Good morning, A special treat today (and Monday): I was able to spend some time with Hugo Barra, Vice President of International for Xiaomi. We had a wide-ranging conversation about Xiaomi’s strategy, their target customer, success in India, how they make money, and accusations that they copy Apple. In fact, it was so much thatSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Notes From the Xiaomi Event, Refining Xiaomi’s Ambition, Additional Notes
Good morning, Hello from Beijing! Today was Xiaomi’s latest announcement and I published a Storify of my live-tweets here. Today’s update is my initial reaction to what was presented. On to the update: Notes from the Xiaomi Event I arrived at the China National Convention Center a little over an hour before the Xiaomi eventSubscribe […]
Xiaomi’s Ambition
Xiaomi, the Chinese smart phone company that late last month raised $1.1 billion at a $45 billion valuation, sells way more than smartphones: Mi.com boasts over a thousand items, and it’s the third-largest e-commerce site in China. One item it doesn’t sell, though, is a AA battery charger. Only Apple: I clearly remember when this […]
Daily Update: Looking Forward to CES, Looking Ahead to 2015, Apple and the Functional High Ground
Good morning, Happy New Year! It’s great to get back into the flow of things. Let’s get on with it! Looking Forward to CES It’s fun to rag on CES, particularly during the 00’s when Apple’s MacWorld keynote announcements would overshadow the going-ons in Vegas, at least from a news cycle perspective. It wasn’t justSubscribe […]
Daily Update: It’s Great to be Small, Niche Business Models, YouTube Seeking to Retain Stars
Good morning, I received multiple reports that Friday’s Daily Update was marked as containing phishing links. I can absolutely confirm this is not the case, so if you missed it, please take a look in your spam folder. For the third Monday in a row I’m writing about media – Media Mondays if you will.Subscribe […]
Daily Update: Apple and Disruption, Chromebooks Surpass iPads, Chromecast Surpasses Apple TV
Good morning, A short update today, followed by a request for feedback. On to the update: Apple and Disruption There is a new piece on Stratechery called Best. In summary: Low-end modular-based disruption is real, but it can be forestalled if the integrated incumbent can consistently deliver a superior user experience (i.e. be the “best”)Subscribe […]
Differentiation and Value Capture in the Internet Age
The implication of the Smiling Curve is not only that aggregators have increased economic power, but that differentiated suppliers do as well; Omni Software is an example.
Daily Update: The Uber Problem, Samsung’s Next Act, Nokia is Back!
Good morning, With regards to yesterday’s note on the web not being dead, John Gruber wrote a great post called Native Apps are Part of the Web; I also forgot that I wrote a guest post earlier this year defending the web for writers. Still, though, it doesn’t really matter what any of us think:Subscribe […]
An Update on the Stratechery Membership Program
Last spring I wrote a series about the future of journalism: Part 1: FiveThirtyEight and the End of Average – link Part 2: The Stages of Newspapers’ Decline – link Part 3: Newspapers Are Dead; Long Live Journalism – link In the third installment I wrote: More and more journalism will be small endeavors, often […]
Daily Update: Bandcamp, Tencent Earnings, Twitter’s Analyst Day, plus a Stratechery Announcement
Good morning, A few quick bits of housekeeping: First off, I’ve heard from enough people that they really don’t want to get articles in their email. I’m going to have a think about the best way to proceed Secondly, I’m going to put a brief note up on Stratechery later today announcing some of theSubscribe […]