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Google Android – I’m critical because I love
I recently attended an event for Android developers. One thing that surprised me was how much developers tended to be aligned in either the Google or Apple camps. In this case, it was mostly an anti-Apple camp. I understand this – there are a lot of reasons to be annoyed at Apple.
However, a lot of it was blind adoration of anything Google, in part at least, driven by hatred of Apple. From the outside, it looked a lot more like Apple envy and general jealousy. As I dared to criticize anything Google did or anything about the Android platform, I was quickly characterized as an Apple-lover and Google-hater. What I was saying didn’t matter anymore at that point.
There are lot of things I don’t like about Apple, their policies, etc. The iPhone platform SDK is also extremely limited in some really important ways, such as no third-party app integration with SMS, voice signaling, the voice channel, etc. – but that is all a post for another day. My point here is that when I’m criticizing Google or Android, it doesn’t automatically suggests that I love all things Apple. Nor does it suggest that I’m an Android-hater.
I’m critical of Google and Android because I want it to be better – I want it to be as good as, or better than, iPhone. The Android apologists will tell you it already is, but that is just their Apple hatred speaking – they would buy anything and overlook any limitation, as long as it’s not Apple. The fact is, the Andorid user-experience is lacking, from a regular “person on the street’s” perspective. Tech geeks will overlook a lot of things that mainstream users will not accept.
The first problem is that there isn’t a consistent “Andorid user-experience” at all. Every device and carrier offer their own variation. Again, geeks argue that this is a good thing, and admittedly, it does have some benefits – but in trying to build an ecosystem and a brand, it is a recipe for disaster. If you have used one iPhone, you know them all. Likewise, iPhone developers only have to be concerned with a small matrix of variations in the hardware, screen-size, etc. With Android, the problem is exponentially more challenging. This is one reason why Android apps often look terrible on different Android based phones – or don’t work at all.
And then there’s the app quality and consistency issue. Apple certainly lets through some pretty bad apps onto the app store, but for the most part, their draconian UI guidelines result in apps that people can figure out and use right away. A random sampling of 10 apps on Android vs. 10 apps on iPhone will make this point quite effectively. Android apps are all over the place in terms of UI and quality. In short, with some very impressive exceptions, Android apps suck.
Android is not a brand yet. Is it a “droid”? Is it an HTC? Is it a Gphone? What the hell is it? It doesn’t help that one Android phone doesn’t look very much like another, externally or in the UI. Nobody knows it’s Android. In fact, it’s not clear to me what brand Google wants to promote here.
So in short, Google has a branding problem, a distribution problem, and an ecosystem problem. I want them to resolve these problems because I want them to keep putting pressure on Apple. But don’t tell me they’re good enough already. And don’t tell me I can’t criticize Google while still wanting them to succeed. They have lots of room to improve and they need to know it and not assume people will accept an inferior product based on their ideals alone.
Skype grossly over hyped, even with the Verizon deal
Ok, short and sweet here.
The recent hype about Skype, and in particular surrounding the Verizon deal has been blown WAY out of proportion, IMHO. It’s time to set perspective here.
First, Skype was supposed to have killed off traditional telecom by now. Last I checked, that hasn’t happened (still a trillion dollar business). In fact, Skype actually PAYS traditional telecoms a significant amount per month, thus helping them stay in business.
Second, Skype was supposed to revolutionize everything. Ok, they’ve done some cool stuff, especially if you like video. And they introduced the world to HD Voice. On the other hand, if you look at where Skype gets revenue, oh gee, it’s from traditional telecoms services – like phone calls, and phone numbers, and voicemail! Where is the new and revolutionary business model? At the end of the day, Skype is not all that different than other Chat applications with Voice and video.
Third, lets not forget that Skype still is a black eye for E-bay and (now candidate for Governor of California) Meg Whitman. Meg paid (at least) $3 billion US in 2005, then wrote off $900 million. And of course now E-bay sold 65% of Skype to a PE group at a valuation of roughly $3 billion. That’s zero percent growth in valuation over 5 years. Not quite the wonderful story it’s perceived to be. What’s more, not only did it not appreciate in value, but Skype added no strategic benefit for Ebay either – it was simply a distraction- a bad deal all around.
So before we go rewriting history, and (once again) claiming how Skype will tear down the telecoms world, maybe a little grounding in fact is in order.
Followup to Nexus One and my “right stuff” comment
The NY Times has an article about Google’s (lack of) tech. support for the Nexus one phone entitled Hey Google, Anybody Home? The NYT reiterates some of points I’ve made here before, including in my prior post about Nexus One.
Google’s celebrated algorithms may power the Web’s most popular search engine, but they have not yet been programmed to answer a call when a customer has a problem. …
Some analysts said that Google appeared to have misjudged the service demands that come with being in the business of selling sophisticated gadgets.
