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News today suggests that Palm wants to embrace Google Voice, even though Google may not be as keen to embrace Palm.

We’ve heard from a source close to Palm that the company plans to roll out deep integration with Google Voice on the Pre phones for users who want it. That could convert a lot of iPhone users to the Palm Pre fast.

This illustrates extraordinarily well the role that asymmetric competition plays in triggering ‘creative destruction’, and the transformations that high-tech undergoes periodically. One such transition underway at the moment is the move in several different arenas to ‘over-the-top’ services, in which insurgents (Google) and underdogs (Palm) leverage rich connectivity and smart devices to disenfranchise and disintermediate conventional telcos’ smart switches and dumb devices.

Google voice

It’s these underdogs, who have little or nothing to lose and much to gain from it, who creatively destroy established business models. Any share gain for Palm would be a big deal; without something that gives it much more impetus it’s not going to achieve escape velocity, and will likely crash and burn. If Google can provide this, then well and good; the opportunity cost to Palm of any revenues foregone is small.

It’s not yet clear how Sprint will respond; again as arguably the weakest of the fab four it may well perceive the potential market share gain as outweighing the ARPU downside.

And as far as Google goes, all of this is good news. It may not officially endorse Palm and the Web OS in this context, given its linkage to the Android OS ecosystem, and need to be seen to be continuing as a strong supporter, but it nevertheless benefits from this.

But should the strong players, such as Apple or the major MNOs be seriously concerned about this? It’s suggested that Apple should worry:

this could convert a lot of iPhone users to the Palm Pre fast

Frankly, I’m skeptical; good as Google Voice is, it’s already available on other platforms, and extending this to the Palm Pre is not going to make it a winner in the marketplace; at least at the moment despite the excellence of Web OS from a usability perspective, Palm has not yet demonstrated that it has the market momentum needed to build a strong and sustainable business ecosystem.

Ars Technica has some insightful observations on this score:

Palm’s major mistake was that it delayed the launch of the webOS SDK until April, allowing its new phone go the entire summer without a real ecosystem. Sure, Apple was able to launch the iPhone without any real developer support, and the company took its sweet time in releasing the iPhone SDK. But Apple wasn’t going up against competitors with software distribution platforms that were high volume or high profile. When the iPhone SDK was ready, it came with an app store that’s every bit as revolutionary as its music distribution platform was.

When the Pre launched, it was competing with the iPhone ecosystem from day one, but you wouldn’t guess it from the way Palm has handled things. The initial app store catalog was small and lackluster, but it could’ve been ramped up quickly with a range of apps showing what the Pre hardware can do. But here we are in August, and no one’s Pre has gained any new capabilities. There’s nothing new for the press to write about, nothing for any Pre owners to show off to their iPhone-using friends, and generally no reason to get excited all over again about Palm

It’s all about timing. If Palm had come out several months earlier, and got its act together on the SDK, the whole landscape would be very different.

As executives, analysts, and advisors we spend a lot of time arguing about metrics and data, and where we need to be to survive and thrive in the market place.  An old joke reminds us that relative performance is all that really matters:

Two hikers are cornered by a bear and climb a tree.  One of the hikers reaches into his backpack, pulls out a pair of running sneakers and starts lacing up.  The other says, “What are you doing?”

“I figure we will have to jump down from here eventually.” says the first.

“But you will never be able to outrun the bear,” says the second.

“True.  But I figure all I really have to do is out run you.”

We are bombarded with random statistics on companies and products and financial performance, but it is important to realize that context matters:

• who are the key competitors?
• what is the real playing field on which we are competing?

Getting the right basis for comparison is critical to both understanding current performance, and to deciding what to do to improve future performance.

There is currently a great deal of interest in Apple’s iPhone and the Palm Pre and comparisons abound regarding sales and usage figures.  Most of these comparisons are confusing and not terribly helpful.

For instance, the Palm Pre sold around 370,000 units in its first month of sales while the new iPhone 3GS sold roughly 1 million units in its first weekend.  iPhone users have downloaded over 1 billion applications while Palm Pre users have only downloaded about 1 million.  Clearly the iPhone 3GS is outperforming the Palm Pre on an absolute basis, but does this make the Palm Pre a failure?  What are the right measures to make an ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison?

