The Killer That Wasn't
Well, it is amazing how much certain companies desperately want the latest Apple-killer; however, the metaphorical road of capitalism has the ditches strewn with the rusting remnants of those who tried and failed. Instead of hyping the next iPad-killers-that-won’t, companies are now urging their useful idiots to describe their products as being Apple-killers without actually saying they are Apple-killers.
Kind of like RIM and BusinessWeek :
Research In Motion Ltd., whose BlackBerry smartphone rose to prominence on Wall Street, is now targeting business customers with a tablet computer to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPad and add a fresh source of revenue.
So it’s going to compete with Apple; but so is every other tablet being “rushed” to market. Ah, but RIM wishes you to know this tablet is different.
The BlackBerry PlayBook, slimmer and lighter than the iPad, supports corporate applications and has advanced data-security features, RIM said yesterday. The device has a 7-inch (18- centimeter) screen, smaller than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display.
“The principal market for this is busy working people,” RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in an interview in New York. “We’re not trying to say this is all things to all people.”
So the RIM tablet for busy working people is called the PLAY Book. And it’s not an Apple-killer. Are we all on the same page now? We all do understand that RIM isn’t trying to sell this Play Book to anyone with money to spend, right? RIM is very serious about who they want to sell this product to, and frivolous people need not apply. It’s for busy working people only.
Could RIM be any more blatant they would really, really like the PlayBook to be an Apple-killer? Seriously, RIM : this passive-aggressive number isn’t fooling anyone.
“RIM needs a tablet device because it’s necessary for all the device makers to have a multiplatform strategy to compete in the long term,” said Scott Sutherland, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. in Los Angeles. “With new devices coming out on multiple operating systems, it’s as much defensive for RIM to have a tablet as it is offensive.”
Seriously, now : did that make sense to anyone? A tablet is offense and defense? Silly us, we were thinking it was a matter of survival.
But we digress - back to the serious :
RIM may sell 6 million PlayBooks in the first year because the tablet may be better suited for business users and “productivity-centric consumers” than the iPad, Mike Abramsky, an RBC Capital Markets analyst in Toronto, said in a note today.
Yes. Right. Because it isn’t like you can run business productivity apps on the iPad.
Apps like word processors, spreadsheets, tie into Microsoft Exchange servers, or run WebEx.
...
Oh... wait... it’s exactly like that. With printing coming soon, too.
“The smaller screen allows a little more portability than an iPad, making it easier to carry in your briefcase,” Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities LLC in Boston, said in an interview.
That may be a deliberate strategy to counter the success of the iPad among business users. Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said in July that 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies are providing the iPad to employees or testing the tablet computer.
We don’t know what RIM is grasping for here, save for a fist-full of straws. We have talked to CEO’s who have used iPads and iPhones and they are of the mind if they were going to use anything with a smaller screen than the iPad, it’s right to the iPhone. They don’t want their means of communication in a briefcase, they want it on their person.
And we don’t know what sort of briefcase upper management at RIM carry, but the iPad didn’t have any difficulty squeezing into a standard briefcase at all.
Just pausing here to recap : Non-Apple-killer-killer, smaller than the iPad and it’s for busy working people. Got it. To this point the PlayBook doesn’t sound like a brilliant idea, but then RIM just seals the deal with this :
The PlayBook has been built with the BlackBerry’s security features that made it popular with governments and Wall Street banks, differentiating the tablet from the competition, Balsillie said. The device’s Web browser is compatible with Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash technology to allow customers to watch a broader range of video content from the Internet, he said. The iPad doesn’t run Flash video or animation.
By promoting the PlayBook’s compatibility with Flash, “absolutely they’re trying to differentiate some of the advantages of going with the PlayBook platform,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in San Francisco. He rates the company “market perform.”
In the name of all that is Holy and Good, up to and including the name of God, how can RIM possibly use the words “security” and “flash” in the same breath?
