June 3rd, 2010
by Raj Dash
under Mobile Computing
Since the launch of both the WiFi-only and 3G models of the iPad, Apple has sold about 2M units in less than 2 months, and they’re sold out at many of their Apple retail stores – proving that there is a market for tablet devices and thus a need for more apps. But will these sales levels be sustained past the current hype? Retrevo did a Pulse Report study [via Mashable] of over 1,000 respondents about consumer attitudes towards tablet computers and e-readers and over 50% said they’re not interested in making such a purchase. Of non-iPad owners surveyed, over half said that they don’t need one.
Let’s look at some other stats. At an average of 1M units/month, they can easily top 8M units this year, beating out estimates of 5-7M units for 2010. The overall market for web-enabled tablet computing devices is estimated to hit over $8B by 2015, despite Retrevo’s study. Such contradictions often exist, and sometimes it’s a matter of creating the need or at least the desire. Apple managed it with iPods — I remember being part of a group of people that held out. I in fact never bought an iPod but both won a Shuffle and was given an iPod as a gift. The latter ceased to function after a year of heavy use; I’d fallen in love with it. Can Apple repeat their iPod success and make people fall in love with iPads, even when they don’t need them? (I believe so.)
Apple is already leading Android with mobile devices in general. According to AdMob (which Google just purchased), iPhone OS-based devices are leading Android OS-based devices in the U.S. by more than a 2 to 1 ratio. Worldwide, the ratio is 3.5 to 1 in favor of iPhone OS. (With market advantages like this, is it any wonder that Apple stock price predictions for 2010 — made in Dec 2009 – Jan 2010 — suggest a $250-300 range?)
Whether Apple is maintaining any lead in the tablet market is hard to say without actually figures, given that tablet computer have existed for a while. Where Apple is lagging is with iPad-specific apps compared to iPhone-specific apps. Developers had to work with only a software simulator for the first round of apps accepted by Apple for the Apr 3, 2010, launch of the iPad. That probably hindered development significantly, and my own observation is that many such iPad-specific apps crash on occasion.
So if Apple can reboot the tablet computer market and create a demand, there’ll be room for loads more iPad-specific apps and maybe even 3rd-party peripheral devices. Whether or not that means the possibility of Windows-based tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or Silverlight Web application plug-in for developing iPad/ iPhone apps remains to be seen. For now it seems it’s not the case, even with suggestions for Apple to be more open.
June 3rd, 2010
by Raj Dash
under iPhone
Skype is finally going to be available over 3G on the iPhone, but it’s going to cost all of us who’ve been waiting.
Skype-to-Skype calls might be free from your computer or enabled VoIP phone, but that’s not going to be the case with the iPhone. At least, not after the end of August. After that, if you want to make a Skype-to-Skype call from your iPhone, there’ll be a monthly fee. As if that’s not a downer for iPhone owners who were looking forward to this Skype feature, AT&T just changed its data plan pricing. Even if there was no monthly Skype-to-Skype 3G fee, AT&T’s new plan makes it less cost effective. (Without doing a detailed calculation, it’s hard to say by how much.)
This double whammy of cost is likely to dissuade Skype-to-Skype 3G calls on the iPhone, so my guess is that Skype is charging the monthly fee because they have to pay off carriers.
Notes: The Next Web.
June 2nd, 2010
by Raj Dash
under General
The Apple iPad is now available in nine more markets, not including the USA. Both the WiFi-only and 3G models are available, in all three memory sizes (16GB, 32GB, 64GB). This is great news for non-U.S. consumers who have been waiting for these devices. Meanwhile the USA seems to be sold out of them. Unfortunately, for American consumers who bought a 3G model in hopes of getting the AT&T unlimited data plan for $29.99, if you don’t have it already, you’ll be out of luck after June 7th. AT&T has decided to completely change the data plans, and depending on your intended usage, it might cost you more.
There are now two per-usage options for iPad 3G data plans through AT&T:
- DataPlus plan, $15/month, capped at 200MB/ month. Extra data costs $15 for 200MB blocks. Not sure if this is prorated if you go over by a little bit.
- DataPro plan, $25/month, 2GB/month cap. Extra data costs $10 for 1GB chunks.
While the DataPro plan is obviously a better deal if you’re going to be a power iPad data user, it’s going to end up costing a lot more. AT&T claims the majority of consumers are not using up their 5GB caps on the iPhone. That’s probably because they never allowed tethering. They will now, for the next iPhone, but it’ll cost you an extra $20 in addition to requiring the DataPro plan. That means $45/mth to let your iPhone be a tether so that your iPad (WiFi-only or 3G models) can share the data plan.
By comparison, Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus phone has a Mobile Hotspot feature that allows tethering of WiFi devices at no extra cost over the data plan (roughly $40/month), which is capped at 5GB. What do you think is the better deal, aside from the fact that the new iPhone is expected to have a much longer battery life than before, and Palm Pre Plus’ tethering drains the battery within 3 hours or less.
