RIM still has a chance with Blackberry but it needs to move fast!
Typing RIM into Google News makes for nasty reading. If you are unaware of the current situation for the Canadian phone maker, here are some choice headlines:
- BlackBerry delay darkens RIM’s future
- RIM Nose Dives After Another Disaster Of An Earnings Report
- Apple’s App Store alone worth more than RIM
- RIM’s Absurd Plan To Fix Itself: Do Better Advertising In 2012
- RIM activist renews call for leadership change
And that’s just a snapshot.
If I was Mike Lazaridis or Jim Balsillie, I would be wondering two things, one where did it all go wrong and what can be done about it. The world isn’t interested in the first question and deeply concerned about RIMs’ plan to answer the second.
Can console gaming companies (Nintendo, Sony) succeed in the mobile market?
PS Vita
My latest article on PostDesk is about how Sony has the option to create three new pathways for the consumer with new convergence devices in the pipeline it has the means to deliver it, but in order for it to succeed it needs to leave devices such as the PS Vita behind.
What kind of fish do you want to be?
I’ve been wanting to get back into development for a while now and I’m been mulling over what platform to target and I’ve decided on Window Phone. Now some of you maybe wondering why would I target a platform with few customers and limited market share, there are two driving factors behind my decision.
The first is the learning hurdle, two years ago I used to be a .net developer, creating superawesomesauce applications for teaching and learning and although this was in VB.net (dont throw things). This means that although C# is a different (and vastly superior) language, it isn’t too much of a leap.
The second reason is more pragmatic, namely App discovery.
I meet a lot of developers in my day job as a developer evangelist and they are all beginning to face the same problem, standing out for from the crowd. At time of writing the most popular App store have over five hundred thousand Apps available for download, how does a developer get noticed? More importantly how does a customer notice a developers work?
Sure if you’re lucky you might get featured on the front page of an App store, but the odds are slim. If you’ve got a lot of VC funding (or a big company behind you), you can afford to pay for advertising and marketing, but this is difficult path with no guarantees of success. If you’re really lucky you might get social media working for you, that quintessential business driver, word of mouth. I trust my friends more than I do advertising (even though they themselves may be recommending based on awareness created by an advert), as there is little chance of their recommendation being anything but genuine.
Indeed Matt Mills co founder of usTwo, creators of Whale Trail spoke to the Guardian on the importance of word of mouth for their revenue model now that Apple’s ‘New Game Of The Week’ promotion has finished:
“We’re hoping that if somebody’s downloading it, they’ll be talking about it, and there are 2-3 big updates planned over the next 6-8 weeks,” says Mills. “We need to get to the people in the pub. Game Of The Week is fantastic: it tells us we’ve made something special. But my wife, mum, dad or sisters don’t really look at the App Store in that way. They find out about new apps when somebody tells them.”
But getting people to talk about your App is very, very hard (but not impossible) so most developers have no choice but to upload and cross their fingers.
So my question to you is this If you are working on your own, is being another item in an overstocked store the best way to get noticed?
I don’t think it is, certainly if you are just getting started in the App industry.
Which is why I am looking at Windows Phone, yes it may only have 5% market share at time of writing and an under developed App store but I see that as an opportunity. The recent Mango update, the Windows Platform has had numerous improvements and it has been well received by industry pundits and consumers alike. The most notable addition has been Nokia’s conversion from Symbian, which has now begun to energise both Windows Phone developers and, perhaps more importantly other hardware partners. Indeed, on watching the unveiling of the Lumia 800 and 710, and the subsequent revelation that these phones would have Nokia’s largest marketing budget ever HTC and Samsung confirmed that they would increase their marketing budgets to compete. Which means that we’ll be seeing a lot more Windows Phone devices around, especially if they can get the price point so that they can offer most Windows Phones free on contract.
But thats the future, in the short term there is still an App store that needs developers, customers that wants to buy Apps and most importantly a provider that is actively promoting developers.
In the end it comes down to this, do you want to be a small fish in a big pond, or a big fish in a small pond?
And for that reason, I’m out…..
Commuting into London with my girlfriend is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my day, as before I used work from home so would ‘lose’ about four hours of us time. We normally talk about plans for the day, news items, things of interest on twitter – the usual stuff.
Today was different.
As I missspelled yet another tweet I decicded that it was time to install a new keyboard; namely Swiftkey. Swiftkey is a popular replacment for the stock Android powered by an AI engine that helps predict your intentions with greater accuracy. Accuracy was something I dearly needed, as since moving to Android I felt like I had regressed to my early dyslexic days getting words and letters all wrong.
