Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - iPad Archives

Touchfire 2.0 Shows iPad IS a Content Creation Device

2013-03-09T17:17:00Z

When the iPad was first introduced so many pundits explained what a niche product this tablet would be as it didn't possess a way to create content - in volume anyway. This of course was a huge surprise to me because I did immediately create blog entries and articles on the device. After a while I did feel pain in my fingers from repeatedly hitting the glass surface, in-part, this is the reason I looked for solutions to my problem. Touchfire was a Kickstarter project I backed and covered - once to introduce it to my readers and another to discuss how long it took to actually get the product.

The product is a rubberized transparent keyboard which can be connected and disconnected easily from the device while fitting under the standard iPad cover. It is obviously not for everyone and has already sold 10,000 units. Is this a big number? I would say yes - not compared to the hundreds of millions of iPads sold of course but I would say it is still an impressive figure.

The Touchfire team has announced version 2.0 (see picture) of its project - the new device will have more transparent keys, be more resilient to dust, look more polished, attach more securely and sport new surfaces which make typing more fluid.

One takeaway from the news is just how lucrative it is to augment the iOS or Android ecosystem. The other of course is the iPad and to some degree all tablets are content creation devices. They certainly can be less convenient than a laptop or Ultrabook in some ways - not running Flash, Microsoft Word, etc - but their increased portability seems to more than make up for these challenges.

Speaking of keyboards, the ZaggKeys PROplus is an amazing cover and keyboard for the iPad 4. Another great benefit of the device is the keys are backlit. The one downside is the iPad 4 is too heavy for the keyboard - meaning if you aren't careful the tablet could and will slip out. From a productivity perspective however the combo of an iPad and this keyboard is enough to substitute for a laptop in most every application. See pictures below.

Apple's Magic Dependent on iWatch Success?

2013-03-05T14:40:51Z

At this point we are all aware Apple has a new watch in the works and it is even thought to be released later this year. Pundits have even determined this product could be vastly more profitable for Cupertino than even the much-anticipated Apple TV. They call it a $6B opportunity!

One wonders however how different this product will be from the iPhone. If you think about it, the iPhone transformed the company’s mobile product line and potential. The iPod used to look like a music player but today is an iPhone without the phone. The larger iPad originally was 4 iPhones working as one. The iPad Mini is just a smaller iPad. The point here is much of the Apple innovation centers around one innovative device – everything else seems to just be an extension.

We all know about the Apple “magic” or the ability to design products we didn’t know we wanted but when we see them, we can’t figure out how we ever lived without them. Rob Enderle writes a compelling piece about the situation on TMC’s Wearable Tech World site where he explains the iPhone and iPad should have been duds based on other similar products which preceded them.

I too have commented about how the Nokia N800 tablet which was a better device than the original iPhone never gained traction in the market.

Enderle points to the iWatch as the next big test for the company. We know there are a ton of techie watches in the market - does the company still have what it takes to make a new product launch such as the iWatch go mainstream? He doesn’t think so but he says he hopes he is wrong.

Here is something worth pondering before the launch of such a device. The smartphone made watches less relevant – especially for the younger generation. Will the company who helped kill a generational desire to own time-keeping devices on their wrists get these same people to reverse course and try slapping a piece of electronic jewelry on an area which has never seen a tan line? Time will tell if Apple still has the magic we once associated with Steve Jobs.

Tangoe Integrates MDM and TEM

2013-02-27T14:44:48Z

At Mobile World Congress 2013 Tangoe was discussing the company's integrated solutions which combine TEM and MDM allowing telecom expense management and mobile device management to be handled with a single sign-on and user interface. As Director of Product Marketing Troy Fulton (pictured) explained to me, with 4G networks, bill shock can be quite real as you can be roaming and rapidly go way over your allotment of data.

The companies rTEM solutions can deal with such a scenario in ten minutes he says. Moreover, Tangoe realizes devices have valuable information on them - in fact many large enterprises spend 57% of their IT budgets on mobility, making it quite strategic says Fulton. He further explained in a big data analytics world, this data becomes more important than ever and as a result the company focuses extensively on an end-of-life recycling program where important data is wiped before the device leaves corporate hands.

Another major area of security is jailbroken or rooted phones and Tangoe's solutions deal with this scenario in a number of ways. It first takes into account who the user is, if the situation is a case of BYOD, is it a corporate liable device, etc.

Actions which can be taken as a result are to lock the device, and notify the user in their language. Moreover they can be blocked from exchange access, App Store access, the MDM profile can be wiped from the device meaning it can't access enterprise resources, etc. If content and data are protected in a secure container on the phone or gadget, this data can be removed as well.

