Samsung – Dancing round the edges

Reply to this post           Hardware alone cannot restore lost margins. Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy s6 and s6 Edge clearly demonstrated how little is left for Samsung to play with now that Google has taken the whole ecosystem. Samsung launched the Galaxy s6 and a double edged variant at a large but somewhat subdued event...

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Ericsson vs. Apple – Power of precedent

Reply to this post           Apple in a weak position in its fight against Ericsson. Following the expiration of their licence deal in January 2015, Apple and Ericsson are heading to court to fight over the licensing of standard essential IP that relates to 3G and 4G. Ericsson has filed 7 complaints in the US claiming...

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Ecosystem economics – Sticky wicket

Reply to this post           YouTube contributes no profit but a lot of value to Google. Even though YouTube managed to earn around $4bn in revenues in 2014A, the inherent nature of video economics continue to prevent it from turning a real profit in its own right. I suspect that the main reason for this is...

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Samsung vs. Google – Here comes trouble

Reply to this post           Mobile payments could cause the gorillas to start fighting again. Google’s acquisition of technology from Softcard threatens to shatter the fragile peace that has existed between Samsung and Google since January 2014. For more details please see Samsung & Google – Gorilla War – 27th May 2014 Following the failure of...

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Yahoo! – The missing point

Reply to this post           Yahoo! still fails to address the central issue of its ecosystem. Yahoo! hosted its first mobile developer conference last week that barely created a ripple in the newsflow. This was because it was devoid of anything really new other than the launch of mobile developer suite that looks a lot like...

Google – Trouble in paradise

Reply to this post           Lollipop in danger of sucking. Despite promises of significant performance improvements, initial testing is showing that Lollipop is not much better than KitKat. This will rub salt into the wound caused by the upgrade that has been sitting on the shelf for months and is still not in the market in...

Samsung – Back to basics

Reply to this post           LoopPay must become seamless to create value for Samsung. With the complete cessation of any attempts at the ecosystem (see here), the acquisition of unique hardware is the only way left for Samsung to differentiate. To this end Samsung has announced the acquisition of LoopPay which is an enabler of wireless...

Sony – Silo city?

Reply to this post           Sony’s strategy raises more concerns that it solves. Sony has announced its medium term strategy with the aim of delivering JPY500bn in operating profit for the full year ending March 2017E. This would represent a return on equity (RoE) of 10% which will be the yardstick against which performance will be...

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Samsung – The final nail

Reply to this post           Using Microsoft apps is the final nail in the ecosystem coffin. It looks very much like Samsung has discarded all of its in house software on the Samsung Galaxy S6 in favour of productivity apps from Microsoft and the ecosystem from Google. Removing all the usual pre-installed apps. should make the...

Apple – Hot wheels

Reply to this post           Infotainment makes more sense than a car. Apple has money to burn, but I think that success has not gone to the collective head of the management team. If the chatter is correct, there is a project inside Apple taking up the time of 1,000 employees that is looking at the...

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