This is an interesting time for tablet computing fans, with the HP Slate (link) being announced today and a revised B&N Nook (link) supposedly being announced next week. Meanwhile, I'm still coming to the terms with the pricing Samsung announced this week for its upcoming Galaxy Tab.
I had a very strong negative reaction to the price, but I wanted to wait a couple of days to see how I'd feel after I had time to think about it. So now I've thought about it, and here's my reaction:
$600 for a seven-inch tablet?? Are you freaking kidding me? A whole netbook costs about $400. Why does it cost $200 extra just to remove the keyboard?
I don't understand Samsung's strategy. A $400 device is maybe an impulse buy for a rich person at Christmas. A $600 device is a carefully considered investment for most people, especially when all the most enthusiastic tablet buyers have already been siphoned off by Apple.
I got a chance to play with a Galaxy Tab at CTIA. The interface is very cool, but I kept asking myself what I'd actually use it for. What problems does it solve that you can't solve with a smartphone? Samsung appears to assume that Apple has created a market for generic tablets to do, you know, tablet stuff. But has it? Or has it created a market for iPads that seamlessly handle lots of content and unique applications?
And although the design of the Galaxy Tab looks nice, I think the ergonomics of it are questionable. Despite what Samsung's publicity photos show, the device is a bit too wide to hold comfortably even in my dinnerplate-sized hand. To hold it securely, I needed to put my thumb on the front of it. But the margins around the screen are so narrow, and the back case is so slippery, that I felt like I was going to drop it when I put my thumb alongside the screen. The weight of the device also put uncomfortable pressure on my thumb (it's a lever effect). My grip felt more secure and comfortable if I put my thumb on the screen, but then I would accidentally press icons and interfere with the interface.
Although Samsung likes to talk about itself as a leader, in practice it's usually a fast follower -- give it a device to copy and it'll turn out its version faster than just about anyone else on the planet. If the device sells, great. If it doesn't, Samsung just moves on to the next device. My guess is that's what it'll do with the Galaxy Tab.
I'm hoping for better from other new products, although I'm not encouraged by what I'm hearing about the HP device (for one thing, Friday is a terrible day to announce a product because your news coverage gets cut off by the weekend). But I'd like to get my hands on that one before I make up my mind about it.
(Note: This post was modified on 10/22 to correct the announcement date for the HP Slate.)
vendredi 22 octobre 2010
jeudi 21 octobre 2010
SFR propose à ses clients le nouveau Palm Pre 2 en avant-première
SFR commercialisera le 22 octobre en avant-première sur la boutique en ligne SFR (www.sfr.fr/boutiqueenligne
) et sur la boutique en ligne SFR Business Team le nouveau Palm Pre 2. Il sera également disponible dans tous les espaces SFR à partir du 3 novembre.Le Palm Pre 2 de HP, est le premier webphone à fonctionner sur HP webOS 2.0, la plus importante mise à jour du système d'exploitation depuis son lancement en 2009. Les clients SFR pourront retrouver les applications SFR comme SFR Wifi (plus de 3 millions de hotspots Wifi), SFR TV et SFR Mon compte.
Le Palm Pre 2 sera disponible pour les clients grand public et professionnels à partir de 1 € avec un forfait Illimythics 5 Webphone ou Illimythics 5 Webphone Pro (soit 99 € moins 98 € d'offre de remboursement dans le cadre de l'offre Multi-Pack de SFR). Il sera également proposé à partir de 129 € HT aux clients entreprises de SFR Business Team, sous réserve de souscription à une option Business Mail & Surf ou un plan tarifaire incluant l'option.
Premier opérateur à avoir lancé les forfaits illimités, promoteur de l’Internet en mobilité avec les mini PC et les clés 3G+, alliant le meilleur du fixe et du mobile avec un réseau puissant et dimensionné en conséquence, SFR poursuit sa stratégie d’ouverture avec le maximum de partenaires pour proposer le meilleur des webphones du marché avec des forfaits adaptés.
mardi 19 octobre 2010
Nokia lance un smartphone tactile 3G économique, doté d’une connexion Wi-Fi : le Nokia C5-03
Nokia a annoncé aujourd’hui le nouveau Nokia C5-03, un élégant smartphone tactile 3G+ doté d’une connexion Wi-Fi et du service gratuit de navigation avec guidage vocal Ovi Cartes.
Le nouveau Nokia C5-03 offre les avantages d’une connexion Wi-Fi et d’une connectivité cellulaire haut débit, à un prix accessible à des centaines de millions d’utilisateurs dans le monde.
Chaque jour 200 000 personnes s’inscrivent aux services Ovi, disponibles dans 190 pays et peuvent utiliser Ovi Musique, Ovi Messaging, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Cartes… Dans l’Ovi Store, de nombreuses applications sont disponibles et compatibles avec ce nouveau smartphone. Proposé dans plusieurs coloris dynamiques, l’élégant smartphone entièrement tactile Nokia C5-03 inclut le service gratuit Ovi Cartes et une fonction navigation avec guidage vocal dans environ 80 pays. La dernière version d’Ovi Cartes (disponible initialement sur Nokia Beta Labs) inclut de nouvelles informations sur les transports publics et des fonctions permettant aux utilisateurs d’accéder à des services de « géolocalisation sociale » populaires comme Facebook et Twitter.
« Le nouveau smartphone Nokia C5-03 offre tous les avantages des services Ovi de navigation, de messagerie électronique et de musique et bien plus encore à un prix abordable, une offre que toutes les tranches d’âge et de population apprécieront », a déclaré Jo Harlow, responsable de la division smartphones de Nokia. « C’est un superbe téléphone tactile, d’un excellent rapport qualité/prix pour les adolescents qui aiment la musique et les réseaux sociaux. »
Le smartphone sous Symbian inclut un écran d’accueil personnalisable permettant d’accéder rapidement à ses contacts, ses e-mails et à la multitude d’applications d’Ovi Store. Des nouvelles icones et le click unique sont implémentés dans cette nouvelle version de l’OS. Les propriétaires du Nokia C5-03 peuvent aisément configurer Ovi Mail, la messagerie gratuite fournie par Nokia, et de nombreux autres comptes de messagerie électronique populaires dont Yahoo!® Mail et Windows Live™ Hotmail.
Le Nokia C5-03 devrait être commercialisé au cours du quatrième trimestre 2010 sur le Nokia Store
. Son prix de vente au détail est estimé à 219 € TTC sur le marché français (hors subvention). À propos de Nokia
Pionnier sur le marché de la mobilité et premier fabricant mondial de terminaux mobiles, Nokia poursuit aujourd'hui une nouvelle mission : allier la technologie mobile la plus avancée à des services personnalisés afin d'aider les utilisateurs à rester connectés avec tout ce qu'ils ont de plus cher. Nous proposons également des solutions de cartographie numériques et de navigation complètes via NAVTEQ, ainsi que des équipements, des solutions et des services pour les réseaux de télécommunications via Nokia Siemens Networks.
Contacts Presse :
NOKIA
Xavier des Horts
Tel : + 33 1 53 56 99 99
Nokiafrance.presse@nokia.com
lundi 18 octobre 2010
Bouygues Telecom lance le nouveau smartphone BlackBerry Torch en France
Un écran tactile complet associé à un clavier simple d’emploi
Le premier smartphone équipé de BlackBerry 6 et de son puissant navigateur WebKit
Bouygues Telecom lance le nouveau smartphone BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 en France. Conçu pour les fans de réseaux sociaux et truffé d’outils appréciés par les professionnels, il est élégant et bénéficie de fonctionnalités haut de gamme. C’est le premier smartphone au monde à associer un clavier BlackBerry® à l’expérience d’un écran tactile. C’est également le premier à être équipé du nouveau système d’exploitation BlackBerry® 6.
Les clients grand public de Bouygues Telecom bénéficient d’un accès simplifié aux services exclusifs de l’opérateur comme « Mon Espace Appli » ou la « TV Bouygues Telecom », grâce à des liens pré-embarqués sur le bureau du BlackBerry Torch.
Les clients professionnels de Bouygues Telecom profiteront quant à eux de l’accès gratuit, et en avant-première, de l’application Eurosport pour BlackBerry.
Le nouveau BlackBerry Torch intègre les atouts majeurs des smartphones BlackBerry en associant un grand écran tactile capacitif, un trackpad optique et un clavier AZERTY complet. Compatible avec les réseaux 3G à haut débit (UMTS/HSDPA) du monde entier et doté de la toute dernière génération du Wi-Fi® (b/g/n), il comprend aussi un GPS intégré pour les applications localisées et le geo-tagging. Son appareil photo de 5 Mp prend des photos exceptionnelles avec autofocus continu, stabilisation d'image, modes scène et zoom ; il supporte également l’enregistrement vidéo.
Le BlackBerry Torch est le premier smartphone lancé avec BlackBerry 6. Ce nouveau système d'exploitation pour les smartphones BlackBerry dispose d'une interface repensée et d’un navigateur WebKit puissant et inédit. Son rendu rapide des pages web HTML (ainsi que des courriers électroniques HTML) est le gage d’un confort de navigation exceptionnel. Le navigateur dispose d’onglets pour accéder à plusieurs sites simultanément, du zoom par pincement de doigts et de l’auto-ajustement du texte permettant de placer du texte intelligemment dans une colonne tout en conservant le placement des éléments clés de la page.
BlackBerry 6 dispose de capacités de messagerie élargies simplifiant la gestion des réseaux sociaux et des flux RSS (Social Feeds) grâce à leurs fonctions intuitives, et assure un accès intégré à BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger), Facebook®, Twitter™ et MySpace™ ainsi qu’aux différentes applications de messagerie instantanée disponibles sur le smartphone BlackBerry Torch 9800. Elle apporte une expérience multimédia renforcée qui rivalise avec les meilleures de son secteur, et comprend une application dédiée à YouTube ainsi qu’une application Podcasts. Une fonction de recherche universelle permet de rechercher des contenus sur le smartphone mais aussi sur Internet, ou de découvrir des applications sur BlackBerry App World™ ; celui-ci est inclus et accepte désormais les paiements par carte de crédit.
Le smartphone BlackBerry Torch sera disponible dès le 25 octobre chez Bouygues Telecom à partir de 249 € TTC pour les clients grand public et à partir de 219 € HT pour les clients Entreprises en complément d’Internet et Mails illimités plus. Pour tout renseignement supplémentaire, merci de visiter http://www.laboutique.bouyguestelecom.fr/telephones-mobiles/blackberry-15/blackberry-torch-9800-E1001701.html ou www.blackberry.com/torch.
