They Should Be Business Tools

A few weeks ago, Google decided to quietly sunset Google Glass. They never said it publicly and in fact they might be considering another strategy for the device, but by all measures, Google Glass as we know it has failed. There are many theories for the reasons of this failure ranging from privacy concerns to the lack of social acceptance for walking around with geeky glasses. My theory is that the failure may be related more to the $1,500 price tag as consumer gadgets are simply not supposed to be that expensive.

Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass

That’s perhaps really the problem. Google Glass was certainly too expensive as a gadget for consumers but it likely wouldn’t have been too expensive as a business productivity tool. Most companies wouldn’t have a problem with the devices price, particularly with the customary volume discounts, if it demonstrated tangible benefits.

I can think of numerous business applications for Google Glass – from instructions while operating or repairing complex machinery, to patient records during surgery, to production data on the assembly line and supplier data in the warehouse.

But none of that was ever a priority apparently. Instead, Google put all their efforts into marketing Glass to consumers. The consumers may represent a greater opportunity in terms of volume but the enterprise market may represent a greater opportunity to optimize revenue. Just ask Microsoft.

There have been other technologies that I thought would have benefited from this strategy. Microsoft Kinect for Xbox comes to mind. While popular with gamers, the novelty of gaming via full body motion control is now wearing off. Let’s face it, most gamers want to shoot at aliens while sitting on their sofa and the Kinect is not the optimal weapon for that.

I would have hoped that we’d see Kinect being used in business – the repair technicians with oily hands reviewing designs, foremen at construction sites reviewing blue prints, surgeons with sterile hands reviewing patient records, farmers with dirty hands, lab technicians working in gloves – there are many use cases for gesture-based interaction.

When gestures are not practical, voice-based interaction might be appropriate. This is another technology that might have a greater application in the professional world than in the consumer space, at least given the current state of voice recognition. While the consumers relish in finding out the shortcomings of the still relatively new technologies such as Apple Siri or Amazon Echo, the business use cases may be more feasible. The business vocabulary is more precise and predictable, particularly in the given context. Professionals usually have to learn their business vocabulary as part of their job training and that makes it easier and less ambiguous.

Consumers usually resort to calling a company’s 800-number only after they failed to accomplish something online. At that point, we are exposing the already frustrated consumer to a voice recognition system that is far less mature than the web site and expect it to deliver a great experience. People usually don’t call in to do something that can be done with a smartphone app – like to check their account balance. In the business world, on the other hand, users are already trained to use a fairly precise language and their voice commands are usually in the context of a specific data set or business process.

“I need the Q3 revenue data for Europe broken down by product group” is much easier for a machine to understand and act upon than: “I want to buy a companion ticket for my spouse using my miles to match an already issued ticket purchased by my employer”. This relatively common task requires many additional data points - ticket number, flight numbers, account number, name and DOB of the traveler, seating preferences, credit card number, etc. – and that is very difficult for a voice-driven system to piece together.

Apple Watch. Yes, I want one!

A few weeks ago, Apple launched its new Watch. By all measures, it is already a success even though it won’t ship for another few days. The demo by the Apple team was very impressive and the press reviews are glowing. I have no doubt that the Apple Watch will become a success. But I wonder about the practical use cases of the Watch for consumers. So far, most wearable devices have focused on fitness but that market is very saturated already. The serious athletes will be hard to separate from their specialized Garmin, Timex, and Suunto watches. The hobby athletes are well served by the Fitbit, Jawbone, and Nike Fuel fitness trackers or they simply keep using their smartphones.

I can’t help but to wonder about the business use cases for the Apple Watch. There are many possibilities – approving process tasks, participating in simple collaboration activities, delivering business context-relevant information, etc. Smart watches are looking for a killer app and sharing your heartbeat is probably not it.  I suspect that we could find it sooner in business rather than the consumer space. 

Google Glass page on March 31, 2015

RIM: One Year Later

Thorsten Heins, RIM CEO

What's up with RIM lately? A year ago, the company was pronounced dead. The revenue was collapsing, the company was losing market share, and the press was having a field day with delivering disaster stories about the BlackBerry maker. When Thorsten Heins was named the new CEO in January 2012, I was cynically thinking that here was another of those German technology company CEOs who will show us how to run a business the "proper way". Just remember Michael Spindler at Apple, Eckhart Pfeiffer at Compaq, and Leo Apotheker at HP!

