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Verizon to Exploit iPad as Well - FierceWireless Rumor Mill

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Apple’s new iPad will be launching early next month. It will be coming out in two basic forms: a cellular version and a WiFi version. The cellular version will launch with AT&T support, but that doesn’t preclude other carriers from pushing the iPad.  All major carriers support WiFi hotspots in addition to their cellular data networks. FierceWireless just published a very insightful article about how Verizon may try to exploit the WiFi capabilities of the iPad to gain new customers. It’s worth the read.

Rumor Mill: Verizon seizing on iPad launch as an opportunity

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Posted in Mobile Devices, Wireless Providers | No Comments »

A Brief History of Smartphones

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

The last few years in the smartphone business has been a remarkable time, with some huge shifts in the market.  Think back to 2003, an eternity in the mobile market, and realize that the whole concept of a smartphone did not exist.  There simply wasn’t such a thing.  In fact, what is even more remarkable to me is that the company who launched the whole market segment we now know as smartphones was Palm.  That’s right. Believe it or not, Palm (and Handspring) invented what we all know as smartphones today, at least in a commercial sense.  Prior to the launch of the line of Treo products, there was nothing out there that resembled what we now know as a smartphone.

Fast forward a little to 2007.  At the end of June 2007, the smartphone market was rocked again with the introduction of the Apple iPhone. Apple, who had not previously been in the phone market, came out with a groundbreaking product. Sure, it was a smartphone, but it was one unlike anything the market had seen before. No keyboard, an amazing user interface, iTunes right on your phone, etc.  And just a year later in the summer of 2008 came the App Store. Both the device and the concept of the App Store were game changers in the market.

treo-600Now jump forward to the end of 2008, and we have the introduction of the first Android phone, built by HTC for T-Mobile, and running Google’s open source operating system, Android.  Uptake was slow, but by the Fall of 2009 several more Android phones hit the market, and the Android Marketplace rapidly grew to 20,000 titles.  As of last week all the major wireless carriers in the US have an Android offering. In fact, with the exception of AT&T, they all have multiple Android phones.  And if you haven’t used one of these devices, I can tell you that they are pretty slick.  The interface is on par with what you get from Apple. I am carrying one right now. It’s the HTC Hero from Sprint, and it’s a nice device.

So what’s the point of this little history lesson?  Well, I actually have several lessons, but let’s stick to 3 or 4 in no particular order:

  1. This market moves very quickly. For those of you who lived through the introduction of the Personal Computer in the early 80’s, you can probably still remember how quickly new products were introduced. About every 18 months, a groundbreaking new computer came up with a new processor and larger memory. That same cycle in in the smartphone world is on the order of months.
  2. Innovate or die. Palm basically invented the smartphone market. Now that same company is struggling for survival, and there is a genuine question as to whether what was once a $1.5 billion company will continue to exist.  Many people point to the fact that they never really changed their phones after that initial launch.  The Treo line of phones ran for about 6 years with no substantial changes, and now even the launch of the Pre and WebOS may not be enough to save them.
  3. Something different this way comes. I wonder quite a bit about what the next great turn of the crank will be. We’re due.  To a certain extent, the iPhone is where the Treo was a few years ago. It’s been out in the market for about 3 years, with no real substantial changes. I know, I know, you Apple fans will talk about the faster network, more memory, GPS, etc. To which I reply, “Yawn”. I am not predicting Apple is going down in flames, but this is exactly what Palm did after the launch of the Treo…small, incremental improvements. That works for a while, but not for long in a market that craves the newest gadget. In fact, I would argue the Android phones have caught the iPhone in terms of the user experience.
  4. What’s in it for business? Here we are almost a decade later, and businesses are still playing second fiddle to consumers in the smartphone market. Even RIM (the maker of BlackBerry), can’t resist the lure of the numbers represented by the consumer market. They seem to be having their own identity crisis.  Businesses, especially small businesses, have so much to gain from smartphone technology, and yet the market is only paying lip service to addressing their needs.

I am hopeful the whole smartphone market will pay attention to what has happened in its brief history. There is much to be learned. I expect they will learn, and I am eager to see what new devices, and what new business application arise in the next few years.

