Microsoft announced last week that it's discontinuing its Spot data watch program.
The trouble with predicting the future is that it's always easy to do in retrospect. Looking back, it's obvious that Microsoft's Spot products were a dumb idea. The concept was that Microsoft would send small bits of wireless data -- weather forecasts, stock prices, etc -- to specially-equipped watches and other small devices like refrigerator magnets, which would display the information. On the face of that, it sounds kind of appealing. There are definitely people who want information like that when they're on the go, and Microsoft had a clever plan to use some unused FM radio bandwidth to deliver the information to the devices. You'd use your PC to pick which data feeds you wanted, and Microsoft would take care of blasting it onto your watch or other device.
The problem, of course, is mobile phones. Five years ago, when Spot was announced, the handset vendors and operators were already getting hot on delivering small bits of data to mobile phones. The market for Spot, rather than being everyone who wanted data on the go, turned out to be everyone who wanted data on the go who didn't carry a mobile phone.
In other words, almost no one.
Like I said, it's easy to point out that problem in retrospect. But Spot was probably in development for a couple of years before it was announced, meaning it was probably started in about 2001 -- before the real rise of wireless data in the US. I think someone who was paying close attention to the mobile market could have predicted Spot's troubles. But it was much less obvious then than it is now.
Once you as a manager put people on a project and spent some money on it, it's very easy to talk yourself into ignoring emerging signs that the product might fail. You want the thing to succeed, so you have an incentive to rationalize away any concerns. Besides, business history is full of stories about products that succeeded despite adversity and critics. How can you tell the difference between a "normal" pothole in the road, and an impassable rift?
Lessons from Spot's demise
In the early 1990s, a number of companies developed specialized wireless modems and private wireless services for delivering data to personal computers. Internet connectivity at the time meant slow dial-up connections for most people, which could not be left active at all times. The idea of blasting data to PCs in real time seemed very attractive, and indeed the products sold well for a few years -- until Internet connections became faster and didn't require dialing out on a phone. Spot ran into the same basic process in the mobile space.
So one lesson is that when you're potentially competing with other sorts of networks is to look very carefully at where they'll be in three or four years.
How to manage convergence. It's very hard to predict how "convergence" will affect a product category. Fifteen years ago many people thought it was obvious that printers would soon be built into every PC, but it never happened. Convergence seems to happen only when there is absolutely no downside to it. So you can combine a printer and scanner -- or a mobile phone and a Spot watch -- because there is no loss of functionality in the resulting product. But put a printer in a PC and you have to sacrifice too many things (or the PC gets too darned big).
Because a mobile phone has a larger screen than a watch, it's actually a better data device than a watch. That should have alerted Microsoft to the danger.
Solve real problems. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating: Products have a much better chance of succeeding when they solve major problems for customers. Spot was cool and convenient, not life-changing. That made it much easier to absorb into some other product.
Microsoft often gets criticized by people in the tech industry for failing to innovate. According to this perspective, all Microsoft does is copy things that others have already proven. But initiatives like Spot are an exception to that rule. I wish Microsoft had chosen its battle a bit more carefully, but I respect that fact that it tried. I wish it would take more chances like this, rather than just focusing on ways to imitate the iPod and copy Google's advertising business.
Some other commentary on Spot:
An early discussion of the technology, from InfoWorld (link)
Engadget's article (link)
Watches vs. mobile phones (link)
Enthusiastic review in 2004 of the Tissot $750(!) Spot watch (link)
An obituary in 2006 for the discontinued Tissot Spot watch (link)
=============
By the way, I apologize for being away from the blog for so long. Family and work issues have to be my top priority, and the blog is in line after that.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label convergence. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label convergence. Tampilkan semua postingan
Minggu, 27 April 2008
Rabu, 16 Mei 2007
Nokia, the computer company?
Ten years from now, Nokia's going to be the subject of an interesting business case study. It'll either be the stirring story of a company at the height of its power that had the courage to challenge its deepest beliefs. Or it'll be the cautionary tale of a company that had it all and blew it.
Nokia says it's planning for what comes after the mobile phone.
