Society and business in the 21st Century
It appears faded mobile phone brand Motorola has proved disappointing for Chinese computer giant Lenovo reports TechCrunch.
For Lenovo, this is concern as the company explores ways to diversify away from the shrinking PC and tablet marketplaces although the smartphone market which itself suffers from poor margins doesn’t seem to be the opportunity the company is looking for.
It does however show that Google is often right in casting off companies it doesn’t see a future in.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi hopes an Internet of Things ecosystem can drive the company’s growth
Are domestic appliances the next wave of connected devices? Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi hopes so.
Xiaomi is best known for its cheap smartphones aimed at third world markets and the company’s move into connected kitchen devices marks an expansion into broader areas.
Smartphones being the centre of Xiaomi’s product offerings seems to be the common factor in the expanded range of devices, with the company hoping their ecosystem will be a compelling point of difference in a crowded market.
The idea the smartphone will be the centre of people’s connected lifestyles isn’t new but Xiaomi’s bet on low margin home appliances to drive smartphone sales and subscriptions to cloud services seems a brave move.
It may work however, the business models of tomorrow look improbable today.
Very soon your smartphone will be able to warn you if you’re driving too fast reports VentureBeat.
Israeli founded and Google owned traffic application Wayze will soon give alerts to users in certain countries if they’re over the speed limit, the service announced yesterday.
Wayze is unique in that it’s one of the first genuine crowdsourcing programs where users contributed information on traffic conditions and it’s doing the same thing in gathering speed limit information.
The fascinating thing about Wayze is how it brings together crowdsourcing, cloud and smartphone GPS services to create a useful product.
Wayze also shows how the smartphone is the ultimate personal Internet of Things sensor, that’s something which shouldn’t be overlooked.
The BlackBerry Priv is probably the company’s last smartphone as it pivots to being a security provider
Having written about BlackBerry’s ambitions in the marketplace for The Australian last week, it wasn’t surprising to be invited to the company’s Down Under launch of their Priv handset earlier today.
The event illustrated some brutal realities about mobile phone market and BlackBerry’s efforts to build on its strengths in the enterprise security space.
With 2.7 billion dollars of cash reserves, the company has seven years of breathing space at its current loss rates although it’s notable the stock market values the company at $3.5bn, implying investors value the business’ operations at a measly $800 million.
Given the collapse in BlackBerry’s handset business from twenty percent of the market at the beginning of the decade to an asterix today, that pessimism from investors isn’t surprising and underscores why the company is recasting itself as an enterprise security provider.
Five major acquisitions in the last 18 months have demonstrated how BlackBerry is attempting to recast its business; security services like Good Technology and Secusmart through to warning software like At Hoc have seen the company bolster its range of offerings.
Coupled with the recent acquisitions are its own longstanding messaging and secure communications services combined with the QNX software arm that promises a far more reliable Internet of Things than many of the current operating systems being embedded into smart devices.
The Android smartphone system itself is bedevilled with dangerous apps running on outdated software and where BlackBerry hopes their PRIV handset can attract enterprise users conscious of the need to secure their employees’ devices.
For BlackBerry though, the PRIV being shipped with the Android operating system is a capitulation to the smartphone market’s stark reality where there is only demand for two products and outside players like BlackBerry or Windows are destined to wither away.
While the PRIV is a nice, albeit expensive, phone and the slide out physical keyboard is nice to use, the device seems to be a desperate attempt by the company to stay in the smartphone market.
As an outside observer it’s hard to see the justification for BlackBerry continuing as a phone manufacturer, there may be some intellectual property value from the development of the devices – although it should be noted the company only valued its IP assets at $906 million in November 2015.
While the PRIV is a perfectly good Android phone it will probably be the last smartphone BlackBerry makes, the challenge for the company’s management now is to tie together the software assets it has into a compelling suite of products for the enterprise sector.
In an age where devices of all types are going to be connected, the market for ensuring their security should be huge. Catering to that market should be BlackBerry’s greatest hope of survival.
Times are getting even tougher for Apple’s competitors with Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC falling out of Taiwan’s main stock market index after their share price fell 66% over the last year.
Coupled with reports that Korea’s Samsung is laying off ten percent of their workforce, it’s clear the smartphone industry is by no means a license to print money.
Making matters worse for the sector, Apple will be announcing a refresh tomorrow morning which will almost certainly hurt the competition further.
For the marketplace, particularly as one as important as the smartphone market, having only one profitable supplier is not a good thing. The challenge though is for Apple’s competitors to find a way to make a profit.
Samsung’s launch of a Smart Things home hub is a step forward for the company looking to pivot from the smartphone market
South Korean industrial giant Samsung is struggling, in the last year its smartphone division reported a 75% drop in revenues while their handsets, while still the world’s most popular, lost ten percentage points of market share.
The company’s smartphone division is stuck because mobile carriers in the western world are abandoning subsidies for handsets, with most developed markets now at saturation point for cellphone adoption there’s little point in chasing market growth for all but the most desperate telco.
For Samsung that’s been a problem as their premium model strategy has been based upon western consumers ordering a new phone every 18 to 24 months as their mobile contracts were renewed, now those deals are not so common a key sales channel for the Korean conglomerate has been lost.
This leaves Samsung looking for the next market and at this week’s IFA consumer technology event in Berlin, the company unveiled its Smart Things hub, a cylindrical device that connects with your TV, air conditioning, music system, and other home appliances.
Smart Things was an acquisition Samsung made last year to improve its IoT product line and the company has an open platform for connecting household devices with over 200 already certified.
For Samsung with its range of domestic equipment this may well mark the future for the business. The interesting thing though is the smartphone is still integral in today’s vision of the connected home, so we won’t see Samsung leaving the handset market soon.
It may be Google’s Project Ara is about to become the latest victim of the company’s attention deficit disorder.
Two years ago this site interviewed New Deal Design’s Gadi Amit about Google’s Project Ara.
Project Ara is an experiment in creating a modular phone where users can customise their devices by adding or removing components.
PC World now reports the mooted soft launch for the Project Ara phone in Puerto Rico has been cancelled.
While Google aren’t saying the project has been shut down, the sporadic and cryptic messages around Ara don’t bode well given the way the company loses interest in and then abandons products.
If it is being abandoned, it will be interesting to see where the intellectual property from the project ends up.
