Running On Fumes

Despite reporting an operating loss of over 1 billion dollars, Nokia managed to pull off a feat to mollify the investors - 1 million Lumia Windows Phone device sales. That’s actually quite a respectable result considering the device has yet to make a showing in markets such as North America and Australia.

But aside from that, Nokia’s future doesn’t appear to be looking any brighter than it was a year ago, in fact maybe it’s even a little bleaker. What Nokia use to have in the market was exclusivity and scale. The tandem of those two factors ultimately led to Nokia’s commanding success. 

Nokia has neither of these two factors today, aside from the exclusivity of being a 100% committed Windows Phone partner, but really that’s only working for Microsoft. The N9 running Meego Harmattan was certainly an exclusive, but with the promised commitment to run full steam with Windows Phone, Meego Harmattan’s potential may never be realised, or at most, a peripheral pursuit. 

Of course, it’s not like Meego Harmattan had a big chance anyway.

And scale, is something Nokia simply can’t obtain given the R&D required to build any good smartphone, especially if you’re Nokia and really trying to deliver with a bang. Nokia’s now signature polycarbonate shell in the N9 and Lumia 800, 900 models is a feat of engineering that simply couldn’t have been achieved if the company had floored it and delivered a tsunami of Windows Phones in generic form factors and hardware variations. 

The only segment where any economy of scale is possible, is in feature phones, once Nokia’s money-reeling gem but now declining precipitously in developed markets. Of course, there’s still money to be made there, and with most cellphone vendors relaying their focus to encompass smartphones 100%, Nokia is really in a position to take full control of the feature phone market. But there’s a reason why the world and the industry is stepping with both feet into the smartphone pool, it’s because not doing so would be committing to a world that will cease to exist in a very short time.

For Nokia, it’s even more crucial than this. As a company undergoing a brand image overhaul, investing excessively into feature phones would do nothing but hamper Nokia’s planned course to become viewed as a forward thinking company. Consumers can’t think of Nokia and see number keypads anymore.

Aside from the fact that Nokia no longer has significant leverage in the development chain to pump their business anymore, there’s also the issue of getting consumers to sign a contract to their phones which run on a platform that hasn’t gained the amount of traction that the company probably thought it would. Aside from getting the nod from reviewers, consumers are yet to see the great value proposition in Windows Phone.

Sure, 1 million sales exhibits promise, but it’s early days. The company has most likely skimmed the piece of market that gravitated towards Nokia in the first place, but from now on, it’s war and Nokia needs to pose some real fight - not only to lure consumers away from the eminent iOS and Android, but also to funnel them away from the other Windows Phone vendors in HTC, LG and Samsung among others.

The latter, an easy task that the company should win, but the former being a spectacularly tall order.

It stands to beg the question of why Nokia didn’t pursue the Android paved path in the first place. I can imagine it being an appealing option, Nokia’s acclaimed hardware quality and design paired with an OS that has solidified its position in the marketplace. It’s always nice to be on a winning team. But Nokia took a risk with Windows Phone, as a consumer I applaud the path they’ve taken, and from Nokia’s vantage, I would’ve done the exact same thing. 

Success in Windows Phone will yield a significantly greater reward that would be irksome to supplant, whereas success with Android would simply be providing another option, as opposed to a different option. 

It’s an uphill climb from here, and by sucking dry their loyal customer base in the first million sales, Nokia is essentially running on fumes. But since when is business not an uphill battle?  Build beautiful things, make sure people know about it and you can’t really go wrong. 

Also on A Pony For President

Apple and Foxconn's Working Conditions

This is not an issue for Apple, it’s Foxconn’s problem and no consumer electronics company that sources their production to Foxconn can do a thing about it. 

It’s not Apple’s job to make sure that worker conditions in production facilities is acceptable, the fact that the company audits these factories at all is already generous. And, if from the goodness of their own heart (heh, doubt it) Apple really does give the slightest care about worker conditions in China, they’re not in a position to dictate terms. Apple can beg and beseech, but poke the bear and you’re treading on super thin ice.

Apple relies solely on Foxconn to make their nut. The majority of Apple’s supply and manufacturing, as with many other consumer electronics companies, is sourced to Foxconn. No other company in the world exists that can manufacture to quite the scale, speed and efficiency that Foxconn does. 

