Umair Haque
Mar 10, 2010
Over the last few months, I've discussed in depth the tectonic shifts rocking the macro and micro economy. Let's put it all together. Here's what the 21st century demands from firms of all stripes: a paradigm shift in the nature of advantage.
The past of advantage was extractive and protective. The future of advantage, on the other hand, is allocative and creative.
Denise Lee Yohn
Mar 10, 2010
A few weeks ago, Forbes ran an article entitled, “Innovation Beyond Apple.” The piece de-briefed a discussion among executives from a range of consumer goods companies including HSN, Mattel, and Chrysalis, an incubator company for emerging brands. It challenged readers to think about innovation differently, and many of the points resonated with me.
Martin Bishop
Mar 9, 2010
Credit Suisse's report picks its 27 elite brands of tomorrow based on a deeper analysis of their potential. Most of the picks are brands that are "transforming," making the leap from niche/emerging players into powerful mainstream brands. Brands like Trader Joe's and Hyundai. These are brands that offer investors attractive returns, some risk but not as much as early-stage brands that may never make it over the hump once the initial rush of growth and enthusiasm is over. Only two early stage brands make the list: Facebook and Comac, a Chinese aircraft start-up.
Mar 9, 2010
It is rare to see an actress on the Oscar red carpet wearing her gown from the previous year. Why, then, were there so many retreads among the commercials that appeared on Sunday during the ABC coverage of the 82nd annual Academy Awards?
The reruns were an aberration given that for many years the Oscars broadcast had been a showcase for new commercials, much like the Super Bowl.
Mar 9, 2010
Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in a fast-moving race to combine Internet content with conventional TV.
The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google's YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.
Mar 5, 2010
Threatened by Apple Inc.'s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing videogames, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Japanese electronics giant also is developing a portable device that shares characteristics of netbooks, electronic-book readers and handheld-game machines. The device is designed to compete against multifunction products such as Apple's coming iPad tablet, these people said.
Mar 2, 2010
Mobile phones are fast becoming the way consumers find coupons, research products, compare prices and make purchases. It makes shopping easier for consumers, but that doesn't mean retailers are thrilled at the prospect of consumers consulting mobile phones from their aisles -- after all, does Best Buy want you to know that the item in your cart can be had cheaper at Amazon -- and purchased right now on your phone?
Jonathan Salem Baskin
Mar 2, 2010
Judging from its branding and the griping of its competitors, Apple customers are hip, aware, and enlightened, yet its shareholders recently defeated resolutions to make the company more environmentally responsible and affirmed instead their uncool unconcern about anything other than profits.
There isn't just a disconnect here, but an entirely topsy-turvy arrangement.
Feb 25, 2010
Apple held its shareholder meeting day today, and CEO Steve Jobs made an appearance.
When asked about Apple's huge mountain of cash, he recited Apple's traditional line that he would rather have cash at his disposal instead of dividends or buybacks, Bloomberg reports.
Feb 25, 2010
Sitting in a meeting room that looks out on a frozen Baltic bay, Nokia Oyj Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo mentions a biography he’s reading. It’s about Mauno Koivisto, the president who butted heads with his own Social Democratic Party en route to opening Finland’s 1992 bid to join the European Union.
Scott Berkun
Feb 23, 2010
One troubling recent phenomenon is the push for everyone to be innovators. I suspect more books have been sold with the word innovation in their title in the last 10 years than in the previous 50, including, I confess, one of my own. And while much has changed, it's hard to say the quality of things in the world has improved as fast. Keen-eyed consumers bemoan the low quality of many of the things we buy and try to use. Web sites divide short articles across 25 ad-filled pages. Gadgets quickly run out of power. Smartphones have anemic reception or fragile screens. Many things we buy and use never work in the way we're promised, which suggests there are opportunities in merely being good: Much of what's made falls short of that mark.
Feb 22, 2010
Mobile advertising, long tabbed as the next big thing, is finally getting its share of attention. Google and Apple, poised in a battle for dominance in what's being hailed as the successor to the PC Internet, have spent a combined $1 billion to buy mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless. And Microsoft last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, previewed its next mobile phone platform, Windows Phone 7.
Yet despite the excitement over the potential of mobile ads, they currently come up short for the kind of advertising most appealing to brands. In the words of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as reported by BusinessWeek last month, "Mobile ads suck."
Feb 16, 2010
I'm a tough customer. I admit it. Takes one to know one. I'm a loud shocking dose of reality for companies that sell me something. I expect too much from them. I've given them my money for, and put my trust in; their products or services, and I expect them to value that accordingly. I can be a firm's greatest ally or its worst nightmare.
So when something goes wrong, I want the company to fix it. Now! When it takes too long, I let them know it. When service representatives can't solve the problem, I want to talk to their bosses, their bosses' bosses, all the way up to their CEOs. And when a service rep tells me, "My supervisor will just tell you the same thing," well, there's nothing I want to hear less.
Feb 16, 2010
Apple is famous for not engaging in the focus-grouping that defines most business product and marketing strategy. Which is partly why Apples products and advertising are so insanely great. They have the courage of their own convictions, instead of the opinions of everyone else's whims. On the subject, Steve Jobs loves to quote Henry Ford who once said that if he had asked people what they wanted they would have said "a faster horse."
Feb 15, 2010
Looking back at some of the greatest innovations in marketing and advertising over the past 100 years, the creative brilliance of these ideas is obvious. Yet the stories behind these examples involve bold thinking, the passion to champion new ideas and a high dose of risk. Our industry's visionaries often countered research results, drove themselves beyond the great idea and defied bosses and boards to push through their plans.
Let these stories inspire today's marketers, who have so many new tools at their disposal, to set aside conventional thinking and become the marketing innovators of the next 100 years.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Feb 14, 2010
Daring Fireball's John Gruber — a Drexel University computer major turned professional blogger — is perhaps the most forceful and articulate defender on the Web of all things Apple (AAPL). He came to Macworld Expo 2010, however, not to praise the company but to probe its vulnerabilities.
Feb 11, 2010
Now that the histrionics surrounding the debut of Apple's iPad have fizzled into a rational, and often uninspired, discussion of the device’s actual merits and shortcomings, Apple is left with the iReality of the iPad. Reviews are mixed, but the brand is being proactive about taking the lead regarding the public conversation.
Josh Quittner
Feb 11, 2010
Magazines, books, newspapers -- all that printed stuff is supposed to be dying. Advertising pages, which have been steadily declining, dropped 26% in 2009 alone. But here, surely, was some evidence that publishing might have a chance. If an adolescent who otherwise spends every waking hour on a laptop still craves the printed word, then maybe, just maybe, there's a little new growth left in old media.
Feb 9, 2010
The technology we call innovative will seem pedestrian to our children. From touch screens to open source, our kids are being conditioned to interact with technology in ways we hardly expected even a decade ago, despite what "The Jetsons" foreshadowed back in the '60s. One thing seems increasingly clear: our children are not being conditioned to buy Microsoft. Not anymore.
Feb 8, 2010
Apple clearly recognizes the importance of the mobile web, but did they get trigger happy and launch the iPad too soon? The launch of the new Apple device has lit up the internet with all sorts of criticisms, praises, questions and opinions. A question remains for those of us in the search marketing and social media world—how will these tablets incorporate the use of social media?
Feb 8, 2010
Is Apple's new e-book store a model for the television industry?
It is clear the existing TV arrangement, under which cable operators sell packages of channels on behalf of media companies, is fraying. Fights between the two sides over subscription fees are escalating—another such dust-up looms this year when Time Warner Cable's distribution agreement with Walt Disney's channels, including ABC and ESPN, comes up for renewal.
Feb 7, 2010
Even before Apple announced the iPad last week, the Internet was going tablet-crazy. After speculation, literally years in the making, finally came to a crescendo, the public reaction has been decidedly mixed. Discussions about what’s missing and why the announcement was a disappointment have been covered from nearly every angle.
However, whether Apple’s iPad ultimately succeeds or fails, it is yet another sign of an emerging device class. With Google (Google), Microsoft, and others investing in researching tablet-style computers, this is a trend that will not begin or end with the iPad.
Feb 4, 2010
Last week a temporary cease-fire went into effect amidst a brewing battle between Amazon.com and Macmillan, a unit of Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GMBH and one of the largest publishers in the US.
The battle was over the price of ebooks on Amazon's site. Macmillan insisted upon -- and eventually received -- a 30-50% increase over the $9.99 loss leader price for new releases that helped build Amazon's dominant position in the ebook market. But only after an attempt by Amazon to wield its distribution power to force Macmillan to back down. (You can read the details at this link).
Brian Solis
Feb 3, 2010
Sounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.
Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.
To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.
Brian X. Chen
Feb 2, 2010
When I picked up my iPhone over the weekend, I had an epiphany. I was using the LinkedIn app to confirm an invitation to connect, and it hit me: This is the future of mobile computing, the mobile web — the mobile experience.
No, I’m not saying the LinkedIn app is the future per se (that’d be silly), but rather the overall concept of it. The LinkedIn iPhone app is, in my opinion, better than the actual LinkedIn.com website. Same goes for the Facebook app compared to Facebook.com.
Gone are their busy, tab-infested UIs. In their stead are beautiful bubbly icons screaming “Touch me!” We no longer have to squint or click around in search of the feature we’re trying to access: The button is right there in that simple interface for us to tap.
The Facebook and Linkedin apps are two key examples of popular services whose iPhone apps outdid the websites they were trying to “port.” They’re two gems glistening brightly for the future of mobile.
Feb 2, 2010
Turns out brands really do matter, particularly when it comes to financial and market performance.
According to Millward Brown Optimor, its BrandZ Strong Brands Portfolio -- a group of the top 100 most valuable global brands -- has outpaced the S&P 500. The brand and financial services consultancy says the BrandZ portfolio has gained 36.4% since April 2009 (when the holdings were last reported), compared with the S&P's increase of 31.6% during that same period.
"What it shows is that strong brands are a source of competitive advantage for a company," Ove Haxthausen, a partner at Millward Brown Optimor, tells Marketing Daily. "Brands matter because they can and do add value for shareholders."
Feb 1, 2010
After a weekend of brinksmanship, Amazon.com on Sunday surrendered to a publisher and agreed to raise prices on some electronic books.
Amazon shocked the publishing world late last week by removing direct access to the Kindle editions as well as printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, which had said it planned to begin setting higher consumer prices for e-books. Until now, Amazon has set e-book prices itself, with $9.99 as the default for new releases and best sellers.
Jan 31, 2010
The digital publishing industry and consumer advocates breathed a sigh of relief when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed that the iPad would use the open EPUB format for the electronic books it sold through the iBooks store. Unlike Amazon, which has quickly grown to be the world’s largest seller of e-books, it appeared Apple was steering away from introducing its own file format that would only work on Apple products. Instead, by choosing EPUB, a more common format, it looked like Apple was breaking with its past walled-garden approach. Those hopes were quickly dashed. According to executives in the digital reading industry, Apple is planning to add its own digital rights management software. Apple could not be reached for comment.
