Mobile Solutions CI

RIM's co-CEOs to step down | Mobile - CNET News

Research In Motion's co-chief executives have resigned their positions as part of a management shuffle, the company announced this evening.

via news.cnet.com

Balsillie and Lazaridis are stepping down to be replaced by their COO. It must be very hard for them to make this move. It will be interesting to see what affect this has on the decision making within the company. At the senior level it still feels as if RIM is the only one who doesn't understand how far behind the market it is. Will that change overnight? Or do they need leadership from outside the company to cope?

This was the one move they had to leverage for a statement acknowledging a need to change (more to the analyst, carrier, and IT segments than end users). However the strong "business as usual" statements ignored that opportunity.

As RIM stands now it's hard to believe they exit 2012 a standalone. Given this will not be an attempt to revitalize the brand or product portfolio it looks more like housecleaning in advance of a deal.

CES 2012 Day One Device News

Here is my wrapup of the kickoff of CES from a device angle.

Nokia: Dominating the early CES news cycles, Nokia’s Lumia 900 for AT&T.

HTC

• Titan II, an LTE Windows Phone Mango device for AT&T. 4.7" Super LCD display, 16MP wide-angle camera, DLNA and HDMI-out. MSM8255 at 1.5GHz, 9.9mm

Motorola:

• VZW LTE Droid 4 – a slide QWERTY with dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, an 8 megapixel camera w/1080p video, on Android 2.3
• Razr Maxx, a fat (almost 9mm) Razr with extended battery.

Samsung:

• Galaxy Nexus will be one of Sprint’s first LTE phones later this year.
• The Galaxy Note is heavily featured.
• Samsung is also launching Galaxy Tab, it’s 7.7” Android tablet, for Verizon’s LTE network.

LG:

• The Spectrum, a VZW device with IPS screen technology LG has demo’d for us. The Spectrum has a 4.5” 1280 x 720 display, runs Android 2.3, with a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. The 4.5 inch display is matched perfectly to the 16:9 aspect ratio -- very long phone. It’s bundled with an exclusive ESPN deal to stream full HD 720p video clips to the device through ESPN’s ScoreCenter app.
• Viper, launching on Sprint, an “eco-friendly” phone with extremely efficient charger and made from 35 percent recycled plastics.

Huawei:

• Ascend P1 S, 6.68mm, 4.3 inches Super AMOLED qHD display with Gorilla Glass ( 960 x 540 resolution), TI OMAP 4460 at 1.5 Ghz running Android 4.0 . 8MP camera with LED flash and auto focus, 1.3MP front facing camera. HD video recording at 1080p and HDMI and DLNA. 1GB RAM/ 4 GB ROM with 1800 mAh battery. No carrier partners announced. Target price around $400.
• Ascend P1, same device with 7.9mm thickness and smaller battery.

Pantech: Pantech’s Burst is an Android phone for the budget-conscious, it will launch on AT&T’s network for under $50 with a contract.

 

The "Windows Phone is Superior" debate

People ask me all the time why, if I think Windows Phone is such an excellent product, sales appear so lackluster.  My belief is Microsoft’s approach with WP7 has a impedance mismatch with the carriers & device manufacturers while Google’s approach reduces friction with carriers & device manufacturers at the expense of end users. The question is: will end-user dissatisfaction with Android’s inconsistencies and fragmentation be strong enough to allow the better product to succeed.

via ceklog.kindel.com

I was very interested to read this blog post. The WindowsPhone "Metro" UI is certainly an interesting piece of work. My personal opinion is that after using it in a couple of incarnations I regard it as evolutionary not revolutionary.

However, the main point of this post and most insider debate within mobile is whether WP still has a chance not how effective the UI is.

And every time I read a post like this I think not. I don't mean to knock a great article from a thoughtful writer. What does surprise me is that this commentary was not an internal debate which got digested and incorporated into Microsoft's mobile planning about five years ago. And if not, that two years ago the writing on the wall would have forced it.

Instead we still see from both inside Microsoft and from their actions a willful ignorance of the market systems they operate in. Operator channels, retail reps, national chains, distributors, end consumers, technology blogs and writers, chipset manufacturers, hardware manufacturers, security threats, SarbOx- and HIPPA-style regulations all feed into the market system that a mobile player must align to succeed.

If you don't have a systematic understanding and approach to this complex and hyper world you will be dead. Which translates to about 3% market share.