Category: The Daily Techpinion

Over the last few years, a great deal of discussion has focused on the importance of voice as the next big interface. The explosive growth of smart assistants, in everything from speakers to thermostats to kitchen appliances, bolsters the argument that voice is going to play a big roll in how we interact with technology going forward. But throughout the last few weeks, I’ve been struck by just how much attention good old-fashioned screens have been getting in new product announcements. From Apple’s recent launch of new, larger-screened iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, to new smart assistants with screens, to Samsung’s teasing debut of its first foldable smartphone, the fact is screens still matter a great deal.

Bigger is Better
I’ve been living with Apple’s new Series 4 watch and the iPhone XS Max and have been struck by just how impactful the new, larger screens has been to how I use the devices. On the watch, I’m using the Infograph watch face that puts a huge amount of information on screen. While I look forward to Apple adding more customizable complications to that watch face (I’d like to have access to messages there), the information density is amazing, making it possible for me to easily access most of the apps I use daily right on the home screen. And the larger screen has led to another usage change: I find myself consuming more content on the watch. No, I’m not going to read a 2000-word news story there, but the larger size makes it comfortable enough to read messages, short emails, and news alerts right on the watch instead of shifting over to the phone.

The huge screen on the iPhone XS Max has led to an evolution in my usage of that device, too. It’s large enough that I find myself perfectly content to consume more content on it than any phone before it. Traditionally, when I get home, I move from the phone to the tablet, but with this phone, I will often make it well into the evening before I think to make the switch. Which begged the question: With the iPhone getting bigger, what happens to the iPad?

Apple answered that question last week with the launch of its new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros. The 11-inch product effectively offers extra screen real estate in a form factor that’s roughly the same size as the previous 10.5-inch product. The real show stopper, however, is the 12.9-inch product. The previous version of this larger iPad was so big it felt a bit unwieldy in hand, but this new product feels dramatically more comfortable to hold and use. While the starting price of $999 will be tough for many to swallow, I expect that big, beautiful screen to drive many to buy this product.

Voice Plus Display is Smarter
One of the most interesting product trends of late has been the move by vendors to add screens to smart assistant products. Amazon did it first with the Echo Play, and the company has continued to iterate in the space with a second generation of that product, as well as the smaller Echo Spot. Google and its partners have recently entered the space, too. I’ve been using Lenovo’s Smart Display with Google Assistant, and I’ve been massively impressed with the product. I’ve written before about how Amazon Echos have taken over our house (six units and counting). But after I installed the Lenovo product in my office, I find myself going to it to ask questions more and more often. I am consistently struck by how much more useful a smart assistant can be with a screen attached. From showing photos, time, and temperature in default mode, to displaying the results of questions asked (in addition to announcing them), to letting me initiate a task by voice but complete it via the touch screen, the simple fact is the whole experience with the smart assistant is smarter with a display.

Dual Screens and Foldable Screens
So, the bottom line here is that even as voice becomes more prevalent, for now, and likely well into the future, screens will continue to play an important role in how we interact with technology. Which is why so many companies are feverishly working to bring to market new dual-screen notebook and foldable screen smartphone products.

I’ve been skeptical about the use cases for products like these. And when Samsung showed off this week its prototype foldable phone, my first response was: What problem is this solving? Followed by: Who wants a double-wide phone screen? While I’m not convinced that the first generation of these products will drive a ton of utility for most people, and the software challenges around the impact to user interface will be harder to address then most people realize, the fact is they could solve a problem: People’s desire for ever bigger screens.

The first generation of these products are important and necessary steps the industry must undertake. I’ve been following the display industry for many years, and while there have been many, many prototypes, the real learning happens when real products ship. So while I likely won’t be standing in any lines to buy the first dual screen or foldable device, I am very interested in the next-generation of form factors and use cases that will spring from what they learn.

At the end of the day, it’s all about offering even more screen real estate in existing or smaller form factors. While voice continues to improve as a mode of interfacing with technology, it still has a long way to go. In the near term, that means companies will continue to find ways to bring larger physical displays to products. Eventually, we’ll get to a point where the only way to offer a bigger screen will be in a pair of augmented reality glasses, where the entire world in front of you is the screen.

It’s been years since I’ve written a book report, maybe decades, but I’ve just completed a book that I want to tell you about. The book, “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling, is one of the most inciteful, irreverent, and fascinating books I’ve read in years. I discovered it by way of a post from Bill Gates, saying it was one of the most important books he ever read.

What initially appealed to me was its premise that things are really much better in the world today than we think. That’s something many of us would like to believe, especially during these turbulent political times, but probably are skeptical, as I was.

The book explains that we get things wrong for many reasons, including what makes the news, how we react to it, as well as relying on old beliefs. We learn pretty quickly how different the world really is.

It shows how we’ve rarely questioned or revisited our beliefs, even though much of the world has been transformed in recent decades. The book opens our eyes and provides reasons why we need to think in different ways.

It provides us example after example of how we are misled and confused about the state of the world and presents factual data that corrects our errors. The book is filled with graphs, charts and tables that add much to the author’s assertions and are often eye-openers.

What was most enjoyable was Rosling’s self-deprecating humor and unusual insights into how we come to our beliefs, why we think that way, and how we can be more objective. He uses numerous examples and stories gleaned from his travels fighting epidemics and conducting research around the world, meeting with numerous leaders.

Throughout the book Rosling reports the results of surveys he took among his thousands of audiences, asking simple multiple-choice questions about life in different countries. Time after time he points out how a chimpanzee making a random guess do a lot better.

