My appearance on Bloomberg West using an iPad to illustrate what it takes to make an iPad.
The Numbers Behind the Apple vs. Samsung Rivalry: Video – Bloomberg.
The Critical Path #103: The Amazon Electric Car
A history of retail as a series of innovations in transportation. How to think about Amazon in a continuum of changing consumer behavior. The source of Amazon’s market power and its hypothetical disruption. What would Amazon do and not do to improve its business.
via 5by5 | The Critical Path #103: The Amazon Electric Car.
(Note: This recording took place a few days before Amazon announced the drone-based Prime Air prototype service.)
The Critical Path #102: The Advertiser’s Dilemma
A history of Cinema as seen through disruptive lenses. How did the medium evolve from novelty to experimentation to establishment of a predominant business model to concentration of power, regulation and ultimate stagnation. How to measure “performance” of a medium via the median age of the audience and how that affects the advertiser’s calculus.
via 5by5 | The Critical Path #102: The Advertiser’s Dilemma.
When will the migration from PCs be complete?
IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark (report is here) has published, for the fourth year in a row, US online shopping traffic data with a split between mobile and fixed online traffic. It reveals a pattern of consumer behavior which is quite startling: people seem to prefer to shop using mobile devices.
The data is shown below:
Continue reading “When will the migration from PCs be complete?”
When will there be one billion iOS devices in use?
iOS unit sales crossed over 700 million units last month. That is a significant milestone but the total number of units in use is likely to be lower. My estimate based on device replacement assumptions is that about 500 million are still in use.
The estimated break-down of units sold and in use by device type is shown below:
Continue reading “When will there be one billion iOS devices in use?”
Cubed Episode 010: The Process of Innovation
I joined Benedict Evans and Ben Bajarin on their Cubed podcast to discuss innovation and cultures that breed innovation. We also discuss some updates on our thinking of the curious case of the android tablet ghosts toward the end.
Show Notes
The Meaning of Really Cheap Android
Android as the Platform For Commodity Electronics
Harvard Business Review – How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity (subscription required)
via Cubed Episode 010: The Process of Innovation | Cubed Podcast.
Dark Matter
Benedict Evans explains well the problem with measuring Android tablets. There are no reliable data collected because many of the devices are invisible through the regular, measurable channels:
- There are no firms which report their shipments
- They are not sold through retail chains which normally are sampled in the US and Europe (NPD and GfK respectively.)
- They don’t show up in browsing or ad transaction data
- Google Play statistics are missing most of the activations since they are not sold as bona fide Google-sanctioned Android.
The only measured statistic happens to be component shipments. Items such as screens, CPUs or perhaps memory might be visible to market analysts. It’s therefore tempting to add up tires manufactured to determine what’s getting sold in auto dealerships.
But it’s also hugely problematic.
A way to measure one’s life
In the post Seeing What’s Next, I showed how the rate of change of adoption of technology varies with time and asked what might be experienced by present and future generations.
It turns out that knowing how what innovations become universal and the speed at which these technologies are replaced can give us an idea of what individuals might experience in their lifetimes.
Here’s how to think about it:
Seeing What’s Next
The adoption of smartphones in the US is on track for reaching 90% of the available audience by August 2016. This is a mere eight years after smartphones reached 10% penetration. As far as technologies go, that’s pretty fast. To get an idea of how rapid, I plotted a few other technologies and the time they took to grow within the US market.
A few things to note: Continue reading “Seeing What’s Next”
The Critical Path #101: The Genie is Out
The fascination with highly visible but largely unknown business models continues. How do infomercials work? What is the value of fashion? How can you make money when no creative idea can be protected? Why is Apple building a sapphire manufacturing facility? It’s all part of a pattern.