Archive for February, 2009

No Microsoft Smartphone Coming

Thursday, February 26th, 2009
2009 Mobile World Congress

Steve Ballmer

After months of speculation and rumors about a new Microsoft smartphone, and months of Microsoft denying said speculation and rumors, Steve Ballmer finally made it clear that Microsoft will not release a smartphone.

Seems like a smart move as I really don’t hear a lot of people clamoring for one. Even so, many analysts and bloggers expected a 2009 release to compete with RIM/BlackBerry and Apple/iPhone.

Apple still has the device to beat and Ballmer seems to be happy to let them keep the current “mojo” in the consumer market. Ballmer’s strategy is to continue to build upon the Windows Mobile (actually now Windows Phones) platform and make it as compatible with as many devices as possible. Though not unique, this strategy is very different from Apple’s and RIM’s, whereby they both have a proprietary device and proprietary operating system. Stirring it up even more, Palm recently announced the Pre as well as a new mobile platform called webOS.

Historically, the proprietary device/OS strategy has worked for many mobile phone providers, but I believe this may be changing. From a business user’s perspective (me), the real value in “smartdevices” comes from the business applications (increasing productivity and reducing costs) that run on it. Highly restrictive access to the OS or having to develop across an endless sea of proprietary platforms makes it difficult for mobile application companies to create solutions that can run on every device. 

I would personally like to see a handful of the best OS platforms be able to run across all the devices – and carrier networks. But I won’t hold my breath just yet.

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787,000,000,000 Reasons to Think Mobile: Healthcare

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

If you haven’t had the chance to review the Stimulus Bill, you may want to take some time to do your own homework.  My suggestion is to review several news sources.  Each one I read pulls out another nugget of information that I did not get from the previous one.  A good place to start, and the shocker for me, is this six page and over 300 line item entry report of the classification, industry/government branch, description and cost in millions of taxpayer dollars.

In the mobile technology industry that is serving businesses, we take pride in bringing efficiencies to almost every conceivable process.   Government is a services business, and in almost every department the inefficiences are glaring.  Government is getting bigger and with a recessionary economy, government and business will need to strive to become more efficient and make the most of every dollar.

My desire is to  highlight and enlist your comments on the impact of the Stimulus Bill on a variety of industries.  A good place to start is the industry with the highest GDP.  Healthcare is approaching 18% of our national consumption/output.  This is a $2,500,000,000,000 industry supported by trillions of dollars in state and federal spending.  Where does mobility have a positive effect on your tax dollars being put to work?

The first healthcare stimulus program that can be impacted is the $1,100,000,000 in funding for research that compares medical treatment and services.  Our customers have programs in Canada where processes in the operating room are monitored and compared using mobile technology.  This information streamlines diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation for the patient by identifying best practices.  There are real savings to the system.

The second healthcare related stimulus which caught my attention is the $18,000,000,000 Healthcare Information Technology line item.  This is an effort to digitize medical records and ‘create billions of dollars in savings’ to an inefficient system.  As those in the wireless industry know, what you digitize will be ‘mobilized’, as the value of that information getting to doctors, nurses and other practitioners who are away from the office will be a necessity.

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Applications Everywhere

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Over lunch today I read a story on the winners and losers at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  In this story, Sue Marek of FierceWireless took time to reflect on what she and other editorial team members saw at the show.  The article discusses the winners and losers in five areas:

  1. US Operators
  2. Handsets
  3. Infrastructure Vendors
  4. App Stores
  5. Operating Systems

What I find interesting about the list is not so much who the winners and losers are perceived to be, but the fact that App Stores made the list as a category.  I haven’t taken to time to look back and see if they did a similar story last year, but if they did they could not have even had App Stores on the list.  Do you know why?  None of them existed.  In less than a year, the iPhone App Store has emerged from non-existence to offer 15,000 applications which have collectively been downloaded over 500 million times.  The Android Market has much fewer applications, but millions of downloads already.

