The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Comic-Con, Convergence and the Rise of Integrated Media

"Here’s my prediction: Almost every dotcom idea from 10 years ago that failed will succeed." - Marc Andreessen

When I got into tech back in 1994, convergence was was the holy grail.

It was borne of the idea that one day the then-immovable boundaries between the following industries would collapse, enabling a new kind of integrated value chain to emerge:

• Television
• Motion Pictures
• Music
• Consumer Electronics
• Internet
• Telephony
• Print Media
• Advertising
• Videogames
• Computing

The promise of this concept led Sony, the inventor of the Walkman, to acquire Columbia Pictures. It led regional phone service provider, Bell Atlantic, seeking to re-factor the communications and entertainment landscape, to pursue a merger with cable TV giant, TCI.

In fact, over the next decade, the 'promised land' of convergence drove a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, reaching its apex when Time Warner merged with AOL.

That many of these deals failed disastrously (in the case of AOL Time Warner) or were never consummated (in the case of Bell Atlantic-TCI) is besides the point.

Poor execution aside, the pursuers of convergence were simply ahead of their time, a truth bounded by the way that:

1. Apple has reshaped so many of these industries by vertically integrating them across media, mobile and tablet device form-factors from distribution channel to software platform, apps and media marketplace.
2. Comcast has leveraged physical connectivity to so many homes (and a commensurate billing relationship) into owning NBCUniversal, extensive cable channel holdings and a growing telephony business.
3. Amazon has emerged as Walmart, Cloud Computing platform and Kindle/tablet maker, rolled into one.

Put another way, as a VC friend of mine once said, "It's as lethal to be too early, as it is to be wrong."

It's this truth that gives folks like Marc Andreesseen the confidence to predict that many of the lamest ideas of the dotcom period will yet be vindicated (I think that he's right on this one), and it's this same truth that was on display at Comic-Con 2011 aka San Diego Comic-Con International.

A Snapshot of how 'Integrated' Media has Become

For me, the AHA moment in planning my Comic-Con experience was attempting to digest a priori an event guide that was almost 200 pages, and it was full of...actual events!

Consider, a four-day long event that literally envelops the city and county of San Diego, bringing in over 130,000 fans of comic books, horror, animation, manga, games and fantasy, making it the single largest convention in America.

If you want to see how integrated media has become (and can become), ponder an event that provides a unified sandbox for:

1. Content Producers to showcase, screen and publicize their new Comic Books, Movie Releases, Cable TV shows, Videogames and Toys;
2. Fans to meet cast members, industry luminaries and their favorite artists, and get their autographs; see their latest projects and hear them talk about them; and, oh yeah, dress up as their favorite characters;
3. Vendors to sell Books, T-Shirts, Posters, Toys, Artwork, Comics and other industry paraphanelia;
4. Artists to present their portoflios for review and potential hire by content producers.

Btw, if you're familiar with the integrated media unit known as a "home page takeover" on a web site, consider what Syfy channel did in taking over an actual, physical restaurant (Maryjane's Coffee Shop in Hard Rock Hotel), and rebranding it for the event as Syfy's CafeDiem, down to the signage, tabletops and menus.

One can only wonder if the boring, staid Oscars and Emmy Awards events were reinvisioned as a like-type festival for producers, fans, vendors and artists alike if, maybe, just maybe, the industry would foment a deeper bond between their audience and their slate of programs/movie releases, not to mention the publicity and promotion food chain.

The Moral of the Story

When I think of the enormous success of Comic-Con (especially relative to the general lameness of the trade show industry in general), and I ponder the recent blowout earnings of both Amazon and Apple, I think about how often conventional wisdom gets things wrong specifically by creating false 'Either/OR' dichotomies.

In the tech business, for the longest time it was not only conventional wisdom, but it was the gospel and hardline religion, that you had to be horizontally organized, and focused on one thing, one discrete line of business, or you were destined to the scrap heap of history.

The truth of the matter is that a lot has to go right, both tactically and culturally, for convergence and integration to work.

But seeing how much of a win (for all types of users) such integrated platforms are across Post-PC (Apple), Commerce (Amazon) and Media (Comic-Con), I think that it's just a matter of time before the next wave - Convergence 2.0 - is born.

