Amazon’s Power Position

Several interesting observations are surrounding Amazon as the company briefly became the second company to reach a trillion dollar valuation. While Amazon’s market cap has dipped back below, they will inevitably get back to the trillion dollar cap and beyond. What stands out to me about Amazon reaching this market cap is how much headroom … Continue reading Amazon’s Power Position

Notch Wars

Despite no longer being a hyper-growth category, smartphones are still a fascinating category to study. Not only because of the unprecedented impact they have on enabling humans of all shapes and sizes, races, and economic circumstances to engage in personal computing but also because of the global competitive strategies. In what was an entirely predictable … Continue reading Notch Wars

Tech Content Needs Regulation

It may not be a popular perspective, but I’m increasingly convinced it’s a necessary one. The new publishers of the modern age—including Facebook, Twitter, and Google—should be subject to some type of external oversight that’s driven by public interest-focused government regulation. On the eve of government hearings with the leaders of these tech giants, and … Continue reading Tech Content Needs Regulation

News You Might Have Missed: Week of August 31, 2018

Google Assistant is Now Bilingual From Thursday this week, Google Assistant is bilingual. Users can jump between two different languages across queries, without having to go back to their language settings. Once users select two of the supported languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese, from there on out they can speak to the … Continue reading News You Might Have Missed: Week of August 31, 2018

Could Gen Z Pass on College?

As many of you know, I have a ten-year-old girl who is about to embark on the exciting adventure of homeschooling. Education is very important to us or maybe I should say knowledge is. Knowledge on a broad list of topics driven by her interest and not only dictated by what a particular curriculum decided … Continue reading Could Gen Z Pass on College?

The Great Tech Questioning

The past year has been a challenging one for tech, what with #metoo moments, security and privacy breaches, unseemly use of power, and certainly some missteps in the ‘fake news’/Russia meddling arena. And despite the seeming incongruity between these incidents/actions/behaviors and tech company earnings and sky-high valuations, there has started to be a reckoning, of … Continue reading The Great Tech Questioning

Brands Bypassing App Stores and the Value of a Marketplace

An important debate is brewing. Along with this debate, an interestingly strategic arc for brands may be emerging. The discussion of how much a marketplace holder should receive is not new. It has become more heated as of late as reports that Netflix is looking at ways to avoid Apple’s cut of subscriptions generated from … Continue reading Brands Bypassing App Stores and the Value of a Marketplace

Magic Leap, Tech’s Pause, and Patient Innovation

Magic Leap recently gave members of the tech press hand on demonstrations that led to a series of articles and reviews of the previously mysterious augmented reality headset. Before this, all the public saw were brief accounts from influencers or investors and a few demo videos from Magic Leap’s website. Last week, the cat officially … Continue reading Magic Leap, Tech’s Pause, and Patient Innovation

Cortana and Alexa: The Next Step Forward for Voice

This week Amazon and Microsoft announced the rollout of Alexa and Cortana integration. First discussed publicly one year ago, the collaboration represents an important step forward for smart assistants today and voice as an interface in the future. I’ve been using Alexa to connect to Cortana, and Cortana to connect to Alexa, and while it’s … Continue reading Cortana and Alexa: The Next Step Forward for Voice

News You might have missed: Week of August 17th, 2018

Google to Open Retail Store in Chicago Google is planning a two-level store in Chicago’s Fulton Market district, its first known location for a retail flagship. The technology giant is close to finalizing a lease for almost 14,000 square feet on the first and second floors of several connected, two-story brick buildings between 845 and … Continue reading News You might have missed: Week of August 17th, 2018

Augmented Realities Role In Smart Cars

Over the last few months, I have often written about the idea that AR headsets could be the next big thing in mobile. In a column I wrote on July 16th, I pointed out that I believe Apple, Google and others will create what I call “light headsets” that receive all of its intelligence from … Continue reading Augmented Realities Role In Smart Cars

The Value of Smartphones

Over the past few weeks, I have been asked a lot whether the prices of smartphones will continue to increase and if such an increase is justified. The success of the iPhone X took those who said people would never pay $1,000 for a phone by surprise. The iPhone X also gave hope to smartphone … Continue reading The Value of Smartphones

The Shifting Nature of Technology at Work

In the business world, technology products and solutions have played an important role in some companies for several decades. In today’s era, however, it’s safe to say that technology plays a critical part in almost every company, regardless of its size. From key infrastructure systems that serve as the backbone of modern commerce to the … Continue reading The Shifting Nature of Technology at Work

