Nearly every company Sydney marketing consultancy Marketing Mechanics works with is exploring its iPhone options these days, according to managing director Diane Costa.

• For consumers. Applications you buy now will not be usable on your next phone.
  You will have to replace your entire application library when you switch from Windows Phone 6.5 to Windows Phone 7 Series.
• For corporations. You will soon have to change your entire mobile infrastructure to move away from Windows Mobile.
  Do you trust Windows Phone 7 enough to switch in 2011, or will you like many others jump on the iPhone bandwagon?
• For developers. Applications you develop now will not run on new phones that will be on the market in 6-9 months.
  What do you do now? Continue developing for Windows Mobile when your sales will be equal to zero in a year. Or begin to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series which will have zero users upon launch. Or move to another platform?

IN THE old days — just after the dinosaurs departed and we got flush toilets, and biscuits came in tins and the grocer was good for a tuppenny bag of broken ones to take to school — who made the bikkies and what they contained were not on our juvenile radar.

But now, grocers have been swamped by supermarkets and the little old lady in her country kitchen that features on so many food labels is actually a giant corporation. Thus, it is not always easy to know what’s good and what might only look good in the food we buy.

There are a number of factors, but I think the main one is software…Developers are following the sales figures because the better selling platforms offer a wider audience interested in the apps being developed and sold.

He uses the latest Gartner market share data to illustrate that there are only three fast growing mobile platforms; BlackBerry, iPhone and Android.

We’ve had some good media so far, including a big piece in the Melbourne MX today plus a couple of blog posts in Lifehacker and Macworld.

The Sustainable Living Festival is happening this weekend and we’ll be presenting on Saturday and Sunday. If you’ve got time, stop by and say hi.

Shop Ethical is a collaboration between Ethical Consumer Group and Outware Mobile, and it’s designed to give Australian consumers the low-down on the environmental and social record of companies behind common brands found in the supermarket.

The app uses data from the Ethical Shopping Guide 2010 edition and is based on assessments gathered from over 25 sources including Greenpeace, Choose Cruelty Free and Friends of the Earth.

Download it now, and let us know what you think.

We’ve certainly seen a massive uptake of the iPhone by the enterprise. Executives just want it and are telling the IT people to just make it work. There are cases where all executives have iPhones and the rest of the staff have Blackberries. Slowly it filters down.

Apple’s iconic iPhone added another chapter to its short history by nearly doubling its shipments from the same quarter a year ago,” the report said. “Demand for the Apple iPhone continued unabated during the holiday quarter, and agreements with multiple carriers within the same market enabled further distribution. The fourth quarter also saw the launch of the iPhone at one of the world’s largest carriers: China Unicom.”

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.