January 25th, 2010
I recently read an interesting post by my friend Tom Tunguz about the potential of browsers, and how we will continue to spend more time centered on the browser. Tom spends more than half of his time in a browser, plus another quarter on a mail application which could easily be browser based.
He also commented on social integration, and how “Facebook Connect or OpenAuth single sign on integrated into the browser means true single sign on.” I tend to agree, however it got me thinking about a previous post about identity on the web and the implications. Last time I proclaimed Facebook as the leader in online identity and the bounties that come with it, including single sign on.
But after reading Tom’s post and the relation to payments, it occurred to me that a sleeper in this single sign-on battle was iTunes. iTunes has over 100 million user accounts, and more importantly, all of them are linked to payment data, meanting they are just a click away from easily buying online media. Given all of the hype surrounding Apple these days, I wouldn’t be surprise if there is some social network / single sign-on / online payments strategy brewing in Cupertino.
Online payments will become increasingly important as more commerce moves online. I happen to use 1Password to manage my credit cards and easily insert them into any online form, but an email and password-based purchase system would be infinitely easier for the rest of the world (and even more convenient for me).
January 19th, 2010
In light of Apple’s finally confirmed event next week about their “new creation”, I wanted to capture my expectations. I got a little carried away on the details, but the headers will give you a good idea of what I’m thinking.
Aiming to Redefine Portable Computing
In general, I agree with John Gruber’s thoughtful post on the Tablet (well worth a read) and I don’t think this will be designed as a single focused device, e.g. an eReader or big iPhone. They are aiming to redefine laptops and portable computing, not to make a pretty interface for e-reading and movie browsing.
Thoughts on OS and Usability
Completely redefined Finder / File Browsing
Presumably on a computer of the rumored size and power there will be some more robust file structure than on an iPhone. Although file structure is fading away with cloud based services and Apple’s own push to make files meaningless in their iLife sweet, they are still here for now. However it’s easy to imagine what it could look like by using the CoverFlow viewer on the Mac Finder.
Full Screen Applications
Most people don’t understand the current paradigm of “Applications” and when you’re “in” an application. I think computing in general will move away from the floating windows to a full screen application. It’s hard to realize this until you have to explain to non-savvy users what an “Application” is, how to tell if they’re in one (”Mom, look up at the top left and what does it say, no the really top left). Every time I have to explain to
No iPhone App “Widgets”
Many people have been speculating that the Tablet will have the ability to either scale up iPhone apps, or enable them as widgets. I disagree because that would be the easy way out, and Apple doesn’t do that. They will make developers re-write their apps completely, to take advantage of the larger screen real estate, new gestures, background processing, and perhaps other goodies. The App Store has proven that developers are extremely willing to write new apps, and Apple will leverage this to make them create new versions and not give them the easy way out of letting exiting apps exist on the tablet.
Thoughts on the Steve’s Keynote
In typical Steve Jobs style, he will come on stage and make fun of current Tablet PCs including insults on usability (most require pens and have terrible UIs), aesthetics (I don’t need to elaborate), and usage cases (what do you do on them other than scribble illegible notes?). This will set the stage for him to focus on the usage cases that make the Tablet different. For Steve, it’s all about the product and how it’s used.
I can also see a similar type of introduction to Steve Jobs’ iPhone introduction, which they positioned as a “a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device.” Perhaps a world-class eReader, a full size media center, and a breakthrough tablet computer. It’s worth watching the original iPhone keynote, which was 3 years ago. Steve wasn’t too far off with his prognostication that the phone was 5 years ahead of others, it took Google and the entire industry to come up with the closest bet to the original iPhone – 3 years later.
Core Usage Cases and Product Features
Productivity – Touch-ready iWork
One thing that really excites me that hasn’t been talked about in all this hoopla is the ability for a truly innovative productivity suite. Microsoft Office has not changed its fundamental structure in 15 years, other than questionable UI changes (i.e. the “Ribbons”). But Apple can leverage their internal iWork (already a much better office suite, except for Numbers vs. Excel 2003 for Windows) to create a dedicated version that leverages the strengths of a tablet. Admittedly this is more relevant and exciting for Keynote, for creating, editing or reviewing presentations, but is also relevant for Pages and Numbers, though not for heavy lifting. I think there already exists a UI framework that would make sense, similar to iPhoto full screen editing, with an auto-hiding browser on top and auto-hiding tool bar on the bottom.
