Chrome begins to shine. Google's Chromebook is the one star in a shrinking PC market. And it highlights major shifts ahead.

PCMAG STORY:
Chromebook Sales Growth Bucks PC Market's Downward Trend >>

MAJOR TRENDS: Cloud, HTML5, low-cost, commoditization, business-model changes

Back in February, I wrote about the next potential screen of death for Microsoft: Google's Chromebook. ("Is MS about to be Wanged?" Feb 25, 2013). At a price of $249, the Samsung-made Chromebook is an extremely capable, super sleek, cloud-centric laptop. It's solid and secure, low-maintenance and high-value. Set it and forget it. But now it's getting tough to ignore.

According to research firm NPD, Chromebooks dominated the low-cost segment of the U.S. laptop market during the half of 2013 with as much as 25% share. And according to Gartner, Chromebooks accounted for almost 5% of all U.S. laptop sales, up from around 1% — 2% in 2012. Considering that Samsung's low-cost Chromebook has been Amazon.com's top-selling laptop since December 2012, none of this is surprising. Americans are really learning that remote is the new local, and that thick-n-chunky, virus-friendly operating systems are a hindrance rather than a requirement to get things done.

But now as the Chromebook is going global, significant changes can begin to alter the entire market for PCs and really provide a boost to cloud-based ecosystems. Starting back in April of this year, Google began selling Chromebooks in 10 other countries. Chrome OS might soon reach escape velocity and become a platform worthy of a lot more respect from developers who'll accelerate the shift of their focus to web-based technologies such as HTML5.

Big changes are coming to the PC industry and Microsoft executives have certainly received the wake-up call: last week Steve Ballmer announced a corporate restructuring around "Software & Services." What's amazing about this new & improved Microsoft is the amazing parallels to the new & improved Nokia in 2006 when company executives promulgated its new organization focusing the future of the company on a P&L center called "Software & Services" to effectively compete against the GYM players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!).

During the coming years we will certainly see many more major company adjustments, some of them late and desperate last-minute attempts to acclimate to the on-going cross-industry shifts which are underway. Some platforms will be abandoned, some new ones will be adopted, smart players will make successful business-model transitions, and some big names will fade fast. Chrome OS is one of the lights at the end of the tunnel.

Will the Fox-Fox partnership disrupt? Mozilla+Foxconn could change the market, but partnership success is spotty at best.

PRESS RELEASE >>
NEWS >>

Mozilla Firefox OS pages >>

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: HTML5, commoditization, Foxconn.

Last week manufacturing powerhouse Foxconn confirmed plans to support Mozilla's Firefox OS with a series of white-labeled devices. If the announced intentions are followed through, this has the potential to impact the handset market in several ways, disrupting both the feature phone and smartphone players.

To begin with, Firefox OS could establish HTML5 as a legitimate mobile ecosystem alternative and slowly dilute native development environments from the bottom up. This won't be easy given the entrenchment that iOS and Android now enjoy. And new ecosystems are notoriously difficult to get going. But HTML5 has the power of the next web behind it, and Apple and Google are largest contributors to the standardization work.

The initial impact of Firefox OS would be felt in developing markets in South America and Eastern Europe, where Mozilla execs believe the platform has the best chances of growing a user base. Firefox OS-based devices are expected to reach significantly lower price points compared to current smartphones on the market. Retail prices of Firefox OS devices should come in below $100, and possibly sub $50 as some point given the smaller hardware profile.

At such low price points, feature phone vendors will need prepare for a consumer expectation shift. If Firefox OS is designed with the future in mind, most current feature phone platforms are descendants of 20th century technology. Vendors such as Samsung and Nokia will need to evaluate Firefox OS. Already Alcatel TCL, ZTE, LG, Huawei, and Sony have announced some interest in the platform. Dismissing Firefox OS could be like snubbing Android in its early days.

But now the Foxconn partnership should be a wake-up call to the industry. While Foxconn will not be selling their own labeled devices, their support should lower the barriers to entry for all vendors great and small to bring Firefox OS devices to market with a rather immediate effect on the feature phone market and lower-end smartphone segment. A trickle-up could put more pressure on smartphone vendors' mid-price ranges and hit ASPs and margins across the industry.


However, it should be made clear that historically, such mega mobile partnerships have a very mixed track record of success. I think back to 1999 when Nokia and Palm, two of the biggest industry names at the time, announced a partnership to create the mobile platform of the future. But despite lots of travel between California and Helsinki, there was nothing to show for the initial market excitement beyond an a press release. And Mozilla's is not the only new platform looking to establish itself. Fresh open-source mobile operating systems from Ubuntu, Intel (Tizen), and Jolla, among others, are appearing on the market.

Nonetheless, history is always on the side of change. Mozilla has shaken up the market before and chipped its way forward against Microsoft's Internet Explorer. History could repeat itself.

Will it trend: Lifelogging? Will we soon all be wearing the equivalent of dash cams around our heads?

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: wearable computing, lifelogging, ODLs, privacy.
EVENT HORIZON: four years.


Robert Scoble's interesting take on Google Glass includes this key observation: "I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant."

So, are we really seeing a technology shift in front of our eyes which will change our lives forever? The next passenger jet? The next internet? A technology which will become so pervasive, so embedded, we will soon wonder how we ever lived without it? Another so-called paradigm shift for better, or for worse?

