All posts in Mobile Mastery

BlackBerry 10 and the Wild World of BYOD

by Dan Zeck on February 7, 2013 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

After a series of delays and months of industry speculation, RIM BlackBerry has finally unveiled its new BlackBerry 10 OS and accompanying devices – the Z10 and Q10. The big question in everyone’s mind now, is whether it will help save the company…or if it was too little, too late.

The features BlackBerry has been betting on to impress consumers with include dual layer on-screen keyboards, cloud data storage, and cutting edge multi-media capabilities. If you’re thinking that none of this sounds particularly compelling, I understand, but keep reading, because they have also thrown something else into the mix: a single interface with separate ‘work’ and ‘play’ profiles – BlackBerry Balance. The work profile, for example, will include a distinct calendar and a specially tailored app store.  For enterprises, a built-in BYOD solution may take the edge off the long wait. 

At a conference prior to the launch, the company’s senior director of enterprise product management, Jeff Holleran, spoke at great length about how many of the features of the new Blackberry 10 OS have been designed in response to the rise of BYOD. If you’re thinking ‘about time’, then again, I’m with you – BlackBerry’s server-based enterprise play met its Waterloo when the iPhone 3G launched back in July 2008. In case you were wondering, fierce competition from MDM ‘point’ solution vendors doesn’t worry BlackBerry, because, according to Holleran, “There’s a different hundred players week after week. It seems to be a very young market, with a lot of new start-ups…there is no clear [leader] who customers are flocking to.”  Whether or not you think Holleran’s underestimating the competition – and I do think he is to some degree – there’s no doubt that BlackBerry has a strong enterprise brand that might help it steal back some MDM market share.  There’s a distinct opportunity for BlackBerry to claim back some lost enterprises and to please some companies in industries that are still using BlackBerries…but who have been considering a device refresh.

There are some really cool things about the new OS and devices – time-shift camera, predictive typing keyboard, BlackBerry Hub for messages, BlackBerry Flow and BlackBerry Balance.  There’s been a few great live blogs and recaps out there – like this one, this one and even this.

Continue Reading

iPad Mini: Is This A Watershed Moment for BYOD or Will the Tide Turn Back?

by Dan Zeck on November 20, 2012 in Mobile Mastery with 1 Comment

Like many of my colleagues and “mobilists” alike, I watched with interest when Apple recently unveiled its much-anticipated iPad mini. The rumor mill, as always, had it partially right (display size, A5 chip) and partially wrong (the lack of retina screen and sub-$300 price, most notably).  One thing is certain: despite the lack of the long lines outside stores that have accompanied their product launches of the past, Apple has another hit on its hands.  As proof, the company sold 3 million iPad minis in its opening weekend. 

While the device certainly makes a great holiday gift, the jury is still out on the tablet’s impact on the enterprise. Speaking to PC Advisor, industry analysts like Frank Gillett of Forrester and Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates clearly think the more portable form factor, smaller price, and access to Apple’s vibrant app ecosystem will appeal to many businesses who have thus far held out on the tablet revolution. Others, like Zach Whittaker at ZDNet, think the device will be a bust and faces serious competition from Microsoft, who is investing heavily in the dedicated tablet sector within the booming tablet market.

Continue Reading

Mobile App Privacy Policy is a Smart Move

by Dan Zeck on February 24, 2012 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

There are many stories in the wires recently regarding protecting personal information.   A reasonable approach to Personal information privacy is needed.  Unfortunately, Government policy may be needed to enforce it.

I believe user trust in privacy policies is essential for mobile adoption to continue its growth trajectory, especially in business-to-consumer applications.   However, privacy policy compliance should also be considered for employee based applications – since these employees are also citizens of countries that require data protection practices.   At the end of the day, your employees are consumers first, and they are likely to have the same concerns in the workplace as they do at home.  More than ever before, employees expect the same kind of experience at work as they receive in their personal lives – especially when it comes to mobile technology and privacy.

Many countries have had data protection laws on the books for years.  However, they are not being enforced to a large degree.  I expect that to change significantly in 2012.  For example, the UK has had a data protection act since 1998.  The EU has just recently – as of Jan 25, 2012 – drafted a new regulation for data protection that will supersede a prior policy.  Awareness has tipped and the mobile industry needs to pay attention to these laws and policies at the price of losing subscribers and users.

