Communities Dominate Brands

Local Motors and the radical redesign of business

Based on the recent developments in automotive design and manufacture, including google's driverless cars, Tesla giving away its patents to stimulate commercial activity, the reported Apple car, and cars becoming more computers than old fashioned vehicles, here is a post about another pioneer - Local Motors, that is a case study in my book No Straight Lines.

A while back I was invited to Shanghai to speak about the transformational design of businesses at Radical Design Week – Shanghai. My topic was the automotive industry.

In the Heavy Metal Seminar (heavy industry rather than a debate about Metallica), my topic was car manufacturing and how with state of the art 3D fabrication tools, combined with networked participatory cultures and tools, insights into rapid innovation and build practices, a car company Local Motors can build cars five times faster at one hundred times less the capital cost and sell its first production vehicle The Rally Fighter at $79,000. This is radical transformational business design.

Local Motors represents the capacity to completely reimagine the way we design, manufacture and build cars. It represents what I describe as a new pattern language where the insights of collaborative cultures and collaborative tools explored in Communities Dominate Brands manifests beautifully in Local Motors. As I like to say, ‘people embrace what they create.’ The core of the business is built upon the principle of co-creation, collaboration and an invested community passionate about automotive design. Local Motors runs design competitions, putting online challenges for its passionate community to work on. One was for the design of the body of their first car the Rally Fighter. For the Rally Fighter, the winner who designed the body styling has his name printed in a silver disc that goes on every sold car. This represents an entirely different way in which car design is normally undertaken. Local Motors also brings together this community in a physical way, organizing events to bring like-minded individuals together to share their passion around automotive engineering. When you buy your Local Motors car, the owner goes to the factory specifically created to build that car, and over six days is coached to build the car. And if you want to customize your car you can through 3D printing technology. Local Motors in many ways is the next stage in business innovation after IKEA’s manufacturing, and LEGO’s redesign of its business model. This approach will bring a radical change to industry that will change how cars are made, how airplanes are made, how boats are made, maybe even how homes are made.

This is why I call it the radical redesign of business.

Designing high performance organisations

I made the point that companies can change the shape, capability and performance of the organisation by rethinking and redesigning all its core processes in the instance of Local Motors; its factories (the Local Motors factory was rated by Jalopnik in the top ten of most impressive car factories in the world), R&D, sales and marketing and final production – this is whole systems design, that represents an industrial ecology, not a series of boxes & silos. Moreover it is much less costly to set up, run and maintain—it also enables the company to invest its energies into high quality design and production.

It demonstrates that better much better does not necessarily have to cost the earth.

An open innovation platform

Co-building your Rally Fighter

Local Motors runs competitions to innovate, in one year for its first vehicle competition; 44,000 designs were submitted to Local Motors, and 3600 innovators have shared their knowledge and insights, no one company can hire that many people. Through its open participatory platform now called ‘The Forge’, Local Motors has collaborated in automotive innovation with DARPA the US Military research agency co-designing and building a fully functional prototype of a Combat Support Vehicle in three and a half months. Normally such a process would take years. As the owner John ‘Jay’ Burton Rogers said to me, ‘you can’t be nimble if you tool big’.

Local Motors is open and collaborative with its community and customers.

Whilst even large car manufacturers have turned to Local Motors, such as BMW running an urban driving experience challenge. So Local Motors becomes more than just a car manufacturing company its an automotive innovation platform.

This is an agile, lightweight, flexible and adaptive business manufacturing model, enabling Local Motors to incorporate new and proven technology as it emerges; for example Tim Thomas the Local Motors CTO was telling me when we met at MIT that the company is now using 3D printers as part of its build process.

Designing high performance organisations

Companies can change the shape, capability and performance of the organisation by rethinking and redesigning all its core processes in the instance of Local Motors; its factories (the Local Motors factory was rated by Jalopnik in the top ten of most impressive car factories in the world), R&D, sales and marketing and final production – this is whole systems design, that represents an industrial ecology, not a series of boxes & silos. Moreover it is much less costly to set up, run and maintain—it also enables the company to invest its energies into high quality design and production.

Local Motors Factory voted in the top 10 most impressive in the world

It demonstrates that better much better does not necessarily have to cost the earth.

These are the takeaways that make this company so fascinating:

• It fundamentally changes the relationship to supply and demand by rethinking and redesigning the process from conception to production.
• It harnesses a distributed knowledge network which is both hyperlocal and superglobal.
• It makes excellent use of open source and Creative Commons in the business.
• It makes a clear point of being green and being sustainable.
• It innovates through engaging enthusiasts who are passionate about car design and engineering. In one year 44,000 designs were submitted to Local Motors, and 3,600 innovators have shared their knowledge and insights.
• It is high velocity: this company can design and build a car five times faster than a conventional manufacturer can.
• It uses competition as both risk mitigator and innovation accelerator. 
• It is lightweight; built to be adaptive and flexible.
• It is less capital-intensive than its conventional peers. Normally, it takes $200m to take a car from conception to full-scale production. Local Motors achieved the same result with £1.5m. That is 100 times less capital.
• It fosters regional development. Rather than building another car plant, Local Motors is building micro-factories, so that money flows into local communities, and creates local jobs.
• Finally, learning is seen as a constant daily process, and so the organisation is a learning organisation: learning to evolve and to grow and learning what work and what doesn’t.

How do we learn to design for transformation?

At the end of my presentation I was asked the same question by a number of heavy industries. It went something like this - we have built our industrial organisations to work within an orthodox industrial model how can we learn to design for transformation—is it even possible? It is a vexing question. The further discussion that ensued indicated that these companies were thinking very carefully about their future, what a best possible future looked like and how to get there. For me it was interesting that this conversation was happening in China.

Navigating a complex world

As a consequence of this audience question, we explored other stories from No Straight Lines of organisations and businesses designing for transformation. The large scale systems change in the public healthcare system in Nova Scotia enabled by what is called participatory leadership, to a radical re-design of venture funding as a networked platform, to factories of the future, radical innovation and the business models that supported them. We explored other successful stories in manufacturing, finance, education, agriculture and healthcare.

We agreed that it required companies facing volatile and challenging times to be able to describe a new destination with new perspectives and a new language, and to get there they needed a set of navigational tools. These are some of the navigational tools discussed.

Whole systems: companies needed to learn how to deal with a more complex world by being able navigators, to do that they had to think in whole systems. I used the example of the World Food Programme using systems thinking to describe the interconnectedness of the environmental, economic, social and political dimensions in the Sudan producing a richer narrative and world context enabling them make more meaningful mission critical decisions.

Literacy and prototyping: companies needed to become adaptive and to do that they needed to be able to evolve their literacy of new tools, process and capabilities and to achieve that had to learn how to prototype internally and evolve a culture which supports such practice.

Openness is resilience: Companies of the future will be far more open, nature thrives because it is an open system that encourages diversity to flourish. From a business perspective openness is cultural, it is a process, accommodates legal frameworks impacting on patents and approaches to business and relates to technology. An example of the language of openness: open innovation, open legal frameworks, open data, open api’s, open business models, open organisation, open source, open eco-systems, mutuality as a business strategy. To get to a comprehensive understanding of these capabilities companies will need to evolve their ability to practice appreciative inquiry.

Participatory cultures and tools: the organisational performance of 21^st Century companies will come from its ability to design for and effectively employ participatory cultures as Local Motors or the public healthcare system in Nova Scotia have done to great effect. I have chosen the word ‘performance’ because for example participatory cultures can; accelerate innovative practice, enable greater flexibility, deliver a more lightweight organisation, become purpose and values led, harness collective intelligence evolving into the learning organisation which learns everyday, and reduce the bottom line cost of running an organisation. Participatory cultures taps into the core DNA of what motivates human beings which can unleash their full creative potential—in so doing social capital, intellectual capital, and financial capital can be created all at the same time.

The crafted organisation: is built upon the concept of craftsmanship. Conventional organisations are designed to run at 100% efficiency, and that’s fine when the world is in synch but when its not it’s a recipe for disaster, think Detroit, Kodak, Nokia or the entire music industry. Therefore, organisations need a culture of craftsmanship, the process of the constant exploration of new techniques, process, language, ideas, models, patterns and systems. It is in fact a description of a creative process that ultimately delivers the ability to design for transformational change that no longer is identified as risky, but relevant and necessary – the larger question then becomes one about execution, rather than why not. This is how Local Motors for example was able to develop such a high performance company.

Be realistic imagine the impossible then create it: This is how companies can design for radical business transformation amidst volatile business conditions, where they become more resilient, more socially and environmentally sustainable and more economically vibrant and creative. Interestingly better much better does not necessarily have to cost the earth—its all about the quality of the design process and practice that enables the impossible to become reality.

 

About No Straight Lines

No Straight Lines is a 7-year research project published as a book in 2012 that systemically explored transformational change in business, finance, healthcare, education, and agriculture. The research showed how this transformation delivered higher performing organisations and businesses that can meet the complex challenges of today’s world. Through that worked I evolved a values based methodology called non-linear innovation built around six principles.

 Outcomes from using these six principles are

• Be able to use 
new 
tools, 
processes 
and 
language
• Learn 
how 
others 
have 
used 
those 
to 
solve 
complex

 multi‐dimensional organisational
 problems
• Apply 
such 
in sight 
to 
challenge 
current 
business‐as‐usual
 perceptions and barriers 
to
transformation
• Be 
able 
to 
rethink 
problems 
to 
create 
opportunities
• Become re‐equipped, 
re‐energised 
and 
re‐connected 
to
 best
 possible futures in 
business 
and 
beyond
• Explore 
innovative 
strategies 
and
 operational 
approaches 

to 
business design for radical transformation

I advise organisations on radical business transformation, please be in touch if you would like to know more. [email protected] 

Microsoft Fires Another 9,000 ex-Nokia Employees, now in China (expanded)

Microsoft took about 32,000 employees from Nokia (may have been less, not sure now). They fired 12,500 last summer. Now we just heard that Microsoft is closing the big phone factory in Beijing and another facility. Firing 9,000 ex-Nokia employees. They've already dumped two thirds of all the staff they brought from Nokia less than a year ago. Talk about a nasty parent. Why is that clown Elop allowed to continue running Microsoft's hardware division if this is his competence. 




