Apple's iPhones and iPads could be banned in Germany

Apple faces the prospect of having its iPad and iPhone devices banned in Germany, just months after securing a ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country with a similar ruling.

Motorola Mobility, which is the subject of a prospective takeover by Google, won a ruling in a German court against Apple’s European sales company, Ireland-based Apple Sales International, based on a patent relating to a “method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system”.

The Court has granted Motorola Mobility’s requests for an injunction and damages, the company said. The news will come as validation for Google, which is pursuing the business primarily for its patent portfolio.

“We will continue to take all necessary steps to protect our intellectual property, as our patent portfolio and licensing agreements with companies both in the U.S. and around the world are critical to our business,” said Scott Offer, senior vice president and general counsel of Motorola Mobility.

“We have been negotiating with Apple and offering them reasonable licensing terms and conditions since 2007, and will continue our efforts to resolve our global patent dispute as soon as practicable.”

Unsurprisingly, Apple announced plans to appeal the decision.”We’re going to appeal the court’s ruling right away,” read a statement from the firm emailed to Dow Jones Newswire. “Holiday shoppers in Germany should have no problem finding the iPad or iPhone they want.”

The move is the latest twist in an ongoing patent saga between Apple and Google’s Android hardware partners.

Apple recently failed to secure a ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, after an Australian High Court rejected an appeal to keep the device off shelves. It was also denied a preliminary injunction to block the sale of Samsung’s touchscreen smartphones and tablets in the US, while Samsung too lost out in its attempts to ban sales of Apple’s iPhone 4S device in France.

Lee Epting, group director of content services at Vodafone

Some applications available through Apple’s App Store are failing to meet Vodafone’s internal quality standards, accessing APIs that are non-essential for the applications’ functions, according to the international carrier’s group director of content services, Lee Epting.

“What we’ve found is that there’s lots of stuff getting into the Apple App Store that we don’t think Apple would be happy with,” Epting told Telecoms.com. “We don’t know why; maybe they’ve dropped the bar. But when we quality check these apps they fail our standards, mainly for using APIs not required for the application. So we’re more stringent than other application stores,” she said.

Vodafone recently launched a branded store within the Android market and a curated, multi-platform store of its own in response to what it has identified as a confusingly wide array of applications in the market place.

If Vodafone is correct in its assessment there is a new generation of smartphone users who are clamouring to be let back into the walled garden. It could be argued that the growing adoption of HTML5 as a rich web technology will exacerbate this problem as many see an HTML5 site as a cheaper alternative to a full blown mobile application.

Epting conceded that HTML5 gives brands the ability to bypass all other channels in the delivery of their solutions but argued that the web is, “just another touch-point. Users come in via the browser and are presented an app to download to the desktop.”

She told Telecoms.com that users exploring the device default to an app-centric world and, while widgets as a concept are becoming increasingly dynamic, there is more richness available  from native apps. “I have yet to see one new paradigm put another paradigm to death. Just look at Java,” she said. “It’s still a primary breadwinner for a lot of app developers today and is a mainstream in the emerging markets. Java will still be around for some time because people with feature phones will want content too.”

Vodafone's Peter Becker-Pennrich

As the global director for terminals marketing at the Vodafone Group, Peter Becker-Pennrich holds decision making powers over a procurement strategy that deals in serious volumes. Vodafone buys between 60 and 70 million handsets each year, spending $8bn across it’s footprint, including affiliates and partner markets.

Just eight vendors account for 98 per cent of the handsets Vodafone offers and Becker-Pennrich says he expects this number to go down. He won’t reveal how many models are in the Vodafone portfolio, saying only that it is a number similar to that targeted by Telefónica, which is looking to slash its 240-model range by more than half. He adds that he anticipates “quite a bit” of reduction in the number of models on offer during 2012.

As Telecoms.com speaks to Becker-Pennrich, late in November 2011, the handset sector is in an even greater state of flux than usual. Over the past few months Nokia and Microsoft have blasted back into the smartphone market, Apple’s talismanic leader Steve Jobs has died, RIM has continued to founder and Ericsson has announced its departure from the handset market, with Sony buying it out of the two firms’ JV Sony Ericsson.

