if connected

People’s unofficial use at work of personally-bought smartphones will lead to personal devices and personal information being managed by corporate IT departments. RIM has just announced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, a new product to help companies manage the proliferation of employee-bought smartphones and tablets connecting to company networks.

Fusion has support for employees to use a single device for both work and home, the ability to manage multiple devices per person — critical in an era where individuals routinely use smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs in tandem — and self-service for individual employees to lock their phone if it’s lost or stolen.

But consumer smartphone owners already routinely have many of these abilities, even if their smartphones are not used for work, or provided by their employer. While RIM has been slow to extend its core expertise into the consumer market, other than with BlackBerry Messenger (BBM),  numerous other companies have jumped into the fray and offered consumer versions BlackBerry’s enterprise features upon which RIM’s phone success was originally built.

The ‘ITization of the Person’ is already well underway. Here’s a selection of the many examples where consumers have corporate-style IT tools to manage their digital lives:-  Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows the biggest battles in technology are today being fought by a small number of large organizations. We intuitively know who these great powers are: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and maybe Microsoft. But we’re not so clear on what it is that makes those particular companies the key protagonists rather than other equally large digital companies — Samsung, Sony, Nokia and Yahoo! among them — who appear to be sidelined.

Calling this a battle, or “The Great Tech War of 2012″, misses the point. It’s far too negative a sentiment when these companies’ main focus is on long term strategy. They are aiming to construct a future in which their products and profits will prosper.

These great digital powers are now building Digital Civilizations, rather than a series of mere products, individual platforms or even ecosystems (around a platform). They are pursuing strategies that reach far beyond the confines of existing markets. They are causing widespread market collisions as they push industries to overlap, merge or cease to exist. They are outflanking and disrupting companies that follow less ambitious corporate strategies.

These new Digital Civilizations use identity to tie numerous disparate products, many devices, multiple platforms and product portfolios together into their long term strategy. Each Civilization has hundreds of millions of active users — often with credit cards attached — far more than even the largest telecom operators or media companies. They straddle industries rather than operating within legacy market sectors. They have an organizing ideology underlying their strategy that motivates and attracts talented employees, excites partners, and is the foundation for the marketing that entices users to become their customers.

What defines these Digital Civilizations? What makes them new and different? Many organizations, companies, industry consortiums, and companies have parts of this strategy in place within their current products. But the new Digital Civilizations have all of the following characteristics:  Read the rest of this entry »

If you buy an unlocked iPhone you’ll see why “SIM-free” won’t be like freedom, to misquote a famous Apple superbowl advert.

Unlike other manufacturer’s SIM-free phones, “unlocked” iPhones continue to behave differently based on the network SIM inserted — see the screenshots below. This sets a precedent for future iPhones that may dispense with any need for a physical SIM card.

An unlocked phone allows a consumer to use their phone with any operator. Such iPhones have long been on sale in many European and Asian countries and Apple US has just started selling unlocked and contract-free iPhones on the online US Apple store. As consumers pay the full unsubsidized price for these iPhones, buyers expect to have complete control over their devices. Network operators should have no say on how they’re used. But that’s not the whole truth.

Apple has just secured a patent that will allow them to ship an iPhone with no need for the for the tiny operator-provided smartcard known as a SIM. This is being widely reported as an attack on operators by threatening their customer relationship.

If operators are smart, this won’t be the outcome. Instead, end users will be the ones whose freedom is squeezed by such a future iPhone.

Why? Current “unlocked” iPhones show that Apple is prioritizing their carrier relationships over end users, even for those that buy iPhones at full price, with no operator subsidy or contract lock.

On these “unlocked” iPhones the network settings available to the phone’s owner depend on what operator SIM is placed into the phone. Read the rest of this entry »

Just eight months after Nokia announced a complete reversal of their smartphone strategy, Nokia unveiled the first new phones to result: the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710. And, impressively, the Lumia 800 is already shipping and will be available for sale in six European countries in November.