(I visited that factory in Beijing on a Nokia consulting gig some years ago. World's largest - and at the time most modern - handset manufacturing facility. Nokia had 70% market share in smartphones before Elop destroyed that market. This factory was running full steam when Nokia was the most beloved handset brand and Symbian supported Chinese apps and Ovi store was China's leading app store)

How did Nokia collapse in China? This is the picture from before Elop joined Nokia till today:

NOKIA CHINA SMARTPHONE SALES
2009 . . . . . 13.5 million units . . . 80% market share . . . Symbian
2010 . . . . . 23.0 million units . . . 67% market share . . . Symbian . . . . . . . . (Elop hired)
2011 . . . . . 19.5 million units . . . 30% market share . . . Symbian & Meego. . (Elop changes strategy)
2012 . . . . . . 4,5 million units . . . . 4% market share . . . Windows & Symbian
2013 . . . . . . 3.5 milliion units . . . .1.4% market share . . Windows . . . . .. . . (Nokia sale to Microsoft)
2014 . . . . . . 3.0 million units . . . . 0.7% market share . . Windows
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting February 2015
The above data may be freely shared

China was committed to Symbian and MeeGo. Symbian and Ovi were China's bestselling app store. MeeGo's bestselling market was China (N9). Windows didn't support Chinese language and characters when the change was announced. Chinese carriers felt betrayed by broken promises from Nokia, MeeGo was supposed to be the major platform for China Mobile. In 2010 Nokia was the top ranked smartphone brand of China with very strong loyalty. This is how you die. You go against the wishes of your channel and betray your promises to them. This is exactly why Lumia will never succeed because Microsoft is synonymous with broken promises. China today is 32% of the world smartphone market and over 3 times larger than the USA for example. If you take a 67% market share and best brand image and strongest loyatly and biggest app store, and burn that with a memo, resulting two years later in a 4% market share, that is perfection in failure. This was not because of bad phones or a bad OS or production problems or pricing or marketing. This as a corporate suicide arranged by a deranged CEO, the worst CEO in history of any industry. Now that we see that even under Microsoft ownership, the management could not return to success in the world's largest smartphone market, it is clear that Windows Phone is dead globally, and Lumia can never recover. 

My heart goes out to all Chinese ex-Nokia staff who are going to lose their jobs (gosh, its their New Year's vacation - this is like firing someone for Christmas. How cruel are they at Microsoft. Sadists!!!) 

To my ex-Nokia friends in China and all others, don't worry. China is mobile, mobile is China. The mobile industry is growing strongly and you will soon find jobs. Having Nokia on your CV makes you highly desirable for your next employer. Good luck!!!

I know I said more layoffs were coming but still, gosh, this is a punch into the gut. Nine thousand more fired. When will this carnage end? And who is keeping a running tally of all the jobs Elop destroyed? The most destructive memo of all time, yes Burning Platforms indeed. The worst CEO of all time, yes indeed. Elop is synonymous with corporate suicide.

What Do We Want? Duelling Stats about What Drives Smartphone Purchases (updated)

As I was preparing the cameraphone dscussions last month, I was struck by how long is been since I had seen consumer preference data about why we buy our phones. It seemed a few years ago that any week there was some survey about what people were looking for. But its been a very long while that I saw something interesting in that space. So I had a little time-killer project to do some searches at random moments of connectivity. I knew there is that research still being done but it somehow has not really broken pat the news threshold in recent months or years.


Update 5 March 2015 - YouGov just out with new US survey about thin phones vs battery life. Will add to the bottom of the article..


So I found a couple of 2014 surveys that are very interesting and shed a lot of light individually but are somewhat conflicted in their overall findings. They are somewhat duelling statistics in fact. But they are recent and the smartphone industry is a global juggernaut worth over 300 Billion dollars and growing strong, and for a global industry its also the most competitive of all time, by number of global giant corporations that compete directly against each other in such a global business. So lets talk consumers. What do we want?

I found three surveys (and one very interesting somewhat related analysis story that is fresh for today). So in May of 2014, IDC released a nice chart of the 10 biggest drivers of smartphone purchase - by platform! It divided the preferences by Android, iOS and Windows Phone, each getting their Top 10 (the same Top 10 across all three). This was based on a huge international online survey of 50,000 consumers in 25 countries. Top driver across all 3 platforms? Battery life. Ok. Then lets go to our second contestant...

Kantar Worldpanel Comtech released its findings (pdf file) of a Q1 2014 consumer survey of only USA smartphone owners and found that actual 4G/LTE network connectivity ranked tops for US buyers and battery life came in only 5th behind large screen size, reliabilty and good camera. But 'type of network' ranked only 6th in the IDC survey for Android and iOS buyers, and dead-last for Windows Phone buyers. Wow, big variance in the findings. Usually consumer surveys find similar findings not this wildly fluctuating ones. But back to Kantar. They didnt just publish an infographic. They released a pdf with tons of data and explanations, including lots of other type of purchase data such as where we buy, retail or online, how we decide (recommendations by friends is tops) and how much retail can influence our purchase (no surprise lots). So lets go to our third contestant. 

In August 2014, ZD Net reported on a uSwitch survey of UK consumers and what features would make the UK smartphone buyer select a given model handset (wow, that sounds like a really good survey) and for those who don't know the international comparisons, the UK is well ahead of the USA and ahead of average Europe in smartphone adoption rate, so its one of the more advanced smartphone markets, a very good country to draw lessons from. So what did it find? Long battery life came out on top, almost 9 out of 10 customers found that as a reason to buy. Second best was waterproofing (67%) and third on the list? An optical zoom capability for the camera (66%). So yeah with a wafer-thin margin these came 2 and 3. So two out of three UK smartphone buyers would select the waterproof phone over the one that wasn't, and haha, supporting my desire of better cameras on phones, also astonishingly high number 2 out of 3 UK customers would pick the smartphone with optical zoom over one that didn't have it. (and by current tech, trying to make an optical zoom cameraphone also waterproof would be quite expensive and likely heavy and bulky so it would usually be one or the other, haha Sony Xperia Z3 or Samsung Galaxy K Zoom not both)

Ok Battery life again came on top with uSwitch and overwhelmingly in that survey. Now first, whats missing? None of the surveys mentioned price. I can't believe it doesn't register in this choice. So we should consider these as indicative but not comprehensive findings. The huge discrepancy where an international and UK survey put battery life clearly on top but the international survey doesn't get battery life until 6th item, suggest we may have issues with methodology here.

In consumer surveys it matters very much how you phrase the question. So for example, if a US consumer is asked 'type of network' as the decision criterion, it is less obvious than '4G/LTE capability' which is more obvious to the US consumer about what this concerns. But if you do an international survey you can't really ask about 4G/LTE in countries where that is not yet commercially available..

Similarly if you ask for 'camera resolution' you will find a different interpretation by respondents than 'quality of camera'. Which helps explain why those got such a big difference. We know, we geeks, that these questions intend to ask about the same decision criteria but the normal non-geek consumer does not understand the terminology at that level and if the consumer doesn't really understand that point, of course they don't rate it as highly. But lets talk about the uSwitch survey just a but more. That seemed the most interesting until you look at what they found, and you notice its mainly a survey about advanced features like fingerprint scanners, bendable phones, optical zooms, waterproofing etc, that ignores the basics like a large screen or reliability etc. So it isn't really apples-to-apples comparison of a survey of similar items as the first two. But the uSwitch survey did include some fascinating data on tech on our phones that is used. Of the advanced features like eyeball tracking or fingeprint scanners, if you have it on your phone already, how many use it. Interesting stuff. They included the camera (haha, not an advanced feature) but not suprirsingly 99% of British smartphone owners use the camera on the phone at least some of the time. But get this, 30% of British smartphone owners use the camera at least once per day or more!

Ok, lets take their main findings and use a bit of math to give us a couple of reasonable charts. The two first surveys both provided the data broken into parts. IDC by the platforms (yet the variances are quite modest) and Kantar separated into 'functionality' and 'design'. So lets first reconstruct the data back into single chart form for both companies. For IDC, I used the end-of-year 2014 market shares as their weighting. For Kantar, I just intergrated both into once chart.

IDC Consumer Smartphone Top 10 Purchase Drivers (Global) 2014
Battery Life . . . . . . . . 57%
OS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Screen Size . . . . . . . 36%
Touchscreen . . . . . . . 35%
Ease of Use . . . . . . . 35%
Network . . . . . . . . . . 27%
Brand . . . . . . . . .. . . 27%
Weight . . . . . . . . . . . 25%
Camera Resolution . .  25%
Browsing Speed . . . . . 24%
Source IDC ConsumerScape 360 survey May 2014, weighted average by TomiAhonen Consulting based on full year 2014 stats, Feb 26, 2015

Kantar WorldPanel Comtech US Smartphone Top 11 Purchase Drivers 2014 
4G/LTE . . . . . . . . . . . 48%
Screen Size . . . . . . . . 42%
Reliability . . . . . . . . . . 40%
Camera Quality . . . . . . 36%
Battery Life . . . . . . . . . 32%
Screen Quality . . . . . . . 29%
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . 22%
Processor . . . . . . . . . , 21%
Materials . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
Ability to Personalize . . 20%
Source Kantar WorldPanel Comtech Q1 2014

Note first, that these surveys were done before Apple launched its 6 series larger iPhones. So we can expect that screen size would factor even more relevantly now, a year after those surveys.

