Good morning, Just how useful is theory in understanding, and more importantly, predicting markets? Well, in the case of Samsung, pretty darn useful I’d say. On to the updates. Samsung Profits Falling From The Guardian: Samsung Electronics says that its second-quarter operating profits will fall to a two-year low, blaming growing competition in China, reluctantSubscribe […]
Happy Independence Day Mr. Glass
Blessed with the sort of love him or hate him reputation reserved for the truly popular, Bill Simmons has received a lot of criticism from NBA fans for his propensity to act as the Body Language Doctor: he will make grand pronouncements about players or teams based on nothing more than a player or coach’s […]
Daily Update: Microsoft Phone, Wearables, and Office; Facebook Acquires LiveRail; Google and the Right to Censor
Good morning, Happy Independence Day to all of my readers in the United States, and an early happy weekend to those of you in the rest of the world. Due to the holiday there will be no Daily Update tomorrow. On to today’s updates: Microsoft’s Muddle Continues There are three interesting items on Microsoft that,Subscribe […]
Daily Update: Fire Phone Follow-up, T-Mobile Test Drive, Adobe’s New Business Model Part 2
Good morning, I originally planned on avoiding yesterday’s Reuters piece about Apple’s smartwatch mainly because the idea of a 2.5” screen seems absurd (it is noteworthy that the piece included specifics about the manufacturer – Quanta Computer in Taiwan – and timing – production starting in July). Just before sending this update, though, the WallSubscribe […]
Amazon’s Whale Strategy
A week before yesterday’s launch of the Fire Phone, Amazon sent all of the attendees a copy of the children’s book “Mr. Pines Purple House” with a note from Jeff Bezos stating: I think you’ll agree that the world is a better place when things are a little bit different. Beyond the book, the first […]
Daily Update: Amazon’s PR Runup, Box Acquires Streem, Priceline Acquires OpenTable
Good morning, Two acquisitions and anticipation for a big announcement – there’s always something interesting in tech! On to the update: Amazon’s Press Release Runup Amazon is doing something interesting in the runup to tomorrow’s announcement, which most expect to be a Kindle smartphone: they are effectively pre-announcing multiple features that will likely be sellingSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Lenovo Earnings, Windows 8 Banned, Google Buys Divide
Good morning, Only 49% of you opened yesterday’s email (it’s usually 80%+); I heard from several folks on Twitter that it got sent to spam, likely because of GroupOn, so please take a look and mark it as “not-spam” if that is the case. I’ll be writing about the Microsoft Surface announcements on Stratechery laterSubscribe […]
Daily Update: AT&T to Buy DirecTV, Google to Buy Twitch, Facebook Building Snapchat Competitor
Good morning, After a relatively slow week, lots of stuff happened this weekend, so let’s get to it: AT&T to Buy DirecTV Lots of folks are comparing this proposed deal to the Comcast-Time Warner merger, but I think it’s much more benign, both from an explanatory perspective as well as an impact one. One ofSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Square Retrenching, Tencent Crushes Earnings, Cisco and the NSA
Good morning, In case you missed my announcement, I’m moving forward with Stratechery’s originally planned podcast, called Exponent. You can get all of the relevant feeds and links at Exponent.FM. On to the update: Square Retrenching Earlier this week Square withdrew Square Wallet from the app store and launched a new service called Square Order.Subscribe […]
Why Apple Is Buying Beats
That’s a bit of a presumptuous headline: The sale is not yet confirmed UPDATE: The deal was confirmed on May 28 It’s likely no one outside of 1 Infinite Loop will ever likely know the true reasons Indeed, as Benedict Evans wrote in his weekly newsletter: The deal [is] something of a Rorschach Blot – […]