Month: November 2011

Analysis: How Amazon’s Kindle Fire Will Impact The Tablet Market

I have been using the Kindle Fire for a while now and I am quite impressed with this new entry into the tablet space. Although one of Amazon’s major goals was to make this a great eBook reader, the fact that it runs on Android and can run Android apps, has a Web browser, and developers can write apps specifically for the Fire inevitably makes it a solid entry in the tablet market.

Some of my research colleagues had originally placed the Kindle Fire in the eReader category, but this does the Kindle Fire a grave injustice. This is a tablet in the full sense of the word and it will especially be competitive with Android tablets. Also, it is very clear that this is positioned only for a consumer audience. Unlike Apple’s iPad, this product would not translate well into a business markets as it stands today. A side note to this is that since it does have an LED screen, reading a page in direct sunlight is as difficult as it is on an iPad now.

I will not be doing a full review in the technical sense of the Kindle Fire as many of the gadget blogs will do that better than I could. However, before I discuss its impact on the market, I do want to point out a few things I like with the Kindle Fire and at least one thing I think would make it better in future versions.

When you pick up a Kindle Fire, the first thing you will notice is how brilliant the screens color and resolution is. It appears that Amazon spared no expense with this component. And its touch sensitivity is as good as I have seen on any of the higher end tablets on the market today. I have been using the iPad from day one and I have a personal preference for a tablet with a larger screen, but I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed reading books and perusing Web pages on this 7 inch form factor. Also, apps like Pulse worked the same as on my iPad, only in a smaller window.

But this also underscores a key issue that consumers need to think about when buying a Kindle Fire. This is really optimized for content consumption and NO content creation. When Apple introduced the iPad, they emphasized its use in content consumption. But within six months on the market, users began to find ways to optimize it for productivity and in some cases, real content creation. In fact, I often use the Zagg Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad and use it as a laptop replacement on many short trips I take. I would never consider doing something similar with the Kindle Fire.

While the Kindle Fire can run localized apps, especially downloaded games, its 6.5 gigs of actual available flash memory means you are highly limited on what can be downloaded for use when disconnected. However, when connected to a WIFI network, the Kindle Fire really shines. You can watch streamed video, stream music in real-time and gain access to apps with Web content.

One small gripe I have is where they locate the on/off switch. It is on the bottom of the device and is awkward to turn on and off in this position. On the next model I hope they put it on the side where it would be easier to access.

The Kindle Fire is the best of the 7-inch tablets bar none. The Android tablet vendors should be very concerned. At $199 Amazon is most likely taking a loss on each product but making it up when people buy books and other products in the Amazon ecosystem.

These devices tied-to-distinct eco-systems underscores another truism that I believe will drive market demand for tablets and other types of digital devices in the future. In fact, I’m not sure that there is an actual tablet market. Rather, the actual revolution-taking place in our tech industry is that the real market drivers going forward will be for broad ecosystems of apps and services that are optimized for various devices, one of which is a tablet, that can be plugged into this ecosystem and are designed to work especially well with these devices.

If you have used multiple Apple devices, such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, this should have become obvious already. While you may be attracted to Apple’s cool looking products, they are really front ends to a rich ecosystem of apps and services that are designed to work extremely well with these dedicated Apple devices.

The iPod, iPhone and iPad are important vehicles designed to work perfectly with Apple’s ecosystem. And now, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is their first real hardware play that follows in Apple’s footsteps. Using this logic, I believe that Amazon will someday create other devices optimized to fully tap into their ecosystem such as a 10 inch tablet, perhaps a Netbook or UltraBook or even a smart phone. Keep in mind, this is not that big a stretch in thinking. If Amazon is smart, they find ways to drive more people to their ecosystem with optimized devices and expand their growth and fortunes in the same way Apple is doing with their device and ecosystem strategy.

Interestingly, although it uses Android, this is not an Android ecosystem they are tapping into. This is an Amazon walled garden that just happens to be on top of Android. And from this point on, it is their hardware, their software, apps and services they will build on. I once thought that Amazon did not want to be in the hardware business and really wanted to just get more vendors backing their ecosystem. But just like Apple, I believe they now realize that the idea of letting others take advantage of their ecosystem would be foolish. Instead, I believe they will build up their hardware prowess and use this as a key way to lock or tie their customers to a total hardware, software and solutions strategy going forward. And, I firmly believe that in the very near future, people will be buying into ecosystems of hardware, software and services, not devices, especially ones that are not optimized to work well with specific rich ecosystems.

So how will the Amazon Kindle Fire affect the market for Tablets?

As I stated earlier, it will have a major impact on Android tablet vendors. At the very least they will be forced to try and get their devices into Amazon’s price range. However, Amazon’s ecosystem is a key part of the Fire’s draw and in that sense, it leaves most of the Android competitors out in the cold. Yes, these competitors can tap into the Android world of apps, but they are still fighting Google on version provisioning as well having to work with an app store that is not curated. Also, most of the Android tablets coming to market are all the same, while Amazon differentiates through their eco system.

As for Windows 8 tablets, our current view is that these will be targeted more towards business customers. But unless Microsoft develops a rich ecosystem of their own for the Windows 8 world, Amazon and Apple will always have an edge.

As for competing with Apple, the Kindle Fire is not a threat at all to Apple’s iPad in business. To date, this is still the market leader and it won’t get any serious competition, especially from the Windows 8 camp, until at least Oct of 2012.

But at the consumer level, the Kindle Fire is clearly going to be a competitor to the iPad in the sense that it is going after a consumer audience. And at $199.00 it gives the consumers a serious option in tablets for use for content consumption.
I also believe that it could force Apple to bring the price of the iPad down faster than they had planned.

But there are three key things to consider when comparing the Kindle Fire against the iPad. I see Apple’s iPad as representing the top end of the market for tablets and one that is becoming a cross functioning device. That means it is good for content creation and great for content consumption. And with its 9.6 inch screen and over 140K apps written just for the iPad, even with its pricing today, it is and will continue to be a market leader in tablets. And I believe they will still sell 15+ Million per quarter at least through 2012.

And while the Kindle Fire is aimed at the same consumer audience, Amazon will need to enhance their eco system consistently if they plan to really compete with the iPad in the future. Also, its 7-inch screen and form factor may be a drawback to some who really do want a larger screen in their tablet. But that said, the Kindle Fire will be a huge hit for Amazon and I would not be surprised to see them sell close to 4 million during the holiday quarter.

The second thing to consider is that there is a very large audience who are OK with what I call “good enough” tablets. While many consumers may still be lusting after and iPad, its current price remains a drawback for some. And while the Kindle Fire is smaller than the iPad and has less in the way of apps and even services, it will be good enough to many and serve as their first real entry into the world of tablets.

The third thing to remember is that the tablet market is in its infancy and I believe could eventually be bigger than the PC market. Key reason is the ultimate portability of the tablet and as we get more ubiquitous connections, this will be an ideal form factor for millions of people who want a device with a larger screen then their smartphone with them when they leave the house or hit the road.

