Category Archives: Mobile/Smartphone

Writings on laptops and smartphones, including devices, software and development.

Winning the Mobile Market Share Wars

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I have been thinking a lot about the make-up of the smartphone market. Two important articles I wrote earlier this year:

I believe in the next few years three operating systems will dominate the mobile landscape (smartphone, tablet and other mobile devices): Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. These three operating systems will account for 99% of all sold operating systems.

Android and iOS are obvious to me. Both are strong leaders with lots of momentum. Apple, I believe, will dominate tablets and portable entertainment devices (a la iPod) for reasons not discussed elsewhere. (An article is up-coming on this topic.) Android, because of its “free” nature will be the poster child for carriers worldwide and therefore has the competitive edge to be dominant. Given that, I think the two operating systems will make up 90% of the market and the split in market share will be close to 50-40 with Android leading.

Windows Phone 7 is my wildcard. First I think there is a high probability of Microsoft leveraging its Office/Exchange/Windows/.NET infrastructure here. Even though they aren’t as prevalent in the tech community, there are some huge Windows fanboys that can rival the Apple ones. Most importantly, though, Microsoft can’t give up. They have to be a player in this market or they risk losing their supremacy in operating systems. Given that, I don’t see them as a strong competitor, instead taking a 8-9% market share.

Of course this could all fall apart. Apple could fail to adjust their breadth of product, instead staying only at the high end. (Unlikely, I think, based on their iPod history. See John Gruber’s excellent summary of recent Android v. iOS discussions over at Daring Fireball.) Android could become so fragmented that it is really like all the licensees having their own operating system. Windows Phone 7 could just be too late to play. RIM, Palm and Nokia could all do something drastic in 2011 to stay in the game.

But if I had to bet, I’d take Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7 to win, place and show in the market share game.

Why RIM Is Flailing

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Mike Mace has done an excellent job of breaking down the financials on RIM and has gotten a lot of press for it recently. His two core articles are here and here, well worth the time to read them. His facts back up my beliefs about RIM: that there is something seriously wrong with the company and the BlackBerry platform even though their numbers look good on the surface. What I have been trying to figure out is why.

A product is only as good as those willing to advocate for it. Flipboard and Instagram are two recent examples of this and both have found a very strong user segment to advocate for them. The advocates for Flipboard, a media app in essence, was media folks who consume tons of data and spend tons of time on Facebook and Twitter. Instagram was picked up by photography/social stalwarts in the tech community. Consumer apps/technology that doen’t appeal to that tech advocate crowd don’t seem to do as well, at least not here in the States.

So, RIM… RIM has failed to enlighten the imagination of the tech crowd and now the company is paying for it, at least in North America. As Mike shows, North America sales are near 0% growth and new customer subscriptions are trending downward.

Why? RIM’s products feel stale compared to iOS, Android and Win Phone 7 devices. The perception is that enterprise users would use something else if only the IT departments would let them. So the influencers, the tech paparazzi, doesn’t talk about them in glowing terms. A second group of influencers, developers, have continually been treated like second class citizens by RIM: horrible (there isn’t a word for how bad) developer tools, constant switches in OS strategy (non-touchscreen, touchscreen, QNX), and zero marketing support from the company itself, even for its paying partner companies. Thus, the crowds that usually kicks off technology products is paying zero attention to the company.

Internationally, however, there is a different story going on. A group unswayed by media punditry, teens who text, are dying for the BlackBerry due to its well-done BlackBerry Messenger app and excellent keyboards. This group doesn’t care what the tech crowd thinks, doesn’t care that the developer infrastructure stinks, only cares what their friends do, and that is text with BBM.

So I can see how RIM’s sales have split, how they have flattened in the US and how they have exploded overseas.

The problem is I don’t see it as sustainable. RIMs key customer bases are de-stabilizing. Teens grow older and move onto different technology or something else becomes the hot texting tool. And with that the International gains disappear. And here in the States? The tech crowd is waiting for something amazing, something new and modern. A transition to QNX feels imperative but that has been downplayed by the company’s co-CEOs. And the developers don’t pay much attention because the customers either don’t buy software or are behind IT-constructed walls.

So things can get worse, much worse, if RIM is not careful. 2011 will be a critical year.

