Apple and Big Picture Strategy

I was sitting there watching Steve Jobs help push one of the biggest Software evolutions in history: The Web Application.

I sat there distraught, thinking, SNAP DANG, my blackberry's browser sucks. My Nokia browser sucks. I quickly installed Opera Mini 4 beta and hit the net on my mobile device. I jumped onto the iPhone Facebook site, logged in on my Blackberry Pearl and started poking around.

Just about then this thought came racing through my mind so I logged onto the iPhone Facebook site on my desktop PC. I was stoked. It worked in both places. Stupid me, of course it worked in both places. So then I started thinking, I wonder if I could use this on a Mac? I don't have a Mac, but I'm sure I could.

Then, this random stream of thought flew through my head: What if Apple is only going to allow a web (Safari) SDK to develop for the iPhone? What if they never release a stand alone SDK for the iPhone?

Well, first, this would probably mean that every application you'd run on the iPhone would be web based... well ah dah. Then I thought, I wonder if they will allow web plugins to run - What if I could run Flash on the iPhone? Then I could create a real RIA with full graphics capability, and use the Safari API's to access the cell features. I loved it.

Then I started thinking, SNAP DARN (Actually, it was more like, I wonder how I could use this for business??). Then I stopped. It slammed me straight in the forehead with no less ferocity than a four by four being slammed into the scull. I could use this for business, infact, I could use this phone for more business features than my Blackberry or my Nokia. And, I could do this all from within the Safari browser. I could not only log into my Intranet, I could follow links from my intranet into my Web Based business applications. So there I was looking at a nice high color graph in Safari thinking: "I can't believe people don't think this will fly in the corporate world".

Then it dawned on me. Apple does not have a very strong foot hold in corporate - in mobile, or desktop. A major issue for Apple was that none of the stand alone software would run on the Mac platform. Well, then came Windows Virtualization on the Mac. That solved the problem nicely, but it still doesn't help Apple. Why should Apple require virtualization to run business applications on their platform? Sure they can still sell more licenses! But why should Apple have Windows virtualization? This has to be helping their single largest competitor maintain it's foothold - and further, allows developers to continue to build applications for the Windows Environment - something they were already skilled and trained to do.

For Apple to grow in corporate, and consumer markets they needed to be able to leverage all the existing hot technologies out there - especially web based applications which nominalize the desktop Operating System. Further, Apple is branching out with it's other devices and including web browsing over WiFi and everything is based on the Safari browser.

So my theory was that Apple could gain a stronger foothold in the corporate market by forcing developers of the iPhone to develop mobile web interfaces. The back ends for these mobile apps would be leveraged against the desktop app (most likely the other way around). So Apple can easily and quickly have people build services for their devices - and easily extend web based business applications to the iPhone.

Further, if Apple can contribute toward the perception that all software will be web based ASAP then they can expiditiously eliminate problems where software will not run on the Apple Desktop.

So yesterday Apple announced they will be opening the iPhone to third party developers. Does this undermine their support of web applications being the future now? Will this negatively affect Apple's ability to reach corporate markets? Is Apple limiting itself to the consumer market? You tell me!

4 Reasons Internet Service Companies Will Beat Device Manufacturers In the Mobile Race

About 8 years ago, wasn't there some perception that Software companies shouldn't get into hardware? Didn't IBM and Apple fail with spectators citing their hardware businesses as being huge cash sinks? Wasn't it around that time that Microsoft really took off after building an OS that could run on pretty much any hardware?

In the past 5 years Apple has been riding the successful iPod all the way to the bank! Microsoft and Nintendo are destroying (sales) on everything coming out of the Sony arena and Dell and HP saw falling profits in 2006 only to be saved by Microsoft's Vista OS.

Is now the right time for software companies to once again pursue the hardware market? I'd say yes, and I'd cite the following 4 reasons for why Software companies will be very competitive against device manufacturers in the next five years.

1) Information Communication Device: A cell phone is primarily a communication tool. A cell phone is almost a perfect information consumption device. I can read my www.NetVibes.com feeds on my blackberry, I can text my friends, I can send and receive video's, images and pictures. I can email. I can MMS. I can Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc. all from within my device. It isn't a huge shock that this is what I use my phone for. The device serves to consolidate these services into one umbrella. And I don't much to distinguish between the services I use to communicate anymore. They all seem the same - and they work perfectly - my phone has replaced my PC / Laptop for all of these channels making it next to impossible for any single device manufacturer to offer me a more compelling communication option. It’s the Internet Service providers that have enhanced my communication options and device manufacturers would be stupid to compete with the above services - with the exception of Blackberry Messenger I've not seen much that is even decent manufacture provided software. Thus, Device manufacturers cannot do much to make my communication experience better. The big Internet players carry the most schwag: More people in their networks, more connections to other information sources / destinations (kind of like why I quit Wayn, and Beebo when I realized 95% of my friends were on Facebook). They can even take that communication experience back to the web or make it shared with my phone or a device of the future. Why should RIM / Nokia / Rogers be involved if I want to check my gmail? They shouldn't. The internet should.

