Project Ara was too lofty, Google

Google today confirmed the end of Project Ara, its attempt to create a modular mobile phone. Was the result too bulky, or was it just a non-core-business clean-up exercise?

There is a need for modules. But not perhaps the ones that Project Ara envisaged. The consumer need is actually much, much simpler than what Ara is trying to solve. It's not technically modules, but spare parts.

We simply need to be able to replace our phone batteries when they run out of juice (or when they finally go kaput). We need to change screens when we crack them. We need to install more memory as Android and iOS as well as the apps that go on them add more and more features that suck up memory space (and battery life).

Remember the good old days of detachable batteries on mobile phones? Imagine not lugging around a power bank and a cable everywhere you go, but a small, spare, flat battery instead. 

Imagine not having to go to the phone service centre and wait for a few days whilst your kaput battery gets replaced. (If you go to the instantaneous but unauthorised repair shops, your warranty gets voided). Just replace the kaput battery with the spare one.

Imagine if drop your phone and your screen gets cracked, but its simple engineering to replace the cracked screen with a new one, without costing an arm and a leg.

Imagine when your phone slows down (from the numerous OS and updates) and all you have to do is to replace the previous 16GB memory "card" by slotting in a whopper 256GB one (well, whopper for now anyway).

Imagine being able to extend the life of the phone from the 18 months - 2 years currently, to 5-6 years. (And being able to tell your kids, sorry, you'll just have to use daddy's old but perfectly workable phone until you're earning your own money to buy yourself the latest one!).

Intriguingly, Google had envisioned the above features to be part of the scope of Ara, but reneged on it later by saying the developer version "would not allow to swap out the phone's processor, battery or display". But the intrigue is now moot as the project is cancelled.

These ain't revolutionary stuff, but they are consumer pain points. It's not beneficial to the mobile phone makers who want replacement cycles to compress, but it's beneficial to us consumers, and to our environment.

Over to you Lenovo and Moto Z.

Nokia - The Beginning of the End?

The first time I came across Nokia, I thought it was a Japanese company.

I was a young lawyer then, and I was responsible for doing corporate filings for some of our firm's clients. One of the them was Nokia, and I was surprised to learn later that it was a Finnish company. This was 1990.

Fast forward to 1995, and I was back in KL working as a management consultant. Here, I bought my first mobile phone. It was a Nokia 2110 (see pic). I am loyal to my clients.

What attracted me to the Nokia phone was its interface. It was easily the most intuitive. I remember exclaiming, wow, its so easy to enter friend's phone numbers on the mobile phone, ask them to give a missed call, and then just save it!

Nokia led the user interface design and deservedly became number 1. I remember loving their NavKey interface. And design, remember the Nokia banana phones they used in The Matrix? That was the bees knees to me.

Fast forward to today and Nokia is in crisis. And it chose to respond to the crisis, (it's so called burning platform) to bet the house on Microsoft Mobile Windows 7.

Great news for Microsoft. A complete strategy cop-out by Nokia.

The hard truth is, Nokia has been complacent. Its product development engineers are in nice plush Scandinavian offices in the Finnish suburb of Espoo, when most of the mobile internet action is happening in Seoul, Shanghai, and Silicon Valley (and Taipei, of you include mobile phone hardware). It's no wonder then that those engineers are behind the curve, because the curve is elsewhere.

A more strategic response would be first to figure out first, what is Nokia's true capability? Then, is there value be earned from this capability?

I would say that Nokia's true capability was once user-interface design for mobile phones and its integration with stylish hardware. Unfortunately, when internet came to the mobile phone, Nokia failed to leverage this strength to come up with a great user interface for the new world of mobile internet, including downloading the digital content that came with it.

But beyond just mobile phone operating systems, Nokia forgot the lesson of ubiquity taught to us by Windows in the personal computer world. The world does not need series 30, 40, 60, Symbian. The world needs just one ubiquitous operating system, so that developers can produce one version of anything, and that would be sufficient.

Instead, developers had to develop at least 20-30 different versions of the same app, about 6-10 for Nokia alone for all its series versions, and then the likes of Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorial, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm (circa 2005).

Is there still value in Nokis's ex-capability of great user interfaces combimed with great looking phones? Is there value in ubiquity? Easy one, just ask Apple (iphone) and Google/Samsung (Android).

And what's Nokia's strategic response? Well, we have the answer today. Delegate this capability to a company that does not have a good track record in mobile user interfaces, Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft has developed ubiquity in personal computers, but it never figured out how to create the best user interface for mobile, and hence, it could not even begin to replicate the Windows ubiquity in personal computers.

So yes, Nokia is jumping from a burning platform. But to another burning platform.

What's the alternative strategic response? Here's a suggestion. Tread water with Android. Do what Samsung does. Licence the mobile OS from Google (it's free, if you're willing to accede mobile search revenues to them), For now, get your engineers, who already have hardware and Symbian software expertise, to familarise themselves with Android's software.

But do not stop there. Avoid becoming just another Taiwanese-like hardware company and learn how to improve on Android. Learn the mobile browser thing, Learn the screen swiping thing. And show them how to integrate it with your strength in hardware design.

One result maybe that you can come up with the best Android phone on the market, with Android features tightly integrated with your hardware design. Like those brazen Oracle server ads, "Your Android works 5 times better with Nokia phones than Samsung phones".

Another result might be that you learn enough about how to cope with mobile internet, that you come up with your own category-killing mobile operating system.

But tread water with the number 2 mobile operating system, not number 5.

Your engineers will be more excited to be working on Android, and maybe, just maybe, you might rekindle their passion for you.

The Core Issue in Mobile Marketing

A great letter to the editor of Mediapost in response to the article Marketing to the Disinterested by Steve Smith, a mobile industry commentator.

