iPhone, Android, Win7 Phone and What is Missing in Product Management

I’ve now read well over 100 articles, reviews and prognostications on the future of the smartphone landscape. The latest -- this one, called “7 Ways Windows Phone 7 Is Cooler Than The iPhone” posted on Business Insider, -- all seem to have completely missed the point of the Smartphone battle. The most ironic about this latest version is the ongoing comments. Those particularly focused on how technological leaders were overcome by followers clearly -- in their minds at least -- that Microsoft will ultimately be the victor in the Smartphone war. This is much in the same way as Android has too many platform options and will overwhelm the iphone. In someone’s world there is only one automobile to choose from as well but that’s an argument for a different day. There are multiple examples provided including:

Lotus 1-2-3.....Excel
WordPerfect....Word
Netscape Navigator...IE
Sony Playstation....XBOX and Wii
Netware....Windows NT
(Thanks to poster “Juara Moran”)

But we should also remember that you can add Apple ... Microsoft ... back to Apple on that list too.

The point isn’t that Android or Win7 smartphones don’t represent an evolutionary step in the technological landscape in much the same way as Windows 7 OS represents a technological leap over XP or Vista. That much is clearly true. Android has some benefits over iOS-based smartphones. Win7 has some benefits over Android, iOS and RIM devices. iOS certainly has some benefits over the pack as well. The point is that Apple created the smartphone market tornado that these vendors are finding themselves in today. Apple created the iPhone five years ago. Then they introduced the iPad which is in the process of creating a brand new market around tablets. In much the same way as they created the mobile music market ten years ago. (I know that the iPod was hardly the first MP3 player and the iPad was hardly the first tablet but there is no arguing that both have created a huge market that simply wasn’t there in earlier iterations of these devices.)

The fact of the matter is that Google, RIM, Microsoft are creating cool options for smartphone customers to consider purchasing today. Three or four years after Apple created the market in the fist place. The assumption in calling these products iPhone-killers is that Apple isn’t innovating on the iPhone. The assumption is that Apple is sitting on its laurels. The more likely fact is that they are innovating on products that will create new markets and new opportunities in 2012. The wonderfully frustrating thing about the critiques is that they all presume to compete against a shipping iPhone as opposed to presuming that by the time a competitor ships the product will be exactly the same. The most glaring competitive comparison is RIMs recently announced Playbook which is supposed to compete with the iPad. Even without providing a personal competitive comparison of features it’s interesting to note that the Playbook will ship sometime in late Q1 next year. RIM was so nice to compare something I cannot purchase with something that has been shipping for many months now. My safe money is on the fact that Apple will upgrade the software at least once -- already announced for November -- and will introduce new hardware (my guess is late January) before RIM ships version one of the Playbook.

What does this have to do with Product Management? This entire discussion is a brief summary of what is wrong with technological Product Management practice: You can’t shoot for what your customer wants today. You have to define what your customer will want tomorrow. It appears that Apple is the only company having any success in defining what a customer doesn’t know they want but what they will demand in the future. There have been numerous books published on this fatal PM flaw however I’m currently drawing a blank on some titles. If you know of any please add a comment below.

New Place To Start

I promise to begin a more consistent update pattern on my blog -- I now have iPad posting software up and running.

Since it has been a while I should probably take a moment and update readerson what I've been up to in the last few months:

Following over fourteen months with desktop virtualization start up Pano Logic I took some time off and performed market research and marketing consulting for a diverse set of early stage start ups through 2009. In September of last year I joined specialty virtaulzation start up ScaleMP (www.ScaleMP.com). They provide a very unique hypervisor / VMM for server aggregation (as opposed to the "traditional hypervisor use case for partitioning). Having formally launched the Company, developed an ecommerce channel and developed a sales and demand gen infrastructure for them I decided to go back into the "big" company and, as of September 1, I joined the desktop marketing team at desktop virtualization leader Citrix Systems.

I am planning to reengage with my active blogging in the next few weeks focused on both the consumer or client end of the network as well as anything virtualization in the backend.

Stay tuned for weekly or biweekly updates. If you like what you read please connect with me on LinkedIn...

