Disruption Matters

Symbian Vs iPhone: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

TechCruch and GigaOm both commented the Symbian quarterly results. Both blogs compared Nokia’s OS to iPhone and reached two opposite conclusions.

Facts by GigaOm:

• Symbian shipped 19.5 Million units in Q2, 5% year-on-year growth.
• iPhone shipped 0.77 Million units of its 2G model in Q2, a 166% year-on year growth, considering iPhone only sold during last month of Q2 last year. ”It is easy to grow from nothing” GigaOm says.
• Gartner estimates 304.7 million phones shipped during the second quarter, giving Symbian a 6.4% market share and iPhone a 0.2% share.
• Symbian has more than 9800 applications available, while App Store has only 2500.

Conclusion: Symbian is still the market leader in mobile phones by far, and iPhone, despite the hype, is almost a negligible anecdote. At 19.5 Million Symbian units in Q2 the glass is half full for Symbian, according to GigaOM.

Facts by TechCrunch:

• Symbian shipped 19.5 Million units in Q2, 5% growth year-on-year.
• iPhone has sold 6 million units of iPhone since the 3G model launched less than 2 months ago. 
• iPhone is selling 800.000 units per week. At this pace, Q3 unit sales will have a year-on-year growth of 900%. 
• At one third of that growth rate, iPhone will surpass Symbian shipped units by Q3 2009.

Conclusion: It is just a matter of time that iPhone beats Symbian. At 19.5 Million Symbian units in Q2 the glass is half empty for Symbian, according to TechCrunch.

Both posts report that 159 different Symbian models have been shipped “compared to just a handful from RIM and one from Apple”. But is that really good news for Symbian?

Despite maintaining the market share leadership, Nokia is no longer the object of desire for Smartphone users. iPhone is. Blackberry Bold is too. Nokia might have not lost the lead in market share yet, but they sure have in user’s mindshare.

I tend to see the glass half empty for Nokia’s OS.

Posted in Digital Lifestyle | 2 Comments »

Google Chrome: Get Equipped for Clouds

Google has surprised the world with its new browser. The product introduction through a comic was a brilliant exercise of showing the superior features of their browser, most of them quite technical, in an simple, plain, easy to understand manner.

Google wants the browser to make the OS irrelevant. The intent was already clear when they launched Gears to power up Google Docs and Google Readers by giving them access to local storage so that applications could run on the browser even when offline.  Chrome is the next step to make sure that the browser is able to run complex and rich applications, as fast as they would run on the OS. 

That is why Chrome includes a fast Javascript Virtual Machine, called V8, designed to run complex Javascript code at the speed of native OS applications. It uses WebKit for rendering, the same engine as Apple’s Safari, and it has been heavily tested with millions of web pages cached in Google’s search platform, to make sure that developers will not need to adapt web applications to yet another browser. As Google will use its browser to drive web innovations, it is open source so that new inventions will be easily available to other browsers.

Quick to render pages and run Javascript, simple clean user interface, more secure against crashes (than IE7, which is easy), includes anti malware and anti-phishing protection, and new nice features, as the Incognito navigation. If you thought that browsers was just a commodity with few room for differentiation, meet Chrome. The perfect fit to run applications on the Cloud safely and fast.

See clip above on Google presentation of Chrome yesterday.

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments »

WiMAX and Emerging Markets

Although many predict WiMAX failure almost before it is born, the reality is that WiMAX is far from dead.

Emerging markets (Africa, India, South East Asia or Latin America) have such a lack of proper fixed broadband that WiMAX becomes a cost effective alternative to ADSL, with the additional value of mobility.

It is true that in developed markets (US, Europe, Australia, Japan…) there might be no room for WiMAX, due to the extensive offering of multi-Mbps broadband and HSDPA mobile broadband plans. But emerging markets still need to fill the digital divide gap, and WiMAX is an effective way to do it.

Intel recently announced that Centrino 2 will have built-in WiMAX support. The initial availability, though, will only be for 2.5 GHz band, which leaves some emerging markets with 2.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz licensees, waiting some more months before enjoying the ubiquity of WiMAX support that the Centrino platform will bring to laptops.

Intel delay for some of these markets is not delaying commercial launch and as an example Malaysia already enjoy commercial WiMAX, thanks to Packet One.