Do you think that vendors are managing to differentiate themselves successfully in the smartphone space – particularly the competing Android vendors?

I don’t think they’re doing it very successfully in terms of impacting customer choice. If you were to compare devices from Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC and the rest, you would actually find quite a lot differences. But what we see from the behaviour of customers in the market is that they typically gravitate towards the large brands. It’s very hard for the smaller players to find ways to differentiate on top of what has become a very standardised design, which is a small tablet. There’s not much design innovation you can bring around tablets and on the OS side the choices are limited. So in terms of customer perception the differentiation is relatively low.

Will that change and, if so, how?

My personal theory is that, if you look at the last ten years in this industry, we’ve always gone through cycles that are driven by some form of technology innovation. So when we started Vodafone Live! we had the clamshell form factor coming into Europe, along with colour screens and cameras. That used to be a €400-plus segment but it went down in price over time.

So camera phones brought the Japanese players to Europe, who had not really been present before, while Nokia missed the boat. Later, the arrival of 3G brought the Korean players in. Another trend was for flat phones like Motorola’s Razr, and another was the slider form factor.

Now, what happens at the beginning of the innovation cycle, typically, is that whoever owns that innovation is able to capitalise on it and build a brand value.  Later on, as the innovation cycle flattens out and more players are part of it—and price goes through the floor—it’s very hard for the players who were not part of the first wave of innovation to explain to customers why they demand a premium price for their brands.

Then current trend for smartphones—started by the iPhone—has been unusually long, but it’s still just a trend. We’re at the very tail end of that trend right now and you can see that the players which led that trend initially are very hard to challenge. Vendors who can theoretically build similar products are struggling to convince consumers to take the risk and go for a lesser known brand.

So there is little differentiation right now, but I don’t think we are headed for a PC model, even though people have said that over the past ten years every time we get to the end of the innovation cycle and there’s nothing else on the horizon. I think there is always going to be something new that will change the world again.

If that’s true, what do you think that something new is going to be this time?

There are a couple of candidates. One is outside the phone space; I expect that the connected device category—by which I mean any consumer device that has a SIM but is not a phone, which is led by the tablet segment—will grow massively next year, simply because prices will come down significantly from where they are today. The number one or two reason for customers not to buy tablets today is that they are too expensive. That will be a significant growth driver for next year and our challenge is to make sure we have the right propositions and retail set up to capitalise on that.

Are you not concerned that tablets may be used principally over wifi connections, threatening the data revenue model?

That trend varies greatly across markets. I see that in the UK, but in other markets like Spain, Italy and Germany, we see almost the opposite distribution of wifi and 3G usage. Across the board in Europe it’s about 50-50. The operators are becoming more educated in how customers really want to use their tablets and are creating offers that are tailor-made to support these use cases. I would forecast that the share of 3G-enabled tablets is going up rather than down for the next year.

That said, there will always be a substantial share of people who want a “couch tablet” that they just use on their domestic wifi connection. We have offers for these too, with mifi and tethering options with smartphones. It’s not a problem, it’s a matter of offering the right way for people to connect regardless of which kind of product they have.

As I said, it’s not just tablets; look at our announcement on the Sony game player. We’ll see significant growth in the next two years for sure.

And what’s the other trend?

The second thing is that, whichever company can create a really smooth integration with the home environment—whoever gets that right first—will be able to command a premium on their products in the smartphone space. Devices will be very neatly bundled with whatever happens on TV, media centres, on home stereo and tablets etc.

I still need to find a product which really neatly works with everything I have at home. If you look at Apple or other suppliers, they are halfway there—I don’t think these guys have really cracked it yet. If they do then there will be a business model occur where someone would offer a quad-play including all the devices and all the services for a flat fee per month. That’s quite a disruptive business model for the device manufacturers. It could be good fro Samsung, Sony and Apple. But it would be harsh for other vendors. It would be hard for the likes of HTC, for example, which doesn’t have a play outside the mobile phone space.

So the vendors will be pushing to get users onto a single brand for all these devices, mobile and domestic?

I think so, because the ones that have the best potential to win in this space are the ones that already have a play in every element. So there’s a lot of sense in trying to drive people towards a single-brand home.

