26 minutes into the Verge CES 2012 SuperSession video

Nilay Patel-“Who owns the customer relationship when you guys sit down and hash out a phone? It’s you (OEM), it’s the platform provider, it’s the carrier.”

Drew Bamford (HTC)-“Thats just the fact of life in the mobile business right? Everybody owns the customer who wants to own the customer and so there is a fine balance.”

Joshua Topolsky-“Fun for the customer isn’t it, four or five different entities want to own you.”

Aaron Woodman (Microsoft)-“Whats funny about that question is that if you asked a customer most of them would say, at least in the US they would say their mobile operator.”

This just makes John Gruber’s point so much more poetic

Apple: Here is our new phone. It comes in black or white. We will let you sell it.

Apples controls the entire experience with its iPhone customers and no other smartphone OEMs, OS vendors, or carriers can make that claim. They sell the phone, provide support, provide updates, and curate the ecosystem. Maybe its not a coincidence that Apple is making the most money.

MG Siegler via parislemon

Hard to pick the most ridiculous element of these updated numbers.

I can’t decide. You choose.

For reference

MG Siegler via parislemon

When you release sub-par products, you look sub-par yourself. Customers don’t care what platform it’s on, and don’t care what politics are going on behind the scenes at the company. If you release shit, you look like shit. It’s much better to release nothing at all.

That’s maybe my biggest problem with Google. They release something, and I no longer have any faith that it’s going to be any good. It’s hard to get excited about a company like that. It’s the same reason why it’s hard to get excited when Microsoft and Yahoo release new things. The track record just isn’t there any more. The faith is gone.

The reaction or anticipation preceding an announcement or update to a product is so different between Google and other companies. When Apple releases something almost everyone is excited and expects them to make positive changes that most users are actually excited to use. The same goes with Microsoft. Every year when they get on stage at E3 and talk about the updates to the Xbox, people are happy about most of the changes and they really look forward to using them.

Google is now more in the same league as RIM or HP. If feels most users would prefer them to make no changes and just not talk about any updates because every time they change something they mess it up. The comforting difference between HP and RIMs complete failures and Google is that they don’t didn’t screw with the cash cow, Google search.

Update: Mike Florio mentioned MobileMe. I agree no one has faith that Apple can deliver web services with the same quality and reliability that they show on other products. The fear for me is that Google is now messing with search. I can overlook Google's inability to code passable iOS apps or Apple's consistant stumbles with web services. I would start to lose faith in Apple if they started making mistakes with iOS, but they are not.

Dana Wollman via Engadget

Still, we managed to find a slew of Android tablets (and one iPad) across a range of budgets. Been on the fence about what to get? Skip past the break for some ideas.

I could have written this fluff article in one sentence.

If you have $500 dollars buy an iPad.

As a side note, the kindle fire is an attractive looking product but is not proven. I wouldn't buy anyone a tablet that was not an iPad until after the fire is released. Maybe at that point it would be a good option for the more budget conscious tablet buyer.

Matthew Izatt via Google

With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

Cryptic error messages really feel fast and efficient.

Zach Epstein via BGR

Google may be preparing to take its mobile efforts to the next level as it tests a Google-branded MVNO in Spain. Unconfirmed reports accompanied by photos of a Google SIM card and a Nexus S running on a “Google_Es” network suggest that Google is toying with the idea of becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or a company that provides cellular service by leasing capacity from existing wireless carriers and piggybacking on their networks.

As an iPhone owner I probably will never use Google as a carrier, but I like the prospect of Google disrupting the wireless telecom industry. Google would surely attempt to act as a dumb pipe providing only data to the devices it services by routing voice and sms over IP using Google voice. I hope that Google could be a large enough presence in the industry that other carriers would have to follow suit.

Kyle Baxter via TightWind

Let’s consider what Apple’s done. They have the best hardware, the best software, and their prices are lower than competing, lower-quality products, due to Apple’s supply chain strategy, all while their margins are larger. That’s difficult to compete with, and HP has effectively pulled out their white flag.

I try not to post links that other blogs have posted, thanks to Shawn Blanc, and when I do I really don’t like using the same pull quote, but this one was too good to pass up.

You can talk about market share numbers, number of apps, and daily activations till you are blue in the face but Apple is becoming increasingly harder to compete with. In the past price was always their Achilles heel but even that is now gone. What can other companies do to compete?

Ben Brooks via Brooks Review

As the title states, I won’t be joining Google’s new social network any time soon. I wasn’t even going to post about it, until I started to get people asking me about it. I have two problems with Google +:

1. It’s made by Google.
2. I don’t trust Google.

I am usually very critical of google products but From what I have seen so far I like Google +. Even though I typically don’t trust Google with my social data, I don’t know if I trust Facebook or Twitter that much either. The main reason I am excited about Google + is how much better the UI/UX looks compared to Google’s other offerings. It looks beautiful compared to most other web services and is easily the best looking Google product ever.

My main issue/fear about google + is the friend issues. It won’t be useful if none of my friends use the service and only time will tell if it will gain traction.

Darren Murph via Engadget

After a bit of additional digging, we noticed that it’s possible to access the Tab’s file system from a Mac or Windows PC by using the Android SDK, putting the tablet in USB debugging mode, and running ddms. It’s not the most convenient solution if you want to quickly and conveniently transfer some content to / from the device.

The iPad, it just works.

In this video Hunt Henning a good friend of mine from twitter unboxed Google’s CM-48 laptop running Chrome OS. He was lucky enough to be selected as a member of the Chrome OS Pilot Program. Be sure to stay tuned for a full review coming in a few weeks after he has some time with the device. Thanks again Hunt.