Author: TheAppleBlog.com

LTE will eventually become the 4G standard of choice, but mobile WiMAX will build a considerable lead over its rival technology in the next few years, according to figures released this morning by In-Stat. Mobile WiMAX will claim more than five times as many global subscribers as LTE by 2013, the market research firm predicted, as carriers seek to leverage installed 3G technologies rather than hastily build out LTE .

“LTE still has several glaring issues,” In-Stat analyst Allen Nogee said in a prepared statement. “These include lack of spectrum, signal-to-noise ratio, and non-established patent and royalty pool. It’s clear that the shift toward 4G LTE will be gradual and protracted.” Indeed, in an earnings call last week an AT&T executive said that the carrier’s move to LTE might take place faster if the technology were robust enough, but for now, Ma Bell expects its 2011 deployment time frame to stay constant.

Carriers and handset vendors are making progress developing LTE devices. NTT DoCoMo will demo a prototype at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, MetroPCS will launch LTE phones late this year and Verizon Wireless plans to bring LTE phones to market in 2011. But LTE handsets won’t ship in major volumes until the second half of 2012, In-Stat said, and external clients such as dongles and newtwork cards will be the first LTE subscriber devices sold. Indeed, Qualcomm’s LTE chips for handsets may not be available until well into next year, and the industry has yet to settle on voice standards for LTE, which doesn’t offer the same circuit-switched voice technology cell networks feature.

As In-Stat notes, though, WiMAX deployments will continue to serve as a kind of dress rehearsal for LTE’s opening night, providing-real world experience for chip vendors, handset manufacturers and infrastructure suppliers. That experience will be invaluable as LTE comes to market over the next several years.

Image courtesy Flickr user cproppe.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

• 4G: State of the Union

Comnet Wireless has tapped ZTE to deploy a test 4G Long Term Evolution network for voice and data services in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. And the Chinese telecom gear company is teaming with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority to lobby for a piece of the government’s $7.2 billion broadband stimulus fund to help.

Comnet, a regional operator owned by Atlantic Tele-Network, applied for a portion of the stimulus funds last August (PDF) but the project was not one of the first 18 initiatives to be approved for funding last month. The operator is looking to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will hand out $2.35 billion in funding by the end of September 2010.

Image courtesy Flickr user radialmonster.

I finally got around to watching the stream of Wednesday’s iPad announcement at about 11:30 local time last night. Of course, I couldn’t wait until the bitter end to go to bed, and falling asleep was a bit challenging even at that late hour. After a short but good night’s rest, I awoke with a thought that had absolutely nothing to do with the iPad, and everything to do with the iPad all at the same time.

I have a strange sense that we were watching what is perhaps the penultimate performance by the master of the keynote. Please understand, this is entirely an intuitive sense that something wasn’t quite business as usual. I have no knowledge of any such information, nor am I making a prediction. I’m just offering my take on what I saw. And I saw several telltale signs that Steve Jobs may be on his way to relinquishing his CEO role at Apple. Here are my thoughts.

1. Jobs went out of his way to point out that Apple is a $50 billion company.
2. There were a couple of historical references, including the great black-and-white photo of Jobs and Woz and the first PowerBook.
3. Though they weren’t necessarily presented in this manner, that sounds a lot like personal legacy to me. Reading between the lines, the unspoken message is “I’ve turned this garage band into one of the most powerful companies in the world today.”
4. With one quick comment and supporting slide, Jobs made a major strategic shift and repositioned Apple as a mobile products company, which has a much more exciting future than computers.
5. He also made a clear effort to convince the media in attendance that they could sell this device. The subtle message is that if they can get traction on the iPad while growing or maintaining the other three product lines, they can succeed well into the future without him.
6. Schiller and Forstall played pretty significant roles in the iPad announcement and Jobs is nowhere to be found in the announcement video. Neither of these unprecedented, but noteworthy nonetheless.

My gut tells me that the earnings and iPad announcements this week was the first real indication that the public reveal of Apple succession is underway. I expect Jobs to become non-executive chairman, maintaining a public profile and involvement as inspirational leader and assurance for investors. Cook will take over as CEO and Oppenheimer remaining CFO. Cook will remain the behind-the-scenes operational genius, with Schiller, Forstall, and to a lesser extent Madsen being the public personae for products. Schiller is the Mac guy (yesterday, his role was relegated to iWork, which is a port of a desktop suite of apps). Forstall is the iP guy (iPhone, iPod, iPad). If the future of the company is truly as a mobile products company, that suggests Forstall will have an increasingly visible role with the company, with Schiller taking a back seat. Indeed, Forstall seems more at ease leading a major presentation, save for his inability to hide the remote while clicking to change slides or averting his eyes to the confidence monitor. The wild card is designer Jonathan Ive, but my guess he is very passionate about the design side of the company and doesn’t want the hassles of the business.