Because these didn't ask the same things (one didn't ask about reliablity, the other didn't ask about the OS, both scored near top), they still are not fully comparable across. But we can see that some items are in strong harmony - Screen Size was 2nd or 3rd in both surveys valued by 42% and 36% of respondents. Not suprising and very consistent with recent sales success of large-screen smartphones (aka Phablets). 

But several items are vastly different. Battery life tops one survey but comes in at 5th in the other. Camera quality ranks 4th in one but Camera resolution ranks 9th in the other. And there are plenty of items only one asked (or reported) that are at the bottom. So thats our 'research' haha.. Not very illuminating and some things are obviously missing like app stores and price.

Lets mention the uSwitch survey from the UK. This is mostly premium features, so its not the same type of survey as the above, but among premium features...

uSwitch Survey of UK Smartphone Buyers, Premium Features that Would Make Buyer Prefer a Phone:
Battery Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 89%
Waterproof . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67%
Optical Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . 66%
Screen Fingerprint Proof . . . 49%
Fingerprint Scanner . . . . . . 38%
Mobile Payment . . . . . . . . 35%
Pico Projector . . . . . . . . . . 32%
3D Display . . . . . . . . . . . . .26%
Voice Control . . . . . . . . . . . 26%
Flexible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%
Source uSwitch Survey 

So there. Battery life again on top and waterproofing appears onto our lists now. A premium camera, in this case optical zoom, is highly desirable to UK consumers. Look at the huge drop to the rest of the features, a screen that repels fingerprints comes in at under 50% of British consumers wanting it and then fingerprint scanners don't even reach 4 out of 10 buyers.

Ok, this is submitted for your apporval, I can't really do more with this, except that this seems like a messy area and more research should be done that would find more data in harmony and more data that is 'comprehensive' ie covering real consumer needs completely. Certainly price will need to be asked and it would definitely hit the Top 10, probably Top 5 in the rankings. App Stores also should be asked but they would probably fall far lower. And that camera question should find a good terminology that gets to accurately measure what consumers want. Camera resolution is not the right terminology clearly, maybe camera quality is better term. (oh, and I'd love to see a physical QWERTY keyboard ability asked, especially one that was offered in a slider/folder format rather than the narrow Blackberry format that limits screen size, but that might be pushing it far too far at this stage of confusion even on the basics like battery life and camera quality)


Update 5 March 2015: Just spotted a brand new YouGov/Huffpo survey of US smartphone owners that asked explicity the thin phone vs battery life question that really is the crux of the issue. Which do you prefer. And by an overwhelming margin - more than 6 to 1 US smartphone owners would prefer a thicker smartphone that had a good battery than a thinner phone with bad battery life. Yes 73% to 12%. This point is now also tested in a consumer preference survey and should be beyond any doubt. The industry is obsessing on the thinnest phone model while that comes at a cost to the consumer... Hopefully we see some change to this later in 2015..


But if you wanted to have proof that your fave feature is or isn't relevant to your fave phone modes and their evolution, there it is. Pick your stat and be happy.

Now, there is a somewhat related finding also, just out today, published at PC World about the smartphone vs tablet wars, which lists 5 reasons why the phablet is killing the tablet. Good article with very good and rare research data in it too based on SpecOut. They find smartphones have better battery lives and better cameras than tablets. They also mention that smartphones have more apps. They argue that the phablet has hit a sweet spot in therms of screen size and also show stats of how smartphone and tablet populations differ, and have evolved, in terms of screen size (obviously smartphone screen sizes have grown as we know with the Phablet phenomenon). They find that phablet-size screens (over 5.2 inches by their division of the sizes) accounted for about 23% of all new smartphone MODELS released in 2014 (that does not mean actual shipments but rather model types, a cheaper phone typically ships in larger numbers so the actual numbers of phones sold were likely less than that).

So take a look. But we know that phablets were eating into tablet sales and already by Q4 of last year more phablets were sold than tablets and tablet sales are now peaking while smartphone sales keep growing at huge growth rates (inspited of the perennial nonsense articles from America that their sales are somehow at saturation haha).

 

Hey Whats Happening With Our Alan Moore? A few good links, Alan on video, slideshare, radio

So whats up with our Alan? Our Alan Moore is the CEO of SMLXL of Cambridge and co-author of my fourth book Communities Dominate Brands, the signature book of this blog and author of several other books (not to be confused with the cartoon book author of the same name).

Alan used to write immensely about the CDB book related topics on this blog years ago but then with his new books and projects Alan's interests moved a bit past 'just tech and social media' if you will, and while I remained here to talk ever more about mobile haha, Alan has moved on. He still writes for us occasionally and I speak with Alan frequently. But what is he up to now?

If you've read his latest book No Straight Lines (brilliant book by the way) then you know already. But for most of our visitors here at the CDB blog, what is up with 'the other guy of the blog' haha... As I mentioned a few of my recent speeches and links to slides yesterday, I happened to chat with Alan today and I asked Alan to give me a few of his latest links. I picked a few for you, not necessariy his very latest but I think these are the best to show where Alan is now, in terms of his thinking. And I urge all of our readers here to go see Alan and his material. Lets first do a keynote:




This is Alan Moore doing the keynote to PINC (People Inspiration Nature Creativity) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands about a year ago. Alan talks about the main themes of No Straight Lines in typical very human and touching ways, about nature, about culture, about society and how society and businesses and organizations have to change to survive. And Alan talks about the need for beauty. I'd say this is one of the best presentations you'll see anywhere and am sure you'll enjoy it (note, with the intro, Alan's part starts at 01;39)

Now a bit closer to home, our readers are into mobile and digital and tech and big data. Now, do you think Mr Advertising Creative guru Alan Moore can handle techie nerdy big data mobile digital complex topics? Ha, his second book was about data analytics! Its Social Media Marketing, deep data analysis of big data etc (co-authored with Ajit Jaokar, Jouko Ahvenainen and Brian Jenkins). So do you want Alan to help 'us' here in 'mobile' get to understand 'our industry' and where is this mobile, big data gamification etc world going? Check out his slides presented at the Blackberry VIP event and you see why Alan and I are so close still to this day. This is a must-see slide set:



 


So yeah, his slideshare of a presentation on big data, mobile etc. Must-see and fabulous. If you've seen my keynotes, this set could be part 2 of my slides, isn't it so? (which we sometimes do, to our paid customers by the way, haha and always in that sequence. I set the ground work and then Alan shows the real impact with his part 2 like this). Except that I'm not that smart. I can only do my part, it takes our Alan to take it to that level next. If you can, go see Alan live anywhere or hire him to your company strategy now haha... (and note, that slide set has had over 95,000 viewings already.. obviously many appreciate his thinking).

Finally, a treat for Alan's fans. I had to include this. If you want to hear a wonderful interview of Alan by BBC4's Peter Day, about the book No Straight Lines, this is absolutely fab. Enjoy!

My Latest Keynote is on Slideshare, plus a few links to recent interviews and videos

I had the honor to return to present another keynote to the World Summit Awards (the only United Nations sponsored tech awards and considered the pinnacle awards of our industry) again a few weeks ago, in Abu Dhabi. I already wrote a blog about some of the winners at the WSA awards plus a few other finalists (and we had breaking news from the event, about the world's first driver's licences done on mobile). 

Sometimes a nice producer of some event where I speak puts up my slides to Slideshare. That happened now with the WSA Awards keynote. My topic was how Smart Societies can Engage with Mobile. I of course as always started with some stats - world has more active accounts than humans, the race to the ten dollar smartphone, the migration rate from dumbphones to smartphones (we should be 100% migration completed by year 2019 by current projections). I discussed what it the role of the tablet, is a tablet a large smartphone - and then had some consumer insights, the 221 times per day stat and some consumer behavior survey data from South Africa, a good 'bellweather' market that is very close to the global average sitting right there between the rich Industrialized World countries and the Emerging World countries by almost all mobile measures. 

Then I got into the engagement and inclusion. I started with the very basics, those who never have been connected who get their first digital connections now. I discussed the use of USSD to deliver free Wikipedia in Kenya, the use of SMS to help farmers get better Cocoa yields in West Africa and the use of the Please Call Me free notices to produce voice calls in South Africa. 

Then I turned to retail, showing what are smart windows in retail in Helsinki Finland with Adidas store, The obvious evolution of price comparison-shoppers once consumers have their wallets on mobile, MoneyMarket.com from Ghana, and the radical opportunities for collaboration such as when you order a Starbucks coffee and pay with mobile, Uber will drive you to the nearest Starbucks for free, in London.

Next I discussed identity. Twitter is using mobile to validate users. A service called Ritirivaj in Nepal is using mobile to preserve cultural heritage of various ethnic groups, and the US state of Iowa was planning to become the first to issue driver's licences to mobile. As that was now a breaking news item from the World Summit Awards, I then hastily added the page showing the breaking news - from this blog obviousy - that no, not Iowa. Its already been done late last year, in the UAE, in Dubai.

Which leads nicely to mGovernment services. I showed the stats from Nigeria where they issued the new constitution onto mobile so all citizens can have it, read it, and carry it with them knowing exactly what are their rights (in a nation known for corruption where a given policeman or judge might try to make unwarranted claims that are in conflict with the constitution, in hopes for  bribe). Then on the opposite side of the world both in terms of geography and of corruption - Japan. I showed the city of Tokyo where Augmented Reality penguins guide families to the Tokyo Aquarium.  And on the inclusion side, from Europe, Estonia became the first nation where citizens could vote on the 2014 elections by mobile phone.

I finished with an example of 'Mobile as a Magical Measurement Machine' with the Trestima example from Finland, measuring forests by simply taking pictures with the smartphone and the Trestima app does the rest (I know most of my readers have massive forests they need to manage haha..) and the example from London of the talking statues. As always after the main slides, there are still bonus slides with more stats and my books, and my recommended best mobilistas to follow on Twitter etc.

