Google, Android and the Myth of Open Source: Part 1

By now, everyone is done losing their minds over the multiple revelations of the last few weeks that seem to indicate that Google will not be as "open" as they've claimed to be up to this point.  One significant article, appearing on Businessweek, gave the impression that Google was significantly tightening the reigns over the future direction of Android.  It remains to be seen just how much control Google intends to exert over Android, but the more interesting question is how they intend to go about exerting that control. In theory, since Android is open source, they shouldn't have the ability to reign in any unwanted use of their platform.  The truth is that Google has always skirted the line of open source and in doing so has taken the liberty of criticizing Apple for doing they very things that they appear ready to do themselves.  The issue isn't a simple one but is getting clearer to understand by the day as multiple stress points have collided in the last few weeks.

"It's Complicated" with Google and Open Source

To begin, we should back up a little bit to recognize exactly what Google's relationship with the open source community has been up to this point.  Contrary to the popular belief that Google is completely open, Google has had a contentious relationship with open source diehards for  long time.  The open source purists would have you believe that nothing is actually open source unless it is developed alongside the community that has full access at every point of development.  Nightly builds, placed on software repositories and available to anyone, are a staple of open-source projects.  To call one's software open-source is to accept that people are going to take the work at some point and do something with it that you didn't intend and probably don't want.  The trade-off is that by making source code available at all times, you're also receiving the collective aid of the online community.  Successful open-source projects include various versions of desktop Linux, particularly Debian, OpenOffice, Firefox, Wordpress and Webkit, the browser engine that Apple open sourced in 2005.

There are, of course, varying degrees to which an entity might choose to make their source code available to anyone online.  There is no open source regulatory agency that runs around enforcing the release of code in a regular and timely manner.  For this reason, a company like Google has often been able to adopt the moniker of open source and take credit for their openness while not completely abiding by the accepted rules of the open source community.  Google is famous and infamous for open-sourcing most of their products.  Famous because they are a giant company that offers popular services, but infamous because they choose to develop nearly everything in-house and then release the source code after they've already launched their service and gained traction.  To some people, this is just a for-profit corporation doing what it can to help the community.  For others, this is a for-profit corporation using the open source community as a sort of indemnification from responsibility.  If Google eventually gives away its code, it can maintain the political posture that they can't be held responsible for leveraging their monopolistic position against new industries.  Since they "give away" their code, anyone can theoretically benefit from their work.  In practice, however, Google tends to move into whatever services they choose and dominate quickly, making the open sourcing of their code an irrelevant action.  In other words, many people view it as an empty gesture that only serves to foster goodwill.

Android's Programming and Mission

This has never been more true for Google than with Android.  Google purchased Android in 2005 and worked to reform the ultimate goals of Android to better benefit Google.  Put simply, while Android was designed as a mobile OS to compete and be sold by license or services like most other mobile OS's of the time, Google saw Android as an opportunity to ensure that Google Search, essentially their only profitable service, would continue to be dominant in the emerging mobile space.  In order to secure that future, Google needed a way to get Android, with search front and center on it, on as many handsets as possible. Just like with Google Maps, Google Calendar, GMail and virtually every one of their web services, the best way to make that happen was to make it free.  In fact, free wasn't even enough because the mobile market was already occupied by established manufacturers with their own goals, relationships with carriers and rivalries with each other.  In order to make the greatest possible impact, Google would need to make the source code available to be manipulated and customized by manufacturers.  in 2007, Google did just that with the introduction of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of industry players who would promote open standards in the wireless industry.  The OHA unveiled Android at the same time, giving the impression that the OHA would be controlling Android in the future.

This expectation proved to be false, as Google not only developed Android entirely in-house but even worked with HTC to make the first Android handset, the G1.  The G1 even had Google branding on it, beginning a long trend of Google putting their own name on handsets that introduce a new version of Android.  To what degree the Open Handset Alliance does anything is not known, as they don't appear to have had any hand in developing Android or in producing anything else.  In a sense, this was another tactic by Google to position Android as not locked-down by one company.  As Apple's iPhone began gaining significant mindshare, Google knew that the appeal of Android was in the idea that it was an open platform, unlike the curated, closed iPhone ecosystem.  You could view this as the beginning of significant, inauthentic posturing by Google that their open-source OS was in some way open to consumers.  Just as the OHA and open source communities had no control over Android until significantly after releases, so did consumers have no real choice or options with their Android handsets.  Virtually every Android phone from the G1 to handsets today go through a similar development cycle: Google develops a version of Android, a manufacturer either works with Google or takes the source code when it's available, a handset is made and negotiated with carriers, and then the phone is sold through the carrier to the consumer.  At no point along this path does the consumer have real control over the device, and nobody other than a small percentage of hacker-types is going to modify the software to suit their purposes.  In such cases when they do, companies like Motorola have no problem voiding the warenty of the handset and not offering support.  In this respect, modifying an Android phone is no different than modifying an iPhone, except that someone who jailbreaks an iPhone can always restore the phone by plugging into iTunes.

Yet nobody would ever get this impression by listening to Google or people who don't understand the industry well.  Andy Rubin, the founder of Android and its director at Google, is famous for saying the word "open" as many times as possible when people criticize the modifications to Android that have provided poor experiences.  He seems unwilling to admit that this "openness" only exists for OEMs and carriers, not for actual consumers.  After Steve Jobs jumped on the Apple earnings call in October last year and criticized the fragmented nature of Android, Rubin tweeted the directions for extracting the Android source code as "the definition of open."  We'll revisit that bravado at a later point, but it's worth pointing out that that type of response is a clear indication that Rubin, and Google by proxy, is not really focused on what matters to consumers.  No consumer is going to go to the Android repository, extract the source code, and build their own Android phone.  Just saying "open" seems to work, though.  In the FCC's net neutrality order, they actually said that they didn't impose restrictions on wireless networks because of "recent moves towards openness, including the introduction of open operating systems like Android."  The confusion woven by Google seems to have worked out just fine.

Meanwhile, Google has stayed true to its other practices in open source.  They've developed Android internally, worked with a single manufacturer on each release of the OS, then open-sourced the code months later.  For consumers, this has proven to be a frustrating process, as OEMs haven't gotten access to new versions until months after each new version is unveiled.  This was particularly evident this last year, as Google introduced Android 2.2 "Froyo" in May, but no phone shipped with it until August, the same time updates came to phones other than the Google Nexus One.  In August, phones were still shipping with versions 1.6 and 2.1.  The Galaxy S line from Samsung , which shipped in July-September with 2.1 has only seen updates to 2.2 in the last two months, a sad fact since Google unveiled Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" in December with the Nexus S.  Open-sourcing the code has not led to timely or meaningful releases from most manufacturers, yet Google has treated the very fact that they open-source as evidence that they are on the consumers' sides.

As more and more OEM skins began fragmenting the Android experience, the one trump card people believed Google held was to withhold access to the Android Market and Google apps such as Gmail.  Yet Google has proven to be surprisingly indiscriminating in what devices on which to allows those apps.  Low-end phones with terrible skins and tablets that aren't given the Google blessing (Samsung Galaxy Tab) receive the apps, giving the impression that Google really doesn't care what devices run Android or how poor the experience is.  All that's mattered up to this point is getting Google search on as many phones as possible, and the strategy has worked to dramatically boost Google search from mobile devices.

Taking the High Road?

So where did Google and Android stand in March 2011?  Google is a giant search and advertising company using Android to boost use of its search on mobile devices.  Google releases each version of Android as open source, both to drive adoption by virtually every manufacturer and to gain good will as a benevolent company.  Google is not restricting how Android is used in any meaningful way, weighing Android and search adoption over ensuring a good consumer experience.  Google is also, very importantly, using its position as open source advocates as a way to jab Apple for being comparatively draconian.  None of the examples given here factor into Google's willingness to pretend that they take the moral high road in developing their OS.

So while we have demonstrated the hypocrisy and incongruence of Google's positions up to this point, a number of developments in the last few weeks have placed the question of Google's moral leadership up for public debate.  Truth be told, Google's position going forward is no more incriminating than what they've done up to this point.  It does, however, shine more light on the process and myths of the superiority of open source.  We'll examine these issues in Part 2.