Time will tell whether Google’s historic “we don’t provide support, we’re Google, we don’t have to” attitude is going to carry over from search to U.S. cell phone users.
Nexus One – Another $500 unlocked smartphone – Ho Hum
Google finally officially launched their own, much anticipated, mobile phone.
Okay, so it’s Google, so it will make a bit of a splash, but for now at least, it is a mostly inconsequential moment.
When the news was finally broken that the event was about the Nexus One, nobody in the audience applauded–it seems even the journos in the crowd weren’t enthused.
It’s sort of a hybrid of the iPhone strategy and Nokia strategy. The phone can be purchased bundled with a plan from T-mobile for $179 with two-year contract (the iPhone way) or it can be purchased “unlocked” for $529 (the Nokia way). We’ve seen all this before – the only difference is this time it has Google’s name on it.
In the future, Google says you’ll also be able to buy the phone with a Verizon plan (Spring 2010).
This is the difference between Apple and Google. When Apple releases a new product, it may not have all the features yet, but the features it has are really slick and polished – it is fully baked and ready for prime time on day one. With Google, everything is half-baked. At some point Google might finish the product, but in many cases they never do, and the product hangs around in limbo “beta” mode forever (take Google Talk for example, or even the Android “Marketplace” store). They just don’t seem serious about most of their products.
I think Google sees mobile telephony as strategic and so they probably want to move Nexus One forward – question is, can they? - Do they have the right stuff to do it? GOOG has made it pretty clear that their enemies are telecomm carriers and Apple – I guess they’ve gotten bored with Microsoft.
For now, Nexus One is a “wait and see” for me. Google is going to have to show me a little more, show me that they’re serious this time.
The Droids have their sights on iPhone
In the early days of the iPhone, I can recall conversations with executives and strategists of other mobile device manufacturers (who shall remain nameless). At the time, I remember how these companies almost discounted the iPhone. We can understand why. Here they are, with many years of experience in the industry, large market shares, etc. And there’s Apple, a nobody, no experience in the market, never built a phone before etc.
I’m not sure if these wireless companies were in denial at the time, or whether they really believed Apple and their little toy iPhone was not much of a threat. I got the sense, they really believed it. And I have to admit, I was guilty of a little underestimation of the iPhone’s potential at the time myself – that changed pretty fast for me (see this post, or this, or this).
I wonder if now, the tables have turned, and is it now Apple who is underestimating Verizon and Motorola’s new Droid that was announced today?
In my experien
ce so far with Android-based phones, they are a lot more like the pre-iPhone “smartphones” than they are like iPhone – I call them DIY phones. They are more clunky to use, less intuitive, and much less consistent between apps. Apple rules with an iron fist and that has it’s problems, but it also means the user experience is more consistent, even when using third-party apps.
However, in the U.S. iPhone has the AT&T Albatross around its neck. Verizon has created the perception that their network is better. Certainly, iPhone users know the AT&T data network is bad, bad, bad (and the voice calling ain’t a whole lot better).
Time will tell how this plays out of course, but my advice to Apple is don’t be like those companies you leapfrogged just a few short years ago. Don’t underestimate your opponent.
Good example of why Apple was able to beat the wireless operators
PC World reports: AT&T Wireless CEO Hints at ‘Managing’ iPhone Data Usage saying that AT&T is overwhelmed by the data usage of iPhone users and may have to do something about it. iPhone users apparently consume 13 times the data of “the average smartphone customer.”
Yeah. You know why? Because the iPhone provides a user experience that doesn’t make it almost impossible to use the Internet in any useful way, unlike AT&Ts other “smartphone” products. AT&T counted on iPhone users having a data usage profile similar to users of these other devices with their garbage user interfaces – no wonder nobody uses any data network on those things.
With the iPhone, even non-tech gurus can easily find and use web content, email, Twitter, and other data services. And so they use it, and use it. John Donovan, the chief technology officer of AT&T told the New York Times: “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones. There’s just no parallel for the demand.”
iPhone users are already angry at AT&T for charging so much and giving so little. AT&T whines about spending billions on data network upgrades, but let’s face it: The iPhone has been a absolute blessing for AT&T:
The average iPhone owner pays AT&T $2,000 during his two-year contract — roughly twice the amount of the average mobile phone customer.
Without the iPhone, what would they be selling? Now AT&T wants to throttle back iPhone users even more. I think that would drive a mass exodus and put tremendous pressure on Apple to open up the device to other carriers.
