Back in the saddle again...

Yeah, I'm back, big as life and twice as ugly!


So ...hum... it’s been a while, and many things have happened in the mean time...

The good news is that the big guys are still there, squaring off the battle ground and keeping us happy and busy watching their moves.

Just to recap some of the highlights of the (almost) year that passed...we had the usual sex, drugs & rock & roll ...and that is actually not a figure of speech...

You probably already heard/ read about the sexual scandal centered around Mark Hurd, the now ex CEO of HP...in the end it all proved to be much ado about nothing, with Mark Hurd joining his friend Larry Ellison at Oracle, and HP dropping charges against him and looking into SAP’s garden for their new CEO.

We also did have some rock & roll, back in September, when Apple launched the new iPods,  iTunes 10 and Ping, its own attempt at social networking (so far met with mixed feelings).

As for the drugs... well, when you think iPhone 4/ iPad waiting lines, time spent playing FarmVille on Facebook etc... addiction is one of the first words that does come to mind.

so below a random reminder of the main events in the tech world (purely based on my own recollection of the last months)

we had the scandal around the stolen iPhone 4, followed by its (very predictable) launch  and the Antennagate (long live the bumper!)

the incredible boom of social gaming companies with Zynga taking the front in the news... coupled with Google's increasing interest in the social gaming movement - expected to materialize in the coming months with Google Me...all this in light of a clear shift in the consumption of the Internet (people spending more time online on Facebook and social related sites and less on generic websites and on Google)

going back to what seems to be the media favorite - Apple, of course- plenty of ink spilled over the much gossiped and long anticipated tablet...the iPad is definitely one of the most talked about topic of the entire year, ranging from the never-ending jokes about its (somehow) funny name, to the lack of Flash support (and the fight with Adobe that followed) to finally, the lack of a clear use and categorization of the product. 

nine months from its launch, I think it is now safe to say that the iPad is a success. I also cannot help notice just how similar the fates of the iPhone and the iPad have been (with the media hurrying to proclaim their premature death, only to be proved wrong by the sales results and consumer adoption).

needless to say that the iPad's (unexpected) success drew the attention of most of the big tech companies out there, making us witness a non-stop sequence of tablet launches from the likes of Samsung, HP and RIM (with more rumored to follow)

another rising star of the tech world is Foursquare and the localization based applications in general (Gowalla, Yelp, MyTown, SCVNGR & co). They have grown substantially enough to raise the eyebrows of the big guys (and make them think of opening their wallet). Google was rumored to have tried to buy Yelp (it failed!), while Facebook had its shot at Foursquare, only to then decide to launch a competing service - Facebook Places.

Groupon and daily deals websites (like LivingSocial and the numerous other Groupon copycats) also stormed the tech industry this year, with Groupon being considered the fastest growing company ever.

also rising this year are the so-called Angel Investors (high profile entrepreneurs behind most of the established startups on the market, having the know how and capital to support new ventures), which are now starting to compete with the long established VCs to attract the most valuable new startups. Other than investing in startups, they apparently also like to collude (leading to yet another scandal of the year, called, surprisingly or not, the AngelGate)

and last but not least, just to get closer to the most recent events, TechCrunch (one of the leading technology blogs worldwide, and one of my own leading information source) has been bought by AOL for something between $25m to $40m.

Not bad, right? :)

So before I really get back to business, let’s just take a look at the current status quo of the industry. 

All's fair in love and war, and one thing is clear: in the tech industry, relationship statuses change almost as frequent as in real life.

A modern history of war...

Recent launches and acquisitions done by Google and Apple got the two companies stepping on each other's toes a lot more often than before. News of the increasing deterioration of the Google - Apple friendship started to heat up back in July, when Google Voice has been rejected by the App Store. What followed was a lot of media comments, Federal investigations and perhaps most importantly, a clear signal that in the technology world, the line between friend and foe is a very thin one.

Below is a time line of the main events that marked the interactions between Google and Apple. The latest significant episodes are Google's  launch of music search, it's acquisition of AdMob and Apple's acquisition of Lala.

Looking at the timeline, it can easily be observed that Google took the offensive, while Apple has so far been on a defensive mode. Strategically, Google went for an indirect attack, by postponing to attack Apple frontally and by weakening it on the flanks. However, Google's most recent news, about the imminent launch of a fully Google produced Google Phone, leaves no misunderstanding on the company's intention: it is ready and willing to start a frontal combat with Apple.

