Mobile Forward

Archives for July 2015

Microsoft’s Likely Path Forward with Smartphones

I’m sure you’ve heard: Microsoft is laying off approximately 7,800 employees, mostly in the handset division, which is primarily comprised of former Nokia employees.

Certainly a sad day for many good men and women from Nokia. I hope they take some comfort in knowing they’ve made a lot people’s lives better.

Here’s an excerpt of Satya Nadella’s email to employees:

In the near term, we will run a more effective phone portfolio, with better products and speed to market given the recently formed Windows and Devices Group. We plan to narrow our focus to three customer segments where we can make unique contributions and where we can differentiate through the combination of our hardware and software. We’ll bring business customers the best management, security and productivity experiences they need; value phone buyers the communications services they want; and Windows fans the flagship devices they’ll love.

Not sure why Nadella didn’t include more detail. Perhaps, at this moment, it would be a distraction from communicating the main decision. But then, again, the detail would have helped to convey the decision with far greater clarity.

In terms of the likely path forward with smartphones, here’s my initial take:

  • “Business customers” = One or two Surface smartphone models, intended for enterprise users.
    • Also intended to set a high bar in terms of mainstream specs and quality, but without the broad distribution and marketing that would threaten OEMs. Basically, it’s there if a consumer wants it, and if OEMs make crappy products. But if an OEM has a better product, sharper marketing, or wider distribution, they won’t lose consumer business to Microsoft.
    • Microsoft might be thinking that business customers will demand less hardware and software innovation, easing the pressure on Microsoft to out-do Apple. It sounds like, for now, Microsoft will be happy with Surface-like results (low unit sales, at a decent profit on a product basis).
  • “Value phone buyers” = Low-priced Lumia smartphones.
  • “Windows fans” = Choose your brand: Lenovo, other OEMs.
    • More likely to carry leading-edge components: “riskier” cameras, displays, sensors, materials, batteries, sizes, and forms than a Surface model.
    • More likely to carry lower prices than what Microsoft will offer with Surface. Reminds me of Xiaomi’s recent experiment with Microsoft. Basically — Xiaomi or not — imagine Xiaomi-like or Oppo-like quality (I’m not saying it’s great), but with Windows, at a competitive price.

Microsoft’s calculation is that it can rely on the Surface team and remaining handset employees to satisfy the first two sets of users. And rely on OEMs to attract anybody else, via: no license fee for Windows; no competition from Microsoft; “inspiration” on reference designs / capabilities from the Surface models.

Will it work? While I support the idea of a third major mobile OS, at this point it’s difficult to anticipate more than – to use the phrase I used above – “Surface-like results”.

Smartwatches: Awareness & Time Savings

Two brilliant insights and illustrations by Luke Wroblewski on Twitter. His Tweets are here and here. Below are screenshots, to make sure readers can also see them in RSS or email.

I agree: readily accessible situation awareness (as you want to define it) is a very core and unique benefit of a smartwatch. Add the ability to provide that awareness distraction-free, without the lure of other details or apps, and it’s outstanding. Overlay that with proactive intelligent assistance, and it’ll be priceless.

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Mobile Forward 00336 2015-07-08

You can read more of Luke’s thoughts at www.lukew.com.

Deeper Reasons Behind Samsung’s Smartphone Decline

Rob Price, for Business Insider:

Samsung used to have one killer draw: Its premium, big-screen devices. It offered a smartphone experience that even Apple — with its paltry-size iPhones, at least until 2014 — couldn’t match. But then the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus came out, and those phone have consistently stolen share from Samsung. The Cupertino company enjoyed the most profitable quarter of any company ever, while Samsung’s profits cratered.

And Steve Kovach, also for Business Insider:

There’s very little incentive for someone to buy a $650 Samsung phone over a $300 Xiaomi phone, especially in developing countries like China where most people can’t afford a high-end phones. And if someone does want to spend $650 or more, they’re better off buying an iPhone, which has a unique experience you can’t find on other phones. In fact, Apple has been crushing it in China since releasing the new big-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

These two drivers, in a nutshell, are behind Samsung’s recent decline. It lost its big-display advantage, and low-cost Chinese and Indian vendors have improved their quality, offering consumers higher value for the price. Additionally, it discarded two of its differentiators (removable battery, memory card slot) without replacing them with anything compelling. And it kept two additional ones (curved display, waterproof-ness) exclusive to other models. It stripped and divided its advantages.