June 2010 : Adobe Fixes Flash Zero-Day with Massive Security Update
July 2009 : Adobe Flash vulnerability affects Flash Player and other Adobe products
Oct 2008 : Adobe Flash Player Multiple Security Issues and Vulnerabilities
Dec 2007 : Flash Player update available to address security vulnerabilities
March 2006 : Adobe Issues Critical Macromedia Flash Update
It absolutely boggles the mind and staggers the imagination that a company the purports to prize and guard customer security would introduce into its systems one of the most insecure pieces of software ever written !
Add to this we don’t know how much the PlayBook will cost, we don’t know it’s media capabilities (RIM isn’t saying), and that if you are not in range of a wi-fi network you can only connect to the internet if you also own a BlackBerry device -
We can’t understand why RIM isn’t touting the PlayBook as the iPad killer. Can’t understand it at all.
3... 2... 1...
We didn’t want to have to do this but someone is buying themselves a lot of positive PR to offset a movie which, as far as we can tell, mostly tells the truth. Here is the spin :
On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced his biggest expenditure to date: a $100 million grant aimed at improving public education in Newark, in partnership with Cory A. Booker, the city’s mayor, and Chris Christie, New Jersey’s governor.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s gift, which he announced during an appearance with Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” instantly propelled him to the top echelons of American philanthropy and made him something of a hero.
And here is the problem with the above. Like nearly every other fringe media outlet on the planet, the NY Times purposely left off two words when describing the $100 million dollars.
In Stock.
In reality Marky has not given anyone anything but air. Completely illogical people are saying for no reason founded in reality that Facebook, Inc. is worth $33 billion dollars. If that were true, then Facebook, Inc. would have a P/E rating 7.5 x more than Google, Inc., and that is a highly dubious statement to make.
And it really is air at this point because nobody - let us repeat that because it sounded vaguely important NOBODY - outside of Facebook, Inc. really knows what Facebook, Inc. has for revenue. It is not yet a publicly traded company and everyone who says Facebook made $X dollars last quarter is guessing. Pulling numbers from thin air.
Just like with the valuation.
The problem is simply one of gravity. As a very wise person once educated us - the only time a stock can’t go lower is when it is at zero. So that $33 billion dollar valuation could be $33 day-after-tomorrow under the right set of circumstances. And remember : the government of New Jersey is going to borrow real money against this tissue-paper-promise.
Has anyone asked what will
happen if the value of this
Facebook stock grant goes
from $100 million to zero?
Personally, we believe before the government is allowed to touch one cent of the money or “leverage it” (read : borrow against it) Mark Zuckerberg should be forced to commit to a surety bond guaranteeing the $100 million dollars. That way we know the money behind it is very real and won’t evaporate.
Unbelievable
Following up on the doom ’n’ gloom for AT&T we have this shocking story :
Canaccord Genuity initiated coverage of Apple (AAPL) Tuesday with a "buy" rating and a price target of $356 per share.
In the long, laudatory accompanying note by T. Michael Walkley, their new Apple specialist, the two paragraphs that jumped out at us were the ones that talked about the company's ability not just to innovate, but to turn those innovations into cash.
For example, he writes, Apple sold 17 million mobile handsets in the first half of 2010, compared with 400 million handsets sold by Nokia (NOK), Samsung and LG. Yet it pulled in 39% of the industry's profit during that period, more than the 32% earned by the world's three largest handset makers combined.
... !
Stunning doesn’t describe the magnitude of this news. What shock to get over first ?
Our knee-jerk first reaction is $356 per share ? Oh, how we wish we had not sold our Apple stock at $20 like the “professionals” told us to.
Next came 39% ?! Someone is clearly sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and that someone is named Apple.
Perhaps last - we are not sure because of the enormity of the first two shocks - is the sheer disparity, the magnitude of the difference between Apple and the also-rans. To make more profit than Nokia, LG, and Samsung combined ?