Steve Lohr
Jan 31, 2010
The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the “wisdom of the crowd” and “open innovation.” Assemble all the contributions in the digital suggestion box, we’re told in books and academic research, and the result will be collective intelligence. Yet Apple, a creativity factory meticulously built by Steven P. Jobs since he returned to the company in 1997, suggests another innovation formula — one more elitist and individual.
Jan 29, 2010
Advocates wary of the Apple device say Amazon.com's e-reader has its new rival beat on battery life, weight, cost and reading experience.
Jan 29, 2010
Apple has generated a lot of chatter with its new iPad tablet. But it may not be quite the conversation it wanted. Many women are saying the name evokes awkward associations with feminine hygiene products. People from Boston to Ireland are complaining that “iPad,” in their regional brogue, sounds almost indistinguishable from “iPod,” Apple’s music player.
Jan 29, 2010
AT&T said Thursday that it will invest an additional $2 billion in its network in 2010 to make sure it keeps up with the growing demand from new smartphones and other 3G data devices, such as the Apple iPad, on its network.
During its fourth quarter 2009 conference call, Chief Operating Officer John Stankey said AT&T plans to spend between $18 billion and $19 billion in 2010 upgrading its wireless and backhaul networks to handle the onslaught of new traffic. This is roughly $2 billion more than the company had invested in the previous year.
Specifically, Stankey said AT&T will add 2,000 new cell sites and upgrade existing cell sites with three times more fiber links than it had in 2009. This will increase capacity for the backhaul network that connects the cell towers to AT&T's main network. The backhaul portion of the network is a critical component to AT&T's network. With these upgrades in place, Stankey said the company will be able to easily upgrade in the future to 4G wireless technology.
Jan 28, 2010
Traditional media -- notably representatives from the reeling print world -- were conspicuously absent from Apple’s elaborate rollout of the iPad, its highly-anticipated tablet computing device. But publishers, advertisers and analysts remain optimistic that magazines and newspapers will ultimately receive a readership and business boost from the new product, which was unveiled during a press event in San Francisco yesterday.
Scott Anthony
Jan 28, 2010
You have to give it to Apple. The company has an uncanny knack for seizing the moment and whipping journalists and consumers into a frenzy. The latest wave comes from today's launch of the iPad tablet with iBookstore content store.
As always, there's a lot to like about Apple's device. The user interface looks great, the bookstore seems intuitive, and Apple set a price point (at least for the entry level iPad) that positions the device well in the marketplace. The hype bar was set so high that inevitably some people were disappointed - Dan Frommer from Silicon Alley Insider called it a big "yawn" that won't define publishing the way many experts projected.
Jan 28, 2010
When I woke up today, it took me about half an hour to get up to speed with the iPad (I’m in Croatia, so the bulk of the news came in overnight for me). After I’ve read a couple of articles, I already knew everything there was to know about it (and more): its advantages, its flaws, and its potential.
But hidden between the lines of all that iPad coverage I’ve learned a thing or two about Apple and its plans, mostly from the things iPad is missing.
Jan 28, 2010
We have seen several epic marketing wars: The Cola War of Coke vs. Pepsi, The Beer War of Budweiser vs. Miller, The Mouthwash War of Listerine vs. Scope and The Battery War of Duracell vs. Energizer. But they all fail in comparison to the money and firepower currently being expended in the Cellphone War between AT&T and arch-rival Verizon Wireless.
Last year AT&T and Verizon Wireless spent a combined $4 billion in advertising to blast consumers with 615,000 television commercials. Yet, despite the incredible sums spent and the enormous volume flooding the airways, most consumers are still confused.
Jan 27, 2010
Steven P. Jobs has finally introduced Apple’s new tablet computer, called the iPad.
The question now is whether regular consumers will buy the iPhone-like device, which starts at $500 and can cost as much as $829.
Mr. Jobs, appearing energized but gaunt, a result of his ongoing health challenges, unveiled the iPad at a press event here on Wednesday morning. Its features and specifications, once the stuff of Internet myth, are now sharply in focus: The half-inch thick, 1.5 pound device will feature a 9.7-inch multi-touch screen and is powered by a customized Apple microchip, which it has dubbed A4. The iPad will have the same operating system as the iPhone and access to its 140,000 applications.
AP
Jan 27, 2010
Literature has always relied on technology. We wouldn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls had the ancients failed to invent papyrus, just as we wouldn't have "The Da Vinci Code" if Gutenberg hadn't come out with movable type.
Technology has also abetted literature by enabling the wealth and leisure that fueled the rise of the popular press — and allowed for such luxuries as a class of professional writers and a large campus establishment devoted to the literary arts. It is important to bear in mind that technology is not the sworn enemy of literature as Apple prepares (according to frantic rumor) to unveil its much-anticipated new tablet computer on Jan. 27. Still, the collision of technology and literature in this case may well prove explosive.
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
Jan 27, 2010
Book publishers were locked in 11th-hour negotiations with Apple Inc. that could rewrite the industry's revenue model after the technology giant unveils its highly anticipated tablet device Wednesday.
Apple's new multimedia tablet device, with a 10-inch touch screen that is expected to deliver video, text, navigation and social-networking applications, is trying to change the way much of traditional media is delivered.
Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford
Jan 26, 2010
With the widely anticipated introduction of a tablet computer at an event here on Wednesday morning, Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past.
Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.
Jan 26, 2010
After throwing off the mediocre display of 3-D technologies and e-books at CES, the industry is eagerly awaiting the main event on Wednesday. There truly is no spectacle that compares to the launch of a new Apple product. The formula is well-established. Everyone is hungry for the next iPhone moment and Apple's bid to squash the Kindle and reinvent the publishing business with the iPad or the iSlate tablet computer. But that is a mere sideshow. The real road kill this time will not be the Kindle. It will be handheld video gaming devices like Sony's PSP and the Nintendo DS, as Apple establishes a lock on the economics of casual gaming with its newest device.
Les Berglass
Jan 25, 2010
When it comes to innovation, many executives in the consumer goods industry are chasing Apple. Who can blame them? While most retailers spent the holiday season slashing prices, Apple reported record earnings by enchanting audiences with iPhones. Now, as retailers try to re-engage consumers this year, executives are trying to replicate the "Apple thrill."
But focusing exclusively on product innovation is a mistake for most companies, say executives who gathered recently at Berglass + Associates, my company, to discuss innovation.
Jason Schwarz
Jan 25, 2010
Steve Jobs is walking the same path as Walt Disney. As soon as California’s Disneyland was completed, Walt knew he had made a terrible mistake by not securing the surrounding real estate. He had built this wonderful destination but his oversight allowed hotel chains and restaurants to come in and make more money off his customers than he did. So Walt immediately went to Orlando, FL and built Disneyworld the right way.
The moral of the story is that Steve Jobs is not someone you want to depend on for your livelihood. His goal is to build a closed digital neighborhood where Apple (AAPL) controls who makes money and who doesn’t. I'll bet that in one of those Apple board meetings that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt used to attend, he realized that Jobs was on the verge of building AppleWorld and he's been scared ever since.
Jan 25, 2010
Hewlett-Packard Co. launched Monday a subscription music service across 10 countries in Europe with U.K. mobile music start-up Omnifone Ltd., moving into a market dominated by Apple Inc.'s iTunes.
Jan 24, 2010
Apple patents come a dime a dozen, but these two seem both practical and implementable. The first outlines a solar powered iPod and the second details more specific gesture-based input methods, including scoops, nudges, and tilts.
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ethan Smith
Jan 20, 2010
With the new tablet device that is debuting next week, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry—and expand Apple's influence and revenue as a content middleman.
In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classrooms, say people familiar with the situation. The company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in homes, these people say.
Jan 20, 2010
BusinessWeek is reporting and solidifying what was previously an almost unthinkable rumor: that Bing might become the default search engine on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). The way BusinessWeek frames it this becomes a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Jan 20, 2010
Though everybody believes next week Apple will be revealing an exciting tablet PC, complete with reputed e-reader powers, the event has clearly got Amazon running scared: It's just improved its deal for Kindle publishers, significantly. In a press release to announce the news, Amazon comes directly and efficiently to the point (a slightly unusual step for press releases!) with the words "Amazon.com [announces] a new program that will enable authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell." The company is preserving some of its existing DTP royalty share options, but is adding in a new 70% option--giving 70% of list price (net of delivery costs) to authors or publishers.
Jan 20, 2010
The New York Times will begin charging for online access to its website by 2011, reversing the prevailing policy among general news brands to give away their best work for free. The publisher of the International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe and the namesake daily newspaper will adopt a metered model, similar to a system used by the Financial Times, that will offer a set number of articles for free monthly and begin charging readers after they exceed the limit.
Jan 19, 2010
Mobile app stores are likely to get a lot busier this year. Smartphone consumers will spend $6.2 billion on mobile apps in 2010, forecasts Gartner in a recent report, generating ad revenue of around $0.6 billion throughout the world. Downloads will also skyrocket, exceeding 4.5 billion this year. But good news for app users--82 percent of all apps downloaded will be free.
Joseph Menn
Jan 19, 2010
Apple on Monday ratcheted up the public relations buzz surrounding the launch of a new product, widely expected to be a tablet-sized computer, this month.
It sent out a press invitation via email, inviting journalists to “come see our latest creation”. Whilst far from explicit, as is Apple’s wont, the invitation was the strongest confirmation yet of what has been the company’s most anticipated new product since the launch of the iPhone three years ago.
Jan 18, 2010
A BusinessWeek piece named Apple vs. Google discusses much of the recent competitive business products the two companies have. On page three of that article, there are some analysts who suspect Apple may drop Google, as the default search provider, to Bing.
Jan 11, 2010
In the wake of Google’s launch of its new Nexus One phone last week, customers are starting to complain about Google’s lack of customer service. At CES on Friday, Walt Mossberg asked Google VP of engineering Andy Rubin specifically about complaints from people seeking support for the Nexus One. According to All Things D, “Rubin concedes that there is no phone support and that there is sometimes a 3-day delay in response time. ‘We have to get better at customer service,’ he says.”
Jan 11, 2010
Those slightly amusing Mac vs. PC Apple ads are getting a bit tired now, but when the PR guys dream up the successors, they might need a rethink on the strategy. Because the new "Mac vs. PC" battle might be "Apple vs. Google."
The idea has popped up courtesy of The New York Times's David Pogue, who's also been speaking to the editors of tech blogs Gizmodo and Engadget. In a blog post late yesterday, Pogue believes he has revealed a "whole new untapped population online: The Android Army."
Jan 10, 2010
To most people these days, an "app" is something you download on your smartphone to help you do a specific task -- say, find a good nearby restaurant.
But big tech companies, seeing how applications have boosted the appeal of gadgets such as Apple's iPhone, are starting to view apps as low-cost enhancements for a broader range of products, from netbooks to TVs and beyond.