So off I went to the marketplace, thinking isn’t it great that I have the option to replace something as fundamental as the keyboard. Perhaps Android isn’t so bad after all.
Installation and setup was fairly simple, and soon enough I had a shiny new keyboard to use. Which promprly started to bog down my system and hold on key presses. Now some of you may have stuck with it, but this really rubbed me up the wrong way and after ten minutes of not much improvement I made my way to the uninstall menu.
Big mistake.
After uninstalling Swiftkey my keyboard defaulted to the chinese/english layout with no obvious way to change it back to the stock keyboard. At this point my girlfriend asked me a question about a tweet of mine, deep in thought of how to sort out this problem I responded with an irritable “What?”.
Afterwards I put the phone away and we continued our normal commute, but I did mull over the problem. As I was walking towards TechHub, it then hit me, that I wasn’t getting annoyed over a keyboard, it was the operating system.
The Android keyboard is a microcosm for the overall platform, the very nature of android and the fact that you can replace something as important as a keyboard is used as excuse for a substandard effort. The mindset feels like (and this is just my personal opinion) that the feeling is that its ok, not bad, satisfactory. Not good enough? Don’t worry install something else!
I fail to see how making the user apply plasters, bandages and gauze to a platform to correct its faults, is not only acceptable but lauded as a unique selling point.
Android and I are getting a divorce, it isn’t amicable.
Price, a new USP for WebOS
I think we are beginning to see the benefits of the HP takeover of Palm.
The launch of the Touchpad, was a tad lacklustre to say the least. Laggy software, the now infamous ‘soft’ launch, indifferent reviews and the sad (and unfair) fact that it wasn’t iPad damaged the reputation of the Touchpad in the important first month.
Palm had a history of annoying its early adopters, for example launching the Pre + not long after the Pre and it seems that this has carried over to the new GBU within HP. This weekend was a Touchpad firesale, in selected stores across America you could get a 16gb TouchPad for as little as $299 (£182!). Had I invested £399 ($652) in a 16gb TouchPad at launch, I would be more than annoyed.
However, this isn’t a post deriding HP for annoying early adopters in the aim trying to stimulate sales, far from it.
I think its the only way for the TouchPad to succeed.
Finding a new USP:
It had probably calculated that the die hard early adopters could be counted on to line up on day one, however the platform cannot succeed on early adopter sales alone. It also knew that to succeed in this highly competitive market (then again thinking about, its not really all that competitive with Apple having 61% of the market), where every other tablet manufacturer are fighting over the 30% it needed to change the narrative.
I have spoken before about how HP couldnt fight Apple on the same level and win, it needed a hook a USP all of its own. Being not Apple wasn’t good enough, iOS 5 takes a lot of good features from Webos such as notifications, cable-less syncing, cloud storage and if rumors are true even inductive charging.
In short, WebOS has lost the features that separated it from the pack, before the consumer was even aware that it had them.
A product in an market with a defacto leader has a few options to distinguish itself:
Quality, features or price.
It was always going to be difficult to compete on quality as Apple has the lead on unibody construction (although the TouchPad isn’t too far from it), the strengths of WebOS such as Just Type and true multitasking come through use not in 30 second commercial so make it a difficult pitch.
Which leaves price.
HP knows how to do one thing well and that’s drive hardware sales, after all until recently it was the worlds leading PC manufacturer. It does this through competitive pricing which becomes the start point for deep discounting and that’s exactly what it has done with the TouchPad.
Pricing conundrum:
Pricing against iPad is a double edged sword, too high (ala Xoom) and you alienate your audience (“Why should I get that when the iPad is X?”), but launching at the same pricepoint is also difficult (“Why should I buy X, when the iPad is the same price?”).
There are many Android tablets that are cheaper than the iPad, but to get to that price point they have sacrificed many important features that negatively effect the user experience that make it difficult justify the purchase (“X is cheap, but it really looks it”). There are however, very few (if any) tablets that offer a decent operating system, sufficient specifications to run it smoothly (well after the 3.0.2 update anyhow) that also feel good in the hand and are cheaper than the iPad.
If the TouchPad was available in the UK for £250-300 it would fly off the shelves, which is why (if Twitter is anything to go buy) the TouchPad has been selling pretty well over in the land of the free this weekend.
It a dangerous game, but price is the only USP that HP can use to turn heads, once they have the unit in there hands the thought becomes: “It’s well built, it looks good, ok it isnt an iPad but it is a hell of a lot cheaper”.
In these hard times, price is everything but its also nice to get a great product too.
Podcasting
I’ve been thinking about doing a podcast for a while and now I’ve finally done one!
