Mobile Forward

Do We Need New Designs for Mobile Devices?

Several interesting bits today, loosely related to new form factors. Most of them evoke a need, rather than a solution, but they’re still interesting.

[With the Galaxy S6 Edge display] Samsung discovered a latent appetite for new, interesting mobile designs, even ones without a lot of practical value. Samsung Has Two Big New Phones, and Even Bigger Ideas (David Pierce; Wired)

The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. […] They’ve fallen out of favor because using the telephone feels mechanically ungainly as much as socially so. Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone (Ian Bogost; The Atlantic)

Language like “interface-free” and “invisible UI” point up just how stuck we are on the idea of VISUAL interfaces. (Josh Clark, @bigmediumjosh; Twitter)

Beyond the antenna designed for a smartphone, Apple notes that the design could also relate to Apple Watch, a MacBook an iMac, an iPad, iPod, gaming device or health monitoring device, and so on. Apple Designs Advanced Wireless Antenna with Unique Sapphire Structure for Killer iPhone Form Factor & Beyond (Jack Purcher; Patently Apple)

That second snippet sounds a bit obvious, in that everything needs to be carried before it’s used. More broadly, though, it prompts ideas about other form factors, including wearables.

Why HTC Struggles

HTC continues to struggle.

HTC has trouble making a profit. That’s because it doesn’t have any sort of advantage. And it doesn’t have any sort of advantage because it fragmented its resources, for years. It probably did that because it didn’t have an identity. It began as a company that built phones for others’ brands and evolved into an intermediary between component vendors, OS makers, and operators. It never seriously sought to control the fundamental technology, deliver product directly to consumers, or build exceptional manufacturing.

That drive to do something different — critical to identity – never existed at HTC, at least not in its leaders. HTC existed, like many companies, to make money. Ironically, that makes it harder to make money. Because without a drive for technology control, customer interaction, or manufacturing excellence, it’s very hard to undertake something unique – to deliver differentiated products, to serve some customers especially well, or to deliver the same product but at a superior cost. I’d never blame the employees. I’m sure they were eager to fulfill a good mission and follow a good strategy.

Allow me to illustrate HTC’s situation. The slides below show how companies can compete and how critical it is to build a sustainable advantage. I’ve found this view, based on Michael Porter’s work, very valuable. Precise positioning of companies on this view is tricky, so think of it this way: if you’re not at an extreme (left, right, bottom), you can’t make money. Even the companies that aren’t fully “stuck in the middle” have trouble, but I’ll leave that discussion for another day.

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Back to the issue of resource focus: It took HTC until 2012 — that’s five years after Apple had announced the iPhone — to focus its R&D on a flagship device, the HTC “One”. But it was a false focus. “One” products were, ironically, many. And HTC kept fragmenting its R&D by continuing to launch mid-tier and low-tier smartphones.

HTC didn’t want to focus on (commit to) differentiated products. And it didn’t want to commit to building a low cost advantage. (It’s not alone in this: count BlackBerry, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft and others in this camp. In a nutshell, if you don’t control key hardware, software, or manufacturing (at-scale), you find it hard to commit to any direction – they’re all hard.)

The visible slide down (in HTC’s financial performance) started in 2011 when the iPhone reached Sprint, a key HTC customer. By 2013, the end was a foregone conclusion (its financial resources and installed base were critically low), and now we’re seeing its last gasps. The end is likely near. I wish all of its employees the best of luck. I hope they can find a place and a role where they can thrive.

Monday Assorted Links

1. On recent rumors of an Apple MVNO: two thoughts, from John Gruber and Jean-Louis Gassée, sum up the reality perfectly, in my view:

Apple is a partner with all the carriers around the world that support iPhone. They can’t compete against them while partnering with them. (link to Gruber’s post)

“[Apple’s] one and only goal is selling devices. Everything else is in support of that goal. Would [an Apple wireless carrier] sell twice as many iPhones? Probably not.” (link to Gassée’s post)

2. Samsung Invents another Round of Concepts for future Smartphones with Multiple Displays. Exciting. Glad to see someone tackling this problem. This is one of many patents Samsung has filed. The specifics of this one don’t matter as much as the notion that Samsung (and others) are working to make this a reality. Someday.

