December 2012 – Page 2

More Amazing Amazonian Mathematics

Amazon announced today that “[a]pp downloads in the Appstore have grown more than 500 percent over the previous year.” ~ via Gigaom

Of course, we don’t know 500% of what, but what the hey, 500 is a big number, right? We should be duly impressed, no? As they say, it’s all geek to me.

We really need to coin a phrase for what Amazon is doing – releasing numbers without context. Not that Amazon is the first to do this, mind you. I’m sure the Romans were pulling this kind of stunt too:

“First Citizen, Julius Caesar announced today that ‘Our troop strength in Britain has grown by more than MDCCCLXXXVIII over the previous year.”

(That’s 1,888, in case you were wondering.)

Amazon can make all the pronouncements they want. But until they release real numbers, 500% or MDCCCLXXXVIII% of no information still remains…no information.

Why The Wheels Are Falling Off Microsoft

This week, highly respected web and technolgy analyst, Mary Meeker, released her end of the year 2012 report on internet trends. The slide deck is 88 slides long and is highly recommended. You can view it here.

As I reviewed Ms. Meeker’s slides, some thoughts on Microsoft’s current prediciment and future prospects jumped out at me. I thought I would use the slides to help illustrate and examine those thoughts.

1. iPods, iPhones, iPads

Take a long hard look at the graph, above. That little green sliver you see represents the growth of the iPod. The very same iPod that powered Apple from near-bankruptcy to a genuine tech contender in less than five years.

Now take a good hard look at the much larger red portion of the graph. That represents the iPhone. The iPhone was the device that rocketed Apple from just one of many to the largest tech company, then the largest company, by market cap, in the free world. For context, that red portion of the graph, alone, is now worth more than all of Microsoft put together.

Now look at the much, much larger blue portion of the graph. Take a long, hard look. Now look at it again. That blue ramp represents the growth of the iPad. It’s growing at three times the rate of the iPhone. Three Times. If you are not awe-struck by the iPad’s rate of adoption, well, you should be.

If you want to know why Appe is rapidly expanding its influence in computing – and why Microsoft is scrambling to catch up – look no further. The above graph says it all.

2. Android And iPhone Adoption

Most people look at the above graph and conclude that the iPhone is in trouble. But you’ll notice that the iPhone is still growing in real terms.

Do you know who’s really in trouble? Anyone not named Samsung and Apple, that’s who. Apple is doing just fine, taking in most of the industry’s profits. Samsung is doing just fine. Google? Not so much. All that market share and little to no profit to show for it has to be worrisome. But this article isn’t about Google. This article is about Microsoft. And no matter how closely you scour the above graph you won’t find a Microsoft product on it anywhere.

(Chart via AllThingsD)

3. Microsoft’s Minuscule Phone Market Share

According to some reports, Microsoft’s phone market share may actually be falling. In the past six years, Microsoft has managed to take its 12% share of the mobile phone market, combine it with Nokia’s 30% share, and convertert it into Windows Phone’s current 2% market share. That’s reverse alchemy – like turning gold into lead.

Steve Ballmer recently claimed that Windows Phone was selling four times faster than it was a year ago. But four times very little is still very little. Microsoft sold 2.8 million Windows phones a year ago. In the same quarter, Apple sold 35 million phones and there were roughly 123 million Android phones sold. So yeah, Microsoft is selling more phones. But so is everyone else that matters.

4. Operating Systems

People think that Microsoft’s Windows is still a powerhouse because it runs 90% of the world’s personal computers. That’s nonsense. Take a look at the chart, above. When you combine phones and tablets and notebooks and desktops, Windows’s only runs on 35% of the world’s personal computers. Android already runs on more personal computers than Windows does and iOS is expected to pass Windows by the end of 2012.

Just as importantly, look at the direction in which Windows is trending. Windows runs almost exclusively on notebooks and desktops, which are a rapidly declining portion of the market. If Windows doesn’t escape its notebook and desktop base and spread to phones and tablets, it is rapidly headed for niche status.

5. Smartphones + Tablets > Notebooks + Desktops

I know that the above graph has a legend, but let me spell this out so that there’s no mistaking the significance of what you’re seeing. The orange portion of the graph represents desktop PCs. The blue portion of the graph represents notebook PCs. Look at how those two portions, combined, are shrinking while the green – representing smartphones – and the yellow – representing tablets – are rapidly growing.

