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Posts Tagged ‘blackberry’

Android Passes iPhone as Most Desired Smartphone. Barely

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Market research, Strategy, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOM.

Android has been outselling the iPhone recently but Apple’s iPhone was still the most desired smartphone in the U.S., according to the Nielsen Co. Not anymore. Nielsen said 31.1 percent of respondents in March said they want their next smartphone to be an Android device, while 30 percent said they wanted an iPhone. Nielsen said consumers planning on buying an Android in the next year increased from 25.5 percent in July to September while people planning on buying an iPhone slipped from 32.7 percent during the same period. That’s not terribly surprising considering the growing momentum behind Android. But it shows that Android’s appeal is continuing to grow even despite the broader availability of the iPhone on Verizon .

Before, Android’s rise could have been chalked up to the fact that iPhone was limited to just one carrier. But it’s increasingly showing that it is attractive by itself, not just as a more accessible alternative to the iPhone. The iPhone is still limited in distribution and opening up availability to Sprint and T-Mobile could shift things somewhat. But at this point, it seems like Android appeal is rock solid while the iPhone is cooling off somewhat with consumers. The smartphone race looks more and more like a two-horse competition, according to Nielsen. Only 10.5 percent of consumers said they planned on buying a BlackBerry device, down from 12.6 percent in July through September. Interest in Windows devices also slipped from 6.8 percent last year to 6.4 percent this year, even with the launch of Windows Phone 7 in November. Android continues to rule the smartphone marketshare battle with 37 percent, compared to 27 percent for the iPhone and 22 percent for BlackBerry.

Recent statistics show how much momentum is behind Android. Fifty percent of people who purchased a smartphone in the past six months said they had chosen an Android device while 25 percent said they had bought an iPhone and 15 percent said they got a BlackBerry device. Now Apple is still sucking down the biggest profits, and has become the largest phone vendor by revenue. And it still has a lead when you consider all iOS devices compared to Android. But Android’s momentum, especially in smartphones, is just getting stronger. If it can replicate that success in tablets, it won’t be long before it has a greater overall ecosystem reach soon.

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How Google Can Beat Facebook: No, Its Not on the Web

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, FaceBook, google, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“A few years ago, Jeff Jarvis, a good friend of mine, published a book called What Would Google Do? When he wrote that book, Google had an aura of invincibility. Fast forward to today: Thanks to Facebook, it doesn’t seem so invincible. The new social web has passed it by. So, the question today is: What should Google do?

I’ve always maintained Google has to play to its strengths – that is, tap into its DNA of being an engineering-driven culture that can leverage its immense infrastructure. It also needs to leverage its existing assets even more, instead of chasing rainbows. In other words, it needs to look at Android and see if it can build a layer of services that get to the very essence of social experience: communication.

However, instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions. In other words, Google needs to think of a world beyond Google Talk, Google Chat and Google Voice.

To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.

In a post earlier, I outlined that with the introduction of its unified Inbox, the constantly changing Facebook had shifted its core value proposition from being a plain vanilla social network to a communication company. Here’s a relevant bit from that post.

Facebook imagined email only as a subset of what is in reality communication. SMS, Chat, Facebook messages, status updates and email is how Zuckerberg sees the world. With the address book under its control, Facebook is now looking to become the “interaction hub” of our post-broadband, always-on lives. Having trained nearly 350 million people to use its stream-based, simple inbox, Facebook has reinvented the “communication” experience. …. Facebook as a service is amazingly effective when it focuses all its attention on what is the second order of friends – people you would like to stay in touch with, but just don’t have enough bandwidth (time) to stay in touch with. Those who matter to you the most are infinitely intimate, and as a result you communicate with them via SMS, IM Chat and voice. So far, this intimate communication has eluded Facebook. The launch of the new social inbox is a first step by Facebook to get a grip on this real world intimacy.

In 2007, I had argued that the real social network in our lives was the address book on our mobile phone. Google has access to real-world intimacy – the mobile phone address book – thanks to Android OS. All it has to do is use that as a lever to facilitate interactions.

In order to understand Google’s interaction-driven social future, one doesn’t have to look far: no further than Apple’s iTunes app store.  As you know, I have switched from BlackBerry to the iPhone, and as a result, I’ve been looking for a BBM replacement, and have been playing around with a score of apps.

In the process of searching for this app, I came across an app called Beluga, which essentially allows me to connect to my friends. And then I can create Pods (essentially Groups) with one or more of my friends. Sort of like what I did on BBM. Except, there’s more to Beluga.

It taps into my social graph (Facebook); it leverages my location, and it allows me to share photos as part of the messaging process. It’s a beautifully designed application that’s very inviting – and the experience is less communication, more interaction.

What’s beautiful about Beluga is it’s as personal and private as you want it to be. It’s just ironic that Beluga was co-founded by three Google engineers — Ben Davenport, Lucy Zhang and Jonathan Perlow — and if you see their bios, it is hardly a surprise that they ended up with an interaction-centric product like Beluga.

Yesterday, I was introduced to a new app called Yobongo, and it comes from a San Francisco startup co-founded by alumni of Justin.tv. It’s a good-looking application that leverages your location, allowing you to find people around you and to chat with them. It is at the extreme opposite of Beluga: It’s open, and you can chat with anyone. It is very real-time in nature. Of course, there are other apps like Yobongo: MessageParty, for example!

What’s common between these two apps is their ability for synchronous messaging. This messaging can, in turn, become the under-pinning of what I earlier called interactions.

Ability to interact on an ongoing basis anywhere, any time and sharing everything, from moments to emotions – is what social is all about. From my vantage point, this is what Google should focus on. If not — you know it very well — Facebook will.”

Read the original post here.

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Patents’ growing role in battle of mobile

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a article from SFgate.com.

“Apple’s patent lawsuit last week against Taiwanese smart phone manufacturer HTC was just one complaint aimed at a rival trying to outdo the iPhone.

But the case shines a new light on the growing use of technology patents to mark turf and battle competitors in the fast-growing field of mobile.

Experts are unclear on Apple’s ultimate intent in suing HTC, whether it’s to explicitly stamp out what it calls theft by HTC or to sound a warning to the entire smart phone industry – including newfound rival Google – that it could be coming for them next. But analysts and observers agree that intellectual property litigation in this arena is heating up, and consumers could eventually be affected by the growing friction.

“I’m seeing more, larger patent cases in the last couple years,” said Paul Andre, a partner with law firm King & Spaulding. “It does appear that companies that were more hesitant to file lawsuits in the past are filing today.”

For years, patents have been a way of life for technology companies, which amassed them as a defense against competitors. There have been eras of heavy litigation such as during the early personal computer years and occasional clashes of behemoths such as Intel vs. AMD.

But in most cases, corporations have been content to avoid using their patents in draining battles that can stretch for years. Apple, for example, hasn’t filed a major patent suit in many years.

But the rise of smart phones has touched off a new land rush as companies jockey for position. Before Apple sued HTC, Nokia sued Apple in October, prompting a countersuit from Apple. Apple was also sued last year for its multitouch technology by a Taiwanese firm. Kodak sued Apple and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion in January for camera phone patents.

“It’s economics. There’s a ton of money flowing into the mobile space; it’s the new platform,” said Jason Schultz, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley. “Laptops, many think, are a thing of the past. Anytime you have a platform shift, you’re going to have a lot of lawsuits over who owns the platform.”

Schultz said previous cell phone patent suits have focused largely on hardware. But with smart phones evolving with sophisticated operating systems, companies are finding a whole new set of patents to tap.

In Apple’s case against HTC, 14 of the patents deal with user interface and six are concerned with the lower-level operating system.

Protecting their turf

Clement Roberts, a founding law partner at Durie Tangri, said companies seem to be turning to patents to protect their territory and keep competitors on their toes. In the case of Apple, he said the company is probably singling out HTC to eliminate a more vulnerable competitor but also give the industry pause as it tries to follow in Apple’s footsteps.

“If you just cause everyone in the industry to become aware of eight to 10 patents and everyone has to design around them, you lengthen the product (development) time frame for everyone else,” Roberts said. “That can have an enormous indirect benefit to Apple and you can earn back the cost of the litigation tenfold.”

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Goodbye PC, hello smartphone

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on February 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good commentary from San Jose Mercury News around Microsoft´s new mobile launch.

“The era of the PC’s dominance is officially over. We have crossed over into the age of mobile computing.

This transition has been building momentum for a while. Some might argue that the iPhone was the dawn of this era. Others might say it was really the rise of the BlackBerry. Or maybe even Android, Google’s mobile operating system. Good cases could be made that any one of these marked the start of the mobile era.

But Microsoft’s announcement of its new mobile-phone platform this week signals a clear end to the old PC era and an epic shift in computing.

But why Microsoft? The reason has little to do with the details of Windows Phone Series 7 that the company unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday.

I haven’t touched it, and it won’t be available to consumers for months.

This isn’t about specific features or its design, or whether it will help Microsoft regain lost momentum in the mobile market. Rather, what struck me is how Microsoft did this.

For years, the company took its Windows operating system and created a miniature version for smartphones. While initially good enough for many users, this was the approach of a titan aimed at protecting its turf, rather than a nimble tech firm trying to innovate. It was safe, which is often the enemy of creativity.

Along the way, Windows Mobile was surpassed by the iPhone, Android and Palm’s webOS in terms of elegance and features.

Rapidly losing market share in this critical space to those competitors, Microsoft eventually decided it was time to reboot. For the new version, Microsoft scrapped the Windows-based version completely. The need to think mobile first was so critical, the company was willing to risk undermining its biggest franchise, Windows, which brings in billions of dollars a year.

Rather than let that fear of change paralyze it, Microsoft built the new operating system for smartphones from the ground up. And it did it for the right reason:

“The phone is not a PC,” said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows phone program management as he demonstrated the new platform.

“Well, duh,” you say. That sounds obvious. It’s not.

The success of the Windows operating system bred complacency. The temptation is to make sure everything you do reinforces the cash cow.

To cast that aside, to start over, is a fearless move.

I chatted Tuesday with Karen Wong-Duncan, a manager in Microsoft’s mobile communications systems, who said the rapid change and adoption in the smartphone market required more than just incremental changes. This time around, Microsoft was trying to think big.”

Read the full article here.

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