Trying To Understand How The iPhone 5c Failed

Failure is fascinating. Failure highlights our limits, our strengths, our mortality. My ‘explorations in failure’ will this week examine the iPhone 5c. At the very moment Apple was about to slice deep into the Android behemoth, offer the world a glorious low-cost iPhone, it fell flat on its face.

How could this happen?

I don’t have all the answers, of course, but I think there is much to divine by piecing together the iPhone 5c detritus.

The scale of Apple, its global supply chain, massive retail footprint, market valuation, the popularity of its computing devices, these all reveal a company that rarely makes mistakes. Apple’s iPhone 5c has been a striking failure, however, selling far fewer devices than Apple expected, likely dampening overall iPhone sales, and, if well-placed rumors are correct, very soon to be no longer of this world. 

It all began, of course, with so much promise. The iPhone 5c — aka the “cheap iPhone” — was, we were convinced, going to be the aggressively priced new iPhone, ready to dismantle Android throughout the developing world, possibly beyond. It would (quickly) add tens of millions, ultimately hundreds of millions of new users into the Apple/iOS ecosystem.  

This was not to be. As Tim Cook stated during the company’s most recent earnings call, 5c demand “turned out to be different than we thought.” While Apple sold an astounding 51 million iPhones total in the last quarter, Cook admitted that “our North American business contracted somewhat year over year.” Cook placed the blame squarely on the iPhone 5c by bravely reminding us that Apple “actually sold more iPhone 5s’s than we projected.” 

Here’s the bottom-line: not only did iPhone 5c fail to sell in the numbers Cook calculated, the company suffered unnecessary expenses and pinched revenues by wrongly estimating the 5c/5s sales mix. 

In a rather harsh assessment to the 5c’s poor showing, USA Today noted that Tim Cook refused to address the device by name. The publication went on to state that:

Sales of Apple’s iPhone 5c have been so disappointing that the consumer technology giant will likely cut the price of the device soon or even scrap the model altogether.

Count me among those that doubt iPhone 5c will reach its first birthday.  

After all, the iPhone 5c, as it presently exists, is frankly inexplicable. It’s one of the highest-priced smartphones on the market, nearly as pricey as the 5s, yet with shockingly lesser hardware and camera features. Oh, and it doesn’t have the same look as the iconic iPhone 5s.

Go on – do your best sales job with that.

How did Apple so badly misread the market? In fact, there are several reasons. 

Failure 1. Losing the Narrative

The most obvious failing of the iPhone 5c may be in how badly Apple lost control of the narrative. Remember the build-up of buzz before the original iPad? A full touchscreen tablet, built on iOS! The only downside, it was going to cost about $1,000.

We happily got that wrong. iPad turned out to be Apple’s most reasonably priced personal computer ever.

The 5c was the reverse of this. For example, as speculated in Daring Fireball: “(Apple’s) three pricing tiers for the next year would be a new iPhone 5S at the high end, today’s iPhone 5 in the mid-range, and the new 5C at the low end.”

Sadly, no. Worse for Apple was that we all believed the rumors. Not simply because of their persistence, no, but from the fact that the market was so obviously ready for that awesome low-end device that we were convinced Apple was capable of delivering.

Perhaps we should not have convinced ourselves. As I have said here many times: it is extremely hard for any company to shift gears and go down-market, or, for that matter, to reverse its low-price strategy and go up-market. Apple is no different. All corporations have unique strengths, unique brands, unique positions within the larger marketplace. With the 5c, we learned this the hard way. Nonetheless, Apple PR must do a better job of controlling the narrative of its upcoming products.

Failure 2.  Anti-Apple design

A second failure is that the iPhone 5c altered the familiar design cues of the highly popular iPhone line. The 5c is “unapologetically” plastic and offered in several bold colors. This is the Nokia design template — and they’ve been doing it far longer than Apple. Apple offered up absolutely nothing new.

This is not to suggest the design is bad. I actually prefer the look and feel of the 5c. Not surprisingly, my go-to device is a Lumia 1520, with its bright yellow casing made of sturdy polycarbonate. The iPhone 5s feels much too light, much too fragile for my taste. Whether others feel the same is not the issue, however. Rather, the world knows at a glance what an iPhone is, and the 5c forks from this.

Unless Jony Ive and Apple are set to unleash myriad models of iPhone in numerous shapes, colors and price-points, iPod-like, then the 5c design stands out for all the wrong reasons. If you want the world to know you have an iPhone, the 5c states this with a whisper, if at all.

Failure 3. Devaluing Hardware

The most egregious, most confounding failure of the 5c, and the one I think will haunt Apple, is that the 5c effectively declares to all the world that one or all iPhones are radically overpriced. I am at a loss to understand how Apple allowed this to happen.

There is a measly $100 suggested retail price difference between the iPhone 5c and the iPhone 5s. For that extra $100, the iPhone 5s buyer receives the following additional hardware, services and benefits:

  • A7
  • M7
  • TouchID sensor
  • Lighter weight
  • True Tone flash and larger 8 MP sensor
  • Slo-mo video
  • Enhanced imaging features

Explain this: A 16gig 5c retails for $549. A 16gig 5s retails for $649. Why?

We know what that extra $100 gets us, and it’s awesome. What are we getting for that first $549? I now have no idea. The very existence of the 5c, priced so high, calls into question the entire pricing scheme for all of iPhone. Either the 5c is priced way too high or the 5s way too low. With the 5c, Apple has brought pricing to the forefront, and in a bad way.  

Putting a positive spin on the 5c’s failure, Tim Cook stated that:

“I think the 5s, people are really intrigued with Touch ID. It’s a major feature that has excited people. And I think that associated with the other things that are unique to the 5s, got the 5s to have a significant amount more attention and a higher mix of sales.”

In this case, I think it would have been better had he not spoken.

The 5c was passed over because people want Touch ID? Where are these people? I watch iPhone 5s users on a daily basis and TouchID is of scant importance to them, and certainly not the primary deciding factor between 5c and 5s.

There is simply no justification for either the 5c’s price or the 5s’s price, maybe both. Which is it, Apple? Why even allow this question to be raised?

Failure 4. Peeking behind the iCloud curtain

A final concern, one pointed out to me by reader iDawg, is that Apple may have intended to legitimately price the 5c at the mid- or low-end, but were prevented from doing so, possibly just before launch, because their services — Siri, iCloud, streaming media, data synching, etc. — weren’t yet ready to support a massive influx of new users.

The real reason Apple doesn’t sell more phones: fear of choking Siri (and online services) to death.”

Thus, as the 5c neared completion, this theory goes, it became apparent that Apple’s various services weren’t ready to effectively meet the anticipated numbers of new users. Raising the price, and thus limiting demand was the only realistic option to prevent every user, not just 5c users, from rage-inducing crashes and failures. This is a bit hard for me to fathom, though if true, ought to place Eddy Cue on the hot seat.

5c We Hardly Knew You

As I wrote a mere fortnight after its release, Steve Jobs would never have approved the 5c.  I stand by that assertion. Jobs had a near-religious fealty to focus and function, and the end result was hardware honed to near-perfect clarity. The 5c, on the other hand, is muddied, the result of varied and competing interests. The 5c doesn’t know who it is nor who it is for.

Let’s count the ways the 5c fights with itself and with what Apple is best at:

  • An alternative design which denotes newness and low-price versus the iPhone design is iconic and beloved
  • Lots of new Apple customers versus we must provide the best service to all our customers
  • A low-cost device versus we must protect our margins
  • We can make a great smartphone at any price versus we focus on the premium market

Is the iPhone 5c Apple’s canary in the coal mine? A telltale sign of near-term headwinds and divergent internal factions? Possibly, though given the company’s track record, I’m inclined to think of this as a minor self-inflicted wound, like how Disney spent far too much on that movie, John Carter.

That said, the failure of iPhone 5c is well-earned. This was not a case of technology before its time. Rather, of botched execution and that rare placement of profits before customers. Apple’s leadership, Tim Cook and Jony Ive, in particular, blew this one. That’s the most troubling aspect of all this. Tim Cook has scaled Apple to once-unimaginable heights. The iPhone 5c, however, reminds us that no company and no CEO has a perfect batting average.

Silicon Valley Owes A Debt Of Gratitude To The Movie Real Genius. We All Do.

I owe much to the movie Real Genius. I think Silicon Valley also owes this great film its gratitude. Indeed, if you love Silicon Valley, its culture, its vision, its bold, disruptive ethos and hacker creed, its belief in the expansive power of technology, then you likewise should be appreciative of this funny, heart-filled film.

Real Genius premiered in 1985. Yes, ten years before Windows 95. Ten years before Amazon.com. The President was Ronald Reagan. Everyone’s music came on cassette tapes. The Mac was a year old, not 30. CompuServe was bleeding edge. Yet, to this day, Real Genius remains a damn good movie, still able to inspire the next generation of geeks.

Talent, vision, skill, brainpower — and not looks, politics or favoritism — rule in Real Genius. To tackle the big problems, to demand success at a heretofore unimagined scale, those non-meritocratic skills are not only useless, the film teaches us, but actual barriers to success. Silicon Valley has taken these lessons to heart. I honestly do believe that Silicon Valley would be a lesser place, less fun, less daring, less successful, less eager to embrace actual unique personal genius, if not for the movie Real Genius.

realgeniusReal Genius assures us that we can remain fully ourself, with all our quirks, all our awkwardness, and still be welcome into its egalitarian world. The movie likewise reveals that to love what you do, love what you are good at, love working with others who feel just the same, then it’s not really work at all, its’ more a calling.

The glory, the money, those will come, and when they do, they will remain secondary. This is the creed of today’s tech entrepreneur.

What’s Real Genius about?

Well, this mean teacher recruits all the top physics and engineering students to his school then blackmails them to work on a top secret project to create a “five megawatt laser” that can vaporize a person from the sky, while he secretly uses those earmarked CIA funds to build himself an amazing new house. The smart kids succeed, naturally, only to soon discover what their work is intended for — drone-like assassinations. Now, they must destroy the device, their greatest creation, and make the bad guys pay. Since they’re all living on campus, far from home, there’s also plenty of good-natured hijinks.

But, none of that’s terribly important. What’s important about Real Genius is its message: Give us your very smart, your young, your daring, quirky, your most technically inclined, and we can achieve the impossible. This same message permeates Silicon Valley. Come one, come all — provided you are smart — and we will find a place for you here.

real genius test questions

Real Genius taught me, taught us, that it was ok to be smart, even super-smart. It taught us that being a geek, a nerd, a egghead, we could still be cool, we could still do good, we could change the world for the better — provided we thought through the consequences of our clever-brainy actions.

For me, Real Genius is that rarest of movies, like Spaceballs, that I absolutely have to watch whenever I stumble upon it.

Real Genius taught me that if I was super smart — and didn’t try to hide it — companies would come to me.  It taught me that that cute, super smart girl was the one I really should spend my time with, give my heart to, and not the girls more commonly displayed across film and television. 

Real Genius is like if the kids in The Outsiders all had off-the-charts IQs, reasonably concerned parents, and then went on to create new companies, new technologies, new business models that upend everything, all while making them each fantastically and legally wealthy beyond their dreams.

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I imagine Steve Jobs is Chris Knight, expertly played by Val Kilmer. Smart, fearless, too reckless for anyone’s good, a corporate slacker that has no time and less patience for the business world. Bill Gates is the slight, scared and scary-smart Mitch Taylor, played by Gabe Jarrett. You just know both will change the world profoundly — maybe even similarly — despite their differences. They are linked solely by their brains and the rising belief in their unique abilities, and that’s exactly enough.

The young Jordan, who can’t slow down for even a second, is obviously Marissa Mayer.

Lazlo? Probably Tim Berners-Lee.

The geek-and-proud, smart-and-disruptive, ready to take on the world ethos in Real Genius has long since been embraced by Silicon Valley, its hackers, programmers, builders, dreamers.  

Heed and herald the Real Genius values:

  • Being smart makes you a badass
  • Change the world and have fun doing it
  • You can beat the system, you can invert the system, and create a world more to your liking

Admittedly, the movie also suggests that the super-smart should congregate mostly amongst themselves, in schools, in bars, away from the other. That is the only real downside to the film’s core message, the consequences of which now reverberate throughout the region.

Perhaps the profound disconnectedness of the world back then heightens my endearment to this small movie, which spoke to me in every scene and through every character. Real Genius taught me, in a way that home, high school and my neighborhood did not, not quite, that it was okay to be brainy, there are more like you out there, and soon you will connect, friend one another, and change the world.

realgenius1

Why Does Tim Cook Even Bother?

Now that the world no longer has Steve Ballmer to kick around, I think it’s time we direct our focus toward Apple’s Tim Cook. After all, just like Ballmer, Cook had to follow a legendary, visionary founder. Just like Ballmer, Cook is an operations guy, skilled in maximizing profits, growing a company, making sure the trains run on time. Like Ballmer, Cook’s more top-line than techie.

The biggest difference between the two men: Ballmer is worth billions whereas Tim Cook, late to Apple, is worth mere tens of millions.

Is this fair? Probably not, though also scarcely relevant. Regardless of the scope of Steve Ballmer’s fortunes, Tim Cook has enough money to live exceedingly well for the rest of his life. Which begs the question: why does he do it? Why does Tim Cook continue to lead Apple, with all its complexities, all its obligations, when he could retire — and perhaps pursue his other passions, or offer his time to the needy?

I find it fascinating that Cook — and so many others who have so much money — continue to give so much of themselves to a business. Does merely wondering this reveal I am destined to never lead a giant, highly profitable corporation?

Like so much about the murky Mr. Cook, his actual net worth is difficult to determine. The vast majority of his money is, unsurprisingly, linked to Apple stock awards which vest piecemeal over ten years. By the end of 2015, however, and based upon the various sources I reviewed, I will ballpark Cook’s wealth at about $250 million. Imagine you hit the Lotto this week and cleared $250 million. Would you still work? Really?

Break it down:

  1. $50 million for your children
  2. $25 million to charities (10%)
  3. $25 million to your alma mater (you are generous, after all)
  4. $50 million to family, relations, friends (you are very generous, after all)

That still leaves you (and your spouse) with $100 million in cash. If you’re, say, 40, and live to 90, you have $2 million to spend every single year for the rest of your life, however you wish — not including appreciable interest and investment returns.

Would you continue at your job, with all its stresses and demands, its long hours, and limiting focus?

Why does Cook? Why did Steve Ballmer? Why do Marissa Mayer, Susan Wojcicki, and so many other smart, talented and extremely rich men and women continue? Is there really so much joy, so much power, glory and opportunity from running Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft or Apple?

Tim Cook has said that “money is not a motivator for me.” No doubt that is mostly true. What does motivate him? The morning meeting with the lawyers over the next patent suit? Responding to customer complaints over iCloud or email? Reviewing highly complex procurement contracts? Testing the iWatch 18 months before its launch? Firing Scott Forstall? Firing John Browett? Interviewing candidates to replace him? Talking with Walt Mossberg? Meeting with the CFO to decide when to buy back the next chunk of the company? Having to sit through that meeting where they discuss how the HVAC plans aren’t up to code on the new headquarters and then being interrupted because PR is upset that so many of the Apple faithful are inquiring about the allegations that Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt conspired to keep engineering salaries in check?

It all seems so exhausting.

Tim Cook will both never be Steve Jobs and always compared to Steve Jobs. That also seems an unnecessary burden.

So, why?

I really do not know. But, here’s a clue. When Microsoft named Satya Nadella its next CEO, Steve Ballmer emailed everyone at the company:

Microsoft is one of the great companies in the world. I love this company. I love the bigness and boldness of what we do. I love the way we partner with other companies to come together to change the world. I love the breadth and the diversity of all of the customers we empower, from students in the classroom to consumers to small businesses to governments to the largest enterprises. Above all, I love the spirit of this place, the passion, and the perseverance, which has been the cornerstone of our culture from the very beginning.

Have you said the equivalent proud, beaming, loving words to your own child? Do so, now.

Ballmer has billions of dollars — billions! Why even care? That said, I am pleased he does, and that many others, particularly in tech, care just as deeply.

On the occasion of Facebook’s tenth anniversary — yes, the social network is years older than iPhone — Mark Zuckerberg shared his thoughts:

When I reflect on the last 10 years, one question I ask myself is: why were we the ones to build this? We were just students. We had way fewer resources than big companies. If they had focused on this problem, they could have done it.

The only answer I can think of is: we just cared more.

While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections.

We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today.

He cared and continues to care.

If I had Mark Zuckerberg money, I would still write, every single day, exactly as I do now. Only, the money would almost certainly alter the pattern of my days. I would never again work for a company, nor for an editor, nor ever look for work. Would my writing then improve? Would the subject matter change? Alas, I will probably never know. I do know, however, that whatever it is beyond money that motivates the Cooks, Zuckerbergs, Ballmers, and Mayers of the world, we are almost certainly the better for it.

