On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Author: Volker Page 47 of 73

RIM's 50m & Symbian's riposte

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On 07/02/2009

In OEM

Blackberry maker RIM announced it had raced through the “epic” 50m device barrier. An honourable feat indeed! Symbian fired of a riposte (or was it Symbian-fan-boy-bloggers that did? I don’t know) that it had sold just under 80m devices in 2007 alone (with a total install base of 250m), and the Blackberry story therefore was to be considered as “how very quaint”.

Now: isn’t this comparing apples and pairs? Every Blackberry is (and has been for, like, ever) the benchmark device for e-mail on the go. I still remember sitting in Moscow pulling down my e-mail on a Nokia 9300, and, in the time it took me to download the header of the e-mails when my dear US colleague had browsed through his e-mail and replied to 5. So: Symbian is not to be equated with Blackberry; it’s an entirely different thing: Symbian was all about creating a more powerful OS that could do a lot of things, and it does them fairly well. But we shouldn’t forget that most of them a N-Series devices without a QWERTY keyboard that do different things than a Blackberry does. It is probably possible (now, not 3 years ago) to create a similar experience on a Symbian-powered phone than it is on a Blackberry but I have still to find an e-mail client on a phone as pain-free, reliable and quick as the Blackberry’s.
I do believe that it is less about the theoretical power of an operating system but about the end-to-end experience (iPhone anyone? I commented on this a long time ago). And – across the board – a Blackberry beats most of its rivals hands down on that; still. So this comparison limps heavily. It is probably also to blame on this odd way to define “what is a smartphone“? The mere fact that it has a “an identifiable operating system” surely is not that smart (although Admob classifies it as such). 
I applaud RIM to their feat of selling 50m devices (or “i-banker phone” as they were called in their early years) and remain a fan.
On a sideline, RIM also mentioned that there have been 7m downloads of the Facebook client for the Blackberry so far. This would mean that a fairly respectable 15% of all Blackberries that have EVER been sold have the client, and this means that this is probably a rather high number of the ones currently in use. Who would have thought that? I-banker phone goes social networking. Ts ts ts…

Top 10 Mobile Phones in January

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On 31/01/2009

In OEM

Our beloved manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, enlightens us again with their top 10 list of best-selling phones for the month of January 2009 (or should that be best-selling phone holsters?). 

1. (1) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia
2. (-) HTC Touch HD
3. (9) Nokia E51
4. (-) Blackberry Storm
5. (2) Nokia 6300
6. (5) Nokia 3109
7. (7) Sony Ericsson X1 Experia
8. (8) Nokia E71
9. (-) Nokia 6220
10. (10) HTC Diamond
The number in brackets is the rank from the prior month.

Now, as compared to all of 2008, the iPhone went from #1 to nowhere. I explained this before: they track phone sales by the number of model-specific accessories sold, and I am still not sure if that makes any sense. I see this more in practical terms: the “suits” carrying around their business phones do not seem to have the fashion sense to realize that specific phone cases is nothing that one does (this is also popular with taxi drivers), and therefore it seems obvious that a lot of “business-type” phones are in the list (and none of the “classic” Blackberries because they have their uber-cool faux-leather holster in the box (and, yes, that’s the piece I throw away first!). 
Let me know what you think!
Photo credit: http://blogfreespringfield.com/wp-content/uploads/image/holster.jpg

Next-Gen iPhone Will Wipe Out DS & PSP

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On 30/01/2009

In Apple, Games, OEM

Today, there was a piece analyzing recent reports whereby Apple was well on its way to wipe out DS and PSP from the handheld gaming sphere, and that it would therefore seek to address a number of weaknesses in its next iteration of the iPhone (and iPod Touch) that would add a few currently missing features that should bridge the – already slim – gap to the PSP.

