Waiting For The New iPhone 5?

So tomorrow’s the day.

We find out what the Apple iPhone 5 is all about.

Before we discover what the details behind the new Apple smartphone are, I thought it might be interesting to provide a quick glimpse at the state of the mobile marketplace here in the U.S.

I unearthed a blog post from TechCrunch from September 4th, citing the “latest data” from comScore that suggests Apple’s smartphone market share has grown to just over 33 percent, up 2 percent since April of this year.

That study surveyed over 30,000 U.S. mobile phone subscribers, which revealed that Google’s Android continues to keep the pace, holding 52 percent share, a 1.4 percent increase since April.

RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry, decline some 2.1 percent, down from 11.6 percent to 9.5 percent.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform also saw a 0.4 percent decline in the same data, dropping from 4.0 percent to 3.6 percent.

And Symbian brings up the rear, down 0.5 percent, from 1.3 percent to 0.8 percent.

Despite the recent patent verdict, device maker Samsung is holding steady for smartphone device share at 25.6 percent in the latest period while Apple stood at 16.3 percent.

So what does Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 5 portend for the device market?

AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes wrote earlier today that the new iPhone will have “major implications throughout the personal electronics markets,” suggesting that existing LTE smartphones will come to be seen as “bulky and subpar” while stealing share not only from other smartphone makers, but also from PC makers like Dell and HP.

Hughes also cites J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskovitz in suggesting that the iPhone 5 “will offer better battery performance in a smaller form factor.”

In finding its way to new customers, Apple is also moving away from existing GPS service providers, and will instead transition to the new Maps application for iOS 6.

But will extended battery life and an Apple-owned GPS service be enough to lure loyal iPhone users to the new device, never mind Android loyalists happy with their current devices?

The answer to that question probably lies more in the emergence of new cloud and application offerings than the device characteristics themselves.

More interesting to me this past week, for example, was the report from The Wall Street Journal that Apple was looking to build its own streaming radio service, a move that seems to have helped drive Pandora’s share price down from a recent $12 high to just under $10.

Or consider the expectation Apple will introduce further synchronization between its iCloud offerings into the iOS mobile sphere, apps like Reminders, Notes, Mail, Calendar, and a new “Lost Mode,” which helps itinerant iPhone users find their lost phones.

I know I’ve found that Web-based services like Evernote and Remember the Milk, which synch across multiple devices and/or computers, provide much more utility than those dependent upon a single platform or device.

Whatever the details of the iPhone 5, the world will be watching closely, but my recommendation as one who’s used smartphones across the range of top competitors, including Apple, Android, and RIM, is to look beyond the device and underneath that larger intersection of IP-based services which transcend platform and help unearth the riches of true and unbound universal computing.

TurboTech: The Wisconsin Episode

Every once in a while, developerWorks’ Scott Laningham and I get together via Skype to catch up on the latest in technology.

This week, Scott’s on a remote, cheese-head “workation” somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin.

And despite being surrounded by trees and lakes, he found his way to an Interwebs connection, along with a gasoline generator, so we could do one of our “TurboTech” episodes.

I was afraid one of the rhinos that John Swanson thought he spotted in a separate “This Week on developerWorks” episodes recorded with Scott in the great outdoors might sneak up on Scott while we were mid-recording, but fortunately that didn’t happen.

In this episode, Scott and I opined on social media’s role at the London Olympic games, along with a deep space exploration of the latest Mars rover (“Curiosity”) landing on the Red Planet. We also mentioned several forthcoming IBM events stretching from Orlando to Vegas to Singapore.

Me, I’m just glad Scott’s generator didn’t run out of gas. That would have brought a whole new meaning to the phrase of having another episode “in the can!”

Google’s New “Jelly Bean”

So did anybody else watch that Google I/O keynote earlier today from the Moscone Center in San Francisco?

Apparently, so, because at one point there were nearly 100,000 concurrent viewings on YouTube.

Yes, I said, 100,000.  Pretty impressive for a developer’s conference.