However, Mr. Heins has so far proven me wrong. While it is way too soon to speak about a turnaround, he has clearly managed to calm the company down. The revenue has stabilized, the string of bad news about various mishaps and calamities has seized and the press is yet again buzzing with excitement about the next model of BlackBerry. As a result, the stock has bounced back from the summer lows.

Living in Waterloo, Ontario, where RIM is the largest employer in the region, I can also see that the doomsday scenarios haven't come true. There has been no massive exodus. The housing market is relatively strong and houses are selling fast. No thousands of “For Sale” or “Going Out of Business” signs. When recruiting, I see more resumes with RIM experience than a year or two ago but there are no RIM bread lines at the local Starbucks. After the layoffs last year, most of the workforce has been quickly absorbed by the more than 850 high technology companies in Waterloo; my employer OpenText among them.

The RIM stock has bounced back from its low levels 

Sure, RIM is far from being out of the wood works. The company continues losing market share and several of the big RIM customers have publicly jumped the ship. The BlackBerry PlayBooks has been officially declared a flop and working on a BlackBerry phone comes today with the same image as driving a Ford Crown Victoria. The pressure is on. All eyes are now on the soon to be released BlackBerry 10 which will be the most significant innovation since RIM switched from a 2-way pager to the BlackBerry smartphone. All the chips are on one number: the BlackBerry 10. It has to be a success - RIM won't get a third chance.

So far, the BlackBerry 10 looks solid. There is plenty of buzz about it and the "leaked BlackBerry 10 picture" campaign is working like a charm. The technology blogs are loving it and reporting about it daily. Most of those reports are very positive. While I am not much into following celebrities on social media, I noticed that RIM has engaged them as well - just the other day, the marathon champion Paula Radcliffe tweeted about her BlackBerry 10 crush. If the BlackBerry 10 fails, it won't be RIM Marketing's fault.

BlackBerry 10 (Photo: closari on Flickr)

RIM is now finally doing the right thing to address their key weakness - the shortage of applications. Last weekend, RIM was running another “portathon” and actually offering cash to developers for porting their apps to the BlackBerry OS. While $100 per application might not be much, I suspect it is more than what some of those apps earn in their lifetime. This is something that even Microsoft has yet to learn. In fact, the battle for the 3rd place mobile OS - after Google Android and Apple iOS - will be fought between RIM and Microsoft and the outcome is wide open today.

The bottom line is that RIM managed to get itself a little bit of a reprieve. This is no time to declare victory, but if the new product hits the mark, there is a sufficiently large and loyal customer base that will embrace it. Let’s hope the BlackBerry 10 delivers!

Will Mobile Devices Ever Replace PCs?

In his famous post titled Dawn of a New Day, the departing Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie has outlined his vision of the ‘post-PC world’. Those were bold words from the executive of a company that has made a fortune selling software for PCs. Many have since latched onto the idea of a post PC world, an idea that got a huge boost when Apple launched the iPad. Many people quickly concluded that mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will eventually replace the PCs - the desktops and laptops.

Photo: Lubor Ptacek

Today, however, the prevailing notion is different. There is an understanding that computer use-cases vary widely between content creation and content consumption and most people argue that they prefer creating content on a PC while the mobile devices are well suited for content consumption. People usually say that the keyboard is too small to type longer passages, there is no mouse and the screen real-estate is too limiting. As a result, most of us use both PCs and mobile devices today.

So what is the future going to look like? A post PC world as Ray Ozzie predicted or a world in which we will continue carrying around multiple devices including a laptop?

Well, I’d argue that all the technical limitations of mobile devices today are just temporary. Most iPad users already use a keyboard for extensive typing and it is just a question of time before Apple adds a mouse or a mouse-like pointing device. The screen size limitation is rapidly going away with the ability to add an external monitor which is also possible today. Alternatively, a pico projector provides another way to get a big-size screen for mobile devices.

The software for content creation is increasingly becoming available on mobile devices. Apple’s office applications such as Pages, Numbers, or Keynote are well adapted for mobile content creation. Even Microsoft is now rumored to be releasing Microsoft Office for iPad later this year. Similarly, Adobe now offers Photoshop Touch and Autodesk provides AutoCAD WS for mobile devices. Content creation software for mobile devices had to be adjusted to the different operating systems and different way of interaction but there is no reason why content creation wouldn’t be possible.