Testing Blog Updates from my iPad

I promise to begin a more consistent update pattern on my blog -- particularly if my new iPad software successfully updates!

Stay tuned...

More on the Android store fiasco

Sure enough, Google is still making ad revenue on the Android store! But come on, 144 Spam Ringtone Apps?

Check out this ongoing coverage:

http://nanocr.eu/2010/06/27/googles-mismanagement-of-the-android-market/

That's one for Steve Jobs' closed App store!

CNet is reporting today (http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20008518-245.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0) that a report from SMobile Security (http://threatcenter.smobilesystems.com/) has studied the growing Android app marketplace and discovered that 20% of the 48,000 Android applications allow access to end user sensitive or private data. The only end user authentication is the approval for download dialog box. What kind of sensitive information is accessible? CNet reports:

“And some of the apps were found to have the ability to do things like make calls and send text messages without requiring interaction from the mobile user. For instance, 5 percent of the apps can place calls to any number and 2 percent can allow an app to send unknown SMS messages to premium numbers that incur expensive charges...”

As Steve Jobs clearly has pointed out numerous times, he has pursued the iTunes App Store policy clearly to better control privacy access and quality. Many have argued against Apple’s sometimes onerous control over application access. However one can argue that Apple’s control increases quality and security of those applications they do make available. Would Apple allow an application that automatically makes calls and sends text messages from an iPhone? Doubtful. Frankly I struggle to understand the value of an application that does this in the first place. The closest thing Apple’s app environment has to this is the location aware apps that send your GPS coordinates back to the vendor. In every case, however you must approve every instance of an app sending your location; every time it sends it.

Quality control is a very important element of Apple’s solutions. Android is built around openness. Security increasingly seems to be a casualty of too much openness...

Two new entries for the day

I haven’t blogged in a while and, over time, I’m sure I’ll expand on the reasons why. For those who know me it’s certainly not because I didn’t have something to say. Suffice it to say that I’ve been busy gaining some very valuable experience. This is very much in line with a saying that is constantly rattling around in my head but that I’ve been unable to identify the source:

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

I wanted a successful exit. I wanted to not have to worry about getting paid any more. I wanted to know that I can comfortably retire whenever I so desired.

Well, at least so far, I didn’t get that. Instead I got to shepherd a company through a branding and positioning exercise for ultimate sale. We were successful -- and I’ve gained tremendous experience (because I certainly haven’t gotten a big paycheck).

So, the net net is that I’ve been busy. Now, not really that much. Don’t feel badly for me though. I am happy and increasingly well rested... now, on with the blog.

Take your open source and put it, well you know where

I love open source software and people who contribute to the open source community. I also love closed software. I love that people can find ways to make money from unique software solutions. Plain and simply I love software development in any form. What I hate when the two paradigms collide. I hate it when someone makes a case for open source over or versus closed / proprietary. (I really rarely hear the opposite argument.)

There are so many things to love about technology and collaboration (and making money from unique and differentiated product solutions and well thought out software development models) that it kills me when it boils down to an “us versus them” discussion.

One of the most pervasive arguements against the iPad this weekend was an extension of exactly this argument. Apple is closed and proprietary. Yes, it is. You don’t like it then don’t buy it. However it often comes back to closed source / proprietary is bad... and bad for everyone. I just don’t get it.

I wasn’t going to write this blog but I ran into the best response to the Open Source bigots on this topic:

http://daringfawnyball.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/expertise/

“...open source has nothing to teach literature or indeed any artistic creation, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more developers check-in access to the version-control system set up for your novel!”
“This was the weekend those of us with high standards lost their remaining residue of patience for ideologues who hyperbolize about open systems without actually creating something people want to use.”

In just four clear and concise paragraphs this is the best rebuttal to the arrogance that comes from the Open Source holier than thou attitude against closed and proprietary.

