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Windows Phone Manages Mere 1.1% One-Year Market Share Growth In Its Home Market
Microsoft is in the smartphone game until the smartphone game is over, and Windows Phone is its vehicle. That said, the company’s success thus far appears to be slightly lumpy and downright sluggish on the home front.
The release of Windows Phone 8, and a crop of new smartphones from Nokia and HTC, helped boost the platform’s sales numbers. For example, in the second quarter of 2012, Nokia sold 4 million Lumia handsets running Windows Phone. In the second quarter of 2013, that figure grew to 7.4 million, up around 45 percent year over year.
That’s a strong number. But Nokia is an increasingly monopoly player in the Windows Phone world, as other OEMs slip into obscurity; only HTC has meaningful market share aside from the Finnish smartphone giant.
While the Lumia line and Windows Phone as a whole are growing, the U.S. market remains a more than difficult one for Microsoft. Recent data released by Kantar details that Windows Phone controls 4 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. That’s only up 1.1 percent in the past year.
In my view that delta is soft and somewhat worrisome.
You might be on guard, given that the +1.1 percent figure is a 37 percent growth rate for Windows Phone in the United States over the past year. That’s correct, but it’s not hard to put up large percentage gains when your market share is so small to begin with. Years into its life, Windows Phone is less than 10 percent the size of either iOS or Android at current tally.
It has cemented itself as the “third player” in mobile, but the simple fact is that even with the noticeable and welcome bump that Windows Phone 8 provided, Ballmer’s old joke about going from very small to very small in the mobile world remains an oddly annoying truism.
The key weakness of Windows Phone isn’t its hardware or platform technology; Windows Phone is in fact a delight to use, and Nokia has reached its stride regarding device quality. Instead, the application marketplace on the phones remains weak, and, as Wired’s Alexandra Chang pointed out earlier this year, that situation remains largely un-remedied.
Why is that? In short because unit volume and U.S. market share remain too low for many developers and companies to pay attention to. So the 4 percent figure is at once a mark of progress, as well as a measuring stick pointing out how far Microsoft has to go.
WMPoweruser makes a fair point regarding the numbers: “As [Microsoft's Windows Phone leader Joe] Belfiore and colleagues all stated in the past – it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” That’s true, but at what point do we get past a slow jog?
Top Image Credit: Al Pavangkanan
Why Labor Unions And Silicon Valley Aren't Friends, In 2 Charts
None of the Internet giants have unionized employees, which has made Silicon Valley a favorite target for civil libertarians.
Earlier this month, after several prominent Bay Area technologists came out against the BART subway union strike, it provided a convenient excuse for haters to brand the tech community as greedy oligarchs. “There’s a reason why so many people are hating on the techies,” wrote Slate’s Andrew Leonard, after quoting one tech executive who wanted to automate BART employees out of existence — “Get ‘em back to work, pay them whatever they want, and then figure out how to automate their jobs so this doesn’t happen again.”
There’s a very good reason why unions have never had a presence in Silicon Valley: they aren’t fans of technology. Labor unions have aggressively fought Uber and Lyft, which threaten taxi drivers with increased competition. They’ve effectively paralyzed a multi-billion-dollar sharing economy industry from spreading around the country.
Not to be outdone, one of the largest labor unions in the country, AFL-CIO, is the leading opponent of more high-skilled immigrants, calling the tech community “greedy” for wanting to make it easier to hire foreign engineers.
Technology is in the business of disrupting industries. Startups will tell you that it takes every ounce of brains and grit to get a product off the ground; they don’t just need an environment that acquiesces to technology, but fully embraces the chaos.
Two surveys, one from 1983 and another I conducted this month, illustrate the differences in attitudes on innovation between tech workers and unionized workers.