Just as the iPad became the major disruptor in mobile computing, I expect the Kindle Fire to set the tone for low-cost tablet devices and be the leader in this price category for quite a while thanks to the Kindle Fire’s high quality design that is tied directly to an Amazon Eco system of software, apps and services.

Quad Core Smartphones: What it Will Take to Become Relevant

hedgeThere has been a lot of industry discussion on multi-core smartphones in the past year, and the dialog has increased with NVIDIA’s launch of Tegra 3, a quad core SOC targeted to phones and tablets. The big question lingering with all of these implementations particularly with phones is, what will end users do with all those general purpose compute units that provide significant incremental benefit? In the end, it’s all about the improved experience that’s relevant, unique, demonstrable, and easily marketable.

Multi-Core Background

Before we talk usage models, we first have to get grounded on some of the technology basics. First, whether it’s a multi-core server, PC, tablet or phone, many these things must exist to fully take advantage of more than one general purpose computing core in any platform:

  • operating system that efficiently supports multiple cores, multitasking across cores, and mullti-threaded apps
  • applications that efficiently take advantage of multiple cores
  • intelligent energy efficiency tradeoffs

Once those elements get into place, you have an environment where multiple cores can be leveraged. The next step is to optimize the platform for energy efficiency. All of the hardware and software platform elements, even down to transistors, must be optimized for low power when you need it and high performance when you need it. The Tegra 3 utilizes a fifth core, which NVIDIA says initiates when extremely low power state is required.

Assuming all the criteria above are met, then it comes down to what an end user can actually do with a phone with four cores.

Modularity Could Be the Key

Quad core phones could potentially add value in “modular” usage environments. While there have been a lot of attempts at driving widespread modularity, most haven’t been a big hit. I personally participated on the Device Bay Consortium when I was at Compaq, along with Intel and Microsoft. It didn’t end up materializing into anything, but the concept at the time from an end user perspective was solid.

Today and beyond, smartphone modularity is quite different than Device Bay’s “modules”. The smartphone concept is simple; use a high powered smartphone which can then extend to different physical environments. These environments span entertainment to productivity. Here are just a few of today’s examples of modularity in use today:

These are all forms of today’s modularity with different levels of interest, penetration, and adoption.

So what could quad core potentially add to the mix? Here are some potential improved usages:

  • Modular video and photo editing. These apps have historically always been multithreaded and could leverage a clamshell “dock” similar to the Lapdock or Multimedia Dock.
  • Modular multi-tab web browsing. Active browser tabs require a lot of performance and overhead. Just use Chrome PC browser and check your performance monitor. iOS5 actually halts the tab when moving to another tab forcing the user to reload the tab.
  • Modular games that heavily utilize a general purpose processor. Caveat here is that most of the games leverage the GPU a lot more than a general purpose CPU. It all depends on how the game is written, extent of AI use, UI complexity, where physics are done, and how the resources are programmed.
  • Modular natural user interface. While plugged in and “docked” at the desk or living room, the smartphone could power interfaces like improved voice control and “air” gestures. This may sound like science fiction, but the XBOX 360 is doing it today with Kinect.
  • Multitasking: Given enough memory and memory bandwidth, more cores typically means better multitasking.

Will It Be Relevant?

Many things need to materialize before anyone can deem a quad core smartphone a good idea or just a marketing idea for advanced users. First, smartphones actually need to ship with quad cores and a modular-capable OS. The HTC Edge is rumored to be the first. Then apps and usage models outlined above need to be tested by users and with benchmarks. Users will have to first “get” the modularity concept and notice an experiential difference. Moving from standard phone to modular experience must be seamless, something that Android 4.0 has the potential to deliver. Finally, some segments of users like enthusiasts will need to see the benchmarks to be swayed to pay more over a dual core phone.

There is a lot of proving to do on quad core smartphones before relevance can be established with any market segment beyond enthusiasts. Enthusiast will always want the biggest and baddest spec phone on the block but marketing to different segments, even if it provides an improved experience, will be a challenge.

Thailand Floods and Their Impact For PC Shipments

The monsoon rains and floods of Thailand has affected close to 1000 factories across central Thailand and is having a major impact on the hard drive industry. I spoke with my contacts in Taipei last night that told me that the fall out from this, both in human terms as well as business terms would be huge.

At the human level, over 50 thousand jobs are affected in the short-term. But a more urgent problem has arisen. There is now an outbreak of malaria that has struck the area and is causing serious health concerns. And that has now become the government’s priority. Western Digital and Toshiba are the hardest hit and Seagate and Hitachi have been shut down by supply constraints. Seagate could use this to gain ground on Western as their facility was on high ground and will not have to make any capital equipment investments like the others whose equipment were wiped out by the flooding. But they are still impacted by supply constraints.

At the business level, Thailand supplies over 60% of worldwide hard disk drives and 50% of assembly capacity. Even drives assembled somewhere else depend on Thai produced parts.

My sources in Taipei say that this will have a dramatic impact on most PC vendors ability to deliver the amount of PCs they have forecasted in Q1. They believe the shortages of disk drives will mean that it will decrease by at least 30% the amount of PCs that could be shipped in Q1. And because the situation in Thailand is so fluid, they can’t predict how much better things could be in Q2 of 2012 either.

And while PCs are being impacted by this shortage of HDD, so are things like Digital A/V equipment, Digital Imaging systems, and DVR’s as well as in-car navigation systems that are all moving to hard drives to handle their maps and new Internet apps.

What this means for consumers is that if you are looking at buying a PC, do it now. We could see price increases start hitting as early as Dec. All of the PCs and laptops on the shelves now have been priced at the current rate for HDD, while PCs that will ship starting in Dec could see price increases already hitting them by mid month.

And if my sources in Taipei are correct, the component price for HDD’s factored into laptops and desktops could be as much as 20% more by Q1 and some have told me it could be as much as 30-50% given the extreme shortages.

If there were a silver lining to this problem it would be that it could push more of the OEM’s to adopt SSDs for some laptops and all Ultrabooks, and with greater demand for SSDs, SSD prices could start coming down.

In Praise of Tweakers: Why Gladwell Is Wrong About Jobs

If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, 1676

Portrait of Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton

In a New Yorker essay on  the career of Steve Jobs,  Malcolm Gladwell dismisses the idea the Jobs was a visionary. Instead, Gladwell writes, drawing heavily on Walter Isaacson’s biography, “he was much more of a tweaker.”

In defining Jobs’s career, Gladwell is mostly right, though I don’t think “tweaker” is an adequate word. Jobs’s genius was to to take ideas he found floating around and make them much, much better.

Where Gladwell is wrong is in his analysis of the inventive process. Those he calls visionaries, the person who “starts with a clean sheet of paper, and reimagines the world,” hardly ever come along. And those who do often end up forgotten, as in the case of of Gladwell’s prime example, Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule.

Consider Isaac Newton, a true scientific revolutionary but one who would have to be classed as a “tweaker” in Gladwell’s taxonomy. Newton did not suffer from false modesty; he carried on a decades-long feud with Leibniz over primacy in the development of the calculus. But he knew that he was building on progress in mathematics from Archimedes to his contemporary John Wallis and on the astronomical breakthroughs of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. Similarly, Einstein’s relatively revolution is impossible to imagine without the physics of James Clerk Maxwell and Hendrik Lorentz or the mathematics of Henri Poincaré and Hermann Minkowski.

Or the computer itself. The computer,  which truly has no inventor, was born when several streams of invention coalesced in the cauldron of World War II: A long history of tinkering with mechanical calculating devices from Pascal to Babbage; the theoretical mathematics of Alan Turing and John von Neumann; the development of electronics to replace mechanical devices; the engineering genius of John Antanasoff, J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, and others; and a flood of government funding.

The fundamental problem with  Gladwell’s approach is that there are no clean sheets of paper, and perhaps no visionaries as Gladwell defines them. Everyone inherits the world as it is. The geniuses are the ones who can take that and turn it into something much better.

Apple Is Becoming the New IBM

“No one ever got fired for buying an IBM.”

That phrase was popular when IBM, in conjunction with Microsoft, was becoming the standard business workstation in the mid-to-late 80’s. Deciding to purchase products from the industry leader was the safe bet, the one with the least risk. This was the underlying psychology of corporate IT buyers and it served them well for many years.

In our conversations with consumers, we find a similar sentiment toward Apple products. Consumers who are purchasing smartphones or tablets for the first time are tending to go with Apple because they are the safe bet in their minds. Other companies may have competitive products with price or feature advantages, but often come with greater risks.

Many consumers we interview have heard mixed feedback or negative stories from Android customers about devices acting up after 6-8 months, containing buggy apps or malware, and getting terrible customer support from their carrier or manufacturer. The reverse is true for first time smartphone and tablet consumers who note the overwhelming amount of positive feedback they hear from people who own iPhones and/or iPads.

It is essential to understand that consumers are very savvy, they do actually shop around, and do research both online and with friends and family. When they constantly hear positive stories and how much those they know love their iPhones, it becomes pretty hard to not go with the safe bet. The decision is even easier now that the iPhone is on all the major US carriers besides T-mobile and rapidly becoming available on all major carriers world-wide.

It is also important to know that when we do consumer interviews and analyze consumer buying habits we are not interested in “early adopters.” Early adopters are predictable and don’t always represent the mass consumer market. We focus more on those who are not in the tech elite, but are practical and desire technology without the hassle of having to manage technology.

This is fundamentally why I believe the analogy of IBM being the safe bet for business rings true with consumers and Apple for the time being. As I stated in my Dear Industry piece last week, this market will evolve and mature quite quickly. I do not expect any one single platform or piece of hardware to control the majority of market share. However, for the time being, a very large portion of consumers are choosing Apple products. The iPhone is the single best-selling phone on the market by far. The iPad is forecast to continue to control over 70% of tablet market share in 2012 and still hold healthy market share in 2013.

Both the smartphone category and the tablet category are in a growth phase. The global smartphone category is projected to grow at 49.2% over the next 5 years and tablets are projected to grow at 200% in 2012. When you look at the numbers and the expansive and rapidly growing TAM for these products going forward you do not need to be the market leader by any means to still sell a significant amount of devices. This is why we need a more informed conversation on market share and include profit share as a part of that discussion.

For many consumers, I am willing to bet, their first smartphone and their first tablet will be an iPhone and a iPad … and for the same reason that an IBM was the business user’s first computer: it’s the safer bet.

Lastly to further make my point, have you ever seen an Apple retail store anywhere close to empty?

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The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet Will Not Slow the iPad

Philip Elmer-DeWitt reported on the Fortune blog about data released suggesting the potential impact of the Kindle Fire on iPad sales. The data originated from ChangeWave and points out several key findings from their survey of “early adopter types.”

  • 5% of those surveyed said they had pre-ordered or were very likely to buy Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, exceeding the 4% who said they were very likely to buy the original iPad in 2010.
  • 26% of those 5% said they would delay or put on hold the purchase of a new iPad.

    •  
    I have to question the FUD this data is causing for a number of reasons. First of all the survey was conducted with early adopters (early adopter types actually whatever that is). Early adopters are not the mass market and nor do they represent the mass market. Early adopters shop for technology with a very different mindset than mass market consumers. Because of that it is hard to use data only taken by early adopters.

    Taking the data one step further only 5% surveyed said they pre-ordered or were likely to buy the Kindle Fire. If we do the math, 5% of the 2,600 early adopters types they surveyed means 130 people out of 2,600 said they pre-ordered or were very likely to buy the Kindle Fire. Keep in mind these are early adopters and I’m guessing most if not all of those 2,600 surveyed owned iPads.

    Now 26% of the 130 (5%) said they would delay or put on hold the purchase of a NEW iPad. That means 33.8 people of the 2,600 early adopters surveyed said they would delay or put on hold the purchase of a NEW iPad. When we look at the data under that lens the headlines becomes less ominous for the iPad.

    Now I do expect both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet to do well. However, the fundamental difference is that those two products are competing with each other rather than with the iPad.

    Brooke Crothers at CNET provided research from eDataSource that stated preorders of the Kindle Fire were tracking to exceed one million. I have seen a number of credible reports forecasting Amazon to sell 4 million Fire tablets during the quarter. Most recently the DigiTimes today reported that Amazon has upped their orders to 5 Million due to demand.

    Both those numbers are plausible but the point needs to be made that those customers are either early adopters or customers who were in the market for a Kindle in the first place. I have a hard time believing that mainstream consumers (not early adopters) who were strongly considering an iPad have changed their mind and now going with the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet.

    IDC’s forecasts for readers in 2011 are 16.2 million, I actually believe that is low, this category is still hot with a lot of consumers. My point, however, is that those consumers in the market for ereaders like the Kindle and the Nook are not in the market for iPad’s, yet at least.
    I’ll end my take on this data with this. Brooke also quoted a separate report today from Rodman & Renshaw’s Ashok Kumar claiming that iPad momentum is slowing. Asok stated:

    “Our checks indicate that production volumes have been scaled back due to moderating sell-through. We estimate that iPad volumes in the current quarter will be 12-13 million units, down from previous estimates of 14-15 million.”

    I think he is wrong but even if he isn’t that would still be more iPads in a quarter than Apple has sold before still putting them over 30 million iPad’s sold in calendar, not fiscal, 2011. That’s still a lot of iPads.

    [VIA Fortune, CNET]

    Hello, Tech.pinions

    I am pleased to announce that, as one element of building a new high tech industry analyst firm, I will be joining Techpinions as a part of the columnist team and as partner. It is an honor to work with Tim Bajarin, Ben Bajarin, Stephen Wildstrom, Peter Lewis and many of the awesome contributors.

    What I Believe
    I believe that we, the tech industry, have the largest opportunity in front of us that has ever existed. The intersection of the biowatch, phone, tablet, computer, home appliances, living room electronics, automobiles and the multiple apps, networks and data centers that connect them, will just be the start of a revolution. We will move from where we are now into a “complete” cloud computing model which, after many years, will then morph its way into an ambient computing model. By ambient, I mean all around us, in the background, and automatic.

