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1. Comment - Apple's App Store hits 100K apps: News or rhetoric?

   (Nov 4, 2009 - 5:13 PM)

   My personal belief at this point is that the 100K App milestone is the point when Apple should switch tactics and focus on something more meaningful than mere quantity, as subsequent numbers become less and less impactful, and we get it, "There's an App for That."
   
   Otherwise, the 'magic' starts to become clinical and cold, which is very un-Apple-like, something that I blogged about in:
   
   iPhone’s 100K Apps is the New '7-Minute Abs'
   http://bit.ly/rJkEC
   
   Check it out, if interested.
   
   Mark

2. Comment - iPhone cannot win the smartphone wars

   (Oct 28, 2009 - 10:15 PM)

   First off, good analysis. While I disagree with your take, I appreciate the reasoned perspective.
   
   Three comments. One it's artificial to call these things smartphones, inasmuch as the same platform runs iPhone and iPod Touch, the latter 20M units that Gartner doesn't count because it's not a "smartphone" (i.e., a full 40% of the units not counted). When the Tablet comes out, it will also run same software, leverage/feed the same ecosystem, and Gartner won't count that to the total. Call it a mobile computing device and maybe the analysis looks radically different.
   
   Two, your article seems tilted to units over margins, pre-supposing that the former is the end-all be all, which Nokia suggests aint so (they have the units but not the profits or the mindshare).
   
   Three, a core pre-supposition is that Apple won't win because of something endemic to Apple (premium pricing, proprietary-ness, vertical orientation). While the Windows v. Mac analog provides convenient historical symmetry, I would argue that the key deviations are that Apple is actually the one playing the platform game this go around (and and making their ecosystem successful to boot), all the while building leverage across products (Mac, iTunes, etc.) and avoiding falling prey to the pricing overhang (e.g., $99 3G) that was core to their undoing in PC Wars.
   
   Btw, some fodder for why piecemeal solutions don't work for mobile in my post:
   
   iPhone Killers, Blackberries and Chicken Parts
   http://bit.ly/1rz7y7
   
   Check it out if interested.
   
   Mark

3. Comment - Apple Q4 2009 by the numbers: Beats street, posts $1.67B profit

   (Oct 20, 2009 - 4:45 AM)

   Personally, the most impressive part of the earnings was the Mac side of the story, where growth is outpacing the rest of the market handily 17% to 2%.
   
   Plus, when you understand how much of that growth is coming from Portables, you understand why the Tablet is inevitable, something that I blogged about in:
   
   The Right Stuff: Analysis of Apple’s Q4 Earnings Call
   http://bit.ly/RJAPA
   
   Check it out, if interested.
   
   Mark

4. Comment - 3G wireless eReader from Irex aims to tackle Amazon's Kindle

   (Sep 24, 2009 - 2:31 AM)

   This stuff is interesting, but my thesis is that whereas Kindle, Sony and iRex seem to be predicated on the construct of the book as less than the current experience (i.e., mostly text), the industry is headed for a full-blown re-boot that takes advantage of interactivity, touch/tilt, social engagement, movies, pictures, animation and sound, a topic that I expound upon in:
   
   Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)
   http://bit.ly/zOoEu
   
   Check it out, if interested.
   
   Mark

5. Comment - Apple and major labels try to bring back liner notes

   (Jul 27, 2009 - 5:22 PM)

   Think of this pitch this way:
   
   Steve Jobs: "Book and Music industry. You are getting commoditized because you have no differentiated platform for extending/re-inventing your product for the online age. We just so happen to have a set of tools that have proven compelling to the tune of 1.5B downloads, field-tested across 65K apps and with a current footprint of 46M devices."
   
   Music/Book Industry: "There is no way we can re-create that value proposition, and we already see the writing on the wall with Amazon. If they are successful, they will be telling us how much money we can make or worse, go direct to writers and musicians, and design us out of the equation. How do we get started?"
   
   This is the consummate 1+1=3 for a segment that is otherwise facing a 1+1=