3. Xiaomi ties up with Taiwan’s Foxconn to assemble smartphones in India. This aligns with Xiaomi’s focus on cost reduction (because it sells at razor thin gross margins) and helps it pursue the hearts and minds of consumers.

4. HTC stored user fingerprints as image file in unencrypted folder. Lovely. Reminds me of one of the six reasons I’ve used an iPhone since the 3GS: industrial design, ease of use, camera, apps, software updates, and … security.

6. Back to the future: Nokia prepares for mobile comeback. Increase in hiring / activity, in preparation for 2016/17 brand-licensing comeback.

6. Graava is a new action camera that does the editing for you. Watch the two minute video. I like the idea of it. I don’t need the actual product, though. Will we ever see something comparable in a smartphone? It reminds me of HTC’s “Zoes”.

Waiting for Android’s Inevitable Security Armageddon

Ron Amadeo, for Ars Technica:

Android was originally designed, above all else, to be widely adopted. Google was starting from scratch with zero percent market share, so it was happy to give up control and give everyone a seat at the table in exchange for adoption. […]

Android still uses a software update chain-of-command designed back when the Android ecosystem had zero devices to update, and it just doesn’t work. There are just too many cooks in the kitchen: Google releases Android to OEMs, OEMs can change things and release code to carriers, carriers can change things and release code to consumers. It’s been broken for years.

I couldn’t have said it better. The headline seems apt, too. I usually don’t write about security. 1) My experience is limited; 2) iOS isn’t perfect, either; and 3) it’s not quite a dynamic, cutting-edge topic. But the number and scale of issues on Android is getting ridiculous. Google made the trade-off between rapid scale and solid security. Scale won. And so “open” is now also a double-entendre.

Sunday Assorted Links

Still digging out from vacation. Lot of interesting developments.

1. Huawei, Xiaomi to hike adoption of in-house-developed smartphone APs. I think they’re focused on reducing their component costs, and on diversifying or securing supply, rather than on any sort of performance boost. An interesting excerpt, however:

Xiaomi and Huawei’s strategy is expected to directly impact AP providers such as MediaTek and Qualcomm. Within the global top-5 smartphone vendors, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and LG, which together contribute over 60% of worldwide shipments, four of them have already adopted in-house developed APs or have been aggressively increasing their adoption, which could seriously damage independent ARM-AP suppliers as well as x86-based solution supplier Intel.

Note, however, that Leadcore, the AP manufacturer working win Xiaomi claims that “Xiaomi wants its own custom-designed processors to differentiate its products and control its destiny“. I think that’s a bunch of marketing spin, and the “differentiation” is really a cost focus.

2. Microsoft Launches ‘Translator’ Free Apple Watch App. I haven’t tried it yet. In principle, sounds like a good idea; a good fit with the fact that a smartwatch is, in my view, essentially a tool. And it’s not surprising that Microsoft has a team(s) working to quickly deliver apps for Apple Watch.

3. Big Android Makers Will Now Push Monthly Security Updates. … because there’s something magical and comforting about the nice, round 30-day number?

4. Michael Lopp (Rands in Repose): “Busy is a bug, not a feature.” I suppose it depends on the role. I agree that for a leader to be continuously busy, or “too busy”, is not a good sign. Though it is more complicated than that (“war time” vs. “peace time”, etc.). Michael is now at Pinterest. Another interesting part:

“It’s gonna sound like I’m lazy but I swear I’m not lazy,” he says. “My job is to get myself out of a job. I’m aggressively pushing things I think I could be really good at and should actually maybe own to someone else who’s gonna get a ‘B’ at it. But they’re gonna get the opportunity to go do that [and continue to learn in the process]. My job is to — it sounds like I just want to sit here and drink coffee and talk about bread — but it’s about pushing it down, so these things, which naturally come to me [go to others in the company].”

