There is a post on Mike Mace's blog that I would recommend to everyone in the business. It talks about the shape of the smartphone market. There are many arguments I am not fully subscribing to (although it is hard to argue with someone with market data ;-) but it is a great read.
I met Mike a long time ago at one of the PalmSource conferences in Munich. Great events, because they were coinciding with the Oktoberfest. I remember more the beer than anything else, but I have a picture of Mike on stage with a slide with Funambol on it. I pitched to him the concept of a synchronization portal for mobile developers and he loved it. Too bad we did not really make anything out of it because his company was not interested. Anyway, time has passed, Mike has left PalmSource and they have lost all their developers...
What I like about his post is the concept of segmentation. I have written about it many times. Call it divergence if you want, but the idea of a uber-device for everyone will not fly. Specialized devices will win. Squeezing a PC in a phone is not a good idea to get the mass market. I do not believe Apple really wants to do it with the iPhone: they are more catering to their captive segment (Entertainment, in Mike's diagram), adding a telephony feature.
However, I have to disagree on one major item. Mike puts "communication" in a separate bubble. While I agree on putting the communication freaks in one separate area (and leave them there because they are annoying), there are two elements of communication that are common to every telephony-enabled device and every segment:
You see also in his diagram, pictured below.
That "and SMS outside the US" hides the fact that people believe a basic phone feature is messaging. Not heavy stuff like a BlackBerry and a keyboard. Light stuff, like voice and SMS. Or the next SMS.
It is not just Europe and Asia, it is also in the US. Messaging is horizontal and a basic need country-independent. Like voice.
The Zone of Death does not have devices but two simple and basic features: voice and messaging. Those are for everyone. The mass market.
It is tough when you get off the spotlight. The dot in the dot.com bubble burst. Everybody saying you are a dead company. A very cool CEO stepping down. A young guy taking the helm (and with a ponytail...). A big shift towards open source, the coolest thing in town, but few talking about your new directions and improvements. Just assuming you are a walking dead.
That has been Sun Microsystems for the last six years. However, they lost market share for five in a row, then they turn it around. Now Sun has gained market share for four quarters in a row. IDC figures show Sun garnering 10.8% of all server sales in 2006 vs. 9.5% the year before (Gartner says pretty much the same). With a 2% market gain, while IBM and HP saw declines. In the firm's fiscal second quarter ending Dec. 31, the company finally got back in the black with earnings of 4 cents per share, its first profit since 2004...
That's a lot of good stuff and shows they are executing the plan. On top of it, there is open source. I am not advocating that their turnaround is all about open source. But there must be something about it...
Sun is the #1 contributor of open source code among companies. They had OpenOffice, then Solaris, then Java. A ton of code. Everything they are doing now smells of open source. They wandered a bit around OSS licenses, with Jonathan Schwartz saying GPL sucked in a famous OSBC keynote, then going for CDDL, then back to GPL (which, apparently, does not suck anymore ;-) It is never easy to do a U turn for a large company, but it is a sign of being smart. Change and adapt fast, as a startup.
They are thinking as an open source company, albeit big. And with JavaME, they are mobile. Big time, considering how many phones out there support JavaME. In a way, they are the biggest mobile open source company around...
Moreover, they are well positioned to gain from the GPL3 mess, the Red Hat vs. Oracle mess, the next mess (we are good at creating them in open source). OpenSolaris might well be what people will go for. It is OSS, it is stable and good (nobody ever questioned it), it has a company behind it that does not look it is going to disappear soon.
In a nutshell, open source allows them to sell more boxes... That's all they need to be successful. On top of it, they will start making money with subscriptions, which won't be marginal in their top line anymore. You can "use" open source in multiple ways. They are looking smart about how they are doing it.
Anyway, I have the feeling Sun is doing quite good. They have nice numbers, they are going in the right direction, they are taking advantage of the open source paradigm shift, they are well positioned in mobile (another paradigm shift). Unfortunately for them, the press does not like them anymore. Maybe if they built a cool smartphone...
I had the opportunity to look at Vista yesterday. I know, I am late, but it is not mobile or open source so I thought I could wait...
