Fresh off the heels of Netflix's earnings report last night, Amazon (AMZN) posted their earnings today. Needless to say, they were very disappointing:
Amazon.com Inc. is still growing at a fast pace, but Wall Street's concerns about the online retailer's margins are likely to grow after the company posted a 73% drop in quarterly profit Tuesday.
Their margins are starting to kill them:
Sales during the third quarter ended in September rose 44% compared to the same period last year, Amazon said. That's roughly in line with expectations and consistent with growth seen in recent periods. But as Amazon has roped in more sales, it has spent heavily on the expansion of shipping centers and data infrastructure, undercutting margins.
Operating margin as a percentage of world-wide sales slipped to 0.7% in the third quarter, from 3.5% in the period last year, Amazon said.
This was one of the main concerns of investors when Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire. The stock tumbled 12.39% in after hours trading. Much of this due to the gloomy fourth quarter outlook:
"They're basically calling for a break-even fourth quarter," said Ken Sena, an analyst who covers Amazon for Evercore Partners, "which is definitely disconcerting for investors."
The culprit of the margin cut looks like it's the Kindle Fire:
Szkutak danced around the culprit a bit, but the Kindle Fire, priced at $199, is definitely deterring higher earnings estimates. Szkutak also touted the long-term plan for the Kindle Fire, describing it as a “premium device,” and that Amazon takes all of the economics of the Kindle business into account, ranging from the lifetime value to the content available on the tablets and e-readers.
Because the Kindle Fire is sold at a loss, it might be the case that it won't pay off for a while. The real money will be generated in apps, Amazon Prime, and the e-books. For the time being, it's concerning because Amazon is still a strong company. In addition, it compounds the fact that in a week, we've seen Apple, Netflix, and Amazon all miss targets.
I wrote a longer piece, related to his career, when he resigned as the CEO of Apple earlier this year, but I wanted to say something more personal about what Steve Jobs meant to me. I've always had Apple products in my life. My family's first computer was an Apple Macintosh. My first computer was an Apple iMac. I've had a couple iPod, and I currently have a Mac Book. Apple products have been around me for as long as I know.
More recently, Steve Jobs has been an inspiration. I looked up to him. It wasn't just that he brought such great products to the market; it was that he saw the need. He made millions of lives better. He always looked forward. He was the pace setter for the technology sector, and as a CEO. he was the envy of every other company.
There are many people who can run a company. It takes something else to direct and lead a company. Steve Jobs was an innovator, a leader, a visionary. He will be sorely missed and remember by many. It is easy to see why.
So people were expecting the announcement of the new iPhone 5. However, Apple only came out with the iPhone 4S. It does still seem good though:
So now everyone has a chance to have a personal assistant? The hardware is much improved, but it's heavier. I'm sure people are disappointed that the iPhone wasn't released, but this is a much improved iPhone. The iPhone is now global, amongst other relevant and fantastic features.
Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc., in its first product unveiling since Steve Jobs resigned as chief executive officer, introduced a faster iPhone with voice features and a higher- resolution camera to help it vie with Google Inc.'s Android.
Let's talk about that camera:
The iPhone 4S, available Oct. 14, will have a camera with 60 percent more pixels and can handle high-definition video. The device also relies on an “intelligent antenna system” that's designed to improve call quality and works with both CDMA and GSM wireless standards. Users will have up to 8 hours of talk time on one charge.
Apple has high hopes for it:
“For many customers, the iPhone 4S will be the best still camera they've ever owned, the best video camera they've ever owned, and it's with them all the time,” said Phil Schiller, a senior vice president in charge of product marketing.
This should enable it to compete directly with Android:
At stake is leadership in the market for smartphones, which is projected to double by 2015, when 1 billion of the handsets will be sold, according to research firm IDC. While Apple is the single biggest smartphone maker, the Android coalition leads the market, accounting for 41.7 percent.
The iPhone always does well when it is first released. It has the benefit of having the "it" factor that Android lacks. While phones like the Droid Bionic seem to be pushing technological advancements, the iPhone continues to be the preferred phone of those looking for user experience. Now, with the new camera, it should attract those who have been moving to Android for phones like the Droid X which features a 8 megapixel.