The bottom line is Tangoe is differentiating itself by integrating its MDM and TEM solutions making life easier for stakeholders as well as reducing cost by minimizing bill shock and protecting corporate data from leaking.

Altair Semiconductor's 4G Chip Bet Pays Off

2013-02-26T16:54:16Z

As wireless markets globally move to 4G, Altair Semiconductor has targeted this newer network standard with a single-mode line of chips which cost less and use less power than mult-mode solutions which have to grapple with 3G and older standards. As consumer electronics devices become more price-competitive, choosing a streamlined solution means OEMs/ODMs can reduce their costs and pass part of the savings on to customers allowing more inexpensive solutions to be marketed.

The big news for the company at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona was the release of a new chipset for LTE-A, the 3800/6300 FourGee line which can download at 150Mbps and upload at 50 Mbps. The chips support carrier aggregation and a wide frequency band span of 400-3800MHz with 6 concurrent LTE bands for both primary and diversity antennas, enabling global band combinations. There is further support for VoLTE and HD-voice as well as interference cancellation an peripheral interface support for a wide variety of applications from consumer electronics to M2M.

The company hopes it becomes the go to source for connectivity in an "internet of things" world and spokesman Matthew Krieger (pictured) brimmed with excitement about how their solutions are replacing competitors in the market. Moreover they see larger competitors selling 3G-disabled solutions as a sign they are on the right track.

Other recent achievements have to do with certification on the networks of Telefonica and Verizon, meaning ODM/OEM customers no longer need to get their products certified themselves.

Krieger continued to tout current success in the market and spoke of future opportunity which they believe will be quite bright as 4G markets in India and China begin to emerge.

MWC 2013 Day One Trends

2013-02-26T14:05:40Z

After a day of meetings there are some strong takeaways from the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Interestingly devices played a large and yet small factor in my analysis. First off The Sony Xperia Z tablet was shown off here but crowds were lackluster. In examining the device I was amazed at how thin and light it was - it seemed like a larger iPad Mini in terms of weight and the feeling in the hands. Huawei introduced the Ascend P2 - the world's fastest smartphone. No one seemed to care that much.

The takeaway here may be devices are less important as apps have moved to the cloud - or perhaps if you are using an Android-powered phone, best-in-class specs for thinness, lightness and speed aren't so important. In discussing the issue with others at the event a common comment was "so what" if they introduced a thinner device. Ironically when Apple introduces a thinner gadget everyone seems to go crazy.

This tells us device makers have finally learned how to copy one part of the Apple success story - thinner, lighter and faster devices. Now they need to understand the importance of marketing holistically - meaning launching devices with fanfare and excitement. Samsung is certainly doing a great job of generating excitement around many of its devices. They do things very differently than Apple and yet are succesful. They certainly have a model worth emulating.

Other trends are a huge focus on small cells, WiFi offload, cloud, big data analytics and companies helping carriers make money through consulting and other services.

The most interesting pre-rumor I heard is a potential purchase of Juniper by Oracle allowing them to become a serious telco equipment competitor. After the announcement of the Acme Packet acquisition, the networking equipment vendor would makee sense as a buy. Finally, the time may be right for such a move as NSN and Alcatel-Lucent are struggling.

How Steve Jobs Even Transformed Our Views on Management

2013-02-09T19:23:24Z

Steve Jobs was such an amazing entrepreneur - even calling him the ultimate visionary doesn't seem to describe accurately how amazing he was at reinventing numerous business categories. Like so many creative visionaries, early in his career he lacked the political and people skills which many people believed were necessary to run a company effectively.

When he was "pushed out" of Apple it was seen as a normal incident - CEOs were pushed out of companies all the time as past Apple CEO John Sculley has said. In fact Scully spoke just over a week ago at StartUp Camp7 collocated with ITEXPO Miami 2013 and gave the inside scoop on many important events which transpired between him and Jobs over the years.

What is interesting though is how Sculley defends Jobs and says it was a mistake to push him out. It seems John's view on management and entrepreneurship has changed over the years and others are beginning to agree with him. In fact, changing the view of the founder-CEO is just one other massive accomplishment Steve Jobs should get credit for. As if his list of accomplishments was somehow lacking until now.

Throughout my career the common knowledge has always been entrepreneurs can't run companies - at some point you need to bring in a real manager who can run operations.

Common knowledge seems to have changed recently and Jessi Hempel writes a compelling article for Fortune which makes the case for having the founder run the company.

