BlackBerry today confirmed that it will soon be releasing an Android-based smartphone. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan may also be reached at jan@jackdawresearch.com or 408 744 6244.

BlackBerry has been steadily inching its way towards an acceptable number of apps in its app store, which continues to be one of the main things holding it back in competing with the two major platforms. First they tried to build up their own app store, then they partnered with Amazon, and now they’re finally bowing to the inevitable and embracing Android. This will certainly help to solve that particular problem, but being an Android OEM is a pretty uncomfortable place to be right now. Competition is intensifying, the biggest players are struggling, and small lower-priced vendors are taking increasing share. The big question is whether BlackBerry can really turn handsets around at this point, or whether it’s simply too late for the brand, which has been tarnished by all that has happened over the last few years. My sense is that many users have moved on at this point, and that even if enterprises like the BlackBerry platform, employees won’t. The reality is that there are still some industries where BlackBerry devices are the only option, and therefore I think it’s likely that BlackBerry will continue to make devices for some time to come, but the question is whether that can ever be a profitable business for them again.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry’s other results continue to be disappointing, and the software turnaround is taking longer than expected, which helps to explain the Good Technology acquisition. While that acquisition should finally give BlackBerry the credibility it needs in the multi-platform device management business, it’s worrying that its own efforts have fared so poorly. Other than cost cutting, which was largely undertaken by John Chen’s predecessor, BlackBerry seems to be making very limited progress on its major goals.

The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan may also be reached at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244, and is at the Apple Event in person.

Apple’s September event always sets the tone for its entire year – new iPhones are announced, and the iPhone makes up the majority of Apple’s revenue and profits, and the performance of the iPhone business largely determines overall growth rates, at least for now. But today’s event, like last year’s, added another new product category that should drive significant new revenue for Apple and for developers, and arguably the new Apple TV was one of the biggest and most important things announced today.

iPhone

The new iPhones have enough new features to make them an interesting upgrade for those who always have to have the latest device from Apple, with 3D Touch the biggest new feature. The name of Force Touch badly needed to change, since it always sounded a little like a form of assault. I’m no convinced 3D Touch is the right name, but it conveys the concept reasonably well, in that the functionality is about a more layered interaction. 3D Touch itself should make navigation and interaction much quicker and easier, but it will mean something of a learning curve for users, because there won’t be any visual cues indicating what a 3D Touch might do, a problem the Apple Watch suffers from as well. For anyone with a two-year old iPhone, which includes the vast majority of iPhone users who will upgrade in the next year, this will be a significant upgrade. For all the concerns about a down year for iPhones, I believe Apple will have another year of year on year growth, though likely significantly slower year on year than in the iPhone 6 cycle.

I’ve been saying since early last year that Apple should launch its own device installment plan for iPhones, and now it’s launching one, with the iPhone Upgrade Program. This is a huge opportunity for Apple to take control of the customer relationship away from the carriers, and that in turn is a big risk factor for carriers, which will now cede some of that relationship to Apple. Arguably, only Apple has the infrastructure in place to offer this kind of plan to customers, so this will also be a further differentiator against competitors.

Apple TV

The Apple TV has been described as a hobby at Apple for too long, and today the transition to a product worthy to sit alongside Apple’s other products begins. The new SDK will create a huge new opportunity for both existing and new developers, both in gaming and content, and in the process it’ll make the device more compelling for end users too. But what will really change the Apple TV is the launch of the Apple TV service a few months from now, because only then will the Apple TV be capable of becoming the only device you need to plug into your TV. In the meantime, Apple is going to bring casual gaming and a much broader range of apps to the platform, and especially for cord cutters, the Apple TV might well become the only device they need.

One interesting wrinkle is that Apple is giving developers less than two months to create apps for the Apple TV, which is by far the shortest time it’s ever given developers for a completely new SDK. The iPad, which leveraged what had been known as iPhone OS, gave developers 66 days, while the original iPhone gave them 127 days and the Apple Watch debuted 157 days after the SDK was released. That doesn’t give developers a lot of time, but it likely reflects the shared elements in tvOS compared with iOS on iPhones and iPads.