Apple's stock may be down on the day, but I think the release of this new phone is setting up for another big quarter for the Cupertino company. It would be one thing if Apple was bringing nothing new to the table, but they are bring improved hardware and global capabilities. The Apple iPhone 4S will prove to be another hit.
Now that the Kindle Fire has officially been announced, we can stop speculating and start anticipating it. The Amazon Tablet will go on sale for $199 which prices it well below the iPad. In fact, you could buy two Kindle Fires and a Kindle Touch for the price of an iPad. The Kindle Fire has already had an impact on the tablet market as Blackberry lowered the price of its Playbook. In my last post, I suggested that Amazon was taking a loss to drive their content sales, and UBs agrees: Then you get to the actual product. With all the hoopla surrounding the Kindle Fire, the pricing suggests it's not going to be a direct competitor with the iPad. However, it appears that the Kindle Fire will tell us whether there is a tablet market outside the iPad:
If the sum of all is more than the value of the individual platform products, we should be seeing substantial interest in the Kindle Fire – more than in any other Android tablet to date. The Kindle Fire will deliver answers that no other Android tablet has done so far. Ultimately, I believe that the Kindle Fire will either confirm claims that there is a tablet market outside the iPad or silence most proponents of this market.
The 7 inch tablet could just be Amazon's initial entry into the market, to establish its presence. There are rumors that Amazon will come out with a 10 inch tablet following the initial release:
According to a Digitimes report, Amazon has tapped Foxconn to produce the larger model. China-based Foxconn is also responsible for manufacturing the bulk of Apple’s iPad. Another Chinese firm, Quanta, however, is manufacturing the 7-inch Kindle Fire. Quanta is also the manufacturer of the BlackBerry PlayBook, although it recently announced that it was cutting production lines for RIM’s tablet, dismissing 1,000 employees from its Taiwan factory.
Regardless, the Kindle Fire seems to already have stirred excitement amongst the masses. Amazon is already cleaning up:
eDataSource, a leading provider of online competitive intelligence, estimates that sales of Amazon's new Kindle Fire reached 95,000 units during the first day that the device was made available through Amazon's website.
The question is why will this be a hit as opposed to other Android tablets. Amazon has let it be known what their tablet is about:
The Kindle Fire has a very smooth purchase-and-use path. Boot, choose from a curated list of options, buy something, enjoy. It's different enough from the successful iPad in size, usage and price that this holiday season may finally see us go from a one-tablet nation to a two-tablet zone. Anyone else trying to break through with a tablet should take a lesson from Amazon here. Tell us what it's for.
The Kindle Fire appears like it will have a better user experience than the other Android tablets because its users will know what to expect when they use it. Apple does a great job of catering first to the user then working on the product that caters to those needs. The Kindle Fire could be the product that combines the great hardware of Android with a positive user experience.
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), which revolutionized reading with its Kindle e-reader, is expected to unveil a tablet computer next week that analysts say will seriously challenge Apple's (AAPL.O) market dominating iPad.
Indeed, the big question is whether it will challenge Apple's iPad. The iPad has been hugely successful and Apple is selling every tablet that they can make. Everyone wants to know if Amazon's tablet, which will reportedly be called the Kindle Fire, will be a threat to the iPad:
Ultimately, it’s a question of how much Amazon has in common with Apple. If they have enough of the same DNA, that fact may separate the color Kindle apart from every other Android tablet on the market — and give Cupertino a run for its money.
The big deal with Apple has been their execution in delivering their products and for the iPad, it's been with Apps:
Today, there are almost half a million iPhone and iPod apps. In the space of less than two years, there are almost 100,000 iPad apps. I don’t know exactly how many Android tablet apps there are, but I do know that any time I’ve used an Android tablet, I have a heck of a time finding decent Android tablet apps (there are thousands of excellent Android phone apps). Tablet developers are clearly building their iPad versions first and, given the 25 millions iPads already sold, likely achieving their greatest success on the iOS platform.
