Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Smart phones allow real geo targeting

Advertisers are trying to geo target their audience since years over the Internet, but the biggest issue is that an ip address can't give enough info. It could be a wide range of possible location or even gives a wrong location information depending who your provider is. I use road runner and had several times an ip address which is based in Miami, even if i am in Tampa.
But smart phones are changing the landscape. Most of the smart phones have gps which can give advertiser an exact position of the consumer, and if gps is not available voice towers do a good job too. Usually it takes three towers to define the location pretty accurate (not so good like gps but good enough).

We are now able to build small apps for smart phones which will display coupons or special discount depending where the consumer is. Imagine you run a "coupon app" when you are at a store or in a mall and it would instantly tell you about special discounts or coupons for the store you are.
The sky is the limit and I am pretty sure we see soon a lot investment into mobile advertising using real geo targeting.




- Posted using My iPad

Location:NW Shore Blvd,Tampa,United States

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Google is trying to stay in China

Google does not like evil as we know and decided last year to stop their business in China after a hack attack which Google believes was controlled by the Chinese government but the government did deny any relationship to the hackers. Since this time google does not offer anymore service in China as a search engine. Of course official reason was that google does not want to be censored and does want to offer all people a censored free Internet. How nice of google.
Instead google did redirect its google.cn to google Hongkong. Of course the chinese government does not like this approach neither. Coming Wednesday google has to extend the contract as a search provider, but this contract will not be extended as long Google has the redirect.
Since today users have to click on a link on the google.cn search page to get search results from Hongkong instead of redirecting.
As much Google does not like evil, google seems not to want to lose the biggest population in the world. Again money goes over evil.
Let us follow what google is doing in China, which is one of the few countries where google is not search engine number one and has only a market-share of 30% , but 30% of 1 Billion is more than 80% of 200,000.
Even if google is always saying it will leave the Chinese market if the censoring does not stop, I would not imagine that they would totally leave China. But if google market-share goes under 20% in China I would see them concentrating on other countries. And then I guess the official statement would be that google does not like to be censored.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States

Monday, June 28, 2010

Europe reduces mobile roaming costs

As a German who lives in America and travels a lot, it is nice to hear that Europe is reducing the roaming costs for minutes and data. The data usage will be closed when 50 Euro is reached to avoid very high data roaming coast, like a German had when he was in France and downloaded a video. The bill was over 46,000.00 Euro.

The new minute price for roaming is 39 Cents for outbound and max. 15 Cents for inbound.
The new law is starting on July 1st and is valid for 2 years but might be extended for some more years.
However it does not help people like me, who are travelling from the US to Europe a lot. I still have to pay 99 Cents for a minute and $0.0195 per kilobyte internet. An average page has right now 800KB this is already $15 a page. SMS is $0.50 in the States but in Europe for roaming only 11 cents.
We all talk about being global but American Carriers don’t care so much and take a lot of money from the customer when they travel. I assume it is not necessary to travel, or only millionaires are travelling.

Germany Says Apple Must Improve Data Transparency

Apple is now in the closer look of the German government, after Google had to work with the Gemran government to give Germany access to their DB for collecting Wifi data.
International Business Times is reporting the following:
Apple Inc. must "immediately make clear" what data it collects from users of its products and for what purposes, Germany's justice minister was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday.

"Users of iPhones and other GPS devices must be aware of what kind of information about them is being collected," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told the German weekly.
According to Der Spiegel, the minister's criticism was aimed at changes Apple has made in its privacy policy whereby the company can collect data on the geographic location of the users of its products -- albeit anonymously.
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said she expected Apple to "open its databases to German data protection authorities" and clarify what data it was collecting and how long it was saving the data.
An Apple spokesman said he could not comment on the report.
Germany has some of the toughest privacy laws in the world as a result of its experience with state surveillance systems once put in place by the Nazis and the former East German Stasi secret police.
The German consumer protection minister made headlines earlier this month when she said she would quit Facebook over what she called privacy law violations.
Meanwhile, after an audit requested by Germany, Google Inc in May acknowledged it had been for years mistakenly collecting personal data sent by consumers over wireless networks.
The justice minister said it would be "unthinkable" for Apple to create personality- or location-based user profiles.
"Apple has the obligation to properly implement the transparency so often promised by (CEO) Steve Jobs," she said.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Ron Askew)

Iphone 4S Not really 'Retina' display

I found this article at Yahoo news (from Christopher Null  - he is avery good technlogy writer) where Raymond Soneira is explaining that the retina display is not better than average human vision. Discovery Channel did say differnet but i like his statement more. But i guess at the end counts that the iPhone has the best display so far.
Steve Jobs' statement on the "Retina Display" when announcing the iPhone 4 at WWDC: "It turns out there's a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels."

I used the accepted value for the visual acuity of the Retina (see below) and found that the iPhone was more than a factor of 2 short on pixels to be a Retina Display. The iPhone 4 would need to have 1.3 megapixels instead of 0.6 megapixels to be a true Retina Display at 12 inches. At 10 inches it would need even more - 1.9 megapixels - a factor of 3 short.
There have been some comments that my analysis is for perfect vision. Jobs' statement is for the *Retina* not the *Eye* with 20/20 or other vision. For 20/20 vision the accepted value is to resolve two lines that are separated by 1.0 arc minute. In that case a 20/20 vision display needs a resolution of 286 dpi or higher at 12 inches and 344 dpi at 10 inches. The iPhone 4 has 326 dpi, so at 12 inches it is a 20/20 Vision Display but not a Retina Display.


In fact, there are lots of people who have better than 20/20 vision, for example, 20/10 vision is twice as good as 20/20. I had 20/10 vision until I was 20 years old and corrective lenses can provide 20/10 vision for many people. For 20/10 vision the acuity is 0.5 arc minutes, which is actually smaller than the value used for the Retina, so at 12 inches an iPhone 4 is not a 20/10 Display nor a Retina Display.


One article examining my results that got a lot of attention was by Dr. Phil Plait on Discovery Magazine.com. He is an astrophysicist and verified my calculations but concluded that while I was technically correct I was being very picky and my results only applied to people with perfect vision - by that he meant 20/20 vision, which is nominal good vision, but not 20/10 vision, which is considered perfect vision. My point is actually that specs have to be picky.


Specs need to be objective, precise and accurate. Allowing puffery and exaggerations in the sales and marketing starts a snowballing effect that eventually leads to the 1000 percent rampant spec abuse that I document for displays. The iPhone 4 is a fabulous display, it's just not a Retina Display - but it's good enough for 20/20 vision when held at 12 inches or more from the eye. Since Apple makes great products that have excellent specs it will be a lot better for them if everyone sticks with the true objective values instead of values exaggerated by marketing departments.

Google Chrome now Number 3

Google did pass Apple Safari as the third biggest browser, during the week of June 21st 2010. 