Hub of Digital Life – Touch-ready iLife
Another core software suite will be porting iLife as a touch-ready application. iPhoto would probably be the most useful, but there might be new applications.
Reading
Even though Steve Jobs said that “nobody reads anymore”, it’s impossible to ignore that reading on a laptop / computer is a major usage case, just not necessarily books, as he was referring to. When I’m reading blogs, PDFs, or newspapers online, I’d certainly prefer a tablet form factor. And if it was good enough, I’d much rather have that to view my magazines (Wired, The Week and Popular Science) instead of the paper version. I also imagine Apple will be working with publishers (newspapers, magazines, books) to make the buying experience easier and get them excited about eReaders, which are here to stay. Again, this won’t be a dedicated device, but I’d be surprised if this is not laid out as a core usage.
Full iChat including Video Chat
The Tablet would certainly have the horsepower, and a front mounted built in iSight would make video converations incredibly simple and elegant.
Video
As more and more video consumption moves online and onto computers, it makes sense for a device that will essentially be just a screen to have a core and elegant video viewing interface. Apple also has strategic reasons to continue to push to centralize how people purchase and watch video. Watching a movie on a 10″ screen is certainly more doable than on a 3.5″ screen.
Areas that will NOT be core usage cases
Games
Apple is allegedly not happy with the fact that the iPod Touch and iPhone have become such game centered devices, but I think it makes sense on a device that size. The entire device is a great controller that offers unique handheld gaming abilities. A 10″ devices does not lend itself to that type of gaming, and if you’re going to need a controller, then you might as well have a game console. I disagree with AppleInsider on this one.
Music
Music, which has been the center of the iPod revolution and was a core feature on the iPhone, will play a primary role on this device. iPod market penetration is already near saturated, and people want music portability, which a 10″ tablet won’t offer.
Price: $999
Apple doesn’t go low end, they are not trying to compete with netbooks directly, especially at launch. They will try to create the best tablet computer ever created, and then potentially have it move down market to compete with netbooks, but don’t hold your breath (I’ve been waiting for a $299-399 Mac Mini for years and full expected they would come that low, but instead the base price increased from $499 to $599). Even at that price, you better believe people will be lining up around the block to buy one when they come out. I myself will be one of them (I bought the original iPhone at $599).
Doubtful but feasible and would be cool
True Docking Ability
If you take the keyboard off of the MacBook Air, and fold the screen down onto it, you can imagine a pretty thin tablet style computer. Now add 2 years of technology innovation on top of that, and you can see a tablet that should be just as powerful as a MacBook Air. When you think that a MacBook Air can run a 30″ monitor with its video card and support a full array of USB connections, it’s easy to envision a tablet with a dock that gives it power, USB, and a display connection, through either USB, MagSafe, and MiniDisplayPort, or an iPod like connector. This way, when you’re at home or the office, you simply dock it in and have your main computer there, with an external screen, keyboard and mouse for full desktop computing.
Either way, I’m excited to see what Apple and Steve Jobs unveil. My guess is this will be as significant as the original iPhone announcement three years ago. Can’t wait.
November 18th, 2009
Earlier today I read an interesting post from Venture Hacks about how disruptive innovation will continue in the near term. Their analogy was about how computers are evolving and accelerating. We all know the evolution from mainframes to personal computers to laptops. This is common knowledge.
The technically adept also are very well aware about how mobile phones are the next phase, and will replace personal computers in the near future. This analysis reminded me of a post by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who a year ago wrote about how the iPhone has as much computer as the top of the line Desktop computer from just 10 years ago. This is really fascinating and eye opening, and really supports Naval’s point.
