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 »

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 »

With the launch of the 2011 iPhone models, Apple will also launch iCloud, a new online services play that replaces MobileMe. This is a part of the iOS5 software that will be available for free to existing iOS devices and will ship as standard on new iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch’s.

This is a core part of Apple’s near term strategy to drive greater device sales — iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac — as Apple builds a post-PC world. Over the long haul iCloud will also help Apple’s content and services revenues but that won’t be its most important initial impact.

Apple still makes the vast bulk of its revenues from hardware sales despite having by far the most successful app store, music download store and various other services initiatives. Example: In the first three years after the launch of the Apple App Store Apple generated $1.1bn in revenue from iOS apps (1). But this figure is dwarfed by their iOS device revenues of over $100bn in the same period (2). Apple has great margins on those hardware revenues too.

Because of that hardware model, Apple has enormous incentives to create new product features to drive device sales, even if that means offering those new features or services for free. Apple can be disruptive with “free” offerings too. The “contagion of free” business models are not just the preserve of Google and Valley-based VC-funded startups.

This is the cloud the way it should be: automatic and effortless. iCloud is seamlessly integrated into your apps, so you can access your content on all your devices. And it’s free with iOS 5. — Apple marketing, October, 2011

Those devices sales give Apple a massive incentive to package its cloud services for free. In so doing, Apple undermines those that have cloud-based services as their core business. This includes Google. Although Google charges for few cloud services — the main exception being Google Apps for businesses — it still generates direct advertising revenues across all of its cloud services such as Gmail. So, if people choose to use Apple’s services instead of Google it still hurts Google’s bottom line.

iCloud supports Apple’s desire to sell more devices by helping two overlapping groups of consumers:

Read the rest of this entry »

The sites below will be providing live coverage of the Apple announcement today, where Steve Jobs is due to detail Mac OS Lion, iOS5 and iCloud.

I’ll be analyzing the news live on twitter, follow me here @ianfogg42.

The event starts at 10am pacific, 1pm eastern, 6pm UK and 7pm CET.

• This is my next (lots of great recently ex-Engadget folks): Liveblog
• Cnet: Live
• Gigaom: Live video
• Slashgear: livecast.
• Engadget: Live video feed
• Gizmodo: Liveblog
• ZDNet: Live analysis 
• Arstechnica: Liveblog
• Macrumors: Liveblog
• Wired: live
• Boy Genius Report: liveblog (not live yet), but this page is working now.
• The unofficial iPhone blog (TiPb): Meta live blog (how apt)

Related post: “Let’s Talk iPhone” – Where to follow the 2011 Apple iPhone launch event live online

This era is so much more than just a ‘Post PC’ age. Numerous other devices are being sidelined too as both their reasons to exist and their business models are disrupted.

Yes, we have switched from a unipolar PC world to a multipolar device era where smartphones, eReaders, tablets, connected TVs and many other smart connected devices are finally becoming viable. In this new digital era the PC remains extremely important. In every country, household PC penetration is rising, even in countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden where PC penetration is already 92%, 87% and 87% respectively. [Source: Eurobarometer 335, E-Communications Household Survey, European Union].

Yet despite this continued success, the PC is still being sidelined.

The most significant innovations are now happening outside of the PC market. Even at Microsoft, the major user experience innovations that will be incorporated into the upcoming PC OS, Windows 8, were pioneered on Microsoft’s smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7, or on the xBox360 games console.

For those companies that lost out in the PC era, like Apple, it’s useful to market this era as a ‘Post PC’ one as that re-defines the market battlefield in a way that favours the strengths of their products: around highly mobile iOS-powered iPhones and iPads, rather than Windows PCs. Steve Jobs successfully changed the battlefield in just this way with his speeches about the iPad in early 2010. Yet Apple continues to innovate with its traditional computer products with imminent launch of iCloud and Mac OS X Lion.

So, when Apple talks about ‘Post PC’ what Apple really means is that this will be a ‘Post Windows’ future.

But whether we call this Post Windows’ or ‘Post PC’ both terms are too narrow a view of the innovative disruption that is transforming the Internet, consumer electronics, media, advertising, navigation, retailing, and almost every aspect of life.

