Amazon sells Android apps - why this move and what's the impact ?

This week, Amazon opened its Android app store.
Why is Amazon moving in this direction ? Is it just for money earned selling these apps ?

There are probably much better reasons for this move.

First, Amazon is by far the most successful Digital Shopping Mall in US and Europe. As any shopping mall, there is no reason why not to sell a product which is sold somewhere else. Amazon can not sell Apple iPhone and IPad apps since Apple behaves as a high end brand, restricting sales in its digital, fully controlled experience iTunes store. It's thus about "one-stop-shopping" and comprehensive digital goods proposition.

Second, through this move, Amazon clearly positions itself in the M-commerce business. Amazon becomes fully relevant for Android mobile users and the market place can collect mobile phones numbers of their current customers or recruit new customers. This critical information added to the Amazon account will further enable the giant to further close the loop, possibly engaging in mobile advertising or couponing.

That leads to the third and probably the main reason. Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon form the FAGA quatuor heading to the same M-commerce expected nirvana, each attacking from a different angle. Google already partially controls the mobile platform real estate, a very good advertising machine and an emerging cash desk. Apple has a fully controlled platform real estate, an emerging advertising machine and an efficient cash desk. Facebook probably has the most efficient platform real estate, (now even extending to feature phones through latest acquisition), including the most innovative advertising machine and is currently building a cash desk.
Amazon is the king of E-commerce, already having all ingredients online but missing presence on mobile. Through this Android store, Amazon penetrates for a low budget an efficient mobile platform real estate to complement a too small Kindle footprint. Amazon is thus strengthening its position in this FAGA quatuor.

The next question concerns the impact on device vendors and mobile apps ecosystem. Will this help or arm Google ? Does it impact Apple ? What about Amazon selling windows phone 7 apps  or Blackberry apps ?

This Amazon Android app store on one hand is an additional factor demonstrating to consumers the openness of Android ecosystem. It can only thus increase relevance of Android phones. On the other hand, it probably arms Google in its quest to spread its Google Checkout, so important in the FAGA war.

Apple is probably not directly impacted, keeping their closed ecosystem and currently suffering (a lot of people would like to suffer this way) the consequences around censorship and too obvious dominance.
BlackBerry apps mainly concern business and are probably less relevant for both Amazon and Blackberry.

The open question remains for Windows phone and especially in the context the Nokia deal. Nokia stopped its unsuccessful OVI store. Amazon could probably be a good partner for Nokia selling special Windows phone apps. But will Microsoft authorize this or will Seattle monster engage in FAGA war to make it FAGAM ?

Future will say ...

Benoit Quirynen

IPad 2 - price points are set for competitors

Today, Steve Jobs announced the IPad 2, the feature list and the prices for the new device.

The main features are sitting in the engine, except the so expected cameras (front and back) that are now on board. But the most important part is the price which stays the same.

This now shapes the market for till end of 2011.
No one can sell a successful tablet more expensive than IPad 2. The only reason buying another tablet than IPad 2 is a lower price.
Let's make a tour of the challenged tablet vendors:
- Motorola Xoom equiped with Android : similar feature set as IPad 2, probably less powerful CPU, certainly poorer batteries and higher price. This one is xoomed to fail.
- RIM Playbook : poorer features, probably less powerful CPU, certainly poorer batteries, same prices as IPad 2. They can perhaps survive focusing on corporate market but it will be bloody challenging and they will eat their margin anyway through rebates on volume based deals.
- Samsung Galaxy : Samsung announced a 10.1 inch in MWC and will announce a 8.9 inch at CTIA end of March. Since Samsung did not yet publish any price, they still get a chance.

Let's take the positive angle. What could be a competitor of IPad 2?
- a device in the range of 300$ or 300€,
- 9 inches minimum,
- a USB able to plug any USB webcam,
- a USB able to plug any USB dongle, even 3G/4G,
- decent screen (could be less robust),
- decent CPU (even slower than IPad),
- WiFi only,
- Android 3.0 Honeycomb on board.

If nobody shows up, IPad 2 will have 90% market share at the end of 2011.
This will strengthen their domination of which they often abuse.

Who'll be the first ? Medion, ASUS, an EEETablet, Samsung, LG, Nokia (just kidding for the last one).

Future will say.

Benoit

IPad2 - will definition be twice higher ?

Some rumours about IPad2 state that the screen definition would be twice higher, becoming 2048x1536 instead of 1024x768.