Devices like Google Glass enable users to capture and store the most ordinary events of everyday life. And there are more where Glass came from. Memento, a Sweden-based start-up, is developing a miniscule wearable connected camera to help users seamlessly capture moment after moment. A day in the life of the user.

The technology-enablers are no longer the issue. Components are getting small enough and cheap enough so that items like Glass could become just another household purchase. Another creature comfort for the 21st century. The real question about disruptions is rarely the technology, but rather, consumer acceptance. How will individuals and society's norms adjust to ubiquitous recording? And how will privacy laws react to a 24X7, capture-capable society?

Will life-logging devices crash and burn, or lead us into the future? Let's take a look ahead.

The ubiquitous Russian dash cam. Are we headed in this direction?

Momento, the lifelogging camera. Imagine capturing every minute of your life:

Google's $249 Chromebook. Is this the new screen of death for Microsoft? Is MS about to be Wanged?

I've had the opportunity to use Google's made-by-Samsung $249 Chromebook for a week now. It's sleek and it's neat. It's instant on, instant off, and it's in demand. As one of the best-selling laptops, it's time to wonder if Google isn't on its way to establish Chrome OS as the Android of PC world.

If such a shift seems unlikely given Windows' two-decade legacy, please take a peek at the next generation of white-collar workers. They are trained in the ways of Google Docs, think net before local, and have no loyalty to the platforms of their parents. Chrome OS could really be the next generation for the next generation.

Being in the center of such industry shifts is never fun. For most such unfortunate companies, it's a deer-in-the-headlights moment. Just ask the talented employees at Wang Laboratories. Wang who? Wang was hot property in its day making dedicated word processors and minicomputers competing against companies such as IBM and DEC (who?). But as the adoption of personal computers squeezed their markets, the company found itself in a painful downward spiral.

I remember well the formation of the Open Handset Alliance and the introduction of Android. It all started so innocently. But even the journey to a billion units starts with a single device. Google's Chrome OS is here to stay and we will soon begin to see it take some real market share. As we slowly march towards an HTML5 world, Chromebooks and Chromeboxes could be just what the doctor ordered.

And for Microsoft? Well, the future of Microsoft's Windows is looking cloudy.

Is this Microsoft's new screen of death?


A Wang dedicated word processor.
A market shift to PCs was a process they couldn't handle.

More "big proactive." Stressing big data with the Neumitra Bandu. This watch collects stress data and advises.

via Ecouterre >>

Neumitra COMPANY WEBSITE >>

Here is another good example of using big data for the power of good. The Bandu from a Bostn-based startup called Neumitra is a watch which has sensors which are able to collect info from the body about stress levels. The data is then uploaded to the cloud where it is stored and analyzed on an on-going basis. The service provides feedback on relaxation and also has a location-based element as it layers stress on the map.

So please take five and watch the Bandu video to get a better understanding.

Is some mobile platform about to get the boot? Mozilla’s “Boot to Gecko” aims to make the web the OS of the future.

B2G webpages >>

MobileMag Story >>

It’s best to give Mozilla the respect they deserve. They took on Microsoft to change the browser biz. And now on to new things.

So, Mozilla is working on a web-based mobile platform similar in concept to Google’s Chrome OS. The general idea is to center the user experience around the browser with a strong reliance upon cloud-based services.

Even Mozilla acknowledges that the goals of the Boot to Gecko, or B2G, project are rather, well, cloudy. But Mozilla believes that there could be B2G handsets on the market already during 2012.

B2G will be coming up against some interesting competition, not so much in the other boot to browser concepts that are popping up, but in established platforms that appear to be evolving in the same direction. iOS, for example, has developed very strong ties to the web for direct updates, storage and backup, and Apple is one of the biggest supporters of HTML5 development within W3C.

Anyway, best of luck to Mozilla. The smartphone market could use a good kick to move things forward a bit. Will this be the real WebOS? Can Mozilla pull a Firefox out of the hat?

The Times is a-changin. The mobile industry's greatest rebel? The Financial Times? YES!

Who would have thought that The Financial Times would lead the revolt against Big Brother?

Last week the expected happened: Apple's bouncers threw The Financial Times out of the iTunes mall. That's a lot of potential foot traffic that the publisher is missing out on. FT's crime to deserve such a punishment? Their desire for independence and freedom. And for maximized profits. And their desire to hold onto their own subscriber data. And to connect to the outside world from within Apple's domain.

The significance here is the use of HTML5 instead of using a native SDK. HTML5 looks like it has the potential to be a key enabler for simple and even rather complex applications. Take a look, for example, at Google Voice on an iOS device, and you'd think you're running a locally installed application. In an HTML5-world, every webpage as the potential to be an app.

FT is claiming success with its app-in-a-web-link approach. And other content owners and app developers are looking at this case very closely. With profit margins slim as things are, the ability to move outside of Apple's walled garden to keep the 30% commission that Apple takes could be an attractive option for content owners with strong name recognition.

Ironically, Apple is one of the key supporters of HTML5 development in the World Wide Web Consortium. But Apple is a pretty swift company, and while not historically very active in standardization, they see the need to influence the future rather than stick their heads in the sand.

For now, we need a couple more major publishers jumping to HTML5 and away from native apps before labeling this one a trend. Remember, three makes a trend.

But the times are a-changin.



It's time to change... or sink like a stone.