An Open and Dangerous Playground

Ladies and gentlemen, RIM just announced that they are going to allow Android apps to run on the Blackberry Playbook. Let that soak in for a moment. Your favorite Android tablet apps, every single one of them, will be able to run in emulation on the Playbook. All of you out there who are dying to get your hands on a Playbook and make it your own, you, along with all of those many Android tablet owners, will be able to run those Android apps. You won't have to go out and buy a Xoom or a Galaxy Tab to buy into that ecosystem. RIM is providing a way for you to have that Playbook AND the apps you really want. It's like the best of both worlds, assuming that you use a Blackberry as your main phone and will have it in order to use the email and calendar clients.

Or, if you're like just about everyone else out there, this is a completely meaningless development that is worth noting not for it's own merits but as an indicator of just how sad a state RIM finds itself in.  For months now, people have been wondering if RIM would do something like this.  Since Android is built on Java, it's always been theoretically possible to run Android apps in an "Alien Dalvik" layer that runs apps in virtualization.  Running the apps in virtualization is not as unsatisfactory as it might sound, since all of Android is a virtual machine and the apps are essentially "virtualized."  The advantage of allowing the Playbook to run Android apps is that there would theoretically be an ecosystem of 200,000 existing Android apps that could be easily ported over and submitted to the Blackberry App World.  There are a myriad of problems with this plan, however, from the perspectives of Android developers and even RIM itself.

For starters, the opening of this article is actually a bit misleading.  You can't currently port Android tablet apps over, because the guidlines outlined by RIM only mention Android 2.3 apps.  Android 3.0 Honeycomb is the first true tablet OS from Google and includes its own unique SDK for apps.  The experiment of putting Android 2.2 (designed for a phone) on a tablet was already tried by Samsung, resulting in a lackluster Galaxy Tab and a complete about-face as soon as they had Honeycomb with which to begin building their Galaxy Tab 10.1.  Ordinary Android apps don't work well for a tablet, even on a diminutive 7-inch tablet like the Playbook.  So right out of the gate, you have the entire purpose of using Android apps drawn into question.  It seems certain that RIM will eventually allow Honeycomb apps to work on the Playbook, but that time hasn't yet come, and the entire point of this strategy was to have useful apps at launch.

What happens, then, when RIM does build in the tools to use Android 3.0 apps on the Playbook?  Won't that fix all the problems that were just mentioned?  That all depends on whether or not there are going to be many useful Honeycomb apps.  The Motorola Xoom just launched and has barely any apps or developer support behind it.  If development for Android tablets follows the same path that development for Android phones took, then it isn't going to be until a significant amount of hardware sells before developers take it seriously.  Right now, there isn't a single Android tablet that looks to be remotely competitive to the iPad. So where does that leave the state of tablet-specific Android apps?  In the starting blocks, just like the Playbook itself.

Furthermore, as RIM adds yet another way to build apps that the Playbook supports, what is the clear message in terms of what frameworks developers should use to write Playbook apps?  They're allowing people to write in Adobe Air and sort of get by with Android apps.  Where is the incentive to write natively for the Playbook?  It doesn't exist, and probably for a more fundamental reason than just having too many options.  The tools that RIM is providing for their new QNX framework must not be that compelling if they've already lost confidence in their ability to convince developers that it's an environment worth investing in.

And finally, the reason this is a bad idea is the thing that should have been considered first.  What kind of experience is this really going to be for consumers?  Playbook owners, however few there might be, will be greeted with a complete mashup of Blackberry Java, Adobe Air, and Android apps, none of which will be particularly strong on their own merit.  And since the Playbook does actually do real multitasking, how is a virtualized app, designed for a different OS and hardware, going to perform and affect battery life?  Battery life has already been identified as a weak spot for the Playbook before they can even get it to market, but RIM doesn't seem concerned that these Android apps will likely tax the system in ways that true native development wouldn't.  How can anyone respect this device if RIM can't show any true ownership of it even at launch?

The reality is that nobody can.  The Playbook absolutely demos well and has shown tons of potential in its interface, but like so many other products, the experience of actually using it over time will likely tell the true story.  Since RIM went out of their way to steal so much from Palm's WebOS, it seems only fitting that after an initial flurry of hype, this device is also likely to trip out of the starting blocks and watch the competition run out of sight.

The App Console

A while back, I wrote an article detailing the various ways I use my iPad.  The intent of the article was to illustrate that while a tablet is not currently a "necessary" device, the appeal is so strong that I, like other iPad owners, am using it more and more.  This is evident in the sheer number of apps that I use on a daily or regular basis, as I listed all of them in the article.  As I spend more and more time on a three-week trip, I find myself blown away how many apps I regularly use on my iPhone as well.  While I've always maintained that the core elements of an operating system (browser, touch response, reliability, general appearance) help establish the quality of a smartphone OS, there's no doubt that we live an an app world that influences how we value certain platforms.

More and more, the iPhone's simplistic interface seems to be a well-placed bet on the eventual importance of mobile apps.  The layouts of Android or Windows Phone 7 both seem confused in their approach, likely because they both hit the market after the iPhone had gained significant mindshare.  In order to differentiate themselves, they added layers of abstraction and obstruction that don't make it any easier to get to your apps.  Adding multiple drawers and places to put apps (Android), or forcing them into arbitrary hubs (WP7), makes it harder, nor easier, to get to your apps.  Only WebOS has a comparable method, since they treat space in the OS differently and put all apps into an easily-accessible launcher.  That's not without its problems, however, because if WebOS had a less-embarrassing catalog, their users might be finding the launcher an inadequate way to navigate their apps.

To those who question whether or not Apple had plans for the App Store all along, I would point to how perfectly the iPhone homescreen is for dropping apps onto it.  While they might have said at the iPhone introduction that they were committed to web apps, they had a perfect solution ready for developers within 8 months of the iPhone launch.  To go along with this "new" approach to native app development, the iPhone just happened to be the perfect console for launching these apps.  It had to have been planned all along, and it was planned pretty well, at that.

This idea of the iPhone and iOS devices as "app consoles" isn't mine, of course.  It's been written about extensively by John Gruber on DaringFireball, and by Watts Martin and Marco Arment.  The point is underscored, however, in a mere list of frequently-used apps on my iPhone, just like the list months ago for my iPad:

Core Apps:

• Phone
• Mail
• Safari
• iPod
• Camera + Pictures
• Clock
• Messaging
• Calendar
• Maps
• App Store + iTunes
• YouTube
• Stocks
• Notes

Social:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Meebo
• Tumblr
• Instagram
• Skype
• What's App

Games:

• Angry Birds Seasons
• Tiny Wings
• Astronut
• Words with Friends

Media:

• TWiT
• Engadget
• Huffington Post
• Pandora
• Wunder Radio
• NPR

Books/Reading:

• Kindle
• iBooks
• Instapaper
• Audible

Productivity:

• Wordpress
• Dropbox
• OneNote
• Photoshop Express
• Genius Scan

Other:

• Google Voice
• The Weather Channel
• E*Trade
• Remote
• Light (flashlight app using the LED flash)
• Flixster

The scary thing is that I know there are people who have and use far more than these.  The point is, this is not a computer.  It's an app console.  At the end of the day, you're just diving into and out of apps and your experience is largely defined by the quality and selection of those apps.

With the iPad 2, Apple Climbs Further up the Hill

As you may have heard, Apple revealed the iPad 2 today, an update to their shockingly successful iPad last year.  As expected, there aren't any major changes to this new iPad, but the iterative improvements are impressive enough to propel Apple even further past the supposed competition. While you might interpret my use of the word "supposed" as clearly revealing a bias towards Apple, the fact of the matter is that considering any of the new tablets true competitors to the iPad smacks of forced impartiality. Motorola may have the single product on the market that is comparable, but neither it nor the list of products that have been announced well in advance of their release are any more compelling than the host of MP3 players that once sought to be considered in the same league as Apple.