The article does lead with a statistic which seems to make the opposite case though:

Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman has spent the past decade studying the impact a founder has on a company. In a study of 460 American startups, he found that on average those in which founding CEOs remained the top decision-makers were less valuable than those managed by outside CEOs. Simply put, the skills needed to invent a new product or service are different from those needed to manage a business, and few people possess both.

The interesting twist however is while the outside manager is better at running a company on a day-to-day basis, they are far less creative than a founder and in-fact almost every company which has become uber-successful has been run by a founder.

Reid Hoffman the co-founder of Linked In explains in-part why there has been a shift in thinking:

20 years ago, you could count on product cycles lasting years, which meant that constantly developing new products and refining the vision was relatively less important than aggressive execution. The “professional” CEO back then just had to be a superb executor for the founder’s vision. The rise of internet time has reduced product cycles to months and weeks. As such, a CEO can’t focus solely on scaling concerns—today, the CEO has to be involved in the product.

Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz details his thoughts on the matter in a piece titled Why We Prefer Founding CEOs and it describes how today [constant] innovation = [the best chance of] success. If we take it as a given that entrepreneurs are best able to innovate then it becomes a given that a "professional CEO" isn't the right person to guide a company forward.

This part of the post sums it up best:

The reason is that innovation is the most difficult core competency to build in any business. Innovation is almost insane by definition: most people view any truly innovative idea as stupid, because if it was a good idea, somebody would have already done it. So, the innovator is guaranteed to have more natural initial detractors than followers.

Moreover he says these are the three ingredients to being a great innovator:

Comprehensive knowledge
Moral authority
Total commitment to the long-term

Here is another great point he makes:

Founding CEOs naturally take a long view of their companies. The company is their life’s work. Their emotional commitment exceeds their equity stake. Their goal from the start is to build something significant. They instinctively know that big product cycles come from investment and that even the biggest product cycles will eventually fade. Professional CEOs, on the other hand, tend to be driven by relatively shorter-term goals. They are paid in terms of stock options that vest over 4 years and cash bonuses for quarterly and yearly performance.

One other idea he brings up worth discussing is that Eric Schmidt is an important exception to the rule as a "professional CEO" he came to Google and launched Apps and Android. He did so by, "teaming with the founders and gaining the benefits of their knowledge, moral authority, and long-term vision." He continues to say this is an obvious strategy, but shared leadership and control are incredibly difficult to achieve." he further describes what is needed to make it work: "Intense communication, deep humility, and some hard compromises." Of course he conludes by reminding us that almost nobody ever pulls it off, making Eric Schmidt a very important exception.

What we learn from the above is professional CEOs need to be humble and able to communicate well to be successful in business today. My personal experience has shown me many entrepreneur CEOs while very creative are pretty bad at the "business side" of the job. This is in-part why most of them fail - something we should keep in mind. Yes, the great companies are run by their founders but remember, most new companies do fail.

This tells us that CEOs who aren't very effective at doing the non-creative part of the CEO job - running meetings, managing, etc should bring in someone to assist. That is if they want to maximize the value of their company. When interviewing such a person they should be sure to look for someone who is able to admit past mistakes and who learned from them. I would go so far as asking them to list their top three mistakes and ask what was learned from each.

Another thought which comes to mind is this change in "founder philosophy" sums up why in-part Amazon's shares trade at an exponentially-higher multiple than those of Apple. Something I have discussed before.

We know that finding another Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos is rare and we also know if we can team more professional CEOs who don't think they know it all with some creative founders, we can unlock tons of value in a slew of companies. Of course the founders would need to realize their shortcomings in order to allow such a "partnership." Hopefully this will happen as word gets out about how Jobs and Sculley worked side-by-side and moreover how much of Apple's success today (especially in product design and marketing) came from that initial collaboration between a founder and solid "professional CEO."

To me it is fascinating to see how "common knowledge" about the ongoing ability of a founder to run the company has changed because we are in an age of acceleration. In other words, the shortcomings of the CEO from a management perspective have become less important because a well-managed company without innovation will get eaten alive by its competitors. The situation with John Sculley of course is an extreme example and shows how their relationship and poor decisions made by the board at the time have helped lead to a change in thinking about the importance in keeping a founder at the helm. Moreover as we can see from Amazon's P/E multiple, the investment community definitely agrees.

A Larger iPhone - Apple Will HAVE to Listen Now

2013-01-08T13:20:54Z

Sometimes I feel like a broken record MP3 player but when you know you are right and you are a student of history, you see the mistakes companies make before they do. On July 8^th of 2010 I told you that larger Android devices would be a threat to Apple. The point was that Apple is repeating its mistake from the eighties where it had its own hardware competing against many manufacturers. At the time price/performance was the Achilles heel of Cupertino but now the challenge is not only price/performance but form factor.