     

    To interact in this environment, end users will utilize advanced and natural HCI techniques like speech and air gestures in addition to traditional touch, mouse and keyboard. Sure, there are interim steps in the future models, but one must envision where the puck will be before skating there. There are many uncertainties, but what is certain is the amount of power and control end users have.

    What to Expect From Me at Tech.pinions
    As an industry analyst, I will be analyzing interconnected ecosystems and for some, advising them on how to best address those future market shifts. One of the vehicles I will be using to publicly communicate my views on the emerging “complete” cloud and ambient computing spaces will be through Tech.pinions. While not exclusive to Tech.pinions, it will be a key communication vehicle. Analysis and opinions will span end usage models and behavior, technologies, and business models that shape the technology future.

    It’s About the Conversation
    Our industry’s learning and insight model has fundamentally changed now that there is a structured way to garner the insights of millions of individuals via social media. I would like there to be a conversation around these opinions at Techpinions, too. You can either comment here, or you can reach me at Twitter, Google Plus, or LinkedIn.

    Stay Tuned
    This is just one of many announcements I will be making between now and CES as I build a up a technology analyst practice. I look forward to getting your direct, honest, insightful, and non-politically correct input as we move forward.

    You can find Patrick’s full bio here.

    Marrying Android and Windows

    Earlier this year I discovered an interesting company by the name of Bluestacks who said they had a virtual engine that would allow a person to run Android apps on a Windows PC. When I say I discovered them, this is an understatement. They moved into the office next to mine so it was pretty easy to find them.

    But I had actually heard about them from some of my OEM clients who were quite excited about what they had been shown by Bluestacks. So I met with them and became quite interested in their technology.

    It turns out that Bluestacks is one of those gems that early stage investors love and so far they have been backed by Andreeson Horowitz, Redpoint, Ignition Partners, Radar and Helion (Jeff Bezo’s VC fund) with strategic investments coming from AMD, Citrix and two others who are not public yet.

    The CEO and founder, Rosen Sharma, who is a veteran of many tech startups, realized that many people who have an Android phone or tablet, would really like to have those same apps on their PC. So he set about creating a technology that would virtualize Android on Windows so that people could take their apps from their Android device and send it via a piece of software downloaded on to their device called Cloud Connect directly to the Bluestacks player on a Windows PC.

    So, when a user goes through this simple procedure, your Android Apps just show up in the Bluestacks Player on Windows and like magic, they just run on Windows as is and in full screen with no performance degradation. That means software written for Android such as Pulse, Flipboard, or any apps written just for Android will now run on your Windows PC and be tied to the data layer of your Android version as well.

    Although Bluestacks has a “Get More Apps” section built into the player itself, most of the ones there now are just to show you what can be done. In the real world, people will just download their Android apps from the Android Marketplace or Amazon’s Android store and then use Cloud Connect to transfer them to their Windows PC.

    The program is in Alpha now, but it is pretty solid even in this state. They have a lot of new features and enhancements planned that would give their program even more functionality, but to be honest, just having my Android apps on my PC is already a good reason to try it out. And all this is free. I do believe that they will offer some premium services and apps eventually that would have a cost tied to it, but from what I can tell, most of what they offer will be free to the user when it comes to running almost all of a person’s Android apps on their Windows PC.

    Check it out at www.bluestacks.com

    Mobile Flash: Adios and Good Riddance

    Flash icon

    UPDATE: Adobe has confirmed the end of mobile Flash development.

    Jason Perlow at ZDNet is reporting that as part of a restructuring announced yesterday, Adobe is ending development of its Flash plug-in for mobile browsers. If true, and the story seems well-sourced, this marks the end of one of the silliest tech controversies in recent memory.

    The dispute was triggered, of course, by Apple’s refusal to support Flash on iOS devices and  by Steve Jobs and other Apple executives steadfastly supporting native HTML 5 over the Adobe technology. Some commentators viewed the lack of Flash would doom the iPad. Google and makers of Android phones and tablets claimed the ability to run Flash as a huge competitive advantage. An Adobe executive claimed the only reason Apple was keeping Flash off its products was to prevent Flash-based services like Hulu from competing with iTunes.

    There was only one problem with the argument. Flash never actually worked on mobile devices. It was buggy, stuttery, and a huge resource hog. Beyond Flash video, the mouse-centric interface of flash applications never worked right on touch displays.

    Somehow, the problems of Flash were always going to be fixed in the next version of the software, or with 16-core processors, or something. But while mobile Flash got better, it never got good, and Adobe now seems to be facing up to inevitable: Steve Jobs was, as was so often the case, right. Flash was the wrong technology for mobile.

    The impending death of Flash deprives Android of a marketing claim. But anyone who bought an Android phone or tablet to enjoy the pleasures of flash was mostly the victim of exaggerated, if not outright false advertising. We’re all better off without it.

    A Digital Insider Scoffs at Townshend

    As an industry insider – on way more than one level – it’s hard to take Pete Townshend’s comments as anything more than another great artist railing at the system.  Look, in the end, we all have to admit that the system is broken.  That’s one thing that Townshend got right in that interview.  After that?  Well, it’s all up for debate.  But the fact that the debate was called to the floor again, that’s a good thing.

    Let’s look at what he probably got wrong.  Apple is not the villain here.  In fact, probably the opposite.  Apple is responsible for 75% of all LEGAL music downloads.  And there’s no way that this makes them a vampire.  It makes them a hero, of sorts.  By creating a closed system, where one download went to ONE machine, Apple stopped the bleeding of way more than royalties. It addressed a cultural shift that it was OKAY to steal music.  “Sharing.”  So there’s something else that Townshend got right in that interview.  Stealing and sharing are not the same thing – and the mere idea that music should be free is an utter insult to the millions of people who give their lives to create it.

    I should disclose here that I was part of Apple way back when and helped launch digital music before it broke wide open, but my 13+ years in digital consultancy have certainly shown me every side of this equation (and argument).

    Whether or not music should be free has gone where it belongs. It’s gone to artist-controlled DIY.  DIY creation and DIY distribution. The indie artists have unlocked the code.  Give away great material to build a tribe, and get that tribe to adore you.  They’ll show up with the money, for sure, but only after the love affair has begun.

    Here’s the other problem with Pete’s point of view – it assumes that Apple controls the digital distribution industry, and quite simply, it does not.  In the world of Spotify and MusicShark and locker systems, Apple is only one giant float in the parade.  Let’s clarify, they may even be leading the parade, but after a brief initial claim to the universe, way back when, they’re far from alone.  Having said that, it’s obvious that the consumer, overall, loves Apple.  Quite simply, in the words of futurist Gerd Leonhard, it’s easy.  It’s a plug and go solution.  It meets busy consumers where they want to be met, and serving the consumer IS the end game on the business side of music (and anything digital).

