Pub Quiz

Partook of a pub quiz last night for the first time in ages.  We performed solidly up until the picture and music rounds where we had a dramatic late order collapse finishing 4th (by 1 point) when we'd be joint first for most of the quiz.

We might try again on Wednesday at the Kangeroo and Kiwi.

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Snoring...

My dog snores.  It's really quite endearing.

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Google Still Doesn't Get It

Google unveils its Android
TelecomTV - TelecomTV One - News

The money quotes for my mind are these, “It’s like how the PC industry was back in 1984. The sector only boomed once all players came to a agree on single standard. We’re kind of seeing a repeat of that now in the mobile industry” and " Rubin also said that the days of the "traditionally' high cost of software development for mobiles are numbered and believes that once Android hits the market the costs of such developments will fall dramatically. He said, “We think about 20 per cent of a mobile’s cost is software, and because Android is free and open, that means close to zero cost on the software side.”"

So here's the two things missing here.  Firstly, the phone market is currently much larger than the _current_ PC market, and its got there without standards.  The important standards are at the back end with the stuff that let's you do those silly things like, oh, I don't know, MAKE A PHONE CALL.

Yes people, phones are phones.

Second item.  They may think that about 20% of a mobile phone cost is software but that's not license fees.  About 10% is usually license fees the rest is Non-Recurring Engineering costs for customising the device and generally making it your own (at least in the smartphone sector).  Believe me, and we have looked at Android, there is nothing there that is going to shift that remaining need for your own NRE - yay, that's good news for me.

Outside of the Smartphone sector the actual OS costs are negliable.  Nobody really knows what OSE (for example) costs but it will be cents per unit.  Nokia's own S40 platform is essentially amortised into the overall R&D budget they have.

Android could certainly be disruptive but I do wonder how they've got so far with such shoddy research into the current market.

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From the department of the implausible...

When making claims about your background it's best to stick to reality.  In a CEO profile I glanced at today it said the following: "Eric brings 30 years of mobile industry experience..."

Er...  so he was working in mobile in 1978...  that's pretty impressive.  There are things he could have been doing but frankly they wouldn't have had much to do with what we are doing today or any of the practical technologies.  He should have said "over 20 years" which would have been a tad more accurate and less likely to raise an eyebrow

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