Why TV Has Resisted Disruption

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This is Part 2 of an exploration of what changes, if any, may be coming to TV. Yesterday I examined why cutting the cord yet keeping the shows you watch (i.e. unbundling) was a fantasy. Also, I should note that yesterday and today’s post are very US-centric; more on the international potential in Part 3

Pay-TV is a good deal for networks, cable companies, and users. It’s socialism that works.

But what about the content? Isn’t that the point? Free the content from the networks, and at last we can pay a nominal fee to watch what we want on any Internet-connected device.

Well, yes, it is about the content; in fact, it’s the content that, in my mind, protects the current system from being significantly disrupted.

Great content has low elasticity of substitution

Not all Pay-TV is created equal; while filler content is everywhere, it’s truly great content that drives affiliate fees. Look at the most expensive networks on a per-subscriber basis:

Affiliate fees and CPMs
Affiliate fees and CPMs
  • Sports is obviously huge here. There is no substitute, and the affiliate fees reflect that
  • Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have fantastic brands; Dora, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Phineas and Ferb1 are the Lakers, Yankees and Cowboys of kids programming
  • TNT, USA, TBS and FX all have original programming with sizable fan bases, and TNT has the NBA
  • FOX News has highly differentiated itself. I’ll leave it at that.

None of this content is easily substituted, which allows networks to increase affiliate fees, which serves to preserve the current system.

Great content production has a high barrier to entry

Sports is, once again, the obvious story here. There is a finite supply of programming, it is rarely time-shifted (which drives advertising dollars – see the right-side of the chart above), and it’s incredibly expensive. At the national level:

  • $4.4 billion a year for NFL rights (beginning in 2014) link
  • $930 million a year for NBA rights (contract ends in 2016) link
  • $800 million a year for MLB rights (beginning in 2014) link

This doesn’t include the myriad of college sports, nor regional deals. It’s a lot of money that is directly connected to rising affiliate fees.

But great scripted programming is expensive as well. AMC pays an estimated $2.71 million for an episode of Mad Men, and Netflix paid $100 million for two 13-episode seasons of House of Cards (more on Netflix in a moment).

Anything that conceivably draws customers away from the pay-TV model will need to have compelling content, and said content has a very stiff price of entry.

Networks matter just as much as content

Several folks noted that yesterday’s post focused on networks, not shows.

I think it does hold water, and I’d actually use Silicon Valley as the analogy: what makes Silicon Valley possible, and so hard to replicate, is not just the presence of startups or willing entrepreneurs; rather, the critical factor is Sand Hill Road. Angels and VCs with substantial war chests and the willingness to make ten deals knowing that nine will fail are essential to what makes the Valley go.

In the case of TV, networks are the VCs. They pay for expensive pilots and concepts, many of which don’t turn out, and bank on making money on the ones that do. They’re just as critical to great content creation as are the producers, directors, actors, etc. And networks love the affiliate system.

Netflix is just another network

Netflix famously pivoted from DVDs-by-mail to streaming, but that was only pivot number one. Pivot number two was their transformation from a content delivery provider to simply another network.

Think about it: Netflix invests millions of dollars in new TV shows to drive growth, and has reruns and old movies as filler. They’re HBO with a unique delivery system. Or, to fit the analogy, Netflix is just another VC, with a war chest built by a completely different business (the aforementioned discs-by-mail).

Netflix is unique, but ultimately uninteresting, and unlikely to be replicated.

YouTube is Kickstarter

One final analogy: just as Kickstarter lets entrepreneurs forego VCs, YouTube lets content creators forego networks. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the likelihood of a breakthrough hit is low, and if one were to occur, it would likely be snapped up by a network.

This is a three-part series.

  • Part 1: The Cord-Cutting Fantasy. Getting only the content you want without paying for everything is a fantasy. Pay TV is socialism that works.
  • Part 2: Why TV has resisted disruption. Great content is differentiated, has high barriers to entry, and depends on networks.
  • Part 3: The Jobs TV Does. The key question is attention, not set top boxes. What jobs do we hire TV to do?

