Confused about Choosing your perfect mobile device! here the answer

Grid comparison of current smartphone solutions
(Choosing your perfect mobile device!)

Source: http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/grid.htm

The idea here is to score most current PDA/smartphone solutions and see which one comes out on top. The scores for each criteria are my own personal evaluations. You can apply your own weightings, though, and the page will multiply everything up and work out your most suitable smartphone solution. Models and scores: (10=excellent, 1=terrible). Weightings: 'Not'/'Quite'/'Very' multiplies scores by 0, 1 or 2 respectively.

Updated 24th November 2007

Note that you must have Javascript enabled in your browser for this to work! To use the Grid:

1. Work your way down the 30 left hand side criteria, rating each according to how important it is to you
2. Read off your personalised scores from the bottom row - which is best for you?

Criteria	Importance to you	Apple iPhone	Nokia E61i	Nokia 9300i	Nokia E90	Nokia E65	Sony Ericsson P1i	Nokia N82	Nokia N73	Nokia N95	Nokia N95 8GB	HTC Kaiser	HTC S620	HTC Touch	HTC S710 (Vox)	HTC Advantage
Calendar/Agenda	Not Quite Very	7	8	8	8	7	8	7	7	7	7	8	8	8	8	8
To-do/Tasks	Not Quite Very	1	5	9	5	5	7	5	5	5	5	7	7	7	7	7
Contacts	Not Quite Very	8	8	8	9	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8
Email	Not Quite Very	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	8	8	9	9	9	9	9
Web browsing	Not Quite Very	9	7	7	9	6	6	8	7	8	8	6	6	6	6	9
Wider connectivity options (EDGE, WLAN, GPRS, 3G, HSDPA)	Not Quite Very	5	8	5	10	7	7	10	5	10	10	10	4	4	4	10
Local connectivity options (Bluetooth, infrared, UPnP)	Not Quite Very	5	10	10	8	10	10	5	10	10	10	5	5	5	5	8
Word processing	Not Quite Very	0	8	8	9	4	7	4	4	4	4	8	1	3	5	8
Spreadsheet	Not Quite Very	0	6	8	8	2	7	2	2	2	2	8	1	4	4	8
Database	Not Quite Very	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Video playback	Not Quite Very	9	9	6	8	9	6	9	9	9	9	8	7	7	7	8
Music playback (over phones)	Not Quite Very	10	5	7	9	9	9	10	9	10	10	9	9	9	9	9
Still photography	Not Quite Very	4	3	0	7	3	7	10	8	10	10	7	2	3	3	7
Video recording	Not Quite Very	0	5	0	8	5	4	9	5	9	9	4	1	1	1	5
Indoor screen clarity	Not Quite Very	10	10	9	9	9	8	8	8	9	10	9	9	9	9	10
Screen contrast outdoors	Not Quite Very	9	9	9	8	8	8	7	9	8	9	3	4	4	4	3
Standalone compatibility*	Not Quite Very	7	8	10	8	8	9	9	8	9	9	9	8	8	8	10
Multitasking/ speed	Not Quite Very	9	7	6	7	6	8	8	7	8	9	7	7	7	7	8
Text entry speed	Not Quite Very	5	7	6	7	3	5	3	3	3	3	6	7	2	5	6
Touch screen input/ doodling	Not Quite Very	6	0	0	0	0	10	0	0	0	0	10	0	10	0	10
Battery life and options****	Not Quite Very	4	10	9	8	9	4	6	6	4	6	4	6	7	7	5
File management	Not Quite Very	1	6	10	6	5	7	5	5	5	5	6	6	6	6	6
Convergence**	Not Quite Very	7	6	3	10	8	8	10	8	10	10	8	5	7	8	10
Size/weight (double weighting!)	Not Quite Very	9	9	8	3	10	8	9	9	9	8	5	7	9	9	1
Screen size/resolution	Not Quite Very	8	6	6	9	4	6	5	5	6	7	6	5	6	5	8
Robustness	Not Quite Very	5	9	6	8	7	6	8	7	7	6	4	8	2	5	3
Software stability***	Not Quite Very	7	10	9	8	8	5	7	7	8	7	7	7	6	7	8
Built-in positioning and GPS functionality with maps	Not Quite Very	0	2	0	10	2	0	10	1	10	10	8	0	0	0	8
Size of third party software catalogue	Not Quite Very	2	8	5	6	8	6	8	8	8	8	9	8	9	8	9
One handed operation?	Not Quite Very	5	7	1	7	10	4	10	10	10	10	3	9	2	8	0
Cost*****	Not Quite Very	1	6	5	1	6	4	5	7	4	3	3	6	4	5	1
Overall		171	220	195	225	204	208	222	204	227 Runner-up	228 Winner	209	177	181	186	211

* How compatible is this solution with the outside world? Is it effectively tied to a PC?
** How far does the solution go towards helping you travel with less gadgets? (MP3 player/radio, camera, camcorder, etc)
*** i.e. how often does it crash? This is somewhat subjective, I've had to rely on reports from owners. 10=super-stable, 1=buggy as hell
**** Includes consideration of battery life per charge and whether the batteries are replaceable
***** I've included cost as a factor, both for initial (new or second-hand) purchase reasons and also for ease of repair or replacement in case of problems. Rating 10 means £100 or less, 7 is £200 or less, 4 is £300 or less, 1 is £400 or less, etc.