I’ll get to some of the key Android announcements momentarily…first, the show stealer, which for my money (and of which there’s not a whole lot), one-upped Apple’s keynotes in a way they’ll likely never be able to match.

As the team was preparing to introduce the much-discussed Google Glasses (which I hope, one day, I’ll be able to wear on the golf course and announce to my technophobe father exactly how many yards his shot is to the pin without missing a beat), Sergey Brin cut away to an airplane flying high over the skies of San Francisco, all featured in a Google Events Hangout.

I presumed the cutaway was Memorex, but soon found out differently.

The skydivers jumped from the plane, flew in their birdsuits a little ways, then opened their chutes and landed safely on a roof by or at the Moscone Center.

They delivered the Google Glasses to some manic BMX mountain bikers, who jumped a couple of roofs before handing them over to some dudes who were hanging by some ropes.

Before too long, they all came busting into the live keynote and up on the stage to deliver the glasses.

I’ll never think of my FedEx delivery guy the same again.

I guess everyone at Google Marketing and PR was pretty confident all their skydivers’ chutes would open and no Google Glasses were going to go splat along with their mules.  That, or they had a contingency plan to cutaway to poor voice-challenged CEO Larry Page trying to pick up the slack via ASL.

Like I said, the whole stunt got my attention.

There were a range of interesting announcements, including the Glasses (available to developers attending I/O sometime next year), the new Google streaming media player (Yawn), and Google’s own Nexus 7 (is that one step behind Windows8?) tablet.

But the new Android, 4.1, AKA “Jelly Bean,” was the storyline I found most interesting.

Google announced “Project Butter” as the new innovation in 4.1, which helps make transitions and animations in the Android OS run more smoothly (at a cool 60 frames per second).

Googlers also demonstrated more responsive widgets (I hate to wait on any mobile device app!), which users can drag and drop and move around on their home screen.

Android Heavens, open up and save me from thith mobile lag!

The Google voice recognition engine is now going offline, which means you can transcribe to your heart’s content without being connected to the Interwebs.

“Android, go beat up Siri and then send me some funny pics of such that I can view on my newfangled Android 4.1 home screen and share them via my non-lagging new Facebook app on Jelly Bean!”

The new “Google Now” was also a cool new feature, which allows you tor bring up new “cards” that contain relevant and timely information (“How tall is the Empire State Building?”).

If Trivial Pursuit ever makes a comeback, I want to play the Google Now-assisted edition!

Google Now also takes advantage of temporal and physical data it knows to make friendly suggestions to you.  For example, when it’s lunchtime, Google Now could suggest some local restaurants nearby and let you easily make reservations to go there.

I’d suggest you view the video below to learn more about Google Now, but despite my preference to stick with the Apple iPlatforms, me likey the new “Jelly Bean” and hope Apple responds with some similar features in a future iOS release.

Get Real With Your Mobile Strategy

As someone who regularly monitors and communicates key trends in the digital marketing environment with IBM, I obviously have to keep pace (as best I can!) with those emerging arenas that I think are going to have an impact in our (IBM’s), and the industry’s, ability to communicate effectively, efficiently, and to the right audience.

The emerging mobile space is a good example of one of those trends.  With the advent of the iPhone in 2007, and later the Android platform and, more recently, the rapid adoption of tablet computers like the iPad and now Microsoft’s “Surface,” the opportunity to market and communicate through these devices is enormous.

But the opportunity doesn’t just end with marketing. Companies around the globe are also realizing mobile computing can change business in fundamental ways.

Enterprise Mobility: A Top Strategic Priority

In our recent CIO study of more than 3,000 CIOs, IBM discovered that 75 percent of respondents asserted that mobility is a top priority in their business strategy.

But, there are significant challenges.  New platforms and operating systems are emerging all the time, security and privacy are critical issues of concern to business leaders, and there’s a need to maximize development investments for the mobile platform.

IBM has been communicating more aggressively about this opportunity, and our own Bob Sutor has been a critical thought leader for IBM in this space.

