So Samsung, and now LG have a phone that comfortably (?) sits in that uncomfortable space between a tablet and a smartphone.
The question for me is why? I mean its too big for comfortable use as a phone, unless your one of the genetically privelidged who can hold a competition basketball comfortably in one hand.
So when you use this phone you’ll look like this…
Not the look you need when you’re trying to look cool with your new smartphone.
Showing posts with label Samsung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samsung. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
This may be a bad omen...
One of Samsung’s staff has come out to say that they are not much concerned with the appearance of an ‘iTV’ from Apple.
Now if I think back to the comments from ‘the industry’ prior to Apple delivering the iPhone they weren’t too different.
Things like, “they don’t understand the market sector’, or, ‘their phone is too expensive’, or, ‘we have better battery life’, and so on.
Now Samsung swings into action with their AV product manager saying that TV sales are driven by picture quality and that Samsung can’t be touched in that respect.
He said “TVs are ultimately about picture quality. Ultimately. How smart they are…great, but lets face it that’s a secondary consideration.”
I dunno, if there’s a TV on the market that lets me access my media content by voice control as well as giving me a consistent interface across my phone, tablet and so on with a good picture quality…I’ll consider it.
Here’s the thing. Go to one of Gerry Harvey’s “yell and sell” palaces and you’ll see a wall full of TV’s and the picture quality varies wildly. In fact you’ll find that the staff adjust brightness and contrast to benefit whatever they’re trying to shift. I’ve seen it.
I’ve had the staff adjust all the setting to be the same on several TV’s I’ve been looking at and found that the nicest suddenly became ‘not so nice’.
I’m not saying that Apple will dominate the market, but, Chris Mosely from Samsung should acquaint himself with the word hubris, just like Monkey Boy did after his comments in the video above.
Now if I think back to the comments from ‘the industry’ prior to Apple delivering the iPhone they weren’t too different.
Things like, “they don’t understand the market sector’, or, ‘their phone is too expensive’, or, ‘we have better battery life’, and so on.
Now Samsung swings into action with their AV product manager saying that TV sales are driven by picture quality and that Samsung can’t be touched in that respect.
He said “TVs are ultimately about picture quality. Ultimately. How smart they are…great, but lets face it that’s a secondary consideration.”
I dunno, if there’s a TV on the market that lets me access my media content by voice control as well as giving me a consistent interface across my phone, tablet and so on with a good picture quality…I’ll consider it.
Here’s the thing. Go to one of Gerry Harvey’s “yell and sell” palaces and you’ll see a wall full of TV’s and the picture quality varies wildly. In fact you’ll find that the staff adjust brightness and contrast to benefit whatever they’re trying to shift. I’ve seen it.
I’ve had the staff adjust all the setting to be the same on several TV’s I’ve been looking at and found that the nicest suddenly became ‘not so nice’.
I’m not saying that Apple will dominate the market, but, Chris Mosely from Samsung should acquaint himself with the word hubris, just like Monkey Boy did after his comments in the video above.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Dilbert Loves WinMoPho
It turns out that Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, loves his WinMoPho, or at least acording to the spin on the story from another blog site.
Normally I’d leave this sort of drivel alone, but, it kind of makes me think of the bleats you’d get from Apple fanbois, back in the day when you had to defend your choice of Apple gear.
Here’s the paragraph that got my attention, “Scott Adams after accepting the challenge from Brandon Watson on using Windows Phone just published his results. In short, Windows Phone emerged as Winner. He actually compared Windows Phone on Samsung Focus on AT&T, iPhone 3Gs on AT&T and HTC Evo 3D on Sprint. Even though he didn’t use every single feature of all these devices, he just used the way he wants and found Windows Phone as the winner.”
Now most people when they hear the word winner they think of gold medal on the top step of the podium I was so good you barely deserve to live in my shadow type winner.
Here’s what Scott Adams said in his blog post “However, the intangible coolness factor is impossible to ignore. Even the names Microsoft and Windows feel dated. And the home screen of the Windows phone is great from a usability standpoint, but lacks sizzle. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t matter to me.”
This doesn’t sound like a clear winner to me.