The Challenges Facing Online Advertising

I’m fortunate that Tim and Ben provide the opportunity to write about anything technology on this forum. In this column, I want to address two different subjects. Online Ads We’ve been convinced that online advertising provides some of the most effective means to sell products. Moreover, based on the success of Google, Facebook and others, … Continue reading The Challenges Facing Online Advertising

News You Might Have Missed: Week of August 10, 2018

Samsung Unpacked 2018 On Thursday, Samsung held its “unpacked 2018” event in Brooklyn where they announced the Note 9, the Galaxy Watch, a DeX dongle, and they teased the Galaxy Home. A lot was packed in a keynote of just over an hour including an update to Bixby. Rather than summarizing all the product details, … Continue reading News You Might Have Missed: Week of August 10, 2018

Apple’s Struggles in India

I’ve been studying the Indian smartphone market for many years now, watching it closely as it grew into the worlds fastest smartphone market. It was only a matter of time until India became the second largest smartphone market since the size of the country is second only to China. However, these two markets could not … Continue reading Apple’s Struggles in India

Tesla Should Reconsider Building Silicon for Autonomous Driving

No stranger to creating evocative statements that generate headlines, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s quarterly earnings call that the future of its autonomous driving systems for Tesla vehicles would utilize in-house designed computing systems. This is the not the first time Elon has said the company was working on chips … Continue reading Tesla Should Reconsider Building Silicon for Autonomous Driving

Voice Commerce is not How We like to shop…Yet!

This week the Information published an article citing that only 2% of Echo owners have used Alexa to make a purchase in 2018. The numbers were shared by two people who had access to an internal Amazon document and revealed that of the people who did buy something using Alexa, about 90% didn’t try it … Continue reading Voice Commerce is not How We like to shop…Yet!

The Risks of Custom Silicon

Ever since Apple has gone all in developing custom silicon chips like their A-series processors as well as companion chips like connectivity modules, an image sensor, display modules, and several others they don’t talk about publicly, other companies have followed suit. I often get asked why companies feel the need to start making their chips … Continue reading The Risks of Custom Silicon

The Beauty of 4K

Even in a tech world seemingly dominated by AI, voice computing, and other intriguing new developments, there’s one thing that’s still hard to beat: a great-looking, large display. Being able to see the cinematographic nuance of a well-lit scene, the fine-grained details of a high-resolution photo, or just a razor-sharp image of whatever you happen … Continue reading The Beauty of 4K

Pressure on Intel and Apple as Qualcomm exits iPhone

Several months back during one of countless analyst calls that Qualcomm was hosting in the middle of the attempted hostile takeover from Broadcom, the company stated as part of a financial outlook that it was “zeroing out” incoming revenue (Qualcomm’s licensing division) from Apple, the company it was fighting in various legal arenas around royalties … Continue reading Pressure on Intel and Apple as Qualcomm exits iPhone

The “So What” in Apple’s Earnings

On Tuesday, July 31st, Apple announced its 3Q18 financial results, an event that drove even more attention than usual given the headwind that some companies faced during this earnings cycle. In particular, analysts were trying to measure the health level of the whole smartphone industry based on what Apple reported for the iPhone. The Core … Continue reading The “So What” in Apple’s Earnings

Tech Industries Problem of Slowing Growth

A few years ago, I wrote an article called “when the easy growth is over.” I slightly regret the title because no growth is easy and we should applaud companies who do tap into the current and scale their businesses because it is not easy. However, my article was more to the point about the … Continue reading Tech Industries Problem of Slowing Growth

The Future of End User Computing

While making predictions about the future is always a challenging business, there’s one prognostication I think we can all agree to: over time, people are going to have an increasing number of “computing” devices. Hard to argue with that one, given the enormous diversity of intelligent gadgets becoming available, and the wide range of devices … Continue reading The Future of End User Computing

News You Might Have Missed: Week of July 27th, 2018

Amazon’s 2Q Earnings Net sales increased 39% to $52.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with $38.0 billion in second quarter 2017. Excluding the $760 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 37% compared with the second quarter of 2017. Operating income increased to $3.0 billion in the second quarter, compared with operating … Continue reading News You Might Have Missed: Week of July 27th, 2018