Yet even more innovation is coming that will make the distinction between PCs and mobile devices irrelevant. The data input is becoming less textual and more, well, human. Voice recognition and verbal controls are becoming useful. Apple’s Siri and Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking are only the beginning. The gesture technology is also becoming more sophisticated. Innovations such as Microsoft Kinect are showing the way of interacting with computers via full-body gestures. Either way, it doesn’t matter whether the computer is a desktop, notebook, game console, or mobile device.

Our habits and skills will also become a factor. We have all been conditioned to use the QWERTY keyboard and learning a new way of interacting with computers may feel difficult. It is quite likely, that a new generation of users will emerge who will be trained in new skills which will make some of today’s constraints obsolete.

Ultimately, I am confident that mobile devices will replace PCs. But those mobile devices may not look quite the same as the ones we use today. The software and hardware will be more powerful and user friendly. And we will see a plethora of add-ons which will expand the content creation capabilities - I wrote about some of the amazing accessories back in December, 2011.

Today, when I arrive in my office, I don’t work on my laptop. Well, I do but I plug it into a docking station which adds a full-sized keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, a camera, and a set of speakers. Why should I not be able to do the same with my smartphone? I am convinced that the day is coming when we will have docking stations for our tablets and smartphones and we will use them as our primary content creation devices.

Mobile devices will replace the PCs

...and our carry-on bags will be a few pounds lighter!

Does Windows Phone Stand A Chance?

I must say, I am pretty impressed by the Windows Phone operating system. Unlike the Google Android which is, let’s face it, a poor copy of the the Apple iOS, Microsoft created a truly original user experience. The notion of having the same OS that spans the desktop, laptop, tablet, and the smartphone is a very compelling idea. Even Apple didn’t quite make that happen as their Mac OS is still distinct from  iOS.

I have also been impressed by some of the strategic moves Microsoft has been making with their Windows Phone. The partnership with Nokia is a strong endorsement - no matter how long and painful Nokia’s recovery might be. Microsoft also recruited many other vendors including Samsung, LG, HTC, Dell, and others.

Since Google acquired Motorola, there is more and more doubt about Google’s innocence when it gets down to the openness of the Android operating system. That fact alone makes the Windows Phone operating system a rather compelling alternative for the hardware vendors. While none of them have publicly switched their allegiances yet, I’m sure they all are talking to Microsoft.

Also, the recently announced deal with Barnes & Noble and their Nook ebook reader could be a major coup for Microsoft. Sure, Nook runs on Android today but I would bet many chips that the next release will run the Windows Phone OS. Not a bad move for Microsoft if you ask me!

With all of these strategic moves going in Microsoft’s favor, it is surprising that the Windows Phone market share continues sliding down. According to the latest ComScore market share report, Windows Phone has merely 3.9% of the US market - compared with 4.7% three months ago. The trend has been heading south over the last 18 months and frankly, any player in the single digits is questionable...

So what should Microsoft do to reverse this trend? Well, releasing a truly differentiated and innovative operating system is a good start. Windows 8 with all its bells and whistles and particularly with the Metro-style user interface is very promising. The Metro-style apps that Microsoft is going to release next look awesome. But one thing is still missing...

A mobile operating system is supposed to be a platform. And a platform requires applications. This is where Microsoft is not doing so well. When I try to find my favorite iPhone apps on the Windows Phone, I am striking out more often than not. Yet Microsoft understands how to cater to developers. Their tools and developer programs are second to none in the software industry. But there is more to that.

Microsoft should be actively recruiting developers to port their apps to Windows Phone. That is not a slam dunk for most developers as Windows Phone is currently their number 4 platform of choice after Apple, Google and RIM. Yeah sure, RIM has some problems but the BlackBerry OS still has more than double the market share than Windows Phone. Today, building an app for Windows OS is a major gamble with uncertain payoff.

This is where Microsoft could and should use its market power. Instead of billboards, Microsoft could be paying a few thousand dollars to the developers of the key apps to port their apps to Windows Phone. Microsoft should just go aggressively after all these developers and entice them to make it happen.

Particularly in the enterprise market , Microsoft should aggresively solicit the vendors’ support. Right now, Windows Phone OS is the number 4 priority on the list for any enterprise software vendor - after Apple, Google, and RIM. Number 4 rarely makes it into a released product. Everybody’s budget is tight and the money is barely enough for priorities 1 and 2...

