Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Crossing the Chasm - it is not really that Ir....simple!

The big $74million dollar question once you have developed a cool standard is how to get the industry to adopt it quickly. Most industry associations are formed to develop and propagate the standard that is developed.

Some options include whether to provide the standards document free to anyone and everyone who wants it or charge for it, cover only printing costs or other overhead costs too. Or perhaps insist that only members can get access to the standards document, and as
members, there are membership dues - which itself is not unreasonable.

The argument gets more complicated if the model gets complicated, such as charging per unit royalties, or charge sliding scale depending on certain criteria. This certainly generates more revenue into the association's coffers but starts impacting whether the model is to create an industry standard or to generate revenue. If early adopters have to stop and think about whether they like the charging philosophy, it detracts from the impulse of jumping on the bandwagon and crossing that chasm.

The fundamental issue for product managers who are deciding to deploy the standard is whether the standard itself has sufficient value to warrant the cost of adding it to the product. Just think of Betamax vs VHS - where Betamax was clearly superior but charged too much and eventually lost to VHS.

The value for the standard has to be high and obvious. These product managers have to be assured through market data or other means that the standard will be demanded by users and if their products do not incorporate the feature, their competition will win. That is always the deciding factor. In this case, then the cost in getting the standard is no issue. Consider Qualcomm - the licensing fee is very high but it was still adopted by many companies because there was no choice!

But if the value of the standard is in question, then there will always be a discussion of price. Once that happens, it is almost better to charge minimally using one of the earlier options - because the objective is to propagate the standard. Without the rest of industry adopting it, the industry association will eventually cease to exist anyway.

So, the best strategy for any industry association is to focus on spreading the word - about the standard, its utility, its adoption and let the resulting demand drive new members to the association.



IrSimple - is it going to be really that simple?

The diligent developers at IrDA have come up with a new standard that will address most of the complaints about IrDA 1.0, SIR, MIR, FIR, and the alphabet soup. And have called it IrSimple.

Simple to use - you can point any virtually anything that is IrSimple and press a button - and it works.
I say 'vitrually' because it is not clear yet if there are any incompatibilities when real products are produced. And if there are any exceptions, then this will again be a big disappointment because once again there will be products that will be called IrSimple, but not really work - I really hope not!

Anyway, the good news is IrSimple will be 16 Mbps - that is 4 times faster than IrDA FIR! It means we can realistically beam an MP3 file and not have to wait 5 minutes and more!

Unless the Bluetooth SIG has been working secretly for a while, it does not seem they have a high speed version of their well known standard yet.

In addition, the IrDA folks have also agreed that this function can be implemented as a single button push, much like how your remote controller works - and I understand some products will even have its own hardware button on the product. So no more clicking through the menus to find the IrDA function to switch on and then click through to find the file to beam! Hurray! This alone will significantly increase the user awareness of IrDA in any product.

Get more information about IrSimple at the IrDA website: http://www.irda.org


Monday, November 19, 2007

Can I have that picture you just took?

SCENARIO: You just took a picture of your friends at a restaurant on a farewell dinner on your camera. And of course, you are not going to see each other for 6 months. So, when your friend asks: "Can I have that picture you just took?" what would you do?

Yesterday's answer: "Sure, I'll send it to your new address as soon as I develop it."

Today's answer can be: "Sure, I'll bluetooth it to your phone." This is because the camera you used is a camera phone with Bluetooth enabled. Sometimes you may even hear "Sure, let me beam it to your phone" - implying the infrared (IrDA) capability.

However, both answers today are very rare - in spite of what the developers of Bluetooth or IrDA tell you. Users just are not that ready to take the leap yet to transfer photos from one phone to another. Why?

  • Is it because they have tried to do it and found the transfer too slow?
  • Is it because they are aware of the function and tried to use the capability but cannot find it on the phone?
  • Is it because they are not aware of the function - and so have not tried it at all?
  • Is it because they have no need for the transfer, even with Bluetooth and IrDA present?

If the answer is in the first two questions, then the solution is a technical one.
If the answer is in the last two questions, then the solution is a marketing one.

For Bluetooth, the awareness is relatively higher but their issue is the transfer rate is too slow.

For infrared, IrDA has developed a faster version called IrSimple, but the awareness of IrDA functionality by end users continues to be a big problem. Companies in Japan have already launched IrSimple products, but the rest of the world is still hesitant.


Have you put your camera to your ear lately?

It seems these days to be a trend that people are putting their little pocket cameras to the ears and talking into it. Of course, this is not your normal Nikon or Olympus SLR sized one. But hey, that may be in someone's product roadmap! I am talking of course about those hand phone cameras - or should we call it a camera phone?

In any case, we have mostly considered the picture-taking capability as an added phone functionality, instead of the 'talking part' added to the camera functionality. So, what does that mean? One way to look at it is that the hand phone is integrating the camera.

So, what do you now want to do with your phone after you take pictures? Store the photo, show off your pictures (or even video) to your friends, post it on YouTube, print it later, send it to a friend across the country, copy it to your friend's phone, and so on.

I have personally even taken a picture of a coffee house in Beijing, send it to a translator to tell me how to pronounce it because I needed to tell someone what it is called - and the translator sends me back the 'pinyin' pronounciation by SMS - all within 3 minutes of me standing in front of the coffee house. Now, that's really cool!


Why do we carry only hand phones today?

Most of us have only one device in our pocket (or belt for the really techies) and that is usually a hand phone. Of course, there are some of us who also have a PDA, but that is going the same way as bell-bottoms. The old argument that one would rather have multiple devices has gone out of fashion because it is cooler to have one whizbang device than 3 old ones. Just look at why the iPhone is flying off the stores.

Simply, the functionality has become usable and rich enough to replace the other ones when you are away from your desk. Or in the case of the young and the young-at-heart (in Japan or elsewhere), their only experience had been the hand phone for everything they do since childhood!

The other useful functions like picture taking, video recording, voice recording are all now integrated into the single indispensable hand phone - which incidentally also makes phone calls. So why bother to carry other things? They only need additional chargers.