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A few years ago I read a book called “Breaking Windows” which was the story of the DOJ investigation into Microsoft’s abuse of monopoly. The book was written by a journalist who tried to summarize some of the findings from the published internal emails.

One of the takeaways was the logic of Microsoft’s entry into the Office market. The main internal justification was not that it would be a hugely lucrative new business, but that it was a necessity to the maintenance of the Windows business.

The story was that Lotus, having a huge installed base, could (and did) arbitrarily refuse to upgrade their software to the latest Windows version and in so doing, could kill the franchise. Lotus owned the “killer app” and Continue reading “Breaking Android: How Google's lack of control affects their value chain”

Frequent readers of this blog know they’re in good company. There have been over 1000 comments in but a few months and, without any qualification, they have all been valuable.

I’ve been delighted that contributing readers are not only civil and polite, but that they almost always move the intellectual level of the blog higher. That’s very gratifying because although one major consideration when publishing is creating a large audience, a high quality audience is much more important. Especially to a site dedicated to elevating analytical discourse.

So, being analytical, I wanted to find out how to characterize the audience and understand the attributes of the readers. Naturally, where appropriate I would like to share that information. I hope to share some stats, perhaps with some interesting highlight, every month.

To kick off, here is a snapshot of one month’s worth of visits to www.asymco.com ranked by operating system.

What is perhaps unexpected is that mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android etc.) generated more views than Windows. When comparing browsers, I also observed that Internet Explorer makes up only about 5% of views. (If that’s not a leading indicator of the intellect of the readers, I don’t know what is.)

Time will tell whether these ratios persist, but so far, it seems that Asymco readers are at least eating their own dogfood.

There is a rush to market a whole new batch of tablets. Here’s another one.

They all bear an outward resemblance to another tablet that was widely panned.

So what strikes me about all of these designs is that they’re basically just shiny rectangular things. There is very little you can do as a vendor to stand out with any particular rendition of a rectangle.

This is also becoming obvious with the mechanical design of smartphones. They are all smaller rectangles with shiny black screens.

Which begs the question: as they are all just screens, shouldn’t what’s on the screen matter more than the screen itself?

It seems only one vendor shows what’s on their screen.

Much of what is published here relies on data, lots of data. It’s important that data be published along with conclusions, but data in spreadsheets is often difficult to read. Spreadsheets are not “productized” so they are hard to explain and therefore impossible to share.

However, I am considering sharing the data I have in a format that is easier to read than a spreadsheet but richer than a screen shot of a chart.

To that end I’ve begun experimenting with a solution based on a service called Roambi. Interested readers can download Asymco authored “roambi” files which I call ADDs (Asymco Data Downloads) will display rich data sets on iOS devices. These representations are interactive and easy on the eyes.

Rather than bore with details, the following images should be sufficiently descriptive.

Continue reading “Announcing Asymco Data Downloads”

Shipping delays have shrunk from 5-to-7 business days to 3-to-5 days which is great because now Apple will run more ads.

Apple – iPad – View photos and images of iPad.

But seriously, how long has it been? Five months with no iPads on hand? Now if only they had enough iPhone 4’s.

Here is the situation in Korea:

SEOUL (AFP)–South Korea’s KT Corp. (KT) said tens of thousands of people jammed its website Wednesday, as it began to take pre-orders for Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone 4.

KT Corp., the country’s sole distributor for the gadget, said in just four hours more than 70,000 people put their names down for the popular smartphone after its online shop opened.

“Our online shop server was jammed instantly as too many clients placed orders simultaneously,” KT spokesman Jin Byung-kwon said.

“So far, the number of orders for the iPhone 4 exceeds well beyond that of the iPhone 3GS,” he said.

See also: Apple’s supply problem

This site is fairly new. It has been around for only about 6 months. In that time there have been 393 postings and 586 comments. It has been read 100k times and I’ve moved it three times to accommodate this growth. Lately, thanks to links from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, views have increased dramatically (to over 10k/day). This has been a blessing but also a dilemma because the traffic is overwhelming for the humble hosting setup I have. So much so that the site was down due to overload much of yesterday.

I apologize for this downtime.

I am trying to find a solution and have implemented a few optimizations (thanks to my lovely wife’s suggestions).  I also turned on full text RSS feeds so readers don’t need to hit the site for full articles.  In the mean time I hope readers will be forgiving and return even if the site is overwhelmed.

Additional suggestions on how to maintain a high quality of service are welcome.

Apple just had its best quarter ever with net income rising 78 percent to $3.51 per share. Revenue rose 61 percent, to $15.7 billion.

On average, Wall Street analysts had expected Apple to report net income of $3.12 a share on revenue of $14.75 billion.

If this is a double dip recession, then I’ll take triple dip with sprinkles on top.

Asymco.com is now touch friendly. Visit this site with an iPhone for a touch optimized experience. Mobile theme is WPtouch.

This posting is also made using the WordPress app for iPhone and geotagged with my approximate location. At this location one has to do with only Edge and no broadband (or electricity or running water). Fortunately the iPhone and iPad can be charged from a boat battery via a regular car charger.

An Ericsson survey shows that the number of global subscriptions to mobile phone services has passed over 5 billion. The global population is estimated at 6.9 billion.

It’s hard to estimate what 100% penetration in this industry is but there is a strong possibility for another billion accounts to be added in the next year. This estimate includes all service accounts, not individuals. As users begin to carry multiple devices (i.e. phones and iPads), the number of subscriptions could easily exceed the global population. In some countries, penetration above 100 percent is already the norm.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100709/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_global_phone_use