Yes- the open platform of Android is killing it.  This is just in track with my prediction.  Mobile will “touch everything”.  From traditional media, retail, consumer products, auto’s, etc.. etc… Apple’s model is just not one to scale. Scale is created when every major manufacturer uses your system to build product and Google has achieved that.  Even with Nokia’s move to MSFT, they will get a smaller market spot then what Google has achieved overnight.  Can Nokia-Msft convince carriers from shipping Android and have them move to this new dynamic duo?

Google seems to have the momentum at this point.

It was just announced that Nokia will solidify its go-to-market strategy with its product line-up to include a deep partnership with Microsoft. What happened Nokia? With this new focus on Windows7 together with Microsoft change the game against iOS and Android? How will they now focus on Symbian, MeeGo and now Windows7? Why not make MeeGo the platform to really compete in this game?

In any event, this was a bit shocking news but not unexpected.

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Nokia jumps from ‘burning platform’ and forges alliance with Microsoft
By Ed Owen, marketingmagazine.co.uk, 11 February 2011, 09:20AM

Nokia is turning to a strategic alliance with Microsoft to compete against rival smartphone manufacturers and is splitting its operations into two divisions.

Nokia N8 series: ‘it’s not technology, it’s what you do with it’ campaign

The tie-up with Microsoft covers mass market mobile phones and partly sidelines Nokia’s ailing Symbian platform.

Nokia was widely expected to abandon its operating system following a leaked internal memo from its new chief executive Stephen Elop earlier this week.

Elop was scathing about his company – which remains the world’s largest handset manufacturer – and said it needed to change.

In Elop’s memo, the man jumps. Elop, a former Microsoft employee, said: “We too, are standing on a ‘burning platform’, and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.”

The mobile giant’s new strategy will be to:

Use Microsoft to develop its primary platform.
Focus on connecting a billion people in developing markets to the internet through their phones.
Generate new “disruptive” technologies to take the creative initiative back.
Elop, today, said: “Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward.

“Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future.”

Two business units will be formed:

Smart Devices, to be led by career marketer Jo Harlow, former head of marketing for Nokia’s North American division, developing high-end smartphones to use Microsoft, Symbian and MeeGo platforms and develop business services.
Mobile Phones, to be led by Mary McDowell to push mass-market devices powered by Microsoft’s platform, pushing another billion customers in new markets.
The link with Microsoft will be symbiotic, with Nokia providing mapping for Microsoft’s Bing search engine and AdCenter ad platform. Nokia’s Ovi app store will be rolled into Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace offering.

Microsoft will now provide the developer tools needed for apps. Nokia had been subsidising app development to try and keep pace with Apple and Android.

Recently appointed marketing chief Jerri DeVard remains in position, and holds a place on Nokia’s executive board.

The Symbian mobile platform will not be dropped completely, but will be used as a “franchise platform” to retain existing users, and the company expects to sell an additional 150 million Symbian devices in the years to come.

Nokia’s other mobile platform, MeeGo, developed for tablets and other mobile computers in a deal with Intel, remains under development and Elop says a MeeGo product will be shipped later this year.

Nevertheless, board member Alberto Torres, who had responsibility for MeeGo development, leaves the company.

Nokia reported an increase in profits in full-year results last month, with growth coming in new territories, particularly Latin America and China.

Nokia remains in various court battles with Apple over who developed interactive browsing features typically used in smartphones.

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk

Fiercemobile Stats

At this rate they are doing  180K/day of products shipped and activated.  This is a bit over half of what Google has claimed to be 300K/day of Androids activated.  Nokia is still doing north of 1M/day….. In order for Apple to reach that 1M/day based on this growth timeline we are looking at the end of 2014.  Now with the expansion of Verizon and other carriers, the growth curb will “hockey stick a bit” and we could even see them hit the 1M/day even by the end of 2012 0r beginning of 2013.