On a regular basis, I hear someone mock Apple or disparage Microsoft. Mere Internet flotsam, signifying nothing. The fact is, these companies have enhanced our lives, our work, creativity, play, learning, and connections with one another. We are fortunate that their leaders give so much of themselves, even when they have every reason not to.

The Death Of iPhone. The Death Of Android. The Rebirth Of Facebook.

Well, that was a heckuva week.

Google sells Motorola for billions less than they paid for it. Apple sells millions fewer iPhones than nearly everyone expected, then directs guidance lower. Facebook becomes a mobile first company, for real this time. Amazon investors prove they don’t quite have unlimited patience. Yahoo remains last decade’s news. Microsoft probably has a new CEO, one with zero connection to Nokia. Oh, and they now make better commercials than Apple.

Anything else?

What we learned from last week’s machinations is that everything we think we know about the smartphone wars is completely, utterly false — or  worse, meaningless. Barely a fortnight ago, on this very site, I told you: “The smartphone wars are not over.” Nothing has been settled, least not the future. After last week’s fun-bumpy-tweet-filled ride, does anyone still dispute this?

Know this: The current market for smartphones, and all they are subsuming, transforming, re-making, inspiring — which is in fact all of the things — is itself under threat, betrayed by its own relentless innovation and rapid success. Yet, far too many analysts and bloggers stubbornly cling to the fiction that somehow, smartphones can alter every market they touch while continuing on a merry upward slope unscathed by their own destructive deeds.

The most basic assumptions about this market are nothing more than faith-based analyst alchemy.

Time now to kill the dominant fictions in the smartphone wars.

The Death of iPhone

Fiction: Apple owns the high-end of the smartphone market.   

If you are making assumptions re iPhone (or Android) sales growth based on an imaginary perceived share of a market that is already on the cusp of disrupting itself, then you are making faith-based decisions. It’s that simple.

As I wrote months before last week’s earnings announcement, if Steve Jobs was alive he would never approve the iPhone 5c. The 5c is a rare self-inflicted wound, the elevation of profits over values. Only, that is not the cause of Apple’s weakness in their iPhone business. The trouble is the smartphone market itself, which I am beginning to suspect does not actually exist. Bear with me.

The persistent belief among analysts that  as much as 90% of the current mobile phone market (nearly 5 billion users) will transition to smartphones is a religious ideal, nothing more. Repeat after me: There is no total addressable market (TAM) for smartphones. The very concept is a fiction. Indeed, we may already be within months of Peak iPhone, a year or two from Peak Smartphone. For billions of people, voice, robust SMS/MMS services, and perhaps some form of digital identity is more than they will ever need. What can Apple provide them? Even at, say, $300, nearly everyone on this planet cannot afford and will never need an iPhone.

It gets worse.

I carry my smartphone with me all the time and use it for far more than I can list here. For the majority of that time, however, I don’t actually need a “smartphone”. What I really need is something like a credit card-sized piece of glass that supports rare but necessary voice calling, possibly video calling, can display a virtual keyboard for texting, and includes a mag-stripe (and/or chip) for payments. Create this and the smartphone market is gone, reduced to the equivalent of the dusty home desktop PC. Given the rapidity of innovation in this market, I should reasonably expect to have my (truly) smart card by no later than mid 2016. No iPhone necessary — in barely two years.

Tim Cook must know this. This is likely one reason why Apple stockpiles so much cash. When you’re dependent upon a single product line, iPhone, for about 60% of your revenue, and that market may vanish in a few years, then your focus necessarily shifts to maximizing profits of that product line and funneling those profits into entirely new offerings.

Apple doesn’t release many new products. I suspect that is about to change in a very big way. Expect to see several new products and product lines from the company over the next year alone. Some designed for nothing more than padding iPhone margins. Others, desperately in search of that next big thing.

The Death of Android

Fiction: Android is unassailable

Google cut itself free from the anchor that was Motorola. They strong-armed Samsung into more closely following the sanctioned Google Android playbook. Wise moves.

I sense fear.

Yes, Android dominates smartphone market share. Look closer. What many call ‘Google-free’ Android, AOSP, now garners a solid second place — and is growing at a rate much faster than ‘real’ Android.

smartphone OS

AOSP is the “open-source software stack for a wide array of mobile devices with different form factors.” It can power Amazon’s Kindle line, or smartphones made for use in China, for example, where Google search, map, Play and other services are not terribly popular and not welcome by the government.

Does this matter?

Absolutely. Google no doubt believes that AOSP is a necessary sacrifice. It’s availability ensures the rapid spread of the  “Android” template and prevents iPhone or Windows Phone, for example, from garnering another new user. It seeds the future for ‘real’ Android — and it is hoped, heavy usage of those most profitable Google services. Except, this is false.

The fact is, the rapid, global embrace of smartphones has altered the entire value proposition of web search and web services — Google’s bread and butter. AOSP may presently be little more than Android without the Google, but it could ultimately become a fully-fledged ecosystem alternative in its own right, one that directly competes against Google on everything that matters to them, and not just in China, but in Japan, South Korea, Brazil, USA, everywhere.

Thus, while I suspect last week’s moves by Google signal the company’s preparations to launch an assault on the Chinese market, it may already be too late. The world’s biggest market for data and smartphones can do just fine without Google. Which means: everyone can.

It gets worse.

Extremely popular mobile services may now have a vested interest in supporting AOSP’s growth. Popular social messaging apps such as Line, WeChat or WhatsApp no doubt noticed that Google made its Hangouts service the default messaging app for Android Kitkat. They won’t sit still for such bullying. What’s to stop them from integrating their service and AOSP and offering a low-end smartphone in the developing world?

In the short-term, perhaps none of this happens. In fact, I expect Google to best Apple as the world’s most valuable tech company, possibly within a few weeks. Save the celebrations. Google’s value arises strictly from it’s ability to capture more of our habits, more of our actions, and monetize them across a near-endless supply of strangers and brands. What we are learning, however, is that despite the rapid spread of Android in all its forms, there are effective alternatives to Google services across every smartphone platform — even its own. Little wonder, then, that Google is moving quickly into moonshots, driverless cars, the connected home, consumer hardware, health and more. Such moves are driven by fear, even if they are shrouded in boilerplate Silicon Valley boasting.

The Rebirth of Facebook

Fiction: Unbundling Will Kill Facebook

Like that persistent meme that teens are abandoning Facebook, the idea that Facebook is being unbundled to death — via messaging apps, social picture apps, Christian dating sites and the like — is simply false. Facebook is benefitting from the unbundling trend.

In fact, after badly stumbling on mobile, after the laughable dung heap that was Facebook Home, the brief marriage to HTML5, and the spats with Apple and Google, Facebook is doing better than ever. More than half its revenues now comes via mobile — no smartphone OS necessary.

This is in large part because the company is embracing the unbundling strategy, shrewdly leveraging its billion users and their extant Facebook identity and eagerness to share everything. That some people want to share only some aspects of their lives with only some others at some times and places, via text or image or video, is fine — every 1 and every 0 feeds the growing Facebook engine.

Let a thousand apps bloom. Facebook will be there.

Barely a year ago, analysts were convinced Facebook was doomed given its utter dependence upon iOS and Android. Now, a case can be made that smartphones, once thought as the device to bring the developing world into the global sphere of the Internet, is already on the cusp of being disrupted. In this new world, it is Facebook (and our Facebook ID) that will connect us all to one another.

The Dogs of War

What I think last week’s official numbers and clever machinations reveal is that the “smartphone” market, which most still believe is a pitched battle between iOS profit share and Android market share, is, in fact, merely the initial wave in a coming tsunami, one that will deliver highly personal, nearly ubiquitous and ever-engaging computing and connectivity to all who want it and nearly all who do not, and in forms we have yet to imagine. Hardware profits and OS marketshare, be damned.

The smartphone itself may be no more than a fleeting, ten-year-blip in computing history. There will be no 30th anniversary for the iPhone. Android will betray its maker. Owning your own smartphone ecosystem does not matter. Everything is in flux. My verse is the destruction of everything — and the great tech companies of our day happily, foolishly oblige.

As Jim Morrison said, “no one here gets out alive.”

Surprise! Apple Execs Use The Mac Anniversary To Dis Microsoft.

When Apple executives speak to the press, pay attention. They may dodge. They may fail to disclose some facts, overemphasize others. But, and this is critical, Apple executives who speak on the record always reveal what they are thinking.

Surprise. Apple executives think a great deal about Microsoft.

Mostly, they think Microsoft has got it completely wrong. In this case, however, I hope it is Apple that is proven wrong.

Last week, Macworld scored a very rare interview with key Apple executives. The men spoke on the occasion of the Mac’s 30th anniversary. That the Mac (in its many forms) is thirty is a truly laudable achievement. For so long, the Mac was marginalized. So much so, in fact, that Steve Jobs had no choice but to turn to the iPod. No more. Today, Mac survives and by the great metric of profits, even thrives.

Which is why I find it so odd that in granting their interview, the Apple executives spoke so little about the Mac’s rather inspiring tale and instead directed jab after jab toward Microsoft’s unified OS strategy.

This, dear reader, is what we call a tell.

Hardware Trumps All Else

From Macworld’s brief interview, consider the many times Apple execs suggest that the current Windows strategy is all wrong:

“It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience? We believe, no.”

“We don’t waste time thinking, ‘But it should be one [interface]!’ How do you make these [operating systems] merge together?’ What a waste of energy that would be.”

“To say [OS X and iOS] should be the same, independent of their purpose? Let’s just converge, for the sake of convergence? [It’s] absolutely a non goal ”

“You don’t want to say the Mac became less good at being a Mac because someone tried to turn it into iOS.”

“There’s a natural form factor that drives the optimal experience for each of those things. And I think what we are focused on is delivering the tailored, optimal experience for those kinds of ways that you work, without trying to take a one-size-fits-all solution to it.”

Tim Cook appeared on ABC in large part to talk about the Mac at 30. The company created a splashy new landing page at Apple.com to celebrate thirty years of Macintosh. Apple execs spoke to the press as part of the Mac’s celebration. Yet, Apple’s conversation continues to come back to that central theme: Microsoft is doing it wrong.

What gives?

Partly, it’s because no matter how rich Apple is now, old grudges never fully heal. It’s also representative of the fact that, at least in part, Apple is smart enough to let sales direct strategy. Consider that for the last quarter, Apple will sell about 50 million iPhones, 25 million iPads, and probably less than 5 million Macs. There is simply no incentive for the company to even suggest a Mac OSX – iOS convergence.

I hope they are wrong.

Many Modes. Many Devices. One Interface.

Surface tabletI want my various “computers” — defined here as at least my smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop, wearable watch, television and even car dashboard — to essentially operate as similarly as possible, preferably with a unified user interface and application set across all.

Yes, my many computers are for different tasks and will be used at different times, in different settings. I will want to use a keyboard and mouse for some activities, touch for others, my voice for still others. That said, I want all my devices to have a UI that looks and feels and functions similarly. Even more, I want a singular user experience across all devices and across all modes of interaction. Thus, Mac knows my touch and my voice exactly as iPhone. My iPad screen and Mac screen are essentially swappable.

It’s troubling to me that the world’s biggest computer company can’t seem to make this work. When I hear Apple execs mocking Microsoft’s UI strategy I think it’s an opportunity lost.

Apple Limitations

Apple has survived and prospered because of its rather profound understanding of the opportunities presented by its own limitations. Whereas Google is almost infinitely scalable, there are hard limits on what Apple can do. Thus, their relentless multi-decade focus on maximizing the potential of a fully integrated hardware-software-services ecosystem. The result is the world’s best smartphone, best tablet, best laptop.

It’s no longer enough. As data shifts to the cloud, hardware becomes increasingly de-constructed. Desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, an assortment of wearables, connected cars, connected homes and on and on. I want the very best of each of these. I also want each of these to operate with the same essential template.

Perhaps I can’t have that, now now, maybe not ever. But it bothers me that it is Apple which seems so determined to accept multiple OSes across multiple form factors. Here’s a case, frankly, where I hope Microsoft wins.

Is Yahoo Even Worth Trying To Save?

Is there any reason to save Yahoo? I say no. 

What does Yahoo do? What is Yahoo for? What is Yahoo great at? What is Yahoo even good at? 

Yahoo does not have the best technology, nor the best content. Yahoo does not have the best users, nor the most. Yahoo is close to irrelevant on mobile — the future of computing — and has flubbed every effort to be social.

Yahoo is the Detroit of web properties. Once big, once thriving, it helped create a future it can never be part of. It’s only hope, in my view, is to whither away, quickly, so maybe a few worthy pieces can find life in the wild.

While the tech blogosphere was in a tizzy last week, some outraged, most envious over the firing and massive golden parachute that Yahoo’s Henrique de Castro received, they missed the larger story: de Castro was not the “dead man walking.”  Yahoo is the dead man walking. Gleeful rubbernecking by industry watchers won’t change the company’s fortunes.

Outraged that Yahoo dropped so much on an executive who failed at his job? Surprised that Yahoo paid so much for Tumblr? The desperate always pay too much. de Castro and Tumblr’s David Karp are, I suspect, only the first of many scavengers who will feast on Yahoo’s bones.  Indeed, there may be no better purpose for this company, sadly, than for the fortunate pleasure of a few lucky ones to fatten themselves up as they tear apart the company’s bloated flesh, devouring its cash and resources till all is gone. This makes Marissa Mayer’s reputed strategy of buying talent — at premium prices — tragically comical in its utter wrongness. Throwing good money atop bad, in tech, especially, is always a waste.

I am surprised, frankly, that this isn’t the prevailing view. Industry website TechCrunch recently stated:

Yahoo is a company remade. Under the guidance of Mayer, it has refocused its product vision, purchased talent at a rapid rate, and expanded its native content efforts.

Vision? Talent? Native content? For whom? Can you recall the last time you used Yahoo? Your colleagues? Spouse? Children? Parents? Is Yahoo where you would recommend anyone go to for breaking news, tech news, weather, apps, cloud services — for anything other than your sister wanting to check her horoscope?

Pop quiz!

What do you think of the person with a @yahoo.com email address?

Second question: do you know anyone who uses their Yahoo ID for any external site, app, or service?

Think of computing, the cloud, the web, apps, smartphones, tablets, PCs. You spend hours with these every single day. They are your work, your play, your means of connecting. You don’t want to be without them, not under any circumstance. Probably none of this activity, however, involves Yahoo. Yahoo is AOL without the dial tone.

Yet, despite this, Yahoo ($YHOO) has more than doubled in the past year.

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Do not be fooled. This run-up is almost entirely due to Yahoo’s rather fortuitous stake in Alibaba (and Yahoo Japan). Yahoo’s present valuation is about $40 billion. Analysts estimate that Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is worth about $36 billion, maybe more. Meaning, Yahoo as the world understands it is worth $4 billion.

Think of that. Yahoo mail, weather, finance…Flickr, Katie Couric, fantasy sports, David Pogue, display advertising…and every other Yahoo service and property — oh, and Tumblr — is worth no more than one SnapChat, and less than half a Dropbox. To spend any of the Alibaba largesse to re-remake or re-rebuild Yahoo is a vainglorious waste.

Yahoo is of such irrelevance, I am still not sure I should even write this column.

It’s not just that the various parts of Yahoo are so meaningless to so many, it’s that their sum is worth so much less. The fact is that everything Yahoo once did at least well and everything it has promised to do going forward is done far better by one or more capable companies. For free. Yahoo has been unbundled to death. It will never get put back together again.

Why choose Yahoo over Facebook, Twitter, Skype. Android? Google Search, Maps, Now? iOS. Siri. Pandora. YouTube. LinkedIn. Roku. Netflix. Foursqare. Yelp. Those digital stickers. Huffington Post. The list of what Yahoo should have been and now can never be is frightfully long.

The company doesn’t even have the benefit of control over its destiny. It is run by techies yet dependent upon the vagaries and cold calculus of Madison Avenue. It gets worse. Last month, Yahoo was forced to reveal its rather shocking reliance upon Microsoft:

Yahoo has revealed in a US Securities & Exchange Commission filing that nearly one-third of its revenue last quarter — 31% — came from its search deal with Microsoft, according to a Bloomberg report. That’s far higher than the “more than 10%” figure Yahoo previously acknowledged.

It gets still worse. Per Bloomberg: “Yahoo’s share of the U.S. digital-advertising market is estimated to shrink to 5 percent in 2015 from 5.8 percent last year, while Google and Facebook both may expand their shares, to 42 percent and 9 percent next year respectively.”

Their irrelevance is accelerating.

Yahoo’s mission is focused, perhaps laudable:

Yahoo is focused on making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining – whether you’re searching the web, emailing friends, sharing photos with family, or simply checking the weather, sports scores or stock quotes.

Except, this simply is not realistic given Yahoo’s limited mobile-social-local strengths. Shut it down, sell it off. Once the Titanic has hit the iceberg, all that remains is to ensure as many get to safety as possible. 

Last week, Mayer emailed employees regarding the firing of Mr. de Castro. Her very first line:

The beginning of a new year always provides time for reflection.

Reflection is not necessary. Yahoo’s time has come.

