Volker on Mobile

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is out, and it is hosted – very, very fittingly – from Vancouver by the good folks over at WIP Connector.

As always, there is exciting stuff on there. Besides not one but two posts of yours truly (which I trust you have read by now; if not, they’re on the Freemium model for mobile and a look on the web v apps), a lot of the industry’s luminaries are speaking out:

• AJ Wright has an intriguing post on how software and services dominate the overall experience (over and above hardware). A sneak preview into the future…;
• MobiThinking’s Andy Favell looks at if mobile search is working;
• Ajit Jaokar offer us a free download of his latest book on “Open Mobile: Understing the Impact of Open Mobile – Implications for Telecoms/Devices, Web, Social Network, Media and Personal Privacy” (I know the title is a mouthful but the man has a very sharp mind indeed!); and
• Tomi Ahonen, master of stats (and many other things) treats us to an account of Google’s mobile firsts.

Enough teasers, this. Now, go over and read the good stuff here.

Back in summer last year (when there was a whole lot less rain), I looked at comparing the mobile web to mobile apps. There is quite a discussion raging on which it will be. The Church of Jobs raving on about their uncountable number of app downloads on the one hand, and the brave warriors of ubiquity on a technical level on the other.

Asking the right Questions

I would posit that there are three distinct issues to be discussed:

1.    What is the web?

2.    What is the mobile web and is it distinct to the web?

3.    What about the content and its context (irrespective of platform)?

Every attempt to an answer should really start from the point of the user (who, I am aware of that, more and more becomes a creator at the same time) because, without them, there is not much of a (commercial) point to it.

Now, distinct to what old lore may have, users do not tend to care for technology much. They care for what technology allows them to do (or not to do). I therefore think the first question to be asked is: can the web do things better than an app (or, indeed, vice versa)? When you then start looking at what is being done (and what users may want to do if and when technology allows them to in a convenient and accessible way), you will come to a couple of easy conclusions.

The web in itself is just one huge content repository,

… which is – currently – being accessed predominantly by browsers. Some questions on this:

• Has this always be that way? No. Pre-web, there were libraries with clever people in them that could help you find what you needed. With enough time, you would eventually get close(r) to the truth.
• Does this always have to be that way? No. Text input via keyboards is not an “intuitive” way of communicating (the old folks here may remember the finger that hovered like a hawk above the keys of an Olympia). May touch control be a game changer? Later more on this…

Prior to Google, people search through catalogues, and they thought that this was an awesome improvement over having to run to libraries and stuff in order to find things. Along come the Google fairies that deliver the same more easily and quickly, and everyone now feels that catalogues are a little quirky and very old-fashioned indeed.

This is to illustrate that the packaging and connection into discovery mechanisms are more important to the usability of the content than its actual delivery. Ease of access matters as, otherwise, there is, well, none.

The mobile web is the web, the web and nothing but the web.

It only so happens it is being accessed from a device with a smaller form factor (that is, until H&M starts shipping those iPad anoraks with monstrously big pockets next autumn). Increasingly, browsers available for mobile devices render web content originally formatted (not created!) for larger devices for the smaller screens. This does not, however, mean that they are the best way to deliver content to a small device.

One big thing speaking in favour of a unified web platform (including on mobile devices) to deploy content is, of course, volume and unit costs: all other things equal, the cost of deploying via a unified web platform is significantly lower than on others (no need to build custom solutions for every man and his dog and unit costs drop to virtually zero very quickly. This is arguably the key argument in favour of the web but I would suggest that it will only work if you can deliver at least as well as other routes of deploying that content offer to.

The usefulness of content is, per se, independent from the device.

In other words, device constraints have, per se, nothing to do with content being accessed, used, consumed, processed. By way of example, who would have thought that people would read a book on the go in the early 90s? Doesn’t seem to be a big thing anymore today, does it? And why not? Because we got used to solutions that make this convenient.

It is a question of packaging and approach that will determine how well (or poorly) access and usage of content on any device works. If you call it an app or a widget or whatever else does not matter. Most people just do not care. They look at how easy it is to retrieve the latest weather forecast. If an app does that more quickly and comfortably, they’ll use that. If a widget does the same thing, they’ll choose what they like more. And if you can deliver the same thing as easily, as comfortably, as quickly and as discoverable on the web, they might just do that.