Jan 10, 2010
The most buzzed-about device at CES 2010 wasn't even on display here. A tablet or slate computer from Apple was basically all anyone wanted to talk about, and it's not even a confirmed product yet. We can partly blame both Apple and Google for this. Google sucked all the air out of the Las Vegas Convention Center Tuesday, two days before this whole show even got started, thanks to its introduction of the Nexus One phone and accompanying online retail platform for it. But Apple's specter has once again haunted the show it doesn't even attend.
Jonathan Salem Baskin
Jan 8, 2010
The buzz is palpable about Apple's plans to announce a tablet computer later this month. I think it's instructive as to the function and uses of conversation.
Apple is a company that has utterly shunned the social media campaigns that have displaced more old-fashioned ways to waste consumers' time. It has no Twitter feed, provides no payola to twentysomethings so that they’ll blog about its products, and I bet it would happily ignore a request for comment from the President if asked.
It doesn't talk. Apple does.
Richard Waters
Jan 7, 2010
Microsoft on Wednesday evening positioned itself for a potential war over a new category of touch-screen “tablet” computers as Steve Ballmer, chief executive, anticipated an expected major product announcement from Apple by showing off a version running on Windows software.
The Microsoft boss used his speech at the opening of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to highlight the product, made by Hewlett-Packard.
Scott Berinato
Jan 6, 2010
So Google's got a new phone now. Internet coverage is predictably hyperbolic, though Scott Anthony smartly puts the phone's potential to make waves into the future tense, and the New York Times' typically giddy David Pogue was downright snarky in his review. Nevertheless, the tech industry is atwitter with a fresh new rivalry. Mac versus PC is so last decade. Now, it's "Hello I'm an iPhone." "And I'm a Nexus One." I vote for Rainn Wilson playing Google in the commercials.
Scott Anthony
Jan 6, 2010
The coverage of Google's Nexus One "superphone" - officially unveiled today - was swift and almost universally positive. The HTC-designed device looks beautiful, its functionality sounds fantastic, and by all accounts it looks like a viable competitor to Apple and Research in Motion in the smartphone market.
In this case, however, there's more to the story. Google's distribution approach has the potential to dramatically accelerate a broad disruption in the mobile phone market where the balance of power shifts from carriers and retailers to device, software, and applications providers.
Jan 5, 2010
Apple just announced that its App Store has blown past three billion app downloads, which is impressive. But the timing is curious, as are the swirling rumors about the upcoming Apple Tablet. Is Apple trying to out-PR CES and Google?
Jan 5, 2010
Looking to build on the momentum of its iPhone and iPod, Apple Inc. will unveil a new multimedia tablet device later this month, but isn't planning to ship the product until March, say people briefed by the company. While the device's ship date hasn't been finalized and could still change, people briefed on the matter said the new product will come with a 10 to 11-inch touch screen—which would make it closer in size to Apple's line of MacBook laptops than its smart phone.
Jan 5, 2010
Google made huge waves in the mobile industry when it acquired mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million. Now Apple, which is increasingly in direct competition with Google, has countered its new rival. According to All Things Digital, Apple has entered into an agreement to acquire Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad platform similar to AdMob but smaller in scale. The announcement may come as soon as tomorrow.
Jan 3, 2010
We've become a nation of early adopters -- now can the consumer electronics industry lead the U.S. recovery? That's what CE manufacturers (who happen to include a few of the world's biggest consumer marketers) hope for as they gather in Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.
Martin Peers
Dec 30, 2009
Reasons to feel bearish about Microsoft aren't hard to find. But it's the software giant's diminishing profile in the mobile world that is the talk of Silicon Valley right now.
The explosion of mobile applications on devices like Apple's iPhone and Motorola's Droid presages far-reaching changes in consumer behavior. Google gets that. Aside from helping develop the Android mobile operating system, the company plans to buy mobile ad firm AdMob. And now it is working on plans to sell its own phone. It's a different story at Microsoft.
Martin Peers
Dec 30, 2009
Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.
A blizzard of speculation is building over Apple's as-yet-unconfirmed release of a tablet computer. Among other things, the tablet is expected to offer e-books and TV programs. Apple has been trying to get TV networks to license their programming for a subscription service planned as part of a revamp of iTunes, presumably with the tablet in mind.
Joseph Menn and Maija Palmer
Dec 30, 2009
Nokia escalated its patent dispute with archrival Apple over smartphone technology on Tuesday, filing a complaint with the US International Trade Commission.
The complaint accuses Apple of infringing Nokia patents in “virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players and computers”, the Finnish company said.
Claire Cain Miller
Dec 30, 2009
Customers were more satisfied than ever with e-commerce sites while holiday shopping, according to ForeSee Results’ E-Retail Satisfaction Index, which uses methodology developed at the University of Michigan to study consumer satisfaction. Satisfaction rose 7 percent to 79 out of 100, the highest since the survey began in 2001.
Richard Waters
Dec 30, 2009
Google will start the new year with a mobile product announcement, setting the stage for what is turning into a showdown with its former ally Apple over mobile computing devices.
The search group revealed earlier this month that it had issued employees with a mobile device to test, though it did not give details. On Tuesday it disclosed that it would hold an event at its headquarters in Silicon Valley next Tuesday for a mobile announcement, prompting speculation that the device would be unveiled.
Dec 28, 2009
The great brands of our time are not about what they are. They are about what they represent.
Apple, Sarah Palin, Harley Davidson, Tom's Shoes... In each case, the reality of the product means far less than what the brand represents.
David Gelles
Dec 24, 2009
Apple has something big up its sleeve for next month.
The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.
Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th. Both YBCA and Apple declined to comment.
Joseph Menn
Dec 21, 2009
In 2007 Steve Jobs launched the iPhone with a fanfare of fiery rhetoric.
The iPhone, Apple's chief executive claimed, was three "revolutionary" devices in one. Combining a touch-controlled iPod media player, a phone and an "internet communicator", the iPhone was "a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been".
In contrast, when Mr Jobs introduced the App store a little less than 18 months ago, his vocabulary was considerably more muted.
Yukari Iwatani Kane And Phred Dvorak
Dec 18, 2009
Research In Motion Ltd. reported surging profits and sales of its BlackBerry devices while rival Palm Inc. posted another quarterly loss amid signs that consumer demand waned for its newest smart phones.
The results showed the diverging paths of a market leader and an underdog in an increasingly competitive smart-phone market. Shares of the two companies moved in opposite directions in after-hours trading. RIM's shares jumped 12% to $71.21, while Palm's shares fell 8.7% to $10.70.
Dec 16, 2009
Nokia Oyj Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said this month he’s “really bullish” about the company’s “Comes With Music” package, a phone bundled with unlimited songs. Analysts say it leaves them cold. Services like Comes With Music from Nokia, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, to take on Apple Inc.’s iPhone are too little too late, said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at Greenwich, Connecticut-based MKM.
Gary Marshall
Dec 16, 2009
Back in the good old days, Microsoft did desktops, Google stuck to search and Apple made toys for people in polo necks. No more.
The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They're fighting on the desktop, they're fighting on mobile phones, they're fighting in the browser and they're fighting in your front room.
Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker?
Dec 15, 2009
Morgan Stanley's global technology and telecom analysts set out to do a deep dive into the rapidly changing mobile Internet market. We wanted to create a data-rich, theme-based framework for thinking about how the market may develop. We intend to expand and edit the framework as the market evolves. A lot has changed since we published “The Internet Report” in 1995 on the web.
We decided to create The Mobile Internet Report largely in PowerPoint and publish it on the web, expecting that bits and pieces of it will be cut / pasted / redistributed and debated / dismissed / lauded. Our goal is to get our thoughts and data into the conversation about what may be the biggest technology trend ever, one that may help make us all more informed in ways that are unique to the web circa 2009, and beyond.
Dec 14, 2009
Two titans of the tech world, Google and Apple, may soon be engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Or, more precisely, handset-to-handset combat.
Google plans to begin selling its own smartphone early next year, company employees say, a move that could challenge Apple’s leadership in one of the fastest-growing and most important technologies in decades.
Dec 13, 2009
Apple sued the cellphone maker Nokia Corporation on Friday for patent infringement, a countermove to Nokia’s earlier suit against technologies used in Apple’s iPhone. Apple’s lawsuit claims Nokia is infringing 13 of Apple’s patents and says the company chose to “copy the iPhone,” especially its user interface, to make up for its declining share of the high-end phone market.
Dec 11, 2009
Mark Anderson is the writer behind the Strategic News Service, a predictive newsletter with a wide following among technology executives and venture capitalists, which he publishes from the island redoubt of Friday Harbor, Wash. And each December, he comes to New York, hosts a dinner and delivers a set of forecasts for the coming year. The dinner was at the Waldorf-Astoria on Thursday night, but I caught up with Mr. Anderson earlier for a preview of his after-dinner performance. One of his predictions, in particular, caught my attention. “Except for gaming, it is ‘game over’ for Microsoft in the consumer market,” he said. “It’s time to declare Microsoft a loser in phones. Just get out of Dodge.”
Jessica Vascellaro and Yukari Kane
Dec 11, 2009
Google Inc. and Apple Inc., which have long thrived without treading on one another's turf, are vying to acquire some of the same Silicon Valley start-ups and developing products that put themselves in more direct competition. Google was in serious discussions to acquire online-music company La La Media Inc. before Apple won the deal this month for $85 million, people familiar with the matter said
Brian X. Chen
Dec 11, 2009
Video entertainment was “the one that got away” from Apple, but recent moves reveal the company is taking a second stab at the category, and that streaming video will play a major role.
The addition of video cameras to Apple’s latest iPhone and iPod Nano were just the first hints of the company’s new personal-media strategy. The company is also building a 500,000 square-foot data center in North Carolina, which could provide the massive bandwidth required for ubiquitous streaming video. And Apple’s recent acquisition of Lala suggests it’s interested in rebooting iTunes into a streaming service, according to Wall Street Journal. That means music, in Lala’s case, but the same infrastructure could be shared with streaming video.
Dec 10, 2009
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is the ultimate brand leader in my eyes. There is no better example of leading through actions, not words. He doesn’t tell people about the Apple brand. He IS the Apple brand personified. Jobs has just been named CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine, and the fascinating articles in this special issue give some great insights into his brand leadership and the stunning results it has produced. I share a few of my favourite highlights below.
Ethan Smith and Yukari Kane
Dec 10, 2009
Apple Inc., the company that restructured the music industry around its iTunes service, is exploring an overhaul of the way it sells and stores music that is aimed at extending its influence to the Web, according to people briefed on the strategy. The key vehicle for the move is Apple's newly acquired music-streaming service La La Media Inc. for which Apple paid $85 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Dec 8, 2009
Yesterday’s New York Times’ article, Apple’s Game Changer, Downloading Now, was a fascinating read. I’m not knowledgeable enough about the technology behind mobile apps to evaluate the story as a representation of the programming and development challenges and opportunities of all the different companies. But I found it a provocative report on the different brands’ strategies.
