Tag: iPhone

Korea Inc overtakes Nokia as Global Phone Supplier

Back in 1996 I was part of a small startup – Grey Cell Systems – which against all odds won a contract to write a PC based, GSM data stack for Samsung’s first mobile phone.  A few weeks after we got the contract we were invited to a meeting at Samsung’s research centre near London, where the phone was being designed.  A senior manager had come over from Korea to tell us Samsung’s vision.  I could see all of the listening engineers trying to suppress as grin as his translator told the assembled audience that Samsung’s strategy was to become number one in mobile phones by 2001.  At the time Samsung didn’t even have a phone – that would take at least three attempts and several years and none of us in that meeting could believe their optimism.  They didn’t reach that goal.  They still haven’t, but they’re not far off.  And since 2003, they’ve been the only company Nokia has admitted to being scared of. 

Samsung have made it to number one in Europe: in the first quarter of this year, shipping 13.2 million units – 600,000 ahead of Nokia.  But for the last few years I’ve been tracking a slightly different metric – the combined sales of Samsung and LG, which I’ve called Korea Inc.  They’ve been closing the gap and in the latest figures from IDC we can see that they can now claim supremacy, pushing Nokia firmly into second place.

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My Last Nokia

The recent partnership between Nokia and Microsoft has created a lot of comment, with the more upbeat view being that it combines Microsoft’s skill in software with Nokia’s expertise in hardware.  That reminded me of the quote from Bernard Shaw to a beautiful actress who suggested they should have a baby so that their child would have her beauty and his brains.  “But Madam,” Shaw retorted, “what if the child has my looks and your brains?”  We don’t yet know what this union will bear, but there are good reasons for asking whether many phone users have already bought their last Nokia?

The marketing world has always understood that if you want to catch a consumer, catch them young.  Tom Lehrer parodied it well with his song “The Old Dope Peddler” who “gave the kids free samples, because he knew full well, that today’s young innocent faces, will be tomorrow’s clientele”.  The consumer electronics industry is equally aware of that principle, as I was reminded today when I went past a window exhorting parents to start their children off on a life of electronic materialism with “My First Sony”.

Nokia must wish that they could be that confident.  When I upgraded my phone to a Nokia E72 this year I thought harder about that decision than I had for most of my previous upgrades.  What finally won me over and stopped me jumping to Android were two features – Ovi Maps and a battery life of four or more days.  But I bought it with the realisation that my next phone would probably not be Finnish.  With the announcement of the new relationship between Nokia and Microsoft, I wonder whether their marketing departments need to get together and make a final push for short term market share with the slogan “My Last Nokia”? 

It’s one of those questions that could enter the public consciousness, like “do you remember where you where when Kennedy was assassinated”, or “when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon”?  For today’s generation of phone users, they may look back and wonder “where was it that they bought their last Nokia”.

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mHealth Apps need an injection of reality

If you’ve been reading the mHealth blogs and analyst reports over Christmas and the New Year, you’ll have realised that medical apps are being promoted as being the next big thing.  You’d be forgiven by thinking that by 2015 we’ll have given up on conventional medicine and the only reason we’ll be going to see our GP is because GPs will replace the Apps Store as the primary source of these apps.  So, if you’ve any money left after Christmas the message seems to be to go and invest it in health apps development, as that’s where the cash will be.

Although it feels a little early in the year to be contrarian, I think that the industry is running before it can walk.  Do we really think doctors are ready to be start practising the mantra of “first I’ll dispense an iPhone app; if that doesn’t work I’ll give them an Android one; and if they’re still not better I’ll put them on the Symbian app – if that doesn’t cure them, nothing will.  They won’t come back after that!”.

I’m not knocking innovation in health apps.  As I’ve said before the industry probably needs to think more out of the box than it currently is, but there are already lots around and there will be more to come.  Whether they will transform our health is another matter, as is whether anyone will make money out of them.  A lot of the current thinking seems to be making unsupportable jumps and simply inflating the mHealth bubble.  Let’s look at whether it makes sense…

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OneAPI to bind them.

There’s trouble in Mobile Earth.  Or so it appeared at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.  Darkness is spreading throughout the networks, as the twin towers of Apple and Android continue to suck application developers into their empires.  But help was at hand.  Step forward those plucky little hobbits at the GSM Association.  Prior to the Conference their ivory burrow had been echoing to the sound of furry feet as they hastily put together the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to thwart those twin evils of the cellular world.

ARPU is precious.  Brand is even more precious.  As without that, you’re just a data pipe.  But both are fading.  The only thing that consumers appear to value these days is downloadable apps, and lots of them.  Last year at MWC, every operator was busy launching their own Apps Store.  A year on, the cellular shires have realised fighting alone didn’t work, so they’ve banded together to pit their combined forces against the dark empire.

It’s an odd alliance, and probably one that is doomed to failure. 

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FDA – mHealth’s Angel or Demon?

In the rush to get a chunk of Obama’s healthcare billions, any industry with the slightest idea about remote healthcare is doing their best to claim that they are the rightful recipient of the cash.  The latest of these is the CTIA, who recently held a policy forum featuring medical experts and government officials.  In it they touted the promise of mobile health applications that would drive down costs and improve the quality of care.  They admitted that they didn’t have a policy yet, but they certainly want a chunk of the action for their members when the $19 billion dollar treasure chest is opened.  They’re not alone, but amongst all of the feverish lobbying going on in Washington there seems to be a total neglect of the role of the FDA.  Instead there’s a general opinion that a good PowerPoint and drinks for enough politicians will overrule any regulatory requirements.

mHealth has been (and still is) a long time in coming.  There’s a whole host of reasons for that.  It’s trying to grow up in a room full of 800 pound gorillas, amongst them technology, resistance from the medical profession and a lack of standards.  But hiding behind the visible 800 pounders is the big brother of invisible gorillas – the Food and Drugs Administration, fondly know as the FDA.

The FDA is responsible for regulating medical devices and services in the U.S.  If they say a product or service can’t be offered, then it’s effectively dead.  It provides a barrier to entry for manufacturers and services in the medical and health arena.  So far, it’s had little to say about many of the visions of the mHealth industry, but there is no doubt that it will.  I recently saw a presentation that outlines just how wide its powers and scope are.  And they are wide.  If the FDA enforced the most aggressive interpretation of its rules it could probably stop sales of the iPhone today.

I’m sure it won’t.  This isn’t a rant against the FDA, but about the relative naivety of many of the organisations claiming to offer solutions in their quest for a part of the new healthcare pot.  The future of mHealth would be far better served if organisations like the CTIA concentrated less on the high level fanfares and started engaging in informed debate about how the regulatory regime needs to change.

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Where’s the Apps Store on the wired Internet?

Everyone in the mobile industry wants to emulate Apple’s success with their Apps Store by having one of their own.  They also want to believe that they’re offering mobile Internet.  But if they were to spend just a few moments looking around they might question the sanity of either view.

There’s no doubt about the success of the Apps store.  Customers with iPhones appear to be deliriously happy to pay to put shortcut icons onto their phones.  But does it make sense?  Or is the industry just repeating the self delusion it first perpetrated when it declared that WAP was mobile Internet? 

There are some fundamental differences between mobile and wired internet, not least of which is, if the Apps Store concept is so good, why doesn’t it exist on the wired internet? Could it be because the mobile and wired internet really aren’t the same thing? The mobile industry does not want to talk about that, as it undermines the whole concept of the mobile internet. So let’s talk about it…

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