Tag: smartphones

Today marks a moment of reinvention

Regardless of what it means for the wider industry, Microsoft’s deal with Nokia means both companies have entered fundamentally different phases of their businesses.

In announcing the company will acquire Nokia’s mobile and devices business, Microsoft said “Today marks a moment of reinvention”.

This is certainly true, with the retirement of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft officially enters the post Bill Gates era and today’s announcement is an admission from Nokia that their moment as the world’s dominant mobile phone manufacturer is over.

What’s notable about the deal is what Microsoft doesn’t get — particularly Nokia’s maps service. While Microsoft gets a license to use Nokia’s mapping services, it leaves the Finnish company with a valuable asset and possibly leaves it as the only company capable of competing with Google in that market.

For Microsoft, acquiring the expertise of Nokia’s engineers shouldn’t be understated, although integrating 32,000 Nokia employees will test Microsoft’s management as this increases their workforce by a third.

Possibly the most fascinating part of Microsoft’s announcement though is the comment in the second paragraph of their media release.

Microsoft will draw upon its overseas cash resources to fund the transaction.

US technology companies have been struggling to deal with the massive profits they have accumulated offshore as part of their tax minimalisation strategy. What we may now be seeing is a wave of foreign takeovers as American companies start to reduce their offshore cash stashes without incurring domestic tax bills.

If that’s true, Microsoft’s agreement with Nokia may well indicate we’re about to see many more takeovers around the world .

Regardless of what it means for the wider industry, both Microsoft and Nokia have entered fundamentally different phases of their businesses.

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Could advertising have saved Blackberry?

Would advertising have saved Blackberry

Could advertising have saved Blackberry wonders Joyce Yip on the Marketing Interactive site.

Yip cites Samsung’s blanket advertising as one of the reason’s for the Korean brand’s success while Blackberry could only afford a token presence for the new Z10 phone.

While there’s no doubt Samsung and Apple’s marketing muscle has helped them dominate the smartphone market, advertising alone doesn’t explain the dominant brands’ success.

Blackberry was doomed from the moment a business friendly smartphone was released, no-one expected it at the time but it turned out to be the iPhone.

Compared to the iPhone, the Blackberry was woefully underfeatured and once corporate users discovered email wasn’t the only use for a smartphone, the Canadian company’s fate was sealed.

While the Z10 and Q10 phones were well featured devices, they are way too late for a market where Apple and Samsung have most of the sales and take all the profit.

It’s tempting to think advertising and marketing may have saved Blackberry, but the company was overtaken by a fundamental market change which left it stranded.

For a while in the late 2000s Blackberry looked untouchable in the corporate market and no-one would have expected Samsung and Apple to disrupt their position. That’s the real lesson Blackberry teaches us.

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Five years of the app store

The Apple App Store enters its fifth year of disrupting the smartphone and tablet computer industries.

It’s been five years that the Apple App Store has been open for business. in that time they’ve revolutionised the smartphone industry, reinvented the tablet computer and had fifty billion downloads.

While the App Store wasn’t an original idea, plenty of telcos and handset manufacturers, had them, Apple were the first to get the formula right for the iPhone.

Their success in changing the smartphone industry lead to their dominance of the tablet industry, another sector which had settled incumbents who were disrupted by Apple’s entry into the market.

It’s notable how in both the smartphone and tablet markets, the established incumbents were struggling with the same business model that Apple got right. This is something other industries should pay attention to.

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Have the smartphone’s glory days come to an end?

Do declining margins at Apple, Samsung and HTC indicate the smartphone industry’s glory days have come to an end?

Today smartphone manufacturers Samsung and HTC released their quarterly results with both reporting falling margins, does this mean the boom days of the smartphone have come to an end?

As industry analyst Asymco reports, Apple are also suffering decline margins as component prices increase, ironically some of those parts come from Samsung.

The question posed by Reuters in reporting Samsung’s decline  is ”has the smartphone business peaked?”

It may well be that the glory days of the smartphone industry have come to an end as cheaper Chinese phones enter the market.

Just as the PC industry is being disrupted after three decades of growth, could it be the smartphone sector is suffering a similar change after just seven years?

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How form factors evolve as tech affects design

Technology often dictates design. As tech evolves, we can rethink the design of many things we take for granted.

Technology often dictates design. As tech evolves, we can rethink the design of many things we take for granted.

While out helping a friend shop for computers this morning, it occurred to me how the keyboards of laptop PCs have changed.