 

Will 2011 Be Good To BlackBerry?

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I have been following Horace Didieu over at Asymco for some time. He has been consistently writing some of the highest quality analysis on the smartphone and mobile device industry for a while now.

One of his recent posts was on the growing smartphone market and a look ahead to 2011. In short, he predicts, half of all US cell phone customers will have smartphones by the end of 2011! That, in and of itself, is an amazing thing from where I sit. Seems like yesterday the whole industry was at 5 million units per year, US and international.

While I am usually dubious of such claims by analysts, Horace’s posts have been spot on and jive very well with my own perspective on the market. His belief: Android and iOS will be the leaders with Windows Phone 7 will gain market share ground. BlackBerry, still #3, will lose share. The rest of the gains will come from new adopters. Finally, Android will grow the fastest and be the largest by the end of the year.

I see the same thing in the US market. RIM, though, is my wildcard. I think this will be a make or break year for the BlackBerry. If the company can transition to a modern operating system in 2011 and keep developers in tow then the company will have a fighting chance. Otherwise, I believe the company will fade very fast in 2012.

If you are a BlackBerry fan, you better hope Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ incoherent, rambling interview at AllThingsD.com’s Dive Into Mobile conference isn’t a harbinger of things to come.

Apps Are Not Software

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There used to be a thing called software. In fact we still buy software for Windows and Mac computers, but it also used to be purchased for Palm and Windows Mobile handhelds.

With software we spent a month or more making a purchasing decision. We downloaded a trial, installed it and played with it. We emailed or called support to see if it did this or did that or whether the bug that was found would be resolved soon. And then, if the stars aligned, we bought the software.

What Apple did was invent something new called apps. Apps are disposable, simple products that we buy and discard at will. Some apps we use for a long-time, like our calendar and instant messaging apps (and powerOne!), and some are temporarily retained until we move onto something else.

With apps we buy and then play. If there is a problem we just discard and move on. It is not unusual, with apps, to buy three or four products in a category, discarding the ones that didn’t serve the purpose.

Apps are descendent from software. To refer to it biologically, apps are to software what humans are to monkeys: we share similar DNA and are in the same family but they aren’t the same. And just like humans and monkeys we shouldn’t confuse the two.

As a developer, I still tend to think like software. We create extremely flexible products that run on smartphones and do any kind of calculation. Some people want that, these very powerful and flexible apps that are meant to solve a broad range of problems for a broad range of markets.

But most don’t care. They want an app they can use right away, use for their purpose and then throw away when they are done with it.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a negative post. I am not bemoaning this split between software and apps. Software is still thriving, especially on the web where we have apps to extend those web versions to local devices. All we need to do is look at the Evernotes, the Dropboxes, the 37Signals of the world.

My points is that there is a software descendent now called apps and, frankly, all of us developers need to consider that, especially in this brave new mobile world.

Today’s Leaders Are Not Tomorrow’s Winners

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Last week in a post I was writing primarily to discuss why Amazon’s pending Android Store and the launch of Windows Phone 7 were good things, I made an off-handed comment that we are currently selling about 200 million smartphone units per year in a six billion unit market (every person on earth). That’s roughly 3% market penetration.

Is that enough to know the eventual winner?

Let’s look at a little history: the personal computer market. Jeremy Reimer put together this excellent web site with data, up to 2005, of desktop and laptop computer sales. In 2005 manufacturers sold 197 million desktop and laptop computers. 3% of that number would take us, roughly, to 1984 when 6.3 million personal computers were sold. In 1984, the leader in the market was the Commodore 64 with 40% market share. The PC operating systems (variants of DOS, I am assuming, although probably predominantly MS-DOS) was second at 32% of the market and at #3 was the Apple II at 16%. Of course NONE of these operating systems are around today and Amiga (who owned the Commodore brand) doesn’t make computers. Windows took over from MS-DOS and Mac OS took over from the Apple II.

In the smartphone space today, Symbian controls 41% of the worldwide market with RIM, Android and iOS all bunched together at 18%, 17% and 14%, respectively ¹.

Like I said last week: anyone who tells you this fight is over is selling you something. Chances are, when the dust settles, not only will the major players change but so will the operating systems we are using.

¹ (Q2, 2010, Gartner)