But what is happening on the horizon, and we just need to see how it gets commercialised, is that there are more and more standards like DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) and all sorts of streaming standards in the network and cloud storage. So there is the chance to actually offer something which is open. If someone works that out and finds a way to offer it across devices from multiple platforms, that could be a disruptive event for the entire industry.

Let’s return to the present competitive situation now. Nokia and Microsoft have made a high profile return to the smartphone space. Is Vodafone pleased to see them back with Windows Phone?

The duopoly of iOS and Android feels uncomfortable and, if you look below the surface, iOS makes it difficult for us to push our services and differentiation agenda. So competition is always good. But Android is actually much more helpful than WP at the moment if you look at the high level requirements from an operator perspective in terms of commercial flexibility, attractiveness to lots of vendors, the ability to pre-embed things and deeply root things into the OS.

Android does that quite neatly. The only problem is that if Google had a bad day and changed all its policies then there’s relatively little that the industry could do about it. That’s where a lot of the discomfort is coming from. So we need more competition in the smartphone OS space.

Windows Phone is not there yet. They are making genuine efforts for Windows Phone 8 but in Window Phone 7 there is still a lot to be wished for, especially  when it comes to offering all those things we need on the enterprise side and the overall flexibility of the OS. Having said that there is benefit in having competition and more players on the market and that’s why we welcome Nokia and Microsoft back into that space.

In the past Microsoft has been criticised for taking too PC-centric a view of the world, and struggling in the smartphone space as a result. Do you think this fair, and has it changed?

I would have said that was true for a while but if you look at what they’re doing now, the Windows Phone 8 kernel is completely changing from Windows Phone 7 to be the same as they have for Windows 8 on the PC. Just look at it technically, two or three years into the future, what exactly will be the difference between a PC which happens to be quite flat and has a touch screen compared to a tablet compared to a smaller version of that which is a smartphone?

I would agree that, architecturally,  Microsoft took a PC-centric view two or three years ago. But not now.

So do you think that Microsoft has a strong play in the smartphone space now?

Well, I continue to be confused with Microsoft’s stance. On the one hand they want to provide a fairly rigid, streamlined experience, saying they don’t want to confuse the customer. They want to have a brand recognition for their experience—they don’t want to be like Android where, in some cases, you can’t distinguish what’s underneath the skin that the vendors put on top of the OS. But in itself this is of no value for anyone in the ecosystem except for Microsoft.

On the other hand they want to appeal to as many OEMs as possible. But if they want to be restrictive with their experience and at the same time appeal to the OEMs, you just can’t square that. Why would an OEM be interested in taking the platform if they can’t differentiate on top of it?

My long term expectation is that at some point Nokia and Microsoft will become one. Not necessarily from a financial and corporate entity perspective but simply because it’s hard for the likes of Samsung and HTC to really justify any investments into Windows Phone if Nokia is benefiting from much tighter integration with Microsoft and the much bigger bet the company has made on Windows Phone.

Do you have a positive outlook on Nokia’s chances for success with its new offering?

I’m tentatively optimistic. I don’t believe that success is guaranteed but nor is it all doom and gloom which, you sometimes see in the analyst opinion pieces. Nokia stlll has one of the strongest and largest supply chains in the world. Their economies of scale are still significant. Unlike some of their competitors they do have a quite substantial presence, in all of the markets that we operate in, at least. It’s really important, if you’re a vendor, that you know how to work the channels and you’ve got enough sales structure in place.

And they do still have brand value, for sure—and a lot of brand recognition. This is a dormant asset because, if they manage to underpin that with more attractive products—and you could say the Lumia800 is an attractive product compared to what came before—then I can see how a lot of these things can be leveraged again, compared to where they were last year. There could be quite a good growth curve for Nokia in the smartphone segment in 2012. Is that going to happen for sure? I don’t know—but they have a fighting chance and therefore I’m tentatively optimistic.

Ok, so let’s go from a leader-turned-challenger to the company that effectively created the smartphone sector as we know it today; Apple. The firm lost Steve Jobs this year, and was overtaken by Samsung as the highest volume smartphone vendor, although Samsung has a far broader product range. Is Apple still a leader, and can the firm succeed without Jobs?

