verizon wireless « Wireless Stuff By Joe Walsh

Posts Tagged ‘verizon wireless’

Should Apple Sign a Deal with Verizon for the iPhone

May 7, 2009

Lots of rumors in the blogosphere about Apple and Verizon Wireless discussing a CDMA version of the iPhone. AT&T is said to be trying hard to extend its exclusive deal that is scheduled to expire in 2010. While the details of the AT&T current deal have not been made public, it is certain that AT&T won big-time with the iPhone exclusivity. Here are my personal thoughts on how this may play out:

Apple lets its exclusivity with AT&T expire – Apple has certainly done well with the exclusivity on AT&T. I am sure that part of any deal involved a large exclusivity payment and lots of committed co-marketing dollars for the iPhone. (If someone told me that AT*T has paid for all of Apple’s marketing expenses in the US, I would not be surprised.) They have also managed to steal over 25% of market share in PDA’s in less than two years. This compares with RIM’s 44% market share. However, this is only on one carrier. If Apple expects to really break RIM’s stranglehold on the corporate environment, having a phone that works on Verizon will be critical.
Apple works around the AT&T exclusivity agreement – There has been a lot of talk about creating a new phone model that isn’t exactly what is mentioned in the exclusivity deal with AT&T. Something akin to the iPhone Nano or maybe an iPhone Lite that could be sold by other carriers without violating the existing exclusivity agreement with AT&T. I think that if Apple did this, it would be something completely different from the iPhone and it is not above them to develop a new form factor to rock the industry that we really haven’t thought about before. There are many other large market segments whose needs are not met by the iPhone. It could be a flip phone such as the Pearl Flip (has anyone bought that?), or a traditional form factor that only focuses on placing calls and playing music. While I think there is a market for such a device, I’m not sure any carrier will pay a large exclusivity payment for it because it would eliminate the need for a data package that all of the carriers seem to be courting now. I see the iPhone Nano on the horizon, but just not in the multi-year exclusivity realm…
AT&T pays big to extend its exclusivity – I am sure that AT&T would pay a lot to extend its exclusivity. I haven’t seen exact numbers, but anecdotally there is a lot of evidence of subscribers shifting to AT&T from other carriers to get the iPhone. However, Apple has to be aware that the largest complaint from new AT&T iPhone customers is on the quality of the network. While AT&T has made great strides in improving network quality over the last few years, no carrier has perfect coverage everywhere so you would expect this from consumers who selected their wireless carrier based on the phone type vs. the coverage where they use their phone the most. Apple also needs to keep the eye on the prize of dominating the smart-phone market and you just can’t do that by only opening yourself to less than 40% of the market to begin with.

Predictions:
Given these three options – I think that Apple will sign and limited exclusivity agreement with AT&T. Perhaps a special AT&T model that takes advantage of the increased speeds that AT&T is rolling out on its network. The agreement, however, will pave the way for a CDMA version of the iPhone.

There will be an iPhone Nano, but it will be available on all of the networks. Carriers will not be excited by this because it will likely not have big data contracts associated with it and will cannibalize their own attempts to sell music.

Wireless consumers will be the big winners. Consumers will have choice and it will continue to push the industry to open the doors for innovative application development.

Tags:apple, at&T wireless, blackberry, cell phone, iphone, iPhone 3G, iPhone OS, mobile email, mobile phone, pda, smart phone, verizon, verizon wireless
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Star Trek Had It Right

April 17, 2009

Rumor has it that the first Motorola flip phone, the Star Tac was based off the communicator from the original Star Trek series. Millions of us pretended to be Captain Kirk calling for beam out. I am surprised that Motorola never licensed the familiar communicator tune as a standard ring-tone.

Perhaps with the advent of the smart phones, it is time to go back to the Star Trek screening room to look for the form factor of the future. The current move to put all functions into one device makes sense – who likes to carry around four or five items when one will do? But that ignores the fact that desired form factor, and even functionality, can change based on situation.

I love being able to read email and surf the mobile web during the week. But sometimes if I am out and about on the weekend, having the larger screen is a pain to carry. Taking the Blackberry or iPhone skiing is just a bit risky at best (get insurance) and just darn inconvenient.

