Apple and RIM kick everything off, as we bring you the breaking news from MWC in Barcelona. Adobe says Flash is going well too.. but is it? The 'Nokindows" no-show troubles analysts.. LG 3D phone, and a tablet.. Plus Twitter's CEO on Google and more
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Day 1 of Mobile World Congress is off with a bang: none of this waiting for starters' orders nonsense.
Straight out of the blocks:
? The Company That Is Not Here, Apple, is reported to be working on an "iPhone mini". That's a rumour that has been around for ages, but what's different this time is that it has come out of the Wall Street Journal, and in particular from writer Yukari Iwatani Kane, who has had the inside track on lots of Apple stories in the past. "Apple works on line of less-expensive iPhones" neatly avoids that "cheap" word, but has some tantalising details:
"One of the people, who saw a prototype of the phone late last year, said it is intended for sale alongside Apple's existing line. The new device would be about half the size of the iPhone 4, which is the current model."
As a strategy, it sounds very like the one that Apple adopted with the iPod - where it established itself solidly and then began to grab more of the market via price and feature segmentation with the iPod mini onwards. The question is, what features can Apple leave out of the existing iPhone to justify a cheaper - sorry, less expensive - iPhone?
? RIM, the company that Nokia's Stephen Elop keeps not mentioning (he implies that the only ecosystems that exist are Apple, Android and Windows Phone), has announced more unicorns. I mean, forthcoming products. Even though there isn't a ship date or price yet for the first PlayBook (I'll be asking them for something later today), it's got more on the way:
"Research In Motion today announced plans to launch two additional BlackBerry 4G PlayBook tablets during the second half of 2011, featuring support for LTE and HSPA+ high speed wide area wireless networks."
Also - in your face, Elop -
"Research In Motion today announced that BlackBerry App World is now available in 27 additional markets worldwide. With today's announcement, BlackBerry App World is now available in 101 markets. BlackBerry App World allows customers to discover, download and enjoy a wide range of mobile applications for their BlackBerry smartphones." Plus: "Research In Motion today announced plans for an innovative mobile gifting platform for carriers that will allow one authorized BlackBerry subscriber to use their post-paid or pre-paid account to conveniently, securely and instantly approve and pay for airtime, apps or other carrier services requested by another BlackBerry subscriber." And finally: "Research In Motion and the BlackBerry Partners Fund today announced that RIM is making a lead commitment to BlackBerry Partners Fund II, a new US$150 million independent venture capital fund focused exclusively on mobile computing. BlackBerry Partners Fund II is expected to launch in June 2011 and will have a broader international mandate than the first Fund."
? Actually, Elop was asked specifically about RIM/BlackBerry on Sunday evening. Here's the question and answer, via Engadget (Nokia's new favourite blog, which has been favoured with leaks of the burning platform memo and internal Nokia mockups of a "Nokindows Phone 7"):
7:07PM Q: "Do you not feel threatened at all by BlackBerry?" Elop: "We believe that with the work we've done already with our lower-priced devices, combined with the business capabilities of Microsoft, we have a very strong competitive position relative to everyone in the environment."
Near-Field Communications (NFC) is getting to be a big subject too. Here's Samsung, which has its Bada platform (one of the other platforms Elop didn't mention) pushing NFC in its new handset:
Samsung Electronics Co today announced the Samsung Wave 578 at Mobile World Congress 2011. The new bada handset is equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) connectivity, sleek, user-friendly design, and runs on bada, Samsung's own smartphone platform.
Simon Stanford, Managing Director, Mobile, Samsung UK and Ireland said: "The Samsung Wave 578 handset combines sleek design with fantastic features, including super quick WiFi connectivity and NFC, on a really user friendly device. This handset enhances our expanding bada platform portfolio."
Samsung Wave 578 features Near Field Communication (NFC) ? a technology that makes many innovative services possible such as mobile payment at shops, paying transport fares, reading tags and getting mobile coupons, direct on the handset. The Samsung Wave 578 also has the fast connectivity around with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, and USB 2.0, for fast data rates and easy information sharing.
