moses choi

The mobile industry, the industry that I somewhat accidentally stumbled into, moves at a breakneck pace and is very difficult to predict the future of what the landscape will look like in the next 3 years. I’ve been thinking about this recently because of all the action (Google-Motorola, patent lawsuits, HP and the struggles that my former employer is going going through) and a question one of my good friends asked me the other day. He asked me what I think smartphones will be like in the about 3 years. I can imagine what a smarthphone might be like in 3 years based on technology in the roadmap, but what I cannot imagine is who the major players, what the major trends and the user experience will be like. It is so cool to be part of one of the most important technological shifts happening today.

When I see the news about HP, Nokia, and RIM, I feel like the end of an era may be at hand. But I admire the courage that HP’s leadership has in looking to drastically change its core business. Margins on PCs are very slim and so in order to generate a good chunk of revenue, the company has to generate a tremendous volume. I remember whenever I’ve had to buy a PC, I’ve always looked for the best price with the best specs. A couple times, I’ve even built my own computer back about 10 years ago because it was cheaper back then to do so. Today, with the slim margins, the competitive nature of the industry and the commoditization of PCs, it makes sense for companies to HP to really think about whether it’s in its long-term benefit to continue to pump out a commoditized product. The difference between a company like HP and Apple is that Apple is vertically integrated and can control the entire end-to-end experience from a hardware and software perspective. Companies that use a licensed OS cannot do this.

Regarding Nokia, I think we will see the Nokia-MS partnership bear fruit in the next year or 2. And to be honest, I hope to see some innovation from them. Competition is the best driver of innovation and personally, I would hate to see a company like Nokia continue to struggle.  They’ve decided to focus on Windows for their smartphones going forward and have also recently announced their intention to penetrate the North American market by being very aggressive with pricing.  To be honest, I think there’s a good chance they may be able to do pretty well, if the recent Meego N9 is any indication of where things are going.

And finally RIM. I’ve been a BlackBerry user for the good part of almost 10 years before moving over to Android for work purposes. They have a lot of work to do to begin excite people again en masse. What the BlackBerry does well, it does exceptionally well, but these features (aside from perhaps BBM) are not sexy features that people get excited about and cause them to spend a lot of money. Imagine you are looking to buy a car and at the dealership the salesman pitches the following attributes of the car you’re considering: fuel efficiency, number of airbags, number of cupholders, and the comfort of the seats and ergnomics. These are all important features for many people and may in fact be the key differentiators that people look at when trying to decide 2 identical cars. But, they are not ‘WOW’ features. Wow features when purchasing a car are things like: horsepower, torque, external styling, the way the ‘electric blue’ color looks, alloy rims on 19″ wheels, and overall sex appeal. Some of RIM’s competitors just have more ‘sex appeal’ and this is what drives mass consumption and genuine excitement. It sounds like RIM is looking to change things up with QNX and I do hope it goes well for RIM. Again, it is better to have more competitors to drive innovation and also for people to have choice.

Overall, it appears that the industry is heading towards a state where it will be a clash of platforms that are anchored by hardware manufacturers.  In other words, I think in the long-term (relatively speaking), we will see Google-Motorola anchor the Android platform with several OEMs also producing Android phones, Microsoft-Nokia anchoring the Windows platform with OEMs also producing Windows Phones, and of course Apple with iOS and RIM with QNX.  It looks like a formidable battle.  My the odds be ever in your favor!

Recently, I moved to South Korea and have started working for Samsung Electronics. I’m excited about the new job and even more excited to work at one of the world’s leading consumer electronics companies. The scale and reach of this company compared to my previous places of employment is amazing. Re-locating and working abroad is not easy, but I find it immensely rewarding. I’m looking forward to a great time and hopefully I get to see as much of this part of the world as I can.

I came across the website of RTKL and this company’s slogan kinda struck me.  This has been something I’ve been thinking of for the last few weeks.   This website also reminded me of all those IBM ads I’ve been seeing about a “smarter planet” and how IBM can help solve problems through its engineering and science.

In a way, great engineering, wonderful code and elegant mathematics is a form of design.

How important is design to you and what role does it have in society?

In just a few short weeks, I will be backpacking through Japan and parts of Korea for 23 days. I’m traveling with a few good friends and hopefully at the end of the trip, we’re still friends.

I am looking to purchase a netbook (ASUS 1005PE or Lenovo S10-3) to use as my blogging machine while I’m on the road so please keep your eye on my site for pictures (if I can figure out how to upload them) and for updates.  If worse comes to worst, I’ll use my trusty BlackBerry to update this site.

