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We have come to expect the Internet wherever we are and whenever we want. Mary Meeker predicts that by the end of the year, we could reach 10 Billion mobile Internet devices. Yes, that’s a B.  While we still have the power of a PC in the palm of our hands, one main area has yet to be conquered–the living room.

Many have tried to create linkages into the living room, but few have succeeded. In 1988, Nintendo launched the Family Computer Network Systems. With the purchase of a special cartridge, the Famicom could interact with other terminals or a central computer to monitor and trade stocks. Unfortunately, by the time I got my NES, it only came with a pad to stomp on and gun to shoot ducks with.

Perhaps the next largest leap came from Tivo. With its emphasis on UX, they brought us the concept of time-shifting our content.  With a simple phone line, owners would be able to sync their cable stream to the programming list. However, Tivo’s glory days were short-lived.  Why pay for a Tivo if your cable operator was willing to give you a free set top box?

In the end, the thought of connecting stand alone devices is such a huge mental leap that not even excellent UX can overcome it.

However, the tides are shifting.  Over the past year, I’ve seen a multitude of new ways to connect the living room to the Internet. From simply plug-and-play devices like Roku, to elaborate Microsoft media center setups, people are realizing that the Internet isn’t just for streaming videos of cute cats playing the piano or seeing charlie biting his brother’s finger. The Internet is able to provide consumers with a lean-back 10-foot experience.

With the GoogleTV coming around the corner, and companies like Boxee that are constantly augmenting their content libraries, the Internet is finally making its way to the living room.

Last spring, my friends and I embarked on an independent study project looking at the this very space. In it, we tested the preferences of lead-users to prove/disprove hypothesis. Here are some of our findings:

• Short-Form Content (like Youtube) belongs on the computer monitor
• Most mass market consumers do not know the difference between streaming v. downloading content
• There is little room for new content platforms, new companies should seek to become embedded with CE manufacturers
• Apps for Connected TVs will provide little differentiation. Companies can only lose from not keeping up with its competitors
• Consumers want a recommendation engine for content

You can review our final presentation here:

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UPDATE: David Good, Founder of GameCrush is speaking on 10/13!

The Fall 2010 lineup for the Digital Media and Entertainment speaker series has been released!

For more info, see the course description

• 9/1/2010: Jon Fougner: Product Marketing Manager – Facebook
• 9/8/2010: Peter Farago: VP Marketing – Flurry Analytics
• 9/15/2010: John Osvald and Manuel Bronstein: Product Managers – Zynga
• 9/22/2010: Andy Kiang: Sr. Product Manager – Yahoo!
• 9/29/2010: Steve Felter: COO – Digisynd / Disney
• 10/6/2010: Sung Hu Kim: Product Manager – Twitter
• 10/13/2010: David Good: Founder – GameCrush

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The following is the latest post on my blog, bayjinger.com

The comparison of the growth rates of the iPhone and Android phones is continually a topic of hot debate, in no small part propelled by the highly vocal and emotional fans of both camps. It almost seems conventional wisdom that iPhone vs. Android will be Mac vs. Windows, Part II.

Personally, I believe that on so many layers, this topic is really a non-topic. It provides entertainment value, no doubt, in the form of daily tech soap opera (bloggers jumping on every new data point released and typically extrapolating it beyond meaningfulness to arrive at flame-bait headlines). But from an industry analysis point of view, or a company analysis point of view (scrutinizing Apple / Google), the market share comparisons are really just one data point – it’s meaningful, but certainly not to the degree that the blogosphere claims it to be. Apple’s future is not in jeopardy if iPhone loses pole position to Android.

Over at Wired, Fred Vogelstein takes a crack at this topic. His main point is that if you sum up all the iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), they are still outselling Android, by as much as 42%. While this may be encouraging to the Apple camp, there is no reason we can expect this to hold, especially when other Android powered devices (e.g. Android tablets) eventually hit the market.

I don’t have any doubt that Android devices will outsell iOS devices. If it hasn’t happened already, it will happen soon. There is no reason to believe an OS from a premium manufacturer (Apple) with an extremely limited range of SKUs can outsell, on a pure volume basis, an OS that is free to use and which is backed by some of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world. On a dollar value basis, it might be a different story, but still not that likely. On a dollars of profit generated basis though, highly possible (Apple generates more profit than rest of mobile industry combined, with only 3% unit volume share).