Apple doesn’t need a breakthrough device for some time. If it continues to execute well on its current product lineup–something Cook excels at–they should be in great shape. Right now or soon after the iPad ships might very well be the perfect time for Jobs to announce his successor.

The debate is raging. Man, that’s a wide bezel! How could they possibly leave out support for Flash? Where’s the front-facing video camera? AT&T? Are you serious? Now that the dust has begun to settle on Apple’s announcement of the iPad, though, there’s another nagging question that only time can answer. Who, exactly, will buy an iPad?

Lets face it: Macs fill what is a fairly obvious need. General purpose computing for personal or work reasons–whether web browsing, email, word processing, managing media, buying online–is pervasive, and is a common daily activity for millions and millions of people. The iPhone, first and foremost, is a phone with text messaging, but it is also a portable Internet computer and a gaming device. With the app store, you can make the iPhone and iPod touch what you want them to be. But ultimately, computers and phones have an obvious place in the market. A tablet style computer, not so much, despite Steve Jobs’ attempt to paint a picture to the contrary.

Apple’s 125 Million Customers

The likely market for the iPad consists of several distinct groups of consumers. The first and most obvious is Apple’s existing customers. Apple consistently ranks at the top of industry customer satisfaction surveys, its customers are passionate and loyal, and its ranks for Macs, iPhones and iPods have been growing. In announcing the iPad, Jobs made it very clear that this is a key market for the device. Apple has 125 million customers who have stored their credit cards with Apple, presumably for iTunes purchases. They know, understand, and are comfortable with one-click publishing via the iTunes Store no matter which device they buy from.

Still, if you have a MacBook and an iPhone, do you really need another device, and if yes, does the iPad fit those needs? It is important to remember that despite becoming far more price-competitive in recent years, Apple still plays in the high-end of the markets it addresses. It has no interest in low-cost, low-margin, high-volume products. It prefers higher cost, higher margin products that, while perhaps not scaling like some other companies, are significant businesses nonetheless. That means its 125 million customers either have higher amounts of discretionary income than ordinary consumers, or they simply choose to spend outside their limits for Apple products.

The iPad isn’t necessarily as much about fulfilling an existing need as it is creating desire. Even in a challenging economy, people want Apple’s products, as this week’s financial results clearly demonstrate. The iPhone is far from essential. I can get a cheaper smartphone or traditional mobile for far less and fulfill the need. The iPhone resonates so soundly with customers that they buy it even though it also means higher monthly costs for a data plan. If Apple only got 10 percent of existing customers, or 12.5 million people, to buy an iPad in its first year or two, it’d have a success on its hands.

Retail Store Visitors Who Aren’t Yet Customers

Don’t underestimate the power of Apple’s retail presence to have a major impact on iPad sales. Apple has 283 stores in 10 countries, and welcomed over 50 million visitors to those stores in the last fiscal quarter. Extrapolating a bit, Apple routinely pegs the number of customers in its retail store who are new to Mac at 50 percent. Granted, this includes many iPhone and iPod touch customers who are Windows users, so there is some overlap with the existing customer base identified above. But if you subtract another half, you still have another 12.5 million customers, for a total of 25 million. Because the iPad is less about filling a need and more about creating desire, the retail stores play a key role in customer adoption. Reports from the people who used it in the demo area (alas, I was not one) are very positive. The emotional appeal of the product when people can actually pick it up and use it for 5 or 10 minutes will be huge.

Primary Purpose Users

One of the smartest things about the iPhone design that has been carried over to the iPad is this: despite each device having a primary function, users can make the device whatever they want it to be. Apple is clearly targeting two key user groups with the iPad.

Gamers: The iPhone and iPod touch are very popular game devices, perhaps surprisingly so. The iPad offers similar experiences, but even broader capabilities, primarily due to the screen size. Games were not a big part of Apple’s marketing strategy for the iPhone and iPod touch early on, but they know its being used as a game device. How? Simply by looking at the numbers of game downloads from the iTunes Store. In more recent months, Apple has run several game-specific ads for the two devices. Look for this to increase, and to include the iPad. Imagine the ability to use the iPod touch while you are on road, but the iPad when you get home. Among gamers, who doesn’t want a more immersive gaming experience? Don’t overlook the fact that games played a large part in the demo portion of iPad capabilities.