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Posted in Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | 1 Comment »

Wireless Carriers as Dumb Pipes?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

pipesFor those of you not in the wireless industry on a daily basis, I am sure you are wondering what the title of this post is all about.  What in the world is a dumb pipe?  Let me attempt to explain.  Over the course of many years, networking in general has used the term “pipe” as a metaphor for the network. The idea behind this is that networks move bits, much as pipes move water. If you have a broadband connection to your house, you have a fairly big pipe at least for your downloads.  At my house I get about 9.5 megabits per second on downloads.  Compare that with several years ago when I had a 14.4K modem that actually supported something more like 10 kilobits per second download speeds. That was definitely a little pipe…maybe even a straw by today’s standards.

OK, so now you get the metaphor of a pipe.  What is a dumb pipe.  Well, until the advent of the iPhone, wireless carriers offered a number of services to their users beyond just the network.  You bought much more from the carrier than just minutes, or bandwidth on a data connection. For instance, if you wanted an application for your phone, you bought it from the carrier. Need a ringtone? Buy it from the carrier. What about a wallpaper for your phone? You guessed it…the carrier. I could go on, but you’d get tired of reading, and I’d get tired of writing. I think you get the idea.  The carrier not only provided the network, but a variety of products and services around that. In other words, they had a smart pipe.  A network that not only provided the basics of moving calls and data, but also had a lot of extras you could purchase to enhance that network experience.

Enter the iPhone. Now you buy your apps, games, movies, music, and just about everything else, not from AT&T, but from Apple. AT&T, along with all the other carriers,  is effectively becoming a dumb pipe.  Dumb seems like a derogatory term, but it isn’t necessarily. It just means they provide the basic network service of handling voice and data, but not much in the way of frills beyond that.  Ironically, this is the way all of the carriers (wireless and landline) started out.  When I was growing up there was a rotary dial phone on the wall in our kitchen.  I bet many of you were the same. That phone did one thing, and one thing only. It allowed us to make and receive phone calls from virtually anyplace in the world.  No applications, no configurable ringtones, and no wallpaper, except for the funky chickens on the kitchen wallpaper. And no dropped calls by the way.

Now, after trying to make the move to smart pipes, the carriers seem to be willing to fill the roll of a dumb pipe.  What got me started on this post was an article in Fierce Wireless talking about Verizon offering Skype on their smartphones.  The article’s contention was that carriers would not become dumb pipes. I have to say that I disagree.  Skype is already available on the iPhone.  As an application, Skype really accentuates the concept of a dumb pipe, because using it, you essentially don’t even use the carrier for voice. Your voice gets turned into IP traffic, and then carried over the network as IP traffic, and turned back into audio on the other end. For you sticklers for detail who are more technically in tune with wireless networks, yes I know the Skype offering from Verizon actually uses the voice switched circuits, but my point is still valid. For those of you who have no idea what I just wrote about voice circuits…carry on.

My point is this: carriers seem to be embracing the role of a dumb pipe, in a way they have not in many years. They seem to be content to do what they do well…build and manage a network.  This opens the door for many others who can come in an focus on a specific application, or a specific service, or your favorite ringtone.  My personal belief is the carriers will do better allowing others to focus on these ancillary products and services, while they continue to focus on the network.  I think this will provide a much richer experience for all of us. After all, auto makers don’t worry about making gasoline, tires,  aftermarket stereos, XM radio service, or lots of other things that make driving our cars possible and entertaining.  They focus on making cars. That in and off itself presents enough challenges. I think the same model will continue to enhance our mobile experience in the wireless world.

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Here We Go Again

Monday, February 15th, 2010

lots-of-phonesTwenty-four wireless telecommunications companies united to announce the Wholesale Applications Community at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Gizmodo has a good overview of the announcement on one of its blogs.  The concept sounds great on the surface, but I am less than enthusiastic they will have any meaningful success.

