Microsoft surprise attack!

If you’ve been following the tech news, you’ll know that iPhone-purveyor Apple has launched a patent infringement lawsuit against HTC, one of the flagship (Taiwanese) phone manufacturers partnered up with Google and Microsoft to push Android and Windows phones. While HTC may be the company listed on the lawsuit, it was fairly clear that this was a blow against all iPhone imitators and especially against Google’s Android mobile phone (which was recently reported to have generated more mobile web traffic in the US than the iPhone).

But, as I’ve pointed out before, the lines between enemy and friend are murky in the technology strategy space. It would seem that Microsoft may have just thrown HTC (and hence the Android platform and other would-be iPhone-killers) a surprise lifeline:

REDMOND, Wash. — April 27, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC’s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC.

The agreement expands HTC’s long-standing business relationship with Microsoft.

“HTC and Microsoft have a long history of technical and commercial collaboration, and today’s agreement is an example of how industry leaders can reach commercial arrangements that address intellectual property,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with HTC.”

Bolding was, of course, my doing.

Why? Other than to just make us ask “why?” I have no idea, but I’d conjecture its a combination of three things:

• Sizable royalty stream: Microsoft is an intellectual property giant. But, given Microsoft’s tenuous and potentially weakening position in mobile phones, they have probably been unable to fully monetize their own intellectual property. Why not test the waters with a company who is already friendly (HTC is a leading supplier of Windows Mobile phones), who desperately needs some intellectual property protection, and is churning out Android phones as if its life depended on it? And, if this works out, it opens the doorway for Microsoft to extract further royalties from other Android phone makers as well (and its even been suggested ominously that perhaps Microsoft is using this as an intellectual property ploy against all Linux systems as well).
• The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Apple is the Goliath that Windows, Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS, and Android need to slay. Given Microsoft’s unique advantage from being the leading PC operating system, one potentially feasible strategy would be to simply stall its competitors from building a similar position in the mobile phone space (like by helping Android take on Apple) and, when Microsoft is nice and ready, win in mobile phones by moving the PC “software stack” into the mobile phone world and creating better ties between computers (which run Microsoft’s own Windows operating system) and the phone.
• HTC probably made some fairly significant concessions to Microsoft: I’m willing to bet that HTC has either coughed up some extremely favorable intellectual property royalty/licensing terms or has promised to support Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 series in a very big way. Considering how quickly HTC embraced Android when it was formerly a Windows-Mobile-only shop, its probably not a stretch to believe that there were probably active discussions within HTC over whether or not to drop Microsoft’s faltering platform. An agreement from HTC to build a certain number of Windows phones or to align on roadmap would be a blessing for Microsoft who likely needs all the friends it can get to claw back smartphone market share.

Obviously, I could be completely wrong here (its unclear if Microsoft can even provide HTC with sufficient legal “air cover” against Apple), but the one thing that nobody can deny is that tech strategy is never boring.

Sushi and soft power

When I was in college, I had the fortune of sitting in on a talk by Joseph Nye, a famous Harvard professor who helped popularize the concept of “soft power” in foreign policy. The idea in a nutshell is that traditional conceptions of power in foreign policy (or “hard power”) around force, coercion, and payment fail to capture all the dimensions of power that are at work on the international stage. According to Nye, it’s not just about who has the biggest army or richest bank account, it was also about who had the “softer” skills in place to motivate other countries to act without coercion through the appeal of their ideals, culture, and institutions.

While Nye was a very engaging speaker, I have to admit that, at the time, I didn’t really grasp what he was talking about. Back then, I felt that “soft power” was a a luxury by-product of “hard power.” Of course, countries like and respect you — you’re rich and powerful! It was the viewpoint of a college student who believed in objective measures of success and power, and who was not a fan of the importance of “softer” influences.

