I wrote a piece on Bloomberg View about Facebook’s vulnerability when it comes to their chief money-maker: app-install ads. Facebook runs the risk of becoming the second option for the sorts of advertisers that are currently its best customers. Facebook has made several acquisitions that will help them gain more insight into in-app behavior, most […]
Samsung Electronics loses $12 billion market value on smartphone worries
Reuters: Samsung Electronics Co lost $12 billion in market value on Friday, hit by brokerage downgrades that have underscored concerns about slowing sales of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone. The share slide of more than 6 percent comes after it recently introduced two stripped-down versions of the S4, fanning worries that profit margins for its […]
Facebook phones and the future of mobile communication
Frank Meehan, who built integrated communications platforms at INQ Mobile/Three in the mid-2000s: We had a lot of early success…because in 2008/2009 most people just used a handful of key internet communication centric services. Facebook, MSN Messenger, Skype etc dominated. So integrating just those services was such a useful step that people loved what we […]
The Facebook Flop
I’ll admit it: I’m rather enjoying the Facebook Home/First flop. First off, it’s always fun to say “I told you so.” Specifically, pre-launch I questioned Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that people, not apps were the center of our smartphone experience in Apps, People, and Jobs to be Done: Apps aren’t the center of the world. But […]
The Humpty Dumpty PC
This has been making the rounds on Twitter (the picture was first posted on the Facebook page of W&CIE): It’s a powerful image, and accurate. Interestingly, though, the iPad and other appliance-like devices have actually had the opposite effect on non-mobile-phone computing. Many of the activities one used to do on a general-purpose personal computer […]
The S4 Design Stinks; Does It Matter?
David Pierce at The Verge (all emphasis is mine): I don’t like holding this phone, and I can’t overstate how much that informs the experience of using it. It makes an awful first impression, slippery and slimy and simply unpleasant in your hand. My white review unit is completely smooth and glossy, with a subtle […]
The Visual Case for a Low-Cost iPhone
Yesterday Horace Dediu posted this very interesting chart showing the average revenue per mobile-cellular subscription in 2010 by country: Average revenue per mobile-cellular subscription in 2010 by country. Would love to have more than 60 countries. twitpic.com/ckybnl — Horace Dediu (@asymco) April 21, 2013 I combined this data with browser share data from StatCounter. Countries […]
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 […]
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 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, […]