I'd like to interrupt the usual programming here to ask you a favor.
The startup I'm working on will ship its first product in 2012. As part of our development, we'd like to get some data on how people are affected by information overload. We hope our product will help with that problem, but we need to understand better how people feel about the problem and what they're doing about it today. So we're doing a survey.
I think that you, the folks who read Mobile Opportunity, are a very good cross-section of technology users, so I'd like to ask you to take the survey. I know you have much better things to do with your time than fill out a survey, but we could really use your help. It'll take about ten minutes, and it's almost all multiple choice. I'll share the results here, so you can learn more about your fellow readers and how you compare to them.
To go to the survey, click here. Note: The survey is now closed. You can read about the results here.
Once our company gets closer to launching, I will start up a separate weblog to talk about the product. I'll also keep on writing Mobile Opportunity, with its current focus.
Thanks in advance for your help. I really appreciate it. And I'll have a new post for you next week. It's a pretty long one that I've been working on for a while.
Kamis, 15 Desember 2011
Kamis, 17 November 2011
On discussing free software mobile phones
Since I think I just summarized a few thoughts of mine well at LWN, I'll copy-paste it here:
So there. For more civilized discussion.
I can grumble about Android from time to time, but I do not say that it sucks. Extreme views are what are annoying. Android is what it is and it's great as it is, even though it could be different as well.
When it comes to discussing about free software and mobile phones, I'm especially annoyed by two types of comments:
1. People essentially saying that there is no value in an open project, ie. free software code dumps should be enough for everybody. I'm interested in the long term viability of free software projects, and it is hard to have successful projects without there being all sorts of factors that make up a good project - like transparency, inclusion, meritocracy. Even though the mobile projects have had little resources and a hard road, it's not useful to forget about these goal in the longer term. For example Debian, Mer, SHR, KDE Plasma Active have some of these in the mobile sector. I hope the best for them (and participate).
2. People complaining about something being not 100% free software, while not themselves actually even interested in it for other sake than complaining. When I've been talking about free software mobile phones, from time to time there is someone complaining about eg. not open GSM stack, wlan firmwares etc.. and to put it sharply probably writing the message from iPhone, while I'm reading it on Neo FreeRunner. If the complainer would be Harald Welte, I'd probably listen and agree with him.
So there. For more civilized discussion.
Kamis, 10 November 2011
Lessons From the Failure of Flash: Greed Kills
Adobe's decision to stop development of mobile Flash has deservedly gotten a lot of attention online. It's a sad story for Adobe and Flash developers: a dominating standard on the PC web failed to get traction in mobile, and will now be abandoned gradually in favor of HTML 5. But the story's not limited to mobile -- without a mobile growth path, I think Flash itself is destined to become a dwindling legacy standard everywhere (link). I think the whole Flash business edifice is coming down.
How did Flash go from leader to loser? There are a lot of explanations being floated online. Erica Ogg at GigaOm has a good list (link):
--Mobile flash didn't work very well
--It was opposed by powerful people like Steve Jobs
--It was out-competed by HTML 5
(And by the way, how in the world do you get out-competed by something as slow-moving as HTML 5?)
I agree with Erica, but it's more a list of symptoms than root causes. It's like saying an airplane crashed because the wings fell off. Yes, that's true, but why did the wings fall off? If you look for root causes of the Flash failure, I think they go back many years to a fundamental misreading of the mobile market, and to short-term revenue goals that were more important than long-term strategy at both Macromedia and Adobe.
In other words, Flash didn't just die. It was managed into oblivion.
The story of Flash is a great cautionary tale for companies that want to create and control software platforms, so it's worth looking at more closely.
A quick, oversimplified history of Flash
In the software world, there is an inherent conflict between setting a broad standard and making money. If you have good software technology and you're willing to give it away, you can get people to adopt it very broadly, but you will go broke in the process. On the other hand, if you charge money for your technology, you can stay in business, but it's very hard to get it broadly adopted as a standard because people don't want to lock themselves into paying you.
Clever software companies have long realized that you can work around this conflict by giving away one technology to make it a standard, and then charging for something else related to it. For example, many open source software companies give away their core product, but charge for hosting and support and other services. Android is another example -- it's a free operating system for mobile phone manufacturers, but if you use it in your phone Google also tries to coerce you into bundling its services, which extract revenue from your customers.
In the case of Flash, the player software was given away for free on the web, and Macromedia (the owner of Flash at the time) made its money by selling Flash content development tools. The free Flash player eventually took on two roles on the web: it was the preferred way to create artistically-sophisticated web content, including an active subculture of online gaming, and it became one of the most popular ways to play video. Flash reached a point of critical mass where most people felt they just had to have the player installed in their browser. It became a de facto standard on the web.
Enter Japan Inc., carrying cash. The rise of mobile devices changed the situation for Flash. Long before today's smartphones, with their sophisticated web browsers, Japan was the center of mobile phone innovation, and the dominant player there was NTT DoCoMo, with its proprietary iMode phone platform. The folks at DoCoMo wanted to create more compelling multimedia experiences for their iMode phones, and so in early 2003 they licensed Macromedia's Flash Lite, the mobile version of Flash, for inclusion in iMode phones (link).
The deal was a breakthrough for Macromedia. Instead of giving away the flash client, the way it had on the PC, Macromedia could charge for the client, have it forced into the hands of every user, and continue to also make money selling development tools. The company had found a way to have its cake and eat it too! In late 2004, the iMode deal was extended worldwide (link), and I'm sure Macromedia had visions of global domination.
Unfortunately for Flash, Japan is a unique phone market, and DoCoMo is a unique operator. The DoCoMo deal could not be duplicated on most phone platforms other than iMode. Macromedia, and later Adobe, was now trapped by its own success. To make Flash Lite a standard in mobile, it would have needed to give away the player, undercutting its lucrative DoCoMo deal. When you have a whole business unit focused on making money from licensing the player, giving it away would mean missing revenue projections and laying off a lot of people. Macromedia chose the revenue, and Flash Lite never became a mobile standard.
Without fully realizing it, Macromedia had undermined the business model for Flash itself. The more popular mobile became, the weaker Flash would be.
Enter the modern smartphone. Jump forward to 2007, when the iPhone and other modern smartphones made full mobile web browsing practical. Adobe, by now the owner of Flash, was completely unprepared to respond. Even if it started giving away Flash Lite, the player had been designed for limited-function feature phones and could not duplicate the full PC Flash experience. Meanwhile, the full Flash player had been designed for PCs; it was too fat to run well on a smartphone. So the full web had moved to a place where Adobe could not follow. The ubiquity of the Flash standard was broken by Adobe itself.
To make things worse, Adobe was by then in the midst of a strategy to upgrade Flash into a full programming layer for mobile devices, a project called Apollo (later renamed AIR). The promise of AIR was to make all operating systems irrelevant by separating them from their applications. At the time, I thought Adobe's strategy was very clever (link), but the implementation turned out to be woefully slow.
So here's what Adobe did to itself: By mismanaging the move to full mobile browsing, it demonstrated that customers were willing to live with a mobile browser that could not display Flash. Then, by declaring its intent to take over the mobile platform world, Adobe alarmed the other platform companies, especially Apple. This gave them both the opportunity and the incentive to crush mobile Flash.
Which is exactly what they did.
The lesson: Don't be greedy
There are a couple of lessons from this experience. The first is that when you've established a free standard, charging money for it puts your whole business at risk. Contrast the Flash experience to PDF, another standard Adobe established. Unlike Flash, Adobe progressively gave up more and more control over the PDF standard, to the point where competitors can easily create their own PDF writers, and in fact Microsoft bundles one withWindows Office. Despite the web community's broad hostility for PDF, it continues to be a de facto standard in computing. There is no possible way for Adobe to make money directly from the PDF reader, but its Acrobat PDF management and generation business continues to bring in revenue.
The second lesson is that you have to align your business structure with your strategy. I think Macromedia made a fundamental error by putting mobile Flash into its own business unit. Adobe continued the error by creating a separate mobile BU when it bought Macromedia (link). That structure meant the mobile Flash team was forced to make money from the player. If the player and flash development tools had been in the same BU, management might have at least had a chance to trade off player revenue to grow the tools business.
What can Adobe do now?
The Adobe folks say the discontinuation of mobile flash is just an exercise in focus (link). They point out that developers can still create apps using Flash and compile them for mobile devices, and that Flash is still alive on the desktop. Viewed from the narrow perspective of the situation that Adobe faces in late 2011, the changes to Flash probably are prudent. But judged against Adobe's promise to create an "an industry-defining technology platform" when it bought Macromedia in 2005 (link), it's hard to call the current situation anything other than a failure.
I think it's clear that Flash as a platform is dying; the end of the mobile Flash player has disillusioned many of its most passionate supporters. You can hear them cussing here and here. Flash compatibility will continue to live on in AIR and other web content development tools, of course, but now that Adobe doesn't control the player, I think it will have trouble giving its tools any particular advantage.
What Adobe should do is start contributing aggressively to HTML 5, to upgrade it into the full web platform that AIR was originally supposed to be. That's a role no one in the industry has taken ownership of, web developers are crying out for it, and Adobe implies that's what it will do. But I've heard these broad statements from Adobe before, and usually the implementation has fallen far short of the promises. At this point, I doubt Adobe has the vision and agility to pull it off. Most likely it will retreat to what it has always been at the core: a maker of software tools for artistically-inclined creative people. It's a nice stable niche, but it's nothing like the dominant leadership role that Adobe once aspired to.
How did Flash go from leader to loser? There are a lot of explanations being floated online. Erica Ogg at GigaOm has a good list (link):
--Mobile flash didn't work very well
--It was opposed by powerful people like Steve Jobs
--It was out-competed by HTML 5
(And by the way, how in the world do you get out-competed by something as slow-moving as HTML 5?)
I agree with Erica, but it's more a list of symptoms than root causes. It's like saying an airplane crashed because the wings fell off. Yes, that's true, but why did the wings fall off? If you look for root causes of the Flash failure, I think they go back many years to a fundamental misreading of the mobile market, and to short-term revenue goals that were more important than long-term strategy at both Macromedia and Adobe.
In other words, Flash didn't just die. It was managed into oblivion.
The story of Flash is a great cautionary tale for companies that want to create and control software platforms, so it's worth looking at more closely.
A quick, oversimplified history of Flash
In the software world, there is an inherent conflict between setting a broad standard and making money. If you have good software technology and you're willing to give it away, you can get people to adopt it very broadly, but you will go broke in the process. On the other hand, if you charge money for your technology, you can stay in business, but it's very hard to get it broadly adopted as a standard because people don't want to lock themselves into paying you.
Clever software companies have long realized that you can work around this conflict by giving away one technology to make it a standard, and then charging for something else related to it. For example, many open source software companies give away their core product, but charge for hosting and support and other services. Android is another example -- it's a free operating system for mobile phone manufacturers, but if you use it in your phone Google also tries to coerce you into bundling its services, which extract revenue from your customers.
In the case of Flash, the player software was given away for free on the web, and Macromedia (the owner of Flash at the time) made its money by selling Flash content development tools. The free Flash player eventually took on two roles on the web: it was the preferred way to create artistically-sophisticated web content, including an active subculture of online gaming, and it became one of the most popular ways to play video. Flash reached a point of critical mass where most people felt they just had to have the player installed in their browser. It became a de facto standard on the web.
Enter Japan Inc., carrying cash. The rise of mobile devices changed the situation for Flash. Long before today's smartphones, with their sophisticated web browsers, Japan was the center of mobile phone innovation, and the dominant player there was NTT DoCoMo, with its proprietary iMode phone platform. The folks at DoCoMo wanted to create more compelling multimedia experiences for their iMode phones, and so in early 2003 they licensed Macromedia's Flash Lite, the mobile version of Flash, for inclusion in iMode phones (link).
The deal was a breakthrough for Macromedia. Instead of giving away the flash client, the way it had on the PC, Macromedia could charge for the client, have it forced into the hands of every user, and continue to also make money selling development tools. The company had found a way to have its cake and eat it too! In late 2004, the iMode deal was extended worldwide (link), and I'm sure Macromedia had visions of global domination.
Unfortunately for Flash, Japan is a unique phone market, and DoCoMo is a unique operator. The DoCoMo deal could not be duplicated on most phone platforms other than iMode. Macromedia, and later Adobe, was now trapped by its own success. To make Flash Lite a standard in mobile, it would have needed to give away the player, undercutting its lucrative DoCoMo deal. When you have a whole business unit focused on making money from licensing the player, giving it away would mean missing revenue projections and laying off a lot of people. Macromedia chose the revenue, and Flash Lite never became a mobile standard.
Without fully realizing it, Macromedia had undermined the business model for Flash itself. The more popular mobile became, the weaker Flash would be.
Enter the modern smartphone. Jump forward to 2007, when the iPhone and other modern smartphones made full mobile web browsing practical. Adobe, by now the owner of Flash, was completely unprepared to respond. Even if it started giving away Flash Lite, the player had been designed for limited-function feature phones and could not duplicate the full PC Flash experience. Meanwhile, the full Flash player had been designed for PCs; it was too fat to run well on a smartphone. So the full web had moved to a place where Adobe could not follow. The ubiquity of the Flash standard was broken by Adobe itself.
To make things worse, Adobe was by then in the midst of a strategy to upgrade Flash into a full programming layer for mobile devices, a project called Apollo (later renamed AIR). The promise of AIR was to make all operating systems irrelevant by separating them from their applications. At the time, I thought Adobe's strategy was very clever (link), but the implementation turned out to be woefully slow.
So here's what Adobe did to itself: By mismanaging the move to full mobile browsing, it demonstrated that customers were willing to live with a mobile browser that could not display Flash. Then, by declaring its intent to take over the mobile platform world, Adobe alarmed the other platform companies, especially Apple. This gave them both the opportunity and the incentive to crush mobile Flash.
Which is exactly what they did.
The lesson: Don't be greedy
There are a couple of lessons from this experience. The first is that when you've established a free standard, charging money for it puts your whole business at risk. Contrast the Flash experience to PDF, another standard Adobe established. Unlike Flash, Adobe progressively gave up more and more control over the PDF standard, to the point where competitors can easily create their own PDF writers, and in fact Microsoft bundles one with
The second lesson is that you have to align your business structure with your strategy. I think Macromedia made a fundamental error by putting mobile Flash into its own business unit. Adobe continued the error by creating a separate mobile BU when it bought Macromedia (link). That structure meant the mobile Flash team was forced to make money from the player. If the player and flash development tools had been in the same BU, management might have at least had a chance to trade off player revenue to grow the tools business.
What can Adobe do now?