I've heard this from Nokia before, but I always used to think it was posturing. Companies say that sort of thing all the time -- "we're looking for the next big growth driver" or something like that, meaning they plan to keep doing all the same stuff they do today but also desperately hope they can grow another line of business alongside it. That's typical in business; you try to have your cake and eat it too.
But after hearing several senior Nokia people repeat the message over the last couple of months, I've started to believe they're saying something different. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say they are about to abandon mobile phones. But I think they sincerely believe that business won't last forever, and they're starting to lay the groundwork for what will replace it.
The message really hit home last month, when I heard it from Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera and Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia Research Center, at a Nokia strategy briefing in Silicon Valley. Iannucci pointed out that Nokia started as a paper mill and has a history of completely changing its industry from time to time -- from rubber boots to monitors to mobile phones. He said it is once again "a company in transition to the next phase." That next phase is mobile computing.
Not smartphones, not converged devices, but full-on mobile computers intended to replace both PCs and mobile phones. Nokia says it expects these devices to eventually sell in the billions of units, and to become the world's dominant means of accessing the Internet.
Even though these future devices will still be mobile, if you take all of Nokia's statements at face value the changes from mobile phones will be so extensive that it's fair to call it a new business.
The fact that Nokia's even talking about this is a remarkable change. Five years ago, Microsoft was charging hard in mobile and the big topic of discussion was how could a company like Nokia possibly defend itself. Now Nokia's talking about how it will put the PC industry out to pasture, and oh by the way take over the Internet as well.
Although the goal is almost insanely ambitious, I can't say that Nokia is wrong to try. Mobile phones are gradually becoming a commodity. The biggest unit growth is in low-end phones, a strength for Nokia because of its volumes and efficiencies. But even Nokia managers will tell you that creating low-end products in a saturating market is not a fun business. It certainly won't produce the sort of growth and margins that investors expect.
Nokia's not predicting the instant death of the mobile phone business. It's a very large and divisionalized company, and I'm sure big chunks of Nokia are hell-bent on staying a mobile phone company forever. But it sounds like the senior management feels the mobile phone business is becoming uninteresting, and they want to get started on the next thing before the current business rides off into a long Nordic sunset.
The hard part is implementing
Becoming a mobile computing company is a lot harder than talking about it. The mobile phone world is based on managed competition, in which operators, handset vendors, and governments create shared standards even as they compete. It's a closed circle in which new features flow down from the top like molasses running down a cake of ice, driven by fiat from the leading vendors.
The computing world is much more Darwinian. Barriers to entry are lower, and innovation often flows up from the smallest players. Companies compete in something that resembles a free-for-all, with the marketplace choosing winners.
So what Nokia's talking about is not just a change in product design. It's more like a wholesale remaking of the company's culture, processes, and partnerships. The advantage of this for Nokia is that if it successfully makes the transition, it will have put everyone else in the mobile phone industry -- handset vendors and operators -- at a permanent disadvantage, unless they can make the same wrenching transition.
The disadvantage is that the change is pretty darned wrenching for Nokia as well.
Nokia seems to understand at least some of the changes it has to make in order to be a computing company. Iannucci acknowledged that the "Internet model" of product development is to create and ship products first, and then bother about standards later (if at all).
He said Nokia's research labs, formerly fairly closed, have re-oriented themselves to work collaboratively with universities and other parties in the industry. The collaboration part is essential because "we can no longer fuel...internally" the amount of technology the company has to develop now that it wants to be a computing company.
Thus the briefing in California -- they want to be a part of the peculiar hive mind we call Silicon Valley.
The transition will be awkward
One amusing example was when a Nokia speaker solicited feedback from the audience on what barriers to success they see in the mobile marketplace.
A VC shot up his hand: "Operators."
Dead silence for a second. Then the Nokia speaker asked uncomfortably, "what in particular about operators?"
And you had to laugh a bit, because the question didn't really need to be explained. What the questioner meant was: "we want the operators dead; are you going to help make that happen?" Everyone in the room knew that. Nokia knew that. The question was a test of Nokia's seriousness.