Someone should send a reminder to Steve Ballmer of what he said waaaaay back in 2007 :
But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
We are pretty sure Ballmer would sell his soul, the souls of his entire family, and every soul of every Microsoft employee to have the “2 or 3%” Apple has right now.
ABANDON SHIP !!
This morning would seem to bring quite a clash of titans. It would seem every media outlet is trying to out-do every other media outlet with completely baseless claims about the imminent death of AT&T. Why, everyone just knows Apple is going to jump ship and head over to Verizon, thus driving AT&T into oblivion. Or early retirement. Or wherever it is has-been cell phone carriers end up :
Verizon's on the Horizon for Some AT&T Users
which begat :
Report: 1.4 million AT&T iPhone users would switch to Verizon
which begat :
AT&T to lose 23% iPhone users to Verizon--report
and finally jumped the shark with :
Survey: Nearly 50% of AT&T iPhone users would switch to Verizon
*WARNING* : Should you choose to actually click on that last link, you will be treated to the most appalling, obnoxiously intrusive ads on the whole of the inter-tubes. You were warned!
So we thought for grins and giggles we would search out... oh, we don’t know exactly. Perhaps something that would bring a little balance to the girly-man shriekfest over AT&T’s impending doom at the hands of Verizon. Lo and behold we found AT&T itself has a little something to say on the subject :
AT&T Chief Randall Stephenson recently spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York City, Stephenson stated that while the iPhone was a major success for AT&T, two-thirds of iPhone purchases came from previous AT&T customers and were not likely to switch to another network just because the iPhone opened up over there as an option.
More to the point, Stephenson says that the iPhone 4 was such a huge success that they’ve locked in a huge chunk of their existing customers into new two year contracts. Added together, Stephenson thinks it’s unlikely that a Verizon iPhone would lead to a mass defection of users.
Exactly. If “reporters” would, oh, do their jobs by conducting basic research, they wouldn’t look so foolish by being so wrong all the time. In all likelihood, even if the numbers are correct, the people alleged to be “jumping ship” are probably not iPhone customers and probably do not represent all that much profit to AT&T in the first place. If anything, AT&T will probably be throwing parties (at least out of public view) when these low-profit customers bolt for the door and infest Verizon.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out !
Oh, and lest we forget - here is the reaction of, well, you know, competent adults that aren’t acting like teenage girls :
AT&T Raised at Credit Suisse Given Concern Verizon to Get IPhone
AT&T Inc. was raised to “outperform” at Credit Suisse Group AG, which said Verizon Communications Inc.’s likely introduction of the iPhone in the first quarter won’t hurt AT&T’s business as much as investors fear.
“The impact from the loss of iPhone exclusivity should be substantially less than current valuations imply,” Jonathan Chaplin, a Credit Suisse analyst, wrote in a report sent to clients today. AT&T is currently the only U.S. company that offers Apple Inc.’s iPhone.
Exactly.
Missing from all of the school-girl natterings of the grab-as-many-eyballs-as-possible crowd is the biggest reason many users will not switch from AT&T, iPhone or no iPhone :
You cannot use the internet and your phone at the same time with Verizon.
Let us repeat that point because it sounded, oh, vaguely important :
You cannot use the internet and your phone at the same time with Verizon.
The CDMA protocol Verizon uses does not allow for the use of Voice and Data at the same time.
For some people, who aren’t with Verizon for a reason, this is a very big deal. Some people with AT&T depend on being able to access information while they are on a telephone call. Maybe they need directions. Maybe they need a stock quote. Maybe they need to access the company servers to give a client a quote. The needs vary, but the difference is immense - having to call people back because you can’t get them what they need now is unprofessional and poor customer service.
And for a lot of people, the occasional dropped call is worth the tradeoff in customer service and convenience. One simply doesn’t abandon ship without a better tool to replace the one currently being used. Especially when one is under contract to use that tool for two years.
Don't Look, Ethel !!
