As part of the Nokia keynote at MWC, it was announced that WP7 will have lower hardware requirements to allow for cheaper phones, but is that a good move? While Microsoft is promising the keep fragmentation down, developers now have to do more testing and will have less of a potential WP7 market if their apps do not work on the lower end devices. This very thing still plagues Android and was part of the poor user experience with the older Windows Mobile phones. Sure they will run WP7 but most likely very slowly with lots of response lag. With all the subsidies that are provided, I, personally, do not see a good reason for this beyond a quick and dirty way for Microsoft to get more market share. But if it comes at the expense of the user experience, then it will be a grave mistake. Nokia has already announced the Lumia 610 with this lowered specs, and by the time you have read this article, they will probably have announced its successor. read more

I, personally, had high hopes for Web OS and Palm. I truly believed that it was the only worthy opponent to iOS and from the moment it was announced I was ready to buy into it except for the cheesy phone design. That was not the only mistake that Palm made though, and HP’s announcement on Friday put the final nail in the coffin … or did it?

The Mistakes

1. Apple proved that soft keyboards are every bit as practical as physical keyboards, yet the Palm Pre added extra thickness to provide one, not to mention the ugly case design.
2. The Palm Pixi was not only uglier, but also added a new aspect ratio for developers to have to deal with.
3. Palm struck a deal with Sprint which meant that the Pre and Pixi where not available for GSM networks and would not be available world wide. On top of that, Sprint was not only not a consumer favorite but also the lacked the user base of both AT&T and Verizon.
4. For a mobile OS that was advertised as web based, support for HTML 5 was more limited than on the iPhone. The end result was that Palm did not win over a lot of developers.

A New Hope

When HP bought Palm, I thought they understood the value of what they were buying. WebOS on every device (Printers, Phones, Tablets, Desktops) sounded like things were moving in the right direction. Now WebOS had the money behind it to do really well, but then things went awry again.

1. It took HP along time to put new WebOS devices on the market. Not necessarily a mistake, but the devices were not that impressive after this long a wait.
2. The Touchpad was priced on part with the iPad even though it did not have the App ecosystem that iOS has.
3. The Touchpad reviews where not good due to the hardware that was not up to par with the OS.
4. HP immediately released updated Touchpad with better specs, infuriating the few fans that bought in early.
5. And finally, HP announced that the Touchpad is dead.

The last five points happened in a span of a couple of months.

Is It Dead?

Not really. HP still plans to license it to device manufacturers and perhaps still embed it in printers and such, but I doubt it will ever be able to compete with iOS or even Android. The latter mainly due to the fact that WebOS has failed to attract a good developer community to provide it with apps. I believe that Apple’s strongest point is that it controls both the hardware and software, so it can guarantee the user experience. While I disagreed with this in the PC era, it is definitely key in the post PC era. To this point, the only true competitors that had any chance of competing where HP, who has already put up the white flag, and RIM, who just cannot get its head around a device that is not email centric. Windows Phone 7 and Android do not control the hardware and the effect is obvious depending on which device you buy. My far fetched hope is for WebOS to become the Linux of the Post PC era and for HP to become the RedHat. read more

And there probably won’t be one anytime in the near future. For anyone that doubts this, let me just say that Apple just surpassed Microsoft this past quarter in revenue and that is no small feat. Well it seems pretty simple enough to answer, right? Apple has a very simple formula:

• Make it simple
• Guarantee the experience
• Provide a single app store
• Have a clear product lifecycle

 

Make it simple

This is a very important success factor for Apple. Everyone, from my 7 year old daughter to my Dad can use the device without instructions. The finger is a natural utility we all know how to use and the rest is just a click away. Granted the other mobile OS platforms have made a lot of progress here, but Apple started it and it is the simplest one to use.

Guarantee the experience

This is perhaps THE most important success factor for Apple. By controlling both the software and hardware, they basically guarantee you the experience you are going to have. There is only one iPhone, but there are 10s or 20s of each other device. You can get an Android phone from LG, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, just to name a few and they each provide various versions with different specs and their own experience. The same is true for Windows Mobile, WP7 and even palm and RIM. While it is good to have a variety and everyone likes to be unique, it could change your mind about a operating system, device manufacturer, or both if you end up with a device that does not perform. The best example is Nokia. They are still the biggest phone manufacturer on the planet and for the longest time they have what I thought was the best phone factor (until I saw the iPhone). I am talking about the Nokia Communicator. I bought the Nokia 9500 Communicator as soon as it came out and was very excited about it, until I was let down by Nokia. For a $900+ phone, the browser was lousy, it crashed often, took too long to start (along with every other app) and never got any software updates. The worst was the promise to support the BlackBerry platform which never came except to certain European regions. Worst yet, Nokia abandoned that version of the Symbian platform. Not that the iPhone is without fault, but at least I know it will work fast. This was the one thing that impressed me enough to change my mind about the iPhone and touch screen devices. Before the iPhone, I had had such a bad experience with Windows and SonyEricsson touch screen phones that I would not buy a phone unless it had a physical keypad/keyboard. That is mainly why I skipped the original iPhone and waited for iPhone 3G.

