As you all have read by now, Steve Jobs decided to resign as CEO of Apple. While I don’t expect Steve to be too far removed from the innovation factory that is Apple, this is a big milestone in my view. Looking back on his career and the influence he personally had on computing and mobile technology is quite a journey. My first paid programming job was on an Apple IIe with no hard drive. Wow! I’m dating myself with that fact.

There are many innovative people in the Apple culture and I’m sure they will be effective at continuing the pioneering work Steve has done. But Steve’s persona and presence has had a massive influence on the worldwide markets including application developers, service providers, musicians, movie producers, and publishers – as well as on consumers of this content.

And, of course, to companies like Antenna, the impact of the iPhone on our business was enormous. It was a true game changer that turned the topic of mobile applications, formerly known only to geeks like me, into pop culture.

There will never be another Steve Jobs. “Steve knows what people want” was a quote that we heard a few years ago referring to his talent to define a creative innovative product. This is big. Think about it – the Apple ecosystem of content, devices that access the content, and apps that manage it. There is nothing like it and likely never will be in my lifetime. There’s no app for that.

Today’s top news:

Skype buys GroupMe messaging app

Skype is buying GroupMe in a bid to break into the increasingly competitive mobile group messaging market. Earlier this year, the mobile app which makes it possible to share text messages, photos and locations privately with selected groups of people, won the ‘Breakout award’ at South By Southwest Interactive awards.

UK HP TouchPad tablet prices slashed as retailers look to shift stock

Retailers across the UK have begun discounting HP’s TouchPad tablet to shift stock following the announcement that HP is to concentrate its business around software and services. Amazon has already cut the price from £400 to £312, while Argos has reduced it to £349.99, as retailers look to offload stock after HP confirmed that it will not manufacture any more devices.

Networks, handset makers vie for mobile dominance

WebOS is all but dead, and died without apparently leaving a gap for its competitors to fill, but the bloodbath of mobile platforms isn’t over despite the clearing field. LiPS, LiMo, Moblin, Maemo and MeeGo are all dead or dying, while Symbian fights on like some jungle soldier who has not been told of the surrender. Access is still awaited, the Else handset having been killed off last year despite its slick video launch, so the field seems clear for a four-way battle between Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM: though Bada and Brew are still lurking nearby.

Think HP is going to be able to license WebOS? Think again

Already there is plenty of talk about the possibility of HP licensing the WebOS operating system – used previously in Palm’s range of phones, and most recently in the TouchPad tablet (which, sold for $100, has done bumper business over the weekend in the US, we hear). According to a few hopeful people
both inside and outside HP, the idea is that some company somewhere has a hardware specification sitting there, into which it is just aching to pour someone else’s OS and software. So how likely is this? Not at all.

BT installs free Wi-Fi in London pubs

BT and Heineken have teamed up to offer BT Broadband customers Wi-Fi access in 100 London pubs
Drinkers in London will get free Wi-Fi access under a partnership between BT and Heineken to connect 100 of the capital’s independent pubs – if they are BT Broadband customers.

I was recently chatting with some smart marketing folk and mentioned that to be a true player in the mobile space, a company must provide “mobility for all.” Not being a marketing type and having about as much creativity as a garden slug, they patted me on the head and escorted me out of the room (Actually, we were on a boat but they got up and walked away without throwing me overboard.)

My thought process was predicated on several conversations I had with existing and potential customers. When we talked about mobility, it had a different meaning to each player based on their current mobility experience. For folks who had not yet deployed a mobility solution, they were typically looking for a native app to solve a specific business problem. For folks that had deployed one native app and solved, let’s say, their field service problem, it was now time to look at an app to solve a different business problem. These folks were still looking at native apps primarily, but had an open mind on what alternatives might be available. For folks who had solved their problem by implementing a mobile Web solution, they were now ready to venture into the native or hybrid app space. And for the last group, mobility Kool-Aid drinkers (and I mean that in a good way), they were ready to expand beyond what they currently had and move in several mobile directions simultaneously.

So what does all this mean? Typically, you find a problem and fix it. Mobility has been traditionally looked at as a solution to a defined problem. Sounds fairly simple. But what happens once that problem is solved? It’s the principle of “low-hanging fruit.” When you go out to pick fruit you start with the stuff that’s most obvious to pick. It’s right in front of you and doesn’t require a ladder to reach. Once you’ve done that, the remaining fruit takes the place of the “easy” stuff. At some point the fruit at the top reaches of the tree becomes the low hanging fruit (compared to moving the ladder to another tree).  Mobility works the same way. Fix the greatest pain first but once you’ve done that successfully all other pains move up the food chain (or down the tree).