Today, the Wired magazine on IPad already consumes more than 500MB in terms of bandwidth and disk size. Since Wired is often leveraging the full capacity, this could lead to a severe increase (media assets - image and video - take the larger part) in bandwith consumption (for consumers and/or for telcos) as well as on-device disk space (up to 2GB).

All this would only opertae if Apple manages to keep convincing publishers using its tablet after having sucked the customer relationship - as announced on Friday.

To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

Telecom - why not simply deliver a better service ?

Blogs, articles, books, everywhere in the world strategists are discussing about the battle between internet boys and telecom elderly. Why are Internet boys so successful, in a kind of continuous hype curve, while telecom elderly are perceived as old-fashioned even if the second ones provide the necessary pipes for the first ones to operate ?

This interesting discussion was reenforced this week due to the Broadband forum.
There is certainly nothing wrong to raise the question and, even better, it's important for the whole society to find the right balance between the two sets of dinosaurs in order to support further evolutions.

But, before engaging in some hazardous strategies, telecom operators could perhaps simply deliver a better service. It's not about inventing yet another stuff. It's all about services around voice, messaging, data access and 3rd party premium services - all the services used by large panel of subscribers.

We can distinguish two aspects : provide a better user experience and solve all the numerous small inconsistencies which are very annoying for subscribers, eventually leading to a complete loss of trust.

Why the hell is the Skype user experience better than my phone experience ? I don't ask for a free service. It would nice but I understand it would not be sustainable. I just ask a mobile user experience as convenient as Skype.

The second improvement concerns the loss of trust that I still have in my telecom provider. Why the hell do I face a problem each time I activate a service ? It's true that I receive more alert messages than before, assumed to explain unusual situations. Receiving alerts when call center tells you that there is no problem creates frustration. Not receiving an alert when there is a problem is even more frustrating. And finally, each time spending 20+ minutes waiting in call center queue is certainly not my favorite activity.

Telecom systems have been built as mushrooms growing, on a yearly basis, a few month after annual Mobile World Congress. In order to face the other category of dinosaurs, it's time for telecom to debug all these minor frustrating error cases or even better, time to streamline the architectures.

Let's remove dangerous mushrooms and structure the telecom landscape for an open field based on latest technologies and concepts - supporting a new wave of innovation.
Fighting or partnering with the other side ? Future will say.
To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

Content is king, cross-device digital rights is key ... for e-paper as well

The limited number of e-books available on IPad pushed me to install Amazon Kindle app on this device.
In my humble opinion, IBooks reading experience is better but reading Winnie-the-Pooh starts to be boring ;-)

Moreover, thanks to Amazon, I can choose to read it on several of my devices where Kindle app could installed (IPad, IPhone, PC, Android systems, etc...). Even if reading a book on a phone is not convenient at all, at least I feel that my digital rights are respected. If I loose or break my IPad and wants to buy back a Samsung tablet equipped with Android, I'll have access to my library of e-books.

Cross-device digital rights is a MUST HAVE for publishers moving to digital world. Apple can not lock readers to his devices using content created by others. It tried it in the past with music. It had to extend afterwards to deliver MP3 versions of music.

You will argue that I could read some books on iBooks and some others on Kindle. And you are right. But today, in my mind, I can accommodate the user experience of Kindle and prefer to have future-safe digital rights. So next time, I'll first search on Kindle.

For newspaper, I also experience the "content is king" assertion. I subscribed to a newspaper quite limited application - even painful from a user experience point-of-view. However, I renewed my subscription to keep access to the content which I find useful.
On the side of cross-device digital rights, I'm blocked. Even if I have a subscription on my IPad, I can not read it through my Android phone. I consider this as unacceptable since I already paid for accessing this content.

When will iBook be open, when will newspaper support cross-device digital rights ?
To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

Microsoft Kinect - some good reasons why a "Kinect app store" could be soon announced

Microsoft could be the Santa Claus of the year thanks to its Kinect - a visual motion detection system combined with XBox360 to replicate Wii gaming experience without any remote control/wimote. A "Kinect app store" could have a huge impact on the overall multimedia and communication market.

Despite the fight between main smartphone manufacturers to federate application developers around their app store in mobile arena, Microsoft still applies the classical game console business model where the top-5 game editors provide a large part of the content. Zune will be the content platform. No signs of app store ... until now.

However, a "Kinect app store" would definitely re-position Microsoft against different kinds of competitors :

Against kings of smartphone apps. This would give Microsoft a first mover advantage against a possible extension of Apple or Google on TV. Both companies federate a large community of developers and already have thousands of apps available. Both Apple and Google could create home devices running their portfolio of apps on TV.

