the smartphone wars

Last week, I wrote about Foursquare, it's potential for growth and why I thought it was the best of the popular location-based services (LBS) out there, spoke highly of its usability and depth. As for Loopt, god-awful:

Loopt, for example, I don't think they're even trying. It is needlessly difficult to figure out.

Turns out, they're at least trying. They've just announced the hiring of a new CEO:

Loopt, an early leader in location-based social services, just announced that mobile industry veteran Steve Boom is joining the company as its first president. Boom will lead the Mountain View, Calif. startup with cofounder Sam Altman (pictured right), who continues to serve as chief executive. Check-in services like Gowalla and especially Foursquare have stolen some of Loopt’s early buzz, and the location market is getting even more competitive

Should we be concerned that each day seems to bring more evil from Google? Or, that each day, these betrayls are conveyed to us by someone who speaks as if they are straight out of Information Retrieval?

Probably both.

Today's example of Do Evil? Yelp is banished to Siberia:

Regarding the presentation of Yelp review snippets, neither of us was happy with the data as it appeared, so we reclassified results from Yelp while we reviewed our options. This means that, for the time being, Yelp pages may not appear as review snippets in Place page results, though relevant results from Yelp will continue to appear in the “more about this place” section, which shows pages about a given location. We are working with Yelp to more intelligently crawl and present results from their site.

Rage against the machine, dear reader.

The unstoppable spread of the future of computing...smartphones.

Chinese manufacturers are building low-cost (under $200 total) smartphones with 3 SIMS!

Support for two GSM SIM cards and one CDMA SIM card, and will target overseas emerging markets such as the Middle East, Africa and South America. First shipments will begin in the fourth quarter of 2010

Sony Ericsson CEO expects smartphones to reach 50% of the Chinese market by 2015:

Mr. Nordberg said that as the price gap between smartphones and phones with fewer capabilities narrows in China, purchasing a smartphone will "not be unthinkable" even for less-wealthy consumers. Smartphone penetration "will quickly grow to 50% of the market...by 2015" or earlier, he said.

To address that expected boom in demand, Sony Ericsson is deepening its relationship with China's largest mobile operator, China Mobile Ltd., by offering a new handset using network technology and software developed in China, a third-generation wireless standard called TD-SCDMA. The Sony Ericsson phone, called the A8i, runs an operating system developed by China Mobile based on Google Inc.'s Android.

Despite the Sony Ericsson plans, Motorola, third in smartphone sales in China behind Nokia and Samsung, continues to focus on this growing market:

The trio of phones [Moto is releasing now in China] will take the number of Motorola Android phones in China to 11, all of which came out in less than a year. Motorola currently holds 13.6 percent of the Chinese smartphone market according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. This puts the company right behind Nokia and Samsung which hold 26.7 percent and 17.9 percent of the market respectively.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, smartphone sales are soaring:

Sales of smartphones were up 128% in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009, and up 17% versus the first half of 2008, the period prior to the global recession.   The volume of handsets sold also jumped 31%.  Overall, smartphones make up about 10% of mobile phones owned in Brazil.

The average price of smartphones dropped 2% in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2009 and by 5% versus 2008.

“The drop in the average price of smartphones has put them in the hands of more Brazilians, regardless of their income level.  In the small but rapidly growing smartphone universe, 15% are owned by consumers in the two lower income levels,”

Though email is on my TECHNOLOGY RANKINGS: DINOSAUR WATCH list, I am not 100% convinced it will die. While the probability of email's extinction by 2016 remains high, I acknowledge that it's one of those technologies, like the fax machine, that may be almost fully marginalized from our daily activities yet, as with notary publics, has to be kept alive for those very rare instances when needed.

Google has just launced a PRIORITY feature for its Gmail. I use gmail, think it is by far the best email program available, and welcome this new auto-magical prioritization service. No matter how often I go in and hack away at my emails -- not just the spam -- more continues to come, like weeds or in-laws after you hit the lotto. This new feature is a welcome addition. That said, it's really more like making a simpler, less noisy, non-paper killing, non-busy signal getting fax machine. The least amount of time and hassle I am forced to spend on this, the better.

The smartphone is the computer. We are moving towards a world that is highly mobile, social, real-time; one that is hyperlocal but scales global. Email pretty much sucks at all these. It doesn't know nor does it care to know my likes, my schedule, my focus, my friendships. It is dumb and anti-social, unaware that the world is an increasing array of momentary and lasting connections, some work-related, some non-work related. It doesn't change based on my location, time of day, interest. It is a carrier pigeon: all messages are the same, no matter from whom, from where and when sent.

Gmail is the best of the bunch, but I am quickly transitioning away from email. Permanently. I suspect many more will, as well. Social media, texts, Skype, videochat, SMS, location-based services and more, all optimized for the now, for the anywhere, and personalized, are the future. Not surprisingly, all thrive on the smartphone. Yet like a dutiful bureaucrat, just before heading off to bed, I scan through my emails, responding as necessary.

(Oh, yes, the death of email will harm no company on the frontlines of the smartphone wars than RIM/Blackberry. Not even Microsoft, which has the potential to offer more smartphone features and services, will be as directly negatively impacted.)