Also see Steve Jobs on TV, my Apple TV prediction, and my Additional Notes on TV

  1. This originally said Phineas and Herb. Oops. Thanks to Mike Byrne for the correction ↩

The Cord-Cutting Fantasy

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Predictably, television was one of the first topics Tim Cook was asked about at yesterday’s interview at AllThingsD. This followed the rumors of Yahoo acquiring Hulu, and Microsoft’s entertainment-centric Xbox One launch last week.

It’s all about TV and the imminent age of cord-cutting. On this the blogosphere is certain.

Except for one little problem: the economics of cord-cutting simply don’t make sense, for neither networks nor viewers.1 Consider two examples: ESPN and AMC.

ESPN is the linchpin upon which cable television turns. It’s the sole reason many people have cable, and it’s insanely profitable. The vast majority of that profit comes from affiliate fees paid by cable companies on a per-subscriber basis (unless otherwise noted, all numbers are from this Forbes article that combines information from Disney’s annual report and data from SNL Kagan):

ESPN FY12 Revenue: $9.4 billion

  • Affiliate fees: $6.1 billion
  • Ad revenues: $3.3 billion

That’s about $508 million per month in affiliate fees alone, from about 100 million households.

Last week, ESPN averaged 1.36 million viewers in primetime, which is 9.52 million for the week, or about 40.8 million for the month. I think it’s fair to say that most of those are not uniques, to use Internet parlance. If we assume that the average ESPN household tunes in eight times a month in primetime, then that means about 5 million households watch ESPN a month.

Let’s assume this is true.2 That means:

  • Every household pays $5.13 per month for ESPN in affiliate fees
  • Only 4.8 percent of households watch ESPN. If ESPN were only available a la carte, each of those households would have to pay $101.60/month for ESPN to achieve the same revenue numbers they do currently
  • The 95.2 percent of households who don’t watch ESPN would only see their cable bills decrease by $5.13 were they able to exclude it

UPDATE: The ESPN numbers were too low; they are closer to $15/viewer. See the update here

ESPN is a special case for many reasons, so let’s take AMC, a geek favorite. AMC pulled in 460,000 viewers a night last week, yet earned $196 million in affiliate fees last quarter. If we assume that the average AMC viewer tunes in the same eight times a month, that’s 1.73 million households that watch AMC:

  • Every household pays $0.65 per month for AMC in affiliate fees ($65.3m/100m)
  • Only 1.7 percent of households watch AMC. If AMC were only available a la carte, each of those households would have to pay $38/month in order for AMC to achieve the same revenue numbers they do currently
  • The 98.3 percent of households who don’t watch AMC would only see their cable bills decrease by $0.65 were they able to exclude it

Both these cases are overly simplified, and make a lot of assumptions, and, crucially, ignore price elasticity: at those a la carte prices, both ESPN and AMC would get a lot less viewers, both decreasing advertising revenue and requiring that much higher of a fee to maintain their current revenues.

The truth is that the current TV system is a great deal for everyone.

  • Networks earn much more per viewer than would be sustainable under a la carte pricing
  • Networks are incentivised to create (or in ESPN’s case, buy rights to) great programming; making your content “must-watch” lets you raise your affiliate fees
  • Viewers get access to multiple channels that are hyper-focused on specific niches. Sure, folks complain about paying for those niches, but only because they don’t realize others are subsidizing their particular interests
  • Cable companies know the cable TV business, and would prefer to put up with customer disgruntlement over rising prices than become dumb pipes

Cable TV is socialism that works; subscribers pay equally for everything, and watch only what they want, to the benefit of everyone. Any “grand vision” Apple, or any other tech company, has for television is likely to sustain the current model, not disrupt it directly.

This is a three-part series.

  • Part 1: The Cord-Cutting Fantasy. Getting only the content you want without paying for everything is a fantasy. Pay TV is socialism that works.
  • Part 2: Why TV has resisted disruption. Great content is differentiated, has high barriers to entry, and depends on networks.
  • Part 3: The Jobs TV Does. The key question is attention, not set top boxes. What jobs do we hire TV to do?

