One of the more interesting things I have been observing for a few years is how the smartphone market has increasingly become extremely regionalized. It is fascinating to analyze the dynamics that have allowed the smartphone market to go global but, in doing so, open the door for local brands and local companies to be … Continue reading The Regionalization of the Smartphone Market
The tablet market share story is quite different. While the market appears to be slowing, it is, in fact, still growing. Our data shows year-on-year increases in user numbers have dropped from around +200% at the start of the decade to less than +15% in 2014. This product may be even more subject to seasonality … Continue reading Tablet Computing Platform Market Shares
Unlike the PC computing era where the industry was made up of “market share” of only one company, the “Post PC Era” is poised to be made up of market shares. That means many platforms competing in different segments, each with a share of each market. As we dive into several of the charts I’ve … Continue reading Smartphone Computing Platform Market Shares
I’m (supposed to be) on vacation this week, but I saw an article by Peter Bright of Ars Tecnica, that got my dander up: “Op-Ed: Tablets really are the new PCs; nobody needs to buy them any more.” Peter Bright’s article looks for trouble, finds it where it doesn’t exist, diagnoses it incorrectly, and applies … Continue reading Counterpoint: Tablets Were Never Supposed To Be The Next Smartphone
Given that it’s just before back-to-school season, it may seem a bit odd to mention year-end holidays, but throughout the offices, halls and cubicles of all our favorite vendors, the holiday product and marketing plans have been underway for some time. These companies not only know what products they’ll have in place by then, they’re … Continue reading Hot Items for the Holidays: Large Phones, Notebooks and Smart TVs
Every generation faces new challenges raising their children as society and culture changes — from the time they are kids to the time they are parents. Looking back, it seems as the past century saw more generational changes than the many centuries prior. Technology, and the increased pace of innovation, played a central role in … Continue reading Raising Digital Natives
Over the last five years, Samsung has become a behemoth in the tech marketplace. Their smartphones dominate the tech landscape and their profits have been relatively good until recently, considering the fact they still make most of their money on hardware. However, as we have seen in the PC market, a hardware only business model is not … Continue reading The Major Industry Battle Brewing Between Samsung vs Google
I’ve caught wind of an interesting trend, or perhaps I should say a counter trend. Recently, I have had a number of discussions with many Fortune 500 CIOs and CTOs about the topic of BYOD. What came out of these conversations was very intriguing. Nearly all of them who have deployed some type of BYOD … Continue reading The Myth of BYOD
Last week before the news broke, I warned Microsoft employees, all of them, to “get to work on your resume.” Change was coming, major change, and that always always always begins with a bloodletting. Indeed, as others were decrying the word count of Satya Nadella’s “bold ambition” manifesto — signifying nothing, given it took Steve … Continue reading Deconstructing Satya. Episode II. The Empire Strikes Back.
When Apple released their Q1 earnings in late April, they reported sales of iPads were down substantially over last year’s same quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated part of the reason for a decline in iPad demand this year is, in Q1 of 2013, there was pent-up demand for the iPad mini and a backlog … Continue reading Why Has the Growth in Tablets Stalled?
A lot of the analysis I do revolves around business models and how companies I cover in the consumer technology market make money. The reality is there are three major business models in use in the consumer technology market for directly monetizing a product or service but there are also a variety of other business … Continue reading When Your Users Aren’t Your Customers
As you wander about your world, casually observe what people wear on their wrists. You will notice the most common wrist worn device is a wristwatch. But you will also notice most people have nothing on their wrist. If you are super observant, you may notice fewer people under 40 wear watches than those over … Continue reading The Naked Wrist
The news Apple and IBM have joined forces to deliver a powerful new business approach to the enterprise is the shot heard round the IT world. This global deal, where IBM in essence becomes a VAR (value added reseller) for Apple and includes IBM porting more than 150 of their IT apps and tools exclusively to … Continue reading Apple and IBM Storm the Enterprise
Most people who follow the technology industry have a general sense there are important differences between younger and older people when it comes to what technology products they buy and how they’re used. Heck, those of us who are parents see it every day in the activities of our children in comparison to what we … Continue reading Digital Generation Gap
Most of the devices we use have three essential components: processors, inputs and outputs. What’s interesting is much of the innovation in the consumer technology space at present is happening across these three categories, but the major companies in the space are each innovating in different areas. Let’s look at a few of them: Apple, Facebook, … Continue reading Where the innovation is: brains, inputs and outputs
I have noticed successful CEOs share an uncanny ability to lay bare a company’s strategy while simultaneously leading you down a false path. Steve Jobs was a master at this. I learned from watching Jobs it was always best to remove my expectations, toss aside my biases, and focus strictly on what he was saying … Continue reading Decoding Page And Brin
Before we reach maturity, we go through what many refer to as “the awkward years”. It’s a rite of passage as we change from adolescence to adulthood. For most people, the best way to describe those years are with a single adjective–weird. Last month, I gave a presentation at a summit I helped put on … Continue reading The Awkward Years of Tech
Samsung’s Q2 earnings and smartphone shipment volume miss should come as no surprise to our readers. I highlighted the fundamentals of what I saw happening to Samsung in this insider article from last September. Samsung has made very little progress competing with Apple in the high end premium segment of the smartphone market and they … Continue reading Peak Samsung
Timing is everything in the tech business and because of that, it’s not uncommon to see old ideas come back to life in new forms. Many important or innovative ideas just reach the market before the world is ready for them and end up having little or no impact initially. However, eventually some make their … Continue reading Virtualization Reborn
I have spent the past three weeks in Detroit, a city possessing a rich history and an unremitting present. The vagaries of Silicon Valley count for little here. When I heard a young man ask — for real — if the Samsung Galaxy S5 was an iPhone or an Android, I knew there was much … Continue reading The Smartphone Is The Computer
I’ve always found it fascinating the two dominant companies in the smartphone market – Samsung and Apple – have such different business models. On the one hand, you have a company that approaches the market in a tightly integrated fashion, combining hardware, software and services in a proprietary way, encapsulating them in a very small … Continue reading Is Samsung’s Exceptionalism Coming to an End?
On June 27th, Tim Bajarin wrote an excellent article on wearables entitled “Understanding Apple’s Wearable Strategy“. If you haven’t read it, I highly encourage you to take the time to read it, or re-read it, now. Tim’s article got me thinking. We’ve been down the “new categories” road before but we always seem to get … Continue reading Our Wearable Future: Lessons Unlearned
Someone who I believe has a good sense of Apple’s thinking about wearables told me some months ago that if I wanted to understand part of Apple’s wearable strategy I needed to go to Disney World. When I was at Disney World in Orlando recently, I tried to get a sense of what this person was talking … Continue reading Understanding Apple’s Wearable Strategy
Google made a series of announcements at I/O relating to Android and for me, one of the big themes was Google exercising greater control over both the version of Android that runs on smartphones and tablets and the new flavors that will run in cars, TVs and wearable devices. Having seen some fairly Google-light (and … Continue reading Google is trying to drive loyalty to Android, not just Galaxy
There are over a billion active users of Google’s version of Android. Add AOSP and we are probably in the 1.6 to 1.7 billion range of users on Android. Both will grow — however, I believe Google’s version of Android will grow at a more rapid pace than AOSP. This is largely thanks to big … Continue reading Android and the Next Billion