Apple Watch

Though a minor announcement at the event this week, Apple Watch OS 2 is going to be enormously important for the Apple Watch and for Apple. An Apple Watch running OS 2 is best thought of as the version of the Watch Apple would have wanted to launch right off the bat, if it could have. The first version of the Watch software was good, but the reality is that the apps are sorely lacking, in large part because of the heavy dependence on the iPhone for functionality. With Watch OS 2, that all changes, and apps should be snappier, more functional, and far more varied in their capabilities. I believe this new phase of its history will change the Watch as much as iPhone OS 2 changed the iPhone, and make it a much more compelling device, while creating big new opportunities for developers. The new watch and band options should also help diversify the appeal of the Apple Watch in both the premium and low-end segments, with both the Hermes watches and the new colors for the Sport option. This, coupled with the holiday season, should make for a really big calendar Q4 for Watch sales.

iPad

The iPad Pro has obvious similarities to Microsoft’s Surface, with its detachable keyboard and stylus. But the big difference is that the iPad is designed first and foremost as a standalone tablet, and the keyboard and stylus are optional extras. The Surface has always felt compromised as a pure tablet, because everything is geared around the use as a quasi-laptop. The Smart Keyboard and Pencil will add a lot of value for certain kinds of users, but the iPad Pro could easily be a replacement for a family PC for gaming or TV viewing. But with the keyboard, multi-tasking, and new apps and functionality from Microsoft and Adobe among others, it could also become a fairly compelling option in the enterprise. At a minimum of $1000 including the Keyboard and Pencil, the iPad won’t be all that price competitive against a basic PC, but with the new internals, it’s actually quite a powerful computer in its own right.

The key for the iPad is that Apple is now engaged in what you might call salami tactics here; in other words, Apple is seeking to add to the iPad opportunity incrementally with a number of smaller moves, and I see the iPad Pro in this context, along with Apple’s partnerships with IBM and Cisco. The iPad Pro by itself won’t dramatically change iPad sales, but should provide a good boost for sales, especially in conjunction with the advancements in multitasking and split-screen functionality in iOS 9. I’m still skeptical that iPad sales will start growing again over the longer term, but I think they might stabilize, and that will happen in large part due to increasing education and enterprise sales rather than renewed growth in the consumer market.

Apple today announced a series of enhancements to its key platforms – iOS, OS X, and the Apple Watch – as well as to its key services. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan can also be reached at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244, and is on site at WWDC for in-person comment and interviews.

A major theme at today’s WWDC was increased intelligence, which is an interesting response to Google’s I/O two weeks ago. Siri, Spotlight, and other aspects of Apple’s operating systems and services are getting smarter, and better at understanding natural language queries. Though Google is arguably the leader in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Apple is showing that it’s perfectly capable of innovating in these areas too. But it’s doing it in a way that’s in keeping with its privacy stance, by keeping personal information on devices and not sharing it with third parties. The tension between getting better at showing users relevant information while preserving their privacy will be a major battleground between Apple and Google over the coming years.

For the most part, iOS and OS X are getting incremental upgrades, focusing on improvements in intelligence and proactivity. Following a big-bang release of OS X last year, the naming of this year’s OS X release as El Capitan, a mountain in Yosemite, seems symbolically appropriate. This is a stronger, better version of Yosemite rather than something entirely new. The biggest change in iOS only affects the iPad, and that’s split-screen multitasking. Apple has largely updated the iPhone and iPad versions of iOS in sync, so this is a sign that the two are starting to diverge. It’s also an important way to add real value to the iPad as a business device, as this has been a major limitation for getting certain types of work done on the iPad. Paired with a larger iPad, which might come in the next few months, this could finally be the shot in the arm the iPad needs.