Understand. I absolutely do not wish ill of anyone associated with Yahoo, certainly not the 12,000+ presently employed by the company. A native Detroiter, I witnessed first-hand what happens to people, to communities, when companies go under. In this instance, however, I believe Yahoo cannot be resuscitated. The longer the delay, the more the vultures will tear at the flesh, till even the very few parts worth saving are no more.

The Smartphone Wars Pivot And I Jump To Windows Phone

The smartphone wars are over. Apple won.

They are not the only winner, of course, just the biggest. I confess I do not fully appreciate the many moving parts of a Korean chaebol, nor understand Korean accounting practices. Such caveats notwithstanding, Samsung also emerged victorious.

Given that there now exists about a billion persons who use Google services everyday, several times a day, their most personal information monetized by the company’s anonymous servers in steady bursts, clearly Google also won, even if it has yet to show up in their earnings reports.

The losers include Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, BlackBerry, Palm, Dell, and far too many others to list here.

Except, our story doesn’t end there. The world keeps spinning. The market keeps growing, smartphones continue to invade new industries, apps are becoming more robust, software ever smaller, the power and scale of the cloud keeps expanding — and competition never stops.

One Shot One Opportunity Is False

HP — remember them — is set to release a low-end smartphone for emerging markets. Don’t scoff. The vast majority of the world still does not own the equivalent of the very device you refuse to give up for even a day. While Samsung continues to lead all smartphone makers, the company’s operating profit fell notably in the fourth quarter, likely due to reduced margins on its high-end smartphones. Apple, meanwhile, saw its global smartphone share drop to a shockingly low 12.1%. That’s not 12.1% of global mobile phone sales but of “smartphone” sales. I never expected it to be so meager.

Yet, new opportunities abound.

Apple’s iPhone is steadily invading corporate IT. With each job and every task smartphones strip away from traditional PCs, their inherent value increases.

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Cars are another new battleground. That constant stream of real-time data, entertainment and connectivity we now demand fill every moment of our lives will not be halted simply because we get inside a car. This is a big deal. Around 80 million new cars and trucks are sold every year.

Last summer, Apple announced iOS in the Car, its effort to integrate iOS  apps and services with newer automobiles. I have exceedingly low expectations. Apple makes its money from hardware sales, iPhone hardware in particular. iOS in the Car still requires users to have an iPhone which they must then plug into the vehicle to gain the full benefits of Siri, Maps, iTunes and other content. This is much too limiting.

Google’s recently announced Open Automotive Alliance — still primarily vapor — has a far greater upside as it is free from such device constraints. The automotive market may force Apple to re-think its hardware-only focus very soon. After all, Apple hardware, at least while we are driving, is effectively irrelevant.

The situation is much different in wearables, where I contend Apple has a decided advantage. If we are ever going to wear computing devices en masse — be they wristbands, eyewear or clothing — they will have to be far more than merely functional. They must look good. They must synch effortlessly with our smartphones and other computers. They must be intuitive to operate. We will want to try them on without sales pressure. Advantage: Apple.

Sports and wellness, the Internet of Things, and the extrication of content from copyright, which will allow us to control, share and interact with content at all times and from any place, will similarly spin the smartphone market into numerous overlapping paths, merging with, tearing down and creating industry after industry.

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Then there are the giant emerging markets. China, of course, but also India, which has long embraced Sony and Samsung. In my admittedly limited experience, Southeast Asia has long revealed a love of physical keyboards and robust messaging services — offering a potential return to life for BlackBerry.

As the many combatants prepare for these coming new wars, let us rejoice in the fact that we can now can go to practically any mall, any carrier’s store, any electronics retailer anywhere in the world, and purchase an extraordinarily powerful, highly functional and reasonably intuitive connected mobile computer for relatively little money. Which is exactly what I did recently. I was quite surprised by what happened.

I chose Windows Phone.

Though I have used smartphones built for nearly every single platform from all around the world, my go-to device for the past 5 years has been iPhone. No longer.

These are my reasons why — and they remind us that even where the smartphone wars are settled, they are never truly settled.

I Like Big Displays And I Cannot Lie

Nokia-Lumia-1520I now primarily use the Nokia Lumia 1520. It’s huge. I love it. Surfing the web, reading a book, racing cars (gaming), watching movies, scanning my photos; all are so much more delightful on the gorgeous and very big Lumia 1520 display than on the iPhone.

I dislike the iPhone 5(c/s) screen dimensions. I find it much too narrow. The dimensions of the iPhone 5 series, in my view, reveal the limits placed upon Apple by its highly successful app ecosystem. Yes, apps should be optimized for specific screen sizes and Apple is the clear leader in apps, both in terms of quantity and quality. Unfortunately, this results in a display with dimensions that I find to be both limiting and, frankly, unattractive.

I have found no device that is as beautiful as the colorful and unapologetically polycarbonite Lumia phones.

Build Quality

The Lumia looks great, yes, but it also feels great. In fact, Nokia devices have long been known for their build quality and durability. This is not to suggest that Apple’s newest iPhone is poorly constructed. Rather, they feel flimsy. iPhone 5s, in particular, feels much too light, like your grandmother’s jewelry.

Navigation

The combination of Nokia Maps (Here Maps), which includes traffic data, search, and downloadable maps, plus Here Transit for public transportation data has proven more helpful to me than Apple’s alternative. Google Maps with Waze, not fully available on Windows Phone, may prove more useful to most. However, I simply don’t want to provide Google with still more of my personal data.

Accessories

Most iPhone accessories are priced well above my pay grade. Not so with Windows Phone. I recently purchased a car charger for my Windows Phone at a gas station — for less than $10. The low price was due, of course, to Windows Phone’s use of the micro USB standard. Similarly, I lost my Jambox charger. Luckily, it also uses micro USB so I simply swap with my phone charger. Standards make life easier.

smart_hero_mba_11_2xiOS 7

I love what I think Apple is trying to do with iOS 7. The problem is, they haven’t done it yet. The emphasis on data presentation, plus improved integration across select apps and functions is a laudable achievement. It’s just that the damn thing freezes and crashes much too frequently.

Live Tiles

Live Tiles are often — but not always — preferable to static app icons. Tiles can display current weather, show me how many calories I have consumed for the day, display my favorite photos. Tiles that merely twinkle and flash and convey no useful information, however, are admittedly a time-sucking distraction.

The Fine Print

I am a Mac user. This means that with Windows Phone I no longer have apps that effortlessly synch across iPhone and Mac. This is just one of the sacrifices I’ve had to accept by choosing Windows Phone.

Because of copyright restrictions, I no longer have full, unfettered access to all the songs and videos I’ve purchased over the years through iTunes.

There are far fewer apps and most apps are of lesser quality on Windows Phone.

Maddeningly, the very latest Windows Phone keyboard remains determinedly stuck in 2011. The keyboard is cumbersome and stupid, rarely correcting my obvious typos.

As much as I dislike the iPhone 5 design, it adheres to what should be a cardinal rule for smartphones, despite everything I have said about big, beautiful displays: for every smartphone, it should be possible for every action to be performed with just one hand.

Games? There are great games on Windows Phone. Microsoft also appears intent on offering a gaming experience that truly integrates phone and Xbox console. Then there’s that bigger display. However, there are far more games for all types of gamers available on iPhone.

Mobile Safari and Mobile Explorer are equivalent. FaceTime and Skype are not, however, with Skype more a global and business telephony service and FaceTime the world’s most accessible video chat service.

Nokia offers highly granular camera controls that are sorely lacking on iPhone. My Lumia takes much better pictures at night. However, iPhone 5(c/s) takes great pictures and is faster to operate.

Email is simpler to use and to set-up on Windows Phone.

The Windows Phone equivalent of Siri is of absolutely no use. As I am at a loss to recall a single instance when I have found Siri useful, this probably doesn’t matter.

Winners & Winners

Clearly, whichever device and whichever platform you choose requires trade-offs. I expect this to become even more pronounced as the smartphone wars morph, move into entirely new arenas, enable new devices, like wearables, reinvigorate old device, like automobiles — and steadily connect more and more billions of people across the world.

For millions of people every month, and for nearly all of us at least once every year or two, an opportunity presents itself to embrace a new or different platform. This is a good thing as it keeps the combatants ever vigilant, always striving to improve.

The smartphone wars are not over. Rather, the first smartphone war has ended.

The Next Steve Jobs Will Destroy Apple

Apple is the biggest tech company in the world, worth at least $100 billion more than either Microsoft or Google. Apple has over 350 million active users. Within a few short years, I suspect a billion people will be using Apple computers every single day.

How did this happen? Thus: Steve Jobs proved us all wrong.

steve_jobs-wideIn so many ways, ways we now take for granted, ways that Google and Microsoft are rapidly trying to copy, it was Jobs who showed us the way — even as we all were convinced of his wrongness. Jobs proved us wrong not just on technical matters, but on profound aspects of both technology and business.

A few examples of Steve Jobs proving us all wrong:

  1. Building a global retail chain
  2. Requiring customers to pay for content
  3. Demanding high-margins for hardware
  4. Choosing margin share over market share
  5. Emphasizing design over commoditization
  6. Building a touchscreen-only line of computers
  7. Banishing pornography

All of these were business decisions that went against the accepted order. All were correct.

In this same way, Jobs taught us — for we did not initially believe — that:

  1. The big money resides at the top of the pyramid
  2. Walled gardens and well-controlled APIs are the future of the web
  3. Existing standards and popular features are of almost no consequence
  4. There is more money in consumer computing than the enterprise
  5. Set prices, clearly stated, benefit buyer and seller
  6. The web — websites, web pages, web standards — is less important than apps
  7. More users, more developers, more content providers directly benefit from a closed ecosystem than an open one

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And here we are today, following decades of Jobs wandering the wilderness, steadfastly implementing the many and varied pieces of his mad grand vision.

Now, developers choose Apple first, others second (if at all).  Apple towers above Microsoft. Apple isn’t just the biggest computing company, it may also be the world’s biggest, most popular, most profitable gaming company. Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm, Motorola and Windows Phone have been crushed by iPhone. Dell has gone private. HP remains MIA. Jobsian tremors are still being felt across multiple industries as content, data, apps and services all collapse inside the iPhone — or its copiers.

In what turned out to be one of his very last shareholder letters, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke with language clearly influenced by Jobs:

“We will continue to work with a vast ecosystem of partners to deliver a broad spectrum of Windows PCs, tablets and phones. We do this because our customers want great choices and we believe there is no way one size suits over 1.3 billion Windows users around the world. There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface. In all our work with partners and on our own devices, we will focus relentlessly on delivering delightful, seamless experiences across hardware, software and services. This means as we, with our partners, develop new Windows devices we’ll build in services people want. Further, as we develop and update our consumer services, we’ll do so in ways that take full advantage of hardware advances, that complement one another and that unify all the devices people use daily. So right out of the box, a customer will get a stunning device that is connected to unique communications, productivity and entertainment services from Microsoft as well as access to great services and applications from our partners and developers around the world.”

And, breathe…

Understand, I do not come here to mock Ballmer. Nor should the Apple faithful: Tim Cook is probably more like Ballmer than Jobs, after all. Besides, Ballmer did far too much to benefit the company he so dearly loved. And yet, in that single paragraph above, where Ballmer references billions of users, seamless experiences, delight, the integration of hardware and software, sounding so much like Steve Jobs, he grounds everything in the obvious, and the near-term. Contained within that same single paragraph Ballmer specifically mentions…Windows, PCs, tablets, phones, Windows, Xbox, Surface, Windows, Microsoft, partners, partners, partners, partners, and developers.

Ballmer’s statement is the beatification of the current product set, the glorification of the existing order, and fully aligned with the rational. This is not surprising. It’s nearly impossible to not be rational. Certainly this is true if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company.

Steve Jobs was not rational. His vision of the future was not dependent upon existing products, existing form factors, partners, developers, nor the established wisdom.

I lived through the years when Microsoft absolutely controlled the direction of personal computing. I was there for the rise of Google — and its destruction of the value of content and user privacy. I would not have dared believe that the radical visions of Steve Jobs would so thoroughly flourish in this world. It’s all so profoundly non-rational.

Steve Jobs was firm in his vision, proudly revolutionary, shrewd enough to avoid the trappings of both success and failure, and fully prepared to prove all of us completely wrong, no matter how long it took.

I am sorry for ever having doubted him.

All of which is prologue to the obvious: Apple is today’s monolith. All must acknowledge, possibly fear, every move Apple makes, each market it enters. We hang on the company’s every word, spin tales from its silence, and have grown comfortable in the knowledge that, as is the new natural order of things, Apple will succeed with each new release, each blessed launch.

Which is prologue to the less obvious: The next Steve Jobs, when she or he finally arrives, will have Apple squarely in their sites. Then blow it to bits.

Apple To Dominate The Wearable Devices Market

I have written much about “wearables” — wearable computing devices such as the Nike FuelBand, Fitbit Force and Google Glass. Wearables are set to invade consumer markets, healthcare, logistics and other industries, delivering a combination of personalized data, real-time notifications, and analysis of various human outputs, all stylishly wrapped inside the explicit promise of empowerment, enhancement and efficiency.

Whether these devices will actually improve personal fitness, lead to a healthier society, make for better-performing professional athletes, dramatically increase worker productivity, or even systematically violate our privacy are all questions I’ve explored.

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One question not explored: who will dominate the bourgeoning wearables revolution?

The answer seems obvious: Apple.

Apple’s design skills, highly integrated ecosystem, apps market, retail footprint, customer support staff, computing prowess, touch-based OS and global manufacturing scale are peerless — and every one of these are critical for success in the wearables market.

Indeed, I have a hard time conjuring scenarios under which Apple will not crush the competition in wearables. For the moment, I can envision only three, and none I put much faith in:

1. Wearables Are Not Real Computers

Though unlikely, I can at least imagine Apple Inc, with its finite resources and very obvious talents in building high-end personal computing devices, simply abdicating the wearables market.

Tim Cook and company may decide to continue their focus on “real” computers — smartphones and tablets — and cede wearables and sensors to others. Then, as wearables, their apps and services all become so popular and so pervasive in our lives that they eclipse today’s computing market, Apple is relegated to the margins.

Given Cook’s poaching of key people from Nike, Burberry and elsewhere, this scenario seems extremely unlikely. Much more likely is my earlier Techpinions prediction: that Apple rolls out a line of premium-priced computing jewelry.

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In fact, I think most analysts are missing the big story from Apple’s recent signing with China Mobile. It’s less about the number of new iPhones Apple will sell — let’s not play the smartphone market share game now, after all. Rather, it’s that a nation of a billion plus people, hundreds of millions of whom are transitioning into middle class, may ravenously desire beautiful, simple, and highly functional jewelry, watches, sensors and other wearables. Apple can provide all of these.

2. Apple Mistimes The Market

The “Apple copies” meme is partly true, at least on the surface. Apple works on a great many technologies, gadgets, form factors. However, the company typically does not release these until they believe both the product and the market are  ready, oftentimes long after competitors have their product collecting dust on retail shelves.

Apple may have a grand solution ready in, say, Q2 2015, only to lose out if wearables explode in popularity in early 2014.

Or, the market may radically veer onto a path Apple has no response to, and no strength to bear. After all, the accepted trajectory of such devices is that they become nothing more than computerized ‘tattoos’ placed on the skin, or tiny capsules we swallow. Perhaps a biotech company will ultimately prevail in the wearables market, or some uber-geeky Maori entrepreneur revolutionizes our very notion of a computer. As we well know, the best laid plans of giant tech companies are often complete failures.

3. Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer

holo-next-generation-wearable-computer8

My final scenario, and the one I think most likely — though still unlikely — is that Tim Cook is the Apple incarnation of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Baller delivered massive profits, global scale, and as Microsoft grew to unwieldy heights, Ballmer somehow kept the trains running on time. Innovation, however, was suffocated.

It may be that the path of the wearable computing market usurps the need for high-margin iPhones and iPads. In response, Cook might hamper Apple’s long-term potential by attempting to corral the wearables market inside the high walls of Apple’s highly profitable iOS ecosystem. Just like Ballmer attempted to force everything through Windows and Office, this also will fail.

Similarly, for all the potential of Apple computers in the enterprise, Apple can’t seem to pull away from the high-margin, high-profit, easy-money consumer market. Perhaps wearables revolutionize the enterprise, just as smartphones upended it, and Apple has no adequate response. Cue the return of Microsoft.

Lastly, I suppose Apple could also simply whiff on wearables entirely, the way Microsoft, for example, struck out on touch screens. All possible, all unlikely.

The Next Evolution of Apple

The competition should be wary. When I examine Apple’s talent, skill set, ponder its brand, analyze its active customer base, assess its growing retail operation, test the integration of its many products, proprietary technologies and devices, it is  difficult for me to see how the company fails to win the wearables computing market.

