Microsoft Favored to Win Smartphone War, Really?
April 10, 2011
I am an optimist. I see blue sky behind gray clouds. I see flowers beneath the snow.
Here in Kentucky, we figured it was wishful thinking to include the University of Kentucky Wildcats in the final four on the March Madness brackets. We were all very surprised when this ideal became a reality. However, we believe this is just poor statistical reasoning: “IDC Beancounters Predict Microsoft to Win Smartphone War.” Wow. Microsoft cannot update its smartphone software. I don’t know one person who owns a Microsoft smartphone.
By 2015, the IDC states that Android will be the top smartphone competitor, followed closely by Microsoft. Apple will be booted down to third place. Android will continue to dominate, however, with half the market and the other divided between Blackberry and Apple based off current market predictions. According to the write up:
The report said that smartphone vendors will ship a total of more than 450 million smartphones this year, up from 303.4 million in 2010. IDC predicts that the smartphone market will grow four times faster than the overall handset market.
Other predictions include the Symbian market will transfer to Microsoft after its recent merger with Nokia and Hewlett Packard’s WebOS will never gain much of a foothold. Don’t rely heavily on IDC’s predictions. Back in 2006, the beancounters never accounted for the rise of the iPhone or Android. The University of Kentucky’s win was a sweet surprise, but based off current market trends unless Microsoft creates the next big phone, Android runs out of batteries, or Apple just fails, this won’t happen. And I am an optimist, not a consulting firm trying to pump up revenues, get headlines, and compete with other mid tier consulting firms for clients.
Even more intereseting is that Gartner, a rival to IDC, issued a report that said the same thing. You can check out the Gartner predictions at http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614.
Coincidence or a Microsoft PR push? We will never offer an opinion on the cheesecloth separating independent consulting firrms and clients with a real need to flash cash.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2011
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Google and Its new Management Method: Reorganization
April 8, 2011
The Los Angeles Times’s article “Exclusive: Google CEO Larry Page Completes Major Reorganization of Internet Search Giant” documents a milestone in big company management tactics. The headline sums up the deliverable from a busy first week or so on the job for Larry Page, the founder with operational control of Google. Here’s the passage that may be recycled in a number of Business 101 essays in the months and years ahead:
The executives will be able to act more autonomously and won’t have to turn to Google’s powerful operating committee on every decision. “The idea is to empower people, let them take risks and give them more authority over decisions,” said one person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain his relationship with Google. Page has been thinking about how to reorganize the company to cut bureaucracy and politicking while speeding up innovation. He may have found his answer in the success of the company’s Android mobile software unit and its video-sharing site YouTube, each of which have thrived as largely autonomous entities.
Questions which crossed my mind include:
- How does one define “success” for YouTube and Android. These two “products” have been fountains of legal and technical activity. Examples range from the shoot out with Viacom which is still flopping around the US legal maze and the possible “we’re open source but we are really into not be so much open that fragmentation occurs” approach to Android.
- What happens to customers of certain Google products and services who cannot find anyone to answer certain questions. Example: “Why has my traffic disappeared?” or “Where did the Adsense revenues go in the last three months?” My favorite is: “Whom do I call about a technical problem with my $300,000 Google Search Appliance?”
- Autonomous decision making is a great thing; however, giant publicly traded companies have many different pressures on them. Example: “What will be done to either re-enter the China market, arguably the fastest growing economy in the world when one compares it to Detroit or Gary, Indiana?” Another example: “When will revenues of a significant nature flow from a social information service?” (I keep thinking of Orkut, its early entrance in a market, and its somewhat interesting impact in Brazil, upon attorneys, and on certain government entities. “Impact” is not direct revenue flowing to Google as I understand the Orkut service.)
Microsoft was once described to me as “10,000 sail boats moving roughly in the same direction.” Is Google emulating Microsoft’s management methods? I see some similarities. A big difference is speed. Moving org boxes in less than five days is quite impressive. Now we can watch performance indicators to see how the method works. MBA candidates, on your mark, get set….