One comes away with new revelations about the world and how much it’s actually improved in the past few decades.

While the book is focused on the state of the world’s condition, such things as income, living and medical conditions, lifespan, and education, it’s much more. It’s a handbook for improving how we think.

Hans Rosling, who passed away last year, was an Egyptian-born Swedish medical doctor, a professor of international health, and an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. His TED talks have been viewed more than 35 million times.

He wrote the book in the last years of his life along with help from his son and daughter-in-law, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, who invented a bubble-chart tool for displaying information in a very unique and highly visual way; that tool was eventually acquired by Google. They make heavy use of these charts throughout the book, including on the inside covers.

Nearly every page is filled with fascinating information that most of us are unaware of and is even counterintuitive. Rosling goes into detail as to why that’s the case, from explaining the motivations behind journalists, doctors and experts, to explaining the biases we each hold. He does it in logical and non-blaming ways. In fact, when it comes to blame, he has a fascinating section on it.

“The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened… It seems that it comes very naturally for us to decide that when things go wrong, it must be because of some bad individual with bad intentions. We like to believe that things happen because someone wanted them to, that individuals have power and agency; otherwise the world feels unpredictable, confusing and frightening.”

This is one of those books that you savor and don’t want to see end. You’ll think about things very differently after reading this remarkable book and might even believe that conditions in the world have never been better than they are today.

”

It has been quite fascinating reading the reviews of the new iPad Pro this week, and even more so reading the comments those reviews received. The process highlighted a few interesting challenges we have when we go through significant technology transitions and what might be holding us back from moving faster.

We Feel Compelled to Put Devices into Buckets

Of course, we give everything a name: a baby, a dog, and a device. We name items to market them and sell them which, of course, makes a lot of sense, but then because of that name we compartmentalize them to count them, project them and see how they are performing in relations to other devices.

Most of the times this works, especially when devices are single purpose: a camera, an MP3 player, a VR headset. But when devices can do multiple things and what they can do is determined by the software or apps they run or even by the accessories you can attach to them things get complicated very quickly.

Often we end up creating artificial categories based on how the product is marketed even though the way it is used is very different from what it says on the box.

Those Buckets Might Prevent Us from Looking Beyond the Hardware

For those devices that do multiple things, it is at times harder to see what they are competing with because the one thing that might drive buyers to get them in the first place is different from person to person. If you think about smartphones, for instance, some buyers might prioritize the screen size, others the camera, and others the quality of their calls.  While many will be similar the importance put on those features will be different and more importantly what people consider a deal breaker is likely to be even more different.

The look of a product is at time deceiving. Something might look like something else but behave very differently, or something might look very different but behave the same or drive the same behavior. Think about netbooks and notebooks for instance. On the surface, they looked very similar with the most significant difference being size. Yet their performance was very different which in turn drove very different use cases. Another example is lower-end tablets running Android. At the beginning of the market they looked very much like an iPad, but in countries like China, they were really competing against MP4 players because their software and weak app ecosystem limited their use cases to watching videos. When you think you are competing with something different than what you are, success is hard to come by as marketing, channel presence, pricing, target audience, all will be off for the product.

The look, however, often determines what people expect. If you quack like a duck you are a duck the same way that if you look like a notebook I expect you to run a specific OS, support a mouse, be great at productivity.

Let’s Talk About the Mouse and Other Must Haves

The PC market is a unique case study because of how many entrenched workflows users have. These are workflows that are old and might not be perfect, but the familiarity we have with them leads us to believe we cannot do without. The mouse is a good example. For many PC users the mouse is a core part of the experience which means that because the iPad Pro does not support a mouse, it cannot be a PC replacement.

Let’s look though at where the mouse comes from, which is a world where the PC was in the same place day after day, after day. Over time that PC moved around with us and the mouse cut the cord and came with some of us. I will always remember one day being in an airport lounge at SFO and seeing a lady who set herself up at a table with her laptop, a mouse and a portable printer. In her mind, I am sure, she was being mobile, but the reality was quite different.

If Apple thinks the iPad is a true mobile computer, then it makes sense that it is looking at an alternative to a mouse when you are trying to pinpoint something on the screen. If you are using the device on the subway, as you walk, in the car touching the device with your finger or the Apple Pencil makes much more sense than using a mouse. If I am right, mouse support is not a technical issue but a conscious decision of what fits the experience. The same can be said for support for a wired printer. This might not match people’s expectations of a true computer, but it matches human behavior.

File systems at an OS level is another behavioral debt we have. Does it still make sense to have one when much of our work is done in siloed apps and or stored in the cloud for easy collaboration?

Focus on What Devices Enable

We can argue as much as we want about whether or not an iPad Pro is a PC or not but I think we cannot argue with the premise of what the next computing experience is likely to include:

• a mobile, not a portable device that is always connected
• a more versatile operating system that transcends product categories
• multiple input mechanism: touch, pen, and voice
• “satellite” experiences driven by other devices such as AR glasses, wearables, IoT devices and sensors

Because of these characteristics, new workflows will be created, and old ones will evolve. Like for other industries, like the car industry, these changes will happen over the course of many years and impacting, people differently based on their line of work, their disposable income, the market availability in their region and most importantly their entrenched behaviors. Who gets there first does not get a medal but gets to show the way to others by showing what works and what does not.