Apple can’t possibly come out with every size phone and anticipate market needs but they could have done the obvious and come out with a wider phone after reading my piece which is exactly 2.5 years old today.

Now Barclays estimates the phablet market will grow to $135B in 2015. Where is Apple in this game? Nowhere, unless you count the iPad mini which isn’t a phablet but a slightly smaller tablet which is bigger than most of its competition.

I have been consistent about my thoughts on the matter as you can see from my past entries:

There are finally reports that Apple will come out with a larger iPhone and it is about time. The company can’t predict every trend but to me it was an obvious mistake to make the iPhone 5 taller and not wider as I have mentioned before. It is indeed surprising that the company has been so slow to react to this market opportunity.

How Apple Can Slow Samsung Down

2012-12-18T22:13:41Z

Tom Keating at TMC reported today that Samsung is beating virtually everyone at virtually everything. He discusses how they have become the dominant TV maker but this isn’t such big news at this point. What is interesting is the company replaced Nokia as the number one producer of cellphones – not a huge surprise at this point but a huge milestone as Nokia held the coveted top spot for 13 years.

Why is Apple, a company with more consumer loyalty than just about any other company being threatened by Samsung? In a word, variety.

Apple got demolished in the PC wars of the eighties because the competition was brutal and Apple couldn’t keep up with the price/performance of all the computers flooding the market from Compaq, Gateway, HP and Dell.

Apple was one company competing against many and couldn’t be a Jack of All Trades. As it tried, it mastered few.

Today, in the smartphone world the issue isn’t so much price/performance – although this is an important area – it has to do with choice. Often screen size.

Many want a wider phone than Apple provides. Other consumers want a phablet. some want low-priced smartphones which have larger screens than the iPhone 4 or 5 provide.

Apple’s business model is more of building perfection – they make the best products they can without compromising excessively. And they charge premium prices for everything. I recently paid $39 for a Lightning to 30-pin adapter. Shortly thereafter I purchased a Roku HD for $49.99 or $11 more – if this pricing doesn’t scream highway robbery (sorry: “exclusive”), I am not sure what does.

Samsung on the other hand as well as Motorola/Google and HTC all compromise for the sake of giving consumers increased choice.

Of course Apple understands the concept of choice but they aren’t going nearly as broad as the competition and it’s hurting them.

Consider Toyota, a very successful auto brand also owns Lexus on the high-end and Scion on the low end. Being successful today requires giving increasing choice.

If you still don’t agree, you should have tagged along when my wife asked me to pick up Jell-O at the grocery store. The company makes 14 kinds of ready-made gelatin from strawberry to black cherry sugar free and 29 varieties of the brand you make yourself from apricot to watermelon. And pudding? There are an additional 66 types!

Point being – I have been salivating over non-Apple smartphones since the introduction of the wider-than-Apple Droid-X phone which I discussed in July of 2010. The title of the post was exactly, Is Apple Repeating its Mistake from the Eighties? Where I said:

This could mean over time that the Android ecosystem gets to be so big that the economy of scale will lead to a variety of devices which have a plethora of form factors which appeal to a large variety of users. As this happens, it is unclear if customers will stay married to Apple or switch to the ecosystem with the newer and cooler devices which seem to emerge every month or even every few weeks.

Could I be more clear? Could the situation be any more obvious? Cupertino does seem to be awakening to reality as the iPad Mini was a response to seeing consumers buy a large quantity of a product Apple didn’t think consumers wanted – the Amazon Kindle Fire.

I haven’t given up on my suggestion that Apple consider a wider-screen phone – a recent post from last month said the company needs an iLane Bryant Phone, my playful way of getting them to understand, sometimes it’s good to have a little junk in the trunk.

Although the company has seen its stock price get punished recently from over $700 to under $510, I am not concerned about Apple’s future as there is tremendous momentum going in Cupertino’s direction. What should keep Tim Cook and company up at night though is every non-Apple device which is sold whether it runs a RIM, Microsoft or Google OS. The war for the future hearts and minds of users, consumers and businesses is all about the ecosystem which includes apps, music, video, accessories, cases and more recently chargers.

And yes, margins may suffer on some lower-volume or entry-level products but ask Toyota how many drivers move up from Scion to Camry to Lexus.

Apple simply cannot afford to be absent from any sectors of the market which consumers want. To make matters worse, when they fail, the media skewers them as evidenced by the recent Apple Maps fiasco. In-short, it is impossible to be ahead of the entire industry as it grows in every conceivable direction – laptops, tablets, desktops, phones, phablets and not ever fail. It has never been done and likely won’t.