Some additional information and framing can help us decide:

• the Palm Pre is supported by Sprint (49M subscribers) in the US while the iPhone is supported by AT&T (62M subscribers) – and Sprint has been losing subscribers while AT&T has been growing them
• the iPhone is available in 88 countries while the Palm Pre is available in only one (although it will soon launch in several others)
• the iPhone 3GS is a third generation product while the Palm Pre is a first generation product

While looking at raw recent sales statistics the iPhone 3GS has nearly a 30x advantage over the Palm Pre, but comparing the Pre against the first generation iPhone and viewing these statistics on a cumulative basis since launch, the Pre looks much better:

Palm Pre on track for strong growth

Even more compelling, however, is a comparison of one quarter of projected Palm Pre sales vs. Sprint’s prior quarter subscriber net losses.  The Palm Pre represents a radical change in outlook for Sprint, perhaps singlehandedly moving them back into subscriber growth:

The Palm Pre has the chance to singlehandedly move Sprint back into positive growth

Roughly 34% of Palm Pre buyers have been new customers to Sprint, similar to the iPhone’s 30-40% new to AT&T numbers reported at this stage.  But much more importantly, the other 66% of Pre buyers stayed with Sprint while upgrading devices rather than switching away from Sprint to other networks for an iPhone (AT&T), Blackberry Storm or Tour (Verizon), or Android G1 (T-Mobile).

It’s early days, but at least so far the Pre is doing better for Sprint than the iPhone was for AT&T at the same time. Longer term, Palm faces significant strategic challenges in building its ecosystem and attracting application developers.

Last week, I posted a quick analysis of Apple’s App Store, which is on pace for over 3.2 billion application downloads by year end.  We tried to do a similar analysis for other platforms such as BlackBerry and hit a snag:  There is little or no information available for BlackBerry App World.  See below:

Blackberry App World has not released download stats

As we dug deeper, we found good reasons for this dearth of data.

First, BlackBerries sold through major network operators do not come with App World pre-installed; hence one of the key questions is how many BlackBerry users have downloaded, installed and set up App World.

Another challenge is that users can get BlackBerry apps from a variety of alternative sources, including:

• developer websites — for example, the excellent Google and Facebook apps for Blackberries are often acquired directly from the web and sent via email link
• Handango website — may be the leading single source for Blackberry apps
• Handango InHand — a pretty good 3rd party app store, downloaded to many BlackBerryies after Apple’s App Store became popular and before RIM’s own BlackBerry App World launched
• network operators’ websites — verizon.handango.com, for instance
• network operators’ app stores — mostly focused on ringtones and games; VZAppZone and AT&T Media Mall are examples

All this choice is confusing for both end users and for application developers.

Moreover our survey of retail store personnel at major US network operators found that they were either or both ignorant or unsupportive of App World when asked about how to get apps for BlackBerries:

• Sprint personnel did not know of any way to get applications onto a BlackBerry and began pitching the Palm Pre as a better device for apps (despite the fact that at present it only has 30 apps, and it’ll be late summer before the SDK has widespread availability)
• T-Mobile personnel knew there was a BlackBerry source for apps, but did not know the name or how to get it
• Verizon’s sales people pushed VZAppZone as an alternative for BlackBerry applications
• only AT&T front line personnel immediately knew about Blackberry App World and described how to find and install it (is this in someway a spillover effect from their learning with the iPhone and its App Store – experience that sales people at other network operators just do not have?)

Given little or no support from network operators, App World must first be discovered and downloaded by users; like any innovation, without information there’s no adoption. In addition, users must have a PayPal account or sign up for one to purchase apps on App World.

Here is a step-by-step comparison of first time use for Blackberry App World vs. Apple’s App Store:

Typical App World vs. App Store first time experience

Guess which application storefront has “Billions and Billions served” and which one has so far been less than forthcoming with performance metrics?

Two items this morning caught my attention, both reflecting on the potential of smartphones as ‘controllers:

• NetworkWorld has a piece of commentary on why the iPhone can’t be killed
• there are now pictures available of the new controller from Sonos

Carolina Milani of Gartner manages to both get it completely right, and completely wrong in NetworkWorld. First, what she got right:

Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi says that the iPhone’s continued success in the smartphone market has as much to do with its relationship to other Apple devices and software as it does with its own capabilities.