It wasn’t until later in my college career that I developed a better appreciation for Nye’s idea. What I hadn’t understood was that soft power wasn’t about getting other nations to like or respect you through strength and wealth. It wasn’t even about winning the Miss Congeniality award in international circles (as some liberals I know have seemed to interpret it). It was far more subtle (and one could even argue, insidious). Rather than compelling China to open up a new trade corridor by threatening them with economic sanctions or military attack, soft power aims to achieve that trade corridor by creating a demand from the Chinese people for US  products or by encouraging the elite in China to want to see their country more open to contact with the US or even  by encouraging the international community to view trade with the US as a sign of economic progress. In other words, the soft power approach is a psychological one where the appeal of one’s culture and image act as the motivating force

An article in this past week’s Economist on the rise of sushi as a cuisine in Syria highlights an example of this sort of soft power influence:

For a country with no particular predilection for fish, sushi is slowly but surely conquering Syria’s capital, Damascus. Ever more foreign-food restaurants have been popping up, from Indian to Italian. But sushi, now deemed the height of sophistication, is becoming de rigueur for the capital’s middle class.

Proud and nationalistic, modern Syria has not been known for welcoming outside influences, be they political, economic or culinary. A decade or two ago Damascus offered just a handful of restaurants serving typical Syrian cuisine. But that is changing as Syria opens up to the world. The sushi boom is partly a product of economic liberalisation, which has most visibly led to a proliferation of luxury services targeting the better-off.

But as more Syrian expatriates return, they are pushing new trends and demanding the services and cuisine they have been used to outside … “The mindset is changing,” says a beady sushi restaurateur. The Syrian outlook is expanding. Flatbread and hummus may no longer do. And is Baathist socialism still tasty?

Now, obviously, this is a long shot from true economic and political liberalization or even friendly relations between Syria and Japan, but with the rise of China and the Middle East, soft power influence like this will become increasingly important tools in the foreign policy arena for the soon-to-be-questioned dominance of the US.

This isn’t to say that the US should stop investing in economic and military might — not only does the rise of a potentially hostile China and Russia suggest otherwise, but the perception of American weakening could also be a big blow to its “soft power” credibility — but it requires the US to pay greater attention to things which continue to give it a moral and cultural upper-hand:

• Allow more foreign students/scientists to study in the US. The US has one thing where it has an undeniable lead: its schools. That most of the world’s major politicians, scientists, and businesspeople have spent at least some time in the US being educated is a testament to that. It also represents a great channel with which future world leaders and businesspeople can be influenced by American values and and culture. Why the US government doesn’t promote this further is beyond me.
• Make it easier for skilled foreigners to get visas. This is another no-brainer to me. If there are foreign workers who would like to come to the US to voluntarily learn about US culture and ideals, get a taste for US products and services, and make US friends and, along the way, contribute to American enterprise, then why don’t we encourage them?
• Remove barriers to cross-border collaboration. There are many foreign companies and organizations who’d love to team up with and learn from their American counterparts. This represents not only a chance to earn goodwill with foreigners, but creates productive relationships which could make it less likely that a foreign government will move in a way to jeopardize those relationships.
• Enhance the impact of NGOs that perform humanitarian work overseas. Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) like those funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are capable of doing a lot of good in foreign countries and thus generating a lot of goodwill towards the US, provided they are run effectively and can overcome bureaucratic hurdles. If the US government can find ways to lower these hurdles and encourage greater impact and effectiveness, they not only help NGOs do better humanitarian work, but also help create more goodwill for the US.
• Encourage trade. The vast majority of foreigners will neither work in, nor be educated in, nor be touched by cross-border collaboration or humanitarian efforts, but they can still be touched by US soft power through trade. Being encouraged to tailor their products/services to American desires helps educate foreigners about American ideals and culture (not to mention helps to give consumers more choices and lower prices), and buying high-quality American products and brands helps create a greater desire for further contact and trade with the US. After all, one does not have to meet an American to associate the US with wealth and high quality brands.

None of these is the “silver bullet” which guarantees the US will always get what it wants in the foreign policy arena, but collectively, they help maintain the US’s strong cultural standing and influence in the world as its “hard power” relative to rising giants like China and the Middle East diminishes.