Within only 2 years Google was able to move to the third place, this is a very good achievement. Since 6 months Apple users can install Chrome on their MacOSX computers. Even the android software for mobile devices is gaining more and more market share, but unfortunately only in the US. 75% of all sold Android devices are sold in the US.
Google Chrome has a market share of 8.97% which is behind Firefox (28.5%) and Microsoft IE (52%). Worldwide is Internet Explorer even counted with 53%. Worldwide has Chrome over 9.4% and Apple Safari only 4% market share.
Source: StatCounter

PayPal allows applications to accept payment

The eBay-owned company introduced Friday Guest Payments, which PayPal has made a part of its Adaptive Payments application programming interface. The feature provides the tools developers need to offer direct credit-card payments in applications built for the Web or mobile devices.


By eliminating membership requirement, application users are more likely to complete a purchase. PayPal acknowledges that developers, merchants and startups have been clamoring for a simpler payment method for third-party applications.


This is a big step for micro payments. Micro payments are a key factor of virtual goods. Mobile/Intenrt users don't need anymore to have a paypal account to buy small goods using paypal.


The transaction will be much faster and opens a new world to our virtual reality.


For developers it gets so much easier with the open API and PayPal is not the only payment service targeting such applications. Rival MasterCard last month announced that it would release Open APIs for third-party and independent software developers globally later this year.


Even handset makers are trying to make payments easier. PayPal is not the only payment service targeting such applications. Rival MasterCard last month announced that it would release Open APIs for third-party and independent software developers globally later this year.

In the next two years it will be totally normal for us to pay with our phone at Publix or Walmart. Many countries in Europe and Asia are already offering this service.


Plus i beleive with this new open API, that we are going to spned more money on Virtual Goods, I see a revenue of 120 Billion in 2015 with peoplke spending in mobile purchasing.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

How much is 1 Billion?


Apple told us that they paid to developers for the iphone apps over 1 Billion dollar.
How much is this money. We know that Apple is paying 70% of the collected money to the app developers. This means Apple did get around 1.45 Billion USD.

In the app store are around 225,000 applications, and the free versus paid ratio is 1:10. This means 22,000 applications are paid applications. Most of them are  $0.99 and the average price of an application is $2.99.

1.45 Billion USD divided by $2.99 is 476,000,000 downloads. When we divide this by 22,000 we get a number of 21,000 download per application. This means a paid application does make around $63,000 revenue. Which is pretty impressive.

Now we need to know that the top 20 paid applications have together 60,000,000 downloads. This keeps us for around 20,980 applications 416,000,000 download, if we subtract this from the total, then the revenue in average is around $59,000.

Unfortunately the math does not always work like this and the success in the app store is surely the short long tail principle. This means 80% of the revenue will be produced by 20% of the paid applications.
Top 20% apps generating around 1.16 Billion USD. This is $263,000 per application.
The rest of the paid applications (80%) are doing not so good. This is only $16,477.00 in average.  If you take the 30% for Apple out it will be even only $11,500.00. If a developer has only one application in store and it is not a top seller then the money is not enough to live from.
Maybe it changes with iAd. Developers can easily put an ad spot in their app and Apple does the whole ad serving and selling of iAds. The developer will get 60% of its generated revenue. Analysts are estimating that apple will reach in 2011 revenue of 2.5 Billion in iAds (See below Apple Stock Watch by Bryan Chaffin).

60% of 2.5 Billion is 1.5 Billion, with my math above, the revenue per application will little bit more than double, that means for the long tail developers (the 80%) the revenue will go up to maybe $24,000.00

Overall the money does lot look big for me (maybe I made some calculation errors). A developer need to have really a good idea how to monetize or be a part of a bigger company which has the marketing power and is able to produce 20 or more applications.


Apple Stock Watch by Bryan Chaffin
Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising network could add US$2.5 billion in revenue per year, and $1.00 in earnings per share, according to Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall. Mr. Marshall said that while Multitasking was the big announcement in iPhone OS 4, iAd “stole the show and will be significant to the financial model.”
“In fact,” he wrote in a research note to clients obtained by The Mac Observer, “we believe the iAd platform could generate an incremental ~$2.5bil in revenue and $1.00+ to AAPL’s financial model when the business hits its stride.”
To put those numbers into perspective, ~$1.00 EPS would be ~10% more to his current calendar 2010 estimates of $12.75 for the company. That said, he cautioned his clients that he made numerous assumptions to arrive at those numbers.
“In our view,” he offered in summary, “Apple remains the best technology company on the planet with numerous catalysts on the horizon (e.g. international iPhone ramp, iPad ramp, emerging recurring revenue stream from content purchases/Ad sales, etc.). We currently see no real business model issues.”
Mr. Marshall reiterated a “Buy” rating on AAPL and a price target of $280. Late in the Friday trading session, Apple was trading higher at $241.29, up $1.34 (+0.56%), on light volume.

Some nice numbers how much apple lost through Piracy
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over 3 billion applications downloaded since the App program began.  Bernstein analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, estimated that between 13% and 21% of those downloads are from paid applications. According to this analysis, the average price of an application purchased at the App Store is $3.  Sacconaghi estimated that Apple’s revenue from the App Store is between $60 million and $110 million per quarter.  That amount has certainly increased since this research report was published because of the rapid growth of the number of applications. 
However, behind all this success lies an insidious force that has plagued the music, software, and movie industry for decades.  Developers of iPhone applications have reported alarming piracy rates for their software, and the ease with which users may obtain pirated versions of paid applications for free is only increasing.  The total number of applications available at the store, including those which are free and those which require payment, is in excess of 100,000.

Anyone who is familiar with the iPhone is likely to know that these phones can be “jailbroken” or, to use the more common term “unlocked”. Jailbreaking an iPhone modifies the OEM Apple iPhone OS.  This allows the user to circumvent the limitations put on the phone by Apple. Apart from the ability to modify the OS itself to allow for customizing of icons, backgrounds, functionality and processes, a jailbroken iPhone permits the installation of applications from sources other than the iTunes store.  It is even possible to use an unlocked phone for access to carrier services other than AT&T (NYSE:T) and the Apple-assigned retailers outside the US. The great majority of iPhones sold in China are unlocked and Apple partner, China Unicom (NYSE:CHU), have only begun to sell locked phones in the last three months

Most iPhone users have not jailbroken their phones. This is likely a result of the perception that this process is incredibly technical for many non-tech savvy owners.  Others may fear that Apple might retaliate.  No rabid Apple fanatic would risk being placed on a DO NOT SELL list!  However, the technical barriers to jailbreaking an iPhone or iPod touch are rapidly decreasing.  The original process required at least some programming ability.  The most recent jailbreak software makes the process accessible to even most Luddites, so the number of jailbroken iPhones will only increase.
It is difficult to get precise figures for the number of iPhones and iPod touches that have been jailbroken.  Jay Freeman, operator of Cydia, a renegade app store that can be found on almost any jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch device is probably the best source for this estimate. Freeman told Wired Magazine in August 2009  that he has received over 4 million unique visitors to his store.  This represents about 10% of iPhones and iTouches that existed at that time.  The jailbreaking process has only become easier since August, and if that figure is still about 10% of all Apple devices that can access the App Store, that would mean that the total number of jailbroken devices today is approximately 7.5 million assuming that total worldwide sales of the iPhone and iPod touch are now 75 million.  It is important to note that not all people who jailbreak their iPhones are pirates.  Pinch Media, a company that specializes in mobile software analytics, has found that only 40% of jailbroken devices use pirated software.