After all, where visionary leaders show the way, smart students will follow.

Related Posts:

1. Ruminations on MacWorld 2011 and the Future of Trade Shows
2. The Programmable Fan Site: A New Media/Ad Unit Model
3. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
4. Thoughts on Book Expo America trade show: Rebooting the Book - Part Two

 

(BEAUTIFUL ART) Jolly & Roger's Misguided Adventures is our next ebook for iPad

Jolly & Roger's Misguided Adventures is our next ebook for iPad. It's a really cool story about dueling pirates, a dark curse, and a little boy named Roger, who just wants to be a pirate. Here is some original art that captures the beauty of this book. (Ages 5 & up)

Apple just became IBM of the Post-PC Era: Thoughts on Apple’s 'Q3 Earnings Call

 

 

"What would I do? I'd shut it (Apple) down and give the money back to the shareholders." – Michael Dell

“Amateur hour is over.” – RIM

“No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” – IT Buyer

With Apple’s stock surging towards $400 in after-hours trading, let me just say that I guess all of those 'Apple can't win' naysayers should have a cold, hard one with Michael Dell about now.

"Not open enough." "Too vertical." "It’s Windows versus Mac all over again." "The iPad is just a really big iPod touch." As if that last one is even an insult.

If anything, we are seeing the last vestiges of Apple being undervalued and under-appreciated - both as a stock and as an entrepreneurial institution - and the realization/capitulation that the company is the second coming of IBM, as in "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."

The good news in that is that the company has earned it through laser-like focus, brutally precise execution and a coordinated balance between short-term goals and tactics, and long-term planning.

There just is no other comparable in terms of this level of innovation, diversification, market penetration, corporate culture and eye on the money-making machine.

As such, like IBM in the good old days, companies big and small will want to gain access to some of the Apple magic, investors will pad their portfolios, and who knows, the next great job creation stimulus might come out of the elixir that engaging with Apple brings forth.

All that said, I like my Apple with a bit of a chip on its shoulder, surrounded by legions of skeptics, confidently, but with a bit of a bruised ego, needing to show 'em what they can't see from the highest heights.

I need good, scary competitors keeping the company hungry and lean of mind, and fear that in absence of same, sloth, arrogance and the easy path might water down true greatness.

To be clear, though, I heard zero in today's earnings call that gives me cause for pause, as these blowout numbers and jaw-dropping highlights suggest:

