About face

 

In about 326 b.C. Alexander the Great reached India after having created the mightiest empire to date. He had built that empire based in his will and determination together with the support of his military commanders in less than10 years since he succeeded his dad as King of Macedon.

After having overstretched his resources and capabilities beyond any conceivable limit, he had to face that India was too much, too complex, to far away, too powerful per se.

Alex did not realize this, and in fact he launched the invasion.

But his up-to-then-loyal commanders understood better their own limitations in front of India, and made their own U-turn and headed home.

This lack of support forced Alex to head back too… and in less than three years, he was actually dead.

His generals ripped the Empire, split is into fiefs and Macedon’s ruling on the mightiest empire on earth was over for ever.

The once almighty empire of RIM has reached India… and commanders supporting yesterday’s success are realizing that their India is too much for their Alex…

 

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Flies against windows

 

Springtime is a lovely season… flowers, trees, weather…

Insects and bugs pop up in Spring too, don’t they? So it is not really strange to see flies behind windows (precisely!) glasses bumping once and again their heads not realizing there is a thick glass barrier which prevents them from getting out.

“Bump”… “bump” again… and so it goes until some monstrous human ends up smashing them precisely against the barrier they could not overcome.

And here we have our Perspiration Champion once more bumping and bumping… and not really able to get out of the windows …

Even after trying, in a desperate move, to engage with his former fellow Elop at Nokia, still he bumps and bumps once, twice… and still not realizing what is going on.

Probably it is a matter of time that the fly swat in the hands of the market’s common sense will be wielded mercilessly… Hopefully by that time, Apple, Google, and even Palm (sorrysorrysorry, HP) are strong enough by themselves to prevent WWF declaring flies a protected species…

 

 

Luke 6:39 in the Bible

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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?

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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.

 

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It goes without saying

 

Predicting the future has always been one of the strongest wishes man has had throughout times. Either to benefit from anticipated information, or to prevent eventual bad news, it’s sort of a constant throughout human history.

History is therefore full of examples about predictions, some of which became true (probably by chance), many more of which turned out completely wrong.

One of the most recognized visionaries in the IT world is, no doubt, Steve Jobs at Apple. In fact, his leadership within that company made it possible to actually contribute to define the future of that industry, for the good or for the bad. Apple’s influence is actually tangible in our opinion.

No matter how much this influence might have been (which could be subject to debate depending on personal opinions), it seems not all Jobs’ opinions are exactly right, however. Even successful visionaries might not be completely right.

His widespread comment about mid-sized android tablets being DOA is not exactly what is happening, according to Samsung’s Galaxy tablet performance so far.

Which is not necessarily bad for Apple anyway. Competition is healthy for an industry development, we’d all probably agree.

However, as important in our opinion as what was explicitly said, it is what was not explicitly quoted in Jobs comment. Certainly not usual for Steve Jobs to criticize competition openly or so directly, his strong attack to Android-based tablets indicated his concern about its potential success. In other words, he could have been seeing what Android could achieve…

If he foresaw the results Androids (through Samsung) are apparently achieving so far, then he was not that bad a visionary at the end of the day… and a master of propaganda, the way he presented his forecast.

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Teenagers buy too

 

Political systems that determine what party holds government for a certain period of years are based on people’s votes. Every number of years, elections are set up, and the party that gets the higher number of votes holds government until next election.

If voting age starts at, say, 18, a significant portion of voters in elections happening in year 2020, for example, will include a lot of new voters who were under age in the previous polls. Let’s use the US as an example.

When presidential elections come up in 2012, all the people who are today from 16 to 19 will be able to vote for the first time in their lives. So Republicans or Democrats that prepare those elections should consider all these teenagers as prospect voters and make sure they buy in even before they become actual voters.

And here we got another smart move from Apple, according to the report here… If the information delivered in it is correct, it would be a fact that Apple is not only selling well to current customers, but as well paving the way for maintaining and/or increasing its share in the smartphone and tablet markets at least in the future. The tablet market, predicted to grow real fast, will be based on current customers, but new ones that today are just teenagers that will have resources to buy stuff in the coming years.

Maybe they have to wait long for 6-year-old kids to be real customers, but the same principle applies to teenagers that will have enough money, or that can convince mom and dad to get one iPad or iPhone for them next year, or in 2012.

It is not frequent, for example, to find teenagers longing for a regular mp3 player, a specific Android phone or even a Zune or a Windows Phone 7 phone. But they actually do for iPhones, iPods or iPads. Not necessarily because of games… but more because of all the rest of things you may do with it in a recognizably “cool” way.

