if connected

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 »

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 »

RIM’s BlackBerry customers are experiencing a further outage as the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) fails again (BBC News coverage) for the second day of problems. The issues started yesterday, on Canadian Thanksgiving. RIM is a Canadian company. These service faults cover a wide geographical region across Europe, Middle East and Africa but not North America. BIS is the network service that powers consumer email, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), and other BlackBerry Internet functions for consumers. SMS and voice calling is unaffected.

This isn’t the first such problem with BIS (or see here), but the timing is horrific, for multiple reasons:

• BBM rival iMessage arrives tomorrow on Wednesday, October 12. iMessage is a part of the iOS5 update for iPhones, iPads and recent iPod Touch models. Similarly to Facetime’s integration with voice telephony, iMessage replaces an iPhone’s SMS app and automatically delivers the improved messaging experience if the phone knows a recipient is also an iMessage user. It also uses Apple’s cloud service to sync messages across the iPad and iPod Touch that lack SMS messaging ability.
• The new version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, is imminent. While Apple is the key competitor for all high end smartphones, it’s Android-powered phones that threaten to eat into RIM’s Curve & BBM toting young customers.
• RIM is suffering a fall in device unit shipments. That’s perhaps too mild a summary, RIM has reported a terrible set of results for its most recent quarter combined with appalling sales for the PlayBook tablet. RIM needs to be able to devote its resources and prestige to expand with new innovations and not run to stand still by patching old services such as BIS for existing users.
• RIM is midway through a risky technology transition. Current BlackBerry smartphones run an evolved version of the same software they have for years. The new QNX software is in development and is on which RIM’s future depends. RIM will have to persuade current users to transition to this new product range that will almost certainly have some irritations for long term users, even if QNX smartphones are excellently executed. Long term users often dislike small changes that new users wouldn’t notice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s round-up of recent wireless, smartphone, tablet, and other mobile data.

There’s a summary of the data at the top with more figures, analysis and links to all of the sources included further down after the break.

1. comScore: August 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

In one of its key countries, the US, RIM is really struggling. RIM sees a decline of 1% in share of the mobile handset market and a dramatic 5% fall in share of smartphone OS platforms in just a three month period. But these figures pre-date the introduction of RIM’s completely new portfolio of low end Curves and higher end Bold’s and Torch’s all running BlackBerry OS 7.

Despite widespread sentiment that Apple is losing out to Android in the US, the company’s share of the total US mobile market edged up by 0.7% between May and August. This reflects continued strength for the iPhone 4 although the handset design is a year old.

2. Apple: Latest iOS, iPhone and other Apple statistics from the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event

Apple’s own figures from the iPhone 4S launch re-enforce how well it was doing on the eve of Steve Job’s death. Some of the many metrics (many stats further down after the break):

• 250m iOS devices sold, including iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch models.
• 18m total app downloads cumulatively.
• 500,000 iOS apps in the store, of which 140,000 are for the iPad.
• 67m Game Center users.
• >16bn songs sold by the iTunes music store.
• $3bn paid out by App to app developers to date

3. Nielsen: In U.S. Market, New Smartphone Buyers Increasingly Embracing Android

Data on new smartphone buyers shows that Android is growing dramatically and now represents 56% of recent smartphone acquirers. However, Apple is maintaining its smartphone market share (28%) when comparing recent smartphone acquirers and all smartphone subscribers. Result: More bad news for RIM and Microsoft Windows Phone, it’s these other smartphone platforms that are being squeezed by the rise of Android, not Apple.

4. J.D. Power: The Right Blend of Design and Technology is Critical to Creating an Exceptional User Experience with Smartphones and Traditional Mobile Devices

Customer satisfaction is greatest for thin and light devices, even among smartphone users. Current feature phone owners demonstrate the same trend as smartphone owners for portable devices but have a lower tolerance for weight with their satisfaction levels dropping off when devices weigh over 4 ounces compared with a threshold of 5 ounces for smartphone owners.

My take: This explains partly the success of the iPhone 4. Apple’s handset is a particularly thin and light smartphone that has wide appeal to normal mobile customers, not just savvy users. J.D. Power data picks out the iPhone as the highest rated phone for satisfaction.

5. Nielsen: 40 Percent of U.S. Mobile Users Own Smartphones; 40 Percent are Android

Apple and Android are neck and neck in appeal for those adults that intend to buy a smartphone in the next year: Both appeal to 30% of prospective buyers. But among an “Innovators” group of early adopters 40% intend to buy an Android smartphone compared with 32% for iOS. My take: This data demonstrates that the iPhone has broader appeal across mainstream users than Android.

Read the rest of this entry »

BlackBerry-maker RIM is struggling following some terrible recent results. It’s now under pressure to hasten the launch of next generation BlackBerry smartphones.

RIM must resist and instead execute better.

The most shocking part of those results was the performance of the PlayBook tablet. Just 200,000 shipped in its second quarter on sale, under half the 500,000 in its first quarter.  This has scared observers as the PlayBook is RIM’s first next generation product of many in a major product transition that will transform RIM’s entire range. The PlayBook is built on the same QNX OS foundation that will power future BlackBerry smartphones.

The PlayBook’s failure clearly demonstrates why speed of delivery, at the expense of quality execution, is the wrong strategy for RIM now despite the pressure:

• The Playbook attempted to go head to head with the iPad by focusing on a media-centric experience, with Flash support, video output to a TV set and elegant multitasking. This diversification spread RIM’s R&D efforts too thin for a company attempting to do three major things: defend its core markets; evolve its old product range; as well as building a completely new set of products using QNX OS.
• RIM failed to appeal to its existing communication-centric customers. For corporates, the PlayBook lacked integration with BES and any native email capability. For young consumers, typically Curve owners, the PlayBook lacked BlackBerry Messenger.

The drop in RIM’s overall device shipments isn’t surprising and shouldn’t lead to a change in strategy. While quarterly device shipments were 10.6 million, down 1.5 million from the equivalent quarter in 2010, they were 2.3 million higher than the same quarter in 2009. RIM remains profitable. In the circumstances, given the complete product portfolio-wide transition that RIM’s largest customers — operators and enterprises — know is about to happen this is a pretty good holding action.

RIM is about to start a major product transition from smartphones based on an evolution of the original BlackBerry software to the new QNX phone operating system that also powers the PlayBook tablet. These kinds of product transitions are hard to do, are always risky, and always threaten to undercut sales of old generation products. Analogous product switches show how hard it is to do:

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This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

At MWC, multiple companies have launched mobile application stores that seek to build upon Apple's iPhone success (Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, mPortico, Surfkitchen, Adtonic, PocketGear and others). These join existing announced app stores (including RIM, Google Android, Palm).

These are more than simple me-too initiatives.

Mobile app stores are not new. Palm, Handango and even Nokia with their Download! service pre-date Apple. Like the iPod, Apple was a follower — rather than first mover — that succeeded due to terrific execution and a clear strategy and market position. Apple benefits from the ease of commercial iPhone application distribution. Developers now prosper in a virtuous circle:

• iPhone application store is easy to use on phone or PC. It offers consumers reviews, user ratings, reliable download & install and low price points. Developers benefit from reliable content protection.
• Developers sell more applications and so prioritise more r&d for iPhone over other phones. This leads to a greater catalogue of applications.
• The greater wealth of third party support increases the benefit for consumers of owning an iPhone, thus driving iPhone sales.
• A greater installed base of iPhones increases the audience of potential application buyers, leading to increased application sales.

To succeed, owners much ensure that their store's convenience to consumers is high. Superb execution will be critical.