Dec 6, 2009
Apple bought internet music site Lala.com late on Friday for an undisclosed amount, a development that could lead to the addition of streaming songs and new payment systems at Apple’s iTunes, the world’s biggest music retailer.
Apple confirmed the deal but declined to say what it would do with Lala, which currently allows users to listen to any song or album once without paying.
Dec 1, 2009
YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV, too. Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me. YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.
Dec 1, 2009
On my way to last month's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, I took a small detour to Orange County to check out the recently opened Microsoft Store there.
Although I had heard plenty about Microsoft's nascent retail effort, I wanted to get a firsthand look.
At a glance, it's easy to understand why the store draws so many comparisons to Apple's stores. The outside of the store features an expansive glass window with a stylized Microsoft logo at the top. Inside, products are sorted into themed sections, with a help desk and theater in the rear, and all around are T-shirted enthusiasts ready to answer any and all questions.
From that standpoint, it's nearly a carbon copy. But even as it mimics much of the Apple approach, Microsoft finds ways to customize its message to its different role in the world.
Nov 30, 2009
The iPhone is a cultural icon of the digital age. Apple's "There's an app for that" slogan in commercials is even repeated both as a punch line and a nod to the ubiquity of new applications on the so-called "Jesus phone" platform. Many top brands have tested its waters. Coke has two iPhone apps, as does Nike. Procter & Gamble has several, including Tide's Stain Brain, which helps consumers find ways to remove stains. All are searching for the secret formula that will unlock the promise of mobile marketing: a utility or piece of entertainment that is with consumers at all times.
Nov 30, 2009
In a landmark 1964 case, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the obscenity conviction of an Ohio theater owner who had screened the French film “Les Amants.” In his concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stevens concluded that while he was unable to provide a precise definition of hard-core pornography, he knew it when he saw it. So it is with great design—we know it when we see it. Trouble is, we see way too little of it. A case in point.
Nov 27, 2009
Apple Inc.'s iPhone on Saturday will finally go on sale in South Korea, a country that prides itself on creating and consuming cutting-edge technology but where the government raised trade barriers on smart phones to protect domestic manufacturers and carriers for several years.
Rishad Tobaccowala
Nov 25, 2009
Digital is so yesterday.
It will soon be 20 years since the advent of commercially available digital services such as America Online, multimedia, mobile phones and widespread use of personal computers.
The American household went digital long before marketers embraced technology and the Internet. Now, as companies struggle to get their "digital strategies" in order, they will be surprised to discover consumers have moved on to the "post-digital" age.
Phil Roos
Nov 20, 2009
Popular opinion suggests that great innovation results from a mysterious combination of forces that make it appear to fall from the sky. Whether divine intervention, the harnessing of creative genius or luck, to many, innovation seems to surface at random moments and emerge from circumstances that cannot be reproduced or understood. However, based on a 30-year analysis of 300 product categories covering 225 countries, it becomes clear this perception is false: Tomorrow's winning innovation can actually be predicted.
Nov 19, 2009
'Tis the season to diss Apple in some very creative and entertaining ways. I'm just not sure whether it's a sign of strategic marketing insight, or fishbowl-like confusion of message over meaning.
First came Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaigns, with its snippets of slice-of-life everypeople declaring their stereotypical lifestyles, and then shoppers explaining how they'd first looked at an Apple but then chose a PC because it was a better value. I'm all for comparison ads but the nonsense of contrasting PC-ness with Apple-ness is kind of silly.
Nov 18, 2009
Sony is looking to concentrate its nearly $5bn annual advertising firepower on a smaller number of products to “reinvent its marketing”, senior executives at the company said. The company fears it is being outgunned by competitors that spend heavily to promote specific products or categories, such as Apple with the iPod or iPhone, Samsung in televisions, or Canon in digital cameras. As a result, Sony believes, even when its device is superior it might not sell as well.
Nov 16, 2009
It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we'll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we've enjoyed for the past two decades. But I'm betting that things are going to get ugly. We're heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it's more than that, it's a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.
And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.
Nov 16, 2009
Maintaining relevance is essential in every industry, not just financial services. As long as competition thrives and technology continues its relentless march forward, companies that don't evolve are destined for extinction. The good news is that innovation doesn't always have to be radical. In fact, a steady stream of minor enhancements to a product, service, or experience can help a company maintain relevance quite nicely. Innovation is like investing—small gains over time compound to deliver longstanding benefits.
Nov 11, 2009
Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo Co., is a self-proclaimed Apple Inc. fan. He carries an iPhone and uses a Mac laptop. So when Mr. Iwata says Nintendo and Apple aren't competitors, he should know what he's talking about.
Nintendo, whose gadgets and software dominate the portable-videogame market, faces the greatest risk from the emergence of Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch as gaming platforms. But Mr. Iwata says attempts to create a rivalry between the two companies make him "uncomfortable," because he says it isn't true. He argues the companies appeal to different consumers.
Nov 9, 2009
Apple, once untouchable in terms of marketing, has gotten a little roughed up lately. For much of the decade, Apple got away with bashing longtime adversary Microsoft without repercussions. Apple also dominated the MP3 player category without a serious rival. But now, as Microsoft has reinvigorated its marketing and it navigates into the phone handset category, suddenly everyone is bashing Apple.
Nov 6, 2009
How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.
Sound too far-fetched to be true? Perhaps. Yet it happens to be the real-life story of Steve Jobs and his outsize impact on everything he touches.
The past decade in business belongs to Jobs.
Jonathan Salem Baskin
Nov 5, 2009
Have you noticed that most conversations about branding inevitably include references to Harley-Davidson and Apple? Sprinkle in mentions of Coke, Facebook, and Zappos, and you get the context of every agency pitch for more spending on brand engagement, loyalty, or whatever else these examples might suggest. I suggest you ban these references from your next conversation. Forget about them altogether.
Adam Kleinberg
Nov 4, 2009
What's a megatrend, you ask? It's something big. I'm talking really big. Think of a giant unstoppable tsunami of change transforming society as we know it. Think global warming scale -- then apply it to mass human behavior. Think glaciers carving the grand canyon of consumer sentiment.
So what are the new megatrends that I believe will transform society in the coming years? What brands are taking advantage of them? And what can you learn from them?
Nov 4, 2009
Few would argue with the statements: “Less is more” (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect), “Do more with less” (Buckminster Fuller, structural engineer), or “Less but better” (Dieter Rams, industrial designer). The list goes on. Each of these minimalists built through subtraction. You too can benefit from a minimalist approach. Most brands and businesses focus on adding value by adding functions. Yet, subtraction is more than just a way of reducing costs. Subtractive thinking can add real value, both by cutting cost and increasing usability.
Nov 4, 2009
When you think of corporate smartphones, you tend to think almost automatically of RIM's BlackBerrys--they're solid, reliable, iconic, successful and have sewn up something like 40% of that market. The iPhone, with its glossy looks, high-tech allure, reputation as a gaming and entertainment platform and relatively high unit costs isn't something you'd necessarily associate with a corporate environment. Apple itself has gone on record to state that the tens of thousands of apps that are helping to make the phone a success (thousands of which seem business-oriented) are most definitely not business tools, implying the phone itself isn't.
Nov 3, 2009
For the third year in a row, Apple's iPhone will enter the holiday shopping season as the smartphone to beat. But this year, it actually has some respectable challengers. Perhaps the best rival will be the new Droid phone by Motorola for Verizon Wireless. Running the newest version of Google's Android operating system, Droid includes an improved web browser, free turn-by-turn navigation, a gorgeous screen, a slide-out keyboard and a super-fast processor.
Oct 29, 2009
Interesting article on global brands adapting to local culture in Market Leader by Nigel Hollis of Millward Brown. Nice one Nigel. First thing that hit me was that global brands beat local brands in the five categories researched across eight countries. The global brands were more often considered for purchase, and scored better on statements including 'easy to recognize', and having 'distinctive identities'. The two global brands which stood out were Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Interestingly, both of these were seen by a significant share of local consumers as being part of their own national cultures. So much for the image portrayed by doom-mongers in the press of these brands being multinational, American dictators.
Oct 26, 2009
In the past few weeks, Verizon Wireless has fired a pair of loaded torpedoes at rival AT&T—and more notably Apple, a company often viewed as a sacred cow in both the marketing and technology spheres.
Telecom experts say that such an Apple offensive is long overdue, though not without risk. Still, most observers doubt that Verizon’s attacking posture indicates that the company has given up on the ultimate prize—being able to offer Apple’s iPhone on its network once AT&T’s exclusive contract expires.
RIta Chang
Oct 26, 2009
With Apple posting record profits last week, thanks in large part to brisk sales of its iPhone, it may seem downright crazy to mount a smartphone challenge at all, let alone one that takes direct aim at the iPhone. But that's just what Verizon, Google and Motorola are doing. With a teaser ad from Verizon zeroing in on the device's perceived shortcomings, such as its lack of a physical keyboard, the triumvirate is beginning a big push for Droid, the flagship device of the Google-backed Android operating system. So far, industry observers are unmoved by the buzz and give the Droid long odds in its bid to become the next ubiquitous handset.
Oct 25, 2009
By not coughing up a low-cost MacBook, as some had expected, Apple has ceded a potentially huge market to PC makers. But is this just all part of Apple's marketing genius? The announcement Tuesday of the $999 white polycarbonate MacBook was pretty ho-hum as product refreshes go (same price, same color as before) but the implication was important: Apple is surrendering a large, emerging laptop market to Microsoft and its coterie of PC makers.
Oct 23, 2009
Tension has been building behind the scenes for some time between two of the world’s technology titans. That friction became public on Thursday October 22nd when Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, lobbed a lawsuit at Apple, alleging that its American rival’s iPhone infringes a number of Nokia’s patents. Apple, in the words of one of the Finnish firm’s executives, is “attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation”.
Oct 21, 2009
I am a proud, flag-waving member of Generation X, the latchkey kids born between the early 1960s and late 1970s who listened to grunge music while worrying that we'd never make as much money as our parents. My children, 4 and 6, are part of the emerging Generation Z, a demographic too young to be stereotyped.
In between are the mysterious creatures known as Generation Y. Born between the late 1970s and late 1990s, these so-called "millenials" intrigue me. As the first generation raised on the Internet, I suspect that they offer a glimpse into our future.
They are more comfortable with technology than any other generation, they live at a faster pace, and yet they are more distracted. They mature slower, marry later, but use social networks to build large groups of friends. They have more choice and opportunity, and also more stress and anxiety as a result.
Oct 20, 2009
Whatever rumors were brewing a few months ago that Apple would break its exclusivity with AT&T and take its iPhone to other carriers, it's a good bet they can be put to bed for now.
Less than two weeks after Verizon Wireless aired a TV commercial that takes aim at AT&T's network service, it's now going straight for the iPhone. The teaser campaign, which plugs the new Android device and debuted Saturday night during the playoff game between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels, is, however, causing some head-scratching.
Oct 16, 2009
It's uncanny. When known software gets repackaged for iPhones and iPod Touches and passes through the hallowed gates of the App Store, something happens: Almost invariably, it gets cheaper. Waaay cheaper. Good right? Well, not always.
The App Store is a strange new place for developers. Veterans and newcomers engage in bareknuckle combat, driving prices down to levels people wouldn't have imagined charging just a few years ago. Margins drop to razor-thin levels while customers expect apps to get cheaper and cheaper, but with ever increasing quality and depth.
For developers, for other software platforms and potentially for the increasingly fickle customers themselves, it's uncharted, and treacherous, territory. But the most bizarre thing of all is—in an effort to keep people in the App Store, and to prevent competitors from getting a toehold in the mobile app business—Apple's charting a course straight into it.
Oct 15, 2009
Interbrand recently released its 2009 list of the best 100 global brands. Social media monitoring and analytics firm Sysomos took a closer look at this data today. While Interbrand bases its list on criteria such as financial data, international scope and economic value added, Sysomos decided to re-evaluate the top 20 brands by their social media presence on blogs, forums and news sites. Sysomos did not include mentions on Twitter in this study. This obviously led to major changes to Interbrand's list. Google, which placed only 7th on the Top 100 Brands list, ranks 1st when it comes to social media mentions in 2009, while Coca-Cola, the #1 brand on the Interbrand list, ranks only 11th on Sysomos' list.
Interbrand's ranking puts Coca Cola, IBM and Microsoft in the top 3, while the top 3 brands with the most social media mentions according to Sysomos are Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Oct 15, 2009
The basic elements of a brand's visual language--type, color, photographic/illustration style and layout also establish a filter for making decisions on how to best "speak" from the heart. If all the basics are in sync, it will make choices like story, set design, talent, wardrobe, physical space, dialog and tone of voice easy to make.
Oct 13, 2009
The Walt Disney Company, with the help of Steven P. Jobs and his retailing team at Apple, intends to drastically overhaul its approach to the shopping mall. At a time when many retailers are still cutting back or approaching strategic shifts with extreme caution, Disney is going the other way, getting more aggressive and putting into motion an expensive and ambitious floor-to-ceiling reboot of its 340 stores in the United States and Europe — as well as opening new ones, including a potential flagship in Times Square.
Disney Stores, which the media giant is considering rebranding Imagination Park, will become more akin to cozy entertainment hubs.
Oct 12, 2009
"You can have it Steve Jobs' way or you can have it your way," said Dell's Ed Boyd, vp of consumer experience design at the world's No. 2 PC maker.
Apple products may be well known for their design attributes, but Boyd and his team are on a mission to turn Dell's products into devices renowned for artistic self-expression. Wearing a T-shirt that read Design Will Change the World, Boyd was in New York last week to promote the third, and latest, iteration of Dell's Design Studio, a customization program that allows customers to personalize purchases online with artwork commissioned from talent around the globe.
The 44-year-old joined Dell a little over two years ago after an 11-year run at Nike. His team's quest, he said, is to deliver the most personalized products in the world.
Oct 5, 2009
My dad always said, if you want to get ahead of the leader, don’t follow his tracks in the snow. If I owned my own jewelry store, this would be the mantra for everything I did. And my store would be truly different.
I think the greatest challenge we all face is avoiding the well-worn track. So, how do we avoid falling into step with everyone else? The trick is to find inspiration, not from your competitors, but from brands outside your own category of business.
Let’s imagine that Apple went into the jewelry business. Now let’s imagine how the Apple jewelry store might look.
Oct 5, 2009
The Mac vs. PC war hasn't just played out on TV. It's also the biggest brand battle in social media.
For the month ended Sept. 25, Apple and Microsoft finished in the top two spots of the Social Radar Sentiment Index, a social-media analysis of Advertising Age's 200 Megabrands by Infegy. The firm tracks more than 20 million web pages, including all the leading social-media sites, and bases its index on comment volume, percentage of positive mentions and percentage of overall brand mentions within social-media that showed signs of sentiment.
Sep 30, 2009
Anyone who has followed Apple news/rumors/patents over the past couple of years has probably noticed a certain trend emerging: Apple seems to be slowly shifting its entire line of products to touch-based computing. That is to say, it’s moving its products away from buttons and keys, towards manipulation through a touchscreen interface.
While obviously, MacBook trackpads have used some level of touch for a long time, this trend really started with the iPhone, which presented the first excellent use of multi-touch in a consumer device. From there, Apple slowly began adding multi-touch support to the aforementioned notebook trackpads, to the point where they all now feature it. And then of course, there’s the iPod touch, which is an iPod with multi-touch support.
But where things really start to get interesting is when you look at Apple’s patents and the rumors that spin out of them.
Sep 24, 2009
As consumers continue to adopt new mobile habits and increase usage of smartphone technology, it's critical that brands take the initiative to evolve with them, creating effective, easy-to-use mobile sites that enhance the on-the-go consumer experience.
This has never been clearer than when I began reviewing Interbrand's list of top 100 brands for 2009 on my phone. Loading its websites one by one, I discovered that only one in three of those brands has a mobile Internet presence that is usable and easily accessible, meaning that the primary website automatically detects the consumer's phone and directs it to the appropriate mobile optimized website.
Sep 23, 2009
Convergence between the television and the home computer -- a holy grail of the digital age -- has largely eluded the industry, but the living-room screen is now emerging as a key battleground for software and Internet companies.
Improvements to the processors in TV sets are making it feasible to run Web applications on a TV without the need for a special set-top box, such as those offered by TiVo Inc. or Apple Inc.
While challenges remain, including technical issues and the reluctance of parts of the entertainment industry, companies are building chips and Web browsers for TVs, and others such as Yahoo Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. are developing Web applications that can be accessed on a new generation of TV sets.
John Maeda
Sep 21, 2009
A few months ago, I sat with John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple, who described Steve Jobs' primary design principle: "Not what you can add, but what you can remove." It reminded me of the first law I outlined in my book The Laws of Simplicity, that, "The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction." This philosophy runs counter to a typical tech company's approach, where the goal is always to upgrade and add as opposed to subtract. It's true, for the consumer to pay more and get less defies conventional wisdom and seems to contradict economic principles. But simplified technology doesn't necessarily mean less functionality.
Apple products aren't simple technologies by any stretch, but there is a beautiful simplicity to them.
Sep 18, 2009
A video took the web by storm today entitled “Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple.” Basically, it boils down Apple’s latest event into a series of superlatives. It’s a funny video because Apple really does have a pattern of using these types of words over and over again in its demonstrations. Cynics will say this is how Apple brainwashes the masses into buying their products, and gets people jazzed about the tiniest features. But I think there’s something much deeper here.
While certainly there is some element of hearing something so many times that you start to believe it, that’s nothing new, any good salesman will do the same thing. But why I think the tactic works so well with Apple is because they actually believe what they’re saying.
Umair Haque
Sep 17, 2009
Innovation: it's the ultimate source of advantage, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the economic ring. Innovation is what every organization should be ruthlessly pursuing, right? Wrong.
I'd like to advance a hypothesis: awesomeness is the new innovation.
Let's face it. "Innovation" feels like a relic of the industrial era. And it just might be the case that instead of chasing innovation, we should be innovating innovation — that innovation needs innovation. Why? When we examine the economics of innovation, three reasons emerge.
Sep 16, 2009
Would you tattoo a brand name to your skin?
A new company does just that. MyBrandz.com is a new start up that offered free tattoos of brands on September 7th ("Free Tattoo Day") to people who really want to "live the brand." One of the founders says:
We'd like to let the people do what they want with the brands, enjoy the life of the brands and not only buy them and let the brand owners tell them what to with them.
The real attraction here is that consumers get more control over the brand names they love, rather than simply becoming walking billboards for them.
Sep 15, 2009
There might be an app for everything, but does everything need an app?
When it comes to brands, it's easy to wonder if the rush to get into the App Store is more about marketers snapping up the shiniest new wonder than thinking about apps as strategic-marketing tools.
Luckily, as the app business has grown, the apps themselves have grown up. While the Zippo lighter -- enormously popular at 5 million downloads and counting -- remains a bit of an anomaly, most branded apps have moved from the simple "wow" or novelty factor to include branded utility, relationship building and even sales.
Sep 10, 2009
Apple's launch this week of its fifth-generation iPod nano, the first iPod to include a video camera, drew heavy chatter from bloggers and tech nerds alike for its affordable attack on the Flip camera. But the unlikeliest benefactor of the new nano? The radio industry, via Apple's first FM tuner, compatible with new 5G nanos.
Sep 9, 2009
Yes, he’s back.
When the Apple event started today, CEO Steve Jobs took the stage to a very long standing ovation. He used his opening remarks to talk about the importance of organ donation. Jobs noted that he now had the liver of a person in their mid-20s who died in a car crash. Jobs urged everyone to think about organ donation, as it saved his life.
After that, Jobs thanked Apple’s executive team, and especially Tim Cook, who steered Apple’s ship in his absence.
But then it was time for Jobs to quickly move into some impressive statistics.
Sep 8, 2009
As most of you know, Sharper Image, home of innovative products like the Razor scooter, the robotic dog, the Ionic Breeze, the StressEraser and the R2-D2 interactive droid, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What remains is an important lesson.
Innovation is not a strategy and companies which depend on a constant flow of new, innovative products will someday find themselves in deep trouble. As Sharper Image did.
Every successful company needs a branding strategy, which may or may not include innovation. Yet many marketing gurus have elevated innovation to a point where it is widely perceived as the single, most-important function of a corporation. Witness the raft of recent articles on the subject, including an editorial in my favorite publication with the theme, Forget the recession and innovate.
Robert C. Wolcott
Sep 2, 2009
As the global economy emerges from recession, regardless of when or how quickly, the focus in the executive suite is already shifting from cost cutting to recovering top-line growth. What role can the CMO play? If CMOs are truly to be growth champions for their corporations, they can't simply rely on traditional marketing and brand-building techniques.
In nearly a decade of research, my colleagues and I have found that established companies increasingly are successfully building new businesses on a repeated basis, a process we call corporate entrepreneurship. Marketing -- true marketing, not just selling the story but helping create it -- must play a central role. True marketing is about understanding current and potential customers better than anyone else, translating those insights into powerful new offerings and experiences, and creating ever more effective and efficient paths to market.
In other words, marketers must design new businesses, rather than just launch new products.
Sep 2, 2009
Debra Shigley recently went to a CVS pharmacy in Atlanta and paid $25.39 for two prescriptions, a beverage and a roll of toilet paper. The cashier then handed her a receipt that was almost two feet long.
"As long as my arm," said Ms. Shigley, a 30-year-old author who consults with women on careers and fashion. Many shoppers have noticed with chagrin store receipts getting longer and longer as retailers tack coupons, return policies, loyalty points and other bits of information and advertising onto narrow pieces of paper that are supposed to be a record of what you bought and how much you paid.