As some of you may remember, Scott Laningham and I interviewed Bob recently about IBM’s mobile strategy at the Impact 2012 event back in May.  You can find that interview below:

Bob’s blog is a must read for you mobile adherents, and you may also be interested in a specific post in which Bob articulated IBM’s mobile strategy.

Continuing IBM’s mobile drumbeat, we most recently partnered with eWeek to produce a short slide show that articulates some best practices in mobile deployment that Bob and his team developed, best practices based on extensive experience with real (and recent) customer engagements.

I’ll hit the wave tops for you below, but to read all the details, you’ll need to visit the full slideshow over at eWeek.

1. Don’t Compromise on User Experience. Good apps are engaging. They are designed for performance and customized to deliver the functionality your users need in a simple and easy-to-use manner.
2. Support Different Development Approaches. Mobile apps are no longer an experiment. Companies are quickly realizing their value to different lines of business, both as productivity tools for employees and engagement channels facing customers.  Choosing a development approach for these apps entails many parameters such as budget, project timeframe, target audience and application functionality.
3. Build for Performance. Recent reports show that already today, mobile users are spending more time using apps than mobile browsers. Combined with projections that more than 50 percent of users will access the Web through mobile devices by the end of 2013, application performance has never been more crucial for your mobile initiative.
4. Enable Collaboration, Efficiency. Modern business applications are constantly changing, and they are rarely developed by a single person anymore.
5. Ensure Proper Authentication and Address Security Concerns. Whether employee- or customer-facing, mobile applications are quickly assuming the roles of many mission-critical systems in the enterprise. It is no wonder that authentication and security have become the top concerns of the mobile enterprise.
6. Close the HTML5 Gap. Commitment from all major mobile vendors, active standardization efforts and a growing ecosystem of third-party tools has been fueling recent success and adoption of HTML5.
7. Connect With Back-End and Cloud-Based Systems. Mobile business apps are not independent entities. They should be tightly connected to a variety of existing back-end and cloud-based systems.
8. Manage Mobile Apps, Devices, Data. Managing applications after they are downloaded and installed on devices has become critical, with the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend specifically challenging IT departments. A growing number of organizations are starting to adopt a combination of management approaches, both on the application level and the device level.
9. Evaluate Supporting Services. The mobile channel is transforming the way companies are doing business, and with that transformation, new challenges arise on both the business and the IT levels.
10. Protect Your Investment. As the mobile landscape develops, success lies in the ability to adapt to change.

IBM: Goin’ Mobile…and Then Some

IBM has been steadily investing in the mobile space over the past decade — not as a device manufacturer, but as a provider of mobile enterprise application and platform technologies, including tools for developing software in the mobile realm, and also to provide endpoint management (management of all those various and sundry devices your employees are now bringing to the office and expecting you in IT to support!).

We acquired Worklight in February to help more quickly deliver mobile application management capabilities across a range of industries, and as eWeek observes, Worklight’s software “enables organizations to efficiently create and run HTML5, hybrid and native applications for smartphones and tablets with industry-standard technologies and tools.”

If you’re looking to get into the mobile game, a good place to start is our webcast, “Harnessing the Power of Mobile in the Enterprise.” (Registration required)

Urgent, Urgent, Urgent…

Excuse me while I just sing out loud to myself for a second:

You’re not shy, you get around

You wanna fly, don’t want your feet on the ground

You stay up, you won’t come down

You wanna live, you wanna move to the sound

You say it’s urgent (urgent, urgent…)

Okay, we’re gonna play human Shazam.

Name that tune!

Need a hint?  Lou Graham?  Singers of “Cold As Ice?” “Hot Blooded?” “Juke Box Hero?”

Of course, I’m talking about Foreigner.  And I’m talking about them not only because they were a band instrumental to my youth, but because they’ll be playing at the IBM Innovate event next week in Orlando.

I won’t be in attendance, but my partner-in-crime, Scott Laningham, will be there and covering the event, and I’m entirely jealous all my colleagues and our customers are going to see Foreigner and I’m not.

