Alec Saunders SquawkBox

If one were to judge based on the 2010 CES alone, it seems that smart phones have arrived overnight in the market.  With the introduction of a bevy of new Android models like the Nexus One, apps launching like crazy, and a media jiggy for everything smart phone, it’s as if suddenly everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. In fact, according to news reports, nearly half the handsets that will be purchased in the next six months in Canada will be smart phones.

Like many technology instant success stories, this one has been a long time in the making.  The first smart phones were conceived in the late 1990’s by Microsoft, Intel and Palm. Those phones came to market in 2001 (does anyone remember the HTC Orange SPV?).  BlackBerry phones hadn’t launched, nor any of the host of other competitors. 

The smart phone story is about like every other new technology introduction story that involves a consumer platform.  The proliferation of USB devices took about 8 years, from start to finish;  Universal Plug and Play became mostly universal in about 7 years;  Microsoft Windows, launched in 1983, didn’t really become ubiquitous until 1992 with the launch of Windows 3.1; the first OFDM Wireless LAN products were sold in the early 1990’s and finally branded WiFi in 1999.

These were all “big science” product launches.  They involved the creation of new technologies, the establishment of standards and ecosystems to support those new technologies, and the education of markets.  No mean feat, and not the stuff that start-ups typically focus on. Today’s start-up and start-up investors are far more likely to build an internet property, where momentum can be established quickly, investment levels are lower, and returns are faster. Dave McClure suggests in Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own Consumer Internet Dogfood, engineering is actually a secondary requirement for internet startups.  McClure says the key factor is user experience and product management – micro-launch, measure, repeat.

If you’re a founder, McClure’s words ought to make you pause.  McClure, and nearly all investors that I know of, favour businesses where early momentum is the game.  They’re cheap and quick to build, and the potential for success or failure can be gauged quickly without risking a lot of capital.

And if you’re building a platform based business, consider it a decade long project.  Also be aware that even if you’re first to market (as Microsoft and Palm were), that is no guarantee of success. Nimbler competitors may build upon your success while you are wedded to your first generation product and eco-system.

Food for thought. 

The title of Friday’s call was Small Computers vs. Big Phones, and the impetus was an issue of Mark Anderson’s Strategic News Service by the same name.  We talked about the coming “war” between smartphones and netbooks, computing in the cloud, and where the intersection between these devices might occur.

Many people expressed the opinion that we would likely be carrying multiple devices, depending on context, and thus were inclined to dismiss the idea that a war might be coming as hyperbole. 

Nevertheless, there’s certainly jockeying for position going on as TI prepares to ship 1W multi-core processors, operating system vendors duke it out, and the device manufacturers themselves battle for the hearts and minds of consumers. 

Friday’s conference call was recorded on Calliflower.  In attendance: Tim Panton, Carl Ford, Jonathan Greene, Brad Jones, Bill Volk, Jim Courtney, Doug Renert, Kim Dushinski, Barlow Keener, Sheryl Breukrer, Ken Camp, Todd Spraggins, Sergio Meinardi, Misha Nossik, and Aga Magdolen.

 

 Squawk Box Feb 27 [49:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A few weeks ago, Mark Anderson’s excellent SNS newsletter (subscription only) carried a piece titled "Small Computers vs. Big Phones – the Next War". I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought at the time that it would make excellent SquawkBox fodder.

The past few weeks have seen nVidia release sophisticated graphics processors for mobile phones, the recognition by the PC industry that the next big wave of devices will be netbook class devices, a deluge of new "smartphones" from the mobile industry, and the announcement of new cloud synchronization initiatives from Microsoft, Nokia and others. It all seems to be pointing to a spectacular convergence of technologies, coupled to an inevitable clash of the titans as vendors battle for the spoils of this convergence.

Join us Friday Feb 27 to discuss. And if you would like a copy of Mark’s newsletter, please leave a comment below with your email address. I will forward it to you, and you will also receive four complementary issues from Mark.

Join the conference call via the Calliflower web conference interface,  or the Calliflower conference call application on Facebook. 

Have you ever been in one of those design meetings where everyone gets hung up on colors, or button placement, rather than focusing on the fundamentals of how the product is supposed to work?  We all tend to obsess over the minutiae of the design rather than functionality, which is putting the cart before the horse.  It’s human nature, I guess. 

When we set out to create the iPhone version of Calliflower, we wanted to avoid this trap.  Enter Balsamiq Mockups.  This great little product lets you quickly create “pencil” sketches of your design, allowing you to sidestep the whole issue of look and feel in your review process.  With a palette of common widgets and some easy to use drawing tools, Balsamiq Mockups lets you blow through initial designs easily and efficiently.

Here’s one of the many mock-ups we created during that process.  It shows the upcoming calls screen and explains how it works to the developers.  This was created in a few minutes to be part of the Calliflower on iPhone functional specification.

Later, this drawing was transformed by graphic artists into the final piece of user interface.  During the process, of course, many iterations of the graphical elements were done, but because the design had been set in the beginning the graphical elements could be could be completed separately from the coding.

Below you can see the final implementation.  It’s pretty similar to the mock-up.

Bottom line: for $79, Balsamiq Mockups was a great investment during the development of Calliflower for iPhone.  Balsamiq Mockups earned its keep many times over. Recommended!