The Adobe folks say the discontinuation of mobile flash is just an exercise in focus (link). They point out that developers can still create apps using Flash and compile them for mobile devices, and that Flash is still alive on the desktop. Viewed from the narrow perspective of the situation that Adobe faces in late 2011, the changes to Flash probably are prudent. But judged against Adobe's promise to create an "an industry-defining technology platform" when it bought Macromedia in 2005 (link), it's hard to call the current situation anything other than a failure.
I think it's clear that Flash as a platform is dying; the end of the mobile Flash player has disillusioned many of its most passionate supporters. You can hear them cussing here and here. Flash compatibility will continue to live on in AIR and other web content development tools, of course, but now that Adobe doesn't control the player, I think it will have trouble giving its tools any particular advantage.
What Adobe should do is start contributing aggressively to HTML 5, to upgrade it into the full web platform that AIR was originally supposed to be. That's a role no one in the industry has taken ownership of, web developers are crying out for it, and Adobe implies that's what it will do. But I've heard these broad statements from Adobe before, and usually the implementation has fallen far short of the promises. At this point, I doubt Adobe has the vision and agility to pull it off. Most likely it will retreat to what it has always been at the core: a maker of software tools for artistically-inclined creative people. It's a nice stable niche, but it's nothing like the dominant leadership role that Adobe once aspired to.
Senin, 07 November 2011
Free software mobile phone galore
Almost forgot to post this. My mobile phones running free software in photos. From left to right:
All of that software running on the devices is more or less free software, with Harmattan obviously being by far the least free, especially applications, but still better than any other on-the-shelf phone software *), and the others being 99% or "Ubuntu like" free ie. possibly with firmware and a few driver exceptions. N9 needs some bootloader work still before Nemo, Debian, Ubuntu etc. can be run there. I've collected a few things about N9 from this point of view at a wiki page.
*) Not sure about every Android phone, but Android is not openly developed anyway so it's hardly a similar free software project such as freedesktop.org projects or Qt
I gave my N900 away now since obviously I cannot make full use of each one of these. I'm multi-SIMming my N9 and the GTA02a7 Neo FreeRunner for daily use, while the other FreeRunner and N950 are purely for tinkering related purposes. The development FreeRunner will get on upgrade to GTA04 once it's available, and then hopefully that can be made into a daily usable phone as well.
By the way, see you in FSCONS in Gothenburg next weekend. Even rms will be there, which is always interesting of course :)
- Neo FreeRunner (GTA02a5) running QtMoko
- Neo FreeRunner (GTA02a7) running Debian
- Nokia N900 running MeeGo CE (now Nemo Mobile)
- Nokia N950 running Meego CE (now Nemo Mobile)
- Nokia N9 running Harmattan (stock software)
All of that software running on the devices is more or less free software, with Harmattan obviously being by far the least free, especially applications, but still better than any other on-the-shelf phone software *), and the others being 99% or "Ubuntu like" free ie. possibly with firmware and a few driver exceptions. N9 needs some bootloader work still before Nemo, Debian, Ubuntu etc. can be run there. I've collected a few things about N9 from this point of view at a wiki page.
*) Not sure about every Android phone, but Android is not openly developed anyway so it's hardly a similar free software project such as freedesktop.org projects or Qt
I gave my N900 away now since obviously I cannot make full use of each one of these. I'm multi-SIMming my N9 and the GTA02a7 Neo FreeRunner for daily use, while the other FreeRunner and N950 are purely for tinkering related purposes. The development FreeRunner will get on upgrade to GTA04 once it's available, and then hopefully that can be made into a daily usable phone as well.
By the way, see you in FSCONS in Gothenburg next weekend. Even rms will be there, which is always interesting of course :)
Senin, 03 Oktober 2011
From MeeGo to Tizen, Debian, ...?
The MeeGo community is frustrated with the news of the MeeGo brand being abandoned. Some are understandably angry or otherwise not happy about how Linux Foundation, Intel handled the Tizen announcement and community in general - or more like how they didn't handle it at all. Last week Openmind 2011 happened to be arranged in Tampere on the very same day as Tizen announcement came alive. It was good in the way that it lead to the fact that Nomovok's CEO Pasi Nieminen was able to initiate the "Reigniting MeeGo" session not just by talking vague things about future, but actually about the process which led to Tizen and the unfortunately brief initial PR about it. Pasi is intense on emphasizing the quality and role of Qt in Tizen as well, even though officially Tizen is all about HTML5 and apparently from Samsung's part at least EFL is provided as a native toolkit. However, the promise of Tizen compared to MeeGo is reportedly that the toolkit is not specified in compliancy documents, so HTML5 with WAC is the main/only "3rd party apps" layer whereas others can be offered case-by-case. This means that unlike before, the underlying system can be built on top of practically any distribution (theoretically) and using whatever toolkits and other techniques wanted. Obviously the "Nordic System Integrators" are probably all very keen of using Qt to produce more of Nokia N9 quality user experiences in various products.
Taking the corporate hat off, I as a community member am also puzzled. The only reason I was not completely blown by the news was that I didn't yet manage to get involved in MeeGo community on a daily basis, since I'm involved with a dozen communities already. Instead I've been more like scratching the surface with MeeGo Network Finland meetings, IRC activity, OBS usage for building a few apps for MeeGo Harmattan and MeeGo proper etc. But I can somewhat understand how people like Jarkko Moilanen from meego-fi feel. They have given a _lot_ to the MeeGo community and brand, all taken away without hearing or pre-notice.
So where to now for MeeGo community? Tizen is one obvious choice. However, for all the talks that even I started this post with, Tizen is still vaporware today, and the dislike of how community is being treated might make it easy to consider other options. Also, if Tizen's reference implementation has lesser meaning, it might also mean less to actually be "in" the Tizen community than in MeeGo. I met Jos Poortvliet at Openmind, and he invited people to openSUSE. There is a lot of common ground with MeeGo and openSUSE - strong OBS usage, RPM packaging, community side focused on KDE and therefore Qt.
I would like to now point similarly to Debian! If one is tired about corporate interests and not listening to community, there is no match for Debian's 15+ years history, purely volunteer based, trust based organization, and first of all scope. While openSUSE has traditionally focused on desktop (even though like Jos pointed out they are open to all new contributions and projects), Debian has always had the "universal" scope, ie. no boundaries besides producing free software operating system for various purposes. There are over 10 architectures maintained at the moment, including the ARM (different ports for ARMv4 and hard-float ARMv7) and x86 from MeeGo world. There are even alternative kernels to Linux, mainly the GNU/kFreeBSD port. There are multiple relevant plans and projects like the Smartphones wiki area, most noticeably Debian on Neo FreeRunner. I have run Debian on my primary mobile phone for over 2.5 years, although now in the recent months I've had dual-SIM in my Nokia N950 as well (Debian not yet running on Nokia N950 or Nokia N9 - but it can and will be done!).
What Debian may lack in both good and bad is corporate funding, if you don't count the still quite respectful contributions from Ubuntu to Debian (it's in Ubuntu's interests to contribute as much possible back to Debian, so that the delta remains small). For each and every aspect, it needs a volunteer - there are a thousand volunteer Debian Developers, and at least a double of that of people without the official DD status but who still maintain a package or two among the 25000+ packages in Debian. That means also that one my find it more lucrative to join a project that has paid people to do some of the "boring parts", more of fancy web tools, including for bug handling and build systems like the OBS (which I do love by the way). On the other hand, there is no other project in my opinion where what you do really matters as much.
To find out more about Debian from MeeGo perspective, please see the recent mailing list post Mobile UXes - From the DebConf11 BoF to the stars where I wrote most of the MeeGo (CE) part when I was asked to and known of my MeeGo involvement.
Last but not certainly least, there is the Mer project - originally "maemo reconstructed", ie. making Nokia's "not really distro" into a real distro by filling in the void places. Now it's obviously MeeGo reconstructed, and they aim to be the MeeGo they always wanted MeeGo to be! Read the post for details from Carsten Munk and other key Mer people. They share the love for Qt, and want the core to be as lean as possible. They also aim to incorporate the most community like aspect from MeeGo - MeeGo CE - as the reference vendor in Mer. They also aim to be Tizen compliant - and when Tizen comes alive, I wouldn't see why the Tizen reference implementation couldn't be used for saving resources. Maybe Nomovok and/or others could offer the Qt maintaining part.
So, it might be that Tizen itself is enough for most people's needs. The key point however in this post is not to fall in agony if one corporate based project takes big turns - it has happened before, it will happen in the future. There are always enough political and business reasons from some points of view to do Big Changes. But the wider community is out there, always, and it's bigger than you think. You should consider where you want to contribute by asking yourself why you are/were part of for example the MeeGo community. Aaron Seigo from KDE asked us all this question in the Openmind MeeGo Reignited session, and I think it's good to repeat.
Taking the corporate hat off, I as a community member am also puzzled. The only reason I was not completely blown by the news was that I didn't yet manage to get involved in MeeGo community on a daily basis, since I'm involved with a dozen communities already. Instead I've been more like scratching the surface with MeeGo Network Finland meetings, IRC activity, OBS usage for building a few apps for MeeGo Harmattan and MeeGo proper etc. But I can somewhat understand how people like Jarkko Moilanen from meego-fi feel. They have given a _lot_ to the MeeGo community and brand, all taken away without hearing or pre-notice.
So where to now for MeeGo community? Tizen is one obvious choice. However, for all the talks that even I started this post with, Tizen is still vaporware today, and the dislike of how community is being treated might make it easy to consider other options. Also, if Tizen's reference implementation has lesser meaning, it might also mean less to actually be "in" the Tizen community than in MeeGo. I met Jos Poortvliet at Openmind, and he invited people to openSUSE. There is a lot of common ground with MeeGo and openSUSE - strong OBS usage, RPM packaging, community side focused on KDE and therefore Qt.
I would like to now point similarly to Debian! If one is tired about corporate interests and not listening to community, there is no match for Debian's 15+ years history, purely volunteer based, trust based organization, and first of all scope. While openSUSE has traditionally focused on desktop (even though like Jos pointed out they are open to all new contributions and projects), Debian has always had the "universal" scope, ie. no boundaries besides producing free software operating system for various purposes. There are over 10 architectures maintained at the moment, including the ARM (different ports for ARMv4 and hard-float ARMv7) and x86 from MeeGo world. There are even alternative kernels to Linux, mainly the GNU/kFreeBSD port. There are multiple relevant plans and projects like the Smartphones wiki area, most noticeably Debian on Neo FreeRunner. I have run Debian on my primary mobile phone for over 2.5 years, although now in the recent months I've had dual-SIM in my Nokia N950 as well (Debian not yet running on Nokia N950 or Nokia N9 - but it can and will be done!).
What Debian may lack in both good and bad is corporate funding, if you don't count the still quite respectful contributions from Ubuntu to Debian (it's in Ubuntu's interests to contribute as much possible back to Debian, so that the delta remains small). For each and every aspect, it needs a volunteer - there are a thousand volunteer Debian Developers, and at least a double of that of people without the official DD status but who still maintain a package or two among the 25000+ packages in Debian. That means also that one my find it more lucrative to join a project that has paid people to do some of the "boring parts", more of fancy web tools, including for bug handling and build systems like the OBS (which I do love by the way). On the other hand, there is no other project in my opinion where what you do really matters as much.
To find out more about Debian from MeeGo perspective, please see the recent mailing list post Mobile UXes - From the DebConf11 BoF to the stars where I wrote most of the MeeGo (CE) part when I was asked to and known of my MeeGo involvement.
Last but not certainly least, there is the Mer project - originally "maemo reconstructed", ie. making Nokia's "not really distro" into a real distro by filling in the void places. Now it's obviously MeeGo reconstructed, and they aim to be the MeeGo they always wanted MeeGo to be! Read the post for details from Carsten Munk and other key Mer people. They share the love for Qt, and want the core to be as lean as possible. They also aim to incorporate the most community like aspect from MeeGo - MeeGo CE - as the reference vendor in Mer. They also aim to be Tizen compliant - and when Tizen comes alive, I wouldn't see why the Tizen reference implementation couldn't be used for saving resources. Maybe Nomovok and/or others could offer the Qt maintaining part.
So, it might be that Tizen itself is enough for most people's needs. The key point however in this post is not to fall in agony if one corporate based project takes big turns - it has happened before, it will happen in the future. There are always enough political and business reasons from some points of view to do Big Changes. But the wider community is out there, always, and it's bigger than you think. You should consider where you want to contribute by asking yourself why you are/were part of for example the MeeGo community. Aaron Seigo from KDE asked us all this question in the Openmind MeeGo Reignited session, and I think it's good to repeat.
Rabu, 28 September 2011
Amazon vs. Apple? No, it's Amazon and Apple vs. Everyone Else
To me, there's something magnificent about a well-executed product strategy. Features and price and marketing all come together to delight a particular type of customer, and everyone wins. The developer gets to sell a lot of products, and the users get something that improves their lives.
In the tablet market right now we have the privilege of watching two companies do great strategy, Apple and Amazon. The press wants to label the Kindle Fire an iPad killer, but really it's the first sensible iPad counterpoint, a tablet device with its own unique design center and business model. I don't think either one's going to kill the other, but I think together they're likely to chop up almost every other company that gets in their way. In particular, that means Microsoft, RIM, and Google.
Let me start by talking about the new Kindle line, and then its likely impact on the market.
Two tablet paradigms
When Apple entered the tablet market, it asked "what can we do to redefine computing for tablets?" It re-thought the user interface, application model, and an endless set of other details to create a unique new computing experience. Apple has been rewarded with explosive sales growth.
With the Kindle line, Amazon asked a different question: "What can we do to redefine content distribution?" The answer led it to a tablet computer, but one with very different hardware specs, user experience, and a vastly different business model. None of the Kindles can match the iPad feature for feature (link), but they're not intended to. At $499 and up, the iPad is a serious investment for most people, a lifestyle statement. At $199 and down, the Kindles are impulse buys, the sort of thing people will get under Christmas trees or just buy for themselves because it looks neat and why the heck not?
Apple makes money from the sale of the iPad and its accessories, with a bit more coming from applications and content. Given the breath-taking pricing for the Kindle line, Amazon will probably lose money on the hardware, or at best break even. Its main profit will have to come from the sale of ebooks and movies and all sorts of other media products, plus some apps. Those revenues may take years to fully develop, so Amazon is playing a very long game. That's why I see Kindle as a strategy rather than just a product. The company is betting that by subsidizing the Kindle now, it can dominate electronic media distribution for the indefinite future.
To keep iPad successful, Apple will need to continue to add wonderful new features to it, constantly refreshing the "magical" experience. It will also continue to drive it into markets where tablet computing can make a big difference. Apple is already making a huge push in education; some people tell me Apple has almost completely refocused its education salesforce on selling iPad to schools rather than Macs. And there are plenty of reports of iPads moving into other verticals like aviation.
