Mobile Solutions CI

Motorola Smartphones In The U.S.: A Rollercoaster | mocoNews

You might well ask what it is that Google sees in Motorola (besides patents). A direct link to Google, by way of ownership, could give Motorola devices the boost it needs to gain more market share again—especially if Motorola finds itself competing against fewer Android devices because of that Google connection.

NPD thinks there could be an opportunity to make more low-cost smartphones to target prepay users, for example. However, if you believe the recent reports about Apple, that’s a market it will be soon targetting, too

via moconews.net

This is not a well thought out argument. Having Google as an owner brings no magic fairy dust to Motorola sales, nor does it suddenly give them a cost structure to profitably compete in low-cost and prepaid segments.

Android chips away at Nokia and RIM from low end, Apple takes high end

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via www.rcrwireless.com

This article actually makes a contrary point to the headline. Look through the android devices named in the article as leading sales across US carriers and it shows Android splitting both high and low end. This seems to indicate the Android platform has been successful in its strategy of going across form factors and price points, even at the expense of fragmentation. The result will be that all the main players in the US mobile industry will continue to be heavily incented to work against helping developers consolidate the Android consumer experience.

Why Android's app store will never rival Apple's

IDC released a report on mobile advertising that is receiving a lot of commentary. IDC estimates that Google’s $1 billion in mobile ad revenues is mostly coming from mobile web display and search ads. It's not rocket science given Google's last earnings call; here is what Google told us:

"Mobile is on an annualized run rate of over $1 billion. This means the people who are accessing our products and services through their mobile phones are adding a $1 billion annually to our existing revenue streams. Clearly, this is the future of search in the Internet, more people in more countries coming online from these smartphones. Our mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years. And of course, a lot more of those queries are now coming from Android phones."

Apple's app store revenue has come mostly from their role as billing platform provider, which is an interesting distinction to think about. I'll write more about the differences between these two models later.

What caught my attention about IDC's report is what it implies for the many Android ecosystem partners who have been anxious for Google to pay more attention to developing and fostering android marketplace. Google has no incentive, and possibly a counter-incentive, to improve the marketplace and the app store model according to this report. Look at the last round of updates Google rolled out and consider what level of progress the marketplace has seen in two years. Not much.

Think about what that means for the Android UI and where it will evolve.

Apple will continue to be an app-driven experience, but Google is driving Android to be a browser-based experience. If you deliver content or services through an application you need a plan for how that will work in a browser-based UI. Where will discovery come from? How will cross promotion work?

These are big questions to unravel for service providers, OEMs, and content players.

Samsung Galaxy S launching on T-Mobile

Today we announced the product I've been working on, Samsung's Galaxy S phone. You can find product information at  http://galaxy-s.t-mobile.com/.

This has been a very fun project for me as it has tied together experiences in web services, complex operating systems, balancing preloads versus marketplace for content distribution, and all kinds of other interesting wrinkles. And all on a very cool device. Many reviewers are saying "The Samsung Galaxy S is looking like the sleeper hit of the summer smartphone releases."

The interest in this has been intense and I'll try and post more information as we get closer to launch on July 21. Samsung is bringing this device to every major operator in the US, and over 100 worldwide. Carving out a differentiated position with it while still leveraging Samsung's strengths is an interesting challenge for all service providers. Launching a high profile device on Android has been exciting and fun and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity.

Strong iPhone4 preorders

Apple is claiming 600,000 preorders for iPhone4 on it's first day of availability for registration. I wish we could know how much of that is US. It's an impressive number.

Comparative devices such as one of the "droid" series verizon phones would be doing well to generate a tenth of that.

But I also agree with this analyst:
“The reality is that in the long term, the Android market share is going to catch up to Apple,” said Charles Golvin, a wireless analyst at Forrester Research. “When you have one device being sold to a smaller portion of the population, it’s not going to compete as well as many devices from many vendors on multiple carriers.”

This fall and winter have the most amazing smartphones launching. The market will continue to fragment as people get broader choices to suit their exact needs.