Nokia didn't exactly pass the test. They won't answer that question on stage because it creates too many political issues for the current mobile phone business. So what could have been a nice bonding moment between Nokia and the Silicon Valley folks degenerated into a carefully nuanced spiel about "we're working together to address many issues" and bland verbiage like that. They ended the Q&A soon after.
Lesson: If you want to bond with somebody, be prepared to discuss the issues they care about. And don't ask for feedback unless you're prepared to answer tough questions.
Next steps
Here are some other issues that I think Nokia will need to work through if it really wants to bond with Silicon Valley.
Get real about the role of mobile computing. As far as I can tell, Nokia's hoping that the mobile computer will literally replace PCs. I think that's both naive and unnecessarily limiting to Nokia's prospects. Mobile usage is a different paradigm from personal computing. You use a PC in a long sessions at a static location; you use a mobile while on the go, in places where a PC isn't convenient. That different usage pattern means the users are likely to have different requirements and different expectations for mobiles than they have for PCs. If Nokia tries to just make mini-PCs, it's probably going to end up with products that don't deliver on the great new stuff that mobile computing can really do.
To give a rough analogy, if the mobile phone companies had focused only on making land lines mobile, would they have ever invented SMS?
Nurture developer communities. Nokia has a very extensive developer support organization, but I'm not yet seeing the sort of broad-scale evangelism -- developer recruitment -- that an Apple or Microsoft practices. To really win over the best developers, it's not enough to just make their development tasks easy, you have to make sure they have the opportunity to make money. No one's doing that well in the mobile space today. Including Nokia.
The mobile software companies continue to flail around trying to figure out which company can build a business opportunity worth committing to. The opportunity is there for Nokia, but it has to invest in building the market.
Manage Adobe vs. Microsoft vs. Sun. Nokia said it's working very closely with Adobe on Apollo, the new software operating layer derived from Flash and Acrobat. The implication is that Nokia will distribute the mobile version of Apollo on its phones, just as it distributes Flash today.
There are two potential downsides to this. The first is that Adobe might lose -- it's facing strong competition from Microsoft's Silverlight, and apparently from a revamped version of mobile Java from Sun (I'm planning to write about that one in the future). If one of the others wins, Nokia might end up deeply committed to a failing standard.
The second danger is that Adobe might win, leaving Nokia at the mercy of a mobile software standard controlled by a different company. Replacing the Microsoft monopoly with an Adobe monopoly would be delightful for Adobe, but it isn't going to feel like much of a win for Nokia.
Learn to design solutions, not gadgets. I think this is Nokia's biggest challenge. The most popular mobile computing products so far have been integrated hardware-software systems aimed at a single usage: GameBoy, iPod, BlackBerry, and of course the mobile phone itself. Nokia hasn't been notably good at designing this sort of integrated system. In fact, its most prominent effort so far, the nGage, was an epic failure on the scale of the Edsel and the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis.
But if Nokia really wants to be a mobile computing company, this is a skill it absolutely must learn. It is an incredibly hard change for Nokia, because computing systems design requires a very strong culture of product managers who understand the customer and have dictatorial control over the features and interface of the product. A good computing system is a product of idiosyncratic vision. Collectivist Nokia, with its endless conversations and responsibility fragmented across dozens of teams, is in a terrible situation to pull this off. Frankly, I'm skeptical that they can do it.
But on the other hand, if they can turn a pulp mill into a mobile phone company, would you really bet against them?
Nokia says it's planning for what comes after the mobile phone.
I've heard this from Nokia before, but I always used to think it was posturing. Companies say that sort of thing all the time -- "we're looking for the next big growth driver" or something like that, meaning they plan to keep doing all the same stuff they do today but also desperately hope they can grow another line of business alongside it. That's typical in business; you try to have your cake and eat it too.
But after hearing several senior Nokia people repeat the message over the last couple of months, I've started to believe they're saying something different. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say they are about to abandon mobile phones. But I think they sincerely believe that business won't last forever, and they're starting to lay the groundwork for what will replace it.
The message really hit home last month, when I heard it from Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera and Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia Research Center, at a Nokia strategy briefing in Silicon Valley. Iannucci pointed out that Nokia started as a paper mill and has a history of completely changing its industry from time to time -- from rubber boots to monitors to mobile phones. He said it is once again "a company in transition to the next phase." That next phase is mobile computing.
