Have RIM and Synaptics Seized The Agenda From Apple?
On the surface, RIM’s new touchscreen phone the Blackberry Storm is essentially a copy of Apple’s iPhone. If that’s all it was, RIM would be destined to play second fiddle to Apple in the high-end phone world. However, early indications are that RIM (and it’s hardware partner Synaptics) may actually have out-innovated Apple in a crucial area: the touchscreen. In doing so, RIM has potentially seized the phone agenda from Apple’s hands, while Apple was looking the other way.
Until the Storm, Apple had been doing a great job of making the iPhone the most desirable phone on the planet. Apple’s focus has been on enabling new software features for their phone, both by itself, and also through its successful app store. And yet, despite its success, there is a major flaw with iPhone: typing on the touchscreen is something that many users have not got on well with. Early iPhone adopters have been switching back to their Blackberries for typing long e-mails. The truth is, then, the iPhone virtual keyboard doesn’t work well. Apple’s solution to making typing work at all effectively on iPhone has been to use software magic (e.g. automatic spell-checking) to correct user input errors. iPhone fans have been hoping that Apple would provide further software improvements to the keyboard with time, to make typing on iPhone more usable.
With the Storm, however, RIM clearly decided that clever software wasn’t going to be enough to make typing on a touchscreen work well. RIM’s co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, has been widely quoted as saying, “I can’t type on a piece of glass.” Rather, the company has used a hardware solution in an attempt to make typing fast and error-free on a touchscreen. RIM calls the technology ClickThrough, and it works as follows. Selecting a feature on the screen (e.g. a key on a virtual keyboard) works similarly to the iPhone via a capacitive touchscreen. However, after selecting the feature, the user must then press the screen in exactly the same way they would press a hardware button. The whole screen is actually one giant button, so the user gets the feedback of a physical click when they press.
Despite sounding a little peculiar (this isn’t an obvious direction to take), early indications are that the system might work well. If RIM has managed to make a touchscreen phone that’s as easy to type on as traditional Blackberry devices, the company is going to have a huge hit on its hands. And, if it works, it’s unlikely Apple will be able to compete with this simply via software updates to the iPhone, which will make it tricky for Apple to catch up.
Asam Bashir wrote:
You either have an iPhone and get it, or you don’t. Keyboard use is a very small fraction of the total use of my iPhone, and if I am ever in the need to type something long, I’m still going to want a proper keyboard over any phone keyboard. I’m not a single use/single function phone user, I didn’t buy my iPhone for the keyboard, I bought it because it’s a whole new device and platform that has filled in the gaps in my digitial lifestyle that where missing before. It’s not letting me do old things better, it’s making me use it in new ways for new uses…
There are almost 5000 + official applications in iTunes App Store now, Blackberry can try and copy but they’re going to fail miserably.
While Mike Lazaridis can’t type on a glass screen, millions of iPhone users are doing that very thing on a daily basis.
Obviously, someone has to be optimistic about Crackberry and get exited about typing vast emails on a phone for some kind of sado-masochistic pleasure, so I’ll leave you to it whilst I enjoy my iPhone….
Posted 13 Oct 2008 at 4:08 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Well, it’s not all about *your* iPhone
For many people, text entry on iPhone is not that great an experience compared to a Blackberry; and text entry for e-mail is number one use for their phones.
I guess, maybe, you don’t realise just how much e-mail is done on the move these days. Not just quick “yes/no” messages. People send substantial, important e-mails these days while they’re out and about, and not carrying a laptop: in meetings, in the back of a cab, in a bars, in airports, in coffee shops, in restaurants. Why? The way that e-mail is used inside many organisations is that near-instant replies are expected/required.
Having text entry work well is a key feature for those people. Obviously, it’s a still an open question whether the Storm works well for text entry. Ultimately, it may not (early reports may be a little optimistic)… but if it does work well, they will find many millions of customers very easily.
