January 27, 2013 – 9:25 pm
Tweet To perform painful surgery on its business model, Dell needs to take the company private. Seeing challenges in raising the needed $22B, Microsoft “generously” proposes to contribute a few billions. Is this helping or killing the deal? The news broke two weeks ago: Dell wants to go private. The company would like to buy [...]
January 20, 2013 – 8:49 pm
Tweet For years, Apple’s been told its products were too expensive – and prospered mightily. Today, many suggest Apple should launch a low-cost iPhone. Will history repeat itself, or have the rules of the Smartphone Wars changed in ways that will force Apple to alter its strategy? Dismissing the prospect of a Low Cost iPhone [...]
January 6, 2013 – 11:46 pm
Tweet As Samsung dominates the Android market, one has to wonder, who controls whom? Is Google really in charge, or is Samsung so strong it can now rule the Android game? This morning’s thoughts are harder to focus than usual: I’m sitting across the street from Sciences Po — the Paris Institute of Political Studies [...]
December 16, 2012 – 11:18 pm
Tweet Meg Whitman’s efforts to turn HP around follow a proven script. But, in her efforts to frame future results against a background of past misdeeds, she might have gone one excuse too far and engaged in a potentially embarrassing fight against Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s founder. Turnaround Artist Manual – Chapter 1: Walk in with [...]
December 9, 2012 – 10:11 pm
Tweet We all want TV Done Right, free of the Soviet Era set-top box, UI and opaque contracts. We imagine Apple will put all the pieces together. But what’s desirable and “obvious” might not be so simple or soon… “When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I [...]
December 2, 2012 – 8:16 pm
Tweet At CES 2011, Ballmer told the world Windows would “fork”, that it would also run on lower power ARM chips for mobile devices. This was seen as a momentous breach in the long-standing Wintel duopoly. Two years later, the ARM tooth of the fork looks short and dull. This is what I wrote almost [...]
November 4, 2012 – 10:14 pm
Tweet A couple of hours after landing in SFO from Paris, I find myself setting up two new tablets: a Microsoft Surface and an iPad mini. While on the road, I had read much on both products and felt reasonably well prepared for the tasks. This proved correct. But the product experience was another thing. [...]
October 28, 2012 – 9:47 pm
Tweet On October 23rd, Apple announced the widely expected iPad mini. The company also surprised most by also introducing a faster “4th generation” iPad, swiftly replacing the one launched on March 7th this year, seven and a half months ago. That same day, Tim Cook proudly proclaimed a an iPad milestone: 100 million shipped since [...]
October 21, 2012 – 7:54 pm
Tweet Apple and Samsung are engaged in a knives-out smartphone war, most infamously in the courts but, more importantly, in the marketplace. In its latest ad campaign, Samsung has cleverly “borrowed” a page from Apple’s own marketing playbook, posturing the iPhone as the choice of autumn-aged parents and brainwashed queue sheep. But when it comes [...]
October 14, 2012 – 7:16 pm
Tweet It’s a beautiful sight when, year after year, a company stays true to its original idea. But when a business loses the plot, we witness a sorry spectacle, an expensive slide into mediocrity. Every wayward company is wayward in its own way: Accountants masquerading as product planners; wannabe visionary execs jealousy trying to prove [...]