While it is difficult to get a firm grasp on exact piracy rates, some developers have put features in their software that prompts it to “phone home” when the phone has been cracked.  Developer testimonials put the figure much higher than many analyst would expect.  Developers Neptune Interactive Inc and Smells Like Donkey Inc have reported piracy rates has high as 90% for their game $1.99 Tap-Fu, and claim that it was available in a pirated version within 40 minutes of its release on the App Store.  Web Scout Inc. reports a 75% piracy rate for its $0.99 iCombat game.  The developer of the $4.99 art program, Layers, reports a piracy rate of 75%, and Fish Labs reports 95% for its $7 Rally Master Pro 3D. Piracy rates almost certainly increase with the cost of an application.  TomTom’s US & Canada GPS product for the iPhone, which retails for $79.99, ranks second in handheld application downloads on piratebay.com, a file-sharing torrent.  The top 100 downloads listed at piratebay.com is littered with expensive TomTom and Garmin GPS products.  A conservative estimate of the average piracy rate is that for every paid application developed and sold at the App Store 3 more are pirated.

There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store.  Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications.  Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%.  That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads.  That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion.  If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers.  That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free.  This is almost certainly not the case.  A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers.
Apple, which takes 30% of  the revenue generated by downloads at the App Store has lost about $140 million from piracy. If Apple’s revenue was between $500 million and $700 million from the App Store since its launch, that is a significant loss.  Despite this fact, Apple has been mute on the subject and done nothing to prevent acts of piracy, which is not unlike the stance it has taken on illegal music downloads to iPods.  Even though piracy has caused a big financial loss for Apple, the income from the App Store is dwarfed by sales of iPhones and iPod touches.  As big a problem as $150 million is for Apple, the $310 million cost of piracy to developers really makes it their problem. Apple intends to ignore the piracy of applications and will focus on the tens of billions of dollars that it makes on its hardware.

Friday, June 25, 2010

I knew it - iphone 4S has very good video and Image capture

I don't have yet the latest iPhone, i have to wait till July 8th till i can do my tests, but i did read a very interesting test from Macworld. Please read yourself. The whole article can be found here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20100625/tc_macworld/iphone4camerabeatsthesmartphonecompetion

About the lab tests
We compared the iPhone 4’s camera with an iPhone 3GS, three other smartphone cameras, and two pocket point-and-shoot cameras. For the video portion of the test, we threw in a Flip Video M2120 for good measure. The other smartphones we tested were the EVO 4G, the Droid X, and the Samsung Galaxy. The point-and-shoot cameras tested were the Sony DSC-WX1 and Samsung HZ35W.
For the still image tests, our lab took the same four photos with each camera. Without knowing which camera each photo was from, a panel of judges rated the images for exposure quality, color quality, sharpness, and distortion amount. The ratings were compiled and averaged for each category, and then used to calculate a final image quality score.

For the video tests, the lab recorded two clips with each device—one in low-light and one in regular light. Our panel then rated each clip’s video and audio quality.

Image quality rankings
Unsurprisingly, the two point-and-shoot cameras came in first in our image quality tests. The next best camera, and the highest scoring of all the smartphone cameras that we tested, was none other than the iPhone 4. Next in the rankings was the Droid X, followed by the EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy, and way at the bottom, the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 4 had, by a healthy margin, the best exposure and color scores of the entire bunch, beating out even the point-and-shoot cameras. It did run into trouble in the sharpness and distortion categories, performing much lower than the pocket cameras and similarly to the Droid.
 These scores show that megapixel count isn’t the most imporant factor when it comes to quality, as camera manufactures sometimes claim it is. The Droid X and EVO 4G both have 8-megapixel cameras, and the Samsung Galaxy has a 5-megapixel camera. As for the point-and-shoot competition, the Samsung HZ35W is a 12-megapixel camera and the Sony SDC-WX1 is a 10.2-megapixel camera.


Video quality rankings
While its image quality was impressive, it was the iPhone 4’s video capabilities that really stole the show in our lab tests. Of the eight devices we rated for video, only the Flip Video M2120 scored higher. The Flip, which also records 720p, 30fps video, had just slightly better video quality than the iPhone 4, even in low-light. The Flip did have far superior audio quality when compared with the iPhone 4, which had the same audio score as the Droid X. The Samsung Galaxy had the best audio quality among the smartphones.

What it means
Apple said the quality of the camera parts is more important to capturing good photos than a high megapixel count. Our lab's test results support that theory, showing that a 5-megapixel camera can shoot higher quality images than an 8-megapixel camera.

For casual photographers who mostly post their images online, the iPhone 4’s bump in image quality might be enough to make them think twice before packing an additional gadget. Quality wise, it still isn’t quite on par with entry-level point-and-shoot cameras, but the iPhone's convenience (it’s already in your pocket), low-light capabilities, and access to a large amount of editing and sharing apps, could mean trouble for the inexpensive digital camera market.

For compact camcorder fans who own an iPhone, the iPhone 4’s great video quality makes it a no-brainer alternative to packing another single-use gadget like a Flip. On the other hand, buying a Flip doesn’t require a two-year contract and a data plan.


For anyone serious about image or video quality, or who knows a bit about photography and wants manual camera controls, the iPhone 4 still has a ways to go as a camera. As a camera built into a smartphone, however, it’s as good as they get.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Let us see the ipad competition

Apple ipad is a success with less than 3 months on the market and already 3 Million sold and still in many stores sold out. Even online is now a waiting time of 2 weeks.
But that might change when new tablets are coming out. If you don't like Apple or prefer just not to support Apple there are some alternatives:


Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid
– The IdeaPad U1 looks like a notebook at first, but don't be fooled. It's actually a hybrid, meaning it can switch between tablet and laptop mode. In tablet mode, the11.6-inch touchscreen shows a Linux operating system, running on a Snapdragon processor (a power-efficient microprocessor made by Qualcomm that is showing up in many smartphones). But if you take the tablet and dock it with the included physical keyboard, it switches to a Windows 7 laptop that runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor. While it's attractive to have the best of both worlds, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is expected to be around $1,000 and won't come out until the second half of 2010.


Archos 9 PC Tablet
– Archos has been making tablet-like media devices for years, and the Archos 9 has been available for over half a year. However, Archos' history of tablet making hasn't made the Archos 9 better than the competition. The 9-inch screen is resistive, meaning it can't support multitouch gestures. The tablet runs Windows 7, but it's only the Starter Edition. Even with these meager features, the device still costs $550.


Fusion Garage JooJoo
– The JooJoo is another tablet that has beat other manufacturers to the punch. It's also one of the largest tablets, with a 12-inch capacitive touchscreen that supports multitouch gestures. The JooJoo runs differently than most of the other tablets. Its operating system is basically just a Web browser designed to be used almost exclusively for Web-related tasks. Instead of software, the JooJoo uses sites with productivity apps, such as Google's Gmail and Google Docs, to accomplish tasks. The JooJoo is available now for $500.


