The Admob data IS relevant to Nokia

Admob just released some data about mobile web usage. It shows that Apple is the market leader in mobile web usage with 40% of traffic coming from iPhones and iTouches. You can read the article about the data here.

Some people have claimed that based on this it's wrong to say that Apple has a 40% market share of smartphones. Well, that may be, but I would definitely say the data is relevant to Nokia, maybe even more relevant than the positive data showing an increase of Nokia smartphone market share.

The data on smartphone market share says that Nokia is still clearly in the lead with 43% of the market, for example this blogpost by the writers of "Communities Dominate Brands" states the facts pretty clearly.

However, Nokia's strategy is to become a service provider more than a handset maker. The actual handset is becoming a commodity, it's nothing more than a touchscreen that can communicate with the outside world in different protocols.

The important thing is what you can do with it, ie the Apps (calling is an app as well). Also the content is of course important, what you read and so on, for example twitter and Facebook. We don't actually use the phone, we use the apps inside of it. So the apps are important, and all the innovation is now done in the apps. That's where the money will be in the future - Ads, Games, Apps...

The Apps are created by developers, and the more users for Apps, the more monetization possibilities for developers, which also means more innovation. Here Apple is the clear leader, and the fact that it dominates the mobile web market is the evidence. The appStore has also paid off.

So clearly Apple is in a situation where Nokia would like to be - a content and service provider.

I also think that the markets where Nokia dominates now, for example China and Africa, will follow suit in adopting iPhones, if Nokia isn't successful in developing an ecosystem like Apple's that just works. The N900 is a good start, and I'm very eager to see how far it gets Nokia. I can't understand the lack of innovation around the N900 though. Again, Nokia is just concentrating on what you have in your hand, not what people do with it.

So don't come telling me that Nokia is the winner because they're selling the most handsets in a commoditized market with falling margins. I know they don't feel like winners.

Nokia Buys American Carrier and Releases The Tablet

This is not an authentic press release, but maybe something that we'll see quite soon:

Nokia has announced that it will buy a wireless carrier that covers the US and Canada. Nokia will sell its phones with a wireless package or without it. Nokia aims to undercut the prices of competing carriers. It is part of their new strategy in America. Company representatives comment:

"According to research by Technology Firm Gartner, consumers in the US and Canada pay 55 dollars for the same service that only costs 11 dollars in Northern Europe. US and Canada have advanced telecommunications networks, but the prices are the highest in the world. "

The margins of wireless carriers are not very high, but by integrating the value chain, Nokia believes that it can offer better service and lower costs to customers:

"The carriers are in a monopolistic position which hinders the advancement of communications in America. We want to change that. The carriers have also been able to exert power on Nokia, our best phones haven't even made it to the market because of the carriers. We were left with no choice but to start our own carrier."

The new Nokia strategy for America also includes the opening of Nokia stores and a single Smartphone platform.

"We'll be opening Nokia stores around America. We will also sell our carrier services from our own stores. The need for this has been made clear by some of the workforce that have moved from Europe to the US. They are not happy with their wireless service. The business model has been copied from the Northern European market, and we know it works. We are also working in collaboration with some Nordic carriers.

We will be offering unlimited data access and flat rates at any time for calls. We don't believe in restricting consumers and we want to allow predictable billing. In addition, there will be no international roaming fees and the calls will cost the same wherever you are in America, there are no long-distance fees. This has already been the case for example in Finland. It's economically feasible and offers value to the customers. The international call rates vary between 10 - 40 cents per minute."

"The opening of our new stores is happening at the same time as our new Nokia Tablet and Laptop are announced. The tablet runs on a completely open Maemo platform. This platform will be extended but always also supported. It is our answer to the need for customers and developers to only worry about one handheld and that you can keep all your applications and information for a long time forward."

Nokia believes that their technology is superior to what is offered on the market today.

"Well, of course we believe our phones are good. For example, for several years it has been possible to use your mobile phone over bluetooth as a modem for a computer. This is every day life for some people in Finland. However, in Americe, these are completely new features that have come out with the iPhone 3Gs. Unfortunately, Nokia has been unable to communicate these benefits to customers because of the pressure and control of carriers in America. Nokia is able to build the most advanced phones. So far, maybe not the most user friendly, but we're hoping that has changed"

It seems Nokia has found it's path again:

"The mobile carriers in America are barriers to Connecting People. Nokia wants to change that."

The Shift to Utility Computing / Cloud Doesn't Erode Competitive Advantage From IT

I sometimes see that researchers and technology analysts write that it is not possible to create competitive advantage through Information Technology. The reasoning is that as computing is becoming a utility and applications are moving to the cloud, IT becomes more of a competitive necessity that something that provides differentiation.

The analogy is often made to electricity;

1. first electricity was produced locally. In the same way as companies have their own data centers for computing today.
2. electricity then shifted to grids, and was provided as a service or "utility".

As a utility, electricity didn't provide any competitive advantage.

Computing is now becoming a utility just as electricity did.

But what about machines that were run on electricity?

Companies that used machines and integrations of machines that supported their specific processes were able to create competitve advantage even after the shift to electricity as a service or "cloud" electricity.

In the same way, companies that can use applications and integrate them in ways that support their specific processes will be able to create competitive advantage.

It's just the infrastructure that is not in-house anymore, not the way we use it.

How will the business IT game play out? Legacy vs. Agility

The amount of interesting web applications springing up each day is overwhelming. It makes me think that there are a lot of smart people out there who are allocating their scarce resource (their time) into projects that will linger a long time and then die out. I wouldn't want to be in that field, doing consumer web services. The barriers to entry are way too low, and the return on investment as well. There could be a lot of space, if we compare to tangible products for example. The problem is that the web provides zero-cost logistics. But that's a question for another post. Today I want to concentrate on Business Infromation Systems.

Business Information Systems (or applications, whatever) have been ruled by a few companies. Everyone has Microsoft (word, excel etc.). Then there's a more directly business oriented group of giants, SAP, Oracle and so forth. These giants have been attacking the balance sheets of all the companies in the world for years, making them believe that they cannot survive without paying their ridiculous licensing fees for software that is developed by such a huge amount of developers that no one really knows where the software is going.

More agile methods have been developing all the time. Ruby on rails, django and other rapid development methods have sprung up opportunitites to create customized applications faster.

Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and SOAP promised making integration a breeze, and when that didn't quite work out as expected, REST came along and is looking quite strong in enabling new, easier ways of data integration.

What is needed now is some good ways of calculating ROI for development, fast ways to develop and easy integration. Using services such as Boomi, companies will be able to create an ecosystem that automates a lot of manual work, thus raising productivity.

In my opinion, some web applications, such as Dabbledb are already at a point where companies should start using their services and see what they can make faster using these easy alternatives to custom application development or out-of-the-box solutions.

It just isn't worth spending huge sums of money running an IT infrastructure that isn't agile, when it is possible to do simple collaboration with Google docs, just settle with Gmail and create fast business applications with Outsystems, Wavemaker or Hammerkit. Or just settle for Zoho and centralize your IT there.

One exciting company that's pushing the boundaries of productivity is Mark Logic. They allow companies to retrieve unstructured data and use it for analysis. Out of the box. No code. Just deploy. Once these technologies become mainstream, and once they are easy enough to use such as any web 2.0 service, productivity will rise fast, and the dilemma of information system success will be a faint memory. (the dilemma refers to the difficulty of research in finding a connection between IT investments and productivity).

I think the research on IT investments and productivity has been led astray. It should be built from the ground up. What can be improved by IT? How much? How much will it cost?

Instead, IT is taken as a bulk investment, money is poured into a hole, and then we try to measure something which at the same time is influenced by another 10 meaningful factors. I think it reflects well the products of the biggest vendors. You're just buying a lot of trouble, because they make you feel like you need it to stay competitive.

I just think companies should stay logical and start calculating what they really need.