May 2010 Archives

Where Apple had a proprietary approach to TV, Google looks to introduce a set-top box based on Android, dubbed "Smart TV," at the I/O conference this week. Smart TV is in collaboration with Sony, Intel and Logitech and allows users to switch easily between TV shows, YouTube or home videos on your own set. The Apple TV, introduced in 2007, requires iTunes so users can buy or rent movies, TV shows, songs or podcasts. The Apple TV was a living room extension of the iTunes Store, that's about it. No major networks got on board with Apple.  Although earlier this year, we thought Disney and CBS were interested in Apple's offer of $2-$4/month per subscriber. That is much higher than networks get today. The only catch was Apple would sell a subscription without ads as a $30/month bundle. I doubted the networks would get on board because their source of reach is cable networks. Those cable MSOs do not want to compete with Internet TV served up by Apple. Google on the other hand, with Smart TV, would enable Google to control navigation of content through the TV set. They've been testing a search service to help consumers find shows on the Dish Network already. Intel provides the Atom chips, Sony provides the consumer brand and Logitech would provide a specialized remote with a built-in keyboard. On the video front, I think Google is about to open up the VP8 video codec acquired with their purchase of On2. The lack of an appropriate universal codec for the HTML5 video element has made it difficult for standards-based video to reach critical mass. H.264 compression still rules and so do its patents and license fees. VP8 is said to be highly sophisticated and competitive with H.264. If Google makes VP8's underlying intellectual property available under royalty-free terms, it could propel HTML5 video as the de-facto standard. Think HD Internet video in a browser from your 62" set! The wildcard is if they can keep the Android kernel for TV from fragmenting. Open Source is a two-edged sword as I've pointed out many times.

The news surrounding Intel's recent announcement of the Atom Z6xx (aka Moorestown) System-on-a-Chip (SoC) tends to focus on the uphill battle the company is facing in the ARM-centric smartphone ecosystem. Intel has claimed idle times of 21-23 milliwatts for the Z6xx series compared to 25 mW for a 1GHz Snapdragon. That is 10 days of standby time with a 1500 mAh battery. What is more interesting is the move to port Windows Server to multi-core ARM processors manufactured at 40 nm, such as announced by Marvell Technology Group. The chips will bring more than a five-fold reduction in power consumption in data centers and cloud environments compared to the x86. Think of the headroom an ARM implementation in servers would be when comparing an Intel Xeon at several hundred dollars versus a $35 ARM quad-core running virtualized Windows Server 2008. Om Malik brings up in a recent post that it was "too bad Intel sold its StrongARM technology to Marvell." I agree; Marvell did what Intel didn't have the heart to do. We think of virtualization in data centers as smart economics in hardware utilization and power consumption but what happens when server hardware processor cores decrease by a factor of 10 and power consumption by 5? Do we throw hardware at the problem again? Analysts should model the financial scenarios factoring in VMWare licensing costs, power consumption/footprint of rack space and application-specific-servers vs. general purpose power-hog blades running VMWare.

Developers explain that using Xcode tools from Apple for Objective-C results in more efficient code and power management for the iPhone & iPad devices. This also ensures some consistency in the way the finished application looks and behaves. Even though Obj-C is not managed code like Microsoft .Net (e.g., with garbage collectors), developers have no problems releasing memory to fulfill the performance requirements imposed by Apple. If your program takes more than 20 seconds to respond to the user or tries to access more memory then is available, the OS shuts it down. I don't see Apple attempting to create a monopoly or impose unfair trade practices. They do not have the desktop market share that Microsoft had during the Internet Explorer DOJ actions. It's not Apple's concern what developers have to do to their app for another platform. Adobe can set up an Apple mobile devices group to develop Xcode libraries for their mobile application developers. This is no different than what Microsoft does with their Apple division where they have MS Office 2008 running very well on Snow Leopard. No need for the government to get involved.

Kevin Kelleher of GigaOM posits in his article that Apple will eventually give up control of the iPhone & iPad environment, the application process, and limiting content to what is "appropriate" for its customers.  While I agree with his analogy of comparing Apple to WalMart in terms of being a retailer, I do not believe their walled garden limits innovation. The reason is during the early phases of technology adoption, it is better to have this type of control to preserve the brand experience. Apple could not afford to have sloppy applications or serve up what their customers might deem inappropriate. Very soon, customers will be able to experience unrestricted HMTL5 applications accessible over the web that will approach the current UI experience from fat client apps on iTunes. The same goes for iPad.  Apple is not only a "platform," it is a Brand and above all, that is what the company will preserve. Gadgets will change but the brand remains the same.