Competition is good… as long as it is really competition.

Some interesting news the past few weeks. Amazon is set to announce their own Android App Store, which is great for the Android market. We worked with Amazon for years selling packaged software. They were always a solid partner who paid on time and were reasonable with their fees. I would expect no less here.

And of course we have the big Microsoft unveil, launching Windows Phone 7 and a handful of devices. I look forward to seeing their new OS in person. The images and videos I have seen so far are very promising.

While some have been lamenting the rise of another store and another OS, I see both as positive.

• Amazon has a history of making the buyer experience exceptional. Reviews, cross-promotion, detailed information are all hallmarks of their store front. The Android market could use some good ol’ fashioned selling after all, as the Android store front is a mess.
• When you want to buy a toothbrush there isn’t just one place to do it, right? Why should the Android world be any different? Now we’ll have choices: the carrier stores, Android store, Amazon store… this is all good AS LONG AS they are not exclusive, as long as I can download an alternative store front to my device and purchases made in one store front are available to my new device, whether I am on the same carrier or not. Since none of the details are known, I won’t speculate. (I know, it is easy to do so.)
• Same for Microsoft. A choice for hardware partners who may or may not like the Google Android game, now those partners have an alternative choice. As for developers we should be rooting for WP7 as it means consistent UI and interfaces to develop toward with exceptional developer tools, at least if what Microsoft is saying and their history is any indication.

One final thought: anyone who tells you this market has been decided this early in the game has something to sell you. We are a couple of hundred million units into a 4-5 billion unit market. That’s about 5% smartphone market penetration. We have a long way to go before this fight has been settled.

Last week I wrote about the real fight in mobile, how we have been distracted by Apple v. Google but in reality it is carrier v. device makers. My goal, to start, was to raise awareness and change the conversation. If we can stop in-fighting between Google and Apple and help the press focus on the real issues around carrier, then that is a great start.

What can you do? Easy. If you see people backsliding, remind them what the real war is. Write blog posts. Write comments to articles and blog posts. Keep up the pressure on politicians to not accept the carrier’s definition of net neutrality. Remind your favorite device and OS maker that we have their back. The hard work will be up to Apple, Google, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft to take the power away from the carriers. And this won’t be an easy task.

The fundamental problem is that carriers control the entire purchasing experience. I believe separating the device purchase from the subscription purchase is a huge first step.

Right now the US carriers act as a one-stop shop for all things smartphone. You go to a carrier to pick out your phone, to get your data plan. They even tried selling netbooks and are about to put their grubby little fingers all over tablets. If you can help it, don’t buy from carrier stores. Instead go to Apple, Amazon, Best Buy or your favorite local cell phone store. It’s not the end-all but it is a start.

This is a big company fight. Massively large companies fighting other massively large companies. And the US Federal Government has been bought hook, line and sinker on this one. AT&T and Verizon, combined, spent over $30 million on lobbying in 2009 alone (data here and here, respectively).

So how do hardware and OS makers fight back? First step is to understand there is a whole world of retail shopping out there that doesn’t involve the carrier stores. Apple is out in front on this one, selling a massive amount of devices through their own stores, Costco, Best Buy, Radio Shack and other retail outlets.

The second step will be separating the carrier from the device itself. Again, Apple as an example (and I wish I had another company to point to as an example), look at the iPad. You want 3G for your iPad? You buy it after market. Don’t be surprised if the future of the iPod touch is the same, offering an after-market 3G/4G plan if you want it. (And then use Skype, Fring, Google Voice or Facetime for all your talking needs.)

We can fight back and hopefully the device makers will fight back, too. In the meantime, we need to keep the pressure up and keep reminding ourselves that this isn’t about device maker v. device maker. This is about makers v. carriers. And the only way we, the consumer, win is by keeping the pressure up on all involved.

—-

I should have called out MG Siegler of TechCrunch with my post last week and didn’t. MG has been writing a lot on this topic and want to thank him for being one of the few tech writers paying attention to this issue. A few samples are here, here and here.

This just in: Android had a phenomenal quarter, Nokia’s market share is down 11% year-over-year and Apple and RIM are pretty much holding steady/slightly down.