Haleron iLet 10
– Haleron might not be well known, but it seems to have put together a respectable Windows 7 tablet. One of the most attractive features in the iLet 10 is the Intel N450 Atom processor, which is an energy-efficient chip designed for tablets and netbooks that also contains a graphics processor so the device can handle video and other media better. The 10-inch iLet is also fairly customizable, letting customers add additional features like bigger storage, 3G Internet connectivity, GPS and more. The cost of additional features can make the price vary anywhere from $420 to more than $900.


Notion Ink Adam
– The Adam was one of the big surprises at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It was sleek, the screen was beautiful and it seemed well made. The Adam blurs the lines between tablet and e-reader. Its screen can turn off the backlight for reading e-books, making it easier on the eyes. But when the backlight is on, the 10-inch display is quite beautiful and very responsive to touch. The inclusion of the new Tegra 2 processor means the device should also handle media quite well. The Notion Ink Adam is slated for release in June of 2010 and will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.


Entourage Edge
– The Edge was another darling of CES, and coincidentally is another device that blurs the definition of a tablet. The company calls it a dualbook because it looks like a laptop but both sides of the device are screens instead of a screen on one side and a keyboard on the other. On the left is a 9.7-inch e-paper display, like the dozens of other e-readers out there, and on the left is a 10-inch LCD display, just like any laptop. The LCD screen is used for Web access and using applications, and e-books can then be sent over to the e-paper screen for easy reading. Navigation is done through a combination of stylus and finger on the touchscreen. The entourage Edge will sell for $490 in March of this year.


ICD Vega
– The Vega is different from the competition mostly in size. The touchscreen display is 15.6-inches, more than twice as big as some tablets on this list. Screen real estate isn't the only nice thing about the device. A Tegra processor, 32GB of storage, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity make it a capable media device. Unfortunately, it's only destined for sale on the T-Mobile network in the UK for now.


Viewsonic VTablet
– The VTablet was just barely announced a week ago. Many details about the device are still unclear, but it seems fairly generic. The 9-inch touchscreen, 4GB of storage, lack of 3G connectivity and 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor certainly don't make it stand out in the crowd, though some people will like that it runs the Android operating system. The VTablet has an estimated price of $450 but no release date.


The HP Multitouch Tablet
– If "HP Multitouch Tablet" doesn't sound like a very catchy product name, it's because this tablet doesn't have an official name yet. It was unveiled during the Microsoft press conference at CES 2010. All we know for sure is that it runs Windows 7, the display is multitouch capable and it's at least partially intended for reading e-books. HP plans to release the tablet in mid-2010 for less than $500.


Acer Tablet
– Shortly before the iPad unveiling, Acer announced its intentions to sell a tablet sometime this year, but gave very few details about it. Acer's Chairman, J.T. Wang, mentioned the device would be inspired by the Apple iPad and then hinted there could be an app store coming as well.


ASUS EeePad
– One the day of the Apple iPad announcement, ASUS confirmed its rumored tablet device would indeed be coming this year. ASUS didn't provide many details on the device aside from mentioning it would have an ARM processor, 3G connectivity and have an interface inspired by the iPhone.


It's Likely that these will come too


Freescale Tablet
– The most interesting part about the Freescale Tablet is the price. At $200, it would be far cheaper than any other tablet, real or anticipated. The 7-inch Freescale tablet can dock with a keyboard and comes with Freescale's own 1GHz processor. As expected for such a price, the rest of the hardware won't turn a lot of heads. The Android operating system and 3G connectivity are the only competitive features. There is no word on an actual release for the product. It appears Freescale may be shopping around for a carrier network to subsidize the device.


Dell Streak
–Dell has shown the Streak to reporters and industry executives, but has released no details other than that it has a 5-inch touchscreen and runs on Android.


Pegatron Tablet
– A company called Pegatron briefly showed a tablet at CES. Because Pegatron is a spin-off of ASUSTek, it's possible this device is similar to the ASUS EeePad. The specs seem to be different, though. The Pegatron tablet was reported to have an 11-inch touchscreen, Windows 7, an Intel Atom processor and a planned retail price of $500.


MSI Tablet
– MSI showed off a fully formed tablet at CES but only confirmed the new Tegra 2 chip inside. The MSI tablet is thicker than other tablets, which could leave room for powerful hardware and a big battery, but also makes it feel clunky in comparison. From the CES demo it's clear the MSI Tablet is running the Android platform, which also opens the device up to a myriad of apps and other media enhancements.


ICD Ultra
–The Ultra is smaller than the ICD Vega mentioned above, with just a 7-inch touchscreen, but is ideal as an Internet-connected media device. The Ultra seems close to production, with solid specs like a Tegra 2 processor, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and Android operating system. There is no release date, but the Ultra is expected to be around $250.


Some are Just a Concept and I think Microsoft did stop working on Courier


Foxconn Tablet
– Shown just briefly during an NVIDIA press conference at CES, the Foxconn tablet was barely acknowledged, let alone explained. The fact that it was in the NVIDIA press event indicates the tablet contains the new Tegra 2 chip from NVIDIA, but after that it looks pretty generic.


Compal Tablet
– The Compal tablet was passed around at CES, but company reps acknowledged the device was little more than a prototype concept.


HTC Tablet
– HTC, a popular smartphone manufacturer, was rumored to be designing a tablet. Then the company confirmed it had indeed been designing a tablet but was postponing the designs indefinitely in order to focus on smartphones.


Microsoft Courier
– Months ago several video renderings of a special folding tablet design showed up and wowed everyone. The design was clean, the interface new but simple. It was accompanied by juicy details from a supposed mole privy to the design process, too. But since then there has been no new information and no indication that the device is nearing completion.



- Posted using My iPad

Don't upgrade iphone 3G or 3GS if you don't need to

Great to have the iOS4 but don't do it with your 3G phone. My upgrading took 6 hours and now the phone is pretty slow and the battery is draining with a few hours.
When you charge the phone it shows charging but it does not change the icon to full. You have to reboot the phone.
Any application like SMS etc you try to open takes now over 30 seconds. Some 3rd party applications are crashing 3 or 4 times before they are running.

With the 3GS the 3G function is not working when you do an update. You have to make a clean install. Apple promised to come soon with a patch out.