Skating, for example, is not that much about moving a certain distance differently than just walking or running. Is about stepping on a fashionable board and doing weird movements on it and with it while managing to keep balance and not getting hurt. Same with tablets or smartphones. It is more about how you do things on them than the actual things you do, which could be performed in a standard laptop or netbook.

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Der Volkscomputer (II)

 

After WWII, once French automotive industry got rid from the German occupation authorities, they followed the Volkswagen concept.

Citroën launched its 2CV model, based on the same principles as the Volkswagen Beetle. It went even a bit further in its austerity. For example, it got just one headlight, for pure cost savings and simplicity. As the Germans in the 1930s, France after 1945 was in badly need for economical recovery.

If iPads or iPhones are the leading concept, the Volkswagen of our times, we guess we could say Citroën’s 2CV follow as the Androids came after the iPhones…

 

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Apples to apples

 

We have read an interesting summary of an analysis made on smartphone users’ loyalty to the brand of their current handset.

The conclusions driven there seem reasonable, though we believe one should be cautious when drawing conclusions.

We think the smartphone market, booming these days, might change a lot in short time, so many things are still developing and reaching users as we write this, that today’s conclusions may be completely different in a few months from now.

If loyalty is a reflection of satisfaction, we’d still need to define how satisfaction is measured. We still need to be clear about what it really means to the user. It is not the same thing a professional that has been given a Blackberry by his employer, for example, to use it for professional email and SMS than a university student that basically might want his phone for chatting, web browsing and facebook logging.

To measure satisfaction, one would need to know the cost a given product has meant to the user, and the expectations he really had about what he got. If we were given a smartphone for the first time for free by an employer of ours, which allowed us to do email on-the-go (assumed our previous phone did not allow us to), we would be very happy with that, regardless the OS (Android, IOS4 or Symbian, for example), especially if it is our company that pays the bill. We would not be more loyal to the handset brand than however loyal our employer were.

As well, if we were to use a Windows Mobile phone after having had an iPhone or Android, our satisfaction/loyalty would be seriously reduced…

As well, there are many factors that can influence user satisfaction or loyalty which might not depend on the handset you are using, nor the OS it supports. What about the carrier service, possibilities or limitations? What about its service plan, the cost of it? For some customer segments, it might be as well important the brand perception or how “cool” might a given device look or feel. We know of many cases where teenagers ask mom and dad for a Blackberry just because mom or dad use one, or just because the most popular mates at school have one each, for whatever reason.

Hard to measure loyalty or user satisfaction, and hard to extrapolate results for predicting future volumes or sales.

We see the current smartphone market more like the case of the youngster that recently got his car driver’s license for the first time. The prospect of moving from being a bike user to driving a car on his own is so exciting to him that he will be the happiest person in the world to have his car, no matter if it is a brand new convertible Ferrari sportscar, or mom’s 20-year old Volkswagen, that she recently replaced by a new one. At the end of the day, both cars open for the kid a new world of possibilities, one way or another, that were so far inaccessible to him.

In a market so much subject to change in very short time frames, conclusions from this kind of surveys should then need to be very carefully managed and understood, we think, making sure one compares “apples to apples” to make those conclusions really valid or useful. By the way, those who prefer Blackberry might prefer to compare “berries to berries”…

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First love

 

We are sure almost everybody remembers his/her first teenage love, his/her first date, and, of course, his/her first kiss. Despite actual age, or whatever circumstances each person had, we think there is a common denominator for all those situations, something all them share. We talk about the lack of real life experience of those persons, discovering what we think is probably the most important aspect of human life.

Inexperienced as everybody is in first love experience, after the person gets a more or less explicit confirmation by his/her partner that both of them are together, the typical question they make themselves immediately after is “and now, what?”.

Unable to answer this question in a precise way, then those fortunate ones that enjoy that situation may start behaving strangely, incoherently, inconsistently just because they have never gone through that before. Older people, when watching them, probably smile and justify them remembering their own experiences…

After this experience, which frequently turns to nothing (how many people do you know that have ended up sharing their lives with their very first love?), people are supposed to get more mature, and manage better and better their next experiences until they settle down. This is what actually happens, but, as nobody’s perfect, there are always clamorous exceptions.

Enter the Gorilla (aka Big Ape Steve) to demonstrate the case for us:

The not-really-so-successful first smartphone experience by this guys was windows mobile, who was quickly wiped out by Nokia and particularly Blackberry like the best football player in the grade at school usually takes the most glamorous cheerleader from her previous boyfriend.

