This time GSMA has decided to move the show from the middle to the end of February. Finally mobile industry professionals will be able to spend Valentines day with their loved ones, instead of hobnobbing in Barcelona. The weather, hopefully, will be better too.

To help you have productive and fun time in Spain, we have again created the “Event & party calendar for MWC 2012”. It includes press conferences and product launches, interesting keynotes & presentations at MWC conference, and, of course, the list of cool parties to unwind in the evening.

The calendar is still a work in progress. If you would like to include your event, or if you found some incorrect information about something – please leave the info in the comments, e-mail it to mwc12 at unwiredview dot com, or send a tweet to @UVStaska.

See you in Barcelona!

• Guide to Mobile World Congress 2011: Parties, Launches & Events #MWC, #MWC11
• Officially confirmed – Nokia will not exhibit at MWC 2010 in Barcelona
• Oct. 27th European Samsung Galaxy Nexus launch to crash Nokia World party again?
• iPhone 4.0 OS: event based modes, intellingent and scheduled communications
• Netvibes2Go – All Mobile Net in One Place

They were already pretty bad in the last quarter of 2011, when HTC had to issue a profit warning and then reported 30% revenue decline compared to Q3.

Now this HTC sales slump is accelerating into 2012.

January revenues just came in at 16.6B $NT ($560M), and they are a whopping 52% lower compared to January 2011. In the guidance for the January-March quarter, HTC now expects to sell NT$65-70B ($2.19-2.36B) worth of smartphones, which is more then 35% decline from $NT 104.16B ($3.5B), HTC collected in Q1 2011.

And, with January numbers as they are – I’m not at all sure that in April HTC will be able to deliver the promised revenues.

The sales in February and March will have to be much better then they were in January, to get to $NT65B for a quarter. Maybe they will. The revenue guidance for Q1 2012 includes 2% decline in gross margin and 5% decline in operating margin – which means we should see a lot of price slashing on current HTC models, and that may help drive smartphone sales. When asked about January numbers and ability to deliver on guidance, HTC CFO Winston Yung was pretty sure that they will get there.

On the other hand, in late October 2011, HTC was pretty sure about its Q4 guidance too. But 3 weeks later came out with a profit warning, nonetheless. So an additional slash in revenue forecast sometime late February or early March is not out of the question.

Another bummer in HTC’s Q4 report was the their decision to stop sharing actual smartphone shipments and average selling prices. HTC cited “competitive reasons”, and, with Samsung hiding those numbers for 3 quarters already – there is some merit to that. But the choice to seriously limit performance disclosure just as your growth stalls and your sales start falling, raises a lot of questions. Even when there aren’t any funny things in the financial numbers you reported.

And there was one very interesting detail  in HTC’s financial report. From Q3 2011 to Q4 2011, in just 3 months, HTC somehow managed to reduce their R&D expenses by 60% – from $NT5.5B ($185M) to $NT 2.2B ($74M). With the bulk of R&D costs usually related to engineering/researcher salary expenses, such a dramatic drop in such a short period looks pretty strange. And does not bode well for future product development.

Maybe today’s HTC problems are just a blip. Company execs were pretty open about the reasons for current troubles. “We simply dropped the ball on products. In form factor, design, battery life” – HTC’s CFO said during earnings conference call. And HTC’s sales were hit particularly hard in the U.S. where their LTE devices were thicker, not as good looking and had worse battery performance then competition.

HTC CFO said that they have learned their lessons from 2011, and are working hard to get back on track. This includes:

• complete reevaluation of components that go into HTC phones to improve the performance
• creation of separate “Studio” unit, staffed with designers and engineers working on new models and reporting directly to CEO Peter Chou
• putting more efforts behind fewer products. Which means reduction in number models/SKUs, with bigger promotion and marketing budgets per model
• increased focus on LTE devices, especially on improving their battery life

We’ll have to wait and see if it works.

HTC is hoping that the new product portfolio, part of which will be announced during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and ship sometime in Q2, will help to turn things around.

Maybe it will. Right now smartphones are a hit business, after all. And HTC’s Sensation bet for 2011 simply didn’t pan out. If they took last year’s lessons to heart, and will be able to come up with a new hit model that can stand up to Samsung Galaxy S3 and later iPhone 5, HTC might get their turnaround this summer.

But if  their next flagship is another dud like Sensation – by the end of 2012 HTC might be following in the footsteps of Motorola and Sony Ericsson, losing piles of money, on the way to become a smartphone division of some bigger rival.

I’m looking forward to HTC Barcelona announcements to see what they will come up with.

• HTC sees weak Christmas ahead, blames iPhone and product transition for its troubles
• iPhone sales fell in Q3, Apple may lose the No.1 smartphone maker spot to Samsung or even Nokia
• Apple Q2 financial results: 8.75M iPhones for $5.75B, 131% growth. But iPhone U.S. sales growth may be slowing
• Samsung may have shipped 35M smartphones in Q4 2011, posts record profit. HTC’s profit down
• Apple sold more iOS devices in Q4 2011 than all Androids combined, reclaims No.1 smartphone maker spot

And it is a mixed bag of goods. On the surface, the result looks pretty good, and it seems that Nokia managed to stop the free fall it experienced in the first half of last year.

But if you look closer at the reported numbers and guidance for the next quarter – things look a lot bleaker.

Nokia Q4 results. The bright side

The number that impressed me the most – was the the amount of the smartphones Nokia was able to ship in Q4. 19.6 million. It is a huge drop from 28.6 million  in the same quarter last year. But it is a huge improvement over the sales crash Nokia experienced in the beginning of this year. Which should indicate that they managed to stop the decline in smartphone volumes in Q3, at 16.8 million level, and now are back to growth again. Depending on how the final numbers in total smartphone shipments pan out, Nokia may have even kept the market share at Q3 level, or gained a point there. Which would be the first time in 15 months. And they finally stopped the price erosion in their smartphones, with average device selling price rising from 131 Euro in Q3 to 140 in Q4.

Another bright spot comes from Nokia’s Mobile Phones unit. They sold almost the same amount of feature phones in Q4 2011 as they did in Q4 2010. And they increased units shipped by 5% from Q3, while keeping ASP at third quarter levels of 32 EUR. At this point in time, Nokia’s mobile phone unit looks like the healthiest part of the company, and the only sustainably profitable business division of Nokia. As Tero Kuittinen noticed at Forbes – Nokia’s $40 feature phones are now vastly more profitable then Sony Ericsson’s or Motorola’s Android smartphones. And while most mobile phone vendors (except Samsung) abandoned feature phone development, Nokia is increasing R&D investments and earning good money from them. The income generated by mobile phone division might be the only thing that keeps company afloat through the transition, until Windows phone strategy starts bearing fruits.

And even if Windows Phone does not pan out for Nokia, the increased R&D investment and development of next generation Meltemi OS with Qt and Swipe interface on top – might be what saves company from going under. Feature phones as a category might be going away in a few years, but cheap phones most certainly aren’t. If Nokia can create a competitive smart OS for cheap mobile computing devices, and make money selling them – they might buy some time while they explore options of how to get back to the more lucrative part of the market.

Which brings us to the part of earnings report we’ve been waiting the most. The sales of the new Nokia Lumia Windows Phones.

According to Nokia press release – they have shipped “well over 1 million Lumia devices to date”. Given the limited time and market footprint Nokia had, the number looks promising. In fact, as I told you back in November, anything between 1 and 1.5 million units shipped – will be an extremely good result.

Unfortunately, upon closer examination, things are not as great as they seem.

Nokia Q4 results. The dark side

That “well over 1 million Lumias shipped to date” is just a PR trick by Nokia. Because that “to date” part includes not only phones in Q4 2011, but also those shipped between Jan. 1st and 26th, this year.

There’s no doubt that their trick worked. If you read the headlines about Nokia quarterly results, 90% of them report that 1 million, when the actual Lumia shipments were somewhere between 500K and 700K. Nokia will probably be able to build on that next quarter, without disclosing actual sales. And inserting a line with “Lumia sales grew 200% or 300% or 400% in Q1” in their next earnings release.

But that does not change the fact that it was just a trick. And, because of the expectations they created since Nokia World, the actual Q4 Lumia sales were a big disappointment. I wish they were more careful with the expectations game all along, and did not have to resort to PR trickery to paint things better then they are. In the grand scheme of things the number of Lumias they managed to sell in the first 7 weeks is not that important. Staying honest and straightforward, and constantly surprising us to the upside – is. Nokia should just stop the stupid trickery and number painting, and let us sort things out for ourselves.

Another really worrying bit of info in the earnings report was in Nokia’s guidance for the next quarter. Which was not good.

According to Nokia – they expect a higher then normal seasonal decline in Devices&Services net sales. This decline is mainly due to the:

• “pressure in Symbian, which is where we see now in percentage terms the greatest risk of sequential unit decline”.
• lower than seasonal decline in OpEx because of continuing investments Lumia marketing and support, as well as R&D investments in Mobile Phones division
• while the ramp up of the sales of new Windows Phones is too slow to offset the losses in Symbian phones in Q3.

All this will lead to a significant drop in non IFRS operating margin in Devices&Services – from 4.9% in Q4 to somewhere between +2% and –2% in Q1.

Translated from corporate speak, that means that Nokia will probably lose a boatload of money in smartphone division in Q1. And mobile phones may not be enough to keep company profitable on even non-IFRS basis. Including various charges and other non-IFRS items, Nokia may record a loss that will be higher 485 million Euro we saw in Q2 2011.

These loses will come mainly due to the big decline in Symbian smartphone shipments. I am not sure what Nokia means by “greater than normal seasonal decline”, But if last year’s 14% drop in smartphone shipments between Q4 and Q1 was a normal seasonal decline, it will be pretty bad. The 14% decline will bring Nokia smartphones to Q3 16.8 million unit level, and if it’s more then that, it may dip well below that. Which will mean that even with Lumia handsets selling for 5 months in many markets, Nokia is still not able to stem the decline in its smartphone shipments.

To be fair – the Q1 2012 comparisons to Q4 2012 will not be easy to every other smartphone maker too. One of the reasons for those huge upside surprises we saw from Apple and Samsung in Christmas quarter, was because Q4 lasted a week longer then usual last year. Also the Chinese New Year gift giving season started earlier and impacted overall sales already last year. Which means that quite a bit of the smartphone sales in Q4, were effectively borrowed from Q1. So in January-March quarter we may see the first sequential decline in smartphone market in years.

But neither the overall market decline, nor PR tricks with triple digit growth in Lumia sales will be enough to cover/spin a whopper of bad quarter that Nokia will announce in April.

The only thing that can cushion the blow, will be a very positive guidance for the rest of the year or at least next quarter. By then Lumia phones will be in many more markets, including Lumia 900 on AT&T, and, hopefully, another Lumia on Verizon or Sprint. Also, Windows Phone Tango and lower priced Lumia phones for many more countries should be out by then, as should the next Lumia flagship.

Maybe that will be enough, maybe not. One thing is for sure, while Q3 and especially Q4 numbers came in pretty good for Nokia, it surely wasn’t the turnaround we’ve been waiting for. The first half of 2012 is shaping up to be as bad as the first half of 2011.

The good news is – Nokia does have enough cash, resources and (still) profitable Mobile Phones division to weather this more or less intact. But the time seems to be running out and we better see some real turn around by the end of this year, at latest.

• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• Samsung Q2, 2011: no more then 16.7M smartphones shipped. It’s still #3, behind Apple and Nokia
• Nokia Q4 2010 Earnings. Nokia confirms 5+mil Symbian^3 phones shipped. Loses a lot of marketshare
• Gartner: cell phone sales declined 6% in Q2 2009, smartphone sales grew 27%
• Nokia’s 2011 results are out. Less than 2 million Lumia Windows Phone handsets sold to date

Especially up there at the top.

Could you please shut up now, and let the results of your work speak for themselves? Instead of creating wildly unrealistic expectations that are bound to backfire when not met.

You’ve been doing such a great job managing expectations prior to Nokia World and the launch of first Lumia handsets:

• Never committing to the first Windows Phone launch and shipment dates
• Insisting that first Nokia Windows Phones, even if they are launched in 2011, will not ship in big volumes. They will be there more to enter the market, show presence. Establish a beachhead as you say now. That’s it. Nobody expected any huge sales this year
• We knew that you will have something with WP Mango to show at Nokia World. But having the first phone ship few weeks after the announcement was a welcome surprise. Having the second one ready 3 weeks later, was even better

All in all, at Nokia World you did surprise us to the upside. For the first time in years you under promised and then over delivered.

And then you got carried away:

• It started small – with that clip of Nokia Lumia 800 being put in a box in Salo factory and shipped to the carrier stores. It was a neat trick for the keynote. The problem – it was just a trick. You then took 3 weeks to deliver the first Lumias to paying customers. And it certainly shouldn’t take 21 days for the phone shipped from Finland to get to the store in the U.K.
• Even before that, you started talking about enormous multi multi million marketing budgets, which are several times bigger than for any other Nokia product launch.
• And started touting unprecedented carrier and retail support. With 31 “operator and retail” partners in 6 European countries. Which, while technically may be true, was an exaggeration as perceived by the press and public. In most of Europe – carrier support is the key, while retailers matter much much less. Lumping both of them into one big number might make it more impressive to brag about, but does not help much beyond that. And, by my count, on Nov. 23d – one week after launch – you only had 14 carriers with Lumia on display.
• Then you started talking about record breaking Lumia 800 pre-orders. While the fact that those huge numbers were only on one network, and a part of the free XBOX offer that came with a new Lumia contract, was mostly drowned out by the noise.
• After that came reports on various Nokia and Windows phone fan blogs that Lumia 800 is the most popular phone on many carrier websites. Most of the  reports had no relation to actual sales, but were promoted by your employees nevertheless.

All of this has created huge expectations for Nokia Lumia sales in Q4 2011.

We, tech press folks and some analysts, are pretty lazy crowd. When looking at what to expect from a new product launch, we will gladly fall back to something that we can easily compare it too. And what’s easier to compare Nokia’s Lumia launch to, then Symbian^3/Nokia N8 in Q4 2010? Both Lumia and S^3 were next generation devices. Both started shipping in the last quarter of the year (more or less). In both cases Nokia touted unprecedented carrier support, huge marketing budgets and record breaking pre-orders.

And we also know how many Symbian^3 devices you sold in Q4 2010 – 5 million. Which gives us a good benchmark of Nokia’s distribution and marketing strength for a new product line. The same 5 million.  Some of us may take into account the shorter period of sales – launch in mid of the quarter instead of the beginning. But it still conditions us to expect  2 million+ of Lumias sold in 2011. And that does not even account for the overall smartphone market growth.

Which is all great, if you can hit those numbers. But a closer look into when and how Nokia Lumia 800 was sold during Q4, makes me think that 5 million is out of the question and even 2 million is highly unlikely. Given that during Lumia 900 launch at CES you did not mention how Nokia Windows Phones fared last year, the actual sales must be pretty low.

Which would have been OK, if you kept to that pre-Nokia World “beachhead establishment”, “not focused on high volumes yet” line, and haven’t hyped up expectations to such crazy levels. You have built enough of goodwill and understanding that implementing the new Windows Phone strategy takes time.

But now, if the actual sales numbers are as low as I think they are, you can expect a barrage of negative headlines about how Nokia Windows Phone strategy is failing, after you report results on January 26th. All that goodwill you’ve built up will be gone, and renewed excuses that everything is good and you never planned for big Lumia volumes in 2011 anyway, will sound pretty hollow.

Your sales&marketing people should have known and forecasted all this even before the first Lumia left Salo factory. Why the heck would you shoot yourself in the foot this way?

Which brings me to the U.S. Lumia launch. I can understand Jo Harlow hinting about frequent Windows Phone releases next year. You have a full year to work on it, and you can probably meet and even exceed that promise. But what the heck Chris Weber was thinking when he promised that “Rolling Thunder” for CES? Blown up Lumia 800 with LTE antenna, on one U.S. carrier? That’ it? That’s your rolling thunder? Really?

While at it, can you please stop taking pot shots at iPhone? You know – stuff like Niels Munksgaard’s “youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones” , or Marko Ahtisaari’s “iPhone UI is becoming more dated as we speak”. Until you have some Lumia sales numbers to impress us with, quips like that just make you look desperate and out of touch. It’s not yet on the level of Ballmer’s famous iPhone dissing in 2007, but you may get there pretty quick, if you continue this nonsense. Just forget about iPhone and Android when talking on the record, and focus on your own strengths.

And could you also ease up on that “Real Windows Phone” thing? Yes, it’s a catchy phrase, and I know Nokia is doing its best job on Windows Phone. But with 16 megapixel camera to brag about, HTC Titan 2 looks no less real to me than Lumia 900.

(Btw, what’s with that camera thing? With Nokia’s prowess and experience in digital imaging, close ties and work you are doing with Microsoft – how the heck HTC was able to leapfrog you in Windows Phone camera flagship department? At least in megapixel count – we’ll have to wait for some real tests  to see about picture quality).

All things considered, you seem to be doing quite OK with the implementation of your new Windows Phone strategy. Better then many expected when you announced it on February 11th, last year. Do brag about that. Point it to everyone who cares to listen. Hype the best features of your new Lumia phones through the roof.

Just try to keep it real were future promises and expectations are concerned. And let the results speak for themselves.

It’s always better to under promise and over deliver.

• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• Nokia Lumia 800 vs Samsung Galaxy S2 vs iPhone 4S/4 price comparison and NWP shipment expectations
• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• AT&T Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) will get $100 million marketing campaign
• Nokia Q4 2011 results. PR lipstick on the approaching trouble

According to Google’s mobile chief, they are now activating 700K Android devices a day. And, just to dispel any doubts that are indeed all new handsets and tablets:

..and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.

To be fair to those of us who thought that Android growth had already peaked, Google itself is somewhat to blame for creating the appearance of a slowdown. Android daily activations reached 550K a day level on July 14th and stayed there at least until Dec. 7th. When Eric Schmidt used the same 550K data point in his LeWeb conference keynote. Almost 5 months without any reported growth is a long time.

So what happened in three weeks between Dec. 07 and today, to add additional 150K new Android devices to daily activation count? Holiday Shopping Season, most likely.

To make new claim about daily Android device activations, Google has to observe that number for a certain number of days. So in the beginning of December, less then 2 weeks after Black Friday/ Cyber Monday, it was probably too early to give any solid growth updates. But sometime in December, with Christmas gift shopping kicking into high gear all over Western Hemisphere, Android device activations topped 700K a day, and are staying there for a while now.

Looking back to the days when the explosive Android growth just started, it has been exhibiting the same pattern for 2 years in a row now:

• From January to March, there ‘s little to no growth in daily activations
• Between April and August– when Android flagships announced during CES and Mobile World Congress start shipping- we get a huge jump in Android activation count. In 2010 daily activations jumped from 60K in April to 200K in August (140K unit, 230% growth). Between April and July this year, Android went from 350K to 550K (200K additional daily units and 57% growth).
• August – December, a period of little to no growth again, until Christmas Shopping Season starts
• December – a smaller, but still impressive jump in Android device activation numbers. In 2010 it increased from 200K a day to 300K (+100K, 50% growth), this year – from 550K to 700K (+150K, 27% growth)

To see where Android daily activations may get next year, if the same growth patterns continue, I plotted the numbers Google already gave us. Looks like by the end of  Q2 2012, new Android device additions can easily top 1 million units a day.

Overall,  the relative Android growth is slowing down. In 2010 Google’s mobile OS grew almost 1000%, this year the growth is “only” 133%. But that’s just the law of big numbers. In absolute terms Android continues to grow at an amazing rate. During 2010 Google added 240K new devices to Android daily activation count. This year – the growth is 400K. To manage this in Q4 2011, when Google has to compete for every customer against newly released iPhone 4S, plus cheaper iPhone 4/3GS, is even more impressive feat.

While I expected Android absolute numbers to grow by a lot, I must I admit I was too skeptical about it last year. The actual daily activations topped even the optimistic part of my range by 100K. I thought that other platforms – Symbian, Windows Phone or Bada – will slow the Android onslaught, but none of them managed to put a dent into Google’s OS growth.

The mobile device market is not infinite, and Android will reach its saturation level sometime. But I have to admit that I have no idea when it will happen. The pressures of patent litigation, and more skeptical carrier and vendor attitude is still there. But so far Android seems to be resilient to them, and anything else competitors throw at it. So I will have to see a much more clear break in Android growth patterns before proclaiming the slowdown next time.

Getting back to the newly reinvigorated Android growth. Here’s a quick take about the winners and losers among vendors in Q4 2011:

• Q4 was the launch quarter of the next generation iPhone 4S. Despite the pent up demand and  launch hype, much wider carrier and price tier availability, iPhone failed to have meaningful impact on overall Android device sales growth. At this point in time these two platforms are growing together, mostly taking the sales from everyone else, but not each other.
• The big winners among Android vendors this quarter will be Motorola and Samsung
• Motorola’s new Droid RAZR is the main Verizon smartphone for the Holiday Season, and, by all indications, a huge hit. Its international version is also quite competitive in those markets where the device was released. Expect some nice upside surprise when Motorola reports Q4 numbers in January
• Samsung’s Galaxy S2 flagship continues to rule the sales charts of most operators worldwide, together with iPhone 4S. With smartphones like Galaxy Mini, Ace, Y, R and S Plus; Sammy also has an incredibly strong Android device line-up at every price point down to $200. Expect some huge October- December smartphone sales numbers from them. Though whether Samsung will be able to beat huge iPhone shipments and keep #1 smartphone vendor spot, is anyone’s guess. Probably not, but it should be close.
• The big loser among Android vendors will be HTC. Due to the poorly balanced device portfolio in Q4 2011, I expect their Android smartphone sales to drop by about 3 million units. With most of the lost HTC sales going to Samsung and Motorola.

Were you impressed/surprised by 700K Android activations number today? Do you you think they will get to 1 million a day this summer? And how high can Android go?

• Google activated 250 million Androids so far, may have topped 1 million/day in the second half of Q4
• Google now activates 350,000 Android devices daily. 3 billion Android apps installed around the world
• Record-breaking 3.7 million Android devices were activated this past weekend, iOS close by
• Google now activates 550K Androids per day. 135 million devices sold. Market reaches 250,000 apps
• More than 300,000 Android phones activated each day, says Andy Rubin

Today they have released monthly sales figures for November 2011, and the numbers are terrible. Last month HTC earned 30.9 billion in Taiwan dollars, or 1,024B in US$. Which is an almost 20% drop from November 2010 sales, and a whopping 30% decline from just a month before.

And that’s with their AT&T Vivid and Verizon Rezound Holiday Season LTE flagships selling for a full month. Black Friday – the busiest shopping day of the year in U.S – behind us. In what historically is the best month for HTC sales.

Smartphone business these days is a hit driven affair. And HTC’s troubles show what happens if your hero device flops.

Having a full fledged handset portfolio, covering multiple price points, is important. But what makes or breaks you in the smartphone market today, is your top-tier/flagship device. Apple is an obvious example. Samsung has its big hit with Galaxy S line for two years in a row now. HTC had its hits with the Desire/Droid Incredible, and the original Sprint Evo last year.

But then their hero smartphone for 2011 – HTC Sensation – didn’t live up to the the promise. Company management admitted as much, and if you look at month-by-month numbers, HTC sales growth has stalled this June/July at NT$45B (US$1.5B). Right about when carrier customers where able to absorb initial Sensation shipments and gauge the future demand.

After that, while Samsung was reporting mind blowing Galaxy S2 sales, HTC numbers remained stalled at $1.5B a month, until late October. Then crashed, when the next generation iPhone arrived to all big U.S. carriers. And Verizon made Motorola Droid RAZR its main Android device for the Holiday Season, at the expense of all other vendors.

However, things might be bottoming out for HTC right about now. It is a bit too early to tell, but if HTC is able to meet the lowered forecasts they made during November 11th profit warning, December numbers will look a bit better. HTC said that they plan to earn NT$104 billion in Q4 2011. Two months in – they already have NT$75 billion in the bank. Which leaves NT$29B worth of smartphones to be sold in December. While that number is still 6% MoM and 13% YoY decline, it is nowhere near as bad as what happened in November.

In the end, it will all depend on what HTC will deliver next year. We all know that they can make some very good smartphones. Also, HTC managers are going around and telling everyone what a great portfolio they have for 2012.

Let’s hope they do, and that they figured out what went wrong with Sensation strategy this year. Because it’s always painful to watch the underdog your rooted for, fail.

• HTC sees weak Christmas ahead, blames iPhone and product transition for its troubles
• Samsung Galaxy S II outselling iPhone 4 in the UK
• Record-breaking 3.7 million Android devices were activated this past weekend, iOS close by
• Andy Rubin: “Android daily activations top 700K”. On the way to 1 million a day in Q2 2012
• Motorola DROID 4 to launch December 8th?

But what does it mean, really? For sales to be disappointing we first have to set some realistic expectations of what they should have been. And then see whether Nokia exceeded, met or missed them.

So how many Lumia 800s and Lumia 710s can we  expect Nokia to ship in Q4 2011?

Lets take a closer look at where and how Nokia is selling Lumia 800 right now. To create the table below I went through online stores of all operators in the initial Nokia Lumia 800 launch countries, and compared the prices at which it is sold there, to the prices of the competing flagships – Samsung Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4/4S.

(All prices are in Euro. They show monthly costs of the cheapest 2yr plans, at which Lumia 800, Galaxy S2 and iPhone is offered for free. For comparison purposes, when free option was not available, the initial subsidized price was split over 24 month period and added to the monthly plan cost.)

Some interesting highlights from the exercise:

• U.K. is by far the toughest and most competitive market for Lumia 800. And Samsung is really gunning for Nokia there by dropping the price of it’s Galaxy S2 flagship 14% – to £31- compared to Nokia’s £36 (42/36EUR) on Vodafone and and Orange U.K. If you had any doubts that this low Galaxy S2 price is aimed squarely at Nokia, check the prices on T-Mobile and O2 U.K. On those networks Lumia 800 is not available and there is no need for any price war on Samsung’s part. So the cheapest plan you can get free Galaxy S2 on T-mobile starts at £35.75, and at £39 on O2 UK.
• While iPhone 4S is a truly premium device and probably not in direct competition with Lumia 800, both in U.K. and Germany Nokia phone competes directly with iPhone 4 8GB on price. Price differences between Lumia and iPhone 4 in France are pretty minor too, and makes both those handsets direct competitors.
• It seems that Nokia Lumia 800 did not start shipping in Spain yet. It is not available in operator online stores, and only Orange Spain has Lumia on pre-order
• For TIM Italy there’s only unsubsidized device prices, since its site made their plans and/or subsidy schemes impossible to figure out. But the unsubsidized price might be a good indicator of the competitiveness of Nokia device, when it launches in less operator dominant markets like India, Russia, Hong-Kong and Singapore. Nokia Lumia 800 is 100 EUR cheaper than Galaxy S2, 150 EUR cheaper than iPhone 4S and 50 EUR cheaper than iPhone 4.
• I am not sure what Nokia meant when they said they have 31 operators in 6 launch countries on board for Lumia. Maybe they had MVNO’s in mind. For now Nokia Lumia 800 is available only on 14 operators in 5 European countries. And even if they get all Spanish carriers on board – that will bring operator count to 18. But overall, Nokia Lumia network coverage is pretty decent. It is available to 52% of mobile subscribers in U.K, 69% in Germany, 72% in Netherlands, and it’s on all networks in Italy and France.

So what can we learn about possible new Nokia Windows Phone sales in Q4 2010 from above?

First we will need some some starting point to see what kind of sales numbers Nokia is able to deliver for its major device launches. And they have conveniently provided us with just such a number, with Symbian^3 launch  in Q4 2010.

Back then Nokia had 2 S^3 handsets – N8 and C7 – shipping the whole quarter,  and added limited numbers of the third- C6.01 –  in the middle of November. It was a global device launch, with N8 and C7 becoming available in most Nokia markets sometime during the same quarter. The results? Nokia was able to ship 5 million S^3 smartphones in three months. There were some unconfirmed reports that 4 million of them were Nokia N8.

Let’s compare that with Lumia launch. While Nokia is not making it’s first Windows Phones available globally, the countries where they do ship, usually make up about 50% of Nokia smartphone sales. With half of the market area covered, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect 2.5 million Lumia devices to ship in Q4?

No.

Last year Nokia had about 1 million in N8 pre-orders before the first handset shipped. Also they had 12 weeks of sales, compared with only half of that or less this year. What’s worse, at least half of the current Windows Phone target market won’t get their Lumias until sometime in December. And even in Europe, Lumia is not yet shipping in Spain.

Given these limitations I will be hugely surprised if Nokia will be able to ship anything close to 2 million Windows Phones this year. And numbers between 1 and 1.5 million Lumias shipped – will be an extremely good result for them. Much more realistic expectation, and and OK result for Nokia, will be between 750K and 1 million NWPs . And, given the promotion and marketing budgets they are throwing at this thing, if they can’t make it to 750K new smartphones by the end of the year, that will be a failure and a disappointment to me.

What about you. How many Lumia’s do you expect Nokia to ship?

• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• Nokia Lumia 710 may be out in the UK on January 6
• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• Apple orders 56 million iPhones for H2 2011. 26 million of them- iPhone 5s
• T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 710 drops to $39.99

In the first part I talked about how the top managers saw the company situation in  September 2009, during its annual Nokia World conference, when they proudly announced a fresh offensive in the smartphone market. And how that offensive fizzled out in the next 6 months.

Today I take a closer look at what happened during the next year and what forced Nokia to abandon the strategy it has been pursuing before, drop its own smart device platforms, and switch to the unproven Windows Phone OS in February 2011.

If you are interested in the longer term view, check out my posts “How Nokia was disrupted“.

February – September 2010. When Symbian/Meego/Qt became not good enough

During Q1 2010 earnings report in April, Nokia managers were forced to admit that they were not able to execute on the strategy outlined in September and December of 2009, and that they are delaying the release of the next generation Symbian OS and new devices,  by months. Few weeks later, Nokia issued a profit warning and lowered profit expectations for the rest of the year.

By that time OPK’s fate as Nokia CEO was, most likely, already decided. Nokia’s board saw the precarious situation 4 years of OPK’s leadership brought the company to, and understood that a major change of direction is necessary.

