Flashback

A post this morning on Engadget about the similarity between the most recent ad for the iPad, and one for the original Apple Newton gave me a profound sense of déjà vu.

It’s far from unusual to see Apple ripping off others when it comes to spots, and the same is true in reverse. But copying itself? Head on past the break to catch the similarities between Cupertino’s freshest iPad commercial and an eerily familiar Newton ad from yesteryear — something tells us the former will make a somewhat more indelible mark on the world than the latter, though.

Back in the mid-90′s, more than fifteen years ago, I was one of the pioneers of tablets with digital cellular connectivity: working in New Zealand for what is now Vodafone New Zealand we put together the Apple Newton with the Nokia DataCard and the Nokia 2110 to provide the first predecessor for today’s smart phones; this was even before the very first Nokia Communicator.

Anyway, take a look at the two videos:

Are smartphones the new stethoscopes

Serendipity: Today I was talking with one of my MIT thesis students about what will become the next 'stethoscope' for doctors. GE believes that it should be its compact ultrasound Vscan should be the next stethoscope, as Engadget reported recently:

the not-quite-flip phone tricorder Vscan, which all kidding aside is one of the smallest functional ultrasound machines we've seen. The goal is for doctors to have better access to specialist tools, reducing the number of referrals and improving diagnoses, etc. -- and we're sure selling an absolute ton of these is probably on the to-do list as well.

Tricorder ultrasound

Perhaps the smartphone, which is in the process of eating the consumer electronics industry is, however, also going to eat at least the low end of the medical devices industry:

Smartphones could be the most important diagnostic tool of this century as part of a revolution in digital wireless medical devices, according to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist working at The Scripps Research Institute, speaking at the TedMed conference last year. In a video released earlier this week, Topol shows off patches communicating with his smartphone to continuously monitor his vital signs.

Smartphones for the teeming masses

One of the key questions about where the demand opportunity for high-tech will be is about the adoption of smartphones: What will be their penetration?
One of the important considerations here is the price point:

• we're already seeing smartphones on the $99 value menu offered to consumers
• a key and closely related question is how much do these smartphones cost, to the network operators who market them, and to the vendors who build them

A news item from DigiTimes, which follows the ODM and EMS community in Taiwan and China closely suggests that prices may be falling faster than (some had) anticipated, heralding smartphones for the teeming masses, rather than just the technological elite.

Prices for Android-powered smartphones are declining at a pace faster than expected due to competition for orders from handset makers in Taiwan and China...
Huawei Technologies has pursued an aggressive pricing strategy to push sales of its Android phones, especially through telecom channels... China-based telecom equipment and handset maker is making a second customized Android-powered phone, the Pulse Mini, for T-Mobile, which will begin to market the model in the UK in April 2010 with an unlocked price [that] represents a reduction of over 54% compared to ... its predecessor, the Pulse, said the sources. Huawei began to ship the Pulse to T-Mobile in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Despite the threat from Huawei, most Taiwan handset makers insisted that they will continue to focus on medium- to high-end Android models to avoid fierce completion in the low-end segment.

Samsung gets smart...

It seems that Samsung has recognized the importance of the smartphone market - Samsung aims to triple smartphone sales in 2010 | Reuters - and now has ambitions to triple its shipments. While a target of 18 million smartphones sounds impressive, that doesn't make it a leader:

• Nokia's shipping about 21 million units a quarter
• Apple's shipping about 9 million

With Nokia's shipments comprising about 40% of the smartphone market, it's on track to be about 220 to 250 million units, depending on how fast it grows; that implies 7-8% market share for Samsung, split across the Android and WinMo platforms.

Blackberry outage was like a crazy Stephen King novel

Yesterday's Blackberry outage was eye-opening.  There are mixed reports all over the web about the extent of this outage and what caused it, but I lost email, PIN messaging, Blackberry messenger, and had intermittent problems across all other apps on my device.

I was traveling with a Blackberry-wielding colleague.  Usually this would make us feel like business Samurai, ready for anything.  Yesterday, this overconfidence caught up with us.

Emails to my travel agent never made it through, and there was no rental car waiting for me in DC.  Even at Hertz, I had one of those "not exactly" moments, and it took an interminable half hour to get a car.  In transit from the airport to meet people for dinner, neither of us could get wireless data connectivity.  No ability to search for the hotel and restaurant by name.  No ability to use Google Maps to get directions.

Also, we kept dropping calls.  Even calling to get directions was not as smooth as usual, but eventually this is the "old fashioned" way we found our destination.

Me:  "I can see the mall on my left, and the XYZ company on my right.  No, I don't know what street I'm on."

Friend/colleague on other end:  "I think I know where you are; go 1 mile, then turn left."  (Not so long ago, this would have seemed miraculously cool - like in the Matrix:  "I need an exit!" - now it seems pretty pedestrian and painful.)

This sort of event brings home how much we depend on technology on a daily basis.  And how quickly we've become spoiled by technological capabilities that are relatively new.  It reminds me of a sort of post-apocalyptic Stephen King novel, where the protagonist needs to find their way through the world using their feet and their wits, but they are suddenly bereft of all modern technology and convenience.

Without Google Maps (and frequent United flights!) I'm not sure I'd make it to Denver in The Stand.  I'd probably jog right past.  Would you make it?

Perhaps more importantly, this has me seriously questioning my loyalty to Blackberry.  From a competitive analysis perspective, this is a disaster for RIM. Two major outages in a week.  A general degradation in service over the past year.  Meanwhile, my partner is having great fun with his iPhone, and my wife's Droid Eris seems pretty darn cool.