The challenge that HTC, Samsung, Nokia and others will now have is that they will compete against two Silicon Valley giants, Apple and Google, who can design great hardware and sell it at low margins. Apple will recoup its costs with apps and content and Google with ads and apps. Instead, all other hardware makers will have to think of how to monetize after the hardware is sold or they will have a hard time competing. A proof of this is that nobody has come up with a product that competes with the iPad at $499 yet. No hardware makers can turn their hardware into a post-sales cash machine as Apple can. Now Motorola will be able to make Android/Honeycomb tablets at low margins because Google will milk them with post-sale profits from ads, apps and probably soon content as paid versions of Youtube and music services get going.
2011 16
There should be a Moore law of memory
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Is there a Moore law of memory? Because if there isn’t there should be one. It should read like this: every 18 months you can buy twice the memory for the same price. And this Moore law of memory is finally working in my favor. As opposed to Moore law itself which seems to be a wash because whenever you get faster chips you get bigger programs, with storage memory I am now unable to produce content at the speed hard drives are falling in price. All my photography and videos taken throughout my life amount to around 3TB. Now that I take RAW photography and HD videos I consume around 100GB per month of memory. But I saw that now they make 6GB external HD for around $400. I am about to get one of those, I can put everything I ever photographed or filmed and still have enough room for a couple of years. It feels nice to be ahead.
In any case advice on what HD to get is appreciated.
2011 16
Google buys Moto
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
A few weeks ago I wrote that Google had to buy a smartphone maker.
I am very glad they bought Motorola. Google has very little to lose buying Moto and a lot to gain. Motorola is affordable, has good IP, is in USA, and even though they clearly don’t make the best Android phones now Andy Rubin will make sure they do.
And $9.5bn is what Google could afford (Moto has $3bn in cash). HTC is a much better company but $50bn is tough even for a $150bn Google. Samsung impossible.
Now the challenge is to make sure that the level playing field continues that Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson and others don’t feel discriminated and if GoogleMoto wins is because they just make the best hardware/software experience.
Of course there is a risk that Android partners will try to help promote Windows Phone but for that they are late after Nokia and in any case mobile operating systems can hardly be pushed. Microsoft has so much cash and resources and with all their might WP is selling 15K units per day while Android sells 550K. A mobile OS is like a social network of geeks where the people are the apps developers. And in a mobile OS as in many other things in life, money can’t buy you love. It helps, but it doesn’t buy it.
Nokia & Microsoft via BI
Nokia is either dead, or saved by the strategy explained in this article. I give 80% that it’s dead, but 20% is still a chance. And if Windows Phone does take off it will be the miracle that Nokia needs. Problem is that WP should it be a success, it is also available for HTC and Samsung. Indeed it is HTC not Nokia who is the number one biggest seller of Windows Phone now. But Windows Phone sells 15K units a day worldwide and falling and Android 550K and growing fast. Nokia surprisingly still sells close to a million phones a day, most are cheap phones but still the largest maker by units. But HTC and Samsung have destroyed Nokia’s market in smartphones by adopting and thriving with Android and effectively together with iOS killing Symbian. So betting on WP is betting on a platform that as it stands nobody wants and if by thanks to Nokia it succeeds then Samsung, HTC and others will have it as well.
Not only it is hard to understand why Nokia went with Windows Phone but also why it went exclusively with Windows Phone instead of having Android as well.
Nokia married Microsoft but Microsoft gets to sleep around.
2011 5
Why I carry 3 smartphones
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Ok, I am obsessed with Smartphones and connectivity, but probably so are you.
My announced day without Blackberry produced an undesirable outcome. I did not abandoned Blackberry but ended up trading back from the Torch(ure) to the BB 9700. My BB9700 is a liberated T Mobile USA model so I can use it both in Europe and in USA (few phones work like that cause T Mobile has their own 3G flavor). But I still carry my iPhone 4 and HTC HD.
