How Finland Brought Down Nokia and Revived Itself
June 21, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
Never have country and company been so interlinked, technology bound them now it sets them free.
Read an extract from my feature on TrustedReviews of my thoughts following my trip to Finland…
How Finland Brought Down Nokia and Revived Itself
- By Gordon Kelly
- 21 June 2011
“Anytime you have a very big duck in a very small pond there are effects that are not in the interest of the pond or the duck.”
It may sound a strange analogy, but Risto Siilasmaa knows what he is talking about. Once Finland’s wealthiest man, Siilasmaa is the chairman, founder and former CEO of Helsinki-based F-Secure, one of the largest security companies in the world. Since 2008 he has sat on Nokia’s board of directors.
“If you went to a Finnish university a few years ago the vast majority of graduates went to Nokia or into the public sector,” he explains. “There was always a job, there was security. Nokia’s success guaranteed it.”
This may sound extreme, but to understand it fully requires context. Nokia may be a technology heavyweight, but it has been in existence since 1865. Its founder, Fredrik Idestam, didn’t call it Nokia until 1871 when he named it after a small nearby town. Over the years it has made car and bicycle tyres, plastics, aluminium and chemicals, televisions, robotics and military equipment including gas masks. It didn’t move into the electrical business for nearly 30 years and only focused purely on telecommunications since the 1990s.
Despite its evolutionary nature the company has come to define Finland. It has 132,000 employees; Finland has a population of 5.4m. In 2003 it accounted for one quarter of all Finland’s exports. In 2007 it was responsible for a third of the market capitalisation of the entire Helsinki stock exchange. Its dominance is a unique situation for any industrialised country and its huge ‘Nokia House’ headquarters (pictured below) overpower its hometown of Espoo.
“It created an attitude of complacency in the population that we are trying to change,” said Siilasmaa. “Nokia became a victim of its own success because over time this attitude then filtered through the company.” READ ON
Is Internet Access a Basic Human Right?
June 11, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
The UN thinks so and it also believes the UK’s Digital Economy Act should be illegal. I weigh up the pros and cons for TrustedReviews…
Is Internet Access a Basic Human Right?
- By Gordon Kelly
- 11 June 2011
Air, water, free speech, Angry Birds… there are many things over the years we have come to see as basic human rights. According to the United Nations this week we should all start getting used to another, perhaps more surprising one, Internet access.
“Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states,” said the report from Frank La Rue, a special rapporteur to the United Nations. La Rue wrote the report “on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”
He explained that “the Internet is one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies.” He added that “the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights.”
Why write this report now? La Rue noted that the Internet has existed since the 1960s, but said its evolution was such that today there is “incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life”.
Is La Rue right? READ ON
Apple Signals the Start of a Post-PC Era
June 9, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
The talk surrounding Apple’s latest announcement may have been about new iOS and iCloud features, but ultimately the theme was the demise of the PC… Here is an extract of my thoughts for TrustedReviews.
Apple Signals the Start of a Post-PC Era
- By Gordon Kelly
- 08 June 2011
At the start of May we wrote an opinion piece entitled iCloud.com: Apple’s most important development in years? On Monday night it proved to be so. Steve Jobs took to the stage of the Moscone Centre for Apple’s annual World Wide Developers’ Conference and unveiled iCloud, a service which will fundamentally change the company’s business model forever.
iCloud had long been rumoured, but for once Apple realised it was too important to play games and used the week before WWDC to declare: “At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.”
If this was out of character then so is the theory behind iCloud itself: the beginning of a post-PC era. Until now Apple has built its iPod, iPhone and iPad product lines upon the strict practice that they must be tethered to a computer to sync with iTunes. The computer stopped these devices from being truly mobile and iTunes tied them to Apple’s software ecosystem. This methodology was so strong Apple had begun to fall behind its rivals leading us to discuss in March Why Apple Runs Shy of the Cloud. As we declared at the time: “the business model which currently serves Apple so well will increasingly become a noose around its neck if it keeps refusing to evolve.”
Well evolve it has and from a business perspective it has evolved brilliantly. READ ON
Can Intel Wrestle Arm?
June 2, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
Intel aims to beat Moore’s Law, but that might not be enough to beat ARM… read an extract below from my feature at TrustedReviews.
Can Intel Wrestle Arm?
- By Gordon Kelly
- 01 June 2011
I’m sure you’ve heard of Moore’s Law. It claims the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit will double approximately every two years. This is often incorrectly quoted as performance doubling every 18 months, but regardless it is a phenomenal technological achievement which has remained true for 46 years. Yesterday Intel revealed its latest roadmap will out accelerate Moore’s Law and the most remarkable thing is this might not be enough…
In unveiling its Ultrabook concept, Intel executive vice president Sean Maloney said its Atom line of processors will be getting a die shrink every year for the next three years. That means the 32nm Cedar Trail design will be succeeded by 22nm and 14nm versions by 2014. “Sandy Bridge is the first step in reinventing the PC,” proclaimed Maloney. “The second step is Ivy Bridge, which is built on our industry-leading 22-nanometer process. The third step is Haswell in 2013. We will double the battery life.”