On the eve of Mobile World Congress 2011 — the mobile industry’s main conference — new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop overturned Nokia’s previous smartphone strategy. Rather than building smartphones based based on in-house Symbian and MeeGo software, Nokia instead embraced Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Nokia’s future rests on the success of this decision, at least in developed countries across Europe, Asia and North America.

Alongside their initial Windows Phone handsets, Nokia today announced a new range of smarter feature phones aimed at emerging markets. This new Asha range includes more dual SIM devices, more full keyboard designs, and more touch screens. “Asha” means hope in Hindi but Nokia’s real long term hopes rest more with the new Lumia smartphones than with these evolutionary Series 40 handsets.

With Windows Phone, Nokia hopes to regain market share in the high end part of the mobile phone market because today’s high end technology and features become tomorrow’s mid market mainstream. If Nokia loses to Android and Apple in the high end, then the danger Nokia faces is that it will lose in the mainstream just a few years from now.

Early signs are that Nokia has regained credibility and is on a path to recovery with its Nokia World announcements:

• Dual SIM is now a foundation of Nokia’s emerging market strategy. Nokia was slow to offer consumers the ability to switch SIMs — essentially run more than one number on a phone with different pricing — compared with LG, Samsung and numerous small phone makers. In the second quarter of this year their phone shipments suffered dramatically: down 34% compared with the previous quarter. But the arrival of dual SIM enabled a full recovery in Q3, although admittedly with lower average price per handset. Nokia shipped just 2.6m dual SIM handsets in Q2 but 17.9m in Q3 and has launched five new dual SIM handsets since June. Across Asia, the Middle East and Africa Nokia phone unit shipments rose 32% in Q3.
• Nokia is finally executing quickly. The Lumia 800 Windows Phone is already shipping from Nokia’s factories just eight months after the major strategy change. It will be available in November. By contrast, Nokia unveiled 2010′s flagship phone, the N8, in April but failed to ship in time for Nokia World 2010 that September. Read the rest of this entry »

The iPod is now 10. The original 5Gb scroll wheel model launched in October 2001. In the years since, Apple has shipped 321m units.

Everyone looks to Apple’s current dominance — who could have imagined writing that phrase a decade ago — and contrasts it with the troubled mid 1990s period when the company almost failed. The iPod was the turnaround product that proved that Apple could diversify outside of the computer business. It established a new revenue source and boosted morale. Without the iPod, Apple would not have tackled the smartphone and tablet markets in the way they did.

For those seeking to understand the iPod and learn from Apple’s turnaround in the last decade, here are the ten key iPod takeaways:

1. Success does not happen overnight, companies have to persevere with a strategy. In its first year on sale the iPod sold just 376,000 units. To compare, in Apple’s most recent quarter it took on average five days to sell that many iPods. Also, RIM shipped 700,000 tablets in its first six months — many more than the initial iPod — and yet that product line is widely considered to be troubled and struggling.
2. Product quality is more important than being a first mover. The iPod wasn’t the first mp3 music player. The market had started in the late 1990s. Apple launched the iPod against multiple players and initially it cost much more than other devices that had more features. What Apple executed differently was that the iTunes sync software made it supremely easily to transfer music from a Mac or PC onto the player. Apple set sync to be automatic once a user plugged their iPod into a computer. At the time, competitors argued ‘drag and drop’ was easier. They may have been right that it was easier to set up initially as users did not need to install any new software on their computer, but drag and drop took much longer to do each time a person wished to update their iPod than a painless automatic sync. Drag and drop was a hassle in day to day use. Apple’s solution was fast and elegant.
3. Apple leveraged openness and compatibility to establish the iPod and maintain its lead. Like Sony, Apple has the reputation of being highly proprietary. While there is truth in that generalization, it’s far from the whole truth. Apple has repeatedly leveraged open standards in its products and been selective about which parts of a product to keep closed and where to allow third party development or standards. The original iPod was mp3-compatible, unlike Sony’s ATRAC-only portable media players of the same era. Apple’s adoption of the AAC format and DRM copy protection was added much later. Apple rapidly moved to offer a Windows version of the iPod in July 2002 which dramatically widened the addressable market for the iPod, rather than tying the iPod to be solely a Macintosh peripheral as would have been the reaction of many companies. With the third iPod design, Apple added the dock connector and created a vibrant market for third party accessories that acts as a significant barrier to competitors seeking to overtake the iPod due to the numerous  iPod peripherals available as a result.
4. The iPod drove people to the iTunes music store, not vice versa. The music store launched 18 months after the iPod, but to begin with only in the US. By the time the store opened in three European countries in spring 2004, Apple had already sold 3.7m iPods. Unlike competitor music stores of the time, Apple integrated the music store into their PC and Mac app — rather than delivering it as a website — this placed the music store right alongside the tools people used to update their iPod and listen to music. In retail, store location and in-store product placement is everything. Apple made sure their digital store emulated traditional retail strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

