Earlier in the day I posted this to my Facebook account.

"John is about to give in. Declare the iPhone the winner , for now, and find some Apple flavour Kool Aid"

I should have been clear in stating the terms of victory being purely a numerical advantage.E.g If I wanted to make applications for a single device then it's hard to argue,seriously,against it being the iPhone. That is against the iPhone in the USA , or wannabe countries  like the UK.  It's the best mobile browsing experience out there but that's about where it stops. Safari stops a lot, a heck of a lot but it's so compelling when it's working that I can forgive it.

The iPhone/ iPod touch is also probably the best, and underutilized, control surface available within the price range. I can think of so many home, life and auto automation tasks small companies could achieve in a manner they'd never be able to afford to prototype had they to develop the hardware themselves. That, as ever, is for another post I'll forget to write.

Tautology warning!

The iphone is great for iPhone apps and there's nothing remotely as enjoyable as flicking,pinching and tapping through a well designed application that's safe to talk about at work. It's  eye candy par excellence.

The moment you come to needing to input text however takes you from that bright clean minty experience to tasteless grey gum.Yep you have to just chew through it and swallow before starting up a fresh piece. 

In summary.

Consumption on these devices rocks but production is quite the reverse. kinda like the US economy. It's very much a phone for an American audience.
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On a related note Wired posted a tabloid headline that begged to be read. "Why the Japanese hate the iPhone"

From the comments section  ,mainly because the article seems to have large holes you can drive a tanker through. there reasons why the iPhone may not make the grade in Japan.

  but I can watch TV, listen to radio, surf the web, pay my bills, shoot video and stills, use a GPS, navigate, play games etc. etc. And I can write in both Japanese and English almost as fast as I type on a keyboard. Faster in Japanese, a bit slower in English. Why don't we use the iPhone? Go figure,

Two of those quoted in the article have called the author to task for what's politely known as "making stuff up"    Here and here.  The latter seems like a far more accurate take than the story that spawned it.
 


Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone | Gadget Lab from Wired.com