It gets even more interesting when you start thinking another 10 or 20 or 40 years from now, and look at that type of innovation and acceleration in technology. I had a couple of beers with Matt Hodgson and Moe Kelley this evening, and we got into some very interesting discussions about the future, and business, which builds on the previous points (but in all reality deserves its own post, but since I’m bad about blogging, I thought I’d just throw it all in here)
Our discussion ranged from general technological advancement, to the companies that will die as a result of that advancement (think book publishers, newspapers, and “value-add” content distributers that are really dumb pipes), to the long term implications of this technological advancement. And that’s where things got really interesting. So we thought about a framework to capture this evolution, which I’ll roughly lay out here.
Phase 1: Today’s Reality – The $200 Billion Technological Revolution
Let’s face it, as much as we’re all excited about the companies that are changing the world today (Google) and the companies that will change the world in the coming months or years (Facebook), a lot of it really comes down to the shift in dollars from traditional advertising (TV, print, radio) to Internet and new media advertising. Google has already shown how profitable this can be, and many others are well positioned to take advantage of the remaining advertising dollars that have not shifted to the Internet, but inevitably will (really, it’s inevitable, just a matter of time). Yet even as exciting as that is, it’s still just 3-5% of our economy.
Phase 2: Augmented Reality – The Next Technological Revolution
There is a lot of talk among technology circles about Augmented Reality. Simple and known versions of this are location based services that tell you where your friends are (e.g. Loopt), or great local deals through coupons. More advanced augmented reality includes the ability to layer on information into any real world setting (e.g. Layar), which nearly infinite uses and benefits. In terms of economic benefits, I find it difficult to quantify the impact. It’s probably broader than advertising (think services, transactions, shopping, etc.).
Phase 3: Parallel Reality – The $2 Trillion Technological Revolution
The real mind bender is when you start looking at “Parallel Reality” (which given by the dearth and inconsistency of the Google search results isn’t even a broad concept). I define “Parallel Reality” as the third stage, where the real world continues to exist, but a “parallel reality” exists along side it. This is Second Life taken to a whole new level of realism, where things try feel, smell, and seem real. In this world, you still live your normal life, but might plug in (or something else) to a parallel reality where you can enjoy things you might not otherwise be able to do. This could mean things you could not afford (luxurious trips), things you couldn’t physically accomplish (climbing Mt. Everest for the physically able but not quite fit, or going for a jog for the physically incapable), or things that would be physically impossible (being in Tokyo for breakfast and Paris for lunch) or difficult (walking around Mars).
The reason I call this a $2 Trillion revolution is that it has the potential to impact fundamental industries such as travel, tourism, entertainment, restaurants, alcohol, etc. Basically anything that costs money to do in order to provide a mental or even physical stimulation that can be replaced in a virtual world is no longer safe from disruption the way it currently is.
Phase 4: Post Reality – All Bets are Off
Finally, at some point of technological evolution, we move past the physical world and even the virtual portrayal of the physical world. Fans of Ray Kurzweil will realize I’m treading into his territory. But once we move into a “world” where the virtual is more real and satisfying than the real, all bets are off. Government, the economy, society, are all irrelevant as they are defined today. Even if we’re all digital, enjoying immortality in a utopian “Matrix”, how do we physically keep the power on for all of our virtual brains and selves? I can go on, but I mainly wanted to illustrate how irrelevant everything we know is once we cross that chasm.
Before you write this off as sheer lunacy or even too far in the future for you to worry about, consider how fast technology is improving:
By the year 2020, your $1,000 personal computer will have the processing power of the human brain-20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. By 2050, $1,000 worth of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth.
Source: http://www.rense.com/ufo6/live.htm
That excerpt is from an article by Ray Kurzweil, and is worth a full read if you’re interested. But it’s clear that the computational power will be able to recreate worlds, recreate human brains, and recreate intelligence in the foreseeable future.
Back to Real Reality
Now bringing this all back to earth, there are lots of real opportunities in the short, medium, long, and real long term. I’m excited about all of them, and will be continuing to think and work in all realms. But every now and then it’s really interesting to step back and think about what the current technology revolution really means beyond the business models. Even more interesting is to think about what the world will be like when I’m really old dying (or not).
November 16th, 2009
It’s been a while since my last post, so I thought I’d jump back in with a personal post about my first ultra-marathon last Saturday.