As for the Storm App Store… I agree, it won’t be as big a success as the iPhone App Store, simply because, as I understand it, each carrier gets to pick and choose which apps it makes available. While some people are critical (rightly, IMHO) of Apple for making bad decisions about inclusion of particular apps (Apple’s strategy encourages crapware, more than it encourages great software, which is a shame given the platform is so great), this is as nothing when compared to the cluelessness of mobile network operators. Also, historically, RIM’s implementation of Java ME has been a little idiosyncratic/behind the times/buggy… whether they’ve improved things for the Storm, I haven’t looked into. It’s perfectly possible to write great apps for Blackberries, though. Just that they’re not that portable, compared to other Java phone apps (although obviously, they’re more portable than iPhone apps).
Posted 13 Oct 2008 at 5:14 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
I do understand the importance of email on the move and that’s not what I meant. I said if I ever want to do a long email then I’m always going to try and do it on my laptop if that’s around. For all other emails then the keyboard on the iPhone works fine and is more then adequate. When I do want an instant reply or expect one, I use SMS or an IM service.
PS. RIM are doomed, it’s a matter of time, they don’t have what it takes to take on Apple, and by trying to market against Apple they’re doomed. They should just try and compete against the others because when companies try and copy Apple and fail, they do themselves double the damage.
You can smell their fear, boy they are major doomed….
Apple looking the other way, I don’t think so, just another product cycle ticking along according to plan, and new species to be released tomorrow……
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 1:55 am ¶
Neurotic Nomad wrote:
Blackberry will ALWAYS be king of e-mail, it’s just that e-mail isn’t as important to high school students and hollywood starlets in 2008 as it was in 2005 or 2006.
SMS, MMS, IM, and Twitter are the REAL Blackberry killers.
The iPhone is just at the right place at the right time as e-mail returns to a mostly-work-related activity.
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 2:22 am ¶
Neurotic Nomad wrote:
RIM has saturated the “corporate sales” market and needs growth in other markets in order to survive.
Is it’s top-notch e-mail support enough of a “killer-app” for these other markets? I not, what else do they have up their sleeve?
At this point, RIM’s activities are transparent in that they are just trying to keep corporate customers from defecting rather than appealing to different markets.
Total “protectionist” behavior.
Drop the keyboard on one model, give it a totally different UI, and de-emphasize e-mail and it will sell well. (Of course, that move won’t help sell the $40000 back-end servers that BB units “need” to operate, so you know how the board would vote on THAT product’s future.)
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 2:32 am ¶
simon wrote:
@Asam - I hear what you’re saying that typing on iPhone works well for you. I also hear many people saying it doesn’t work well for them. I know people who have either stopped using their iPhone altogether (”it’s so over-hyped, and the keyboard is rubbish”) or use a Blackberry instead; and who carry an iPhone and a Blackberry at the same time (”I use the Blackberry for e-mail, ‘cos the iPhone keyboard is a pain to use.”).
Of course, plenty of people really love their iPhones… I’m simply saying that text entry is a weak point for iPhone, and one that almost certainly can’t be addressed by software alone (which is where Apple has been focussed for iPhone innovation).
@NeuroticNomad
I can see you’re not one to let the facts get in the way of your opinion
You can SMS, MMS, IM and Twitter with a Blackberry… which is more than can be said of iPhone (no MMS). Also you can record video on a Blackberry, which is something else people like to do, but can’t with iPhone.
RIM hasn’t saturated the corporate market by any means: the company is growing both its top-line and its bottom line fast. For example, revenues grew by 88% in the last quarter. RIM currently ships around 25 million handsets a year: that’s around 15 million upgrades, and about ten million new customers.
As for “needing” to sell the expensive back-end server software licenses, not true: device sales are 80% of RIM’s revenues.
Finally, you think iPhone is in the right place at the right time because it appeals to high-school students? You think high-school students are the main purchasers of iPhones? Not true, I don’t think.
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 8:57 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Anyway, Apple could kill RIM by releasing an external Bluetooth or docking keyboard at anytime.