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Anyone who thought that the iPhone and iPad were going to force commonality in competitors was dead wrong. As much as all the device manufacturers have moved to match the Apple device capabilities and user experience, they are all innovating at an exciting pace to create their own unique capabilities. My team receives all the pre-release devices and evaluates them for our platform. Instead of convergence there is a significant divergence, especially across Android devices. This is everything from form factor and device capabilities to unique software loads. We recently received a set of devices and found much of the new to be gadgetry. One really cool feature for one of the devices is a 3D camera. At first look, this sounds like a gadget too, but the app for the camera actually takes the two camera shots and combines them into layers. In everyday technical use this can provide some depth to shots of machinery, packing materials and packaging to name a few. Combine this with an approval app and you’ve got some unique value. Keep an eye out for some device goodies from Samsung and LG. They both have some really interesting features on the way.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I first started in the cellular business, mobile phones were big (transceivers the size of large phone books), expensive ($3,500), physically installed in a car (in the trunk, or boot, to be more accurate), and cost a fortune to use ($45 per month for the privilege of having a phone number, and 45 cents per minute to use it). 

These behemoths provided the user with “mobility” and broke the chains that bound them to their offices – at least as far as voice communications were concerned. In those days, there were no hand-held phones and it wouldn’t have mattered since the systems were so immature you couldn’t have held up a call on a portable anyway.  Good times.

If you remember back to those days you can recall many conversations that typically ended with, “I’ll take care of that as soon as I get back to the office.” As time progressed and vehicle-mounted cell phones were replaced with hand-held cell phones, the degree of mobility improved, but the conversations typically ended the same way. You could carry on conversations, often without dropping a call, but your ability to do much more than that was limited by the technology and phone capabilities of the day.

Fast forward to today.

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Everyday I get the question whether WebKit and HTML5 applications are the answer to the complexity of mobile. The answer is that they are a partial solution, and depending on the application requirements, they may not do at all.

It is true that simply by moving from native to HTML5 that the complexity of building applications is greatly reduced. There are many kits on the market that provide ready controls to construct the app. There’s a big HOWEVER here. The implementation of WebKit on the various smartphones is not the same. There are still intricacies for controls that can work across Blackberry, Android, Apple, WebOS and everything else that’s coming. These variations are not trivial. When you consider the idea that you would have to implement securing the app database differently, create control libraries, and handle device APIs, there still is a lot to create. Keeping up with these changes is also a significant challenge. Many are looking to the future and the standardization of WebKit.

W3C has recently requested last call in order to ratify the HTML5 spec, but this does not mean that it will be standardized any time in the near future. Even with a spec, device manufacturers are free to implement with their own twists. For those looking to get greater ROI for their mobile apps investment, HTML5 is many times the right choice but technology like Antenna’s Volt handle the variations and provide the security and control needed to really make HTML5 enterprise ready. Consider as you evaluate technologies whether they simply provide sets of controls, or also solve for our implementation and management needs going forward.

Anyone considering HTML5 should also already have app design in mind. This point is important because HTML5 does have some UI limitations when it comes to animations in particular. This is evolving rapidly as more and more developers are moving toward HTML5 the device manufacturers are adding acceleration to provide for this. There continues to be a drum beat that HTML5 is in its early days. While somewhat true it is a powerful method of delivering applications and can provide for rich, stable, and powerful apps.

Every year the “quiet” news period, lovingly called “the silly season” by hacks because of all the puff press releases companies try and get them to write while there’s a dearth of “hard news,” gets shorter and shorter. This year, it’s been almost non-existent. However, as I drove to work yesterday, the sky clear and blue, the roads almost empty of other cars, something in my bones told me this was it – the start of a (two-week) silly season. No more hacking scandals, riots, mass murders, and certainly no more big technology company announcements.

Needless to say, I was wrong. At the strange time of 12:30 p.m. BST (7:30 a.m. EDT ) the news broke that Google was purchasing Motorola Mobility for $40 a share – $12.5bn in total. (Incidentally, the purchase amount was set at 63 percent over the stock price, meaning that Google enjoyed a big discount when the Motorola shares collapsed on the back of the company’s bad earnings report.) Here’s my take on what the acquisition might mean:

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