The March 6th event of Apple introducing iPhone software roadmap is interesting for many reasons, but what I found most impressive was a piece of statistics that Jobs presented at the first 10 minutes of the presentation or so, regarding the usage of web browsers on mobile devices. According to it (source: Net Applications) 71% of all mobile web browsing is done via the Safari browser, which is another way of saying that 71% of the time people are browsing using the iPhone. This is for a device which is less than a year since its launch.
While I find this figure quite exceptional, it doesn’t come to me as a real surprise. As an iPhone holder myself, it is very clear to me how it stands out among the other so-called smart phones as a real mobile computing platform. It is the touch screen with its high resolution. It’s the accelerometer. It‘s the rotating and the pinching. All come together, it is the understanding that a mobile device needs a designated user experience; the PC equivalents of mouse and “drag&drop”, if you will. Something which most Mobile players from Nokia to Microsoft have missed, but Apple understands very well.
It goes much beyond browsing o’course. With the introduction of the iPhone SDK, Apple really brings the power of the Mac OS X into mobile computing. This is the most important point here. See - the phone is merely a side effect. It is a new computing platform which is as powerful as a PC, as mobile as a laptop and as elegant as a cellular phone. And why is that so revolutionary? - it all boils down really to a simple math.
There are less than billion PCs in use worldwide, compared with more than 2.5bn Mobile subscribers. It is fair to assume that 5 years from now; at least 75% of these phones will be smart phones. Apple is already 28% of the U.S smart phone market and growing. The big rival RIM/Blackberry with its poor excuse for UI is not a real alternative (remember, it’s not about making calls or reading mails, it’s about computing in a phone form factor). Apple is in the best position to take (or take back, us 80s geeks say) dominance in the compute market.
What a brilliant strategy - iPod and mobile music as the beachhead, followed by iPhone as a prototype for mobile computer, and whatever comes next as the real thing.
Vista has never looked so pale. Let’s just hope they won’t screw it up this time.
Microsoft beware.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Web 2.0 is content, and content is king
If you are an old school technology guy like I am, then just like me you probably can’t escape feeling puzzled by all the web 2.0 buzz going around. I mean, we were born and raised on the old eighties model of a startup – that is, two founders in a garage with a good idea for a product, 2 years or so of self-funded R&D work, then some external funding, building the organization, first sells …well, you know the drill.
So what with all that 18-years old punks that turn out every day with a new idea of a web 2.0 applications? Are any of these companies really sustainable? For most part, it looks like these ideas are nothing more than the result of a nice thought someone had while drinking in a bar. “Hey, why not have a website with a text field that lets you type in where exactly are you each moment of the day, and share it with your friends” says Joe – then pour some extra ten grounds or so to develop it (in AJAX o’course), color it in green, add a BETA label and a new startup is born. Then a week later someone says “well, Twitter is nice, but wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of just typing your message you could also SMS it to your friends” – and here goes yet another web 2.0 startup.
Could it be the bubble days all over again? Possibly, but I think that this time we go far beyond than just not having a business plan. Where every feature becomes a new company, you have 20+ different ways to do the same thing, nothing is compatible and no-one knows how the hell they gonna make some money out of it (save for the 1-size-fits-all answer – advertisement).
So unless the world has gone completely mad this time, we should expect everyday the bubble burst and a return to a more reasonable business framework, right?
Maybe not
What if it is our way of thinking that needs changing. After all, it is an old Kohn’s philosophy that when too much of the new data conflicts with the theory, it may just be the time for a new one – a paradigm shift.
Consider this – what if instead of thinking of all these new web 2.0 initiatives as distinct companies, we will regard them as a new form of content. In the same way, that TV shows, movies, cartoons and games are all forms of content. What we define here is a new content category – applications. Now under such view a lot of the anomalies of the startup mode start making sense – the entrepreneurs of web 2.0 are really a new breed of content provides, the seed investments to run up their site is production money. It very nicely justifies the existence of so many different apps in a variety of flavors and tastes – not much different than your 500+ channels TV guide.
We as users can pick and choose the content to our likes, we can play around with Fickr for a year, and the year after dump it in favor of ‘the new season of’ Picasa, and so on.
For some apps we may pay premium (which fits well the new move of apple to use their iTunes Store to sell 3rd party iPhone apps), but it should make no wonder that the bulk of money for this industry will come from advertisements. Again, this is not so different than your regular cable TV.
And just as content providers of the TV are rarely independent, and typically survive through their attachment to the big TV networks (ABC, CBS …), what is then more natural for these web 2.0 startup if not to get acquired by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft – the new media conglomerates of our times.
I have to say, I begin to like that model. It does make much more economical sense, doesn’t it? I’m sure there are some other insights hidden here if we’ll think about it a little harder. Might be the subject of some future posts.
So what with all that 18-years old punks that turn out every day with a new idea of a web 2.0 applications? Are any of these companies really sustainable? For most part, it looks like these ideas are nothing more than the result of a nice thought someone had while drinking in a bar. “Hey, why not have a website with a text field that lets you type in where exactly are you each moment of the day, and share it with your friends” says Joe – then pour some extra ten grounds or so to develop it (in AJAX o’course), color it in green, add a BETA label and a new startup is born. Then a week later someone says “well, Twitter is nice, but wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of just typing your message you could also SMS it to your friends” – and here goes yet another web 2.0 startup.
Could it be the bubble days all over again? Possibly, but I think that this time we go far beyond than just not having a business plan. Where every feature becomes a new company, you have 20+ different ways to do the same thing, nothing is compatible and no-one knows how the hell they gonna make some money out of it (save for the 1-size-fits-all answer – advertisement).
So unless the world has gone completely mad this time, we should expect everyday the bubble burst and a return to a more reasonable business framework, right?
Maybe not
What if it is our way of thinking that needs changing. After all, it is an old Kohn’s philosophy that when too much of the new data conflicts with the theory, it may just be the time for a new one – a paradigm shift.
Consider this – what if instead of thinking of all these new web 2.0 initiatives as distinct companies, we will regard them as a new form of content. In the same way, that TV shows, movies, cartoons and games are all forms of content. What we define here is a new content category – applications. Now under such view a lot of the anomalies of the startup mode start making sense – the entrepreneurs of web 2.0 are really a new breed of content provides, the seed investments to run up their site is production money. It very nicely justifies the existence of so many different apps in a variety of flavors and tastes – not much different than your 500+ channels TV guide.
We as users can pick and choose the content to our likes, we can play around with Fickr for a year, and the year after dump it in favor of ‘the new season of’ Picasa, and so on.
For some apps we may pay premium (which fits well the new move of apple to use their iTunes Store to sell 3rd party iPhone apps), but it should make no wonder that the bulk of money for this industry will come from advertisements. Again, this is not so different than your regular cable TV.
And just as content providers of the TV are rarely independent, and typically survive through their attachment to the big TV networks (ABC, CBS …), what is then more natural for these web 2.0 startup if not to get acquired by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft – the new media conglomerates of our times.
I have to say, I begin to like that model. It does make much more economical sense, doesn’t it? I’m sure there are some other insights hidden here if we’ll think about it a little harder. Might be the subject of some future posts.
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