2) No Manufacturer's Proprietary Software: Windows made the PC UI consistent and this lead to their OS being the OS of choice. Nothing like this exists in Mobile, and this is because first the Hardware manufactures use their own proprietary software avoiding a license fee for the OS, second carriers want to load their proprietary software and charge a usage fee - you get a dually branded device - "Blackberry Pearl by Rogers Wireless" with Rogers Blackberry TV. The Manufactures have tried to partner with the Internet Players: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, but then the Carriers have the option to remove all the software before selling to customers – after all they are the resellers. Obviously this totally undermines the competitive landscape of mobile software. Further customers DO NOT seek out and INSTALL applications on their phones. Window's Mobile OS has not been a hit for MSFT. The Internet players are all pissed off at the device Manufacturers, the device manufacturers are frustrated with the Internet players and then came the iPhone. To AT&T the iPhone is a Data hog, to Apple where PC meets the phone, and to the consumer - a breath of fresh air and a severe disconnect from these ghetto manufacturers proprietary software applications. In fact, most of the iPhone sites work on my Blackberry Pearl (when the Opera Browser is installed). I've read other people can view the iPhone sites on their Nokia's (when the Opera Browser is installed). This all comes down to: When the Opera Browser is installed. And that folks, is why Device Manufacturers are doomed. I can install one single 3rd party application on my phone and it unlocks 100% of the internet functionality that I need to exist. The Blackberry browser pales in comparison to Opera Mini - it's not even close to as good. Using the built in Blackberry browser is like showing up to a Formula one race with a Toyota Prius and expecting to take the pole. In this high speed, consumer facing RIA world we call the web - we need specialized software built by companies with experience. Not junk ware built by Device Manufacturers and tossed on their platforms just because they can. We need standards – after all we did design them. We need cross platform. We need interoperability. But especially as a developer, if I can write one mobile web site and not care which device it’s running on. That just makes sense – and developers will not go back to writing stand alone mobile applications for one specific platform because of this. Device Manufacturers make nice devices, but their software sucks.

All of this information consumption leads to another problem still, bandwidth, how to charge and how to collect, how to keep the pipes open and flowing all the while keeping them full.

3) Advertising Revenue and Service Plans: We purchase Cable TV and basically pay to have people advertise to use. Genius, whomever thought up this scam is pure genius! We get a questionably better and wider range of shows, and they get a wider range of shows to advertise to us on. But seriously think about this: the more mobile bandwidth we consume, the more information we consume, the more information we consume the bigger the range of information there is to advertise to us on. When you perform a mobile search on Yahoo! on your cell phone your carrier doesn't get a cut of the advertising revenue. The carrier builds the sidewalk for you to walk to the store on and then charges you for walking? Isn't there a problem here? The store keeps getting richer and richer, and I pay to walk to the store? No wonder nobody's walking. If Google / Microsoft / Yahoo! end up developing in house Mobile Phone Hardware products then they can get people walking by providing mobile users 1/2 or 3/4 or 7/8 of their advertising revenue to the carriers to help support the bandwidth use. This provides incentive for consumers by making it cheaper to consume bandwidth on particular sites (the bigco sites) than it does on other sites (the littleco) and provides value through the entire “digital supply chain” - sustenance. With the privatization of the internet – or at least private channels – this concept will only continue to grow. The real money in mobile correlates location to advertisement relevancy in that the advertisement viewed is more applicable in one geographic location over another. The big internet players are in much better position to be able to leverage these trends. They already own geographic tools, they own advertising networks and they have far more total cash on hand – they are much more agile businesses and they are far more use to working with their customers than say Nokia, Motorola or RIM. Simply put, Internet companies are in position to subsidize your viewing experience through the advertisements you consume and view. Carriers must work with the Internet Companies but not the Device Manufacturers to spread this wealth – So doesn’t it make sense to have the Internet Companies be the Device Manufacturers? Or at least be borderless against them?