If we refer back to the industry paradigm about innovation cycles, then Apple were the ones that benefitted most from the latest one—and they have a lot of clout at the end of it. If the tablet is the next big thing then Apple have done a great job of also meeting that need from the start. It’s very rare in the tech industry that someone would be able to do that back to back.

So we just have to give them a lot of credit for what they’ve built. In doing so I think they did leverage their capacity for innovation. But looking into the company from my discussions with Tim Cook before he took his new role, and some of the guys that are running the iPhone and iPad business there, the whole company is completely built to execute from the top. They are so rigid on their processes—of going to market, of production, of everything you could imagine. It’s no wonder they are the most valuable tech company in the world right now because they have the best products delivered through the best processes.

The question is whether or not they will have the best product going forward. And you could argue that the iPhone 4s was a disappointment to many people. If  you forget about brand value and all these kind of things, and just genuinely compare a Galaxy Nexus, SII or HTC sensation with an iPhone you find many reasons why the iPhone wouldn’t be rated as high as the others.

So the big question will be whether they can replace the genius at the top with enough empowerment in the system and at the same time maintain the rigour in their processes. If they can’t, then you can imagine that all their marketing guidelines, which are very strict and are quite clear on what the different channels can do and cannot do, will be impossible to enforce. And you can already see that in some markets at the edge of Europe or outside [the core markets] they are starting to really struggle to maintain the level of control they used to have.

If you have processes which are not built with flexibility and your content is not absolutely dominant any more, then you can’t just instruct people to act the way you want them to and that could be very disruptive to the business model that they have built.

Finally, I’d like to hear your thoughts about Research in Motion. That firm is having a tough time. Do you expect them to come out the other side ok?

RIM reminds me right now of Nokia around the point when Nokia was selling the N97, maybe a bit later. If you have strong leaders who take credit for taking  company to where it is now, they really struggle to see that they shouldn’t be the ones who take it further forward. We’ve seen the same thing with Motorola, we’ve seen it with Nokia  and now we’re seeing it with RIM.

I’m not sure whether RIM entirely understand the magnitude of the problem that they have. I don’t think it has completely sunk in. Look at their options; should they license another OS? I think it’s quite difficult because what makes your Blackberry really valuable is not the user experience of being able to write emails and integration and all of that. It is the unbeaten ability to have push email with very decent battery life; a service that is super stable, super robust. They’ve taken a lot of flack for the outage they had but they ran so many accounts for so many years when nothing happened. That’s their strength.

The magic sauce of this thing is just about where the silicon hits the software. It’s very far down  in the software development. So it’s not easy for them to put some standard software on top of their hardware and then somehow use all the things they’ve been developing. It will be a massive effort but I think they will go for an open OS which they don’t control—which is why they made the QNX purchase.

Sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 are permitted in Australia... For now...

An Australian court has ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not infringe on patents held by Apple, clearing the way for the product to go on sale in the Australian market. In October Apple was granted  a temporary injunction that stopped Samsung from selling the unit in Australia.

This most recent ruling is just another twist in a bitter and protracted battle between Apple and Samsung that began in April this year in the US, when Apple claimed that its Korean competitor had “chosen to slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple’s valuable intellectual property rights.”

Apple has since pursued Samsung through the courts in a number of different markets.

But Samsung may not yet get access to the potentially lucrative Christmas sales period in Australia as Apple has indicated its intention to appeal the court’s latest decision.

Samsung has been told it can no longer sell the Galaxy tablet in Germany

Apple has won a case in Germany to prohibit the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 device in the country.

A Düsseldorf court upheld the preliminary injunction secured by Apple, which claims that Samsung had infringed its intellectual property and copied the iPad.

Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann ruled that there was a “clear impression of similarity” between the Apple and the Samsung devices.

Apple declined to comment on the judgement, but Samsung wrote in a statement:

“We are disappointed with this ruling and believe it severely limits consumer choice in Germany.”

The company added that it will “actively and immediately” appeal the ruling and will likely go to a higher court, the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf.