If you want to see the slides, my keynote from World Summit Awards 2015 on How Societies can Connect and Engage with Citizens is here on slideshare.

Now, while we are doing this, let me include two links to recent videos. There is a nice edited summary from Mobile Web Africa (Johannesburg South Africa) from September 2014. My keynote there was 45 minutes, this is an 11 minute edited highlights video, very nicely done. So a quick taster of Tomi on stage if you want.

And then if thats too long, haha, there is a very nice 3 minute interview of me also in South Africa but Capetown in November 2014, when we did the Mobile Monday year-end event there. And I am interviewed about Africa and Emerging-world related matters, its only 3 minutes and I think interesting topics covered.

If you like them, send your friends to view them. The slides obviously are yours, feel free to share and use. And if your company or association or event needs a speaker, I am all yours. Write to me at tomi at tomiahonen dot com and lets put it onto the schedule...

Finally Data on Second Hand Smartphones (Thank you Gartner!) including hand-me-downs, recycleds and resolds

Gartner has given us rare data (smartphone replacement cycle) and previously never released data (what happens to smartphones after first buyer stops using them). This is magnificent and we can do some very rare analysis and also do a sanity check on one controversial number. So lets first get to Gartner's data.

Gartner has a brand new report, 'Reused, Recycled, Resold' about the afterlife of smartphones. There is a nice highlights-level summary of main points in their press release (thank you Gartner for this valuable info!)

GARTNER FINDINGS

So based on a survey of 5,600 consumers in the USA and Germany, on their smartphone habits, Gartner found that nearly 2/3 of smartphones are offered a second life. Some are sold as used. Some are handed in as trade-ins when buying the next smartphone. And many - 23% of all smartphones, are given to family or friends as hand-me-down phones. Incidentially only 7% of smartphones are properly recycled, so roughly 3 out of 10 smartphones will just linger somewhere in the bottom drawer of our desk wtih a dead battery and lost recharger, maybe a broken screen too...

Gartner also reports that for smartphones the replacement cycle is now down to between 18 and 20 months, and for just over half of the 'tech enthusiast' segment, the replacement cycle is less than a year. That accounts for 13% of all smartphone owners who are so in love with their pocket gadget they get one more frequently than once ever 12 months.

There also is data on 'refurbrished' phones that are resold. Gartner counted that 56 million refurbished smartphones were sold to a second owner in 2014, and this business was worth 7 Billion dollars in the wholesale market. If we assign a 33% markup to the phones, that means refurbished used smartphones have an average sales price of about 166 dollars globally (unsubsidised price). Not bad for a device that on average is 19 months old...

Now the actual second hand market is considerably larger than that 56 million 'refurbished' smartphones as especially in the Emerging World market there is a big second hand market for older phones. For that we don't have numbers. But we do have now some very interesting data points for the installed base calculation of smartphones. 

GLOBAL SMARTPHONE INSTALLED BASE

There are not many who report the installed base of smartphones (I do here at the CDB blog of course) and when that kind of data comes out from some random sources, often it is an obscure data provider who may have bizarre numbers based on questionable methodology that often defies all published data on say new sales etc. But lets see what we now can calculate from Gartner's data.

The replacement cycle for smartphones is between 18 and 20 months. So lets see how many smartphones are then currently in use. We do have the data points for 18 months ago and 21 months ago. If all new smartphones sold in past 18 months are now still in use (by the first user obviously), that would mean 1,841 million (1.8 Billion) smartphones. If all smartphones sold in the past 21 months are still in use today (by first buyer) that is 2,074 million (2.1 Billion) smartphones. The weighted average at 19 month replacement cycle is 1,994 million (2.0 Billion) smartphones.

Now, 19 months old smartphones are no longer used by their primary owner. But 23% of those are given to family or friends (often our kids) as hand-me-down smartphones. How long are they used? Definitely not as long as the primary phones (on average) as these are older, already somewhat worn so they will show ever more wear. The single biggest group receiving them are our kids (and nieces, nephews, grandkids and little brothers and little sisters). They in turn will grow older, ask for a new smartphone for birthday or Christmas, and soon grow old enough to earn some money to buy their own smartphone. Yes, some of our hand-me-downs go to wives and husbands and parents etc, but most go to kids and thus we can say the average life is far shorter. Lets say half. So if we say they live one year on, lets take the smartphones that were sold in the 12 months ending October 2013, so 757 million smartphones, and take 23% of those that are given to family and friends as hand-me-down second hand used smartphones. That is 174 million smartphones.

Adding 1,994 million new smartphones still in use by their first buyer and adding 174 million hand-me-down second hand smartphones, we get an installed base estimate of 2,170 million (2.2 Billion) smartphones for end of 2014  Now as we measure slightly different things (new sales include some phones that shipped to market that were never sold) the reality is slightly less than this number but reasonably close. So what did your CDB blog calculate as the installed base of smartphones as of December 31, 2014? I said it is 2.110 million smartphones in use!

Haha that is almost exactly what this Gartner data supports, but my number is below it, as it should. That 2.1 Billion active smartphone installed base calculation is pretty perfect. If you needed the breakdown by OS it is of course:

INSTALLED BASE OF SMARTPHONES BY OPERATING SYSTEM AS OF 31 DECEMBER 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was 2013  . Main Manufacturers of current base
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . . 1,596 M . . . 76 % . . . . . . ( 66 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Sony, ZTE, LG, Lenovo/Motorola, Xiaomi, Coolpad, TCL-Alcatel 
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . 410 M . . . 19 % . . . . . . ( 21 %) . . . . . . Apple
5 . . . . Windows Phone . . 45 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   3 %) . . . . . . Microsoft(Nokia), Samsung, HTC
4 . . . . Blackberry . . . . . .  33 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   4 %) . . . . . . Blackberry
3 . . . . Symbian . . . . . . .  15 M . . . . 1 % . . . . . . (   5 %) . . . . . . Nokia
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11 M . . . . 2 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 2,110 M smartphones in use at end of Q4, 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

Returning to Gartner data. So we have about 174 million used smartphones that our family and friends use. Out of the total installed base of active smartphones that is 8%. And if we counted that the world sold 1.3 Billion new smartphones last year, in reality 1.47 Billion people last year received a new or second hand smartphone. The digital opportunity is essentially 8% larger than most sources have been reporting (except that readers of the CDB blog have known this the longest as I've been the expert to first introduce and measure this bizarre phenomenon of the second hand phone concept to the industry. And it turns out, I've apparently been darn accurate in estimating that market too haha)

Thats pretty awesome and truly rare to be able to verify that kind of hard-to-find number. Thank you Gartner for the data points. And on the CDB blog, I continue to share any info I find. Incidentially, if you have missed it, my brand new keynote presentation I just gave at the World Summit Awards in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago is now up on Slideshare. It has (as always) plenty of new stats too and lots of interesting case studies as well as some smartphone industry forecasts.

Finally If you need more info on the handset market in 2014, get the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014 

2016 Republican Primary Season Will Collide with Reality of Math - Primary season will be unprecedented nightmare

This blog is one of my hobby postings, as an outsider observer or US politics. This has nothing to do with tech or mobile, my regular readers can skip it. And I am not a US citizen, I can’t vote in the 2016 elections, this is just the views from someone who finds US politics very fascinating. But I was surprised that I hadn’t seen anyone do this type of math (yet) about what the 2016 elections mean in terms of the Republican party Primary process of nominating their candidate for President. The math is almost guaranteeing we will see not just chaos but a nightmare for the Republican party. I don’t mean the general election against Hillary, which also seems to be pretty badly stacked against the Grand Old Party (GOP). I mean the Primary process which starts eleven months from now. We saw a ‘clown circus’ in 2012 when the dimwits jostled against Mitt Romney and somehow Romney couldn’t swat them all away and the primary season went far longer than anyone expected. I think the math is almost certain to guarantee this time 2016 will be far worse. So follow me past the fold and lets do some math...

So How Accurate Is This Blog? Duelling statistics: IDC releases 2 regional market smartphone stats Top 5 for China and Western Europe (cool)

This is a rare treat. While the big analyst houses collect very detailed handset data the world over, and sell that in very expensive market studies, occasionally we do get a rare glimpse into some region. Well, we have Christmas in February. IDC has released latest regional data for two of the biggest smartphone markets, China and Western Europe. And rather than just quarterly data, they have given full year 2014 data for both markets. This is awesome and very rare insights.

Now most of you on this blog are regular readers (nice to see you back, thanks for visiing this blog, we've had over 5 million visits in the 10 years the CDB blog has been live) and know that last week I published my annual big collection of smartphone market share data. The data of the mobile industry released on this blog has been the largest collection of free data by any source on the web, from mobile subscriptions to mobile data usage to handset sales. I've been publishing a Top 10 'horse race' for each of the big brands in smartphones ever since I predicted a 'bloodbath' was about to begin in smartphones (year 2010). And I have also been publishing the installed base of the global smartphone user base. Data to that level (Top 10 brands) and that detail (installed base) is not available anywhere else, consistently and free.

We get rare chances to validate the data on this blog but whenever we do, I publish that info eagerly. I am very confident that my model is solid and based on enough data points to give a good overall view while I don't have staff to do individual studies of various markets. I mostly base on my inputs on the various published sources of relevant data, have acquired a pretty good gut feel for the reliablity of each data provider, and as my model is a comprehensive global model, I can always do the 'top down' checks and balances, to see that Apple's individual market shares in the various regions do not amount to more than Apple's total sales were globally, etc.  So there is a lot of that 'sanity check' analysis also going into my model. My Consultancy does modest market analysis itself but I also have access to a lot of proprietary mobile industry data from various companies through a long association with many of the big analyst houses and of course my broad base of industry giants as clients. And I work with many industry associations who have often data they collect. But in the end, my forecast is based on my model, not a comprehensive global survey of market data by a team of researchers. its a model. I estimate the market to my best ability. 