Apple is touting the newest iPad Pro models as the biggest change that has come to iPad since the original device launched. For Apple, iPad has always been their clearest vision of a large screen computing device. Like all of Apple’s products, iPad has an industry-leading customer satisfaction rating, and nearly all consumers of all ages love their iPad. Where iPad has succeeded in consumer sentiment and satisfaction, it has still not fully met its full potential as the perfect large screen computer for the masses.

Fascinatingly, in poll after poll I’ve seen in both our own consumer research and other sources, many consumers indicate they would gladly make the iPad their primary large screen computer, ditching their legacy PC or Mac, if they believed they could. While we can debate whether this perception is the reality, there is no debating the positive sentiment and desire to go all in on iPad by a large number of consumers.

Even in tech circles, the desire is high to jump to what is considered a better way forward. In countless conversations, I’ve had with techies, and even tech-leaning early adopters in our research panel and on Twitter, I continually hear how they would love to switch to iPad if they could. When I press deeper on the reasons why they feel they still need a PC/Mac it often comes down to a mouse/trackpad.

More specifically, they explain how many of their primary workflows still require a mouse/trackpad and the precision of a mouse pointer and the many legacy apps which make efficient use of this legacy solution. After spending some time using the new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, it left me thinking the future of precision input tools for iOS may be the Apple Pencil not a mouse/trackpad.

The Pen(cil) is Mightier Than the Mouse
After Apple announced the new iPad Pros, along with an updated Apple Pencil, I began to look at Apple’s website for iPad and looked specifically at the areas where they highlighted some of the new gesture features of Apple Pencil and software experiences that support this feature. It was then I began to wonder if Apple Pencil is Apple’s mouse, or more specifically, their precision input tool for iPad.

With this thinking, I’d like to draw a potential parallel. When the iPhone first came out, there was a heavy dose of skepticism about Apple’s all screen phone with a soft-keyboard. Every single smartphone at the time had a smaller screen but a physical keyboard. Apple’s rationale for the soft keyboard was straightforward. They could simply do more from an input standpoint with a software-based keyboard than with a physical keyboard which functions are fixed in the hardware. Things like multiple language support, emoji, and a range of other software based features took smartphones text input to an entirely new level and and there is no going back.

I’m curious if Apple thinks about Apple Pencil in a similar way. Where the software based keyboard for iPhone opened up entirely new forms of input and new, more efficient type based workflow, I think Apple Pencil has the potential to do the same thing from a precision pointing/input tool.

Apple’s new gestures clearly support this theory. Apple may be easing people into this new functionality but the idea of a multi-touch function on the Apple Pencil seems like a logical path forward. At the moment, you can customize the double tap gestures on Apple Pencil to switch between the two tools you use the most. However, ProCreate implemented a clever example that brings up a more sophisticated menu designed to use the Pencil gestures to enable a more seamless workflow. Here is a picture of what a double tap with Pencil brings up when you enable.

While in it’s early stages, I contrast this with Microsoft’s Windows Pen/Ink support. With Windows a mouse is still available to use as a precision pointer, meaning most people will still choose this method by default. The presence of a mouse/trackpad enables the user to stay in their comofort level rather than embrace a new paradigm. The implication is the pen is likely only used for pen use cases and not in a position to become the new mouse. The lack of a traditional mouse pointer/trackpad is precisely the reason Apple has the potential to innovate and encourage software to be built around new precision input paradigms instead of old ones.

It will be very interesting to see how Apple continues to develop the gestures feature on Pencil and what developers do with it. I’d love to see Microsoft run with this idea and explore new Office experiences focusing on the pen as a new type of precision input that can go beyond just ink/drawing.

From a use case standpoint, when you need a precision input tool, there is not that much different in motion than taking your hand off the keyboard and using a trackpad then picking up the pencil. And, I’d argue that what can be enabled by pencil, gestures, and software, will take precision input to a level not possible with a trackpad/mouse.

A few Points about the New Keyboard
I’ve been very clear in my affection for the keyboard design of the Microsoft Surface. As a touch typist, and someone who types north of 7,000 words a week, the feel of the keys when typing is important to me. While not yet perfect, Apple’s new folio keyboard is a huge step up for someone who does a lot of typing like me. I also prefer the additional rigidity of the keyboard cover which closes like and feels like a hardcover book when closed and sits firmly on your lap or table with a strong sense of stability.

Another welcomed improvement and something I have been asking for with the iPad keyboard experience was a way to alter the screen angle. With the previous generation iPad Pro case you could only use the screen in 65-75 degree angle. The new iPad Pro Folio case has an additional groove to dock the screen that is closer to a 90 degree angle which is a more common notebook orientation. Having both these options is excellent for both lean back and lean in workflows and experiences.

Lastly, a subtle point about magnets. Apple’s material science and design team does some excellent work with magnets. The Pencil’s magnetic dock and charging experience allows you to carry the pencil without worry of it falling off. Upon first dock you will find it surprisingly strong. Similarly, the magnetized grooves on the keyboard dock are surprisingly strong. This makes all the difference in the world when you are touching the screen with any degree of force. The firmness and stability of the iPad when using with the new keyboard cover design certainly feels much more notebook-like than ever before.

A Whole Computer and Nothing But
To truly understand the iPad, I firmly believe you have to take the long view. Most consumers are not power users. Most consumers use their smartphones more than their notebooks and most have a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with their notebooks. Most kids are similarly growing up in a world where their smartphone is their primary computer and their comfort level with mobile operating systems is drastically higher than their comfort level with legacy desktop/notebook operating systems. It is within this environment that I feel the iPad will find its sweet-spot.