If you were plan to use your iPad in all the amazing online ways that Apple’s commercials suggest, it’s going to cost you. Forget watching video on the go, because that’ll eat up your data plan in short order. AT&T claims this is a new lower-priced wireless data plan intended to make mobile Internet more affordable to more people. Unfortunately, power users get punished, but this sort of plan change has been part of the cellular industry for years.
May 31st, 2010
by Raj Dash
under Mobile Apps
Mobile apps have infiltrated themselves into the auto industry and one of the newest, Safe Driver Program for the iPhone by Dangerous Decisions, is going to make most parents of driving teens pretty happy. Amongst other things, this app lets you know the moment your teen goes over a certain speed or acceleration that you’ve set (by utilizing the iPhone’s GPS and accelerometer). It also records a number of other bits of driving data, including braking and cornering. This trip report can be password protected.
The app gets installed on the driver’s 3G or 3GS iPhone. Parents can use this to monitor teens, or companies can monitor employees who drive regularly as part of their job. Visual and audio indicators can warn a driver if they’re getting close to some set limit such as speed. If the driver violates some limit, the trip log plots the location on a Google map. Text message and email notifications, if configured, are received in real-time by the person doing the monitoring. The
Cost: free for the basic app [iTunes] and US$24.99 for the pro version. [Via Mobile Weblog]
What’s not clear is how you get someone to run the Safe Driver app, since it’s on their phone, but it sounds like a great concept. (I suppose you could make running the app on every trip mandatory.)
Want to discuss a mobile Web or native mobile app for your business or projects? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app or mobile campaign needs.
May 31st, 2010
by Raj Dash
under General
There’s speculation that the with the introduction of the iPad, netbook and laptop sales might be in danger. When you think about it, tablet computers have a different if overlapping purpose than netbooks and laptops. On the other hand, tablet computers can do what e-Readers such as the Nook and Kindle do, and witih more features. So if any type of device is doomed by the existence of the iPad and all the tablet computers that will follow, it’s the e-Reader.
The big bookstore chains even seem to be hedging their bets by introducing iPhone OS apps intended for people who don’t own their device. Barnes & Noble is the latest with their Nook app for the iPad. The app has several iPad specific features, including new fonts and customizable layout for readability, in-book search, bookmarks, cross-device syncing, ePub support. Crunchgear have published the full press release from Barnes & Noble, which says there’ll be an Android version this summer as well.
Amazon isn’t ready to give up yet, with plans to release a thinner Kindle reader in August. But it’ll have neither a touchscreen nor a color screen. I think about the beautiful Alice in Wonderland interactive book in full color on the iPad and ask myself why I’d ever want a non-color, non-touchscreen Kindle? Sure, the iPad might cost more than some people want to spend, but there are expected to be low-cost tablet devices appearing later this year which can double as both e-readers and mobile computing devices.
So why would you want to buy an e-Reader device? Well other than ZDNet’s finding that the iPad is poor for outdoor reading, and another experiment’s finding that suggest the iPad might disrupt your sleep habits because of its backlit IPS screen. E-Readers that use e-Ink technology (Kindle, Nook, Sony’s devices) are said to be less likely to do that.
Image: Flickr.
May 31st, 2010
by Raj Dash
under Mobile Computing
If the increasing number of tablet computer options hasn’t caught your interest, maybe the one HTC is planning will. If you’re a woman. The idea is that women do a great deal of social networking, such as on Facebook, and HTC thinks this is something they might like to do while watching TV. They’re considering an Android-based HD tablet aimed at women.
Now does HTC really want to fragment their potential market share like that? I mean, I use my iPad to check email and Facebook while I watch all the programs recorded on my DVR — multitasking. Does that mean I need a special man-version? What about all the women who want a tablet computer but not for social networking while watching TV? What version do they use? Doesn’t it make more sense to have a single tablet but with specialized configurable features? Or special cases in different colors and patterns? What compelling features will such a female-specific HTC tablet have that would persuade the numerous women I know who use netbooks to check Facebook while watching TV?
While competition is always a good thing, it seems to me that HTC’s approach is just fragmenting the mobile computing market a little too much. What do you think?
Trying to make sense of your mobile device and apps options? Want to discuss a mobile Web or native mobile app for your business or projects? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app or mobile campaign needs.
May 31st, 2010
by Raj Dash
under Mobile Computing
Remember the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) campaign aimed at providing children in developing nations with affordable computing devices? It ended up costing way too much, but there’s a new, relatively inexpensive option. The next version of the campaign’s device won’t even be a laptop, it’ll be a tablet computer.
