Samsung and Google will end up in a struggle for the user. So far Samsung and Google have been on good terms given the symbiotic nature of their relationship. The Android software has enabled Samsung to tick the software box and to make excellent margins on its hardware designs and innovations. In return, Samsung handsets...
(RFM will return on Wednesday April 3rd) Windows RT in its current form looks doomed. When Samsung pulls its RT products, everyone will and I have also seen many product roadmaps shut down all together. I have discussed the problem in detail in a previous post but in a nutshell, Windows RT fails because although...
Intel’s aspirations in TV are about supplying chips. Intel appears to be closing in on acquiring TV shows and movies to offer to consumers as a pay-tv service. Time Warner, NBC Universal and Viacom are all in discussions with Intel and success would give Intel critical mass to start offering a service. This is going...
Digital Life has an increasingly Orwellian future. The big ecosystem creators are slowly but inexorably nudging users towards their ecosystems. It is very subtle, it is very slow but the signs are there that the long term of ambition of Google, Twitter, FaceBook, Microsoft, Apple and so on is to keep their users to themselves...
The China ecosystem is coming. Android is currently exploding in China but there are plenty of signs that this is temporary. Under Google’s definition, anything that does not meet its specification cannot be called Android and this where the vast majority of the cheap Android devices find themselves. While the market is growing like crazy,...
Exporting services from Japan is a license to lose money. NHN Corp, South Korea’s biggest internet company, is making a bid to expand outside its own turf with its Line, its chat application. This application has been developed by NHN Japan, the Japanese internet company it acquired in 2006, but the focus is to take...
Microsoft has loads of money but no clue how to use it. Paying developers to write applications is a well-known tactic for those trying to prop up an ecosystem that is not faring as well as it should. Microsoft has backtracked on a long held policy and is now offering developers $100 per application for...
ST Ericsson has effectively committed suicide with its inability to execute. After failing to find a buyer, ST Ericsson is being split up and handed back to its parents. Ericsson is taking back the LTE multimode thin modem development while STM will take back the other STE products such as application processors. In a...
Google Reader has gone because it is not big enough. That’s all. The retirement of Google Reader has nothing to do with the “free” internet model and everything to do with its size. A common view out there is that Google is retiring Reader because it is free and are using the example to dish...
Dell– Not so sweet
There is no upside in Dell without risk. The “go-shop” period has produced two additional bids, but investors are going to be disappointed with the prices that have been offered. At the 12th hour, both Carl Icahn and Blackstone have put in bids of $15 per share and “more than $14.25” respectively. These bids are...