Aug 30, 2009
FOR years, Microsoft was the stodgy market leader. It sold 90 percent of the world’s operating system software, and generally left the advertising to Dell, H.P. and other hardware makers who licensed Windows. The only time Microsoft hawked its most recognizable brand on television was when the latest version of the software hit the shelves. Then the company flooded the airwaves with commercials full of loud music and swirling imagery saying that the new version of Windows is out — and that it’s awesome!
Apple is the classic smaller insurgent. Its share for desktops and laptops in the United States is just over 8 percent. Every time Apple grabs another point of market share from Microsoft’s partners, its stock price climbs. And one way that Apple has tried to gain share is by running clever ads that ridicule everything Microsoft stands for.
Aug 30, 2009
The elevator speech.
It's one of the prerequisites of business development. In the time you can spend with someone on a 30-second ride, how do you describe your business? For established brands, the elevator speech is not so much a speech but a word. For brands like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you can quickly get from brand name to association in a word.
Let's play the game together, in your head or on paper.
Google? Microsoft? Apple?
Got your word?
Aug 28, 2009
Study everything the iPod's rivals did. Then do the exact opposite.
Aug 28, 2009
Is Kevin Butler the new Mac guy? Actually, Jerry Lambert, the actor who plays Kevin Butler in Sony PlayStation 3 ads breaking this weekend, smacks more of John Hodgman's frumpy PC character than Justin Long's Mac daddy. With bland, cubicled offices as his backdrop, Mr. Lambert, garbed in a Dunder Mifflin-ready shirt and tie, walks and wisecracks as he answers questions one-on-one with fictitious consumers. The new ads from agency Deutsch, Los Angeles, are designed to elicit the same serial attraction that makes consumers anticipate fresh Mac vs. PC ads.
Aug 24, 2009
If you've wondered why the marketing world is obsessed with creating apps for the iPhone, take a stroll down the hallways of Kraft Foods, Gannett and German publisher Axel Springer. There you'll see a sea of iPhones as the brand makes incursions on RIM's BlackBerry, once acknowledged as the smartphone of choice for corporate America. In a recent conference call, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said about 20% of Fortune 100 companies have purchased a total of 10,000 or more iPhones since the handset's release in 2007, and scores of government agencies and businesses have each purchased more than 25,000 iPhones for their organizations.
Aug 22, 2009
It goes without fail, whenever a new product is released from a Gen Y "it" company, my phone rings off the hook. So why are people calling a financial guy when a new product is released? Because these "it" companies market so well that the consumer wants to be an owner ... of the company.
Aug 21, 2009
It's Apple's fault I hate receipts. A few years ago, I grabbed some computer accessory off an Apple Store shelf and brought it to the cashier. I pulled out my paper-stuffed Costanza wallet and gave the cashier my card. Then he asked an unexpected question: "Do you want us to e-mail you your receipt?"
I said yes and thus, unwittingly, began a crusade against the paper receipt—a slip too analog, too temporary, and too wasteful to be anything but superfluous. It is a relic of another age, when record-stuffed filing cabinets lingered in musty basements; when patriarchs sat down with a checkbook on Sunday afternoons while the football game was on; and when we expected to search for things for hours, not seconds. Apple had recognized and made explicit an anachronism of our times. We no longer need a piece of paper to tell us what we bought, just the information that's trapped inside it.
Aug 20, 2009
Nokia already owns the global cell-phone market. Now Tero Ojanperä is launching the world's biggest delivery system for services, apps, and entertainment.
Aug 19, 2009
We were wrapping up a meeting with a client who was developing a new neighborhood. Through a combination of field research, trend studies and historical analysis we defined a story and collection of artifacts and experiences that would make this place meaningful to potential residents as well as the neighboring community. After the meeting our client said, "I finally understand what you guys do. You orchestrate the obvious."
Tom Asacker
Aug 19, 2009
“If I am I because you are you. And you are you because I am I. Then I am not I and you are not you.”
⎯ Unknown Rabbi. It may sound like double-talk, but the wise Rabbi’s message is a profoundly important one for those trying to navigate today’s complex and rapidly evolving marketplace. And it’s this: We are not separate. We define each other. We are fronts and backs of each other⎯producer/consumers; government/citizens; manufacturer/suppliers; consultant/clients; management/talent; and, especially, brand/customers. In fact, a brand only knows what it is in terms of its customers. Unfortunately, we tell ourselves a very different story.
Aug 15, 2009
It can invigorate a company's image or squander its brand equity. To see which gambles paid off, Fortune turned to a few experts to judge some of the most dramatic transformations.
Aug 15, 2009
One of the best books of the year is undoubtedly “Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean,” by Roberto Verganti. In it Verganti, a favorite of this blog, attacks one of the central mysteries of innovation–how can a company successfully create a product that is a radical break from the past, and which shows the way to a new future?
Aug 5, 2009
The recent skirmish between Apple and Google -- filled with legal innuendos, regulatory scuffles and high-profile departures -- has, if anything, crystallized for me what I had been thinking for the past six months: what we have been witnessing is nothing less than a battle for the future of the surfable Web. On one hand, we have Google, which favors the widest, broadest Web possible, so that its cash cow Google Search functionality remains the key to the discovery of all content on the unruly, unmanageable Web, filled with ripcurls and big waves. On the other hand, we have Apple, which favors a Web that can be managed simply and efficiently from apps downloaded for $1.99 or less from its wildly-popular Apps store. (All apps, in fact, except that pesky little Google Voice app!) Which leads to the inevitable question: how often do you actually "surf" the Web anymore?
Aug 5, 2009
Not many branded iPhone games have broken through, but a new one from U.K.-based Barclaycard has quickly become the most popular free, branded game in the history of the iTunes App Store.
Aug 3, 2009
Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago will be getting a month-long billboard ad campaign starting for this week, with one simple message: If you want to escape Microsoft's expensive grip, switch to Google.
Aug 2, 2009
The Federal Communications Commission late on Friday entered the fray over consumer calling choice on mobile phones, sending letters inquiring into Apple’s recent decision to reject Google Voice applications on its iPhone.
The FCC’s letter asked Apple to detail any influence AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive US carrier, may have had in its decision. Google’s applications would have allowed users to make less expensive international calls.
Alain Breillatt
Jul 29, 2009
When what you teach and develop every day has the title “Innovation” attached to it, you reach a point where you tire of hearing about Apple. Without question, nearly everyone believes the equation Apple = Innovation is a fundamental truth. Discover what makes them different.
Jul 28, 2009
Although the world of business development partnerships can be complex, rife with epic contracts with tie-ins and promises, expirations and penalties for all parties, when relationships are struck that reduce customer choice, it is a telltale sign that the product or service being provided is well below acceptable standards. You see, customers aren’t stupid. They will be your product and company’s loudest advocates, more than willing to spread the word on your behalf, if you have a game-changing offering. But if you have to rely on bundling and exclusive contracts just to rope customers in, you probably don’t have something they want all that much anyway.
Jul 27, 2009
Apple is working with the four largest record labels to stimulate digital sales of albums by bundling a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads, in a move it hopes will change buying trends on its online iTunes store.
Jul 24, 2009
Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks.
Jul 24, 2009
“Our goal is not to build the most computers. It’s to build the best.” That was Apple COO Tim Cook two days ago during Apple’s quarterly earnings call. Sure, it may sound like spin from an executive who doesn’t have a better answer as to why Apple isn’t competing in the low-end of the market, and thus, gaining market share. But it’s not.
Jul 23, 2009
Apple, Louis Vuitton, and SAP represent three very different sectors. But all share one thing in common: Their brands and products were shaped in part by designer and innovation strategist Hartmut Esslinger.
David Armano
Jul 22, 2009
In nearly every conference room across the business landscape it's inevitable that at some point the phrase "social media" enters the discussion. Marketers, PR and salespeople are among the first to engage in the discussions, trying to figure how networks can be leveraged to sell more stuff. But I'd like to propose another way to approach the topic. What if we looked at "social media" as a design problem?
Jul 21, 2009
Nokia is trying hard to be seen as an open organization. This website is a good example of a company that's opening its people and process up for public view. If you happen to be interested in working for the company, a huge fan of Nokia or work in a related field, this can be good stuff to see. In essence, it's material for a very limited core audience.
Jul 19, 2009
Apple’s iPhone App Store may be a resounding success. But Google says app stores are a dead end.
Sour grapes? Maybe. It’s no coincidence that Google has placed its money on web-based applications, for its mobile Android operating system as well as its forthcoming Chrome OS.
Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist, said on Friday at the Mobilebeat conference in San Francisco that the future of the mobile industry lies in web-based applications, rather than native software coded to run on specific smartphone operating systems.
Jul 9, 2009
The announcement of Google's Chrome OS plan puts an exclamation point on the challenge faced by Microsoft, but actually doesn't really change the core threat to Microsoft. In short, Google is aiming to render desktop software irrelevant. To thwart them, Microsoft needs Windows to do things that a browser can't--or do the same things significantly better.
Jul 8, 2009
Is Google undercutting the value of its own brand by giving away everything free? That’s an interesting implication raised by the statement that the Yankee Group just sent out about the announcement of a Google operating system for PCs.
Brett Lovelady
Jul 7, 2009
As a concept, American design is very tangible. It's unapologetic. It's a roll-up-your-sleeves and get your hands dirty, "show me" sort of design. American designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors alike feast off an American license to create what's next. It's the boldness of a Corvette or Mustang plus their afterlife hot rod modifications. It's Jobs' confidence to create Apple's Mac, iPhone & iPod. It's Jack O'Neill making his first wet suit so he could surf in cold NorCal waters. It's the Yahoo! or Google boys living on air in college and then creating empires from their hard work.
John Dragoon
Jul 2, 2009
It's almost impossible to escape the constant reminder that we are in a recession. While it's easy to criticize the media for playing up the downturn, marketers in general--and technology marketers specifically--feel obligated to lead with the message, "In these tough economic times..." Enough already!
Jul 1, 2009
An iconic brand is a powerful asset. These brands become part of our lives and stand the test of time. Think what our culture would be like without brands such as Apple, Coca-Cola, and Target. The Nike "swoosh" remains a powerful symbol today, more than 37 years after its creation.
Adam L. Penenberg
Jun 30, 2009
To explain the present and divine the future, Amazon's founder and prognosticator-in-chief, Jeff Bezos, often turns to the past. Fond of historical analogies, Bezos has compared the dotcom boom and bust to the 1849 gold rush, the advent of electricity to today's broadband-infused Web, the printed book to a horse, and the Kindle reader to a car. Perhaps his trippiest simile likens the impact of the Internet on business to the Cambrian period approximately 550 million years ago, after the first multicellular creatures crawled out of the primordial ooze. That's when we experienced an evolutionary big bang, which engendered both the greatest rate of speciation the world has ever seen and its greatest rate of extinction. "What's very dangerous," Bezos summed up, "is not to evolve."