The first Ultrabook will be the Asus UX21 (pictured) and Maloney believes the new sector will claim a whopping 40 per cent of the notebook market within 18 months. What Maloney didn’t address, however, is who will claim the remaining 60 per cent? If you believe the foke at ARM, the answer is them. READ ON
Spotify Can Replace Your iPod
May 23, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials, Guide
In an experiment for TrustedReviews I find out if music streaming services are ready for the big time… find an extract below.
Spotify Can Replace Your iPod.
- By Gordon Kelly
- 23 May 2011
Apple’s iCloud is the talk of the Internet, with it strongly expected to be the company’s long awaited music streaming service, but could there already be a streaming service capable of replacing Apple’s increasingly outdated iTunes and iPod model? We decided to run an iPhone experiment: goodbye iPod, hello Spotify.
The Terms
It couldn’t have been simpler. Remove all iPod music from an iPhone and move 100% to Spotify. Could we survive like this or are the theoretical benefits far removed from reality?
Why did we choose the iPhone and Spotify? Well, the iPhone bit was easy – we had one to hand, it is utterly ubiquitous, and of course it’s on this device that the iCloud is surely to be most thoroughly integrated. As for Spotify, again it is the most ubiquitous of the streaming services, with one of the largest music libraries. We could just as easily have chosen the likes of We7 or Napster, or indeed smart radio services like Last.fm and Pandora, though we’ve never quite seen the latter as true personal listening alternatives.
Two weeks on the results are in.
The Upsides
The only way to describe removing all the music from your iPod is to compare it to a spring clean. That feeling of terror from what you have discarded, quickly followed by the relief and excitement of a clean slate. The amount of music we all carry around which we never listen to is huge and the instant creation of space is liberating. READ ON
Nokia Is Finding Its Feet Too Late
May 18, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
As Nokia streamlines its business is it really just readying itself for a Microsoft takeover? Read an extract from my editorial on TrustedReviews…
Nokia Is Finding Its Feet Too Late
- By Gordon Kelly
- 18 May 2011
Nokia is finding its feet too late.
Two huge stories have hit the troubled phone maker this week. The first that Nokia is ditching its Ovi brand, the second that Microsoft is about to swoop to buy the company’s entire mobile phone business. Are the two true? Are they related? And what does it mean for Nokia?
The first is simple. The news surrounding Ovi is true, with Nokia having confirmed it on its blog. “The main reason for this change is so we can leverage the high-value of the Nokia master brand to better support future plans to deliver disruptive and compelling mobile experiences globally,” said Ovi blog editor Pino Bonetti. Interestingly the bold letters are the company’s own, illustrating how keen Nokia is to stress: there-is-nothing-to-see-here-move-along.
To an extent this is true. Ovi’s services will remain unchanged, they will just be offered under the Nokia name so ‘Ovi Music’, ‘Ovi Maps’, ‘Ovi Store’ and others become ‘Nokia Music’, ‘Nokia Maps’, ‘Nokia Store’, etc. It is hard to fault the logic here. It reduces confusion for mainstream users and refocuses on the company brand. That said what has been swept under the carpet is Nokia having to correct yet another strategy misstep. In short the company had attempted to brand something that didn’t need to be branded and the name itself (the Finnish word for ‘door’) made no sense to the wider world. READ ON
Why Microsoft Paid $8.5bn For Skype
May 12, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
It may seem a ludicrous amount of money, but there is method in Microsoft’s madness. Here’s a sample of my breakdown for TrustedReviews…
Why Microsoft Paid $8.5bn For Skype
- By Gordon Kelly
- 12 May 2011
It takes something special for technology to become front page news, but that is what has happened following Microsoft’s blockbuster agreement to buy Skype for $8.5bn (£5.2m). The deal represents Microsoft’s biggest ever purchase and the size of the fee has left many scratching their heads. Why would Microsoft pay so much for a company which cost just $2bn in 2009? We’ll tell you why…
The first hints come from looking at the deal itself. As incredible as the price is, equally remarkable is Microsoft is paying investor group and Skype owner Silver Lake “in cash”. No stock options, no complex trades, cash. Which immediately tells you one thing: Microsoft was in no mood to lose out. Rumour has it both Facebook and Google were in the running and Microsoft has lost enough of the limelight to them in recent years.
“Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world,” proclaimed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in an official statement. Answering speculation as to how Microsoft will use Skype, Ballmer was clear: it would be in everything. “Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities.”
