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éléments par Mike Feibus

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• 

  It's a gargantuan war among industry titans and the winners will control everything for years to come

  Publié: juin 29, 2012, 6:26pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  Damn, what an extraordinary month.

  Let’s recap. First, we saw a spate of exciting new Ultrabook announcements, along with some x86- and ARM-based Windows 8 tablets at Computex. Then Apple introduced new spins of iOS and OS X for tablets and PCs, respectively, at its developer gathering. Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8 at the Windows Phone Summit -- and let's not forget the Surface tablet. And this week, Google rolled out new products and concepts buckshot-style at Google I/O, showcasing its first branded tablet, the Nexus 7, and Android 4.1, just to name a few.

  Get Your Finances in Shape

  If your eyes aren’t bugged out by now, then I’m afraid we’re going to have to pull your Geek Card, my friend. Taken together, these are the ingredients for a perfect storm that will pound store shelves this holiday season. Indeed, there may never be a more exciting time to possess a credit card. So many platform advancements on so many fronts. Not like last Christmas, when your choice boiled down to an iPad, a Kindle or a new laptop that looked like the one you already had. So start preparing now. You’ve got the summer to get your finances in shape so you don’t sprain your wallet this fall.

  That said, the coming retail nirvana is only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible piece of a war between industry titans. And the stakes in this war are gargantuan. The winners will influence -- and maybe control -- the distribution of just about everything for years to come. From the news we read and watch to the entertainment we pay for and enjoy. From the brands and models we decide to buy to the places we buy them. And from the routes we take to the places we visit and the restaurants in which we eat.

  To be sure, ours is an era of hyperbole, an era of extremes. It is an era in which journalistic oversight and balance has given way to unsubstantiated ranting on the blogosphere. It is the era of Fox News and MSNBC. Even in these times, though, it is nearly impossible to overstate what this war means to the players. Or to us.

  It's Coke or Pepsi

  There have been battles for control of distribution channels before. Like Coke and Pepsi’s war for control over restaurant soda machines. (And Dr. Pepper, for you Windows Phone fanboys.) Or like Wal-Mart and downtown America. Or, more recently, like Apple’s iTunes and the record labels.

  But there has never been a battle like this before. It’s an opportunity afforded by the Internet as well as an increasingly concentrated set of options for tapping the Internet. The cable TV folks, the phone companies and the wireless carriers are trying valiantly to maintain relevance. But as video-on-demand gives way to streaming services like NetFlix, as home phone lines are supplanted by VOIP, and as wireless services like AT&T Navigator are cannibalized by free stuff from Google, the role for those players is being relegated to conduit. Increasingly, we find ourselves selecting the platform and device we want.

  The choice of carrier is becoming an afterthought, sort of like snatching a package of plugs and wires when we buy a home theater. We’re not there yet. But that’s where we’re headed.

  So it should come as no surprise that the war pits Apple, Google and, increasingly, Microsoft. But there are others in the mix, as well. And each of them is trying to protect and extend its turf. Like Amazon, which controls a growing number of distribution channels. And like Facebook, which has helped expand and solidify our social networks to include long-lost classmates we might otherwise have the opportunity to chat with only once a decade. And hardware giants like Intel, Nvidia, QualComm, Samsung and TI, which have the power to tip the balance in the platform wars with superior solutions.

  Playing to Win

  With so much at stake, it’s easy to understand why the players are suing each other in courts across the globe and spending billions on intellectual property assets. But that’s not all they’re doing. Here are a few other tactics:

  Acquisitions. They’re buying technologies and companies that buttress their platform packages. Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype last fall is a good example.

  Proprietary Features. They are implementing proprietary features, which is a double-edged sword. It does tend to create brand loyalty. But it can also isolate your customers. FaceTime is a good example. The downside for Apple is limited in this case, however, provided it also makes competing apps like Skype and Google Voice available to its customers. Apple’s halfway there...

  Partnerships. As the old adage goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That explains why Apple joined forces with Tom Tom. And why it sidled up to Microsoft’s Skype.

  Pretty heady stuff, I know. So keep an eye out. The longer the war goes on, the better it will be for our businesses and for our wallets. And we can play a role in maintaining the balance of power.

  One thing’s for sure. No one is going to get knocked out this year. So rest easy for the time being. And when you dream, dream about all the stuff you’re going to buy yourself for the holidays.

  Photo Credit: photofriday/Shutterstock

  
• 

  I once was blind but now I see -- or, why I’ll never give up my PC for a tablet and smartphone

  Publié: juin 27, 2012, 3:48pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  Oh man, what a hellish 10 days this has been.

  Before we get too far, let me just warn you that when the doorbell rings, this little chat will be over. I don’t care if I’m in mid-sentence. That’s it. Period. End of story.

  The reason: tucked under the arm of the hand attached to the finger pressing the doorbell will be my precious Lenovo ThinkPad. It’s been 10 days now since she sputtered and failed, and five days since I’ve last seen her. I sent her off in a box last week to rehab in Atlanta and then I packed up and hopped a plane to San Jose, in the other direction.