Jun 28, 2009
Attention, iPhone users: We've found a way (via Pre Thinking and Sprint's Facebook page) that you can save up to $1,200 over two years on your service plans! All you have to do is buy a Palm Pre and sign up for service with Sprint.
Derrick Daye
Jun 25, 2009
Customers will talk about your company, its products and services, whether you want them to or not. And online there are a multitude of places to do so. The question is, do you as a brand facilitate or participate? I will argue that you should do both, and tell you why.
Jun 23, 2009
Apple's "Wall of Applications" developed for its recent developer conference did more to demonstrate the breadth and scale of its applications than any single static ad ever could. It's a great example of the power of data as a compelling form of communication. In Apple's case, it's all about the scale of the information to signify the size of the ecosystem.
Jun 22, 2009
The old branding model is past its "sell by" date. It is a product-centered model that comes from packaged goods in the '70s and '80s; offer differentiated benefits that a particular consumer segment is thought to care about. "My peas are picked at the peak of sweetness"...that kind of thing. This model is breaking down as people try store brands and find they are "fit for purpose" at a better price. Now what?
Jun 18, 2009
What are the "moments of truth" for your brand? For consumer goods, it might be the purchase decision at the grocery store, or how laundry looks when it comes out of the dryer. For service companies, it might occur when the customer connects to an agent. But for many brands there's another moment of truth, which occurs when the consumer sits down at the PC and begins typing.
Jun 15, 2009
Online media can be a real paradox—an environment that represents such a wealth of creative opportunity, yet has for so long been a slave to the banner ad. But more brands are rewriting the rules of online ads by growing the dimensions of their ideas beyond the traditional banner or video. Of course bigger is not always better—a bad idea is a bad idea in any size. But with a great idea, breaking the boundaries of traditional online formats can really bring to life what this medium does best.
Jun 15, 2009
Every brand should be using the web to attract and connect with their most ardent fans. And they should do it by cultivating a distinct personality.
Jun 15, 2009
Gadget lovers have never had it so good. It seems, suddenly, that personal computing devices are turning up in all shapes and sizes. For nearly three decades, the PC has dominated the landscape. But a surge of innovation is ripping through personal technology as companies from the computing, mobile phone and consumer electronics worlds all race to define the next intelligent mass-market item.
Martin Lindstrom
Jun 15, 2009
I guess you’ll have heard about the Versace hotel, the Ferrari laptop, and the Apple cell phone. Yet, had I suggested any one of these products to you fifteen years ago, you might have been forgiven for thinking that a few extravagant typos had made it past the editor. Yet today, we’ve become perfectly used to extreme brand extensions like these.
But, can you go too far? Brands have been stretching their way into such new and unexpected product categories that some product progeny can be impossible to link to their brand parents.
Tom Fishburne
Jun 14, 2009
I've thought a lot about "thinking global, acting local" since I moved to the UK to help launch an American brand two years ago.
It's a constant tug-o-war between global consistency and local adaptation. Recently, I had coffee with Patrick Cairns, CEO of Plum Baby, who spent a lot of time in global roles with Unilever. He described the standard dichotomy as being either "mindlessly global" or "hopelessly local".
Jun 12, 2009
Apple's iPhone and other smartphones are generally good for Google: Anything that gets more people using the internet on their cellphones -- and using Google, the web's dominant search engine -- is going to help Google someday make a market in mobile advertising. (That is, as long as it's not cutting down on the amount of time they use the web and Google on their computers.) But Apple's iPhone App Store -- a huge hit -- is not as good for Google. While Google has a tiny business displaying in-app ads, the rest of the movement toward mobile apps and app stores is currently bad for Google. Why?
Jun 9, 2009
Apple executives didn't throw any curve balls at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference today in San Francisco. But the iterative changes hidden within a new, faster iPhone -- and the previously announced software upgrade -- could change not just consumer but also advertiser behavior. Here's a run-down of what's new and what it means to marketers.
Michael Learmonth
Jun 4, 2009
Once, just having a smartphone application was enough, but the era of novelty -- the blowing, shaking, one-trick-pony app -- is pretty much over. To rise above the clutter, an app has to be truly useful, whether it's created by a brand or by an entrepreneur.
May 31, 2009
Mitchell Waite could think of only one reason that Apple’s legal department would leave a voice message last February asking him to call back: he was about to be sued. He called back and discovered that his life was about to change no less than if the lottery authority had told him he’d won the big prize: Apple had decided to feature iBird in a television commercial.
May 25, 2009
Microsoft has used attack ads to go after Apple, and now it has Google in its sights.
Fast Company staff
May 20, 2009
There are no rules about creativity. Which made constructing our list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business a tricky task. We looked for dazzling new thinkers, rising stars, and boldface names who couldn't be ignored. We avoided people we've profiled in the recent past. We emphasized those whose creativity addresses a larger issue -- from the future of our energy infrastructure to the evolution of philanthropy to next-generation media and entertainment. So read on. Enjoy. Quibble. Complain.
May 19, 2009
Apple may have some of the most interesting online ads we've seen in a while, but Microsoft's recent push to paint the competitor as pricey is starting to work, according to data from BrandIndex.
May 15, 2009
The latest Laptop Hunters ad in the famous series features pre-law student Lauren and her mom, Sue. They are looking for speed, portability and battery life, and a few opportunities to slap down Macs.
May 13, 2009
Microsoft is continuing its attacks on Apple products as overpriced with a new Web campaign for its Zune portable media player.
In a Web video, financial planner and former reality show star Wes Moss presents the case that the 120GB iPod would cost $30,000 to fill with music buying songs at $1 each at the iTunes Store. "People worry about the capacity of their iPod," Moss says in the 30-second spot. "What about the capacity of their bank account?"
May 11, 2009
As the company moves from marketing to its once-niche following -- many experts have suggested Apple customers were for many years a cult -- to selling to the ever-broadening sweep of iPhone, iPod and iTouch users, it finds itself wrestling with some of the same issues that confront other truly "mass" marketers, such as whether it needs to be an arbiter, or some might say censor, of what content it makes available.
Ryan Singel
May 8, 2009
If you think Google, Microsoft and Apple are bad-ass, cutthroat, take-no-prisoner companies, you should meet the nation’s wireless carriers, who have collectively convinced those intensively competitive software giants to cripple their products.
Need any more proof that the nation’s four largest wireless carriers - AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile - have too much control over the airwaves, what phones you can use and what applications you can run on them?
May 6, 2009
Apple's rejection of a Nine Inch Nails iPhone app update caused a mini-firestorm across the Internet. Apple-bashing may be the important part of the story to some, but there is a business lesson amidst the noise.
May 5, 2009
Apple and Twitter sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I... well, you know the rest of that rhyme. There's a fascinating little rumor that recently surfaced on the Internet: Apple is interested in acquiring the hot little social networking/lifecasting tool--Twitter.
May 1, 2009
The growing popularity of free video-viewing site Hulu could test the viability of Apple's pay-as-you-go iTunes download business.
Apr 28, 2009
Microsoft is in talks with Verizon Wireless to launch a touch-screen cellphone on the carrier's network early next year, in a bid to compete with Apple's iPhone.
Apr 26, 2009
Don’t say “Apple” and “netbook” in the same breath. In fact, contempt may be too kindly a term to describe the attitude of Apple’s COO Tim Cook toward the mini-laptop category that’s making waves in the market, but not, apparently, in Cupertino.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Apr 23, 2009
As the executives at Apple (AAPL) were passing around the Dom Perignon, their counterparts at other companies which design and manufacture smartphones were putting all sharp objects out of reach. In a recession, there is only so much air in any room. Smart phone sales are suffering like all consumer electronics. If the iPhone is doing extraordinarily well, others are doing badly.
Apr 23, 2009
When the e-mail popped into my inbox with the subject “Packard Bell” I was magically transported to my early teenage years, maybe even younger or, at least, to a time before Apple ruled the earth and beige expensive beige PCs were the household norm. I don’t know much about Packard Bell and, all things considered, it’s a brand that is as memorable as the pigeon waddling outside the window of the coffee shop I am writing this from. Apparently Packard Bell has a whole other appreciation of its brand.
Apr 14, 2009
For 25 years, Microsoft held unquestioned dominance in the personal computer business. But last year the maker of the Windows operating system started to look like a weary, vulnerable champ. Fueled by iPhone-mania and the iconic "I'm a Mac" TV ads, Apple was nearing a double-digit share of the PC market. At the same time, a new generation of sub-$500 "netbooks" that ran on the free Linux operating system was taking off.
Now, Microsoft has launched a determined counteroffensive.
Apr 13, 2009
Thanks to a confluence of factors -- ubiquitous broadband, changing viewer habits and cheaper tech parts -- internet TV is on the verge of a breakout. However, there are still too many interested parties trying to play a part in making a seamless connection -- and nabbing a piece of the payoff.
Apr 10, 2009
Probably one of the biggest criticisms that the iPhone gets is that it’s considered not the best phone for business. That judgement is based on the comparison on the keyboard and email functionality with the Blackberry. This new iPhone ‘Office’ ad suggests that the App Store might just change our view of the device: while for many of us we find our work days spent sending and receiving missives, Apple reminds us that there’s much more to running business and the phone might “just have an app” for all those other tasks we should be doing instead.
Apr 8, 2009
After years of being defined by Apple, Microsoft is fighting back and somewhat surprisingly, landing some punches. The company’s latest round of ads featuring real consumers named Lauren and Giampalo trying to buy laptops for less than $1,000 and $1,500, respectively, seems to have struck a chord.
Apr 8, 2009
Yesterday, prices on Apple's iTunes service went all kablooey. Songs now retail at three price points: $.69, $.99, and $1.29.
It's likely that most "popular" songs will be offered at the higher price point, though the record labels reserved the right to decide (and a brief check today revealed at least a few Top Songs still going for $.99. The presumption is that deep cuts/catalog songs will retail for $.69. Or something.
Do consumers benefit from the new pricing? Of course not. The record labels insisted on it, solely because they can.
Apr 6, 2009
Microsoft's new Lauren is a tech-savvy engineer with a complicated, foreign name, tasked with finding a laptop that'll address his needs for under $1,500. You'll never guess what this Microsoft-paid probable-actor decided to buy.
Apr 1, 2009
"Design thinking" is all the rage, thanks to Apple, Target, you name it--it's the idea that with a little ingenuity, companies can gear their products and services to what consumers want. But one of the more intriguing applications has been when companies want to engage in the design process. This is when design firms like Ideo and Frog are hired to introduce "design processes" as a way to reengineer the way companies work. For example, the U.K. is partnering with patients to "co-design" its processes for serving the sick.
Apr 1, 2009
RIM joins the likes of Apple and Google in offering its own exclusive applications marketplace
Mar 31, 2009
The Pre, Palm's ridiculously slick new mobile phone, stole the show at CES this year. Good looks helped, but mainly it was the Pre's iPhone-like touchscreen technology that wowed the industry crowd. Sure, the Pre has a built-in keyboard, but all anyone wanted to do was drag their fingers along the screen and make magic happen: pop windows open, scroll through sites, fling the contact list to the bottom of the display. The gestures were intuitive, fun, and basically copies of Apple's.