Giving Marc Benioff his due

As much as I don’t like salesforce.com as a CRM solution -- and I seem to be almost alone in that -- Marc Benioff is a visionary. Instead of going on and on I’ll let him take the floor. The future of the Cloud and why the iPad is a major enabler:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/29/ipad-cloud-2/

This patent thing

I was preparing to write an entire blog entry on the ongoing software patent problem and how traditional methods of protecting IP via the United States Patent and Trademark process is broken and doesn’t work. This issue has come to the forefront in the tech industry with the recent patent violation claims made by Apple against HTC / Android. Then, as I was browsing my favorite blogs I ran into an excellent piece by ever present Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball. He, of the symbiotic mindset regarding the terrible Adobe flash, is so concise and to-the-point that it makes no sense for me to even try. I ask that you check out Jon’s argument here:

http://daringfireball.net/2010/03/this_apple_htc_patent_thing

The only thing I would add, or rather emphasize, is his last point regarding the Nokia lawsuits against Apple. I absolutely do believe that the HTC filing is a legal initiative to enforce Apple’s patents more broadly to help in its battle against Nokia. The most interesting takeaway is that if you look at Jon’s graphic link of Apple’s cell phone comparisons:



The one phone / phone company listed that has done the least since is Nokia. Nokia is an aging dinosaur of a company that hasn’t had a hit smartphone in almost a decade. With all due respect to those that will be ever so quick to point out that Nokia is the largest cell phone company in the world, I’d also point out that no one is competing with them in the candybar, flip phone business anymore. We’re talking about the part of the market that requires innovation and engineering resources... not the one that simply needs miniaturization. Yes, they are the largest handset manufacturer. Are their phones any different than what they were shipping five years ago? No, not really. Their response to the changing market dynamics? Sue. Apple’s hand was forced and HTC got hit on the head. Sometimes it really does suck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Now, about fixing the patent system...?

How do you spell greatness? I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N

At the risk of increasingly turning this blog into a forum to air my Apple opinions I have been forced to yet again blog on Apple. Yes, I am being forced to do this!

I’ve been pouring over the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7 reviews with quite a bit of interest. It is so fantastic to finally see some out-of-the-box thinking again coming from Redmond. It appears that they’ve completely rethought the way in which users use their phones and how to create a user interface that best aligns with what users want to do. Their past windows mobile iterations were, frankly, awful. They were awful simply because Microsoft has gotten away with continuing to take a desktop user interface and stuffing it into yet another form factor. No thought to how and what the user will be doing only that there should be a start button and right button menus, etc.

Along comes the iPhone, designed from the ground up to be a killer phone user interface and all of a sudden there’s new life around cell phone innovation. We now have a Palm Pre, Touch versions of RIM, Android and Phone 7. The only company that seems to be fighting innovation tooth and nail is Nokia. They have the most to lose but seem to spend the least amount of time thinking about how to design a better phone.

Another interesting example of this mind boggling behavior is around the tablet / netbook. With the introduction of the iPad, so many (Microsoft-centric) vendors crowed about how they had tablet computers and how the market wasn’t that interested or how the Netbook is the next tablet, etc. Firstly the original tablet designs were examples of Microsoft stuffing the same old Windows into a new format. It didn’t take into account user habits or better interface design. As a matter of fact, having used a few different ones, I always hated trying to hit the menu bar with a little pen. This was not only difficult but completely counterintuitive. (Along the same lines, how many of you hit the ATM keypad in your grocery store with your fingers before you pick up the pen in frustration. Why in the world I need to use a stylus to peck out my pin number is completely beyond me?!) The iPad will drive further innovation in the tablet space and I expect that Microsoft will introduce a new interface for tablet computing by 2012...

The Netbook is yet another interesting device. This is a cloud computing personal notebook. A laptop form factor optimized for web services. It has a keyboard and a laptop screen. Using existing GUI-based interfaces similar to (or exactly like) existing laptop user interfaces makes perfect sense. However comparing this device to a tablet makes no sense what so ever! I’ll just continue to scratch my head over those comparisons.

In summary, I’m not necessarily an Apple Fanboy (and I won’t even consider the iPad unless it has a web cam for video conferencing -- which I consider the killer app for me on the device) but I tip my hat to Apple every day for making the rest of the technology / IT world restless. If it wasn’t for the iPod and the unique iPod interface we’d still be using Sony MP3 players. What a disaster those were. If you don’t believe me I have three to give away... let me know where I can ship them...

