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’.

Whenever I hear the talk about the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) demo looking great, I go back thinking about the Coke vs Pepsi taste test. As Malcolm Gladwell puts it, Pepsi won the sip test as it tastes better in smaller quantities. But Coke won in the market as it taste better when you drink the whole bottle. More info on this here.

I think we are seeing a similar behavior with WP7. The OS might be great in a demo, but if you use the device for extended periods of time, it won’t do well. Microsoft went for the cool factor with their new OS. Given Microsoft’s core audience (businesses), I am not sure if this is a good thing. It looks like this is exactly what Microsoft is shooting for. Ballmer’s interview with Seattle Times highlights this.

Q: Windows Phone 7 (a cellphone platform) is coming out this holiday season. How are you going to turn this into a billion-dollar business for Microsoft?

A: The place to start is, “Are we going to have cool phones out with our software on them this holiday season?” You put aside the questions of how you make money and blah, blah, blah. That’s all interesting in the long run. In the short run (claps his hands and rubs them together), people gotta want these phones. I think they’re going to look pretty good. … If we start the popularity chain and start kind of the buzz around these things, we’ll be able to make some money off them.

Highlights are mine above. Based on the response above, Microsoft seems to be going for the cool factor in the short term. I am not sure if this a good thing for Microsoft. But if that is what they are aiming for, I guess Microsoft achieved it with the new metro look. A look, that will not work for a majority of the audience.

The entire OS is two dimensional with shades of gray all over the place. After a while, the cool factor dries down and all you are left with is a DOS like interface on your phone. The navigation is confusing. There is horizontal navigation on the top for menus (not to mention huge font size) and then there is vertical navigation below it. Then you have several options at the bottom and coming back to where you started in an app is a pain. To keep it short, it is not easy to understand how the navigation works on the device. It might be fine for geeks, but it is going to be a challenge for mainstream audience. Microsoft recommends developers to follow the same 2D/metro look for their applications. I don’t think we will see much innovation if the developers are restricted to the retro design.

I wanted Microsoft to come up with a better mobile OS. But they disappoint. I actually think this OS might be better fit for a tablet than a phone. The phone could be a hit among students etc. But for businesses, this version/design will not work. I think Android and iPhone will continue to make inroads in the smart phone market and Windows Phone 7 will continue to lag despite Microsoft’s push.

WP7 has the cool factor. But this cool factor will die down soon. The OS is not optimized for productivity.

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.

When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”

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.

This is a device I can hand it my grand father and he won’t have much trouble using it. Compare this to handing him a laptop and training him about how an OS works, what a drive is, what a file system is, why he needs an anti-virus software etc. Ease of use is the key here. Infact, we have seen this with iPhone already. Every day I see many 2-3 year old having absolutely no problem using the device. That makes a HUGE difference.

In a country like India, there are over 500 million mobile phones. But there are less than 15 Million computers (connected to the internet). Why is this the case? One of the reason is, PCs are complicated to use/learn for non-techies. I think this device can address a broader market as it hides the details from the user.

Ofcourse, mobility is a another huge factor here. India has less than 40Million landlines compared to 500Million mobile phones. Morgan Stanley report on mobile internet says mobile internet will cross desktop internet usage very soon. It is through devices like this we will see this happening and it is through devices like these the internet will reach the masses worldwide.

Sure, for techies, it can be yet another device between phone and a laptop solving a specific need, but for the rest of the world, I think this will be a great device and mostly their primary computer. Yes, there are some missing features initially, but they’ll be addressed and that is the evolution of any product. We have seen this with the iPhone and I am sure we will see this with iPad.

Overall, I see this as a first major step in the evolution of mobile computing. We will see a flurry of devices in coming months and years. But end of the day, it is all about software. In this case, iPad has the software dumbed down to the masses in a great form factor and in my view, it’ll be a winner.