Quick Takes: Nokia's culture, RIM's interface, and living in the paradigm of engineers

This post is an experiment.  I sometimes run across information that I think is worth sharing, but that doesn't fit into my usual publishing tools.  Generally it'll be something too complicated to tweet, but too simple for one of my usual long blog posts.  I've decided to try compiling those tidbits into an occasional post, which I call "Quick Takes."

Please let me know if you find this useful.

This time I want to talk about the aftermath of the Nokia-Microsoft deal, Android on BlackBerry, wireless insecurity, and WikiLeaks as a model for the future of human society.


More aftershocks from the Nokia-Microsoft deal

In the flood of commentary about Nokia's deal with Microsoft, I ran across three items with interesting perspectives on the deal.  They helped me understand how much work Nokia still needs to do.  If you're interested in the deal, or just in organizational change, I think they're worth checking out...

The engineering-driven culture.
  Adam Greenfield, a former Nokia employee, discussed Nokia's culture and explained how it produces wonderful mobile phone devices but poor user experiences (link).  The key sentence:
The value-engineering mindset that’s so crucial to profitability as a commodity trader is fatal as a purveyor of experiences.

When I've written in the past that Nokia needs to learn how to do real product management, this is what I was trying to say.

This is how it feels to have an alliance dumped on you.  Meanwhile, if you want to get a sense of how corporate alliances get built, check out Engadget's interview with Aaron Woodman of Microsoft (link).  Aaron is a Microsoft spokesman and a key player in the Windows Phone team, so you might expect him to know chapter and verse about the plans for the alliance with Nokia.  But he doesn't, and you can feel his discomfort as Engadget tries to pin him down on some details:

Q:  There will be no preferential treatment given to Nokia in terms of the level of customization that they can apply to their devices. Is that correct, or no?
A: So it's an interesting question -- you say, like, preferential treatment, so say more about that. Is that like oh, they can modify...

The reality is that a big corporate alliance is created from the top down.  Senior management negotiates the broad outlines, and then announces the deal (because it's material to both companies and has to be announced to prevent insider trading).  Then the mid-level employees have to painstakingly work out what the agreement actually means.  I believe that's happening as you read this, and that process will probably continue for some months.  Meanwhile, Aaron can't answer most of Engadget's questions because the answers don't yet exist.  I give him a lot of credit for not trying to make up something to make himself sound better.

Anyway, if you see some vagueness from Microsoft and Nokia in the next few months, don't be alarmed.  It's how these things are done.

When is an installed base not an installed base?  I've been delighted to watch the rise of Horace Dediu, a former Nokia employee who has built himself a huge online following through very cogent analysis of Apple, and now the overall mobile market.  Although I usually find myself agreeing with everything he says, I thought he was a bit off base in some recent commentary about Nokia (link).

Dediu plotted the installed base of every mobile platform, and pointed out that Symbian has a far larger installed base than any other mobile platform.  He said Nokia has decided to throw away that installed base:

The disposal of such a large installed base must count among the largest divestitures in technology history and, when coupled with the adoption of the least-tested alternative as a replacement, elevates platform risk-taking to a new level. It may seem bold, but there is a fine line between courage and recklessness.

If all of those Symbian users understood that Symbian was their OS, had purchased applications for it, and felt that Symbian added value to their devices, then Nokia would indeed be taking a huge risk.  But virtually the only people who were even aware of Symbian were the people reading and writing blogs about the mobile industry.

Try this -- go look at a typical Nokia Symbian phone.  What is the brand you see on it?  Start the software, launch some apps.  Do you see the word "Symbian" displayed prominently?

Have you ever seen an ad for Symbian?  A billboard perhaps, or a big glossy ad on the back cover of the Economist?

Maybe a teensy little text ad inside the Economist?  Anything?

Indeed not.  Because Nokia didn't want the name Symbian to be prominent.  Heck, it didn't even let Symbian create its own user interface, let alone advertise its brand.  Nokia made Symbian into anonymous plumbing, because Nokia wanted Nokia to be the brand that users bought.  And considering how things worked out, that was something the company did right.

When I was at Palm and we surveyed mobile phone users, we asked Symbian users what OS was on their phones.  Most of them had no idea.  Among the minority who said they knew what their OS was, more of them thought it was Windows than knew it was Symbian.

Let me say that again, more Symbian users thought they were using Windows than knew they were using Symbian.  I guarantee that hasn't changed in the years since we did our surveys.

So, if Nokia executes its marketing properly, it should be able to flip most Symbian users to Windows Phone easily.  Just grin, tell them it's the cool new Nokia smartphone, and move on.  In that vein, the riskiest thing Nokia has done in the past couple of weeks is play up its deal with Microsoft.  It would have been better to play it down, so Nokia customers wouldn't get a message of disruption.

But I doubt most of them are listening anyway.

If there's anything reckless in the Nokia-Microsoft deal, it's the huge number of things that both companies need to execute very well in order to make it work.  But I think there's nothing reckless about the basic idea of ditching Symbian.


Android apps on BlackBerry?

There have been persistent rumors that RIM is trying to get software that will let its PlayBook tablet run Android apps (link).  Now there's some evidence that they may be looking to do the same on BlackBerry phones as well (link).  This seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I'm astounded that they're only working on it now.  The time to plan the app platform for your tablet is when you're creating the software for it, about a year before it ships.  It's not the sort of thing you dink around with a couple of months before shipment.  And you especially don't tell the public about it right before the hardware launches -- all that does is undercut any chance you had of getting native app development on your platform.


Wireless isn't secure (duh)

This isn't news if you've been paying attention.  For years the security companies have been telling us that wireless networks (especially wifi) can easily be snooped.  I'm not sure why the wireless insecurity story has never gotten much traction outside the beltway.  Maybe we weren't using enough web apps to care, or maybe no one listens to the security companies because they're presumed to be alarmists who just want to charge you $49.95 a year for something that'll make your computer run slow.

Anyway, it seems to me that the story is now popping up all over the place.  In December the Wall Street Journal ran a series on the information collected by mobile apps (link), this week The New York Times ran a story on the third party tools available to hack wifi hotspots (link), and a professor at Rice University posted on the types of data his class could sniff from his Android phone (link).  A surprising find -- two apps unrelated to location services were broadcasting his GPS location.

Why is this significant?  The mobile operators plan to offload traffic to wifi to reduce network congestion.  If those networks turn out to be insecure, the operators might be blamed for security breaches that result.  Or if more wifi networks are restricted due to security fears, the operators might find it harder to do that offloading in the first place.  Bottom line -- it is risky to depend on someone else's infrastructure as part of your core product.


WikiLeaks: Human society as designed by an open source engineer

O'Reilly ran a fascinating review of Inside WikiLeaks, a new book describing how WikiLeaks operates (link).  It reminded me of some thoughts I had after I heard a talk by Ward Cunningham, one of the creators of the wiki (link).

Most of the social structures in the world today were designed by two groups of people, religious leaders and lawyers.  The religious leaders gave us governments based on moral codes and hierarchies; the lawyers gave us governments based on laws, property, and checks and balances.  In both cases, the people creating the system built into it their own worldviews, their own assumptions about human nature.  The assumptions were so fundamental that I think they didn't even realize they were using them; they just baked them into the system.

Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, and movements like them are profoundly new because they attempt to structure society around the social assumptions of a third group of people: engineers.  And not just any engineers, but open source engineers.  That culture believes in the rationality of human beings and the existence of absolute truth.  It assumes that if the same information were available to everyone we'd be able to settle all disputes through logical discourse.  And it is intensely hostile to authority structures, because by definition they're assumed to get in the way of free discussion.

WikiLeaks is an attempt by that culture to restructure society.  I know that sounds crazy, but here's a quote from the book:

In the world we dreamed of, there would be no more bosses or hierarchies, and no one could achieve power by withholding from the others the knowledge needed to act as an equal player.

If you want to see this idea taken to its logical extreme, check out the short story "The Ungoverned" by science fiction author Vernor Vinge (it's online here).  I'm not saying that's the world we're headed for, but I think we'd all be foolish to assume that WikiLeaks will be the last attempt at open source social engineering.

I think it's actually just the beginning.

16 comments:

  1. Michael,

    Each of these quick takes could perfectly be a post. Where is it written that posts should be longer?

    Great work!

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  2. Love the post! Please do more of these.

