November 2008 Archives

With the advent of the Storm, RIM and Verizon came together to offer what they hope is the equivalent of the iPhone but with the benefit of the Verizon Wireless network.

To determine how good this device is in the real world, I spent a good deal of time in a Verizon store and made camp near the single Blackberry Storm which the company had on display in the corner of the store in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

My wife is due for a new phone and thought for sure she would pick up a Storm. In fact she went into the store ready to buy it. I told her to test it first and after she did, she realized it was confusing to operate and typing on the device is not easy to do. I picked up the device myself and tried it and also found it difficult to type on.

She decided to pass (for now) and may buy a different Blackberry model instead.

I also had the opportunity to interview a number of other people about what they thought about the phone and the result was always the same. Slow, difficult to use and typing didn't work very well. The device even locked up a few times. I didn't see anyone who used the phone actually buy one.

But the phone is not all bad. In fact, what I did like about the screen was its ability to have true tactile feedback - the screen simulates clicking extremely well. It is just many people, including myself could not get the right keys to press - even after repeated attempts. On a positive note, a plus for the device is the back button, which allows you to quickly find the last screen you were on. But the increased number of options you can click on leads to problems. I found this out myself as I repeatedly and seemingly without reason, kept getting the clock to appear.

We all know the real claim to fame of this device is the speed of the network and believe me, Verizon EVDO can be blazingly fast and the HTC Verizon-based XV6800 runs circles around the AT&T-based iPhone in sheer download speed. This is why I was disappointed to see that the Storm is a slow browsing device. I found the iPhone is actually 20-70% faster when pulling up pages on TMCnet and other graphically rich websites. What this tells me is there is a rendering problem in the Storm and perhaps the processor is underpowered.

In addition, the browsing experience on the Storm is not intuitive. Using the device is not as pleasant as an iPhone.

To be fair, the Storm has glitches which could be solved with software upgrades and it goes without saying that software updates may correct some or all of these problems. The iPhone too needed updates and in fact this past Friday the 2.2 iPhone firmware update turned on push email and other features such as a more stable browser and the addition of street view while using Google maps.

If you have to choose between the iPhone and the Storm at this point, the iPhone gets a 9 and the Storm gets a 6.5. The benefits of the faster network and great touch-screen feedback technology are more or less erased by painfully slow rendering and a clunky user-unfriendly interface. Still, due to the network, the Storm will work in perhaps 10-20% more places than the iPhone and it is possible the usability of the device is not as big an issue if you use the gadget daily and get used to it. Then there is the application factor - there are just so many more of them on the iPhone than other devices.

So this version of the Storm is a category one at best and over time it is possible for it to get better. For now though, I just can't recommend this device. I really want to and more importantly I would like to have a solid touch-screen device myself which works on the Verizon Wireless network. Hopefully, over time, the Storm will create real competition and make Apple brace for cover.

From time to time I invest in companies in the industry and as of this writing I am long Apple call options (betting Apple will go higher).

What is interesting is the thought that the Android OS and Google brand may be

strong enough to allow an army of companies to come out with Android phones. The good news here is that competition is good for consumers. The bad news is that each hardware design will require all/many accessories to be redesigned.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. In addition, it is worth pointing out the low

price of this phone, $119, is lower than what many subsidized phones cost and this one is unlocked. It is way too early to predict massive disruption in the smartphone market but having a low-priced phone backed by the Google Android name has the potential to change US cell phone pricing/subsidization models.

Personally, I won't be happy till my phone supports Asterisk. Mark Spencer, are you reading?

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• Local vs. Hosted CRM Solutions
• Getting Ready for CRM Software
• SugarCon 2009 to Celebrate SugarCRM Community Accomplishments
• MDSL Taking Control with Telecom Cost Management
• Workforce Management Software: More Valuable Than Meets the Eye
• Using CRM Software to Assign Tasks
• Five Steps to Successful CRM Software Implementation
• Five9 Hosted, On-Demand Solutions Provide Resolve in Troubling Economic Climate
• Loquendo Adds Danish Female Voice to TTS Family
• Homeshoring Continues to be Attractive Choice, Despite Economic Downturn
• NACR, CallCopy, to Promote VoIP, UC, Call Center Solutions
• Avaya Offers Proactive Outbound Self-Service Products
• Dynamics CRM Videos Available from Microsoft
• Vertex Taps Insight Now for Contact Center Tracking
• Survey: Singapore Consumers Happier with Contact Center Experiences
• Call Center or Contact Center: What's the Difference?
• Broadlook Announces Sales Contact List Optimization Product
• Language Line Services Unveils "Your World, Your Language"
• V-Tech Solutions to Provide Call Center Support Services for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• Study Finds Companies Lacking in E-mail Customer Service
• TomTom Recognized by J.D. Power For Second Consecutive Year
• Percall Growth Significant Thanks to App-Line Sibilo Contact Center Solution

Had a great meeting -- sorry, all under NDA -- in NJ and am heading
home. What I can tell you is the company I met with has a cafateria
which makes world-class cookies. I need an hour on the treadmill but
mine is broken. Need to get it fixed soon. Will write more when I get
to a laptop.