1. The Law of Big Numbers? Yeah right: Apple posted $28.57B in revenues for the quarter, an 82% year-over-year bump. But the company has never been one to confuse market share or even raw sales with profits and cash, and this quarter was no different. In terms of profits, Apple netted $7.31B for the quarter. That means that profit growth (up 125%) outpaced revenue growth. Imagine a quarter that drops $10.4 billion in new cash reserves (up 131% year-over-year), and you have a picture of Apple, which now has a tidy hoard of $76.2 billion. Oh, and they actually grew gross margins in accomplishing this (41.7% vs. 39.1% a year ago), spotlighting the single-mindedness of their assault. Good thing the board didn’t listen to Dell when they had the chance. I jest.
2. Victory over the Tyranny of the "One Right Way": One knock on Apple is that they are trying to do too much, and be too integrated, which is a false dichotomy in the same way that Apple winning doesn’t mean that Google has to lose, or even that the King of Old PC, Microsoft, will die anytime soon. Strategy that is well-planned and even better orchestrated is simply magical, and validates itself through measurable, repeated results. Were Apple to do nothing more than sell 20.34M iPhones in the quarter (representing 142% year-over-year growth, double the 67% growth rate of IDCs smartphone segment) it would warrant Lion-izing Jobs & Co (pun intended - it ships tomorrow). But it’s beyond shocking to see that on top of that performance they took the iPad, a product that did not even exist five quarters ago, a tweener device, and one for which there remains no viable competing solution, and sold 9.25M units in the quarter - a whopping 183% increase year-over year. Apple management was magnanimous in stating plainly that they literally sold every single iPad that they had to sell. Put another way, the iPad is now selling almost 2.5X the number of Macs sold quarterly in just its fifth quarter of life. Imagine the kid in diapers down the block, storming onto the court, and whupping LeBron James without breaking a sweat. It's that astounding. I am sure some analyst will find a dark cloud in Apple's "disappointing" Mac and iPod numbers, since the former is only growing 14% year-over-year and the latter actually contracted 20% year-over-year, but this is akin to a parent with a family full of prodigies lamenting that one of her kids was merely top of class, and not top of the world. Mac, after all, still sold 3.95M units to outpace the growth of the larger PC business by 5X, the 21^st consecutive quarter its growth has outpaced the larger PC market. And the iPod, where Apple still commands a 70% market share, is somewhat of a hodge-podge. After all, almost half of the 7.5M devices sold were the non-iPod touch variety, and thus, a long-term dead end on the street of smart devices. Meanwhile, the other half - iPod touch - is subsuming the legacy iPods on one side, and being subsumed by the god-device iPhone and the big daddy iPad on the other. 
3. When You Look Like the Safe Choice, You’re IBM: One hard takeaway throughout the call is how the one-two punch of iPhone and iPad, when combined with everything else that Apple has done right (Apple Retail, iOS unity, the SDK play, iTunes) has made Apple look like the "safe choice" in Post-PC computing. Consider emerging markets, like Asia-Pac where the iPhone business quadrupled year-over-year. Even the Mac is up 57% year-over-year there. Similarly, China, Mexico, Brazil and the Middle East were cited by Apple management as the mega-drivers of iPhone growth in the quarter.  And if you think that China is a bellwether, consider this. It generated $3.8B for Apple in the quarter, constituting 13% of Apple’s revenue. Moreover, in the K-12 educational segment, typically a laggard in new technology adoption, Apple sold more iPads than Macs in the most recent quarter. You wrap hard numbers like this with 'soft data' of iPhone and iPad pilots in the enterprise (91% and 86% of the Fortune 500, respectively, about half that amount in Global 500 companies), and the picture is clear. Apple looks like the safe choice, which history suggests has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, as both IBM and Microsoft proved before them.
4. Masters of their (Channel) Domain: Now what’s scary in all of this is that the company is hardly at their apex from a market penetration standpoint. First and foremost, the almighty Apple Retail halo-effect creation engine, which no other device vendor has, is a business that is humming along with 36% year-over-year revenue growth, but equally important, one where Apple is seeing 20% Y-O-Y growth at the individual store level (now at $10.8M per store). Moreover, I took note of the assertion by Apple COO Tim Cook that the company is ready to move from “pilot stage” to “adoption phase” in the enterprise, something they plan to do vis-à-vis the dual leverage of: A) Piggybacking off of carrier’s sales forces that target enterprises to sell them voice and data solutions (where RIM’s inattention to their core competency, and obsession with chasing consumers will be business school fodder for years to come); and B) Building overlay sales organizations that co-sell with other enterprise solution providers (although details were fuzzy at best, and no mention was made to their recent B2B licensing programs). When you surround this gauntlet with an additional existing 115K outlets for Apple products, another 228 carriers (in 105 countries), and of course, the 225M account strong iTunes ecosystem (all backed by credit cards), and you’ve got something that is, dare I say, borg-like.

A side observation in trying to digest all of these numbers is that for all of the puffery about Apple being a "closed" company, if you compare their metrics breakouts in earnings calls to a more "open" company like Google, it’s laughable. Google, like a lot of companies, gives the flyover view, whereas Apple allows the interested to get fairly surgical in their understanding of Apple’s business.

I could go on and one, but the key point is..."Holy Crap!" And you can quote me on that. :-)

Related Posts

1. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
2. Five reasons iPhone vs Android isn't Mac vs Windows
3. Holy Sh-t! Apple's Halo Effect
4. Is the enterprise dead as a tablet strategy?
5. Apple announces 'Custom B2B Apps for Business' Program...but there's a catch

 

Google+ doesn't hit the bulls-eye, but Google's found a 'wedge'

Sure, we'd all love to be killer apps, to have hit the bulls-eye, to have delivered a solution so compelling that it forces the competition to change, and adapt.