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  3. I agree with both of the previous comments, even where they disagree with each other—I like the new content, regardless of how you package it. I also agree with your comments about the difficulties Nokrosoft faces; at a recent presentation, they didn’t even seem to know the number of screen sizes developers will need to worry about.

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  4. While I agree with the statement that Symbian users might not be aware of having it in their mobile device, developers, operators and other stakeholders of the ecosystem know these details.

    And, if we believe that the smartphones war is of ecosystems and not of devices, than the fact that Symbian is at the end of the life matters.

    For example, if you are a developer, are you going to invest in the platform now? Probably not.
    If you are an operator, are you going to invest in the support of that platform? Probably not.

    Unless, we consider the forthcoming Symbian devices as feature phones (with a consequent low average selling price). In this case, the ecosystem story is not that important.

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  5. Do you have a quota of max posts per week or min words per post? I'd be just has happy (happier) if you split these into separate posts per subject.

    I have a Nokia phone, and I can't find the word Symbian anywhere, even on the page that lists the software version. The app store (and a bunch of other stuff like Maps) is called "Ovi".

    I chose this phone because it was priced like a feature phone, and uses a cheap feature phone data plan, but can do a few smartphone things. So I'm already using it as commenter "cdr" suggests.

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  6. Nokia did use the S60 brand though. Any change WP will be branded as S60 ;-)

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  7. I did manage to find an "About" page with an S60 logo. (I didn't realize S60 had a logo.) That page says "This product is based on S60 5th edition software. S60 Platform is developed by Nokia and licensed from Nokia Corporation."

    Further down it says "This product includes software licensed from Symbian Software Ltd."

    Then more stuff about Java and GNU. (GNU? Who knew?)

    I got here through this byzantine path: Menu > Settings > Phone > Phone Management > About

    I'm not sure the casual user would find that page, or surmise that any of it was the phone's ecosystem (along the lines of iPhone or Android). All the obvious branding on the phone says Nokia and T-Mobile.

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  8. Thanks for the feedback, folks. I think I'm hearing that the content is OK, but many of you would like to see it broken up into individual posts...


    Julio wrote:

    >>Each of these quick takes could perfectly be a post. Where is it written that posts should be longer?

    I may be over-thinking the issue. I've been encouraging people to subscribe to the weblog by e-mail, because I don't post very often. If I start creating more, shorter posts, I worry that some folks might be bothered by the e-mail volume.

    On the other hand, an advantage of limiting posts to a single subject is that they're easier to link to and discuss.

    I'll think about it some more...


    Flash Sheridan wrote:

    >>the difficulties Nokrosoft faces; at a recent presentation, they didn’t even seem to know the number of screen sizes developers will need to worry about.

    Mmmmmm, Nokrosoft. I like that the best of all the fusion names people have made up for the alliance.

    And yeah, I can almost guarantee that issues like screen size have not been worked out.

    By the way, what does it say for Nokrosoft's likely speed of execution if issues like that need to be negotiated.? I hope that as they flesh out the alliance they'll pay special attention to decision-making flow.

    The competition would do it like this:
    --Apple would get a couple of people in a room and hash it out, with a senior manager making the final call.
    --Google would do whatever it thought was best, and the licensees would have to deal with it.

    Both can move pretty darned fast.


    cdr wrote:

    >>While I agree with the statement that Symbian users might not be aware of having it in their mobile device, developers, operators and other stakeholders of the ecosystem know these details.

    Agreed.


    >>And, if we believe that the smartphones war is of ecosystems and not of devices, than the fact that Symbian is at the end of the life matters.

    But the Symbian ecosystem was already dead, so what is Nokia giving up?


    >>For example, if you are a developer, are you going to invest in the platform now? Probably not.

    How many developers were investing in the platform before? I know there was some support for Qt and MeeGo, but how large was that group of developers compared to Android or iOS? I think it was pretty small.


    >>If you are an operator, are you going to invest in the support of that platform? Probably not.

    Were they investing in Symbian before? Not that I'm aware of. They were investing in Nokia phones, because they attract customers. I don't think that has changed.

    I agree that the ecosystem is important, I just don't believe Nokia had a functioning ecosystem prior to the alliance.


