WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends... And this week we have smart phones, Windows XP, a Boeing 737 flight simulator, a high tech toilet tale, and URLs pointing to Toyota donating efficiency to charities, the Caterpillar B15 smart phone, graphene switches, and super glass.
It’s a little less than usual, because I’m out of town on family business this weekend so rather than skip an issue I wrote this week’s issue early. I will be taking a break later this month to coincide with the UK’s August Bank Holiday, but I’ll let you have details of that in next week’s issue. In the meantime, have fun ...
Shorts:
I suspect the heady growth in the high end smart phone market is nearly over. The reports from the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC no longer show the massive rises in sales and profits for their smart phone divisions, and as for Blackberry and Microsoft - they came to the party too late to get a look in. When you arrive that late, you need some really compelling new applications to get the customers to look at your offering.
The truth is that the high end smart phones are converging in what they offer now. The only real difference between what Apple and Android phones offer is one of what you start with. In the case of Apple the device comes with a full set of ‘everything’ Apple has decided you need out of the box, and as long as you are prepared to do it Apple’s way it’s just a matter of charging it up and you’re off running, though you are stuck with iTunes. Interestingly, I note that virtually all iPhone users I know loathe iTunes, but that’s another story.
Android is more of a roll your own, in spite of the likes of Samsung trying to cram in the goodies. If you have an Android phone it will probably take you a few weeks to set it to work in the way you want, but it has the advantage of then having it set up for the way you work, rather than have to change the way you work to fit in with how Apple says you should work.
This difference is one of the main reasons why there is rarely any switch over by smart phone users - iPhone users upgrade to new iPhones, Android users upgrade to new Android phones, although they may, and often do, switch to a different Android phone maker. The truth is, though, that, at the end of the day, there is very little difference in the capabilities of the top tier offerings of the two systems.
Even more noticeably, there is little difference in the capability of both types phones vis-a-vis the previous model. And it is this that is causing the market to slow down. I don’t see a lot of new and compelling innovation in the works either, so the only way I can see of increasing top end sales is to reduce prices. But, of course this will have repercussions all the way down the chain, as well as reducing the current healthy profit per smartphone sold. The smartphone market isn’t yet at the level that the PC market reached in the last year or so, but it doesn’t take supernatural powers to suspect that it’s moving in that direction.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/06/samsung_isnt_alone_htc_profits_take_a_huge_dive/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/26/samsung_smartphone_growth_slowing/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/whats-wrong-smartphones-today-theyre-boring-222940?page=0,0&source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2013-07-18
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/12/poor_iphone_sales_mean_verizon_could_owe_apple_14bn/
I was shocked - shocked I tell you - to discover that over a third of the desktop PC operating systems out there are still Windows XP. The top runner is, not surprisingly, Windows 7, which holds a 44.49% share of the market, followed by XP with a 37.19% share. Windows 8? Trailing with a miserable 5.4%, barely above Vista’s 4.24%. The rest is mostly various flavors of the Mac OS and a few hold outs still using Windows 2000 and Windows NT. Clearly Windows 8 is not offering what people want, and the forthcoming 8.1 seems to just be offering more of the same. I wonder what Microsoft will try next?
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=174
For Geeks:
Here’s a little something for you to emulate as the nights start to draw in in the northern hemisphere... A French airplane enthusiast has built a complete Boeing 737 flight simulator in his son’s bedroom. I’m not clear where the aforementioned son is supposed to sleep with the room full of 737 cockpit equipment, but I suppose he can always snooze in the co-pilot’s seat while daddy is playing with his toys.
http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/27/man-builds-fully-functional-boeing-737-flight-simulator-in-his-sons-bedroom-3900819/
As discerning geeks you may have noticed adverts for a luxury high tech toilet - the Satis - which is controlled by an android app. The problem is that the password/pin number is hard coded into the Satis - it’s an easy to remember 0000 - four zeros. Apparently some people are having a great deal of fun flushing other people’s toilets, activating the bidet function, and setting off the air-dryer. I’m sure you can see the possibilities, but I would stay away from it, if I were you!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23575249
Scanner: Other stories
In lieu of money, Toyota donates efficiency to New York charity
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-toyota-donates-efficiency-to-new-york-charity.html?_r=1&
Caterpillar B15: The Android smartphone for the building site
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/review_caterpillar_b15_rugged_android_smartphone/
Could graphene switches lead to 100-times faster internet?
http://www.gizmag.com/graphene-faster-internet/28382/
New coating turns ordinary glass into super glass
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-coating-ordinary-glass-super.html#nwlt
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
11 August 2013
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
