Thursday, February 27, 2014

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Hello, MS-Android. Good-bye, Windows Phone (ZDNet)

Hello, MS-Android. Good-bye, Windows Phone

Summary: Nokia may be making the Android X, X+ and XL handsets, but at the end of the day it was Microsoft's call to produce Android phones. This is bad news for Windows Phone.
Or, some people would add, "in Google bind them." But that's not true: Android is much too open for Google to lock vendors in. Amazon proved that with its Kindle line, and now Microsoft's smartphone company, Nokia, wants to show that Android will work well with Microsoft services too.
nokia-x-610x407
Nokia's --really, Microsoft's -- new Android phones.
Yes, Microsoft is supporting Linux by way of Android. Do you really think -- with the clock running down on Microsoft's final acquisition of Nokia -- that the Finnish phone company would make such a move without Microsoft's full backing? I don't.
I think Microsoft and Nokia have made a smart move. I'm not the only one.
Mary Jo Foley, the top Microsoft reporter on the planet, writes: "Nokia is clearly wooing Android developers who want to build apps for users in developing markets." I think it's bigger than greenfield markets. I think Microsoft/Nokia wants Android developers creating apps for all markets.

Gallery: Hands-on with Nokia's Android X and XL devices

Why? Because Windows Phone has failed. Even in Europe, where Microsoft's mobile operating system seems to do the best, it seems to have stalled out at the 10 percent mark.
Android rules the smartphone market. Canalys reported that 80 percent of all smartphones shipped in 2013 ran Android. Gartner predicts that Android will reach 1.1-billion users in 2014. Do the math. Android is where mobile developers spend their time, not Windows Phone.
Ed Bott, a Windows pro's pro and no friend to open-source operating systems, also sees Microsoft sticking with Nokia's new Android phones. As Bott has pointed out before, Microsoft is turning into a services and hardware company instead of the operating system and application giant we've known for decades.
That being the case, Bott argues, "Microsoft’s arch-rival in the mobile market is Google, not Android.Microsoft’s services – Office 365 and Outlook.com, OneDrive cloud storage for consumers and businesses, communications via Lync and Skype, among many others – work on multiple platforms. They compete on most of those platforms with Google services, like Gmail and Google Apps and Google Drive and Google+ Hangouts."
He's perfectly correct—Yes Ed Bott and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols are in complete agreement for once and hell hasn't even frozen over!
Bott, unlike Foley, also can see Microsoft/Nokia moving its Android smartphones to the high end. I agree. Microsoft would love it if by next year's Mobile World Congress, the hot talk was whether Samsung's Galaxy S6 or the Nokia XP was the best phone of the show. But, what Microsoft would love even more is if users were running Outlook, Office 365, and OneDrive instead of Gmail, Google Apps, and Google Drive on their devices --regardless of the specific platform.
Last, but never least in the list of reasons why Microsoft can back Android: The boys from Redmond already make billions from Android. I estimated that Microsoft made as much as $3.4 billion in 2013 from Android. This revenue comes from Microsoft's Android patent deals. While I don't think there's anything to these patents, companies would rather pay than fight, so at least once a month another phone OEM, such as Hop-on, signs up as an Android patent licensee.
James Kendrick, ZDNet's moble device expert, disagrees with us. He can't see "Microsoft having Android products under its roof. Having to support another platform in addition to its own is going to be a tremendous effort, and while Microsoft has the resources to do it I can't see it. It just doesn't feel right to me and I think there are quite a few Microsofties who will feel the same."
I see eye to eye with Kendrick that there are many Microsoft developers that will Hate the Android move. If Ballmer were still in charge, I'd worry that the Windows Phone faction get their way. Ballmer's not. Satya Nadella is the man now, and what does he know best? He knows the cloud. And, what do Microsoft's services run on? Yes, that's right. They run on the Microsoft cloud.
The heavy lifting for Nokia's apps has already been done over on Azure-based cloud. Google's done the hard work of creating the base operating system. In terms of developer man-hours, Nokia-Android isn't going to cost Microsoft that much. And, come to think of it, Microsoft won't have to pay itself those patent royalty-fees!
As for the app front-end, that work will be done by the tens of thousands of Android programmers who are already out there. Sure, Microsoft's internal developers may not be up to speed on Android, but all those third-party mobile programmers know Android like the back of their smartphones.
The real question is whether Android independent software vendors (ISV)s will think it's worth their time. I think that they will.
Within Microsoft what I see happening is that the company will start backing off Windows Phone. Kendrick's right, you see. It is too much to ask Microsoft to support two mobile operating systems, so I think they'll slowly and quietly drop the least-profitable of them: Windows Phone.
I still can't see Microsoft producing MS-Linux—although I wouldn't count it out either—but I can see Microsoft retiring Windows Phone. Supporting Android with their own app suite simply makes too much financial sense to do otherwise.
*With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien.

