Chrome plated NetBooks?

Today Google showed off its new Chrome Operating System for PCs. It also announced that it would be open-sourced to allow developers to partner in its development. This free browser-based system is to be targeted at new NetBook computers, the successful cut-down, underpowered and lightweight laptop PCs. Features of Chrome include fast startup times, no client applications (only web apps), automatic syncing and encryption of users' data.

The more important aspect for the industry is how Chrome will impact on Microsoft's domination of PC systems. Senior executives of the Redmond based giant have recently stated that their strategy is to raise the price of NetBooks by the licensing of Windows 7 on them. Chrome could torpedo this strategy. If the user experience including responsiveness of the browser tabbed applications in Chrome is good enough, this could be a very dangerous time for Microsoft, who need Windows 7 to be a success after the Vista disaster. The licensing model for mobile device operating systems is failing; they can't afford the desktop/NetBook market to fail too.

The androids are coming...

The androids are coming ... ok so I have blogged about robots before ... this time I am talking about the Google mobile device operating system! The mobile industry has always been sceptical of success for new entrants ... this was true but wrong in the case of Apple with their iPhone. Will it also be the case for Google with Android?

Well first you need a brand. With its integrated hardware and software approach, Apple specifies and and very carefully controls the brand. Whatever carriers partner with Apple and whichever geography they operate in, the iPhone brand and marketing is very strong and totally controlled. Google has one of the most recognised brands on the planet; so much so in fact that it has become the verb for web searching in our dictionaries. With Android however, Google's brand is practically invisible. Outside of the mobile industry, for the ordinary man or woman in the street, they have a much bigger chance of saying they have heard of iPhone than Android. Android phones have virtually no obvious Google branding. Further, because it is an open free-for-all approach, every Android phone's user interface can look very different, and so far this is the case. As more and more manufacturers bring out Android phones, more and more unfamiliar variations appear. This makes things unrecognisable for users and more complex for third party application developers.

Secondly for success penetrating the mobile market, you need a successful business model. There are three typical approaches. The integrated model which has been a success for RIM with the BlackBerry and Apple for the iPhone (and iPod), the Open model such as Linux and Android, and in between the licensing model used by Windows, and until recently Symbian. The latter has now been taken over by Nokia and is being made open-source. While the Open and Licensing models have worked very well in the computer server and desktop market, they have struggled in the mobile market, where the performance/power balance, interaction through the user interface and integration between hardware and software are all more critical. In fact due to the flexibility of open Android, it is more likely to take share from Windows Mobile than from RIM and Apple.

Google's Android will certainly appear on more phones by the middle of next year. Whether their approaches with brand and business model will mean that Android phones appear in many people's pockets remains to be seen. Android might just become the Linux PC equivalent on mobile devices; an open, flexible, system which appeals to hobbyists and hackers. It could make the mainstream too ... but it will have to change or buck the trend to do so.

The next smartphone sensor...

Mobile phones have come a long way in the last few years. The high end so-called smart phones are now equipped with a range of sensors that once upon a time no-one associated with phones at all. There are the obvious location sensors such as GPS receivers so that the phone knows precisely where you are (not just roughly from cell towers). Video CCD sensors have adorned phones for some time but have mainly been confined to the obvious camera picture taking application. These can also sense light levels, read barcodes, and provide the means to recognise gestures and expressions. Many high-end phones also know what orientation they are in and how they are being moved through the use of accelerometers. And some know which direction they are facing through magnetometer sensors. This is important in augmented reality applications as well as useful in mapping. In the former it allows the phone to deduce which buildings the camera is seeing for example, while in the latter it means displayed maps can be automatically oriented the right way for where the user is facing.

So what will be the next sensor that we see incorporated in the high-end phones? It could well be the near field communications technology which can form the basis for radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers. This would allow a whole host of new application types. In addition it will enable e-commerce on the phone; ticketing and small value purchasing by simply waving you phone over readers, much like the Oyster card is used by Transport for London as an e-ticketing alternative around the UK Capital. The future for smarter phones is bright.

Business Breakfast Cafe

This morning I had the pleasure to present some futures messages at a breakfast meeting of small and medium business enterprises. This type of session is always interesting for me because of the wide range of people and businesses present. The breakfast and coffee was very good and I especially enjoyed meeting members of the group before and after the formal presentation. Thanks to those who invited me and to all those present who attended.

