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 »

After ten years as a joint venture, Sony has bought out partner Ericsson to take sole charge of mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson. The split appears amicable. Sony gains full control of the products plus access and/or ownership of numerous patents. Ericsson receives Euro 1.05bn ($1.45bn) for its stake.

This move is even more important for Sony group than for Sony Ericsson itself.

Mobile phone technology is becoming ubiquitous. Similarly, digital media is becoming personal as smart mobile devices are a mainstream way of reading, viewing, and listening to media. Mobile phone connectivity is being integrated into everything from eReaders, tablets computers, to portable games consoles and beyond. Soon, no area of consumer electronics will be untouched by mobile’s reach. Sony group makes many of these consumer devices, including the upcoming PSP Vita handheld games console that includes a 3G mobile phone radio and eReaders that compete with the 3G-enabled Amazon Kindle.

The future is mobile and personal. Sony needs the competencies that Sony Ericsson has worked for years to nurture. Equally SonyEricsson needs the unreserved commitment of Sony to ensure that its smartphones — now 80% of Sony Ericsson’s shipments — intelligently tie into all of a person’s digital life: on Sony TVs, on notebook PCs, tablets, music, gaming and other media.

HTC demonstrates the importance of digital media for smartphones and tablets:

Read the rest of this entry »

[updated October 19 with the latest Q3 Apple results and the official name of the new Nexus]

A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other (1), as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.

This unification of smartphones and tablets is a red herring. Other things matter much more for Android.

Android tablets are failing in the market, while Google’s smartphones sell in enormous numbers. This is a major issue for Google.

In tablets, Google’s own numbers show the extent to which Android is struggling. There are approximately 3.4m Android tablets running the official version of Android intended for tablets (2). This is small compared with the tablet market leader from Apple. Over 39.9m iPads were shipped up to the end of September this year. In the third quarter of 2011 alone, Apple shipped over 11m iPads, almost three times that of all official Android tablets to date.

Android smartphones are a massive success. Given the above Android tablet figures, the vast majority of the 550,000 Android devices activated each day must be smartphones. Google has already caught Apple in smartphone adoption. There are 190m Android devices in use compared with 250m Apple iOS devices. But in smartphones the adoption numbers show that Android is already ahead: Apple has shipped a total of 146m iPhones to date (end September 2011) — some of those units are over three years old and will no longer be in use — while there are approximately 180m Android smartphones (3).

Google is succeeding with smartphones, but not tablets, as a solid media strategy isn’t essential for success in the smartphone market.

Why?

Read the rest of this entry »

Next week Apple will announce new iPhones. There will be a backlash. There will be praise. Much of significance will be lost in the noise.

Instead, Apple’s metrics should focus rivals’ attention on the importance of multi-year strategies.

Competitors are forever seeking to emulate Apple. But too many deploy me-too tactics, rather than following a consistent and sustained long term strategy:

• HP fired its CEO under a year after appointment. There’s only time to kill things, not build them, in such a short period.
• Nokia dithered on MeeGo. In 2009, Nokia partnered with Intel on MeeGo, then killed MeeGo just a year later, to focus on Microsoft Windows Phone instead.
• Samsung’s Galaxy S of 2010 resembles the Apple’s old iPhone 3GS of 2009, not the designed-from-scratch iPhone 4 that the S actually competed against at the time the S arrived in the market.

Part of the problem is that Apple keeps its strategy to itself: New products seem to appear out of Apple’s magic hat fully-formed at high profile launch events as if they’ve been born an adult, with no incubation or nurturing period. There are rarely betas or pre-announcements months ahead of availability, unlike the perpetually beta services of others. But we know Apple takes years to create these products. The iPad’s origins pre-date the iPhone and go back to around 2004 — six years before it launched — while serious development began in 2007, again years before competitors had anything publicly available that they could copy.

