Archive for the 'Business trends' category

Garmin and the disappearing GPS

Jan 14 2011 Published by Ben Chong under Business trends

Or the need thereof…

Seriously, when was the last time you used a GPS?

By GPS, I am referring to a Garmin, TomTom, Magellan etc device that you either “stick” to your car’s windshield or pop on the dashboard.

I have not used my ancient Garmin in a long time. Not since I got my first Android phone.

Today, when I need to go anywhere new, I just pull out my T-Mobile G2 Android phone, launch the Maps app, search for the address, tap on the banner of the destination address on the map, tap on the “navigate” icon, choose “Driving Navigation”, and I’m on the way! If the address was sent in an email, I can just hold my finger over the text containing said address. Android automagically figures out that it is an address, and launches the Maps app.

Hello smart phone, good bye dedicated GPS device!

Google Maps is still not perfect for navigation in the sense that the map and direction data is not stored on the device. You still need some connectivity for the device to get the maps and directions. I found this out the hard way when I went to some place where there was no network connection. While the G2 was able to get all the navigation data to go to that place when I left home, it could not get the data to help me navigate home: there was zero cellphone or network access.

Here is where GPS manufacturers can avoid being made obsolete by smartphones: be able to provide products that allow offline navigation or complement the functionality of the built-in navigation apps.

Garmin tried shipping a GPS+smartphone device with Asus, the nuvifone (sold in some places as the Garminfone). This device combined a full-fledge Garmin GPS device with an Android phone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a commercial success and Garmin and Asus terminated their partnership.

Garmin hasn’t given up (this is an existential issue) and is now selling the Garmin StreetPilot app for Apple iDevices. It is available on the iTunes app store at $40. Garmin currently doesn’t have a similar offering for Android.

Will Garmin’s approach of “cooperating with the competition” help prevent its GPS markets from being eaten by smartphones? That remains to be seen. There are a number of negative comments on the app.

Meanwhile, in a case of “your competitor is my competitor” cooperation, Nike and TomTom have come together to launch the Nike+ SportWatch. This combines Nike’s Nike+ shoe sensor watch technologies with TomTom’s expertise in GPS devices. This is clearly an attempt to roll back Garmin’s lead in GPS-equiped sport watches.

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CNN: Helping make Americans more insular

Jan 14 2011 Published by Ben Chong under Business trends

What’s wrong with the following picture?

This screenshot of CNN.com was taken in the early afternoon PST on Friday, January 14th, 2011.

When this screenshot was taken, almost all my favorite news websites (LA Times, Washington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, BBC News), feature news from Tunisia: the “president for life”, Ben Ali, had quit as a result of mass protests. The only other news site that I frequent that did not mention news from Tunisia was the Detroit News.

I can understand why the Detroit News does not talk about Tunisia: it is a regional newspaper. I go to that website to read automotive news.

CNN.com, on the other hand, had (deliberate use of past tense) a reputation of being a great source of up-to-date news. If you are old enough to remember the first gulf war, CNN was the TV channel to tune into to learn the latest on what was happening on the ground in Kuwait/Iraq. That was how CNN built its brand reputation.

Today, when an authoritarian government is toppled by mass protests, which may result in either a domino effect or more oppression in the Middle-East/North Africa, CNN.com refers to the event in a single line news item hidden among everything else.

Granted that I am looking at the “domestic” edition of CNN.com whereas none of the other news sites differentiate between a “domestic” versus “international” audiences.

However, I think this is unfortunate, for it basically tells me that I can no longer trust CNN to be a good source of news. CNN has lost sight of what made it successful in the first place: delivery of news that matters.

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Are cameras on their way out?

Jan 05 2011 Published by Ben Chong under Business trends

Maybe not, but the camera industry appears to be one where new technology tends to keep manufacturers on their toes.

Witness the demise of complicated aim-and-adjust cameras when inexpensive point-and-shoot autofocus came along, and then the demise of film cameras when digital cameras came along.

Now the competition is more indirect (my “strategic competitor” concept): the smartphone.

If you are an iPhone user, when was the last time you picked up your camera?

You can’t remember?

Neither can I. In fact, I probably haven’t used my camera (a 12-megapixel, widescreen Panasonic) since I started using an Android phone.

Advanced camera plus phone combos are not new. I used to have a Sony Ericsson K750i which had a better camera than most digital cameras of the era.

But today’s smartphone have a better ecosystem than the old Sony Ericssons: real Internet connectivity and compelling Internet/cloud tools like Facebook, Dropbox etc for sharing pictures.

So today, you can snap a picture with your trusty iPhone/Android and with a few taps, share the picture with your friends/family and the world. You also no longer need to mess with cables or SD Card adaptors: just use Dropbox (and to a more complicated extent, ZumoDrive) to transfer the picture to your PC.

It looks like the camera manufacturers are starting to take notice. So Samsung just announced the SH100 at CES. It comes with Wi-Fi and can share pictures with your PC, Android device, Facebook, Picassa, Photobucket etc. Read the press release here. Adding WiFi to digital cameras is not new, but this is the first time I see WiFi being integrated into the camera experience along with Facebook and PC sharing capability.

Should other camera manufacturers follow suit?

There’s no easy answer. If they don’t, they risk being overtaken by the smartphone tide; at least, in the casual point-and-shoot segment. On the other hand, that segment may still go to the smartphones anyway: for casual point-and-shoot, you are not going to carry another gadget if your smartphone suffices…

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2011 is here! And …

Jan 03 2011 Published by Ben Chong under Business trends

But first of all, I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

2010 was a very interesting year.

We saw Apple launch the iPad, which quickly showed the world what the tablet PC experience should be like, and consequently sent Microsoft back to the drawing board.

We also witnessed Google’s Android evolve into a very good competitor to the Apple iPhone and consequently take market share away from smartphone stalwart RIM/Blackberry, sending it into a downward spiral from which it will probably not recover.

So it looks like 2011 continue to be interesting (or should I say “exciting”?).

The tablet wars will spin up fully in 2011, with Apple (and iOS) on one hand, and Google’s Android on the other. There will be other players like RIM, Ubuntu and Microsoft, but they will remain bit players, at least initially.

An “alternative PC operating system” war will brew with more vigor in the background. Google Chrome OS will finally ship on systems that you can buy at the store. Alternatives will be Intel/Nokia’s MeeGo and the various flavors of Linux (Ubuntu, Jolicloud).

Hopefully, we will also get better clarity in how Google will position Chrome OS, particularly vis à vis Android. Google is not infallible, as we have seen with Google TV here and here. So some of the big questions of 2011 will be (a) whether a cloud computing device powered by Chrome OS makes sense and (b) whether Google will continue to support two operating systems.

Social media will continue to be HUGE. On Dec 29th 2010, Hitwise reported that in the US, Facebook beat Google as the most visited site in 2010. This can mean many things. For example, Bing may be grabbing market share or eyeballs from Google, resulting in fewer visits to google.com. But we cannot deny the fact that Facebook will be incredibly influential in 2011.

This year will also be critical for Facebook’s competitor (I am tempted to use the word “former”), MySpace. The latter was the 7th most visited US website in 2010, but it may lay off up to 50% of its staff.

So there we go: my first blog for 2011. Again, wishing y’all a Happy New Year!

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