What type of information requires protection?  There’s a term for this – Personally identifiable information (PII):  Your identity, location, network address, payment info, phone numbers, vehicle tags, driver’s license number, date of birth, birthplace, national ID numbers, and more.   The current definition of PII does not address social network concepts so add to that list your social “friends” and their PII.  You can certainly understand how this data protection issue grows exponentially with the advent of cloud-based social apps and networks.  In the news just recently several social services, like Twitter and Foursquare have been caught gathering user contact info from their devices without direct consent of the user.  This has since been addressed to a degree but it’s a great example of the issue.

Device vendors, social networks, content providers, carriers, app developers and enterprises all have a role to play to protect consumers’ personal information.  I agree that this is required but a reasonable approach must be taken that provides sufficient protection and consumer awareness but is not “heavy” in terms of government regulation and compliance.

There’s a balance point here that the major industry players and government agencies must define and agree upon.  I applaud the recent Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, HP and RIM agreement with the AG of California.

And at Antenna, our platforms will continue to be compliant with the emerging policies across the globe.

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: Predictions for 2012

by Dan Zeck on December 22, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

As 2012 quickly approaches, all minds start shifting to what will move the market in the year to come.  As someone who’s constantly looking at the next wave of technology and implications on the mobile industry, this is a fun time for me to hone in on what is driving mobile technology innovation.  Without further ado, here are a few mobile related technologies I expect to be realized in the next few years.

  • Mobile commerce and m-payments represent a hot but fragmented space, with a slew of the new tech innovations for these areas being incorporated into mobile devices. NFC chips are part of it, but further down the road we can expect to see Micro-SD proximity solutions, which are being trialed in devices now, as well as enhanced bump capabilities and new kinds of bar code scanning and shopping solutions. Mobile wallets will also be continuing to make a big show as companies across the spectrum – including Google, Apple, banks, credit card companies and even carriers – try to figure out how they will solve the problem best and create new revenue streams from innovative payment services.  
  • Sensors and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication are also growing rapidly and a killer application we expect to see here will be mobile point-of-sale.  M2M capabilities will be increasingly incorporated into devices as they follow the standard evolution of new technologies – starting as peripherals and now starting to be incorporated directly into the hardware of mobile devices.  Sensors will be used for some interesting security functionality as well, making it easier to lock down phones in the event they are lost or compromised.  Think biometrics with finger swipe technology and voice recognition that can be used to lock and unlock a device and device-resident data.
  • Speech recognition has piqued consumer interest with the release of Siri in the iPhone 4S.  We can expect to see speech recognition and virtual assistants being used in many mobile apps and integrated with mobile search for powerful mobile web and application capabilities. The technology has already come a long way in overcoming challenges of dialects, accents, and speaking styles, and will continue to be a growth area and drive mobile adoption.
  • Many companies have a mobile strategy and many more realize they need one.  However, as the demand for mobile content shows no sign of slowing down, many organizations have missed one key aspect in their mobile strategy — mobile content distribution. The challenge many businesses will face is how to get content AND apps to customers AND employees on a myriad of devices, something beyond the capabilities of many traditional CMS’. The importance of mobile search and the growth of mobile web are changing how people interact with brands and shifting their content expectations, which in turn are changing the way businesses must solve this problem.  Mobile content hubs, with capabilities beyond a traditional CMS, will provide a single channel for making content available and help make distribution strategies a reality.  Furthermore, content distribution should take user information and context into account to tune content to the user at the right time and place to have optimal impact.  Certainly consumer and customer opt-in programs can enrich this user experience.  Both classes of users – those that have registered for specialized content and those that have not need to be considered in a comprehensive mobile strategy.
  • Enterprise social will also make a major showing in 2012. The recent successful IPO of Jive, and market movement by other enterprise social companies like Yammer and Spigit will continue to drum up interest in these segments, and you can expect that some of the big players will start making acquisitions in this space to compete and gain market share. As companies strive to help employees collaborate better internally offerings in this space will improve and start to gain significant traction.

 

Continue Reading

The Door Closes on Mobile Flash, Opening Greater Opportunity for HTML5

by Dan Zeck on November 17, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

You know the saying, when one door closes, another one opens?  In this case, the door for HTML5 was just kicked open a little wider.  Last week Adobe announced it would be abandoning mobile Flash, a move that the late-Steve Jobs would certainly endorse.  This also signals a trend we’ve been following and advocating for a while – HTML5 is making great headway over the competition.  And in my opinion, HTML5 is making great progress.  HTML5 is getting richer and richer, and as mobile web standards evolve and the UI for mobile web apps gets better, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between web-based HTML5 apps and native apps.  On top of that, it’s less expensive to build a mobile HTML5 app instead of several native apps, and the web development model saves time for developers who don’t need to write in several languages.  There is also more to come with the future of mobile web apps, including inter-app messaging, better UI animations and background script processing provided by web workers.