Overall the iOS4 is clearly designed for the new 4S phone and is not a good idea to use on older iPhones. Maybe Apple did this to get more users to switch to the new iPhone.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Tampa,United States

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Conde Nast brings New Yorker to iPad

Conde Nast confirms it will produce an iPad-friendly version The New Yorker magazine using Adobe's Digital Magazine Solution technology. This technology helps publishers create interactive experiences for their readers using a blend of applications, technologies, and services provided by Adobe.
On the heels of what is considered a successful launch of the Wired Magazine App, Conde Nast's CEO, Chuck Townsend, notes that though the Wired app surpassed the print magazine's newsstand sales it, "has not cannibalized them either." This comes as a big win for Adobe, who continues to be embattled with Apple over the use of Flash on Apple devices such as like iPad and iPhone.
Adobe's continued work with Conde Nast, assuming its products continue to be well received, could give Adobe the support it needs to pressure Apple into allowing Flash technology in iOS devices.
According to Adobe's Digital Publishing blog:
"As Tom Wallace, editorial director at Conde Nast previously stated, 'Wired's visionary execution of Adobe technology expands the potential of this new medium for all Conde Nast magazines. Our work with Adobe is just beginning. We expect to use this technology to deliver more of our publications over the coming months.' "

Conde Nast's Wired app paves the way for Adobe to bring its Digital Magazine Solution to iPad.
(Credit: Wired)
Conde Nast publishes many popular magazines--such as Vogue, W, GQ, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Parade, and many others--that could find their way to iOS using Adobe's Digital Magazine Solution.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Internet technology summit 2010 day 2

Mike Volpe - inbound marketing at HubSpot
Tools to grow your business
Past:
companies are sending messages through all channels to consumers
Today:
consumer is controlling when and how the message comes to them

Control is sooooooo 20th century

How to build a 21st century company
Internal:
1. New Employees = entrepreneurs
DARC : Digital, Analytical, Reach, Content
2. Wikify all knowledge
3. All should be able to contribute to blogs not only few people.
4. Collect as much data as possible
5. Set targets for all key metrics
6. Publicity target reports daily
7. Measure often. Evolve faster

external:
1. Communication should be about your customer and not your company
2. Talk about what your target like to hear and not what you like to tell
3. Make it self service for your customers
4. Listen and Responding
5. Grow brand by cultivation not control

What are the key tools?
Email, calendar, blog, forum, CRM, social, virtual meeting software, documents, file sharing

Stop trying to control start empowering your employees

Tony Greco - CEO hiveve.com
Cloud Computing
Unfortunately he is not talking about cloud. All is about software as SaaS model, which not the only meaning of cloud.

Jennifer Bakunas
Sharepoint as cloud
Save. Innovate. Grow. [SIG]
SP 17k customers and over 100M Licenses
Fastest growing product of Microsoft
SP 2010 offers unified communication and collaboration Convergence
Integrated user experience for multiple devices and tools
SP 2007 is installed on company servers. 2010 can be totally in the cloud.
Benefits of leverage the cloud:
Scale on demand. Adopt rapid provisioning. Offer the power of choice. Simplify systems.
Enhance Collaborating and find new ways to work. All this will work with Cloud Computing

Phil Chambers -HP
Client Virtualization
To be in the client pc cloud it is important to know the charges. Not all users should pay the same. Pay by usage.
Know your business and make your proof of concept otherwise cloud will fail.
Clients in the cloud will have not a lifetime of only 4 years.
But it is not cheaper to renew cloud license than buying new PC. The saving is in the back for storage and 24/7 availability etc.
why virtualize?
Take control by centralizing. Increase security and control. Replacement of PC much faster. Lower support cost. Ensure business continuity. Increases IT & business agility.

Guy Hagen - innovation insight
The business site of social media
Listen for
.. Your reputation
.. Feedback
.. What your competitors are up to
.. Trends and opportunities
.. Danger

Some tools:
- google alerts
- socialmention alerts - top keywords, top hashtags top users
- blogpulse trend search
- yahoo pipes + alerts (feeds on steroids)
- facebook ads - not as hard as you'd think. Pretend you create an ad and define all your geo data. Facebook gives you the target number of people back without finalizing the ad order process.
- sm2 freemium very good analytics for free.

Bernie Borges
Risk of Social Media Marketing and what you can do about
If you are not carefully you are doomed. Watch and listen
Risks:
- No strategy
- wrong strategy
- lack of Executive Support
- wrong staff
- not measuring progress
- measuring the wrong stuff
- not using available tools ( good tools: hubspot, raven)
- unwilling to Experiment
- expecting overnight results
- trying to stay in control (example: Asus: community chose best blogger but Asus chose different and bloggers did not like.
- employee abuse example domino pizza
- being slow to respond
- shorting the effort
- underestimating one person - one person can have a lot of power

Charles Armstrong - Spark Labs
How to move from idea to a market-ready product
- conceive
- research
- engineer
- adapt and exploit
- develop
- protect
- design
- promote
- launch
good example of this approach: tourwrist for iPhone

Greg Wilson - Adobe Evangelist
HTML 5, flash, air and mobile
Flash was build to complement HTML and not to compete with
In his opinion in 2014 HTML 5 and flash will replace normal HTML. Google has a really good html 5 demo page. Html5rocks.com
Adobe is actually supporting strongly html5
Dreamweaver already supports html5
Netaverages.adobe.com
65% of installed browsers don't support HTML 5
97% of installed browsers have flash 10 installed
Approximate 3 million flash developers are world wide.
It is not just Bout browsers and web content it is about apps and flash is the best alternative to produce fast and good.
Gregsramblings.com
Browserlab.adobe.com - good place to see how website looks on different simulated OS and web browsers.

Sean Carey - HD interactive
Mobile development the 3A - Adobe, Apple, Android
He loves iphones and iPads but....only as consumer
As developer he loves android and adobe.
TwinStriker for iphone and Android made with Corona SDK. It seems Corona is the one SDK to build for apple and android.
But then since April announcement from Apple you can not use anymore other SDK than apple SDK
Farmville, hulu and CNN do not run on iPad, only if you have their app but not through web browser on iPad.
When you port a website flash game to mobil it will work on flash mobile devices but you have to optimize it to get best experience.
Motorola is announcing today a new smart phone with swipe keyboard.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Livingston St,Orlando,United States

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Internet technology summit 2010 in Orlando

Around 1pm brent britton started the summit with a nice speech but for my feelings too much pro apple and against Microsoft, he seems to forget that microsoft is not the target for apple.
He is intelligent funny, which you find seldom on IT summits.
After 20 minutes i have to say the speech could be better. But maybe I think this only because what he is saying is not new for me. He is very pro Apple and contra Microsoft, but bottom line of his topic is how the future could be.

I see it is a funny event, all want to be funny. Now tech murphy is talking and he starts "funny" as well. Master act we all had to get up and shake hands with 5 people we never met.
Now we need to write bad ideas for car securities down on sticky notes. I think he want to make his social proof working together without computer. Now we have to create on a paper an iphone app. Taking as a base ideas posted to Twitter. Wondering what he wants to proof.
Communication is all and get solutions. Good point. In 25 minutes we could meet 5 new people and created 2 apps.
Mike cascone is talking about discovery channel. And the merger with howstuffworks.com. Merging traditional with digital work.
Howstuffworks is the hub of 20 different discovery web channels/ sites.
Keep asking became the brand call-to-action, creating the connection between HSW and discovery for audience.
Discovery did spend 4 million in a new online channel called curiosity project, which looks really promising.