• As of November, the ratio of iOS to Android users was more than 15 to 1 at AT&T.
• iOS at AT&T has twice the users as Android at Verizon
• Although T-Mobile had the Android franchise to itself for all of 2009, it was overtaken by Verizon within four months
• T-Mobile Android consumption has also been nearly matched by Sprint within a year

In Addition, this extension by Apple and Verizon shows that we are moving into a new era of advanced devices and connectivity that will lead to an exciting 2011 in the ecosystem of mobile internet and cross-media applications.

Given the fact that the Verizon iPhone is still not the LTE 4G device, there is room for the release of the iPhone 5 during this year with an exiting evolution to not only the network capabilities, but also the link to rich-media.

At CES this year, there was a plethora of new innovative 3D services and video delivery systems.  Group video with Skype and being able to consume video at a signal action on the device will only get better and better.  The use of the device as a remote control tied to a users TV set will keep evolving and the ubiquitous nature of having all kinds of vertical applications leveraging real-time communications will make the device more and more personal in our daily lives.  With this growth, there will be all kinds of new business models and we grow more mobile in this next decade.

I Just arrived here at CES…. Clear day, but cold here for the desert! Definitely Android’s presence at this major Consumer Show will help warm up the mood.  2011 is going to be a great new year in the mobile industry in North America as both Apple and Google battle it out for the leading market share of smart phone devices.

#1- Devices, Devices and more  Devices

We are all looking forward to some of the new devices that will hit the street with Android.  As an open system and an entry platform into the mobile area the competition with ensue between Consumer electronic manufactures, PC manufactures, incumbents and anything you can embed an OS.

The Apple vs. Google’s Android (24.6% vs. 23.5% respectively according to Comscore) competition has first of all made a major dent in RIM’s leadership.  Will Blackberry move from #1 to #3?

At CES this year we expect a fresh taste of many of the new devices to come.

#2-  The blurring line between Smartphones and Tablets

This jostling is not only in the Smartphone race, but in the tablet market as well.  Apples iPad with its 44% marketshare getting nibbled to death from Android’s estimated 39% marketshare by 2010 according to the Piper Jaffray’s estimates.

Although there has been polarization of the different formats, a new breed of formats occupying that middle ground has started.

What makes this interesting is in the multiple forms of display sizes from the 3.5 inch Retina displays, advanced OLED’s all the way up the spectrum to the 10.1 inch and larger.  How will content itself polarize for these different formats? Or maybe not?

#3- Apps and Media Marketplaces

The big differentiator in this new era of advanced internet devices is in the content.   Apple’s leadership in the iTunes marketplace ( more then 300K strong)  has not been threatened yet, but with Android’s openness as the angle for developers to bring in new and exciting things in parallel to the shear volume of content.  The Android Marketplace has will quickly reach the 200k level and continue to grow strongly!  HTML5 mobile apps and content that blend web experiences on native app experiences is something we should keep an eye out for this year with the overall Android App and Marketplace experience.

#4 NFC and the mCommerce explosion

It has been a long-time coming to see this opportunity of Near Field Communications baked into devices.  The quiet release in Google and Samsung’s Nexus S with the Android 2.3 and the NFC chip is an indication that these enablers will be aggressively now released into the market as part of the competition to bring in these new business models. Apple, RIM, Microsoft as well as the mobile operators have all entered this foray becoming the next big battleground for local and location based payments.

#5 Connected and Suggest Advertising

2011 will be a year of advertising innovation beyond the basic impression based CPM models of past.  Android will be a unique platform where Google will bring out is best of ideas of mobile and local advertising that will go beyond the basic behavioral response, but to include the context of location and push.  How will this be mitigated so that our social privacy is not evaded? The debate will continue as the competition ensues.  Google’s Admob vs. Apple’s iAd will be two of the big battle grounds, but expect to see all of the local retailers, commerce and media companies bringing in new and exciting formats to make it more relevant for advertisers in this cross-media, physical and local connection.   The shear volume of Android handsets entering the market should make this a very dynamic addition to Google’s strength, but with Facebook’s Places Mobile Application and the opportunity to bring advertising into this mix as social ads will be another interesting spike in this evolution.

