Apple - the end of the affair

When shareholders come first, you know innovation is not the priority. Mirroring Microsoft's decision to fork out billions from its war chest to the market years ago, Apple officialized the end of vision-driven business.

I know the talk of the town is rather if AAPL, GOOG, or PCLN can break the $1,000 barrier, but if I were a long term investor in the compay, I wouldn't feel happy.

My only worry: I hope the stock will not fall too soon. If Apple coughs, the Nasdaq plunges. I don't mind if Wall Street takes a dip, but I'm not okay if it leads to a November defeat for Obama.


mot-bile 2012

tech+ 2011

If I had received one Korean won each time the name of Steve Jobs was pronounced yesterday at the 2011 tech+ forum, I'd probably be a few million bucks richer today.

The thing is, the late Apple founder used to herald the convergence of humanities and technology, and that's precisely what this forum is all about : tech+ stands for technology, economy, culture, and human, wrapped up in / multiplied n-fold by resolute optimism (the final +).

While I'm at acronyms : the event was organized by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), and the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE). Overall, 7,000 people showed up at Kyung Hee University's Grand Peace Palace, an impressive cathedral overlooking the splendid campus at its autumnal best.

Day 2 featured no less than 9 keynote speakers and a final wrap-up speech, but time flew seamlessly thanks to perfectly rhythmed transitions. A refreshing change from the usual verbose introductions : dynamic animations on a giant screen launching each speaker like a rock star.

Actually, the most convincing orator happened to be an expert in music : Stanford University's Ge Wang rocked the audience with his musical demos, winning more than a few hearts with his 'Ocarina' version of Arirang. The young Chinese professor delivered the ultimate stevejobsian show : same black top, same beard stubble, same voice pitch, and same gadgets (iPhone, iPad, imCool). Even his Center for Computer Research in Music and Accoustic (Stanford's CCRMA) echoes Steve's sense of Karma. But Ge Wang is a truly original and passionate individual, with an universe of his own (inhabited by such Zorgians as Smule, ChucK, MoPho, or SLOrk*). Bonus: unlike "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named", absolutely not arrogance whatsoever ! Bonus redux: an almost Mozartian touch (short high pitched laughters very reminiscent of Milos Forman's Amadeus). In a nutshell : the inspirational leader every innovating team loves to follow.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Hyundai Motors R&D VP's presentation was almost bad PR for the company. Since I've got the charisma of an anvil on stage, I can't blame him for not being as fun as Ge, but innovation is certainly not about repeating 'convergence' like a mantra without obviously understanding the word, and stamping it on every page of the company's catalog (I'm pretty sure these guys recycle always the same slides with a different keyword depending on the flavor of the month : 'well being', 'ubiquitous', 'premium'...?). Likewise, SK Planet's presentation reminded me of countless shows I attended fifteen years ago, introducing the next deja vu netco with a complete line-up of me-too applications (this time: Sundew, musicBunk, StyleTag, DishPal, Facecard, StarCall).

OK. I'm a more than demanding audience as far as innovation is concerned, but the least you expect is people really enjoying and believing in what they do. So everybody welcomed Yon Namgoong, another man of music and member of the Stevejobsian Adventist Church, and a true model for Korean students who massively attended the event: yes, you can succeed and have an impact, even if you didn't go all the way to the university. Yes, Korea needs to make more room for creative people with diverse backgrounds and a contagious eagerness to share. Yon was clearly more relevant when he developed interesting concepts bridging music with technology than when he interpreted corporate strategies, but did he have fun playing drum on stage !

Significantly, Ge and Yon delivered the same key messages through similar quotes about the evolution of technology : Ben Shneiderman for the hairy Chinese (old computing is about what computers can do / new computing is about what people can do), and the power shift for the bald Korean (power used to come from owning the tool, now it's about how you use it). Both pitches were clearly in the strike zone for the forum's "Technology@me" agenda.

Jay Elliot's job was basically to make sure we didn't forget to mention the late Jobs, and his qualities as a true leader in innovation. From a man who worked closely with him and other giants at IBM or Intel, a rather pleasant chat by the fireplace (i.e. Ge Wang's virtual lighter app for iPhone).

Neither Richard Florida nor Zhong Qui Wang brought disruptive insights either, but it's always useful to remind Korean corporations that stress can be counterproductive, and that staff shouldn't be considered as mere cost centers (and not only in R&D units). I guess Zhong must have an even tougher time trying to convince 'nouveau riche' Chinese entrepreneurs of the virtues of frugality and other Lao Tseuities...

What else ? I wish the 'creative space' presentations had reached deeper because there's so much to say about urbanism and architecture in a 'tech+' perspective for this country, but that leaves more threads to pull for future editions.

I don't know about Steve's second coming, but I'll be back.

mot-bile 2011 (also on Seoul Village : "tech+ 2011 - technology@me"

* respectively the company for which he serves as CTO, a sound programming language, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, the Mobile Phone Orchestra.

Steve's Wonders

The first computer I owned was a Mac. That was back in 1989. I switched for my third one, but even now I keep a special affection for Apple.

I'm not a member of the Stevejobs Adventist Church and I never quite liked the guy, but I always respected the innovator.

Not the inventor but the innovator, the person who decisively accelerates the adoption of something new. People like to quote Steve Jobs quoting Picasso ("good artists copy, great artists steal"), or to remember how he "stole" Xerox's inventions (the windows interface later copied by Microsoft, the mouse)... Nokia and others could argue the Apple Store and iPhone borrowed more than a few characteristics but you've got the general idea : the company suing Samsung & co is not exactly the Saint it pretends to be.

Of course, Steve Jobs was not the only brain in Cupertino, and not the man who brought up new ideas. Of course, his fingerprints will be all over Apple's releases for the next few years, and the company has the money to remain a top competitor far beyond that.

But Apple lost the heck of a decision maker.

Innovating is about making decisions, trading-off at all levels (time to market, availability of key features, readiness of distribution channels...)... and this is the fastest-changing of all environments. Steve Jobs knew when to say no and when to say go. He could launch the first iPhone in 2G because he knew he could count on the customer appetence for the brand (a key asset built over years and perfectly entertained by the King of Hype), and because he had to leverage on the iPod / iTunes momentum without waiting for competitors to soak the market with 3G novelties. But some decisions must have been tougher, and future decision makings will be tougher without him.

It's time for Apple to expose its real innovation engine. We don't necessarily need to hear it roar now and then, but constant purring would be a nice surprise.

mot-bile 2011

Apple employee walks into a bar...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Again, an Apple employee walks into a bar, where he leaves unattended the company's latest prototype (this time a tablet*).

Highest stage of incompetence or ultimate marketing genius ? This incident feeds the buzz and tells the whole industry nothing has changed in Cupertino following Steve Jobs' resignation.

Want to hear the latest Polish joke ? Steve Wozniak walks into a bar of justice with a Samsung lawyer...

mot-bile 2011

* probably an iPad with a very Random Access Memory

Huawei Vision : a view from the cloud

Huawei Vision runs on Android 2.3 but comes with a 160 Gigabyte spot in the cloud for every owner, positioning the Chinese player at the strategic gateway between that soft spot and its own hardware (scheduled for September in China, along with 4G). Apps agregation starts with the usual suspects : music, images or video that you may not want to transfer forever from laptop to laptop or to XX century storage solutions (ie CDs, DVDs).

Hardly disruptive : Alibaba just launched a similar concept, and of course Apple made a splash with its iCloud earlier this year. But Huawei was supposed to be essentially about hardware.

Sounds like that business model may not be sustainable anymore. Clouds may pass in the sky, replaced with new UFOs, but the truth is starting to sink in : smartphones are not much smarter than computers, and differenciation is getting more and more difficult every year. Worse : product cycles are even shorter and being cool never lasts long.

Food for thought for Samsung, who's been threatened by the Nokia syndrome even before claiming the leadership in handsets. But at least the Finns did venture into new business models. Never forget that OVI preceded Apple's App Store iOs by one year.

Of course, back then, Jorma Ollila was already gone, and Steve Jobs still cool.


mot-bile 2011

Motorola's Android Tablet : Focus On TV (Apple, Amazon, Others Watching)

Motorola and Android have already met, but Motorola and tablets are a new item.

The 10 inch screen device would be bundled with Verizon FiOS TV (pay-TV) service, which makes perfect sense. Much more sense than say Nokia, to name a fabled marketing counter-example... Let's see how rivals will move, for instance how Samsung will position its own Android tablet, smaller in size but with a screen of potentially much better quality, and a better grasp at personal computing.

But this is first about entertainment, and Verizon takes and interesting shot in the convergence barnum. Most quadplay operators across the World have necessarily been, if not working on, at least thinking about a "tabletish" gizmo to complete the set of home / away screens, and if people start (for instance) massively and legally downloading and watching movies with an Android 3.0 / 3G ticket on their tablet this November, xmas season looks fine...

Except maybe for Amazon : expect even more push marketing until then... unless of course Jeff Bezos manages to stevejobs a new Kindle feature high up into the buzzosphere.


mot-bile 2010

iAdMobsters and multitaskers

Apple will take a 40% for all ads on its new advertising platform : iAd.

Google will gobble AdMob (whose moto happens to be "Enriching Mobile") with the benediction of regulators on the grounds that Quattro Wireless* + iAd = Google left some room to whatever's left of competitors.

iAd focuses on in-App advertising across iPhone, iPad*, and iWhatevercomesnext. Steve Jobs estimates the potential at 1 billion ad impressions per day on existing Apple devices.

Google focuses on everywhere, including iPad, iPhone, and iPutaspellonyou. It's been a long time since Big G ditched that billboard advertising "over 1 billion burgers served".

But iPhone OS 4 also offers improvements in multitasking, a word Cupertino definitely seems to be getting a grasp on.

mot-bile 2010

* snatched by Apple last January (see "SK Telecom pushes Android"). Google's purchase of AdMob last September has not been okayed yet.
** which eventually sold 450,000 units in 5 days instead of the 700,000 on day one earlier outoftheballparked by a fan (see "iFad's deliberate marketing blur") - anyway a good score. More significant : 600,000 ebooks and 3.5 M apps downloaded (iPad apps store claims 3,500 applications).

Obama considering purchasing an IPad

That's what I gathered listening to his State Of The Union speech : the POTUS said he wanted to focus on Jobs and to help the country cruise safely through this painful iPeriod.


mot-bile 2010

iLife '09 - no Jobs in sight

Steve Jobs uploaded "Hormone Imbalance" and some wonder whether it's a Wii Fit bug or the Apple Store's next killer application. Looking for clues ? SJ was not there to talk about iLife '09.

A new ultra flat TV screen for Samsung, a web enabled Broadband HDTV for LG (forget about browsing but you can enjoy VOD with Netflix Watch Instantly) : Korea Inc opened its IPTV services ahead of the 2009 CES and it shows. Or kinda.

China ignited its 3G cube revolution too late or at the best possible moment... on time to bail out TD-SCDMA and China Inc anyway. About 53% of Chinese citizens don't have a mobile phone and we'll keep an eye on market shares :
- TD-SCDMA goes to leader China Mobile (over 450M customers - about 70% MS). Chinese manufacturers will have to make an effort to make competitive TD-SCDMA handsets (commercial trials only started last April)
- China Unicom inherits W-CDMA - an interesting window of opportunity, too late ?
- to China Telecom the LG Telecom curse (a CDMA2000 license)

Expect some action in Europe too. Let us see who the true survivors are.

Cool summer

One year after launching a disposable 2G prototype, Apple decided to actually deliver a decent iPhone. If you're into mobility you'll notice the HSPA and GPS tags, if you're into music you'll chose between a 8GB and a 16GB version ($199 or $299). Steve said there were cool SDK gizmos on board as well.

Orange UK's Tom Alexander is talking about marketing issues. The guy came from Virgin and his predecessor Bernard Ghillebaert from Mobistar. Mr Ghillebaert will be learning about Customer Experience at the Group level. Orange customers may be learning about the brand's fabled cool factor - 90s stuff the younger generation could dig.

And the mother of all mergers may eventually reshuffle the cards on the US market : this summer's DNC Convention in Denver could turn out to be friendlier than expected for Barack Obama. So despite Colorado's scorching heats, no sweat there either.

CES 2008 - the magic boredom

An environmental nonsense with a yearly electrical parade where people expose gadgets and all the chips nearby casinos turned down ? Exclusive features and contents that tend to turn into commodities (neon signs, Cirque du Soleil shows) ? That's Vegas, and it sounds sooo passé.

If you missed the best Western Movie Award (the flick was over even before the generic started), here's the pitch : Warner kills H.D. DeeVeeDee and picks Blu-ray.

The 15 Warholian Minutes Award went to Wistron and its GW4 Android smartphone. Google's rival didn't get as much attention, but at least those who heard about Yahoo! Go 3.0 learnt that a 1.0 and a 2.0 existed before. That was a good way of advertising about that status update feature.

And from day one, the winner of the Corniest Showman Award is Bill Gates. Yeah, the same guy who didn't realise the internet existed until 1995. Here he is now, on stage, talking about the "second digital decade"... and this great visionary sees more video and more storage ahead. I can't wait to see what other disruptive insights he'll deliver after retiring.

For Jobs on Viagra, stay tuned for at least two more decades. That will include a 5 year break to found a new pet project ("NeXt2NeXt"), and a comeback right on time for the launch of iHologram.

PS : a happy new year to you IRL