Against game console manufacturers. This would rapidly build the largest portfolio of console games. Of course, Sony & Nintendo could react but both companies don't have any experience with support of large communities of developers. Microsoft support developers for 2 decades. Of course, this would push Microsoft to some compromises in the way they currently deal with developers.

Against telco and SetTopBox vendors in the small IPTV market. Leveraging their leading position in IPTV, Microsoft could propose SetTopBox extensions/migration scenarios for consumers to benefit of these apps. Most of SetTopBox devices hardware setup is today probably too weak to support this kind of local applications, especially if it was not foreseen from day-1. Moreover, Microsoft significantly reduced the price of basic XBox. Simple SetTopBoxes are doomed to disappear.

It's obvious that KIN and KINECT have same roots. There is no coincidence. KIN project on mobile is perhaps delayed, waiting for Microsoft to focus on home during 6-12 months, develop an app position on this market and bring a compatible smartphone afterwards. Microsoft would then be the first player addressing the whole scope of multi-screen.

But even the large Microsoft is too small to develop all applications for this potential. Moreover, leveraging a community of developer largely supports the development of a device during beginning of this 21st century. So Microsoft probably has interest to delegate app development to developer communities. Apple paved the way of developer federation. Google proved that this model can be copied. Microsoft can then smartly activate developer communities, which has been his territory during last two decades, seeding their multimedia app portfolio from TV green field instead of overcrowded mobile arena.

Launching a KIN in June this year did not indeed make sense in this scenario. No obvious reasons for consumers to buy KIN now. If Kinect is a success, rules of the game then change and a complementary mobile phone then fully applies for young consumers and thus solve the issues addressed in this post and in this post.

Another market analysis published these days shows that consumers, when buying a new TV set, more focus on online connectivity than on 3D features. So consumers are demanding an Internet TV model.

Until today, this "Kinect app store" scenario still is an assumption. On the other hand, the fact that TV landscape and ecosystem will drastically evolve in the coming 5 years is a given.

So, game console manufacturers, telco vendors, smartphone vendors, gaming software editors have some time to prepare a battle plan taking the "Kinect app store" scenario into account. Telecom and cable operators would also be well inspired to analyse such a scenario.

Because, for all these players, there are so many things to do to anticipate possible next moves of the dinosaur.

To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

Racer mobile phone - the name of the winners not written in the press release

Racer, the new Android phone sold below symbolic threshold of 100 UK Pounds, produced by ZTE and distributed by 3-UK, has been announced this week. This is probably an important milestone in the mobile phone history. Funny enough, the name of the true winners is not written in the press releases.

The announcement indicates an important smart complementary offer; 3UK granting a volume data bucket of 150MB for top-up on a prepaid account.

3UK and ZTE are obviously mentioned in the press release.

Through this launch, 3UK, desperately tries to attack its strong competitors with an appealing offer for youngsters. Vodafone, T-Mobile/Orange and O2 are able to follow when they decide. If the phone is a success, it's just a question of months to come back to a similar balance between telco players on the island.

On the other hand, ZTE makes a step towards a position in the top-5 mobile phone manufacturers but there is still a long long way to run.

Funny enough, the name of the big winners of this important milestone is not written.

Android is mentioned but Google is not. Through its "free licensing model", Google will win the scale battle with Apple. Google copies the Windows model used by Microsoft against Apple during last century. Google does not directly produce cash through this kind of offer. But advertising inventory (display and search) will indirectly grow at an higher pace and this growth is directly linked to G revenues.

The name of the other winner is Facebook, with the same logic of increased inventory, since target of this phone is most probably youngsters, heavy Facebook users. This can be extended to myriad of mobile phone application providers.

Names of losers are rarely written in press releases.

We can not say that Apple will loose with this kind of move but it defines the borders of a profitable corner.
Apple, luxuriantly trapped by the very high value of his brand and its vertical approach - mandatory to change the game at the beginning but limiting the scale during next phases of growth -, will loose against Android in terms of mobile OS market share. As a consequence, iAds, advertising initiative from Apple, will then probably be restricted to high-end brands while Google presents a universal inventory for any brand, any shop.

This announcement now materializes another level of danger for Nokia. Lost in Symbian, Meego, Linux mobile OS announcements, Nokia is still the number one but does not manage to tease interest of developers for applications - the next criterion for people to buy a phone.

Moreover, the whole telco market could start to see ARPU (average revenue per user) declining faster at this stage. Through this offer with such a pricing for device and data, number of data users could reach a tipping point where messaging traffic could start to significantly migrate from charged SMS to free instant messaging.