And now these guys come back… supposedly having learnt from the past. Not really being precise with the product positioning (consumer versus enterprise, work versus fun, or any other user segmentation you want), as you may recall from the “Really!” marketing campaign, not they seem to be willing to demonstrate the world precisely that: They have learnt from the past, and they are different from what they used to be: If Mobile was for work, Phone 7 is for fun.

Learnt what from when? For God’s sake, with less apps than Apple or Android, with less developers than the formers, with less brand recognition, and with precedents like Zune dramatically behind iTunes, how can they claim any strength in the consumer world, in fun?

If there had to be any strength within these guys, it would be clearly related to the enterprise market with the supposedly easy integration on the Office Suite within their OS… though we can hardly imagine, besides email and very basic usage of Excel or Word, any intensive use of Office documents in a screen smaller than a tablet.

Again erratic, inconsistent, and eventually behaving like a teenager who just came home after his first kiss: “so now what?”. And while they make their minds up, market will keep being rushed by Apples, Androids and even Nokias and Blackberries who might have eaten the pie and just leave the crumbs for them when they decide something consistent.

As we said before, nobody’s perfect. Still, you may always find one which is even less than anybody else.

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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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Flaming balloons

 

By the end of the 19th Century, the German started developing balloons for military purposes. We could consider this milestone, together with the use of reconnaisance balloons during the American Civil war as the very early stages of modern air forces.

Despite the progress made since then until the late 30s, when classical planes had consolidates its dominance in the air, and when helicopters were beginning to have their earliest realistic prototypes, it was clear before 1940 that balloons had reached a dead end. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 was the final chapter of its brief history.

Conceptually speaking, the defenders of the balloon industry used the principle of “best of both worlds” to insist in developing that industry. Static possibilities, later developed factually with helicopters, combined with actual mobility like in the classic planes, combined with its very low cost compared to the other models.

Caught halfway between the two flying models, there was no room for balloons.

In a brave attempt to bridge the gap between today’s two main trends towards easy, affordable computing ultra-mobility (netbooks and tablets), Dell is about to launch their Inspiron Duo device.

In our opinion, we are basically talking of an original design that combined the features of both types of devices, tablets and netbooks, and there is some praise about the possibility of getting the best of both worlds.

However, we see a bigger risk in getting caught halfway between both worlds, or, if you’d prefer, getting the worst of both worlds. Few advantages, all the disadvantages, that is.

Besides the clear disadvantages pointed out in the reference news, we see some more:

First, the flipping screen, as a movable part, can be sensitive to hardware failure. The less the mobile parts the better, for reliability. What takes us to the second item.

Second, though flash storage is a plus compared to standard disks with moving parts in terms of reliability, its increased capacity is not really a significant advantage, for netbooks and tablets are more and more oriented to online content that is stored in the “cloud”, not necessarily in a local disk.

Third, its operating system, as it is today, is not a rival for tablets in particular, powered by androids and iOS much more successfully than whatever Windows might be doing. Just look at market data for units already shipped, or to market predictions.

Fourth, having a keyboard (supposedly demanded by customers) is not really such an advantage. Millions of customers, using same figures as in previous item, are clearly NOT demanding such a keyboard, which adds cost, weight and technical complexity.

Fifth, a significant value for tablets, regardless of its OS, is the AppStore behind them. Microsoft is way behind Apple and Google, isn’t it?

Sixth, long-term financial viability. Even if Dell makes an initial success, following the “Qualdroid” business model does not guarantee financial success to them. The “Wintel” model proves so.

Seventh, as well related to Dell’s financials, they are starting from a very weak position at this moment that might not help at all in sustain the time it might take for this Inspiron thing to take off. Maybe they are diverting their consumer portfolio too much, with Streak, Inspiron, mobile phones…?

In praise of Dell we could say it is always good to try new things and move forward with innovation… but we do not really see a major chance here. Not to kill iPads nor Androids at least, Inspiron Duo might blow up like the Hindenburg did.

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Katie’s concert

 

The other day there was a great concert in Seattle. One of the most popular pop stars of the moment was performing, and all the youngsters in the area were dying to be there.

The place was fully packed, al the tickets had been sold out.

Wandering around, we saw very many teenagers and kids enjoying a lot being there. Casually, they were dancing, singing, and even sharing their experience.

Some of them took their iPhones and Androids to make pictures of the scenery, the public, their friends or even themselves. And we are sure before the song was over, lots of those pics were already posted in Facebook, YouTube and other social networks or blogs.