(Image credit)

The Same Four Chords

This video of Australian comedy group Axis of Awesome has been making the rounds on the internet lately, so I’m probably late to the party, but if you haven’t seen it, watch this hilarious and well-done (annotated!) medley showing how a huge chunk of major pop hits use the same four chords again and again…

It reminds me a lot of this other comedian’s rant about how many pop hits borrow heavily from Pachelbel’s Canon in D:

So, why do we pay pop singers so much money to sing the same damn song over and over again?

Grand Challenges

Over at Bench Press, my buddy Anthony posted about the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s collaboration with the White House and Expert Labs to help identify “which scientific and technological challenges should be the focus of policy initiatives in the coming years.” The collaboration is unique in that, to my knowledge, it is the first time (or at least one of the first times) the federal government has used social media/crowdsourcing to help shape science policy.

While my first reaction was “we’re so screwed that the White House is using Twitter/Facebook to figure out our future science policy!?”, I felt it would be fun to participate in my own little way via this blog post (even though the deadline for submission was technically April 15, I’m hoping the non-140-character-limited nature of this blog post carries some weight! ).

So, without further ado, here would be my list of ten things (all super-broad and super-idealistic, of course), in no particular order:

• Enabling medical treatments to be tailored for an individual patient’s history, age, gender, and genetics
• Safer, more precisely targeted treatments which don’t damage or affect cells they are not supposed to
• New chemical, physical, or biological processes to more cheaply produce drugs and other chemicals
• Advanced energy storage capable of at least an order of magnitude better energy density than existing Lithium ion batteries
• Chemical, physical, or biological methods to capture carbon dioxide and handle the increasing amounts of pollution people are generating
• An improved understanding of the complex systems which govern our world through new mathematical/computational techniques for approximating NP-complete problems and calculating/understanding non-linear partial differential equations
• Petaflops-capable supercomputers which cost as much and consume as much energy as a laptop today
• (Partially inspired by Star Trek) Intelligent natural language processing so that computers can actually understand and translate language
• (Partially inspired by Star Trek) General-purpose scanning device capable of quickly detecting chemicals, sounds, and forms of radiation as well as performing simple tomography scans (via ultrasound and/or some other form of low-energy radiation scanning)
• (Partially inspired by Star Trek) Near-light-speed space travel to explore beyond the solar system and allow humans to move beyond near Earth orbit

Picking ten was actually pretty difficult. There are clearly many other important scientific questions to be answered, but these were my ten. What would be on your list?

PARO

At the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco’s Japantown, my girlfriend and I expected many things. We expected to see beautiful performances of Japanese dancing. We expected to be thrilled by taiko. We expected to gorge ourselves on street food. We even expected to see odd American tourists wearing panda gear, even though pandas are Chinese and not Japanese. What we did not expect to see, however, was an adorable robotic baby harbor seal named PARO.

The Japanese have an almost unnatural obsession with robots. While I struggle to understand it at times, I had zero problems understanding how someone could love this “kawaii” little guy. While it may be a robot inside, it is soft and cuddly on the outside and has been programmed to be responsive to the world around it in a way that is far more sophisticated than a child’s toy. As the PARO website points out:

“Paro has five kinds of sensors: tactile, light, audition, temperature, and posture sensors, with which it can perceive people and its environment. With the light sensor, Paro can recognize light and dark. He feels being stroked and beaten by tactile sensor, or being held by the posture sensor. Paro can also recognize the direction of voice and words such as its name, greetings, and praise with its audio sensor.

Paro can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers, and to respond to its new name. For example, if you stroke it every time you touch it, Paro will remember your previous action and try to repeat that action to be stroked. If you hit it, Paro remembers its previous action and tries not to do that action. ”

So far it’s been used as a surrogate for animal therapy in hospitals where terminally ill patients may not have access to live animals (for expense or health reasons). I was unable to find a decent video of the PARO interacting with patients on YouTube to embed here, but the PARO website has many videos of happy patients interacting with these cute guys which you need to see to have a real understanding of the appeal.

But, in my eyes, the cutest thing about him is that his power cord is a pacifier!