They are attempting to solve a worthy problem. Every mobile application developer faces a huge hill to climb every time they want to develop a new application.  If you want to write a piece of software that will run on most of the smartphones out there so you have a large market, here is what you have to do:

  • Design the application
  • If you want to develop for the iPhone:
    1. Download the Software Developer’s Kit
    2. Write the application
    3. Test the application
    4. Sign up as a developer on the App Store
    5. Pay your fee
    6. Agree to all the contractual obligations
    7. Submit you application for approval
    8. Wait, wait, and then wait some more
    9. Celebrate when your application is finally approved
    10. Hopefully begin selling your software
  • If you want to develop for the BlackBerry, repeat steps 1-10 above
  • If you want to develop for Android, repeat steps 1-10 above
  • I could go on, but I think you get the idea

Conceptually what the Wholesale Applications Community wants to do is great. They want to make an environment where a developer can write a piece of software once, and then be able to port (technical term for copy) the application to multiple other types of phones on multiple other carriers (Verizon, Sprint, etc.).  They also want the developer to not have to deal with multiple app stores from multiple device makers.  Sounds great, right?

Problem is, it won’t work. If you know me personally, you would know that I am a very optimistic person. So why do I think this is a lost cause. Because it has been tried before in many situations other than mobile applications, and it has always failed.  There are many reasons for this, but here are my top three for this specific instance:

  1. Even though you provide a common software development environment, by definition it must support devices with a least common denominator approach. As soon as a device maker offers, and a developer takes advantage of, a unique feature on a specific device, the application is no longer portable to other devices.
  2. Apple, BlackBerry, and Google already have pretty well established App Stores. Introducing a new app store alternative will be pretty difficult, even if it helps the developer community. Let’s face it, there are technology bigots who are in love with devices from a specific maker, and they are very unlikely to be open to trying other environments.
  3. Look at who is missing from the list of supporters for this effort. No Apple. No BlackBerry (RIM for you industry folks). No Google. No Microsoft. Nuff said.

Once you have been around information technology for a while, you see trends repeat themselves over an over. The whole concept of a common development environment has been attempted many times. It really started common programming languages like FORTRAN, and with Operating Systems like Unix.  The idea of a common app store married with a common development environment is just a different spin on the same theme.  I get why they are doing it. I just don’t think it will succeed.

Remember, this is just my opinion, and your mileage may vary.

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Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | No Comments »

Mobile Market Changes

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Well, it’s been a while since I posted, but that’s not because nothing has been going on in the mobile world (was that a double or triple negative?). There continue to be changes in device popularity and availability which is having an impact on the smartphone market. For instance, back in September of last year Android was just beginning to gain traction with a couple of Android phones and about 8,000 applications in the Android Market.  The only mobile device Apple made was the iPhone.  And most of us would not have had a clue as to what AT&T and Verizon’s 3G coverage maps looked like.

Today there are about 25,000 apps in the Android Market, and there are several Android phones available, including one from Google itself. Apple just recently announced the iPad (insert your favorite product name joke here), which is truly a mobile device. It’s relatively small and light, and supports not just WiFi, but also cellular data connections. And we are all probably sick of seeing the coverage map wars between AT&T and Verizon, though some of the commercials have been pretty creative.

smartphone_1209As the industry continues to evolve, it would be a good idea to remember that the more things stay the same, the more they change. Actually I think the phrase goes the other way around, but stating it this way suits my purposes for this post. ComScore just recently released a report showing the US smartphone marketshare by operating system. Ars Technica was kind enough to put together the chart you see to the left.

There are several things about this chart that are interesting. Two items come to mind with regards to the iPhone. First of all, we all have come to accept that Apple is a huge player in the mobile market. The thing I think that bears remembering is that three years ago the iPhone had just been announced, but had not yet appeared in the market. That wouldn’t even happen till the end of June in 2007. Now look at it. Three years later and it has 25% market share for smartphones in the US.

The second item about the iPhone that is interesting is that even for all of it’s success, it is still dwarfed by BlackBerry (RIM for those of you in the industry). BlackBerry is still king, and though it has lost some ground to other players, Apple still has a long way to go to catch them.  For people developing software, this is an important point. Apple has gotten a ton of traction in the application world, but developing a great app for BlackBerry opens up a huge market to developers.