In May 2010 Nokia announced another of its restructurings, and brought Anssi Vanjoki back to the spotlight from the exile in Nokia’s marketing arm, where he was banished after losing a fight for CEO spot back in 2006. Nokia’s Board put Anssi in charge of the most important smartphone division, with a task of reforming Nokia ways and possible promise of the top position. The new CEO search started at about the same time, with Anssi Vanjoki as an obvious front runner. He had to come up with a viable plan for Nokia’s turnaround, sell it to the board, and convince them that he can execute it.

As soon as Anssi started in his new job in July, he issued a very inspiring rallying cry “The fightback starts now”. And got to work on changing things. From what we know now – those changes included:

• dropping incompatible Symbian^4 development in favor of a more evolutionary path we see today
• strongly refocusing all Nokia smart device efforts around Qt
• killing off competing UI projects
• restarting Meego development with the new Qt based Swipe UI

(Most of those changes were announced/came out when Stephen Elop was already in charge, but that was too soon for a man only 3 weeks into the new job, for it to have been purely his decision. After all – Elop himself said that he would spend his first month (October) listening, learning things from Nokia employees.)

Despite the big internal changes, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia man to its core, was adamant that he will be able to turn Nokia around relying solely on Symbian/Meego/Qt trifecta. And refused to even consider external platform alternatives. Unfortunately, he failed to convince Nokia board to trust him on this.

We’ll never know whether Anssi was right or wrong, or how Nokia boardroom politics played out, but we know the end result of it. Few weeks into the Anssi’s new job as head of smartphone division, Nokia Board made a decision that his plan is not enough.

According to Board’s thinking, Nokia may not be able to survive on its own, the viability of Symbian and current Nokia transition strategy would have to be evaluated afresh, and possibilities of joining other mobile platforms – either Android or Windows Phone – seriously looked into. And Anssi was not the man to do it – they started looking for an external CEO with strong software background  to implement the changes.

And they found one in Stephen Elop in early September 2010.

September 2010 – February 2011. The end of Nokia as we know it and a fresh start

Nokia has announced that it has hired Stephen Elop as new CEO on Sept. 10th. His vision and Nokia turn-around plan so obviously rejected, Anssi Vanjoki announced his resignation from Nokia 3 days later. On Sept. 21st Elop started his new job.

The end of Q3 2010 was a very turbulent time at Nokia. The changes Anssi Vanjoki initiated in the smartphone division were starting to take shape. Meego team began working on the new Swipe interface, Nokia N8 – the first Symbian^3 device was about to ship and the plans to streamline Symbian development were in place. On the other hand, market realities were catching up and Nokia’s smartphone market share started dropping too fast – it declined 6% in just one quarter.

The end of the year was even worse. Symbian^1 sales have collapsed. In Q4 2010, during the Holiday Shopping Season, Nokia sold 3.2 million less of its Symbian^1 handsets, then it was able to sell just 3 months ago. Due to previous delays and pent up demand, Nokia’s formidable sales organization was able to push 5 million next generation Symbian^3 devices to operators and wholesale partners. S^3 helped to show a some quarterly growth, and even increased average device price and overall Nokia profitability, but those gains were largely an illusion. Compared to available Android 2.2 devices, the new Symbian phones were uncompetitive and the end consumer demand was pretty low. Failing to sell the devices they already had, Nokia partners started slashing the orders for the next year. For more detailed analysis of Nokia Q4 2010 check here.

The fate of Symbian has already been decided during spring/summer 2010. Looking at an amount of time, efforts and resources S^3 update required, Nokia’s management and the board have already made up their minds about the gradual phase out, in favor of Meego. But the rapid collapse of S^1 sales and a tepid Symbian^3 uptake must have caught them by surprise.

Since mid November 2010 Stephen Elop and Nokia management team were already talking to Google and Microsoft about adding their mobile OSes to Nokia’s offerings. But as 2011 rolled in and Nokia saw the actual sales numbers and projections, the situation became much more urgent.

At  the time, Nokia was less then 4 months into the development of the new Swipe interface for Meego, and no guaranties that they will be able to ship it by next September. Furthermore, according to Business Week, in early January 2011 management realized that at the current pace  they will only be able to launch 3 Meego devices before 2014. This one device a year release cycle for Meego phones was the part of the original Nokia strategy/roadmap. And Meego team was following this roadmap even after the changes initiated by Anssi Vanjoki during the summer of 2010.

And it might have been a good plan – to have one top of the line champion device a year, to put all of Nokia’s marketing strength behind. If Nokia had a refreshed and moderately competitive Symbian OS, to fill the portfolio beneath it. Alas, with Symbian sales collapsing, instead of orderly transition to Meego via Qt, Nokia was now facing a rapid collapse of its main smartphone platform with nothing to replace it for the next 10-20 months.

To make matters worse, they now had a hard deadline when the new Nokia strategy had to be unveiled to the world. The date for this – Nokia Capital Market days on February 11th, was already set and announced.

Coming to the realization that the platform you have been betting your future survival on is not ready to compete, and may not be ready for years, must have been a pretty big shock to Nokia team. In late 2010, Android or Windows Phone was just an attractive option to broaden Nokia product portfolio, help with U.S. market and smoothen the transition. So after first introductory meetings between CEOs, high level management teams were mostly looking into technological feasibility and negotiating technical details during the meetings in New York and Reykjavik. But in January of 2011 this suddenly became a huge “bet the whole future of the company” decision for Nokia.

Google, riding high on Android success, wasn’t much interested in giving Nokia much leeway, or possibilities to customize the OS to Nokia’s liking. To them Nokia was just another handset maker which will have to adhere to Android Compatibility Guidelines like the rest. And the way Google treated Samsung- stopping already shipping Galaxy S sales over the Skyhook matter last summer, shows what would have happened to Nokia, if it fully committed to Android.

That left only Microsoft’s Windows Phone as a viable platform for Nokia. Using possible Android switch as a club, Elop was able to get the permission to modify Windows Phone OS to Nokia needs, got the commitment of huge marketing support payments from Redmond, made Navteq/Nokia maps the default in Microsoft ecosystem, and negotiated revenue share from the location based services built on Navteq technology. The deal was hammered out during Ballmer’s visit to Helsinki and Jan. 16th Microsoft/Nokia management meeting in London, and finalized on February 10th by the approval of Nokia’s Board. The rest, as they say, is history.

Will Nokia’s bet on Windows Phone be able to turn the company around? We  simply do not know yet. We’ll see the first tangible results tomorrow, at Nokia World. But  will probably have to wait until next summer to see if the strategy really works.

Wouldn’t Nokia have been better off,  if it had doubled down on Meego and made it work? We will never know. But a thing to remember here – is that this decision was not made just by Trojan Horse Elop secretly under Ballmer’s command. Most of the top Nokia management, and Nokia’s Board – with a much better insights into the real state of Meego and Nokia’s business situation at the time, approved and fully supported Windows Phone switch.

Given the cards he was dealt, the Meego and Symbian situation at the time, Stephen Elop played the best game he could. Now we have to wait and see if that was enough.

Hat tip to AllAboutWindowsPhone’s Rafe for help with some of the Meego stuff in this post

• Nokia’s head of Mobile Solutions (Anssi Vanjoki) resigns
• Nokia’s road to Feb.11th – the last 18 months. Part 1
• Nokia N8 is “the best entertainment phone”, says Anssi Vanjoki
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Elop says Nokia’s first Windows Phones are on track for Q4

Back then, Symbian was still the biggest smartphone OS in the world, shipping 100 million+ devices a year. And, after 3 years of treading water, the Nokia turnaround seemed to be just around a corner. The newly hired CEO appeared to be fixing the bloated and ineffective software operation, killing off competing Symbian UI renewal projects and streamlining the development process. With 5 million devices shipped, Symbian^3 OS appeared to be selling pretty well, improving company margins and profitability. After years of waiting, Qt – the new well regarded application and UI development framework for Nokia smartphones – was more or less ready and shipping, promising a smooth transition from aging Symbian to the next generation Meego OS. And everyone was expecting the first Meego phone announcement any day now.

After thousands of man years and billions of Euros invested into developing its own platforms, the thought that Nokia will simply abandon Meego and Symbian at a time when those investments were starting to turn the company around, was simply inconceivable. And yet, it is exactly what happened on February 11th.

Stephen Elop got on stage with Steve Ballmer in tow, and announced to the world that Nokia is abandoning all its smartphone platform initiatives, betting its future on the new, unproven and as yet unsuccessful Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.

How did things get so bad at Nokia, that even its senior management lost all faith in its own abilities to turn company around?

September 2009 – February 2010. Nokia’s fizzled offensive

From the long term point of view, it’s easy to identify the point where Nokia’s downfall started. January 9th, 2007. The day iPhone was introduced and mobile industry changed. I wrote about “hows” and “whys” in my posts “How Nokia was disrupted. Part 1 and part 2”.

Here I’ll try to take a closer look at what happened during the last 18 months leading to February 11t.

In September 2009, almost 3 years after iPhone announcement, but with Android 1.x still struggling to find its customer, top Nokia managers were feeling pretty good about state of things. “We are on the offensive” – announced Anssi Vanjoki during Nokia World 2009, dismissing claims that Nokia is getting killed by new smartphone competitors.

And he had a point. At the time Nokia just launched the next generation Linux Maemo based superphone – N900, which was enthusiastically received by anyone who had a chance to play with it. While there already were a lot of problems reported with the new Nokia N97, the upcoming software update was supposed to fix them. Furthermore, the new flagship was selling at a rate of 1 million+ devices a month (huge number at the time, comparable to the iPhone sales), and there was a cheaper companion handset – N97 Mini – coming, that had to boost Nokia smartphone shipments even more. At the mid-tier, Nokia 5800 was still a hit, with 5530 and 5230 on the way to take Symbian Touch device sales to the new levels.

For 2010, a major Symbian rewrite was coming. In the first half of the year S^3 had to fix all the underlying S60 stuff that made it so hard to do touch, with Symbian^4 ushering the next generation modern touch based user interface for next Christmas. And Nokia had a killer device– Nokia N8 – in the works, scheduled to launch sometime in the second quarter of 2010. In addition to the next generation, consumer ready Maemo 6 based Nokia N9, scheduled for the holiday season.

With its smartphone market share close to 40%, and holding steady, good device line-up for the next 6 months, and a solid upgrade plan for 2010, it’s no wonder that Nokia execs felt pretty certain about the future.

And then it all fell apart. Nokia’s new offensive fizzled in less then 6 months.

While Nokia Q4 2009 results, as seen by outsiders, were pretty good, the reality was catching up to them. Nokia was able to push almost 10 million of its new touchscreen devices (N97, N97, 5800XM, etc; ) into the sales channel. But hardware mistakes in N97 design made the usability problems impossible to fix, dealing a huge blow to Nokia credibility in the eyes of the best, high end customers, and (most likely) resulting in huge product returns.

The realization of what a deep hole they are in, must have hit Nokia management and board sometime between December 2009, when they made their Capital Markets Day presentations, and February 2010.

At CMD in December Nokia execs still sounded very confident about their strategy, all but promising Symbian^3 release in the first half of 2010, and the second major Symbian milestone (presumably S^4) , in Q4 2010. And, even though Nokia has decided not to be present on Mobile World Congress show floor in February, they’ve had an even bigger place booked next door to MWC, to show off next generation Symbian devices.

Sometime in late 20009/early 2010, Nokia management figured out that their next generation Symbian^3 and their new flagship – N8 – are not even remotely ready for the spotlight, and will have to be delayed by about 6 months. Symbian^3 launch at MWC was cancelled, and in Barcelona we saw a very different, much more humble Nokia. There were no more loud ‘We are on the offensive” proclamations and the huge showroom felt like ghost town, with no S^3 devices and only few outdated S^1/S60 handsets on display. Nokia’s EVP Anssi Vanjokki even made a surprise admission to All About Symbian’s Rafe Blandford, that their Nokia N97 flagship is crap.

All these problems – N97 debacle, S^3 and N8 delay – couldn’t have come at a worse time. iPhone 3GS was already stealing troves of most profitable customers  all over the world. Then, in the first half of 2010, second generation of Android smartphones started shipping worldwide, providing another very good alternative to the bug ridden Nokia flagships.

At that point, with no champion device of its own, Nokia had to admit the defeat at the high end, and move heavily down market, pretending that this was a plan all along, under the “democratization of smartphone” slogan.

Furthermore, to keep its high smartphone unit volumes, and the appearances that it is still doing ok, Nokia had to resort to buying market share by price dumping. Which resulted in falling profitability and margins, and was still only a very temporary fix.

This is Part 1 of our look into the last 18 months of Nokia as we knew it. In the part 2 we’ll cover appointment of Anssi Vanjoki as head of Nokia smartphone division, his plan to save Nokia on the strength of Symbian/Meego/Qt stratetgy, and his failure to convince Nokia Board that it is enough, hiring of Stepehen Elop and other events that lead to Feb. 11th

• Nokia N9 will be available in Sweden on September 23
• Nokia’s road to Feb.11th – the last 18 months. Part 2
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Nokia N9 and MeeGo will be supported “for years”
• Nokia Q1 2010 musings. 18% ASP decline, OVI store grows 70%, rethinking Symbian^3, S^1/S60 here to stay

We all heard about the biggest threat to Google’s mobile OS – patent issues. We took a close look at them on Tuesday, and I won’t go into that again. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch event in Hong Kong brought enough signs of Android troubles in addition to patent stuff.

Stalled growth, possible problems with Verizon in the U.S., worsening vendor attitude towards Google and its loss of leverage with OEMs– all signs point to a very challenging 2012 for Android.

Android growth is now stalled at 550K activations a day for 3 months, and there’s something strange about it

Something strange has happened to Android growth in the past three months. During Q2, 2011 earnings conference call on July 14th, Google announced that they are activating 550K Android devices a day. And that they now have a total of 135 million Android devices activated since launch.

On Tuesady, while announcing Android 4.0, Google revealed that 550K daily activations number remains the same.

Which is pretty strange, because just last week, during Q3 earnings conference call, Larry Page told us that there are now a total of 190 million Android devices activated since launch. It means that during the last three months Google has activated 55 million Android devices. The problem is, that at a rate of 550K activations a day – Google could have activated only 50.6 million devices during the last 92 days. It’s a simple math – and it shows us that there is a discrepancy of at least 4.4 million units between what Larry Page told us last week, and what we learned today.

The only explanation I can think of – is that there was a pretty big daily activations spike sometime between July and October. Big enough to account for additional 4 million+ new Android devices. But then it leveled off, and activations dropped again to the July levels. After uninterrupted almost 2 year growth, such fluctuations look rather worrying and raise the question of how much more growth is there for Android.

Of course, we do have a Holiday Season coming up, and new exciting Android devices are launching as we speak. But will they be enough to boost Google’s mobile OS growth to the levels we are used to?

Did Verizon f&#%k up U.S. Nexus/ICS launch plans?

Verizon has long been Google’s main carrier partner in the U.S. It was the key to jumpstarting Android growth in late 2009 with the launch of Verizon Droid, it was a the key launch partner for Android 2.2 Froyo in summer of 2010, and it was the biggest backer of Google’s OS in U.S.

The rumor drumbeat leading to the Ice Cream Sandwich launch was well in line with Verizon’s role. It became clear during the summer that Samsung is making the next Nexus device. Then, in late August, we learned that Verizon decided pass on the new hot Samsung’s flagship – Galaxy S2. Soon after that we heard the name Droid Prime or Nexus Prime bandied about, as a hot new Google Experience device on Verizon. And that Droid Prime will be exclusive to Verizon in U.S. for a few months. The reasons for forgoing Galaxy S2 in favor of Samsung made Droid Nexus Prime were obvious. Then came the invitations to a joint Google Samsung event on Oct. 11th – during CTIA trade show in San Diego.

Stars were aligning perfectly for the exclusive next generation Android flagship launch on Verizon , along the lines of the original Android 2.0 Verizon Droid event.

And then something happened. 4 days before October 11th Samsung and Google cancelled Ice Cream Sandwich launch event. Giving a line about respect for Steve Jobs as a reason.

By Oct. 11th – 6 days would have passed since Steve Jobs death. On the very next day – Oct. 12th – Apple themselves were having the biggest iOS 5 launch in history and they had no plans of postponing anything out of respect for Steve. Heck, Apple execs didn’t even postpone iPhone 4S announcement, which happened just a day before Steve passed away, and they knew about Steve’s situation perfectly well.

And here we have two Apple’s competitors cancelling a major U.S. product launch. During the biggest U.S. mobile industry event in 6 months. Just 4 days before it happened, and when the invited press corps have already made all their travel plans. Out of respect for Steve? It sounds much more like a convenient and rather cynical excuse then the real reason for the ICS launch cancellation.

I think that the real reason why Samsung and Google didn’t launch Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich at CTIA San Diego, was because something happened between them and their main carrier launch partner – Verizon. Most likely – Verizon changed their mind about the support and promotion it was going to give Nexus Prime, by deciding to make Motorola’s Droid RAZR their flagship device for 2011 Holiday Season. And without a major U.S. carrier partner – the CTIA announcement fell through.

Thus two separate major Android device launches on Oct. 18th (Droid RAZR and Galaxy Nexus). Thus Google and Samsung screwing Verizon back, taking attention away from VZWs main device launch of the year with their own Android 4 ICS announcement. Thus Google and Samsung moving their launch event to Hong Kong, to get some additional media exposure from Wall Street Journal’s AsiaD conference. Thus the outright refusal by Google execs to name Verizon as a U.S. carrier for Galaxy Nexus. And thus the multiple carrier availability and no Verizon exclusivity signs on an official Samsung U.S Galaxy Nexus info sign-up page.

Cooling of Google/Android OEM relationships. The other reason to buy Motorola?

A lot of mobile handset vendors still strongly support Google’s mobile OS, and ship Android smartphones in mind boggling volumes. But since last spring/summer, when Google delayed or even interrupted major device launches for Motorola and Samsung over its own mistake and a purely internal Skyhook matter, OEMs have become much more circumspect about Google.

This change in attitude is best seen in the Nexus program. According to Google’s execs – Nexus is supposed to be a showcase, a reference design pushing the smartphone innovation limits. But the only time they were able to do that, was with the very first Nexus One.

After that, HTC lost any interest to build other Nexus Phones, focusing on the development of its own Sense UX instead. Most other vendors do not seem to care much about Nexus either. And Samsung, who now has 2 Nexus devices in its portfolio, only provides a ho-hum oldish hardware. The first Samsung Nexus S was a bit souped up Galaxy S device, and the new Galaxy Nexus is more or less the same Galaxy S2 LTE with a better display. Samsung prefers to save the best of its hardware innovations for its own Galaxy S line.

Google has also lost the leverage it had over OEMs by providing some of them with the early access to the next version of Android code. It used to be a very big deal and huge competitive advantage.

HTC’s early access to Éclair code allowed them to beat competitors by months with first Android 2.1 super phones. And sell millions of them before others were able to catch up. But the early access to Android Froyo or Gingerbread proved to be much less beneficial. Then Honeycomb flopped. And big vendor interest in early code access evaporated. We’ll have to wait and see what Samsung will be able to do with the Ice Cream Sandwich, but current reaction from other Android manufacturers indicates that they are not too worried about it. Android 2.3 Gingerbread interface is good enough for a few months delay it’ll take to upgrade to ICS.

And Google isn’t the only game in time for smartphone vendors, like it was in 2009/2010. Back then – if you wanted to have anything remotely competitive with iPhone, the only thing you could use was Android 2.x. Today smart device vendors can chose between Windows Phone Mango, Ice Cream Sandwich and heavily customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread. What’s more, as Amazon just showed us – Android 2.x is an open source platform that can be forked with a heavily customized user experience. While smartphone vendors like HTC already have their own Android interfaces that may be more important to the end user then the OS version underneath.

What is happening now – is that Google’s early strategy to play Android vendors off each other by providing early access to Android code, and wielding pressure over OEMs by withholding new device certification, is rapidly eroding. Soon, Android OS may reach a level of maturity where any big OEM will be free to do with it as he pleases, paying little attention to what Google wants.

And that, in addition to the patent problems, might have been the other big reason for Google Motorola deal. If Google only makes good software, which somehow conflicts with some interests of Android OEMs, e.g. – if HTC decides that it does not care much for Android 5.0 and decides to develop Sense UI on Android 4.x in some other direction – there may be very little Google can do to make them see the way.

But if Google owns its own Android OEM, and can put great devices with their great software to directly compete with vendor whims – HTC, Samsung and others will have to take notice, and Android will move in the direction Google wants it to.

Google’s troubles with Android. A blip or a start of a bigger trend?

All the signs I mentioned above – stalled growth, Verizon thing, troubles with Android vendors – taken separately, do not mean much.

Last year, after a huge spring/summer spurt, Android growth also leveled off before holiday season. Verizon thing can be just my imagination, or a conscious decision by Google to form closer relationships with other U.S. carriers. Android OEMs may be just hedging their bets some, but still in love with Android. And the patent threat may get resolved somehow in the near future.

But taken as whole, they look to me like a start of a new trend. The heady days of unabated Android growth are coming to an end. There might be one more Holiday Season daily activations jump left for it, but that’s about it.

If patent infringement lawsuits do not kill or seriously cripple it, Android is certainly not going away. It is already a hugely successful mobile platform, and will continue to do do great. But sooner or later this exponential growth we so got used to had to come to an end. And that time is either upon us already, or will be here very soon.

• Google moves Nexus Prime launch to October 19. Says it activated 55 million Android devices in Q3
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Nexus Prime) unveiling and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch delayed
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus (not Droid Prime) with LTE shows up in Verizon’s system
• Oct. 27th European Samsung Galaxy Nexus launch to crash Nokia World party again?
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus heading to Verizon according to promo video?

But outside of a global commercial success, there are problems with Android in a space that, until recently, nobody outside of specialized corporate departments paid much attention to: intellectual property (IP)/patents.

When the first signs of an infection of the Android ecosystem with the malady of IP infringement showed up, most of us laughed them off. The ecosystem was healthy, and the resources of Google were surely going to give its immune system a boost when needed.

Then the threats from Microsoft against pretty much everybody in the industry began in earnest, and Apple started suing – first HTC, then Motorola and then Samsung. The patent illness has broken out, and it turned out that everybody in the ecosystem was on their own. Google just stood on the sidelines, and did nothing at all for a long time.

Apple and Microsoft – two different kinds of threat

Microsoft and Apple both present different dangers to Android:

• Microsoft is a chronic, but manageable disease. It constantly drains energy from the ecosystem through the payments for license deals, which it is ready to strike with anybody it can infect. The only question is the price for these deals. Microsoft doesn’t want the host to die – it is content to suck out its marrow.
  Additionally it pushes Microsoft’s own Windows Phone as the cure for its own attacks. Use Windows Phone, possibly for the same price as a patent license fee, and the disease disappears. You’re also assured that no other patent disease can attack you in regard to these phones: Microsoft gives you blanket indemnification against any other software patent lawsuits regarding Windows Phone devices. Since Microsoft has been incredibly active in getting software patents, they should have the ammunition to back up their indemnification against anybody else in the mobile space.
  Microsoft’s attacks are about fundamentally altering the basis for a manufacturer’s decision for Android vs. Windows Phone. The results are either Android phones that are less price competitive across the board, and disastrously so at the low end, or an exodus of manufacturers towards Windows Phone.
• Apple, on the other hand, is a deadly illness. They are not in the software licensing business, so their goal cannot be selling a cure. They are running a hardware business with incredible margins. Their goal is to give their own devices every possible advantage out there. To this end they use their patents to kill off as many of their competitor’s products, in as many markets as possible. Apple goes for the leaders in the field first: Motorola – as the then leading manufacturer of ‘Droids’ in the US market, HTC and Samsung – as the biggest worldwide brands in Android phones. They want to take out the strongest competition first.
  With Microsoft paying up is an option. Apple’s strategy leaves only countersuits as a defense. So far the competition seems to have drawn mostly blanks in finding suitable antibiotics here. Samsung trying to use standards-essential patents it has to license under FRAND conditions can well be seen as a sign of desperation, and the fact that so far Motorola also hasn’t produced a silver bullet also speaks volumes.

It is unclear whether some of the incredibly broad Apple patents are going to stand up in the long term (e.g. their frankly ridiculous multi-touch patent), but then it’s not primarily about the long term. Mobile is a an ecosystem of launch fast, become obsolete within a year or two, and by the time any lawsuit or patent reexamination is finally resolved, a couple of product life cycles have passed. Even delays of a few months can spell disaster in a market moving as quickly as this.

So how far has either disease spread?

HTC was the first to cut a deal with Microsoft, several smaller manufacturers followed, and now, with Samsung having joined the pool of licensees, it’s clear that everybody who wants to sell Android devices in most of the developed world will have to do so as well. The financial terms of the licensing deals are unknown, but seeing what Microsoft wants to achieve, the amounts should be something in the same order of magnitude as the license payment for Windows Phone. Figures of between $ 5 and $ 15 per device sold have been bandied about, and this is a range that fits with that. While something like $ 5 is not going to hurt with a high-end device, with a $80 phone it really matters. So far we haven’t really seen a mass defection to Windows Phone, but the next few months might be interesting in that regard.

Apple’s lawsuit against Motorola continues; it has scored an early victories against HTC in ITC court which may eventually result in blanket HTC Android product ban in the U.S.; and Apple is stepping up its attack on Samsung in courts all around the world. It has won the first victories against the latter too, banning some Samsung Android devices in several countries. Samsung is set to take a hit during the Christmas shopping season.

They have started to design around some of the patents (as, incidentally, has Google), but a couple of the patents Apple asserts might reach so far that there is nothing that Samsung, or any other Android manufacturer, can do to circumvent them. Considering the pace at which patent lawsuits usually move, Apple is doing quite well with its efforts.

Google’s announced purchase of Motorola, which was the supposed cure-all for all patent diseases, hasn’t had any noticeable effect so far. The deal itself takes time to finalize, and might yet fall through, so there’s no help in the short term. And then Motorola’s patents haven’t been enough to stop both Microsoft and Apple from suing Moto, or to end the lawsuits before now. It’s quite likely that Motorola just doesn’t have any silver bullets in its patent portfolio. As Samsung’s deal with Microsoft shows, most in the industry have woken up to these facts, and are trying to go fix problems on their own.

So the attacks on the Android ecosystem are spreading. Presently Android still looks healthy. It is huge and still adding users and market share. The momentum is still there. The infections are strictly limited to markets where Microsoft or Apple hold patents, and Android has spread far wider than that. There are huge markets that are not threatened at all by what is happening now. Even without a resolution of any of its problems, with Android adoption in these markets widening, the infection will take a while to show up in the total numbers.

But make no mistake – underneath it all, Android is seriously ill. And, unlike the problems at Nokia or RIM, Android’s patent disease is one that even setting ever new records in device activations, market share and device releases can’t cure.

PS: There is, of course, also the Oracle lawsuit directly against Google over the use of Java technology in Android. That falls into the category of ‘chronic, but manageable’, since Oracle have no current interest in mobile space, and only want to extract as much money as possible without killing Android off. Add another $ 5 – 15 per device to the BOM for an Android phone.

This post was written by a mobile tech enthusiast Alexander Gödde. He works for mobile software  start-up Tavendo, andshares his thoughts about mobile industry in his free time.

• The Microsoft Tax is official: Samsung will pay royalties for each Android phone or tablet it sells
• Google buys Motorola to get some patents. Samsung, HTC, LG and other Android OEMs rejoice
• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells
• Google officially buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion
• Motorola’s Sanjay Jha openly admits they plan to collect IP royalties from other Android makers

The third largest US carrier has thus joined Verizon, which is offering Apple’s smartphone since February this year, and AT&T, which is selling the iPhone since the very first day it was launched (back in 2007). This, of course, leaves T-Mobile as the only major US carrier that doesn’t have the iPhone in its line-up.

Not long before Tim Cook unveiled the new iPhone 4S in Cupertino last week, Cole Brodman, Chief Marketing Officer at T-Mobile USA, posted an article over at the carrier’s official blog, titled “About the iPhone.” In the article, the CMO stated:

“We think the iPhone is a great device and Apple knows that we’d like to add it to our line-up. Today, there are over a million T-Mobile customers using unlocked iPhones on our network. “

Naturally, this gave hopes that T-Mobile would carry the iPhone starting later this year. But it obviously won’t happen. So, one may think that T-Mo is going to lose a fairly important part of its customers because of this. Well, maybe. But I don’t see why this will matter in the long run. Not with AT&T ready to buy T-Mobile. Even though many (including Sprint) are opposing the merger, I’m pretty sure the deal will take place, and it should be closed sometime next year – when current T-Mobile customers will finally be able to buy subsidized iPhones.

This (the AT&T acquisition) was likely one of the main reasons why Apple didn’t want to complicate things now with an iPhone for T-Mobile USA. Another possible reason is that T-Mo’s HSPA network uses the 1700MHz AWS spectrum band (unlike AT&T’s) – so Apple would’ve needed to put a different 3G radio in the iPhone 4S than the one featured now for it to work on T-Mo’s 3G. Apple may have thought this would be too much of a hassle (especially since the new iPhone also has a CDMA / EV-DO radio inside), and it probably considered T-Mobile (with its 33 million customers) is too small for all the trouble.

Anyway, until the AT&T – T-Mobile merger is completed, does T-Mo have smartphones that can stand next to the new iPhone 4S? Well, yes, it does: the Samsung Galaxy S II ($229 on contract) and the HTC Amaze 4G ($259 on contract), which are both available for order as of today, coming with Android Gingerbread, dual-core processors, 8MP cameras, and quite awesome displays (4.3 inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus on the S II, and 4.3 inch qHD on the Amaze 4G).

And let’s not forget about the HTC Sensation 4G (launched not long ago for $199), which also features Gingerbread, a qHD screen, dual-core processor, and 8MP camera. There’s also the HTC Radar 4G, but that’s an option only if you’re into Windows Phone (Mango), since it can’t really compete with the iPhone 4S specs-wise.

So, T-Mo (which, by the way, has just announced two new Android tablets) certainly has iPhone 4S alternatives. Sure enough, this won’t keep some customers from leaving the carrier to get the new iPhone 4S. But as long as they’re going to AT&T, in a way they’ll come back to T-Mobile after the former completes the acquisition of the latter.