Further, HTML 5 video (webM or H.264) will provide a better than sufficient mobile user experience  and as hardware and devices continuing to be ship with faster CPUs and  high performance memory, the experience will improve even more.

 

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: Nokia and Microsoft a Tale of Two Ecosystems

by Dan Zeck on October 26, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

Users have their heads in the clouds.

When Nokia announced they were signing up with Microsoft in February 2011, the mobile world gasped. Could it be that the world’s number one handset manufacturer was signing on with Microsoft and dumping Symbian and the fresh air that was Moblin + Maemo > MeeGo? It happened. Wow!

The engineering teams inside Nokia no doubt went through some serious soul-searching trying to find a way to make the Microsoft OS “fit” into their development culture let alone their emerging devices and ecosystem, which was not a simple undertaking. They announced product today and ecosystem updates – good stuff!

The question is: will it be good enough? The world has moved on and a few months is a long time in this fast-paced market. Can Nokia regain lost market share with previous users? What about new users? Will they come? Why will this be so difficult? Apple has great devices with more to come, a killer feature set in iOS 5, an amazing marketing machine and the leading mobile media ecosystem. Android is making big strides and has locked-in the number two position with a strong ecosystem and many hardware suppliers. The proverbial user-expectation “bar” is set high.

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: Phone Call – iPhone 4S or 4G for AT&T?

by Dan Zeck on October 13, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

Heard on the net recently: AT&T might label the iPhone 4S as a 4G phone? Really? The purists cringe.

I find this amusing in a technology vs. marketing sort of way. AT&T is competing hard with Verizon on 4G coverage. Verizon is winning in terms of deployments and AT&T’s Mobility Leadership admitted it. AT&T claims to have faster speeds in 4G tests vs. Verizon; this is very regionalized and subject to many network conditions – channel bandwidth, encoding schemes and antenna usage.

The question is what does 4G actually mean and when did 3G end and 4G begin? It’s all a little gray… and was made worse when the ITU reversed a decision in December 2010 and stated that HSPA+ was a 4G technology even though it preceded LTE by years.

The iPhone 4S does have an HSPA+ enabled radio on the AT&T network. HSPA+ was defined in the 3GPP Rev 7 spec in the 2006-2007 timeframe. LTE was defined in the 3GPP Rev 8 spec in the 2008-2009 time frame. Many believed that the Rev 8 spec was where the 3G and 4G boundary was. That is, until the ITU changed its mind.

Some in the technical community suspect that the iPhone 4S lacks a few current technical enhancements to make it real 4G (e.g. 64QAM encoding in both the uplink and downlink). We will soon find out as the phones are shipping now and no doubt detailed test results will appear on the net.

The bottom line: this is way too complex for consumers to understand.

As for coverage maps, see for yourself:

AT&T HSPA + map
Verizon LTE map

This is one reason why AT&T is pursuing T-Mobile – to expand their HSPA+ network.

Today’s carrier networks are evolving and the features required for the highest throughput are not available everywhere creating a situation where marketing hype will thrive – let the carrier 4G battles continue.

A 4G label on the iPhone 4S is a stretch in that it’s not real 4G based on what networking purists believe. However, given the ITU’s reversed decision in Dec 2010, it is sort of true…and clearly gray.

———————–

Geek Speak:

AT&T 5MHz/channel HSPA+ and Verizon’s 10MHz/channel LTE can be roughly equivalent throughput-wise IF (the proverbial big “IF”) favorable radio conditions exist and IF AT&T uses certain networking techniques (e.g. channel doubling, 64QAM and 2×2 MIMO). One wonders what 64QAM and 2x MIMO are. 64QAM = 64-bit quadrature amplitude modulation – basically how analog and digital signals are converted to symbols for transmission. MIMO is Multiple input, multiple output. Contrasted with MISO – multiple input single output, not the soup! and SIMO – single input multiple output. 2×2 MIMO is 2 transmitting antennas and 2 receiving antennas effectively doubling the throughput on a point-to-point link. You may recall Apple talking about using two antennas in the iPhone 4S. Is this MIMO on the device side? We will soon find out.