If you look at the above chart, you can clearly see Microsoft’s dilemma. Even if Windows were to power each and every notebook (blue) and desktop (orange) computer made going forward – which they won’t – their share of the market would soon dwindle to near nothingness. Microsoft NEEDS to get their operating system onto phones and tablets and they NEED to do it now.

6. Microsoft Isn’t Even Trying

Here’s the thing. Microsoft isn’t even trying to break into the pure tablet (yellow) portion of the market. Instead, they’re trying to create a hybid device, a new category, a new color, if you will, on the chart above.

In July, I wrote an article entitled: “The PC is the Titanic and the Tablet is the Iceberg. Any Questions?” The purpose of that article was to demonstrate the multitude of tasks that could be done well by a tablet but poorly or not at all by a traditional notebook computer. Windows 8 tablets – with their 16:9 aspect ratio, their desktop mode and their reliance upon keyboards – fall far closer to the notebook than they do to the tablet. One can’t help but feel that, even now, Microsoft still doesn’t totally believe in the stand-alone tablet form factor. Windows 8 tablets are notebooks first – and tablets only in emergencies.

After failing to field a competitor to the iPad for two and a half years, Microsoft is now ceding the tablet market (yellow) to Apple and the rest of the industry – yet again.

7. Conclusion

Microsoft faces a host of problems in the the years to come. Their competitors are far ahead of them in phones and tablets. Their bastion of strength – the notebook and the desktop – is an ever shrinking island. And their strategy to compete in the tablet market is, in my opinion, fatally flawed because it doesn’t even attempt to create a true tablet competitor.

Take a look at that last graph again. The green and the yellow portions are the future of computing. And in that future, Microsoft is nowhere to be found.

Microsoft’s Strongest Asset is XBOX Not Office

I’m sure if you surveyed many in the industry and asked them what Microsoft’s greatest asset to leverage going forward would be you would get a range of answers. I’m sure people would offer up Windows or Office as the most frequent responses to that question. From the looks of much of Microsoft’s marketing it seems as well that they feel their strength lies in Windows and Office. However, they are sitting on another asset that I believe may be the fundamental cornerstone of their success going forward. And that is the XBOX.

If you think about what drove the bulk of Microsoft’s success during the PCs golden age, most would agree it was Windows and Office. For the bulk of the PCs lifecycle it was productivity use cases that drove Microsoft assets into the corporate world and thus by default into the homes of many consumers. That world has changed and I don’t believe the same kind of strong sentiment exists with Windows or Office as it once did with the broader consumer market.

However the product that I do believe not only has more relevant mindshare with consumers than Windows and Office, but also has a largely positive sentiment is the XBOX. To date the XBOX has sold over 70 million units. Now, although that sounds much smaller than the 350-380 million traditional PCs we sell annually on a world wide basis, XBOXs cover more ground than PCs. PCs generally, have a higher penetration due to their tie to individual consumers. In an average consumer home there is generally more than one PC. But XBOXs are more communal and therefore generally only have one per household but chances are more than one person benefits from the XBOX regularly. But this device plays a very important role from an entertainment standpoint and one that I feel has driven higher consumer sentiment than many of the other Microsoft assets.

When it comes to all of Microsoft’s assets, I would argue that the XBOX is the one that is most commonly being woven into the core of many consumers media and entertainment experiences. XBOX is the new Office and I am not sure that Microsoft understands this at the level they need to.

Had Microsoft launched a XBOX tablet first and not a Surface tablet, my conviction is that they would have had much more success. Surface sales are not going well and our close supply chain sources indicate that its likely to not even sell 1M by the end of the year. Had their first go out the door been much more focused on leveraging XBOX assets and positioned more for gaming and entertainment, then I believe Microsoft would have had much more success.

Jim Dalrymple wrote an article today, that is worth reading, where he points out that Microsoft with Surface created a product that didn’t solve a problem. I agree at one leveld, but I’m sure many can make the case that Microsoft did solve a problem. My point is Microsoft solved the wrong problem with Surface. The problem Microsoft is looking to solve, one where productivity is the emphasis in both design and philosophy of a tablet, is not the one I believe most consumers are leading with when researching which product to buy. Thus with Surface, Microsoft has developed a product for the few rather than a product for the masses.

I fundamentally believe that pure tablet use cases carry more weight with the mass consumer market than notebook use cases. Things like an easy to hold and use form factor, a quality visual experience, heavy emphasis on best of breed media consumption and entertainment, simplicity and ease of use. These are the things the mass market values at the highest level. In my opinion if Microsoft was focusing on these use cases with Surface, they would have made a different product and I believe tied it more to their strongest asset for the mass consumer market–the XBOX.

