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Can Low Prices Save the Tablet Market from Apple?

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Google 4 Comments

Update: All Things D has interesting post looking at how much money Hewlett-Packard might have lost on the TouchPad.

Steve jobs ipadSo let’s get this straight: Hewlett-Packard spends $1.2-billion to acquire Palm so it can move into the tablet computing business. It then launches the TouchPad (creative name, by the way!) with a marketing blitz, only to see sales go nowhere, leaving retailers such as Best Buy with loads of unsold inventory.

Then, HP shocks the world by announcing it’s going to abandon the tablet and PC markets to focus on software. Fascinating….except the story gets better.

After HP makes its decision, Best Buy goes back on its original decision not to sell its stash of 245,000 TouchPads by blowing them out at discount prices – $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. (betanews has some colour on the TouchPad buying frenzy.)

People who would have never considered buying a TouchPad are now drooling about picking up a cheap unit, even though it’s built on an OS that could be orphaned.

If anything, it just goes to show that everyone likes a deal, even if it involves a product that is being discontinued.

At the same time, it does put a intriguing issue into the spotlight: could low-price tablets keep the marketplace from being dominated by Apple’s iPad?

There are some great tablets from companies such as Samsung and Motorola (I’m really enjoying my Xoom) but the iPad’s appeal and Apple’s brand mean the default choice for most consumers is an iPad.

Many people suggest the iPad is so compelling because of the 100K+ apps but truth be told, Android has an apps portfolio that is more than good enough. Heck, even the much-maligned Blackberry World probably has enough apps to do the trick.

So the iPad has the marketing aura and the apps but what it doesn’t have is a low price, although there’s rumbling Apple could introduce less-expensive models. This leaves a window of opportunity for someone to step up with a low-cost, user-friendly tablet likely built on Android that would have mass market appeal.

As much as overall sales are soaring, a cheap tablet would push the tablet into the mainstream, making it available to just about everyone, including people who look at them as a nice to have as opposed to a must-have. And the nice thing about playing in the low-price market is there’s little chance Apple will join the fray.

Of course, the key consideration for a supplier who decides to make low-cost tablets is having low enough costs and high enough sales volume to have decent profit margins. It would also help if there were add-on services available (storage, security, etc.) that would generate additional sales to support the low-cost model.

Given the strong sales of the TouchPad, there’s clearly a market for a cheap tablet backed by a reputable brand. Either that or people love a deal or they’re looking for a souvenir to sell later on eBay.

More: Daring Fireball offers a “simple explanation” about why HP abandoned Palm and decided to exit the PC business.Update

Lawyers Laughing All the Way to the Patent Bank

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Google No Comments

There’s a Spanish proverb that “fools and obstinate men make rich lawyers”. Given the high-tech landscape these days, it would be easy to tweak it to read “Fools, obstinate men and patents make rich lawyers.”

In the past month or so, the patent marketplace has gone crazy. A consortium happily coughs up $4.5 billion for Nortel’s 6,000 patents. Google wants to spend $12.5-billion for Motorola Mobility and its 17,000 patents, and Wi-Lan has bid $480 million for Mosaid.

For all the talk about patents protecting innovation, it is looking more and more like patents will be used as a weapon to discourage innovation….unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege. We should have seen the writing on the wall in 2006 when RIM paid $612.5-million for NTP, a patent troll, to go away.

With high-tech companies aggressively building their patent portfolios, we should prepare ourselves for a flurry of lawsuits or, at least, threats of lawsuits as everyone attempts to protect their investments.

It goes without saying this will be a goldmine for lawyers who will be happy as pigs in shit as the patent wars are unleashed. With the stakes so high given how much money is being spent on patents, the legals fees for both sides (the patents owners and the alleged patent infringers) will be enormous.

My take is this is going to be a disaster for the high-tech industry as patents rather than innovation take centre stage. For people creating new products and services, it means having to look over their shoulder for an army of lawyers who will contend that a patent has been infringed.

That’s no way to encourage innovation.

The Dangers of Loving Google Too Much

By Mark Evans in Google 1 Comment Tags: , ,

With the launch of Google+, there’s yet another reason for people to embed themselves even deeper within the Google empire.

The availability of free services that work well have been an irresistible and subtle attraction and, arguably, seduction for many people. Without fully realizing it, you can find yourself depending on a variety of Google services for your personal and professional lives.

For example, my Google portfolio includes Google+ (although I’m a less than enthusiastic embrace), Google Docs, GMail and Google Apps. Then, there’s my regular use of search, Google Maps and Google Images. I would suspect my embrace would be fairly typical of many people who use the Web on a regular basis.

But there is a price to be paid and danger for dancing with Google.

First, the service may cost nothing but they’re not free; there is a price to be paid. For one, Google has access to a good chunk of your activity, which not only feeds its ability to deliver increasingly relevant advertising but information about your online behaviour.

Second, Google has the ability to lock you out of your services without providing an explanation or justification for “violating” its terms of service. For anyone who has seen their online lives disappear behind the dark Google curtain of death, you know how terrifying it can be.

Sure, it’s a remote prospect but, nevertheless, people need to be aware it is part of the deal they strike with Google to gain access to “free” services. You same “deal with the Devil” applies to Facebook and Twitter.

So what can you do to protect yourself from being too dependent on Google or having Google slam the door on your nose?

Well, you could stick to non-online services such as Outlook and Microsoft Office but that would meaning not being able to take advantage of the cloud. For lots of people that would be fine but for people who travel or work away from the office on a regular basis, the cloud offers the convenience of access any time, anywhere.

Another approach is spreading your online portfolio between different service providers. Perhaps you use GMail for e-mail, Microsoft Live or Zoho for productivity services, and DropBox for collaboration and storage. While it reduces risk, it’s probably not the best or most user-friendly approach given there’s no integration between the different services.

In many cases, it means dancing with Google, and accepting the fact there are potential risks or downsides. Given the depth of the Google portfolio, it is a deal most people are willing to make.

The High, High Hopes for Google+

By Mark Evans in Google 1 Comment Tags: ,

So it’s been a little more than a week since Google+ launched, and the enthusiasm has been palpable. Google bubbles there will be 10 million Google+ users by tomorrow, which will no doubt see many cases of Moët and Chandon champagne popped at the GooglePlex.

Some of it has to do with the fact the digitrati loves new and shiny things – and there’s been a dearth of cool and compelling social media services arguably since Twitter launched – apologies to all your Foursquare fansboys/girls.

But I think there is another key factor driving Google+ that have little to do with Google+’s features or functionality.

As much as many people (700 million and counting) have joined Facebook, there is a growing concern about Facebook’s dominance and bold ambitions to inflict its social graph across the entire Web. People use Facebook but they’re afraid of it because of its dominance.

So, in many respects, the optimism about Google+ have everything to do with the high hopes that it can become a big enough player to keep Facebook honest.

This is not to suggest Google’s ambitious are any less aggressive than Facebook’s but there needs to be another social networking player to keep Facebook in check, otherwise Facebook will rule the roost and do what it wants because there would be no other options.

So as Google (and its boosters) trumpet the fact millions of people are joining Google+, keep in mind there are other factors at all that have everything to do with Facebook.

Links:
- Tommy Walker talks about why Google+ doesn’t stand a chance against Facebook.

Google+: Finally, A Rival to Facebook

By Mark Evans in Google, Social Media 3 Comments Tags: ,

I’ve been on Google+ for all of three days but my initial impressions are pretty good. Although I’ve only scratched the surface of what Google+ offers and there are lots of cards that Google has yet to show, Google+ has an excellent shot to become the badly-needed rival to Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting Google+ will be a Facebook-killer but the social networking world desperately needs another player to keep Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook honest. After MySpace imploded within the bosom of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Facebook could do anything they wanted because there’s nowhere else to go. For all the complaints about Facebook’s cavalier attitude to privacy, for example, it didn’t matter because users had no other choices.

