KenC

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132 Comments

    • Fri Sep 12th 22:56 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Microsoft Seinfeld Commercial #2 - Still About Nothing
      The writer makes a good point. If the point is MS wants to "connect real people", then how do they do it when they don't understand "real people" when they seem to go out of their way to insult and otherwise belittle "real people". This is cynicism, passed off as humor, which appeals to the SNL college crowd, the Seinfeld Yuppies. But how do they sell it to the "real people"?
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    • Fri Sep 12th 22:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Don't Close the Line on Nokia Just Yet
      Dude, when you start a piece with, "I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to emerging trends in tech.", you are just asking for trouble. I mean, don't pat yourself on the back with your first sentence! Pat yourself on the back, when you have some evidence in hand of your ability to forecast emerging trends!

      Like write a piece on emerging smartphone trends, and then in 6 months when your points come true, then you can pat yourself on the back, and link to what you had written previously. Then you look smart.

      Then you said, "The problem is that companies like Apple and RIM are selling their phones at break-even prices for the shear purpose of snatching market share from Nokia, which announced that it would not stoop to their level." Where is the evidence that Apple and RIM are selling their phones at "break-even prices"? Have you looked at their margins? Nokia didn't mention any companies by name, and the odd thing is that Nokia is the company that has been gaining market share by flooding developing markets with low prices. Besides, what I've heard is the Nokia comments were referring to Sony Ericcson, not Apple or RIM.

      Then you said, "This aggressive approach from its competitors cannot last long and is purely a marketing scheme that will end." Please explain. How do you know that this is a marketing scheme that will not last long, if you don't even know who Nokia are talking about? We KNOW that Apple can't be the one, since they are making great margins on their product, so they can continue ad nauseum. I don't think anyone following RIM thinks their company is selling product at "break-even" so tell us, who is?

      Then you said ,"Nokia’s new Symbian operating system is on par with the iPhone and Android, and will be able to compete with the best of them." How do you know Symbian is on par with OS X and Android? You do realize that Symbian is NOT "new". And, if Symbian were so great, why then, did they use Linux in their handheld device the N800 and N810? One would think that it would be an ideal platform for the power of Symbian if it were "on par" with OS X or Android.

      Now, I can't say whether Nokia is a good buy or not, superficially it looks good to me, but your above reasoning for doing so, is sorely lacking in due diligence.
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    • Fri Sep 12th 22:27 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Can Two Rich Guys Humanize Microsoft?
      The bottom line is that the success of an ad campaign ultimately leads to more sales. Whether you like the Apple campaign, there's no doubt that it has coincided with huge sales of Macs, generally 30 to 45% more than the previous year. That says alot about their effectiveness.

      Now, the MS ads, who is their target demographic? How do the ads, stimulate the target demographic to buy more MS products? What's the bottom line? Where's the ROI?

      If in your brief paragraph on what you think is going on, is true, that Gates is an out of touch, clueless guy, older white guy. Isn't that kind of like our President, is that a good association?

      And, if the target demographic then are those people who "love" Seinfeld, well, that show hasn't been on in a decade. Are they really the target demographic, cause that's my demographic, and I hate the ads.
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    • Fri Sep 12th 19:45 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet
      Flash Lite is NOT Flash. Heck, last time I looked at Adobe's website for devices with Flash, I think I went thru half the list, before giving up, as there was not a single device that uses Flash. Everything was Flash Lite.

      There's no doubt that ubiquity often drives standards adoption, much like language. What's slang today, is in Webster's tomorrow. I think the writing was on the wall for PDFs that it would become an adopted standard sooner or later. As for Flash, the jury is still out.

      What I think you are missing is the movement, outside of MS, towards web standards. That's why I referenced a loose alliance of WebKit-based browsers and apps. There's alot of momentum on that side of the ball, and even MS has been forced to respond.

      I think it's not a given that something like Flash will become a standard. In fact, you've got large players like Google moving away from Flash and re-encoding all their Youtube videos in standards-compliant H.264.
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    • Fri Sep 12th 13:44 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      6 Things Apple's Not Doing Right
      Wow, there's so much wrong here I don't know where to begin. Why not with your list. Okay, Apple does lots of things wrong, but this list is not one of them. Let's begin.

      1. Not being brave when updating the Nano.
      Where was it reported that FM radio was the most requested feature? The Nano does record, quite well, but if there's no radio, why would you need to record it? If you want radio, just get a Touch. There's AOL Radio, Pandora, Simplify, Stitcher and others I'm sure I can't remember.

      2. Slighting their faithful.
      What?!? Apple didn't move engineers from Snow Leopard to the 3G iPhone. Apple moved Leopard engineers to the EDGE iPhone. I don't know of any Apple faithful who didn't think that was a good idea.

      3. Not marketing iPod Touch as a MID.
      Dude, it's the same reason why Apple didn't market the iPhone as a MID. The cellphone market is huge, while the MID market is tiny, so market to the huge market instead. Likewise, the MP3 player market is huge compared to MIDs, so market to the MP3 player market, and as people get used to the idea of the Touch and iPhone, gradually let them in on the secret that they're actually using a MID.