European vs. American mobile phone use

Source : European vs. American mobile phone use

In last week's post about Palm's phone plans, I made a passing comment about the right way to display your mobile phone at dinner in Europe. It turned out to be the most popular part of the post, and produced a couple of requests that I say more comparing European and American attitudes toward mobile phones. I don't pretend to the world's expert on the subject, but I'll summarize what I've seen. Here goes:

In the US, a cellphone is a tool. In Europe, a mobile phone is a lifestyle.

I guess I ought to give a few details. Let me start with a disclaimer: It's very dangerous to talk about "Europeans" as if they're some sort of unified cultural group. Europe is a continent of many nationalities, and each one has a different culture and history. National regulations on phones also differ dramatically within Europe, which has an important impact on mobile use.

I saw a good example of this in the responses to my last post. I said all Europeans put their mobile phones on the table during a meal. I got replies from some countries agreeing with me, and others saying I was completely wrong. It turns out the table thing differs from country to country.

It's only slightly less hazardous to talk about a "typical" American mobile phone user. The culture in the US is more uniform than it is in Europe, but there are profound differences between various market segments. The average 16-year-old in the US views a mobile phone very differently than the average 40-year-old. (Come to think of it, I suspect average 40-year-old mobile users in Berlin and Chicago probably have more in common with each other than either of them have with the 16-year-old.)

Now that I've hedged thoroughly, here are those details:


Vocabulary

The differences start with the words we use to talk about the industry. In Europe, a mobile phone is usually called (in English-speaking countries) a "mobile." As in, "I'll ring your mobile." In the US, mobile phones are most often called "cellphones," and that's sometimes shortened: "I'll call your cell."

The term differs in other European countries, of course (for example, Hermann on Brighthand says the term in Germany is "handy.") I do know that if you say "cellphone" pretty much anywhere in Europe, people will look at you like you're a dork. Found that out the hard way.

Occasionally young people in the US use the term "mobile," but it's not very widespread. I try to use the term "mobile phone" in this website because it's understood on both continents.

There are also differences in the terms used to describe the companies that sell mobile phone services. In the US they are generally called "carriers." But the second easiest way to piss off a European mobile exec is to call his or her company a carrier. They are "operators." As the distinction was explained to me, an operator actively runs a network, while a carrier merely delivers something passively.

(In case you're wondering, the first easiest way to piss off a European mobile exec is to ask how his MMS revenues are doing.)

The operator vs. carrier thing is very confusing in the US, because to most Americans an "operator" is a person who runs a switchboard. The archetypal operator is Ernestine, a character created by actress Lily Tomlin. She snorted annoyingly, was rude, and reveled in her ability to manipulate customers:



"Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. (snort) We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [snatches plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care. Watch this [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria. (snort) You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company!"
–Ernestine

Some people might say that's a good metaphor for a mobile phone company, but it's hard for an American to understand why any company would want to apply the term to itself.


The mobile phone culture

To me, one of the most pronounced differences between mobile use in the US and Europe is that Europe has a more developed mobile phone culture. There are huge variations in attitude from person to person, but on average, people in Europe expect the mobile to play a more prominent, recognized role in the structure of society, and many people look to the mobile as a central source of new innovations. The belief is almost that the mobile phone has a manifest destiny to subsume everything else. This love affair with the mobile phone is far more common in Europe than it is in America.

You can find a good example of this attitude in an essay about the future, on the website of the Club of Amsterdam, a think tank based in the Netherlands:

"Every machine will be a mobile phone, talking to their owner but mainly to other machines.... In 2020 the world is one big video screen, one big video camera, one big mobile phone.... The mobile will act as a "trust machine". It will be our most important lifestyle instrument. It will probably be decomposed with its core elements scattered all over and inside our body."

People in the US can be just as enthusiastic about mobilizing technology, but they often think in terms of shrinking and mobilizing the PC and Internet, rather than growing the cellphone. In the US, the cellphone is often viewed as a necessary tool rather than something to love. For example, an MIT survey in 2004 found that Americans rated the cellphone number one in the list of inventions they hate but can't live without, edging out the dreaded alarm clock.

If you're still having trouble picturing the difference in attitudes, look at it this way – many people in Europe feel about their mobiles the way that Californians feel about their cars.

