Nokia recently announced its new 5800 Xpress Music, or Tube, as an “iPhone Killer”. Reviewers, however, disagree, mainly on hardware spec grounds – no touchscreen, S60 software issues.

What most reviewers seem to ignore is that even if Nokia (or Google, Sony, LG etc.) do come up with a device that matches the iPhone’s technical abilities (and I’m sure they have the required resources to do so) they’re still going to have a tough time competing with it.

Why? They way they sell and support their devices is very different than Apple.

When you buy an iPhone you have one company that control’s your entire experience with the device. From purchasing to ongoing operations and services its all ran by Apple that controls the entire product experience etc.
Apple bundles its iPhone with a set of services (AppStore, iTunes, Music Store…) that are tightly integrated with the device allowing easy consumption by customers which eventually is what’s driving Apple’s business.

Nokia, Sony, LG etc., on the other hand, sell the device through partnerships with different communication companies such as Orange Partner, which in turn, works with local sub-diaries. They rely on these partners for supporting their device and providing services to customers which often results in poor (sometime broken) customer experience.

Speaking at an Israeli GarageGeeks meeting, Steve Glagow, VP of Marketing Operations at Orange Partner VP mentioned that due to the fact they have to work with many regional and local partners, it takes more than 3 clicks and several screens for a user to install an application. Although he said their application installation rate is high (percentage of users who reach the application marketplace and end up installing an application) its a misleading measurement as most users will give up and never even reach the marketplace – only users determined to install an application will go through that effort.

Bundling your device with services is a winning strategy, not just for cellphones. Microsoft’s Xbox Live! platform is another great example on how bundling a device with online services helps increasing its value and perception.

Killing the iPhone will require more than just cool new hardware…

Related readings:

• Six Reasons iPhone Delivers Where Android Won’t
• Nokia 5800 (Tube) - Not an iPhone Killer?
• Nokia 5800 on Engadget

Tags: 5800, Apple, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Steve Glagow, Xpress Music, XpressMusic

Here are my notes from the Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference:

• Apple is cutting the price of the iPhone to $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16GB version.
  This price tags now puts the iPhone in direct competition with Nokia on the consumers market and with Blackberry on the enterprise market.
  The iPhone is now targeting mainstream consumers and not only the high-end market…
• 35% of Fortune 500 companies participated in  Apple’s enterprise iPhone experiment - including the US Army, Disney, etc. That’s quite an impressive market engagement.
  The new iPhone enterprise features, coupled with the new competitive price tag can make Apple a significant player in the enterprise market. Look out RIM…
• Seems like $9.99 is going to be the pricing standard for iPhone apps. Cheap…
• MobileMe was dubbed “Exchange for the rest of us” - a new service from Apple to synchronize personal data across devices and platforms.
  Basically it does what Plaxo does but its not free :S
  • Microsoft’s Live Mesh\SkyDrive\Foldershare services now have a new serious competition…
  • In “Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You” Joel Spolsky claims that data portability is just a theoretical problem invented by architecture astronauts (Ray Ozzie in this case).
    Joel picked a bad example to prove his point as I guess having all the major players trying to data portability is a sign that its a real need.
    Personally, I don’t know what I would have done without Plaxo and Foldershare but that’s a topic for another post I guess…
• The seventh release of the iPhone SDK is out.
• The next version of Max OS X is called Snow Leopard and is set to be released within a year.
  • Apple plans to support new hardware architectures (like multiple CPUs) and fix Leopard issues as well as add native support for Microsoft Exchange.
  • Sounds more like a Leopard Service Pack than a new major version…
• The “Apple Push Notification Service” - finally a decent solution for notifications for background applications on a mobile platform.
  Instead of draining battery life and degrading performance by running a background process, applications can use the service to update remotely.
  Here’s how Dan Moran from MacWorld describes it:

  as you run an app like an IM client, it’s connected to the server. When the user quits the app, the iPhone will maintain a connection to the server, which will let them push notifications. It can push three types of notification: badges, custom alert sounds, and you can push custom textual alerts, appearing kind of like SMS messages and you can provide buttons that will automatically launch application. Great thing about this design: it scales, but only requires one persistent connection. This is sweet, sweet news for all developers and those who wants to use IM clients especially.

