Airshow Vancouver, Wed March 26, 2014

We will be conducting our 9th Airshow event in Vancouver next Wednesday, March 26, 2014.

Airshow

The purpose of Airshow is to:

  • Understand how data can be used to persuade through an appeal to logic as well as through empathy.
  • Understand the basics of “data cinematicism” including the techniques analogous to cinematography and direction.
  • Understand story development techniques including how to facilitate the audience’s entry into the story.
  • Learn how to build a cinematic presentation.

The method we devised borrows heavily from the techniques of cinematography and screenwriting to impart meaning to the audience beyond the literal words spoken or images shown on screen. These techniques are demonstrated with “feature presentations” and then deconstructed in interactive lectures. Throughout we also weave Aristotelian rhetorical tips and present from the Asymco repertoire of stories.

Discounted registrations are available for readers of this blog, and students.

Invaluable

The smartphone market continues to grow. 2013 saw total shipment of around one billion units (up from 683 million in 2012). In contrast, non-smartphone shipments continue to decline, with shipments around 800 million (down from 987 million in 2012).

This pattern is shown below:

Screen Shot 2014-03-18 at 3-18-12.45.12 PM

Note that prior to 2012 the non-smart market seemed to be holding steady in spite of the growth in smartphones. The notion that smartphones would become universal was widely dismissed. I certainly heard many objections to my 2010 hypothesis that not only would smartphones become ubiquitous but that it would become increasingly difficult to find anything else to buy. (This in spite of the clearly evident demand for “low-end” non-smart devices.)1

I also suggested that the notion of distinguishing phones with the”smart” tag would become irrelevant and that we would just call these devices “phones”. Continue reading “Invaluable”

  1. The analogy I used was that of the black-and-white TV market as color TV became increasingly popular. There probably was a market for monochrome screens for a long time after they were discontinued but that is beside the point: the old technology becomes increasingly scarce because of economies of scale []

The Thin Red Line | Asymcar

We explore the strategic and tactical considerations behind BMW’s i sub-brand. Why did BMW attach a new BMW sub-brand to a new powertrain rather than using another brand, like Mini? The answer helps explain how innovations and brands inter-relate and how incumbents can attempt to absorb what is potentially non-sustaining.

We consider the pros and cons of innovation within an operating business – “intrepreneurship” – compared with creating an autonomous enterprise for the “new new thing”. I contrast BMW i with General Motors’ failed Saturn experiment.

We consider the burden that regulation, girth, cycle times, legacy practices, financialization and strategy taxes place on incumbents.

Finally, we look at what it takes to cross over the line which separates the device-based nice-to-have infotainment options from the must-have driver and ownership assistants that will inevitably find home in these devices.

via The Thin Red Line | Asymcar.

On Google’s Future. Part 1

From 2005 through 2012 Google site revenues1 have risen at a rate consistent  with the growth in global Internet population excluding China2. The Internet population and Google.com revenues for the period 2005-2012 are shown in the following graph.

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.02 PM

The correlation is shown in the following graph:

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.21 PM

Taking into account costs and expenses, on a per-user basis profitability per user (assuming all non-Chinese internet users are Google users) is shown below:

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 3-13-3.17.14 PM

The simple conclusion is that Google earns approximately $1.2 per user per quarter (net income is the blue area above). This figure is relatively constant with a slight increase (~20%) over 3 years.

If the company does not alter its business model then the future potential of the business could be measured as a function of Internet (ex. China) population growth.

How hard can that be?

The next post will answer this question.

  1. Google revenues are reported as “Google.com”, “Network”, “Motorola” and “Other”. For this analysis I am including only the Google.com revenues []
  2. Internet population is calculated as a combination of penetration as reported by the ITU and population data from the World Bank []

Tim Cook’s outburst [Updated]

When trying to assess the success of an ecosystem, the primary measure is the size of the user base or the “audience” for the product. Companies like FaceBook and WhatsApp and Twitter are measured first and foremost on this metric. Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are less so. When revenues are firmly attached to products the focus shifts to “follow-the-money” rather than “follow-the-users” metrics.

That’s as it should be, but for the sake of understanding the competition between ecosystems, they should be compared on some similar basis. If the basis of competition in this day and age is ecosystems1 how does one evaluate Facebook’s vs. Microsoft’s? Or, more poignantly, how does one compare WhatsApp’s valuation with that of iMessage?