Not everything is delivered best on the web

Now, the web is big, it is very big indeed but it is unlikely – despite of what Apple tells us – that there will be an app for every web page. Then again, does there need to be? No. Why not? Because not every web page will be accessed from mobile devices or, rather, will not need to be accessed from mobile devices in numbers large enough to be of commercial relevance.

Hah, I hear you say, he is taking a short cut here: the above implies that, if there is a need to access content from a web page, an app is the better solution. And, yes, you are right. But I will come to this later.

Sometimes, the web does not even work well through a browser. Google Earth is one of these: it is a desktop application because of functionality constraints over the web. It is connected, mind you.

Not everything is best delivered through an app

The equation works around the other way, too. There are things I will normally access through a browser, simply because it would be too onerous to have a single app for all web pages I access. Moreover, there are indeed web pages (this blog included) that use nifty code (don’t ask me; it’s run through WP plug-ins) to render content in a more useful way for smaller devices. Would you care much for a “Volker on Mobile app”? Probably not. Because I only update this blog a couple of times a week, and it probably does not generate enough value-add to merit the (presumably) superior functionality you could deliver with an app.

Some things don’t work on Mobile, or do they?

Did you ever use Google Earth via its iPhone app? If not, let me tell you that is a pretty poor experience compared to the wow-feeling all of us will have felt the first time we played around with it on their desktop app. Why? Because it just doesn’t translate properly. Imagine watching Independence Day on the iPod Touch: you’d get cute little spaceships but not really the awe-inspiring size Emmerich had in mind when shooting it.

Both of these lack of one thing mobile can never deliver, namely the big screen. They are, in their current packaging, unsuitable. This may not however apply to subsets of the content and/or information embedded in them. Google Earth may provide useful data that, if re-packaged, delivers a powerful and good user experience on a mobile device, too.

Functionality and Usability are King and Queen

Almost all considerations result from and in questions of functionality and usability. On devices with larger form factors and constant high-bandwidth connections, a lot of rich content can be appropriately delivered via a web browser. The same cannot (yet) be said of mobile devices. Even with 3G, performance of rich media can often be shoddy. Poor user experience = frustration = low or no usage.

With 4G on its way, this may change considerably. With down-speeds North of 10 Mbps to your mobile device, there is a lot of rich content that you can get to your device in no time (or, rather, real time). That would be functionality solved then.

In the short and medium term, I see, however, two other constraints, and these are a) usability from a device perspective and b) usability from a user perspective.

Currently, a device running constantly on a high-speed data connection sucks battery life. With an iPhone already running on something like 30 minutes when in full use (OK, I exaggerate, and, yes, I do know that Nokias do better – but then, they are not as usable [anymore]), this is a non-starter. People will not do it. Once this is solved (and this is a question of when, not of if), this goes away, and that will be a huge constraint removed.

The other obstacle is usability from a user perspective. What does an app actually do? It pre-packages content. And because it (or some of it) is already in there, you don’t have to download it again. It also allows you to build in specific input mechanisms that optimise use for the mobile device (and how this impacts uptake, the iPhone has shown!).

Touch as a game changer?

Touch control is very much on the fore. And it makes perfect sense: that stylus just seems to dangle on the end of one (OK, normally two) of your limbs, it’s always on, it’s always with you (quite literally at arm’s reach) and you learn how to control it from pretty early on in life. Heck, it’s even been used to get us onto this earth in the first place (or so some people believe).

Touch control then also does away with a few constraints in particular on mobile screens (where mouse control, touchpads, etc are not normally readily available nor as useful as they are on a desktop). So once HTML5 is widely deployed (which – I am told – makes the UI life within web pages a whole lot easier), the usability thing might just go the way of the mobile web.

Touch control (and other nifty things; check here for another Apple patent on finger-based input using the camera) then propels the usability forward (or back? the first maps were arguably drawn with fingers in the sand…), and this will be quite helpful – in particular also on the smaller device.

