if connected

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

Tomorrow, on the 9th, it’s three years since the announcement of the iPhone. In that short space of time, and as Apple promised back then, Apple has reinvented the phone.

The iPhone has proven to be the ‘Ironclad’ of mobile phones. Everything that went before was obsolete overnight, both smartphones and dumb phones included. No prior phone could compete with the experience and the abilities of the iPhone. Sure, some phones were superior in very specific regards — especially on cost and call quality — just as very early Ironclad warships were not always the most sea worthy vessels. But overall, nothing existing could go toe-to-toe with the iPhone.

Other manufacturers saw this fast and reacted. Just like with the warships of the latter part of the 19th century the pace of innovation since, both from other manufacturers and from across the whole mobile ecosystem, has been ferocious. This week at CES we’ve seen numerous competing high end mobile phone launches that demonstrate that the pace of innovation in mobile is accelerating, rather than slowing.

Consumers use this new breed of high end phones in completely different ways to older ‘smartphones’ or dumb phones (we have consumer data on this, clients please ask!). This is especially true in Europe where consumer ownership of Nokia’s Symbian Series 60 handsets is so great.

What does this mean for the ‘smartphone’ category? Well, as I wrote in the preamble to my ‘Long Live Smart Phones and Smart Gadgets‘ report last year, the term ‘smartphone’ is dead and is no longer useful (read the report for more on this). Today’s high end phones are so different from the pre-Ironclad / pre-iPhone era it’s that it’s not useful to bracket them in a single category with older model designs that consumers don’t use in anything like the same way.

We need a new word for this new breed of phones. I proposed ‘Internet phone‘ last year. Others have made other suggestions: Google this week introduced the Nexus One as a ‘superphone‘ and pitched it as ‘web meets phone’; NYT’s David Pogue proposed ‘app phone’; Nokia has talked about the PC-centric abilities of its new Maemo phone as it has consigned its use of ‘smartphone’ to its older Series 60 Symbian line that’s being re-positioned for the mid-range (officially confirmed by Symbian: it will be a smartphone for the masses according to Symbian. This was interestingly unnoticed by most, as Symbian chose to publish on the day before Christmas). Or, do we simply accept that what constitutes a smartphone has fundamentally changed and move on?

Thoughts on the name? Do we need a new term? If so, please add your suggestion for a new term to describe this new generation of phones below in the comments. If not, I’d love to hear why you think that.

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

Background – Today Palm announces the first major operator partner for its European strategy with an O2 partnership.

Back in January, when Palm unveiled the Palm Pre and its new Web OS platform, Palm’s innovation was clearly differentiated and ahead of the competition. Palm had pulled a rabbit from the hat. The Pre integrated social networks with its ‘Synergy’ interface in an extremely modern overall touch user interface. The hardware was different too: The Pre offered wire-free charging with the add-on Touchstone and managed to combine both a capacitive (multi)touch screen with a QWERTY keyboard in a phone the same size as the iPhone.

Nine months is a long time in mobile.

Now, most of the key Internet phone makers have launched social network integration (most notably Motorola with Motoblur on the Cliq/Dext; HTC’s Sense UI on Android and Windows Mobile; and INQ Mobile’s various models; and others about to announce plus operators). Offering a capacitive touch screen is now table stakes for a high end Internet phone.

Palm’s product strategy was smart when put in place several years ago. Unfortunately, others thought the same way. This is a key challenge for developing a product strategy that takes several years to move from inception to launch. How do you stay ahead of the game when you’re stuck behind the fog of the product strategy war? (It’s a great reason to use research firms to develop that strategy).

Now, Palm does retain differentiation, but mostly in how the Palm Pre does what it does. Palm has to work hard to communicate that its execution is different.

Today’s announcement of an exclusive deal with O2 in various European countries will help. As a small firm, with a new launch product, Palm will benefit from the co-marketing support to evangelize its product differentiation.

Palm’s other key challenge is how to maintain the r&d spend needed to ensure its next products are more innovative than its much larger competitors, while shipping significantly less handsets than any of them every quarter.

For more insights into why so many firms are integrating social computing and social networking into mobile handsets, see this report: How Mobile Handsets Will Deliver 24×7 Social Computing.

For analysis of the Internet phone category and how Palm compares with the other handset makers please read this key report: The “Smartphone” Is Dead: Long Live Smart Phones And Smart Gadgets

Orange are promoting social networking and Internet access on pre pay so-called ‘featurephones’ (see photo on the right). Consumers care about what their phones can do not what artificial term the mobile industry chooses. No one can define the term ‘smartphone’ unambigously and no one defines ‘smartphone’ the same as anyone else. It’s meaningless.

On various briefing calls yesterday Nokia defended their (tenuous) position in high end phones by repeatedly claiming to be the leading maker of ‘smartphones’ — but 45% of a non-existent category is a useless metric. Consumers certainly don’t get it: Series 60 (“smart”) and Series 40 (not, ‘featurephone’) look virtually identical on the surface, and neither looks comparable in their online abilities compared with Android, iPhone, Palm, the INQ1 or even Windows Mobile.

Instead, what matters is how good phones are at doing the Internet or for Facebook. Everyone must focus on ‘Internet phones’ in developing mobile strategy or mobile phone marketing.