Chart 1: Only 16% Of Unions Advocated For Technology
As far back as I can see, unions have been tech-averse. In one 1983 survey of labor unions [PDF], Researcher Stephen Peitchinis found that a mere 14 percent of unions had policies advocating for technology change, while 14 percent actively opposed innovation if it threatened members’ jobs. Most (42 percent) have policies that begrudgingly accept technology so long as employers do so in a way that minimizes its impact on the workforce.
Peitchinis also has a few historical gems in the paper, including one of a railway union that fought to keep fire-safety workers on board after trains got rid of coal power.
It is no shocker, then, why economists generally find an inverse relationship between innovation and unionization. “Indeed, economists generally find that unions stall innovation,” wrote a research team from the University of South Florida in May. “Firm innovation output, measured by patent counts and citations, declines significantly after firms elect to unionize and increases significantly for firms that vote to deunionize.”
It’s no wonder that unions never found a foothold in the Valley.
Chart 2: The Trend Continues
Since the survey was conducted in 1983, I wanted to see if the protectionist sentiment was still around. I tried to replicate the spirit of the study, using Google Surveys to gauge the attitudes on job-replacing-technology on union workers vs. people who work in the tech industry.
Roughly twice as many respondents in tech were willing to sacrifice their jobs for innovation (16.5 percent vs. 30 percent). Three times as many unionized employees were willing to stand in the way of innovation to protect jobs (27 percent vs. 11 percent).
The Lucky And The Sacrifice
Unions may be quite valuable in other parts of the country, but they haven’t been needed much in the Valley. Despite having no union, Facebook, Google and other tech companies are consistently voted the “best” companies to work for in America. Cushy salaries, luxurious dining amenities, and decentralized management structures provide an elite class of high-tech workers all the benefits and influence that unions have long hoped for.
Moreover, the Valley has long subsisted on freelancers, who roam between high-tech firms. “I think unionization would ruin the free spirit and innovation in the high-tech industry,” freelance web designer Alvin Bost told CNET in 2001. “It would be terrible for people like me.”
Unfortunately, those outside the Valley bubble have experienced rising inequality, as technology automates more and more jobs. It’s a serious problem. If Google ran the BART system, I seriously doubt a human would still be powering every train.
However, I think Slate is wrong to characterize this as “class warfare.” Many technology workers hold a genuine philosophical belief that the benefits to innovation outweigh the short-term gains of protecting workers. I think many in the Valley have been honest about their philosophical assumptions, and it’s time for unions to be honest about theirs.
[Image Credit: Flickr User Michael Dunn~!]
Russian Politician Proposes Law Punishing Individuals For Using Naughty Language Online
You can’t be a little pregnant, and you can’t be slightly censorious. Word out of Russia is that the country is working to further denigrate free speech, this time with a proposed law that would make the use of naughty language online a punishable offense.
Ludicrous? Certainly. Outside the bounds of possibility? Not in the slightest.
TechDirt, which brought the proposed law to our attention, notes that this is not the first time that Russian politicians have tried something like this. Last year another bill that would have introduced broad Internet censorship was considered. Russian citizens pushed back heavily in that case.
This time around, here’s the current idea, as described by the Russian newspaper Pravda [Emphasis: TC]:
State Duma Deputy Yelena Mizulina intends to make further amendments to the Law “On the Protection of Children.” The chairwoman of the Committee on Family, Women and Children put forward a suggestion to punish people for using dirty language in social networks.
According to politician, [pages] of posts and messages containing swear words, will have to be blocked within 24 hours, if harmful information is not deleted. This should apply to pages on social networks, websites, and various forums.
You might think that such a broad, draconian, and almost impossible-to-enforce law would have no chance of passage. However, the current governing climate is more in favor of such a law than opposed to it. In the United Kingdom, a pervasive Internet filter is being raced to market. It was put together under the guise of protecting children from pornography, but in fact will go much further, blocking all sorts of information.
The Russian bill is being proposed on the grounds of protecting children, as well. As far as canards go, this ruse is overplayed.