I could not drop the BB for one main reason, INPUT. I can’t type super fast on the iPhone no matter how hard I try. And I have tried since 2008. I envy people who say they can. I find the symbols in a second screen and the globe to change languages a real impediment. Android is better. I can type faster on the HTC HD with Swiftkey (amazing app) but not as fast as in a BB with a vertical raised keyboard made for thumbs and a trackpad. My daughters agree, they say typing on glass with long nails is too difficult. The Blackberry Bold is my main communication, messaging, email and blogging machine. The Bold BB is my “lean forward” device. The Android and iPhone are my “lean back” alternatives. My spectator smartphones. In the BB I create, in the Android or especially the iPhone, I enjoy what others have created. Many times I end up paying for it as well. The Bold BB is crucial in my life because my wife, my 3 older kids all use Blackberries and I BBM with them. Many think Blackberries are for old people but at Columbia University, NYU and Spanish high schools, Blackberries are still very big. Blackberry is also the only service that gives me global roaming via Movistar for only an extra 20 euros a month. With the Android and iPhone if I don’t find Fon or other WiFi I am roaming toast.
So I continue to walk around with 3 smartphones. I know it’s crazy.
I use the iPhone and Android for different collections of apps because as we know, apps suck on the BB.
I use both because neither phone has enough juice to get me through the day so I use the Android and iPhone at different times. I think that people in California don’t have that problem because they live in their cars, so workers at Apple and Google never notice how much battery their software/cpu and other chips need. They charge their smartphones stuck in traffic jams. In the rest of the world either smartphones will get better batteries or buses and subways will have plugs.
Now I don’t just use smartphones, I abuse them. I make use of all of them intensely. I mountain bike practically every day using sports apps like Endomondo, music apps like Spotify, I use RadioMe in Android, Twitter, Facebook, G+ on Android and iPhone (I want it in BB). I also use Seesmic to multipost. Dropbox to send files to myself and others.
I frequently give the iPhone to my 4 year old who abuses it even more. He plays up to 20 different games, watches videos, pictures. If what people mean that iPhones are for young people is that they are for 4 year olds then I am with them. Little kids find iPhones their device of choice. Before language acquisition they are unbeatable. I also sometimes play games such as Chopper, Angry Birds with him or alone and the iPhone is the king of gaming.
When I am in grown up mode, I use Navionics when I sail (amazing app), I use photo apps like Instagram (iPhone) or Picplz (Android). I also turn my Android and iPhone into hotspots for my MacBook Air or iPad. I use BBM a lot, PINs, Google Maps, Latitude, Whatsapp, Rebtel on BB (amazing integration to save money on international calls), Skype on iPhone and Android, Gmail everywhere of course, WordPress apps to blog in all three platforms but best in BB cause of input same with Tumblr. Sonos controller is available for Android and iPhone not BB. I love AirPlay in my iPhone and through Airport Express I can play Spotify or iTunes on my stereo. I use Fon apps to connect automatically to Fon WiFi on Android. I also enjoy other music apps like Rdio, Grooveshark, for me music apps are like radio stations, none is good for everything. And of course, I use cameras and video and for that the iPhone is the best. And then there is the issue of back ups. Because apps fail, like sports apps, I sometimes go cycling with two different smartphones collecting data, say Endomondo in the Android and Runkeeper in the iPhone, so I have back up. The ultimate back up tool? Dropbox, works everywhere 
Now what I almost never do, with any of these smartphones is to send a txt and I very rarely make a phone call.
Today, 21 European early-stage VC firms released a standard term sheet they will use as guideline for their future investments (actually they released 2 term sheets – one for “general use” and another designed to facilitate the EIS tax relief for investments in small private companies). Both docs were drafted for the UK market, but the general idea should be the same in most countries. Especially first-time entrepreneurs in Europe without much experience in dealing with investors can benefit greatly from this document. While the terms will still be adjusted as required for each transaction, these general guidelines give entrepreneurs a good idea of what is considered “common practice” in a term sheet. This will also help to reduce legal costs and speed up the whole investment process.
Of course not all start-ups will end up winning. Some might have been able to negotiate more favorable terms if the SeedSummit term sheet had not been published. But the positive effects will surely far outweigh such drawbacks (TechCrunch readers seem to agree – so far almost entirely positive comments). Even with all the information available on the web about term sheets, there are still many entrepreneurs out there who have no clue of what should and should not be included in a term sheet. Even top MBA candidates have this problem, as I observe frequently among my students at IE.
