New Browser from RockMelt

Many of you may have seen this announcement from the founder of Netscape. It's a new browser called RockMelt.

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Will this have an impact on how we access the web? Does it change the dynamics between web versus app?

Apple Looks to a New Computing Era

Looking through the daily technology articles on the 'The New York Times' I came across this very interesting article by Nick Bilton titled 'Apple Looks to a New Computing Era'.

Recently, Steve Jobs presented the new MacBook Air and mentioned that these new 'Macbook Air' line will be the next generation in laptops. What he essentially means is that future Mac laptops or desktops will no longer have DVD or CD drives! They will be replaced by the iCloud where users will store all their videos, music, photos and important documents.

Apple has a lot at stake, by being one of the first to move into this space. Also Steve Jobs is very aware that there are many players eagerly waiting to get into this potential high-revenue space and no better than Google (which has essentially grown up in the cloud and created integrated services).

Last week it was reported by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, that they are ready to open a 500,000 sq-foot data center in North Carolina, worth $1bn, any day now which will act as the data storage for the iCloud. But Apple is being cautious about this launch, due its previous disaster of launching 'MobileMe'. Once this data center is launched, don't be suprised to find any number of cloud-based applications on your ipod, iphones and ipads!

What is most interesting is that we are at the brink of a major technology change which will once again change the landscape for technology and businesses. Personal storage will no longer be on our laptops but on data centres located in far off locations and maybe in different countries and continents. This does bring upto the issue of security but then nowdays how secure is the information we post on facebook or other social websites?

get paid to drive safely

Do you like to multitask while driving? SafeCellApp will PAY you to put down the phone. The new points-based program rewards you for every mile that you drive without distractions.

This app uses iPhone's GPS to track how many miles you've driven safely -- i.e., without talking on the phone or texting. Each mile driven safely equals one point, and 500 points can get you a $5 gift card to retailers like Amazon, Apple, and Macy's. For emergencies, you can press a big emergency button and make a call. And even though your GPS location is being tracked everywhere, you are supposedly the only one who has access to the details of your whereabouts.

At $12, SafeCellApp is considered pretty expensive for an app, but the idea is that you'll make it all back with safe driving. Although you'd have to (safely) drive a whopping 1,200 miles before you break even. Personally, I can't imagine this being an effective incentive to get people to stop calling/texting while driving. The only person I can imagine having the patience to drive without distractions for 500 miles is my mom, and she's the kind of person who would never pick up the phone while driving in the first place.

Apple overtakes RIMM

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This table provides a summary picture of where things stand. It does not explicate the relative roles of hardware manufacturers (who can be seen as resellers of devices on specific platforms) and OS providers (Apple versus RIMM versus Google versus Windows).  But, the trend for Apple looks interesting for sure.
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Verizon to Sell the iPhone in 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536191649347572.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

For those Verizon customers who have patiently waiting for Apple to manufacture a CDMA based, Verizon model, looks like your wishes have been granted. "Apple Inc. plans to begin mass producing a new iPhone by the end of 2010 that would allow Verizon Wireless to sell the smartphone early next year." This Verizon, CDMA based phone will officially mark the deal of AT&T's exclusive contract with Apple, and will allow current AT&T customers to switch over to Verizon.

Personally, I think it's about time Apple realized that they could expand their customer base by having an iPhone compatible with the Verizon, CDMA network. When this happens, are you going to be one of the first to switch network providers, or will you stay loyal to AT&T in anticipation of the next generation of iPhones? Has AT&T truly created lock-in? What will this mean to AT&T and the future of it's relationship with Apple?

RIM jumping on the tablet bandwagon

Today, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion announced their version of the tablet, the Playbook, which is due out next year. It will use a new platform, QNX Software Systems, instead of their BlackBerry 6 operating system and promises "an uncompromised Web experience."

But the question still remains, Can anybody beat the ipad? According to T. Michael Walkley's estimates (below), not likely.

RIM's Playbook will only be able to connect to the internet via Wi-fi though plans to offer 3G and 4G are in the works. No price has been announced for this product yet, though its 7 inch screen and 1GB offering will have to be priced much lower than the current Wi-fi 16GB that is going for $499.

Although tablets are increasingly more popular right now, for me, nothing beats reading a good old fashioned book.

