Archive for April, 2012
It’s Not Apple’s Responsibility To Pay More Taxes
Most of the response to The New York Times‘ takeout on how Apple avoids billions of dollars in taxes has implied that Apple is doing something wrong and somehow has a moral responsibility to be paying more. Nonsense. As Arik …
Would Hemingway have used an iPad?
For most of the week I have been in Paris, a city that I have traveled to regularly since 1971. Back then, communications to the US was dismal and a letter sent from here could take 2 weeks to get …
Notebooks are the Past, Tablets are the Future
This may be one of the more controversial columns I have written in sometime, although my goal is not to be controversial but to spur thought- so please hear me out. It is no secret that I am …
Reports of Apple’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
The past few weeks have brought out some interesting commentary around the imminent decline of Apple. Yesterday perhaps the most forceful view yet came from Forrester’s CEO, George Colony.
George and others root their argument on the absence of Steve Jobs …
East Coast, West Coast: The Startup Difference
Last week I watched several dozen launch demos at the DEMO 2012 conference in Santa Clara. Yesterday, I watched 10 startup pitches at the New York Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator’s Demo Day, and was struck by a dramatic difference in style …
An Act of Folly: Smartphones in Five Years
2007's hot smartphone
Let’s take a quick trip in our time machine to survey the smartphone market in the spring of 2007, five years ago. The iPhone had been announced but not yet shipped, and many were skeptical about its …
The Curious Case of Microsoft Marketing
Is it just me or am I missing or not seeing much marketing effort by Microsoft these days? Generally I am very observant to marketing campaigns within our industry due to my conviction of its importance. …
Yahoo!: Tactics Masquerading as Strategy
Last week on Yahoo!’s earnings call, CEO Scott Thompson outlined six points the company would pursue to return the company to a proper focus. When I looked at the list, they all made sense as operational principles or even action …
Why Google Will Use Motorola To Become Vertically Integrated
If you look closely at the most successful company in tech today, it is Apple. And they are in this position for a major reason. They are completely vertically integrated. They own the OS, the hardware and the ecosystem. And …
A Cloud Computing Primer
The DEMO conference may not be the stellar event it with once was, but its still a good indicator of the computing zeitgeist. At least week’s edition in Santa Clara, CA, it was pretty clear that the tech world is …
Apple TV and the Trojan Horse Strategy
Apple TV is one of the things I get asked quite a bit about during my industry analysis presentations. It seems that everyone out there wants to know what Apple has planned for the big screen. Although no …
The Fallacies of How To Compete with the iPad
I take articles like this claiming the iPad will drop below 50% market share by as early as next year with a grain of salt. I don’t want this article to be about all the reasons why we believe the …
Why My Next Tablet Will Run Windows 8
I’ve been using Windows-based tablet computers for almost a decade. I was hooked the moment Bill Gates trotted out Microsoft’s first prototype tablets at a developer event in mid-2001. I got my first tablet, a Fujitsu Stylistic, in 2003 and …
Ultrabooks, MacBook Air, and the Need for Inspiration
Is the laptop business doomed to slowly ebb away as tablets capture more and more of the mobile market? It’s not hard to see a future where the world is divided into tablets and smartphones for the overwhelming majority of …
The Case Against a 4-Inch iPhone
As a regular part of my job I evaluate many different devices. I don’t always publish this analysis publicly but nearly every new device passes through our “labs.” When it comes to smartphones, or pocket computers as I like …