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Posts Tagged ‘mobile phones’

The new iPod nano is a tour de force, the Swiss Army Knife of mobile entertainment. I’m sure there’s some obscure gadget from Japan that packs more features per cubic millimeter, but I’ve never heard of it, and chances are neither have you. This one’s a major consumer product, just in time for stimulating the economy this holiday season. Speaking as a technophile, I want one of the new nanos for the same reason I want a Dremel with 300 different bits: just because.

I’m also impressed by the new price point on the iPod Touch. Apple frequently overhypes its announcements, but the $199 price point in the US truly is a milestone that should lead to much higher sales. The improvements to iTunes and the App Store look promising as well, and I’m especially intrigued by Apple’s effort to make paid apps more prominent. More on that in a future post.

But the thing that surprised me the most about Apple’s announcement wasn’t the features of the new products, or the absence of a tablet or an iPhone Lite. It was something Steve Jobs said when he talked about the video camera in the nano:

“We’ve seen video explode in the last few years,” he said, showing a picture of a Flip video camera. “Here’s one, a very popular one, four gigabytes of memory, $149, and this market has really exploded, and we want to get in on this.”

Think about that for a minute. “There’s a big new market, and we want in.” Not, “we’re creating something new” or “we can vastly improve this category.” Just, “we want a cut.”

It sounds like something Don Corleone would say. Or Steve Ballmer. But it’s not what I expected from Apple.

Now, it’s logical for Apple to put video cameras into iPods. A friend of mine worked at one of the companies producing cameras-on-a-chip, and he’s passionate about the potential for building vision into every consumer product. It’s not just an imaging issue; when the device can see the user, you can create all sorts of interesting gesture-based controls that don’t require you to ever even touch the device. Instead of point and click, the interface is just…point.

So it’s been inevitable that video cameras would eventually be built into things like the nano. For Pure Digital, the makers of the Flip, this ought to be a tough but normal competitive challenge. The first step is to make sure your camera works better than theirs (check). Next, since music players are becoming cameras, you might want to build a camera that can also play music.

But that’s where the situation becomes abnormal. Because even though Pure Digital was recently purchased by Cisco, giving it almost limitless financial resources, it’s more or less impossible for its products to become equivalent to the iPods as music players. Not because they can’t play music, but because they aren’t allowed to seamlessly sync with the iTunes music application.

The issue of access to iTunes has already been simmering in the background between Apple and Palm, with Palm engineering the Pre to access the full functionality of iTunes, Apple blocking that access, and Palm breaking back in. To date I’ve viewed it as kind of an amusing sideshow, and I didn’t really care who won. I figured the folks at Palm had plenty of time in the past to build their own music management ecosystem, but they (including me) didn’t bother, so there wasn’t any particular moral reason why they should have access to Apple’s system.

Apple the predator

The situation with Pure Digital is vastly different, in my opinion. Pure Digital pioneered the market for simple video cameras. It identified an opportunity no one else had seen, and built that market from scratch. In a declining economy, it created new jobs and new wealth, and made millions of consumers happy. It’s incredibly difficult to get a new hardware startup funded in Silicon Valley, let alone make it successful. For the good of the economy, we ought to be encouraging more companies like Pure Digital to exist.

But there’s no way for a small startup like that to also create a whole music ecosystem equivalent to iTunes. Yes, third party products can access iTunes music. But not as seamlessly as Apple’s own products, and as we’ve seen over and over in the mobile market, small differences in usability can make a big difference in sales. So Apple gets a unique advantage in the video camera market not because it makes a better camera, but because it can connect its camera more easily to a proprietary music ecosystem.

In other words, iTunes is no longer just a tool for Apple to defend its iPod sales; it’s now a tool to help Apple take over new markets.

In the legal system they call this sort of thing “tying,” and it is sometimes illegal. For decades, Apple complained that Microsoft competed unfairly by tying its products together — Office works best with Windows, Microsoft’s file formats are often proprietary so you can’t easily create a substitute for their apps, and so on. I was heavily involved in the Apple-Microsoft lawsuits when I worked at Apple in the 1990s, so I know how passionately we believed that Microsoft’s tactics were not just unethical, but also harmful to computer users and the overall economy.

So it’s very disappointing to see Apple using tactics it once bitterly denounced, and declaring that it’s decided to take over a market because “we want to get in.” If Apple can use iTunes as a weapon against Pure Digital and Palm, what’s to stop it from rolling up every new category of mobile entertainment product? Where’s the incentive for other companies to invest?

I saw first-hand the stifling effect that Microsoft and Intel’s duopoly control had on personal computer innovation. PC hardware companies learned not to bother with new features, because Microsoft and Intel would insist that anything new they created be made available to every other cloner. And software investments were restrained by the belief that Microsoft would use its leverage to take over any new application category that was developed.