Mashable believes that Amazon has a similar built in ecosystem that'll enable the Kindle Fire to thrive:
Amazon has one big advantage over virtually every other Android Tablet manufacturer: it understand user interfaces. No other competitor, aside from Apple, runs such an active and varied website for consumers. The Seattle-based retailer has been perfecting Amazon.com’s interface for 16 years. When Amazon was just books, it was pretty straightforward — but as the company added other product categories, it struggled to find an rational interface metaphor. Even so, Amazon was the acknowledged leader in the space. When it introduced tabs, all other online retail sites tried them as well.
Then there's pricing:
But I doubt Amazon cares if it takes a small loss on the tablets. They’ll be putting a fully functional, Internet and media-ready portal to all of its products in the hands of millions of existing customers. (How many people do you know who do not have an Amazon account?)
Amazon has features like Amazon Prime and the Amazon App Store which can give it a pricing advantage over the iPad, while still being a profitable entity for the company.
The hat trick with an Amazon tablet will lie not with whether Amazon can offer a device that integrates its storefront and services—that's an easy bet, and a foregone conclusion given its history with Kindle e-readers. The real question is whether the company can produce a tablet with an interface that's natural, visually pleasing, and functionally spot-on for how it will be used by consumers.
The Tablet market isn't easy to break into:
If, with this tablet, Amazon can finally make a product that's a standout star with its interface and usability, the tablet has legitimate potential to be a threat to Apple's iPad. But if the company doesn't nail the interface, it runs the risk of offering yet another ho-hum tablet in a crowded landscape, albeit a ho-hum tablet with, presumably, a better-integrated media consumption and e-book experience than most. One can hope.
Amazon is late to the Tablet party, but only Apple is really having fun in the party. Other companies have made attempt to compete with the Cupertino giant, but have come up short. The iPad is a jack of all trades, and it has the support of Apple's application Arsenal. Amazon seems to be the one company that can compete with Apple on the application front, with its App Store, but the fact is the tablet, itself, has to be good in order to compete.
Amazon is taking a risk by entering the tablet market, but if they get it right, it could be a huge win for the company.
Steve Jobs resigned from Apple on Wednesday. I have a great deal of admiration for the man. My family's first computer was an old Apple Macintosh. It was small, cute, and different.
I don't really remember it that much, but it was my first exposure to computers. During the time I grew up, Apple was always the underdog. Microsoft and its PC allies seemed to have a dominating presence in the personal computer market.
If you look at Apple now, as the greatest company in the world, you have to wonder how they got to where they were. The answer to everything is Steve Jobs. He's been a visionary, he's been an innovator, he's been The Man.
His resignation has been like a worldwide eulogy:
His departure leaves an empty feeling because he has brought us so much.
The history of Apple of a company is very much intertwined with the life of Steve Jobs at Apple. The New York Times had a chronology of Jobs's career at Apple.
Obviously, one of the key moments for Apple was when Steve Jobs returned to the company after a ten year hiatus:
When Steve returned, Apple just took over the world. Those iMacs were fantastic and cool. I owned a special edition Graphite G3 iMac. I actually still have it in my room, even though I haven't used it in forever. I remember the first thing I did was watch the free "A Bug's Life" DVD that came with the computer, probably related to Steve's ownership of Pixar at the time.
His story isn't just the story of a person, but the combination of time, place and person, spawning a career in industrial design of awesome proportions. Mr. Jobs founded two pivotal companies in American history. Both happened to be named Apple. One was the Apple of the Macintosh, the other was the Apple of the iPhone.
We'll return to that article in a second, but his return's significance to the company is incomparable. You can see it in the stock price: Over the last ten years, he has brought us a plethora of technological advancements with iPod and iTunes, the new mac computers and laptops and more recently the iPhone and iPad. These increased the influence of the company by diversifying its products in music as well as mobile devices. The iPod was the first of these new devices that really changed the game:
It throws up endless interesting juxtapositions: just now my iPod came up with Nick Cave, Judy Collins, Kasabian, Elvis Costello, Booker T, the Beatles, PJ Harvey, Arcade Fire and the Carpenters. It’s not perfect (why is it so determined to team Nick Lowe with Led Zeppelin?), but if you don’t like one of its choices you can just press fast-forward. Thanks to shuffle, you can create a radio station of a kind that died out when the broadcasters allowed niche playlisting to become a tyranny. And it doesn’t have any chit-chat or jingles or adverts. The music really is the thing.
