10 Winning Strategies For Tablet And Smartphone Manufacturers

Tablets are quickly replacing netbooks and they are significantly eating away sales of normal notebooks, even PCs. What's the winning strategy for tablets and the sibling products like smartphones?
These are exciting times, as manufacturers are exploring and experimenting a lot. Sales cycles  of products approach 6 months. Of course most replacements are upgrades rather than complete redesigns. But small changes can make big difference in the way the product is differentiating. And of course small changes can have an important impact in the adoption and the utility for customers. In this race a manufacturer wins long term by treating users as repeat customers.

1. Implement a support structure beyond the 6 months production cycle
2. Ensure that software updates are made available for 3 years at least 2 years
3. Iron out significant bugs both in hardware and software
4. Make sure that accessories and parts are available for 3 years after launch
5. Allow for compatibility of accessories with other products and across product ranges
6. Use standard ports and interfaces
7. Ensure that accessories are compatible over 3 product generations
8. Support third party hardware manufacturers for accessories
9. Enable early access for external software developers
10. Don't try "lock-in" market strategies, especially as the fast development cycle and experimental nature (trial & error) is making this approach nearly impossible.

BTW point 1,2 and 3 can be achieved by opening up products to communities. The easiest way is through unlocking hardware and software. Use standards and open source approach. Embrace and team up with customer communities...

What do you think? Further ideas and suggestions?

Photo CC 3.0 2010  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IFA_2010_Internationale_Funkausstellung_Berlin_18.JPG by Bin im Garten

My Favourite Defy Android Apps

Here are the Android Apps I use on the Motorola Defy.

I have installed MIUI (http://en.miui.com/, http://miuiandroid.com/) for Defy which is a community Android Gingerbread. MIUI has a great interface, doesn't stutter and cough like Motorolas' Froyo (and might not ever be updated to Gingerbread or beyond). I am using the German Defy MIUI which can be found at http://einsteinno1.de/.

MIUI comes with a range of pre-installed apps, many of which are very practical, like 2 email apps, music, photo (which works on the Defy), themes, MIUI updater, Google Maps & co, calendar, notes, downloads, file browser, Automodus / Google CarHome (a simplified interface when on the move) and a couple of tools / widgets.

Additionally I install nearly all of Googles' apps, like Docs, +, Translator, Earth, Chrome to Phone, Reader, Voice, Gesture Search, My Tracks and last but not least Goggles.

Then I like

• TaskOS - a simple Task Manager which syncs with Google Calendar, very nice.
• WiFi Analyzer - always interesting and useful
• Touch Calendar - The calendars of MIUI are quite nice, I am not using TC so often anymore
• Weather Pro - very useful
• Kompass - fun, though I am hardly using it (comes with MIUI apps)
• Amazon MP3, Shop and Kindle 
• Skype - I hope Google Hangout / Huddle will soon help me to not turn Skype on anymore
• Stoppuhr - haven't found a great stopwatch yet
• Magic Doodle - I am just learning
• SMS Backup
• Klink (Motorola Defy is a bit special for tethering via USB, Klink helps me using the Defy as 3G modem).
• Shelves - I really used to like it, but I am having trouble re-importing my film and book libraries. I only get a thrid of them back on my pone, which is annoying.
• ES File Explorer - Bad name, me thinks, but quite useful

Edit  - the newest 1.9.16 MIUI includes a Barnacle WiFi tethering out of the box (nice, another app I have used before). I also recommend to install the additional MIUI apps as well as the Moto apps if you happen to own a Motorola Android...

Welcome ThinkPad Edge 15" - My New Ubuntu Workhorse

What is that for? A Schlepptop of more than 2kg with a 15" display and only 1366x768?