According to specs in Fortune, the XO-3 will be a 9-inch, Android-based tablet made by Marvell. It’ll have one or two cameras, Wi-Fi, and a multi-touch screen. It’ll also work with a plugin mouse and keyboard. Apparently it’ll be capable of playing HD video, too.
One of the benefits of this device is that it’ll be easier to support a variety of languages than was the case with the previous OLPC because of the physical keyboard. A virtual keyboard, on the other hand, can be switched, for example, to non-Latin characters on the fly.
The hardware is expected to cost $99 initially, but drop to $75 by 2011. Sounds pretty cheap, but at least one Asian manufacturer is planning Android-based tablet computers for $100-150, to be released by the second half of 2010.
Who knows? They might even have a similar deal as with the old OLPC, where you could buy two devices for a fairly reasonable price — by N. American standards — and one device would be given as a gift to a student in a developing country. If they manage the $75 price tag, I’m looking forward to getting a couple of these for my twin nieces — who were addicted to my iPad within minutes of trying it — as well as maybe contributing some.
May 30th, 2010
by Raj Dash
under News
Foxconn, the Chinese company that manufactures Apple’s iPhone has had over a dozen suicides either on its premises or from the homes of workers. The why of this is still being investigated, but so far it’s chalked up to high-pressure, low wages. As a result of this, Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski asks whether it’s time for a “Fair Trade” iPhone
Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company Hon Hai has promised a 20% raise to all 420,000 employees, but says that this has nothing to do with the suicides and does not address the reportedly sweatshop-like work conditions at Foxconn. Foxconn had been playing Buddhist music, presumably to soothe workers, and apparently went as far as sending a letter to employees asking them not to kill themselves, which they retracted. In addition to manufacturing iPhones for Apple, it produces devices and components for Dell and HP.
May 29th, 2010
by Raj Dash
under General
The mobile tech rumor mill suggests that Apple might open up iPhone/ iPad development to tools on the Windows PC environment, and for that reason, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer will appear at Apple’s WWDC keynote next week. But Microsoft’s officially Twitter channel says it’s not true. What might be true, on the other hand, is that Microsoft’s Bing search engine could become the default one for the iPhone OS.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Justice Dept probe is looking at how Apple does business with non-music media businesses. Apple’s market capitalization just passed Microsoft’s this week, and a recent complaint from Adobe has already triggered an anti-competitive practices probe.
Probes take time and in the meantime, it’s pretty clear that Apple will be announcing a new iPhone some time in June — an iPhone that’ll be leaps and bounds, technologically, ahead of the last generation, in order to support all the new features that appear in iPhone OS 4.x.
Digitimes Research has a Q&A with senior analyst Ming-Chi Kuo about some of the iPhone rumors, but the existence of a new phone is not a rumor. In fact, BGR says in two-line post that AT&T has already confirmed to their employees that there is a new iPhone in June.
Unfortunately for consumers, AT&T seems to be upping the cost of ownership. While the new phone itself is possible going to cost only $18 to upgrade to from an older iPhone, AT&T’s ETF (early termination fee) for all smartphones has increased from $175 to $325.
BGR also says that AT&T is launching a new iPhone insurance plan that costs a ridiculous $13.99 and launches in June. That’s nearly half the cost of the data plan. There’s also a deductible fee to be paid, for some claims. Are they expecting an increase in thefts and planning to capitalize? Or are they losing exclusivity and trying to come up with new revenue streams? Or maybe both? Considering that AT&T claims that 40% of iPhone sales are to business users, businesses might in fact approve the insurance rates and write them off against profits.
Oddly enough, this insurance is supposed to be available in the Apple App Store, but you have to sign up within 30 days of purchasing or upgrading to a new iPhone. In case you don’t feel like doing the math, that’s nearly $170/year in premiums.
May 26th, 2010
by Raj Dash
under iPhone
A lot of changes are happening in the iPhone area, and there’s a ton of speculation about what’s coming for the 4th-gen iPhone.
Firstly, the 8GB iPhone 3GS might be on it’s way out of production. The Apple.com site no longer allows it to be selected as an option to view details about. Speculation is that it will be replaced with another $99 iPhone, possibly a version of the upcoming 4th-gen iPhone. However, Wal-Mart plans to sell the 16GB model at $97, starting yesterday.
Of course, there’s also speculation about whether any other American carriers will get the iPhone. First it was Verizon getting it,and now rumors suggest that Sprint might get the next-gen iPhone, aka iPhone HD, in June. However, an analyst at Piper Jaffray says that this is unlikely. Apple Outsider also gives an interesting technical explanation for why a Verizon iPhone is probably unlikely any time soon. (Note: Apple Outsider’s Matt Drance is, if I’m not mistaken, a recently former Apple employee who appeared in some of the iPhone development how-to videos.) AT&T’s exclusivity contract is said to be ending, but I believe it’s not for a couple of months yet.