Kindle Takes on the iPad

Has anyone seen the new TV commercial for Amazon's Kindle? It pretty much disses the iPad.

The ad shows a guy trying to use his iPad by the pool, without very much luck given the bright sunny day. He asks the girl next to him how she's able to read, and she responds: "It's a Kindle."

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I thought this ad was pretty interesting for 2 reasons:

1. The ad is a direct attack on Apple

2. The iPad has not established a significant presence in the ebook market yet. The main competitors are still Kindle and Nook.

It'll be interesting to see if Apple responds to this ad, or if they just let it slide!

Is Apple simply a cash machine ?

I came across a Fortune article, which seems to be against everything we have learned at school so far. In today's strategy implementation class it was repeated again: when you increase your market share you also increase your profits, partly due to economies of scale and partly to other joint effects. So how come Apple gains this "outrageous share of the mobile industry's profit", while only selling a tiny number of phones compared to the other manufacturers?

Apple gained 39% of the industry's profit share with 17m units sold, while the others sold about 400m devices to gain 32% of the profit share. While those figures are already impressive, have a look at the charts which a part of the article.
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I (Venkat) have embedded the picture below and it connects to what we discussed in class about the share of industry profits of Microsoft and Apple.

25 Years From Now: Why Google Will Outlive Apple

Tim O'Reilly's article on the Internet Operating System talks about a future of horizontal integration vs. vertical integration. Google will ultimately outlive Apple because Google is pursuing an integration strategy which makes Google an integral part of that operating system. Apple's integration strategy makes it temporarily successful in spite of that system, but at the expense of the company's long-term relevance.

As we all know and as O'Reilly reminds us, Apple has successfully pursued a strategy of vertical integration. With iPhone/iPad/iTouch/iPod/iTunes, Apple owns the hardware, the software platform, and the content. But Apple has also cultivated a strong brand - good, clean design, user-friendly, young, hip, intelligent, forward-thinking. The strength and cohesiveness of the Apple brand in people's minds is what has enabled Apple to succeed with a vertical integration strategy. Indeed, the core of any vertical integration strategy in information technology is a strong brand. To the extent that brand assets as powerful as Apple have proven difficult to replicate, full vertical integration will remain elusive to most, if not all, other technology companies besides Apple. This leads to an odd conclusion: vertical integration can never be an industry-dominant strategy in the world of information technology. There just aren't enough truly strong brands among large-scale companies to make it a broad phenomenon.

You could even argue that an essential element of Apple's brand is the company's gadfly, oppositional status - Apple can never be the dominant owner of most of our technological lives because Apple will always need a significant competitor to stand in opposition to. If it weren't for Microsoft being so easy to beat up on, Apple's brand might not evoke the white-hot intensity of feeling it does today.

The conclusion: Apple's success, and the vertical integration strategy so tied to its brand, are unreplicable on an industry-wide scale. Apple has been successful to date, and may continue to enjoy success for a while. But it will not define the industry in the future.

So what about Google? Google has demonstrated true mastery of the art of hedging. This mastery has enabled the company to evolve from super-fast search engine to technology industry idea-fount funded by ad brokering. And this same artful hedging lies behind Google's pursuit of *both* horizontal and vertical integration strategies. Android and Chrome represent the vertical strategy. Android is a software platform for mobile apps, and the Chrome browser is a software platform for web applications. Both platforms show that Google understands that owning front-end layers in the platform can help companies gain strategic advantage through exclusive interaction with more back-end layers. I don't think that Google knows whether this will end up necessarily being a successful strategy long-term. They just know that can afford to make both of these money-losing investments in order to position themselves intelligently should the industry develop in the direct of vertical integration.

But will it?

Never forget who owns the data. As O'Reilly points out, Google has amassed more potentially valuable data than maybe any other company on earth. And in an environment where horizontal integration is dominant, the owner of so much data sits in the catbird seat. In a horizontal world, success isn't about owning all the layers, it's about offering enough value to others within the *same* layer so that you become indispensible. If Google, with its enormous data assets, won't be indispensible to other parties who crunch data and deliver meaningful services using that data, I don't know what company will be.

This is also another way of saying that Google's ownership of so much data and data-collecting capability (which, by the way, Android and Chrome provide in spades) makes the company a critical component of The Cloud (the giant middle layer in a horizontal integration model).