I'm sure the Kindle Fire will also show up in schools, but at heart the Kindle line is a Volkspad, priced to be the tablet thing that everyone eventually gets for basic content access. Already about 40% of tablet owners also own e-readers according to Pew Research (link), and I expect that percentage to increase.
Over time we might see Apple and Amazon compete more directly; it all depends on how much Apple is willing to subsidize hardware to get long-term revenue from content. There is also potential for product line conflicts -- if Apple makes a lower-priced iPad, it might cannibalize iPhone sales. In the past Apple has tried to keep its product lines separated in price, and it hasn't used the subsidy model. This is a very interesting test for Apple's new CEO Tim Cook, and I'm glad Steve Jobs is still on the scene to advise him.
But in the meantime, it's very likely that iPad and Kindle will coexist nicely in the market. The losers, I think, will be everyone else trying to play in the tablet space.
Hammer and Anvil
Companies trying to sell tablets against Apple were already suffering from slow sales. Now instead of just being pounded by the iPad hammer, they've been undercut by the Kindle anvil. For most of them, there's no place to go. It's very hard for me to picture how somebody like Samsung is going to get market traction with its current tablet line, and I think the RIM PlayBook, due to its size, is going to suffer against Kindle Fire. Between slow sales of its current phones and now the PlayBook's dwindling prospects, I hope RIM has been very very careful about managing its inventory of parts and finished devices. Otherwise it could end up with a massive inventory writedown in a couple of quarters.
I will be very interested to see what Barnes & Noble does next with its Nook Color tablet. Nook Color is similar in many ways to Kindle Fire, but B&N was reluctant to add a lot of Android apps because it was afraid people might buy it as a tablet rather than an e-reader. Amazon appears to have overcome this fear, and there's a danger that B&N may have let its opportunity for leadership slip away. On the other hand, if the next Nook Color has better features than Kindle Fire, Amazon's announcement might validate B&N's product and help it sell.
And then there's Microsoft, which has a beautiful-looking new Windows 8 tablet interface coming maybe late next year. I'm excited, I hope it'll be wonderful, but I'm starting to wonder if any customers will still be available by the time it ships.
There is still plenty of room in the market for competing tablets, but they'll need to be aimed at different usages than the iPad and Kindle. The biggest opportunity is for a stylus-equipped business productivity tool, an info pad (link). But none of the major hardware companies are working on that; they seem to prefer to bash their brains out competing directly with the iPad.
You're not the licensee Droid is looking for. Google's reaction to Kindle Fire speaks volumes about its goals for Android. Kindle Fire is based on Android, and will run Android applications. Android has been struggling in the tablet space, so you'd expect that Google would be delighted to have Amazon on the Android bandwagon. But you'd be wrong. Let's look at the press release Google issued today to welcome Amazon to the Android family. Wait a minute, there is no press release. Okay, so let's look on the Google blog. Nothing at all. Maybe a tweet from Andy Rubin? Dead silence.
The problem is that Amazon is using Android as just an OS, not using the Google-branded services and application store that Google layers on top of the OS (link). Although Google touted the openness of Android when it was first launched, the reality is that Google is using it as a Trojan horse to force its services onto hardware. What Amazon did with Android is very threatening to Google, and so you're not likely to hear a lot of supportive words from them.
Silken dreams. Speaking of threats to Google, we should discuss Amazon's new Silk browser. It supposedly integrates Amazon Web Services with the browser to produce a faster, more efficient browsing experience on Kindle Fire. Given the inefficiencies of web browsing over the wireless networks, this is potentially a compelling innovation that also might make it possible for future Amazon tablets to browse over 3G networks using less bandwidth than competing devices. That might lock in a structural cost advantage for Amazon's tablets.
Kindle Fire today is a WiFi only device, but I'd be very surprised if we didn't see a 3G version sometime in 2012.
Silk potentially gives Amazon a very powerful position (link). I can picture a couple of ways it could be used to disrupt the mobile market. First, Amazon could tie the browser to its own content services and distribute it to other hardware vendors. Basically, it could try to make Silk the content layer on Android that Google wants to be. This could be a good business move for Amazon, since it's not making money from the hardware anyway.
Google would hate this passionately, but with the company already under antitrust scrutiny, it would have to respond very carefully.
Amazon's other play could be to expand Silk into an enhanced platform for mobile web apps. I've been waiting for someone to make web apps work properly on mobile, and many smart people have been getting more and more depressed about the lack of leadership in mobile web APIs (link). Amazon has the expertise and the incentive to fill that gap. The question is whether it wants to. I think it should, I hope it will. If it does, Silk could become the platform for the next great generation of applications, giving Amazon enormous power in the computing market.
This will be a fun space to watch. Apple and Google will both feel pressure to respond to Silk to prevent Amazon from getting a decisive lead in mobile web apps. Maybe just the threat of Silk will be enough to finally drive some innovation in the mobile web platform.
I may be indulging in wishful thinking, but there's a possibility that ten years from now we'll look back on Silk as the single most important thing in today's announcement.
Or not. It depends on what Amazon's agenda is, and they're not telling.
Slouching toward Bethlehem. One revolution I'm sure is coming is the remaking of the print publishing industry. As I've said before (link), once about 20% of the reading public has electronic devices, an established author can make more money bypassing print and selling direct through e-readers. I think the new Kindle line, and especially the entry-level Kindles at $99 and below, will finally push us past the 20% threshold. It will take a couple of years to play out, but this will force the long-awaited restructuring, or destruction, of the traditional book publishing industry.
(Note: I wrote this before I read John Gruber's take on the new Kindles. He and I are thinking along similar lines. link )
In the tablet market right now we have the privilege of watching two companies do great strategy, Apple and Amazon. The press wants to label the Kindle Fire an iPad killer, but really it's the first sensible iPad counterpoint, a tablet device with its own unique design center and business model. I don't think either one's going to kill the other, but I think together they're likely to chop up almost every other company that gets in their way. In particular, that means Microsoft, RIM, and Google.
Let me start by talking about the new Kindle line, and then its likely impact on the market.
Two tablet paradigms
When Apple entered the tablet market, it asked "what can we do to redefine computing for tablets?" It re-thought the user interface, application model, and an endless set of other details to create a unique new computing experience. Apple has been rewarded with explosive sales growth.
With the Kindle line, Amazon asked a different question: "What can we do to redefine content distribution?" The answer led it to a tablet computer, but one with very different hardware specs, user experience, and a vastly different business model. None of the Kindles can match the iPad feature for feature (link), but they're not intended to. At $499 and up, the iPad is a serious investment for most people, a lifestyle statement. At $199 and down, the Kindles are impulse buys, the sort of thing people will get under Christmas trees or just buy for themselves because it looks neat and why the heck not?
Apple makes money from the sale of the iPad and its accessories, with a bit more coming from applications and content. Given the breath-taking pricing for the Kindle line, Amazon will probably lose money on the hardware, or at best break even. Its main profit will have to come from the sale of ebooks and movies and all sorts of other media products, plus some apps. Those revenues may take years to fully develop, so Amazon is playing a very long game. That's why I see Kindle as a strategy rather than just a product. The company is betting that by subsidizing the Kindle now, it can dominate electronic media distribution for the indefinite future.
To keep iPad successful, Apple will need to continue to add wonderful new features to it, constantly refreshing the "magical" experience. It will also continue to drive it into markets where tablet computing can make a big difference. Apple is already making a huge push in education; some people tell me Apple has almost completely refocused its education salesforce on selling iPad to schools rather than Macs. And there are plenty of reports of iPads moving into other verticals like aviation.
I'm sure the Kindle Fire will also show up in schools, but at heart the Kindle line is a Volkspad, priced to be the tablet thing that everyone eventually gets for basic content access. Already about 40% of tablet owners also own e-readers according to Pew Research (link), and I expect that percentage to increase.
Over time we might see Apple and Amazon compete more directly; it all depends on how much Apple is willing to subsidize hardware to get long-term revenue from content. There is also potential for product line conflicts -- if Apple makes a lower-priced iPad, it might cannibalize iPhone sales. In the past Apple has tried to keep its product lines separated in price, and it hasn't used the subsidy model. This is a very interesting test for Apple's new CEO Tim Cook, and I'm glad Steve Jobs is still on the scene to advise him.
But in the meantime, it's very likely that iPad and Kindle will coexist nicely in the market. The losers, I think, will be everyone else trying to play in the tablet space.
Hammer and Anvil
Companies trying to sell tablets against Apple were already suffering from slow sales. Now instead of just being pounded by the iPad hammer, they've been undercut by the Kindle anvil. For most of them, there's no place to go. It's very hard for me to picture how somebody like Samsung is going to get market traction with its current tablet line, and I think the RIM PlayBook, due to its size, is going to suffer against Kindle Fire. Between slow sales of its current phones and now the PlayBook's dwindling prospects, I hope RIM has been very very careful about managing its inventory of parts and finished devices. Otherwise it could end up with a massive inventory writedown in a couple of quarters.
I will be very interested to see what Barnes & Noble does next with its Nook Color tablet. Nook Color is similar in many ways to Kindle Fire, but B&N was reluctant to add a lot of Android apps because it was afraid people might buy it as a tablet rather than an e-reader. Amazon appears to have overcome this fear, and there's a danger that B&N may have let its opportunity for leadership slip away. On the other hand, if the next Nook Color has better features than Kindle Fire, Amazon's announcement might validate B&N's product and help it sell.
And then there's Microsoft, which has a beautiful-looking new Windows 8 tablet interface coming maybe late next year. I'm excited, I hope it'll be wonderful, but I'm starting to wonder if any customers will still be available by the time it ships.
There is still plenty of room in the market for competing tablets, but they'll need to be aimed at different usages than the iPad and Kindle. The biggest opportunity is for a stylus-equipped business productivity tool, an info pad (link). But none of the major hardware companies are working on that; they seem to prefer to bash their brains out competing directly with the iPad.
You're not the licensee Droid is looking for. Google's reaction to Kindle Fire speaks volumes about its goals for Android. Kindle Fire is based on Android, and will run Android applications. Android has been struggling in the tablet space, so you'd expect that Google would be delighted to have Amazon on the Android bandwagon. But you'd be wrong. Let's look at the press release Google issued today to welcome Amazon to the Android family. Wait a minute, there is no press release. Okay, so let's look on the Google blog. Nothing at all. Maybe a tweet from Andy Rubin? Dead silence.
The problem is that Amazon is using Android as just an OS, not using the Google-branded services and application store that Google layers on top of the OS (link). Although Google touted the openness of Android when it was first launched, the reality is that Google is using it as a Trojan horse to force its services onto hardware. What Amazon did with Android is very threatening to Google, and so you're not likely to hear a lot of supportive words from them.
Silken dreams. Speaking of threats to Google, we should discuss Amazon's new Silk browser. It supposedly integrates Amazon Web Services with the browser to produce a faster, more efficient browsing experience on Kindle Fire. Given the inefficiencies of web browsing over the wireless networks, this is potentially a compelling innovation that also might make it possible for future Amazon tablets to browse over 3G networks using less bandwidth than competing devices. That might lock in a structural cost advantage for Amazon's tablets.
Kindle Fire today is a WiFi only device, but I'd be very surprised if we didn't see a 3G version sometime in 2012.
Silk potentially gives Amazon a very powerful position (link). I can picture a couple of ways it could be used to disrupt the mobile market. First, Amazon could tie the browser to its own content services and distribute it to other hardware vendors. Basically, it could try to make Silk the content layer on Android that Google wants to be. This could be a good business move for Amazon, since it's not making money from the hardware anyway.
Google would hate this passionately, but with the company already under antitrust scrutiny, it would have to respond very carefully.
Amazon's other play could be to expand Silk into an enhanced platform for mobile web apps. I've been waiting for someone to make web apps work properly on mobile, and many smart people have been getting more and more depressed about the lack of leadership in mobile web APIs (link). Amazon has the expertise and the incentive to fill that gap. The question is whether it wants to. I think it should, I hope it will. If it does, Silk could become the platform for the next great generation of applications, giving Amazon enormous power in the computing market.
This will be a fun space to watch. Apple and Google will both feel pressure to respond to Silk to prevent Amazon from getting a decisive lead in mobile web apps. Maybe just the threat of Silk will be enough to finally drive some innovation in the mobile web platform.
I may be indulging in wishful thinking, but there's a possibility that ten years from now we'll look back on Silk as the single most important thing in today's announcement.
Or not. It depends on what Amazon's agenda is, and they're not telling.
Slouching toward Bethlehem. One revolution I'm sure is coming is the remaking of the print publishing industry. As I've said before (link), once about 20% of the reading public has electronic devices, an established author can make more money bypassing print and selling direct through e-readers. I think the new Kindle line, and especially the entry-level Kindles at $99 and below, will finally push us past the 20% threshold. It will take a couple of years to play out, but this will force the long-awaited restructuring, or destruction, of the traditional book publishing industry.
(Note: I wrote this before I read John Gruber's take on the new Kindles. He and I are thinking along similar lines. link )
Minggu, 04 September 2011
Happy Birthday, Business Computing
September 5, 2011
On this date sixty years ago, September 5 1951, the world's first business computing program was first tested on the world's first business computer, the Lyons Electronic Office (link).
LEO was inspired by wartime computers that calculated things like artillery aiming tables for the military. Lyons was a massive restaurant chain in the UK, and realized that the new digital computers could simplify its human-driven accounting operations. So it built its own computer, consisting of 21 racks with 6,000 vacuum tubes and occupying about 5,000 square feet. The company's first use of LEO was to calculate the cost of all the baked goods produced by its 12 bakeries (link).
From that humble beginning...wait, that wasn't a humble beginning at all, it was a very cool beginning. The first use of a business computer was to solve a real-world problem faster and more accurately than people could do it on their own. That's exactly what you're supposed to do with computers. LEO was quickly adapted to other tasks, where it achieved impressive results. For example, it cut the time needed to calculate an employee paycheck from eight minutes to 1.5 seconds.
It's hard to believe that many people believed for years that computers didn't increase business productivity (link).
From that very auspicious start grew most of the computing industry we know today (link). So take a moment to contemplate that dinner roll or slice of pie you eat today, and say a quiet thank-you to David Caminer, John Pinkerton (link), and the other pioneers who got it all started sixty years ago today.
More about Lyons
More about LEO
On this date sixty years ago, September 5 1951, the world's first business computing program was first tested on the world's first business computer, the Lyons Electronic Office (link).
LEO was inspired by wartime computers that calculated things like artillery aiming tables for the military. Lyons was a massive restaurant chain in the UK, and realized that the new digital computers could simplify its human-driven accounting operations. So it built its own computer, consisting of 21 racks with 6,000 vacuum tubes and occupying about 5,000 square feet. The company's first use of LEO was to calculate the cost of all the baked goods produced by its 12 bakeries (link).
