When Platforms Collide; Mobile and Payments
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that covered my areas of investment interest for 2010. Three of the areas I find most interesting are the mobile ecosystem and the payments sector and the theme of “platform” business models. You can find that post here. The natural question I’ve since been asked is: “What [...]
Dissecting Google's Nexus One Strategy
Two days back Google announced the release of their Android 2.1 based mobile phone, NexusOne, with much fanfare. In spite of the fact that CES is just around the corner, this announcement got the tech blogosphere and mainstream media go wild. The reactions from the pundits ranged from why is Google getting into handset business to why [...]
The most important app on your phone
The last couple of days have seen a flurry of activity in mobile. Apple announced its response to Google’s acquisition of AdMob by acquiring mobile ad network, Quattro. Google announced the much awaited Google phone, the Nexus One. The bulk of the discussion has been around the mobile application battle between Apple and Google. Henry Blodgett thinks [...]
Areas I’m most likely to invest in during 2010
I have always been fairly thematic in my investment approach. For me, the process starts with identifying big markets that are either 1) emerging (and will therefore be created over the next several years) or 2) undergoing some structural shift that will enable new entrants to grab market share from incumbents. I have seen Companies succeed in [...]
Will Free Decimate Freemium/Paid Mobile Apps?
ABI Research, a market intelligence company specializing in global connectivity and emerging technology, has released a new report on the mobile market that proclaims the death of paid mobile apps and freemium apps. Some of the predictions from the report include Mobile application downloads to reach five billion by 2014 from 2.3 billion in 2009 [...]
Addressbook As A Platform, The Way A Contact Manager Should Be
I always felt that the address book or contact manager I have on any internet enabled device is very primitive. Even in this era of mashups and APIs, our web based address books and the ones on our smart(dumb?)phones are no different from the rolodex we had decades back. If I couldn’t get any additional [...]
Payments: A Day on the Inside
Image by monty.metzger via Flickr Earlier this week, I participated in a truly special event, the Lydian Roundtable. Lydian is a gathering of the best and brightest in the electronic payment industry and is hosted by my friends at Market Platform Dynamics, David Evans and Karen Webster. Every year, they bring together 50 to 100 [...]
Android is Like Linux: Excites Geeks, Not End Users
There has been some good discussion around Android recently and Daring Fireball blog has some very good points on the opportunity Android has in the market. I 100% agree with him that the iPhone needs competition. Unfortunately, the competition doesn’t look very good so far. While John Gruber makes a case where competition could exist [...]
Google Voice Webapp For iPhone And The SaaS Factor
David Poque writing on NYTimes says Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the [...]
Tapping The Clouds For Mobile Nirvana
One of the many reasons for the success of SaaS in the desktop world is that it frees users from the restrictions put on by the OS vendors. Whether it is Apple’s OSX or Microsoft’s Windows OS, there are some inherent restrictions imposed on both the users and developers due to the proprietary nature of these operating systems. The [...]
Thinkfree Releases Netbook Edition For All Major Operating Systems
Thinkfree is taking a multi-pronged approach to establish themselves as a credible alternative to Microsoft Office. They have an online edition, they have a desktop suite, they have an Android version, they have a MID version, they have a standard server edition, they even have an enterprise server edition with powerful collaboration features and they [...]
SaaS Will Accelerate The Convergence Of Consumerism With Enterprise
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Last week Stacey Higginbotham wrote on GigaOm about how CISCO Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, sees an end to the idea of business machines. She was quoting him from Cisco’s third quarter earning conference call. I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. [...]
Mobile Phone Processing As A Service?
Image by ronin691 via Flickr Technology Review has an interesting article about a research project, from Intel Research, where researchers have built a technology that taps into the Cloud for the processing power needed to do complex tasks on a mobile phone. The project, titled CloneCloud, integrates Cloud Computing to Smart Phones seamlessly. CloneCloud uses [...]
E-Government – It’s Not Just the US Leading the Charge
Much has been said in recent months of the revolution beginning to occur in the US Government Agencies with the more open and accessible stance that Obama is taking. Notwithstanding the dearth of activity on his Twitter account post election, news of his blackberry, the new websites, the ability for citizens to contribute and the [...]
