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During the summer, I was crawling through the book "In the Plex – How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives", by Steven Levy (Simon & Schuster, 2011). As one might guess, the book covers the complete history of Google, starting from the two Silicon Valley nerds founding the company. Yes, I did like the book, it had plenty of stories I was unaware of, and many details that made me think. Particularly, I would like to take up two topics that one could and should consider in many other businesses as well. First, there is the overall lack of trust on traditional marketing by the founders (and many other key persons). To gain users for many of the services, Google used methods like buying ad space – and donating that to early partners, still keeping also the revenue share structure that was fundamental to the service itself. While I am not saying that one should not use traditional marketing methods, I recommend performing some out-of-the-box thinking while planning the campaings. There could well be methods that provide an excellent fit to a particular product or service, effectively resonating with the inner values of the concept or business model itself.

Second, there are the corporate values. The book provides a nice insight into the famous "Don't be Evil". In general, it also shows how difficult it actually is to have values that work both within the company, as well as outside. "Don't be Evil" turned out to be excellent internally, providing a clear and easy-to-remember anchor point for Googlers (many of whom are engineers in background). You may compare this to the fluffy values jargon presented by many other large companies. However, it also made a target which the press easily attacked, especially in the case of negative incidents. Is it so that the values only really matter internally? After all, every company wants to be one that serves the customers well and shows respect to the employees, among things they typically tell to the public.

Image © Google

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According to TechCrunch, Facebook is working on a secret Project Spartan. We should see within a few weeks whether this is true or just a rumour, but Facebook's targets are so interesting this deserves a few comments. Project Spartan aims to create a mobile HTML5 platform for Web-based apps. As a plus, the Spartan apps will include a Facebook wrapper: this wrapper links the app to Facebook's discovery mechanism, allows easy sharing and recommending, and also supports Facebook Credits to implement an in-app payment system. Effectively, this will make Facebook a distributed mobile app store, with special emphasis on social networking and locating the most interesting apps based on friends' recommendations.

Assuming this will happen, Facebook is likely to challenge many of the existing (mainly platform-specific) mobile app stores. The primary target seems to be Apple App Store, though Android Market and others will obviously also be on the list. In the same way as the recently launched Yahoo AppSpot app finder, Spartan is trying to solve the app discovery dilemma of the steadily expanding app store universe: how to locate the personally relevant apps. However, Project Spartan also adds the social networking aspect to the game. Not totally unlike the ideas I had in mind when I created one of my earlier pet projects, Apzaar (see my blog entry on October 5th, 2010)!

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When preparing my presentation for a training session (see previous blog), I briefly checked the progress on various mobile Web development frameworks. Overall, the tools still require more engineering knowledge than typical tools on the desktop side do. I have been experimenting with my own framework, Hydra, and focusing specifically on improving usability and perfecting visual outlook. Of all the different frameworks, I find jQuery Mobile the most interesting one. Not only does it build on the widely used jQuery foundation, but it also aims to reach a very important target: provide support for a broad range of mobile devices, operating systems and browsers. Among other platforms, it should work seamlessly on iPhones, Android devices, recent Symbian phones as well as the upcoming Windows7 phones. And, it includes several fallback modes for browsers that do not include sufficient capabilities for all the functionality and visual effects.

Digging deeper into the features of jQuery Mobile, it includes a nicely defined HTML DOM architecture to help structuring an app-like mobile Web site. The iPhone browser may have been the first high-quality mobile browser, but it also includes some irritating details, especially in the handling of fixed positioning and touch events. jQuery Mobile includes a new abstraction layer to cover mouse and touch events in a consistent and portable way. It also provides a theming framework (using many CSS3 features in order to reduce the need to use images for buttons and background patterns), and mobile-optimized form elements such as check boxes and radio buttons. Implementing perfect select tags in mobile context has been somewhat challenging; I'll need to check if they have found a better solution than the one I have used with Hydra.

jQuery Mobile is currently in feature-complete Alpha phase. Though it may still take some time before it gets finalized, I'll give it a closer look to see how it behaves in a real-world task. Stay tuned for more analysis in the coming blogs!

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As part of a local eBuusti coaching program for small and medium-size companies, I'll provide a training session titled "How to Reach Mobile Customers?" on May 10th. The eBuusti program is hosted by the public sector and the Federation of Finnish Enterprises in cooperation. The training session will cover the mobile market, commonly used business models, implementation options, and guidance what can be done within a predefined budget - including zero investment. The target is to provide an overview of the mobile ecosystem, and catalyst thinking along the lines "how could our company best serve mobile customers, or could we further expand our business to the mobile ecosystem?" The session will be held in Finnish. For more information and attendance fee, go to training page. The last day to sign in is May 5th.

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Before making a forecast for 2011, it makes sense to look to past and see what actually did happen in 2010. I will walk through my earlier forecasts in the three categories - Product, Business and Technology - and provide my thinking and opinions regarding what I believe will happen during this year.

Product: Last year, I forecasted that a new phone will take the position of the iconic iPhone. Well, I am not quite sure this actually happened. The new iPhone 4 (despite of the 'antennagate') is still a very good smartphone. Android as a platform has been gaining market share extremely fast, and there are now many excellent Android-powered phones. In the Mobile World Congress 2011, the most visible mobile product trend were phones with dual-core processors. Although I trust a dual-core will enhance the user experience (by providing faster and smoother operation), my golden art deco award goes to LG Optimus 3D. Why? Because I believe a phone, being a very personal device, is an excellent platform for 3D content. Unlike 3D televisions that (at least today) require inconvenient glasses, in order to reach a wide viewing angle, a phone can provide a full 3D experience without any special gadgets. Regarding year 2011, I will simply repeat my challenge: make a phone that is clearly superior to the current iPhone. I hope it will not be simply a better clone, but something more innovative.

Business: Last year, I reviewed the development that had taken place within the mobile apps ecosystem, and forecasted a new business model for phones. It seems that the most successful one during year 2010 turned out to be in-app purchasing. Different subcategories within this business model have proven to be viable from the developers and content publishers perspective alike, and have left simple mobile in-app advertising behind. Apple's App Store as well as Android Market have now been enhanced to support these business models. While this trend will obviously further advance and expand during this year, I foresee also a new trend starting: payments and purchasing using mobile phones and near-field communication (NFC). The building blocks are being distributed to the markets, and there are several industry heavy weights investing marketing money in order to make this happen. It will probably not be a big business yet, but something where a lot of actions will take place.

Technology: Last year, I emphasized the importance of cloud-based mobile apps. This trend will continue during 2011. Based on my own development exercises, I have learned that iPhone as well as Android phones include an excellent browser, capable of delivering a good mobile cloud app user experience. The Webkit browser engine today incorporates many HTML5 and CSS3 features, and more is scheduled for the new platform releases. The next release of Mobile Windows (expected during 4Q) is said to include support for HTML5 as well - so the next-generation Nokia phones using MS platform will potentially include a very good browser as well. As I said earlier, there are many app categories where the Web technologies do not make sense. However, there are also many reasons, most notably cross-platform portability, seamless update cycles, and new pay-per-use techniques, that will fuel the Web app market.

Image © LG

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