    The artistic side?  Producing great content and hiring mentors to aide and abet that?  I wish I could ask Townshend why that is at all iTunes’ responsibility.  That is a model that we see fading at every label, sadly (& that’s me wearing my hat as a former A&R exec at one of the majors).  From this insider’s viewpoint, however, it will fade, but not die.  There is a space for grooming artists, from a label’s point of view – otherwise we end up with the music industry’s version of Yentl for every project.  (The same Editor, Producer, Writer and Actress, if you needed me to spell out that comparison.)  Without label support, bands have limited objectivity of their work, at best.  But we KNOW what percentage of artists get signed.  So this new world of digital DIY is an amazing opportunity for artist AND consumer. Which brings us to Townshend’s issue with gatekeepers – one that social media and DIY will summarily trump, given enough time. Spaces like iLIke and Facebook will level the playing field.

    Finally, it’s NOT Apple’s job to bridge the gap between labels and DIY. They are, like it or not, a retailer.  Why should they be expected to fix what’s broken in music?  The business model for direct sales/acquisition of recorded music in the traditional sense is collapsing.

    But with all of the GREAT minds in the digital and music space, of course we’ll find a new model.  Music does far more than soothe the savage breast, it is the most vital language of unification.  Ask the millions of Chinese listening to Gaga or Beiber – or just look at the worldwide recognition of Mozart.  Or the global domination of Idol.

    Yes, there are definitely parts of the foundation with cracks, or worse, but I have full confidence from my life experience of consulting with the industry leaders and artists, that we’ll find a new and more powerful model to propel us forward. Until then, in the immortal words of Sonny and Cher, the beat goes on.

    Kelli Richards
    CEO
    The All Access Group, LLC

     

    Nook Tablet vs. Kindle Fire: Specs or Ecosystem

    Photo of Nook TabletDo you care how fast the processor in your e-book reader is? Barnes & Noble seems to hope so. It’s announcement today was heavy on comparing its specs to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. There’s no doubt the Nook beats the Kindle hands down in speeds and feeds: more memory, much more storage, better display. But there’s little doubt that Amazon offers a superior ecosystem that may turn into a better user experience.

    The Nook Tablet is basically an upgraded Nook Color: thinner, lighter, faster, better looking, but functionally similar. The Tablet will sell for $249; the Color remains in the lineup at a reduce price of $199, matching the Fire.

    A bigger difference than the specs is how the two devices present content. The Nook, of course, connects (via Wi-Fi) to the Barnes & Noble store for books and periodicals. Music can be streamed over a number of services, including the built-in Pandora app, but there is no integrated music store. Video can be streamed over Netflix and Hulu Plus, or downloaded from Flixter.

    Fire, by contrast, is an all-Amazon production: Kindle books, magazine,and newspapers; Amazon Music (including streaming of your own music uploaded to Amazon’s cloud), Amazon video to buy or stream. No separate apps, no separate subscriptions.  But anyone who signs up for the $80 a year Amazon Prime after the free 30-day trial gets free book loans, free video streaming, and–Prime’s original purchase–free two-day shipping on Amazon purchases. My guess–and it can only be a guess until we have a chance to put these devices through their paces–is that a superior shopping experience will trump a superior display.

    Fire also has a wild card in its Silk browser. The Nook Tablet has a browser, of course, but not much was said about it at the launch. Fire has a novel split browser that offloads much of the work of rendering pages to Amazon’s cloud servers and promises much speedier browsing. Again, we can’t really come to any conclusions about how big an advantage this is until we see it in the wild.

    Barnes & Noble also promoted the competitive advantage of its retail stores by promising a sort of Genius Bar to help consumers with Nook problems. One can only hope that it won’t be used much; something would be very wrong with the design of the tablet if large numbers of consumers have to seek help in using it.

    Amazon gains a considerable leg up in this fight because of its unique combination of retailing chops and deep technology skills. Amazon Web Services represents a very sophisticated technology infrastructure that Amazon can throw behind a project like Fire that no one, except maybe Google can approach.

     

    How Close Are We to Steve Jobs’s Apple TV Dream?

    The latest edition of Jean-Louis Gassée’s always stimulating Monday Note takes a highly informative look at what Steve Jobs may have meant in this comment to biographer Walt Isaacson that he had “cracked” the TV user interface. A key, Gassée speculates, is the idea (which he credits to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber) of channels-as-apps.

    Old TV with Apple logoI remain skeptical, probably more so than Gassée, about Apple’s intentions of getting into the TV display business. But I have no doubt about their ability to–eventually–revolutionize the TV business by building the ultimate TV content controller, whether it is integrated into a TV or in a separate box connected by a single cable. And it’s the business, not the technology, that’s the problem.

    The key, as usual these days, is the iPad. First, an observation. To the extent that people want interactive content while watching TV, whether it’s stats during a sports event or cast information in a movie, I am not at all sure they want it on their TV display. Directors, whether of movies or football games, do an excellent job of putting the images you want to see on the screen  (and stations already mess it up with ugly irrelevancies like promos for other shows.) There isn’t any spare real estate.

    But an iPad–it could be another tablet but Apple is way ahead in this game–makes a wonderful auxiliary display both for extra content and for navigation. The trick is integrating it properly with the TV or set top box, so you can get that cast info without having to go to a separate IMDB app.

    A lot of this might be possible with the equipment, even the miserable set top boxes supplied by cable companies, we have today. My iPad already can control my TV, my experience with Verizon’s FiOS remote app being happier than Gassée’s with Comcast. What it mostly needs is a completely redesigned user interface that does better than mimicking the existing on-screen displays.

    Even better. my iPad “knows” what I am watching, even without help from Verizon. Yahoo!’s Into Now app does an amazing job of identifying what content your TV is tuned to. All we need is the software glue to connect the pieces.

    If the cable companies and their allies in the content business were smart–a large if–they would be racing to enable this new world by disrupting their own business before someone else, like, say, Apple or perhaps Google, does. It requires will, not rocket science.

    What the Mac OS X Sandbox Means to Users

    There has been considerable unhappiness, even outrage, in the developer community since Apple announced that as of next March, all software sold through the Mac App Store would have to run in a sandbox, that is, its access to system resources would be restricted, the exact restrictions based on the type of program.

    “Why the Mac App Sandbox Makes Me Sad,” wrote OS X developer blogger Pauli Olavi Ojala. “Apple’s Mac OS Lockdown To End Developer Independence,” screamed a headline on Forbes.com, though the article, by Roger Kay, was more reasoned in tone.

    I’m sure Apple’s new restrictions will make life harder for App Store developers, and they may have to choose between the easy distribution offered by the App Store and the greater programming freedom of delivering their software the old fashioned way. But to consider this from the users’ point of view, ask yourself a question: What do most people like better, their computer or their iPhone or iPad?

    My guess is that if you asked 100 people who used both a computer and an iOS device which they were happier with, 90 or so would vote for the iPhone or iPad. Mac owners probably hate their computers a little less than Windows users. But both types of systems have the same problem: They are full of software, often poorly written and poorly tested. that can cause all manner of mysterious, frustrating problems. This has gotten better over the years, but as long as there are atrocities such as the Adobe Flash plugin for Chrome, to pick an example not at random, there’s going to be trouble.

