Have recent missteps by Apple opened the door for a competitor in the cool-phone sweepstakes?

With a pun-intended headline, Apple getting a seedy image, The Chicago Sun-Times carried a story last week calling the iPhone “the Lindsay Lohan of technology.”

What did Apple do to deserve such a moniker? It rendered useless phones that had been hacked to release the AT&T; SIM lock and at the same time, it killed third-party applications that were developed for the device.

Last week, it also happened that Verizon released its line-up of new devices for Christmas, including two touch screen devices from LG, the Venus and Voyager. The Voyager appears to have incorporated some of the iPhone “look” but it adds a supplementary QWERTY keyboard and it accepts micro-SD supplementary storage.

The Wall Street Journal wrote about the trendiness of handsets – making a fashion statement with your cell-phone. Apple iPhone pricing is creating a discontinuity, possibly allowing carriers south of the border to decrease their up-front subsidies if the demand is sufficient for the device itself.

Alternatively, the price of the iPhone, coupled with Apple’s arrogance and disdain for open third party applications may open a crack in the market for alternate providers of cool devices. I’m not talking about a device that has to settle for “just as good as a Xerox” status. I’m looking for one that looks at the shortcomings of the iPhone and blows right past.

Don’t get me wrong – the window of opportunity hasn’t been opened wide, but it seems to me that there is a sliver, a space in the market for other participants to elbow aside Apple’s impersonations of one of these Hollywood starlets with more money than common sense.

Much has been made of Apple’s success in selling 1 million units in its first 74 days. It was a remarkable product launch. Still, some perspective is required. For example, Nokia sells more than a million phones every day. There will be about a billion phones sold in the world this year – Apple hopes to achieve about 1% share. Isn’t it possible that some other device manufacturer can afford to assign some R&D; and industrial design to achieve the elusive cool factor?

We’re coming into the season that should be most determinant in bonus payments in the wireless industry. Historically, the Canadian wireless market sees about 40% of the year’s net additions in the 4th quarter.

What kinds of devices are going to find their way onto Santa’s gift lists?

Technorati Tags:
Apple, Verizon, LG, iPhone, Voyager

Last July, I wrote about a USB-key hardware firewall / virus protection that I was introduced to by my friend Jeff at Gentek, around the corner from me in Concord, Ontario.

It took me a couple months to get a chance to try it, but I have finally installed it on one of the computers that powers MHG&A;.

Talk about ease of installation! Plug in the USB Yoggie, slip in the CD and minutes later, your PC has hardware protection.

My computer is running noticeably faster; the previous software-based protection tools were having me look at new equipment.

The pro version is designed for easy and remote administration by corporate IT departments. Unplug it, and the computer is locked down from network access.

It makes me wonder if there is a market for this device for parents looking to help manage their kids network access. Issues to be discussed with Jeff and Yoggie over the coming months.

The first round of comments have come in for the CRTC’s consultation on registering all telemarketers.

All of the major telephone companies have submitted a unified proposal that can’t be ignored. They want your kids to register and pay fees before calling to sell Uncle Bill a chocolate bar. They want your church auxiliary to register and pay a fee before calling members up to come to bingo night. They want political candidates to register and pay a fee before their campaigns.

Here is what the telcos said:

36. … The Companies submit that it would be preferable to establish distinct rules that require ALL telemarketers and clients of telemarketers to register with the National DNCL operator for the purposes of providing their contact information. This rule would be in addition to the rules established in Decision 2007-48 that compel non-exempt telemarketers to subscribe to the National DNCL. The Companies accordingly propose the following two new rules:

• A telemarketer shall not initiate a telemarketing telecommunication on its own behalf unless it has registered with the DNCL operator and has paid all applicable fees charged by the DNCL operator and the CRTC UTR complaints investigator delegate, as appropriate.
• A telemarketer shall not initiate a telemarketing telecommunication on behalf of a client unless that client has registered with the DNCL operator and has paid all applicable fees charged by the DNCL operator and the CRTC UTR complaints investigator delegate, as appropriate.

