If Apple Wins We All Lose

 

Yesterday's news that courts had ruled against HTC in favor of Apple was a tidy little victory for Apple. But HTC is just an initial skirmish in a much larger fight. The real war is against Android, and if Apple wins that, we'll all lose.

The iPhone was like nothing that came before. And Apple should be able to protect its innovations and intellectual property. But the Cupertino Crew doesn't just want to do that; it wants to kill Android. It wants Google's mobile OS to go away. No settlements. No licenses. Dead. Jobs said as much, very explicitly.

There are two avenues Apple can take to achieve this victory: the marketplace and the courts. I'd be all for Apple winning fair and square in the marketplace. It's okay for consumers

Android malware must be kind of thrilling for Microsoft

QuotW This was the week when in a rather ironic about-turn, peer-to-peer veterans decided to start a suit against companies like Google, Amazon, Dropbox and VMWare for using their intellectual property to make their cloud and virtualisation offerings.
While the US discovered that one of the devices it uses in critical infrastructures like water facilities has a weakness that could allow hackers to take control of it remotely.

And boffins got one step closer to, but by no means definitively found, but nevertheless are more certain of, up to a specific statistical probability of course, the Higgs boson.

This was also the week when the tech world tried out some negative marketing, with Samsung using ads in Australian newspapers that publicly celebrated its court victory in overturning the ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. The tagline for these rather pointed missives read:

This is the tablet Apple tried to stop.

And Microsoft started the #droidrage campaign on Twitter, promising free Windows phones for the best (or should that be worst?) stories from victims of Android malware. Security consultant Graham Cluley pointed out that it's not often Microsoft gets to go on about other tech firms' security issues:

I guess it must be kind of thrilling for Microsoft - which has endorsed the #droidrage campaign - to find the malware boot on the other foot for once. After all, they have long suffered having the Windows desktop operating system negatively compared to the likes of Unix and Mac OS X when it comes to the levels of malware infection.

However, on the very same day, a hacker discovered that Windows Phone OS had a security flaw that could let malicious persons disable the messaging system by sending an SMS, Facebook chat message or Windows Live message, so that was a short-lived moral high ground.
Sticking with phones, Nokia exec Niels Munksgaard also decided to get in on the rival-bashing the old-fashioned way, with some disparaging statements to the media. According to the Nokia Entertainment Global sales director:

What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone. Also many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security.

So naturally, all those yoofs were just waiting for Munksgaard to tell them how Apple and Android suck so they could run out and buy Nokias.
Meanwhile, Research in Motion continued to hang itself with one disaster after another, as two of its executives pleaded guilty to causing all sorts of drunken mischief and mayhem while aboard an Air Canada flight to Beijing, including chewing through their restraints. The flight was eventually forced to land in Vancouver. The Canadian prosecutor said:

The repercussions for the company as well as every single person on the plane, both financially and perhaps even emotionally, are going to be huge.

The two men have already been sacked by RIM and were ordered to pay $71,757 in restitution and got a year's suspended sentence and probation.
From the bad publicity to the good publicity, Google has announced festive funding for charities, including money to spend on educating girls, empowering people through technology, promoting science, technology, engineering and maths and... fighting slavery.
Yes, the Chocolate Factory is putting a tenth of one per cent of its revenues, around $11.5m, towards stopping slavery and human trafficking. As it said on its blog:

The bad news: there are more slaves today than at any other point in history. The good news: by returning to their villages and helping educate others, freed slaves protect hundreds of thousands of at-risk people from being tricked or forced into similar misery.
Our support will free more than 12,000 people from modern-day slavery, and prevent millions more from being victimised.

And that's not all Google wants to spend its money on - its co-founders also hoping to snaffle NASA's Hangar One to park their extensive air fleet in. The space agency wants to preserve the historic hangar, where US Navy airships used to reside, but it's being cautious about selling off two-thirds of Hangar One's floorspace to Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. One member of the subcommittee pointed out that any restorative work on the site should be in keeping with its historical significance:

We don't want to see 'Google' in 200-foot letters on that hangar.

A co-founder of Apple also featured this week, dropping some pearls of wisdom on how to succeed in business. Steve Wozniak told radio listeners that what a company really needs to get on in this world is employees that are allowed to wear t-shirts to work.

Look at societies like Singapore where bad behaviour is not tolerated and can get you extreme punishments: Where are the creative people? Where are the great artists, where are the great musicians, where are the great writers?
All the creative elements seem to disappear. Though, of course, everybody is educated and has a good job and nice pay and a car.
Thinking for yourself is creativity and that's goes right down to what we were talking about dress, the clothing that you wear - you wear what you want to wear.

