Out of reach

 

Well, before we begin, we would like to clearly state that this post has nothing to do with violating intellectual property about a relatively old yet popular hit by a singer called Emilia that happens to have by chance the same title.

By the way, lovely theme this song, played in one or two movies, we recall, as ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, for instance.

Anyway, we have a different thing in mind for this post.

It happened to come to our minds lately the myth of Tantalus, the guy that was rich and popular enough in Ancient Greece to challenge the Gods for a place at their table, sharing with them their banquets. But the guy wnet too far, and stole nectar and ambrosia to prove his buddies he had been at the table of the Gods.

And the Gods found out.

And the Gods decided to punish the guy by sending him to Hades, that could be considered as a sort of Beta-release of modern Hell the way we understand it. The Gods, not feeling enough satisfied, went even further, and they placed him in a water pond beneath the most wonderful fruit tree in a way that when he wanted to calm his thirst off, water would withdraw from him, and when he wanted to reach for the low hanging fruit from the tree to fill his stomach, the tree branches would raise enough to remain always out of reach.

If Hades exists and the concept of Eternity may stretch beyond an iPad lifecycle, the Gods be may very well still laughing watching the guy helplessly stretching his arms towards the fruit.

Ironically enough, artists have represented the myth by using, precisely an apple. Not sure about it being a MacIntosh, but still a nice, fresh, and juicy apple.

We have recently been overwhelmed by the tons of news about HP launching its TouchPad in an attempt to challenge Apple’s iPad better than other tablets so far have.

And it looks that compared to ‘others”, HP has some chance. There are quite a number of good reviews. So we believe that all the biggies at HP might be really enjoying the limelight for sometime, from Apothekerr to Jon Rubinstein to Toad Bradley to Phil McKinney to Steven McArthur to Martin Homlish to Bill Wohl, and are kind of attempting to demand their place in the sun (well, not the SUn, for they would need some permission from Larry Ellison), their place at the table of tablets or, if you prefer, at the table of Jobs (er… sorry, the table of Gods).

yep… they want a piece of the cake that is being eaten by the guys in Cupertino…even if the crumbs are being eaten in Taiwan, aren’t they?, the same way that Tantalus wanted nectar and ambrosia.

And you know what… before they even demonstrate the slightest achievement, Jobs has punished them by showing them iPads and putting them at their fingertips and when they think they can reach them, they happen to be “out of reach”…

So it appears that while the folks at HP are celebrating these days having been late to iPad, Jobs (er… the Gods, of course) have already anticipated the punishment.

 

Technorati Tags: hp,apotheker,touchpad,rubinstein,steve jobs,WebOS,ipad,ios,tablet

 

This post is dedicated to a good friend of ours that loves technology, loves being an early adopter, loves traveling, has an ipad, became a teacher, translated medical brochures years ago in the same company he is currently working at, loves singing ‘New York New York at Karaoke parties, has a daughter whose name is Bea and is married to Isabel.

‘

At least they bark…

 

Casually seeing in a sidewalk or in a park a small dog standing up at a bigger one, actually challenging it with a lot of noisy barking is not something readers are unfamiliar to, we’d say…

So here we have the small dog standing up…

But…

Where dos the small dog go when the big dog blows back?

Technorati Tags: hp,smartphones,phil mckinney,apple,steve jobs,iphone,webos,palm pre,palm,ios,ios4,ios5,ipad,rubinstein

Faust 3.0, cleverly disguised.

 

So finally the eternal promise will make it to mere mortals… Oh, yes, Palm will finally put his tablet in the market, and make it available to mere mortals.

Palms tables, under Palm’s OS, will be sold starting this summer, at $499.

Cleverly disguised as HP’s, naturellement, as mortal sin was cleverly disguised as an apple (precisely!) when the Devil, cleverly disguised as a Snake, offered the fruit to Eve (“bite it, and you’ll be like God”)…

We can figure Léo Apotheker, cleverly disguised as Faust 3.0, handing on a tablet to a mortal sinner… (“buy it, and you’ll be like Jobs”)…

What makes us think that the apple in the logo should go to HP more than to Apple actually…

 

And… who is talking about the great loser? We mean, of course, Todd Bradley… SVP for Personal Systems Group, declining… against the rising star, Palm head, Rubinstein… Was Todd not a former CEO at Palm?

 

Technorati Tags: apotheker,rubinstein,todd bradley,jobs,steve jobs,apple store,hp,palm,tablet,smartphones,ios4,webOS,ios5

Really!?