(all pictures from PARO website)

Net Neutrality 2.0

If there is one consensus in the very polarized technology world, it is that more and more people and more and more devices will be connecting to the internet. Consequently, the amount of internet traffic that will be delivered over these networks will explode – estimates by Cisco suggest that total internet traffic will grow on average 41% every year resulting in an almost inconceivable 327 exabytes per year in 2012. To put that into context, that’s the equivalent of ~84 billion DVDs!

The growing size and importance of the internet has pushed regulators and activists to advocate for new rules and regulations to preserve the internet’s independence and neutrality from political and corporate interests. This movement has been called “Net Neutrality” and seeks to make it impossible for network owners to gain too much power over the content and information that a consumer can access.

Now, I am a firm believer in the aspirations of net neutrality – I am no fan of “walled gardens” and am even less a fan of Comcast/Verizon/AT&T throttling access to content they don’t approve. I am also well aware that major network owners, at least those in the US, are granted public licenses by the FCC to operate, and thus have a moral and legal obligation to provide a public and valuable service. But, aspirations and obligations without a realistic assessment of technological and economic realities are meaningless, and I suspect, based on many of the arguments I’ve heard on the internet, that many net neutrality proponents don’t have a good grasp of why their Eden-esque visions of net neutrality may be missing some of the bigger picture needed to make sure their implementation is more effective than naive.

The fundamental reality around the economics of network construction is, in short, that it is expensive as hell. There are enormous upfront costs that need to be recouped, and there are plenty of maintenance costs and challenges. This has two direct consequences:

• Network providers tend to be large
• The cost of an incremental byte of data transmitted is marginal (because the equipment is already there), but the cost of incremental capacity is extremely high (because the provider has to buy new equipment, contract new construction/digging, bring it online, etc.)

What does this mean for net neutrality? The cynical view would be that the network providers are primarily interested in minimizing new capacity investments/maintenance costs and in finding ways to “jack up” prices on data transferred, for example by only allowing content and devices where the content providers/device manufacturers pay the network owner a handsome reward. There is no doubt that network carriers can be guilty of this mindset, but the carrier’s current reaction to the smartphone revolution by opening up their formerly “closed gardens” and the failure of walled gardens like AOL to dominate the internet service provider space suggests that something else is at play. In my mind, what will dominate the business priorities of the network providers as time goes on is one question: how will network carriers profitably provide access for the exabytes of content that will be traveling through their networks?

The best example of what may come is in the mobile phone space where AT&T has been caught off guard with the enormous network demands from Apple’s iPhone. It seems the general consensus is that AT&T has been behind on its network infrastructure investments, but the fact of the matter is it will be increasingly difficult for network providers to keep pace with the investments in capacity necessary to maintain service quality for its users. This is especially complicated in the mobile phone space because of three things:

1. the amount of wireless spectrum available for use is being consumed faster than it is being made available (although this could be alleviated by new regulatory policies)
2. the quality of network service is dependent on more than just the wireless spectrum, but also an extremely expensive-to-upgrade, rapidly saturating “backhaul” network
3. the spectral efficiency (how much data you can cram down a particular wireless pipe) is reaching the theoretical limit defined by Shannon’s Law (chart below)

I’ll admit I haven’t fully crunched the numbers (its been my experience that its pretty difficult for a casual observer to find good data on the costs of upgrading network capacity or on the ability of femtocells/network topology changes to help carriers cope with new data demands), but I suspect that network carriers will soon hit a real wall in terms of their ability to profitably expand their networks to meet new demands. If this is true, then there really are only four options open in the long run for profit-seeking network carriers:

1. Dramatically increase cost of network service – Ending “unlimited access” plans and increasing the average monthly service costs and cost per byte transmitted could alleviate the profitability constraint in the short-run; but, depending on the economics involved, if the network service reached a high enough price, new users would be deterred from using the service, resulting in user attrition for the service provider and the loss of a potentially valuable network access for society
2. Introduce tiered traffic and practice heavy network management – Allowing the carrier to preference certain traffic (e.g., to users/businesses or content providers/application developers who have paid more, or to preference emergency/government network traffic, etc.) and practice heavier handed network management could alleviate the network traffic constraint without dramatically changing the cost of network access
3. Some combination of (1) and (2)
4. Government bailout

