"The Lenovo iPad" LePad

An iPad look-a-like?  Lenovo launches its colorful LePad Series!

( Las Vegas) CEA expected 80 Tablets, but they said there might be over 100 at CES, Leading PC Manufacturer Lenono Releases its iPad look-a-like LePad. If you like the way iPad looks and feels, well you have a new option in with this colorful and a sexy new Android Tablet launched today at the unveiling session at CES.

What makes this product more unique is that it normally runs on Android 2.2, but they claim that as soon as you plug-in the keyboard you can switch to Windows 7.   It was designed for the mobile lifestyle.  It can be purchased separately, and even though the target for the product is China, they claim it will be available in the US with Android 3.0.

The product houses a 10.1 inch touch screen (same as the iPad), 3G as well as a front facing camera to enable video calls.

As Lenovo has build a very strong business model through Enterprise sales, will this device become a standard around the office?  More coverage on this device as we cover the event over the next couple of days..

The estimated pricepoint is $520 for the tablet alone.  This is a bit higher then the average prices presented at the CEA press conference between $300~400, but is looks like the right prices for this product that I may just want to buy.  In addition, I have always loved the Thinkpad red nipple

CEA Presentation trends to watch in 2011. As expected 2011 CES drew the crowds! They expect 120K this year and it could not be a better for us mobile folks as a  turning point in the CE industry mobile is the spotlight! I am here to cover Android and working as free lance for Nikkei BP IT Pro this time.  My colleague from Japan, Takahiro Kikuchi will be covering devices and I will be looking at Applications, Content and new enablers along the way.  The exciting news is that there will be over 100 Tablets on the floor. More the 20% greater then the expected amount.   iPad is still the champ in the Tablet space, but with this explosion of Tablets it is going to be hard for them to stay “King on the hill”. The Four main trends of the CE industry presented by CEA.

1) Portable vs. Pocketable. In the dynamic spread of screen sizes between the 2~3inch smartphones to the large laptop and PC LCD displays at the 15 inch level, a new category of tablets have now emerged in what was the VOID of displays between the 5inch and 15inch level.  These are portable and the differences with the pocketable smartphones is a unique trend that has emerged in 2010 and will explode in 2011.  It has been over 18 months in the waiting of when Tablet devices will become main stream and Apple has led the way with this new category. Not only is this Void being filled but the sweet spot of  pricing In this trend there will be the following factors that were described by the CEA team.   1) Differenciation 2) Use Case Scenario’s 3) Integration of Sensors 4) Close Cousins with the eReaders… Collide or co-exist.

2) The intelligence of Things With connectivity, advances in processing power for these portable devices the trend of new found intelligence of devices will be key in 2011. They highlighted some key factors effecting the overall integration of intelligence.  1) GPS 2) Connectivity 3) Computing power 4) Network effect of the App Ecosystem. As smartphones and devices get more and more smarter, there will be a plethora of apps that link hardware to things…. for instance, connecting your smartphone to a thermometer to gage when your BBQ meat is ready, or using devices for health check and blood pressure monitors..

3) Miniaturization and Sensors Sensors are now going to make the key differences in connectivity and usage cases for new emerging content.  From pressure sensors being use to gage height as a complement for GPS, to all kinds of augmented usages. Augmented reality was not discussed in the press review, but it is something I do believe will be a key content area in 2011.

4) Applications Although we saw a boom for Apps in 2010, the evolution will mature with the business models of  the App publishers as they integrate into all different aspects of a users world. From Shopping/ Retail Apps to accessing the home network.  They will control multiple devices and have network effects creating a broader experience.  Four areas to keep an eye on; 1) Content Apps 2) Connectivity with the home 3) m-commerce 4) Apps enhancing the hardware experience. As Tablets and Smartphones continue to occupy the leading category of the CE world so will the volume of growth. CEA estimates that Tablets will hit 30Million units , with eReaders about 20M for a total of 50M devices in 2011

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.

