Photo: MktFan / Flickr

Rumours began swirling on Friday that Research in Motion, the makers of Blackberry smartphones, will be going through a significant executive – and identity – change in the coming months. The company’s chief marketing officer has just resigned, less than a month before the Blackberry Playbook is slated to do battle against the steamrolling iPad.

Large turmoil

The Wall Street Journal reported that Keith Pardy, RIM’s CMO and a former Nokia employee, was leaving the company due to ‘personal reasons’. Apparently Pardy will be on board for a six-month period to allow for smooth transition with whoever will be replacing him.

WSJ’s unnamed sources say that Keith Pardy had decided to leave a month ago already, with the move reflecting ‘larger turmoil’ within the company.

Playbook concerns

Outside of losing their chief marketing officer, tech commentators are saying that they are concerned for the future of the Blackberry Playbook, in general. Several have said that while the hardware of the prototypes recently shown at GDC 2011 was on point, the software was still far off the mark. Engadget wrote: ‘…the hardware was still pretty solid, but the software was a bit sparse, and what was there felt like it needed more than a few coats of polish’.

Given the Playbook is scheduled to launch in less than a month, there are concerns about whether RIM can polish fast enough, to continue that analogy.

Trying times

RIM is going through trying times. The company’s long-term viability against the strong Google Android platform has really been put to the test in recent months, with all signs indicating that the Blackberry maker is prepared to make some concessions. Those concessions seem to be the ability for the Blackberry Playbook to playback Google Android apps, as well as bringing the popular Blackberry Messenger platform to iOS and Android.

The departure of the chief marketing officer may be the first sign that RIM is (or will be) going through a transformation of identity. It won’t be easy by any measure, but it will be extremely interesting to watch.

Photo: @cdharrison / Flickr

Mobile payments company Square is beginning to gather some serious momentum. The company is reportedly processing $1 million dollars in transactions everyday, confirming that adoption is growing at a steady pace.

Impressive growth

Towards the end of last year, Square was processing a couple of million dollars each month, suggesting they’ve continued their steady – if not meteoric – growth. The $1 million (£615,000) milestone was tweeted by the company’s founder, Jack Dorsey. It’s almost poetic that’s the manner in which he revealed his startup’s milestone, in that he co-founded Twitter.

Transaction fee dropped

Last week, Square also announced that they were dropping their fee per transaction to just $0.15 (about 10p). The startup hopes this will goose the number of transactions and the number of subscribers using the service, which will in turn further increase the volume of transactions processed daily.

How does Square work?

What makes Square so unique – and of interest to us – is how it works. The service uses a dongle that plugs into the earphone jack on your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone. Once plugged in with the Square app downloaded, you can process a transaction by swiping a buyer’s credit card right on your iOS device.

It’s effectively a replacement for a credit card machine that leverages the modern smartphone as its platform.

You’re not alone

Square isn’t alone in this space, though, with VeriFone making a play for the space with their PAYware system targeted at business. It also stands to reason that credit card companies like Mastercard, VISA and American Express won’t sit to the side while these new mobile payments solutions look to erode their business.

To some extent the same can be said for PayPal, who built their business on top of eBay, before expanding across the web and onto mobile platforms, too. We suspect mobile payments will become big business, and Square is already leading the charge with that.

Photo: re-ality / Flickr

While the talk of the day is no doubt the unveiling of the Apple iPad 2, what struck me hardest about the Apple press conference held on 2 March was the company’s propensity for talking up big numbers, and showing off its achievement. It’s almost as if Apple throws their sales numbers around to show off, but it puts in perspective just how remarkable the company has been, and what a sales machine it has become. Below are some snapshots.

100 million iPhone, 15 million iPads

Apple announced that they recently sold their 100 millionth iPhone. For a handset that costs a ton of money, subsidized or unsubsidized, that is insane. What’s even more insane is it has only been on sale since the middle of 2007, meaning the company has achieved these numbers in less than four years.

One step further down the line of Apple’s touchscreen revolution is the iPad. While people – consumers and analyst alike – were unsure of how successful it would be when it first launched, Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Apple press conference to say that the tablet PC had moved 15 million units in 2010. The device only launched in April, so those sales numbers represent nine months worth of sales, not even a full calendar year. To put that in perspective, that gave Apple 90 per cent of the tablet PC market, and sold more units than the entire tablet market had prior.