#6  Application Search… the other blurring line

Up until now, Applications have been silo’ed creatures that had activation to content only when downloaded and launched.   I would expect this to be another unique battleground as the plethora of content grows, access in-app will become more and more important as well as the indexing of relevant content on the go.  Twitter search has had the make-up to be the next big thing in the search space, but now will the growth of endless applications paralleling websites as the content for mobility; search will take a potential exciting new direction in the coming year with Applications.

#7  TV and Rich-Media Convergence

Android should make an exciting platform for the future of TV.  In 2010 we saw Google TV, Apple TV and the evolution of real-time video streams anytime, anyplace as a growing trend, now in 2011 with the advances in LTE and more and more content becoming available online this will be another battleground for the mindshare of consumers.

As the Android OS continue to show up everywhere in 2011 ( taxi’s, airplanes, billboards, etc..) this opportunity will make way for interactive video everywhere on the go.  However, how long will it last before content owners hold back from licensing content to Google’s TV initiatives?

This trend is also bringing in new entrants such as Vizio that has been a top Flat-panel manufacturer now entering into the smart device area as well.

#8 Chrome OS vs. Android OS cross-platform

Google has been strategic in keeping these two different platforms separated as they build within the two different marketplaces of mobile and online, but how long will this last. Android platform has been strong with the evolution of the opensource Webkit Browser based on a Safari core.  The Chrome Browser vs. The Safari browser dynamics has now put Google in a unique position for moving forward with its own enablers in parallel with taking the best from both worlds.   2011 will be the year of the Cloud when it comes to the connected OS cross-platform.

#9 Android , Google Music and Content Distribution

It seems like Apple has enjoyed the luxury of being predominant player for the last several years in the mindshare of the music industry. With the shear volume of Android handsets and tablets flooding the market, it would only make sense to see some unique play into the music space by Google.  This space has been a minefield of content rights licensing and business models.  In 2001, the world will begin to relook at the Limewire’s and the Bit torrents of the world that have made such dent on the business models of music.  Intel will launch a new architecture for content protection embedded on its chips that will find their way into the Android devices to come and the App Marketplaces will evolve with new dynamics for business models around the distribution and rights of music to attempt to give content owners more choices in revenue generation.

#10 Social Relevancy and the Android OS

It was rumored in 2010 that Facebook was attempting to launch their own devices the same way Google brought the reference platforms of Nexus One and Nexus S into the market.  There is no stopping Facebook from moving forward with this strategy, but it is clear that further enhanced and improved Social Relevancy will become a key part of the entire OS of Android in the near future starting with Android 2.3.  Facebook and Google have not always shared similar views, but with the large market penetration of Android moving forward they will find the right mix of cooperation strategies that will make this a platform that will leverage social interactions and conversations as a core to the overall user experience.

We have entered 2011 and I have to say the first decade did fly by rather quickly for us in the mobile industry.   I am a big fan of JWT and their things to watch deck.  I thought I would share it and highlight the top 10 in my mind for those realigning and creating a  mobile strategy this year.

Apple has finally rolled out a way for app makers and content providers to build their own specialized ads for apps and the iAd Producer could help boost its mobile advertising network.

Advertisers will need to use this tool to create proprietary ads for iPhone, iPad, AppleTV?  and all in the Orchard I guess….?

Apple rolled out its advertising network as part of iOS 4.0 and it promised to give ads all the functionality of the app itself – this included 3D graphics, multitouch, video, gyroscope and more.  The goal was to create ads which deeply engage the user with experiences  brands could create only mobile… Yahoo took some stabs at it and beyond the Nissan Leaf campaign, we haven’t heard of too many success cases.

In fact, Chanel dropped its plans to advertise with this network after Apple meddled with the creative process.