From that humble beginning...wait, that wasn't a humble beginning at all, it was a very cool beginning. The first use of a business computer was to solve a real-world problem faster and more accurately than people could do it on their own. That's exactly what you're supposed to do with computers. LEO was quickly adapted to other tasks, where it achieved impressive results. For example, it cut the time needed to calculate an employee paycheck from eight minutes to 1.5 seconds.
It's hard to believe that many people believed for years that computers didn't increase business productivity (link).
From that very auspicious start grew most of the computing industry we know today (link). So take a moment to contemplate that dinner roll or slice of pie you eat today, and say a quiet thank-you to David Caminer, John Pinkerton (link), and the other pioneers who got it all started sixty years ago today.
More about Lyons
More about LEO
Rabu, 31 Agustus 2011
The Two Most Dangerous Words in Technology Marketing
"Just wait."
So powerful. So easy to say. So appealing when your current products are behind the curve, and the press and analysts are beating you up about it. You can shut up the critics instantly if you just drop a few hints about the next generation product that's now in the labs.
So dangerous.
The phrase "just wait" ought to be locked behind glass in the marketing department, like a fire extinguisher, with a sign that says, "Break glass only in emergency." And then you hide the hammer someplace where no one can find it.
Saying "just wait" is dangerous because it invites customers to stop buying your current products. You're basically advertising against yourself. If your company is under financial or competitive stress, the risk is even greater because people are already questioning your viability.
This danger is especially potent in the tech industry (as opposed to carpeting or detergent) because tech customers worship newness, and they use the Internet aggressively to spread information. One vague hint at a conference in Japan can turn into a worldwide product announcement overnight.
This danger has been well understood in the tech industry dating at least back to 1983, when portable computing pioneer Adam Osborne supposedly helped destroy his PC company by pre-announcing a new generation of computers before they were ready to ship (link). Palm reinforced the lesson in 2000 by pre-announcing the m500 handheld line and stalling current sales (link).
But maybe memories have faded, because we've been hearing "just wait" a lot lately:
--Nokia announced that it's switching its software to Windows Phone, and promised new devices based on the OS by this fall. Nokia executives have hammered that message over and over, even making detailed promises about features including ease of use, battery life, imaging, voice commands, cloud services, and price (link). Some execs have even told audiences that they have a prototype in their pockets, but coyly refused to show it (link). What's the thinking here? Does refusing to show the product somehow nullify the fact that you just told everyone not to buy what you sell today?
--In February 2011, HP pre-announced a series of new smartphones that were supposed to come out over the next year. The most attractive-sounding one, the Pre3, was supposed to ship last. Not only did this obsolete HP's current products, but it also overshadowed the other new products HP launched in the interim. HP's interim smartphone sales turned out to be so bad that it killed the business before the Pre3 could even launch in the US.
--Speaking of HP, the company just announced that it will be selling its PC business because it's not doing well. As Jean-Louis Gassee pointed out, that's like inviting customers to switch to another vendor who actually wants to be in the business (link). That forced HP executive Todd Bradley to boost confidence by going on tour pre-announcing himself as future CEO of the theoretical spun-out company, even though HP's Board won't even meet to decide on a spinout until December (link).
--RIM announced that it's moving BlackBerry to a new operating system, which will apparently not run on its existing smartphones. It has spent much of the last year telling people how great all the new features of the OS will be. The company also pre-announced that it will enable Android applications to run on its future phones. Meanwhile, market share of its current products has been dropping steadily. The latest rumors say RIM's new phones will not be out until Q1 of 2012 (link), meaning the company has probably sabotaged its own Christmas sales for 2011.
--Microsoft announced that it's replacing Windows in about a year. That's not necessarily a problem, since it says the new version of Windows will run on existing hardware. But Microsoft also said it's introducing a new development platform based on HTML 5. This set off a huge amount of teeth-gnashing among today's app developers worried that their skills are about to become obsolete (check out the excellent overview by Mary-Jo Foley here).
Why are companies doing this over and over? Sometimes you have no choice. For example, Nokia couldn't lay off the Symbian team without saying something about its OS plans. However, it didn't have to be so noisy about the plans, so I think that wasn't its only motivation.
Sometimes the cause is a mismatch between the needs of a hardware business and the needs of a software business. If you're making a software platform, you pre-announce it as early as possible to build confidence and get developers ready at launch. But if you're selling hardware, you want to keep new stuff a secret until the day you ship. When you mix hardware and software, you are pulled in both directions. I think that disconnect probably affected Nokia, which is now run by a CEO who worked in software for most of his career.
Companies also sometimes pre-announce products because it placates investors. Wall Street analysts always ask what you're developing in the future, and executives sometimes can't resist the urge to tell them and prop up the stock price. Ironically, this may help the stock for a quarter, but often has the long-term effect of hurting a company's value when the pre-announcement slows sales. But each CEO always seems to believe he or she will be the one who gets away with it. I believe investor pressure was one of the drivers when Palm pre-announced the m500, and I believe it also explains some of the pre-announcements by HP and RIM.
Sometimes internal company politics also plays a role. An executive may pre-announce a product in the hope that the announcement will put more pressure on the development team to deliver "on time." Or a business leader will pre-announce something to pre-empt internal competition from another group. I've seen both of those happen at places where I worked. Needless to say, any company that allows internal politics to drive external communication has much bigger problems than its announcements policy.
Pre-announcements also create other problems. They educate the competition about what you're doing, and give them time to prepare a response. This is especially dangerous if you're trying to come from behind, which is usually the situation when a company pre-announces. So a competitor is already out-maneuvering you, and now you're giving them more notice of your plans?
But I think the worst effect of a pre-announcement is that it invalidates any signals you get from the market. You can't actually tell if your underlying business is healthy or not. Did HP's smartphone sales slow down because people hated its products, or because HP had invited customers to wait for the new ones? Have BlackBerry sales been suffering because customers don't want them, or because RIM invited people not to buy? Was the enormous drop in Nokia smartphone sales due to flaws in the products, or due to Nokia's relentless promotion of new phones that aren't yet shipping?
There's no way to tell for sure. And so, if you're running one of those companies, you don't know whether or not you should panic -- or more to the point, what exactly you should panic about. You have now trapped yourself in limbo, and there is no way out until your new products ship.
So, as you can guess, I am generally against pre-announcements. But they can be very powerful, and there are a couple of special cases in which they're appropriate.
When it's safe to pre-announce
If you're entering a new business. If you don't have any current sales to cannibalize, it's relatively safe to pre-announce. You're still alerting the competition, which I dislike, but at least you won't tank your current business. Apple pre-announced the first iPhone and iPad before they shipped, but you'll notice that they've been very secretive about the follow-ons.
A variant on this is when a competitor is ahead of you in a new category and you want to slow down their momentum. You pre-announce your own version of their product, in the hope that customers will wait to get it from you rather than buying from the competition. This can be especially effective in enterprise markets, where IT managers tend to develop long-term buying relationships with a few vendors. IBM used this technique relentlessly during the mainframe era, and Microsoft picked up the habit from them.
Pre-announcements are less effective against competitors in consumer markets, where people are sometimes driven by the urge to buy now. They also don't do much in cases where it's easy to switch vendors. For example, Google pre-announcing a web service isn't likely to stop people from using competitors to it in the interim. A pre-announcement can intimidate venture capitalists, though, and I wonder if Google doesn't sometimes announce a direction in order to hinder a potential competitor's ability to raise money.
If there is a seamless, zero-hassle upgrade path. If customers will be able to move easily to your new products, without obsoleting what they use today, and without big expense, a pre-announcement can be safe. For example Apple generally pre-announces new versions of Mac OS, and it's not a major problem because currently-available Mac hardware can run the new OS. Where RIM went wrong with its OS announcement is that its current hardware apparently can't run the new OS. So RIM has announced the pending obsolescence of everything it sells today.
If you are messing with the mind of a competitor. Theoretically, if you're dealing with a competitor who's very imitative, you can make them waste time and money by leaking news of future products that you don't actually plan to build. The competitor will feel obligated to spin up a business unit to copy your phantom product, leaving less money to respond to what you're actually doing.
When I was at Apple, we used to joke that we could waste $20 million a pop at Microsoft by seeding and then strenuously denying rumors that we were working on weird but plausible products. Handheld game machines, anyone? Television remote controls? Apple today is so influential that it could manipulate entire industries by doing that, not just individual companies.
But when you do this you gradually erode your credibility with your customers. If the rumor is plausible enough to dupe a competitor, it will also dupe some customers, who will then be disappointed when you don't deliver. Eventually you won't be able to get customers excited when you announce real products. Look at the skepticism people often express today when Google announces a new initiative.
The most famous case in which misdirection supposedly worked was not in business but in international politics. Some historians say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was hastened by the huge investments it made trying to keep up with Reagan Administration defense initiatives, some of which had no hope of actually working, but which still seemed plausible enough that the Soviets felt obligated to cover them.
I'm not so sure that really caused the collapse of the Soviet Union; big economic changes are usually driven by big economic forces, not by tactics. But more to the point, you're not Ronald Reagan, this isn't the Cold War, and if you try to pull off a fake this complicated you'll probably just confuse your customers and employees.
So unless you're entering a new market, or have a seamless low-cost upgrade path to the new product, your best bet is to grit your teeth, shut up, and next time plan better so you'll be ahead of the market instead of playing catch-up.
So powerful. So easy to say. So appealing when your current products are behind the curve, and the press and analysts are beating you up about it. You can shut up the critics instantly if you just drop a few hints about the next generation product that's now in the labs.
So dangerous.
The phrase "just wait" ought to be locked behind glass in the marketing department, like a fire extinguisher, with a sign that says, "Break glass only in emergency." And then you hide the hammer someplace where no one can find it.
Saying "just wait" is dangerous because it invites customers to stop buying your current products. You're basically advertising against yourself. If your company is under financial or competitive stress, the risk is even greater because people are already questioning your viability.
This danger is especially potent in the tech industry (as opposed to carpeting or detergent) because tech customers worship newness, and they use the Internet aggressively to spread information. One vague hint at a conference in Japan can turn into a worldwide product announcement overnight.
This danger has been well understood in the tech industry dating at least back to 1983, when portable computing pioneer Adam Osborne supposedly helped destroy his PC company by pre-announcing a new generation of computers before they were ready to ship (link). Palm reinforced the lesson in 2000 by pre-announcing the m500 handheld line and stalling current sales (link).
But maybe memories have faded, because we've been hearing "just wait" a lot lately:
--Nokia announced that it's switching its software to Windows Phone, and promised new devices based on the OS by this fall. Nokia executives have hammered that message over and over, even making detailed promises about features including ease of use, battery life, imaging, voice commands, cloud services, and price (link). Some execs have even told audiences that they have a prototype in their pockets, but coyly refused to show it (link). What's the thinking here? Does refusing to show the product somehow nullify the fact that you just told everyone not to buy what you sell today?
--In February 2011, HP pre-announced a series of new smartphones that were supposed to come out over the next year. The most attractive-sounding one, the Pre3, was supposed to ship last. Not only did this obsolete HP's current products, but it also overshadowed the other new products HP launched in the interim. HP's interim smartphone sales turned out to be so bad that it killed the business before the Pre3 could even launch in the US.
--Speaking of HP, the company just announced that it will be selling its PC business because it's not doing well. As Jean-Louis Gassee pointed out, that's like inviting customers to switch to another vendor who actually wants to be in the business (link). That forced HP executive Todd Bradley to boost confidence by going on tour pre-announcing himself as future CEO of the theoretical spun-out company, even though HP's Board won't even meet to decide on a spinout until December (link).
--RIM announced that it's moving BlackBerry to a new operating system, which will apparently not run on its existing smartphones. It has spent much of the last year telling people how great all the new features of the OS will be. The company also pre-announced that it will enable Android applications to run on its future phones. Meanwhile, market share of its current products has been dropping steadily. The latest rumors say RIM's new phones will not be out until Q1 of 2012 (link), meaning the company has probably sabotaged its own Christmas sales for 2011.
--Microsoft announced that it's replacing Windows in about a year. That's not necessarily a problem, since it says the new version of Windows will run on existing hardware. But Microsoft also said it's introducing a new development platform based on HTML 5. This set off a huge amount of teeth-gnashing among today's app developers worried that their skills are about to become obsolete (check out the excellent overview by Mary-Jo Foley here).
Why are companies doing this over and over? Sometimes you have no choice. For example, Nokia couldn't lay off the Symbian team without saying something about its OS plans. However, it didn't have to be so noisy about the plans, so I think that wasn't its only motivation.
Sometimes the cause is a mismatch between the needs of a hardware business and the needs of a software business. If you're making a software platform, you pre-announce it as early as possible to build confidence and get developers ready at launch. But if you're selling hardware, you want to keep new stuff a secret until the day you ship. When you mix hardware and software, you are pulled in both directions. I think that disconnect probably affected Nokia, which is now run by a CEO who worked in software for most of his career.
Companies also sometimes pre-announce products because it placates investors. Wall Street analysts always ask what you're developing in the future, and executives sometimes can't resist the urge to tell them and prop up the stock price. Ironically, this may help the stock for a quarter, but often has the long-term effect of hurting a company's value when the pre-announcement slows sales. But each CEO always seems to believe he or she will be the one who gets away with it. I believe investor pressure was one of the drivers when Palm pre-announced the m500, and I believe it also explains some of the pre-announcements by HP and RIM.
Sometimes internal company politics also plays a role. An executive may pre-announce a product in the hope that the announcement will put more pressure on the development team to deliver "on time." Or a business leader will pre-announce something to pre-empt internal competition from another group. I've seen both of those happen at places where I worked. Needless to say, any company that allows internal politics to drive external communication has much bigger problems than its announcements policy.
Pre-announcements also create other problems. They educate the competition about what you're doing, and give them time to prepare a response. This is especially dangerous if you're trying to come from behind, which is usually the situation when a company pre-announces. So a competitor is already out-maneuvering you, and now you're giving them more notice of your plans?
But I think the worst effect of a pre-announcement is that it invalidates any signals you get from the market. You can't actually tell if your underlying business is healthy or not. Did HP's smartphone sales slow down because people hated its products, or because HP had invited customers to wait for the new ones? Have BlackBerry sales been suffering because customers don't want them, or because RIM invited people not to buy? Was the enormous drop in Nokia smartphone sales due to flaws in the products, or due to Nokia's relentless promotion of new phones that aren't yet shipping?
There's no way to tell for sure. And so, if you're running one of those companies, you don't know whether or not you should panic -- or more to the point, what exactly you should panic about. You have now trapped yourself in limbo, and there is no way out until your new products ship.
So, as you can guess, I am generally against pre-announcements. But they can be very powerful, and there are a couple of special cases in which they're appropriate.