Colin Fowler, associate at specialist IP law firm Rouse, said that the practical effect of the ruling will be limited to Germany, rather than the EU-wide ban – with the exception of the Netherlands – that Apple had initially secured.

“The skirmish over the injunction is important not just for Apple and Samsung, but also for other tablet manufacturers, as well as consumers, because it means the product stays off the market in Germany. Apple is reportedly now also pursuing the Galaxy Tab 7.7 so the dispute between the two companies appears to be escalating,” said Fowler.

“However, the two central issues of whether Apple’s design survives a validity attack and whether Samsung’s product is too close to Apple’s design and therefore infringes it will not be finally decided for many months. If Apple is eventually successful Samsung will have to redesign or abandon the affected products and future designs for tablets from all manufacturers would have to steer clear of Apple’s design rights.”

Patents are killing innovation, said Saadi

The ongoing patent disputes between Apple and Google and its Android partners is killing innovation, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

In the US, HTC is suing Apple after acquiring technology patents from Google, while Apple has been aggressively pursuing Google’s Android hardware partners with patent lawsuits. It currently has more than ten ongoing legal cases filed against Samsung alone for Android-based devices.

HTC acquired nine patents from Google, which itself took ownership of the patents less than a year ago, with four of the patents originating from its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, three from Openwave Systems and two from Palm.

The handset vendor is now filing a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court of Delaware for patent infringement by Apple’s Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod product lines.

“We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones,” said Grace Lei, general counsel, at HTC.

And Google’s protection of its industry partners is a key factor in these ongoing patent disputes, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media.

“HTC’s patent portfolio is not as strong as Apple’s, but it is one of the prime partners of Google when it comes to Android, so you have to view Android as an ecosystem,” he said.

“Google’s aim is to get that ecosystem as widespread as they can, so that they can capitalise on it. Google has a business model where they are not making money from hardware but they want their software to be everywhere so that they can capitalise on that widespread presence.”

He added that Google’s acquisition of Motorola will not deter hardware partners from working with it, because it has acquired a strong patent portfolio to protect not only Motorola, but the whole Android ecosystem.

“All Android partners will, in fact, have a vested interest in welcoming Google’s acquisition of Motorola,” added Saadi.

And with Apple targeting Google’s Android partners with its own lawsuits, because they represent the strongest competitor to Apple’s mobile and portable product lines, Saadi added that these ongoing patent disputes are having a destructive impact on the tech industry.

“Initially, the goal of patenting was to protect innovation. Now, the target of patenting is to prevent innovation, because of this protectionism,” said Saadi. “That is really bad for the industry, when you see companies just buying patent rights to use them as legal battle against others – that really kills innovation.”

However, a resolution could come in the form of a bill to overhaul the operations of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which is speeding toward a conclusion. With software now driving innovation, rather than hardware, Saadi believes the proposed bill will calm the patent problem down.

“In Europe, software players don’t traditionally patent software, they have intellectual property copyright instead. In the US, software is hugely patentable. Copyright keeps negotiations open and you can create agreements to use it. But when you patent something, you don’t give anyone a chance to even explore or experiment with that type of code,” said Saadi.

“Intellectual property copyright encourages more sharing and innovation, while patenting is just becoming a legal tool and that’s the difference between Europe and the US. It’s becoming a case that these giants are trying to monopolise innovation and giving a hard time to anyone who wants to innovate their own circle.”

Android market downloads will hit 8.1 billion in 2011

The world’s smartphone users will download a total of 18 billion mobile apps during 2011, up 144 per cent from 7.4 billion in 2010, according to Ovum. The firm forecast that the number of downloads will grow to 45 billion in 2016.

While many of the apps downloaded by consumers are free of charge, revenues are increasing. Ovum expects app downloads to generate sales of $3.7bn this year, up 92 per cent on 2010, eventually hitting $7.7bn in 2016.

With the growing number of Android handsets available, Ovum predicts that Android Market downloads will outstrip downloads from Apple’s App Store for the first time in 2011. The firm expects Android downloads to hit 8.1 billion this year, compared to six billion for Apple.

“Consumers’ seemingly insatiable demand for mobile applications is set to continue this year,” said Ovum analyst Nick Dillon. “The outlook for the longer term is also positive with consumers set to continue to use apps to add new features to their phones and to access their favourite services on the go.”

