Author Archives: admin

Bustle Bit Business

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Who wants $29B a year? The ubiquity of cell phones has not gone unnoticed by anybody, even the stodgy old banker down at your local branch (though he merely finds his daughter’s monthly texting charges aggravating).  Even the most primitive of modern cell phones is a small computer with wireless data capabilities.  With cell phone penetration nearing 80% in the United States, and emerging nations adopting cellular as their first telecommunications infrastructure, soon a cell phone will be owned and operated by every homo sapiens and a few lower order mammals as well (cats will not deign to dial themselves … that’s what they keep humans for). Thus, folks who earn a dime from financing a dollar are interested in using any technology to speed payments.  In our fast paced modern world, waiting behind someone using an ATM card at Starbucks seems like an incredible waste of time.  Hence the … Continue reading →

Mobile Mechanics

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Mobile is a microcosm for market mechanics. In recent weeks we witnessed the mobile market churning in seemingly random directions, but each has actually affirmed fundamental and very mechanical aspects of every market. If you are interested in mobile marketing check out white label SMS reseller, you will be able to send text messages to your clients for appointment reminders along with other things. When Nokia makes a bold move by adopting Microsoft’s mobile operating system, it asserted one market imperative.  When HP and Google forced Apple to blink, another market realty was at play.  As Google’s Android OS heads toward ubiquity, yet a third force of marketing was displayed. Commoditization: All markets commoditize over time as competitors provide similar or identical features.  In the mobile market, Google is the major force toward commoditization as they emulate what Microsoft did with desktops (indeed, the rumor that Android and webOS will … Continue reading →

Lively Laddering

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“But how does server virtualization make you feel?” Sounds like an odd question to pose to a Chief Technology Officer, but it might be appropriate.  Everyone outside of congress has human emotions. Numerous studies show that promotions appealing purely to emotions sell better than those that pry only on intellect. Exploiting common target buyer emotions is a basic marketing tactic. Which is oddly missing from most B2B marketing. High tech entrepreneurs rarely add qualitative research to their task list.  Having met with early adopters, they mistakenly assume they understand everything about their entire market. The motivations of early adopters are as different from the broad market as are Hillary and Bill Clinton’s motivations toward Monica Lewinsky. Start-up founders may accidentally appeal to one or another emotional motivation of early adopters, but rarely do they take time to discover the motivations of each buyer genotype within their top three market segments. … Continue reading →

Market Omissions

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Poking couch potatoes is useless. For as along as television cable companies have provided set top boxes, one or another technologist has pimped the possibilities of interactive television (iTV).  Some were horrible notions, such as Microsoft attempting to turn your TV into a dial-up terminal and thus annoying the rest of your family as you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y surfed the Internet.  Others sought to enhance viewing experiences by offering multiple picture-in-picture angles of sporting events.  A few tried to make a buck by littering your TV screen with icons that would instantly purchase merchandise. They all bombed, and for the same reason (and continue to do so). The fundamental flaw behind iTV is that television was designed specifically to prevent interaction.  A couple of generations of boob tube bumpkins have stridently avoided interacting with their parents, spouses, children and reality.  Television was a tool for disconnecting the brain and thus decompressing … Continue reading →

Innovative Followers

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I love watching people fuss over false dichotomies.  Liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, Sane/Congress … This week’s dubious duo are Innovators and Fast Followers. In all industries, but in exaggerated form for high tech, there is a need to innovate. Mankind was built through innovation that allegedly improved life (fire did improve living though Twitter remains debatable). Many companies thrive on innovating while other lay in wait for innovation to occur and then compete through plagiarism. It can (and should) be argued that Microsoft rarely innovated anything, but made a tidy living by hijacking innovations from CP/M, Lisa/Mac, WordPerfect, and other also rans. Microsoft was the fast follower model to follow. This is not to decry the innovators. Apple grows consistently and has high stock price multiples not by dominating every market (aside from MP3 players) but from perpetually rethinking products. Collective gasps were heard when they introduced the Lisa (the Mac’s antecedent) … Continue reading →

Bean Bits

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Looks like Leo is back from his coffee break. HP’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, was MIA for a while, allegedly escaping a court appearance at the hands of Oracle.  Now that the nastiness of litigation has lapsed, Leo has reappeared in rumor mills that speculate on how he might possibly change HP more so that Mark Hurd or Carly Fiorina (though the changes wrought by that pair have Bill and Dave spinning faster than disc drives in their respective graves).  A Wall Street Journal report says that Leo, the former head of software shop SAP, wants to make software HP’s new focus. To which one former HP tech guru said “Lord help us, more HP software! Arghhh.” HP is not a software company.  Aside from Openview, which appears to be reverse mistake, HP is not only known as a hardware company, but also as a source of software incompetency.  Even … Continue reading →

Innovation Insufficiency

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Is owning 95% of a market enough? Taking in a number of market share estimates, Apple iPads have about 5% of the potential U.S. market for pads/slates/tablets (or as the wags at The Register prefer to call them, Fondle Slabs).  This is based on current P.C. market penetrations (north of 76% of households) and the estimated U.S. deployment of iPads.  Thus, the green field of the slab market is currently wide open. Which explains why several million Android slabs were introduced at CES last week. Market mechanics are based on many things, with technical innovation being a misleading indicator.  Apple has always been an innovator, but innovation in and of itself is insufficient.  Apple invented the PDA market with the Newton, which sold four or five units.  Pure innovation, but not only was it ahead of the market, it was also poorly marketed.  Alternately the iPad was very innovative and … Continue reading →