 

In the 17th Century, Sir Isaac Newton laid the foundations of Universal Gravitation in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Tradition tells us that he realized evidence after having been hit by a falling apple (precisely) while he was sitting beneath a tree. The obvious thing, Universal Gravitation, took millennia from mankind to be understood.

Archimedes of Syracuse, sometime in the third Century before Christ, suddenly realized the principles of buoyancy while having a bath. He had been for a long time trying to figure out how to calculate how much pure gold was contained in a crown, without melting it. And suddenly, inspiration hit him, and something evident was fully understood.

Copernicus as well realized the evidence of heliocentric cosmology in the 16th Century… and so we may find dozens of examples of obvious things realized after years or centuries of study.

All these guys would have been awarded Nobel Prizes should these have existed when they were alive.

Today we have discovered a new potential candidate for Nobel Prize awards in the figure of SAP co-CEO McDermott, who offers his company for alliance with HP.

Leaving aside his obvious comments, it’s the reading between the lines that catches our attention, as we see there a certain willingness to achieve that alliance. What certainly means there is some sort of motivation, and some benefit.

Probably still hurt by the not so old trial about Intellectual Property (IP) that ended in the biggest defeat in the industry, according to the result, SAP is still trying to inflict some kind of damage to its arch-enemy Oracle while granting some kind of “protection” for the future.

 

 

 

 

Facts:

Léo Apotheker served as CEO for SAP. Today, he still is CEO at HP.

SAP execs have moved to HP since Léo Apotheker, aka Faust 2.0, was hired as CEO at HP:

- Marge Breya, new General Manager for Software and Solutions at HP.

- Martin Homlish, new Chief Marketing Officer at HP.

- Bill Wohl, new Chief Communications Officer at HP.

Oracle owns Sun Microsystems, direct rival of HP.

Oracle is in quarrels both with HP and SAP.

Oracle hurt HP by hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd after his scandalous exit from HP.

HP recently gave up Oracle’s Siebel CRM to move on to Salesforce.com’s CRM.

HP’s tradition to hire top execs from other companies and ending up acquiring, merging or absorbing them. Was not a certain Todd Bradley former CEO at Palm, now the jewel of the crown at HP wth all the WebOS buzz? (by the way… where have the HP pre-Palm smartphones gone?).

Some months ago, when SAP was fighting at court with Oracle, SAP’s market cap was at about $50B, HP was beyond $100B, and HP had plenty of cash to be in an even stronger position to force a take over. Today market caps of both companies are at parity… which may ease a “natural merger”…

We spoke about this, which seemed obvious, even when McDermott’s speech was totally different from what we read these days…

Technorati Tags: hp,hewlett-packard,apotheker,leo apotheker,oracle ceo,sap,bill mcdermott,bill wohl,martin homlish

Technorati Tags: marge breya,mark hurd,salesforce.com,siebel,crm,todd bradley,palm,webos,smartphones

Faust 2.1

 

Angels were created, according to Christian and Hebrew tradition, before men and women. Angels were far more perfect, and certainly less tied to human limitations.

However, in the beginning of times, one of them rose against his creator. Against God Himself.

He was the most beautiful of them all, and claiming his own merit based on that, he led nothing less than one third of the angels supporting his rebellion. He would not accept to bow down to mankind after having discovered God’s plan of salvation. He would not accept being second best to creatures not so perfect as him, to Sons and Daughters of God.

Men and women were not perfect, after all.

Now we have our own version of Faust dwelling into these troublesome and difficult waters… and moving one step ahead. After all, he is not unfamiliar to Hebrew traditions, we suppose.

He will not launch a product which is not perfect…

Leaving aside any definition of what perfect exactly means in his mind, should we understand that when WebOS is out there it will really be perfect? Will the tablets or smartphones that run there really achieve that?

Several million people all over the world may have something to say about that… and the same wrongly understood sense of pride which ultimately led Lucifer to rebellion floats in the atmosphere, as Satan’s shadow floated over Faust through Mephistopheles, according to the German legends that our dear 21st-Century Faust is probably not unaware of.

Lucifer is also know as The Fallen Angel… if he continues the trend of the stock value of the company he is leading, he will soon match the same “perfection” as the former.

 

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Legacy’s cost

 

“Number 2 is just the first one of the losers”, says a very famous motorbike racer who has been World Champion many times (still not retired) who loves being the fastest one.

This would be too radical a view when we have a look to any market, where there is not just one winner. It would actually be impossible under antitrust regulations.

However, the quote from Valentino Rossi (which is the biker’s name, as many bike fan’s might have guessed) can be understood in the context of what is currently going on in the smartphone market (and eventually in the tablet’s too), where old kings are running the serious risk of being phased out from their former positions.

