RIM - New Tablet and New OS

This Christmas will be a tablet Christmas with various screen sizes ranging from 5 to 10 inches from many OEMS. RIM is under immense pressure to come up with new devices and create a developer eco-system. Their existing efforts with black berry appworld were not that fruitful. They recently purchased another OS called QNX, who is a leader in embedded RTOS. In consumers mind its not just a device anymore, It is about usability, it is about the apps, it is about the whole experience. It will be challenging for RIM jump start the developer ecosystem. The OEM's lock-in consumer to buy tablet from same manufacturer as their phone , so that they can share the apps. This is especially true for iOS devices, which makes new entrants with tablet only offering more difficult. I don’t believe that these new devices reducing the market share of iPad devices in near future, but it will make apple to offer new features such as camera and reduce the prices. In the operator perspective, yet another data plan would be hard from consumer standpoint, so we need to find some niche services that we can offer on these new segment of devices.

Wal-Mart offering their own branded wireless plans

The Wal-Mart branded offering will be based on the no.4 network operator T-Mobile. The network itself has limited coverage compared to others. I believe, they are currently struggling to raise capitol to upgrade their networks 4G. From wal-mart side, they do have greater retail presence and branded for cheaper products. The proposed voice plan is not cheaper to the rival MetroPCS offering of $40 unlimited calls, text and web. They currently expanding to more markets and upgrading their networks to LTE. Similar to wal-Mart, the electronics retailer BestBuy partnered with clearwire to offer similar service with more emphasis on data plans rather than voice. Overall, the wal-Mart plan encouraging non-data users to try and later buy data, which make sense for the segment, they are targeting. Another biggest problem from the consumer standpoint would be the initial investment on the handset. Wal-mart can show little retail muscle to get the handset prices down compared to the MetroPCS.

Apple relaxed rules

You might heard the news that apple is now allowing third party frameworks on their idevices. Adobe might be pretty exited about this news. After series of back and forth arguments about flash on devices, Apple realized the impact of adobe developer community embracing other platforms mainly android. With huge market adoption of android devices across the world, apple wants to defend their position. The other community of 3rd party ad engines may welcome the news. Previously apple wants to exclusively benefit from iAds program, but now it opened to other 3rd party engines. Overall, the mobile applications industry ranging from developers, cross platform tools, analytics companies etc might extend their support to idevices. I believe apple realized the fact and acted quickly than estimated.

LightSquared to Challenge Clearwire

I just watched LightSquared CEO Mr. Sanjeev Ahuja, talking in bloomberg TV. The network they are building has unique value proposition of quicker and broader coverage by linking the 4G network to satellite, and this is never done before. Unlike clearwire, the only left over player in Wimax, lightSquared going with LTE. When we compare both the companies, the average consumer see reduced prices when many networks competing. Mr.Sanjeev brought another point that, lightsquared is "wholesale only" operator compared to clearwire. Even though Sprint is a partner, the clearwire's 4G mi-fi devices are competing with sprints mifi devices, which is not a good sign. There was another question on the interview about the devices embedding the 4G chipsets or OEMs need to build separate devices. But may be it is cheaper to build LTE chipsets than wimax due to huge market adoption(of course satellite is the twist here, i am not sure about the whole network architecture, at this point).The LightSquared launch was quicker than i expected.I wish they could go to IPO during next year.