You can still register, and if you do, you can expect to select from over 400 technical sessions, some extended technical training with hands-on workshops, great keynotes, a comprehensive exhibit hall, and the opportunity to network with over 4,000 of your peers.

What else do you want?

We’re going to have mountaineers and string theorists among our external keynote speakers, not to mention one of my favorite IBM execs, Rational’s vice president of marketing, Gina Poole.

Here’s just a few of the key tracks you can look to follow while in Orlando: Application lifecycle management. Design, development, test and deployment. Embedded systems and software. Security. Smarter computing with enterprise modernization.

A little something for every developer in all of us.

If, like me, you can’t be there in the flesh, there’s going to be more than ample opportunity to follow the stream from beyond. First and foremost, use the #ibminnovate hash tag to keep track on Twitter.

You can also watch some of the great video content Scott and team will be producing at www.livestream.com/ibmsoftware.

Scott tells me I might even be making a guest remote appearance.

But whether I make it or not, if you’re in the software development realm, I don’t know why you would be anywhere else next week.

Just don’t tell me how great Foreigner was when you get back.

SXSW Interactive 2012: The Turbo Debrief

A picture from the SXSW show floor coverage from TechCrunch at SXSW Interactive 2012. Be sure to keep an eye here on Turbotodd.com for more interviews conducted by Turbo and Scott Laningham through the course of this year's event.

Well, SXSW 2012 is finally over… And over 25,000 computer geeks from around the world were probably about ready for it be over, fun as it was.

There was lots to be said about this year’s SXSW, both good and bad, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was the best SXSW interactive ever, and I’ve been to quite a few.

I was there for the Mark Zuckerberg and Sarah Lacy interview debacle several years back… I was there for the yawner Twitter interview with Evan Williams a couple of years back… I was even there when Christopher Locke introduced The Cluetrain Manifesto in 2000, just before the bubble burst, and burst hard.

And despite the insane and torrential rains that we had in Austin, which we had been waiting on for well over a year, in the midst of our atrocious drought, it didn’t surprise me at all that the rain clouds followed the digerati to Austin before the heavens would completely open up.  Geeks bring rain!

There really wasn’t any huge new new thing at this year’s SXSW… It was really a lot of the same old thing with a few new ingredients mixed in. But lingering in the air, there was an optimism and sense of opportunity that transcended the often selfish inclinations of SXSW past, one that was more worldly and altruistic in nature.

A spirit that attempted to bring people closer together in small networks to be able to meet and to get to know one another and to get things done. I ran into Robert Scoble, the renowned tech blogger whom I’ve never before met, and he explained to me on the expo floor that the big deal of the event was “Highlights,” an iOS-based application that helps do just that, bring people together in the most serendipitous of ways based on their location and data from their Facebook graph.

Assuming one can get past the privacy implications of such a tool, it’s actually very cool. And I certainly wish I had had it once upon a time in my virtual dating life.

There was also a lot of almost Beckett-like absurdity, including the registration badge pickup line that seemed to linger all the way into South Austin this year. I spent over an hour waiting in that line for my badge, when it seems to me, it would have been just as easy for SXSW to have mailed it to me well in advance. Ever heard of RFID tags??

I did use that waiting time productively, and met someone from a startup whom I spoke with about the mobile boom for most of our time in line. But I’m sure somebody from IBM’s smarter cities initiative would be more than happy to sit down and discuss with SXSW the opportunity that a smarter queuing solution might present.

There were more companies at SXSW this year than ever before, and by companies I mean enterprise companies, not just startups. I saw attendees from the likes of Oracle and Microsoft and IBM in more numbers than ever, just to mention a few, and so the former digital divide between startups and developers and the enterprise seems to have started to close at this year’s SXSW, which I think is a good thing: We need them, and they need us.

The keynotes from the likes of Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram seemed to suggest we’re on the brink of breaking through in AI and speech recognition — the former invented core speech recognition technologies being used today in product’s like “Dragon Dictation” (which I used to assist me in writing this blog post), and both mentioned Watson as demonstrating this new direction. I’ll be looking forward to the day soon when I can run most of my computing devices, smartphone and otherwise, through voice and facial recognition.