First impressions: WOW. Nice looking interface (looks like a Mac), it has search (like the Mac, a year or more ago) and gadgets (those are called widgets in the Mac world), they improved security, file sharing and the movie editor (you know the drill... already there in a Mac).
Sooooo, the big news is: Vista is a step closer to a Mac.
Now, I am not a Mac user. I never had a Mac. I had to buy a Mac for my wife because it matched her iPod. I now have to buy Macs for all salespeople in Funambol (a tip for CRM vendors: build Mac integration fast and you will win). And even for techies, like Stefano, Kincy, Harrie and others. I am chased by Macs...Macs crash like Windows. The hardware is not superior because I have seen many return their laptop, including Dave and Matt.
However, my brain works in strange ways. The moment IE7 came out and finally had the features of Firefox, I switched from IE6 to Firefox, just because Microsoft was pushing me hard to upgrade. Why would I get a browser that had the same features that Firefox had months before? Firefox had to be more stable and I assumed "they must be working on the next features, while Microsoft is chasing them"...
Therefore, I have the feeling that the moment they will force me to upgrade to Vista, I might jump to the light side of the force (anything that is not Microsoft is light, I guess).
Am I alone? Probably so... Or maybe not. Why would you upgrade to an OS that is like the one that has been out there for more than a year and can run your Windows as well (the opposite not being true)?
Since I am talking about switching, let me ask Steve Jobs for two necessary features:
1. Please give me a VGA output. My life is giving presentations (sad, I know) and I will lose the dongle in a month... You switched to Intel, you can switch to VGA too...
2. Please give me a touchpad mouse with the right button. Yes, I understand I can achieve it with an external mouse or a click on the keyboard. But it is not the same. If it is just for advanced users, put it in the high end laptops only. Please...
That said, I believe I might be close to switch. Definitely closer than I ever thought. If I am not the only lunatic out there, Vista might be good for Microsoft - as they said - but it might be even better for Apple...
Day 3 is a strange day at 3GSM. The first half is fast and furious, then - after the storm - the calm builds in. At noon, the taxi line outside the show is already long. By 2 pm, they are all gone. Therefore, your Wednesday morning agenda becomes absolutely crazy, with ten meetings per hour, since everybody is trying to squeeze in one last meeting. Past lunch time, the wind is gone.
Left alone, in the afternoon I spent some time visiting Hall 8. The hall where the money is. Where the exhibitors are the device manufacturers, who plunk unbelievable amounts of money to look bigger and more successful than the others.
Nokia announced a good amount of devices. Huge booth, an enormous amount of phones, each with a Finnish person ready to help you, if you had any question. A strong angle on music, which is not surprising looking at the competition. Some device updates, but mainly lots of boring phones that give you the impression they are not going in the right direction... Still, I found one that I liked. The E65. The first Nokia E series device in slider format. Nice format, appealing to the Italian eye, also powered with email and "business" features like conference calling and mute/unmute (a business feature? since when?). It supports 3G and wi-fi, but it also sports a 2 megapixel camera, and 50MB built-in memory expandable with microSD cards. A mix of features that should appeal the prosumers, that want advanced features (such as VOIP on wifi in the office) but also a compact format and a good look. I bet it is going to be a winning device for Nokia. At least, it shows something innovative and thought for a precise segment, which is growing fast.
Motorola had a smaller booth and really claustrophobic. Again, a million phones with the feeling they also lost their touch (it is hard to compete in this market...). The MOTORIZR Z8 was supposed to be the star of the show. But with that yellow line, I did not even bother opening it. It is just ugly. Some updates on the Q were pretty cool, but I can't say I felt innovation was there.
The Sony Ericsson booth was full of cool music phones. Still, it wasn't crowded. Although as a company they might not be considered trendy, they are in a fun hip trend and I feel they are creating devices that people want to buy. There is a clear segment for a music - phone convergence and they are hitting it big. Kudos to them, I believe they will keep doing great.