Then again, I would love to have a Kindle type ebook reader. The larger screen for downloading magazines, newspapers, and books would be convienent. Several magazines I love do not come in print version any more and reading my laptop while nodding off to sleep isn’t comfortable. At the same time, I don’t want to plunk down the $300 for the Kindle that comes with Internet service I already pay for several times over.

The solution, the communicator / touch pads that they use on Star Trek. The communicator is a great device. It is small, voice activated with no screen. Why no screen, because if voice dialing works, and you don’t need it to read email, what is the purpose of the screen? It would be perfect for almost all situations for voice communication. Of course it would have data commuincation capability. Perhaps even a web interface to allow for updating of the contacts list.

For the times when you need to have a screen, there are the touch pads. These are small devices that appear to be about 1/4 inch thick that are largely just displays. In the real world, these would have some sort of blue tooth or WiFi connection that would tie into the communicator for wireless access outside of the home. This screen would be larger, capable of reading emails and surfing the web. Perhaps there are some models that are even larger for ebook replacement. The beauty is that you can have multiple touch pads associated with the same communicator based on the type of away mission you are undertaking. (I mean business trip…)

I guess the simple way to boil this down is to separate the concept of display from the basic cell phone. Let people mix and match their devices to get the functionality they need for the situation. Perhaps we should call this idea “Cell Phone 2.0″.

Tags:blackberry, cell phone, CTIA, email, EVDO, flip phone, iphone, iPhone 3G, phone design, smart phone, star tac, verizon wireless
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Mobile Application Stores For All

April 7, 2009

I’m back from CTIA and had a great time. The show was much smaller this year than in the past but to some extent, that made it easier to network. (As one of my friends used to say “all the tourists have gone home.”) There was a lot of buzz around the shift to 4G – the next generation of wireless networks that promises higher speeds and capacity.

The real story of the show, however, was the abundance of mobile application stores. As with just about any change in the wireless industry over the last two years, Apple started the ball rolling with the addition of mobile applications to the iTunes store. This made it ridiculously easy for mobile application developers to reach consumers and even easier for consumers to download mobile applications to their phone. Gone are the two years of networking and cajoling of carriers to make your application one of a few dozen that appear on their “deck” of approved applications. iTunes literally has thousands of applications.

Device manufacturers realize that they were losing market share to Apple (who has gained 26% of the smart-phone market in less than two years!). It was no longer up to the carrier or the handset manufacturer to add functionality to their phones, they can focus on what they should do best, create a great platform, and allow developers to add functionality.

At CTIA Research In Motion (RIM) launched AppWorld for the Blackberry. (Download it by pointing your mobile phone browser to http://www.blackberry.com/appworld.) In fact, most of their booth was devoted to featured application developers. While some phones were about, there was little fanfare around the Bold or the Storm, their flagship smartphones.

Additionally, Samsung, Microsoft and Motorola announced their own application stores to join Symbian and Nokia’s application stores. To be sure, there will be a great deal of overlap between these stores and it will open a quandary and potentially a great opportunity for application developers.

Ironically, while Apple has broken down the Chinese Wall that has blocked application developers from getting their applications to consumers, it has also taken some heat for blocking some applications (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10041187-62.html). With several stores having the ability to sell the same products (e.g., Samsung, Motorola and Microsoft will all sell Windows Mobile applications) will there be alternative channels for applications blocked from one store. I asked the folks at Samsung if they would sell applications to non-Samsung phones and they didn’t appear to have thought about this scenario. The marketing manager I spoke with indicated that there wouldn’t be anything blocking such sales.

Will there be a market for specialty stores (only applications for outdoors (REI Mobile), mobile photography (Ritz Mobile), etc. ? How many application stores can we handle? Interestingly, the mobile application stores can be quickly set up and be more of a marketing expense then a true money making operation. A simple payment mechanism, some advertising, a database, and automated customer service and shazam you are in the mobile application store business.

The net-net good news for all – it will be easier for developers to create and deploy applications for mobile phones. Additionally, the abundance of stores will lead to price competition to get higher revenue shares for developers. Some stores are already promising 70% of the application revenue for developers. This is a huge shift from developers getting 30% in some cases with applications sold through carrier stores. Consumers and businesses alike will appreciate the abundance of mobile applications for just about any need.