Apple’s challenge is to make the iPad a somewhat new experience and one that challenges the idea of what you can do with a big-screen computer. While Apple is continuing to make solid improvements in hardware, it will truly be up to their software developers and broader ecosystem to buy into the vision and participate in creating the future. But within that thinking still lies a distinguishing observation about the way a person may perceive the iPad vs a notebook while they are shopping.

When you buy a Mac or a PC, you get the whole computer experience out of the box. You get the screen, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad. That is still not true of iPad. If Pencil can live up to its potential as the precision input tool of the future, then it is likely Apple would need to include this in the box at some point. Similarly, the Keyboard may need to be included. My concern is that the market may perceive the emission of these critical accessories as an admission by that it is not yet a full computer. They may look at the total price and justify getting a PC or Mac because it comes with all the inputs they need in the box for one set price. The iPad is really not a full computer, the way Apple wants to position it, without the Keyboard and potentially without the Pencil. Someday, if Apple hopes the market to perceive iPad as a whole computer it may be necessary to include all the critical components in the box.

After using the new iPad Pro, I’m more convinced than ever that Apple is heavily invested in continuing to advance iPad as the future. It has taken baby steps to get here, and will still take baby steps forward as it gets closer to reaching its full potential from a hardware, software, and accessory standpoint. But what is most interesting to me in this thinking, is how when I think about the traditional PC/Mac form factors it seems as though those devices have essentially reached their peak where iPad still has a lot of opportunities to grow and many future innovations in store.

The conventional wisdom is that the wireless industry has sort of stagnated. Differences in wireless coverage, data capabilities, and pricing have narrowed. Most smartphones are good, if not great, and even the latest flagship phones show more ‘small i’ than ‘big I’ innovation. It’s been awhile since there was a real blockbuster app. And IoT, while growing modestly, is still waiting for its breakout.

But fasten your seatbelts, because the 2019-2020 are going to be the most pivotal years in telecom in some time, setting the stage for the next phase of connectivity. Of course, 5G will be the headline story. Although we’ll see a handful of deployments before the end of this year, 2019 is when 5G gets going in earnest. That’s when 5G New Radio (NR) becomes commercially available, and true, standards-based 5G services are launched by all major U.S. operators. Additionally, during the first half of 2019, we’ll see the introduction of several 5G smartphones, although it will likely be 2020 before Apple announces a 5G iPhone.

By a year from now, all major U.S. operators will have rolled out 5G to a healthy number of major cities – each of them with a slightly different approach/strategy. There will also be 5G launches in several other countries – notably South Korea, Japan, China, and a handful in Europe. So we  should have a pretty good idea of what this first wave of 5G looks like, and whether there are any breakout business cases.

In the U.S., I’m expecting two flavors of initial 5G services: hot spots in cities that will deliver more of a wow factor on speed; and ‘coverage’ oriented 5G, such as what T-Mobile is planning with its 600 MHz-based launch, which will cover a broader geography but will look more like 4G Plus or 5G Minus. Also by this time next year, Verizon will have launch its fixed wireless access service in a multitude of cities, some of them on standards-based equipment, and we’ll have a much better sense of how well 5G mmWave works as an option for fixed wireless access and whether Verizon’s service is taking any meaningful share from the incumbent broadband providers.

And finally with respect to 5G, mmWave spectrum auctions are starting in November and will continue in waves through much of 2019. We’ll see if it’s just the rich getting richer or whether there are any potentially viable new entrants. There are also a large number of 5G spectrum auctions scheduled to occur in Asia and Europe. These will be pivotal in their own right, but will also influence the development of a ‘global’ 5G band and will put pressure on the U.S. to move on mid-band spectrum.

There will also be several developments next year that will set the tone for years to come. The 3GPP is expected to approve Release 16 in the 3Q-4Q timeframe. There are many key aspects here, among the most notable being Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC, say that five times quickly). This will be among the anchors for exciting new applications leveraging 5G, such as AR/VR, plus the other ‘pillars’ of 5G beyond Enhanced Mobile Broadband, such as industrial IoT and autonomous vehicles.

The launch of CBRS will also be an exciting development. In addition to introducing an innovative spectrum sharing infrastructure that could be a model for other countries and future spectrum auctions, we could also see a new model for indoor coverage and services. The PAL auctions for CBRS will occur later next year or in early 2020. This is also an area where there could be new market entrants, such as cable companies, wireless internet service providers (WISPs), and perhaps some of the more influential Silicon Valley types.

During 2019, we will also see further definition of the industry’s future structure, starting with the likely approval the T-Mobile/Sprint deal will be approved. This could trigger some other M&A activity, more broadly focused on the future of broadband than just relegated to the wireless sector. DISH will also figure in here. Even as it builds its NB-IoT network, we will know over the next 12-18 months whether its spectrum assets are acquired by another operator or whether it plans to build a wholesale 5G network, for which an anchor tenant (Amazon?) is needed.

If you’re not already out of breath, our eyes are also on the following:

• The launch of T-Mobile’s Mobile TV service based on the Layer3 acquisition. The OTT TV space is pretty crowded already, so T-Mobile will have to do something characteristically disruptive to make a mark.
• AT&T’s project AirGig. There have been some interesting trials. We’ll know more within a year or so as to the potential commercial viability of this technology.
• Small cell siting. A Battle Royale is shaping up between the feds and the municipalities regarding new rules on small cell siting (pricing and shot clock). The results here will have important implications on further 4G densification and how quickly high-band 5G is rolled out. The “U.S. Competitiveness” card could be a factor here, as other countries such as China and South Korea are able to get small cells deployed at a much more rapid clip due to a different model of ‘government involvement’.