BOUYGUES TELECOM, SERVICES DE TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS MOBILE, FIXE, TV ET INTERNET
Créée en 1994, Bouygues Telecom compte 10 514 000 clients Mobile, 525 000 clients Fixe et 9 000 collaborateurs. Son ambition est de "devenir la marque préférée de service de communication Mobile, Fixe, TV et Internet" et de libérer les usages en privilégiant l’accueil, le conseil, le service et l’accompagnement de ses clients.
Créatrice du forfait Mobile en 1996, Bouygues Telecom lance les premières offres illimitées avec Millennium en 1999 et neo en 2006.
En 2008, l’entreprise acquiert son propre réseau Fixe et devient fournisseur d’accès Internet (FAI) avec la Bbox.
2009 est marquée par l’invention d’ideo les Tout-en-un la première offre quadruple play du marché (téléphonie Mobile, Fixe, TV et Internet).
En 2010, Bouygues Telecom devient, grâce à ideo 24/24 le premier opérateur à proposer une offre quadruple play avec appels mobiles illimités 24h/24. L’année verra aussi le lancement d’une offre Très Haut Débit Fixe.
Son réseau Mobile couvre près de 99% de la population. L’Internet mobile est accessible grâce au réseau 3G+ qui couvre lui plus de 82% de la population.
Seul opérateur à détenir, pour l’ensemble de ses activités Grand Public (Mobile et Fixe), la certification « NF Service Centre de Relation Client » délivrée par AFAQ AFNOR Certification, l’entreprise a aussi été élue n°1 de la relation client en téléphonie mobile* pour la quatrième année consécutive. Bouygues Telecom offre une présence de qualité auprès de ses clients grâce à ses conseillers de clientèle, son réseau de distribution de 610 magasins Club Bouygues Telecom et le site Internet disponible 7j/7 et 24h/24.
* Podium de la Relation Clients BearingPoint-TNS Sofres (avril 2010)
Contacts presse :
Alexandre André – 01 39 26 62 42 – aandre@bouyguestelecom.fr
Clémentine Sillam – 01 41 09 54 17 – csillam@bouyguestelecom.fr
dimanche 17 octobre 2010
What's really wrong with BlackBerry (and what to do about it)
Just a couple of weeks after Research in Motion turned in a good earnings report, the death watch over the company has resumed, with Business Week magazine running a long article that mocks co-CEO Jim Balsillie (even picking on his duck-emblazoned tie) and saying that RIM needs to learn how to market as well as Apple (link).
Business Week quoted Balsillie at a press briefing:
OK, he deserves to be mocked for that. But Business Week goes on to conclude that his quote captures the whole dilemma of the company -- technical sophistication coupled with incoherent marketing.
Business Week has joined a large and distinguished group of experts taking jabs at RIM. Morgan Stanley recently downgraded RIM's stock, saying it's going to lose share faster than previously expected (link). Gartner reported that Android had passed BlackBerry to become the most popular smartphone OS in the US (link). And CNET said RIM is about to be kicked out of the enterprise market (link).
I've been getting very tired of the criticisms of RIM, because most of them seem superficial and some are petty. Yes, Android is doing well, but neither RIM nor Apple is giving away its operating system, so it was close to inevitable that Android would eventually get the unit lead. It's the default choice for most smartphone companies, so of course it moves a lot of units in aggregate. But there is room in the market for several mobile platforms to succeed. The companies Android is hurting most are Microsoft, Access, and others that were hoping to sell mobile operating systems.
Yes, RIM's not good at sexy marketing, but it has always been that way. People have been predicting its imminent doom for as long as I can remember (do you recall when Microsoft Exchange was supposed to destroy it?). My guess is that the folks at RIM are shaking their heads at all of the bad press and assuming it will once again blow over in a quarter or two.
I think that would be a serious mistake. In my opinion, RIM is indeed in danger, probably a lot more danger than its executives realize. But I don't agree on the reasons most people are giving for why RIM is in trouble, and I think most of the solutions that are being proposed would make the situation worse, not better.
The fault lies not in our ties, but in our selves. In my opinion, RIM's real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it'll drift into in a situation where it can't afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It's very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.
There's a lesson in RIM's situation for every tech company, so it's worthwhile to spend some time understanding what's happening.
How a computing platform dies
To explain RIM's challenges, I have to give you a little tech industry history. When I worked at Apple, I spent a lot of time studying failed computer platforms. I thought that if we understood the failures, we might be able to prevent the same thing from happening to us.
I looked at everything from videogame companies to the early PC pioneers (companies like Commodore and Atari), and I found an interesting pattern in their financial results. The early symptoms of decline in a computing platform were very subtle, and easy for a business executive to rationalize away. By the time the symptoms became obvious, it was usually too late to do anything about them.
The symptoms to watch closely are small declines in two metrics: the rate of growth of sales, and gross profit per unit sold (gross margins). Here's why:
Every computing platform has a natural pool of customers. Some people need or want the platform, and some people don't. Your product spreads through its pool of customers via the traditional "diffusion" process -- early enthusiasts first, late adopters at the end.
It's relatively easy to get good revenue from the early adopters. They seek out innovations like yours, and are willing to pay top dollar for it. As the market for a computer system matures, the early adopters get used up, and the company starts selling to middle adopters who are more price-sensitive. In response to this, the company cuts prices, which results in a big jump in sales. Total revenue goes up, and usually overall profits as well. Everybody in the company feels good.
Time passes, and that middle portion of the market gets consumed. Eventually demand growth starts to drop, and you make another price cut. Sales go up again, sometimes a lot. With revenue rising, you and your investors talk proudly about the benefits of reaching the "mainstream" market.
At Apple, when we hit this point we called our low-cost products the Macintosh Classic and Macintosh LC. At Palm, it was the M100.
What you don't realize at this point is that you're not "reaching the mainstream," you're actually consuming the late adopters. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to tell when you're selling to the late adopters. They don't wear signs. Companies tend to assume that because the adoption curve is drawn as a smooth-sided bell, your demand will tail off at the end as gradually as it built up in the beginning. But that isn't how it works. At the start, you are slowly building up momentum from a base of nothing. That takes years. But by the time you saturate the market you have built up huge sales momentum. You have a strong brand, you have advertising, you have a big distribution channel. You'll gulp through the late adopters really rapidly. The result is that sales continue to grow until they drop suddenly, like a sprinter running off the edge of a cliff.
The chart below illustrates how the process works:
Until you get close to the end, your revenue keeps rising, enabling you to tell yourself that the business is still in good shape. But eventually you reach the dregs of the market, and sales will flatten out, or maybe even start to drop. You cut prices again, but this time they don't increase demand because there are no latent customers left. All the cuts do is reduce further the revenue you get from selling upgrades to your installed base. The combination of price cuts and declining sales produces a surprisingly rapid drop in revenue and profits. If you want to make a profit (which your investors demand), your only choice is to make massive cuts in expenses. Those cuts usually end up eliminating the risky new product ideas that are your only hope of re-igniting demand.
At Apple I called this the platform "death spiral" because once you get into it, the expense cuts and sales declines reinforce each other. It's almost impossible to reverse the process, unless you're Steve Jobs and you get very lucky.
The best way to survive is to stay away from the cliff edge in the first place. But that means you need to be hyper-attentive to small changes in sales growth and gross margins. Which brings us back to RIM's situation.
Dissecting RIM's financials
At the top level, RIM's financials look utterly fantastic:
RIM Revenue and Profit
Fiscal years. Dollars in millions.
Since fiscal 2003 (when it turned profitable), RIM has grown from $500m revenue to over $15 billion. That's 30X growth in eight years. The BlackBerry subscriber base has grown from 500,000 people to about 50 million. Throughout that period, the company's net income has hovered at between 15% and 22% of revenue.
This is one of the most impressive business success stories of the last decade, and most CEOs in any industry would kill to have that sort of results. Considering how much turmoil there is in the smartphone market, RIM's senior managers must feel extremely proud of their success, and more than a bit bewildered that people keep criticizing them.
And that's exactly my point. Looking at the high-level financials can lull you into a false sense of security if you're managing a computing platform. You have to really dig to find the warning signs. That's especially hard to do in RIM's case because the company has several different sources of revenue: device sales, service revenue, and enterprise server revenue. The overall results they report are mashup of all three revenue streams. To understand what's really happening, you have to tease them apart. Here are some key data points.
First, let's look at the total number of BlackBerry subscribers:
Total BlackBerry Subscribers
RIM's fiscal quarters. Units in millions.
Pretty impressive growth. But remember, we're looking for subtle signs of saturation. Let's look at the number of subscribers added per quarter...
Net New Subscribers Per Quarter
RIM's fiscal quarters. Units in millions.
This is where you get the first little twinge of discomfort. Until a year ago, the rate of growth of BlackBerry subscribers was itself increasing every quarter. In other words, RIM added more new subscribers each quarter than it had added in the previous quarter. But for the last four quarters, RIM's subscriber growth has plateaued at around 4.7 million net new subscribers a quarter. The company's still growing, but it looks like the rate of growth may be flattening. That might imply the beginning of saturation.
Next let's look at net new subscribers as a percent of total BlackBerry units sold.
New Subscribers Added Per Unit Sold
RIM's fiscal quarters.
This one's a little disquieting as well. Five years ago, RIM was getting .7 new subscribers for every BlackBerry sold. In other words, most of its sales were to new users. Today, RIM is getting .37 more subscribers per BlackBerry sold, and that figure is at an all-time low. To put it another way, RIM now has to sell more than two and a half devices to get one more subscriber. Either RIM is selling most of its units to its installed base, or it is having to bring in a lot of new customers to replace those who are leaving for other devices. My guess is it's a mix of both.
If you look closely at that chart, you'll notice a curious bump in the line at Q4 of 2009. The percentage of new subscribers went back up all of a sudden. What did RIM do to produce that growth? A look at device gross margins tells you.
Device Gross Margin Percentage
RIM's fiscal quarters.