The net-net bad news – developers will have to deploy their applications across multiple stores to reach the market to have maximum exposure to their audience. They will also have to work to differentiate their applications for the consumers as thousands of applications flood the market. For consumers there is a double downside – tons of applications with most of them junk will make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The second downside for consumers – the months of testing that carriers used to put applications through before launch to ensure a positive interaction are gone. You will be lucky of most of these application stores load an application to see if it starts much less have extensive testing. Additionally having multiple applications loaded on your phone will lead to many unintended interactions in the near term. This will go away as mobile phone operating systems get more powerful, but be ready to reboot your phone ever day or two in the short term.

All-in-all a great show and I will be talking about some of the cool applications that I saw while there over the next few blog posts.

Tags:API, apple, application store, applications, at&T wireless, blackberry, cell phone, CTIA, iphone, iPhone 3G, iPhone OS, microsoft, motorola, nokia, pda, samsung, smart phone, storm, symbian, verizon, verizon wireless, verizonwireless, Wireless 2009
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Under the Radar for iPhone OSv3 – Accessories

March 31, 2009

It has been over two weeks since the announcement of the new iPhone OS and developers have had the opportunity to kick the tires of the beta version of the OS. There is a lot to like about the new OS including many features that I have blogged about such as:

MMS support – finally, true picture messaging.
Push start support – the ability for content publishers to send messages to applications
Landscape support for all apps – One of the positive features of the Storm allows for easier access to many applications

Additionally, Apple reports over 1,000 new API’s available for developers that allow new functionality such as access to the iTunes Library, peer-to-peer connectivity, in application purchases, etc.

Apple also introduced a new class of functionality that allows greater control over accessories. While this sounds rather plebeian, this could lead to another sea-change in the mobile phone market forcing other manufacturers to play catch-up to Apple once again. With the new functionality, developers can easily control other devices either connected through the iPhone dock or wirelessly via Bluetooth. Examples given by Apple during their press conference include FM transmitters controlled by the iPhone to find the perfect frequency to broadcast to your car stereo or a blood pressure cuff that will keep track of your blood pressure history and if necessary, send the results to your doctor. This ease of connecting external devices to a wireless device combined with the promised ease of Bluetooth connections, will lead to an explosion of new applications and a further penetration of the iPhone into business.

To be fair, Apple did not think of this concept all on their own, they just made it easier to deploy. For example, a few weeks ago I had my car windshield replaced at my house. The technician had me sign for the service using a Bluetooth pen that was connected to his Blackberry. The application was highly specialized and required a lot of custom programming on the part of the auto glass company to deploy. I’m sure there is also a significant support cost to maintain this custom application.

With the new support for Accessories to help developers produce and deploy applications that utilize external devices should help reduce those development and deployment costs. Manufacturers of devices from medical equipment to pens to even stereo systems are likely rushing right now to incorporate this technology into their products and release widgets to simplify application development for control of their devices.

So, what will be the big device winners? Send me your thoughts. My guess is that it will start with medical, move to field service automation, then move to consumer devices. I’ll try to blog up on unusual device applications that I hear about.

Tags:Accessories, API, apple, applications, at&T wireless, blackberry, cell phone, external devices, iphone, iPhone 3G, iPhone OS, MMS, mobile phone, OS v3, pda, storm, verizon, verizon wireless, verizonwireless
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US Behind in Adoption of Telecommunications

March 25, 2009

The United Nations released a report yesterday that shows the United States falling six places on their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) index. (MSNBC article here and full report here.) While the report does show increased usage of both wireless and Internet penetration in the US, (80 and 60% respectively), we lag behind other countries such as Sweeden that has more cellular accounts than citizens.

The interesting thing about the report is that it goes beyond just pure adoption and looks at a broader spectrum of ICT including intellectual property rights (IPR), researchers, degrees issued, exports, etc. The report correctly points out that countries with significant ICT policies that favor innovation will experience higher productivity on the whole and thereby have a better chance of a growing economy.

