Category Archives: Market Trends

Trends in various markets

HP Hip Plop

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I would not want to be an HP employee this week. Well, actually I have not wanted to be one since Bill and Dave went to the big database in the sky. Last week, in rapid fire, HP said they will likely get out of the PC/laptop business (either through an Agilent-like spinoff or outright sale), killed their newborn webOS phone and slab business, and bought a relatively obscure software company for a huge premium. Their stock dropped about 30% and HP aficionados are still staring, jaws agape, in disbelief. Change is the only thing of permanence, and that applies doubly in the high tech business. Tech companies are the most agile known, and many have completely reinvented themselves when faced with undeniable market shifts. Others change because better opportunities exist. HP’s newest CEO, Leo the Lively, knows that software companies make significant margins (Oracle has an overall margin of … Continue reading →

Hulu Dancing

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I’m glad I don’t watch feminine hygiene product commercials these days. Not that I ever enjoyed them. They just often plopped into television programs that might have had a significant female audience. In the desperation that is mass advertising, marketers know that a great deal of the ad spend is utter waste, such as when pitches for FDS appeared in my bachelor pad. The folks at Preparation-H realize that they sell to a specific demographic, and a growing minority at that. For every anxious prospect reached via a network television show, they are selling to twenty people who are suddenly slightly disgusted. Though you can reduce misspent budget by pouring through demographic viewership data, there is always a great deal of zero return in mass media. Thankfully mass media may be dying. Ubiquitous broadband allows for individualized content and advertising targeting. This is nothing new — that was the original … Continue reading →

SMB Samba

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Even SMBs have inertia. I have been waiting for a solid uptick in cloud services adoption by Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs).  Yet a recent report from Microsoft indicates that SMBs are not yet adopting SaaS and cloud services at a blistering pace.  Then again, given Microsoft’s rapidly plunging market value, maybe their survey sample included only Microsoft loyalists … both of them. According to 3,258 respondents representing companies with less than 250 employees, fewer than 40% plan on paying for cloud services in the next few years, though this is a full 10 points higher than in Microsoft’s previous poll. They also report that those SMBs with their heads in the clouds are doubling the number of services which they rent.  The analysis suggests that cloud adoption will be gradual and, given SMB investments into non-cloud infrastructure, a hybrid model will persist. In the absence of established infrastructure, small … 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 →

Paranoia Pays

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Steve Jobs needs to call Andy Grove ASAP. Groves, one of Intel’s founders, was very clear on the concept of paranoia in the tech biz.  Perhaps being Hungarian and thus too well acquainted with Soviet oppression, Andy learned paranoia at a young age.  But he refined his paranoiac inclinations being in the technology business, a war zone where corporate death comes quickly and painfully.  Like a battlefield where every soldier is out for himself, nobody and no company are safe from competition. Not even Apple. Wildly popular and cult-like, the iPhone and iPad made indelible marks in the consumer electronics space.  Though pads and smartphones existed before Jobs took on the job, Apple refined the product category and advanced the expectations of the market.  Combined brilliance in product design and marketing led to worldwide buzz, techno lust and a stock price that makes members of the House of Saud blink … Continue reading →

Shift Happens

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A start-up client of mine maintains an interesting page on their intranet that showed when employees typically come and go.  The CEO routinely arrives at the office around 8:00AM, the software architect by 10:00AM, and their hotshot Java geek leaves the building at o-dark-thirty. Technology is shifting time.  In the bad old days (say 1998) lives were regimented.  Between work and television, most Americans kept static and well matched schedules.  Most everyone was at work at nine, home by six, integrated with their couch by eight and using Jay Leno as a nightlight for foreplay around midnight.  Lives between people were synchronized out of practice and the necessity of both communing at work and the nature of broadcasting. Technology has made work life at the start-up asynchronous and may well spell the death of broadcasting as we know it (expect the water cooler phrase “Did you catch blah-blah-blah on TV … Continue reading →

Android Aggression

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America used to beg for immigrants, because the joint was big and there was plenty of room and opportunity to go around. Kinda like the Android market. IDC caused Steve Jobs to dance a jig (not a pretty sight) when they predicted that the smart phone market would grow by 55.4% this year, a full 10% more than they had last prognosticated.  Steve could hear cash registers ringing at every Apple store with thoughts of iPhones flying out the doors.  IDC then caused Jobs to change underpants midday when they also predicted that Android and Windows phones would lead this surge in sales through 2014. Cachet casts a short shadow. IDC thinks Android smart phones will comprise nearly 25% of units within two election cycles (and can we just call them ‘phones’ since they will be the market by 2014).  Windows phones are estimated to take a relatively paltry 9.8% … Continue reading →