The LG booth was very sophisticated, with the Chocolate everywhere. Classy, almost upscale, it gave you a feeling of wanting in. As in a party where you do not know if you will have to stay outside for an hour to wait or if you will be chosen to join the lucky ones. The superstar was the one LG Prada phone (a.k.a. the iPhone killer or KE850), in the hands of a nice lady who was cleaning it after each use. Sleek, cool, it was screaming "buy me because I will make you look rich and famous". Rich for sure, since it is going to cost north of 600 euros... But I have to say it had a very nice interface, easy to use and attractive. Not having a keyboard or buttons does not prevent a call, but still makes selecting a contact a bit of a challenge. Typing a message is hard, and they offer only a simulated phone keyboard with just numbers (imagine how hard it will be with a full simulated keyboard as in the iPhone). The fact that the lady was cleaning the screen every 5 minutes makes my point on this kind of input interface... If they invent a way for humans not to sweat (Prada could), then it will be perfect. Once again, a niche device like the iPhone but quite innovative. Too bad they were copied by Apple who jumped the gun and make it all look exactly the opposite. Man, I love Steve Jobs!
That's it. I did not visit Samsung and others because I was tired. And I had to catch a flight to leave Barcelona. Tomorrow, the show is only for the exhibitors, who will visit each other since there are no visitors anymore. Enjoy the rest of the show, I am out of here :-)
Day two of 3GSM is usually busier than day one. It does not happen in any other conference I know, but it is common here... Today, it was no different. Our booth was inundated by people, mostly mobile operators and partners. What a difference a year makes: a year ago, people were stopping at our booth, looking at us with a strange face and saying "what do you mean with mobile open source?". This year, they come and already know about us. Strange feeling.
I also found out you can use our cell phone holder also to juggle (works well to attract visitors and you can build on the funambol story), as a soccer ball and even to play catch. Multipurpose cell phone holder...
I had a moment to walk around, talking to Trolltech and Access (both doing mobile open source stuff). They had two nice parties inside the conference. Lots of people and not just for the good wine. Mobile open source is going mainstream. No surprise.
Lastly, I was intrigued by a new device by Neonode, a Swedish company. Extremely small and light, iPhone-sque on the input side (no keyboard, you use your fingers) but based on Windows Mobile. Fully featured, with even too many apps on it. But also open (or so they claim) to accept applications for third parties (Neonode Friends). If it takes off, it could be a cool device for our community to build applications on. Porting our Windows Mobile client on it would be a breeze. Once again, it is just another sign of divergence and segmentation. There will be more, I am sure.
The interesting part, though, was the marketing tactic they used to launch the device. The campaign was built around the actual birth of the device ("a new breed is born"). That included a lot of girls dressed up as nurses... In a male-only environment (3GSM is the only place on the planet where the restroom line is longer on the male side) it is old but working tactics. The traffic on their booth was unbelievable. Lots of cameras and dark suits... It is a sad lesson for marketeers, which repeats itself year after year.
Tomorrow is my last day at 3GSM. I can handle three days but then my body starts complaining. It has been fun so far, let's see what Wednesday has to offer. I haven't seen a shocking announcement since the beginning, but the mood is definitely upbeat. Maybe tomorrow is the day of the iPhone killer...
Busy day in Barcelona, as expected. Lines not as long as in previous events, though. A smoothly organized event, considering the size... The weather is gorgeous, which helps going through the 9 am - 7 pm crazy marathon.
For the first time, mobile entertainment has a big presence. We are used to have it at CTIA, but here it is new. At CTIA, you have Hollywood. At 3GSM, you have Bollywood, with a mobile film premiere. I am sure the Festival people in Cannes are asking themselves why their counterparts in Barcelona had to go all the way to India instead of Europe, but that is another story...
After a good amount of years (when GSM became 3GSM...), today everyone is talking - again - about mobile bandwidth. HSDPA is everywhere. The carriers have to defend themselves from the message Intel is proposing (this year for real, I guess): "WiMAX is here"... In reality, we all know that nobody really needs that much bandwidth. A phone does not really need video... Messaging is going to be light in size because people cannot even type a long message without a keyboard. Who cares about bandwidth? 3G is more than enough...