Here’s how such efforts work out in practice: In the name of protecting children from what their parents might not want them to see, the state is taking on the role of guarantor of the public morality, deciding what is fit, and not fit, to read and see. Grant the government that power, and you have ended free expression and free inquiry. This is not to be allowed. Let parents raise their kids and protect them as they will. It is not good to allow the state to do an end run around individual liberty in the name of helping some other person’s kid.
A final note: The Russia bill is essentially impossible, in that to actually enact it would require hiring a massive labor force to parse the Internet as real-time censors. Therefore, it would only be enforced capriciously, making it all the more odious. Say it with me: No.
Pravda’s article on the law includes an incredible set of quotes from current Russian lawyer Sergei Smirnov:
When people express their thoughts or emotions with the use of profanity, many are offended by it. Obscene lexicon is equated to disorderly conduct, there is an appropriate article in the Code of Administrative Offences. [...]
Obscene language offends both children and adults. A ban on its use is not an infringement of human rights. This is a direction towards a civilized lifestyle.
No, it isn’t, for fuck’s sake.
Top Image Credit: Nicolas Raymond
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Greylock's Newest Partner Josh Elman
This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, we have Greylock’s newly appointed partner Josh Elman. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show.
As was announced last week, Elman is Greylock’s newest partner, focusing on consumer investments. Prior to Greylock, Elman was a product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, and helped Twitter grow its active user base by nearly 10x. Before Twitter, Elman worked on platform at Facebook and led the launch of Facebook Connect. Earlier in his career, Elman led product management for Zazzle, was also part of the early team at LinkedIn focused on growth and jobs, and led product and engineering for RealJukebox and RealPlayer at RealNetworks.
Elman told TechCrunch last week that he’s particularly excited about social platforms, communication tools, new media, marketplaces and mobile experiences. And he’s been working on product development for over 15 years, so he has plenty to share on how to build beautiful products that delight consumers.
Please send us your questions for Elman here or put them in the comments below!
Finland's Next Gaming Phenom? Grand Cru Raises $11M From Idinvest, Qualcomm, Nokia Growth
Almost at a steady pace, Helsinki has produced a hit gaming company every couple of years: Rovio’s Angry Birds blew up in 2009 and then Supercell took the crown as one of the highest-grossing iOS game developers in the world last year through Clash of Clans and Hay Day.
Is the next one Grand Cru?
Named after the French wine classification, the 25-person startup has been quietly working on a game called the Supernauts, which has been called a more mainstream and accessible take on Minecraft.
Early on, they picked up funding from Supercell-backer Lifeline Ventures and now they’ve racked up an additional $11 million from strategic investors like Qualcomm Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners and lead investor Idinvest Partners.
Their funding comes at a time when the Helsinki gaming community is abuzz with the success of companies like Supercell and Rovio and as dozens of other tiny startups splinter off with talent from both these companies and then longer-standing studios like Remedy and Digital Chocolate’s local office. To an outside observer, it may seem pretty random that Helsinki keeps churning out world-class gaming companies, but the community has deep roots because of these older gaming companies, the existence (and then decline) of Nokia and longstanding events like Assembly, which has been an annual mecca for developers and enthusiasts for more than 20 years.
Grand Cru’s executive team is pretty experienced in the field: CEO Markus Pasula ran RealNetworks’ studio Mr. Goodliving, while chief technology officer Mikko Wilkman came from Habbo Hotel-maker Sulake and chief marketing officer Thorbjorn Warin ran marketing at German social game maker Wooga.
The company has yet to launch its first game but they’ve been quietly at work on its flagship title for about two years. It’s like a more cartoonish and social version of Mojang’s 8-bit megahit game Minecraft. Players solve puzzles and create shareable worlds while traveling to a flooded Earth to rescue humans.
They don’t have a timeline for when it will be released.