Readers: Apple has dusted off the iBook brand for its e-book reader embedded in the iPad. The Kindle is the clear market leader in this space, and has the weight of Amazon behind it. But ask yourself, which would you rather have: a single-purpose e-book reader with a (admittedly very good) monochrome screen, or a similar sized, full-color device that does the same thing–perhaps with a more elegant user interface–plus a whole lot more: color, video, photos, and other media in the books themselves, as well as browser, email, calendar, games, and the 140,000 other things from the iTunes App Store? And if you could do that for just $10 more (Kindle DX currently listed at $489, lowest-priced iPad at $499)? No brainer.

The video game market is huge, with likely many non-Mac customers. The e-reader market is not as big, but is likely growing, and the iPad is likely to really juice the market for e-books. Combined, these two markets represent millions and millions of potential customers.

Families

The iPad is light and thin, and supports both Wi-Fi and 3G wireless Internet. As Jobs said, its a mobile device. And though he didn’t come right out and say it, I expect the iPad to become primarily a room-to-room mobile device. I think most iPad buyers will be existing Apple customers. The parents will carry iPhones, the kids iPod touches, and the family will have a laptop or desktop Mac that tends to stay chained to the home office desk and connected to peripherals. So the iPad becomes the device that everyone in the household can use at home when they want a more immersive media experience than the smaller devices allow. The calendar, contacts and notes apps appear to be designed specifically for families. And though the rumored multi-user and sharing features didn’t make it into yesterday’s announcement, my bet is that they appear before the devices ship.

Newbies

Its often hard for us to remember that there is still a huge percentage of the population that doesn’t make computing a part of their daily lives. Many of them have cheap desktop PCs that they occasionally use for email and shopping, but that’s about it. They don’t have game machines, media center PCs, laptops or smartphones. But one of the reasons they don’t have these things is how they fit their lifestyles. Yet all these people read books, watch TV and movies, listen to music, and more and more, browse the web. I conduct software usability testing for a living, and I come across people like this every single day. The iPad will likely meet most or all of their computing needs, and become their primary computer.

Who Will Buy the iPad? Who Won’t?

The brilliance of the design of the iPhone and iPod Touch–and a key contributor to their success–is the combination of incredibly simple, well-made hardware that doesn’t look like anything but a small rectangular thingamabob. Turn it on, however, and it can do some pretty amazing things. With the SDK and resulting app store, you can turn these devices into anything you want them to be. I know some people who use them almost exclusively as iPods, others as game consoles, others still as business communications tools. The big screen is a great new feature that comes with the iPad. But the hardware is a small part of what the iPad represents, and the software will drive its adoption.

Nokia enjoyed an impressive fourth quarter, with profits rising 60 percent despite a 5 percent slide in overall handset sales and its market share in the lucrative smartphone space increasing to 40 percent from an estimated 35 percent in the third quarter. The performance not only beat Wall Street expectations, it indicates that the Finnish manufacturer is finally beginning to execute again. And that’s a strong signal that Nokia is well positioned to leverage Symbian upgrades that will be key to its short-term prospects.

It also reverses — or at least interrupts — a trend that had seen Nokia steadily lose ground to Apple’s iPhone, especially in key Western markets. Indeed, the company was overtaken by Cupertino last fall as the world’s most profitable handset vendor, according to Strategy Analytics. Nokia responded by slashing some research and development jobs and consolidating its handset lineup to focus on higher-end phones — moves that are already paying dividends.

Nokia still has its work cut out for it in the ultra-competitive smartphone segment. The company must find a way to tap the North American market, and its long-term hopes still hinge on a Maemo OS that is just beginning to mature. But the company last month announced plans to re-engineer its Symbian user interface, which has long been a serious vulnerability in an increasingly consumer-driven market. An improved Symbian experience would help Nokia keep pace as it continues to develop Maemo. And as Om noted last week, its focus on location-aware services provides a chance to become the GPS device maker of choice in many markets. If Nokia can continue to regain its momentum, that’s a goal that suddenly seems more plausible.

Image courtesy Flickr user Cyb3rbl@ck.

During today’s unveiling of Apple’s long-awaited tablet, now officially known as the iPad, Steve Jobs also briefly detailed a couple of accessories that will be making their way to market to go with the new 9.7-inch device, one of which is a keyboard dock, with another being a protective case.

The keyboard dock not only acts as a charging station for the iPad, but as the name suggests also offers an integrated full-sized keyboard. Jobs commented on stage that the need for a specific physical keyboard, versus that of the iPad’s on-screen offering, is useful for when “you really need to do a lot of typing”; giving the example “if you’ve got to write War & Peace, just plug your iPad in.”

Apple has also since added that the keyboard dock features the typical 30-pin connector, which will allow for the device to sync to your PC or Mac while still docked. The inclusion of the 30-pin connection also means that other compatible devices can of course be attached. The dock also has an audio-jack so you can plug-in your speakers and enjoy a more full-on experience.