Carol Cox
Social shopping
Shopping changed on the last 10 years extremely. It is not just going online and buy. Users are now spending 22% of their time in social before even finalize the shopping.
Users don't search anymore and order. They talk over facebook where to find a stroller or hair stylist. Example to integrate social is Levis where users can share products on facebook.
Or you can have your store in Facebook like 1800 flowers. There you cna even order virtual goods. Already 2.5 billion USD are made by virtual goods in the US.
Estimated revenue in 2014 for virtual goods is 10 billion.
But who is buying virtual goods? All and everybody. A good company which helps to create virtual goods is playspan.com
Virtual currency have higher click through rates than ads. Retailer can give virtual currency to consumer they then use it to watch a video etc.
The message is if you have a free offer and a paid offer make sure you market correct to get free users to paid users. Pandora is a good example how to offer free service but with ads, then users can upgrade and pay for service without ads, but bad is that the non ad model is limited by user downloads who wants to pay.
Location based apps and advertising is the future. Example: foursquare.com
Very good speech. I loved it. Twitter.com/civiclink



Mario Garcia
The context of content
He is presenting the way of communicating with an example of a stock fall. He got on the phone, in Twitter, on tv etc that the dow did drop. He was scared, but later he learned that it is normal when economy changes.
Content = what we are experiencing
Context = is how and who is experiencing the message.
American Idol is. A perfect way to experience the content. You watch you vote, you read. Another good example is ESPN it has games, has magazines and channels. Started with sports but now it is a 360 degree experience.
Don't publish everywhere your content, know your audience and target them.
Know your story and make it simple as possible.
Know your platforms - don't replicate what works in one platform to another. Take advantage of the new platform.
A good example of an easy message and knowing the platform is the Susan c. Cancer activity. All Facebook users should post their color on their page, within hours the page got 100,000 followers.

Now our good friend Rob Campbell is speaking known to work for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
Mobile revolution - history repeats itself
When did mobile revolution start. It did started 1983 with the first cell phone.
No it started 1976 with the first apple computer. Basically with the first home computer because it was small enough to carry if you have enough muscles.
1983 computer shack had its first mobile computer the x80.
with this new mobile computers new applications had to be invented.
But there was no distribution channel and so many companies did not survive.

Jody Haneke
Mobile trends and application in business today
It is all about the interactive experience
With smart phones there are new ways to build software by including video and feeds.
Combining brick and mortar with mobile. Take barcode picture and get Info of products back on your phone.
Make a picture of something, send it to usps via web as a postcard, and then receiver gets a real postcard with your picture taken as background.
Next mobile revolution might be e-learning or better m-learning. Example: hollister woundcare
Conclusion:
there are many options
Deliver tools as well as information


Alfred Goldberg
He is talking about how important is a mobile strategy. What makes a mobile product great and it is about the user.
Put the user in the center of your experience.
7 rules of mobile strategy
1. Forget what you think you know
2. Seeing .... Is believing
3. Do not constrain innovation
4. Context, Goals and Needs
5. You can't support everything
6. Don't Convert, Create
7. Keep it simple

At Large
Future of Technology in Florida moderator Anad Pallegar
Panelist
Leslie Hielema
Robin Kovaleski
Scott Faris
Scott Faris - VC changed you need to get innovative to get VC. Most of the VC companies are either at the West Coast or Asia.
But Florida gets stronger in technology.

Mary Spio - gen2media
How online video is changing social and SEO
She is taking about vidaroo and that it has 10 million visitors, but does not say per day, hour or year and even if they are unique.
Most viral videos are non professional videos.
A shit in media consumption. TV is good for older audience, but online video for audience younger than 30
Internet TV will surpass Broadcast TV by 2020
Cisco predicts that by 2013 90% of all web traffic will be generated by video.
However we should not forget that video is much heavier than images and text therefore it is obviously that video will take more traffic.
A lot marketer are using video in Facebook to bring the message. In average a facebook user watch 6 videos a day.
More and more people uses the word video in their search.
24% of video watchers make a purchase decision as a result of watching the video.

Ben Self
Mobilizing the Masses - the surprising and simple ways to build relationships online.
He helped to run the Obama campaign online. Over 2000 online videos watched over 50 millions time.
The whole campaign could raise over 770 Million USD
Point:
internet video is better than broadcasting because you can interact with viewer.
Turn your customer in evangelists this is much easer than finding new customers.
1. Create a compelling call to action
2. Create great content or tools so people will come back
3. Use email to drive action
Tips for email:
communicate regularly
Be relevant
Be authentic ( nobody wants to read newsletter but real emails)
Be honest
4. Make it easy to engage
5. Expect more
6. Measure and Adapt
Use technology to build a movement around your product, not just to convert potential leads.

Location:W Livingston Ave,Orlando,United States

Updating iPhone 3G to iOS 4

As soon Apple released the iOS update a friend of mine started to update his iphone. iTunes prompted him that the new update is available. He made the necessary step to backup. After the backup the upgrade was suddenly not available anymore. iTunes was showing that his phone is up to date. This was enough info for me to wait till I am at home. I guess they released and then they took it back.
Later the day at home I started my process. The first backup took just 20 minutes. I started the update process and it promoted me again for backup. The backup started and took his time. Exactly 4 hours, I have no clue why it took so long. Finally the OS was installed.
This morning I started to play around and looked at the new features. Mail obviously changed a lot; you see your mail boxes and accounts which is funny wise for me the same. But nice is really to see all emails in one folder (called all mail boxes). 
Accounts have little icons to show what kind of account it is, either mobile me,  imap, or exchange. This is nice.

The next thing I started was to move apps into folders. I have 83 application installed and it took forever. Moving apps through screens is very hard, especially when you have a cover on the iphone. I had had to take the cover off that I could easier move apps to the border of the screen to get it in another screen.

Finally after 1 hour all applications were in their folders. When it creates folder it takes the category name of the application, which goes over the first app to build the folder, but you can easily change the name of the folder. I could reduce my 11 screens down to 3 screens.
My camera captured now the location, but I am not able to zoom. I guess it only works with the 3Gs, which has a higher resolution.
Multi tasking is of course not working, as announced form Apple.
Next I went ahead and downloaded ibook. But before I could do this I had to agree the new Terms and conditions. IT took a while till this worked; it always jumped out of app store and back in without displaying the new terms to agree on. Finally it worked. The new terms are 45 pages . The first part on the first page notifies that now all apps are location based. 
TERMS OF SALE

U.S. SALES ONLY

Purchases or rentals (as applicable) from the iTunes Store are available to you only in the United States, its territories, and possessions, and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Store from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.

I can’t download German application anymore, which is bad, because I live in the states but I am German; therefore I need some German applications.  Apple changed this because in Europe the laws are different especially about adult content. Now Germany is able to have bild.de as application, which has a lot of naked women. This is just normal in Germany; even in day TV commercials there are some naked women or men (when they take a shower etc.). Unfortunately when you download a new application it does not go automatically in folder, which could have worked by looking at the category name, and compare it with folder name/ content.
I don’t know if it because of new OS, a lot of traffic at apple store or bad internet connection but downloading seems to take much longer than before.
I have ibook with my ipad which is pretty fast, but not with the iphone 3G. It takes almost 30 seconds to load. When starting ibooks the first time it ask you to sync your bookmarks and books across devices, which I did.

 But I did not see any of my books, I guess I have to do some extra settings, which I did not find yet. Both devices are using same account access, it should have worked. Finally I found how to do it. I had to go to purchases and download them again. I have a lot of books and I could only re-download one by one.