Good fences make good neighbors

There’s a danger that Apple’s behavior will have the same chilling effect in mobile electronics. So I believe Apple should allow any device to sync with iTunes content, the same as an iPod. But not because it’s morally right or even because it’s legally required, but because it’s the best thing to do for Apple. Here’s why:

The two biggest threats to a very successful company are complacency and consistency. Complacency is more common — a company that’s very successful starts to relax and loses the hunger and drive that made it a winner. I think we can safely assume that won’t happen to Apple as long as Steve is around. But the second risk, consistency, is more insidious — behavior that’s appropriate and accepted for a spunky startup gets punished when a big company does it.

This is what tripped up Microsoft. The same aggressiveness that served it well against IBM got it a series of lawsuits and intense government scrutiny a decade later. Even though Microsoft eventually won those suits, its execs were distracted for years, and it was forced to dramatically change its behavior. It has never been the same company since. I think Microsoft would have been much better off had it proactively adjusted its own behavior just enough to pre-empt legal action.

That’s where Apple is today. It has to realize that it’s no longer the underdog. It’s the dominant company in mobile entertainment, and the fastest-growing major firm in mobile phones. It’s already under a lot of legal scrutiny for the way it manages the iPhone App Store. If it also leverages iTunes to take out small competitors, and especially if it’s dumb enough to say things like “we want in,” it will guarantee unfriendly attention from government regulators — a group of people who actually have more power to hurt Apple than do most of its competitors.

The Obama administration in the US is making noises about enforcing competition law more vigorously, and look at how the EU is picking on details in the Oracle-Sun merger, allegedly to protect local companies (link). If they’ll do all that to help SAP and Bull, what will they do to protect Nokia?

Apple, you don’t need the special connection with iTunes to keep on winning. You’ve already proven that you’re much better at systems design than almost any other company on Earth. The huge iPhone apps base is exclusive to you, and that won’t change. By opening up iTunes, you take away an easy excuse for regulators to pick apart your business, a process that would be distracting, expensive, and could result in much more dramatic restrictions on your actions.

Ease up a little on the gas pedal, Steve. It’s the best way to keep moving fast.Copyright 2009 Michael Mace.

Tags: apple, application, apps, AWS, blog, blogs, business, car, Computer, consumers, Design, functionality, gadget, google, Hardware, hardware companies, Innovation, iphone, ipod touch, jobs, Mac, Management, microsoft, Mobile, mobile market, mobile phone, mobile phones, music player, new ipod nano, nokia, palm, personal computer, silicon valley, Software, steve jobs, system, Windows

[scientific american] A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that researchers deduce social networks with great accuracy simply by analyzing mobile phone use.

How do you know if someone’s your friend? Ask your cell. Because your phone knows who your friends are. Sometimes even before you do. Or so says a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists who study social networks have long been hampered by one thing: their subjects are not always reliable reporters. They don’t lie about their associations, but their ability to recall how much time they spent with Tom, Dick or Cody last month is not always accurate.

So scientists have been searching for a better way to track relationships. Which is where mobile phones come in. Researchers handed nearly a hundred subjects souped-up cell phones that recorded information about calls, text messages and even how physically close callers were to those they contacted. Analyzing calling patterns, the investigators were able to infer which contacts were friends with 95 percent accuracy. In some cases, the patterns revealed a friendship in the making months before people declared someone a pal.

The data could also predict job satisfaction: people who spend all day on the phone with friends, it seems, are generally not stoked about their work. So remember—keep your friends close. And your cell phone even closer.

Phone Networks Reveal Relationships

Tags: amp, blog, blogs, cell phone, information, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, Network, research, social networks

[Pew Internet] Teenagers have previously lagged behind adults in their ownership of cell phones, but several years of survey data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that those ages 12-17 are closing the gap in cell phone ownership. The Project first began surveying teenagers about their mobile phones in its 2004 Teens and Parents project when a survey showed that 45% of teens had a cell phone. Since that time, mobile phone use has climbed steadily among teens ages 12 to 17 – to 63% in fall of 2006 to 71% in early 2008.

In comparison, 77% of all adults (and 88% of parents) had a cell phone or other mobile device at a similar point in 2008. Cell phone ownership among adults has since risen to 85%, based on the results of our most recent tracking survey of adults conducted in April 2009. The Project is currently conducting a survey of teens and their parents and will be releasing the new figures in early 2010.

We went back to our databanks in light of the intriguing findings about adult mobile phone use in two of our recent reports, and to help lay the ground work for our current project on youth and mobile phones. This memo is the result of our data mining.