Why oh Why?
The story actually starts about 4 months ago, during an evening of drinking with the Kendall Keiretsu. At that point, I had been on the sideline, and had not run for about 6 months because of a heel injury I go playing squash with Chris Keller. I was out of shape, and not happy about it. During the happy hour, I was talking with Moe Kelley about a book he was reading, Born to Run. We talked about the book for a while, about how humans evolved to run, and about how he was thinking about running a 50 mile ultra-marathon, inspired by the book. I found exactly the type of excuse I needed to get back in shape. So that night, after a few beers, I made a brilliant decision to join him and run the ultra-marathon. I really like making commitments that are more than you really should make, because it forces you to complete them.
Training, Training, and a Nasty Injury
Once I committed, I needed to start logging miles, lots of miles. I also purchased my own copy of Born to Run, and couldn’t put it down once I started reading it. It really helped motivate me, and got me thinking about new running styles. I never did go all the way to get a pair of Vibram Five Fingers, but I did do weekly barefoot sprints.
After about 2 months of training, and working up to 17 mile runs on weekend, disaster struck. 9 miles into a 20 mile run, I had an intense sharp pain in my left Achilles heel, and had to hobble my way home. I was really worried that this would sideline my plans. If you run that much, you’re bound to get injured. My friend Moe, who had this idea in the first place, was also sidelined with a stress fracture in his foot, which would eventually keep him out of the marathon and ultra. To be sure, I went to my podiatrist, had an MRI, and took 2 weeks off from running, before slowly working my way back up.
It turned out to be nothing serious, but to be safe I changed the way I ran to put less stress on the Achilles. I started landing on the forefoot, instead of the more traditional heel-toe. There are lots of reasons the heel-toe is not good for you, and the injury was the final straw to get me to change. The first couple of weeks were very difficult, since you work different muscles, but it was worth it.
Along the way, I built a sweet little spreadsheet to help me keep track of the miles. Below is a graph of the running log. It shows daily and weekly mileage, and speed, in a nice visual way. I rested the week of Aug 24, before ramping back up. The Bay State Marathon was on October 18, and the last big bar is obviously the 50 Mile race
Final Prep and Taper
In the 2 weeks leading up to the race, I tried to stay off my feet, ran very little, drank lots of water, tried to sleep a lot, and avoided coffee and alcohol. This all went well, except for the night before the race, when I had to drive back down from Hanover, NH, then get up at 5 am, meaning I only got 5 hours of sleep.
Race Day
The race started at 6:15 in the morning, just as the sun was coming up, to give people enough time to finish before it got dark if possible. I went with my usual pre-run breakfast, banana, coffee, and bread. Chris, my brother-in-law, drove me to the race since we had stayed with him and my sister the night before, to be closer to the race. The race was limited to 150 people running the full 50 mile race, and 150 doing a marathon on the same course. This is probably one of the few times that a marathon is a “short” run.
The course was four 12.5 mile loops in a forest preserve. It was incredibly hilly, had loose rocks all over, and 3 inch high exposed roots. And to make it worse, all the dangers were covered by 3-4 inches of loose leaves all over the course. I tripped and fell once, and hit my toes a few dozen times on the various roots and rocks, which was incredibly painful when your legs are in the middle of a 50 mile run.
At about 26 miles into the race, I started cramping up really badly. I was worried about finishing, and realized that this was the hardest physical thing I’d ever attempted. Luckily at the next aid station a few miles later, I was able to get some ibuprofen, water, bacon, and a shot of whiskey to help thin out the blood.
About a mile after that station, I saw Andrea, Chris, and Nadine, who made it to the course to cheer me on. It really helped to see them, and I kept pushing along. By the time I finished the third loop, I knew I would finish, even though I still had 12 miles to go.
This picture captures how I felt at about half way:
Later on, ironically, I actually felt better and was surprised at how fresh I looked with about 8 miles to go (below). And that thing I’m holding is actually a water bottle that I duct-taped to my hand so I would have water the entire time, even between the aid stations. It was a life saver.
