Archive for August, 2009

About Apple vs. the Developer Community

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

First and foremost, my apologies to all the readers of my blog, as I haven’t been able to write much at all lately… I’ve been so busy at work, literally ->0 time to write/blog.

(well, I’ve been busy writing other kinds of stuff — business cases and new products requirements and marketing and sales and pricing stuff; but I digress)

A lot of mobility-related things have been happening, from Augmented Reality to other cool stuff, but allow me to briefly focus (rant) on one aspect that bugs me the most at this age of “openness”: Apple’s angle and attitude w.r.t. iPhone/App Store and its effect on (against) the developer community. For a good example of what I’m talking about go read the blog post There’s No App for That – the nightmare experiences by iPhone app developer Riverturn (I know Kevin Duerr indirectly through a good friend of mine). Also read about Riverturn’s case at Mac|Life – Apple’s FCC Response Infuriates Google Voice App Developer.

I stick by what I said back on July when I wrote on Twitter:

“Google Voice was removed as it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”. That’s anti-competitive, unlawful and will bite Apple later”…

(First it was Google Voice, then Riverturn’s VoiceCentral application)

A couple of days later, the FCC started some inquiries on the matter and then Apple officially responded to the FCC inquiries.

In my opinion, Apple with its policies, selective rejections and lack of explanations on why the applications are being rejected (leaving developers with no route to re-enter the app market and leaving their users/subscribers unhappy potentially resulting on not returning back) Apple is clearly behaving like a “monopolist”.

And what I find ironic is that Apple (a god when it comes to design) is wrapping “policy” around “design” and making design (and thus policy) the reason for rejections; here design is the iPhone’s “distinctive user experience”.

But what Apple is conveniently ignoring is that 3rd-party developers, even the ones who are competitors are the ones who have made the iPhone successful — all you have to do is watch the iPhone TV commercials; it is about the applications.

It is about the E C O S Y S T E M — don’t screw with it!

Related to this see:

ceo

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Operator strategies for mobile broadband in emerging markets (Ovum)

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

From: Ovum’s report on Operator strategies for mobile broadband in emerging markets (August 7, 2009)

Mobile broadband in emerging markets is a very different proposition to that seen in mature markets. Low fixed-line penetration means that there are opportunities for a myriad of access technologies. In addition, low PC penetration makes the small screen (or handset) the leading access device. However, this also means that mobile broadband is viable as a fixed-line alternative, as long as operators can rise to the specific challenges of providing data in low ARPU markets.

Spectrum is the top market barrier for operators wanting to offer the next generation of mobile broadband and services. This is such a heavy infrastructure (from technical to business to political) effort that for this operators need the help from the goverments in the development of such mobile networks. Then come the land grabs by the operators with the deepest pockets. Subsidies and pre-paid will help promote the adoption of mobile broadband; expect Notebooks and Netbooks to play a key role on this, and keep in mind that going after emerging markets is different from markets such as the United States and Europe…

The following diagram (Ovum) illustrates the expected (initial) distribution-use of mobile broadband in emerging markets vs. the type of access technology and device, indicating that 4G networks (LTE and WiMAX) will be primarily/initially used on “big screens” or Desktops, Laptops, Netbooks. I would add that even for non-emerging markets, the big screen w.r.t. nomadic behavior will drive at first the usage of wireless/mobile broadband as in WiMAX and LTE.

The following diagram also from Ovum shows that the number of broadband users in emerging markets will be predominantly “small screens” or handsets; note that mobile broadband includes both 3G and 4G.

So in short, while the majority of mobile broadband in emerging markets will be predominatenly mobile handsets, at first 4G mobile broadband is about Notebooks/Laptops/Netbooks; this is especially true for non-emerging markets!

This is BTW great validation of what we are doing at Motive/ALU as we are creating products around mobile broadband: from the activation and support/management, to care…

ceo

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Posted in Mobile Broadband | No Comments »

On AR, Hype and other things

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

On ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez writes Prepare Yourselves: Augmented Reality Hype on the Rise.

You know, I really like the RWW, but this particular article was pure complaining about the “Hype” with respect to Augmentated Reality (AR) to the point of bringing up the Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies diagram.

At the end, who cares? Hype fuels expectations and hype makes things exciting, pushing imagination. More importantly, hype is about monetizing the opportunity, for those with the right good-enough product, right relationships, at the right time (i.e. remember Friendsfeed, you know, recently acquired by Facebook for $50M in cash and stock? Talk about hype converted to $$$$).

As I commented on the RWW blog:

AR has great potential.

Yes, *of course* (and expected) is that AR is “discovered” by marketers — because it is about monetizing the opportunity.

And note, the majority of these AR marketers are technologists, entrepreneurs, attempting to monetize their vision, know-how and technology; the application(s). Don’t believe me? Just check out the founders and teams of the different AR application makers/companies…

Hype (from peak, to slope, to plateau) is part of the process and expected; nothing wrong with it…

…regardless of which company is left standing at the end, the technology and potential is here to stay – cheap, real-time, augmented reality for everyone!

CEO

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Posted in AugmentedReality | No Comments »