One thing that caught my attention in the video is Android installations by country. Here is the slide.

As it shows, there is a direct correlation between device activations and app installations. US is the largest market followed Korea and Japan.  I’d assume China is part of the ‘Others’ category.

Wait…think again. Korea is the #2 market for Android and Japan is #3. Why could that be? Here is my take.

Samsung, one of the leading device maker for Android is from Korea. I’d assume they own the local market which explains strong activation numbers from Korea. Regarding Japan, it is one of those countries where Android devices are aggressively pushed by carriers – just like the way Verizon promoted Android in US. In addition, Google says direct carrier billing is very successful in Android. This makes sense as carrier billing will be promoted by carriers backing Android.

In other words, it sounds like Android success has a lot to do with carriers (or OEMs) backing it. In contrast, judging by app downloads, Apple’s #1 market is US followed by UK. Then there are countries like Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Italy etc before getting to Japan and Korea.

Carrier backing isn’t necessarily a bad thing in business as long as the market share keeps going up. But for the tablet market where carriers have little impact, Android’s success could be very limiting. Judging by this, my guess is, Android’s tablet market share will be significantly lower compared to its phone market share, despite some optimism.

For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers’ proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power.

This was short lived as Google gave the control back to the carriers to compete with Apple. As Jason Hiner notes…

Here’s the dirty little secret about Android: After all the work Apple did to get AT&T to relinquish device control for the iPhone and all the great efforts Google made to get the FCC and the U.S. telecoms to agree to open access rules as part of the 700 MHz auction, Android is taking all of those gains and handing the power back to the telecoms.

It took Apple to take the control back again with today’s announcement of Verizon iPhone.

I see a similar story panning out. This time with online video.

It took Apple & Jobs to get rid of Flash for online video. Based on reports, a large percentage of video is already moving to H.264. But with today’s announcement from Google about discontinuing H.264, it looks like Flash is more likely going to stay relevant again as they support both H.264 and WebM.

As a user, this looks like another Google’s move to fight competition, masqueraded under ‘openness’.

I like working late and more often than not, I am up till 3 or 4AM. The worst thing I want to see in the morning is a random call waking me up at 8AM. The caller has no idea on my state/availability. This is one of the advantages online communication channels (like IM, audio, video etc) have over mobile phones. I can set my presence to ‘Do Not Disturb’ till I am ready for an interaction. As a user, I’d like to see a similar option on my mobile phone.

Can this be done? Absolutely! But there has to be an open protocol which every service provider has to adhere to.

Our cell phones are always connected to our mobile networks. So, service providers can maintain the presence info of their customers and share this with other service providers. This is no different from how multi-protocol IM Networks work. Each service provider is like an IM Network (Skype, Yahoo, AOL etc). If calls are within the network, it is straight forward. While you try to call me, the network can inform you that I am busy (based on what I define on my mobile phone). For calls between networks, they should share this presence info (an alternate to XMPP?) to enable this. There has be an open protocol for service providers to exchange this info.

To extend this idea, I should be able to unify my online presence with my phone presence. If I am in a meeting, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ status I set online should also apply to my mobile phone. This way, I can interact when I am ready to. Not when the other person wants to.

Given the state of service provider’s ‘innovation’ in US, I am too not confident on seeing something like this soon. I hope someone (Google, Apple?) will be able to push them towards this.

For Google, the web is about people, and we’re working to develop open, transparent and interesting (and fun!) ways to allow our users to take full advantage of how technology can bring them closer to friends and family and provide useful information just for them.

I always thought Google was focused more on organizing worlds information. With competition from Facebook, looks like Google is adding a new dimension (Google Me?) focusing on social elements.

Google to see Google move in this direction. Competition is good against Facebook, which I have never been a fan of.

If you remember, Google Wave was launched just couple of months back at Google IO. Now most Google Apps users will remember Google Wave as a product that was killed within 2 months after its launch (though it was available for consumers for about 14 months). What is the other product that was killed recently within such a short timeframe? Oh ya, Kin, from Microsoft.

Killing free consumer products is one thing, but killing products that are offered to businesses and are part of paid offerings is an entirely different thing. When a high profile product is discontinued 2 months after the release, it raises more questions.

Jeff Mann from Gartner talked about this subject today on his blog.

If I had spent a lot of time or money incorporating Wave into how I work, I would feel pretty bad after someone pointed out that blog post to me. Just imagine: you have to follow a specific blog page to find out that the product you have built a business around, or used every day is doomed. . If I were a partner who had spent money developing products around Wave, I  would feel even worse. Let down. Adrift. Angry. Certainly, I would think twice about doing business around Google technologies again. Actually, I wouldn’t think twice; I would never do it again.

Infact, I am interested in hearing the reaction from all the companies who invested in Wave as a platform and showcased their ware, just two months back, at Google IO.

I guess, at the end, Google is a search & ads company (to support that Eric Schmidt confirmed that yesterday saying Android is created to help its search business). When push comes to shove, Google will focus on its core business – search & ads – and could terminate its enterprise offerings. After all, their Google Apps business doesn’t contribute much to its bottom-line.

Discloser: I work for Zoho, which competes and co-operates with Google. But that said, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho explained it best…

When push comes to shove – and there is a lot of very messy push and shove in the business software market -  Google’s resources are going to flow into figuring out how to monetize the humongous traffic of YouTube or compete in online auctions, rather than figure out a way to squeeze a bit more margin compared to Oracle or Adobe or Salesforce. That may explain why Google has been silent on CRM, Project Management, Invoicing or HR type of tools, because those markets don’t offer the profit potential they already enjoy.

