Posts Tagged ‘slates’
Orange mobile app scheme, Slates with Intel and the threat of rising content costs
December 10th, 2010
Ronan Shields has posted a strong opinion article on New Media Age around the challenges and opportunities offered by the new Orange Partner Connect Scheme, which point the way for mobile operators to insert themselves into, and own, the mobile app buyer chain.
The scheme is fuelled by Orange embedding its app shop on the Android devices it sells to subscribers. Brands can also harness the Orange reach into 32 markets and it will enable brands to charge for downloads through the phone bill.
The Orange billing USP is clearly a winner. Who wants to key in their card details on mobile?
Does it also offer network operators a wider opportunity of providing mobile payment systems for consumer shopping through a single monthly bill? The logistics would be a challenge but nothing is impossible.
That also points to wider questions about mobile consumer and usability/confidence.
Brands will need to engage much more closely next year with their customers to convince them that mobile shopping is secure. The just-announced OFT initiative reflects that, as does recent mobile research by client Tamar.
Meanwhile, at the developer layer, the Wholesale Applications Community is gearing up to provide members with new specifications that will enable them to write applications that can be deployed across multiple platforms and operators.
WAC believes that this will help to reach a potential global market of 3.5 billion customers. It expects to release version 2 of its spec early next year while continuing its aim to sign up all the industry’s major device vendors as members.
At the same time, this week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that manufacturers such as Dell, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba have agreed to use Intel chips in 35 Tablet models, including a few already on the market. Caveat here – as in my previous post, the term Tablet can refer to a wide range of devices, not simply the Slates we know as iPad and Samsung Galaxy.
Paul called Intel’s pursuit of the smartphone market “a marathon, not a sprint,” and said that the company’s second-generation Medfield smartphone chip is now being sampled by customers and should ship next year.
He said: “You will see smartphones from premier branded vendors in the second half of 2011 with Intel silicon inside them …The consumer [tablet] products will roll out over the first half of next year,”
That’s very good news for the expanding Smartphone market and the nascent Slate sector.
On the other side of the mobile universe, European mobile network operators have demanded this week that companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook should pay to help them keep up with growing demand for data on their networks.
Bloomberg News reported that France Telecom-Orange, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone Group would like to charge content providers fees linked to usage to help cover the cost of upgrading wireless broadband networks.
France Telecom-Orange Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard discussed the issue at the “Le Web” conference in Paris on Wednesday. Stephane said the current mismatch between revenue and investment for Internet infrastructure providers is not sustainable.
All network operators are facing the same challenge – falling revenues and rising costs.
IDC estimates that the number of mobile data connections in Western Europe is expected to grow 15 per cent a year to 270 million in 2014. By then revenue is expected to fall 1 per cent. Meanwhile, carriers are expected to increase capital spending by 28 per cent to $3.7 billion, according to Canalys.
Does this signal the end of the “free ride” for content providers, and if so, how will the increased delivery costs distort the content market over the next 2-3 years? The network operators are also losing patience with the flat-fee model and are discussing ways to implement the more flexible, “pay-per-use” model.
It seems that the people who own the mobile highways are about to place a range of toll booths along the network, which means that the commodity of information is about to become much more expensive in 2011.
I’ll leave you with this rather splendid, and relevant track from Elastica. Have a good weekend, all.
Nokia N8 global launch, Smartphone futures and rise of the Slates
December 9th, 2010
Tomorrow (December 10th 2010), Nokia is launching a global campaign to promote its N8 smartphone. The dominant mobile manufacturer is fighting back strongly against the Apple and Android assaults on a market that it once considered its own.
Nokia’s promotion is most welcome. It’s about time that the market had some strong input from the company that defined mobile for more than two decades, along with its competitor cousin, Ericsson. These two companies led the way in mobile innovation and the delivery of handsets that were the first choice for professionals globally.
Both worked hard to develop the one thing that, I think, helped to redefine the mobile market – the ability to write on screen. I still miss my Sony Ericsson P910 for that reason. I could write an email, an instant message, a blog post on the P910 with an ease that I do not have with my Blackberry. And I’m a veteran keyboarder.
The N8 does not have stylus text input. It’s out of fashion.
Nokia is not alone. Find me a Smartphone or Slate that gives users this facility and I need will wake you up rudely. None exist - and that’s a commercial crime.
If I was a Smartphone/Slate producer, I would be refining the onscreen stylus text input function. Why? Well, I’ve used keyboards all my life but I know many people who have not touched a keyboard. The keyboard is a design disaster – we use a form that was designed to slow down the application of keystrokes. It makes no logical or aesthetic sense. Worse still, it’s an obstacle to communication.
So, if you are a neophyte and are being told that Slates (or Smartphones) make everything easy – you will come up against the big challenge of trying to talk to family, friends and contacts through the most idiotic communications tool ever developed – the QWERTY keyboard. Hours of fun.
Instead, imagine if you picked up your Slate (or Smartphone) and just started writing on the screen. Even with the need for corrections, it would be intuitive, tactile and rewarding. I will wager a £100 bet with anyone who can show that a beginner can learn to type faster than they can write and communicate on screen using a stylus.