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2011
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Love or Hate: Amazon and Android Apps
April 8, 2011
Amazon wants a piece of the smartphone app market pie. We read “Today Amazon Locked Up the Android Ecosystem” from ZDNet. The write up takes a look at how the Internet retailer is attempting to annex the Android app market. The author strongly believes Amazon will eventually dominate the entire Android marketplace, driving other competitors out of business. The process began with the Kindle app, then it segued into the Amazon MP3 app. Both generated millions of sales and encouraged Amazon to start its own App Store. Here’s a snippet that caught our attention:
The recent launch of the Amazon Appstore to sell Android apps firmly entrenched the company’s business in the platform ecosystem. One could argue that it is the beginning of a process whereby Amazon takes over the ecosystem, by subtly pushing the Android Market to the side.
Cloud Drive and Cloud Player Amazon were also added Amazon not too long ago and this supposedly increases Amazon’s dominance. What will cement the entire takeover will be a reasonably priced Amazon tablet with compatible hardware/software. The author gushed his love for Amazon, prophesying the company will throw Android out of its own market. Premature prognosis on his part.
The problem is that Android is not really open source. Google is struggling to prevent Android fragmentation. One of the chief offenders may be Google TV pal Sony. Now a mere online retailer is moving into the Google App space. Google may be into open source, but it is now in a position similar to the kid on the playground who owns a basketball but is not picked to play in the pick up game. Time to take the ball and go home or just play smarter?
Whitney Grace, April 8, 2011
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Down from the Mountain and Being Tracked en Route
April 8, 2011
No need to chop off one’s arm if monitoring goes big time. Now everyone has heard of “big brother” and no, I’m not talking about the television show. Though it used to be just a theory spouted by crazed and deranged individuals who wore tin foil hats and swore they’d been probed by aliens, in 2011 with “the age of the Internet” firmly underway, the “big brother” concept has become a very real, very scary (in my opinion) piece of reality.
According to a report by The New York Times and reported on by Digital Trends, many cell phone companies can and do track your movements without ever divulging to the consumer that they are keeping an “eye” on them. This information came to light after Malte Spitz, a German politician, sued his cell phone carrier, Deutsche Telekom, for information that they had acquired about him. What came out was somewhat shocking but nothing less than any “tin head” could have told us about.
Between August of ’09 and February of 2010, Deutsche Telekom, recorded the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of Spitz more than 35,000 times. The snippet that caught my attention was:
We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone,” Sarah E. Williams, a graphic information expert at Columbia University. “We don’t even know we are giving up that data.”
In the United States it is unclear exactly what level of surveillance is conducted on consumers and what information is saved because companies are not required to divulge the information they collect…though I would argue that the documents are public record and could possibly be demanded under FOIA laws since it is not optional to opt out of consumer tracking initiatives.
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2011
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What Is Your Social Business IQ?
April 6, 2011
Ours is dull normal.
It seems that since the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, that companies have found a new way to push products and make a profit. The new more popular way to do this is to market “social business intelligence” as a way to help consumers take advantage of the social marketing realm. The article “Social Business Intelligence – What Is It, and Do You Need It?” asserts:
“In many ways, social BI is still a forward- or future-looking approach. Most BI in the world is not social, but rather pulls the data from a data warehouse, as opposed to enabling person-to-person knowledge sharing. There is already some implementation of social BI because collaboration functionality is already incorporated into some of the leading BI tools.”
Basically they teach you how to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to track consumer trends for example the release of the new iPhone 4, every person who Tweeted about or from a iPhone 4 was counted and put into a graph that marks trend patterns from speech in order to see what people are talking about and to what audience they need to focus the marketing campaigns toward.
The really funny thing is that you don’t need a company to sell you integrated software in order to track trends in your goods. If you are a business or have a fan page on Facebook or Twitter, the heavy work is already done for you, all you have to do is read the fine print and click on the “tracking” tab, they have charts and everything.