Most importantly, within 12-18 months we’ll have a much better sense of what 5G really is and can do. This will set the stage for the development of other use cases beyond enhanced mobile broadband. The fixed wireless access piece is important as well. If 5G wireless can be a viable option for broadband, there could be a shakeup of cable’s near monopoly in that market. Who knows – maybe by 2025, a fair number of households will only have to pay for one broadband connectivity solution.

About a year ago, Dell sent me their newest 34- inch curved display to test. Up until then, I had a 24 -inch monitor at my desk, tied to my laptop. That monitor allowed me to see one app at a time and forced me to switch apps I was using for any given task regularly.

I found out quickly that with a larger widescreen monitor I could put three apps up on the screen and work with them as needed. On the left side, I have my email app. In the middle, I have Evernote, my go-to app for notes and writing first drafts of my columns. On the right, I keep a browser window open which, when writing allows me to check related info as well as peruse Twitter, Facebook and many other tabbed sites for use as needed.

That new monitor and the ability to work with multiple apps was a productivity game changer for me. And it has made my overall workflow much more comfortable as I can see activity on all of the open apps all of the time.

Last week, Dell added another curved display to their line-up, a new 49-inch model that makes it easy to add a fourth app to my viewing screen.

I have been testing it for a week or so, and this new 4K monitor is the best monitor Dell has ever brought to market. Besides having exceptional clarity and supporting 4K, its curved wide viewing angle makes it easy to see and use four apps simultaneously a breeze.

I may be a bit unusual working with four open apps at a time, although I know that in financial markets where they track stocks and multiple finance sites, having 3 or 4 apps open simultaneously is the norm. I suspect having four sites open at a time may be too much for mainstream users, but for me, it dramatically impacts my workflow.

What is interesting to me about this new Dell monitor and their overall commitment to creating world-class monitors in general, is the fact that they see monitors as an essential part of the workflow. To them, it is not just an accessory as so many monitors of the past have been positioned.

For Dell, this is a strategic product that is part of their commitment to PCs. This mirrors the way Lenovo thinks of PC’s as both companies use PC’s to help them with their enterprise businesses and are a critical front end to delivering applications, security and a host of services that extend their reach into business accounts. And they make monitors a big part of the PC experience as it is more and more becoming a valuable tool that is added to the PC workflow to enhance productivity. Dell was the top seller of Monitors in 2017 and should be number one again in 2018.

One other important thing about this monitor that was not in the 34-inch model I had before this is they have added USB-C to USB-C connections. When I installed the 49-inch model, I discovered the USB-C port on the back and assumed it was for other add-on’s or for charging mobile devices. But I plugged it into my laptop, and it immediately powered up this new 49 Inch display. Of course, it has all of the other video outputs such as HDMI, Display Port, and Thunderbolt support but the USB-C connection is a welcome addition since most mid to high-end laptops have advanced video cards and employ multiple USB-C ports.

This new 49-inch monitor from Dell is pricey, coming in at $1599. However, the 34 -inch version is a stellar option at $749. From personal experience, I can affirm that from a productivity standpoint, these large screen full displays were a game changer. It would be tough to go back to a screen that can only handle open app at a time anymore.

It is the eve of 5G. Over the next several months, all major U.S. operators will launch some flavor of 5G (Verizon has already quietly rolled out fixed wireless access in select neighborhoods in four cities). During 2019, we’ll also see some limited rollouts in South Korea, Japan, possibly China and possibly a couple of countries in Europe. You’ve all seen the hyperbole from one industry analyst or wireless trade organization or another – 5G will contribute X trillion to the economy, create X million jobs, catalyze entire new industries such as autonomous vehicles, and perhaps cure cancer while doing wireless remote surgery. While I’m optimistic about the prospects for 5G in the longer term, I think we’re in a particular period of pre-5G hype cycle, where a dose of reality is needed.  A key to understand is that it’s going to be very, very different than 4G.

First, a bit of history.  2G allowed for very basic data, and some services such as text messaging. 3G revolved around e-mail, limited web access, and some rudimentary applications/content such as ringtones and games, where operators were really the kings of the hill. But the beauty of 4G LTE, especially after a couple of iterations when one could count on getting 10 MB or better in most locations, was that it allowed for the near replication of the home or office broadband experience, with the beauty of mobility. It also unleashed a wave of innovative applications that leveraged mobile broadband with some of the unique aspects of the phone, such as ‘always with you/always on’, location, and so on. Uber wouldn’t exist without 4G, and companies such as Facebook and Google would be shells of their highly valued and very profitable selves.

But it’s going to be hard to justify the $150+ billion in planned investment in 5G over the next five years in the U.S. (spectrum plus capex) if it’s just a faster, better, more spectrally efficient version of 4G. Let’s face it: a typical 4G connection today (and the average is about 20-30 Mbps) allows you to do pretty much anything you would want to do on a mobile device. And the LTE roadmap in and of itself is highly compelling, with the kitchen sink of carrier aggregation/LAA/CBRS/MIMO/256 QAM firing on all cylinders. The gating issues, really, are coverage, congestion, and economics (throttling typically kicks in at 20-30 GB of usage/month).

So, here are some of the ways 5G is going to be different than 4G.