Of course there can be space for them, and we actually believe there will always be, in fact. But it is really hard to accept being below second rank after past history dominance.

RIMM, Nokia, though still hitting very important volumes, might well be in that situation. The issue is the trend, clearly decaying, and the chance that they still base their current results on legacy. .

Legacy of corporate business and systems that have an enormous cost of change. Legacy of users who are provided a phone by their companies that might be used for personal purpose. Legacy from past experiences and resistance to adapt to new phones from previous ones.

But legacy has a deadline and does not last forever. History proves legacy is not enough, and costs empires. Ask the British about India, ask the French about Indochina, ask the Dutch about their Indies, or ask the Russians for the “xxxstan” republics. there is still a Britain, a France, Netherlands and Russia… but where did their empires go?

Technorati Tags: microsoft,nokia,rimm,apple,samsung,android,lg,htc,hp,webos,palm,meego,blackberry,consumer electronics,symbian,google

The sound of silence

 

It is common to hear that no news equals good news… but it does not really seem the case for the guys at Microsoft regarding their mobile phone story.

Silence, as in that famous tune by Simon and Garfunkel, can be really loud, even more than the cheerful reporting when success is there, like it happened with Kinect.

Silence as well about the potential upgrades that are badly needed does not help either. When will the famous “cut & paste” basic feature show up?

The more they wait, the smaller chunk of the pie they’ll get, though they still have the potential benefit from the corporate and enterprise market, that to much extent has a Microsoft based IT. But even there, RIMM and Nokia can be too far it they keep on slowing down, or if they fail to move fast. Even the slowest of the slowest, that is, Palm, might move ahead of them if they ever start. Particularly if they deliver a confusing message to this segment.

The market does not wait for sound names and brands if they do not really deliver.

 

Technorati Tags: microsoft,windows phone 7,smartphones,nokia,rimm,blackberry,symbian,palm,webos,apple,iphone,ios4,android,google,consumer electronics

Cheap fuel

 

As long as cars need fuel, its price (as insurance’s, maintenance’s, taxes…) ought to be added to the total cost of owning one.

Cheap gas or lower taxes do not guarantee any given car is better than other using a different type of fuel or subject to higher taxes.

It’s the total ownership and driving experience what matters.

And, by the way, the fact that a given fuel type today might be cheaper than another does not ensure it won’t change in the future, once the car has been bought.

Not really sure smartphone users have really analyzed their potential expense on apps when they decide to buy one.

We do not therefore think this is necessarily going to provide any effective help to Windows Phone 7 in its struggle against iPhones or Androids… and we are not really sure this is going to make very happy developers, as their financials won’t have the same prospects as the ones provided by developing for Androids or iPhones.

 

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Nothing to fear…

 

… but the sky falling on our heads. This is what Chief Vitalstatistix used to say to his fellow warriors in the Gaul village surrounded by the almighty Roman Legions in the Asterix cartoon books. Many of our readers might remember these comics by Herge.

So how could these few gauls uphold the Roman Empire? Easy: They could count on a certain magic potion that their peculiar druid Getafix was able to prepare, which provided extra strength to whomever drank it, and made them unique and extraordinary.

Steve Jobs seems to be a better druid or potion maker than the guy with the pharmacist name, Herr Apotheker, as the former somehow found the recipe for the magic potion that makes Apple unique.

In fact it seems that Apple has, at least in the tablet market for the moment, nothing to fear but reaching the sky too fast, what, for the matter, would have the same effect than having the sky falling on their heads. Both Chief Vitalstatistix and druid Getafix all in one, Jobs prospects look good in the tablet market. iPad’s dominating about 95% of the market, serious rivals are yet to come, and the only fear for iPad might be iPad 2.

Important to note, the Gauls in the comic books never ever used their potion to expand their village beyond its own walled limits which they held firmly not to prevent villagers from going out, but Romans to get into their Sancta Sanctorum. They did not need to flee nor expand. Happy they were in their spot beside the coast in Bretagne, where they lived much more happily than the Romans who sieged them.

Technorati Tags: apple,tablet,ipad,ipad 2,ipad2,steve jobs,playbook,rimm,dell,android,google,palm,hp,webOS,blackberry,symbian,samsung

Next Year in Jerusalem

 

In the times of Roman Emperor Hadrian, second century after Christ, Simon Bar-Kochba led one of the very last Jewish revolts in Judaea against the imposition of Roman religion.

This revolt when pretty much like previous ones: Three years combat, about half a million people dead, including leader Simon Bar-Kochba and the rabbi Akiba, the latter after great torture.

Emperor Hadrian built a new city, Aelia Capitolina, on Jerusalem’s ruins and barred all Jews from coming anywhere near it.