5. Smartphones are hurting our children – but the real culprit is bad parenting. The headline says it all.

The New Moto X

David Pierce, for Wired:

What’s most powerful about this phone is that it’s being sold unlocked, for $399, and will work on any carrier in the United States. It supports every band of LTE, so all you have to do is pop in whatever SIM card you want. This is how phones work in the rest of the world, and a much better system. […]

In most other ways, the X is the same phone as always. It uses a nearly untouched version of Android, save for a couple of genuinely great additions like the always-on Moto Display and the touch-free Moto Actions. […] You can customize it with Moto Maker, which offers options like bamboo and leather. Unless something catastrophic and strange has happened, the Style is going to be a very good phone.

If you’re looking to buy a new Android smartphone, I recommend the Moto X Pure Edition (known as the Moto X Style outside the US).

Microsoft, Capitulation and the End of Windows Everywhere

Good words by Benedict Evans, from Andreessen Horowitz, on his own blog, ben-evans.com:

Though a big part of Microsoft’s mobile strategy has been to push towards common code across Windows on the desktop and on mobile, so that it’s easy to write apps for both at the same time, in practice that’s largely irrelevant. The apps that people want on smartphones are not being written for desktop Windows anyway. Uber doesn’t have a desktop Windows app, and neither does Instacart, Pinterest or Instagram. […] You can’t tempt developers to support Windows Phone by saying ‘it’s easy to deploy your desktop app to mobile’ if there is no desktop app. So Windows is not a point of leverage for Microsoft in mobile. […]

So, Microsoft has missed mobile […]. […]

The smartphone is the sun and everything else orbits it […]. […]

Microsoft has two huge, profitable businesses in Windows and Office: they will slowly go away, so how do you use them to create something new? Instead of every new project having in some way to support Office and Windows, how do you use Office and Windows to support the future? […]

I don’t have a complete sense of what that looks like, but admitting defeat [as Microsoft has done by drastically scaling back its smartphone efforts] is the first step to working it out.

Samsung Unveils the First Monitor that can Wirelessly Charge Your Phone

Emil Protalinski, for VentureBeat:

Samsung today unveiled the SE370, claiming it’s the first monitor with an integrated wireless charging function for mobile devices. […]

Here’s Samsung’s pitch: The SE370 “declutters work areas by doing away with unnecessary cables and ports needed to charge mobile devices.” More specifically, the monitor works with all mobile devices that use the Qi wireless charging standard. […]

Unfortunately, Samsung didn’t provide timing or pricing for the SE370. Chances are it will be available before year end though, and hopefully won’t cost more than your actual desktop computer.

I like the idea.

Apple, Samsung in Talks with Telecom Groups to Launch e-SIM Card

Daniel Thomas and Tim Bradshaw, for the Financial Times:

Last year, Apple revealed its own Sim card for its latest iPads. However, it was supported by only a handful of operators such as T-Mobile and AT&T in the US, and just EE in the UK. Those familiar with its UK rollout said that it had not been widely adopted.

The electronic Sim is not expected to replace the Apple Sim, a piece of plastic that fits into a device and could be included in the next generation of iPhones.

e-SIMs in phones? Sure. So that you don’t have to swap SIMs? Okay. So that you can dynamically change between carriers? Maybe. But there’s a more interesting thing to think about.

What device is so space-constrained that, today, carrying a SIM card is prohibitive? Keep a watch out.

And if a device has a SIM card, what else does it need to make use of it? Please radio it in, when you find out. More (but not very much) on all this at a later date.

Apple Performance in Calendar 2Q 2015 – Highlights

Several excellent Tweets captured highlights from Apple’s earnings call. Some Tweets are metrics-focused, but all these analysts and writers have deep quantitative and qualitative insights. Below are screenshots, to make sure RSS and email readers can see them.

Horace Dediu, who runs and writes Asymco.com, and who also works at the Clayton Christensen Institute (Tweet link):

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Eric Smith, at Strategy Analytics (Tweet link):

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And about the iPad (Tweet link):

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Daniel Eran Dilger, who writes for Apple Insider (Tweet link):

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Neil Shah, at Counterpoint (Tweet link):

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From Ryan Reith, at IDC (Tweet link):

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Finally, nice charts by Dan Frommer, for Quartz. Nice transcript of Tim Cook’s comments by Jason Snell, for Six Colors.