Until then, build apps that incorporate controls that make the user’s life easy (or at least easier). If you call them apps, widgets or whatever else you can come up with, doesn’t really matter…

There have been reports (referred to by this here) pondering if Motorola grabbed an “exclusive” deal with the Google-led Open Handset Alliance for Android 2.0 on its Droid (or, in Europe et al, Milestone) handset. There does not appear to being any formal confirmation of this but it was mentioned that, anecdotally, other vendors (and fellow members of the Open Handset Alliance) like HTC, LG, Kyocera and Samsung were still deploying version 1.5.

They quoted industry analyst Ross Rubin as to why Android 2.0 debuted on a Motorola device:

[...] There could be several reasons. Verizon’s subscriber strength and more direct competition with AT&T and the iPhone may have led it to push for Android 2.0 to be more competitive. Or it could be simple product development timetables. Moving forward, HTC will want to put its Sense user experience on top of Android 2.0, which requires development time. Google wants a healthy Android ecosystem and a competitive Motorola contributes to that.

The article went on to refer to the respective releases for 1.0 and 1.5 (both to HTC). However, one might argue that, for the first two releases, there was not much harm done in working more closely with HTC as they were the front-runners on deploying an Android phone, so that the concerted marketing buzz etc might have been justified. However, now that there is a large number of vendors deploying, one might query the compliance of the term “open source” with such exclusivity arrangements.

It also highlights the dominance Google has in the Open Handset Alliance which might, longer-term, lead to assertions that Google is in fact using the open source road as a cover to push what is effectively an OS largely driven by them. I am not implying that it is and a healthy ecosystem with multiple strong is important in particular for the launch of a new OS in a space so full of powerful multi-nationals but there is a fine line to walk in order to get it right.

It was an eventful week but I shall pick Google’s acquisition of AdMob as my top (well, maybe only #2) item. A game changer, the final acknowledgement of the power of mobile, there is a lot one can find to describe the deal and for all the right reasons:

The acquisition of Admob by Google shows Google’s commitment to “mobile, mobile, mobile”, which in itself is encouraging for the sector that is – despite a number of larger players evolving and despite the still relatively recent paradigm shift initiated by the iPhone – still fledgling. That in isolation makes it great news for the mobile sector!

From Google’s and Admob’s respective business perspectives, it appears to make eminent sense, too (and I am not privy to their numbers): Admob will be able to bulk up and cement its leadership position in the segment. Its inventory and back-end ad management will be able to dip into Google’s vast resources, which is great for them. Google probably realized that Admob’s strength meant that they would be difficult to beat. And who you can’t beat, you shall join (or, in Google’s case, buy) them. For Google, it is a smart move as it gives them critical mass in an ad format where they have not nearly been as dominant as for other formats and gives them access to a lot of eyeballs.

The eyeballs bit is, however, maybe the concerning piece of this: Google makes 97% of its revenues from its legacy business using AdSense, AdWords, etc. Nothing much has changed for a couple of years and it has miserably failed with a couple of acquisitions (anyone remembering “the 2 kings have gotten together” [1:00]?), YouTube is a great site but did Google maximize it (yet)? Probably not. Jaiku was more than just a worthy competitor to Twitter; they were history the moment Google bought them (well, it was eventually moved to Google’s App Engine but no one seems to have made much use of it).

As much as I admire Google, the company (where – get this -, when in new product development, you are allegedly judged by the number of failures you managed to produce! Very, very good and gutsy thinking!), it has to get its head around more “modern” approaches to marketing and engagement. Text and display ads alone won’t cut it in the long run… But, in any event, the combination with AdMob will give Google a little bit more of a runway to get this right and – smart companies both of them are – I am sure there is more than enough brain cells to get it right. All good!

I do not normally do this but when Mary Meeker, the iconic Morgan Stanley researcher, this is too good to let it slip (and too voluminous to blog in detail), so I am posting her presentation here. Mobile starts in earnest on slide 28 et seq. Enjoy!

If you want to download it, you can do this here.

Yesterday, I blogged about Motorola’s Motoblur UI, which adds an additional SDK for its specific APIs beyond the standard Android stacks. I reckoned that this might mean more fragmentation, which would push it a step closer to the nightmare that was/is J2ME.