So, with Apple making it easy to plug-in a keyboard and speakers, it seems they are really hoping this device, with the help of accessories, can replicate a typical home experience, when required. However, it’s clear that one thing is missing; the mouse. Of course, Apple showing no pointing device is very-intentional, but without having that established and common set-up would you be willing to switch away from more traditional devices?

Beyond the keyboard dock, Apple revealed a protective case for their new device, dubbed the iPad Case. Although, while the attractive leather holder may protect the iPad from the elements, it also handily doubles up as a stand. The case can be used in a variety of positions which make propping the device in a position that suits your needs super easy. For example, propping it up to watch your favorite movie.

Following the keynote, Apple’s official website updated with additional accessories. These included a dock, without the aforementioned keyboard attached, a camera connection kit, which offers two ways to get your digital images on your iPad and a USB power adaptor. The full range of accessories can be seen in more detail on Apple’s site now.

Much has been made of the supposedly declining fortunes of virtualization giant VMware, which faces increasing competition from free virtualization platforms bundled into operating systems, including Windows Server. So yesterday, on the heels of a sterling quarterly report from the company, I paid a visit to its Palo Alto, Calif., campus to get the lowdown on how the company is fighting back. Contrary to some reports, beating everyone at virtualization remains the game plan.

A quick look at a five-year chart of VMware’s stock illustrates the competitive turmoil that the company has faced as virtualization platforms — ranging from open-source offerings such as Xen to Microsoft’s Hyper-V (bundled in Windows Server) — have proliferated and become freely available in most major operating systems:

Under relatively new CEO Paul Maritz, a longtime Microsoft executive, VMware has been making big acquisitions, first picking up SpringSource (GigaOM Pro, subscription required) to gain a foothold with application developers and the open source community, and more recently, buying Zimbra, which offers cloud-based mail and collaboration applications.  The acquisitions have been widely interpreted as attempts to move up the software stack from the virtualization layer, and into applications. However, in interviews I did yesterday with executives at VMware, they described how focused they remain on virtualization, and the following competitive advantages that they claim they can leverage:

One Of the Toughest Computer Science Problems. When I asked Bogomil Balkansky, VP of product marketing in VMware’s server business unit, about threats from free, bundled virtualization competitors, he stressed that VMware offers its own free hypervisor, and that the management, security and disaster recovery tools that it offers on a paid basis are key differentiators, especially for IT administrators focused on “control.”

“The idea that lots of eyeballs from the open source community produces a better product is not the case in our market,” he said, noting that VMware has more than 3,000 engineers working to make its virtualization platform more efficient. “Efficient virtualization is one of the toughest problems to solve in computer science,” he said. With regard to competition from Microsoft, he and other company executives claimed that Microsoft is years behind VMware in research on virtualization. “Also, it’s one thing to get a blue screen [of death] for a single operating system, and quite another thing to get 10 of them across multiple operating systems,” he said.

The Double Down: 16 Virtual Machines Per CPU. I also got a demo of some of the forward-looking moves VMware is making from Raj Mallem Pati, director of product marketing for VMware’s desktop business unit, and his team.  Clearly, VMware is very focused on greater efficiency in data centers that serve desktop users at enterprises. Specifically, the team noted that in current tests with Intel’s Nehalem processor, they are able to efficiently run 16 virtual machines per CPU in servers. That’s double the maximum amount found in many deployments, and could potentially help users save on space, power and physical servers in data centers. As it works toward this goal, the team is also focusing on reducing latency in many types of enterprise applications.

Virtualization As the On-ramp to Cloud Computing. In a talk with Steve Herrod, VMware’s CTO and SVP of R&D — and also one of the “graybeards” at the company — he characterized virtualization as “the on-ramp to cloud computing,” and, in many ways, a prerequisite for it. He said VMware has more than 1,000 partners focused on cloud computing solutions, ranging from carriers such as AT&T and Verizon to cloud hosting providers. When I asked whether he believes most businesses will want hybrid private/public clouds, he said very much so. With regard to local applications, he also noted that VMware itself uses many of them.

In response to questions about possible threats from operating systems bundling virtualization platforms, he noted that VMware remains operating system-agnostic, and works closely to tie its platform to popular operating systems efficiently. “Operating systems are rigid,” he noted, “and with efficient virtualization helping to manage hardware, the operating system doesn’t need to worry about as many things.” Herrod also anecdotally noted some of VMware’s more unusual field deployments, including installations at the F.B.I., and “in many nuclear submarines.”

Throughout my visit, there was no question that everyone at VMware is aware of increased competition on the virtualization front. (Oracle announced renewed focus on virtualization just today.) Time will tell whether the company’s operating system-agnostic, proprietary software strategy will pay off, but, flying in the face of free things, one thing’s for sure: VMware is going to have to offer more for the money.