Why most iPhone users are not jumping ship
I’ve been meaning to write this post, long before TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington threw a tantrum and “Quit The iPhone” and before, Steven Frank, the well know Mac developer, who co-founded Panic, wrote on his blog “The iPhone ecosystem is toxic, and I can’t participate any more until it is fixed.” He says he will be buying a Palm Pre. For my part, I’m not planning to follow in their footsteps any time soon.
A lot of things are not perfect with the iPhone, to say the least. One example is the “phone” part of it. If you’re a person that really likes to use their mobile phone for, say, talking to people, you know, not typing, but with your voice, and listening to the other person with your ear, you might want to play with an iPhone a little before jumping in.
Besides that minor detail, here are a few other areas where iPhone users suffer:
- Incompatible (or limited) Bluetooth support
- No MMS (to be fixed in the future for newer phones at least)
- No Flash support in the browser, meaning many sites cannot be used from the iPhone
- No multitasking – it doesn’t support more than one application running at the same time
And of course one of the biggest practical limitations of the iPhone is being locked to a carrier, AT&T in the U.S. For many people, this means switching carriers and for all of us in the U.S., it means accepting AT&T coverage and performance, which for many people sucks.
And then there’s the whole battle of the App Store that triggered Arrington’s response and a firestorm across the net (among geeks that follow such things at least, but even carried somewhat by the mainstream media):
It seems that in more numbers than ever, consumers are speaking out against AT&T’s network problems and developers are complaining about Apple’s and AT&T’s inconsistent policies on which applications get approval.
- The Washington Post
Yes, as an iPhone user, we accept a lot of flaws with the phone and service. But guess what? Even with these flaws, the combination of iPhone device and Apple and AT&T service still kicks ass over everything else. Many people seem to think Apple iPhone users are too stupid to realize what they’re giving up. I disagree. While there may be users in that category, for many of us, we know what we’re giving up, but we’re willing to do it, because the alternatives are even worse, far worse in most cases. [I'm going to qualify this in a few specific ways. One is if you talk on the phone a lot (I don't) the iPhone limitations hit a lot harder and you'd probably prefer a different phone. Second, if you really, really, really need a hardware keyboard, for emotional or whatever reason, then don't even consider the iPhone.]
As an example of a user that has issues with the iPhone but isn’t going anywhere, consider Dave Rosenberg of cnet who writes a mostly scathing review, and then concludes with:
All that said, I’m going to stick with it for now. The interface, utility, and functional possibilities are just that good.
That pretty much sums it up. However, all this said, Apple still needs to use this episode as a reality check. The iPhone has a global marketshare of only 1.9 percent. The competition is heating up, big time. Apple has a bullseye on their back, with the entire industry setting their sights on displacing them. For the most part, this is Apple’s game to lose. Apple needs some humility here (not something Steve Jobs has ever been known for). They could be knocked off their pedestal if they go too far. For some, like Arrington (and Om Malik before him), they have already crossed that line. For many of us, we’re not blindly following Apple wherever they go, but weighing the options, and, for now at least, staying with the iPhone, but keeping an eye open to the alternatives.
Lessons for eComm “Lightning Talk” speakers
Earlier this year at eComm 2009, I gave my “lightning talk”. At the end of the day, I have to accept that I did a terrible job. An eComm “Lightning Talk” is a 5-minute presentation. My problem was, I really just condensed a 15 minute talk down to five minutes. While I did cut out a lot from the larger talk, I didn’t focus the presentation enough. I practiced and practiced the talk and successfully completed the presentation in five-minutes, but it tried to present too much information across too many directions.
If I give another such lightning talk, I will focus the entire thing down to one main point. In the above talk, I waste too much time on the “how” (the implementation) without enough focus on the “what” (the result). This is of course because I’m a geek and I find the “how” really interesting. But what is significant about the research I was presenting here is really the “what” – and I failed miserably in getting that point across. In fact, what this research was about was very much in tune with what Lee Dryburgh likes to call intention-based economics:
What we care about with intention based economics is human psychology and behaviour, both individual and in aggregate. … what we need to build for is access to ever more personal information, i.e. about the human behind the endpoint. Privacy does not exist looking long-term. Ever more personal information is the new currency, which underlies intention-based economics, and people will increasingly trade it for free access to services.
… telecom networks receive vastly more human attention coming in from the edges and transit much more “intention data” than Google, in the form of telecom signaling. But it’s latent, not acted upon and thrown away. They actually throw away their most precious asset and plan to continue charging for their long-term least worthy asset (voice transmission).
This research looked at “intention data”. Instead of throwing away this telecom signaling information, as the telecom companies currently do, this research used the data to study actions of the “human behind the endpoint” to include historical analysis as well as making predictions, i.e. determining intent.