Lots of announcements about push email as well, both on the enterprise side (e.g. a ton of new Nokia phones, the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 that I played around with, and so on) and - finally - also on the consumer side. I have the feeling our "mobile data for the masses" story is hitting the wires big time and people are noticing it. Competitors are embracing the idea (that's flattering, but I would rather be alone, thanks :-) Mobile 2.0 is happening now. Messaging is a key part of it. Let's get people what they want: a cheap way to send their pictures from their phone to their families at home. Forget bandwidth and movies on phones (please...).
So long from Barcelona, I won't talk about the parties because I am here to work (yeah, right ;-)
Just in case you are still doubtful if you want to take a flight on Sunday to get to Barcelona, here you have a good reason to visit 3GSM. We are giving away cell phone holders...
They are soft, you can squeeze them to lower your tension, you can throw them to your dog, you can put them on your nose to look like a clown and make your kids laugh, they can even hold a cell phone on your desk.
The ball represents the world, since our downloads are coming from any corner of the planet (212 and counting, the Vatican still missing though...) and the community makes our server tested on every device with every firmware version on every carrier in the world.
It is that time of the year. The time for 3GSM, the largest conference in mobile. The craziest event in wireless...
As usual, PR people started bombarding us with announcement the week before, to avoid being buried among a million press releases. So you already have Microsoft announcing Windows Mobile 6, Nokia rolling out a free mobile map service and Samsung launching a would-be iPhone beater.
On our side, we announced a preview of our Funambol v6 release, including a very cool Open Source Java Push Email Client for Mass Market Devices (all capital, do not ask me why but that's how marketing works) and a Mobile Email Portal for Consumers. If you want to see them, we are at booth 1J46 in Hall 1 (same as last year, close to the coffee break table ;-)
Barcelona will be flooded by mobile people. Last year, Barcelona did not know what 3GSM was (since it was in Cannes before... BTW, I loved that show). This year, they know. Prices for rooms skyrocketed... A room that normally costs 200 euros (I was in Barcelona around Christmas...) is now well over 1,000 euros... Taxi drivers will try to rip you off, if you do not speak Spanish. Restaurants might follow suit (hey, you want to eat paella, right?).
In any case, it will be fun, as usual. Day and night. Mobile is hotter than ever. If you are going there, stop at our booth and let's chat about it. See you in Barcelona.
One of the interesting announcement of DEMO 07 has been DAVE (Digital Audio Video Experience) by Seagate. It is a very small storage drive (credit card size) with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. It boasts up to 14 days of standby power and 10 hours of continuous use, it can be accessed from anywhere up to 30 feet (9.1 meters), it will ship in May/June and it will cost around $150.
What does it mean?
It means you can store 20 Giga of your stuff in it, put it in your bag and access it from your cell phone. Wirelessly.
In theory, it makes a lot of sense. You have a growing need for storage. You want your data always with you. Therefore, you go out with Dave at night. It speaks to your cell phone, PDA, mp3 player, iPhone (yeah, right, like you will be able to write an app on it), your PC at home and so on. DAVE kills the need for synchronization. It is a one-stop-shop for your data storage.
In practice, I do not think the concept will fly. IXI tried something like this with the PMG (Portable Mobile Gateway). Devices that only solve an infrastructure problem, but require no physical interaction with the mobile user, have no appeal. The thing does nothing. No beep, no lights, no tactile feedback, nothing. It is in your bag. Still. It appeals to geeks but not consumers. I can see people showing it off in a coffee place in San Jose, not in a bar of Milan. It is not fashionable, it is geeky (and black).
As you probably know, I am not a fan of mobile convergence. I believe in divergence. DAVE pushes divergence, taking care of a basic task (storage) and adding yet another device. I should like it. However, I just can't see it as a viable mass solution. I believe phone will just add more storage (see the iPod Nano, does it have enough storage in a limited space?). Storage won't be a good reason for divergence. User interfaces will. Usage segmentation will. Multiple devices with local storage, same data, to be synchronized.
One thing I really like about the way Seagate approached the software component of DAVE: open source. The API to access the device will be all open source. That's mobile open source, by the way. That will generate a ton of innovation. Someone very smart will build something we are not even thinking about today. Maybe one day you'll put your DAVE in your car and leave it there. Or it will be strapped to your purse. We'll see. Let open source people take care of it. They know better.