Otherwise all my bookmarks and the page have been the last time visited worked.
Surely there are more features, which I will encounter soon or later. 
Overall the changes are nice but my phone seems to be much slower than before. I would not yet recommend to upgrade to iOS 4.0 if you have only a 3G iphone (not the 3Gs)

Monday, June 21, 2010

Did you know this about Apple?


A while ago (when I was on vacation in Germany) a friend of mine (an attorney and developer what a unique and great combination) asked me about Apple’s developer Program for iphone.
I said that he just need to sing up, pay the $99 and then he can start to test his iphone software on his iphone.

I got yesterday from him an email that I could not believe how much Apple changed. I am almost positive that when I signed up fro the developer program I got my access instantly. He told me his funny but true story.

He signed up but got not instantly enrolled. He got worried and searched within Apple but did not find anything about how long an enrollment would take. After searching the Internet and reading posts from other developers he could make an estimated guess of 3 to 4 weeks for enrollment. But a few days later he got an activation code (hurrah) unfortunately the code did not work. Lucky wise the code came with an apple phone number. It was Friday and he did want to start with his new venture to be an apple developer. He called the office in Germany, UK and the US but all are closed over the weekend and are only open from 7am to 7pm local time. He emailed as well but no luck. I understand that offices are closed over the weekend but for such a situation should be a 24/7 hotline, he was for sure not the first person, hence apple has over 100,000 developers enrolled in 2008 (On Wednesday, the company issued a press release to announce that an astonishing 100,000 copies of the SDK had been downloaded in just four days.., March 2008). I assume it will be today over 250,000.

After a frustrating weekend, he tried it again on a Monday. Monday seems always good, but it took over 10 minutes till somebody took a call at the office in Munich, oh actually it was not the office in Munich the call got routed to UK, there they explained him he has to talk with the business department in Munich.

He got really frustrated and went into his apple account again and after searching a while he could find a notice that his identity check did not work, but funny the credit card payment worked. Did not know that people can get credit cards if they can’t proof that they are who they say they are (Note: He is in Germany, getting a credit card there is only possible through your house bank).

After days talking with Apple going through the online account the solution was easy. He just needs to fax his identity papers (singed by a notary) to the US. He does not need to send original, only fax, but email is not valid. Do they know how low the fax resolution is, that anybody could fake a notary stamp? Maybe Apple has a new fax invented, which has a 96000 dpi resolution (quadruple retina display).
In case you want to see the form you have to submit:
http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/program/identityverificationform.pdf

Here is an interesting post about this problem:
http://iphonedevex.blogspot.com/2009/04/enrolling-my-company.html

Anyway he is waiting now to get access to apple developer program, and hopefully he can soon start to develop an iphone app to get his money back. As we know Apple paid already 1 Billion to developers the best paid apps are listed here http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/paid/?device=iphone&sort=position&dir=asc

My friend told me that signing app at Microsoft or Sun is not as half as long and complicated. 

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Facebook – the next Single Sign On

All of companies spending since years millions to develop a single sing on. Having in a company over 40 different software applications, a single sign on is important. I worked myself on two projects to develop a single sing on solution. This sounds easy but it is not.

As a consumer or Internet user, you might have a lot of online accounts; one for each of your banks, for each online retailer, each credit card and each social network. I don’t have many accounts or credit cards but I still come to over 25 different accounts access. I had to install 1Password to keep track. Even if you try to keep your username name and password always the same, it does not work, because sometimes your username is your email, sometimes given by website etc. Or you are already a member and don’t remember anymore.

To be honest it is ridicules that we need to keep track on all these access codes. Sure it is kind of save because if somebody hacks your account A then the account B is not hacked.
Now finally we have one company that understands that we should not have so many access codes in our private life. Facebook offers other companies to use a facebook account as login. I love it. Ok, facebook might not have the best privacy policy, but at least it helps me not to remember 25 or more access codes.

I believe if facebook is working hard on keeping this data secure, it might be the best marketing and selling point for them. Facebook of course need not only to gain trust with their members (which is not too hard) but gaining trust with online retailers that they can rely on facebook and their security of data. As a bank or online retailer, the biggest assets are their customers and this data need to be very very secure. I am sure facebook tries provide this security and will assure that they won’t know about important user data which is not meant for them (maybe I am dreamer).

I think facebook will be more and more the only login people will have to shop or pay credit cards. Of course as a user I will always have the choice not to use facebook login at other websites, but I will be among them who prefer to have one login for everything like I am used to have at work.

We will soon see a lot of movement in this direction. Already meetup and other websites offering that the user can choose to use their facebook login.

BTW Apple and Google are trying this since years. Google with their gmail account and apple with mobile me account, but both were not able to extend it outside their services. 

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Give Apple and AT&T a break

I want to take some stands for AT&T and Apple. I read the last view days a lot of complains, how the website from AT&T is down and Apple can’t deliver enough iphones. Give them a break.
I don’t say it is OK what happened but I want to give us a chance to look at this picture from a bird view.
How many high tech items with over 250 parts (as I heard) got in our history 600,000 times sold on its first day?

AT&T

We had on Tuesday 10 times more users requesting an upgrading verifying than at its best time when the iPhone 3GS was released. This is 12 Million people hitting the DB, over a Million an hour and up to 4 Million at its peak. This is a lot. The request for upgrade is not just a call to the DB. There is a complex query to define if you are eligible to get an upgrade. It looks on the contract lengths, on your monthly average bill amount and if you belong to a corporation account. All this together goes in a query to the DB millions of times (over 1,000 times a second). This is a lot of data to process and I don’t know who could have handled it. Of course AT&T could have invest upfront a lot of money to be able to process the request, but is this really necessary for something which will last only a few days, and something you might have not be able to foresee?
But I have to admit their query to define upgrade had an error. We have two iphone both bought last year at same time, but I only could upgrade one phone for the low $199 the other was $399. I went to an AT&T store and they told me they will reimburse me. I guess it is rare that a household has on the same plan multiple iphones.
When a new product gets released we all make our homework first. We look on statistics of old releases and multiply with what we expect because of hype. If we do his homework we would still not expect that 12 million users want to see if they can get an update. Maybe 2 million best 3 million. Imagine AT&T has right now 73 Million subscribers, this tells us that almost 20% of all AT&T subscribers would like to buy a new iPhone. Give me a break; I don’t think anybody of us would have thought about this.
Yeah there were issues, which users saw other peoples account or that the credit card reader in stores did not work. But again AT&T has over 10,000 stores in the United States. If each store will access at the same time their billing system, then there is a problem as well. Nobody has thought about this.