  I returned home last night. And she’ll show up any minute, her arrival trumpeted by the chime in the entryway.

  Don’t worry. This isn’t a fable on the perils of casual backup. We’ve all heard too many of those. Besides, my data was backed up, so the issue wasn’t even in play. Sort of. (If anyone knows how to tease your contacts, calendar and tasks out of Outlook when it doesn’t want to expose them, I’d love to hear from you.)

  Rather, it played out more as a mash-up of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol theme, with a glimpse into a present-day vision of a computer-less future sprinkled with an insight or two from Technology Past.

  I decided to load present-day Windows 7 and Office 2010 onto my nine-year-old ThinkPad x31, an ultra-portable whose time has clearly passed. Not an ideal solution by any stretch. But I had real work to do, so I wasn’t going to be without a laptop. And as I like to say, I only make room for one device in my briefcase and one in my pocket. So the tablet didn’t make the cut. And so I headed off to San Jose with nothing but an old laptop. And a smartphone. With an eTrade app.

  (And, uh, my MP3 player. OK, two MP3 players.)

  Tell you what: let’s cut right to lessons learned. Because as I said, once that doorbell rings...

  1. Size does matter. Manipulating multiple inter-connected spreadsheets felt arduous on the X31’s 12.1-display, even though it was only 1.3 inches less than my ThinkPad X220. (Now where is that UPS driver?) Once in the Bay Area, though, I was able to reverse that deficiency thanks to a delightful 27-inch display made available to me. Except in the most extreme instances, most of us would choose a laptop over a smartphone for any serious content creation. That’s obvious.

  What may not be as intuitive, though, is that the bigger-is-better tenet applies across the spectrum. For work, a 13.3-inch laptop beats a 12.1-inch laptop. And a 12.1-inch laptop trumps a 10.4-inch tablet. Sure, there are advantages to the tablet. But getting work done isn’t one of them.

  2. Storage capacity does matter. Try to find a tablet with more than 32GB of flash. Yes, I know they’re out there. But $699 for a new iPad with 64GB? Hell, I can’t even squeeze everything I want into my 32GB MP3 player! Storage was a big deal on my trip. I frequently swapped files with a couple of flash drives and a USB hard disk. And the X31 has a 100GB hard drive!

  3. The cloud does matter. I much prefer to physically have what I need in hand, locally. That said, the past 10 days would have gone much smoother had I been taking advantage of all those storage services up there in the sky. Nothing like leaving the barn door open to teach you what you needed to know yesterday.

  Hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe this is a why-you-should-back-up story. Whatever the case, I can tell you that next time...

  Computer’s here. See ya!

  
• 

  Say, iPad idolaters, don't write the laptop's epitaph just yet

  Publié: juin 1, 2012, 8:05pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  May you live in interesting times. It’s an ancient curse. Or is it a blessing? There are volumes devoted to that age-old issue. In my world, though, there’s nothing gray about this topic. I get paid to answer questions, so interesting times are a blessing. Straight up. When clients don’t have any questions, now that’s a curse.

  These are blessed times we live in, my friends. At least it is in my world. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been two years since Apple sold the first iPad. The year before, the tech world marveled at the vitality of the PC. Incredibly, shipments grew in 2009, defying gravity at a time when the rest of the economy seemed to be in a free-fall. My, how things have changed.

  Today, many of you now are busy chiseling the epitaph onto the face of the laptop’s tombstone. Sorry, I don’t mean to spoil the ending. I know you’re still working. But from what I gather, it’s going to read something like this:

  "Here lies the laptop
  Sluggish, heavy, unresponsive
  We’d miss you
  If we didn’t all have iPads"

  You might want to put the funeral plans on hold for a while, though, because the PC is about to get interesting again. The ecosystem, sparked by Intel’s Ultrabook initiative, has been hard at work trying to erase its shortcomings, which together singed a hole in the market wide enough to drive more than 100 million media tablets through.

  I’m fond of saying that equilibrium for personal electronics stands at two devices, one in the pocket and one in the briefcase. When we buy a third device, it’s for picking up the slack for one or both primary devices.

  If you’ve strolled down the aisle of a commercial flight during the past year, you might conclude that what the iPad brought to the computing world was Solitaire. I’m being facetious, of course, though the real answer is interrelated.

  First and foremost, the tablet is tackling the laptop’s deficient battery life. It’s giving us a chance to read, watch a movie -- and yes, play Solitaire -- without siphoning any of the juice needed for productivity apps.

  That’s how the tablet pushed its way alongside the laptop in our briefcases. That it’s a more recline-friendly form factor, that it boasts superior battery life, that it’s easier and quicker to engage and access is why we’re turning to it more and more.

  Many of us still opt for the laptop for more creation-centric tasks. But because the tablet is more accessible, it wins out for anything that we can do equally well on either device, like researching something on the web.

  So there’s a lot riding on the PC ecosystem’s response, which kicks off in earnest at the Computex trade show next week in Taiwan. It will be the coming-out party for dozens of new laptop models. They’re sleek and sexy. They’re more responsive. They boast better battery life.

  Many of them are convertible clamshells that double as tablets for reading, gaming and watching video. Some have touchscreens or offer them as an option.

  If you have a tablet and a laptop, these new portables probably won’t convince you to go back to one device. But if you’re deciding whether to buy your first tablet or replace your current system, I’ll bet that one of these new laptops will lure you in.

  All in all, a good first step toward bringing us back to equilibrium, and a good reason to put off finishing that tombstone.

  Photo Credit: metalstock/Shutterstock

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
• 

  Is Intel Inside iPad, iPhone a pipedream?

  Publié: mai 29, 2012, 6:03pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  
  Intel CEO Paul Otellini told investors this month that Apple could build its iPad and iPhone lineup on the Atom family of microprocessors any time it wants to. And he’s going to do everything in his power to make that prospect so enticing that Apple can’t refuse. Pipedream? Not hardly.

  Now, I understand why some of you would consider this to be pure fantasy. Intel has been trying to pry its way into the smartphone and tablet markets for five years now, and until this year the company has had little to show for it.

  One reason for the slow start is that Intel has had to retool itself in order to compete in these markets. The performance-per-Watt tradeoffs are necessarily different for smartphones and tablets than they are for notebooks, desktops and servers. Intel has been learning that, and also discovering what else smartphone and tablet designers want.

  That’s all understandable. Anytime you attack a new market, you don’t know what you don’t know until you dig in and get your hands dirty. Intel’s hands now are finally dirty. And now, finally, Intel has a competitive part in Medfield, the latest Atom iterant. Design wins are beginning to materialize as a result.

  OK, Atom is now better than it was. It’s in the stable of options. So what? That’s not going to get Apple’s attention.

  Apple will want a solution that stands out from the field, not one that’s just now making its way into the lineup of viable options. And Apple will want custom variants made exclusively for its devices. Building custom parts isn’t a problem for the high-volume, standard parts manufacturer, Otellini says. He told investors that Intel is slowly bringing up a foundry business, and would entertain the notion of producing made-to-order chips for "strategic customers".

  Apple likely would fall into that category, yes? Yes.

  That could be a strategic move for Apple, as well. Today, Samsung builds the custom processors inside Apple’s smartphones and tablets. And it’s no secret that Apple views Samsung’s smartphone and tablet operation as possibly its fiercest competitor. The two are employing battalions of lawyers as they sue each other in courts around the globe.

  Apple can’t be happy with the situation. But for the time being, it doesn’t have much of a choice. Because Apple wants its chips made at a leading-edge facility, and right now, the choice is down to two. One of those is Samsung.

  And the other is Intel.

  But Intel’s not an option for Apple’s processors. Not today, anyway. Because while Apple is a strategic customer, the processors inside its iPads and iPhones are not. They’re ARM-based. And Atom, along with most every processor Intel builds, is x86.

  Otellini loves to say that Intel gets collections margins twice for every chip it builds: once for the manufacturing work and second time for the chip itself. Pure foundry work, or contract manufacturing, would mean no double-dipping. So as long as Intel can keep its fabs filled with x86 chips, any foundry business the company takes on would cut into profits.

  Otellini says that Intel can keep its fabs busy with x86 through the 22nm generation now ramping -- and possibly 14nm as well. Which means he won’t consider building someone’s ARM chips for quite some time.

  Alright, so it’s reasonable to assume now that a compelling offering from Intel will get Apple’s attention. So when might that happen?

  That could be as early as next year. Intel hopes to outpace the competition by pulling Atom up sooner into its leading-edge manufacturing processes with each generation. In 2013, Atom chips will be made on Intel’s 22nm manufacturing lines. And in 2014, Intel plans to bring Atom to 14nm.

  One of those just might be prove to be the tipping point. Or not. Nothing’s assured here, obviously.
  But nothing more than a pipedream? No, not hardly.

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
• 

  Smartphones put privacy on the tsunami hazard map

  Publié: mai 27, 2012, 6:54pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  Now, finally, the tide of public opinion on Internet privacy begins to flow in the other direction. Consumers are becoming more hesitant to share their data and are less tolerant when those with access to their data violate trust. That presents a tremendous threat to some of the titans of our day -- and an equally monstrous opportunity for others. Apple, Google, are you listening?

  Honestly, I’m amazed that the issue was ever able to germinate and flower, particularly here in the United States, a country that distinguishes itself on the right to privacy. And a country that spent much of the last century wringing its collective hands over the Orwellian nightmare that awaited us down the road of technological advancement.

  Discount Cards and the Dystopian Vision

  Then in the 1990s -- the decade after the one in which George Orwell set his oppressive dystopian vision -- grocery stores kicked off their discount card programs, which enticed consumers to surrender personal information in exchange for lower prices. Consumers by and large agreed.