Availability is from May 2011. Come on, anyone out there knowingly got a bada-based handset? (It does sound like the sort of thing Tony Soprano would own, doesn't it?)
Adobe meanwhile is getting its own nyah-nyah at Apple, announcing that Flash is getting a promising uptake on mobile phones. (You'll recall that Apple does not ship Flash on any of its iOS-based devices - iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.)
At Mobile World Congress, Adobe Systems Incorporated announced that developers and content publishers can now deploy Adobe� AIR� applications to more than 84m smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS. Thousands of applications have been created and made available on Android Market and Apple's App Store to date. By the end of 2011, Adobe expects more than 200m smartphones and tablets to support Adobe AIR applications. For examples of popular AIR applications for Android and iOS, visit m.flash.com.
Well, of course we will. But what has the uptake been like?
Adobe announced that more than 20m smartphones were shipped or upgraded with Adobe� Flash� Player 10.1 software on over 35 certified devices in the first six months following the launch. For 2011, the company expects Flash Player to be supported on more than 132m units worldwide. More than 50 tablets are expected to support Flash Player this year alone. Using Adobe Creative Suite� 5 tools, over three million Adobe Flash Platform developers are now able to author content across a substantial number of devices for both Flash Player and AIR.
"We are thrilled to see mobile adoption of Flash Player and AIR exceeding even our own expectations, with much more to come in the months ahead," said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Creative and Interactive Solutions Business Unit, Adobe. "This is tremendous progress toward ensuring that mobile users everywhere have access to their favorite content from casual games to Web video and enterprise applications regardless of what device they are using. And, our CS5 customers are excited about the ability to easily extend their creative work across millions of mobile devices."
OK, so Flash appears to be getting into mobile phones in a big way - which ought not to be a surprise, given the speed with which ARM-based chipsets and processors are moving: this year if you don't have a dual-core ARM processor running at more than 1GHz on your shiny new phone, then you look a bit last year.
But let's put the numbers into some context. Number of smartphones (as defined by analysts) shipped last year: around 300m, of which slightly less than 50m were from Apple. So that's 250m smartphones shipped where the maker didn't outright ban Flash. Nokia shipped 100m of those; it's not clear how many of those were able to run Flash. Assume it was around 75%. So you probably have a target market for Flash Player of about 225m. Of those, Adobe is saying that about 20m had Flash Player 10.1. If the Nokia figure is upside-down, and you assume only 25% of Nokia devices could play Flash, then you have a target market of 175m. Even so, 20m looks surprisingly low in that context.
And then there's the followup: "For 2011, the company expects Flash Player to be supported on more than 132m units worldwide." If you look at a smartphone market that last year grew by 74%, and if you expect it to continue at that rate - or even if you go for a lower rate such as 50% - then that's a total smartphone market of 450m smartphones (on a 50% growth rate), or 525m at 75% growth.
Subtract Apple's share - assume it remains steady at around 15%, which gives you 67.5m or 79m, depending on the growth rate - and you have an addressable market of 382.5m (at 50% growth), or 446m (75% growth).
And Adobe is only expecting Flash to be supported on 132m of those? That's only 34% or 29% of the smartphone handsets where the manufacturer hasn't ruled out Flash. It begins to look less impressive when you put it like that. The question suddenly becomes: why isn't Flash as pervasive as it is on the desktop?
More on the rumours about a Facebook phone from HTC: T3 has a piece in which Facebook kinda-sorta doesn't deny it:
Dan Rose, Facebook's head of business development, told a gathering of hacks yesterday that such a phone simply didn't exist. "The rumours around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown."
Oh, so it doesn't exist?
He added, "This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs and integrated them into their device in an interesting way." When asked flat out if the phone would be Facebook-branded, Rose answered with an emphatic, "No."
Oh, so he means it does exist, but it won't have the Facebook logo on it. Got ya.
(By the way the timestamps here are local time in Barcelona, which is on CET, an hour ahead of London. It's not like I've invented a time machine or something.)