It should be obvious from our article last week detailing the woes of the Motorola Xoom that the Xoom doesn't even stack up well against the current iPad.  The lack of a compelling story, an accessible retail channel, competitive pricing or an app ecosystem renders the Xoom a novelty product for Google to test its tablet wares.  All of those are major flaws that don't even address the weight of the Xoom (heavier than iPad 1) or the bizarre nature of a 16:10 aspect ration screen.  A 16:10 aspect ratio might be slightly better for watching movies (though it would still require letterboxing for most 16:9 movies), but it isn't better for anything else.  The wide hold required for landscape use is no picnic, nor is the weight imbalance while using it in portrait.  Apple made sure to highlight one of the Xoom's weaknesses we pointed out by contrasting their 65,000 iPad-specific apps with the 100 currently attributed to Android 3.0 Honeycomb.  Of course, as the reviews poured in on Thursday last week, it became clear that the Xoom was a solid effort by Google, Motorola and Verizon but not a recommended product over the iPad.

So if the only Honeycomb tablet on the market can't compare with the first iPad, what would happen if Apple significantly improved the iPad and put it on the market?  That's exactly what happened today, and Apple is shipping the new iPad next Friday, March 11.  What's the answer to the question, though?  The answer is that Apple has just taken another quantum leap in front of hopeful competitors.  The new iPad makes the original look bloated, the same way an old iPod seems curiously large today.  At these dimensions, even thinner than the iPhone 4, the new iPad is now in a different world in terms of compact, but functional, design.  What's more, the listed performance improvements through hardware and software take an already fast product and turbo-charge it past anything Motorola, HP, RIM, Samsung or HTC can get on the market this year.

So what do you get when you combine superior hardware with an already-dominant app ecosystem?  You get a category leader unwilling to cede its place in the market.  The iPad is the new iPod, at least for the time being, and nothing any of the other manufacturers can do will change that.  RIM and HP can't even get their products to market, but even once they do they'll be met with a lack of interest and without any convincing selling points.  No wonder that after the  "Year of the iPad," Apple is playfully calling this the "Year of the iPad 2."

Motorola's Flash in the Pan

The first Google-blessed iPad competitor, the Motorola Xoom is set to ship on Thursday, Feb. 24.  For a device with no paricular use case, the Xoom isn't exactly flying out of the gate with today's revelation that it will ship without Adobe Flash support.  One of the only supposed advantages over the iPad is now not coming for "a few weeks," with some sources reporting that the Xoom may not receive an update to enable Flash until the Spring.  Even if it doesn't take that long, the lack of Flash support at launch is one more thing to quiet the masses who just last months were predicting that the Xoom would hit the market and usher in a new wave of iPad competitors (they don't bother to say "killers" anymore) that would significantly cut into Apple's market share.

Daniel Eran Dilger of RoughlyDrafted Magazine has an exhaustive 3-part series on  the reasons why these Android Honeycomb tablets aren't likely to be a real threat to the iPad.  I agree with most of what he says, but the issue isn't so complicated that it absolutely needs an explanation that long.  The Xoom is going to usher in a new group of tablets, but they are all plagued by issues that will hurt them in a market that isn't as well-defined as some would have you believe.  These issues are both short- and long-term, and are likely to leave people at this time next year humorously reflecting on the launch of the Xoom.

In the short-term, there is a significant lack of any compelling case for these Android tablets.  There is no such thing as a tablet market.  It's the iPad market for all intents and purposes.  Consumers today only know the iPad, to the point that many people watching the expensive Super Bowl ad for the Xoom thought that the device at the end was an iPad.  It's a complete reminder of the days in the last decade when every MP3 player was referred to an an "iPod."  It's indicative of the fact that there is no popular demand for a slate-style computing device right now.  The selling point for these devices really is as simply as, "Oh, Apple's got that new iPad.  My friend showed me his and it looked really cool.  I could use that as my portable computer.  I'd love to have one."  The main reason the iPad looks so strong right now is that it already has a huge ecosystem of apps.  In just a year, Apple has established iPad-specific apps and brought the same level of interest from developers that it already owns in the phone market.  Google seems to be barely able to get the Xoom out the gate with very few details on apps or why it is a better device.  Right now, what consumer will choose to buy a Xoom over an iPad?

The Android apologists will object, of course, and say that in the early going it will take a little while.  Long-term, however, Android tablets will attract developers and will start to pick up steam.  This is all based on the fact that Android supposedly ate into the lead that the iPhone had in the phone market.  First of all, I'm not convinced Android did eat into that market.  The iPhone started with a tiny market share that grew quickly and has stabilized recently.  But consider that all the manufacturers of Android handsets are the same companies that were around before the iPhone.  They've almost all now switched to Android, essentially retaining some share they had (though certainly not in profits, as the iPhone has grown to eat half of the profit in the mobile space).  Second, despite passing the iPhone in total quarterly market share, Android has not drawn the developer interest one might expect, primarily because almost nobody is buying apps in the Android Market.  iOS remains the place to be for a developer, with Android the secondary concern that receives disturbingly sub-par variations of popular iOS apps.

Alright, then if apps on the iPhone are more numerous and of higher quality, how did Android take its current place in the market?  Part of it has to do with the retail channel.  Everyone needs a phone and they go to their carrier's retail store to pick a new phone.  Even discounting the fact that the iPhone was only on AT&T in the U.S. until just recently, that puts Android handsets of different sizes and price points before the consumer.  Inevitably, in that scenario, people are going to choose Android phones for a variety of reasons.  A tablet doesn't follow that scenario at all, though.  Not everyone needs a tablet.  A tablet is less like a smartphone than it is a computer or an MP3 player, which is where Apple proved their dominance in the last decade.  They have their own retail stores as well as prominent placement in a number of mainstream stores such as Best Buy and Target.  If HP thinks it holds an advantage in being able to sell its upcoming Touchpad through their usual retail channel, you couldn't find a less convincing retail channel for Motorola.  All of a sudden, the iPad now has far better presence in consumers' minds, as well as a more familiar and trusted app network.

Which leads to the other key area where an Android tablet won't have an advantage: price.  While most premier Android handsets debut at $200, alongside the iPhone equivalents of $200 and $300, those prices always drop significantly.  It's also clear that a huge portion of the Android phones that make up their marketshare are cheap, low-end devices that are coming on strong in Asia.  Apple's always maintained the identity of a premium brand, but even so it's becoming clearer by the day that nobody is able to compete with them on price in the tablet war, due largely to their economies of scale.  Samsung built their Galaxy Tab entirely in-house and could only meet the iPad's price, a sad accomplishment given the Tab's 7-inch screen vs. the iPad's 10-inch screen.  The Motorola Xoom matches the iPad's price for the 32 GB model at $600, but they fail to offer a 16 GB model at that magical $500 price point.  What's worse, the WiFi-only Xoom isn't even available at launch, meaning that early adopters can only choose the $800 Xoom with a month of 3G service required.  By the time Motorola releases their $600 Xoom, the iPad 2 will be near or in the market, rendering the Xoom practically dead on arrival.

There are other areas where these Honeycomb tablets, and the Xoom in particular, fall short.  There are a number of questions surrounding the UI choices in Honeycomb and how third party apps fit into those choices.  The above reasons, though, are basic market realities that are hard to escape.  Is the iPad less of an iPhone and more of an iPod, a consumer electronics product that allows Apple to dominate by merit alone?

The Single Best Deal in Mobile

For those people who are looking for a great deal for a portable hotspot, or anyone who wants a smartphone but isn't willing to pay the typical rates, Virgin Mobile is finally offering a deal and a phone worth considering.  For years now, Virgin Mobile has been offering incredible deals to U.S. consumers. But wait, where are the Virgin Mobile stores?  Virgin isn't a traditional U.S. carrier, preferring to work on a pre-paid model and offering access on Sprint's network.  In fact, Virgin Mobile USA is not even it's own entity anymore, as Sprint bought them in 2009 but retained the name.  It's fascinating that Sprint chooses to maintain the old Virgin Mobile model but offers dramatically different plans for use on their network. Presumably, the bargain-basement, pre-paid model has enough traction in the U.S. that they thought it was worth maintaining.

Sprint currently offers better deals through Virgin than through their own stores.  They also do so without requiring a contract.  The current phone plans on Virgin are as follows:

You'll note that even the most expensive plan is less than the Simply Everything plan on Sprint that is now effectively $79.99 for any 3G phone.  Virgin rates are predicated on their model of not subsidizing a phone and locking customers into a contract.  As a result, they've always offered phones that were less compelling than Sprint's, but they've now broken through with a killer phone and a backdoor value that is causing it to fly off the shelves.