By mistaking tactics for strategy Apple’s many competitors are doomed to poor results. The time needed to build products as deeply and well designed as Apple’s can’t be completed overnight. Software design takes years to do. The supplier relationships that Apple is securing are long term. The investment that Apple is placing in key component design — moving into chip design with the A4 and A5 — is not something that any company could achieve without clear multi-year strategy.

Despite the Android evangelists and Apple naysayers, Apple’s metrics are nothing short of outstanding:

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Apologies again for the title pun.

Now the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is official, everyone has set out their view of how well it will do. Almost all of these forecasts are positive.

But all of this analysis has been based on a tiny little assumption: That the product works as described, is quick, elegant and bug free. Ok, it’s not such a small assumption. It’s massive.

At the event yesterday, Amazon controlled access to the Fire. Attendees were not able to test it out free form. Amazon staff showed it, yes, but they also pressed the buttons, browsed the web, scrolled the screen, and played the music and videos. PC World columnist Harry McCracken tweeted about Amazon’s demo control first. Now, Engadget reports it wasn’t able to go hands-on, as do Venturebeat, Gizmodo, and This is my Next and others. Kindle Fire tablet demo videos from the event all have in common Amazon staff holding the Fire, they look similar: see Techcrunch ; WSJ etc. etc.

This lack of access to the Fire this close to launch is suspicious.

By not allowing attendees to try it, Amazon is implying that the current Kindle Fire software is sluggish, buggy, or not yet fully implemented. The last time I saw a tablet shown in this way was behind closed doors at HP’s Mobile World Congress booth back in February. There they showed me the Touchpad but wouldn’t let me use its apps myself. As history records, the Touchpad launch wasn’t smooth. Early buyers complained the software was sluggish and HP killed the whole Touchpad line just 48 days post launch.

Read the rest of this entry »

I speculated ahead of Amazon’s launch that the Kindle tablet should be called the Kindle 451, from the Bradbury book where the temperature of 451F is that which causes book paper to spontaneously ignite. I was wrong. Kindle Fire is the better name as the Fire will burn so varied a selection of physical media that no single named temperature could describe its impact.

This is the first true media tablet, as I predicted it would be. With the Kindle Fire, Amazon is making a play for movies, TV, music, magazines, apps, games as well as books.

The Kindle Fire is the first tablet that has its whole design optimized for content consumption. There’s no extraneous features. No camera. No aspirations to replace a notebook PC.

While Apple, Google and Microsoft aim to build tablets and smartphones that drive a post-PC world, Amazon is taking ownership of digital media. And, as digital media will become all media, by implication Amazon is now becoming the leading player in media as a whole. It’s impossible to assess the prospects for the Kindle devices without also assessing the potential for the total digital media market.

Yet despite the Kindle Fire’s impressive hardware the price is extremely aggressive at just $199, a fraction of the price of Apple’s iPad. Until the component breakdowns have been completed we can’t be sure… and I’m writing this minutes after the end of the launch event… But I strongly suspect that Amazon has only achieved that price due to its expectation of strong sales for Amazon’s content services, ie an effective content subsidy again as I predicted would happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

The sites below will be providing live coverage of the Amazon announcements today, where Amazon’s first tablet will likely be unveiled.

I’ll be analyzing the news live on twitter, follow me here @ianfogg42 or read now my preview of what potential tablet features to watch out for and what the impact will be of each: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Will Be The First True Media Tablet .

The event starts at 7am Pacific, 10am Eastern, 3pm UK and 4pm CET.

• This is my next, soon to be The Verge: Liveblog
  (lots of great ex-Engadget folks)
• PC World / Technologizer: Liveblog
• Cnet: Liveblog
• Engadget: Liveblog
• Gizmodo: Liveblog
• Arstechnica: Liveblog
• Boy Genius Report: Liveblog (will work later today in time for the event)
• Byte / Information Week: Liveblog (page not yet live)
• intomobile: Coverage here (they’re attending but not sure if this will be a liveblog)
• Reuters: Liveblog