Okay? Got it now?

The European love of the mobile phone has several facets to it...

Fashion. To many people in Europe, their mobile phone seems to be a fashion statement. It says something about you, much like your clothing. Americans also care about the look of their phones (just take a look at my daughter's Razr, covered in stick-on jewels and shiny dangling beady things). But in general I don't think Americans identify with the phone as deeply.

It seems much more common for someone in Europe to change phones than it is for someone in the US. All phones in Europe are GSM, and people generally understand that you can pop out your SIM card and pop it into a new phone anytime you want. The mobile is just a skin that you wrap around your phone contract. Major retail chains, like Carphone Warehouse, sell large numbers of mobile phones independent of any operator.

Although you can do the same sort of phone swap in the US if you have a GSM phone, it seems like relatively few people do it, and very few phones are sold outside of the carriers' stores. I'm not sure why. I think awareness of the capability is lower (I'll bet a majority of American GSM users couldn't even find their SIM card). And of course many mobile phone users in the US are on CDMA, forcing them to go through the carrier if they want to switch phones. But also, I think there's just less desire to constantly update your phone in the US, because people don't pay as much attention to it.

Design. This is related to the fashion topic, but it deserves a separate discussion because it's so surprising, at least to me. In most consumer goods, there's an approximate consensus on design between the US and Europe. You can find exceptions, but in general clothing, pop music, cars, and furniture considered to be cool in one continent are admired in the other. In fact, a lot of Americans think of "European design" as automatically stylish. But mobile phone styling and features often polarize people in the US and Europe. In Europe, people generally hate external antennas on a phone. In the US, most people don't notice the antenna, and if they do notice it they may well like it because they assume it'll give better coverage.

Many people in Europe love candybar phones. Most Americans think they look cheap and dislike them. Instead, many Americans love flip phones. I think they feel the flip cover prevents accidental calls, and keeps the screen from getting scratched. Maybe they also feel a bit like Captain Kirk when they flip open the phone.

Many Europeans hate flip phones. I don't know why (although I'll speculate that the flip cover makes it inconvenient to send and receive a lot of SMS messages).

SMS vs. IM. Speaking of SMS, it's vastly more popular in Europe than it is in the US. Some of this difference is generational – young people in the US are much more likely to use SMS, whereas it's extremely rare among older Americans. Some of the difference is also training – most Americans don't have a clue how to enter text on a keypad. But even among young Americans, who do the most texting, I think PC-based instant messaging is still the king, now often tied to webcams.

History helps to explain the difference. The US started with a more PC-centric culture, and then IM was pushed aggressively by AOL in the United States, years before many mobile phones here were SMS-capable. There was no great champion for instant messaging in Europe, and besides PCs with Internet connections were less common there in the early days of IM. So SMS had a lot less competition.

Because of differences in mobile phone billing plans, I'm told that sending an SMS was often much cheaper than making a voice call in Europe. US mobile plans, with their large blocks of monthly minutes, supposedly create less of an incentive to use SMS. (In fact, many American mobile plans don't by default include any pre-paid text messages; you pay separately for each one. There's an amusing television commercial by one of the US mobile carriers showing a father relentlessly pursuing his teenage daughter around town – not to keep her out of trouble with her boyfriend, but to keep her from sending text messages on her phone.)

I did a quick spot check of Orange (UK) and Cingular (US) mobile plan charges, to look at the current price differential between voice and text. The main difference was actually that everything in the UK cost more than it does in the US, perhaps due to the horrific dollar-pound exchange rate. The difference between the US and UK in treatment of text messages was not as dramatic as I expected, but it was there. Today the US and UK both charge more for voice than text, but the plans I looked at in the UK almost all either bundled text messages in the base plan, or had options to get a lot of text messages for free if you spent a certain amount on your voice calls. In the US, text messages were always an option that you had to purchase separately, and there was no opportunity to get free text messages. Basically, you have to plan on spending extra if you want to do texting in the US.

(The details: Using a prepaid plan, Cingular in the US will sell you 900 minutes a month for $60, but you'll have to pay $5 extra per month to get 200 text messages. That same $60 spent with Orange in the UK will get you just 325 voice minutes, but 150 text messages are included in the base price. The UK plan creates a strong incentive to substitute text for a voice call when you can.

(If you look at pay as you go plans, Orange charges 38-76 cents a minute for voice calls [depending on whether the call is to a mobile or a land line], and 19 cents for each text message. So a text message is half to a quarter the price of a voice call. However, Orange also gives you 1,000 free text messages if you spend more than $19 a month. Most people would end up getting the free texting, so their effective price for text messaging drops to almost zero. Cingular charges you about 25 cents a minute for voice calls, and five cents per text message. Texting is one fifth the price of a voice call, actually a better ratio than Orange. However, there's no option to get free text messages, so you know you're paying for them no matter what.)


