iCloud is sticky, even before birth

I was reading an interesting analysis today. It is a survey on smartphones, customer satisfaction and the like. The last part talks about iCloud and its effect on users. Let me copy it here for the link-clicking-averse:

The survey found that 29% of Apple’s existing company were “More Likely” to buy Apple products in the future because of iCloud, a service that was announced only a month ago and has yet to be entirely rolled out.

Even more interestingly, 13% of those who do NOT own an Apple device were also “More Likely” to buy an Apple product in the future because of the service.

I always say that a Personal Cloud service is sticky. Your life is in it. The more you use it, the more difficult it gets for you to leave. A few months in, you are stuck forever.

Here, though, we are talking about a service which does not even exist. Sticky before birth.

It is funny, but once again a proof of the power of Apple marketing. They make you desire things that do not exist yet. I will never stop thanking Steve Jobs: he made people understand what a smartphone can do, why you need an App Store, now he is explaining what the a cloud synchronization service will do. It benefits everyone in the industry.

The best technology is invisible

I was invited to attend the Frontiers of Interaction conference in Florence today. It is a fantastic event, sort of the TED of Italy, with speakers coming from all over the world. If you close your eyes, you would think you are in Silicon Valley, then you eat at the coffee break and you realize you are in Italy ;-) The best of both worlds.

Anyway, the talk I enjoyed the most was one by Amber Case, titled Cyborg Anthropology and the Evaporation of the Interface. I was pretty much in agreement with everything Amber said, which is a rare case for me...

One slide hit me so much that I felt I had to take a picture.

The best technology is invisible.

I could not have said that better.

The beauty of this statement is that it comes from a UX designer. The goal of people in this field is to build the best user interfaces. What is the best UI? The one that does not exist. It is there, it does things for you, but you do not see it. It is like magic. The UX designer destroys the UI. It makes it disappear.

It has always been my mantra (yep, I have a usability background too, apparently we like to destroy our jobs as well ;-) and I tried to apply it to Funambol every step of the way. Synchronization should just work. You take a video and it magically appears on all your devices, without you touching a button. No need to click on sync. Ever. We pushed it so far that at a certain point we realized we screwed our chances to add an advertising layer (well, you need real estate for it, if the UI does not exist, it is hard to put a banner anywhere...).

Still, I believe it is the best way to build a user interface. Make it magical. User will like it because they will not see it. The robots out there are working for us, life gets easier, I do not have to upload anything, I save five minutes of my life every day to do what I really like instead.

The best technology is invisible. It just works. The machines are working for us, not the opposite. It is how the future should be.

The iPad is one step closer to be a personal device

What seems a very long time ago (a year in mobile is 10 years in desktop life ;-) I wrote a post about the iPad as a personal device vs. a family device.

You know, as soon as you took it home, it was stolen by your spouse or kids. It became a family device, not a personal device.

I fight daily with my daughter over it, even more than over the TV remote (she does not like the Giants as much as I do, apparently).

Still, I was convinced Apple planned for it to be a personal device, eventually expecting everyone in the family to have its own. The lack of multi-account support was a strong hint...

I concluded:

Do I really think the iPad is a family device? Nope.

Do I believe Apple will add multi-account support to it? Nope.

The iPad is and will remain a personal device, as your iPod or your iPhone. I already know people that bought two, three or four. One for each member of the family.

Everyone in the family will get an iPad, eventually. Apple is more than happy to have you not fight on the remote. So nice of them.

After the WWDC keynote, I am even more convinced about it.

What they are doing is tying everything to one Apple ID. They are piling stuff on it. First it was just apps, now it is calendar, contacts, pictures and your entire life. It is all about personalization (for one person, there is nothing to split it). They are even adding sharing to calendar, something you would not need for a shared device (you could just pass it around...).

It is not just to sell more iPads. It is also to sell you more apps, music, books and movies. If they manage to tie the Apple ID to only one individual in the family, you will not be able to share apps across devices. You will be forced to buy them separately.

Obviously, for now it fits only the adults in the family, because each Apple ID comes with a separate credit card. Unfortunately, I see a lot of fights with my daughter in my future. Unless, of course, I decide to buy her an iPad and make Steve Jobs even richer. Thankfully, my wife will prevent me from doing it.

SMS are going away, so are the revenues

The amount of news out of the WWDC keynote is staggering. Apple has announced three different products, all interconnected, threatening dozens of startups and lifting some (glad to be in the second category ;-)

One thing that did not get much visibility, as one of the 10 features of iOS5: iMessage. It is a built-in instant messaging product, one that will work on all iOS devices (and, I am assuming, Mac and PC down the road).

What is it? Simply: texting. It is the new SMS. It replaces SMS. And it does it transparently, because you receive a message that looks like an SMS and you reply with a message that looks like an SMS. The UI on the iPhone is exactly the same (and it works on iPads too, also the wi-fi only ones).

The difference? It uses your data plan. Very few bytes of it. It is practically free for the end user.

Nothing new: one of the most used feature of BlackBerry is BBM or BlackBerry Messaging. It is what is allowing RIM to stay afloat in emerging markets.

