The Millennials' Challenge

I have been asked to speak at the Canada 3.0 Conference in Stratford, Ontario next week. Canada 3.0 is a unique type of conference that annually brings together participants from industry, government, and academia to discuss the country’s digital future.

My panel at the conference will be focused on the topic of millennials which is a topic that I am very interested in. The generally accepted way of thinking about the millennials is that they are about to join the workforce with their freshly minted college degrees and that they will take over the world with their digital hipness.

Indeed, the millennials have a lot going for them. They have been born and raised surrounded by all the digital technology. They have no fear of technology and they have a new way to handle information - in fact, often an implicit entitlement to information. They have discovered new ways of collaborating and communicating with each other. They don't use email anymore, relying on Facebook and SMS to communicate instead. And, what’s most important:

They will not put up with your old ways of doing business!

Especially, they will not put up with the old clunky applications your business forces them to use. They would rather go work somewhere else!

This could be very concerning for many organizations who are faced with an aging workforce and who are struggling to attract young talent. Just think about the government, for example. Such organizations need to seriously think about how to make their work environment more attractive for the millennials. Such considerations must include the productivity tools - from BYOD (bring your own device) to social media and gamification, the millennials will want it all!

At the same time, the world of business is not all about Facebook, Twitter and SMS. In the enterprise, some serious concerns will always exist about data security, intellectual property protection, regulatory compliance, and legal risk and liability. The existing IT infrastructure has been put in place to address these requirements. So, if you [young] people want a job here, forget about Facebook and get in line! After all, your generation of young university graduates is facing the greatest unemployment rate today...

As you can see, this can easily become a pretty emotional debate. That usually makes for an interesting panel discussion. That’s why I look forward to my Canada 3.0 session. It’s titled “The millennials’ role in the consumerization of IT”. I hope to see you there!

Mobile Security Conundrum

Typing a password on your mobile device can be a pain. The keyboard is tiny and the password gets in the way of convenience and productivity which are the reasons to use a smartphone in the first place. Chances are you only have a short password that consists of 4 or 5 characters. Your password is probably a string of easy to type numbers like “1-2-3-4” or a simple word. Strong passwords consisting of a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, special characters and at least 8-10 characters in length are not very useful on a mobile device.

The problem is that mobile devices are easy to lose and when they fall into the wrong hands, the simple passwords are just too easy to hack. On top of that, it is quite likely that many of your important files have been copied onto your device via synchronization.

With device-to-device data synchronization via cloud based synchronization tools ranging from the consumer-oriented ones like Dropbox to the enterprise-focused OpenText Tempo, security is becoming increasingly a concern. For a minute, let’s not worry about the security of the actual repository and the private cloud vs public cloud debate. Let’s talk about the security of the data stored on the device.

The synchronization ensures that there is a current copy of your files on each mobile device which is tremendously convenient, especially if you are switching between devices throughout the day like I do - iPhone, iPad, work PC and home iMac. But the convenience comes at a price - you have to trust that each device is secure and the security starts with a good password. But good, strong passwords are just too impractical on a mobile device and most users don’t use them.

How do we solve this conundrum?

Well, there's not much you can do in the short term other than educating the users or perhaps imposing draconian password rules if the device connects to your corporate network. The draconian approach may work but it will likely result in undesired behavior - the users will find ways around your network security.

In the long term, the device manufacturers will need to step up. The devices will need to be secured via a typing-free authentication method. One such method involved biometrics. Fingerprint scanner, face recognition or retina scan could solve the problem. Some of us frequent travelers have signed up for easy border crossing services such as Nexus or GlobalEntry which use the retina scan technology. It works! In fact, these technologies are available for our smartphones today, albeit they are not quite the mainstream yet. Scanning is still relatively slow if I want to make a quick phone call but probably faster and easier than typing a strong password. And much more secure!

Voice print based passwords are another possibility. Combining the pass phrase with the color and intonation of your voice is faster and more convenient than typing on a small screen. But the ambient noise might represent a challenge. Besides, I don’t want to sit on a plane next to someone repeating his password once every five minutes...