None of these options (especially #4) are especially attractive, but it is important for regulators and activists to keep these potential futures in mind when considering their proposals. I fear that the strict form of net neutrality espoused by many would drive carriers to adopt course #1: something which could cut short the full potential of the internet to only wealthy individuals and businesses. This blogger’s humble opinion is that the best outcome would be to use regulation to pursue a variant of #2 for the following reasons:

• AOL 2 is unlikely to happen: To believe that network carriers absent strongly worded neutrality regulations will rapidly clamp down on access is to believe that the failure of AOL’s walled garden and Verizon allowing Skype and Android on its network are flukes. The value from the openness of the “full Internet” is not trivial and no longer something that major network providers can ignore. And, based on Verizon’s recent promotion of the Droid by harping on problems with the closedness of Apple’s iPhone App Store, is something carriers have learned to use for their own purposes.
• Regulations can be implemented just around content neutrality: Of all the concerns that I have about network neutrality, the one that matters the most to me is equivalent treatment of content. After all, the internet in the US would suffer a great deal if every ISP/carrier only provided content sanctioned by just a single political party. The remainder of the provisions (universal device access, universal platform access, ability of third party networks to piggyback off of the main network) are much less important, especially if content neutrality is mandated, and implementation of them may even weaken the ability of the industry to create high-quality integrated/tailored products (e.g., requiring AT&T to allow the iPhone to access Verizon’s network as well would have significantly delayed the iPhone’s release and probably would have worsened its battery-life and introduced additional problems). Furthermore, the cost of implementing content neutrality is likely minimal, whereas the cost of requiring networks to support every possible platform/device/third-party are likely to be significantly more prohibitive.
• Enabled tiering/network management allows network providers to manage networks for higher quality experience: Strict network neutrality could limit the ability of network providers to manage the traffic on their networks, especially in times of peak demand, likely reducing quality of service for all parties. It also limits the ability of network providers to prioritize traffic that should be prioritized (e.g., emergency/government communications, traffic which businesses have network providers manage for them, or even packets related to keeping tabs on the network service quality or devices on the network) and potentially do basic things like block spam/DDoS attacks or manage the quality of internet experience by traffic type (the demands for web page viewing are very different from the demands of internet video and internet telephony).

I won’t claim to be the policy expert that knows what the right solution or sets of costs and tradeoffs are, but hopefully this gives a sense of some of the nuances behind the network neutrality debate.

(Image credit) (Chart credit – Qualcomm whitepaper)

How is it that I did not know about this movie until today?

I love comics. I read them for fun. I watch the movies. I am subscribed to a whole bunch of comics blogs. Heck, I even wrote my college application essay about comic books.

So, how is it that I didn’t learn about the movie Kick Ass until now? (Warning, trailer below is NSFW)

Won’t be the classiest movie (and I’m doubtful if it will even be any good), but how can I not want to see a movie which is basically about what I spend a reasonable amount of my day thinking about (being a superhero)?

Apple to buy Intrinsity?

I recently read an interesting rumor off of tech blog Ars Technica that Apple has acquired small processor company Intrinsity – who’s website is, as of the time of this writing, down.

In the popular tech press, very few self-professed gadget fans are aware of the nuances of the chip technology which powers their favorite devices. So, first question, what does Intrinsity and why would Apple be interested in them? Intrinsity is a chip design company known for its expertise in making existing processor designs faster and more efficient. They’ve been retained in the past by ATI (the graphics chip company which is now part of AMD) to enhance their GPU offering, Applied Micro (formerly AMCC) to help speed up their embedded processors, and more recently were used by Samsung (and presumably Apple) to speed up the ARM processor technology which powers the applications on the iPhone and the iPad.