Another compelling visualization

As long time readers of this blog probably know I’m a huge fan of interesting data visualizations; better ways of telling a story. Sometimes just seeing the story however is compelling enough. The link below is an image that clearly (and frighteningly) demonstrates the depth of the Mariana Trench in the west Pacific Ocean. Clear, concise and communicates exactly what it was intended to...

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=47264

How the Cloud Computing Paradigm will evolve

I just ghost authored an article on the future of workload evolution in cloud computing. Instead of writing it all over again on this page please check it out at:

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/69377.html?wlc=1266584871&wlc=1266600707

Comments and thoughts are always welcome!

What Google, Apple and Microsoft have in common

“Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about!”

~ Troy McClure

Not really sure where this quote comes from -- dynamic quote creation is a feature of my blogging software -- but it seems appropriate. For years the tech world has been split into two distinct factions: those who like Microsoft and those who don’t. As a matter of fact one of the biggest tech successes in the last 15 years springs directly from the latter of those two groups: Google. Google, founded on the mantra “Don’t Do Harm” was thinking of Microsoft when they fashioned that new age mission statement. Microsoft has always been seen as the bully; greedy, monopolistic and focused on global homogeneity. The goal of technology homogeneity seemed like a good one back in the late 1980’s before the web, consumer electronic standards, communication standards. Today everything about it feels completely stifling and counter intuitive. With that said does anyone think that if given the same chance Google wouldn’t want the same power that Microsoft had in the 1990’s? Apple, in the same way, always held the banner of the Microsoft alternative for those who wanted to “Think Different(ly).” While Apple couldn’t beat Microsoft in the OS war they figured out a way to circumvent the frontal assault and beat Microsoft in alternative battlefields: Cell phones, app stores, music stores, electronic commerce, consumer electronics, etc. Got me to wonder if Apple is becoming exactly that with which they fought against?

What started (or reignited) my thinking around this? Google’s announcement that they’re looking at how to provide 1GB/Sec fiber connections to the last mile. They made the announcement early in the week. The combination of that announcement along with their Android cell phone OS got me thinking that, on one hand, they are interested in anything that increase web traffic, they really aren’t spending too much time working with others on these projects but rather jumping in feet first to make these technologies work on their own. There are many ways to view this but the most obvious -- and most capitalistic -- is the Google is looking distinctly at new businesses to help them simply make more money. The more money they make the happier their shareholders. Good right? This is exactly the attitude that Microsoft had. By expanding into new markets they create inherent (big money) barriers of entry. Now I’m not going to cry over new players in the internet access business: the alternatives pretty much suck today (Comcast, ATT, Verizon, etc). But before we consider this a good thing I’m left wondering what will be next for Google? In ten years will they be playing in pretty much the entire technology ecosystem? Will that be so good?

In the same manner as I’m not crying that Apple has a stranglehold over smart phones, music and media content sales online, etc. I have to wonder where the Apple juggernaut will go next. Perhaps the big difference for Apple is that they are creating brand new markets (iPod/iTunes, iPad, AppleTV, etc) and that is more opportunistic rather than monopolistic. With that said I wonder how many instances of “monopoly” will appear in a Google search of “Apple and music?“ Oh, maybe I should suggest a Bing, er Yahoo search instead?

The market for Apple's tablet "computer"

Following a fever pitch in marketing hype, Apple announced the iPad yesterday. (Note: perhaps if I’m ever in a humorous mood one day I’ll wax on the horrible name... is the low end version a “mini-pad” and the high end version a “maxi-pad?”) It appears that the majority of the reviews are positive but there are quite a few critical naysayers out there. Many continue to chew on the fact that many PC vendors have had Windows Tablets available for years. (I guess that’s like saying that Apple’s Newton was the originator of the handheld smart device... certainly didn’t mean much!) The fact that Dell and HP and others have had tablet devices and they haven’t taken the market by storm is supposed to, in the critics minds, mean that there is no market for the Tablet and that Apple will fail. One of the loudest critics has been Balmer and Company up North.