This only if the Racer phone is good and is a commercial success.

To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

IPad and elderly - magic device contributing to reduce Digital divide ?

In the series, what can you do with an IPad, here is a small funny video (thanks Pascal !). Beyond this funny marriage between IPad and Velcro, I also made some experience, leaving the beast in the hands of elderly.
It's just incredible ! This is neither a quantitative study nor a qualitative one. No statistical value - just feedback. Even 70+, reluctant to use Internet, started to naturally browse with the device. Reading a book was perceived as pleasant, especially since you can increase the font size. They managed to write an email (an address, a subject, a text) and read other ones. Gestures were perceived as very natural. Watching video was also nice but will not replace TV screen - too small for long period of time. Photos were naturally appreciated, not only due to the device but also due to the persons appearing on pictures.

As you see, no complain about lack of video camera, USB ports or slots for memory cards as you can expect ;-) The single negative comment was about the wastage - the back of the page you turn in iBooks is white. Apple could have printed both sides of pages. What a wastage of paper !

A study published in France states that 85% of persons who want to buy an IPad don't know the capabilities and have no idea about what they will actually do when they'll receive it. Funny to see that persons who don't necessarily want an IPad know how they would make use of it. A special kind of "Digital divide".

Just try out and share with us what you observe.
To be continued ...

Benoit

Steve Jobs has broken a thermometer. Who will offer a new, more reliable, reference ?

During last 2 years, analysts presented a lot of reports about mobile Internet usage based on AdMob public reports. Now that AdMob is thrown away from iPhone, what will be the new reference ? GSMA has a unique opportunity to take a position.

AdMob is regularly reporting Mobile Internet traffic trends for the mobile sites - traffic per device manufacturer, per country, etc... - based on measurements on mobile sites where it delivers banner ads. The last part of the sentence is important because it naturally brings a bias to the statistics. AdMob mainly delivers banner ads for small mobile Internet websites, typically with an insufficient size to maintain an internal advertising agency.

Typically, since AdMob has a very low footprint on main mobile service provider portals (Orange World, Vodafone Live or Vodafone 360) or on successful internet sites (flickR, yahoo, Google, news, etc...), these reports were probably minimizing the mobile Internet traffic generated through feature phones (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lg). Typically, due to broader "phone designed content" and/or preferential tariff, owners of feature phones were more used to crawl telco and well-known portals. This possible bias did not prevent analysts to create expensive reports from this free input.

Does this create a small or a tremendous bias ? Nobody knows the exact relevance of these reports in the past. But these reports will for sure loose any value for next issues, now that AdMob, on one hand, has been acquired by Google - a mobile OS vendor - and, on the other hand, will be prevented to deliver ads on iPhone.

So, through these drastic T&Cs, Steve Jobs has broken a thermometer. There is now a need for a new reference. GSMA could certainly become this reference.

Association of mobile service providers could aggregate local reports collected by all their members, measuring traffic in the network, on the neutral path between device and mobile web site. Perhaps these reports (aggregated measurements !) already exist but they are then published with a serious lack of impact. Mobile service providers could play the role of neutral party, providing totally unbiased reports, guiding the whole industry : device manufacturers, web designers, application developers and even end-users in the choice for an efficient phone. These measurements could even be monetized through more advanced reports sold to large Internet players, specialized analyst offices or governments willing to measure "digital divide".

Moreover, at the contrary of some other available measurements created in some countries (ComScore, Nielsen, national advertising associations, etc...), mainly done for advertising purpose, these GSMA measurements would also measure traffic on "ad free" sites.

Will the community of mobile service providers take this unique opportunity to become a reference or will they leave other players become a reference in their own garden ?

To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

IPad - not sure paper will disappear tomorrow

For 4 months, due to IPad, we read a lot of information about newspapers and magazines moving digital. Notepod creatively surfs on the wave the other direction ... Nice idea !

Notepod proposes block of sheets of paper with IPad and IPod format/dimensions so that designer can sketch screens at 1:1 scale, reducing the risk for bad design.

Paper probably stays for a while the best medium when you design a screen alone or with your colleagues around a physical table.

We will see how much time this "while" will stay.
To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

IPad 3G & impacts for mobile service providers

IPad 3G will force mobile service providers to rethink some of their mobile Internet offerings or face huge number of complaints reaching their customer care. User experience has a volume cost.

Beside the known impact of IPad for mobile service providers with the need to support micro SIM cards - the single format supported by the magic device, another phenomenon touches volume and bandwidth consumption.