But there’s a problem with onscreen stylus communication. It is often called Steve Jobs.
Steve, bruised, battered and bewildered by the failure of the Newton, has decided that styluses suck, big-time. Never mind that the Newton introduced more complexity by requiring users to learn a new alphabet.
This is what Steve has to say about stylus screen input:
“Oh, a stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus. No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away, and you lose ‘em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with - born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers.” [source]
I’ve just measured my fingers against my old Sony Ericsson P910 stylus – and the difference is frightening. The point of the stylus (the business end) is roughly 500 times smaller than the point of my digits. Steve, there is no way that my fingers are going to do the talking.
More than that, the stylus replicates the way we have learned to write. Only a numpty would consider the finger as the primary communications device of the future.
And so, while we await the roll out of an amazing array of Smartphones and Slate in 2011, here’s my Christmas wish-list for my ideal Slate and Smartphone:
- Stylus text input
- Voice input
- Social media apps onboard
- Open apps market
- Camera to match the N8
- Touchscreen to match the iPad
- Easy purchase process
- Film studio network
- Image studio network
- Smaller, more precise social network app
As for the N8, whether it will gatecrash the iPhone and Android party is moot. TechRadar will give you a full briefing with its fearsome and quite brilliant review but there is a significant point in its narrative when it says: “Nokia is all about connecting people”. That is, surely, the point of mobile - and Nokia has the experience, knowledge and expertise to deliver that.
At Liberate Media mobile HQ, we have to work with many handsets because the delivery and display of web, mobile web – and mobile apps – varies so greatly. Our clients need to know the details of how their messages are being seen.
The N8 looks beautiful – and matches iPhone on design. That’s to be expected. Apart from a few design Fails, Nokia has consistently delivered desirable, usable devices.
If Nokia, or Ericsson, revisits the stylus-input function with the Slates that they are planning, and deliver the joy of onscreen writing, I will be the first to buy and evangelise. This is much needed and, I think, would be a definitive USP for players in the Slate and Smartphone markets. But let me know what you think.
And if you believe that Nokia is a crusty old has-been, just enjoy this video, showing what you can do with the N8. Pure class:
iPad, Samsung Galaxy and why we should call them Slates
December 3rd, 2010
This is a brief rant, because it’s Friday evening and the weekend beckons. I spent last year (2009) talking about the incoming anywhere, anytime devices being championed by HP. We called them Slates then. What a brilliant brand concept name! Come the iPad and suddenly we were talking about Tablets. How did that happen?
Just search for Tablet online. Hours of fun guaranteed. I think this is what marketers call ‘creative confusion’. The name Tablet now covers a multitude of devices and pills, as well as a highly-respected religious publication. I’m certainly confused, creatively.
Is it too late to start describing the wonderful Apple iPad (version 2 coming to an online store near you very soon) and the equally spellbinding Samsung Galaxy as Slates? It would only take some hard SEO graft and social media engagement to win a new online market space for these types of devices.
And then we could really begin to understand the unique qualities of a portable Slate. We’ve got the Blackberry Playbook (that’s a Slate, not a Tablet), Motorola Droid (well, not really Slate), the HP Slate (ah - with added Tablet), the Fujitsu (Slate Tablet PC, apparently) and, I can guarantee, many more coming in 2011.
So, from now, I’m going to call them Slates – because that is what they are. They’re not Tablets. Tablets are funky laptop PCs with detachable bits. They’re pills that can make you feel better.
I admit that I dropped into the Tablet trap this year but I crawled slowly back out of that dark pit – and it feels good.
Instant poll: Slate or Tablet?
Have a great weekend.
Phil McKinney and the digital future in 3D
December 10th, 2009
I’ve just been listening again to Phil McKinney’s views (Guardian Tech Weekly podcast) on the future of everything digital – just to remind myself of how much we’ve got to look forward to in the next decade.
Phil is the global CTO of Hewlett Packard as well as the presenter of the influential Killer Innovation podcast and has the knack of turning the technical mountains into the flatlands of speed and opportunity.
In the Guardian podcast, he races through the future of print media, the need for slate computers that fill the need for 4.5–10-inch screens, what’s in the way of cloud computing (the network infrastructure) and data mobility transforming third-world lives.
But for me, the most interesting focus was on the future of 3D. Phil believes that 3D is how we will be accessing a lot of rich information and the reasons, he says, are simple - 2D means that you are throwing information away.
Anyone viewing 3D makes better decisions and for business that means greater productivity because the information presented is more in tune with how people see things in the real world. The challenge is to present 3D without the funny glasses.
I think the expressions of 3D over the next few years will include the full range, from virtual reality through to 3D interactive virtual worlds, accessible anytime, anywhere. Right now, there is an explosion of 3D environments, tools and services that push the boundaries of knowledge delivery.
As Phil concludes: “3D will fundamentally change how we see, view and experience content.”
How we will find relevant information is another challenge - for the search engines.