In a world where businesses function more and more as nodes in a network, making yourself a critical component of that network keeps you relevant. Google understands this and is committing resources today to position itself for that emerging world. Apple is merely coasting on the admittedly impressive success of its vertical integration strategy. But this strategy is a sideshow to the growing trend of horizontal interdependence within an ecosystem of services. This is the larger future for which Google is preparing.

Competing in the Courtroom

As a company using advanced technology that is vital to your business model, how vulnerable can you be if you do not have a defensible patent position?

Before today, I had never heard of Interval Research Corporation.

In 1992, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, bankrolled this tech incubation lab with 100 million dollars. The goal was to create a "research setting seeking to define the issues, map out the concepts, and create the technology that will be important in the future...[pursuing] basic innovations in a number of early stage technologies and [seeking] to foster industries around them -- sparking opportunity for entrepreneurs and highlighting a new approach to research."

Interval Research was shut down in April 2000, but not before it had secured 300 patents, 4 of which are now owned by Interval Licencing LLC, a vehicle that Paul Allen is now using to sue Apple, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Netflix, YouTube and others.

One of these patented technologies allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers based on what they are currently viewing, another allows readers of an article to rapidly find related subject articles. The remaining two are related to what is happening peripherally to a user's main activity, such as flashing video images or updated stock quotes, news or ads.

If the patent infringement can be proved, the damages could be vast.

Incidentally, Amazon has been left out of the list of defendants, even though we know that one of Amazon's practices is to offer suggestions to consumers. I wonder if a strategic deal has been made, or if Amazon has a solid defensible position for its technology that does not infringe on Paul Allen's "patents".

So far, it seems that the defense that the sued internet companies are planning is based simply on the fact that Paul waited too long. It will be interesting to see if that will be enough to fend off the lawsuit.

If Paul Allen had sued a long time ago, it may have been harder to prove the monetary potential of the technology, which would affect the dollar value of settlements.

Here's a copy of the lawsuit filed:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/intervallicensingcomplaint0827.pdf

According to the Wall Street Journal, NTP, Inc, another licence holding company which successfully sued RIM in 2006 for $612 million dollars, is now suing Apple, Google, HTC, Microsoft and Motorola over infringement of 8 patents related to the delivery of email over wireless networks.

I find it very interesting that an innovative company that struggles to develop technology and make it work in the marketplace can remain so vulnerable if their technology can be proven to infringe on a patent held by someone else, and I am curious as to how executives at the likes of Google and Apple would approach innovation, if they know that "patent trolls" - companies that hold patents but don't do further development work - are waiting in the wings to pounce on their hard earned profit in the form of damages.

Why Apple Really Isn't Losing the Mobile Race

Since Google released the Android mobile operating system, observers have carefully watched to see when they would overtake Apple in mobile market share. It seems as if every month a report would come out showing how Google was quickly catching up with Apple and that it was only a matter of time until Apple fell behind in market share. The way it was reported, you would think market share was the only measure of success in the mobile OS industry.

In recent months, Apple has come under ever harsher criticism for restricting its devices to one carrier instead of opening them to all carriers as Google has done. Analysts predict at every product announcement event that “today will be the day Apple opens up the device on Verizon and other carriers”, but they are then surprised when Apple does not make the change.

However, when you look at the Apple’s track record for the past 30 years, people really shouldn’t be surprised by the strategy Apple is following. Apple likes to strictly control its products and partners. Every wireless carrier in the world would carry Apple devices if they could, thus giving power in that relationship to Apple. If there is a disagreement, Apple can always move to another carrier. If they opened it to everyone, they would lose their control over their partners. The last thing Apple wants to do is lose control over the relationship and its products.

Additionally, it is only recently that Apple became a mainstream brand – for decades, it was a product for professionals and the elite. They have never gone after huge market share, but rather for superior products and groundbreaking design. People pay more for Apple products in general because Apple (through Steve Jobs) gives them exactly what they need and not every possible feature available (as Microsoft does), creating a more clean and flawless experience.

Rather than wonder why Apple is losing the battle against Google, we should look deeper at what Apple is really doing and notice they are competing on a far different strategy than Google (and Microsoft). It is no accident that they have seen more growth over the past years and have a higher market value than both companies. Apple is looking out the windows laughing at the critics, because they know by the time everyone figures out their strategy, it will be too late to stop them.

