The French Photographer Weblog

As you noticed already I write about Photography but I write also a lot about Apple, Smartphones and iPhones. So I cannot avoid a word on that antennagate story.
First, monday was an interesting day for me, FedEx delivered my iPhone 4. It took me about 5 minutes to have it activated and another 30 seconds to test the infamous death grip to the conclusion that… what a bullshit!
There is simply no problem there. Ok, there is some signal attenuation. Ok, if I hold the phone tight for a minute maybe the signal will decrease but nowhere enough to drop a call. And in real life who will grip a phone like that and hold tight and not end up with cramps after a few minutes.
Come on, this is just plain bullshit.

I also watched the press conference last week about this topic and like everybody I noticed the body language and sort of contempt in Steve Jobs attitude when he announced the free bumper for everybody. And honestly now that I have experienced the real extend of the matter (sorry, I cannot call that a problem) I understand much better his frustration and his general attitude with the media.
This bumper giveaway will cost Apple probably $150 to $200 millions because of something that has been blown out of proportion by the media. That’s kind of expensive for a media interference.

So what’s the bottom line. iPhone 4 has a new antenna design, with a trade off. There is one clearly indicated weak spot in an overall excellent product. Does that make the product unusable? No. Is it a reason for a recall? Never ever. Is it a real problem preventing a normal usage of this product? Not in my experience. Actually I don’t even think about it or pay particular attention to it. I never used a case on my iPhones and I won’t use one on the iPhone 4, because I don’t like cases, because they are ugly and not convenient.

Funny thing, now the focus has shifted from the antenna issue to Steve Jobs attitude during the press conference.
And honestly I understand him. To me his answer to this problem is exactly in line with the way he thinks and not very different to his answer on the flash controversy. Listen if you have not done so yet to the interview he gave at All things Digital a few month ago. The segment on Flash is particularly relevant, basically steve’s opinion is quite simple – we think that Flash is not appropriate for iOS devices, there are technologies that allow us to get the same result without the problems generated by Flash, so we don;t need Flash and we won’t invest in it. If people agree with us they will buy our products, and if they think we are wrong they won’t!
For that matter Steve is the ultimate believer in free market. He must be a good friend of Alan Greenspan.
And when you look at the last quarter numbers, the market tend to prove that steve is right. Yesterday Apple repeated several times that they sell the iOS devices as fast as they can make them and cannot keep up with demand.
Nowadays information travels fast and social medias are powerful to build or destroy the reputation of a product, obviously the iPad sales like crazy even without Flash and people buy iPhone 4 despite the antenna weak spot. And they don’t return those products.

So what happened? There is a weak spot on the iPhone 4 antenna. Maybe this should have been clearly explained during the presentation of the product. Instead, it was blown out of proportion by the media. We heard all sorts of conspiracy theory about Apple knowing about it and having ulterior motives. at the end of the day – money talks, bullshit walks. Or maybe customers do. People want to buy more iPhone 4 and iPads than Apple can produce. They don’t return the products. They experience some dropped calls but not more than any other phone on the market.

This bullshit is over. Price tag for this media stunt – about $150 millions.

I’m a strong believer in the freedom of the media but maybe they should really focus on the important topics nowadays, not on that kind of easy crap.

Well, let’s keep everything relative. It’s an historic time for the computer and mobile communication industry.

Google is holding its big Google I/o conference in San Francisco this week. Apple will have the WWDC in 2 weeks and from both events we can expect big announcements like the one we saw today.

What makes it an historic and interesting time is that the market of mobile computing is still totally open with some serious competitors fighting for their share of the market. I can see at least 5 serious competitors right now:

- Apple certainly got a head start with the iPhone and the iPad. They have already sold a millions of devices (can’t wait for their announcement of the 100 millions iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad).
It looks like they cannot produce enough iPad to keep some descent inventory in their own stores (75% of the Apple Stores were out of stock as of today).
iPhoneOS 4 should be available in a few weeks with more than 200,000 apps. Those are very solid numbers. The future sounds pretty bright for Apple with maybe a few clouds in that blue sky – the long term reaction of the end users to Apple addiction to controlling everything and anything and their overall attitude toward developers and opening the platform to contents not deemed acceptable.

- Google is the strongest contestant to Apple supremacy and come to the fight with some serious weapons. Their OS is slowly catching up, their browser is solid and they recently found their line of communication by pretending to be the white knight and our ultimate line of defense against Apple dictatorial attitude. By their book Apple platform is closed and managed by control freaks, they are our last hope of freedom.
The question is: how long is this going to last? For how long are they going to give away all that technology for free to cell phones manufacturers. If you look at some past experiences, Google always use the same strategy to enter a market – provide a service comparable to what is already existing but for free. Attract a large base of users and than align the price of their service with the competitors. If you want a confirmation of that look at Google Checkout. After a couple of years it is no longer free but charge the same transaction fees as Paypal.
Google is successful because they offer a FREE solution to cell phone manufacturers who want to propose inexpensive alternatives to Apple’s iPhone with a product that look similar.
Apple has never entered the market of discounted products. They have always favored the top end of the market (cellphones or computers) hence Google will most likely win the battle of the market share. But how long will they accept to not make money on this market?

- HP/Palm certainly the best thing that could have happened for both companies. Palm is finally saved (and about to dissolve into its new owner corporate maze) and HP acquires a much needed knowledge, patent and mobile OS. This move will certainly lead to an interesting development. Historically among all the computers manufacturers Apple has been the only one to do both the software and the hardware. Now in the mobile computer market HP will be the second company to control both aspects of the user experience. This move makes them independent from a software manufacturer (like Google or Microsoft) and place them on a course similar to Apple strategy. We will see if this was the right move.