How important is good design to you? If I could live a 2nd life or if I could do things again, I think I would have considered going into design as a career. Specifically, the type of design I’m referring to is industrial design, human-centric design or product design for the purposes of solving problems, closing the gap in a poor product offering or simply producing something of value for its own sake.

I’m not the most artistic person out there, in fact, I am not artistic at all. But the world of design is very attractive to me. If there was a way that I could fuse design with business/making money while providing solutions to the masses, I would be very satisfied.

One of the top companies in the world in this field is IDEO. It has consistently been ranked as one of the most innovative firms in the world by Business Week magazine. They are experts in both design and business and have worked on some really interested projects over the years, bringing to market some of the most compelling solutions to problems sometimes we never realized we had.

Good design, good user experience and aesthetic appeal makes good business sense especially in the fickle consumer marketplace. In many ways, it helps define the brand. Over the years, unbeknownst to me, design has become very important, but not in isolation. Form and function has to of equal salience. I admire companies like Samsung, Apple, and Porsche for their commitment to both form and function. Contrast these firms with lets say, Bang & Olufsen. It seems to me that they are more about form over function for the purposes of serving a small segment of the market with a large amount of disposable income.

To answer my own question, design is very important and the companies that are able to bring both design and utility in a singular package will end up winning the very limited funds in my wallet.

The last few days have been a time of exploration and experimentation for me and this site. It’s been a bit of a struggle to find a fully featured and aesthetically pleasing theme. After several changes, I think I may have found the one I’ll be using for the next little while.

Let me know what you think about this look!

First of all, I love the fact that I can blog from my BlackBerry.

Today was a good day. It was a good day at work for me and a good day for tech geeks out there. Apple finally held its product announcement event and to nobody’s surprise, a tablet was presented to the public.

Here are my thoughts on the iPad in point form.

- Most significant factor is the pricing. $499 starting price is awesome!

- The Apple cool factor. There is no denying the impact Apple’s brand and industrial design has on people’s purchasing decision. It is what allows perfectly rational people to pay more for products that otherwise might be sold for less by other manufacturers.

- The iPad allows Apple to capture part of the growing netbook market without bringing its Macbook line downmarket. The challenge is really convincing people that an iPad is really all you need if you’re looking for a netbook (even if you’re one of those people looking at the new netbooks out with Intel’s “Pine Trail” atom processor).

- Along with a surprisingly low price, the other significant factor may be revealed in the coming weeks in the form of additional content deals. Apple has shown that it can help content providers and publishers stay relevant in the digital age.

- I feel that typing might be an issue on this device. I can see typing being a bit cumbersome.

- The smaller than expected flash hard drive capacity was a disappointment.

- Battery life could be better.

- Lack of USB ports.

- Flash support and multi-tasking capabilities yet to be confirmed.

Overall, I feel that the device will be successful. It will likely impact netbook manufacturers, but not as negatively as the impact the iPod has had on all the MP3 makers last decade. For smartphone makers, it might cause some people to opt not to get a smartphone and get an iPad while keeping their regular feature phone a bit longer. I can see some people delaying their smartphone purchase, but the iPad will not replace the smartphone.

It looks like Apple did a good job of making sure the iPad isn’t a do-it-all device to prevent cannibalization. Their ideal consumer is someone who uses an iPhone for everyday mobility, an iPod nano for the gym, an iPad for light browsing and multimedia, and a Macbook Pro/iMac for heavy computer use. In other words, this is a complementary device that perhaps completes someone’s consumer mobile needs.

Insomnia.

Today I re-did the layout of this blog and downloaded the WordPress application on BlackBerry. I figured I would test this app out in the next day or so, but here I am trying it out tonight.

Hope this worked.

I had an issue with my Grado SR80 headphones and instead of trying to fix it myself, I decided to email Grado Labs first to see if they had any form of customer service. To my pleasant surprise, my email was addressed within a couple hours and after a couple emails back and forth, they said they would send me replacement part free of charge.

This is an example of how small businesses can go the extra mile to ensure satisfaction and continue to facilitate positive word of mouth recommendations. This is in stark contrast to many larger companies where your inquiries are typically lost in the abyss of their customer service teams.

Thank you Grado Labs and hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

I really enjoy looking at the work of talented photographers. One of the best collection of photos on the internet is obviously Flickr. Although I’m far from being a talented photographer, I do enjoy snapping away once in awhile to replicate some of the interesting photographs I’ve seen online. Swing by my flickr site and take a look!

www.flickr.com/moseschoi

Thanks y’all.