Developing apps for a platform that has 3.9% market share with a declining trend is a tough business case to make. This is the top problem Microsoft has to focus on to make Windows Phone a success and without addressing this issue, the platform will likely fail.

Testing Samsung Omnia Running Windows Phone 7

My office is very close to the office of our head of development for OpenText Everywhere. As it turns out, he’s the ultimate gadget man. He gets all kinds of devices to test them. The result will apparently be Everywhere running everywhere - at least that’s his excuse for getting all those gadgets. In any case, I’m keeping him on my good side as I like to play with the gadgets. A few days ago, I got to test the Samsung Omnia 7 for a week. His words were: “I’d like you to test it and blog about it. Just don’t post any pictures of me...”. I'm developing a reputation internally, I guess.

The Omnia 7 is a Windows Phone 7 powered smartphone and since I have never had the opportunity to play with Microsoft’s latest OS, I jumped at it. The Windows Phone 7 OS is Microsoft’s 12th version of their mobile OS - a lineage that started with Pocket PC 2000. It was a road paved with many disappointments and so I was a little skeptical about the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

But first I must comment on the Samsung Omnia 7 phone itself. It is very nice. I was pretty impressed by the Samsung Galaxy tablet a couple of months ago and the Omnia is a similarly cool device. It is sleek, made of a great composite material, and I love its 4" screen. The screen is slightly larger than the iPhone and the device is also thinner than the original iPhone. I don't have iPhone 4 yet and so I could only compare it with the 'old iPhone'. The picture gives you an idea of the two devices side by side.

Samsung's Omnia compared with Apple's iPhone

I also liked that the Omnia has a USB interface, replaceable battery, and a built-in radio. The touchscreen is sharp and worked well.  That said, I struggled a bit with the typing although I struggle with the iPhone too since I got used to the iPad. Talking about typing, I liked how the system provides multiple suggestions for possible words as you type. It worked pretty well.

The typing suggestions work pretty well

I also loved the camera button which is a real 'hardware button' that is placed in the right place when you hold the device sideways to take a picture. That said, the camera is lousy - I failed to take an acceptable picture even after several tries.

The screen didn't always switch automatically when I turned the phone from vertical to horizontal. It worked fine in some applications (i.e. Twitter) but it wouldn't switch in others. Notably, it appeared to never switch in the operating system which was rather annoying. Talking about the operating system, it was well organized - I was able to easily find every function. What was weird was the fact that the screen content often wouldn't fit onto the screen itself and the OS ended up cropping it instead of resizing. That was sometimes looking cool and artsy but often annoying and sometimes even unusable.

Not only does the text not fit on the screen, the screen didn't flip to horizontal either

I liked the big tiles that you can pin on the homepage - they made it easy to customize the device and to simplify its use - very handy while driving (which is of course illegal and I would never do). The tiles allowed me to set up the device in a way that resembled more of a mobile phone rather than a smartphone with simple and straight forward functionality. This cellphone level simplicity will surely appeal to some users.

The biggest drawback of the phone was it's Microsoft centricity. Basically, it wants me to live in a Microsoft world that consists of Windows Live, Hotmail, Zune, MSN, Bing, etc. I was able to connect to my Yahoo! Mail easily but I failed to figure out how to connect to my Exchange-based work email. That was surprising since iPhone makes that task really easy. Unfortunately, the operating system treated the Yahoo users as second-class citizens compared to the few users I have in Hotmail. Same thing happened with the Facebok users. The system asked me to connect with Facebook which didn't lead to any obvious benefit. I have downloaded the Facebook app from the Windows Markeplace and it was great but it didn't connect to the rest of the OS capabilities in any way.

The Marketplace was straight forward but the assortment is far, far behind iTunes. I loved the fact that many applications offered a “try before you buy” option which is something iTunes needs to introduce. The music store is as poorly supplied as the app store and movies are not available at all. The Bing search is omnipresent, in fact, it keeps popping up often to my annoyance when not expected - Microsoft is clearly obsessed with search right now. That said, search in the Marketplace lacks the ability to sort results by content type and I was having a hard time finding anything in the long results list consisting of apps, games, and music. Should Microsoft gain support of the developer community and end up with some 100,000 applications, nobody will be able to find anything.