1. There are going to be multiple flavors of 5G. Initial mmWave deployments are going to be ‘5G hotspots’, sort of like a super Wi-Fi, focused on particular venues or geographic zones. 5G in the lower bands, such as that being rolled out by T-Mobile at 600 MHz, will be ‘coverage 5G’. I see this as extending the best of today’s 4G services, outside of cities – think ‘underserved’ locations for mobile broadband. The sweet spot is in the 2.5-4.0 GHz spectrum range, where over time and with additional spectrum allocations, could offer the holy grail of coverage and performance. Major operators will of course own assets across multiple bands, and over time there will be devices that support all these bands.
2. Operator Strategies are Less Monolithic. 4G evolved to, essentially, a mobile version of fixed broadband: $50 per month for unlimited service with an asterisk. 5G will allow the operators to differentiate. Verizon is using mmWave to compete more directly in broadband. AT&T has important DirecTV and content assets that are surely part of their 5G strategy. One can envision Sprint or ‘New T-Mobile’ offering a creative metro-oriented service leveraging their 2.5 GHz holdings.
3. Pricing Will be More Dynamic. It will be difficult to justify the 5G spend in order to merely maintain what has, essentially, been flat-ish revenue per subscriber (ARPU) for several years. As I mentioned in a recent column, operators will have to find a way to charge a premium price for premium services, particularly once certain milestones for coverage and performance are reached. There will be app-specific opportunities to offer variable pricing. Network slicing presents one of the most dynamic opportunities for 5G differentiation.
4. 5G Coverage Will Not Be As Ubiquitous as 4G. Today, some 90% of the U.S. population has access to LTE. The economics don’t work to build out 5G as broadly, particularly in the mid- and mmWave bands. LTE will be the primary coverage layer for the foreseeable future. The aspects of 5G that seem really different from 4G will be very hotspot- or limited geography – centric
5. There Will Be Overlap Between 4G and 5G. Continued advances in the LTE roadmap mean that the higher end of LTE performance (up to 2 GB) will feel very much like low to mid flavors of 5G, at a minimum. Repeating some history of 4G, operators might market the best of 4G LTE as 5G — certainly there will be overlap between the two ‘Gs’.
6. 5G Cannot Rely on Enhanced Mobile Broadband Alone. Operators mainly monetized 4G by getting the vast majority of smartphone users onto a mobile broadband plan. We will need new market segments to develop as 5G gets rolled out: IoT of various flavors, more specific enterprise solutions, machine connectivity – each with potentially substantial revenue streams. In fact, the ability to connect millions of IoT devices with different power and bandwidth requirements is one of key differentiators of 5G versus 4G.
7. Operators Will Have to Take Ownership. In 3G, operators sold Blackberries. In 4G, they sold mobile broadband data plans. For 5G, operators will have to build a sales, and marketing, and partner ecosystem to develop and grow the new market segments that will drive 5G. They’ll also have to be more proactive in developing applications, or working closely with partners, that will help them sell 5G ‘plans’. For example, while an operator might be able to sell you a higher speed data plan for a $10 per month premium, selling a ‘low latency’ plan or feature is a much tougher nut. Instead, operators will have to sell apps or experiences, such as a hot AR/VR capability, multi-player game, etc. that requires this ‘low latency’ capability.
8. 5G is being rolled out much more in phases than 4G was. Many of the most important 5G capabilities, embodied in 3GPP Release 16 (which is not expected to be finalized until late next year), won’t be commercially viable until the early-to-mid 2020s. These are some of the features that will allow for some of the newer and ambitious market opportunities, such as massive MTC, industrial IoT, or autonomous vehicles, where the new 5G core network is required.

5G will evolve very differently than 4G. It will come in phases, in a staggered fashion, in various flavors, and won’t be ubiquitous. I urge folks to not rush to judgement, or declare 5G a ‘failure’ if they’re not getting 10 GB on their smartphones in two years. Patience and a long view will be needed.

About 18 months ago, I was talking to my contacts in Hollywood, and they told me that Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg had become interested in short form videos. The word they used to describe his thinking was “short telenovela’s” that could tell an entire story in about 10-15 minutes. At the time I heard this news from these friends, the smartphone had been on the market for close to 8 years. Moreover, during that time, many had observed how people in Asia were using smartphones to watch locally created soaps on their way to work.

I have been on these commuter trains in Japan and Hong Kong and have observed this type of behavior, especially by Asian youth, as they rode the train to work each morning. Most have commutes of over an hour and before smartphones, they would either read or play handheld games on their way to work. However, once smartphones were able to deliver video, local short form video content became widely available, and most watch their soaps or segments of a movie or TV show on the train to their jobs.

Katzenberg is not the only one in Hollywood who was thinking about this idea of creating short-form videos. There are projects inside all of the major movie and TV studios who have been exploring this idea for a couple of years.

This week, Katzenberg and his partner, Meg Whitman, officially announced their new movie studio called “ Quibi” which is short for quick bites of content. Its primary goal is to create a short-form video for quick consumption when riding to work on public transport or standing in line at the DMV, or anytime or place what you can spare 10-15 minutes to watch one of these videos.

At Vanity Fair’s Establishment Summit last week, Katzenberg and Whitman announced their new venture.

According to Deadline Hollywood, “Katzenberg talked about his rationale for the startup, which has secured an initial round of $1 billion. He said people leave the house each day with a television in their pockets — their smartphones; and they are devoting 70 minutes a day watching videos from these ubiquitous portable screens.

YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snap all have created an appetite for mobile video and helped to establish a powerful daily habit. Now, mobile video is ready for its HBO moment — a time for a new player to step in and reinvent mobile video with high-quality content from Hollywood’s top talent.” For top talent, Quibi has tapped big-name filmmakers like Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro, and Antoine Fuqua.

