AT&T to bring out Nokia phone with Windows

Last week, Steve Ballmer joined Nokia CEO Stephen Elop in unveiling the Lumia 900, their newest phone at a press event in Las Vegas (ahead of CES). The device represents Nokia and Microsoft's best chance yet to break Google and Apple's hold on the U.S. smartphone market. The new phone will use AT&T's LTE wireless data network. Since this is Nokia and Microsoft's (last?) chance to disrupt the most lucrative phone market, I can't wait to get my hands on one of them and experience the new device. I also would like to hear about their developer plans.

Will BlackBerry survive 2012?

Good article here. The answer is no. According to research group Canalys, RIM's share of the smartphone market in the US fell to 9.2% in the third quarter from 24% in the same period last year. You don't recover from this kind of numbers, not unless you have a great plan in the works.

There might be room for another developer environment on top of iOS and Android, but it is not going to be RIM (Microsoft is not going to abandon a market that could grow into a trillion dollars). RIM totally missed the apps boat and doesn't have an attractive value proposition for users and developers. Why would you spend time and money porting your apps on a platform with a declining number of activated users?

iTunes App Store Surpasses 15 Billion Downloads

The iTunes App Store had only 500 applications when it launched in 2008, now it has over half a million applications if you count iPad's. The 15-billion download number is staggering. Talk about a Long Tail! The App Store is reaching this milestone only one month after the iTunes Music Store reached the same number (iTunes Music Store launched in 2003, 5 years before the App Store).

I have been a strong supporter of a vibrant developer community to establish a platform, this is one of the best illustrations we've ever seen so far.

Google's Android Market is still playing catch up (Apple must be feeling them breathing over their neck though), but if you add their numbers, this truly is an incredible growth and remarkable achievement.

How many Java developers are there?

Over 9M according to this blog post. I first looked at Java back in 1996. An engineer at Alcatel brought the first copy of "Java in a Nutshell" and said: "This is the future".

The author of the blog says that at the time of Java's open sourcing in 2007, there were 6 million Java developers and the number of Java developers had been rising at an average of 0.75 million per year during the previous two years. After Java was open sourced, that number shot up to 1 million per year.

Why the success?
From a technical point of view, "Write Once, Run Anywhere" and a solid set of APIs would do the trick.
From a business point of view, Free and a "transparent" Java Community Process would work, but a solid evangelist like Sun Microsystems is also needed.

As the back-end is moving to the cloud and the front-end is moving to mobile devices, Google and Apple are in control of the user experience. Java is still very relevant (through Android for the front-end).

Disruption at work: Apple's iPad

Apple has done it again. The Cupertino guys have, one more time, dramatically changed how people consume digital content with their new iPad device. This is on the same scale as the iPod and iPhone introduction. Digital content streaming is going to explode with the adoption of the iPad. The size, the weight, the resolution and the price make it the perfect device to use in the house. I don't like to look too far back, but Apple is superbly executing on their strategy as discussed in an early 2006 post. So who should be concerned with the new iPad?

• Amazon. It's going to take a lot of work for the Kindle to get any significant traction unless there is a big change in design and business model.
  


• Carriers. AT&T gets a 3GSM model to increase its subscriber base in an environment where ARPU is declining. Verizon and Sprint must be worried and so should be other carriers worldwide.
  


• Print Media. It's going to be very interesting to watch how media companies such as newspapers are going to react to the new device. Why do you want to pay for print newspapers/magazines ever again? I'd better monitor newspapers sales and distribution from now on.
  


• Device manufacturers (Nokia, RIM, Samsung, LG). Apple is all over the house now, they have so many touch points with the consumer that the barriers to entry will be too high for you and you may become irrelevant quickly.
  


• Google. This is a double-edged sword. Apple was first to market but a lot of the device manufacturers may flock to Google to adopt Android. This looks very much like the open vs closed war that we saw before.

All these companies are vying for a dominant position around the network triangle. Apple and Google are appearing as the leaders to control the overall user experience.

Apple tablet launch expected in November

Nothing has been officially confirmed. If history is any indication, there will be delays, but the latest is that Apple will announce a tablet PC in September and release by November. There was a lot of talk at the last CES about tablet PCs. These devices have the potential to seriously disrupt the media and consumer electronics landscape. The convergence of microprocessor speeds, multi-touch screens, higher bandwidth and web 2.0 applications is changing the way we consume multi-media content.

As we are approaching 20 million iPhone shipped, the Apple tablet PC could become the ideal companion device in the living room and beyond. I don't think this is going to be a PC/laptop replacement. Nobody in his/her right mind would want to do advanced Excel work on a multi-touch screen. On the other hand, nobody would want to boot up a PC or laptop to do a quick search on the internet or watch videos or pictures.

Apple is solidly controlling two ends of the network triangle.

iPhone 3G and App Store: The Long Tail

Much has been written about the new iPhone 3G released by Apple last week. While it is a great device, attention should be paid to the release of the App Store. The App Store can be installed through an iTune update, and allows you to buy and install applications on your new iPhone. This is a major achievement for Apple and more importantly for the developer community. I wrote about such an environment back in 2006: "harness the millions of developers to work on creating value for your network, bring the new media content to your subscribers' handsets".

I'm very curious to see the number of applications (good and bad) that will be made available to the public. I won't try to forecast that number but it will be another order of magnitude to what carriers could bring to market. I believe we will see a true example of The Long Tail where consumers will be offered a large (huge) selection of applications at a very low price.

Apple reinvents the phone

People have lined up in front of Apple stores all around the country to get their hands on Apple's new device, the iPhone. There are many things that make the iPhone a truly innovative device and much has been written about it already. I'm really interested in seeing how Apple can work with the developer community to create new applications for the iPhone. This has the potential to create a significant ecosystem and get innovative applications quickly. What Apple has been able to achieve with the iPhone is no small feat. It is incredibly hard to line up gorgeous design, cutting edge hardware, and flawless software together. Apple has been able to achieve this because they control all the elements. It is even harder when you only control software for instance.

Apple is moving in the same direction as Google to better control the user experience.
At the same time RIM, the smart phone leader, hasn't come up with anything close to this kind of innovation. A blackberry phone with a simple messaging application is going to look very bad very quickly compared to an iPhone. RIM and Nokia should be afraid, very afraid of this new product.

Ubiquitous Network Triangle

A picture is worth a thousand words. What are the components of the ubiquitous network? I drew this picture to illustrate the dynamics at play in the new converged network.Three different players are fighting for one customer. Names are self-describing. Historically, the equipment manufacturers used to make the network and handheld equipment but this is now changing. The key question for all these companies is: Who ultimately will control the customer experience? Who will become a commodity?


Now a quiz: Where is Google on this picture? Apple? Yahoo? RIM?