Tweet “Carriers are confident we won’t read the small print that contradicts their tricky advertising. Once in a while, a public servant really does his job and forces a retraction. Why so rarely?.” ‘My goal in life has been to have just enough money to ignore 8-point Helvetica!’ Thus spake a close friend one night [...]
Tweet Facebook’s new Home on Android smartphone is an audacious attempt to demote the OS to a utility role, to keep to itself user data Android was supposed to feed into Google’s advertising business. Google’s reaction will be worth watching. Amazon’s Kindle Fire, announced late September 2011, is viewed as a clever “Android lock pick“. [...]
March 24, 2013 – 10:56 pm
Tweet Publishers are concerned: The shift to mobile advertising revenue is lagging way behind the transfer of users to smartphones and tablets. Solutions are coming, but it might take a while before mobile ads catch up with users. (A mistake in the ad revenue chart has been corrected) Last week, at a self-congratulatory celebration held [...]
Tweet As seen last week in Barcelona, the mobile industry is red hot. The media sector will have to work harder to capture its share of that growth. The 2013 edition of the Mobile World Congress held last week in Barcelona was as large as the biggest auto-show in the world: 1500 exhibitors and a [...]
Tweet As they approach the one million apps mark, smartphone and tablet app stores leave users stranded in thick, uncharted forests. What are Google and Apple waiting? Last week, Google made the following announcement: Mountain View, February 24th, 2013 — As part of an industry that owes so much to Steve Jobs, we remember him [...]
February 10, 2013 – 6:38 pm
Tweet Looking for next big wave of products or services, for something as big as smartphones or, more recently, tablets, we see technology kept in check by culture. To qualify as a Big Thing these days, a product — or a service, or maybe something hardly more effable than a meme (think “social networks”) — [...]
February 3, 2013 – 8:43 pm
Tweet The iPad started simple, one window at a time, putting it in the “media consumption” category as a result. Over time, such category proved too narrow, the iPad did well in some content creation activities. Can the new 128 GB iPad continue the trend and acquire better workflow capabilities? Last week, without great fanfare, [...]
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 – 11:23 pm
Tweet Mobile audiences are large and growing. Great. But their monetization is mostly a disaster. The situation will be slow to improve, but the potential is still there — if the right conditions are met. This year, a major European newspaper expects to make around €16m in digital advertising revenue. The business is [...]
