Why Apple and Samsung will Rule the Future of Television
There are several trends in television that will concentrate hardware sales in the hands of just a few companies, but will enable consumers to have a much deeper televisual experience.
How Television Will be Consumed
On February 1st, 2013 Netflix released its first commissioned series, House of Cards. Not only was this a first for the company, it was a first in another sense too.
Television series have been traditionally released on a schedule. This made sense in an era of over-the-air broadcasts when distribution was limited by available slots.
However, in an era where television is distributed by broadband internet, people are consuming programmes at their own speed. For some, that might be occasionally, but for many they binge on a series until …
Microsoft is Adapting to the New Realities of the Market by Aping Apple
Microsoft has decided to become Apple! Or Google – we’ll find out which. Yesterday, they announced that they would be directly building their own Windows 8 tablet called Surface.
Rather than just creating software for third party vendors to build their own hardware and promote the final product, Microsoft will do this themselves.
So will Microsoft become successful, like Apple, or crash and burn like Google did with its first Nexus phone?
It certainly makes sense for Microsoft to enter this market. Apple has shown it can be insanely profitable and that there are a lot of advantages from having a non-fragmented vertically-integrated solution. It means Microsoft …
Why Microsoft’s $85 Tablet Software May be Dumb, but not Fatal
Oh the outrage engendered this week by Microsoft’s rumoured $85 per tablet software tax. Many people consider it to be really, really stupid. Just look at Microsoft. They are no-where in the tablet market. Not even number four. Today they have no offering at all.
What should Microsoft be doing? Shooting for marketshare. This game is about building an ecosystem, and for that you need a large installed base. What price should Windows 8 be? $5. Five bucks. That’s it. Android is “free”, so Microsoft can charge almost nothing without having competition issues. It’s also a signal that Microsoft will charge for their OS, but in the future, when it’s successful. Microsoft and their partners will share the fruits of success.
But, it appears Microsoft has taken the …
Microsoft Invests $300 Million in the Nook
Microsoft and Barnes and Noble have announced that Microsoft will invest $300 million in the Nook and it will be spun off as a separate joint venture.
It may seem, just as Microsoft is on the cusp of releasing Windows 8, strange of them to invest in a rival platform that’s based on a forked version of Google’s Android platform. Aren’t they helping a competitor?
I see a few points here:
This is primarily about content. Supporting the Nook means gaining access to ebook content and controlling that access. It means Windows 8 tablet users will be able to read e-books without having to rely on Amazon.
Bolstering Nook also bolsters a competitor against Amazon; reducing if ever …
Beautiful Phone Design is not enough, you need innovation tech too
The failure of Nokia’s Lumia 900 phone to get off to a good sprint has shown that it’s not enough simply to produce a beautiful phone. As I previously mentioned, they should have spent more on the hardware too.
This is important for the whole market, because even if you don’t intend to buy a Windows Phone, at least you can benefit from competitive pressures on your chosen supplier to create a better phone.
That’s why it’s heartening to see in this article from Business Insider that Samsung is innovating with its processor technology for its next smartphone, the Galaxy S III.
The most impressive feature is the …
The Change of Titans: Facebook’s ‘Microsoft Patent Purchase
Five years ago, if you said that Facebook would pay Microsoft over half a billion dollars for patents, no one would have believed you.
It shows how the power in the tech world is moving from web 1.0 to web 2.0 companies. That Microsoft decided that the monetary value today of their patents was worth more than future potential revenues shows where they think their growth will be coming from in the future.
Facebook = consumer focused social web.
Microsoft = enterprise applications.
Where Nokia and Microsoft Went Wrong with the Lumia 900
2012 should be a big year for Windows Phone 7, it’s the year that new Nokia phones are released into the important US market and it’s the year that Windows for tablets, aka Windows 8 is launched.
Having a strong offering for Windows on tablets and Windows on a smartphone is crucial for Microsoft, because both devices will feed off of one another to create the Windows ecosystem. You don’t want to have a Windows tablet if you have an iPhone as you cannot share iCloud access and applications.
Hence the launch of Nokia devices with Windows Phone 7 is of crucial importance to Microsoft and Nokia. The launch is important because the phone hardware has to be at least competitive with where the rest of the market will be …
