Longtime Internet pioneer, AOL today matured its mobile platform with a two new applications for Android handsets and an HTML5 version of the AOL Mobile website for smartphones. The new site — still found at http://m.aol.com — now supports richer content and media on handset browsers supporting HTML5. While it’s not surprising that AOL is looking to support advanced devices such as smartphones, the selection of Android over iPhone for the new software title is notable.

Speaking of Mobile Strategy…

It is an interesting choice and certainly not a bad one specifically due to the momentum of the Android platform. They can follow this with an iPhone app and not even miss a beat.

I like it because they are not following the crowd. It shows both leadership and independent thinking… Although we don’t have visibility into all the reasons why AOL chose Android over the iPhone it does put a marker on the ground and shows they are thinking things through and not bowing down to the buzz.

I like it.

A few years ago in speaking with customers their priority for development was:
- BlackBerry
- iPhone

Then it became:
- iPhone
- Android
- BlackBerry

Will it soon become…
- Android
- iPhone
- … and maybe BlackBerry?

I was watching Nexus One very carefully especially it’s direct to consumer implications considering my emphasis on the Open Gardens philosophy. By all accounts, the reception has been luke warm and as the fierce wireless article says, when it is available, Nexus one is not in its original incarnation (through a direct to consumer web site), rather it is sold and distributed through Operators – making it similar to any other phone

So .. What does it mean for the industry as a whole?

Nexus One put Google directly in competition (and indeed conflict) with other handset vendors who adopted Android. So, in that context, I see Nexus One as an experiment and in Google showing what is potentially possible. This is similar to Google strategy of acquiring spectrum Google: Spectrum bid goal was openness, not winning.

These goals are commendable but also commercial in keeping up with the Google business model of advertising(more people use more content and more that content is linked- annotated , the better the advertising model works as long as Google can capture meta data for that content). That philosophy applies to spectrum as it applies to phones .. Others benefit (and some lose) and the customer gets services which they could never dream of before(example Google maps and Google street view)

Whatever you can say about that vision, it certainly works .. And it customers like it ..
This last bit ‘customers like it’ probably explains the Nexus One status ..
In other words, I see it as an experiment which customers(as of today) did not get (and don’t like as such) since they had nothing ‘special’ to look forward to

Remember that the Web players like Google , Facebook, Twitter and Apple are nothing without their customer fan base(a lesson telcos learnt only too late after the proverbial horse had well and truly bolted from the stable)

There are many factors already discussed such as ‘support’ by email only for Nexus one, iPhone comparison, not understanding the consumer device market and the experimentation angle ..

However, I would like to add two things to this:

a) Apple succeeded to some extent by the direct billing (through iTunes) which is a sort of direct to consumer strategy. That worked because they had the customer on their side by providing a truly superior product in the iPhone. To get concessions from Operators, we need a truly superior product – which Nexus One was not and nor were the many offerings from Nokia(which explains Nokia’s current soul searching).

In other words, the customer is the main driver. If you want to get Operators to change their strategies, get the customer on your side first.. That did not happen with Nexus One.

b) The second point is more subtle. There needs to be ONE main factor for the switch. It’s hard to convince customers about MANY benefits. One BIG benefit which MATTERS for customers will do. Most of us had hotmail accounts. Many of us(including me) switched to gmail in a big way. Why? It was more than ‘Google’. For me, gmail has one BIG feature which literally gave me something very valuable .. TIME .. And that’s the SPAM filter. Nothing else comes even close to it. That alone was enough to justify the move.

So, to conclude, I see Nexus one as an experiment .. But a valuable one in Openness where we can all learn the value of serving the customer.

…buried in yesterday’s Pew Internet report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” it appears that Ballmer has cleared a way to score a future goal. The survey indicated that more than half of US consumers already get news and other real-time information wirelessly via laptops. This is a field which Steve still has a lot of control.When Ballmer’s boys release Windows 7 for the Mobile it is likely to improve the links between the desktop and the the PC. Not only making the OS more attractive for business but also for those who want news on the move. It is starting to look like Windows 7 will be able to mimic a lot more PC behaviour on a mobile and thus Steve can use established behaviour on the desktop and put it onto mobile by offering similar capabilities.

Consumers should be able to sync capabilities and their behaviour from mobile Windows desktop to Windows Phone. “On-the-go-news consumers” are a better demographic for Redmond than say the iPhone user. According to Pew Internet: “The typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, age 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full-time.” It is the same demographic which is likely to buy a bleeding edge phone.

Apple’s demographic is much younger and less interested in news or anything other than shiny objects and listening to Coldplay.

The original title on this post at Fudzilla is somewhat of a misnomer. Or perhaps it was done like this as as an attempt to draw traffic (we all do it don’t we?).

However, it does bring up one good point.

Microsoft has had success in mobile longer than what most give them credit for. Where am I clipping this from? What am I using?

I am at a Starbucks three hours from home… and I am on my Windows Laptop.

More than we would like to admit… Microsoft already has many of our hearts and minds while mobile. Some (at least more than 50% of you) are also reading this from a Windows desktop or laptop.

How many of you are reading this on a laptop? Away from your desk? Away from home?

We should never underestimate the sleeping giant… no matter how many missteps it takes it is still there and close enough to get back into the game.

Or am I wrong?

A new report published yesterday by the UN indicates that 67% of the world’s population, or two-thirds total, are mobile subscribers- far outweighing Online access.

67% of the world’s population represents around 4.6B people, up from only 1B in 2002, indicating staggering continued growth.  In developing nations, however, the uptake is even more substantial with 57% of the total population in these nations being mobile subscribers, even though other technologies are scarce.

What’s your Mobile Strategy?

Regardless of what you do… you need to think through this. How does it affect your business? Your constituents? Your congregants? Your members?

You don’t have to be a business to have a strategy… you just need to understand that you have them right there. They all have mobile devices … what are you going to do about it?

What’s your call to action?

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders… for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology… how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more… much more.

If you were planning on popping a lot of location-based ads into your upcoming killer iPhone app, you might want take a peek at the latest update from Apple for developers. A rather stern note on the site reads: “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.” Is Apple doing this to prevent abuse from advertisers, so that users won’t end up with advertisements from stores all around them? There isn’t any real explanation as to why this isn’t allowed, but it’s certainly worth taking note if you’re building an app with the intention of putting advertisements in. After all, you wouldn’t want to spend your precious time building an app only to find out that it will be rejected by Apple, right?

Interesting little tid bit. Somewhere else folks have been wondering out loud if this has anything to do with Apple’s purchase of Quattro or some other secret juicy soon to be released nugget? Unfortunately I don’t recall where or who was doing this wondering…

It certainly can’t be about diluting the App Store right? It is already flooded with loads of sub-quality apps… so what is this about?

Or I may be wrong. Perhaps they are just trying to clean up and tighten control to prevent users from being spammed with ads…

Regardless of the underlying reason why Apple is doing this it is for the good of the industry. It does make one feel protected and looked after doesn’t it?