As Lumia 900 launch looms, analyst says Nokia, Microsoft need BlackBerry users to switch to Windows Phone

Computerworld – Nokia’s Lumia 900 smartphones will reach AT&T stores on Sunday for $99.99, and one analyst said it could be the start of something big: Windows Phone as a market disrupter between the successful iPhone and Android phones.

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Windows Phone, Microsoft’s mobile operating system that’s used by Nokia in its Lumia line of smartphones, is so far a small portion of the smartphone market, less than 3%. Still, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in a blog Thursday that the smartphone market is “ripe for disruption … and every player in the ecosystem (other than Google and Apple) wants a third player to wedge between Google and Apple.”

Epps went on to argue that Nokia and Microsoft should try to convert every BlackBerry user to Windows Phone within two years. BlackBerry usage is declining and today makes up 8% of the global smartphone market. Grabbing those customers “would be a modest but achievable gain for Windows Phone,” she said.

Attracting former BlackBerry users and a portion of Nokia’s Symbian users in China and India to Windows Phone “positions Nokia and Microsoft as a viable third platform and foil for Google-Apple hegemony,” Epps said. “In the dog-eat-dog smartphone market, viability in itself can be disruptive.”

Epps admitted that she is a strong supporter of Windows Phone and has used the OS on the HTC Trophy and Samsung Focus Flash as her personal phones. “I will say it loud and say it proud: I love my Windows Phone,” she wrote.

The coming Lumia 900, which she now uses as a review unit, is priced right at $99.99 to attract new smartphone users and to lure BlackBerry customers who are already paying their carriers for data plans. Since BlackBerry maker Research In Motion said it won’t have new smartphones soon, BlackBerry customers should be a prime target, she added.

Nokia and Microsoft have “built a great product,” Epps contended. In an interview, she said she likes the Lumia 900′s industrial design, including the slim form factor and a body that has a “satisfying tactile feel.” She said the screen resolution is better than the Trophy and has a front-facing camera that the Trophy lacks.

Epps said the Windows Phone interface uses live tiles that can keep her husband’s contact information and status right on the home screen, an example of how the OS lives up to its brand promise of “putting people first.” “I personally do feel a strong emotional connection with Windows Phone, and before that I had BlackBerry, so it’s the first phone I’ve ever really loved,” she said.

Some reviewers, including Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, pointed out a weak Web browser on the Lumia 900 among other concerns. “Overall, I consider the Lumia 900 a mixed bag,” Mossberg wrote. “Unless you are a big Windows Phone fan, or don’t want to spend more than $100 upfront, I can’t recommend the Lumia 900 over the iPhone 4S or a first-rate Android phone like Samsung’s Galaxy S II series.”

Epps agreed that Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T are not going to persuade an iPhone user to use Windows Phone, but maintained the Lumia 900 could attract BlackBerry and first-time smartphone buyers.

Nokia and AT&T have said they will promote the Lumia 900 in AT&T stores with more floor space and promotional signs than other phones and by training sales reps to show it off. To Epps, AT&T’s support is the biggest key to Lumia 900′s success, and Nokia has offered AT&T an attractive-enough profit margin on sales of the phones to promote it well.

“Carriers sell the phones they can make the most money on,” she said. “He who pays the operator sells the phone.”

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I am currently engaged with mentoring some young technology start-up businesses.  What strikes me about these companies is that they spend the majority of their time utilising their skills to deliver their product.  They are agile, knowledgeable and very hungry to succeed and to create.

When do they find time to “learn” new emerging technologies?  They seem to have learnt it “on the fly” as they go along – such is the pace of technology at the moment.  With cloud computing, mobile computing and social media now becoming the current “bubble”, I realised just how easy it is for anyone in IT to become out of date quite rapidly.

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There is an old saying which says “use it or lose it” and I will add “use it, grow it and keep your eyes open to what is happening around you, always”.   In this process we must keep learning.

Stopping learning, even for a few months or a whole year can make a huge difference.  It is like being having a motor car – use it regularly and it works fine (sure it may need a little maintenance), but leave it parked outside for a year unused and the battery will be flat, tires a bit softer, oil a bit tired, the gas will have lost its vitality etc.  (Of course it does depend on where you park it – it may not even be there when you return!)

Learning is the same, especially in IT (and most other professions – like medicine, law, tax etc) we need to keep up to date, and even a few months “out of the game” will render us less sharp, and left with an uphill battle if we want to regain our status.

If “IT” is our career, then we need to learn on a regular basis, via personal learning, e-learning, books, attending classes, or as I am realising, by working with very sharp entrepreneurs who are leveraging the three technology areas listed above without even breaking into a sweat.

What are your experiences of keeping yourself in the best shape you can?

Along with the usual performance and speed enhancements, some other Google products are also heavily integrated, such as Instant and Instant Previews as well as the +1 button for Google Plus. Image results are much more vivid thanks to a new image carousel that lets users swipe through results.

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Google also promises that services like Google News and Calendar are easier to find and operate within the new Apps menu.

Hopefully the update of this app, free to download from iTunes now, will go much more smoothly than the uneasy initial release of the Gmail app for the iPad and iPhone earlier this month.

However, much like the Gmail app, the Search app still looks like a glorified version of just using Google in a browser. Sure, there are definitely some visual enhancements that one comes to expect from iPad apps in general.

But it’s still not really on par with the bounty of features and attractive graphics seen on Bing’s app for the iPad. Nevertheless, this is still a move in the right direction and reflects that Google is taking building for iOS more seriously these days.

Do you own a first-generation iPod nano bought between September 2005 and December 2006? If you answered ‘yes’ then you could be eligible for a free replacement thanks to a manufacturing defect that could result in the diminutive music player overheating.

Apple is recommending that owners stop using their iPod nano and check to see if they are eligible for a replacement unit, free of charge. Not all first-generation iPod nano units are affected – entering your serial number here will tell you if your device is affected.

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Note: Only units with a black or white plastic front and a silver metal back are affected. Later iPod nano models with a metal front and back are not affected.

If your iPod nano is affected, you will be instructed to send it back to Apple. You will receive your replacement unit within 6 weeks.

This is a great opportunity to get that old iPod nano that’s languishing in a drawer for a few years refreshed.

Enjoy the new Bing on Android, but not WP7

If I hadn’t read it on Microsoft’s own Bing blog, I wouldn’t have believed it. The Microsoft Bing team has just released the new Bing for Mobile app for iPhone and Android… but not for Windows Phone 7 devices.

Wow. Just wow.

Maps/List Split View: Provides a dynamic way to synchronize a list such as business listings and directions and a map in a single view making it easy to see the location of what you’re searching for. Also works for driving directions and transit.

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      Deals: One-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals from more than 100 deal providers across the US.

Transit/Real-Time: The Android app now features transit routing/real-time transit and news– all features that were previously only available on m.bing.com.

You can get the updated Bing app. on the general Android Market, Verizon customers can get it here, and Apple iPhone users can pick it up at the iPhone App Store. Windows Phone users can… ah… well “We’re working to release the same consistent experience for RIM and Windows Phone 7 devices in the future, and will share more details as they become available.”

Isn’t that comforting?

I can understand being slow about RIM. Blackberry’s papa company, is sinking fast, but not to support your own operating system with a major update to your mobile search engine app.?

What’s even more troubling is that Microsoft comes right out and says, “Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience. In order for search to advance, engines need to be able to call functions that are currently ‘hiding’ in apps so we can better help people get done what they are trying to get done. Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and – in the future – callable by engines to help people get from searching to doing.”

Read that again. This application is meant to be more platform independent than most mobile applications thanks to its use of HTML5. In other words, Bing for Mobile app is meant to be easy to port from one operating systems, to another, like, well their very own Windows Phone operating system. But, no, instead Microsoft put bringing its newest Bing app to its own platform on the back-burner.

Former Microsoft executive and current VMware president Paul Maritz is credited with coming up with the phrase “eating your own dog food” while he was at Microsoft.That is to say a company must use its own products before you can anyone else to buy into them. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that lesson.

Seriously, if Microsoft’s own developers can’t be troubled to make Windows Phone 7 a priority, why in the world should independent software vendors (ISV)s? In turn, why should users consider it seriously. If you like Microsoft’s Bing search engine and you can get the best experience with it on an Android smartphone or an Apple iPad or iPhone, why would you buy a Windows phone?

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Just look at the recently announced Nokia-Microsoft partnership. It turned out that it used to be a triangle, with Google in the mix.

Nokia first contemplated on inking a deal with Google before it announced its partnership with Nokia. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was in talks with both Google and Microsoft when he finally decided to go with the latter, which was his former employee.

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Microsoft agreed to pay billions of dollars to Nokia for marketing and developing Windows Phone 7 handsets. But the deal almost didn’t push through because Nokia executives thought that Microsoft is treating them like any other potential phone partner, while Nokia was looking for an exclusive software partner.

Then Microsoft CEO Ballmer was reminded that if Nokia inks a deal with Google, Microsoft will have no way to get its share in the smartphone market.

Because of that Microsoft went ahead and sent their proposal with Nokia, which the latter agreed with and they signed the contract before Nokia’s investor conference. It was during the conference when Elop announced the deal.

