Category: Personal Computers and Mobile

パソコンのブランドイメージ

私はもっぱらMacを使っていますが、たまにWindowsを使わなければならないこともあるので、昨日Windowsパソコンを買いに行きました（オフィスにあるのは2003年発売モデルでさすがにきつくなってきましたので）。

数多くのメーカーが並んでいる中で、結局は中古のThinkPadを購入しました。実はこのとき、自分の中でブランドイメージをかなり強く意識しました。そこで、現時点で自分がパソコンブランドに対して持っているイメージを記録する意味で、ここに書きとどめようと思います。

日本メーカーのブランドイメージ

  1. 世界で戦えていない
  2. 高い
  3. 今後、何年続く変わらない。もう既に店じまいしている（NECやSony VAIO）

この中で例外なのは世界で戦ってきたToshibaのDynabook。そして軽くて頑丈なPanasonicのLet’s Note。

ただ”Let’s Note”というブランド名は、製品の質実剛健さとは裏腹に、英語にするとあまりにも軽いイメージで、恥ずかしくて外国に持って行けないという感覚があります。

アジアメーカー

  1. 性能の割には安い
  2. もしかしてボロいかも知れない

「ボロいかも知れない」というのはアジアメーカーに限ったことではなく、価格戦争に巻き込まれているすべてのウィンドウズOEMに言えることではあるのですが、アジアメーカーだとより強い不安があります。

特にSofmapに置いてあったASUSの展示機は、トラックパッドがなんだか浮いている感じだったのでかなり不安を覚えました。

USメーカー

DELLとかHPとか。

  1. 外資系の本社支給だから使っているのでしょう？
  2. 安く作るためにアジアに丸投げしているんでしょう？
  3. 本当はパソコンを売りたくないんでしょう？（HPとか）

そしてThinkPad

こうしてみると、ウィンドウズ機の中でブランド的に良いイメージのものって全然無いのがわかります。その唯一に例外とも言えるのがThinkPadではないでしょうか？

  1. 日本で生まれた製品！
  2. 伝説的なキーボードへのこだわりに見られるように、スペック以外にもこだわっているという安心感

そういうこともあって、中古でCore i5搭載のT410sを中古で購入しました。かなり使い減らされていて、ガタが来ていましたが、それでも下手に新品のASUSを買うより長持ちするんじゃないかと思わせるところがThinkPadにはあります。

私にとって、ブランドというのは「目に見えないところ、スペック以外のところにも注意を払っているよ」という暗黙の約束です。だからブランドというのは、購入後にじわじわと良さが伝わってきます。そして「やっぱりこのブランドを買って良かった」と思えるのです。

安物ブランドは買った後に後悔します。そして「まぁ安かったからしょうがないよね」と自分に言い聞かせることになるのです。

この差は大きいと思うのですが。

Internet Explorer 8, 9 usage decline is quite slow

With the support for Windows XP ending in three weeks, we as web developers would hope that usage of Internet Explorer (the newest version of IE to run on Windows XP) to rapidly approach zero.

Support for Windows XP is ending

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Looking at statistics from StatCounter, it appears that IE8 usage is still 7-8% in the USA and Japan. Encouragingly, the pace of usage decline seems to be accelerating and we might reach almost zero within the year 2015.

StatCounter browser version partially combined US monthly 201302 201402

StatCounter browser version partially combined JP monthly 201302 201402

What is more troublesome is IE9 data. IE9 usage is declining and is already quite low at 5-7%. However the pace of usage decline is quite slow and it looks like it will be with us at least as long as IE8. This is probably due to corporations blocking automatic updating of Internet Explorer.

Analyzing StatCounter data at per-day resolution, we can see that before IE10 debuted, IE9 was used a lot during weekends. However, after IE10 was introduced and most of the consumer users shifted to IE10, corporate users remained on IE9. As a result, IE9 usage became more pronounced during week days.

StatCounter browser version partially combined US daily 20120201 20140231

StatCounter browser version partially combined JP daily 20120201 20140231

In summary, despite Windows XP not being supported after April this year, it looks like IE8 will still be with us, at least till the end of this year. IE9 also looks quite stubborn and since it’s on Windows Vista and 7, it’s unlikely that we will see it go away. We web developers will still have to support these legacy browsers for another year.