MMS? What’s the point of MMS when you’ve got email on 3G network? MMS was invented for the days of slow Internet connections in days when email clients on phones didn’t have support for attachments. Apple like’s to give access for progressive technologies, not regressive ones.
Also, you’re wrong anyway, iPhone on O2 has MMS capability. If someone sends you an MMS, you get a link sent in SMS and clicking on it takes you to the stored MMS through Safari.
It’s all about location based services, and don’t see mention of GPS in CrackBerry…
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 4:16 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Asam said,
“What’s the point of MMS when you’ve got email on 3G network?”
Of course, if everyone with a mobile phone had good mobile push e-mail, there would be no need for either SMS or MMS. However, they don’t. The point is - it’s not about you *receiving* messages, it’s about being able to *send* messages (esp photos) to almost anyone’s mobile phone. A real MMS (sending) capability is a much-requested feature from iPhone owners. Consumers love mobile messasing - trillions of SMS and billions of MMS messages being sent each year.
Asam said,
It’s all about location based services, and don’t see mention of GPS in CrackBerry
Lots of Blackberries, including the Storm, have GPS built-in. And there’s a pretty comprehensive set of APIs for developing apps for Blackberries that use GPS.
Posted 14 Oct 2008 at 6:15 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
The bottom line is the competition is heating up not just with new RIM phones, but with Android and Nokia phones.
iPhone is still probably the best all round consumer device. As I said at the launch of iPhone 2.0 - it was just enough to keep the lead and that others would catch up between iPhone 2.0 and 3.0
To move clearly away again Apple need to take the hardware and user interface ( software and physical ) to the next level in v3. That’s a tough job but something they are clearly aiming for with the purchase of PA Semi - I suspect they will be able to deliver top end smart phone functionality in a smaller package, with longer battery life, than any of it’s competitors because:
1. Full control of hardware and software gives you opportunities to make more power savings - through clever idling etc.
2. Custom low power chip versions and system integration will help power and size.
3. They will continue to innovate on the interface - better interaction without adding extra hardware that takes space and sucks power.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 9:23 am ¶
simon wrote:
Surely, though Apple, Nokia, and RIM have full control of the hardware and software they use in their systems. With Android, Google has taken the Microsoft approach - completely separating hardware and software innovation.
So, in principle, Nokia and RIM can get the same benefits that Apple can. As far as I’ve seen, though, (with the caveat that I haven’t look in the last week or so), there is *nothing* coming out of Nokia that even begins to look like competition for iPhone in the next year or so.
Some people have said that the first HTC-designed Android phone looks great in the flesh. However, it looks terrible in photos and videos - poor aesthetically, cheap-looking mechanism for the slide-out keyboard - just really clunky. I’ll reserve judgment, but I’ve never seen an HTC phone in the flesh that looks and feels anything close to the quality of an Apple product.
So, the Blackberry Storm looks like the main potential competition to me right now. I think the high-end phone market is still Apple’s to lose. The question is whether they’ve taken their eye off the ball in terms of some areas of hardware innovation i.e. assumed that their current hardware touch interface is as good as it needs to be. If it turns out that RIM has come up with something really special with their new clickable touch interface - how long will it take Apple to respond?
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 11:18 am ¶
Mr X wrote:
Ok your right - I thought Nokia and RIM didn’t have the depth in experience of custom hardware that a computer company like Apple or Sun would have - but looking at their jobs pages Nokia seems to do custom ASIC design and RIM builds designs it’s own hardware.
I don’t think there is any doubt that Apple are looking to push forward the user interface - look at the patents around touch feedback etc and the work on more complex gesture recognition - the billion dollar(s) question is whether they have anything that’s ready for prime time.
It’s interesting you say that the smart phone market is Apple’s to lose - isn’t RIM the leader by sales (depending on how you define a smart phone ) - was before the iPhone launch and still is - in a way it’s RIM’s to lose. But I’m not even sure that is true - Apple have created a new category in a way - just as RIM did.
RIM own - email on a phone.
Apple own - fun on a phone - high quality music, video & games and the simple pleasure of the touch screen, the physical beauty and the elegant user interface touches (sic).
I know people who have both and when asked how they compare they say they don’t - not because one is better than the other, simply that they are different things.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 3:29 pm ¶
simon wrote:
The reason I say it’s Apple’s to lose is that they have: the best device currently on the market; huge mind share among consumers; huge momentum in sales; the best mechanism to deploy new software innovations (new app software, OS updates etc) to customers. So, they are incredibly well-positioned.
In terms of current market smart phone position in the US, I think RIM is number one, and Apple number two. World-wide, I suspect Nokia is number one in smart-phones.
I think the issue you mention of people saying Blackberry and iPhone can’t be compared just shows the power of brand. Clearly, the Blackberry brand is “e-mail”, where as the iPhone brand is something else, perhaps “phone + Internet + iPod”. That’s what people *think*, but the reality is that Blackberries and iPhones have huge feature/capability overlap… and that overlap is much greater than ever before with the Storm.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 3:59 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
Well I agree it’s partly brand, but not only - remember this person *has* both. ie it’s not the market perception it’s the perception from day to day use - part of that is of course driven by the Blackberry being hooked up to work email, but part is also the email focus of the blackberry - the home screen can show your different email streams directly - for something that’s in and out of the pocket or belt clip all the time little things make a huge difference.
And until now the iPhone has stood alone in terms of being a fun rather than frustrating device - all those small touches adding up to something that doesn’t show up on a technical spec or function list type comparison.
It’s like cars - some put a smile on your face and others don’t and sometimes you can’t put your finger on why - but even if you have that fun car you might also need a practical one.
BTW I think a company that makes it easy to have multiple devices with a single contract, number, contacts list etc will be on to a winner.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 9:24 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Results in from Nokia Q3 loosing massive market share,
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/16/nokia.q3.2008.results/
Apple needs to improve the iPhone Mail.app a little I think, it should have support for rules/filters so those created on the desktop version can be transferred to the iPhone. It’s a bit of a problem for heavy email users.
Now that world-wide shipping of iPhone phase is over, and the OS and store are pretty healthy and stable, I think Apple has a small window to work on a candy bar form-factor for iPhone Nano which it could now release prior to starting work for Atom based iPhone v3.
A candy-bar iPhone Nano at MacWorld Expo 2009 would start doing some serious damage to the rest of Nokia market share at this stage. It’s also the easiest for Apple to actually do. Only very minor modifications would be needed to add a phone app to the current iPod Nano OS, games for this platform are already available.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 5:14 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
When Apple enters a market and changes it’s name, it’s not there to just make one product, take a look at Apple’s whole range, it makes Pro devices and consumer ones, so there will be a consumer phone, just a matter of time..
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 5:18 pm ¶
simon wrote:
@Asam, yes Nokia have really skrewed up their strategy, believing they can continue charge premium prices for what are actually inferior products. BIG mistake.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 7:00 pm ¶
Martin Hill wrote:
I’m not sure I understand why having the entire screen click in when you press an onscreen key is useful for typing? If it is just to confirm that you hit a key when typing, why is an audible click (as on the iPhone not just as useful?
How does that help a user hit the right key onscreen? Isn’t it the 3D contours of physical buttons that allows your fingers to feel the different keys that people like about physical buttons?
I haven’t tried a Storm yet, so am just wondering. For the record I type a great deal on my iPhone all the time (quite lengthy pieces as well) and have no problems. In fact I find it far more preferable (and faster to type on) than my older HTC-made O2 XDA IIs smartphone which has a full slide-out keyboard with plastic keys.
ps. I think there is plenty of room in the market for both Apple and RIM - the more competition the better.
-Mart
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 7:09 am ¶
simon wrote:
Martin, I haven’t tried a Storm yet either. But I can tell you about the design principles, and why the idea is a good one.