Teens and Mobile Phones Over the Past Five Years: Pew Internet Looks Back

Tags: amp, blog, blogs, cell phone, Internet, Mobile, mobile device, mobile phone, mobile phones, t mobile

[bbc] Millions of Africans are using mobile phones to pay bills, move cash and buy basic everyday items. So why has a form of banking that has proved a dead duck in the West been such a hit across the continent?

It has been estimated that there are a billion people around the world who lack a bank account but own a mobile.

Africa has the fastest-growing mobile phone market in the world and most of the operators are local firms.

In countries like South Africa, for example, mobile phones outnumber fixed lines by eight to one.

In Kenya there were just 15,000 handsets in use a decade ago. Now that number tops 15 million.

Setting up a bank account on your phone is straightforward. All you do is register with an approved agent, provide your phone, along with an ID card, and then deposit some cash onto your account.

You can use it to pay for everything from beer to cattle – one Masai farmer told the BBC that when he sells cows in Nairobi, he puts the money on his phone to ensure that robbers can’t get his cash.

A Kenyan woman said she uses the technology to transfer money from her phone to that of her parents while a Nairobi businessman told us it was handy for settling customer accounts.

Africa’s mobile banking revolution

Tags: amp, ash, Banking, bbc, blog, blogs, business, businessman, car, handsets, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, money, Technology, world

The Microsoft-Nokia alliance turned out to be a lot more interesting than the pre-announcement rumors made it out to be. Rather than just a bundling deal for mobile Office, the press release says they’ll also be co-developing “a range of new user experiences” for Nokia phones, aimed at enterprises. Those will include mobile Office, enterprise IM and conferencing, access to portals built on SharePoint, and device management.

Of those items, the IM and conferencing ideas sound the most promising to me. Office, as I explained in my last post, is not much of a purchase-driver on mobile phones. And I think Microsoft would have needed to provide Nokia compatibility in its mobile portal and device management products anyway.

I understand the logic behind the alliance. Nokia has never been able to get much traction for its e-series business phones, and Microsoft hasn’t been able to kick RIM out of enterprise. So if they get together, maybe they can make progress. But it’s easy to make a sweeping corporate alliance announcement, and very hard to make it actually work, especially when the partners are as big and high-ego as Microsoft and Nokia. This alliance will live or die based on execution, and on a lot of details that we don’t know about yet.

Here are four questions I’d love to see answered:

What specifically are those “new user experiences”?

If Nokia and Microsoft can come up with some truly useful functionality that RIM can’t copy, they might be able to win share. But the emphasis in the press release on enterprise mobility worries me. The core users for RIM are communication-hungry professionals. If you want to eat away at RIM’s base, you need to excite those communicator users, and I’m not sure if either company has the right ideas to do that. As Microsoft has already proven, pleasing IT managers won’t drive a ton of mobile phone purchases.

Will Microsoft really follow through?

Microsoft has been hinting for the last decade that it was were willing to decouple mobile Office from the operating system, but they never had the courage to follow through. Now they have announced something that sounds pretty definitive, but the real test will be whether they put their best engineers on the Nokia products. If Microsoft assigns its C players to the alliance, or tries to make its Nokia products inferior to their Windows Mobile versions, the alliance won’t go anywhere interesting.

What does this do to Microsoft’s relationships with other handset companies?

Imagine for a moment that you are the CEO of Samsung. Actually, imagine that for several moments. You aren’t exclusive with Microsoft, but you’ve done a lot of phones with Windows Mobile on them. Now all of a sudden Microsoft makes a deal with a company that you think of as the Antichrist.

How do you feel about that?

I can tell you that Samsung is not the most trusting and nurturing company to do business with even in the best of times. So I think you make two phone calls. The first is to Steve Ballmer, asking very pointedly if you can get the same software as Nokia, on the same terms, at the same time. If you don’t like the answer to that question, your next call is to Google, regarding increasing your range of Android phones.

Maybe the reality is that Microsoft has given up on Windows Mobile and doesn’t care what Samsung does. But that itself would be interesting news.

I would love to know how those phone calls went today.

What does RIM do about this?

It has been putting a lot of effort into Apple-competitive features like multimedia and a software store. Does it have enough bandwidth to also fight Nokia-Microsoft? What happens to its core business if Microsoft and Nokia do come up with some cool functions that RIM doesn’t have? Are there any partners that could be a counterweight to Microsoft and Nokia? If I’m working at RIM, I start to think about alliances with companies like Oracle and SAP. And I wonder if Google is interested in doing some enterprise work together.Copyright 2009 Michael Mace.

Tags: apple, blog, blogs, business, car, experiences, functionality, google, Mac, Management, microsoft, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobile version, nokia, nokia phone, operating system, rim, samsung, Software, system, Windows, Windows Mobile