日本人のiPhone好きは特殊か、それとも普通か？

なぜ日本人はiPhoneが好きか？

2014年1月15日にカンター・ジャパンが日本のiPhoneのシェアが69.1%で、Androidの30%を圧倒していることが紹介されました。そしてどうして日本人はこんなにもiPhoneが好きなのかということがネット上で話題になりました（例えばJ-Cast「日本人はなぜこんなにiPhoneが好きなのか ユーザのITリテラシーが低いから？」）。

理由ははっきりしていました。それは日本ではiPhoneの価格を補填していて、Android端末と価格差がなかったからです。場合によってはiPhoneの方がAndroidを買うよりも割安という状態でした。

「同じ価格なら、大多数の人はiPhoneを買うでしょう？」

というわけです。

もちろん他の要因を考えることはできます。理屈としてはかなり無理がありますが、例えば上記のJ-Castの記事では以下のような要因も挙げられています。

角川アスキー総合研究所主席研究員の遠藤諭氏に聞くと、考えられる要因を挙げた。まず、欧米と比べて日本のユーザーはITリテラシーが低いとの指摘だ。欧米の学校におけるIT教育の素地は、日本とは比べ物にならないという。そのため、スマホ入門者にとっては比較的操作がしやすいiPhoneに流れるのではないか、と推測した。

まぁ、どう考えてもこじつけとしか言えない、とんでもない理屈ではあります。

他にもいろいろなことが言われていますが、同程度に穴だらけの理屈がまかり通っています。

実は中国人も日本人と同程度にiPhoneが好き

つい先日、Umengという中国に強みのあるアプリ・アナリティックス企業がスマートフォンやタブレットの利用動向のレポートを出しました。その中でこう述べています。

High-end smart phones (pricing above 500US$) have a significant market share in China, contributing 27% of total devices.

… 80% of these are iPhone.

つまり500 US$よりも高価なスマートフォンを購入できるだけの豊かな中国人の間では、80%の人がiPhoneを購入しています。一言で言うと

「買うことさえできれば、大多数の人はiPhoneを買うでしょう？」

というわけです。

日本ではiPhoneが実質0円なので、「買うことさえできれば」というのはスマートフォンユーザの全員が満たしている基準になります。

ということで日本のiPhoneのシェア 69.1%と、中国のハイエンド・スマートフォン・ユーザのシェア80%というのは同じものを見ていると言えます。

結論として中国でも日本でも、

「買うことさえできれば、7-8割の人はiPhoneを買う」

と結論できます。

なかなかデータは手に入りませんが、日本と中国に見られるこの数字はおそらく世界の大多数の国でも同じだろうと私は推測しています。つまり日本人のiPhone好きは特殊な現象はなく、ましてやガラパゴスでもなく、普遍的なことだと思います。

The OS for Wearble Devices (Android Not)

Google is releasing an Android SDK for wearables this month (March, 2015).

So what is their vision for wearables is? The example that Pichai reportedly gave is a “smart jacket” with sensors.

Seriously?

The only wearables that I know of that are currently succeeding in the mass market, are the fitness trackers. The Nike FuelBand’s and the Jawbones. NPD has reported that the market for digital fitness devices was $330 million. Given the price of these devices, it looks like millions have been sold.

So the question is, does the FuelBand run Android? Does it run Linux?

The answer lies in the hardware that enables them to be small enough to comfortably fit on your wrist and last a full day on a single battery charge. It looks like the CPU is an ultra-low power ARM Cortex-M3 with 256 Kbytes flash (hacknikefuelband.com).

Not really enough to run Linux or Android.

Even the Pebble smartwatch which is a bluetooth connected notification center, uses a non-Linux OS (FreeRTOS) according to Wikipedia.

Simply put, the hardware that would comfortably fit on your wrist cannot run Android yet. Pichai is right; you need something jacket-sized.

64-bit Android

In September, 2013, just after the iPhone 5s was announced, I wrote that we would be able to gauge Google’s commitment to the high-end based on when the 64-bit version of Android would be released. I commented that Google might not prioritize 64-bit, mainly because their focus has shifted to the low-end with the departure of Andy Rubin.

Until now, I had not heard any credible reports on when a 64-bit version of Android would be available. Now, on March 11th, ABI Research reports that “the first 64-bit version of Android OS is expected in the second half of the year”.

At this point, there is no way of knowing how accurate ABI Research’s prediction is. There is also no way of knowing if Android and ARM’s 64-bit implementation will deliver a significant performance improvement like Apple’s A7 chip did, or whether the gain will be rather insignificant as most industry pundits claimed when the A7 was announced.

All I can say is that we don’t know yet.

What Are “Services”

There is a lot of discussion on the Internet about how “services” are essential to tech companies.

