Content Matters

What Role Does Gender Play in Mobile Hardware Use?

Will Apple products start to be designed to meet gender-specific needs? No, I'm not talking about something stupid like pink versions of pens or phones. But the response to both the iPhone 6 and Apple watch seem to be somewhat different, according to gender.

 

When the iPhone 6 and 6+ were first released, I remember many of my friends being awed by the screen of the 6+. It seemed perfect - easy to read and to scroll. Yet, within a few weeks, I noticed many of those same friends had become less enamored with the 6+. Specifically, several male friends were dissatisfied with their decision to buy the 6+. And when I asked them, I got the same answer from each - "it doesn't fit in my pocket". Meanwhile, the women I knew who'd bought a 6+ were still very happy with their decision. I realized that none of them kept their phone in their pocket.

 

Let's face it - most skirts, ladies' suit pants and other women's business attire simply don't have pockets. Hell, for some reason neither she nor I can figure out. many of my daughter's jeans have faux pockets. For many women, their phone sits in their bag or on their desk all day, not in their pants.

 

The other comment I heard from men was that the 6+ was a 2-handed device, while the iPhone 6 could be managed with one hand. And while some men have small hands, and some women larger hands, on the whole, men's hands tend to be larger. For many women, even the iPhone 6 might be a 2-handed device, so moving to the 6+ brings no added drawback.

 

Now, with the launch of the Apple Watch, I'm seeing some comments that make me think men and women are viewing the Watch differently.

In an article on wsj.com, Joanna Stern discusses how she "tamed the watch" by turning off excess notifications, and now it meets her needs, notifying her of important matters. And that's great. Except, that's what my phone already does. I turned off most notifications and now get notified with a gentle vibration for meetings or critical messages. 

 

I think the key difference here is that for many women, their phone sits in a bag where they can't feel the vibrating notifications. For most men, the phone sits in their pocket most of the day. Sure, having it on my wrist might save me from occasionally having to pull the phone out, but for the most part, that slight vibration tells me what I need to know. If I'm in my 2pm meeting, the vibration tells me that my 2:30 will be starting in ten minutes. I don't need to pull the phone out to figure that out. But if the phone lived in my bag, I'd never know that.

 

While for many men, on-body notifications from the phone are nothing new, but for those women who don't keep their phone in their pocket, the Apple Watch brings a totally new experience.

 

Wth the Apple Watch and with the larger iPhones, we're starting to see a gender-based split on use cases. I wonder where this will take us next.

The One Thing Missing From the Apple Watch Launch

The Apple Watch launch event was a spectacle. Thousands of journalists and industry luminaries lined up for entry into the auditorium, giving it almost a red carpet feel (though without the silly "who are you wearing?" questions). Once inside, the crowd hung on every word, with even journalists applauding each new announcement (something I don't believe they teach at J-school). 

The crowd oohed and aahed at each new device - ooh a gold MacBook, a pretty aluminum Apple  Watch and, ultimately, the gold Edition Watch.

 

But for me, one thing was missing. Compelling User Stories. How were these Apple Watches going to solve real problems or drive new behaviors.

 

"That's unfair" was the retort of the fan boys and girls. "When the iPhone launched, no one knew what it would be used for" was a common refrain.

 

But that's not quite true. The iPhone promised a computer in your pocket, with full Internet access wherever you went. And it offered features we had become accustomed to in other devices - an iPod, a phone, a GPS (the camera came later).

 

"What about the iPad?" was another common refrain. Well, the iPad added some core functionality - a larger screen for surfing or reading, but not a lot more. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the iPad model is that it relies heavily on 3rd party app developers to drive innovative functionality. And, to be frank, as an early adopter, I haven't seen a lot of innovation from those developers. 

 

One of the first innovative products for the iPad was the News Corp tablet-based newspaper, The Daily. The Daily, leveraging all the capabilities of the iPad, held the promise for immersive, innovative advertising. But most of the ads were simply boring. It turns out that ad agencies were ill-equipped to create immersive experiences what they were good at were creating static display ads and video ads for television. So, that's mostly what we got in The Daily. 

 

Fast-forward nearly five years and we see that the big challenge for the iPad is that upgrade cycles are long. Since app developers are not pushing the limits of the hardware, the version you bought 3 years ago is still just fine for the primarily tasks of reading and browsing. My iPad 3 does everything I need. And my wife only recently upgraded from her first gen iPad, only because Apple wouldn't allow that version to upgrade to the latest version of iOS. The app ecosystem around the iPad remains largely focused on reading apps, along with more expansive views of phone apps (calendar, mail, social media). App developers have failed the test of driving new use cases that Apple had not imagined.