Roberto Galoppini has a blog on commercial open source, that I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in the topic (not just because he is Italian or because he interviewed me some weeks ago). Lately, he has been blogging about open source franchising. Very interesting stuff.
His last post is about a presentation he gave at Barcamp, titled "Free as in Business: lucrative coopetition".
He is presenting a few taxonomies to categorize commercial open source projects. We all like taxonomies, since the game is trying to put your own project somewhere (then you should build a quadrant and put yourself in the upper right corner ;-)
I guess Funambol is Hybrid, Symbiotic, Externally Funded. Or maybe not... That's the fun part of taxonomies, you never fit squarely in one category...
There is one sentence in the post, though, that I strongly disagree with. Roberto writes:Open Source is not sexy yet
Open Source is sexy. The problem might be that we show too much. The code is there, there is nothing we hide. Fully naked. Always. However, I would not go back to proprietary fully clothed software. Code hidden under ten tons of clothes. And you know they will not show you anything, as much as you try to convince them. THAT is not sexy.
Go naked.
In my Mobile 2.0 Manifesto, I mentioned that a key element for the success of Mobile 2.0 will be moving everybody in mobile to flat fee (item 4). It is the only possible model for people to embrace data usage on a cellular phone.
Luckily, we are getting closer to this goal in the US. Sprint has a $15/month unlimited plan which is fantastic (too bad is not based on GSM...). T-Mobile has a $5.99 plan with some limitations, but the price is right (and there are ways around the limitations ;-)
It is not all good, unfortunately. Cingular (sorry, at&t) unlimited plan is $49.99, which is a non starter for consumers... If you look at the recent data ARPU from their last quarter, it was $7.19... A number that include SMS, which still represent the largest chunk. I honestly believe they would be better off with a $15 unlimited plan. Higher data ARPU, simpler plans, happier customers. What's wrong with that?
When you look at Europe, it is even worse. Almost everywhere you find only pay-by-kilobyte plans. I wrote it before, but... how the heck do I know how big is a kilobyte? If I am downloading my email, how can I know how much data will I consume? I will not know, because I am not going to use it... And it does not help when you hear horror stories, like the guy who got a €50,000 bill for data usage in a month... It scares people away (rightly so).
There are bright spots, however. 3 in particular (that's Three, like H3G). They have in Italy a €19 plan, with 5 Gigabyte of traffic. I do not know how big is a kilobyte, but I know a Giga is big enough for a lot of emails... In the UK, they launched the X-Series: X-Series Silver at £5 (including Skype calls) and X-Series Gold at £10 (including Sling TV). They call them "unlimited plans", but they are limited (e.g. 1G/month for browsing and 5,000 Skype to Skype minutes per month)... Still, they are a great deal and a great start.
It is funny: Europe had the best SMS plans and SMS exploded. US had the worst SMS plans and SMS never took off (please, I beg you, stop asking me to pay 15 cents for receiving an SMS...). For data plans, it is exactly the opposite. The US is ahead. Therefore, the initial growth will happen in the US. Europe will follow, hopefully fast.
In essence, item 4 of my Mobile 2.0 Manifesto is still a bit far from becoming mainstream. In particular in Europe. But if you look back at a year ago, the jump was impressive. It is getting close to reality. Let's just wait for a few months more and the iPhone is going to crack the data plans market open...
Once again, browsing the web, I found an article on SmallNetBuilder about how to synchronize your smartphone with Funambol. It is quite detailed, so I would recommend it as a must-read for anybody having a smartphone and looking to sync contacts and calendar over-the-air (and, no, it does not talk about the iPhone, sorry).
The article is: Remote sync your smartphone with SyncML and Funambol
Yesterday, I spoke at the "Open Source meets Business" conference in Nuremberg. The atmosphere was magic, since it snowed the night before and the city was all white (a bit of a change from the meeting I attended in Miami last week, where we had dinner pool-side). They had to postpone the program for an hour because of the snow, which forced lunch at 2 pm. I am Italian and I adapt easily, but you do not want to talk at 1:59 pm in front of hungry Germans...