In fact Scott Adams has hit on the real issue. WinMoPho’s just aren’t cool.
Its like you’re being given a choice between three cars. One is a high performance machine that, for every hour of driving needs an hour of tuning but is cool and lets face it, kinda fun. The second is a high performance machine that’s been built by an engineer without a lot of thought for ergonomics or fuel economy. The third is your father’s Volvo.
Hmmm.
So then you find ways to justify the Volvo as being the new up and coming thing.
It’ll be there. It’ll have market share, but, its not going to set anyone’s world alight.
Normally I’d leave this sort of drivel alone, but, it kind of makes me think of the bleats you’d get from Apple fanbois, back in the day when you had to defend your choice of Apple gear.
Here’s the paragraph that got my attention, “Scott Adams after accepting the challenge from Brandon Watson on using Windows Phone just published his results. In short, Windows Phone emerged as Winner. He actually compared Windows Phone on Samsung Focus on AT&T, iPhone 3Gs on AT&T and HTC Evo 3D on Sprint. Even though he didn’t use every single feature of all these devices, he just used the way he wants and found Windows Phone as the winner.”
Now most people when they hear the word winner they think of gold medal on the top step of the podium I was so good you barely deserve to live in my shadow type winner.
Here’s what Scott Adams said in his blog post “However, the intangible coolness factor is impossible to ignore. Even the names Microsoft and Windows feel dated. And the home screen of the Windows phone is great from a usability standpoint, but lacks sizzle. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t matter to me.”
This doesn’t sound like a clear winner to me.
In fact Scott Adams has hit on the real issue. WinMoPho’s just aren’t cool.
Its like you’re being given a choice between three cars. One is a high performance machine that, for every hour of driving needs an hour of tuning but is cool and lets face it, kinda fun. The second is a high performance machine that’s been built by an engineer without a lot of thought for ergonomics or fuel economy. The third is your father’s Volvo.
Hmmm.
So then you find ways to justify the Volvo as being the new up and coming thing.
It’ll be there. It’ll have market share, but, its not going to set anyone’s world alight.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Samsung isn't thrilled by Googorola
Seems like Samsung was being ‘polite’ about the Googorola hook up after all
Read the article here.
Looks like Samsung’s going to open the wallet too.
If this keeps up and companies start spending cash like there’s no tomorrow then maybe they’ll also jump start the economy.
Read the article here.
Looks like Samsung’s going to open the wallet too.
If this keeps up and companies start spending cash like there’s no tomorrow then maybe they’ll also jump start the economy.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
More Thoughts on Googorola
I was talking to a friend of mine in the United States last night.
He was telling me that he thinks that Googorola is going to end up as a colossal corporate folly.
His take on the whole deal is that Google rushed the deal. They rushed the deal because they didn’t have the patent pool to defend Android and they were under pressure to find some way to defend it. So they zeroed in on the grandaddy of cellular technology, the guys that invented the thing and made them an offer they couldn’t sensibly refuse.
They rushed the deal because they crapped out with the Nortel patent portfolio auction a little while ago.
If the stories that this deal was put together in the last five or six weeks are true then Google was desperately seeking patents which puts the comments by Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha from about a week ago into perspective. He was playing brinksmanship with the Gnomes of Mountain View and they blinked, paying $12.5 billion for a company that lost $85 million last quarter!
Basically he said we’re gong to look at WinMoPho and sue the pants off all the other Android vendors.
And you can bet that Carl Ichan (one of Motorola’s largest shareholders) was happily wringing his hands in the corner wondering if Hanukah had come early.
The real question is, how many patents do Motorola have that will really help Google defend Android?
Its not going to help them in their fight against Oracle and I doubt its really going to help them in their fight with Apple over UI look and feel and its questionable if its going to help them in their arguments with Microsoft.
So if these Motorola patents aren’t going to help them in these three major battles then why?
I mean Redmond is asking Samsung for $15 per Android doohickey and I doubt that is going to change and they got General Dynamics, the granddaddy weapons of death and destruction globocorp to shell out a licence fee per Android doohickey.
This tells me that there may be something to the patents they’re showing everyone to get them to agree to paying the royalty.
