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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Apple’s new iPod Nano

Sep 14 2010 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product

I’ll be at IDF (Intel Developer Forum) today and after the mid-day exhibit hours, I’ll walk over to the Apple Store at Union Square and get myself a new iPod Nano.

Between myself and my kids, we have almost all generations of the iPod Nano.

We also have a couple of generation of the iPod Shuffle. But the Nano beats the Shuffle hands down in usability. If you have been frustrated by the “select playlist” double-click on the previous generation Shuffle’s remote control, you’ll know what I mean.

The new iPod Nano is very interesting in terms of what’s new: touch screen, multi-touch user interface, built-in clip etc. From a product point of view, what is more interesting is what is not in the new Nano.

If you look at different generations of any given product, you’ll notice that as the product evolves, it gets more and more features. A tiny 1977 Honda Accord hatchback sits in my driveway. Next to it is a 2007 Honda Accord, which is almost twice the size, and categorized as a mid-size car. A great example of feature bloat is Microsoft Office, which has so many features today that you need to Google to figure how to do anything with it.

Apple is not immune to feature bloat, but when that happens, it is usually in a very controlled manner and for a good reason. Bigger is no necessarily better at Apple.

Which brings us back to the new Nano. Size-wise, it is much smaller than the previous generation. Some features are also missing: camera and the ability to play movies/TV shows. While I don’t mind the missing camera (which was added only in one generation of the Nano), I do miss the ability to watch TV shows. In fact, I bought the previous generation Nano for that purpose: to watch Eureka episodes on the plane while on business trips.

What Apple did with the new Nano was to basically refocus the product. The new Nano is music-only: music with a very very cool user interface.

Apple would have gone the “normal”, evolutionary route: keep the features of the old Nano, but add a touch screen interface.

The resulting product would have been a ho-hum skinny iPod Touch.

Instead, Apple chose to come up with completely revolutionary version of the Nano. As a result,  the new Nano is a very unique and must-have gadget. Strategically, it is a way to bring consumers back to the iPod line.

This is a very brave move from a product management point of view: it is always easy to tack on more features, but hard to justify the removal of some. There will always be consumers who will be vocally disappointed at the lack of features that they are used to seeing. Witness what happened when Apple removed Firewire from the MacBooks.

But, hey, if you really must have video-playback and a camera, just go get an iPod Touch. It’s not a lot more expensive than the 16GB Nano.

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History revisited Android=MSDOS, iOS=Apple Macintosh

Aug 13 2010 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product

Are we seeing history repeating itself here?

Apple has been very successful with the iPhone, iPad and the newly re-named iOS operating system driving both these devices.

But Google’s Android has come out of nowhere to overtake iOS as the 3rd most popular mobile OS, as this Gartner report claims.

The advantage of Android is that it is open source and generally available to anyone wishing to make a smartphone or tablet device. This is very much like the PC industry, where the appearance of non-IBM BIOS vendors (Phoenix, AMI etc) and Microsoft’s MSDOS pretty much allowed anyone to build personal computers that were somewhat mutually compatible.

In contrast, Apple has always operated in the framework of a closed system. Apart from a brief period in the 1990s, Apple has not and does not license its operating system for use on third-party hardware.

Advantages of a closed system is that Apple has full control over the software and hardware and is therefore able to innovate and deliver an awesome user experience. The regular PC manufacturers who have depended on Microsoft to deliver that experience have been sorely disappointed by Windows 7′s inability to function well as a tablet OS.

The downside is that Apple as a single company, with finite resources, can only deliver a finite number of variants of its products. Variations are limited: amount of memory, WiFi vs 3G/broadband, color scheme etc.

On the other hand, an open system allows more participants. In the Android space, for example, we had Motorola and HTC taking the lead in delivering Android devices, but other players like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Dell, Asus and a whole slew of who’s-who in the PC and mobile device industry are also jumping in.

The sheer number of players in the Android space is allowing for innovation, in both hardware, software and user experience. There is also a better ability to fill the needs for a larger number of market segments. For example, you can get simpler, lower cost devices with smaller screen sizes and resolutions or you can spring for the supersize 4″ displays in the Sprint EVO 4G or Motorola Droid X. You can opt for physical keyboards (Droid, Droid 2, MyTouch Slide) or just use the touch screen keyboard. If you don’t like Motorola’s Motoblur interface, opt for HTC’s Sense UI or Samsung’s Touchwiz.

So in brief, the larger number of Android player results in not only  economies of scale, but also economies of innovation as there are more resources to innovate and deliver on that innovation.

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The Apple Magic

Apr 12 2008 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product

One of my favorite web sites is Low End Mac. Be forewarned that this is truly the Mac fanboy/geek paradise, with articles on what to do with antique Macs, antique Mac of the day, profiles of said antique Macs etc.

The website also has very interesting articles about using the new Macintoshes, stories of folks who have moved from the Windows to the Mac world and various opinion pieces.

Charles Moore runs Low End Mac and he has a recent piece entitled: “That Old Mac Magic Isn’t Gone, but It Is Fading” .

He concludes the article by saying:

The Mac is now close to mainstream, and whatever else it is, the mainstream is not magic.

This is really interesting.

Apple has been using the “Think Different” concept in its advertising for many years. The old “computer for the rest of us” slogan from 1984 was just the beginning of that trend. In a way, it was a David-vs-Goliath, support-the-underdog appeal. It was also an appeal to the rebel in many of us: why be like everyone else when you can be different? Indeed, even the recent PC guy vs Mac guy advertisements imply this: the PC guy is dressed up all conservatively while the Mac guy is casual, hip and progressive (in the non-political sense).

This positioning has been effective. Macintosh sales have been very robust, especially among the don’t-want-to-be-like-my-parents, cool-is-everything college crowd. A recent report(from JPMorgan) went as far as to state that, unlike the other PC manufacturers, Apple sales will not be affected by the currrent period of economic uncertainty.

Unfortunately, the end result is that owning a Mac no longer let you stand out as much as before. Futhermore, with the move to Intel architecture, Macs are now even more like the average Windows PC, with the only difference being that the Macs come with a different operating system.

This reduction in “status” can be seen in resale values. In the past, Macintoshes kept their values very well. Owning a Mac was like owning a Lexus.  I sold my two year-old, second-hand 12″ PowerBook for just $100 less than the price I paid for it. In contrast, my fall 2007 MacBook is probably worth less than $800 (almost half its original value). Why? Because Apple sells a refurbished MacBook with slightly more advanced features for less than $900.

The changing perception of Mac ownership and increased market share means that Apple will have to review some aspects of its positioning soon. It will be hard to show that you are “different” if almost everyone else has the same computer.

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