It’s common to value a company which aggregates audiences at a multiple of that audience size. The implication being that each member of the audience returns a certain cash flow to the aggregator and the discounting of those flows is the net present value. Which is why, for example, a newspaper is valued in terms of its subscribers. As is a TV network and as might be a social network. Using this metric, a WhatsApp (i.e. free messaging) user is worth $40 and the average social media user may be worth around $100.2

The implication is that users/subscribers/audience members are loyal and will stay with the programming for some time. There is also a second implication that businesses which are not measured by audience size don’t have this loyal and recurring revenue base. The absence of an “audience” implies transience and impermanence and results in deep discounting of long-term viability.

Continue reading “Tim Cook’s outburst [Updated]”

  1. As Microsoft, Apple and Google seem to agree it is. []
  2. The degree to which a user is actually worth the sum of all the subscriptions she may have made is a good topic for discussion. []

Review: Jony Ive by Leander Kahney

I don’t usually find books about Apple to be quotable. There are certainly some interesting anecdotes and observations but few appeal to the analytical mind. The popular books on Apple have tended to cover what close watchers have already known and are thus compilations with few revelations.

This is not the case with Leander Kahney’s book on Ive. It certainly is the best compilation of detail on product development at Apple during the Ive years (and some time before.) Moreover, it’s also filled with choice insights into the process of development.

This process-orientation is what makes the book stand out for me personally. There are character observations and personality intrigues but they are not the main focus or ambition for the author. Rather, as befits the book’s subject, there is an exposition of detail about how things are done. It’s not a complete exposition–nor can there be one–but it goes much further than any other Apple book I’ve read.

For this reason I found myself tweeting quite a few quotes from the book. Here are some examples:

“In a company that was born to innovate, the risk is in not innovating. The real risk is to think it is safe to play it safe” – Jony Ive

“Scott Forstall wasn’t allowed to visit. His badge wouldn’t even open the door.”

“Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation” – Steve Jobs

“I have seen buildings where, as far as the eye can see, you see machines carving, mostly aluminum.”

“I do not want any of my guys thinking about cost. They should not care…that is not their job”

“The thing is, you could transplant me and this design group to another place and we wouldn’t work at all”

“they wanted to give PowerPoint presentations, but Jobs quickly banned them. He saw PowerPoints as rambling and nonsensical”

The book mostly follows Ive’s career with chapters covering most significant episodes chronologically, however there are deep dives into the “how” rather than just the “what” happened. There is a hint of causality rather than correlation between events and outcomes.

For example, there is a mesmerizing description of the actual Apple design studio even though it has never been depicted in any public photo or video or diagram. There is a great attention paid to manufacturing and materials, as indeed there should be if talking about Apple design (but not necessarily if talking solely about design in general.)

There is an amazing revelation of the existence of the “ANPP” or the Apple New Product Process. This process directs the “extreme detail [for] every stage of product development”. The presence of such a “giant checklist” implies a degree of process and rigor which is in contrast to the “heroic” effort that prevails in popular folklore about how Apple develops its products.

If there was one disappointment it was that I felt as if half was missing. The half which would tie the dots together and see where they might lead. But that’s perhaps too much to ask for what is essentially a biography of an individual rather than a company.

Nevertheless, for anyone interested in the process of innovation that remains Apple’s principal asset, Jony Ive, The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products by Leander Kahney is available at the iBookstore.

The billion dollar hobby

During the latest shareholder meeting Tim Cook revealed that Apple TV sales were above $1 billion in the last fiscal year (ending September 2013). The company later clarified that this figure includes device and content sales.

This poses a problem. In previous statements the company cited device (unit) shipments rather than value. The statements made to date suggested that cumulative volume of 3rd (current) generation Apple TV totaled 6 million units as of January 1, 2013.

The following graph includes an estimate of quarterly Apple TV sales based on comments made to date.

Screen Shot 2014-03-02 at 3-2-8.07.43 PM

As there were no additional comments during 2013, the “Billion Dollar” quote is all we have to go with for the year.  The problem with trying to separate content from hardware is complicated by several factors: Continue reading “The billion dollar hobby”