Well, the big picture is fairly well accepted and there are no big controversies on the big numbers and this blog and my consultancy has become highly respected (as the most accurate forecaster of the mobile industry..) But what about the level of detail. Now we have a rare chance to examine exactly how solid is Tomi's model? A week ago I expanded the depth of the detail I published in my big annual review, to include a regional split of the Top 5 brand market shares in China, the biggest market, Western Europe second biggest region, North America third, and then the rest of the world grouped into the 'Rest of World' region. As I wrote, it was a rough estimate with clearly spelled 'approximate' sizes within each region. But this is the deepest level of data I have published into the public domain - and nobody else has given a regional breakdown of the Top 5 brands like this in the industry for any year so far. That I thought was very valuable data for my readers and I wanted to share it, even where I felt this was at the extreme of the detail I dared to commit to haha...

Now only days after I published that, we have IDC releaseing their Top 5 ranking of China 2014 smartphone market AND also a Top 5 ranking of Western Europe also for full year 2014. It is incredibly valuable not only because IDC is one of the big 3 most reliable smartphone analyst houses, but because the data is from the same source and the same period. Very rare and very good comparison point. (Thank you IDC for releasing this detail of info, you are a credit to the industry). Lets do duelling statistics. China first:

CHINA TOP 5 SMARTPHONE BRANDS 2014 COMPARING TOMI AHONEN VS IDC STATS

TOMI AHONEN . . . . . . . . . . .IDC
1 Xiaomi 14% . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Xiaomi 13% 
2 Samsung 13% . . . . . . . . . .  2 Samsung 12%
3T Huawei 12% . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lenovo 11%
3T Coolpad 12% . . . . . . . . . . .4 Huawei 10%
5 Lenovo 11% . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Coolpad 9%
Total 415 Million . . . . . . . . . . .Total 421 Million
Sources: TomiAhonen Consulting at Communities Dominate blog 13 Feb 2015 and IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker February 17, 2015 published at The Street

IDC is definitely more reliable as a source for China smartphone stats than I am haha. So lets see how well I guessed. I called each of the Top 5 brands correctly (and note the big 'catch' here is that Apple is not in the Top 5 even as we heard all the silly sensationalist press stories in the past months how Apple somehow now rules China). I also called the Top 2 positions of the table correctly. For the 'biggest difference' ie Lenovo, I had their rank off by 2 ranks (5 rather than 3) but I still had their market share accurately at 11%. Then I had Huawei and Coolpad tied, IDC gives the the nod to Huawei. On one brand I hit the market share exactly and on two of the five I was off only on one point of market share! On the last two I was off only by two points of market share. On the total market size I was below but off by only 1.4%. This is a darn, DARN good guess for someone who doesn't have his own analyst team on the ground in China to count the market size.... And you can see, my percentages are slightly above IDC's because I counted a slightly smaller total market size. My (slghtest) error is also consistent. Then lets do Europe

WESTERN EUROPE TOP 5 SMARTPHONE BRANDS 2014 COMPARING TOMI AHONEN VS IDC STATS

TOMI AHONEN . . . . . . . . . . .IDC
1 Samsung 30% . . . . . . . . . . 1 Samsung 35%
2 Apple 28% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Apple 21%
3 Sony 11% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Sony 10%
4 Microsoft/Nokia 8% . . . . . . 4 Microsoft/Nokia 7%
5 LG 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 LG 6%
Total 155 Million . . . . . . . . . . Total 146 Million
Sources: TomiAhonen Consulting at Communities Dominate blog 13 Feb 2015 and IDC European Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker February 17, 2015 published at IDC website

Again we can accept IDC is the master here, they know the facts on the ground and I only tried to guess the numbers. So lets see how close I came. Now I nailed not only each of the Top 5 brands but I nailed EACH ranking position exactly. Samsung first. Check. Apple second. Check. Sony ahead of Microsoft/Nokia. Check. LG fifth. Check. Wow. That is spooky accurate! And on the total market I was this time above IDC's number but how massive was my 'error' - 1.6%. That my friends, is near perfection. Now, yes, the market share percentage differences are bigger for Samsung and Apple, I had the race far tighter between Samsung and Apple for Europe, with only a 2 point spread while IDC measures a sizeable 14 point spread in favor of Samsung. Part of the variations on this 'region' is of course on how much we count into the exact definition of Western Europe which also helps explain why my Europe is bigger than their Europe haha. But yeah, after the top 2, I am then within a percent on the remaining top 5 ranks, one point too high for Sony and Microsoft/Nokia, and one point too low for LG.

I was the first out with this data, I provided far more detail than IDC, as I gave data on four regions not two. And my data for China and IDC had the total market size nailed with less than 2% error of the actual, while picking each of the Top 5 brands in both regions accurately. I even had the exact rankings in seven of the ten cases - that is uncanny - and had the Top 2 accurate rankings for both markets. Even on the exact market share percentages I was within one point - one POINT of accuracy for six of the ten brands. Wow is this blog of value to understand the global market in mobile?

With that, we have a very VERY accurate estimate of two of the four regions in how I divided the world, China and Western Europe which accounted for 46% (either IDC's or my math) of the total planet's smartphone sales. With the US stats we have rather solid Kantar and ComScore numbers and obviously my regional analysis of the US market is totally consistent with those. That means by simple subtraction math, the 'Rest of the World' region analysis is also very close to the mark. So for those who want to see those again, from my blog a week ago:

TOP 5 NORTH AMERICAN SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . approx 67 M . . . . . 49% market share
2 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . approx 31 M . . . . . 23% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . .  approx 11 M . . . . . . 8% market share
4T . . HTC . . . . . . . . . . . .approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
4T . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
Total Market 135 M smartphones 2014 (10% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

TOP 5 REST OF WORLD SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . .approx 183 M . . . . . 31% market share
2 . . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   43 M . . . . . . 7% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . . . approx   41 M . . . . . . 7% market share
4 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . . approx   38 M . . . . . . 6% market share
5 . . . Huawei . . . . . . . . .  approx   25 M . . . . . . 4% market share
Total market 595 M smartphones 2014 (46% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

So yeah, I am very happy to see such rich detailed data from two regions published by the same global source at the same time for the same period, as IDC just did this week. Wonderful to have that concrete measured data. But was my blog useful to my readers? You got a very good guess a week earlier, and you got more regions covered using that same methodology which is this accurate haha... 

And now the obligatory plug: If you need more info on the handset market at a trivial 9.99 Euro cost, go order the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

Smartphone Year 2014 Final Stats: Brand Top 10, OS Top 4, Installed Base, Regional Split; and Bloodbath Q4 Results (Updated)

Its time to do the biggest collection of end of year smartphone stats here on the CDB blog. The year ended with 1.3 Billion smartphones sold, up 31% from year 2013. Samsung is clear gorilla of the smartphone brands with 24%, and Android has won the OS wars with 82%. China is already 2.5x as large as Western Europe as a smartphone market, over 3 times bigger than North America. As this was the fifth and 'final' year of the Bloodbath, I will do some reflection to brands of the past. Also for the propeller-heads who may be playing along at home, I have decided to stop waiting for Canalys final 2014 and Q4 numbers. Our Q4 and full year 2014 number is the average now of only 2 big analyst houses (IDC and Strategy Analytics).


UPDATED 19 Feb 2014 - Note I have now a short update to the Regional Split analysis based on fresh IDC data, see below



But lets dig into the numbers, thats what you're here for. Big table first:

2014 FULL YEAR SMARTPHONE SALES STATISTICS

Rank . Brand . . . . 2014 units . . Share . . 2013 units . . Share . . 2012 units . . Share

1 (1)  . Samsung  . 314.2 M . . . .24.2% . . 311.4 M . . . 31.5% . . .215.0 M . . . 30.8% 
2 (2)  . Apple  . . . . 192.7 M . . . .14.8% . . 153.4 M . . . 15.5% . . 135.8 M . . . 19.5%
3 (5) . Lenovo *. . . . 95.0 M . . . . 7.3% . . 46.2 M . . . . 4.7% . . . 24.9 M . . . . 3.6%
4 (3)  . Huawei  . . . . 75.0 M . . . . 5.8% . . 52.0 M . . . . 5.3% . . . 32.0 M . . . . 4.6%
5 (-)  . Xiaomi . . . . .  61.1 M . . . . 4.7%. . - - - - . . . . . . - - . . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
6 (4)  . LG  . . . . . . . 59.1 M . . . . .4.5% . . 47.6 M . . . . 4.8% . . . 26.5 M . . . . 3.8%
7 (8) . . Coolpad . . . 50.4 M . . . . 3.9% . . 35.3 M. . . . . 3.6% . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
8 (6) . . ZTE . . . . . .  46.1 M . . . . 3.5% . . 40.0 M . . . . 4.0%  . . 30.0 M . . . . 4.3%
9 (-) . . TCL-Alcatel . 41.4 M . . . . 3.2%. . - - - - . . . . . . - - . . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
10 (7) . Sony . . . . . . 40.2 M . . . . 3.1% . . 38.4 M . . . . 3.9% . . . 31.9 M . . .   4.6%
Other . . . . . . . . . . 325.4 M . . . 25.0%
TOTAL . . . . . . . .1,300.6 M . . . . . . . . . . 990.0 M . . . . . . . . . . 697.7 M
 * Note: Lenovo includes Motorola annual sales from year 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

So another year, more classic smartphone brands kicked out of the Top 10 (Nokia and HTC) replaced by more Chinese maufacturers (Xiaomi and TCL-Alcatel). With Finland and Taiwan out of the table, we have only 3 countries left that are not China: 2 providers from South Korea, one from the USA and one from Japan. And Sony is trying to sell its smartphone business...