Its a bit rough around the edges but it covers the following subjects:
In the podcast I talk about the Google V microsoft slagging match, RIM new handsets, Android revenue issues and the new HP Touchpad!
iMessage: A Clarion call for Operators
So WWDC (Apples developer conference) has come and gone and it did not disappoint.
We get iOS that fixes a whole bunch of issues like finally getting rid of Apples hugely annoying modal notification system but that’s not what i’m talking about tonight.
No, whilst that feature is long overdue, the one that really grabbed my attention was iMessage.
iMessage, shit just got real
Now the concept of iMessage is simple, it enables all devices capable of running iOS5 can send SMS style messages.
So a iPod Touch 3G, 4G, iPad WiFi, iPad 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 can now communicate to each other with an SMS message, except that they aren’t SMS messages as they run over data.
And that after I processed that announcement, I had two thoughts:
- As a consumer, its a great idea
- Operators are going to lose a lot of SMS revenue
Preamble: INNTW reviews the Pre 2
I had an rough relationship with the Palm Pre last year, I loved the platform but in the end swapped it for an iPhone 4. The reasons were simple, poor quality hardware and sub par performance.
Pre 2
As highlighted in my earlier posts, I dont tend to use many apps, sure on my iPhone I have plenty installed but my core are twitter, facebook and safari. Secondary Apps are lightbike and kindle. Shocking I know, but those are my main uses of both my iPhone and my iPad.
Kindle is coming to webos but sadly I think light bike is but a dream…
Still I had the Pre – for around two weeks and it went from being a techno joy to being just plain annoying, I suspect that the fact that although my app need were satisfied, ‘this was as good as it gets’ put a dampner on things. Combine this with the dissapointing build quality and sluggish performance (I did overclock it but I feel it should be optional rather than mandatory) meant that the Pre and I were doomed.
So why am I posting about the Pre 2? Well as said I’m a big fan of the WebOS platform and when Palm announced it was setting up a developer device program, I signed up immediately. A couple of months later (due to the overwhelming popularity of the program) and I recieved my Pre 2.
So what’s it like? Pretty impressive.
It corrects many of the Pre’s deficiencies, the touchstone coating over the entire surface of the Pre makes it much nicer to hold, I suspect it will pick up less scratches that the hard plastic of the Pre -. Further enhancing the Pre 2 is the redesign of the front of the phone. These consist of two changes, first (and arguably most importantly) a change to a Gorilla Glass screen. The plastic screen of the Pre – was a real let down for me, it just made it feel cheap and it scratched incredibly easily. The other major change is recessing the ear piece, it’s a simple change but it creates a very iPhone like appearence and brings the Pre 2 closer to a premium device.
The keyboard is much improved, I had found myself getting more and more frustrated with the onscreen keyboard of the iPhone 4, so the transition was welcome. The key action is more satisfying and I find myself making far less mistakes, the cheese grater edge is still present. However, the slider seems to be the same sadly and there is ‘Oreo shimmy’ present, which jars slightly with the rest of the improvements, I don’t have great confidence that the Pre 2 will handle a short fall any better than the original.
Performance is a strange combination of improved and sluggish, launching apps is much improved and TMC has not reared it head just yet. The touchscreen seems to be far less accurate than that of the iPhone 4, I’m not sure of the reason but I find that in some instances, multiple presses are required to make the phone recognise the button press. There are also noticeable pauses when using the gesture area, especially if you switch on ‘advance gestures’.
Now lets get on to the important bit, software.
The changes in WebOS are stunning, I love just type.
Just Type
It enables me to quickly and easily find/search both locally and on the internet. For example If I wanted to find out where Pecroino Sardo came for, I simply swipe up and start typing and I can choose to search for it using twitter, wikipedia and the internet. I can also instantly see how many emails and messages contain that term. You can also add custom search engines (e.g. WordPress), if a website supports just type a notification will pop up at the bottom of the screen and you can install it.
Stacks
Stacks, are a simple but very well thought out idea. As we know WebOS is a true multitasking OS but having multiple cards open can make linked information hard to track. Stacks solve this by stacking (shocking I know!) related items on top of each other. So if I have an email with a hyperlink in it, if I choose to open that link it will stay with that email rather than go to the end of the card list. Both are brilliant ideas and available no where else, these are the features that HP need to be screaming from billboards, but that’s a different subject for another time.
Overall the Pre 2 is an improvement, its not perfect but I am making it my main phone, which is as close to a ringing endorsement as you can get.
HP TouchPad in Education, an opportunity?
State of the Union:
HP TouchPad
- #1: The iPad is the only tablet around in the mind of the consumer, that 90% market share that Apple cited during the iPad 2 launch is no joke.