Also see Steve Jobs on TV, my Apple TV prediction, and my Additional Notes on TV

  1. Update: It’s been pointed out, correctly, that I’m talking about unbundling, not cord-cutting. That’s technically correct. However, I think folks who talk about cord-cutting still want the same content. That’s the fantasy I’m referring too. Still, I regret the imprecision. Thanks to John Feminella for the correction ↩

  2. It’s not; those numbers were prime time only from a random week in May. The total number of households that watch ESPN is surely higher, but that only changes the dollar figure somewhat, not the overriding point ↩

The Week in Review – May 19-25, 2013

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The Week In Review is a weekly digest of what I found interesting in tech over the last week. It consists of the story of the week, a summary of stratechery articles and links, a huge collection of links that I found noteworthy (plus commentary), and my favorite tweets of the week. I post this weekly at stratechery and email it to the stratechery mailing list (sign up here).

Microsoft announced the Xbox One in what was, otherwise, a pretty slow week. I found it telling that the entire first 30 minutes of an hour-long presentation did not include a single game. In fact, while I’m sure the Xbox will be a great gaming device (Anand Lal Shimpi says the PS4 will be more powerful, but I’m very intrigued by the cloud component), I do wonder if the Xbox is brand constrained; the fact it’s associated with high end gaming may make it less likely folks buy it for the entertainment options alone. Time will tell, and I think the NFL partnership is really smart, albeit really expensive.

It was an ugly week for HTC: it’s never good when three separate news sites – The Verge, CNET, and Techcrunch – write exclusives about a senior executive leaving, and aren’t lying, because they’re all about a different executive. None of this is a surprise, unfortunately. I’ve written about HTC several times, including:

I strive to be pretty impartial on this blog, but I’m absolutely rooting for HTC; Taiwan, my adopted home country, really needs strong brands, and HTC was one of the best. But it really doesn’t look good, even if the HTC One has sold “around 5 million“.

It was a great week on stratechery. I greatly appreciate your spreading the word about stratechery and following @stratechery.

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The Google We Always Wanted

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Steve Jobs, in his biography, on his meeting with Larry Page after the latter became CEO:

We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of lieutenants he can count on. I described the blocking and tackling he would have to do to keep the company from getting flabby and being larded with B players. The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.

Skip ahead two years, to the aftermath of last week’s Google I/O, and the backlash is kicking into high gear. Google is the new Microsoft, the story goes, and we hate it.

We, to be clear, are getting exactly what we always wanted.1

The Google that I saw at I/O was, to use Jobs’ words, focused. They know exactly what their strength is – machine learning – and they know exactly what they want to be – the world’s source of all information, both facts and people.

Of course, it’s been there all along, albeit phrased slightly differently:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

There are no qualifiers here, nothing that says the information is only the information we want them to collect. What websites we visit, what locations we go to, what music we listen to – that’s all information. And Google has made very clear they are just as interested in that as they are in the links that undergird the web, and Google itself.

Look again at the signal-to-ads cycle:

The signal-to-ads cycle
The signal-to-ads cycle

Google dominates every aspect of this cycle, and every announcement at IO accrued to it:

On the signal side:

  • Their mobile apps are both the best, and the most popular, and they work best with a Google+ account
  • Their browser is the best, and the most popular, and it works best with a Google+ account
  • Their maps are the best, and the most popular, and they work best with a Google+ account
  • Their video website (YouTube) is the best, and the most popular, and it works best with a Google+ account
  • Their mail service (GMail) is the best, and the most popular, and is a Google+ account

And they simply own online advertising, with the best, and most popular, search ads, 3rd-party ads, and display ads.

Android did its job: Google’s signals have unfettered access to users on every mobile platform. Microsoft is in no position to block them, and Apple, for all its bluster, isn’t interested.

Chrome is doing its job: Google’s signals sit on top of an increasing number of PCs, slowly making the underlying OS irrelevant.

Google+ is doing its job: Every Google service is now tied together by a single identity, and identity is the key to data collection on mobile.

Cars and Glass are doing their jobs: not only do they have the potential of capturing an untold amount of information, they also give comfort to shareholders that Google has future growth opportunities, and comfort to geeks that Google is simply a mad scientist who only has ads in order to keep the lights on.2

The tragedy of wishes is that, when you finally get what you want, you realize that you actually didn’t want that at all. That, more than anything, seems to underline the post-IO angst. It turns out that focus is an incredibly powerful thing; in the hands of perhaps the most powerful company in technology, it’s downright awesome.3

Be careful what you wish for.