It’s not so much about *confirming* you hit a key - it’s about preventing the user making typing mistakes by accidentally hitting the wrong key. The problem they’re trying to solve is: with a regular capacitive touchscreen, people often “click” buttons without meaning to. Lots of people find typing on the iPhone keyboard very difficult for this reason - forever making mistakes. In fact, it’s so difficult and error-prone that Apple has to add spell-checking software in to try to auto-correct all the mistakes people make. Clearly, though, lots of people - like you - don’t find it difficult to type on iPhone (although I wonder if you rely on the software auto-suggest/correct a lot, rather than always hit the key you intend to). So, RIM is trying to find a solution for all the people that can’t type fast and accurately on a piece of glass.
To understand the core of the solution, think about really big hardware buttons e.g. the on/off switch on a TV, say. People rarely push those kind of buttons when they don’t mean to.
So, with the Storm, the process of typing a letter is as follows:
- Move your finger over the key you want to type. When a key is selected, a radial “glow” shows on the screen, spreading out over the keyboard, centered on the selected key. That way, because your can see where the glow is radiating from, you can see what key you’ve selected, even though the key itself is covered by your finger.
- Knowing that the correct key is selected, you physically press the whole screen (i.e. a really big button) to type a character.
In principle, this big “single whole screen button” could be better in some ways than the many separate physical buttons on a physical phone keypad (like current Blackberries). With the current physical keypads, you can accidentally press the wrong button because the keys are so small and so close together.
That’ the theory! It’s most certainly a good idea, and it’s easy to see that it would have got the green light as an R&D project. Whether RIM has got the implementation detail sorted out, and whether it ends up working well for people in practice, only time will tell.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 9:39 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
That’s the theory, and it works well in some situations, such as the glass trackpads on new MacBook and MacBook Pro. On a phone however, I can imagine problems because of the way you hold a phone and manipulate it with one hand.
I really wish Apple would add Bluetooth keyboard support but for other reasons. I’m using my iPhone a lot in the car and have it mounted to windscreen and plugged into an iTrip, but it’s a bit of a pain typing whilst mounted and in this particular situation a little Bluetooth keyboard would be perfect. Also, if Apple enables the Bluetooth support needed, third party case makers could incorporate a razor thin aluminium keyboard into a leather flip case.
There are some other ideas floating around, one for example where the iPhone fits into a netbook style case:
http://olo-computer.com/
Don’t think above idea would work, but a simple leather flip case with built in removable keyboard would.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 10:23 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
Well Apple have surpassed RIM in sales this last quarter… impressive.
However a few notes of interest - clearly a very big launch quarter for Apple - lots of new countries plus 3G in existing countries and pent up demand due to lack of phones pre 3G launch. It’s the next quarter that’s a big launch quarter for RIM. Apple probably will carry the advantage to next quarter as they are more consumer orientated and hence will experience more of a seasonal boost? dunno.
It doesn’t appear to be at the expense of RIM - RIM sales didn’t drop while Apple’s grew massively - as discussed above it’s not clear how these devices actually compete - Apple may compete more with itself than with RIM at the moment ( ie every iPhone sale is a potentially a lost iPod sale ).
Finally interesting quote from Jobs:
“I think that the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing. And most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business.”
“So we’re extremely comfortable with our product strategy going forward, and we approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different than most of our competitors.”
Obviously this doesn’t say whether they originally intended it to be a software platform for Apple alone, or for third party developers - but I think it’s clear that they view the iPhone/iTouch as a platform, rather than a collection of consumed devices - from the outset Jobs was clear that part of the value they brought with the iPhone was making it less of a throw away device by offering substantial software upgrades over time.
It makes sense - the time consuming bit is the software - high quality, usable software takes time to develop, time to debug and time to refine - perhaps one of the reasons for less the than stellar software on some of the competitors is the ever changing target of form factor and hardware - a slower moving hardware platform allows you to carry forward more of your software investment.
That doesn’t mean they won’t innovate in the hardware - but I think it means things like screen size, chip set etc are going to change as little as they can manage.