Second question, then, would Apple do it? Questions about Apple are very difficult to answer – in part because of the extreme amount of hype and rumor surrounding them, but also because they tend to “think different” about business strategy. Normally, my intuition would say that this deal is unlikely to make much sense. I’ll admit I haven’t looked at the deal terms or Intrinisty’s finances, but my guess is Intrinsity has a flourishing business with other chip companies which would probably be jeopardized by Apple’s acquisition (especially now that Apple is itself sort of a chip design company and will probably want to de-emphasize the rest of Intrinsity’s activities). An acquisition like this could also be risky as Apple’s core strengths lie in building and designing a small number of well-integrated hardware/software products. While most analysts suspect that Apple contributed a huge amount to the design of the Samsung chip that’s currently in the iPhone, Apple is unlikely to have a culture or set of corporate processes that match Intrinsity’s, and I suspect nursing a chip technology group while also pushing the edge on product design and innovation at some point just becomes too difficult to do (which may partially explain the exodus of PA Semi, Apple’s other chip company purchase, engineers post-acquisition).

Of course, Apple is not your ordinary technology company, and there are definitely major benefits Apple could gain from this. The most obvious is that Apple can avoid paying licensing, royalty, and service fees to Intrinsity (which can be quite large if Apple continues to ship as many products as it does now) if it brings them in-house. Strategically, if Intrinsity is truly as good as they claim (I’ve read my fair share of rumors that the A4 processor in the iPad was a joint development effort from Samsung, Apple, and Intrinsity), then Apple may also want to take this valuable chess piece off the table for its competitors. Its no secret that major chip vendors like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Intel see the mobile chip space as the next hot growth area – Apple could perceive leaving Intrinsity out there as a major risk to maintaining its own device performance against the very impressive Snapdragon, Tegra, and OMAP (and potentially Intel Atom) product lines. This is a similar move to what Apple did with its equity stake in Imagination Technologies, the company that licenses the graphics technology that powers the iPhone, the Palm Pre, and Motorola’s Droid. Its widely believed that, had Imagination been willing (and had Intel not also increased its stake in Imagination), Imagination would currently be an Apple division – highlighting Apple’s preference to not license technology which could potentially remain available to its competitors, but to bring it in-house.

So, in the end, does an Apple-Intrinsity deal make sense? Or is this just a rumor to be dismissed? It’s hard to say for sure (especially without knowing much about Intrinsity’s finances or the price offered), but if Intrinsity has key talent or intellectual property that Apple needs for its new devices, then Apple’s extremely high volume (and thus large payments to Intrinsity) could be the basis for fairly sizable financial benefits from such a deal. More importantly, on a strategic level, Apple’s need to maintain a performance lead over new Android (and Symbian and Windows Phone 7) devices could be all the justification needed for swallowing this attractive asset (note: AnandTech’s preliminary review shows the iPad outperforming Google’s Nexus One on web rendering speed – although how much of this is due to the iPad having a bigger battery is up for debate). Its hard to say for sure without knowing much about how profitable Intrinsity is, how much of its business comes from Apple/Samsung, and what sort of price Apple can negotiate, but there is definitely a lot of reason to do it.

(logo credit) (logo credit) (smartphone cartoon credit)

Speculations on the iPad’s Success

I would lose my tech punditry license if I didn’t speculate on the soon-to-be-released iPad. As a result, I’m going to add a few thoughts to my last post on the what we’ve been able to hear so far on Apple’s widely-hated/awaited device.

