Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘google’

Android Still on Top; Now Crushing BlackBerry

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“Google’s Android operating system solidified its place at the top of the charts in the U.S. with 44 percent of the market, according to a pair of reports out today.

While Android’s momentum shows no sign of let-up and Apple continues to hold its own, both are applying pressure to Research in Motion, which is hemorrhaging OS market share and was overtaken in handset sales by Apple in the third quarter.

According to NPD, which measures consumer purchases, Android’s share of the U.S. smartphone market in the third quarter increased 11 percentage points from the previous quarter while Apple’s share grew by 1 percentage point to 23 percent. Research In Motion’s share continued to tumble, dropping from 28 percent to 22 percent.

U.K. research firm Canalys, which arrived at similar U.S. numbers for the OS market, said that Nokia remained the top smartphone manufacturer worldwide with a 33 percent share, down from 38 percent in the second quarter. Apple took second with 17 percent, up from 13 percent last quarter, while RIM followed with 15 percent, a slide from 18 percent in the second quarter.

The Canalys numbers reflect the latest quarterly sales numbers from Apple and RIM, showing Apple eclipsing RIM for the first time. Apple also moved into fourth place in global handset sales, passing over RIM in the process. RIM is still the top vendor in Latin America with about 40 percent of the market but its prospects are looking tough with pressure from Apple and particularly Android, which appears to be eating into its sales. NPD reported that the iPhone 4 was the top-selling phone in the U.S., followed by the BlackBerry Curve, LG Cosmos, Motorola Droid X � and HTC Evo 4G.

Nokia continues to hold the top spot in the five so-called BRIIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China, which bodes well for Nokia as those markets are growing 111 percent year-over-year, faster than the market overall which grew by 95 percent to 80.9 million shipped units. However Android, as my colleague Kevin has noted, could eat into Nokia’s share in places like India as it moves down market into cheaper smartphones.

That’s going to be a ongoing theme as smartphones work their way into more hands. The manufacturers and OS makers who can manage the growth in lower tier smartphones should enjoy a significant volume advantage. Nokia is already losing out on the lucrative high end of the market to Apple and is now facing the threat of Android outpacing sales in mid and lower-tier smartphones. Android shipments grew 1,309 percent year-over-year from 1.4 million units in the third quarter of 2009, according to Canalys, to more than 20 million units in the third quarter of this year, good enough for a quarter of the worldwide OS market.

Meanwhile, phones running a Windows operating system account for just 3 percent of the worldwide market, according to Canalysis. With Windows Phone 7 shipping this month, Microsoft will have to claw its way back to relevance. Microsoft’s tight control on handset interface customization and its high-end specifications could limit how vendors differentiate Windows Phone 7 devices and how well they sell down market, said Canalys.”

Read original post here.

Read Full Post »

The Big 11 Tech Acquirers

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Distressed IP, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

Fundamental changes in networking and computing are shaking things up in the enterprise IT world. These changes, combined with ubiquitous broadband and new devices like smart phones and tablets, are leading to new business models, new services and shifts in corporate behavior. It’s also leading to a lot of M&A activity as companies jockey for position before the ongoing technology shift settles into the new status quo.

A report out today from Deutsche Bank lays out some of the shifts and names what it believes are the 11 most likely acquirers, calling those companies the Big 11. The bank’s Big 11 are: Apple, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm. They were selected because of their size, their cash balance and their willingness to make strategic acquisitions. The report talks about which companies each might acquire, but it also gives a wealth of data on the companies which comprise the Big 11 that any startup looking for a buyer on the software and infrastructure side might find worthwhile.

In addition to the information on buyers, the report goes on to explain why many deals today are valued at multiples that are so much higher than the potential revenue of the company (HP’s buy of 3PAR is a prime example of this trend):

On the other hand, the multiples paid for these companies go counter to typical expectations for valuations. All of these deals were priced at considerable premiums to forward estimates. The implication is that the larger companies believed that there were strategic benefits far in excess of the smaller companies’ near-term prospects. A common criticism of acquisitions holds that management teams of large companies try to buy revenue and earnings to offset far lower growth rates in their core businesses. This does not appear to be the case with these deals. We see this as confirming our thesis that large companies are looking to buy technology and product synergies. In all of these deals, we see larger companies either significantly building up weak product lines or looking for the ability to bundle new features into existing equipment.

