American automobile company Ford today announced it is now releasing its software development kit to developers looking to make their smartphone apps compatible with Ford SYNC's voice command system.

SYNC debuted in the 2008 Ford Focus, and after it proved to be much more than a sales gimmick, discussion that cars could be the next big platform for apps^[1] began to arise.

But the big question was: should they be native to the car, or extensions of the apps on the mobile devices we already carry? Ford has chosen to go with the latter.

"More and more drivers will find a way to use their devices and their apps while in the car," said Derrick Kuzak, Group Vice President, Global Product Development at CTIA on Friday. "They can do it unsafely, or they can do it through safer voice-activated solutions such as Ford SYNC -- keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel."  

Since Ford launched its developer website, the company says it has received more than 1,000 submissions from developers looking either to modify their existing apps, or create all-new ones that interface with Ford SYNC's voice commands through AppLink.

AppLink will debut in the 2011 Fiesta and be compatible with Android and BlackBerry smartphones. iPhone compatibility is expected to come to the system in mid-2011.

Automatic voice command compatibility looks to be an impressive feature for an application to have, especially since Ford announced it had increased the lexicon of SYNC's voice command system to more than 10,000 words^[2], and simplified its architecture last July.

But hands-free controls are meant to give drivers fewer distractions, so Ford isn't looking to have every fart app enabled with voice commands.

"Our goal is not to have thousands of apps available for the car," said Kuzak in his CTIA keynote, "because there are strict limitations on what should be allowed while driving."

Ford is still considering what apps are appropriate for in-car use, but has named Pandora Internet radio, Stitcher podcatcher, and OpenBeak Twitter client as the first apps to be compatible with AppLink. Beyond that, Ford mentioned location-based services, navigation services, vehicle telemetry, banking and financial apps, and scheduling and travel-planning apps all as acceptable categories.

References

1. ^{^} cars could be the next big platform for apps (www.autoblog.com)
2. ^{^} Ford Sync voice recognition explodes to more than 10,000 commands (www.betanews.com)

AT&T is doing the unthinkable and raising its smartphone early upgrade cost to $200, or $125 higher than the original fee. This means if you want to upgrade your smartphone before you’re eligible for a full upgrade^[1], $200 will get tacked onto the fully subsidized price (e.g., the BlackBerry Torch, which sells for $199 with a two-year contract will go for $399).

It seems AT&T hasn’t been too pleased with the tons of customers who have been taking advantage of the early exception upgrades and decided to give customers an incentive to hang onto their current handsets. Perhaps what’s most infuriating is that with the original option, you were signing two years of your life away anyway. Now you’re committing to two years and forking over an additional $125 over the original $75 upgrade cost.

AT&T’s reason? The same one it gave for its exorbitant hike for early termination fees: smartphones are growing more sophisticated and the carrier has to pass on the cost to you, the consumer.

So, let’s do a quick summary. If you’re not near the end of your contract and you want to upgrade your smartphone, you’ll have to pay $200 on top of the fully subsidized cost of the phone. This is bringing you dangerously close to the non-commitment price of most smartphones. Oh, and if you decide to cancel after upgrading, you’re going to have to pay a $325 ETF^[2] or early termination fee. Excellent.

Or you can just do like many do and hang onto your device for a full two years. You wouldn’t have to worry about either upgrade exception fees or ETFs, either. Then again, if you’re the type who actually holds onto a device for that long, you probably wouldn’t be reading a mobile fanatic site like IntoMobile.

If it’s any consolation to you, however, the iPhone and basic messaging phones aren’t included in this change, but that’s because the iPhone already has its own special upgrade cost.

[Via: BGR^[3]]

References

1. ^{^} Early Adopters Rejoice! AT&T Moves iPhone Upgrade Eligibility Up (www.intomobile.com)
2. ^{^} AT&T raising ETFs to $325 in June (www.intomobile.com)
3. ^{^} AT&T’s early upgrade smartphone program detailed (www.boygeniusreport.com)

Motorola's co-CEO Sanjay Jha has a busy selling season ahead, and it's going to involve more than just hawking the five phones he unveiled on Oct. 6 to consumers just before the critical holiday shopping crush.

