Over the last few months, there’s been so much turmoil in the touchscreen tablet space! Consider:

1. HP’s newest foray into tablet computing, not with a Windows OS but instead with WebOS, subsequently gets beheaded in under 2 months after the TouchPad’s launch.
2. Android’s Honeycomb and Gingerbread tablets are growing in number, but not so much in market share.
3. RIM’s launch of the Playbook is widely acknowledged as a flop.
4. Apple’s iPad 2 launch in March is one of the most successful product launches in recent history.
5. And last but not least (by a slim margin), Microsoft continues to plug away with its Windows 7 stopgap strategy while working on Windows 8.

As a product person who’s been working on a HTML5-based offline web application, it’s been an exciting ride! So far, the recent events underscore several key ideas that product folks should take into account: platform flexibility, platform longevity, and control over the platform.Developing platform-specific applications will give you the broadest access to that platform’s advantages and features, but ties you into an ecosystem. Developing platform-neutral applications will give you the broadest access to a user base, but ties you into a variation of whack-a-mole. Given that a platform is composed of both hardware and software, product people have a set of issues to face which will shape your strategy. Hardware ends up being a snapshot in time, an end result of the evolutionary lessons and manufacturing capabilities up to a certain point. Unless a company directly controls their own hardware, it’s unable to fully understand and leverage all the nuances and potential of a device quickly. It takes time and exposure in a marketplace for both developers and consumers to achieve that knowledge. And in the case of hardware manufacturers themselves, failure is not so kind to a company and the ecosystem. In contrast, software is more malleable and can be adapted more easily. Your ability to deliver frequent iterations have less limitations to delivery.

The interesting development lately has to do with HTML5 apps versus native apps. While I’m a bit biased to one camp, I can say this: longevity aside, I’m interested in hitting the widest user base possible, and I’m willing to compromise slightly on performance and hardware features to gain an edge in control and reduce the friction it takes to get the user up and running. Not every company can say that, but every company needs to weigh those factors. And here’s the kicker: HTML5 is still an evolving spec. It is expected to get better over time, and build its API inventory up and continue cutting into the advantages that native apps have. As a wise man once said: “Choose wisely.”

Here’s why I’d predict this sort of product from Apple: the current field is ripe for two things, simplification and opportunity. PayPal touts that their NFC solution only needs a few taps of the phone; Apple will figure out a shorter series of steps. The world’s largest App Store still needs a credit card; Apple will make purchasing digital goods even more seamless and accessible than before. And with its current hardware profile that includes a camera, I’m sure an app will appear faster than George Costanza can say “Important things go in a case”, which would likely scan old-fashioned paper receipts on the spot for tagging and uploading into iCloud. Apple will ask you to say goodbye to back pain, cash, credit cards, and receipts. And consumers will love it.

The right solution to handle the obsolecense of cash is to give consumers a physical alternative. And I don’t mean printing more money with a different ink; rather, a standalone device that can represent your money aside from a given institution or being networked. It should be a physical object, tied uniquely to some asset. It can be a vault in its own right, embedded with value. I’d envision something like the RSA hardware tokens, used to implement two-factor authentication, to ensure that your money stays with you and you alone. And for goodness’ sake, make sure the battery life is robust! Imagine if you’re just headed to your local coffee shop, and your “wallet” runs out of power. If that local coffee shop doesn’t have an AC adapter for your device, you’re out of luck!

The point is that cash has a lot of advantages that we take for granted: standard value denominations, physical security, intermediary-less (for the most part), and universal transference. If the world moves towards a cashless society, we have to ensure interoperability, security, and usefulness of our electronic currency.

Conclusion: If cash disappears, something just as easy and tangible needs to replace it. And for anyone who asks: No, it can’t have a “low battery” warning!

In contrast, Visa and Square jointly took the high road and continued to build their positive brand image while pushing innovation in the payments space. While Square seems to have capitulated to Verifone’s claims, it is far more likely that implementing encryption was a part of Visa’s terms to publicly back Square. The monetary contribution certainly seems to be far less significant than the potential reduction of Square’s barrier to entry to the payments market. After these events, Verifone may have been better off just ignoring Square!

Conclusion: Innovate with newcomers in your space, and you’re bound to get some halo effect and drive benefits to both companies!

While this play is sensible from Amazon’s standpoint, I do pine for the days when we weren’t inundated with ads. It seems that all sorts of mediums and devices are being saturated with them, when I actually crave a simple, straightfoward, elegant, and uninterrupted experience that’s free of them. Why can’t there be another way: to pay for no ads, no interruptions, no distractions?

Conclusion: Seems like the day when the Kindle (in its current form) is free isn’t too far off. But, does it have to come with the price of ever-increasing ads vying for our eyes?

“We don’t want to lose our direct relationship with our subscribers. It’s at the core of our business model,” Rob Grimshaw told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

To give you, fair reader, some context: Apple’s 30% cut of subscription revenues is a decoy statement, not the real deal like John Gruber states. In fact, it masks the real reason why Apple’s instituting this policy (from this article):

“Customer data for in-app subscribers will remain with Apple, generally speaking, but customers will have the option to send their name, email address, and zip code to publishers. (Opt-in, not opt-out.)”

And the reason why this is important: it’s estimated that 35% of a high-quality content publisher’s revenues come from subscriptions, whereas 65% of revenues come from advertisers.^1,2 If advertisers can’t rely on publishers for reliable demographic/ethnographic data, they won’t justify paying premiums to the publishers. Publishers in turn will get their 65% of revenues knocked down. And who wins? Definitely not the publishers.

Bottom line: Know your business model, quality publishers, because even the pundits get it wrong! Apple is threatening the very survival of curated content on their platform with this approach.

The idea is to eliminate the two line navigation layout which currently has tabs on top and the navigation buttons, menu and URL bar below. The compact navigation model would only have one line and place the navigation buttons, a search button, tabs and menus next to each other. The URL bar is gone and the URL of each tab is not visible at all times, but only displayed when a page is loading and when a tab is selected.

Go Google go!

This sort of innovation and change is on the level of Apple’s (in?)famous decision to start shipping computers without a floppy drive. With the advent of URL shortening services and the proliferation of odd company names, I believe top-level URLs are little more than keyboard shortcuts to our destinations, and longer URLs are only useful to machine interfaces. We users are actively being encouraged to think of browsers and Web services as the equivalent of applications on your desktop! And why not? Simple is great for users, and this is progress that’s simple! More room for content, for rich applications, for interaction: I love it!

Visually stunning work from Christian Stoll, it really captures the idea of scale and the result of scaling horizontally. I wonder if the architects imagined that the escalator machinery had to be as wide it appears to set the escalator stairs as narrow as they look…

In the spirit of the holiday season here in the US, this article from the Wall Street Journal seems particularly appropriate:

In many cases, rewards enticed people whose cards were dormant to start spending…[and] even small rewards can prompt people to spend more.

This useful study backs up the old management consulting adage of “you get what you measure.” In this case, financial services companies measure a customer’s spending and show a clear link to a nominal reward. And voilà, we shouldn’t be surprised that customers then immediately think about what they can get, as opposed to saving the money in the first place. Rewards programs are an ingenious way to acquire customers and encourage spending, but this can be to the detriment of the customers themselves.

My point is that customers need to really question their spending habits in the first place, as opposed to jumping at offers no matter how lucrative they may seem. There are plenty of savvy product managers out there, and their sole job in cases like these are to get you to spend money. Instead of watching your checking account go down for “rewards,” how about watching your savings account go up for a change?