November 2010
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Month November 2010

Entries 5 Total

Warner Music waits for Godot

Nov 17, ’10 4:32 PM

You really can’t stress this point enough: We’re a decade past Napster, but the music industry still runs on CD sales. In Warner’s case, digital now accounts for 25 percent of overall revenue.

via Warner Music Renews Spotify’s European Deal, Waits for Google | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.

What’s even more amazing is that after ten years not a single industry participant has found a new job for which its product can be hired by consumers.

The music companies wait for Apple, Google, Spotify to  ”invent” some new consumption model from which they can extract a rent.

Comments (19)

The staggering size of iOS’s game collection

Nov 17, ’10 4:16 PM

iOS has nearly three times more games than the previous twenty-five years of gaming combined.

via The staggering size of iOS’s game collection.

Most of the comments in the linked article complain that there is no filter for “quality” in the App Store. Contrasts nicely with the persistent criticism that Apple curates the App Store.

Comments (23)

Operators’ last stand: payment platforms.

Nov 17, ’10 12:20 PM

Operators “had high hopes until 2007 or 2008,” said Patrik Karrberg, a researcher in the London School of Economics’ Department of Management. The hopes dimmed after the emergence of iPhones and improved data speeds that made the Internet directly accessible on handsets.

“They gave up the idea of controlling the entry point,” Karrberg said. “That was the death of the portal.”

via Vodafone, France Telecom Push to Regain App Edge From Apple – Bloomberg.

It looks like a payment platform may be one of only a few opportunities remaining.

Comments (13)

HP/Palm’s Rubinstein believes in integration

Nov 16, ’10 10:08 PM

In other words, to differentiate and succeed in the mobile device space, you need to own a veritically integrated stack strategy — software, hardware and services — like the one Palm is now building out with the help of HP’s not inconsiderable resources

via Palm Chief: By Birthright, Palm Should Have Owned the Smartphone Market | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD.

I would not write Palm/HP off in this market.

Comments (34)

Is the smartphone a commodity?

Nov 16, ’10 2:26 PM

People throw around the idea of things being or becoming “commodities” but there is little clarity about what “commodity” status implies.

If you look up the word, it has nothing to do with technology or innovation. In economics, a commodity is something that is substitutable (fungible) and roughly equal to competing versions of the same thing. A mineral good (oil) or agricultural product (pork bellies) is roughly of equal value regardless of where it comes from or who produces it. Commodities also have very liquid markets and are therefore easily priced according to demand.

Commodities have a “fixed” quality which cannot be and most likely never was improved. It’s a product that is essentially frozen in terms of innovation.

But in technology and especially in terms of complex, rapidly improving and evolving products with uneven distribution a commodity is not easy to identify and there can be a lot of arguing about what is and isn’t.

Continue Reading… Comments (42)