And one more thing ...

Whilst it's hard to have too much sympathy for the senior management team at Cupertino right now I believe that they are between the proverial rock and a hard place right now with the 'rock' being market share and the 'hard place' being product margin. Let me explain: The rise of the iPhone & iPad from nothing in 2007 to the become the major financial contributors to Apple's bottom line has been nothing short of spectacular. That success has been driven by a relentless increase in iDevice market share and the highest product margins in the industry - especially on the iPhone. So what's the problem? In a word - Android. The iPhone has for many a year beaten all challengers as the best smartphone in the world. This status was certainly challenged last year with the release of handsets like the Samsing Galaxy S2 and now the Galaxy S3 is probably the first handset to be more desireable than the iPhone. Most tech reviews also now rate Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Jellybean at least on a par with iOS. Add to that the recent release of the ultra cheap Google Nexus 7 (with minimal product margins) and we could see the first serious challenger to the 70% plus market share the iPad currently holds. But what about the imminent release of new iPhone and the iPad Mini? Of course the widely anticipated September release of these new products will no doubt be welcomed by the now familair fanboi queues but the reality is that Cupertino faces some hard choice and risks. In truth the 'iPad mini' simply needs to arrive and be priced within a $100 of the equivalent Nexus 7 and it will probably be another stellar success, but will that cannibalise Apple's current iPad sales and margins? More concerning is tha the new iPhone will need to be truly special in order to better the best android handsets already out there. So what do you do when you're between a rock and a hard place. The simple answer is move if you can. Just as Apple moved on from the iPod it will move on from the current iDevices and enter new or stagnant markets. My belief is that we are overdue an Apple "one more thing" moment in this Septembers keynote and that it will potentially overshadow the release of the new iPhone and iPad mini. Will it be a Apple TV releated device? In a word, probably. I believe Apple's next move will place a stake at the heart of home hub computing that has never be fullfilled by the PC or the Games Consoles or the TV. Here's hoping anyway that's the case anyway.

Why Nikon and Canon should be worried

There has been some recent speculation on iLounge that Apple may be about to enter the 'point and shoot' camera market. According to the authorised biography of Steve Jobs the three fields that he most wanted Apple to tackle were Television, Textbooks and Photography. We can speak of certainty with regard to textbooks as Apple has already released iBooks Author. According to tech chatter then an Apple 'iTV' is almost certainly imminent too. But does an entry into the world of photography, particularly the point and shoot variety, make any sense? At first appearance the obvious answer seems to be no. There's no doubt that the smartphone market has encroached into sales of point and shoot digicams. For example, the iPhone is by far the most popular camera that posts to flickr. This is for three main reasons; firstly, smartphones are omnipresent whereas most digicams are only carried for particular occasions. Secondly, our smartphones are connected enabling us to share our photos on our social networks almost instantaneously and finally cameras on smartphones are good enough to replace most digicams, though not DSLR's. So why would Apple enter a class of device that most agree that it has played a decisive role in making obsolete? To answer this question we need to know why Apple and Jobs were interested in photography. Firsly we know that Apple have always placed importance on decent optics in all of its camera iSight offerings. Secondly we know that Apple has produced professional photography (and movie) software in Aperture (and Final Cut Pro) in addition to its consumer iLife products (iPhoto, iMovie). This in itself is quite strange seeing a neither professional product is likely to have made much money for a company which traditionally abandons peripheral product lines. Unless of course these products are part of a longer term strategy. We also know that Jobs was very active player in Hollywood circles given his roles at Pixar and Disney. Jobs was also a very keen photographer – and we know he was never healf-hearted about anything. Indeed he was the official photographer at Larry Ellison's latest wedding. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, we know that Jobs had met with and was impressed by the people at Lytro with their 'light field' camera. Taking all this evidence together it doesn't seems plausible to me that Apple would enter the traditional digital camera market with a point and shoot camera. Where Apple ventures it tends to be much more disruptive. If Apple does release a standalone camera I’d imagine it will be something like a Lytro, but probably with still and video features, that was always on and always connected and had hooks into the Apple entire ecosystem. I'd imagine it would be a companion camera that displayed real-time output on your iPhone/iPad and could be controlled from such a device. Lytro has been around for about a year now and looks very impressive but also very, very niche. The Lytro solves a problem to a question we haven't yet asked ourselves. Time will tell but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple wanted to turn the photography world on its head by producing a new type of camera. If that's the case then Nikon and Canon had best start worrying now.

Got rocks in their head

News today that the Nokia Lumia is barely selling shouldn't really come as a surprise. Supposedly for every 1 Lumia sold there are 100 Samsung Galaxy S2's sold. No matter what your thoughts on Windows Phone 7 (I'm fairly neutral on the platform) the fact that Nokia seem to think that people will pay as much, and indeed perhaps even more, for an unknown proposition that an iPhone 4S or Galaxy S2 tells you that the people in Espoo nead a reality check. And soon.

MS Office for the iPad 2

More thoughts on the topic:

If MS had confidence in their Windows 8 tablet strategy surely they'd hold out the port of MS Office for their own kit. Wouldn't it be the definitive tablet killer app? Maybe, maybe not.

It would be the first time that MS were producing a major product for a platform they didn't control (yes I know that office for mac has been available for years - but it hardly counts). Scary new territory.

Wot no e-mail?

On this day when the Entente Cordiale (sp?) definitely took a hit on the chin let me do my bit for Anglo - French relations by praising a French leader. No not sulky Sarky - who more than likely won't survive his bid for re-election in 2012 - but Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, who has decided to phase out internal e-mail over the next 18 months. Inspired leadership.

MS Office for the iPad

A few posts back I speculated as to whether Miscrosoft would bring Office to the iPad. According to recent tech news Microsoft is indeed in the process of porting its Office suite onto the iPad. If true this is an interesting development. You would have thought that such a move was counter productive given that it could hold off and port Office directly onto the Windows 8 platform for both PC and tablets.

I wonder if they'll get round to doing an Android port?

You can't be sirious!

When Siri was launched at the iPhone 4S product launch it was dismissed by both Andy Rubin of Google and Craig Mundie of Microsoft. The initial dismissal was along the lines of "people don't like talking to phones" which seams a bizarre statement when you think about it.

Now Microsoft seems to have rethought its objections and is now running a series of TV commercials about the voice integration that currently is in place in the Xbox 360.

I'm not going to get into the semantics of Voice Control versus quasi artificial intelligence but Micrsoft's lame TV commercials really don't do anything to help their case.