Another possibility is the use of NFC technology (near field communication) which uses an RFID chip. This chip could be carried on the user’s body in the form of an ID card, bracelet or ring (remember Scott McNealy’s Java ring from the 1998 JavaOne conference?). Such loosely attached chips could still be lost or stolen but even with that risk, the security might be stronger than a “1-2-3-4” password. The chip could be also implanted into the person’s body which would make things much more secure and much more convenient. Imagine if your device could verify your identity several times per minute without ever interrupting your work!

OK, OK, I can hear your screams about Big Brother and the government’s invasion into your privacy. But what privacy? If you move around a city, your image is captured on hundreds of security cameras. To get a driver’s license or a passport, you’ve surrendered your picture and fingerprints. Consciously or unconsciously, you pass through multiple security checkpoints every day - from transportation security, public building entrances, hotel check-ins to in-store purchases. Oh, and your mobile phone includes a GPS chip that can be tracked by law enforcement even if the phone is switched off.

Alright, implanted RFID chips may be still a bit of a stretch. But somehow, we will need to solve the conundrum with strong security on mobile devices...

The Social Divide

We live in a new world today. We are hanging out on Facebook, sharing our wisdom on Twitter, posting links on Google+ and building our professional networks on LinkedIn. The new world of social communities is great - it allows us to keep in touch with our friends and network with people who share our interests. We can hardly imagine the world before social media - it has become a part of our lives. Right?

Well, not so fast! I am again and again reminded that there are many of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances who don’t participate in any of this. They are not on Facebook, they don’t tweet, if they don’t work at Google, they are certainly not on Google+. If these folks happen to have an account on any of these networks, it usually doesn’t include a profile picture and no activity has been posted in well over a year. Social networks have clearly no appeal for this crowd.

This is not a generational issue. It is not a demographic issue - at least not by the traditional ways of defining demographics such as age, gender, race, or income. It is also not that these folks aren’t social. In fact, many of them are very sociable and have a strong network of contacts and friends.

I suspect that anyone who has not embraced social media yet is not likely going to do so anytime soon. They can’t be forced. For every rational argument pro social networking, they have a rational argument against it. They usually state security and privacy concerns, they say that it is all a waste of time or that it is all about self-promotion. But I suspect that they simply are not interested because it is not “their thing”. There are simply people out there who are choosing not to participate in social media.

Whatever it may be, we might be witnessing the emergence of a new social divide. It just may happen, that our future society will consist of a social media class and the anti-social media class. This is not the first time this happened. We have presumably left behind a few people in the past. When Gutenberg invented the press and popularized books, not everyone started reading them. In fact, literacy is an issue to this date. When email replaced letters, not everyone embraced this trend and there is a portion of the population keeping the postal service on life support today. The same thing might be happening to social media.

The next time we use sweeping generalizations about how the nature of work has changed due to social media and how social software revolutionized customer engagement, we should remember that there is a group of people choosing not to participate. Perhaps they will be forced to join in eventually. Or maybe, the social networks need to step it up and provide services compelling enough to attract these folks.

The Future of Content Management

Last week, I had the privilege to participate in a panel at the new AIIM 2012 Conference in San Francisco. The conference was a smashing success for AIIM, selling out weeks in advance and attracting the who-is-who in the content management industry. My panel was titled the Future of Content Management and my fellow panelists were Roland Benedetti, VP of Products at Nuxeo and Robin Daniels, Head of Enterprise Product Marketing at Box who was standing in for Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck, the head of enterprise business at Box. The session was moderated by Laurence Hart, the CIO of AIIM and Cheryl McKinnon,  AIIM’s CMO - both of whom were an essential element to the success of the session.

The goal of the session was to debate the future of Content Management and sure enough, all of the panelists had an opinion about SoLoMo and also cloud, big data and other trends. Prior to the conference, we stated our views in writing which Laurence has published on his blog. But while everyone kept talking about the of cloud, mobility, and user experience, the selection of panelists alone suggested that a different question was hanging in the air.

The panelists represented a traditional vendor (OpenText), a cloud vendor (Box) and an open source vendor (Nuxeo). The elephant in the room was not the technologies of the future but rather the business models.

