Category Archives: Mobile

"Write Once…" is Anti-Customer

February 21, 2013
Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms, Technology & Execution
23 Comments

Just as in the ’90s, there’s a bunch of hype these days around solving the cross-platform development problem. Mobile platform fragmentation is killing developers, and if only every device supported some common language or technology engine we could all Write Once and Run Anywhere. If only. WORA was, is, and always will be, a fallacy. WORA reminds me of the mole in whack-a-mole. It just keeps popping up and the realities of competing platform vendors …Continue reading →

Apps are Dead. Long Live Experiences.

November 26, 2012
Branding, Mobile
3 Comments

I like to get people’s attention by asserting “apps are dead”. I do this because it causes people to pause and think about what “apps” really are. After Apple started the app explosion in 2008 most apps were primarily client-side code. Today, however, it is almost impossible to find an app that does not rely on at least some Internet based service. In fact the apps most people use most of the time are almost …Continue reading →

Computer Vision Explosion

November 4, 2012
Mobile
5 Comments

We are about to see an explosion in the use of computer vision systems. If you thought Kinect was cool or you think Creepy Cameraman is scary, the technology right around the corner, and its impact on our lives will blow you away. We’ve all dreamt of the day when natural user interface (NUI) systems were “real”. For example, in 1984 I built, as a high school project a system that allowed my school to …Continue reading →

If This Looks like This in 3 Weeks, We’ll Know The Answer

October 31, 2012
Mobile
5 Comments

This is the VerizonWireless Smartphone device page as of today. This is the “Featured” view, which means Verizon decides what devices appear at the top of the page. In about three weeks, if there aren’t a few Live Tiles a the top of the page then the canary is dead.

LockerGnome Guest Post on Mobile Fragmentation

October 22, 2012
Mobile, Platforms
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Today LockerGnome ran a guest post by yours truly titled “The Fragmentation of Mobile Fragmentation”. This is a follow-on post to my post focused on Android in January, intended to express my opinions on the broader mobile ecosystem. (Note, as of right now, the post on LockerGnome does not have my byline. They are working on fixing that). “Mobile fragmentation is going to get significantly worse over the next few years. While this fragmentation will …Continue reading →

Revisiting the Mullet: Why Surface is not a MS Business

October 21, 2012
Mobile
20 Comments

A few weeks ago a bunch of people (who should know better) were running around like chickens with their heads cut off yelping “Surface will be $199!” Exasperated, I wrote a post1 describing just how idiotic a concept that would be. I showed that even if Microsoft was serious about Surface being a real business, it could never sell it for $199 this fall. I promised to wear a Kasey Keller like mullet to Build …Continue reading →

The Market Sides of the Mobile Ecosystem

October 18, 2012
Mobile, Platforms
12 Comments

I’ve been using a taxonomy to describe the market-sides of the mobile ecosystem that looks like this:     Up until now, my writing on the mobile ecosystem has been focused on smartphones, because their adoption and sales dominated. Given the season of the tablet has started, I need to make some points about how tablets relate. Even though we use the term “mobile” to describe scenarios involving both phones and tablets, before I go …Continue reading →

Mobile is Mobile

October 18, 2012
Mobile
4 Comments

In the past, I’ve instinctively associated “mobile” with “phone”, as in something that has cellular voice as a primary function. But most of the world has, apparently, decided to include tablets (but, curiously, not laptops) in this definition. I did an informal poll on Twitter. I asked: HiveMind Poll: Answer Yes/No: When someone says “mobile” (as in mobile industry) that includes tablets. — Charlie Kindel (@ckindel) October 18, 2012 The vast majority of respondents said …Continue reading →

Motorola is a Sunk Cost (and a sinking Titanic)

October 5, 2012
Mobile
1 Comment

M.G. Slieger wrote, regarding the horrific “deal” Google got in buying Motorola: Google bought the Titanic. And they bought it when it was already underwater. – @parislemon This is cute (and true), not the right analogy because it makes people think Google bought Motorola for Motorola’s business. They did not. Google paid $12.5B to become a patent-superpower like Apple and Microsoft. They had failed in getting the Nortel patents (or were thwarted, depending on your …Continue reading →

The Conversation Amongst MSFT, NOK, VZW, & ATT

October 4, 2012
Mobile
11 Comments

NOK to MSFT: We really need to get all major carriers at WP8 launch. MSFT to NOK: Agree! Let’s make it happen. NOK to VZW: Do the 920 for launch! VZW to NOK: Well, ok. Maybe. MSFT to VZW: Do WP8! VZW to MSFT: One word: Kin. MSFT to NOK: Hey, Elop, beg them please! NOK to MSFT: Ok, working on it… Meanwhile. MSFT/NOK to ATT: Do the 920 at launch. ATT: Sure. We’re in. …Continue reading →

