How Google *Pwned* Samsung & HTC (aka Why Nexus is still #1)

By now everyone has heard that Google has sold off Motorola Mobility and what a loss it was. I strongly disagreed with that and this Forbes article says a lot of what I felt. Google needed Motorola Mobility for its strategy to *pwn* other vendors who greedily thought they could exert their unique brand of is 'enhancement' further fragmenting Android is.

• Google Nexus 5 #4, LG G2 #9
• HTC One Google Ed. #2, HTC One #3
• Samsung S4 Google Ed. #6, Samsung S4 #7
• Moto X #5 (ahead of all ODM except HTC)

(As of Feb 2014 - Business Insider RANKED)

You can see this with the latest Android device rankings. Every Google Edition of nearly every ODM device is better that the original (HTC One and Samsung S4) and the Nexus 4/5 are way better that any LG offering, yet are also made by LG. Add to that the announcement that the new flagship Samsung S5 will be more Nexus/Google experience like, you can see that Google has exerted it's will over its android ODM (original device manufacturers). 

I had always wondered why Motorola devices weren't more innovative. Sure questions on 'fair play' concerns from Samsung, HTC, LG, etc was a factor but I don't think it was the main driver. I *think* Google was trying to make a point on the RIGHT way for ODMs to add value to androids with minimal OS changes and subtle hardware tweaks. All this allows for more equivalency/democracy amongst Android, (think number portability in North America years ago and carriers) making it easier for consumers to switch between makers within the android ecosystem. 

Moto X and G were like Nexus devices in disguise! This way Google could use LG as the nexus vendor for nexus 4 and 5 and basically get almost 4x Nexus phones (adding in the 2x Moto phones) in the last few years!

I was always curious as to why Google didn't try to build off the initial success of the Moto Xoom, the first Honeycomb 3.0 Android tablet. Both the Moto X and G are both Superphone format devics. If I had to guess the reason it would be either:

• 'A' -  was happy with what it got from ASUS (why not? For the price the Nexus 7 is pretty much the best 7" tablet out there!)
• 'B' -  thought that the larger market phone market (what Google calls "SuperPhones") fragmentation was more important to fix first.

Likely a little of both 'A' and 'B', but maybe more 'B' as money is still in "Superphones" and not really tablets. The margins are much higher still for cellular devices vs. WiFi-only. (See Cellphone Economics posting I had a while back.)

Don't believe me that ODMs don't want to make it easy to move to another Android phone manufacturer? See the photo below. Samumg and HTC intentionally make thier back button on different sides of the phone.

(S4 back button RIGHT from http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/05/review-samsung-galaxy-s4/)

(HTC ONE back button LEFT from http://androidandme.com/2013/10/news/t-mobile-htc-one-android-4-3-update-rollout-commences/)

Notice that the back buttons are intentional opposite. Compound that with two very different icons, one with a curved back arrow (Samsung S4) and another more like a square bracket (HTC ONE). Keen observers will also note that HTC ONE has no 'middle' button. Menus are all done by Context Action Bars (as suggested by Google Android Dev site a few years back). The Home Button on S4 is really the middle non-labelled button, yet again different from HTC and others.

I wish Google could have made this a 'Hardware' standard too. Not a problem with Apple's iPhone 5s vs. 5c! *Apple fan-boys cheer* Both because there is no back button (and no labels on iPhone5s) and that there is only 1x hardware manufacturer.

Hope that helps,

Wayne Pau

P. s. Nokia and Motorola used to do this too with pick-up and hang ups buttons which was worse! It totally annoys 1st time users who muscle memory jets them to go back a screen, only to have app close and go to the homescreen.

*** UPDATE *** Looks like Lenovo is also going the patent route, buying a number of patents from UP. Read more here. So you can clearly see that Google by keeping the patents from Motorola Mobility clearly knew what they were doing!