When it's safe to pre-announce
If you're entering a new business. If you don't have any current sales to cannibalize, it's relatively safe to pre-announce. You're still alerting the competition, which I dislike, but at least you won't tank your current business. Apple pre-announced the first iPhone and iPad before they shipped, but you'll notice that they've been very secretive about the follow-ons.
A variant on this is when a competitor is ahead of you in a new category and you want to slow down their momentum. You pre-announce your own version of their product, in the hope that customers will wait to get it from you rather than buying from the competition. This can be especially effective in enterprise markets, where IT managers tend to develop long-term buying relationships with a few vendors. IBM used this technique relentlessly during the mainframe era, and Microsoft picked up the habit from them.
Pre-announcements are less effective against competitors in consumer markets, where people are sometimes driven by the urge to buy now. They also don't do much in cases where it's easy to switch vendors. For example, Google pre-announcing a web service isn't likely to stop people from using competitors to it in the interim. A pre-announcement can intimidate venture capitalists, though, and I wonder if Google doesn't sometimes announce a direction in order to hinder a potential competitor's ability to raise money.
If there is a seamless, zero-hassle upgrade path. If customers will be able to move easily to your new products, without obsoleting what they use today, and without big expense, a pre-announcement can be safe. For example Apple generally pre-announces new versions of Mac OS, and it's not a major problem because currently-available Mac hardware can run the new OS. Where RIM went wrong with its OS announcement is that its current hardware apparently can't run the new OS. So RIM has announced the pending obsolescence of everything it sells today.
If you are messing with the mind of a competitor. Theoretically, if you're dealing with a competitor who's very imitative, you can make them waste time and money by leaking news of future products that you don't actually plan to build. The competitor will feel obligated to spin up a business unit to copy your phantom product, leaving less money to respond to what you're actually doing.
When I was at Apple, we used to joke that we could waste $20 million a pop at Microsoft by seeding and then strenuously denying rumors that we were working on weird but plausible products. Handheld game machines, anyone? Television remote controls? Apple today is so influential that it could manipulate entire industries by doing that, not just individual companies.
But when you do this you gradually erode your credibility with your customers. If the rumor is plausible enough to dupe a competitor, it will also dupe some customers, who will then be disappointed when you don't deliver. Eventually you won't be able to get customers excited when you announce real products. Look at the skepticism people often express today when Google announces a new initiative.
The most famous case in which misdirection supposedly worked was not in business but in international politics. Some historians say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was hastened by the huge investments it made trying to keep up with Reagan Administration defense initiatives, some of which had no hope of actually working, but which still seemed plausible enough that the Soviets felt obligated to cover them.
I'm not so sure that really caused the collapse of the Soviet Union; big economic changes are usually driven by big economic forces, not by tactics. But more to the point, you're not Ronald Reagan, this isn't the Cold War, and if you try to pull off a fake this complicated you'll probably just confuse your customers and employees.
So unless you're entering a new market, or have a seamless low-cost upgrade path to the new product, your best bet is to grit your teeth, shut up, and next time plan better so you'll be ahead of the market instead of playing catch-up.
Selasa, 30 Agustus 2011
MeeGo (CE) and the FreeSmartphone.Org Distributions
FreeSmartphone.Org (FSO), Openmoko, Debian's FSO group, SHR, QtMoko et cetera are a few of the community based intertwined projects to bring free software to smartphones. They have a relatively long and colorful history of doing this, and have nowadays been approaching multiple target devices despite limited resources and for example the losing of Openmoko Inc. in 2009. I've been using Debian on my Neo FreeRunner phone for over two years now, and over three years of FreeRunner use altogether. FSO2, the next generation freesmartphone.org stack, is finally coming into Debian now, extending the basic phone support besides Openmoko phones to eg. Palm Pre, Nexus One, Nokia N900 and a few HTC phones. It needs a lot of tweaking and eg. a proper kernel, but still.
Four years after beginning of sales of the first Openmoko device (Neo1973), we're still in the pioneering phase of free distributions for mobile phones. There is no "Ubuntu for phones" so to speak, not for even a selected models. Meanwhile, like so often in the wide world, competing free software approaches have arrived. Android is the obvious one, and has seen a port to Neo Freerunner among else. Android is not as open a project as one could like, and replaces everything we've known with its own code, but nevertheless it requires to be noted and is completely usable in its free software form. But since there are limitations to its approach, and since it's more of an own separate world from the rest of Linux distributions, it is not as interesting to me as the others in the long run, at least in its current shape.
A more similar competitor to FSO and distributions using FSO is MeeGo and its middleware, and to be more precise so far specifically Nokia's efforts on it. Obviously there is the strong competitor for the best general population smartphone of the year, the Qt based Nokia N9, but its default software is more of a proprietary thing even though it has a neatly rock solid free software foundation with separate free/non-free repositories and all that. Nice and great for the (GNU/)Linux in general, but the Harmattan software is not exactly on topic for this blog post. It's however in my opinion the best marketing to vendors around the world GNU/Linux + Qt can get as Android Linux has been taking most of the limelight. But meanwhile, with significantly smaller focus and resources, Nokia has also been sponsoring to try to create a truly community based mobile phone software stack at the MeeGo upstream, nowadays called "MeeGo Community Edition" or MeeGo CE for short. It co-operates with the MeeGo Handset target of MeeGo (and Intel) that hasn't got actual target consumer hardware at the moment, although that might change soon (?), but has been doing some nice applications recently. CE has the target hardware and additional device specific and non-specific software cooking. It used to target Nokia N900 only, but nowadays the project has added N950 (the for-developers-only phone) and N9 to the targets, and it is starting to seem there should be no showstoppers to bring MeeGo CE (or other distributions later on) to them, despite some earlier doubts. A few needed bits to void the warranty we all want to do are still missing, though, but coming. After that it's just developing free software. Usual caveats about specifics of a few kernel drivers apply, as the devices were not designed with the sole purpose of free software drivers in mind. Hopefully mobile 3D gets into a better shape in the coming years, but that's another story.
MeeGo (CE) smartphone middleware, of course, shares nothing with FSO *). While FSO is a "handle everything" in itself with its wide variety of daemons, MeeGo consists of more separate software like Intel's and Nokia's oFono for modem support. FSO demo UIs and SHR UIs have traditionally focused on using Enlightenment 17 for its suitability to low power machines, while in MeeGo everything is written in Qt. As Qt/QML is becoming faster and faster, and it's very powerful to write, there might be quite a bit of useful software emerging from there also for other distributions besides MeeGo itself. Actually, there is already a Debian MeeGo stack maintainer group available, although it hasn't yet focused on the UIs as far as I can see (if I'll have free time I'll join the effort and see for myself in more detail). There is also the QtMoko distribution, based on the original, canceled Trolltech/Nokia Qt Extended (Qtopia) project, but ported to newer Qt:s and put on top of Debian.
*) Although, correct me if I'm wrong and I might be, the Nokia N900 isi modem driver in FSO was ported/learned from oFono.
MeeGo CE is not only a project to bring a proper MeeGo distribution to a few smartphones, but also to shake out bugs in the MeeGo project's contributions and community processes. It is acting as a completely open MeeGo product contributor, and investigating how things should be optimally done so that everything gets integrated into the MeeGo properly, and that proper MeeGo software releases can be done for the target devices. Therefore it's also an important project for the vitality of the whole MeeGo.
MeeGo CE has so far had a whole team in Nokia working on it, but for obvious strategy related reasons community cannot rely on it lasting forever. The real hurdle is for the wider free smartphones community to be ready for really embracing a project that is already a community project but to outsiders might seem like a company project. I believe it's never easy to grow a volunteer community if the starting setup is a paid company team, but it mainly requires a) the interested people and b) the few smart ones to take control and communication responsibility so that it's not anymore seen as a company project. MeeGo CE never was a traditional company project, everything being done in the open and together with volunteers, but I just know how people perceive these things by default. People tend to assume stuff as someone else's responsibility
Whatever happens, I hope there are enough people interested in free software for mobile phones to carry on all these different approaches to the software needed. I hope MeeGo / MeeGo CE will have a great future, and I hope that both the middleware like FSO and MeeGo's components, and the UIs like FSO, SHR, QtMoko and MeeGo Handheld UIs continue to develop. I also hope other distributions like Debian will gather a strong suite of packaged software for smartphones. I know I have had some hard time to find suitable apps for my phone at times.
For those interested about how I use Debian as my mobile phone OS, see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/User:TimoJyrinki
Rabu, 24 Agustus 2011
Thanks, Steve
I've never even met you, but I wouldn't have my career if not for you. So I thought this would be a good time to say thanks.
It was the Macintosh computer you championed that first drew me into developing software. That business didn't make me rich, but it eventually got me hired by Apple. Unfortunately, you left a year before I got to Apple, but the company's goals were still the things you preached -- do something insanely great, change the world.
I spent ten years at the company you co-founded, and it was both a great education and a fun ride. Unfortunately, in a case of spectacularly poor judgment, I quit in early 1997, after the NeXT acquisition but before you took back control of the company. I didn't believe you'd take over, and I lost faith in the previous management. My only contact with you was a single meeting that you and I both attended. I was there as an observer, so I sat in the back and said nothing. My only impression of you was, "wow, he really doesn't wear socks."
Perhaps it's just as well that I quit.
Although I was no longer with Apple, you still played a huge role in my career. For a time in the late 1990s, it looked like Silicon Valley was becoming a backwater in technology. Software was dominated by Microsoft after its demolition of Netscape, AOL on the east coast was the online leader, and Dell in Texas plus the Asian companies were the leaders in PC hardware. The Valley's leadership role was saved, I believe, by Yahoo and Google in the web world, and by Apple's resurrection in computer systems.
Other people are doing a great job of recapping all of Apple's product successes since your return, so I won't bother repeating them here. But I want to talk about two other accomplishments that stand out to me. The first is how you've reset the way the tech industry looks at consumer products. Even a few years ago, most people still said that Microsoft's business model -- in which the hardware was designed separately from the software -- was the only viable way to make computing devices. Today, everyone talks about codeveloping hardware and software, and it's because of you.
The other accomplishment that stands out to me is your creation of an organization at Apple that could turn out hit after hit, reliably and with great quality. Most people don't appreciate how hard that is, mostly because Apple makes it look so easy.
It's because of the organization you built that I'm confident Apple will continue to do well, even as you reduce your role. I hope your health will improve, and it would be great to see you back as CEO some day. But that's speculation for another time.
Right now, I just wanted to say thanks, Steve. It was insanely great, and you did indeed change the world.
It was the Macintosh computer you championed that first drew me into developing software. That business didn't make me rich, but it eventually got me hired by Apple. Unfortunately, you left a year before I got to Apple, but the company's goals were still the things you preached -- do something insanely great, change the world.
I spent ten years at the company you co-founded, and it was both a great education and a fun ride. Unfortunately, in a case of spectacularly poor judgment, I quit in early 1997, after the NeXT acquisition but before you took back control of the company. I didn't believe you'd take over, and I lost faith in the previous management. My only contact with you was a single meeting that you and I both attended. I was there as an observer, so I sat in the back and said nothing. My only impression of you was, "wow, he really doesn't wear socks."
Perhaps it's just as well that I quit.
Although I was no longer with Apple, you still played a huge role in my career. For a time in the late 1990s, it looked like Silicon Valley was becoming a backwater in technology. Software was dominated by Microsoft after its demolition of Netscape, AOL on the east coast was the online leader, and Dell in Texas plus the Asian companies were the leaders in PC hardware. The Valley's leadership role was saved, I believe, by Yahoo and Google in the web world, and by Apple's resurrection in computer systems.
Other people are doing a great job of recapping all of Apple's product successes since your return, so I won't bother repeating them here. But I want to talk about two other accomplishments that stand out to me. The first is how you've reset the way the tech industry looks at consumer products. Even a few years ago, most people still said that Microsoft's business model -- in which the hardware was designed separately from the software -- was the only viable way to make computing devices. Today, everyone talks about codeveloping hardware and software, and it's because of you.
The other accomplishment that stands out to me is your creation of an organization at Apple that could turn out hit after hit, reliably and with great quality. Most people don't appreciate how hard that is, mostly because Apple makes it look so easy.
It's because of the organization you built that I'm confident Apple will continue to do well, even as you reduce your role. I hope your health will improve, and it would be great to see you back as CEO some day. But that's speculation for another time.
Right now, I just wanted to say thanks, Steve. It was insanely great, and you did indeed change the world.
Minggu, 21 Agustus 2011
I'm Speaking at Mobile 2.0
FYI, I'll be speaking on a panel at the Mobile 2.0 conference September 1, 2011 in San Francisco (link). The panel is about native apps vs. web, and should be a lot of fun, especially since Marc Davis is also on the panel. He's a great thinker and speaker.
The Mobile 2.0 folks have offered a discount to Mobile Opportunity readers. If you register using the code "TwentyFive" you'll get a 25% discount.
The Mobile 2.0 folks have offered a discount to Mobile Opportunity readers. If you register using the code "TwentyFive" you'll get a 25% discount.
Jumat, 19 Agustus 2011
The Part of Palm that Smartphone Companies Should be Bidding For
Anytime a CEO gets ousted in disgrace, his or her pet projects are vulnerable to a quick trip to the gallows if they falter. Mark Hurd was the CEO who bought Palm, so it was at risk from the moment Hurd left. HP's mobile device performance had not been good this year -- the Veer smartphone launched and vanished on the same day, and the TouchPad turned out to be a sales disaster. If Leo Apotheker had chosen to invest further in the business, it would have turned into his responsibility. It's far easier to just walk away.
You can make an argument that HP should have given the business more time, and it's a shame that we'll never get to see the Pre 3. But Palm's sales have been troubled for years, and I think its fundamental mistake was that it tried to be too much like Apple. From the start, Pre was aimed at the same users and the same usages as the iPhone (even down to a failed effort to tie the phone directly to iTunes). HP proved that most people don't want to buy an incremental improvement to the iPhone that can't run iOS apps.
Then just for kicks, HP went and proved the same point again with the TouchPad.
The lesson to other mobile companies, I think, is that unless you're a low-cost Asian vendor, you need to differentiate from Apple, not draft behind it.
I'd love to see Web OS live on, but the hardware debacle makes that less likely. As I mentioned the other day, licensees choose an OS because they think it'll generate a lot of unit sales for them. Since Web OS couldn't do that for HP, who else would want to license it?
If you believe that every smartphone company needs to own its own OS, we ought to see a mad bidding war between LG, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Dell, and maybe Samsung to buy Web OS. (The loser could get RIM as a consolation prize.) Maybe a buyout will still happen, but I think HP has probably been quietly shopping Web OS for a while, and if there were interest it would have tried to close a deal before today's announcement.