Apple approves Google Voice App for iPhone App store

More than a year after rejecting the official and third-party applications for Google Voice, Apple has just approved GV Mobile for the iPhone. People can now visit the iTunes store and download the app for $2.99.

There is a lot of buzz online about what this new app means. Some are complaining that they don't understand what this app does, others are saying it's going to forever change the way they make calls, "with nsanely cheap international calling, a permanent phone number for life no porting necessary, free texting, synchronized phone records and sms's available online..."

Personally, I'd be curious to see how this changes (if at all) the rivalry between Apple and Google -- and how this impacts AT&T. Text and minutes overage charges are a significant source of revenue for cell phone service providers. I imagine this new app could have an impact on AT&T's revenues.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Apple-Approves-Google-Voice-App-for-iPhone-App-Store-699181/

iPad and digital content

As a former journalist who watched many newspapers disintegrate in the face of the Internet, I have been interested in how certain newspapers have succeeded and others have failed. The Wall Street Journal has a target audience who will pay for content. It can keep itself close, and has been doing very well financially. Other newspapers, like the Boston Globe have been hemorrhaging, because no one wants to pay.

I was particularly interested when I saw a Charlie Rose PBS special about the iPad and digital publishing:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10952
A big-time European media mogul was thrilled when the iPad came out. The reason: it uses a paying model for content. That means that his German newspaper could charge for content, and it would, charging only 10% less than the paper version.

Of course, Apple gets a cut when you subscribe. A big question is whether newspapers want to be at the beck and call of Apple and other device manufacturers. A bigger question is whether they have a choice.

What is 'SmartPipes' and why is it so important to telecom operators today?

'SmartPipes', today is a very hot area for wireless service providers/telecom operators (such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-mobile) because of the potential for revenue generation. Just to give you a background, currently all telecom operators in the US provide WCDMA technology, with data connection speeds of 5-6 mbps, to all handsets. The next generation of wireless communication will be provided through LTE (Long Term Evolution)/4G technology. What this means is that we will be able to get mobile broadband speed upto 100 Mbps on our mobile handsets. We would be able to stream movies, do video chat with friends, do online gaming and download apps to enhance our entertainment experience all at once. Currently telecom operators provide mobile broadband speed of only 5-6 Mbps, which shows that LTE/4G will completely change the end user experience.

The basic services provided by operators, prior to the launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007, were mainly voice and text. But with the iPhone, people were able to download apps which provided new features. People could watch videos, listen to music, surf the web and send emails. This made the iPhone a smart device and more commonly called a ‘smartphone’. Today many handset manufacturers (like Google, Nokia, Samsung, LG, HP-Palm) manufacture smartphones.

So how does this all tie into SmartPipes. Well, with handset manufacturers making smartphones and creating their own app stores telecom operators were not getting any part of the revenue pie. In essence, they were providing the connectivity to these smartphones, which in turn allowed users to download apps and all the money went to the content providers such as Apple and Google and some amount to the developers of the apps. So the telecom operators provided what was called the ‘dumb pipe’ experience since their network only provided good connectivity and high bit transfer rate. The challenge that many telecom operators are trying to address around the world today is how to move from being a ‘dumb pipe’ (and not giving away all their revenues to companies like Apple and Google) to becoming a ‘smart pipe’ and capturing a major slice of the services revenue.

'Smart Pipes', entails telecom operators to provide more value for every bit of data sent over their network. How can this be done, is much debated by analyst and experts in the market. Some of the common themes where we see them making money are by charging for data usage (since we have seen exponential growth in data usage with the advent of smartphones); creating their own app store; collaborating with other telecom operators to create a consortium of some sort (like GSMAOneAPI) where apps can be downloaded to any smartphone. All in all, they want to break the monopoly that Google and Apple have created in the App market. Also operators have an advantage in the services they can provide to users since they provide the connection based on the subscription plan the user chooses. Also they can provide great user experience through ‘quality of service’ and efficient network traffic handling.

Smartpipes is the future for telecom operators, since we already see that the US market has reached saturation on the number of subscribers. We also see that subscribers are spending less time on voice and more on data services. All this points to the fact, that operators need to focus their energies on getting a bigger slice of the services market by capitalizing on data usage.