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iPhone

  • Change for Change’s Sake

    iPhone OS was, but for copy-and-paste, a perfect OS (bear with me here – assume this is true). It handled every function the iPhone was expected to do in an incredibly elegant and polished way, and it’s not an accident that much of the core functionality has gone unchanged for six years. The tech press […]

  • Two Bears

    There are two Apple bear cases; only one applies to Apple, though, and the other applies to Samsung.

  • Why Do Carriers Subsidize the iPhone?

    Horace Dediu at Asymco used the data I compiled1 in “The Case for the Low-Cost iPhone” to further elucidate why carriers tolerate the iPhone’s industry-leading subsidies. The presumption behind smartphone usage is that it leads to more browsing which leads to more network usage which in turn, leads to more network revenues and, finally, more […]

  • Observations on the App Annie Index

    App Annie posted their quarterly app report this week, and there were three big-picture trends that jumped out at me. 1. Google Play is getting over the monetization hump, and it’s likely due to in-app purchase From the report: Over the past quarter, Google Play has achieved higher growth rates than the iOS App Store […]

  • The Vanishing Uninformed, Charted

    Last night I wrote: In the United States, where an iPhone 4 is free,1 customers who have the option of an iPhone choose it in overwhelming numbers (over 80% on AT&T and over 60% on Verizon). It’s increasingly clear that Android market share in the US was a direct result of iPhone carrier restrictions; those […]

  • Strategy 101 and the Wall Street Journal: A Fisking

    The Wall Street Journal has 531 words in a news item about Apple’s plans to start production on a new iPhone in the second quarter. 155 of the words are useful:1 Apple Inc plans to begin production of a refreshed iPhone similar in size and shape to its current one in the second quarter of […]

  • Apple plans to scale up presence in India

    The Economic Times of India (emphasis mine): The US and China were the only countries that accounted for more than 10% of Apple’s net sales in 2012 and 2011. Apple CEO Tim Cook had time and again said China is where Apple would see future growth, and famously said last year that while he loved […]

  • Apple and the Innovator’s Dilemma

    This paper was originally written in 2010 for a Corporate Innovation class at Kellogg Business School, and thus predates Stratechery by several years.

  • iOS

    This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr The part I always remember from Steve Jobs’ most famous keynote, when he introduced the iPhone, is the very end, when he announced Apple Computer Inc. would henceforth be known as Apple Inc. I found this quite shocking at the time, and looking back, it truly […]

  • Computer or Phone?

    This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr Classic Rands: It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why. First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know […]