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: Steve Jobs. Amen

by Dan Zeck on October 6, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011, as seen on Google’s home page this morning. You click the link and you then see a black and white photo of Steve on the Apple home page. His biography, yet to be released, is the No.1 selling book on Amazon now. Memorials are popping up everywhere – Apple stores, college campuses, parks, city intersections. It’s amazing. I saw a replay of a speech he gave in 2005 at Stanford’s commencement, where he talked about death and how perfect it was.

He meant a lot to a wide variety of people, and built disruptive tech products that people loved to use. He was passionate, smart, talented, and had incredible vision. He fueled an incredible marketing machine to drive Apple products to the forefront of the personal computer, music and mobile device markets.

For me, my first paid programming job was on an Apple II computer. Thirty-something years later, we now have multiple Macs in our homes, iPhones, iPods, iTunes, Apple TV units. We’ve enjoyed these creative, innovative products along with their usability and the Apple content ecosystem for immeasurable hours. Apple products made other products better, yet always seem to develop an edge. That same thing just happened with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S.

He was inspirational to me and to many others. One of my favorite Steve Jobs’ quotes:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
– Stanford University commencement address, June 2005.

Amen.

Read my August 25 post about Steve Jobs’ retirement, Once in a Lifetime – Steve Jobs, and the comments from Mobile Masters bloggers.

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: iPhone 5 More Than a Faster 4

by Dan Zeck on October 5, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

Courtesy of Apple

OK, so there’s no iPhone “5″ today. However, there are many new features in iOS 5, and the new iPhone 4S hardware has many appealing updates that could arguably be called a fifth-generation iPhone. What’s in a name? It might as well be called an iPhone 5 – there’s that much difference in my view.

Here’s some of the major improvements:

* New 2x faster A5 dual-core processor with 7x faster graphics
* Split antenna for transmit/receive
* Faster downloads
* World phone – GSM and CDMA built in
* 8MP camera with 5 element lens
* 1080p video with stabilization
* 64GB version
* Improved battery life

There are literally 200+ features in iOS 5 – see here for details.

Five iOS 5 features that caught my attention today:

*Siri – full voice control app integration
*iMessage – IM with iOS users on any iOS device
*iCloud integration – sync photos, docs, music across devices, even backup your device
*Friend mapping – find your friends that have opt in and your kids and even your dog
*iTunes match – obtain Apple-format music you already had in other formats

The bar has been raised. Android has some work to do! Other OSs have even more to do.

Continue Reading

Mobile Mastery: Viva HTML5

by Dan Zeck on October 4, 2011 in Mobile Mastery with No comments

Adobe is making some moves. Two acquisitions were announced recently – PhoneGap and Typekit. It’s about the users, differentiation on top of standards, cloud and relevance.

PhoneGap is an open-source, Web-app framework and packaging/publishing solution, and possibly soon an Apache OSF submission.

Typekit is a typography company with some big-name customers among its claimed 250,000 (The New York Times). They offer a subscription service for system-independent fonts that Web app and site creators can leverage via JavaScript.

Just a few years ago, the Flash versus HTML5 wars waged. If you remember this, you remember the outcome – essentially the winner was HTML5, not Flash. The outcome is the result of Google, MSFT, Adobe themselves, and most everyone else going to HTML5. Now we have Adobe making some moves to add more standards-relevance to its tools and embracing recently released CSS properties and HTML5. How quickly things change in our dynamic mobile market. Air? Flex? Are they enough? We have our answer.

This set of acquisitions adds more momentum to the tool development for creating differentiated HTML5/JavaScript/CSS Web apps with great UI and UX for B2C and B2E customers. Adobe also has a cloud offering – Creative Cloud – to augment their products and foster a community of designers. I see both of these acquisitions fitting into this strategy to extend Creative Cloud. They needed a packaging and cloud publishing mechanism – PhoneGap provides that. The recently approved CSS2 property for font-family definitions of preferred fonts is what Typekit specialized in – remotely hosted fonts that are not tied to the host system’s OS or tool. Another toolset extension. Another edge for Adobe – they’ve been in the font business…forever.

Adobe needs to turn this ship around. With abundant cash in the bank, perhaps a content management acquisition is not far away?

Continue Reading
← Older Entries