Foxconn relies on almost the entire industry to make their nut, so really, Apple, though of course a cash cow of a customer, doesn’t mean nearly as much to Foxconn as Foxconn does to Apple. The Chinese monster knows this, and permits themselves to cut corners and cross moral lines knowing that Apple really isn’t going to do anything about it, aside from throw a few unsubstantial ‘demands’ for better working conditions. It’s all PR.

As long as the company doesn’t significantly attract government attention or that of rights activists, Foxconn really does have the freedom to hire as many under-age workers as they want, have as many 12 hour workers as they want, and ignore as many safety regulations as they want. Chi-ching. Money, money, more money.

Even then Foxconn has the Chinese government in a strangle hold too, why would the Chinese government dare hamper the growth of such a lucrative corporate gem? They’re probably sitting there in their spin around chairs going, ‘Dayum our economy good’. And who’s to blame them, their economyis good.

To point fingers at Apple, or Sony or Dell or Microsoft as acting immorally and permitting torturous slave like conditions in Foxconn is akin to blaming your professor for poor grades, not their problem.

They’ve done their job, Apple has done their job in R&D, their job is to dream the ideas and create beautiful products for an end user. Foxconn’s job is to make it, and all the unfair blood, pain and suffering that goes into the birth of an Apple product is weighted on the manufacturing side of things.

Don’t blame Apple, blame Foxconn, it’s their job and they’re the ones doing it wrong. They’re the ones acting immorally on so many different fronts, not only by providing abysmal worker conditions but by abusing their monopoly position to permit themselves to do it even more.

Foxconn has a history of issues, a mainstay in which was the fourteen suicides in late 2010. The company resolved the problem by installing suicide prevention netting, like that was totally attacking the source of the problem. Not only does it show that Foxconn doesn’t get the staggering effect of their actions, but that they simply don’t care. 

But that’s business, and that’s capitalism. When someone makes some killer cash, somebody has to be on the other end of the trigger. When we look for something that is both awesome and affordable, and seek the best of everything, somebody has to end up with nothing.

The world is full of compromises, all we’re doing is shifting them, playing with the economics of life. I’ll just drop by my carrier store and get an iPhone that doesn’t quite burn the bank, while you, get no iPhone and pay for my cash savings through your weary eyes, swollen leg and back pains. 

The worst thing is, we’re all just like each other, I’m just like everyone else. While I do care about the workers, when its buying time I’ll do everything to nail that Mac at the best price possible.  

It doesn’t have to be this way though, Foxconn just needs to show a little heart. But shit, who am I kidding, it’s all money and vested interest.


Also on A Pony For President

Beneath the Excitement of iBooks 2

Last week, Apple pulled the wraps off its latest offerings, iBooks 2 and iBooks author in a publicised event in New York City. Whilst the announcement has proved exciting and potentially world changing, digging a little deeper, there's probably just as much to be concerned about as there is to be contented about.

I'm just going to start by stating the shallowest of my sentiments - this announcement is darn exciting and will no doubt change the state of education and of course, reading as a whole. But, , whether it will change education and reading for the better or for worse is something we can't be entirely sure of.

Ebooks are certainly the next big thing in reading, but I doubt they'll ever fully replace paper, not in our lifetime. We will always want books, I will always want the option of an actual book, libraries will never just be online catalogues. It's not about nostalgia at all, well maybe a little, but certainly not all of it. The reason why books have lasted so many centuries as a technological medium for knowledge distribution is because they simply provide so many practical benefits which are irreplaceable through technological innovation.

Dieter Bohn of The Verge recently published a lengthy feature titled 'Sorry iBooks,paper books still win on specs', which outlines all the books practical benefits which can't be ported digitally due to the very limitations of technology itself. Here's a few crucial ones: books don't crash, books don't run out of power, books have a consistent user interface, books are compatible with every nook and cranny of our daily lives.

Sure eBooks exhibit traits that are impossible for paper to ever adopt, but that's how it is, books and ebooks are just compromises of an impossible optimum which is why we still need both.

To play the nostalgia card by saying that there is a nothing quite like curling up with a good book, turning paper pages and the smell of an old book isn't really worthy of awarding a point to the good old traditional book. For the most part, these claims are distorted by a desire to cling onto the past.

