Category Archives: Technology (General)

Writings on technology that is not laptop or smartphone related.

The best you can do is iOS is Cool and Android is Open???

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I have recently been accused of being an Apple fanboy. I personally found it funny as, if you follow my writing you will know that while I like Apple’s products and approach I personally think Android will be the big player on the smartphone block.

Of course, my reasons for recognizing the dominance of Apple and Google platforms are usually different than most analysis. This weekend I was listening to an interview by Robert Scoble of two developers in the Bay area whose opinion boiled down to this: Android’s open and iOS is cool and thus they win. Robert’s argument, by the way, is that iOS and Android dominate apps and thus will dominate device sales.

As for me… my argument boils down to my college level strategy class taught by one Mr. Nelson Olf.

There are really only two sides to any market: the premium providers and the low cost providers. Apple, clearly, is the premium provider in every market they walk into. They maximize profit by protecting profit margin at the expense of market share. But in tech, just like in cars, there is always a premium provider. Think Apple as Lexus [1]. On the low end it is all about volume and cost control. Google, by open sourcing, is playing this game perfectly. Think Google as Toyota. The last thing to consider is that there really is no middle ground, or at least if you are in the middle ground you are likely to get squeezed. And that, I’m afraid, is Microsoft, Nokia, RIM and HP. None are considered premium platforms any more and, while Nokia and RIM have traditionally been low cost providers, they are getting squeezed by the army of hardware companies Android has unleashed.

Unfortunately for those three (now that Nokia will be a Windows Phone 7 licensee) there are only two ways to compete: either reclaim the premium brand or undercut Google as the low cost provider. Both are unlikely with the current crop of OSes.

As for developers, let’s face it, we are followers. (And I am one of them.) What we primarily care about is revenue in our pockets and thus the platforms that have the best chance of delivering that. (We also care about what is in our pockets.) A year ago that was only iOS. Now it is iOS and Android. For Windows Phone 7, webOS, and BlackBerry OS/QNX to become relevant, they have to either 1) get developers interested in buying and using their devices as their own or 2) show platform numbers that will attract developers because they think they can make lots of money there.

For now, only Apple and Google are demonstrating either of these.

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[1] The car analogy isn’t perfect. In cars there are multiple luxury (premium) brands: Lexus, Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, etc. I think the auto industry, though, is more forgiving of multiple players than tech because of developers. In tech developers act as a catalyst to drive consumers to one platform or another. We can only truly support a couple of platforms, making it unlikely that there will be more than two high profile players.

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)

And The Award For Best Vaporware Goes To…

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Before we announce the nominees, let us define vaporware: the act of announcing a product or service that isn’t shipping but is intended to keep a customer from buying an alternative product or service.

So without further adieu, here is our 2010 nominees:

  • The Crunchpad/JooJoo Pad
  • Random Android Tablets (Dell Streak, Samsung Tab)
  • White Apple iPhone 4
  • RIM PlayBook

And the winner is… without even a fight… the RIM PlayBook!

This was a tough fight, I have to admit. There were some worthy competitors here. The CrunchPad, a Michael Arrington at TechCrunch production, was a full-blown court drama after all with he said/he said allegations, etc. But it couldn’t win because it really didn’t keep us from buying an alternative. It was just sad and was quickly eclipsed by the iPad. (Besides, it happened too early in the year. And you know how Oscars work: it is better to be one of the last dramas of the year than the first to win the big awards.)

The Android tablets, too, don’t quite qualify. While they have been rumored for a long time, their official announcements have come within a reasonable time of shipping (although they haven’t shipped here in the States yet as far as I can tell.) Got to give these hardware guys some credit. It is not like you can announce and ship on the same day… or at least they never have.

The white iPhone is worthy of the prize but I think it has probably cost Apple more than anyone else. After all, how many people were waiting to buy an iPhone 4 in white instead of black. (My wife is.)  This means they froze their own customers, and not competitors, which is quite not the point of vaporware. (I can only imagine how mad Steve Jobs is over this.)

And that leads us to the only true winner: the RIM PlayBook. Don’t get me wrong, it looks like a nice device. But they don’t expect to ship this thing until early 2011! That’s at least 4 months from now! 4 months in this market is a lifetime!

So we get the endless comparisons of these vaporware tablets against the first generation iPad and, at least RIM hopes, that it will keep people from buying the iPad this holiday season. I don’t think so. Customers don’t like technology products they can’t touch and feel and play with (see Google, Nexus One). And besides, as John Gruber pointed out yesterday, Apple will likely announce if not ship version 2 of the iPad by then, making all the comparisons moot.

I will say one thing: at least we have markets interesting enough for vaporware again. Vaporware was a very popular play in the 1990s as the market for computing hardware and software was heating up, then went dormant for most of the 2000s. With the rise of smartphones and now tablets, the games become interesting again!

Fighting The Wrong Fight

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We have been distracted by ridiculous arguments and fabricated “wars” for too long. We have been distracted by thinking that Google is Microsoft and Apple is Apple in a doomed fight already fought 20 years ago.

But that is not the fight we should be caring about at all. The fight we should be talking about, but aren’t, is the fight between mobile device makers and the carriers. This is the only real fight that matters.

Why should we care? Because carriers have been standing in the way of excellent user experiences for a long time. For years, Palm and HTC and Nokia and RIM have been kowtowing to the carriers. Carriers sell all the devices and the services, decide what software is available and what isn’t, decide what you can do with the device you paid $3000 or more for (over a two year contract). And who is punished? We, the consumers, with lousy service and controlled devices with crappy experiences.

I’ve been in this business for 13 years now. 3 years ago I had lost faith… until the iPhone. It wasn’t Apple’s designs or devices or user interfaces that excited me as much as it was their revolutionary business model (although the former excited me, too). Apple controls what apps are installed. Apple controls where the device is sold. Everyone — Apple, AT&T, developers — gets a cut of the revenues and the consumer gets an amazing experience and exceptional support.

I was just as equally excited when Google announced Android. The two most powerful companies in tech could surely go up against the four major carriers, reducing them to what they should be: regulated pipe providers just like your gas and electric company. And maybe, I thought, this will get Nokia and RIM to finally grow a pair and butt heads with the carriers. (Didn’t happen as RIM’s own mobile app store is still not pre-installed on their devices.)

But this pipe dream is being crushed quickly. The carriers, after giving up ground initially, are fighting back. They are using Android’s openness against the company. The carriers refuse to carry the Nexus. Verizon cuts exclusive deals with Skype. Slowness in “approving” new Android OS releases. AT&T locked devices from side-loading and the removal of the Google Marketplace. Secret (and ridiculous) deals on net neutrality. And now, insult to injury to Google who expected to make most of their money from selling ads like they do on the web, removing Google Search in favor of Microsoft Bing as the only and default search option on certain Android-based smartphones.

My goal here is to re-focus the conversation, put the attention back where it belongs. This is war. And this war will go nothing like Apple v. Microsoft. This is about who controls the experience; who gets to interact with the customer.

The stakes are a lot higher.