In the past half a year mobile industry has experienced turbulent time of great market changes. When the year started Nokia was still committed to developing Qt-based Symbian and Meego ecosystem, Google backed Android was the preferred choice for the market challengers, and the Apple iPhone was unchallenged industry benchmark. The era of change started when Nokia abandoned its own development efforts and made a deep alliance with Microsoft to adopt Windows Phone as its sole smartphone platform, leaving both Symbian and Meego dead in the water. At the same time Android manufacturers gained momentum while Apple stalled and Nokia lost ground, making it seem that in the near future smartphone market was going to be divided in three camps: Apple iPhone, Google lead Android group, and Microsoft-Nokia. This all changed when Google acquired Motorola Mobility.
While Google informed the public that its acquisition of Motorola Mobility was defensive, that its intention was to obtain patents to defend the Android ecosystem, that it would retain Motorola Mobility as independent subsidiary, that it would treat equally all Android vendors, it is hard to believe that this state of affairs would continue for long. Google made a massive investment and its investors will sooner or later demand results from the management, and from the management the only way to obtain them is to become a vertically integrated company, imitating Apple. Not to mention that in large organizations there is always massive inertia to favor home grown solutions, even if the upper management tries to maintain neutrality with users of Android, the human factor, middle managers and developers inside Google-Motorola will pull and give flavors to each other’s. The simple fact at the end of the day is that due to acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the playground isn't level anymore and by time it will become even less so.
So what is next? Apple doesn't license IOS and with Microsoft the playground isn't even due to Microsoft working closely in deep partnership with Nokia. Fortunately there is a choice that mobile vendors can and should take, that choice is Meego. While Nokia did more or less abandon Meego, Intel continued to push forward and invest into it. It is a production ready mobile OS that is thoroughly modern, easy to develop and adopt. By adopting Meego as one of the used smartphone platforms in their offerings, device manufactures gain by..
..Having leverage against Google and Microsoft. Leverage is needed because both Google and Microsoft have in the past made it clear that they are in charge of their platforms, dictating more or less the terms of usage to manufacturers. They also have taken the freedom of favoring one device manufacturer to further their own goals. To ensure more fair and equal treatment, vendors need to have the nuclear option to threaten abandoning both platforms if needed, this threat should allow manufacturers to gain concessions to modify platforms, but also gain more favorable financial terms to license Android or Windows Phone.
..Allowing deep alliance with network service operators. Since the dawn of mobile networks, service operators have had one single goal, to be something more than just a pipe of bytes. They want their customers to select them not because of their pipes, but because of the unique features and services that they offer as part of their larger customer experience. With Apple, Microsoft and Google the problem is that they offer their own standardized customer experience, leaving operators to be commoditized pipe providers. This creates tremendous opportunities for device manufacturers to ally with service operators to create unique customer experiences, for example operator specific user interfaces that interwove services into tightly packed offering. In case where this co-operation leads to a hit product, benefits are more than clear. It should also again be mentioned that operators to need and want leverage against Google, Apple and Microsoft, which itself makes the business case worthwhile enough.
..Enabling product and brand differentiation via software. The big problem that all major phone manufacturers of today are trying to solve is to how to be different and how to maintain that difference once it is found. Designs can be easily copied or imitated. User interface is the same across the multiple vendors who use the same operating system. Hardware components and technology are the same and used by multiple vendors, buzz words changing from Retina Display and Super AMOLED to Clear Black Display, for the customer it is more or less the same, better than normal displays. The only way to clearly obtain differentiation is via creation of unique software offerings. The only platform that in the future offers this is Meego.
In my honest opinion, there is a very strong case for mobile device manufacturers to make use of Meego. While I don't think that any device manufacturer at this point should commit them solely to it, they should take the option for obvious strategic reasons, as a life insurance, but also as a way to move forward in the ever changing mobile market.
Sunday 21 August 2011
Monday 15 August 2011
Retailing 101: How not to deliver service
Last week I ordered an soda maker from a web-store of an large and established Finnish home appliance and electronics retail chain. The web shopping experience was pleasant and I was delighted that I could select my order to be delivered to an near by shop of theirs. I was even more delighted when they e-mailed to me and told explicitly that my order was ready to be collected after two working days. However as I had worked in retailing before, I knew that their information and logistical system just couldn't be this good and up to the job, and I was right.
Today I went to the store to pick up my soda maker. When I approached the salesperson and told that I had come to get my delivery, he was surprised, told me that they didn't have the machine, that they didn't usually sell it in their store, that to his knowledge even supplier had difficulties on delivering them. He then went on and started browse some papers on his desk, he found my order notification from the papers, but there was no machine. As I knew that the local shop wasn't at fault, I just left the shop, feeling little bit blue that I had just wasted my time and effort, not to mention that I hadn't got what I had been promised. But lets think on why this did happen, why did they fail their service promise. In my opinion they failed because they...
..made the service promise too early
When they sent me the email that my order could be retrieved in two business days, they probably hadn't even shipped the product. Their promise solely leaned on their belief that they had the product available in their or suppliers warehouse, and that their logistics could deliver it just in time. This is just plain stupid. The only time when you make an explicit promise on when you deliver a product is when you have shipped the product, and even then you add few days extra to be sure that you can keep the promise. In this instance making a promise that they will deliver in two days was just madness.
..made an unnecessary service promise
I as an web consumer am not time constrained, I order from the web because it is convenient for me and because I have the time to wait, if I need a product right now, I walk into a brick and mortar store and buy it from there. For me as an consumer loving convenience, it would have been much better if they had send A) notification that they had received the order; B) notification that they had shipped the product, or that they have difficulties on shipping it; C) notification that the product has been delivered to a store and I can pick it up from there.
