Apple does everything wrong. They don’t do market research. They don’t segment the market with multiple models. They don’t have promotions. They don’t diversify. They don’t have divisions. They don’t have multiple P&Ls. They don’t pursue market share above all else. They don’t take on debt.1 They don’t pay dividends (or big enough ones, now). […]
2013
A Common Thread
Asymco: The Windows PC market is contracting. The market data has been showing unit shipment declining for some time with the latest quarter having perhaps the steepest decline for two decades. What remains undocumented however is how the market looks when considering economic value. A more complete picture would be to show revenues, average selling […]
Facebook Thinks You Might Like Up to Three Video Ads in Your News Feed Each Day
Delightful headline-writing by The Verge. From the article: Expected to launch in the summer, Facebook’s new video ad units may prove to be a revenue success for the company, but they may also become another nuisance for users. According to AdAge, Facebook is currently in talks with various agencies to secure its first video ad […]
The Facebook First at the AT&T Store
I paid a visit to my local AT&T store1 on the occasion of the Facebook First being officially available for sell. There was more promotion than I expected, including a dedicated installation and a huge promotional banner behind the counter. That said, there wasn’t really any effort by the salespeople to push me on the […]
The Week in Review – April 6-13, 2013
It was a week of beginnings and endings. The iPhone launched on T-Mobile on Friday to lines nearly everywhere, although they quickly dissipated. There seems little reason to doubt the iPhone will soon be more that 50% of T-Mobile smartphone sales, just like the other major carriers. More pointedly, it seems increasingly clear that limited […]
Apple, Samsung, and the Parable of the Model-T
Steve Jobs was famously fond of the Henry Ford adage: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” It’s true! New products – new categories – require vision and an unflinching focus on the job to be done (i.e. transport), not simply enhancing or extending solutions that already exist […]
The Samsung Mega
Stefan Constantinescu: The long rumored Samsung Galaxy Mega product family has just been made official. As expected, there are two devices in the Mega portfolio, the Mega 5.8 and the Mega 6.3. Starting with the larger model, it has a 6.3 inch 720p TFT display, a dual core 1.7 GHz processor, 1.5 GB of RAM, […]
Line Enters E-book Business With Line Manga
TechInAsia: Line Corporation popular messaging app, Line, has launched Line Manga yesterday. Line Manga is an extended service and a separate app from Line messaging app which allows users to read manga while on the move available both on iOS and Android. The launch brings 30,000 comics to Line’s 120 million users with popular titles […]
Huawei, MediaTek, and the Lower Right
Stefan Constantinescu: Huawei is a Chinese network infrastructure vendor that once made cheap phones for operators, but then they decided to pull an HTC and promote their own brand. The company has had a lot of success, no one is denying that, but they’re not growing as fast as they’d like. Huawei repeatedly said they […]
Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs
Three seemingly disparate news items – Facebook Home, Google’s alleged (and denied) bid for WhatsApp, and Apple’s removal of AppGratis from the App Store – together give convincing evidence that we are moving up the mobile hierarchy of needs. And that’s a concern for Apple in particular. One of the more famous theory’s in psychology […]