Though Samsung beat them to market, and their Galaxy Gear ad is sublime, long-term I see no company that can bring to the wearables market what Apple already has. Namely, the chips, the design chops, the OS, the integration across devices, the commitment to intuitive function, voice and touch controls, cloud support, media partnerships, carrier relationships, broad appeal across borders and demographics, battery expertise, AirDrop, their own video chat service, the best designed notifications service, the list goes on.

The scale of each new computing revolution is far bigger, far richer, spreads far wider than the one that came before. I expect this with wearables. These will eclipse smartphones and tablets, just as those devices eclipsed “PCs.” Thus, if I am right, Apple is about to get much, much bigger.

Where I Save Windows Phone

My name is Brian and I use Windows Phone.

Confession: I want Windows Phone to succeed. I want it to succeed because I believe users will benefit from Microsoft innovation and renewed market competition. I want Windows Phone to succeed because as Android increasingly takes over the computing world I am increasingly fearful of the success of an OS whose very existence is to track and record user behavior across the world.

I want Windows Phone to succeed because I want great, American companies to continue to dominate the global tech market.

I am not at all sure Windows Phone will succeed.

This has nothing to do with the silly, breathless rumors about a Nokia Android device. Rather, even given Microsoft’s money, brainpower and massive “Windows” install base — and 10+ years of fruitless R&D — the world continues to reveal that it is quite happy choosing between Android and iOS.

My hope, thus, is cruelly crushed by market reality. Must be doubly bad for Microsoft, I suspect. Therefore, I offer the following advice to help save Windows Phone.

1. Fewer Apps

Yes, this is counterintuitive, but absolutely necessary. You lost the app battle, Microsoft. It’s over. Accept defeat. We now live in a world where there are far more software applications for Apple products — and they are much easier to buy.

Stop pumping bad apps through the system in a futile attempt to make the actual numbers look not so awful. Instead, focus on offering the absolute best apps of any platform.

I have spent the past 4 years using iPhones as my go-to device. I have spent the past several weeks using the Lumia 1520 almost exclusively. In nearly every case, I’ve found an app equivalent for Windows Phone to match my iPhone. Unfortunately, nearly everyone is awful. Limited functionality, poor to no integration with web services (or iPhone apps), bad design. Indeed, the vast majority of apps in the Windows Phone store appear to me as little more than high school projects. End this anti-user behavior. Ensure that any app offered from your store is absolutely awesome and in no way a pale, brittle facsimile of what’s long been available for iOS and Android. Reject far more apps than you accept.

Fifty thousand great apps is better than 150,000 awful ones.

I also recommend you pledge every single of the many billions of dollars you receive from Android patent scofflaws to fund app projects with the very best app development houses. Bonus: offer huge cash windfalls for successful tie-ins with your very best mobile offerings (Skydrive, Bing, Office, Skype).

2. Fewer Devices

Windows Phone, the platform, will not be widely embraced by OEMs the way Windows was back in the 20th century. Android has won that war and its presence and pace throughout the world is accelerating. Your best hope is to focus on your own great devices. Luckily, you now own Nokia, which makes the most beautiful, best designed smartphones in the world.

Nokia’s problem is its insistence on offering as many variations of devices across every possible region, industry and demographic. This is no longer a viable strategy in a world where we are all connected. Worse, it increases manufacturing and marketing costs, generates user confusion and capitulates to self-serving carrier demands.

This is what you should offer:

  • Student model — for children, students, grandparents and those of lesser means.  The Lumia 520 is amazing for the price. Does the target market even know this?
  • Business model. Your premium offering. The Lumia 920 (or equivalent) with Office, Outlook, Skydrive and Skype included is a powerful combination.
  • Globetrotter model. The Lumia 1020 with 41mp camera is the baseline device for artists, photographers, creative types.
  • Gamer model. Your “gamer” phone fully leverages Xbox and the beautiful large-display Lumia 1520. Maybe offer Xbox credits with every purchase.

Next, you must give each of these devices comprehensible names. 520, for example, means absolutely nothing to absolutely no one. 920 is (obviously) less than 925, which obviously has lesser hardware than the 1020. Right? Nobody knows. Stop such nonsense.

3. Be Mobile First – Really

From this day forward, the role of Office and Windows is not to maximize shareholder value. Rather, it is to maximize profits to fund the future. The future is mobile.

You’ve bravely taken a few baby steps in this direction, and have now evolved from believing smartphones are mere satellites revolving around the PC sun to your current belief, where you appear to grudgingly accept that smartphones and PCs can be equivalents. Still wrong. The smartphone is the center of the computing world. Until you accept this your giant company will continue to flounder.

I fear this will not be an easy fix. Your Surface ads reveal that you, dear Microsoft, can’t even conceive of a “computing” device that is solely and purely touchscreen and mobile. In the second decade of the 21st century you still promote computers and “slates,” such as your Surface, as devices that work best when there is a physical keyboard attached and the user is seated. This is a profound misunderstanding of the future of everything.

Focusing on non-mobile, non-touchscreen devices is like if Android is the Death Star, iPhone is Ben Kenobi and you are Aunt Beru. Don’t be Aunt Beru, Microsoft.

Change your strategy. Radically improve touchscreen responsiveness. Offer a movie store. Make multitasking really work. Fix the (virtual) keyboard. Mobile first — really.

It’s not all bad, of course. Your instincts are sound. Note that the much-lauded Jony Ive continues to parrot what Windows Phone and Nokia have been doing for years: “Unapologetically” plastic devices. Bright colors. Polycarbonite-like feel. Flat design. Lots of white space. He knows.

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4. Start A War With Apple

Android is good enough for most of the world. For what it offers, for its price, availability and ecosystem, you aren’t going to convince many to choose Windows Phone over Android, particularly at the low-end. You must prove your worthiness by taking on Apple. Fortunately, that’s where most of the money may be found.

Focus your marketing on a Mac vs PC-like campaign.

  • Your live tiles versus their static icons
  • Skype versus FaceTime
  • 20mp and 41mp cameras with Zeiss lenses and Nokia imaging controls versus iPhone’s 8mp camera
  • Office versus iWork
  • Outlook versus Apple Mail
  • Nokia Maps and real-time transit data versus Apple Maps
  • Xbox versus Game Center
  • Mock Siri. Belittle Touch ID.

Pay no attention to the Apple echo chamber. Ignore what people may say on Twitter. “In marketing, what looks new is new.”

A relentless assault against the iPhone earns you respect, customers, and helps focus your company. If possible, hire the “PC” guy to do the ads.

saupload_mac_pc

Reminder: not one moment of these ads, not one image, may include a keyboard or a person seated. Commercials advertising a “real keyboard” to do “real work” is my grandfather insisting that music used to be so much better. Probably, he’s wrong and if he’s right, it’s irrelevant.

Having spent the past month with a Nokia Lumia 1520, and having used every iPhone, several Android devices, BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian, Asha, MeeGo and others, I know that your odds are slight. Your potential remains great, however. Go forth. No excuses — you’re Microsoft. The time to line up your pawns has long since passed. These are the smartphone wars. Ball so hard.

2013 Winners And Losers In Tech

We track, analyze and oftentimes promote technology because of its overarching, mostly positive impact on our own lives and throughout the world. It’s many disparate parts, incorporating intellectual property and global manufacturing, hardware and software, content and creativity, when brought together at exactly the right time, in exactly the right way can be both uplifting and magical.

While we may not fully understand all the long-term ramifications of what our technology has wrought, we can know its winners and losers. In 2013, much like the harsh, unblinking truth at the final whistle of some great sporting clash, knowing who won and who lost was surprisingly rather easy to discern.

Winners

Amazon

There wasn’t even a close second.

Hardware, content, search, real-time pricing algorithms, personalization and a near-infinitely scalable platform. There is no more high tech company than Amazon. Yes, $AMZN has (only) gone up this year. If Jeff Bezos is to be believed, and the evidence certainly suggests so, then the company is just getting started. Amazon is the low-price leader in retail, a behemoth in cloud services, the first place most of us think to visit when we think about buying anything — and the unmatched leader in big ideas.

Google Glass is so Spring 2013. All anyone is talking about now are Amazon delivery drones. Amazon is more than talk, of course. It took Amazon to offer live, personal (“Mayday”) support for every new Kindle tablet user. Did Apple, king of the locked-down, high-margin, customer-focused hardware-based ecosystem, even consider such an audacious idea?

Amazon, not Silicon Valley, is the new home of really big ideas. Amazon embodies a scope of business, a level of execution, and a breathless vision that I don’t think even Google can match. They won 2013.

Twitter

A highly successful IPO, a highly engaged user base, the new home for breaking news, the place we share our most joyful moments, greatest tragedies, and idle thoughts.  Apple execs say damn near nothing outside of highly staged events. Yet both Tim Cook and Phil Schiller tweet often.

Tablets

What, exactly, is the purpose of a tablet? No one seems to know. I cover the industry and typically recommend them only to grandparents and toddlers.  Microsoft finds the tablet so utterly confounding — despite 10+ years of effort — that they can still only envision such a device with a keyboard attached. The numbers do not lie, however. At least, not in 2013. Tablets are everywhere. Per IDC, 220 million tablets moved just this year alone.

Team iOS 7

iOS 7 is audacious, shocking, beautiful as a European runway model, and just as brittle.

If you were part of the team that developed iOS 7, congratulations. The iOS 7 adoption rate is already nearing 75%. With around 500 million iOS devices in use, that’s 375 million devices running with your OS — about triple the latest Windows operating system.

iOS should fuel Apple for at least another generation, and iOS 7 points the way forward.

Gaming and Gamers

A new Playstation, a new Xbox, and a new chip (A7) powering Apple iOS devices make 2013 the best time ever to be a gamer. Add in social media gaming, a billion smartphone users, and ‘computer games’ are now as ubiquitous as Miley Cyrus gifs.

Female Tech Execs

I believe Marissa Mayer’s strategy, such as I can divine, consigns Yahoo to a permanently middling presence in our lives. Much content, some personalization, cloud-scale, new acquisitions and several new mobile apps all point toward nothing more than news, views and reviews of the sort our parents now get from morning TV talk shows. Doesn’t matter. The market has spoken and the money people obviously like what Mayer is doing.

Meanwhile, Meg Whitman is righting the busted ship that is HP and Sheryl Sandberg is making the day-to-day adult decisions at Facebook. Since Tim Cook is determined to transform Apple into a “casual luxury” brand, I can absolutely believe the rumors that Apple’s next CEO will be Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts. That’s quite a line-up.

Road Warriors

All praise the glories of the market. In-flight WiFi became possible, then practical, then profitable, then widespread, and then the government — surprise — changed the rules. Now we can keep our electronic devices turned on, legally, throughout our entire flight. Self-interest mixed with technology is a powerful combination.

Google Lawyers

What a year! Google lawyers fought off Oracle, got a judge to agree that digitizing and making “out of print” books freely available was a public service, signed a sweetheart deal with the FTC, despite a monopoly position in search which they have frequently abused, and the late Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear war on Android has not slowed down the world’s most popular OS even in the slightest. I’m assuming there will be quite the cash bonus from Larry Page to his merry band of lawyers.

Considered: Kickstarter, Pinterest, iTunes (seriously), iPhone 5s, and the ‘smartphone’. 

Losers

Computing technology is deeply personal yet seeks to connect us with everyone and everything. It can eradicate the worst parts of our past, re-invent our very notions of the future and captivate our present. Oftentimes, however, it flops worse than a petulant soccer player on a losing team. This year’s biggest losers in tech:

Facebook Home

Facebook Home was such an utter, abject, laughable failure that you probably already forgot that it ever existed. I suspect that the mysterious illness that prevented Google’s Larry Page from talking for so many months stemmed from his laughing hysterically when he first saw Facebook Home.

Steve Ballmer

I believe no non-founder ever gave more of himself, his talents, his passions, his sleepless nights, as Steve Ballmer gave to Microsoft. Ballmer helped Microsoft become so big that it — literally — scared governments and sent the mighty Steve Jobs, fortuitously, scurrying off as far away from “personal computers” as he possibly could.

Nonetheless…Microsoft’s stock has done better since Ballmer announced his “resignation” then it did during the decade he actually ran the company. Worse, much worse, and nearly inconceivable, is that there are over a billion smartphones in use plus hundreds of millions of tablets and nearly everyone has absolutely no Microsoft software inside.

For all I admire about Ballmer, and I admire much, the company’s failure in mobile computing is, in my opinion, a far more devastating capitulation than Time Warner buying AOL at the absolute top of the market.

Smartwatches

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear commercial is glorious. The watch itself is Kanye-cool. Only, no one bought one because there is no need for one. The year of the smartwatch was anything but. Galaxy Gear flopped. Apple’s iWatch never appeared. The Pebble watch was essentially a high-margin toy purchased by Silicon Valley insiders. Not wanted, not needed.

Google Maps

Every quarter, as Google reports anew the latest Motorola loss, we are presented with yet another reminder that Google’s purchase of Motorola was a profound strategic mistake.

I don’t think it’s their biggest. Rather, that would be Google’s decision to consign iOS users with an inferior version of Google Maps — for years. That led to Apple’s decision to offer its own mapping service. As Charles Arthur notes, Google Maps has already lost tens of millions of iPhone users — possibly Google Inc’s most lucrative customer base. Hubris.

Siri

Apple’s existence now spans across five decades. In all that time has the company ever promoted a device or a service as prominently, as consistently and as aggressively that has gone so utterly unused as Siri? Siri is now more than two years old and still doesn’t work as it should. Worse, even if it did we would still rarely use it.

Skeuomorphism

We all learned what this word meant when Apple killed it off. It was time.

The Third Mobile Platform

As of this moment, smartphones now sell about a billion units a year. This massive, industry-shifting market belongs almost entirely to two platforms: Android and iOS. Symbian is dead. BlackBerry is at death’s door. There is effectively no Tizen, no Firefox OS in actual use, no Ubuntu and nearly no Windows Phone.

Has the industry consolidated this quickly, despite being this big, this global? As much as I believe there is room for a thriving Windows Phone ecosystem, the market itself, in every region and across every demographic, tells us that iOS and Android are enough for nearly everyone. Perhaps 2014 will surprise us.

Considered: Obamacare website, PCs, privacy, BlackBerry, the “cheap” iPhone, and RSS.

An Open Letter To App Developers

The smartphone has quickly become our primary interface to the world. The app has become our primary interface to the smartphone. Apps matter. Therefore, app developers matter. Unfortunately, too many apps, too many app developers, likely in pursuit of riches that shall never come, continue to offer copycat apps, apps poorly designed, apps that value ads over users.

I want to help. I know apps, good and bad. I was analyzing the “smartphone wars” back when most tech blogs were still talking Mac vs PC. I have used most major smartphone platforms, at length. This includes Palm and BlackBerry, Windows Phone, iOS and Android, Symbian, Asha and, yes, Meego.

I offer the following rules and declarations in the interest of creating more and better apps for everyone.

  1. The world does not need another weather app.
  2. By 2015, at the latest, I expect Windows Phone will garner at least a 20% share of all new smartphone sales. Create apps for this platform.
  3. It’s absolutely appropriate to ask me to rate your app. Once. If I choose not to, accept this — and never ask me again.
  4. Life is much easier when I can sign in to an app using my Facebook credentials.
  5. Never — not ever — should you request anything beyond my Facebook credentials, however. Do not ask to post my purchase of your app to my Facebook page, do not ask for my location unless there is a clear and present and ongoing user benefit. Do not ever ask me, and especially never require me, to tell you my Facebook friends.
  6. You have 3 seconds, tops. If I cannot fully immerse myself within the wonder and scope of your app in 3 seconds or less, then your app gets abandoned.
  7. Care about your app icon. It really does matter.
  8. Apple does not care about you. Apple provides you, for now, with the single greatest platform for monetizing your app. But do not believe they are your partner. They are the world’s largest (tech) company and do not like to share. iWork, iPhoto, Garage Band, Weather, Maps and more are just the start. Should a new app opportunity arise, possibly one you helped create, Apple will not hesitate to move in. Be ready to out-innovate, pivot, or die.
  9. We take our smartphones with us everywhere. For many, they are the first thing we see at the start of a new day, the last thing we see before going to sleep. This is a tremendous opportunity. At perhaps no time in human history has a single tool been used so fully throughout the day, everyday, for work and play, by child, teen, adult and senior, all over the world. Take pride in your work.
  10. You deserve to be paid. Of the hundreds of apps I have purchased, minimum, I have never once thought that I would rather choose the app with ads over paying $1, sometimes more, for an ad-free app. Even large display smartphones have relatively small screens. Cluttering it up with an ad, ever, is annoying. Worse, it’s a clear intrusion upon my privacy and a waste of time. I never click on a mobile/in-app ad. I can assure you that my time and my privacy are worth far more to me than my ad view is to you.
  11. Users deserve a second chance. Apple, especially, should offer an app trial period. Yes, even for a 99 cent app. Should they ever agree, these rules become even more important.
  12. Apps must be optimized for the platform and device. Always. Smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop. I subscribe to several web services (e.g. MyNetDiary, New York Times). The smartphone app version may look similar to the website, but must be optimized for the device itself (e.g. iPhone). There are no excuses for failing this.
  13. Touch, pinch, swipe. The touch interface is a beautiful thing. Yet, I have absolutely no use for apps, Clear, for example, or Tweetbot, that insist upon a needlessly expansive variety of gestures to access its data and features. This is nothing more than too many fonts on a Word doc.
  14. Almost every single app I have purchased over the past 18 months I discovered from a Twitter follower or a Facebook ad. Nowhere else. Not Apple genius. Not Google search. Not any app-focused website. You should know this.
  15. Specials are viral. I find out about your app on Twitter, for example, and learn it’s half-priced for today only, I am both extremely likely to buy and to tweet my purchase to others.
  16. Apps are like sperm. Only the first survive. If I have a decent grocery list app, say, there is an extremely good chance your far better, newer grocer list app will be irrelevant to me. Similarly, an app not on the ‘home’ screen is likely not long for this world. No advice, merely an acknowledgement. Your work is hard.
  17. Hold the line. Google has taught us that other’s information should be accessible, for free. Apple has taught us that hardware, not software, should be paid for. I don’t really know how you can succeed in this environment. But I hope you do. Most of you do great work.
  18. You get one chance only to ask if I want to connect with my friends. I should not have to repeat this. Ask once, then accept my ‘no’.
  19. I have a lot of friends. I know a lot of people. When you show me people I know or may know or should know and ask me to connect with them via your app, you make me feel nearly as dirty as you are.
  20. Never scan my contacts. Never ask to scan my contacts. It is a betrayal. This is why I can’t have LinkedIn on my phone.