[Note: RIM does not report separately the gross margins it gets in the devices business, so I had to estimate this number using the company's hardware revenue and the total cost of goods sold across all of its businesses. Most of RIM's total COGS are hardware expenses, but they also include some server costs associated with providing e-mail service. That means my calculation understates RIM's device margins by a bit. But as the company grows, server costs should go down as a percent of overall costs (because you get better economies of scale). So apparent hardware margins should be going up over time. That makes the fact that they're declining all the more ominous.]
RIM increased new subscriptions by substantially cutting the profit it makes per device. What happened is that the BlackBerry Bold, Storm, and Curve all came to market with increased features, replacing older devices that were much cheaper to build. That should have produced only a one-time hit to margins, though -- they should have gone back up as component costs on the new phones declined. Instead, margins have stayed down ever since. Why? Let's look at the what RIM gets paid for each BlackBerry it sells:
RIM's Revenue Per BlackBerry Device Sold
RIM's fiscal quarters. Hardware revenue per unit sold.
This chart shows the average price the carriers pay to RIM per phone, prior to the discount they put on the phone when you sign up for a contract. The line looks pretty flat, and in fact through the middle of fiscal 2009 RIM's price per unit was very stable. Then in Q3, with the introduction of the new devices, RIM gets a temporary spike in revenue per unit. The new phones are selling at a premium. But that goes away in the next two quarters, and then about a year ago, RIM started cutting prices. Today the company gets about $50 less per unit than it usually did in the past.
When you assemble the big picture, it looks like this: To keep growing, RIM has been forced to reduce margins and prices. Despite the cuts, the rate of growth in subscribers appears to have flattened out. And more and more of the sales mix is going to existing users, or user replacement, rather than new users. RIM starts to look like a company that's working harder and harder just to stay in one place.
The picture gets more ominous when you look at some recent surveys of smartphone user satisfaction. In JD Power's 2010 smartphone satisfaction survey, BlackBerry finished near the bottom, with below average ratings in every category except battery life (link). Just three years earlier, as the iPhone was coming to market, BlackBerry had the highest satisfaction ratings in the industry (link). I don't love JD Power's methodology (for reasons that are too long to explain here), but no way should RIM's rating be declining like that.
The low satisfaction is starting to threaten RIM's future sales. In June of this year, Nielsen released some tidbits from a survey of the future purchasing plans of smartphone users (link):
OS Preferences of People Planning to Replace Their Smartphones
The chart shows US smartphone users who were thinking about buying a new device in Q1 of 2010. More than half of the BlackBerry users considering a new smartphone were leaning toward a different OS.
If I were working at RIM, that chart would scare the crap out of me.
The company is by no means dead, but the symptoms of a stalling platform are definitely there. If you work at RIM and are reading this, here's what I want you to understand: Your company's at risk. Your great financials mask that risk, and give you lots of logical-sounding reasons to avoid making the changes that need to be made. RIM is like a 53-year-old man who has high blood pressure and cholesterol but tells himself that he's OK because he can still run a half-marathon. You are indeed fine, right up until you have the heart attack. Then it's too late.
Here's what you need to do:
How to avoid the cliff
To keep a platform viable, you need to focus on two tasks: Keep the customer base loyal, and add adjacent product categories.
Keeping the base loyal. This is transcendently important to a platform company. As your market matures, more and more of your sales will come from replacement devices sold to the installed base. You'll also depend more and more on a base of developers who add value to your products. If you can keep these people happy, you'll have a steady stream of replacement sales that you can build on. It won't be enough to produce the growth that your investors want, but it'll be a great foundation.
On the other hand, if these customers and developers drift away, there's virtually no way you can grow something else fast enough to offset their loss. The trick here is that the supporter base for a computing platform is like a herd of cattle. They move as a group. When the herd is contented, it tends to stay in one place. But if the herd gets restless, even a small disturbance can cause a stampede in which they all run away at once.
For example, this is the factor that HP failed to consider when it bought Palm. The Pre's small base of users and developers was a classic group of restless cattle. When HP bought the company, the first priority should have been to calm those people by promising a renewed commitment to the Pre and follow-on products. Even if HP didn't see smartphones as its long-term future, it should have focused on keeping the developers and users loyal until it had something else for them to buy and develop for. Instead, HP CEO Mark Hurd more or less killed the product line a day after the purchase (link):
Ooookay, so if you're a Pre customer, do you buy again? Do you tell your friends to buy? If you're a WebOS developer, do you keep writing code while you wait for HP to decide what it'll do with that "IP" it bought?
The answer is, you run for the exit as fast as you can. HP bought a company for a billion dollars and then immediately trashed it.
Back to RIM. Your cattle are restless. If you don't believe me, go look at that Nielsen chart again. Your goal is to keep the cattle content, by feeding them a steady diet of delightful new products that deepen their commitment to the platform. RIM's record in this area is very mixed. There have been a lot of new BlackBerry products announced in the last few years, but most of them seem to be focused on copying things Apple has done rather than finding new ways to delight BlackBerry customers.
Some of the Apple imitation is probably necessary. Apple has turned a lot of features into checkoff items that are now expected from any smartphone -- a better browser, for example. If RIM didn't eventually add those features, the herd would at some point stampede away for sure.
But what I haven't seen from RIM is a vision for deepening the special features that made people bond with BlackBerry in the first place. The personal communication functionality of BlackBerry is about the same now as it was five years ago. Why in God's name was Apple the first North American smartphone company to really push video calling? As the communication beast, RIM should have led that years ago.
Instead, the latest BlackBerry devices feel a bit like an overbuilt ice cream sundae -- the original BlackBerry functionality is at the base more or less unchanged, and a bunch of gooey media toppings have been dumped on top of it. I see sprinkles, fudge, marshmallow, pineapple, whipped cream, a cherry, and a few gummy bears, but no significant improvement to the old, dried-out ice cream at the bottom of the bowl.
Inevitably, RIM can't implement those new media toppings as cleanly and elegantly as Apple did, because its platform wasn't designed for that. So what you get is a BlackBerry that endorses Apple's design direction but fails to fully deliver on it. Maybe that helps keep some BlackBerry users from leaving instantly, but it doesn't give them a positive reason to stay. Rather than playing to win, RIM is playing not to lose, and doing it poorly.
This is especially scary because RIM depends much more than Apple on mobile operators to help drive demand for its products (if you're in the US, ask yourself how many Verizon and AT&T ads you have seen for BlackBerry, versus how many ads you've seen from RIM itself). The operators follow customer interest, they don't create it. If they get the sense that BlackBerry users want to switch, they will be only too happy to facilitate that switch -- especially since they don't have to share service revenue with Android vendors the way they do with RIM.
What RIM should do. RIM need a product vision identifying a few new differentiators for BlackBerry that will resonate well with the busy knowledge workers who are at the core of its installed base. There should be no more than three of these features (because customers can't remember more than three), and they should not be copies of things that Apple is already implementing. RIM should focus on building them deeply into the product, so they are very well integrated with the rest of the device. My nominees are meeting planning, conferencing, and live document sharing.
Other smartphone companies will eventually copy these features, so RIM needs to create a pipeline of development in which it'll bring out another 2-3 new differentiators every 24 months.
Adding adjacent categories. Settling down the installed base is not enough. It's an enormous task, but all it'll do is stabilize the business. It won't produce the growth that investors expect. To get that, RIM needs to eventually add new types of product that expand its market.
Apple is a master at this process. When Steve Jobs came back, Apple had only the Macintosh. It refreshed that product line, securing the customer base. Then it added the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Each of them targeted Apple's core market of creative, entertainment-loving people, and each of them leveraged Apple's existing software and hardware. This overlap made the new products relatively inexpensive to develop and market -- they could be sold to the same sorts of people, through the same channels, and they reused a lot of technology. Each new product line also tended to drag a few more customers back to the earlier products, so they reinforced each other.
These new products enabled Apple to grow its revenue rapidly without putting pressure on the Macintosh to carry the whole load. Apple could invest enough in the Mac to keep it a stable and very profitable business, while the new products produced the topline growth.
To understand how wickedly efficient Apple's business model is, take a glance at the R&D budgets of RIM and Apple.
Quarterly R&D Spending of Apple and RIM
R&D spending in most recent four quarters. Dollars in millions.
Although Apple has about three times the revenue, RIM's R&D spending is about two-thirds of Apple's. With just a third more money, Apple produces the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, App Store, custom microprocessors, and a suite of mobile services. RIM is producing a bunch of minute variations on a family of phones, an e-mail server, a new OS, and a suite of mobile services that also has to be individually interfaced to each operator. RIM puts much of its effort into infrastructure that has little or no impact on features that users can see and value.
Now RIM wants to add more product lines. Its first effort will be the PlayBook tablet in 2011. This will be a decisive test of RIM's ability to grow in the future, and so far the signs are worrisome. Unlike Apple's first announcement of the iPhone, the PlayBook announcement didn't show much functionality that looked fundamentally new compared to the competition (in fact, the interface looked to me a lot like a warmed-over version of Palm's WebOS). The pitch was almost all about enabling technology rather than user benefits. When you find yourself talking up the dual-core processor and symmetric multiprocessing in a consumer product, it's a sign of a serious lack of differentiation.
I'd be more hopeful about the prospects for the PlayBook if RIM had done a better job of evolving its BlackBerry products recently. Unfortunately, RIM's latest innovation flagship is the BlackBerry Torch, an overproduced heap of half-integrated features that ranks as one of the most disappointing mobile devices I've seen from a major manufacturer in years.
Yeah, I know there are some people who like the Torch. But there were also people who thought MS-DOS was easy to use.
Burned by the Torch. I recently bought a BlackBerry Torch for my wife, who needed a smartphone to manage work e-mail. We both wanted her to have something simple to use, with a keyboard that made her comfortable. She liked the Torch in the store, so we bought it for her.
The device was a usage nightmare. Even after years of working with touch screen technology, RIM hasn't managed to evolve its user interface to the point where the touch pad and the touch screen work together smoothly. Some functions are easier to perform on touch screen, and others are easier on touch pad, and so the whole interface feels muddled. But by far the more disappointing problem was that the huge number of new applications just added to the phone do not work together properly. I can't even list all of the problems we both had figuring out how to use them, but one vivid example should suffice. My wife entered a lot of contacts directly into the device's contacts app, but didn't bother to include the area code in the phone numbers. The BlackBerry didn't warn her about this.
Then she went to the messaging app and tried to send a text message to our daughter. When she tried to send the message, the app reported that it could not send to a contact without an area code. So she went back to the contacts app and added area codes.
