There will undoubtedly be many comparisons made between Apple TV and Google TV in the upcoming weeks. As Apple updated and re-vamped their Apple TV initiatives today they showcased their strategy to make the television a viable platform for software and services.
The theme of many of my conversations with reporters the past week was centered on the question of whether or not the iPod is still relevant. I maintained that there was still a large market for the iPod and Apple verified that today when they shared that they have sold 275 Million iPods to date. The iPod is still a healthy business for Apple and I don’t see that ending anytime soon.
Today AMD announced that they are retiring the ATI brand entirely from their branding and marketing. This is a move that I have been expecting for some time now since it has been one of the more prominent discussions at the last few AMD Analyst Summits I have attended.
It has become blatantly clear over the past few years that the “speeds and feeds” marketing by manufacturers of personal computers was becoming less relevant to the decision making process of mainstream consumers. This is why both AMD and Intel are taking very different approaches with their partners on how to position and market to consumers.
I first heard the term “Super Phone” used as it relates to a new category of devices at a conference I attended last month. I’ve thought for a while now that the industry needed to come up with a term other than smartphone to distinguish these new classes of devices. Even though I’m not completely in love with Super Phone as a term (and I’m pretty sure consumers don’t care about these terms anyway) it is perhaps the best so far.
Intel announced plans this morning to purchase McAfee for $7.68 billion dollars. This the largest acquisition made in Intel’s history.
Intel has been looking into / experimenting with tying security to the CPU for over 10 years. Intel’s latest Pro family of processors boast this very claim, stating that they are designed with intelligent security and manageability technologies built in.
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What is interesting about Facebook announcing their new Places feature is not necessarily that they were the first to provide location sharing but that they have a chance to bring location sharing to the mainstream.
With all the latest forecasts from my analyst colleagues at IDC, Gartner and Forrester showcasing declining desktops market share over the next few years, i’d like to pose an alternate question. Can tablets, like the iPad which was not on the market at the time the forecasts were made, actually re-invigorate the desktop market?
Google’s Android operating system has proven itself a growing force to be reckoned with as adoption rates among manufactures and consumers continue growing at considerable rates. I feel that Android 2.1 has finally reached a point where it is ready for the mass market. I’ve also had the opportunity to use a Nexus One with the next release 2.2, AKA Froyo, for the past month or so, and have found it even more ready for the mass market and perhaps even the enterprise.
Apple once again has built and delivered the most advanced mobile device in the market. Steve Jobs, during his interview at the Wall St. Journal conference last week, mentioned that his companies passion was to build the best products around and in this analyst’s opinion they have again set the bar by which other mobile phones will be judged.
This doesn’t mean that other competitors won’t catch up or include key innovations of their own, however for the time being the iPhone 4 and the newly named iOS4 is packed with innovation useful for everyday consumers and tech enthusiasts alike.
It may be easy for many people within the press – including the Apple naysayers – to look at today’s announcements and complain that there was anything truly innovative announced. Statements like these miss the broader picture of not only what Apple is doing but what Apple is doing for the technology industry at large. That being said, I want to highlight several things that require a deeper look.
With the KIN entering the market, HP’s acquisition of Palm, and a number of other industry events, I have been asked quite a bit about Microsoft’s chances of success with Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is losing traction in this market rapidly and is in desperate need of strategy that will keep their operating system competitive in a market dominated by RIM, Apple, and Google. If you look at the numbers released by Gartner toward the end of last year projecting mobile OS market share, they projected in 2012 Microsoft to rank 4th on the list with just over 12% of the smartphone OS market share. 12% of the market is not bad and would come out to roughly 70 million devices in that year. That being said, I can’t imagine Microsoft being content with 4th place. So what do they need to do to be successful in a fragmented smartphone OS landscape in which we expect some consolidation to happen in the next few years?
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