And in tech especially, there is a tendency to create these false dichotomies - fueled by the echo chamber of the blogosphere - such that everything either "sucks" or is a "game-changer."

But sometimes, it's just as important to find a wedge, some wafer-thin morsel of utility or delight that gets you into the game.

For Google, I think that's the best way that I can describe Google+.

Is it going to kill Facebook? Probably not, but then again, it doesn't need to. It just needs to provide another reason for Google's base of users to use a Google product twice a day, "just like your toothbrush," as Google CEO Larry Page suggested in last week's earnings call.

So what is that reason? For now, it's status updating with decent visual display, and at a more basic level it's an opportunity for users to reboot their friending process.

In that regard, Circles is a **potential** middle-ground on the friending front between:

A) Being a prude with your social network, so as to maintain intimacy and trust; AND

B) Being promiscuous, so as to maximize reach and connectivity.

Personally, I think that as Fred Wilson noted, once you get beyond true "Friends" and "Family" buckets, the 'circle' distinctions get to be arbitrary and unwieldy except for the most die hard users.

As such, I believe that for the concept to scale, it will need to be more simple and algorithmic, probably some combination of tracking "like minds" and "like content," coupled with contextual, visual content "traversal" tags, along the lines of what Posterous facilitates on the user-generated side, and Quora enables on the auto-generated side.

Again, these are implementation details, but unlike my past knocks on Google for being unclear about what purpose a new product initiative serves, and what path Google will take that product, with Google+:

• Google is showing clear leadership at the CEO-level (Larry Page categorically frames three product buckets for Google)
• Google-folk appear to be eating their own dog food by using the product
• Google has defined Google+ in meta terms as a project that will permeate all their efforts, while at the same time showing continuous, daily iteration of their offering.  

On that last point, today brings a native iPhone app, and you can see the iteration on the web side daily.

Yes, I could quibble about the UI or the user experience that Google+ currently delivers, or I could lament the fact that Google+ is yet another social service to post to.

But, that would only affirm the point that in the same way that Twitter succeeded -- despite its unreliability -- specifically **because** it was useful, so too will Google+ succeed, despite these annoyances.

Simply put, it's useful and engaging enough, which constitutes a wedge.

Ironically, given how fully Twitter has changed the rules of the game on its developer base (perception is reality here), if Google gets any religion on making G+ into a developer platform, that could be a game-changer, but I'll keep my platitudes to a minimum in this post.

Related:

1. Google+ (Wake me up when I should care)
2. Google Buzz: Is it Project, Product or Platform?
3. Quick Take on Google Earnings Call: Put me in the bucket of being a Larry Page 'fan'

Apple announces 'Custom B2B Apps for Business' Program...but there's a catch

Finally! I have had two major gripes about Apple's iOS Developer model that are starting to be answered.

The first has been that Apple, in correctly recognizing that a surplus of app variety (i.e., "there's an app for that") would catalyze the success of iOS-powered devices, has fostered a race to the bottom in terms of app pricing.

Unfortunately, price commoditization creates an environment where developers can't possibly grow into large companies ($100M+ revenues), such that the icon for breakout success on iPhone and iPad is Angry Birds, perhaps a $20-30M business.

In truth, price commoditization creates a dynamic where very few developers can grow beyond lifestyle businesses, if that.

Sidebar: Read 'The iPhone, the Angry Bird and the Pink Elephant,' my analysis on how the Post-PC era is shaping up for software developers relative to past computing eras.

The second major gripe that I've had has been that the consumer-centricity of App Store, and the concept of App Store as the only viable way to distribute iOS software, is at odds with a primary means that businesses embrace to acquire software: System Integrators (SI) and Value Added Resellers (VAR).

For the uninitiated, SIs and VARs are best thought of as channels that:

• Build custom software for companies (as opposed to consumers); 
• Install, integrate, configure and support software within a company's IT infrastructure, typically on lots of devices.

In fact, Apple's fuzzy-to-non-existent position in this category, coupled with the woeful state of the enterprise as an IT innovator, lead me to question just two days ago whether the enterprise is simply 'dead' as a viable market penetration strategy for Post-PC device makers.