    One thing Apple has learned from iOS as that a tightly controlled software environment is one way to produce a great user experience. iOS apps rarely crash and when they do, they don’t else with them.The arrangement is much more secure because apps’ access to the system is so limited.Yes, the sandbox can cause some frustrations for users. The restrictions on apps’ access to each other’s data is one  reason why document handling is such a pain on an iPad, for example. But I find it a price worth paying. And if the sandbox policy makes Macs more iOS-like in this sense, users will love it.

    One very important caveat: My views on this would change dramatically if Apple were to restrict users’ ability to load any apps from outside the App Store, as they do for iOS. For people who use their Macs as creative tools, the sandbox’s restrictions could be a crushing burden; they almost certainly would for anyone who writes software, which is why Apple won’t restrict their freedom.

    Apple does have a tendency to be heavy-handed  in its administration of rules, so I’m sure there are going to be some problems. But many of the fears seem to be to be vastly overblown. Roger Kay, for example, writes: “The longer-term consequence?  A lack of innovation in consumer software.” The fact is that iOS, for all of its restrictions, has produced an outpouring of highly innovative software, putting iPads and iPhones to uses that I am sure Apple never imagined.

     

    Dear Industry: History Will Not Repeat Itself

    I have noticed an interesting thread of conversation both with some industry folks as well as in the media. That thread is around the assumption that the technology industry will repeat itself and a dominant platform will emerge and command the lion’s share of the market. I understand why many people would assume that this would be the case, but I would encourage more discussion around the topic. History might not repeat itself—at least not the way they think.

    This assumption that history will repeat itself also lies at the core of why people keep making a big deal about market share statistics. Since market share does not equal profit share, the only reason we would make a big deal of it is if we are looking for the dominant platform to emerge. If we are to assume history will repeat itself and we are anxiously waiting for the dominant player to emerge, then I would fully understand why market share is such a big deal. However, I do not believe history will repeat itself and here is why:

    First of all this industry (the computer industry), quite frankly, is not old enough to assume that history is cyclical. In fact, the majority of this industry’s computing history has been in the enterprise. Only in the past 5 years or so, I would argue, have we moved to a mature consumer market in personal computers.

    We have a slide in one of our big picture industry trend presentations where we start out by saying that we are in the middle of a 50 year journey. The first 25 years was about bringing computing to business customers and the next 25+ years is about bringing computing to the masses. Given that perspective, it is difficult to say that the way the industry operated during the past 25 years or so by developing technologies largely for enterprises customers, is going to operate the same way going forward in bringing computing to the masses in every corner of the earth.

    Using history as their guide, many who believe it is cyclical will point out a trend within product categories to start out vertical, then go horizontal, then back to vertical. Since this happened in the category of Mainframes, Mini Computers, and now personal computers it is easy to think that the vertical-horizontal-vertical trend is an industry truth. However, if we truly analyze the cycle it is clear it is more a product category truth rather than an actual industry truth. In the case of Mainframes and Minis toward the end of the product life-cycle they generally ended vertical and stayed that way.

    The reason for this is because the vertical-horizontal-vertical product path is the same path a technology takes as it moves from creation-standardization-maturity. In the beginning when a new category or technology is created there is a flood to create similar yet different products. It begins vertical and fragmented. Soon after a standard emerges, which is when the life-cycle goes horizontal the single standard drives the market to maturity at which point it then begins to fragment again and trend vertical. As interesting as that factoid is the real evidence lies in understanding mature markets.

    Understanding Mature Markets
    In all case studies the dominant platform is only dominant until the market matures. This is perhaps one of the best ways to understand how it is possible that Microsoft’s Windows OS is actually losing market share and Apple’s OSX is gaining market share. When markets mature they fragment and open up the doors for differentiated vertical players to succeed and begin to forge their own market share. Below is a slide depicting how this happened in automobiles.

    What you will see (or recall if you remember) is that the shape of the mid-sized car (embodied in this photo by a Toyota Corolla) was the dominant look and feel of a car. They mostly looked the same as the market was maturing and consumers were figuring out their needs, wants, and desires with this product. However as the market matured and consumers became familiar with these kinds of cars, they wanted ones that were more suited to their needs, wants, or desires. When this happened, design variation opened the door to fragmentation so the dominant shape and form of an auto began to break up into segments. Thus the luxury, economy, SUV, Mini-Vans, Trucks and more segments of the market were born.

    The fact of the matter is the consumer market is so large that it can sustain quite a bit of consumer choice rather easily. It is for this reason that multiple technology platforms, segments, and ecosystems can remain in the market and all retain healthy market shares. Take for example the chart below showing US automobile market share by brand in 2010.

    I show this slide to show how a mature market that has segmented with a plethora of consumer choice all differentiated around form factors and preference can be sustained. Notice in this chart that there is not a clearly dominant brand or automobile platform. This is because the market for automobiles is mature and can sustain a healthy mix of variation.

    Now with those charts in mind take a look at the chart below with a breakdown of OEM Vendor market share from earlier this year. Keep in mind some of these numbers have changed but the changes up or down have not been drastic.

    When you break down Smartphone market share by OEM it looks very similar to the US automobile OEM market share. Now some may be questioning the comparison between the automobile market and the personal technology market, however, I would argue they are very similar. Both are very personal choices based on personal preference. The automobile industry is 30+ years further along in its industry cycle therefore I believe provides many of the fundamental market elements to shed light on what the future of the personal computer industry may look like. Namely one by which there is not a dominant platform or hardware vendor but one that can sustain a healthy diversity of consumer choice.

    In part two of this series we will dive deeper into a smarter discussion about how to think about vendor market share and platform market share going forward.

    Part 2: Dear Industry, Focus on Profit Share not Market Share

    Why HP Has Chosen to Make A Windows 8 Tablet

    When it comes to being a PC vendor these days, life is tough. For 30 years they have had a cozy business and only had to worry about designing two major form factors. Desktops and laptops were their bread and butter and they mainly needed to focus on enterprise, SMB and consumer markets.

    But over the last two years, with the introduction of tablets and smartphones, their world has been turned upside down. Their enterprise customers are bringing iPhones and Android phones to their IT managers and asking them to support them. And now, iPads, and to some minor degree, Android tablets, are entering IT through the back door as well.

    Now, these major PC players have to seriously consider significant plays in tablets and smartphones if they want to keep their IT customers happy. But, even their consumer users want tablets and smartphones from these vendors since they are well-known brands and in most cases, are known for their services and support.

    But until recently, if the OEM’s wanted an OS for these products, they pretty much had only one option at their disposal. Android came along at a time when, for most PC vendors, it looked like it was a godsend. But after two years of trying to deal with Google and their scattered approach to designing and releasing so many versions of Android at irregular intervals and favoring marquis partners for major releases, some of the really big PC vendors are de-emphasizing or backing away from Android and are now seriously considering Windows 8 on tablets instead.

    I was recently in a meeting with two PC vendors who were wrangling with the issue of backing Android or Windows 8 in tablets and while they still viewed Android as a viable product for potential consumer customers, they have pretty much concluded that if they want a tablet to be accepted by their business customers, they need to back Windows 8 on tablets and especially the ones supporting based on Intel silicon.