Mar 29, 2009
Once again Microsoft’s ad strategy is off-base. Their newest ad criticizes Apple for being expensive by “documenting” one woman’s quest to find a laptop that meets her needs for under $1000.
Mar 28, 2009
As agencies herd their clients onto the iPhone-application bandwagon, brands are happy to climb onboard. After all, what marketer wouldn't salivate at the engagement prospects behind the 800 million games, utilities and entertainment downloaded from the App Store? And with handset makers Research In Motion and Nokia set to launch their own app storefronts in the coming weeks, app fever is sure to get more fuel. But the rush to apps has led to a backlash in some quarters, and a call for more measured thinking around branded apps.
Mar 27, 2009
By now you've probably seen Microsoft's latest ad featuring Lauren, a woman who claims to be neither cool nor rich enough for a MacBook. Well Lauren, one of our readers has a gift for you.
Mitch Gewirtz of Michigan would like to give you his 17-inch PowerBook. For free.
Mar 27, 2009
With the recession as its backdrop, Microsoft has finally jumped on the value-messaging bandwagon in a new ad, a 60-second spot dubbed "Laptop Hunters" that will break tonight during the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament.
Mar 26, 2009
What do Netflix, Peet's Coffee, and Apple all have in common? Maybe more than meets the eye. First off, each of these companies is defying expectations with stocks that continue to rise-- despite the recession. But how are they doing it? Could it be that the green qualities these companies have are inadvertently helping them beat the recession?
Mar 26, 2009
Research in Motion will soon launch an online store to rival Apple's, with Nokia and Microsoft to follow.
Mar 23, 2009
The Pre, Palm's ridiculously slick new mobile phone, stole the show at CES this year. Good looks helped, but mainly it was the Pre's iPhone-like touchscreen technology that wowed the industry crowd. Sure, the Pre has a built-in keyboard, but all anyone wanted to do was drag their fingers along the screen and make magic happen: pop windows open, scroll through sites, fling the contact list to the bottom of the display. The gestures were intuitive, fun, and basically copies of Apple's.
Mar 20, 2009
So we're supposed to believe Microsoft actually has a better brand than Apple?
Mar 19, 2009
Apple is making it easier for developers to create iPhone applications, which could increase its smartphone market share.
Mar 18, 2009
Apple announced Tuesday a host of new features for the next version of its mobile operating system, iPhone 3.0. Among the additions are two features that the company has long been criticized for overlooking: The ability to cut, copy and paste text between applications, and support for multimedia messages.
Mar 18, 2009
Apple's iPhone 3.0 event today made it abundantly clear that the iPhone is evolving into a gaming machine. Here's why:
Mar 17, 2009
In a shot across the bow of other mobile phone makers that are rushing to emulate aspects of its popular iPhone, Apple on Tuesday previewed some features that are due out in the next version of the phone’s software.
Mar 17, 2009
Apple's third-generation iPhone must adopt several crucial features to outsmart competing smartphones, developers and enthusiasts agree.
Mar 12, 2009
With apologies to Dr. Seuss, "An iPod's an iPod no matter how small." The original $99 iPod Shuffle, released in January 2005, was smaller than a pack of gum and held about 120 songs. Its successor 20 months later dwarfed that to a money clip, and doubled song capacity. It cost $79. Now we have the talking $79 iPod Shuffle that Apple announced Wednesday. It is closer to a tie clasp and holds roughly 1,000 songs.
Mar 12, 2009
Apple has quietly introduced a new 4GB iPod shuffle. Not only is it
bigger on the inside -- it's smaller on the outside. So small, in fact,
that it has no buttons other than the shuffle mode switch. All the
controls are now on the earbud cord, which means that you'll be stuck
using Apple's own earbuds until third party versions make it to stores.
Mar 11, 2009
With Chief Executive Steve Jobs out on medical leave, Apple
Inc. hasn't announced a major new product this year. That has freed the
rumor mill to churn about what new gadgets the company may be preparing
to launch. In the past few days, speculation has swirled that the Cupertino,
Calif., company is developing a device with a touch screen that could
be as big as 10 inches, for release in the second half of the year.
Mar 6, 2009
Parodies of well-known ad campaigns, reworked with anti-hunger themes, will be popping up around NYC ahead of next Thursday's launch of Agencies in Action, a new non-profit designed to get local ad agencies involved in the city's social problems.
Mar 4, 2009
The world's financial system has had its guts torn out. The U.S.
unemployment rate is on the express train to double-digit land. And Apple's biggest rivals--Hewlett-Packard and Dell--are racing to grab whatever business is left with dirt-cheap laptop computers.
Mar 4, 2009
Shaking up the nascent market for electronic books for the second time in two months, Amazon.com will begin selling e-books for reading on Apple’s popular iPhone and iPod Touch. Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle
for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will
give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com,
which include a majority of best sellers.
Mar 3, 2009
Apple has unveiled new Mac models including the long rumored updated Mac Mini.
Feb 27, 2009
Apple's iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it's being offered for free.
Feb 19, 2009
Palm has confirmed that games will be among the applications
available for the Palm Pre, although exactly what type of games will
run on the handset remains unclear. In an interview with Engadget,
Palm said games will be part of the Pre experience, along with various
other applications that will be offered through a Palm-style version of
Apple's App Store. Mobile gaming is extremely popular on the iPhone and
iPod Touch, and is a big part of Apple's pitch for those devices.
Feb 19, 2009
Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual
quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students
who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam
results than those who attend the lecture in person.
Feb 13, 2009
Microsoft
Corp. said it hired a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive to help the
company open its own retail stores, a strategy shift that borrows from
the playbook of rival Apple Inc.
Feb 9, 2009
For the past few years, Microsoft has been losing share in PCs to Apple. It’s been losing huge money on the Web. And it’s been badly shown up in mobile phones, where Apple and Research In Motion have far more momentum and even Palm seems
to have more mindshare. But now, the company is preparing plans to do
what no other company is as well-positioned—at least on paper—to do:
tie the PC, Web and phone together.
Feb 4, 2009
Twenty-five years ago, Apple hurled a legendary marketing sledgehammer at I.B.M. personal computers that ran Microsoft software. During the 1984 Super Bowl,
Apple ran a television ad that depicted those machines as instruments
of Big Brotherish conformity. The ad was shown just once, but people
still talk about it. Today, Apple is still producing ads that hammer away at computers that
run Microsoft’s software. But this time, Apple’s pounding is constant,
even as Microsoft has been weakened by product stumbles and a series of
ads that fell flat with the public.
Jan 29, 2009
If Palm ends up in court over the Pre's multitouch,
it'll join a prestigious line of firms that have tussled with Apple,
which loves a good legal battle almost as much as sexy aluminum.
In
Apple's legal trail are, for the most part, corpses. Save for one
little skiffle with you-know-who that haunts them to this day. And
along their bloody way, they've managed to be involved in several
landmark decisions that continue to shape technology IP law to this
day. Behold, Apple's most important legal disputes.
Jan 27, 2009
The "don't rip off our IP" spat between Apple and Palm continues: Turns
out the U.S. Patent Office has gone ahead and awarded Apple a patent
covering its "multitouch" technology, including gestures such as
"pinching" and "swiping." Will it be the ace up Apple's sleeve?
Jan 22, 2009
Apple turned in a strong holiday sales season as executives tried to
reassure the market that the company would be fine even if CEO and
co-founder Steve Jobs isn't able to return from medical leave.
Jan 15, 2009
For millions of Apple fans, Steve Jobs is irreplaceable. But if there's
one man Jobs himself trusts to stand in his shoes, it is his second in
command, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.
Jan 13, 2009
In this first installment of Dumenco's Media People -- a new interview
series with media grandees conducted by our media columnist Simon
Dumenco -- Macworld VP-Editorial Director Jason Snell talks about
Apple's challenges in the wake of news reports about Apple CEO Steve
Jobs' mysterious health problems.
David Carr
Jan 12, 2009
Remember that when iTunes began, the music industry was being
decimated by file sharing. By coming up with an easy user interface and
obtaining the cooperation of a broad swath of music companies, Mr. Jobs
helped pull the business off the brink. Those of us who are in
the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like
him convinces the millions of interested readers who get their news
every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.
Jan 9, 2009
After years of fits, starts, threats and ultimatums, Steve Jobs and
three major labels have come to terms on a deal: Music will be
available immediately on iTunes without DRM restrictions. Free of the
limitations that currently restrict music playback to Apple products,
the new plan will let consumers choose from three price levels instead
of the 99-cent song model the store implemented on day one.
Jan 7, 2009
The big theme at this year’s Macworld Expo is not a product, it’s a
year: 2010. Next year’s conference is touted on banners, information
booklets, and even the show badges, which come with an ad for next
year’s event — the first without Apple, its anchor tenant.
Jan 6, 2009
This week the media is a-squabble over the death rattles coming from
the book publishing industry. Yes, it's in dire condition. But a new
business model might bring readers back. Call it the Free Lunch model.
Dec 30, 2008
The retailer is selling the phone, but not at the steep discount previously reported. Instead, it's AT&T that will be the low-priced leader, selling $99 handsets -- albeit refurbished and for a limited time.
Dec 24, 2008
USA Today has made available its own
application on the Apple App Store, for the iPhone and iPod
touch. Designed and developed in cooperation with Mercury Intermedia of
Brentwood, Tenn., the USA Today app -- which is free --
allows users to browse and read stories from all the newspaper's
print sections: News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech and Travel.
Articles can be shared via e-mail, text message or Twitter, and are
automatically saved for later reading.
Dec 22, 2008
There
was a time when a glowing Apple logo symbolized radical nonconformity.
Being part of a miniature customer base was, to Mac users, like being a
member of a holier-than-thou, secret society — a "Cult of Mac," if you will. But when Apple's
ecosystem grew beyond notebooks and desktops to phones and internet
services, that era came to an end.
Dec 21, 2008
The ailing creator of the iPod and iPhone is next to irreplaceable. No other chief executive is so inextricably linked to his company's
brand and products. As one Wall Street analyst put it this year, "Apple
is Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs is Apple." Alas, Jobs is all too human.
Dec 19, 2008
Salesforce is in the middle of a metamorphosis that could put it in the center of the
development of services that consumers will start using.
Dec 17, 2008
This fall, ABI Research did an online study
among 1,001 tech-savvy consumers to gauge their perceptions of tech
brands.
Dec 8, 2008
Nine components that powerfully engaging brands share with religion.
Dec 3, 2008
Apple doesn't want you to believe what it says, even though the company claims it's not lying. That's the gist of the Cupertino company's legal response to a
lawsuit regarding allegedly misleading advertising for the iPhone 3G.
Davis Thinking
