if connected

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

Today, Nokia announces its first netbook, called the Nokia Booklet 3G (press release, Nokia blog post). Like all netbooks, the Nokia Booklet 3G is essentially a miniature laptop PC and has more capability in common with the PC than with handheld devices like mobile phones. Despite misinformed advance speculation, the Booklet will run Windows and has an impressive claimed battery life of 12 hours.

In the flesh, the Booklet 3G has a neat modern design and a modern metallic appearance case. The screen and keyboard are both relatively large and well-proportioned.

Mobile operators are increasingly looking to extend their early successes in the mobile broadband market. This is the Booklet’s key differentiator: unlike almost all other netbooks, Nokia’s has an internal mobile broadband card with a SIM slot. Other netbooks rely on external USB mobile broadband modems for Internet access. The presence of this internal wireless modem is why the Booklet 3G is a natural extension to Nokia’s traditional phone handset product range.

Unlike most of Nokia’s key phone handset rivals — such as Samsung, LG, Apple — Nokia does not sell laptops today, and so is in danger of being outflanked by other handset makers that do offer laptops. Nokia will use the Booklet to support their operator customers and discourage them from taking rival handset makers’ netbooks.

Nokia’s challenge with the Booklet 3G will be how to communicate the offering in the market. Over the last couple of months Nokia has had to rebut repeated rumours which are at odds with its current strategy. The name of this netbook, the “Booklet” makes the device sound more like a MID or Internet tablet running a custom version of Linux, rather than the contemporary Windows netbook PC that is the Booklet. Additionally, Nokia now faces new and different competitors for the Booklet that are strong in the laptop PC space such as Dell, HP and Sony that are weak or non-existent players in mobile phones.

Nokia’s first Netbook deserves to do well. But Nokia must work hard to gain traction in this new product category.

Further reading:-

Refining Mobile Broadband Strategy In The Netbook Era

The Mobile Broadband Future – Tactics to Position On-the-Go Mobile Broadband for PCs

Public WiFi is tricky to find and hotspots always seems to require some different arcane sign-on process. Logging on via a scratch card token or entering credit card details is slow. Every sign-on web UI is different and requires concentration to make sure things work first time. The comprehensive roaming agreements between “networks” that would make this easier have never happened. Even if they had, they wouldn’t cover the numerous one-off free hotspots that still require a web log-in for t&c compliance.

Worse, once connected, WiFi hotspots often block some applications/uses but not others, or deliver poor speeds. But it’s only possible to test this after paying the WiFi connection charge or the indirect charge for the coffee needed to be able to sit in the particular cafe with WiFi. In Europe, that WiFi charge is often greater than an entire month of mobile broadband use.

Mobile broadband is quick to connect to and predictable.

Yesterday, I wanted to check something online fast on my laptop while I joined a conference call. I booted the laptop. I could see a faint BT Openzone WiFi signal but ignored it as I only had one hand free to type my credit card number and I wasn’t sure the signal was strong enough to be reliable. Instead, I hit the connect button on screen and my laptop created a bluetooth connection to the Nokia phone I had and went online. Time to connect was about 20 seconds, no more, and as soon as I was online I knew for sure that email, IM and everything else I needed would work as I’d used this mobile network for Internet access many times before.

WiFi is faster and less battery draining, but for genuinely mobile out-and-about use the convenience of mobile broadband wins.

Today, Vodafone announced first half results. Unsurprisingly, mobile broadband was a key part of their strategy to maintain revenues as mobile voice and sms increasingly head towards becoming free.
They reported very fast mobile broadband growth, built upon aggressive pricing by other operators in European markets. Vodafone — not aiming to be the cheapest priced — reported an 84% increase in mobile PC connectivity devices and reckons about half of those are consumer buys. Given the early stage of the consumer mobile broadband market, that’s an impressive result. Data-related revenues will be harder to secure: they rose by just 27%.
In the UK alone, Vodafone reported >500k mobile PC devices. This would place Vodafone among the leading ISPs if compared with home broadband, and with growth levels that only Sky could approach (but not match).
Note to non-European readers, pricing for mobile broadband is as low as 10ukp for one months’ use on a pre-pay SIM, or 5ukp if an add-on to an existing contract plan. This isn’t in every country, but in some where low prices exist, the market is moving extremely quickly.
There will be much more mobile broadband adoption to come as data spreads into emerging markets. Both Vodafone, and all of the operators I heard speak at last weeks’ FT Telecoms conference, were sure this would happen very soon. Most, thought the opportunity is even greater than in Europe.
Vodafone’s CEO: “In emerging markets: The Internet will be mobile.”
Given the strength of some of the early mobile broadband take-up and of the arrival of numerous laptop-mobile subsidy sale models in retail, I think that’s too narrow a statement, should read:
Ian: “The Internet will be mobile.”
By that I mean that everyone, retailers, PC makers, home broadband providers, website owners, everyone… will have to adjust to the arrival of mobile/cellular in their businesses. Increasing numbers of consumers will go online using laptop PCs on relatively slow mobile broadband connections — including very small netbooks — leading to website design tweaks. Where and when people go online will change. Operators, retailers and device makers will have to embrace mobile industry pricing and packaging with subsidies and tight contract lock-ins. Additionally, and in parallel, phone handset Internet access is on the rise too.
I see any attempt to write about fixed and mobile Internet in isolation, or home broadband and mobile broadband on their own, as doomed to failure. Strategies must embrace both.
There is now one Internet, although with a few different flavours.
Exciting times.