Then she went back to the messaging app and again tried to send a text message. The messaging app reported once again that it could not send a message without an area code. It had apparently made a copy of the data from the contacts app when it was first used, and would not update the copy. So my wife then edited the contact information from within the contacts app (it lets you do that). But when she tried to save the updated contact, the phone responded that it could not accept external changes to the contacts, and deleted the change.
Next, she tried to send a message by typing our daughter's phone number, including area code, directly into the To: portion of a new message. When she tried to send that message, the messaging application did a lookup on its contacts database, changed the phone number back to the version without an area code, and then reported that it could not send the message because the phone number lacked an area code.
Using the BlackBerry Torch is like being trapped in a real-life version of "Waiting for Godot."
I've seen this sort of incoherent design before. It happens when you have several teams working on parts of the device, and you haven't done proper planning up front to make sure the apps will work together well. It is a symptom of an out-of-control development process. The fact that this happened on RIM's flagship product is deeply disturbing. If the same incompetent processes are applied to the PlayBook -- a much more complex product with a lot of new functionality -- it is almost certain to fail.
By the way, we returned the phone.
What RIM should do. To fix this problem, RIM needs to create rigorous up-front planning processes in its software team, with someone who has dictatorial power placed in charge of overall software integration for a device or OS release. Also, the product manager needs to be empowered (actually required) to delay shipment of a product if it's not right. I'm sure someone at RIM knew about the problems in the Torch. The fact that the company went ahead and shipped it is almost as disturbing as the problems themselves.
Rescuing RIM
To sum up, RIM is at risk because its natural market is saturating and many of its customers are considering a switch to other platforms. The company may be able to bumble along in this situation for years before the problem comes to a head, but once a migration away from BlackBerry starts it would be almost impossible to stop. So if the company wants to ensure its survival, it needs to act now. Two steps are needed:
--The BlackBerry line needs to be given a several fundamental, visionary innovations that will give its core customers a reason to stay; and
--The company needs to change its development process to guarantee proper design and integration in all of its products.
Given the time needed to create a new product, these changes will take at least 18 months to bear fruit, probably more like two years. During that time RIM will remain at risk of a platform collapse. What's worse, the company's engineers already have their hands full copying iPhone features, customizing phones for a huge range of operators, and simultaneously creating a new operating system and developing a new version of the current one. The sort of changes I'm suggesting would disrupt that work, forcing the cancellation of some projects and slips in the schedule for others. They would make the problem worse before they make it better. In the meantime, the company would lose serious revenue, and might even miss earnings projections for a quarter or two. The stock's value would be trashed, and there would be calls for firing management.
As the founders of the company, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis could probably pull this off without losing their jobs. And I know they have the courage to make big changes. But I doubt they can see the need, or especially the urgency. Their current processes and business practices got them to $15 billion in revenue; why should they change now? It's much more prudent to focus on making the numbers for next quarter.
That's probably just what RIM will do. And if it does, that's why the company will probably eventually fail.
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[Edit: Since this post is still getting a lot of traffic, I wanted to let you know that I've posted a look at RIM's Q3 FY 2011 financials, with updated charts and a deeper look at international sales. I think the situation is both better and worse than I originally believed (link).]
Business Week quoted Balsillie at a press briefing:
"There's tremendous turbulence in the ecosystem, of course, in mobility. And that's sort of an obvious thing, but also there is tremendous architectural contention at play. And I'm going to really frame our mobile architectural distinction. We've taken two fundamentally different approaches in their causalness. It's a causal difference, not just nuance. It's not just a causal direction that I'm going to really articulate here -- and feel free to go as deep as you want -- it's really as fundamental as causalness."
OK, he deserves to be mocked for that. But Business Week goes on to conclude that his quote captures the whole dilemma of the company -- technical sophistication coupled with incoherent marketing.
Business Week has joined a large and distinguished group of experts taking jabs at RIM. Morgan Stanley recently downgraded RIM's stock, saying it's going to lose share faster than previously expected (link). Gartner reported that Android had passed BlackBerry to become the most popular smartphone OS in the US (link). And CNET said RIM is about to be kicked out of the enterprise market (link).
I've been getting very tired of the criticisms of RIM, because most of them seem superficial and some are petty. Yes, Android is doing well, but neither RIM nor Apple is giving away its operating system, so it was close to inevitable that Android would eventually get the unit lead. It's the default choice for most smartphone companies, so of course it moves a lot of units in aggregate. But there is room in the market for several mobile platforms to succeed. The companies Android is hurting most are Microsoft, Access, and others that were hoping to sell mobile operating systems.
Yes, RIM's not good at sexy marketing, but it has always been that way. People have been predicting its imminent doom for as long as I can remember (do you recall when Microsoft Exchange was supposed to destroy it?). My guess is that the folks at RIM are shaking their heads at all of the bad press and assuming it will once again blow over in a quarter or two.
I think that would be a serious mistake. In my opinion, RIM is indeed in danger, probably a lot more danger than its executives realize. But I don't agree on the reasons most people are giving for why RIM is in trouble, and I think most of the solutions that are being proposed would make the situation worse, not better.
The fault lies not in our ties, but in our selves. In my opinion, RIM's real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it'll drift into in a situation where it can't afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It's very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.
There's a lesson in RIM's situation for every tech company, so it's worthwhile to spend some time understanding what's happening.
How a computing platform dies
To explain RIM's challenges, I have to give you a little tech industry history. When I worked at Apple, I spent a lot of time studying failed computer platforms. I thought that if we understood the failures, we might be able to prevent the same thing from happening to us.
I looked at everything from videogame companies to the early PC pioneers (companies like Commodore and Atari), and I found an interesting pattern in their financial results. The early symptoms of decline in a computing platform were very subtle, and easy for a business executive to rationalize away. By the time the symptoms became obvious, it was usually too late to do anything about them.
The symptoms to watch closely are small declines in two metrics: the rate of growth of sales, and gross profit per unit sold (gross margins). Here's why:
Every computing platform has a natural pool of customers. Some people need or want the platform, and some people don't. Your product spreads through its pool of customers via the traditional "diffusion" process -- early enthusiasts first, late adopters at the end.
It's relatively easy to get good revenue from the early adopters. They seek out innovations like yours, and are willing to pay top dollar for it. As the market for a computer system matures, the early adopters get used up, and the company starts selling to middle adopters who are more price-sensitive. In response to this, the company cuts prices, which results in a big jump in sales. Total revenue goes up, and usually overall profits as well. Everybody in the company feels good.
Time passes, and that middle portion of the market gets consumed. Eventually demand growth starts to drop, and you make another price cut. Sales go up again, sometimes a lot. With revenue rising, you and your investors talk proudly about the benefits of reaching the "mainstream" market.
At Apple, when we hit this point we called our low-cost products the Macintosh Classic and Macintosh LC. At Palm, it was the M100.
What you don't realize at this point is that you're not "reaching the mainstream," you're actually consuming the late adopters. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to tell when you're selling to the late adopters. They don't wear signs. Companies tend to assume that because the adoption curve is drawn as a smooth-sided bell, your demand will tail off at the end as gradually as it built up in the beginning. But that isn't how it works. At the start, you are slowly building up momentum from a base of nothing. That takes years. But by the time you saturate the market you have built up huge sales momentum. You have a strong brand, you have advertising, you have a big distribution channel. You'll gulp through the late adopters really rapidly. The result is that sales continue to grow until they drop suddenly, like a sprinter running off the edge of a cliff.
The chart below illustrates how the process works:
Until you get close to the end, your revenue keeps rising, enabling you to tell yourself that the business is still in good shape. But eventually you reach the dregs of the market, and sales will flatten out, or maybe even start to drop. You cut prices again, but this time they don't increase demand because there are no latent customers left. All the cuts do is reduce further the revenue you get from selling upgrades to your installed base. The combination of price cuts and declining sales produces a surprisingly rapid drop in revenue and profits. If you want to make a profit (which your investors demand), your only choice is to make massive cuts in expenses. Those cuts usually end up eliminating the risky new product ideas that are your only hope of re-igniting demand.
At Apple I called this the platform "death spiral" because once you get into it, the expense cuts and sales declines reinforce each other. It's almost impossible to reverse the process, unless you're Steve Jobs and you get very lucky.
The best way to survive is to stay away from the cliff edge in the first place. But that means you need to be hyper-attentive to small changes in sales growth and gross margins. Which brings us back to RIM's situation.
Dissecting RIM's financials
At the top level, RIM's financials look utterly fantastic:
RIM Revenue and Profit
Fiscal years. Dollars in millions.
Since fiscal 2003 (when it turned profitable), RIM has grown from $500m revenue to over $15 billion. That's 30X growth in eight years. The BlackBerry subscriber base has grown from 500,000 people to about 50 million. Throughout that period, the company's net income has hovered at between 15% and 22% of revenue.
This is one of the most impressive business success stories of the last decade, and most CEOs in any industry would kill to have that sort of results. Considering how much turmoil there is in the smartphone market, RIM's senior managers must feel extremely proud of their success, and more than a bit bewildered that people keep criticizing them.
And that's exactly my point. Looking at the high-level financials can lull you into a false sense of security if you're managing a computing platform. You have to really dig to find the warning signs. That's especially hard to do in RIM's case because the company has several different sources of revenue: device sales, service revenue, and enterprise server revenue. The overall results they report are mashup of all three revenue streams. To understand what's really happening, you have to tease them apart. Here are some key data points.
First, let's look at the total number of BlackBerry subscribers:
Total BlackBerry Subscribers
RIM's fiscal quarters. Units in millions.
Pretty impressive growth. But remember, we're looking for subtle signs of saturation. Let's look at the number of subscribers added per quarter...
Net New Subscribers Per Quarter
RIM's fiscal quarters. Units in millions.
This is where you get the first little twinge of discomfort. Until a year ago, the rate of growth of BlackBerry subscribers was itself increasing every quarter. In other words, RIM added more new subscribers each quarter than it had added in the previous quarter. But for the last four quarters, RIM's subscriber growth has plateaued at around 4.7 million net new subscribers a quarter. The company's still growing, but it looks like the rate of growth may be flattening. That might imply the beginning of saturation.
Next let's look at net new subscribers as a percent of total BlackBerry units sold.
New Subscribers Added Per Unit Sold
RIM's fiscal quarters.