Top image courtesy of Dearoot on Flickr.

AT&T is developing a new social recommendations site that it plans to use to enter the white-hot space in the coming months. Think of it as AT&T’s version of Yelp or Urban Spoon or even CitySearch and you get the picture. The effort is a long shot given how teeming the market already is with other user-review offerings, but AT&T isn’t coming to the table empty-handed.

Buzz.com, which is currently in closed alpha with a group of AT&T employees, is aimed at helping users find the right local business based on reviews from friends and family. The company is walking a well-worn path — one that’s been traveled by Google, Yahoo, Yelp and plenty of others — and Buzz.com has all the hallmarks of a corporate me-too offering.

But AT&T brings some muscle to the crowded space. It already has a massive database of information and a substantial local advertising operation through its Yellow Pages business, giving it a solid foundation on which to build. Just as importantly, the telecom has vast experience with mobile content. Not only could AT&T distribute a Buzz.com app to many of its 81 million-plus mobile users, it also could use the site to target consumers using other carriers’ services on the mobile web. Which would give AT&T a great chance to monetize the site as it builds a community of users across mobile networks.

Image courtesy Flickr user MrVJTod.

It didn’t really surprise me in December when I learned that Google was buying AdMob, the leading mobile advertising platform. I was surprised, however, to learn that Apple had been in the discussions and possibly even lost a competitive bidding process. Why? Apple doesn’t make many acquisitions, and when it does, they tend to be about core technologies or engineering teams. Plus, Apple’s primary business model is hardware sales, so an ad platform didn’t make much sense.

The first week of the new year brought definitive word that Apple has purchased Quattro Wireless, a competing platform, for what has been reported to be in the $300 million range. The rumor that Apple was interested in AdMob seems far more likely now. But the two factors that made me question Apple’s interest in AdMod remain relevant to the Quattro deal.

There are at least three possible reasons Apple might buy a mobile advertising company. First, mobile advertising is clearly a growing business, particularly on devices like the iPhone. Second, because Apple owns the iPhone and controls the app distribution process, it might make sense to build ad delivery capability right into the iPhone SDK and iTunes App Store, as a premium or value-added service to developers. Include the right code in your app, ads will be automatically embedded, and you’ll make 70 percent of all ad revenue just like you do from app sales. With app sales, in-app purchasing, and advertising, Apple can now offer a 360-degree mobile app monetization solution. Third, mobile analytics can provide tremendous insights to Apple and its developer community about usage data, trends, and demographics.

There are two other possibilities that are perhaps less obvious, but far more interesting. One relates to a new device, the other to a competitive threat.

It is now widely expected that Apple will release a tablet-style computer at its media event scheduled for January 27. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Apple will discuss “mobile products” at the event, which suggests the event is about more than the rumored iSlate. Clearly, a mobile ad network falls into the mobile products category. And Apple has been rumored to be courting book, magazine and newspaper publishers to produce content for the new device. It wouldn’t be surprising if, during a round of meetings with publishers, Apple learned that an advertising platform would be a key requirement for their participation. The new content wrapper I expect to be included in Apple’s mobile products event – sort of an iTunes LP for traditional print publications — might very well include an integrated Quattro Wireless ad platform as a major enticement for publishers.

That last possibility is really intriguing to me, and has the potential to have a major disruptive force on the wireless industry. As rumors of the Google Nexus One first arose, there was significant speculation that it would be sold as an unlocked device for something between $199-599. On January 5, we learned that the new Android phone would be available in the U.S. on T-mobile immediately for $179 with a two-year contract, and $529 unlocked, and that it would be available later this year on Verizon, likely for similar prices. This means that the business model employed by the carriers and device manufacturers — in which carriers subsidize the cost of the hardware in exchange for a two-year service contract — remains intact. For now.

In launching the Nexus One, Google announced that it could only be purchased through the new Google phone store on the web. Which means that Google is effectively an authorized reseller of the carriers and gets paid a bounty for every contract customer they deliver. Consumers cannot get the Nexus One directly through the carriers. When Apple launched the iPhone, conventional wisdom was that it had rewritten the rules, but Google has taken it several steps further. Like Apple, it controls the hardware and software, and while Apple exerted significant influence on AT&T, you can still go directly through AT&T to get the iPhone. Not so with Google, who now has even greater leverage with the carriers in dictating terms.