      4. Gravitating towards proprietary hardware.
      This is STILL RUMOR. No one knows how the PA Semi engineers will incorporate SOC chips into an iPhone or a iMac. There's no reason to conclude that they won't be compatible with x86 instructions.

      5. Once again, thwarting generics [which did them no good the first time around].
      The generics almost killed Apple. Are you daft? You don't realize that the true cost of Apple OS software development is not incorporated in the retail price, because those are UPGRADE boxes. $129 is an UPGRADE price. Pshyster is using an UPGRADE piece of software on their generic boxes. If it were to pay full retail on OS X, it would be double. Have you looked at how Windows Vista is priced?

      6. The Cult of Jobs - dependence on one single person.
      Apple does NOT Depend upon just Steve. The media has created a cult around one figure.
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    • Fri Sep 12th 13:14 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple's 3G iPhone: Q4 Sales Estimates Are Encouraging
      I would think having 1 M iPhones in the channel should help as well. If you think about it, the runrate is about 1M a month, and Apple usually keeps about 4 to 6 weeks of inventory on hand, so that means 1M in the channel, and that's counted as sold.
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    • Thu Sep 11th 19:06 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple Takes a Positive Step Forward
      The original iPod click-wheel revolution is over. The NEW iPod Touch revolution has just started. The App Store only just opened two months ago. The first Xmas selling season after the opening of the App Store hasn't yet passed. Next year, will bring more trickle-down features to more Touch devices. The revolution has just begun.
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    • Thu Sep 11th 19:02 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Why Doesn't Apple Give Away iPods?
      The author makes some good points, why Apple doesn't give away iPods, but I think the author doesn't quite understand that Apple has reversed the razor and razorblade metaphor. The classic understanding would be to give away the razor to stimulate blade sales. Apple doesn't. It gives away the blades to stimulate razor sales. In this case, Apple gives the music and other media away for a pittance in profit to make it up on ipod sales with healthy gross margins.
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    • Thu Sep 11th 18:52 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet
      I think the trouble people are having or maybe it's the author is the definition of what the full internet or real internet is. I think most people don't realize that Flash is NOT a web standard. It may be popular, but not being a standard means proper code should avoid it. I don't think it is part of the real internet. Honestly, I think as the internet gets more and more mobile, more and more coders will avoid Flash, with it eventually ending up on the trash heap, unless it improves significantly. It's heavy and slow, just bad news for a mobile device.

      I'm not sure whether the author knows the difference between JAVA and javascript. The iPhone browser allows JavaScript, but doesn't run JAVA. I haven't heard too many people complain about not having JAVA other than Sun Microsystems.

      Further, WebKit on your S60 browser, is from Apple. Apple developed the rendering engine WebKit and gave it back to the open-source community, that's how Nokia can use it, as does Adobe for Adobe AIR, as does Google for Android and Chrome. And, there are literally a dozen other browsers or browser-based apps built on the frameworks of WebKit. This is the real story, the story of the rise of WebKit. A loose WebKit alliance between all the non-MS companies.

      It's just funny to read the comments comparing Safari to S60 to Chrome, when they are all built on the same rendering engine. Sure there'll be some small differences in performance as Safari 4.0 uses SquirrelFish as its JavaScript engine, while Chrome uses V8 as its.

      If the author wants to keep tabs on how the real internet is progressing into the mobile world, all he need do is go to:

      webkit.org

      And, you can read all about WebKit and the SurfinSafari Blog, and how WebKit was the first to pass all 100 of the Acid3 tests back in March. Of course, the Acid3 test was the acid test of meeting web standards. WebKit scored 100%. I believe Gecko which powers Mozilla scored 100% as well.

      My recollection is that desktop MS IE 6 or 7, scored about a 12 of 100 on the Acid3 test. I just tested my Mobile Safari and got a score of 72. So, my Mobile Safari meets more web standards as defined by Acid3 than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

      I think history will show that Safari qualifies as the Real Internet, regardless of what the British advertising board thinks. If you read their statement, it has more to do with public expectations than published standards. Of course, since Flash is not installed by default, I really wonder what they are talking about.
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    • Thu Sep 11th 18:20 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      How The Street's Digesting Apple
      Steve will always be thin for the rest of his long life, if you'd learn a little about his medical history. He's not just going to put on 10 or 15 pounds because analysts want him to.
      View article »
    • Thu Sep 11th 18:15 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Dell's Factory Sales: End of an Era
      Actually, while the comments people have made are true, the biggest fact is that the market has changed. People have been transitioning from desktops to laptops for a while. While desktops could be bought sight unseen, as they are stuck under a desk, laptops must be seen and handled to make a sale. As long as desktops ruled, Dell was the king, as it could use its supply chain to make the cheapest desktop and get it to you the fastest. Now that laptops rule, Dell's approach isn't ideal. You need retail points of sale, and you need inventory. A fast supply chain isn't as critical when people are buying in-stock inventory. So, all those other missteps aside, the biggest factor in Dell's reason for selling its factories is that their market advantage has disappeared as laptops have taken over.
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    • Tue Sep 9th 15:26 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      3 Stocks Poised to Move on Tuesday
      Good hypothetical to illustrate your point, Andy.
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    • Tue Sep 9th 15:20 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Are Global Smartphone Sales Poised For Takeoff?
      Honestly, the problem is the definition of "smartphone"... When is a smartphone, not a smartphone? When it's not being used as a smartphone. Currently analysts define smartphone by the OS it runs, that they have deemed as smart. But is using a phone for email, make it truly smart? Or is it like Windows version 1? People considered Windows version 1 a GUI, but what could you do with it? Who really used it? I installed it back in the mid-80s after buying my copy at J&R Music World in NYC, but it did virtually nothing useful.