Ben Bajarin recently raised the point that even though Google is using their services as a weapon to fend off the proliferation of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) devices, Google’s services are actually only relevant in markets like the US and UK, but much less so in other regions.

What you see with regard to the Google Play services availability is the biggest issue facing Google. It is one that is forcing, in a good way, local companies in those regions to create and bring to market services of their own to support their region. China is the best example of this do date. Granted China’s Android ecosystem is a bit messy with over 100 different app stores but the region is quickly fixing these issues and consolidating.

The fact that Android is being used as an open source platform is not necessarily a bad thing for Google. What is challenging is that they are not making the impact with their services the way they need to be in many of these regions. Their competition in this case is not from the likes of Apple or Microsoft necessarily but from savvy startups looking to solve a problem in their region and doing it better than Google can thus keeping Google out of regions they may wish to compete.

I totally agree with Ben’s argument, but I would also suggest that what we are simply calling “services” should be broken down into certain sub-categories. For example, looking at the Wikipedia table on Google Play availability, we see that “paid apps and games” are available in the majority of countries, whereas books, movies and music are not. Compared to the same chart for Apple’s iTunes store,, Google Play is extremely lacking in books, movies and music but not very different in apps. This suggests that digital distribution of apps is a very different business compared to that of books, movies and music.

The reason why there is a large difference is rather obvious. In the case of apps, Apple and Google are the gatekeepers. They do not have to negotiate with the content owners over whether they can distribute the content in a certain country and at what prices. They make the decisions or the developers make the decision when they submit the app.

For books, movies and music, the rights to distribute content are much more complicated. The content owners have much stronger bargaining power and they often have different agreements in each country. Each country may have their own distributor network which may have exclusive rights for distributing content in that country. Furthermore these distributors might have plans for their own digital distribution which would compete with what Google and Apple are planning to offer.

Hence the difference between Apple and Google Play is most likely the difference in negotiating power, skill and previous relationships with the content owners. Essentially, it boils down to the ability to make deals.

With this in mind, I propose that we break down “services” into the following;

  1. self-owned services: These are the services where the provider has ownership of the content. Examples are search, social network services and web-based services (Google Apps, etc.).
  2. self-controlled services: These are the services where the provider can distribute without negotiating with a strong content owner. The prime example is apps. App vendors are generally quite small and have little bargaining power relative to the service provider.
  3. third-party owned services: These are the services where you are selling content that is owned by a third-party, and that third-party has strong negotiating power over distribution (unlike in the case of apps). Examples are music, books, movies, etc. Distribution of this content was historically done physically through retail networks and this resulted in complex networks and agreements, which are often different in each country. Also this content tends to be much more expensive to create than “self-owned service” content, thus requiring large companies to fund production. These large companies obviously have strong negotiating power.

When we map companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and Pandora to these categories, we find that no company is strong in all three. Twitter and Facebook are exclusively in the “self-owned services”. Amazon, Spotify and Pandora are exclusively in the “third-party owned services”. Google is mostly in the “self-owned services” and to some extent in the “self-controlled services”. They are however very weak in “third-party owned services”. Apple is strong in “third-partly owned services” and strong in “self-controlled services”. They are however weak in “self-owned services”.

From an international perspective, “self-owned services” and “self-controlled services” are relatively easy for the service provider to provide in many different countries. However, “third-party owned services” are very difficult. Amazon for example has very limited international reach. The fact that Apple has in fact been able to provide their services in a large number of countries is very much the exception.

These three categories will probably have very different dynamics and I sense that it will be very difficult for any single company to excel in all of them. At least that seems to be the case so far.

Google Plus is an SEO Tool

There was a good article on the New York Times about Google’s spooky social network, Google Plus.

Some quotes from the article;

Thanks to Plus, Google knows about people’s friendships on Gmail, the places they go on maps and how they spend their time on the more than two million websites in Google’s ad network. And it is gathering this information even though relatively few people use Plus as their social network. Plus has 29 million unique monthly users on its website and 41 million on smartphones, with some users overlapping, compared with Facebook’s 128 million users on its website and 108 million on phones, according to Nielsen.

…

Starbucks, for instance, has three million followers on Plus, meager compared with its 36 million “likes” on Facebook. Yet it updates its Google Plus page for the sake of good search placement, and takes advice from Google representatives on how to optimize Plus content for the search engine.

“When we think about posting on Google Plus, we think about how does it relate to our search efforts,” said Alex Wheeler, vice president of global digital marketing at Starbucks.

