Category Archives: Market Trends

Trends in various markets

Televised Apocalypse

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Google is proving an old joke right, and in the right way. The joke was that UNIX is the original computer virus, spreading like an epidemic to every conceivable computing platform.  Geeks used to laugh at this line … until Linux was first spotted running side-by-side on both a surplus x86 desktop and an IBM mainframe.  It then leapt onto cell phones, into routers, and I think there is a Linux application for my toaster. It may in your next television. Samsung — whose cell phone division likes Android in the same way sumo wrestlers like cheeseburgers — let slip that they are considering baking Android into televisions.  This is no meager moment because Samsung makes more idiot boxes than the public school system makes viewers.  In fact, Samsung make more boob tubes than any other enterprise, and is single handedly responsible for most of the traffic on Best Buy’s … Continue reading →

Stack ‘Em

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So, when will Oracle buy Brocade? Well, they might buy Juniper, Alcatel or maybe even pick-up Nortel on a distress sale, but I’m pretty sure they will jump on Brocade to secure their data center dominance. Several vendors have been assembling stacks in attempts to become one-stop shopping centers for CTOs.  Cisco shocked many by getting into the server business, HP by buying 3Com, and Oracle buying Sun and not realizing the mess they had gotten themselves into.  IBM is oddly the laggard, evidently content to rake in huge margins on services instead. But IBM may well buy what Oracle doesn’t. Let’s ignore applications, if for no other reason than to give Larry Ellison a reason to panic and read this blog.  The major components of the data center infrastructure stack include servers, storage, operating systems, management suites and networking.  HP has all of the above, and wedding ProCurve, 3Com … Continue reading →

Mobile Movement

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The mighty fall, upstarts rise, and nothing is guaranteed. Comscore published their periodic post of positioning between portable platform providers (tell me when you get sick of my constant alliteration … it won’t stop me, but I do like the feedback).  Of interest are instances where major players are advancing, retreating, or showing signs of stagnation.  In Comscore’s latest totable techno tout sheet we see: RIM:        42.1% rising slowly (+1.3) Apple:      25.4% stagnant (-0.1) Microsoft:  15.1% falling fast (-4.0) Google:     9.0% and rising fast (+5.2) Palm:       5.4% and sinking (-1.8) Most noteworthy and yet most predictable is Microsoft’s plummeting while everyone else is either growing or staying steady.  Microsoft’s mobile operating system has been derided, insulted, defamed and dismissed by many, for sound reasons.  Unlike competing platforms, one routinely needs to buy a new handset whenever Microsoft releases a new OS (I say this with my tongue buried deeply into … Continue reading →

Desktop Disconnect?

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Apple is pushing people to populate their phones with installed applications while Google, IBM and Microsoft are urging folk to remove apps from desktops. This is not nearly bizarre as it sounds. The success of Apple Apps for iPhones is slightly more phenomenal than the second coming. The universe seems consumed by the desire to have useful and useless apps installed onto their handsets. Sure, most of the iPhone app rush comes from the rush of playing with a new toy, proving once again the only difference between men and boys is the price of their data plan. Yet this month shows that the desktop is slowing turning into little more than a SaaS suckling tool, whereby apps are delivered online. Google may have led the pack with early availability of desktop apps-on-tap, but now IBM and Microsoft have tap danced onto the stage. (The mental visual of Steve Balmer … Continue reading →

Locked-in

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Lock-in as a marketing strategy is alive, well, and unfortunately growing. For dot-communists and those raised in the era of Linux, vendor lock-in is the art of keeping customers captive. By making people commit to a technology, and thus raising the pain of switching away from said technology, vendors cause customers to linger even when they do not want to. I know CIOs who for decades have blustered against Cognos and being locked into stiff annual license fees for PowerHouse, Cognos’ ancient 4GL. Yet they pay the fee every year knowing that rewriting thousands of lines of PowerHouse code is pretty pricy too. Another variation of vendor lock-in is commonly called upgrade robbery. I encountered such a scam this week when I noticed my ancient (circa 2003) smartphone buttons started to stick. In order to upgrade to a newer smartphone, AT&T insists that I buy $720 worth of wireless data … Continue reading →

Adobeture

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I was unsurprised by Adobe’s Omniture acquisition. Until I saw the price they paid. Adobe is sitting on stacks of cash. As is routine with tech companies, cash fat firms buy other outfits during recessions when acquisition prices are normally lower. Omniture was not suffering, so Adobe’s $1.8B buy may be the right price to pay for this strategic move. I asked my acquaintances in both Adobe and Omniture about this … and they wisely said nothing, forwarding me links to official press releases. I obviously need sneakier friends. The stock market didn’t think it was a good short-term move. Despite beating the street’s estimates on quarterly earnings, Adobe shares dropped more than 6% on the announcement. Perhaps short-term selling of Adobe stock is warranted because their software sales revenues continue to suffer during the recession. But in the long term Omniture’s less volatile SaaS revenue streams will compliment and … Continue reading →

Solid Move

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It is always fun to see a market tipping point at the moment it occurs. Samsung, the Korean tech titan, is rumored to be exiting the hard drive business for ultra thin notebooks, switching instead to solid state drive (SDD) production. It appears that Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate and Western Digital have abandoned that market as well, leaving Toshiba alone to peddle electricity sucking spindles for your groin warmer. When five out of six primary players leave a market, you know that market is toast. Intel is accelerating the switch. They report that as soon as next month they will double the density of their SSDs, pumping in a hefty 160GB into the small form factor. Since SSDs are a relatively new market phenomenon, and since work has only begun on how to bundle more bits into the drives, we can expect Moore’s law to switch from CPU cycles to SSD … Continue reading →