Not smartphones, not converged devices, but full-on mobile computers intended to replace both PCs and mobile phones. Nokia says it expects these devices to eventually sell in the billions of units, and to become the world's dominant means of accessing the Internet.
Even though these future devices will still be mobile, if you take all of Nokia's statements at face value the changes from mobile phones will be so extensive that it's fair to call it a new business.
The fact that Nokia's even talking about this is a remarkable change. Five years ago, Microsoft was charging hard in mobile and the big topic of discussion was how could a company like Nokia possibly defend itself. Now Nokia's talking about how it will put the PC industry out to pasture, and oh by the way take over the Internet as well.
Although the goal is almost insanely ambitious, I can't say that Nokia is wrong to try. Mobile phones are gradually becoming a commodity. The biggest unit growth is in low-end phones, a strength for Nokia because of its volumes and efficiencies. But even Nokia managers will tell you that creating low-end products in a saturating market is not a fun business. It certainly won't produce the sort of growth and margins that investors expect.
Nokia's not predicting the instant death of the mobile phone business. It's a very large and divisionalized company, and I'm sure big chunks of Nokia are hell-bent on staying a mobile phone company forever. But it sounds like the senior management feels the mobile phone business is becoming uninteresting, and they want to get started on the next thing before the current business rides off into a long Nordic sunset.
The hard part is implementing
Becoming a mobile computing company is a lot harder than talking about it. The mobile phone world is based on managed competition, in which operators, handset vendors, and governments create shared standards even as they compete. It's a closed circle in which new features flow down from the top like molasses running down a cake of ice, driven by fiat from the leading vendors.
The computing world is much more Darwinian. Barriers to entry are lower, and innovation often flows up from the smallest players. Companies compete in something that resembles a free-for-all, with the marketplace choosing winners.
So what Nokia's talking about is not just a change in product design. It's more like a wholesale remaking of the company's culture, processes, and partnerships. The advantage of this for Nokia is that if it successfully makes the transition, it will have put everyone else in the mobile phone industry -- handset vendors and operators -- at a permanent disadvantage, unless they can make the same wrenching transition.
The disadvantage is that the change is pretty darned wrenching for Nokia as well.
Nokia seems to understand at least some of the changes it has to make in order to be a computing company. Iannucci acknowledged that the "Internet model" of product development is to create and ship products first, and then bother about standards later (if at all).
He said Nokia's research labs, formerly fairly closed, have re-oriented themselves to work collaboratively with universities and other parties in the industry. The collaboration part is essential because "we can no longer fuel...internally" the amount of technology the company has to develop now that it wants to be a computing company.
Thus the briefing in California -- they want to be a part of the peculiar hive mind we call Silicon Valley.
The transition will be awkward
One amusing example was when a Nokia speaker solicited feedback from the audience on what barriers to success they see in the mobile marketplace.
A VC shot up his hand: "Operators."
Dead silence for a second. Then the Nokia speaker asked uncomfortably, "what in particular about operators?"
And you had to laugh a bit, because the question didn't really need to be explained. What the questioner meant was: "we want the operators dead; are you going to help make that happen?" Everyone in the room knew that. Nokia knew that. The question was a test of Nokia's seriousness.
Nokia didn't exactly pass the test. They won't answer that question on stage because it creates too many political issues for the current mobile phone business. So what could have been a nice bonding moment between Nokia and the Silicon Valley folks degenerated into a carefully nuanced spiel about "we're working together to address many issues" and bland verbiage like that. They ended the Q&A soon after.
Lesson: If you want to bond with somebody, be prepared to discuss the issues they care about. And don't ask for feedback unless you're prepared to answer tough questions.
Next steps
Here are some other issues that I think Nokia will need to work through if it really wants to bond with Silicon Valley.
Get real about the role of mobile computing. As far as I can tell, Nokia's hoping that the mobile computer will literally replace PCs. I think that's both naive and unnecessarily limiting to Nokia's prospects. Mobile usage is a different paradigm from personal computing. You use a PC in a long sessions at a static location; you use a mobile while on the go, in places where a PC isn't convenient. That different usage pattern means the users are likely to have different requirements and different expectations for mobiles than they have for PCs. If Nokia tries to just make mini-PCs, it's probably going to end up with products that don't deliver on the great new stuff that mobile computing can really do.