How Many Companies Use Lotus Notes

In understanding the process of innovation and technology diffusion, it is important to analyze how long it takes for an outdated and unpopular technology to actually be eradicated from the market.

That is why I am interested in knowing how many companies use Lotus Notes there days.

I’m having difficulty finding credible information, but what I’ll find, I’ll post here.

From the salesforce.com blog;

Well, the reality is that Notes penetrated companies pretty darn well back in the 90’s (like a Nirvana song permeated the radio waves), and the departmental applications sprouted and filled all the holes that IT often couldn’t get to. Love it or hate it, Notes became a mainstay platform of the enterprise. In a recent survey we did of our Dreamforce 2012 attendees, we found that 73% did indeed still use Lotus Notes. And that 70.3% were considering replacing Lotus Notes, the majority within the year.

From an old source but which mentions that companies might not be using Lotus Notes for Email, but for other stuff, which would make a market share comparison rather difficult;

Jim goes on to explain, that by a wide definition of “use Lotus Notes and Domino software” even Microsoft would be a Notes customer.

How Are iPads Actually Being Used in the Enterprise?

There is a lot of discussion on how tablets (iPads) are replacing PCs. I have been generally skeptical of this view based on tablet usage data (1, 2).

The discussion for tablets replacing PCs is generally based on the decline of PC sales coinciding with the rise in tablet sales. This is true. However, there is little discussion on cause and effect. It is totally possible that these sales trends are not strongly related; they may simply have happened at the same time by coincidence.

Also, there are many tech bloggers and analysts who claim that they have managed to get by on their iPads alone, and only using their PCs very rarely. Or some people will claim that their parents have simple needs which are completely covered by an iPad. I have no reason to doubt these arguments, but on the other hand, I have very little reason to believe that the majority of users, especially in corporations, would feel and act the same way.

What is sorely missing in the vast majority of discussions, is how corporations are actually deploying iPad. Things like to following;

  1. How many people in the organization are getting iPads?
  2. What are iPads being used for by which people?
  3. Do the people who use iPads stop using their PCs?
  4. How do the iPads integrate with the preexisting corporate IT setup?

We can only reach a good idea of the potential market size of corporate tablets if we carefully analyze these points.

A few days ago, an article was published on ITMedia (a Japanese IT publication) that described how and why a large company introduced iPads into their IT infrastructure. I thought that it was very insightful and I have listed some points below. It tells us what iPads are good for, and importantly, why they limited distribution to only their managers and executives.

  1. The company is Mizkan, a food company that has been around for 210 years (a history almost as long as that of the United States of America). This company has 2,900 employees and a revenue of 170 billion yen (~1.7 billion USD).
  2. They have been using IBM Lotus Notes/Domino within their IT infrastructure since 1996.
  3. One main function of the Notes system was workflow management. Since their business involves products that can directly damage customer’s health, accountability is key. They need to have a strict approval process.
  4. The managers who are responsible for the approvals are often on the road, who are often not able to frequently open their laptops. This led to delays in the approval workflow.
  5. They installed “Lotus Notes Traveller” into iPads together with some custom applications designed to work together with Notes. These iPads were handed out to the managers and executives who were responsible for approvals.
  6. As a result, they were able to significantly reduce the time to get approvals from all concerned executives and managers.
  7. Some executives have expressed that they don’t take their PCs around anymore and that the iPad is sufficient when on the road or at home.
  8. Importantly, Mizkan has no plans to introduce iPads to their lower-level office workers. This is because whereas executives rarely have to prepare documents themselves, normal employees have many jobs which use keyboards extensively. Mizkan predicts that normal employees will not be able to complete their tasks on tablets alone.

My takeaway from this article is the following;

  1. Corporate IT has many more functions that email, document/file sharing and project management. There functions are already provided by legacy solutions.
  2. The new generation devices (smartphones and tablets) are not going to replace corporate IT infrastructure overnight. Instead, they have to integrate with the current systems. This means integration with Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and all the other solutions that corporate IT have accumulated.
  3. The majority of workers in the office are going to stick to PCs. Hence PCs will most likely remain in the center.

Will tablets never replace PCs? I don’t necessarily think so. I think they eventually will. But I think it is increasingly important to reflect on Steve Jobs’ own words as he introduced the iPad;

  1. Better at browsing the web than a laptop.
  2. Better at Email.
  3. Better at enjoying and sharing photographs.
  4. Better at watching videos.
  5. Better at enjoying your music collection.
  6. Better at playing games.
  7. Better at reading eBooks.