Differences in market structure

Operator power. In general, the US carriers have more power over their customers than the European operators do, for several reasons. The first is that pay as you go plans are much more popular in Europe than they are in the US. In some countries (Italy, for example), almost everyone was on pay as you go the last time I checked. In other places in Europe, users are split between pay as you go and contracts. But I don't know of any place in Europe where as many people are on contracts as they are in the US (please speak up if I've got that wrong – it's hard to find numbers on the percent of users on each type of payment program).

The second difference is mobile phone number portability (which lets you keep your number if you switch mobile operators). Many countries in Europe had it years before it came into the United States. For example, the UK got portability in 1998, Spain and Sweden in 2000, and Italy in 2001. Americans didn't get it until the end of 2003.

Another important difference is that in parts of Europe phone subsidies are illegal. I know about this one because at Palm I used to track the sales prices of mobile phones, and they varied wildly from country to country. I finally figured out that the subsidies were skewing the numbers. The subsidy laws are changing, and they may be allowed in most countries by now.

I think the relatively weaker customer control of European operators has driven faster innovation in Europe, because the operators have to do more to attract customers. They also can't lock a phone vendor out of the market completely, the way the US carriers have been strangling SonyEricsson.

Mobile versus fixed. Fixed-line phone companies in Europe are often monopolies, legendary for high costs and poor service. I have been told by many friends in Europe that it was faster and cheaper to get a mobile phone there than to wait for a land line, which drove very rapid movement toward mobiles. In the US, land line phone service is generally reliable, quick to install, and cheap, so there's much less incentive to get away from it. Some younger people in the US are starting to get rid of their land lines, but the movement is much slower than in Europe.

Reliability of coverage. In much of Europe, mobile phone coverage is more or less ubiquitous. There are always exceptions, of course, but generally you can make a voice call anytime you want to.

This really came home to me recently when I had the good fortune of taking a driving vacation in the fjords of western Norway. That's some of the most mountainous landscape in Europe, but I never noticed a spot where I was out of coverage (check out this coverage map). Contrast that to a driving vacation in the western US, where once you get out of the cities it is almost impossible to get a signal anywhere. For example, when I was in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona a couple of years ago, I couldn't get a mobile phone signal anywhere in the park.

The usual American excuse for its poor coverage is that US population densities are low. That doesn't hold up to close examination – Norway has about 15 people per square kilometer, the same density as Arizona, which is not exactly crowded. The US overall has about 33, more than double Norway's density. I think Europe is just more dedicated to universal mobile coverage.

Brands. The prominence of mobile phone brands varies tremendously from continent to continent, and even from country to country in Europe. In general, Nokia is much better known and respected in Europe. Motorola is much better known and respected in the US (although it doesn't have the rock star status that Nokia has in Europe). And there are national champions like Siemens, which is heavily respected in Germany but nowhere else I know of. Samsung's brand awareness has been steadily rising in both the US and Europe, and LG is trying to tail along after it.

The differences over Nokia are the most surprising to my friends in Europe. Throughout Europe, and actually most of the world, Nokia is one of the top elite brands, like Nike in sports or Microsoft in computers. It produces an immediate aura of respectability. In the US, Nokia is lost in the crowd of semi-anonymous Euro-brands -- names like Saab or Peugeot that you've heard of but have never experienced personally.

I think Nokia recently compounded this problem with its "It's your life in there" television commercials in the US. The commercial that stuck in my mind was about "Jill," who praises the phone's ability to delete an ex-boyfriend from her phone's address book:

"It is so great because when you go to the phone and you delete and your phone asks 'Are you sure?' You look at your phone and you're like, 'oh yeah, I'm sure.'"

She then gives one of the most annoying, braying laughs I've heard on TV since...well. Ernestine.

I understand what Nokia was trying to do – it was making a sophisticated effort to tap into the mobile phone culture in the US. You can read a detailed ethnographic analysis of the ad campaign here. The problem for me was that, first, the mobile phone culture Nokia's trying to tap into is pretty weak in the US; and second, that Jill has just a whiff of trailer trash about her.

(Nokia has pulled the website for the campaign, which perhaps tells you how well it was received, but you can still find the commercial on the site of the agency that created it. Just follow this link and move your mouse around on the slider at the bottom of the page until you find Jill. You can also check out the other losers Nokia featured in the series.)

Americans tend to respond best to aspirational ads that make them feel good about themselves for buying a product. So buying a Mac will give you kinship with Einstein and Gandhi, which is outrageous but Steve Jobs can pull that off. Nokia's unintended message was that a Nokia phone will turn you into "a sniveling Sex in the City wannabe," as Gizmodo put it.

I think this is typical of Nokia's inability to connect with the American public.


What about the rest of the world?