So Samsung was essentially flat in sales, its market share fell dramatically from 32% to 24%. Apple was able to grow unit sales but see its market share fall again, from 15.5% to 14.8%. Lenovo leapfrogged to 3rd ranking with the Motorola purchase but fell a bit short of selling triple digits of smartphones per year (they will easily achieve that in 2015). Huawei continues its steady progress using organic growth and focusing a lot on Emerging World opportunities. Xiaomi exploded onto the charts powered by almost exclusively Chinese domestic sales and benefitting from China being by far the world's largest smartphone market. It is now trying to expand abroad, starting with India. LG and ZTE showing steady performance in the mid-field, with newer rivals Coolpad and TCL-Alcatel. Sony is stumbling. Below the Top 10 the next rivals from China are Oppo and Vivo, the largest challenger rising from India is Micromax. One of these three may enter the big chart for this year. On the migration level, exactly two thirds of all new phones sold now are smartphones (67%). For those who want to see the table from a year ago, here is the previous year's blog. Then lets look at the OS war.


2014 FULL YEAR OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . . .  2014 units . . share . . .2013 units . . share . . 2012 units . . share
1 (1) . .  Android  . . . . 1,061.6 M . . . . 81.6% . . . 767 M . . . . . 78% . . . 425 M . . . . . 65%
2 (2) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . 192.7 M . . . . 14.8% . . . 153 M . . . . . 16% . . . 136 M . . . . . 20%
3 (6) . .  Windows Phone . 35.1 M . . . . 2.7% . . . .33 M . . . . . . 3% . . . .  16 M  . . . . . . 3%
4 (3) . .  Blackberry . . . . . . 9.0 M . . . .  0.7% . . . 23 M  . . . . . .2% . . . . 33 M . . . . . . 5%
Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 M . . . .  0.2%
TOTAL  . . . . . . . . . . . 1,300.6 M . . . . . . . . . . . 695 M  . . . . . . .. . . .  486 M
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

Blackberry is now only a very small niche enterprise platform (Samsung trying to buy the Blackberry handset business). Windows Phone is dead too, its market share is still falling from the peak Windows smarphones had once of 12% and even year 2014 saw a further erosion as Microsoft bought Nokia's collapsed handset business. The Lumia unit has never been able to generate a profit and the transition to a 'unified' Windows 10 OS platform gives Microsoft a face-saving way to abandon its loss-making smartphone business while holding onto its Surface tablet alongside its highly lucrative Windows desktop business. Apple's iOS is headed to that 'similar to Macintosh' market share as I predicted right from the start of the iPhone and Apple again lost almost a point of market share in 2014 from 2013. By around year 2020 we can expect iPhone to hold roughly 10% market share of smartphones and likely stabilize at that level. Android has eaten up all the major rivals and now towers over the industry with almost 82% of all smartphones sold powered by Android. 2014 was a big milestone year when more than 1 billion Android devices were sold in a single year (and remember, we can add Android tablet sales to the above totals to have Android's total reach). For contrast it takes Microsoft nearly four years to ship a Billion Windows licences across all its platforms. As I wrote, Google and Android have won the tech war of the century. And that brings us of course to the favorite chart nobody else shows, the most relevant chart for developers: the installed base. Actual smartphones in use right now, not what was sold in the past year:

INSTALLED BASE OF SMARTPHONES BY OPERATING SYSTEM AS OF 31 DECEMBER 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was 2013  . Main Manufacturers of current base
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . . 1,596 M . . . 76 % . . . . . . ( 66 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Sony, ZTE, LG, Lenovo/Motorola, Xiaomi, Coolpad, TCL-Alcatel 
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . 410 M . . . 19 % . . . . . . ( 21 %) . . . . . . Apple
5 . . . . Windows Phone . . 45 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   3 %) . . . . . . Microsoft(Nokia), Samsung, HTC
4 . . . . Blackberry . . . . . .  33 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   4 %) . . . . . . Blackberry
3 . . . . Symbian . . . . . . .  15 M . . . . 1 % . . . . . . (   5 %) . . . . . . Nokia
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11 M . . . . 2 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 2,110 M smartphones in use at end of Q4, 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

The above table reflects of course the bombshell info we had last year from Microsoft that one third of all Lumia smartphones had never even been activated. As Lumia accounts for far in excess of 90% of all Windows Phone OS smartphones sold, that is devastating for the suffering OS platform in terms of reach and developer interest. As we've seen, major brands like Bank of America and Chase have unpublished their Windows Phone apps and are joining the chorus of app developers abandoning this sinking (arguably sunken) ship following Opera Mini, TeamViewer etc. The only platforms currently viable are Android and iOS. In some specialized enterprise areas like banking, government yes Blackberry has a niche audience and in parts of Africa, India you can still find a Symbian audience but Windows is dead on smartphones.

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL MARKETS

Then lets do a regional split. This is very approximate but the biggest national markets in smartphones are:

LARGEST NATIONAL SMARTPHONE MARKETS (Approximate) 2014:
1 . . China . . . . . . 415 M . . 32%
2 . . USA . . . . . . . 120 M . . . 9%
3 . . India . . . . . . . . 80 M . . . 6%
4 . . Brazil . . . . . . . 45 M . . . 3%
5 . . Germany . . . . 35 M . . . 3%
6T . Russia . . . . . . 30 M . . . 2%
6T . UK . . . . . . . . . 30 M . . . 2%
6T . Japan . . . . . .  30 M . . . 2%
9T . France . . . . . . 25 M . . . 2%
9T . Indonesia . . . . 25 M . . . 2%
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

So do we want REGIONAL market shares? I betcha you do! Well, the data is getting very difficult to parse together as we get so little reliable regular data, but I have divided the world into four parts, China, Western Europe, North America, and 'Rest of World'. And I am reasonably comfortable that using various sources of sporadic market share data on individual countries we can do that split. I can report the top 5 handset brands in these 4 regions.

TOP 5 CHINA SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Xiaomi . . . . . . approx 59 M . . . . . 14% market share
2 . . . Samsung . . . . approx 54 M . . . . . 13% market share
3T . . Huawei . . . . .  approx 50 M . . . . . 12% market share
3T . . Coolpad . . . . . approx 50 M . . . . . 12% market share
5 . . . Lenovo . . . . . . approx 46 M . . . . . 11% market share
Total market 415 M smartphones 2014 (32% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

TOP 5 WESTERN EUROPE SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Samsung . . . . . . approx 47 M . . . . . . 30% market share
2 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . approx 44 M . . . . . . 28% market share
3 . . . Sony . . . . . . . .. . approx 17 M . . . . . . 11% market share
4 . . . Microsoft/Nokia . approx 12 M . . . . . . . 8% market share
5 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . approx   7 M . . . . . . . 5% market share
Total Market 155 M smartphones 2014 (12% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

TOP 5 NORTH AMERICAN SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . approx 67 M . . . . . 49% market share
2 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . approx 31 M . . . . . 23% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . .  approx 11 M . . . . . . 8% market share
4T . . HTC . . . . . . . . . . . .approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
4T . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
Total Market 135 M smartphones 2014 (10% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

TOP 5 REST OF WORLD SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . .approx 183 M . . . . . 31% market share
2 . . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   43 M . . . . . . 7% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . . . approx   41 M . . . . . . 7% market share
4 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . . approx   38 M . . . . . . 6% market share
5 . . . Huawei . . . . . . . . .  approx   25 M . . . . . . 4% market share
Total market 595 M smartphones 2014 (46% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

So that is my best guess by using 'best fit' analysis from very sporadic regional and national market share numbers and occasional news tidbits like say that Motorola celebrated selling 3 million smartphones in India. And then plugging as much of those items into a big messy spreadsheet and then aggregating the data. I think the above is fairly consistent (within about 5%) of most published numbers except some wild outliers we've had like the much criticized Canalys India numbers that just came out. Also remember, some data is not annual sales data (ComScore publishes installed base market shares) and some data have differing methodologies for different regions, like Kantar China numbers are for the 'urban' areas only in large cities, not all of China. But yes, I am confident those numbers are close to reality about as good as we can do and obviously nobody else publishes this kind of data for free, haha. If you want more detail you have to buy the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014 (only costs 9.99 Euros) or the upcoming TomiAhonen Almanac 2015.

Meanwhile lets dig a bit into those numbers. The world is quite fragmented still in the young smartphone market. Samsung is the only brand in the Top 5 in each of the 4 regions, and ranked number 1 or 2 in each of them. Apple, Lenovo and LG are the only other brands to score in the Top 5 in three of the four regions. Both fail to crack the Top 5 in China. Lenovo/Motorola doesn't hit the Top 5 in Europe. A bunch of familiar brands are now purely regional - HTC only sells significant share in North America, Sony and Nokia-Microsoft-Lumia in Europe. Huawei is the only other Chinese brand (after Lenovo bought Motorola) to score outside of China, and with its powerful presence in Africa, Huawei appears in Top 5 of Rest of World. ZTE is the biggest smartphone maker to fail to hit the Top 5 in any of the four regions.


UPDATE 19 February - Note, IDC happened to release annual Top 5 ranking data on two of the above 4 regions just days after I published this blog. I have compared the data in 'duelling statistics' haha. We are very very close in agreement about the market sizes AND the Top 5 brands in both regions.