Apple announces Custom B2B Apps for Business

Well, ask and ye shall receive, for Apple just announced a program specifically geared towards what they call 'Custom B2B Apps for Business.'

It offers two primary things that as a developer, I am excited and hopeful about.

One is a mechanism enabling third-party developers to sell their custom business apps outside of the App Store, and take bulk orders via volume purchasing mechanisms provided by Apple.

On both the transaction and distribution side of the equation, this addresses the case of third-party developers creating and selling 'seats' of custom iOS software to specific corporate customers (as opposed to the general consumer universe).

Moreover, because it sidesteps the App Store, the program mitigates developers being forced to broadcast their customers to competitors, and the App Store being littered with apps that are custom-built for one customer.

Raising the Floor on App Pricing...but there's a catch

The other thing that this program does is it sets a floor on pricing of $9.99, which reboots app pricing logic from "everything should be 99 cents or free" to something more akin to historical packaged software and custom software pricing models.

There are some caveats, though. One is that to actually participate in the program, your customer needs to be big enough to have set up a Dun & Bradstreet (D-U-N-S) number for their company, and THEY need to have signed up to participate in the App Store Volume Purchase Program for Business.

Put another way, while I as a developer need a program so I can sell custom-built iOS offerings directly to businesses, what Apple is actually giving me is a program for enterprises to sign up for Volume Purchases of apps in the app store, and a subset of that program deals with the case where the enterprise wants to buy truly custom iOS software directly from a third-party developer, like me.

While that may sound like semantics, in truth, it raises the bar for developers wanting to pursue business customers as a core focus, since only a certain type of customer can buy from them, and that customer has to get set up in the Apple program, in addition to the developer's own commitment to Apple.

In the pattern recognition bucket, there's an axiom that if you raise the bar a half inch, you lose 90% of the audience, all of which casts some doubt on how successful this program, as configured, will be.

A Taxing Question: attached to Apple's teat in perpetuity?

Also, while in concept Apple is acknowledging that such custom apps will need to do a bunch of things that would be atypical of App Store apps, nonetheless such apps still have to go through the standard App Store approval process.

As such, it remains to be seen just how "custom" Apple will allow developers to get, and where they'll draw the line.

To be clear, this a non-trivial concern when you understand that selling into corporate environments often means integrating with a bunch of legacy crap, mapping to wacky UI conventions and supporting non-intuitive workflows.

By definition, taking care of the customer could create scenarios where the developer is in technical violation of Apple's rules.

What will Apple do in such cases, and what happens if they change their mind (as they are sometimes prone to do), and you have a written license with the enterprise that you can no longer perform on?

Finally, unclear in this case is whether Apple is taking their 30% cut for an app that doesn't even sell through the App Store, but that only leverages their tools and their transaction model?

In such cases, Apple's 30% cut starts to feel more like an onerous tax than a fair exchange of value.

That said, I am going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they'll get to the 'right answer' for the customer, developer and themselves alike.

So far, their batting average has been pretty good, iAds, MobileMe and Ping, notwithstanding.

Here's an excerpt from Apple's announcement of the new program (full link is HERE):

Custom B2B apps are designed to provide tailored solutions that extend the possibilities of iPhone and iPad in business. For example, a custom B2B app could offer:

• A customized user interface including company logo or branding
• Unique features or capabilities specific to a business process or workflow
• Extra privacy protection to handle sensitive data
• A specific configuration to meet the customer’s server/back-office environment or IT environment
• Features targeted to a limited audience, such as a business partner, dealer, or franchise

Businesses can buy custom B2B apps from developers in a private transaction through the Volume Purchasing Program. The minimum price for a custom B2B app is $9.99.

Related: 

1. Is the enterprise dead as a tablet strategy? (O'Reilly Radar)
2. The iPhone, the Angry Bird and the Pink Elephant (O'Reilly Radar)
3. The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK

Quick Take on Google Earnings Call: Put me in the bucket of being a Larry Page 'fan'

In today's Google earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page said two things that frame why I believe that the Larry Page era is going to be very different from the Eric Schmidt era.