The best review comes from Seth Weintraub on CNN's Fortune page.  As he explains, the LG Optimus V is actually a quite competent Android phone that many customers would be happy with.  Also included in his review is the allusion to the fact that you can download an app from the Android Market to enable the mobile hotspot functionality for free.  What this means is that on a super-cheap plan, you can have a quality Android phone and share that internet connection with a laptop or tablet for no extra charge.  You also have the option of going month-to-month, turning phone service on and off.  The availability of Virgin Mobile pre-paid cards in stores also gives users the freedom of never having to talk to their carrier.  The Optimus V is a mere $150 off-contract, by far the best phone in the U.S. that's available for that low of an unsubsidized price.

Weintraub's review and video explain almost everything that's necessary, but it's interesting to reveal how some of this is possible.  In terms of using the Optimus V as a WiFi hotspot, this is actually an error by Sprint/Virgin in not effectively locking down this feature.  Starting with Android 2.2 "Froyo," creating a WiFi hotspot is a native feature, baked into the very core of the operating system.  Unlike on the Nexus One or Nexus S, however, this feature is almost never available for free.  The reason is that in the U.S., phones come to consumers through carriers who choose to modify the software to their advantage.  So while tethering is a native feature, on almost every phone on Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, the setting to enable tethering leads to a carrier page on which to pay for the service.  The cost is anywhere from $20-$40 on top of the existing plans.

The LG Optimus V, however, is a special animal.  LG made many different variations of it's Optimus One line in 2010 and it proved to be a massively popular series due to its price, styling, and relatively good performance.  When Sprint chose to adopt the phone as the Optimus S, they introduced it as part of their Sprint ID service, a new "feature" that they're making available across almost all of their phones.  Sprint ID offers an almost stock Android ROM, a very rare option, in exchange for a system that allows customers to download packages that consist of a pre-selected collection of apps.  The existing Sprint ID phones appear to have very few customizations other than the ability to install these packages and some options having been removed.

Removing an option, however, is not the same thing as disabling a capability.    This is particularly obvious when observing the differences between the Sprint Optimus S and the Virgin Optimus V.  The phones are have identical hardware and the software is almost the same as well.  The biggest difference in the software appears to be the removal of the Sprint ID button.  Other than that, it's a nearly completely stock Android 2.2 build.  As such, there are a number of apps in the Android Market that are able to reveal settings that may not be readily available to the user.  The app Weintraub mentions in his video is the app "Quick Settings," which does nothing other than give a control panel of options.  Included in these options is the setting for Mobile Hotspot, and sure enough, turning that on enables the hotspot with no questions asked.  The settings work because nobody actually removed the capability from the phone.  Sprint and Virgin simply hid it, which took the least effort.

So why spend this much time talking about a relatively cheap phone and carrier?  The reason is that using all of this to one's advantage results in the cheapest MiFi, or portable hotspot device, available.   The $25 plan offers unlimited data, far cheaper than on the big U.S. carriers.  If 300 minutes is not enough for someone to use as their main phone line, the $40 plan gives them 1200 minutes, more than almost anyone needs.  Virgin does offer a MiFi hotspot device on a $50 unlimited plan, but that is obviously twice the price of the workaround for the Optimus V detailed here.  Even at twice that price, Virgin appears to have had plenty of interest, since they recently started throttling speeds after the 2.5 GB mark, rendering their use of the word "unlimited"  somewhat questionable.  It remains to be seen if Virgin will do the same to their phone customers who use a lot of data.  They haven't said so yet, and it's unlikely they would do so without some warning.  Until they make changes, The LG Optimus V is an incredible deal for either the road warrior or the bargain smartphone buyer.

A Marriage of Necessity

After months of speculation, Nokia made a number of huge announcements Friday, the biggest of which is that they will be adopting Windows Phone 7 as their primary smartphone platform going forward.  I speculated earlier in the week about the various options available to Nokia, but they surprised even me in going as far as they did in putting Windows Phone 7 at the front of their plans for the foreseeable future.  At Nokia's Capital Markets Day, new CEO Stephen Elop invited Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer onstage to introduce the partnership.  Nokia will not only be licensing Windows Phone 7, but they will be working closely with Microsoft, integrating their maps and other services into Microsoft's own Bing services, as well as working to drive Windows Phone into low-power handsets for emerging markets.

As a consumer, I'm personally thrilled to see this new partnership because it gives Windows Phone a fighting chance going forward as the smartphone race intensifies and the space is increasingly dominated by Apple and Google.  Nokia adoption of Windows Phone means that Redmond will be able to stay alive while they work on finishing their very unfinished new mobile OS.  On Mobilified, we've been very complementary of Windows Phone 7 in terms of responsiveness and overall experience, but there's no question that they started far behind and they've given every indication of falling further behind.  Their copy and paste update has been pushed from January to March (projected), and the major update for late 2011 can't happen soon enough.  Lack of multitasking and other assumed features is a major problem for the platform.  With this new deal, however, they have a deep-rooted interest from the world's number one phone manufacturer for years to come.  They have time to add those missing features and make their case against Android on user experience, quality of apps, and developer interest in their store.

As an observer, however, I'm both confused an shocked by the depth of Nokia's involvement with Microsoft.  While they said clearly that they are free to pursue other platforms at any time, there's no indication that they have any major plans to use a smartphone platform other than Windows Phone for their high-end devices for many years to come.  Nokia didn't just adopt Windows Phone, they expressly laid out the time they expect to phase out Symbian and almost outright killed their partnership with Intel on the Meego platform.  While Meego didn't appear to be going anywhere fast, it's still surprising to see Nokia leave itself without any options should Microsoft prove to be an unworthy partner.  If this partnership with Microsoft doesn't translate into sales, they will either have to adopt Android at a much later date, falling behind other manufacturers, or start from scratch with yet another smartphone OS.

Furthermore, the de facto Windows Phone exclusivity turns Nokia into just another hardware OEM overnight.  While Nokia has always had impressive design and hardware innovation, they lack the in-house manufacturing advantages of Samsung or LG.  Other than in impressive cameras, has Nokia ever put out the type of high-powered hardware that HTC is now releasing?  Perhaps that was part of the reason for not going with Android, to avoid direct comparisons.  Still, it seems like a short-sighted decision to trade their advantages in software and services to become an OEM for an unestablished platform.  Now, those services are going to be rolled into Windows Phone and Bing.  Stephen Elop has already made a few comments about how stopping Android from becoming dominant is a major goal.  What's they're essentially saying, however, is that Windows Phone is a better choice because they are currently smaller and less-successful.  But what happens if Windows Phone gains momentum and reaches legitimate competition with Android?  All of Nokia's unique assets and contributions will be there for the taking by competing manufacturers.

The apparent imbalance of this arrangement with Microsoft seems to indicate a deeper problem.  This arrangement is rife with complications and negative possibilities for Nokia, but they may not have had any other option.  In fact, the analogy put forth in Stephen Elop's now-famous "burning platform memo" doesn't seem terribly overdramatic.  Nokia put themselves in a corner and this may be their only way out. Unfortunately, this only way out is also a ticket to dependency on Microsoft and a reduced stature as industry-leader.

HP doing everything it can to burn consumers

Lost in the list of HP WebOS product announcements yesterday was the barely-newsworthy announcement that HP was bringing the Pre 2 to Verizon.  While we were fairly positive about elements of the Pre 2 in our own review, we were pretty adamant in our position that the Pre 2 is not a phone worthy of consideration in the smartphone market of 2011.  The original launch of the Pre 2 last fall included the curious announcement that it would come to Verizon soon.  It seemed odd that Verizon would carry the Pre 2 at all, but as time went on a number of people just assumed those plans were dead.  They're not. They're very much alive in a terrifyingly zombie-like fashion.

It turns out that the Pre 2 is now available for pre-order and will start shipping on Feb. 17.  Neither HP nor Verizon seem terribly concerned that the Pre 2 hardware is embarrassingly dated or that the Pre Plus (nearly the same phone) didn't sell well last year.  They also don't seem bothered by the fact that the Pre 3 is slated for a release this summer, possibly just 4 or 5 months away.  They apparently made a deal and darn it, they're going to follow through!