As the world goes mobile, connecting everyone and everything, focused, functional and highly usable apps will serve as the entry point to all the world’s data, resources, people and content. The humble app, then, is a rather noble device. Treat it and its users with all due respect.

Godspeed.

Truth And Lies Of Silicon Valley

It’s a privilege to write here, and a joy to focus on the long-term trends in technology, the rise and fall of companies and leaders, and the impact this region has upon not only America, but the entire world. I suspect Silicon Valley’s output will come to equal the impact of Detroit, my hometown, which effectively created the middle class, ensured the Allied victory in World War 2, and fundamentally altered how and where people live.

Silicon Valley is also a region that rivals Hollywood and Washington for talking about itself. It frequently displays the worst elements of both pack mentality and herd mentality, and aggressively covers up its failings, including a truly dismaying inequality in wealth and an almost gleeful ageism, all while insisting it knows best for California, the United States, for industry, for government, and for the world.

I now live here. These are my personal, unvarnished observations on Silicon Valley.

Almost all of the work in tech is done by companies and by people which tech bloggers pay scant attention to or worse, openly mock.

Patent lawsuits have about the best margins of any product or service in Silicon Valley. Consider that Apple recently won $290 million in a suit against Samsung. All told, Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear war has resulted in nearly a billion dollars in jury awards. If Apple only ultimately collects less than a third, $300 million, for example, that’s still about a 10X or greater return, no matter how they account for legal fees.

Does Coca Cola even make 10X on its syrup?

Computing is the new oil. The Silicon Valley “ecosystem” integrates smart people, start-ups, venture capital, and a cozy relationship between universities and for-profit corporations, has them all working at light speed and with almost zero consideration of the long-term or the existing order of things. It absolutely can be replicated in many parts of the world. This comes with a caveat, however. This area has optimized on this proven model while focused almost exclusively on computing (hardware, software, standards, apps, data, cloud, social media). Unless the copycats focus their efforts on computing-related activities, their returns will never be like what we have here. Note the very limited impact of Silicon Valley’s biotech efforts thirty years in.

Never, ever believe anyone that says Silicon Valley and Washington, DC do not mix. Washington, DC has the power, Silicon Valley has the money. The courtship is in full swing, and it’s far more than simply Washington leaders searching for big campaign contributions and re-election algorithms. Consider that under President Obama, the annual deficit alone is larger than the total value of Apple, the Valley’s biggest, richest company. Follow the money. Silicon Valley and Washington are the new Wall Street and Washington.

I always assume that any start-up whose value is based upon artificial limits is doomed. For example, Snapchat. The company is optimized for mobile, social media and the visual web. That’s almost a can’t miss. Yet, it is riding atop a temporal distortion, a gimmick whereby owners of digital content and services create artificial limits. In Snapchat’s case, the artificial limit is time (e.g. your picture or ad will vanish in 5,4,3,2,1). We all know this is not true. You may remember the briefly popular, and much-blogged-about Mailbox app, which created a sign-up list, despite the near-infinite scalability of such digital services. It may pay off in the short-term, but if you can’t cash out in the short-term, I suspect you will get burned.

There are real limits and there are made-up limits. If the limit is made-up, I don’t invest.

Speaking of investing, anyone using Snapchat for (illegal) insider trading may wish to re-consider their actions.

Almost everything you do online, and almost every time you carry your smartphone with you outside, is a far greater security risk than leaving your home WiFI open. Stop refusing to share. Stop handing over all your private data so easily.

Most people I meet here are very smart and work very hard. This is critical to their success — and to the region. Bonus: most that I meet are good people.

I have been around the world and all about this great country. Nowhere in the US is there a more socially inclusive environment than Silicon Valley — nor a more politically intolerant one. You will be branded if you are a Republican, a conservative.  Just so you know.

Connections matter above all else. Except, brainpower. If your brainpower sits atop the 0.1%, you will do exceedingly well. If  at the 1%, you will still do great. Nonetheless, and though I can’t say how many people at Apple have actual “humanities” degrees, I can assure you that you better have an engineering degree, science degree, and/or economics degree if you want a good job. It’s not about humanities or the social sciences out here.

Too many here are focused on creating the future or disrupting the current order, and not at all on preserving what is best. This is too bad. Think of all the great stuff we’ve been able to re-capture almost without trying. For example, thanks to iPhone, Yelp and Foursquare, I never again have to eat at fast food joints or franchise restaurants. Now, no matter where I am, I can find a great, local, mom-and-pop eatery. Similarly, classical music in the US, effectively dead on radio, is now readily available, for free, on Pandora and iTunes. I suspect the region is missing a giant opportunity is overlooking things to preserve.

We spend more on apps than on software.

I know of no one here who spends more on television than on connectivity. Internet, WiFi, smartphone and tablet connectivity wildly crush cable television, DVD rentals and the like. And yet, the new cool is to tell the world you’re going to stop reading email, stop tweeting, maybe go off-grid for a week or two. In my experience, no one who tells you this is ever telling you the truth. To be disconnected in Silicon Valley, even for a moment, is to be without air.

In physical space, absolutely no one ever mocks anyone for their choice in smartphone or computer.

Perhaps because there are so many smart, competitive, reasonably well-off people here, but attractiveness and fitness command a premium.

The rest of the world will know soon enough: the best source for breaking news is Twitter. The best links to the best analysis of current events is via Twitter.

In Silicon Valley, the cloud is your real hard drive and your physical hard drive is just a backup, likely to crash.

The last thing we see at night and the first thing we see in the morning is our smartphone.

We get our music recommendations come from iTunes and YouTube.

Design is hard. Really hard. BMW has been making cars for about 100 years. The new 750i is ugly. If BMW still can’t get car design exactly right, 100 years on, it’s probably no wonder that so much hardware, so much software, so many apps, nearly every UI design is so poor. Still, bad design is an obvious failing, with Silicon Valley a leader.

In my time here, I’ve witnessed radically more communications failures and personal angst based on people with obviously different Myers-Briggs assessments than on whether the person was black or white, male or female, for example.

There are so many people out here, so many cars, so little space. Yet barring a literal seismic catastrophe, I believe this area is on a growth trajectory that will continue for at least another generation or two.

Truth And Lies About Apple

I regularly provide analysis of the computing market, trends inside Silicon Valley, the current state of the smartphone wars. This week, I offer instead my observations on Apple. Starting now…

The persistent view among analysts that Apple can (magically) go down market, whenever they want, is, in my view, utter nonsense. It’s the same as suggesting Burberry, for example, can be WalMart. Apple is high-end, high-margin, brand and image focused, and companies cannot magically transform their market approach. To remake their products, their hardware, to radically expand customer service and to effectively give up the lead role in their global retail footprint — all necessary to go down-market — would make Apple no longer Apple.

To those that point to the iPod as some sort of proof that Apple can go down market, even that is wrong. The iPod was (always) a high-end flash drive with minimal computing capabilities.

That Google continues to develop and support services optimized for iPhone is all you need to know about those who scream that IPHONE IS DOOMED. They are either ignorant or they are lying to you. Why do you continue to reward them with your attention?

Google’s biggest mistake was wildly overpaying for Motorola, which continues to be a noose around the company. The second biggest mistake, however, was saddling iPhone users — for years — with an inferior version of Google Maps. I am not the only one that now uses Apple Maps almost exclusively. I suspect they have learned their lesson, the hard way.

In the most recent Apple patent trial, Phil Schiller stated that “almost everyone” at Apple works on iPhones, not Mac. This is true. It’s also remarkable. The iPhone was an unexpected blessing for Apple, raining down more in profits than anyone ever imagined it could. But, Apple’s management team still doesn’t get the credit they deserve for effectively re-making Apple, once the Mac company, into the iPhone company.

The next iPhone will be just like the new Nokia Lumia 1520. Large display. Unapologetically plastic. Colorful. 20mp camera.

Apple will be forced to develop a “phablet” because the market wants larger display devices. For most, a phablet is simply a better alternative to buying both a smartphone and a tablet. This is especially true for Apple, with its over-priced iPad line. Steve Jobs intended iPad to rest in sort of that middle ground between laptop and smartphone. A great idea for those who can afford three devices. The vast majority of the world cannot.

iOS 7 is beautiful. There is a core design flaw, however. The world is eagerly embracing the visual web — Pinterest, Snapchat, the new Twitter. In an increasingly mobile, real-time existence, visuals convey a great deal of information in an instant. iOS 7 runs counter to this trend. Note that your iOS 7 device insists on using text even where visuals would obviously work better, such as when telling you the current weather. Jony Ive’s legend is no doubt secure, but I expect iOS will quickly evolve to incorporate more visual elements. Form should follow function and most of the time the market wins.

With Rockstar, Apple becomes a patent troll. Rockstar is absolutely no different from Lodsys. That said, there is absolutely validity to Jobs’ thermonuclear war. There was nothing available like the iPhone or like the iPad until the iPhone and iPad. Intellectual property and design should be protected and compensated. On this, I fully stand behind Apple.

I have covered the smartphone wars as long, as diligently as anyone on the planet. Nonetheless, despite the growth of iPhone and the global smartphone market in general, I never thought it would be easier for me to buy more and better software for Apple products than Microsoft products.

Nintendo is hurting. Sony is hurting. We recently discovered that Xbox may not even be a money-maker for Microsoft. The premiere gaming company in the world is…Apple? I know, shocking. At least for those of us who grew up on PCs and game consoles.

The new iWork is so bad primarily because of Apple’s insistence on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ software strategy, forcing the product to be the same on a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop. This will always fail. Giving it away won’t change how bad it is. The only question now is, how long before Apple abandons this silly notion and gives us a productivity suite that works well?

As bad as the new iWork is, Apple does not get the credit it deserves as a software company. iTunes may not be on every desktop, but its close. iOS is now on hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets. Mavericks is on millions of laptops. Apple’s global software presence is approaching Microsoft’s. This was even recently unthinkable. Even more, Apple’s software is on a larger array of usable devices — tablet, phone, laptop, desktop, set top — and built for multiple modes: touch, keyboard and voice. Remarkable achievement.

Every tech blogger I read, and I think I read them all, is a poor stock analyst. Please do not buy or sell stock, whether $AAPL, $AMZN, $GOOG or other, based on what a tech blogger says. Ever. They are cheerleaders. Save your money.

The next Apple app revolution will be…email.

Email, that boring, dated, derided yet almost universal tool, used — with great reluctance — for personal and professional reasons, is on the cusp of a revolution. At least, I hope so. Here’s an example of what I think Apple will do — what I think only Apple can do. Use the Open Table app, for example, to make a restaurant reservation. Now imagine that the reservation confirmation email you receive contains visually appealing, pre-embedded Yelp reviews of the chef’s best dishes, a PassBook coupon, Facebook credits, Foursquare check-in rewards, your friends list for those having dinner with you, and Apple Maps directions to the restaurant. This is all contained within the email. All secure because each ‘chunk’ of personalized app data is run only through Apple servers. Speed, simplicity, convenience, enhanced benefits. Think Google Now, only on steroids, because Apple will allow its massive app ecosystem to take part. Delivering it all through iOS Mail servers is a nice little knife in Google’s side, as well. That’s my vision, at least.

I look forward to your comments on what you think is true and what you think are lies.

Next week: Truth and lies about Silicon Valley

Finding God In Our Smartphones

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony.”
– Albert Einstein

Smartphones have changed our world. Wearables will change our selves. Together, these amazing devices represent some of humankind’s greatest work, integrating the absolute leading edge of technical prowess, computer engineering, manufacturing skill and materials science. I wonder also if they are bringing us closer to God.

I confess, I do not know the answer.

Silicon Valley is about money, not faith. Real-time, not eternity. Change, not permanence. The worship that occurs here is typically at the altar of wealth, intellect, and luck; a place where residents proudly wear their atheism on their sleeves, and where the obviously religious are, if not looked down upon, then viewed the way far too many view obese people — broken, not quite fully evolved.

The spirit finds a way.

At the intersection of smartphones and wearables is a locus of desire to know ourselves, improve ourselves, celebrate ourselves. And yet, through these devices we are reminded how fully connected we are to one another, and soon, to all things. This strikes me as a form of grace.

At first glance, this notion seems incongruous. With smartphones and wearables, we post in real-time what we ate, how much we weigh. We tweet our passing thoughts on all manner of topics. We update our Facebook page to sanction our latest pleasure or most recent transient annoyance. We take pictures of our self, then another, then another, and display them all for the world to see. We actively seek the affirmation of nearby friends and faraway strangers, asking them to affirm our actions, no matter how small or fleeting.

We may all be, in this age of miracle and wonder, at our most vain.

Nonetheless, that fire hose of data gushing from these personal computing devices lays bare our very human failings, our strivings and our mortality. What comes after that? At the time of our greatest technical and intellectual advancement, do we merely expose ourselves as insufferably common, or are we (unknowingly) unlocking the fullest truth of ourselves?

The very tools used  to elevate our physical and intellectual selves, helping us to be the very best we can be, may ultimately serve to remind us that without a equal focus on the spiritual, it’s all for naught.

Consider that with smartphones, that which was once physical is now digital. Apps, tweets, music, movies, these are abstractions made real. We are contented with their ephemeral realness. Our very best technology, then, may be edging us closer — shaman-like — to bridging the physical and the virtual, and possibly to accepting the spiritual.

Our most advanced personal technologies are not merely uplifting, but guiding. We track everything, or soon will. In the morning our devices will remind us to eat right, to walk 10,000 steps. In the evening they will ask us if we gave due attention to our children, our spouse and our dreams. The daily rituals of monitoring what we do and how we improve may in fact help us find our way onto a narrow, possibly righteous path to goodness.

Yes, we can instantly access all manner of fetishism, violence, pornography, but also the greatest of humanity — and one another. The fragments of humanity, good and bad, are embedded within our technology, and resident inside our iPhones and Fitbits. Humans seek, we care, we dream, we sense there is far more beyond our self, our neighbors, even our world. This is true even if, at least in this infant stage of our meta connectivity, we initially turn such powers upon ourselves.

With smartphone in hand, we are connected to nearly everyone, from anywhere, at any time, and never truly alone. Wearable computer bracelet strapped tightly against our skin, the truth of our self is brightly flashed before our eyes, including our mortality. These devices will change us.

Which may not lead us to God but certainly should lead us all to be better.

Smartphones Are Transforming Retail Not With Technology But With Messy Humanity

I believe a profound transformation in retail is now underway, one set to equal the changes in buying and selling formed during the modern industrial age. Only, it’s not what you think.

It started with Apple, which launched the smartphone wars. With smartphone in hand, we can now assess competitor price, global availability, level of service, and overall quality of any product anywhere on the globe, even while browsing inside a small store on the very edge of the farthest reaches of our planet.

For today’s retailers, it gets worse.

Amazon has constructed a platform that enables it to sell virtually any item at a lesser price than any competitor anywhere, with all necessary adjustments on price and availability made in real-time.

With Google, we can know everything around us and can locate exactly what we want, whether down the street or on another continent. There are no boundaries, no safe places.

With social media, we are always in contact with family, friends, followers and all manner of experts. Meaning, we need never pay more than the absolute best price available. We never need to choose the wrong product for our unique needs — nor be persuaded by crafty or misleading sales entreaties.

Thanks to smartphone payments apps we have our requisite coupons and loyalty points always at the ready. We can also now instantly send (digital) cash to another person’s mobile device, bypassing all manner of legal and non-legal intermediaries.