Fun Topic: Apple vs. Samsung (Fine Dining vs. Mega Buffet)

*Sorry for the gap in posts. Being in Toronto, Canada we've been through Ice-Storms, Polar Vortex and Power Outages! Hopefully we'll get this back on track again in 2014... thanks for your patience.*

There is no getting around that Samsung and Apple are two very different companies. They are headquartered in two different continents, have two very different corporate histories and basically seem to go about business in polar opposite ways. Apple does everything, including write the OS and design the perfect matching hardware. Samsung uses (non-exclusively) a 3rd party (Google) to write the core OS (Android) and focuses on adding on the basic OS with value-adds aligned with in-house designed hardware. Apple only supports iOS devices, yet Samsung makes more than just Android phones, hedging their bets with Windows Phone, Bada and Tizen phones. Apple is concerned with the end-product, where as Samsung also sells it components to other companies (even at one point to ironically Apple possibly for shortfall of retina displays for new iPad Mini Retina).

However today I want to look at one specific difference in basic philosophies between the companies. In Apple we have a 'brand-name' synonymous with design, and like a fine dinning establishment believe they know what consumers want and have no problems telling customers what that is. It's the "chic" resturant with only one or two daily specials. Where Samsung seems to be the more accommodating endless buffet whose goal is to have something that will please anyone.

If you look here, it lists no less than 23 models of phones that Samsung has released in 2013. For Samsung, it seems they would be embarrassed if you asked for a phone format combination that they didn't already produce. The older Galaxy Y Pro Dous was the smallest display at 2.6" and new Galaxy Mega 6.3 is currently the largest at 6.3" (phone-format device that is not a true phone, but tablet like Tab 7" and 10"), more than DOUBLE the size!

• Samsung Galaxy S5
• Samsung Galaxy Win Pro
• Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2
• Samsung Galaxy Express 2
• Samsung Galaxy Round
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 3
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket Neo
• Samsung Galaxy Star
• Samsung Galaxy Core
• Samsung Galaxy Y Plus
• Samsung Galaxy Win
• Samsung Galaxy Mega
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
• Samsung Galaxy S4
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
• Samsung Galaxy Young
• Samsung Galaxy Grand
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket Plus

(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galax)

(Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos - image from here)

(Samsung Galaxy Mega - image from here)

Apple on the other hand released 2x models in 2013, doubling the previous year's models with the 5s and 5c. Besides the *slight* pricing difference and visual colour offering, there really isn't that much difference between the available iPhones. Even Apple's own site points this out. The 5c has older A6 chip which isn't 64-bit, but many users would be hard-pressed to know the difference at this time between 64 vs. 32-bit iPhones (at this time... who knows about it in the near/short-term future... with apps and api in the feature that better take advantage of this... it may be more noticeable). Both phones use lighting connector, 720 video recording, 1080 HD display, 1136-by-640 resolution
and 326 ppi.

• iPhone 5c
• iPhone 5s

(iPhone 5s & iPhone 5c - images from here)

From a developer point of view, I find it hard to manage with the Samsung philosophy. There are so many disparate models with differing physical differences like screen sizes, resolutions, but also software & O/S level difference like Android O/S version and Premium Suite & security enhancement support like KNOX and SAFE. Having an app work perfectly on one Samsung Galaxy device does not ensure portability to another Samsung Galaxy device. Compound that with the issue that many models are region specific, it becomes a nightmare to support all but the most popular permutations.

From a consumer point of view, I find it hard to imagine how Samsung is able to make any "economy of scale" saving with so many different models of products. Shipping 3 or 4 models a year can be daunting for any company, but 23 models?!? For me I already get confused which are "budget" models or "premium" models. "S" and "Note" vs. the cheaper "Y" and "M" devices.

However it's hard to argue with Samsung's relative success. Compared to all other Android device manufacturers, they are the Apple of the Android world. For example, in 2 months, the new Galaxy Note sold 10 million units.

So bottom line? I hope I don't get into trouble for saying this, but it seems like Samsung is taking the safe-bet. It's spreading it's investment and ensuring that no device format is missed and basically offering the proverbial "Chinese Menu". So as a 'developer', I feel like the innovation is going to come from Apple and Samsung will always be playing catch-up. Realistically it seems like there are more Chinese Buffets than Michelin Star Restaurants.

Therefore, it might make sense for companies to develop for the less varied, but more refined iPhone and then attempt to move to support the massive offering from Samsung Galaxy/Android. Do you think Samsung took that into consideration when coming up with their product offering?

Hope that helps...

Wayne Pau

Fun Topic: Google 20% Part 1

I am a firm believer in Serendipity. (I must say I got that from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan book. He's got me hooked at looking for 'free lottery ticket')

My Design Thinking coach/mentor Niels Billou never misses an opportunity to remind that 80% of projects fail. Gartner puts this # at between 70-80%. Practically, on one very specific day, 6 numbers may win you millions $ at Lotto649 or Powerball, but on any other day it's a $2 receipt for a donation (that BTW doesn't have any tax-benefit!) 

A great feature, product or idea at the wrong time or with the wrong people or the wrong audience or the wrong team fails. *Everything* has to work just right for success. 

So practically what does that mean? Recently I've been serving in a role as a surrogate Product Owner for a mobile app. I have no shortage of examples why certain great features do not get prioritized into the Sprint Backlog (SCRUM terminology for "things done next"), including but not limited to:

• Technically not feasible at this point in time (missing necessary components, etc)
• Time need is larger than time available (partial features are of no-use to anyone)
• Important feature, but there is an *even more* important feature
• Policies/Process governs another feature must be release first

This is why I believe good ideas and good features sometimes 'die on the vine'. We rarely don't want to do these things, but unfortunately in a zero-sum world, they are just 'slightly' less important than something else (at this time, for whatever reason).

Other times we may not attempt a project that may even exasperate the 80% failure rate. We may think an idea is too risky and that it may look bad if we fail. (There is a whole other discussion about what to do if you a recipe for disruptive innovation vs. simply incremental innovation... I'll postpone that for later!)

Enter the famous Google's 20% or Twitter's Hack Week school of thinking. The 'name' changes from company to company, but the principle is the same, it's out-of-band, usually self-policed, grass-roots driven initiatives where features or ideas are allowed to be executed that normally would not see the light of day (for whatever reason, possible some of the ones noted above). 

At the heart it drives innovation and creativity precisely because it works differently from the other 80% of the time or non-Hack Weeks. It gives a chance for ideas and feature that would not normally be completed using the typical process to just 'get done'.

Remember in Design Thinking we have this saying(s):

"Fail Early, Fail Often, Fail Cheaply" - Andréa Mallard (IDEO)

"Fail often to succeed sooner"- Dave Kelley (IDEO)

The 20% may seem like a lot, but it's capped (in reality, it's actually likely even smaller than 20%). It is relatively 'cheap'. This creates an environment for something that looks like the following formula:

Great Idea + High Reward      ==      Disruptive Innovation * 20% of time

             Low Risk 

Even with my group @ SAP Labs we are given approx. 10% of our time innovate much like the Google & Twitter. For my own Emerging Technologies group, I am currently 'donating' 20% (approx. 1 day a week) of my time where I work with a totally separate group of individuals from my daily tasks to the design a Local Innovation Programme where we hope will one day change how SAP interacts with local Government, Start-ups, Academia and NGO/Community Groups. Without this type of mandate, I very highly doubt something like this could happen...

Is your company investing in innovation 'serendipitously'?

For more on this topic, see part 2 here.

Hope that helps... 

Wayne Pau.

p.s. Yes I know, I know lots of people are saying Google 20% is dead. Google also clearly stated that even after the demise of Google Labs, the 20% initiative will not change. I am not saying Google and Twitter are the proto-types that everyone needs to follow. I am merely using them as well know examples to help illustrate the point. Thanks!

Fun Topic: Google 20%: Part 2

OK. So you like the 20% rule we talked about in Part 1 and it *makes sense*. So why doesn't everyone do it? I'd like to propose that in reality, allotting or allowing employees is not the problem, actually getting them to take advantage of it is harder than it looks.

The vacation site Hotwire in 2012 did a survey and found that Americans do *not* take advantage of 9.2 vacation days per year. (Marketplace goes onto say how this have a pretty scary negative effect on our health.) Employees as a whole are not always good at taking advantage of the perks offered us, which is sad, because the 20% rule I believe is a 'huge' perk. As we can see in this RSA video on Motivation the 3x big motivators of people are:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc @ 5:16

The 20% rule/Hack Days seem to provide this. It provides Autonomy in that you can do something without having to push it through the typical backlog process. It's Mastery as you work on it and potentially it's even Mastering something you don't day-to-day. Lastly it's Purpose, because people chose to work on things that have Purpose.

So let's take a look at the company is Atlassian (who Dan Pink loves for their "ShipIt" days, see below), the guys who make JIRA, which even us @ SAP use. There motto is:

"Build the Next Great Thing. Our software helps your team ship products – smarter and faster." 

The great thing about Atlassian is that they are project management software people and they gave us some metrics as they tried to track the progress of their 20% of time initiative. Then they blogged about (somewhat sparely though) to give us further insights.

For the purposes of this blog I'll be looking at the following posts:

http://blogs.atlassian.com/2008/03/20_time_the_nuts_and_bolts/
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2008/03/20_time_experiment/
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/02/atlassians_20_time_a_year_in_review/
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/03/atlassians_20_time_now_out_of_beta/

 Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder of Atlassian was very clear in his blog that he was "Unhappy" with innovation and he was going use 20% rule to re-jump-start innovation.

"In any startup company, innovation slows as the company grows." -  Mike Cannon-Brookes

Atlassian was willing to make a $1 million investment (20% * 70 ppl * 6 mnth) to see if this would work. However the *actual* usage of the 20% rule looked more like this:

1 Year (2x long as initially expected
48 Projects
248 Days of Effort* = “1.1% Time”
34 People*
(http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/02/atlassians_20_time_a_year_in_review/)

So what did Atlassian think were the biggest problems?

#1 - Convincing people to take the 20%.

“Getting 20% time is incredibly difficult amongst all the pressure to deliver new features and bug fixes.”

Surprise, surprise. Just like 9.2 days of vacation left on the table, it doesn't a part of en-mass human nature to take advantage of the these types of perks. 

#2 - Tracking the 20%

"Another problem was accurate tracking of 20% effort."

Atlassian *are* the JIRA guys. They probably know project tracking better than anyone else. If they can't do it, I'm not sure how much hope other companies have.

The end of the story is that Atlassian put 20% out of BETA, meaning that it was successful enough for them to keep doing it. Their trial wasn't perfect, but it was more than enough to show its worth.

If you've read Part 1 of the post, I said that fear of failing is what prevented some features from being built. Ironically, this is what John Rotenstein said about the GA version of the 20% project:

Spelled out clearly is that "Failing is OK".He follows that up in bold with: "innovation is not guaranteed".

They added some check & balances and still recognize scheduling is main roadblock. However I think Atlassian is on the right track. Good for you guys!


Well, I hope you found this post interesting. Seen enough? Tempted enough to try to implement this @ your company?

Hope that helps...

Wayne Pau.

p.s. Dan Pink video I believe isn't actually talking about the 20% rule, but the programme called "ShipIt", which you can read about here:

http://www.atlassian.com/company/about/shipit

"It’s also worth mentioning that our quarterly ShipIt Days also contribute to 20% Time but are tracked separately. They involve specific days set aside for innovation in a time-limited, competitive-like atmosphere." - http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/03/atlassians_20_time_now_out_of_beta/

We didn’t mandate strict record-keeping and we don’t have reliable timesheet data since 20% Time got mixed-in with our ShipIt projects.  - http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/02/atlassians_20_time_a_year_in_review/

So similar idea, but it's not the same thing. This blog focuses on the 20%, not the 24-hr hackathon.