Wearable displays

While all the talk these days is about touch screen displays, the form factors of future devices will exploit rollable and foldable displays, before the display is separated from the device altogether. The first instantiation of this separation is likely to use special glasses which the user wears and which projects an image onto the lens. I have already seen some excellent prototypes of this sort of display by Konica Minolta in Japan.

Another Japanese innovative company NEC have now given details of what I expect to be the natural successor to the glasses based displays, a prototype retinal display. The 'tele-scouter' has been described as a tiny retinal projection display and microphone mounted on a frame in front of the wearer's eyes. The application they have described it being used for is to translate and display languages. This seems a bit ambitious even for a prototype at this stage but it is good to see these types of innovation beginning to see the light of day. One quote even states that NEC hope to bring something based on this technology into the market during 2010 so watch this space!

Kindle or kindling?

The Kindle is Amazon's attempt to do with reading books what Apple did with the iPod with listening to music. It's an e-book reader using a monochrome e-paper like screen which you can hold in the hand. And its strongest point is that it is linked to the Amazon book store machine which has been so successful with paper versions.

However this will not revolutionise book reading like the iPod revolutionised the music industry. Certainly it will mean that more players in the publishing industry release more electronic titles but I don't see it replacing the paper book in the same way that electronic music downloads have replaced the majority of music media forms. It's all about the experience. The actual experience of listening to music is basically similar whether your earphones are plugged into an iPod or a Walkman or a stereo system. The actual experience of reading a book feels quite different when holding a book of paper pages and when staring at a screen and pressing a button to advance pages. I can see that a minority of people who travel and carry around a lot of heavy tomes with them at present might choose the device but its wider attractiveness is questionable.

And then there is the overall experience of using the Kindle device. The screen is quite small. There is less text on each screenful compared to most books' pages. And there is a waste of space on the bottom third of the device where Amazon has found it necessary to put a plastic button keyboard which makes the Kindle look reminiscent of an electronic calculator of old. The Sony e-Reader is at least a better design with more touch screen real estate and no plastic keyboard. However they do not have the relationships and hence volume of media content to bring to their offering.

There is another player in the wings who could combine ease of use, an experience which is much better and a store/portal with content in the e-publishing area. It is also likely that they would attempt a rather different business model too ... the price of a device with the required design and features needs a use case more than just reading books in order for people to buy it in enough numbers to ever become a mass market or revolutionary device. Watch the Apple space!

Danger in the Cloud?

There is a fair amount of debate amongst computer folk about Cloud Computing. This is where data and increasingly applications run on servers in the Internet 'cloud' rather than the device of the user. The approach is championed by players such as Google and Amazon etc. But other more traditional players are also not to be left out. Both Apple and Microsoft have flirted with the cloud approach too. Apple have their MobileMe offering which even has an icon of a white cloud on a blue background! This provides a store in the cloud for users' data which can be synced between devices as well as other features. In early 2008, Microsoft bought an innovative company called Danger who ran a product called Sidekick. Sidekick stores its users' data in the cloud. On the 2nd October, SideKick users on T-Mobile's network could not access their online services nor their data. Even after service was restored four days later, they still had not access to their data and were later told by Microsoft/Danger that the data had been lost. This is the real danger for cloud-based systems.

There are degrees of cloud computing ... it doesn't have to be an all or nothing situation ... particularly in the case of mobile devices, which generally need charging or other basic processes from time to time. Some less than full cloud computing approaches don't remove all of the users' control of their data but simply automate the use of the cloud as a resource. Apple's approach for example is that all data on an iPhone or iPod is backed up on the user's local PC when it is charged and synced to that device, even though the active use of the device transfers the data to their MobileMe cloud. In this way, if the Microsoft's Danger/Sidekick problem happened at MobileMe, users would at least be able to restore data from their most recent local backup. Microsoft also have a cloud based service called MyPhone for Windows Mobile users. This also only backs up data to the cloud and not a local device.

So users have to be wary of vendors who place all of their data and its backups in the all powerful cloud which of course also offers many benefits for sharing and accessibility from anywhere etc. And users would also do well to understand that not all Cloud services are the same in respect of how much control they are left with for their own data.