Some more for Nokia: the shares are taking a further hammering this morning - down another 3.7%, following the substantial 16% drop on Friday. Analysts seem to think that the fact that there is no promise of a "Nokindows" (shall we copyright that?) phone this year (Jo Harlow, the newly-promoted head of Nokia's smart devices division, only said on Sunday that "I can't tell you when, but my boss has told me he would be much happier if that time was in 2011." That may mean that it's not going to happen in time to prevent everyone and their smartphone-buying dog from migrating to someone else.
As Reuters reports:
"Elop likened the plan to leaping from a burning platform, but Nomura analysts responded: "It's a long way down" and said the fact Nokia was so uncertain that it could not give a 2011 outlook made the stock "hard to own" over the next 12 months."
The share are now at their lowest level since August 2010. "The chief executive will suffer from a lack of credibility among investors for a long time, fixing that will be a major task," said Swedbank analyst Jari Honko, cutting his recommendation on Nokia to "sell" from "buy".
As Andrew Orlowski (who has long followed Symbian and Nokia) asks pertinently over at The Register, what happened to all the confidence shown a week ago, when Nokia's stock rose in expectation of this tieup? Now they've got the tieup, why is everyone selling?
Here's why: because the analysts expected Elop to jump out of a cake on Friday brandishing at least two working Nokindows phones. Instead, he came up bearing a wad of P45s for Nokia staff, a stake through the heart for Symbian, and with only some vague assurances about shipping Nokindows "in volume" in 2012. Which could mean the end of 2012.
"I believe Nokia's smartphone sales will go down by some 20% for the rest of the year. They will lose a lot of market share," said Nordea analyst Sami Sarkamies, adding that the alliance could prove to be succesful in long term.
"We have lowered our Nokia smart-phone forecasts for 2011 by 7% and we are concerned by both the lack of preparation the industry/employees appear to have had (some key suppliers weren't told, operators were given 24-48 hours and Nokia's employees 0-72 hours)," UBS analyst Gareth Jenkins said. "We expect significant technological and re-organisational disruption in the next twelve months of transition."
Others pointed out that Microsoft's experience in the mobile phone market did not bode well. "Nokia is...handing responsibility for its user interface to Microsoft, which has a poor track record in this area, and giving access to its innovations to key rivals," said Stuart Jeffrey at Nomura in a research note.
Ouch. Poor track record? Still, Microsoft can point to the success of all its previous strategic alliances with other phone companies. Or, um, as Horace Dediu at Asymco points out, actually it can't. LG, Motorola, Palm, Nortel, Verizon, Ericsson, Sendo and Nokia itself back in 2009 - a deal made by some guy called, it says here, Elop. The plan: to bring "Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications, collaboration and device management software to Nokia's Symbian devices." Yup, real barnstormers, all of them. That's quite scary context: if Microsoft makes this work, it will be the first time such an alliance has succeeded.
LG is offering, wait, a 3D smartphone? Called the Optimus 3D, it will mean
consumers will be able to watch 3D videos without wearing special glasses as well as capture 3D content themselves via a special double camera on the back of the phone.
James Cameron will be pleased.
"For users to be able to create content will be paramount to reach a critical mass in 3D content," said Daniel Hernandez, LG director of product marketing in Europe. "We believe this phone will act as a catalyst to create the 3D mobile industry."
Minor technical point: you can only catalyse something that's already there (catalysts aid a reaction between two reagents while not themselves being changed by it). Sort of assumes that the demand is there. Colour me slightly sceptical.
In order to make it easier for consumers to share 3D content online, LG said it has struck a partnership with popular online video channel YouTube.
Here's the details:
? Glasses-free LCD panel for 3D viewing
? Record, watch and game
? 3D enabling dualcore processor TI OMAP 4
? Full HD 2D (1080p) / 3D (720p) video playback
? 4.3" stereoscopic screen
? Dual stereoscopic 5MP cameras
? Mini HDMI output
? YouTube 3D
? 3 Pre-loaded games
and Android, of course. (What, not Microsoft? "In February 2009 Microsoft Corp. signed a multiyear agreement for Windows Mobile to be included on devices from LG Electronics Inc. LG would use Windows Mobile as its "primary platform" for smartphones and produce about 50 models running the software." Well, perhaps two years is "multiyear" and so the agreement expired..)