Other companies came out with their own devices but the iPod was the iPod and iTunes was iTunes. He made it easy. You could get iTunes on any computer and it was a simple way of keeping track of your music. It linked to the iTunes Store as well as to your iPod when you downloaded new music. It just changed the music listening experience.
Jobs gave business an identity. He brought it to the 21st century:
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work,” Jobs said in a 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, which has been much quoted in recent days. “And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
Here's the speech if you haven't seen it:
There are two other great Jobs speeches here.
He moved business forward. Technology is what drives innovation today. It is what makes our lives easier. Jobs has made a career of making products that people not only need, but are easy to use. I conceived the idea of the iPhone soon after the iPod, but I don't think I could have executed the product much better than Apple did.
That's been the story of Apple in recent year. I've questioned the need of some of their products, but the products they've brought forth have always been executed flawlessly. And people buy them like crazy. When I sit on the T and look around, everyone is on their iPads doing work or playing games. Apple has become a company that has a presence in every aspect of your life. That's a lot of what has made the company so great.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see how it goes. Jobs himself said that Apple will continue to innovate:
"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it," he said in his announcement this week, perhaps his one concession to ordinary sentimentality, for it seems impossible that Apple, or any company, could anticipate another run like Apple's in the 10 years since the iPod's introduction.
Going forward without Jobs is a scary prospect. It is something that is now a reality. Changes will be made:
Rather than acting as mere advisers to one of the world's great visionary leaders, the board may have to take more control, be less deferential to the new CEO Tim Cook than it was to Jobs, and meet more often.
Jobs is going to be the new chairman on a board that lacked a chairman before. This means that while he is no longer the CEO and won't be in charge of day to day operations, he will still have a strong say in the direction of the company. Despite his health worries, it's a good sign.
It's a good sign for everyone, the shareholders, the customers, but most importantly as a sign of Jobs's health. Steve Jobs has contributed so much to the world. He is an inspiring story for any American as a self-made man, as an innovator, an entrepreneur, as a cancer survivor and battler, and as an American. In the years to come, Jobs will be immortalized for his deeds. I have to say, it's been a pleasure to read about all the things he's done for Apple.
While this may be goodbye from running Apple, I hope it's not a goodbye forever.
The tech industry is at an interesting crossroads right now. While many of the largest companies have a plethora of cash at their disposal, rather than spending it on acquisitions, research and development, or stock buy backs, these companies are buying up patents to sure up their standing.
This patent purchases have been happening for some time but Google's recent purchase of Motorola has heightened the patent debate:
The costs of our broken patent system are often abstract, but this month Google put a price tag on the problem: $12.5 billion. That's what Google paid for Motorola's U.S. smartphone business and its 17,000 patents. This is $12.5 billion that one of America's most creative companies will not use to innovate, fund research or hire anyone beside patent lawyers.
Rather than using these patents to develop new products, these companies are using them to sure up their market position against their competitors and to start lawsuits. The war is taking place not in the sleek high tech buildings of Silicon Valley, but in the courtrooms.
The Google deal is the biggest in a line of purchases that has seen the biggest companies look to secure a competitive advantage:
Lacking its own trove of patents to vie with Apple, Microsoft and other companies, Google and its hardware partners were targeted by suits aimed at slowing the adoption of Android smartphones. Adding the 17,000 patents of Motorola Mobility, which has been inventing mobile-phone technology since the industry began, may help Google stanch the onslaught.
Google's Android technology has been under attack, so these purchases sure up their position against Apple and other competitors:
Apple stepped up the patent feud by suing Android manufacturers, claiming Google-powered devices copy the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft has sued Motorola Mobility and Barnes & Noble Inc., whose Nook reader runs Android software.
