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.

 

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

Sponsored Content   

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.

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.

 

Nokia decides software development knowledge matters in mobile

Big changes at Nokia this past week. Not a surprise that OPK took a walk but it was surprising to me to see how fast Anssi Vanjoki gave notice. It will sure be interesting to see how Elop does given his background in enterprise and client/server software.

Coming in to a sprawling, worldwide device manufacturer will be some hard learning for him but perhaps harder will be taking his knowledge of software and services and figuring out how to build a defensible business model that bakes into a device BOM palatable enough to support carrier economics. For the first time he will not have licensing as a revenue model, services as a revenue model, etc. I also wonder whether he regards the embedded/existing Nokia end customer base as a similar leverage point to the Windows OS customer base which gave Office its legs. A serious mistake in my mind to make that analogy but then maybe that's why he's CEO and I'm not ;).

Four years ago this would have been a daring and brilliant move for Nokia. Even more so for Microsoft! Now, not so much. However even the basic message that change is required is well past due at Nokia and hopefully this is an opportunity that can be captured for all the smart people and great friends of mine who still work there. I wish them the best as they get a new leader and, I'm sure, another re-org!

Flagship products increasingly important to mobile vendors

The mobile industry value chain is going through some rapid shifts. Big players are choosing vertical integration in very different ways to compete.

As earnings announcements roll in across carriers and OEMs it's interesting to see how dependent the industry is overall on a flagship, high margin products. Nokia's defenders often site its dominant share in mobile handsets across regions, but look at Samsung's earnings coverage and Motorola's to see how much good high volume at low margin does you in this business:

"Hard on the heels of Motorola, Samsung announced a record second quarter, up 83% year-on-year to $3.61bn. However, despite the launch impact of its Galaxy S Android family, its first serious assault on the open smartphone sector, this was too late to affect Q2, and handsets actually weighed on the profit figure, with the surge coming mainly from memory chips and LCD screens. "

Motorola's successes were similarly dependent upon high-end flagship devices.

However, one wrinkle for Samsung is that their form of vertical integration allows them to profit in different parts of the value chain even as their mobile unit suffers from the collapse of pricing power to mid (and even formerly high-end) tier smartphones.

"Robert Yi, head of investor relations, said in a statement: "In the second quarter, our component businesses performed very strongly, yet it was a more challenging quarter for our set businesses" (phones, TVs and appliances). The smartphone boom may not deliver significant growth for Samsung's mobile unit until Q3 or later, as its Galaxy S takes hold, but it is already boosting sales of Flash memory chips, a key element in the chip unit's strong performance."

Note that while Nokia, and at a different scale and to a lesser extent RIM, still play effectively in the smartphone space by vertically integrating supply chain and distribution, their focus is to control costs and see the benefit in margin (handset ASP). Samsung abstracts this further by taking margin profit down at the component level.

For Samsung "average selling prices fell amid intense price competition, making it urgent that Samsung shifts its product balance further towards the high end. Like Nokia and unlike most other rivals, its economies of scale and broad channels enable it to compete profitably at the low end, but so far it has been a small player in smartphones. "

The most vertically integrated of all, of course, is also the most successful right now. Apple.

All vendors and providers should be planning for rapidly falling ASP and consumer-facing pricing for flagship products. Where will profit, and margin, be sustained for the different players?

Apple makes it interesting

Had to pass along this spin control:

"The mobile phone market today is so much more interesting than it was pre-Apple" Will Harris, Nokia's head of marketing for Asia-Pacific, told Australia's PC World.

Quote of the day for sure.

May we live in interesting times!

Nokia dumps Ovi Mail, working to federate openID with Yahoo

Oh, Nokia. Where to begin.

Nokia today announced they are dumping yet another email technology/service. After throwing out the $450 million they spent acquiring Intellisync to purchase Oz messaging, which was branded Ovi Mail, Nokia will now white label Yahoo's mail.

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later this kind of misdirection adds up.

Integrating with trailing brand like Yahoo would have made sense three years ago. Now it just reeks of desperation. This won't offer added benefit at the UX, business model, or platform levels. And a year from now it too will be forgotten.

Smartphone market share trends stable in Q4 2009

Strategy Analytics reports that smartphone sales are picking up again. It attributes Nokia's continued strength in non-US regions to the E-series, which is interesting. Mail for Exchange and a QWERTY driving more smartphone sales than Ovi?

If this is true than I wonder how long before the form factor defines that segment more than the smart/feature phone distinction. Because if people are buying E Series because it is messaging centric then it competes with RIM smartphones and LG and Samsung feature phones. RIM and Nokia both will have trouble commanding "smartphone" premiums for messaging optimized devices unless they can tie them to rich services which happen to use email and messaging for delivery.  

ABI reported similar numbers to SA as reported in the WSJ. Apple's iPhone grew year-on-year and has just over 15% market share. It's incredible to think Apple will be half the size of Nokia in the smartphone segment with basically one model!

Android's gains are somewhat masked in both reports as they focus on the vendors more than the OS layers. 

Device vendor booths at ces highlight differences

Visiting the various booths at CES really brings out the differing approaches of the OEMs.

RIM is the only vendor highlighting their partners. The booth is ringed by the leading apps with a rep from each company. LinkedIn, shazam, a whole range of brands. What a great idea. RIM really gets that it is building a channel.

If only it could fix it's OS and app world memory and UI problems.

Nokia has a slick booth but Ovi continues to be a confusing brand mix. For starters I saw at least two other vendors with Share and other Ovi service names for their own very different services. The booth itself is still ultimately focused on educating visitors on device hardware spec differentiators. The app revolution is totally passing them by.

HTC, Huaewei, and a multitude of rising Chinese vendors impress with their brand slick presence. No more the unsophisticated low cost newbie.