Versatile Amphibian

Some thoughts on the Playbook 2.0 delay , since it's topical. I think the 2.0 upgrade issue is embarrassing for RIM and will be bad for their relations with the developer community, but it’s a small part of a wider dynamic in the tablet industry. If you look at the distribution of tablet sales so far, it almost exactly follows the distribution of wealth in the population, which suggests that early adopters are buying as a luxury and therefore buying on appearance, brand and reputation as much as they’re buying on the technical features of the platform. Software is definitely a major part of the tablet experience, but actually the Playbook (or Android equivalents) are not significantly more or less user friendly than the iPad in this respect. Where all of the competitors are currently falling down is that they’re taking the iPad on head-to-head with high concept products at the same price point, but without the great marketing and retail experience that Apple offer. So everyone is p...

Besides a slight naming problem , there were few surprises in the launch of the Lumia 800 at Nokia World today. I was a bit unimpressed by the stage show, which felt very forced, but the hardware looks good and, according to early benchmarks it offers very respectible performance. A few thoughts from me: I think Nokia should have been more aggressive in its pricing. I'm firmly of the belief that the mass market smartphone customer makes a simple choice. If they can afford an iPhone, then they buy one - its a trusted choice in a rather confusing world, not to mention its status symbol er... status. Those who can't afford iPhone then choose a monthly payment they can afford and go from there. By pricing the 800 at the same point as iPhone, I think NOK are in for an uphill battle. Rebuilding their brand requires shifting a lot of units and becoming the "next best option" after iPhone; not going head to head with Apple just yet. If it was me, I'd have accepted much l...

A slow month for announcements in September, perhaps a result of Ramadan and vacation season in much of the Western world. Only deal of significant note was Airtel's $30Mn purchase of a 3G licence in Rwanda and announcement of $70Mn of additional investment to build the network. Of the 39 stories on African telecoms, 29 related to mobile access networks, 6 backhaul and 3 to fixed line networks. Outside of basic access, number portability is generating a lot of buzz, with Ghana in particular having notable success in enabling customers to port.

I found this story remarkable. The Chinese authorities seem to be taking a more and more hardline approach to international businesses and markets, which flies in the face of the "common knowledge" that exposure to free market capitalism will inevitably soften the regime's economic and political control on the economy. Many of my clients are seeing toughening up of import restrictions, increasing requirements for technology transfer and great efforts being made to replicate or substitute technologies in the ICT space. TD-SCDMA is a great example of the latter, which has been pursued despite its obvious flaws, principally because its use avoids patent payments to foreign enterprises. I'm increasingly of the believe that technology companies should regard China as less of a market opportunity and more of a threat. I can't believe I've just written that, but I hear too many stories such as the above regarding market shaping and asymettric competition to ignore t...