Wow! You have to admit that some headlines just grab your attention :
Nokia exec compares using Android to peeing your pants for warmth
Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki has heard all the chatter about pundits suggesting the world’s largest handset maker should ditch Symbian and MeeGo in favor of Android and he thinks that’s a bad idea. In fact, you might say he’s pissed at the idea.
The outspoken Nokia executive said using Android would be like the Finnish boys who peed their pants for warmth – it would provide momentary relief but there would be bigger problems down the road.
We don’t want to go out on a limb here, but we think Mr. Vanioki doesn’t cotton to Android all that much, but still he may actually have a point.
Vanjoki is no stranger to frank talk, as he has publicly said that the N97 didn’t provide a great user experience. I once had the pleasure of having dinner with the man and he told me that WiMax will be the BetaMax of its time.
Vanjoki also doesn’t have to worry about offending the higher-ups at Nokia for much longer, as he has already announced that he will be leaving the company in about six months. Vanjoki is the smartphone leader and many thought he was gunning for the CEO spot which went to Stephen Elop.
... and so we may never find out exactly what that point is. Well, besides the ‘peed pants’ meme we saw above. It occurs to us the market is voting with their dollars, as they always do. Nokia is more and more coming up on the short end of the stick. It’s obvious they need to do something, but the $64,000 question is : What?
LALALALALALALA !
So how far does Sony have their fingers in their collective ears? It turns out that would be elbows deep :
Sony Corp., maker of the PlayStation console, said the growing popularity of games on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad isn’t a threat to its games business.
“It’s something that will lead to broadening the customer base of the overall game industry,” Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony’s Networked Products & Services Group, said in an interview in Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo, today. “People who had never played a game before may enjoy it on their iPhone or Android cell phone and may want to play more at their home.”
Ummmm... yeah. Because people who just spent a few hundred bucks getting a portable device that can do anywhere with them will then want to spend more, in a down economy, to be tied to one, single spot on the planet Earth. Then they will want to go through the hassle of setting up that PlayStation. Because, Kazuo, that is so much easier than just pulling a device out of your pocket, or a backpack.
And then going anywhere on the planet you want with that device.
Demand for video-game consoles may be little changed at 52.3 million and shipments of portable units may drop 2.5 percent to 38.9 million, the El Segundo, California-based researcher said.
Sony will be selling the “Move” controller, resembling Nintendo Co.’s Wii motion-sensing wand with a colored ball at the top, in the U.S. and Europe this month and in Japan in October. Sony is also offering new game titles such as Gran Turismo 5, which can be played in 3-D format, to stimulate consumer demand.
The company started offering 3-D game titles that can be downloaded through the Internet in June, when it also began selling Bravia 3-D televisions.
There’s only one problem with that strategy - THIS :
If 3-D television is in fact the future of home entertainment, that future may not be so very bright. In a recent Nielsen survey, consumers expressed a variety of concerns about purchasing 3-D TV tech, not least of which are the obvious complaints: there’s not enough 3-D programming, and you have to wear silly 3-D glasses to view the content that is presented in three dimensions. What’s worse: the numbers suggest that the more experience you have with 3-D TV, the less likely you are to buy one.
If this survey is correct, then the Sony strategy is a dead-end. But that is ok, because they don’t see the iPhone / iPod Touch as a threat, despite the fact it is already generating 2X more game revenue than the PSP.
SONY is Apple circa 1995.
Somebody Should Have Warned Us!
Someone should have spoken up about the security problems in Adobe Flash!
... oh, wait. Someone did :
Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.
Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.
So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise there are security problems with Adobe Flash :
Adobe revealed a critical zero day flaw in Adobe Flash--the second in less than a week. The vulnerability extends even to Adobe Flash on the Android mobile OS, supporting at least one of the reasons laid out by Steve Jobs for not allowing Flash on the iPhone and iPad.