A couple of weeks ago, I would have declared anybody mad who would have dared suggesting me such a cheapo biggie... But then, I had to do something quick, I needed to replace my HP6715b because after 3 years the battery didn't last for much longer than 30 minutes, the thing has been very loud, and despite the fan going on crazy rotations it frequently overheated and before damage was done, the HP slowed down and shut off in an emergency procedure. That has been pretty maddening. Because of a transitional phase of AMD product generations, most components of the 6716b have not been supported by AMD for Linux. Although the 6715b looked at the time like a good compromise with a high resoultion screen and spec, it turned out to be the black sheep of the HP Compaq range.

I thought about a new, cute  and quick smaller notebook. But than much of what I wanted to do with such a notebook, I could have done with a tablet. And because a tablet is even more mobile and practical, I decided that a tablet will be the priority device for such purposes. I kept shopping around for cute laptops, but they were either to expensive or lacked some other features.

If I am taking a device with me that is more than a tablet, I would need a DVD as well. 11" notebooks don't have an optical reader and even among 13" it is tough to find adequate ones for a reasonable price and packaging.

In the end it was a spontaneous decision. As I couldn't find my ideal spec notebook at a decent price I stumbled upon the Lenovo Edge 15"at Cyberport.  It looks good and feels very robust and was dirt cheap. The screen is matte, which is one of my minimal spec must haves. The screen is ok, quite bright, nothing fancy. The Thinkpad is very silent and stays cool even under stress in the summer heat. It's more than quick enough. For 300 Euros you can't be wrong, especially if it is meant as a temporary fix rather than a long term solution.

Oh, did I mention, that I bought it without a Microsoft royalty fee :-) The Edge had no OS and it was one of the smoothest Ubuntu installations I had so far. It just worked, even the wireless connections. After the initial installation I enabled the proprietary drivers to speed up the notebook. Within less of a hour and some application downloads, the Edge was fully operational. No tweaks needed apart from the normal annoying stuff to be able to watch encryptet DVD films. But that is DRM stupidity by the film industry and has nothing to do with either the Thinkpad, nor Linux.

The Thinkpad Edge is part of a improvised solution. The other part of that is the Samsung Galaxy Tab. More on that in a next post :-)

Google Invites needed?

Just send us a mail to gplus@tickertxt.org with your Google ID. Please indicate the request in the subject line of the mail... We have no intention of keeping the list of invitees, we won't use these email addresses for any other purpose than to send you an invite.

Before we got our invites, we were trying to figure out who among our acquaintances could invite us. And only once we got in, did we realise how many of our friends were already "in". So here is our offer to send invites to people who like ourselves are looking for a way into the Google circles.

Tablets take Two

Now that the tablets are more than a year old, it is becoming clear that the tablet concept works and is selling. But it really depends on the tablet.

A tablet is a mobile device, light, practical, affordable. A classic OS designed for PCs needs more power, which need too much energy, makes devices heavy, hot and short battery life. Ergo even stripped down OSes have trouble. OSes need to be redesigned like iOS and Android for phones. Than you can add features and functions for tablets.

With smartphones and tablets less can be more. They are mobile devices first. Switched on instantly and only physically connected if really needed, mostly to recharge. Sounds obvious, but for PC manufacturers it isn't. The old PC mantra was, pack as much tech as you can. Energy efficiency was an afterthought, notebooks a compromise for portability.

The OS is more important than the features. Android wasn't initially adapted to the screen size of tablets. Therefore many Android tablets were disappointing when compared to the iPad. The OS needs to be conceived with touchscreen operation in mind, not as an afterthought.

So, dear manufacturers, mostly of the Android camp. Here are some specs and principles for you :-)

Screen resolution: That is definitely an area where you can offer real benefits for users compared to Apple products.

Design: Apple has the edge, but there is enough room for everybody. Just don't think design is just a visual exercise - Sony and Toshiba, are you listening? Apples design is very functional, not just nice.