65,000 apps

The next major stat the company revealed at the Apple press conference was that there were over 65,000 dedicated iPad apps. This means the Apple iPad 2 will hit the ground running with respect to applications. Never one to shy away from taking jabs at competitors, Jobs pointed out that, by comparison, Android Honeycomb had only 100 apps.

To be fair, Honeycomb only just came around, but again Apple’s strategy of throwing big numbers around to show how far off the pace their competitors are is working. Whether the Apple iPad 2 will have the same level of success its predecessor had is as yet unknown, but what is clear as day is the success prior to it shows Apple has a ton of momentum.

For a blow by blow of just how the Apple press conference went, including big stats and all, have a look at Engadget’s blog on the event.

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano / Flickr

When Apple was teetering in 1996, Sun Microsystems nearly purchased the company. Had it done so, Apple would likely be a very different group to the company it is today. What’s most refreshing is how Sun’s head honcho from the time readily admits he wouldn’t have allowed Apple to become the company it is today had he managed to acquire it.

No iPhone for you, sir

When quizzed during a dinner of the Churchill Club at a convention centre recently, Sun’s CEO at the time Scott McNealy admits he would have limited the company’s potential had the Apple acquisition gone through. He says: ‘If we had bought Apple, there wouldn’t have been iPods or iPads… I’d have screwed that up.’

This nearly happened, though

What people do not realise is how close this Apple acquisition was to happening! Ed Zander, who was a top ranking executive and eventually president at Sun Microsystems during McNealy’s tenure, admits they were painfully close to acquiring the house Steven and Steve built. He says: ‘Honest to gosh, I was at an analysts’ meeting in San Diego on a Tuesday morning and was getting ready to announce that we were going to buy Apple.’

What stopped the Apple acquisition? A clause-happy investment banker on Apple’s side, McNealy added. ‘There was an investment banker on the Apple side, an absolute disaster, and he basically blocked it. He put so many terms into the deal that we couldn’t afford to go do it.’

And that is the story of how the iconic Apple CEO nearly didn’t return, and the iPod, iPhone and iPad trio nearly never existed.

The tale of the acquisition

The Sun CEO’s honesty is refreshing for numerous reasons, but it isn’t uncharacteristic of any acquisition. Furthermore Apple is not the only company that would have been something different due to a near acquisition. Tech icons like Google and Facebook were nearly acquired years ago, too, and it stands to reason they would never have become what they are.

On the other hand, one cannot help but wonder how services like Flickr, or Mint or any number of companies acquired daily would have turned out had it not been for them being acquired. Being pretty fond of my iPod Touch I send my thanks to you, Sun, for never having bought Apple.

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano / Flickr

Finance titan JP Morgan says that the tablet PC market will become a colossal $35 billion market come 2012. In the process, the market will also eat into the PC market, while growing competition will put downward pressure on the premium prices of tablet PCs.

Big sales this year and next

The bank predicts tablet PC sales in 2011 will total 47.9 million units, while sales in 2012 sales will be 79.6 million units. As such their revenue estimates for the period are $26.1 billion this year, with that leaping to $35.2 billion next year.
What’s more, JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz said that: ‘We expect tablets to have an increasingly negative impact on PC shipments’. He continued, adding that: ‘More than 35 percent of tablets sold in 2012 will be cannibalistic, particularly as relates to netbooks and notebooks.’ What he means by that statement is that people will be buying tablet PCs in lieu of buying netbooks and notebooks, negatively impacting sales in that sub-category.

Growth in verticals, premium pricing crushed

JP Morgan says much of the growth of tablet PC sales will be off the back of penetration into the lucrative enterprise and education marketplaces. Incidentally, the firm believes that when many competitors flood the market in Q3 and Q4, the price premium Apple enjoys with its iPad will be diminished.

This is hard to believe, really, with early iPad competitors struggling to compete with the iPad on price. The Motorola Xoom, now widely considered the number one competitor to Apple’s crown, costs $300 more than the cheapest iPad, which, while it is not a like for like comparison, the average consumer won’t be too fussed about giving up a little extra storage space. The point is it is likely that the iPad is not premium priced as is, and competitors may struggle to match – let alone beat – Apple’s tablet on pricing.

Back of the napkin iPad numbers

While $35 billion may seem difficult to believe, it’s actually very attainable if the early success of the iPad continues as competitors eek out some market share, too. If we assume that the average selling price of the iPad is $500 as a reference point, then Apple would need to sell 70 million iPads in one year to make the tablet PC business a $35 billion business.