There are even bigger variations in the mobile market in other parts of the world, but I didn't have the time (or the knowledge) to discuss all of them here. Mobile phone services and features in Japan and Korea make both Americans and Europeans look like techno-hicks. In Japan, the operators have so much power that phones are sold virtually unbranded, and Japanese phone manufacturers struggle to operate anywhere else in the world because the required reflexes are so different. It will be interesting to see what happens in Japan when number portability is implemented there, in late October. Surveys have said that large numbers of Japanese mobile phone users, especially those on Vodafone, would switch operators if the could.

The market worldwide is so complex that I think it's impossible for any one person to understand it all. So please help me out -- if I missed your country, or if you'd like to add to or correct something I said above, please post a comment.

Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT)

I’ve mentioned this briefly in my morning routine, but I thought I’d explain a little bit more about MITs - Most Important Tasks. It’s not an original concept, but one that I use on a daily basis and that has helped me out tremendously.

It’s very simple: your MIT is the task you most want or need to get done today. In my case, I’ve tweaked it a bit so that I have three MITs — the three things I must accomplish today. Do I get a lot more done than three things? Of course. But the idea is that no matter what else I do today, these are the things I want to be sure of doing. So, the MIT is the first thing I do each day, right after I have a glass of water to wake me up.

And here’s the key to the MITs for me: at least one of the MITs should be related to one of my goals. While the other two can be work stuff (and usually are), one must be a goal next-action. This ensures that I am doing something to move my goals forward that day.

And that makes all the difference in the world. Each day, I’ve done something to make my dreams come true. It’s built into my morning routine: set a next-action to accomplish for one of my goals. And so it happens each day, automatically.

Another key: do your MITs first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. If you put them off to later, you will get busy and run out of time to do them. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy!

It’s such a small thing to implement, and yet I’m raving about it like it’s a huge revelation. But it is. Sometimes small things can make big differences. I highly recommend you give it a go.

The rise of the information ecosystem: How mobile devices, personal computing, media, and the Internet all fit together

The rise of the information ecosystem: How mobile devices, personal computing, media, and the Internet all fit together

Source : http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/02/rise-of-information-ecosystem-how.html

Fair warning: This is going to be one of those philosophical posts on strategy. If you're looking for quick gratification, I recommend browsing the archives here.

Anyone still reading?

Okay. The other day I got a bit of flak for posting a note about Hollywood's view of the Web. "Your weblog's about mobility," the comments said. "Stay on topic."

I sincerely appreciate the feedback, but it was a surprise. As far as I was concerned, I was staying on topic. But then I realized that I've never actually explained what I'm trying to accomplish in this weblog, and so of course people might confused. I'd like to fix that right now.

I started this weblog to comment on the mobile industry, but as time went on and my work at Rubicon exposed me to a wider range of tech companies, I found that the boundaries of mobile were getting harder and harder to define. I'm now convinced that you can't understand the mobile world as a separate industry, because it's deeply interconnected with three other industries that deal with information: the Internet, personal computing, and the media (including video, print publications, games, and so on).

All four industries like to think of themselves as separate. But in reality, they depend on each other heavily, and the connections are deepening all the time. In each industry, it's commonplace for people to be blind-sided by unexpected changes, or for major initiatives to fail dismally. I think that's a symptom of the growing connections. Because we can't yet see all the connections, success and failure become more a matter of luck than skill.

The idea that those industries are merging has been around for years -- I remember a colleague making that argument at Apple back in the early 1990s. But I think "merging" or "convergence" isn't the right metaphor. What's emerging is more like a tropical jungle where a rare tree is the favorite roost of a bat that's fed on by a mosquito whose larvae are eaten by a fish that secretes the cure to cancer in its skin. Everything's connected in subtle ways that we don't understand.

Call it the information ecosystem.

Some very bright people have used the term "information ecosystem" in the past to refer to the Internet or Web 2.0, but I think it encompasses all four industries.

That ecosystem is what I'm trying to map in this weblog, because that's where the opportunity is. I don't pretend to have all the connections mapped yet; nobody does. But what we can see so far suggests that we're still in the early stages of the new ecosystem. I think the big changes are still to come.


The new information ecosystem

Back in ancient times (around 1975), the old information ecosystem looked like the diagram below. Most information (and I'm using that word very broadly to include everything from written words to movies to photographs) was passed through a distribution hierarchy that filtered and distilled it down to the most marketable items. Delivery of information was generally through mass media -- bookstores, magazines, newspapers, television stations, etc. The prevailing metaphor was one-to-many, with information flowing from a relatively small elite of creators to the population as a whole. People also communicated directly between one-another, of course, but most of that communication was one-to-one or one-to-few via letters, meetings, and phone calls.