This one's a little disquieting as well. Five years ago, RIM was getting .7 new subscribers for every BlackBerry sold. In other words, most of its sales were to new users. Today, RIM is getting .37 more subscribers per BlackBerry sold, and that figure is at an all-time low. To put it another way, RIM now has to sell more than two and a half devices to get one more subscriber. Either RIM is selling most of its units to its installed base, or it is having to bring in a lot of new customers to replace those who are leaving for other devices. My guess is it's a mix of both.
If you look closely at that chart, you'll notice a curious bump in the line at Q4 of 2009. The percentage of new subscribers went back up all of a sudden. What did RIM do to produce that growth? A look at device gross margins tells you.
Device Gross Margin Percentage
RIM's fiscal quarters.
[Note: RIM does not report separately the gross margins it gets in the devices business, so I had to estimate this number using the company's hardware revenue and the total cost of goods sold across all of its businesses. Most of RIM's total COGS are hardware expenses, but they also include some server costs associated with providing e-mail service. That means my calculation understates RIM's device margins by a bit. But as the company grows, server costs should go down as a percent of overall costs (because you get better economies of scale). So apparent hardware margins should be going up over time. That makes the fact that they're declining all the more ominous.]
RIM increased new subscriptions by substantially cutting the profit it makes per device. What happened is that the BlackBerry Bold, Storm, and Curve all came to market with increased features, replacing older devices that were much cheaper to build. That should have produced only a one-time hit to margins, though -- they should have gone back up as component costs on the new phones declined. Instead, margins have stayed down ever since. Why? Let's look at the what RIM gets paid for each BlackBerry it sells:
RIM's Revenue Per BlackBerry Device Sold
RIM's fiscal quarters. Hardware revenue per unit sold.
This chart shows the average price the carriers pay to RIM per phone, prior to the discount they put on the phone when you sign up for a contract. The line looks pretty flat, and in fact through the middle of fiscal 2009 RIM's price per unit was very stable. Then in Q3, with the introduction of the new devices, RIM gets a temporary spike in revenue per unit. The new phones are selling at a premium. But that goes away in the next two quarters, and then about a year ago, RIM started cutting prices. Today the company gets about $50 less per unit than it usually did in the past.
When you assemble the big picture, it looks like this: To keep growing, RIM has been forced to reduce margins and prices. Despite the cuts, the rate of growth in subscribers appears to have flattened out. And more and more of the sales mix is going to existing users, or user replacement, rather than new users. RIM starts to look like a company that's working harder and harder just to stay in one place.
The picture gets more ominous when you look at some recent surveys of smartphone user satisfaction. In JD Power's 2010 smartphone satisfaction survey, BlackBerry finished near the bottom, with below average ratings in every category except battery life (link). Just three years earlier, as the iPhone was coming to market, BlackBerry had the highest satisfaction ratings in the industry (link). I don't love JD Power's methodology (for reasons that are too long to explain here), but no way should RIM's rating be declining like that.
The low satisfaction is starting to threaten RIM's future sales. In June of this year, Nielsen released some tidbits from a survey of the future purchasing plans of smartphone users (link):
OS Preferences of People Planning to Replace Their Smartphones
The chart shows US smartphone users who were thinking about buying a new device in Q1 of 2010. More than half of the BlackBerry users considering a new smartphone were leaning toward a different OS.
If I were working at RIM, that chart would scare the crap out of me.
The company is by no means dead, but the symptoms of a stalling platform are definitely there. If you work at RIM and are reading this, here's what I want you to understand: Your company's at risk. Your great financials mask that risk, and give you lots of logical-sounding reasons to avoid making the changes that need to be made. RIM is like a 53-year-old man who has high blood pressure and cholesterol but tells himself that he's OK because he can still run a half-marathon. You are indeed fine, right up until you have the heart attack. Then it's too late.
Here's what you need to do:
How to avoid the cliff
To keep a platform viable, you need to focus on two tasks: Keep the customer base loyal, and add adjacent product categories.
Keeping the base loyal. This is transcendently important to a platform company. As your market matures, more and more of your sales will come from replacement devices sold to the installed base. You'll also depend more and more on a base of developers who add value to your products. If you can keep these people happy, you'll have a steady stream of replacement sales that you can build on. It won't be enough to produce the growth that your investors want, but it'll be a great foundation.
On the other hand, if these customers and developers drift away, there's virtually no way you can grow something else fast enough to offset their loss. The trick here is that the supporter base for a computing platform is like a herd of cattle. They move as a group. When the herd is contented, it tends to stay in one place. But if the herd gets restless, even a small disturbance can cause a stampede in which they all run away at once.
For example, this is the factor that HP failed to consider when it bought Palm. The Pre's small base of users and developers was a classic group of restless cattle. When HP bought the company, the first priority should have been to calm those people by promising a renewed commitment to the Pre and follow-on products. Even if HP didn't see smartphones as its long-term future, it should have focused on keeping the developers and users loyal until it had something else for them to buy and develop for. Instead, HP CEO Mark Hurd more or less killed the product line a day after the purchase (link):
HP won't "spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn’t in any way make any sense....We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP."
Ooookay, so if you're a Pre customer, do you buy again? Do you tell your friends to buy? If you're a WebOS developer, do you keep writing code while you wait for HP to decide what it'll do with that "IP" it bought?
The answer is, you run for the exit as fast as you can. HP bought a company for a billion dollars and then immediately trashed it.
Back to RIM. Your cattle are restless. If you don't believe me, go look at that Nielsen chart again. Your goal is to keep the cattle content, by feeding them a steady diet of delightful new products that deepen their commitment to the platform. RIM's record in this area is very mixed. There have been a lot of new BlackBerry products announced in the last few years, but most of them seem to be focused on copying things Apple has done rather than finding new ways to delight BlackBerry customers.
Some of the Apple imitation is probably necessary. Apple has turned a lot of features into checkoff items that are now expected from any smartphone -- a better browser, for example. If RIM didn't eventually add those features, the herd would at some point stampede away for sure.
But what I haven't seen from RIM is a vision for deepening the special features that made people bond with BlackBerry in the first place. The personal communication functionality of BlackBerry is about the same now as it was five years ago. Why in God's name was Apple the first North American smartphone company to really push video calling? As the communication beast, RIM should have led that years ago.
Instead, the latest BlackBerry devices feel a bit like an overbuilt ice cream sundae -- the original BlackBerry functionality is at the base more or less unchanged, and a bunch of gooey media toppings have been dumped on top of it. I see sprinkles, fudge, marshmallow, pineapple, whipped cream, a cherry, and a few gummy bears, but no significant improvement to the old, dried-out ice cream at the bottom of the bowl.
Inevitably, RIM can't implement those new media toppings as cleanly and elegantly as Apple did, because its platform wasn't designed for that. So what you get is a BlackBerry that endorses Apple's design direction but fails to fully deliver on it. Maybe that helps keep some BlackBerry users from leaving instantly, but it doesn't give them a positive reason to stay. Rather than playing to win, RIM is playing not to lose, and doing it poorly.
This is especially scary because RIM depends much more than Apple on mobile operators to help drive demand for its products (if you're in the US, ask yourself how many Verizon and AT&T ads you have seen for BlackBerry, versus how many ads you've seen from RIM itself). The operators follow customer interest, they don't create it. If they get the sense that BlackBerry users want to switch, they will be only too happy to facilitate that switch -- especially since they don't have to share service revenue with Android vendors the way they do with RIM.
What RIM should do. RIM need a product vision identifying a few new differentiators for BlackBerry that will resonate well with the busy knowledge workers who are at the core of its installed base. There should be no more than three of these features (because customers can't remember more than three), and they should not be copies of things that Apple is already implementing. RIM should focus on building them deeply into the product, so they are very well integrated with the rest of the device. My nominees are meeting planning, conferencing, and live document sharing.
Other smartphone companies will eventually copy these features, so RIM needs to create a pipeline of development in which it'll bring out another 2-3 new differentiators every 24 months.
Adding adjacent categories. Settling down the installed base is not enough. It's an enormous task, but all it'll do is stabilize the business. It won't produce the growth that investors expect. To get that, RIM needs to eventually add new types of product that expand its market.
Apple is a master at this process. When Steve Jobs came back, Apple had only the Macintosh. It refreshed that product line, securing the customer base. Then it added the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Each of them targeted Apple's core market of creative, entertainment-loving people, and each of them leveraged Apple's existing software and hardware. This overlap made the new products relatively inexpensive to develop and market -- they could be sold to the same sorts of people, through the same channels, and they reused a lot of technology. Each new product line also tended to drag a few more customers back to the earlier products, so they reinforced each other.
These new products enabled Apple to grow its revenue rapidly without putting pressure on the Macintosh to carry the whole load. Apple could invest enough in the Mac to keep it a stable and very profitable business, while the new products produced the topline growth.
To understand how wickedly efficient Apple's business model is, take a glance at the R&D budgets of RIM and Apple.
Quarterly R&D Spending of Apple and RIM
R&D spending in most recent four quarters. Dollars in millions.
Although Apple has about three times the revenue, RIM's R&D spending is about two-thirds of Apple's. With just a third more money, Apple produces the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, App Store, custom microprocessors, and a suite of mobile services. RIM is producing a bunch of minute variations on a family of phones, an e-mail server, a new OS, and a suite of mobile services that also has to be individually interfaced to each operator. RIM puts much of its effort into infrastructure that has little or no impact on features that users can see and value.
Now RIM wants to add more product lines. Its first effort will be the PlayBook tablet in 2011. This will be a decisive test of RIM's ability to grow in the future, and so far the signs are worrisome. Unlike Apple's first announcement of the iPhone, the PlayBook announcement didn't show much functionality that looked fundamentally new compared to the competition (in fact, the interface looked to me a lot like a warmed-over version of Palm's WebOS). The pitch was almost all about enabling technology rather than user benefits. When you find yourself talking up the dual-core processor and symmetric multiprocessing in a consumer product, it's a sign of a serious lack of differentiation.
I'd be more hopeful about the prospects for the PlayBook if RIM had done a better job of evolving its BlackBerry products recently. Unfortunately, RIM's latest innovation flagship is the BlackBerry Torch, an overproduced heap of half-integrated features that ranks as one of the most disappointing mobile devices I've seen from a major manufacturer in years.
Yeah, I know there are some people who like the Torch. But there were also people who thought MS-DOS was easy to use.
