if connected

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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

The new N900 is a departure from Nokia’s regular evolutionary extensions to the Nokia handset portfolio that build on previous models. It’s the first big reaction to the many new entrants that have arrived in the high end Internet phone market over the last two years (Google’s Android, Apple, Palm’s Pre etc.).

While the Nokia N97 that launched earlier this year used a variant of the same software used in every high end Nokia Internet phone for over five years — Symbian Series 60 — the N900 does not. For the first time, Nokia is launching a high end Internet phone using Linux. And note, The N900 is using Maemo, and not Android.

Nokia isn’t positioning the N900 as a “smartphone”. This is smart. Read why here: The “Smartphone” Is Dead: Long Live Smart Phones And Smart Gadgets.

This is a significant strategic play for Nokia as I warned clients was coming last year. I’ve seen the N900 and held it in my hands. It’s impressive. But is it enough to help Nokia re-gain mindshare? Comment below! Or, contact me via the Forrester inquiry team (clients) or press office (media).

Updated – We’ve published a report analysing this:
Nokia Begins The Fight Back With The N900

Why do I blog so much more here compared with other blogs? Simple: It’s much more convenient as the WordPress mobile tools are superior.

Take the respective platform’s iPhone support as an example: All three blogging platforms offer iPhone apps. But only the WordPress app allows editing of published posts, comment moderation, and the creation or editing of static pages.

Typepad, only offers post creation as does the iPhone Livejournal app. I find that I often wish to amend or add to published posts. I’ve also discovered that on mobile phones it’s easier to hit ‘publish’ by mistake. Or, to be unsure if a post has published successfully due to the vagaries of mobile phone networks. In both situations, being able to edit published posts overcomes the issue. On any important blog I find that lack of ability to edit published posts unacceptable as it leads to error-ridden mobile blog posts staying live until I am back near a PC and able to fix them.

WordPress also has richer post creation options: It has full support for category selection and tags; draft posts can be stored online as well as locally. Storing a draft on the phone enables offline support, and allows the quick storage of posts with large photo attachments, that can be later published when there’s a fast 3G connection or WiFi available. Typepad only has limited local draft support and doesn’t work with the categories in my experience.

On other platforms, WordPress also seems better supported. I’ve found a competent, although unofficial, app for Android in wpToGo, but nothing good for the others.

WordPress:

Typepad:

Livejournal:

When I started this blog last November I agonised over the name. Implicit in “Being Connected” is the idea of an always-on Internet. But “always-on” is a term that we all use blithely without thinking about it.

Most of the time, we still use a PC to browse websites or create content. But the PC isn’t an always-on device, or if it is always-on, it’s not where people actually are living for large parts of every day. Home broadband connections may be “always-on” but only the infirm live their lives exclusively at home. Laptops enable people to enjoy mobile broadband out and about but laptops are too bulky to carry all of the time and take too long to set-up on a flat surface to deliver anything other than a part-time Internet.

The devices that create an always-on digital life are the increasing numbers of Internet mobile phones. These are carried 24×7 and  are carried in easily accessible pockets for instant Google, email, Facebook or whatever.

The mobile phone isn’t significant because it’s mobile. If mobile was the most important aspect of the mobile phone, then mobile’s role in people’s lives would be limited to ‘away from home’ or ‘out of the office’ situations. But people use their phones inside the home as much if not greater as outside: studies on mobile TV and mobile phone calling show very high usage at home. Plus people don’t leave their personal mobile phones outside of the office. No. They carry their personal digital lives into work on-board those personal mobile phones. This increases the collision between work and personal lives.

What’s important about the Internet mobile phone is that mobiles deliver a 24×7 digital life. One where people are connected all of the time, should they choose.

I’ve started writing about this idea, in the increasingly misnamed “day” job here:
How Mobile Handsets Will Deliver 24×7 Social Computing

Bootnote – If people carry Blackberries or work mobile phones 24×7, is it still a “day” job?

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

Too many firms are building their mobile strategies as a mere extension of the PC Internet, and are missing out on what’s now possible when mobile, but which remains impossible using a PC.

A PC is always going to be limited to deliver a part time Internet experience. They are too bulky, too heavy, too power hungry, and increasingly too dependent on the assumption that a super fast fixed-quality broadband connection is present to be something that people will have with them all of the time 24×7. If a PC evolved to be suitable for 24×7 use it wouldn’t be a PC anymore.

Today’s Internet mobiles offer people that 24×7 digital life. People are becoming connected 24×7 through their Internet phones and that must transform the strategies that firms adopt. Mobile enables a 24×7 relationship between brands and consumers. Mobile enables people to interact with websites 24×7, both to consume — read and browse — and to contribute. Mobile opens up new business models through the fusion of location awareness and a 24×7 Internet-connected device.

The first and clearest example of this new world is what’s happening with social computing. People are now able to lurk on Facebook or Bebo at anytime, or post photos onto Flickr that are taggged with where they were taken (as well as when).

Read this new report for more on 24×7 people:-
How Mobile Handsets Will Deliver 24×7 Social Computing

I’ll be developing this theme in future reports this year.