The very public & direct attacks on ARM in the iPhone, by Intel are very interesting. Are Intel trying to bounce Apple - are they frustrated by Apple’s lack of interest, or are they pre-announcing a change ( seems unlikely ) or are they trying to say to competitors that Intel is the way to beat them? I don’t know.
Posted 23 Oct 2008 at 9:49 am ¶
simon wrote:
Apple’s results with iPhone for the last quarter are really impressive. They have executed really well. As you say, it was a big launch quarter, and there was much pent up demand around the world. Only time will tell if, over the next couple of quarters, iPhone sales continue to grow at the current (or a faster) rate.
For sure, with the Storm, RIM is trying to compete with iPhone. No-one can look at the Blackberry Storm seriously say, “Nah, the Storm is nothing to do with iPhone”.
Now, as you point out - in the last quarter, iPhone sales didn’t come at the expensive of Blackberry sales. What both Apple *and* RIM will be hoping is that this is because, at long (long!) last, the market for high-end smart phone is growing rapidly; and will be further stimulated by touch-based phones.
The point is, the overall market for mobile phones is at least an order of magnitude greater than the current market for smart phones. So, there’s huge potential for growth in smart phones.
Re: the iPhone hardware staying relatively still, and delivering innovations through software. This is exactly Apple’s strategy, and is the point I was trying get at in the blog. The question is whether their strategy leaves a window for competitors to accelerate past Apple by using hardware innovation. At some point, Apple is going to have to release a phone with another form factor - getting the timing right for that will be interesting.
Jobs makes a valid point about lots of different form factors not being nice from a developer point of view; and it increases product development costs from a business perspective. However, this is simply the reality of the mobile software business (one size doesn’t fit all customers for handheld devices - as Apple well knows with their range of iPods); and the truth is that *other* handset makers have made real efforts to standardize some aspects their software platforms through use of Java ME, and a variety of apis standardised through JSRs.
The point is, it’s a hell of a lot easier to develop across Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, RIM etc etc., the way *those* guys have done things, compared to if they’d all played Apple’s game and each insisted on being *totally* different from everyone else.
I take your point about about rapidly changing hardware being a cause of low-quality software. However, ultimately, I don’t think it’s the reason for crappy OS software on many mobiles. I think the true reason for that is that there has been no competition in this area, partly because network operators don’t care at all about their customers and didn’t demand better quality from handset makers.
I expect the presence of Apple and iPhone to force competitors to up their game in terms of software quality. Why? Because customers *hate* buggy, unreliable phones. They really do. So if Nokia, SE and the others don’t increase their quality, they’ll go out of business as customers migrate to more reliable handsets that can be easily patched and upgraded.
As for Intel, it seems it was just a couple of rogue execs stepping out of line. They’ve been told to shut up by top Intel people; so it seems that Intel senior folks didn’t find those remarks helpful, largely because the remarks weren’t even *slightly* credible.
Posted 24 Oct 2008 at 3:31 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
Of course they are trying to compete - the tacked on media features attest to that - however I don’t think it competes in a significant way yet - people who use the iPhone as an iPod won’t be impressed - not withstanding the ‘fairplay’ lock-in issue - I think, in general, it will still only interest the core market - enterprise users, rather than consumer users - just like RIM has the edge for business email - obviously both are gunning for each other - but neither are there yet.
Another form factor would also most certainly be another device - there is a fundamental limitation of a touch device - if your going for touch interface then you need a certain size and style - no coincidence that the Storm form factor is almost identical - the user interface is probably the hardest bit to change in terms of software. You’d have to seriously reduce the features if you changed the form factor - you’d lose the web browsing if you made it much smaller, typing on screen - or even a keyboard would be painful if smaller - ie it’s not just the size you need for the chips that makes smart phones the size they are - it’s the surface area you need to interact with it for the smart functions.