37. These rules would logically lead to two new potential types of violations: the failure to register with the DNCL operator and the failure to pay all applicable fees charged by the DNCL operator (including those assessed by the investigator-delegate). In each case, these violations would likely come to light in the course of an investigation of a UTR complaint and should be identified by the investigator-delegate to the Commission along with the results of its investigation of the complaint in question.

The CRTC has defined telemarketing telecommunications as: unsolicited telecommunications made for the purpose of selling or promoting a product or service or for the solicitation of money or money’s worth.

Your car dealer calling to remind you it’s time for an oil change? Telemarketing. The dry cleaner calling to ask if you want them to fix the cuff on that pair of pants you dropped off? Telemarketing. Dentist calls to remind you to come in for your appointment tomorrow? Yep.

The definition is broad enough to include too many calls from groups that are supposed to be exempted.

Parliament specifically exempted telemarketing calls made under certain circumstances. Such as an existing business relationship. Such as from a registered charity. Newspapers. Political parties.

These exemptions get thrown out under the proposed registration process. It sounds like another private copying collective. We’ll see collectors go through the yellow pages in order to collect registration fees. At risk of being hauled before a tribunal for “failure to pay all applicable fees charged by the DNCL operator”.

The kind of discretion that the investigator would have according to the telcos plan scares the closet civil libertarian in me. The investigator has an incentive to register as many groups as possible; to collect as many registration fees as possible.

It scares me to have investigators with the discretion to decide which church groups they will pursue, which clubs, which schools, which political parties merit further examination and harassment for failing to register before making a call.

It is disturbing to think that leading executives from all of the phone companies – most of them lawyers – were unanimous in proposing this kind of bureaucracy and these kinds of restrictions on free speech. Just read the signature page on their submission.

Their proposal should scare you too.

I opened an email from Staples offering me a great deal on copier paper and a few coupons for office supplies.

But there was an error in the phone number listed in the email. Instead of reaching the order department, I found myself being called a hot, sexy guy. I have been called a lot of things, but hot and sexy aren’t usually the adjectives. It was a different kind of order desk from what I expected.

This incident serves as a good reminder to all of us. When you send a message to a million of your closest friends, make sure you proofread it carefully.

I wonder if they will issue a correction. Or if the other people will accept Staples’ coupons?

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Update [October 4, 3:30 pm]
Staples has corrected the phone number on the link I provided. I don’t think the phone sex line deserves free publicity from me, so I won’t bother letting you know what the original number was. But it was nice to have someone call me hot and sexy. Even if it was a wrong number.

Update [October 16, 6:20 am]
Today’s Globe and Mail includes a little write-up on this incident in Patricia Best’s column “Nobody’s Business.”

Technorati Tags:
Staples

During my travels this past summer, I visited a Druze village outside of Haifa that has dismantled its cell phone towers. The village is located at the top of a mountain and it had been a popular place to host towers from all of the national mobile services providers.

The ban was an extreme response to a rash of health problems in the community and it is unclear whether the community is any healthier now without mobile antennae or indeed, are there increased health risks associated with losing access to the usually outstanding mobile signal strength in the rest of the country. That kind of epidemiological study is beyond the scope of this posting.

Instead, I’ll focus on the balance for consumers’ rights. Do citizens have a right to access information about the towers in their neighbourhoods?

Recently, the UK telecom regulator, Ofcom, did battle with the country’s information commissioner over full public access to a national database of mobile base station locations. Ofcom first refused the request, claiming that the information was already publicly available. After an internal review, it found that not all of the requested data was available, and so it then refused based on an exemption for National Security and Public Safety and an exemption for Intellectual Property Rights.

Ofcom lost its appeal. As a result, the telecom regulator has been ordered to disclose the location, ownership and technical attributes of mobile phone cellular base stations.

Would Industry Canada lead an initiative to provide equivalent access to tower location information in Canada? Do our collective rights to access antenna location information outweigh any perceived confidentiality due to competitive concerns or issues of national security?

In Canada, who would or who should lead the discussion of public access to such information?

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Update [October 5, 7:30 pm]
There is an easy to view website that mashes Canadian cell towers onto Google Maps: click here. Thanks to John, who commented on this blog entry.

Technorati Tags:
Ofcom, mobile antenna