Even before the Internet, this old ecosystem had already started to erode. For example, computer-based desktop publishing in the 1980s made it much easier for small groups and individuals to create newsletters and magazines, giving them some of the power of mass media (although their creations still had to be printed and distributed through traditional mechanisms).

"Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one." --AJ Liebling
"Let's give everybody a press." --Simultaneous thought of several million Internet users, sometime in the 1990s

The new information ecosystem. It was the rise of the Web that really challenged the old structure. Although we're still in a transitional period, I think it's clear that the new information ecosystem will look something like the diagram below. In the new system, the filtering role of the publishers and commentators is radically eroded. Any information that anyone wants to share can be fed directly into the Internet. Tools like the personal computer make it much easier for people to create information, and mobile devices are also starting to play a minor but important role in info creation as well (for example, at the end of 2006 a cellphone video of the execution of Saddam Hussein created worldwide news and intense political debate). The net effect should be that information flows faster, and between more sources, than ever before (by the way, that's an assumption I want to test in future posts; I'm not sure it's correct).



The diagram shows why mobile devices can no longer stand alone as a separate industry. As soon as they get any data capabilities, they're embedded in the larger ecosystem. Want to add apps to a mobile device? You need to understand the trends driving PC and Internet app development. Want to tie your customers to you more closely? Make sure you know how online communities form (and why most of them fail). Want to play content on a mobile? Don't link yourself too closely to a content company that was part of the old ecosystem -- you might be pulled down by the suction when it sinks.


What's the most important part of the ecosystem?

A lot of people would tell you that the center of the ecosystem is the Internet; that the other industries are just appendages. On the other hand, many mobile enthusiasts would tell you the dominant part will soon be the mobile phone, and I'm sure Microsoft and Apple would tell you that it's the personal computer. But I think they're all wrong. The most important part of the ecosystem isn't any technology, it's the ideas themselves: the articles and music and essays and videos and memes that we use to make decisions and entertain ourselves. The Internet and the servers that hang on it like Christmas ornaments are the storage and transport mechanism for those ideas. PCs and mobile devices are capture and playback systems, and the software programs we run on those devices are the tools that we use to create and work with the ideas.

Meanwhile, the publishers, producers, editors, and critics who used to control the idea factory are struggling to find relevant roles in the new world. I think some will succeed, and many will fail.


The real mobile opportunity

So I know it'll feel irrelevant to some people, but I'm going to be writing more about subjects like web apps and communities and Hollywood, because they're all part of the same system. I'll try to label the posts that focus on the broader ecosystem, so you can skip them if you want to. But if you're working in the mobile world I think you should tune in. You need to understand the whole ecosystem or chances are you'll be left twisting slowly in the breeze by a competitor who does get it.

The real mobile opportunity of the 21st century isn't mobilizing technology, it's mobilizing ideas.

That's what this weblog is all about.

The three laws of technology strategy

A very nice article by a experienced veteran !

The three laws of technology strategy

The other day when I was writing about the fate of mobile apps (link), I mentioned one of the laws of technology strategy. It made me realize that although we in the industry talk about those laws all the time, I've never seen them all written down in one place. There are probably more than three laws, but these are my favorites. Please post a comment if you want to add some more.

Here we go, twenty years of industry experience boiled down to three lines:


1. An elegant business model paired with mediocre technology beats an elegant technology paired with a mediocre business model.

To put it another way, if you create a marvelous tech product that has no way of making money, you get a long and passionate entry on Wikipedia. If you create a lousy tech product that prints money, you get to be Bill Gates.

Windows is the best case study here, but this one has been proven over and over again in the history of the tech industry. But companies keep tripping over it because they're often run by engineers who have been trained to value technical elegance as an end in itself.

Don't get me wrong, elegance is great. The most wonderful tech companies are those that combine elegant products and great business models. But you must pay the bills or you don't get to keep playing. And wads of money can buy a lot of patches and kludges.


2. Design for a need, not a desire.

A serial entrepreneur once expressed this to me nicely: "I focus on aspirin issues." In other words, if someone has a serious enough problem that they feel pain, they'll be much more likely to pay money for an answer. (I wish I could remember who told me that -- I'd like to credit him by name.)

Very often tech companies will fall in love with a concept that is compelling to people in the company, but not to non-technologists. They'll convince themselves that people will want it because, well, they ought to want it.

A related problem: A company will come up with a product that's nice, but doesn't really address an aspirin problem. You know you have this problem when someone in the company says that need a marketing campaign to explain to people why they should want the product. The really good products need marketing for visibility, not persuasion.

I think this is the underlying problem behind most failed web applications. They do something interesting, as opposed to something compelling.

What makes this whole problem especially tough is that you can't just ask customers what they need. They aren't engineers, they don't understand what you could build. All they'll ask you for is improvements on the products they already have today. What you have to do is get inside the customers' heads, understand how they live, and figure out what you could do to improve their lives. That's what the best product managers do.


3. Software designed for one platform usually fails on another.

We teach this one to ourselves every time the industry goes through a platform transition, and then we promptly forget it again:

A computing platform isn't just a technology, it's a mindset, with a huge set of unstated assumptions about customers and business practices attached to it. When you port software from one platform to another, you take those assumptions along with you, and usually they don't fit.

This is why the software leaders in one generation of computing usually fail in the next generation. Check it out -- which software products led in the DOS world? Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton-Tate. Did any of them thrive in the Windows/Mac world? Nope.

Then did the software leaders in Windows/Mac -- Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit -- dominate in the Internet? Nope, the new startups without the mental baggage dominated.

Which leads to an interesting question: Do you think the leaders of mobile Internet will be the same companies that led the PC Internet? Or is the next Adobe/Lotus/Google a little startup out there, rethinking what it means to be connected in a mobile setting?

Think about it.

Was Windows XP Microsoft's last good OS?

Windows Vista is a disaster. Windows Mobile is unusable. Is there hope for Microsoft?

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9065938

March 1, 2008 (Computerworld) Everybody's talking today about "Drivergate" — internal Microsoft e-mails that show senior Microsoft executives personally struggling to use hardware products sporting the "Windows Vista Capable" sticker. The e-mails also show that Microsoft lowered its standard for some hardware compatibility, apparently to help Intel impress Wall Street.

This revelation is simply the latest in a long series that add up to one inescapable conclusion: Windows Vista sucks. (And making it cheaper won't help, either.)

Compatibility of drivers is just one issue. Another is a convoluted user interface that prevents ordinary users from gaining a sense of control over the OS.

Windows Mobile, Microsoft's operating system for cell phones, suffers from a similar problem. The Windows Mobile OS isn't horrible per se, it's just that it's completely wrong for cell phones and other small screen devices.

Windows Mobile clearly compromises usability to mimic the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) focus of Microsoft's desktop operating systems. To quote Dr. Phil: How's that workin' for ya? It hasn't helped eroding desktop Windows market share, and it hasn't helped Windows Mobile, either.

The biggest problem isn't that the company's newest products are unusable, but that Microsoft may have actually lost the "ability" to make good operating systems. It may not be able to let go of its dogmatic insistence on the flawed vision of the same Windows "experience" from wristwatches to supercomputers.

And there is evidence that delusion or, at least, wishful thinking, prevails at Microsoft. The company's founder and chairman, Bill Gates, said last week that "Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard." Hey, Bill: Do you want to bet $10 billion on that? I doubt even that Microsoft will fix its Vista driver problem within five years. This is the same guy, by the way, who bragged that Microsoft would "solve" spam by 2006.

It's imperative for Microsoft to get the next major OS right. The secret lies in the company's Surface initiative.

Microsoft has never understood the importance of "simplicity," a fundamental design concept it has always swept aside to make room for "feature rich" (i.e., bloated and complex).

Right now, the Windows Vista type user interfaces are in their final days. The future belongs to what I call the 3G user interface, which replaces flat icons and folders with multitouch, gestures, physics and 3-D.

It's imperative for Microsoft to get the next major OS right. But how?

The secret lies in the company's Surface initiative. Sure, Surface is at present a little more than a semishipping demo usable for product marketing.

The Surface demo dazzles with its 3G goodness. But what's impressive and surprising is that somehow someone at Microsoft was allowed to create a user interface unburdened by "compatibility" with two decades of spaghetti code. What a concept! And no "Start" button!

Another hopeful sign is that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to agree that Surface is important — or, at least, urgent. He announced earlier this month that Microsoft is accelerating the development of a consumer version.

Here's what I believe Microsoft needs to do to save its vitally important operating systems business:

1. Never compromise on driver compatibility, not even for Intel.
2. Insist on the highest standards for compatibility stickers, then use your marketing millions to drive customers to partners that have earned those stickers. Drive the laggards, the cheaters and the inadequate vendors out of business. They're poisoning your swimming pool.
3. Make an operating system for each computer type — cell phone, UMPC, consumer desktop, enterprise desktop, enterprise server, supercomputer — optimized for that type, not as a dogmatic slave to the limitations of the generic desktop Windows vision.
4. Emphasize usability and simplicity over "feature rich" complexity. We don't need more options, features, capabilities, applications, peripherals and hardware vendors. We need better ones.
5. Emphasize usability and simplicity over backward compatibility for the consumer version of Windows. The 1990s are over. Don't sacrifice the future for customers and partner companies that are living in the past.
6. Throw everything they've got at getting the consumer version of Surface right. Surface is the future of the company. And Apple won't wait around. That company is aggressively patenting elements of the user interface of the future, and you know they'll build and market it successfully.
7. Be afraid of Apple, Google and Asus. Apple is eating your desktop marketshare because they succeed with simplicity and UI elegance. Google might do so with its cell phone UI. And Asus, a two-bit Taiwanese motherboard maker, was able to cobble together a quick-and-dirty UI for Linux that's way better than Windows Vista for UMPCs.