I received two quick reactions to this: one reader commented that this was only bad if you wouldn’t have good tools and compilers. To him (@tederf), I would respond that, while it is certainly true that good tools reduce the friction, raise efficiencies and alleviate overall pain, the smallest common denominator is always just that. In my previous companies, we used to produce up to seven or eight different J2ME builds in order to maximise performance of our games on the huge spread of handsets. Could we have done with one build? Probably. Would the result have been great? Almost certainly not!

Anyway, the more interesting reaction came from the good folks at Motorola themselves. They reckoned (via Twitter; they are @motoblur) that:

with all due respect, I feel you’ve misunderstood motoblur, and android fragmentation concerns are a wee bit overblown.

Now, now. I offered them a guest post here in order to explain this further. I have unfortunately not yet had a response (which I take, applying Twitter attention spans, as lasting silence). But I still wanted to use the opportunity to elaborate a little more on this (and, no, I will not lament Moto’s lost opportunity to feature their wares on this humble site).

To clarify a couple of things outright:

1. I would be delighted would I be mistaken (and note that I am not a techie, so this is a distinct possibility!).
2. I would be equally delighted would Motorola manage to regain some of its lost ground. The world clearly would be a better place with another strong manufacturer regaining old strengths (although maybe with better UI this time around – which Motoblur certainly seems to offer [see picture on the right of the Motorola CLIQ!).

But let’s go back to the general issue of Android fragmentation threats (the fact that I pointed this out – again – en cas de Moto is of course purely coincidental).

So let’s dive in: with open source software, there is always the intrinsic possibility that fragmentation will occur. Why do people customize it? Because they can! vendors, developers and operators that make up the Open Handset Alliance (which releases Android) can tweak is in whichever way they like (or “need” to) and for any number of reasons: to protect IP, to optimize performance on their network or for certain devices or simply because they feel they need some distinguishing factors, some degree of uniqueness. The result can be, however, as one analyst puts it that

there will be multiple flavors of Android, all of them incompatible with each other. That, in turn, necessitates different versions of each application or updates to accommodate the entire device ecosystem. On the whole, such activity negates the cost efficiencies inherent in the idea of a standard, open operating system, and potentially makes the Android Market a confusing place to shop for widgets.

And that’s what you call fragmentation. Interestingly, there were rumours that Google had made the Open Handset Alliance members sign “non-fragmentation agreements” but it seems that this is either not true or not enforceable.

Others point out that HTC, Samsung, Dell, Verizon, (may I add Motorola?) all have phones on the way that run on different software to the others. Reports of version conflicts, lack of backward compatibility, etc, etc. I mean, hell, there is even an “alternative” Android app store (with 223 apps as of tonight)… Sounds familiar?

Dear Motoblur, if it is different with your SDK, please enlighten us! I am sure I will not be the only one applauding!

Image Credit: http://www.visionmobile.com

A new round of fragmentation looms. It is something I have been fearing for a while now: that OEM (and carriers) would make use of the open source of the likes of Android and LiMo to produce their very own flavour of apps. So after Vodafone’s 360 announcement (with customized LiMo storefronts, etc), Motorola announced so-called “signature apps” from a number of developers that are all delivered through Motorola’s new “Motoblur” user interface, which

is based on the Google-backed Android platform for mobile systems. Motorola [will] offer an additional SDK for its APIs beyond what is available for Android.

And then it said that

Over a period of time–we’re not there yet–we’ll allow the APIs to be available so people can develop many more applications than we can think of ourselves, but it’ll take us a little bit of time to mature ourselves to a place that we could open up APIs.

Ouch. An additional SDK. Which is not yet there yet. Whilst the Motoblur UI looks actually quite nice, this sounds suspiciously like another round of walled gardens, onerous internal and external QA, fragmentation and pretty much a fall back into the traps of the J2ME uber-customized world where one needs to support hundreds of devices for a commercial roll-out (with the trouble of course being that, all too often, that work meant that it would no longer be commercially very sensible). Oh dear…

It makes one want to call out for a quick advancement of HTML5 with Gears and all, so that one won’t need apps after all. The issue of connectivity and usability, etc would of course still be there. Such despair…

As Android continues to roll out (at least 18 devices by year-end), the ecosystem around it starts to sprout, too. To highlight this, an Android-centered business and development-oriented conference, Droidcon, will hit Berlin on 4 November, and I will be giving a keynote on licensing models and open source (full programme here).

It looks like a very exciting event, so I’d like to encourage everyone to come (there are 4 parallel tracks, so you do not have to listen to my ranting…)! Register here (and, no, I do not earn a commission).

I’ll post a little preview on what I will be talking about more specifically ahead of the event, so stay tuned.

After much huffing and puffing, Vodafone unveiled yesterday what everyone had been waiting for for months and months: its new Vodafone 360 concept, which will replace Vodafone Live! It launches on – drumroll – LiMo-OS Linux phones from Samsung with touchscreen and GPS and, for the H1, AMOLED display (yum!), WiFi, HSDPA, etc, etc, etc. and also supports a fairly big range of Nokia (not on the N97 though!) and Sony Ericsson devices (although, judging by the screenshots, it doesn’t look as sexy on those).

The 360 thing is, according to the press release

a brand new set of internet services for the mobile and PC which gathers all of a customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites (like music, games, photos and video) in one place.

It has an address book with nodes into Facebook, IM (Windows and Google) and will “soon” also cover Twitter, Hyves and StudiVZ (the German Facebook clone). Two tailor-made (!) handsets that use a proprietary (!) interface based on LiMo’s release 2 mobile Linux OS. Users can create groups across different networks (which is very neat!), an app store with 1,000 apps at launch (no word so far what this comprises) and syncing with your computer.

So is this the big thing then? Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly:

The Good

• The service reaches out. It acknowledges (this is a big step for most carriers!) that users have a life outside their carrier. Facebook, Live Messenger and Google Talk are a bit thin, I’d say, but let’s cut them some slack; the others will follow.
• It has a couple of neat twists built-in: I mentioned a few above but there is also a feature that uses some spooky thing called the “Vodafone’s proximity algorythm” and which basically automatically favourites your most-loved people: the most frequently contacted people (like your mom?) come closer to the front.
• At least on the custom-built devices, it looks much better than previous attempts by carriers to make something look and feel a little more user-friendly.
• I hear that the whole widget-thing should be really neat. Now, I haven’t seen any of it as yet but the concept sounds good.
• It works across different operating systems (at least LiMo and Symbian).

As a funny side remark, the PR blurb points out that

The beauty of Vodafone 360 is that all the services work together and they are easy to use.

So they weren’t before, huh? — sorry, couldn’t resist…

The Bad

Some commentators mentioned that the cloud-hosted address book and generally aggregation of contacts, networks etc through a provider rather than through the handset would tie people to the provider more closely (which might not actually be anything Vodafone would object to). I am not sure how tough it would really be (as you have your computer back-up), so easy on that.

It is still very much a closed-circuit affair: It is Vodafone and no one else. It is proprietary, tailor-made and not open. This is not good (and, yes, I know that the oft-cited iPhone is proprietary and tailor-made, too). Alas, its applications are not – unless your name is Spotify; then it takes a little longer…

The Ugly

The underlying proprietary thinking is nothing I can see working longer term. In a world that is (Vodafone press speak)

a substantiator of Vodafone’s new brand expression – ‘power to you’ – which is focused on putting the customer in control and enabling simple and easy to manage communications, both mobile and fixed

this is also a little bit of a contradiction.

But I will say that it seems to be the nicest operator-built environment I have seen so far. And for this to come from the world’s largest operator is no mean feat and might actually yield some results. Go on, guys, tweak it, improve it, show us!

Nokia struck again, it seems. This time? No, not another multi-billion dollar acquisition such as Navteq but another tiny start-up, namely the “boutique” travel social network Dopplr, which the Finnish telecoms giant allegedly gobbled up for anywhere between €10-15m. Hm. Hm Hm…

Dopplr’s Business Case

Let’s see what Dopplr does (besides its co-founder [and angel investor] being an old Nokia hand): the idea is to share trips with friends so that a) people coincidentally going to the same place at the same time (“what??? you will be in Barcelona in the second week of February, too???”) will find each other and b) they can share cool and “unique” tips from other travelers. It is (was?) one of the group of location-aware social networks that have been and are still waiting to come out of cover.