Is this smart or is it simply throwing mud against the wall and seeing what sticks? After all eBay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6bn before admitting it had “limited synergies with eBay and PayPal” and selling it off to Silver Lake for $1.9bn in 2009}. Right now Silver Lake is laughing all the way to the bank… READ ON
Why It’s Smart for Tech to Play Dumb
May 8, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
Beckham at Samsung? will.i.am at Intel? Lady Gaga at Polaroid? Believe it or not, it’s a good thing.
Why It’s Smart for Tech to Play Dumb
- By Gordon Kelly
- 07 May 2011
Did you know that as of this week David Beckham works for Samsung? Or that will.i.am has been ‘director of creative innovation’ at Intel since January? What about Lady Gaga’s ‘product development’ job at Polaroid? Yes, they are all fatuous. Yes, they are marketing gimmicks. But they also symbolic of something hugely encouraging…
First let’s wind you up with some quotes. “I’m very proud to be part of the team that brought the Olympics to my home city, London,” said David Beckham in a vague statement following his no doubt lucrative deal with Samsung. “It is one of the greatest events in the world. Working with a globally respected brand, like Samsung, our aim will be to help more and more people to enjoy and share the excitement of the London 2012 Olympic Games.”
“Nearly everything I do involves processors and computers, and when I see an Intel chip I think of all the creative minds involved that help to amplify my own creativity,” said an equally out of his depth will.i.am. “Teaming up with the scientists, researchers and computer programmers at Intel to collaborate and co-develop new ways to communicate, create, inform and entertain is going to be amazing.”
Do we really think David Beckham can teach Samsung something about user interfaces or will.i.am had anything to do with Intel’s 22nm 3D transistor breakthrough? Of course not.
Why we hate these deals is because it offends our tech sensibilities that some random celebrity can receive a monumental amount of cash (and no doubt a huge number of goodies) for knowing virtually nothing about technology and smile all the way to the bank. Prada dumbphones? Swarovski encrusted TVs? Thankfully they are all part of a positive bigger picture… READ ON
There Is No Rush for a New Xbox Or PS4
April 25, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
No next generation Microsoft and Sony consoles until 2014? Sounds like cause for celebration. Here are my thoughts as to why…
There Is No Rush for a New Xbox Or PS4
An interesting news story emerged this week that received little attention: next generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles may not arrive until 2014. There was no backlash, no angry complaints, no rushed company statements. Yes tech doesn’t always have to evolve at the speed of light to stay relevant…
The news story came from gaming website Kotaku. “Both MS and Sony are telegraphing to each other that they’re delaying, to milk the current [generation] and fill in previous craters better,” said Kotaku’s source. This was backed up by ‘other sources with access to first-party companies’ who also disclosed 2014 to be the target date, though some believe it could be late 2013 “if their company feels pushed”.
Taken at face value this news could annoy. Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005, a year when ‘Million Dollar Baby’ won best picture at the Oscars (It should have been ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’), the PSP had just hit the market, Windows Mobile 5 was the cutting edge smartphone platform of choice and the Guitar Hero franchise was unleashed upon the world. Sony launched the PS3 in 2006 when ‘Crash’ took the Oscar nod, Facebook launched outside the college community and everyone thought this was an iPhone.
Since then both consoles have sold over 50m units and the technology sector has changed radically. So why do Microsoft and Sony think they can get away with still selling the same old hardware? In short: because they can. READ ON
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
April 25, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Copywriting, Features & Editorials
Are lawsuits, convergence and touchscreens ruining gadget innovation? Here are my thoughts for TrustedReviews…
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
The eccentric poet Charles Caleb Colton once said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. Nearly 200 years after Colton’s death it is still hard to disagree, but in an era of multi-billion dollar technology corporations it is easy to get angry.
On Monday evening Apple’s anger hit new heights. The company announced one of the biggest lawsuits of all time, going after Samsung, the biggest electronics company on the planet. Apple declared it was suing Samsung for deliberately copying the “the look and feel” of its iPhone and iPad with its Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets.
“Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products,” said Apple in its strongly worded lawsuit. Apple seeks actual and punitive damages and a conclusion that the infringements were wilful.
In fairness Apple has pulled such tricks before, though on a smaller scale. It already has outstanding lawsuits against Motorola and HTC and has long traded court hearings with Nokia. Where this lawsuit differs, however, and what makes it interesting is Apple and Samsung are big business partners. How big? Last year Apple spent $5.7bn on Samsung components. This includes chips, flash storage and RAM for the aforementioned iPhone and iPad as well as its line of Macs.
“Apple is one of our key buyers of semiconductors and display panels,” said a Samsung representative in response to the lawsuit. “However, we have no choice but respond strongly this time.” In a separate statement the company declared: “Samsung will respond actively to this legal action taken against us through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property” and vowed counteraction.
All of which asks two fundamentally important questions right now of the technology industry: 1. What are tech companies’ priorities in the 21st century? and 2. Is the evolution of technology inevitably headed towards common ideas and form factors or is it running out of ideas? READ ON