  1. This article is not a moral judgment about whether Google is “evil”. I purposely stay away from that on this blog, and only use “we” as a rhetorical device ↩

  2. Related: Google is a hypocrite. That I do agree with. It bugs me. ↩

  3. Merriam-Webster: Awesome. “Inspiring awe.” Also, I didn’t say “most profitable.” ↩

Hangouts requires a Google+ account

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Jon Russell:

I’m really impressed with the Hangouts messenger service. Web client is a good addition IMO, but mandatory G+ account is a big frustration.

Benedict Evans had a brilliant post a month ago about why consolidation may not be the endgame for mobile chat:

On mobile the social graph comes ready-made in your address book and the accompanying PSTN numbering system. Your phone already knows who your friends are – you don’t have to enter them into each new social network. Both Whatsapp and Viber leverage this: they look at your phone book and tell you who’s already using it.

This is a much simpler global identity system than Facebook Connect: phone numbers (and the address book) are themselves a single global social network that any app can use, bypassing Facebook’s biggest protective ‘moat’ and removing a lot of the problems of fragmentation. Such apps ride on mobile and mobile numbers just as Facebook apps ride on Facebook and websites ride on the web. There are lots of social apps on mobile, just as there are lots of apps on Facebook or lots of sites on the web: this is not necessarily a problem.

Hangouts ignores this ready-made network in favor of Google+.1 uses this network, but puts it behind Google+; unlike other services, a Google+ account is mandatory and the first screen you see.

Not that Google had any choice in the matter: Google+ is the entire point. As I wrote yesterday:

The solution to no cookies is identity; this is what Google+ is all about. Google builds best-in-class mobile apps that work significantly better when you log in with the Google+ account you didn’t even know you had [in order to gather data]…tracks you across the web, and then monetizes you on their search engine, YouTube, Gmail and AdSense. Everything is connected; it’s either signal or ads.

Google+ is the key to Google’s strategy, yet Google+ will make it much more difficult for Hangouts to succeed broadly.

This is the definition of a strategy tax.2

  1. I was sloppy on this point, and regret it. Thanks to Satish Varma for the correction. ↩

  2. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s bad (or good; you’ll note I rarely make such judgments on this blog). A strategy tax is anything that makes a product less likely to succeed, yet is included to further larger corporate goals ↩

Yahoo, Tumblr, and the Signal-to-ads Cycle

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Tumblr is worth far more to Yahoo than $1.1 billion, and worth far less as a standalone company. That makes this acquisition a win-win; Yahoo is buying three important parts of the signal-to-ads cycle, and Tumblr’s investors are getting a nice exit.

There are three ways to improve advertising revenue:

  • Sell more ads
  • Sell more effective ads
  • Sell better targeted ads

Tumblr helps Yahoo on all three fronts, particularly the third, where the signal-to-ads cycle really matters.

Sell more ads

The most obvious way to grow revenue is to increase impressions, and fill those impressions with ads.

Tumblr’s nascent radar advertising already has 120 million daily impressions, but they are having trouble filling it, and they haven’t even touched display advertising.

Yahoo brings one of the largest ad sales teams in the industry to the table, along with the ability to offer advertisers a full spread of campaign options that reach every demographic. It’s a great complement.

Still, though, increasing the number of ad slots is ultimately deflationary; it doesn’t do much good to sell 20 ads at $1 each instead of 10 ads at $2 each.

Sell more effective ads

To this point, there have been two types of online advertising: display and search. Display is what Yahoo is built on, and it’s fine as far as it goes. Actually, it’s not that fine at all: It’s not very relevant, it drives bad behavior, and, as I just noted, it’s deflationary.

Search ads, on the hand, are much more effective. The best search ads are super relevant, and that relevance drives the price up, not down. Unfortunately for Yahoo, they gave this business to Microsoft.

However, there is a third form of advertising that is emerging on Twitter, Facebook, and new-generation sites like Buzzfeed: native.

Native advertising intermingles advertising and content; the advertising is less obtrusive, and, done well, is just as interesting and readable as everything else in your stream.

When you consider what has worked on other mediums – voiceover for radio, commercials for TV, spreads for magazines – there’s reason to believe this is the future of online advertising. Tumblr is focused on native advertising, and Yahoo now has a toehold.

Sell better-targeted ads

The best paying ads are those that directly hit a brand’s demographics and/or are clicked on, and ads are clicked on when they are personal to you. And so, online advertisers need great signals about who you are, where you are, and what you like.