Wall Street Journal offers a great overview of the markets in which Apple and Google overlap. Interestingly enough, in this fight of the titans, the companies are competing for the same allies - in our case the startups they acquired, such as lala and AdMob.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Here's where it gets even more interesting. We shouldn't forget the almighty Goliath, the common enemy of Google and Apple. You guessed it: Microsoft. Surprisingly enough, several commentators expect Apple to team up with Microsoft to fight Google, on the principle that "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

As juicy as this might sound for all the fans of strategy, warfare and of the technology world in general, I think it is premature to say Apple and Microsoft will start making love, and not war. First of all, the whole assumption is based on Microsoft's recent launch of a Bing app for the App Store. While this marks a (almost) first in the Microsoft - Apple relationship, it is not enough. For the simple reason that Microsoft HAD to launch the Bing app. Because whether the Redmond giant likes to admit it or not, App Store is becoming an increasingly important platform for software distribution. And if they want Bing to fight head to head with Google's search engine, they need to make sure they cover all the flanks, App Store included.

But to all the warfare enthusiasts, do not despair. There are still some wars to be fought and surprising alliances to be made in the future. Looking at the market evolution, at the increasing convergence of devices, all the big players will ultimately find themselves in a single battlefield. This is what I particularly like about this industry: you need to cover all markets and product categories to be sure you get a big piece of the pie. When we think of other markets, it normally makes sense to focus on your core market, develop core competencies and defend your turf. However, in the technology world, the opposite applies: it is almost imperative to offer services across multiple devices and markets. And this means co-opetition is at its best, because players end up cooperating in one side of the market and competing directly in another side. Not because they like it, but because they have to. Apple's recent announcement that it will not discontinue the agreement between Google and lala for the music streaming search results is an indication of just that.

So war enthusiasts, stick around. There are some interesting battles to be fought...

Employing creative templates to create new mobile applications

The present paper proposes an alternative method for developers to use to generate novel, innovative mobile applications that can succeed in an increasingly cluttered market. It does so by relying on literature focusing on innovation templates and new product development, particularly attribute dependency and other creative templates, hybrid innovation, convergence and product categorization.

Based on the aggregation of these theoretical streams, a conceptual framework is configured and tested against existing applications through a multiple case study analysis focused on Apple’s App Store. The validity of the framework is further tested in an exploratory exercise designed to generate several ideas for new mobile applications.

The outcome of matching the conceptual framework with empirical data is a semi-structured development process for new mobile applications. The preliminary results of the research provide sufficient support for the method; further feedback from developers positions the method as a viable alternative to current methods. The paper concludes by identifying the main limitations and the possible areas of improvement and future research.

The description above is the abstract of my master thesis, which has been promised to you in several of my blogs. You can also read an excerpt from it below. If you're interested for more, don't hesitate to get back to me. Enjoy!

Google Goodies

Tonight, Google launched some cool new search features at Google's Search Event. Tech Crunch has been covering the event live, leaking some of the new stuff to be expected from Google in the near future.

One of these things is Google Goggles, which allows users to take a picture of an object and then use that image as a search query. This is obviously a perfect fit for mobile phones - users simply take the shot of the thing they want to search for, and they are then showed the Google results for the product.

According to Google, 2/3 of our brain is involved in visual processing which makes visual search quite an important feature to be considered for the future.

Some of you may know that a couple of visual search apps have already been around for some time now on the App Store and Android Market. Perhaps the currently best know app for visual search is SnapTell, available both for the iPhone and Android handsets. It allows users to take a photo of a book, DVD or video game and then displays the title of the respective item along with a list of the prices for that item on some of the best known online retailers.

 

Nokia also has a similar application for its Symbian platform for some time now but I am not sure it really took off. It's called Nokia Point and Find and you can find details about it at this link or see how it works in the video below.

There was one part in Google's presentation that I found particularly interesting. Vic Gundotra, the VP of Engineering at Google, said search will be possible in the future by sight, by location and by voice. Interestingly enough, these three search modalities are enabled and empowered to reach the mass market by the same device: the mobile phone. It is more than likely than Google will direct more and more effort and attention into the mobile phone in the future. It's strong push of the Droid, along with the increasingly strong rum ours about a 100% Google phone show just that.

Google is already well positioned on all these three new types of searches. Let's briefly consider them...

Search by voice - See the now famous Google Voice app, that caused so much friction in the past between Google and Apple after its rejection from the App Store. As a cool added feature to Google Voice, Mandarin and Japanese Voice Search capabilities have been added and in 2010, the app will also support an audio real time translator.

Search by sight - See the latest Google Goggles


Search by location to be checked very soon in the future.

According to tonight's presentation, Google's mobile homepages will soon have the capability to adjust its search suggestions to consider the user's location. As an example provided to the audience in the Computer History Museum - the venue of the presentation - Vic Gundotra showed how the same Google search for "Re" resulted in different results for one iPhone with the location set to Boston (Google top result: "Red Sox") and for another iPhone set to San Francisco (Google top result: "REI")

Before I end this post, I just wanted to highlight one more goodie from Google Labs, launched some weeks ago, but which I never got to introduce.


 Google Image Swirl is a new way of categorizing searched images by considering both the visual and semantic similarities.