Everyone in open source was there. It was amazing how many people they were able to get together. However, it felt kind of boring... Been there, done that. With the addition of 90%+ of the people in a dark suit, the highest percentage I have ever seen. Even more than at 3GSM, where half-naked girls in the booths balance the dark of the just-male visitors. Political incorrectnesses at his highest.
Open source conference smell of deja-vu. Same stories (we are good, they are bad - we are conquering the world, they will all die), same people. All the time. I wrote this before. This conference was flawlessly organized. The place was great. The castle at night was fantastic, as it was the beer (and the bratwurst). The right people were there. All perfect. But still boring...
In open source conferences, the excitement is gone. Open source is mainstream. It is everywhere. It is not news. In particular, when we preach to the choir.
On the contrary, it is still very exciting when you push open source in front of an audience that does not know about it. Such as 3GSM and CTIA for us, coming up in the following weeks. That mobile crowd finds open source interesting. Mobile open source is exciting stuff. They get excited. I get excited.
So... you are all invited to visit our booth at 3GSM in Barcelona next month. And no, sorry, we are not going to have half-naked girls in the booth (however, Daniele will be there). Sorry, we are open source, we do things differently. We are fun. We are not supposed to be boring.
Right?
I found out yesterday that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has assigned Funambol an official tcp/udp port. Port 4745 belongs to fmp, a.k.a. Funambol Mobile Push.
What does it mean? I am not totally sure, but I believe it is cool to have a port assigned by IANA, that nobody else can use...
Jokes apart, the port is assigned to our TCP-based push mechanism, to push email (and more) to mobile devices. That is, to notify a device there is email ready to pick up. The famous beep of your BlackBerry: "You got mail!".
We also have an SMS-based push mechanism, which is linked to the OMA standard, but it is sometimes a bit too expensive to use, in particular for enterprises (not a major problem for mobile operators, since the cost for them to send an SMS is pretty much zero). TCP-push is a better solution in some cases and we offer our users to choose the best option suiting them.
This gives me another opportunity to talk about why push is important for mobile email. Some people tell me "I do not really need push, I can pull my email when I want and it will be enough". That is true, but let me tell you a secret: you won't...
You won't check your email often on your phone. You will do it rarely, when you have spare time and you are not going to get close to a PC in the next 30 minutes. When you are mobile, you are most likely about to go home or the office, or you just got out of the home or the office. You have a PC there, you do not really feel the need to check your email on your phone right away. You can wait.
If you are around and your phone beeps, showing a message from your boss (that is, either the one at work or your wife), you will answer. You will not delay a reply. You will react. You have to. You cannot wait.
The usage of a mobile phone is all about reacting, not acting. Pull is acting. Push forces reacting. That's why it works. That's why it is addictive. That's why you use a BlackBerry. That's why you use SMS.
And do not tell me you wait until you get home to answer a SMS from your wife ;-)
The day after the the launch of the iPhone I really felt alone... I wrote a negative post about it (actually, two), while everyone else was writing great reviews. Now the pendulum has swung...
In one comment on Computerworld, Mike Elgan went all the way. The journalist simply said "Steve Jobs blew it". Here are his reasons:
- Jobs raised buyer expectations too high.
- Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high.
- Jobs gave competitors a head start.
- Jobs undermined Apple TV hype.
- Jobs put iPod sales at risk.
- Jobs wrecked Cisco talks.
I believe it counts as heresy, punishable with a life with Zune...
America Venture Magazine named forty "Leaders in the Emerging Growth Technology Industry" under 40 years. Somehow, I made the list. It is quite funny to read what they say about the other 39 people:
Call it 2006’s most promising young guns. The top 40 under 40 list is our remarkable selection of those talented young leaders who, with deep understanding of today’s fast changing technology, had the extraordinary ability to develop a new variety of business models with a vision for the future and community involvement. The incredible part, that each of them made their dreams come true at a very young age. In the selection process, American Venture Magazine considered the nominees' achievements and ground-breaking efforts in the following areas: vision, leadership, development strategies, innovation and achievement. [...]
Through their passion, they embrace risks and commit to what they believe in. They are definitely doing something right.