And there are some deeper reasons for this

More importantly, though, Samsung didn’t build a consumer base as loyal as Apple’s. It had better products than some competitors, but often suffered from feature bloat, poor features, or complexity. So, while Apple retained loyal users even when it lacked big displays, and even when rivals offered good-enough alternatives, Samsung hasn’t been able to do the same. (At least not to the same degree.) And so now, when the company’s Galaxy S6 is lackluster, and when it hadn’t manufactured enough curved display Edge models, it didn’t have the loyal consumer base to survive unscathed. There’s a reason why Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned the term “switchers” (consumers switching to Apple) in the last Apple earnings call: Samsung and other mobile handset companies have failed to build meaningful loyalty in their high-value consumers.

Poor product management doesn’t linger for years without poor leadership

And there are some deeper reasons for this. The first: poor product management. Too many features, too little product definition. But poor product management doesn’t linger for years without poor leadership. And that is the root cause of Samsung’s decline. Poor leadership allowed the mis-use of Samsung’s capabilities:

  • Ability to offer excellent build quality / but in practice, models used creaky plastic
  • Curved displays / employed for side-UI purposes, rather than something more compelling
  • Excellent display quality / negated by over-saturated color settings
  • Excellent camera quality / bogged down by frivolous camera features
  • Ability to master the latest CPUs / marred by benchmark cheating scandals
  • An army of software engineers / wasted on paper thin or me-too features
  • A second army of software engineers / cast off to work on the Tizen OS
  • An army of hardware engineers / without the leadership to respond to Xiaomi
  • An army of research engineers / whose ideas are released too early and all at once
  • An army of designers / whose ideas count less than the opinion of the business administrator
  • Huge marketing budget / applied to, often, soul-less commercials

This is what lack of product management and lack of leadership looks like.

And if Samsung’s efforts in the next mobile device era are any indication (too many models; not enough refinement), things could get worse before they get better.

Search After the Search Box: Google Now

Mark Bergan, for Recode:

Chennapragada spelled out the three-pronged direction [for Google Now on Tap] — what she called the “bets” her team is taking. The first bet was embedding Now with Google’s full “Knowledge Graph” — the billions-thick Web of people, places and things and their many interconnections.

The second is context. Now groks both the user’s location and the myriad of signals from others in the same spot. If you enter a mall, Now will tailor cards to what people in that mall typically ask for. “Both your feet are at the mall. You shouldn’t have to spell it out,” Chennapragada said. “Why should I futz with the phone and wade through 15 screens?”

And this is where the third benchmark for Now comes in: Tying that context to the apps on your phone, or ones you have yet to download. In two years, Google has indexed some 50 billion links within apps. In April, it began listing install links to apps deemed relevant in search. Indexed apps will be included in Now on Tap when it arrives in the latest Android version this fall.

I’m looking forward to trying out Google Now on Tap.

Xiaomi Aims to Reshape Brazil Smartphone Market

Parmy Olson, writing at Forbes, on Xioami’s recent entry into the Brazil smartphone market:

Barra believes that Brazilians will change the way they buy phones though, and implies that’ll partly be because of Xiaomi’s presence. “By the end of this year, depending on who you ask, probably one out of every five phones sold in Brazil will be sold online. This is a similar number already happening in India where between 20% and 25% of smartphone sales are happening online. I think we had something to do this with this acceleration since entering the market last summer. Things will evolve. People will buy online.” […]

Brazil’s smartphone market is about half the size of India’s but it’s the fourth-fastest growing market in the world, meaning success here could make a meaningful impact on Xiaomi’s global sales. Barra concedes that Brazil is a challenging and “very competitive” market, and one where Samsung controls half of all smartphone shipments. But Xiaomi’s big selling point is its price. At $160 the Redmi 2 is half the price of comparable phones by the company’s local competitors in Brazil.