The Finish
I finished in 10 hours and 7 minutes (see Full results). It felt great to finish, and no, I never reached a state of zen where I just floated along. It hurt, I pushed through, nothing magic. But the adrenaline at the end was awesome. Here is the finish:
April 18th, 2009
There has been a lot of buzz recently about Twitter. Just a few months ago, it was a techie network that was difficult to explain to an existing user, let alone anyone that had never heard of it. Not, it’s a mainstream phenomenon that everyone is talking about. This came to head with all the ridiculous Ashton vs. CNN race to a million users (Ashton won), and Oprah’s first tweet. The explosive growth is a result of reaching a critical mass of users, getting celebrities started, and having a wide range of support tools (e.g. TweetDeck, Nambu).
As a result of this growth, Facebook has been reacting, or possibly over-reacting, as evidenced with their recent redesign. The controversial redesign is trying to focus more on status updates, and copied a lot of Twitter (and FriendFeed) features. Given the explosive growth, Facebook is certainly justified in their fears.
Lead Users
Facebook is worried about the Lead Users, the early adopters. Among my tech friends, we all are spending more time interacting with Twitter than we are with Facebook. I do this is mainly because it’s much easier to actually interact with Twitter (with the tools I referenced earlier, my favorite is Nambu). And on top of that, I’ve found that Twitter is more useful and relevant for what I need.
Chasing the Wrong Problem
Twitter is winning the status update wars. But that’s ok. Facebook is caught up in this because it thought that status messages were such an important part to it’s value proposition, right from it’s initial conception, inspired partly by AIM status messages. (On a side note, other sites need to get over the status update issue and stop trying to force users to update their status, yes I’m talking to you Plaxo and LinkedIn).
Facebook = Identity
Facebook right now is so much more than a fancy way to update your status message. It’s your IDENTITY. Facebook is trying to win back status messages and real time conversation. Instead, it should just realize it’s about identity, and focus on that. Facebook Connect is important, and if they neglect that, it won’t become what I hope it becomes.
Twitter = Communication
Twitter is leading in real time communication. Ironically, it’s also going back into the era of random user names that I was hoping Facebook has ended. That’s not as bad as it once was because there are more ways to map the random names to names that make sense to you, i.e. real names. But the implication of Twitter’s usernames is that it makes it much less likely to become a standard login protocol (as TechCrunch is implying).
Facebook’s use of real names and validation makes it well suited for a global identify management, and Twitter’s open standards make it well suited for real time public conversation. I don’t mind some overlap, as long as they each don’t lose focus on what makes them valuable.
December 11th, 2008
Web 2.0 companies often focus on growing very aggressively, ignoring short term revenue. Part of this is due to the face that many Web 2.0 models offer free to use, ad-supported products, which inherently needs to get to an incredible scale before generating meaningful ad revenue.
However with the current economic environment, companies are being pushed to generate revenue and get to cash flow positive sooner than they previously expected. As a response, in the coming months I expect to see a lot more previously ad-only websites and services to begin moving to premium or freemium models.
37Signals has been preaching this philosophy all along, encouraging developers and entrepreneurs to create something valuable that people are willing to pay for. Despite looking prescient now, they have been mocked by the tech community, including a post from TechCrunch, who half-jokingly blamed them for driving a company to the deadPool. We’ll certainly see more companies headed to the deadpool, but as a result of having ad-only models, rather than following 37Signals’s advice.
The irony of this entire situation is that companies are trying to start charging customers as consumers are slowing spending faster than they have in decades. However, it’s still the right move, especially considering that Internet users are getting more comfortable paying for services they use, and that many internet services, even if they charged, would still be cheaper than their offline or other alternatives.
At YouCastr, we have always had a two pronged business model that relied on advertising and paid services. Reflecting the current economic state, we have focused our product development and marketing efforts towards accelerating our paid services. It’s a move we are all certainly excited about, and a decision that was easy to make.
On a fun closing note, I would characterize the previous attitude towards revenue for web startups as similar to Allen Iverson’s disdainful attitude towards practice in his infamous press conference. I can almost see it now, a Web 2.0 CEO at a board meeting saying:
“We’re talking about revenue. We’re talking about REVENUE! We’re not talking about the company. We’re talking about revenue. When you come to our offices, you see see us code, you see us getting users, you see us giving it everything we’ve got, but we’re talking about revenue right now.