Vodafone Italy is now offering an innovative home gateway that has both ADSL2+ and HSPA (ie a 3.5g mobile radio). What’s special is that the mobile radio is used completely differently to normal discussions of fixed-mobile or femtocells.
Here, the HSPA radio offers an alternative to ADSL2+ to route a consumer’s access onto the Internet (ie backhaul from the gateway). And, just like any other home broadband modem or router, a consumer’s computer connects to the gateway through WiFi as normal.
A conventional femtocell approach uses the HSPA radio to connect a consumer’s device to the gateway as an alternative to WiFi. And, ADSL2+, HFC cable, or fibre to route the consumer’s data from the gateway onto the Internet (ie backhaul). Typically in this scenario, a consumer device would be a mobile phone, although it could also be a laptop using a mobile radio.
The advantages for Vodafone of using HSPA, alongside ADSL2+, in this gateway include:
- Avoids delays between a consumer purchase of a broadband service and the service going live and being ready for use, due to the minimum provisioning time for ADSL2+ which is not entirely in Vodafone’s control due to their partial reliance on LLU service and wholesale DSL packages (applies outside Italy too).
- Reduces Vodafone’s dependence on ADSL2+ coverage (although good in Italy).
- Creates a broadband product which is easy for a customer to transfer between houses or flats. So, could increase appeal to market segments that move house frequently and wish to avoid hitting contract lock-in problems.
There is also potential for small business broadband products for similar reasons to the above.
This is yet another example of the current collision between the mobile broadband and home broadband markets. There’s more in this report, especially note figure 9.

The Air is an astoundingly thin PC. Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air by saying that Apple had made no compromises, unlike other manufacturers. This is great spin but is not quite correct. Apple did make trade-offs in the design, but just not the same ones as everyone else. Apple thought differently, again. (How many times have I written that here?)
Apple have delivered an ultrathin laptop, with an absolutely wonderful screen, a full size keyboard, a reasonably fast processor, and complete with the latest WiFi standard.
Despite the rumours ahead of the launch, Apple chose to leave out WiMAX support. This was absolutely the right thing to do in such a tightly miniaturised device. Today, WiMAX is nascent. There are very few WiMAX networks operating, let alone active WiMAX users. If Apple had increased the weight, size, or price of the MacBook Air by one iota to fit WiMAX capability inside the case then the effort would have been a waste.
Other trade-offs that Apple made are more interesting and perhaps controversial:

• Speed. The hard drive is both slow and small, unless a buyer opts for the (extremely) expensive SSD model. The processor is faster than competitors in the same size/weight category, but it appears to be a low voltage version rather than the full fat cpu used on (heavier) competitor laptops such as Dell’s M1330. For a light laptop focused on office apps, email and browsing the Air is easily fast enough.
• Connections. There’s only one USB port and no ethernet. Result: a business traveller will need to carry dongles to use a wired network, or use more than one USB device (e.g. iPod + mouse; mouse + ethernet; etc). This is an irritation rather than a major issue. The Air also has a non-standard monitor socket which needs an adaptor to plug into a projector
• A sealed in battery. If the MacBook Air delivers on its five hour promise this will affect few people.

The MacBook Air result remains very impressive. Apple has made smart trade-offs. Whether the compromises prove significant will depend on the individual and on the experiences of real world use.
I believe the MacBook Air will do very well indeed.

To speed up performance on my current phone I often switch off the 3G radio to speed up performance.

This is, of course, silly.

The phone is a Windows Mobile device, it’s an operator-branded HTC TyTN (also called ‘Hermes’ or by various operator-specific names).

When the 3G radio is on (WCDMA/UMTS/3GPP), and something is downloading in the background, like a large email attachment, the foreground application often slows down dramatically.

Worse, it’s an unpredictable experience. One minute I’m able to launch the phone application in an instant to call someone, the next, the screen redraws overlap, it starts looking like the phone has crashed although it hasn’t, and the process of making a phone call takes me literally minutes to do.

This is, of course, silly.

In 2G mode, on the same phone with the same software and on the same operator: No problem. In addition, my battery lasts anything from two to four times as long.

This is, of course, silly.

The downside of 2G/GPRS is that data and voice can’t coexist. If I make a phone call, the data connection drops. If there’s a live data connection running, then sometimes incoming calls are bounced direct to my voicemail. It’s all very unsatisfactory and far from “always on”.

With the iPhone, Apple are emphasising that calls do not get missed. They are positioning iPhone with the a message that the one experience that is paramount is the phone/voice one.

For me, the main issue with the absence of a 3G radio on iPhone is not the much vaunted 3G speeds (which are becoming impressive, especially with HSDPA as on my Windows Mobile phone). And, after all, there are plenty of Blackberries in Europe that are only 2G. Instead, the impact of leaving out 3g is the issue of how to ensure voice and data coexist.

Apple will need to implement some neat workarounds — of which a number are possible — to ensure that the lack of 3G does not cause the voice and data experience to conflict. They have to ensure that they deliver on their marketing message that above all else, the iPhone is a great phone as well as everything else.