Can Big Data Make Us Healthier?

I spent some time this week at the Mobile Health Summit, an annual Washington event featuring the latest in mobile health-related technologies. The exhibition hall was filled with sensor-based devices that can track blood pressure, body weight, blood glucose, pill-taking behavior, and just about any other facet of human life. There was even a $199 sled from AliveCor that turns an iPhone into an electrocardiogram.

Nearly all of these devices feature either Wi-Fi or cellular wireless capability, making them part of an ever growing machine-to-machine network, also known as the Internet of Things. There is little doubt that they are becoming an important part of individualized treatment that can help keep us healthier, albeit at a sometimes creepy loss of privacy. (One company was showing connected motion sensors that could alert a care giver if it didn’t sense you moving about your room when you were supposed to be up and about. I can see the usefulness, but still find the idea disturbing.)

To be truly useful, the data from these sensors should feed into the patient’s medical record in a way that gives a health care provider a big-picture idea of what is going on. Infrastructure providers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcomm, are building systems that can consolidate data from a variety of sensor sources.

But the question in my mind is whether we can go beyond individual medicine and use the staggering mass of data that will be produced by our quantified futures to improve health in general. The practice of medicine remains, in many ways, stunningly unscientific. Treatments are often selected without solid statistical knowledge of outcomes because data is hard to come by. Many decisions are based more on instinct and custom. What studies do exist too often reach sweeping conclusions on the basis of painfully small numbers of patients involved.

I have no doubt that researchers could gain tremendous insight into medicine, particularly what does and does not work to keep us healthy, if they could use big data approaches to study treatments and outcomes from an aggregation of the information that is starting to flow. However, many challenges–technical, business, and regulatory–have to be met before this can happen.

Today, what data does exist is likely to be stored in completely disconnected silos. Changes in technology, insurance company practice, and government regulations are forcing the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) at a rapid rate, but EMR systems often cannot talk to each other. If you land in the hospital, you will be very lucky if its records system can communicate directly with your doctor’s. The government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.the payment agent for two massive programs, has a vast collection of data on treatments and outcomes hidden away in an assortment of mutually incompatible legacy databases. (CMS has launched a modernization program mandated by Obamacare, but it could take years to bear fruit.)

There are many obstacles in the way of turning a big collection of individual medical records into useful big data. An obvious one is privacy. Medical records are about as sensitive as personal data gets and we have to make sure that the identity of individuals is not exposed when the information is aggregated. There are already extensive protections in place, most significantly in the U.S., the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA.) Some experts, notably Jane Yakowitz Bambauer, fear that excessive concern with making sure that data remain anonymous threatens to cripple valuable research.

There are also major issues in making sense of the data. If you are researching outcomes, it does help to be able to find all the patients with the condition you are studying. But the metadata accompanying today’s medical records, often designed more for the needs of insurance companies and other payers than for doctors, can make identifying the relevant data hard. “People are carefully coding the financial side, but that provides very little help on the clinical side,” says Dr. David Delaney, chief medical officer for SAP Healthcare. A new system called ICD-10 is in use in much of the developed world, but won’t be fully implemented in the U.S. for another two years.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, writing for Fortune, argues that data analytics will eventually replace 80% of what doctors now do. Fortunately for his prediction, Khosla does not put a time on “eventually.” I have no doubt the time will come, but given the myriad difficulties, I suspect it will take a lot longer than any of us would like.

Marty Cooper’s Billion Dollar Spectrum Contest Idea

It has been almost 40 years since Martin Cooper made the mobile phone call that earned him the title of father of the cell phone. Today he is still active in the industry, looking for ways to make mobile better. Like many others, he thinks t5hat finding enough spectrum to handle soaring wireless data usage is the great challenge. Unlike many, however, he has ideas that go beyond reallocating a limited pool of wireless spectrum.

One of his concerns is that what has been spectacular growth in the efficiency of spectrum use has slowed. “There’s not much motivation for the people who have the spectrum to get more efficient,” he says. “Why should they get more efficient when all they have to do is ask for more spectrum? Yes, they have to pay for it, but the cost of spectrum at auction is the bargain of the century. Just think about it. You may spend $1 billion to get a piece of spectrum but that spectrum is going to double in value every 2½ years.”