Since then, all over the worlds, Jews have mournfully prayed “Next Year in Jerusalem…”

Palm’s Rubinstein, in recent appearance at Web 2.0 Summit has claimed Palm’s birthright to have owned the smartphone market, should they have done a better job.

In other words, should have they cared for doing a decent job, their “Jerusalem” would have flourished and set as the smartphone reference. But a much stronger power, call it Apple, Nokia or Blackberry, has de facto imposed new rules in the market, and destroyed Palm’s “Jerusalem” with a lot of pain and suffering for the latter.

Ever since, it appears that Palm’s staff keeps on claiming, quite mournfully too, “Next Year in WebOS…”

Technorati Tags: symbian,tablet,webOS,smartphone,blackberry,rimm,nokia,meego,hp,apple,ios4,iphone

Dorothy’s smartphone

 

We have recently learnt Apple is adding The Beatles to iTunes… Good for them! No matter whether Google or Amazon were after the same deal, the UK band goes to Apple.

Easy to say that Apple’s taking The Long and Winding Road… but we prefer to think it is their competition who are going to have some difficulties on the road, and it is for them that the road might be really long and winding.

However long or winding it still looks as well, in our opinion, more like the yellow brick road. And if we think yellow brick roads, we couldn’t avoid thinking of Dorothy, could we?

So here we have Dorothy starting her way on the yellow brick road trying to figure out how to succeed with her smartphone.

First she gets a call from the Scarecrow, who asks her some help to add some brains to his berry-like smartphone… Willing to learn from his experience, Dorothy asks him to join her in her quest for success in the smartphone market.

A short while after, she gets a call from the Lion with no courage. “Hey, Dorothy, need some help here… Got the muscles and the fangs, but I am really afraid of getting out there… Maybe next year if I make it for WebOS 2.0?” So Dorothy invites him as well to join her and the berryphone Scarecrow in their quest for success in the smartphone market.

Later on they find the Tin-Man lacking of heart… “Oh, what a nice android”, they say. “Come join us to look for success in the smartphone market”. The Tin-Man replied: “Indeed I need help: So many versions I have, and so many handset makers I need to support, I do not really know where my heart is, if I have any”.

And so the little group went on looking for success in the smartphone market…

“We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Phones, because, because, because, because, becaaaaaaauuuuuuse… because of the magical things he does”…

And they indeed found the Wizard… in a black turtleneck and old jeans, wearing round glasses.

Up to the reader, by the way, to think who Dorothy is… (hint: sweats a lot!)

lovely classic, still, obviously, up to date!

Technorati Tags: nokia,rimm,meego,symbian,hp,webos,palm,blackberry,android,google,smartphone,leo apotheker,steve jobs,eric schmidt

A wintel déjà vu

 

We like taking a look back to History every now and then and compare the past with what might be going on every day. In many cases we see amazing analogies, but in some others there are nuances that make slight twists.

Following closely as we do the early stages of the booming smartphone market, we cannot prevent ourselves from having a certain déjà vu feeling as we compare it with the PC business some years ago.

We could say for a moment that smartphones today might represent what PCs did in the 1990s, when the market was certainly growing very fast under the impulse of its consumer side. PCs were not unknown to the consumer market, though real technology leaps and breakthroughs were coming from the enterprise segment, and were gradually implemented in the consumer segment as costs were being slashed and PC manufacturers were in the need of keeping their business targets up.

In that process, two big winners consolidated positions at the expense of hardware manufacturers: Intel and Microsoft, who dominated that market, and all the selling effort cost their lives to many hardware assemblers that could not keep the pace. From all the manufacturers, multinational or local, from the 1990s, very few survive to this date. Big names like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, and Lenovo (as ex-IBM) are the toppers of this short list.

Smartphones have followed a very similar way, as they are starting to boom in the consumer market after an initial successful deployment in the enterprise segment. We believe Qualcomm will play the role of Intel, and, naturellement, Android will play Microsoft’s.

We seem not too be in full disagreement with the opinions from others.

However, we see some differences with the Wintel tyranny if we approach the case from a different angle.

First, we can look to the the actual use consumers and professional users give their smartphones: Connectivity. Smartphones are the logical evolution of standard mobile phones because of the connectivity possibilities: Email, internet, social networking… Before that, mobile phones were basically regular phones to do texting as the most advanced feature. Like PCs in the 1990s, which, in very many cases, worked standalone at home, or connected at most within a professional intranet.

Smartphones can work today autonomously and get connected directly to almost everywhere with no necessary need of uniformity in the way they connect (ie needing the same operating system).