Applications are becoming a key part of what people are looking for on their mobile devices.  We are just at the beginning of this wave in mobility.  It will be interesting to see who the winners and losers in mobile applications are next year.

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The Pendulum of Business and Consumer Applications

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Those who have been in the mobile applications business since the PDA days have experienced the innovation and buying cycles many times.  When we were at Palm’s first developers conference in 1997, a majority of the attendees were developing the next biggest game beyond backgammon.  Individual or consumer based applications were a big hit until wireless data networks started working on PDAs.  The industry forgot about games and rushed to the new frontier, business applications.  The color screen was then announced, and a new wave of games and consumer apps flooded the market.  Then the ability to synchronize email shifted industry focus back to the high ARPU promises of the small and medium sized businesses and the Fortune 1000. 

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of ring tones, games, and personal applications in the market and it seems the industry has forgotten the business customer once again.  The demands of the commercial market in each of these cycles is always lagging as the business customer has higher standards (security, version control etc.) and demands some ROI for the investment.  With 100’s of millions of new Smartphone owners, the pendulum will be swinging back to the interests of the business user, and maybe sooner than we think.   ABI Research just announced that 16.5% of surveyed Smartphone users spent between $100 and $499 on applications.

That seems like an awful lot of ring tones and $1 games from the app store.  Something else is going on.  Stay tuned.

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Applications are King

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

chinamobileApple has continued to push the iPhone outside of the US.  Here in America we see the iPhone as a seminal device, changing many of the rules that had been in place between device makers and carriers for many years.  AT&T has been rewarded for breaking the mold with Apple.  About 40% of iPhone-based subscribers are switching to AT&T from other carriers. 

However, the stakes are high.  Everyone is now chasing applications, and the “ownership” of who presents those applications to the user is key.  In a recent article in FierceDeveloper it was revealed that talks broke down between Apple and China Mobile over who would own the interface to users for sharing applications.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The third and final round of negotiations ended after Apple demanded it retain control over iPhone application sales, insisting consumers purchase apps directly from the App Store.”

China Mobile has to know how wildly successful the iPhone has been and continues to be.  Having the talks break down over this point reveals just how important providers think controlling access to applications is.

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SMB and Managed Services: Support to the Mobile Employee?

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

I’ve been meeting with several different types of managed services companies around the country.  The typical MS company is providing network, PC and email administration and 24/7 support for small crashes or major disaster recovery episodes.  All of them are serving small-to-medium businesses who do not have a robust IT department, or maybe not one at all.  The MS company has become a mission critical partner in today’s business operations.  No PCs, no Internet access, no email usually equals no revenue.

Mobile workers are now introducing a new level of challenges as their smartphones, rugged devices, cell phones and wireless laptops make them a part of the mission critical profile in business operations.  Yet, while talking through the technical capabilities, value proposition, understanding of the fragmentation of the mobile solution ecosystem and what seems like an obvious high margin value-add service for the the MS MS company, I don’t get the sense that the MS industry is fully prepared to extend its services to the mobile worker.

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Crossing Over…

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

mobileworldcongressI just read an article in my inbox from Fierce Developer.  The article was discussing what is hot at Mobile World Congress, which is going on this week in Barcelona.  So what is the big topic of conversation there?  Not surprisingly it’s app stores.  Just look at the landscape today.  We have the iPhone App Store and Android Market already.  Add to that announcments from RIM (BlackBerry), Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and LG, and you can see how quickly the whole concept is proliferating.

At the core, both economics and a desire to control the user experience with the mobile devices are driving the handset makers to offer these stores.  What I think is more interesting though is that we are at a tipping point with mobile devices.  Our mobile phones are starting to cross over from “just phones” to devices that are more PC-like.  The whole concept of the app store is facilitating that change.  The stores offer more than just ring tones.  Granted, much of what they offer today is along the lines of games, or other types of applications to keep us entertained waiting on a flight, or waiting on our friends to pick us up.  But more is coming, including more business applications.