So the questions come like they do each quarter: when are you going to stop being stupid and develop for <platform X>, which this quarter is Android?

The problem is, from a developer perspective, market share doesn’t equal sales.

Sure, number of devices sold plays a part in the decision but it isn’t the only one and, frankly, not even at the top of the list. So a customer wrote and asked when we were going to develop for Android. This is what I told him:

Thanks for asking. There are a number of factors [regarding us developing for Android], to be honest. One major one is that we are just a small company and developing the skill set for multiple platforms is hard. Once we figure out how to make money in the iOS world than it will be more feasible to look at other platforms.

That is a business decision. The technical issue that concerns me the most is Android’s fracturing. We dealt with this in the Palm world as the OS got licensed to 7-10 hardware manufacturers who all changed the underlying code. Android is even worse. There are over 150 devices and no one device remains popular for more then 4-6 months. On top of that all the major licensees are writing their own UI front ends or completely customizing the OS.

For us it is the calculator specifically that is a problem. It just doesn’t resize at all and has to be customized — rewritten — for every hardware change.

This doesn’t change my opinion of Android. I think it will do very well in the market and people will buy lots of Android devices, whether they are actually Android devices with Google’s direction or some offshoot of that. Hardware guys will love it because it is free (without Google’s apps) and they can put their own UI stamp on the device, especially with Microsoft setting the specific standard for Windows Phone 7. But I think it is going to be very difficult for developers in that market. So far, with 160,000 devices sold daily, there are no stories of developer success at all.

This doesn’t mean we won’t ever write for Android. It just means Infinity Softworks sits on the sidelines and watches, at least for a while longer.

Friday was a busy day for me. I had two meetings in the morning surrounded by telephone calls, and then more calls in the afternoon. In total, I spent somewhere between 4 and 5 hours on the telephone, all on my iPhone 4. I had one dropped call but that is because I wandered into a dead spot near the couch in the family room, not because of the iPhone. At the end of all my phone calls, after using the phone for Internet connections and hours of calls, I still had 75% of my battery remaining.

The events of the last few weeks surrounding Apple’s iPhone 4 and the antenna problem have bordered on hysterical, at least if you are in the Silicon Valley distortion field. There are various distortion fields around the country — movie industry in LA, media in NYC, politics in Washington — but it seems over the past 15 years the Silicon Valley field has grown to rival these others in size and depth and influence.

Here’s the reality: no one cares about this problem except Silicon Valley and those of us who are connected to that world but live outside it. And I think this Valley distortion problem has gotten worse. A decade ago there were strong technology companies outside the Valley: Microsoft dominated the northwest, Dell dominated the south, IBM dominated the northeast. Sure, Apple, Oracle, Cisco and the bulk of companies were in the Valley but at least there were outside voices.

Now these three behemoths have faded in importance and Google, a Valley company, has risen in its place. As if the epicenter of tech activity wasn’t squarely in the Valley before, not it really is.

Watching Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, berate John Gruber of Daring Fireball and MG Siegler, a TechCrunch writer, on air brought this problem front-and-center for me. It seems to go like this: If it doesn’t pass mustard with the technorati in the Valley than, by God, it must be lousy technology. Unfortunately the screwy nature of the Valley is as likely to render good tech bad as bad tech good, at least in how the rest of the world views it.

Arrington, if you missed it (video here if you have 20 minutes to waste), road rough-shod over Siegler and Gruber again and again, proclaiming loudly that he can’t make a phone call with an iPhone 4 while in the heart of San Francisco, a place where you couldn’t make a phone call on ANY AT&T phone, period. The entire time he does this while holding a Sprint Android-based EVO, a device that Arrington uses and admits gets 20-25 minutes worth of battery life. Not exactly a strong leg to stand on there, Michael.

What the world really thinks of the iPhone 4:

• Apple has sold 3 MILLION iPhone 4’s in three weeks.
• Only 1.7% of those phones have been returned.
• Apple has a 3 week wait, if you order an iPhone 4 today.

And Apple hasn’t even shipped the white iPhone 4 and will add 7 new countries in the next few weeks.

For some reason, I don’t think the antenna problem is as much an Apple weakness as a Valley one.