All that is left for me to say at this point is enjoy. And keep searching!

Is more less for the App Store?

Recently Apple announced that  App Store reached 100,000 applications. While some claim this milestone has been reached earlier, it marks yet another stage in the impressive evolution of the App Store. Below is a graph showing the evolution of the App Store until it reached 1 billion downloads back in April. Seven months later, the numbers center around two rounds numbers: 100,000 applications and 2 billion downloads.

 

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/04/23/how-the-app-store-got-to-1-billion-downloads/

As I already debated in a previous post, the question one has to ask at this point is just how much more can the App Store grow? When will applications be simply too many for users to handle? Will this degenerate in app fatigue and backlash at Apple? 

It’s interesting to see how Apple will manage this increased complexity of the App Store, given the historic efforts of the company to keep things as simple as possible for their users.The increasing clutter on the App Store is affecting users, developers and ultimately Apple. Let's look a bit closer at how this happens.


USERS

Now, more is normally better for consumers. More variety means more choice, more competition among providers which might lead to better apps for users, at lower prices. I am not questioning that. However, once the number of application reaches a certain threshold (which remains to be discovered), it is possible that the offer will be too broad for consumers to manage. When dealing with too much choice, people normally tend to panic and desist choice, being simply overwhelmed with the options available. In App Store terms, the discovery of relevant apps might take too much time and effort. On the long run, this might negatively impact the user interaction with the App Store.


Various research focusing on the usage patterns shows that consumes are already finding it difficult to keep up with the apps they install. Consumers download many applications (from 10 to 30) but end up using only 2 or 3 of them. Furthermore, applications have a limited lifespan, with an average of 20 accesses, after which consumers stop using them. And according to analytics firm AppsFire, quoted  by Moconews.net, only around 20,000 apps are being downloaded to begin with.


Apple has tried to improve the app discovery with the latest version of the iTunes, which allows a faster and more direct access to the various App Store categories. A Genius feature is also being offered - this means Apple analyzes the apps available on the user's device and recommends similar ones. There are also a bunch of websites that offer various algorithms (for ex, one of them looks at users' tweets and suggests apps based on that) to help consumers sort out the mess and find the apps they are interested in. Numerous websites feature periodic reviews of applications, with rankings per category. While these do help users to some extent, the app discovery remains cumbersome.


DEVELOPERS

While for users the increasing number of apps is a double edged sword, for developers it largely means just trouble. More applications means more competitions, longer approval times, fewer chances of being noticed and increased pressure to lower prices.


Competing with 99,999 other apps is not easy. Especially when Apple is keeping a tight control of the App Store and the possibilities of promoting an app are very limited inside the store. Developers normally have to launch websites and use advertising services like the one provided by AdMob to make sure users even hear of their app's existence. The only ones with a different fortune are the lucky few who get selected by Apple and get featured in the now famous 'There's an app for that' commercials.


To add to developers woes, several companies now offer services that make the app development process accessible to non engineers. Companies like Swebapps.com, AppBreeder.com, GameSalad.com and MyAppBuilder.com offer such services for relatively low monthly fees (compared to the costs of developing one app from scratch). That basically means that the App Store is now opening up to people with no clue of Apple's SDK and no technical background, who simply follow some simple steps to create their customized application.


Given this situation, perhaps the fact that some developers have decided to sell their apps on eBay and leave the App Store should not be such a huge surprise. Surely one of the most serious blow to date was the recent decision of Joe Hewitt, the developer of Facebook's application for the iPhone to leave the store, as a sign of protest to Apple's review process.

APPLE

As already said, Apple's recent relationship with developers has been spiny, largely because of its apps review and approval process. The closed ecosystem characterizing the App Store has also been criticized. However, many developers still choose the App Store and its platform in favor of the other app stores and platforms. The increasing competition faced might result in more developers leaving the App Store, since they will no longer be able to cover the costs of developing the app (estimated at several thousand dollars).

Apple may either choose to provide some increased assistance to developers and re-ensure them of guaranteed success on the platform, or decide to stand back and let a natural selection of the strongest apps take place.

Wrapping up...

The App Store is definitely central to the success of the iPhone. I recall the early days of the iPhone and the high number of skeptics of its success. To be fair, the phone did not take off from day 1, and many considered it was too poor from a technological point of view to claim such a price premium and hope to challenge the big guys from Nokia and the like. But then came the App Store. And just like the iTunes store with iPod, the demand for iPhone exploded. And it hasn't stopped growing since. In the process, Apple has challenged and reshaped the entire mobile industry and its full impact is yet to be finalized. No later than this week, Apple became the largest smartphone seller in the world, outing Nokia from its top place. And today, the media was rumoring a possible acquisition of Palm by Nokia. If this will actually happen (many say it will remain just a rumor), we are going to witness more interesting moves in the smartphone arena.