    The key issue for business is backward compatibility. Although developers will have to adapt their apps to run the Metro UI for tablets, they won’t have to re-write much of the applications code as they would for use with ARM processors. And for users, they can be pretty much be assured that they can run Windows apps even without the Metro touch UI if needed by using the pen input as the mouse on most of these Win 8 tablets that will be out next year.

    As for Android support in tablets for business, the interest from the big vendors is waning. There are a lot of reasons for this, but in the chart below, Michael DeGusta created this chart to show the Android and iPhone update history. As you can see, Android’s scattered releases alone have caused nightmares for tablet and smart phone vendors and this type of release schedule within enterprise is just not acceptable.

    Of course, HP was the only company to buck the Android trend completely. They bought webOS and, to their credit, had hoped that they could build an ecosystem around webOS so that they had total control of this OS and their ecosystem themselves. Interestingly, they started out backing Android but wisely dropped it as they foresaw serious problems with this OS on many levels. The key one was that they were very concerned that Google did not have a good grasp on how to create a mobile OS that would meet the need of their core customers. So, they bought webOS with the thought that they could use this to create a more robust and secure OS for business and consumers.

    Of course, as you know, things have not gone well with webOS and at the moment, it is not clear what HP will do with this great mobile OS. But it is pretty clear that they still do not see Android as an OS they wish to support.

    HP actually has a long history of Windows tablet support and has sold it to many vertical market customers over the years. At CES 2009, HP publicly backed Microsoft’s Windows Tablets in Microsoft’s keynote. But with their turning their back on Android and webOS not living up to their own expectations, they pretty much were forced to turn back to Microsoft and will indeed, make Windows 8 on tablets their preferred tablet OS.

    For enterprise, this is a no brainer. But they do have some latitude to back even ARM based tablets for consumers with Windows on ARM as well.

    So, with HP keeping the PC division and tablets becoming a very important part of the business segment, HP, Dell and Lenovo along with the traditional PC vendors are all going to back Windows 8 on tablets in a big way. Unless Google changes their way of dealing with these vendors, I suspect that they will all eventually ratchet down support for Android tablets and instead put all of their weight behind Windows 8 on tablets, at least when it comes to tablets in the enterprise.

    2698MJ5W5PYC

    When Siri Becomes A Member of the Family

    Siri is much more than just a useful feature for Apple’s iPhone 4S. Siri is also incredibly strategic for Apple. I have written quite a bit on the subject of how software platforms become sticky. The point I continually emphasize is that we who study the industry need to understand “ecosystems” more than products. What I mean by that is that consumers, when they buy technology products, are moving from a product buying mentality to an ecosystem buying mentality – they just don’t know it yet.

    Products by themselves are not sticky and have very little consumer loyalty. In terms of products, brand or lowest price is what keeps consumers coming back. But as we transition from personal to personalized computing, consumers will stay loyal to ecosystems more than simply brand or product, even though those play into the ecosystem. Think of these products as screens which allow consumers to tap into a rich ecosystem driven by software and services.

    As I evaluate products, platforms, and companies’ strategies, I am looking for things that invite consumers into an ecosystem and then encourage ecosystem loyalty. This is essentially the root of differentiation going forward.

    If we look at the platform as the basis for an ecosystem, then right now the companies with ecosystems are Apple, Microsoft, Google (with Android) and RIM. Some ecosystems are more fleshed-out than others, but as a baseline those are the four — for now.

    The key to any of these companies’ long-term success is to continue developing innovations that keep consumers loyal to their ecosystem. When this happens, consumers are less likely to switch from one platform to another. For example, consumers who have invested time, money, and energy in Apple’s ecosystem are less likely to jump to Android for their next phone due to the high cost and inconvenience of switching.

    This is why I think Siri is so incredibly strategic for Apple. Siri in my opinion is the first step in moving computing from personal to personalized — something that happens when your personal electronics learn and understand things about you without you having to personalize it yourself.

    When you use Siri, even though it is in beta and in a very early stage of its life-cycle, you observe how it learns and remembers certain key things about you. Inevitably over time as Siri learns more about you and hits her groove as a true personal assistant, this feature will keep you loyal to Apple’s ecosystem.

    Credit: AP
    Imagine if over the period of a year or two, Siri has developed into a true personal assistant adding value all the way through task automation, discovery of places and events based on personal preference, geo-location assistance and more. After all the time you have spent living with Siri, who is learning quite a bit about you in order to be valuable, would you really fire her and go buy a different smart phone just because it is cheaper?

    I don’t know a single executive with a personal assistant (who they often consider as a member of their family) who would fire that assistant just because he or she can find another one who’s cheaper. Rather, when you find a good assistant you hold on to them and stay loyal.

    In fact, ask any executive what they hate most about hiring a new assistant and they will tell you it is the initial training process.

    The same will be true with Siri as the technology evolves and gets better and even more useful. The amount of hours put into training Siri to understand critical elements of your life, preferences, habits and more would require quite an undertaking and a headache to simply start over with another device, assuming another device has such a feature of course.

    This is why Siri is strategic for Apple. Siri is another piece of the Apple ecosystem that will command consumer loyalty. This is why Apple competitors should be concerned. The more people Apple gets into their ecosystem, the less likely they will consider competitors’ products year in and year out.

    Ecosystem loyalty will be the battleground of the future and companies who do not build a healthy ecosystem that drives consumer loyalty will be in for an uphill battle.

    Interactive TV Trends – How the TV Experience is Changing

    The article below is the first in a three part series describing key interactive TV trends. This first article looks at new technologies to control the TV – and how the TVs future ability to recognize users will allow it to tailor content choices and preferences. The second article in the series will examine how multiple screens of the PC, tablet, smart phone and TV will alter the TV experience. Finally the third article discusses new trends in image processing and why major improvements in picture quality are still necessary

    Credit: Soft Kinetic
    Part 1: Where’s the Remote? Controlling the TV with your Gestures and Voice
    The convergence of the internet and broadcast TV is changing the way we will interact with the TV set. Convergence is enabling the use of the TV for gaming, social interaction and new ways to watch content. As the internet and broadcast TV continue to intertwine – the way we interact to the TV will continue to evolve. This evolution will focus on finding new ways to fuse interactive functions to work well in the “lean back” TV experience. Nobody wants to “lean in” on the TV in the living room; this is why early attempts to simply graft a PC to the back of a TV were never going to create a useable interactive TV. The industry is finding new ways to bridge the internet more naturally into the TV experience. This is the first in a series of three articles explaining key trends in interactive TV and the technologies that are being developed to support them.

    Improvements in the way we interact with the TV start with how we control the TV. Gesture recognition technologies are a very promising development – especially command gestures that do not require a remote. The Xbox Kinect is probably the most compelling example of the importance of this trend. The Kinect works by combining the use of a camera, and light emitter and receiver as well as voice control. The combination of these capabilities enables the Kinect to recognize you, watch and understand your physical movements and gestures, as well as understand voice commands. This results in an interactive experience that enables remote free gesture control. You can control the TV and games by using hand gesture. For games, this is great as it allows a more immersive experience.

