The Facebook Phone: It's Finally Real and Its Name is Buffy
allthingsd.com
allthingsd.com
What more could a Facebook phone launched this late in the game really offer other than lock-in?
A "Facebook"-branded phone isn't such a long-shot, especially since Facebook is attempting to be your email/messaging/contacts database/... provider as well.
Likely as not Facebook will take a cue from Amazon, and produce a Android-no-Google phone (no Google maps, no GMail app, no Marketplace, basically nothing that requires a google authentication event. These will all be replaced by FB services.)
However, even WinPhone7 with deep FB integration didn't seem to really catch on with users (or at least, that wasn't a standout feature that brought users in).
Perhaps FB will stop updating their iOS/Android apps just to make Buffy look better?
I've worked with their API's, which are core to their business, and they tend to be inconsistently implemented, changed at will and have high rates of failure.
The existing culture of 'whatever, just ship it' would never produce a phone that is bug free enough to ship.
1. Will it offer at least as cohesively a sharing-centered user experience as Microsoft's ill-fated Kin? Microsoft may have shot Kin down shortly after takeoff, but it set the yet-unmet benchmark for a "social phone."
2. Will it launch with low-priced, youth-targeted data plans from carrier partners, Kin's fatal omission?
1. The HTC Status already exists 2. Every single modern smartphone is trying to integrate multiple social networks more tightly (which includes competing non-FB networks)
I had previously thought that the Status made sense as something cheap for kids- like the Kin, and as a test device prior to a game-changer- like the ROKR. My previously assumption is that FB will either come up with its own OS (doubtful) or even buy WebOS. To release yet another branded Android phone seems a bit unrevolutionary from a rising star.
Very excited to see the features they plan to build out. Specifically, giving developers direct access to handsets seems like it would open some cool possibilities.
Apple and Microsoft are different in a lot of ways, but their core business is making operating systems for personal computers. Apple makes the whole widget, but Microsoft focuses on the OS and licenses it out. Different business models, but much the same business.
It's not surprising that Apple and Microsoft, as a result, have the two best Phone Operating Systems as well as the two most popular Desktop operating systems.
What is google's core business? Advertising. What is Facebooks? Advertising What is Amazon's? Retailing
All of these, of course, have some overlap with Apple and Microsoft. Amazon is increasingly selling digital goods, Microsoft got into the search business (a failure that is illustrative of my point, btw.)
What is the key value add that Facebook can add to a phone that nobody else can? Deeper integration with Facebook. Is that compelling? For a phone? Certainly useful... but why make the tradeoffs?
The same thing is true with Google. The original iPhone shipped with google in every place it wanted to be-- providing maps, providing youtube video app, built in, as the only option for search, and consequently, also, the primary mobile advertising opportunity.
Apple didn't try to keep google out, Apple partnered with google, at a very high level, and gave google unique access to its device. I cannot think of any other company whose key products Apple ships as default on the iPhone. Apple's still shipping google maps (or actually Apple Maps app, backed by google) But, notice, despite the deep integration of Twitter in iOS 5, Apple doesn't ship the twitter client.
Even before there was a third party Apps business, Apple gave Google premium positioning for its services in the OS.
What does google have, fundamentally, to offer to the phone industry that nobody else can offer? Better search? A better maps app?
As I've pointed out, Apple let google have prime real estate to get that distribution. It is only after Google decided to compete with Apple that Apple bought an advertising company, and started buying mapping companies, and started offering Bing and Yahoo as alternate search engines in Mobile Safari (or maybe I'm wrong and they're not even doing that, can't remember.)
Success comes form being focused.
Facebook is increasingly becoming very distracting and kinda pointless. The things my friends share that I care about are buried, and Facebook arbitrarily decides not to show me many status updates from some of my friends.... meanwhile BS is at the top of the feed all the time.
Google's search results are in a marked decline. The advertising business is going like gangbusters, but Google is getting less and less useful as a search platform.
And now they're going to start making their own hardware?
Further, what's the business model? Apple and Microsoft have been very successful selling operating systems (though Apple packages them with the hardware.) Nobody has been nearly close to as successful giving away software for free. Google and Facebook have to plow most of their R&D budget into their core businesses, so they can't compete (and in googles case, so far haven't' been able to compete) with Apple (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft) in adding key features to their phone operating systems.
I think the folly of Apple, trying to make its own desktop CPUs is another good example. Even when partnered with Motorola and IBM-- two heavyweights-- and a superior technology base-- they were unable to remain competitive with Intel simply because Intel is able to plow so much money into their CPU business.