So Cooper, who has spent many years working on smart antenna technology that would allow more effective reuse of spectrum, has an idea to create an incentive. “One possible way, and a way that I suggest would be really valuable for the government to get people to operate more efficiently, is what I call the Presidential Prize. Suppose the government offers the industry the opportunity to get, say, 10 MHz of spectrum free of charge, no auction price or anything, All you’d have to do to get that 10 MHz of spectrum is demonstrate that you could operate at least 50 times more efficiently than existing people. Well, if somebody could do that, they’d have the equivalent spectrum of 50 times 10 MHz, or 500 MHz of spectrum today.

“So my suggestion is let’s have a contest to see who can get to 50 times improvement over the next 10 years or so. It’s going to cost a lot of money to do that, but we’re going to find that we’ll have some new carriers , people that have made substantial investments, and we’ll now be using the spectrum more efficiently. The spectrum belongs to us, to the public, not to the carriers. We only lease it to the carriers, and they are supposed to operate in the public interest. It is in the public interest to use that spectrum efficiently and make it available to more and more people. The only way to do that is to get the cost down.”

You can see much more of my interview with Cooper, including video, on Cisco’s The Network.

Evernote and Sugarsync: Headed in Reverse Windows 8 Gear

Two of the apps that changed the way I work are Evernote and Sugarsync. Evernote allowed me to go paperless and Sugarsync allowed me to have access to all my data accessible by any device. Both of the apps have very robust Windows 7, OSX, Android and iOS capability. Robustness stops, though, at Windows 8, where Evernote and Sugarsync are the biggest disappointment I have yet to encounter with the new OS. It has been 15 months since Microsoft’s BUILD event, more than enough time to architect, design, develop and test any application, particularly one with robust Windows 7 functionality.

Evernote for Windows 8 Metro

For the last few years I have infrequently used a pen or pencil to take a note in a meeting or at home. I take all notes with Evernote. Even if someone hands me a piece of paper, I will take a picture and import into Evernote. Business card? Import into Evernote and throw it away. Whiteboard? Take a picture and import into Evernote. The great thing is that every image imported into Evernote is searchable, too. This experience gracefully (relatively) scales across my PC, Mac, iPhone, Motorola RAZR I, Nexus 7, and iPad. But falls miserably apart on Windows RT and 8.

Evernote for Windows 8 looks kind of similar, but falls down immeasurably.

For the first few weeks, Evernote would not sync. It pulled in one note from each month, then stopped. Windows RT-based systems would just crash. About a week ago, the sync feature started working on Windows 8 but still to this day, will not sync and just crashes after a few minutes of sync.

Here is the delta list of what I can do on Windows, OSX, Android and iOS that I cannot do on Windows 8:

Sync on opening app
Edit a note with any rich text. Will only append.
Adding attachment
Edit text font, size, color, bold, italics, strike-through, alignment, bullet, number
Adding check-boxes and grids
Voice notes
View attachments (ie pdf, doc, ppt, xls). You can see the file and it looks like you can touch it and open, but you cannot.
Sync in background (cannot on iOS either)
Save searches
View by pictures
Auto-subject by calendar
Paper image clean up
View by place (geo-positioned)

As you can see, the list of unsupported features is immense and keeps it from doing anything other than viewing or making very basic notes. The continued crashed with the Windows RT app is inexcusable. Judging by the mass of one and two start ratings in the app store, I’d say I’m not alone. Stay away from Evernote and Windows 8 Metro; they don’t mix well. Use the desktop app with Windows 8 desktop.

Now, onto Sugarsync.

Sugarsync for Windows 8 Metro

Sugarsync for Windows 7, OSX, Android and iOS enable you to keep your files in sync across devices. On PC, Mac, and Android, files can be automatically synced in the background, too. Therefore, every file you have on every device can automatically in sync to view and edit. This all breaks down on Windows 8.

The Sugarsync experience is equally weak as Evernote. Again, Sugarsync is multi-platform just like Evernote, but for some reason, they have decided to support a narrower subset than even iOS or Android. Here is the Windows 8 delta list:

Search (no, you cannot search your files, online or offline)
Offline access to synced files (you must be connected to have access to documents)
Background sync
Select all devices synced to Sugarsync
Look for recent documents
Sort files by date

Finding what you are looking for is nearly impossible as there is not search, sort by date, or recent documents. I cannot recommend any alternatives because none are better. Literally, with Windows 8, you are landlocked.

Where to Next?

