if connected

This video is a reminder that Apple is not the only company with a controversial business model and practices. Here’s the Onion’s absolutely wonderful take on Google’s ecosystem. It’s not new but this is a must watch for anyone interested in smartphones.

Apple focuses on delivering the best customer experience but with tight central control, while Google offers much for free — Chrome browser, Android, Gmail, search, Picasa, docs — in return for supporting an advertising-based business model.

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

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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.

This post was originally published on my Forrester blog.

Today Intel and Nokia merged their existing smartphone and mobile device operating systems (Moblin and Maemo respectively). I’ll be brief as I’m at the MWC event right now (see my tweets for latest analysis). The target devices range from smartphones — or mobile computers in Nokia’s current positioning — netbooks, tablets, in-car entertainment among others.

This is a bold play that places MeeGo into a competitive position with Android, iPhone OS, Google’s Chrome and even desktop software like Ubuntu (as well as the mushrooming moble-centric smartphone software like Palm’s WebOS, Samsung bada and Windows Phone).

Intel’s support will raise the ability of the new platform to attract device makers as well as the app developers that every smartphone and smart mobile platform desperately needs to be competitive.

They have lots in common: Both are Linux-based; both predominantly target mobile devices; both aim to deliver outstanding rich consumer Internet experiences; and both have been more talk than action to date. Nokia needs to shift step quickly from talking to walking and even better running or the high end market in Europe will be dominated by the same players as in North America and Nokia will have to pursue a winback strategy. It’s taken Nokia nearly five years since the first Maemo device shipped to launch the first phone, the N900, and that is not the complete product — as Nokia concede — impressive although it nevertheless is (read my first take on the N900 in this Forrester report).

The aims for this new initiative are lofty but execution must match these ideals with both quality and speed. MeeGo must not allow the desire to implement this software on a very wide range of devices — in-car entertainments; smartphones; netbooks; tablets etc. etc. — to distract them from gaining rapid traction in the mobile market.

Meanwhile, I fear the consortium has challenges with its positioning and naming strategy: MeeGo is an awkward name. Nokia is focused on bucking the market and insisting these devices are “mobile computers” — not smartphones — and is shifting its smartphone devices to go head to head with featurephones. I understand the reasoning. But to regain the mindshare that Nokia and MeeGo needs, names as well as positioning need to be perfect.

More thoughts later when the MWC dust has settled.

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.

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

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.