The first was his commentary on how Google thinks about what it is; namely, that he thinks of Google as three businesses:

1. Search and Ads;
2. Products enjoying high Consumer Success -- YouTube, Android, Chrome;
3. New Products like Google+ and Local, where the bet is long term, and the investment is made with an eye to securing returns on that time horizon.

IMHO, this type of framing is great, inasmuch as it gets the company both internally and externally beyond being perceived as a one-trick pony (search and ads), solely defined by revenues and profits.

In other words, it provides a clear context for gauging how Google is going to invest time and effort, as well as a clear demarcation line (especially, internally) on projects that will lose their oxygen if they don't yield results.

Contrast that with the Schmidt era, where it was never clear how all of the various Google projects fed the larger gestalt of the company (other than being cool).  

"Exhibit A" is the delta between the Schmidt Way and the Page Way is the deeply flawed launch of Buzz at the tail end of Schmidt's run, contrasted by the highly successful launch of Google+ with Page at the helm.

My only comment regarding the Google buckets is that it would be great to see the company articulate metrics that define what it takes to fit into buckets 2 and 3 (a measuring stick, if you will), although I'd caveat that comment by saying:

1. The company is certainly not shy about sharing them post-facto (Google+: 10M users & 1B items shared daily; Android: 550K daily activations; Chrome: 160M users);
2. I am guessing that those metrics are codified internally.

The second thing that Page said, which I found resonant, is that Google wants to create products that people use twice a day, "just like your toothbrush."

I love it, inasmuch as if I am working at Google, I'm thinking that we can crush that number, and that there are more of these types of "jobs" that can grow usage from 2 to 5 to 10 times a day.

In other words, Page's crisp articulation simplifies even for the layman outsider how the company grows from a $40B run rate business (i.e., $9B this quarter) to a $200B business in the not too distant future. 

What does it all mean? If am an employee, I am psyched because my CEO just defined the step-stones from R&D to Core Consumer Engagement to Cash Cow, and if I am an investor, I now have a mental framework for better understanding the relationship between HOW the company is doing and WHAT the company is doing.

Smart guy, great communicator.

Related: 

1. Horizontal, Vertical and the Google Path to Riches: Ruminations on Today's $GOOG Earnings Call
2. Google Buzz: Is it Project, Product or Platform?
3. Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon
4. Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom

Five quickie thoughts on Amazon's tablet computer announcement

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Amazon will be releasing a tablet computing device by October.

Some quickie thoughts on this:

1. Amazon is the only company with the media relationships AND comparably-sized billing relationship with consumers to directly challenge Apple. No one else has either of these elements, let alone both of them. Not Google, not HP, RIM, Microsoft, Facebook etc.
2. In the consumer realm, Hollywood-style media (music, movies, TV shows, books) is such a core "job" of a tablet device, that NOT having an iTunes equivalent is analogous to a missing leg on a table. It's pretty integral, unless wobbly is okay with you.
3. Arguably, Amazon understands product discovery and recommendation even better than Apple does, and certainly groks the transaction and distribution logistics of that equation at least comparably well.
4. What's interesting about this one, is that while the spotlight is on Amazon and Apple as competitors, Amazon is also very well-positioned to outflank Google's play with Android. How? By better leveraging their installed base with Kindle; by building both tight integration with the Amazon Android App store and with Amazon Cloud Services; by better harnessing their recommendation services on both digital and physical goods (e.g., "Looking to buy a screwdriver? Constructor App will help you with construction project budgeting."); and of course, the aforementioned billing relationship, which facilitates one click purchases.
5. For developers, the market needs an integrated alternative to iOS, if for no other reason than to keep Apple honest, and also because not enough developers are making serious coin in either the iOS or Android model. Amazon, if they get their act together, can seriously court developers on the premise of their success with their Cloud Services offerings, not to mention the various hybrid programs they have proven out over the years for smaller retailers to plug into the Amazon Marketplace. Heck, there is even a place for an affiliate model in all of this to make app discovery more viral. Put another way, there are legions of Android developers who like the Android model, but don't like having to support the compatibility matrix from hell on the device front, not to mention the fact that the Google model is all about free, which is not exactly music to the ears of the typical developer. 