Second, we think today technology is much more accessible to people in general, who have grown earlier much more knowledgeable. In the 1990s, when people were acquiring their first PC for home use, they needed something they were familiar to, the Windows familiar environment they had learnt at work. This gave a major advantage to the Wintel tyrants. Today, even kids know how to use a smartphone with no need to depend on any familiar system used before at work, obviously.

Third, in the 1990’s, there was a certain lack of competition, as Apple, the only possible one, was suffering its famous “near-to-death” experience. If you wanted a PC, there were almost no alternatives to Wintel. Today, the smartphone market has been led by Apple, Nokia and Blackberry, and Androids are catching up real fast. Even HP is promising something on Palm’s WebOS, and there is a certain attempt from Microsoft with Windows Mobile 7.

So, yes… there is a risk of having a “Qualdroid” tyranny in the Wintel space… and we indeed pity some of the handset makers that will die for it sooner or later. But, thank God, it seems that there will be intelligent life out of it, and there will be valid alternatives for the benefit of the market.

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: nokia,rimm,apple,hp,google tv,smartphone,microsoft,intel,mobile,symbian,blackberry,android,qualcomm

A drop in the ocean

 

Despite how sound it may look, indeed it is a drop in the ocean. 9,000 HP Slate orders based on a pretty expensive device with a non-optimized OS does not really look impressive.

HP stated before, however, they would have this sort of product after the failure in formally launching it almost a year ago when plans to acquire Palm were already progressing in the Palo Alto based giant.

We actually think this is nothing but a token for HP to prove they are not (completely) dead yet in this segment, plus creating some buzz around what should be more linked to HP in the customers mindshare, WebOS that is. At the same time, HP probably might be legally tied to Microsoft in developing this kind of thing from the times in which Palm was not yet in HP’s radar screen.

So the news is not that much about bathroom-scale tsunamis, but about when HP will finally come up with something tangible in the tablet arena based on WebOS.

Everybody is going to have been there for a while when HP arrives, and the more time it takes for HP, the more difficult it will be for them to really make something remarkable.

The more HP remains with Microsoft, the more they will end like the two blind men in the Bible.

“so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.", Matthew 15:14.

The market will ignore them both.

Technorati Tags: hp,webos,tablet,microsoft,windows 7,windows mobile 7,slate,palm

NO! Not the gumdrop buttons…

 

Who can’t recall the scene in the first Shrek movie when Lord Farquaad mocks the Gingerbread man?

"Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the ginger bread man!"

Gumdrop buttons sound clip  Shrek sound clips

Probably this is what the Google guys had in mind when they decided to name Gingerbread their new version of  Android OS to be launched pretty soon: Running and speeding, like Apple does.

After cupcakes, éclair, donuts and frozen yogurts, they really want to add some speed to the market, and catch up with the IOS4.2 as well, scheduled as well soon by the guys from Apple.

The issue here is not that much how fast Gingerbreads can run, but how speedy the handset vendors implement it in their devices. Dell’s Streak, for example is still to get latest updates on Froyo, and many others are still in earlier versions of Android.

Again, one of the apparent disadvantages of Android: Too many versions, too much fragmentation, and handset vendors who will have to squeeze their brains like crazy to avoid squeezing their margins too much when differentiating themselves…

 One of the big opponents and rivals to Android, as we have said before, seems to be the Blackberries and the MeeGos who like Farquaad, seem for the moment much more powerful, bigger and stronger than little Gingerbread Androids, though the latter is biting market share away from them like crazy.

Just having a look to a typical Blackberry or Nokia device, we are not surprised to note how obsessed these two Farquaads can be with buttons, too many of them they have. Maybe they don’t want anybody else with any button at all…

Technorati Tags: apple,steve jobs,ios 4.2,dell,streak,froyo,cupcake,eclair,donut,gingerbread,google,eric schmidt,android,blackberry,meego,symbian,nokia,rimm,hp,webOS

No apples for the apes

 

Tantalus was a powerful guy at his time in ancient Greece. Powerful enough to have been granted access to the gods, nothing less. Impressive.

Ungrateful though, he had an “inappropriate behavior”, and took with him nectar and ambrosia from the gods’ banquet table, and thus, “disclosed confidential information” to mortal humans.

That violation of the gods’ Standards of Business Conduct could not go through without punishment, and Tantalus was sent to Hades (the Greek version of Hell at that time; please note we carefully typed and initial “H” for Hell as confusion with “Dell” could have easily happen to our dear readers).