It seems improbably, but given early Apple momentum plus inevitable sales of competitors, it is not impossible.

Photo: liewcf / Flickr

The Samsung-Apple relationship, the greatest example of industry ‘frenemies’, is said to be deepening with the two working on a display deal valued at $7.8 billion (£4.86b). This deal is Apple’s response to the insatiable demand for its iPad tablet PC and iPhone iOS devices, as the mobile computing giant looks to shore up components ahead of its next major product releases.

Component contract

Basically this $7.8 billion contract will make Apple Samsung’s single biggest customer. In this component agreement, many believe a big portion of the funds is for LCD display panels for the incoming iPad 2. Other components likely part of the agreement are NAND flash memory chips, of which Apple is the single biggest consumer in the world, and mobile application processors, too.

Some unknowns

AllThingsD reports that it is unknown whether this Samsung-Apple agreement includes the ‘rumored Super PLS Panels that offer not just a wider viewing angle, but superior visibility outdoors’ earmarked for the iPad. A second consideration that is unknown is whether this big deal is related to the ‘$3.9 billion component supplies and capacity contract’ Apple COO Tim Cook mentioned during Apple’s first-quarter earnings call.

One of Apple’s greatest strengths is getting as much bang for buck out of its suppliers as possible. The company’s massive cash reserves, and high sales volumes have allowed the Cupertino-based company to get preferential pricing from many of its key suppliers, either improving profit margins of its core products, passing on the savings to customers or a combination of the two.

Here we go

The Samsung-Apple relationship is fascinating for several reasons, not least of all for how reliant Apple is on Samsung, but also how desperate Samsung is to usurp Apple at the top of the smartphones and tablet PC pile. It’s no surprise that, depending on who you ask, these are the top two mobile computing companies in the world today.

Photo: BBC

Everybody’s favourite TV catch-up service, BBC iPlayer, is on its way to even more mobile devices. The broadcaster just confirmed in a blog post that the iPlayer would be available for the iPad and Android 2.2 soon.

Soon, soon

BBC’s Daniel Danker wrote a blog post finally addressing the murmurings about the BBC iPlayer’s mobile strategy. He says ‘Having stuck our toe in the water last year with the iPad, this new native app is a significant improvement on the existing experience. And it’s great to be on the Android platform too.’

Speaking to how soon we can expect the apps on each of the devices, Danker says: ‘We’re just applying the finishing touches to the apps as we speak, and all things being well we plan to have Android and iPad apps in [app] stores by the end of the week.’ Great news then for the many fans of the streaming TV service that happen to have mobile devices.

iPad uniformity, Android hobbled

However, with the good news comes some bad – as can no doubt be expected. While the iPad will see one native app released that functions on all of Apple’s tablet PCs, the Android strategy is a little different. Much like only Android 2.2 devices could use the iPlayer in browser form, only Android 2.2 devices will be able to play the application natively.

While the snarky will immediately cry out Android fragmentation, Danker says ‘for technical reasons we can’t bring the app to every single Android device’. He continued, saying ‘Our Flash streams need a powerful mobile phone processor and a Wi-Fi connection to ensure a smooth viewing experience, which means that only newer, more powerful Android 2.2 devices connected via Wi-Fi can support the Flash 10.1 streaming experience.’

While that’s a bummer for many earlier Android adopters, it is what it is. Ultimately what matters most is the BBC iPlayer mobile strategy is working, and the broadcaster clearly has plans to bring the streaming TV service to as many platforms as possible.

Photo: Microsoft Sweden / Flickr

With the iPad running circles around its tablet PC competitors, selling an insane 7 million units in its last quarter, you know whatever strategy Microsoft is cooking up to take on Apple’s dominance must be a good one. Well, that strategy for Windows 7 tablets seems to have been dug up, and, it’s difficult to call it ‘good’ in and of itself.

Here we come, enterprise

Microsoft’s reselling partners have received marketing material from their friends up top, encouraging them to market the Windows tablets as enterprise-friendly and Apple’s as enterprise unfriendly.

The PowerPoint deck spotted by ZDNet basically reads like a cryptic warning against the iPad, with a heavy focus on security issues. The usual suspects such as ‘mitigating against lost/stolen devices?’, or ‘secure connection IPs?’ or ‘remote access?’ make an appearance.