Any other thoughts regarding Apple’s announcements and plans?

Tags: AAPL, Apple, iPhone, iPhone 3G, MobileMe

When I bought the LG L226WTQ Widescreen LCD a while back, I wrote that its fixed height monitor base was a major pitfall.
Well, it turned out to be worse than I thought. The screen’s height was too low which made it really uncomfortable to work with.
Placing the base on top of some books just made my desk look ugly. Alas! I set out to find a decent LCD base\arm to replace the original LG base…

On my quest looking for LCD Arms I encountered the products made by Ergotron, specifically the Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arms which looked perfect for my needs.

The best thing about this arm, as you can see in the picture above, is that it makes the screen look as if its hovering above the table, freeing up the space underneath that used to be occupied by the screen’s base.

Assembly was a piece of cake as the LX Desk Mount comes partially assembled so you only have to assemble the main components - the base (and pole) that attaches to the table, the main arm and an optional extension arm.

All LCDs have a standard VESA mounting place on the rear, however there are several standards for that. The LX Desk Mount support the VESA MIS-D standard:

VESA MIS-D, 100/75, C compliant monitors are equipped with either a 100 x 100 mm or 75 x 75 mm mounting hole pattern. A wide variety of Ergotron products attach directly to these monitors. This is the most common interface for monitors weighing under 30 lbs (14 kg).

My LG L226WTQ supports this standard so I just used the 100×100mm mount. You should check the display compatibility page provided by Ergotron to see if your screen requires any  custom interface adapter…

Once the LX has been assembled and is fully supporting the monitor, the tension of the arm and the various pivot points can be adjusted using the included tools.
Assembly and adjustment are simple and straightforward and the included manual does a good job of drawing out what needs to be done. The entire process shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete.

Overall, the Ergotron LX Desk Mount is just was I wanted.

• It’s flexible, allowing me to easily reposition the monitor at will.
• Frees up desk space.
• Looks good. Hidden by the LCD monitor making it look as if its hovering above my desk…
• Supports mounting another screen (if I ever get one…)

As for the price, Amazon carries the Ergotron LX at roughly $115 and if you’re in Israel you can get it from Tamlil for 844nis.

Tags: Desk Mount, Ergotron, LCD, LG L226WTQ Widescreen LCD, LX

If you haven’t heard of Modu by now you’ve probably been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks.
The company who’s product has been a kept secret so far, has been spreading teasers around the net for the past couple of weeks until it finally announced and exposed their product yesterday.

Modu Mobile, led by Dov Moran - the mind behind the USB flash drive, aims to revolutionize the cellular world by introducing a modular phone, called Modu.
The Modu is a device, smaller than a credit card, containing flash memory and a cellular SIM and is meant to fit into different “Jackets” that can make use of its abilities. From cell-phone like devices to car radios, digital cameras and TVs - simply plug you’re Modu device into the jacket and it’ll have cellular abilities and access to the personal information you’ve got stored on it.

Basically, behind all the PR, teasers, and claims for revolution, the Modu simply adds cellular capabilities to the Disk-On-Key we all know - A DiskOnKey Evolution. Not such a  big surprise given Dov Moran as one of the inventors…

Can the Modu really deliver the revolutionary promises of its inventors?

To answer that question lets examine the DiskOnKey. Like the Modu, the DiskOnKey was also meant to be a small device that holds your personal data allowing you to carry that data with you anywhere and provide any device with a USB socket access to this data. Pretty much the same concept as Modu’s Jackets “revolution” only based on a wide-spread standard - USB- rather than a proprietary one.

The main problem with the DiskOnKey is that the master copy of the information is saved in a single location which can only be plugged into one device at a time - not a limitation that is easy to live with, especially when there’s an existing alternative of using wireless technologies (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) to sync the different devices and have all the data available anywhere and not locked in a single location on a single device.
The fact that you’ll rarely find a USB socket in a newly purchased TV, car radio, etc. proves that the DiskOnKey failed in achieving its goal and penetrate the market that’s beyond computers.

The Modu is exactly like the DiskOnKey only it uses a new proprietary connection standard…

Which leads us to the big question, what’s so special about the new Modu Mobile that will make it succeed where the DiskOnKey failed?

Tags: 3GSM, Gadgets, Innovation, Mobile, Modu