99$ HP TouchPad: A dent in the iPad universe ?

jens General No Comments

Interesting view in Forbes on the impact of 99$ HP TouchPad on the iPad future: “Why The Undead $99 TouchPad Might Portend The iPad’s Doom”

However I can not really share the analysis and conclusion. Clearly the 99$ sale of the remaining TouchPads, which HP announced it will discontinue, was a big hit, but following all analysis in the Internet the price was well below the production costs. And while it is legitimate to sell products below costs, I assume you need to have a plan to recover those losses / costs at a later stage and this is where I miss to see HP’s end-game for this. (Except obviously to clear stock of a discontinued product)
So what is their plan to capitalize on the sold TouchPads? The only one I could see at the moment is getting market share for WebOS, which they announced to continue and potentially license to other HW manufacturers. But then they would also need to create the large application and developer community, something that HP has up to now also struggled to achieve. And they would need to price the HW sales losses into the licensing price, which again appears unconvincing considering the free of charge alternative by Google.
Following the experience the best way probably to put a dent into Apple’s table business would be to away tablets for free:
– Google could be doing it with Motorola acquisition and cross-financing it with their ad revenue, but I’m  not sure what their Android partners would think of it.
– Amazon might be doing it. Reclaiming part of the costs through content sales.
But where is the secondary business model for HP, which could refinance this for a longer term ?
Additionally the analysis is probably also underestimating the excellent cost position – and 25% margin in HW business is clearly a sign of it – Apple has achieved in their tablet business. Apple’s products might be still high price, but they are not high cost as also the MacBook Airs prove. All the competitors with Intel-based ultra-portable Windows notebooks have still to achieve a similar cost and price position.
At the moment it looks more like HP is enjoying the ride as long as it goes (and maybe try to impress future buyers as part of the PC deal to which they could bundle the tablet HW) and clear the stock.

iMessage + Facetime = Skype ?

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One of the more suprising announcements in Apple’s WWDC keynote was iMessage in iOS5.

Besides the already mentioned fact that the operators will not like this replacement of their SMS services, especially as it seems to be seamlessly switching between creating a SMS and an iMessage message (see “Cult of Mac“).
But even more surprising is the fact that iMessage is not better integrated with Facetime. The features iMessage provides are very similar to the Skype Chat/IM function (conversations, typing indication). And now Microsoft (also offering a Mobile OS) will control Skype with it’s very integrated communication suite: voice, video, messaging.
Apple doesn’t seem to have a bigger communication suite strategy in place yet, but I assume it is already in the making.
Think of Facetime + iMessage + Mail (now with conversations in Lion) integration available on iOS and MacOS devices.

Apple, the new / old Microsoft

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Looking at all the new features Apple announced for iOS and MacOS during the WWDC keynote I had a strange feeling of deja vu.

Microsoft has been known and accused of copying successfull 3rd party applications from the Windows ecosystem and making them part of the operating system.
Now Apple feels a little bit the same, if you consider:
  • Reminders:          much like Things and similar apps
  • Reading List:        Instapaper
  • Camera features: much like Camera+ and other apps (e.g. grid, zoom, AF/AE)
  • iMessaging:         a lot like Skype IM/chat
  • Documents in Cloud: like Evernote
Not that this is necessarily bad and in many cases they added a special touch to it, e.g. Location triggers for reminders. But still it feels a little like the past Microsoft.
The major difference is probably that Phil Schiller called the Safari Browser a system component of the operating system, something that Microsoft has fought hard to avoid.

Mary Meeker publishes “Top Mobile Internet Trends”

jens General No Comments

Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkens just released her “Top Mobile Internet Trends”. Overall interesting read. What immediately struck me were slides 4 and 5 showing the exceptional take-off for the iPad and the Apple App-Store. The interesting part is that iPad grew much faster than iPod and iPhone and the App-Store grew faster and bigger than iTunes. In both cases the key to this is in my view that those had no real competition at the time of launch.

The iPad created the market for tablet devices without any really competitor. At the time of launch the iPod had several MP3 player and the iPhone several smartphones as serious contenders for the market. Although finally they also re-defined their category the start was not as easy for them.

Similar is true for the App-Store. There have been already several MP3-download sites pior to the launch of iTunes, whereas for mobile phone application download sites they have not been any real competitors, despite some attempts by mobile operators and device vendors.

iNFC

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The new iPad will have cameras (front- and/or rear-facing), higher resolution (or not), it will be using carbon-fiber or still a unibody and it will support NFC or Near-Field-Communication. So the rumors go.

And NFC is also rumored to be part of the iPhone 5, in order to compete with Google’s Nexus S, which already supports it. NFC is considered one of the key elements of the final breakthrough of mobile payment, replacing credit card with smartphones.

But the much more interesting question is, if the next releases of Apple iOS HW really support NFC, what kind of applications will be bundled with it? Considering the past success of Apple being based on creating a complete environment for new products and features (iPod – iTunes, iPhone – AppStore) I doubt that NFC will be released without any application to make use of it. But will it be mobile payment, e.g. replacing the current partnership with Starbucks around mobile payment or will it be the a big bank or a credit card company that joins the launch? It could be like lining up of media companies and games developers with the launch of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Social customer acquisition

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Just following up on the owning the customer / softSIM post and adding the social network flavor of facebook, linkedin, xing and the cool technology of “bumping” information between phones (www.bu.mp)

What if you could just switch operators by “bumping” 2 phones. So if I’m with operator A and really like and want a friend to join, why not just bump the phones.

Ok, agreed, maybe this is not possible today and there are a lot of issues related to it: you need to sign a contract, transfer or change of mobile number, somehow the payment needs to be cleared, termination of the old contract.

But, if you could actually manage this within your backend processes the world suddenly looks different: very limited acquisition cost, acquisition by recommendation, leveraging social networks.

And this example shows the disadvantage telecom operators today have above Internet companies like facebook, twitter, etc. This kind of recommendations/social network scaling is very difficult and expensive to achieve.

Who owns the customer ?

jens Allgemein No Comments

Again and again I come across remarks about the fight for “who owns the customer”.

Especially in the telecommunications industry there is a lengthy debate about this with regards to telecommunication operators, device manufacturers, Internet companies, content owners.

My first point is that the question is wrong. It should be “who gets permission to serve the customer”. Probably very much in line with Seth Godin (see Permission Marketing). Personally at least I don’t want to be owned by any company and if I feel that way they have already lost. I would also assume that most people would not feel owned by Google, just because they use their search engine (although in fact they are to a great deal)

The second point is that if your business is based on “customer ownership” it might disappear pretty fast.

Most recently this was part of a debate on Apple’s rumored initiative to add a SoftSIM to the iPhone or iPad in one of the next releases. SoftSIM would replace the normal, physical SIM card and would allow customers to switch operators without replacing a card. (Obviously also without the hassle to get the card etc.)

The immediate reaction in the operator community was an uproar, because of the threat to loose “ownership” of the customer. Currently operators spend large amount of money (of which the management and distribution of the physical SIM cards is only one part) to acquire new customers. This obviously only works if the customer stays with the operator for some time so the initial costs can be refinanced by service charges.

That is also why churn (i.e. loosing customer to the competition) is considered to be a bad thing. But what if you re-define the operations to streamline the acquisition of new customers. In saturated markets, i.e. with limited number of additional customers, churn usually works in all directions. You loose some customers and you gain some customers (from your competition). If you could make acquiring new customers more effective than your competition, you could immediately create a business advantage.

So don’t try to own the customer, get the permission to serve them and serve them more efficiently.

Now the GSMA (the organisation of telecommunication operators) seems to have taken up initiative to work on a SoftSIM (or embeddedSIM) standard. However, the officially stated driver is the increasing number of connected devices.

The value of the process

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Just yesterday I came across this great presentation by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels at Ted 2009.

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Besides the gorgeous architecture and the interesting ideas captured within, what especially struck me were his remarks about their design process and how to capture it.

It became clear that the value comes – not only – from the final result, but from the process of the creation and all the discussions related to it.

For me this sounds very familar from discussions around scenario planning, where also the main value is not so much in the final result (the future will be different anyway), but in the conversations and discussions that lead to it.

I also like the view of their office and storage with all the architecture models collected for future use.

Now, here comes the twist or the question that haunts me: How do you do this in a distributed environment, where teams a scattered around the globe and interaction is with 2 hour phone conferences and document sharing? How do you create a continous interactions and joint conversations along the process? How do you do brainstorming on the Internet?

Is a wiki infrastructure the right answer?

Or does it just not work efficiently?

State of the RIM address

jens General No Comments

Just want to point you to this really great analysis of today’s Research-in-Motion / Blackberry business facing the iPhone and Android competition.

Michael Mace does an excellent job in putting the business essentials together and not only looking at design or size of developer community.