• Telus HTC Amaze 4G to be launched on November 4, priced from $99.99
• HTC Amaze 4G (Ruby) confirmed by Telus, will hit Canada soon
• Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Amaze 4G now available at T-Mobile
• T-Mobile HTC Amaze 4G – new official photos
• Apple ordered 15 million iPhone 5s, report says

This then is the day that the Microsoft Tax has become official. Unlike the (in)famous Apple Tax, which is just a way of saying that Apple products are more expensive than the competition, the Microsoft Tax is fueled by the company’s patents and is something that very soon will hit every company that makes any kind of hardware that runs Android.

Last year, HTC did what Samsung is doing now and signaled a rather grim future for Android device manufacturers. Back then some analyst estimated that HTC would be paying Microsoft $20-$40 per smartphone. Now Samsung is a much bigger company, and holds quite a few patents itself, so it was probably able to negotiate that down to, say $10 per device for phones (maybe a bit more for tablets).

It also looks like one of the methods by which Samsung drove the royalty per unit down was promising to invest a lot more than now in Windows Phone devices.

Which makes this a win-win for Microsoft. On one hand, it’s already making more money from Android royalties than from licensing Windows Phone, on the other hand it will get the increased support for its struggling mobile OS from one of the biggest handset makers around.

Alongside HTC, a bunch of smaller companies (at least small in the mobile world) like Onkyo, General Dynamics, ViewSonic, Acer, Velocity Micro, and Wistron have also already agreed to pay Microsoft. But Samsung is clearly the big fish in this pond. And with it caving, it’s clearly only a matter of time before all the other Android manufacturers will have to. Microsoft will sue them all, that’s for sure. The company has clearly shown that what it lacks in being able to compete with Android on software it is more than happy to make up in patent defences.

So that’s that then. Android isn’t free anymore.

The nice irony here is that Google (through Motorola, which it has recently acquired) may end up paying royalties to Microsoft for Android.

So what about Android? If this happened once, it’s bound to happen again. Many other companies hold many mobile-related patents, and these companies have chosen not to go after Android makers so far. But if they do, then Android may get even more expensive, potentially even costing around $60 per device. If that happens, then Android’s march to the midrange and low-end portions of the mobile market will be brutally halted. After all, you can’t sell $100 devices if you have to pay $60 in royalties for each one.

While that will probably not kill Android, it may break its incredible momentum. And leave an interesting opening in the market. The low-end and the midrange have historically been ‘won’ by Nokia, but in recent months, especially in Western markets, it has been replaced by Android offerings.

So what OS will take Android’s place? iOS? Probably not. Even if Apple starts selling a cheaper iPhone in more places than just the US, that will still be just one device, no matter how craved. BlackBerry OS? Hardly possible, since RIM itself recognizes that it’s on the way out. RIM is transitioning right now, and will have a whole new QNX-based phone OS soon. Perhaps that may take a chunk of the midrange market in the future, but not in the near future.

So what’s left? Exactly. Windows Phone.

Therefore, today’s announcement is actually a win-win-win for Microsoft.

Remember, this is the company that couldn’t care less about ethics, and is known for bullying businesses into using its products (or preinstalling their software). It’s just doing the same thing over and over again.

As for Windows Phone, whether or not it’s a better platform than Android will become irrelevant. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wanted. It doesn’t care about the moral high ground, or the methods used (which, though legal, do exploit the sorry state of the patent system). It wants Windows Phone to succeed.

And it very may well do that, because Microsoft has patents, time, and money. The first of those three we’ve seen in action. The company also has a lot of money to invest in Windows Phone, and it can wait. A lot. This isn’t impatient HP we’re talking about here. Windows Phone may not be a success today, but by this time next year? Who knows?

Of course, what I’ve painted above is one possibility. This is the predictable path. Things may turn out differently, and for the sake of Android and competition in this space (since WP and iOS are basically two sides of the same closed-ecosystem coin) let’s hope they somehow do.

PS: If you want to have a good laugh, read Microsoft’s surreal blog post on today’s news. Here’s a taste:

“We recognize that some businesses and commentators – Google chief among them – have complained about the potential impact of patents on Android and software innovation. To them, we say this: look at today’s announcement. If industry leaders such as Samsung and HTC can enter into these agreements, doesn’t this provide a clear path forward?”

• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells
• Nokia, Apple enter into patent licensing agreement, Apple has to pay up
• HTC promises Windows Phone 7 handset for late 2010 (again)
• HTC Android phones use Microsoft technologies, Microsoft licenses patents to HTC
• Nokia gets £20m, Samsung £8m from Microsoft for Windows Phone promotion in the UK

Companies that do have their own successful proprietary platforms are no it usually too eager to start giving them away in hopes that outside developers will make it better in exchange. Companies who’s platforms do fail to take off or get into trouble, on the other hand, sometime do try to turn to the open source community for help. Sometimes these efforts work and result in a successful product (e.g. Netscape Navigator turned Firefox), sometimes they end in disaster – e.g. Nokia’s Symbian experiment. However, even in Netscape case – it wasn’t the actual open sourced code, but the community created in the process that built Firefox browser from scratch, without much help from Netscape. And it took years of stale browser competition for Firefox to emerge, while Netscape’s corporate owner reaped very few benefits from open sourcing.

So Samsung’s hints about Bada open sourcing plans next year does not sound like a sign of strength. When we combine this with Samsung’s apparent failure to achieve its own publicly announced goal to ship 10 million Bada phones in the first half of 2011, their own platform efforts do not look so successful anymore. But I guess we’ll have to wait until next year to see what happens.

But how will Samsung go about open sourcing of Bada?

Bada is not an operating system itself. It is middleware, application framework and user interface layers running on top of Mentor Graphics owned Nucleus real time operating system kernel. Open Sourcing Bada without the operating system kernel makes little sense. But the current kernel is not owned by Samsung and will not be opened.

Fortunately for them, Bada was designed to be more or less independent from the underlying mobile OS. According to some company reps I talked to, they can replace the current RTOS kernel with Linux based mobile OS whenever they chose to do so. What they forgot to mention is that Samsung has to have a suitable Linux based mobile OS to put underneath Bada. But they do not have one, and mobile OS is not a trivial thing to develop.

And here’s where it gets interesting. What if Samsung teams up with Intel to put Meego kernel underneath Bada platform?

There were rumors that Intel is suspending Meego development for now, and Meego’s non-appearance during Intel Developer Forum last week seemed to confirm that. But then Steve “Chippy” Pane has published his impressions about Meego from IDF. And I started having some doubts. According to him:

No-one in Intel that’s involved with Meego is talking Meego. There’s no Meego conference planned yet, there was no Meego representation in the IDF technology showcase and I even heard a ‘watch this space’ comment in one of the technical sessions. Everyone is keeping their mouths shut tight. Something is going on.

If Meego was cancelled or suspended at Intel – there will be quite a few disgruntled employees, ready to spill the beans, and we would have heard something by now. But we have silence instead.

What if it’s for a good reason? What if this reason is that Samsung has decided to use Meego to replace Nucleus as an OS underneath the Bada? Samsung really needs a stronger underlying OS to give Bada a chance of competing with Android and Windows Phone. After Nokia defection, Intel desperately needs a smartphone hardware partner to keep Meego alive in mobile space. Among various flavors of Linux – Meego is the best there is for smartphones, and Samsung is the best hardware partner Intel can get for its mobile ambitions. Intel’s Meego on Samsung’s Bada phones looks like a match made in heaven. At least on paper, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in real life.

But, even if Samsung decides to go with Meego, the current Meego on smartphones branch is still at a near death. Without active Nokia support, there is no one to push it forward. And Sammy has no reason to do it either.  Swipe interface that was such a hit on N9-  is a proprietary Nokia thing, as is a lot of other smartphone related stuff that went into the Meego/Harmattan.

Intel may have tried to buy Meego assets from Fins, but Nokia did not sell – so a lot of things that went into N9 won’t be making the transition to Samsung. And I seriously doubt that Qt will make it onto Bada phones too. Mobile Qt is still controlled by Nokia, and Samsung will not trade its dependence on a still more or less neutral Google, to a dependence on one of its main rivals.

Samsung smartphones may get Meego core, but they will be much more Bada then Meego phones, with their own UI, SDK, app store and other distinct Samsung features.

Will it work? At this point I have some very serious doubts. Buts lets wait and see, and hope Samsung is up to the task to make Meego/Bada a success. The more competition we have out there – the better off we, users, are.

• Early MeeGo code released to developers (for Nokia N900 and Intel Atom-based devices)
• Intel to merge MeeGo with LiMo. Samsung is on board
• Meego is officially dead. Long live project Tizen, HTML5 to the rescue of Samsung’s mobile OS ambitions
• #MWC10: Nokia and Intel introduce MeeGo, a Moblin-Maemo software platform (video)
• Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets

By the end of summer/early fall, rumors about the new version of Android become so widespread, that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind the next Google mobile OS release is coming very soon. The only difference this year – is that we are talking about only one version of Android. At about this time in 2009 we were wondering about Android Donut and Eclair, in 2010 there was a lot of confusion about Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

Today we have only one version/codename – Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4 – to obsess about. We are now waiting for the first Android 4 smartphone – Samsung Verizon Droid Prime – to launch in the next few weeks, quickly followed by Google’s own unlocked Samsung Nexus Prime, and a plethora of Ice Cream Sandwich devices from other OEMs unleashed soon after that.

May be it will happen this way. Maybe Google has finally learned how to make and release the next generation of their platform in a finished, market and retail ready form, that OEMs can quickly adapt. But I really doubt that.

“Release fast, release early and fix things as you go along” attitude is way too much in Google’s DNA. And this attitude lets Google push out new OS version updates at a pace nobody else can keep up. On the other hand, for the first next generation releases, it usually results in a half baked beta level software, that takes months to fix.

We’ve seen this happen with Android 1.x – the first more or less stable and market ready version (1.5 Cupcake) released 6 months after launch. We saw the same with Android 2.0/2.1 Eclair launch and again with Android 3.0/3.1/3.2 Honeycomb releases. There is no reason to think Android 4.0 roll-out will be different.

Only there is one more pattern emerging here. Android Honeycomb launch and subsequent updates felt very much the same as what was happening with Android 1.x. Google did not really care much about either generation of it’s platform. They both were never meant to be a true mass market Android OS platforms. That role was always assigned to the next, second (Eclair) and fourth (Ice Cream Sandwich) generations  of Android.

And, if history is any guide, Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich roll-out will probably proceed pretty similar to the way Android 2 Éclair happened. It will not be nearly as fast as many of the eager Android fans hope. Verizon customers will get their hands on a new Android flagship this November, early adopters will be able to buy the next Nexus around Christmas, or early next year. But for the rest of the world – Android 4 smartphones will start shipping in volume only next spring.

Let’s take a look back at how Android Éclair has been launched by Google in late 2009/2010.

The mid October 2009 Android 2.0 Éclair launch on Verizon Droid was somewhat a surprise, coming only a few weeks after Google released Android 1.6 Donut. Everyone held their breath, waiting for other vendors to start announcing Android 2.0 handsets. But that never happened. For the rest of 2009, everyone doggedly stuck to Android 1.6/1.5 for their new smartphone releases.

By early November it was pretty obvious, that Android 2.0 wasn’t a software version worthy of a 2.0 number.It was half baked, one carrier/one vendor optimized release, that should have carried 2.0 beta tag at best. And it was also pretty clear that after Droid, there will be no more Android 2.0 phones in 2009, or ever.

Then, in early 2010, Google finally finished polishing Android 2 and released the final, mass market version (2.1), together with their own HTC made flagship – Nexus One. But for the first 4 months of 2010, only “pure Android” smartphones – Motorola Droid/Milestone and HTC Nexus One were available to consumer. HTC, which had an early access to Éclair code, was able to ship their first carrier optimized Android 2.1 handsets with Sense UI in April/May of 2010 (HTC Desire, Legend, Droid Incredible and EVO 4G). For other OEMs, it took several more months to get their Android 2 handsets ready to ship.

This time I expect something similar to happen with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch.

U.S. is still #1 market for Google, and Verizon is still a #1 carrier there. So, very soon, sometime around mid to late October, we will have a launch event where Verizon Droid Prime smartphone, running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, will be announced. And available for sale 2-3 weeks later. As rumors now have it, Verizon Droid Prime will be made by Samsung.

But this will be only one flagship smartphone for one U.S. Carrier, and the rest of us will have to wait for a while. How long – it will depend on Google: how many shortcuts they’ve had to take to get Samsung Prime with Android 4.0 launched on Verizon, and how ready for other OEMs and mass market adoption Ice Cream Sandwich really is.

If Google trusted Samsung to make make the next generation Nexus device as well, we might get Nexus Prime before the end of Holiday season. If there is some other vendor involved with that – we might have wait until CES. As for mass market Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich phones, with Sense UI, TouchWiz and other customizations – those will start showing up sometime next spring.

Of course, the situation this year is different from 2009. And, while history tends to repeat itself, the repetition is never exactly the same. There are quite a few wildcards with Android 4, the biggest one of them is that Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to unify tablet and smartphone versions of the OS. And Google has yet to show us their own “lead device” in a tablet form factor – Motorola Xoom was certainly not it. Will it happen together with Verizon Prime smartphone launch? Or will Google have a separate event for their own flagship tablet? Heck, is Google even working on one?  There were some rumors this spring that Google tapped LG for their Nexus Tab. Is this work still on track?

If LG is working on Ice Cream Sandwich tablet, they must have access to the same OS code that goes into smartphones. I can’t see someone like HTC or Samsung launching “pure Android” smartphones of their own, unless they are doing an Android lead/flagship device to Google’s specifications. Samsung and HTC are doing to good with their own, customized Android handsets. But LG situation is different. Right now they are not doing too well with their smartphone biz, and are rather desperate to catch up to the big boys. If they see a chance to do that by ditching their own Android customizations, and betting on being first to market with carrier subsidized Android 4 phones, they will do it in a heartbeat.

So we may see much more Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones much earlier then we had with Éclair. And all of them, to our geeky delight, pure Android Experience handsets.

• Verizon to launch the Samsung Droid Prime with Android Ice Cream Sandwich in October
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus (not Droid Prime) with LTE shows up in Verizon’s system
• Samsung’s Google Nexus Prime likely headed to Canada
• Google Nexus Prime name confirmed by Samsung
• Verizon Galaxy Nexus (Prime) won’t have OEM customization

Some people are disappointed that Amazon tablet is just a souped-up Kindle, instead of some sort of iPad killer. But that’s Ok. A souped-up, smarter Kindle is exactly what Amazon wants and needs.

When first credible rumors about the upcoming Android based Amazon tablet started popping up, I wondered what the heck Jeff Bezos and his team were up to. They can not just do another Honeycomb tablet like everyone else! Amazon is in the hardware game only as much as it helps to sell their digital products – just look at a Kindle e-reader. So Amazon tablet will have to be heavily customized around Amazon digital services. But there is only so much customization you can do before you run afoul of Google’s Android Compatibility Guidelines. Putting Amazon services front&center instead of Google apps, may already cause some licensing issues. And Amazon is directly competing with Google Music – how long will it take for Google to make this service part of default Android apps suite, and what should Amazon do then?

One thing seemed pretty clear to me back then –Amazon will not become the official Android licensee. But without contract with Google – there was no way that Amazon tablet will run Honeycomb. Android 3.0 has not been open sourced yet, and probably won’t ever be. The only way to get the Honeycomb code – is to sign Android OEM license agreement with Google. Which Amazon couldn’t do. To make Android tablet as tightly integrated with its services as Amazon wants, they had to use the open source Android 2.x version. And lose the timely access to all future Google Android upgrades and improvements. Thus automatically putting the new tablet behind other OEM’s relying on licensed Android.

Or not.

The end user does not care much which version of Android his tablet runs. If their new shiny gadget just works, delivers excellent content and provides possibility to expand the functionality via apps, it does not matter if it runs on Android 2.x. or Android 5.

Amazon knew that. On a new tablet, Amazon e-books, music and video libraries are just a tap away, can be downloaded or streamed instantly, and, even more important – paid for with a single click. While Amazon App Store takes care of the expandability thing. And at the $250 price point, Amazon Kindle Tab is not yet in the impulse purchase territory, but is pretty close to that. With the prime placement on Amazon.com homepage, it should start selling in the millions very soon.

But since Kindle Tab runs on Android 2.x, Android 3.0 and higher tablet apps will not be compatible with it. In a few months, a developer writing a tablet app for  Android will have to start making choices – write an app for Android Marketplace or Amazon App Store. And, at least in U.S., Amazon may quickly become a much more attractive place for tablet apps.

For now, Google licensed tablet sales are pretty pathetic. That’s probably because Google itself does not care much about Honeycomb, and is hard at work on Ice Cream Sandwich to give Android tablets a boost. With $250 Kindle Tab, Amazon has a pretty good chance to match and beat the number of Google tablets sold in the U.S. And give app developers a much better monetization opportunities too.

App monetization is a major Android Marketplace weakness. Let’s face it – Google has no experience in selling things, and can’t directly monetize (sell) any of their products worth a damn. While Amazon- an unsurpassed master at selling things online – will soon be heavily applying its talents to its own App Store. What’s more – all Kindle users have already entered their credit card data, and trust Amazon with their purchases.

By this time next year we may have two competing Android based platforms for tablet apps – Google’s and Amazon’s. If Amazon is able to achieve device volumes parity with Google, but their users download several times more paid apps, guess which platform will developers start writing their tablet apps for first?

If Amazon had a bigger global presence, this could be a very dangerous development for Android. Fortunately for them, at least at first, Kindle tab will be mostly U.S. based. Amazon digital services in other countries are not yet up to the par to make Kindle Tab an attractive proposition. They are probably hard at work getting content licensing deals and infrastructure in place there, but Amazon is present only in Canada, China, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and U.K. And, apart from Europe, getting Amazon digital services up and running could take a long time. So there is a big chunk of the world where Kindle Tab is a non issue for Android.

Nevertheless, as soon as Amazon launches its Kindle tablet, Android becomes  forked in a major way. Before Kindle Tab, the only serious Android forks were in China – things like OPhone and Baidu’s Yi. But now, even if the sales official Google approved tablets explode this Holiday season with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, there is very little doubt that Amazon’s version of Android will become a mainstream tablet platform as well. With it’s own set of apps and it’s own ecosystem.

And, with Amazon paving the way, who knows who else may decide to follow them?

• Amazon Kindle tablet is real and slightly disappointing, details get leaked
• Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet officially announced, pre-orders start for $199, ships on November 15
• Amazon’s Kindle Fire may be headed to the UK in January
• Archos 70b is an Android Honeycomb tablet for $199 or £179, shipping in January
• Amazon Kindle Fire still selling very well

Sprint’s variant of the Galaxy S II, the Epic 4G Touch, will spot a slightly larger screen at 4.52-inches and will run on Sprint’s WiMax network.

T-Mobile’s version(no name yet) will also feature the same large screen as the Epic 4G Touch and will run on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network.

AT&T’s model will sport the original smaller 4.3-inch screen of the international version(and original name) and will run on AT&T’s HSPA+ network. AT&T’s Galaxy S II will also be the thinnest device on the market thanks to its smaller 1650 mAh battery inside as opposed to the normal 1800 mAh pack.

All devices will have the same 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, Super AMOLED Plus display, and a 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD recording(Samsung mentioned they would include video editing software pre-installed on the device as well). They all will run on Gingerbread with Touchwiz 3.0.

Samsung has made some changes to TouchWiz 3.0 such as the getting rid of the chicklet tiles, making it easier to organize files into folders, and providing a cleaner UI in general. Social Hub has also been upgraded to support multiple social networks and to allow a good amount of control over them(ex: you can like, comment, and share a Facebook post within Social Hub). MediaHub now allows users to plug their device via HDMI cable to an HDTV and stream their movies onto the TV. Samsung Kies Air allows users to manage their digital content(music, photos, videos) from any computer wirelessly from a web browser. Samsung has also included some enterprise features that will appeal to business users such as improved security and IT management(remote wipe/backup).

Sprint’s Epic 4G will arrive first on September 16th for $199.99 on a new two year contract. You will be able to pre-order the device soon by purchasing a $50 gift card. AT&T’s Galaxy S II will arrive on September 18th, but we have no word on pricing yet. T-Mobile said that their version would be arriving sometime in the fall and didn’t mention anything about a price. Follow

• Sprint Samsung Epic 4G Touch (Galaxy S II) press photos leaked
• Sprint’s Samsung Epic Touch 4G (Galaxy S II) may be out on September 9
• Sprint Samsung Epic 4G (Galaxy S Pro) to launch on August 11th
• Sprint Samsung Epic 4G Touch pre-orders start for $149.99, shipping on September 16
• Sprint’s Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch confirmed by Samsung

But will it be just one new iPhone? Rumors about a smaller and cheaper iPhone (iPhone Nano or whatever) have been around ever since the Cupertino company introduced its first smartphone back in 2007. And this year we’re seeing more reports about an alleged cheaper iPhone than ever.

Important publications like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have informed the world that Apple may want to launch two new iPhone models this year: one as a high-end successor to the iPhone 4, and another one as some sort of an entry-level iPhone, made with emerging markets in mind.

However, it doesn’t make much sense for Apple to manufacture two new iPhones. And here’s why:

When iPhone 4 was released, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone 3GS to $99 (on contract at AT&T). Right now, the iPhone 3GS is even cheaper: $49. A similar thing can – and most likely will – be done after the iPhone 5 is launched: the iPhone 4 becomes the cheap model, while the iPhone 5 replaces it as Apple’s top of the line handset. But how cheap can the iPhone 4 go? I’d say not more than $300, or even $250 unlocked, and free on contract. Read on to see why I’m making such a seemingly crazy statement.

iPhone 4 16GB’s BoM (Bill of Materials) was estimated by iSuppli to be of $187.51. That was in June 2010, thus more than a year ago. Right now, I guess the same materials cost less, let’s say $150. Of course, the actual value of an iPhone 4 also includes R&D costs, assembly costs, plus packaging and shipping costs. But I’m pretty sure the R&D costs have been already covered a while ago – because Apple must have sold more than 30 million iPhone 4s since launch, and profits have been huge. It’s a bit weird that Apple didn’t specifically say how many iPhone 4s have been sold until now, but official figures* suggest the company may very well sell a total of 50 million iPhone 4s before the new iPhone 5 hits the market (October).

So, R&D costs aside, I don’t think I’m wrong to say that Apple could offer the iPhone 4 16GB for about $250 unlocked and still make profit. The profit margin would not be high, that’s for sure – but the iPhone 5 (which should have an average selling price of about $600) will certainly compensate for that.

With a $250 iPhone 4 16GB available in both GSM and CDMA flavors, Apple can penetrate any market, via any carrier. And let’s be honest, the iPhone 4 is a good smartphone – mind you, I’m saying this as an Android user. The iPhone 3Gs and 3G may have been just good phones, but iPhone 4 is a good smartphone (emphasis on smart). Priced at just $250 or thereabout, it will become an excellent one, even in 2012.

Sure enough, you may wonder: why would someone buy the new iPhone 5, when the iPhone 4 will be way cheaper and still offer a high-end user experience? Well, those who have the budget for a new and expensive iPhone will get one anyway, regardless of how good the older model still is. That’s how the mobile market is build. Just look at Samsung – it’s currently selling the Galaxy S i9000 (another excellent handset, by the way) for much less than what it’s asking for the new Galaxy S II i9100 flagship, and this doesn’t affect sales of the latter.

Now, I can’t say Apple will definitely not introduce a new, cheaper iPhone this year. I just think it has no strong reasons to do it, not as long as it can sell the iPhone 4 16GB for the price I’m thinking it can sell ($250). Making a brand new product implies lots of new efforts, including new R&D costs, new assembly lines, finding new component suppliers and so on. So why do that, when you already have a product that can act as a significantly cheaper alternative to your next big thing?

* – you can see Apple’s financial results (including iPhone sales) for the last four quarters as follows: fiscal 2010 Q4, fiscal 2011 Q1, fiscal 2011 Q2, and fiscal 2011 Q3.

• An 8 GB iPhone 4 may be the iPhone Nano everyone’s waiting for
• iPhone 4S costs $196 to make. AT&T already sold 1 million units
• Apple to sell iPhones through CostCo by January at $149?
• AT&T still exclusive carrier in US for iPhone 3G
• Rumor: $99 iPhone coming to Wal-mart

I told you a couple of weeks ago about the best and easiest solution for all Android patent problems. Google should just buy Motorola.

Today Google went and did just that. They bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5B in cash. So now that the deal is done, what does it mean to Google and Android ecosystem in general?

A heck of a lot, I think. But most of it can be summed up in one sentence. The biggest threat to Android’s future – the lack of defensive patent portfolio – is now neutralized.

Yes, there are still lawsuits from Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and many others out there. But they do not matter much anymore. With Google owning a huge Motorola’s patent portfolio and wielding it as a defensive club, none of the competitors will be able to simply shut off Android devices from any market, or demand exorbitant fees. While there will still be legal maneuvering and bickering who pays who and how much, this is a normal thing in mobile and other tech industries, and companies know how to deal with that.

So HTC might end up paying Apple licensing fees due to some of the patents, but with Google/Motorola able to threaten the ban of Apple’s products due to some other patent infringements – Apple will have no choice but to negotiate in good faith. The same is true for Microsoft. It is not clear yet who’s patent portfolio is stronger – Moto’s or Microsoft’s – that will be sorted out in courts and negotiations in a few years, and we’ll have a cross-licensing deal, or one will end up paying the other a modest licensing fee. Which will be much lower then what Microsoft is demanding right now.

At this point, the one big question that remains – is Google/Oracle suit. With Oracle asserting its Java IP, and having very low exposure to mobile – where most of Motorola’s patents are – Oracle problem remains as big as it was before. Though finally seeing such a bold move to protect Android ecosystem, makes me much more optimistic that Google will find a solution here too.

With the patent threats out of the way, let’s look at the other Android OEMs and how this deal affects them. With Google now a direct competitor to Samsung, HTC and others – won’t they be heading for the hills and turning to the alternative platforms like Windows Phone?

I don’t think so.

At least not very soon. The biggest Android licensees like Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson and LG are probably as happy as they sounded in those canned press clips in the deal announcement. Here are some reasons for them to feel that way:

• HTC and Samsung were already kicking Motorola’s behind with their Android Phones. Despite starting at about the same time, despite having less exclusive access the Motorola – both HTC and Samsung are now selling 3 times as much Android devices as Motorola. And with Google acquisition, at least for the next 6-12 months, Motorola is now a weaker competitor then it was before. As with every big buyout – there will be a lot of transition problems slowing Motorola down. And becoming part of Google will take away at least some of the competitive drive/motivation to succeed from Motorola’s employees.
• Today, and for the foreseeable future, patents are a much bigger problem to Android OEMs then anything Google can do with additional Motorola exclusivity perks. HTC is facing a possible ITC import ban on its Android phones by the end of the year. Samsung’s Android tablet sales were already stopped in Europe and Australia by Apple. According to some reports, Microsoft, Oracle and others are already trying to extort per device fees from every Android OEM, and many of them are ready to give up and pay up. As soon as the deal closes – Google can start extending patent protection to every Android device maker.
• Google assured all OEMs that acquisition won’t change the way Android devices are developed and the way OEMs get access to the new versions of OS. Google always had one preferential OEM for each new version of Android. For 1.0 and 1.5 – it was HTC with G1 and Magic, for 2.0 it was Motorola (Droid), then again HTC for 2.1 (Nexus One), Motorola for 2.2 (Droid X), Samsung for 2.3 (Nexus S) and again Motorola for 3.0 (Xoom). Google assured that the new Motorola will operate as a separate business unit, and the preferred OEM selection process will remain the same. Some may say it’s naïve to believe that Google will remain true to these promises. But I don’t’ think so. Google has no real motivation to become a major competitor to other Android device makers… As long as those OEMs produce state of the art devices that sell well.

Are other device makers worried a bit that Motorola is now part of Google? Of course. And OEMs are looking at available alternative platforms to Android. Most likely Windows Phone.

But none of the big Android licensees, except for Motorola, had an exclusive relationship with Google. Most of them already had Windows Phones on the market and were working on the second generation devices too. Especially in light of escalating patent threats.

And no matter what preferential treatment Motorola may get as a subsidiary of Google, the benefits of early access to the new versions of Android are overrated. Yes it is good to have it, and, if you are lucky, you can get a few months of free reign as Motorola had with Droid, or HTC with Desire. But that’s about it. You also have to have a great manufacturing capabilities and distribution network, otherwise few months lead won’t help you much. As the success of Samsung Galaxy S and HTC phones clearly shows.

Except for USA, Latin America and China – Motorola’s distribution power is very weak. And Google is not well liked in China too. So the possibilities for Google/Motorola becoming a major competitor to HTC or Samsung is basically non-existent in the short term. In the long term – it would require some huge investments that Google has no incentives to make.

Much more likely scenario is for Google to run Motorola as a separate business unit for a year or thereabouts, for political/PR reasons, and then sell it to someone willing to get into a worldwide smartphone game. Keeping all the patents and (maybe) a team for its Nexus line.

As for now – Android patent threat is more or less neutralized, and Google as a direct competitor is an unlikely threat in some distant future. I think everyone in Android camp, including Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson, LG and other OEMs are very happy today.

Brilliant deal. That Nortel patent auction, where Apple and Microsoft spend $4.5B just to keep it out of Google’s hands seems pretty pointless now. Larry&Sergey must have been laughing their pants off, bidding pi and stuff while on Nortel, while working preparing to snatch Motrola

• Quick and easy fix for all Android patent problems. Google should buy Motorola
• The real cost of Android? Potentially $60+ per device in patent fees
• Motorola’s Sanjay Jha openly admits they plan to collect IP royalties from other Android makers
• Android is patently ill. Two strains of IP disease that may soon derail Google’s OS
• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells

It is being besieged by various patent holders, demanding licensing fees or an outright stop of Android device sales. Furthermore, those suing Google right now are no ordinary patent trolls. The biggest challenges come from such tech giants as Oracle, Microsoft and Apple.