The US has done a wonderful job of encouraging the free market economy and in most cases, this encourages innovation. However, there are times when the free market economy can actually stifle competition and innovation. For example, in a rapidly expanding market such as wireless telecommunications with competitors protected by spectrum licenses, there is little need to innovate as most wireless carriers will continue to grow if they continue to add capacity. There is little need to work with innovative technologies unless developed by large vendors with pre-existing relationships and even then, only if it increases capacity or decreases cost. There is little incentive to work with companies with innovative technologies until a competitor adopts the technology.

Hopefully we have turned a corner in th industry with the adoption of the Apple iPhone and recent releases of Andriod and other platforms. As penetration begins to wain in the United States, innovation will begin to drive wireless profitability. Apple’s success (garnering over 20% of the smartphone market in less than two years) has put the industry on notice. Innovations in technology (touch screen interfaces), pricing (reasable flat rate all-you-can-eat pricing), and marketing (App Stores) are all exploding across the industry thanks to Apple.

Application developers are lining up around the block to take advantage of the relative ease of application distribution through the App Stores and this is great for the industry. I look for this to continue across the board and hope that carriers will open up their application stores for non-PDA phones.

Of course, the caveat here is that network quality can not suffer too much. I’m willing to take a little instability in my phone for cool new applications but at the end of the day, it is the network that is the cost of entry for a long-term customer relationship. (AT&T seems to have learned this well with the recent announcement of the multi-billion dollar network investment over the next year.)

Tags:applications, at&T wireless, blackberry, cell phone, email, EVDO, ICT, iphone, iPhone 3G, iPhone OS, mobile email, mobile phone, pda, Report, smart phone, UN, United Nations, verizon, verizon wireless, verizonwireless
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Blackberry Storm – Part 2

March 4, 2009

So after three weeks of using the Storm, I think I have a handle on it and can talk intelligently about the pros and cons of the device. Overall, I like the device. RIM has done an outstanding job with their first touch screen model.

I set up the Storm with two email accounts, a gmail account and a separate account I have through GoDaddy. I am using IMAP to access both of these accounts as I have a notebook and a desktop. Using IMAP (compared to POP3) theoretically synchronizes emails across multiple computers so that deletions from one computer are carried forward to other computers. I was hoping that the same would be true for the Blackberry since I no longer access a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) that would normally reconcile deletions.

The built-in setup wizard recognizes the gmail account and will automatically configure it for POP3 access. However, I wasn’t sure if that would negate the advantages of IMAP that I was hoping to gain. The workaround for this is to disable POP3 via the Gmail web interface. Setting my GoDaddy email was ironically easier since I could manually configure that account to use IMAP.

The Storm automatically set up three icons on my main screen, one for all messages, and one for each of the message services. This is an easy way to organize your messages. I found this much easier than the iPhone’s method of switching back and forth between different email accounts to check all of your email. Of course, eMail is Blackberries bread and butter and as expected, it performed excellently on this front. (Similarly, Apple’s media player is top notch.) My only complaint, and this could be a Verizon or a setting issue, I could not get extremely long news letters to download entirely. They would typically truncate around 64Kb.

The major email down side is that I could never get IMAP to work properly. If I deleted a message from the Storm, it would be deleted from my computers. However messges deleted from my comptuer were never deleted from my Storm. This SHOULD work according to RIM support, but to be honest, I haven’t had the patience to spend time with them on technical support to figure out why it wasn’t working…

Applications also worked mixed. Legacy applications are loaded in what RIM calls a “compatibility mode” that opens the keyboard and leaves it open. This works fine on some applications (such as SquareLoop’s Mobile Alert Network) but not so well with other applications such as REI’s snow report. This is likely due to how well applications stick to standard programing conventions (something we tried to do at SquareLoop). The issue should go away as more applications are written with the new SDK’s that take the Storm into account.

I also like the fact that most applications will turn sideways when the phone is flipped. This can be a drawback when the phone is sitting on a desk or flat surface as there is no way to “lock” the orientation. However, this is much better than the iPhone that only allows you to view items such as email in portrait mode.

While I can type using the portrait keyboard (aka the Pearl keyboard) I found it much more comfortable and faster to use the full landscape keyboard. This is a surprise as I am a former Pearl user. I also found the word guessing very accurate on the Storm for when you do (and you will) fat finger keys. It was a little tricky to select a link on the screen if the link or button was close to the edges, but this may be a fact of my large fingers.

