Thorston Heins said this the other day:

"In five years I don't think there will be a reason to have a tablet anymore."

The people who took shots at him in this regard are small-minded idiots -- he's right.

Consider this folks -- why do you have a tablet today, if you have bought one?  

You have one because your smart phone's screen is too small.

The computing power of the phone is equal (and in some cases the capability greater) than the tablet.  Having another device is just plain stupid, unless you're the guy selling it, in which case you're patting yourself on the back for stroking people off to get them to blow money unnecessarily.

Do you buy a new computer because you want a larger monitor on your desktop?

Now take that nice Z-10 you have (you did buy one, right?) and notice the HDMI jack.  If you plug it into your 60" projection TV, what happens?

Did the light bulb come on in your cranium yet?

Why not have your computer in your pocket and have the screen as just a peripheral that can talk to it when required?  There are already open specifications for this and we can define a few more if we need to; hell, WiFi is more than up to the bandwidth requirements and the phone already has that in it.  Now the screen costs $100 or $200 instead of a $500 tablet, it's smaller and lighter than the existing tablets (since it doesn't duplicate the rest of what's in the phone) and it works with the other devices you already have.

That would be smart.

It also appears to be what BlackBerry has in mind, which would be a true revolution in how we think of mobile computing.

Incidentally, they're already moving this way.  The Z-10 (and Q-10) make the phone's filesystem transparently available from your computer whenever it's in range of the same WiFi connection, along with both Dropbox and Box integration.  The next software release (10.1) works both ways and allows you to see your computer's files from the phone via a built-in VPN-style tunnel that can be configured to work on Wifi only or also over the cellular network.  Now you have your own private cloud!  All of these show up transparently in the phone's file browser just like an attached disk on your desktop.

Instead of owning a laptop, a phone and a tablet the model appears to be you own a smartphone and a handful of peripherals for each situation where you need them.  The processing, storage and central communication capabilities are in the single device (your "smartphone") which goes anywhere you go.  The rest are where you need them and because they are peripherals they are both easily replaced as needs change and are inexpensive as well.

I'll be damned, a new idea that actually advances how we use computing instead of simply saying "well, we'll introduce a 5" screen phone!  No, a 6"!  I know, I know, we'll do a 7" and 10" tablet!"  

DUMB!

Those who panned Heins for this have it exactly backward -- or are shills for firms like Apple that could have realized this years ago but lacked the vision to do so.

Incidentally, QNX's device abstraction layer makes implementing this easier than it is for the big monolithic kernel guys (that would be everyone else, by the way.)

Those who are incapable of innovation often pan those who are doing exactly that right up until their lunch gets eaten.

Thorsten Heins is hungry and if you're one of his competitors it appears you may well be what's on the menu.

Oh time for this one again:

On April 12, Facebook introduced Home, a software suite for select Android devices that puts the company's social-networking features on a person's home and lock screens. Less than a tenth of a percent of the company's roughly 1 billion members have given Facebook's Home a chance. Those who've tried it have derided Home for taking over their device.

Oh c'mon.  Half the so-called "users" are cats and dogs who are incapable of deciding to download anything!

In all seriousness, however, these numbers are a disaster.  But they're not surprising to me.

There is a reason that TV channels only run 12 minutes of advertising per hour -- 20% bee-ess is all the people will put up with, in general.  Beyond that level you get revulsion and the eyeballs you need to sell your product turn you off.

But 20% of your screen on a mobile is insufficient to sell you anything which means there is no market in the mobile space for so-called "advertising."  Sorry folks, that's just the way it is.  And this, when it is realized, will destroy all of the firms that have staked their claim to riches and fame on that premise.  If your premise contains the word "ecosystem" you have a "use by" date and while you don't what it is in advance I assure you that the rate of spoilage in all such "companies" will eventually produce botulism poisoning.