And there is very little Google and Android OEMs can do about it. Except to try and drag the whole process in courts for as long as they can, searching for some other way out. Google is a young company, with very small patent portfolio to use in a fight. And there are some indications that they have played fast and loose with IP issues, while creating Android. In the end, anyone putting Google’s mobile OS on their gadgets, might end up paying $60 or more per handset in patent fees.

But Google has a way out. An easy fix, that could solve all their Android IP troubles at once:

Google should buy Motorola Mobility Holdings (MMI).

Motorola’s mobile device and home entertainment unit has been spun off of into an independent company at the beginning of this year. And it is not doing too well.

Motorola’s CEO bet their whole company on Android, and they have had some early successes, including the launch of the original Verizon Motorola Droid, which started the Android growth explosion. But now – due to an un-inspiring product mix and execution blunders like the delays of LTE device releases, Motorola is being killed in the market by HTC and Samsung. While Motorola’s 80% Android device unit growth this year might seem impressive on the surface, it is actually very low. Their main Asian rivals are now growing much faster (HTC at 124% a year and Samsung at 400%) and from a higher initial unit base. Thus eating away at Motorola’s market share and profits. After a few profitable quarters MMI started losing money again.

The way things are unfolding in mobile, the future of Motorola Mobility as independent company is very much in doubt. Motorola’s management is already showing a signs of fatigue. And they are signaling their readiness to sell to Google.

I first noticed interesting undertones in Sanjay Jha’s (Motorola’s CEO) interview with Fortune a month ago. Here are the interesting tidbits:

“I expect consolidation to occur. Our customers are consolidating, and our supply base is also consolidating. But my view is that consolidation occurs in some interesting ways. I’m not convinced that handset manufacturers acquiring other manufacturers is the best way for value to be created for shareholders. Consolidation across content manufacturers and hardware and software manufacturers — I see a bunch of different ways for this consolidation to occur, to create shareholder value and create different structures to the industry… Do we expect Motorola to be an independent company? I don’t know yet. I hope very much that we are. I believe our strategy is the right strategy and will deliver the shareholder value we’ve promised.

Q.It sounds as if Motorola consolidating possibly with a software outfit of some kind is not unimaginable?

A. There are lots of opportunities for us to combine different resources and create more shareholder value.

Sanjay Jha does not sound like a CEO who strongly believes that what he is doing will make Motorola a success and keep them independent, does he? Any chance of Peter Chou (HTC’s CEO) saying anything remotely like this? And that “software outfit” they are talking about – can they mean anyone BUT Google here?

Last week Motorola provided another interesting hint. During their earnings conference call, Sanjay Jha started touting Motorola’s patent portfolio – 17000 granted U.S. patents, 7000 pending. And said that they plan to start monetizing it more aggressively, by going after “new entrants to mobility industry with big revenue streams”. The problem is – all those new entrants are predominantly using Android. By going after them, Motorola will be hurting ecosystem on which it depends 100%. Why would they do such a thing? One reason might be that they do not really care, as long as they can get some additional cash from their patents, and make their own Android devices a bit more competitive, at least on price.

But there might be another reason – Sanjay Jha might be sending a veiled hint/threat to Larry Page: “Just buy us, or else!”.

Recently Google was ready to spend upwards of 4 billion dollars for Nortel’s 6000 strong U.S patent portfolio, but have been outbid by a consortium led by Apple, RIM and Microsoft. Currently Motorola Mobility’s market value is around $6.5 billion. And it’s 17K patent strong portfolio is probably of much better quality to anyone in mobile, then Nortel’s was. So just by offering $10-12 billion for Motorola, Google will actually spend less per relevant patent, then it was willing to spend on Nortel.

And, by buying Motorola, Google will get a world class mobile device hardware R&D team, that can help push Android limits with a Nexus line. They then could use their Nexus devices as a state of the art reference models. And send a clear signal to OEM partners like Samsung and HTC, that Google is not interested in getting into mobile sales biz, if partners continue to do a great job with their own Android gadgets. I think OEM’s will be more happy with such arrangement, then with what Google is doing now – giving one of them early exclusive access to latest versions of Android, thus leaving others at a considerable disadvantage.

As for the rest of Motorola business – the sales&logistics organizations, set top box business, etc; – they can sell it in pieces and make some nice profit in the end. Who knows – Google may even find something good and interesting there for their fledging TV initiative.

And, if Google made a serious offer for MMI – there is no danger of a bidding war like the one over Nortel’s patents, erupting. The key player – Apple – is out of the game on anti-trust considerations. Microsoft is now firmly in bed with Nokia, and there’s too little synergies with what Motorola does today, for MSFT to put up a serious fight. The rest in mobile industry are simply to weak to win.

Android is a key strategic asset for Google, and it is now in a serious danger due to Google’s weak intellectual property portfolio. By letting Palm to go to HP, and losing out on Nortel bid, Google has already squandered two great opportunities to address a key vulnerability of one of their most precious assets.

With Motorola  deal, which will probably be cheaper then what they were ready to pay for Nortel portfolio, Google can now solve most of their intellectual property problems at once. They might still have to reach accommodation with Oracle, but with Motorola’s IP, nobody in mobile industry will be able to seriously impede Android growth via patents anymore.

The more I think about it, the more Google buying Motorola makes sense. I’m actually struggling to find any reason for Google not to buy Moto.

Can you name one?

• Motorola’s Sanjay Jha openly admits they plan to collect IP royalties from other Android makers
• Motorola: 4.4M smartphones in Q2. Defy+, 2 tablets, 4 more handsets for Christmas, Droid Bionic in September
• Motorola confirms it’s working on a Google phone – Nexus Two?
• Did Motorola just hint they are ready to join Android IP racket with their own patent fee demands?
• Google buys Motorola to get some patents. Samsung, HTC, LG and other Android OEMs rejoice

According to  9to5, the APIs that they discovered are “Highly Sophisticated” and Mark Gurman explains “The first, called CIFaceFeature, can determine through an image where a person’s mouth and eyes are located. The second API, CIDetector, is a resource within the operating system that processes images for face detection.

The possibilities, assuming this story is actually true, are literally endless. If the iOS line of products has integrated facial detection, and more importantly, if developers can take advantage of a facial detection API to create facial recognition capabilities, we can expect to see a whole group of new types of apps populate the App Store.

Putting aside the integration into iOS itself, which can mean auto tagging of photos, as well as deep social integration with the device’s phone book, the new apps that will surface as soon as this API is available, are potentially seriously exciting.

My friend Darrell Etherington had some very interesting thoughts on the matter in his Gigaom post including Kinect-like functionality built into iOS. Now, that would be pretty cool.

For the record, as Bruce from Grizzly Analytics points out, there is a difference between face detection and facial recognition and the new API is actually the former, NOT the latter.

The following are just a few examples of app categories we can expect to see as soon as the iOS facial detection API is released to the general public of iOS developers:

Security Apps

Bye bye passwords, hello Minority Report. Seriously though, facial detection and recognition might still be considered futuristic and somewhat impractical, but there are already many companies that offer this technology, one of which Apple actually acquired in 2010.

Just imagine picking up your iPad and the device recognizing you based on your eyes or your facial structure. The iPad will then present your apps and configuration to you, all of which will completely change when your wife picks up the iPad.

Of course, this also means no one would be able to steal your iOS device because they will have no access, unless of course you lend them your eyeball or bone structure…

Caller ID Apps

One of the ideas someone said they would love to see when I asked on Google+ about this post, is Rapportive for calls. Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that gives you data of the person you are corresponding with and includes that person’s social profiles across the Web.

With a face detection API, a developer can theoretically create an app that when installed on both the caller and the recipient’s phone, will essentially take a picture of the caller and offer the recipient all the information they need about the person calling.

For this to work, the caller does not have to be in the address book of the recipient, which is of course the major difference between this concept and the caller ID we have today.

Reader Apps

OK, this one is insanely far fetched now, but is completely possible with facial recognition. Imagine you are reading your daily news on your iPad using a Flipboard-like app. Now imagine your eye keeps wandering to the articles about the new iPhone coming out in a few months. The app will then take the data based on your eye movement, and display more relevant content next time you open the app.

In fact, taking it one step further, the app can analyze your face, determine what kind of mood you are in and display content accordingly. Like I said above, the potential for this new API is quite literally endless.

Video Calling Apps

We already discussed the different options to make video calls on iPhone and Android, but the possibilities here with facial recognition are really exciting.

Just imagine Google+ Hangouts on your iPhone that knows how to recognize who is talking and can present you with real time data of all the participants of a video call.

Take it one step further and imagine an iPhone app that enables you to meet people (possibly for dating purposes) based on facial features. You input the type of face that you are attracted to either by taking a picture of someone or drawing it, and the app then finds people for you to video chat with (or just to meet) based on the data you provided.

Crime Prevention Apps

A few years ago, I heard one of the founder of Face.com, a leading company in the facial recognition space, pitch his company to an audience. When asked what the business model was, he jokingly replied, “With our technology, we can find Bin Laden and collect the reward. There is the business model!”. Now a few years later, here we are, talking about facial recognition possibly becoming an integral part of a leading mobile operating system.

Imagine a scenario that you meet someone and want to do a quick and dirty background check on them. You wait for the second they are not looking and snap a photo. Your phone then cross references that photo with all the databases of the law enforcement agencies in your country and tells you everything you need to know about that person. Voila, you have become Jack Bauer.

Of course, privacy issues are going to become a big question if any of this comes to fruition, but if someone is a recognized sex offender or has a police record, you deserve to know about it, if you are out on a date with that person, don’t you think?

These are just some wild ideas I am throwing out there, but again, there are so many other possibilities. In fact, as a person who works in mobile advertising, the ability to track facial movements can have an unprecedented effect on user behavior and how people engage with mobile ads.

We are living in exciting times!

• Google Reportedly Working on Babel Fish Phone With Speech Translation
• Lip-Reading Phones May Be in Our Future
• Apple’s iPhone 3G has second proximity sensor for improved functionality
• Apple sells 1 million iPads (only in the US)
• 10 Features I Would Love to See in the New Facebook iPad App

None of them could make even a dent in iPad’s dominance.

And Honeycomb tablets won’t make a dent. Ever. Because Google itself does not really care about whether Honeycomb succeeds in the market or not- Android 3 wasn’t meant to do do that. It was just a placeholder until Google finishes forging it’s real weapon in tablet wars – Android 4/Ice Cream Sandwich.

The whole situation with first Android tablets strongly reminds me of Google’s first steps in smartphone market with Android 1.x in 2009.

Back in 2007 Apple invented a new kind of mobile computing device – iPhone. They called it smartphone, but I think it is a mistake to lump Apple’s new device into the same category as the phones people were calling smart before 2007. With iPhone, and especially with it’s next generation iPhone 3G – Apple has created a completely new category of mobile computing devices, and a new market. Still, for the purpose of simplicity, in this article, let’s call the iPhone – a smartphone, and smart devices that came before it – just mobile phones.

The new smartphone market was expanding rapidly and Apple completely dominated it in 2007 and 2008. For the first two years, nobody was able to offer any viable competitor to iPhone.

Looking at a new mobile computing/smartphone platform that Apple has created, Google saw a strategic threat to it’s core business. Even though Google apps like Search and Maps were featured prominently on iPhone, there was nothing to prevent Apple from switching to competitors like Microsoft’s Bing at some point in the future. And leaving Google on the sidelines of rapidly expanding mobile market.

Reacting to a new threat posed by Apple, in 2007/8 Google scrapped it’s previous Blackberry like Android efforts, and started working on iPhone alternative. Google had to put something in the market as soon as possible to get developers and other partners interested.  That something came in the form of HTC G1/Dream with Android 1.0 , which shipped in late 2008. But when G1 started shipping , the new Android 1.0 OS running the device was still a work in progress, not a finished, market ready product. It was extremely buggy, had poor UI and lacked some essential functions – like SD card support. Even Andy Rubin admitted that Android running on G1 wasn’t actually worthy of a 1.0 version number.

Situation improved a bit with the release of Android 1.5 Cupcake in May and 1.6 Donut in September. More and better Android phones started appearing on the market – HTC Magic, Samsung Galaxy i7500, HTC Hero, Motorola Cliq. But Android 1.x was still a half baked product, with a pretty bad usability and little customer appeal. New Android device activations were stuck at a 30K a day level – a run rate of less then a million of Android smartphones a month, and well below the number of iPhones shipping at that time. Developers also did not care much for Android, mostly preferring to focus their efforts on making it in Apple’s Appstore, with Android as a distant afterthought.

This lackluster Android performance continued while we  had only Android 1.x devices available.

But Google did not care much about how Android 1.x was doing. They got what they needed from it – a foothold in the market and real world use data to work with. Even in early 2009, when Android Cupcake/Donut updates were still underway, Google’s eyes were already on the main prize – Éclair -the second generation of Android. I’ve been going through my archives and stumbled on these musings about Android by Eldar Murtazin, from Mobile World Congress in February 2009:

Android is pretty well stuck right now, because of Google, which does not really want to strongly promote Android devices yet. They have a key partner – HTC – which already released/announced phones (Dream, Magic) based on Android 1.0.

The first release of Android OS – it’s Google making a claim for the future position in mobile OS market. It is more like a marketing tool to train the public on Android and also to give the developers a live device to make the apps for. Though there will be some interesting new Android devices coming from HTC and others later this year.

Android 2.0 looks pretty sad. Android won’t get to the level Google and partners want to see it on until releases 3.0 and 4.0. It has multiple partners working on Android 3.0 devices and there were some demos of the handsets with Android 3 in closed showrooms. They look fantastic. The problem is that Android 3.0 is not slated for release until the mid of 2010, with version 4 to follow in 2011. So it will be a while until Android devices reach their full potential.

Remember, we are talking about February 2009 here. The only Android device that was shipping then was HTC G1/Dream. Replace those version numbers – 2 with 1.5/1.6 and 3 with 2.1/Éclair – and Eldar pretty much nails it. (Well, there’s no original Droid and Nexus S mentioned, but there’s only so much you can learn 9 months out in the tech industry).

Google never really cared much about promoting any of it’s Android 1.x devices. The prize and main effort was always Android 2.

Google started with the unfinished Android 2.0 Éclair version on the original Verizon Droid, with a huge U.S. promotion campaign. Big G even thought that with Android Éclair on Nexus One, they can get into mobile phone business themselves, and  got slapped hard by mobile carriers. But the real worldwide Android explosion happened in Q2/Q3 2010, when second generation Android devices like HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S started shipping en masse.

And what do we have today with Android tablets? The action is unfolding pretty much the same as it did in 2008/2009 for smartphones.

With iPad launch in early 2010, Apple invented/created and now owns the new, rapidly growing portable post PC computing market . After seeing iPad, Google dropped whatever plans they had for the next generation of Android OS in early 2010, and refocused it’s efforts on creating a tablet OS of their own. The time was short and they had to “take a few shortcuts”, like dropping any smartphone support from Honeycomb, thus radically forking Android for at least a year. Then Google rushed to market with half baked Android 3.0/Honeycomb on Motorola Xoom, and are now doing small tweaks/incremental patches with Android 3.1 and 3.2.

And, just as it happened in 2009 with Android 1.x smartphones, nobody except tech press seems to care about Android tablets. It’s all iPad all the time for average Joe. According to some estimates, almost 6 months after launch – there are only 1.21 million of Android tablets in customer hands. Android developers are not too impressed either, with very few of them bothering to rewrite apps to run on Honeycomb, while iPad apps are growing like crazy… But that’s ok.

Consumers and developers do not care much about Android Honeycomb, and  neither does Google. In 2011 Google is just staking it’s claim, warming up for a real fight over the tablet market. The real fight that will start late this year or early in 2012, when the fourth generation of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich, is released.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will again unify two separate forks of Android, by enabling Honeycomb based UI/OS to run on smartphones. Next year all Android flagship handsets will be launching with Ice Cream Sandwich, and the number of Android 4.0 devices will skyrocket. So all Android app developers will have to rewrite their apps for Ice Cream Sandwich phones. For many of them, only small additional effort will be required to make those same apps run natively on Android 4 tablets. Thus quickly solving the App draught problem current Honeycomb tablets face.

And then it will be up to Google and it’s manufacturer partners to create Android tablets that can finally pose a real challenge to iPad dominance. Will Google succeed, with Android tablet sales exploding in 2012, like smartphones sales did in mid 2010? Who knows. Based on Google’s past record – I’d say they have an extremely good chance. But it’s very dangerous to project past performance into assured future success. Competitive dynamics are very different every time.

E.g., in tablet market, there is one key force missing, that played a huge role in success of Android smartphones. Mobile carriers. Tablet market is much more like a PC market, and carriers have very little influence on consumer choices there. So they won’t be able to provide any real boost to Android tablet sales. On the other hand, Google’s PC manufacturing partners are now even more desperate to create a viable iPad alternatives, then mobile vendors were to get something to to compete against iPhone back in 2009. Someone of them may succeed.

The only thing I can promise you now, is that the fight over the tablet market in 2012 should be no less interesting then what is happening with smartphones today.

• Apple Boasts 100M iPhones, 15M iPads Sold
• Android 3.0 Honeycomb gets officially unveiled, alongside Web-based Android Market
• Android Honeycomb may need at least a dual-core Cortex A9 processor to run ‘properly’
• Google Music, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Honeycomb 3.1 officially announced
• Schmidt: More than 300K Androids Activated Each Day, 150K Apps in Market

A perfect example is the mobile industry. Every phone that comes out is either an iPhone Killer or a total failure. The same applies to the mobile operating system ecosystem.

Right now, in the minds of many tech bloggers around the world, there are two operating systems, and only two.  iPhone and Android. In reality, it is true that other platforms such as Nokia’s Symbian, WebOS, and BlackBerry might be suffering now, but are still far from their death beds.

Windows Phone 7 is a different story than both categories. Right now, the new Microsoft mobile initiative has insignificant market share of less than 5%, but according to almost all predictions, it is expected to make a difference in the landscape of mobile operating systems in the coming years.

The big question is, would you buy a phone that runs a Microsoft operating system after having used the mess that was Windows Mobile? Personally, if you had asked me before ever using Windows Phone 7, I would have, without hesitating, answered no. However, Microsoft has clearly internalized some of the feedback they received from Windows Mobile and reinvented their mobile offering from scratch.

A lot has been said about Windows Phone and its future, but the latest development is that Mango, the most recent update to the platform has just been released to manufacturing with a whole list of improvements that will enhance the overall Windows Phone experience. You can see the first Mango device, which is going to debut in Japan, in the video below.

This got me thinking about what it would take me to replace my iPhone with a Windows Phone device, and with the help of a little crowd sourcing on Twitter and Google+, I came up with the following list.

The following are five immediate and practical steps that Microsoft must implement in order to achieve any sort of success in the over saturated and uber-competitive mobile industry:

Apps

This is hands down the biggest factor in the success of the Windows phone platform. Take the Playbook for example. The hardware is top notch, the software is powerful, but the apps are M.I.A, and we know how many Playbook devices RIM has managed to sell. Microsoft’s top priority way ahead of anything else on the list, should be to make the lives of its developer community as easy and pleasant as possible.

As of now, the development environment of Visual Studio is indeed top notch, but if you have developed a Windows Phone app and tried to upload it to the Marketplace, you surely know how big of a headache it is. It’s as if Microsoft does not want you to upload apps. The verification process for you and your company is so painful and unintuitive; that developers have told me they almost gave up in the process.

However, the headache does not end there. Once your app is live, good luck promoting it. Now 25,000 apps is not 500,000 like the App Store but for some odd reason, unknown to anyone it seems, Microsoft seems to have chosen some big titles to promote under their own name, and a small independent developer does not stand a chance. This does not seem like a company struggling to succeed in a super competitive space.

The Cool Factor

Off the bat, I will say that the UI of Windows Phone is awesome. Except, if you ask 9/10 people about Windows Phone, all they hear is Windows, which means uncool. Microsoft has to push this platform with all its marketing might. I mean, the “Really” commercials were mildly entertaining, and Microsoft’s $500 million budget combined with Nokia’s $130 million budget to push Windows Phone is a good start, but Microsoft (and Nokia) has to try harder.

Lucky for Microsoft, they are not first in this market and they can learn lessons from some of their competitors. Have you ever heard someone refer to the Android platform as a whole by calling it a “Droid phone”? Yea, it is the same as someone calling MP3 players “iPods”.

You know why that happens? Because of marketing. Android and Verizon flooded the U.S with the Droid Does ads and guess what? They did the job and helped Android reach enough people to help the platform compete with iPhone. Microsoft, are you taking notes?

Unparalleled Hardware

While in today’s mobile world, hardware comes second on the list after apps and software, there is no denying how well a mobile device with unmatched specs can sell. I am talking dual-core processors (or possibly more), top notch screen resolution, a camera with a ridiculous amount of megapixels and LED flash, and all the possible sensors you can imagine.

On this front, I am fairly optimistic that Microsoft will fill these shows. Why? For two reasons. For starters, the first batch of Windows Phone 7 devices such as the HD7 and others were pretty darn impressive. However, the kicker is a small little Finish company that Microsoft is partnering with. If there is anyone that can wow us with their hardware in a very software-centric mobile era, it is Nokia. I am convinced this is what will happen by year’s end.

Subsidized Phone and Service

OK, here is something I did not think of and was suggested to me on Twiter by Rob La Gesse, a.k.a Scoble’s boss at Rackspace. He suggested that Microsoft has to focus on market share and not revenue. For this cause, Windows Phone app revenue should be used by Microsoft to subsidize handsets and even service. What better way to bring users by the millions than to give them a phone for free?

Far fetched? Definitely. But as Rob said to me on Twitter, desperate times call for desperate measures. As far as Micorsoft and Windows Phone are concerned, these are definitely desperate times.

How would this work? That is something that would require some creativity on the part of Microsoft, but Rob suggested, and I like the concept, that users would pay for an app in the Marketplace and Microsoft, instead of taking a cut like Apple does, will take that money to subsidize free phones or some kind of deals on free or discounted phone service. Would this require operator cooperation? On some level, absolutely, but in order to succeed in this space, Microsoft better have already recognized the essential nature of operational ties with mobile operators around the world.

Global Reach

In today’s market, iPhone and Android are growing fast but globally, Nokia still holds the crown. For Microsoft to make a difference here, the company is going to have to attack the market across all continents. Of course, the fact that Nokia smartphones will be running Windows will help their cause, but let’s not forget that Nokia’s dominance in emerging markets is not based on smartphones, but feature phones that have a very small margin of profit for the Finnish company. That might explain the numbers we heard last week about the Nokia Q2 results.

If Microsoft thinks it can beat Apple or Android in its home court and ignore the rest of the world, they are in for a big surprise. Windows Phone  devices are going to have to be in the displays of stores throught the US, Europe, of course, but the rest of the world is going to need some Microsoft lovin as well. It has to be a global push or it will quickly turn into a global failure for Microsoft.

All in all, I have high hopes for Windows Phone and Microsoft seems to have learned many lessons from their past mistakes. If the platform’s 25k apps are any indication of its future growth, which I believe they are, we can expect a serious explosion in the coming years, the likes of which should make Apple and Google worry and step up their game.

• Microsoft ups Windows Phone 7 free app submission limit from 5 to 100
• Nokia gets £20m, Samsung £8m from Microsoft for Windows Phone promotion in the UK
• Windows Phone Tango could support 120 languages, C++ native coding
• Microsoft: Windows Phone production costs will drop by half next year
• Microsoft Tag Reader is the company’s first Android app

Did you expect anything better? You shouldn’t. It is perfectly clear now that Nokia has been disrupted by Android and iPhone, and there’s not much they can do this year to make things any better.

Competition knows about weakness in Nokia Symbian portfolio, and the inability of the platform itself to compete on anything else but price. If rivals could match Symbian handsets on price, with  good enough, similarly featured Android devices – 9 customers out of 10 will leave the shop with new Android device in their pocket.

And, as of this spring,  competitors like Samsung and HTC are matching Nokia Symbian device price points aggressively. Take a look at this Infographic (price data from Amazon.de):

Things were over for Nokia Symbian smartphones in the second half of last year, when Android phones got good enough and cheap enough for most of the former Nokia smartphone buyers.

A year ago Nokia started losing market share by 5-6% (of the total) a quarter. It went down from 39% to 33%  in Q3 2010, then another 5% – from 33% to 28% in Christmas quarter. In Q4 2010 Nokia managed to slow the decline a bit with a boost from from the novelty and pent-up demand for terribly delayed Symbian 3. In Q1 2011 they floated on air by stuffing Nokia distribution channels in China and Europe to the hilt. Unfortunately, distributors can take and move only so much of old crappy phones, and with nothing interesting to stimulate the demand, Nokia is now paying the price. With smartphone market growing by leaps and bounds, Nokia sold 8.5 million less then they did last quarter. Nokia sales in China dropped by 53%, in Europe by 21%.

Of course, some Nokia/Symbian fans and analysts who consider Stephen Elop, the strategy shift to Windows Phone, and “Burning Platforms” memo to be the root of all Nokia troubles, where quick declare  that they have been proven right, and that Nokia Q2 results show that all of this is happening only because of February 11th.

Sorry to disappoint you, guys. Nokia’s current state of affairs has little to do with Feb 11th, and everything to do the mistakes/failure to react to disruption by former management. Symbian is just not good enough to compete with the latest versions of Android, and it’s improvement is way too slow. It was way too slow 3 years ago, it was way too slow last year, and it is way too slow today. February 11th, or not.

Symbian’s efficiency was a big competitive advantage when processing power in a phone was scarce and expensive. The key selling point for most of Symbian devices these past few years was the price. Unfortunately Moore’s law works almost just as well in mobile, as it did in PCs. Computing power got cheap and plenty enough this year, and Symbian lost the only competitive advantage it had.

Nokia N8 and other Symbian devices were positioned to compete on price with Android flagships like Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire. Unfortunately, Nokia’s competitors introduced next generations of their flagships this year, and slashed their last year model prices significantly. While Nokia launched X7 and mostly cosmetic S^3 make-over that is Symbian Anna.

Right now, Nokia rivals have several Android handsets, that are cheaper and, in many cases, better then anything Nokia has to offer in the same price range. The only feature that Android vendors arguably could not match yet – is camera. But very few customers will chose a phone simply because it can take better pictures.

It’s simple – if offered to pick between Nokia N8 and cheaper Samsung Galaxy SL, or X7 and Galaxy S that costs 20% less – the choice is obvious. For consumer and the sales guy in the shop. It’s Galaxy S. You do not need to invent some imaginary Nokia boycotts caused by Nokia’s February announcement, to understand why almost nobody wants to buy Finnish smartphones anymore.

Nokia will continue to bleed market share, and, most likely, lose unit volumes for the rest of this year. It is very likely that they will end 2011 with the market share in a single digits. But it does not matter much in the long run. What’s done is done, and Nokia has to pay the price for it’s hubris of the last 3 years.

What matters – is whether Nokia’s bet on Windows Phone pays off or not. We should know that by this time next year.

• Nokia stops smartphone sales drop in Q3, but it’s now No.3 behind Samsung and Apple
• Nokia posts Q1 2011 results, signs definitive agreement with Microsoft
• Nokia posts Q1 2010 results. And no, Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 are not delayed
• When will Symbian die?
• Samsung dethrones Nokia in featurephone sales (in Western Europe)

We already addressed what Google has to do to bring this social network into the mobile sphere, and the first on the list was releasing an iPhone app. Well, one down, four to go. Apple approved the Google+ app yesterday and Google actually announced it, where else, on Google+ itself.  As Punit Soni, one of the people responsible for the new app posted the announcement on Google+, I tweeted it here, and suffice to say, the excitement I saw on Twitter about this new release was unprecedented.

Then the excitement died down and people actually tried to use the app. Talk about disappointment. It was full of bugs and Google recognized that, releasing an update within minutes. Yes, some of the issues were resolved but most were not, and the overwhelming response to the new app is negative. People are hating and here is why.

Limited Support

The new Google+ iOS app is actually not an iOS app. It is an iPhone 3G, 3GS, and iPhone 4 app. It does not work on iPad, in fact you cannot even get the app on iPad. Might be me, but I use apps such as Skype that are not optimized for iPad all the time. Why can’t I even download Google+ on iPad?

How about iPod Touch? Same deal. Even the new generation iPod Touch that is significantly more advanced from a hardware perspective than the iPhone 3g does not have the option to download the new app. I don’t get it.

OK, one more thing on this front. I know iOS5 is still in beta but it is being used by thousands of iOS developers, if not more. Guess what app does not work at all on iOS5? The Google+ app. It crashes constantly on various screens including the main Stream screen. Unusable completely.

Half jokingly, I would say that Google is trying to bring the Android fragmentation problem over to iOS by releasing the app with support for such a small minority of iOS devices.

Update your Profile

Have you downloaded the app yet? Great. Now go ahead and open it and try to update your Google+ profile. You know, the most basic functionality of any social network? Yes, not possible. How is THAT possible? The Google+ app is simplistic in its design, much like Google.com, which is great. The trick with mobile apps and specifically with apps in the social category is to offer a simplistic and intuitive UI but include advanced features and complete functionality. On this front, the Google+ iPhone app fails miserably.

Sharing

After  updating your profile and writing a post, the most elementary functionality of any social network and especially Google+ is sharing. As in sharing a post a friend wrote, a picture someone posted, or a link someone sent you. No way to do that yet on the iPhone app (or the Android app for that matter). That, in my opinion, is just strange.

Speed or Lack Thereof

I thought it was just me experiencing slowness in the app. The experience I saw can only be described as an app that basically took the web interface and wrapped it into a native app.

But then I saw this tweet from the founder of Appsfire, Ouriel Ohayon. He was right, the app was apparently just a wrapper for the Web app, which means a lot of things.

For starters, the app as a whole is slow. It seems to call the Web for every action you try to do, which means longer response times as opposed to complete native functionality, which exists in other apps such as the Facebook iOS app.

Moving along, why is there no integration whatsoever with your phone’s contact book? That is a basic feature found in many native social apps and it is very much lacking here.

Lastly, and this is something related to the UI in general, why on earth does it take 3 clicks to post something on Google+ from the app? For the sake of integrity, the Facebook app is no better on this front and also takes too many clicks to post. Both apps should have a Post option from the home screen.

In conclusion, perhaps I am nitpicking here, but Google knows how important mobile is and that is why they released the Android app alongside the web platform. It seems that they forgot about the 200 million iOS users here and released a half-baked and super simplistic iPhone app that needs major improvements and fast.