Microsoft: I'm rooting for you. I really am. But you've got to get your act together with your core business and ship an operating system that works, or this could be the beginning of the end of the company's leadership role in the industry.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Who Will Control the Heart of Handsets?

Symbian has a strong position among mobile operating systems, but announcements from Microsoft, LiMo, and others show the competition's heating up

by Jennifer L. Schenker

Google's new software platform for mobile phones entitled 'Android' in its prototype form on demonstration at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Getty

In years past, when the mobile-phone industry gathered for its biggest annual convention, the talk was mostly about bells and whistles—who had the sexiest, thinnest, or most feature-packed handsets. Not this year. At the 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the center of attention has shifted to the software inside phones that most consumers don't ever think about.

From flashy newcomer Apple (AAPL) with its hit iPhone, to gate-crashing Google (GOOG), to stalwart Nokia (NOK), the titans of tech are locked in a high-stakes battle for the heart and soul of mobile phones. At stake is nothing less than the future of mobile communication—and, by extension, of the Internet, as a growing number of consumers around the world access the Web from handheld devices.

It's no wonder operating systems have become the industry's new focus. The majority of today's handsets are still based on proprietary operating systems developed by makers such as Nokia and Motorola (MOT) for use in their own phones. These closed software environments are costly for makers to maintain and upgrade, limiting the opportunity for economies of scale that would be possible if phones from many makers shared common software.

What's more, by fragmenting the market, closed systems make life more difficult for operators and suppliers of mobile software and services. Paris-based Gameloft (GLFT.PA), for instance, the leading seller of mobile games, has to separately develop, test, and support hundreds of versions of every game it makes thanks to the lack of software standards in mobile phones and differences in operator network configurations.

Industry leaders are fed up. "Today there are 30 to 40 different operating systems for mobile, and that is too many," said Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone (VOD) during a Feb. 12 speech in Barcelona. "We need to narrow that range to three, four, or even five." To get there, Sarin urged his rivals to join forces in defining the handful of operating systems that could power mobile phones in the future.

Fight for Midrange Phones

Undoubtedly, one of the strongest contenders is London-based Symbian, a software maker owned by a consortium of phone makers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, and Panasonic. Symbian is already used in nearly half of the smartphones—high-end devices with computing capability—sold today. But to stay in the game, the company is scrambling to move its software onto less expensive midrange devices of the sort now powered mostly by proprietary homegrown operating systems.

It will face far stiffer competition there. Microsoft (MSFT) and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) are eyeing the same opportunity as they try to move beyond business-oriented devices into the consumer market. And the elephant in the room is search giant Google, which is spearheading an initiative called Android that seeks to create a Web-friendly software platform, based on open-source software, for midrange phones.

Nokia unwraps bendy nanotech phone

Nokia unwraps bendy nanotech phone

12 comments

By James Sherwood [More by this author]

25th February 2008 11:17 GMT

Nokia and the University of Cambridge jointly designed a concept mobile phone that allows users to mould the handset into different shapes.

Nokia's Morph: formed from shape-altering substances

Dubbed Morph, the handset has been designed to demonstrate the possible future benefits of nanotechnology for mobile devices. Morph is both stretchable and flexible, but a Nokia spokesman claimed that nanotechnology could also allow future mobile phones to incorporate self-cleaning surfaces and see-through electronics.

On-the-fly interface adaptation

Although very little has been said about the Morph’s technical capabilities, pictures show how, in theory, the handset’s able to alter its state between a watch-like mode, a credit-card shape and a traditional mobile phone. No dimensions are given, but the Morph appears to be extremely thin no-matter what state it’s in.

The project, which has been roughly one year in the making, doesn’t mean the Morph will be on shelves anytime soon though. Nokia admitted that it could be seven years before elements of the Morph will be available for integration into other off-the-shelf phones.

However, the Finnish mobile phone giant claimed that, eventually, nanotechnology could help reduce manufacturing costs and introduce complex features at lower prices.

One day, all mobile phones will be made this way. Apparently.

"GiFi" — Short-Range, 5-Gbps Wireless For $10/Chip

Source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=

"The Age reports that Melbourne scientists have built and demonstrated tiny CMOS chips, 5 mm per side, that can transmit 5 Gbps over short distances — about 10 m. The chip features a tiny 1-mm antenna, a power amp that is only a few microns wide, and power consumption of only 2 W. 'GiFi' appears set to revolutionize short-distance data transmission, and transmits in the relatively uncrowded 60GHz range. Best of all, the chip is only about a year away from public release, and will only cost around US $9.20 to produce."