“We have a responsibility to our employees, customers, partners and shareholders to safeguard our intellectual property,” David Howard, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation, said in an e-mail. “Motorola is infringing our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor.”
Besides the lawsuits, the purchase of Motorola Mobility puts a price on patents:
"There is clearly an upward sloping trend in patent value and patent value being recognized," said James Malackowski, chief executive of Ocean Tomo, an intellectual property advisory firm which values patent portfolios as part of its services. "As with any trend, it's never perfectly smooth, you see volatility in outlier transactions."
I think this best describes the situation:
"There are three textbook ways to value intellectual property, just as you would real estate -- the income approach, the cost approach, and the market approach," he said.
"If you are looking at an apartment building, the market approach says how much do other apartment buildings sell for? For the cost approach, you would ask what it would cost to build a like unit. The income approach says look at the present value of the rents -- or for patents, the present value of the expected earnings associated with owning the technology."
The question is: should these companies be spending their cash on patents? The answer isn't so simple:
Many venture capitalists and software entrepreneurs have warned that software is fundamentally different from other areas of innovation and that patents should be granted much more rarely than they are today. Software almost always builds on previous work, so patents rarely reflect the kind of original work that patent law is supposed to protect.
Part of the problem is that the law no longer distinguishes between how ideas become products and services differently in different industries. A good contrast to software is how advances are made in the pharmaceutical industry, which is made up of largely independent areas of research.
While these companies do deserve protection for their intellectual property, it is not good for the companies nor the technology sector for these companies to just duel over these patents. The cash that these companies have on their books would be better used for new innovation through R&D and to create new jobs. The posturing of these companies suggests more about patent law than anything else. There needs to be changes:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the exclusive forum for patent appeals, created in 1982 to keep the law consistent. But with consistency has come decisions upholding patents so broadly it’s hard to tell exactly what they cover.
The solution would be to have stricter standards:
A more reasonable approach would be stricter approval standards. The U.S. Supreme Court seemed to agree last year when it affirmed the rejection of a proposed business-method patent. The decision comes too late for companies that have shelled out for infringement fights. But it bodes well for those that would rather use patents to promote innovation than squelch it.
You cannot change what has already happened, but you can make the future more clear. The purchases of these patents have been made because of uncertainty over these patent laws. They don't know where they are protected and where they are vulnerable.
These companies can't move forward without ensuring that their present is stable. It is time to reconsider how patent law applies to technology. The US government must make a stronger push to ease these companies' worries and get them back to focusing on innovating the future.
One would be based on GSM/UMTS standard that powers AT&T’s network, while another would be compatible with CDMA, the standard used by Verizon. The announcement would come in June or July, when Apple normally announces new iPhone models.
I really hope this is true because I will get an iPhone within seconds of its release on the Verizon Network.
Looks like another wonderful technological innovation from Apple. Here's what Steve Jobs had to say:
The iPad “is so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen,” Mr. Jobs crowed. “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”
Sounds incredible, and I'm sure millions of people will flock to Apple Stores just to check it out. Here are some of the features from Apple Insider. It's Apple's world, we're just living in it.
PC World published an article stating why the Nexus is better than all other smart phones:
With such major differences in hardware between the Nexus One and older generations of Android phones, it's likely that the 2.1 update will take a while to filter down to the other Android phones, some of which were not speedy even with the initial release of the OS. To back this up, Android phones manufacturers are still using inexact timeframes for the arrival of 2.1 on older devices.
It also goes onto praise the iPhone and its users' ability to download the latest software:
Take in comparison Apple - even on the original iPhone (2007), you can still run the latest software update (3.1.2), albeit not as fast as on the iPhone 3GS and without certain features such as GPS or video recording. However, iPhone users, old or new, have always had the choice to freely upgrade to the latest software version, usually within days of the launch of the new version.
It should be interesting how effective Google's software updates are in comparison to Mac. We already know that Mac has a very effective way of offering updates.