Jha also faces a huge after-Christmas sale: He's got to convince investors to buy in after Motorola splits in two^[1] and he takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility. That transformation is currently slated to occur early in the first quarter, and it leaves investors with the question: Is it time to jump into Motorola's stock?

For Jha, the new role will mean a mandate to deliver strong earnings and revenue growth on the wings of the company's mobile handset and cable set-top box business, especially since Motorola Mobility will no longer be weighed down by the profitable but slower-growth side of Motorola that makes two-way radios and networking equipment, which will be renamed Motorola Solutions.

Investors, however, have been eying Motorola (MOT) with a little trepidation. After all, the big mobile-phone maker has struggled to turn a profit over the past four years since the go-go days of its once-popular Razr, and its subscriber market share has steadily dropped over the past year, falling most steeply among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of mobile phones. Within one year, Motorola's installed subscriber base market share has seen its rolling three-month average plunge from 25.3% to 18.8% in August, according to comScore figures.

Adroit Moves With Android Smartphones^[2][3]

But Wall Street is starting to come around and is increasingly feeling bullish about the company's prospects as it focuses on smartphones and the Android operating system. And Motorola's latest lineup of handsets broadens its product portfolio with moderately priced smartphones and an entry into the business sector, where Research In Motion's (RIMM^[4]) BlackBerry has dominated, moves that add to Wall Street's optimism about Motorola.

"We believe [Tuesday's] announcement should be viewed as a slight positive for Motorola," says Deepak Sitaraman, a Credit Suisse analyst, in a research note.

He cited Motorola's consistent execution on new product announcements, which topped 17 in the past 12 months; a move toward lower-price Android smartphones to take advantage of the tiered data service plans carriers are rolling out; and Motorola's expansion of its carrier relationships beyond Verizon, which appears poised to begin offering Apple's iPhone early next year on its network.^[5][6]

Motorola's Android lineup includes three new moderately priced smartphones with a two-year contract to run on the AT&T (T) network: Flipout, at $79.99, set to launch Oct. 17 that provides WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity; Bravo, at $99.99, expected to hit the market before the holidays and offers a speedy 800 MHz processor; and Flipside, at $129.99, to be available for holiday shopping that features a slide-out Qwerty keyboard and trackpad for navigation.

Sponsored Links

"MOT is taking smartphones to the next level with numerous mid-range Android devices. We believe MOT is well-positioned to benefit from 'tiered' pricing plans which will take smartphones into lower price points," says Mark McKechnie, an analyst with Gleacher & Co.

Motorola also unveiled Citrus, an entry-level CDMA Android smartphone that will be offered in the fourth quarter on Verizon. The smartphone comes preloaded with Android Marketplace and Google's YouTube and Gmail.

But one of Motorola's most significant opportunities to boost revenue will be the introduction of its high-end Droid Pro. The Android phone marks Motorola's first effort at luring Corporate America into using its devices as company phones. The Droid Pro includes security features such as remote wipe, complex passwords and virtual private networks, in addition to the consumer-friendly features that come with the Android OS and its app market. The Droid Pro is expected to roll out on Verizon's (VZ) network in the first week of November.

After the split, Motorola Mobility will have estimated revenues of $11 billion to $13 billion, with roughly 66% of sales coming from mobile phones and the remainder from its set-top boxes and other items in its home category.

"While Motorola's overall market share footprint is shrinking because its legacy Razr is fading, its high-end smartphones, which are the most important part of the market, are growing," says Mark Donovan, a senior analyst with comScore.

That bodes well for investors who are eying Motorola Mobility as a potential growth stock once the company splits.

Profitable Fourth Quarter?

"In general, the story at Motorola is it's a company that had been broken for a long time and is on a path toward recovery," says Jay Goldberg, an analyst with Deutsche Bank. "It is improving, so on that merit, it is worth investing in."

After four years of losses, Motorola is forecasting profitability in the fourth quarter of 2010. That prediction comes despite Apple's (AAPL^[7]) rapid rise in the mobile market with its iPhone and iPad.