The CPU Business is core for Intel. The OS business is core for Apple and Microsoft. The devices business is core for Apple and Microsoft's partners. IT isn't for Google, Amazon or Facebook.
They might be successful making phones, to some extent, but they will be taking their eyes off the ball when it comes to their core businesses.
Google's entry into OSs makes sense from Joel Spolsky's 'commodotize your complements' perspective. For Google, anything that sits between users and search ads is a complement. That includes OSs, mobile and desktop, hardware, social networks, etc. Google will try to commoditize everything by getting a finger into the most commoditizable and most complementary things.
It also makes sense from a 'moat' perspective. If Google sat back and watched Apple take over the mobile industry (which doesn't seem farfetched), it would be at the mercy of Apple for the increasing amount of mobile traffic. Bad place to be.
Google's search results are in a marked decline. The advertising business is going like gangbusters, but Google is getting less and less useful as a search platform.
I have not found this to be the case. I occasionally try to use other search engines, but invariably find them lacking.
You're gonna have to elaborate on that point because I simply don't agree.
While this is true, I think Google understands it well enough that they take it a step further: growing internet usage as a whole.
Google will gain advertising revenue as long as it's used, and it's used literally almost every time anyone uses the internet. Even if people don't use Google Search directly, than there's a good chance that the sites they visit use Google Adwords or some other Google product, which in the end will earn money for Google.
So it follows that Google should devote resources to ramping up internet usage, and they have. That's why they built and maintain Android and Chrome, and why they're building Google Fiber. They even reduce the amount of resources they have to devote to some of these products by open-sourcing them, and also -- especially in the case of Android with the Open Handset Alliance-- sharing the workload with groups that have similar interests.
To help ensure that people have no barriers to using the internet, which means that people will have no barriers to using Google.
There's really only one complaint constantly leveled against WP7 when compared to Android, and that's the app control from MS. This has been changed now to allow you to install your own apps through a Microsoft-sanctioned jailbreak procedure. The best OS is not always the most popular (WP7 and WebOS both fall in that category). In comparison, Android is a modern Windows Mobile.
On your phone. That you bought and, at least theoretically, own.
No, I think Android is "plagued with" the ability to run the apps you want when you want. That's not a bug.
No, there's no theoretically about it. You own the phone, you do not own the software. There are unofficial jailbreaks out there if that's more your persuasion.
>No, I think Android is "plagued with" the ability to run the apps you want when you want.
I said it was plagued with baked-in vendor customizations that cannot be removed without installing a new ROM. I never once said sideloading is a bug. Get your panties out of your ass. If you want to have a discussion on it, stop twisting my words. I didn't insult your precious, I criticized it. If you think this criticism is invalid, there are ways of getting your point across without restorting to ignoratio elenchi or setting up strawmen.
>With Mango, Microsoft has got the smartphone operating system right. It's fast, it's fun, it's easy to use, it does everything you need, and it looks great... As a piece of software, it's a triumph, and it's more than good enough to take on Android and iOS. [1]
>If you’re unfamiliar with Windows Phone, it offers one of the most intuitive user interfaces available on a mobile phone today. [2]
>With Mango, WP7 has caught up with Android and iOS in nearly every way, and in some areas it's even surpassed the other two in functionality.[3]
[1] http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2011/10/real-compet...
[2] http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/21/nokia-lumia-800-review/
[3] http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/windows-phone-7-5-mango-r...
Besides these articles did not take ICS into account which has received stellar reviews so far. The Verge for example rated the software (not the phone) for the Lumia 800 (WP7 - Mango) 8/10 and ICS on the Nexus Galaxy 10/10.
ICS was not taken into account in these reviews because ICS was not released when these were written. Hardly a fair comparison to say that OSX is worlds better than Windows 95.
I'll be the first to say WP7 is not perfect, but at least it's original and it's well-executed. It strikes a great balance between iOS and Android, while still being nothing like them.
I found Windows 7 to have several problematic UI choices that imply that it could use some more polish. (another difference between Apple and microsoft, apple ships less features but more polish, and micriosoft the reverse.)
I've not found any other phone OS that really compares, with Windows 6.5 being probably the worst ever. (I'm talking smartphones here, of course.)
Google has entered the market with a low quality copy cat product outside their core skill set.
How about Google Voice? I sure hope that in 10 years the phone network has been subsumed by the Internet, and that the days of stupid roaming and SMS charges is behind us.
What did Apple do when Google tried to launch a Google Voice app for the iPhone? Rejected it from the App Store. That was the moment when I realized that Android was totally necessary for Google to not be at the mercy of its competitors.
I was once a big advocate of Google Voice but I realized you're not really gaining independence by moving your number to Google. You're just transferring dependency from a phone company you pay money to, to an advertising company you don't.
I'm reasonably sure that Google announced Android before the iPhone was ever announced.
Yes, I know that pre-iPhone Androids looked and worked differently from how they did before the iPhone was announced, but that doesn't change the fact that Google decided to tread the mobile waters before Apple was a competitor.
Google's search results are in a marked decline.
[Citation Needed] I assume you're not talking about Siri right?
That's incorrect, the iPhone was announced first by almost a year.
Could not disagree more. I was recently using DDG (which uses Bing and Yahoo search API, iirc) and I had to go back to google because the search quality is simply unmatched. That is not a 'i think its better but I cant really tell...' comment. That is from my personal experience of having to go back to google anytime my search got complex/obscure; then simply observing the difference between the two result sets.
Instant search is an amazing feature also.
Here's a tip for you: people vote with their wallets. And so far they've decisively voted against WP7.
Google's strategy is clear: to make the Web cheaper, more ubiquitous and more accessible. It has by any measure been astoundingly successful in this.
> Facebook is increasingly becoming very distracting and kinda pointless.
On this I can agree. The problem with Facebook is that it's basically solved the photo-sharing and status update problem and it has games but virtually everything else it does just hasn't gotten (similar) traction. Games are a fickle business. People could play them anywhere and increasingly are on mobile devices.
My personal belief is that the only company Facebook fears (despite a brief scare with Twitter 1-2 years ago) is Google. If not then why can so many things Facebook does be interpreted as being aimed at Google (eg Open Compute)?
> Google's search results are in a marked decline.
What praytell is your basis for this claim?
> The OS business is core for Apple and Microsoft.
Incorrect. While true for Microsoft, Apple's core business is hardware and a vertically integrated complete solution. Where once OSX updates cost $129 they now charge a nominal fee ($29) because they realized that it was in their interests for everyone to be on the (near-)latest version (which they are) and that selling OSs is just a means to an end.
As for the Facebook phone itself, Facebook will have their "Stalingrad" moment just like everyone else has. Microsoft seemed invincible in the 90s until they DoJ sucked the wind from their sails. Google's stock peaked in 2007. It makes more money than ever but people realized that the exponential growth couldn't continue for ever. At some point FB will make a move that will dispel their aura of seeming invincibility and dominance. It may well be this phone.
If the current crop of companies has proven nothing else, it's that making good phones is hard. Arguably only Apple has had stellar success at it. RIM is all but dead. MS will probably hemorrhage money on WP7 for little gain just like they do with Bing. Google's core business is elsewhere (commoditize your complements).
The idea that the "Facebook generation" will flock to a deeply integrated Facebook phone is, I think, outdated thinking. What people feared was that Facebook would become, for all intents and purposes, THE internet. IMHO the idea of "social search" is completely overblown. I believe that concern has now passed. We shall see.
The new "Nexus Prime" (Google reference phone for their latest OS version) was not even made by Motorola.
They are going to be building phones and they're going to be running Android - you can call it a Motorola Phone but its all part of Google.
But I don't think they will now march into the Motorola offices and try to Googlefy them (install lava lamps everywhere and what not). They will just treat them as an asset.
You yourself would find success in transmitting organized thought if you were focused on what you write. What the hell is that jumble of words? And why is it the top voted comment? Is it because of the quantity of characters therein?
The reason why any of these companies are getting into different markets is because of one thing: Money. The fact is, these organizations have a lot of money already and want to put it work --- the most obvious place to put it work would be a laterally related market segment.
Ad hominem doesn't really belong on HN. If you have a legitimate counter argument, you should put some thought into writing something that can stand on its own.
Facebook's core competency is social networking. Mobile devices are one mode of social networking - it is a logical choice of theirs to create their own mobile device, strengthened by their brand it would be adopted on novelty alone; to a global user-base they can reach at little cost seeing as how they own their own advertising platform.
The first thought that came to my mind is agrarian revenue capture.
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Apple is a product company, and their products consist of hardware and software.
At least we can sleep soundly knowing the company managing everyone's personal data is an honest one...?