Xiaomi prefers online distribution; it helps Xiaomi deliver a lower price to consumers. Brazil is a good market for Xiaomi to try and replicate its online distribution success: it has high demand for smartphones, plenty of consumers that can access the Internet and pay for goods online, and a reasonable number that actually do. Now, Xioami may well end up using both on-line and retail channels, as it has in India. But the odds are also high that it helps shift a meaningful amount of demand to online channels.

On China’s Shift to Using Industrial Robots

Timothy Aeppel and Mark Magnier, for WSJ:

In 2013, Beijing outlined a 2020 goal of having at least three globally competitive robot makers, eight subcontractor clusters, a 45% domestic market share for Chinese high-end robots and a tripling of robot penetration to 100 per 10,000 workers. […]

“We think of [the Chinese as] producing cheap widgets,” but that is not what they’re focused on, said Adams Nager, an economic research analyst… China, he said, is letting industries that rely on lots of manual labor, such as clothing and shoe production, shift out of the country to focus on capital-intensive industries such as steel and electronics where automation is a driving force. […]

One reason China will continue booming is because it has relatively low “robot density,”[…].

Robert Hackett, for Fortune, provides robot density for several countries:

At the moment, China has 30 industrial robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers—about double what it had in 2013.

In comparison, South Korea has the world’s highest robot density at 437 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, which is about 15 times greater than China’s. Japan’s is about 11 times greater than China’s; Germany’s is 10 times higher; and the United States’ is about three times higher.

More here.

Interview with the President of the University that Turned Israel Into a Start-up Nation

Peter High, writing at Forbes, interviews Paretz Lavie, president of the Isreal Institute of Technology, also known as Technon. Lavie explains how the university has become a hotbed of entrepreneurship:

I have been asked this question many, many times and I have come to the conclusion that a world class university that plays such a major role in the economy of its environment or its state must have three ingredients: excellent students, excellent faculty members, and this is obvious, but it must have also a third ingredient and it is not so clear when you think about universities. This is a statement of mission. A mission statement must be part of the DNA of the university. […]

Being entrepreneurial and being innovative is affected by a multitude of factors. First, how the student or the entrepreneur is educated. The ability to take risk or the ability to sustain failure is very important. Remember, among startups only one in ten is successful. Some entrepreneurs are successful only in their seventh or eighth attempt, so you must be resilient to failures. The need to achieve is very important. These are characteristics of sometimes immigrants as you said yourself, or people who need to live in an environment or a neighborhood that constantly challenges them. What you can do in order to direct them or to make them a better entrepreneur is to give them some tools. You can provide them with role models, and this is what we are doing in the Technion […]. […]

You cannot rely on your own knowledge, you must bridge different areas. So most of the research centers in the Technion now are interdisciplinary.

Casio Bets on a Watch That Is Smart

Megumi Fujikawa, for WSJ (below). Bold emphasis is mine.

The maker of the G-Shock series is betting its expertise as a watchmaker will help it outmaneuver the technological wizardry of the Apple Watch with a smartwatch that keeps an eye on the mass market’s need for comfort and durability. Casio says its product will be a watch that tries to be smart, rather than a smart device that is also a watch. […]

Now, [said Casio founder, Kazuhiro Kashio,] “we are trying to bring our smartwatch to a level of watch perfection: a device that won’t break easily, is simple to put on and feels good to wear.”

It seems Casio will essentially add very basic connectivity and information features to a watch. I honestly don’t know if that’s the right approach for Casio. Maybe it’s a good fit with their technology capability; I don’t profess to know.

But what I would say is this: If you don’t think of a smartwatch as a general computing device, you risk making the equivalent of a “feature watch”. Your product will definitely appeal to some users, but you’ll miss the transition to a new class of device, a new way of helping people every day.

I do, at one level, agree with Mr. Kashio’s remark about “feels good to wear”. I like my Apple Watch, for example, but the thing I miss most about my old “diving” watch is its rugged-but-classy face. Over time, however – with custom watch faces and new industrial designs – I expect the concern will fade. And it’s almost a moot point, since the issue won’t keep me (and many watch wearers, I think) from leaving their old watches behind.