Orange’s in-store Internet-centric messaging is strong, but they are missing a trick with their online store as there’s no option there to filter phones by features such as ‘Facebook’ or ‘Internet’.

Update Friday, August 14 – See this Forrester report by me for more on “smartphones”: The “Smartphone” Is Dead: Long Live Smart Phones And Smart Gadgets

Nokia is in danger of trying to execute on a strategy that is spread too thin. The story today about Microsoft office arriving on Nokia phones joins yesterday’s piece in the FT Germany that Nokia plans to replace Symbian in its high end phones with Linux-based Maemo. Last month, a story appeared about Nokia offering Android-based phones — swiftly denied — that appeared to miss out on Nokia’s long term Maemo strategy. Beyond phones, Nokia has invested enormous resources into Ovi (maps & nagivation, digital music sales, email, media sharing, and the app store).

I struggle to see what benefit Microsoft Office will deliver on Nokia phones. Word, Excel and the rest are niche applications on mobile phones. Few use them as anything other than a document viewer even on those devices where the implementation is good. A better approach for Nokia would be to improve and enrich their phones’ Exchange support to improve email folder access and group calendaring. Perhaps, Office on Nokia is destined for a different class of device — a netbook — if so, Nokia must take care to avoid irrelevance.

Nokia must quickly revive its execution in core business areas such as high end Internet phones. Those devices may be small beer today, relatively, but they are tomorrow’s mid range phones, and next months’ entry level. If Nokia loses that high end Internet phone battle today it cedes its future.

Maemo should be a critical part of Nokia’s Internet phone strategy. It should be the device and software component of Nokia’s shift to Internet thinking and business models. And, given the pressure from rivals — Google & Android, Apple iPhone, Palm’s Pre, even Windows Mobile — the sooner Nokia brings new mobile phones to market that deliver a step change improvement in people’s experience of Nokia phones, the better.

Forrester clients will know I’ve analysed Maemo’s rise several times over the past couple of years — please get in touch for advice — most noticeably in these two reports:

“The N810′s importance is vastly greater than the niche, savvy, youth audience, to which it will appeal or that small sales of previous tablets indicate. With the Internet tablet range, Nokia is incubating both desktop-quality technologies, and a new business model that is independent of the constraints of the traditional mobile value chain.” Nokia Embraces the Whole Internet with the N810, November 2007.

“The Maemo-based tablets are a strategic play by Nokia. They are one of the most visible MIDs currently available. As Forrester advises, they deliver a strong communication and navigation application focus. With the extension of the platform to include cellular radio standards, future models threaten to replace high-end Internet-centric mobile phones.” Nokia to Evolve the Internet Tablet Range to Include Mobile Telephony, December 2008.

The Nokia N97 is currently Nokia’s flagship phone for consumers. Key features are a large touch screen, sideways sliding qwerty keyboard, five megapixel camera and Symbian Series 50 5th Edition.

Somehow, Nokia appear to have convinced themselves that simply because the N97 is the current flagship, and the N95 8Gb was last year’s flagship, that owners of the latter should buy the N97. See the imagery below which also matches my impressions after talking with Nokia product managers.

Nokia phone upgrade positioning, summer 2009

I don’t buy it. The N95 8Gb was famous for its dual-slider mechanism and easy access music playback controls. The N95 is completely controllable one-handed, with the N97 it’s a struggle. N95 buyers were attracted by what was, at the time, a state of the art camera, but today’s top end phones have eight or twelve megapixels, not the five of the N97. The N97′s features and form factor are simply not a clear evolution from the N95.

Ironically, there is a model in Nokia’s current line-up that is the clear heir of the N95, but Nokia are not choosing to market it that way. The N86 has a near identical form factor to the N95, a better eight megapixel camera with variable aperture, and it has the same neat music control buttons. Like the N95, it runs Series 60 3rd edition and is completely controllable one-handed.

The N97 has had a lot of criticism. Most is deserved. But if Nokia had presented the N97 more modestly rather than as the all conquering flagship heir to the N95, I suspect the many critiques would have been more measured, and reviewers would have given Nokia a little slack.

A valued uberreader spotted that a photo of a London bus in a previous post had been distorted by the iPhone camera.

The bus was moving right to left. It appears that by the time the iPhone camera recorded the bottom of the bus, the bus had moved to the left. So, the bus in the photo has an extremely slanted front, rather than the sheer vertical of the original.

The uberreader reader tested this theory by taking a photo of an office fan. The actual fan only has five blades, but in this photo the fan appears to have many more, due to the scan effect. This photo was taken with the iPhone held vertically and the fan must be spinning clockwise to create this visual illusion.

This is yet more evidence that cameraphones can’t be judged on megapixels alone. The lens, sensor, software, aperture control, type of flash and numerous other things are every bit as important.

Earlier, I wanted to take a photo of an electrically-powered UPS delivery van. The vehicle was stationary while waiting to turn.

Even so, my phone camera was nearly fast enough… But still missed the shot.

The iPhone asked me whether I wanted to allow the camera to use my GPS location yes/no. The seconds delay from that extra dialog meant a bus obscured the van, and then the van turned and was gone.

The phone wasn’t fast enough.