Let’s just sum this up with a quote Scoble told me about his thoughts on the iPhone Google+ app. When I asked him about it he said and I quote: “Other than the constant hangs, it’s OK.” What does that say to you? For a guy who has been praising the heck out of Google+ for the past few week and for a guy that is overly obsessed with anything new, shiny, and mobile, the fact that he said it is just ”ok” leaves a bigger impression on me  than the constant hangs he is experiencing along with the rest of us.

• 5 Steps Google Must Take Now To Bring Google+ into the Mobile Sphere
• The Success of Google+ Very Much Depends on its Mobile Implementation
• How Facebook Plans to Take over the Mobile World
• Google Analytics now available for mobile apps (Android and iPhone)
• 10 Features I Would Love to See in the New Facebook iPad App

Putting aside all the buzz, the truth is that using these platforms whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, enables users to communicate and connect with people from around the world they would otherwise never have encountered.

Having said that, and despite the amazing things that have been accomplished on the social Web, there is so much more room for improvement, and the mobile phone will facilitate those improvements in the coming years.

Source: Geek.com

Location-Sensitive

One of the interesting phenomena of social media and the Web in general is that you can basically say and do whatever you want, since everything is virtual and no one can confirm the validity of your tweet/status/update.

This is already starting to change with services like Foursquare that basically bridge the social you and the real you. Of course, there are many other location-based services decreasing this gap as well.

If there is one characteristic of the mobile phone that separates it from the desktop environment, it is its portability and “Always on” nature. With location sensors improving daily and all smartphones coming with this capability built in, the future of social media will be a whole lot closer to our real lives than in it is now.  Let’s just put it this way, your Google+ Circles will be seriously overlapped with your real social circles, you know, the ones you actually talk to in real life.

Less Anonymity

In continuation to the location point I mentioned above, the social Web lets you remain as anonymous as you would like. You can protect your Twitter updates, increase your Facebook privacy, or share personal updates to your very limited Google+ circles.

The future of social media, if mobile has what to say about it, will be a whole lot less anonymous. As smartphones advance and include more and more sensors and state-of-the-art capabilities, your mobile phone will be sharing more and more info about you without you even knowing.

Before you jump and yell “but what about my privacy?” I think the type of information we tend to keep private today, will be the type of data we will be happy to share tomorrow and your smartphone will be the tool you use to do that. You don’t believe me? Just think about the first time you  heard about Foursquare and thought “I would never share my current location across the Web. Why would I?” Well, it seems people, 10 million of them, now disagree and voluntarily share their whereabouts with their networks, despite the obvious dangers of burglaries that accompany such an announcement.

Consolidation of Streams

Like it or not, the very nature of a mobile device is limited access to screen real estate, which means less flexibility on text and other types of content. What you can read on a 27’ screen will be a lot more difficult to consume on a 4’ mobile display.

What that means as far as social media is concerned is that in tomorrow’s world that is dominated by mobile devices, users will not have a Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and RSS stream, but they will all be consolidated into one. Think Flipboard meets Google+ meets iPhone.

With smartphones beginning to replace laptops, which already replaced desktops, all your content will have to be much more manageable on a small screen. Of course, this is already happening with apps like Flyscreen, Pulse, and many others. Exciting things coming from Flipboard too.

Push Notifications

Take the power of social media, throw in a little location sauce, and add a layer of real time push notifications, and what you have is a super powerful and engaging platform to interact with your community on a whole new level.

Just imagine a world in which someone you connected with on Facebook or Twitter bought a new tablet with their NFC-enabled device and enabled their phone to share that info. You are on the market for a new computing device and are near a store that carries that tablet. Your phone then notifies you based on your social graph and recent updates that you should enter the store and purchase that specific tablet.

The amazing thing about that scenario is that no part of it is unrealistic even today. In fact, coming up with that scenario was actually difficult since every other situation I tried to imagine is already possible today and actually takes place on a daily basis.

Multimedia-based networking

Last but not least, if today, social media is primarily based on text updates with the ability to share photos and videos at will, the future of social media will be the exact opposite.

With smartphones increasing their photography capabilities, there will be no more need for point n shoot cameras, and your primary camera and video camera will be on you at all times.

That means a whole lot more photo and video sharing, not to mention audio. On tomorrow’s social Web, you will connect with others based on interest and location like we do today, but you will find yourself connecting with people with whom you do not necessarily share interests, mainly because you enjoyed the video/photo/or audio clip they shared on the social network that most likely does not exist today.

In conclusion, it is an exciting time to be on the Web and as the Web continues to change and evolve, so does user behavior. As the mobile phone continues to take a more central role in our day to day lives, it will begin to influence the way we do mundane things including socializing on the internet. Like I said, exciting times.

• 5 Steps Google Must Take Now To Bring Google+ into the Mobile Sphere
• Facebook cloud phone features detailed
• Samsung bada OS – more details unveiled
• Rumor: HTC’s Buffy is The Facebook Phone
• Apple iOS 5 Rumored To Have Social-Network Integration Features

But Android has an Achilles Heel, a vulnerability which, if not addressed soon, may bring Android growth to a halt very quickly. This week spot – is a very thin wireless intellectual property portfolio that Google has. And Google’s apparent indifference to the legal IP challenges Android device makers are facing right now.

All of Google’s Android partners are under rapidly growing pressure from multiple patent holders, claiming that Android devices infringe on this patent or that, demanding licensing fees. And, more often then not, Google seems to be content to watch it’s partners struggle from the sidelines , filing occasional brief in their defense, but refusing to commit real cash to cover legal costs or provide guaranties/insurance against damages, if Android is found to be infringing.

Yes, Google did try to buy a huge pool of Nortel patents that would have helped a lot to ease Android patent pain, but it lost the auction to Apple, RIM and Microsoft. And Google is fighting Oracle directly to make some key Android related patents invalidated, with some encouraging developments - USPTO rejecting a lot of Oracle patents/claims after reexamination. But it only takes one really strong and broad patent confirmed, to make all those early victories meaningless.

And that’s about it, as far as active Google involvement in patent fights goes.

Faced with this apparent Google indifference, Android device makers are already starting to fold, agreeing to pay licensing fees for each Android handset they sell. For now, only the most aggressive Android IP licensor –Microsoft – has had any success. And it’s winnings are pretty small. Except for HTC, which last year agreed without any fight to pay licensing fee to Microsoft for each Android handset sold, only a few wireless industry newbies like General Dynamics, Onkyo, Wistron and the likes , agreed to pay up.

But last week Reuters reported that Samsung may be ready to cave in to Microsoft, and is now only negotiating how big it’s license fee per Android device will be. And how to get it lower with promises of future Windows Phone commitment. If this report is true and Samsung signs a licensing deal with Microsoft, these could be a very bad news for the future of Android. Because, if Samsung folds without fight, and starts paying $10 for each Android device it ships, it’s a very strong confirmation that the patents Microsoft is asserting against Android, are really strong.

Samsung is not the industry newbie like HTC or Onkyo, with little to no IP in wireless. They’ve been in this business for almost 20 years, are one of the most prolific patent generators around, and probably have one of the strongest wireless IP portfolio in the industry. Samsung lawyers and engineers may have already looked into Microsoft claims, and decided that there is a very good chance they may lose the court battle, so they better settle it right now. If that happens, I don’t see how any other Android device maker, except Motorola,  can avoid paying a license fee of $10 or more per device to Microsoft.

But the potential Android partner troubles do not end with Microsoft. They are only start there. We are already hearing that Oracle has put up Android IP licensing program, and is approaching Android device makers with an offer to license it’s patents for $15-20 per shipped device.

Then it gets much worse. Microsoft is only one of the big wireless IP holders hostile to Android, and not even the strongest. In anti Android camp we now also have: Nokia, Apple, RIM (with it’s share of 6000 Nortel patents) and HP/Palm. For now, only Apple has joined Microsoft in anti-Android litigation fray.  But you can bet dollars to donuts others will too, soon.

And there is a good reason to believe that each of these players has a wireless IP portfolio, that is at least on par with Microsoft. So they may be able to demand, and get, fees similar to what Microsoft is getting now. Which means, that in a few years, every Android device maker may have to pay an average $10 licensee fee to Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, HP and Oracle. That’s $60 per device only for the rights to put Android OS on it.

How many device makers can sustain this additional cost? It would be taxing enough for the top of the line Android phones like Samsung Galaxy S2 or HTC Sensation. And it will effectively shut out Android from mid-to low end markets – that are the key for Android to grow or at least sustain the market share it has achieved today.

Which makes apparent Google passivity on this issue very strange.

Since Android exploded, Google already had 2 big opportunities to remedy it’s patent problem. It could have bought Palm last year for something like $1.5 billion. Which would have got them patent portfolio of the smartphone industry pioneer, IP cross-licensing deals with most of the old players,  in addition to all WebOS assets and team.

Last week, they could have had 6000 patent strong Nortel portfolio for something upwards of 4.5B. Which sounds pricey, but would have netted to about $25 per Android device for 1 year of production at current 500K a day rate. Accounting for future growth, spreading it over a few more years, this cost per device would have become negligible, easily covered by advertising and other revenue streams Google can generate via Android. But Google let both of these tremendous opportunities slip through it’s fingers.

I don’t know, maybe Google has some secret plan to solve all Android related intellectual property issues and are only biding their time. Let’s hope so. Because it will be a huge loss to all of us if competitors succeed in destroying Android with their patents.

Even if Google’s inaction is partly to blame, the main problem here is the patent system. Instead of promoting innovation, patents today have become an innovation strangling litigation vehicle. If Google’s competitors succeed in derailing Android with them, maybe there is a silver lining to it. Maybe by then enough people in U.S. government will have and love their Droids, to sit up and notice. And start the badly needed real patent reform.

• Motorola’s Sanjay Jha openly admits they plan to collect IP royalties from other Android makers
• Google buys Motorola to get some patents. Samsung, HTC, LG and other Android OEMs rejoice
• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells
• Quick and easy fix for all Android patent problems. Google should buy Motorola
• Android is patently ill. Two strains of IP disease that may soon derail Google’s OS

Of course with iOS 5 out there for developers, we already know that some of the major software features we have all been waiting for will definitely be a part of the next iPhone. This includes better notifications, lock screen information, as well as wireless syncing capabilities. Of course, by the time the new iPhone is announced, iOS5 will be a whole lot more stable and will most likely include many more features, but what about the iPhone itself?

Source: iPhonedownloadblog.com

The following  are some characteristics many users have been waiting for in the next iPhone as well as a realistic assessment of what we will really see in iPhone 5:

Larger Screen

All of the mockups on the Web agree on one thing. The next generation iPhone will have a larger screen. While 3.5’ might have worked in 2007, today with devices such as the Galaxy S2 and others that include screen with 3.8’ displays all the way up to 4.3’, the iPhone’s 3.5’ just doesn’t cut it anymore. A larger screen on the iPhone will enhance the overall experience of Web browsing, multimedia consuming, and reading content, which based on the first beta of iOS5 (the reader in Safari) is a major theme of the next version of iOS. What are the chances of the next iPhone having a significantly larger display? I say they are very high. Let’s give it a  8/10.

Full Gmail Support

This might be a software feature, and something we have not seen in iOS5 so the chances of the next iPhone including this are not looking great. What do I mean by Full Gmail support? Well, the email experience on iPhone is not bad, far from it. Having said that, Gmail users still do not get the full experience the way Android users do. For example,  Gmail on iPhone does not include stars, labels, or many other UI features Gmail is so famous for. The chances of iPhone 5 improving the Gmail experience? I would say 4/10.

NFC

We have said it before and I will say it again. NFC is big and will most likely take off in the coming years. Will the iPhone 5 include an NFC sensor? Well, that depends which rumors you pay attention to. Many have claimed that it definitely will, while others are skeptical and think Apple will not include something so cutting-edge that  has not yet reached the mainstream. All I can say is, I don’t know whether or not iPhone 5 will include NFC technology but if it does, we can expect it to go mainstream a whole lot faster with hundreds and thousands of iOS apps popping up to support NFC almost immediately

Better Rear and Front Camera

OK, Android lovers, sit down, you are not going to like what I am about to say. The iPhone 4’s camera is the best on the market. It is the most popular phone camera, we know that, but based on my review of many leading mobile phones with state-of-the-art cameras, the iPhone trumps them all. The front facing camera, however, is a completely different ball game. Yes, it is good enough for video calls, but why not improve the quality of photos taken with the main camera as well as the front facing one? The chances of this happening are very good. I would say 9/10 good

Thinner Body

Have you seen the Galaxy S2? It is ridiculously thin and it is in my opinion the only phone that would lure me away from my iPhone now. Apple has to reduce the size of the iPhone when it announces the iPhone 5. It does not have to be just as thin as the Galaxy S2’s 8.5mm body, but anything over 9mm would be a disappointment. Compared to the iPhone 4’s 9.3 mm body, that is not the biggest deal. You can do it, Apple. The chances of the iPhone 5 going on a crash diet? I say 8/10.

Wireless Charging

This is slightly more far-fetched but there are already countless solutions on the market that enable you to charge a mobile device without any wires. Will Apple adopt this technology? Not so sure, but combined with iOS5, which allows you to sync wirelessly,  the ability to charge wirelessly would be an amazing addition. I don’t know about you, but the first thing I would do? Burn those annoying white USB cords that came with my iPhone and iPad. Chances? 4/10

Sensors Galore

What the smartphone can do today would have never been imaginable just a few years ago. Accelerometers, Gyroscopes, etc. Who knows what type of sensors the smartphone of tomorrow will  have, but how cool would it be if iPhone 5 had heat, pressure, humidity and electro magnetic sensors built in? What would we use this for? Something tells me the iOS developer community would find some pretty amazing uses for these in no time. The chances of new sensors appearing in iPhone 5? I would have to say 3/10

Enhanced Battery Life

OK this is the only feature we will definitely see in the next iPhone. While I have no complaints about the battery life of the iPhone 4, and it generally makes it through the day, I would have no objection to my iPhone making it through the week (ok, perhaps that is pushing it). If I had to guess, I would say the iPhone’s battery will go from a 1420 mAh to a 1600 mAh or even more. This gets a 10/10, the iPhone 5 will have a better battery

Dual or Quad Core Processors

The iPhone 4 is fast and does not lack in the performance department. Having said that, single core mobile devices are so 2010. The iPhone 5 must, and will most likely have dual core processors, if not more. Why? Because with new technologies making their way into the app store, such as augmented reality, apps are getting more resource heavy and the iPhone needs to be able to handle them and handle them well. The chances of this really happening? I would say pretty darn good, 9/10

No Buttons

Last but not least, I will add a somewhat controversial feature request. I love the simplicity of the one button system that we have on iPhone and iPad today. But, you know what is simpler than one button? NO buttons! Yes, I would love it if Apple got rid of that one Home button that is in my opinion unnecessary in today’s multitouch world. Why not make the whole iPhone UI based on gesures and enable me to go back to the home screen by pinching or some other familiar gesture that Apple introduced to the world? I see no reason Apple should not release a completely butonless iPhone. Do you? Chances? I am going to go out on a limb here and say the chances of this happening are actually pretty high… Let’s give it a 7/10 for iPhone 5 and a 9/10 for some iPhone that will be released in the coming years.

Source: Knownewtricks.blogspot.com

• 4th generation iPhone to come with 5MP camera. Apple tablet to be showcased in January
• Both iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S coming this fall?
• iPhone HD coming on June 22 with 960 x 640 display, Verizon version coming too?
• Rumor: iPhone 5 to have a metal chassis and a 3.5-3.7-inch screen after all
• iPhone 5 front panel allegedly pictured, suggests larger display

Of course, the most popular iOS Twitter app is the app made by Twitter itself, but the truth is, it is far from the best. Another popular Twitter app is Tweetdeck, which was recently acquired by Twitter, and despite its dominance on the desktop, does not have as big of a user base.

There are many Twitter apps that stand out from the crowd because they offer a different user interface, a better user experience, or just a unique feature not supported by other apps.

The following are six iOS Twitter apps, some of which you may not have heard of, that have managed to stand out and create a loyal audience that keeps coming back.

All of these apps, in addition to their unique characteristics,  offer a full fledged Twitter experience that allow you to perform any and all operations that you are able to perform on the desktop or using a Web client such as Twimbow or Hootsuite:

Maha – $1.99

Out of all the apps on this list, the chances that you have heard of this app are lowest. The UI however is one of the best out there. It can only be compared to the UI of Windows Phone 7, which is metro, intuitive, and smooth. Maha is a feature-rich Twitter app that offers a superior user experience with clean and fun transitions.

TweetList Pro- $2.99

This app is unique in that the entire UI is built around Twitter list functionality.  Many people, myself  included, manage their Twitter networks via lists. Creating a list based on topic makes the whole Twitter experience more manageable. For such users, most Twitter apps fail to meet their needs. Tweetlist enables you to use the familiar swipe gesture to navigate between all your lists and to access lists with one click. Of course, besides the lists, the app is full of the regular functionality that will enable you to tweet on the go.

Tweetbot- $1.99

This app is unique because, simply put, it is the best designed Twitter app on the App Store and I dare you to challenge that statement with another app. Tweetbot is relatively new in the game, but it took the Twitter community by storm and everyone is raving about the Tweetbot UI. Whether it is the blue on grey contrast or the stylish icons, if you have used any Twitter app and found the UI to be lacking that extra kick, Tweetbot is a must.

HootSuite- Free

If you are not using Tweetdeck on the desktop, chances are you are using Hootsuite. It is the most powerful Twitter Web client with built in stats, scheduling capabilities and much more. The iOS app is no different. With more customization options than any other app, you can tweet from Hootsuite on iOS however you want, whenever you want, and track the results better than any other solution. The UI is a little more complicated than other apps I have tried but the possibilities are endless with Hootsuite for iOS.

Flipboard- Free

Why is Flipboard a unique Twitter app? Well, a good start is the fact that it is not a Twitter app at all, but it sure does enable you to tweet and engage with your Twitter network. Flipboard is of course first and foremost a very well designed reader app for iPad that provides a magazine-like experience on the wildly popular tablet. However, the latest releases have added full social features including sharing posts on Twitter, but also replying and engaging on the micro blogging platform. I would not say Flipboard, as a Twitter app, is as feature-rich as Echofon or some of the others, but if you are interested in content first and Twitter second, Flipboard is a great choice.

Echofon – Free

Out of the tens of Twitter apps I have tried, I always come back to Echofon. Why is it unique? Because it is not missing any feature I can think of. Echofon has the most advanced features out of any Twitter app I have tried on any platform and has a super intuitive UI that has close to no learning curve. To name one example of a feature I found in no other app, if you want to reply to multiple tweets from multiple people with one answer, Echofon allows you to do that. For example, if you are getting happy birthday wishes from a lot of people, you can either say thank you to each person individually or reply to all of them (within 140 characters of course) with one tweet.  This is not to be confused with a Reply All option to reply to everyone mentioned in one tweet.

If you have any iOS apps to add to the list, please share them in the comments below. I can be found on Twitter at @hilzfuld, please share them with me as well.

• Twitter upgrades SMS functionality: Fast Follow, alerts and more
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• How Social Media is Evolving Before our Eyes Thanks to Mobile Technology
• 10 Features I Would Love to See in the New Facebook iPad App

The following are 8 iPhone apps that will actually enhance your life in a way that a game cannot, no matter how much fun it is to fling birds at pigs:

1: 360 Panorama ($0.99)

There are various apps in the App Store that allow you to take a panorama photo. Microsoft even has its own iPhone app for this,      PhotoSynth. 360 Panorama has to be the best designed, easiest to use, and most feature-rich panorama app out of the bunch. As soon as you open the app, you are presented with a grid, and 3 icons along the bottom for adding a photo from your library, snapping the photo, or configuring the settings. Then you take the picture, rotate the phone and begin to capture a 360 degree panoramic photo of what you are seeing.

You can then easily upload the photo to the site that is associated with the app and share the 360 degree photo across the Web. All in all, the app is very user friendly and the resulting photos are super impressive.

2: ToonPAINT ($1.99)

This app, out of the hundreds or thousands I have tried makes my top ten list in terms of apps that blew me away. The design of ToonPAINT is fantastic and the pictures that it creates are truly phenomenal. So what does it do? You can load a photo or take one with the camera, and the app turns the picture into a full fledged cartoon. You can then customize the look of the cartoon with colors and easily share it via email or the social Web. There are some extra enhancements that you can buy via an in-app purchase, but even without them, the app is sure to impress your friends and create superb cartoon-like photos.

3: QuickPix ($0.99)

I have followed the evolution of this app since it was first introduced into the App Store and it was awesome then, and it is awesome now. The basic premise is that due to the nature of a mobile device, you want the ability to snap a photo using your phone instantly. If the camera on your phone, in this case the iPhone, takes a few seconds to load the camera app, those seconds can be the difference between capturing an image and missing it.

QuickPix loads instantly and enables you to take a photo significantly faster than the iPhone camera. You can also capture images in burst mode, which works unbelievably fast on the iPhone and somehow, even faster on the iPad. There are many other features as well such as the ability to snap a photo right in the middle of a video, something that can come in handy.

4: FlyScreen (FREE)

Originally a wildly popular Android app, Flyscreen recently launched on the iPhone. The app offers an easy-to-read and pleasant-on-the-eyes user interface that enables you to add your favorite RSS feeds, or social networks such as Twitter and Facebook and read them on the go. Each feed has its own view similar to the “card” concept we have seen in other platforms such as WebOS or on the Playbook and you can share articles directly from within the app and fully customize the look and feel including premium themes.

In addition to the regular “reader” functionality, Flyscreen is the only app that not only lets you actively read your favorite content, it also has a “passive” reading mode that lets you dock your device and the app slowly streams your content onto the screen enabling you to click on articles that only really draw your attention.

5: doat (FREE)

This one is interesting. DoAT launched at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt event and has since seen some nice tech coverage. What the developers set out to do is revolutionize mobile search and while competing with giants like Google might be a huge challenge, DoAT seems to be doing a fantastic job so far. When you launch the mobile app, you can search for anything you would generally search via Google on Safari. DoAT then shows you results of Web apps for the query you entered.

For example, if you search for your name in DoAT, you can see results for you under different categories such as People, Internet,  Reference, and others. As soon as you select the relevant category, you are presented with live dynamic results in the form of Web apps. So in our example, if you click People, the app will show you your Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google results for your name, and others. If you had clicked Reference as a category, you might see any mention of your name on various sites such as Wikepedia, Answers.com, or others. The app might take you some time to get used to but it definitely offers a lot of value depending on your search query.

6: Boxcar (FREE or $4.99)

I think Boxcar might be a little more well known than the other apps here, but it is well worth a mention. Boxcar is the notification system that the iPhone is missing, at least until iOS5 is out to the public. However, even after iOS5 is out, Boxcar offers a lot of value that Apple will not offer. With boxcar, you can get notifications for so many services including Twitter, Facebook, Email, a specific Twitter search, an RSS feed, and so much more.

The app lets you customize the way  you are notified and in the year and a half I have been using Boxcar, I  have become increasingly dependent on the service and with the exception of a few cases, it never disappointed me and was always a reliable solution.

7: Silent Film Director ($0.99)

This app, like ToonPAINT, is pretty much guaranteed to blow you away.  With Silent Film Director, you take a video either from your library or the video camera, choose your soundtrack and effect, and convert the video to an old-fashioned movie that kind of reminds of you of a Charlie Chaplin clip depending on the year you choose in the settings. There are tons of customization options in Silent Film Director and the design of the app is nothing short of stunning.

8: Onavo (FREE)

To end off with a bang, here is an app that you will use, love, and want to share with your friends. Onavo will save you serious money on your data plan and without you even knowing it is there. Basically, Onavo runs your Web traffic through their servers and basically shrinks your data. Onavo also enables you to see what apps are using the most data and how much of your plan you have used. This is great for users with limited data plans and it is even greater for people who travel a lot. It can save you serious money on roaming charges, which we all know are completely out of control.

There you have it, folks, 8 fantastic apps most of you have never heard of and will absolutely love. If you have others you can recommend, please leave them in the comments so others can benefit from them as well. You can also let me know what you think of these, find me on Twitter at @hilzfuld.

• Updated Google Mobile App for iPhone available now
• Google Search for iPhone and Android enhanced with app search results
• New Google Image Search results available for Android, iPhone
• Yahoo launches Sketch-a-Search, Yahoo Search apps for iPhone
• Voice-enabled Google Mobile app for iPhone now available

The app landscape is getting out of control. 500,000 approved iOS apps, 250,000 Android apps, then add BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone 7, WebOS, and other platforms to the mix, and what you have is a full fledged flood of mobile applications.

Of course, this is great news for consumers who have a tremendous variety of apps to choose from, but in reality, do we really need SUCH a wide variety? What ends up happening, especially on Android, is that users are not able to find the best apps to fill their needs and filter out the junk. It is becoming increasingly overwhelming and frustrating for mobile users to find great apps.

As expected, this app discovery problem needs a solution and many startups as well as established companies are attempting to fill that void. This includes small companies you might not have heard of like Appboy that has an iOS solution to enable “app checkins”, all the way to Yahoo and its newly released app search engine.

The following are some interesting tools that make the challenge of finding new and interesting apps, just a little bit easier and more manageable.

• Appsfire: Founded by Ouriel Ohayon, Appsfire is a leading player in the space. Having recently raised a significant round of funding, Appsfire will take its already rich portfolio of cross-platform apps to enhance discovery, and improve and expand it. Appsfire now works on iOS and Android and offers various apps on mobile devices as well as the iPad. As of today, the company has apps such as Appsfire, App Deals, and Appstream on iPad, as well as its Web based search including a VIP section. These tools all offer a clean and user-friendly interface to discover new and interesting apps and the company is working on expanding its portfolio by introducing new tools to increase app discovery.
• Appboy: A Canada-based startup that originally offered the Web’s first social network for app developers has recently pivoted over to the app discovery space. Appboy’s new iOS SDK, dubbed Appboy+ offers iOS developers the ability to add a layer onto their app that will enable users to check in to their app and notify their social graphs that they are using that app. Sorry for the cliché but Appboy+ is the “Foursquare of mobile apps”. The new SDK is in closed Beta and if you are a developer of iOS apps, you can sign up for it here. When a user in your Twitter stream opens up their favorite app, with the Appboy SDK, you will see them check into that app and that way, you will find the apps your friends are using most often.
• Chomp: Chomp is widely regarded as the Google of mobile apps. It is first and foremost a Web search engine that enables users to search for apps on iOS and Android. However, it is not the kind of search you are thinking. With all those apps, there is no way for a user to know the name of the app they are looking for. What they will know, is the functionality they need in an app. With Chomp, you search for the word “Flashlight” for example, and are presented with the best options to match your query. Of course, Chomp also has its own apps on iPhone and Android, which basically replicate the experience on mobile.
• Appolicious: Yet another leading name in the app discovery space, Appolicious partners with Yahoo on its advanced app search capabilities. However, Appolicious goes far beyond search. It integrates social feature enabling users to see what apps their friends are using, and the company has also built somewhat of a Web content empire with leading app sites such as Appolicious.com, AndroidApps.com, and AppVee.com.
• Yahoo: The search giant only recently joined the competitive market of app discovery solutions. Just like some of the previous companies, Yahoo offers advanced search capabilities on iOS and Android. With the launch of the Web interface, Yahoo also launched an iOS app called Appspot, which similar to the Web, allows users to search for apps based on title description, or keyword.
• Zwapp: A relatively new and unknown service in the form of an iPhone app that helps users share their favorite iPhone apps with their social networks. The app integrates with Facebook, Twitter, and your phone’s address book and lets you see what apps your friends and contacts are using via a very intuitive user interface on the iPhone.
• Frenzapp: Very similar to Zwapp, Frenzapp scans your Facebook friends’ favorite apps and tells you what apps they are using. The company just released a new discovery service for music, which much like their apps solution, scans your Facebook friends’ music collection to enable you to find new music of interest. The basic premise is, if you are friends with someone on Facebook, chances are you share something in common and the apps that person is using would be relevant to you as well.
• Discovr: This solution takes a unique angle to app discovery. With Discovr, you search for your favorite app that you know of, or choose from one of the featured apps, and the service creates an interactive map of other apps similar to your selection. In addition, Discovr allows you to view an app’s description and screen shots directly from the map and share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or email. From what I can tell, this is the only solution here that does not come in the form of a free app and Discovr costs $.99. Based on my first impressions, the UI of Discovr is what really makes it stand out and the superior user experience is worth the dollar price tag in my opinion.

These are some leading solutions in the app discovery space but every day, new ones are born. There are also countless apps and sites that enable users to find app promotions such as FreeAppADay, and many others.

With the app stores growing at an increased pace, these services are going to come in even more handy in the coming months and years.

How do you find new and exciting apps? Please let me know in the comments or you can find me on Twitter at @hilzfuld.

• 9 of the Best iPhone Apps that Let You Call for Free
• Yahoo launches Sketch-a-Search, Yahoo Search apps for iPhone
• iOS and Android Video Calling: Which App to Use and When?
• 5 Steps Google Must Take Now To Bring Google+ into the Mobile Sphere
• Truphone brings Skype and Twitter to iPhone and iPod Touch users

Google may have activated 100 million Android-powered devices since the operating system was first released and until May 10 of this year (the figure was announced during Google’s annual developer conference), but it certainly looks set to sell a lot more than that this year.

That’s since Andy Rubin has announced that Google is now activating 500,000 Android devices each day. Furthermore, the growth is currently at 4.4% per week. There’s really no other way to put this other than say that those numbers are great, and Android’s continued growth is not something many would have bet on even six months ago.

But it is. Growing. Sure, not at the levels seen through some of last year (not in percentage points, that is), but that’s rather normal. You can grow 900% or so at the beginning of your lifespan, since your base number is so low. You obviously can’t do that (in terms of sheer percentage points, remember) later on, because, well, it’s just impossible.

Yet Google is showing us that Android still has the resources to grow. If Google were to continue activating exactly 500K devices each day, over the next year it would sell 182.5 million. Of course that’s probably not going to happen if the growth continues, but it’s a number you can use to try and decipher the scale of this mobile operating system.

Google started 2011 with 300,000 devices activated each day. Then, in April, it reached 350,000, and 400,000 in May. Now, just before half of this year is over, they’re at 500K.