Today, we see two different trends in terms of Mobile Internet offerings on the two sides of Atlantic ocean. On one hand, we see in Europe mobile service providers extending their offering towards unlimited offers (however never truly unlimited). On the other hand, AT&T and Verizon start to limit the previously true unlimited.

IPad creates a higher demand in terms of volume and bandwidth. As an intermediate device between PC and mobile, offering an incredible browsing & multimedia user experience, IPad requires HD websites, increases consumption of pictures and videos (Facebook, Picasa, Youtube, etc...). It's just another scale compared with "pocket size" devices.
Moreover, footprint of IPad applications is exploding. Wired magazine, presented end May, offers a very nice magazine but the price to pay, beyond the app store price, is the download of about 500 MB - yes half a gigabyte. BMW also offers a very nice free magazine, containing beautiful pictures and very design layout, but requires download of 157 MB. Each page is a high definition picture.

We can thus guess that a 2GB offering per month will be the bear minimum for an IPad 3G consumption. Or consumers will have to quickly figure out, before their first bill, that they primarily should download applications and consume Internet through home WiFi networks.
If telecom service providers do not adapt their offerings and do not warn consumers to take care of their IPad usage (through a continuous monitoring of the "connectivity icon"), this could lead to severe increase of complaints - as it happened for iPhone bought without special subscriptions.

On the other hand, Apple would probably be nicely inspired to add some settings describing "connectivity subscriptions" within its IPad in order to suggest correct "connectivity behavior" for the benefit of their customers.

Some will say that it's only a transient situation because everything will be "always-on". This however probably requires an evolution of business model to finance LTE networks and scarce spectrum resources or Femto equipments. And it's only the beginning since iPhone 4 also comes with a better screen.

The answer to the question "who will pay for the volume ?" is quite easy : "obviously the consumer !". The actual questions are more "who will charge for the volume ?", "will this volume cost be disguised or not for the consumer ?"
To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen

Steve Jobs and the publishers

With the creation of the famous IPad tablet, Steve Jobs gives an incredible opportunity to press industry. This industry must certainly leverage the power of these devices but does not need to give all the power to the enlighten despot.

"Steve Jobs and the publishers". It sounds as the name of a rock band but it's not. It's the title of the story that we live for a few months.

Early January, CES Las Vegas, all device manufacturers were announcing their E-reader devices, all more black or white than the neighbor. All these devices would bring a revolution to press and book industry. Amazon was considered as a king based on Kindle sales figures : about 2 millions pieces everywhere in US in about 2 years.

Device manufacturers were proud of capabilities of their devices but a bit worried about info leakages or rumors around next Apple announcements. All device manufacturers were present ? There was only one missing : Apple. But Apple is not only a device manufacturer. It's a dream factory. They play at another level.

A few weeks later, Steve Jobs announced the IPad device and was demonstrating it, reading a newspaper in the sofa. Then, as usual with new devices from Apple, started an unbelievable hype period where press world has been shaken. One company announcing an IPad version of its magazine every week. Model was clear for Steve Jobs. As an angel saving press industry, he deserves a sales commission of 30% on all sales as it happens for music on iTunes.

Then came announcement of Murdoch - the pope of the English written press through NewsCorp religion : Washington Post news would not be bought through Apple but readers would download a free app and pay for news usage within the app, not through Apple. Moreover, the app proposed a better user experience than New York Times - the preferred magazine of Steve - proposed through Apple.

During April and May, a lot of magazines have published their specific app to deliver content : some of them copying Murdoch model - bypassing Apple.

Steve Jobs publicly demonstrated his disappointment in front of such low loyalty from the ones he is willing to save. Steve jobs behaves as an exclusive guy. Either you are his friend and he will help you, taking an important part of your money or you become his enemy. He creates new kingdoms but wants to rule these kingdoms in all dimensions, behaving a bit as Louis XIV "le roi soleil" - playing enlighten despotism. This kind of "no compromise" attitude is definitely a key success factor when designing best products. It does not necessarily help in all aspects of business.

All polemics last months about its ruling of app store - latest one about definition of "independent advertising aggregation" (commented here) - prove that the despotism, even if enlighten, starts to federate a lot of enemies which will be ready to jump supporting Apple competitors as soon as they have recovered.

Everyone wants his devices but not under his tough conditions.

When will these competitors be ready ? Will these be smart enough to take benefit of this perceived despotism ? Will Steve smoothen his positions ?

To be continued ...

Benoit Quirynen