This is a bit too much, even for my big ego. Anyway, let me focus on one good thing: I am still considered young despite the gray hair I saw this morning looking in the mirror :-))
I met with Matt in Salt Lake City over the weekend (yep, I went skiing at negative Fahrenheit temperatures...) and we talked during a nice dinner. He blogged about things I wrote here in the past. It is funny to see that other people are better than you at explaining your own thoughts...
I would therefore suggest you to check his post clicking here.
I just want to add a comment to "Sell open source to those who don't like/trust open source". Selling to someone that does not like/trust/use you is nothing new. Skype does it. They make money because people do not use Skype (that is, calling a landline). If everybody had Skype, they would be out of business. That's an interesting tought for eBay ;-)
I wrote my last post on the iPhone at midnight in Europe, right after "watching" the launch, then I went to bed. I woke up and I found out I was the only idiot who wrote something negative on the iPhone... It is sad to be alone... Since I am currently alone at home in California with family 10,000 miles away, it is even worst...
Jokes apart, I thought about it a bit more and I did not change my mind (double idiot). It is a smartphone, it has a limited market, you are going to sweat on the good looking screen while calling someone (I know you sweat as well, Steve) and it is nothing terribly new (check this image about an LG phone and let me know how different it looks... If LG had Steve Jobs, it would be a cool company ;-)
Probably, it is a great Video iPod with network connectivity. A cool looking PDA. A small networked tablet PC. Three niches. It is going to be all over Silicon Valley (and I am going to get one) but I stick with the idea that is never ever going to challenge the RAZR, until they have a mini or a nano.
That said, one thing is really bothering me, if it is true (never trust Apple rumors...): they plan to lock the phone completely, so that nobody will be able to add any application. According to the NYT, Steve Jobs said:
“We define everything that is on the phone. You don’t want your phone to be like a PC.[...] These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them"
I beg to differ.
A locked device works well for single-purpose ones. Like an iPod. Multi-purpose devices (also known as smartphones, like the iPhone) do many things and letting the user decide what to do is key. We are quite different out there. The ability to add third party apps has been the reason why Palm has been successful (together with the synching capability). You can't lock a smartphone or people will develop for different platforms and innovation will go elsewhere.
Since I sort of represent the largest development community in mobile (we are getting close to one million downloads...), what I am reading is: go away, we do not want you. We won't be able to have the Funambol plug-in on the iPhone. No open source push-email. No open source PIM synching. No way to put all the apps that people built on our platform on the iPhone.
That is stupid. Where will our community go? To OpenMoko, first. To Microsoft Windows Mobile, second. If you are a startup and you have a cool app in mind, where will you develop it first? On Windows. Same happened for the Mac. If you have the next killer VOIP client, you will build it for Windows Mobile, not the iPhone. There, you will be stuck with whatever Apple gives to you. Even if it sucks or you do not want to get locked on iMac... Innovation will go elsewhere.
Outside developers are a phenomenal resource. Look at Google. They have the brightest people on the planet but the coolest products were written by non-Google people (then they bought them). Innovation came elsewhere. It is not different for Apple.
Apple, you chose to build a smartphone, not me. I was not expecting it. Now it is much better for you to let us develop for it... Niche smartphone with no developers is a niche of a niche. Lock the iPhone nano, which will do just two things well, it will be fast, small and supercool. Not that smartphone.
Man, I feel alone...
As you certainly know, Apple launched the iPhone today. Great show by Steve Jobs, as usual. And surprising announcement, at least for me. Everybody is excited about the device (the stock market for sure, with AAPL up 7% and RIM down 7%...), I am not that much. Obviously, I need to get my hands on it and play with it, but one thing is clear: it is a smartphone!!!
It is funny how nobody noticed it with surprise. I was not expecting a smartphone... Apple is a great consumer company... Smartphones represent a minuscule size of the mobile market. The smartphone market is not even considered "consumer". It is an enterprise market, prosumer at best. Apple target is 1% of the entire device market in 2008. That's nothing. That will be a rounding error in Nokia or Motorola or even Samsung market share... The iPhone is not a RAZR, not by a mile.
Moreover, the iPhone does not even look like an enterprise device. It just looks like a smartphone for geeks (and I love geeks, do not get me wrong, but we are not the majority out there...).