- Microsoft: even if the company is way behind on this market they just cannot be ignored. Windows Mobile 6 was a disaster of a magnitude similar to Vista. Version 6.5 was not really better. Than for some strange reason the company announced that Window Mobile would arrive in about a year and would not be compatible with the devices running the current version. That was the best recipe to make sure that every cell phone manufacturer and end user (at least the one who pay attention to what they buy and not simply listen to a sales rep) walk away from their solution. So right now Microsoft is dead on the water in the battle and all they have to rely on is the hope that Windows Mobile 7 will be their salvation. Still, once it gets available it will require all the power of Microsoft’s marketing machine to reenter the market. At this time they will have to convince cellphone manufacturers that their OS is better than Google’s even if it has very little applications and it’s not free. Talking of an uphill battle!

- RIM: Is something different in my opinion. They are very strong in the corporate world but still seriously under attack. They were there before everybody else with their own OS (sort of), their own devices with their specific design, and even their own architecture to support the devices, but… they totally missed the evolution of the market they were sitting on. It’s only after they realized that Apple was coming up with a device and an OS so strong that it was a threat for them that they finally decided to react. And it was not a very strong reaction. Basically imitating the interface that was created by somebody else but falling short on a lot of aspects. Since everybody watches them losing market share and doing very little to stop it. They come last in the list of competitors because they are simply going down. It is another typical case of a market leader sitting on its position, not bringing any innovation and slowly losing its advantage. Wonder why? Try doing the same thing on an iPhone (or an Android phone) and on a good old blackberry and you will quickly understand that one look attractive and modern and the other is some sort of dinosaur of the mobile computing.

Now I can hear some comments and I would like to address those.
Why is not Nokia on that list? Well because they have nothing so far that can compete with Apple or Google. Nokia has been making cellphones for decade but they see those as phones maybe with a few added features. Apple like I explained some months ago did not created a phone, they created an eco system that includes prominently an OS but also an App store and the tools to support that phone. Google jumped in the same train relatively quickly and now HP is trying to catch up. Microsoft had an OS but it was so bad that they more or less had to abandon it and start again from scratch. RIM had a complete system but just forgot to update it and innovate. In the meantime Nokia is still making… cellphones with a few added functionalities.
And what about Motorola. Ah good old Motorola, remind me when was the last time this company did something right. They used to make microprocessors, they drove themselves out of that business years ago, they used to make cellphones, they still do except that they position themselves in the less profitable segment of this market. They had some success with the razor but them too missed the evolution toward the smartphones pretty much for the same reasons. Lack of a descent (you can say Touch based) operating system and lack of the ecosystem to support it. During the last quarter Apple sold more phones than Motorola. Motorola currently has a catalogue of 117 devices, Apple has exactly 5 references. Call that a victory of quality over quantity!

Since my iPhone App has been online a lot of people have been asking me if there is gone be something similar for other smartphones. The answer is – probably not. For various reasons.

First I believe that the iPhone has more or less already won the battle of the smartphones. Apple current market share is still low but it’s rising very quickly. In the US the exclusivity with AT&T is a strong factor to limit the market share but it is likely that this will have an end as soon as possible. In France, for example, during the last 2 weeks of December Orange the largest mobile operator announced that 77% of the smartphones they sold were iPhone. That is the market share we are heading toward in my opinion. Another factor to consider is that most of the cellphones are subsidized by the operators in exchange for a 2 years contract. So users have to wait to get a new device, but once they get one, they are more likely to get an iphone than anything else.

The second reason is simply that the competition is still not catching up with Apple in terms of offer, technology and marketplace.
When the iPhone was released everybody focused on the device and the hardware (yes it was missing 3G at that time) but nobody realized that to go with the iPhone Apple created a mobile operating system. More precisely a version of MacOS that works with devices without a mouse or a keyboard. The iPhone is not a cell phone it’s a computer that can be used to make phone calls.
The magic is that the computer is small enough that you can stick it to your ear.

This OS has been a major investment to create and we can expect that it will be used in other Touch based devices. And to tell the truth, it’s a pretty good OS. Far more advanced than Windows Mobile. And as far as the other competitors, well let’s face it, they have nothing at all even close.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is also a great phone. Apple came up with a nice user interface and some great innovations. We can even wonder why people who have been selling cell phones for 15 years could not come up with something like Visual Voice Mail. Why did they had to wait for Apple to invent it?
But the real strength of the iPhone is not the hardware or the device itself, it’s the operating system and the ecosystem that goes with it.
So, ok, the iPhone has a great OS but what about Google and Android? Well, yes it’s an OS, a modern one, pretty good too.
Will it be successful? Well most likely yes it will, because it is better than anything else (ie Windows Mobile), it is free and if you are a cell phone manufacturer like HTC (those guys do some really nice hardware) it’s your best interest to use Android in your phone. Android lacks the second component that makes the iPhone a success, the ecosystem, ie iTunes, the App Store, Apple review of all the softwares available and Apple strict guidelines on what an App should look like and do.
A lot of developers have been complaining about Apple review process and for sure there has been some ‘disturbing’ stories, but overall Apple strict guidelines and policy make users life much easier.
When you buy an iPhone you are pretty much assured that you will be able to use every software on it. The interface will be consistent.
Unfortunately with the competition it’s not exactly the same, software versions and operating systems differ. One software will work on one phone but not on the other. Screen sizes are not consistent. Overall it’s not nice and slick and a no brainer like the iPhone can be.

It’s a typical case of look a like product. You save a few dollars (not always) you get a product that look like the real thing but when you start digging you figure out that it’s not the real thing, far from it!