But not only was the guy sent there, where he might have eventually found a decent living by writing his memories and giving conferences and TV shows with forgettable American Presidents, the gods’ wrath went further. Instead of enrolling him in endless PowerPoint presentations about Standards of Business Conduct, which seems to be the classic punishment for normal mortals, they decided to teach him a lesson about ambrosia and nectar he would never ever forget: They placed him in a water pond beneath the most wonderful fruit tree in a way that when he wanted to calm his thirst off, water would withdraw from him, and when he wanted to reach for the low hanging fruit from the tree to fill his stomach, the tree branches would raise enough to remain always out of reach.

Thirst and starvation for eternity did not really seem a good plan. but we’d guess that is what happens when you fall short of expectations in such an exclusive club as Mount Olympus.

…

Microsoft is a really impressive company. Rich, knowledgeable, talented… a winning combination certainly. No wonder it is one of the best known brands, and much present in many people’s daily life, either as individuals or as professionals. Becoming the CEO there certainly gives you big green US presidents portraits, and, subsequently, a hell lot of power. You become a member of the super-exclusive elitist club of the people that appear regularly in Fortune magazine, and even the US President may ask for some of your time. Furthermore, if you wanted you could even have a yacht to win America’s Cup, or build spaceships to ascend to Heaven like a “Virgin”. You could say you reached the Mount Olympus of the 21st Century, you could say you are like a god on earth, couldn’t you?

When you imagine, dear reader, the banquets and conversations they enjoy in Mount Olympus, you expect at least fantastic goods and services, outstanding super cool products coming out from the companies they lead, from the companies that have put them in those jobs, would you not? “Product etiquette”, which, should it not be observed, creates an actual situation of “not living up to standards” that should end up in sending the non compliant guy to 21st Century Hades… (again, not suggesting a promotion within Dell at all).

Generally speaking, we think those super-exclusive people do well up there… but, being as human as people can be, there are always exceptions to the rule.

Enter Steve Ballmer, 50% Ape, 50% Man, 100% pure transpiration…

by the gods, someone bring deodorant to this guy

No wonder his sense of etiquette falls a bit short to expectations… but as well do his company products and services do, especially compared to other peers of his.

And, as in ancient Greece, somehow the market gods are delivering him slowly to the 21st Century Hades of the IT Market (again, not really suggesting he should be hired by Hell-Dell). He’s been placed in a pond of operating systems, beneath a tree of wonderful fruit in the form of smartphones…

Whenever he finds himself thirsty of operating system technology, the pond withdraws its androids, symbians, blackberries, iOS4s and even WebOSs, and whenever he wants to reach a piece of fruit, revenue raises, but not for him to “touch”, while a subtle breeze sounds in his ears like “not yet, kid…”

In very many versions of the mythological story of Tantalus, by the way, as much as in many artistic representations of the story, the fruit in the tree are red, shaped like a heart, fresh, juicy… Apples!

Technorati Tags: larry ellison,richard branson,apple,microsoft,hp,nokia,rimm,blackberry,palm,webos,ios4,wp7,smartphone,symbian,google,android,tantalus,olympus

Play wise, play fast

Some time ago we suggested Léo to speed up in one of his most powerful, though still would-be, weapons.

Every day counts. The barrier the oracle was planning to put in front of Herr Apotheker with the upcoming trial on the TomorrowNow affair has been smartly, elegantly and swiftly overcome by SAP’s lawyers.

It looks that Léo left good friends at SAP… what, indirectly, can have a hidden meaning: Nothing less that a tighter liaison in the coming future between HP and SAP.

The Acid Edge already anticipated this possible move, when talking about “Stepping Ahead, Please” (did you notice the initials S-A-P at that time?).

We still think both actions should develop fast and sound: Hurrying with WebOS in one front, and engaging closer to SAP to counter the Oracle’s hostility. And we start to find some similar views around.

Math and numbers, however, set the odds against HP, at least in what relates to storage, which could be the third move. 3Par and Palm acquisitions do not seem to be profitable in any near future.

But more than the mere cold numbers, it is more about confidence what HP should deal with. The ultimate value of the company will rely more on the confidence and expectations it creates than the actual math in a given point in time.

If HP demonstrates strength quickly enough, shares will come up sooner than later:

First: By speeding up smartphones and tablets. That’s a matter of WebOS. The company is showing boldness there by hiring external proven expertise and reorganizing its Palm Division.

Second: By speeding up integration of 3Par and quickly delivering results. More than actual profitability, it needs to show solid trends.

Third: By closing ranks with SAP. A solid covenant to stand against the oracle. Depends much on SAP, but the two could make a formidable rival to the oracle, despite not having nice Armani suits nor having won America Cup.

Fourth: Playing the Russian military tactics…

You could have some aces in your sleeve, HP. Play wise, but play fast.