“From technological perspective, there are devices out there that might have higher specs than iPhone,” she says. “But there’s nothing on the market today that pulls everything together to give the superior user experience that you get with the iPhone.” (our emphasis added)

Then I believe that she gets it completely wrong when it comes to the potential appeal of smartphones as a gaming platform:

“I think a lot of gamers would rather go for a full PlayStation [Portable] than a phone-based as a video game system,” she says. “At the end of day you have enough phones that do voice and they are small enough for you to carry a second device that does only video games. I’m not sure that a video game phone would bring much to Sony, to be honest.“

Completely missing the point. If your phone is a smartphone, with a responsive and powerful user interface, and motion sensing and haptics, then it’s an insanely great gaming controller. Two games on the iPhone illustrate this incredibly well:

• X-Plane -the amazing flight simulator
• Flight Control – the completely addictive casual game

X-Plane exploits the graphics capability and the motion sensors as a controller. Flight Control exploits the touch screen and the peer-to-peer networking. Both of them rock, and illustrate just how good a smartphone can be as a games controller.

In fact I was thinking of a post called the ‘Flight Control’ test; for other smartphones, can you imagine playing the game on them. In particular, it’s where the Nokia N97 currently falls short (I’ll update after the update); there’s just no way that it’d work for Flight Control.

On the other hand, the growing importance of interfaces like Facebook may mean that it’s home screen is a better answer than either iPhone or WebOS.

I’m even dubious about the Pre; sometimes it just lags in its responses to touch input, and that’d cause a major (virtual) mid-air collision.

We are already seeing a lot of investment in games for smartphones, and the iPhone in particular. If games developers like id Software are in love with it, as John Carmack said in an interview with VentureBeat:

Carmack’s endorsement means Apple has one of the leading game developers in the whole industry on its side.

“I love the iPhone,” Carmack said in an interview. “It’s a real game platform, not a tiny little toy.”

It would make a lot of sense for Sony [Ericsson?] to launch a great gaming smartphone that leverages the PSP franchise, and unsurprisingly there are recent rumours to this effect again.

The Sonos news is interesting; as any of you with both an iPhone and a Sonos music system will already know, the Sonos app for the iPhone is in many ways a better controller than the dedicated controller. In response, they’re launching a new touchscreen controller:

Sonos CR200 controller

This is important, because it represents another big application area for smartphones: home control.

Apple has its great Remote application which now has gesture control, and now almost all of the major home automation companies already have apps for the iPhone: AMX and Crestron, for example.

What’s more, the value and competitive importance means that other platform players are also targeting this; even Nokia through its home control technology and There venture.

Perhaps one of the interesting ways to think about smartphones that deliver great user experience is as ‘life controllers’.

We’ve already noted that despite the excellence of WebOS, Palm needs strong support to become a credible platform player, competing with the likes of Apple, RIM, Android, Nokia/Symbian/Ovi and even (because it might do something radical) Microsoft with WinMo.

The point is now not lost on even the analyst community (Kaufman Sets Hold Rating; Many Possible Suitors), who’ve identified several options:

“…potential suitors include Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Microsoft and Dell.”

Let’s leave aside the question of why buy now, when in December Palm was trading at less than one-tenth of its current value with a market cap below $200 million, the value of Palm is in WebOS and its US presence, not the Pre, so let’s take a look:

Nokia – already bought and paid for Trolltech, and has Maemo – not likely, unless its struggles in the US make Palm worthwhile for that alone

Samsung or LG – {neutral | non-aligned | independent} device players – very hardware-focused – do they want to transform their business model become a platform player with WebOS, competing against Android and Microsoft rather than collaborating with them, or trying to co-exist?

Motorola – too many of its own issues, also already stronger in US than elsewhere

HP or Dell – clearly want to build positions in smartphones from their personal computer position, could they re-focus WebOS development in the right direction?

Microsoft – not unless or until it admits (to itself, most of all) that WinMo’s not going to get it there…

Cisco – the wildcard, perhaps as the basis for entry into smartphones as they become a key element of the the interwebs

Computerworld is publishing the results of its mobile deathmatch between the iPhone and the Pre (Mobile deathmatch: Can the Pre knock out the iPhone) on Monday (6 July) and is asking for feedback on what to evaluate the devices on. FWIW, The Register has a good comparison as well.

I’ve been using both intensely since the Pre was launched (along with an N97, and less intensely a Storm, a G1, a Bold and an X1), and the Pre does come closest to the iPhone.