Could it be the fact that Motorola were suing Microsoft for patent infringement as a reaction to Microsoft suing them “In October 2010, Microsoft sued Motorola for allegedly violating nine patents with its Android smartphones. “The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone experience,” Gutierrez wrote in an Oct. 1 statement. Motorola later retaliated with an intellectual-property complaint of its own.”
This might be nothing more than posturing to negotiate a better “per doohickey” royalty fee.
I just wonder if Motorola just saw Google as desperate to wave a pile of patents at everyone and say “look at us…if you don’t play nice with us we’ll hit you with our patent portfolio”, especially after their debacle with the Nortel patents.
I also wonder if Motorola realise that their patent portfolio won’t help Google all that much which is why Google have to pay $2.5 billion if the deal DOESN’T go through. Like after they do their due diligence and find out that the patent pool of around 25,000 patents actually don’t help them all that much?
I really wonder how this is going to pan out for all concerned...
He was telling me that he thinks that Googorola is going to end up as a colossal corporate folly.
His take on the whole deal is that Google rushed the deal. They rushed the deal because they didn’t have the patent pool to defend Android and they were under pressure to find some way to defend it. So they zeroed in on the grandaddy of cellular technology, the guys that invented the thing and made them an offer they couldn’t sensibly refuse.
They rushed the deal because they crapped out with the Nortel patent portfolio auction a little while ago.
If the stories that this deal was put together in the last five or six weeks are true then Google was desperately seeking patents which puts the comments by Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha from about a week ago into perspective. He was playing brinksmanship with the Gnomes of Mountain View and they blinked, paying $12.5 billion for a company that lost $85 million last quarter!
Basically he said we’re gong to look at WinMoPho and sue the pants off all the other Android vendors.
And you can bet that Carl Ichan (one of Motorola’s largest shareholders) was happily wringing his hands in the corner wondering if Hanukah had come early.
The real question is, how many patents do Motorola have that will really help Google defend Android?
Its not going to help them in their fight against Oracle and I doubt its really going to help them in their fight with Apple over UI look and feel and its questionable if its going to help them in their arguments with Microsoft.
So if these Motorola patents aren’t going to help them in these three major battles then why?
I mean Redmond is asking Samsung for $15 per Android doohickey and I doubt that is going to change and they got General Dynamics, the granddaddy weapons of death and destruction globocorp to shell out a licence fee per Android doohickey.
This tells me that there may be something to the patents they’re showing everyone to get them to agree to paying the royalty.
Could it be the fact that Motorola were suing Microsoft for patent infringement as a reaction to Microsoft suing them “In October 2010, Microsoft sued Motorola for allegedly violating nine patents with its Android smartphones. “The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone experience,” Gutierrez wrote in an Oct. 1 statement. Motorola later retaliated with an intellectual-property complaint of its own.”
This might be nothing more than posturing to negotiate a better “per doohickey” royalty fee.
I just wonder if Motorola just saw Google as desperate to wave a pile of patents at everyone and say “look at us…if you don’t play nice with us we’ll hit you with our patent portfolio”, especially after their debacle with the Nortel patents.
I also wonder if Motorola realise that their patent portfolio won’t help Google all that much which is why Google have to pay $2.5 billion if the deal DOESN’T go through. Like after they do their due diligence and find out that the patent pool of around 25,000 patents actually don’t help them all that much?
I really wonder how this is going to pan out for all concerned...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Google buys Motorola Mobile
Lawyers all over the United States woke up happy this morning on hearing the news that Google has splashed out cash, to the tune of $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobile and its portfolio of around 25,000 patents.
Googorola? Motorogle?
I like Googorola personally. It sounds like something that would go on a rampage and flatten Tokyo for our matinee entertainment.
I’m guessing that Google plans to unleash their mutant matinee monster in Redmond and Cupertino hoping for a Godzilla meets Tokyo like result and with such a large patent portfolio you’ve got to start wondering how long it’ll be before their army of lawyers will end up rolling into action like London teens looking for a night of looting and pillaging.
The really interesting story here is the effect on LG, Samsung and, especially, HTC.