In an interview with DailyFinance Tuesday, Jha said this about investors weighing a play in Motorola versus Apple:

I am a bad investment advice giver, so I'll not advise any investors. But I will tell you a little bit more about my business. Today, in a report, it said Android was neck and neck with Apple's operating system. We are one of the best proponents of Android smartphones, and I think that it gives us a very good competitive position.

Certainly, the offering that has come out of Cupertino [where Apple is headquartered] has been capable and rational, but I think if you look at our Droid X and look at the feature sets, you will see a larger display [screen], much faster processor, much better browser and much better multimedia.

I think it's a decision that a lot of consumers are making. And if you look at the success of the Droid X^[8], it says there is room for multiple devices and multiple offerings in the marketplace.

We are excited about the five devices we launched today and the entrance we have made in supporting business-ready features in our devices ,and we think we have growth in front of us.

Whether investors share that view will be become more clear as the company moves forward toward splitting into two to unlock that always sought-after shareholder value.

References

1. ^{^} Motorola splits in two (www.dailyfinance.com)
2. ^{^} MOT (www.dailyfinance.com)
3. ^{^} struggled to turn a profit over the past four years (www.bloggingstocks.com)
4. ^{^} RIMM (www.dailyfinance.com)
5. ^{^} expansion of its carrier relationships beyond Verizon (www.dailyfinance.com)
6. ^{^} Apple's iPhone early next year on its network. (www.dailyfinance.com)
7. ^{^} AAPL (www.dailyfinance.com)
8. ^{^} success of the Droid X (www.dailyfinance.com)

I read an article recently in ComputerWorld titled "Devs bet big on^[1] Android^[2] over Apple's^[3] (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS." If that is not the definition of "link bait," I don't know what is.

Either way, with hook in mouth, I surfed over to the article to find the opening paragraph proclaim that "A majority of mobile application developers see Google's^[4] (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android as the smart bet over the long run." The article makes it sound like Game Over -- Android wins. Well, not so fast ComputerWorld, and others who misreported on this survey.

See, these "developers" that were surveyed were developers who use Appcelerators Titanium cross-platform compiler to produce iOS and Android Apps -- the same cross-compilers that up until recently Apple said were not allowed, which was the case at the time of the survey.

So asking these developers anything about iOS is like walking into a biker bar (a real biker bar, the type where the women's restroom looks worse than the men's -- and I know this because I actually worked in a biker bar in high school and cleaning the women's restroom still haunts me) and asking the patrons if they like Hondas over Harleys. The results will be skewed just a tad.

Running the Numbers

If you read the A-list tech blogs and listen to some of the key tech podcasts, you would get the general feel that at least as many Android devices have been sold to date as iOS devices. But what if I told you the reality is far different, with over three times more iOS devices sold to date than Android devices, and that each month and each quarter the difference between the two platforms has the iOS devices increasing their lead? You would -- if you read and listen to the aforementioned sources -- think I was daft. You might even at this point be looking for the comments section below to tell me as much. But the reality is, iOS is increasing its lead over Android. Don't believe me? Then lets look at the numbers:

At the end of 2009, there were 8.5 million Android phones that had been sold worldwide, according to Canalys^[5]. According to Gartner^[6] (NYSE: IT), in Q1 2010, there were 5.2 million Android phones sold, and in Q2 2010, there were 10.6 million Android Phones sold. Google said it was doing 200,000 activations per day this past quarter; that works out to 18.2 million Androids in Q3 2010. Add this all up, and the total Androids devices sold to date equals 42.5 million units.

As of Sept. 1, 2010, Steve Jobs said there were 125 million units sold and that they were selling 230,000 per day, which equals 7 million units for September, for a grand total of 132 million iOS devices sold to date.

So here is the real comparison:

132 million (iOS) vs. 42.5 million (Android) -- that is a 3.1 to 1 ratio in iOS's favor.

And when you look at the daily numbers, there is a 30,000 unit net gain per day for iOS, which means a 2.7 million net gain for iOS over Android in the last quarter alone.