  Privacy became a bit more of a concern in the "oh-oh's" with the explosion of social networking. To be sure, there’s no shortage of tussles along the way between consumers and the likes of Facebook, for example. For the most part, though, consumers have continued to participate.

  I’m not sure exactly when the perception started to turn, though I suspect it was sometime last year. Maybe it had something to do with persistent reports that reveal what Apple and Google know about us. Or maybe it was the outcry over the discovery of Carrier IQ’s tracking software on smartphones from US carriers.

  But you don’t need a tidal chart to see that the waves now are crashing closer to shore. A survey released a few weeks ago by University of California-Berkeley professors found that 79 percent of Americans "definitely would not allow" their phones to share information with stores they visit but don’t buy anything. Another 17 percent said they would "probably not allow" it.

  Smartphones Make Privacy Personal

  Nielsen earlier this month released a study on smartphone attitudes and behaviors that suggests consumers are quite concerned about privacy. According to the report, 73 percent of smartphone owners worry about the issue of personal data collection. That’s up a bit from an already high 70 percent in 2011.

  Even if we can’t determine exactly when the tide changed, it’s not difficult to pinpoint why.

  In a word, smartphones.

  Our loyalty cards are basically walled gardens of personal information. We know exactly what we are divulging. Even Facebook is a walled garden to an extent. Obviously, the walls encompass far more than what you buy at a single store. But we still exercise control over what’s published and shared about us.

  There’s nothing penned in, though, about what our smartphones know about us. Our calls pass through them. So do our texts, IMs and emails. They know where we are and where we’ve been. And the more useful our smartphones become, the more we integrate them into our lives.

  The more we integrate them into our lives, the more they know about us. And the more they know about us, the larger and more hostile the waves of anger become. Count on it.

  This sentiment should be top of mind for every strategist and decision-maker in the smartphone ecosystem. For Apple and Google, yes. But also for hardware vendors, carriers, app developers -- even cloud services. If your goods or services have the ability to collect or store our data, then you should consider your sales and profits to be on the tsunami hazard map. So prepare.

  Gain More by Collecting Less

  One of the better suggestions I’ve heard for tackling this issue proactively comes from Ian Chen, a longtime colleague and friend now at Sensor Platforms in San Jose: establish an Office of Privacy. Hire a big-name lawyer to head it up, and have him or her report to the CEO.

  Establishing an Office of Privacy is an opportunity for a company to distinguish itself as a sentry for consumer data. The company that succeeds in building that perception will have an inside track against its competition. It will be the provider that consumers trust at a time when trust in the smartphone ecosystem is eroding.

  Here are a couple other things to consider:

  • Develop a privacy policy that is more restrictive than the competition’s. Don’t share consumer data, for example.
  • Even better, don’t allow your product to collect any personal information at all. Someone will notice, and spread the news. That will more than offset the sacrifice you’ll make to your data mining efforts.
  • Develop a way to have apps tap a sandbox of personal data that’s housed on the smartphone itself rather than in the cloud -- and prove to consumers that app developers can’t gain access. This can be at the platform level, or on the hardware itself.

  Whatever you choose to do, do something. Smartphones are becoming our companions, our confidants. And the closer they get, the more virulent our reaction will be when they violate our trust.

  Photo Credit: Viorel Sima/Shutterstock

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
• 

  Kindle Fire sales are still hot

  Publié: mai 8, 2012, 5:04pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  Wow, what a swirl of good-news/bad-news last week for the media tablets aimed at the ereader market. As it turns out, the roller-coaster ride continues this week.

  comScore reported that the Kindle Fire from Amazon generated far more Internet activity in February than any other Android media tablet. Then a few days later, Microsoft dumped $300 million into a Barnes & Noble ebook venture, a move spurred in part by the success of the bookseller’s media tablet, the Nook Tablet.

  I wrote a column explaining why the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, the first- and third-highest selling Android tablets in 2011, respectfully are so successful -- and what that means for hardware vendors who want to make it in the tablet market.

  And then the roller coaster began hurtling earthward.

  Target confirmed rumors that it is tossing Amazon’s Kindle line-up out of its chain of department stores. Target was coy as to exactly why, though fellow writer Ed Oswald offered up a few possible explanations.

  I suspect it has to do with Target’s new pilot program that will put Apple boutiques in 25 of its stores. (That’s possibility #2 in Ed’s article if you’re scoring at home.) Apple knows what powerful draw its products generate and exploits that in its relationships up and down the supply chain. It's why Verizon invested millions two-and-a-half years ago to elevate Android: to level the playing field in the smartphone market by giving iPhone a legitimate competitor. It’s also why Verizon is looking to prop up Windows Phone during this year’s selling season.

  And then late last week, Joe Wilcox raised another possible reason: that Target dumped the Kindle Fire because it’s no longer selling. He pointed to first-quarter data from IDC that estimated sharply lower shipments of the Kindle Fire in the year’s first quarter -- 700,000 units down from 4.7 million.

  I find it difficult to believe that Target, a retailer well accustomed to consumer buying patterns, would toss Amazon due to a seasonal letdown in sales. As it turns out, the IDC report, while technically accurate, is a bit misleading.

  Kindle Fire shipments, or deliveries by Amazon to thousands of stores as well as to Amazon’s own warehouses, fell off a cliff, not actual sales. That’s normal for the year’s first quarter -- Apple’s quarter-on-quarter shipments also dipped, as did total tablet shipments, according to IDC. You would expect Kindle Fire shipments to fall far faster than the industry during that time, because the fourth quarter was the Kindle Fire’s inaugural quarter, so retailers had to build up their holiday stock from scratch.

  Sales, actual purchases of Kindle Fires by consumers, were seasonally strong in the first quarter, according to NPD. Consumers bought about 1.8 million Kindle Fires in the first quarter, compared to 3.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. That’s seasonally down, yes. But the Kindle Fire still sold “pretty darn well” in the first quarter, says NPD’s Stephen Baker.

  So let’s see if we can’t get Kindle Fire news back on an even keel. One thing’s for sure: all this perceptual yo-yo’ing doesn’t change the fact that the Kindle Fire is a well-designed and well-positioned tablet that is successful because it sidesteps the iPad rather than challenging it head-on, like so many other wannabe’s in this market.

  On the other hand, the Kindle Fire’s success may be why Apple has painted a target on its back -- and why it isn’t welcome back at Target.

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
• 

  Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet are better by design

  Publié: avril 30, 2012, 9:21pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  The best-designed Android tablets you can buy today aren’t the sleekest or the sexiest. They’re not the most powerful. And they don’t boast the largest or brightest displays. What they do have, however, are sales. The tablets? The Kindle Fire from Amazon and Barnes & Nobles’ Nook Tablet.

  On a runway awash with thin, pretty models, it’s easy to overlook this pair of plain Janes. But don’t. They are two of the top three largest-selling Android tablets on the market. And their formula should serve as a model for how to succeed in this market if you’re a supplier that’s lacking a throng of breathless fanatics aching to snap up anything you sell.

  According to comScore data for the US market, more Kindle Fires were in use than all other Android tablets combined at the end of February, just its third month on the market. comScore says that 54.4 percent of all Android devices accessing the Internet were Kindle Fires.

  In the same breath in which comScore lauds the Kindle Fire, though, it snubs the Nook Tablet. You see, comScore excluded Nook Tablet from the study, classifying it instead as an e-reader rather than a tablet.

  Microsoft, however, knows a good thing when it sees it. The software giant today invested $300 million in Barnes & Nobles’  ebook spin-off, Newco.

  Regardless of whether Microsoft or comScore understand, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon know they hold the keys to this market: that a successful tablet is built around what I call an “anchor” app. Yes, you can load other apps, just as you would with a general-purpose tablet. But when it’s optimized for a popular app, it’s more compelling than one that’s being marketed by its form factor.

  Think about it this way: would you be more or less likely to consider purchasing a Swiss Army Pocket-able Lump?

  The Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet were two of the four best-selling tablets last year. And they weren’t even available until the fall. The other two -- the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the iPad -- were launched in 2010.

  Savvy CE manufactures have taken a lesson from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Watch for them to unleash tablets designed around other anchor apps beginning late this year. A few of the more attractive anchors:

  1. Gaming. I would argue that Sony’s PlayStation Vita is a gaming-centric tablet. It’s got a browser, Facebook, Twitter and access to an online store where you can go get other apps. Just last week, in fact, Sony added Skype to its app store.

  I’d be shocked, by the way,  if Microsoft wasn’t hard at work on an Xbox-inspired tablet to unveil after Windows 8 is on the market.

  2. Video. I’m shocked that I still see people on planes who are watching movies on portable DVD players. Who is buying these dinosaurs? Regardless, there is obviously a ready-made opportunity for a well-designed video tablet to entice these consumers out of the disc age.

  3. Personal Navigation. The window for this is limited, as the market for single-function GPS devices is already beginning to contract. Nevertheless, it is an established device market that a GPS-centric tablet could tap into and quickly exploit.

  Needless to say, designing a tablet around a popular app isn’t the only ingredient for success. The Vita stands testament to that. As well, there will continue to be a market for sleek and shiny general-purpose tablets. But as Amazon and Barnes & Noble have shown, it’s much easier to coax consumers to pull out their wallets if your tablet does impeccably well what it is they want to do.

  Remember: you can call it a knife and still tuck a toothpick and a fish scaler inside.

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
• 

  PCs need model years, just like cars

  Publié: avril 23, 2012, 6:10pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  

  Windows PC makers will start unveiling their first 2013 models from today. They are all desktops built around the maiden Ivy Bridge processors out of the chute, which Intel announced late this morning. Ivy Bridge is the working name for Intel’s 2013 models.

  Intel decision-makers chafe whenever I refer to their processor generations as model years. In fact, executives throughout the PC ecosystem universally hate the term. They’d better all start embracing it, though. Because they’ll need to adopt a model-year mentality if they want to ensure continuing growth.

  Good for Growth

  These days, even the most casual observer can see that the PC industry could stand to use an injection of growth. First-quarter market estimates now are trickling in, and it appears that PC shipments were basically flat from last year. Some of us hold out hope that sleek, sexy new designs paired with a new Windows operating system will stimulate consumer interest and spark some growth by year’s end. I happen to subscribe to that point of view. But there are plenty of others who believe that the best days of the PC are behind us now that tablets permeate the landscape.

  No doubt, media tablets divert cash that consumers might otherwise spend on new PCs. But it’s not the reason I’m advocating the model-year concept. Tablets are merely the latest new shiny thing to take advantage of the PC industry’s lack of a cadence and steal sales. There have been lots of others. Some of them, like tablets, prey on a weakness of PCs of the day. PDAs are another example of this.

  Digression: why does the flight attendants’ narrative still include a passage giving us permission to turn on our PDAs once the plane is airborne? Raise your hand if you still use a PDA. In public, I mean. Where others can see you.

  I thought so.

  But electronic devices don’t have to be even remotely related for them to impact PC sales growth. Personal video recorders, flat-screen TVs, set-top gaming systems and MP3 players are just a few examples of items that sapped PC sales over the years. Consumers have limited funds to spend on electronics. So if there’s an exciting new gadget available, and the old PC still works tolerably, then the new laptop purchase will have to wait another year. That’s the hazard of high penetration rates.

  The auto industry saved itself 90 years ago by adopting the model-year directive. After a couple short decades of rapid sales growth, the low-hanging fruit had all been plucked. Most households that could afford a car now had one. And they weren’t becoming obsolete. A five-year-old car could motor along at 45mph indistinguishably as well as a new car.

  Date is Gentle Reminder

  So what to do? Model years, that’s what. If managed properly, model years can serve as a gentle yet ever-present reminder to consumers that their ride is, well, outdated.

  The PC ecosystem has been wrestling with a similar problem for decades. With few exceptions, four-year-old PCs can handle consumers’ demands today. So why not extend the replacement cycle for another year? Certainly, there is no compelling reason coming from the PC ecosystem to speed up replacement cycles.

  I started preaching model years about 15 years ago, when I was on an advisory council at Microsoft. The folks in Redmond, Wash. said that model years were a good idea. Unfortunately, they couldn’t implement model years because they’re on a multi-year upgrade cycle.  Or so they said.

  Intel and AMD also said they were a good idea. But they couldn’t adopt it, they said, because the model-year methodology would introduce an ebb and flow into their manufacturing cadence, and they needed to keep their factories humming full force for 12 months out of the year.

  Good idea, the PC vendors agreed. But they couldn’t adopt it because they need to sell out their inventory, they said. And who would buy last year’s model once this year’s was out?

  And they all, each of them, said: what if we have a hiccup in our schedule and our product is delayed?

  Meantime, in spite of each of their objections, they’ve all been moving closer to the idea. Intel now updates its architectures annually. And Microsoft, which still can’t figure out how to roll out a PC platform on a schedule that Outlook can present, is spinning multiple Windows Phone updates a year, just like the rest of the smartphone ecosystem.

  And they all still say that PC model years is a good idea. But...

  It’s always ‘but.’

  But...what a model-year cadence would do for the industry is that it would give them an opportunity to spruce up the platform: new processor, new OS, new aesthetics. If you don’t have a new OS, give us a cosmetic update to last year’s. That’s what the auto industry does.

  Intel deftly adopted BMW’s 300/500/700 grading system for delineating good, better and best in its product line. So when consumers buy a Core i5-based PC, they know they’re getting a middle-of-the-road system.

  Great. So why not also signal that they own a 2012 laptop? That way, they’ll have ever-present reminders of where their systems rank -- and also the age of their systems.

  So forget the ‘but’s’ and get it together, PC ecosystem. The calendar is ticking.

  Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
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  Windows Phone will gain serious market share this year

  Publié: avril 21, 2012, 8:28pm CEST par Mike Feibus

  Let me repeat that a little more verbosely. Watch for Windows Phone to grab a serious hunk of market share at the end of 2012. No doubt about it. "Huh?" you ask. Believe it.

  The Feibus-is-crazy club most assuredly is enjoying a surge in membership right about now. And why not? There is certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that Windows Phone thus far has underwhelmed.

  Just this past week, in fact, Nokia’s financial results confirmed what the company, Microsoft’s primary Windows Phone partner, earlier had warned: that shipments of phones built around its fading Symbian platform are now in free-fall, and its WP7-based Lumia family isn’t picking up the slack as the company had planned.

  Microsoft’s earnings report, released the same day as Nokia’s, echoed much the same. Indeed, Windows Phone stood out arguably as the weakest link in what proved to be an impressively strong quarter for the software giant.

  So why, then, would I predict such a rosy change in fortunes for Microsoft’s struggling smartphone platform? It’s because of what was revealed in an earnings call from another wireless player, also that same day: Verizon.

