Tag: smartphone

When NOT to use your iPhone…

I am (nearly) terribly sorry that I appear to be cross-posting a lot of great stuff from the good folks at Gawker/Gizmodo these days rather than furthering the world’s knowledge with my (presumed) insights but this one is – yet again – hilarious:

Image credit: http://gizmodo.com/5419435/a-romance-flowchart-when-is-it-inappropriate-to-use-your-iphone

What about this Dell Phone?

Dell, after a lot of denials, finally confirmed release of its first smartphone, the Dell Mini 3. The device will run on Android (as well as on China Mobile’s specific Android flavour, called OPhone) and features a 3.5” touchscreen. Otherwise? Erm, not much known. No WiFi for China to be sure, at least not at the start.

In a move that was ridiculed by some, Dell chose China Mobile and Claro Brasil as its first partners to distribute it. Some sources suggested this may be “crazy” but I am wondering why that is so? Because it’s not – no offence – Idaho? China Mobile has 508m subscribers, that is 200m more than the population of the US. Claro has 28m subscribers in Brazil, its holding company America Movil has 194.3m subscribers. That’s not shabby! And there is larger growth potential in these markets, too. The raised eyebrows may simply come from the fact that this is (or at least appears to be) the first time that a US vendor chose emerging markets as its launch territories. I would suggest that this is only the beginning: it is these markets where the large majority of user growth resides. Good move that.

Now to the more critical points, and a small one at first: They could have done better on the marketing. Apple shows everyone how it’s done: come out with a bang and woe them. I do not think there is a need to outperform competitors on the technical side but a strong launch allows you to tell your story rather than leave it to a plethora of commentators to pave the way.

The larger question will be if and what the Dell smartphones offer that others don’t. Will a Dell phone connect more seamlessly with a Dell computer (or any computer for that matter?). Will it have some nifty little features that have the power to make a difference? Never mind that Michael Dell may not have the coolness factor of Steve Jobs; that’s fine. But will the devices be good? Dell has shown it can do it (with its PDA Axim that of course died together with the rest of the market). The smartphone market is only starting to evolve, so the timing might be better this time. Let’s see…

iPhone outsells N-Series

Last week was quarterly reporting week, and both Apple and Nokia let us have a glimpse on whatever they did. Subsequently, some reported (via Twitter) that the iPhone outsold the N series for the first time.

Nokia first: In Q2, Nokia sold 103.2m units (down 15% year-on-year but 11% as compared to Q1). Total sales of “smartphones” amounted to 16.9m devices, of which 4.6m were N series (the balance being made up of E series and some “numbered” devices, of which the 5800 series took the biggest share). The total number of Nokia smartphones (or “converged devices”) in market was thought to be 41m. Nokia estimated its share of the smartphone market to amount to 41%, which would be up 2 points from the previous quarter. I wonder…

Apple, by contrast, reported that it sold a whopping 5.2m iPhones in Q2 (Apple’s financial Q3), which means that the iPhone outsold the Nokia flagship smartphone series for the first time. A couple of years ago, no one would have thought this was possible! It is noteworthy that this does not even include the iPhone 3GS, which only went on sale after the close of the quarter.

After all the worries about Nokia’s performance (see e.g. here, here and here) and the relevance of Apple’s “minute” market share in relation to the total handset market, this is a very important benchmark: not only does Apple beat Nokia in an important segment (the N-series traditionally spear-headed Nokia’s mass market assault on the higher-end side of handsets) but it also shows the dynamics behind Apple. Nokia’s distribution and incumbent market footprint is hugely superior than Apple’s and yet Apple manages to outsell them. Very impressive indeed!

No Smart Phone, Want Apps…

phonesAccording to a little piece of research, we might all have been wrong: it is not that owners of feature phones (the embellishing term for the “not so smart” phones) do not want content, they do, or at least “over” 90% of them do.

The report said they found “strong interest” in apps with VoIP, IM and navigation leading the pack. Now, is this Apple’s ads (“there’s an app for that”) having an impact? Or did these people want that stuff all along and just could not get it? To be clear: there have been VoIP solutions for a while (depending on the carrier of course: Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany weren’t too keen but 3 UK has a specific Skype phone out), there are dozens of mobile IM clients. And when it comes to maps, well, GPS beats triangulation any day and a lot of carriers have traditionally been, erm, cautious with allowing application providers to access network data.

It is striking that the most sought after apps are those that – anecdotally – a lot of smartphone owners use regularly, and also that most of these come for free (to the user). So is it the aspirational look at the guy with the posher phone who gets stuff for free? I wonder…

Android Wave rolls in

No, this post will not muse over Google’s new Wave announcement today. I rather wanted to give a brief update on the wave of Android devices that is promising to roll in over the course of this year. I had posted on this before (e.g. here and here), and Google, at its Google I/O developer conference gave a hint (yes, funny enough through Yahoo! News…) on the size of the deployments we can expect this year. And its not bad at all: 18-20 Android phones this year tells us Andy Rubin, Google’s Sr. Director for Mobile Platforms. The article then goes on to quote a number of analysts on earth-shattering insights but let’s leave these aside.

Android’s advantage was always going to be two-fold:

  1. As an open-source platform based on a Linux kernel it would be a) cheap and b) stable. This is invaluable for handset manufacturers as it reduces their development costs for new handsets significantly. I have no hard numbers but the rumoured ones are fairly high…
  2. Because it is a stand-alone OS rather than a combo of hardware and software (as the iPhone or – at least for the time being – Blackberry devices are), it will be used and deployed by a plethora of manufacturers rather than only one. And, well, this results in many more devices in the market (think MS DOS vs. Apple OS).

And this is now starting to show…

In terms of increase of “smart” phones (and these will, I would suggest, in the future include models we would today class as “feature” phones) this is seriously good news. How a slick and versatile operating system can spurn extended use of a mobile device beyond voice and SMS was impressively shown by the iPhone (8% smart phone market share equal 43% of web requests). Others are catching up (cf. here and here) and the more is the merrier when it comes to providing devices consumers actually can use. Avoid the term of “educating the consumer”; the consumer is quite educated but if people need a customer service helpline to even open the box (courtesy of a cider ad in the UK), one must not be surprised that people do not use it. Ease of use rules and well-made operating systems support that.

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