Deadline points out that Quibi has big-name backers as well. This includes Disney, eOne, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, Viacom and Warner Media. Tech investors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Global and Madrone Capital.

When I initially heard about Katzenberg’s interest in short form videos, the snarky side of me called it “short attention span” theatre. However, over the last two years, I have found myself watching short video clips from Facebook videos and even short videos I found on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube when waiting in long lines and when I ride the train to meetings in San Francisco once in a while. However, most of the videos I watch are tied to things like music videos, America’s Best Talent or American Idol or things that are funny or amusing.

What Katzenberg and Whitman are doing is launching high-quality mobile storytelling in which an entire story is told in a relatively short time span. I see this as a significant inflection point in mobile computing history. We already know that 70% of video is already being consumed on mobile devices. Also, most of these videos in the west are like the examples I gave above. However, in Asia, this type of short form mobile storytelling has been going on for years.

Now Quibi is set to deliver high-quality video that will tell a story in a short “bits” or create short stories in the form of weekly episodes like what we already have on TV or as stories that can be linked together perhaps by chapters. More importantly, the shows from Quibi will be movie theater quality given the high powered movie directors who will create them. This will raise the bar for mobile video in that movie quality content breaks new ground and could change the mobile movie game field in useful ways.

Other companies are also doing some of their short videos. Digiday reported on why Netflix and Amazon are experimenting with short-form video earlier this year. Here is what they wrote:

“Netflix, for instance, announced this week that it will air a new documentary series from BuzzFeed News called “Follow This,” which will follow BuzzFeed News journalists as they report interesting stories. The show will span 20 episodes, with each episode running for roughly 15 minutes. Amazon, too, is venturing into short-form video. Last fall, it commissioned three original digital shorts from Funny Or Die through its Prime Video Direct program, which allows video creators of all types — including those that specialize in short form — to upload videos to the Prime platform. This was the first time Amazon funded any original and exclusive content through the Prime Video Direct program. Hulu, meanwhile, hasn’t picked up any short-form video series, but is exploring the format as part of its original content strategy, a source said.”

How successful Quibi will determine how this part of mobile storytelling develops and gets accepted by the masses. They will not compete with the short videos we already have on YouTube or Facebook Videos, much of which is user created. This represents a new phase in mobile video, and it will be up to the writers and directors to craft their stories in this short form format, which is no small task. I have consulted on movie and TV projects in the past with scriptwriters as a technical consultant and know how hard it is to write a screenplay, especially for television, where the content represents only about 22 minutes. Now they have to tell a story in under 15 minutes, and it will take new levels of writing skills and creativity to achieve this.

I see Katzenberg’s and Whitman’s new company as essential trailblazers who will be delivering movie quality storytelling for small screens. If successful, it has the potential of raising the bar on next generation videos we will consume, especially on smartphones, and could be the catalyst that pushes other serious video creators to new levels of quality and innovation.

Magic Leap this week held its first-ever developer conference called LEAPCon, where the company made a wide range of interesting and promising development and product announcements. But the company, its executives, and its partners also did something unique during the opening keynote: They asked developers not to merely rush into the creation of new content for the platform they call spatial computing, but to stop and think about why they are creating it, and what they can do to make it more inclusive.

New Platform, New Possibilities
Over the years, I’ve been publicly skeptical of Magic Leap’s ability to deliver upon some of the outsized promises it seemed to make around its technology. When the company’s first developer hardware kit, the Magic Leap One, shipped in August, many saw it as proof it had radically overpromised what it could do. I was a bit more forgiving, seeing it as the first hardware step on a long journey. At LEAPCon, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz and company did something equally important to shipping that first piece of hardware: They talked about the future they hope people will build with this new technology.

Abovitz kicked off the keynote by acknowledging something few CEOs would: a troubled world. “Today our world feels divided. It feels broken. Our new medium of spatial computing is fresh; it doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that are dominating the news today,” he said. “As a creative collective, we can refuse to perpetuate the baggage that weighs down traditional mediums that came before like radio, television, and film. They are great, but there is all this baggage. Spatial computing can be a safe haven, and a creative space to include all who respect each other.”

Abovitz then ceded the stage to his Chief Marketing Officer, Brenda Freeman, and CEO of Funomena, Robin Hunicke. Freeman noted that at present, the “magic verse” is a blank slate that affords creatives the opportunity to do things differently. To create an ecosystem that’s “vibrant, future forward, and culturally relevant.”

Hunicke acknowledge that the world today often feels overwhelming and uncertain and that people don’t always feel empowered to make change. “We are here today to talk and think and dream about adding a new dimension to our reality,” she said. “The possibilities are infinite, and the landscape of this work is fresh and new. It is relatively unexplored. This means the power we have to shape the future is incredible.” She went on to ask a question that not enough people in technology ask themselves: “What does that power mean, and how are we going to use it?”

“When platforms like radio, television, and film were first developed, diversity and inclusion weren’t part of the Zeitgeist,” she said. “When the internet, game consoles, and cell phone technology were first invented we were not yet quite honest with ourselves about how our unconscious biases would shape these new forms of communication, perpetuating stereotypes that alienate people from one another and sometimes from themselves. It may have been harder then to predict what such unbalanced representation in our creative, financing, marketing, and promotion structures would do to the industries that sprung up around these powerful technologies. Or how this unbalanced representation would tax our society long term. But this is no longer the case. We have a precious opportunity to ask ourselves some very important and difficult questions about what we build, why we build it, and who we build it for.”

