Daily Update: Google Blocked in China, WeChat Ecommerce, LINE IPO?

Good afternoon, I finally posted the WWDC piece I mentioned yesterday: Growing Apple at WWDC. While the number of updates were pretty incredible, I think they mostly fit into a coherent growth strategy. Check it out. I apologize again that today’s update is a little later (tomorrow’s probably will be as well). I’m very muchSubscribe […]

Daily Update: WWDC Overview

Good morning, I apologize that today’s update is so late; I have been on a fruitless search for Wifi most of the morning after realizing T-Mobile unilaterally disabled my phone’s ability to tether. Fun! But enough about me – on to the update: WWDC As expected there were no hardware announcements, which actually made theSubscribe […]

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 […]

Daily Update: Google v Oracle, Mobile Gaming and Gambling, Third-Party Mobile Platforms

Good morning, I’m still thinking a lot about the Apple Beats deal, and plan on a post later today, so keep your eyes out. It’s really one of the more fascinating deals we’ve seen since, well, Facebook and Google buying Occular and Nest, respectively, but with Apple everything is magnified. In the meantime, a longerSubscribe […]

LINE Results, Nintendo Hurting, Katie Cotton Retiring

Good morning, I thought it worth calling out this letter from several leading tech companies defending net neutrality. I’ve been quite cynical about their willingness to go to the mat for net neutrality; I certainly hope this is the beginning of deeper engagement on their part. On to the updates: LINE Releases Results…Kind Of LINESubscribe […]

Face Is Not the Future

There is certain logic to any Facebook acquisition given the current stock price. The current market valuation of $156 billion implies significant revenue growth on an annual basis far greater than simply converting desktop revenue streams to mobile ones; if you assume the stock price will decrease in the future, then making largely stock-based purchases […]

The Social Conglomerate

When news of the Facebook/WhatsApp deal broke, a lot of people gave me credit for being prescient: after all, I had just written 1,568 words on why messaging was mobile’s killer app. WhatsApp, though, was all but absent from the article, meriting but a single mention, and in parenthesis at that! Viber does have strong […]

Messaging: Mobile’s Killer App

Messaging is a completely new kind of social networking that is uniquely enabled by mobile.