If there is going to be a third category of device, it gonna have to better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise, it has no reason for being.

Extending Steve’s discussion, if the iPad is going to replace the PC, it’s gonna have to better than a laptop at current corporate IT tasks.

That’s a pretty tall order.

2013 Smartphone Sales Decreased in Japan

MM Research Institute (MMRI) recently published a couple of reports (1), stating that in Japan in 2013, smartphone shipments decreased by 3.7%. This was due to a combination of the following factors;

  1. Total mobile phone shipments decrease by 10.2%.
  2. Smartphone penetration is nearing saturation at roughly 45% of total mobile phone subscriptions.

Smartphone saturation

Observer the following graph from MMRI. This shows the number of subscribers. Blue is for smartphones and pink is for feature phones. The last bar is for Dec. 2013.

You can see how smartphone penetration is saturating. The current smartphone penetration is 44.5% and it looks like it might stop at 50%.

NewImage

Additional information from the report;

  1. 52.4% of feature phone owners answered that their next purchase would be a feature phone. Only 34.4% said that their next purchase would be a smartphone.
  2. Reasons for not purchasing a smartphone include a) pricey data plans, b) no need for the additional features, c) difficulty of use.
  3. Smartphone users average 6,826 JPY per month whereas feature phone users average 3,746 JPY per month.

In interpreting this data, you have to understand that Japanese feature phones are pretty capable. They can do email (even email to/from PCs), surf mobile web sites (and there are many of these in Japan), play music, watch TV, take photos, play games and make NFC enabled purchases. You can even use LINE, the explosively popular messaging app although features are limited.

Also, virtually all smartphone data plans in Japan are unlimited data. There are some pay-as-you-go schemes but you quickly reach the ceiling after which your plan actually becomes the same as an unlimited data plan. Pre-paid plans are rare.

On the other hand, feature phone typically do not need data plans to access email or watch TV. A cheap voice plan is sufficient. You can subscribe to a data plan if you want to surf the mobile web or do more complex stuff, but I suspect that most of these users are now using smartphones.

Smartphone sales decline

MMRI data for 2013.

  1. Total mobile phone sales decreased by 10.2%.
  2. Smartphone sales decreased by 3.7%
  3. Apple garnered 32.5% (+9.2 points vs. 2012) mobile phone share, or 43.6% of smartphone share.
  4. Other vendors are Sharp (14.6% share), Sony (12.6% share), Fujitsu (9.7% share), Kyocera (8.8% share), Samsung (5.9% share)
  5. Percent of smartphones sold vs. total mobile was 74.1%.

Combining the subscriber base (44.5% on smartphones) to the annual sales (74.1% smartphones), it is clear that feature phone users are clinging on to their old models. This is probably because R&D on feature phones has ceased and no new features are being added. Additionally, carriers are not promoting feature phones.

Implications for countries outside of Japan

What this data means is that around 50% of Japanese mobile phone subscribers do not need the high-end features of smartphones, and would be satisfied with email and voice. They don’t need Facebook or LINE on their phones (although they could if they paid for a data plan). They just need a convenient way to communicate.

Now assuming that we can apply this 50% number to other countries. Since these countries do not have the feature-rich feature phones that the Japanese have enjoyed for more than a decade, we can assume that low-end Android phones on pre-paid plans are being purchased instead.

What I am trying to say is that although U.S. smartphone penetration is now at 64%, which is significantly higher than the Japanese 44.5%, a large proportion of this number probably includes subscribers on cheap pay-as-you-go or pre-paid plans. These subscribers may be using their smartphones in a manner that is similar to Japanese feature phone users, hence including them in smartphone market share is potentially misleading.

In other words, U.S. smartphone penetration may be significantly higher than Japan but the way that people are using mobile phones in general might be much more similar.

Smartphone penetration is not the right metric

Instead of looking at smartphone penetration, I propose that we should be looking at data consumption. We should be looking at what percentage of the subscribers use their smartphones to use services over the Internet thereby consuming lots of data, and what percentage use it only for voice and simple messaging. Instead of looking at the hardware, we should be looking at how people use them. If data consumption data is hard to obtain, we should be using their data-plan (unlimited, postpaid, prepaid) as a proxy.

Similarly, we should be looking at how many iPhone users consumer lots of data and how many Android users consume lots of data.

In other words, at the low-end, Android is not a smartphone platform. It is a platform upon which vendors build a feature phone.