The disruptor gets disrupted: how Apple is beating Nintendo at its own game

The Nintendo 3DS

In an industry obsessed with polygon counts and frame rates, Nintendo's Wii console and DS handheld were the proverbial knives at a gunfight. They were grossly underpowered compared to the competition, meaning Nintendo could sell them at a profit from day one. Their innovative control methods ensured they still sold like hotcakes. An animated GIF of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata holding a DS that printed money became the go to picture to run alongside quarterly announcements of Nintendo's gargantuan profits. If a disheveled man emerged from a time-traveling Delorian with tales of a near-future Nintendo struggling to sell its latest handheld, I'd have been more surprised about the Nintendo thing. So what on earth happened?

A wild STEVE JOBS appears! STEVE JOBS uses DESTROY VALUE. It's super effective!

Late last year, Steve Jobs told the press that Apple was activating 230,000 iOS devices every day, with a staggering 200 million already in the wild.

According to 148apps, there are 72,185 games available in the iOS App Store, of which 28% are 99 cents and 38% are free.

To say that 1% of these games would be worth playing would be an overly generous estimate. Most will pale in comparison to the console games they emulate. Many will take longer to download than they will to grow tired of, if they aren't quit in disgust and deleted immediately. Others will be lost in the noise of the App Store. Occasionally, one will appease the zeitgeist and make a fledgling developer very wealthy.

But what exactly is the alternative that Nintendo proposes?

NINTENDO used HEAD IN THE SAND. It's not very effective!

Satoru Iwata told AllThingsD that the ad supported, freemium and high volume/low cost models of mobile gaming "destroy the value of the game software" and made it clear he is not willing to lead Nintendo in that direction.

Unfortunately, the mass market has spoken - a firehose of cheap and disposable games on a multi-purpose device wins over a drip feed of expensive and...well, lessdisposable games on a dedicated gaming handheld.

It might take you somewhere between 30-50 hours to play through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, on your 3DS...but how many iPhone games can you get for that US$40? How many can you get for the price of the 3DS itself?

EA CEO John Riccitiello recently told Industry Gamers that consoles represent just 40% of the market, down from 80% in 2000. The casual market that Nintendo fueled with the Wii has jumped ship to cheaper pastures.

Big publishers like EA are coming along for the ride. That NBA Jam game you can get for $0.99 on the iPhone and $4.99 on the iPad is exactly the same as the $39.99 console version (...and it's one of those rare ports that plays beautifully without physical buttons). This probably sounds insane to someone who doesn't realize that they're completely different markets, or that there's people like me who will buy the iPad version and the Xbox 360 version.

What about testing the waters with a stripped-back Mario title in the vein ofCanabalt? Basically guaranteed to sell millions, and won't devalue the Mario brand at all - indeed, it would introduce Mario to a generation of kids who had never had a Nintendo at home. Give them the first hit for next to nothing, and get them nagging Mom and Dad for a 3DS in time for Super Mario 3D Land.

What about releasing a SNES controller dock for the iPhone with some classics from the 16-bit era like Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country? Charge $50 for the controller and $5-10 for the games. That's like a license to print money. Alternatively, what about a strategic move against Apple by throwing its support behind the Android platform, or a partnership with HTC or Samsung?

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, investors are pushing for an embrace of mobile too. Nintendo's share price jumped after JPMorgan Chase & Co. told its clients that Nintendo may start making games for non-Nintendo hardware in June, and fell again after an official rebuttal just hours later.

Qualcomm, makers of the Snapdragon chipset that powers many modern smartphones, also sees mobile phones becoming the consoles of the future. Already some Android phones and tablets feature HDMI outputs and the ability to connect to a console controller via USB or Bluetooth.

There's only so long a company can ignore the market, the industry, and investors.

SONY wants to fight NINTENDO. SONY uses IMPRESSIVE LAUNCH LINEUP! It missed!

With the casual market adequately catered for by the mobile space, Nintendo is increasingly reliant on adoption from the hardcore market. What a shame that Sony had to go and unveil the PS Vita this year, a device that has the hardcore set drooling over its dual analog joysticks, generous 5-inch OLED screen and console-caliber graphical prowess.