According to a study by Ovum, by 2014, around 18.7 billion million apps will be downloaded (from 491 million that were registered at the end of 2008). These will generate sales of $5.7 billion. This basically means there is a lot of money at stake in this young industry, and so far Apple is by far the best positioned to cash in the largest part of this pie.

Is this market going to become over-saturated? It is possible. Will consumers suffer from app fatigue? Most likely.


However, let's not forget we are looking at an incipient industry (we only started talking about apps in a serious way back in 11th July 2008, when App Store was launched). This is a 1-year old industry, still in its early phase, but quickly burning steps into the growth phase. This means at some point a shakeout will happen. What remains to be seen is what exactly will determine who stays and who goes. In time, consumers will become more picky, forcing developers to come up with more relevant apps and app store providers to reconsider the sourcing of their store to better reflect consumer preferences.

Apple and Microsoft tablets are looking sweeter than chocolate tablets

If some of you are already starting to be bored just by hearing the word 'tablet', you'd better get used to it. Because it looks like this word is here to stay. And along with the word itself, frantically used in the last couple of months, come some pretty interesting devices...

The product category as such existed already, with manufacturers such as Toshiba, HP and Fujitsu trying to grab a piece of this pie. However, the market didn't quite take off, being estimated at a mere 1.4% of the global portable PC market, according to research company IDC. But as it happened before (with MP3 players and smartphones), word that Apple might launch its own tablet immediately drew everyone's attention to this category.

Most were expecting the "iTablet" (the name predicted by many bloggers) to be launched as ready as September 9th, when Apple launched its new line of iPods. However, this did not happen. But according to recent news, there's no doubt an Apple tablet will be launched in early 2010. There are several clear indications of this: Apple apparently developed a multi-touch OS X version some years ago. Then Steve Jobs came back to work, and according to WSJ, the tablet is his number 1 priority these days. And then there are the leaks of selected suppliers, who confirmed that they already received order for components. And there are some nice previews of the tablet online, to complete the picture and satisfy our curiosity.

As you can see from the photos below, there is no clear indication of how the tablet will actually look like. Most observers predict a larger version of an iPod Touch.

 

And then, in the midst of all this excitement, BAM! comes Microsoft. Gizmodo leaks some rumors that the Redmond giant is also launching its own tablet, named "Courier", and it substantiates the rumor with some videos (see below).




Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

We're obviously looking at yet another Microsoft - Apple showdown (few days before, rumors of Microsoft's own smartphone model also surfaced the blogosphere), which is more than likely going the make this emerging tablet PC category a whole lot more interesting. But what I think is particularly interesting (if most of the rumored features of iTablet and Courier turn out to be true) is that the two giants are following two completely different strategies: Apple is playing the entertainment card, while Microsoft chose the business & productivity card.

Now, mobile entertainment is growing like crazy and the iPhone and App Store's success are there to prove it. Entertainment on the go, available outside one's living room is here to stay. For a while at least. There is a lot of content that is being consumed more frequently in digital form, starting from music and TV programs to books and newspapers. But I think the business segment will also embrace a tablet with enhanced capabilities compared to a smartphone and more advanced that a netbook.

So there's no telling who chose the right strategy. Given the incipient stage of this product category, it looks like there is plenty of room to accommodate both Microsoft and Apple. Especially since the two tablets satisfy different needs and are at most complementing each other, instead of competing against each other.

As a final consideration, I just want to give a thumbs up to Microsoft for finally stopping to step in Apple's shoes and copy it at all costs. Courier seems like a valuable future product, with which Microsoft might take back some credit, that it partially deserves (for having actually invented the tablet concept and dedicated software back in 2001).

Flipping the latest news

A lot has happened since my last post. Apple's iPod centered event took place last Tuesday. As expected, not many huge surprises, with the exception perhaps of the fact that the iPod Touch didn't get a camera like the Nano model did. The blogosphere is still debating as to why exactly that didn't happen, while some users creatively and funnily express their disagreement (see video below)



Today, Microsoft launched Zune HD, along with an improved Zune 4.0 software and the long awaited Marketplace. I already wrote about Zune. It is interesting to see how well this device will do, given the very recent improvements Apple made to its iPod series. I for one will also look for the direction that Marketplace will take, since it was initially anticipated as a platform for mobile applications for the phones using Windows Mobile.

 

 

These days in California, the TechCrunch 50 conference takes place. A lot of the big guys are there, showing some new and cool stuff. But there are also a lot of startups being featured. The full list can be found at this link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/the-list-of-startups-presenting-at-techcrunch50/

According to TechCrunch, they were selected from more than 1,000 applications, so it wouldn't be a surprise to hear from some of them in the future.

Below are the presentations from TechCrunch50 concerning two new features launched by Google and Bing respectively: Google Fast Flip and Bing's Visual Search. Enjoy!