Apple

Does Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype change anything?

May 10, 2011
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So Microsoft has acquired Skype for $8.5 billion.  Whew!  It’s a breathtaking sum, especially for a company who’s bread and butter is the prepaid telecom business. Of all those rumoured to have been in the hunt for Skype, however, Microsoft was the suitor most able to take advantage of Skype’s network, ecosystem, and technology.  Their [...]

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Playbook: Maybe just right on target.

April 15, 2011
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There have been a rush of negative reviews for RIM’s Playbook over the last few days.  It’s been called half-baked, rushed to market, unfinished, and worse.  I haven’t seen it yet, but in my opinion, Playbook might be just right. What? Yup.  You heard me. No product team has ever produced a fully realized product [...]

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Apple revives long dead marketing practice

February 10, 2011

When I first started in the technology business, the practice of marketing differently in various geographies was common.  The same product might be sold in Canada for 10% more than it cost in the United States.  And watch out if you were European – 100% mark-ups were common.  Ostensibly companies localized products for various markets, [...]

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Lies, damn lies, and statistics

December 1, 2010
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Like a lot of mobile software developers, we track which handsets and operating systems are most popular. It’s critical to our business to understand which platforms have market share, are in ascendancy, decline and so on.  That’s the reason I read Royal Pingdom’s study of mobile OS usage so carefully this morning.  Region by region, [...]

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Skype vs Apple–is video the catalyst?

November 29, 2010
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In “The Sunday Morning Reflections on Game Changing Technology” Andy Abramson digs into what’s going on in the video space. You can summarize what he’s saying as “with Facetime, Apple could remake the video conferencing space”.  He lays out a number of scenarios where applications like Webex and GoToMeeting are shared with video via an [...]

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RIM’s new strategy PlayBook

September 29, 2010

RIM’s new PlayBook looks pretty nice, doesn’t it?  At least from what we can see, anyway.  Launched a couple of days ago, its high pixel density display, snappy dual core processor, gobs of OS RAM, and Adobe Flash support (!) make it a very interesting entrant into the tablet market. In fact, let’s go one [...]

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RIM’s secret weapon.

September 9, 2010

The US analyst community has been holding a wake for RIM in the last few days.  Henry Blodget has been beating the drum for some time, and now he’s been joined by Colin Gillis of BCG, Adnaan Ahmad of Berenberg, and Pierre Ferragu of Bernstein.  It’s a pile-on that has driven the stock price down [...]

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Which phone manufacturer will team up with Sony or Nintendo?

August 17, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Microsoft has finally announced the Xbox Live titles that will be available on Windows Phone 7, and according long time Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, the company has said that games will be front and center for the Windows 7 platform.  Marrying the successful XBOX franchise to Windows Phone is clearly an attempt [...]

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Can 3.3.1 Kryptonite Kill Apple’s Super Powers?

May 4, 2010

On Monday, The New York Post published rumours that the US Government is close to launching an inquiry into Apple’s developer licensing terms, specifically the 3.3.1 clause in the developers agreement that bars developers from using any but Apple mandated development tools to create applications.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, one source said “Apple could [...]

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Apple’s naked self interest

April 12, 2010

Any vendor in the platform business knows that their primary product is programming interfaces – the so-called APIs that developers depend upon in order to deliver applications.  The API exposes features of the platform, and differentiate applications running on that platform from all others.  Lose control of the API, and you will lose control of [...]

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