Fighting Back: What You Can Do

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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.

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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.

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.

Road Trips and the iPad

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My wife’s family owns some property in NE California so every Labor Day weekend we pack up the kids and head south. It is a very long drive, about 8 hours with limited stops. For us it was more like 9.5 since the girls need to stop to go to the bathroom, run off a little excess energy and eat.

In years past we have packed the portable DVD player and a handful of DVDs but this solution was not a good one once we had a second child. Last year we rigged up this horrible interface that made it hard for both girls to see and was way to soft for either one to hear.

This year we have… an iPad! So with movies loaded (ripped using HandBrake), I rigged up a string to go across the two front seats, used the case to straddle the rope and another string to make sure it didn’t slip off. It was now close enough to plug it into the auxiliary port on the car stereo system, too, so the girls got surround sound. Another bonus: every time we needed to change a movie we could flip the screen to the front seats without removing it from its hanging position. Because the screen would rotate, we could see the controls right side up!

A couple of grainy pictures for you to see the entire set up (and my two lovely daughters):

Back to our regular programming next week, but thought I would share an innovative use of the iPad this week. Thanks, Apple, for making this trip a lot easier.

Cloud Nine

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Last week I went off on Google. This week I am going to admit that of the big companies Google is one of the few whose products I use. The reason for this is that Google is one of the first who focus on and advance the “apps in the cloud” mantra, which is why their net neutrality stance is even more frustrating.

Here’s the complete list of big company apps:

  • Apple: laptop, iPhone, iPad, iWork (Pages, Keynote), iLife, MobileMe
  • Google: GMail, Reader, Docs (as little as possible), search, blogger, YouTube
  • Microsoft: Excel
  • Intuit: QuickBooks
  • Adobe: Photoshop Elements

(And I would love to replace Adobe and Intuit — especially Intuit. And Excel can’t be replaced even though their Mac version stinks.) All other software — and a lot of it — is from smaller, independent developers.

But it is Google and Google alone who really understands this concept of access everywhere. Take Google Reader for example. I access Google Reader from every computer I have (including using an app called Reeder on iPhone and iPad) and they all stay in sync perfectly because of its connection to the cloud.

This is where the future resides for most software products and anyone who doesn’t understand that will be left behind. I am already convinced that this is a clear deliniation on smartphones and tablets: if you don’t have a web connection, don’t bother developing it.

Good Google/Bad Google

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It always amazes me the image that corporations craft for themselves. Some companies fully embrace that image. For example, HP has a very strong reputation that is reinforced by everyone at the company, in the end forcing out a very highly successful CEO over a few thousand dollars in expense report inaccuracies. Impressive in the least that ethics trumped “shareholder value” at least at this company.

But some companies don’t really stand up to their reputations. Google I am afraid, is one of them. Google has a two part reputation: one is for innovation and the other is for ethics made famous by their “do no evil” mantra. But both, in recent days, have proven to show the king for what he really is: naked.

The first is more cut and dry, the great innovation machine of Google. But is the company really that innovative? First let us define innovation. When I say innovation I mean a highly successful new idea that influences the markets. I could argue that Google has had only one major innovations in its history; no more, no less. Remember, that is a single breakthrough from a company that encourages democracy of innovation to the tune of 20% of their paid time.

This innovation? It wasn’t AdWords itself as they got the idea from somewhere else but rather how to incorporate ads in such a way that people would actually click on them. Everything else the company did was buying or ripping off others’ ideas. Email, documents, web site creation, operating systems are all just bought products and/or rip-offs of other people’s ideas.

The second, Google’s “do no evil” approach to business, is quickly being proven a farce. This is exemplified by the behind-the-scenes ranglings with Verizon over net neutrality. Net neutrality, if you aren’t paying attention, is the belief that all companies should be treated equally when it comes to speed and bandwidth use of the network infrastructure. In other words a company like Microsoft or Google or Apple can’t use their market power to buy favoritism with carriers and other internet service providers. In other words, a company like Infinity Softworks can develop a web service and get the same treatment as Nike when it comes to access to customers.

Google, destroying the last vestiges of their reputation, threw net neutrality under the bus by trying to cut a back room deal with Verizon. Net neutrality, they agreed before being outed by the New York Times, is fine for DSL and cable companies but wouldn’t have to be upheld by cell phone carriers. Now Google has to be treated as hostile to net neutrality rules, breaking them away from the rest of the technology industry, siding with their most critical US partner Verizon.

I think it was more than net neutrality thrown under the bus this day.