To give a rough analogy, if the mobile phone companies had focused only on making land lines mobile, would they have ever invented SMS?
Nurture developer communities. Nokia has a very extensive developer support organization, but I'm not yet seeing the sort of broad-scale evangelism -- developer recruitment -- that an Apple or Microsoft practices. To really win over the best developers, it's not enough to just make their development tasks easy, you have to make sure they have the opportunity to make money. No one's doing that well in the mobile space today. Including Nokia.
The mobile software companies continue to flail around trying to figure out which company can build a business opportunity worth committing to. The opportunity is there for Nokia, but it has to invest in building the market.
Manage Adobe vs. Microsoft vs. Sun. Nokia said it's working very closely with Adobe on Apollo, the new software operating layer derived from Flash and Acrobat. The implication is that Nokia will distribute the mobile version of Apollo on its phones, just as it distributes Flash today.
There are two potential downsides to this. The first is that Adobe might lose -- it's facing strong competition from Microsoft's Silverlight, and apparently from a revamped version of mobile Java from Sun (I'm planning to write about that one in the future). If one of the others wins, Nokia might end up deeply committed to a failing standard.
The second danger is that Adobe might win, leaving Nokia at the mercy of a mobile software standard controlled by a different company. Replacing the Microsoft monopoly with an Adobe monopoly would be delightful for Adobe, but it isn't going to feel like much of a win for Nokia.
Learn to design solutions, not gadgets. I think this is Nokia's biggest challenge. The most popular mobile computing products so far have been integrated hardware-software systems aimed at a single usage: GameBoy, iPod, BlackBerry, and of course the mobile phone itself. Nokia hasn't been notably good at designing this sort of integrated system. In fact, its most prominent effort so far, the nGage, was an epic failure on the scale of the Edsel and the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis.
But if Nokia really wants to be a mobile computing company, this is a skill it absolutely must learn. It is an incredibly hard change for Nokia, because computing systems design requires a very strong culture of product managers who understand the customer and have dictatorial control over the features and interface of the product. A good computing system is a product of idiosyncratic vision. Collectivist Nokia, with its endless conversations and responsibility fragmented across dozens of teams, is in a terrible situation to pull this off. Frankly, I'm skeptical that they can do it.
But on the other hand, if they can turn a pulp mill into a mobile phone company, would you really bet against them?
Minggu, 22 April 2007
Carnival of the Mobilists #70: Is RIM stupid or lying?
Welcome to the 70th weekly Carnival of the Mobilists. If you're not familiar with the Carnival, it's a collection of mobile-related commentary from the last week, nominated by the weblog authors themselves. The hosting duties rotate from week to week.
This week's articles cover a huge range of subjects, from game-playing cameras to RIM's service outage. I tried to come up with some clever theme to link them all together, but I think the main message is that the mobile market is so diverse that there are no common themes.
And away we go...
RIM's service outage: Are they liars, or just incompetent? Wow. The Mobile Enterprise Weblog gives a scathing analysis of RIM's recent service failure, and concludes:
(With 'none of the above' meaning the company had a more serious failure and is trying to cover it up.) I have no idea what really happened, but this commentary is what occurs online when you try to play down a story. It's far better to be completely open about a problem. Then at least people may trust you in the future rather than assuming you're lying.
MVNOs: Victory of the bottom-feeders? Jason Devitt at Skydeck, a mysterious new mobile startup, contributes a very interesting post on the fate of MVNOs. He argues that the high-profile MVNOs targeting lucrative customers are doomed, and that the ones to watch are those targeting low-end customers.
How to improve feature phones. Little Springs Design reviews some of the flaws of today's feature phones, and makes suggestions on what needs to be changed.
American business executives should all use SMS instead of e-mail. That's the message from Tomi Ahonen's fervent (and very detailed) essay on the benefits of SMS messaging, and its ubiquity outside the US.
