Soon after I started writing this blog, web services came up as a serious challenger to software. The thing that swung the tide in software’s favour was the rise of the mobile app ecosystems.
Originally mobile apps solved a gnarly problem for smartphone companies. Web services took time to download and were awkward compared to native software.
Now we tend to have a hybrid model where the web holds authentication functionality and the underlying database for many applications to work. If you pick up a Nokia N900 today, while you can appreciate its beautiful design, the device is little more than a glowing brick. Such is the current symbiosis between between software apps and the web services that support them.
That symbiosis is very important, while on the one hand it makes my Yahoo! Finance and Accuweather apps very useful, it also presents security risks. Some of the trouble that dating app Grindr had with regards security was down to the programmers building on third party APIs and not understanding every part of the functionality.
This means that sometimes things that I have categorised as online services might fall into software and vice versa. In that respect what I put in this category takes on a largely arbitrary view of what is software.
The second thing about software is the individual choices as a decision making user, say a lot about us. I love to use Newsblur as an RSS reader as it fits my personal workflow. I know a lot of other people who prefer other readers that do largely the same job in a different way.
Some thoughts on the implications of the Microsoft Surface launch:
Microsoft and tablets
I found the Microsoft a curious device full of interesting design choices. It was interesting because it seemed to be defined by what it wasn’t. The device was a world way from the clunky tablet keyboard combos by the likes of Fujitsu and Motion Computing who had helped Microsoft get tablets a niche place in the enterprise many years ago.
The keyboard covers were also an acknowledgement that whilst keyboards are useful tablets aren’t really content creation devices in the sense that ultra books are. The keyboard looked like the kind of membrane keyboard found on industrial computer kiosks or the vintage Texas Instruments Speak’n’Spell toy. For the supposed ultra book competitor it was an interesting choice. As a MacBook Air user, I already chafe at the limited travel keyboard on the device with its limited haptic feedback which acts as a limiting factor on my touch typing speed.
What I haven’t been able to reconcile is where a tablet fits into my life. I have used one to enjoy my South China Morning Post subscription and have skimmed the online version of Wired magazine (give me the print any day). However most of the time it just services as an ancillary screen displaying ambient media like TweetDeck or the occasional Skype call. Quite how tablets will revolutionise my life is at the moment unclear. My architect friend who evangelised the iPad to me originally seems to be using it a lot less since upgrading to an iPhone 4S, and isn’t in the market for a new iPad unless something radically changes.
Curious design language
When I saw the pictures of the Microsoft Surface, the first thing that I thought of when I saw the magenta and cyan keyboards was Nokia’s design language for the Lumia handsets. The Windows 8 colour palette may naturally dictate some of the colour choice, but it did make me think that Nokia could be integrated into a newly muscular hardware division at the right (fire sale) price. Quite how Microsoft would keep the complex carrier relationships and channel together is another matter, maybe I am reading too much into this design choice?
Microsoft and the PC manufacturer
Whilst some articles have talked about the Microsoft Surface as signalling a post-PC age; I think that this lacks a certain amount of nuance. It more resembles the approach of corporations who ‘right-size’ their organisations cutting out swathes of management and flattening the organisation to get closer to the consumer. In this respect the Surface is an expression of an aspiration for a post-PC manufacturer age.
Let’s reflect for a moment on the relationship between Microsoft and its manufacturer partners. The Microsoft monopoly was started off by IBM back in 1981 and innovators like Dell and Compaq were instrumental in driving the PC into the corporate arena. Compaq is now just a memory as part of HP’s business pioneered portable computing, Windows-based PDA devices and the MP3 player. IBM’s ThinkPad line was a mix of robust engineering and clever product design that popularised the notebook as an enterprise computing device. Dell innovated on process, allowing customers machines tailored to their needs, developed new techniques in global supply chain management and pioneered direct-to-customer telephone and online sales.
By the early noughties however, the PC as a product offered little margin of profit for the manufacturer. Manufacturers like Sony and HP relied on software distribution deals to subsidise the cost of a computer and IBM had realigned its business towards services and consultancy so saw no need for its own PC business.
It is hard to invest in continual product innovation when you are running flat-out to stay afloat. By this time, Microsoft had maximised its profit on these computers, but its partners had reached the end of their usefulness so a vertically integrated model became inevitable.
This antagonistic and excessively exploitive approach to business is likely to act as a warning for future Microsoft potential partners like cellular phone and fixed line telecoms providers or handset manufacturers. Every step forward that Microsoft takes disrupts an intricate thread of relationships in markets that are key to the company’s future.
Microsoft and technical capability
One of the arcane features of using Microsoft Windows over the years has been getting the different components to talk to each other. A PC gaming rig at one time needed as much care and attention as an MG sports car, tweaking, prodding or even replacing components to get the machine to work with a new game. Prior to Windows’95 it was the Sound Blaster series of audio cards that allowed multimedia playback. A standard that coalesced in spite of Microsoft rather than with their help. All the different hardware permutations that need to be accounted for take a toll on code creation, integrity and innovation.
