Author: Horace Dediu

That River in Egypt

Mini-MSFT:

Windows Mobile 7: we so dropped the ball in our early phone OS presence that now it seems like it’s a losing battle to have a dog in this fight. But WinMo7 is out there. To me, I can imagine this becoming like the Zune HD: well praised and all, but not making a dent in the market because everyone has already moved on to the iPhone platform.
David Worthington interviews Brandon Watson, “director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft”:
Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective-C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.

Now if we can get the Grand Poobah of Ovi to chime in, we’ll be all set.


Two Million Droids

During the reported quarter, Motorola shipped 12 million mobile phones, commanding a global market share of just 3.7%. However, the newly launched two Android 3G smartphones CLIQ and DROID witnessed impressive results. Launched in the fourth quarter of 2009, these two devices generated sales of 2 million units together in the quarter.

Not sure what’s impressive about getting 2 million units sold after $100 million in promotion by Verizon.


First Thoughts on the iPad

I think it’s a logical evolution of mobile computing. A hop along the trajectory. When the iPhone first rolled out as an embodiment of the new touch-based UI–a disruptive technology, I said it was far too good as a phone. It could not be a better phone because phones were as good as they could be. It was a pretty lousy computer so I reasoned all it could become was a better computer. The iPad is a better computer.

Will it be a big hit? I think it will grow nicely and be profitable. It will take several iterations but eventually it will absorb usage from low-end laptops and move computing to new contexts. It will have amazing applications in certain verticals like education, health care, travel and automotive use.

All these steps are like checkboxes in the disruptor’s playbook. In 5 years, this will be as big a business as the Mac and then Apple will have to think how they break out of the 5% share ghetto.

Will there be a response? Yes, but, like with the iPhone, not for a long time, and not symmetrically. The PC guys will dismiss this and the phone guys will see it as outside scope. Once they begin the effort in earnest, it will fall well short of the entrenched, incumbent, integrated(*), rapidly evolving juggernaut that will be Apple Mobile Computing.

(*) Note the emphasis from Apple on its own CPU in the device. Apple does not talk about chipsets in their devices, but they did this time. Not only are they signaling control, but it also shows that value-chain integration down to silicon is what is needed to go up the performance trajectory for good-enough mobile computing.


Oppenheimer on Quattro

When asked about the company’s recent acquisitions of Quattro and Lala after yesterday’s earnings report, Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Openheimer answered, “In terms of Quattro and Lala we acquired Quattro because we wanted to offer a seamless way for developers to make more money on their apps, especially free apps.”

As I said before: why would a developer bother with AdMob if Apple integrates ads into the SDK? Does AdMob offer better terms? Does AdMob offer more sponsors? It’s the developers (and Apple indirectly) who supply inventory.


The Dynabook

Alan Kay, regarding his reaction to the iPhone in January 2007:

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.

http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet-apple-will-rule-the-world/

See also: Dynabook


Cash is King

40 billion at end of 2009 shows acceleration over 2008. In 2008 Apple added $9.7B in cash while in 2009 it added $11.7B.

Apple still has no debt.

I consider it safe to assume that at least $10 billion will be added during 2010 for an end of year total of $50 billion.

To put that in perspective, there are only 76 companies (out of 2673 listed on Google finance) whose entire market cap is greater than $50B. Nokia is not one of them.


Sony Ericsson ships 14.6 million phones

Sony Ericsson shipped 14.6 million phones at an average selling price of EUR120 in the fourth quarter, down from 24.2 million units at an average selling price of EUR121 a year before. Net sales fell to EUR1.75 billion from EUR2.91 billion, in line with market expectations.

We will see next week, but by my reckoning, Apple sold more iPhones and iPod Touch units last quarter than Sony Ericsson sold of all its phones.

The ASP is also likely to higher at maybe 400 EUR blended average, for a total sales of 6 Billion EUR vs. 1.75B for SE. That’s more than 3x the sales level.

Next year we might see >50% growth from Apple which would imply Apple overtaking Sony Ericsson in the phones market share race.