I know this announcement seems small. It is just an instant message product, right? However, it is huge, not only for RIM (sorry for them) but mostly for the mobile operators. Because it comes from the big gorilla.

SMS is by far the most lucrative product ever conceived by a mobile operator (it was an accident, BTW ;-) The amount of money they make with texting is insane, considering the network is practically not used at all.

It is all going away. It will happen slowly, of course. And there is an issue with interoperability between devices because it will work only within the Apple silo. But it is a sign. The direction is clear. SMS are going away, and so are the revenues attached to it.

Years ago I mentioned to a mobile operator that SMS were going away, eventually, and that they would have to move up the food chain (I went all the way saying that voice is a data type and that it will go as well, just wait...). He told me it was not going to happen. The carriers had too much control to let this slip away from them. "They can take everything, but not the cash cow". My answer was: "I spoke a few years back to a fax manufacturer who said the same thing about email"...

Guess what? The cash cow is going. If you are a carrier, you better move up the chain fast, because it is not going to last.

The sweet feeling of validation

Feel free to skip this post. I am not writing it for you, I am writing it for myself. I just want to keep a log of what happened today, because I have been waiting for years for this moment...

Today Steve Jobs unveiled iCloud. I wrote on this blog many times before it was going to happen one day, and it did. What surprised me is the words he chose to explain why cloud and synchronization are so key to the future of computing. Why? Because it sounds like me talking ;-) How cool is that?

This is what he said:

I get to talk about iCloud. We've been working on this for some time. About 10 years ago, we had one of our most important insights. We thought the PC would be the hub for your digital life. Where you put your photos, your video, your music.

You were going to acquire it, and sync it to the Mac, and everything would work fine. And it did... but it's broken down in the last few years.

Why? Because all your devices have photos, have video, have music. If I buy something on my phone, I have to sync it to get a song I bought. Then I have to sync that to other devices, and if I have photos, it's the same thing... and keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy!

We've got a solution for this problem. We're going to demote the PC and the mac to just be a device. We're going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.

So now, if I get something on my iPhone, it's sent to the cloud immediately, and they're pushed down to my devices automatically. And now everything is in sync without having to think about it. I don't have to be near my Mac or PC.

He even had a slide with the motto our Product Manager has used to focus our team: "It just works".

Here you have it. If the greatest visionary on earth tells the word that the future is what we started building ten years ago, then it means we were doing something right. Seeing Apple catching up to the concept feels great. Validation is sweet.

What about Funambol? This is just a great lift-off for us. iCloud is an Apple-centric platform. If you own an Android device (just one, and keep in mind they are getting everywhere, in your TV, car and so on), or a BlackBerry, or a Windows phone... you are screwed with iCloud. This is the Apple silo. Everything will work as long as you stay within the silo. However, in any family or company I know, there is a mix of everything. And that is where the big money is.

It is great that Apple is showing it to everyone, because when they do, everyone believes it. When I say it, nobody gives a damn :-)) Now life is going to be so much easier!

Thanks Steve, you made my day, and probably ten years of my life.

It is time to kill the file system

I am sure you have watched the video preview of Windows 8. If you haven't, shame on you, it will turn out to be a crucial moment in the history of computing... Ok, ok, I'll add it below here. Watch it and then come back.



Now, tell me what you felt and what you remember if you close your eyes.

Exactly, it is all smooth and nice and wow until you get around minute 3:00. He opens Excel, Windows creeps in from below and you think "oh, s**t, that's ugly, I want to go back to the other interface!".

I think that reaction is telling. We want good UIs, we want the new touch interface, we are tired of windows, we like tiles and things that magically update themselves. However, Microsoft needs to be backward compatible and - as Michael points out - they were successful once with launching Windows 3.1 while having the ugly DOS window in the background. Maybe they can do it again.

Maybe.

The problem is that we have moved on. Mentally. We, as users of mobile devices and tablets. We like what we have now, we do not want to go back. The paradigm has shifted, a new era has begun, mobile is becoming desktop. The desktop is tired, it needs to move, to become mobile.

One thing in particular kills me in that video. He says: "Because it is a PC, it has a file system". I think it tells everything. It is a PC, it has a file system, it must have a file system, right? Or it would not be a PC!

I do not think so.

The file system is dead.

Think about it. It is the biggest change introduced by Apple with iOS. There is no file system. Documents live within applications. Pictures live within the picture app. Videos within the video app. Books within iBooks. You can move stuff around (from Mail to iBooks) but there is no concept of file system.

I know you know what a file system is. But ask your parents. Did they ever understood the concept. Fully? Do they ever created folders within folders? Do they get the tree? No. It is complicated. It is not intuitive.

Actually, it is not necessary at all. It is a complication of the metaphor. One we can live without.

Of course you'll have a file system underneath. I am not advocating killing the OS file system. We geeks will use it to move stuff around, but the end users do not need it.

Eventually, they will not need the old Windows UI either.

Panic: cell phones are killing us!!

I have read the report from the WHO meeting about the risk of brain cancer due to use of mobile phones. The conclusion is that they have not enough data, but just to be sure they said the phone radiation are "possibly carcinogenic" to human beings.

The category they put phones in is 2B, described as follows.

This category is used for agents, mixtures and exposure circumstances for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. It may also be used when there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. In some instances, an agent, mixture or exposure circumstance for which there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but limited evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals together with supporting evidence from other relevant data may be placed in this group."

I am a geek, possibly scientist, and I like to see things before I believe them. I decided to go and look at the list of substances in the 2B category from the WHO/IARC web site.

The list is quite long, but I want to warn you: it is scary.

One thing that hurts like mobile phones: coffee (bye bye all my Italian friends). Another one: pickled vegetables (bye bye all my Asian friends).

Let me call BS on this. You cannot turn the media loose on something that is possibly carcinogenic. They will run wild and scare the heck out of people. It does not help our industry. If you have real data, show it to us. If you do not have it, please shut up.

I would respectfully ask the WHO for a study around how risky is to talk and walk at the same time. I bet it will deserve a 2A, probably dangerous to humans, definitely fatal for idiots.

While waiting for the next report on how dangerous mobile phone radiation are, I will go back to use a landline, possibly extending a cord out of my office to make sure I can cross the street safely.

Five reasons why Windows Phone could make it

I speak with people in the industry all the time. As soon as we talk about Windows Phone, the best comment I hear is "they are dead". I spare you the rest of the comments ;-)

I disagree. I know I am the most unlikely believer in Microsoft, due to my open source background and extensive use of anything non-Microsoft, but here you have my five reasons why you should not discount Windows Phone.

1. Android is getting too dangerous for device manufacturers. I have said many times that the war between Apple and Google reminds me of Microsoft vs. Apple in the PC era. It turns out that Google is winning and has a high probability of becoming the Microsoft of mobile OS, with Apple becoming the Apple (i.e. repeating the mistake they made years ago, with the slight difference that they are making tons of money now ;-) The industry is scared by Google now, more than by Apple and a million times more than by Microsoft. They have seen the PC world and do not want it to repeat. Nobody must own 90% of the market, relegating them to pure boxes makers. Apple is not an option (they do not want help), Microsoft is the only weapon to slow down Google. Windows Phone will get a lot of support and love because of it.

2. Android is getting expensive for device manufacturers. The news of today is that HTC is paying $5 per device to Microsoft, for every Android device. You read it well, for Android... Microsoft is actually making more money from Android than from Windows Phone, due to Intellectual Property BS (a tactic they use it very well, and have no intention of abandoning). ODMs flocked to Android because it was free. If Microsoft lowers the price of WP below $10 and Google keeps increasing the cost of their proprietary add-ons, the field will be leveled on price. At the same price point, splitting production between Android and Windows Phone seems reasonable.

3. Android is less and less open. Because of fragmentation, and some confusion in Google on how to monetize it with advertising (any hint why they are still pushing Google Chrome OS? Yep, that fits very well with the ads play, Android does not). Android becoming close makes it equal to Windows Phone. Same price, same openness, less risky player: ODMs will just do it.

4. Windows Phone is a good consumer OS. If you look at the three points above, it was all about device manufacturers picking one OS vs. the other. However, the king-makers are the end users. If they believe WP sucks, it is game over. However, the (few) people I know with a WP are very happy about it. It looks different. And cool. Even non-Microsoft. It is on par with Android, and it some ways even better. Android still looks too geeky. Windows Phone is everything but. Eventually, it will start to sell.

5. Nokia still enjoys a huge market share. In particular in feature phones and emerging markets. Right now, people upgrading their Nokia phones are buying Android devices. As soon as Nokia has a decent smartphone, they will prefer to stick with the brand they trust and like (Nokia phones do not break, they might not be sexy anymore, but they are reliable. Reliability sells, if you spice it up a bit). Nokia must move fast, because every day they lose is a day of more upgrades to Android. They will ship a WP device, eventually. It is just a matter of time.

The missing element is convincing developers (we hate Microsoft by definition), but if ODMs build good devices and users start buying them, eventually we'll port our software to it.

Here you have it. I believe Microsoft could make it. Nothing close to domination, but a significant market share. Something between 20% and 30% in three years. Wanna bet?

Overage charges will kill the mobile revolution

I have been in mobile long enough to have witnessed every attempt by the mobile operators to milk data revenues. SMS being the holy grail they always wanted to replicate (can't be done, some things are too good to be true...).

It started with outrageous pricing, which did not make any sense. It kept out anyone but large enterprises, mostly using BlackBerry. Finally, the prices were relaxed, consumers could afford them, the smartphone era began and the mobile revolution started. We owe a lot to Apple, as usual.

Then the panic kicked in, combined with some greed. The network started to look overloaded, thanks to the combo AT&T + iPhone in major cities. They began telling us they had to limit the use of the network. They needed to offload to Wi-Fi (smart). They needed tiered pricing, abandoning unlimited data plans (this is happening today in the US).

I am in favor of tiered pricing. I am a capitalist. If you use the resources more, you should pay more. If you use it less, you should pay less. It makes sense. Nothing in this world is unlimited. I get it. It has been like that in Europe forever.

The issue is what happens when you reach a threshold. When you are a network hog. When you are hitting the upper limit that gets you to unlimited.