A bit off-topic, I realize, but:

1) it's my site

B) in a period of wrenching, global, lasting change, stupid must be called out

And what Christopher Hitchens writes about the Glenn Beck rally is as stupid as they come.

Firstly, is the man British? In my life, I've never met anyone who could use words so well to craft a put-down, such as his to Glenn Beck, labelling him:

"a quasi-educated Mormon broadcaster"

That shit's priceless. Thing is, and this is in large part why the Brits no longer matter in the world, it's all sound and fury signifying nothing. Would he lablel, for example, Al Sharpton as the "street wise new jack Christian"? And, if so, would it matter?

Unfortunately, it gets worse. A crowd of, what, 250,00 people showed up in Washington, DC, from across the country, on a hot August afternoon, to gather and pray and protest and affirm. And Mr Hitchens, desperate, sadly so, to diminish this rather impressive feat searches all about for a metaphor.

And comes up with the movie Waterworld. Get it? BIg budget. Big stars. Big marketing. But, ultimately, nothing came of it. Of course, having written this about 48 hours after the event, unless there was looting and violence, of which there was none, it's sort of too early to tell what will come of this rally and it's movement, no?

Unfortunately, it gets worse, still. What was said at this rather massive rally? What was announced? What happened? Apparently, all that would get in the way of Mr Hitchens' effort to create a tapestry of guilt by association, linking this with a rather sinister effort to co-opt Martin Luther King, to one of JFK's speech writers, to Arizona immigration, to amending the 14th Amendment, to McCarthy, to changing the wording in the pledge of allegiance, to, well, to a lot more stuff, in fact for a rally of which nothing has come or will come from it, apparently.

Funny. It's always the smallest minds that seem to be able to weave together the most massive over-arching conspiracy theories that are able to ever-so-nicely trap everything that is happening within a small box. Perhaps that is the definition of a small mind?

And, yes, it gets worse. Mr Hitchens actually mocks this crowd for not engaging in violent acts? How badly he wanted that to happen -- as proof, you see, proof of, well, likely some other grand conspiracy. "At the last "Tea Party" rally I attended, earlier this year at the Washington Monument, some in the crowd made at least an attempt to look fierce and minatory" Think Mr Hitchens made the time to go to Al Sharpton's quite-small rally ? Did he come away from that disappointed that there was no violence?

But, wait. There's more rank dumbness. Mr Beck, apparently, committed the egregious act of not lying. In sterling, yet impotent British prose, Hitchens notes that "It was clever of [Beck] not to overbill it as a "Million"-type march." Clever, or honest? Of course, the fact is, the crowd was substantial. This crowd of tens of thousands, but really, more likely hundreds of thousands, represents...what? The feeble-minded writer dare not probe what this rally might actually mean lest it puncture his grand illusory plot line, so, once again, he attempts to sneeringly dismiss:

"The numbers were impressive enough on their own, but the overall effect was large, vague, moist, and undirected: the Waterworld of white self-pity."

A gathering of a quarter million, in prayer, with men and women and children expressing a faith in God got "on their knees". That Mr Hitchens views this as weakness is a stark insight into his own mental and spiritual frailty. Which is really the saddest aspect of his entire article. While he sneers at the gatherers and attributes dark, sinister motives behind the fact that the speakers do not -- do not! -- make racially charged remarks and in all other ways seeks mightily to diminish those in the crowd, he succeeds at doing so only to one. Himself.

I cannot yet say what may come from Glenn Beck's gathering on our nation's capitol. I am certain, however, that it's legacy will reacher farther and last longer than that of Mr Hitchens.

Yesterday, I expressed my disappointment with my first iAd experience:

http://brianshall.com/content/popped-my-iad-cherry

Today, I have to admit, it felt much better. I can begin to see what everyone else is talking about.

Once again, I was in the New York Times app. As big and bright and beautiful as the iPhone 4 screen may be, there is still a premium on usable space. The iAd banner strip along the bottom of the screen is probably the perfect size, all things considered, althoughit does make you realize how difficult it is to craft exactly the right look, feel and message within such a small space. Of course, music, video, text, graphics, in-app interactivity and location are obviously the powerful lures to mitigate this new reality.

By the way, I have never seen an iAd banner that was anywhere but at the bottom of the screen.

While scrolling through stories I saw three iAds: Dove, JC Penney and NFL/DirectTV. Yesterday's test of the NFL 'contest' didn't go so well. Today, I clicked on the Dove ad. This was a much better experience. The ad was responsive to the touch (ahem), made it clear that I was still within the New York Times app while at the same time providing a new, semi-immersive experience. Since the Yankees are the devil, I clicked on the Albert Pujols picture instead of the one of the guy who's the devil's handmaiden.

I was presented with a well-made video story of Albert and family. Oh, and why a big successful athlete man would use Dove products. Very well done. Great branding. Maybe at some point in my life, when I need soap and see that Dove for men is on sale, I'll try it. Of course, the *only* reason I clicked on the banner itself was to test the iAd experience. If the New York Times is smart, they should get some coin just for putting that banner strip on over their story content.

This was a successful start for iAd, I thought. As I noted yesterday, there is definitely a place for Big Brand on Big Content in Big Ad. If Apple and its developers can capture several percentage points of this, they've done themselves well. I still do not feel, however, that I've seen the future of advertising in the age of the smartphone.