  Fran Shammo, Verizon’s CFO, responding in part to a question about the high cost of subsidizing iPhones for new contracts, says that the carriers need a viable third horse in the smartphone platform derby to keep the balance of power -- and thus the prices that Apple believes it can charge the carriers for its phones -- in check. For its part, Shammo said, Verizon will throw its weight behind Windows Phone.

  The last time Verizon tinkered with the balance of power between carriers and platforms, it bet on Android, introducing the Droid in late 2009 backed by $100 million marketing campaign. That fall, iOS was the second largest shipping smartphone platform in the United States with 30 percent share, and closing in on market leader Blackberry. Android’s US share, meanwhile, stood at just 5.4 percent for that quarter. (These figures courtesy of Gartner.)

  Android’s share quadrupled the following quarter -- that’s Q4 09, the first full quarter of Droid shipments -- to 20.4 percent. A year later, Android enjoyed a majority of all domestic smartphone shipments (51.6 percent), while iOS share dipped to 20.1 percent.

  Last April, BetaNews published a white paper I wrote predicting that the carriers soon would elevate an underdog platform like Windows Phone to hold the market leaders in check. And this past week, that’s exactly what Verizon has signaled it intends to do.

  Now, don’t expect Windows Phone share to quadruple in the fourth quarter, as Android’s share did three years earlier when Verizon took up the cause:

  • For one thing, the smartphone market is several times larger.
  • Second, there aren’t any fading platforms today. Three years earlier, Android had RIM and Symbian to snatch sales from to pad share.
  • Third, the viable competitors -- Android and iOS -- own a much larger share of the market than the competitive alternatives did when Android was trying to claw its way into relevancy.

  Still, there’s little doubt that Windows Phone will snag share in the fourth quarter -- in spite of itself. Bet on it.

  Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  
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  Tyranny of Numbers Two: Why cellular carriers can't meet data capacity

  Publié: mars 9, 2012, 9:14pm CET par Mike Feibus

  

  As I passed through the gates of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last week, it struck me that the protests outside served as a metaphor for a collection of conference keynotes that warned of the impending wireless capacity crunch. Neither had much to do with the sea of booths showcasing creative new data-intensive apps and ever-more capable smartphones and tablets. But sooner or later, both will prove to be disruptive to those who are trying to make a living selling the products on the show floor.

  It only took a few days for the demonstrations along the Plaza de Espaňa to chip away at the exhibitors’ bottom line. The protests -- at first by public transport workers and increasingly by students objecting to budget cuts -- swelled from a curiosity into an impediment as they grew larger and more forceful. Traffic sputtered after police blocked the main entrance and forced attendees to exit out the back. Some left early. Others arrived later the following day to avoid the crush.

  Capacity Crunch

  To be sure, the capacity crunch will take longer than a few days to cut into the mobile world’s bottom line. But it will. And unless the industry re-focuses its attention and creativity from the exciting handheld advances and onto the more pedestrian matter of ensuring wireless capacity, the cuts could be deep.

  LTE, the consensus 4G solution, won’t solve the problem. By build-out, it won’t even keep things from getting worse than they are today, when capacity is already so strained that AT&T and Verizon are alienating long-time customers by curbing bandwidth bloat with limits on “unlimited” plans. (Do carriers commit to anything when we sign those two-year contracts? Or just us?)

  So how bad is it going to get? Hang with me, and I’ll take you there.

  Let’s start with this tidbit, from the keynote address of Franco Bernabe, Telecom Italia’s Chairman and CEO: Smartphones represent 12 percent of the mobile device volume today, but 80 percent of overall data demand. From that, we can infer that the average smartphone consumes about 30 times more wireless bandwidth than the typical feature phone.

  The disparity doubtless will widen as new apps drive new and varied reasons to draw content from the web. A 2011 Nielsen study, for example, reported that the average American smartphone user consumed 435MB per month -- 89 percent more than the 230MB a month they consumed a year earlier. Couple that with the growth trajectory of smartphone shipments -- Gartner says they grew 59.1 percent globally in 2011, to 472 million -- versus that of feature-phone sales, which are flat and forecasted to dip slightly over time.

  With that as a backdrop, it’s not hard to see why Cisco is forecasting that mobile data consumption per user will mushroom in 2016 to 18 times what it is today. Combine that with Gartner’s mobile device forecast (he writes and he multiplies!) and you end up with overall data demand in 2016 of more than 26 times what it is today.

  So that’s the demand side.

  Demand Growth

  On the supply side, LTE promises improvements in peak data rates of 30x or more over the same time period. But that’s just for an individual connection. In the aggregate, capacity improvements will be far less. A study commissioned by Ofcom, which oversees the UK’s airwaves, forecasts improvements in spectrum efficiency in the 3x range by 2016.

  Data demand growth of 26x, but capacity growth of only 3x? Ouch.

  Call it the Tyranny of Numbers Two.

  The original Tyranny of Numbers was the name given to the wall that the microelectronics industry was hurtling itself toward in the late 1950s. Everyone understood the math. Like the wireless industry today, the applications were progressing far faster than the plumbing was capable of supporting. Programmers contemplated ever-more complex routines that could solve ever-greater problems. But what good were these sophisticated operations if they required more real estate than the city of Barcelona and more solder than a trade school?

  It was a problem solved -- independently and at roughly the same time, so the story goes -- by Bob Noyce, then of Fairchild, and TI’s Jack Kilby. The solution: integrated circuits, or multiple, inter-connected electronic elements on a single chip. Like a pilot from movie "Top Gun", the chip pointed the jet skyward just a few yards ahead of the mountainside.

  That new trajectory has held to this day. It’s known as Moore’s Law, named after Gordon Moore, the industry pioneer who first graphed the new pace of advance. Moore, who co-founded Intel with Noyce and Andy Grove, declared decades ago that the chip industry was on a path to double the number of transistors it can place on a single chip every 18 months. It still holds true today, more than 30 years later.

  Sure beats cordoning off Barcelona to lay out a smartphone, doesn’t it?

  Which brings us back to the problem at hand: the Tyranny of Numbers Two. The carriers understand the problem, as they should. But in order to solve it, they’re going to have to tap into the plentiful bandwidth available from wired broadband technologies. That’s something they’ve been reticent to do, because it means allowing their customers’ data and voice traffic to leak outside of their control.

  The most promising wireless offload option is WiFi, because it’s already so well deployed, and because it’s already a standard feature in smartphones. The carriers are slowly swallowing their reluctance to adopt WiFi. They’ll need to move faster, though, because there are still some hurdles to overcome. And because data demand continues to grow unfettered.

  If they don’t hurry, the Tyranny of Numbers Two will kick them where it hurts the most: in the bottom line.

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.

  Photo Credit: SVLuma/Shutterstock

  
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  Don't blame tablets for slow PC sales

  Publié: décembre 1, 2011, 11:09pm CET par Mike Feibus

  This is one of the more uncomfortable years the PC ecosystem has ever endured. It started out sluggish, and never really recovered. Early on, Intel’s CEO chided market researchers who didn’t echo his call for double-digit unit growth. (Full disclosure: so did I.) AMD’s board booted its leader in part for taking much the same stand.

  Slow growth alone, though, isn’t what draped 2011 in a soot-colored hue. The industry has seen its share of ups and downs. But this year is different. Because while PC sales were under-performing, shipments of these new things, media tablets, skyrocketed. Coincidence?

  Yes, actually. It’s tempting to witness the appearance of one thing and a change in fortunes of another and assume that the former caused the latter. Our ability to draw a line connecting two points in space is a trait that enables us humans to discover great things. It’s also a quality that can land us in deep trouble if we’re not careful. (Tip: taking a shot at the president will not impress Jodi Foster.)

  For a time, the PC industry appeared immune to the financial calamities that cut deep into sales and profits for many businesses around the globe. PC vendors actually eked out shipments growth in 2009, the first full year of the recession -- and things got better from there.

  PC shipments grew 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent in first and second quarters 2010, respectively, according to Gartner. In the following quarter, though, growth suddenly plunged to just 7.6 percent. That period also happened to be the first full quarter of iPad shipments.

  The results from that quarter ignited a flurry of dire predictions for the end of the PC market at the hands of tablets. These forecasts sounded uncomfortably familiar to industry veterans. After all, it was barely 30 years ago that the PC appeared on the scene, and quickly began to push aside Big Iron, the last king of computing.

  The fallacy with those ominous forecasts, though, is that they centered on the wrong inflection point. It was the fourth quarter of 2009 that marked an industry disruption, not the third quarter of 2010. Let me explain.

  In the third quarter of 2009, Microsoft began shipping Windows 7. After enduring 18 months of Windows Vista, the consumer PC market was hungry for computers built around a quality OS. So people flocked to stores to buy. PC shipments climbed an impressive 22.1 percent that quarter, compared to just 0.5 percent in third quarter 2009 (again, according to Gartner). The sales fest continued for another six months.

  See, it’s not that third quarter was so bad. It’s that the three prior quarters were so good.

  I’ve always been a believer in the Field-of-Dreams approach to the consumer market. Every time we build it, consumers come. If we don’t, well, they don’t. Or they buy something else.

  In the third quarter of 2010, Apple built the iPad. And consumers came. The PC ecosystem, meanwhile, blew through its vein of new and shiny over the preceding nine months and had nothing much exciting to offer for the second half of 2010. Ditto for this year’s selling season.

  You can agree or not, obviously. One thing’s for sure: we won’t have to wait long for this forecast to prove out. See, the PC ecosystem’s next new and shiny is slated for the fourth quarter of 2012. That’s when system vendors will be pairing Windows 8 with some exciting new hardware, systems that mash the best of the PC together with the tablet’s touch interface, sexy form factor and long battery life.

  Who knows, maybe a year from now the industry will buzz about the end of media tablets, as surging Windows 8 PC sales ignite another upgrade cycle.

  Photo Credit: dencg/Shutterstock

  Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.