IBM did not invent personal computing but their “PC” became synonymous with the category. Having entered the market in 1981, the IBM PC quickly became the top selling brand. From 1984 to 1993 IBM sold more PCs than any other vendor, conceding the spot to Compaq which remained on top only until 2000. No PC vendor … Continue reading “IBM and Apple: Catharsis”
Seven years after the iPhone was launched, 70% of the US population is using smartphones. Smartphones existed before the iPhone so the category is older than seven years but as far as adoption goes this is nearly the fastest ever. The CD Player reached 55% in seven years and the Boom Box about 62%. If … Continue reading “Late late majority”
You can hear this as an MP3. [It’s important to understand just how much the theory has evolved in the last 10 years. Much more perhaps than in its first eight.] Doug Kaye: Hello, and welcome to IT Conversations, a series of interviews recording and transcripts on the hot topics of information technology. I am … Continue reading “Ten years ago: Clayton Christensen on Capturing the Upside”
Catalin Stelian Andrei, Editor of The Day, INTERNET PROTV asked me twenty questions: 1. What phone do you have in your pocket right now? Why that model? I carry the iPhone 5. The last iPhone I bought was an iPhone 5C which I gave to a family member. 2. Apple is going to launch, form all we know, … Continue reading “Twenty Questions from Catalin Stelian Andrei”
The Re/Code conference begins this week, and Apple executives Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will be answering questions from Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Here are some questions I hope they ask: For Eddy Cue: Why is there no app store for Apple TV? Even though the product is running essentially the same hardware and … Continue reading “Questions for Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi”
In The Capitalist’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen and Derek van Bever introduce a powerful new theory which explains the relative paucity of growth in developed economies. They draw a causal relationship between the mis-application of capital in pursuit of innovation and the failure to grow.1 In particular, they observe that capital is allocated toward the type of … Continue reading “Who Solved the Capitalist’s Dilemma?”
In the graph below the grey circles represent the US penetration (percentage of households which own) MP3 players. Superimposed on this sparse sample graph is a line showing the sales of iPod touch. This second graph has a different scale, shown with a gridline at 10,000, representing millions of units shipped by Apple. To smooth … Continue reading “Categorizing technologies”
In the postmodern computing world that we live in, the measure of success isn’t revenue or profit or units sold but the number of users that an ecosystem can attract. Therefore the monthly active user (MAU) unit of performance seems to be in vogue right now. E.g.: Facebook claims Messenger has more than 200 million … Continue reading “Monthly Apple Users”
Show #1: The Future of the Internet and Everything Part 1: The Internet is dead, long live the Internet The data shows the Internet growth will go through an inflection point. Should we panic or celebrate? In this inaugural episode we open with the biggest question facing the biggest technological innovation of our time: the … Continue reading “Significant Digits Episode 1 Part 1”
There are 7.1 billion people on Earth. Coincidentally there are also 7 billion mobile connections. Those connections are held by 3.45 billion unique mobile subscribers.1 Unsurprisingly, the largest national mobile markets (by number of subscriptions) correspond closely to the most populous nations. Considering smartphones, last year 1 billion smartphones were sold and the number of … Continue reading “Postmodern computing”
