Microsoft’s purchase of Skype was all over the Internet this week, along with lots of good jokes. (Microsoft will rename Skype to “Skype VoIP Technology for Consumers But Also Premium And Semi-Premium Business Clients Professional.” @chaseperrin) The purchase generated a lot of discussion about how Microsoft has lost focus, that Steve Ballmer is an idiot. Gene Steinberg thinks Microsoft needs to be put on suicide watch.
Perhaps it’s a case where Microsoft’s strategic intentions are oblivious to Microsoft’s inherent inability to execute. Anyway, I found this discussion interesting because there’s always more behind the scenes than meets the eye. “Why Microsoft Is Buying Skype for $8.5 Billion.”
Part of the rationale for Microsoft to buy Skype is to give a boost to its Windows Phone 7 system. You have to hand it to Microsoft. They’re taking some action. The world wide acceptance of Nokia as a brand and the acquisition of Skype seem to signal some manner of strategic thinking. There’s more in: “How Microsoft’s Skype Purchase Can Help Windows Phone.”
Despite our best hopes that Microsoft will handle the Skype acquisition smartly, some fear the company may not and are already making lists of alternatives — just in case. Check: “9 Great Alternatives to Skype for VoIP and Video Chat.”
Image credit: iStockPhoto.com
The issue of fragmentation on Android just won’t go away. It keeps rearing its ugly head like Freddy Krueger. First, here’s Peter Cohen’s overview: “On fragmentation, Google still comes up short against Apple.” Later in the week, we got into specifics as the company noted that their Netflix app will only be available on five of the hundreds of different Android phones: “Netflix streaming now on (a few) Android phones.” Hope your friends have the right one.
In a clever take on an often used phrase, Horace Dediu takes a close look at smartphone shipments instead of OS market share in “A rising tide does not lift leaking ships.” Looked at from that perspective, Nokia looks to be in some serious trouble. But not to worry. Doing business with Microsoft will save Nokia. Right?
With bold confidence, Business Insider has declared that: “The iPad is Becoming the Only ‘PC’ That Matters.” The chart backs up that headline. These days, we look at growth or decline to tell a story because growth in a fiercely competitive market carries great weight.
Have you ever wondered how the CPU in your Mac or iPad compares to the supercomputers of yesteryear? Here’s a neat article at TG Daily that tells how Jack Dongarra (University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)) has estimated the speed of the iPad 2 at between 1.5 and 1.65 gigaflops. That compares to the world’s fastest supercomputer in 1994, coincidentally when I was working at ORNL and could only muster an SGI Indy with a meager 11 megaflops.
I saw a video with Neil deGrasse Tyson recently in which he said that taking an iPhone into the past just ten years would have resulted in the resurrection of witch burning laws. Imagine taking an iPad 2 back to the 1950s! It would surely be seen as extraterrestrial technology. (By the way, the video is hilarious and worth watching.)
Sometimes I am sure that Google (as the hare) is just throwing stuff out to see what sticks, at an ever increasing pace, while Apple (as the tortoise) is more careful, making sure its products have lasting appeal and value. Here’s a story that supports that idea: “Apple Gains Strength as Google Rattles Its Cage.”
Finally, this isn’t food for thought, but just a snack. I ran across this summary article of image editors for the iPhone — and presumably the iPad 2. If you’ve had any experience with these, let us know. “Top-Rated iPhone Image Editors.”
4 Comments
Oh geez, John, I like Peter Cohen as much as anyone who’s been in Mac circles for the last more than a decade, but do you think he even has the perspective of having actually used Android devices of different flavors to offer anything more than the fanboy party line on “fragmentation”?
This particular assertion in the article is just plain ignorant:
It?s a nightmare for developers to figure out what device is running which operating system and planning spec for their software accordingly.
You guys are just going to end up losing all credibility pushing this line as more and more people discover that it’s not true and it does not matter.
@Bosco - Did you read the CNet article? It didn’t say it was a nightmare, but the Netflix folks appear to be dribbling out players and NOT just releasing their app en masse.
The CNet article author DOES have an Android phone, a “Motorola Droid 2, which never gets invited to anything.”
The Netflix blog that announces their app ends with
“We anticipate that many of these technical challenges will be resolved in the coming months and that we will be able to provide a Netflix application that will work on a large majority of Android phones.”
That means not all phone, why not? ...
I think TMO’s credibility is going to be just fine.
Fine standings from JM again.
I get the feeling that Android is like a huge house with many doors and each door has its own key. Some keys will open a few doors and all of them will open the lavatory, basement knick knack room, the sewing room and some section of the kitchen. The kitchen sections are scattered around the house on many floors and some open from the outside from ladders or ropes tossed off a roof or out a window, the windows of which also open with a key.
It?s like a house built for Kafka and the house is bonded to a travelling carnival gone mad in directions whose map mixes text, number, obscure scratchings & braille points and the pages are confused and turned askew. And still the three hundred or so kinds of Android nightmares sell as the bewildered save a few bucks on their march up the smart stairs to the stars. A word of caution. You know an Android salesman is lying when his lips are moving and when they are not, he?s just taking a breath to think a good one up.
Seeing and knowing this, Apple should be able to figure out a way to meet the needs of these desperate customers or maybe it is just biding its time knowing that there?s a breaking point at which everyone tires of chard fingers.
Bryan predicts the iPad’s path to follow the iPod trail and that may be all the business Apple can handle between world disasters, but I still think there’s room for an iPhone iTriumph but it’s the carriers’ greed and need for long term agreements to yolk consumers to their plans that suffers the tales from the salesmen’s mouths. Now the iPhone 3 outdoing every Android monkey, that is sweet.
John:
Again some well-aimed picks.
The big news here, in my view, is the continued discussion of MS and its purchase of Skype. This didn’t happen in a vacuum, but now appears to be a surface indicator of a deeper industry current, namely that, going forward, VOIP will be an increasingly important component of mobile tech, and any company without a viable VOIP solution will not be competitive. I think, irrespective of what happens to Skype as a global service, the move is a good one for the growth of the industry, in that, at least potentially, it keeps MS/NOK in the game. The mobile industry, so rife with potential for abuse, and in need of additional consumer-protective legislation, is better as a competitive market than a single-source dominated one. Certainly for now.
I also think that, not only are we seeing demarcation lines between competitors, but stress lines as well, separating the strong from the weak. There appears to be a gathering view that MS/NOK and RIM, while they have enough to move to the next level, are not as strong as either Apple or Google. Each of these companies has its strengths and weaknesses, but the coming months will unmask the advantages of well conceived strategy and advanced preparation, and which companies have them.
The TG Daily piece is a good and quantitative reminder of Moore’s Law in action, and somewhat of a humbling reminder when we wax perhaps a bit too critical of the wonder devices we carry in our pockets, let alone those in our backpacks. That the iPad2 ranks in unmitigated processing power alongside super-computers from the 1980’s and early 1990’s (the latter being not that long ago) renews one’s appreciation for the power of this technology, and what this potentially does for education, medicine and science, and development. More than bragging rights, this highlights the potential for these devices as agents for socio-economic development.
The Business Insider articles is yet another data point against the somewhat perplexing NPD article that argues against the iPad displacing PC sales. People’s personal computer practices say otherwise, although it must be admitted that computing practices are not a proxy for purchasing practices. Still, it appears we are witnessing a platform transition that will be a watershed for the industry and the companies that comprise it.
Loved the Neil Tyson piece, one of the people I ‘follow’ on Twitter. The ‘argument from ignorance’ segment, as humorously as he put it, is no less concerning for its implications for our reasoning processes and decisions based on that reasoning - well beyond UFOs.
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