On launch, the Vita will have Wipeout 2048, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, LittleBigPlanet and Super Stardust Delta - and titles from system-selling franchises like Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Call of Duty, Killzone, Mortal Kombat andResistance are in the pipeline.

With Sony's recent admission that the PS Vita won't be released outside Japan until 2012, contrary to its original statement, the executives at Nintendo must be feeling like they've just dodged a bullet.

But can one original Mario title (Super Mario 3D Land), two Nintendo 64 ports (Star Fox 64 3D and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Edition) and a few third-party titles really compete with the generous array of games headed for the Vita?

NINTENDO used PRICE DROP. It's...?

There's a chicken/egg situation with consoles - people don't want to buy a console without a large library of games, but developers don't want to make games for a console without a large install base.

The 3DS is hurting as a result. With big third-party titles like Assassin's Creed, Megaman and Saints Row being cancelled, and Nintendo looking massively unprepared with its own meager software lineup, there's no rush to buy a 3DS.

Late last month, Nintendo announced it would drop the price of the 3DS from $250 to $170 on August 12. Is this enough to push the 3DS to a critical mass by the time the Vita drops? Only time will tell.

Feel free to chime in in the comments section.

By Tim Hanlon

Fujitsu releases Windows 7 F-07C Mobile Phone

The Windows 7 F-07C mobile phone from Fujitsu - a smartphone mode and a PC mode in one device

Fujitsu has launched what is claimed to be the world's smallest Windows PC / smartphone. Available only in Japan at the time of writing, the new F-07C phone has two modes of operation - one which gives users all we've come to expect from a modern smartphone, and another that launches a full version of Windows 7 to offer personal computing in the palm of your hand. It's powered by an Intel Atom processor, has system memory and solid state storage, and benefits from a slide-out tactile keyboard.

Earlier this year we featured the Magic W3 microcomputer, a handheld computer that also happened to include mobile phone capabilities. Now Fujitsu has unveiled its Windows 7 F-07C mobile phone, a smartphone that's also a PC.

When in smartphone mode, the F-07C behaves much as you would expect a smartphone to behave, supporting the latest NTT DOCOMO services such as i-mode mail, as well as Osaifu-Keitai, i-channel, i-concier, and Oazukari Service for mobile phone data. At the push of a button, though, the device revs up the Intel Atom Z600 processor running at 1.2GHz (note: the Magic W3 features an Atom X530 processor running at 1.6GHz) and boots up a full version of the Japanese edition of Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit (with SP1 already applied).

The phone comes with a 2-year license for Microsoft Office Personal 2010, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook, to satisfy any productivity wants, and also includes Internet Explorer 9. Rather than the onscreen keying of the Magic W3, the F-07C features a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard with trackball for basic mouse cursor control.

There's also a 4-inch, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution touchscreen LCD screen sporting 262,144 colors, a 5.1 megapixel CMOS sensor camera, 1GB of LPDDR400 system memory, 32GB eMMC SSD storage, and microSD/SDHC expansion support. As well as FOMA 3G, the phone also has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR wireless capabilities. Its battery is said to offer 600 hours in standby, 370 minutes continuous talk time in voice mode, or 170 minutes in videophone mode.

With 4.92 x 2.4 x 0.77-inch (125 x 61 x 19.8 mm) dimensions and weighing 7.68 ounces (218 g) including the battery, the F-07C is both lighter and smaller than the Magic W3. For my money, it also wins in the looks department, too.

Physical connectivity to peripherals or big screen televisions/monitors is via a USB/HDMA cradle, which is sold separately.

Mozilla launches Boot to Gecko web-based mobile OS project

Mozilla has announced the start of a new project aimed at creating a new app-centric, completely open, web-based phone and tablet operating system called Boot to Gecko (B2G)

The way we spend our time online is changing fast. While the browser still reigns supreme, more and more people are getting their online fix using apps. Mozilla, the folks behind the popular Firefox browser, has now announced the start of a new project to develop an app-centric, completely open, web-based phone and tablet operating system called Boot to Gecko (B2G).

There are, of course, a good many tried and tested mobile operating systems already out there already but useful apps created for one operating environment are not going to work on another. As a developer, if you want your killer app on an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy S then you'll need to effectively create your innovation twice, or more, using different SDK's.

Rather than confine application development to vendor-specific operating environments like iOS, Android, WP7, webOS, the much-maligned Symbian and so on, the B2G project is looking to develop a complete, standalone operating system that will give developers the tools they need to create locally-cached apps at least as capable as native device applications but that will work across mobile platforms.

Open from day one

While the similarly cloud-based Google Chrome OS heads mostly for netbook-like devices, Mozilla has its eyes on the phone/tablet arena for B2G. Unlike other so-called open source developments in that area, though, B2G's code - built around the Gecko engine that drives its Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client - will be available for all to see from the start.

"We want to do Boot to Gecko the way we think open source should be done," says the project's Andreas Gal. "In the open, from day one, for everyone to see and participate."

As a starting point, the team intends to re-use a small portion of the lower layers of the Android OS. According to the project's Mike Shaver, this only represents the kernel and device drivers, in addition to libc and some ancillary bits and pieces. Although test hardware hasn't yet been chosen, the team says that it's likely that Tegra 2 devices will be chosen for initial rounds because of its support for hardware acceleration of open audio/video formats.

Developers will need to build entirely new web developer tools - as opposed to vendor-specific SDK's - that will allow B2G users to make phone calls, send text messages, take a photo and present a gallery of images, read e-books, play games, utilize near-field communications technology, and all of the other things we've come to expect from our mobile devices.

The project is still very much in its early stages at the moment, being driven by a four-man development team on a part-time basis but could mushroom very quickly as it gathers pace and veer off at any point into wholly unexplored territory. While the project infrastructure gets cemented in place, Mozilla is appealing for ideas and contributions from the online community.

Mozilla's B2G project is also looking for inspiration from and collaboration with other projects such as Chrome OS and Webian, folks at the latter having already expressed an interest in helping via the project development thread.

Huge undertaking

The B2G project is a huge undertaking for Mozilla and will clearly take more than a team of four to oversee the building of an operating system from scratch. That said, the collaborative community approach has proved quite successful for the non-profit group in the past and has also had positive knock-on effects for users of products from other brands - just look how other browser vendors upped their respective games when Firefox started snapping their market share heels.

Anyone else interested in either following or joining in with the development of B2G can find more information at the dedicated Mozilla Wiki page.

If you're wondering, the project team says that Mozilla has no plans to release a Firefox phone.

Nokia 500 - first 1GHz Symbian smartphone announced

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Positioned as a "low-cost, full-function smartphone", the freshly announced Nokia 500 is the first Symbian Anna-based device to utilize a 1GHz-clocked CPU. The handset is lightweight at 93 grams (3.28 oz) and features a 3.2 inch, 360 x 640 resolution capacitive touchscreen along with a 5 megapixel flash-less camera at the back (no front-facing camera) and 2GB of internal memory expandable via a microSD card slot up to 32GB.

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Connectivity comes courtesy of WiFi b/g (no 'n' support), GPS and A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, microUSB, HSDPA/HSUPA support and a 3.5mm audio jack. There's an FM Radio and three different-colored battery covers (included in the box). Nokia Maps is pre-installed with free driving and walk navigation, as is every GPS-enabled Nokia cell phone these days.

The Nokia 500 will be available in black starting from Q3 2011 (a white version is expected in Q4) priced at EUR150 (around US$213) "before taxes and subsidies."

The latest arrival in Symbian Anna line of devices joins the likes of Nokia E6 and Nokia X7 which were first to introduce the updated platform. Symbian Anna is the successor of Symbian^3, bringing such improvements as faster browsing, new icons, virtual QWERTY keyboard in portrait orientation or refreshed OVI Maps.

New naming convention

The Nokia Conversations blog has also explained that no letters in new smartphone's name means a change in Nokia's naming policy. From now on, Nokia will resign from letters suggesting the phone's application (e.g. "E" - for business, "X" - for entertainment, etc.).

"The classifications were indicators, but often, they didn't match-up to what people were actually doing with their phones," Nokia says. It will instead stick to just numbers where "Nokia 900 would be top dog and a Nokia 100 is the most accessible option."