Cynthia Murrell, April 7, 2011
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Hands Off My Honeycomb, Mr. Open Source!
April 4, 2011
If you were looking forward to developing nifty Android tablet apps, you’ll have to wait. ZDNet reports in “Google Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’: Open source no more.”
Does this foreshadow the future of open source?
Our view: “Winning is Google’s way. Open source is a convenience and may not take precedence over money, control, and other key business drivers.”
Google seems to want it both ways. The fact that Android is open source is a big selling point, but they’re making an exception for Honeycomb, the Android platform designed for tablets:
“Version 3.0 of Android, which many have called a fork of the mobile OS (and now it looks like they were right), is now closed source, with access only going to OEMs and specific developers. While Google claims that they don’t want people experimenting with the OS on smartphones for which it wasn’t designed, one has to wonder if there aren’t other motivations for the move.”
Software is either open source or closed source. It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a gray area in that.
Google’s stated aim is to avoid bad user experiences, but maybe that’s unnecessary when a simple disclaimer would do? Really, we would take a few imperfect apps over this restriction. Software is open source or it is not. Both ways works at Dairy Queen, not in our software pond.
Cynthia Murrell, April 4, 2011
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Android Microsoft: Strange Mobile Extremes
April 3, 2011
The birds are singing. The sap is running. And the pundits are feeling their digital oats. Navigate to “Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM — iPhone Dead In Water.” What’s remarkable about this write up is that it, in a way, is as wild and crazy as the mid tier consulting firms’ prognostications that Microsoft’s Windows phone will dominate the mobile market. For a representative look at this assertion, point your browser at “ABI Research: Android will have 45% of the Smartphone market share by 2016.” I find the extremes fascinating not because the predictions are probably incorrect but for the motives that trigger such statements.
Here’s a snippet from the dead in water write up:
The Android gains matter because technology platform markets tend to standardize around a single dominant platform (see Windows in PCs, Facebook in social, Google in search). And the more dominant the platform becomes, the more valuable it becomes and the harder it becomes to dislodge. The network effect kicks in, and developers building products designed to work with the platform devote more and more of their energy to the platform. The reward for building and working with other platforms, meanwhile, drops, and gradually developers stop developing for them.
The thought that galloped through my mind was that Google is about search. Android is a vector for search. The only hitch in the git along is Google management. In a perfect world, Google’s management would deftly steer Android forward, avoiding the telco reefs and regulatory riptides, ducking below deck to avoid the hail of Android’s fragmenting platform, and cashing in on the applications marketplace.
Google versus Microsoft fighting in the open. What happens if there is a sniper with a clear shot at the combatants? Source: http://www.defensive-solutions.com/hand_to_hand.asp
For Microsoft and Nokia, the challenge is similar. There is the management “thing”, the software update “thing”, and the execution “thing.”
With Android a winner in one pundit’s view and Microsoft the victor in another consultant’s view, what could go wrong? Good question and one that is ignored for purposes of generating clicks and reputation enhancement via online methods.
My short list of challenges for both Google and Microsoft includes:
- Proving that both companies can succeed without coming apart at the seams. What do I mean? Neither Google nor Microsoft has its management ducks in a row. Both companies are quite similar and appear to have difficulty focusing resources and making money outside their quite different money making workhorses: ads for Google and desktop applications for Microsoft. The stress of creating another winner that generates substantial revenue is likely to break fragile management methods at both companies. Internecine warfare may be underway at both firms. The management shift at Google and the calls for the ouster of Mr. Ballmer are not to be ignored.
- Apple and RIM may be marginalized, but I am not sure that these companies are down for the count. Apple seems to be chugging along. RIM, despite its stand up comic reputation, has some enterprise adherents. A third party, not on the pundits’ radar, could swoop in and cut a deal or enter into some other agreement. In the aftermath of a third party move, Google and Microsoft might face a competitor for which neither firm has prepared. What type of firm might make such a play? Candidates range from investment banks, foreign owned entities, or even a player which now seems to be on the periphery of the mobile phone business. Surprise can be a disruptor.
