How fast is your provider?

With their newest streaming only plans, it is in Netflix’s interest to ensure that the service can actually deliver as promised. And if you’re streaming tons of content into people’s homes then you will get great insight into the actual capacity that subscribers are able to sustain to their homes.

Recently, on the Netflix tech blog, they published Netflix performance on the top USA networks. The performance of the networks group into three main clusters, an unsurprising finding when you think about how the service is delivered.

The first is the cable companies who have a nice “fat” pipe into your house. Charter leads the pack closely followed by Comcast and Time Warner. Cox, Suddenlink, Cablevision and Cable One round out the pack.

The next group down is led by the Mobile Phone Operators, Verizon and AT&T with their fiber services followed by what appears to be a pack of DSL based providers (Embarq, Windstream and Qwest).

The last group is the only one that provides a bit of a surprise with Clearwire running at about half the speed of Comcast. Not a great advert for their much vaunted 4G WiMax network but it is the only wireless service on the list so is affected by things like distance from towers, phases of the moon and sunspot activity. Ok, so phases of the moon and sunspots don’t’ really effect bandwidth (but it sounded good).

Apps for timewasters?

Apps are for timewasters?

Looking through the lists of free apps, the top 10 generally are what you would expect with YouTube, Adobe, Netflix, eBay and Facebook all knocking around the most downloaded list. What is more interesting is the top 10 paid app list. Even though the amounts are nominal, it is still a considered purchase. While the names may change, the subject matter is pretty constant. Games and timewasters (or timekillers depending on how you view the world) crowd out any serious business contenders. Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Tap Tap Revenge and iFart seem to be where we want to spend our valuable money and time.

So how much time is that exactly? A recent presentation by Mary Meeker showed that 60% of activity on Smartphones is beyond the traditional communication functions (SMS, Email and Voice Calls) you would expect on a mobile device. This 60% of time is made up of Web browsing/Web apps/Social/Games etc.

Before you get upset at the state of society and humanity, spending all their time on frivolous pursuits, remember that like with the internet, this is just the first wave of development where usage is more novelty based. It took time for the internet to become regarded a serious business tool.

Last week it was announced that Smartphones are outselling PCs and with the fast rise of tablets (over 100 tablets were unveiled at CES 2011) we will see rapid enterprise take-up because of their useful form factor. Microsoft still makes most of its profit selling software to the enterprise and with iPad and Android adoption threatening that revenue stream you can see why their Nokia deal made sense. Bloomberg reported that the RIM Playbook will run Android apps demonstrating they clearly see the same threat. And just the other day it was announced that Motorola have announced the acquisition of Three Laws Mobile who provide security management solutions for enterprise customers with Android devices and Samsung are working with Sybase and Cisco to ensure that their tablets are more enterprise friendly.

You can bet there is a lot more going on than is being reported. Roll on Wave 2!

The Big Mobile Revolution

The Big Mobile Revolution

It has been well reported that, in a brief guest article for the Harvard Business Review entitled “preparing for the big mobile revolution” Google CEO Eric Schmidt laid out three priorities for the company: focusing on developing fast LTE networks; pushing the development of NFC-based “mobile money” and, increasing the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world.
This blog has a post on NFC in the works as it seems all the players are working on an NFC strategy.

But, it isn’t quite clear from the article how Google will help with LTE development unless they commit to building out a competitive network to the operators. We need some more information guys!
However, Schmidt’s vision of “literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years.” is pretty achievable. And he can comfortably say that because Android is at the forefront of that drive because the software is free.

The LG’s Optimus line has already made Android more affordable for smartphone buyers on a limited budget and analysts are predicting Android phones will sell at unsubsidized prices under $100 in the US. This is a good start but the really interesting stuff is happening in India and China where the markets are significantly bigger.

Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp are rolling out Google-powered phones that could be sold by carriers for an unsubsidized cost of as little as $50. And in case you doubt the ability of these companies to step up, it was just announced by IDC that ZTE just got the world’s No. 4 handset spot in the fourth quarter, pushing Apple down to No. 5 and RIM out of the list of top five handset makers altogether.

Indian manufacturer Intex says that it’ll have an Android based handset on the market next month for around $120. That includes a touchscreen and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

Cheap (and soon to be cheaper) prices combined with the potential market size of just those two countries quickly demonstrates how Google’s confidence is not misplaced. Now, about the LTE claim…

Where now Apple?

Where now Apple?

With so much buzz last week about the iPhone coming to Verizon, the press seems to have forgotten the fact that Apple are excellent marketers and this launch marks a key point in the iPhone lifecycle to go mass market. And going mass market is a pretty good indication that a product has reached the latter stages of its lifecycle. Although the iPhone 5 is slated for release later this year and all industry buzz is pointing to a completely redesigned handset, it will likely not be the quantum leap forward that made the iPhone the unbelievable category killer (or creator) that it is currently. Rather, it will be an update of what is a great but ageing product.

