Benedict Evans: From 2007 to 2012 annual handset sales grew from 1.1bn units to 1.7bn units. This was, obviously enough, driven by an expansion in the number of ‘human’ mobile phone users from 2.1bn to 3.2bn (the number of total connections was much higher). Almost all of the growth in subscribers and hence in handset […]
March 2013
The Week in Review — March 25-29, 2013
This week was a relatively slow one in tech, but a big one for this blog. On Monday, March 25, 2013, stratechery.com officially launched. And what a week it was! Four full articles, 12 linked list items, and this summary. I’m still working to find the right voice and post frequency — I don’t think […]
Facebook’s Mobile Failure: A Compare/Contrast With LINE
Facebook is in the news for an imminent Android-related announcement; speculation is heavy that this is fabled Facebook phone. Techcrunch: Facebook just invited press to an event at its headquarters on April 4th to “Come See Our New Home On Android”. Sources tell us it will be a modified version of the Android operating system […]
How Samsung Became the World's No. 1 Smartphone Maker
Businessweek: To see how his company was faring internationally, Lee embarked on a world tour in 1993. His findings were not encouraging: A visit in February to a Southern California electronics store revealed Sony and Panasonic (PC) TVs in the front window and Samsung TVs gathering dust on a low shelf in the back. Lee […]
EA and the Future
Mitch Lasky: A lot of the buzz around the EA interregnum has focused on EA’s relevance in digital distribution, mobile gaming and free-to-play. Can EA win in these new markets? What should a 21st century EA look like? It is interesting to think about EA’s assets and the current state of the digital game economy […]
Samsung Galaxy S4 to cost $249.99 on AT&T
The Verge: AT&T has announced availability and pricing for the new Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. Customers will be able to preorder the Galaxy S4 starting on April 16th for $249.99 with a new two-year agreement. The carrier claims to be the first to offer the GS4 in the US, though Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other […]
T-Mobile’s New Value Chain
T-Mobile’s relaunch as an “uncarrier” has drawn it’s fair share of critics. After all, what is the difference between buying a phone with a contract versus buying a phone with a financing plan? In practical terms, not much. I don’t think this will really move the needle. But as an observer of the industry, I […]
Where in the World Are Windows Phones Outselling iPhones?
NYT Bits Blog: According to Kevin Restivo, an analyst at IDC, the countries where Windows Phone shipments exceeded those of iPhone during the fourth quarter were: Argentina, India, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine. A seventh “country” where Windows Phone shipments beat iPhone is actually a group of smaller countries, including Croatia, that IDC lumps […]
What’s Actually Wrong with Yahoo’s Purchase of Summly
Emin Gün Sirer: So, Yahoo is in the news for buying Summly. Summly is a company that extracts summaries of natural language text, a TL;DR of sorts. Summly licensed its core technology from SRI, which, previously, spun out Siri and sold it to Apple. Summly had 5 engineers, only 2 of whom will be moving […]
Apple plans to scale up presence in India
The Economic Times of India (emphasis mine): The US and China were the only countries that accounted for more than 10% of Apple’s net sales in 2012 and 2011. Apple CEO Tim Cook had time and again said China is where Apple would see future growth, and famously said last year that while he loved […]