Retail — the entire shopping, buying, paying, servicing, researching, promoting ecosystem — is being de-constructed by smartphones, social media, location data and the cloud, with power flowing outward to every potential buyer.

This is only the beginning.

[pullquote]Values equal profits.[/pullquote]

The more profound change, and one that industry analysts seem utterly blind to, is that the very same technologies which enable shoppers to receive the best price, the best service, the best value, will similarly guarantee that their money itself generates maximum impact.

For every $100 you spend, would you prefer that most of it, if possible, stayed within your community? If you could choose between having your next $100 go to retailers that support your child’s school, your neighborhood, your political and social views versus to a faceless corporation of undetermined origin and values, would you? I suspect the answer is a resounding yes and I believe our technologies are rapidly leading us toward this new reality.

When able to easily determine and demand the very best price and the very best product, what comes next is to make sure we spend our (limited) dollars in a manner that fosters and extends our political, social and community goals to optimum levels. Retailers will have to adjust to this new world. Their new reality is thus:

Values equal profits.

We can now get anything, anytime, anywhere and at the very best price available. How then to choose? Simple. We choose Brand X and Retailer Y because the product’s origin, its composition, the people who make it, those who sell it, those who service it, all support a world and a future that most closely aligns with our own.

Seen in this light, smartphones and the mobile web are not merely upending retail and relationships, fostering new services and business models, they are transforming the very notion of retail. No longer will it be about profits first. Rather, values first, then profits.

We can already see the beginnings of this change, of course. Fair trade coffee, handmade crafts, and restaurants that emphasize “local” as much as the food itself. These are merely brief flashes of what’s to come. I predict that within a decade, maybe less, values will be a primary driver behind most consumer sales in the developed world.

Note: I do not mean “values” as practiced in the traditional (20th century) marketing sense. Apple, for example, does a masterful job promoting their values — aspiration, liberation, creation. These are, however, feel-good values designed to please everyone. This will no longer be sufficient. In a world when we can easily find equivalents and get them at the absolute best price, values will become the prime differentiator. No doubt, the values of some retailers will be highly offensive to many. This will not slow this new reality down.

Indeed, with so much information readily available, it may soon no longer even be  possible to make a purchase decision without knowing the values of a product or the political leanings of its sellers. With instant price comparisons, location-aware search, real-time data streams, constant connectivity to friends, family, followers, spiritual advisors, political leaders and product experts, the act of purchasing based on values becomes not just possible but commonplace, probably even expected. In the near future, you don’t merely check in to a place to tell your friends where you are, you check in to make a declaration of who you are — and you can do so with every purchase.

Retail will become less about profit and more about a larger social purpose. To promote particular religious or social views, gun rights, a greener planet, transgender equality, Christian fundamentalist practices, polygamy, animal welfare; the options are as expansive as humanity itself.

Yes, it can get messy. It will get messy. Humanity is messy. Despite such messiness, I believe this trend is inevitable — and ultimately far more liberating. I also expect this new reality, in fits and starts, to be absolutely embraced. Very soon we will have a difficult time comprehending 20th century retail.

We have spent our whole lives focused on price, quality and convenience. We won that war. Anything, anywhere, at anytime and at the best price is now the base level expectation. Deeply personal, values-based shopping comes next, enabled, ironically so, by mass market computing technologies and globe-spanning social media platforms.

We are only now entering a era where we can search and find shops that match our values for whatever we want. We are only now able to instantly declare our purchases to all our friends and followers, telling them and the entire world in semi-permanent digital ink who we are and what we believe in with the very money we spend.

Values will drive sales. Values will drive profits. Values cannot be matched by Amazon, Google or any global conglomerate.

Image courtesy of The Guardian 

Stop Believing Apple Invents Stuff! Where I Interview The Biggest Android Fanboy In The World.

He is known simply as Charbax. You can find him on Twitter, on Youtube, and very often in the comments section of any post that trashes Android. He is in my opinion the biggest Android fanboy — fan, fanatic, believer, evangelist — in the world. His numerous first-hand, homebrew videos showcase the incredible innovation occurring across the Android ecosystem, be it in China, in Europe, or America.

What fuels his passion? Apple makes gorgeous physical products, easy to love. Android, by contrast, is a string of ones and zeros, cold, unfeeling code. There are many more questions, of course. If Android is “winning” then how does he explain Apple’s massive profits? Or the pre-eminence of iPad? Why care about an OS whose primary reason for being is not to get more people online but to capture more personal data to sell to advertisers? And what of Google’s continued moves to tighten control around this once aggressively marketed “open” platform?

Charbax arrived in San Francisco last week and did not shy away from any of my questions — though his numbers are often suspect.

Disclosure: I have followed Charbax online for at least three years. As that rare pundit who has gone on record stating that Android is, well, not very good, and almost certainly to be eclipsed by a far more functional and cohesive platform, I have faced his wrath many times over. Watch his videos, however, and you must admit that no person, no company — not even Google itself — has so well documented the stunningly rapid spread of Android throughout the globe, and into all manner of computing devices, be they phones, tablets, toys, cameras or sensors. If Android does come to rule our world, as Charbax absolutely believes it will — maybe already has — then history will lean heavily upon his work.

Author note: I have edited responses for the sake of brevity and clarity.  

His real name is Nicolas Charbonnier. He is from Denmark. He tells me that he funds his work primarily through his well-trafficked pro-Android website and popular Youtube channel.

What explains the rapid global spread of Android?
Android is the first embedded Linux for smart devices platform that got enough investment to reach full usability.

What are some current examples of innovative development taking place with Android?
Android is reaching sub-$25 Phones this year and it’ll be in sub-$15 phones next year. Android has reached sub-$20 Desktop HDMI Sticks now and it’s going to reach sub-$10 desktop prices next year. Without Android, there would be nothing of interest going on in the tech world.

Android is enabling the next 5 Billion people access to smart technology. You can fly to China and buy an iPhone 5S copy on MediaTek MT6572 (dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, Android 4.2.2) for the same total price as buying a “real” iPhone 5S in America.

It seems as if only Samsung has profited from Android. What if they abandon the platform?
This is the dream of the same morons that sank Nokia and Blackberry. Samsung is hugely profitable only thanks to Android. Android subsidizes Samsung, Sony and LG’s HDTV business and other businesses. Companies make money on Android because it’s free, open source, and optimized for the most advanced consumer products.

Are you affiliated with Google?
Nope. If Google wants to give me a job, they are welcome to hire me.

Why are you an Android “evangelist”?
I’m basically an evangelist of technology.  I think technology is the solution to all world’s problems and all the (latest) technology is powered by Android. I video-blog at 20 consumer electronics shows per year and 99% of what is happening there revolves around Android. Without Android, I would have nothing to video-blog about.

Charbax

How do you support your globe-spanning work documenting Android?
My Youtube channel passed 25 million views and I make money from ads. A few companies pay for my flights and hotels when they want me to video-blog at their conferences. I have some 300+ members paying me $20/year on my website. I also earn money by offering advice on sourcing devices out of China.

What do Apple users get wrong about Android?
The world is bigger than Cupertino. Most technological innovation is not happening in the USA and especially not in Cupertino!

Stop believing Apple invents stuff! Apple never invented anything! Even selling overpaid hardware pre-dates Apple by millenia. Apple is simply a cash machine. They invest money wisely in components at the right time for them and they make absurd amounts of profits selling those devices.

They convince consumers that it’s worth paying $2,500+ with a 2-year contract for a device that cost Apple less than $150 to manufacture by underpaid workers in China.

While you may stay in love with your Apple plastics if you want, there is much more happening out in the rest of the world. Android has 100 times more engineers and 100x more R&D being invested throughout the thousands of Android companies working on Android innovation right now.

Author note: I did not ask Charbax if he was referring to me with his “stay in love with your Apple plastics” remark or to Apple users in general.  

What is the future of Android?   
Android has about 90% market share today (where it matters, growth markets and non-US developped markets). It’ll be 98% in 2 years. It’ll power everything in the world.

But isn’t fragmentation a significant problem for Android?
With retail prices for Android devices ranging from $20 to $2000, you cannot expect everything to work on all those different types of devices. On the other hand, even without “official” support on perhaps 50% of the Android device output to date, most apps and most Android features work perfectly fine on 98% of the Android devices on the market.

Author note: Again, Charbax did not offer verifiable evidence for his assertions.

Android was very ingeniously designed since day 1 for both massive backwards compatibility and forwards compatibility. The Android apps SDK enables 99.9% of the 1 million Android apps to work perfectly fine on 99.9% of Android devices being used on the market right now. Even your 3-4 year old Android device will support above 99% of the 1 million Android apps today.

This is absolutely not true of Apple iOS. iPad apps don’t work right on iPhone. iPhone apps don’t work right on iPad. iPad (2) apps don’t work right on iPad Mini. iPad Mini apps don’t work right on iPad Mini Retina.

Android is built to accomodate for just about any screen size, pixel density and any optional hardware features. You do not need to design “tablet optimized” apps for Android for example as you must absolutely do so for iPad.

What else is better about Android than iOS or Windows Phone (or any other operating system)?
Android is 100% open source. This is the most important thing. Android is like the web. iOS and Windows are like proprietary competitors to the web. Android is 100% free.

What about claims that Android or Android makers infringe on other’s patents?
All those patent lawsuits against Android are complete bullshit. Anyone who believes Microsoft or Apple have the right to sue Linux open source on smart devices is just out of his mind. Nobody must touch Linux, it’s free and open source. End of story. Nobody can patent any touch UI, any device shape, any essential user interaction idea, or anything that somebody else would have come up with.

Google appears to be transitioning away from the very open source view you espouse.
Admittedly, Android needs to be even more open source and even more free. That means open source GPU drivers, open source WiFi, Bluetooth, and other source drivers. It means perhaps 100% free alternatives to HDMI, USB, H264, Mp3, Dolby, as well as alternatives to whatever else other people are claiming licence fees against Android device makers for. That practice is just wrong and needs to stop.

Connectors, codecs, graphics engines, all those things need to be free to use for any device maker. Google needs to ramp up their involvement in providing 100% free alternatives to the market for these things so that device makers can in fact produce 100% free and open source Android devices worldwide.

But is this something Google should do? What about controlling the Android brand name, the use of Google apps, and controlling development of future releases?
(I suspect) Sundar Pichai‘s role overseeing Android may be to prepare Android 5.0+ to be totally open. Google should (and soon may) allow any third party developer access to see in real time all the future features of Android that Google is working on. Google should release dailies and accept way more third party patches and feature requests. Any improvements to Android that any third parties want to submit should get integrated in real-time.

You think Google will do this?
I think Google knows they are so far ahead of anyone else now that it really doesn’t benefit either Google or Google’s hardware partners to offer exclusive access to future Android development anymore. Give everyone equal, real-time access.

I also think Google will un-licence and un-restrict the use of their Android apps so that anyone will be allowed to ship Android with Google Play, Google Maps, Gmail, and whatever other apps Google offers, as much as they want, with no more need to ask for Google certification first.

Google should also count all Android activations in the future, and not only count certified Android devices. The 1.5 million Android activations per day are only certified Android devices being activated. That does not include the 500,000 – 1 million non-certified Android devices that are sold worldwide and activated each day.

Why are you visiting San Francisco?
I want to interview HP, Intel and others in the region. I will also be attending a Samsung developer conference. Before this, I was  in Shenzhen, China and purchased some Android phones for $36, and Android-powered devices that copy both Windows Phone and iPhone.

Thank you.

Author note: below are some of my favorite Charbax videos: 

Archos Childpad

A $29 Android tablet

Shenzhen Tablet Factory tour

The Simple Shocking Failures of Microsoft Google Facebook Apple And Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley companies love to remind us they are on a mission to change the world. Perhaps, although I confess I’m slightly suspicious given their obvious relentless pursuit of funding, acquisitions, getting acquired, going public, and generating piles of cash.

And because so many things they offer us — things that really ought to work, every time, anytime, no questions asked — fail so miserably. This list, it seems, is endless.

Email gets a pass. Siri is so thoroughly ineffectual and so utterly counter to its advertising that I’m not even going to include it here. Wouldn’t be fair. Same with the industry’s tragic dependence upon advertising, which now litters nearly every real, physical, virtual and digital space any of us might occupy. But there’s far more than these, of course. My smartphone ought to know how I feel, right this moment. After all, what contains more data on me, about me, historical and present, than my smartphone? Know how I feel and play a song to match my mood, for example. That would be awesome. Only, that’s asking for too much, I suspect. I mean, has Apple’s “genius” service ever worked for anyone, ever? I’ve received better music and movie recommendations from my mother — and she neither listens to music nor watches movies.

There may be unknowable failures, of course. Perhaps with Google and Amazon giving us so much for free in return for using their service, we are creating a future America that believes everything should be offered at no price, or that profit is unnecessary to sustain a business, or that we are all entitled to something, anything, without ever paying for it. That’s a potential massive dependency failure. Only, I am merely concerned with the obvious failures. Those instances where some lone wolf at each of these companies should not have even had to point it out because it ought to have been so obvious to everyone involved.

Why is it that practically every single smartphone ever built can’t seem to recognize that the WiFi it is connected to isn’t actually connected to the Internet — so switch over to cellular, already! In a world where I can tweet from a jet 30,000 feet above the ground, this should not ever happen.

Any site that demands I first log-in using Facebook is a failure — and an affront to decency. Imagine any physical retail store doing the same.  Similarly, any site that allows us to log-in using our Facebook credentials should not ever receive more than confirmation of our identity. Our location, contacts, friendships and long history on Facebook should not ever be handed over without our explicit and ongoing consent.

Too often, Instagram videos fail to play on my iPhone. On my Mac, Twitter Vine videos fail more often than they work. I’ve stopped clicking on Vine links, in fact.

Printing from an iPhone or iPad is a joke.

Windows 8 — and I promise you, I am no Microsoft hater — is so inexplicably, almost painfully user-unfriendly that, and I am serious here, every other thing Microsoft has done right, and every other thing they have achieved, and despite all their money, and ignoring the ascendency of iOS and Android and the rise of iPad in the workplace, the breadth and scale of of the Windows 8 OS failure is such that it could literally take down the entire company.  Microsoft could absolutely afford to be years behind in the smartphone wars and could absolutely drop billions and billions more on online services and go through a succession of just terrible post-Ballmer CEOs and could be outright hostile to the consumer market — if such a thing exists — and  they could still dominate the enterprise for at least another generation. Except…Windows 8 is so shockingly hard to use, so determinedly strategy over function that I now believe it’s a very real possibility that Bing will be worth more than Windows before this decade is out. I say this absolutely as someone who wants this great American company to thrive — and as someone who fully believes that Microsoft’s singular UI strategy and flat “live tiles” design is still the right one. As someone who cares, I cannot emphasize this enough: fix it.

It’s a failure for my hometown that Amazon somehow gets away with selling billions of dollars of goods without charging its customers sales tax.

It’s a failure that I can’t have my “smartphone” ignore every single call that does not include the number and person (or business) calling.

Has Eddie Cue every actually used iMessages? Or Maps?

When Jony Ive flies from San Francisco to London, at what point does his iPhone batter fail him? For me, it’s much too soon.

In return for a never-ending wave of our most personal information, Google promises us instant, usable search results. Yet when I enter “Brian S Hall” I am instantly offered 286 million results. That is a stupid failure.

That the entire tech sector has done next to nothing to make it so we don’t all have to pay near-criminal prices to HP and Canon for printer ink is a massive failure.

Similarly, it remains far too hard to move the pictures from my smartphone onto my computer(s) and to the cloud, and back again, and share them with exactly who I want. Probably every single user on the planet wants this, deserves this, and still can’t have it. Fail.

How is all this possible? Is it because for too many of the indicted companies, they believe that historic marketshare is an excuse? Or that free equals just good enough? Or that they will eventually get to it? Yet Google thinks I might get inside their driverless car?

With all the data Google collects on us — who we are, where we go, what we search, what we buy, going back forever — how is it that the only predictive service they can offer is Google Now? Which is little more than the weather and local bus schedule.

Why does Facebook insist on curating my newsfeed despite my repeated requests to give me everything, most recent to least, in order, every single time? If Mark Zuckerberg can’t trust me with that gushing flow of information, perhaps I shouldn’t trust him with the drip drip drip of my personal data.

It’s the second decade of the twenty-first century and far too much that comes out of Silicon Valley is broken. This makes me suspect everything they say and do. Yes, obviously, I want world peace, an end to hunger, longevity, joy and prosperity. But until the industry can get the tiny features of our most popular technological products actually working properly, those will have to wait.

If Jeff Bezos Is Serious About An Amazon Phone He Better Take Out His Wallet

Over the past several weeks, rumors of an “Amazon Phone” have become more persistent, if no more credible. The rumors stick, of course, because Amazon has years of experience designing, developing, selling (and I assume servicing) personal mobile computing devices — the Kindle line of eReaders and tablets. In addition, Amazon operates its own Android app store, has a very successful cloud infrastructure platform, and manages one of the larger direct-to-consumer smartphone channels. Add to this the company’s robust digital media ecosystem — books, music, movies and more — and it’s easy to understand why so many believe Amazon can and will make its own smartphone.