Big Brother Operates Via Wireless Companies
April 3, 2011
Digital Trends proclaims “Wireless companies ‘track your every move.’ “ I knew it!
The New York Times reports that cell phone companies keep track of customers’ global coordinates. They know where you, or at least your phone, were when. The secret was revealed during a German lawsuit against Deutsche Telekom, who owns T-Mobile USA. And it isn’t just them. And what other information are they caching?
“In the United States, even less is known about what level of surveillance wireless companies are conducting on their customers because these companies are not required to divulge what information they collect. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, that information is extensive, and is only getting more so.”
Furthermore, unlike tracking by Web site cookie, it’s very hard to opt out of cell phone surveillance.
I can’t say I’m surprised by these revelations. Are you?
Cynthia Murrell, April 3, 2011
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Does Google Get an Edge by Hiring a Java Babydaddy?
April 2, 2011
Some background. Sun “invented” Java. Oracle bought Sun. Oracle entered into the American legal process to assert its rights over Java. Forget the open source stuff. This is Oracle and the alleged miscreant, Google.
The IT sporting arena has seen some hefty competition this year. The rivalry between Oracle and Google heated up over an infringement suit, but according to “Google Hires Java Founder James Gosling amid Oracle Infringement Suit” things are about to get nasty or more interesting depending upon one’s point of view.
Google has been less than happy that Oracle is suing them over a Java-related patent infringement. The search mogul decided to rub static electricity over the wounded relationship by hiring James Gosling, Java founder, and former VP of Sun Microsystems. Engadget opines:
When Oracle acquired Sun last year, Gosling, who refused to take part, wasn’t shy about expressing his views, calling Oracle’s Larry Ellison “Larry, Prince of Darkness.” On a post to his blog, which has since crashed, Gosling was vague about his new duties saying simply, “I don’t know what I’ll be working on. I expect it’ll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon.
Gosling may be unsure of what job awaits him at Google, but one thing is certain: Larry Ellison is not happy about the sudden change in teams. The Java babydaddy phase of the Google – Oracle dust up is underway.
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2011
Freebie like most things in life except Google enterprise services and Oracle database software
Google China: Small Bump in the Road
April 1, 2011
After my trip to Hong Kong to give a talk about “content with intent”, I have been noticing information about Google and China. I don’t have a stake in either Google or China, but I find the coverage of the US company interesting. One example is the information in “Sina Ends Google Search Engine Deal for China Online Users.” The one beat article asserts:
Sina Corp., owner of China’s third- most-visited website, dropped Google Inc.’s search engine a year after the U.S. company moved its Chinese service offshore to avoid local censorship rules. Sina stopped using Google’s search service after the expiry of a contract, Liu Qi, a spokesman at Chinese Web portal operator, said in an e-mail today. The Shanghai-based company will instead use its own proprietary technology, he said.
The key point is, in my jet lagged opinion, “use its own proprietary technology.”
I can no longer keep track of companies offering search. The reason is partly due to the demystification of search. What once was rocket science is no big deal. For those unable to code their own engine, a click on an open source package does the trick.
The optimism Google appears to be radiating about its revenue in China is interesting and somewhat at odds with what I picked up as I talked with people at the conference. I learned from one of my readers:
According to Analysys International’s statistics, Google search advertising revenue in China after a long decline, finally ushered in the fourth quarter of 2010 rose. Google China in the fourth quarter of 2010, China accounted for 23.1% of search advertising revenue share, compared to the third quarter rose 1.5 percentage points, but still 35.6% from the end of 2009, revenue market share far. [January 19, 2011]
The source provided was this link.
Google sends messages about China and the opportunities it presents to the firm. I listen, but I have to keep in mind the fact that there is some dissonance between and among messages about Google and China. No joke. Big money is at stake.
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2011
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