Apple iTV - TV set concept

But can assume the 5 or 6 areas where Apple will try to offer an outstanding user experience. I believe these areas will be :

• Gesture or voice based control
• Seamless and easy integration with other Apple devices to stream content
• Video call service based on face time
• Video on Demand and Music through iTunes
• Browsing
• Applications based on objective-C
• And Games

The last one is the tricky one. Will Apple TV set have enough power to run more than casual games? I think so as it will be a key differentiator and one of the justification of the price gap with other brands.

Happy new year !

The most admitted order of magnitude for a Facebook fan is around 1€ . A lottery with an iPad prize worth 500€ should bring around 500 fans. So your company 1M Facebook fan base is more or less a 1 M€ asset.

Matrix syndrome...

It reads:

Keyboard failure
2,66 Mh Quad-core processor (…)

They should try to make it funnier like some 404 error pages from tutoriallounge.com:

Blue pill or red pill? That’s your call.

There are 2 tracks that ISP can follow:

1. The first is to offer a 2-tiered service. Over the Top (OTT) services coming with SmartTV have no QoS whereas they guarantee the QoS of the services coming from their STB.
2. The second track is to push further their STB experience with more features. It is the track followed by Free in France offering a STB featuring an Atom processor, a full browser, a remote control with an accelerometer, a blue ray player, etc. On the other hand TV set makers cannot compete as they cannot subsidize all these features. With these specs the STB is more like a smartphone capable of running games and advanced applications. E.g. the new Freebox revolution can run Asphalt 6 Adreline game (picture from last Aug.).

By increasing its specs the STB is now eating in the console plate and some console like the Xbox is starting to feature interactive services. Frontiers between these product categories are blurring.
Some small ISPs are currently considering another route. As very soon, TV sets will be able to display multicast streams for the additional TV channels, they want to withdraw back. Their plan is to save some CAPEX in not offering any STB at all. They are just assuming their pipe positioning.

Just to give a few figures, this blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011.

Visitor map 2011

Most of you came from the United Kingdom. The United States & France were not far behind…

See you in 2012 !

The first is for TV manufacturers: It is really painful when you switch on your TV set to have a nice message ‘Please wait. Downloading new firmware…’, because when you switch on your TV usually it is to watch a program and usually it is right now! The firmware update should happen when you switch off your TV. Unlike a laptop you are not in a hurry to move your TV. I don’t like either the Windows update process when you want to switch off your PC and already late for an appointment. But that’s another story.

The 2 other main pitfalls are for CSP.

A TV is a video first device. So when you land on the home page of a service a video should fire at once and maintain the user in a soft lean back experience.

The last one is the click experience. It is tedious to navigate a page with just 4 arrow keys. The end user should be able to navigate using a minimum of click and if possible in a single page. The loading of page takes 1 or 2 seconds which is a time end user aren’t used to anymore. So when designing your service use the colors buttons but not the red one which is reserved for HbbTV services.

Even though TV manufacturers have had always a very careful speech, some enthusiastic futurologists were predicting a big tsunami that will smash every other way to consume the Internet in the home.

Technology Hype Cycle

Since that time, Google have failed to launch its first version of Google TV. The market is still waiting for the first Apple TV set due in June 2012 apparently. Rumors are growing…

The first Content Service Providers are a bit disappointed by the Return On Investment of their TV first services.

I think we are the deception zone of the Hype Curve, but the connected TV is there and there for a long time. It will not replace Tablets or PC but TV connected TV services will find their audience.

The main showstoppers today to the growth Smart TV are

1. Distribution

Shops don’t have internet connectivity to show off properly connected TV services. Sales assistants need to be trained properly

2. Monetization

• Monetization of Smart TV services are an issue as there is little or no advertising method.
• There is no payment mean natively integrated in the TV set that would enable a 2 click purchase (1 click and a PIN code confirmation).

The latest figures of smart TVs that have been really connected to the Internet are growing to an impressive 50% from 20% 6 month ago.  For sure connected TV will find their place in our digital lives. It will just take a bit longer than expected.