There’s only one problem: every time we might use an “Amazon smartphone” we most certainly are (via their cloud, apps, payments platform, rumored smartphone sensors and integrated services) visiting Amazon.

And Jeff Bezos has taught us that every time we visit Amazon we should demand and we should receive a whole host of free goodies. This alters the entire Amazon smartphone equation.

Free Free Free!

A famous Bezos quote is “there are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.”

I won’t call Bezos a liar, the quote is accurate. Only, it’s not complete. Bezos and Amazon often do charge less than the competition. They are like WalMart in this regard. Where they are different, however, is in making that (slightly) lower price even more appealing by throwing in a feast of freebies.

Amazon Prime, for example, is damn near a steal for my family — just on shipping costs alone. There’s also the many free streaming movies we get for being Prime “subscribers.” We get free books on Kindle, free Android apps, free cloud storage for our many digital belongings and much more. Then there’s all the sales taxes we’ve saved by choosing Amazon instead of buying local. I shudder to add those up.

The modus operandi of Amazon isn’t “cheap” or “low price.” Rather, it’s using other people’s money — including some from Wall Street — to subsidize the company’s most favored customers.

I am happily one of Amazon’s most favored customers.

But I have no intention of getting an Amazon smartphone, however. Not unless Bezos hands me a great deal more freebies than ever before.

All Amazon All The Time

Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch recently provided details on the rumored Amazon smartphone(s).

Amazon is planning two devices, the first of which is the previously rumored ‘expensive’ version with a 3D user interface, eye tracking and more.

Another feature said to be planned for the device, but not yet locked for release, is an image recognition feature that lets users take a shot of any real-world object and match it to an Amazon product for purchase.

Count me as highly skeptical on any of this. An actual value-enhancing 3D screen — before Samsung, Apple, Sony, LG or Motorola? Eye tracking and image recognition that really works? From the company that is primarily a web commerce and services concern?

Worse, the company suggests they may charge us for their smartphone! Recall, Amazon publicly told AllThingsD: “we have no plans to offer a phone this year, and if we were to launch a phone in the future, it would not be free.”

If it’s not free, what could be the actual selling point? Better hardware? Better software? Better ecosystem? That seems extremely unlikely. Lower prices? Between iTunes and App Store pricing and Google giveaways, how much lower could Amazon go?

Answer: they’d have to start paying us to use the device.

It’s the opposite of free!

This is not so far-fetched.

The Opposite of Free

Smartphones are profoundly altering commerce. We use them to buy, to research what to buy, to see what is available to buy — at this moment, at this exact location, and from whom. We use our smartphones to complete the purchase, to make the payment, to store our coupons, to ask our friends for recommendations.

Amazon wants badly to capture and monetize as much of this action, and as many of these steps, as theoretically possible. Give Bezos his due for thinking in such grand terms.

Everything Google does, for example, is to get us to provide more of our personal information, which they can then monetize. Everything Amazon does is to get us to make more of our purchases through them. An Amazon smartphone would no doubt be designed for just that.

Which, from a user’s standpoint, sounds absolutely dreadful.

An Amazon smartphone could only work if Amazon paid us to use it.

Amazon is a Tiger. Jeff Bezos the Tail.

In a recent piece in BusinessWeek, Bezos and Amazon are reverentially lauded:

Today, as it nears its 20th anniversary, it’s the Everything Store, a company with around $75 billion in annual revenue, a $140 billion market value, and few if any discernible limits to its growth.

I’m less sure of that last bit. Admittedly, I use Amazon regularly. The reasons are clear:

  1. the sales process extracts only minimal pain
  2. the products are available within only a few days
  3. the prices are reliably low
  4. all the free stuff the company throws in with every purchase

Just one of those goes away, however, and I will look elsewhere — possibly even make my purchases elsewhere. Which means there is at least one very obvious limit on Amazon’s growth: if the rubes who are subsidizing Amazon’s most favored customers ever rebel, us most favored customers just might go elsewhere.

I can’t say when or if that will happen. But, I can say that if the Amazon smartphone is not free, as Amazon says, then it will have to compete with other devices. I simply do not believe Amazon can win on a level playing field.

I could be wrong. There may well be an Amazon smartphone on the horizon. It may turn out to be great. Time will tell.

But I am certain of this: Jeff Bezos better be ready to pull out his wallet if he’s serious about entering the smartphone wars. I will make him pay a fortune for my business. I suspect we all will.

Do Android Or Windows Phone Have Any Hope Of Defeating iPhone?

No.

Neither Android nor Windows Phone, apart or in concert, have any hope of defeating iPhone. None. For the foreseeable future, iPhone will remain the world’s most popular, most profitable smartphone by a wide margin. The best apps, the first apps, the most popular accessories, the lion’s share of the industry’s profits all will belong to iPhone.

Indeed, I think the gap in profits and mindshare will only widen from this point forward. The iPhone is simply too good, Apple too rich, iPhone hardware too advanced, the iOS ecosystem too robust, integration across devices and platforms too seamless, retail footprint too large, customer satisfaction too high.

Mobile First

iPhone’s dominance is also partly the result of the right strategic bets. Apple has successfully re-positioned itself as a mobile first entity. Android and Windows Phone not only lag behind iPhone from a financial, technical and platform perspective, their masters — Google and Microsoft — still underestimate just how profoundly mobile will remake computing, work, play, commerce, interactions, our lives. Their smartphones suffer accordingly.

Google, which makes nearly all its money from (stationary) web advertising, continues to focus its efforts on getting more users on the web more of the time. Wise, but not enough. As I have previously shown, the person-to-web relationship is no longer central to the connected user. With smartphones, apps and services such as AirDrop and iBeacons, for example, we will witness a radical jump in person-to-person, person-to-group and device-to-device interactions that bypass the web entirely, never once to cross a Google server or gateway.

Likewise, Microsoft is still designed for a world where the “desktop” is at the center of an ever-expanding sphere of computing devices and services. This is fail. As Ben Bajarin has shown, it is smartphones, not PCs that will serve as the hub of our mobile, social and highly connected lives.

Apple’s iPhone is simply too far ahead of the competition everywhere that matters.

But, there remain opportunities — very big ones, in fact.

As I have written in the past, do not be misled by those who insist that Apple can magically go down-market whenever they wish. This is false. Apple’s skill set, cost structure, corporate expertise and branding all prevent this. Thus, Windows Phone and Android vendors can fight it out over the low-price, low-profit market.

There are several additional paths to take. These can all benefit from non-Apple innovation.

Form Factor

Apple now controls the most robust developer platform for personal computing. No one on the planet foresaw this happening, not even Steve Jobs who initially radically underestimated both the disruptive power of the app and the near-limitless potential of the iPhone.

Therein lies the opportunity.

Apple is now beholden to its developer community. The iPad and then the iPad Mini, the iPhone and then the iPhone 5, all have very specific display sizes in large part because these work best for the nearly million apps available. You may pine for an iPhone “Note” but the fact is Apple cannot offer us a wide array of display sizes because this would harm the performance and presentation of existing apps.

Android and Windows Phone should therefore radically expand their efforts and develop devices that embrace all manner of display size and form factors (e.g. these massive Microsoft ‘tablets’). The upcoming “bendable” LG smartphone and the extremely popular large-display Samsung devices reveal the potential of this market.

Similarly, iOS cannot well support physical keyboards. Mobile devices with physical keyboards — including, yes, the Surface — will remain in high demand for years to come.

The Integration of Things

The shockingly rapid transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7 only hints at the potential power of Apple’s platform. With hundreds of millions already on iOS 7, app developers, payments platforms, makers of accessories and hardware companies all know that building for iOS, unlike all other platforms, is a near guarantee that their service or device will function properly and have access to the most lucrative market.

There is another path, however, one which Apple may simply be unable to support: everything else in our lives.

I want my smartphone to serve as my identity, my credit card, my house key, car key, to manage my heating and cooling, monitor my home when I am not there, control my washer and dryer, serve as my television remote, connect with my medical devices (e.g. blood pressure monitor), track my dogs, offer me instant access to the subway and thousands of other activities.

Given the obvious limits on Apple’s marketshare and hardware development, Android and Windows Phone need to position themselves as the go-to platform for the Internet of Things. Apple and its hardware partners cannot be everywhere.

Government Intervention

Smartphones connect us with content, with the web, with one another, and with an ever-expanding array of devices and services. They are the center of our lives. Not the PC, as Microsoft envisioned. Not the web, as Google still believes. The smartphone is the last thing we see at night, the first thing we see in the morning. The odds of some new tech marginalizing smartphones any time over the next decade, say, are extremely remote.

A far more likely pitfall for Apple’s iPhone is government intervention.

No matter your political bent, the long history of government from at least the beginnings of recorded history clearly reveal that wherever there is a great deal of money, government will be there.

Apple has a great deal of money.

Expect new rules on how this money is taxed, how it may be spent, and a bevy of new and potentially inexplicable regulations on what Apple must do to satisfy each nation’s (or region’s) many and varied constituencies. Also expect nations to directly and indirectly limit Apple’s sales in favor of national entities.

How such intervention might impact Apple and iPhone is simply unknowable at this point. I nonetheless expect ongoing and potentially significant government intrusion upon Apple’s business, at least from China and the European Union, possibly even the US.

I suspect that government intrusion, more than the marketplace, more than any new technologies, more even than industry collusion, will impact Apple’s and iPhone’s continued success the most over this next decade.

Martha Stewart vs Mark Zuckerberg. Seniors vs Silicon Valley.

Help! My iPad’s fallen and it can’t get up!

Much mirth ensued across both Twitter and tech blogs last week when the very entrepreneurial — and very senior — Martha Stewart broke her iPad. Perhaps she only has herself to blame considering the series of naive tweets she unleashed upon her followers, including:

No, Martha. There is no magic button — yet — that alerts Apple that your iPad is broken. Nor does Apple — yet — offer a service where they come to your home and repair or replace your device, not even for the very wealthy. Except, that is not the real story here. Rather, it is this:

Is Silicon Valley really so blind to the computing revolution taking place right in front of their eyes?

I suspect the answer is yes.

The evolution of computing is very clear on this: it starts with a few than spreads to the many, with each new computing revolution touching exponentially more lives: mainframes to minis to PCs to, now, smartphones and tablets. The market for these latest personal computing devices is literally in the billions of users. These billions of users include potentially a billion senior citizens.

Silicon Valley, however, appears utterly blind, even disrespectful to this market; to its size, its wealth and to the fact that it is growing faster than any other demographic, at least in the developed world. Mocking older people’s inability to “google” or to “turn on the Internet” or effectively service their iPad limits us to the incredible opportunities just around the corner.

The Valley’s notorious cult of youth is the most obvious telltale sign.

Consider Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, who said a few years ago: “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30?”

In the Valley, youthful smarts trumps all, apparently, and all flows from that.

Now the head of a publicly traded company, Zuckerberg no doubt still believes his youthful words. As the New York Times noted, the median age of workers at Facebook is a mere 28. This is not uncommon.

The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook (28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.

Ask yourself: if a tech company had a median age of, say, 60, would you believe it could effectively build devices and services optimized for twenty-somethings? Yet all of Silicon Valley is absolutely convinced of the reverse.

That Zuckerberg and other leaders in Silicon Valley clearly favor young over old is obvious in so many ways. This shows up not just in the age of their workers. Their ongoing lobbying efforts with FWD.US, for example, are  part of a multi-pronged effort to bring talented — young — workers into the US. Perhaps this is wise, possibly even necessary. But shouldn’t such efforts come after they have thoroughly proven their willingness and their ability to hire and train older workers?

Unfair? I don’t think so. The stated mission of FWD.US is “to promote policies to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy—including comprehensive immigration reform and education reform.”

Given the median age at the many tech companies supporting FWD.US, I confess I find it difficult to accept that their leaders care all that much about keeping the citizenry competitive. Forty year olds can’t learn to work for Facebook?

Which brings me back to my larger point: can today’s youth-obsessed tech companies effectively build products and services optimized for people of advanced age? Is Silicon Valley about to cede this giant market to others?

The demographic that will experience the biggest growth over the next decade — by a vast margin —  is seniors. In the US, there are already over 40 million seniors — age 65 or older. Many of today’s seniors, including my parents, are only just now using their first-ever computing device. Almost certainly they can benefit from new form factors, new modes of input, new ways of thinking about UI.

Regrettably, the Valley appears convinced that its devices, such as iPads, and its platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, are magically optimized for all, just as they believe twenty-five-year-olds make for the very best workers. Such a blind spot will no doubt create opportunities for others, elsewhere.

Consider the latest offering via the very creative Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. The company’s new Kindle Fire HDX now includes “Mayday” — a one-click service that instantly connects the user to live person-to-person video chat. According to Bezos, this will “revolutionize tech support.” This may not be a hollow boast:

With a single tap, an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you—whatever works best.

Did anyone in Silicon Valley even contemplate such a thing?

Isn’t this the land of bold ideas and audacious, daring new creations?

I am not calling on Silicon Valley tech companies to build devices and services explicitly for senior citizens. I am asking for far less than that. I am urging the region, filled with some of the world’s best and brightest, to understand that by expanding their worldview — and ridding themselves of their bias of working with and alongside old people — they might understand and then capture a market possibly far larger than any they are in now. All while helping to empower millions as never before.

If Steve Jobs Was Alive What Would Steve Jobs Do?

If Steve Jobs was alive I would not need to write this column.

He is not, tragically, and yet as I cover Apple, the smartphone industry, and the rapid spread of mobile personal computing throughout the world, I never hear the end of analysts, bloggers — and haters — telling me exactly what would be different if Steve Jobs was alive.

Google “If Steve Jobs Was Alive” and you are delivered 760,000,000 results. By comparison, “If Einstein Was Alive” yields only 142,000,000 results, and “If Jesus Was Alive” a distant 490,000,000. Obviously, people care deeply about ‘what would Steve do’ if he was still with us.

I used to fight this line of questioning, in the vain hope I could make it stop. I failed, and so here I embrace the idea, basing each and every supposition on my knowledge of the man and his work and not at all to prove a point, gain some advantage, nor even start a fight.

If Steve Jobs was alive…

There Would Be No iPhone 5c

The iPhone 5c combines the worst of iPhone 5 with the most iconic of the Nokia Lumia. Worse, it has no reason for being other than as a cash generator. It offers far less than the iPhone 5s and for the price there are far better smartphones available from Sony, Samsung, Nokia and others.

Apple will no doubt make a good deal of money from iPhone 5c, though I don’t believe Steve Jobs would have let that sway him. He would have said no. To quote Jobs: “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”

The iPhone 5c is a waste of the very best that Apple can do. The iPhone 5s is the latest truly “insanely great” product from Apple. Its brightness, however, is diminished by the far lesser yet ironically far brighter iPhone 5c. If Steve Jobs was alive, the 5c would not exist.

The Thermonuclear War Would Still Be Raging

Google wildly overpaid for Motorola — for patents. Nokia, near death, clings to its patents. BlackBerry is being sold for a bit more than its cash, its only other assets its patents. Intellectual property matters dearly — few in Silicon Valley understood this as well as Jobs.

Angry at how partners and colleagues shamelessly copied from Apple’s many years of hard work, and no doubt still wounded deeply by what he (wrongly) considered Eric Schmidt’s personal betrayal, the smartphone patent wars would be raging if Steve Jobs was alive.

Steve Jobs could change his mind. He listened to those around him. He knew when to move forward and what to leave behind. The patent wars, however, is that rare Jobs crusade that he would refuse to set aside.

Mentoring Mark Zuckerberg Would Make Him Happy

I am not convinced that wearable computing would excite Jobs as much as it does the rest of us. This despite the cool new “motion chip” in the iPhone 5s and the obvious benefits for Apple Inc. I am convinced, however, that having The Beatles and Bob Dylan always available, for free, via iTunes Radio, would excite him a great deal.

I also believe that mentoring Mark Zuckerberg would bring Jobs much joy.

There is much about Silicon Valley that I suspect would deeply trouble Steve Jobs. So much small thinking, so much incipient press coverage, the bourgeoning NSA – Silicon Valley mash-up, and the near-religious focus on get-rich-quick and sell-for-today.

Mark Zuckerberg is not like that.

I suspect Jobs would look forward to meeting regularly with Zuckerberg, even if just to talk.

The Reality Distortion Field Would Burn Just As Bright

If there is any company that does not need cheerleaders — or to distort reality — it is Apple. The company’s scale is almost hard to fathom. Consider that in less than a week they have sold more than 10 million new iPhones and gotten 200 million of their customers onto their latest operating system (iOS 7). No one else can achieve anything close to this.

Apple is the biggest tech company, has the most profitable global retail footprint, maintains stunningly high product margins, controls the biggest media ecosystem on the planet, and builds the very best mobile computing devices at a time when the world’s billions are clamoring to have one.

Cheering today’s Apple is like cheering on Microsoft — in its fight against Netscape. Right or wrong, it’s not really a fair fight.

