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Open Always Wins
That may be. Open only wins when the underlying service is a commodity for which improvements (other than price) will not be valued. In my way of speaking, openness is semantically equivalent to “modular” and that is in contrast to “integrated”. Integrated is the only way to develop systems when they are not good enough. Continue reading
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The Symmetry of Google and Microsoft in Mobile
The question of Android viability goes deeper than the app ecosystem. In fact the ecosystem is itself dependent on the network effect of the platform. That effect is weak because the platform is not “tight” and is prone to fragmentation and its value cannot be communicated to end users. That is due to the lack Continue reading
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Serving the Needs of IT
An interesting note in the latest Canalys Smartphone quarterly summary (http://www.canalys.com/pr/2009/r2009112.htm): “…in our October study of 600 European decision makers in medium and large enterprises, more than 20% said they expect the iPhone to be the dominant smart phone platform for running business applications in their organisation within the next 3 to 5 years. In Continue reading
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Is Mobile Computing Good Enough?
This new “mobile computing” use case that smartphones try to serve is not going to be satisfied with solutions that are built from modular components. The reason is simple: as the solutions are not good enough (because it’s early days), they need to be improved. If they are to be improved, competitive pressure will compel Continue reading
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Motomojo
Motorola shipped 13.6 million handsets in the quarter, compared with 25.4 million in the same quarter the year before. Android will not save them. Not least of all because HTC makes better Android devices. Continue reading
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Apple: It’s all about the “marketing”
“In fact, as a percentage of revenue, Apple has actually been decreasing its ad spending every year for the past eight, from nearly 5% in 2001 to 1.37% today. That’s about half the 3.6% Research in Motion’s spends advertising BlackBerries.” http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/28/apples-2009-ad-budget-half-a-billion/ Continue reading
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Apples vs. Nokia in North America
Comparing US sales of iPhones vs. Nokia’s NA device business. AT&T iPhones activated in Q3: 3.2 million Nokia phones sold in North America Q3: 3.1 million (obviously, Nokia’s figures include Canada and Apple might have sold a few more phones in the US than AT&T activated so Apple outsold Nokia by a significant margin in Continue reading
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Market Caps
For reference, some selected current market caps: Microsoft (MSFT) – $236.76B Apple (AAPL) – $183.40B Google (GOOG) – $173.97B IBM (IBM) – $159.93B Cisco (CSCO) – $138.60B Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) – $114.26B Intel (INTC) – $109.85B Disney (DIS) – $54.31B Nokia (NOK) – $48.24B Research In Motion (RIMM) – $37.43B Amazon (AMZN) – $40.34B Dell (DELL) Continue reading