Nokia’s Master Plan

The deal is great for the Dopplr guys who seem to have made a nice return and the pieces of the jigsaw on a very, very, very high level seem to make sense: Nokia is assembling a location-based empire. They acquired Navteq in what was Finland’s largest acquisition ever, they bought German location social network Plazes, and now Dopplr. And it now all comes together at Ovi Maps (which looks quite good!). Makes all sense, huh? The rationale was – arguably – to do to sat-nav systems what they did to (small) digital cameras: kill them and incorporate it into their phones (or multimedia devices). When Nokia moved to Carl-Zeiss lenses, mobile phone camera were basically on par with low- and mid-tier digital cameras. Why carry 2 devices if 1 will do the same job. Easy! And boy did it work!

So, let’s do the same with maps. And, more importantly perhaps, do not maps (and location-awareness in general) find a completely new way of justification in mobile phones, i.e. in devices that are, well, intrinsically mobile? Yes, it does. When Steve Jobs premiered the original iPhone, he famously ordered coffee from the nearest Starbucks, using a maps application. Simple, right? Wooing the masses but nothing much in it, right?

But! On the maps side, Nokia competes against Google Maps (this is what Jobs was using), which is free (if one leaves aside the probably not insignificant investment that will have gone into this service with its various extensions such as Streetview et al). It also has an open API and many, many people use this. It is embedded on the iPhone (Jobs again) and most people I know use it on their Blackberry because it is better than RIM’s own offering. A free download to most phones, Nokias included.

The Impact of (Fairly) Open Networks

Now, I never got these highly specialized things anyway. I find them way to complex to handle: when I am going on a business trip, I am normally much too busy to feed data in some travel network or other. And when I am going on a personal vacation, I am a) even busier and b) want to be left alone (normally). Oh, and did you see that Twitter plans something like this, too?

But even aside from this, when it comes to “being found”, all my friends (real and virtual) knew through my blog, through Twitter and Facebook that I was going to France this summer. Do I really need another, specialized service for this, over and above the ones that can provide that information and also everything else? In other words: does it make sense to try and hone a super-focused service when similar (if not identical) results can – and already are being – achieved through smart filters on networks that have somewhat of a head-start when it comes to active users? I mean, Facebook has more than 300m users, MySpace – even if it seems to be struggling a little lately – will have more than 150m. And then you have Twitter, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, StudyVZ, etc, etc, etc. – that is more than Nokia sells all year.

Now, the existing players are adding geographical awareness as an additional feature to their services. I mean, even YouTube is doing it!

But the real point is: whoever uses one of these (say, when you are in Brazil, you use Orkut), there is a certain likelihood that your friends will, too. Otherwise, you would not be on it. Need more? I doubt it.

On top of that, it is – arguably – much easier to integrate a location-based function into a network that already has hundreds of millions of users (and I am not talking of hundreds of millions phone users because they only are potential users of any service that might come with the phone) than to build one. Nokia does certainly have a great starting point (it sells more devices per year than Facebook and Twitter users combined; see – old – numbers here) but they are not with Nokia because it provides such a great network but because their phones are good.

When it comes to services, it has become an issue of today’s mash-up world where access and resulting services go across a variety of – more often than not – open offerings rather than tight proprietary ones, and Nokia seems to be struggling of getting to grips with this. Some commentators compared it with Yahoo!’s M&A swoop in order to try and grab back the love it lost to Google and others. Even if one isn’t so harsh, it seems obvious that the thought pattern behind Nokia’s thinking might be a little outdated. I stand to be corrected (and would love to be since Nokia has brought a lot of really great stuff to the world) but that is what is worrying me. So congratulations again to the Dopplr team again but, dear Nokia, for the time being I remain skeptical as to the commercial sense of it (and, yes, I appreciate that €10-15m is but a fly speck on your balance sheet if it fails…).