Burned by the Torch. I recently bought a BlackBerry Torch for my wife, who needed a smartphone to manage work e-mail. We both wanted her to have something simple to use, with a keyboard that made her comfortable. She liked the Torch in the store, so we bought it for her.
The device was a usage nightmare. Even after years of working with touch screen technology, RIM hasn't managed to evolve its user interface to the point where the touch pad and the touch screen work together smoothly. Some functions are easier to perform on touch screen, and others are easier on touch pad, and so the whole interface feels muddled. But by far the more disappointing problem was that the huge number of new applications just added to the phone do not work together properly. I can't even list all of the problems we both had figuring out how to use them, but one vivid example should suffice. My wife entered a lot of contacts directly into the device's contacts app, but didn't bother to include the area code in the phone numbers. The BlackBerry didn't warn her about this.
Then she went to the messaging app and tried to send a text message to our daughter. When she tried to send the message, the app reported that it could not send to a contact without an area code. So she went back to the contacts app and added area codes.
Then she went back to the messaging app and again tried to send a text message. The messaging app reported once again that it could not send a message without an area code. It had apparently made a copy of the data from the contacts app when it was first used, and would not update the copy. So my wife then edited the contact information from within the contacts app (it lets you do that). But when she tried to save the updated contact, the phone responded that it could not accept external changes to the contacts, and deleted the change.
Next, she tried to send a message by typing our daughter's phone number, including area code, directly into the To: portion of a new message. When she tried to send that message, the messaging application did a lookup on its contacts database, changed the phone number back to the version without an area code, and then reported that it could not send the message because the phone number lacked an area code.
Using the BlackBerry Torch is like being trapped in a real-life version of "Waiting for Godot."
I've seen this sort of incoherent design before. It happens when you have several teams working on parts of the device, and you haven't done proper planning up front to make sure the apps will work together well. It is a symptom of an out-of-control development process. The fact that this happened on RIM's flagship product is deeply disturbing. If the same incompetent processes are applied to the PlayBook -- a much more complex product with a lot of new functionality -- it is almost certain to fail.
By the way, we returned the phone.
What RIM should do. To fix this problem, RIM needs to create rigorous up-front planning processes in its software team, with someone who has dictatorial power placed in charge of overall software integration for a device or OS release. Also, the product manager needs to be empowered (actually required) to delay shipment of a product if it's not right. I'm sure someone at RIM knew about the problems in the Torch. The fact that the company went ahead and shipped it is almost as disturbing as the problems themselves.
Rescuing RIM
To sum up, RIM is at risk because its natural market is saturating and many of its customers are considering a switch to other platforms. The company may be able to bumble along in this situation for years before the problem comes to a head, but once a migration away from BlackBerry starts it would be almost impossible to stop. So if the company wants to ensure its survival, it needs to act now. Two steps are needed:
--The BlackBerry line needs to be given a several fundamental, visionary innovations that will give its core customers a reason to stay; and
--The company needs to change its development process to guarantee proper design and integration in all of its products.
Given the time needed to create a new product, these changes will take at least 18 months to bear fruit, probably more like two years. During that time RIM will remain at risk of a platform collapse. What's worse, the company's engineers already have their hands full copying iPhone features, customizing phones for a huge range of operators, and simultaneously creating a new operating system and developing a new version of the current one. The sort of changes I'm suggesting would disrupt that work, forcing the cancellation of some projects and slips in the schedule for others. They would make the problem worse before they make it better. In the meantime, the company would lose serious revenue, and might even miss earnings projections for a quarter or two. The stock's value would be trashed, and there would be calls for firing management.
As the founders of the company, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis could probably pull this off without losing their jobs. And I know they have the courage to make big changes. But I doubt they can see the need, or especially the urgency. Their current processes and business practices got them to $15 billion in revenue; why should they change now? It's much more prudent to focus on making the numbers for next quarter.
That's probably just what RIM will do. And if it does, that's why the company will probably eventually fail.
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[Edit: Since this post is still getting a lot of traffic, I wanted to let you know that I've posted a look at RIM's Q3 FY 2011 financials, with updated charts and a deeper look at international sales. I think the situation is both better and worse than I originally believed (link).]
jeudi 14 octobre 2010
SAMSUNG WAVE II
Samsung réaffirme son engagement à proposer « un Smartphone adapté à chaque style de vie » en étoffant sa ligne de mobiles sous OS bada, avec le lancement de son modèle haut de gamme Samsung Wave II
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., l’un des premiers fournisseurs de solutions de téléphonie mobile, annonce le lancement du Samsung Wave II. Ce Smartphone supporte la toute nouvelle version de la plateforme propriétaire ouverte de Samsung : bada 1.2. Proposant une gamme complète de loisirs multimédias, une messagerie unifiée et une expérience utilisateur optimisée, le tout nouveau Samsung Wave II offre un cocktail de performances intelligentes avancées.
- Ecran tactile Super Clear LCD WVGA 3,7’’ - multipoint
- Processeur cadencé à 1GHz
- 3G+, Wi-Fi (n)
- Accès au Samsung Apps
Un accès direct à la boutique d’applications Samsung enregistrant déjà plus de 4 millions de téléchargements
- Le Social Hub™
Un service de messagerie unique qui rassemble tous vos comptes (e-mail, messagerie instantanée, réseaux sociaux …) au sein d’une solution unifiée et intégrée au répertoire.
- Nouveau Mode de saisie rapide Samsung T9 Trace
- Mémoire : 2Go + port microSD (jusqu’à 16Go)
« Après le succès du premier modèle Samsung Wave, Samsung a maintenu ses efforts d’innovation pour intégrer de nouveaux médias sociaux, des expériences multimédias enrichies et fonctionnalités avancées », commente J. K. Shin, président et directeur de la division Communication Mobile chez Samsung Electronics.
« Les utilisateurs souhaitaient un écran plus grand et une meilleure méthode de saisie, et nous avons réalisé leur souhait. Ils disaient apprécier les fonctionnalités avancées et nous en avons ajouté de nouvelles. Le Samsung Wave II démontre véritablement les capacités d’innovation de Samsung », explique-t-il.
Performance, vitesse et connectivité
Au cœur de ce Smartphone doté d’un très confortable écran multipoint de 3,7’’, le processeur Samsung cadencé à 1 GHz offre aux utilisateurs les meilleures performances graphiques actuellement disponibles. Sa vitesse rend l’interface utilisateur incroyablement réactive et intuitive. Ultraconnecté (HSDPA, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, USB, DLNA), il autorise le téléchargement et l’envoi de fichiers volumineux, facilite les échanges de contenus avec les appareils compatibles (écrans, PC…).
Ecosystème Samsung
Pour une personnalisation sans limite, le Samsung Wave II intègre la boutique d’applications, Samsung Apps, donnant accès à de nombreux services utiles ou divertissants. Vous pourrez accéder facilement à Samsung Apps depuis votre smartphone mais aussi depuis votre ordinateur avec le logiciel Samsung KIES et depuis Internet via le site www.samsungapps.com. Près de 4 millions d’applications ludiques ou pratiques ont d’ores et déjà été téléchargées via ce portail.
L’utilisateur peut découvrir chaque jour de 15 à 20 nouveautés. Samsung Apps propose une multitude de jeux, d’outils de navigation, de livres électroniques, d’applications communautaires, sportives, professionnelles, de santé et de loisirs, afin de répondre à chaque besoin ou envie.
Le Samsung Wave II est également équipé d’une solution de messagerie unifiée. L’application Social HubTM intègre carnet d’adresses, réseaux sociaux, messagerie instantanée et e-mail en une présentation unique sur une seule page, afin de rester connecté en permanence.
Et pour optimiser la saisie des messages, la nouvelle fonctionnalité proposée par Samsung, T9 Trace, permet de rédiger e-mails, textos… bien plus rapidement et facilement qu’avec une saisie ordinaire : au lieu de taper une à une les lettres en appuyant répétitivement sur les touches, il suffit de glisser son doigt d’une touche à l’autre pour que le combiné détermine de manière intelligente le mot épelé.
Fonctions multimédia et connectivité
Le Samsung Wave II autorise l’enregistrement, le partage et la lecture de vidéos haute définition (1280x720 pixels). Prenant en charge de nombreux formats vidéo, ce Smartphone assure une compatibilité universelle pour lire facilement différents types de films et fichiers, tandis que sa fonction enregistrement vidéo HD vous permet de capturer et revoir des moments de votre vie avec une clarté d’image remarquable.
Lecteur-enregistreur performant, il prend en charge de nombreux codecs dont le DivX et le Xvid…Doté de la technologie DNSe 2.0 et d’une prise jack 3.5mm, il diffuse un son d’une excellente qualité acoustique. Il embarque également les fonctions de reconnaissance musicale, enregistrement radiophonique, système RDS, ainsi qu’un appareil photo 5 millions de pixels avec autofocus. Equipé d’une puce A-GPS, il intègre la fonctionnalité de geotagging qui autorise le marquage des photos à l’aide de balises géographiques afin de les partager avec ses amis.
Ce Smartphone entièrement tactile sera disponible en France à partir de novembre 2010, et sera progressivement étendu sur d’autres marchés internationaux tels que l’Asie du Sud-Est, l’Amérique Latine, le Proche-Orient, l’Afrique, l’Inde et la Chine.
Samsung Wave II sera disponible au prix de vente hors abonnement de 449 € TTC.
N° Samsung : 01 48 63 00 00 www.samsung.fr
Contacts presse :
Gwénola Vilboux - Latifa Chine
Henry Conseil - Tel 01 46 22 76 43
42 rue Laugier – 75017 Paris
agence@henryconseil.com - www.henryconseil.com
lundi 11 octobre 2010
Le HTC HD7, smartphone Windows® Phone 7 chez Bouygues Telecom Entreprises
Le nouveau smartphone HTC HD7 vient compléter la gamme des smartphones commercialisés par Bouygues Telecom Entreprises. Ce nouveau terminal entre dans la gamme Windows® Phone 7 annoncée par Microsoft.
Dernier né des Windows® Phone HTC, le HTC HD7 offre une expérience mobile unique, conçue pour simplifier la vie personnelle et professionnelle.