Package size needs purpose dedication: the iPad resembles A4 / letter standard of the most used paper format. Therefore it feels familiar. For something mostly used indoors, the iPad has a great size, especially at home for which Apple designed the iPad. For offices purposes the screen could be bigger. Sharing the device by showing it to somebody else, screen size is relevant. Androids competing directly against the iPad with 10' devices need to come out with more convincing devices or compete seriously on price.

The 7 inch tablets like Samsungs Galaxy Pad are great for people needing a device big enough for tablet use, but small enough to carry them in larger pockets. The 7 inch ones could also be designed for outdoor use.

Motorola, how about a Defy Tablet? In order to be more of a success, the 7 inch needs a redefined environment specification, like robustness to be great outdoor activities as well. Applications are sport and community activies. And commercial applications for people who are constantly on the move, architects, delivery, sales people, contruction workers, foreman, inspectors, police, firemen, community worker, aid organisations, militay.

Navis: Another (complimentary) design spec is the use as a navigation system for cars and trucks. Smartphones mostly are a bit too small to be good navi devices, 7 inch would be great and would rival or better many of the hyper expensive built-in systems.

Ports and connectivity: Android devices have the advantage offering ports for USB for example. The iPad is really deficient in that regard. Maybe Apple made an initial limit of the iOS a design virtue and subsequently a proprietary add-on market opportunity.

Easy upgrades: Let users easily upgrade their device with the newest Android, please. Samsung, Motorola and co, your update policies are most customer unfriendly. I have a Motorola Defy. And that update (non-)experience is not exactly putting the probably nice Xoom on the top of my list :-(.

Install Unity 2D for a Natty Experience on Old AMD / ATI Notebooks!

Ubuntu 11.04 is out and when the Update Manager asked me, if I wanted the upgrade I clicked "yes", please :-) "Natty Narwhal" features the new Unity desktop and because of this I was a bit worried if the old HP Compaq 6715b would be up to it. And, well the installation worked without hickups. Hook your notebook on a Ethernet cable connection to download the proprietary Broadcom driver, and for the first time, wireless did work without any further tweaks.
Unity looks nice, but the 3d version is really slow on old ATI notebooks. The 6715b has a x1250 on-board video adapter and is not supported by AMD anymore. So to fix the jerky and sluggish Unity problem, do NOT download and do NOT install the AMD proprietary drivers for old Radeon adapters.
Simply open the Ubuntu Software Center, search for Unity and install the 2D version. Log out or restart the computer, check if on login the computer has selected the 2D desktop and bingo.... The old and noisy 6715b runs Ubuntu as if designed for that task. Unbelievable. Of course, this is not a long term test, but gosh, Ubuntu suddenly feels fresh and responsive, light and lean. Better than ever :-)

And here are some great tips how to add applications to the Unity launcher... So easy...

My first steps into the new world of smart mobile devices

Notebooks and PCs will become niche products for some office workers - it is becoming a shrinking market. Tablets and smartphones will be THE personal computing devices, in the office, at home or on the way. You can already start to combine them with bigger screens, projectors and keyboards. You will get them in all sizes and you will be able to combine them, side by side, share and aggregate screen usage, for network services. And of course, these devices are great for real group applications when combining collaboration with real gestures like hand-overs, hand-shakes, invitations...

I finally did my first step, I got an Android phone, a Motorola Defy, to replace my fast aging Nokia E71. Good-bye Symbian, was a nice time, could habe been so much better. But all I miss will be the small and neat keaboard. Good-bye Nokia, the E71 will have been my last Nokia unless they start producing Linux-based / Android phones, which they propbaly won't until it's too late.

The Defy is a bit of an bestselling underdog. You stumble upon it when researching seríous Android smartphones. Early 2011 there are not so many serious players, the Samsung Galaxy, i9000 sexy and expensive, the HTC offers, nice but a bit on the expensive side, the LGs and Sonys are disappointing, Acer, Dell and other new entrants in that market are quite good, but something is usually a little off. Then there is Motorola, back from the dead they offer the Milestone 2, the best Android with a keyboard at a decent price and out of the blue there is the smaller Defy.