    For example, by detecting your body’s movements and articulation – your movements are translated to your avatar representation on the screen. For action games, you simply mimic the movements as though you were skiing, dancing or playing tennis. This technology can also be used to control the viewing experience on TV. A typical example is viewing menu pages or video thumbnails – you can move options or pages around by a wave of your hand. Future advances could allow for more intuitive controls as well as systems that integrate coordinated gesture controls from your tablet to your PC.

    Apple’s new Siri improved voice control is also a promising technology that could have a place in the interactive TV world. Siri enables people to speak to machines in a more natural way. The Siri technology includes a semantic sensitivity – that can find meaning in your statement to help it understand you better. This has huge implications in the interactive TV world where we need this type of personalized control especially when we convey our intentions, preferences and feedback to search and discovery.

    There are consistent rumors that Apple is working on an Apple branded TV or at least an improved version of their Apple TV media box. They could easily apply the Siri voice control capability to the control of the TV. (As we will discuss in the next series, Apple’s combination of the multi-screens in the home and their elegant interface to the cloud creates a TV ecosystem that could pose a threat to existing TV OEMs.)

    TV OEMs like Samsung have been experimenting with remote free gesture control for a while. Samsung, Toshiba and others have shown these technologies at CES over the years. But there is no large scale market availability. That said, in China, mega TV maker Hisense announced that it will be shipping a remote-free gesture control TV starting this month. On the voice side, besides Xbox, there are several electronics companies that have been working on standalone voice activation TV remotes. Voice activation on a remote or a tablet may have a lot of advantages. For one, it is easier for the TV to isolate who it should listen to when there are several people in the room. It will be interesting to see what will come out at CES 2012 on these technologies.

    Remote free gesture and voice control are excellent solutions for overcoming the lean back environment of the living room TV. And these capabilities will only get better as the underlying software, user interface, electronic program guide and menu systems improve. The methods of controlling the TV will also become more efficient as TVs take on their ability to personalize their menus for either an individual or a group in the household. In short, TVs will have the capability to recognize us and present a tailored list of menus and services when we come into their vicinity.

    Personalization in general is a key trend on the internet. We see that many interactive programs attempt to improve their services by personalizing their user experiences. Examples include the voting function “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on Pandora allowing it to tailor an individual’s song selection. The interactive TV will also take on capabilities to personalize menu options as well as content and service preferences. This represents a new level of convenience in terms of controlling the TV, as the TV will only be presenting options that you really care about.

    To enable this, smart phones or tablets interacting with the TV through WiFi, Bluetooth or other interactive technologies can also identify users to the TV. Alternatively or in addition, TVs could use camera technology just like cameras are used in our hand held devices and laptop computers. Cameras together with facial recognition algorithms can do a good job to see who walks into the room. Imagine entering your living room or den and the TV automatically brings up options dialed into your specific preferences and interests. The TV can also set up all kinds of services and capabilities that are tied to your needs. The system can stand ready to serve up your favorite TV shows, download music for your run or commute, enable or disable your home security system, regulate the sprinkler system if it is raining, and update you on the whereabouts of family and friends.

    Preferences do not have to be limited to individuals. TVs will also be able to recognize groups of people such as your whole family sitting together, the kids only or even the family dog and will serve tailored content and service options appropriate to each group.

    The TV can be programmed to personalize its menus when the entire family or various subsets of the family is sitting in the front of the TV. The TV greets the family and immediately serves up some appropriate video, audio or service options. The father can ask the TV through a voice command to display the photographs from the recent family trip to Hawaii and provide some Hawaiian background music. During the slide show, the family can also ask the TV to dial in a distant grandparent to join the review of slides. If a child asks a question such as when Hawaii became a state – the TV can search video, webpage or blog content on Hawaii’s history. Likewise, if the family suddenly has an interest in buying a surfboard, the TV can put together a list of interactive ads from local surfboard shops.

    Of course, it can be unnerving for some to contemplate this type of interaction with a TV or any machine for that matter. Thoughts of Space Odyssey 2001 may come to mind. There is no doubt that the preferences and choices made through an interactive TV represent valuable information to advertisers and retailers. The technology should also provide consumers strong privacy controls. But the advantages of personalization will outweigh the concerns of letting “HAL” loose in the home. In terms of control – it is much easier to control what you want if the TV is familiar with your preferences.

    The technology driving gesture control, voice commands and cameras with facial recognition are available today. We are likely to see incorporation of these types of concepts in TVs next year. As the internet makes further inroads into our living room TV – we can expect to see the use of these tools to improve our ability to interact and maintain our feet-up laid-back position on the couch.

    The iOS and Android Mobile Web Disparity

    There are two interesting data points released that I think is worth asking some questions. The first comes from Net Applications and it plots out mobile web browsing OS share by platform. The full chart is below.

    What strikes me in this chart is the clearly dominant iOS platform when it comes to mobile web browsing over all platforms. It needs to be pointed out that Net Applications is tracking iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch but also all Android phones and tablets. We know there are now well more than 250 million iOS devices in the market so there is a clear lead in volume over Android. However, at the same time we know that Android is growing explosively fast. Even with the Android explosive growth it seems that Android customers are still not nearly as heavy web browsers as iOS consumers.

    One other point on the Net Applications chart is that since it does contain iPad, and we know iPad is rapidly climbing the charts with web browsing share on its own, then we need to also look at a similar chart without iPad. That is exactly what StatCounter provides us with.

    In the chart below we see a picture of web browsing OS share with only hand-held devices, so not including tablets.

    This shows a very close picture of iOS to Android hand-held only browser share but still showing iOS in the lead. Still interesting that iPhone and iPod touch account for more web browsing than all Android smartphones in the market. So again it appears that even with hand-held devices iOS consumers browse the web more than Android consumers.

    I have a few observations.

    First iOS is a superior web browsing experience. Having used both platforms quite a bit I can attest to this fact that the web browsing experience on iOS is better than on Android.

    Android consumers are using more apps than browsing the web. This has come back true from many of our Android consumer interviews. They use more of the native apps for search, Facebook, Twitter, etc and conveyed to us that general web browsing is less of a use case for them. This again will vary between power user and average consumer, but still true in a general sense.

    iPad is poised to become one of the most dominant web browsing platforms. I have not been shy in proclaiming how touch computing and the tablet form factor is the computer for the future. I’ve also stated that in my opinion web browsing is better on a tablet than on a PC. When we look at the Net Applications chart, which includes iPad, we see how wide the gap with iOS is when the iPad is counted in mobile web browsing. This is an incredibly significant trend and one that should concern Google.

    Overall all Google still gets a serious chunk of revenue from iOS devices when it comes to mobile search. The fact that in iOS 5 consumer can change their search engine preference should concern Google greatly.

    Every company in mobile search needs to understand this data. It demonstrates how tablets are not only more than a fad but how important they are to the mobile web of the future.

    [Other Good Articles VIA BGR, Fortune, SlashGear,GigaOM]