The question is - how much of the market is happy with a device the size of the current iPhone ( if it were cheap enough )? I think that increases as the functionality goes up - ie I think Apple are more likely to target netbook users than basic phone users - ie the challenge is to get netbook functionality into a iPhone form factor, not get iPhone functionality into a tiny handset ( which I think would be extremely difficult ) - not that the former is easy either from a UI point of view
That’s not to say they couldn’t make a different device, but I think it would be quite different, less capable and so less easy for them to differentiate from the competition - so not valuable to Apple - unless as I mentioned before they can effectively make the device a surrogate for the main phone ( using software ) - shared number, contacts etc - that’s something I don’t believe has been done well.
You could imagine some sort of “thunderbird system” TM - the SIM card is in the smaller docked device that you can pop out if you really want to just the phone functionality in the smallest possible form factor.
Posted 27 Oct 2008 at 7:37 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Re: enterprise users vs consumers
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget these are the same people. Increasingly, people with “business phones” like the Blackberry want to use them for personal “consumer” activities. Similarly, people with “consumer phones” like iPhone want to use them for “business” activities. So the distinction is blurring; clearly, though, as you say, Apple has a big lead in terms of handling music and video playback. There’s no technical reason the Storm couldn’t do audio and video playback as well as iPhone; it’s about ability/willingness to execute in this area.
Re: form factors
I don’t agree you have to reduce features if you make a device smaller (I think history agrees with me). The question is always what the technology available allows you to do. Sure, you need a certain size surface to *use* a device - but that surface could stretch, fold, roll-up etc. to be much more compact in your pocket. Or maybe there would be a big market for a small device with a smaller screen than iPhone, but incorporating a pico projector, where you just use the phone screen like a laptop trackpad to interact with a projected screen. The idea being that such a device could truly offer desktop-class web-browsing, video playback etc (the iPhone screen size and resolution is still a compromise).
Not sure about the “Thunderbird 2″ idea
Sounds a bit gimmicky! As I think we’ve discussed before on here though… what I’d personally like is the ability to easily take a totally different devices with me, but keep the same number etc. But I’d like the freedom to choose those devices to be optimal for a particular need etc.
Posted 27 Oct 2008 at 8:42 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
The reason we have SIM cards is so that they can be used in different phones, so Thunderbird idea a bit backwards if I can be honest.
Not sure about the ’shared’ contacts thing either. Once your numbers are in Address Book.app on your desktop, and kept up to date with MobileMe from all your devices, then you can transfer and sync back to any other phone you have using iSync.app. It’s been very easy to manage an Address Book and sync across multiple phones ever since Bluetooth and dot mac have been available.
Pull out SIM, slap into other phone, hit Sync, done in less then a minute….
Posted 29 Oct 2008 at 4:28 am ¶
simon wrote:
Most phones are not really designed to be taking out and putting in different SIM cards every few minutes. They’re typically only engineered for occasional SIM card changes, and most will start to break/look tatty if you change the SIM card every day etc.
The right answer to the need to enable customers to have multiple phones having the same number is for mobile network operators to provide a service that allows this.
On the phone you want to use, you should just be able to pick it up, and, using a simple app say “Make this my live phone for these numbers” (a user might want several phones, and several numbers). The process should take less than five seconds for the user, and then all calls, SMS messages etc. would get routed to the live phone.
It would be very easy and inexpensive for them to provide this service. The technology needed for this kind of call routing is already in widespread use in other applications, for example follow-me call services. The only innovation required is to have easy-to-use software control of the call routing from the mobile phone itself, and to integrate dynamic network sync’ing of contacts between phones etc.
I think this is a service a lot of people would pay for. Having said that, you could even argue it should be a no charge option. After all, with the availability of VOIP, all this stuff becomes essentially free to implement. For example, the service I describe is pretty much what systems like Skype already offer. It just needs the mobile network operators to get their acts together, and understand what amazing telephony-related services they *could* offer if they actually gave a few seconds thought to trying to make their customer’s lives easier. For example, why did it take Apple to come up with the idea of visual voice mail? Companies that specialize in telephony should be coming up these kind of innovations all the time; and given how clueless most of them are, it would be a way for a smart operator to differentiate itself from the competition.
Posted 29 Oct 2008 at 10:15 am ¶