We know from the landline Internet that very few people do get there. But those few, use it more than half of the rest. They are the one a carrier should target, making sure they do not bring down the network for everyone else. How can they do it?

First option: overage charges. If you go above a certain amount of network use, you start paying per MB or time or whatever. You pass the threshold, you will be punished. The carrier will make it so expensive you are not going to do it again.

Second option: throttling. When you use it too much, the speed of your network goes down. You become a second class citizen. It still works, you do not pay more, but the quality decreases.

Overage charges are a very bad idea. They do limit usage by bad guys, but they scare the good guys (everyone else). You just need one story of the poor kid that got charged $274,000 by AT&T because he made a mistake of some sort: the media will jump on it and everyone will be scared. Parents will not get data plans for their kids. Seniors will stay away for good. The market will not take off. Actually, it already has, so this would likely kill the mobile revolution. Or slow it down dramatically.

Overage charges seem a good idea to carriers. In theory, they can make more money from the bad guys. And that is appealing. But in reality, they won't make a dime. Only few people will be caught and by mistake. They will be pissed and ask for their money back. A PR nightmare, for nothing.

Throttling is the way to go. Limit usage for the bad guys, everyone else will be serene. They won't hit the limit in any case. They will buy in because there is no fear ("worst case scenario, my network will be slow, I do not care"). The mobile revolution will continue.

If you are a mobile operator, please consider this. Overage charges are a bad idea. Throttling is the way to go. Pleeeeeaaaase...

72% of iPad users do not own an iPhone

Today I bumped into a very interesting report from ComScore on iPad users. In particular, there is one finding that jumped out at me: less than 30% of iPad users have an iPhone (27.3%, to be precise). 17.5% own a BlackBerry, the rest have an Android or something else.

It is interesting because it means that the Apple silo solution (MobileMe + iTunes) will not work for 72% of iPad users. When Apple announces their digital locker cloud solution (I am still betting it is by WWDC in June), they will leave all of them behind, scrambling for a solution to sync their phone with their tablet.

If you have an Android device and you cannot sync it to your iPad, then the Apple solution will be meaningless for you. You would better be served by someone who can go across devices (wink wink ;-)

On the other side, this puts even more pressure on Apple to have such a cloud solution. If you bought your iPad after your smartphone (likely) and you are looking at buying a new smartphone (very likely, you change mobile device every 18 months) then you might be attracted to an iPhone more than any other device. Now that you have an iPad (and you love it), you are more likely to ditch your BlackBerry for an iPhone, because Apple allows you to sync them transparently.

The other option, of course, is ditching your iPad for a BlackBerry PlayBook or an Android Tablet, but the iPad has such a lead in the tablet market - and I feel people will change tablet not as fast as they change mobile phone - that I see this as a 2012/2013 option. Not this year.

Bottom line:

• there is a huge market for syncing devices across platforms and the iPad is making this very visible (72% is a pretty big share...)
• there is a huge opportunity for Apple to use the iPad to drive iPhone sales, like they need more :-)

Is MeeGo dead or alive?

Yesterday I received a call from a banker asking a very specific question: "is MeeGo dead or alive?". That made me think.

If you do not know MeeGo, it is an open source mobile operating system. It was originated by the merger of Maemo (supported by Nokia) and Moblin (supported by Intel), and it is managed by the Linux Foundation.

I tried MeeGo on a laptop some time ago and I was very impressed. Great UI, playful, very interesting metaphors. I had good hopes for the OS because Intel was behind it, and I assumed the big gorilla (Nokia, funny how they are not considered one anymore...) would push great devices on it.

When Nokia announced their move to Windows Phone 7 before MWC, it was clear they decided to abandon MeeGo. Their slide, depicted below, did not leave many questions. MeeGo was not even illustrated ;-) while Symbian was going to die (an horrible marketing mistake, in my opinion).

That leaves Intel as the only sponsor. And they have not been able to produce a mobile device yet...

If you look at the mobile OS market, there are two clear leaders: Android and iOS. Is there room for a third OS? Yes, I think so.

Who are the competitors? Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Palm WebOS and MeeGo.

If you have to put them in a sequence, which one would you pick? Hard to tell, but MeeGo is probably between #3 and #4, because Microsoft is betting their life on Windows Phone (and they have tons of money) and RIM is still a formidable player (at least in emerging markets). I think MeeGo can beat WebOS, but is there room for five mobile OSs? I do not think so. I hardly see room for four, honestly.

That would mean MeeGo is going to die. Unless they find a home for it. Let me try to see if there is one.

Android is not really open source anymore. It is hardly open. The rest of the pack are closed OSs. MeeGo is the only pure open source play remaining. This is a big differentiation. At the end of the day, if Android stumbles (there are many reasons to believe it could happen, from lawsuits to fragmentation), MeeGo could be a great option for device manufacturers and carriers.

In particular, I have a feeling MeeGo has a chance on connected devices, beside mobile. The world out there is in need of a true open source OS, built for low power consumption and great interactivity. Something you can use for machine to machine (M2M) communication. It could work on cars, digital frames, microwaves, and a lot of more devices. We are talking trillions here. With Intel behind it, providing the chips.