TOTAL HANDSET MARKET INCLUDING DUMBPHONES

Then lets look at how the total handset market sits now, when dumbphones and smartphones are included 

2014 FULL YEAR TOTAL HANDSET SALES STATISTICS

Rank . Brand . . . .  . . . .2014 units . . Share . . Migration Rate . . 2013 units . . Share 

1 (1)  . Samsung . . . . .  . 395 M . . . . 20.3% . . . . 75% . . . . . . . . . 440 M . . . 23.5%  
2 (2)  . Microsoft(Nokia) . 252 M . . . . 12.9% . . . . 15% . . . . . . . . . 263 M . . . 14.0% 
3 (3)  . Apple  . . . . . . . .  193 M . . . . .  9.9% . ..  100% . . . . . . . . . 153 M . . . . 8.2% 
4 (4)  . Huawei  . . . . . . . 138 M . . . . . . 7.1% . . . . 55% . . . . . . . . .  77 M . . . . 4.1% 
5 (8) .  Lenovo *. . .. . .  . . 95 M . . . . . . 4.9% . . . 100% . . . . . . . . .  46 M . . . . 2.5%  
6 (5)  . LG  . . . . . . . . . . .. 78 M . . . . . ..4.0% . . . . 80% . . . . . . . . . . 72 M . . . . 3.8% 
7 (7)  . TCL-Alcatel . . . . . 64 M . . . . . . 3.3% . . . . 67% . . . . . . . . . . 49 M . . . . 2.6% 
8 (-) . . Xiaomi  . . . . . . . . 61 M . . . . . . 3.1% . . . .100% . . . . . . . .. - - - - . . . . . . - - .  
9 (6) . . ZTE . . . . . . . . . .  56 M . . . . . . 2.9% . . . . 65% . . . . . . . . . . 58 M . . . . 3.1% 
10 (-) . Coolpad . . . . . . .  50 M . . . . . . 2.6% . . . .100% . . . . . . . . . - - - - . . . . . . - - . 
Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 M . . . . . 29.1%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . 1,950 M . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,875 M
 * Note: Lenovo includes Motorola annual sales from year 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

Samsung total shipments in handsets are down from 2014 but they still sell a million phones every day. Microsoft ie Nokia continues in second place (but Apple is currently overhauling them. 80% of Microsoft phones sold are dumbphones and Microsoft is winding down that business.). Lenovo, Xiaomi and Coolpad are the other pure smartphone makers in addition to Apple in the global handset Top 10.

MIGRATION RATE

So how is that migration rate? I think you can see now why I am so convinced year 2019 is the last year we will see dumbphones sold. Look at this migration rate as a graphic that I showed at the World Summit Awards just last week:



Image by TomiAhonen Consulting January 2015
Picture may be freely shared

So yes, the migration rate of the handset market, in new phones sold hit 67% for the year 2014. We are now seeing the last years that dumbphones are still sold. I project year 2019 is the last year when any meaningful numbers of dumbphones are sold (more than 1%) and year 2020 is the first year when all phones sold are smartphones.

QUARTERLY FINAL DATA Q4

So then for those who are interested in the 'horserace' aspect on a quarterly basis, lets do final Q4 numbers. The table is:

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 2014

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q2 2014 . . OS systems supported (coming)
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  74.8 M . . 20.1% . . . . . . . ( 24.5% ) . . . . . . Android, Tizen, Windows
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 74.5 M . . 20.1% . . . . . . . ( 12.3% ) . . . . . . iOS
3T (4) . . Lenovo * . . . . . 24.4 M . . . 6.6% . . . . . . . (   5.3% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
3T (5T) . Huawei  . . . . . 24.4 M . . . 6.6% . . . . . . . (   5.2% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
5 (3) . . . Xiaomi . . . . . . .17.0 M . . . 4.6% . . . . . . .  (   5.6% ) . . . . . . Android
6 (7) . . . TCL/Alcatel . . . 16.8 M . . . 4.5% . . . . . . . (  4.0% ) . . . . . . . Android
7 (5T) . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 15.5 M . . . 4.2% . . . . . . . (   5.2% ) . . . . . . Android
8 (8) . . . Coolpad/Yulong  14.9 M . . . 4.0% . . . . . . . (   3.9% ) . . . . . . Android
9 (9) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . 13.2 M . . . 3.6% . . . . . . . (   3.4% ) . . . . . . Android, Firefox
10 (10) . Sony . . . . . . . . . 11.4 M . . . 3.1% . . . . . . . (   3.1% ) . . . . . . Android
Others . . . . . . . . . . . .. .   90.8 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . ..   377.7 M
 * Lenovo includes Motorola
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 13 February 2015, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

First, on Sammy. I have taken the average of the Samsung number by our analyst houses which just edges it to Samsung over Apple. Its not my call haha, don't blame me. So yeah, Xiaomi had its brief moment as 3rd largest but has fallen now back into the pack. Lenovo jumped to a tied third place with the Motorola purchase but the real solid growth is at Huawei, steady on organic growth. So lets do the Android chart...

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 OF 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . . Market share . Was Q3 2014 . . Manufacturers in Top 10
1 (1) . . Android . . . . . . . 288.4 M . .  76.5 % . . . . . ( 83.6 %) . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, ZTE, TCL/Alcatel, Sony, Yulong/Coolpad, Xiaomi
2 (2) . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . 74.5 M . .  19.8 % . . . . . ( 12.3 %)  . . . . . Apple
3 (3) . . Windows Phone . 11.2 M . . .  3.0 % . . . . . (  3.2 %) . . . . . . Samsung
4 (4) . . Blackberry . . . . . . . 2.1 M . . .  0.7 % . . . . . (  0.7 %) . . . . . . (None)
others . . . . . . .. .  . . . . . . . . . 1.0 M . . .  0.3 % . . . . . 
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  377.4 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 13 February 2015, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

Yeah Android won blah-blah-blah, Windows Phone is dead blah-blah-blah, iOS is nice luxury/premium niche, blah-blah-blah, Blackberry who cares, blah-blah-blah.

FIVE YEARS IN THE BLOODBATH

Want some context? So how was the Bloodbath? We've followed ever exciting toss and turn in this, the most intense global market share war there ever was, in any industry cars, banks, airlines, personal computers, cola wars, you name it. The past 5 years have been carnage as never witnessed in any global industry ever in such a short period of time. This is what the smartphone market looked like in 2010 full year with now brief commentary on what happened to them:

SMARTPHONE TOP 10 GIANTS OF 2010 AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM
1  Nokia . . . . . . 100.3M . . . 34% - died. Sold to Microsoft. Currently has 2% market share
2  RIM . . . . . . . . 48.0M . . . 16% - on life support. Samsung trying to buy. Currently has 1% market share
3  Apple . . . . . . .47.5M . . . 16% - grew with the industry mildly losing market share. Currently 15%
4  HTC . . . . . . .  25.0M . . . . 8% - vanished. Some say there are HTC models sold in the US market
5  Samsung . . . .24.0M . . . . 8% - exploded, grew 13x bigger and has 24% market share today
6  Motorola . . . . 13.7M . . . . 5% - died. Sold to Google. Then sold onto Lenovo. Brand has 2% share
7  SonyEricsson . 9.5M . . . . 3% - on life support, Sony management trying to sell the division
8  LG . . . . . . . . . 7.0M . . . . 2% - grew strongly to 5% market share today
9  Fujitsu . . . . . .  6.2M . . . . 2% - vanished to the Japanese domestic market
10 Sharp . . . . . . . 5.2M . . . . 2% - vanished to the Japanese domestic market
Others . . . . . . . . 11.6M - spawned a Chinese revolution: Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, ZTE, Coolpad, TCL
Total . . . . . . . . .297.9M - grew more than 4-fold in the past 5 years, fastest growing giant global industry

Yeah, thats amazing looking at that list. But haha, Palm had already died by 2010, was sold to HP who then sold the Palm brand onto TCL. Only 3 and a half of the 10 brands in the above list survived to be competitive in the Top 10 through the tumultuous Bloodbath years. Why 3.5 not 4? Because SonyEricsson was the phone brand back in 2010 and Ericsson pulled out of that mess so only Sony is left now and even that has been a struggle for the electronics giant.

Ok I will post this version now and then re-read it all, correct some formating and the inevitable math error and consider if there is anything else worth saying or doing with this data. As always, feel free to share all this data with anyone, the biggest source of free stats about the smartphone and mobile industry is the CDB blog.

If you want to see the previous Quarter, here is that data for Q3. If you need more info, get the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014 and if you buy the TomiAhonen Almanac now, I will send you both the current ie 2014 edition and the new 2015 edition when that is published. Don't worry about the website showing older editions I just have't bothered to update those pages.

World Summit Awards WSA Gala Just Ended, Here Some Highlights and Winners

Lets talk about the WSA, the World Summt Awards, the only global tech awards that are endorsed by the United Nations, so this is the pinnacle of any mobile industry awards. The 'Oscars' of mobile or the 'Nobel Prizes' of mobile so to speak. I was honored to be invited to return and present a keynote to the World Summit Awards Gala event and met up with many friends and even participated a little bit as a replacement juror to the judging (there were some visa problems with some of the WSA judges, utterly mind-boggling when these prestigious mobile industry thought-leaders had been attending the WSA there, the same event in Abu Dhabi in the past. Esteemed colleagues, authors, respected worldwide. What is wrong with the world today?)

The quality of the finalists was incredible and there was a lot of world-class brlliance in the concepts and services and apps that we saw. There are 8 award categories in the WSA and the finalists in each category got to do a presentation but even with a 4 day event, the finalists had to be split into two streams running in parallel, so I had to chose always one out of a pair of award categories, so I only saw the presentations from half of the finalists. Please bear that in mind in what I will discuss in this blog story.

M GOVERNMENT

So lets start the review from the category of mobile government services and apps. The winner of the category was the Dubai Police Department App which lets Dubai citizens interact with the police through their smartphones. The smartphone penetration rate for Dubai is well above 90% by now and overall mobile phone penetration rate per capita is over 190% (it was over 200% but then the government required that all SIM cards have to be registered and 3 million 'orphaned' SIM cards were removed from the system which brought about that weird instance where the penetration rate actually declined haha). So the Police Department decided to create an app to let citizens conduct their police-related affairs through their smartphones, such as reporting a crime or a car accident etc. The app also includes the ability to have your driver's licence activated onto the smartphone - so you don't need to carry your physical 'card' driver's licence in your wallet anymore. This is a true world's first and I reported about it as breaking news over the weekend. This app was the category winner for mGovernment. But let me mention three other finalists that I also saw which were amazing:

From Latvia we had finalist in mGovernment which was called 'Pass to get a Better Result' Futbols. It is a concept around Latvian passion in football (ie soccer, the game most of humans think of when you say football, ie with the round ball, not the thing they play in the USA which has a thing which is not played with the foot and is not a ball). The idea here is that wherver Latvian citizens find a government employee being a bit 'bureaucratic' and not working hard, rather than saying 'do your job' they can now say 'play good football' instead. And of course all sorts of feedback systems and incentive ideas.