Facebook has been repeatedly accused of trying to cook up "likes" out of whole cloth.  I believe they've been doing it and there's plenty of evidence to support the allegation.  It's rather amusing, I will note, that not long after those stories surfaced the company started asking if you know new "friend" outside of Facebook.  Gee, that wouldn't be so they could avoid you seeing a claim that your next door neighbor, who was just foreclosed upon by Bank of America, likes Bank of America -- right? 

Here's reality for so-called "social media" -- free **** will be lapped up so long as it's free.  As soon as there's a cost associated with the "free ****" or the star power fades a bit (like, for instance, when Grandma decides to adopt what all those teens thought was "cool") it will be tossed aside by our attention-span challenged kids like a lit stick of dynamite.

There is nothing, in fact, new under the sun when it comes to fad companies and fad stocks.  They were what made the Internet bubble so "powerful" but that power never went anywhere productive and ultimately blew up in everyone's face.

So it was in 1999, so it was in 2007, and so it will be again.

Facebok is, ultimately, a zero.

Back on the 24th I said this about the impending Q-10 launch:

So how does this all tie into the Q-10?  Simple: The (foolish and ultimately guaranteed to fail, in my view) drive to media phones, where the business model is one not of giving the consumer what they want but rather, in fact, is all about trying to reach into their wallet on a continuing basis through the day left those who didn't change their model of what they do with a mobile device out in the cold.

There are a lot of those people -- they see the "mobile smartphone" as primarily a means to make and receive calls, of course, but also as a primary means oftextual communication, especially email.

This user of the technology literally has nowhere to go in the current "smarphone" space.

Until May 1st, that is, when they do -- the Q-10.

Looks like I was right:

According to two people who were there separately, the Carphone Warehouse outlet was selling dozens of handsets at once to buyers from corporate IT customers and to would-be exporters.

In a statement, Selfridges said that the Q10 had been its fastest-selling consumer electronics product ever, through its London, Birmingham and Manchester stores. "Selfridges' initial stock of the BlackBerry Q10 sold out in stores within two hours," the store said in a statement. "Stock of the BlackBerry Q10 is being continually delivered on the hour, every hour to keep up with demand."

Fastest-selling consumer electronics product ever?

Oh boy.

And this was with essentially no promotion.

Of course the Guardian article had to find someone who would try to pan the release, whining that they didn't "restrict" people from bulk buys who might be looking to resell.

So what?  A sale is a sale is a sale and if there's a lot of demand exactly what's wrong with someone willing to speculate coming in and buying up a briefcase -- or suitcase -- full of the phones?  I see no problem with this sort of transaction and it certainly tells me that the marketplace thinks about final demand for the device.

As I noted in my piece I suspect that 10-15% of smartphone users fall into the category of using their phone for business, defined as "I want to communicate", rather than I'm a fanboi and love to consume media where Madison avenue can try to shove advertising down my throat.

Both IOS and Android are aimed at the latter population and like good little sheep waiting to be shorn the mass-market has bought into that model hook, line and sinker, ponying up $600+ (and often well north of $1,000 under subsidized phone sale models!) for the "privilege" of having ads shoved in your face on your handset.

The business users who actually needs to communicate quickly, effectively and securely is the real user of technology for the purpose of leveraging their earnings power.

They are a minority of the user population but they're the high-income people who power both America and the rest of the world rather than 16 year old kids screaming at their parents for iPhony status symbols.

They were also an unserved market that had been intentionally passed over by both Google and Apple, since their reaction to all the advertising is one of revulsion rather than bowing before the Madison Avenue gods.

Until now.

Disclosure: The author is long BlackBerry stock.

BlackBerry is preparing to release the new Q-10, which should hit Canadian and European stores around the first of the month and then the United States in the coming weeks.  Bloomberg is saying:

The phone’s most unusual feature is its screen. Unlike just about every other smartphone, whose displays are taller than they are wide, the new BlackBerry’s is a 3.1-inch-diagonal square with a resolution of 720 by 720 pixels.