The third item I wanted to point out in this chart was Android. Listed in the chart as Google (because they are the force behind Android), it has made amazing strides since September. For the better part of a calendar year, there was only one Android phone available. It was the G1. It was available only on T-Mobile, and let’s face it…the phone wasn’t very good. Now several big players such as HTC and Motorola have multiple Android phones, and Google even has one. As a result of this push, Android market share has doubled in just 4 months. I’ll go out on a limb and say you should look for this to continue.

I hadn’t posted in several months before today. And look at what has happened in the market in that time. It’s only going to continue to accelerate. So strap on your helmet, and fasten your seat belt. It’s going to continue to be a wild ride.

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Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Devices | No Comments »

It’s Getting Crowded in Here

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

imagesThe last couple of weeks have been interesting in the world of smart phones.  Motorola/T-Mobile, HTC/Sprint, and LG have all announced the upcoming release of new Android smart phones.  If you don’t know much about Android, that’s not surprising. It is a smart phone operating system announced with a lot of fanfare quite a while back. It is backed by Google, and supported by several large wireless industry players.  The idea is to provide a platform that will run on a lot of different phones, from different manufacturers, and different carriers, making it easier for developers to write software that will support a wide variety of users.

The problem to date has been that you could get any Android phone you wanted as long as it was the G1 from T-Mobile. Yep that’s right.  For all the hoopla, there has been only one Android phone on the market since Android was introduced.  Even with that huge limitation, the Android Market (their version of an App Store) now has about 10,000 applications on it.  The availability of more phones should provide additional momentum to encourage more developers to jump on the Android bandwagon.

The market trends with mobile applications are truly staggering.  Consider for a moment that just a little over one year ago there was not a single app store out there.  Sure, there were some smart phone catalogs, but they were mainly used by techies, and there was no way an average person could easily get access to software for their phone.  Enter Apple, and the App Store.  Since its introduction last summer there has been a proliferation of applications for smart devices. In addition to the 70,000+ for iPhones, and the 10,000+ for Android, there are a projected 20,000+ for Windows Mobile, a few thousand on BlackBerry App World, and a rapidly growing number of applications for the new Palm Pre and Pixi.

What does this all mean for us users?  It means that we are being presented with a rapidly growing number of software choices for our phones.  And more choices means more functionality.  More functionality means more usefulness.  More usefulness means more use.  The way we use our smart phones is growing rapidly, as is the amount of time we spend on them.  They are becoming our main vehicle of communications and “computing” at a rate that makes the evolution of PC and software look like it occured over eons.

We are rapidly being presented with many choices of software which make our phones more useful devices.  And that’s a good thing not only for consumers, but also for businesses.

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Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices | No Comments »

Another App Store?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

According to a press release yesterday, Microsoft has finally driven a stake in the ground and will be delivering new phones with Windows Mobile 6.5, as well as the Windows Mobilewinmo-65Marketplace on October 6th.  Windows Mobile 6.5 is the newest version of the Windows operating systems for smartphones and related devices that has been promised since very early this year.

If you take a look at what Microsoft is doing with this launch, it is pretty aggressive.  In North America alone, it will be released on the 3 largest carriers in the US, along with about half a dozen device manufacturers.  Pretty impressive, and definitely a non-trivial undertaking.  But probably the most interesting thing coming in the announcement is the launch of the new Windows Mobile Marketplace.

It’s hard to realize that with almost 65,000 titles online today, Apple just launched the App Store a year ago July.  That’s right.  It’s only been a year, and now all new devices are being judged as to whether or not they have a good app store.  One of the few criticisms I continually read about the Palm Pre is that there are very few applications for it.  I say that not to throw rocks at Palm, but to illustrate how much the market now demands applications for smart phones.

What makes Windows Mobile Marketplace so interesting is that Microsoft has a ready made set of applications for Windows Mobile devices already.  Estimates put the number of Windows Mobile applications at about 20,000.  More interesting is the fact many of these applications run on more rugged devices from Intermec and Symbol.  By definition many of the applications are business oriented vs. consumer oriented.  The App Store is extremely consumer oriented.  It will be interesting to see how Microsoft’s entry into the environment changes things.  I think they may have enough critical mass to swing the pendulum at least somewhat toward business applications.

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Posted in Mobile App Dev, Mobile Apps | No Comments »

iPhone Apps Driving Sales

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

iphone-pizzaiPhone Apps are no longer just driving sales for Apple and application developers.  They are now starting to drive revenue for products other than the software itself.  Take a look at this article to see more about this interesting trend.