Comment from Stephen Shankland of CNet: "LG wouldn't give a straight answer on the effect 3D display will have on battery life in the Optimus 3D. My guess: it can't help."
Our old friends Mr Pricing and Mr Availability haven't yet hoved into view, but the phone will be available from Three in the UK whenever it does.
LG also announced a tablet - the 8.9-inch Optimus Pad, to run Android Honeycomb (whenever that appears) "which LG stressed would make it easier to pick up with only one hand, in comparison to other, larger tablets on the market." Uh-huh. It has dual 5MP cameras on the back for recording 3D content but can't play it back directly - though you can to a 3D TV. Specs: dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 32GB of internal storage, 6400mAh battery, 243mm x 149.4mm 12.8mm, weight 630g, "making it 100g lighter than Apple's iPad." And slightly smaller, obviously, compared to a 9.7-inch screen.
Mr Pricing is MIA but Mr Availability is apparently "March in some markets".
MarketWatch has some apposite comment on tablets from an analyst:
"U.K.-based consultancy CCS Insight believes it's only a niche and predicted that only 44 million tablets will be sold in 2011, compared to over 1.5 billion mobile phones.
"If Apple maintains its current trajectory, it's likely to sell around 30 million iPads, leaving a meager 14 million units for the rest of the market to share," CCS Insight analysts said in a note published last week.
"With Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, HTC, LG, Motorola, Research in Motion and many others chasing the opportunity, we expect there to be some big losers," they added.
Dick Costolo of Twitter is keynoting. (Sorry, missed Steve Ballmer's - but the slides were the same as at CES, so I'm suspecting it wasn't revelatory.)
Costolo says you can ask him a question by tweeting @dickc with the hashtag #askdick. Of you go.
"Our mission for Twitter - when you create value for your users that value will be returned to you multifold." Quotes Steve Jobs saying "you can't connect the dots looking forware, you can only doing it looking backwards, and that's what we believe at Twitter."
Quoting lessons from Digicel Haiti where Twitter helped earthquake victims.
"Our mission: instantly connect people everywhere to what's most meaningful to them."
Beautiful sunset picture, tweet "What a day.. in more ways than one" - user @choppedonion. "Maybe a friend or a loved one knows that there's more meaning that than in it."
"I was at a conference and an executive was asked what he thought of Twitter and he said 'why should I care if someone goes to the dentist, I don't even go to the dentist'. What that notion of Twitter misses is that there's a social aspect. It makes no difference that there's 100m raindrops in the day, some will have meaning to me."
Showing the famous image of the Hudson plane "landing" from the ferry: "This tweet became so newsworthy and so meaningful that it escaped the social context, but 99% of them are around it."
40% of all tweets are created from mobile devices, and 50% of all active Twitter users are active on more than one platform. Twitter needs to be super-simple and it needs to be always present, it needs to be like water in my home. Instantly useful. Always present, I don't need to relearn how to use it in the shower after using it in the kitchen."
Talking to networks about deep smartphone integration and stronger text messaging integration.
"If a user comes to Twitter and makes a couple of social connections they are far more likely to stay with it? and create an interest graph, following accounts that don't follow them back like a football team or a small business."
"We've got to shorten the distance between awareness of Twitter and engagement with Twitter, and at the moment that distance is so great you can't see it without corrective lenses."
"Medvedev started using Twitter and was welcomed by the White House.. we're very happy for that."
"More and more users on Twitter aren't tweeting when they come to the platform. So what we're doing now is understanding that many users coming to Twitter are here for the consumption experience, they hear about it on the news or in an advert promoting a Twitter account, so again as we work with mobile operators to create a more simple embedded experience, we'll see more engaged users on all of your platforms. "
Max tweets in Superbowl 4,000, during 3,000, compared to 2008 when it was 28 max.
Max ever Japanese new year 6,000 per second.
"People have talked about interactive TV and a second screen experience forever."
"We're seeing now that the second screen is twitter. It already exists. Before the TV executives are doing anything about it."
