Mobile Solutions CI

MWC showing 2012 smartphone trends

MWC is in full flight and we are seeing all kinds of interesting news--Nokia's crazy camera phone (41MP, but Symbian!), HTC's brand launch for "one" devices, LG's quad core 3D device.

Here are the things I've been noticing from all the announcements:

Processors are becoming the new battleground. At first it was screens but now we see the core count and AP performance rising in prominence within the industry. The next six months will be make or break for NVDIA--can their Tegra deliver, can they support an on-time go to market? Their track record in tablets was not good and competing against Qualcomm means more than spyder tests. They have to show they can support partners in getting to commercial launch on time and bug free.

The biggest players no longer use these trade shows to drive news cycles. Samsung and Apple will have the most-watched, highest unit volume, heaviest advertised device launches this year and neither is talking about them at MWC. What is not there says volumes about Nokia and HTC efforts to leverage the event.

Screen definition technology is moving past the point of differentation for consumers. Just an opinion, but I don't see how anyone effectively markets around technology or size differentiation now that all players are pushing so hard. Huawei has two 4.5-inch screen devices, but still at resolution of 1280 by 720 pixel, while the LG Optimus 4X HD and the HTC One X both have 4.7-inch screens with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. Blogs are reporting Samsung's new flagship at similar or better resolution.

Finally, everyone is anchoring on bringing best experiences in camera and music. For music I don't see how this wins against a full ecosystem experience such as iTunes (and no, Google music is not there yet). For camera, I have a hard time believing that will be a brand space you can defend beyond a product launch window.

It will be interesting to get a few months down the road and look back at Mobile World Congress and see what sticks.

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.

 

Mobile competition hits Samsung's quarter - Rethink Wireless

Intensifying competition in handsets and other mobile devices hit Samsung's first quarter, as the Korean giant posted its second consecutive quarterly fall in operating profit. The firm's shares slumped on fears that full year profits may be hit by the price war in phones and tablets, despite Samsung's progress in market share in those sectors.

via www.rethink-wireless.com

Samsung appears to be hit harder by iPad, while HTC has reported a very strong quarter. Android manufacturers are increasingly showing different strategies deliver different results.

Note HTC earnings:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/htc-posts-record-sales-profit-on-demand-for-advanced-phones-1-.html

Naked versus skinned android -- why UI innovation should be API innovation

Does the customer experience on an android phone benefit from the modifications that device manufacturers make?

HTC skins android with their Sense UI, Samsung integrates messaging and email more heavily with its Touchwiz interface, and of course Motorola brings its Blur interface. These are the best known and most heavily developed examples.

The OEMs believe they have to customize at the OS level to differentiate themselves. They also believe that consumers prefer the extra widgets, wallpapers, and other UI touches that they bring. For many people, for people who don't care to have to think about their phone, that may well be true.

For technology-first consumers who are really passionate about their devices it is frequently not true. Many of these people prefer to have the latest version of OS and do not at all like the 3-4 month lag required for an OEM to take an OS release and then develop on top of it. Many also don't value the extra features, wishing instead to have a more "pure" google look. This sentiment is frequently represented online in blogs and comments but is not reflected in direct consumer research of average smartphone owners and intenders.

Increasingly I believe that UI overlay customizations are a serious mis-step as a differentiation play. I think there is real room to move for an OEM to take android straight (the GME build) but then offer an abstracted API layer on-device to developers, service providers, and content providers. The purpose would be twofold.

First, consolidate the key developer-facing device features into one interface or limited set of interfaces. With a shortset of features stabilized and delivered in an optimized balance (e.g. location, messaging, notifications, orientation, etc) many apps and services would gladly accept a single managed API which did not change across OS builds and carrier implementations.

Secondly, the user experience would benefit from balancing notifications of various sorts from a UX and battery/processor perspective.

The intent would be for everyone to play to their strengths--the device maker now markets a platform and optimizes the core performance aspects that only they can touch. The content and app developers devote their resources to the harder problems of promotion and uptake. 

The OEM (or ODM for that matter) who adopts this can move past Google's effort to suck the value from their business by including direct billing payments integration and ensuring they therefore are part of the content revenue stream, without having to invest so much R&D into UI and software development. They also gain at least a business quarter of time to market which is a huge advantage given what a poor partner Google is.

The one area where this may break down as a concept is notifications. If there is one area Google lags badly in UX it is notifications and solving this elegantly would be a huge win for an OEM who could then implement the above approach of keeping a consistent JSON API to plug into--especially appealing for content providers and app developers who depend upon notifications to drive uptake of freemium or premium models (i.e. most everyone).

When iPhone 5 launches my prediction is this last element will be exposed fully as the achilles heel of a vanilla android build.

Can OEMs sustain Android market share with balanced product portfolios?

ABI Research has its marketshare reports out through Q3 of 2011. I had been looking at some other internal data on the same subject and was interested to see that ABI claims HTC, Samsung, and Apple all continue to take share from RIM and Nokia--mostly Nokia. HTC escaped much notice in the report but I was struck by the different path it seems to have taken to continue winning share.

HTC marketshare growth comes without a single iconic device associated with it. Samsung has the Galaxy S, Motorola has the Droid, and even Nokia with all of its OS platforms has tried to focus attention on a single reference device. Same with RIM. While these vendors have had different degrees of success it seems to me that only HTC is choosing to continue with a portfolio approach on the device side and focus marketing on its brand instead.

I wonder if this is accurate. Are the heavily promoted HTC devices similar enough that they share a common physical ID with consumers? I’d actually argue no, although if you are a diehard smartphone person the finish details definitely speak HTC to you.

The next question I have is whether this is a purposeful long term strategy and position of HTC or whether it is simply the result of a quarter by quarter focus. Only HTC knows that.

If all of these assumptions are true it will be most interesting to watch how successful this strategy will be going forward. My hope is that it is a purposeful bet and that it works if for no other reason than it seems so rare to find a company which considers the marketplace, takes a long term position on how to play it, then executes consistently against that.