That said, the main reason people are obsessed with these market share numbers seem to be the underlying assumption that iPhone and its eco-system will lose its draw to developers, and by extension to consumers, if it is relegated to a minority market share. I think there are at least a couple of counter-arguments to make here.

First of all, being the minority market share platform does not translate into a lack of quality apps, to the extent that it will hamper mass-premium consumers’ (Apple’s core segment) interest in the platform. For example, if you flip the argument over the number of apps in the Android vs. iPhone app stores on its head, you may well say that even though Android has a smaller number of apps, the eco-system is already sizable enough, so that for any functionality there will be “an app for that”. Another example would be none other than Macs – what’s the market share that Mac OS holds in all personal computers? Single digits? Do mainstream Mac users complain about the lack of quality apps (note the emphasis on mainstream – specific categories like hardcore gaming is lacking on the Mac, but even that is seeing improvement)? Holding these two examples, I would argue that with the developer community Apple has already amassed, it would be hard to foresee a drastic dying out of quality apps, even if Android floods the market.

Secondly, if you take a step back and look at the broader trend in computing, it is definitely headed in the direction of platform-agnostic. Some tech purists would even decry the whole notion of apps – everything should be realized on the browser, over the web. If you look at the desktop space, there is indeed the trend of “fat” clients (local apps) losing out to “thin” clients. Indeed, Google is perhaps one of the biggest proponents of this – its whole challenge to Microsoft is based on the browser. If we believe that the same trend will apply to mobile devices, then the apps craze we are experiencing really is just a transition phase – at some point, most of the apps you want would be delivered to you on the browser, as opposed to an app you download (again, Google’s Gmail mobile version on the browser is arguably better than Apple’s Mail app). And let’s give credit where credit is due – when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs’ initial vision was to have web apps (browser-based apps) instead of local apps. The app SDK and the app store only came out a year later, due to popular demand. (So you could say that Jobs had already envisioned an end-game where the browser was the point of delivery for apps, not the app store – his vision was perhaps just ahead of its time.)

If you sum these two arguments together, the bigger point is that iPhone will not lose its richness of apps in the face of Android capturing majority market share – it’s big enough already of a market so that there will be quality apps developed, and apps will be platform-agnostic anyway down the road. As long as Apple continue to bring innovation to its devices, it should not be overly worried about losing market share leadership – its whole strategy is founded on premium products, which implies that it won’t be market leader from a revenue / volume perspective. That’s why I wrote the headline of this post.

PS: Also, for people who continually say this will be a rerun of Apple vs. Windows in the 80s, please pause for a moment and reflect on the Mac’s continual resurgence over the last decade. This is again very indicative of the broader trend. In other words, one could almost claim that the “network effects” so famously championed by Wintel is close to becoming irrelevant, because the Internet has leveled the playing field for the small market share OSes.

PS2: And even if we are to talk of the platform wars of the 80s, we should get the facts straight. The following is my reply on a Quora question (similar topic really) awhile back:

First of all, it’s not really windows vs. mac, but PC vs. Mac. I would say by the time windows 3.0 came out, the platform war between PCs and Macs (at least the first war, not including Mac’s resurgence in recent years) was already over.

If you look at this article on Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/old/conte…
as early as 1986 PCs already had over 50% market share of computers, and it over-took the mac platform’s shares a few years before that. So in that sense, there never was a windows:mac war, at least not until very recently.

I think one key distinction between the platform wars of the 80s and android:iPhone is that in the 80s it was primarily driven by b2b, not b2c. IBM was late to the personal computers space, but they were the driving force behind making personal computers legitimate for business – they could go to a sales pitch with a business client with a perhaps inferior product but still sell it, and they could generate serious developer interest in developing for the PC. The killer apps of the 80s were spreadsheets and word-processors, sold to businesses. Apple could have better versions of such products on macs, but they couldn’t sell to businesses as quickly as IBM and clones like Compaq could, which is dictated by company structure and channel strategy – they are positioned as a consumer products company, and the only verticals where they made serious progress were education and publishing (where their products were clearly far far superior). That’s where the network effect kicked in and made Macs a niche.

Flash forward 25 years, and smartphone adoption is primarily driven by consumers, not businesses (blackberries being the exception). This is in Apple’s core area of expertise. It will still be challenging to fend off a group of competitors’ collective efforts (Samsung, HTC etc.), but as long as Apple retain a significant portion of the market, it will be in good shape. Apple doesn’t need to be market leader to be hugely profitable and have a sizable eco-system of 3rd party apps etc. – just look at macs today, as a general consumer you have majority of the apps you need to be happy with it (games being one major exception, which is also therefore a good business opportunity).

So back to your original question, I’d say Android:iPhone will play out very differently compared to Windows:Mac. Android might still end up with a more market share, but iPhone will have enough share and a big enough eco-system so that Apple won’t have to go through the kind of existential challenge it had back in the mid 90s.

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Foursquare, a mobile social networking game that gets users to “check in” at places they visit in the real world, has experienced explosive growth. While people are acquiring mayorships in droves in the US and the UK, bold users in other countries are marking their territory as well.

While we’re all in search of those elusive badges or fighting to retain those mayorships, the real value of Foursquare may be much, much more.  For people traveling abroad, it’s been a brilliant source of current advice and tips.

Having travelled a good amount, I’m always cautious of my research before getting into the country. Some sites and listings haven’t been updated for years, and its not when you get there that a) the place no longer exists, b) the venue isn’t what it was like in 2008, c) the crowd is vastly different.

I always check my check-out list with locals just to make sure.

With Foursquare, I have easy access to local tour guides. The desire to recommend and be “in the know” knows no boundaries.  Each mayor is potential guide. Here are a few new mayors in Montevideo, where I’m currently traveling.

Surfing through their postings, I can quickly find where I need to be on Thursday Nights. Looks like Francisco V thinks I should head to Lou Bizzarro Bar on Thursday night.

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Having attended the SF Music Tech Summit in December, I was thoroughly surprised that a mere six months later, 700+ people would be filling the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown for another pow-wow. Congratulations to Brian Zisk for another great summit!

From the panels held, the underlying theme was to recognize the power of proper data analytics and management to empower the music ecosystem.

As the music industry adapts to the digital age, the attendees were stress that there will always be music.  As the industry seeks new business models, it was made clear that many of the companies aren’t re-inventing the way people interact with content and music, but looking towards data analytics as a guiding light to new monetization models.

From Cisco’s Eos’ technology enabling both front-end and more importantly, back-end management Saas solution for enterprises to Pandora conscientiously tracking its users to pair growth with capital investments the tone to both artists and businesses was that in order to succeed, one needs to see the numbers in music.

Know who your audience is and where there are

There is no silver bullet. Gone are the days where listeners flock to the artist. Gone are the days of mono-channel distribution.  While artists and their promoters are in search for a general recommendation, figure out where your listeners are and go to them.

Case in Point: Susan Boyle's CD Sales

Case in Point: Susan Boyle

Simon Cowell saw $$ when she got up on that stage and cleared her windpipes.  The label was clearly shocked when her CD went on sale—91% of recorded sales were from physical DVDs.  Thinking that digital sales were not being accounted for, the label soon learned that Boyle’s audience watched on YouTube, but still purchased plastic CDs.

There were also some great quotes:

• • Monetization through Hypersyndication: Get your data out there, actively send out your info. It’s about distribution, give them the data so that it’s clean, so it doesn’t rely on user submissions. Hypersyndication will enable artists to find new ways to get paid.” Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind
  • Understanding Your Point on a Growth Curve: “We’ve always been vigorous with our analytics. However, it can be surprising. For the first couple of years, our growth over time was surprisingly linear. When you’re in the early part of the exponential growth curve, it looks very linear.” Tom Conrad, Pandora
  • Comparing Android v. iPhone OS: “You can push faster and iterate to learn with Android. Android is good for acquisition.  For the iPhone, its the opposite. We’ve received pushback from user registration, often a week to two weeks.  But with the iPhone, we get more paid conversions.” Warren Wan, Dada Entertainment
  • On Multitasking Functionality for the Phone: ” When you can run things in the background, companies will be able to use background information to trigger events or discovery.” Reno Marioni, Nokia

It was great to dive into the conference. The greatest value from attending the conference isn’t just the download from the panels, but from the conversations in between the panel.  I was able to meet some amazing minds! From learning about JamLegends, meeting A&R managers, and networking with entrepreneurs to exploring a partnership with the SF Chapter of the Grammy’s I was grateful that the conference was in Japantown—I walked down the block to carbo load at my favorite ramen shop.