People are always afraid of adopting unproven things and letting go of the past, especially when it's something like the binded book which has served us so well for countless years. In the hypothetical situation that the world regressed from iPads to paper books, we'd look nostalgically back at the swift beauty of swiping to turn a page and puke at the thought of touching paper.

But then again, I feel that eBooks do have the capacity to devalue intellect. Despite being a grace to the spread of knowledge, the fact that it is now so easy to publish books with iBooks author and distribute them freely, it is no longer really special to have a book published under your name. Additionally, it potentially makes it harder to find genuinely good books, and easier to stumble across one that someone may have simply published for a school project.

In many ways, it's comparable to what email has done to letters, making it easier to receive and dispatch letters, yet also a lot easier for spammers to get to you. And perhaps also what blogging has done to traditional paper journalism.

On the education side of things, I can't be one hundred percent certain that interactive iBook textbooks is truly what education has been looking for. iBook textbooks are indisputably a preferable alternative to the fat textbooks of today - interesting, useful, engaging, it's all there for the iBook textbook. What's concerning is having the iPad in class at all.

There's a reason why cellphones are generally not permitted for use in class despite their potential utility as a learning tool. It's because electronics are distracting; pair that with the fact that learning subjects that a student dislikes is boring and you have a fairly tasty recipe for procrastination, in class texting, and Facebook-ing. Interactive books will never make a student interested in a subject that inherently bores them in the same way that playing Halo won't make me a fan of guns.

Apple's interactive textbook is a double edged sword, empowering engaged students to learn in new and better ways, but for the kids who aren't really engaged in the first place, it's just a brand new way to get away from class. By trying to emulate the quick access and fast paced immediacy of current technology in the new interactive textbooks, we're also emulating the negatives – the constant contingency to lose focus.

If we want to fix education, we can't simply implement books that move and talk, we need to change the curriculum so that students don't have to do science or math if they simply don't give a sh*t.

Interactive textbooks aren't a step forward for education, but more like a step to the side. IBooks and eBooks are a step to the side for reading too, another alternative that is appropriate for certain use cases but can't replace paper books which are appropriate for other use cases. I can't really sum this up any better than Dieter Bohn did in his article on The Verge, but if we ever want digital to become the dominant medium for books, we need to make sure we can try recreate at least some of the better things about paper into electronics.  

Also on TECHGEEK.com.au

A Pony For President - My 2 Cents on Google Search Plus Your World

My 2 Cents on Google Search Plus Your World - on my Tumblr 'A Pony For President'.

Just some thoughts on the antitrust debate surrounding Google's new personalised search feature.

"I’m definitely one that is a fan of competition, count me in for that, but I also run under the belief that corporations who have worked hard to gain their position as a leader should be able to leverage their position in the industry. Google have worked hard to maintain their position as the number one search engine, they’ve earned their spot not through sly tactical means, but for the pure fact that they have a better product.
I believe that claims for anti-competitive behaviour by not including Twitter and Facebook in personalised search results are unfair to Google."

Sony's big opportunity

CES 2012 has come and gone and if there was one thing that really stood out, it was perhaps surprisingly the smart TV and what it means as companies work harder to integrate their sparse hardware offerings. Samsung impressed, but Sony, of all the exhibitors at CES demonstrated the cuts to make this ecosystem thing really happen.

Samsung on the most superficial level was the ecosystem warrior at CES 2012, making a noise about its television sales numbers, which are objectively impressive and their focused strategy consisting of the three verticals - content, service and connectivity. With the reach of Samsung's TV user base, the reach of its enormous smartphone user base and the reach the company obtains by providing not only consumer electronics but home appliances, Samsung, in every possible way appears set to take the ecosystem war against Apple by storm.

By not conforming to the Google TV bandwagon, Samsung are playing their chances on the TV revolution alone. With a thriving developer community, popular smart TV platform and a successful consumer electronics business to leverage, why wouldn't they? Well because Samsung along with most of the industry are wrong about the Smart TV, and only Sony seems to get it.

Let's back up a little. Televisions are simply not like smartphones, and therefore applying the same principles that have made the smartphone a raging success simply won't work. Smartphones and the app approach have been a ground breaking success simply because smart, simple, streamlined apps are what's necessary to achieve anything when on the go. Minimise the number of button presses as possible, make things as simple, quick and engaging as possible and you have a big winner.