One of the specific applications discussed is an application being distributed by Pizza Hut.  Their application allows mobile ordering, and has already been downloaded 150,000 times since July 15th.  The move to mobile business applications is gaining momentum.

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Razors and Razor Blades

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Fierce Wireless had an interesting article about Verizon that I got a chance to read yesterday.  In the article, they note that Verizon has dropped the price on almost all of their smartphones to $99 or less with a 2 year agreement.  The speculation in the article is they are doing this to clean out their inventory in preparation for offering new devices that will be coming soon.  While I think there is validity to this claim, I think there is more to it than that.razorrazorshaving

After all, Verizon has been offering good deals on BlackBerry devices for several months with their buy one, get one free offer.  So why would they be doing this?  After all, each device they sell generally costs them more than what you pay for it.  Surprised? What many people don’t realize is that carriers like Verizon pay the manufacturer of the smartphone more than what consumers pay for the device.  They subsidize your purchase.  The iPhone was just about the only exception to this rule when it was first released.  If you recall, early purchasers of the iPhone payed $599 or $699 for the coolest smartphone on the market.  But later on, AT&T began to subsidize the price of the iPhone, and pricing to the end user dropped to $199.

Why do carriers do this?  It’s simple really, and it’s a model we are all accustomed to.  It’s all about razors and razor blades.  The maker of razor blades sell you the razor very cheaply, because they know you will buy blade refills and that is where they make their money.  It’s the same with carriers.  They subsidize the price of the phone so you have a lower entry price.  After all, on average people spend $50-$60 per month for each wireless phone.  The industry calls that ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), and it is one of a few numbers they watch very closely.  If they can make it easy for you to buy a new phone cheaply, they know you will sign up for 2 years at a run rate of $60 or so per month.  Not a bad model.

So, if you apply this same model to smartphones, you can see why it would make sense to lower prices on smartphones to get you to move to a smartphone.  It is also interesting to note that ARPU for smartphones is higher than for regular phones.  Carriers want and need us to consume more data plans, and smartphones provide a reason for us all to use more data, and not just voice.

If this whole idea sits wrong with you, like you are being tricked into something, it shouldn’t.  The more of us that use smartphones and data plans, the cheaper they become.  It’s like LCD displays.  When they originally were introduced on laptops, they were very expensive.  But as they produced more and more laptops, they refined the process and LCD displays became cheaper.  Now they are found everywhere including cell phones, GPS units, car stereos, TV’s, and the list goes on and on.  So in the long run, cheaper smartphones means more users of data services, and that means more powerful devices and more comprehensive data services for all of us.  And that’s a good thing.

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My PC is More Mobile Than Yours

Monday, July 27th, 2009

iphoneI met with the owner of a restaurant last Thursday and had something completely unexpected happen.  The gentleman I met with has been in the restaurant business for quite some time, starting out with Subway, then rolling out his own pizza franchise concept, and now finally launching his own pizzeria.  I was there to do a little research for the product side of our business.  We talked for about an hour about several ways mobile technology could assist him in the operation of his restaurant, and also how it could help him be more in tune with his customers.

The discussion was very helpful to me, and I believe to him as well.  However, about midway through our discussion something completely unexpected happened.  This gentleman held up his iPhone that had been sitting on the table next to him throughout our discussion.  As he held it up he declared “This is my PC.”  His point was that he was not in the restaurant all the time, and he used his iPhone as not only the mechanism to help keep him in tune with what was going on his his restaurant, but also to help him access other information, make calls, visit web sites etc.  In every way, this little “phone” had become his primary computing device.

I have made mention of this trend in other previous posts, but in this case I got anecdotal confirmation straight from the horses mouth without any prompting from me.  This is not an advertisement for the iPhone, though it is a very slick device.  I am sure if asked others would say the same thing about their Windows Mobile device, or their BlackBerry, or maybe even the Pre now.  The point is that in fact, our phones are becoming much more than phones.  They are in many instances taking the place of our PC’s in the real world.

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Posted in Mobile Devices, Mobile in SMB | No Comments »

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