The developer guarantee

The second aspect of the experience guarantee is what developers got. One platform, one resolution, one set of features, and one place to advertise. We will talk about the latter point later, but these are also very important. Again, with almost any other platform every developer has to worry about what devices to support, what resolutions they may have and what features they may have, which ultimately means that the user experience for end users will not be the same on every phone. And this is not accounting for the programming difficulties to support these variations. I must end this section by saying that Windows Phone 7 has made great strides here, but I still do not see it as the same since the hardware is not controlled which would mean that every manufacturer will do something different to make its phone more attractive to end users.

Provide a single app store – One Store to rule them all

Now this is arguable the most controversial aspect of the iOS ecosystem. Originally, I disliked the fact that I was not free to put any software I liked on the phone, but now I see the value of it. Before the App Store, almost everyone was skeptical over buying mobile software for various reasons. Chief among these was the fact that it was relatively expensive, and almost always tied to your particular phone, so you had to repurchase it if you upgraded your handset (even if it was just a newer model of the same phone). The iPhone addresses all of these, plus it provides a single great place to promote and sell your app. The approval process has its faults and there are many, but again it too protects users to some extent so they can shop with some sense of security. As for the other potentials now, their app stores are segmented at best which just damages their potential.

Have a clear product lifecycle

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this also is critical to Apple’s success. The current product lifecycle for any iPhone so far has been two years, which is a year and half more than any other device. I say this jokingly, but it is almost true. Every other phone maker, has such diversity in their phone offering that they do not care about the hardware. Its all disposable, except the money we put down to get it. The only thing that has changed recently is that Google’s Android has been upgradable on some phones (mainly its own G1 and Nexus One), and even at that, you are at the mercy of the device manufacturer as to when and if they will support newer versions of Android. With the iPhone its a clear message. An iPhone will be upgradable to the latest version of the iOS platform for two years. I have to say that Microsoft again is trying to catchup here, and they announced that WP7 phones will be upgradable over the air, and they specifically mentioned this regarding the cut and paste that will be added to WP7. IF they execute well here, they could have this one nailed down.

What to take away

Having said all of this, there has been some changes in the iPhone ecosystem with the iPhone 4 having a retina display, but you can be certain that iPhone 5 will not support a new resolution, and there is a compromise to be made between consistency and advancing. The only two manufacturers that I see with a true potential to compete with the iPhone are RIM and now HP. They are the only two that control the software and hardware so they can control every aspect of the user experience. For the others it is much harder. Here are a few pointers for the other manufacturers if they are listening:

1. Reduce your hardware offering, and instead concentrate on fewer devices with a longer lifecycle. If users know that they are buying a phone that will be supported for a year or two, they will be more inclined to make that investment
2. Related to the first, make sure you do provide software updates for your phones. This buys brand loyalty when combined with a good user experience
3. There is a fine balance between performance and battery life. But for a smartphone, the performance has to be snappy, otherwise no one will care that the battery lasts 5 days.
4. Provide consistency between your devices. You can provide a touchscreen phone, one with a physical keyboard, and even a clamshell, but make it easy for developers to develop one code for all your devices
5. Related to the last point, provide a single portal for users to buy applications. Users should not have to jump from shop to shop depending on what they need. Granted this is difficult with some service providers such as Verizon insisting on its own App Store.
6. (Personal Agenda) For goodness sake, provide a GSM version of your phone with global support. The rest of the world runs on GSM and users want to know that they can use their phones everywhere.
7. (personal Agenda) Do not lock your phones to a provider. We are already tied to contracts to get the phone with huge ETF fees, and most people don’t like to jump providers just for the heck of it. But we do like to be able to put in a local sim when traveling abroad and not have to spend the kids’ tuition fund on mobile fees.

How else can others compete with the iPhone? Get vocal in the comments. read more