The update to the Watch software will be a huge boost for third party apps on the Watch. App developers have been very limited so far in what they’ve been able to do on the Watch, and the apps available have been largely poor until now as a result. With native watch apps able to tap into the hardware features on the Watch, we should get much better and more innovative third party apps going forward. The Watch’s own software is getting better too in some significant ways, which is a rapid iteration cycle on what’s still an almost brand new device.

Apple’s Music service is Apple’s attempt to save the music industry from itself once again, just as it did in 2003 with the iTunes Store. Then, the threat was piracy, but today the threat is free music streaming services. In both cases, Apple wanted to use its muscle and skills to convince people that music was still worth paying for. That’s an uphill battle in a world where people have become accustomed not to pay for music and lots of services cater to those who want music for free. But Apple has a base of over four hundred million iPhone users, and these are also likely to be the users most likely to pay for music. Apple is also in a unique position to combine the music people already own and have on their phones with the new music they’ll discover through streaming services, and the new Music service will do this. But Apple’s new service feels like it’s targeted as much at SoundCloud and YouTube as Spotify, with its focus on allowing even undiscovered artists to connect with fans.

Overall, today’s keynote reinforced Apple’s position as the only company in consumer technology that is able to bring together all the crucial elements – hardware, software, content and communications – that people care about, in a way that’s tightly integrated and designed to work together. There was definitely some borrowing from other companies, but there was also much that was new, not least in Music and with the Watch. And much of what was announced today will be available in some way to at least some people this month.

Google today held the keynote for its I/O developer event. As usual, there was a disparate set of news from Google. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst at Jackdaw Research. Jan may also be reached at (408) 744-6244 or jan@jackdawresearch.com and is also on-site at I/O today for in-person interviews.

Google’s event today was surprisingly short on major news, and especially on surprises. Much of what was announced was trailed ahead of time, and the Android announcements in particular were very short on notable news. The Android M release was described as being focused on quality and polish, but it felt like the other major focus was catching up with Apple, with lots of key features basically attempts at achieving parity with the iPhone. Android Pay feels like an Apple Pay clone without the base of fingerprint sensors to work with and a lack of control over the full stack. The changes to permissions also bring Android in line with iOS, where they always should have been. On Android Wear, too, there was little new, especially given the enhancements over the last few months, and it feels like the Apple Watch will do more for Android Wear interest and adoption than Google and its OEMs will over the coming year.

Brillo was arguably the biggest news of the day, as it’s a big step forward in the Internet of Things domain. Lots of IoT applications are already using Android, but Android hasn’t been optimized for these applications to date, with the OS both over-featured for most applications, and lacking IoT-specific features like communication protocols for connecting with other devices. Project Brillo feels like it could fix both of those problems, and is the first real IoT-specific platform from a company which many would-be adopters already see as a natural fit for the space. However, it also feels like this project is in the early stages, and it remains to be seen exactly when it will hit the market and start to have a significant impact.

On the consumer-facing side, Google Photos feels like the biggest announcement. Photos solves two real problems for users: consolidating all their photos in one place without having to pay an arm and a leg, and managing them automatically on behalf of users without requiring tons of human intervention. The availability across Android, iOS, and the web is another useful feature.   Separating Google’s photos feature from Google Plus is huge, because it both resolves concerns about keeping your photos in a social network and gets away from the perceptions of failure associated with the social network. The photos feature always should have been independent, and it’s a good thing that it now is.

Google Now on Tap is a great example of Google’s unique skill set in machine learning and its application to real-world problems. This continues to be what Google is best at, and the advancements shown today were a great illustration of that skill set. It’s also reassuring that Google recognized that not all people’s needs will be met by its own Knowledge Graph, and that Google Now cards will continue to expand the amount of third party app content they show users. However, the Chrome Custom Tabs feature for developers felt like an effort moving in the opposite direction, taking users back out of apps and onto the web, something which clearly benefits Google.

