Tagged / Mobile

Sony Tries Again with Consumer Mobiles, Crosshairs on Apple

04 Mar 10 / by Mark Bao / Mobile / / Comments

The Wall Street Journal reported today on Sony (SNE)’s re-entry into smartphones with a new product line of mobile devices, one of them a smartphone. They’re also developing a product that will be combining a number of forms of mobile devices, as WSJ reports:

The Japanese electronics giant also has a project under way to develop a portable device that blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP. The device is designed to compete against multifunction products such as Apple’s coming iPad tablet, these people said.

Both the new smart phone and the multifunction device are expected to work with Sony’s online media platform, due to launch later this month in the U.S. as the company’s answer to Apple’s iTunes.

Of course, this isn’t Sony’s first foray into mobile products: Sony Ericsson develops a multitude of mobile phones, including the one mentioned in the article, the Xperia X10, an Android-based mobile phone. (In the past, Sony Ericsson has stuck to using BREW-based operating systems, as well as Windows Mobile.) Unfortunately, sales for Sony Ericsson have fell, both in dumbphones (being dominated by the likes of Nokia and Motorola) and smartphones (BlackBerry and Apple).

If anyone’s going to be challenging Apple, though—Sony is the one. Although Sony’s products have been experiencing serious flak and unpopularity, there are some reasons

The Apple Touch Bloc is Breakable

We’ve seen real competitors to the iPhone (AAPL) emerge—namely, on Google’s (GOOG) Android platform. Phones like the Motorola (MOT) Droid and the HTC Nexus One have presented themselves—and proved themselves—as good enough to compete and take market share against the iPhone. During September to December 2009, Android OS experienced a 208% market share gain (comScore), to 5.2% of the smartphone market. Apple’s Reality Distortion Field is in effect, but it isn’t clouding the public perception enough.

It’s possible to recover and be taken seriously — see Palm

Sony Ericsson has been a declining company. However, it’s possible for a company such as Sony to recover and release a brilliant product. This has happened within the reign of the iPhone: see Palm. There isn’t really any other company one can look to for an example that is as antiquated as Palm. A leader of the 90s and early 00s, Palm declined—and stayed quiet—until the release of the Palm Pre, thought of as the iPhone killer. (It wasn’t.)

Sony has the technology and expertise

Sony knows how to design excellent phones, both technically and aesthetically. The Xperia X10 is an excellent example of Sony’s ability to develop superb devices. With years of experience with Sony and Sony Ericsson, they could very well develop a groundbreaking mobile platform line.

» New research published by ChangeWave Research shows Google Android gaining incredible market share in the mobile operating system market, jumping from 6% to 21% penetration from September 2009 to December 2009. I've been bullish on Android for a while now, and this substantiates why. (0)

AT&T releases app to track dropped calls, and why it’s okay to say you’re wrong

07 Dec 09 / by Mark Bao / Mobile / / Comments

The largest predicament surrounding the iPhone (AAPL) seems to be the network: indeed, there seem to be a large number of dropped calls experienced by iPhone users lately, which until recently wasn’t really acknowledged by AT&T. Today, AT&T released an iPhone app that will track problems with the AT&T (NYSE:T) network.

Using this tool, users can pick a category of problem (dropped call, failed call, no coverage, data failure, poor voice quality) and a frequency of this problem occurring, which is sent to AT&T along with your GPS coordinates. This will allow AT&T to increase its attention towards problem areas in the network.

I never quite understood why companies believed admitting to and fixing a problem was difficult and undoable because of the admitting part. Through such a tool, AT&T gains many advantages. Let’s take a look.

  1. Users like that AT&T recognizes the problem.
  2. Users like that they took action and released an application to help fix the problem.
  3. AT&T gains many data points from millions of iPhone users—each with exact GPS coordinates to see which hives are the worst offenders—from which they can identify pain points and improve their network.
  4. In the end, users gain a better experience using AT&T as improvements stemmed from this app are issued.

