≈ Relations

Looks like we don’t have to wait too long for android based e-reading devices. archos just announced  that they intend to build the Archos Internet Media Tablet series, based on Android. Looks like  Archos is going to build them, Heise reports. Availabilty Q3 of this year.

So i’m attending TOC and was simultaneously  following the Kindle 2 launch (via liveblogs). My impression: Publishers are really exploring all opportunities to publish their content.

To my surprise e.g. Leslie Hulse (Vice President, Digital Business Development at HarperCollins Publishers) stated that Piracy and hence DRM is no big concern. They are monitoring the torrent sites, but see it largely as marketing. She also hinted a couple of times that Apple is moving in the eBook area. At the minimum this could mean that they provide some better means to filter  the Book section of the app store. But maybe this means more. (fingers crossed).

Cynthia Cleto (Global Manager for eBooks at Springer Science+Business Media) told the audience that they have given 30000 books to Google for the Google Book Scan and that they are seeing 30% of the traffic to their sites coming from Google.

I already tweeted that the Kindle 2 is still EV-DO only, so no Kindles outside the US  soon. In addition the hints that Amazon eBooks are coming to phones (including iPhones) soon are mounting.

All this leaves quite some opportunity for a decent eReading device in Europe. May be one based on a phone OS.  To see the potential of a GSM/Wifi-based device one only has to compare the sales figures of the original iPhone  being sold only in the US vs. the sales figures of the iPhone 3G.

So all in all i think the market is getting ripe enough to make it interesting enough for a move by Apple.  Put up a Books and Magazines Section in iTunes (parallel to Music and Apps, not as a section within Apps), and introduce a bigger iPhone OS based reading device. Use EPUB as the base format and include a Reader with all iPhones etc.

Either Apple moves within the next 6 -9 months or some Android based devices will be the first to do so. All in all i don’t think that Amazon wants to lock their eBooks to their devices. Primarily they want to sell books, the kindle is an instrument to develop the eBook market.

Yesterday PlasticLogic demo’ed their forthcoming PlasticLogic reader at DEMOfall08. It is a very impressive device:

• 8,5×11 inch, very thin, under a pound.
• Displays all kinds of documents.
• Switching screens still takes a lot of time
• A color version of the screen is expected in 3- 5 years time.
• Nothing about the price point nor the connectivity.

But have a look for yourself:

More coverage over here and here.

But stillI think that LCD based ereaders will take the majority of the market. Because:

• They have colour tday
• They can display video
• The screens are much cheaper to manufacture.

Hence i’m hoping that either a forthcoming Apple’s netbook with multitouch and/or a bigger iTouch based device (with a 7 -9” screen) will debut this year (maybe even today). Apple has everything it needs to build an axtraordinary ereading device from hardware to software to distribution channel. Given the success of netbooks and the Kindle, it would be stupid for Apple not to do one of these devices. But one never knows.

If they don’t, i’m pretty sure that somebody eles will jump in using existing netbook designs and /or Google Android.

Update: Unfortunately no iReader yesterday, maybe in an upcoming MacBook Event. But the official DEMO08 is available now.  Since there is speculation about the flexibility of the device.

My guess : While the display itself is flexible, the device isn’t, because of the processor and other electronics.

So google finally announced a part of it’s mobile plans: A software platform called Android, built by the Open Handset Alliance.

There’s already plenty of commentary from the usual suspects. (See below for my favorite quotes). My thoughts:

• In the 8 years im working in the mobile spaces i have yet to see an Alliance (e.g. OMA) or Forum (e.g. WAP Forum) to succeed. IMHO they where always doomed because operators and handset manufacturers tried to block each other. It needed a small set of predominant players (like Sun and Nokia in the J2ME space) in order to get something useful.With Google being the driving force and predominat player at the OHA (btw. a very nice acronym for german speaking people, like OMA) there is a chance that this is also the case here. But with players like Qualcomm i’m not sure.
• There have also been / are a set of opensource Linux-based handset OS approaches most notably the recently abandoned QT’s Greenphone and OpenMoko. Neither of them is a large success. This, IMHO has two reasons:
  1. No or a very little chance to get access to a phone to put that system on.QT hat to build their own phones in order to get that done. Only a couple of hundred were build. That made them expensive.

     With HTC, one of the if not the biggest OEM manufacturers on board, one can hope that developers can get access to a reflashable Android-based phone easily. Ideally, they just publish a piece of software that reflashes their existing windows-mobile based devices.

  2. Small developer base for nitty gritty low-level developmentThere are only few people that are able (and love) doing the low-level programming needed to bring an OS to a mobile device.

     If in the OHA Google is sponsoring these people this would be a real winner.