"Tweets about Glee go up 30x and they stay there until the moment the show ends when they drop back down to their background level."
"We're already making money".
References Al-Jazeera adverts running on Twitter.
Events in North Africa and Middle East. "we were blocked in Egypt for a while just like we're blocked in China. But people live in the desert because people know how to find a way to water. And where Twitter is blocked you just challenge people to find another way to use it."
Reiterates "instantly connect people with whatever's meaningful to them."
"There's been a lot of discussion about the importance of these platforms and that takes away from what these people [in the mid-east] have accomplished."
"All we care about is ensuring that we're instantlyconnectingpeopleeverywherewithwhat'smostmeaningfultothem."
Said like that.
BPGlobal: social satire, if we're providing an outlet... that's driving meaning to our users. "And finally" (for about the tenth time)
Cites Chinese artists Ai We Wei and his sunflower seed display. He calls it an interpretation of Twitter and the intimate connections, if you look at the detail you don't see Twitter you just see detail, and if you back out.
"we'll be successful if we're instant, simple and always present."
"So simple you don't have to think about us, and then we'll be like water... and all we'll see if each other." Ends the formal part of the speech.
Twitter's biggest fear? Not competitors, lack of execution,.
Over 130m tweets per day, couple months ago 100m.
Just need to execute..
Trends: got work to do on local relevance, bunch of work to do on local trends. Will see more progress on that in the immediate term and more later this year.
One of the challenges has been multi-word trends, and we've cracked that now.
What's next? All we need to do is continue what we're doing, and simplify the service.
How monetise? We have three products, will offer more this year. Promoted trends, tweets, accounts. Allow companies to enhance the way they're already working with Twitter.
Trends - trending topics allows company to promote something that people already starting to talk about. Toy Story 3 - people were starting to buzz about it so we allowed Disney to pay for 11th spot on the trends list.
Tweet - any company can tweet a message out to followers, but promoted means if people searching for something then it's their tweet. Way we deal with quality is "resonance" - has to be an organic tweet, we know what tweets and follow rates, if their promoted tweet doesn't rise to a certain threshold and it doesn't appear.
Accounts - on the RHS of the site we promote 3 organic accounts, based on who they follow. And allow people to promote accounts to people who share their interests.
Did you promote celebs to get users?
"We don't go out of our way to promote famous people. We had suggested user lists, so there are some accounts that have millions of followers because they were in the suggested user list, it's only if you have a couple of social connections that you drive engagement, putting 20 random people in someone's timeline doesn't help."
"Biggest mistake? The founders will laugh about this and tell you they shot themselves in the head and foot, not hiring fast enough, not scaling fast enough, I would say those are the things that have caused us not to catch up to the growth fast enough."
Don't yet have right-to-left languages.
Q: used more actively outside countries against totalitarian regimes? Eg Iran?
"There was an amplification outside Iran... but in current events we have seen dramatic increases in use inside those countries, looking at growth curves of signups in the middle east it's a dramatic usage, current events probably little different than how it was used in Iran."
"The Guardian had an article saying it's the voice of the people.. but will it be voice of revolution of social media cash cow..while I don't particularly favour social media cash cow as a description, if we can provide meaning around a conversation both those things are possible." Yay for reading the Guardian (actually, Observer.)
Twitter-branded smarthone? No. Believe there's need in existing ones.
How more deeply integrate into smartphones and carriers, and can Google afford a $10bn acquisition?
"What I would love on Android now when you take a photo, integration means you can tweet the photo. What I would like are more single signon experiences and ability to sign on directly. Those things which remove veneer from Twitter and the complexity of using it."
"Re second question, people write that stuff down all the time, I'll tell you - it was reported in the LA Times. Steve Ballmer and I had breakfast and I said there's a small restaurant on the 4th floor or someone will write about us merging. And on that morning there was a conference in the room next door... I don't know where these things come from, it's just a rumour."
[Yes, but what was the breakfast about?]
And that's it. All done from Dick Costolo, chief executive of Twitter. Thanks for joining us today. More MWC tomorrow.
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