The PC penetration in these markets is still low, but cheaper laptops and specially affordable netbooks as the Asus Eee PC are rapidly increasing the number of computers.  And for people owning a laptop, instead of a desktop, wireless broadband with mobility is a much better deal than ADSL.

Posted in Telecom | No Comments »

Back from Holidays

After a long summer break, welcome to the new season of tech-talk.biz

It has been two months with big sport events as the UEFA EURO Cup and the Beijing Olympics, covered for the first time not only on TV but also on Internet and mobile phones. And competition has not been intense only in Beijing these days among the Phelps, Bolts or Nadals, but also between the biggest challengers to Nokia’s reign in the handset market.

On 11 July Apple launched the much awaited 3G iPhone in 21 countries, and 20 more would follow on 22 August, including Singapore, Philippines or India. The 3G iPhone has not disappointed, though some complained about 3G connectivity issues supposedly linked to its Infineon chipset, and promised to be fixed in the next iPhone software update. Still the launch can be considered a great success with more than 6 million units being sold in the first 2 months.

iPhone competition has not taken any break, and the first Android handset is rumored to be launched by T-Mobile US as early as September. The handset comes from Taiwanese vendor HTC, and has been dubbed Dream, although the official name will be G1, reminding it is the first Google phone in the market. Equipped with a sliding full qwerty keyboard, a full web browser and a powerful CPU,  it will have access to plenty of applications to download from Google’s App Market. I can not wait to grab one.

In parallel, RIM is about to launch its Blackberry Bold, targeted to keep the heavy email business users away from iPhone, and adding functionality such as iTunes sync, GPS, Wifi and HSDPA support. Even some iPhone users might switch back to this beast from RIM once they realize email is so much easier.

Competition is great, both at the Olympics and at making us mobile users happy.

Posted in Digital Lifestyle, General | No Comments »

Viva España!

Spain is the Champion of the Euro 2008. Forty-four years after the European Cup that Spain won in Madrid in 1964, this is the only major title the Spanish squad has conquered.

Spain has been a favorite for many major tournaments before only to disappoint and lose in quarter finals in most of them. But this time the Spanish team has not only displayed a beautiful game, but also has shown a determination to win, not seen ever before in the Spanish team.

A great team spirit and huge self confidence, but above all the winning attitude free from the ghosts and fears from the past.

The Spanish soccer team joins Fernando Alonso, Rafael Nadal and a bunch of great basket-ball players moving to the NBA, led by Pau Gasol. A generation of winners that are a true inspiration.

“Podemos” was the cry from Spanish media to motivate the soccer national team. It translates as “Yes, We Can”. Barack Obama may have had an influence well beyond USA borders.

Posted in General | No Comments »

Cerrado por Vacaciones

I go on summer holidays. So during the next weeks posts might be more infrequent.

See you soon

Posted in General | No Comments »

Wireless Energy Transmission for my Laptop

When will my laptop be totally wireless, even to recharge the battery? The future might be sooner than we thought, and Nanotechnology will be part of it.

There are many types of Wireless Energy Transmission although none of them have gone further than a prototype. For home use, powerbeaming could be the technology to free our portable devices from wires. Powerbeaming works based on a Laser system at one end that beams to a Solar Cell at the other end that transforms light into a DC current.

Current lasers have a 30-60% efficiency that combined with a 40-50% efficiency of solar cells, brings the overall efficiency at a maximum of 30%, still not too bad compared with electric bulbs. But Nanotechnology might boost these efficiencies at both ends.  

Solid-state lightning  promises up to 100% efficiency to convert electricity into light, once that we have atomically precise manufacturing technologies to arrange light-emitting building blocks in a controlled manner.

Today’s CIGS, CdTE or thin-film silicon are bringing down prices of Solar Cells. The ability to manufacture defect-free nanomaterials would improve efficiency at an exponential rate. With laptops foreseen to be equipped with solar cells in less than 10 years, solid-state lightning beams could be a wireless replacement to a wall socket.

 Picture from Wikipedia: NASA prototype of lightweight plane powered by a laser beam and a solar cell.

Posted in Digital Home, FictionPrediction | No Comments »

Nokia to Get Full Control of Symbian

Nokia announced today a bid to acquire 100% of Symbian. Nokia already owns 48% of the shares, and would purchase the remaining shares for 264 million euro, from their current Symbian partners Sony Ericsson, Telefonaktiebolaget, LM Ericsson, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Siemens International Holding and Samsung Electronics.