 

Nothing personal

 

In an attempt to grab back presence in the market, mainly in the consumer space, but collaterally in the more professional one, the guys at HP launched a massive marketing campaign a few years ago, “The Computer is Personal Again”.

It was a massive, integrated, worldwide campaign that certainly allowed HP to catch some attention and again recover some of the punch it had in earlier times, as you might have read in the above link. The main idea here was to make people understand that they could use HP hardware, mainly from the Personal Systems Group division, for their daily life.

Leaving aside stories on top execs that took too seriously the campaign motto, and engaged in fishy affairs too personally, the effect in the market was certainly notorious. HP made a good marketing job, and collected the corresponding results in its financial statements since the launch of the campaign.

Still we believe the campaign remained just that: A mere campaign. It did not fundamentally change a company that started from hardware and still is mainly hardware-based. Mark Hurd himself, as the last relevant CEO for the time being, based his strategy in being “the infrastructure leader”. This was not at all in synch with all the personal messaging, was it?

It appears that in fact, there is really nothing personal in the HP strategy. And the problem with this is that a significant part of the available IT hardware these days and in the near future is really going to be truly personal.

In a world where being online permanently gets more and more relevant, people will demand devices which suit them upfront. Not that a device is capable of whatever feature you could imagine and the user has to change his habits and customs to adapt himself to it. Not that much that manufacturers define how the world is going to be, but more how much manufacturers are able to offer a product and its services which are adapted to what the customer already knows he could do, and the way he wants to do it.

Smartphones, for instance, are today more powerful than PCs from five or six years ago. And you can carry them in your pocket. You can even do things with them you could not dream about with your old desktop unit 10 years ago. For an increasing number of people, they are their main tool for daily life: From work to personal purpose, entertainment or planning vacation. They store very private data, as their wallets or purses would. Is there anything more personal for someone than his own wallet?

Once you have quite a variety of operating systems, hardware manufacturers and telco carriers that fundamentally do not differ much from each other (including prices and fees), customers will choose the combination of device, operating system and carrier that makes it easier to just start to use the device, or that allows the easiest customization to tailor the end product to each individual, even letting him choose the color, texture and shape of the case!

Just look to the automobile industry. When mass production started in the times of revered Henry Ford, he got the famous question: “May customers choose different colors for their car"?”. And he made his famous reply: “Yes, as long as it is a Ford, a model T, and black”. At that time, all the possibilities around a car (a black Ford model T was a finished product) were beyond imagination, and features that today we take for granted in the simplest car did not yet exist in the most visionary pioneers of that industry. Today, when it comes to buying a car, the set of options and accessories sometimes reaches the volume of a pocket dictionary. Even the guys making the Mini (quite popular in Europe for decades) claim today that there are not two Minis alike. The idea being “your Mini is unique because you are unique”.

The guys at Apple, from the very moment the first idea sparked in Steve Jobs’ mind have always applied the same principle. From what the customers wants, from what the customer would like to have, from how the customer would like to use the product, they make all the way up to the components they might need to build the product, and as well to the how to build the unit. Moreover, the product would still not be released until it really was the most perfect item (by design, by quality, by functionality) that could be produced within the industrial environment of the time. Jobs’ himself is famous for being a perfectionist close to hysteria.

As an example, we might quote iPhones… An iPhone is basically an iPod Touch (a definite winner, a conqueror of users’ hearts) that gets telephone capabilities after it has proved a success. Symbian and Windows Mobile have been designed as phones that afterwards were to have added email, music, multimedia capabilities. Precisely the opposite approach.

Apple took a successful product and added valuable features and functionalities customers would be glad to pay for. When making their first calls with iPhones, they already knew how to use the device, and setting it up was a matter of seconds. Windows Mobile and Symbian devices were forcing users to adapt themselves to the smartphones they supported. No wonder that Apple fans are rather unconditional fans, and do not worry much about the product cost premium.

This is HP’s issue: How can you claim your product is personal when you are asking your customer to do what Microsoft Almighty allows you to do the way Microsoft Almighty forces you to do it?

To be personal again means that your device (notebook, tablet, smartphone…) has to be as unique as possible, and that, once the OS, hardware and carrier layers are put aside for a moment, can only be achieved with the right AppStore: Broad variety of developers and applications, easy to use kind of thing. And this matter, not being easy for a guy like Windows7 Mobile, will certainly be a major challenge to HP, no matter how good or bad WebOs is (judge by yourself).

We believe the market will be personal. For everybody, and this includes HP. And being personal will take more than millions of dollars spent in nice fonts, nicer ads, and some celebrities of the moment. Nothing personal, but you cannot afford having nothing personal.