This information has traditionally been captured by tracking you across the web; think AdSense, or those Facebook ‘Like’ buttons. But mobile has opened a new treasure trove of information, even as it raises new challenges: specifically, sandboxed apps mean the old methods of cookie tracking don’t work.

Identity, mobile and the signal-to-ads cycle

The solution to no cookies is identity; as I wrote last week, this is what Google+ is all about. Google builds best-in-class mobile apps that work significantly better when you log in with the Google+ account you didn’t even know you had.

The result is the signal-to-ads cycle:

  • Information is gathered from first-party sites via analytics, 3rd-party sites via ads, buttons, etc, and owned-and-operated mobile apps tied to your identity (think Instagram)
  • Highly targeted ads are served in search results, display ads, and natively, primarily on PCs
The advertising targeting cycle
The signal-to-ads cycle

Google is pretty far ahead in this game. They provide best-in-class mobile apps, track you across the web, and then monetize you on their search engine, YouTube, Gmail and AdSense. Everything is connected; it’s either signal or ads.

Tumblr helps Yahoo catch up. Every Tumblr user has registered with an email address; that email address will be the linchpin for Yahoo’s targeting, especially since they gave up on their own identity system a few years back (YAMM – Yet Another Massive Mistake).

Tumblr is also a great indicator of interests – you follow certain tumbleblogs for a reason, and the fact every blog will be hosted by Yahoo gives them full access to user analytics. More importantly, Tumblr is mobile, and mobile is an information goldmine (interestingly, the Tumblr app does not currently use location services; look for a new “feature” update soon).

Looking Ahead

While I think this is a good move, and affirms that Yahoo is an advertising company, they are by no means out of the woods. The fact they don’t control their own search or identity services is absolutely killer, and speaks to how incompetent Yahoo’s past leadership was.

Here are how the leading advertisers stack up in terms of the signal-to-ads cycle:

Tumblr checks a lot of boxes
Tumblr checks a lot of boxes

Effective online advertising requires strengths in every type of ad, and mastery of every type of signal. That’s why Yahoo, even with all the benefits Tumblr brings them, are still far behind.1

In fact, only Google has a full set, which suggests that Tumblr may not be the last acquisition in this space; any missing piece in the signal-to-ads cycle dramatically decreases its effectiveness. It’s certainly worth pondering who might be buying, and who might give in to an offer too good to refuse.

  1. Update: Yahoo actually has a decent 3rd-party play with the Newspaper consortium. Not a ton of sites, but relatively high traffic ones. Thanks to Joel Irwin for the tip. ↩

Intel CEO shakes up units, creates ‘new devices’ group

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Reuters:

Intel Corp’s new chief executive, Brian Krzanich, has launched a sweeping company reorganization and created a unit aimed at growing its market share in mobile technology…

The chipmaker’s main product groups – including the PC client group, mobile communications and data center unit that previously reported to Intel Architecture group chief Dadi Perlmutter – now report directly to Krzanich.

That was fast. Me, a few weeks ago:

Massive demand, limited suppliers, huge barriers to entry. It’s a good time to be a manufacturing company. It is, potentially, a good time to be Intel. After all, of those four companies, the most advanced, by a significant margin, is Intel. The only problem is that Intel sees themselves as a design company, come hell or high water…

It is into a climate of doom and gloom that Krzanich is taking over as CEO. And, in what will be a highly emotional yet increasingly obvious decision, he ought to commit Intel to the chip manufacturing business, i.e. manufacturing chips according to other companies’ designs.

Jean-Louis Gassée, in his Monday Note:

Another factor is the cultural change that would have been required were Intel to have gotten involved in making ARM devices. As both the designer and manufacturer of generation after generation of x86 microprocessors, Intel can wait until they’re good and ready before they allow PC makers to build the chips into their next products. The ARM world doesn’t work that way. Customers design their own chips (often called a System on a Chip, or SoC), and then turn to a semiconductor manufacturer (a foundry) to stamp out the hardware. Taking orders from others isn’t in Intel’s DNA.

The architecture head is no longer in charge; I believe this is a great sign.