But the challenge for now isn’t so great. For Heaven’s sake, just come out with a wider phone to give people who gravitate towards the HTC DNA, Galaxy SIII and Note 2 a viable choice.

Important Tech News of the Day Dec 14, 2012

2012-12-14T20:34:59Z

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out
Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers
Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers
IT spending will pick up in 2013
Mobile data growth is booming
Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia
Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant
There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping
A win for the free market in the EU
There’s an app to measure skin health
Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as
Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans
Small business hopes for better 2013
Cities are cutting out ISPs
We are actively trading privacy for security
But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data
Comcast now allows video downloads
Social media has destroyed the web
If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market?
China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out and in my testing on a 4^th generation iPad it worked well. Some complaints remain that for non-Prime users the experience isn’t that great. I for one would like to be able to download video on the app – there is a download area but no instructions as to what is downloadable or how to download.

Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers. According to Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer, “Left unmanaged, the rapid growth in video traffic can turn into a deluge and spell disaster. It is important to look at where service providers’ investments can have the most impact, and this research makes clear that the IP edge of both wireline and wireless networks – which are increasingly becoming one and the same - offers the greatest opportunity to improve network performance.”

It is undeniable that video streaming will grow in popularity – the war between cable providers and companies working with Roku, Apple TV, Google and others will only continue with the goal being to keep the viewer watching as much content as possible on your service(s).

Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers and must pay them for their legal fees and in the form of advertising in the newspapers whose content was used by the search giant. Some say the settlement totals $6M. Moreover, there will be an ongoing advertising partnership between the news outlets and Google. The challenge for the search leader who profits handsomely from content on the web is if this case could set a precedent allowing many other companies to sue for damages because their content too is being used without permission.

IT spending will pick up in 2013 which is great news for the tech market which has had to deal with numerous ups and downs since the dotcom bubble burst over a decade ago. Gartner recently noted that “most enterprises have already significantly cut discretionary IT spending growth over the past several years,” and that “they have little room to reduce IT spending further over the long run.”

Mobile data growth is booming and has seen a compound annual growth rate of 25.4% between 2006 and 2011. Interestingly only in United States, Japan and Australia does mobile data revenue exceed fixed broadband revenues. No surprise here but voice revenue is declining in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011 according to Ofcom.

Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia and this is the danger of the patent wars – even if you were smart enough to invent lots of cool new ideas, there will always be some people somewhere who thought of some things before you did. This is why the tech patent wars may on the surface seem like a smart way for a company to protect their intellectual property but in reality, when defending your inventions in every country you are bound to lose sometimes.

All of this litigation hurts consumers at the end of the day.

Of course I am referring primarily to Apple and Samsung, in the case of MobileMedia, they are a patent troll (but owned by Nokia, Sony and MPEG LA) so there isn’t much of a defense when you lose. Moreover, you are generally a sitting duck, waiting for these companies to come after you. Especially when you become successful in the market.

Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant of sorts by managing friend’s birthdays, your schedule and more. It offers you time to leave alerts based on your schedule, can track packages and more. It can notify you of based weather the night before and can jump into conference calls for you three minutes before they start. I just downloaded it on iOS and will post further if it is as great as it seems. I set it to remind me of free songs to download each week and to remind me once-a-month which apps are accessing my personal info.

There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping and TMC’s Brooke Neuman details them for you. Gilte Groupe and others make the list.

A win for the free market in the EU as Apple and four other publishers have made an offer to ease price restrictions against Amazon in the book market as a response to an anti-trust investigation.

There’s an app to measure skin health – just take well-lit pictures of yourself and receive a personal beauty number which the company, Own says is 95% accurate.

Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as the dreadful Newtown Sandy Hook, CT Elementary School shootings remind us. Trending topics on Twitter include #Connecticut, #Newtown, #PrayForNewtown, 27 Dead and Sandy Hook.

Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans, especially to its iPhone customers according to TMC’s Senior Editor, Tony Rizzo.

Small business hopes for better 2013 but don’t expect them to hire more according to a study by IP communications, data and cloud provider Cbeyond. Other important parts from the survery: 83 percent of cloud users said it made them "more flexible," 78 percent said it made them "more productive," and 71 percent said it was actually saving them money to use the cloud that they wouldn't have saved without.

Cities are cutting out ISPs to get high-speed networks to their citizens and Seattle is the latest city to do so.

We are actively trading privacy for security in the US and terrorism has definitely eroded many of our freedoms. A sense that citizens are presumed innocent seems to be slowly eroding.