Not to be outdone, a co-founder of Microsoft was also making waves, announcing his plan to build the largest aircraft ever flown. Paul Allen wants to use a humungous aeroplane to lift bigger rockets than any before launched in mid-air and thereby deliver much larger cargoes to orbit - maybe even manned spacecraft. Allen optimistically orated:

I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne – to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system. We are at the dawn of radical change in the space launch industry. Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering an innovative solution that will revolutionize space travel.

And finally, Wikipedia fonder Jimmy Wales was pondering a global Wiki-blackout to protest new US laws against online piracy (SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act) that are being considered by Congress. Many internet companies feel the Act puts too much responsibility for piracy on content hosts, ISPs and search engines and uses a 'guilty till proven innocent' model. Wales was attempting to gather support for a Wiki-strike from his Wikipedian masses, saying:

My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case (referring to a similar move made by the Italian Wikipedia, which resulted in that country's parliament backing down from the law it opposed). As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse law going under the misleading title of 'Stop Online Piracy Act' is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. ®

5 Reasons Why Firefox is Losing to Chrome

It has been predicted to happen for some time. Chrome has surpassed Firefox in market share, at least according to one Internet analysis firm.

While it is a milestone for Google, the higher market share number for November is just an event within a trend that began taking shape about two years ago. In 2011, Mozilla’s market share losses have accelerated, revealing a bigger picture of strategic mistakes that amplified the growing strength of Chrome.
The numbers in a simple trend line hardly show the scenario of the current browser battle. However, StatCounter’s numbers are rather detailed, allowing those who are interested to dissect the browser war on the surface by browser versions and by geographies. In addition, those numbers date back to July 2008, which is far enough to assess the impact of certain events in the browser market. As an aside, NetApplications offers data that are much more favorable toward Firefox on an absolute basis, but let’s not get stuck on the news that Chrome has greater market share than Firefox. Instead, let’s agree that both StatCounter and NetApplications show the same trend: IE and Firefox are generally down, whereas Chrome is up. Since StatCounter offers a more comprehensive set of public data and appears to be more consistent over a longer timeframe (NetApplications changed its metrics in the past), I will exclusively refer to StatCounter data in this article.

Status quo

Mozilla is in a continuing and accelerating share decline for Firefox, which is now at 25.23 percent – the same as it was in December 2008. It’s at its lowest value since July 2008 when StatCounter began recording browser market shares. Over the past six months, Firefox has lost 12.33 percent of its share (3.11 points); in the past 12 months, the loss amounts to 20.37 percent (5.14 points). In November 2011, Mozilla suffered the highest loss of Firefox market share on record (-1.16 points or 4.4 percent). In comparison, IE lost 15.5 percent of its share since December 2010 (6.31 points).
It is hard to ignore that Firefox is in a freefall of market share that is surpassing the pace of IE in some metrics. Though, as I previously mentioned, Firefox has been caught in a trend that started in December 2009, the first month in a long series of market share losses. Out of the past 24 months, Firefox posted negative growth in 19 of them. November was the tenth consecutive month of market share loss. Of course, you could blame the losses to a strong Chrome, which had approximately 5.5 percent in November 2009. However, I would argue that Mozilla has made some mistakes that allowed Chrome to grow at an astonishingly fast pace.

Reason 1: Firefox 4

I still have not managed to wrap my head around Mozilla’s decision to develop a new browser over a period of more than one year (if we include the development phase of Firefox 3.7, which directly preceded Firefox 4). Between the announcement of Firefox 4 in April 2010 and its release in March 2011, Mozilla lost almost 1.5 points of share, but Google gained more than 9.3 points. In the end, Firefox 4 was in a massive effort to catch up with Google’s JavaScript acceleration gains and to revamp the browser UI. What Firefox 4 did not accomplish was to get Mozilla ahead in the browser race and provide breathing room for upcoming versions. Originally planned to be released in October 2010, the browser did not surface until the end of March 2011 after a very long beta phase. By the time the browser was released, Firefox 4 felt outdated and months behind Chrome. At the very least, Firefox 4 was not enough to keep Firefox users from switching to Chrome. Instead, it set the stage for massive market share losses in 2011.