That might be it. Grow in connected devices, hope for Android to stumble and maybe eventually make it back into mobile or even tablets and laptops.

I have great faith in the Linux Foundation and I think they can pull it off. Android destroyed MeeGo momentum and Nokia stubbed them in the back. You could conclude they should be dead by now. However, we know open source does not die, it grows and grows. Sometimes under the radar, but it does not stop.

If you look at the news, you can see some signs of it. LG is looking at MeeGo. Many others could follow, and in many different markets. Android is giving device manufacturers some worries, and they like to maintain their options open (and keep vendors - like Google - honest). There is life here.

Not in great health but not dead for sure. We'll hear about it for a long time, I believe.

A business model for open source (hint: it's the cloud!)

Yesterday I found on YouTube the keynote I gave at the Open World Forum in Paris last September. I talk about what I consider THE business model for open source projects: a separation of a free community edition for deployment (for people that have time but no money) and a commercial edition in the cloud (for people that have money but no time). Obviously, the example I am using is Funambol... but I think it can be a model working for a lot more projects.

Caution: it is 15 minutes long. Too bad the slides are not visible, this was my best zen presentation sequence ever ;-)



Video on YouTube

Android not open source is suicide for Google

Since the launch of Android, two forces have been at work:

1. Open Source, which made Android what it is today, the fastest growing OS of all time (I need data for this statement, but I am ready to bet it is true) on its way to connected devices domination (i.e. domination of the future of computing)
2. Fragmentation, which has generated a lot of problems for developers and device manufacturers, turning into issues for end users

Of the two forces, I think #1 is the key. Android has changed the game of Operating Systems. From a model where you had to pay for the OS (Microsoft Windows) to one where the OS is free and open. Linux and the rest of the Unix variations had tried it before, but only Android made it big. Because of the Google brand and timing (there was nothing like that available, and it was badly needed).

Google does not make money on the OS. They make money if you use it.  Their goal is to make sure it is in the hands of billions of people. Their money is on advertising, through search and maps. It is working astonishingly well.

To me, fragmentation just makes the road not as smooth as one would like it to be. It makes it like a Californian highway, vs. a Northern Italian one. The former is free, the latter is expensive. The former might have bumps, the latter is perfect. Still, I prefer the Californian highway. And I get to work as fast as I would do in Italy. Actually, faster because I do not have to stop at the toll booth. Could the road be better? Sure. Does it matter to me that much? Nope, I like it free.

However, due to fragmentation, I have seen a bunch of news pop up. Scary news.

First, Honeycomb - the latest version of the Android OS - is not going to be available in open source soon. That might be ok, as long as it happens sooner rather than later. The move is meant to cut out the little ODMs which were building devices on the open source version, fragmenting it.

Today, the news is that Google is forcing licensees to abide by 'non-fragmentation clauses'. Therefore, if you are a licensee, you can build your customizations only if Andy Rubin says it is ok.

Fighting fragmentation is very important to Google. They get bugged about it on a daily basis, I am sure. However, check the current distribution of Android versions:

Android 2.x is at more than 90%. That is all you need. Some people will be always left over. After all, 11% of people still use IE6 as their browser...

I do not think fragmentation is such an issue with Android to prevent it from being the dominant force of OS in the future. I believe pissing off all your ODMs and pushing them to choose other platforms might actually do it.

Eventually, preventing fragmentation might be suicide.

Take a bit of fragmentation, keep the open source model, let people vent about it and move on.

Google, you are winning: if it ain't broken, do not fix it...

Did Amazon just launch the mythical GDrive?

The race to cloud synchronization just got hotter today. Amazon has launched Amazon Cloud Drive, a space where you can put all your data. Interesting enough, they decided to market this service with music first, although the system allows you to upload any kind of data (like your pictures, documents, videos). They have just one player for mobile - the music player on Android - but it is clear this is just their first move.

We were all expecting Apple to bring iTunes to the cloud, or Google to launch a music cloud service, and - surprise surprise - Amazon did it first. I actually called it a few weeks ago, when I wrote about trust and who could own your data in the cloud. Amazon is a trusted source, they could be the one going across devices (since Apple will do only iOS and Google only Android). It is a bold move. Maybe this is why the CEO of RealNetworks stepped down yesterday ;-)

If you look at the service, the aim is clear: create a digital locker for all your data. One that you will be able to access across a ton of devices, mobile and not. Some of the data will be synced, some will be streamed.

It does look familiar, doesn't it?

The pricing is aggressive but not too much. They are undercutting Dropbox by 100% (50G cost $50 vs. $100... ouch) and they throw in 20G for free for a year if you buy an MP3 Album (the lowest price for an MP3 album is $0.69 right now, do your math and buy one today...). The price is roughly inline with their public S3 offering (you get to those numbers as a third party when you buy 4,000TB). However, they are not undercutting Google, which has Google Storage at a quarter of that cost (double-ouch).

Yep, Google is selling 1G of storage for a quarter dollar a year, Amazon for one dollar, Dropbox for two dollars. Get ready for this to get better (for consumers) while margins get squeezed. There is no money in storage, the game is on features. If you battle on storage, you are dead.