Now somebody working in retail and knowing department store systems, could probably say that it just costs too much and is too complicated to network systems that date to end of 80s or beginning of 00s to do what I suggest. Well I disagree with that strongly. If modifying the department store system and ERP would cost too much, then they could have just build an extra interface to the web store where they could have stores to receipt incoming deliveries and launch delivery notifications based on that. Coupled with an increased time frame for the delivery they could have provided a better customer response and a promise that they actually could have fulfilled.
Today I went to the store to pick up my soda maker. When I approached the salesperson and told that I had come to get my delivery, he was surprised, told me that they didn't have the machine, that they didn't usually sell it in their store, that to his knowledge even supplier had difficulties on delivering them. He then went on and started browse some papers on his desk, he found my order notification from the papers, but there was no machine. As I knew that the local shop wasn't at fault, I just left the shop, feeling little bit blue that I had just wasted my time and effort, not to mention that I hadn't got what I had been promised. But lets think on why this did happen, why did they fail their service promise. In my opinion they failed because they...
..made the service promise too early
When they sent me the email that my order could be retrieved in two business days, they probably hadn't even shipped the product. Their promise solely leaned on their belief that they had the product available in their or suppliers warehouse, and that their logistics could deliver it just in time. This is just plain stupid. The only time when you make an explicit promise on when you deliver a product is when you have shipped the product, and even then you add few days extra to be sure that you can keep the promise. In this instance making a promise that they will deliver in two days was just madness.
..made an unnecessary service promise
I as an web consumer am not time constrained, I order from the web because it is convenient for me and because I have the time to wait, if I need a product right now, I walk into a brick and mortar store and buy it from there. For me as an consumer loving convenience, it would have been much better if they had send A) notification that they had received the order; B) notification that they had shipped the product, or that they have difficulties on shipping it; C) notification that the product has been delivered to a store and I can pick it up from there.
Now somebody working in retail and knowing department store systems, could probably say that it just costs too much and is too complicated to network systems that date to end of 80s or beginning of 00s to do what I suggest. Well I disagree with that strongly. If modifying the department store system and ERP would cost too much, then they could have just build an extra interface to the web store where they could have stores to receipt incoming deliveries and launch delivery notifications based on that. Coupled with an increased time frame for the delivery they could have provided a better customer response and a promise that they actually could have fulfilled.
Thursday 4 August 2011
Are we going to have a double dip?
The question on everybody's lips is are we going to have a double dip recession or not? Many people from common persons to market watchers are predicting that we are going to have another recession. Stock markets certainly have taken the hint and taken a deep hit down, at the moment of writing the OMX Helsinki has plunged over 5% and major stock exchanges around the world have seen prices going down. The media while still not preaching doom and gloom is constantly speculating on the issue. On this climate it is hard not to be pessimistic about the future, it is easier to say that things are going down hill than say that they aren't. However, I myself think that we are not going to have another recession, we simply don't have enough reason for it.
Recessions happen for a reason
They happen because the market has had long enough digression that finally runs out, leaving the market and the market actors paralysed by both their past misinvestment and invisibility of the future. The financial crisis that started in 2008 was largely caused by housing and commodity bubbles around the world. In the USA investors, banks and lenders had for too long thought that property values can go only up, leading everybody and their dog to take advantage of the market. The same was happening in Europe where endless amounts of leisure and holiday apartments where mushrooming here and there, for example at the peak of the Spanish property bubble, over half of the cement used in Europe was used in Spain. The belief that the market can go only up was the market delusion that finally lead into recession.
Do we have a good enough reason for another recession?
This is the question that we should be thinking about, is there a good enough reason for a recession. I don't think so. We do have big problems in the world economy that need fixing sooner or later, for example the increasing debt of US government, continuing crisis in the Eurozone, doubts about continuing growth in China, etc.. However if we look at the real economy, on what people and companies are actually doing, there is a lot less to be worried about. People and companies haven't over extended themselves, quite the contrary: people have been investing carefully especially to real estate markets; and companies have restructured themselves during the recession and are now more efficient and enjoying healthy profits.
In my honest opinion, we don't have good enough reason to have the economy go back into the recession. However we neither have good enough reasons for the economy to boom, like I said before, there are many troubling things that make the market uncertain about the future, but that doesn't lead into a recession, it leads into an era of slow growth until the major causes of this market nervousness are corrected.
CQMMYKQVNPDW
Recessions happen for a reason
They happen because the market has had long enough digression that finally runs out, leaving the market and the market actors paralysed by both their past misinvestment and invisibility of the future. The financial crisis that started in 2008 was largely caused by housing and commodity bubbles around the world. In the USA investors, banks and lenders had for too long thought that property values can go only up, leading everybody and their dog to take advantage of the market. The same was happening in Europe where endless amounts of leisure and holiday apartments where mushrooming here and there, for example at the peak of the Spanish property bubble, over half of the cement used in Europe was used in Spain. The belief that the market can go only up was the market delusion that finally lead into recession.
Do we have a good enough reason for another recession?
This is the question that we should be thinking about, is there a good enough reason for a recession. I don't think so. We do have big problems in the world economy that need fixing sooner or later, for example the increasing debt of US government, continuing crisis in the Eurozone, doubts about continuing growth in China, etc.. However if we look at the real economy, on what people and companies are actually doing, there is a lot less to be worried about. People and companies haven't over extended themselves, quite the contrary: people have been investing carefully especially to real estate markets; and companies have restructured themselves during the recession and are now more efficient and enjoying healthy profits.
In my honest opinion, we don't have good enough reason to have the economy go back into the recession. However we neither have good enough reasons for the economy to boom, like I said before, there are many troubling things that make the market uncertain about the future, but that doesn't lead into a recession, it leads into an era of slow growth until the major causes of this market nervousness are corrected.
CQMMYKQVNPDW
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