I, however, completely disagree.  This market is much, much more nuanced.  The reason is that there are two major differences between different phones that affect user behavior – input mechanism and screen size.  For example, here’s a list of the different screen resolutions for Android devices:

800 x 480
600 x 800
320 x 480
240 x 320
854 x 480
240 x 400
1024 x 600

And Android is only now becoming popular.  Some Android devices have keyboards, some are touch only, some have pointers, some have extra buttons, and some have sensors others don’t.  With the computer, everyone had a similar keyboard and mouse.  Users had different size monitors, but the big difference was that you could get away with cropping and not using the entire monitor for computer apps.  On a phone, where the screen is already so small, not using the entire space is much more significant.

This is the same issue that plagues Blackberry right now (well, that and terrible API implementation/documentation).  Whether it’s the Curve, Bold, Pearl, and so on, every device has a different resolution, and so apps need to be tailored appropriately.  I’m not the first to realize this is an issue (official Android documentation and another post).  The iPhone, on the other hand, has one screen resolution 320 x 480, and one input mechanism, touchscreen.

That all said, I believe that Android will thrive, but it won’t be the same way as Mac vs PC.  Bill Gurley’s piece (a must-read, in my opinion) begins to get at the nuanced differences, but Android is still a smartphone platform, which puts it head-to-head with the iPhone.   It is very lucrative for manufacturers and carriers to use Android instead of paying a licensing fee (they actually receive ad revenue share for using Android).  But for consumers and users of apps on both devices?  I still think the iPhone will be a better experience.

Two additional interesting factors to consider – if feature phones (i.e. non-smartphones) begin to adopt Android in full-scale, and the continued success of the iPod Touch and iTunes store (remember, you can’t use your iTunes music on a non-Apple device).

But soon, a single company could provide your software for your email, browser, OS, TV, and mobile phone.  That’s every single way I consume information, purchase products, and communicate with my friends and family.  A single advertising company.

Right now, they are a fairly friendly privacy company.  But what happens if growth slows, or there’s a change in leadership, and the company is pressured to seek alternate revenue streams.  I’m not sure I’m ready for a single company to own/control access to all this data.  I like convergence but not this much.  The question as a consumer is where do we draw the line?  Google has not made many major missteps with privacy (though last week’s comments were awfully close).  But what if that changes?

The thing is this – there should be a large competitor that’s challenging Google and trying to perform the same convergence, and there isn’t a clear one yet.  Yahoo tried with Connect TV/Digital Home, but they have been struggling.  Microsoft has been trying to push Media Center for awhile, and their mobile platform is confusing at best.

Apple seems the best poised.  Although no one has said it, the new Google device is their answer to the iPod Touch, a tremendous device that can be used for a variety of things, including as a phone (and I’m guessing an HD camera soon).  But Apple tends to attack verticals.  Regardless, I will continue to use my Apple phone, my Windows laptop, and my garbage software on my TV.

I hope some startups and incumbents come up with ways to challenge Google on all fronts.

FYI – I’m long Apple.

I’m not alone when I say I’m often running late to lunches and social gatherings.  Or oftentimes I get delayed when I need to travel out of the office for a meeting.  The one thing that’s constant in all these situations – my phone.  My mobile device always knows where I am.  My calendar always knows where I should be.  Why can’t these two merge?

Now, I know this is difficult on the iPhone since there are no background apps, making it difficult to keep updating location (though some folks have found workarounds) .  But on Android, this should be relatively easy.  With the proliferation of LBS, my phone knows where I am at all times.  It could tell, for example, that if it’s 8:45 AM and I am more than 15 miles away (or there’s traffic) from my 9 AM calendar appointment location, that I will be late.  It could then send a text/email to the other attendees (or at least the organizer).  Little late to dinner?  Perhaps an integration to OpenTable.  Flight late, meaning I can work later?  An integration to TripIt would be help.  Yes, many folks have admins to help with this, but it really should be automated.  Last night, my phone clearly could have known I was heading home to SF via the Bay Bridge, and alerted me of the closure (the news was all over Twitter, which I unfortunately did not check before leaving).

None of this is ground-breaking, or extremely tough to do.  Google is probably best positioned to do this, but perhaps there’s a startup already hard at work (I hope so).  I’m looking forward to the day when all these services are combined and I can comfortably know I’m being alerted.  In the meantime, good luck to Caltrans on the repairs, and all commuters who usually take the Bay Bridge daily.

The app store has taken over my previous excitement that I felt about the flyers.  Now I download Waze or buy Snapture rather than a trackball mouse or screen cleanser.  Instead of waiting for Sunday, I can just load up the store on a whim and see if there are any cool apps.  I wish there was more turnover in top apps, but the fact is that it’s far and away better than Blackberry’s App World (and I hear also Android’s and Palm’s, though I have limited first-hand experience).  It has the instant gratification element.  I wish that the iPhone allowed developers more flexibility, but as long as people keep releasing great apps, I will be interested.  And that’s the key – the moment another platform’s app store gets more traction, and their apps become more innovative than the iPhone’s apps in terms of quality and quantity, I will most likely switch over.

UPDATE: As I was loading up my blog to post this, I saw a very relevant argument that Blackberry needs to step up their efforts in the app store.  Worth a read…

Essentially, after 9-18 months doing the same thing (whether it’s a specific job, function, etc.), our learning begins to taper off logarithmically.  That doesn’t mean we stop learning, it just means we slow down.  The lesson is that we should look for new challenges to keep ourselves learning in an exponential fashion.  Here’s the full preso, feel free to comment or send me your thoughts:

Career Management Rohit Gupta 04142008 Final

What is extremely interesting is their iPhone app.  The app costs $9.99 (slightly steep, but worth it if you are a baseball fan), and has game tracking, video highlights, live audio, etc.  But if you are an MLB.tv subscriber, it lets you watch games live, on your phone.  And it works on the 3G network (which is huge), without much choppiness.  In fact, here’s an image of a Sox game via 3G:

Anyways, I thought I would mention it on my blog because I love showing it off.  It looks like they are running a promotion, so if you download the app, you can buy individual games for $.99 (without being an MLB.tv subscriber).  It’s definitely my favorite app on the iPhone, just wish I had time to use it more!

What’s fascinating is how this movement is happening with the telephone as well, in a seemingly parallel track.  Convergence will happen sooner than we think.  I’m terrible at remembering numbers – but pretty soon we won’t need to.  That’s what makes Google owning GrandCentral (now Google Voice) fascinating – at some point, the phone number (at least the way we think of it today) will be superfluous.  The Palm Pre already connects to Facebook, Android phones to Google.  The phone number will essentially become the device ID.

This why owning the digital identity of the individual is so important to Facebook and Google.  At some point, reaching individuals via phone will be based entirely on a digital identifier, i.e. SSO will apply to phones, and our digital identity will be the conduit for communication.  It may be our email address (like it is with online payment), or our Facebook identity.  There are pros and cons of both, and clearly both companies want to be in the middle.  By being the broker of communication, they will become the telecom companies of the next generation.  A lot of this is obvious, but my hope is that it’s done in an open fashion.   I’m just looking forward to the day where all I will need is an online ID and that’s it.

As we all know, change can take forever in political organizations, as well as in large enterprises.  What struck me as refreshing from Chopra’s talk was the administration’s efforts to tackle short-term problems initially, with a broader vision in mind.  That way, at least some progress can be demonstrated.  The example he gave was that by September (90 days after they announced the idea), they would develop a new website that will allow immigrants to check their application status online.  While not fully satisfying his broader goal of immigration reform, it does represent a non-trivial first step to get there.

I took the lesson as something I should consider myself.  Oftentimes in our lives when we seek change, whether it’s personal or professional, we try to aim for the ultimate goal and get frustrated when we fail to achieve it quickly.  While I think we must have longer-term vision, I think having specific, short-term goals to get there is extremely helpful and helps us feel like we are making progress.

Anyways, I know this is off-topic, but I have been thinking about this recently, and trying to figure out different areas of my life where I need to define some short-term goals that will help me achieve my vision.

Take a look at the two graphs below (I’m taking the top 22 countries by population that spend at least $1,000 per capita on health expenditures, which excludes BRIC and developing countries).  The first one compares (as a percentage) where the money for health expenditures comes from – government, out-of-pocket, or private/insurance.  The US clearly has the largest percentage coming from private/insurers.

The second graph looks at raw expenditures per capita.  The US doubles nearly all other countries in spending, as we all know (this is slightly self-selected as I only chose countries with over $1,000 in spending, see my earlier post for a more complete picture).  Yet it’s clear that the US government spends nearly as much or more than other countries spend combined (government, out of pocket, and private/insurers).   Correlation does not mean causation, but clearly the intricacies of our current employee/insurance-based model adds significant overhead to the overall system.  But are there other inefficiencies in the system that lead to the high costs?

Opponents of single-payer argue that our quality of care will be poor if we move that way, but what is the evidence of that?  Our health care as currently setup is not the best in the world (perhaps it’s in the conversation).  But only two countries listed here have insurer’s paying over 15% (US insurers pay 41%).

My personal hope is that we slowly begin to move away from our overly complicated system and begin to adopt a system that resembles other countries’ (albeit better).  This won’t happen quickly- half the “stakeholders” (or special interests) in these negotiations would be severely hurt by reducing costs, as inefficiencies to us mean profit to them.  The Obama administration is making progress (I would rather we do it right slowly than rush into a poor solution) but we must all continue to educate ourselves, keep an open mind, and avoid the knee-jerk reactions from phrases that opponents throw out to impede potential improvements.

Health Expenditure Split (by % overall)

Health Expenditures Overall

Zappos, on the other hand, is a more recent fad of mine.  I heard Tony Hsieh speak at TiEcon earlier this year, and it was the best keynote I can remember, especially given that I was able to stay awake (without coffee) on a Saturday morning with very little sleep.  And he was quite inspirational, though he didn’t talk just about Zappos or his background.  I actually bought a book on his recommendation – Happiness Hypothesis (which I will blog about sometime in the future), ironically on Amazon.

Their value prop is awesome (free unlimited shipping and returns) and their service is impeccable.  While they focused on shoes (competing with Amazon’s Endless.com), they had already expanded into apparel, and it was only a matter of time before they moved to other types of goods that Amazon offered.  I loved where the direction they were pushing the market in, and was hoping that I’d eventually be able to choose between Zappos and Amazon for that next gadget or toy.

The question I wonder is whether, as a consumer, is it good that these companies are now one and no longer competing.  As Hsieh colloquially put it in his letter (btw I like his sense of humor), this was less an “acquisition” and more like “Amazon and Zappos sitting in a tree…”  In my opinion, Zappos’ customer service cred kept Amazon honest, but now that they are “sitting in a tree” together, who is challenging them, and pushing even their vaunted reputation higher?  I’m sure there are smaller companies out there that are evolving, but to reach their scale it requires significant capital.  Perhaps Ebay can challenge them but given their CEO’s recent statement, it looks like they’re going to push their Paypal offering (which has a terrible customer service reputation, fair or not), which to me means they may be deshifting their focus against Amazon.

Anyways, I will leave you with the presentation Hsieh gave to TiEcon – it gets really interesting around slide 36 (though even the beginning is great):