Avec sa nouvelle interface fluide et intuitive, les applications sont directement intégrées dans les différents univers thématiques (documents Office, réseaux sociaux, photos, musique, jeux, …). Le HTC HD7 voit tout en grand : un grand écran de 4.3 pouces en haute résolution, un puissant processeur de 1 Ghz, une mémoire interne de 8 Go, du son en dolby surround SRS, une connectivité complète (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS,...), et même une béquille physique qui permettra à son utilisateur de poser l’appareil pour visionner des contenus les mains libres (diaporama photos, présentation Powerpoint…). Imaginé pour faciliter les usages, le téléphone offre également le regroupement de tous les échanges (emails, SMS, réseaux sociaux) avec ses contacts depuis un même menu ainsi qu’une multitude d’applications spécifiques proposées dans le HTC Hub (météo, bourse,...).
Taillé pour la 3G+, le HTC HD7 révèle tout son potentiel sur le réseau HSPA de dernière génération de Bouygues Telecom. Il sera commercialisé à partir de fin octobre. Luc Perraudin, Directeur Marketing Entreprises déclare : « Nous sommes ravis de proposer l’expérience Windows® Phone 7 aux entreprises en ce mois d’octobre. Les nouveaux Windows® Phone sont dotés d’une interface extrêmement fluide et sont naturellement intégrés au système d’information de l’entreprise. Une véritable révolution de l’expérience du smartphone professionnel. »
Les solutions de mobilité Microsoft Windows® Phone pour les entreprises
Windows® Phone 7 offre une productivité mobile sans compromis, intégrée au système d’informations et tenant compte des attentes personnelles et professionnelles des collaborateurs dans les entreprises. Windows® Phone 7 bénéficie d’une plateforme de développement puissante et homogène qui permet aux développeurs de créer des applications attrayantes et homogènes entre le PC, le téléphone et le web pour répondre aux besoins de tous les utilisateurs.
Microsoft® Outlook Mobile
Recevez et gérez vos e-mails et vos calendriers personnels et professionnels en un seul endroit.
• Obtenez vos mails et les mises à jour de vos contacts et calendriers en temps réel.
• Consultez plus facilement vos messages (filtrés, urgents, marqués, non lus…).
• Visualisez en un clin d’oeil vos rendez-vous professionnels et personnels grâce aux différents codes couleur.
•Utilisez plusieurs comptes de messagerie, dont 2 avec Microsoft® Exchange.
Hub Office
La productivité sans compromis
Le hub Office offre une expérience inégalée pour gérer tous vos documents Microsoft® Office sur mobile. Vous pouvez les visualiser, les éditer, les commenter et les partager par email ou les publier grâce à SharePoint Server 2010.
www.windowsphone.fr
A propos de Bouygues Telecom Entreprises
Depuis 1997, Bouygues Telecom dispose d’une activité dédiée aux entreprises et aux professionnels. Promoteur du forfait, des offres à la seconde et des accès data illimités, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises a obtenu la confiance d’un million de professionnels et d’entreprises partout en France. Plus de 200 grands comptes (le Conseil de l’Europe, l’Ecole du Ski Français (ESF), La Poste, BNP Paribas, EDF, les Douanes, LVMH...) ou PME bénéficient des solutions de communication fixe, mobile ou internet. Grâce aux équipements IP répartis et maîtrisés sur l’ensemble du territoire, Bouygues Telecom contrôle de bout en bout la qualité du service rendu aux entreprises.
Le réseau Internet mobile de Bouygues Telecom associant les technologies Edge et 3G+ permet de profiter d’une excellente couverture partout en France et de très hauts débits dans les principales villes pour une qualité de service adaptée aux besoins de ses clients.
Afin d’accompagner les entreprises pour le choix, l’installation ou le suivi de ses solutions de communications fixes ou mobiles, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises a choisi d’implanter à Paris et en régions ses 10 agences commerciales qui regroupent 750 collaborateurs dédiés aux professionnels. 800 points de service après-vente et près de 200 distributeurs accrédités sont répartis sur l’ensemble du territoire métropolitain.
Contacts presse Bouygues Telecom
Alexandre André – 01 39 26 62 42 – aandre@bouyguestelecom.fr
Clémentine Sillam – 01 41 09 54 17 – csillam@bouyguestelecom.fr
Samsung Omnia 7
Partenaire clé de Microsoft depuis plusieurs années, Samsung lance aujourd’hui un nouveau smartphone, grand public, sous OS Windows® Phone 7. Arborant une finition tout métal très soignée, le Samsung OMNIA 7 est doté d’un écran tactile Super AMOLED de 4 pouces, un processeur cadencé à 1 GHz, un lecteur enregistreur vidéo HD, une caméra de 5 millions de pixels et une mémoire interne de 8Go. Il offre le meilleur des loisirs directement sur votre téléphone grâce aux fonctionnalités Microsoft Xbox LIVE® pour vos jeux et Zune® pour vos musiques et vidéos. Ce mobile au design minimaliste, à la fois très simple d’utilisation et raffiné, s’adapte parfaitement au mode de vie de chacun.
« L’OMNIA 7 est notre premier smartphone utilisant Windows® Phone 7, et nous sommes convaincus que les consommateurs seront séduits par la vitesse et le style avec lequel il assure une expérience des loisirs de première qualité. Ce smartphone démontre notre volonté d’offrir aux utilisateurs un choix de plateformes adapté à leur mode de vie », explique J. K. Shin, président et directeur de la division Communication Mobile chez Samsung Electronics.
« Samsung a joué un rôle essentiel en tant que partenaire de Microsoft pour offrir Windows Phones aux consommateurs du monde entier », précise Andy Lees, président du pôle Communication Mobile chez Microsoft.
Rapide, ultra-connecté et multimédia
L’écran Super AMOLED Samsung rend l’affichage plus réel que jamais. Il offre une luminosité et un taux de contraste exceptionnels pour une lisibilité améliorée, sous tous les angles de vue, tout en réduisant sa consommation énergétique. Fluide et réactif, ce large écran de 4.0’’ permet de naviguer avec aisance et rapidité. Bénéficiant des toutes dernières technologies en matière de connectivité, l’OMNIA 7 est également un smartphone ultra-connecté, disposant du Bluetooth et d’un Wi-Fi (n) de dernière génération, 2,5 fois plus rapide. Et grâce à son excellente qualité de son, l’OMNIA 7 vous permet de suivre une conference call comme si vous étiez dans la même pièce. Smartphone multimédia, le Samsung OMNIA 7 possède un appareil photo 5 millions de pixels, avec autofocus, Flash LED, zoom x4 multipoint et stabilisateur optique. Doté d’un lecteur MP3 et d’une prise jack 3,5mm, ce nouveau mobile dispose également d’un lecteur-enregistreur vidéo HD et multi-codec. Et, pour une synchronisation simplifiée et rapide du contenu multimédia, le logiciel Zune® (via Windows live) vous permet de déplacer des dossiers du mobile au PC et vice-versa.
Un menu réinventé pour une navigation optimale
Pensé et conçu pour tous, le Samsung OMNIA 7 propose de réinventer l’expérience utilisateur, en ne conservant que ce qui est essentiel au quotidien. Ce nouveau smartphone à l’interface épurée permet ainsi d’organiser plus facilement ses applications web et de personnaliser le menu d’accueil.
Le menu principal a ainsi été totalement repensé afin d’offrir à l’utilisateur, le plus rapidement possible, tout ce dont il a besoin. Composé de larges icônes aux couleurs variées, appelées « vignettes dynamiques », l’écran d’accueil, mis à jour automatiquement, est ainsi entièrement consultable en un clin d’œil. Contacts, favoris, applications préférées, tout est désormais très facilement à portée de clic.
Grâce au navigateur Internet Explorer et au moteur de recherche Bing, surfer sur le web en toute sécurité devient un jeu d’enfant. L’écran multipoint permet de zoomer très facilement et, avec la gestion des onglets, vous passez aisément d’une page ouverte à l’autre. Avec Outlook mobile et la synchronisation des contacts et du calendrier, vous recevez et consultez vos mails en temps réel.
A chaque envie, un Hub
Grâce à ses nombreux Hubs (panoramas thématiques), permettant de regrouper différents contenus - réseaux sociaux, sms, photos...-, gérer son quotidien n’a jamais été aussi simple. Ces plateformes viennent répondre et s’adapter parfaitement à tous vos besoins. Proposé par Samsung, Hub Maintenant, permet de visualiser météo, news et cours de la bourse, Hub Contact de gérer aisément son répertoire et de synchroniser l’ensemble des ses contacts mails et actu Facebook ; Le Hub Musique + vidéos permet d’accéder à une remarquable quantité de contenus vidéos et musicaux, le Hub Photos de partager aisément ses photos, grâce à une interface et une synchronisation simplifiées. De nombreuses applications développées par Microsoft sont également disponibles sur la plateforme Hub Marketplace. Le gaming n’est pas en reste grâce au Hub Jeux, qui offre aux utilisateurs de riches contenus ludiques afin de jouer en ligne via Xbox LIVE®. Enfin, Hub Office offre la possibilité de créer et de modifier aisément vos documents.
Le Samsung OMNIA 7, un smartphone design, ultra pratique et simple d’utilisation pour organiser sa journée et gérer son univers mobile au quotidien, disponible dès fin octobre 2010 au prix de vente hors abonnement de 599€ TTC.
Caractéristiques principales :
• Ecran 4.0’’ Super AMOLED (480x800)
• 3G+, Quadri-bande
• Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Port universel USB 2.0
• Exchange ActiveSync
• Mémoire : 8Go
N° Samsung : 01 48 63 00 00 www.samsung.fr
Contacts presse :
Gwénola Vilboux - Latifa Chine
Henry Conseil - Tel 01 46 22 76 43
42 rue Laugier – 75017 Paris
agence@henryconseil.com - www.henryconseil.com
mercredi 6 octobre 2010
SAMSUNG Player 5 Lolita Lempicka
Grand nom de l’élégance à la française et des parfums féminins, Lolita Lempicka est aussi une femme de son temps qui aime jouer avec les références et les symboles. En partenariat avec Samsung, et uniquement chez Bouygues Telecom, elle pare d’un habit chic et choc le mobile Player 5.
Depuis la fin des années 80, Lolita Lempicka habille et parfume les femmes (et les hommes !) avec un succès jamais démenti. Si Lolita, L ou Fleur de corail, toutes ces fragrances ont été d’immenses réussites qui ont consacré leur créatrice. Sa collaboration avec Samsung l’inscrit une nouvelle fois dans l’air du temps.