The increasing popularity of smartphones has laid the foundations for the growth in app downloads. Figures from Gartner show that, with unit sales of 107.7 million, smartphones accounted for 25.13 per cent of total handset shipments in the first quarter of this year, up from 16.86 per cent for the first quarter of 2010.

The next generation of Apple's popular iPhone is expected to be unveiled soon

The fifth iteration of Apple’s popular iPhone handset has inched closer to commercial availability with the news that Deutsche Telekom has begun taking pre-orders of the new mode.

The company told Bloomberg that it will hand out coupons to people who request the replacement for the iPhone 4, but it would not confirm what the handset will be called or launch details of the device.

As of yesterday, O2 UK claimed that it did not know when the next iPhone would be made available, while Vodafone UK admitted that it would be available soon and that the operator would be supplying the device.

Meanwhile, Apple is also training staff in its retail outlets on the iOS 5 operating system, which the handset will use - as well as on the new iCloud service, according to 9to5Mac.com.

Apple had originally said that the iCloud service would be launched alongside the next generation iPhone. The report states that training will be done through the company’s internal RetailMe application.

Apple iPhone handsets currently hold 18.2 per cent of the worldwide smartphone market, according to research firm Gartner, trailing behind Nokia, which has 22.1 per cent and Google’s Android operating system, which dominates with 43.4 per cent.

HTC has been accused of tracking users' locations with its Sensation handset

HTC has become the latest mobile player to become embroiled in controversy over the tracking of users’ locations.

The Taiwanese handset manufacturer faces allegations that two of its handsets, the Sensation and Evo 3D, track users’ locations without permission. A new Android software update that was issued to these two handsets was found to have included tweaks that allow the OS to log users’ behaviour.

The allegations come just days after Microsoft found itself being sued in the US after it was accused of tracking the location of its smartphone users, while almost 27,000 Apple customers in South Korea are suing the firm for tracking their movements via their phones’ location.

However, HTC has defended its policy, claiming that the new functions are all tied to an opt-in service and that it is not spying on anyone.

The firm said that all of the data collected by the devices in question is encrypted, and the data collected by the process is only sent to HTC if the user has already opted in to an error reporting feature.

“HTC, like most manufacturers, has an opt-in error reporting function built in to our devices. If your phone experiences an error, you have the option of “Telling HTC” so we can make improvements to our phones,” the firm said in a statement.

“Details about this are in our privacy policy on each device and in order for data to be collected, you have to opt-in. If you do opt-in, we protect your privacy by de-identifing and encrypting the data. HTC is committed to protecting your privacy and that means a commitment to clear opt-in/opt-out as the standard for collecting any information we need to serve you better.”

The FT has pulled its app from the App Store

The Financial Times (FT) has had its iPad app removed from iTunes following a dispute with Apple.

The decision was made after the FT refused to comply with Apple’s demand that is collects a 30 per cent cut from all in-app payments and subscriptions, and has ownership of all customer data that is collected.

The FT has instead been pointing users to its web browser-based app for the iPad and iPhone, which offers more features than the native app, and is written in HTML 5.

“The FT iPad and iPhone apps will no longer be available to new users through iTunes. We’re encouraging our readers to switch immediately to the new FT web app, as many new features and sections will be added over the coming weeks,” said a spokesperson from the FT.

“iTunes will remain an important channel for new and existing advertising based apps.”

However, the move should not have too much of a negative impact on FT’s readership figures, as it has already garnered a strong reputation among iPad users, according to Adrian Drury, consultant and lead analyst for media tech, broadcast and telecoms at Ovum.

“The value of the App Store is that it offers access to traffic that goes through its search bar,” he said.

“But the FT has been very clever; it has already created a solid critical mass and a solid reputation for apps, and it began moving users away from its native iTunes in March this year.”

“Other publishers have been exploring the idea of exiting iTunes because of to Apple’s demands, but they first have to get to that point where they have that critical mass of users. The FT has had its iPad app on iTunes since day one, and it has the reputation and a large user base, but other firms don’t have that critical mass of users that they can then concentrate on converting them to browser apps, rather than their native apps.”