Author: Horace Dediu

RIM Reactions: Goldman Downgrades to 'Sell'

Goldman Sachs: “Evidence that the structural competitive issues are starting to weigh on its growth prospects. We estimate that RIM’s U.S. business declined 15% [quarter-on-quarter]—the second q-o-q decline in a row, and the first [year-over-year] decline. While RIM attributed that to an inventory reduction at a North America customer, we think the magnitude of the decline points more to lower demand at Verizon as a result of its endorsement of Android; our checks showed a dramatic reduction in the number of RIM [models] at Verizon last quarter and better sales for Motorola’s DROID than for RIM at many Verizon stores.”

via RIM Reactions: Goldman Downgrades to ‘Sell’ – MarketBeat – WSJ.

RIM remains the best feature phone company out there.  Too bad that feature phones are not going to survive against mobile computers.

Apple: When Will They Build Their Own Mobile Search Engine?

Apple: When Will They Build Their Own Mobile Search Engine? – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com.

The opportunity here is not to do web search better than Google, but to find a way to index the information that lives on the iPhone ecosystem.  With potential for millions of apps and hundreds of millions of iPhones generating usage patterns a separate mountain of information is emerging independent of the current cloud.  The mobile cloud has different hooks and different relevance measures.

Mobile search will be as much about new algorithms as about getting a new way to spider the data.

It seems Apple is better positioned to leverage this emerging space than Google.

Business customers eager to try Apple iPad

“Apple has blown through the barriers with the iPhone, and the same thing is going to happen with the iPad,” said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer for Salesforce.com. “This will be huge for business, and a major new category that will be a catalyst for many different aspects of the industry.”

link: Business customers eager to try Apple iPad


Analyst likes vertically integrated smartphones

“We believe that user experience complexity will grow and weigh in favor of those companies that can control and deliver superior integration through vertical integration of software and hardware,”

link: RIMM, Nokia tops in ‘year of the mobile computer’ The Ratings Game – MarketWatch

I’ve been banging on about this for some time. The analyst continues:

“We expect this unstable period to last for another 2-3 years before expected user experience stabilizes and a more horizontal industry emerges,” he wrote.

In this type of market, Hall says, Google’s Android has a greater advantage in a horizontal market than a vertical one.

“We would caution investors against prematurely declaring Android as the winner as we expect the mobile computer OS platform market to be hotly contested over the next 2-3 years,” Hall wrote.

I would argue it will take even longer than 3 years for horizontal (or, as I call it, modular) architectures to become competitive.

The evolution of user interfaces is now so rapid that modes of interaction become obsolete before value chains have time to evolve.

The iPod continues unchallenged long after it over-served because standalone music players are no longer an attractive market to challengers, especially in light of the continued integration with a music service (iTunes).


Rumor: iAd App Store service on April 7th

Citing an unnamed executive familiar with the plans, MediaPost claims that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has been touting the upcoming service, rumored to launch April 7th, as “revolutionary” and “our next big thing” amongst his inner circle. No further details were reported.

via AppleInsider | Apple rumored to introduce iAd App Store service on April 7th.

On December 30th 2009, I wrote:

I think it’s a certainty that Apple will introduce an ad serving platform for the iPhone (and any tablet) in 2010. This will amount to a checkbox that developers will check when submitting their app to the store.

Google’s Advertising Rev-Share Deals With Carriers

Well, at least part of the answer appears to be that Google is sharing advertising revenues with carriers that use Android, according to multiple sources who are familiar with the deals.

via Android’s Secret Sauce? Google’s Advertising Rev-Share Deals With Carriers | mocoNews.

This must be why AT&T replaced Google search with Bing on its Android phone and gutted all Google services as well.