There are two key criteria which differentiate all of these devices:

• user experience (UX)
• ecosystem (apps and content)

And when you dig deeper, ease of use is not so much about any individual app, it’s about the ‘edge cases’. They’re all pretty much the same for an individual stand-alone task, except where the hardware lets them down (like the resistive touch screen on the N97 and WinMo devices, and the Storm’s horrible hybrid).

The big difference is if the job that you want to get done is an ‘edge case’:

• forward something from an SMS as an e-mail
• take a video and post it
• get information from a search and use it to navigate
• pick up a e-book for casual reading for a few minutes
• watch the second half of a movie on a smartphone that you started on the big screen TV last night
• search for and get directions to the nearest Starbucks (certified caffeine addict)

This is where the iPhone (particularly now it’s got cut-and-paste) excels. Easy to switch apps; lots of them.

They play nice together; take the integration of Where with Google Maps:

1. Swipe to the screen with Where on
2. Tap on Where
3. Tap on Starbucks
4. Tap on the nearest icon
5. Tap on Get Directions

Five taps, because there’s a nice little app, and good interworking; 17 seconds.

I just checked, on my big desktop it takes three times longer – ~50 seconds:

1. Mouse to the search field in Safari
2. Type ’starbucks’ into the field, hit return
3. Mouse over to and click on ‘Store Locator‘
4. Mouse over to the ‘Postal Code’ field and click in it
5. Type my ZIP code ‘01742′ into the field
6. Mouse over to and click on the ’submit’ button
7. Mouse over to and click on the nearest store
8. Mouse over to and click on ‘Driving Directions’
9. Type in my street address: about thirty characters and four tabs between fields
10. Mouse to and click on the ’submit’ button

Seven (7) mouse movements, about forty characters of typing.

Worth noting as well, with the app, Google sees much less; how will this affect its economics over the long-term?

Or the amazing Kindle app, which syncs to the last page read in the book that I’m reading.

For messaging and communication tasks, the BlackBerry (except the Storm) is better at mixing and matching modes than anything else.

The Pre’s pretty good as well. Where it falls short is in the complementary ‘cloud services’ and in the apps. The user interface is very elegant, and has some nice touches (pun intended), but it falls so far short on the apps side. The sync with iTunes does, at least for the moment, work surprisingly well.

There’re now a slew of apps on the Phone, like Where and At Bat (Red Sox fan, no zeal like that of the convert) and SugarSync and WordPress on which I depend. The Pre and WebOS has Where, but none of the others.

Without the strong support of either or both a major global network operator (Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile or Telefonica) or licensing to and working with one or more of the top tier ‘independent’ device vendors (Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, HTC or Motorola) Palm won’t get the market momentum it needs to build an installed base to enroll developers. Shipping the SDK so late and expanding the developer program so slowly doesn’t exactly help, either.

So, evaluate smartphones on ease of use for edge cases, and their supporting ecosystem.

With the dawn of the superphone, where is Microsoft? – FierceWireless

In a post on FierceWireless about smartphones (which he tags superphones), Stephen Drake poses the question that many of us are wondering about – what is Microsoft going to do?

It seems to me, however, that although it’s the right question, he’s missing the point, focusing on aesthetics and hardware, rather than on ease of use and software.

He characterizes these smartphones (or ’superphones’) as a:

“…high-end device class characterized by its ‘wow factor,’ a real or perceived buying frenzy, or an otherwise stylish, functional and pretty-to-look-at device…”.

While aesthetics matter, as hardware features, functions and form factor continue to be difficult but do not any longer differentiate, he completely misses the single most important factor: the user experience.

Talking about the Pre, he focuses on its: “…multi-touch capabilities and beautiful interface…”, hardware and aesthetics, when what matters about the Pre is WebOS. And the apps. Or lack of them.

When he comes to Microsoft, he asks where is “… the iconic, shiny device that users have coveted….” There are iconic, shiny devices: Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 for example, but WinMo just isn’t there.

Yes, aesthetics matter, but much less so than first ease of use, then the ecosystem (apps and content), both of which outweigh elegance.

Unless and until Microsoft can deliver the usability that customers are coming to expect from Apple, Android and Palm, it will remain uncompetitive.

Tragically, although this should have been apparent since before the launch of the iPhone, as Andy Lees put it at the announcement in Barcelona in February of the forthcoming 6.5 release:

“…[the user interface] seemed less important…”