This is the third in my series on what I see happening in the year ahead for major tech companies. Apple is here, and Google is here. One quick note: as an analyst, my coverage area is consumer technology, so although I will address Microsoft’s enterprise business throughout this post and especially at the end, it … Continue reading Microsoft in 2015
“Jobs To Be Done” is one of my favorite analytical tools. Tech analysis often appears to be a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a wreck. ((Stolen from Kant: “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.)) The Jobs To Be Done” test is a … Continue reading Thoughts On “Jobs To Be Done”
Welcome to the weekly Tech.pinions podcast. This week, Ben Bajarin, Jan Dawson and Carolina Milanesi discuss the trends happening in the smartphone market. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. If you happen to use a podcast aggregator or want to add it to iTunes manually the feed to our podcast is: techpinions.com/feed/podcast
There have been rumors of the return to netbook pricing in the PC market. We believe this could have an irreversible impact on overall PC prices. When we study the PC market, we see a high degree of health in the higher end segments of the market. Companies like Apple and other vendors who have legitimate … Continue reading The Danger of the $200 PC
There are a few topics in consumer technology that are perennial, coming and going in the public consciousness and being periodically reinvented. One of those is virtual reality and, although I remember movies like Lawnmower Man and big promises for the technology over 20 years ago, this time it actually seems to be on the cusp … Continue reading Thoughts on Virtual Reality
I’ve been tracking nuances of the global tablet market since the origins of the category. As I emphasize in my analysis, we know not all tablets are created or used equally. I’ve also been adamant about explaining that, when I look at tablet usage data, we essentially have two tablet markets. Tablets with a brand on … Continue reading The Implications of the Low Price Tablet Era
This is the second in a series of posts for Insiders on what I see ahead for some of the major tech companies in 2015 – I covered Apple last week, and Microsoft and others will be coming in the next few weeks. My intention is to look ahead at the challenges and opportunities facing … Continue reading Google in 2015
The feel of Apple’s September launch event was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Familiar in the way all Apple events I have attended since 2001 have felt. A similar format with many familiar faces but also unfamiliar because of the dramatic increase in the number of attendees. A casual observation by any … Continue reading The Day I Rubbed Shoulders With will.i.am
I’ve just published an in-depth report on the state of Windows Phone as an operating system (and, by implication, Microsoft’s mobile phone business which makes up around 95% of sales on the platform). You can download the whole report for free here, but I wanted to provide a brief summary for Tech.pinions readers as well. It … Continue reading The State of Windows Phone
PC installed base is 1.8 billion and 600M+ are 4+ years old according to @intel….that’s part of the reason why they’re positive on growth. ~ Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech) 11/20/14 Here is the chart Intel provided in support of the above: Intel is suggesting 600 million PCs over 4 years of age is reason to be … Continue reading Intel’s PC Dilemma
Recently, IBM released their post Black Friday analytics report. As always, it includes some interesting takeaways around devices and platforms used for Black Friday e-commerce. Before digging into the report, I thought this tweet from Benedict Evans was insightful in context. Tablets functioning more like PCs in the home rather than mobile devices should be … Continue reading Takeaways From IBM’s Black Friday E-Commerce Report
I attended last week’s Los Angeles Auto Show, as I do every year. While the norm among native Californians seems to be to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I always drive. I make my way over to I-5, confirm there are no patrol cars nearby, then torch the accelerator. Soon I’m in LA, checking out … Continue reading Mobile Is Eating The Car
All of us know our smartphones are actually powerful personal computers that fit into our pocket. I have been in the PC industry for 35 years and my first PC had an 8088 Intel processor in it and sported a 4.77 MHZ processor speed. The processor in my iPhone 6 Plus runs at 1.4 GHz … Continue reading Does the Asus PadFone/Tablet combo represent the future of personal computing?
With Thanksgiving upon us, at least in the U.S., it’s a good time to look back upon the year of nearly 11 months and see some random participants in tech who have done well in 2014. Apple: Every year seems to be a good year for Apple, but 2013 was an exceptionally good one. At a time when … Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving Winners
The biggest challenge I see facing disruption theory is an understanding of when it applies vs. when it does not. Several posts lay the foundation for truth. Ben Thompson’s What Clay Christensen got wrong Jean-Louis Gassee’s Clayton Christensen becomes his own devil’s advocate. Disrupting Disruption Theory – by me. A few weeks back, Horace Deidu … Continue reading Disruption Theory Need Not Apply
I have been watching the current crop of Microsoft’s TV ads that pit the Surface Pro against a MacBook Air with great interest. They also have one that shows the Lenovo Yoga vs. a MacBook Air although the majority of the ones I have seen in the last few weeks highlighted the Surface Pro. At the very least, these ads … Continue reading Have Microsoft’s Surface Pro vs. MacBook Air TV ads worked?
Let’s start with some comments on “Post PC.” If we take a step back and look at the global computing landscape, we realize two things. First, there is a “PC plus” market (people who use a PC and other devices like tablets and smartphones together) and a non-PC market where the only computer people use … Continue reading Intel’s Challenge in the Post PC World
Internal data I have access to from Baidu in China allows me to see a picture of what is happening at ground level in terms of daily active users by device on Baidu’s network/app distribution platform. Baidu is the largest search engine in China both by use and revenue and their app distribution platform represents … Continue reading Data: The iPhone 6 vs. the 6 Plus in China
As I sat through various sessions at the recent Dell World event in Austin, TX, I could not help but think about the new Dell vs the new HP. In a recent Techpinions article, I wrote about how Dell, as a private company, was making major strides in growing and becoming a profitable company again. However, in one conversation I had with … Continue reading The New Dell vs the New HP
On November 17 in his weekly Monday Note, Jean-Louis Gassée wrote: “App Store Curation: An Open Letter To Tim Cook“. He summed up his own letter best when he said: With one million titles and no human guides, the Apple App Store has become incomprehensible for mere mortals. A simple solution exists: curation by humans … Continue reading Algorithms Aren’t Always The Answer
On October 27th, 2014, Techpinion’s very own, Brian S. Hall, wrote an article entitled “Microsoft Is Doomed. Doomed!” Brian was, of course, being facetious. Far from predicting doom for Microsoft, he was mocking the Microsoft doomsayers. Let’s take a look at a few of his article’s choicer bits: I have to believe Microsoft’s latest earnings … Continue reading Microsoft Is (Sorta) Doomed
Welcome to the weekly Tech.pinions podcast. This week, Tim Bajarin and Bob O’Donnell discuss the Dell World 2014 Conference, Samsung’s Developer Conference and Sony Electronics. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. If you happen to use a podcast aggregator or want to add it to iTunes manually the feed to our podcast is: techpinions.com/feed/podcast
In early 2013, Michael Dell and his team made the decision to take the company private but got serious push-back from some of their investors. The biggest came from Carl Icahn who felt Dell was undervalued and tried various moves to try and take over the board and kick Michael Dell out of the company. Of course, Dell and … Continue reading Evaluating The New Dell One Year After Going Private
Reinventing TV The last several years have seen huge innovation in the TV and video space, with a plethora of startups and larger companies transforming the television watching experience in a number of ways. Many are forecasting a future of cord cutting and online, over-the-top delivery, and yet that reality doesn’t seem to be panning … Continue reading Why cord cutting isn’t happening (and may never happen)
By now you have probably heard CVS and Rite Aid have disabled their NFC radios in check out terminals in order to block Apple Pay and Google Wallet. The reason is they, along with Walmart and about 45 other merchants, are working to create a competitor called CurrentC that eliminates their paying a fee to the credit card companies and gives … Continue reading The Idiocy of CVS and Rite Aid