Apple’s Approach to Updating the iPhone’s Industrial Design

Good words by John Gruber, on Daring Fireball, about the iPhone’s industrial design:

I think Apple’s logic is that they want top-tier iPhone industrial designs to sit atop the lineup for two years […].

Keeping the same industrial design for two years serves multiple purposes:

  • It recoups the hard work put into design. During this time, designers can focus on developing better ideas for the next generation of products. Remember, design isn’t just the “look”; it’s also the functionality. Considerations like display size, button placement, material selection for durability and radio transmission, heat dissipation, acoustics, waterproofing, and more.
  • It allows for a similar hardware configuration inside the device, because the dimensions remain the same. This minimizes changes to the shape and layout of the circuit board, the antenna placement, the battery shape, etc. In turn, this makes efficient use of Apple’s massive investment in manufacturing. Engineers and supply chain experts can shift their attention to new consumer needs and new technologies to address them.
  • It allows many customers who like the design, but who aren’t able to upgrade when the first version debuts, to purchase it in year two. And the people who do buy the first version of any design don’t feel, one year later, that their model is out-dated.

Basically, solving important problems is intense work, and Apple wants to maximize the return for the time, investment, and risk.

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Update: To improve readability, I shortened the introduction of this post, by removing the reference to Jason Snell’s article and reducing the excerpt from John Gruber. That content wasn’t directly related to the rationale for a two-year design cycle.

On Xiaomi: Imitation is a Choice, Sameness is an Opportunity

Emily Chang, for Bloomberg, interviewed Xiaomi SVP Hugo Barra. Hugo had some interesting things to say:

So this whole [accusation that Xiaomi copies Apple] all boils down to one chamfered edge, on one particular phone model, which was Mi4, which people said looked like the iPhone 5.

Judge for yourself, about this “one” product: here, here, or here.

If Jony Ive and his team — who are the most constrained to continuity in the iPhone’s design language — can make the latest major generation of iPhones look different from the last major generation, then so can any other OEM. Imitation is a choice. Different design is possible. It just requires leaders with fortitude and integrity.

On that note, congrats to the Nokia and Microsoft industrial design teams, who cared to be original and succeeded with great designs: the N9 and the Lumia series.

But Hugo had more to say:

Without a doubt every smartphone these days kind of looks like every other smartphone, right? You have to have curved corners. You have to have at least a home button, in some way. That’s how interaction design works.

Sounds like an opportunity to me – an opportunity to be different in a sea of look-alikes. This difference can range from the small to the large: industrial design details, form factor, or even product type. Think of the beige boxes that PC makers shipped before Apple introduced the iMac. Or the candy bar phones before the Motorola RAZR.

Moto G (2015) to Offer MotoMaker Customization

Interesting Tweet from Evan Blass, here. Below is a screenshot, to make sure readers can also see it in RSS or email.

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Letting consumers pick the color, finish, or material of their device is cool – that’s MotoMaker. And now it’s coming to a very budget-friendly product.

I have great respect for the mobile phone makers that make affordable devices for billions of people who, otherwise, might not have one. To echo the title of this site, they move mobile forward in a big way. Motorola, and the Moto G product, are great examples of companies and products that do this. And the thing about a product like the Moto G is that you don’t need a case. It’s very durable.

Tip of the hat to Andy Ihnatko, for voicing a similar sentiment – about making affordable devices – on one of my favorite podcasts.

Apple’s Share of Smartphone Operating Profits Reaches 92%

Shira Ovide and Daisuke Wakabashi, for WSJ:

Apple Inc. recorded 92% of the total operating income from the world’s eight top smartphone makers in the first quarter, up from 65% a year earlier, estimates Canaccord Genuity managing director Mike Walkley. Samsung Electronics Co. took 15%, Canaccord says. […]

Apple’s share of profits is remarkable given that it sells less than 20% of smartphones, in terms of unit sales. […]

Neil Mawston, executive director at market researcher Strategy Analytics, said many Android vendors are stuck between low-cost, high-volume brands such as China’s Xiaomi Corp. and Apple’s premium smartphones.