I guess, just like many others, I first ignored it, but it kept coming back in comparisons. Good screen, maybe not great, but more than good enough. Robust and quite tough, even water resistant to a point, yet light and nice to hold. The sound quality of the phone, both the mic and the speaker, is really really good.

What's missing?, Well a better Motorola Android commitment mostly. For a relatively new phone in early 2011, Android 2.1 is a bit shabby. The whole upgrade experience is - at the moment - remarkable, because there isn't any. I'll probably get a normal Android 2.3 and will therefore not enjoy any longer Motorola Blur, (social aggregation and communication mostly)  and some other interesting goodies like the car dock application, a really neat interface for services when the Defy is mounted on the dashboard, like a Navi button, voice search button etc...

It looks as if Motorola is just discovering how marvelous and profitable the Android business can become, without fully comprehending that community and developer support for updates is crucial to build a mobile device brand for the future.

So far I am increasingly impressed, especially as the Moto Defy is far cheaper than the Galaxy 9000 or the HTCs.

Why Tablets as Group Devices Will Change Our Lives Forever!

From now on, IT architecture will evolve around tablets. Think about it. If you roam around a lot, and that includes your work places or meetings around town, you want an extremely mobile "screen" which is a weight and size compromise between mobility and usability. My 10 key arguments:

1. Applications (apps) are dedicated services, nicely packaged, searchable, user-friendly and portable, ideal for tablets. Office culture will change, the "net based computing" device is finally there. Cheap and sexy, far easier to manage for IT departments than the old fashioned PCs and notebooks.
2. Surfing the web as well as docs mean a lot of reading, ideal for tablets. Maybe a chance for us to get rid of office-desk related back problems?
3. Creativity cannot be scheduled on demand, therefore your "recording" device needs to be at your disposal when you are creative - tablets are mobile companions and will become much better at capturing input like handwritten notes, doodles, scribbles, voice memos. Tablets are dissociating keyboards from devices, keyboards will increasingly become productive add-ons for pros as docking stations, not the necessary and hated instruments for office work.
4. We are a social species - tablets are group friendly, you can easily show and demonstrate things, they are immediate and un-obstrusive. Tablets will quickly adopt info exchange features like Near Field Communications (NFC)
5. Interacting with the device is far more direct and intuitive. Especially in office environments, tablets could virally propagate NFC adoption, because "handing over" really invokes a physical gesture.
6. Tablets are ideal as meeting and conference companions, be it simply for supporting presentations or actively engage people. Plenty of web services and solutions allow simultaneous co-editing of documents & spreadsheets, scribbling on white-boards, commenting presentations or sharing questions using chat. Tablets allow physical meetings as well as video conferences to become far more productive and interactive, allowing the input of each and every participant. 
7. Security is only superficially a problem. The biggest worry is that devices are lost or stolen, therefore data is at risk and privacy issues and leaks could occur more frequently. But all it needs are tablets which don't store that kind of data on the device itself. The browser history and passwords should either be automatically removed after the process or when the device is not used. If specific circumstances and environments demand better security, thin client architecture is an obvious answer. Tablets can prove to be quite useful to provide more intuitive and natural login and authentication procedures.
8. Tablets will enable the emancipation from the desk-focussed workplace. If I can use walls and big screens as bigger interfaces, my tablet doesn't need more than, say, 12 inches. Think of hospitals, professions on the move, even car salesman. You can use a computing device on the spot where you need it, instantly.
9. Corporations will rapidly realise that tablets unleash impressive latent productivity gains quickly. We will adopt these things so quickly that within a couple of years we wonder how we ever could live without them, at work, at home and while on the move. 
10. Tablets are finally merging the mobile and PC world, basically by putting the classic PC-client and workstation architecture out of business, in the same way that "speaking", "chatting", "video interaction" will make the "phone" obsolete as a dedicated device. We will be contactable through some channel, not numbers. Telephone numbers will become mobile IP numbers over time, no need to remember them anymore.