But telling us all just how great Apple is was never what the “reality distortion field” was about, at least, not primarily so. Nor was it  about masking any of the company’s shortcomings. Reality distortion, so-called, was Jobs’ way of showing us what he saw, of helping us to glimpse the possibilities of the future.

Indeed, perhaps reality distortion is the wrong term. It should be called Jobs’ “time distortion field” instead.

Steve Jobs used his ‘time distortion’ powers to remind us that our talents and abilities, those unique parts of us, would soon be liberated. Apple just needed a little bit more time to make it happen. Each product moving us one step closer.

Discuss

What do you think Steve Jobs would do? About anything? Have at it. Clearly, we all need to get this out of our system.

Did Apple Fail Us? Maybe. Did Apple Just Stab Microsoft In The Heart? Definitely.

Ambition is the last refuge of failure.
– Oscar Wilde

Apple held its much-anticipated iPhone launch event last week. The company offered up iOS 7, iPhone 5c, 5s, iTunes Radio, a “motion” chip, a 64-bit processor and several more goodies. The “one more thing,” however, turned out to be the reaction of the world. Neither awe, nor disappointment, really. Rather, a collective shrug of the shoulders.

It was plainly clear that the company missed the mark.

Except, this is not really true — at least, it’s not the full truth. The full truth is thus: we misread Apple at least as much as they misread us.

The Undiscovered Country

Anyone who labels the iPhone 5c as a “mid-tier” device does not understand the meaning of the term. The baseline version costs an incredulous $549 — not counting criminally high-margin bumpers. And this is the “low cost” iPhone we were all expecting?

Apple followers, Apple bloggers, and industry analysts were nearly universal in expecting a budget-priced iPhone. We were all wrong. Why?

Few companies plant and manage leaks as craftily as Apple. It was not “leaks” that caused us to expect a low-cost device. Indeed, that a few of the most well-connected Apple insiders started backtracking from this sentiment a week or so before launch was the leak.

The reason everyone was expecting a low-cost iPhone was because the entire world understands that now is the time for such a device. Great smartphones can be had for $200 – $400 all over the world. Apple’s competitors — Android, essentially —  offer a slew of great devices with good hardware, great apps, great camera and great screen for under $400.

There is no excuse for Apple to not offer us a similarly priced similarly great device. It’s not about margins or greed. The company literally has more money than it knows what to do with.

The reason the bloggers, followers and analysts were all wrong, however, stems from a rather profound misunderstanding of Apple.

Apple cannot go down-market.

Asking Apple to go down market is like asking Microsoft to no longer charge for software. It runs counter to their history, their strategy, their culture and skill set, their strengths, their leadership and how they recruit, reward and incentivize their staff.

To go down market would likely require Apple to alter device specs — which would badly upset much-needed developers. To go down market would require Apple to outsource more of its production. It would require more deals with more carriers and retail outlets, offering them more leeway on pricing. It might require using other’s processors, other’s batteries, ramping up global manufacturing and sales capacity. Apple has close to zero experience with these. You can’t simply magically alter who you are. It’s hard enough just to try and buy your way into transformation.

Think Mercedes’ disastrous acquisition of Chrysler.

The faithful may argue that Apple refuses to chase market share. Or that Apple refuses to make lesser-quality products. Fine. But the fact is now plainer than ever before. There are companies in this world that can — right now — make awesome smartphones for under $400. Apple is not one of them.

Apple failed to deliver the low-cost iPhone we all were certain was coming. Yes, they failed us. But, it was our failure to expect from them something they simply cannot do.

The Next Generation

What Apple can do, of course, is make amazing mobile computing devices — the very best in the world. The iPhone 5s may be the best smartphone anyone can buy at any price. Not that you should.

A week after launch and I simply cannot get over the fact that the iPhone 5s is, uncharacteristically for Apple, less than the sum of its parts.

Apple had the perfect opportunity to offer the world an iPhone that featured radical improvements in camera specs, radical improvements in Siri, radical improvements in iCloud, and at least significant improvements in battery life. Instead, Apple tossed in a 64-bit (A7) chip, a “motion co-processor,” and a fingerprint scanner. How does any of this help you, the paying customer, here and now?

While the A7 chip will almost certainly improve device responsiveness and should enhance operation of the camera, the full value of the iPhone 5s may not be realized for possibly a year or more, as developers and industry partners catch up. Why pay for the privilege of being a beta user?

By the time you have wearable devices that make the M7 relevant to you, and by the time most games and apps take full advantage of the A7, will you even own your iPhone 5s? Possibly not. For most users, a 1-2 year lifespan is all their smartphone ever achieves. Then it’s on to the newest device. This was a missed opportunity.

The Wrath of Jobs

Apple may not have given us what we wanted, not really, not now, but they have nonetheless created a device that puts Microsoft on notice. This cannot be overstated. Indeed, I contend the biggest story to come out of last week’s Apple launch, and which almost no one is discussing, is the breadth of the assault Apple is readying for the enterprise, Microsoft’s final stronghold.

  • Free iWork — with secure cloud included.
  • The very best smartphone (and tablet).
  • A secure ecosystem that welcomes enterprise-class apps.
  • Working fingerprint identification.
  • An M7 motion chip can both support and foster the healthcare, logistics and wearable computer industries.
  • “Desktop class architecture” inside mobile devices. Yes, Apple gleefully reiterated the world “desktop.”
  • True end-to-end ownership of the hardware and software, delivering the best reliability, customer support and security.
  • The premier software developer community and the very best, most accessible, most secure software distribution platform. Yes, these all belong to Apple.

The PC is a relic of the 20th century. The smartphone is the computer. No one, still, is even close to Apple in this regard.

The Final Frontier

Techpinions analyst, John Kirk, noted that “Apple is quietly putting together the foundation for the next five to ten years. People seldom pay attention when foundations are being laid.”

I agree. Despite periodic missteps, Apple is relentlessly marching forward. Sadly, most of the world will never know.

I’ve long contended that Apple’s end game is thus: Siri (voice) + TouchID (fingerprint) + iCloud makes every Apple screen everywhere instantly available to you and fully personalized for you. That is as awesome as it is audacious. I’ve long hoped, however, that Apple could make this a reality for every screen, every user. This is a pipe dream, I’m afraid, and that’s never been more obvious.

Apple is designed to create amazing computing devices — just not for the vast majority of the world. That’s not really a failure, but it is unfortunate.

Windows Phone And Android Hate

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” 
― Maya Angelou

I want Windows Phone to succeed. More than that, I want Android to fail. I hate Android.

There, I said it. Yes, I am a market analyst, detached, and I have absolutely no stake in the success or failure, rise or fall, of either Microsoft or Google, $MSFT or $GOOG, or Apple, for that matter. I simply do not like Android. I refuse to hide this fact.

I think Android is a pale, poorly executed imitation of Apple’s iOS. I have real concerns about the ethics of Google’s ex-CEO as he simultaneously served on Apple’s board. Google’s scale and de facto search monopoly allow it to undercut competition and stifle innovation in local-mobile services. That’s no good. I can’t stand the way they use terms like “open” the way fast food chains label yesterday’s hamburgers as “fresh.”

Nor can I ignore their duplicitous stance on patents.

Most of all, I am suspicious of Google Android’s business model, which is built upon the capture, store, sift and sell of an ever-increasing amount of my increasingly personal information, all of which is then bundled and sold off to countless unknown people and businesses.

With Google search, Google Maps, Google Android, Google Wallet, Google Play, Google Chrome and Google+, Google knows where we are, what we are buying, who we are with, what led us to that purchase — and has documentary evidence of it.

Forever.

I don’t want this.

As everything goes digital and as everything digital collapses inside the shimmering smartphone screen, I see no justification for anyone cheering on Android.

I am not fueled by animus, however. I want the new Microsoft – Nokia to succeed because the world benefits if Windows Phone becomes a viable third alternative to iPhone and Android.

A Great Disturbance In The Force 

Yes, I think Apple currently makes the best smartphone and operates the best smartphone platform. But, for sundry reasons Apple will not and cannot stop the global spread of Android. Should Apple release, as is widely expected, a low-cost global iPhone “C”, and if rumors of deals with DoCoMo and China Mobile are all true, it’s still likely that the very best Apple will achieve — ever — is well under 30% of the global smartphone market. Likely, 25% is their ceiling. I don’t want Google to own 75% of the smartphone market as I believe this would be harmful to innovation and a long-term threat to personal privacy norms.

Where Apple will not succeed, Microsoft now can. Pushing Ballmer aside and acquiring Nokia suggests an acceptance of the new world they must now compete in. No, it will not be easy to take on Android. It is unlikely they will succeed. Still, the company that once seemed like the Evil Empire is now more like an aging Annakin Skywalker — and our last, best hope to slay the Emperor.

There are many arrows in Microsoft’s quiver: Windows 8 + Nokia design + Skype + Bing + Office + Outlook + Nokia imaging + Windows Media — plus security and server tools for businesses of all sizes. Microsoft with Nokia also has the necessary global footprint.  Taking on Android is not a suicide mission.

The Circle Is Now Complete

The greatest barrier to success, however, is that Microsoft remains of a world that no longer exists. Smartphones represent a transformative shift in computing – like mainframes to Minis and Minis to PCs. Companies optimized for PCs are, I believe, more likely as not to fail in this new age. Of course, Google is also optimized for PCs. That’s where nearly all its revenues come from, still.

Nokia, however, is optimized for mobile if not quite for this new age of smartphones. Moreover, they possess still another strength that Google does not: the user is also the customer.

This is critical — and little understood by most mobile industry pundits. Smartphones are with us all the time. They are in our hand when we awake and when we fall asleep.  They are our most personal objects, containing our most private data, and the thing we touch more even than our own children. Carriers and IT units may be major channels for smartphone sales but unlike with PCs, the user will be the ultimate arbiter. These devices are simply too personal to allow others to decide what we choose.

Nokia possesses yet another strength, and one not well understood in the United States. The company truly knows how to make quality devices at amazingly low prices.

Nokia-Asha-311

The pre-Microsoft Nokia lent me various “Asha” phones to test: the dual-SIM Asha 310, and the cute, colorful and long-lasting Asha 501. I also tested the  Nokia 105 feature phone. I was legitimately struck by the functionality and usability of each of these phones, particularly on a per-dollar basis. I would not buy any of them — which means I cannot recommend them. That said, these phones can be had for $25 – $100, a truly amazing feat of engineering, design and manufacturing. In many parts of the world, most do not have the luxury of turning their back on a sub-$100 device like I can.

Analysts that confidently predict Android will forever dominate the smartphone wars on cost alone have likely never used a very-low-cost Nokia device. Similarly, those analysts that are convinced that Android will win because Google offers its services and applications for free badly under-estimate the value of functionality, reliability and security that is built into Microsoft’s software.

The Force Is Strong With This One

Microsoft and Nokia can deliver this to the world:

Low-cost, secure, functional smartphones that seamlessly integrate across multiple devices (e.g. smartphones, PCs and game console), that satisfy end users and businesses alike, that can incorporate Yammer, Skype, Xbox, Outlook and Office, and which provide a hedge against the overwhelming force that is Google Android. That is a powerful combination.

Admittedly, the numbers at present are not terribly good, as this recent Kantar market survey reveals.

screen-shot-2013-09-02-at-10-17-10

Despite its current meager share, the Windows Phone platform is growing. Moreover, the smartphone market itself is only in its early days. Analysts who suggest otherwise are dead wrong. The vast majority of the world does not have a smartphone yet — though almost certainly will within the next few years. In addition, smartphones are becoming more used and more useful for all  users with every passing day — for work, school, play, home, life. “Free” and ad-driven business models like Android may ultimately fail to satisfy the requirements users demand for these truly critical devices. What is critical in your life that you don’t expect to pay for?

I Sense Something. A Presence I’ve Not Felt Since…

When Microsoft effectively acquired Nokia, the company made no secret of their intent:

To accelerate its share and profits in phones. To create a first-rate Microsoft phone experience for its users. To prevent Google and Apple from foreclosing app innovation, integration, distribution and economics.

I am hoping they succeed. It is within them to do so. Their fatal flaw, it seems to me, is do they have enough faith in themselves to do what is right, to achieve what I contend is possible, and build for the future, not the present? After all, the reason Ballmer was so successful and yet ultimately failed is that he chased the easy money, valued Windows profits above all else, and refused to acknowledge the potential for complete market disruption.

Nokia is likewise guilty of this. In a recent interview, Frank Nuovo — once the Jony Ive of Nokia — told the Australian Financial Review that Apple, not Nokia, re-invented the mobile market despite Nokia’s massive head start, because “all of our user testing pointed to the fact that no-one wanted touch phones.”

And yet now all of us have one.

The world can change, and quickly.

As can you. It’s time to let go of your anger. All has been burned clean. Begun the Smartphone War has. Microsoft is now on our side. May the force be with them.

Microsoft Buying Nokia A Great Move. But iPhone And iOS 7 Are Already Set To Remake Mobile Computing Once Again.

Do not be misled. Microsoft purchasing (the best of) Nokia — at firesale prices — is a brilliant move. Nokia + Skype + Bing + Office + Outlook + Nokia Maps + Nokia imaging. That is a very powerful proposition.

Apple, however, remains at least one step ahead, and iPhone continues destroying and disrupting all in its path. The mostly wise and semi-literal sacking of Steve Ballmer is but the latest casualty of the iPhone. There will be more.

In less than a decade, Apple’s iPhone has fundamentally altered computing, connectivity, work, play — and industry after industry. Its impact simply cannot be overstated.

aapl versus the rest

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

Ballmer was absolutely not alone, of course, in failing to realize early on that iPhone was the personal computing equivalent of gun powder. Fact is, excepting Steve Jobs and Larry Page, nearly all in the computing industry whiffed on the iPhone’s game-changing potential — until it was much too late. Even the beleaguered Apple faithful, whom cheered when the iPhone was first launched, and aggressively downplayed the device’s initial glaring shortcomings, perceived it as little more than a touchscreen iPod with calling capabilities. They, like the CEOs of tech’s biggest, baddest companies, simply could not fathom how this little device with nearly no buttons, no software and no keyboard would soon re-construct our future, re-make Silicon Valley and devour content like some technological black hole, everything collapsing inside its glowing screen.

Now, we know better. Well, most of us. Far too many remain stubbornly clueless. Despite controlling the most used, most engaging mobile platform on the planet, despite the ongoing turmoil inside the Android camp — and, frankly, I still question Google’s long-term commitment to Android — we are treated to such nonsense as Fred Wilson’s “fear” that Android will obliterate iPhone and iOS.

Hard to take such unthinking proclamations serious. The iPhone is just getting started.

The iPhone Second Wave 

Apple has an astounding 600 million users on the  same version of the same operating system. This is more than anyone else. Given the global thirst for smartphones, it’s hard not to see this number reaching at least 1 billion in under two years. That ensures at least a decade of self-sustainability. There is more to come, however, much more. I believe the value of each individual iPhone, old and new, is on the cusp of a sizable increase in value and utility.

This is the most under-reported story about the iPhone

iPhones connect us to apps, to the cloud, to the web, to our content. The unstated genius of the iOS 7 operating system, however, is that our iPhones will increasingly connect to each other. This represents yet another fundamental computing shift.

iPhone to web (or cloud) was merely the first implementation of iPhone. Soon, it will be iPhone-to-iPhone-to-iPhone.

With iOS 7, Apple is rolling out AirDrop, which supports proximal one-to-one and one-to-many sharing of apps, web content, photos and other services. The new iOS will also leverage iBeacons, allowing us to connect our iPhone with (Apple-approved) wearables and intelligent accessories.

The value of these interactions is not derived from the web, but device to device, location to person.

In other words, Apple is on the cusp of having a billion users on the same platform, their computers always in hand, everywhere they go, connected to each other in physical proximity, not via the web, not via the public switched network, but iPhone to iPhone. I can only begin to fathom the unprecedented innovations we will quickly witness in location-based social sharing, gaming, and commerce.

Only Apple Can Do This 

No one else has this. No one has ever even had this potential.

Yes, Android phones are far more prevalent. Yes, Google does a far better job of connecting us to all that the world wide web offers. But, only Apple will be able to connect us en masse to one another, device to device.

Think of three modes of connectivity. All are vital, all are valuable.

  1. Apple does the very best job of connecting user with device — via the most intuitive operating system and a richer, simpler ecosystem.
  2. Android does a better job of connecting users (and their devices) to the real-time and increasingly personalized richness of the world wide web.
  3. The third path is entirely new: connecting device to device for all manner of sharing of content, data, money, photos and whatever else clever app developers invent.

Again, this is something only Apple can deliver. Hundreds of millions of devices, nearly all on the same version of the same OS, similar hardware, same modes of connectivity, same (Apple-based) standards, same simple method of sharing, same payments and distribution platform.

It will take years for Microsoft-Nokia, or Samsung or even Google-Motorola to catch up with, if they ever can.

My advice: Do not once again underestimate iPhone’s impact. It’s just getting started.