As for the technologies, everyone agrees on the key trends. What’s important to mention though is that the given 3-5 year time frame for the future was relatively short. At OpenText, we have roadmaps and business plans that go at least 3 years out - we have a pretty good idea what capabilities we plan to deliver in our software. At the same time, anyone who tries to predict the future 5-10 years out and whose name is not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is probably just making things up. After all, the smartphone didn’t exist 5 years ago, not to mention the iPad.

But back to the business models. The big question hanging in the air was what will the future bring in terms of a business model. Is every piece of software going to be replaced by the cloud? Will all software go open source? Are the on-premise (aka traditional) software vendors going to even exist a few year from now?

Well, my answer was very simple. I have met many enterprise customers and the one thing that I have learned is that almost no customer has ever managed to adopt a single stack or single vendor environment. The reality is that most enterprises have EVERYTHING. I’m not talking about the small or medium sized companies. I’m talking about enterprises with over $1 bln in revenue. They almost always have a mix of different environments, systems, architectures, and applications. It may be not the most efficient solution or the cleanest architecture, but it is the reality. Most enterprises have a lot of software in different stages of maturity and these past investments have to be leveraged.

My answer to the question which business model would prevail in the next 3-5 years was: all of them. Our customers have to find their place of comfort on the scale between all-in-the-cloud and all-on-premise. Most of them are already somewhere in between. Today, many companies in the US use ADP for their payroll which is a cloud-based offering. Many companies use cloud-based talent management or document sharing offerings today. But most enterprises have many on-premise applications today and they will have many 3-5 years from now. There will be a few extreme cases on each end of that scale but most enterprises will  find their comfort zone somewhere in between.

As for open source vs. well, “closed source”, I think a similar scale exists. I have explained before that customers fall into different categories in their desire to customize and enhance on their own vs deploy out of the box solutions. There are other similar scales, by the way. For example, customers will find their comfort zone on the social media scale between conservative and controlling vs. open and engaging.

The bottom line is that the future is not going to be black or white. The last few decades dominated by the Wintel architecture were an anomaly. It is not likely that we will see such dominant monopoly ever again - and that was just the desktops. No doubts about it, more and more services will move into the cloud because it just makes sense. Some services will only become available through the cloud and rest assured that vendors like OpenText are busy innovating their offerings to take advantage of the cloud. But real customers will have plenty of on-premise software to deal with. In the future of content management, we will deal with customers who each have a very different mix of requirements and the successful vendors will be able to cater to them all.

Many thanks to Laurence and Cheryl for inviting me to participate on this panel. It has been a great fun and AIIM put on an awesome conference. I hope to be there again next year, on March 20-22 in New Orleans!

On Running, Technology, and Good Causes

I have recently become a runner - what started as a way to get back into shape after some injuries has now developed into a full-on midlife crisis.  Since I am training to run the Ottawa Marathon and raising money for a charity along the way, I wanted to write something about the technology related to running.

Boxing Day 10Miler, Hamilton

First, there are the fancy shoes and clothes which have evolved dramatically in the last years. Yes, that stuff is pretty high-tech and expensive too.  Basically, nobody runs in a t-shirt anymore - you need the latest and greatest dry-fit moisture whisk-away clothes and a pair of running shoes with extra support. That’s not to mention the fuel belts with high-tech nutrition from Gatorade to energy gels and recovery drinks.

But for us tech people, the gadgets are far more interesting. I run with a Garmin Forerunner 210 watch with a GPS receiver that also collects data from my foot chip and heart monitor. The foot pod measures my cadence, speed and distance when running indoors. Combined with the GPS based pace, speed, distance, elevation, and route and with the pulse data from my heart monitor, I am collecting more data on my watch than what Formula 1 cars were capable of just a few decades ago. Just check out the data from my recent race for the level of detail I get.

When training, I also run with my iPhone to listen to something that keeps my mind away from the miles. I usually listen to books from Audible.com which I like better than some peppy music, although that’s a matter of personal preference. I use wireless earphones that connect to the iPhone via a Bluetooth connection. I tried regular ear-buds for a while but the cable was always getting tangled.