I can choose to sit idly by and not chime in on this debate -- and I largely refrain from adding my comments to the end of articles on the Computer and IT news sites because having an anonymous argument with a 12 year old always seems to end with “...no I didn’t!” “Yes, you did!” “No I didn’t!” “Well, you’re a poopy-head!” etc.

The reason that Apple succeeded with the iPod and iPhone is that they didn’t redesign their PC / PC-operating system into those devices. Instead, in both cases, they defined what the end user wants to do and designed -- from the ground up -- a system / solution / software / hardware to best deliver the functionality. OS X is good for a PC but not good for a phone. This is in direct contrast to Microsoft which continues to insist that Windows is the best OS for EVERYTHING. What part of fail have they missed? Windows is a horrible device OS.

The reason that Windows is a horrible device OS is at the heart of the reason that Apple introduced the iPad yesterday. There is a clear and definable market for a computing device IN BETWEEN the phone and the traditional laptop / netbook / PC. This is a device that let’s us manage our content but isn’t about content creation. A device that allows us to watch a video but doesn’t limit us to the screen of our phone. A device that let’s us look at pictures the same size as they were originally taken. A device that does simple things like browse the web, watch videos -- movies and TV -- and play games, without the limitations of a phone. What we don’t need is all the bells and whistles of a full blown PC OS. We don’t need the functionality, and the overhead costs, the pop-up screen. (Think of watching a movie from a laptop on an airplane... don’t you hate it when you’re all set up and the guy in front of you decides to recline his seat; crushing you laptop?)

The tablet allows me to bring up a recipe in the kitchen without firing up my expensive laptop. It allows me to browse the web while watching TV AND easily share that experience with others. (Note that last phrase! It’s an important distinction!) The laptop / PC experience is an individual one. The Tablet is a social experience that is easily shared.

THIS is the experience that Microsoft doesn’t understand; that past Tablet manufacturers don’t understand. This is why the iPad will succeed.

Restart

For those few who have followed my blog with earnest through the first half of 2009 and have noticed that I haven’t updated this space for a while please consider this a restart. I am again committing myself to update this space on a weekly basis with more of my technological observations.

First an update -- and full disclosure -- I am now VP of Marketing for a small virtualization company called ScaleMP. ScaleMP’s own technology would easily be a natural fit within this blog but I needed to make sure the full disclosure is present before going into further detail. I do have an interest in this technology -- both philosophical and financial -- so continue reading with that warning in mind.

Where all other virtualization vendors -- VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat among others -- have focused on using hypervisor / Virtual Machine Monitors to disaggregate server hardware (or desktop hardware) from operating systems in order to increase workloads on top of a single system -- also known as partitioning a server -- ScaleMP has a hypervisor / VMM that aggregates multiple servers into a single system with a single operating system. This may seem counterintuitive but storage vendors have been both partitioning and aggregating storage systems for decades. On one hand -- and as a parallel to what VMware, et. al does for a server -- customers have purchased large storage systems and partitioned them for multiple users and multiple purposes, customers have also purchased a bunch of small disk arrays (JBOD for instance) and aggregated them to appear as a much larger disk. ScaleMP’s technology allows customers to purchase far less expensive x86 servers and aggregate them together to create a large supercomputer with hundreds of CPU cores and large RAM / memory capabilities. These systems appeal to anyone with a high performance workload needing many CPUs or working with files in excess of 128GB but don’t want to pay millions of dollars for the system capabilities. Using off-the-shelf x86 servers and ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation aggregation platform can now assemble a 128 core, 4TB system running Linux for a few hundred thousand dollars.

As virtualization for consolidation / partitioning was revolutionary when IBM introduced it over 25 years ago and took flight when VMware introduced the capability for standard Intel servers I believe the same will be true for virtualization for aggregation. The challenge for server vendors is realizing that forcing customers to rely on proprietary, expensive high end systems for exclusive workloads is counter intuitive and flies in the face of technological evolution.

This blog will not exclusively focus on a single technology -- certainly with Apple’s iPad tablet announcement looming mid-next week I’m sure that will result in commentary here in the not too distant future -- it is absolutely a certainty that virtualization will continue to be an underlying theme of many of my musings.