The iPad is also an excellent product.  And with the iPad 2 approximately 30 days out it remains to be seen if Apple will support that launch with a similar mass market strategy – bringing it to both AT&T and Verizon’s networks (they seem likely to do so). The “tablet” market is making inroads with many new and some very strong products recently launched or in the final stages of development, including Asus Eee Pads and Slates;  the LG Slate; BlackBerry Playbook; Samsung Galaxy Tab;  Dell Streak; Motorola Xoom and many others.  And while earlier this week it appeared that the Samsung Galaxy Tab had made great inroads in taking market share from Apple, revised indications now seem to reverse such gains with Apple maintaining over 90% of the market.

To remain ahead, not only in the market place, but in consumers eyes as the consumer products innovator, Apple really needs to redefine another market fundamentally in the way they did with Smartphones and online music.  Interestingly, the WSJ published an article today entitled Are Apple’s best years over. The author opines “I see only one problem: I’m not sure what worlds are left for Apple to conquer.”

I believe their most recent foray and relaunch of Apple TV will be their next primary focus.  Apple TV will move from the proverbial “hobby” that Steve Jobs has said it occupied up until recently into a very consumer forward platform delivering significant revenue to Apple.  I’ve blogged before, a long time ago, about consumers not needing cable companies as their content provider and the improvement and model behind Apple TV will likely accelerate this need.  I believe Apple TV will be viewed in a few years much like iTunes is viewed now – the preeminent source for video content (like iTunes is the source for music).  I’ll publish more on this topic in the future.

Let’s hope that the Apple team have at least few more great ideas in the wings. It certainly makes the industry and our tech lives more interesting.

SmartPhone Privacy – are you ready?

SmartPhone Privacy

Facebook was the most visited site in the US in 2010. Social is clearly big. Or does that just mean we just have an easy way of keeping in touch and communicating with each other? The old adage that consumers drive technology adoption holds true once again. If you look at any successful business, inevitably that company has provided a product or service that fills a need.

With so many people spending an inordinate amount of time (40 million minutes a month) on Facebook, they are starting to actually make some money on advertising. Nothing to justify their silly multiples, but $2b a year isn’t too shabby.

Spending all this time online does mean that scrutiny of our behavior is also on the rise. With so much of our behavior now recordable – especially via Smartphones – we are starting to see a mixed response to tracking. People like relevance but are worried about privacy.

Cookies have been around for ages but advertisers are working with networks to use them more aggressively. Having the products you looked at re-served in ads on other sites is not terribly annoying and only mildly creepy. The FTC has proposed a “do not track option” to block tracking cookies. But clearly getting served relevant ads is way less intrusive than a cold call.

A little more interesting is the debate over the use of a mobile device’s unique identifier (UDID) by third-parties. App makers in co-operation with companies like Flurry get free data on how their app is being used. That is fairly acceptable but Ad Networks are beginning to use this number to build a profile of the phone user for targeted advertising. And you can’t clear the UDID.

But is having your age, gender, UDID and the location of your device available to third parties really a huge issue? If companies find ways of providing a service useful to consumers then we shouldn’t have problems. However, in general, paid advertising tends to drive most of the business models for this kind of data aggregation so I’m not hopeful that we will get much more than slightly relevant ads. If that turns out to be the case then we will definitely see increased Smartphone privacy activism.

January 2011 – SmartPhone Snapshot – It’s Game Time!

It is safe to say that 2010 was the year when smartphones became mainstream. Besides having the ability to be loaded with cool apps and games (Angry Birds anyone?), smartphones really excelled in erasing the walls between communication channels and their associated buckets of contacts. By connecting services like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter (and if you are lucky, Skype) and merging them into a seamless way of interacting, we have started to see the promise of what Ex-Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie called “ the post-PC era”  where hardware, software and services are all fused together on a connected device. In fact, Facebook recently announced that a third of its 600m members access the service on their mobile phones.

Following the initial push the iPhone gave the sector, smartphones now make up nearly half of all new U.S. mobile device purchases. And the biggest beneficiary of this growth is Google. Devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system accounted for more than two fifths of all smartphones sold in the U.S. between June 2010 and November 2010. Android based phones are being activated at a rate of over 300,000 a day.

Interestingly, the three main players are pretty close in current U.S. consumer market share with Apple’s iOS at 28.6%; Android at 25.8% and BlackBerry at 26.1%. However, with Android’s rapid growth rate it’s a safe bet that Android should take the No. 1 position in the first quarter of this year. RIM’s market share is going to be interesting to watch as although they are still shifting millions of units, OS 6 with the revamped UI is functional and much better than previous iterations, but still lags the rest of the market. The Torch is a good device but from a hardware design standpoint, it just doesn’t score any cool points. RIM needs a device that is going to fire up customers other than die-hard BlackBerry fans.

Apple looks certain to release a CDMA version of the iPhone early this year and AT&T have just announced today that they will be releasing 12 Android devices – so the two main operators will have the full range of devices for their customers. Operator selection is not going to be as much of an impediment to getting the device you want this year so smartphone market share numbers will become more representative.

This sector is pretty exciting and this blog will be publishing regular updates on the winners and losers including how Microsoft is doing with WP7; HP’s progress with WebOS; Samsung’s BADA;  and Nokia who have stumbled really badly in the smartphone market.