A showdown between two of the largest players in the high-tech industry appears to be on the horizon. Google appears to be ready to take on Apple with the introduction of their Nexus smart phone. The ongoing theme in the industry recently has been to compare the two in order to forecast a prediction about the Nexus' success. While the iPhone has been a huge hit and is probably the most popular phone in the industry, it is very likely for the search engine supernova's Nexus to receive a huge reception as well.
I have a Mac, but I use Google a lot and I'm intrigued by both phones. I have a friend who was a PC guy, but worked on Macs all summer programming iPhone applications. He bought a Mac computer as a result and has been itching to get an iPhone. However, since news of the Nexus came out, he has changed his wishlist to include the Nexus. Brand loyalty will certainly be a factor. Unfortunately, the iPhone is not offered on my network (Verizon), and the Nexus looks like it will be offered to T-Mobile and AT&T customers:
Virtually all the information on the Google Nexus One that come out so far indicates that it will fully support only T-Mobile's network, including its 3G network. The version that was approved by the FCC has support for only T-Mobile's version of HSPA, so AT&T customers using this device will limited to voice and the 2.5G standard EDGE.
However, an unconfirmed report says that Google is not going to put all its eggs in one basket, and will offer a second version of this Android OS smartphone with support for AT&T's 3G service.
Color me as one of the people that is kind of disappointed by this revelation. However, I'm glad that I will be able to see the kind of reception that the phones will get. I currently have a Blackberry, and I can't say that I'm at all disappointed with it. When I first saw the iPhone, I noticed that people were always on their phone to check everything. It's cool to have that tool at hand, but you just look so self-involved when you have it. I thought the same of Blackberry users.
Then I got the Blackberry, and I started doing the same thing. Then my Blackberry broke, so I was without a phone for a little while. It taught me to get back to who I was. Once I got my replacement phone, I started using it less than I had with my previous phone. Yeah, it's still a great tool to have. However, while I may still check my phone more than I should, I definitely check it less than before. The benefit of the Nexus not being on my network is that I won't buy it any time soon and that I won't be checking it all the time because of how proud I am to own one.
Early reports of the Google Nexus have come out from some Google employees who received them to try out. Reviews and reports have made it to media outlets, and Attack of the Show has this interview with engadget.com's Joshua Topolsky:
This was about a month ago, and as more information about the Nexus has come out, more comparisons, predictions, and analysis have been made about its impact on the cell phone industry and in particular its competition with the iPhone. A Gerson Lehrman Group analysis had this to say:
Existing iPhone users may find it hard to come up with any serious complaints on the new Google phone. However, the minimal differences are not likely to be enough for users to switch and go through the trouble of learning the new system. Still, if a new buyer that has not used either system compared them side-by-side, there may be a higher probability this time in choosing Google’s new version.
In fact, we anticipate that users will find it to be very iPhone-like. They are both about the same size, with perhaps the Nexus One, being a little thinner. They both will have a full soft keyboard touchscreen.
Of course, the Nexus One will not have nearly as many applications, but almost all of them are free. It has also been developed to be exactly opposite the iPhone, which is very locked down and in which so many people control the particular apps that can be put on the device.
While the Nexus appears to offer a high speed processor along with a better screen, camera, and two speakers, I think what will determine its success will be how it performs. What's more important than sales success for me as a consumer of a phone is my ability to get the most out of my phone. The iPhone offers so much, but with its exclusive contract with AT&T, AT&T's network has struggled to provide the support necessary for the phone. The iPhone signified a huge boost in the amount of data that AT&T's network had to handle. It has not been up to the challenge and its competitors have benefited as a result.
Why is it that people continue to buy Blackberry's when the iPhone is a better phone? The Network and ability to use a phone is paramount. Verizon is annihilating AT&T about its 3G network, and the reason why Verizon's 3G network is better is because of the iPhone. Whether Google's Nexus is tied down to a single carrier or whether it is unlocked for the world will have a significant effect on how it is viewed. Google could set a new trend by foregoing exclusivity. The idea of having a contract is that the carrier will subsidize the cost of the phone. It's a deal that works out well for both the carrier and the phone producer. However, the consumers suffer because they can't get the most out of their phone. If the Nexus is unlocked, users can be free to join whatever network they want without a strict long-term contract.