The next level of technology is available online. From plentiful training advice, race registration, pace calculators, and training plans, the Web is full of useful info. But what I find particularly motivating is the mutual sharing of training data on social media. Most of the running software such as Endomondo, MapMyRun, NikePlus, and Garmin Connect not only display and analyze the data but also enable sharing it via Facebook and Twitter.

Seeing my Facebook friends post info about their training runs is very motivating - knowing that they will see my own results makes me run harder. I know that the frequent posts might annoy and sometimes even demoralize the non-runners but please forgive us. It’s not like we are tweeting what we’ve had for dinner... Mutual encouragement for sport enthusiasts is a great use of social media!

Finally, the technology managed to transform another aspect of running - fund-raising. Running and other amateur sports have long been connected to fund-raising efforts for various charities. Today, services such as Razoo or Kintera make it very easy to set up a fundraiser for one’s favorite charity and take care of all the payment processing. They even send the donors a receipt for their tax deduction.

I am now in the middle of my training program for the Ottawa Marathon on May 27th. For this occasion, I have set up a fundraiser for the American Heart Association and the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation (trying to accommodate either tax jurisdiction for the bulk of my friends). Please check it out and donate to support my cause. Your contribution goes to a great charitable organization that helps fight heart disease. Your donations are the greatest motivation for me as I am getting ready for the big race. And, the technology enthusiast in you will appreciate how technology transformed even this part of our life...

Donate online to Running with Heart at Razoo

Thank you!

The Need for Privacy

The marketing guru Seth Godin wrote a blog post recently in which he claimed that the notion of privacy is an illusion and that we don’t really have any privacy today. He’s argues that people don’t really care about privacy - the only thing they care about is being surprised.

I’ve been thinking about this post and it has been bugging me. Yes, I do agree that we have less privacy than we often realize. I know that my bank knows how much I earn, my credit card company knows my spending habits, my doctor knows my health status, my mobile phone company knows where I travel, Facebook knows all my friends [who are on Facebook], and Google knows pretty much everything I’m up to.

But that information is compartmentalized. My bank doesn’t know my spending habits. My mobile plan provider doesn’t know what I am searching for online and my insurance company doesn’t know my exact health status. It is important that it remains that way. The triangulation of information is the real danger. If my mortgage company gets access to my health records, that’s bad. If my mobile plan provider got access to my friends, that’s not cool.

I accept that my physician knows my health and I accept that my credit card company knows where I shop for clothes. I trust that they will treat my data with confidentiality because their survival as a business depends on that. Whether regulated by law or by market forces, every business has to treat its customers’ data with confidentiality. A doctor who doesn’t keep patients’ privacy confidential, breaks the law and won't be a doctor for much longer. A cell phone company that discloses whom I am calling without a court order breaks the law and has to be punished.

It is the triangulation of data that makes me really worried. When a harmless-looking iPhone app starts collecting info from other apps, that’s not a surprise as Seth Godin calls it. That’s a criminal activity. Just as if my doctor started sharing my medical records with my life insurance provider would be.

We do care about privacy. There is a different degree of privacy awareness among different demographics, likely depending on their culture, education, and other factors. Forrester Research recently published a global heat map on Privacy and Data Protection by Country which clearly shows that the US is below-par compared to many other countries - although still ahead of China and Nigeria. Clearly, some countries take privacy much more seriously than the US. But even in the US, we care about privacy and we want it really bad.

Forrester Research: Privacy and Data Protection by Country

Having companies provide me with service and collecting detailed information about certain parts of my life along the way is OK. But swapping that info with other companies is unacceptable.

I Declare Email Bankruptcy!

“I Declare Email Bankruptcy”. This is a line that I have borrowed from the latest book by Neil Stephenson titled Reamde which I have just finished reading. The quote is not particularly central to the plot of the book but it immediately resonated with me. How many times do we all feel that there is just no hope to cope with all the incoming email and want nothing more than to throw in the towel and start all over? What we want is to declare email bankruptcy.