[updated October 19 with the latest Q3 Apple results and the official name of the new Nexus]

A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other (1), as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.

This unification of smartphones and tablets is a red herring. Other things matter much more for Android.

Android tablets are failing in the market, while Google’s smartphones sell in enormous numbers. This is a major issue for Google.

In tablets, Google’s own numbers show the extent to which Android is struggling. There are approximately 3.4m Android tablets running the official version of Android intended for tablets (2). This is small compared with the tablet market leader from Apple. Over 39.9m iPads were shipped up to the end of September this year. In the third quarter of 2011 alone, Apple shipped over 11m iPads, almost three times that of all official Android tablets to date.

Android smartphones are a massive success. Given the above Android tablet figures, the vast majority of the 550,000 Android devices activated each day must be smartphones. Google has already caught Apple in smartphone adoption. There are 190m Android devices in use compared with 250m Apple iOS devices. But in smartphones the adoption numbers show that Android is already ahead: Apple has shipped a total of 146m iPhones to date (end September 2011) — some of those units are over three years old and will no longer be in use — while there are approximately 180m Android smartphones (3).

Google is succeeding with smartphones, but not tablets, as a solid media strategy isn’t essential for success in the smartphone market.

Why?

Read the rest of this entry »

A major part of Apple’s new iOS software update is iMessage, which replaces the iPhone’s standard SMS app. The iOS5 software is compatible with approximately 200m of the 250m total iOS devices sold, including both the older iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 models, as well as the iPod Touch and iPad. It’s also installed on all new devices including the iPhone 4S. As of today, over 25 million devices now have iMessage installed and Apple sold 4m iPhone 4S handsets on its first weekend on sale.

The way iMessage works is extremely interesting. In so doing, iMessage cannibalizes carriers’ SMS and MMS services:

• Any messages sent from an iPhone to another iPhone with iMessage installed are automatically sent by iMessage over the Internet rather than via SMS. This bypasses carrier text messaging (SMS) charges but requires a working data tariff.
• Similarly, any photos or videos sent over iMessage bypass costly operator MMS systems. There’s even an iMessage preference option for users to switch off MMS so they do not inadvertently incur MMS charges when they’re intending to send for free via iMessage.
• Messages can be sent to or from iOS devices that lack SMS capability, such as the iPad and iPod Touch.
• Users can address messages to an email address rather than a phone number. This is essential to send messages to an iPad or iPod Touch. New iMessages sent to a phone number only appear on an iPhone. Any messages addressed to an email address are sync’ed to all iOS devices tied to that Apple ID.
• Users can change their iMessage “Caller ID” to be their email address so that any replies go to all of their devices. This is very similar to the way Apple’s video chat service, FaceTime, setup works. Additionally, users can attach multiple email addresses so that iMessage will receive messages sent to any of a selection of email addresses.
• By default, iMessage does not report whether a message has been read but there’s an option to set this to “on”. There’s also an optional ‘Subject’ field that starts out “off”.

iMessage is clearly Apple’s take on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), small messaging players such as Whatsapp or eBuddy, and Internet instant messaging systems such as Microsoft Live Messenger or AIM. But iMessage does not the deliver the precise same mix of product benefits as any of those alternatives.

Apple has a number of differentiated twists on their execution that guarantee iMessage will be a success:

Read the rest of this entry »