In virtual reality, it continues to feel like Google is trying to do virtual reality on the cheap, which may not be a bad strategy. Leveraging the devices people already have rather than forcing them to buy expensive dedicated hardware dramatically increase the addressable market while giving people more value from the phones they already own. The Expeditions project looks interesting, but we got no real information about pricing for the education market here, and that will be critical to its ability to succeed. It’s also disconnected from Google’s other major education efforts, which have focused largely on Chromebooks. The partnership with GoPro looks like a great fit for both companies – Google doesn’t want to develop cameras, and GoPro badly needs more unique IP to differentiate its products in the coming years. The fact that much of the Jump intellectual property will be open sourced, however, mitigates the positive impact for GoPro somewhat, though it’ll clearly have a head start.

T-Mobile today announced its first Un-Carrier moves targeted towards businesses. The below comment can be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan can also be reached at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244.

T-Mobile’s first business effort with Un-Carrier is a logical next step in its strategy, since businesses have many of the same pain points as consumers. T-Mobile’s move towards transparency in pricing should help customers on other carriers figure out more easily whether it’s worth making the switch. It doesn’t enable true comparison shopping because the other carriers still do custom, negotiated pricing for business customers. But with most business customers currently on other carriers, that may not be so important. T-Mobile’s new business offerings should be very popular with smaller businesses, which buy services very much like consumers, with the buyers being office managers or business owners rather than professional IT directors. However, for larger businesses, rate plans are just part of the picture, and other features like mobile device management, other communications and productivity applications and wireline services will be part of the picture too, and T-Mobile can’t address any of those today. Device pooling will be popular with businesses too, though T-Mobile only offers three tiers, and this may not give most businesses enough flexibility to pick the right plan and have predictable bills each month.

T-Mobile’s extension of Contract Freedom into device payments will make customer acquisition even more expensive, but is an important additional step given how many customers are now on device payment plans with the other carriers. The trade-in of devices will help offset some of this cost, however. Locking in pricing for life will help counter some of T-Mobile’s competitors’ criticisms of disappearing promotional pricing.

Overall, T-Mobile’s new moves will help keep the momentum going around its growth and its success in getting subscribers to switch from competitors. It’s continuing to bank on the fact that adding new customers in this way will pay off long term, because these subscribers will stick around. Though there’s a risk that it attracts the most price-sensitive customers, and these customers will be more likely to switch carriers again in future, T-Mobile tells me that’s not what’s happening, and that these new customers are at least as loyal as the rest of its base. Its churn is falling over time, which lends some credence to that claim. I’ve been concerned that T-Mobile was running out of obvious levers to drive continued rapid consumer growth, but moving into business opens up a huge new opportunity for T-Mobile to continue that growth, especially because its market share of the business market is so small today.

The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst at Jackdaw Research. Jan may also be reached at (408) 744-6244 or jan@jackdawresearch.com.

Apple demonstrated today why it’s unique among major technology companies. It combined technological innovations with partnerships with healthcare companies and the launch of fashion accessories.

In the healthcare space, many companies have tried to use technology to transform key processes, but the focus has been almost exclusively on transforming them from the enterprise out. What’s unique about Apple’s ResearchKit is that it works from the consumer-in. In other words, it empowers consumers rather than healthcare providers and in the process changes the healthcare research model.

Apple’s new MacBook extends Apple’s leadership in the PC space and illustrates exactly why Apple has been outperforming the rest of the PC industry for most of the last ten years. It advances technology in the key areas users care about – battery life, display quality and resolution, and above all usability. One concern is the reduction in the number of ports to a single USB-C port. While many peripherals now communicate through wireless rather than wired technologies, power, external microphones and other devices still rely on wired technologies. It’s likely that Apple will deal with this by providing adapters, but customers will likely have to buy new devices and cables to work with the new port. At the same time, Apple has clearly laid the groundwork with various wireless sharing technologies such as AirPlay, AirDrop and so on.

