Leeroy Jenkins

McDonalds actually has started to clearly label nutritional guides (with bar graphs in fact)

While it is possible that Nintendo is using toxic materials, its not like Greenpeace found toxic materials in the Wii or other hardware. The study is inconclusive, but since Greenpeace has always been sensationalist, they went ahead and gave Nintendo a zero, and hammered the other major electronic companies.

I do think that the press this has received is good. All they want is for companies to publicly reveal policies, not give away trade secrets. If Nintendo is not using toxic materials, it won't be hard for them to make something up and publish it, it won't change their manufacturing. And at least the public will know for sure then.

That being said, it is irresponsible of Greenpeace to publish a misleading article such as that. They score a 0 on their PUBLIC POLICY, not necessarily their product or policy.

I give tons of credit to apple and nokia. Apple has put together a solid set of features, both old and new (Visual voicemail is bad a$$) and made it sexy AND usable. And the fact that a US company designed it is solid, the US cell phone market sucks, and the iPhone is one of the only bright spots. But don’t think the iphone is the perfect product, apple made sure of that themselves. For that, I’m disappointed and not surprised.
Nokia gets kudos for their own reasons too. Nokia is a solid cell phone manufacturer with a history of making solid and sexy phones. I think they have a much better chance of making a iPhone competitor than Microsoft is at making a hard-drive MP3 player. They probably have developed enough of iphone type technology on their own that putting it together in one product isn’t an automatic lawsuit and loss. See, that’s the beauty of the iPhone interface. How do you patent sliding pictures across the screen? Its too simple an idea. Its just that nobody really has done it other than a gimmick.
As for innovation, Apple and Nokia are OK. They definitely don’t invent things. And they both do a pretty good job of improving things nicely. Apple did a solid job of designing a product ground up full of cool, well, gimmicks. Nokia hasn’t had the guts to do it, and that makes sense. It’s not really that Nokia couldn’t do it, it was just too big a risk. Apples risk was much better because they can market the crap out of it, something Nokia can’t really do (does the average American even know what the N95 is?), and apple has a solid brand backing. They even tied the iconic iPod into the phone. Now Nokia is releasing their own product, self-developed, that will pretty easily run off the iphone hype. Genius on both sides.
For true innovation, that last thing I was genuinely impressed by was the Japanese dude who invented the blue LED. SONY, Phillips, Panasonic, etc. put millions into that, but this guy from a small company got it done. Blue lasers followed shortly, as well as millions of different inventions (like white LEDs, lol). This guy has my respect way more than Jobs or Nokia corporate.

I think that this is a fantastic idea. As a consumer, I don’t care who made what. The smartest consumer is not bound by brand loyalty. The smartest consumers go for the best products at the best prices. If Nokia can deliver what only the iPhone has right now (fantastic interface) without the shortcomings (3G, locked to AT&T, etc.) then I’m game. It benefits EVERYBODY. Fanboys and haters alike. For fanboys, it will drive the price of the iPhone down, accelerate the release of the next iPhone, force apple to include better features, etc.
For haters, it will provide a technically better product at a cheaper price. If successful, it will even drive other companies to create their own phones with solid user interfaces. Consumer wins. That’s me.
Every company in the WORLD is driven by profit, I don’t care who you are. R&D will continue on the iPhone, but don’t be fooled into thinking that Apple released the best of what they had. They released what they deemed would be the most profitable products for the company in the long run. I’m damn sure this included features they could improve on for a 2nd iphone release. Like, I dunno, 3G and GPS. Maybe even a not network-tied phone. Nokia is doing the same thing. They want in on the iPhone hype, no doubt about it. As well they should. But to get marketshare, they will release a better product with a lower price point. So let the corporations battle it out. The only thing you will be doing by supporting just one product is promoting market stagnation. Don’t even think for a second that Apple would release a second iPhone unless there was some type of competition, not until generation 1 sales had slowed significantly. And what about the 70% of the market not tied to AT&T? Keep supporting iPhones and the whole US cell phone market is behind (again).

Also, I only vaguely remember hearing that the GBASP was the fastest selling console ever. I did not check that info before posting. Sorry.

48.
You are correct on both counts.
Let me clarify some of the point I was trying to make:
The Sega Genesis lead in marketshare did come during the SNES era. However, in Japan, the Super Famicom easily retook marketshare, to an estimated 90-95%. In the US, a late release and supply problems did give the Genesis a majority market. However, in annual sales, the SNES eventually overtook the Genesis in sales. All in all, more segas were sold than nintendos in the US, but worldwide, the SNES outsold the Genesis.

Also the handheld market has grown significantly since the introduction of the GBA.
In a 12 year period, iterations of the GameBoy sold about 170 million units, from 1989 to 2001 (includes GBColor). This averages to a sale of about 14.16 million units per year. The GBA and subsequent DS sales since 2001 have amounted to about 93.73 million units, averaging 18.75 million units per year. The Gameboy Advance SP was the fastest selling console ever. Assuming Nintendo continues to feed the market with new products and the sale rate averages the same, in a 12 year period, GBA and successors will sell 225 million units, a 32 percent increase.
Compared to console sales, the Playstation series has sold 205.6 million units since its introduction 12 years ago.
The PSP has shipped 17 million units, I'm not sure how many have been sold.
The NES and SNES combined sold about 89 million units (main competitor was the Genesis which sold about 35 million)
The N64 sold 32 million, followed by the GC's 20.85 million.
The xbox sold 22 million.

I mistakenly said that Nintendos marketshare has grown considerably. A more accurate statement is that overall Nintendo sales have grown considerably. However, their sales have not kept up with the market's whole growth, mostly credited to the Playstation series, and some to the Xbox.
It's difficult to break it down into pre and post GBA eras, since it overlaps so much, but here's an attempt:
Pre GBA (Playstation (1994), N64 (1996), and Gameboy Color (1998))
Nintendo marketshare about 45 percent, Sony 55 percent

Nintendo's marketshare may be slightly higher, since I didn't include regular Gameboy units sold, since it was a system that really belongs to the NES, SNES, Genesis, Gamegear era (and I can't find that data, lol)

Post GBA (PS2 (2000), Xbox (2001), Xbox 360 (2005), Gamecube (2001), Gameboy Advance (2001), Nintendo DS (2004), PSP (2005, est. 15 million sold))
Nintendo: 44.34 percent
Sony: 45.96 percent
Microsoft: 9.7 percent

From this rough breakdown, it looks like Nintendo has actually lost overall marketshare since the GBA introduction, although not nearly as much as Sony. Microsoft obviously did nothing but gain marketshare.

Sorry if I misled anybody in my previous post, and thanks to epobirs for pointing my mistakes out.
Most of my information comes from Wikipedia, so anyone is welcome to check my numbers. I have no idea if the Wikipedia numbers are accurate or not, but I am assuming they are.

#38. Your statement that Nintendo has lost marketshare ever since Sega was introduced into the mix is slightly inaccurate.
Nintendo did lose market share once the Sega Genesis came out, actually losing market majority. However, they also regained marketshare once the Super Nintendo was released, once again gaining market majority. They have subsequently lost marketshare with the N64 and GC, but if you include handheld consoles in the mix, Nintendo's overall marketshare has grown considerably, largely thanks to their dominance of the handheld market that has exploded since the Gameboy Advance.
As a side note, the PSP has done exceptionally well, taking significant portions of the market, although not a plurality. It has gained a higher marketshare than any handheld competitor to date, including the Game Gear (although the site I found on this was sketchy). Another thing that is of interest is that Bandai WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color actually grew to an 8% handheld marketshare in Japan, where it was released.
The reasons why I don't think Apple and Nintendo will merge:
Both companies wouldn't benefit.
Apple does have some gains to make through this acquisition. Apple has been notoriously weak in gaming support, although acquisition of Nintendo wouldn't necessarily mean better computer gaming support. People mention the PowerPC processor similarties, but Apple is switching to Intel. Perhaps more importantly is the handheld aspect of the acquisiition. Acquiring a game library that can be digitally distributed to iPods could catapult the already popular iPod into a handheld replacement. Think PSP with large hard drive and good games. iPods seem to be the bread and butter of Apple currenty, and I'm not particularly a fan. Other than the 30 GB video iPod, the other iPod version are overpriced for their size and functionality. An iPod shuffle doesn't even have a screen, but I digress.
Nintendo, does NOT have much to gain from Apple. Nintendo has consistently posted a profit, unlike Apple. If the iPod fad dies out, in favor of other MP3 players, which may or may not happen, what is Apple's future? Steve Jobs is an excellent CEO and Mac fanboys shouldn't worry. Too much... The DS lite is selling better than ever, and hype for the Wii is alarmingly large. Nintendo is about to establish their own library of digitally distributed games.
Finally lets look at the company philosphies, which I think people feel, inaccurately, are similar.
Nintendo is focused on gaming directly, nothing else. Affordable, quality gaming.
Apple seems focused on trendy expensive form-factor and sometimes very high quality products. Yes, the Apple notebooks are quality products, but they are also overpriced due to Apple's form-factor agenda. This is a far cry from the Nintendo Wii, which does not have cutting edge tech, rather is built to be affordable.
Someone mentioned earlier that Apple does not profit much on hardware. This is a key point in the 2 companies differences, since Nintendo very much plans to. Although launch consoles generally lose money, as the system ages, production is cheaper, while the cost remains relatively the same. Therefore the company eventually makes a profit. The Wii launch is expecting minimal losses, making the profit margin appear that much earlier (this is unique to the launch of the Wii). Nintendo also makes profits off of its redesigned handhelds, which use many of the same components, now cheaper, for a system that sells as well as a brand new one does. Sometimes better.
It just wouldn't make sense for Nintendo to sell their company.