> red stars rising

ZTE seems to have moved to the phase 2 of their plan: establish their brand in the market. Here is a poster in Paris’ metro promoting the ZTE latest devices: the affordable Racer II and their current flagship device the Skate.

ZTE poster in Paris Métro

The claim is not ground-beaking “Smart Phones for Smart People” as the poster itself but there is a will to establish the brand.

Next phases will include create some compelling and proprietary service offer and a ZTE user experience. As they are moving at a very quick pace I wouldn’t be too surprised if it happens in the next 18 months.

Windows 8 transforms the way we see tablets and computers. There will be no clear frontier between a PC and a tablet anymore. The tablet will be able to change its finger friendly UI into a mouse friendly UI when docked with a mouse and keyboard.

On this video I shot you can see the Metro UI and a switch to the PC legacy UI.

In the past we used to think a machine = a UI = a processor. This paradigm is no longer valid.

Now an OS will be able to run on different chipset architectures (ARM or x86) and to run different UIs depending on the context.

It is already the case with UBUNTU 11.10 which runs on X86 and ARM.

I really love my Toshiba AC100 running Ubuntu. OK it’s really sluggish due to the lack of RAM (only 500MB) so it’s more or less a mono task computer but never the less it works. For more information on Ubuntu on ARM > Ubuntu Wiki

One can expect next year a revival of the long lasting war between MAC and PC. I expect Apple to merge its MacOS and iOS for Tablet UIs into something new that will combine the 2 product categories. Apple will most probably manage it smoothly to avoid damaging its healthy iPad business as it did in the past managing the transition from iPod to iPhone.

Microsoft which has no presence in the tablet space will be far more aggressive in merging the 2 segments. The unknown factor remains Google. Will Google be able to strengthen its Android value proposition and combine it with Chrome OS?

This video is a pitch of a revolutionary device that will be your knwoledge center, called Book.

And this website is all you need to know on iHam, a new kind of silicon valey Ham with a different design.  (Thanks Miguel!)

iHam family of product screenshot

> http://www.ijam.es/

Enjoy !

The ratios between platforms are surprisingly stable from one CSP to the other.

a mobile downloads benchmark

The ratio they get is roughly 1 download on Windows Phone for 10 downloads on Android for 100 downloads for iOS.

One can expect the ratio to improve on Windows Phone with the upcoming launch of the first Nokia Windows Phone mobile due next week. Never the less these ratios help to make up one’s mind in term of platform priorities.

MS Office on Best Buy UK

In my mind the cost of software, especially the “Office-like” ones were quite common, hence cheaper. I imagined that with all these smartphones, consumers were now expecting software at around 5€ with a maximum of 15€ for essential productivity software. I was wondering where this misperception was coming from so I started to investigate.

Actually when it comes to Macs, Apple is selling its software at a quite reasonable price both on Macs and iPads.

Office software on Mac

Android prices are quite similar

Office software on Android

or :

More office softwares on ANdroid

More surprising, the MS Office suite comes for free on every Windows Phone 7 device

Office on Windows Phone 7

And of course one can use the LibreOffice suite for free on Linux, Mac or Windows7.

So to put it in a nutshell in a table :

Office like software price table

I believe the price of tierA software, like the Office suites, will stabilize around the 50€ mark in the next years. This price drop might accelerate with the launch of Windows 8 and the blurring of the frontier between device categories.

Barclays Mobile Banking poster ad

Visa is providing in Europe a safe way to shop in the internet. You get a One Time Password by SMS on your registered mobile number to confirm your internet purchase.

HSBC is giving to their customer a Secure Key to secure access to their Internet Banking account. HSBC customers now need to have this nice calculator looking device in their pockets. They enter their PIN and get a One Time Password to access the HSBC internet website.

HSBC Secure Key

What if this device has been integrated securely into a SIM card? You launch the application, enter your PIN and here you get the OTP. It would replace the SMS to secure your Internet purchases and this piece of electronics.

This, would just require some bank & telco cooperation.

Another friend sent me this nice video from Tesco Korea with a great vision of m-commerce:

Even though Tesco is exiting the Japanese market, a smart approach seems to make the difference in Korea.