The Apple TV didn’t get the big upgrade some were expecting. The price drop reflects the fact that the device is now competing against sticks sold at $35 rather than simply boxes sold at $80-100. The HBO Now exclusive should be a big selling point for Apple TV, but the price change signals that Apple may be laying the groundwork for a bigger TV service push later.

The Apple Watch information provided today was relatively unsurprising, with little new information other than price. The prices weren’t entirely surprising either. The vast majority of sales will be for the Sport and Watch versions, and I expect Apple to sell around 20 million of these in 2015. The release of the Apple Watch will also catalyze the overall smartwatch market and help other vendors even as Apple comes to enjoy levels of market share it hasn’t had since the iPod. It will likely take some time for sales to ramp up, since most potential customers will want to look at the watches in stores and possibly even wait until early-adopter friends see and show them off. More broadly, the Apple Watch also demonstrates what only Apple could do among major technology brands, and that’s create a credible high-fashion device that can sell at every price point from $349 to over $10,000. No other technology company has the combination of technology chops and fashion and brand credibility to pull this off.

Sprint has announced a deal with RadioShack to build Sprint stores within 1750 RadioShack stores as part of RadioShack’s restructuring. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan may be reached for further comment at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244.

Sprint’s deal is a smart way to dramatically increase its footprint of company-owned retail locations. It’s lagged behind its three major competitors in terms of company-owned store footprint. Each of its major competitors has over 2000 company owned stores, and Sprint will now leapfrog to 2750 company-owned locations with the addition of the RadioShack stores. This gives Sprint both a much bigger opportunity to capture walk-in business from customers and a much better mix of owned versus indirect distribution, which should have a positive effects on a number of other metrics. Stores have been one of several major areas where Sprint and T-Mobile have both suffered from a lack of scale compared to AT&T and Verizon, and this deal is a cost-effective, rapid way for Sprint to make some rapid progress. In the process, it’s converting these RadioShack stores from multi-carrier dealerships to directly-owned, exclusive Sprint retailers. The fact that Sprint employees will be staffing the stores within a store is a major advantage, too, compared with third party retailers.

T-Mobile today announced Smartphone Equality, a policy change which will allow the many customers who don’t have prime credit to nonetheless qualify for smartphone installment plans and other deals normally reserved for those with prime credit. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan can also be reached for further comment at (408) 744-6244 or jan@jackdawresearch.com.

When T-Mobile introduced Mobile Money, it was clearly targeted at a segment of the market largely ignored by the major carriers. This segment has lower incomes, poorer credit and often no access to traditional financial services, and T-Mobile demonstrated a willingness to go where other carriers had not. Today’s Smartphone Equality announcements is another example of T-Mobile targeting customers which are largely neglected by the big four carriers, and especially their postpaid services. It should reinforce T-Mobile’s appeal among this segment and help drive loyalty among these customers.

I’ve been concerned by some of T-Mobile’s Un-carrier moves from a business perspective, as they often sacrifice financial performance for short-term pursuit of growth. But Smartphone Equality is an example of a plan which both serves growth objectives while being well grounded in good financial sense. The plan is based on research from T-Mobile into which customers are most likely to pay their bills, and targeted carefully at customers who should present little or no additional risk. This is a smart move from T-Mobile, one that should both benefit customers and the bottom line. Unlike some of T-Mobile’s other moves, it’s not targeted at switchers but rather at existing customers, since a track record of paying bills on time is required to qualify. As such, this should help churn rates rather than simply boosting gross adds, which have been the focus of so much of T-Mobile’s efforts recently.

AT&T today announced that it will resurrect the Rollover concept it pioneered in the days when voice minutes dominated wireless service with Rollover Data. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan is also available for further comment via email at jan@jackdawresearch.com.

