Category: Industry

Mobile Computing Industry

Apps attract more viewer attention than most TV shows

Social games on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices are competing for television viewers.  In fact, these apps, tracked on the Flurry network alone, comprise of a daily audience of more than 19 million who spend over 22 minutes per day using these apps.  Treated as a consumer audience, its size and reach rank somewhere between NBC’s Sunday Night Football and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and only 4 million viewers shy from beating the number one prime-time show on television, FOX’s American Idol.

via Flurry. Continue reading “Apps attract more viewer attention than most TV shows”

Escape from license-land: Measuring phone vendor commitment to licensed mobile platforms

Windows Phone had its day in the sun yesterday. After discarding its previous seven-year effort with Windows Mobile, Microsoft started with a clean sheet of paper. However, whereas the software has been re-built, the business model has not. WP is still a licensed operating system whose primary customers are mobile phone vendors. With Symbian mostly out of the picture, WP becomes only the second viable commercially licensed mobile OS, after Android.

So with two licensed platforms in the running, how do we measure success in the licensing business? Units sold to end users is one metric. But that data will have to include the performance of vendors and operators and other distributors. And it will take a year to do valid comparisons. The only indicative metric we have available today is how many devices have been committed by vendors.

As WP is out of the gate with device announcements, we can actually measure this. We can plot each vendor’s commitment to various platforms as an early indicator of strategic success. To that end, here’s the methodology: I took all smartphone vendors and tallied how many SKUs they have announced or leaked for either the WP or Android platforms (source: pdadb.net). I then plotted each vendor on two “commitment axes” (see notes below). Continue reading “Escape from license-land: Measuring phone vendor commitment to licensed mobile platforms”

Acer chairman predicts iPad market share

Acer chairman J.T. Wang recently predicted that Apple’s share of the tablet market would decline precipitously as new rivals emerge, falling from nearly 100 percent to 20 to 30 percent.

via Apple Will Retain At Least Half the Growing Tablet Market, Says Analyst | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD.

So let me get this straight: A PC vendor…

Adobe and Microsoft sitting in a tree

Adobe is one of the last surviving desktop software companies. So is Microsoft. Consolidation happens when an industry matures and excess capacity and excess overhead can be squeezed out of the value chain, giving a temporary burst of earnings growth.

So, in this way of thinking, recognizing that the sun is setting on desktop software, a merger of old schools of thought may make sense. Rather like Sun and Oracle or HP and Compaq.

But then a lot of other things make more sense. Like both companies trying to expand into new growth areas. Like Microsoft talking to RIM or Adobe developing tools for HTML5. Adobe’s cash cow products are not going anywhere without a deep reset. Same is true for Microsoft. They will both face these challenges whether standing alone or together.

There would be nothing strange about a Microsoft Adobe merger, but there would be nothing great about it either.

IBM Survey: The cell phone is no longer a gadget – it’s what IT is going to become

“In all areas of software development, mobile computing is seen as the number-one hottest IT opportunity next year,” said Jim Corgel, an IBM general manager of independent software vendors and developer relations who was involved in the survey. “Not only will mobile spike to the forefront, but by 2015, respondents said it will dominate everything. The cell phone is no longer a gadget – it’s what IT is going to become.”

via IBM Survey Says Mobile Apps Will Dominate Enterprise – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ.

Developers are usually not very good at predicting specific business winners or losers (to prove this consider why developers don’t spend their energy and earn their living picking tech stocks instead of writing code.)

However, developers are very good at spotting long term technology trends. It was developers who championed the early internet and it was developers who saw potential in social networking. To see a survey of developers confirm that mobile devices will dominate IT, in contradiction to most incumbent strategies, is encouraging.

The strategic tension inherent in the iPhone franchise

I don’t write product reviews and I don’t pass judgement on individual products but I do own and test various products. For example I have the Android powered Samsung Galaxy 5 (GT-I5500) and the experience is, in my opinion, better than for recent Symbian phones but not as smooth as for Apple’s products.

But that’s not what this article is about.

It’s about Continue reading “The strategic tension inherent in the iPhone franchise”

The symmetry of share shifts in mobile phones

Thanks to a reader’s suggestion, I took another look at the profit and market share data from the mobile phone market overview posted last quarter. This time to compare the vendors on two dimensions at the same time.

I plotted the vendors on share of market and share of profit axes in two different points in time: Q2 2007 and Q2 2010. I further broke the chart into four quadrants as shown: Continue reading “The symmetry of share shifts in mobile phones”

Ticonderoga sees over 15 million iPads in 9 months

White contends iPad could be “one of the most coveted gifts” this holiday season; he sees the company selling 7.1 million units in the September 2010 fiscal year, with 19.9 million in 2011, and 25.8 million in 2012.

The analyst said his target is based on 20x his interest expense/income adjusted calendar 2011 pro forma EPS estimate, plus net cash of $49.43 a share.

via Apple: Ticonderoga Starts With Buy, Street-High $430 Target – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com.

If Apple hits 5 million in the just ended September quarter Continue reading “Ticonderoga sees over 15 million iPads in 9 months”

Is Android share of Web lagging iOS share of Web?

Of all the public statistics about platform share, Share of web use must be the most important measure for Google. The more browsing people do, the more searching they do and if Google search is most likely for a platform then the more income Google derives from that platform.

NetMarketshare.com has offered an insight into the split between Android and iOS as search platforms and it shows how iOS is still five times more likely to yield search revenue than Android. That multiple is likely to shrink as the gap narrows, but it still demonstrates the power of iOS to drive Google’s bottom line. It’s no wonder then why Google has renewed their default placement of Google search in mobile Safari (a guarantee they don’t seem to share with all Android licensees.)

But Android launched later than iPhone, so everyone should be asking how rapidly the share of Continue reading “Is Android share of Web lagging iOS share of Web?”

Android licensees: If you're not paying, you're being sold

The latest litigation lollapalooza over Android reminds one of the old web adage that if you’re not paying for content, you’re the asset being sold.

That’s certainly one of the consequences of the Android licensing model. The mobile phone vendors with no software intellectual property are pawns in a game between IP holders. It’s clear that Microsoft and Apple and Oracle (and perhaps Nokia) have IP issues with Google. But it’s the licensee device vendors which are most often the accused. Whether Google indemnifies or not is an open question, but the evidence is that the vendors are exposed.

The proof is in the fact that HTC is paying Microsoft for the use of Android. It’s conceivable that Microsoft also asked Motorola for Android royalty payments but were rebuffed. It’s also possible Continue reading “Android licensees: If you're not paying, you're being sold”