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.

HD7 Review: My Month with WP7

The best perk of my job is getting to play with so many mobile devices. This past month I spent with my first Windows Phone 7 device as I felt it was high time I got to really know the WP7 operating system. I used an HD7 during three trips (Orlando, Bay Area, one extended local area trip) and both business and personal time over the past three weeks.

And I can't wait to get back on an Android. There were a few fundamental deal killers for me with this device:

• Screen responsiveness. The touchscreen and OS interplay just didn't work well enough. The screen would lag or stutter during fast scrolling and seletion, or would simply mis-read my intended inputs in ways that should not happen on a product touchscreen smartphone.
• Size. Too big and bulky. I never did get used to the size.
• Not great at data connectivity. Too often the already poky device would step down to Edge and stay there when I could get 4G on another device.
• Overall UI and especially apps UI. For an OS that is supposed to be all about surfacing just what you need I find WP7 extremely frustrating in its menu layout. There are just too many selection steps for common tasks. And no, I don't want to have to set up specific shortcuts for all of my favorite or most common tasks. That is what the OS is supposed to do for me.
  • Third party app UI is particularly bad in requiring 2-3 more steps for the most common actions. As a small example, the Facebook app doesn't remember where you closed out an opens at the main menu every time. So does every app. As a result every damn time I open FB I then have to select into the timeline. I don't care enough about FB to have to make 3 selections just to get to what I consider the default screen, so the app is close to useless to me.
• Exit paths from core apps. If you are in camera but want to switch to gallery to find a photo you've already taken, there is no easy toggle. Far too often I found myself having to hit the "home" button and then drill back into some slightly different app just to complete an action.
• Lack of third party apps. I never thought of myself as using very many or very cutting edge apps until I didn't have access to 95% of them. The app ecosystem is such a powerful driver for iPhone and Android that after this experience I don't think I'm interested in going back to another OS.

There are lots of little extras on this device. The Netflix integration, the kickstand, a good camera, the pretty transitions in the mapping. The candy is nice but does not overcome the weaknesses.

Nokia and Microsoft partner...five years too late

Five years ago this would have been industry-shaking news. Now, the headlines are various forms of requiem for Nokia. Many people believed that Elop's move to Nokia was primarily to foster just this partnership and it is natural that after viewing each other as the primary competitors for a market they have now lost the two companies would want to partner.

But now, instead of spending the next two years winning customers, they will spend them figuring out how to partner. And when has either company ever successfully partnered?

-Update-

Here is a funny and sad list of big mobile partnerships announced with Microsoft (e.g. LG, MOT, Palm...). The best outcomes have been nothing, the worst have brought financial ruin. Not promising for either side.

 

Kin: Moscow, not Waterloo

Microsoft couldn't have chosen worse timing to kill the Kin. 

It's always easy to poke holes in a product and especially this one--a hideous ID, heavy emphasis on web-based tools for a mobile-centric demographic, a UI overly stuffed with features, no tailored pricing plan, a bad pricing plan period, the list goes on. 

It's incredible to see the lack of energy and overall fizzle of this launch from both Verizon and Microsoft after all that Microsoft poured into it.

Coming just in advance of the next generation of Windows Mobile the one thing Microsoft has to demonstrate to a skeptical industry is that it is really in this game. And giving up and rolling over at the first bad mistake is not the way to do it. This loads more pressure on the first Win7 phones to be hero products and they won't be. They can't be. 

We have incredible devices launching every month now and no single one of them gets more than a week, a few weeks at best, in the spotlight. Microsoft's strength in this environment should be the ability to stay with partners and create demand generation that will last. Except when they demonstrate that they have no problem pouring years and dollars into design and build but will walk away at the first mistake when it comes to go to market.

It was always a disastrous strategy for Microsoft to open a second front in the mobile OS wars. But they did it. And once you start for Moscow, by god you better take Moscow.

What an incredible year. Right under our noses we are seeing Microsoft, Palm, and Nokia removed from the top tier of the smartphone scene. Samsung with the Galaxy S, Apple of course, HTC and Verizon pushing Android, Android itself--these are the players defining the game now.