So let’s play a quick numbers game. Let’s assume that Google activates 500K Android devices each day for the remainder of this year. Let’s also assume that it has activated exactly 400K per day since the day they reported that number, 350K since the day they reported that number, and so on. A simplified calculation then brings us to a conservative estimate of Android devices shipped this year (it’s conservative because it assumes there will be no more growth from now on for six months, which is not something that has ever happened in Android’s short history).

153.1 million Android devices would be shipped from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011 following the above rough math. Of course, almost anything can change and therefore impact these numbers. Android’s growth over the past few weeks may have also had something (albeit perhaps not much) to do with Apple not releasing a new iPhone in June as it usually does. Some people may have gotten Android devices instead of continuing to wait for new Apple hardware – although only about three weeks have passed since we found out for sure that the new iPhone will come later, so this effect, even if real, couldn’t have been the only driver of Android’s growth.

Let’s look at another number, also resulting from the above calculation. By the end of this year, if activations stay at the 500K level, Google would have sold 213 million Android devices since the OS was first released.

So while it took Google two and a half years to activate 100 million Android devices, the next hundred million is bound to happen in little over 7 months. And, again, that’s considering that there will be no further growth.

If Google does indeed arrive at the 200 million mark at the end of this year, it will have reached that number for its mobile operating system about a year faster than Apple was able to. Back at the beginning of June, Apple reported that it had sold 200 million iOS devices. Since 2007 when the first iPhone was launched, that’s roughly 4 years. Google launched the T-Mobile G1 in October 2008 – so roughly three years.

Now let’s look at the competition. Nokia sold about 24 million smartphones during the first quarter of this year (that’s the latest data we have since the second quarter is due to end in a few days). Now let’s say Nokia will manage to sell exactly that number of smartphones through each future quarter, even though that’s clearly not going to happen. Why? Because no one wants to buy Symbian devices anymore since the February 11 announcement that the OS is basically dead. Because no one will really want to get a fancy new N9, when Nokia’s plan is to not ever make another “MeeGo” phone even if the N9 somehow manages to become successful. As for Nokia’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 Nokia N9 clones, umm, sorry, devices, those will only be available in limited quantities this year, so even if they sell all their stock, it’s probably not going to impact the yearly smartphone sales a lot.

Okay, so let’s, just for the fun of it, say Nokia will sell 24 million smartphones each quarter from now on. That’s 96 million smartphones for 2011. Which would make Android sales about 60% more than Nokia’s, the king of smartphones until the beginning of this year.

What about Apple? It’s a bit trickier here, because Apple doesn’t publish the quarterly numbers for how many iPod touch devices it sells, rather just an ‘iPod’ category which includes every iPod model. So for the sake of this quick analysis, we’ll assume that half of all iPods sold by Apple in the first quarter of this year were iPod touch devices. That gives us 27.85 million iOS devices in Q1. Let’s round that up to 28. Now if Apple will sell the same number of devices each subsequent quarter of this year, the total sales of iOS devices for 2011 would be 112 million. Android’s number would be 36% higher.

Of course, Apple’s numbers will probably keep growing. There’s no reason not to, with the company’s devices becoming available in more and more markets, and with the upcoming new iPhone set to trigger some new enthusiasm for the iOS platform.

Then again, Android has no reason to stop its growth either. And keep in mind that as of now, tablets are almost nothing in Android’s market share. If Android tablets really do take off, the growth of the OS may accelerate once more. Don’t think that’s possible? Remember that Samsung’s two new Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9, are still not released in most of the world. Also remember how Samsung’s Galaxy S from last year managed to get on more than 100 carriers worldwide. If Samsung pulls the same distribution feat with the tablets, there’s no telling how much they can sell. So let’s wait and see.

Amazing? Interesting? Boring? You tell us.

• Google now activates 550K Androids per day. 135 million devices sold. Market reaches 250,000 apps
• Most smartphones now have touchscreens; Android shipments grew 1074% YoY
• Google now activates 350,000 Android devices daily. 3 billion Android apps installed around the world
• iPhone sales fell in Q3, Apple may lose the No.1 smartphone maker spot to Samsung or even Nokia
• Apple sold more iOS devices in Q4 2011 than all Androids combined, reclaims No.1 smartphone maker spot

Luckily, this particular rumor isn’t specifically about an iPhone, but has to do with Apple’s relationship with Samsung. Remember, if you will, that the two companies are currently involved in some litigation primarily over Apple’s claims that Samsung copied Apple’s designs.

Ars Technica has heard from several sources in the semiconductor business all saying the same thing – that Apple will turn to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (known as TSMC) to produce the processor that will be in next year’s Apple iPhone and iPad (most likely running iOS 6). This processor is known at the moment by its codename A6, but that may very well end up being its ‘commercial’ name as well, since this year’s iteration is called A5, and last year’s is A4. The A5 is inside the iPad 2 at the moment (and probably will make it to the next iPhone), and the A4 powers the original iPad, the iPhone 4, and the 4th generation iPod touch.

Anyway, the A4 and A5 are both manufactured by Samsung right now, and they have been since they were launched. So the speculation goes that Apple is now trying to get rid of Samsung as a supplier as fast as possible, in the light of the ‘copying’ that the Korean company has allegedly undertaken.

Please.

These aren’t five-year-olds, they’re multi-billion dollar corporations, so please don’t fall for the catchy article titles (notice how ours has a question mark?) and think that Apple is now so angry at Samsung that it would give up on the relationship no matter what.

Please.

Let’s dig in a bit. If this doesn’t have anything to do with the litigation, then what is it about? Well, from the same source linked above we find that Samsung is making Apple’s current processors using a 45nm process. The alleged talks between Samsung and TSMC were focused on a prospective 28nm process. So what if that’s the gist of it? What if Samsung simply isn’t able to have a 28nm process ready in time to make the A6 units for Apple? After all, 28nm isn’t the first process smaller than 45nm, so Samsung is more than one generation behind in those terms. At least it is right now.

According to an X-bit labs article from May, Samsung is ready to mass produce 28nm as well as 32nm chips. And while it looks like it will be able to push out the first such chips during 2011, nothing is set in stone yet. So maybe Samsung is facing some delays with these processes, and Apple is playing it safe shopping around for alternatives. Who knows? No one. No one knows for sure today, and that’s the point.

What we have today is a rumor that Apple will (perhaps) switch suppliers for a key component of its mobile products. Okay, but even if this turns out to be true, it doesn’t mean we know anything about Apple’s reasons here. Please understand that. Everything you read about why Apple may be doing this is pure speculation. Just like this post you’re reading right now is.

And even if Apple does stop buying processors from Samsung, those are hardly the only things that it sources there. We need to hear rumors about a lot more components than processors going from Samsung to another supplier before we start considering that this had anything to do with copying anything.

Which brings me to that. The Samsung Galaxy S II was launched about a year ago. If Apple saw it then (and it did) and thought ‘hmm, this looks very much like our trade dress… shouldn’t we sue?‘, why did it take one year to actually sue? Is Apple worried about its trade dress only when the products it claims copy its designs become successful? That’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it?

I don’t know why Apple really sued Samsung, but I can tell you one thing: it probably has nothing to do with the way TouchWiz UI looks, or the way Samsung hardware looks. And since these are big companies that are otherwise in a very tight supplier-customer relationship, the first thought I had was that Apple’s move was a negotiation ploy. Something designed to scare Samsung into lowering prices for some of the countless components it sells to Apple. Or improve them in some other way at Samsung’s expense. Or give Apple more favorable terms in one or more of its contracts with Samsung. A negotiation tactic, if you will.

If the move to TSMC for processors turns out to be real, then I’m not so sure anymore. Yet I still can’t accept that the suit is only about what it claims to be. It’s too ridiculous to be so.

• Apple likens Samsung discovery request to “harassment”
• Apple sues Samsung for imitating the iPhone and iPad designs
• Another rumor confirms iPad 3 shipping in March, says iPad 4 will follow in October
• Half of all Samsung mobile processors will go to Apple this year
• Apple iPad 2 shipments may start in February

The following are 8 upcoming trends we can expect to see in the world of mobile apps in the coming years:

Consolidation

Right now, the amount of app stores out there across all mobile platforms is borderline ridiculous.. Between each platform’s own store like the App Store, App Market, App World, Marketplace etc. and the independent app stores such as Getjar, Mobango and many others, it is getting seriously overwhelming. The CMO of GetJar predicts in this interview that the app ecosystem will undergo some sort of consolidation over the next few years and the big players such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and others, will swallow up the smaller players by way of acquisition. In five years down the line, we can expect to see one or maximum two app stores per platform.

Augmented Reality

Among the many new types of mobile technology out there, augmented reality has to be the most futuristic and coolest. Qualcomm recently introduced its platform for augmented reality development that enables a developer to create an augmented reality app in a matter of minutes. There is no doubt that augmented reality technology will become more mainstream over the next few years and apps from all categories including games, utilities, entertainment, and tools will most likely utilize this new and exciting technology.

New APIs

A trend we have seen a lot of lately is app developers creating an app that serves as a platform for other apps to connect to. Apps that stand alone and do not offer their own API are so 2009. Whether it is Instagram, Dropbox, Instapaper or many other super popular apps, this is a trend we can expect to increase over the next few years. After all, why limit your audience to just the people who actually download your app when you can offer your functionality via many other apps?

Integrated Social Features

I feel like it was just yesterday when the first “Tweet this” appeared in a mobile app and yet today, if you can’t tweet from your app, it is considered lacking a basic functionality. Whether you have a news reader, a photo sharing app, or a game, the ability to share information with your various social graphs is an absolute must. This functionality will only become more of a necessity in the coming years with social media showing no signs of slowing down and some might say even replacing traditional media in various industries.

Cross Platform

While one year ago, it was enough to have an iPhone app, in today’s app ecosystem, cross platform availability will guarantee further distribution, increased monetization, and true scalability. Of course, with the ridiculous growth Android, iPhone, and even other platforms like Windows Phone 7 are experiencing, the need to port your app onto other platforms is pretty much a given and will only increase in the coming years.

More Ads

In yesterday’s Distimo report, the company analyzed the app consumer market in Asia and to summarize the report, it is safe to say that Asia, when it comes to mobile apps, is a monster. It ranks second place after the US in terms of downloads. However, when it comes to monetizing apps in Asia, only one model seems to work and that is in-app advertising. In-app purchases are a complete failure and the ability to incorporate ads in your app and offer it for free has taken off in Asia and other places for both developers and consumers. Based on various predictions, the mobile advertising industry will surpass $50 billion by 2015. We can expect to see a whole lot more ads in apps over the next few years.

NFC

Near Field Communication is a new technology that seems to be replacing barcodes, which never really took off. Using NFC, you can interact with real life objects such as billboards with integrated NFC, or as Google is pushing hard for, pay for your groceries by placing your phone’s NFC chip close to the NFC scanner. All in all, this is a relatively brand new technology, but based on initial predictions, NFC will be reaching the mainstream in no time (it already has in many parts of Asia). Developers are sure to start developing apps to take advantage of NFC technology by the hundreds and thousands.

Voice Activation

Chances are, you have not been exposed to this trend yet, but there are already countless apps that use voice activation technology. In fact, Apple actually acquired a voice activated search company, Siri, and voice search is integrated into both Android as well as Google on the Web (as of last week). We can expect to see many games show their faces over the coming years that are controlled by your voice and other app categories are going to being adopting voice integration as well.

There are many other trends we can expect to see and of course, there are many new technologies being worked on now that we are not aware of. Whatever the case may be, mobile technology is a super exciting space to be operating in right now.

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter. I am @hilzfuld.

• Nokia and LG to have phones with augmented reality features
• Google Search by voice available for S60, in Chinese too
• First handsets running Symbian Foundation’s open-source OS out in 2010
• LG Opens Developer Network
• Sony Ericsson offering mobile apps through PlayNow arena

The following are 9 mobile apps that enable you to make voice and/or video calls for free or at extremely reduced rates:

1. Viber

This app is at the top of my list not only because it enables you to make calls completely free, but mainly because it is integrated with your phone book. That means you do not need to sign up for the Viber service or open an account like on Skype. In addition, the company is about to release an Android apps and in my experience with Viber, and I use it quite often, the call quality is far superior to others and often as good as a regular GSM call. The obvious down side is that both sides need to install the app in order to call.

2. NetTalk

While Viber lets you call others with the app, NetTalk lets you call all landlines in the U.S and Canada for free. The app is designed well and requires pretty much no setup on the part of the user. The call quality is excellent and just like Viber, the app is free. With NetTalk you can also record conversations and import your phone book and favorites, then call them for free over Wifi or 3G. Yep, this one is pretty much a no-brainer.

3. Fring

Fring is an old-timer in the VoIP space and works on its own network, much like Skype. The company used to allow Skype calls through the Fring app, but then one day, out of the blue, Skype shut down access. Since then, Fring has released multiple versions of its app on various platforms including iOS and Android, and the latest innovation it released is four way video chat over 3G. You can also make cheap international calls using Fring Out, similar to Skype. For me, Fring’s major down side is the fact that you cannot see your friends categorized by network so you don’t know who is on Aim, Gtalk, Facebook, etc. Other than that, Fring is a great solution.

4.Tango

As opposed to the apps mentioned above, Tango specializes in free video calling across iPhone and Android. It is the only app that allows users on both platforms to video call, but in my experience, the app is a little buggy and seems to have somewhat of a personality of its own. In Tango’s defense, its stability has improved significantly since the first version and I have used it many times between iPhone and Android successfully.

5. Nimbuzz

Nimbuzz, like Fring, used to enable its users to Skype on mobile phones, until Skype disabled that feature. Nimbuzz is one of the main players in the cross-platform IM apps and like Fring enables you to call other Nimbuzz users for free and has Nimbuzz out for cheap international calls. I have been a fan of Nimbuzz for years and its fully customizable UI is something I find convenient and lacking in some of its competitors. Nimbuzz recently announced that it has hit the milestone of 50 million users. Another significant advantage that Nimbuzz has is that it is truly cross platform, available on every smartphone platform worldwide.

6. Vonage for Facebook

Vonage is a leading name in the VoIP space and even has an iPhone app for its customers. However, this app is different. It is free and allows you to call your Facebook friends for free. Your friend needs to have the app installed but once it is, you can call them free of charge and in my experience, the call quality is superb. The app is super simplistic in its design, which in the case of many mobile apps enables an intuitive and seamless experience for the user.

7. TalkBox

This one is a little different. TalkBox has taken off in popularity lately, and more and more friends join the service every day. With TalkBox, you can essentially push a button to talk to your friend in real time, sort of like voice SMS. The app works flawlessly and in the months that I have used TalkBox, I have never once encountered an issue of any kind. Other TalkBox features include group chat, one click photo transfer, sharing audio on Facebook, and conversation history. All in all, this app gets a “Highly recommended”.

8. Vtok

I stumbled on this app accidentally, and I am very happy I did. Vtok enables you to make video calls to your Gtalk friends. The new Android 2.3 also supports this so using Vtok, you can call your contacts in Gmail whether they are on a PC or a mobile phone. The app is well designed and works perfectly. You can also chat with Vtok then switch on the camera, both front and back. This is a gem of an app for Gmail users.

9. Skype

Of course, last but not least, with over 600 million active users and a recent Microsoft acquisition of $8 bilion, Skype is the king of VoIP, both mobile and desktop. The iPhone app also supports video, but the Android version does not. Yet. All in all, both the sound and video quality is superior, but there is one UI issue that drives me nuts. There is no way to chat with a person using the iPhone app when your camera is activated, so you cannot chat and video chat in the same call. Maybe it’s just me, but that is a definite down side when it comes to user experience. Other than that, the app is great.

Of course, a simple search of the words “free calls” in the App Store will produce dozens of results, but these are the cream of the crop when it comes to VoIP apps on iPhone… If you have any others that you recommend, please let us know in the comments or on Twitter, I am @Hilzfuld.

• Fring finally comes to Android, available for download now
• iOS and Android Video Calling: Which App to Use and When?
• fring VoIP app for iPhone
• How Fring is Schooling Skype on Every Single Front
• Did Skype block fring, or fring ditched Skype?

In short – what happened was pretty simple. Nokia was disrupted by the new model of true mobile computing invented by Apple and then accelerated by Google’s Android.

In the first part of this post I  looked at how disruption in general works, and how the disruption of Nokia started. The second part looks at how Nokia tried to fight back, lost and surrendered. And what may happen to Nokia next.

Nokia disruption ends

Nokia’s response to the new disruptive true mobile computing threat – was a classic incumbent. First dismissing the new development as niche and not a threat. Then quietly developing a competitive answer, without any real understanding what they are competing against. With phone hardware/feature guys in charge, their first try at a real mobile computer – Nokia N97 – was born crippled by underpowered CPU and too little RAM. The platform- S60 5th edition, with it’s thin touch layer over the aging phone/keypress optimized OS – was buggy as hell and a nightmare in usability. Developer tools were still antique, nightmare to learn and use. Early versions of Nokia (OVI) app store – boderline unusable too.

Their next try – Nokia N8 and Symbian^3 – could have fared better, but it was too little to turn things around and, what’s worse – it was way too late. Symbian^3 had a significant performance/usability improvements over S60/S^1. Had it come out in late 2009 or, at least as promised, early 2010 and then have been quickly followed by a major interface revamp in the second half of 2010, Nokia could have pulled through. Symbian^3 had a good chance to stand up against Android 1.6, and Nokia N8 was pretty competitive compared to the Android phones on the market for most of the first half of 2010. It’s possible that N8 could have even lured some potential iPhone 3GS buyers in early 2010.

Alas, it was not meant to be. In a typical incumbent fashion, Nokia first spent 2 years in a futile effort to modernize S60. Then, when they finally figured there’s no way to make it work, they severely underestimated the time and effort it would take to rewrite Symbian for the touch world. So Symbian^3 was late by at least 6 months from the planned launch date, probably a year to really help. And the typical phone company penny pinching – putting in a weaker CPU/GPU into Nokia N8 (680 ARM11 CPU/Broadcom BCM2727 GPU) then a year old iPhone 3GS had (600MHz Cortex A8 CPU/PowerVR SGX535 GPU), on a flagship that was supposed to show Nokia’s technological prowess, didn’t help either.

By the time N8 shipped – October 2010, it was up against iPhone 4 and a slew of Android 2.2 competitors on fast 1GHz Snapdragon chips. The only way Nokia could compete against them – was price. The pent-up demand from longtime Nokia fans, holiday shopping season, huge marketing initiative and comparatively low Nokia N8 and other S^3 handset price, helped to bump up Nokia smart device sales volumes a only a bit in Q4 2010.

And by early 2011, Nokia smartphone sales started slowing down. Then, this spring, preparing for the arrival of their next generation dual core powered Android 2.3 devices, competitors slashed prices for their last year’s flagships. Suddenly Nokia N8 had to compete with the likes of Samsung Galaxy S2 and HTC Desire not only on price, but in the overall user experience as well. Similar thing happened to the available Symbian^3 devices at all price points. In many cases, competitors were able to match prices of cheap Symbian^1 handsets with much more attractive offerings too.

That was pretty much game over for Nokia as we know it.

Nokia smart phone sales this April/May started falling off the cliff, with little hope of recovery. I strongly doubt that Symbian Anna, the new phones like X7 or the promised 1GHz Symbian devices this fall will help much. Especially when next generation iPhone will push iPhone 4 prices near the high end Symbian price range, while early 2011 Androids will get even cheaper.

And, in a typical incumbent fashion, the latest Nokia flagship, N9 is too little too late, again. Even Nokia itself doesn’t seem to believe that it can make a difference.

The main problem with Nokia N9 and Symbian Anna is that they are Nokia’s answer to a problem – user interface – that Android and iOS solved before 2011. And while Nokia is joining this battle of the past, Apple and Google have moved on to a bigger and better things. Building out a cloud services, creating working wireless payment systems for developed world, improving accessory/device integration, disrupting PC industry, making their mobile platforms a central point for home automation and more.

Some would like to blame Feb. 11th Microsoft partnership/Symbian death announcement for current Nokia woes, insisting that while Nokia had some execution issues, it was on the verge of turning around. The announcement may have had some limited effect, but I don’t think the effect was that big. Latest in Nokia software achievements – Symbian Anna and Meego 1.2/Harmattan, especially the time it took to make them market ready, only confirms it. Nokia problems were much deeper, started way before Feb 11th, were already visible early last year, the crash started in the second half of 2010 and Nokia was simply too slow to do anything about it.

Game over? Is this the end of Nokia?

So the game over for Nokia? Is this the end?

Not necessarily. Not all disrupted companies disappear. Some of them just lose the former influence in the industry, go through a major restructuring and, focusing on their key strengths, continue to live and sometimes prosper. Just look at IBM, who’s mainframe business was disrupted by the advent of mini and then micro computers, and who went through near death experience and major rethinking of it’s purpose during the nineties. This is where Nokia may be headed.

While I have some doubts of whether Nokia can survive 2011 as an independent company – those doubts are mostly related to the sharp decrease of Nokia share value. With Nokia as a company so cheap now, it can start attracting hostile takeover bids and I ‘m not sure it will be able to fend them off. As for the core business itself, even if Nokia starts losing money due to the crashing smartphone sales and declining mobile phone volumes, it should have enough cushion to get through 2011. And if Nokia’s bet on Windows Phone pays off in 2012, Nokia will survive and might even prosper eventually.

It’s just over for the Nokia as we knew it – a dominant force and trend setter in mobile industry. Nokia lost the battle for the current generation of mobile platforms and surrendered. From now on it should be important, but just one of the many mainly hardware players in the new true mobile computing world.

I know, the abrupt abandonment of Symbian and it’s next generation successor – Meego – upset a lot of loyal Nokia fans. Especially when, according to Nokia public statements all through 2010, Nokia transition was almost over, and the next generation Symbian and Meego devices were just around the corner. The problem is, these next generation devices – N97, N900, N8 and now N9 – have been just around the corner and then ready to turn Nokia’s fortunes around, for years. None of them arrived in time or were good enough to do that. Nokia N9 shows that, given time, Nokia can come up with software that may be good enough for a mobile computing platform. But there is no time, industry is moving too fast.  And, probably because of it’s deep roots as a hardware company, Nokia is unable to keep up. It took almost 2 years for Nokia to get from Maemo 5-N900 to Maemo 6/Meego 1.2 Harmattan-N9. Android went from 1.6 to 2.1-2.3 (Gingerbread) and 3.1 (Honeycomb) in the same time frame, while Apple delivered iOS4 and iOS5. Google and Apple are moving too fast, solidifying their lead in the things that matter in true mobile computing every month.

Faced with this unpalatable truth, Nokia surrendered and turned to another former smart phone industry incumbent –Microsoft. Microsoft recognized the disruption happening in mobile world years before Nokia, then took radical steps to save their business in time when it could still help. And had the necessary competencies to do it. They are still very late in the game, but, by most accounts, their new mobile computing platform –Windows Phone- is good enough to compete with the new incumbents – Apple and Google. It just lacks commitment from mobile device hardware makers and distribution.

With Nokia’s excellence in hardware and power in distribution, this alliance just might work.

What about the mobile phone business? It may be more interesting then you think

With all the talk about next generation true mobile computing devices (mistakenly called smartphones today) people usually forget that smartphones are only a half of Nokia mobile device business. The other part is mobile phones. And while the top, most lucrative part of mobile phone business has been taken over by smartphones/mobile computers, more then 70% of mobile devices sold in the world are still phones. And there is a big question how much of those 70% are actually susceptible to mobile computing disruption anytime soon.

Both iPhone and Android are designed around and strongly rely on internet connectivity for a great deal of their functionality. And they use huge amounts of mobile data compared even to smart phones. Take the connectivity away, and mobile computers lose a lot of their appeal. But mobile data is pretty expensive, and it’s unlikely it will get much cheaper anytime soon. Even in developed countries, there’s only a finite number of users who are ready or can afford to pay premiums for a data connection required to get the most from the iPhone or Android handset. In more poor countries, the amount of such users is even smaller. And as those who can afford and are ready to spend on mobile data get their mobile computers, moving down market might become a bit of a problem for data hogging devices. Data frugality may soon become much more important then anything else. Michael Mace of Mobile Opportunity just penned an excellent post about this issue.

There’s no doubt that even the lowest end mobile phones will be getting more and more computer like functionality. But will they become true mobile computers with app/net centric design, like the smartphones at the top end of the market did? Probably not for at least quite a few years yet. Vendors will have to figure out how to deliver computing experiences on a very thin data pipe. And here lies the opportunity for Nokia. While nobody seem to want Symbian devices anymore, Nokia S40 phones are still selling pretty well. Some recent developments hint that Nokia has quite an interesting vision how to add a mobile computer functionality to S40. And data frugality plays a very important role in this vision.

First – it’s Nokia Browser for S40, which, similar to Opera Mini – compresses internet pages on Nokia servers and can reduce data consumption by up to 90%. Then there are Nokia Web Tools for S40 enabling Web App development for S40 browser. Nokia Maps are now shipping on a number of S40 handsets, and require no or very limited data connection to work. Nokia is also working on a new full touch interface for it’s (S40) mobile phones, and N9 shows that they may have finally figured out how to make full touch centric UIs well. And then there’s a biggie announced during Nokia Connection event on June 21st. Nokia is porting Qt core to S40. Which will transform S40 into a smartphone platform overnight. And, with S40 sales volumes, it could become the biggest smartphone platform in world pretty quick. If Nokia is able to execute this vision well, they may soon have a new platform for mid-tier and lower end smart devices, which could succeed were Symbian has failed. And become a major competitor to Android and iOS in lower end, data constrained environment.

Unfortunately this is just a vision for Nokia now, or, more accurately – some hints of the vision Nokia may have for S40 mobile phones. And vision without an execution is just a dream. Nokia had many beautiful dreams about Symbian/Meego/Qt/OVI over the past few years and look where they are now. If Nokia fails execute again on their Microsoft alliance and on whatever they have in store for S40, then all bets are off. Nokia may be history much sooner then you think.

So let’s hope the new management have learned their lessons from past Nokia failures, and can finally deliver on the execution front. For now, the talk sounds pretty good to me. We’ll know if they can do the walk in the next 6-10 months.

• Sony Ericsson Concept Phones Video
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Nokia 6650 launched in the UK via T-Mobile
• Nokia, Maemo, Symbian ditching thing explained
• Nokia 5800 and 5530 get new features via software update

The latest device – Nokia N95 – was a masterpiece of technology. It took more then a year for Nokia’s biggest competitor – Samsung – to launch anything remotely competitive. Most of the hardware feature set that Nokia introduced with N95 way back in September 2006, is still more or less the same standard feature set even for the top smartphones today. 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS navigation, accelerometer, hardware graphics acceleration your shiny new iPhone 4 sports today? Nokia N95 had them back then.

Fast forward 4 years. Nokia has been out of trend setting business since 2007. Their overall sales are starting to decline, Nokia’s smartphone sales and market share is in a free fall and has been for almost nine months now. The margins have thinned, profits evaporated, and we are now seriously discussing the possibility that Nokia may not survive 2011 as an independent company.

What happened?

To those familiar with Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, the answer should be pretty obvious. Nokia was disrupted

How great companies get disrupted

Every industry goes through 2 different development/change cycles. The period of sustaining innovation/growth and a period of disruptive innovation/change.

During the period of sustaining innovation, players in existing markets innovate by adding features to the products that makes them better and more attractive to the ever growing number of users. Eventually those products reach the level where they are already good enough for most users and use cases. Incremental improvement of existing features only gives diminishing returns. 8 megapixel camera vs 5 megapixels in my current phone? Ok. But what’s the point? Wi-Fi N connectivity vs B/G I already have? 2.8” display instead of 2.6” on the next T9 candybar? 64GB of storage vs 32GB, most of it unfilled, on my current phone?

But that’s not what incumbent will hear from it’s best customers, or their traditional market research efforts. Fans and early adopters, buying the newest, most expensive, high margin devices will always look at that 3 megapixel camera sensor bump as a good reason to get one. Ask any focus group whether they prefer 5 or 8 megapixel camera, I’ll bet most will say 8. And hardcore fans will happily replace their Nokia N95 8GB with Nokia N86, just as they happily traded N95-1 for the same phone with a bit of a memory bump. So the incumbent players listen to their best customers, and do “the right thing” – focus on improving the stuff they know works and their customers ask them to.

Meanwhile, some new player, a market outsider, comes along, takes a hard look at how the products with current technology work, what they are used for and sees a lot of redundancy and waste. He also has the idea how by trimming this waste, and focusing on some unappreciated before set of features, he can create a product with a new, entirely different value proposition. The new entrant effectively creates a new product category, which may look pretty similar to the old one, but has some key differences in how the new product is used and bought. It starts as a small niche, with limited customer appeal and sales potential.

Incumbents dismiss the new development as a fad, too insignificant, or not profitable enough. They compare the features of their own offerings and see that the new entrant product is inferior in almost every way. And incumbents think that if they ever want or need to, they can crush the new competitor/product in a heart beat, with their own tweaked offering. But other industry outsiders now see the new value proposition, recognize the emerging new category and jump in with their own products, focused around the newly important feature set. A cycle of disruptive innovation starts, with new entrants rapidly improving their own products around the new value proposition, and slowly adding the missing bits and pieces from the incumbent’s product feature list. With each new iteration, the products in the new category become good enough and accessible to a wider and wider market, taking over the ever increasing share of the market previously owned by incumbent. Eventually, the products in the new category reach effective feature parity with incumbent offerings in every way that is important to most customers. At the same time, the new entrant products are much better at their own core feature set/focus then anything the incumbent can offer. And the incumbent, after ignoring, neglecting or simply being unable to compete in the new category all this time, is now generations behind in what today’s customers begin to consider to be the key features of the product. The new category explodes and becomes mainstream, displacing former incumbent product to an irrelevant niche. For the old incumbent, it’s game over. The new entrants become incumbents and start the new cycle of sustaining innovation and growth. Until the next disruption comes along.

And that’s exactly what happened in a smartphone industry over the last 4 years.