The app stores open up a market for developers much, much larger than they could access with their own resources.  This helps drive creativity, because there is actually a place to display your wares once you have taken the time to develop them.  The more applications that are available, the more useful our phones can be, and the more like computers they become.  The more capable the phones become, the more application developers can do with them.  It’s a circle that feeds on itself.  I don’t think mobile phones have completely crossed over yet, but I do think we are witnessing that cross over occur before our eyes.

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The Application of Mobile Technology…Where Are We Going?

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Yesterday in our senior staff meeting we were discussing some trends that are influencing the direction of the mobile industry. In that discussion we talked about some predictive statements from previous computer industry giants. The first quote was attributed to Thomas Watson Jr. in the 1950’s. Watson was then-Chairman of IBM, and the quote attributed to him was “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”. While this appears to be a misquote according to IBM, he did make a reference at the 1953 shareholder meeting about receiving 18 computer orders nationwide, when IBM had expected to sell only 5. The second statement is a well known quote from Bill Gates where he stated “640kb ought to be enough for anybody”. The point behind both of these statements is that it is difficult even for industry visionaries to predict the real potential of emerging technology. It is not unusual to underestimate its impact.

When I got back to my office I saw the Weekly Edition of the “Mobilizer Newsletter” in my Inbox. This newsletter is produced by “Mobile Enterprise Weekly, and this week it has an article from 8 mobile industry experts discussing “The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility”. While I do not personally know any of the people who are quoted in the article, and I am sure each of them is an expert in his/her perspective field, I do have a couple of my own observations after reading the article.

My first observation is that the 8 experts who provided input for the article all talked about different technologies they each thought would be “the next big thing”. Not one of them agreed with any of the others. That’s not really surprising when you consider the statements from Watson and Gates. When we are in the middle of the revolution, it is very hard to see where we are going. And we are definitely in the middle of a mobile revolution.ocarina1

The second observation is that where mobility is really going is likely far more amazing than what we can imagine right now. Have you seen the iPhone application called “Ocarina” by Smule? It turns the iPhone into an electronic ocarina (a musical instrument dating back 12,000 years according to Wikipedia). By holding your iPhone horizontal, placing your fingers over 4 “holes” on the multi-touch screen, and blowing into the microphone with varying intensity, you can play a variety of songs. The application can even vary the tonal quality by tilting the iPhone at various angles. If you like music, you should check it out. I think you’ll be amazed. Who would have thought a year ago that the iPhone could become a musical instrument, and not just an mp3 player?

Ocarina sounds interesting for sharing with your friends and passing the time in an airport, but it isn’t going to help us in the business world. So what is the next big thing with mobile business applications? I’m going to disappoint you here. I don’t know. I could take a guess like other experts, but likely the best I could do is be partially right. But there is hope. I may not know what the next great business application is, but I do know how to find it, and that’s almost as good as knowing what it is.

Here’s the challenge: we need to do a better job of getting mobile applications into the hands of business people. And not just in big corporations, but in small and medium sized businesses too. After all, the smaller companies account for the majority of jobs in our nation, and therefore represent by far the largest pool of mobile business users. While mobile technology has proliferated for personal use, it’s really just getting going for business use outside of email, so the opportunity is enormous. When we get more mobile technology into the hands of businesses, they will figure out ways to use the technology that the experts never dreamed of. That’s the real key to the next big thing in business mobility.

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Mobile Application Developers Bullish on Industry

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

RCR Wireless magazine reported on a wide range of industry metrics yesterday.   What caught my attention was the positive expectations coming out of the mobile application development industry and specifically the segment focused on business solutions.  If you missed it, below is the link and a good summary paragraph.

http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20090202/WIRELESS/902029986/1081

‘Evans Data last week released a report indicating an astounding 48% of enterprise-focused developers expect activity in the space to increase in 2009, and nearly as many (46%) expect the same amount of development as last year. Only 6% of the nearly 400 polled expect development in the space to decrease, and two-thirds of the developers expect data revenues to rise this year.’

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