Now imagine anyone who doesn't read PreCentral on a regular basis walks into a Verizon store.  They see the Pre 2 occupying the same long-neglected spot on the wall where the Pre Plus sat the last time they were in there.  They immediately forget glancing in that direction, though, as they're already captivated by the iPhone 4 or a super-sized Android phone.  They then buy one of those real phones and move on with their lives.  Is anyone going to buy the Pre 2?  If they do, how completely screwed over will they feel if in the summer they see that the Pre 3 is available with much better performance and a more usable, larger screen?

There is no way that the sales of the Pre 2 will be able to make up for a loss of consumer confidence, wrought from either buyer's remorse or brand dismissal.  By this summer, will anyone on Verizon be willing to give HP and WebOS a shot?

Bloomberg revives the iPhone nano rumors; just as wrong today as two years ago

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is working on building a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone that they could sell for $200 off-contract.  The supposed rational is that Apple needs to do this to compete with the wave of cheap Android handsets flooding the markets.  This... is complete fiction. Bloomberg's ability to cite "people who have been briefed on the plans" is hardly impressive.  That lack of accountability is always suspect, even when it involves something remotely likely.  This is nothing more than a recycled rumor from 2008 and 2009 that Apple would released a cheaper "iPhone nano."  The justification was that the iPhone is too expensive.  Is the iPhone too expensive?  Has its growth slowed in any way?  Did Apple not just say in their last earnings call that the only limiting factor in sales was their ability to make enough iPhones?  Head over to Asymco, the dynamite analytics blog by Horace Dediu, and have a look around.  It doesn't seem as if Apple is doing anything but running away with sales.

Apple in the "second era" of Steve Jobs is a company solely focused on the high-end and the best products possible.  A cheaper iPhone does not fit into the identity of Apple.  Furthermore, to what purpose does a $200 unsubsidized iPhone serve Apple?  They already make the iPhone available for $200 to consumers with carriers subsidizing $400.  Yes, this would turn a carrier subsidy into a free iPhone, but what exactly is the margin in a $200 iPhone?  Apple makes their money on hardware, not the App Store.  If there's one thing Apple has proven, it's that they can print money by not compromising and attacking the high end.

Furthermore, a cheaper iPhone does nothing more than potentially fragment the iOS ecosystem and hurt Apple's brand.  That anyone would adopt this story as plausible is embarrassing. Consider this portion of the Bloomberg article:

While Apple has aimed to unveil the device near mid-year, the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, the person said. Few Apple employees know the details of the project, the person said. Apple often works on products that don’t get released.

The prototype was about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4, said the person, who saw it last year.

That sounds like a good way to hedge your bets if you're Bloomberg and you're publishing the story. Maybe some device was floating around Apple, but "one-third smaller?"  Why?  Maybe the reason few Apple employees know the details of the project is because it's not going to happen in the way that this article implies.  There is no advantage to Apple trying a low-end market grab.  They operate on high margins, premium products, and and unassailable brand.  Anyone who tells you differently doesn't know Apple.

Uneven Palm Lines

HP finally had it's big WebOS event today.  I do mean big because it showcased a number of products and lasted over two hours.  As predicted here on Mobilified, HP introduced a tablet and two smartphones. Their (first) WebOS tablet is named the TouchPad and their two new phones are the Pre 3 and the Veer, respectively.  The Pre 3 is very much a larger, faster sucessor to the Pre and the Pre 2, while the Veer carries on the legacy of the Pixi as a tiny phone, though with its new portrait-slider orientation it is more of a miniature Pre.  HP also spoke about the future of WebOS and how it fits into their overall corporate strategy.  This strategy apparently includes putting WebOS on printers and even PC's.  HP has already posted the video of the event here.

It seems clear that the bulk of the time and effort went into developing the Touchpad.  Since the introduction of both WebOS and Apple's iPad, it was incredibly obvious that WebOS would scale beautifully to a tablet.  It wasn't just pundits making the case either, since RIM decided to essentially steal the interface for their upcoming Blackberry Playbook.  There isn't a ton that can be said about the Touchpad, though, because the experience is almost exactly as one might have imagined on a larger screen.  If you're familiar with WebOS, or read our review of the Pre 2 and WebOS 2.0, then you know what the basic operation of this device is.

On the TouchPad, HP made some very smart decisions.  For starters, they are using a screen with the same 1024 x 768 resolution as the iPad.  Rather than a move to copy Apple, this was a choice to help their platform, since they will be able to leverage their Plug-in Developer Kit that makes it easy for developers to port apps from iOS to WebOS.  On the Pre, this PDK resulted in a disproportionately high number of quality WebOS games.  While there is more to a platform than just games, there's no question that games are an important part of the iPad's appeal.  Copying the screen resolution is just the first part of a larger strategy to convince developers to put in the little extra time to bring their apps to WebOS. Individual apps and notifications are redesigned and rethought for the Touchpad, showing that HP put more thought into its design than to throw a phone OS onto the tablet (see: Samsung Galaxy Tab).

What is a little disappointing to see on the TouchPad is that HP chose to eliminate the WebOS gesture area.  Instead of an area dedicated to swiping and performing various actions, they simply retained the singular capacitive button to navigate throughout the OS.  This may have been a compromise, since people tend to hold tablets in all four orientations, meaning that they would have had to build gesture areas around all four sides of the bezel.  It would have been nice to see them attempt that, rather than take functionality away from their tablet.  It remains to be seen if navigating will be as desirable without a swipe up to bring up the launcher or a right-to-left swipe to go back.

Still, the biggest disappointment of the day has to be a toss-up between the projected summer launch dates or the phones HP unveiled.  The Pre 3 is simply a faster, bigger version of the Pre, although to their credit those happen to be the qualities most sorely needed.  The listed 1.4 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor should prove to be exceptionally fast, given that the current Pre 2 runs quick on a less-desirable 1GHz OMAP processor from Texas Instruments.  Even by summer, performance won't be an issue for the Pre 3. What will be an issue is a completely uninspired design that looks almost exactly the same as the original Pre.  In fact, despite the fact that the screen is significantly larger (3.6" vs. 3.1"), it practically looks like the same phone in pictures.  The over-reliance on these particular grades of plastic is starting to get old.  What's more, even though Palm has identified keyboards as a differentiator, it's still hard to believe that they wouldn't try putting out a slimmer, slate-style phone.  While the portrait-slider form factor has ardent supporters, it's not one that has proven itself in the market yet.  It's also a concern that the new Pre 3 is less than a millimeter thinner than the original Pre.  Ultimately, the Pre 3 looks dated, which is hardly a way to jump back into the waters in the summer of 2011.

What's even more perplexing is the decision to make the Veer a portrait-slider.  HP seemed obsessed with making this phone the smallest anyone had ever seen, but this is not a revolutionary design.  For starters, as Engadget has already observed, the Veer is actually a successor to the Pixi.  While performance looked astronomically improved, the screen size is the same (2.8"), begging the question, why did this have to morph into a slider?  The Pixi's keyboard is beyond tiny, but many people thought it was superior to the original Pre's because the keys were raised and very clicky.  By making this a sliding keyboard, HP may have just taken the worst of both worlds, the size of the Pixi keyboard and the rubberiness of the Pre keyboard, and combined them.  What's more, if you have room to have a keyboard exposed, why force onto your consumers the extra action of sliding it open, and why make your phone thicker in doing so?  It doesn't seem to make any sense, other than to say you have a postage stamp-sized phone.

While the TouchPad has the best opportunity to make an impact in the still-nacent tablet market, it's a mistake for HP to not make their smartphones the focal point in their strategy.  Setting aside the fact that the phone market is much larger and guaranteed to grow more, any ecosystem play should start with the phone first.  While it's great that HP will take WebOS and put it on both printers and PC's, the smartphone is fast becoming the center of most people's computing experience.  The Pre 3 will be competitive in performance when its released, but will it be competitive in the market?  Will customers view its dated industrial design and relative thickness as competitive?  That remains to be seen, and more than just the Pre 3's fate is riding on that contingency.