For many years, notepad keyboards were restricted to roughly 80 characters as the 4 x 3 ratio of screens have dictated the dimensions of of the keys. Here’s an example.

 80-character-keybaord

In recent times though the wider screen dimensions of laptops has seen the resurrection of an older layout — the 102 key layout with an added numerical pad.

 102-character-keyboard

What’s interesting about this is how technology form factors evolve.

Not so long ago mobile phone manufacturers were competing to create the smallest handset. Cellphones like the  Motorola Razr pushed the limit on how small phones could be.

With the arrival of the smartphone, the size and shape of mobile phones changed. Now the limiting factor was a screen big enough to read the internet on and display a thirty key keyboard.

Now reliable handwriting recognition software means that some phones can eliminate the use of keyboards at all, which means we may start to see the race to create smaller cellphones restarting.

The layout of all of the items we use, from cars to computers, is largely determined by technology limitations. As the tech evolves, we can start to rethink how a device is designed, just as the laptop and iPhone designers did.

With whole new display, input and sensing technologies being developed, there are many household items that may well look different in the near future.

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Disrupting the incumbents

Industry incumbents like Nokia and Microsoft are finding their market positions disrupted as Apple, Hauwei and Samsung reinvent the marketplaces.

One of the truisms of modern business is that no incumbent is safe, Microsoft, Nokia and Hauwei are good examples of just how businesses that five years ago dominated their industries are now struggling with changed marketplaces.

In the last two days there’s been a number of stories on how the smartphone and computer markets are changing.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s tech blog, PC manufacturers are hoping Microsoft’s changes to Windows 8 reinvigorates the computer market.

Those hopes are desperate and somewhat touching in the face of a structural shift in the marketplace. These big vendors can wait for the Big White Hope to arrive but really they have only themselves to blame for their constant mis-steps in the tablet and smartphone markets.

Now they are left behind as more nimble competitors like Apple, Samsung and the rising wave of Chinese manufacturers deliver the products consumers want.

All is not lost for Microsoft though as Chinese telecoms giant Hauwei launches a Windows Phone for the US markets which will be available through Walmart.

Hauwei’s launch in the United States is not good news though for another failing incumbent – Nokia.

Nokia’s relationship with Microsoft seems increasingly troubled and the Finnish company is struggling to retain leadership even in the emerging markets which until recently had been the only bright spot in the organisation’s global decline.

Yesterday in India, Nokia launched a $99 smartphone to shore up its failing market position on the subcontinent.

For the three months to March, Nokia had a 23 percent share of mobile phone sales in India, the world’s second-biggest cellular market by customers, Strategy Analytics estimates. Three years ago it controlled more than half the Indian market.

India isn’t the only market where Nokia is threatened – in February Hauwei launched their 4Afrika Windows Phone aimed at phone users in Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Angola, Morocco and South Africa.

The smartphone market is instructive on how many industries are changing, almost overnight the iPhone changed the cell phone sector and three years later Apple repeated the trick with the iPad, in both cases incumbents like Motorola, Nokia and Microsoft found themselves flat footed.

As barriers are falling with cheaper manufacturing, faster prototyping and more accessible design tools, many other industries are facing the same disruption.

The question for every incumbent should be where the next disruption is coming from.

In fact, we all need to ask that question as those disruptions are changing our own jobs and communities.

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Three screens, one screen

Is Blackberry, Apple or Microsoft right about the way we’ll use computers in the future?

One of the points that came out of Blackberry’s Z10 launch last week was CEO Thorsten Heins’ talking about the company’s ‘one screen’ strategy.

Blackberry sees the smartphone as being the centre of people’s computer usage with them replacing personal computers and tablets as the main computing tool.

This is at odds with the rest of the phone and computer industries who are struggling with managing the three or four devices that most people use.

Apple overcame this by having different operating systems – OS X and iOS – and even then the mobile iOS is subtly forked for the different ways people use tablets versus  smartphones.

With Windows 8, Microsoft chose to go the opposite way with an operating system which works on all devices. Sadly it doesn’t seem to have worked.

Blackberry’s strategy is to assume smartphones will be their main communications device. It’s a big bet which doesn’t align with what seems to be experience of most people.

Over the last few years Blackberry’s smartphone market share has collapsed from 40% to 4%, so it’s the time for brave bets although its hard to see that customers will use smartphones instead of PCs or tablets is the right call.

It’s an interesting question though – can you see your smartphone being your main computer?

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