It is funny all attention is on music right now. The labels are on fire, saying Amazon must pay them a fee (for what, having an hard disk which is not physically connected to your PC? Yeah, right, good luck). Amazon will knock down the labels and it will be a free game for all, as they have done with DRM and mp3 when they launched the Amazon MP3 site. This is going to be fun to watch.

However, the focus should not be just on music. Rumors about Google launching the mythical GDrive have been around for years. Then one day Amazon comes around and does it for them. It is the ADrive. It is big news. The start of the race to the cloud. The GDrive is history.

What will Google do? What about Apple? I bet the answers will come before summer. Get ready, it is going to be a hot spring for cloud synchronization. It is great to be part of it.

Your tablet will never be a laptop

I am on record as one of the first who said that the tablets were the future of computing for the masses. I stand by my assessment of a year ago. I am even more convinced that the tablet will replace the home desktop computer for the majority of the population and, for that matter, laptops.

However, I am very surprised when I hear people saying that the tablets will replace laptops for people who use them to work. The tablets are not good to do work, period. Any work.

They are not made for it. They are made for entertainment, with some light work in between. They have a precise scope in the workplace: take notes and give presentations. And do some communication. The rest of their life is on the couch at home or on the plane.

I feel it is insane to really believe you are going to use your tablet for heavy document writing, or to work on a spreadsheet. The UI interface is not conducive of high productivity. Your hands are always in the middle, you cover your visual interaction with your hands. It will always yield to low productivity results.

Some people say "simple, just get a wireless keyboard". Wrong. The OS for a touch device will always force you to touch the screen. You will end up putting your hands on the screen way too many times, which will lead to low productivity.

Some people say "then use a keyboard and a mouse". Wrong. The problem is that the OS for a touch device is built for touch. If you try to overlap a mouse interaction on it, you will end up with a multi-modal device, one that is the classical hybrid that sucks on both. iOS works because you interact with touch. Some of its paradigms will be ported to Mac OS, but Mac OS will always be a mouse-centric OS, while iOS will always be a touch-centric device. They will not fully merge, and for a reason. Look at the success of the Microsoft strategy around one OS for everything...

I am not the only one saying this. Steve Jobs is. Look at the presentation of iPad 2. Where is iWork in the presentation? Where is the innovation around Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iPad? They were not there. What Steve presented is iMovie (cool) and GarageBand (very cool). No productivity tools. He knows, as we do, that the iPad is not going to replace your work laptop. For entertainment, it will.

There is no swiss-knife when it comes to devices. In your pocket, you keep a smartphone. In your bag to go back and forth to work, a laptop (which does perfectly replace your desktop, BTW, just add a keyboard, mouse and monitor). On your couch, and in meetings, a tablet.

You just need to makes sure you keep all of them synchronized. But for that, there are solutions.

Google Voice is key for domination in mobile

I have been a GrandCentral user for a long time, way before Google bought them to create Google Voice. I love the service, and it got better with time. Slowly, but it got better.

[START RANT] I am just waiting for the possibility of sending international SMSs to call it the best tool I own (oops, use as a service). Not sure why international SMS support is not there, because I would pay for it! Nowadays, I have to open up Skype and send an SMS to an international friend (paying dollars), to get an answer in Google Voice, then go back to Skype. Aaarrggghhh!!! [END RANT]

Rant excluded, I think Google Voice is awesome. And I do not believe people understand how critical it is going to be for Google domination in mobile.

First of all, if you have Google Voice, you do not need one particular carrier. You need someone to give you connectivity, but you are totally unplugged from them. You can move to a different carrier and not even notice it, since your number is on Google Voice. It makes the carrier a voice and SMS pipe. You can simply go with whomever gives you better connectivity and lower prices. Huge.

Second: the future of computing are a bunch of devices you carry with you, all with some wireless connectivity. It can be your tablet, your smartphone or your laptop. They will have all-the-time connectivity one day. 4G or 5G, whatever. They will be always-on and able to talk to the world. Still, you will want a single number, one that people dial to call you. They call you, the smartphone rings, or the tablet rings, or the laptop rings (in the last two cases, you'll need a Bluetooth headset if you are in public). Or all of them at the same time. It does not matter.

What matters is that you will need an infrastructure to make all your devices converge into one for the outside world. It is like email and the ability to read it from different devices, but real time. You do not give people three different email addresses, for when you are home, work or in between.

If you have an Android tablet, it will all work through Google Voice. If you have an iPad, too bad, Apple does not have it (actually, they will try to prevent it to limit Google and help the carriers).

Eventually, more people will be forced to choose Android over iPad. For a stupid feature, but a very important one: nobody wants to give the rest of the world two or three different numbers and say "try the first number, then the second, then the third". There is a reason why nobody calls you at home and work anymore: they call you always on your cellphone because they know it is the only number they have to dial (even if it might cost them 10 times more, as in Europe). Convenience is everything. People are fundamentally lazy.

Somehow, Google Voice is key for Google domination in connected devices. Weird.

No trust, no cloud

A few weeks back, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I was invited to give a talk about "Consumers in the Cloud". It is a hot topic: consumers are putting more and more personal information on the cloud, from their friends (address book) to pictures, videos, files and much more.