As far as news about the iPhone, it appears that Apple will try to get not renew its exclusive contract with AT&T and look to be available on other providers as well. It looks like Verizon could be in the future of the iPhone, according to CNET:
Gene Munster, senior research analyst for investment bank Piper Jaffray, said in a research note to clients 0Wednesday that he believes there is a 70 percent chance that Apple will launch a new iPhone with Verizon in 2010. Munster puts the timing of such a move around the middle of the year.
That makes sense, since Apple has used June and July to launch all three of its iPhone models. The company also used the summer months to debut the App Store in 2008. It seems reasonable to speculate that Apple would continue with its schedule of introducing a new iPhone in mid-2010.
Munster said a move to Verizon would more than double Apple's current potential market by 89 million subscribers, adding to the already 82 million available on AT&T.
Of course, at this point the big problem is Apple's arrangement with AT&T as its exclusive carrier in the U.S. That deal is widely thought to end in 2010, although talks between the two companies are said to be ongoing, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Here's the Wall Street Journal article, for reference. While the iPhone may still be locked into contracts with carriers, a move away from exclusivity would make a great deal of sense as it would open the phone up to many more potential customers. I don't know if I personally would buy a iPhone immediately, but it would be a welcome addition to the Verizon line up. Regardless, with the increased competition in the market for phones, the consumer is the one that should benefit. 2010 should introduce a Cold War type arms race to put the best phone with the best services on the market.
Get your popcorn out, it's a smart phone showdown.
I'd like to introduce a new class of post that I'll make from time to time. It's called "What's Goin On?" Basically, I'll look at events that are happening through out the world. May be I'll comment about them, may be I'll let them stand on their own. The key thing is to share them with the world. Here we go:
This is a story I've commented on this week, but it's turning out to be a bigger issue of security. This past week, on Christmas Day, a man was apprehended after trying to light a bomb on an airplane after it landed at Detroit Metro Airport. It appears that the man failed, but several facts have arisen after the incident. It has been reported that his father had reported him to the US Government. Here's some back ground on the suspect:
Instead, officials said Sunday, they marked the file of the son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for a full investigation should he ever reapply for a visa. And when they passed the information on to Washington, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to 550,000 others with some alleged terrorist connections — but not to the no-fly list. That meant no flags were raised when he used cash to buy a ticket to the United States and boarded a plane, checking no bags.
It will be interesting to see what develops as a result of this incident. We've already seen TSA have a security breach that revealed secrets including racial profiling when it comes to checking people. Will this go one step further? Some people say that security checks are doing their jobs. However, it is clear with incidents like this that they aren't. Not only are they checking people who are completely innocent (like myself), they are not checking people like Abdulmutallab, who have bad intentions. I think an easy solution would be to scan passports to make sure that people are not on any terrorist watch lists.
Things aren't any better in Iran where protests continue to sprout up since their election in June, 2009. The latest protests have turned violent, showing an increasingly dissident group of support against the government of Ahmadinejad. I'm a fan of seeing visually what is going on, so here's a video from Al Jazeera:
While we're in the Middle East, it's the one year of the bombings in Gaza. Here's a video of children recounting their stories. I couldn't imagine being in a situation like this. Imagine being that young and having that sort of chaos escalating around you, your home, your life. I remember watching a live feed of Gaza last year and it was a constant stream of bombs and machine gun fire.
Just chilling, haunting stuff.
Speaking of anniversaries, Monday is the two year anniversary of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. We still have no answers about her murder nor do we have stability in the Pakistani government. There is a lot of work to do.
If there's any question that China will take over the world, China has unveiled the fastest train in the world:
In science and technology, the focal point of news seems to be on Apple's new tablet. Apple is one of the most successful companies with their incredible computing machines, music devices, and of course, their phones. Now they are introducing a tablet and the industry is going rampant with curiosity. What impact will the introduction of the tablet have on the market? I look forward to seeing it because quite frankly I'm not sold on the Tablet idea. I need to learn more about its usefulness.