Well those days are long gone, and the crop of companies that survives is going to be better for it.
(For a fun diversion, read the entire transcript of Iverson’s press conference, but replace “practice” with “revenue”, “Coach Brown” with “The Board”, and “game” with “company”.)
October 29th, 2008
This week we launched a completely new website, including a complete redesign, a range of new features, and improved overall usability. Our development team has been working extremely hard on this update for the past 2 months, culminating in a final, all-night 30 hour homestretch to get the site live. Their dedication and hard work has paid off.
Overall goals
The main goal of the update was to make it easier for our users to do what they love doing on YouCastr. We also put a lot of effort making it clearer to organize and schedule live broadcasts for non-mainstream sporting events, such as high school and non-covered college sports that we’re seeing on the site. Because we focus on sports, we can create a much better way to organize sports broadcasts across all different levels and leagues.
New Design
The first thing existing users will notice is the new design. We have been working on the new design for the past 2 months, and the final result is the most concrete impact of our full time Web Designer, Fred Yates. He’s done a great job with the design, and constantly tweaking and improving it. The design is a lot sportier, crisper, and tighter, and creates a great framework for us to continue developing great new features.
New Features
Aside from the redesign, the major new feature is the ability to upload audio and video content. This is our first foray into video, where people can upload entire sporting events, highlight clips, or pre-recorded sports shows. The ability to upload audio now allows people to upload their previously recorded and produced podcasts, for those users that are more familiar with that medium. Before this update, users could only stream the content live, and it would automatically be archived for playback or download. There are more, so you’ll want to see all of YouCastr’s new features
Usability Improvements
We rethought all of the key processes to make it easier for our users to do everything, including creating live content, uploading content, writing articles, and navigating around the site. We’ve applied all of what we’ve learned over the past year since our private beta launch, and applied it to our current focus.
Result of Changes
These changes put us in an even better position to continue revolutionizing the way fans, parents, and alumni follow non mainstream sports. As we move forward, we will be introducing new features to make YouCastr better and better. I’m really excited about where we are and how far we’ve come, and there are a lot of great new things in store.
October 2nd, 2008
Today I went to the MassTLC unConference. It was an interesting structure for a conference, where the entire agenda is created by the audience on the day of the actual conference. It brought together a great mix of entrepreneurs, investors, and technologists for a day of interaction. The structure (or rather unstructure) allowed anyone to create a session on any topic by simply writing it up on a card, picking a time and a room, and posting it on the central board. Then people could review the “agenda”, and pick the topics that they were interested in. It worked better than it sounds, and better than I was expecting.
In the morning I went to a session on digital video on the internet. We talked a little bit about the technology, but ended up focusing on business models and monetization. The biggest challenge right now for web video is monetization. One investor specifically commented that they are staying away from web video currently for that reason. One of the biggest challenges is getting ad buyers to understand and get comfortable with the new mediums. It’s a dollar to dimes issue that the video industry will have to come to terms with. The newspaper industry is already dealing with this. Essentially, for every dollar of revenue that newspapers (and soon broadcasters/cable companies, video producers, etc.) are losing, they are only seeing 10 cents of revenue from their online equivalent. There are two ways to address this: lowering production / overhead costs to make that 10 cents more valuable, or increasing that 10 cents through innovative advertising channels. There is a lot of creativity going into that space now, but Madison Ave. hasn’t caught up yet.
We also talked about the monetization potential of different content types. Niche sites generally have more loyal audiences and higher CPM rates, but are harder to scale. Premium content with higher production value has a larger total audience potential, but needs much more advertising revenue to support that higher production cost and higher paid actors.