Some people suggested that this is the fault of the email application itself and that we can perhaps solve the problem by adopting different types of tools. There has been some news recently about different tools that improve dealing with the email torrent. For example, Fluent recently drew some attention with ideas on how to redesign email. Also, Social Media has been heralded as a solution to the email problem but in reality, you can get just as overwhelmed on your company’s internal social software. Sure, all of these tools can help but the problem of drowning in email cannot be solved with tools alone.

The root cause of the problem is our behavior, our discipline and our way of communicating with each other. Communication has to be taught. Professions that depend on clear and precise communication put their workers through often very rigorous training. Just think about the type of training required in any radio communication for air traffic control, law enforcement, or the military. Similarly, marketing people and corporate executives get trained on presentation skills, messaging, and talking to the press. In each case, communication requires a specific protocol, precision, and discipline.

The problem with email is that we take the skill for granted. Using Microsoft Office has become part of basic literacy and we expect every employee to know how to use email. But we shouldn’t confuse the skill to use the software with the skill to communicate. Those are not one and the same!

Let me give you an example that is all to frequent. When my manager delegates a task to me by forwarding an email request to me, I should not engage with the originator of the request while continuing to copy my manager on every single message. This often leads to a flurry of messages that just clog up his inbox and he is not likely paying any attention to. The correct protocol is to reply to my manager with a simple “I’ll take care of it” message and leave him out of the subsequent discussion. If I feel that it is needed, I can send him a status update later.

Continuing to copy my manager on every one of the subsequent emails says that I either feel insecure and want him to watch my every move or that I am completely ignorant of his own workload and time. Neither scenario helps my career aspirations.

Of course, some business processes may require a different communication protocol. I get involved a lot in various reviews and approvals of press releases, pricing proposals, product lifecycle reviews etc. Each one of them uses email and has to be done in a certain way. What I observe is that when we use email in a structured business process, it works reasonably well. But as soon as it gets outside the structured process, communication often becomes freewheeling.

This is the type of training that we don’t get today. And boy is it needed! The next time you complain about your overflowing inbox, ask yourself if it really is the fault of the tool.

Pinterest is Growing - What Will Big Media Do?

My Pinterest board

I have been hearing a lot about Pinterest lately - the supposedly fastest growing online service ever. Of course, I had to check it out. I have created my Pinterest account using my Facebook profile (and immediately severed that connection on Facebook, just in case). After a bit of looking around I thought I got the hang of it and created my first online scrapbook. I’ve opted for a collection of vintage images of Jaroslav Drobny, one of the most remarkable athletes of all times. I know that you have probably never heard of him but check out my Pinterest board or his Wikipedia entry which I have authored mostly myself. Yes, I am not just a fan but a self-proclaimed authority on Drobny ;-)

Anyway, back to Pinterest - I can see the potential of this new service. Creating a collection of online pictures can be very useful for projects, as a collection of visual ideas, or as a fan page of any kind. But here comes the challenge. I am pretty sure that Pinterest is copying the pictures on its site which is probably a copyright infringement. It does preserve the link to the picture source which would probably placate image sources such as Flickr that essentially want to be pretty open and are content with sharing as long as the attribution is made.

But take my example of Drobny. There are probably no more than 20 of his pictures in existence online and most of the good ones are on sites such as Getty Images and Corbis. Of course I have included those images in my Pinterest board which I am pretty sure violates some copyrights or distribution rights. Unlike Flickr, Getty and Corbis are in the business of selling pictures for hefty prices and their customers are usually not individuals but businesses that purchase or license the pictures primarily for promotional purposes.

The big question is, what will Big Media do - Getty, Corbis but also most magazine publishers? On one hand, this is clearly violating their fundamental business principles. After all, if you want to publish a Getty picture on your site, you have to pay for it. Sure, you could also argue that Getty and Corbis only allow me to post a thumbnail of the images but I suspect that’s just a technical detail. The main principle - I am posting their content on my page is no doubt raising some bushy Big Media eyebrows.  