In no way is Google beholden to the carriers. It can sell an unlocked phone for any price it wants. Google isn’t likely to sell the phone for a loss, so the low carrier-subsidized and higher unlocked prices make perfect sense. But Google can subsidize the phone another way. Since they control the hardware, software, and consumer relationship, they could easily offer an unlocked version of the phone at a very low price — perhaps even lower than the carrier price — by selling a version that features advertising delivered via its new AdMob platform. There are likely many people who would rather endure ads on their mobile devices than commit to a two-year contract. Now that Google has AdMob and a phone they completely control, it can conduct extensive research on the potential profitability of such an approach, while still collecting carrier subsidies. If the ads perform – and the bet here is that they do — Google could release not just an unlocked phone, but one that doesn’t even need the wireless carriers. Google Voice and Wi-Fi will do just fine in many instances, and Google could pull a WhisperNet for off-net needs.

Which leads us back to Apple. If Google offered the Nexus One and other Android phones at 3 price points — unlocked with no ads (highest), carrier subsidized, and ad subsidized (lowest) — it would be a huge competitive advantage. At the very least, Apple may need a similar ability to go head-to-head, something that Quattro may offer, should sales or market share suffer. And in the competitive arena, now that Google is selling a mobile device in direct competition to Apple, should Apple be required to allow Google Voice on the iPhone?

This is the seventh and last in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

Well, here we are. One more day until Apple holds its Latest Creation event, when all the rumor and speculation about an Apple Tablet will be subject to scrutiny. I won’t be left out. Over the last seven days (including today), I’ve tried to give some thoughtful analysis about what to expect from Apple at tomorrow’s announcement, so you’ll soon know how successful I was. Instead of recapping the previous six days, which you can access here, I’m taking a different approach with my final predictions.

If I were to put myself in Steve’s shoes and outline a keynote for this event, I think it would look something like this.

• Mobile: Today we’re here to talk about our mobile products, and we’ve got an amazing new product to share with you. I think you’ll be blown away.
• Macbook: Record sales in the quarter, strong growth in consumer/retail and education, outpacing the competition. New models with faster processors, more memory, more storage, and more multi-touch. Available immediately.
• iPhone/iPod touch: Crazy growth domestically and internationally. Far exceeding our wildest expectations. Totally reinvented the smartphone market. Massive market share and growing. New hardware models in June. iPhone: better camera, more storage, support for Verizon, same pricing. iPod Touch: camera, video, more storage, same pricing.
• App Store: Billions and billions served. Here are some great examples (show a few including games and apps with hardware additions like Square). Really terrific developer community. We’ve let you down. Here’s how we’re going to do it better. More explicit guidelines about what we’ll approve and what we won’t. Decreasing lead times to get apps launched. Better communication with reviewers via new web tool including chat.
• iPhone OS: Announcing new version. Better overall performance (speed + battery life), new navigation options (integrated homescreen, landscape view of icons, easier way to jump between apps), multitasking, streamlined settings management. Free upgrade for iPhone, $15 for iPod Touch. Available to developers today, consumers in June.
• MobileMe: Over x millions of users. Great way to keep devices in sync, especially contacts and calendars. Innovative features like Find My iPhone. Expanding MobileMe to “your iLife in the cloud.” Store music, movies and photos by syncing with iTunes and iPhoto. Backup that can be accessed and streamed from anywhere. Now includes feature set of iWork.com, with browser-based editing of all file types. Available immediately.
• iTunes, iPhone, Apple TV, MobileMe: Great ecosystem for accessing digital content. Complete rethinking of how they all work together. Easier sharing and seamless movement among devices. Software updates will being appearing soon.
• Our Latest Creation: iPad tablet computer. 10″ multi-touch display, very thin, just one button. Feels great in your hand, believe me. Beautiful, isn’t it? Incredible way to enjoy digital content: movies, music and photos, but also ebooks and digital periodicals. Solutions for all sectors of publishing (show examples: NYTimes, People, Newsweek, textbook). Front-facing webcam for iChat video conferencing. Combo docking station + keyboard. New OS X based user interface. Apple Developer Tools (Xcode, etc.) + new emulator. Support for all existing apps, plus updated app spec to optimize for tablet. Available in March in two models: Wi-Fi only for $899, 3G data with 2-year contract with AT&T or Verizon.

If this prediction is even remotely close, Apple will have hit a home run. How will I do? Check back after the event for my 7 for 7 recap and scorecard to see how I did. In the meantime, here is the full complement of 7 for 7 posts.

Verizon posted today a fourth-quarter loss thanks to a $3 billion charge for worker layoffs related to the company’s fading residential landline business. And while Verizon continues to grow its wireless operations at an impressive clip, its FiOS business seems to be losing momentum.