The dumbest convergence product of all time (in my opinion). Pocket Gamer brings us news of a new digital camera that comes with twenty video games built in. They treated the product with very polite respect, but I can't restrain myself: I thought I had seen dumb convergence products before, but this one's the new champion.
Using SMS to communicate to students. Mopocket editorializes that universities should use text messaging to communicate with students in emergencies.
The rebirth of Web Clipping? Well, sort of. Web clipping was a technique Palm used several years ago in an effort to overcome the latency problem with accessing web content on mobile devices. David Beers predicts that Palm's going to use something similar in the future.
Anger over mobile data charges. Helen Keegan editorializes on the charges for mobile data in the UK, and she's not happy.
Enthusiasm for Nokia's web tablet. b-trends brings us a very enthusiastic review of the Nokia n800 Internet tablet device. They tested a nice range of websites, and there are good screen shots.
Checking out a new operator in Spain. WAP Review gives a hands-on review of the Spanish operator Yoigo.
The future of mobile advertising. Always-on Real Time Access summarizes a recent panel on mobile advertising.
Future barcodes. The Pondering Primate speculates about possible future competition between Microsoft and Google in barcodes.
Mobile phone myths corrected. Shackkdiesel tackles some interesting myths about mobile phones.
Which devices to target in enterprise? Mobbu talks about the process for choosing which devices to target when creating an enterprise mobile application. It's not always best to pick the most advanced device.
Bloggus interruptus. My submission for this week is a short commentary on trying to use the mobile Internet while riding on a train.
A robot to load the dishwasher. SharpBrains contributes a summary of the recent Stanford Media X conference, a technology conference featuring Stanford researchers and others. Most of the content wasn't mobile-related, but it makes interesting reading anyway. Check out the robot that can load a dishwasher.
Post of the week. Each week's host traditionally picks a favorite post, and mine this week is Mobile Enterprise's rant on RIM's service outage. It's not the longest post of the week, but the analysis made sense to me, and I always enjoy a weblog post with a bit of passion to it.
So it goes. Next week's Carnival will be at the Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition. Anyone with a weblog can submit a post to the Carnival. You can use the new online submission form here.
This week's articles cover a huge range of subjects, from game-playing cameras to RIM's service outage. I tried to come up with some clever theme to link them all together, but I think the main message is that the mobile market is so diverse that there are no common themes.
And away we go...
RIM's service outage: Are they liars, or just incompetent? Wow. The Mobile Enterprise Weblog gives a scathing analysis of RIM's recent service failure, and concludes:
"Either RIM's NOC is managed by idiots OR RIM's PR department is incompetent OR none of the above."
(With 'none of the above' meaning the company had a more serious failure and is trying to cover it up.) I have no idea what really happened, but this commentary is what occurs online when you try to play down a story. It's far better to be completely open about a problem. Then at least people may trust you in the future rather than assuming you're lying.
MVNOs: Victory of the bottom-feeders? Jason Devitt at Skydeck, a mysterious new mobile startup, contributes a very interesting post on the fate of MVNOs. He argues that the high-profile MVNOs targeting lucrative customers are doomed, and that the ones to watch are those targeting low-end customers.
How to improve feature phones. Little Springs Design reviews some of the flaws of today's feature phones, and makes suggestions on what needs to be changed.
American business executives should all use SMS instead of e-mail. That's the message from Tomi Ahonen's fervent (and very detailed) essay on the benefits of SMS messaging, and its ubiquity outside the US.
The dumbest convergence product of all time (in my opinion). Pocket Gamer brings us news of a new digital camera that comes with twenty video games built in. They treated the product with very polite respect, but I can't restrain myself: I thought I had seen dumb convergence products before, but this one's the new champion.
Using SMS to communicate to students. Mopocket editorializes that universities should use text messaging to communicate with students in emergencies.
The rebirth of Web Clipping? Well, sort of. Web clipping was a technique Palm used several years ago in an effort to overcome the latency problem with accessing web content on mobile devices. David Beers predicts that Palm's going to use something similar in the future.
Anger over mobile data charges. Helen Keegan editorializes on the charges for mobile data in the UK, and she's not happy.