That means, among other things, that it can show much less content per screen than other phones -- for example, icons for 12 apps, as opposed to 24 on Apple (AAPL)’s iPhone 5 and 20 on the Samsung (005930) Galaxy. You can theoretically watch a movie on it, but I can’t imagine why you’d want to.

BlackBerry enthusiasts, of course, don’t really care about that. What they want to know is: “What about the keyboard?”

I used to be a keyboard guy.  My first "smartphone" was the T-Mobile MDA, which had a slide-out keyboard and a touch-sensitive screen.  Unfortunately it also ran Windows Mobile, which was buggier than a roach motel and liked to blow up with not-very-amusing frequency, including at times you really wish it wouldn't (like during a call.)  It also had a stylus that you actually needed to use it productively.

Along the long path I ditched the hard keyboard and moved to touch screen phones, where I am today. I love the Z-10 and very much liked my Samsung SGS-II, along with the other touch-screen phones I had before that.

What changed?  

How I used the phone changed.

In short I went from my phone use (aside from making and receiving calls, of course) being mostly about texts and emails to media consumption in one form or another.  

That's what drove the "smartphone revolution", incidentally.

But at the same time it did two other things, one of which is going to eventually blow up in people's faces, and the other which gives BlackBerry a unique market that the Q-10 will address.

First, when we turned to media consumers with our "smartphones" the traditional Madison Avenue folks along with the upstarts in the "new media" space all descended on us as sheep are sent toward the barn to be shorn.  Firms like Facebook arose with the so-called "app ecosystem."  That "ecosystem" is not, contrary to often-pumped media nonsense, about "what you want."  It is about advertising -- stuffing commercial messages under your nose and trying to convince you to buy things at a time when you would otherwise be inaccessible to the marketing mavens.

So far nobody has come up with the "magic sauce" in this space and I argue that it's unlikely that anyone will.  The reason is simply real estate and the annoyance factor.  Traditional television has 12 minutes of advertising per hour.  That is, about 20% of the material is advertising.  The reason for this is quite simple -- people seem to be willing to put up with about 20% "trash" in the content they wish to consume; beyond that they turn it off as the annoyance factor rises up far enough that the "draw" (the content being sent) is no longer sufficient to keep the consumer's attention.

If your smart-phone screen is 3.5" long (a roughly ~4" diagonal measurement) then this means that 0.7" of that, or just over a half-inch, can be advertising, and that tiny space is not big enough to monetize effectively.

This, incidentally, is why I believe that Facebook's mobile "push" will fail and so will the other ad-supported media models on handheld devices.  There simply isn't enough room to drive revenue without trashing the ratios that you must maintain as the maximum you can intrude into someone's user experience before they turn you off.

So how does this all tie into the Q-10?  Simple: The (foolish and ultimately guaranteed to fail, in my view) drive to media phones, where the business model is one not of giving the consumer what they want but rather, in fact, is all about trying to reach into their wallet on a continuing basis through the day left those who didn't change their model of what they do with a mobile device out in the cold.

There are a lot of those people -- they see the "mobile smartphone" as primarily a means to make and receive calls, of course, but also as a primary means of textual communication, especially email.

This user of the technology literally has nowhere to go in the current "smarphone" space.

Until May 1st, that is, when they do -- the Q-10.

I suspect the share of the total smartphone market that rests in these users is somewhere between 10-15% of the whole.  The demographic is grossly skewed toward the professional user of technology, which means incomes of $100k/yr+ and this segment tends to wear suits to work rather than jeans.  They drive Audis, BMWs and Mercedes rather than Ford F-150s.  They demand secure storage and secure communications.  And they want their damn keyboard, because when they get an email from someone the need to answer it with more than a "K" or other short quip -- they need to be able to actually communicate using the device.

These people not only will make the sacrifice of screen real estate for the keyboard they demand it.  They also want very long battery life because the annoyance factor of running out of power in the middle of the day is not about annoyance, it's about missing a critical email from a client, and that in turns means lost money.