APPLE

People did complain, about the problem to access the pre-order process at Apple. I say of course, because there store access the AT&T DB to get upgrade information, if AT&T is down then Apple might be too. I was able on Wednesday to place my order, but I had to full fill two full check outs because the system did not allow me to do one check out for both phones even I had given for each another phone number. Again, I think they are not used to family plans with multiple iPhones. And Apple did want prevent people to buy unlimited phones for resale. Un fortunately it prevented as well end customers like me to order two phones in one transaction.
Now, please, take the seat of the CEO chair at Apple. Try to be a leader. You find yourself that your team did build a very nice phone and you talk to the analysts how big the factory should be to build the phone and how much items the suppliers for the iphone (like the glass, battery, etc.) should be able to deliver each months. The analysts will tell you that over the last years in average 3 million iphones got sold a month and the peak might be during Christmas time at 6 Million. They might tell you that they anticipate that 30% of the phones will be still build as 3Gs. You as the CEO says let us double the production to 6 Million a month. Let us build the factory to be able to assemble up to 10 Million a month but should be still profitable with only 2 Million a month.
This is what I would have said as CEO, my people would call the suppliers to make sure they start to produce enough parts. And I would tell my factory to be ready to start to assemble as soon the first pre-order comes in (to keep in stock supply small, to keep the costs small). Don’t forget the iphone costs more in parts than it get sold. Keep the costs low as possible.
Now we assume we can produce 9 million 4G iphones a month (rest is reserved for 3GS which totally different assembly line). We had 600,000 pre-orders the first day, who could have thought this?This is the same amount apple can produce on one day and then test and ship out. BTW shipping take at least 3 week if Apple does not want to pay ridicules high priority air shipping. If the speed keep half up, this will be rough 9 Million in the first month, exact what the factory could assemble, but then they need to be shipped and the suppliers must be able to keep up. I think you get the point. Even if we as a CEO plan upfront and try our best to anticipate growth, it would be not possible to imagine that the growth of pre-order is 3 times higher than when the 3Gs got released (3GS was sold 1 Million in the first 3 days). And if AT&T could have kept up with requests and allowed more users to get an upgrade I believe now the pre-order would have gone up to 2 Million. And to be honest nobody, no analyst, no CEO would have ever thought this upfront.
It is like having each year a birthday party with 10 people because you never send an invitation. But the next year you have your 40st birthday. Would you suddenly order food for 100 people only because it is a special event? And risk to throw tons of food away and to have to rent a big place in case 100 people would have come to the party?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Finally i could order the iphone

What a nightmare. I stayed almost the whole night awake to get the iPhone (how stupid). ATT still does not allow to order through their website but i was able to do so through Apple website. But we have a contract for two iPhones, and i had to place two orders, it did not allow me to have one order with both, which is weird. I did put the first one into the basket, chose the second one with different cell phone number. All worked fine till i checked out, i had to delete one, finish the process and restart. I think they should update their order process, it was clear i did not want to order two for same number.


Now interesting is that we have a family contract. The phone for the main number was $199 but the second one $399 (like if you do not qualify for "free" upgrade). Which i did not understand because both lines are opened at the same day. However i was willing to pay the extra fee and hope to make the money back by selling my 3G phone (hint).


Apple got so many orders (even with all problems yesterday) that I have now to wait till my birthday to get the phone delivered, which is over two weeks later than first shipping day. I am pretty sure my co-workers will make fun, because they are used that i am among the first to show new gadgets.

I really liked that i could keep the unlimited plan even with the two year contract reniew.

But i could nor order a white iPhone, Apple is already sold out in white phones. It is really a wonderful thing. Apple changed the color of desktops and notebooks. They used to be grey or black, but Apple made them white and silver. Consumer seem to like it. Now since the 3GS we can buy white phones not only balck. The new black is white and we like it. Apple knows how to make everyday items beautiful.


Apple can build such hype that everybody wants to have their products. 12 years back, nobody cared about Apple, now a lot people are thinking Apple is cool. The underdog, the special is going to be mainstream. Maybe it is time for me to choose Microsoft; they might be soon the underdog. And i like to buy underdogs.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Evo versus iPhone 4

A lot of people are asking me which phone they should buy, the iPhone or the new Evo. I think it is a hard call because it depends a lot what provider they prefer or already have. But I will try to give some tips.



Internet Speed:
Evo is available at Sprint, which is has 4G which is claiming to be faster than 3G and this is partly true, however 4 G is not wide available than 3G . Evo can use 3G but Sprint 3G is slower than AT&T.
Winner: Evo


Cameras:
Both phones have two cameras. One in the back and a front camera. The rear camera lense at the evo is biger than the iphone camera lense and has a higher resolution. However apple is using a better technology. In perfect light condition the evo is far better, but when the lights are not good the iphone wins.
Winner: Evo


Processor:
The Evo is using a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ QSD8650 (1GHz) processor and the iPhone has a A4 high speed 1GHz processor with an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU).
Winner: -


Screen:
Apple iPhone has a very high resolution 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi, the Evo comes with 800-by-480 pixel with 200ppi, however the screen is much bigger than at the iphone. The iphone has 3.5 and evo has 4.3 inch. And this is Apple trick. Have a smaller display but more points. The screen is so much better. If the iphone would have a 4.3inch screen with same resolution the PPI would be much lower but still better than the Evo.
Winner: iPhone


Memory:
The iphone comes with either 16GB or 32GB, the evo has 1GB ROM and a 8GB micro SD card (extends up to 32GB). Hence Apple has the memory on board the speed is much better, but with Evo you can have multiple SD cards to change to keep all your apps stored.
Winner: Evo


Video:
Both are taping HD video, but Apple has iMovie which is pretty cool for video editing. Sure there will be apps which can more in the future to download. Evo is using for video chat Qik. Apple is using Face Time, both claim to be open standard but both don’t work with each other. Cool feature from apple is that you can switch the cameras for video chat. But Video output is only 576i/480i (PAL/NTSC) the Evo is 720p which is basically same as 480i. P (progressive: the whole picture does get refreshed 29.97 frames a second) and I (interlaced: every other line gets refreshed but the frame rate is 59.94
Winner: iPhone

OS and apps:
Evo has the latest Android 2.1 and the iPhone has iOS4. There are right now 225,000 iOS apps available for Android just 30,000. But the biggest difference is that apple apps are controlled, which means you won’t get all you would like but because of the control Apple can assure that there will be less phone crashes than with Android where nobody controls the apps. Open source development is great that we can get what we want but keep the chance for bad quality of applications open.
Google did a lot of improvements with Android but still the usability is less intuitive than with iOS4 and the multi touch part needs some improvements.
Winner: iPhone


Battery:
The iphone seems to have a bigger battery and therefore a longer lifetime, but of course it depends as well on the OS iteslef. And I could not find any good data to support my assumption. Evo talks about 1,500mAh and Apple about talking and internet time.


Keyboard:
The Droid sports a “multitouch keyboard” and Swype software that really excited Engadget’s tester. The iphone is still not easy to type.
Winner: Evo


Extras:
The Evo comes with more gadgets like a stand to watch TV and better twitter and facebook integration, plus flash in browser which nobody needs.
The iphone has some good out of the box software like ibooks.
Winner: Evo


Multitasking:
Both phone allow multitasking, but Sprint cannot yet offer data and voice at the same time, but Apple and ATT can.
Winner: AT&T


Overall I have to say the facts are for Evo, however i would prefer the iphone because i have my whole infrastructure in Apple (ipad, iphone, macbook pro, apple TV, imac and itunes) and the phone just works better with this than an android.