4) Hardware Innovation: The cell phone manufacturers are no longer technology innovators. Hardware is basically stuck waiting for other bottlenecks to work themselves out. Sure sure, there is innovation to be had - I mean come on, the most successful part of the iPod was the scroll wheel – big deal. The Carriers support the huge costly 3G networks. Hardware can far outperform 90% of the capabilities of the networks it runs on. In many cases software actually correct these hardware issues. It is technically possible to watch an HD movie on my wireless device – but if everyone did it the cell networks wouldn’t be able to support it. So, it appears as Marc Cuban said – the internet is dead (I say it with a grain of salt). At least, there is no next revolution on the immediate horizon, just time for the array of technologies that have been building up to actually mature together leading the next software standard or should I say consumer software standard or what becomes the norm. In this type of a business climate, how is it possible for a company that supplies hardware (and arguably a bunch of crappy proprietary applications) to continue to drive growth? They can attempt to start their own social network or sharing sites, they can try to hook these into their devices, they can try to leverage enterprise software like a BES to drive unit sales inside the enterprise. They can’t do it by innovating on hardware because it’s already done. They can make their iPhone red, say it’s for AIDs and sell it, or use whatever gimmick to drive unit sales –BUT They CANNOT innovate in the arena’s that make the internet the internet: Consumption of information, Search, and Communication. With Hardware Innovation more driven by other technologies, this really means they can’t innovate (Camera innovations from camera companies and sold on license to phone manufacturers etc…). Even if RIM purchased Ask.com, I’d still use Yahoo! Mobile for search! With the release of the iPhone manufactures face an obvious ultimatum: connect your devices to the internet or die a slow cold death. But connect them using robust SOFTWARE like Opera Mini – Hardware is done – we are connected. Firefox – Make a Mobile Browser!!! Look what the internet has done to the music industry, look what it’s doing to television. It’s about to do the same thing to the mobile phone – and it’s all about consolidation and consumption of information – not hardware innovation – that makes our lives more convenient and simple given this is the norm we have to deal with.

Conclusion

It seems the only way to get total and complete mobile platform dominance is to make a mobile hardware device and put interfaces into all your internet services on it then force it down the carriers throat. So what if it’s built by Nokia – it’s branded and supported by Google, or Microsoft, or Yahoo!. It’s a gPhone, yPhone, or phonIE.

This is no longer about the Telephone, it’s a realization that we can make laptops so small and powerful that they look like phones, act like phones, and perform the same functions as phones. I’d welcome Google providing me a device that I can actually do stuff on, as opposed to this technologically advanced Blackberry Pearl that still can’t read bloody HTML emails.

Over and Out

iPhone Apps = Mobile RIA = Blackberry X with Opera Mini

Yes the iPhone is a cool product that runs OSX over UNIX on a mobile device. My bet is the touch screen will bother more people than it helps, and I’m sure it’ll be a warranty issue as screens get scratched and fail to function. I like my tiny QWERTY that I can feel.

I had a Compaq iPaq back in 2001. It had a touch screen you COULD use with your thumb. It played Audio and Video. It worked on the Cell Network and doubled as my cell phone. It could communicate wirelessly over 802.11a and 802.11b, and even had an external GPS device. Sure it ran Window’s Mobile, not UNIX and OSX. Why didn’t it last in the consumer spectrum? Possibly because there were no mobile services for the device.

So I ask, what is the benefit of running OSX over UNIX when application developers write code for the Safari Browser? With the recent flurry of Mobile RIA’s targeting the iPhone is there really any reason Apple would open the platform and provide a native SDK?

Regardless, I have a Blackberry Pearl. It plays music, video, mobile TV, and runs many popular mobile applications like Opera Mini 4.1. Sure the screen is about a quarter the size of an iPhone, but guess what? It has no problem running iPhone RIA’s!

Try it for yourself:

Navigate to http://www.operamini.com/beta/ (on your device), download and install the new Opera 4 mini beta browser (which as a first includes a little mouse you can control with your trackball!!).

Setup Opera Mini on your device by launching it in the Main Menu (you should see the red O icon).

Navigate to any of the following sites:

1. Facebook: http://Iphone.facebook.com
2. NetVibes: http://M.n1.netvibes.com
3. Meebo: http://www.meebo.com

That adds Social Network, News and IM functionality to your Blackberry device. Everything should run fine. I'm not totally sure if these sites run in Opera 3, regardless, I've installed Opera 4 mini beta.

I think it’s time that the industry in general starts labeling these Mobile RIA’s rather than iPhone applications.

Side Note: I bet there are a lot more Blackberry's out there than iPhones so branding a Blackberry / iPhone site may actually make a lot of sense.

Free Advice to RIM: Drop the Blackberry Browser and replace it with Opera Mini 4 on the base device. If you have features in the Blackberry Browser that are not in Opera Mini than work with Opera to have the features included.

Over and Out