Category: Business

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Carriers with Low IQ’s

Sen. Franken petitions AT&T, HTC, others for Carrier IQ info:

Minnesota Senator Al Franken has sent letters to several more companies involved in the Carrier IQ scandal, reports say. Franken is in charge of a Senate privacy panel, and has issued new requests to AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint, in addition to one sent earlier to Carrier IQ itself. The new parties are being asked to explain how they’re using the Carrier IQ technology, and what data they’re gathering through it.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)

Sen. Franken is not the guy you want asking hard questions.  It’s going to be a circus of scandal, finger pointing, the works.

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The Fed’s $7 Trillion Secret Loan Program

The Fed’s $7 Trillion Secret Loan Program:

 

Eliot Spitzer on the aforelinked scandal revealed by Bloomberg:

Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don’t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours.

Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public.

Or, as Jon Stewart asked, “How the f*** is it that Martha Stewart went to jail?”

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

Gruber finds the perfect quote.

 

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Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US

Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US:

Like HP, Dell is believed to be putting most of its faith in Windows 8 tablets for the US market. It won’t have this option until mid-to-late 2012, however, and will essentially concede its share of mobile tablets for a year.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)

Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor?  Execution of course has been lacking by announcing tablets so early the market had moved on to more advanced tablets, but that begs a serious question: Why is Dell behind?

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Two Sides of the Same Coin

How Much Is Your Brand Loved (Or Hated)? – The BrainYard – InformationWeek:

Passion makes a difference, in social media analytics as in life in general.

Measuring the intensity of emotion is one way NetBase distinguishes itself in the crowded field of social media analytics. Or, as Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Joy Rosner puts it, “I’m quite passionate about how we measure passion.

The point is to distinguish between liking and loving, mildly disliking and intensely loathing, while also trying to dodge linguistic pitfalls like satire that can confuse a computer program. NetBase does a good enough job of it that it has been able to win the business of major consumer products companies like Coca Cola and Kraft.

(Via Information Week – Business Intelligence.)

I’m not sure about this.  A mentor of mine found in his research that passion drives comments.  The more you care the more you tend to comment.  So, how do you account for people dissatisfied or satisfied with your product but don’t care enough to comment?  How does that change the reading on the love-o-meter?

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RIM, You’re Done Here

RIM, You’re Done Here:

RIM’s legacy is writ large on the world around us. Almost every major enterprise mobile system is patterned on their excellent email and PIM solution. But they are now slaves to their own success. They can’t sell anything other than a keyboard-candybar phone in an era where the keyboard is increasingly irrelevant or hidden away until needed. This failure of imagination in both consumer and manufacturer is their curse. In a world where every phone is smart and every phone does email, there is little to recommend any RIM phone over any other. It’s over and now we’re just waiting for the buy-out and inevitable disappearance of one of the greatest mobile companies in modern memory.

(Via MobileCrunch.)

It’s so often a mistake for your current customers to determine your product roadmap.  Current customers can be a fickle bunch.  You need to figure out what future customers will want.  I’ve often heard that the “only” reason my friends stick with their Blackberries is for BBM.  When the one thing keeping your customers is a service that can be and is now replicated, you have a serious problem.  You need to be different in a way that motivates your customers to pay you and not someone else.

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Zaky: Apple’s Cash to Exceed $300 Billion by 2015

Zaky: Apple’s Cash to Exceed $300 Billion by 2015:

Andy Zaky:

If it then carried that 2013 0.00% growth rate into 2014, the company would have $230 billion in cash or just about $250 in cash per share. 2015 it would have $300 billion in cash or $330 in cash per share. Again, that assumes 0.00% growth for 2013, 2014, and 2015. So if Apple grows 0.00%, then by 2015, it will have more cash per share than the stock is trading at today.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Those numbers aren’t tricks. Apple is a beast with cash. But Zaky assumes the world in 2015 will be a later version of the world in 2011.  Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.  Is 2011 just 2007 4.0?

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Business Class: Freemium for News?

The idea of creating a business class for online news where is not about buying information, but buying better experience, it’s about service and customer experience. That’s right: Customer (paying), not user (free).

via Daring Fireball.

Now this is an idea that might have some traction.  I would pay for online news to provide clean, efficient news delivery.

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Windows Phone 7 Fails To Halt Microsoft’s Mobile Slide

Windows Phone 7 Fails To Halt Microsoft’s Mobile Slide:

Microsoft’s share of U.S. smartphone platforms slipped 1.7%, to 8%, during the three months ended Jan. 31, according to market watcher comScore. Over the same period, Google Android’s share increased 7.7%, to 31.2%, while Apple’s iPhone held steady—increasing .1% to 24.7%.

(Via InformationWeek – All Stories And Blogs.)

Ouch.  No hardware carrier needs two monkeys on their back.  Microsoft’s traditional model has been to charge for their OS and appropriate some value from the OEM.  Google’s turns all that on its head.  In fact, Google is willing to pay through revenue sharing on search.  Microsoft’s rumored “billions” paid to Nokia to implement on Windows Phone is too little, too late.  Microsoft can’t pay everybody to implement on their OS.

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So Far, Rivals Can’t Beat iPad’s Price

So Far, Rivals Can’t Beat iPad’s Price:

Analysts and industry experts point to a number of reasons. Primarily, they say, Apple’s deep pockets — a staggering $60 billion in cash reserves — have allowed it to form strategic partnerships with other companies to buy large supplies of components, for example, in expensive flash memory. By doing this, the company probably secures a lower price from suppliers, ensuring a lower manufacturing cost.

 

At the same time, they say, Apple has sidestepped high licensing fees for other items it needs, like the A4 and A5 processors within the iPads. Those parts, designed in-house at Apple by a company that Apple bought, are among the costlier components needed to make a tablet computer.

Mr. Sacconaghi said Apple also could subsidize some of the cost of building iPads with the money it makes through its App Store, which generates more than a billion dollars each year. This means that Apple can take a lower profit margin on the iPad, 25 percent, than it does on, for example, the iPhone, which can yield as much as 50 percent profit.

Yet another advantage is Apple’s wide net of its own global retail shops and online stores; for customers, this means they can avoid a markup from a third party like Best Buy.

Although other companies have some of these factors in their favor, no one but Apple has all of them.

 

(Via Business and Financial News – The New York Times.)

Add the fact that the hardware and iOS is implemented well, delivering the Apple “experience,” and you have a tough competitor.  It’s not that HP and Samsung can’t compete. It’s just that they have to make different design decisions than they’ve been making to date.  And given the constraints they are under, they have their work cut out for them.