Nokia disruption starts

Before 2007, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and even RIM were focused on perfecting mobile phone. The pace of innovation and growth in the mobile phone industry was already staggering. Mobile phones were rapidly consuming everything around that could fit into them – digital cameras and camcorders, stand alone navigation devices , PDA’s, etc;. Each added feature improved the attractiveness of the mobile phone itself. At the same time, Moore’s law allowed to keep the prices of the most feature rich devices steady, while pushing the simpler device prices down, making the phones accessible to virtually anyone.

During the last decade, a clear leader in mobile device technology emerged – Nokia. It was at the forefront of introduction and popularization of almost every new major feature mobile phone acquired since the nineties. Music player, ringtones, internet connectivity, camera, big storage, GPS, Wi-Fi – you name it, Nokia was either the first to launch a phone with that feature or was a very fast follower, quickly becoming #1 in unit volumes for a phone with that particular capability. And one of the ways to make the phone better, was to make it smarter. So Nokia created the smart phone category, where third party developers could write software applications to extend the capabilities of the phone. The problem is – all these innovations, however radical they have been, were sustaining innovations for a mobile phone. The pinnacle of this mobile mobile phone innovation was Nokia N95 – finally putting all the pieces that define today’s smart devices together.

Unfortunately, when viewed primarily as a phone, Nokia N95 was an overkill for average user. Yes, millions of them bought Nokia N95 and were extremely happy with it. Some of them liked the camera, some of them liked the music player, others enjoyed the cheap Wi-Fi connectivity to browse the net, some may have even installed few apps. Most of them also enjoyed it as a status/fashion statement – everywhere except U.S., Nokia N95 was THE coolest most advanced device you can get for most of 2007. Even if you only used it to call and text your friends – you still were a proud owner of the coolest gadget of the year. Very few were able to use N95 for what it  actually was – a small, always connected computer in your pocket. The phone centric design hid those potentially useful features from the average user very well.

Then, worried about the threat to it’s iPod media player empire, Apple took a hard look at the latest mobile phones. And, with their deep user centric PC industry roots, figured out what all the incumbents with their phone blinders were unable to see. The computing and communication hardware in those phones has advanced so far, as to make a general purpose true mobile computing device possible. And the key to competing in a computer world is a great and user friendly platform software, enabled by powerful computing hardware. So Apple went out and built an always-on computer for your pocket. Focusing on the things that matter for a computer: CPU, RAM, display and software.

The only specs where original iPhone beat Nokia N95 are telling – faster CPU (620 MHz vs 332 MHz), more RAM (128MB vs 60MB) and display. And, of course, software user friendliness/usability. Which was the only thing to give Nokia and other incumbents a pause. But it too was dismissed as a “gimmick”. With “we can easily do that better when we want to” cavalier attitude.

After seeing the iPhone, another outsider with mobile ambitions – Google – quickly pivoted their own mobile efforts and now started working on a real computer instead of a smart phone for your pocket. The disruptive innovation cycle has started.

Both companies started pushing for/adding the latest available mobile CPUs, GPUs, copious amounts of RAM, bigger/better displays, and were rapidly innovating on the software side. They were also enabling a vast ecosystem of 3d party developers with easy to learn development tools, while making mobile development economically attractive with streamlined app store distribution channels. Apple and Google (via their partners) were also improving/adding traditional smartphone features along the way, and achieved effective feature parity with Nokia devices by the summer of 2010.

Continue to part 2 of Nokia disruption story, to see how Nokia tried to fight back, lost and surrendered. And what the future may hold for the Finnish cellphone giant.

• How Nokia was disrupted. Part 2
• Samsung sells 50 millionth touchscreen phone. 40 million of them this year!
• On the way to irrelevance, N9 shows what Nokia could have been
• Nokia Mobile Games Innovation Challenge inspires the Future
• Nokia patents a dedicated gaming console/phone idea

We already addressed the first two, but the iPad app has been making headlines for days and no one really knows when it will show its face. Supposedly, the Facebook iPad app will have extra features not found in the iPad-optimized Facebook site and will have a completely revamped full screen UI, which is sure to make iPad users smile.

If I may, I would like to name some features that would be incorporated in my ideal Facebook iPad app. Some of the features I will mention will surely make an appearance in the Facebook app, and some will remain a fantasy, but a man can dream, right?

The following are 10 features I would love to see in the up and coming Facebook iPad app:

1. Full Screen Photos and Videos: The most important and impressive characteristic of a tablet device and the iPad specifically is the large screen. The display is what differentiates tablets from smartphones and enhances the overall experience. There has been much said about the new photo UI on Facebook.com and suffice to say, most people are not fans and find the new UI to be buggy and confusing. A solid photo and video UI on the Facebook app is a must-have.
2. Dropbox Integration:  This feature will most likely remain a fantasy, but the thought of full Dropbox integration in an iPad Facebook app raises all kinds of possibilities. Easily backing up your Facebook data to Dropbox, easily adding notes or files to Facebook from Dropbox, and many more scenarios. This might be a far fetched feature, but it sure would be an awesome one.
3. Photo Slideshow: If you have used the Facebook iPhone app, you surely found that the photos often load way too slowly. How cool would it be if the new Facebook iPad app somehow pre fetched your photos and loaded them automatically as a slideshow? This is a feature that can’t be too hard to implement and would have me opening my Facebook app before I look to my iPad Photo app to show my photos off to my friends.
4. Simple Privacy Options: The privacy settings on Facebook.com are so annoyingly complicated, despite their importance; I almost never go there to adjust them. If the iPad app is to replace the site, Facebook should provide a well designed Privacy screen in which I can configure my privacy settings without getting a headache. Wouldn’t that be nice?
5. Multiple Account Support: Everyone is on Facebook nowadays. The other day someone tweeted that “I am not on Facebook” is the new “I don’t own a TV”. It would be great for users to access their Facebook in the new iPad app, then be able to hand the iPad over to their wife/husband and have them use the same app to access their Facebook, without the need to log out and log in again. The Facebook iPhone app does not support this but almost all Twitter apps do, no reason the iPad Facebook app should not support multiple accounts.
6. Instapaper Support: This, just like the Dropbox feature will most likely never come to fruition, but the ability to save Facebook posts to Instapaper and read them later, would definitely make the iPad Facebook app more usable and efficient. Again, this is a feature found in most social apps on iPhone and iPad including Flipboard, which only recently added it, I would love to see it in the Facebook iPad app as well.
7. Social Sharing Options: Think Tweetdeck meets iPad meets Facebook. I am fairly certain this will never happen, but the ability to tweet a Facebook post or add it to LinkedIn would make this iPad Facebook app an absolute killer. Unfortunately, something tells me Facebook’s ego (read Zuckerberg’s ego) is too big to include Twitter functionality in any Facebook app, and the iPad app is no different.
8. Facebook Apps/Games Support: Many people use Facebook to play games and access apps. Unfortunately, most of these Facebook apps are Flash-based and we already know how much Steve Jobs loves Adobe. I am no developer and am not sure how or if this is possible or if it would require the developers to rewrite their entire app, but if somehow the iPad app was released with supported Facebook apps, that would make a lot of people very happy.
9. Photo and Video Upload: The Facebook iPhone app allows users to upload photos but as far as I know, videos are a no go. The iPad Facebook site does not support either one. With cameras now built into the iPad, it is kind of a no brainer for the iPad Facebook app to enable photo and video uploads. I am pretty sure this is a feature we will see in the new iPad Facebook app.
10. A non-annoying Group Implementation: Here is the thing with Facebook, the company; they have done a lot of things right, but along the way, they have made many mistakes. The way groups are implemented on the site is one of their worst mistakes in my opinion. Notifications for groups you did not even ask to join, as well as posts you did not subscribe to are just two examples of how bad and annoying Facebook groups are. The iPad app is Facebook’s opportunity to fix this error and make it right. Let’s just hope they seize the opportunity.

The question is not whether there will be a Facebook iPad app, the question is when it will be released. Supposedly, the company has been working on it for over a year, which leads me to want to believe that when it is eventually released, we will see a superior product like the Facebook iPhone app when it was released. Then I remember, we are talking about Facebook here, so I might want to lower my expectations.

This post has been written by Hillel Fuld. Hillel  is a tech blogger who manages multiple sites such as Technmarketing, Appboy, and inneractive. In addition, Hillel has written on many leading online publications such as Mashable, Gigaom, and others. In addition to his blogger hat, Hillel is an active Twitter personality who defines himself as a “Social media addict”. When Hillel is not blogging or tweeting, he is the Head of Marketing for inneractive, a mobile startup that deals with app monetization across all mobile platforms.

• Facebook To Create Photo-Sharing App For iPhone
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The new Nokia flagship is a pretty good device. It’s got some good specs – 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 3.9” WVGA AMOLED display, 8 Megapixel camera, etc; and an interesting, pretty smooth interface. It made a lot of hard core Nokia fans extremely happy. And it looks great.

But N9 is also one of the best reminders of how deep a pit Nokia has dug itself into over the last few years.

The latest and greatest flagship from a company that still is the biggest maker of mobile phones in the world? A company that used to set the world on fire with each new NSeries flagship release, defining industry trends, leaving competitors scrambling to catch up for months? And all I can say is – Well, yeah, N9 is OK? With the specs close to those iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire HD had a year ago? Main interface innovation – having one less button on the front panel then iPhone has and swipe gesture? Main hardware innovation – NFC syncing with custom made Nokia accessories?

As someone put it, the new N9 flagship really shows what Nokia can do. And it looks pretty impressive for Nokia. Unfortunately, when compared to iOS 5, Android Gingerbread/Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich, heck, even compared to WebOS 3.0– it’s pretty obvious that Nokia can’t do that much. Which makes me rather sad.

And also makes me think of what could have been if Nokia double downed on Maemo back in early 2010 and released their first consumer friendly Meego 6/Harmattan device in mid 2010, as initially scheduled. Instead of embarking on a Meego experiment, which – like every other Nokia strategic move before Feb. 11th,   looked great on paper, but never panned out in real life. And took from Nokia the only thing it could not afford to lose – time.

Had this N9 come out a year ago, Nokia would have been up there with the leaders in hardware innovation, trumping competitors on many fronts. The working NFC implementation with accessories would have been industry first. Everyone would have acknowledged that Nokia finally caught up in interfaces with Apple and Android. And it would have energized Maemo and QT developer base, allowing for the emergence of that elusive third ecosystem Nokia is now looking for,  together with Microsoft.

Alas. All those could have, would have, should have doesn’t help much. So what about the future of Nokia N9?

Probably not much. It looks like a really nice device from Nokia. But N900 looked even better at the time it was released, and it was a big flop for Nokia then. I don’t see N9 doing much better. It lacks a cloud infrastructure behind it, the developer ecosystem to create apps and quite a few more things that competitors have. But those probably could be overcome with enough effort. The main problem is an apparent  lack of commitment to N9 from Nokia itself.

When you announce your new flagship, you usually go all in. With CEO (if he can) or some other charismatic exec touting your new product as the next best thing since sliced bread, trashing competitor products and promising that your new device will soon take over the world. Did that Marko Ahtisari Nokia N9 launch presentation sound anything like it?

What about this quote from Stephen Elop:

The real focus of the N9 was to uncover new ways to break innovation into the marketplace. Many of the innovations that you see today in the N9 will live on in a variety of ways at Nokia. The industrial design, user interface and a focus on Qt. Elements of all these innovations will be seen in future Nokia products

Does this sound like like a strong endorsement and commitment to the new product by company CEO? Or does it sound more like an obituary for something that does not have long to live?

The only wildcard here is Qt. Not a Qt on N9 itself, but the one Nokia promised to port to S40. If Nokia is able to do that well – it could open a huge new market for Qt developers and lead to the explosion of Qt based mobile apps. Which then may also run on Nokia N9. Which could significantly increase consumer interest in Maemo/Meego and N9. Which would lead to increased commitment, upgrades and new high end devices from Nokia.

But the are so many ifs, mays, coulds and unanswered questions there that I am not holding my breath.

• Nokia N900 firmware updated to version 1.2
• Some thoughts on Nokia N8 and Nokia’s device strategy
• No MeeGo Nokia N9 at Nokia World?
• Intel to “temporarily discontinue Meego OS development”. Meego R.I.P?
• #NW09 impressions. Did Nokia underestimate how good N900 really is?

Of course, this is not confirmed by anyone, but maybe the reason Zuckerberg has not released an iPad app on the App Store is because he wants to release one on his own app store, a Facebook branded app distribution channel. Sound unrealistic? Keep reading.

Based on various TechCrunch reports in the last few days, Facebook knows all too well just how big the mobile space is and how crucial it is for the company’s future to bring its Web dominance to the mobile phone.

Facebook’s shift of strategy from a Web company to a mobile entity is starting to show its face. Of course, Facebook is not alone and just this week we witnessed how Google now launches new features on mobile phones, and only then pushes it to the desktop.

Facebook’s jump into the mobile ring is composed of several steps, two of which became apparent to us this week.

Facebook Photo Sharing Platform

By now, we are all very familiar with the booming trend of mobile apps that enable photo editing and sharing. Instagram leads the way with over 5 million users, 100 million photos, and a 100,000 new users who joined the service last weekend alone.

The newest development is that Facebook itself, with its 100 billion hosted photos, 6 billion photos uploaded monthly, and 700 million active users will be launching its own app for photo sharing.

Here is the thing with Facebook’s mobile development skills. Historically speaking, they rock, and based on initial photos of the app, this app is no different. The Facebook native app is the most downloaded iPhone app ever and this new photo app, whether integrated into the Facebook app or as a standalone, will really give other photo sharing apps a run for their money.

The secret to the success of a Facebook photo app is in its numbers. In fact, whether Facebook launches a photo app, a video sharing app, or any other app that involves sharing with your friends and contacts, the fact that the company brings 700 million users means the app will almost automatically become an overnight success.

Facebook App Distribution Channel

OK, as big as the photo sharing trend might be, that is not how the company intends to leave its mark on the mobile space. The next piece of news, also coming from TechCrunch implies that Facebook is entering the mobile game on the distribution front, which as far as apps are concerned, is the most crucial component of the development process.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has elaborate plans to create its own app store, which will be HTML5-based and will run on top of the popular iOS browser, Safari.

That’s right. Facebook knows it cannot compete with Apple from within the App Store given Apple’s tight grip on the whole iOS ecosystem, but the Web is an open space and Safari is the vessel Facebook is going to use to its advantage.

This new Web-based app store is part of a new mobile platform code-named Project Spartan and its initial goal is to reach 100 million mobile users via Safari.

Supposedly, there are already more than 80 developers working with Facebook on Project Spartan, including big names like Zynga and Huffington Post, which will surely help the new app store take off upon launch.

The basic concept of how this new app distribution channel will work is as follows. A user opens Safari, accesses Facebook, and is presented with a dropdown displaying apps to download. Once downloaded, the app will appear within a Facebook wrapper that will have some basic Facebook functionality, including payments and most likely social sharing.

Of course, all this is hot off the press so many questions remain unanswered, but one thing is for sure, if this is even partly accurate, and TechCrunch has apparently seen the new project first hand, then this may symbolize a true reversal in app distribution and monetization, as far as the industry is concerned.

Many experts claim they do not see this Facebook HTML5 app store taking off and users will always prefer the native app experience with Apple’s tight integration over a Web app experience, even if it is Facebook-branded.

Of course the other side to that coin is that an HTML5 Web based app environment will offer true cross-platform distribution, as well as a significant decrease in app development time and resources. Develop once, deploy for all platforms. This can mean a heck of a lot more revenue for developers, whether they charge per download or use other models of app monetization, such as in-app advertising. Of course, that would require Project Spartan to be available on other mobile browsers, but that is the next logical step with Android numbers continuing to explode.

The one point that is undisputable here is that Facebook, like others before it, now clearly recognizes the explosive potential of the mobile phone and its surrounding ecosystem. Why is there no Facebook iPad app? You can be sure it is not because Facebook does not intend on entering the space, it might be because it wants to make a grand entrance on its own terms.

This post has been written by Hillel Fuld. Hillel  is a tech blogger who manages multiple sites such as Technmarketing, Appboy, and inneractive. In addition, Hillel has written on many leading online publications such as Mashable, Gigaom, and others. In addition to his blogger hat, Hillel is an active Twitter personality who defines himself as a “Social media addict”. When Hillel is not blogging or tweeting, he is the Head of Marketing for inneractive, a mobile startup that deals with app monetization across all mobile platforms.

• Facebook App For iPad in The Works
• Facebook To Create Photo-Sharing App For iPhone
• 10 Features I Would Love to See in the New Facebook iPad App
• Nokia Image Space app provides a new way of viewing photos
• FCam for the Nokia N900 is an open-source digital photography platform

Apple announced three new products, OS Lion for Mac, iCloud, which will keep all your various Apple products in sync, and iOS5 for iPad, iPod, and iPhone.

The main attraction of WWDC 2011 was most definitely the newest version of Apple’s wildly popular mobile platform, iOS. iOS5 also has more than 200 new features and is the biggest advancement the operating system has made since its original introduction.

You can read a complete list of iOS5 features, but I wanted to focus on the negative press the new features have gotten, with many people claiming that Apple simply “stole” ideas from other platforms.

The way I see it is that Apple took a good look around at the competition and hand picked certain features it viewed as successful, then adapted them for iOS5. Apple did the same with Copy Paste in the past and many believe Apple’s implementation of the basic function that has been around for years, is the best in the industry, hands down.

The following are three iOS5 features that Apple clearly borrowed from other mobile platforms, but the iOS5 version significantly improved:

• Notifications: OK, let’s just get this one out of the way. The new iOS5 notifications are pure awesome. They fundamentally change the way I use my iPhone on a daily and hourly basis. However, to ignore the similarity to Android’s notification system would be to fool yourself. They both enable you to get a short and unintrusive popup when you have a new notification, and they both enable you to view all your missed events by sliding the notification bar down from the top of the device.However, I do believe Apple took the Android notification system, and improved it on almost every level. The ability to choose what apps are included in the Notification Center is much clearer and more intuitive on iOS5 than it is on Android. The information included in the Notification Center in iOS5 is much richer and more practical than in Android. All in all, Android might have given Apple a glimpse of how to best implement  a solid notification system, but Apple hit a homerun on this front…
• iMessage: The first thing everyone said when the rumors started circulating that Apple was going to announce its own iOS to iOS messaging service is, bye bye BBM and RIM. Well, of course that is an exaggeration and RIM isn’t going anywhere so fast, but again, Apple clearly received inspiration from the tremendous success of the popular Blackberry messaging service.However, and this is a big one, Apple integrated the iMessage system into the already existing Messages app. No need for a separate app. What does that mean? It means that as far as iOS is concerned, you do not need to open something new to message your friend for free, it is the same app, the same familiar interface, and the same experience as SMS. iMessage might not have killed SMS revenue as many claim, but it sure will put a huge dent in SMS revenue on iOS devices.
• Home Screen Notifications: Another huge advancement that iOS5 has made is that it utilizes the dead real estate of the iPhone’s lock screen. Applications such as Flyscreen on Android have long since discovered that the lock screen of a mobile device is a great resource to include useful information. iOS5 now enables you to see your most recent notifications without unlocking the phone.This, again, is not a new or revolutionary feature and it existed on other platforms such as the old Windows Mobile platform as well as the new Windows Phone 7 OS. However, based on my experience with all three platforms, iOS took the feature and improved it significantly. Not only are the notifications richer in information, but using the familiar gesture of swiping on one of the notifications will immediately open up the relevant app. If you have a new mail and are viewing it on the lock screen for example, just swipe your finger right on the notification, and that message will then be opened with no delay in the Mail app. Implemented to perfection.

In conclusion, no one can deny that Apple included features in iOS5 that are just a little too close to other platforms, to be a coincidence. However, it all depends on how you look at it. Perspective is everything and any company that does not conduct an analysis of the competition is a company doomed to failure.

Apple looked at Android, RIM, and Microsoft, took the best of all worlds, and added it to iOS5. In the few days I have been using iOS5, I can safely say, that when it comes to the user experience, there is no operating system on the planet that can even play in the same league.

So, did Apple steal from its competitors? Maybe, but did Apple just raise the bar for the entire mobile industry? Absolutely!

This post has been written by Hillel Fuld. Hillel  is a tech blogger who manages multiple sites such as Technmarketing, Appboy, and inneractive. In addition, Hillel has written on many leading online publications such as Mashable, Gigaom, and others. In addition to his blogger hat, Hillel is an active Twitter personality who defines himself as a “Social media addict”. When Hillel is not blogging or tweeting, he is the Head of Marketing for inneractive, a mobile startup that deals with app monetization across all mobile platforms.

• Apple unveils iOS 5, many new features you won’t actually see until “this fall”
• Apple’s iOS 5 is now available to download
• Both iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S coming this fall?
• 10 Features I Would Love to See in the New Facebook iPad App
• How Facebook Plans to Take over the Mobile World

Earlier today HTC’s UK arm took to its Facebook page to announce that despite previous promises, the HTC Desire will not be updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Ever. This was an update that was widely expected, as HTC had previously said that it will come.

Here’s the entire paragraph that HTC posted to Facebook today regarding the Desire’s Gingerbread update:

“Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones. However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you.”

Now let’s try to cut through the marketing/PR speak and see what this is really about. At first glance, it would seem that HTC’s proprietary Sense UI overlay is the culprit here, as it’s unable to run atop Android 2.3 Gingerbread with the amount of memory the Desire has.

That argument sounds valid enough, especially as anyone who’s ever had a Sense-ified HTC device knows that the UI overlay that HTC loves so much is in the habit of using quite a bit of memory.

That all makes sense until you remember the HTC Wildfire S. Here’s an HTC smartphone that has even less memory than the Desire, yet runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sense UI on top without any issues. For what it’s worth, the Wildfire S even has a much less powerful processor than the Desire – I’m saying that even though HTC didn’t blame the processor at all.

Yes, the Desire has 576 MB of RAM (that’s the memory we’re talking about here, not the internal storage space that usually gets confusingly referred to as ‘memory’ too), while the Wildfire S has 512 MB.

So let’s consider that the HTC employee who guards the Facebook page is really technically challenged, and has mistaken memory (a.k.a. RAM) for storage space. But this argument falls too, as the Desire and the Wildfire S both have the exact same amount of ROM – 512 MB.

Yet there are a few possible explanations here.

First of all, if the issue is indeed memory or storage-related and that’s not just a neat way to cover up something else (which I’ll get to in a moment), it may be that the screen has something to do with it. One major difference between the Desire and the Wildfire S that may matter here is that the former has a higher-resolution screen. So, and believe me I’m just speculating here, while the Desire has a bit more memory than the Wildfire S, perhaps it isn’t enough to run the Android Gingerbread version of Sense on a 480×800 display. Or maybe the internal space just isn’t enough to accommodate the new, Gingerbread Sense in all its glory on a 480×800 screen.

Think about it. After all, Sense is mostly about graphics. Graphics shown on the screen. So the above may make a bit of sense (easy pun, I know). If it isn’t that, then only two other options are left as to why HTC would choose to cancel this update (if you see another, please let us know in the comments).

HTC may mean that there isn’t enough storage space in the phone needed to perform the actual update – as in, it won’t be able to backup your settings, apps, and so on. But in that case, there’s an easy fix – just require that everyone that’s updating use HTC’s own desktop Sync software to backup and restore that data. Easy. Which means this is probably not it.

What’s left, then? Well, you know what. HTC may just want you to go and buy a brand new, Android Gingerbread-running HTC Desire S instead of holding on to your beloved original Desire. Or, better yet, go buy an HTC Sensation, this year’s flagship Android smartphone from the Taiwanese manufacturer.

It looks like Android smartphone manufacturers such as HTC still haven’t figured out how to keep customers happy about OS upgrades while also selling new devices. It’s certainly an interesting dilemma, and perhaps more interesting is the fact that Apple doesn’t seem to ever face it. Of all the things a company could ‘copy’ from Apple, this is one of the easiest. Yet no one has even tried so far. I wonder why.

Note: Please don’t comment saying “HTC should release an Android 2.3 Gingerbread update without Sense”. They won’t. Sense is (mainly) how they differentiate in the Android world. They won’t give it up. You may not agree with their viewpoint, but for them it’s what makes an HTC Android smartphone an HTC Android smartphone. They won’t give that up because you can shout loud or use all caps.

Update: HTC has changed its mind.

• HTC changes its mind again, now says the Desire will get Android Gingerbread
• Telus HTC Desire HD Android 2.3 Gingerbread update now rolling out
• UK: HTC Desire Android 2.3 Gingerbread update will be rolling out this month
• HTC Desire S coming to Vodafone UK on April 8. Pre-orders available now
• HTC Desire Android 2.3 Gingerbread update will hit Three UK in mid-May

Nokia’s in a free fall with smartphones at the moment. Having held on to the market leadership in volumes, with a slow and steady decline, for years, they may now actually have been overtaken by Apple in their market share, just as they were overtaken in both profit and sales revenue share by them before.

Now success in mobile is a multi-faceted thing. It’s not simply about having a better product, or better sourcing, or better advertising, or better sales channels. Why Nokia is failing is not a simple story, and a lot has been written about it. There are articles about when Symbian was killed, whether Steven Elop is a Trojan horse for Microsoft, whether MeeGo would have been ready before it was killed, the timing of the Microsoft/Nokia announcement, and all other kinds of aspects.

Through all this the question of whether Symbian would have still been a viable OS for Nokia going forward is usually a pure fanboy topic.  There’s little between “Symbian sucks” and “Symbian was and is the best mobile OS”, and actual arguments are scarce. Being a Symbian user, and having some experience with both Android and iOS devices to compare the Symbian experience to, I’d like to contribute to a more balanced and detailed picture here.

The question was posed here has two parts: There is the state of Symbian itself, and then there’s the state of Symbian development within Nokia.

The State of Symbian

When talking about the state of Symbian, not even the strongest proponents of Symbian argue that there aren’t at least some problems. The usual arguments here go along the lines of features and technical capabilities vs. interface, with the Symbian diehards maintaining that it is only with the later that there are any problems.

Admittedly, on a pure feature list comparison, Symbian may still be the leader. So let’s take it as a given that you can do more with your Symbian handset than you can do with one of competitors. Let’s also take as a given that Symbian handsets can have better battery life than those on other OSes. There is at least some truth to both. These are not the points I want to argue, because these are not the points that matter much out in the marketplace at the moment.

_Effective_ feature parity

The vast majority of users have a very limited base of knowledge when making a buying decision. Feature lists in consumer magazines and stores are very short. All the major current OSes have feature parity – as seen on these lists. Symbian hasn’t managed to get anything on there to differentiate itself. (USB on the go is not something on there, because it’s too unknown to be explained in two words. Ovi Maps is not a feature of Symbian itself – but Nokia should have marketed the hell out of it.) Battery life, while important in everyday life, is just one point on a checklist, and not something you experience when trying out a handset in a store – or trying a friend’s device.

Interface pain

What  sticks in these situations is the interface.  Now the Symbian interface certainly has come a long way since the release of Nokia’s first (mass-market) touch screen phone, the 5800 XM, and that itself improved vastly from the catastrophic launch state. Personally, I like a lot about the interface as it is. I’m not a fan of bling, and will take efficient over pretty transitions every time.

For example, once configured, the home screens are efficient and work for me. The ‘once configured’ is a big ‘but’ here, though. When my N8 forgot the entire homescreen configuration after a crash, I had to keep from screaming (no exaggeration here). Configuring the shortcuts widgets is a process from one of the deeper circles of usability hell. The choices made in designing this really do defy belief. Let’s take a closer look:

The UX hell of changing a homescreen shortcut

You can only have shortcuts widgets containing exactly four shortcuts – no more, no less. There are no single shortcuts. To change one of these four shortcuts on a widget you first need to enter the configuration mode for the homescreen (long tap anywhere, or via the context menu). Then you need to enter the configuration mode for the widget (tap, select option from pop-up context menu). This then switches to a different screen which gives you a list of the positions and the currently assigned shortcuts – in writing, without using the icons you just saw. You then select the one position to change by a tap. This brings up a question about the type of shortcut you want to replace the current one with: to an application, or a bookmark. Choosing an application brings up a scrollable list of installed applications. This list uses about a third of the screen, and so displays only five entries in a small font. Additionally, it only displays application names, no icons. You scroll through this list (painful because of the small size) and select an application by tapping on a radio button next to it. Then you choose back (no ‘ok’ or ‘save’!) to exit the configuration screen. Now all you have to do is tap ‘done’ on the homescreen configuration screen – and you’re done.

This is insane, pure and simple. That was nine steps to change a shortcut – across three different screens, none of which after the first one use the icons for the applications, which to me are their main identifiers. The first time I went through the process I didn’t believe it. This was clearly coded by an engineer – and not even using standard parts, since that ridiculous small application picker menu doesn’t appear anywhere else in the system, and doesn’t look like anything else in there. I believe even the font size on this menu is not used anywhere else. The engineer may be excused since he was assigned a task he obviously wasn’t qualified for, but the manager ultimately responsible for allowing this deserves to lose his job. It may be argued that this is not a very common thing to do in everyday use, and thus doesn’t matter too much to me now, but I can absolutely see a new user return the phone after first encountering this. After all, it is one of the first things you do with the phone.

There are other disastrous design decisions. Menus for configuration are still the same as they’ve been for years, nested three- and four hierarchical layers deep. I often need to go on a search expedition to find particular points that I know are there, and I’ve capitulated in respect to the SIP client that’s supposed to be in there and working. Using a third-party app is just less painful.

Just plain broken

This is the design issues part  – and as said before, Symbian fans do admit that there are some problems there. There are, however, a lot of parts of both the interface and the underlying system that are not misdesigned but plain broken. Examples?

The taps on the home screen that get registered (i.e. the icon changes to indicate this) but don’t have any effect. The application menu that gets massively slower to first display the more applications are installed (did somebody, a long time ago, try to save memory there by not caching the application icons?). The screen timeout, which does not work (it’s only the auto lock that turns off the screen, before that there’s just a dimming that somewhat imitates the behavior of an LCD screen with the backlight turned off).

Setting a browser other than the default one gets ignored even by some of Nokia’s own applications. The browser itself – which by now is so old that it has to be considered broken by today’s standards. The ‘back’ button in the email app which exits the app when you’re in a subfolder instead of returning you to the folder overview menu.

Payment and installation via the Ovi store – which, for me, has a failure rate of about 25%. The Qt smart installer which for a while crashed the phone each time during the installation of a new Qt app, and then needed manual removing before allowing any new installations at all. Nokia Social, which often takes a few attempts to start, and then often presents me with a black screen.