Do any of these values apply to television? Sure.

Sure it would preferable to have smart, simple and streamlined television apps, but looking at the broader picture, is apps really what's going to drive the TV revolution forward? To put it bluntly, no. Unlike mobile where things need to be snappy and fast, television is lazy and passive. Television is about content consumption, not content creation or content engagement. Although apps will be a hit gimmick sell, television will always be about consuming content - an area that Samsung simply isn't addressing with nearly enough punch and where Sony is flying high and mighty.

Sony Entertainment Network, a major talking point at Sony's press event may very well be Sony's big break. With significant leverage from the company's Playstation products, and the foundations of Android and Google TV rooted into its latest products, the company has the groundwork to make the content ecosystem its own.

The addition of cross-platform support in Sony Entertainment Network will not only allow the company to deliver highly compelling tablets, smartphones and connected products, but with SEN's unique placement as a single unified source for entertainment, Sony has the potential to turn its entertainment network into a cash cow.

Despite Samsung's breadth and sales, why Samsung isn't poised to take advantage of the TV revolution as well as Sony is, is simply because Samsung is placing too much of their efforts in their own hands. By developing every single facet of its own Smart TV and trying to be the be all, end all approach, the company can't use those same resources towards what really matters - deliver a truly compelling content delivery system.

Sony on the other hand, are taking advantage of Google's already established Google TV platform to gain them instantaneously what Samsung are working so hard to maintain whilst placing their own efforts into delivering an unsurpassed content platform with the deep cross device integration that the Japanese company promises.

Speaking from my own personal vantage, the ecosystem has always been something desirable, yet something I can never really obtain given the fickle nature of my technology desires. I own a Vaio PC, yet also own a Mac. I own a Windows Phone, yet use a Blackberry Playbook for my tablet needs. Hence, I've never had the coveted opportunity to be truly invested in any ecosystem.

iTunes never stuck with me because despite owning a Mac and a PC, my distinct lack of Apple mobile products eliminated much of iTunes' value proposition (besides, I'm more a fan of streaming). I trialled Zune Pass for 14 days when I purchased my Windows Phone, I loved the service but the fact that I couldn't use it on my Blackberry Playbook, TV or Walkman didn't prove it to be a worthy investment. The ability to help people like me is Sony's remarkably big opportunity.

No company has thus far delivered a single unified media distribution platform. If Sony plays their cards right, SEN could end up being just that. With support for all Android phones, upcoming support for iPhone and presumably iPad and of course, built in support with all Playstation products, Sony have formed the underpinnings for this master plan.

Deliver the service onto every platform imaginable (Windows Phone, Blackberry, Blackberry QNX, webOS etc...) and Sony have themselves an impossible to say no to, content 'sub-ecosystem' empire. Pair that with the advantages of owning a content studio (Sony Pictures) and it's hard not to envision a phenomenally compelling service.

While Samsung pays lip service to the success of its Smart TV offerings and integrated ecosystem trajectory, the inability to envision the larger picture may eventually have Samsung scrambling into the open arms of Google TV and have companies like Sony reign supreme in the TV revolution simply with their ability to deliver what it's really all about - content.

TECHGEEK.com.au - Windows Phone 7 is far from dead

Check out my article on TECHGEEK.com.au in response to 'Is Windows Phone's Consumer Focus Killing It?' published on Wired Epicenter.

"Wired Epicenter recently published an article on Windows Phone titled 'Is Windows Phone's Consumer Focus Killing It?' It's certainly reasonable to propose that the consumer focus is a reason for Windows Phone's less than spectacular adoption, but to say that Microsoft's will to satisfy the end consumers to the highest degree possible will be a prominent cause in the platform's possible demise is pushing it much too far.

That's obviously not to plainly suggest that Microsoft taking a very Apple-like approach with smartphones isn't holding them back even slightly. It's a large reason for Windows Phone's general lack of awareness amongst phone shoppers, and the obvious lack of sparkle in Microsoft's Windows Phone lineup. Unlike Google with its Android operating system, Microsoft places strict hardware guidelines on manufacturers developing Windows Phones. OEMs are not permitted to have a screen resolution that is beyond or below 800 X 480 and processor requirements remain particularly strict and unmoving..."