Verizon saw just 153,000 net new FiOS fiber-to-the-home Internet customers in the fourth quarter, down from 198,000 new adds in the third quarter of 2009. The growth marks a 34 percent year-over-year increase but also indicates a dramatic slowdown from the first half of 2009. FiOS Internet penetration (customers as a percentage of potential customers) was 28.1 percent by the end of the fourth quarter, up from 24.9 percent penetration during the fourth quarter of 2008. The company expanded its potential FiOS Internet market by only 2.2 million potential premises during 2009, which appears to confirm reports that it is slowing deployment until it sees higher uptake.

Verizon Wireless continued to grow at an impressive pace, though. The joint venture with Vodafone added 2.2 million net new customers to reach a total of 91.2 million users and surpassing analysts’ estimates of 1.5 million net adds, according to Reuters. Data average revenue per user increased to $16.24 and data revenues accounted for 31.9 percent of all service revenues during the quarter, up from 26.5 percent during the year-ago period. That overall growth in data ARPU is a trend Verizon is obviously hoping to build on with new plans that reduce the cost of voice but make data service mandatory on many popular phones. Mobile network operators are increasing depending on data usage to offset declining revenues from voice.

Image courtesy Flickr user Eric Hauser.

This is the sixth in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

The unlikeliest of all the features I’m hoping for in an Apple Tablet–home controls–made it to the penultimate post in the 7 for 7 series (tomorrow’s article will be a recap and will address some broader concepts about Apple’s mobile strategy). Unlikeliest? I’ve seen very little in the way of rumors or speculation that Apple is intending to include support for home controls in the iSlate, iPad, Canvas or you-name-it tablet device now widely expected to be unveiled on Wednesday. Yet its one of those out-of-the-blue kinds of things that would allow Apple to both surprise analysts and pundits alike, and to totally disrupt the current home controls market while opening it to the masses. So allow me to dream for a day before the reality of Wednesday’s announcement brings me back to earth.

First off, we should probably define home controls, which is also known as home automation. Home controls is the automation of many household appliances and services, such as lighting, temperature, audio-video, and security, among other systems. These systems are integrated into one central control unit, which can then be accessed by multiple devices on the network. Home controls give residents the ability to turn lights on and off, increase or decrease your thermostat’s temperature control, or select options on your home entertainment center.

Home control systems have become commonplace in luxury homes because of the convenience they offer, but are out of reach for most homeowners because of cost. Companies like Savant and HomeLogic offer an impressive array of control devices, from wall-mounted and wireless touchpads to sleek system controllers and even digital furniture. Control4 has successfully attempted to make full-scale home automation systems more affordable, but their system can also be a bit pricey as it requires many custom components. My brother has a Control4 system in his new home, and I love how it makes distributing audio a breeze. All three companies, and others, offer home controls iPhone apps, as central servers can often be accessed via Wi-Fi.

Devices in your home must also be controllable, which means they typically need some form of actuator. The high-end companies offer their own solutions, but there are industry standards for communications like X10 which drive down the cost. Any device, like a light switch, can be retrofitted to support X10, and communication signals are sent over existing electrical lines. Yet such controls have yet to hit the mainstream, in part because they are somewhat technically advanced and still considered a luxury. However, as energy consumption becomes more important and the cost of home control equipment goes down, more and more people will consider home controls as a serious option, especially if government incentives that support such devices gain traction.

Apple and its developers have ventured into various aspects of home controls. Apple offers its Remote app in the iTunes App Store to control iTunes, Apple TV, and Airport Express audio. The aforementioned home controls companies have released iPhone apps as part of their solutions. And there are a few Mac-based home controls systems on the market, including Shion and Perceptive Automation’s Indigo, which communicate with X10 and other automation standards and devices.

The reasons I want to see and think there is an outside chance that home controls a part of the tablet announcement are: 1) positioning of the device as a new kind of home computer or room-to-room mobile; 2) the huge market opportunity that home controls represents; and 3) my own imagination about what Apple could do with a multi-touch interface that controls my home’s functions. But the reasons not to expect it are perhaps stronger: 1) this positioning competes too much with a larger opportunity to be a digital media device; 2) a successful home controls strategy would require too heavy a reliance on a now fragmented market for hardware peripherals; and 3) frankly, Apple has too many other ways to excite and engage customers via multi-touch interface.

I’d really, really like to believe that Apple will aggressively address the home controls market, starting with the launch of the tablet on the 27th, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. For some entrepreneurs out there, however, I think the tablet represents a new opportunity to develop new, or better commercialize existing home controls solutions using Mac hardware for control center and user interface functions, x10 and related hardware for device control, and system integration services to pull it all together. If Apple doesn’t do it, someone should.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

• Is Energy Management the Killer App For the Home Automation Market?
• What’s Next for Apple’s Living Room Strategy?
• Is the Age of the Web Tablet Finally Upon Us?