The network stack: some applications always ask for permission to connect, others connect via packet data when wi-fi is available. The stack even allows simultaneous wi-fi and packet data connections! Sometimes, for some applications, the connection process is not even triggered at all – but this doesn’t get communicated to me as an error. I once wondered for a couple of days what was happening since email and Opera Mini were still connecting, but the internal web browser always failed. I had to switch to manual approval of connections for that to get things going again. At this point most users would have either given up or contacted support. Accessing links from Nokia Social while on 3G? I’ve given up – I don’t see any pattern to the few times it actually works. Oh, and the fact that there is a single font that Symbian^3 uses for all font rendering, including web pages? I’ve never heard this mentioned by anybody in the Symbian world, but it is bizarre for a smartphone in 2011.

Two steps forward…

Other things are even more bizarre: Symbian^3 actually has less features in many respects than the previous versions. No more auto-redialing. No user-adjustable EQs in the music player. No podcasting – at all. No converter app, or stopwatch.

Some of these things may be cosmetic. Some may indicate shoddy development and quality control. Others seem to indicate some things are really fucked up under the hood. Taken together, they lead to pain on a daily basis when using a Symbian^3 handset. No, it’s not all pain, and there are a lot of good things about Symbian^3, but the level of bad design, confusion and frustration is simply unacceptably high.

S60 the edition – the skeleton in the closet

And I’m only talking about Symbian^3. What is often forgotten is that Symbian^1/S60 5ht edition is still what runs on all the low-end Nokia smartphones – which should have been at least a significant part of the 150 million Symbian handsets that Nokia still wanted to sell. And Symbian^1 with resistive touch screen on a 3 year old hardware platform vs. the current crop of low-end Android phones? No competition to the average user, not at any prices where Nokia could still make a profit.

Developers: There’s no pain like Symbian

Since today users are not the only people whose interests are important, let’s take a quick look at the other big group: developers. I’m not one myself, so I’ll have to go by what I heard. A friend described the experience of developing for Symbian as the most perverse, painful thing he’d done in over 25 years of programming. The sentiment has been echoed by others. Well, this was supposed to change with Qt. Which is currently in some transitions under the hood. Where the toolkit still doesn’t support kinetic scrolling. Or have a standard widget and icon library, apparently. So no, despite significant improvements, the average developer will still choose iOS or Android over Symbian without a second thought. Now in theory the strategy of taking the pain away from developing by establishing Qt for development, and then easing the transition to MeeGo because these Qt applications would run on that as well (with small changes for anything non-trivial, but still) was brilliant. The best in the industry, as a matter of fact. But then there’s nothing theoretical about the handset business. And the market doesn’t forgive delays in execution.

Symbian in the State of Nokia

That brings us to the second question: would Nokia have been able to fix the problems with Symbian? My consumer view is shaped by the fact that the promised update for my N8, the mystical PR 2.0, the one with the real goodies like then new browser, a portrait QWERTY keyboard, and some real fixes for the current problems, is already between 5 and 7 months late – depending which non-announcement from Nokia you believed. The only thing they’ve managed so far is a change of name – it’s now called “Anna”, but still projected for “the next few months”. There are some puzzlers here as well. That the portrait QWERTY keyboard everybody in the blogosphere demanded has not been delivered yet independently of “Anna” speaks of gross mismanagement regarding development priorities. This particular point can’t be a technical problem with Symbian – and plenty of third-party developers have implemented such keyboards in their own applications, so it can’t be a matter of resources either. Or perhaps the update process itself is broken, and there are bizarre, deep interdependencies that don’t allow such changes on their own?

Regarding the resources for Symbian development at Nokia: There are blog posts out there from former Nokia employees who tell of entire new UIs and frameworks for various things being scrapped, of double- and triple developments, of reverse engineering UI patterns from the already written source code (!). There are references to fractions inside Nokia that effectively sabotaged, and sometimes entirely ignored, instructions from the CEO and higher-ups. How much of this is true matters little.

In the end there is a simple truth regarding Nokia and Symbian:
Nokia had years to fix Symbian. Whether you count from the time the iPhone was released and upped the game regarding UIs, or from the release of the 5800 where the public reception must have told them there were some very big problems, its years either way.  They had 6500 engineers working on it. If you think that is an incredible number of people – it is. There’s nothing like it in scale in the entire handset industry. With all this time, and all these resources, we got Symbian^3. An update to Symbian that was delayed, and then delayed again. An update that improved things, but not by enough. We got promises of delivering upgrades and fixes quickly. This simply hasn’t happened. Nokia has proven that it isn’t able to deliver software of necessary quality, and to deliver it on time. It has been proving it for at least the past two years. Whether this is the result of gross mismanagement, the result of an OS that is no longer maintainable, or, most likely, a mixture of both is an academic question. Changing any of the reasons to enable it to catch up with the market would have required time. A lot of time. In today’s market, this is not something that any handset maker has.

The Symbian myth: Symbian as a viable OS at Nokia

So I think it is a myth that Symbian, at Nokia, was still a viable OS in today’s market. It is a myth that, without Steven Elop, Nokia could have found a way to soldier on with Symbian, and maintain its market share. Nokia would not be at 30%+ market share with Symbian at the moment, no matter what. Symbian handsets would not be considered market leaders by anyone. Not in this universe, not with where Symbian stood at the end of 2010, and not with the track record that Nokia has at this point in time regarding software development. This truth was a slow and painful realization for me. Things seemed OK for most of 2010, and it seemed like Nokia had a chance to turn Symbian around. They missed it. I am deeply saddened by this, but it’s no use pretending the situation was any different.

• First handsets running Symbian Foundation’s open-source OS out in 2010
• New pictures of the Symbian^4 homescreen surface
• Symbian Ltd now fully belongs to Nokia; Symbian Foundation gets closer to launch
• Chat with Julien Fourgeaud about Symbian, Symbian^3, Nokia N8 and other stuff
• Nokia Q1 2010 musings. 18% ASP decline, OVI store grows 70%, rethinking Symbian^3, S^1/S60 here to stay

And it gets worse. The tablets that were supposed to ship with Android 3.1 – Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 – have been delayed until then too.

For now it’s still a rumor. But it comes from a pretty reliable source – Mobile-Review.com’s Eldar Murtazin – who usually gets things right, especially this close to the device launch. So I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing  Android 3.1 tablets here in Europe until August.

Poor Samsung. With Galaxy line they have been a key part of the Android success story from the second half of 2010. They made the first “official” Android tablet, they even partnered with big G to make the second official Google Phone – Nexus S, they gave 5000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets away at Google I/O event. They have jumped through every hoop Google asked them to and shipped more Android devices then anyone else. Heck – they are kicking iPhone’s arse with Android flagship in some major markets.

And then they get screwed by Google on a major product launch in big way. For the second time in less then a year!

Google first screwed Samsung with the launch Galaxy S smartphone last June. At the time the search giant was very worried that it’s major Android partners were replacing Google’s location technology with the solution provided by a small location service provider called Skyhook. Google first learned about it in April, when Motorola decided to ship it’s next Droid with Skyhook solution. Google then refused to certify Motorola’s Droid 2 as Android compatible device until Motorola removed Skyhook’s location technology. Motorola complied, delaying it’s Droid 2 launch and then shipping it with Google’s location solution which they perceived to be inferior to Skyhook’s. Only to learn that Google allowed Samsung to start shipping it’s Galaxy S handset with the same Skyhook technology that Google now said is not Android compatible.

When Motorola complained, Google ordered Samsung to halt all the shipments of Galaxy S with Skyhook’s tech. Even with tens of thousand’s of Galaxies already sold or on the way to carrier customers. And Samsung had no other choice but to comply, stop all Galaxy S shipments and hastily replace Skyhook with Google’s location provider. Remember all the GPS/location problems Galaxy S had last summer? Yep – most likely it was about that.

Here we go again. With the pre-order options and promised mid-June shipping dates popping up around the world, I’d say thousands of Samsung Galaxy Tabs are en route to the carriers and distributors. And now they will have to sit in the warehouses for a couple of months, until Google fixes whatever last minute bug they found in Android 3.1.

In the meantime, potential customers will keep snapping HTC Flyers, Motorola Xooms and Asus transformers with even buggier Android 3.0 OS.

I don’t think Samsung is happy today.

Via: Tweet 1, Tweet 2

• Motorola drops Google’s location services in favor of Skyhook wireless
• Qualcomm incorporates Skyhook’s positioning tech into its chips
• Google Nexus Tablet with Android 3.x to be made by LG. Android 2.x tablets won’t upgrade to 3.0?
• Samsung Galaxy Tab Android 2.3 Gingerbread update out “within the next couple of weeks” in the UK
• Reconfirmed: Samsung Galaxy Tab Android tablet coming this quarter

Elop said: “Plan B is to make sure that Plan A is very successful”. Obviously, if there was a Plan B discussed internally, Elop wouldn’t say what it was on television, not now before any WP7 Nokia devices even shipped. Doing that would totally undermine Nokia’s WP7 strategy.

However, it does make you think: what if there really is no Plan B? What if Elop is so confident in his beloved Microsoft (partnership) that he just can’t imagine it failing?

As I said before, that’s a troubling perspective. So let’s hope there’s a Nokia prototype somewhere running Android. Or there’s a PowerPoint slide somewhere at Nokia House which details (yet again, ironically) how MeeGo is the future. Anything not related to WP7, basically.

According to Mr. Elop, consumers are saying that Windows Phone is better in terms of their satisfaction than competing platforms. And, Elop thinks the only reason why WP isn’t bigger today is that Microsoft hasn’t yet had a big hardware partner such as Nokia to work with.

There are so many odd things about these statements that I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, when you hear a sentence starting with “consumers are saying”, just don’t listen any further. What will follow is, in nine cases out of ten, marketing speak or PR spin, or both. I’m sure Nokia has surveyed 1000 individuals somewhere, and they all said WP7 was fabulous. Then again, any big company in any field can have such surveys done, and each one will be (very) favorable to the company paying for it. So let’s just forget that.

As for the fact that Microsoft needed a big partner such as Nokia to sell more WP7 devices… really? Why? Did Google need such a big partner to succeed with Android? No. Before you start shouting Motorola Droid!, consider two things. First, you can’t compare Motorola’s size (not pre-Droid, not post-Droid) with Nokia’s. Second, the most important partner for Google when launching the original Droid was not Motorola, it was Verizon. The phone maker could have just as easily been HTC, Samsung, LG, or any other company. It was Verizon that invested the marketing money, created the ‘Droid Does’ campaign, and basically put Android on the map in the US.

So why does Elop think that the lack of a partner the size of Nokia is what has kept WP7 behind the competition? Why would Microsoft need such a partner to succeed? These are both questions without plausible answers. There are many, many WP7 devices on the market right now. And people aren’t buying them. Period.

Although apparently carriers worldwide are very happy about Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft, so at least someone is. Of course this is something that has been said or implied before. And sure, the carriers have many reasons to be happy. A third big-ish player in the smartphone OS space (alongside Apple and Google, though why no one seems to ever count RIM is beyond me) means more choice for the carriers, and more choice means more negotiating power. And make no mistake, that’s all they care about.

Clearly, the following months will be very interesting for Nokia watchers. The company may be in the process of reinventing itself once again, as it has done so many times during its history, or we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for what was once the biggest company in the mobile industry. We’ll see which way it goes, and we’ll naturally be here to let you know too.

To watch Mr. Elop’s entire interview on CNBC, just go here.

• Nokia has gone from Designed in Finland to Designed in California in less than two years
• Nokia gets £20m, Samsung £8m from Microsoft for Windows Phone promotion in the UK
• Adding few more pieces to Nokia Microsoft deal puzzle. Interview with Nokia’s EVP Dr. Kai Öistämö #MWC11
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Microsoft again rumored to be in talks to buy Nokia’s smartphone division, Elop to resign next year

One of those things is that Nokia’s first Windows Phones “are being designed and put together in California, with the US market very much in mind”.

Okay, so having the US market in mind is a pretty decent thing to do especially for Nokia which seems not to have had the US in mind for many many years. And considering that Windows Phone 7 is a US-born OS, again that makes perfect sense. Nokia will probably even start working with the US carriers, something it has always hated doing, and it will bring some WP7 devices to market there. Fine.

The first part of that sentence though is just plain funny. I mean remember the Nokia N900 and its “Designed in Finland” cheap jab at Apple? Oh my.

Image via AllAboutMeego

Here’s the story. Before the release of the Maemo-powered Nokia N900, Nokia somehow managed to find out that people tend to love Apple. Then someone within Nokia probably decided to buy an Apple mobile product (read: iPhone) – just to study the competition, of course. On that device, Apple proudly says that it’s “Designed in California” (as if California’s brand is more important and/or recognizable than the USA’s – but hey, who knows, maybe it is). So what did Nokia think to do?

Quick, let’s write “Designed in Finland” on one of our high-end devices. That will teach Apple! And hopefully make it go away! At least from the mobile industry.

Yeah. So die-hard Nokia fans were very excited with that. Most of the world didn’t care, as for Apple… just remember that the N900 doesn’t even run Symbian (which at the time was the world’s No.1 smartphone operating system) and you can imagine how hard they laughed.

Still, the “Designed in Finland” thing, while not hurting Apple in any way, didn’t hurt Nokia’s Finnish ego either. On the contrary, one might say. But this…

This is just giving up. In fact, everything Elop has done since he took the reigns from OPK smells like surrender. First, a surrender to Microsoft (Elop himself is that, choosing WP7 only makes it worse, and the possible sale… let’s not even go there), then a surrender to Apple – what else do Nokia smartphones designed in California signify?

Nothing, except that California was better than Finland all along. And, implicitly, Apple was better than Nokia. I don’t know what marketing books Nokia execs read, if any, but implying that one of your main competitors, which you have fought for years, has been better than you all along is probably not the smartest thing you can do.

It’s not how you win back consumers. Just think of what Joe average, the ‘man in the street’ could think about this. Oh, so Apple was right in everything it did all along. Well, nice one Nokia, nice of you to admit that. Now I’m off to buy my next iPhone, thank you very much.

This shift in thinking that seems to have occurred among Nokia’s management since Elop came along is a bit extreme. After (rightfully) pointing out each shortcoming of Apple’s devices since the first iPhone was announced, Nokia’s now basically saying oh yeah, easy to use software and sexy user experiences are everything that matters in the mobile space after all. Oh, and California.

Really?!

Is California now the only place on Earth where you can design compelling mobile devices? Give me a break. Not even Microsoft, Nokia’s partner in all this, believes that. It’s headquarters are in Redmond, Washington.

I think that this going from one extreme to the other isn’t going to do anything good for Nokia outside of the USA. Perhaps it will have some effect there, and perhaps this is all about the US market. If so, it’s well played. Making Nokia a more American brand is going to do good things for its image there.

Nokia and Mr. Elop just need to remember one thing though: the Internet is global. And just like the February 11 announcement that Symbian is basically dead made its way to average consumers very fast (and they simply stopped buying Symbian-powered smartphones), such US-centric statements make their way across the globe equally fast. And not everyone on this planet will be as excited as Mr. Elop seems to be when he says that Nokia’s first WP devices are now being designed in California.

To watch the entire interview, go here.

• Nokia doesn’t have a Plan B ready in case Windows Phone fails
• Nokia posts Q1 2011 results, signs definitive agreement with Microsoft
• Nokia N9 will be available in Sweden on September 23
• Elop: Rumors about Nokia selling its mobile business to Microsoft are baseless
• Microsoft again rumored to be in talks to buy Nokia’s smartphone division, Elop to resign next year

Now that Finnish company announced the sales in two of it’s most important markets – Europe and China – have stalled, and Nokia has no idea what it will be able to sell until the end of this year, it certainly seems so. At the very least, things will get much worse for Nokia before they get better. If they ever will. Nokia is now in a free fall, and whether they will be able to survive this one as an independent company, is anyone’s guess.

The main problem for Nokia today is that people stopped buying their current products and, until Windows Phones are ready,  they have nothing in the pipeline to renew the consumer interest.

As a matter fact, Nokia didn’t have anything interesting and competitive in the market for about two years now. The only smartphones that allowed Nokia to keep their market share through late 2009 early 2010 were the ever cheaper clones of 5800XM and N97. And even those stopped working in the beginning of 2010. To keep the eroding demand and market share, in the first half of 2010 Nokia started dumping the prices for their smartphones, sacrificing margins and profitability. And hoping that the new Symbian^3 OS will be good enough to revive things and get Nokia back on top.

When Nokia board put a stop to the price cutting tricks last summer, the slide started. First there was a blip of disappointment and market share losses in Q3 2010. In October the new Symbian^3 handsets arrived and , with the help of loyal fans who have been waiting for the new high end Nokia handset for months, boosted Nokia fortunes a little. But outside of Nokia loyalist circles, Symbian^3 boost proved to be too small to matter. Nokia ended up losing 25% of it’s market share in the second half of 2010.

In the beginning of 2011 things became worse. Most of the fans and early adopters who wanted the new Symbian^3 handset already got one, very few others were interested. Then came February 11th, and the change of strategy announcement. Elop’s message that Nokia is moving on to Windows Phone, and from now own Symbian is dead, was received by the man at the point of sale in every mobile shop. Later spin and damage control to keep Symbian alive a bit longer didn’t help much. People already were more interested in the new shiny Androids and Bada phones. The change of Nokia strategy was another reason for mobile salesperson to steer customer towards competitors.

With real sales cratering in Q1 2010, in addition to price dumping, Nokia turned to channel stuffing as well. In January-March of this year, the best market for Nokia was China, where it was able to show 9% growth from Q4 2010. Turns out these numbers were bogus and, as Stephen Elop admitted yesterday, resulted from “inventory mismanagement”. I.e. shipping as many phones as possible out of Nokia warehouses to it’s retail and wholesale distributors, on credit, without timely payment guaranties, etc. Just for the sake of recording the unit as sold by Nokia in Q1. As Eldar Murtazin reports in his blog– similar things were happening in March in Russia and India.

It worked for a while to boost Nokia Q1 numbers, but now it’s over. All Nokia retail channels are filled with millions of unsold Nokia phones and Nokia partners just won’t buy any more of them. With consumer interest in Nokia Symbian devices falling rapidly, sales persons at the counter not interested in pushing Nokia phones, partners can not sell what they already have, let alone order additional phones.

No sales visibility for the rest of the year means, that neither Nokia nor it’s partners have any idea when they will be able to sell things already in the stores and warehouses. Yesterday Nokia promised 3 actions that might help revive Symbian sales:

• Slashing prices even more. Someone should be interested in some Nokia phones at some price. The question is how low Nokia will have to go and how much money they will lose in the process. And what do they do if Samsung, HTC and others join in a price war and start offering competing Android devices at similar price points, while maintaining their margins with high end devices were Nokia can’t compete?
• Demand generation at a point of sales. Which means cash and other incentives to the salespersons in the shop to push Nokia devices. In a conference call yesterday Nokia management said they have big plans to boost PoS incentives. But again, it might help some, it will cost a lot, competitors ain’t sleeping, and will be able to match Nokia in most markets they care about.
• The boost from Symbian Anna and new Symbian phones. Maybe Anna will help. But, if the huge improvement over Symbian^1/S60 that Symbian^3 was, didn’t help Nokia much since October 2010, why would a largely cosmetic improvements in Anna be any different? And there are no new Symbian phones with improved specs coming from Nokia until this fall. Probably until about the same time that first Windows Phones show up.

To sum it up – for the next 5-7 months Nokia has no interesting products to boost demand, the sales channels for current offerings are filled with unsold inventory and competitors are ready to respond. The things Nokia promised yesterday might help some, but not much.

Which means that there are much more bad news about falling Nokia smartphones sales, declining margins and monetary loses to come in the next few months.

The only silver lining in yesterday’s announcement was the news that Nokia is now very confident that they will be able to ship the first Windows Phone devices this year, and that there is a big operator and distributor interest for Nokia Windows Phones.

Let’s hope they are right about that, and that new Nokia Windows Phones will be enough pull the Nokia out of this free fall. Otherwise there might be no Nokia to talk about by 2013.

Picture from: Fotki.yandex,ru via @eldarmurtazin)

• Nokia posts Q1 2010 results. And no, Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 are not delayed
• Why did Nokia Symbian smartphone sales crash this year? Infographic
• Nokia stops smartphone sales drop in Q3, but it’s now No.3 behind Samsung and Apple
• Nokia posts Q1 2011 results, signs definitive agreement with Microsoft
• Microsoft: Windows Phone production costs will drop by half next year

The above seems to me like it’s a pretty accurate representation of the messages Nokia has been sending since February 11 of this year, the day when it announced that Windows Phone will be its primary smartphone platform in the future, and that “Symbian becomes a franchise platform” (don’t even try to understand, that phrase still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever).

Subsequently, we’ve heard here and there that Nokia’s great WP push will come in 2012. Hence, everybody kind of assumed that Symbian will be End-Of-Lifed (read: shot, killed, put out of its misery, etc.) around 2012 or 2013, with massive sales declines starting next year. At least that was the theory, that people will continue to buy Symbian devices this year, and they’ll only stop buying Symbian phones to buy Nokia Windows phones.

Yeah, right.

It turns out, surprisingly for Nokia and Mr. Elop, that smartphone buyers have internet access and can read news. So they found out about Nokia’s February announcement, and are slowly deciding not to buy Symbian anymore – because why invest in a ‘burning platform’ after all?

So this is funny, in a way. Nokia first declares Symbian dead, to make the ‘Western’ media happy (and by Western you should clearly read based in the US and UK). Then it realizes that if Symbian is dead, like, right now, then Nokia’s sales numbers and profits will abruptly go down. Hence all the no, it’s not really dead, okay it is, but not now, etc. attempts to spin this.

Amazingly, today is the first time we’ve actually heard a target for Nokia’s ending of support for Symbian. So all those 2012-2013 assumptions I’ve described above were just that – assumptions. Nokia didn’t bother to issue any official word on this until today, when Stephen Elop did in an interview for Nokia Conversations China (yes, Nokia Conversations China. At least the interview is in English. Wait, why is the interview on Nokia Conversations China in… English? I don’t know either, but this is hardly the avenue to announce such important things – in fact, this should have been announced on February 11).

So it’s like this: Nokia will continue to support Symbian until “at least 2016″ – about five more years. “Support” in this context means software updates, services, apps, the whole shebang.

At first, that seems like a drastic change from what Nokia has implied in the past (read: an end-of-Symbian coming a lot sooner). And sure, having devices supported until 2016 (though obviously the devices being released this year will not be) is nice. However, that still doesn’t tell us when exactly Nokia will sell its last Symbian handset. Supporting the platform until 2016 almost certainly doesn’t mean that you’ll see new Symbian phones pop onto the market in 2016, maybe not even 2015. If Nokia remains committed to how it’s been supporting Symbian phones up until now, that means that we could see the last Symbian device launch in 2014. Perhaps a low-end offering could even be launched in early 2015, since Nokia doesn’t usually support cheaper devices for more than 12-18 months. But that will clearly depend on whether the market will want a new Symbian smartphone in 2015, and my guess is it won’t.

If people are being turned off by Symbian’s demise today, imagine how they’ll feel in 2015. Heck, imagine where the smartphone world will be in four years! I mean, four years ago today the original iPhone was not shipping yet. Just think of how much has changed in four years – basically anything can happen in the next four.

And with Symbian not getting any low-level improvements from now on, I doubt that it will be able to compete with Apple’s and Google’s one new OS release each year. Or even Microsoft’s development pace. All of these mobile OS makers (and even RIM) may bring many new features to the table in the next four years, features that Symbian just won’t be able to match (which, indeed, will be the supreme irony, as in the past, one of the key strengths of Symbian compared to its competition was the sheer number of features it had).

Imagine that in 2014 we’ll have iOS 8 competing with Android 7 (probably) and Windows Phone 8.5 or 9. And by that time, Symbian will have slowly but surely become, at least in market share, quite irrelevant (you know, the US pundits were right! They were just a few years early).

An interesting fact is that the projected volume of Symbian devices yet to ship has apparently remained unchanged, as Elop didn’t even mention it in this tell-all interview. So that means that Nokia still intends to sell 150 million more Symbian handsets. That’s going to be 150 million devices over what… three years? Four? Who knows? Does Nokia even know?

Nokia’s Q1 2011 numbers have it selling about 24 million smartphones. That’s about 8 million per month, or 96 million per year – though those numbers are falling very, very quickly.

While it’s impossible to tell right now if the 150 million number will be reached by Nokia by 2016, 2015, or 2014, things will become a lot clearer towards the end of this year, and especially at the beginning of 2012, when Nokia will already have at least a couple of WP devices on the market. We’ll then see how much Symbian’s market share has been eroded by Android and iOS, and also if WP will do anything to further diminish it.

To sum up Elop’s statement: buy Symbian smartphones. Don’t worry. Just buy them.

Of course, less and less people will do that. And Nokia knows that. And it can’t really do anything about it. Scratch what I said above. This isn’t funny, it’s sad. Ah well, maybe WP will indeed be something worthwhile… next year.

Here’s the entire interview with Mr. Elop embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Via AllAboutSymbian

• Elop says Nokia’s first Windows Phones are on track for Q4
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Dow Jones: “Market speculation” suggests Samsung to buy Nokia
• Nokia has gone from Designed in Finland to Designed in California in less than two years
• Nokia stops smartphone sales drop in Q3, but it’s now No.3 behind Samsung and Apple

Okay, so he didn’t actually say that the Touchpad will sell better than the iPad, although that’s clearly what he implied. Not saying it directly is certainly smart, as he’s going to be able to say he’s been misquoted when investors ask him, during next year’s conference calls, what he was thinking.

He believes that HP will perform even better in the tablet space than it has in the PC space, where, “with fewer ways of differentiating HP’s products from our competitors, we became number one”. Let’s just ignore that strange-sounding assertion (I would certainly like to hear why exactly he thinks that the PC space allows for less differentiation than tablets) and focus on “number one plus”. That has to be one of the most void-of-any-meaning things we’ve heard from a big honcho at any company during the past few years.

Again, not saying anything directly (those investors must really bite). Not “we’re going to be No.1″, not “we’ll seel more than anyone else”, not even “our product itself is better than the competition” (although I suspect that latter example is what the aforementioned investors will hear when Cador spins this). No. Number one plus. What does that even mean? Seriously, what?

0? -1? 0.5? Almost No.1? I don’t get it.

And I don’t think we’re supposed to get it, because there’s nothing to get. HP is just desperate for some attention ahead of its European launch of the Touchpad. That’s all. As for the WebOS-powered tablet selling more than the iPad…

Yeah. Right.

Sure, HP has a lot of distribution muscle, inherited from its PC arm (pun intended, indeed). However, distribution isn’t enough, as Nokia has so eloquently proven.

Sure, HP has what is probably the best looking mobile operating system, and one of the most capable. But until developers will start noticing it, it can’t even compete with Android (in the tablet space) or Windows Phone 7 (in, erm, phones). Cador promises that the Touchpad will launch in Europe with “thousands” of apps.

Sorry. Until that’s “tens of thousands”, or, even better, “hundreds of thousands”, the tablet market will still be dominated by the always interesting Apple Vs. Google “fight”. Not because any one person will ever install 100K apps on her or his tablet, but because with big numbers come better chances that everything you need is there. Platforms that have big app numbers are also those that developers tend to write apps for first. Having the app of the moment from day one, and not after 16 months or so, does help drive consumer perception in your favor.

So good luck HP. I do hope that webOS will live long, because it certainly deserves to. However, HP should focus a lot less on statements that literally don’t make any sense, and more on developers, developers…

Via The Telegraph

• HP TouchPad may launch on June 12
• HP TouchPad will be available in Australia on August 15
• HP Touchpad, Veer and Pre 3 hands-on videos #MWC11
• Apple Boasts 100M iPhones, 15M iPads Sold
• HP TouchPad passes FCC, will launch soon

Jen-Hsun Huang, the one who’s made some pretty earth-shattering allegations over there, is Nvidia’s founder and Chief Executive. What exactly did he dare say?

That the tablet market for the next two and a half years will mirror what has happened in the smartphone space in the past two and a half years, at least in the Apple vs. Google fight.

What’s that? Well, Apple’s product (iPhone then, iPad now) gets an early start, great sales, and amazing market share numbers. Slowly, but surely, competition mounts from the Android corner, and, in about two and a half years, Android becomes number one.

An important thing to note here is the focus on just Apple vs. Google – so, Symbian fanboys (really? you’re still around?), BlackBerry fanboys (!), Microsoft fanboys, etc., don’t sweat. Yes Symbian has been the No.1 mobile operating system for much of the aforementioned period, but, again, we’re just focusing on Apple vs. Google here. Okay?

Good. Now that we’ve cleared that out, the time has come to ask Mr. Huang the obvious question: how dare you? How dare you spell out the obvious in front of media people? I mean, don’t you know that they all have iThises and iThats in their pockets, on their desks, in their minds… everywhere? Sure, they may have conceded the smartphone battle, but clearly Apple will win out in tablets. Please… it has to win somewhere. For even though it may be more profitable than all the other companies on Earth combined, some people just hate it when the raw (market share) numbers show something else as No.1.

Oh, media. This is a funny industry. Ask anyone, ANYONE, in it during iPhone 1 times, about Android. We all would have laughed. Hard.

Today? Well, Google’s laughing at us.

Tomorrow? It will be laughing at you, who think the iPad will forever be at 80%+ of the market.

The only issue I take with Jen-Hsun’s quote is the time frame. I’d say Android’s domination of the tablet space will start even sooner, perhaps as soon as in 18 months from now.

Sure, things may change. But if they don’t drastically change (think: Apple may release a whole array of tablets starting at $199; or Google may decide to give up on Android to focus solely on Chrome OS – stuff like that), then Android will be the No.1 tablet OS. And soon. Mark my words.

It will be even easier with tablets, since there’s basically almost no one else around. RIM’s got one offering,… and that’s it. MehGo tablets? Yeah, right. Windows 7 tablets? Microsoft still thinks we’re fools. So it’s (almost) just Apple vs. Google here.

The mobile space is getting more and more interesting by the day, that’s for sure. So keep reading, and we’ll keep reporting.

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