Some of the 50 targets mentioned are:

  • Salesforce.com (s crm )
  • VMware
  • Adobe
  • Citrix
  • Research In Motion
  • Riverbed Technology
  • SAP
  • Atheros
  • Skyworks
  • f5 (sffiv)
  • Juniper

Each are on the list of potential candidates for different reasons associated with improving the quality and speed of delivering web-based applications and services from a cloud-based infrastructure to a multitude of devices. However, there are plenty of startups and private companies that are pioneering new technologies in these areas which are also fair game. The report doesn’t go into the content side of the business where companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Disney, etc. are fighting for features and services to expand their reach and platforms.

Since we’re living through an enormous period of potential disruption thanks to technology, the giants in the industry find themselves playing a game of musical chairs as they seek the best seat at the table for the future. Startups and larger public companies that will help those giants fill out their offerings before the music stops are under the microscope and perhaps at the top of their valuations.”

Read the original post here.

Read Full Post »

Zynga Moves 1 Petabyte Of Data Daily; Adds 1,000 Servers A Week

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from TechCrunch.

“We all know that social gaming giant Zynga is one of the fastest growing tech companies of all time and has turned games like FarmVille into a mainstream phenomenon. And via international expansion and deals with Facebook and Google, Zynga has continued its path to domination of the social gaming market. We have an idea of the company’s revenue and other gaming statistics, but there is some data involving the backend of the platform that has not been revealed. Today, Zynga’s CTO Cadir Lee is speaking at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference about the gaming giant’s infrastructure, business and challenges.

Lee offers the following statistics:

  • 10 percent of the world’s internet population (approximately 215 million monthly users) has played a Zynga game.
  • The company adds as many as 1,000 servers every week to accommodate growing traffic.
  • Zynga’s properties move a whopping 1 petabyte of data daily, and the company operates its own data centers; using a hybrid private/public cloud infrastructure.
  • Zynga’s technology supports 3 billion neighbor connections on games like Frontierville and Farmville.

The company itself has been steadily adding employees, through both acquisitions and new hires, and now counts more than 1,200 full time employees and includes 13 game studios.”

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

Android phones look to expand app offerings

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, mobile 2.0, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

“Pinger Inc., a San Jose developer of mobile applications, can get twice as much in sales from programs for Apple devices than for phones powered by Android software. That’s not stopping it from creating its first Android app.

“Even if the revenue generation might be less, we think it’s still going to be significant,” said Joe Sipher, chief product and marketing officer at Pinger, which makes text-messaging and other programs. “Our users are saying, ‘Gosh, I switched to an Android phone. Can you put your Textfree app on Android?’ ”

Pinger and other programmers don’t want to miss out on the $40 billion that Booz & Co. estimates will come from sales of apps by 2014, much of it from Google Inc.‘s Android platform. Android unseated Research In Motion Ltd.‘s mobile operating system as the top U.S. smart phone software last quarter, making developers more willing to put up with its drawbacks, including higher app-creation costs and an online marketplace some users consider harder to navigate than Apple’s App Store.

PopCap Games Inc., maker of the Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies games, doesn’t have any titles in the Android Market. But by mid-2011, the Seattle company expects to release games simultaneously for iPhone and Android handsets.

“Even though we are not making any money on Android right now, we have pretty high hopes for it,” said Andrew Stein, PopCap’s director of mobile business development. “There’s really no reason why users shouldn’t consume and buy content to the same extent on an Android phone as they are on an iPhone.”

Android phones like Motorola Inc.’s Droid X and HTC Corp.’s Droid Incredible are gaining devotees. Stein expects the revenue generated from Android games to approach that of PopCap’s iPhone versions by the end of 2011.

Apple way ahead

A wide variety of apps – as well as the availability of the most popular ones for games, location, texting and content – is critical to luring phone buyers. Android lags behind Apple by that measure. Apple has more than 250,000 apps available, compared with about 70,000 for Android.