I’m excited about Google+’s potential because it not only offers many of the features that social media users want but it has some interesting features that make it different and better than Facebook. Here’s a short list of what’s good about Google+:

1. The ability to create different circles based on your personal and professional interests is great because it lets you splice and dice your digital presence just like you do in real-life. This means you can leverage social media to connect with different groups of people on the same platform rather than throw them all into the same bucket like you do with Facebook.

2. In Google+, you control the data. I’m sure Google will leverage it somehow as part of the deal but the company says that if you leave, your data comes with you. And they’ll make it easy to delete your account. Facebook, on the other hand, believes it owns or, at least, control all data. And leaving Facebook is not an easy process.

3. As Google+ evolves, the integration with other Google services will make Google+ a more valuable and multi-faceted service to share content and provide updates to different circles.

I don’t expect Google+ to cause major damage to Facebook in the short-term but Google+ has the potential to become a strong rival to Facebook within the social networking market, which should be cause for celebration for anyone who has misgivings about Mark Zuckerberg’s hubris or bold ambitions.

At the very least, Google+ should keep Facebook on its toes and force it to change how it operates, which is the great thing about real competition.

Links:
- Robert Scoble who believes Google+ will become the social network for geeks, early adopters and social media gurus.
- All Facebook on the one Google+ feature that Facebook should fear – the integration with other Google services.
- Nine Reasons to Switch to Google+ (PC World)
- Fred Wilson on the fact he’s rooting for Google+ to expand the social media landscape and provide more choices

Using Add-ons to Pimp GMail

By Mark Evans in Google No Comments Tags: , , , ,

GmailFor the longest time, I sat on the fence when it came to embracing Web-based email services such as GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail (aka Live.come). Instead, I continued to use desktop software such as Mail and Postbox on the assumption that controlling my email was more important than the convenience and features of Web-based services.

After a few technical glitches with Postbox, I finally decided to take the plunge into the cloud by switching to Google Apps and GMail as my primary email service. It may not seem like a major deal but after more than a decade of using software, it felt like a big leap of faith – sort of like jumping into a lake after swimming in a pool for a long time.

After embracing GMail, it was interesting to discover GMail is far from a perfect email service. There were features that should be standard but, for whatever reason, are missing.

One of the most glaring is the ability to schedule email to appear in the future. To me, it’s a no-brainer because I don’t like to send people email at night or on weekends as a way to separate professional and personal time. As well, post-dating email is a great when you’re travelling and you’re not sure if a message can be sent at the right time.

Fortunately, I was happy to discover Boomerang, a free add-on for Firefox and Chrome that makes it a breeze to post-date email to be sent whenever you want. The downside of using Boomerang is you have to give its developer, Baydin, access to your GMail account.

Next on my list was a better way to search through GMail messages. Although the search features is obviously great, I discovered another free plug-in from Cloud Magic that is excellent. It may not replace Google’s search feature but Cloud Magic does provide a valuable option.

For people using GMail as a business tool, it’s worth checking out Rapportive, an add-on that provides information about the people who send you email. This includes their social media presences, as well as the ability to write notes about each person.

I’m also using Xobni’s free add-on that is similar to Rapportive by offering the ability to see information about each sender, as well as see email conversations that have taken place and conduct searches.

A GMail feature that I am using is the Priority Inbox, which highlights your most important messages after you provide it with some guidance. I don’t use it often but it is useful to get a quick snapshot of your inbox as opposed to going through every email. I have also tried a plug-in called SaneBox but didn’t like how it worked.

Are there any GMail add-ons that you’ve found valuable or useful? If so, leave a comment.

Links: The New York Times’ Gadgetwise blog offers a mini-review of Boomerang.

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