As with most innovation in the European VC sector, this move comes more than a year later than the US Series Seed documents, which were adopted in March 2010 by a group of prominent US seed investors, such as SV Angel (Ron Conway), First Round Capital, Mike Maples, and others. But better late than never!
2011 26
VirtualGallery a click away from great art
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
My friend Jon Berrojalbiz has launched VirtualGallery.com, a new virtual community for artists and art lovers. If you’re an artist, you can create your own 3D gallery for free and exhibit your artwork to the world. Art lovers or anybody faintly interested in art can browse through the different galleries and can purchase many of the pieces directly.
The site has a very lean design and easy to understand. You can even enjoy it in fullscreen. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, VirtualGallery.com offers a recommendation engine that worked quite well for me. If you are browsing through a premium gallery (for which the artist has to pay a certain annual fee), you can also listen to soundtracks created for that gallery, making the experience even more enjoyable. Artists can additionally embed their galleries in external sites and hold “opening events”, where they can chat with their guests and show them details of their artwork using the “follow” function.
VirtualGallery.com also solves some of the typical problems you encounter when browsing for art online: you get detailed information about the texture, and you can zoom in to have a good look at the artwork. Also, you have the option of changing the background color, which makes it easier to imagine how a certain piece of art would look like in your home if you have differently colored walls. Every piece of art is also shown in comparison to the dimensions of the human body.
If the definition of an art lover is simply a person who enjoys art to a great extent, then I would certainly consider myself as such. Maybe that’s the reason why I really enjoyed Jon’s new project. I find it especially useful for discovering new art without needing to sacrifice a lot of time, which is often the case when you physically visit different galleries. And I don’t know any gallery in the world that can offer the same amount and variety of art in one place!
2011 23
Opengarden, not your typical tethering app
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
I just met with Micha Benoliel, the founder of Opengarden. If you have a rooted Android I recommend you try Opengarden. Opengarden is not your typical tethering app. Opengarden not only creates a hotspot out of your Android phone which is something that now most Androids do, but it also makes you a member of Opengarden allowing you to mesh. So for example if you find encrypted WiFi and you know the password you can mesh or act as a bridge and give WiFi to someone else (still not sure to how many others). Also you can have 3G and give WiFi to others and then another person can obtain this signal and grow the garden without being connected to 3G. I can see how this can be useful at conferences for example or places where many people are in one place. What I don’t share is Micha’s vision that this Opengarden can somehow be a permanent garden of smartphones always active. But I like the idea!
2011 20
Wayra: Telefónica’s start-up accelerator
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Entrepreneurship with No Comments
A couple of weeks ago, Telefónica announced the launch of Wayra, a program that will support the creation of high-tech IT companies in Latin America and Spain. Basically, Wayra is a business incubator, although it wants to be more than that and calls itself a business “accelerator”. (Future) entrepreneurs can submit their projects, even if they’re only at an idea stage, and the 30 teams with the most promising ideas will be given the opportunity to present in front of a jury which will then narrow the selection down to 10 projects (this occurs on a country level). The first three countries are Colombia, Mexico and Spain, and the goal is to have this initiative running in eight countries by the end of this year. This will bring the number of supported projects to 80 by the end of 2011.
Every project will get access to Telefónicas top-notch technological infrastructure, and in addition will receive financing of $30k to $70k during the first six months and will obtain all the necessary support needed to establish and build a successful company (office space, mentoring, day-to-day management, technical support from Telefónicas R&D department, etc.). Wayra will also help the most interesting of these projects to obtain additional financing after the initial six-month period.
The idea behind this project is to facilitate the creation of global tech companies out of Latin America and Spain, which, despite some great successes like MercadoLibre, is still very difficult. Many potential founders move to tech hubs like Silicon Valley, New York, London or Berlin because they can’t find the necessary environments needed to create and grow an international company in their home countries. Access to capital is difficult (especially finding “smart money”), it’s hard to find skilled employees and the overall environment (legal, etc.) is often not supportive of entrepreneurship.
Wayra’s mission is to plant the seed from which local “Silicon Valleys” can emerge over time in the target countries, enabling talented individuals to pursue their dreams without having to leave their home country and fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. A great initiative, I am looking forward to seeing the first projects emerging from the program.