Category Archives: Uncategorized

Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem

January 22, 2012 – 8:15 pm

TweetIn the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars and Eiffel Tower. The gathering was meant to be an informal discussion among media people about Nicolas Sarkozy’s push for the HADOPI anti-piracy bill. The risk of a heated debate was [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (36)

2011: Shift Happens

December 18, 2011 – 10:59 pm

TweetWhatever 2011 was, it wasn’t The Year Of The Incumbent. The high-tech world has never seen the ground shift under so many established companies. This causes afflicted CEOs to exhibit the usual symptoms of disorientation: reorg spams, mindless muttering of old mantras and, in more severe cases, speaking in tongues, using secret language known only [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Tagged , , , | Comments (10)

HP Kicks webOS To The Kerb

December 11, 2011 – 10:25 pm

TweetWe strongly believe that the best days for webOS are still ahead. Thus spake Meg Whitman in her memo to the troops, an intramural rendition of HP’s official announcement that webOS will be “contributed” to the Open Source community. …the executive team has been working to determine the best path forward for this highly respected [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Comments (20)

Datamining Twitter

December 5, 2011 – 7:00 am

TweetOn its own, Twitter builds an image for companies; very few are aware of this fact. When a big surprise happens, it is too late: a corporation suddenly sees a facet of its business — most often a looming or developing crisis — flare up on Twitter. As always when a corporation is involved, there [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Behind RIM’s $485M Write-off

December 5, 2011 – 5:54 am

TweetOn December 5th, three days ago, RIM announced a $485M write-off “related to its inventory valuation of BlackBerry PlayBook tablets”. Wall Street didn’t like the news and dumped the stock, it went down 9.7% in one session. One of the last analysts supporting RIM, Scotia Capital’s Gus Papageorgiou, finally gave up and turned vocally bearish. [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Comments (38)

Unaccounted For Readers

November 27, 2011 – 11:04 pm

TweetNewspaper publishers need to quickly solve a troublesome equation. As carbon-based readership keeps dwindling, the growing legion of digital readers is poorly accounted for. This benefits advertisers who pay less for their presence. Putting aside web sites audience measurement, we’ll focus instead on the currently ill-defined notion of digital editions. A subject of importance since [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (7)

A Facebook Smartphone – Why?

November 27, 2011 – 10:53 pm

TweetAt the end of last week’s Monday Note, I briefly wondered about the rumored Amazon smartphone. Would it follow the Kindle Fire strategy: Pick Android’s lock and sell the device at or below cost in order to lubricate the wheels of Amazon’s e-commerce of tangible and intangible things? This week, we have the rebirth of [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Comments (19)

Apple’s Antitrust Problem (Part 2)

November 20, 2011 – 8:41 pm

TweetLast’week’s Part 1 column about Apple’s dominant’s position in the tablet market triggered an abundance of comments and emails, both on the Note’s blog and on the Guardian. All interesting, most well reasoned. But, for some people, it’s always funny to see how an Apple topic can turn religious. Question a few basic facts and [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (20)

Apple’s Antitrust Problem

November 13, 2011 – 5:58 pm

Tweet(First in a series) Will Apple face the type of antitrust issues Microsoft had to contend with in the 90′s? Possibly, but not with the same magnitude. Apple is by no means locking up its market the way Microsoft controlled the personal computer field with Windows. Still, the question arises for the iTunes Store, the [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged , | Comments (25)

The Discreet Shift to Twitter

November 6, 2011 – 9:14 pm

TweetYou hear things about Facebook. You see things. As its audience matures, a subtle shift might be underway. Of course, numbers remains staggering. Facebook is heading toward the 800 million users mark, mostly by conquering new markets. The growth is distributed as follows : Middle-East Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America grow by around 60% per [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (28)