A better, brighter Flickr

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The Flickr blog:

In the beginning, Flickr innovated the way people share and discover photos. Today, we are shifting the photo-sharing landscape again. We’re releasing a Flickr that’s more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere.

In a weird way, today’s Flickr announcement is the most encouraging sign possible that the Tumblr acquisition will turn out OK.

  • It’s striking how few tech companies have a flair for the moment. Said flair is hard to explain, but announcing the Flickr refresh today is a perfect example and is very un-Yahoo-like.
  • While the GeoCities comparison is fun as far as it goes, it’s the Flickr-precedent that should worry folks. Flickr had the seed of not just a photo-sharing service, but a true community, and Yahoo! completely neglected it until it all-but-died. Relaunching today sends an important signal that change is afoot.
  • The Flickr redesign was either just finished, or held until this day. It doesn’t matter which it is: finishing by today means internal teams are learning to execute; holding it is even more impressive. It shows that management understood what this announcement could mean (i.e. the previous two points), had the patience to sit tight, and the discipline to not leak (too much). Both bode well for Tumblr.

Then again, maybe I’m just swept up by the emotion of this absolutely pitch-perfect piece by Marco Arment on his personal history as Tumblr employee number one. Must-read.

How to know when Apple finally gets iCloud right

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Gus Mueller, who creates the amazing Acorn, among other cool products:

WWDC 2013 is fast approaching, and chances are good that we’ll get some sort of preview and song and dance about how iCloud sync is even better than ever for developers. Honestly, would you expect Apple to say anything else?

But how are we going to know Apple has finally fixed iCloud syncing for developers and is really serious this time? And I’m not just talking about Core Data syncing, I’m also talking about the APIs developers are given to push document data back and forth. The broken stuff, the things developers laugh at Apple about and have given up on.

Here’s my short and inconclusive list of things that will let us know iCloud might be ready for real world developer use.

It’s a good list, and worth reading in full.

Stepping back though, the reason Apple consistently gets the cloud not quite right is the exact same reason Android’s UX, despite improvements, is still a little off.

I wrote last week in The Android Detour:

Apple invests in software, apps, and services to the extent necessary to preserve the profit they gain from hardware. To serve another platform would be actively detrimental to their bottom line. Google, on the other hand, spreads their services to as many places as possible – every platform they serve increases their addressable market.

So what about Android? I remain convinced that Android was, first and foremost, defensive. To own the bottom of the pyramid is to own access to the top, where Google’s profit lies. Android ensured that no one company would ever monopolize the bottom of the pyramid like Microsoft did for PCs.

Apple cares, and wants to make iCloud great, but the product they sell is the priority; Google cares, and wants to make Android great, but the services they provide are the priority. And anything that is not a priority will never be perfect.1

  1. I’d posit it’s more likely that Apple will internalize the idea of iCloud as a core component of their products than Google will internalize Android as what their company is about; I think Android development (within Google) may have peaked. It’s rather striking how much of a disconnect there seems to be between Android fans and Google itself ↩

The Week In Review – May 12-18, 2013

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The Week In Review is a weekly digest of what I found interesting in tech over the last week. It consists of the story of the week, a summary of stratechery articles and links, a huge collection of links that I found noteworthy (plus commentary), and my favorite tweets of the week. I post this weekly at stratechery and email it to the stratechery mailing list (sign up here).

Yahoo is in talks to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. While I held out hope Yahoo’s big purchase would be Dropbox, Tumblr makes sense; Yahoo will be able to offer advertisers a full set of channels that serve most demographics. That’s where the synergy is – I don’t think anyone expects Tumblr users to suddenly develop an affinity for Yahoo. Yahoo clearly continues to not have an affinity for the letter ‘e’.

Google’s IO conference dominated the news this week. The Verge’s storystream has 47 stories and counting, and it’s not a bad place to start. It almost feels pointless to try and summarize in a paragraph. What was notable was how little attention was paid to Android. As noted below, I don’t think this was an accident. Android was only ever a detour.

BlackBerry held its annual developer conference as well this week. Announcements included US availability information for the Q10 (no carriers were actually called out), the new low-cost Q5 (no price was actually called out), and that BlackBerry Messenger would be made available for iPhone and Android (no continued reason to buy BlackBerry was actually called out).

It was a great week on stratechery. I greatly appreciate your spreading the word about stratechery and following @stratechery.

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