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 »

[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 »

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 »

The iPhone 4S is a completely different phone from its predecessor. Really. Screen and exterior industrial design aside, there’s almost nothing that’s the same as the older iPhone 4. Mobile industry and media coverage sentiment hasn’t matched that analysis.

Nevertheless, the iPhone 4S has many improvements, including:

• A new chipset, baseband and radio that is dual mode. Previously, Apple used Intel-owned Infineon for earlier iPhone models. Now they are almost certainly using Qualcomm as they’re the leaders in dual mode CDMA/GMS (3GPP3 / 3GPP) handset technology. There’s some great analysis of quite the enormity of this shift to dual mode in this piece by Dean Bubley. In addition to his points, Apple also gains other benefits from now making a single phone that they are able to sell anywhere, rather than two separate phones for CDMA and GSM/3GPP: they boost their economies of scale still further with component purchasing, driving down costs. Also with only one SKU to manage in global manufacturing and distribution Apple has greater flexibility to re-direct iPhone 4S stock to where it’s most needed whatever network technology an operator uses.
  Ironically, given the reaction to the 4S, the new chipset and baseband may make the 4S the first iPhone that is actually a great phone for making phone calls. Assuming Apple has engineered the new platform right.
• A re-designed still and video camera. Not only does the 4S have 8 megapixels rather than the 5 of its predecessor it also has altered optics and a different sensor. Result: better low light performance, one of the big weaknesses of all mobile phone cameras. The 4S also records video in 1080P quality at 30 frames per second, up from 720P in 2010′s iPhone 4.
• More storage. This is the first time that an iPhone has shipped with a 64Gb option. The last time Apple raised the storage available on a iPhone was in 2009 when the iPhone 3GS launched.
• Faster processor and much faster graphics. The iPhone is now dual core like so many recent high end Android smartphones (e.g. Motorola Atrix, LG Optimus 2x, Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation). This should deliver snappier performance throughout and better games.
• New on-board software with improvements throughout. The most notable changes in iOS5 are the central notifications list, a reminders app, the week view in the Calendar, system-wide twitter integration and iCloud support. Almost all of these features are available to current iPhone 4 and 3GS owners but they’re still new. Apple reduced excitement around all of these major changes by pre-announcing iOS5 and iCloud features in June. As far as the media and industry, they’re four months old.
• Context-based intelligent voice assistant. The ‘Siri’ software is widely seen as an extension of Apple’s voice technology implementation. The background to Siri is more interesting. Originally it was a defence department project that focused on artificial intelligence learning. The clever part of Siri isn’t voice recognition, which Apple have almost certainly licensed (likely from Nuance). Instead, Siri’s differentiation from the mass of voice control services on Android and Windows Phone is from its contextual understanding of what a user means when they ask something, and to deliver improved results over time learning about context from a user’s past questions. The demos look impressive. Only real world usage over a prolonged period will indicate how well Siri delivers.

So why the widely expressed disappointment by the mobile industry, media, and savvy mobile enthusiasts?

Read the rest of this entry »