But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data. A new bill would require companies to get a customer's consent before collecting or sharing mobile location data. It would also ban mobile applications that secretly monitor the user's location — a feature that Senator Al Franken said allows for stalking and enables domestic violence.

Comcast now allows video downloads – this may mark the first time a cable company is doing so and is a great help to people who don’t always have fast and cheap broadband access. Airline passengers are an obvious beneficiary.

Social media has destroyed the web – it’s brought in hundreds of millions of new users but has locked us in, taken over our online identities and made it more difficult to share our information from one service to the next.

If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market? Moreover, why is it pulling out?

China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship and has already ublocked searches for the names of many top political leaders in a possible sign of looser controls a month after new senior officials were named to head the ruling party.

In Windows 8, Microsoft Has a Winner

2012-12-05T21:23:50Z

Samsung has a winner with its Microsoft Windows 8 powered ATIV Smart PC Pro 700t (XE700T1C, a device which is part Ultrabook and part tablet in one. I consider it to be the perfect combination of both worlds, allowing users to do everything they need with a single device. There is no longer a need to wait till you get to a secondary computer to do “real work” as this one does all the things you might need. It has a full array of ports allowing you to plug in a memory stick or hard drive. It runs Flash in its browser allowing you to do all the things which iOS will not. How many tens of thousands of iOS apps are just poor renditions of what webmasters used to create using Adobe’s Flash after all?

Then there are all the PC applications like Microsoft Office which just run – no new version is needed.

TMC’s Tom Keating just reviewed the ATIV Smart PC Pro 700t and he loves it. I have used it for a while as well and am just as impressed. This computer is fast – it brings up web pages a tad more quickly than a fourth generation iPad! And the screen is about 98% as bright as the Retina display on the iPad. There are a lot less pixels on the Samsung but the difference is indistinguishable to Tom and me in picture after picture we examined.

Perhaps the biggest complaint I have for Samsung is the name – it’s too long (I have to look it up each time I need to reference it).

The biggest challenge with the software is the switching between user interfaces – Windows 8 Metro and the traditional desktop we are familiar with in Windows 7. It gets confusing. Moreover when you want to run Flash in Metro, the site has to be approved by Microsoft first. So you have to leave the “easy touch” interface and then come back if you want to watch a video on a site like TMCnet.

There are a number of reasons why Apple is beating Microsoft when it comes to mobile – design is one of them and so is the slickness of the UI. But one less obvious area where Apple is winning is simplicity. Microsoft’s problem is still that things are too complicated and the learning curve is higher than what is needed on an iPad or even Android device.

And this is where Microsoft has to continue to focus. I love having less devices – I carry an Ultrabook, iPad and iPhone to conferences and meetings and would like to ditch one of them. The corporate security and other business networking features of Windows 8 will likely give this and similar devices a huge push in the enterprise – but ease-of-use is still an area of improvement for Redmond. One which it has struggled with for years. With Windows 8 and Metro, it is likely about 80-85% of where Apple is with iOS. The pivotal question is whether consumers will weigh all of the amazing features of Windows 8 which Tom details quite well more than the 15-20% usability gap which is likely always going to remain when a device is running 2 separate interfaces.

If you're wondering what Tom might think about all this – fear not, I asked him for his closing arguments:

The dual-mode Metro/Modern UI + Desktop interfaces may indeed cause some usability concerns as you mention Rich. However, there is always a trade-off of features vs. usability. It is true Apple has made iOS very touch-friendly, but you cannot run the full Mac operating system or the full Mac applications. Microsoft has melded the desktop operating system with a touch-friendly operating system. Switching between the two takes some getting used to, but I would not prefer a single unified user interface. Some things are better suited for touch (Metro/Modern UI) and some things are better for desktop mode like Photoshop, full Outlook application, Windows Explorer, etc. If Microsoft had tried to kludge the desktop UI to all be in Metro I would have never switched to Windows 8. I guess you could say I like that Microsoft gives me the freedom of choice, while Apple has always been a control freak limiting choice. Sure, an easy to use UI is great, but when you have to compromise on so many features, for me it’s an easy decision - Windows 8 is the better choice.

Eventually "markets" decide "market share" but it does look to Tom and I like Microsoft has a winner with Windows 8 and the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700t is a very powerful yet portable device which is free of most every compromise made on iOS and Android devices.

Mobile Profits are Skyrocketing as 67,000 Are Laid Off

2012-11-15T22:44:09Z

Mobile is not your father’s tech space.

