The blogosphere has suddenly discovered the incredible array of products, tools and services Microsoft has long possessed. Better late than never, I suppose. Fact is, their realization of the obvious is in large part due to the accessible dynamism and well-regarded tech cred of Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella. Nadella’s hire makes for a great … Continue reading Panic Inside Apple and Cheers for Satya
Microsoft made a number of announcements at their Build conference this morning. While many were related to Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, most feature announcements were simply playing catch up. But they did announce a few things I think are interesting. Let me preface this by saying Microsoft is in a deep deep hole. … Continue reading Microsoft’s Two Big Announcements and Their Future Impact
When I first started doing industry analysis in 2000, my focus was heavily on mobile computing. Our firm has a legacy of PC industry analysis and, at the time I joined, we were embarking on the major shift from desktop computing to mobile computing. Mobile computing in those days was defined as a notebook or … Continue reading Mobile Changed Everything
The ghost of Steve Jobs haunts Google and Facebook. Unlike Apple, which has always aligned its interests with its users, both Google and Facebook must serve two masters: users and customers. They are not the same. Indeed, the divergent demands of these two groups has placed both web giants at a long term competitive disadvantage … Continue reading The Genius Of Steve Jobs Or Why Google And Facebook Must Make Big Bets
Analyzing and discussing a product category from afar is always a fun exercise, but for me, the pedal doesn’t really hit the metal until I put together a market forecast. As an industry analyst, building forecasts is part of what I do and the process helps me crystallize my thoughts about the direction I believe … Continue reading A Wearables Forecast
Last week I talked about health and fitness wearables and my failure to see how they appeal to a broader market. This week I want to talk about the potentially lucrative category of smart watches. If we count Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object (or SPOT watches) as a smart watch then I have been using these … Continue reading Is There Value in Smart Glass on My Wrist?
Molly Wood, writing for the New York Times, thinks that Android Wear is the beginning of the wearable devices era. I doubt that. The Line Of Reasoning This is Woods’ argument in a nutshell: 1) Nascent technology needs a platform to be successful. 2) Android Wear gives wearables that platform. 3) The availability of an … Continue reading Rebuttal: Why Android Wear Is Not the Beginning of the Wearable Devices Era
The wearables market continues to capture the imagination of the tech industry, press, and investment community. (A few actual customers also seem interested, although they almost seem secondary at this point…) Even early on, it seems clear that the wearables market is going to be significantly different from other device categories that have preceded it, … Continue reading Measuring Success In Wearables: It’s Thousands of Thousands
Arguably, Apple and Google are the largest, richest, most powerful, most influential technology companies on the planet. Across many markets their products, services and technologies directly compete with one another. Yet, in countless endeavors, each benefits the other, enabling both to earn more, reach more, do more, grow ever larger, their creations touching nearly all … Continue reading Better For The World? Apple Or Google?
In addition to wearables, the other hot topic in tech these days is the Internet of Things, or IOT. The concept behind IOT is certainly an intriguing one—in the future, there will be tens of billions of devices (about 10x the current installed based of PCs, smartphones and tablets combined) all connected to the Internet … Continue reading IOT: Islands of Isolated Things?