Ovi-Shadowing the Competition

Next Monday, Mobile World Congress kicks off, providing a platform for the biggest names and players in mobile.  We already know that HTC and Samsung purposely held back upcoming products at CES, hoping to use MWC as their primary stage for introducing their next generation of smartphones.  HTC will likely introduce rather iterative upgrades to their Desire, Desire HD, and Wildfire lines.  They might even have a tablet to show off.  Samsung is expected to introduce their Galaxy S successors with Super AMOLED Plus screens, Tegra 2 or Orion chipsets, and all the TouchWiz you can handle.  What won't be too surprising, though, is the possibility that any news coming out of the conference will be overshadowed by announcements taking place in the next two days. At 1:00 PM EST tomorrow, HP will hold its long-awaited WebOS event where everyone will be holding their breath, hoping that the fruits of their purchase of Palm hasn't gone rotten.  They will certainly introduce a WebOS tablet, at least one phone, and will also outline where they plan on taking the WebOS platform. With all of HP's money and technical services, there is major potential for them to take WebOS and truly make it the cloud-centric mobile OS that it was designed to be.  While Google appears to be stumbling while trying to articulate why anyone should buy an Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet, HP may introduce the first viable iPad competitor with a compelling story and use case.  In such an unsure market, they may fail to capture the public's interest, but this may be one case where they don't fail to deliver a promising consumer product.  Also note that I'm referring to HP, and only HP, as I expect the Palm name to be flicked away like a WebOS card that's served its purpose.

If HP fails to make a lot of noise tomorrow, then Nokia can have the mic to themselves on Friday.  So many rumors have been swirling about what direction Nokia will go and it seems as if everyone will finally have an answer soon.  Today's leak of an internal memo from new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is the final nail in the coffin for any idea that Nokia would stay the course with Symbian and Meego as their primary smartphone platforms.   I've expressed my confidence that Meego could still become a success, though that success is predicated on the sheer market presence of Nokia.  Whether or not they maintain support for Meego, it's clear that Nokia is poised to make some big changes that include adopting existing platforms. Because Elop was previously the head of Microsoft Office at Microsoft, many people are insisting that Nokia will adopt Windows Phone 7.  I find that line of reasoning simplistic because it doesn't address how Windows Phone 7 is more advantageous for Nokia than Android.  WP7 is also an embarassingly unfinished operating system at this point.  While it might be technically superior to Android at its core, there's no question it lags behind in features.

I genuinely have no idea what Nokia will do at this point.  They've seemed so resistant to Android in the past, but Windows Phone 7 has little to offer as an alternative.  If Nokia has any desire to maintain its status as a premium company that provides services on top of hardware, they may choose to adopt Android, but in a different way than the HTC's and Samsung's of the world.  They have the option of forking the open-source Android OS and turning it into a uniquely Nokia platform.  Their phones could run standard Android apps, but core services from search, to location, to the market itself could be stripped out and replaced with their own Ovi services.  Admittedly, this could be unlikely given the increasing rumors that there will be a partnership with Microsoft announced Friday.  For all we know, they could have plans to adopt Windows Phone, work on their own Android variant, and wait for Intel to deliver a chip that can run Meego.

Whatever they do, it's likely to have a dramatic impact on the industry.  Nokia may not be the industry leader that they once were, but any shift of power towards either Windows Phone or Android could have implications for everyone, even Apple.  And while everyone is busy sorting out what Nokia's announcement means, will they have time to care that HTC updated the specs in their year-old hardware design?

The future is NOT now

On the heels of the Verizon iPhone launch, AT&T and Motorola have decided to crush everyone's dreams and highest hopes for Android.  The Motorola Atrix was the clear winner in the battle for the coolest story from CES less than a month ago.  Now, a month after CES and a month before its release, they've made it irrelevant by pricing the phone's accessories way too high.  AT&T sent out a press release that included the following paragraph about pricing:

AT&T will offer two special packages for customers who choose to purchase ATRIX 4G in addition to these unique accessories. The first combines ATRIX 4G and the Motorola Laptop Dock for a promotional price of $499.99 after a two-year service contract and $100 mail-in-rebate after subscription to Data Pro smartphone data plan and tethering add on. Customers who choose to purchase the Motorola Laptop Dock separately pay $499.99. AT&T is also offering an Entertainment Access Kit for ATRIX customers which includes the Motorola HD Multimedia Dock, a Bluetooth® keyboard and mouse, and a remote control for $189.99.

That... is straight-up crazy.  The phone itself is a beast in terms of size and specs, but the only thing that made it interesting was its dockability and the webtop environment.  500 dollars fully-subsidized for the phone and laptock dock puts it out of the range of anybody but the most rabid enthusiasts.  Also, requiring tethering just to buy the dock subsidized?  That adds $20 to the standard plan, or $480 over the life of the contract.  What's just as amazing is that they are charging $500 to buy the dock separately.  For $500, you can buy any netbook, a decent Windows laptop, or even one of the new class of affordable ultraportable "notbooks" as recently coined by Engadget's Joanna Stern.

We were very enthusiastic about the Atrix and its promise, but also listed some concerns:

So while it is impressive, what will ultimately matter for this phone is execution and price.  The following are questions, the answers to which could end up sinking a great idea:

...

4. How much will these docks and laptop hardware cost? By all accounts, they’re not junky, so they could run close to $150 or $200.  If users don’t want to pay the extra cost, then again, these innovations will fall flat.

What I meant by this was that $200 might be edging too close to full laptop price range and could kill the appeal.  I could never have imagined that a "dumb dock" with few legitimate internals could cost $300 subsidized and $500 unsubsidized.  Perhaps this demonstrates Motorola's inexperience in sourcing and producing laptop hardware, but whatever the case this is a failure.  The phone itself will still be the best Android phone on AT&T, but Motorola and AT&T have killed the Atrix with this pricing.  As Steve Jobs would say, this product is DOA.  Dead... on... arrival.

Apple's Rotten Week

Apple has had a bad week.  What was supposed to be a triumphant week with the introduction of News Corps's The Daily, a new iOS subscription service, and the first pre-orders of the Verizon iPhone has turned into what can only be called  disappointing and confusing week.  The issues started Tuesday when news broke that Apple had rejected the Sony Reader app on the basis that it violated Apple's guidelines. The guidelines in question address the ability to purchase content for an iOS app without going through Apple's in-app payment system.  Apple's in-app system works the same as the rest of their store, where Apple takes 30 percent of the revenue.  While this works fine for developers of specific apps, it isn't a system at all suited to newspaper or magazine subscriptions.  And it really isn't a system that works for e-book retailers who already operate on thin margins.

What's been unclear up to this point is how exactly the Sony Reader App worked.  Did it actually connect and make purchases possible in-app or did it boot the user into a browser where they could make their payment and have the content sync after the purchase.  In reality, it doesn't seem to matter.  Apple responded to Jim Dalrymple with the following statement:

We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.

The problem with this position, of course, is that Apple has been allowing apps that violate this policy for some time.  Some pretty notable apps, for that matter.  The Amazon Kindle app is one of the most popular on iOS, particularly on the the iPad where it has led many to use the iPad as an e-reader.  Kindle users have always enjoyed the fact that the Kindle app syncs with their other devices, making the reading experience seamless no matter what you're using.  The Kindle app by default allows you to purchase content through the iOS browser, a less-than-perfect system but one that people could live with.  Apple's renewed focus on its guidelines would put Kindle purchases on the iPad in jeopardy.  Amazon itself only takes a 30 percent cut from the ebooks it sells, meaning that the standard in-app purchasing system would eat up all of that margin.

Something will have to give, either in Apple's demand for 30 percent or Amazon's pricing of e-books on iOS.  Raising book prices would be a disaster and confusing for consumers since many use the same book on their Kindle and their iPad.  How can Apple enforce pricing without messing with Amazon's ability to sync?  They could insist that the Kindle app not give users the option to buy new content, but that would be harmful to users, Amazon, and ultimately Apple.

The timing of the app's rejection seeme dot make sense since Apple was set to help present the release of the new News Corps. product The Daily.  The Daily is a new iPad-specific app that functions as a digital magazine, downloaded daily and full of news articles and videos.  The app looks good, but is severely flawed.  It is laggy in many spots and even crashes upon certain actions.  Even if the performance were up to par, it's questionable whether this app makes any sense.  It's not updated as the day goes on and not all of the content is able to be shared.  Without a totally open system to be linked to, The Daily does exist on an island, despite assertions to the contrary.  It's a old business and product model, formed in the heyday of an old medium, trying to be relevant in a new world.