Internet Neutrality (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

Netflix’s Deal With Comcast Isn’t About Net Neutrality—Except That It Is

For net neutrality to gain traction as a popular cause, it needs Netflix (NFLX). Yes, the infrastructure of the Internet is important, but few people will find it interesting without a clear connection to the new season of House of Cards. So Netflix’s acknowledgment over the weekend that it had reached an agreement with Comcast to make its service run smoother for the cable company’s customers has led to a mini-outcry over the health of the open Internet.
The twist is that Netflix and Comcast’s (CMCSA) arrangement isn’t a net neutrality issue in the technical sense of the term. A proper net neutrality discussion would involve Internet providers playing favorites with the traffic on their networks reaching end users, and analysts quickly pointed out that this deal has none of that. But when a company that drives one-third of U.S. Web traffic teams up with a company that could soon control access to 60 percent of broadband subscribers, it’s worth parsing.
Netflix’s slow speeds on Comcast have been an issue for a while. The video service releases regular reports about the streaming performance of various Internet providers, and Comcast’s quality dropped significantly in the past year. By December 2013, Netflix cited the country’s largest broadband company for offering the fourth-slowest service in a ranking of 17 providers.
Netflix has several strategies to fix this kind of predicament. In this case it wanted to connect directly to Comcast’s pipes instead of sending its traffic through other companies that struggled to handle the traffic. The sticking point, according to media reports, was that Comcast wanted to be paid for this privilege. Last week an analyst noticed that Netflix was sending traffic directly to Comcast, indicating that an arrangement had been reached, and the companies confirmed it on Sunday.
The announcement comes at an interesting time. Last month a federal court overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules, which limited Internet service providers’ ability to give preferential treatment among types of Web traffic by putting up for bid speedier access to users. Critics of the decision immediately began predicting peril for Netflix, which is responsible for about a third of U.S. Internet traffic at any given time. Shortly thereafter, in a development with significant but uncertain ramifications for the net neutrality debate, Comcast announced it was buying its largest competitor, Time Warner Cable (TWC), for $45 billion, which could give it at least a 60 percent share of the national broadband market.
The talks with Netflix were already under way before the court decision or the merger; multiple reports trace the framework for the Netflix-Comcast deal back to the International Consumer Electronics Show in early January. Still, by coming to an agreement with Netflix, Comcast neutralizes a company that might have been a potent voice in blocking its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. “That was one of the side benefits, or silver linings, of this announcement,” says Paul Sweeney of Bloomberg Industries.
This looks like a worrying development, because Netflix is reportedly now paying Comcast directly for access to its customers—the much-feared vision of what life might be like without net neutrality rules. Then again, Netflix was already paying companies to carry traffic between its servers and Comcast’s customers. Details are murky, but this deal may have actually lowered Netflix’s costs by cutting out the middle man. It’s unlikely that it would have raised hackles at the FCC even before last month’s decision.
The real issue is who has power at the negotiating table. Having multiple third parties move traffic from companies like Netflix to those like Comcast reduces the chances for abuse because there is always another route. That’s different than content companies striking deals with service providers directly, especially one with as many customers as Comcast. If you run Netflix, can you afford not to agree to terms with the gatekeeper providing well more than half of the Internet subscribers in the country?
The most vulnerable companies here aren’t the likes of Netflix, which is big enough to force Comcast to the table. If nothing else, Comcast couldn’t afford to anger regulators with a fight against such a household name right now. But smaller companies will have much less leverage and could get worse terms. Dan Rayburn, an analyst for market researcher Frost & Sullivan, says this is no different than bulk deals that any large customer enjoys. “It’s a volume-based business with economics of scale,” he says. “The more eyeballs you push, the better deal you’re going to get.”
Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your perspective.
Brustein is a writer for Businessweek.com in New York.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Hablando de Taxis...

Features

Invasion of the Taxi Snatchers: Uber Leads an Industry's Disruption