We have always known China was going to be a key market for Apple. The only question was when. Our research has continually turned up evidence China was a booming iPhone market. iPhones were coming through the secondary market or being imported and brought onto local networks through backdoor channels even before they were officially … Continue reading Data on China: Apple’s Biggest iPhone Market
Not long after my mom and dad died before the turn of the century, we finally got around to looking at hundreds of pictures my parents took from their early days as well as my early childhood. The photos brought back one particular memory of the first camera I used as a young child. It … Continue reading How Two Cameras ushered in the age of Digital Image and Video Documentation
Over the last several months, we’ve seen moves by the US carriers to introduce a new model for paying for devices in addition to the traditional subsidy model. The new model allows customers to pay for their devices over a period of time in monthly installments. It began at T-Mobile in May 2013, and the … Continue reading How Carriers’ Move Away From Phone Subsidies Could Hurt Them
In our fascination with tablets and smartphones, new paradigms have drastically simplified the way we interact with our daily technology. But have we forgotten how much of the growing capability is based on soaring computational capability on the back end? Just the existence of ubiquitous computing clouds, from companies such as Amazon Web Services and … Continue reading In Praise of Computational Complexity
There has been a good discussion recently on our site about Apple and India. I try to maintain as global a perspective as possible. I study in depth markets like China, India, Latin America, and more. I look for data from these markets; I search for trends, and try to get a handle on each … Continue reading Why China is More Strategic to Apple Than India
Apu Kumar has held senior leadership roles at iconic technology brands as well as early stage start-ups, Hewlett-Packard, Phoenix Technologies, CNET.com, mySimon and is currently the SVP, Chief Deal Hacker at BlueStacks – GamePop. This is part 1 of a 2 part series from Apu on the PC industry. Evolution “We are the facilitators of … Continue reading Future PC Part 2: Evolution and Resurrection
Apple’s TV device made the headlines again this past week when Tim Cook mentioned at the annual shareholder event that it was a billion-dollar business for the company in the last fiscal year. Apple subsequently made clear that this included content as well as hardware sales connected with Apple TV. Though Tim Cook made clear … Continue reading Taking Apple TV beyond a hobby
Google recently released their latest platform numbers for each version of Android. This chart shows what percent of each platform is still in use on an Android device in the market. A couple of things are worth pointing out regarding this data. These metrics from Google only track a piece of hardware that has passed … Continue reading Chart: Android Install Base
India is considered to be the next big superpower and second largest market for smartphones. It is a country Apple often ignores in their giant plans to get iOS to concur the smart phone world. Sure, bureaucratic hurdles do exist, and Tim Cook has pointed those out on prior earning calls, but while every other … Continue reading Does India Exist for Apple?
Perhaps I should have titled this “India Is The Future Of The Smartphone Wars”? The appointment of the highly capable Satya Nadella to lead Microsoft only partly explains why I am thinking more about India and technology. The other reason is that it increasingly appears that the future of smartphones, and the winners and losers … Continue reading India And The Future Of The Smartphone Wars
Apu Kumar has held senior leadership roles at iconic technology brands as well as early stage start-ups, Phoenix Technologies, CNET.com, mySimon and is currently the SVP, Chief Deal Hacker at BlueStacks – GamePop. This is part 1 of a 2 part series from Apu on the PC industry. Trepidation “Trepidation is either the sign of … Continue reading The Future PC
For decades now, debates have raged, developers have been wooed and dollars have been spent trying to convince the world of the value of various consumer-focused computing platforms. From the early days of Apple DOS, AmigaOS, Atari TOS, and MS-DOS; through the middle period of Windows and MacOS; to the modern battles of Android, iOS, … Continue reading The New Platform Battle
E-commerce has been a buzzword in the industry for more than a decade. I have come across some interesting data points that paint a new picture of the e-commerce marketplace than one that has previously existed. Not surprisingly, this shift in e-commerce trends is being driven by mobile devices. The implications of mobile on e-commerce … Continue reading Report: Smart Devices and E-Commerce
Anybody still recall when Apple’s chief competitors went about mocking the company for being, well, technology designed for older people? Those attacks came to an abrupt end in large part because Apple kept on printing money. I suspect, however, there is a second reason: iWatch. iWatch may be the perfect personal computer for boomers, seniors … Continue reading But Apple Is For Old People! Where iWatch And Apple Have The Last Laugh.
Business is a combination of war and sport. ~ André Maurois The Long Summer Of The Microsoft Monopoly Olympics Computing was pretty simple for the last 15 years: PC plus a browser. Both are splintering now. ~ Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) Once upon a time — long, long ago in 2006 — the Personal Computing Olympics … Continue reading Who Won The Mobile Tech Olympics?