Last time, I gave four reasons why Apple might not choose to enter the tablet industry – insufficient market opportunity, fear of cannibalization, immature technology, and lack of a clear vertical model. Although the existence of the iPad shows that Apple thinks they can overcome all of these challenges, it doesn’t make them any less real. In fact, it is the existence of all of these, plus a few other “wildcards,” which makes it very difficult for this pundit-wannabe to predict how the iPad will do for Apple. Below are 9 things which I think are open questions which will determine how well the iPad will do, as well as my preliminary scoring of how well Apple is positioned on each (on a scale of 1-5). Obviously, take these with a grain of salt as all I’ve seen are the videos everyone else has seen (although I intend to play with my friend Joe’s this weekend when he gets his):

• Market opportunity/pricing: The most basic concern is whether or not the iPad is priced appropriately. In my eyes, the iPad is an interesting hybrid eReader/netbook (or smartbook, actually, given its use of an ARM chip rather than a chip based on Intel’s x86 technology), and so, the relevant price comparison for the $500 point is with devices in that range. Currently, the only devices that fit this device niche at around that price are high-end netbooks (i.e., those with NVIDIA’s Ion technology), handhelds (like the Viliv) and eReaders (like Plastic Logic’s Que). Like the iPad, these are all fairly impressive devices with high functionality (partially because most are powered by Intel chips): the question is, is there going to be a big market for them? Given Apple’s brand power, rich app/content store, and smooth UI, I’d give them a pretty decent shot, so 5 out of 5.
• Usability: Apple is renowned for its sleek and very usable user interfaces. So, on that point alone, Apple will likely get high marks. My point in bringing this up is not whether or not Apple will create a good interface (they most likely will), but whether or not the form factor itself will be usable. The initial iPad marketing blitz highlighted a few use cases such as web browsing, simple office application use, gaming, video watching, and ebook reading. The question is whether or not a flat tablet is particularly well positioned for this. My gut instinct is that the device form factor is great for video watching and web browsing (large screen, multi-touch), but will not be as efficient for applications that involve typing (it looks uncomfortable to hold and type, and I have my doubts on a soft, non-haptic keyboard of that size) or which require the user to hold on to the heavy device for long periods of time (ebook reading). In the end, the usability will depend on the dominant use cases, but I give Apple a 3 out of 5.
• Performance/power: Apple has done something very interesting with the iPad. Instead of relying on an external chip provider to make the processor (as they did with the iPhone and their computers), they’ve created an internal design using the chip design team they acquired when they bought PA Semi about two years ago. Most of the industry speculation that I’ve seen suggests that the A4 chip is actually only an optimized version of an older processor technology called Cortex A8, as opposed to the new and much-faster Cortex A9 technology that NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 and Texas Instrument’s OMAP4 chips (which will go into other tablets and smartphones) are based on. Whether or not Apple’s excursion into building its own silicon will result in decent enough performance and power consumption to butt heads with other devices (especially those running on Intel’s Atom processors) remains to be seen. If I were to have to put my foot down, though, I’d guess that the reason Apple still refuses to let multiple applications run at the same time is that the A4’s power/performance aren’t quite perfect, but with such heavy-handed restrictions, the final result will probably be pretty good so I will give Apple a 4 out of 5.
• Cannibalization: This is less to do with the iPad’s success, and more to do with Apple’s. This is simply the double-bind that Apple faces in releasing a product like the iPad. If it’s too good/cheap, then there’s no reason for people to buy Macs and Macbooks. If it’s not good enough/too expensive, then nobody will buy it. This device has to exist in the sweet spot of performance and pricing. Given the huge demand in netbook/eReader-type devices, I would wager that the vast majority of people really only use their computers for simple web browsing, email, watching videos, uploading photos, and maybe playing a game or two. My guess is that the iPad can probably do all of the above relatively well and, consequently, Apple may have limited flexibility in terms of the iPad’s pricing to limit cannibalization or increase uptake. I will give Apple a 4 out of 5.
• Display technology: Apple disappointed me in choosing a fairly ho-hum display technology for the iPad. Granted, this was when I still thought the major use of the “iTablet” was going to be as an eReader, but the choice of a touchscreen IPS LCD display not only limits the battery life of the device but makes it unsuitable for use under direct light. The choice makes sense given Apple’s desire to also pursue applications/movies (which don’t work well with any of the existing alternative display technologies) and the full use of the touchscreen, but may limit Apple’s ability to penetrate as an eReader against more dedicated devices like the Kindle or the Que. However, it does give the iPad a leg up across every other dimension and may be “good enough” for most casual ebook readers. I will give Apple a 4 out of 5.
• The Flash wars: The iPad’s lack of Adobe’s Flash support has caused many of the tech punditry to view this as a major battle in the war between Flash and the still-under-development HTML5 standard. I’ll explain my views on the subject more deeply in a future post but my take is that we are unlikely to see a clear winner in the battle between Flash and HTML5 in the near-term for several reasons. First, HTML5 is still under development and support for it is mostly preview/experimental. Secondly, Flash is currently installed on almost every single internet-connected computer in the world and will soon be available on Symbian, Blackberry, Android, Chrome OS, and Palm phones. When you combine that with the fact that Flash still supports a number of features a pure HTML5 approach can’t easily duplicate, there’s not only little reason for developers to abandon Flash, there’s little rationale to rapidly build HTML5 replacements for all of their features. While video-centric sites like YouTube and BrightCove have pushed HTML5 alternatives due to the relative ease, non-video Flash use will be more difficult to translate. And, as long as major web applications and features are still built in Flash, then I believe the iPad will suffer in terms of delivering the full web experience that is expected. 2 out of 5.
• App transferability: One point Apple has tried to sell is that the same iPhone App Store will also work with the iPad. While I think one of the big strengths that Apple can leverage here is the existence of an already-populated App Store, the fact that many companies are racing to put out new iPad apps and the sheer difference in terms of the screen size make me somewhat skeptical of the ability of most iPhone apps to be used effectively on an iPad and vice versa. This is not something which I think detracts from the iPad or Apple’s design process – I believe strongly that different form factors require different applications and interfaces – but, in my opinion, it’s a bigger barrier to the usefulness in the short-run of the iPad than I think many people are realizing. 4 out of 5
• Book content: Apple has historically done very well with its vertically integrated model supplying not only the device (e.g., iPhone) and the software (e.g., iPhone OS), but also the content (e.g., the iPhone App Store, iTunes for music). They have continued this tradition with iBooks, Apple’s attempt to pull together a book content store. While the success of this will help the iPad, I don’t view success here as especially critical given the abundance of non-proprietary ebook content and the number of other functions that the iPad is capable of. With that said, I am disappointed that Apple again chose the DRM-content route with regards to its book content store (just as it did at first with its proprietary DRM MP3s on the iTunes store). Given that the eReader functionality is not the critical selling point of the device, I don’t think the inability to port iBooks content to another device will scare off too many iPad buyers (it certainly hasn’t scared away Kindle users yet), but time will tell. 4 out of 5 
• Competition: This is always the big wildcard. The strategic challenge here for Apple (and its competitors) is that the device category is nested in between two enormous ones (laptops and smartphones) and needs to strike the appropriate balance in terms of performance and price, as well as offer up the right sort of applications, form factor, and content to have a leg up. My guess is that Apple’s big competitors here will fall into three categories: (a) innovative and low-cost Taiwanese netbook manufacturers like Acer and ASUS who will try to undercut Apple on price but have proven themselves to be willing to try all sorts of form factors and software platforms, (b) Amazon who likely views Apple’s content store as a threat to their own ebook and digital music stores and who is likely to expand their Kindle with application capabilities, and (c) Google who not only has control over a massive free and non-proprietary ebook repository, but a book search engine, and freely licenses two operating systems (Android and Chrome OS) for use in the tablet/netbook space. Of course, Apple is no slouch itself and has proven itself able to conquer new segments (cases in point: the iPod and the iPhone), but because the iPad doesn’t seem as imminently disruptive or game-changing as the iPhone and iPod were, I will rank this as 3 out of 5

My rating on every dimension but one with a 3 or better (average: ~3.6) shows that I have a fair amount of confidence in Apple’s ability to overcome individual obstacles to drive the iPad’s success. The real question which I’m still unsettled on is whether or not Apple will successfully overcome all of these. Only time will tell, but if I had to put money on it, I’d say yes.

(Image credit – Apple) (Image credit – Plastic Logic) (Image credit – A4) (Image credit – Apple) (Image credit – Apple)