That's the Q-10's market and it is likely the most-understated opportunity that BlackBerry -- and nobody else -- is aiming at.  The reason nobody else is aiming at it is because the IOS and Android phone and software makers are all wedded to the phone being a means to sell you things.  That's their model, whether it be Google or Apple.

For those who use their phones as business tools and find the idea of carrying a marketing portal used to blast their eyeballs with ads from Google, Apple or Facebook extraordinarily offensive, there's the Q-10.

I predict it will quickly saturate that segment of the market.

Ps: If your IT folks don't know how to set up the VPN for these without using BES, and you want secure comms, have them contact me.  I've got it working with commodity gateway hardware running FreeBSD and will be happy to provide the consulting necessary to get you going at a reasonable price.

Disclosure: The author is long BBRY.

If you're not concerned about mobile security you're not very bright.  Carriers can triivally look at what you're doing online, if you care.  Encrypted email transport secures your email -- but nothing else.

In addition, there's a little-known secret about mobile data access -- it's slow.  No, you won't hear the carriers talk about this much if at all, instead lauding their "LTE" or "HSPA+" data transport speeds.  But these are speeds once a connection has been made and for most mobile devices anything beyond 1 or 2Mbps for common uses are utterly immaterial -- even for video (due to the relatively low perceptible screen resolution on said devices.)  In addition data quotas make trying to hammer a line with high-speed (e.g. LTE) data problematic for your wallet.

The problem with mobile data performance lies in what carriers do in the back room.  They are all doing "deep packet inspection" now to try to detect tethering cheaters, among other things.  This means that they have their computers doing both "NAT" (address translation) and also inspecting each packet robotically before passing it on.  This takes time -- lots of it -- and in addition they are all doing screwball proxy server inspection and packet thrashing in an attempt to reduce traffic on their backbones (but you get none of the benefit of that, since you are metered by the byte to the phone!)

I'm sure there will be many screams about "privacy!" that echo around over this, but the real problem doesn't lie there.  It lies in performance.  In short, a web transaction is quite slow to start moving data as a direct consequence of what the carriers do with your packets.  This has always sucked and as the networks have gotten more-congested it has sucked more and more.

For those who care about privacy using a VPN has been one traditional way around the security issue.  VPNs encapsulate your traffic in an encrypted container, then strip that on the other end.  Traditional VPN "user friendly" technology uses a protocol called PPTP and sometimes LT2P.  But these protocols are somewhat insecure and more importantly they're historically slow imposing anywhere from a moderate to very severe performance penalty over non-VPNed connections.

Enter IKE.  V1 was faster that LT2P and PPTP but still had security issues in many circumstances.  IKEv2, on the other hand, is fast, uses IPSEC (a formal IP extension for encapsulating packets securely) and a wide variety of authentication options including shared secrets ("passwords"), secure certificates (public-key) or both.  It also internally implements a tunneling mode that (with appropriate kernel support in the gateway host) can take advantage of hardware encryption acceleration and reduces overhead dramatically, leading to gross user experience improvement, and knows about potentially-changing user endpoint addresses (e.g. a phone moving around that gets handed difference IP numbers as it goes from one location to another.)

I have not bothered implementing the VPN connection capability on my Android devices, mostly because they're clunky and offer performance impairment rather than enhancement.  Using the older protocols they suffer from performance issues exactly as do the same protocols on a Windows machine, and in addition must be manually turned on and off as they don't know about address-hopping.  This is ok when you're sitting in a cafe and want to make sure your traffic doesn't get intercepted and I put up with it when I need to access something on my local network that I am unwilling to leave facing the Internet as a whole.  

It's not so good with a phone in your pocket that is hopping from one cell -- and IP Address -- to another.

IKEv2 solves this with an extension known as "MOBIKE", making such transitions mostly seamless.

Ok, so why am I spilling all this ink?

Because I have managed to integrate the Blackberry Z-10 with FreeBSD's StrongSwan IKEv2/IPSEC VPN capability, and all of those objections have disappeared, making full-time No-BS VPN not only transparent it actually improves the user experience compared to a bare internet connection as opposed to impairing it!