On the other hand, my online scrapbook hasn’t really harmed Getty, Corbis or any of the other sources. On Pinterest, I have no way to monetize the traffic from all the Jaroslav Drobny fans around the world. At least not yet. If anything, I have advertised the paid content. You could argue that I have created for free an online catalog for Getty - a catalog that can take advantage of the social powers of Pinterest since the Pinterest boards can have multiple contributors. That’s actually a pretty good resource for Getty if you ask me.

But I am not sure which tactic the Big Media companies will use. What I do know is that they are faced with yet another possible disruption. Something new that came out of nowhere and that is becoming hugely popular. There are the first signs that indicate Big Media is noticing and their initial reaction is - yet again - an attempt to squash the intruder. Under media pressure, Pinterest just started allowing sites to opt out of their service. Well, I’m not sure that’s the best course of action for Big Media but I am not surprised as this has been their usual modus operandi ever since the World Wide Web has emerged.

What to do, what to do?

Government Conspiracy

Something’s up. The secret must have leaked. The vultures of power are all conspiring to take over. Let’s put the Genie back into the bottle! Or at least let us control it. It has been without any supervision for too long and now that we understand how important it is, how strategic it is, we cannot let it continue. Let the kids move aside and let the grown-ups take over!

What am I talking about? The Internet! In the last few months, the attempts of governments around the world to control the Internet have notably intensified. The governments want to control it.

There is the Patriot Act which gives the US government sweeping rights to search your data on the Internet by ignoring any individual or organizational privacy rights.

How about Internet Neutrality? Shouldn’t we make sure that important business gets the preferential treatment while the gamers and file swappers get less bandwidth? There has been many calls to enact a law for that.

Then, there is the content piracy issue with its series of failed attempts to assert controls over the digital universe - most recently culminating in SOPA. But as we have put SOPA and PIPA to rest in the US, the Europeans are stirring emotions with the ACTA agreement just as I am typing these words.

Let us also not forget the “three strikes” law that has been adopted in countries such as France and the UK. This law allows the government to cut off individuals from Internet access for repeated content piracy violations. These laws have been actually condemned by the UN Human Rights Council in a special report. Yet they exist.

Next, there is the question of censorship. A couple of weeks ago, Twitter made the headlines by allowing censorship in various countries, presumably under pressure from such countries. A few years ago, RIM went through a similar experience with having to bow to the will of countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and India when their governments demanded control over their citizen’s email. Even before that, various countries have been asking for the master key for any encryption technology used in their virtual airspace.

So what’s happening? Are the governments waking up to the significance of the Internet and the degree to which it dominates their economy? YOU BET! Governments around the world are used to full control of their countries’ infrastructure - from transportation, communication, commerce, to entertainment, education, and politics. But to date, the Internet has evolved with very little government supervision and as one industry after another is being completely transformed by the Internet, governments are worried about losing control completely. After all, if everything moves to the unregulated virtual universe, what’s there going to be left for government to regulate?

So it is not a surprise that the governments are trying to fight back. Their allies are the very same industries that have been under the threat of extinction because they failed to adapt in the age of the Internet: entertainment, telecom, retail, publishing, etc. The good old ally called national security comes in very handy too.

What governments fail to realize is the amount of business that happens on the Internet because it is free and unregulated. Sure, revenue streams have moved from one company to another and new industries have grown where others have declined. Internet companies have exploited legal loopholes such as avoiding to charge sales tax. But the Internet is essential for the economy today. Free Internet, that is. Because only thanks to the fact that the Internet is free and open to everyone, has it gained the kind of adoption that is propelling a big portion of any nation’s GDP today.

I am not advocating for any criminal activity on the Internet. Laws are laws and they should apply to the Internet the same way as they do anywhere else. But artificial protectionism and tampering with the Internet’s fundamental principle is dangerous - possibly disastrous to the economy of a given nation or even to the entire world. The governments have to be very careful tempting such powers. And we, the people, have to remain vigilant and continue reminding our governments that we want to keep the Internet free.