• Java is used instead for application development, there is no word on Javascript based development, Given the actual size of the java for mobile development community
  and my experiences with Opera Platform back in 2005 as well as recent reports with the javascript performance on the iPhone this is a reasonable choice for today. But the flood gates will not be opened until everybody is able to “develop” his own mashup by writing some *ML and javascript code.
• There is word that Android is goin to be published under the Apache license, the press release only mentions: ” … will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products”.I’m wondering how this interplays with Linux GPL.

  I also wonder how this custom built VM looks like. Having a good VM (and i presume that tihis VM is good) under the Apache license sounds interesting.

  And since Google is able to pay the bill for the TCKs, they might even calling it Java, not having the problems bug-labs are reporting.

• Looking at the alliance membersI think the most interesting partners are: ChinaMobile and the japanese carriers, Intel and Sirf, HTC and Samsung on the handset side and Google and Nuance on the software side.

  IMHO, the most prominent member missing from the Alliance is Sun. I guess this has to do with the license.

  You couldn’t expect any other company that hat stakes in a mobile OS to join the alliance at this stage. This includes: Nokia, SonyEricsson, Microsoft and Apple.

  From these, i guess Microsoft has the most to loose, because they are in the handset manufacturing business, and the handset manufacturers love to get rid of these licensing fees (especially in the low and middle tier handsets). Thats the reason why Motorola, Palm and all the others have tried building Linux-based mobile OS.

• The platform looks interesting for other kinds of devices too: I think that Chumby Industries and Bug-Labs will definitely have a look at it for usingit on their Chumbys and Bugs.
• Maybe with Android, there is finally a place where the free roaming software agents written in Dylan i loved to read about in GeneralMagics early days can prosper. Really, i’m serious. OK, maybe not Dylan but aome other prototyp base ddynamic language.

Quotes

NYT:

“Today the Internet experience on hand-held devices is not optimized,” said Peter Chou, chief executive of HTC, one of the largest makers of smartphones. “The whole idea is to optimize the Internet experience.” Mr. Chou, whose company makes several phones based on Microsoft’s software, which are largely aimed at business users, said the phones based on Google’s technology would probably be marketed primarily to consumers.

A brief demonstration of the Google software recently suggests that phones made using the technology will have features and design similar to the Apple iPhone. Mr. Rubin demonstrated a hand-held touch-screen device that gave an immersive view of Google Earth, the company’s three-dimensional visualization software.

O’Reilly Radar:

All in all, very interesting. It’s remarkable to see Apple once again in the position of selling a whole-stack platform (software and hardware, at least — network sold separately), competing with a broad coalition of commodity hardware companies using a common software platform. I think they’ll repeat history — they are already repeating history — by not doing whatever they can to bring developers to their platform. I wonder if Google will teach them what they should have already learned from Microsoft.

Techcrunch:

No ad-supported phones, says Andy Rubin in Q&A: “Part of this Android solution is a very robust HTML Web browser, so there is really no difference between browsing on a phone [and on a PC]. Contrary to speculation, you won’t see a completely ad-driven phone on this platform for some time.” But he confirms that this plays into Google’s overall advertising strategy by bringing a more fully functioning Web browser to the handset. Notes that Android will require at minimum the equivalent of a 200 MHz ARM 9 processor. The platform is open source, and that will be its competitive advantage over other mobile platforms.

MokoNews:

Availability: Rubin: “All this software will be available in about one week to developers in an SDK“. Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) CEO Rene Obermann said T-Mobile would be offering wireless internet and Web 2.0 devices “in the US and in Europe in the course of 2008″, creating a “better-than-internet experience”, while HTC CEO Peter Chou said its first devices would come “in the second half of 2008 with others to follow”.

FSJ:

The Journal kind of nails the problem with this story. Money quote: Tech consortia for decades have been notorious for failing to live up to their promise. Google Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin acknowledged the troubled history of previous consortia, but said that Android was different because “we’re actually releasing in one week this software.”

But the issue isn’t about when the software ships. Consortia don’t work because nobody can ever agree on anything and everyone always wants to push the group in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage everyone else.

Mobile Opportunity:

Impact on Windows Mobile: Ugliness. The handset companies endorsing Android are also Microsoft’s most prominent mobile licensees. I doubt any of them are planning to completely abandon Microsoft (they don’t want to be captive to any single OS vendor), but any effort they put into Android is effort that doesn’t go into Windows Mobile. So this is ominous.

The whole mobile thing just hasn’t worked out the way Microsoft planned. First it couldn’t get the big handset brands to license its software, so it focused on signing phone clone vendors in Asia, thinking it could use them to pull down the big guys. But Nokia and the other big brands used their volume and manufacturing skill to beat the daylights out of the small cloners.

Now Google is coming after the market with an OS that’s completely free, and may even be subsidized. This will put huge financial pressure on not just Windows Mobile, but all of Windows CE. Even if Microsoft can hold share, its prospects of ever making good money in the sub-PC space look increasingly remote.