      Right now, we have a large category of phone called smartphones, but we need to start segmenting it. Just because a phone has a smart OS, does not mean people are actually using it much for anything beyond what a feature phone offers. I would say there are at least 2 segments: email phones and internet phones in the smartphone category. Email phones are the vast majority of Nokias and Blackberries. The sales of email phones may be slowing from the fast growth in the last couple of years. The other segment are true internet phones, like the iPhone and its copies, like Android. This is the hot segment where sales are growing quickly, and why everyone is trying to offer something in this segment.

      The only way to truly measure share in this internet phone segment of the smartphone category is to look at internet usage. I mean, if you have a smartphone with web access but never use it for the web because it's so horrible, is it really an internet phone, or just an email phone? If you look at mobile internet usage, then the iPhone dominates already, and the rate of growth of mobile internet use is growing rapidly.

      The bottom line, is that we need to segment the smartphone category because it makes sense, as there is a difference pre and post-iPhone.

      As someone mentioned above, internet phones are replacements for a computer in many developing countries. I know, as I have a home in China. Everyone seems to have a cellphone, or at least half the 1.3Billion people do. Very few people have computers. DSL connections are lousy and slow. In fact, cell connections are more reliable. EDGE is fantastic, even in the countryside. 1/4 of the cellphone sales in China cost more than 500USD. They don't subsidize cells over there. Having an internet device that you can carry in your pocket is far more appealing in developing countries like China, than the idea of a laptop or desktop.
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    • Thu Sep 4th 22:35 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Web Browser Wars: Google Looking Beyond Market Share
      WebKit isn't just "strongly supported" by Apple, it was developed by Apple on top of KHTML, which is open-source. As a result, Apple has to return their work to the open-source community. This allows Nokia's S60, Adobe Air, Google's Android and Chrome and others to use WebKit to build their browsers. It's an informal WebKit alliance. WebKit's goal is to be the most web-standards compliant out there. In other words, it's built to stand up to MS's Internet Explorer. This is not about money, but about keeping the internet playing field open.
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    • Thu Sep 4th 22:25 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Seeing an End to the iPod's Hegemony
      Interesting that you mention Chrome at the top. You do realize that Chrome is built upon WebKit and is now essentially part of the WebKit alliance? Who is part of the WebKit alliance, oh, Apple, Nokia, Adobe, and others. Who is NOT part of the WebKit alliance, oh, let's think, can you say Microsoft?

      Your article would have been far more interesting if you had applied your thoughts to "Seeing an End to Internet Explorer's Hegemony".

      I also wanted to point out some factual errors. You said, " And since the iTunes downloads were all encoded with Apple's DRM". Uhm, not "all" iTunes downloads are DRM encoded, just something like a little over a half, and that's only because some of the labels are trying to steer business to Amazon.

      You say MS is "hammering the door" with the Zune. Everyone knows that that is laughable. Zune has 2% of the market at best. Dell is a failed player in the MP3 player market, and quoting Enderle only undermines your argument, since he has a conflict of interest, having consulted on the effort. And, Sandisk's wifi music player? You do realize that iPhones and iPod Touches can download over wifi from the iTunes Music Store, right, without going thru a computer.

      The reason why MS and Dell are in the market isn't because they think they'll have an impact on iPods or iTunes, it's because they need a full media product offering. It's not just about music, but about all types of digital media, and giving up on music, will potentially cede the video download and video device market to Apple as well. That's the fear at MS and Dell. That's why they have to get into markets they don't look likely to win. They have to play in the last battleground, in order to have a chance to win in the next battleground.

      And, thinking the subscription battle is where Apple will lose is just silly. Apple can turn on subscriptions in a New York minute. There's NO meaningful barrier to entry. Besides, there's more out there than just Pandora that already work on my iPhone. There's AOL Radio, where you can choose from hundreds of radio stations. There's rumors that Sirius is coming to the iPhone. There's a FREE app from SimplifyMedia which allows me to serve my whole music library from my home PC to my iPhone wherever I am. I don't even need my music on my iPhone any more. I can just stream it. Do you think Zune or Sandisk have those capabilities in their devices? The other players in the market are just getting further and further behind, because Apple has already created a large enough ecosystem that all the innovation is being driven for iPods and iPhones. The other players are too small to attract any development. Sure I know, it's much like Apple Computers were just 10 years ago, but it took extraordinary talent to take Apple from where it was 10 years ago to where it is today. It will take another extraordinary talent for it to happen again. So far, you haven't identified anyone or any company or any idea that would be that talent.
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