The response by Mark Pilipczuk from MAP Consulting LLC :

"You’re just seeing another manifestation of the constant push-pull between marketers and technologists. Technologists, and tech-savvy people, tend to love feature lists. True marketers will always want to home in on two or three key consumer benefits.

A lot of product development is unfortunately done via laundry list. Build the biggest, longest and most acronym-laden checklist and they’ll come, is how the thinking goes. But they, by and large, don’t. Nobody wants a ton of features. Tell me what the benefit is.

And I think that’s what a lot of the problem with the mobile web is. Forget the whiz-bang stuff you CAN do with the platform. Give me something that’s going to benefit me as the user.

Buy a soda from a machine with some kind of mobile micro-payment app lashup? Err, no. Coins solved that problem years ago. Give me a way to see a full web page on my phone so I can rebook a flight during a storm at LaGuardia (my actual experience on an iPhone). Now that’s a benefit I’m willing to pay for.

Think “benefit rich” products, not “feature laden” and we’ll get consumers to adopt our devices and media."

TElenor and Time Dot Com - A Huge Sucking Sound

Time Dot Com today emerged as the main buyer of the Digi.com shares that Telenor placed to the market.

So in addition to getting RM700 million+ for squatting on a 3G Licence, TDC also got a sweet price from CIMB's so called book-building efforts. At Digi.com's closing price of RM24.40 today versus the TDC's purchase price of RM21.50, TDC made a cool RM146 million in a single day.

But wait a minute - how did TDC get credit facility for RM1 billion + to finance the purchase in the first place? Remember, we're talking about a company here that 2 days ago, was not even creditworthy to the tune of a mere RM50 million guarantee to MCMC for its 3G licence.

Something stinks.

Telenor shareholders today heard a huge sucking sound to the tune of RM800 million from their company to TDC (RM650 million for the 3G licence, and RM150 million for its less-than-market price for its shares in Digi.com).

No fault of the Norwegians, it's just that us Malaysians are getting pretty good at fleecing our foreign investors, to our long term detriment as an foreign investment destination.

Google's Android - It's the Right Move

I must say I was a bit surprised by the kind of deflationary tone the internet news sites were taking on the latest announcement by Google of the development of Android, its first foray into the development of a mobile phone operating system. I think tech commentators wanted to see another iPhone and were probably disappointed by the focus on just software. I'm not one of those guys.

I think its probably one of shrewdest moves by Google to enter the mobile market. As commented on this blog previously, I believe that's the best area to create value for the mobile industry today as no one has even come close to developing an ideal mobile phone operating system (and certainly none with the equivalent ubiquity of Windows in the PC environment) . I voted with my wallet by buying my first shares in Google the very same day (at about 8 times the Google IPO price).

What's a little more intriguing though is news that Google will enter the auction for the wireless 700Mhz spectrum to be issued by the FCC. Hmmm, aren't there enough mobile and wimax carriers that can do this job better and more efficiently? Sure, mobile internet and telephony is a sexy business, but what's Google's competitive advantage?

From an ROI and value added perspective, I believe developing an open standards mobile operating system will give Google more bang for the investment buck than being a wireless carrier. Kinda like the success of Microsoft Windows versus the failure of MSN's internet access business (I have a vague recollection that Microsoft started this business after seeing the early success of AOL, but its testament to the total failure of the business that I find it hard to recollect what happened to it!).

Time dot Com - the ultimate rent seeker

This was feedback to the theedgedaily.com report of Digi's offer of issuing 27.5 million shares or so for Timedotcom's 3G spectrum.

Time dot com seems like nothing but a rent seeking company. Its mobile business had to be rescued by Maxis, now its non-existent 3G business which they acquired for RM50 million (have they even paid the licence fees?) is flipped for RM650 million, whilst not meeting a single milestone set by MCMC.

Sigh, at least Digi was smart enough not to acquire the whole company, otherwise they would have to contend with how to get rid of deadwood management and a huge -writedown of non-existent assets (read non-lighted, maybe even non-existent fibre, supposedly in the ground).

Meg Whitman : Oops. I lost US$1.4 billion today. Sorry.

EBay today announced a US$1.4 billion write-off for its Skype unit, purchased for US$2.6 billion 2 years ago. See Business Week, San Jose Mercury News

I'm not one for adding to the chorus of "I-told-you-so" by analysts and commentators, but as a Yahoo insider at the time, it always felt like the purchase was a panicky "we-gotta-do-something" response to Yahoo's encroachment into the auctions space in China through their investment in AliBaba and its TaoBao auctions unit.

I was always in two minds whether the Skype purchase was a defensive move to prevent Yahoo and Google from acquiring Skype and consolidating their online messaging dominance or just a raw emotional response along the lines of, "You attack my territory in China, I will attack yours"(maybe both).

In any case, what an expensive decision. (And the only head rolling is the happy founder!)

Mobile Progress - Sep 2007

I attended a Mobile Monday event at Baze in Clarke Quay today, organised by the Singapore chapter and hosted by Forum Nokia.

It's been almost 18 months hiatus from mobile events for me, but apparently it was an 18 month hiatus for the Mobile Monday organisers too. (So I did not miss much).

But worse, it was evident from the event there was a distinct lack of new ideas and direction in the mobile industry. And Forum Nokia was just replaying a broken record about supporting developers (of course for the Nokia platforms.. and therein lies the crux of the problem of the mobile industry - lack of a universal operating system)

There was also a sense that our mobile attendees are looking rather enviously across the greener grass plain at our Web 2.0 counterparts, Google, Facebook and the like. Terms like social networking was banded about like the mobile industry invented them.

Where has the creativity gone? Time for a mobile field trip to Korea again to discover Mobile 2.0!