For now, it's the private tablet adoption which leads the way. Netbooks will soon become a blip in the history of computing devices. PCs as well as dedicated phone devices will become obsolete, a smartphone is nothing more than a small tablet. We will use mobile tablets, which happen to be smaller or bigger depending on taste and needed functionality. A big tablet might have small companion tablets which are used for telephony etc. Tablets will be able to combine and extend functionality to other devices as well as other people's devices for collaboration and exchange.

My next  everyday workhorse device will be a tablet, not a PC notebook. 

Yippee! Google makes us "Happy ..."!

A snippet of the Google news (all GAE developer waiting for):

Happy Holidays from the App Engine team - 1.4.0 SDK released

...
No more 30-second limit for background work - With this release, we’ve significantly raised this limit for offline requests from Task Queue and Cron: you can now run for up to 10 minutes without interruption!!!! Great!!!
...

This and some other great features (incl. "Increased API Call Size Limits" ) here on original google app engine blog:

http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/12/happy-holidays-from-app-engine-team-140.html

Thanx Google - good job!

Ubuntu - copying from one media to another causes "Error splicing file: Input/output error"

That is one annoying error which happened quite frequently lately when copying large files from an external USB disk to my hard drive. A quick search reveals once again "I am not alone" :-). The first forum findings also prove lots of trouble and then one weird entry. Someone put a USB hub between the disk and the Ubuntu PC et voilà.

I love those weird forum contributions. At first they seem so strange, esoteric really. But what could I loose, right? So my collegue gave me his USB hub and - it worked. No file errors anymore. Unbelievable.

Maybe something to do with the power supply, voltage...? No idea. The USB external hard disk is an old internal 51/4 80GB IDE drive with a USB adapter cable and a power adapter and cable. The USB Hub also had a power supply.

HP inkjet - "Low ink" stops printing process

A little search on the web confirms, if you are looking for a solution, you are not alone and it doesn't matter if you have Windows, Mac or Linux. In my case it only recently started after the completely new installation of Ubuntu 10.10. Yes the ink of my HP F2180 was low, but it was the color ink only. So please print, it's not a presentation, just some text.  Arrggghh.

The printer tells the driver that the ink is low, and either that message, or the drivers interpretation stops the print process. I didn't want to go for a new driver, that would have been my last action, that, or through the printer out of the window.

So I googled and found that on Ubuntu forums people seemed to use the HP Device Manager. Got it, started it, and the Device Manager indicated an action panel including "Print". I like action, so I clicked on "Print" and a new window asks me to select the file (or files). Did that, went through the next window, confirmed the selection and print. Et voilà.

HP is the culprit but in this case and also the solution. HP has a customer unfriendly policy trying to hook you up on expensive ink from HP. And your printer will maybe tell you to buy new ink, when it still should be enough, but it shouldn't prevent you from printing.  No ecological argument either, because a few wasted paper pages are less polluting than discarding partially filled ink cartridges which might work. But HP is also relatively Linux friendly, has this nice little device manager which somehow ignores that message and lets the printer do what it should do: print. So HP, you have been spared a trashing rant because of your Linux team :-)

Einfache und kostenfreie Bildbearbeitung mit Apple Vorschau - Step by Step

Das mit jedem Apple Mac kostenfrei mitgelieferte kleine Programm Vorschau kann mehr als man denkt. Oft ist es für grundlegenden Aufgaben einer kleinen Bildbearbeitung ausreichend. Und dabei noch schnell und gut in der Qualität.