Reason 2: Reaction time

Mozilla adopted the six-week release cycle from Google, justifying this move by explaining that it could introduce new features when they are ready. Overall, the impact of the rapid release cycle has been largely limited to one major new feature since March. I am referring to the memory improvements for Firefox, which were developed very quickly and deployed even faster. This is the poster board example for Mozilla as to how new features should be communicated, developed and implemented.
Unfortunately, Mozilla has not been reacting fast enough with other features. The silent update has been delayed and will not be ready until version 10 or later. Chrome migration could be delayed until version 11. The Home Tab is in the same time frame. These are all critical features that Firefox needed yesterday – not tomorrow. Sure, Google has more resources and can put many more developers on some tasks, but Mozilla’s advantage should be that it is nimble, can react, and act much faster than Google. A perfect example would be the Joystick API – a Mozilla idea first published in 2010 but not yet realized. Google picked it up in August and already has it running in the developer versions of Chrome.
Mozilla needs to follow a focused feature roadmap to develop and implement quickly, effectively, and without distraction. The current action and reaction time is out of whack and not competitive. Even if Mozilla is inventing new features and ideas, they are picked up by Google and developed in half the time that Mozilla takes. Chrome, as a result, captures the perception of being innovative, while Firefox is left with the image of the copycat. It’s a massive problem that collides with Mozilla’s ideal of open communication, but it needs to learn to develop much faster than it has so far. In order to assume the perception of being a trendsetter, Mozilla will need to own features again.

Reason 3: Identity

If you had to define Firefox, what would you think of first? What do you get with Firefox that you don’t get with Chrome? How many of those features apply to all browser users?
If it is my daily browsing behavior, then I would have to mention the following features: First, standards, because Firefox works well with more websites than Chrome does (at least in my world). Second, add-ons, because there are some really good add-ons that I can’t get with Chrome. Finally, personal values, because Firefox is the browser for rebels and those who oppose software that serves corporate goals.
Mozilla does not want Firefox to do anything else but gain market share so it can finance itself. Chrome ties its users to Google advertising. IE helps Microsoft with the construction of its HTML5 app platform in Windows 8. This picture lends Firefox appeal and trust, but it is not enough anymore. I don’t believe that the average browser user does not care about idealistic goals. Furthermore, I don’t believe that Mozilla will ever be able to communicate this difference to all web users. What Mozilla needs is differentiation that explains what makes Firefox different and better. While Firefox is, in my personal experience, today’s finest HTML5 browser that offers the greatest compromise between strong HTML5 support in Chrome and the hardware acceleration speed in IE9, it is not generally perceived to be a leading browser with a very specific strength.
I believe that Firefox has lost its identity over the past two years. Firefox needs a look and feel that defines its identity as being more competitive.

Reason 4: Platform

It has not been a secret for at least 18 months that both Google and Microsoft are developing their browsers as platform enablers: Chrome OS and search support by Google, and Windows 7/8 by Microsoft. When Microsoft announced hardware acceleration in IE9 in March 2010, and then when Chrome followed suit with Chrome 6 a few months later, it was clear that both are moving toward web app support that suits their platform strategies. Mozilla had no platform then, nor does it have one now.
Mozilla can fight back with Boot-to-Gecko (B2G), its tablet, as well as its smartphone browser. Mozilla’s big advantage of an open approach is that it can bridge platforms to deliver user value, while its competitors have the goal of keeping their platforms closed.  If Mozilla can find a way to build bridges between iOS, Android, and Windows, it has a huge opportunity to build its own platform with B2G and Firefox. Mozilla will be the only developer that can bridge the gaps between those products.

Reason 5: Focus on Opportunity

Possibly the most substantial failure of Mozilla’s has been that it has been distracted and has not pursued its opportunities aggressively enough. The only opportunity on which Mozilla has capitalized in 2011 was Firefox for Android, which still has very little impact. Both IE and Chrome have, since early 2010, shown very clearly what Google and Microsoft wanted to do with their browsers. Google, for example, focused on JavaScript acceleration to eliminate a performance bottleneck in web applications. Microsoft focused on hardware acceleration to drive a vision of HTML5 apps. Both also shaped the reasoning behind a reduced browser interface, where Google took the lead and Microsoft added its GUI design experience in a clean and IE9 interface that offers more web content space in pixels than any other popular browser today. It all adds up to increased usability and a path that leads to apps running in the browser. What opportunity did Mozilla pursue? It appears that Mozilla has parts of everything but lacks the whole of anything. The result is the appearance of a browser that is a compromise in many ways. Mozilla needs to be much firmer in its definition of its vision for Firefox. It also must be far more aggressive in pursuing this goal in order to make the browser more identifiable and the idea of what Firefox will be much more transparent.