This trend can be seen in some numbers from outside the U.S. Comscore's European smartphone market share showed a year over year increase for Apple iPhones from 10.2 percent to 19.2 percent vs. Android's increase from .5 percent to 6.1 percent, which is a 5.6 percent gain in market share for Andriod vs. a 9 percent gain for the iPhone.

This is very important, because in Europe there is a more level playing field -- in that Apple is not hampered by exclusivity in all markets, just a few. Again, Apple is pulling away from Android. Yes, Android increased its share, but not nearly as much as Apple increased its own.

Note: This does NOT include numbers for the other iOS devices, which also are selling well in Europe. And just think what happens when eventually in the U.S. the iPhone is available on the other three carriers.

Granted, 42.5 million Android units is nothing to sneeze at, but you do need to realize there have been many two-for-one programs for Android phones, including a few carrier plans where you got the Android phone for free. With the iOS devices, Apple and the carriers sold each device with no special deals. In other words, Apple got full price for each iOS device.

Family Size and Apple Pies

Another issue for Android handset manufacturers is the number of manufacturers and devices vs. iOS.

For iOS, there have been a total of nine devices to date: four iPhones, four iPod touches and one iPad. From the developer's perspective, there really have been just two different screen sizes, and all have the same number of buttons for interfacing. This makes it very easy to develop across the iOS platform. More importantly for Apple, there was just R&D and marketing costs for nine devices, and really only three at any one point in time for marketing purposes.

With Android, things get a lot more convoluted: There have been over 72 models of Android phones from 22 manufacturers to date. This means there are eight times the number of devices from 22 times more companies that have to share in a pie that is currently a third the size of Apple's pie (sorry for the bad pun). What this means is that Apple makes a lot more money than all the Android manufactures combined, and that money can be used in extra and more advanced R&D that ensures Apple can keep and grow its tech lead over its combined competition.

Another issue with Android is that there seems to be a lot more buyers' remorse than with the iPhone. Surveys have shown a much larger percentage of Android users are looking to make the jump to the iPhone than the other way around.

According to Nielsen, 21 percent of Android owners are looking at the iPhone as their next smartphone with 71 percent wanting another Android. However just 6 percent of iPhone owners are looking at going to an Android phone for their next smartphone, with 89 percent planning on getting another iPhone. Throw in BlackBerry users for a moment -- as they are the biggest market share in the U.S. currently for smartphones -- and you have 29 percent of BlackBerry owners that want an iPhone for their next smartphone vs. 21 percent that want an Android ... and just 42 percent that want another BlackBerry. This all bodes very well for the iPhone for the immediate future.

There are a few big differentiators between the iTunes^[7] App Store and Android's app stores -- key ones being ease of purchase on the iTunes side. But even more important is one you never hear mentioned on TWiT^[8] or in any of the key tech blogs, and that is the iTunes gift card factor.

You can easily find iTunes gift cards in the checkout lines of nearly every major retail and drug store in the U.S. iTunes gift cards are routinely given for birthdays, graduations, holidays, contest prizes and even just as a thank-you. iTunes gift cards are basically "funny money" users of iOS devices will then spend on iOS apps without any real thought, whereas on the Android side it seems people view app purchases as spending hard-earned money every time. This is a factor you never hear mentioned, but it's a key reason why app developers can get rich on the iTunes App store and why most developers know that it's iTunes first -- and if resources are limited, then iTunes only. That is not just a short-term plan; that is the plan for the foreseeable future by ALL of the developers I talk to.

I think one developer of a poker app explained it best to me. He said that if your app is number one in the iTunes App Store, that is equivalent to winning the Word Series of Poker's main event -- it is that big of a life-changer. Being number one in the Android app store is akin to winning the Friday night poker tournament at your buddy's house. It's OK money, but nothing that will change your life.

References

1. ^{^} "Devs bet big on (www.computerworld.com)
2. ^{^} Android (www.android.com)
3. ^{^} Apple's (www.apple.com)
4. ^{^} Google's (www.google.com)
5. ^{^} Canalys (www.canalys.com)
6. ^{^} Gartner (www.gartner.com)
7. ^{^} iTunes (www.apple.com)
8. ^{^} TWiT (www.TWiT.tv)
9. ^{^} Today in iPhone (tii.libsyn.com)

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