AT&T not only was able to increase its public image and improve their network, but they were able to do so by crowdsourcing millions of AT&T iPhone users’ data, all pretty much free of charge.

Sometimes, it’s okay to admit you’re wrong—as long as you fix the problem. It shows responsiveness and shows that the company is trustworthy to the point where they—gasp—admit that they made a mistake.

Motorola Droid Announced on Verizon, Engadget has a Hands-On

28 Oct 09 / by Mark Bao / Mobile, Technology / / Comments

Verizon (VZ) announced the Motorola Droid (MOT) operating on its network today, a very powerful and elegant Android-powered mobile cellphone. As rumored, it arrives on November 6. With a viral marketing campaign executed earlier this month at DroidDoes.com, directly targeted at the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and exposing its shortcomings, the mobile industry prepared for the launch of the already-leaked phone.

The leaked specs presented it as probably the best consumer Android device available, with the same processor as the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre, a large and extremely pixel-dense screen (at about 840px wide), and the Android 2.0 Eclair operating system.

Engadget has shots of the really slick hardware and software on the Droid.

The Mark Bao Journal reported on the effects of the Motorola Droid and Android 2.0 on the state of the Android platform itself. I speculate that Android will beat out Palm (PALM) Pre, Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry, and Nokia (NOK) Symbian as the #2 smartphone platform under the iPhone.

Verizon Communications stock went up 2.57% to 29.95 today.

New Android 2.0 SDK and rumored Droid launch Nov. 6: What Android 2.0 and the new Motorola Droid mean for Android

27 Oct 09 / by Mark Bao / Analysis, Business, Mobile, Technology / / Comments

Gist: Android 2.0 SDK released, Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris to launch on Verizon on Nov 6, as rumored by Boy Genius Report. Hardware has always been the bottleneck on Android, among other problems. The marketing by Verizon making Droid a serious mobile device for the alternative iPhone market as well as the excellent hardware on the Motorola Droid, and the polished Android 2.0 Eclair OS, will allow Android to become more mainstream.

Google (GOOG) has made official the new Android 2.0 SDK, which allows the new 2.0 “Eclair” APIs to be used in Android applications, including improved bluetooth, multitouch, sync, account management, and, of course, support for new Android 2.0 devices such as the Motorola Droid. The new SDK update is downloadable immediately. Android 2.0 official video is at the bottom of this article.

Leading mobile industry news and insider source Boy Genius Report reports that the Motorola Droid (MOT) and HTC Droid Eris (2498.TW), two new Android 2.0 Eclair devices, will hit the stores on November 6 on the Verizon Wireless (VZ) network.

The Droid devices, highly hyped by Verizon as the iPhone killer, has been the subject of quite a bit viral marketing and noise in the mobile industry. Earlier this month, Verizon launched a mysterious marketing page for the Motorola Droid at DroidDoes.com, a direct attack against the Apple (AAPL) iPhone device’s shortcomings.

I’ve recently moved from bearish to bullish on the Android platform. The first T-Mobile Android G1 device wasn’t polished and didn’t at the time seem like a viable competitor to the iPhone.

However, the Motorola Droid could be a huge development in the Android environment. Droid represents a serious advance in promoting Android as a serious device, built and supported by two serious mobile companies. The specs of the device (the same processor as the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre, large screen, full of memory, ready for backgrounding applications, and more delicious specs) will hold its claim to fame as the premier Android hardware.

The bottleneck to the proliferation of Android has partly been the hardware that it runs on. The G1’s hardware didn’t cut it, especially since Android and all Android applications operate on Java, which is a notoriously slow platform. (EDIT: No, it isn’t, I’m wrong; I had neglected to mention that the Android platform has a custom build of Java called Dalvik.) The other bottleneck is the App Store, which, although it will improve over time, the derivative of available applications needs to start getting better. And with the new SDK and excellent new Android 2.0 Eclair, we may be seeing real changes soon.