The device provides promising support for Microsoft Office with the key applications available as part of the operating system. Having Word and Excel is great. That said, I couldn't test the synchronization with my desktop since my desktop happens to be a Mac and Windows Phone 7 doesn't  integrate with a Mac. That's pretty much a K.O. criterion for me.

I was somewhat surprised that Flash isn’t supported. We all understand by now that Steve Jobs hates Flash which is why the iPhone does not support it but I didn’t realize that Steve Balmer hated it too. I tried to download the Flash player from the Adobe web site but the operating system is apparently not supported.

I have tested the actual phone capabilities with a SIM card from my BlackBerry which worked fine. I have liked the three buttons on the phone's face which include the home/menu button (just like the iPhone) and also the 'back' button (awesome) and the 'search' button. The hardware buttons on the side were in the way and I ended up turning the phone off inadvertently several times. That happens to me on a BlackBerry too and I ended up disabling some of the buttons eventually. I did like that camera button, though.

Watching my 7 years old son play a game tells a lot of ease of use and ergonomics

All in all, the Samsung Omnia 7 is an intriguing smartphone. It will not work for anyone who's already hooked into the Apple world through iMac, iTunes, iPod, or AppleTV but I can see how someone who's upgrading from a regular mobile phone could end up with a Windows based phone. If you live in the Microsoft universe, this phone must be great but the only such people I know are Microsoft employees.

I wonder if Samsung provides the Omnia with the Google Android operating system. They probably do. It must be an awesome gadget...

PS: If anyone from RIM is reading this, you should know that I can’t wait to test the PlayBook. I’ll even run across the parking lot to your offices to pick one up ;-)

Why Chase the Consumers, RIM?

BlackBerry has been declared the loser in the raging smartphone battle. Apparently, Research-in-Motion (RIM) has been losing market share to Apple and Google even though it continues growing. I am impressed that our neighbors in Waterloo keep on fighting as witnessed by the very positive preliminary reviews of the PlayBook tablet device. But one thing continues puzzling me: Why is RIM so determined to fight for the consumer market? Virtually every marketing message the company has been sending this year is about the consumer. They even had the rapper will.i.am as a keynote speaker at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) this year. No joke - I was there.


BlackBerry has had a complete monopoly on the enterprise smartphone market. Having cracked the code on the first real killer application – e-mail – RIM has dominated the enterprise. And it still does to a large extent. The BlackBerry provides a significantly more secure and enterprise ready platform. Why else would the US military and even the President exclusively use the BlackBerry? It offers a far better bandwidth management (that means lower communication costs, dear CFOs) and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which has been already deployed in every enterprise, is RIM’s greatest asset that allows better management of the devices. Apple and Google don’t have anything like that.

But instead of focusing on the enterprise, RIM has been fighting Apple on its home field – the consumer space. And the results are not convincing. Sure, I keep hearing about teenagers loving the free BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) but the tough reality is that I keep seeing more and more iPhones in the enterprise. And that’s a big mistake on RIM’s part. They should not have allowed Apple and Google to enter the enterprise. They should have kept hammering home the message of security, bandwidth cost and manageability which would allow them to keep the intruders at bay. Why, I ask?

RIM might possibly believe that people will want to use only one device and that their consumer preferences will be the decisive factor in selecting which one. I don’t agree with that assumption. I believe that professionals will use the best tool to do their jobs and accept its consumer capabilities – albeit inferior - or that they will simply carry multiple devices.

If I was Mike Lazaridis for a day, I would refocus my development and my marketing on the enterprise. Make the BlackBerry the best device for PowerPoint; add decent Office applications; provide a Bluetooth sync for desktop folders; turn it into a single sign-on token - whatever it takes in the enterprise. And, work with enterprise software vendors such as Saleforce, SAP, Oracle, and [yes, of course] OpenText to make sure their software for BlackBerry is the best and first on the market.

Yes, BlackBerry needs to do a better job at playing music and movies. It needs to provide a far better browser and it needs to aggressively recruit application developers. But fighting Apple on its own turf is like David fighting Goliath without the sling. Differentiation is the name of the game and BlackBerry still has differentiators today. But time is running out and I don’t see BlackBerry displacing any iPhones anytime soon.

Image: Will.I.am as a keynote speaker at WES 2010 (source: Flickr, Official Blackberry Images)