“We will launch it when it’s ready,” Warin said. “We’ve put two years into the game. We will not fumble on the finish line and we have taken a very extensive process in developing the game.”
Supernauts is done in third-person and the artistic style is quite different in feel and form.
“We’ve spent six months perfecting the camera controls and user interface,” Warin said. “There aren’t very many 3D games for a casual audience.”
He said the game’s social features are much deeper than what you’d see in a typical casual game.
“We don’t want to have the standard stuff, where you visit your friends and they give you stuff,” he said. “We have proper multiplayer competitions.”
They plan to use the funding to launch Supernauts, and Warin said the company is taking after the Supercell model of building a gaming company gradually instead of staffing up really aggressively.
“We’re not going to grow too quickly and go on a crazy hiring spree. We’re not going to be cranking out new products every six to nine months,” he said. “We want to make sure the people we hire have a good, strong cultural fit with people who want to make games with the same level of ambition that we have.”
Groupon Loses Mobile Head David Katz, Who Is Heading To Sports Commerce Site Fanatics
Groupon continues to roll out new products that point to the e-commerce company’s ongoing ambitions to move beyond the daily deal and further into becoming a central hub for local and mobile commerce. But come August, it will be doing so without one of its most senior mobile execs. David Katz, VP and GM of consumer mobile, is leaving the company at the end of next month and taking up a position as SVP and GM of mobile for Fanatics, the sports apparel commerce site.
Katz passed on the news to friends and colleagues in an email, which TechCrunch obtained via an anonymous tipster. We’re including that below.
Meanwhile, Groupon has also confirmed Katz’s departure, interim management for mobile, and plans for recruiting a replacement:
“David is leaving Groupon at the end of the month to take another position,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve begun a search for a new leader of our Consumer Mobile division. Groupon has very deep and talented mobile team that will continue to report to our Senior Vice President of Product Development Jeff Holden, and we’re excited about the future for one of the fastest-growing Mobile operations in the industry.”
Fanatics, which had been acquired by GSI Commerce (now eBay Enterprise) in March 2011, was spun out of the company as part of Kynetic (a new company from the founder of GSI Commerce) just seven months later. Sports apparel is big business. In June of this year, Fanatics was valued at $3.1 billion when it raised $170 million from Singapore’s Temasek and Alibaba. Prior to that, Fanatics had raised $225 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Venture Partners and Bank of America for its network of sports commerce sites, focused mainly on apparel (one of the biggest in its portfolio of sites is Football Fanatics). Making a bigger move into mobile is a logical step for the company.
Katz has been with Groupon since April 2011, and before taking on the role of VP of mobile. Prior to that, he was VP and GM for retail solutions. And before that, Katz spent six years at Yahoo, with the last three as VP of mobile.
I’ve spoken with Katz several times about the launch of new mobile products, and he’s always been firmly focused on business as usual, despite there sometimes being more than a little drama going on around him. In the wake of co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason getting ousted, Katz told me that it was simply “business as usual” at Groupon, with the company just focused on shipping new products.
He was also one of the key people there trying to make sure that what Groupon was doing in the U.S. would also see light outside of North America — no small task, considering that much of Groupon’s international growth was inorganic and therefore based on different IT systems. The question going forward will be whether whoever succeeds Katz and Groupon will continue to give mobile the same focus it has had up to now, and whether that ambition connects with consumers, both in the U.S. and elsewhere.
We’ve reached out to Katz for comment. For now, here’s his memo:
Dear Friends,
Just a quick note to let you know that I’m going to be leaving Groupon and joining Fanatics, Inc. as SVP and GM, Mobile.
And what you may ask is “Fanatics”? If you don’t know, Fanatics is a privately held e-commerce company that is the market leader in sports apparel (~$1B in annual revenue). Fanatics runs the online stores for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA, major college conferences, major media properties like ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo and Sporting News and lots of individual pro and college teams. Basically, if you are a sports fan there’s a good chance you’ve already bought something from Fanatics.