But before the partnership was made public, Vic Gundotra, Google vice president, posted a Twitter message that said two turkeys don’t make an eagle. This jab surprised Nokia executives when the conversations between companies had to be confidential.

Three days after the two turkeys announced their union. It looks like the Google executive’s prediction was right. After the announcement, both Nokia and Microsoft stocks went down. Nokia was down by more than 15 percent while Microsoft shares were down 2 percent. It looks like the investors didn’t see an eagle with the deal as well.

Early this year Microsoft and Nokia were beaming as they announced the strategic alliance that would see the latter’s smartphones switching to the Windows Phone platform. Talk was rampant about the possibilities working closely together would create for new competitive products. Rumors have been tossed freely describing that Microsoft paid over a billion dollars to Nokia to form the alliance. With all of the posturing by both companies, it is not unreasonable to think Nokia would produce a Windows Phone product with features to set it apart from the competition. Strangely, that hasn’t happened.

Microsoft at Nokia World this week, hoping to see something unique coming that the strategic alliance has spawned. We’ve seen the first two Windows Phone products from Nokia, but neither one has that special something to set them apart from the competition. They are nice devices, but there is no special something that screams “look at me”. There’s not even a front-facing camera among them, to better take advantage of Skype video calling that is now under the Microsoft umbrella.

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With all of the money and resources Microsoft and Nokia are pouring into this Windows Phone alliance, to see nothing that sets it apart from the crowd is puzzling. It leads to the conjecture that Microsoft can’t help Nokia produce a special feature in its Windows Phone line due to concerns about upsetting its other platform partners. Maybe Microsoft realizes its partner’s commitment to the Windows Phone platform is fragile, and can’t risk upsetting the Mango cart.

With an alliance that reportedly has cost over a billion dollars, it’s not unreasonable to expect something new and improved, or even something radically unique. Instead all we’ve seen are some decent handsets with more of the same, only bearing the Nokia branding. That’s not likely enough to make this huge effort worthwhile.

It bears closely watching Nokia in the near term to see if something, anything specific to this strategic alliance comes along to set the resulting products apart from the crowd. It’s not a huge crowd to be sure, but just another handset or two like the others is not worth all of the effort expended.

A time-honored ritual for Apple devotees played out yet again on Friday as early buyers formed lines outside of Apple stores and other phone retailers in order to get their hands on the latest, greatest iPhone. Despite an external design nearly identical to that of last year’s phone, the iPhone 4S managed to draw crowds on launch day as well as rack up over 1 million pre-orders.

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Pre-orders for Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone 4S hit the 1 million mark quickly after they became available earlier this month, and the deluge swamped the websites of Apple and its retail partners. This week, hordes of people began queuing up outside stores, some camping out overnight, to get their hands on the device, which hit the shelves Friday.

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Eager crowds have been reported lining up at stores from New Jersey to Japan, in Canada, Australia, the UK, France and Germany.

“People feel very passionate about these products,” Andrew Eisner, director of community and content at Retrevo, told MacNewsWorld. “It’s almost like a cult.”

You’ve Got, I’ve Got, Everyone’s Got a 4S

A recent Retrevo survey led to some interesting findings regarding early iPhone 4S buyers.

“We found most of the people planning to buy an iPhone 4S already owned an iPhone,” Eisner said.

“There were as many iPhone 4 owners as 3G and 3GS owners,” Eisner continued.

There are at least 50 reasons why people make purchases, according to the website Guerilla Marketing.

Attracting praise, increasing enjoyment, possessing beautiful things, avoiding criticism, keeping up with the Joneses and making work easier are among the 50.

Those last two reasons are among those Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak cited for waiting in line to buy the iPhone 4S in an interview with Cult of Mac.

Being able to interact with the phone by voice using the new Siri feature is another reason “the Woz,” as he’s also known among Apple fans, wanted to get the iPhone 4S. Woz couldn’t sing the praises of Siri, the intelligent voice-enabled assistant on the iPhone 4S, loud enough.
Any Swagger?

One potential sales pitfall for the iPhone 4S is its external design. On the outside, it’s nearly identical to the iPhone 4, dampening the “show-off” factor for owners.

“Apple didn’t redesign the case, so there’s no way people can tell if you have the iPhone 4S,” Eisner pointed out.

“So, if consumers are looking to impress their friends, they’ll have to find another way,” Eisner added.

Perhaps they could show off by leveraging Siri.
Some iPhone 4S Tech Specs

IFixIt did a teardown of the iPhone 4S recently.

Tech specs include a 1GHz dual-core processor, an 8MP fear-facing camera with 1080p video capture capability, a VGA front-facing camera, an LED backlit IPS TFT LCD retina display, and world phone capabilities with support for multiple networks.