Even though it may seem that Nokia wants to reinforce Symbian, with plans even to make it open source, the truth is this operation may benefit even more Sony Ericsson, Panasonic or Samsung that now will be free to go Android without conflicting interests. In fact, Samsung is already a member of the Open Handset Alliance.

As we mentioned before, Nokia Symbian usability is very poor when compared to iPhone, Blackberry, Android or even Windows Mobile. And this is also affecting Nokia brand.

As well as making it open source, Nokia should better rethink its Mobile OS user interface, or they might get into trouble as Android will target low-end handsets too, eating from Nokia’s last stronghold.

Posted in Digital Lifestyle, Telecom | 1 Comment »

Nokia Still Don’t Get it

 ”It is the usability, stupid.”

In essence, Nokia keeps developing mobile phones, when younger generations do not care about a phone but about communications in an ample sense (IM, Facebook, web, etc) and multimedia (music, music , music, clips and music). And they do not want multimedia to be a poor media player added on a phone with not even a plug for a standard earbuds stereo jack.

Examples of usability for Nokia phones (and most traditional mobile phone vendors):
1) Why insist on a dialpad inherited from old telephones, when most calls are initiated by a click in the address book?
2) Why is the main input interface still based on a numeric keypad, when most of the inputs are actually text (SMS, URLs, IM, address book names,…)?

Blackberry got it right from the start, as any Blackberry user will confirm. This is THE device for corporate email. Easy to read and navigate through emails, easy to write with the keyboard, easy to search and file messages while wirelessly synchronizing with your inbox, calendar and address book on your laptop/server. Even Windows Mobile did a better job than Symbian in usability, phone stability problems and high prices aside.

iPhone has definitively raised the bar, and every one is expecting Android to follow the path, only with a wider hardware variety from the Open Handset Alliance vendors.

“The innovation [...] is not that they let us do something new, but that they allow us to do what we already do better, more often, in more places and more quickly.” -Joshua Porter

Blackberry and iPhone definitively got it right.

Nokia keeps trying and now Comes with Music, to counter-attack the iPhone-iTunes duo. Will that be enough for music fans to choose an N81 over an iPhone? I doubt it. Nokia’s market share will be sustained by low cost phones, specially in Asian developing countries. (That assuming that Apple does not halve iPhone price next year into $99…)

Posted in Digital Lifestyle, Telecom | 4 Comments »

It Is Time for Renewable Energy

The high prices of oil in the seventies stimulated the research for alternative sources of energy. Nuclear power plants emerged as a very cost-effective energy source, though always controversial. Windmills and solar plants were in their infancy and too inefficient, while hydroelectric plants, apart from the high environmental impact, only can cope with a small percentage of the energy demand. In the eighties and nineties oil prices went down, and with cheap oil the progress on renewable energies slowed down.

Now, the high oil prices have returned driven by the increasing demand for energy in the developing world (specially China and India). The high price is making economically viable to extract oil from other sources, such as tar sands or liquefied coal. This means oil reserves will still last for a while, but oil will remain expensive.

Add the concerns on global warming, and this time renewable energies are here to stay. Many governments in developed countries are considering to tax emissions of CO2. This tax on coal, oil and gas power plants, with high oil prices, would start making renewable energies a cheaper alternative. It is what Google.org calls RE<C, or renewable energies cheaper than coal. Google’s initiative will focus on areas such as solar thermal, wind, and geothermal, that promise utility scale energy production.

Solar technologies are one of the most promising option to power the planet cleanly. New thin-film photovoltaics with mixtures of new materials (cadmium telluride or CIGS) are bringing costs down and built on top of steel and crsital, the cells can be part of the roof structure of buildings or vehicles. The efficiency of this new solar cells is lower than bulk silicon cells, but the efficiency is improving at a pace close to Moore’s law in computers, with big names, as IBM, getting involved. With the promise of nanotechnology bringing new techniques and materials, like carbon nanotubes, expect an efficiency boost in the coming years.

If Internet made the network decentralized, solar cells will also make power generation a distributed process in 20 years.

Related reading:
Another silicon valley? From The Economist print edition Jun 19th 2008

Posted in Media & New Economy | No Comments »