So why am I’m making this switch? Well…
1) I get to work in sports, which is awesome
2) I think this is a strong team building a great, big business that is on the cusp of becoming enormous
3) I get to build a brand new mobile team and some cool product from scratch
In my new role I’m going to be setting up a new dev center in the Bay Area to build and market mobile apps and sites. I’m going to be building a new team – which is part of the appeal – so if you know great mobile developers, PMs, designers or marketers who love sports and m-commerce please send them my way.
I’ll be at Groupon through mid-August and moving over to Fanatics immediately after. I’ll send new work contact info when I have it but I’m always reachable at this email.
Thanks,
DK
iTunes Beta Adds iTunes Radio, Slide-To-Unlock Tweak And Screenshot Detection API Added To iOS 7
Apple has released a new beta of iOS 7 today, which is the fourth in the series. There are only a couple of months to go at most before we see the final edition roll out, so it’s not surprising that this update contains a variety of notable visual changes that smooth out some of iOS 7′s rough spots. There’s also a new iTunes beta of version 11.1, which brings iTunes Radio to the OS X desktop.
Apple introduced iTunes Radio when it unveiled iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks back in June at WWDC 2013. iTunes Radio promises to be a streaming online radio service, sort of like Pandora, which allows anyone to make a genre or artist station, skip tracks and hear suggested artists, all included ad-free with the price of an iTunes Match subscription ($29.99 per year) or with audio and visual ads when accessed completely free.
On the desktop, iTunes Radio looks to operate pretty much the same as it does on mobile, providing access to some pre-set stations and letting users create their own. The interface is remarkably minimal for now, but Apple has left lots of room for custom stations. There’s also a button to let you buy songs being played back instantly in the “Now Playing” window, as you can see in the screenshot below provided by an anonymous tipster.
As for iOS 7, it receives a design change on the lock screen that addresses complaints that the original layout was confusing to users. Specifically, there’s now an arrow next to the “slide to unlock” text on the lock screen, and the down arrow on the status bar suggesting the notification center has been replaced with a solid bar (as you can see in the screenshot from 9to5Mac below). There are also numerous visual refinements and icon changes, including for AirPlay devices, as 9to5Mac notes, along with a screenshot detection API that Snapchat users will appreciate. We’ve also heard that shared links are now working in Safari, and likewise icons have been tweaked in the iOS mobile browser.
Typically, Apple has a minimum of four betas before a full release, and iOS 6 last year had four before the general public release in September. I expect we’ll probably see at least one more (if not more) this time around, as this is a major overhaul of iOS, with much more dramatic changes than in past versions.
Google Relaunches Zagat's Website And Mobile Apps, No Payment Or Registration Required
Google today gave Zagat, the restaurant review service it acquired in 2011, a set of new mobile apps for iOS and Android, as well as a complete facelift on the web. For the first time, Google says, all of the service’s ratings and reviews are now available for free and without the need to register.
Currently, the new Zagat covers restaurants and nightlife nine cities, but Google says it plans to expand this list to over 50 U.S. and international destinations. Today, the site only covers San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Google also plans to expand the range of reviews to include hotels, shopping and “other places of interest,” something the printed Zagat guides have been doing for a while now.
The new site, Google says, will also feature news and video content from local editors, as well as curated lists, improved search and map-based browsing. You will also be able to make reservations through Open Table and read menus before you arrive at the restaurant. The website, of course, still lets you participate in the usual Zagat surveys.
It’s interesting to see that Google is holding on to the Zagat brand. After acquiring the company, it wasn’t clear if Google was just interested in the content for its Google Maps and Google+ Local brands and whether it would shut Zagat down sooner or later.
Today’s launch, however, explains why Google is shutting down its Google+ Local app for iOS on August 7. While Google says it did so because Google Maps now does most of what the Local app used to do, there would have been quite a bit of overlap with Zagat.
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