Rob Pegoraro is a technology columnist at The Washington Post. We recently interviewed him on our Motley Fool Money radio show. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation about the smartphone market in America.
Chris Hill: Right now, Research In Motion's
Rob Pegoraro: I see the iPhone number definitely going up. Android is definitely going up. comScore put out some new numbers and I think they have Android up at 13% already. Windows Mobile is going down, down, down. Microsoft
Hill: Is there an untapped opportunity out there for BlackBerry?
Pegoraro: Hard to say. From what I have read about the next version of their operating system, due sometime later this year, they want to make it much more touch sensitive and try to get into that consumer market. I see two opportunities that are being left open a little bit right now by iPhones and Android devices. One of them is really simple synchronization with the calendar and contact software on your computer. The iPhone does that, but in Windows it is only with Outlook and so a lot of consumer home users, they don't have Outlook, so they have no way to sync up. The other is just a cheap, cheap phone and I think Palm in its own way has been sort of backing into that strategy. If you have seen how cheap you can get a Pre or a Pixie Smartphone, in fact, with some carriers they are not practically giving them away, they are giving them away.
Hill: Is that also an untapped opportunity for iPhone and Android, to just make a really scaled-down cheap version of their product?
Pegoraro: Android, yes, iPhone, no. Apple