(By the way, HTC, if you do buy Web OS, you should insist that HP give you the Palm brand name as well. It's still far better known than the HTC brand in the US. The same logic applies for LG.)
But I'm not persuaded that buying an OS is the right way to go for any smartphone company. Turning yourself into a second-class imitation of Apple isn't a winning strategy, especially if your company doesn't know how to manage an operating system. (Case in point, look what it did to HP.) You can create great mobile systems without controlling the OS; all you need is a great system development team and the freedom to put a software layer on top of whatever OS you use.
That means the real crown jewel in the Web OS business unit is the system development people -- the product managers and engineers -- that HP just threw in the garbage. In my opinion, that's the part of Palm that smartphone companies should be fighting for.
You can make an argument that HP should have given the business more time, and it's a shame that we'll never get to see the Pre 3. But Palm's sales have been troubled for years, and I think its fundamental mistake was that it tried to be too much like Apple. From the start, Pre was aimed at the same users and the same usages as the iPhone (even down to a failed effort to tie the phone directly to iTunes). HP proved that most people don't want to buy an incremental improvement to the iPhone that can't run iOS apps.
Then just for kicks, HP went and proved the same point again with the TouchPad.
The lesson to other mobile companies, I think, is that unless you're a low-cost Asian vendor, you need to differentiate from Apple, not draft behind it.
I'd love to see Web OS live on, but the hardware debacle makes that less likely. As I mentioned the other day, licensees choose an OS because they think it'll generate a lot of unit sales for them. Since Web OS couldn't do that for HP, who else would want to license it?
If you believe that every smartphone company needs to own its own OS, we ought to see a mad bidding war between LG, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Dell, and maybe Samsung to buy Web OS. (The loser could get RIM as a consolation prize.) Maybe a buyout will still happen, but I think HP has probably been quietly shopping Web OS for a while, and if there were interest it would have tried to close a deal before today's announcement.
(By the way, HTC, if you do buy Web OS, you should insist that HP give you the Palm brand name as well. It's still far better known than the HTC brand in the US. The same logic applies for LG.)
But I'm not persuaded that buying an OS is the right way to go for any smartphone company. Turning yourself into a second-class imitation of Apple isn't a winning strategy, especially if your company doesn't know how to manage an operating system. (Case in point, look what it did to HP.) You can create great mobile systems without controlling the OS; all you need is a great system development team and the freedom to put a software layer on top of whatever OS you use.
That means the real crown jewel in the Web OS business unit is the system development people -- the product managers and engineers -- that HP just threw in the garbage. In my opinion, that's the part of Palm that smartphone companies should be fighting for.
Selasa, 16 Agustus 2011
Google and Motorola: What the #@!*%?
It's two days later and I'm still confused. When I saw the headline yesterday, my jaw literally dropped. "Google bought who? That's got to be a misprint. They must have bought a mobile operator, like Sprint or something. But Motorola? Really?"
Usually when a big tech merger happens you can see the logic behind it. Even if you don't agree with the logic, you understand why they made the deal. But in this case the more I think about it the more confused I get.
Did Google buy Motorola for the patents? If so, why isn't it spinning out the hardware business? Or did Google buy Motorola because it wants to be in the hardware business? If so, does it understand what a world of other problems that will create for Android and the rest of Google? Seriously, if Google tries to integrate Motorola into its business we could end up citing this as the deal that permanently broke Google.
Why roll the dice like that? Maybe I'm missing something, maybe Google has a screw loose, maybe both of the above. Or maybe I'm wrong to look for airtight logic. Companies sometimes make decisions on impulse, especially when they are under stress, and it's a sure thing that Google is under stress these days on IP issues.
So I have a lot more questions than answers. My questions are about Google's intent, its next steps, and how other companies will react...
Why did Google do it, really? The conventional answer is that Google wanted Motorola Mobility for its patents. That's what Google itself implied, and Marguerite Reardon over at CNET agreed (link). That might well be the explanation. Om Malik had a really intriguing take: Google bought Motorola as a defensive move to prevent Microsoft from getting the Motorola patents (link). And Richard Windsor of Nomura, who I respect deeply, said in an e-mail that this is all about the patents. He predicts that Google's new patent portfolio will create a balance of power enabling Google to quickly force a settlement to the patent lawsuits against its licensees.
But if you wanted only the patents, I think you'd buy Motorola, keep the patents and then spin out the hardware company to avoid antagonizing your licensees. Google says it intends to keep Motorola and run it.
Besides, as Andrew Sorkin pointed out in the New York Times, Google could have bought a different but also important mobile patent portfolio from InterDigital for about $10 billion less than Motorola (link). Maybe there's some magic patent at Motorola that Google feels is worth $10 billion more, or maybe there are some terms in Motorola's patent cross-license agreements that Google desperately needs. But again, if that's the case, why not keep the patents and resell the hardware business?
Unless Google is lying about keeping Motorola intact, I think Google intends to be in the mobile hardware business. Which raises the next question...
Does Google know how to run a hardware business? No, of course not. The processes, disciplines, and skills are utterly different. The same business practices that made Google good in software will be a liability in hardware. Google's engineers-first, research driven product management philosophy is effective in the development of web software, because you can run experiments and revise your web app every day in response to user feedback. But in hardware, you have to make feature decisions 18 months before you ship, and you have to live with those decisions for another 18 months while your product sells through. You can't afford to wait for science. Instead, you need dictatorial product managers who operate on artistry and intuition. All of those concepts (dictatorship, artistry, intuition) are anathema to Google's culture. Either Google's worldview will dominate and ruin Motorola, or worse yet the Motorola worldview will infect Google. Google with Motorola inside it is like a python that swallowed a minivan.
To put it another way, I think Google has about as much chance of successfully managing a device business as Nokia had of running an OS business.
But the real question is, does Google realize that it doesn't know how to make hardware? I doubt it. Speaking as someone who worked at PalmSource for its whole independent history, an OS company always believes that it could do a better job of making hardware than its licensees. It's incredibly frustrating to have a vision for what people should do with your software, and then see them screw it up over and over. The temptation is to build some hardware yourself, just to show those idiots how to do it right.
I think maybe Google just gave in to that temptation.
But if Google really wants to sell hardware, that raises questions for the other Android licensees...
How will Google really manage Motorola? Google says it's going to treat Motorola as an independent company without any special access to the Android team. But what's the point in that? Motorola hasn't exactly been dominating the mobile device world lately, so I find it very, very hard to believe that Google would buy it and leave it intact. Wouldn't you want to have Motorola create special products that take advantage of the latest Android features? Kind of like a flagship operation? Then when you announce a new initiative at Google IO, you can have some nice new Motorola hardware ready to ship with it on day one. Of course, the other Android licensees will be allowed to participate too. They're welcome to run flat out to keep up with every Google software initiative, disregarding expense and business risk, just like Google's Motorola subsidiary will.
Which makes you wonder...
How will the Android licensees react? I think we can safely disregard the positive quotes from the other Android licensees. What would you do if your company depended utterly on Android, and Google called you up twelve hours before the announcement and asked for a quote? Would you risk Google's anger by refusing to give a nice quote? Of course not.
But would you honestly be happy? Of course not. In the last year, you gained share at the expense of Motorola. Now instead of being a weak and failing vendor you can snack on, Motorola has infinite financial resources and cannot physically go broke. Sure, I am happy to compete with that.
The other issue is the one everyone else has already pointed out -- even though Google says there will be a firewall between Motorola and Android, you suspect it'll be semi-permeable, meaning you'll always be at a bit of a disadvantage.
So what do you do? A lot of people are predicting that Android could be in danger of losing licensees. For example, Horace Dediu at Asymco drew a parallel to the Symbian consortium, whose members were uncomfortable because Nokia held the largest share of the ownership (link). But when Symbian was launched, those companies were happy to sign up, despite the asymmetric ownership, because they thought Symbian was going to dominate the mobile OS market, and they were scared of Microsoft. They dropped out only after it was proven conclusively that only Nokia was capable of making a Symbian phone that sold well in Europe.
I can tell you from personal experience at Palm that licensees don't care about governance issues when they think your OS will help them sell a lot of units. It's only after growth slows down that they get twitchy. As long as Android continues to grow explosively, the licensees will be right there with it because they're terrified not to be.
Google probably knows the licensees can't go anywhere. In fact, it has a history of treating them very roughly in private (check out the nasty tone in the private memos between Google and Samsung exposed by the Skyhook lawsuit here). So in some ways the Motorola deal is just more of the same.
But there is still a risk to Google. Android licensees will probably be more willing to talk to Microsoft now, and they might do a few more Windows Phone products, if only to get leverage against Google. So Google has just thrown a lifeline to Windows Phone, which otherwise might have been headed for extinction if the first round of Nokia products failed.
This might also be an opportunity for other mobile platforms. If there were any...
Is there a third path? The Android licensees are probably pretty wary of both Google and Microsoft at this point, and may be wishing forlornly that there was a third alternative for mobile operating systems.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is. The handset vendors' embrace of "royalty-free" Android strangled the other Linux mobile platforms. TrollTech was bought by Nokia and then killed, while Access's evolution of Palm OS died for lack of customers.
There's speculation that HP might broadly license Web OS (link). But HP has its own hardware conflict of interest (a much stronger one than either Google or Microsoft). Far more importantly, keep in mind that mobile phone companies license an OS because they believe it's going to sell millions of units for them. If HP, with all of its resources and channel presence and strong brand, can't sell significant numbers of Web OS phones, why would HTC or Samsung believe they could do it?
[Edit: In the original version of this post, I failed to mention MeeGo. A couple of people have told me that was unfair, and I think they are right. Based on past experience, I have a lot of skepticism about OS consortia, especially ones involving Intel. But if MeeGo's ever going to get serious consideration from hardware companies, now is the time, and I should have acknowledged that.]
Hint to Android licensees: If you build up HTML 5 as a platform, you won't have to depend on anyone else's platform. But in the meantime, your realistic choices are Android and Microsoft.
Speaking of Microsoft...
What will Microsoft do now? Steve Ballmer faces a very interesting decision. Windows Phone just got a boost because it's now seen as a more vendor-neutral platform than Android. The door is probably open for Microsoft to build deeper relationships with Android licensees. If Microsoft sill believes in its licensing model, it will focus on walking through that door.
But as others have pointed out, Microsoft's position is now a bit lonely in some ways. The other major smartphone platforms (iOS and Android) now have captive hardware arms. Even RIM has both hardware and OS, although it's been a while since RIM was held up as a model for others to emulate. Will Microsoft feel exposed without its own hardware business? And if it does feel exposed, will it buy Nokia?
I'd be very surprised if it did. Buying Nokia would decisively end the Windows Mobile licensing business. You'd be betting Microsoft's mobile future even more completely on the ability of Nokia to execute in hardware. Besides, why buy the cow when you're already milking it?
I'd also like to think that Microsoft learned from the Zune debacle that it's not great at creating mobile hardware.
And then there's the fruit company...
What will Apple do? Apple's history since Steve returned is that it doesn't react to competitors; it forces competitors to react to it. Apple is brilliant at setting the terms of the competition so other companies are forced to compete on Apple's turf. Everyone else is focused on building licensed commodity hardware, so Apple creates integrated systems. Everyone else has optimized their supply chains to sell through third party retailers, so Apple creates its own stores. Everyone else stopped making touchscreen smartphones, so what does Apple make?
You get the picture. So I don't expect Apple to make any changes in response to the Motorola deal, but I would be shocked if Apple didn't have plans for changing the terms of the competition again now that Google is trying to build more integrated hardware and software. There are all sorts of game-changing moves Apple could make -- do a much larger push in web services, create an iPhone Nano (fewer features and lower price), even create its own search engine or social network (potentially valuable just to make Google crazy).
What's next?
To sum it all up, it's impossible to predict what will happen. Hopefully the new balance of power in patents will make the big lawsuits go away, although I doubt we'd see a resolution before the deal closes, and that could take many months. If Google bought Motorola for the patents, it'll either sell the company or let it gracefully rot, and we'll go back to business as usual.
On the other hand, if Google tries to integrate Motorola into its business, that's a noble mission, and I hope they'll succeed because the mobile industry needs more competition to Apple in systems design. I dearly hope Google will take the challenge seriously and recognize that it'll need to make fundamental changes to its culture. But those changes would be daunting even for a company experienced in mergers, and Google's never done a deal this big before. I think the most likely outcome of the Google-Motorola merger is some flavor of train wreck.
I hope I'm wrong.
Usually when a big tech merger happens you can see the logic behind it. Even if you don't agree with the logic, you understand why they made the deal. But in this case the more I think about it the more confused I get.
Did Google buy Motorola for the patents? If so, why isn't it spinning out the hardware business? Or did Google buy Motorola because it wants to be in the hardware business? If so, does it understand what a world of other problems that will create for Android and the rest of Google? Seriously, if Google tries to integrate Motorola into its business we could end up citing this as the deal that permanently broke Google.
Why roll the dice like that? Maybe I'm missing something, maybe Google has a screw loose, maybe both of the above. Or maybe I'm wrong to look for airtight logic. Companies sometimes make decisions on impulse, especially when they are under stress, and it's a sure thing that Google is under stress these days on IP issues.
So I have a lot more questions than answers. My questions are about Google's intent, its next steps, and how other companies will react...
Why did Google do it, really? The conventional answer is that Google wanted Motorola Mobility for its patents. That's what Google itself implied, and Marguerite Reardon over at CNET agreed (link). That might well be the explanation. Om Malik had a really intriguing take: Google bought Motorola as a defensive move to prevent Microsoft from getting the Motorola patents (link). And Richard Windsor of Nomura, who I respect deeply, said in an e-mail that this is all about the patents. He predicts that Google's new patent portfolio will create a balance of power enabling Google to quickly force a settlement to the patent lawsuits against its licensees.
But if you wanted only the patents, I think you'd buy Motorola, keep the patents and then spin out the hardware company to avoid antagonizing your licensees. Google says it intends to keep Motorola and run it.
Besides, as Andrew Sorkin pointed out in the New York Times, Google could have bought a different but also important mobile patent portfolio from InterDigital for about $10 billion less than Motorola (link). Maybe there's some magic patent at Motorola that Google feels is worth $10 billion more, or maybe there are some terms in Motorola's patent cross-license agreements that Google desperately needs. But again, if that's the case, why not keep the patents and resell the hardware business?
Unless Google is lying about keeping Motorola intact, I think Google intends to be in the mobile hardware business. Which raises the next question...