WM7 launching into a headwind

Rethink Wireless has a good summary post on hole Microsoft has dug for itself.

"As part of its Q3 results announcement, Microsoft said revenue in its mobile and entertainment division - excluding the Xbox gaming platform - fell by $80m. Windows Mobile has lost over 20% of its smartphone market share in the past four months, according to estimates from comScore, with...just 15.1% [market share]."

The larger problem Windows Mobile faces is that its success is based upon a licensing revenue model. With sales around $1 billion and profit of a $100 some million how can it ever become a material business to Microsoft when the other business units create around $4 billion in profit on around $15bn in sales?

Microsoft KIN (Pink)--Now the OS players want their own UI layer

Microsoft rolled out their new social networking phones which will be called the Kin phones. The concept looked nicely executed with sms, email, social networks, photoshare, blogging, etc all rolled into a small UI on a qwerty keyboard device with a web-based client for management, backup, and retrieval. As an added bonus we don't have to see any more breathless "reveals" of the Pink project.

I struggle to see how this will be much of a hit though. It's essentially a souped up feature phone in a really strange form factor. Pink turns out to be INQ (remember the FaceBook phone?) with Ovi Share as web backup.

While the product looked nice I was surprised that platform fragmentation didn't get addressed even tangentially. There is no intention for 3rd party apps on the KIN devices but it does bring many dependencies to carriers and other partners. This is an OS overlay on the new Windows Mobile so before WM7 is  in market it is fragmenting like Android has. Given the lack of backward compatibility to WM 6x this is banking an awful lot on silverlight and web service level platforms. Are we going to be seeing every OEM skinning each OS (Blur, Sense, etc) as well as the OS providers doing it? Will Google start offering uniquely branded, skinned, and featured Android subsets? How is it a win for partners to have Microsoft splinter WM even further? How many different service infrastructures are service providers going to support?

In many ways I'd say this looked like Motoblur with a Dashwire integration. Great concept for 2 years ago, still relevant last year, questionable launching in the same window as iPhone 4. My skepticism comes from wondering how Microsoft expects their partners and ecosystem to be excited about offloading contacts, content, and backup (backup! after the Danger debacle) to Microsoft with no value add provided within the application, service, or network partners. 

Microsoft better plan on marketing and selling the crap out of these things if they hope to get and keep any kind of traction. 

New devices start with the platform

Isn't it interesting how mobile platforms now start by marketing to developers? Most of them end there too. I've been reflecting on that while reading the positive reviews of the MIX event in Vegas, Microsoft's developer conference.

"The big take-away message is that Microsoft is trying to make it easy, fast and cheap to make apps for the new mobile-phone platform" says Moconews.

It's great to see Microsoft climbing back into the game. And it's always good for developers, and us as consumers, when distribution becomes easier. However as soon as distribution becomes easier the next thing we'll see is the supply-side blogs and media shouting "holy crap with all this content discoverability is really hard!". That is the story of the iPhone app store's success.

So while it's a positive to decrease the friction in distribution channels it's very frustrating that no one seems to have learned the basic lessons of web 1.0, Blackberry, iPhone, etc etc. I feel that frustration in particular with Android and the OHA. Easy distribution is a message you must have to developers and a reality you must deliver upon as a platform. But that only covers the delivery. It isn't a panacea for creating a market with liquidity (supply and demand in balance), and only markets with liquidity survive.

Mobile platforms driving "the smartphone craze"

Here, on the Vision Mobile website,  is an interesting look at segmenting mobile operating systems. I've cross-posted my comments below because I don't agree entirely with this. But I do think it raises some interesting thoughts about where RIM, Windows Mobile, and Android will be positioned and is worth a read--go read it.

I don't believe Android belongs in "Type 1". The whole point of Android is in expanding the upper boundary of "Hybrid" -- at the upper ranges by OEM UI overlays (HTC, MOT) to optimize for usage types not otherwise as polished as alternatives, at the lower end by messaging-centric devices.