My talk focused on one major topic: trust.

Trust is the key when it comes to putting your data in the cloud. There are things you want to share with everyone, some you want to share with few, and few you do not want to share with anyone (probably, not even your mom). My focus was on the latter.

Why would you put your persona data in the cloud, anyway, if you do not want anyone else to see?

First, because you are afraid to lose it. Because your data is important. And if you put it in your hard disk and it blows up, you have lost it forever. A picture gone is a part of you gone, a memory that will never come back.

Second, because you want your data to move across your devices. If you take a video on your mobile phone, where do you want to see it? On the small screen or on your TV (or - at least - on your PC)? Yep, me too.

Therefore, your data will end in the cloud, eventually. Synchronization across connected devices will drive it. Backup, Time Machine will make it secure and easy. Once your data is in the cloud, you can pick what to share (not everything).

Trust comes in because you need to be sure that the place you put your data in will not give it away, or use it for different purposes. You need a safe for your data, a locker, a place with a key you only have. The bank itself cannot open it, cannot see it. You must trust them.

Who do you trust?

Do you trust Facebook for your important data? Well, rent The Social Network and let me know...

Who could you trust, then?

Your device manufacturer, maybe. Can you trust Apple? Probably, but there is a major flaw in their ecosystems: they are close. You must have iPhone-iPad-AppleTV and so on for everything to work smoothly. If anyone in your family has an Android, the Apple world breaks. Device manufacturers cannot go cross-platform, so they will never be able to be a good digital locker.

Google? I doubt it. Maybe. But their business model is built on sniffing your data and make money on it. They will analyze your information. They will know it. And they have another issue: they are the land of Android and they have neglected all the other platforms because of it. It is Android or a browser, anything in the middle is decaying (look at the poor support they give to sync with a BlackBerry... And they do not even have contact sync on Outlook...).

Anyone else?

The carriers. They can go cross-platform. They have a brand known well. Some of them are even trusted, mainly in emerging markets. Are people loyal to their carrier? Not really. Do you want to give all your data to AT&T, get locked in so you can't move to Verizon. Maybe not. But they definitely have a shot.

Ouch, who is left?

A third party, a startup, someone built with with this idea in mind. It could be Yahoo! or Amazon, or someone we do not even know now. I think a company will eventually own this space, and it is going to be huge. It is all your data in the cloud, it means your life, something you will pay for. To someone not doing advertising, not looking at your data.

Someone you trust.

The day iTunes will fly in the cloud

UPDATE: it did not happen ;-) I got the iPad2 predictions, but that was too easy. Apparently, Apple is not ready for the cloud story yet (and I know why: it is hard to pull it off...). Next stop: the announcement of iPhone 5 in June. It will happen, someday... Lesson learned: never bet on something you really care about...

Tomorrow is iPad2 day. As usual, I should come with a list of predictions on the device, getting some right and some not. However, I do not believe it is going to be a special day for iPad enthusiasts: iPad2 will be faster, lighter, thinner and with a camera in the front (and back, although I would not bet my house on this one). Nothing revolutionary, just evolutionary. I know a ton of people who have been waiting for the camera to buy it. They will be in line. Apple will sell a ton.

What is going to change our world is not the iPad2. It is the announcement around MobileMe and the cloud. I am ready to bet any amount it is going to happen tomorrow.

I have been waiting for this moment for months, probably years. Obviously, I am biased: my company, Funambol, provides a mobile cloud synchronization solution, sort of MobileMe for the rest of us. It works on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and even iPhone and iPad. We sell it to carriers, device manufacturers and portals, and we have one for consumers too (you can try it out at my.funambol.com).

It all started with iTunes. It was the Trojan horse for the Apple strategy. Buy an iPod, you need to sync music to it. Get iTunes. First only on Mac, then also on Windows. Everybody installed one.

At the time, Steve Jobs was sure: the PC will be your media hub. The place where you would store everything, from music to pictures to videos. A cable and boom, all your data would move to other devices. Cable syncing was everything.

Then came the cloud. With Google and Facebook pushing it hard. With all your pictures moving to the cloud, with your videos being posted somewhere far away. And the tablets, which screw up cable syncing (syncing one device with a cable is ok, two is too many), and made the PC less relevant (also, I should thank the laptops for this, because they are not always on).

The PC lost as the media hub. The cloud is your media hub. That is where you will store your life, your address book, your calendar, your pictures, your videos, your music, your files. All backed up and secured. And synced across all your devices, from your PC to your laptop, from your IP phone to your TV, from your picture frame to the dashboard of your car.

Steve Jobs knows it and it showed for the first time with the AppleTV: no cable there, not even a sync mechanism with the PC, it is all cloud driven. Now they are ready to go all-in. Moving iTunes to the cloud, making MobileMe the hub for your entire life, from PIM to rich media.

It is going to be a turning point in this industry. The moment that makes the cloud the place where your life is stored. The start of the connected devices game, where data gets synced from the cloud to any of your devices, seamlessly.

Apple created the online music business. The smartphone business. The tablet business. Tomorrow they will be doing again, creating the cloud media hub for Apple devices. It will start a market, which will take off like a rocket.