At YouCastr, our sports focus makes our web video addresses many of the concerns with distributed video. For one, large brand advertisers like Nike and Coca-Cola will be comfortable associating their brands with high school and college sporting events, which are safe. Second, sporting events are long and have natural breaks, meaning people are willing to sit through a short pre-roll if they are going to watch a 2 hour event, and ads during timeouts and halftime are generally accepted. And third, we are not planning on producing the content, which means we can monetize an audience of 1, versus ESPN which needs tens of thousands (if not more) viewers to pay for the production cost and opportunity cost of showing something on a cable channel (fixed distribution inventory). Fourth, sports fans are LOYAL. I can go on about the business merits of focusing on sports, but maybe I’ll have to devote an entire post to that.
I also had a couple of interesting lunch sessions. The first was with James Geshwiler from Common Angels. We talked about angel fundraising, key challenges, and the key differences between angel and VC financing. The second lunch session was with George Bell of General Catalyst. He was truly energetic, offered short but insightful feedback, and gave us all a good inside perspective about the impact of the overall economy on VC’s investment strategy. Generally, new investments are down in order to reserve cash for future deals and existing portfolio companies. The environment is definitely tough right now, but that’s also the topic for another post, this one’s already getting long.
In the afternoon, I led a session about attacking the Long Tail, which in our case means reaching long tail content creators (high school and college sports broadcasters) and content consumers (the small niche audiences for each sport). We had some interesting dialog about the challenges to reach them, and some effective ways to actually do it.
Overall, the day was great. Got to meet some really interesting people, and to experience a different type of conference that was very refreshing and created a lot of opportunities for chance encounters and casual conversation.
September 26th, 2008
But I did say it.
RIM’s 28% drop today ties perfectly into my last post. What is weird is that all the analysts were “shocked” that RIM had to spend more money on advertising to fend off the iPhone, spend more on R&D to make better phones, reduce profit margins to compete on price, and cut margins to go after consumers.
The writing was on the wall folks. If you expected RIM to keep those silly margins, you are blind. RIM makes cheap hardware, but because they were competing with Windows Mobile and selling to business customers that are not sensitive to price, they could keep those margins and sales growth.
Good luck RIM, see you when your market cap is under $10B.
Here are some fun links:
August 21st, 2008
I have been meaning to post this for a while, got sidetracked, then ended up holding off as my prediction seemed to be coming through. Yet given RIMM’s recent resurgence, I feel my window has reopened.
Let’s look back a bit to understand the Palm parallel. Shortly after its IPO, Palm went on to have a peak market cap of about $85B and was the darling of handheld computing, perched to lead the revolution. But then they made crap for years, and the market cap is now hovering at around $800M. Today, RIM has a market cap of about $73B. It’s NOT a $70B company. The writing is on the wall, and here are some reasons:
The iPhone
This one’s easy, but the biggest threat to Blackberry’s ongoing growth is the iPhone. The application infrastructure and user interface are without question the future of mobile computing.
RIM is a one-trick pony
Let’s be clear about one thing, RIM’s value is based entirely on one service it provides: push email. That’s it. It doesn’t make the best phones out there, they aren’t particularly sexy or usable outside of the core emailing functionality, and push email isn’t that defensible.
RIMM vs. AAPL Stock
It’s incredible but true that RIM has been outperforming Apple for the last 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 5 year periods. Is that sustainable? RIMM today is worth half as much as Apple. Think about that. To use the venerable Chewbacca Defense “IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE”. Apple makes the best computer operating system, the best computer hardware, the best music players, and the best phone.
RIM is on the wrong side of the innovator’s dilemma
I feel strongly that RIM will not reinvent its way to ongoing relevance because of their focus on the physical keyboard.
BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone – New York Times: “THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. ‘I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,’ says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. ‘It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.’”
Note to Mr. Lazaridis: as the actual act of typing becomes a smaller percentage of the total time spent interacting with a particular device, the incremental speed benefit of having a full tactile qwerty keyboard is reduced. And that’s not even talking about the fact that in many cases, people type faster on the iPhone’s virtual keypad (myself included, I’m much faster on my iPhone than on my recently-retired BlackBerry Curve).
So good luck RIM, but you’ve peaked.
Disclaimer:I do own a (small) amount of Apple stock, a MacBook, an iPhone 3G, and until recently, a Blackberry Curve. Also, I am NOT an investment adviser, and the information in this column does not represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks.