QuoteStars: Industry analysis from genuine experts

A word of advice. Industry analysts get paid loads. Loads and loads and loads. Just in case any of you are thinking of a career change, it might be something to consider. There have been some excellent predictions made this week - the sort that are usually followed by a screaming headline and a kerching noise for those who make a living out of such things.

Sadly, we can’t put any of you on the payroll for your almost eerie powers of prescience, but we can reward one of you with a £5 iTunes gift voucher. This week’s deserving winner is fishsticks, who made this very plausible prediction in the comments for our Rumours of third gen iPod touch deepen story:

“As long as they don't double the price for no good reason like they did with the 3GS, this will be mine. Another speed bump ala Touch 2 / 3G would be a happy bonus as well. "I'm curious about the inclusion of the microphone and camera though - are they really wanting it to be a used as a skype based device and potentially eat into sales of their real phone, or are they trying to make it easier for (lazy) devs to port their Nintendo DSi titles? A decent augmented reality game would be nice though...”

Lots to agree with there. The iPod touch’s impending feature creep could have an adverse affect on iPhone sales, particularly in areas where city-wide wi-fi coverage is available. Well done fishsticks, your £5 iTunes gift voucher is on its way.

Elsewhere, there were some other very measured musings on the subject of new hardware. This time from sudhanshu_johny in the comments thread for our Spice unveils X-1 gaming phone for India story:

“Given the fact that mobile gaming is one of the next big things on the entertainment front in India, the idea to come up with a device like this is certainly novel, and deserves kudos. However, the execution seems to be far from perfect. "One wonders which age group of gamers is the manufacturer seriously targeting? From the looks of it, it seems to be more like 10-15 year olds, than a more mature audience. This is because the casual gamers won't prefer to carry a joystick as big as the phone itself along with them for work etc., while the more hardcore ones probably won't like the collection of games. "Any serious mobile gamer would know that Symbian games look much better than Java, so this really isn't the ideal gaming platform. If Spice still wanted to persevere with Java, then they should have chosen much better 3D games like KO legends, Asphalt, etc. to showcase the phone's graphic prowess, rather than average games like Pro Moto Racing.”

Gamers truly do know best sometimes it seems. Or are both fishsticks and sudhanshu_johny way off the mark? the only way you can join in the debate is if you start commenting yourself. Who knows, so long as you comment using a registered account, it could be you who wins next week’s iTunes voucher.

Remember, comments left on both the forums and the main site are elligible for entry, so long as you use a registered Pocket Gamer account, which you can obtain with a minimum of fuss by heading to this here link.

That’s all from QuoteStars for this week. Check back next week to see if you're the lucky winner. To make sure you don’t forget, hit ‘Track It!’ to be automatically alerted as soon as the feature is published.