Does Google know how to run a hardware business? No, of course not. The processes, disciplines, and skills are utterly different. The same business practices that made Google good in software will be a liability in hardware. Google's engineers-first, research driven product management philosophy is effective in the development of web software, because you can run experiments and revise your web app every day in response to user feedback. But in hardware, you have to make feature decisions 18 months before you ship, and you have to live with those decisions for another 18 months while your product sells through. You can't afford to wait for science. Instead, you need dictatorial product managers who operate on artistry and intuition. All of those concepts (dictatorship, artistry, intuition) are anathema to Google's culture. Either Google's worldview will dominate and ruin Motorola, or worse yet the Motorola worldview will infect Google. Google with Motorola inside it is like a python that swallowed a minivan.
To put it another way, I think Google has about as much chance of successfully managing a device business as Nokia had of running an OS business.
But the real question is, does Google realize that it doesn't know how to make hardware? I doubt it. Speaking as someone who worked at PalmSource for its whole independent history, an OS company always believes that it could do a better job of making hardware than its licensees. It's incredibly frustrating to have a vision for what people should do with your software, and then see them screw it up over and over. The temptation is to build some hardware yourself, just to show those idiots how to do it right.
I think maybe Google just gave in to that temptation.
But if Google really wants to sell hardware, that raises questions for the other Android licensees...
How will Google really manage Motorola? Google says it's going to treat Motorola as an independent company without any special access to the Android team. But what's the point in that? Motorola hasn't exactly been dominating the mobile device world lately, so I find it very, very hard to believe that Google would buy it and leave it intact. Wouldn't you want to have Motorola create special products that take advantage of the latest Android features? Kind of like a flagship operation? Then when you announce a new initiative at Google IO, you can have some nice new Motorola hardware ready to ship with it on day one. Of course, the other Android licensees will be allowed to participate too. They're welcome to run flat out to keep up with every Google software initiative, disregarding expense and business risk, just like Google's Motorola subsidiary will.
Which makes you wonder...
How will the Android licensees react? I think we can safely disregard the positive quotes from the other Android licensees. What would you do if your company depended utterly on Android, and Google called you up twelve hours before the announcement and asked for a quote? Would you risk Google's anger by refusing to give a nice quote? Of course not.
But would you honestly be happy? Of course not. In the last year, you gained share at the expense of Motorola. Now instead of being a weak and failing vendor you can snack on, Motorola has infinite financial resources and cannot physically go broke. Sure, I am happy to compete with that.
The other issue is the one everyone else has already pointed out -- even though Google says there will be a firewall between Motorola and Android, you suspect it'll be semi-permeable, meaning you'll always be at a bit of a disadvantage.
So what do you do? A lot of people are predicting that Android could be in danger of losing licensees. For example, Horace Dediu at Asymco drew a parallel to the Symbian consortium, whose members were uncomfortable because Nokia held the largest share of the ownership (link). But when Symbian was launched, those companies were happy to sign up, despite the asymmetric ownership, because they thought Symbian was going to dominate the mobile OS market, and they were scared of Microsoft. They dropped out only after it was proven conclusively that only Nokia was capable of making a Symbian phone that sold well in Europe.
I can tell you from personal experience at Palm that licensees don't care about governance issues when they think your OS will help them sell a lot of units. It's only after growth slows down that they get twitchy. As long as Android continues to grow explosively, the licensees will be right there with it because they're terrified not to be.
Google probably knows the licensees can't go anywhere. In fact, it has a history of treating them very roughly in private (check out the nasty tone in the private memos between Google and Samsung exposed by the Skyhook lawsuit here). So in some ways the Motorola deal is just more of the same.
But there is still a risk to Google. Android licensees will probably be more willing to talk to Microsoft now, and they might do a few more Windows Phone products, if only to get leverage against Google. So Google has just thrown a lifeline to Windows Phone, which otherwise might have been headed for extinction if the first round of Nokia products failed.
This might also be an opportunity for other mobile platforms. If there were any...
Is there a third path? The Android licensees are probably pretty wary of both Google and Microsoft at this point, and may be wishing forlornly that there was a third alternative for mobile operating systems.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is. The handset vendors' embrace of "royalty-free" Android strangled the other Linux mobile platforms. TrollTech was bought by Nokia and then killed, while Access's evolution of Palm OS died for lack of customers.
There's speculation that HP might broadly license Web OS (link). But HP has its own hardware conflict of interest (a much stronger one than either Google or Microsoft). Far more importantly, keep in mind that mobile phone companies license an OS because they believe it's going to sell millions of units for them. If HP, with all of its resources and channel presence and strong brand, can't sell significant numbers of Web OS phones, why would HTC or Samsung believe they could do it?
[Edit: In the original version of this post, I failed to mention MeeGo. A couple of people have told me that was unfair, and I think they are right. Based on past experience, I have a lot of skepticism about OS consortia, especially ones involving Intel. But if MeeGo's ever going to get serious consideration from hardware companies, now is the time, and I should have acknowledged that.]
Hint to Android licensees: If you build up HTML 5 as a platform, you won't have to depend on anyone else's platform. But in the meantime, your realistic choices are Android and Microsoft.
Speaking of Microsoft...
What will Microsoft do now? Steve Ballmer faces a very interesting decision. Windows Phone just got a boost because it's now seen as a more vendor-neutral platform than Android. The door is probably open for Microsoft to build deeper relationships with Android licensees. If Microsoft sill believes in its licensing model, it will focus on walking through that door.
But as others have pointed out, Microsoft's position is now a bit lonely in some ways. The other major smartphone platforms (iOS and Android) now have captive hardware arms. Even RIM has both hardware and OS, although it's been a while since RIM was held up as a model for others to emulate. Will Microsoft feel exposed without its own hardware business? And if it does feel exposed, will it buy Nokia?
I'd be very surprised if it did. Buying Nokia would decisively end the Windows Mobile licensing business. You'd be betting Microsoft's mobile future even more completely on the ability of Nokia to execute in hardware. Besides, why buy the cow when you're already milking it?
I'd also like to think that Microsoft learned from the Zune debacle that it's not great at creating mobile hardware.
And then there's the fruit company...
What will Apple do? Apple's history since Steve returned is that it doesn't react to competitors; it forces competitors to react to it. Apple is brilliant at setting the terms of the competition so other companies are forced to compete on Apple's turf. Everyone else is focused on building licensed commodity hardware, so Apple creates integrated systems. Everyone else has optimized their supply chains to sell through third party retailers, so Apple creates its own stores. Everyone else stopped making touchscreen smartphones, so what does Apple make?
You get the picture. So I don't expect Apple to make any changes in response to the Motorola deal, but I would be shocked if Apple didn't have plans for changing the terms of the competition again now that Google is trying to build more integrated hardware and software. There are all sorts of game-changing moves Apple could make -- do a much larger push in web services, create an iPhone Nano (fewer features and lower price), even create its own search engine or social network (potentially valuable just to make Google crazy).
What's next?
To sum it all up, it's impossible to predict what will happen. Hopefully the new balance of power in patents will make the big lawsuits go away, although I doubt we'd see a resolution before the deal closes, and that could take many months. If Google bought Motorola for the patents, it'll either sell the company or let it gracefully rot, and we'll go back to business as usual.
On the other hand, if Google tries to integrate Motorola into its business, that's a noble mission, and I hope they'll succeed because the mobile industry needs more competition to Apple in systems design. I dearly hope Google will take the challenge seriously and recognize that it'll need to make fundamental changes to its culture. But those changes would be daunting even for a company experienced in mergers, and Google's never done a deal this big before. I think the most likely outcome of the Google-Motorola merger is some flavor of train wreck.
I hope I'm wrong.
Rabu, 10 Agustus 2011
The Case for Software Patents
It's become popular lately to call for the elimination of software patents. Tim Lee at Forbes sounded the call last month (link), and this week Mark Cuban joined the chorus (link):
I have a ton of respect for many of the people arguing against software patents, but I disagree strongly with their arguments. I think software patents play an important role in encouraging innovation, especially by small companies. The loss of them would make it harder for small companies to survive, and would discourage fundamental innovation in software.
The online debate about software patents is very contentious, and much of it focuses on philosophical issues like the nature of software and whether that's inherently patentable. The debate also often gets mixed with the contention that all software should be free. I'm not going to get into either topic; the arguments are arcane, sometimes quasi-religious in their fervor, and besides they've already been debated to death online.
What I want to focus on is the broader issue of the economic role of patents and how that applies to software. The patent system is designed to encourage innovation by giving a creator a temporary monopoly on the use of an invention. Does that mechanism work in software? What are the problems? And what's the best way to fix them?
When you take that perspective, I think it's clear that there are some genuine problems with software patents. (Actually, there are problems with patents in general, and software is just the most prominent example.) But I think there are better ways than a ban to solve those problems. To me, banning software patents to solve patent problems would be like banning automobiles to stop car theft. The cure is far worse than the disease.
The value of software patents
Let me start with a personal example. As I've mentioned before, I'm working on a startup. When we brief people on what we're doing, one of the first questions we get is, "how will you prevent [Google / Apple / Microsoft / insert hot web company here] from copying you?"
A big part of the answer is, "we've filed for a patent."
A patent isn't magic protection, of course. It might not be granted, and even if it's granted, patents are difficult to enforce against a really big company. But it reassures investors, and more importantly if a Facebook or Google wanted to copy our work, the patent makes it safer and quicker for them to buy our company rather than just ripping us off. So it helps to protect the value of our company.
Without the patent, I think it could be open season on us the moment we announce our product.
Advocates of eliminating software patents say there are other ways to protect software companies. The first is that software can be copyrighted. That's technically true, but the only thing copyright protects you from is word for word theft of your source code; it does not protect inventions. For most software innovations, copyright is no protection at all.
The second argument is that small companies should move quickly, so the big companies can't catch up with them. The idea is that if you move fast enough, you won't need patents. I think there's a consumer web app bias in that advice -- it works best for small apps that can be adopted quickly, or that have a strong social effect (so the user base is part of your competitive protection). It doesn't work well for software tools that have a slower adoption curve. The more complex and powerful the software, the slower the adoption cycle. This is especially true for enterprise tools. Without patents, those companies are exquisitely vulnerable to being ripped off soon after they launch, when they're just starting to gain word of mouth.
So for companies creating new categories of software, and especially for enterprise software tools, I think patents remain the best (and really only) protection from theft.
But what about the damage being caused by abuse of the patent system? If we keep software patents, are we then endorsing those abuses?
I don't think so. In the articles I've seen, there are two primary arguments for eliminating software patents: Trolls and patent warfare. They need to be discussed separately.
Discouraging patent trolls. The troll problem is something we all know about: patent licensing companies buy large collections of patents and then extort fees from companies that had no idea they were violating the patents. That's the core of the problem Mark Cuban was talking about above, and it is outrageous. These surprise lawsuits can have a devastating effect on smaller companies that can't afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves. Even if you're in the right, it can be so expensive to defend yourself that you just have to give up and pay the license fee. That definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, it is contrary to the intent of the patent system, and therefore it needs to be restrained.
But I think the answer in that case is not to eliminate software patents; it's to restrict the right of "non-practicing entities" (patent trolls) to sue for patent infringement. That would still have a financial effect on small companies -- in the case of my startup, it would make it harder for us to sell our patent if we wanted to. But patent law exists to protect the process of innovation, not to protect inventors for their own sake. If you can't put your patent to good use, you aren't contributing to the public good and you shouldn't get the same level of protection as a company that has built a business around a patent.
Patent warfare is a very different issue. Several large tech companies are using patent lawsuits to slow down competitors and pull revenue out of them. Eliminating software patents would not stop these wars; they're also based on hardware patents, antitrust law, and any other field of law that the companies can apply. It's like one of those cartoon fights in a kitchen where a character opens up a drawer and throws everything inside it.
Yeah, like that.
The underlying problem here isn't about patents; it's about the use (and abuse) of the legal system as a competitive tool. I've had more involvement in tech industry legal wars than I want to think about: I gave depositions in the Apple-Microsoft IP wars, and I testified in Washington in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. The overall experience left me plenty cynical about the legal system, but it also persuaded me that big tech companies are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves in court. They do not need our help. You should think of lawsuits as just another way that tech companies express love for one-another.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Android vendors being sued by Apple, but a lot of it is their own fault. HTC in particular has no one to blame but itself for its situation, in my opinion. HTC was one of the first companies in mobile computing, creating PDAs for Compaq and early smartphones for Orange and O2. I've got to believe that if HTC had been thinking clearly about patents, there are a lot of fundamental mobile inventions it could have patented. Then it would have had a big enough patent portfolio to force a cross-licensing deal with Apple.
The same thing goes for Google. When it decided to enter the mobile OS business, it should have expected that it would end up at war with Apple and Microsoft (heck, anyone could have predicted that). Google should have bought up a big mobile patent portfolio (like maybe Palm's) back when they were inexpensive.
Are we obligated to change the patent laws just because Google and HTC were careless? No. Is it in the public interest for us to intervene anyway? I doubt it. Here's how the mobile patent wars will play out: The big boys will do a whole bunch more legal maneuvering, they'll scream bloody murder, and in the end one of them will write a check to the other. Then they'll all go back to work.
My advice: If it bothers you, stop reading the news stories about it. Or sit back and enjoy it as theatre. It's hardly an important enough issue to justify stripping the patent protection from every small software company in the US.
A world without software patents
If you want to understand the importance of software patents, go back and talk to the first people who patented software. That's what I did. Two years ago, I corresponded with Martin Goetz, holder of the first software patent (link).
Goetz was a manager at Applied Data Research, one of the first independent app companies in the 1960s. ADR made applications for mainframes, and IBM copied and gave away a version of ADR's Autoflow application (the first commercially marketed third party software app). ADR might have been wiped out, but it had patented Autoflow, and it was able to successfully sue IBM. That lawsuit, plus a related one by the US government, laid the foundations of the independent software industry by forcing IBM to stop giving away free apps for its mainframes.
The lawsuits involved a lot of legal issues, including antitrust, so you can't say that software patents alone led to the birth of the software industry. But I think it's clear that patents helped codify the value of software independent from hardware. If that value hadn't been recognized, the antitrust suit would have been meaningless because there would have been no damages.
So antitrust and patent law have worked together to help protect software innovation. Antitrust helped to restrain big companies from giving away free competitors to an app (although that protection has eroded lately), while patents restrained big companies from copying apps directly. It's like a ladder. If you pull out either leg, I worry that it won't stand.
In his online memoirs (link), Goetz makes the case that application innovation was slow and unresponsive to users in the decade before software patents, and accelerated dramatically in the decade after. I agree. That is exactly the sort of innovation that patent law was meant to encourage, and so I view software patents as a success.
Without software patents, I think it would be far too easy to go back to the bad old days when the big computing companies walked all over small software companies, the software industry consisted of only consultants and custom developers, and software innovation moved at a much slower pace.
_____
More reading: Software entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham wrote a nuanced and detailed take on the subject here. Some of his conclusions differ a bit from mine, but the essay is well worth reading.