On top of it, it is pricey... At $499, you need to be a wealthy geek... Did anyone notice that the BlackBerry Pearl is much smaller, looks pretty cool and cost you $199?? When I saw it for the first time I thought "wow, that might get into the hands of consumers". I have a hard time thinking the same for the iPhone...
When it comes to the UI, I am happy to hear from Steve that our fingers are designed for interacting... But touching something requires a tactile feedback. If I touch a screen, there is no feedback. When I touch buttons, I get it. Did anybody notice a difference between the buttons in a BlackBerry, Treo, Q or E61? I do. They feel different when I touch them or push them. You are going to miss it with the iPhone... Look at the iPod: it is all about tactile feedback. The wheel is just perfect. It feels perfect. A screen won't. Never. It is cold and flat.
How innovative is it? Well, have you looked at the OpenMoko device? Gulp, it is a smartphone and it does not have a keyboard as well. It is based on the same idea. Steve said they patented everything about the iPhone. Good for them... If you are a geek developer and you have to choose between a fully proprietary solution and a fully open source device, what would you choose? They are both based on a Unix derivative... I would go with OpenMoko, where you can freely build any kind of application without paying a toll to Apple.
Lastly, and this is for geeks, it does not support 3G. No UMTS, only EDGE. That's slooooow for a geek. I am happy about the wi-fi support, but this is a device that is supposed to change the way I interact with the world when I am mobile (and I do not have wi-fi everywhere today). It is going to be sloooooooooow!!
Ok, I believe I have been a bit too harsh on this one. I really want to play with it and say I was wrong. But I won't be able to do it for the next six months... That's an eternity in mobile. Where is the Apple that announced a device and it was available in store the same day???
In a nutshell:
- It is just a smartphone
- It is a smartphone for geeks only
- It is pricey even for a geek
- Input is going to be clumsy
- It is not that innovative
- It is slow
- It is going to take six months before we see it
I might be wrong on everything, and I hope to be. I am an Apple fan. I bought dozens of iPod Shuffle before Christmas, after all... If I look at it with a positive angle, the iPhone is very similar to the first iPod. That one was for geeks only, as well. Heavy and big. Then they made the mini and the nano and the last shuffle. Fantastic devices for the masses. Everybody got one.
I guess I will have to wait for the iPhone nano...
I promised myself and my family that I would not work during the holidays. That included this blog (which is more fun than work, but...). I have been good and maintained the promise (although I still checked my email few times a day on my mobile since I am addicted to my own software). Now it is time to start writing again...
When I was about to go on vacation, my friend Mike Olson at Oracle (a.k.a. Mr. Sleepycat) tagged me with the "Five Things" game. It is a pyramid scheme. I am supposed to write five things you do not know about me and tag five more people to do the same. Pyramid schemes are interesting because are social phenomena, like open source, where a group of people get together with a goal in mind (or just for fun). They die because of party poopers, killing the chain. I'll be happily one of them.
FIVE THINGS YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT ME- I lived in a mental institution for three years. Actually, not as a patient... My parents are both shrinks and worked there. It was easier for them to live in a apartment inside the hospital for the night shifts. Therefore, I spent the first three years of my life in a mental institution. It was a great experience, although I do not remember it, and it might explain a lot of things about me...
- My high school was a "Liceo Classico". That is, I studied a lot of Ancient Greek and Latin and pretty much zero math. My grandma, a Greek and Latin teacher, always told me that classical studies "open your mind". I really hope so. It seemed not very helpful while moving into high tech, but it gives me a good amount of topics for boring social dinners.
- I hate carrots, of any shape or form.
- The girl I married attended my same kindergarten and was sitting in front of me for five years in high school. She was one of my preferred target for spitting paper balls with my pen during not-so-interesting lessons.
- I am the only Italian on the planet who is crazy about baseball. It resembles soccer, after all. It is slow, there is a lot of strategy, it is all about episodes. The difference is that you can munch cracker jacks and talk as much as you want, knowing you are not going to lose the key moment: when you hear the crack of the bat, you have time to turn your head and watch the ball land in McCovey Cove. When the ball is in the net, it is too late... You need to wait until you are home to see the game again (yes, I do that as well).
That's it, I am not going to write the other 45 for now...