The real driver Type 1 is having a cloud or PC-based service as brand fulcrum. If you want to deliver an integrated service it doesn't matter whether your OS is "open", whether you truly have an OS, or any other criteria which denotes "smartphone" as opposed to a rich feature phone. Instead delivering an integrated service experience is the dividing line. Open only matters when and if a service experience breaks down.

BREW has gained momentum in some regions and vendors (the AT&T announcement at CES was a surprise win), but that position is nuanced by losing traction at others. Far more important is the state of developer depth and engagement in BREW. The real point to BREW is that it is "open" as a platform only to OEMs who can invest headcount over years on it. Indy developers have voted with their feet to direct distribution (i.e. app store) models. BREW is a "most cost" distribution path for merchants, casual game vendors, etc.

And that is the real point of difference between the typologies. The consumer use cases for Type 1 are built around content consumption and delivery not possible on Hybrid and Type 2 devices. Hybrid is migrating to messaging-based and messaging-delivered activities (including messaging as transport uses, such as social networking). What will this mean for RIM who is firmly in Type 1 but with a Hybrid use case and OS? And Type 2 remains voice-centric, waiting for better voice search, navigation, and content.

Finally, no WinMo at all?

As someone who has been working in this space for some time now it makes me laugh to title this post "the smartphone craze". Using mobile devices to connect to people and consume content has certainly developed in uneven spikes but calling this evolution a "craze" and linking it specifically to smartphones strikes me as funny. 

Apple will take Bing as default for the right $$

Lots of coverage today about the Business Week article claiming Apple might move to Bing as the default search tool for iPhone. It's all being positioned and reported as Apple and Google being angry at each other.

Here's a quick reminder from 2008: "Verizon Wireless Search Deal: Microsoft Closing In On It; Guarantees May Cross $500M Mark"

If Microsoft would pay Verizon half a billion dollar for default search placement, how much would it pay Apple? This will be a dollars and cents decision and nothing more. Microsoft is desperate to buy search share. Buying placement on the iPhone is cheaper (I think) than buying Yahoo and has the added advantage that it doesn't cannibalize existing IE/Bing search share.

iSuppli Predicts WM Resurgence--What am I missing?

Analyst firm iSuppli has a new report out which is getting a fair amount of attention. It has WM at twice the current market share of most analysts and then predicts Windows Mobile rapidly gaining even more market share with the number of WM devices tripling over the next three years, leading to a #2 market share. Huh?

There are several things about this view I find puzzling:

• The chart shows total smartphones shipped in 2008 as being around 25 million. What? RIM alone ships over 8 million devices each quarter. They sold more than 25 million devices in 2008. What can this chart possibly mean? Most analysts call current shipments as being around 100M.
• Symbian is projected to hold 47.6% market share. Really? How will that happen? Apple disappears? Android craters? Coming the same quarter where Nokia launches its flagship smartphone on Maemo and only two days after Nokia publicly started walking away from S60 you have to be very bold or just crazy to make this call. Gartner has Symbian falling to 45% last quarter--never mind in one or two years. Other projections are similar. 
• What is the point of making projections into the future with ".6" and other specious indications of accuracy? What a joke! How about rounding or, if you want to actually be useful, showing a 10-90 range?

Here is a reality check from Gartner: "Microsoft's mobile operating system had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008. A year later, it had 7.9 percent of the market, while the iPhone's share had risen from 12.9 percent to 17.1 percent, and RIM's share had risen from 16 percent to 20.8 percent"

I'm not one one to sing Gartner's praises. But did iSuppli talk to any operators? None of the top four US carrier product teams are super excited about WM 7 and certainly none of them are talking about decreasing Android and other platform launches in favor of WM. It's very hard to understand what this report could possibly be based upon and how it squares with what I hear directly from carrier teams.

Did iSuppli talk to vendors? Microsoft itself has said that 85% of its devices come from HTC, which is now at least equally focused on Android. LG is indeed an important partner win but they are not solely focused on WM and also will not have significant share of the smartphone segment for some years.

This report is very contrary to what I read and what I experience. And I'm not the only one seeing the opposite: Wired: "How Microsoft Blew It". What am I missing?