Am I going crazy or is the digital world going crazy? Skype is down, Wikipedia is down, Facebook is down……. at least for me anyway. Is it the travel rush… We all know that the Bird-flu travels in planes, does this H1N1 or should I say HN11 ( Happy New Year 11 virus) traveling during the Holiday season going to put us all at home off our computers and spending time with the family

….ahh yes an analog experience for once.

As we all gear-up to fly out for the 2010 end of the year holiday season, are we grabbing that large guidebook and throwing into our suit case or travel bag? Are we getting the iPhone App, iPad App, or even Kindle version instead.

I saw this article on how Tourism Thailand ( TAT) is moving over to mobile and it brought back a nostalgic moment for me any my life.  In 1984 when  I was a third year Engineering Student at the University of Illinois,  I had the chance to study/ teach abroad in Thailand.  For me the Lonely-Planet Book for Thailand- written by Tony Wheeler ( at that time)  was a bit of  Bible  or sorts for my survival.  Back in the  Bangkok summer of 1984, it was like the wild-wild west for me.  I actually did contract Typhoid Feaver, and had many unique stories to tell, but that Lonely-Planet guidebook was something special in my overall discover and journey of the Thailand countryside.    The guide book lent it self for shoe-string travelers like myself to take notes, tear-off pages to share, and send in information that would better the book.  It was one of the first collaborative community projects of its time.  What happened Lonely Planet? I guess you lost the Tony Wheeler type characters of that day? Times had changed as well with global digital communications and the Internet of the 90′s, but it is something for me in my late teens to experience that was a slice in time right before the global World-Wide-Web.

Now as see all of this going Digital, that distant feeling of going to such a far away different place at that time has really changed as we  experience tourism/travel and back-packers of the day….  I remember reading about this unique noodle place tucked in the back-alleys off of  Sukumvit Road, and getting there with this diagram map to a Tuk-Tuk driver only to find the exact description of the Snake-charmer and old man siting on the corner adjacent to that Noodle shop.

Now we will be navigated with Google maps on our iPhone Lonely Planet App…. Not much Analog left in that experience…..:(

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…

Google announced today that this free calling from the U.S. to anywhere in the States and Canada would be extended through all of 2011! (Back in August, it said it wouldn’t charge for those calls “for at least the rest of the year”-Liz Gannes “All Things Digital”)

2010 was a good year for Google and Android.  Besides the fact that the media coverage seemed more pro-Android than Apple  ( iPhone4 Antenna problems, Apples lack of variety (  the white version was not even launched) , and the constant push that Apple is not closed) they did get amazing growth and start to become the dominant player in the Smartphone market in North America.   We started to see even Android Devices being given away for Free with basic data plans making  it clear that in 2011 Android will eat quickly into the feature phone market and continue in that dominance mode as just the smartphone being the status-quo.

So to add some nice icing to the cake, not only did they use the momentum to thier advantage with the Google-to-Google Free  talk services as in Skype-to-Skype calls for Free, but they just make a defining blow to the Carriers by now offering a Google-to-Land line Free service.   This has in someways even has trumped Skype that has offered a low-cost service, but not completely free.  Skype charges pennies.minute  for this service that makes it cheap and addictive to end-users ( including myself that has been enjoying and using it over the years).

In my mind this is a big Wow.  Make the Operating System Free, Make the Calls all Free, Make all their content and services  Free, make the Wifi Networks Free and focus on building up local advertising and targeting.  Google did have some great patents in the Pay-per-Call for merchants, so with this Free service of users calling shops and making reservations is even more incentivised when Free…

With their power and position making everything Free is definitely a disrupter to this market where competition between companies is difficult without the economies of scale of Google and their Ad network network as well.   It is going to be interesting to see how Carriers respond to this when more and more users are leveraging Wifi for their data connections and calling as well.

Just learned about this and found it very interesting.

Apple to Improve App Purchasing & Sharing — A release from the US Patent & Trademark Office has revealed a new patent for Apple and the purchasing of applications at places such as the App Store. According to Patently Apple, the system will utilize an “Application Seed” methodology, which means that when users download an app, they will be able to share it with others, allowing them try it, for free, and effectively helping to mitigate the over-saturation of apps on the market.

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.