Windows Phone’s Canary in the Coal Mine

September 1, 2012
Mobile
1 Comment

Few believe Nokia will survive as a company if Windows Phone 8 isn’t successful. How can we tell if Windows Phone and Nokia will live or die? Coal miners used to take canaries down into the mines to detect deadly gasses. If the canary suddenly dropped dead it was a warning to the miners they were about to die too. The canary in the coal mine for Windows Phone is the sales force responsible for …Continue reading →

Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins

August 30, 2012
Business, Mobile
2 Comments

Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they should stay focused on technology because this post is seriously absurd: “More than two years after the introduction of the iPad, Samsung appears to be very confident in the tablet market and is shooting for margins that exceed Apple’s iPad levels.” – Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Has Bigger Profit Margin Than iPad, Aug 27, 2012 MSRP stands for Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price. It is the price a …Continue reading →

My “The Future of Mobile” Talk (Video/Slides)

August 28, 2012
Mobile, Platforms
6 Comments

I just wrapped up my “The Future of Mobile” talk at www.thinkspace.com.  I had a great time giving the talk and the event was sold out. Thanks to all that attended. While I’ve written about the content and I talk about the topic with consulting clients regularly, this was the first time I had given this particular talk in public. I thought it would go over well, and I sensed it did. If you missed …Continue reading →

The Future of Mobile

August 26, 2012
Mobile, Platforms
4 Comments

Video & Slides from this talk are here: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/08/28/my-the-future-of-mobile-talk-videoslides/   I will be presenting my thoughts on the future of mobile this Tuesday, August 28, 2012, from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at Thinkspace in Redmond. If you’ve read my blog you know I have some pretty strong thoughts about how the mobile industry actually works. My goal for Tuesday is to drill into some of those ideas further.  In my experience most industry watchers are seriously …Continue reading →

Apps Must Be Cross Platform

July 24, 2012
Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms
15 Comments

This is a copy of a guest post I wrote for GeekWire. View the original here. Maybe there are a few Robert Scobles out there who still believe that a significant number of successful apps in the future will be unique to any one client platform. Connected experiences across all devices is where the growth is and it would be insane for anyone, from a major brand to an early-stage startup to believe they don’t …Continue reading →

Wanna Compete with Apple? Focus on Experiences.

June 7, 2012
Branding, Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms
8 Comments

TL;DR Apple’s insane profitability has the other big guys jealous and freaked out. None are stupid enough to try to compete with Apple on Apple’s terms. The way to beat Apple is to redefine the game by making apps irrelevant and by making mobile just a piece of the equation. The “Experience = Stuff / Time” model is a great way break the conversation down to really understand what is going to happen. In 1999 …Continue reading →

The Five Big Guys

April 15, 2012
Business, Mobile, Platforms
17 Comments

I’m working on writing up my thesis on the future of the consumer technology business and have convinced myself that there are 5 companies that stand to dominate. I call them The Five Big Guys. This post lays the ground work for that thesis by discussing these 5 companies. In 1989 I read the tea-leaves and made the call that Windows was going to dominate and OS/2 was going to fail. I felt I was …Continue reading →

Experience = Stuff / Time

April 2, 2012
Branding, Customer & Product, Leadership, Mobile, Startups
9 Comments

The real value in creating new businesses is in delivering customer experiences. The ubiquitous nature of the web, devices, and social networks means successful companies in the future will understand this. The question is “what do people mean when they say ‘experience’”? This post provides an answer. Over the years, I’ve developed a mental model that helps me and my teams think about new businesses from a very customer focused perspective. I refer to it …Continue reading →

Brand is a Critical Part of the End-to-End Experience

April 1, 2012
Branding, Business, Customer & Product, Mobile, Startups
4 Comments

A commenter on another of my posts asked me to explain further why I think “brand is as much a part of the end-to-end experience as the user interface, device, OS, apps, and services.” I took it as a challenge to actually get my thoughts on the subject down in writing. So here we go… I use the following mental model when thinking through end-to-end user experiences: Or, since this is not real math, in words: …Continue reading →

All of these Operating Systems are Fundamentally the Same

February 26, 2012
Mobile
1 Comment

Another video interview I did for GLG Research at CES (another one here). In this one I babble about mobile device OSs and voice a few of my opinions about the current mobile operating system battles. Near the end (3:15) I talk about the point I care about the most: Users will start to care less about device operating systems and more about being able to experience services across all of their devices. I regularly …Continue reading →