    MikeTeeVee wrote:

    >>I chose this phone because it was priced like a feature phone, and uses a cheap feature phone data plan, but can do a few smartphone things. So I'm already using it as commenter "cdr" suggests.

    I think most Symbian users are like you, Mike.

    In other words, Symbian may be a smartphone OS, but most of its customers are more or less feature phone users.


    >>I did manage to find an "About" page with an S60 logo. (I didn't realize S60 had a logo.) That page says "This product is based on S60 5th edition software. S60 Platform is developed by Nokia and licensed from Nokia Corporation." Further down it says "This product includes software licensed from Symbian Software Ltd."

    Wow, it doesn't even reference the Symbian OS directly in the fine print. Thanks for sleuthing that out.


    Anonymous wrote:

    >>Nokia did use the S60 brand though. Any change WP will be branded as S60 ;-)

    Very, very good point. Thanks. I think Nokia would be wise to continue the S60 brand in some way, at least during the transition. I think it would also be wise not to totally drop the Ovi name.

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  9. These quick takes work for me. It's the depth of insight that counts. A sharp, quick blade adds to the advantage.

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  10. Michael,

    Like this format and the content. Not all posts need to be long to be interesting.
    Having both the regular posts with these 'interruption' posts works well for me.

    As for the Symbian brand - I did a similar short survey with my own friends and got to similar results. I wrote about it in a recent post titled Android - the OS Symbian wanted to be.

    Regards,
    Tsahi

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  11. Regards RIM's development direction: “…all [uncertainty] does is undercut any chance you had of getting native app development on your platform.”

    Maybe it's MY failure, but I have never understood how RIM hoped to get ANY 3rd party apps any time soon, and it must be awful to be doing development inhouse, too.

    There IS no published native development kit. Your choices are AIR and an enhanced HTML package. None of your BlackBerry OS5 and OS6 skillsets need apply.

    And since there are no tools, no interest, and with no interest, no need to dedicate support; see Jamie Murai's rant about how RIM made it impossible to try.

    But that was before starting this comment.

    Regards the recent sightings of BlackBerrys claiming to be running Android, I don't see it as TOO unlikely that Android would be a template for many of the frameworks that will eventually show up in QNX. It seems that RIM at least has a solid deal with Oracle, and if Oracle delivers a knockout punch on Android re: IP theft, this path could have a double benefit in letting developers move over en masse.

    Just as one ought not ascribe to malevolence actions that can be understood as merely stupid, RIM's utter lack of a Playbook SDK shouldn't be ascribed to blinding stupidity (as it seems), if they are merely trying to pull a rabbit out of their hat but need time to get their technical act together, and actually have something, whether it's Plan B or Un-be-f'ing-lievable Genius Plan A.

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  12. Mace, why is there no post date on these posts? It's kind of important for readers to know when each was written.

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  13. Walt French wrote:

    >>Just as one ought not ascribe to malevolence actions that can be understood as merely stupid, RIM's utter lack of a Playbook SDK shouldn't be ascribed to blinding stupidity (as it seems), if they are merely trying to pull a rabbit out of their hat but need time to get their technical act together

    That is a really good comment, Walt. Thanks for posting it.


    Anonymous wrote:

    >>why is there no post date on these posts?

    The date is contained in the URL, at the top of the page.

    I don't put a date as the first line in the posts because this isn't a daily diary type of blog. It's more like a series of essays, or maybe chapters of a long book, where the posts stay relevant for a long period of time. It just happens to be hosted on a blogging tool for convenience.

    When I started Mobile Opportunity, I inserted the date at the beginning of every post, and found that people stopped reading anything that was more than a week old. Seriously.

    When I pulled off the date, the reading patterns changed. I kept the date in the URL, though, so people could find it if they were wondering.

    It felt to me like a reasonable compromise. But I know it annoys some people, and for that I apologize.

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  14. Michael,

    I could not agree with you more just ask the Former crew at the Symbian Foundation about how their hands were tied. Symbian never had an independent voice, especially once the shareholding and power base was basically Nokia, Nokia, Nokia.

    Gregory
    Mobile 2.0

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  15. The Nokia-Microsoft deal made headlines, and with the eve of Android and iPhone, even giants like Blackberry are lagging behind.

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  16. awesome post... bookmarked and waiting for another post

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