1. Step: Vorschau starten mit Doppelclick auf das Bild:

2. Step: Anpassen der Symbolleiste
(das ist natürlich nur ein Empfehlung von mir - je nach Geschmack und Anwendungszweck kann sich jeder eine andere Symbolleiste zusammenstellen)

Überlegungen warum ich diese Symbole nutze:

• das größere Zoom-Symbol ist sehr sinnvoll, weil man nicht schnell nur größer und kleiner zoomen kann, sondern auch mit einem Click wieder die 100% Größe erreicht
• das Feld Größe zeigt die aktuell dargestellte Größe (Zoom) an und erlaubt auch eine Eingabe einer Zahl
• das Symbol Drehen ist nur eine kleine Erleichterung - da man auch per Tasten-Kürzel Apfel+R Rechts bzw. Apfel+L Links drehen kann
• auch das Beschneiden Symbol hilft den Tastatur-Faulen - da Apfel+K das genauso erledigt
• über das Symbol Information erreicht man das sehr hilfreiche Panel Information (geht auch per Apfel+I)

• und zum Schluss das Symbol Anmerken (sehr sinnvoll um Markierungen, Anmerkungen, Pfeile und Hervorhebungen direkt in den Fotos unterzubringen)

3. Step: Bild beschneiden - ist ganz einfach:

•  zuerst die rechteckige Auswahl anclicken

• dann den gewünschten Bildausschnitt wählen (kann man mit den kleinen runden Punkten noch nachträglich in jede Richtung verändern)

• dann das Symbol Beschneiden clicken

• fertig - jetzt nur noch unter einem neuen Namen speichern, dann drucken, per email schicken, oder auf Blogger posten oder ....

4. Step: Bild Größe anpassen - ist auch ganz einfach:

•  zuerst den Menü-Punkt Werkzeuge/Größenkorrektur

• dann darauf achten, das das Häkchen bei "Größe proportional anpassen" und "Bild neu berechnen" gesetzt ist (je nach Ziel kann hier auch die Auflösung angegeben werden - für eine Webseite üblicherweise 72 Pixel/Zoll)

• dann bei Breite oder Höhe die notwendigen Daten für das Ziel (z.b. Webseite) angeben - es ist hier immer nur eine Größe notwendig, da das Bild proportional skaliert wird

• dann OK clicken und das Bild wird neu berechnet

• dann nur noch das Bild unter einem neuen Namen speichern - siehe Ende 3. Step - fertig

Quellen: - das Programm Vorschau stammt selbstverständlich von Apple Inc. und wird mit jedem Apple Mac ausgeliefert. Ich habe hier die Version 5.02 (in SnowLeopard) verwendet. Die anderen Versionen funktionieren aber grundsätzlich ähnlich. - das Beispiel-Bild stammt aus wikimedia (alle Rechte siehe dort): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajhastan.jpg

Google's public data directory - wow

I am impressed.

Microsoft never has been a real consumer brand...

CNN Money says Microsoft's consumer brand is dying - Oct. 27, 2010 (via Vowe's tweet). The real problem for Microsoft is that it PC amd software related business never was a real consumer brand. Consumers have bought computers which happened to run Windows. It doesn't matter if they asked for a pre-installed OS or if the hardware manufacturers were basically strong-armed to pre-install Windows.

Now there is a real choice first with smartphones, then Netbooks (until Microsoft forced its' way back in), recently pads and tablets. Customers prefer nicer and friendlier devices. Windows Phone 7 might be good, but it's attached to the MS world, it doesn't make much sense if you don't own a Windows PC.
Apart from a few consumer product success stories, like keyboards, mice and Xbox, the rest of the MS products and services are aimed at the corporate world, marketing, sales, services, infrastructure...

The other big problem of MS is that business and industry tend to follow consumer technology trends: think of phones, networks... Even the PC invaded the corporate world bottom-up: first aimed at students who ran pirate copies, then the same graduates went to work for corporations and forced the IT to equip management and offices with PCs and LANs.

But business-wise MS is at the top, not the bottom. And mentality wise they have been on the defensive for  more than a decade.

How David Pogue almost lost his job using Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

David Pogue suggests, that maybe software development should have a "stop" button for people involved in the "production" just like the famous Toyota production lines - Kaizen for programming...