Over the past two years, profits from the top eight mobile vendors has risen from $5.3 billion to $14.4 billion for a whopping increase of $9.1 billion and all this while over 67,000 people have been laid off in the technology. How is this possible you ask? I posited a similar query two months ago regarding Corning’s shares losing value – even while they supply Gorilla Glass to much of the booming mobile market.

FierceWireless sums up some of the companies shedding jobs in the wireless space just this year alone.

Google/Motorola shed 4,000 jobs but these were anticipated. Motorola like others on this list is losing share to Apple and more recently Samsung.
RIM shed 5,000 jobs and is betting the company on Blackberry 10 which is due out in Q2 of 2013.
Alcatel-Lucent has let go of 5,490. Similar to Nortel’s troubles, the company has suffered from a seemingly perpetual slowdown in carrier spending and competition from Asia.
Nokia has shed 10,000 jobs which makes sense as they lost the leadership role in smartphones to Apple and Samsung.
Nokia Siemens Networks has shed 17,000 jobs and faces similar challenges to other carrier equipment providers.

AT&T, Verizon and many other carriers around the world are benefiting tremendously from the massive spending on wireless connectivity from its customers and yet this money is not reaching the majority of equipment providers or device manufacturers. It is worth mentioning Cisco is certainly a beneficiary here and they will now get into the small cell market, making life even more difficult for existing players in the space.

In the past they haven’t been immune to cuts though as they recently laid off 11,300 people.

Sony too announced plans a while back to lay off 13,000 workers. This is the company that invented the mobile audio space, has historically produced some of the lightest and sleekest notebooks on the market and with its SonyEricsson division really led the way in mobile phones for a few years.

The challenge is the wireless market has a lack of competition for now. Apple and Samsung are so dominant the other players have to eke out a living in the shadows. Samsung has done an amazing job using technology and a plethora of devices sizes and shapes to fight this war. Another challenge – the aforementioned organizations are so large they can afford to design and in Samsung’s case, manufacture their own mobile chips. What this means is typical suppliers to a thriving market like Texas Instruments have trouble making a living. This is why TI announced they too are laying off 1,700 wireless employees… A staggering amount for an arms supplier in a wireless arms race.

This is a brave new world for technology – when the PC market was thriving there were hundreds of companies providing computers – some which you put together yourself and others which were bare bones models at discount prices. But now, prohibitive marketing budgets, need for a patent arsenal and carrier relationships have made it difficult for a no-name company to become a market leader overnight.

Google and Amazon are exceptions but they can afford to lose money in mobile for as long as they need to in order to further their core businesses.

Instead, the growth seems to have to come from the aftermarket space – meaning ecosystem plays. Apps makers, hardware add-on companies like Square and case making are the angles to play to generate big money in wireless. For traditional hardware arms suppliers like NSN and TI, mobile is not your father’s tech space.

A Little Heavy Chrome

2012-11-01T15:49:07Z

Google has a new heavy metal-based TV commercial which has a Halloween undercurrent. The ad touts the $249 Samsung-made Chromebook as being smaller, better on batteries and good for “scaring off viruses.” It goes on to discuss its lack of phantom files and crashes. Although the video has had under 100,000 views I can see it going viral and perhaps adding a zero to that number.

What is unclear is how much demand there will be for a cloud-based laptop which seems to ape the look of an Apple computer at a fraction of the price.

It’s worth noting the device has seen good reviews and includes so many free services it actually gives you $20 back after you outlay your $249!

If you haven’t been paying attention, this is one of the most exciting times I can recall in the hardware wars. Amazon has come on strong with its Kindle Fire HD and is blasting the iPad Mini – as being inferior. Then there is Samsung who recently released their 5.5 inch Galaxy Note II which is an awesome phone/tablet hybrid. Throw in the Galaxy S3 and the new HTC Windows Phone 8X and it becomes obvious that innovation is alive and well.

As you can see, manufacturers are serious about mobile and are fighting fire with fire. And if consumers continue to lust after and purchase them as fast as companies can make them, the tech market should see their balance sheets back in black in no time.

IBM Mobility Keynote at ITEXPO

2012-10-16T08:20:21Z

At ITEXPO, Michael Riegal of IBM discussed how mobile is transforming industries – and discusses case studies related to his company’s Smarter Planet Strategy. Watch the video and see how many people have 3, 4 and 5 devices with them at the show – amazing!

Microsoft, SNL, Sprint and Softbank News for Monday October 15, 2012

2012-10-15T11:08:44Z

Microsoft is jumping into the music business and this is perhaps the biggest news of the day and possibly the week. Redmond is now offering ad supported music streaming and going up against Sirius XM, Pandora and Apple’s iTunes all at once. Boasting a 30-million strong library of songs, users can listen to playlists for free or download to own music across their TV, computers and smartphones. The ad-free version is $9.99 per month and includes access to music videos as well.

