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.

Google to Buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion

Looks like Larry Page didn't waste time since he moved to the CEO position. It is hard to believe that the acquisition was made for Motorola's hardware business. Google wouldn't risk alienating all the smart phone makers (Samsung, HTC) who are using the Android operating system. It seems to me that Google wanted to make sure that no patent lawsuit would stop Android's growth. I see a few dark clouds on the horizon for this acquisition:

• Looking at the problems AT&T is facing with the T-Mobile acquisition, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Feds looking at this transaction very closely and, despite approving other patent acquisitions, investigating the run for patents.
• Set top box, smart phone and tablet manufacturers may ask Google to reconsider the move or get guarantees from Google about the future of their relationships.
• Nearly 20,000 employees to integrate in a software, Silicon Valley culture-driven company. It will be a challenge for both sides to adjust to the new environment.

There is no doubt that there is a huge patent war going on between Google on one side and Apple and Microsoft on the other side. What will happen when they run out of patents to buy?

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.

Context-aware technology

I just read an excellent special report on Business Week about context-aware computing. You can read most of the report here. Context-aware software tracks a person's location, interests, buying habits and other information. Smartphones are the perfect device to collect and aggregate that kind of information.
Early 2000, Location Based Services (LBS) already promised unimaginable smart services to serve coupon to shoppers walking by a store and other innovative applications. Handheld location was determined by triangulation based on signal strength from each base station. That architecture never delivered. Several reasons to this failure: hype cycle, precision was not good, wireless service providers controlled the information and wanted their own applications to use that data (not external applications). It is my opinion that the first incarnation of presence services went the same way for the exact same reasons.
Fast-forward nearly 10 years and we have a completely different environment. Apple (and its developers/partners), and Google are in total control of the user experience. Multiple applications are able to use location information to provide advanced services to the users. Yelp provides a unique example of combined use of location and camera with the Monocle feature (augmented reality).

The more source of data you can integrate (social media, CRM), the more phone features you can leverage (camera, accelerometer), the best experience you can provide and the more information about the user you get to track. Good and bad. Best way to enable this is to open up the phone platform (Android, iOS, RIM, Windows) to as many developers as possible. Java was a great example of a rapid and pervasive adoption.

Google releases a browser

Google is obviously going after Microsoft's position on the desktop with this new announcement. But if you look at the Android announcement last year, this makes even more sense for Google to have a light-weight browser that can run on top of mobile devices using their OS. It's always a concern to see too many initiatives launched without a real long-term strategy behind it. The Chrome announcement doesn't seem to belong in this category, and could become a cornerstone of Google's strategy in the mobility space.

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo!

Let's look at the numbers: $44.6 billion in cash and stock (62% premium to current trading price). This is on par with the carriers acquisitions we have seen in the past.

Yahoo, you should take this offer and run. Nobody else can make you a better offer and you don't stand a chance to make it on your since you haven't had any significant innovation in the last few years that can threaten Google's domination in the search area (if this is your space?). You are in a slow decline and I don't see a leader emerging to take over the company and make the changes needed. Anyone trying to make the required drastic changes would go against the board that probably doesn't want this kind of changes.

Microsoft, you have a huge amount of cash but nothing in the works that can produce growth on the scale needed by your shareholders. Yahoo is a falling knife that you are trying to catch. This seems the only options, but I can't imagine how many start-ups or smaller companies you could evaluate, purchase, and develop with $44 billion dollars. Far more difficult but so much more rewarding.

Google To Bid For Wireless Spectrum

I'm still having trouble putting my hands around this one. Last week, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Google was going to apply to bid for wireless spectrum in a January Federal Communications Commission auction.

Why would they want to build their own mobile network? It will squarely run against the interest of their current mobile partners (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile), and if they join forces with one of these companies, they are sure to alienate other partners. The Feds will not like the fact that they would own content, advertising and network. Maybe Google wants to put some pressure on the FCC to make sure carriers won't be able to block Google's content on the airwaves. Companies are evolving to take more control of the consumer around the network triangle.

Google announces Android

Last week, Google announced an open-source mobile operating system called Android. There is no doubt that this will change the way that mobile applications are developed.
As much as I like the people at RIM, they have no innovation on the application side that can resist what Apple and Google are doing to them right now. Ask people why they have a Blackberry today and the answer will be: push email. Messaging was a great differentiator 3 years ago, but for iPhones and Android-based phones, this is not even a table stake anymore.

Operating systems that can accommodate a rich and vibrant developer community will allow the creation of many small innovative applications that will drive revenue for carriers, handset manufacturers and developers. The more revenue they will generate with the platform, the more new developers will invest in this technology. Microsoft's response will be interesting, since they would be the only other serious contender in this battle.

Control of the user is achieved through control of the device, network and content. Google is becoming quite dominant here.

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.

Google acquires YouTube

I discovered YouTube a little bit over a year ago and thought this was going to change the video network landscape quite significantly. To be very honest, I believed a TV network would have been the acquiring company, because I initially saw parallels with Napster. Video is clearly becoming the de facto digital content on the web and will continue to dominate as innovation brings increased bandwidth and improved digital cameras and phones. Phones will inevitably become the main production and consumption point for video as these innovations take place.
The players around the network triangle are at work again. I wouldn't be surprised to see handset manufacturers integrate software into their devices to facilitate the use of services like YouTube.

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?