Like Apple, Google takes a 30 percent cut of revenue from apps sold in its marketplace.

“We want to reduce friction and remove the barriers that make it difficult for developers to make great apps available to users – across as many devices, geographies and carriers as possible,” said Randall Sarafa, a Google spokesman.

Google may be taking steps to remedy some of the problems that make Android apps less lucrative to developers.

Apple iTunes users can do one-click shopping because iTunes saves their information. While Android buyers can do the same if they sign up for Google Checkout, that service doesn’t have as many users.

Android Market also lacks features for in-app purchases, which some developers of Apple apps use to sell new game levels or virtual products, said Tim Chang, a venture capitalist at Norwest Venture Partners, whose investments includes Ngmoco of San Francisco, which makes games for the iPhone.

Google is in talks with eBay’s PayPal to add its payment service, three people familiar with the matter said last month. That may ease the process. Google may also offer tools that let developers sell subscriptions and virtual goods from within apps, Andy Rubin, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in June.

For now, producing programs for Android isn’t as lucrative. Loopt Inc., the maker of an app for locating your friends on a map, and Zecter Inc., which offers the ZumoDrive file storage service, said they make less from the sales of their Android apps than they do from their iPhone versions. Neither of the Mountain View companies would specify the difference.

Developers hesitant

“There’s no question Android has a lot more phones out than six months ago, but that’s very different from saying Android is a more appealing platform for developers,” said Sam Altman, chief executive officer at Loopt.

ZumoDrive makes money by getting people to download the free program and then upgrade to a paid version. Thirty percent more iPhone customers do that, said CEO David Zhao.

Besides generating fewer downloads of paid apps, fewer people click on ads in Android programs, according to data from Smaato Inc., a Redwood City mobile-ad firm. In July, the iPhone had a click-through score of 140 in the United States, compared with 103 for Android, Smaato said.

Plus, the market share Gartner Inc. measures for Android – 34 percent in the United States last quarter – doesn’t mean there are that many customers for apps, said Pinger’s Sipher. Some Android phones don’t have the ability to access Google’s app store and the proliferation of models means some programs won’t work on some phones.

App creators have to contend with various versions of Android and differences in screen resolution and keyboards. That makes it more expensive to test programs and can force developers to design for the lowest common denominator, said Bill Predmore, president of POP, which builds mobile applications and ads for such clients as Google, Microsoft Corp. and Target Corp.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/01/BU381F6GOA.DTL&type=tech#ixzz0yLeTxmEa

Read Full Post »

Android sits atop U.S. smart phone market for Q2

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , on August 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good techarticle from SF Gate.

“If you’ve been following along, getting definitive smart phone market share numbers can be a little tricky so take this with a grain of salt.

According to the NPD Group, the Android operating system is now the top smart phone platform with 33 percent of the market in Q2. That puts it ahead of BlackBerry at 28 percent and the iPhone at 22 percent and represents the first time since 2007 that the BlackBerry wasn’t the top operating system in the U.S.

This comes just days after Nielsen said that BlackBerry remained on top with 33 percent of the market in Q2, ahead of Android’s 27 percent market share and the iPhone’s 23 percent. The Nielsen figures looked at the six months up through Q2 while NPD focused just on the quarter so that may explain the discrepancy.

But the overall picture is that Android is growing and fast. That it eclipsed the iPhone isn’t much of a surprise considering there are more than a dozen Android phones available on four carriers, compared to really just one iPhone model sold through AT&T.

But if the NPD numbers are true, Android’s rise and BlackBerry’s fall are more pronounced than I originally thought. I assumed that BlackBerry would enjoy an advantage for a little while longer but the threat from Android is very real.

This makes Research in Motion’s new BlackBerry Torch even more of a vital product for the company. RIM is not trying to hold on to its top spot, it’ll need the Torch to help regain it.

NPD’s Ross Rubin said the Torch and its new BlackBerry 6 operating system, won’t likely blunt the Android onslaught.”

Read more here. 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »