Two recent articles talk about the use of sensors to improve people’s lives.

The first article in FT Invasion of the body hackers (June 10 2011) uses the term self-quantifiers, defined as the engineers and entrepreneurs that have begun applying a tenet of the computer business to their personal health: “One cannot change or control that which one cannot measure.”  The phenomenon is still niche but  technology is making possible to have sensors and wireless devices together in experiences that can go mainstream making data collection completely passive. Some will even be “game-ified”, (Tim Chang) says, made as fun and addictive as Angry Birds.

The idea is very simple, by listening to our body we can easily understand ourselves and improve our health and behavior. There is a conference on the subject Quantified Self conference, the first was this year, for users and tool makers interested in self-tracking systems.

The second article is from Wired (July 2011)  and it is titled Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops.  The feedback loop, a profoundly effective tool for changing behavior. The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors.

From the Wired article:

A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage. Second, the information must berelayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage. But even compelling information is useless if we don’t know what to make of it, so we need a third stage: consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead. And finally, the fourth stage: action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.

GlowCap, Zeo, GreenGoose are all example of the applications that show the potential of these ideas.

Highly relevant and interesting is the talk at Tedx of Daniel Kraft Medicine’s future? There’s an app for that

Apparently, not only Nokia’s platform is burning. From February to June 2011 RIM has lost 60% of its value, and had 21% drop in the share price after the Q2 results in June 17th. RIM dropped to its lowest level since 2006 after the BlackBerry smartphone maker said quarterly revenue may drop for the first time in nine years and unveiled plans to reduce jobs. Device gross margins are down to 28%, a drop of three points from the quarter before.  The year over year revenue increase was driven by a 67% increase in sales outside North America.  If you look only at North America, sales were down about 18% year over year. Full-year profit will be $5.25 to $6 a share, excluding some costs, RIM said, down from a previous forecast of $7.50.

And this happens when, according to comscore in the US market:

• 74.6 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones.
• 62% of smartphones in use in the US are either Android or iOS. The sum a year ago was 37%
• There are about 20 million iPhone users and 27 million Android users in the US today. A year ago there were 12 and 6 million respectively.
• Android and iOS gained 3 million users in April. One million switched from other smartphones and 2 million switched from non-smartphones.

Basically, this is happening as the smartphone market is growing, a lot. The first Android device was launched in 2008 and the first Apple iPhone in 2007, but they changed the industry.

Jean-Louis Gassée in his Monday Note blogs writes, as usual, a great post titled  RIM: What Did You Know and When Did You Know It? How did we get there?

Some excerpts from the post:

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Is this yet another example of the Incumbent’s Curse?:

“The Incumbent’s Curse works like a neurotransmitter disease: it starts slowly, there is no brutal onset of symptoms. The patient’s good health of the moment encourages denial; but when the malady becomes obvious it’s hard to combat, it’s often too late.”

The execs are partly right: RIM is an amazing success story. And the company is still profitable with about $3B in cash.

But, unfortunately, they’re also dangerously wrong. RIM has been an amazing story, but its leaders have been in denial for too long, they have failed to recognized how two from-stratch platforms were able to move much faster than the incumbent, with its need to preserve the past while trying to build an incompatible future at the same time.

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Another great analysis is What’s Next for RIM? from Michael Mace.

Some highlights from the post:

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A computing platform runs on momentum.  When the platform’s growing, there’s a virtuous circle between the growth of the customer base, the introduction of new products, and the arrival of new developers.  Each one reinforces the others, and it produces strong, resilient growth.  Look at Apple’s current expansion for a great example.

But if that momentum breaks, the same forces that help you grow can create a self-reinforcing decline.  The loss of customers reduces your resources, so you can’t spend as much on new products, so developers are less excited, so you lose more customers, and so on.

To restore momentum in a faltering platform, you need a hit product.  Can RIM generate one?

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At Asymco, Horace Dediu writes a great, as usual, post titled Peak RIM

Some excerpts from the post:

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During the second half (Sept 2010 to April 2011) RIM lost 1.8 million users (in US).

RIM went from being a consistent net usage gainer to a consistent net usage loser during this 16 month period.

There are many interesting patterns to observe in the data, but I think the most evocative is the erosion of Blackberry usage. If the Blackberry peaked, and a follower platform not yet in sight, the question is how long will RIM survive?

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The smartphone domain is a very competitive and dynamic market. Google Android and Apple iOs have disrupted the industry by providing new platforms in an environment in which the ecosystem is more important than the single device or list of features.  And a former RIM employees says, the difference between a ‘list of features’ and ‘inspiring’ is the difference between 1st place and potentially ‘out of business’ – and this is something they  need to understand – culturally.

It is easy to criticize the incumbents, but transitions are very hard and include technical challenges and more importantly cultural shifts. Being comfortably at the top for long time can make anybody blind to the changes or disruptions coming, sometimes from a different industry.

Some more analysis on THE CRITICAL PATH (Critical Path is a talk show contemplating the causality of success and failure in mobile computing.)

• Horace Dediu and Dan Benjamin discuss how smartphone pioneers Nokia and RIM falter while the market is booming.

Recent news is the Nokia Q2 profit warning, press release May 31 Nokia lowers Devices & Services second quarter 2011 outlook and updates full year 2011 outlook.

From the press release:

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today commented on factors impacting its business and updated its second quarter and full year 2011 outlook for Devices & Services. During the second quarter 2011, multiple factors are negatively impacting Nokia’s Devices & Services business to a greater extent than previously expected. These factors include:

• the competitive dynamics and market trends across multiple price categories, particularly in China and Europe;
• a product mix shift towards devices with lower average selling prices and lower gross margins; and
• pricing tactics by Nokia and certain competitors.

The stock has dropped  19% in the last 5 days,  44% from February 11, 70% in the last 5 years.

And now some very good articles and comments on the topic. Get your opinion.

• Comments from analysts Instant view: Nokia warns on Q2, drops FY targets
• Elop at D9, June 1 Nokia CEO Stephen Elop: It’s Not a Battle of Devices, It’s a War of Ecosystems (Video) (he is a very good speaker)
• Good article at TheRegister Nokia: When pigeons fly home to roast (Don’t blame Elop or Microsoft for Nokia’s catastrophic fall from grace)
• The cover story of BusinessWeek/Bloomberg Stephen Elop’s Nokia Adventure
• Horace Dediu at asymco.com Does the phone market forgive failure?

From @selop “Enjoyed discussion at #D9 with Walt. Quoted Sun Tzu: “We believe in ourselves”, and in our ability to execute well against our strategy.”

Some cool gadgets around worth sharing:

• GoPro Camera , The world’s best selling wearable HD cameras for sports.
• GoFlex Satellite™ Mobile Wireless Storage SeaGate wirelss portable HD. Take your media library with you. Stream it to your iPad®
• New Trent iCruiser External portable charger for any accesssory

Some interesting trends,  highlighted also by Chris Andersons in the recent Silicon Valley Tedx are:

1. ubiquity of cheap sensors
2. data are shared socially
3. gamification

The first trend is already big, every smartphone has accelerometer, GPS.  And with Bluetooth, WiFi or ANT+ is possible to extend the list of sensors. Some of these sensors or data input are heart rate monitors, blood pressure monitors, glucose meters, sleep monitors,  gym equipment, scales.

Examples:

• ANT+ can give an overview on some of the interconnected elements that are possible with this protocol.
• Wahoo Fitness provides some of the sensors for fitness
• Zeo can monitor your sleep and give immediate feedback
• Fitbit tracks your activity during the day
• sports tracker or endomondo, track your sport activities
• Withings helps you track your weight and blood pressure
• GreenGoose attaches sensors to your tools and monitors your activities
• Arduino makes possible to create your own peripherals and add sensors (Google has embraced Arduino and that means more synergies with Android)

And these data are more and more shared in social networks, Facebook and Twitter, adding the social element. Gamification is now an essential element in any application or service to engage people, see previous blog post.

Example:

The (Withings) WiFi scale transmits your weight automatically to the server. You can share your weight (and yes, people do it, see a Twitter Withings search). The social element pushes you to improve your wellness and gamification, with rewards, badges etc, is another lever for a more effective weight management and fun. Overall, this is the present and we should expect more and more of these kind of experiences in the near future.

Games and gamification are hot topics and the buzzwords of the moment. Gamification is defined,  in the Gamification by Design by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham, as:

The use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems.

…

This framework for understanding gamification is both powerful and flexible: it can readily be applied to any problem in need of a solution.

Examples of game mechanics are the use of points, badges, levels, challenges and rewards. The idea is to apply concepts already widely used in games into websites and applications to drive loyalty and engagement.

A recent article (May 4 2011)  in the WSJ titles Gamification: Hype or Game-Changer?:

Gamification is already shaping up to be one of the buzzwords of 2011. Educators, brands, charities and government are all looking at how to use gamification to improve engagement, make money or change behaviors.

We are in the grip of gamification-mania. Rick Gibson of Games Investor Consulting says “Some analysts estimate that 50% of companies will have ‘gamified’ by 2015. That’s 13.5 million businesses in the U.S. alone. That seems pretty ambitious to me.

Gamification is not a panacea. Many of the things that proponents claim gamification can do can be done by normal business processes: redesign your website, improve your product, train your customer service better. But if you are looking for ways to encourage behaviors amongst your customers, it has a place in the marketer’s arsenal.

A recent book on this topic is Reality is Broken: Why Games make us better and how they can change the world by Jane McGonigal. From her intro in the Amazon.com website:

Reality is Broken explains the science behind why games are good for us–why they make us happier, more creative, more resilient, and better able to lead others in world-changing efforts.

One authority in games and gamification is Jesse Schell, the author of The Art of Game Design. Bruce Sterling reviewed the book in Wired. I talked of Jesse Schell in this blog one year ago in the post  Design Outside the Box. He gave a very good presentation on Gamification and it is worth sharing it again.

And now, back to finish reading the books

There are some nice websites where you can read the Earnings transcripts. And  seekingalpha.com is a good one.

The quarterly results tell a part of the story. The Q&A part of the earnings call is usually more interesting.

The game has changed from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems (Stephen Elop) . The ecosystem is based on the software and hardware platform,  plus additional services, applications and gears built on top of the platform. Different players are involved, carriers, OEMs, Internet companies, OS providers, hardware manufacturers, accessories manufacturers.  It is pretty clear that platform management is very important.  The platform must offer a consistent experience and the different pieces must fit together in a cohesive way for the benefits of the stakeholders of the ecosystem.

Examples:

1. By changing the screen resolution applications will have problems in being displayed correctly. (HW side)
2. Creating extensions in the APIs only in some of the products create fragmentation with applications that only work in specific SW. See the example of creating different UI styles and frameworks on top of Android (SW side)

Let´s take the example of the gyroscope. This sensor is probably not a must have but rather a nice to have. However, the implications can be wider.First of all, the gyroscope enables experiences that start to be common on smart phones. For examples virtual reality apps, new UI gestures and gaming are some of the applications that use the gyroscope.

More importantly, not having the gyroscope will INCREASE the fragmentation of the platform.

There will be applications that cannot run on some of the devices because of the lack of this enabler e.g. Layar or they will run with inferior user experience or performance. A developer will not have a clear view on how many devices his applications can target and not a clear view of which enablers are in which device.

Yes, developers will have a “if then” clause to make sure the device has the set of enablers required and the app store will present to the users only the apps that support that specific device.

But what happens when as user I move to another device (with the same OS) and I cannot have the application I had in my previous phone ? Users do not know anything about the gyroscope but they know they used “Layar” and in some Nokia devices is available and in others is not.

Apple is doing everything to ensure that the platform is not fragmented. Every person buying an iPhone 2 knows that all of them will have a gyro. iPhone 3 will have gyro as well, and so on. Of course, there are old Apple devices that do not have the gyro. Yes, Apple has only one device to manage and one market segment to target and this is pretty easy. But it is probably one of the reasons they have not created a iPhone at lower cost (yet).

The problems come when you want to offer the devices at different price points. You have to reduce memory and remove non essential enablers, but this has a price in terms of fragmentation and has to be managed very carefully.

HW and SW enablers should be managed to ensure a consistency for developers, end-users and the stakeholders in the system. By not having a consistent set of enablers will confuse developers and users.  In the moment you introduce an enabler, you must consistently have it in future versions of the platform and across the portfolio. You can still have different price segments, but the variations  must be limited and well defined.

Android explosive growth has also caused fragmentation given the different number of products with different specifications, OS versions and so on. At the beginning growth had  a higher priority, now it is time to tackle the fragmentation. The corrective answer  has come, see the Bloomber Businessweek article Do Not Anger the Alpha Android (Google cracks down on the chaos of Android Land; some mobile partners aren’t happy).

And excerpt:

Playtime is over in Android Land. Over the last couple of months Google (GOOG) has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system with a message: There will be no more willy-nilly tweaks to the software. No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview. From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.

…

Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Google has been demanding that Android licensees abide by “non-fragmentation clauses” that give Google the final say on how they can tweak the Android code—to make new interfaces and add services—and in some cases whom they can partner with. Google’s Rubin says that such clauses have always been part of the Android license, but people interviewed for this story say that Google has recently tightened its policies.

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“The premise of a true open software platform may be where Android started, but it’s not where Android is going,” says Nokia (NOK) Chief Executive Stephen Elop.

Not everybody is happy of course. How would OEMs differentiate? The platform wants to be consistent, the OEMs want to be different. Differentiation should come from services built on top of the platform, for example music, maps, wellness but that also means a different strategy, skill set and organizations. This industry is moving fast and it is very interesting to follow.

A platform has to be careful managed to ensure consistency, evolution across a portfolio of devices. Here an excerpt from Apple Q4 2010 Earnings call where Steve Jobs replies to an analyst that asked about going into lower price points.

Thanks to seekingalpha.com for the transcript.

Toni Sacconaghi – Sanford Bernstein

Tim, maybe you want to comment, if I could push you on that Steve. So if the market starts to move towards somewhat lower functionality smartphones in that migration of non-smartphones to smartphones that you talked about. If the market starts to move to dramatically lower price points, you feel you can’t make an appropriate product that is good at those price points, you will cede share under those circumstances. Do I hear you correctly?

Steve Jobs

You’re looking at it wrong. You’re looking at it as a hardware person in a fragmented world. You’re looking at it as a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t really know much about software, who doesn’t think about an integrated product, but assumes the software will somehow take care of itself. And you’re sitting around saying, “Well, how can we make this cheaper? Well, we can put on a smaller screen on it and a slower processor, and less memory.” And you assume that the software will somehow just come alive on this product that you’re dreaming of, but it won’t. Because these app developers have taken advantage of the products that came before with faster processors, with larger screens, with more capabilities that they can take advantage of to make better apps for customers.

And it’s a hard one because it throws you right back into the beginning of that chicken and egg problem again to change all the assumptions on those developers. Most of them will not follow you, most of them will say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to go back and write a watered down version of my app just because you’ve got this phone that you can sell for $50 less and you’re begging me to write software for it.”