Author Archives: Jean-Louis Gassée

What’s next for RIM?

July 1, 2012 – 7:11 pm

TweetA sad coincidence provides a stark contrast between the fortunes of two high tech companies, titans present and past. Last week, on (almost) the same day that the iPhone celebrated its fifth birthday, RIM issued very bad quarterly numbers: Down 43% year-to-year to $2.8B; a $518M net loss compared to a $695M profit in the [...]

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Microsoft: Apostasy Or Head Fake?

June 25, 2012 – 12:23 am

TweetMy appetite whetted by three days of rumors, I went online last Monday and watched Microsoft introduce its Surface tablets. After the previous false starts — the moribund Tablet PC and the still-born Courier — Microsoft finally took matters into its own hands. Ballmer & Co. could no longer wait for OEMs to create vehicles [...]

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The Nokia Torture

June 18, 2012 – 10:04 am

TweetHow would you like to be a Nokia employee? Last week the bosses came up with more bad news: In order to cut 3B€ (about $3.8B) in expenses by the end of 2013, another 10,000 employees will be shown the door — this after earlier cutting payroll by 4,000 people. The news came couched in [...]

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Mobile Advertising:
The $20B Opportunity Mirage

June 10, 2012 – 10:39 pm

TweetThere are a lot of questions left to be answered about Facebook’s IPO fiasco, but one thing we know is this: As consumers shift their use of Facebook from PCs to smartphones, investors worry about lower mobile advertising revenues. Is this a temporary situation that will be remedied when usage patterns settle, or do investors [...]

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Monday Note Exclusive: The Walmart Garden Smartphone

June 3, 2012 – 11:49 pm

TweetLast week was the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Conference, D10 for short. For the past three years it’s been held at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, South of Los Angeles. If I leave in the wee hours and take an North and East detour around the Evil [...]

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Decoding Share Prices: Amazon, Apple and Facebook

May 27, 2012 – 11:51 pm

TweetThere are many religions when it comes to calculating the “right” price for the shares of a publicly traded company. At a basic level, buying a share is an act of faith in the company’s future earnings. The strength of this belief manifests itself in the company’s P/E (Price/Earnings) ratio. The stronger the faith, the [...]

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California’s Financial and Cultural Deficits

May 20, 2012 – 11:35 pm

TweetI think I found a cure for both. First, the symptoms. Financially, California is close to being bankrupt, it spends more than it makes and runs a huge $361B debt, as illustrated by the online, live Debt Clock: Unemployment is high; infrastructure is neglected; the pride of California, its UC Colleges, must raise tuition beyond [...]

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The Apple-Intel-Samsung Ménage à Trois

May 13, 2012 – 10:29 pm

TweetFascinating doesn’t do justice to the spectacle, nor to the stakes. Taken in pairs, these giants exchange fluids – products and billion$ – while fiercely fighting with their other half. Each company is the World’s Number One in their domain: Intel in microprocessors, Samsung in electronics, Apple in failure to fail as ordained by the [...]

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Apple: Q2 Thoughts

May 6, 2012 – 9:51 pm

TweetThere was a time when clever individuals could sustain themselves by exploiting people’s ignorance and anxiety. Augurs studied the flight of birds to explain the will of the gods; haruspices practiced divination by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals. For fear of bursting into uncontrollable laughter, so the joke goes, the fortune tellers studiously avoided [...]

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Apple Is Doomed: The Phony Sony Parallel

April 29, 2012 – 9:33 pm

TweetIn the weeks preceding the April 24th release of Apple’s quarterly earnings, a number of old canards sent the stock down by about 12%: Carriers are going to kill the iPhone Golden Goose by cutting back “exorbitant” subsidies; iPhone sales are down from the previous quarter in the US; inexorable commoditization will soon bring down [...]

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