In addition, the disappointment of the app is only the start of the letdown.  Apple's new subscription service doesn't seem to be new at all.  News Corp. admitted that their cut of the subscriptions will be 70 percent, the same as with any other App Store purchase.  There was no talk about a new model, and when asked about the Sony reader controversy, Apple's Eddy Cue emphasized that Apple wanted to ensure that customers can get content "both from our device and our App Store, and from other websites and ways that they get them."  That's in line with the rumor that Apple might require that content be made available through the App Store as well but is hardly an ideal scenario because of the pricing concerns listed above. It's also poor implementation to have two places for people to get their content, and again draws into question whether a button that takes you to a web store in Safari will be allowed.

While Apple makes plenty of decisions that are controversial, few have ever been this hard to rationalize or understand in context.  The inconsistency between what they're allowing Amazon to do vs. what they're allowing Sony is troubling, as is the very idea that Apple might hinder the progress of cross-platform apps that manage content outside the app store.  I suspect that Apple may be the one to change its policy in this case because it's the only "real" solution, though that would be uncharacteristic for a company that so notoriously likes to control their ecosystem.

Motoblurred

With the release of one of their humorously rendered videos, Motorola seems close to launching the Atrix on AT&T, an ambitious Android phone + ecosystem on which we previously offered some thoughts.  Peter Rojas on gdgt also chimed in recently with his thoughts on where he thinks Google should take Android as it pertains to these smartphones and dumb docks. The idea of a world where you have machines ready and able to be controlled by your phone is very appealing, almost more so than the vision of Chrome OS where everything is limited to the browser-based view of the cloud.  What is concerning, however, is the lack of a standard for all Android devices to perform in this manner and work with all "dumb docks."

Part of the concern is that Motorola has built this functionality into Blur, their proprietary skin that runs on top of the Android OS.  It seems a given that if Google chooses to adopt this functionality and build it into the core Android OS, they will do so in a manner that will break compatibility with whatever Motorola is doing to accomplish this.  They're also almost certain to do it in a way that will launch a different desktop environment than what Motorola has created, especially in terms of using a Chrome offshoot instead of the desktop version of Firefox.  Needless to say, this current crop of Motorola phones and docks may be less relavent by this time next year if Google wants to incorporate this into Android.

With that in mind, this isn't just a software issue.  Motorola has built these docks with specific form factors in mind, particularly on the Laptop Dock.  What happens when they come out with phones that have the mini-HDMI or micro-USB ports on different sides and edges of the phone?  What happens when they introduce a phone of a different shape or size?  How long consumers expect their docks, especially the Laptop Dock, to work for them is a big question, especially in a time where Android phones are obsolete in a year and the company has moved on to focus on other models.  The hesitancy to shell out money for an unsure ecosystem is the challenge that will most hamper the adoption of these devices and accessories. What the Atrix and its Motorola siblings will offer will probably be very useful, but like many Google and Android products, that may not be enough for buyers to not feel a bit of remorse when the idea is fully developed and packaged better for users.

RIM's Playbook Cut Down to Size

RIM is continuing on its quest to build up hype for their Blackberry Playbook, a device that looks slick but has many unanswered questions about battery life, notifications, etc.  What they are doing, however, is showing us a video of how the Playbook interacts with a Blackberry.  RIM seems fairly invested in making this interaction work well, seeing as their brand doesn't carry much weight beyond the Blackberry diehards who are addicted to BBM, fast messaging, and super-secure network connections.  The video is short, showing how the email is synced between devices and how you can quickly move to other applications to find data.

The one thing that jumps out to me is a sheer size comparison between the Playbook and the Blackberry Torch next to it.  The 7" form factor is very unproven and this seems to only draw into greater question why you would want a device this size.  The screen seems cramped with the phone and hands there for size comparison. Since they decided to spend the bulk of the time showing off the email app, it's worth asking one question: if it were you and you had those two devices in front of you, which would you find easier to manage and type your emails on?  The iPad-style email rip-off looks like a nightmare to use on a screen that small, to say nothing of the keyboard that the person in the video typed on using one finger.  I guess that's one way to make the aging Blackberry phones look good.

Samsung's Fuzzy Math

The Wall Street journal has had a hard time the last few days not falling into the dreaded "process journalism" in its coverage of the tablet market and Apple's respective share.  Their report on Monday seemed to indicate that Apple's iPad had dropped from 96% to 75% over the last quarter due to increased competition from Google's Android, specifically the Galaxy Tab.  The numbers cited came from Strategy Analytics, drawing into question once again how some of the companies stay in business offering bad statistics.  This shift in market share seemed too big to be true, and in fact, it turns out that it was. Strategy Analytics, apparently, was using a metric for market share that only measures devices in the retail channel.  What this means is that if a retailer or carrier store is carrying a a number of Galaxy Tab units in the store, that counts as a sale.  When Samsung announced 2 million Galaxy Tabs sold, I was very skeptical and wondered if that was actually the number sold.  The Wall Street Journal must have been curious about their own story because they updated it today with an admission from Samsung that the number of devices sold to consumers was actually "quite small" and that the 2 million number includes devices to retailers.  That makes a big difference when you consider that Apple's numbers reflect devices sold to consumers, while Samsung is selling the Tab in every retail store and seemingly every carrier in the world.  The Tab has probably sold alright for Samsung, but not nearly on the level of the iPad.

Without question, the iPad will lose market share over the next year as Google makes their first legitimate tablet play and HP and RIM introduce their own devices.  What remains to be seen, however, is whether it will be the kind of loss that these illegitimate numbers seem to indicate.

John C. Dvorak Warns Everyone About an Imaginary Threat.

John C. Dvorak thinks iPhone owners are about to be screwed. Actually, to be more accurate, he thinks everyone is going to get screwed.  Constantly.  That's his M.O. after all, as a tech "journalist" who's credibility has pretty much dwindled to nothing over the last few decades.  As one of the first writers to cover computers in the 80's, he seems to have earned himself a seat at the table, and PCMag apparently sees some value in keeping him around.  You have to wonder what that value, is, though, since he's wrong about just about everything he writes these days.  It's not because he's lost his mental facility, but because he seems to love indulging the caricature of himself as a "cranky geek."  Oh, when you're in your late 50's it's probably fun to play the curmudgeon, but that doesn't mean that you're entitled to people taking you seriously, either.  That's probably why he seems most at home as a frequent guest on the TWIT network's This Week in Tech these days.  When you're on a video broadcast designed to entertain, it doesn't matter how unfounded anything you say is, particularly when there are three other hosts ready to disagree and obscure just how off-base you might be.

So what has Dvorak so worried this week?  Well, according to his PCMag editorial, iPhone users are about to be screwed.  Why?  Because Apple is rumored to be pushing NFC or "Near Field Communication" in the next iteration of the iPhone.  NFC will allow people to use their phone as an e-wallet of sorts, essentially replacing credit cards by enabling a payment system in the phone to process payments with a mere push of a button or wave of the phone.  Google's Nexus S has NFC and Android developers are working to create apps and uses for it right now.

So why is Dvorak worried about NFC?  He says that routing payments through your phone is a huge mistake because it will give tremendous power to the carriers.  He goes into detail about the power that phone companies have and the manner in which they've supposedly scammed people in the past.  To embolden his argument he pulls out an obscure reference from the "modern era of communications" that involved phone calls being rerouted in order to jack up fees to absurd levels.  He then reveals his own paranoia by claiming that he always believed this was a test to show banks and "everyone" that phone companies are the best collection agencies because they can deny service for failed payments.  Because that's what phone companies want: to weave an elaborate scheme for banks (don't worry about why), wait years for the technology to advance, and then pounce.

It would be easy to dismiss Dvorak's paranoia on the grounds of absurdity, but why bother leaving any room for debate?  After all, there is a fatal flaw in the very premise of his article.  While Android may cede issues of NFC billing to carriers, there's no way Apple is going to go the same route.  Apple will enable NFC payments through their iTunes store, like they do with everything else.  If you think Apple is going to bother with the complexity of carrier and country relations by giving the phone operators control over the billing, then you know nothing about Apple and how they have operated so far in the mobile space.