The State of the Mobile Market

The latest marketshare data for the mobile devices market has been released recently and I thought that it might be a good time to take a look at the mobile market today and tomorrow. First, lets take a look at the data that comes from comScore, combined with the latest Nielsen report and with data from iSuppli and a few other sources. The most widely reported information is the smartphone market share which looks as follows (comScore):

Basically, there are three vendors left today - Google, Apple, and RIM - with RIM losing market share while Google and Apple are growing. A forth vendor, Microsoft is fighting what seems to be a loosing battle to connect with the leading group. According to many analysts including Gartner and IDC, we will see some massive changes in the near future. The research firm iSuppli recently published a report that suggests that the Windows Phone will not only knock off the fast-fading RIM from its 3rd spot but it will even steal the 2nd spot away from Apple:

So why are all the analyst so bullish on Windows Phone when Microsoft has been losing marketshare so far? Well, the next data point may suggest an explanation:

As we can see, the smartphone penetration is still relatively low but growing very quickly. The overall market growth for mobile devices is at 10.8% according to iSuppli and both Nielsen and iSuppli expect that 60% of devices sold in 2015 will be smartphones. That means that there is plenty of marketshare to grab amid the double digit device growth, the rapid growth of smartphone penetration and the decline of other vendors.

Not a bad market to be in, is it? No wonder the vendors are so desperate to grab a piece of this pie. Today, Google and Apple have a clear lock on the top two positions while RIM keeps sliding and Microsoft is nowhere - at least so far. There are rumors about a Facebook phone and HP still has to make up or re-make up their mind about what to do with webOS. Here are some thoughts about the respective players:

Google
Google has grabbed a ton of market share thanks to all the Asian manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, etc. They all needed an operating system and since Google Android is free, the choice was easy. So far so good except that there are three big problems looming ahead. First, as a result of the open source model, the Google market has become massively fragmented and application developers struggle to support all the device types. Second, Google acquired Motorola which will make it difficult to keep the competition honest between its own devices and the other vendors. Third, Google is hardly making any money on Android - in fact they are paying hefty patent fees to Microsoft for each device - which makes it a hard business to sustain for a publicly traded company.

Apple
Apple may have lost the top market share spot to Google but honestly, Apple is running circles around everybody. Leveraging their unique value proposition of a tightly integrated system consisting of hardware, software and content, Apple is just piling up profits and making everyone else look bad. Make no mistake, the market share loss in units has nothing to do with market share in revenue and profits where Apple is standing head and shoulders above the rest of the industry combined. The decline in units market share is not a result of an inferior product or any systemic problem. It is more the result of the fact that many users are upgrading their feature phones and opting for the cheapest smartphone available without caring much about the operating system. Those users are clearly not Apple’s target customers. Apple is after the more affluent user who will not only shell out a premium price for a premium brand but who will also keep contributing to Apple’s profits through ongoing purchases on iTunes.

Microsoft
Unlike Google who’s Android is basically a less polished version of Apple’s iOS, Microsoft has built a very distinct and compelling mobile operating system. But adoption is so far eluding Microsoft for several reasons. The vendors selling Microsoft Phone devices are the same lot as those who sell Android. Android is free and Windows Phone is not and so guess who they push more? The second issue is that Microsoft has bet the farm on their Nokia partnership which was a smart move except that Nokia didn’t ship any Windows phones until the end of last year. The third and by far most important issue is the lack of developer support. Apple and Google have attracted many developers quickly leveraging superior tools, compelling business models and - in the case of Google - the open source effect. Microsoft has shown little love to developers so far. Unless Microsoft addresses these issues, they will always continue battling at best for the third place.

RIM
Well, it has been widely reported that RIM is in trouble and just replacing the CEOs is not going to fix that. RIM’s greatest problem is the lack of innovation. The good old BlackBerry may work fine and be more secure than iPhone but it is no longer hip enough even for the executives at stodgy brick-and-mortar companies. Today, RIM needs a purpose, a focus, and a compelling way to differentiate. Leaking pictures of phones that could ship in two years and be almost as cool as the iPhone is today is not going to do it. Even if those new RIM phones were available today, it would hardly make much difference. Besides needing some innovative and competitive products, RIM also has to address the developer support just like Microsoft.

HP
To be complete, I should also mention HP as the only other remaining MOS vendor. Or did they announced that they have killed webOS? Yeah, whatever. I will write another post when I meet a user with a webOS based smartphone.