What gets me most excited about this is the fact that in Amazon and Bezos, you have a company that is clearly focused on execution.

Case in point, on both the product and M&A front, they have had very few crash and burn outcomes. This is a company that is disciplined and durable such that when they launch an effort they keep iterating until they get it right...and then they make it better.

Plus, as a developer, they are focused on making stuff that directly makes money when it sells. Not a trick subsidized offering to sell their real product, be it advertising, customer's data, etc.

Finally, it's hard not to root for a vendor whose approach inspires the kind of loyalty that one associates with...Apple (and Google).

RELATED:

1. The iPhone, the Angry Bird and the Pink Elephant (O'Reilly Radar)
2. Built-to-Thrive: The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon
3. Google Android: on Inevitability, the Dawn of Mobile, and the Missing Leg (O'Reilly Radar)

Is the Enterprise Dead as a Tablet Strategy? (Guest Post @ O'Reilly Radar)

 

In 'HP’s Tortured WebOS Positioning,' Jean-Louis Gassée makes the assertion that the consumerization of IT renders the “enterprise-only” pivot null and void.

I disagree, but first some clarity for those who aren't familiar with the term 'consumerization of IT.'

The Puss-ification of the Enterprise

Once upon a time, large enterprises (think: Fortune 2000 companies) were widely perceived to be the ideal customer, owing to their large size, well-defined and massive IT budgets, wide range of solution needs, and target-ability from a sales perspective.

All sorts of hardware, software, hosted services and consulting services companies - not to mention a significant chunk of the venture capital industry - fed off of this massive ecosystem, the impact of which meant that innovation began in the enterprise, and trickled down to the consumer.

However, when the dotcom bubble blew up at the end of 2000, coinciding with the end of the over-hyped Y2K project 'pig trough,' enterprises lost the impetus to spend aggressively on IT.

In parallel, they began to (rightly) question the ROI (return on investment) for the many projects they had funded.

In broad terms, this led to a reclassification of IT from being a strategic asset, and core differentiator, to being a liability, and a necessary evil.

Basically, the CFO trumped the CIO going forward.

Read the full post HERE.

Related:

1. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
2. PlayBook: Confusing a Bag of Chicken Parts with a Living, Breathing Chicken
3. The iPhone, the Angry Bird and the Pink Elephant
4. Holy Sh-t! Apple's Halo Effect
5. Post-PC, Tablets and the iPad: BGC Investor Call Keynote (Podcast)

Even Superman had his Kryptonite: Apple's missteps in online services (iAds, MobileMe, Ping)

On news that Apple is cutting prices on iAds, and hopefully re-working their approach in toto, it's worth asking, are the core services that we think of as as 'native to the web' - i.e., browser-based services, online ads and social networking - the company's kryptonite?

And if so, why is that the case?  Are their other more fundamental narratives and takeaways on this one?

The iPhone, the Angry Bird and the Pink Elephant (Guest Post @ O'Reilly Radar)

Will Post-PC battles lead to a war of attrition for developers?

I am firm believer that he who wins the hearts and minds of developers wins the platform game.

Case in point, in today's mobile/Post-PC universe, we see clearly how major companies like Microsoft, HP, Dell, RIM and Nokia are struggling to remain relevant in the face of developer apathy.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google have left the competition in the dust by virtue of their tremendous success in courting application developers.

But, there is a "pink elephant" in the room that no one is really discussing, and it gets to the nut of what investing time and energy in a software platform is all about.

Read the full piece HERE.

UPDATE: Interesting article in today's AllThingsD, where Android co-founder Rich Miner says that developers can now afford to wait on iPhone (i.e., they should focus first on Android). Beyond the eye-rolling, "Well, what do you expect him to say?" I personally welcome the topic of which platform developers should develop on first, and why. After all, as flagged in the article that I wrote, I am for anything that better spotlights the core question of who is making money, how much and which vendor (Google, Apple, RIM, HP, MS) has come up with the best model for developers to make serious coin in the Post-PC era.

Related:

1. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
   
2. Understanding Apple's iPad
3. Five reasons iPhone vs Android isn't Mac vs Windows
4. The Chess Masters: Apple v. Google