HTC is now between the devil and the deep blue sea. On one side their wildly successful Android based business and on the other their not so much Windows MoPho based products.
The good news for them (!?), now, is that they’re going to be competing directly against their key suppliers. Microsoft and Nokia, who have recently announced that they’re going to drop prices to buy marketshare in the US for the good of Finland, Redmond and the WinMoPho way. Googorola who have now got a hardware/software end to end experience and they control Android too. Unless it now somehow forks.
Publicly HTC, Samsung and LG aren’t going to be too vocal about this. They won’t want to piss off the Gnomes of Mountain View, but you’ve got to wonder about the long term effects on their businesses.
If the Gnomes really wanted to go for a scorched earth policy they should have bought Nokia, I mean with their share price it wouldn’t cost a whole lot, and then move the whole company to Android and leave Ballmer standing with his WinMoPho in his hand.
As for Samsung, between their problems with Apple and now facing down Googorola, Tokyo’s not all that far from Seoul after all, they’ve got some real problems especially since they’re only just starting to make serious inroads into the market place with the Galaxy S II.
LG look like they’re going to be the big losers in this one because they don’t really have major market penetration outside Korea.
I’ll talk a bit more about this over the next couple of weeks because this is a landscape mover.
I wonder if any IP Law Firms have floated? That’s where I’d be putting my money.
Googorola? Motorogle?
I like Googorola personally. It sounds like something that would go on a rampage and flatten Tokyo for our matinee entertainment.
I’m guessing that Google plans to unleash their mutant matinee monster in Redmond and Cupertino hoping for a Godzilla meets Tokyo like result and with such a large patent portfolio you’ve got to start wondering how long it’ll be before their army of lawyers will end up rolling into action like London teens looking for a night of looting and pillaging.
The really interesting story here is the effect on LG, Samsung and, especially, HTC.
HTC is now between the devil and the deep blue sea. On one side their wildly successful Android based business and on the other their not so much Windows MoPho based products.
The good news for them (!?), now, is that they’re going to be competing directly against their key suppliers. Microsoft and Nokia, who have recently announced that they’re going to drop prices to buy marketshare in the US for the good of Finland, Redmond and the WinMoPho way. Googorola who have now got a hardware/software end to end experience and they control Android too. Unless it now somehow forks.
Publicly HTC, Samsung and LG aren’t going to be too vocal about this. They won’t want to piss off the Gnomes of Mountain View, but you’ve got to wonder about the long term effects on their businesses.
If the Gnomes really wanted to go for a scorched earth policy they should have bought Nokia, I mean with their share price it wouldn’t cost a whole lot, and then move the whole company to Android and leave Ballmer standing with his WinMoPho in his hand.
As for Samsung, between their problems with Apple and now facing down Googorola, Tokyo’s not all that far from Seoul after all, they’ve got some real problems especially since they’re only just starting to make serious inroads into the market place with the Galaxy S II.
LG look like they’re going to be the big losers in this one because they don’t really have major market penetration outside Korea.
I’ll talk a bit more about this over the next couple of weeks because this is a landscape mover.
I wonder if any IP Law Firms have floated? That’s where I’d be putting my money.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Wintel Market Share Slips
I noticed an interesting piece today about market share.
It seems that Apple shipped 20+ million smartphones in Q2 2011 an increase of 12 million over Q2 2010. This eclipsed Nokia who shipped 16+ million smartphones in Q2 2011. Interestingly, if you look at Nokia’s results they’ve only been able to move this many by shaving their margins to the bone. If they were making their regular margins it looks like this number would have plummeted.
To make matters worse Samsung shipped in excess of 19 million smartphones for the same period.
To put some context on this Nokia has lost over half of its smartphone market share in 12 months.
The other interesting fact that came out of the article was the following assertion by industry analysts Canalys:
“the share held by “Wintel”, which it defined as “any PC running any version of Windows in conjunction with any x86 architecture”, fell below 82 percent, its lowest point in more than 20 years“.
I know that falling below 82% doesn’t sound that spectacular, but, its an earth shattering statistic. Not that long ago the Wintel market share was well above 90%.