"Because of software and process patents any company could be sued for almost anything. It is impossible to know what the next patent to be issued will be and whether or not your company will be at complete risk. It is impossible to go through the entire catalog of patents issued over the last 10, 15, 20 years and determine which will be used to initiate a suit against your company."
I have a ton of respect for many of the people arguing against software patents, but I disagree strongly with their arguments. I think software patents play an important role in encouraging innovation, especially by small companies. The loss of them would make it harder for small companies to survive, and would discourage fundamental innovation in software.
The online debate about software patents is very contentious, and much of it focuses on philosophical issues like the nature of software and whether that's inherently patentable. The debate also often gets mixed with the contention that all software should be free. I'm not going to get into either topic; the arguments are arcane, sometimes quasi-religious in their fervor, and besides they've already been debated to death online.
What I want to focus on is the broader issue of the economic role of patents and how that applies to software. The patent system is designed to encourage innovation by giving a creator a temporary monopoly on the use of an invention. Does that mechanism work in software? What are the problems? And what's the best way to fix them?
When you take that perspective, I think it's clear that there are some genuine problems with software patents. (Actually, there are problems with patents in general, and software is just the most prominent example.) But I think there are better ways than a ban to solve those problems. To me, banning software patents to solve patent problems would be like banning automobiles to stop car theft. The cure is far worse than the disease.
The value of software patents
Let me start with a personal example. As I've mentioned before, I'm working on a startup. When we brief people on what we're doing, one of the first questions we get is, "how will you prevent [Google / Apple / Microsoft / insert hot web company here] from copying you?"
A big part of the answer is, "we've filed for a patent."
A patent isn't magic protection, of course. It might not be granted, and even if it's granted, patents are difficult to enforce against a really big company. But it reassures investors, and more importantly if a Facebook or Google wanted to copy our work, the patent makes it safer and quicker for them to buy our company rather than just ripping us off. So it helps to protect the value of our company.
Without the patent, I think it could be open season on us the moment we announce our product.
Advocates of eliminating software patents say there are other ways to protect software companies. The first is that software can be copyrighted. That's technically true, but the only thing copyright protects you from is word for word theft of your source code; it does not protect inventions. For most software innovations, copyright is no protection at all.
The second argument is that small companies should move quickly, so the big companies can't catch up with them. The idea is that if you move fast enough, you won't need patents. I think there's a consumer web app bias in that advice -- it works best for small apps that can be adopted quickly, or that have a strong social effect (so the user base is part of your competitive protection). It doesn't work well for software tools that have a slower adoption curve. The more complex and powerful the software, the slower the adoption cycle. This is especially true for enterprise tools. Without patents, those companies are exquisitely vulnerable to being ripped off soon after they launch, when they're just starting to gain word of mouth.
So for companies creating new categories of software, and especially for enterprise software tools, I think patents remain the best (and really only) protection from theft.
But what about the damage being caused by abuse of the patent system? If we keep software patents, are we then endorsing those abuses?
I don't think so. In the articles I've seen, there are two primary arguments for eliminating software patents: Trolls and patent warfare. They need to be discussed separately.
Discouraging patent trolls. The troll problem is something we all know about: patent licensing companies buy large collections of patents and then extort fees from companies that had no idea they were violating the patents. That's the core of the problem Mark Cuban was talking about above, and it is outrageous. These surprise lawsuits can have a devastating effect on smaller companies that can't afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves. Even if you're in the right, it can be so expensive to defend yourself that you just have to give up and pay the license fee. That definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, it is contrary to the intent of the patent system, and therefore it needs to be restrained.
But I think the answer in that case is not to eliminate software patents; it's to restrict the right of "non-practicing entities" (patent trolls) to sue for patent infringement. That would still have a financial effect on small companies -- in the case of my startup, it would make it harder for us to sell our patent if we wanted to. But patent law exists to protect the process of innovation, not to protect inventors for their own sake. If you can't put your patent to good use, you aren't contributing to the public good and you shouldn't get the same level of protection as a company that has built a business around a patent.
Patent warfare is a very different issue. Several large tech companies are using patent lawsuits to slow down competitors and pull revenue out of them. Eliminating software patents would not stop these wars; they're also based on hardware patents, antitrust law, and any other field of law that the companies can apply. It's like one of those cartoon fights in a kitchen where a character opens up a drawer and throws everything inside it.
Yeah, like that.
The underlying problem here isn't about patents; it's about the use (and abuse) of the legal system as a competitive tool. I've had more involvement in tech industry legal wars than I want to think about: I gave depositions in the Apple-Microsoft IP wars, and I testified in Washington in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. The overall experience left me plenty cynical about the legal system, but it also persuaded me that big tech companies are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves in court. They do not need our help. You should think of lawsuits as just another way that tech companies express love for one-another.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Android vendors being sued by Apple, but a lot of it is their own fault. HTC in particular has no one to blame but itself for its situation, in my opinion. HTC was one of the first companies in mobile computing, creating PDAs for Compaq and early smartphones for Orange and O2. I've got to believe that if HTC had been thinking clearly about patents, there are a lot of fundamental mobile inventions it could have patented. Then it would have had a big enough patent portfolio to force a cross-licensing deal with Apple.
The same thing goes for Google. When it decided to enter the mobile OS business, it should have expected that it would end up at war with Apple and Microsoft (heck, anyone could have predicted that). Google should have bought up a big mobile patent portfolio (like maybe Palm's) back when they were inexpensive.
Are we obligated to change the patent laws just because Google and HTC were careless? No. Is it in the public interest for us to intervene anyway? I doubt it. Here's how the mobile patent wars will play out: The big boys will do a whole bunch more legal maneuvering, they'll scream bloody murder, and in the end one of them will write a check to the other. Then they'll all go back to work.
My advice: If it bothers you, stop reading the news stories about it. Or sit back and enjoy it as theatre. It's hardly an important enough issue to justify stripping the patent protection from every small software company in the US.
A world without software patents
If you want to understand the importance of software patents, go back and talk to the first people who patented software. That's what I did. Two years ago, I corresponded with Martin Goetz, holder of the first software patent (link).
Goetz was a manager at Applied Data Research, one of the first independent app companies in the 1960s. ADR made applications for mainframes, and IBM copied and gave away a version of ADR's Autoflow application (the first commercially marketed third party software app). ADR might have been wiped out, but it had patented Autoflow, and it was able to successfully sue IBM. That lawsuit, plus a related one by the US government, laid the foundations of the independent software industry by forcing IBM to stop giving away free apps for its mainframes.
The lawsuits involved a lot of legal issues, including antitrust, so you can't say that software patents alone led to the birth of the software industry. But I think it's clear that patents helped codify the value of software independent from hardware. If that value hadn't been recognized, the antitrust suit would have been meaningless because there would have been no damages.
So antitrust and patent law have worked together to help protect software innovation. Antitrust helped to restrain big companies from giving away free competitors to an app (although that protection has eroded lately), while patents restrained big companies from copying apps directly. It's like a ladder. If you pull out either leg, I worry that it won't stand.
In his online memoirs (link), Goetz makes the case that application innovation was slow and unresponsive to users in the decade before software patents, and accelerated dramatically in the decade after. I agree. That is exactly the sort of innovation that patent law was meant to encourage, and so I view software patents as a success.
Without software patents, I think it would be far too easy to go back to the bad old days when the big computing companies walked all over small software companies, the software industry consisted of only consultants and custom developers, and software innovation moved at a much slower pace.
_____
More reading: Software entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham wrote a nuanced and detailed take on the subject here. Some of his conclusions differ a bit from mine, but the essay is well worth reading.
Rabu, 03 Agustus 2011
Quick Takes: Logitech's Misstep, Nokia's New Names and Fonts
Short thoughts on recent tech news...
Logitech strays from the path
I haven't written much about Logitech here, but they've long been one of my favorite tech companies because they have a history of breaking all the rules of Silicon Valley:
--The Valley says you can't make money in commodity hardware, but Logitech makes good profits from the most commoditized bits of the computer industry.
--The Valley says you especially can't make money in low-end consumer hardware, but that's where Logitech thrives.
--The Valley says that if you want to make money in hardware, you need to be based in a low-cost part of the world like China. But Logitech is Swiss-owned and headquartered in Silicon Valley, two of the highest-cost places to do business in the world.
Logitech succeeded by picking well-established markets like keyboards and webcams where its skills in design, user experience, and added-value features let it charge a bit more than the commodity players. As the folks at Logitech will tell you, "we're chefs, not farmers." In other words, we don't create new markets, we come to existing markets and do an especially nice job of rearranging the ingredients.
But Logitech's financial performance hasn't been great for the last two years, and the company's most recent quarter was a loss. The disappointing earnings report stood out to me because Logitech put much of the blame on its Google TV product, which apparently had apocalyptic negative sales last quarter (more returns from retailers than shipments) (link). Apparently somebody at Google convinced Logitech to do some farming, and the company is paying dearly for it.
I'm usually an advocate of companies taking risks and pioneering new markets, and I think that's something Logitech has the skills to do if it's careful. But in this case, it chose a terrible target: the uncertainties of a new market, but with a user experience constrained by Google's software. So Logitech took on the risks of farming without the ability to fully apply its own strengths. Logitech was more or less a passenger on Google's boat.
The lesson, obviously: Be very careful when you step away from your proven strategy. Oh, and never trust Google to develop a new market for you.
Good luck naming your phones, Nokia (again)
Nokia announced that it has changed the naming system for its phones, going back from letters to numbers (link). The last time Nokia changed its naming, five years ago, I wrote a piece saying why technology naming schemes eventually break down after about six years. This morning I thought about updating the post, but actually I think it's still valid as-is, except that naming schemes now apparently last only five years. Here's a link to the article, so you can judge the rest of it for yourself (link).
Font games
Speaking of Nokia, there are few things more embarrassing for a company than announcing to the world that you have chosen a new font for your corporate communication. Making font and logo changes is often interpreted as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic -- "we can't fix our fundamental problems but by God at least we'll fix the font!" That's unfair, of course; Apple changed its logo in the middle of its rebirth, ditching the six colors, and it turned out just fine. So I didn't blame Nokia when it announced on March 25 that it was moving to a new font (link).
But I'm surprised that more than four months later, Nokia's old font is still splattered all over its web pages. You can find the new one in some spots, but a lot of website navigation, headlines, and even new product announcements are in the old font. Here are some examples (click on the images for a larger view):
Nokia Conversations (official company blog), August 2, 2011. Note the use of the old font to announce the company's newest product. That means the use of the old font isn't limited to legacy bits of the website that haven't been converted yet.
Nokia Press website, August 2, 2011. New and old logos together on the same page. That's got to annoy the corporate branding folks.
Nokia UK home page, August 2, 2011. New font used for the headline, but the old font is used elsewhere.
Nokia US home page, August 2, 2011. Old font almost everywhere. Well, you kind of expect Nokia's US site to be behind the times.
Nokia Finland home page, August 2, 2011. The greatest use of the new font -- except when they mention Ovi. Freudian slip?
I feel childish and petty for picking on Nokia about a little detail like this. Fonts stand out to me because I used to run a font company, but I know most people don't even notice them. Nokia has much bigger problems to solve.
However, four months is more than enough time to switch over to a new font, especially in newly-created headlines. Since the criticisms about Nokia's smartphones often center on inattention to detail and slow execution, you'd think they would want to execute crisply wherever they can. In its March announcement, Nokia wrote that the new font is important because "the letters flow into each other somewhat, creating the impression of forward movement." Since the old font lingers, does that create the impression that Nokia's not moving forward?
Logitech strays from the path
I haven't written much about Logitech here, but they've long been one of my favorite tech companies because they have a history of breaking all the rules of Silicon Valley:
--The Valley says you can't make money in commodity hardware, but Logitech makes good profits from the most commoditized bits of the computer industry.
--The Valley says you especially can't make money in low-end consumer hardware, but that's where Logitech thrives.
--The Valley says that if you want to make money in hardware, you need to be based in a low-cost part of the world like China. But Logitech is Swiss-owned and headquartered in Silicon Valley, two of the highest-cost places to do business in the world.
Logitech succeeded by picking well-established markets like keyboards and webcams where its skills in design, user experience, and added-value features let it charge a bit more than the commodity players. As the folks at Logitech will tell you, "we're chefs, not farmers." In other words, we don't create new markets, we come to existing markets and do an especially nice job of rearranging the ingredients.
But Logitech's financial performance hasn't been great for the last two years, and the company's most recent quarter was a loss. The disappointing earnings report stood out to me because Logitech put much of the blame on its Google TV product, which apparently had apocalyptic negative sales last quarter (more returns from retailers than shipments) (link). Apparently somebody at Google convinced Logitech to do some farming, and the company is paying dearly for it.
I'm usually an advocate of companies taking risks and pioneering new markets, and I think that's something Logitech has the skills to do if it's careful. But in this case, it chose a terrible target: the uncertainties of a new market, but with a user experience constrained by Google's software. So Logitech took on the risks of farming without the ability to fully apply its own strengths. Logitech was more or less a passenger on Google's boat.
The lesson, obviously: Be very careful when you step away from your proven strategy. Oh, and never trust Google to develop a new market for you.
Good luck naming your phones, Nokia (again)
Nokia announced that it has changed the naming system for its phones, going back from letters to numbers (link). The last time Nokia changed its naming, five years ago, I wrote a piece saying why technology naming schemes eventually break down after about six years. This morning I thought about updating the post, but actually I think it's still valid as-is, except that naming schemes now apparently last only five years. Here's a link to the article, so you can judge the rest of it for yourself (link).
Font games
Speaking of Nokia, there are few things more embarrassing for a company than announcing to the world that you have chosen a new font for your corporate communication. Making font and logo changes is often interpreted as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic -- "we can't fix our fundamental problems but by God at least we'll fix the font!" That's unfair, of course; Apple changed its logo in the middle of its rebirth, ditching the six colors, and it turned out just fine. So I didn't blame Nokia when it announced on March 25 that it was moving to a new font (link).
But I'm surprised that more than four months later, Nokia's old font is still splattered all over its web pages. You can find the new one in some spots, but a lot of website navigation, headlines, and even new product announcements are in the old font. Here are some examples (click on the images for a larger view):
I feel childish and petty for picking on Nokia about a little detail like this. Fonts stand out to me because I used to run a font company, but I know most people don't even notice them. Nokia has much bigger problems to solve.
However, four months is more than enough time to switch over to a new font, especially in newly-created headlines. Since the criticisms about Nokia's smartphones often center on inattention to detail and slow execution, you'd think they would want to execute crisply wherever they can. In its March announcement, Nokia wrote that the new font is important because "the letters flow into each other somewhat, creating the impression of forward movement." Since the old font lingers, does that create the impression that Nokia's not moving forward?
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