AT&T’s announcement will be seen as a response to T-Mobile’s Data Stash announcement from just before Christmas, but in reality it has been in the works and under discussion at AT&T for quite some time. Given that AT&T pioneered the concept of Rollover Minutes, it’s natural that it would want to own the concept and the brand in the data world too. AT&T’s version differs significantly from T-Mobile’s version. It’s less generous, with a single month of rollover rather than twelve months, but that should make it both easier for customers to keep track of and more manageable from a network load perspective. T-Mobile’s plan risks creating a situation similar to airline miles, where customers have a hard time keeping track of which miles (or Gigabytes of data) expire when. AT&T’s version also better mirrors the original concept, which was designed to give customers some flexibility about month-to-month usage rather than allowing them to accrue substantial unused allowances over time. But T-Mobile (and John Legere) will undoubtedly beat AT&T up about the perceived inferiority of its offer.

All of this is part of the broader escalation in the competition between the US wireless carriers that’s occurred in recent months. And as with previous moves, it’s focused on larger data allowances, which carriers have the flexibility to offer without occurring significant costs or reducing prices directly. It’s relatively low-risk for AT&T to offer, especially given the one-month limit, and fits well with its branding and history, so it should resonate with consumers. It will also increase pressure on Verizon to offer a similar deal, though Verizon has resisted recent moves to a greater extent than competitors, preferring to target discounts at individual users it considers at risk rather than sweeping discounts or widely-available offers. However, as all four major networks reach rough parity in LTE coverage over the next year or so, competition around offers and pricing will continue to intensify as a major source of differentiation, and Verizon will find it increasingly difficult to resist these moves.

Apple today announced new iPads, an iMac with a Retina Display, and a new Mac Mini, as well as providing more details on OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan may be reached for further comment at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244.

Apple had three jobs to do with its iPad announcements today: convincing people who own an iPad 2 or 3 to upgrade to a newer model, winning over new customers to the iPad, and convincing people who own an iPad but have stopped using it to buy a new one and start using it again. It achieved two of those three objectives with its announcements. The new iPads are a significant upgrade over iPads that are two or three years old, which is the main target base for upgrades. They’re thinner, lighter, much more powerful, with better cameras and a Touch ID sensor, and as such anyone upgrading from a two- or three-year old iPad will notice a major improvement in performance. About 3-5% of Apple’s iPad base upgrades every quarter, and these improvements together with the lower prices on the older iPad Minis may increase that number a little.

Apple also extended the bottom end of the iPad range down to $250 for the original iPad Mini, meaning that it now has a range of iPads that run the gamut from $250 to around $1000 – there’s something for almost everyone here. And with last year’s iPad Mini at $300, the entry point for a very good iPad is now lower than it’s ever been. Apple adds about eight to ten million new iPad customers each quarter, and the new iPads should help keep that momentum going, while expanding the addressable market somewhat at the bottom end.

However, there was nothing in today’s announcements which would convince someone who’s stopped using an existing iPad to buy a new one – the new iPads do the same things better, but don’t do anything dramatically new and different. For people who have found a large smartphone and a laptop sufficient, the new iPads won’t change the equation. One other interesting note is that, having effectively achieved parity between the iPad Mini and iPad Air last year, Apple has again opened up a gap between the two in terms of performance. While the iPad got thinner, gained a new, more powerful processor and a better camera, the iPad Mini remained largely unchanged except for the Touch ID sensor and software improvements. The iPad Mini is now again clearly the poorer of the two devices, and the $100 price difference between the iPad Mini 3 and iPad Mini 2 is somewhat hard to justify.

The iMac with Retina Display checks an important box for Apple’s community of creative professionals such as photographers, videographers and designers who need a higher-resolution display to do their work on a Mac. This is a marginal business in the grand scheme of things for Apple, but it’s an important segment for Apple to keep happy. That base is still waiting for a display peripheral with the same high resolution to use with the company’s new Mac Pro which launched last year, so that needs to be high on Apple’s to-do list for the near future.