Monday January 15, 2007
iPredictions for the iPhone No doubt the iPhone will be a hit and help to change the balance of power between wireless operators and handset makers. In the US, I can see why many folks might jump for the iPhone. Still I predict that the iPhone will not be the market defining gadget that the iPod was- at least until Apple recognizes and addresses some obvious shortcomings. Here is why:
1. No Java! Yeah, Apple has redefined the music player landscape single handedly, but even it cannot beat the momentum behind the billions of phones that support mobile Java. Looking at just one segment of the market- Java games downloads- its unclear why Apple chose not to play in it. Sure, OSX is cool as a development platform but it is absolutely no contest to J2ME. For my personal cellphone, that support was instrumental in my being able to download the free and capable Gmail mobile client.
2. The GSM market in the US isn't the place for mobile
innovation! Only 2 of the 4 major network operators use GSM. Furthermore, under their iron grip there is little incentive for the average user to go out and buy a particular handset. Many folks typically first choose the network operator and then pick a locked handset from a limited list. This is opposite to the experience in many fast-growing worldwide mobile markets- where handsets are not subsidized and not sold locked. In other words, what if one likes the iPhone but does not want to (or cannot for coverage or other reason) use Cingular? Will the iPhone single handedly cause a move away from CDMA, and away from the other GSM operator to Cingular?
Finally, US network operators currently charge exorbitantly for a data plan compared to European or
Asian operators causing few to use data services.
Will the iPhone encouarge Cingular to make its data plans more affordable? I sure hope Apple isn't planning to sell both a network and software locked handset in
the rest of the world!
3. My own cellphone is a Sony Ericsson W810i with a 2 GB Memory Stick Duo in it. It has a 2 MP Auto Focus camera with photo light, a music player that supports MP3 and AAC, a WAP 2.0 compliant browser, Bluetooth 1.2, and USB synchronization (that works perfectly well with Solaris Nevada!). And did I mention the hundreds of mp3 songs on this phone? All this for under $300. Because it is unlocked and has Quad frequency GSM support it can be used virtually anywhere in the world. Other than WiFi support, I guess I don't see a single missing feature that would make it worthwhile to upgrade to the iPhone at $499. At that price point one can get a network unlocked Nokia N-series handset with WiFi support. The recently introduced N95 even supports high-speed networks, GPS and a 5 MP camera. In other words, Apple will have plenty of competition from well established market players who have strong, mutually beneficial relationships with network operators around the world, quite unlike the situation in the digital music player market when Apple introduced the iPod.
Sure, none of the above are significant issues for the iPhone. After all this is a 1.0 product and Apple has done well building on its first iPod. To the extent that Apple recognizes and addresses some of these issues, the iPhone can only help to jump start the maturing of the GSM market in the US and hasten Apple's transition to a consumer electronics company.
( Jan 15 2007, 07:29:56 PM PST )
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Monday June 13, 2005
Sony PSP and device convergence I was one of the hundreds lining up at my neighborhood Best Buy to snap up the Sony PSP (a.k.a the Playstation Portable). I would have loved to be at the official launch party at the Sony Metreon or the main one in New York City. Well, at least the weather in San Jose is much nicer this time of the year than SF or NYC! Now I must admit that when it comes to handheld gaming consoles, I'm a newbie. My experience has been limited to watching my 7 year son showing off his Pokedex on his Game Boy Advance SP.
But a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan changed all that. I was fortunate to have time to visit the Sony Building in Ginza. For a gadget freak like me, I thought I was in heaven! The very latest technologies- in some cases- technologies that the rest of the world- outside Japan- may not see for months, or years.
One such gadget was the PSP. At that time the PSP- had only been launched in Japan and sold out almost overnight. The US launch was still a month away. But the console just blew me away. The quality of the 16:9 format screen was a work of art- the videos were flawless, the games engrossing. And it had built-in Wi-Fi , which meant I might even be able to use it to browse/email at my neighborhood Starbucks!
Fast forward to the present. While the PSP has lived up to much of its hype for video and gaming, Sony has still kept the PSP largely a restricted proprietary device, whether its internet access, or using the "universal media disks". Of course, some folks quickly figured out a way to use a built-in browser in one of Sony's own games- Wipeout Pure to surf the web using the built-in Wi-Fi. Isn't it interesting though that that's its not so much a PSP hack, but a well known DNS hack - record spoofing, which is both very old and very common.
All you have to do is to setup a DNS server serving the "hacked" resource records and get a DNS resolver (read browser) to somehow point to it. In this case, of course, you are telling your resolver you want that alternate DNS resolution! The PSP resolver still makes a DNS request for www.scea.com as before and it thinks its fetching the address record for www.scea.com, but of course its not! Its getting the IP address where you setup your own website! Unfortunately these types of attacks can be minimized but not entirely eliminated until DNSSEC allows all DNS servers to have cryptographically signed records. (The BIND 9 DNS server, newly available in Solaris 10, has some helpful features such as no automatic glue fetching, random id pool, ability to create "split" views of your namespace, and so on.)
So what next for the PSP platform and handheld gaming in general? Based on purely anecdotal data and speculation, I believe that handheld consoles will continue to "grow up" as baby boomers and much of the "developed" world ages. The traditional handheld market already appears to be declining rapidly and Sony itself exited from this segment in most worldwide markets. This means the Sonys of the world will put more non-gaming functionality into these types of consoles. After all, the past ten years have been characterizted by vendors putting Wi-Fi into PDAs, bluetooth into cellphones, PDAs in phones (or vice-versa), cameras into phones, GPS into PDAs, gaming consoles in phones and so on. However in my opinion this has been akin to throwing darts and seeing which ones stick, than any real movement towards convergence and ubiquity. The next decade could see some real convergence emerge with functions customers like to see on the same device coming together, while the ones not particularly interesting falling back to smaller, niche markets. The only question is what will those functions be!
( Jun 13 2005, 11:24:19 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]