It’s not just the PC that’s being sidelined. Numerous devices are becoming obsolescent as they too are disrupted, so this new era is also:

• Post Phone — Mobile phones are now routinely smart and consumers often choose to buy a phone that is not the best phone but instead choose a mobile handset with the best apps, Facebook access and Internet browsing delivered with a great user experience. If call quality, signal reception, and battery life were the key factors for consumers buying phones then Nokia’s market position would not be in free fall.
• Post Print — Paper books, magazines and newspapers are being replaced by digital distribution and business models on PC-accessible websites, eReaders, smartphones and tablets.
• Post TV — The TV set is no longer the only way to watch TV. Increasingly, it’s not even the main way. Traditional broadcasters are offering live and recorded TV programmes on their own websites or through special services such as Netflix, Hulu, iPlayer or many others. People are choosing what device to watch TV on based upon whatever screen is most convenient. Old metrics such as the number of TV sets per household are irrelevant. Instead, the new metrics are how many TV-capable screens does each person have available, what size is that screen — from very small such as on a smartphone, to enormous living room projectors — and is it mobile and usable at any time of the day or night wherever that person is?
• Post disc — Music, TV, software and games used to be distributed on physical media. With the arrival of digital games distribution systems such as Valve’s Steam or OnLive, streaming video and music subscriptions, people no longer need optical disk drives. The latest generation of light laptop computers forego that drive. Games consoles and home music systems will go the same way soon.

Those that are talking about ‘Post PC’ are right that this is a new digital era. We’re long past ‘Web 2.0′ but the term ‘Post PC’ does not describe this new era adequately. It’s so much more. It’s post so many many devices, business models, and companies.

In a future post I will set out how to describe this new era.

A while ago I wrote about how to set up a modern Mac to boot into Windows (or Linux), as well as Mac OS, but using three hard drive partitions. As standard, the Mac OS Boot Camp utility only works with two (see Tips for setting up Bootcamp with three partitions)

Due to the amount of video and photos I’m creating now, I wanted to get rid of that third hard drive partition so as to make more space for Mac OS. But deleting the additional partitions caused Windows on the Boot Camp partition to stop working. If this happens to you here’s how to fix, or to avoid:

To avoid the problem – Instead of deleting the additional partition, resize it to be the smallest amount possible (in my case about 800MB) instead using Disk Utility. This third partition should be between the Mac partition and the Boot Camp partition on your disk.

To fix, if you’ve already deleted it and gone to two partitions:
- Resize the Mac OS partition to be about 900MB smaller.
- Create a new 3rd partition in the newly unused disk space and call it the same name as your original 3rd partition.
- That’s it!

Don’t touch the actual Boot Camp partition at any time with Disk Utility or the Boot Camp utility during the above steps, unless you feel braver than me.

Foxmarks bookmarks sync
This is the killer feature for me and the reason I’m going to stay loyal to Firefox for now: Foxmarks delivers reliable and secure sync of bookmarks across multiple computers whatever OS they are running. In a recent version there’s an option for users to define whether each computer is ‘work or ‘home’ and then sync a different set of bookmark folders with each type of machine. Foxmarks stores a copy of all the bookmarks either on the Foxmarks server or one a user specfies. The advantage of syncing with Foxmarks own server is that the ‘my foxmarks’ website allows users to log in and access their bookmarks from any web browser, for example using a shared computer in a cafe.

Add bookmark here 2 (Windows only)
I really miss this when I’m not using Windows. Puts an ‘add bookmark’ item into each folder in the your bookmarks. So, to add a bookmark you just navigate your folders, as if you were choosing to load an existing bookmark, then pick the appropriate add button when you’ve navigated into the right folder.

Openbook (Windows only)
This causes the ‘add bookmark’ dialog to appear with the folder tree extended. Handy. Although it’s largely, but not entirely, superceded if you have the ‘add bookmark here’ extension. Again I really miss this when I’m not on Windows, especially on the Mac version of Firefox.

Tiny menu (Windows only)
This is a fantastic extension for use on laptops (especially) or any machines that are low on vertical screen space. It collapses the entire menu to a single word with a hierarchical sub menu. However, there is a downside: Once installed, you need to manually configure the space to the right of the word ‘Menu’ with whatever buttons you desire (back, forward etc) and then hide the standard ‘navigation’ toolbar.

Tab preview
Adds mini previews of each tab as the mouse hovers over the tab’s name. IMO this is especially useful if there are a lot of tabs open.

Adblock Plus
I used to use the original Adblock, but found that it interfered with Flash working on some websites, especially movie trailer sites for some reason.

Cute menu crystal svg
Pure eye candy. I suppose you could argue that the icons next to menu items improve usability….

Web developer toolbar
…what it says. I especially like the ability to fiddle with what CSS elements are active.

Pdf download
Offers options for how to handle pdfs when they’re left clicked.

Tab Mix Plus
Offers customisation of the way tabs work. On Firefox 3 it’s less essential but still has some nice features.

Others that I have installed, but don’t use very often:-

Downloadthemall
Useful download manager but I use it occasionally and not all of the time: my main use is to grab multiple things for download from a single web page without a lot of manual clicking.

Copy plain text
Does what it says via the right click context menu.

IE tab
This isn’t as useful as it appears. The goal is to enable incompatible websites to be opened within the firefox UI. In reality, the only problematic site I’ve come across in recent years, a UK stockbroker, crashes in this too!

IE view
I find this more useful: it adds an ‘open in IE’ link to the right click menu.

Chatzilla
An IRC client

Streetmap

Freetranslate