There is no enterprise

Perhaps this is a gutsy statement, but Microsoft is aiming at a non-existent market – there is no enterprise market for mobile devices. Or, to put that differently, the fast convergence between enterprise tastes and consumer tastes means that the enterprise is buying what the mass market is purchasing anyway, negating the need for enterprise-specific devices. Or, to put it bluntly, there seems evidence the enterprise is adopting the iPad itself already.

Sell yourself!

The point is Microsoft would be better served upselling what makes its Windows 7 tablets more compelling than Apple’s by outdoing Apple’s in all the areas that matter – applications, ease of use, and performance. Right now, it’s very difficult to say that MS is achieving this. Moreover, until Windows 8 and its barrage of tablets finally launches in 2012, it seems we’re stuck with Windows 7 tablets, which, to date, have not fared well commercially at all.

The Apple iPad was a revelation in 2010, and it looks set to only stretch its lead further in 2011.

Photo: stevegarfield / Flickr

Perhaps one can file this in the ‘obvious’ cabinet, but it’s a major announcement nonetheless. Word has it that the iPad Skype client will see a video calling service to the incoming iPad 2, which is widely expected to have at least a front-facing camera for video conferencing built in, if not a dual one as well.

It’s inevitable

TechRadar got the scoop from Heather LeRoy, who is senior project manager at Skype for iOS devices. She told the publication that there are plans to significantly improve the iPad Skype client and that, if all plays out with hardware, video calling is coming to the iPad 2.

She said: ‘Skype on the iPad is currently the basic Skype iOS client, but we really hope to support the iPad in a much more thorough way in the future.

‘And of course, if iPad 2 has cameras, then you bet we are going to be very interested in supporting video, because that is a company priority for us.’

I don’t know what Apple is doing

Just like the rest of us, whenever LeRoy speaks about cameras coming to the iPad 2, she does so with a raised eyebrow since nobody really knows what the company is cooking up, except for the folks within the company. But come on, dual cameras are inevitable.

She says: ‘Apple plays it close to its chest with all new product announcements – which is what makes them so mysterious and exciting! – so we don’t yet have any concrete information,’ which she prefaced by saying ‘it would be fantastic’ if video tech came to Apple’s next tablet PC.

Retreading your footsteps with better shoes on

Basically, Skype is merely retreading the path it has been going in recent months, following successfully launching video-calling on the iPhone 4, as well as many new announcements, including the acquisition of video service Qik. The Qik acquisition is perhaps the most exciting of the company’s recent developments, since that video-streaming software provided ways to natively record calls/videos in-app, something Skype no doubt want to deploy with immediacy.

We’re big fans of Skype’s VoIP phone replacing service, and improvements to the iPad Skype client are inevitable. Given the tablet PCs that already have video calling functionality, we would be shocked if the next iPad did not, too.

Photo: kodomut / Flickr

We all know that the iPad is the world’s number one tablet, and the Kindle is the world’s number one e-reader. What many do not know is how intense that dominance actually is, with an IDC report showing the iPad virtually is the tablet PC market, and the Amazon Kindle has stretched its legs from the competition.

Nearly nine in 10 tablets is an iPad

The IDC report states that the iPad owned a mind blowing 87.4 per cent of the entire tablet PC market in Q3 of 2010. That’s just shy of nine in every 10 tablets being made being Apple’s.

However, since Q3, there have been many more tablets announced and released, meaning that the market share will inevitably decline. In fact, given that Apple’s Q1 2011 report shows the company moved 7.33 million units, and the number two tablet PC, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, moved close on two million units in the same period, the iPad market share has already begun to drop.

You can’t Kindle this

The counterpart to Apple’s tablet dominance is the Amazon Kindle e-reader, with the IDC report saying Kindle owns 41.5 per cent of the digital reader market. Given that Amazon supposedly sold 8 million of its e-ink devices, that dominance is of no surprise. What is a surprise is the company coming in close second – Pandigital, who make the Novel coloured-screen reader currently only available in the US. Intuition would have told me Sony would be second. Intuition would have been wrong.

2011, the year of the tablet PC

The IDC report also echoes what is widely believed – that 2011 will be the year of the tablet PC. The research firm expects 44.6 million slate PCs sold this year, in comparison to the estimated 17 million sold in 2011.

As for e-readers, the group expects 14.7 million sold in 2011, compared to 10.8 million moved in 2010. Which is mathematically odd, if there were in fact 8 million Amazon Kindle devices sold last year, meaning Amazon should either have closer to 80 per cent market share, or the IDC report needs to adjust overall sales upwards.