What's In Store for Technology in 2011

It has been a big year in personal technology, from the debut and early success of Apple's iPad, to the rise and continuous improvement of Google's Android smart phone platform, to the continued surge in social services led by Facebook and Twitter.

Apple: Coming off a highly successful 2010, in which it introduced a new category of portable computer—the multitouch tablet—and sold millions of the product, Apple will have to withstand an onslaught of competitors by wowing consumers again with the second version of the iPad. At the same time, it will have to make a widely expected transition for the iPhone from a single carrier in the U.S., AT&T, to a second, likely Verizon

Google: The search giant, also riding high, is now in so many product areas it competes with nearly everyone. In its core search business, it must focus on fending off a surprisingly strong challenge from Microsoft's Bing by giving consumers more attractive, actionable results.

Microsoft: The software giant still generates strong consumer loyalty with its older products, like Windows and Office and Xbox, all of which have had updates in the past year or two. But it faces big challenges in two hot areas: smart phones and tablets. Its new Windows Phone 7 platform has some nice design features, but also some missing capabilities that need to be addressed.

RIM: The BlackBerry maker had a good 2010 in some ways, though sales were propped up by two-for-one giveaways, and consumer surveys show enthusiasm fading for the iconic smart phone. The company has an answer: a new software platform called QNX, but is vague on when that will show up on the BlackBerry. For 2011, RIM's big move will be a new QNX-based tablet, the PlayBook, which looks speedy and highly attractive in the limited demos RIM has provided.

HP: The technology behemoth's laptops and printers have proved popular with consumers. But it hasn't had any real presence in smart-phones, tablets or consumer cloud services. To solve the problems, in 2010 HP bought innovative but struggling Palm, whose smart-phone operating system, webOS, and phones, the Pre and Pixi, got good reviews but sold poorly and didn't attract many third-party apps.

Facebook and Twitter: The twin leaders in social networking were red-hot in 2010, attracting vast numbers of users. They have huge opportunities for further success, but face challenges. Smaller services, like social-coupon company Groupon, continue to emerge with new social and community ideas consumers like.

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Toshiba's Android tablet sales stop in UK after major flaws

Toshiba's entry into Android tablets hit a major setback today as UK retailers have stopped sales of the Folio 100. A set of leaks of company memos from Dixons chain stores Currys and PC World have shown that both are freezing sales after a "high return rate" for multiple issues. Shops have pulled it off their websites and deliberately boosted the price to £999 ($1,613) to deter customers from asking about a sale.

Among the issues reported at MoDaCo's forums have been the absence of Android Market and Flash support despite the use of Android 2.2, random wakeups from standby and a lack of responsiveness. Some owners have also commented on a poor-quality display and low build quality with a relatively fragile plastic shell compared to the tighter build of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the aluminum iPad. Flash should be available on Monday, but most workarounds have so far involved rooting and installing custom firmware.

Toshiba hasn't commented on the halted sales, and its lack of communication has been cited by some forum goers as a reason for returning the Folio 100.

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Comcast iPad Customers to Get TV Service - Android on the Way

For Comcast customers, the concept of TV Everywhere took another step towards reality as Comcast announced the release of its Xfinity TV app for the iPad. The current app will allow you to use your iPad to search TV listings, change channels, and remotely schedule your DVR. By December, iPadders (or is it iPaddies?) will be able to watch pre-recorded video content on the iPad. Moves such as this one reinforce the opinion of many TV service providers that the iPad is the next "screen" for the consumer, as well as a growing revenue opportunity.

Lest mobile phone users feel left out by Comcast, the company plans to offer similar apps for the iPhone/iTouch, Android, and Blackberry platforms.

Netflix Delays Android Mobile App Over Security, DRM Fears

Netflix Nov. 13 said it will release an instant streaming app for Android on specific smartphones next year, delaying the launch because of content protection hurdles caused by fragmentation in the open source platform.

Apple and Microsoft both have strict control over the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 platforms they offer, making it easier to build secure apps for devices using those platforms.

This isn't the first complaint about the difficulty in writing software for the platform. More than 200,000 Android handsets ship daily and devices floating around are powered by Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and soon, version 2.3.

Because not every build offers the same protections, this makes it difficult to write one unifying app that won't break across the builds

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Monsoon revamps Vulkano media streamer lineup

Monsoon has rebranded its lineup of Vulkano placeshifting multimedia streaming devices and added a new, barebones model. The Vulkano and Vulkano Pro introduced this past summer now become the Vulkano Deluxe and Vulkano Deluxe Pro, respectively, while a third model, the Vulkano Platinum, has been added.