Why do I love it? Because I am convinced Apple is not going to get 100% market share.

In any family, there will be Android devices and Apple devices, and probably much more (I am sure that if I have an Android, my daughter will want an iPhone, and vice versa). Variation and fragmentation will be key. Apple will not be able to solve that problem. Google will not be able to solve that problem. It will be left to those who can go cross-devices. And I know the best one (although I am biased).

Not sure if I will be able to sleep tonight ;-)

Why I believe Microsoft will buy Nokia

I have been pretty lucky in January to predict that Nokia would pick Windows 7 as its new OS. I even won a beer in a bet with the Honorary Consul to Finland in Silicon Valley, clear sign the Finns were not expecting it at all...

I felt it made sense for the situation Nokia was in. I do not think they had many choices. I believed Android was a better option, but it was just not going to happen. Microsoft, also because of Elop's background, was the easiest path.

However, I have been quite surprised by the way they threw Symbian under the bus. I was ok with killing MeeGo, although it is sad to see it (almost) gone, but I feel Symbian has so much market share - still - that a light touch would have been better.

I would be shocked to hear today from any developer in the world "I am still developing for Symbian". As of last week, Symbian is a dead platform, everybody is jumping from it.

Unfortunately for Nokia, developers are not jumping from the platform towards the same boat. They are going to miss the Microsoft boat because it is just a raft, right now. However, they will not miss the Android cruise ship, because it is enormous, it has a pool and a casino on it (check this fantastic video, it is amazing to see how fast Android grew).

Giving up on Symbian, waiting for a Windows Phone to appear (at the end of the year), means wasting a long year, probably even two. If you consider where Android was two years ago (nowhere, check the video above for February 2009) and where they are now, you know what I am talking about. This market is moving at Silicon Valley speed, if you miss two years, you are history.

That's why I think Nokia is doomed as an independent company. Before the announcement, their market cap was $43B, now it is $32B (yep, eleven billions jumped off the platform too). That means today Microsoft has 7 times Nokia market cap (they are at $224B).

With the devastation of the Symbian story (and the grow of low-cost devices from MediaTek and Android), I can only see the stock go south from here. In a year, I bet their market cap will be around $20B, just half of what it was before the announcement.

Put yourself in Steve Ballmer's shoes. At that time, your market cap will be ten times Nokia's. Their company will be $20B cheaper. Apple will be out with iPad 2, iPhone 5 and maybe even an iPhone Mini, with the highest margins ever. Android will be over 80% of market share in mobile, with Google making billions in mobile ads. Where can you go? You can't beat Android, because it is open source and it sells for zero dollars (and it has a momentum that cannot be stopped). But you can chase Apple.

And to chase Apple, you need a vertical integration, from the phone to the OS to the cloud. Microsoft+Nokia is exactly that. Give it a year, there will be friction between the two sides, because the pressure will be enormous and these things rarely work. Microsoft will be left with the only choice of buying, with everyone saying "smart move, you got them for cheap!".

That's why I believe ultimately Microsoft will buy Nokia. And a fantastic story of a company, which was selling rubber boots in the coldest place on heart then moved to mobile to conquer the world, will come to an end. Knowing the Finns, they will drink on it, and move on with a smile. They still have Angry Birds, after all.

Android Honeycomb is no iPad

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Home button of the iPad, what I call "The Panic button" (the one you press when you are in panic, that brings you home). Someone told me the post was Zen, even too Zen... "How can you write an entire post on a single button?".

The answer is "Just because I can ;-)".

Jokes apart, I still believe it is a little detail that makes all the difference in the world (of UI).

Today, looking at the pictures of the new Android Honeycomb operating system (the one designed for tablets), I found a confirmation. Look below.

What is it?

Simple, this is the home button on the Android tablets, just slightly more complicated. Slightly.

First of all, is there really a Home button? Let's look left to right.

The first button must allow you to scroll the screen to the left. The middle one to scroll the screen up. The third one... well, maybe that thing on the top is an arrow pointing top-right: so it must be a button to scroll the screen up and right (although I am not sure why I would do it).

Right? Wrong.

The first button is actually Back. Mmhh, like the circular rotating arrow I have on my Android today. But the circular shape of it somehow gives the impression of going back. This one, it does not. In particular, not with a touch interface (it could, with a mouse-based interface).

The second button is actually Home. Hey, how did I miss it? That is a house, not an arrow! Yep, one close to an arrow, which is not really an arrow...

The third button allows you to switch between applications you have open (I am not even sure what its name might be ;-) Something that would freak out your beginner user, the actual Panic button, but the one that generates panic because stuff move in front of your eyes and you do not exactly know why.

I do not think my mom will ever click the Switch App button intentionally. She would not know what to do with it. She wants one single application open, the one she is using. She does not understand multitasking, multitabbing, multiwhatever. She is old school, when people would watch TV without an iPad on their lap.

However, I am sure she would click on it by mistake. She would panic, she would lose confidence in the device, she would think it is an enemy, not a friend.

That is why I am going to buy her an iPad tomorrow. Android is no iPad, sorry. And yes, just for a little button, however Zen it is. It is $499 more for Apple, Zen.