“We can and should hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard,” she said. “To discuss and debate not just what is possible for the technology, or who will be in the marketplace, but what is ethical, important, and universal about this new dimension of reality.”

Thinking Before We Leap
It’s easy to be cynical about aspirational comments like these, especially when it comes from a company that’s hasn’t always lived up to some of the ideals being discussed. And we don’t have to agree with all the backward-looking cause and effects discussed to acknowledge that the technology industry often build new tools, platforms, and mediums without fully contemplating the impact they may have on the world. Too often, we build it because we can.

I’ve been talking about the possibilities of augmented reality for a few years now, and I continue to think this technology will have a world-changing impact. I’m an optimist, and I think that change can be for good, but there is no doubt that when we bring together the real world and the digital world this way, there is risk involved. This week there was a heartbreaking story about bullying on Instagram. Now imagine that happening on a platform where digital and physical worlds are merged together. And these are just kids; imagine what’s possible in the broader world with truly bad actors at work.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t create these technologies. It means we have to do so with open eyes. I find it heartening that Magic Leap devoted time at the beginning of its keynote to discuss these important topics. Will the company or the broader augmented reality industry always get it right? Probably not. But at least they’re thinking about these questions now, at the beginning, when there is still the opportunity to build it right the first time.

One of the better parts of working in the technology industry is that it transcends politics. Most of the time. With the advent of the tariffs that have progressively been put in place by the Trump administration on goods produced in China, that has shifted. What started with an emphasis on materials like steel has now muddied the water for the PC ecosystem, and in particular, the segment that depends on individual components like DIY consumers and enthusiast gamers.

The impact of tariffs on the final pricing of products for consumers in the PC space has been discussed for months at this point, with several component vendors proactively reaching out to the media. The hope is that by talking openly about the situation and how it might affect the market that we could prepare readers for the future they are going to be a part of, limiting surprise and anger. Or at least, redirecting it towards the politicians and policy makers rather than channel partners and manufacturers.

Coverage of the tariffs has been steady, but I would argue not aggressive enough. Outlets like GamersNexus have done a great job of laying out the details while also presenting the thoughts of hardware vendors telling their side of the story. Mainstream outlets like CNBC have also touched on the subject with a lean towards the financial implications to major players like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel.

The biggest component of concern when it comes to the tariff implementations is graphics cards. These are easily the most expensive products (on average) produced in China that will see price increases with the tariff implementation. NVIDIA and AMD will both be impacted to some degree, but it will be how they plan to work with board partners that produce, ship, and sell to the end-user that will be most interesting. It is well understood that NVIDIA and AMD make the majority of the margin in the graphics card and GPU pipeline, with companies like EVGA and ASUS making less than 10% (and supposedly MUCH less in many cases). The tariffs are technically imposed on the company that brings the goods into the US for sale, meaning that the board vendors are on the hook.

But graphics cards aren’t going to be the only casualty here. Most every level of component will have tariffs applied, from power supplies to computer chassis to motherboards. Even coolers and storage devices are on the list. This translates into higher import costs for companies like Corsair, NZXT, Gigabyte, MSI, and many others, throughout their product stacks. Expect to see higher prices that are passed on to the consumer because of these trade policy changes.

Impact of this might extend even beyond the components and companies with direct ties to the tariffed products. We saw a similar situation during the mining craze of 2018, where secondary components saw reduced demand and sales because higher prices on graphics cards were driving away upgraders and new system builders. I foresee the same thing occurring here – if the cost of graphics cards, motherboards, cases, and power supplies all go up by 10-25% in the next quarter, resulting sales of complimentary products like CPUs, memory, keyboards, and accessories could drop.

Interestingly, the tariffs in place with this third iteration of Trump’s policy do not affect complete, pre-built systems. This means that computers that ship from China with a case, GPU, power supply, etc. included and assembled are not required to pay the 25% import fees. Though not useful for large scale operations, it could be an avenue for smaller unit transactions to save.

For these vendors and manufacturers that now must balance the bottom line of their financials with the goodwill and consumer impact of big price hikes, there are only a few options they can consider. The first of which is a direct cost pass-through to the consumer. Rather than paying $400 for that new Radeon or GeForce graphics card, you should expect to see $500. Future product releases will likely include the tariffs in stated MSRPs, something that Europeans are familiar with because of VAT.

The short-term solution in the ramp up to the initial 10% tariff and the pending 25% tariff on these products was to import as much product from China prior to the tax implementation. Companies that had the capability were (and still are) ramping up production and shipping to hoard as many power supplies, cases, and motherboards as possible in stateside warehouses. But being the field that it is, technology changes quickly with new chipset, graphics processors, and designs releasing frequently. It’s near impossible to speed up development of something like a new line of graphics chips to prevent additional taxation.

A long-term option will be for these companies to move production facilities to countries other than China. Ironically, that is the goal of such a tariff, to encourage these vendors to manufacture more in the United States. But no company I spoke with, or that I have seen quoted anywhere else, has indicated that would be the best option. Instead I am hearing that board production will see increases in other Asian countries like Singapore, Vietnam, and even some increase in Taiwan. But this kind of move takes time, months at least, years perhaps.

For now, vendors appear to be pessimistic on the outlook for tariff resolution. Enthusiasts and DIY consumers are equally concerned about how this will affect them. For better or worse, this problem is much bigger than graphics cards and motherboards, and our market is simply caught up political storm of our time.