You can compete on the basis of making differentiated products or on the basis of making low cost products. Successful execution of either approach is difficult and expensive. You’re either investing in technology development and the customer experience, or you’re investing in lowering your costs across your business and supply chain.

Most smartphone OEMs never wanted to invest enough to operate at one extreme or the other. “Too expensive” or “too risky” was probably the prevailing thinking. And so their products aren’t differentiated enough, and their costs aren’t low enough to enable a profit. They’re stuck in the middle. That’s a pretty expensive and risky place to be.

Put differently, if you don’t take on risk, eventually your competitors will deliver it to you.

Samsung Adjusts its “Pre-Empt and Out-Size” Launch Tempo

Jonathan Cheng, for the WSJ:

[Samsung] will move up the autumn launch of its oversize smartphone lineup by several weeks to mid-August, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The South Korean company’s move is part of a bid to give its Galaxy Note smartphone-tablet hybrids some breathing room before mid-September, when Apple Inc. typically unveils its refreshed iPhone—a product whose popularity has the potential to monopolize media and consumer attention for weeks.

[Last year] Not only did the iPhone 6 Plus’s 5.5-inch screen rival the Galaxy Note 4’s 5.7-inch screen, the new iPhones were unveiled six days after the Galaxy Note 4 was introduced on September 3. The Galaxy Note 4 went on sale just weeks after the new iPhones.

Despite my earlier post about Samsung’s product management, the company has taken several effective actions over the past several years, and this move is a related adjustment.

What prior actions am I referring to?

  • It was the first Android OEM to develop a global flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S, in 2010. It took other Android vendors years, in some cases, to realize they couldn’t have their A team work on 40 – 80 different products per year. And that they couldn’t fragment their sales team time and media spend, either.1
  • It took inspiration [a euphemism] from the iPhone to a much higher degree than other Android OEMs. It’s not a move I respect but, in retrospect, it was very effective. Court fines were a fraction of what market losses could have been.
  • It ramped up its media spend. Good products deserve good marketing (or at least an attempt). It took other OEMs time to realize that if you concentrate your product risk into one product, you need to back that product with media. HTC learned that the hard way.
  • Samsung created the phablet. Great move. I don’t know if it was anticipatory or an experiment, but it really doesn’t matter.
  • Finally, with both a mainstream flagship (Galaxy S) and a phablet flagship (Galaxy Note), it decided to book-end the iPhone’s annual launch. Each year, it introduced the Galaxy S in the spring and the Galaxy Note in the fall. Its intent was to capture new smartphone users and iPhone-defectors (few) prior to the iPhone’s launch, and then to offer something different (larger display) after the launch, with the Note. In a nutshell, it was a “pre-empt and out-size” tempo.

These actions worked. Samsung was the only smartphone maker to earn a profit, other than Apple. For many quarters, Apple would earn approximately 60% of the profits in the handset industry, and Samsung would earn approximately 40%. (Other companies’ profits were minimal, or negative.)

But then something changed. Apple finally introduced a larger-display smartphone, the iPhone 6 plus. Now, the “out-size” aspect of the tempo no longer makes sense. And Apple’s share of profits has climbed to 92%. So Samsung is focusing on the “pre-empt” aspect, by moving up the launch of the Galaxy Note line.

Will it make a meaningful difference? Perhaps, in a small way. I’m sure Samsung’s done the math; looked at when consumers in the US and other markets are most likely to upgrade their handsets. The August timing might align with that. And, as the smartphone market saturates, many of the late adopters aren’t loyal to particular brand, including Apple. So, an earlier Note launch might attract some of these consumers. But, fundamentally, this is a tactic; it doesn’t change the drivers of Apple’s or Samsung’s fortunes. Apple has excellent hardware and software, and an excellent ecosystem. Samsung just has really good hardware. That’s why Apple is number one in profit, and Samsung is number two. This move won’t change the overall situation.

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1 Samsung, itself, continued launching dozens of product per year, but it had a resource advantage that other OEMs did not.

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Update: I updated the last paragraph of this post to include Apple’s ecosystem, and made several other minor changes. I also added the statement and link about Apple taking 92% of the smartphone industry’s profits.

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