Tickerforum displays, at the bottom of each page, a statistical piece of data on load times.  This is not just the time required by the system to process your request internally; it also includes transmission time of all the elements of the page.  In other words it's an "end-to-end" view of the transaction from the time the system starts processing your request until it finishes it.  The only missing piece is that buffer drain time is not measured as the application cannot determine it.

Here's a fairly common view of that time for a "New Posts" command when running through a 4G cellular data connection that allows the carrier to "do it's thing" by using an unencrypted carrier-based packet channel:

Note the "Elapsed:" line -- 5.445 seconds.  This is pretty typical, and most of it is round-trip waiting -- that is, it's not transmission time, it's the time for the gateway to do both its NAT and "deep packet inspection" in both directions.  This is on a HSPA+ connection that is capable of and does reach 10Mbps+!

Now let's look at what happens when I enable IPSEC/IKEv2 on the same connection, adding two hops to the transaction as well.

The same command now takes 162 milliseconds to complete -- it's 33 times faster!

Now granted, the amount of data involved in this command is small (it's a "new posts" list request.)  But the user perception of performance over the 4g link is now effectively identical to that over WiFi sitting on my local network, although I'm actually on a mobile data connection!

There is a price for this, in that the IPSEC server must have a fast connection to the Internet itself, and for bulk file transfers this will slow things down, because the data flows over that link twice in getting to you on the phone -- once in and once out.  If you run a "Speedtest" over the VPN it'll be about half the speed of the raw connection but few actual uses, other than video streaming, are reasonable analogues of a speed test.  Rather, most user experiences are more-akin to the web-page model where you ask for a piece of data and then get it, and the actual amount of data you receive is relatively small.

So how hard was this to set up?   Quite a bit, but not due to really being hard, but rather due to the*****-poor set of documentation that comes with these protocols.  IPSEC offers a framework of capabilities and unfortunately the existing projects are mostly concerned with the idea of linking a remote office or LAN rather than the "mobile warrior" sort of single host.  In fact I banged my head on the wall over the StrongSwan configuration for a couple of days before I figured out what was going on (packets appeared to be literally disappearing for quite some time!) mostly because PPTP and LT2P are radically different in how they work internally (and that's where my previous VPN experience has come from.)

Nonetheless, BlackBerry's Z-10 offers a quite-easy to set up option with "Generic IKEv2" in its VPN screens and that option offers both the greatly enhanced security and performance of IKEv2 along with the performance improvements, while using either certificate authentication or pre-shared keys (passwords.)  Not only do you get secure access to your home or office you also get security against prying eyes of the cell carrier and improved performance.

Finally, the Z-10 can be told to bring up a VPN connection automatically whenever on a cellular connection or on individual saved Wifi networks.  This means that you can roam around and have the phone automatically secure and performance-enhance your connection without having to click the "enable" button all the time -- reducing your risk and making use both seamless and easy.

The only "gotcha" is that if you tether the tethered device does not go through the VPN.  However, you can have the tethered device access the same VPN server if you wish as well.

I have one objection -- the Z-10 does not display an icon in the notification bar if VPN is enabled and in use.  Blackberry needs to fix that so you can tell "at a glance" if the VPN connection is up or not.

As I've noted Android devices and IOS (iPhones/iPADs) support LT2P and other VPN options, but as far as I know IKEv2 is not supported, at least not out of the box.  To those who think it is not a big deal, you're wrong -- IKEv1 using clear-text passwords is subject to offline attack and LT2P, which is the common transport, is quite-inefficient compared to bare IPSEC/IKEv2.  For those who are in a corporate environment the use of certificates can (and does) overcome the security problem but you're still not going to see the performance levels you can achieve with native tunneling on an IPSEC/IKEv2 connection.

Blackberry wins big in this regard with the Z-10 -- they have both a security and performance advantage, and the latter, on mobile networks, is not small.

Disclaimer: You can pry my Z-10 out of my cold, dead fingers.  (Oh yeah, I own BBRY stock too)