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Matthaus Krzykowski at Venturebeat:

Since the launch of Apple’s iPhone in June 2007, Nokia’s share price has fallen by almost two-thirds, decreasing the company value by around $65 billion. At last week’s Nokia World, Elop reiterated that, like his former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer, his credo of choice is “developers, developers, developers” and he intends to instill this credo into Nokia.

It will be interesting to see what Elop does with Nokia. But this race for developers is starting to steal focus from what’s really important. Nokia needs a  smartphone that nails mail, maps, surfing and music – not 10,000 fart apps.

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I have had a hard time defining iOS. Is there something that is fundamentally different in iOS from OS X or Windows 7, and if so, what? Is it the lack of a file system? Is it that it is built for touch-based devices? Is it that it runs on mobile devices?

Maybe all of them. Or maybe none of them. iOS certainly is different.

Yes, I just compared the iOS to a Spork. I totally went there.

Looking back a few years it is easy to see the design considerations that Apple faced:

1. Touch-based mobile device with all that implies (limited battery, screen size)
2. Restrictions from AT&T on what applications are allowed on the device

Over time the second restriction has become less important. As iOS now runs on non-mobile phone devices limiting apps to what AT&T approves is not as important. I think it is just a matter of time before Apple will make it possible to install apps outside of App Store. Ofcourse, App Store will still remain the prime sales channel for anyone selling apps or trying to advertise free apps for a long time since it is well known and available by default on all iOS devices.

Since launch iOS has “graduated” and now powers the iPad which more resembles a Netbook then a mobile phone. Suddenly, a lot of the requirements that were specific to iOS running on a small mobile device became less important. The only requirement that did remain important was maintaining a long battery life.  If you look at a tear down of the iPad you can see that it is basically just a big battery with a screen and a processor. And when it comes to battery life, the iPad always wins against similarily priced netbooks or laptops.

But a new requirement has emerged: using your iPhone or iPad as a replacement for a laptop. So suddenly you have a touch based device that needs to maintain long battery life but still be usable for all the tasks that we do on a Netbook. This is where it gets interesting.

The most obvious and most discussed issue is the App Store – only applications approved by Apple can run on the device. But it runs deeper than that. Even if apps were set free on iOS there would stil be restrictions on what types of apps you can build (without resorting to undocumented API:s or circumventing the system). For example, on OS X you could easily create an application that allows you to run widgets or have a process that does number crunching in the background.

And I think this is the key area where iOS differs from other desktop operating systems. All apps fit in a certain niche predefined by iOS. Making a music playing app? There is a specific way to integrate that into iOS. Making a location aware app? Get cell-id updates when in background and GPS when in foreground. Making a game? Use Game Center.

It’s like the iOS developers are trying to foresee all available types of apps and then figure out how to make those fit into the OS. I think it’s good. It has a clear value proposition towards consumers: make similar apps work the same way. On the other hand, some will argue that it hinders innovation on the platform. And that certainly is true. But if a new type of app surfaces on Android handsets you can be sure that support for that will be integrated into iOS.

Tomi T Ahonen:

Mobile can drive visitors to your store. But please don’t think of the idea of the Tom Cruise movie ‘Minority Report’ and its style of personalized spam ads delivered by location. That idea of location-based ads delivered to random walkers-by is a myth, it is economically not viable and it is hated by consumers.

Obviously, I was not alone in thinking “proximity marketing” is a bad service that have been marketed wrong by the mobile marketing firms.

French newspaper Le Figaro:

[The operators] are motivated by a view that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems have become a “Trojan horse” for these companies to establish their own relationships with mobile customers, reducing the significance of the operators in the value chain.

I guess this was just a matter of time before the operators wanted their own OS. And they have an interesting definition of a trojan horse: a trojan horse that operators are fighting over to have.

IF they decide to launch their own OS it will be interesting to see which path they go down.

• LiMo: Already used by Vodafone for Vodafone360, but eventually cancelled
• MeeGo: No traction whatsoever.
• Symbian: Possibly, will make Nokia excited too. Probably their best choice.
• Android fork: In theory possible. But Android is nothing without the Google Services closely tied to it.

This whole situation reminds me of a quote from WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play”.

(Via MBM)

I hope you enjoy them!

Tomi T Ahonen:

Imagine, its just about the ultimate job? If you were in the IT industry in the early 1990s, and you were given the job of CEO of Dell, the world’s biggest PC maker – and with it came the job of Toshiba, the world’s biggest laptop PC maker – where the bulk of the revenues were in desktops (Dell) and the future of PCs and more of the profits, was in laptops. And as a bonus the job came with being CEO of Microsoft, the biggest operating system that ran on all those PCs? Thats a bit what the job of CEO of Nokia is today.

I don’t remember Dell spending five years selling laptops with an ageing operating system. Dell already had the defacto standard among operating systems: Windows. Nokia’s future operating system is still undecided: a revamped version of Symbian or the brand-new untested MeeGo?

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Kwon Kang-hyun, VP of Samsung’s content service team:

According to a Dow Jones Newswires report, the South Korean vendor’s online market called Samsung Apps currently has 4,000 apps available, and the company aims to hit at least 10,000 by the end of the year. Kwon Kang-hyun, VP of Samsung’s content service team, noted that this target is dependent upon increasing the number of phones available that support its proprietary operating system, bada.

Why do they need to increase the number of phones? Apple has 250,000+ apps with only one phone.

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I remember seeing the original Tron movie in 1992, ten years after it’s original release. I was amazed to see a movie where geeks were the cool people.

The original trailer is an amazing video that documents the early 80s perfectly in so many ways. But  most importantly it embodies the belief that computers will once rule the world. To be honest I kind of miss the broad belief of computers soon becoming evil and trying to take over the world. Now we just take computers for granted instead.

Now compare that with the trailer for the new movie coming out in December, Tron Legacy. No more focus on computers trying to take over the world (sadly).

Oh and did I mention that Jeff Bridges is Clu 2.0?

And that Daft Punk is making the soundtrack?

And it is being filmed in IMAX 3D?

And that that Disney is creating a theme park named “Electronica” just to celebrate the launch of Tron Legacy?

Did you hear that sound? That’s the sound of my head exploding.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Its an interesting proposition. There is alot Facebook could do if they had their own phone. How about free IP telephony calls between Facebook users?

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Purnima Kochikar at the keynote of Nokia World:

Ovi Store update. 190+ countries, 120+ nokia devices, and supports credit card and operator billing. “Given a choice, consumers choose operator billing 2 out of 3 times.”

That’s alot of people paying extra for the convenience of not having to input their credit card details.

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