Enthusiasm for Nokia's web tablet. b-trends brings us a very enthusiastic review of the Nokia n800 Internet tablet device. They tested a nice range of websites, and there are good screen shots.
Checking out a new operator in Spain. WAP Review gives a hands-on review of the Spanish operator Yoigo.
The future of mobile advertising. Always-on Real Time Access summarizes a recent panel on mobile advertising.
Future barcodes. The Pondering Primate speculates about possible future competition between Microsoft and Google in barcodes.
Mobile phone myths corrected. Shackkdiesel tackles some interesting myths about mobile phones.
Which devices to target in enterprise? Mobbu talks about the process for choosing which devices to target when creating an enterprise mobile application. It's not always best to pick the most advanced device.
Bloggus interruptus. My submission for this week is a short commentary on trying to use the mobile Internet while riding on a train.
A robot to load the dishwasher. SharpBrains contributes a summary of the recent Stanford Media X conference, a technology conference featuring Stanford researchers and others. Most of the content wasn't mobile-related, but it makes interesting reading anyway. Check out the robot that can load a dishwasher.
Post of the week. Each week's host traditionally picks a favorite post, and mine this week is Mobile Enterprise's rant on RIM's service outage. It's not the longest post of the week, but the analysis made sense to me, and I always enjoy a weblog post with a bit of passion to it.
So it goes. Next week's Carnival will be at the Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition. Anyone with a weblog can submit a post to the Carnival. You can use the new online submission form here.
Kamis, 22 Maret 2007
Seven Companies That Aren't Rumored to be Buying Palm, But Really Should Be
This afternoon I heard from a reporter that Google and Microsoft are now rumored to be interested in buying Palm. I have no idea who starts these rumors, or whether there's any truth to them, but they're not nearly creative enough. Here's my list of other companies that have absolutely no interest in buying Palm, but ought to be in the rumor mill anyway. Feel free to re-use these if you want to manipulate the stock market. No need to credit me; I don't want to be visited by the Feds.
7. Airbus
Compelling business rationale. I hear Airbus has a lot of trouble with the wiring in the A380, and there's a bunch of wires and stuff inside a Treo, so this seems like a good match. (Hey, it makes as much sense as Google buying Palm.)
6. eBay
Compelling business rationale. Most Treos end up on eBay eventually, after their owners upgrade to a new model, so this is an opportunity to "significantly integrate the value chain," as we say in the business. Each Treo could come with an eBay account, enabling the user to offer it for sale whenever they're ready.
As an added benefit, a Skype client could be bundled with every Treo sold. (By the way, this is apparently the only way to get Skype to port its full native client to Palm OS.)
5. Ben & Jerry's
Compelling business rationale. What if Jeff Hawkins designed ice cream flavors?
4. Cisco
Compelling business rationale. Apparently not required for a Cisco acquisition.
3. DaimlerChrysler
Compelling business rationale. I propose a straight-up equity swap: Palm for Chrysler. Daimler would give away a company that's talented at design, but whose products have fallen behind the innovation curve, and that has problems with execution. In exchange, it would get...exactly the same thing. But as a bonus, Daimler could build a Treo and sync cradle into every car it sells. This fits with the whole convergence thing that's supposedly driving all industrial development in the western world, so this merger is a natural.
2. HP
Compelling business rationale. No, wait, this one actually makes sense. Never mind.
1. JetBlue
Compelling business rationale. Give a Tungsten to every employee, pre-loaded with a datebook alarm that says, "Time for the airplane to leave now." The acquisition would pay for itself within three months.
7. Airbus
Compelling business rationale. I hear Airbus has a lot of trouble with the wiring in the A380, and there's a bunch of wires and stuff inside a Treo, so this seems like a good match. (Hey, it makes as much sense as Google buying Palm.)
6. eBay
Compelling business rationale. Most Treos end up on eBay eventually, after their owners upgrade to a new model, so this is an opportunity to "significantly integrate the value chain," as we say in the business. Each Treo could come with an eBay account, enabling the user to offer it for sale whenever they're ready.
As an added benefit, a Skype client could be bundled with every Treo sold. (By the way, this is apparently the only way to get Skype to port its full native client to Palm OS.)