The number of mobile apps on the market grows larger by the day, but the number of ways to sort through them all remains quite limited. T-Mobile USA looks to give the discoverability of the apps offered on its network a jumpstart by partnering with developers. Together they tie certain apps to specific devices, then embark on a concerted effort to market the heck out of them.

T-Mobile isn’t alone in trying to figure out how to connect consumers with top-notch apps. The glut of titles has given birth to a subset of applications that deliver personalized mobile apps or recommend offerings to friends. Apple, meanwhile, has gone so far as to encourage developers to use keywords when submitting their offerings in order to help users find them more easily.

While the glut of choices can result in app store operators creating a competitive advantage by, say, leveraging recommendation engines in order to help customers separate the wheat from the chaff, it also creates an opportunity for carriers, which can cherry-pick the apps that help them best market their phones. T-Mobile USA worked with Big in Japan, a Dallas-based developer, to feature the app ShopSavvy on the carrier’s Android -based G1 phone at its 2008 launch, and it worked with Geodelic to build a T-Mobile-specific version of the app Sherpa that was pre-loaded on myTouch 3G handsets. A mobile barcode-reading app, ShopSavvy has been downloaded by more than one million U.S. users, and the search app Sherpa has seen more than 350,000 downloads.

“There is a multitude of ways of bringing those devices to life; to tie the value proposition of those devices to those apps,” Sajal Sahay, T-Mobile’s director of handset innovation, told me. “Once we figured those out we went out and looked for developers…One of the things we do very well is that we’re able to bring these value propositions to life in marketing communications. And what these (developers) get is instant access to tons and tons of marketing spend from T-Mobile.”

T-Mobile also recommends certain apps through its App Pack, which uses an icon on the home screen to eliminate the need for users to rifle through the Android Market. And the carrier has launched a print magazine to push new apps and features for the myTouch 3G. The new collaborations sometimes require more sophisticated business models than the simple revenue splits that are the foundation of most app stores — Venetia Espinoza, T-Mobile’s director of mobile applications and partner programs, estimated about 20 percent of its developer deals are individually negotiated — and often require substantial investment.

There’s still plenty of distrust from developers who have long suffered at the hands of carriers that insisted on controlling every aspect of mobile content. And over time, established carrier/developer relationships could pose yet another hurdle for newcomers looking to bring their apps to market. But with app stores quickly becoming overstocked warehouses, the developer/carrier model could evolve as a key way for both sides to better leverage the exploding space.

Image courtesy Geodelic Systems.

Social networking tools are critical to how most of us keep up with others and raise our profiles in the working world. They are also emerging as ever more useful ways for businesses to communicate. Here are eight essential guides from our network that can make you a power business user of social tools.

32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business: In this hugely popular post from WebWorkerDaily, you’ll find tips on using Facebook for everything from marketing to finding a job. Have you established a business acount on Facebook? How can you do better branding there? If you have a small business, have you set up an optimized Facebook page, and reviewed the basics?

62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business: Facebook is hardly the only social tool online that can boost your business prospects. At the GigaOM Network, we make extensive business use of Twitter, as do many companies. In this post, you can learn how to join industry topic groups on Twitter, or enhance your Twitter background and profile.  If you’re hunting for a job, TwitterJobSearch might be up your alley.

33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business: Is your LinkedIn account sitting around unloved? LinkedIn is one of the older online social networks, and is still essential for business people.  You can use it to get jobs, sell products, gain free publicity and more.

10 Golden Rules of Social Media: What do you need to know from an overview perspective to make the best business use of online social tools? In this post, you’ll find excellent tips on how to listen properly using these tools, the manners surrounding them and more.  This collection provides more useful information along these lines.

10 Tips for Becoming a Smarter Social Business Person: Did you know that Dell has made millions of dollars using Twitter? What are the rules you should follow pertaining to your employer when using social tools online? This post covers these topics, and other interesting ones.  It’s also worth reviewing how to be sure that you’re being both personal and professional in social networking environments.

How to Build Conversations in Social Media: Whether you’re just launching a business or want to start a conversation about your job prospects with people who might be able to help you, getting a discussion going using social tools is an art. Here is the art explained.

Why Social Media Marketing is Still a Red-headed Stepchild: How do you use social networks as part of a fully-integrated marketing strategy? Surprisingly, few businesses give careful thought to this, when they could greatly benefit from doing so. Here are some ideas on next steps for a great online marketing strategy.

Evaluating Social Media Dashboards: There still aren’t enough good tools and dashboards for looking at social media messaging and content from an aggregated, overview angle. There are some though, and you might want to look into Spredfast’s solution, and the free Flock browser. The open source Sweetcron application is also worth evaluating.

Top image courtesy of Flickr user LittleDan77.