The signaling data of who is talking to who, combined with their locations, recent movements, and so on, can be used to predict future actions (intent). For example, a certain flurry of a certain kind of activity might suggest that a group of friends are probably going to go see a movie together. Advertisers would be interested in such fore-knowledge, one would think.
I think it’s particularly interesting that we were able to do this in the real world, using real phones available today, and doing so without the user’s active involvement and without the permission or participation of the carrier, i.e. as an independent third-party with no special relationship to the carrier. We did it by supplying users with modified edge-devices (phones) that provided “ambient awareness” streams. These phones didn’t require GPS – we used cell tower and bluetooth proximity for location data. We didn’t need a very large sample to get meaningful results. Everything we did in this research could be done by the carriers and of course they may be doing it already and we wouldn’t know. This research shows how practical intention-based economics is and that it may not be as far off or as abstract as we think.
This research basically turned humans into “sensors” emitting data about their location and, more importantly, who they are talking to (and texting with), all as a surreptitious side-effect of carrying around a mobile phone and performing their every day routines. In general, besides location, other behaviors are very powerful indicators (behaviors like “what are they taking pictures of?”). A single data point may not provide much insight, but when viewed over time, and in relation to other human actions and behaviors, it becomes incredibly powerful. With this power comes responsibility. As Lee says “Privacy does not exist looking long-term.” This research doesn’t attempt to answer that question. Rather, it explicitly intends to raise awareness that it must be addressed and, given the results we were able to obtain in this research in fairly short time and with relatively modest resources, it needs to be considered sooner rather than later.
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We did this research as contract work – if you’d like to learn more or perform similar research contact us here: sales@telEvolution.com
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SabSe Technologies Acquires Jaxtr
I find it sort of interesting that I had a post about Jaxtr sitting in my drafts, from back in December 2008. Back then, the one-time darling of VoIP whose investors included some of those investing in Skype before it, had reported that it had laid off 13 workers (about 30% of its workforce) and that the much heralded CEO, Konstantin Guericke, had stepped down.
That draft was titled “Jaxtr revisited” and referred to the company’s burn rate:
Jaxtr raised $10 million in their Series A in August 2007. In September 2007, I said they would burn through that within a year, and it looks like they did, because they had to take another $10 million in June 2008.
In that post, I was highlighting some potential trouble spots ahead for Jaxtr, including the fact that they’d soon need even more capital and there would be challenges raising it in this climate, especially with a continued “burn cash now for some future unspecified opportunity later” business model. I also discussed little details like the potential for rampant fraud, once they start charging. I never got around to publishing that draft.
Of course we don’t know if these things contributed to the sale of Jaxtr to SabSe Technologies, Inc. (www.SabSeBolo.com) announced yesterday, for an undisclosed sum, but it seems like they could have.
SabSe was co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia, an original co-founder of Hotmail. They are in the free conference calling business. All the access numbers listed on the website are in India. A large percentage of Jaxtr users are also in India and in Pakistan. I’m guessing SabSe makes money on termination and are hoping to use Jaxtr’s local numbers, in some related manner, perhaps expanding their conference calling services beyond India.
Nokia handset sales down 19 percent
Alec Saunders provides his analysis of Nokia’s recent report that profits fell 90 percent in the most recent quarter. I agree with Alec’s points. I would add that this news fulfills my predictions (here and here) that it’s not about the hardware. If it were, Apple would already be in trouble. The iPhone doesn’t compare on a hardware level to Nokia’s high-end phones. As I said before: Apple isn’t winning because their phones are better. Apple is winning because the experience is better. iPhone has opened up a whole new world of uses for a mobile phone to ordinary consumers. People are doing things they never dreamed of doing before on a mobile phone (even if these things were technically possible on the phone they had before).
Nokia is playing a hardware one-upsmanship game, while Apple has swooped in on the flank and utterly redefined the handset landscape.
And the really bad news for Nokia is that even if they are able to realize they are playing the wrong game, they are in no position to be any good at the new game that Apple has created. Apple knows how to build good-enough hardware. More importantly, they know how to market it and they have their own distribution – all things out of Nokia’s reach. And the nail in the coffin? The App Store. Not only do they not have one, but Nokia doesn’t own enough of the parts to create one, nor do they have the expertise for operating one.
Nokia’s numbers will continue to slide as the DIY niche continues to narrow. I’m not smart enough to know how to get them out of this situation, but I can make one suggestion: Make your platform the easiest to build for. Get rid of “Symbian Signed” and let a third-party app marketplace thrive. Don’t make it easier to get certs – get rid of certs entirely! This is one place Nokia can immediately leapfrog Apple – not follow, but lead. Get rid of approval and let anybody write code and let the market, the community, rate the apps, and let end-users decide which ones they want to install based those community ratings.