Voice Messaging Could Be ‘Killer’ App

Teresa Rivas, at Barron’s Tech Trader Daily, cites a note from UBS analysts Steven Milunovich and Peter Christiansen, below. The article is about Apple Watch, but it applies, more generally, to mobile devices. Bold emphasis is mine.

Voice messaging a “job to be done”: A year ago we suggested that voice could become an important aspect of the Watch. At WWDC Apple introduced voice messaging capability to Messages in iOS 8. With iOS 7 a message can be dictated, but it is sent and received as text. In iOS 8 a new microphone button is touched, a message recorded, and the screen swiped to send. When we visited with Tim Cook, he said that walking down streets in China one sees people speaking into their phones sending voice rather than text messages. Porting this capability to the watch makes sense as it is easier to send a voice message from a device already on the wrist than pulling out a phone. It also could aid penetration of China, which Cook said has a ways to go.”

Technology increasingly regional: In the US, adults hold the phone to their ear (or wireless equivalent) while kids prefer text over talk (ours refuse to answer the phone). But countries differ. An article in Motherboard says, “On any given block in Buenos Aires, you are likely to see someone speaking into their phone but not on it; talking to someone, but not necessarily with anyone. In reality, most people are perpetually sending voice memos to one another.” Argentinians are choosing voice memos over texting using less expensive WhatsApp rather than SMS.

Sending voice can be faster than texting when the content is long, complicated, or requires special emphasis. It’s also very useful when text-to-speech doesn’t work well, or at least doesn’t work well on the specific content the user aims to send. It’s also easier to do if the user’s hands are busy.

Rumored Apple Auto Project is Now Rumored to be Siphoning Staff from Other Divisions

Shaun Nichols, for The Register (below). Take it with a grain of salt. Still interesting to consider, though.

Apple is investing significant resources into a car-related project, so much so that it’s been reassigning employees from other divisions, insiders claim.

Sources familiar with the matter told [The Register] that Apple has shifted so much staff towards its auto division that senior managers in other divisions are complaining about the loss of talent from their teams.

Remember, sometimes sources aren’t that great – see here.

Xiaomi’s “Pick Mi” Service for Device Servicing

One of the interesting facets from Xioami’s launch in Brazil is its “Pick Mi” service (below). Curiously, it’s aimed at product service. TBD if Xiaomi intends to expand its scope to include home delivery. Note that the language is generic, referring to “devices”, rather than only to smartphones. A simple nod to the fact that Xiaomi sells a range of consumer electronics.

From Xioami’s press release (at the bottom of this link):

As Xiaomi hits the ground running in Brazil, it is offering a unique home pickup service called “Pick Mi”. This allows users to send in devices for servicing when necessary, without having to leave their homes. Details are available on Mi Brazil’s official website.

A Strong CTO and a Strong VP Engineering: A Winning Formula

Fred Wilson, writing on his blog AVC.com:

A VP Engineering is ideally a great manager and a great team builder. He or she will be an excellent recruiter, a great communicator, and a great issue resolver. The VP Eng’s job is to make everyone in the engineering organization successful and he or she needs to fix the issues that are getting in the way of success.

A CTO is ideally the strongest technologist in the organization. He or she will be an architect, a thinker, a researcher, a tester and a tinkerer. The CTO is often the technical co-founder if there is one (and you know I think there must be one).

When a company has a strong CTO and a strong VP Engineering that trust, respect, and like each other, you have a winning formula. The CTO makes sure the technical approach is correct and the VP Engineering makes sure the team is correct. They are yin and yang.

Uncoupled Wireless Charging

Sarah Buhr, for TechCrunch:

Energous’ WattUp is a wireless charger for electronic devices. It can charge your cell phone and other battery-enabled devices on the go using something that is already abundantly flowing all around us – radio waves.

There are several companies approaching this same problem in different ways. Nikola Labs presented at TechCrunch Disrupt a couple years back with the same idea – turning radio frequency signals into battery power. Energous told us that their tech will be ready for the consumer market [in late 2016, early 2017].

Hopefully. Whether or not this particular approach is best, it helps to get a sense of what different companies are pursuing.

The video from the article is worth watching. Embedded below.

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