- #2: The iPad is not perfect
The iPad has driven tablet prices to a hitherto impossible level (see the multitude websites stating the iPad 1 would launch for £999 or similar) and most if not all tablet manufacturers are a year later still scrabbling to catch up. I don’t think that Apple will cede the number one position anytime soon, the total ecosystem it offers is difficult for individual suppliers to combat.
As we all know the UK Education market has been ravaged by cuts and tightening of ICT budgets, institutions nationwide (and globally for that matter) are having to do more with less. At the same time mobile devices are becoming more prevalent both in and outside of education. The iPad has achieved two things, first its created the mindshare for what tablets can do and secondly its raised the bar for what is acceptable for a tablet.
This is a doubled edged sword as its created demand for the device but at a time where investing £399 in a mobile device is difficult to justify.
This become all the more difficult when you try to integrate the iPad into your existing education environment:
- iPads offer no access to the file system so do not work with VLE’s (i.e. you can’t upload into areas)
- Schools can’t use systems like drop box due to third party data protection issues
- You cannot bulk specify a proxy, even with the iPhone configuration meaning that a tech will have to manually enter it on each iOS device (fine for one class, not for an entire school)
- A iPad can only sync with a total of five machines, yet does not offer any out of the box cloud/wireless ways of transmitting content
- iPads are poor content distributors i.e. give a student a task that requires them to create and then share content with the teacher and it will in most cases require 3rd party work arounds
In short the iPad creates fundamental barriers to integrating it into education and Apple is unwilling to help ‘We’re not looking to go in that direction’ is a response I’ve received from an Apple engineer when discussing the above issues. In spite of this, they are the number one requested item by teachers and because of this I think that HP has a distinct opportunity to flourish in the education sector as the only credible alternative to the iPad.
Lets not forget the elephant in the room, Android.
Android tablets fall into two catagories, cheap and nasty or prohibitively expensive. Add to this the lack of a consistant UI (although this may change with Honeycomb) and a lack of tablet formatted apps stacks the deck against wide scale adoption of the platform.
Try to convince a user:
- ‘So it’s cheaper than the iPad?’ No
- ‘Ah so that means it must be lighter!’ No
- ‘But it must have hundreds of tablet Apps!’ No
What is the incentive for the user to invest?
This is the issue that manufacturers of Non – iPads face, everything you do, all of your services are going to be compared to the iPad, whenever I talk about the Xoom, TouchPad to people the word tablet fails to have any resonance ’Oh you mean an iPad…’. Manufacturers need to understand is that the product they are going to buy is an iPad, unless you give them a damn good reason not to. This is clearly demonstrated by the lack of interest in the Motorola Xoom despite having impressive specifications 1280 * 800 resolution screen, 1GB ram, dual core processor etc it means nothing to most users.
TLDR? In short being better wont win the war.
So is HP doomed? I’m not sure.
At WebOS Connect I saw a presentation by Ben Tattersley on his experience as a both Student learning WebOS and as Teacher showing others how to develop WebOS Apps. Ben went on to discuss the success of teaching students WebOS because of the low cost of investing in the platform due to its HTML/Javascript nature. That means a student does not need to buy a new Mac or PC , they can develop everything they need at home and in School.
And it hit me, there’s the hook, the USP for use of the TouchPad within education, it goes a little something like this:
- Offer a slight discount on the hardware, it doesn’t have to be massive but enough for the cheapest model to undercut the 16gb iPad
- Offer a training program for Teachers to learn about WebOS and how develop Apps for themselves
- Offer on site support to those Teachers when they teach these classes
Think of the PR potiential of the above:
- The School gets devices at a discount
- Students get not only access to devices but learn marketable skills for the future
It means that HP doesn’t just sell devices, it offers the those that invest in the TouchPad opportunities to enhance their Students career potential.
Apple is doing everything it can to hold itself back in the market, HP has a real chance to capitalise on it but only if it offers something different.
Tick tock
The clock is ticking, I dont feel that the HD7 is going to be staying in L’s ownership for long.
The reason? Stability.
The HD7 seems to crash a lot, combine this with random graphical glitches and a it doesnt make a convincing long term package. She has also noticed the lack of cut copy and paste (I had failed to mention it before hand…), she still likes the phone but the honeymoon period is well and truly over.
In fact I’m glad that she isn’t a massive multitasker as if she were, it would highlight another drawback in WP7…
Now we know that there is an update coming through to WP7 later on this week (hopefully) this will bring improved memory management which will speed up application, stability fixes and copy cut and paste (but not in third party apps unless they use the textbox control).
Will it give the HD7 a shot in the arm? Only time will tell