Could this  iAd Producer change this slow start for Apple to get involved creating the ads,  yet now giving the creators a bit more flexibility.  As it appears these tools seems it make it fairly easy for user to create.

According to Apple:

iAd Producer makes it easy for you to design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd. iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd to make creating beautiful, motion-rich iAd content as easy as point and click.

For advanced developers, iAd Producer offers sophisticated JavaScript editing and debugging, along with a powerful extension mechanism that enables them to create and re-use their own page templates and components.

We all know that Google is fully integrating AdMob into its business and you know that the search giant is going to be putting a lot of effort into the mobile advertising space. Besides there foray into Voice, Operating Systems and new advances to Search that was recently stated by Google’s Marissa Mayer- ” Contextual Push”, this is not going to be a straight forward process for Apple to get the agency and brands mind share that easily, but with these tools it is definitely a good way to start…

About 3 months ago we were all saying the Smartphone market size was about 20~25%.  Now in a recent release by Nielsen, they show the US Smartphone market approaching 30% ( 1/3rd the market).  We are looking like we are on track to hit the 50%  by the end of 2011….. Big changes in 2011 for smartphones and mobile with the Media Tsunami now here! Lets all hope the Carriers get the new LTE roll-out right and on-schedule.

In a recent article by Nielsens, “The Smart Phone Battle heats up….”

they show the market for iPhones a bit skewed toward Women… Is this really the case? The stat that I find interesting is that even though 30.9% perfer iPhones, 23.8% are unsure….. This leaves an interesting opportunity for the Market.

As Motorola releases its series of cute smartphones, what is going to be the next killer design for Apple in their next move.  They have been quiet since the iPhone 4 release that was definitely very masculine focused in design. We still have not heard when we will see the White iPhone4, and indications show something to do with Verizon potentially…

In another article by Techtree, they say that women should adopt Android for Three-reasons.

1) Qwerty Keyboard makes for easier input…… no worry about the nails

2) The come in all kinds of sizes and shapes…. easy for the handbag

3) They are cost effective…..or does this really relate to women? More related to the transition from Feature phone to smartphone I would say.

To sum this up, I do not think that Android vs. iPhone will be a mans vs. a women’s thing…..Lets really see what Apple launches next.

There has been a lot of debate recently about whether Foursquare will truly become the main point of check-in’s around places in the future, or our others going to to be the next game in town ? With Facebook’s Places now extending to Blackberry’s and the roadmap growth process for the 600M+ users,  Foursquare only has 4M users is not even 1% the size of its Goliath predator. Foursquare has been growing with brands and starting to bring lots of new value with different promotional relationships and feeds to their platform, but can they grow fast enough as a company focused on local and is their growth  pace enough to be sustainable? Recently Foursquare was compared to Groupon in its efforts to bring value-added promotions around the community, and some say that Foursquare will need thousands of resources to keep the momentum going.   Even though advertising can be considered great content ( if presented in the right way)  is it the right content that will make Foursquare scale with user acquisition?  For some reason, I believe that it is a good direction, but I am not convinced it is really the right focused strategy as it is so resource intensive to do all those deals.  Groupon emerged with a very different business model for user attraction that has been very local, but not as hyper-local as Foursquare.

In my recent visit to conference around local advertising from the perspective of the local directory companies, Foursquare was a hot-topic, but they seemed to be working toward building their own anchor around local advertisers and Foursquare was not the centerpiece.  There was more debate and discussion around social media distribution in general around Facebook and Twitter.  Foursquare’s game got them out of the gate, and they have tapped into the behavior of the check-in, but others are fast to copy this phenomena.   I am really looking forward to seeing how they scale, but they need something more organic wow now to attract users like they did with the first game concept.   I am looking forward to this evolution and see how they balance user focus vs. advertising in the future, with or without that sales force.  My question is can they keep the game going to continue to game users? Can the game concept continue to grow at a local level?