I respect Rob Enderle’s experience in product development and marketing but it doesn’t mean I have to agree with him does it. This article that compares the iPhone launch to the Origami launch is something I don’t agree with. The title has a question mark in it for a start (always a bad sign,) and the content is just too fuzzy. ‘Link bait’ comes to mind when I look at it.
Rob says that iPhone is “the Origami done right?” and he goes one to talk about what appears to be marketing/PR related issues and what Origami did wrong (which is interesting because I thought that the Enderle group was involved with the Origami product before it launched. I could be wrong though.)
There’s nothing that really justifies the comparison of the Origami and iPhone products, marketing or launches that Rob has made. Sure, people can learn a lot from the iPhone launch but its nothing to do with Origami.
- iPhone: In-house controlled design, development and marketing of a voice and PMP product that you keep with you all the time. Development of an existing product group with historical sales figures. 1st year (2007-2008) sales targets: about 10 million? Subsidised sales model. Highly targeted audience. (Non business. iPod-generation.)
- Origami: Specifications and guidelines for a mini-PC that’s mobile. Completely new product group. First year (2006) sales target: about 0.5? No subsidy. Multiple models. Multiple designs. Multiple manufacturers. Multiple user types. (Consumer and business)
These are two completely separate processes, products and markets. No comparison of launches is really possible.
OK Let me go back and read it again just in case I’m getting all emotional about someone attacking UMPCs…
No. I still think he’s wrong. And the article doesn’t really provide any decent arguments either.
This paragraph doesn’t make sense at all…
The iPhone, in concept, hits on almost all of the notes that Origami missed. It prices in at under $600 (granted with a 2 year cell phone commitment), is relatively small, has integrated WAN, and they figured out that by using Synaptics’ technology they could make a touch screen keyboard work. The iPhone’s interface is simple (even though the OS is based on OSX) and they did a great job of eliminating the complexity (in effect they completed where Microsoft didn’t).
The iPhone is probably more expensive than an Origami device (the iPhone is subsidised.) WAN was never part of Origami spec probably because during 2005 everything was 2.5G and technically WWAN was quite an expensive thing to do. Subsidising it through a carrier would have been impossible too. Try to convince Vodafone to subsidise a suite of ultra mobile PC products when the worldwide target market for all products is under 1 million. They will probably laugh at you. And what the *&%^$ does ‘relatively small’ mean. UMPCs are far smaller ‘relative’ to PCs than the iPhone is ‘relative’ to a normal mobile phone. Regarding the interface – The Origami interface was never meant to be simple – Windows XP was the specification. The target market wouldn’t have wanted a new interface. Quick learning curve and interface familiarity were important.
Nobody knows if Origami was wrong yet. Even if everyone in the world has an iPhone I still believe that the Origami concept would be a sound one. The game is not over for Origami just because iPhone is here and playing on Center Court against HTC, Moto and Nokia. Origami is playing a different game in a different place to a different crowd.
This diagram might help to explain what I mean. Its something I made in Feb 2006 to prove to myself that there is no possibility of converging everything on one device. You see that the iPhone (lets put it in the 4″ bracket) and ultra mobile PC (I called it a Carrypad back then) fit into two different categories. See how the functionality differs. There’s quite a number of differentiators there. Browsing, quality video, TV/IP, video conferencing, games, note creation, emails. (Click to get PDF)
If Jobs had launched this…
Credit: Engadget
…then the Rob Enderle comparison would be valid. But he didn’t. So maybe MS weren’t so stupid after all. I think Rob spotted that at the end of his article. There’s a new opportunity forming.
Microsoft probably made a good choice to pull back on Origami marketing when they got the feedback from Amtek and Samsung that the 7″, keyboardless, 2 hour ultra mobile PC was a bit difficult to sell and when they realised that perhaps the hardware was not mature enough. Apple are going to throw a lot of money into convincing people that they need the mobile Internet. When people start to get get pissed off with trying to browse ad-rich Web2.0 sites on a 480-wide screen with no keyboard there will be space and a chance for someone to step in with 5-7″ keyboarded modular PC’s (Rob already identified that modular computing is a winner) with super-efficient x86 processors, better graphics processors and the huge choice of application that Vista, Linux or even OSX will offer. It might just be that Jobs does that in 12 months time of course and then MS will be in trouble but they still have a little time. And Vista.
Steve.
Origami was obviously a disaster. You never see the devices that were released within six months of the Origami “viral” campaign in the real world. There was successful SIMILAR stuff (Sony UX) but it was already happening without Origami.
MS’s advantage is that they can afford disaster after disaster and still win due to the Windows monopoly—when a popular solution finally does appear, it will certainly carry a Windows tax.
Anon.
Whatever Origami was or wasn’t, there’s still no comparable metrics between the two projects. That is my point.
As for Origami’s success, there’s no way we can quantify the success or failure of Origami. As far as I know, Origami was a project that researched and produced an ultra mobile spec that was given out to some partners. MS kicked off a teaser campaign which went unexpectedly viral through the ‘kitchen’ video. There was a CeBit launch, some marketing and after that point, it was pretty much up to the OEMs, vars and resellers. Unfortunately, MS did the opposite of managing expectation by talking about $500 UMPCs. That was a little bit silly and now results in the general feeling that the whole aim of the project was a series of $500 UMPCs. And thus we have – disappointment.
I actually think that it’s been a good idea that prices have stayed high:
http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2006/08/incubating-umpcs-keep-price-high.html
From the consumer point of view I can see the disappointment but that original Origami specification is now starting to bear fruit. One year later we see 35 UMPC-like devices and this year alone we’ve already seen over 10 more with more and more on the horizon. If MS had done nothing, would the ultra-mobile market be as vibrant as it is today?
Regards
Steve.
When I read the original article I felt like he wasn’t making a valid argument. The iPhone may be said to run OS X, but something tells me this version of OS X is the mobile version, similar to windows mobile. That would explain in part why Apple only allows 1st party and select developers to create apps for the iPhone, because the apps need to be less hardware intensive, so the iPhone can still handle it. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but it’s like comparing apples to oranges.
Iphone is a convergence device, but it merges products that Apple produces: ie. Music, Video and now phone. It hardly touches upon the multiple uses that a PC has. With an UMPC despite the fact that the processors aren’t particularly powerful, many poeple could comfortably perform most office tasks. I fail to see how any office task could be performed comfortably on the iPhone.