SNL was actually funny for once. If you tuned into SNL this past weekend and were expecting to be disappointed as it continues to struggle to be funny, you would have been surprised. Many of us tuned in to hear them make fun of the recent bizarre VP debates where the world witnessed Vice President Biden laughing in an uncontrollable fashion. Thing is, the original was funnier than the imitation. The good news is, later in the program the show aired a segment pitting iPhone 5 reviewers and their silly minor grievances against factory workers in China who build the devices. As a techie, I loved this segment and laughed out loud. Remember, I have written about over-picky iPhone 5 reviewers myself.

Apple is sprinting away from Samsung as you might imagine. These once great partners are parting as Apple is looking to punish the Korean conglomerate for infringing its patents and becoming perhaps the strongest hardware competitor to the iOS line of devices. The company will likely lose the A7 chip contract or maintain it in a limited way as alternative supplier TSMC may not be able to keep up with demand.

Softbank and Sprint deal ink a deal as 70% of the US phone carrier will go to the Japan-based company for $20B and in the process Sprint will have the deep pockets needed to compete head-to-head against Verizon and AT&T.

Microsoft says Google and Motorola are infringing its mapping patent which means Redmond seems to want an active role in the latest round of patent wars hitting the tech market.

ZTE’s biggest problem is a quarterly loss of $300M and you thought the US Congress was the company’s biggest headwind. Shares dropped 16% today on the news.

KidsCash launches in Beta allowing parent to help kids manage their money and shopping. In an age where US-based adults compete with their government to see who can spend money they don’t have at a faster pace, using tech to teach the next generation how to budget and manage money more effectively seems to be a great idea.

Now it's Occupy Apple?

2012-09-20T17:03:32Z

Some of the Occupy Wall Street crowd has turned its attention to Apple and its roll out of the iPhone 5. After all, this evil company decided to take on the two largest phone makers non-US based Nokia and RIM, and make them irrelevant in less than half a decade. Moreover, these disciples of Satan from Cupertino had the gall to have their stock increase by hundreds of billions of dollars and in the process help hundreds of thousands of investors including people holding IRAs, 401Ks, and those who benefit from pension funds like school teachers, firefighters, policemen and legions of other union and non-union workers.

One occupy protester, Shiloh Coral (above) said it best when she explained that instead of enriching Apple and the consumer culture it benefits from, we should invest in education and helping low-income families. After all, it isn’t like Apple hires anyone in the US or has retail stores where just about anyone who has the drive and ambition can sell products. Also, its not like tens of thousands of salespeople benefit from these device launches in companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Best Buy or T-Mobile.

It isn't like these devices have spawned an app ecosystem with hundreds of thousands of choices where the poorest of the poor can go to a public library, learn how to program on free government computers and develop the next must-have app while becoming wealthy in the process.

It’s not like jobs allow low-income families a source of income or anything like that. Moreover, its not like taxes on income from the above-mentioned jobs reduce state entitlement costs on things like housing and food stamps, allowing them to increase education funding if they choose.

But sarcasm aside, did we stop teaching young people how to think??

Let’s see – the most successful company perhaps in the world resides in our country and people from the same country are angry with them? For what? Yes, it is worth pondering the sign below that says Apple minimizes the taxes it pays to the US government. But the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world – can you blame them? After all, the last time I checked, the company has competitors like HTC and Samsung who don’t have to worry about tax rates which are as onerous.

And as scary as this may sound to the young – in business you have to compete every day or you risk losing, which means potentially bankruptcy or a fire sale on your distressed assets.

Which by the way almost always results in job loss.

Don’t think such a thing could happen to a company like Apple – well consider it almost did in the nineties.

This isn’t the first time protesters have targeted technology – you may recall this sign “F&*k Capitalism” from the MWC show in Barcelona from earlier this year.

My favorite “Occupy” irony is the app which was developed to tell others you are being arrested. The point is – you take one of the greatest achievements of capitalism – the multibillion dollar 3G and 4G cellular network coupled with microprocessors and myriad phone components funded by “capitalist” investors and use the resulting cellular-powered device to assist your anti-capitalist movement.

Perhaps the best way to conclude is with the humor from a comment on the matter from Casaiir:

I wonder if they would sell their spots in line.

The whole idea of these people protesting Apple would be funny if it wasn't so .

See also: EDITORIAL: Demand for iPhone 5 contrasts with 'Occupy' banalities

Photos courtesy of CNET