Apple has reportedly changed a part of iOS 5 to make it impossible for iPhone users to downgrade their phone’s firmware, even if they’d rather run an earlier version.

The iPhone Dev Team, a well-known group of iPhone hackers, first discovered the change in an unlocked developer’s version of iOS 5, which is expected to be released this fall.

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Normally, to restore your iPhone to an earlier version, you’d save “SHSH blobs” (which are like digital signatures to authenticate software) at a specific timestamp and use a third-party app to restore your firmware back to that time. The SHSH blobs are static and can be used as often as you like.

But the team found that in iOS 5, Apple has prevented people from being able to save these blobs for a specific timestamp. Instead, Apple will re-assign your phone a new SHSH blob each time your reboot your device in jailbreak mode, making saved blobs irrelevant since Apple can just reject ones that were saved.

This only affects untethered jailbreaks, so one way around it is to simply connect your iPhone to your computer and boot it up in jailbreak mode each time. But realistically, who lugs around a computer with their iPhones?

Furthermore, as the hackers note, this new system only applies to iOS 5.0 blobs and beyond. You’ll still be able to revert to pre-iOS 5.0 versions with your saved blobs, but from 5.0 onwards, there is no turning back.

Microsoft announced new tools designed to simplify management of embedded devices and smartphones. Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 targets hardware such as thin clients, digital signs, point of service products, and kiosks, while the Beta 2 version of System Configuration Manager 2012 previews control over phones running Windows Phone 7, iOS, Android, and Symbian operating systems.
The ongoing MMS (Microsoft Management Summit) in Las Vegas has already showcased a variety of new products from Redmond, including the cloud-oriented System Center 2012 and Windows InTune products covered by our sister publication eWEEK. Now, Redmond is getting around to more earthbound issues, tackling the issue of managing smartphones and embedded devices.

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On March 23, the company released a downloadable Beta 2 version of its System Center Configuration Manager 2012 product, designed to run on Windows Server 2008. Noting that “consumerization is a growing challenge for IT organizations,” Microsoft said the upgraded tool will let enterprises manage “the wide range of devices that connect to Exchange ActiveSync” — including iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Symbian devices, and Windows Phone 7 handsets.

The expanded operating system support is key, since the currently offered System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 only manages Windows Mobile. (It appears, however, that SCCM 2012 will be able to exert its most granular control only via a device enrollment process for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile; other devices will reportedly be controlled only by a default ActiveSync policy.)

Microsoft has posted a lengthy list of differences between SCCM 2007 and SCCM 2012. In addition to the expanded mobile operating system support, SCCM 2012 gets a new Configuration Manager 2012 console, said to have the following benefits:

* Logical grouping of operations into the following workspaces: Administration, Software Library, Monitoring, and Assets and Compliance
* A ribbon to help you more efficiently use the console
* An administrative user sees only the objects that she is allowed to see, as defined by role-based administration
* Search capabilities throughout the console, to help you find your data more quickly

Embedded Device Management

In addition to expanding enterprises’ control over smartphones and tablets, Microsoft is also providing the ability to “deploy, assess, update, and integrate Windows Embedded devices from a single management solution.” The company says its newly announced Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 can provide a detailed inventory of embedded devices and distribute software to them — even when their disk drives have been protected by write filters.

If we read the Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 data sheet correctly, it is not an additional piece of software enterprises need to buy. Rather, Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 refers to a set of inventory extensions and plug-ins manufacturers can code into their devices — thin clients, point of service products, digital signs, and more — allowing them to be managed by the existing SCCM 2007 product.

According to Microsoft, the Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 technologies are relevant to devices built with Windows XP Embedded, Windows Embedded Standard 2009, Windows Embedded Standard 7, Windows Embedded for Point of Service, and Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 operating systems. Those running Windows CE or Windows Embedded Compact 7 are apparently not supported, however.

Wyse announced that it has embarked on “Project Seattle,” through which its Windows Embedded thin clients will become compatible with Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011. The technology will be available at the end of June, the company added.

Kevin Dallas, general manager for Windows Embedded at Microsoft, stated:

With the addition of Windows Embedded Device Manager to Microsoft’s extensive management portfolio, we’re in a unique position to make the lives of IT managers a lot easier across PCs, servers and embedded devices. Previously, enterprises were forced to implement several management solutions to meet their needs, at a significant time and financial cost. We’ve made it simple for IT professionals to make simultaneous system updates across the enterprise with the familiarity of System Center Configuration Manager.

In response to a question by Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, the company clarified that Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 only works with SCCM 2007, not the SCCM 2011 beta. “However, our roadmaps are closely aligned, and moving forward we will coordinate our future product releases,”a spokesperson was said to have explained.