moses choi

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’ve recently moved to a new team at work. For the last 6 months or so, I was on the Product Development team for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile services and software. What this means in a nutshell is delivering to market carrier-branded software and services on our smartphone devices. What a great learning experience it was to be on that team! I had the great opportunity to work with really interesting and most importantly fun people. I was able to really bite into projects and own them and had my first taste of what it would be like to own a product and manage it. I was sad to leave, but I had to continue to try different things so I moved to the Product Marketing & Pricing team for our prepaid portfolio.

My time on the new team can best be described as hectic. There is a lot of work to do for this year and not enough capacity on the team as all our projects have been piling on really quickly. What I really enjoy about my new role is that it’s based around an entire portfolio, rather than a particular function or a subset of a product. What this means for me is that I have visibility on the product end-to-end, working on initial product development, execution and launch, all while implementing marketing and pricing strategies.

I will be on this team for about 6 months before I move on to another challenge. By that time, I will be reaching my 2 year mark at this company. Time really does fly…

With Nokia’s hold on the smartphone market worldwide at around 50%, Windows Mobile taking a big chunk of the market and RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone capturing the rest of the market, is Google’s Android platform going to be a disruptor or just another player? I have been thinking about this since Google’s announcement of the Android platform but wasn’t sure how to answer this until I saw this, an official demonstration of Android. It really makes analysis easier when you see something in action instead of trying to visualize an abstract description in your head. After watching the demonstration, I’m convinced that Android has the potential to be a disruptor, however there are hurdles involved in that there are huge incumbents that can throw money at development and to a large extent replicate the experience. The hope would be that with the release of the Android SDK, the development community, as a collective force, can create innovative software. To provide incentive, Google has set aside $10 Million in prizes for the best applications developed.

Google will likely bid on the upcoming 700Mhz spectrum auction and if they end up acquiring it with or without a carrier partner, it is a huge step for the search engine. What started as an extremely sophisticated search algorithm has morphed into a company with the 4th largest market capitalization in the US and the backbone of the internet. It is without a doubt one of the most innovative companies of this generation. The purchase of spectrum and the release of Android signifies what pundits all over the world have been talking about for years, that the internet will move to the mobile wireless arena and its growth will be exponential. Just recently there was a report published saying that global handheld sales outpaced that of desktop PCs. Convergence of the internet, wireless service and computers will continue and only those companies that can re-invent itself will be left when the dust settles.

Android, internet, spectrum and the organization of the world’s information are the ingredients for Google’s strategy in these rapidly converging industries. I think in the longterm, Android will end up becoming a huge threat to the Windows Mobile platform and will overtake them. As for the BlackBerry software, there is nothing, that the Apple or even Google (with current information) can do to penetrate the enterprise market that RIM holds so dear (as for the consumer segment, the jury is still out on that). The main difference between RIM’s strategy and everyone else’s is that they provide end-to-end solutions for email starting with the email server, network infrastructure to hardware to the OS. This is the crux of RIM’s strategy, success and survival from the enterprise perspective. As long as they can keep that barrier to entry by way of defending their IP, they will be good for many more years to come in the enterprise space.

What makes Google so dangerous to the traditional carriers, handset manufacturers and software developers is that they aren’t jumping into wireless to make money in the same way that everyone else has been, but to provide yet again another platform to deliver its services like Gmail, Google Search and Google Checkout, which all of course serve as platforms to deliver targeted ads. The more accessible these services become, the more sticky or convenient it is for people. It will be through the way Google operates itself in wireless, rather than through the actual product they offer that it will disrupt wireless.

Whatever the outcome of the spectrum auction or the adoption of Android, I would love to see Google, RIM and Apple battle it out for the consumer space. Competition from these guys will only benefit the little people like myself.

- It’s been a really long time since I’ve written in my blog. I guess I’ll start off where I left off last time I was here: the Toronto Raptors. I just watched their home opener against the Philadelphia 76ers and wow, what a great game. It wasn’t a great game by the traditional definition of great games, but it was an indicator of the positive things to come. (note: I started the last sentence a couple nights ago, today was the game versus the Nets and I didn’t catch it this time)

- Anyway, with the start of a new season, comes a new fantasy season and hopefully another season of blogging. 2007 is supposed to be the 10th year anniversary of blogs and blogging. It has come a long way from being an activity that nerds do in their spare time; now, almost everyone blogs in one way or another and it has become a legitimized means of communication, influencing the public and keeping in touch. Perhaps I can find some discipline to continue writing and contributing whenever I can.

- Let me talk about Google Reader. For those of you who love reading online articles, blogs or are looking for a robust, well-designed, fast and reliable RSS reader, look no further than Google Reader. I’ve been using it since it was under development in the Google Labs and it has become my default home page. It allows me to swiftly scan the headlines of the newspapers/blogs/websites I like to read.

- Now that it’s in the public domain, I can now talk about this online. The TELUS BlackBerry Pearl is now available! I’ve been using the new Pearl since early September and I think I have decided that I’m a big fan of SureType. I assumed that I wouldn’t like it, but given sufficient time, the Pearl learns what I want to type and predicts my words. Today, I can confidently say that I can type just as fast on my Pearl as I can on a qwerty BlackBerry. I am happy with the Pearl and even better, I am happy with my RIM shares!