From Uganda we had a finalist called U Report. It uses SMS (yeah!) to have citizens respond to various surveys and interviews, as well as report on what is going on. Its kind of citizen journalism meeting Gallup polling. 260,000 Ugandans have joined to voice their opinions. The results are collected with local/regional focus so the local government and related authorities and media and businesses can find out what is on the minds of the Ugandans.

And from Brazil there was a very strong entrant called Colab.Re which lets citizens report on issues they find as problems, and these are directed to the appropriate government authority, so for example a car parked in a way that obstructs traffic or a public toilet that is filthy, or a pothole on the street that needs to be fixed etc.

M TOURISM

The mobile Tourism category is a category that I would have wanted to attend but couldn't because of the conflict at another stream and by the finalist descriptions in the WSA Annual Booklet, the finalists were very interesting. But the winner certainly was. From Italy, Ancient Aguileia 3D, is an Augmented Reality (YEAH!) app to explore the UN World Heritage Site historical Roman city of Aguileia, through AR to see what the city looked like before it was destroyed.

M COMMERCE

In the mobile business and commerce category we had several payments related finalists but the winner was Mobizy from Portugal, a platform for businesses (typically small businesses) to automate their business processes through their smarpthones and the Cloud, providing things like customer relationship managment, inventory management, payroll etc type of business functions. Its a platform where individual app developers can offer business apps and the target is the B2E (Business to Employee) and B2B (Business to Business) markets rather than B2C (Business to Consumer).

M EDUCATION

My personal passion is in the area of mobile education and of course I attended that session in the streams. I need to remind readers that I interpret in a strict way 'mobile' to mean 'cellular' ie 'mobile phone' and similar tech and thus a 'tablet' is not a mobile, it is only an ultra-portable PC. But tablets make excellent learning tools and several of the finalists in the mEdu category were apps built onto tablets. I won't bother with those on this blog, they are of interest to those who specialize in the relatively small industry of tablets and ultra-portable PCs (as my readers know, the tablet industry is already nearing its peak and smartphones alone outsell tablets by a factor of about 5 to 1, all mobile phones by a factor of 8 to 1). But there were a few very interesting entrants aside from the tablet apps.

Cure Runners is a game for 14-19 year olds to teach them financial matters, from Austria. Its built around the idea of a virtual world which is attacked by a virus. To win in the game the youth have to master basic concepts of financial literacy. From Ireland there was Life in the Womb, a visual illustration of what is happening to in the stages of pregnancy with pictures and the story of how humans grow before birth, as an app for Android and iPhone.

The winner in the mEdu category was Lifesaver from the UK, a game as an app and web version, to teach first aid in a more realistic situation than typical Red Cross arranged 'tea and bisquits' sessions using a CPR dummy. In most real life emergencies where people are at risk of dying like in a deadly car accident or fire etc, the voluteers who know CPR are often screamed at and the situation poses a lot of stress from the situation, not related to the person who has stopped breathing... So this very realistic and shocking videogame will continuously have the victim die, until the game player figures out ALL the right moves to save the person regardless of the others standing by who scream and yell and offer wrong advice etc.

M ENTERTAINMENT

I wasn't able to attend the mEntertainment session which seems to have had very strong entrants. The only one we saw briefly summarized in the Awards Gala session was the eventual winner, Createrria from Poland. That is a gaming platform which allows kids to create their own adventures and games (based on some templates) that seems incredibly addictive while also teaching some basics of game development. I will want to learn more about this winner and wish it well.

M HEALTH

The mobile healtcare category had a wonderful winner from Spain, called Universal Doctor Speaker. It is for doctors to use when dealing with patients who can't speak the language of the doctor. This is a common problem at all hospitals and medical emergency situations around the world, always some patients arrive who are from some other country and don't speak the local language of the doctor. This app has 500 typical phrases a doctor will need, and can speak and display he text of those phrases in 13 different languages. A wonderful, 'magical' and potentially life-saving solution from simply our pocket and the Android or iOS platform.

Meanwhile the Finnish finalists in the mHealth category was BetterDoctor which is a smart doctor-finder. It identifies the specialities of the doctors in your vicinity, plus what experience that doctor has in the procedurs you are interested, what insurance companies are accepted, and if there have been any malpractise claims against that doctor. Over 10 million American consumers have already used this app in the USA for example.

M NEWS

The mobile media and news category I also missed, but its winner comes from Russia and tells the news around you wherever you are, and whatever is happening nearby. It is called Lifenews. 

M INCLUSION

Then we had another category that I got to see and which was of incredibly high quality. The category of mobile empowerment and inclusion. And how could the jury possibly decide on these incredibly worthy finalists each solving such a different but massive problem. Let me discuss my faves

From Palestine the finalist was Brailleboard. They have programmed the touch screen to behave like a braille keyboard (the kind that has 6 buttons that need to be pressed in a particular way to create any one letter in the alphabet). Millions of blind people know how to read and write braille, but the braille 'typewriter' or PC keyboard is an expensive device. Now any Android touch screen phone can be the braille keyboard.  (the team that created the app were unable to attend the WSA Awards Gala because the Gaza border is closed currently, so I hope to meet this team in the future when the Palestinians are allowed to travel again to outside their little home country)

Meanwhile the Philippines is a nation that gets almost any type of natural disasters except snow avalanches. They get floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons (aka the LARGE hurricanes of the Pacific), volcanoes and of course all sorts of killer animals too. And this in an island nation that poses all sorts of challenges to disaster prevention and recovery. So they created a simple location-based app on Android called Arko that helps locals identify - before the disaster strikes - where are the nearest safe places that are safe from rapidly rising flood-waters that accompany many of the natural disasters that hit the Philippines every year. By using historical flooding maps and patterns, they have identified the areas that are safe, and even have a very simple color-coded guide in the app to show how dangerous is it (water up to knees, so you can still walk, water up to your neck, that you are still alive, or water going over your head...). It works with GPS if you have that on your Android phone but works also with just cellular tower positioning to get approximate location, well enough that all locals recognize the local village details like where is the bridge, etc.

Then from Ghana we got the finalist SnooCode. Did you know much of the world is without formal addresses. Imagine going to Ghana and you need to visit that relative's house and you get this as your instruction: 

"When you get to McCarthy Junction, you take a taxi saying you are going to Morro House. When you get there, you say you are looking for Aisha and at the STC. At the STC you take another taxi saying you go to Azuma. When you get to Azuma you say you are looking for Aisha's mommy (ie mother) but be clear that you do not mean the Maame Drugstore."

That is a real instance not made up. That is TYPICAL for most of Africa and many parts of Latin America, Middle East and Asia. Even some very advanced countries like the UAE and Japan don't have house numbers (or in Japan they do, but the numbers are not in numerical order, so the numbers are in completely random sequence hence their ability to assist in navigation to your destiny is hopeless)

So imagine if you are say attending a wedding of a close relative and its held in Ghana and you are at that fabulous farm house but its in the middle of nowhere and then one of the guests has a heart-attack. You have a mobile phone, you can call the ambulance but what are the instructions to get to the house... No address. The presenter joked that when he grew up he thought the white ambulance was a hearse, ie car that carries coffins and dead people for funerals, because it took so long for ambulances to find the right location in their village, the only times he ever saw the white emergency vehicle was when someone had actually died (but they obviously had been alive when the ambulance was called).

So enter SnooCode. They have created a super-accurate address code generator, precise to a few meters, so that every address globally can be identified uniquely. Even Western 'zip codes' postal codes are not really accurate to individual homes and doors but SnooCode is (its 230x more accurate than the UK postal code system for example). And the address code you get is unique and short, easy to memorize. What is your address? COF-K8D. Now you do have an address that the banks can identify and use. Now you have an address that your mail can find you if you bought something from Amazon for example. Now there is an address that the emergency services can use to find your home if there is a fire or medical emergency etc. I really liked this finalist and feel it will change the Emerging World dramatically in the coming years.

Which brings us to the winner of the m-Inclusion category and the overall crowd favorite of the whole WSA event, from Brazil, Livox. Livox enables people with disabilities like Cerebral Palsy that prevent them from using traditional IT tech to still use touch screens and join the digital revolution. Livox is smart enough to understand what was the attempted gesture, for those who do not have perfect control of their fingers or hands or feet. They estimated that 15 million Brazilians will be helped by this technology who would otherwise be shut out of the digital revolution that we all take for granted. Livox is a gorgeous solution that will help hundreds of millions globally by the time it is ported to more languages and launched in more countries.

The finalists and winners of the World Summit Awards showed true excellence from all around the world. Thank you to Peter Bruck and the team that arranges the WSA Awards every year. If you are a journalist or tech blogger, please share some of these stories. If you are an app developer or mobile service developer from SMS to HTML to Augmented Reality, please consider entering next year's WSA. If you are a big corporation with a social responsibility budget, here are truly worthy candidates for you to consider helping and sponsoring. If you are an investor looking to make a difference in the future of the planet, not only to make some money, here are the best of the class of 2014 in tech and mobile. These are those who survived the vetting of their national selection processes, and then through the WSA evaluation, made it from 469 entries from 101 countries, down to the incredibly worthy 40 finalists from 30 countries from 5 continents. My most heartfelt congratulations to all finalists and wishing you all the best on your journey now ahead into the next stage of your mobile future.