Avec sa couleur violette ultra glamour, agrémentée d’une jolie feuille argentée, emblème de la marque, le Player 5 séduira les jeunes femmes coquettes et mutines. Livré avec 7 fonds d’écran exclusifs à changer selon son humeur, ce tout nouveau modèle fera de vous une véritable Lolita.
Le Samsung Player 5 est aussi un bijou de technologie qui possède un large écran tactile, une excellente connectivité Wifi et un appareil photo haute résolution de 5 mégapixels… Pour ne rien rater de vos épopées urbaines !
Samsung Player 5 Lolita Lempicka
Ecran TFT 3’’- 262 000 couleurs
EDGE, Wifi
Design exclusifs griffés Lolita Lempicka
7 fonds d’écran Lolita Lempicka
Appareil photo autofocus 5 mégapixels
Lecteur audio, radio FM
Mémoire : 78Mo + MicroSD jusqu’à 32Go
Le Samsung Player 5 Lolita Lempicka est commercialisé sur la boutique en ligne de Bouygues Telecom(1) ou dans l’un des 610 magasins clubs Bouygues Telecom à partir de 9€ avec un Forfait Neo.3 ou 16.000 points et 19€ en renouvellement de Forfait. Il sera également disponible pour les autres gammes grand public.
À propos de Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
SAMSUNG Electronics Co. Ltd. est un leader mondial dans les domaines des semi-conducteurs, des télécommunications, des supports numériques et des technologies de convergence numérique, qui a réalisé en 2009 un chiffre d’affaires de 116,8 milliards de dollars. Forte d’environ 188 000 salariés travaillant sur 185 sites dans 65 pays, l’entreprise se compose de huit grandes divisions exploitées séparément : Affichage visuel, Communications mobiles, Systèmes de télécommunication, Appareils numériques, Solutions informatiques, Imagerie numérique, Semi-conducteurs et Écrans à cristaux liquides (LCD). Reconnue comme une des marques bénéficiant d’une des croissances les plus fortes dans le monde, SAMSUNG Electronics est leader dans la production des téléviseurs numériques, des puces de mémoire, des téléphones mobiles et des écrans plats à cristaux liquides (TFT-LCD). Pour en savoir plus, veuillez consulter le site www.samsung.com.
Contacts presse :
Gwénola Vilboux & Latifa Chine
Henry Conseil - Tel 01 46 22 76 43
42 rue Laugier – 75017 Paris
agence@henryconseil.com - www.henryconseil.com
(1) Prix disponible sur la boutique en ligne de Bouygues Telecom.
mardi 5 octobre 2010
Samsung Wave 723
Après le succès du smartphone Samsung Wave, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., l’un des premiers fournisseurs de solutions de téléphonie mobile, annonce le lancement du Samsung Wave 723. Ce séduisant smartphone, sous OS bada, est destinée à une clientèle grand public, jeune et branchée.
L’écosystème Samsung
Le Samsung Wave 723 est avant tout un smartphone facile à vivre et à utiliser. Avec son écran tactile multipoint, surfer, écrire, se renseigner ou trouver un itinéraire devient un jeu d’enfant ! Grâce à l’accéléromètre, vous pouvez afficher vos pages web à votre gré, en mode portrait ou en paysage. Le portail d’applications Samsung Apps permet de personnaliser aisément son smartphone pour en faire un téléphone unique. Son excellente connectivité et sa navigation très fluide offrent aussi la possibilité de recevoir toutes les informations de ses réseaux sociaux (Facebook, Twitter…)
Samsung Apps
Le système d’exploitation développé par Samsung et ouvert aux développeurs, bada, permet aux utilisateurs de télécharger très facilement plusieurs centaines d’applications disponibles sur le kiosque intégré : Samsung Apps. Vous pourrez accéder facilement à Samsung Apps depuis votre smartphone mais aussi depuis votre ordinateur avec le logiciel Samsung KIES et depuis Internet via le site SamsungApps.com. Samsung Apps compte 40% d’applications françaises. Près de 3 millions d’applications ludiques ou pratiques ont d’ores et déjà été téléchargées via ce portail. L’utilisateur peut découvrir chaque jour de 15 à 20 nouveautés. Samsung Apps propose une multitude de jeux, d’outils de navigation, de livres électroniques, d’applications communautaires, sportives, professionnelles, de santé et de loisirs, afin de répondre à chaque besoin ou envie.
Le Social Hub™
Le Social Hub™ a été conçu pour intégrer, dans une boîte de réception unifiée, les services de courriels, de messageries instantanées et de réseaux sociaux des principaux acteurs du secteur.
Grâce à ce service unique capable de configurer jusqu’à 10 comptes de messagerie, le Samsung Wave 723 centralise toutes les communications virtuelles et synchronise l’ensemble de ces informations avec les données du répertoire et du calendrier. Selon les paramétrages souhaités, un résumé de la vie sociale des contacts est, à tout moment, consultable. Ainsi, depuis le clavier virtuel azerty du smartphone, l’utilisateur peut mettre à jours ses statuts, répondre à ses messages... Tous les comptes sont paramétrables et sélectionnables pour recevoir uniquement ce que l’on désire. Grâce au protocole ParlingoTM, accédez en toute simplicité à vos messageries instantanées : Gtalk, Yahoo…
Un design élégant
Ce nouveau smartphone se distingue par son look à la fois sobre et tendance. Avec son étui amovible de protection, il affiche un style résolument urbain et moderne. Son design premium, sa coque en métal brossé et sa finesse sont autant d’atouts qui séduiront une clientèle exigeante et branchée.
Fonctions multimédia et connectivité
Le Samsung Wave 723 possède un appareil photo 5 mégapixels, avec autofocus et Flash Power LED, qui comprend un menu élaboré (mode panorama, détecteur de sourires, retardateur.) La musique n’est pas en reste : grâce au lecteur MP3 et à la prise jack 3.5mm, le Samsung Wave 723 diffuse un son d’une excellente qualité acoustique. Il embarque également les fonctions de reconnaissance musicale, enregistrement radiophonique, système RDS et dispose d’un lecteur-enregistreur vidéo. Et pour un transfert simplifié et rapide de son contenu multimédia, le Samsung Wave 723 intègre le Bluetooth® 2.1 et la norme WiFi (b/g/n).
Le Samsung Wave 723, un smartphone raffiné, performant et simple d’utilisation pour échanger, gérer et enrichir son univers mobile au quotidien, disponible dès octobre 2010 au prix de vente hors abonnement de 299€ TTC.
• 3G+, Quadri-bande
• Haut débit: 3,6Mbps
• Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
• Port universel USB 2.0
• Exchange ActiveSync
• Mémoire partagée: 90Mo + port microSDHC (jusqu’à 16Go)
N° Samsung : 01 48 63 00 00
www.samsung.fr
Contacts presse :
Gwénola Vilboux & Latifa Chine
Henry Conseil - Tel 01 46 22 76 43
42 rue Laugier – 75017 Paris
agence@henryconseil.com - www.henryconseil.com
Samsung Player Mini Hello Kitty
Le mobile tactile de poche Hello Kitty
Star incontestée de la mode, Hello Kitty habille aujourd’hui le nouveau téléphone Samsung Player Mini. On craque pour cet adorable objet !
Depuis plus de 30 ans, Hello Kitty séduit la gent féminine du monde entier avec son look candide et girly, En véritable star, le mignon personnage s’associe régulièrement à des marques prestigieuses, telles que Victoria Couture ou Dr Martens. Fort d’une première collaboration réussie l’an dernier avec cette naïve icône, Samsung transforme l’essai. A l’occasion des fêtes de fin d’année, la marque habille son dernier né, le Player Mini, aux couleurs du célèbre personnage.
Tout comme Kitty, ce tout nouveau mobile est tout petit et très mignon. Avec son format mini (9,6 x 5,3cm), il se glisse dans la poche en toute légèreté et devient l’ami idéal de toutes nos virées quotidiennes !
Un mobile tactile ultra-compact, aux couleurs vives et féminines, qui vous accompagnera partout, du matin au soir. Tout en rondeur et très facile à prendre en main, ce modèle pourra aussi être personnalisé grâce aux 12 fonds d’écran exclusifs Hello Kitty. Avec ses animations à l’effigie du petit personnage, magie et douceur seront au rendez-vous tout au long de la journée…
Une navigation fluide et une batterie longue durée permettent de rester connecté à tous les réseaux sociaux et d’échanger avec ses amis via Myspace ou Facebook. Grâce à son appareil photo, mettre à jour ses photos de profil devient un jeu d’enfant !
Hello Kitty et le Samsung Player Mini, un mariage coloré plein de charme et de délicatesse.
Samsung Player Mini Hello Kitty
Ecran tactile 2.4’’ avec 262 000 couleurs
EDGE, Quadri-bande
Appareil photo
Lecteur Mp3
12 fonds d'écran Hello Kitty & Animation
Alarme, réveil, calculatrice, Agenda
Jeux
Mémoire : 30Mo + MicroSD jusqu’à 8Go
Le Samsung Player Mini Hello Kitty est commercialisé au prix de vente
généralement constaté de 119 € TTC (hors abonnement).
À propos de Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
SAMSUNG Electronics Co. Ltd. est un leader mondial dans les domaines des semi-conducteurs, des télécommunications, des supports numériques et des technologies de convergence numérique, qui a réalisé en 2009 un chiffre d’affaires de 116,8 milliards de dollars. Forte d’environ 188 000 salariés travaillant sur 185 sites dans 65 pays, l’entreprise se compose de huit grandes divisions exploitées séparément : Affichage visuel, Communications mobiles, Systèmes de télécommunication, Appareils numériques, Solutions informatiques, Imagerie numérique, Semi-conducteurs et Écrans à cristaux liquides (LCD). Reconnue comme une des marques bénéficiant d’une des croissances les plus fortes dans le monde, SAMSUNG Electronics est leader dans la production des téléviseurs numériques, des puces de mémoire, des téléphones mobiles et des écrans plats à cristaux liquides (TFT-LCD). Pour en savoir plus, veuillez consulter le site www.samsung.com.
Contact presse : Gwénola Vilboux
Henry Conseil - Tel 01 46 22 76 43
42 rue Laugier – 75017 Paris
agence@henryconseil.com - www.henryconseil.com
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