Here is a shot as I head to New Jersey. And no, I won't tell you what
exit.

Thanks to April Dunford's tweet for pointing out this entry on her blog pertaining to how to kill a killer product. One thing she leaves out and I have been meaning to mention for a while is -- in the consumer space -- the importance of naming a product effectively.

For example Apple is a master at selecting simple, easy and trendy product names. iMac, iPod, iPhone. Sony is one of the companies that uses too many letters in its product names. The company recently ran an ad touting its noise cancelling digital headphones which are according to user tests better than comparable models from Bose.

While Bose has names for their headphones like QuietComfort 1,2 and 3 - Sony chose a non-intuitive name -- MDR-NC500D -- the problems with such names is - when someone sees you are using these headphones and asks if you like them and what they are called, what do you say? Oh yeah - I love these headphones and the model number is the MDR - uhhh, well, NC MDR, uhh. Forget it.

Even if the owner of the headphones remembers the name, the person asking won't. What on earth is Sony thinking?

This is the same problem I have with the HTC/UT Starcom XV6800 phone I use. People ask me what it is and to be honest it is branded as a Verizon phone but is made by HTC and distributed by UT Starcom. People ask me what it is called because they want to buy one and it is not easy for me to answer. Do I just say XV6800? Verizon XV6800? I mentioned that the XV6700 the predecessor to this device should have been called the mobile office or something similar. I still think when companies have what they consider to be a "killer" product, the name should imply simplicity and name recognition is crucial.

I would like to finish this entry by saying that the consumer and business markets are converging in my opinion and using simple and catchy names in the b2B space is as crucial as in the consumer space. Don't name that new IP-PBX the IPB-20131JHP, call it "IP Simplicity" or "Productivity1" or some other cool name. I know this may seem silly but product selection and purchases are more emotional than you may first think.

Hats off to Benioff and company at SalesForce.com for beating the quarterly estimates and also for keeping guidance for the year. Analysts are grappling with whether the SaaS model is immune from slowing in a down economy and the simple answer is while SaaS has the potential to reduce costs for a company and increase productivity, the challenge for SalesForce.com and other vendors is to grow as unemployment rises rapidly.

I feel unemployment will hit at least 12% and in this environment, SalesForce will have to expand by talking share from other companies to keep growing. Perhaps this is why the company added 700 new employees in the first three quarters of this year and plans on continuing this hiring spree.

Benioff remains optimistic about selling to customers of all sizes and the optimism is in stark contrast to most every other company exec. So congrats to SalesForce.com and the team for bucking the trend and the takeaway here is that SaaS is really performing well in a very difficult economic environment.

For $99 to start and $9.95 a month you are able to get photos from your camera phones to show up on this picture frame via unlimited MMS. Like the Kindle from Amazon, here we have another product which leverages the cellular network to provide additional value.

Sure, there are ways to do this with WiFi and sure Kodak has camera and picture frames which work fairly seamlessly with one another. But who cares?

You see, today's kids are also able to use email for free with any mobile data plan but they don't - they use SMS/text messaging instead. And they pay through the nose to do so. So it is possible these kids might also gravitate towards a photo frame which can be updated remotely by MMS-enabled camera phone (which by the way does not include the iPhone). One wonders if they can get this frame to also display messages as well so a person could text the cameo frame when he/she is running late.

Mobile phones and texting have become just so popular. If T-Mobile plays its cards right, this could become a popular new category of electronics and T-Mobile could be the major player in the space.

Assuming you could nail down who is truly qualified for this plan, giving away service is probably not a good idea as it drives up usage of cell towers. This could lead to slower service for customers who pay the full amount.

Could the carriers implement service of lower quality for people who pay less - and make this discounted service available to the unemployed? Perhaps. If you can make it easier for this group to get phones, perhaps there will be incremental revenue from text messages, ringtones, etc.

For fascinating analysis of why wireless carriers should/should not give away service, check out this article.

Adtran has mentioned repeatedly just how expensive their test
equipment is from companies like Spirent, Ixia and Tektronix Agilent.

As an alternative they are using their own modified equipment to test
when possible.

Too bad... This pub was an early inspiration to me. It will live online though.

My other inspiration was InfoWorld and sadly it is gone as well.

This is what Tom Keating had to say.

The campus is massive. We are in a new building seeing more testing equipment. There is voicemail testing, voice quality testing, compatabilty testing, etc.

Check out this massive phone bank used for interop and load tests.