But then, why would we expect Dvorak to sweat the details on anything?  This is the guy who used to review software based on the packaging it came it.  The same one who predicted absolute failure for the iPad.  The same one who said Apple should kill the iPhone.  The same one who dismissed the original Macintosh because he thought the mouse would be unappealing to users.  Striving to be "edgy" or "controversial" may be his thing, but when you don't even bother to understand the basic behaviors of the companies you cover, you end up with worthless articles based off horrible premises.  It's like the Andy Kindler stand-up routine from the 90's that made fun of comedians whose jokes are based off an incorrect premise.

That may be a little unfair, though.  Dvorak isn't officially a comedian.

Motorola Mobility struggling to move quickly

Engadget is relaying the news that Motorola Mobility (the new, self-sufficient company spun off from Motorola Inc.) made a total net profit of $80 million in Q4 2010 while selling a total of 4.9 million handsets. To the average person, these seem like lofty numbers, but $80 million is barely above even for a company the size of Motorola Mobility.  Wall Street is similarly unimpressed, seeing as their expectations for the quarter included 5.5 million handsets sold.  Given their tepid profits and failure to meet expectations, Motorola seems resigned to a disappointing Q1 of 2001, predicting a drop of 9 to 21 cents per share.

While Motorola Mobility has dominated Verizon's Droid line of phones, it's clear that that has not been enough to keep the company climbing into profitability.  Verizon as a whole has not expanded in smartphone sales at the same pace as AT&T, as Horace Dediu of Asymco expertly pointed out in December.  In the meantime, Motorola has failed to make any name for itself on any other U.S. carrier and Nokia continues to dominate in Europe.

Moving forward, it's imperative that Motorola establish an identity on other U.S. carriers, particularly since the iPhone is hitting Verizon very soon.  The Motorola Atrix, pondered here, is a great start on AT&T, but they will need to bring their best efforts to Sprint and T-Mobile as well.  Furthermore, given that Motorola made a slim profit of $80 million this quarter, it may be time to revisit or regret the $100 million in various pay packages CEO and Chairman Sanjay Jha received in 2008, not to mention the 1.8 to 3 percent of the new company he is set to receive now that the Motorola split has gone through.

One more reason for Verizon customers to get their iPhone now

For those on Verizon who are considering switching to the iPhone soon, the latest from Verizon may serve to motivate them to go ahead and get the iPhone 4 now.  If you recall our previous reasons for getting the iPhone 4 at launch or our Verizon iPhone roadmap, you already know that there are plenty of reasons buy now.  The likely product schedule for the iPhone, combined with Verizon's plans to expand the time between standard phone upgrades, is enough of a reason to join the Apple ecosystem in February. Now add to that the latest report that Verizon will be offering the iPhone with a $30 unlimited data plan... for a limited time.  AT&T drew sharp criticism for dropping unlimited plans in Summer 2010, especially after the iOS 4's introduction of multitasking to the platform.  With the amount of video being served though iPhones today, it would be worth the extra effort and planning for consumers to ensure an unlimited plan before Verizon decides to only offer their $25 2GB plan.

Google's copyright infringment and how it affects more than just Android

This Friday the mobile world was less than surprised by the seemingly indisputable proof that Google did, in fact, copy source code from Oracle's Java and redistribute it under the open-source Android license. What followed was a back and forth between bloggers about the veracity of the claims, with some Google defenders pointing out that the files and code in question are likely test files that don't actually ship with Android handsets.  As Nilay Patel from Engadget points out, however, it doesn't matter whether or not the code actually ships in Android handsets.  Google has likely committed the offense simply by repackaging the code and sending it along to Android licensees.

Everyone is concerned about what this means for Android.  Will this mean that Oracle can extract licensing fees for every handset that ships with Android?  Will this disrupt the march to market dominance that everyone has predicted for Android?  While licensing fees on Android would make a huge difference going forward, it's likely that Google will figure out a way to clean this mess up before it disrupts their business model.  What's more interesting is the fact that Google appears to have been very sloppy when it comes to legal issues.  This might end up hurting them a little bit, but should be considered more of a cautionary tale for Google's partners on multiple fronts.

Previous legal issues involving Android

This might come as a surprise, but Oracle's lawsuit against Google is not the first of its kind.  Last year, Microsoft notoriously began making noise about how the user interface and underlying technology was in violation of its patents, a continuation of their crusade to claim rights over what they perceived as Linux violations.  These threats were lobbied not at Google, but at actual device manufacturers.  Without yet going to court, however, Microsoft announced that it had "negotiated" deals with many of the handset makers.  The reason behind this curtailed aggression, of course, is that many of these device makers are Microsoft's actual partners.  A number of industry observers took Microsoft's statement to mean that they worked out further deal with Windows Phone 7.  In essence, the liabilities of Linux have enabled to Microsoft to either receive licensing fees from Android manufacturers or to push its platform onto partners' handsets.  It's a win for Microsoft all the way around, but a loss f freedom from device makers.

Google's unsupported support for WebM

At Google I/O last May, one of the biggest announcements was the news that Google was making use of its purchase of On2 Technologies by open sourcing the VP8 video codec under the name WebM. Google's intention in doing so was to push forward native browser support for video via HTML5.  While Apple's Safari and Google's own Chrome browsers already supported HTML5 (with Microsoft promising support soon), the issue was whether or not free and open source browsers Mozilla and Opera would climb aboard. The issue at the heart of the matter is the codec used.  The ubiquitous and industry-standard H.264 codec is an open standard, but is not entirely free, requiring licensing for browser support.  That licensing is capped at a maximum of four million dollars, however, making it expensive but not at all impossible for Firefox and Opera to support the codec.  Google's view was that they could release WebM as a free standard for Firefox and Opera and hope that it gains the support needed for content providers on the web to recognize it.

The issue isn't that simple, of course.  H.264 has become the de facto standard for video, right down to cameras that encode in H.264 and hardware acceleration in mobile devices that enable H.264 playback. The reason that the iPad plays video so efficiently is that it doesn't waste resources on Flash but is literally built to play H.264.  In fact, chipsets in almost all major mobile handsets have support for H.264, something that requires engineering, testing, and space on the die.  For hardware companies to support WebM playback, they will have to tear up existing designs and technology roadmaps in order to fit WebM accelerators on their chipsets.

And for what?  Possibly to encounter patent litigation.  From it's inception, the VP8/WebM line of codecs has been dogged by criticism that it may infringe upon a number of patents wrapped into H.264.  The reason Apple has never supported it is that they fear that once they do, one of the media companies under the MPEG LA (the firm that manages the patent pool that controls H.264) will sue them for huge royalties that disrupt their profits and their own hardware plans.  WebM is already drawing attention from the MPEG LA and will likely face legal challenges soon.  For hardware companies, it's more difficult to weigh the risks of patent infringement because the remedy is far more complicated than paying some fees and flipping a switch to turn off support for an infringing codec.

Google's unconvincing show of altruism

While some might have viewed Google's support of WebM as a show of strength, essentially taking the risk of delivering WebM, the truth of the matter is that there is no way for Google to indemnify its partners or would-be licensees.  Just because Google puts itself at risk with WebM doesn't mean that it faces the same risk as its partners.  For starters, Google is a software company.  If they are found liable for patent violations, they simply pay out licensing fees and/or penalties and change their software approach.  This is an unacceptable risk to hardware OEMs, however, because they build and ship hardware, operating on far slimmer profit margins than Google.  Even a small disruption can have far-reaching implications for a hardware company's bottom line.  Secondly, the need to have hardware support for video codecs increases the risks to manufacturers.  Patent violation fees are one thing, but having to reconfigure your hardware roadmap is an expensive and disruptive proposition that is far too risky for any large company to consider.

So how does all of this relate to Android?  Well, if this week's revelations are any indication, Google may not be as scrupulous as some might hope when it comes to evaluating potential legal violations.  If you're HTC, Motorola, or Samsung, you're now facing potential licensing fees to Oracle for the Android copyright infringement.  You're also at a crossroads in deciding whether you should devote resources to developing hardware decoders for WebM.  Given the apparent sloppiness by Google as it pertains to Android and Java, are device makers really going to believe Google's promise of WebM as a "free" video codec? Expect them to be far more conservative, leading to a convoluted situation for video on the web and on devices, a far cry from where the web would have been before Google opened WebM to the masses.