It also foregoes any onboard storage, but does get Wi-Fi and allows users to watch live streaming TV content on their Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones as well as the iPad. It uses H.264 compression for not quite HD video quality but just 150kbps of necessary bandwidth.

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HP Introduces Slate 500 Tablet

Hewlett-Packard on Friday introduced its Slate 500, a Windows 7-powered touch screen tablet PC for $799, billing it as "the ideal PC for professionals who don't work at a traditional desk, yet need to stay productive in a secure, familiar Windows environment."

Besides the iPad, the Slate 500 will compete against the Android-powered 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tablet, which will retail for $599.99 at Verizon Wireless in November; the 5-inch Dell Streak from AT&T, for $550, and a 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that Research in Motion announced in September. Since Apple launched the iPad last April, it has sold more than seven million units. Apple has marketed the iPad as mainly a consumer device.

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Technicolor's Media Touch Tablet

Last week, Technicolor announced that it is launching the second generation of its Media Touch tablet.

The product has been primarily defined to consume online and home audio and video, access the
Web, and interact with other equipment. It is also positioned as an all-in-one remote controller.

The device is based on Google's Android operating system.

Apple ipad- Fastest Adopted Consumer Electronic Device

The Apple iPad is proving to be one of the most successful consumer electronic devices of all time. Despite much derision at its time of launch, the iPad is now selling faster than the iPhone and leading the way in the worldwide tablet revolution.

At this rate, the Apple iPad is not only flying of the shelves faster than the iPhone, but is also far ahead of entire categories of tech products like the 350,000 DVD players that sold in the first year. The iPad will reach sales of $9 billion in 2011, making it the fourth largest category of electronics and putting it ahead of cellular phones and game consoles.

The rest of the market is obviously affected by the huge success of the iPad, which is the reason why so many manufacturers are starting to produce similar tablets of their own. However, only time will tell if the Microsoft and Google Android tablets starting to hit the shelves have what it takes to acheive the same kind of consumer excitement as the iPad.

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Is Google TV for real?

There is value in Google's solution (the ability to initiate searches across all kinds of content, including a pay-TV provider's channel lineup), but there are drawbacks. First, will users want to use a keyboard in their TV search experience? (Logitech says that the Harmony software can be downloaded as an app to Android smartphones, so that would be another option.)

Second, without the blessing of the pay-TV providers (DISH Network is the only service provider to work with Google TV), Google's search capabilities would be limited to the provider's program guide information and NOT assets like VoD titles. As the VoD libraries of the service providers grow, search and discovery is going to be more and more important - Joe Ambeault commented that Verizon constantly changes the title art and positioning of its VoD assets to encourage purchases.

Google touts its TV solution as an open platform, but one has to wonder if the pay-TV providers will care. Verizon's approach has been to develop advanced TV features themselves. Let's assume that we start to see more provider-device relationships emerge such as the LG Electronics/Orange deal or Philips Net TVs and TeliaSonera VoD. In this case, could Google TV be useful? Sure, but the question is who controls the user interface and search functionality. I would think the operator would still want that control.

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G1, Android, and Cupcake

T-Mobile USA announced that Google Android-based G1 smartphone is now available in all markets nationwide. Previously, it was only sold in T-Mobile’s 3G service markets. Although the carrier has not publicly discussed the G1’s sales figure, Morgan Stanley projected around 300,000 unit G1 sales in 4Q08 for the carrier. Contrasting this number, Taiwan’s HTC (G1’s maker) in early January said that G1’s 2008 shipments reached the company’s one million goal as first reported by DigiTimes. Since G1 was only available in the U.S. and U.K. in 2008, the Morgan Stanley number looks a bit low unless either T-Mobile intentionally stocked up G1 during the holiday season or sell-through was very poor.

Entering into 2009, G1 will become available in additional countries. T-Mobile will introduce it to Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Austria in January, and to Germany and Poland in February. Expanded availability, like in the U.S. will favor G1 sales. But on the other hand, the competition is up too. Google’s Android will be featured in other smartphone models. Sprint and Motorola reportedly showed interest in the Android platform, and Huawei, Samsung, and Kogan (an Australian CE maker) are working on Android-based models. Competition also comes from other mobile brands. Apple’s iPhone is clearly the biggest threat, but Blackberry’s Storm also had decent sales in the past quarter (500K as reported by the Wall Street Journal).

More exciting to G1 users is the news (or rumor) that an Android update is coming soon. Codenamed “Cupcake,” the update will bring new features to the phone’s visual display and add a new on-screen interactive keyboard, among many other hyped features. There are even rumors that G1 will get multi-touch feature in the future. Of course, with today’s news regarding Apple's multi-touch related patents, vendors will rush to consult with their lawyers to figure out if their multi-touch feature is free of IP troubles.

G1 is born, Stirring up the Smartphone Pot

Google showed off its new brainchild yesterday: a smartphone design in collaboration with its Android partners, Taiwan’s handset maker HTC, and the wireless carrier T-Mobile USA. The phone specs are all over the place on the Internet. It looks quite attractive but perhaps because of Apple iPhone’s lasting impression, many tech pundits gave only a “pass” grade on its appearance. The biggest design difference between the iPhone and Google’s G1 (BTW, an unimpressive name that sounds like a robot rather than a personal/lifestyle device) is the keyboard. Instead of the virtual touch-screen keyboard on the iPhone, G1 has a sliding, full-size Qwerty keyboard. (Read Stuart’s funny blog here to understand how important an easy-to-use keyboard is to a road-warrior doing quite a bit emailing everyday.)

In Google’s view, the biggest difference is G1’s openness. Andy Rubin, Senior Director of Mobile Platforms for Google, claimed that the phone was "future proof because it has openness built in." I am skeptical that “future-proof” will be the selling-point of G1 in the U.S. In this country, consumers’ replacement cycle for mobile phones is perhaps 18-24 months, similar to their mobile service contract length. Replacement purchases are a good business for handset makers. Making consumers believe their G1s are future-proof is at odds with handset makers’ interest in driving volume growth. “Future-proof” is one of the benefits for being open, but do not alienate yourself from your partners’ interest.

Perhaps Andy’s comment targeted more towards third-party application developers in its Android community than towards consumers, and served as an assurance that even Google and its handset partners move on with G2 or G3 in the future, the open software development environment will still allow G1 owners to benefit from new applications from the developer community. But backward compatibility is virtually the standard in this industry, and “future-proof” does not make Google’s G1 stand tall.

I might take Andy’s words out of context, but I think what he really meant is the promise that the openness of the Android operating system will bring a richer and far better user experience on G1 than any other non-Android smartphones on the market in the future. I will be keenly interested in how successful Google’s strategy will turn out to be in the next year or so. The mobile industry is clearly at the crossroads with the smartphone category sitting right in the eye of the innovation storm. This “future-proof” category (meaning its status as the crown of the digital convergence is well-established) will decide the mobile industry’s direction in the next 10-15 years. The Symbian sect is gradually moving in Android’s direction, but the Blackberry and Apple clans still cling to their proprietary approach. Third-party application developers now have a formidable spokesperson named Google, but will handset makers and carriers ever budge? If they will, who will blink first?

With Android, Google either crashed the party or took over as the new DJ. What a moment!

Open Up and Say Android

Rumor has it, on Monday British chip player ARM will unveil a mobile phone that uses Google’s new open-source platform for cellphones aka Android. No details have yet been released (both companies were quoted as saying zip) but details aren’t really the point here in my opinion. It will be a phone. It will have Android. It will be written about by the press. Why? Partially because Google is involved and people are beginning to suspect that Google really runs the world. (They took over from the Freemason’s around 2003.) If Google does anything it must have significance because Google itself is so significant, right?

Beyond that, however, I think the real trend this highlights is the gradual opening up of the cellular world. Mobile phones are becoming more like PCs not only by having a more capabilities but also by having more in common. The balkanized technical landscape of the cellular world has always made it hard to develop applications and services. Google’s Android highlights efforts by big industry players to make mobile phones more similar and more usable by third parties.

Google Android vs. The Celco Cyborgs

So what will Google’s new open-source software mean for the mobile phone industry? I’ve spun this Rubik’s cube around as many ways as I can think of and always come back to “not much”. I’d like a more open, flexible cellphone as much as the next guy but the problem isn’t the OS. The problem is that (most) of the major cellphone players control their handsets like an obsessive mama. You can only use their handsets to access their applications via their network. And for those of you just joining us, this isn’t an accident. The mobile carriers deliberately do this because… you guessed it, they want to make money. They have nothing to gain from a hyper-competitive market that lets consumers can access what they want, where they want, and how they want. So why would a new Google OS package change their minds? I don’t think it will. T-Mobile & Sprint might be willing to experiment with it in hopes of luring some subscribers but I somehow doubt they are willing to give consumers the freedom needed drive down prices. After all, isn’t that was regulators are supposed to do?