Like all Blackberries, the Storm will run applications in the background making it easy to talk on the phone, look up contacts, read emails, etc. all at the same time. The only thing that you can not do simultaneously is data communication while using voice. This, however, is a limit of the current revision of CDMA that Verizon runs and not necessarily the device itself.

Many people have made a big issue about Apple’s patent on two-finger interface patent. While this is very handy, I did not find the lack of it a major drawback on the Storm. In most cases, tapping the screen will either zoom in or show a toolbar that has a magnify / de-magnify button.

The Storm is missing one key feature that I would like to see added to a future version – WiFi. I really like the ability of the iPhone to switch to WiFi when available to provide faster data throughput (and offload cost to the carrier).

If you are thinking about getting a Storm, now is the time to do so. Verizon Wireless is offering a 2-for-1 Blackberry special for new two year agreements. Well worth the cost if you are in the market!

Tags:apple, blackberry, cell phone, email, EVDO, IMAP, iphone, mobile email, pda, storm, verizon wireless
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iPhone – 1 Week In

March 4, 2009

I decided to give the iPhone a whirl in my quest for the perfect smart phone. Most of my usage is around mobile email, but having access to mobile web and media is increasingly important to me. Being a long-time iPod user, I have been anxious to try the iPhone for some time. (A consulting engagement also gave me the opporutnity to kick the tires as well…)

The media has hyped the iPhone since before its initial public launch in 2007. Much of the hype is well deserved. Apple engineers are the consumate user experience design engineers so the phone is very easy to use wihtout an instruction manual. Starting with the original iPod, the engineers go to great lengths to eschew buttons and controls and the iPhone is no exception. The phone itself has exactly one button on the main surface. Yes, one. The button changes context based on the task being pefrormed, but typically takes you back a step or all the way to the main screen. Even in the mail screen, there is one button for reply or forward. When pressed, the phone displays a pop-up with reply, reply all and forward.

As a mail client, the iPhone does an admirable job. While it s a little cumbersome to swtich between mailboxes, it was easy to set up with my two IMAP mail clients. It correctly handles IMAP synchronization out of the box with little customization. Retrieving email happens on a schedule that is customizable by the user so it is not a true “push” email client as the Blackberry is. However, this is a minor issue as a 15 minute delay to retrieve an email typically is not a major issue and you can always pull email whenever you like.

Like the Blackberry Storm, the iPhone guesses at words you are typing when you fat finger the wrong virtual key. At first, I thought the Blackberry did a much better job, however after a day of use I was more comfortable with the iPhone and now thing that it does as good, if not slightly better than the Blackberry at correcting mistakes. One drawback, however, is that the iPhone’s mail client only has a portrait mode keyboard. I found the landscape mode of the Blackberry much more comfortable to use for longer emails and the larger keys enabled by the Blackberry’s “Pearl” type keyboard much more user friendly for large hands.

The web browser is also very easy to use and it does “mostly” provide the whole Internet as advertised. The major glaring exception to this is any site that relies on Flash. Quite the disappointment when I went to check ski conditions at www.skiroundtop.com and found that there was no content on the page except for the missing flash icon. According to news reports, Adobe and Apple have a deal to allow Flash to be distributed on the iPhone and this can not happen soon enough.

The iPhone, coming from the iPod heritage, does a phenominal job at handleing media, particularly music files so I will not spend much time covering those features.

My next task is to work with a number of downloaded programs. Apple is supplanting both Palm and Blackberry as the developer platform of choice offering thousands of programs available for download through iTunes. More on that in my next posting.

Tags:apple, at&T wireless, blackberry, iphone, mobile email, pda, smart phone, storm, verizon wireless
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Wireless Stuff By Joe Walsh

Posts Tagged ‘verizon wireless’

Should Apple Sign a Deal with Verizon for the iPhone

Star Trek Had It Right

Mobile Application Stores For All

Under the Radar for iPhone OSv3 – Accessories

US Behind in Adoption of Telecommunications

Blackberry Storm – Part 2

iPhone – 1 Week In

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