Before taking the children there, their moms and dads surely used their Nokias and Balckberries to check in Google Maps where the place really was, and verified as well what was traffic like. Kids would not forgive them ever if they had failed to take them to the concert on time.

As well we noticed some of them were texting like crazy: “Y’know, mom still carries one of those old phones with no internet”, one kid was telling his friend…

In a certain moment, we happened to run into Katie. Katie is the daughter of a charming couple who are friends of ours. She loves pop music, which she used to play all day in her old mp3 player, and recently in her brand new iPod she got for her 15th birthday. She had asked for an iPhone, but mom and dad suggested her to wait for her Verizone’s current contract to expire.

“Hey, Katie! What a surprise to see you here”, we said. “It must have been difficult to get tickets, so full the place is”.

“Yeah, it was a surprise for me too. We could not find tickets anywhere, but the other day mom came home with several of them. I think she told me she got them in a PC shop or something that had opened recently somewhere nearby, and they were being given away for free. But not really sure, in fact”.

“For free?”, we asked.

“Don’t really remember, but when I get back home, I can check for you if you want. We can search the internet in our Mac.”

 

 

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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.

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The Consul’s Legions

 

In the times of the Republic, Rome was ruled by the Senate. Senators were elected by the Senate, of course, but all men born within a senatorial family would be elected by birthright.

Senate had the power to declare war, and, therefore, it controlled the State Legions, the Roman Army.

Senate leaders (consuls, proconsuls, praetores or propraetores, province governors) therefore needed agreement and support from the Senate itself to use the Army for carrying on any war that sparked.

Commanding legions and succeeding at a military career was not an uncommon way to gain personal glory or reputation to step up for the commander. In many cases, successful political careers were based precisely in military reputation.

Therefore, political success required commanding legions, and commanding legions required support from the Senate. In other words, it was the Senate who controlled who could succeed in his political career by granting him command of legions, regardless the personal value as military leader of the commander.

If we look to the smartphone market, we see some parallelism with what happens to handset or operating systems manufacturers. Carriers do have a lot of power, and the success of this or that vendor depends quite much on this power. Carriers can, somehow, make or break success for this or that manufacturer. Much is being said, for example, about iPhones being distributed through Verizon, or about Apple’s relationship to carriers.

Successful Apples, Androids, LGs, Samsungs, HTCs, Nokias or RIMMs would depend on how “gracious” carriers might be when granting command of legions.

Back to Rome, we as well can see that if a given individual Senator was resourceful enough (ie rich and smart at the same time), he might enlist and equip his own legions, which would rival the State’s, controlled by the Senate. In fact this is what Gaius Marius did around 100 b.C. Thus, he became independent from the Senate to build his military and political career, pretty successful by the way.

We believe this is what Google might be doing, Rich and smart, they might be planning independence from senatorial carriers. And this might lead to a successful career, similar to Marius’, the only person in Roman History to be elected Consul nothing less than seven times.

Careful, Jobs… Androids might take this road to outflank you.

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Titanic effort

 

We do not believe the smartphones war will be a minor one at all. At the moment it looks like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based alternatives are taking a clear lead, eons beyond historical kings of the hill, Nokia and RIMM.

The latter will need a titanic effort to recover and catch up, apparently.

It looks, however, that Nokia’s N8 model, expected to be the company’s flagship, did not really get what “Titanic” was supposed to mean, we’re afraid.

 

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By George, they did it!

 

One of the greatest musical milestones in classical movies is My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion.

Poor Eliza Doolittle, from lowest social extraction, is used by Professor Henry Higgins as an experiment about teaching English, in an attempt to prove his methods can bring such a low-class person to the ranks of Aristocracy. At least in what relates to speaking English properly.

Professor Higgins takes care of her completely, as she is poor and has no resources of her own besides selling flowers in the street for a living. She totally depends on his wealth while she receives her lessons.

Despite providing her all possible physical comfort, he is so much oriented to his own personal success with the language experiment he is using her for, he does not really care for being considerate at all with her, and actually treats her like a scientist would handle a guinea pig.

Naturally, she ends up completely fed up, and quits, disregarding and ignoring all the good he claims to have provided her with. She simply does not stand his arrogance and tyranny any more, and looks for alternatives that indeed could work for her.

By George!

We would say that “Professor Ballmer”, with all his wealth, power, aristocratic profile (well, this one under discussion), and methodologies, really can not stand up to all the Eliza Doolittles that so much have depended on him for so long, can he?

 

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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…”

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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!

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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.

 

 

 

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