You have of course read it here before but I would like to revisit this again. I had mentioned the huge advantage of having swift and global digital distribution, giving Apple and any developer pondering which platform to choose an easy solution. Accelerometer and multi-touch add new gameplay features. Plus the iPhone is lighter than its rivals (and of course does a number of other things pretty decently, too, namely playing music, making phone calls or surfing the web).
And then there are the numbers. It took Apple less than 3 months to boast 1.5x the number of games of DS and PSP combined (1,500). The digital distribution model keeps on impressing and shows that this is really what consumers want in terms of accessibility, purchase mechanism (download as opposed to physical cartridge) and – yes – perhaps also price (although there is rumour that Apple wants to introduce a premium segment).
So here is what Apple allegedly wants to change:
  • Enhanced graphics (to address its current lack of loading complex textures);
  • improved processing capabilities (through its own ARM chip, which is currently developing; this follows the acquisition of PA Semi last spring);
  • Better camera (minimum 3.5 mega-pixels) and video-recording.
Multi-tasking as demonstrated by the Palm Pre with its WebOS would be something I would like to see. 
No word if cut-and-paste will work as well, it seems… Oh well, I guess they need to leave something to complain about for the old-school geeks to who Apple still is the fruity devil… 😉
Photo Credit: http://www.macblogz.com/Media/2008/6/iphone-flash-nand.jpg

Vodafone ponders and prepares to bulk up

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On 29/01/2009

Did you know about Vodafone’s Flipfont app? No, I didn’t think so; it seems to have gone more or less unnoticed. Well, it allows you to – listen to this – customise your phone frontpage. Woah! How cool is that? The downside? Well, you need to pay £1.99 for the pleasure, per screen! I don’t think so… And, apparently, (now) so does Vodafone. Amidst the iPhone/AppStore rage and the “revelation” that UI might actually matter to people, they seem to have realized that changing a font will not necessarily change the uptake of consumption to new levels. And because they cannot have the iPhone (although it has the Blackberry Storm, which is performing much better than the initial damning reviews would have suggested), they will launch their very own app store, or so they said (if you read Dutch, that is; how nice that we have a Dutch blogger amongst us who translated it for us).

This is not the only bit of news though: Vodafone also wants to tighten relationships with two other players in the market, and these are none other than giants China Mobile and Verizon Wireless. Now if you thought that Vodafone was large, take this in: together, these 3 carriers combine 821 million (!) subscribers (Vodafone 280m, China Mobile 457m and Verizon Wireless 84m [although I believe that VF counts a number of VZW subscribers proportionate to its shareholding in]).
Here’s what Vodafone’s CEO Vittorio Colao told the FT:
“If you think of three players, China Mobile is very strong in China; it’s a big country. Vodafone is very strong in Europe, Africa, India. Verizon is very strong in the US.

“If these three companies could work more closely… in the management of customers, procurement and service creation, we could be unbeatable, quite frankly.”
And right he is…

Carnival of the Mobilists #158

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On 27/01/2009

In Carnival of the Mobilists

This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists, the definitive guide to the must-read blogs on everything mobile is hosted over at Tsahi Levent-Levi’s VoIP Survivor blog. Check it out here.

Twitter on the Money Trail again…

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On 27/01/2009

In Deals, Social

Twitter is this phenomenon of which some people say it is the business that never was. Not that Twitter never was but that it never was a business… which is why they apparently need fresh money, or more specifically $20m, or so it is said (see also here) The valuation? A cool $250m. A lot, you say? Well, they allegedly recently turned down a $500m acquisition offer from Facebook, so it’s a bargain!

Now, one of the issues they are facing is (never mind the unresolved business model) that a) they need to bulk up on infrastructure to cater for the 750%+ growth in 2008 and b) (OK, there are probably more reasons) they are trying to bring back SMS notifications to the UK (which it stopped last summer claiming it cost them up to $1,000 per user p.a.). And on the latter I wonder why: does anyone still uses this? I am using Twitterberry, cooler users use any one of a plethora of iPhone clients, and there are enough clients for “other” phones out there, too. It is more convenient, more powerful, a better interface and – for Twitter – much, much cheaper. If they are not satisfied with it, shouldn’t they perhaps invest some $100k to build a Twitter client for all phones? I mean, it’s not THAT complex…
As to business model, I am fairly confident that they will be able to translate this staggering amount of traffic into $$$. Their recent acquisition of Summize, which provides a newly introduced search option for Twitter, is one step. My hunch would be that they will utilize some of the momentum their growth afforded them will allow them to acquire some of the value-adding services (GigaOM names Twitpic and Stockwits) as well as ad-funded clients (e.g. Twitterific serves you – on the free version – an ad per hour of use).
Oh, and yes, I am a fan and Twitterer. Follow me here (vhirsch). And, no, if you’re an investor, Stephen Fry‘s account on why this is so great will not necessarily convince you it makes sense (although he is VERY enthusiastic about it) 😉

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