By taking control of the complete product including both industrial design and hardware, Microsoft has reduced this effort massively. It means that the all-in-one vertically integrated model of old computing (DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, CDC etc) that was considered to handicap Apple is now economically sensible again. It is like the swing of a massive pendulum with a forty year sweep is finally going backwards. When Steve Jobs was commissioning the original sit-up and beg Mac design he looked to the likes of Sony and Cuisinart for inspiration. Apple’s concept of the computer as an appliance took about three decades to get mass-acceptability and the Surface gives it the Microsoft seal of approval as an approach.
Microsoft and the channel
The fact that Microsoft is prepared to go to the mats with the manufacturers that have supported its business for the past three decades indicates that Microsoft doesn’t need these people to reach out to the channel. Of course, Microsoft has its own retail channel relationships for software, the XBox and accessories like mice and keyboards. The question is how receptive and/or passive will the channel response be to Microsoft? If Microsoft will roll on partners like Dell and Acer with this tablet launch what will it do to the channel partners?
Secondly, as the PC industry became unprofitable companies like IBM, HP and Dell moved into services; for large enterprise clients the very manufacturers that Microsoft has just spurned become the channel. Awkward.
Microsoft and the supply chain
Looking at the Surface immediately brings home the fact that Microsoft must have worked closely with an original design manufacturer such as the likes of Foxconn, Compal or Quanta to create their tablets. This is a calculated risk by the company involved as it is likely to lose business from affected PC manufacturers.
The choice of original device manufacturer will be instructive, if it was Quanta in particular, Microsoft is likely to be relying on their patent portfolio to provide the Surface with ‘air cover’. Foxconn is more likely to invest in specialist production facilities like the thousands of milling machines it uses to produce Apple’s i range of devices.
London 2012 brought into sharp focus the high cost and low benefit of hosting the Olympics. The Olympics has a low to negative economic impact. London 2012 was a way of seizing land for redevelopment that benefited a few investors. To do this the organising committee of London 2012 closed down a plethora of small businesses and a previously affordable London neighbourhood was priced out of the reach of many Londoners.
So, you thought London 2012 was for spectators? Wrong | guardian.co.uk – In 2005 the International Olympic Committee passed a 109-page document to the British Games organisers in which they described, in mind-bending detail, how Lord Coe and his colleagues at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) should run the media strategy for London 2012. “The preparation period is likely to be the most difficult for Locog in terms of communications,” it explains. “Popular support may decline … soft targets should be identified … Meanwhile, there will be an enormous range of milestones that can be taken advantage of to demonstrate positive progress.” We are now well into what the document calls the operational readiness phase, during which every celebrity “honoured” to carry the Olympic torch has helped Locog satisfy their requirement to show “positive progress” with the Games. The torch run is a truly inspired PR tool. Alas, the hourly stories of its ponderous progress have not yet drowned out all coverage of those “soft target” stories which, with equally ponderous regularity, are beginning to reveal who may stand to benefit most from the Olympics – the corporate sponsors and the IOC themselves. – Not terribly surprising, just emphasises how huge a mistake of having the London 2012 Olympics was. However The Guardian misses the big picture. The Olympics sees the city captured by a non-governmental body that answers to elites of a criminal or authoritarian nature. They dictate media laws, traffic laws and planning laws. They provide a detailed guide on media manipulation like the example quoted above for London 2012.
Dazed Digital | East London 2012: Is It Dead? – to give an idea of how London 2012 is facilitating a real estate ponzi scheme: Reuters reported that Shoreditch was on course to become a “mini Bond Street” that would welcome luxury retailers eager to capitalise on Shoreditch’s “edgy image”. Property values in areas such as gallery-strewn Redchurch Street have doubled in the past decade, and have the potential to do so again in the next five years as the retail giants move in. For those stores that chose east London as a cheaper, dirtier alternative to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the unthinkable has happened – the east is now mimicking the west
Why I left Google – Spencer Tipping – probably getting more attention than its worth at the moment, but an interesting point-of-view none the less. Interesting how Google’s engineering culture in some ways conflicts with trying to build a social application / platform
Ellen Pao, the protagonist in the Kleiner Perkins law suit doesn’t sound like the typical kind of person one would think of in terms of coercion and harassment. She is the child of middle class Taiwanese immigrants to the US. Ellen Pao has an educational background in law and technology topped with an MBA – so a high achieving executive. All were from Ivy League schools. According to the egalitarian myth of Silicon Valley Ellen Pao should have been an insider. Pao had worked in legal and strategy at various blue chip Silicon Valley firms before she started at Kleiner Perkins. Instead Ellen Pao was past over for roles and dragged through the mud for a relationship that she was coerced into continuing by Ajit Nazre.