 

Which brings me back to the Apple Watch. In the demos, the greatest benefit that Apple shared was "YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR POCKET!!!"

 

OK. There's some value in that. If you get frequent notifications, you might find value in glancing at your wrist, rather than reaching into a pocket or purse. Then again, I shut off most notifications as I don't want constant interruptions for low priorities.  For high priority alerts I am fine reaching into my pocket.

 

It seems to me that Apple has not identified any really compelling use cases for wrist-based access. And the assumption that developers in the Apple ecosystem will identify those must-buy concepts seems a big risk to the model. I'm sure there will interesting uses. I think a voice recorder could be very practical, though I am glad there's no camera. But that alone is unlikely to drive adoption.

 

I've always felt that the wrist was not the most obvious place for a mobile device. The reason why Dick Tracy had a wristwatch phone was that, at the time, a watch was the only "device" most people carried (Maxwell Smart's shoe phone came later). No one at the time envisioned us all carrying a powerful computer in our pocket.

 

Wearables have the potential to impact the way that we work. I'm not sure that a wrist-based disruption device is the answer. Small screens have limited use cases, other than for quick alerts. I think there's more potential for an in-ear device ("smart earbuds") that can provide more useful information. And, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by innovative apps that emerge, but I'm a skeptic for now.

It's Hard to Disrupt From Within: One Reason the Apple-Beats Deal Could Make Sense

There's no questioning that Apple has been a disruptive force in the market. Whether it's digital cameras, GPS devices, or the original Walkman, Apple has completely changed the way we use electronic devices, bludgeoning many companies in the process. And they've clearly disrupted the way in which we buy music. While iTunes brought order to a chaotic world of illegal downloads, together with Amazon, it's a major reason why Tower Records is no longer here.

 

But in each of those cases, Apple was the disrupter, not the company being disrupted. The one possible exception was when they disrupted the market for standalone iPods by adding that feature to the iPhone, but they were moving customers to a more expensive device in the process, so it wasn't a terribly difficult move.

 

But disrupting from within is not easy. Anyone who's ever tried to bring out innovative new products at an existing market leader can attest to that.

 

When I was with Crowd Fusion, one of our clients was Tecca, a startup funded by Best Buy. Tecca was a mobile-first content provider with great video and blog content on consumer electronics. They also provided a barcode scanner, which returned reviews and pricing from BestBuy, Amazon and Google Products.

 

Tecca could have been a great differentiator for Best Buy, driving greater value for customers who come into their stores. But, although they had incubated the company, Best Buy could never fully embrace it. After all, users of the app might see that prices were lower at Amazon. 

 

And that's the dilemma faced by all legacy companies, when trying to disrupt their own business. Too many people have their bonuses tied to preventing that disruption. And that could be the challenge for Apple and iTunes.

 

For several years, analysts, bloggers and consumers have been waiting for Apple to jump into the streaming audio market with a Spotify-like offering. And, just like the annual Gene Munster predictions of an imminent Apple TV, their streaming audio has so far been a unicorn. They've danced around the edges (iTunes Radio) but held off on building what seemed the obvious next step. And while there are many strong arguments against building an Apple television (low-margin business where consumers only replace a device once a decade), the arguments for streaming audio are much more compelling. So, what's held Apple back?

 

The reality is that iTunes today is a $28 Billion per year business for Apple (using estimates from Horace Dediu). And while the largest part of that is the App Store, iTunes music is still a multi-billion dollar business.

 

Now, I don't know how much the average iTunes user spends on audio downloads per month, but my guess is that Apple would willingly trade those users for a predictable $10/month subscription service. That's not what makes them worry.

 

But when you look at the streaming audio market, most of the companies in that space have used the freemium model. Take Spotify, for example. As of a year ago, Spotify had roughly 6mm paying customers and 24 mm active users. So, they've been able to convert about a quarter of their users from free to paid. As freemium services go, that's pretty impressive. But, for a company like Apple, with billions of iTunes transactions potentially at risk, that can be very scary. The idea that millions of iTunes users might stop paying for downloads, and instead use a free streaming service could mean huge disruption to Apple's iTunes business. 

 

The freemium model makes sense for consumer subscription products, as it's an inexpensive way to drive brand awareness. How would Spotify attract an audience if it required a subscription? Instead, by bringing new users on board for free, they hope to upgrade some of those users to paid over time. 

 

Beats Music took a different approach. They decided to buck the trend and not go freemium. Instead, they used a "free trial" approach, where new users could sign up for a trial of the service, but would then have to either subscribe or quit after the trial ends. Unlike Spotify and other rivals, Beats could rely upon its brand to drive awareness, while also partnering with other companies to spur trials. At launch, Beats Music partnered with AT&T, so users could simply add the service to their monthly mobile bill.

 

And that's why Beats Music is not nearly as scary for Apple as Spotify, Rhapsody or even YouTube. There's no free option with Beats. And, because they're buying an existing business, it will be more difficult for managers throughout Apple to sabotage it, even if they do see it as a threat.

 

I'm still not very bullish on this deal. As I'd previously written, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But it could be that Apple management, realizing how difficult it might be to disrupt iTunes from within, saw this as a less difficult approach.

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Apple - Beats Deal Makes No Sense

When the news first hit of a potential Apple acquisition of Beats, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. Having given it another day to think about it, it still makes little sense to me.

There are two core parts to the Beats business: hardware (headphones and speakers) and streaming audio. Let's take a look at each.

 

Hardware

Beats hardware products are headphones, earbuds and portable speakers. Their headphones and earbuds are not particularly innovative - they use the same basic design that other manufacturers have used for decades. Their portable speaker, the Beats Pill, is basically a me-too version of the Jawbone Jambox. Beats products are not of particularly high quality. I owned a pair of diddy beats earbuds. They had decent, but unspectacular sound quality. The left channel died about a month after the warranty expired, but that happens with many earbuds. 

 

But the key issue here is that Beats are not particularly innovative.  Some have suggested that the Beats team would be able to help Apple create a great iWatch.

 

This is not a Google - Nest deal, where you're bringing on a team of design engineers who are rethinking everyday items. It's not Square, who have brought point-of-sale to the mobile device. There's no real innovation here. Instead, this is a company that has created a cool brand around decent quality products. Beats does offer a cachet of cool. At least for now.

 

But Apple doesn't need to rely on others to provide coolness to their products. Apple products are already cool. And while Apple's coolness seems to have staying power, Beats are more of a fashion statement for teens, and you can look at brands like Abercrombie to see how fleeting that position can be.

 

Streaming

Beats created what they hoped would be a Spotify killer.

The Beats Music service launched to great hype, but has struggled to gain traction. I have not used the service, so have to rely on reviews that I've read, but in a market crowded with entries, Beats did not particularly stand out. The UI got good marks, but the core functionality was not very different for that of Spotify, Slacker, Rdio or Google Play. It wouldn't seem that difficult for Jony Ive''s team at Apple to build a comparable service. Some tout the existence of contracts with the record companies as an asset, but all of those contracts will need to be reassigned or renegotiated, and I'd guess it wouldn't be too hard for Apple to strike comparable deals on their own.

 

Two days in and I'm still baffled

With $151 billion in the bank, the $3.2 billion deal is not a huge financial strain for Apple, but it is significantly more than they've paid for any other acquisition. And the deal itself still doesn't make much sense to me. Beats hardware is a bit of a fad that could collapse as fashions change. Their streaming service seems OK, but it's hardly unique. But Tim Cook and his team are smart and I'm sure there are things that I've not considered. But for now, this deal makes little sense to me.

Fourteen Deals Yahoo Could Do With The Alibaba Proceeds

There's lots of discussion of what Yahoo! should do with the proceeds of the Alibaba sale. Some are calling for a dividend (boring), while Josh suggests a bold move would be to buy a controlling stake in Twitter.

And while the core advertising business continues to drag, I don't see any simple deals that would really reverse that. So, while Yahoo should continue to make small, strategic technology deals, I'd look elsewhere for the big deals.

Yahoo still has a huge footprint in both Finance and Sports, so why not double-down on those? And two important, emerging opportunities for Yahoo come in Video and Mobile, so those need attention as well.

Assuming Yahoo has $10 Billion to go shopping with, who should they buy?

In the Finance space, there are a number of interesting content plays that could reenergize their Finance pages and give them some unique content. Stocktwits, the online community for active traders, provides the best insights into financial events as they happen. Just watch the StockTwits page for a tech company during their earning release and you’ll see what I mean. Estimize, who crowdsource earnings estimates, M&A rumors and now economic data, could provide an innovative reason to visit Yahoo pages. TheStreet.com has been rapidly building their video content and would be an attractive fit, provided they could convince Cramer to stay on board for a few years. Yahoo could probably acquire those three companies for around $350mm.

While ESPN has now surpassed Yahoo Sports in traffic (according to ComScore), Yahoo is a close second. It may not be ideal timing, but if I were Marissa, I’d give Jim Bankoff at Vox Media a call. While the new Ezra Klein-led Vox.com may not be a great fit, SB Nation would be a great addition, while Curbed could open up some new opportunities. If they couldn’t get SB Nation, I’d see if I could pry Deadspin from Gawker and would also take a look at Bill Simmons’ long form site Grantland. I might also look to pick up either Narrative Science or Automated Insights, both of which offer technology which automates short editorial articles from statistics. Yahoo already uses Automated Insights for personalized summaries of fantasy sports results, but could expand its use across multiple verticals.

Video is a big area of focus for Yahoo, and one where they’ve had success, though the numbers aren’t yet big enough to move the needle. If I were Yahoo, I’d look at Funny Or Die, or perhaps see if IAC might part with CollegeHumor.com in order to drive short-form video and bring more of an edginess to their offerings.

That leaves mobile and social. There’s a lot of interesting activity there. I think the valuations for SnapChat are too high, and I could see it going downhill after an acquisition, but maybe Yahoo could make a play for Whisper or Secret.  And, of course, a content site like Buzzfeed or Distractify could drive a lot of social engagement on mobile and the desktop.

If you were Marissa, what would you do with that pile of cash?

Bad Idea of the Day: LinkedUp

From the Guardian comes word of a new app - the cleverly named LinkedUp, which they describe as "Tinder for your professional network".

The app uses the LinkedIn API to access a user's professional contacts, and has a Tinder-like interface to quickly browse pics and profiles.

Let's think for a minute about how bad an idea this truly is. 

For most of us, our professional network consists of current and former coworkers, clients, your next potential boss and more. What could possibly go wrong?

I can only imagine the alerts from LinkedIn: you've just been endorsed for the following skills...

According to founder Max Fischer, "I think it helps people feel a little more comfortable about people. I was looking through some profiles earlier today and the tag line says "You must love sports and dogs" or "I really love this hockey team." 

Wait - I thought that's what Facebook already does. It captures your social graph, your interests, your experiences and more. But it does that in your social circle, not your professional circle. In other words, people who are less likely to adversely impact your career if things don't go quite right.

There could be worse ideas for dating. Perhaps a "classmates.com" for prison parolees, or an app that sits on top of the national sex-offender registry. And, I'm sure there will be those who find LinkedUp to be a useful app. But, there's a reason we don't have a single social graph, covering our business and personal lives. And most of us prefer that those world's do not collide.

 

 

 

With Office for iPad, Microsoft Aims to Drive Its Cloud Services

The long-awaited Office for iPad was launched today.

Office for iPad is clearly aimed at driving users to adopt Microsoft’s cloud-based tools. It’s fine as a document reader, but to edit or create documents requires a $99.99 per year Office 365 subscription.

To access cloud-based documents, which is the primary way you'll work with documents, they have to reside on Microsoft OneDrive (the relabeled SkyDrive service). There’s no option to access your docs on Dropbox, Google Drive or any other third party platforms. You can get a free OneDrive account with 7 GB of storage, but for those who actively use Dropbox or another service, the idea of adding another cloud host for documents doesn’t make much sense. That leaves an opening for tools like QuickOffice Pro, acquired by Google, which integrates with both gmail and Dropbox.

The applications themselves seem robust. They didn't just take the desktop apps and shrink them; clearly a lot of effort went into building device-appropriate apps. I'll leave full reviews on these to others, but my quick thoughts are that the apps themselves are solid.

If you're an active MS Office user who doesn't use Google Docs or Dropbox, Office 365 and OneDrive would make a lot of sense. But, for the gmail/dropbox/google docs crowd, I don't expect much takeup. For me, the biggest benefit might be to use the PowerPoint viewer as a way to more easily run PowerPoint decks from my iPad to a projector. I typically use Keynote for that, but they're not 100% compatible, so a solid PowerPoint viewer will be great for that occasional need.

The big winner here is Apple. Microsoft has resisted developing iPad-specific versions of Office applications because they still held out hope that those applications could ultimately sway users to buy Windows Mobile-based tablets. Clearly, Apple is winning the BYOD war by a large margin and this serves as Microsoft's endorsement of that. Where that leaves Microsoft's mobile strategy, in the long run, is an unanswered question.

 

Poncho Shows Sometimes the Best Mobile App is No App at All

 I've just started to use Poncho, the weather un-app from Betaworks and, at first glance, I'm impressed.

I have used a bunch of weather apps and, until now, the two in "regular rotation" for me are Dark Sky and the Weather Channel.

Dark Sky is a one-trick pony that executes that trick better than anyone else - it gives you the hyperlocal forecast for the next hour. So, whether you're trying to figure out whether to start the softball game, or whether to bring an umbrella to lunch, no one does it better.

I use the Weather Channel app for the more mundane task of checking the daily weather report before I leave for work in the morning. All I want to know is the current temperature and the expected high and low, along with whether it's gong to rain or snow. And the Weather Channel app does that reasonably well, as do a number of others. But, there's a lot of clutter there that most of us don't need.

Enter Poncho.

Poncho, founded by Kuan Huang, out of Betaworks, gives you the info you need, when you need it, without all that clutter. Poncho simply sends you a text message or email each morning, with a brief snippet telling you what you need to know.

There's no app required. Just go to the Poncho sign up page and answer a few critical questions (where do you live? what time do you wake? do you have pollen allergies?) and tell it whether you want your forecast via email, text or both. And, every morning you'll get a brief forecast with just the info you need to know, right when you need it.

What I love about Poncho is the simplicity. It's like the early days of mobile - when I got my first Blackberry in 2000, there were a number of simple auto-reply services. You'd email a question (e.g. stockprice for a given ticker) and a text response would come back. Sometimes, a brief text message is all that you need. We don't need a robust, full-featured app for every task. 

So, we can all learn a lot about development from Poncho.

The Smartwatch Must Be More Than a Remote Control For Your Phone

This week begins the hype all around the new Samsung Smartwatch, to be introduced on Wednesday. 

While many are envisioning Dick Tracy and video chat on the wrist, it doesn’t sound like that’s what the focus of these initial devices will be. And I’m not sure that very many people want the Dick Tracy watch today, anyway.

Fifty years ago, when people thought about mobile devices, they naturally assigned these capabilities to things we already had on our person - a watch, or, in the case of Maxwell Smart, a shoe. Today, we all have powerful communications devices in our pockets, so moving it to our wrist is not that exciting.

And that’s one of the challenges in terms of a smartwatch. What should it be? Is it simply a remote control to access data on your phone, tablet or computer? And will that be enough to become a mainstream “must-have” product?

The core functionality that everyone seems to be focusing on is health and fitness. And there’s definitely an audience for that. Despite the fact that I’ve stopped wearing a watch, I wear my Fitbit 24/7. One good thing about the Fitbit is its low profile. I can work out with it, shower and even leave it on while sleeping (it monitors my sleep). But a big, bulky smartwatch will be cumbersome and I’m not sure it will fit the Fitbit/Fuelband niche.

The other obvious function for a smartwatch is communications. And while Dick Tracy and the Jetsons envisioned videophones as the killer apps of the future, that’s not how people choose to communicate. My teen daughter and her friends use a lot less Facetime and Skype these days, spending most of their time texting. And while receiving texts on your wrist may be compelling for some, sending texts requires a decent typing platform and I’m not sure that a watch interface will lend itself to that.

That’s not to say that there’s not a place for smartwatches. It’s early days for Fitbit and Nike Fuelband and entries from Samsung, Apple, Google and others can certainly expand that market. And certain niche segments may want a texting watch or a wrist-based television remote. But none of these are true killer apps in my opinion.

Dick Tracy doesn’t do it for me. But if you want to get me excited, how about a built-in jetpack? Now that would be a killer smartwatch.

Chromecast - Instant Review

My Google Chromecast arrived today. I was excited to get my hands on it, since my daughter commandeered our Roku box to her room about a year ago, so Netflix for me has been limited to the 9.7" ipad screen since then.

I'm usually quick to bash Best Buy, but I want to give them kudos here. While the Google Play Store and Amazon were out of stock, BestBuy.com processed my order and delivered it right away.

The great thing about Chromecast is its simplicity. When you unbox it, you get a dongle, a USB power cord and a flexible HDMI adapter, without which I would not have been able to plug mine into the TV, which sits against the wall.

It took about 5 minutes to setup the Chromecast, and 3 of those were spent trying to locate the HDMI port by feel without removing the big screen TV from the wall. Once I had it plugged in, the website instructions had be connected in about a minute or two.

And the results...

It's great. So far, I've watched a 1982 Clash concert from Tokyo, on YouTube and am about to watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Don't Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and the gang look much better on the big screen?

So, is it as good as a Roku or Apple TV?

Well, today both of those have more content than the Chromecast. But that gap will soon close. GigaOm is reporting that Chromecast has struck deals with Vimeo and Redbox Instant, with HBO Go and Plex to follow soon after. And you have to expect that every website doing video will add the Chromecast button soon (with the possible exception of direct competitors like iTunes and Amazon). 

What's great about the Chromecast is its portability. I can definitely see buying a second one to use for travel. Since it takes only a minute to set up, why not use a Chromecast in your hotel room? It's a great chance to catch up on those episodes of Bob's Burgers you've been meaning to watch.