Evernote and Sugarsync need significant improvement or users will simply not use these apps. Ironically on Evernote, this type of behavior reminds me how they treated Blackberry OS, which they do not support anymore. While I don’t believe Evernote will discontinue Windows 8 support, they need to improve quickly and substantially to keep it from becoming naturally extinct. With Sugarsync, the story is a bit different. Even Microsoft hasn’t enabled Windows 8 offline storage with SkyDrive and at least with some of their messaging, they are trying to help the user learn how to do some sort of offline updating. Sugarsync prompts the user to, “If you make changes to this file, please open Sugarsync again to automatically save your updated file to Sugarsync. This way your updated file will be available across all your other decives [their misspelling] with Sugarsync”. Very kludgy but at least it’s a way to keep files fresh.

Both companies have had over a year to plan, code and test for Windows 8 and there’s really no explanation other than lack of belief and priority in Windows 8 that explains this. For the sake of users, I hope the situation is remedied quickly. At a minimum, can you at least call them “preview”, alpha” or “beta”?

The 5 Technologies that Changed My Life

I thought it would be interesting to kick off a series where each of our columnists would share the top 5 technologies that changed and profoundly impacted our lives, along with the reasons why. Technology has shaped and is shaping many different generations in different ways and will continue to do so for long periods of time. I know I always enjoy listening to others tell stories about the products that truly impacted them for the better and some of the reasons why. So here are the ones that shaped my life up to this point.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
That’s right the very first EPIC NES. It was 1985 when the NES came into my house. I was instantly the coolest kid on the entire block. My father being one of the first analysts in the computer industry developed a good relationship with Nintendo so he got to bring one of the first units home.

Many of you can relate to your first gaming experience, whether it be with the Commodore, Atari, NES or even the Playstation or XBOX. It was mesmerizing, captivating and seriously addicting. I couldn’t get enough, the escape that video games presents or more immersive and emotional that books or movies could ever be, for me at least. It also most likely contributed to my ADD.

Now with the addition of things like Kinect and the Wii, families are getting together and playing immersive games together. For me it all started with the original NES.

IBM PS/2
DIR/W. Ah the memories of DOS. The PS/2 was the first computer I remember using at length. We had many others before it in our home but I simply don’t remember them as well. I learned to use DOS on the PS/2 which instantly made me the go to for tech support in computer lab in the 5th grade.

Computers and computing are a big part of many of our lives. I highlight this one because it was the one I spent the most time with at a young age and the one much of my computing foundation was grounded on.

Compaq iPaq 3630 W/ PCMCIA sleeve and Metricom Ricochet Wireless Card
I had a difficult time choosing between the iPaq and the first Palm Pilot. I was at the Palm Pilot launch event when Jeff Hawkins first publicly demonstrated the device. In fact my dad took me out of school to attend the event because he knew how significant it would be for the industry. I remember thinking at the time how groundbreaking this pocket computer was. The primary reason I chose the iPaq over the Palm Pilot was because of the Metricom wireless card adapter sleeve. Although the original Palm Pilot represented a vision for a true pocket computer, the iPaq with the Metricom Ricochet Wireless card brought me the Internet in my pocket for the fist time and that was what gave me my inflection point.

Now you may be wondering why I chose this device over a smartphone or cellphone of some kind. The reason was because this particularly product, tied to the Metricom broadband service, provided the basis for my smartphone experience. Because I was highly familiar and comfortable with a pocket computer experience, I didn’t have the same profound “aha” moments many did with their first smartphones because the iPaq had provided the fundamental experience of apps and the internet in your pocket.

My first HDTV – Mitsubishi 55” Rear Projection
Being an early adopter I bought my first HDTV the second I could possibly afford one which was in 2003. That was also the year my first daughter was born, so I positioned it as a birthday present for her, which obviously no one believed.

I remember the first time I saw an HD picture on this beast. I nearly cried. I stared at it for hours and watched the most random things simply because HD content was limited and I just wanted to watch HD shows. I remember telling my wife it was like looking out a window or like actually being at the football or baseball game. She didn’t think so but I did and that was all that mattered.

The iPad
I chose the iPad for a number of reasons. Mainly because in the 13+ years I have been working in the technology industry I always dreamed of a product like this (a no compromise tablet) and this was the first to deliver. I used nearly every pen computing tablet that came to market in a variety of shapes and sizes prior to the iPad. Yes, there are a number of good tablets on the market and they will all continue to get better but for me the iPad brought touch computing to the mass market and is still the cream of the crop in my opinion.

Arguably touch computing started with the iPhone but a small pocketable screen is only capable of some elements of touch computing where the iPad represents a much more holistic touch computing platform and has cast a vision of where touch computing will go with future innovations.

So those are my 5 defining experiences with technology. More Tech.pinions columnists will share theirs and why and as always we would love to hear from our fantastic community with your comments.