Spotlight turns on Hong Kong graft agency – FT.com – (paywall) the ICAC is the jewel in the crown of Hong Kong. It is unfortunate that there isn’t a similarly robust service to fight corruption and graft in other countries like the UK and Ireland – we wouldn’t have needed the Mahon and Leveson investigations
Why Microsoft Killed Windows Live – It’s basically admitting that “Windows Live” branded products cannot compete with Facebook, Twitter and other successful online services. (So why did Microsoft launch a new social network this month, named So.cl? Yes, exactly…)
Google+ wants to be your new Flickr | VentureBeat not likely to happen whilst I have 1000s of photos on Flickr, use it for my blog image hosting service and Google+ doesn’t offer similar things cheaper. Also Flickr’s APIs continue to enjoy developer usage
Hong Kong-based independent mobile industry analyst Tomi Ahonen is one of the most prominent critics of Nokia. One of the points that Ahonen makes is that the Nokia N9 (based on the MeeGo operating system; parts of which has now been incorporated into Samsung’s mobile operating system Tizen) is more attractive than the equivalent Nokia Lumia phones.
Nokia has been suspiciously ambiguous about Nokia N9 sales numbers. Mr Ahonen has made some guesses that put the N9 selling in broadly the same numbers as the Lumia range; despite not being sold in many developed world markets and not being backed by a $150 million advertising campaign. These are just estimates so I was curious to to see what the relative interest was for Lumia devices versus N9 when they are sold side-by-side.
I decided to look at Expansys.com. Expansys is the place to go for early adopters to get the kind of handsets that UK carriers, Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse don’t want to sell. In common with many sophisticated e-commerce websites Expansys has a search function that has an auto-suggestion function based on popularity to help get consumers to the item they want as fast as possible.
In this unscientific study the Nokia N9 is more popular than all the Lumia models – when the products are sold side-by-side, which is probably why Nokia has taken care to minimise the amount of market competition between the Lumia and the Nokia N9. This still doesn’t give me any idea on differentiation between the N9 and the Lumia models.
I decided to have a look at the different Lumia models and the N9 on Google Insights for Search. What this shows is an overall decline in interest on all the premium Nokia brand phones I looked at over time. Whilst the Lumia 800 has been the most popular on the chart, the gap between it and the Nokia N9 doesn’t merit the fact that Nokia blew an estimated $150 million promoting the Lumia 800 – their biggest ever budget and didn’t for the N9.
One could argue that Nokia has been handicapped in its carrier relations because of Microsoft’s Skype acquisition, and reviewers have given the handsets themselves mixed reviews. But what I found most disturbing is that it seems that the evidence suggests consumers have failed to be sufficiently excited the Lumia phones; that an unpromoted, unsupported handset running an operating system that Nokia has killed off is giving the Lumia range a run for its money – despite the Lumia range having Nokia’s largest ever marketing campaign behind it.
Nokia still has a stretch of runway to make its transformation complete, but it doesn’t fill one with confidence, perhaps RIM will be the third mobile eco-system? More Nokia related content can be found here.
Ferdinand A. Porsche, 76, Dies – Designed Celebrated 911 – NYTimes.com – Butzi Porsche dead. Butzi Porsche came from a family of engineers. His grandfather led the original team behind the Volkswagen Beetle. His father had been part of that engineering team and went on to found what we now know as Porsche. However, Butzi Porsche wasn’t engineer but a designer with technical chops. After an infamous meeting of the Porsche family, no members were allowed to work at Porsche. Butzi Porsche didn’t get to do more after he designed the 911. Instead Butzi Porsche started Porsche Design. Butzi Porsche did product design for other companies. Porsche Design also came out with its own products with Butzi Porsche designing watches, glasses and more. Butzi Porsche resigned from Porsche Design in 2005 due to ill health.
Why Are So Many Americans Single? : The New Yorker – single living was not a social aberration but an inevitable outgrowth of mainstream liberal values. Supported by modern communications platforms and urban living infrastructure: coffee shops, laundrettes
Kraft break-up yields marketing shift: Warc.com – the break-up is ironic when you look at the trouble they went to, in order to buy Cadburys and then break their business down broadly into Cadburys + Jacobs Suchard vs Kraft US.
HK’s rich hesitate to have babies | SCMP.com – interesting takeaways: didn’t want the emotional commitment, time poverty, financial stability / too small a living space and concerned about the local environment not being suitable for children. It was interesting that the education system was given such a hard time, given that it’s better than the UK system (paywall)
agnès b. | VICE – great interview with French fashion designer agnés b
Marketing
Fueling the hunger for The Hunger Games – The New York Times – really interesting comment: …during the 1980s you bought the poster and once a year went to a convention and met your people for something like Star Trek (and Star Wars). It misses out the fact that you are likely to have had real-world friends that you would have talked about it with as well – marketers now seem blindsided to the real-world
