Nokia thinks WinMoPho's are great. Imagine my surprise...

During a break on a big project I’m working on I was catching up on some reading.

I ran across this piece on the Boy Genius Report - Nokia’s Jo Harlow: Windows Phone is ‘easier, faster and a hell of a lot more fun’

Imagine my surprise!

Nokia’s product boss says something like this about the product that Nokia has bet the farm on.

I’m sure if Jo worked for a company that sold bovine manure there would be some way to tell us that their bovine manure is a hell of a lot more fun that the oppositions bovine manure.

Given Nokia haven’t sold a single unit yet and Microsoft’s share of the mobile market is so small that it would represent a massive reduction of Nokia’s already shrinking market share you’d have to hope everything Jo Harlow is saying is true otherwise the bovine manure manufacturing sector may start looking good.

Random Thoughts II

The PC is Dead! IBM says so.

I’ve been wondering, now that the tablet has become a mainstay in computing what’s the future for the PC as we know it?

IBM’s CTO says the PC has seen it day.

I wonder of this is really the case though? Will people really want to walk away from the box on the desk?

I’m not so sure this will come to pass as easily as some people might think.


Will Samsung buy webOS from HP.

This is an interesting rumour. Samsung are obviously not happy about the creation of Googorola. Add the lawsuits that are coming at them from Apple that have effectively halted sales of the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Tab in different parts of the world - this may not be so far fetched.

Samsung said to be considering webOS acquisition from HP

Its not out of the realms of possibility.


A Torch, a torch, my kingdom for a torch!

Lately I’ve noticed a bit of a furore (tizz in a teacup really) about the fact that the latest version of the WinMoPho operating system, Mango, doesn’t have a native API to turn on the LED to use as a torch.

No real LED torch apps for Windows Phone 7 Mango

I dunno, it strikes me as a bit absurd that with everything else out there that may be interesting to talk about, the lack of an ability to turn your phone into a torch rates, nay demands, column inches.

White Light: Brings a LED Flashlight to non-HTC users running Mango

I never thought not being able to turn a complex piece of communications technology into an axe simple tool would cause such consternation.


Nokia makes Minority Report a sort of Reality

NFC technology scares me. Its not the tech so much, rather its the lack of consideration of the practical implications.

In the rush to be the first to bring NFC to market to grab “mindshare” security invariably gets overlooked.

Nokia: "From now on, all our products will have an NFC chip inside"

There’s lots of evidence that RFID chips can be skimmed from a distance. NFC chips are really just low power RFID chips that Nokia are so considerately putting into all of their doodads.

Makes feel feel all nice and safe knowing that Nokia, the company that so spectacularly gave away the mobile phone market due to blind arrogance has decided that they’re on top of all of this NFC/RFID security stuff.

Samsung isn't thrilled by Googorola

Seems like Samsung was being ‘polite’ about the Googorola hook up after all

Read the article here.

Looks like Samsung’s going to open the wallet too.

If this keeps up and companies start spending cash like there’s no tomorrow then maybe they’ll also jump start the economy.

Google buys Motorola Mobile

Lawyers all over the United States woke up happy this morning on hearing the news that Google has splashed out cash, to the tune of $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobile and its portfolio of around 25,000 patents.

Googorola? Motorogle?

I like Googorola personally. It sounds like something that would go on a rampage and flatten Tokyo for our matinee entertainment.

I’m guessing that Google plans to unleash their mutant matinee monster in Redmond and Cupertino hoping for a Godzilla meets Tokyo like result and with such a large patent portfolio you’ve got to start wondering how long it’ll be before their army of lawyers will end up rolling into action like London teens looking for a night of looting and pillaging.

The really interesting story here is the effect on LG, Samsung and, especially, HTC.

HTC is now between the devil and the deep blue sea. On one side their wildly successful Android based business and on the other their not so much Windows MoPho based products.

The good news for them (!?), now, is that they’re going to be competing directly against their key suppliers. Microsoft and Nokia, who have recently announced that they’re going to drop prices to buy marketshare in the US for the good of Finland, Redmond and the WinMoPho way. Googorola who have now got a hardware/software end to end experience and they control Android too. Unless it now somehow forks.

Publicly HTC, Samsung and LG aren’t going to be too vocal about this. They won’t want to piss off the Gnomes of Mountain View, but you’ve got to wonder about the long term effects on their businesses.

If the Gnomes really wanted to go for a scorched earth policy they should have bought Nokia, I mean with their share price it wouldn’t cost a whole lot, and then move the whole company to Android and leave Ballmer standing with his WinMoPho in his hand.

As for Samsung, between their problems with Apple and now facing down Googorola, Tokyo’s not all that far from Seoul after all, they’ve got some real problems especially since they’re only just starting to make serious inroads into the market place with the Galaxy S II.

LG look like they’re going to be the big losers in this one because they don’t really have major market penetration outside Korea.

I’ll talk a bit more about this over the next couple of weeks because this is a landscape mover.

I wonder if any IP Law Firms have floated? That’s where I’d be putting my money.

Wintel Market Share Slips

I noticed an interesting piece today about market share.

It seems that Apple shipped 20+ million smartphones in Q2 2011 an increase of 12 million over Q2 2010. This eclipsed Nokia who shipped 16+ million smartphones in Q2 2011. Interestingly, if you look at Nokia’s results they’ve only been able to move this many by shaving their margins to the bone. If they were making their regular margins it looks like this number would have plummeted.

To make matters worse Samsung shipped in excess of 19 million smartphones for the same period.

To put some context on this Nokia has lost over half of its smartphone market share in 12 months.

The other interesting fact that came out of the article was the following assertion by industry analysts Canalys:

“the share held by “Wintel”, which it defined as “any PC running any version of Windows in conjunction with any x86 architecture”, fell below 82 percent, its lowest point in more than 20 years“.

I know that falling below 82% doesn’t sound that spectacular, but, its an earth shattering statistic. Not that long ago the Wintel market share was well above 90%.

Something’s happening and its big.

Think about it. if we look back 20 years people were running Windows 3.0. The first really stable version of Windows released. Prior to that people were running DOS. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 were released in 1992 and the Windows juggernaut really took off once Windows 95 hit the market in mid-1995.

So these guys are saying that Windows market share has slipped to where it was when Windows 3 first saw the light of day. If this is actually the case then I'd be sweating it if I owned stock in Microsoft. Imagine if Coles or Woolworths suddenly saw their market share slip back to where it was 20 years ago the Daily Garbagewrapper would be screaming it was the end of the world, or maybe even worse than that!

Back in those days a Windows release was greeted with as much fanfare as a new iPhone. People would line up at midnight to be the first to buy a copy of Windows 95 from Harvey Norman.

I’m not going to have a discussion here about the pros and cons of lining up to be the first to buy anything at midnight let alone an Operating System but lets just think about this for a second, Windows market share has fallen below 82% since it became a stable operating system that could be used in the everyday corporate world.

This fact is even more surprising when you consider that each new PC shipped from everyone except Apple includes a copy of Windows.

Are people giving up on desktops for tablets, and I mean of any flavour?

Is everyone buying a Mac?

Are people going in Linux in droves?

I don’t have any answers, but, anecdotally I can say this; as I go from company to company, client to client the questions that I keep getting asked is ”How do we use Linux servers in our business and we also want to use Macs, iPads and iPhones as well as our Windows machines?“

One client asked me ”How come Apple can sell a new operating system for under $50 and Microsoft want to charge me over $400?“

Is this a taste of things to come or have the analysts screwed up their numbers?