But we also saw some nods to the past, including on the SXSW expo floor. There was a machine that presses vinyl records (I’m sure most of the attendees had never seen a long-play record!), along with a killer jet black keyboard from “Daskeyboard” that mimics the clickety-clack spring action of the old IBM Model M keyboard.

What’s old is new, even in technology.

Be sure to come back and visit turbotodd.com in the days and weeks ahead, as I’ll continue to post the fascinating interviews that Scott Laningham and I recorded with a garden variety of digital thought leaders in the IBM “Future of Social” lounge.

In the meantime, I’ll be preparing for SXSW Interactive 2013.

Wouldn’t miss it for all the Austin rain in the world!

The App Economy: Creating Nearly 500,000 New Jobs

This just in from TechNet, a bipartisan policy and political network of technology CEOs that promotes the growth of the innovation economy.

TechNet's new report, "Where The Jobs Are: The App Economy," reveals how smartphones, tablets, and other devices are creating a wealth of new jobs in the U.S.

They released a study yesterday showing there are now roughly 466,000 jobs in the “App Economy,” as they refer to it, in the United States.

That’s up from “zero” in 2007.

Remembering, of course, that the iPhone wasn’t introduced until June 2007 (and I guess the BlackBerry before that didn’t count!).

Here’s what Rey Ramsey, the President and CEO of TechNet, had to say about the report: “America’s App Economy — which had zero jobs just 5 years ago before the iPhone was introduced, demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting-edge innovation. Today, the App Economy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers today and even more in the years to come.”

In terms of U.S. urban centers, the top metropolitan area for App Economy jobs turns out to be New York City (9.2 percent) and its surrounding area, although San Francisco and Silicon Valley combined make up for 14.8 percent.

In terms of states, of course, California runs away with it at 23.8 percent, followed by New York at 6.9%.

The research also revealed that when it comes to employment impacts, each app represents jobs across a wide spectrum of roles: programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers, and support staff.

They include jobs at “pure” app firms like Zynga (which makes games for Facebook) as well as app-related jobs at large companies like EA, Amazon, AT&T, as well as app “infrastructure” jobs at firms like Google, Apple, IBM, Facebook, and others.

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 2 Vodcast Summary — Getting Down To The Business Of Social Business

Another day, another vodcast.  Scott Laningham and I teamed up again late yesterday afternoon to try and effectively summarize some of what was spoken about here at Day 2 of Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012.

Chief among the topics was the business of getting down to the practicalities of social business — including a case study of IBM customer TD Bank, the 6th largest in the U.S. — as well as some insights on enterprise gamification and collective intelligence.  The later of which Scott and myself have certainly not cornered the market on.

I want to thank Scott in advance for including that particular frame of the video by which to start this vodcast (you know, the one where I’m squinting like Uncle Scrooge?) Nice editing, amigo.

That’s okay…I’ll get you back, just when you least expect it.

You’ve never had to contend with an exploding microphone on camera before, have you, Scott?  Kind of like those exploding golf balls my dad used to exchange on the tee?

TurboTech: Technological Romance For Dummies

Scott Laningham and I, having entirely too much time to ourselves over the holidays to ponder all things technology, spent a good 26 minutes one late December day discussing likely future tech trends: Everything from the absurdity of code names for mobile operating systems to our having our own technology reality TV show someday — but one in which nobody could give Scott and I a rose.

That just simply wouldn’t be appropriate.

I also provide a shout out to the IBM Connections event, which starts a week from today in lovely Orlando, Florida.  It’s not too late to register for it, and for Lotusphere. Go here to learn more.

I’ll be arriving in Orlando early Sunday evening and plan on bringing all the blogging coverage my little Turbo hands can handle (And Scott assures me in the video below he’ll do some remote podcasting, since he won’t be there live and in person.  Make sure you provide some comments and try to hold him to it!)

IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report: And The Survey Says…!

