Mobile Computing Industry
And then it all went wrong. Mobile utility providers became mobile operators. They decided they knew what their customers wanted. They turned into the electricity company trying to sell us toasters.
via The joint mobile operating system: A risible idea | Mobile Industry Review.
Great reading.
A quick update on the analysis of mobile phone profits. If the available profit[1] (i.e. excluding losses) were summed and each vendor’s profit were measured as a percent of this total, this chart would tell the story of the last three years:
Note that profit share has mostly shifted from Nokia to Apple, though Sony Ericsson and LG were also casualties and Motorola has not had anything to lose.
Some assume that the future belongs to the Koreans but we see that the relatively small amount of profit that Samsung has (less than RIM actually) has not changed much. HTC is also shown to be a steady performer but not having displaced much from competitors.
Will Android change this picture? As I’ve argued before, Android is most attractive to the unprofitable and the strategically constrained. Can having undifferentiated new products change this? As Nokia is unlikely to license Android, and RIM seems very unlikely and Apple is out of the picture, the only possible contenders are Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
Motorola and Sony Ericsson have both returned to profitability but with a very small volume Android strategy. However the incumbents fielding Android are really facing a far more sinister threat: the smaller local brands in China (e.g. ZTE) and emerging markets.
On profitability, the smaller challengers are unlikely to make a large impact, but they will constrain the profits of other licensees. The distribution of phones on a global scale is challenging without a brand, and brands are very expensive to build. It’s still possible over a longer timer frame that a small brand like HTC can emerge on a global stage. But in terms of profit capture, challengers will mostly “steal” from the already constrained big brands running with Android.
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[1] Profit is not the only measure of success and can sometimes be a deceptive indicator. For this reason I look at a longer time frame so that anomalies, seasonality and business cycles are smoothed over. As flawed as it is as a measure, the most important reason to pay attention to profit is that it’s the only fuel for growth in the long term. Companies that are consistently unprofitable (e.g. Motorola) face diminishing degrees of strategic freedom further lubricating a downward slope toward financial distress.
What do Palm, Kin, Nexus One, and the Simon have in common?
Beside being market failures, it’s the fact that they were efforts by large companies that had no business in smartphones. What’s more important is that the motivation for participation was not well thought out.
HP, Microsoft, Google and IBM tried (or are still trying) to capture a piece of the hardware revenues from smartphones, but their results were dismally poor. It turns out that with the exception of RIM, HTC and Apple, there have been no smartphone entrants which have succeeded against the incumbent voice phone makers.[1] Furthermore, Apple is the only large technology company to succeed. Studying the efforts that the successful entrants undertook shows that (1) it takes a very dedicated effort, led from the top, and (2) it takes a lot of capital or a lot of time. Those who tried and failed were not dedicated to the concept at a high enough level and were not patient enough for growth.
I think the real motivation to enter the market is rooted in vanity: appealing to the need management to feel a part of something new and important. If you are an ambitious internal champion skilled in political maneuvering, it’s fairly easy to appeal to this vanity in order to secure funding for these efforts.
This string of vanity-induced failures is not likely to end anytime soon. No doubt Dell will keep trying with the Aero, and we might see the PC companies rush in again as they did with PDAs.
We also hear today of the evolution of INQ’s product (INQ Social Mobile) into some sort of Facebook phone. However, is the Facebook phone project a vanity phone? Maybe, but the counterpoint is that this is not likely to be a smartphone. It’s more likely to be a feature phone and, as such, it’s not attempting to be something so grand or vain.
The real comparison might be to the Kindle. A specific, purpose-product built by the most motivated and best-positioned service provider. The Kindle has had some (unspecified) amount of success because it was developed to light specs and with a well-established distribution channel (amazon.com).
So although the motivation might be more sound, the challenge for Facebook will be the same as for Google: distribution. At the end of the day, without operator support the product will still remain a niche.
[1] I note here that Android and Windows Mobile are not phones but platforms and this article deals specifically with hardware.
Since wireless subscriptions in the US are running at about 100% penetration, it’s possible to classify the wireless subscribers as representative of the entire population. So it’s safe to categorize the population of the US by the phone OS they carry.
The left part of the chart shows data from Nielsen that breaks up the population by the OS to date. The right part of the chart shows my estimate for how the platform shares will evolve by this time next year. The non-OS share will still be above 50% but it looks like it might shrink even more rapidly after reaching a tipping point of half the market. (Note these charts do not show quarterly sales but installed base of each OS).
My hypothesis remains that smartphone user bases will be balanced (or fragmented, depending on your point of view) by operator portfolio decisions and chronic constraints on distribution.
Noteworthy data (with my notes in parentheses.)
Research In Motion CEO Discusses F2Q2011 Results – Earnings Call Transcript — Seeking Alpha
Management changes are usually made at the end of the year but the change, which takes effect from October 1, reflected an urgency to overhaul the struggling mobile unit.
“We made the decision to give an incoming chief executive enough time to prepare for next year,” LG Group said in a statement.
LG Elec names new CEO as mobile business struggles | Reuters.com
LG follows Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Palm and Nokia in replacing CEOs because of trouble with their smartphone efforts. Microsoft also let go Robbie Bach, head of the Mobile division.
It’s an interesting pattern at a time when the industry is facing unprecedented growth.
France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard has invited the heads of Vodafone, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) to Paris on 8 October to discuss the development of a common operating system for mobile devices. He told Le Figaro that mobile operating systems were the Trojan horse used by Google and Apple to establish relationships with mobile customers. The four operators have nearly 1 billion customers combined and the capacity to influce industry. The initiative could take several forms including a joint venture or a common apps development unit. He added that the operators aim to retake the reigns of innovation, rather than be followers.
In the interview Richard also stated that carriers have decided not to advertise the iPhone any more.
Phone carriers want to team up against Apple and Google. – HardMac Forum
This attempt at operator cooperation in software has been tried before, but it predictably failed (does anyone remember Savaje?) Symbian itself was an attempt at mobile phone vendor cooperation on systems software. There are various consortiums for “open mobile OS” based on Linux (e.g. LiMO which started as a Japanese effort). Even the Open Software Alliance is a rubber stamp body rather than an attempt at development.
Although one can safely dismiss the potential of this effort on the basis of a lack of competence, the arrogance reminds one of the rigidity in response to the disruption under way. The fact that high-speed data networks allow operator disintermediation cannot be changed by “innovation” on systems software.
But the odd thing is why even bother. The solution to taking control over the user experience and services platform is straight-forward: each operator could fork a version of Android as their own and hire a team to integrate white label services. It’s much more straight-forward than coordinating a joint effort. China Mobile have already done their own non-Google Android.
That makes a total of six devices for [AT&T] who is looking more and more like the premier Windows Phone 7 partner.
via Windows Phone Thoughts: AT&T Set to Release Multiple WP7 Devices.
With Verizon shaping Android into its image, you can read AT&T’s embrace of Microsoft as the deeply-held belief by operators that they need multi-platform balance in their portfolio.
The idea that operators will tolerate “dominance” of a platform is looking less and less tenable.
But one area where IBM won’t compete with HP is personal computers. In 2005, IBM sold its PC business to China’s Lenovo Group for $1.75 billion. The PC era, Mr. Palmisano said Tuesday, ended three or four years ago.
“We wanted to get out before it was obvious to everyone,” said Mr. Palmisano. “I couldn’t give it away today,” said Mr. Palmisano of the PC business. HP is the world’s biggest PC maker.
via IBM’s Chief Thumps H-P – WSJ.com.
Is this obvious to everyone yet?
Following up on survey data showing that up to 25 percent of Americans have moved to smartphones, here is another survey (Comscore) which shows that US smartphone users are at about 23 percent.
Comscore also surveyed European countries, and we can compare the popularity of smartphones vs. the US.
I also indexed the share to population to show the relative populations of smartphone users across these countries.
It may come as a surprise to some that smartphones are more popular in the UK, Spain and Italy than in the US. Considering that these are countries with lower levels of disposable income, and that in Italy and Spain pre-paid plans are overwhelmingly more popular. Buyers in those countries are much more likely to pay full, unsubsidized prices plus 20% or more VAT. Overall the price differential for an Italian buying a smartphone vs. an American is likely to be a factor of 5. It gets even more peculiar when you consider that many Italians have more than one phone, with overall phone line penetration above 100%.
The explanation for this remarkable appetite for smartphone goodness is the early lead that Symbian had in Europe. Buyers who entered the phone market ten years ago became accustomed to upgrading their Nokia phones. Symbian phones were aspirationally positioned as feature-rich camera and messaging devices. Many were also purchased without data plans and were thus used as high-end feature phones. In other words, consumers in those countries were comfortable paying full price for unlocked Nokia devices and using them with multiple SIM cards.
This can be seen in the share of Symbian in these charts:
The data points to how normative behavior evolved and how different that can be even among culturally aligned Western nations. When looking at Asia and South America, it gets even more interesting.
Whereas in Europe it was Symbian, in the US RIM got the ball rolling.
The contribution of these platforms in shaping expectations, not to mention pricing, for the iPhone and Android should be noted.