Something’s happening and its big.
Think about it. if we look back 20 years people were running Windows 3.0. The first really stable version of Windows released. Prior to that people were running DOS. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 were released in 1992 and the Windows juggernaut really took off once Windows 95 hit the market in mid-1995.
So these guys are saying that Windows market share has slipped to where it was when Windows 3 first saw the light of day. If this is actually the case then I'd be sweating it if I owned stock in Microsoft. Imagine if Coles or Woolworths suddenly saw their market share slip back to where it was 20 years ago the Daily Garbagewrapper would be screaming it was the end of the world, or maybe even worse than that!
Back in those days a Windows release was greeted with as much fanfare as a new iPhone. People would line up at midnight to be the first to buy a copy of Windows 95 from Harvey Norman.
I’m not going to have a discussion here about the pros and cons of lining up to be the first to buy anything at midnight let alone an Operating System but lets just think about this for a second, Windows market share has fallen below 82% since it became a stable operating system that could be used in the everyday corporate world.
This fact is even more surprising when you consider that each new PC shipped from everyone except Apple includes a copy of Windows.
Are people giving up on desktops for tablets, and I mean of any flavour?
Is everyone buying a Mac?
Are people going in Linux in droves?
I don’t have any answers, but, anecdotally I can say this; as I go from company to company, client to client the questions that I keep getting asked is ”How do we use Linux servers in our business and we also want to use Macs, iPads and iPhones as well as our Windows machines?“
One client asked me ”How come Apple can sell a new operating system for under $50 and Microsoft want to charge me over $400?“
Is this a taste of things to come or have the analysts screwed up their numbers?
It seems that Apple shipped 20+ million smartphones in Q2 2011 an increase of 12 million over Q2 2010. This eclipsed Nokia who shipped 16+ million smartphones in Q2 2011. Interestingly, if you look at Nokia’s results they’ve only been able to move this many by shaving their margins to the bone. If they were making their regular margins it looks like this number would have plummeted.
To make matters worse Samsung shipped in excess of 19 million smartphones for the same period.
To put some context on this Nokia has lost over half of its smartphone market share in 12 months.
The other interesting fact that came out of the article was the following assertion by industry analysts Canalys:
“the share held by “Wintel”, which it defined as “any PC running any version of Windows in conjunction with any x86 architecture”, fell below 82 percent, its lowest point in more than 20 years“.
I know that falling below 82% doesn’t sound that spectacular, but, its an earth shattering statistic. Not that long ago the Wintel market share was well above 90%.
Something’s happening and its big.
Think about it. if we look back 20 years people were running Windows 3.0. The first really stable version of Windows released. Prior to that people were running DOS. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 were released in 1992 and the Windows juggernaut really took off once Windows 95 hit the market in mid-1995.
So these guys are saying that Windows market share has slipped to where it was when Windows 3 first saw the light of day. If this is actually the case then I'd be sweating it if I owned stock in Microsoft. Imagine if Coles or Woolworths suddenly saw their market share slip back to where it was 20 years ago the Daily Garbagewrapper would be screaming it was the end of the world, or maybe even worse than that!
Back in those days a Windows release was greeted with as much fanfare as a new iPhone. People would line up at midnight to be the first to buy a copy of Windows 95 from Harvey Norman.
I’m not going to have a discussion here about the pros and cons of lining up to be the first to buy anything at midnight let alone an Operating System but lets just think about this for a second, Windows market share has fallen below 82% since it became a stable operating system that could be used in the everyday corporate world.
This fact is even more surprising when you consider that each new PC shipped from everyone except Apple includes a copy of Windows.
Are people giving up on desktops for tablets, and I mean of any flavour?
Is everyone buying a Mac?
Are people going in Linux in droves?
I don’t have any answers, but, anecdotally I can say this; as I go from company to company, client to client the questions that I keep getting asked is ”How do we use Linux servers in our business and we also want to use Macs, iPads and iPhones as well as our Windows machines?“
One client asked me ”How come Apple can sell a new operating system for under $50 and Microsoft want to charge me over $400?“
Is this a taste of things to come or have the analysts screwed up their numbers?
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