So how many of you remember last year’s IBM Tech Trends Report?  Nobody?  Well, here’s a quick refresher of the key headlines:

• More than half of all IT professionals – 55 percent — expect mobile software application development for devices such as iPhone and Android, and even tablet PCs like iPad and PlayBook, will surpass application development on all other traditional computing platforms by 2015.
• Mobile applications sales will undergo massive growth over the next three years (as if they haven’t already!), with estimates of mobile application revenues expanding from $6.2 billion this year to nearly $30 billion by 2013!
• 91 percent anticipate cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary way organizations acquire IT over the next five years
• Mobile and cloud computing are followed by social media, business analytics and industry-specific technologies as the hottest IT career opportunities beginning in 2011

So flash forward one year. Today, IBM released the details from this year’s study, and the lead this year is this: Developers around the world believe that IBM Watson’s sophisticated analytics capabilities will transform industries that are managing massive amounts of data, with education and healthcare being two areas could benefit most.

IBM 2011 Tech Trend survey respondents were asked which skills they needed to develop and/or deploy business analytics solutions. (Note: "Conocimiento" translates into Spanish in this instance as "knowledge with a subject")

But developers also expect that financial services, life sciences, and government also rose near the top of the list.

The Survey Said…!

The 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report surveyed more than 4,000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries. Those who provided their views on future IT trends demonstrated a growing need for technical skills in the areas of business analytics, social business, mobile computing, open source technologies, and cloud computing, providing a clear line of continuity in key issues year over year.

The majority of respondents believe that business analytics will continue to be in demand for software development, and also outlined the growing importance of open source platforms like Apache Hadoop and Linux for business analytics developers.

The report provides IT and business professionals a roadmap of the technologies and skills that will be in greatest demand in the coming years.

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Key Differences from 2010 to 2011

LAST YEAR (2010)	THIS YEAR (2011)
2000 developers in 87 countries	4000+ developers in 93 countries
Mobile devices replacing traditional computing	The mobile revolution has begun, 3 in 4 developers already working on mobile solutions with Enterprise App development as priority one
The survey shows that 91 percent believe cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary way organizations acquire IT by 2015	The shift is on. 60% of organizations are already using cloud computing. Development of new apps and virtualization are the top ways the technology is being implemented.
Mobile Computing was overwhelming focus	Mobility continues to be a major focus. This year we saw the emergence of Business Analytics as another major driving force in the IT Landscape. Cloud computing held steady ranking near the top in both years.

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Key findings in the 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report include:

• When asked why they selected Watson respondents said they thought the technology would: help with the development of customized learning plans for students, equalizing resources for remote areas and change the approach academics use to solve problems by enabling more creativity and analytical thinking versus memorizatio
• Eighty-seven percent of respondents believe open source and open standard technologies will play a key role in the future of application development.
• During the next two years more than 75 percent of organizations will engage in cloud computing.
• Fifty-one percent of respondents cited the adoption of cloud technologies as part of their mobile strategy.
• Regional cultural differences impact social business adoption. India is strongly embracing social business with a 57 percent adoption rate, followed by the US with a 45 percent adoption rate and China with a 44 percent adoption rate. Russia shows the strongest resistance with a 19 percent adoption rate.

Focus areas for mobile computing as identified by 4,000+ developers in the 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report.

“The results are clear. Mobile computing, cloud computing, social business and business analytics have gone beyond niche status and are now part of any modern organization’s core IT focus,”said Jim Corgel, general manager ISV and Developer Relations, IBM. “IT professionals who can develop the skills needed to work across these technologies will be ready to meet growing business demand in the coming years.”

More About IBM developerWorks

IBM developerWorks, the company’s online community for IT professionals is the industry’s largest and most visited global site for them to gain technology skills. More than eight million IT professionals have visited the community to gain no-cost access to software tools and code, IT standards and best practices across various industries. Visitors also tap skills training in open technologies, business analytics, cloud computing and mobile computing, among others. In addition, IBM Business Partners and entrepreneurs can access advanced training and resources at IBM’s network of 40 Innovation Centers around the world to further build their skills.

The complete IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report and the data gathered as part of the survey are available at ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport