What 'problem' does an iphone solve?
What 'problem' does a gucci handbag solve?

People in afghanistan, sudan and iraq have problems.
We have lifestyle accessories.

Some more thoughts:
* Consumer wants are partially organic, partially marketing-born.
* Software isn't fungus. It doesn't just appear on its own.
* Microsoft prevents interoperability by breaking their own standards.
* Windows users would be less smug if they had to pay for their warez.

after looking into GPE, i find that it should be able to sync with evolution and kde-pim stuff at least (opensync on the pc end), but the setup is non-trivial, involving ssh server on the tablet...

as for outlook or similar, no clue...

iPhone lets "normal" (i.e. non-geek) Americans make use of a smartphone.

The handbag makes its owner feel important about herself. It is the same thing as battle insignia.

You are mistaking Nokia's marketing strategy for reality. In Nokia's marketing strategy, Nokia is selling people "lifestyle accessories". In reality, people buy phones to satisfy a certain set of needs. These needs may not involve finding food or blowing up another hapless bunch of American soldiers, but they do exist.

The most important of these needs is to make a phone call (don't believe me? check how many dumb phones Nokia sells vs. its smartphone sales). Once you get past making phone calls, you get to several less important needs: instant messaging, email, web browsing, media playback. PIMs are actually in the third tier of these needs, somewhere at the same level with GPS. Office apps go next.

To turn this set of priorities upside down, you have to persuade customers that you are selling them not a phone, but something else. And this is very dangerous thing to do, as customers may just abandon you completely, concluding that you have nothing useful to offer them.

BTW, here is another very important point: customer needs greatly depend on the place where they live and on their lifestyle. 20-40% of subway riders in Moscow and probably 60-80% of Japanese train riders carry and habitually use smartphones or PDAs. In US, everybody drives a car and you can't really stare at the screen while driving: hence is the much lower popularity of such devices.

This is correct qualitatively, but you seem to misjudge the proportion between organic and marketing-induced needs. In reality, most customer needs are organic.

Can't argue with these three, but I can't see how they are related to each other and to the discussion topic. BTW, warez-wise, Symbian users are no less endowed than Windows users, so don't blame poor suckers for being too spoiled. They just have a bigger inferiority complex when it comes to mobile devices.

It's easy and it works. You pay a hefty premium for that simplicity, but everyone I know who has one ( 3 people now ) loves it.

Give everyone in Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq an iPhone and we'll have world peace. iPhone for world peace.

i just hope they never set foot in a tech webforum...

the current "holy war" would be just a margin note...

You keep speaking of "needs"; perhaps this short article might help. The distinction between organic and marketing-induced "needs" is not one I'd care to make; marketing is merely one way of trying to persuade people that some desire is, in fact, a need.

no wonder i want to blow up every center of economic teachings on this world...

Well, you may have noticed that your article talks about objective vs. subjective statements. Your "distinction between organic and marketing-induced "needs" is not one I'd care to make" is an example of a subjective statement. Objectively, the distinction is present though:

Organic needs do not require any additional expenditures to create. They already exist and just wait to be satisfied.

Marketing-induced "needs" (notice quotes) come at a price required to create them. This price may sometimes be very steep and can easily exceed the revenues expected from satisfying such induced "need".

To consider an example, let us say I have a great vision of an urinal that also works as a drinking fountain. Let us further assume that I somehow resolved the obvious sanitary issues with such a device. How much, in your opinion, will it cost me to induce a need for such a device in public? Do you think I will be able to cover my marketing expenditures by selling such devices?

Didn't they just buy a whole other company that effectively writes PIM suites (and dev tools)?

Seems to me that what we might see come out of the Trolltech acquisition is ... a standard phone app suite for Maemo.