5. Ben & Jerry's
Compelling business rationale. What if Jeff Hawkins designed ice cream flavors?
4. Cisco
Compelling business rationale. Apparently not required for a Cisco acquisition.
3. DaimlerChrysler
Compelling business rationale. I propose a straight-up equity swap: Palm for Chrysler. Daimler would give away a company that's talented at design, but whose products have fallen behind the innovation curve, and that has problems with execution. In exchange, it would get...exactly the same thing. But as a bonus, Daimler could build a Treo and sync cradle into every car it sells. This fits with the whole convergence thing that's supposedly driving all industrial development in the western world, so this merger is a natural.
2. HP
Compelling business rationale. No, wait, this one actually makes sense. Never mind.
1. JetBlue
Compelling business rationale. Give a Tungsten to every employee, pre-loaded with a datebook alarm that says, "Time for the airplane to leave now." The acquisition would pay for itself within three months.
Minggu, 11 Maret 2007
Can we please stop talking about convergence?
I know, I'm having a fantasy. The term "convergence" and the idea behind it -- that various industries in technology and entertainment are gradually merging -- is pervasive online and in the popular press. Nothing I write here is going to change that.
But let me say this for the record anyway: The problem with convergence is that when you look closely, it's not happening.
Markets aren't converging, they're diverging. The web deconstructs mass markets, by making it economically attractive for a company to address narrower market segments. Online marketing can be targeted at much more specific demographic groups than mass media could reach, and online communities help companies to talk directly with their most important customers. I've already written about this happening in mobile devices, but if you want another example, look at television: the mass markets are slipping away from the big networks, eaten by a gazillion cable channels. Or look at newspapers, chewed down by a blizzard of websites.
"Convergence" is definitely not the right word for what's happening to markets.
Are the industries converging? If the markets aren't converging, then maybe it's the industries that are doing it. The computer industry gradually merges with telecommunications, which seamlesly blends with entertainment. I can kind of get into that, except for phrases like "gradually merge" and "seamlessly blend." They sound far too gentle. What's actually happening is more like they way they make steel: coal, lime, iron ore, and oxygen get fed into a blast furnace and utterly consumed by unearthly fire. If that's what you mean when you say "convergence," then yeah we're converging.
OK, so what should we call it? I kind of like "spontaneous combustion;" it captures the spirit of what's happening. But I can't picture the Economist running a 16-page special section on the spontaneous combustion of the mobile phone industry, so we need to come up with something snappier. Maybe "deconstruction" or "re-forging." "Collision" might do the trick, but it doesn't sound quite violent enough.
I don't know, what do you think? If you have a better term for it, please post a comment.
But let me say this for the record anyway: The problem with convergence is that when you look closely, it's not happening.
Markets aren't converging, they're diverging. The web deconstructs mass markets, by making it economically attractive for a company to address narrower market segments. Online marketing can be targeted at much more specific demographic groups than mass media could reach, and online communities help companies to talk directly with their most important customers. I've already written about this happening in mobile devices, but if you want another example, look at television: the mass markets are slipping away from the big networks, eaten by a gazillion cable channels. Or look at newspapers, chewed down by a blizzard of websites.
"Convergence" is definitely not the right word for what's happening to markets.
Are the industries converging? If the markets aren't converging, then maybe it's the industries that are doing it. The computer industry gradually merges with telecommunications, which seamlesly blends with entertainment. I can kind of get into that, except for phrases like "gradually merge" and "seamlessly blend." They sound far too gentle. What's actually happening is more like they way they make steel: coal, lime, iron ore, and oxygen get fed into a blast furnace and utterly consumed by unearthly fire. If that's what you mean when you say "convergence," then yeah we're converging.
OK, so what should we call it? I kind of like "spontaneous combustion;" it captures the spirit of what's happening. But I can't picture the Economist running a 16-page special section on the spontaneous combustion of the mobile phone industry, so we need to come up with something snappier. Maybe "deconstruction" or "re-forging." "Collision" might do the trick, but it doesn't sound quite violent enough.
I don't know, what do you think? If you have a better term for it, please post a comment.
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