Consider the example on why iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad doesn’t support Flash. While there has been a lot of talk on this subject, the best technical explanation I have seen comes from a Flash developer on why Flash is not supported on iPhone/iPad.

Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.

I recommend reading the entire post.

Going beyond Flash, I actually think this explanation holds true for web apps too. This lack of mouseover functionality could make some web apps and even some websites unusable or less effective.

There are ton of webapps that use mouseover functions for many actions. Remember those drop-down menus on mouseover? Sites like Amazon, eBay, GoDaddy, BestBuy, Microsoft… they all use mouseover. Take eBay for example, the categories menu on the top left is a mouseover event. The action for mouseover event is different from onclick event.

All such mouseover functions have to be reconsidered while optimizing web applications for touch.

Does Touch kill mouseover function? I think it does.

It is not just mouseover function. But there are other things we are used to on the web like viewing Tooltips, viewing the URL in the status bar on mouseover without clicking the link…they will all be gone from the web if we are accessing it from touch-based devices. Is it a good thing? I think yes. Touch has its own advantages and I am sure we will find some innovative alternatives. These are small compromises in adopting the next major step.

Touch changes the way we use the web. We need to get used to it and vendors need to design their apps assuming this reality.

Openness doesn’t always result in great end-user products. Look at many open source projects out there (I am talking about end-user products here, not server side marvels). How good is Linux? At the back-end, it is AWESOME. But for the end user, it is a pain in the rear. I’d put Android under the same category. It very much excites geeks, but is far from desirable, atleast to my taste (yes, I own an Android device but couldn’t use for more than a day).

This talk about not using a standard processor, not-replaceable battery etc…commmon. We are blaming Apple for creating a better product? Every single person who played with the iPad said it screams. Shouldn’t we blame other guys for not creating power efficient processors? We also blame them for closed AppStore etc. When Apple first said web apps will be the way to include third party apps on the iPhone, everyone panicked and asked Apple to open it up for developers. Two years and 140K apps later, we go back and scream that it is a closed platform and web apps are the way to go? That’s interesting.

For developers, I actually think iPhone/iPad platform is pretty open. Their APIs are pretty exhaustive and are improved constantly. I expect to see some innovative apps on the iPad. We have seen troubles with Android due to ‘openness’ (available in n devices, by m carriers with x number of screen sizes and y number of configurations). Android Market app sales talk for themselves. Contrast that with the iPhone App sales.

For end users, simplicity matters, a LOT. More than openness.

Bill Gurly wrote up a great piece on Google’s disruption in the navigation market. It is a great read to understand the impact Google’s new navigation ‘feature’ will have in that market.

…

That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!!

When you have a hugely profitable business, it is relatively easy to disrupt adjacent businesses which will hugely impact other players focused in that market. Google’s model is not new. We have seen this before. Microsoft disrupted Netscape by simply offering the browser for free and even included it in their OS, essentially killing Netscape whose business model was to sell a browser. When the oxygen supply of a vendor is cut, their business has to change quickly or it eventually dies, as we have seen with Netscape. For Microsoft, Windows & Office is their cash cow. They can afford to give away a browser with no impact to their bottom line. But in the marketplace, it commoditizes the browser and kills other vendors whose sole business is selling the browser (like Netscape). This is petty much what Google is doing in the Maps/Navigation market. As Bill mentioned, it will have a significant impact on vendors like Garmin, Tom Tom.

When you have one profitable business, it is not uncommon to give away something to disrupt adjacent markets. Apple, for example, focuses on selling hardware with software as a value-add to sell more hardware. When software is the value add, it can be cheaper than the other guys up north who solely rely on selling software. This kind of explains why the cost of Windows 7 is so high compared to Snow Leopard.

Google cannot continue disrupting all markets it enters. It needs to find alternative money making markets apart from search. If the search market gets very competitive (Bing?), it could spell disaster for Google’s core, cutting its oxygen supply. According to Eric Schmidt, Google Apps is the next big thing for Google. How significant will Google Apps be to their bottom line is yet to be seen – especially considering how low the margins are for business vendors compared to vendors serving the consumer market.

This disruption game is interesting. Microsoft makes money from Office & Windows and is trying to disrupt(?) search. Google is doing the opposite to Microsoft trying to disrupt(?) Microsoft with Google Apps & Chrome OS. These are just two companies. When we look at the bigger picture, we see many companies disrupting each other to establish their presense with consumers and businesses.

No matter who disrupts whom, it is only good news for the end user.

The idea is, my car should connect to my home WiFi network and Sync music from my iTunes (or whatever the music library is). I hate burning CDs and I am not a fan of sync on my iphone and then connecting it to the car as these things need cables.

I finally achieved the first part – being connected on the go. First, I ordered a Sprint Mifi. This is basically a WiFi access point at one end and on the other end, it is connected to the Sprint EVDO network. This way, I am always connected as long as there is a Sprint signal. Because it is a WiFi network within the car, all passengers in the car can now be connected to the same wireless network.

One of the drawbacks of this device is the battery life which can only last for 4 hours. To have it permanently connected, I purchased a PowerLine Power Inverter. This basically connects to the car charger on one end and on the other end, you can connect any device with the standard power outlet or even USB.

A combination of connected power and connected internet makes my life better and the passengers happy.

Now, I am looking for ways to connect a hard drive to my car and sync it with my library.

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