Léo, hurry up!!!!

 

Disclaimer: The historical references to the tragedy of World War II used in this post are exclusively intended for educational and illustrative purposes. No comment herein should be understood as any kind of support (political, social, cultural, even military) to any of the parties involved in that conflict. References are made at high level, objectively, and from a pure historical perspective.

In particular, we would like to apologize Léo Apotheker, as he is explicitly mentioned for heading HP as corporation. We acknowledge that, given his family’s background in those years (as has been published), he may be particularly sensitive to anything related to the events that struck the worlds the way they did.

In late 1944, when the USAAF and the RAF dominated the Western and Central Europe skies almost unopposed, they suddenly had to face a new kind of aircraft. Something really revolutionary, something based on what for them was, in the best case, a lot of paperwork from physic theoreticians. It took some time for them to realize what they were up to.

As it soon was to be painfully realized, Germany had finally made it for the so-called “secret weapons” that would change the tide of the war, and deliver, according to German propaganda of the time, final victory against the rest of the world. We talk about jet propelled fighters, from which the top representative probably was Messerschmitt’s Me262 Schwalbe (“Swallow”).

Interesting to note that Swallows were the most technologically advanced piece ever. Best specs, every single flight established a new aviation record. British or American pilots would not even actually “see” the enemy, so fast and high it flew. Virtually undetectable, thus. It was never defeated in the air. The only way Allies found to beat or capture enemy units were on ground (lack of fuel and/or pilots) or by pilot defection to the Allied lines.

It is very probable that had had the German Air Force a couple od hundreds of these aircraft as early as 1940, Great Britain would not have won the Battle of England, Russia would have surrendered, and the US would have never entered the war in Europe.

The plane came. But is was too late. In fact 1942 started with Germany strong enough to be likely to win the war, but when it ended it was obvious to all the world but Germany that the war was lost for them. It was just a matter of time.

Best quality, best features, best design, best performance, maximum possibilities. A clear winner on paper, useless as a bottle of shampoo for actor Yul Brynner, because of several reasons:

First, it came too late. Germany was exhausted by late 1944, alone and surrounded by all the biggies, up to their home gates: the USA, the UK, the USSR, and representation from another forty-something nations from the free world. Clear dominant positions in the European skies of the big three.

Second, Germany lacked pilots. La crème of the German war pilots was already dead by then, or promoted to commanding ground posts, or dedicated to classical (ie propeller) planes. Even if part of the human force were to be transferred to jet units, there was no time nor resources for proper training.

Third, fuel was as scarce as ever. With no actual physical sources in the remaining areas controlled by the Germans, the little fuel available was synthetically produced, extremely expensive, and normally given priority to ground units trying to hold both the Eastern and Western fronts. Even worse, in some cases it went to other so-called “secret weapons”, like flying rockets V1 and V2.

Fourth, the German High Command made some key “positioning” mistakes, without clear guidance, or targets for those units. Clearly designed as fighters, they were eventually as much used as bombers, reconnaisance units and even transports.

HP has recently presented its WebOS 2.0.

Going through the details, one must admit it is impressive. A clear winner. Léo Apotheker has quite a number of reasons to feel well about this indeed. BUT:

First, would this not be too late? HP has spent fortunes on its former Smartphone line.based on dear Windows Mobile-no-matter-what-version, and the “secret weapon” is supposed to seek its place in skies which are heavily dominated by Android, IOS4 and eventually Win7 mobile (or Symbian, for the matter…).

Second, you need pilots to make the maximum of the units potential. You need apps… and app developers, call it trainers if you’d like. The “enemy” has them by the hundreds of thousands… and upping every day.

Third, the fuel these devices need is as well scarce. App developers will develop apps that are demanded, and demand for a new thing has to be created first. Back end R&D and strong support plus consultancy as well needs to stand behind, as ground personnel is needed to keep the planes in the air. All this to keep the right focus, not diverting priorities to other bombastic stuff that might in parallel happen to appear (storage, networking, software, whatever).

Fourth, Léo & Staff have to make sure positioning is right, and customer segments are addressed correctly. Corporate, Consumer, both? Tablets, smartphones, both?

Hurry up, Léo… but make sure the brains that you are putting in here should not oversee the basics.

Footnote: This post is dedicated to a good friend of ours that has the potential of the ME262 of the time, but every now and then gets confused about her own strategy and positioning to achieve goals. Differently from the original ME262 case, this person should understand that in this case, three years do not necessarily mean it is too late; even if it is not being yet realized, like Germans say, “Ende gut, Alles gut”…