An Adobe spokesperson contacted me and shared that, "A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.1.82.76 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris and Android operating systems. This vulnerability also affects Adobe Reader 9.3.4 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, and Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh."
In a nutshell, the critical flaw could be exploited to crash the affected system, or may even allow an attacker to gain access and control it to execute additional malicious software. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against Adobe Flash Player, but Adobe is not aware of any attacks exploiting it against Adobe Reader or Acrobat thus far.
The Adobe spokesperson explained, "Adobe is actively sharing information about this vulnerability (and vulnerabilities in general) with partners in the security community to enable them to quickly develop detection and quarantine methods to protect users until a patch is available. As always, Adobe recommends that users follow security best practices by keeping their anti-malware software and definitions up to date."
In a nutshell, instead of doing all they can to prove Apple wrong, Adobe is even going so far as to off-load the problem on third-party security software, which one may-or-may-not have, to deal with the mess.
Perhaps it is wise to go back and re-read the entirety of Thoughts on Flash and paying heed to the sage advice therein. It isn’t like Adobe has been moving mountains to prove Apple or Steve Jobs wrong.
Who Put the Burr...
under Consumer Report’s saddle?
Apple has quietly discontinued its free-case program for the iPhone 4 effective October 1, but says it will still provide a case to the "small percentage" of buyers who will need one due to the phone's "antenna attenuation issue."
In a statement posted to its website on Friday, the company said "we now know" that the antenna issue is "even smaller than we originally thought." Because of the low incidence, Apple says, it's discontinuing the current program, which allows all those who buy an iPhone 4 until September 30 to order a free case for the device.
Wherein there is nothing new under the sun. Apple had been up-front with all of this. But what comes later really makes you question Consumer Reports :
The iPhone 4's reception problem, we found in earlier tests, can occur when your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side if the phone is being used in an area with a weak signal.
Apple provided no data to detail its claim of lower-than-expected incidence of dropped calls with the iPhone 4. In his July 16 news conference announcing the free cases, Apple chairman CEO Steve Jobs said the iPhone 4 dropped only about one call per hundred more than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G S, which remains available. Jobs also then reiterated the company's earlier claim that all smart phones have similar problems, and that "no one has solved this problem."
Least of all is Consumer Reports, who gets called out by a real EM engineer :
Consumer reports “RF” engineers should know better than to think they can run an engineering grade test for an issue like this in a shielded room. And certainly not one with people in it.
To even reasonably run a scientific test, the iPhone should have been sitting on a non-metallic pedestal inside an anechoic chamber. The base station simulator should have been also sitting outside the chamber and had a calibrated antenna plumbed to it from inside the chamber.
To say that Consumer Reports is doing more of an injustice to the consumer than Apple is being gentle and kind. To report a conclusion backed by the scientific reputation of CR without using, y’know, actual science is perpetrating a fraud on the consumer. It cannot be disputed that CR knew they were testing under scientific conditions. CR’s only ‘out’ here is to claim ignorance, but to do so means they will be throwing away their ‘scientific’ reputation.
But that fraud is compounded in the fact that CR does nothing to dispute Apple’s claim there is a smaller occurrence of the ‘death grip’ than reported initially. Please bear in mind that Apple reported one-half of one percent as the initial figure of problems. CR castigates Apple for not providing the documentation, but CR has done nothing to answer Bob Egan’s claims they screwed the pooch in their own testing. Since July !
Moreover, if the ‘design flaw’ doesn’t affect every user can it truly be called a design flaw at all? The testing fraud foisted on every unsuspecting reader of CR meets our definition of a design flaw. CR has the slogan “Nobody Tests Like We Do”, and now we see why. No self-respecting scientist would use the low standards and pseudoscientific methods CR has employed in their vendetta against Apple.
But on top of all of that, the iPhone 4 remains the highest-rated smartphone, according to no less of an authority than the formerly-reliable Consumer Reports !
Give Me Where to Stand...
... and I will move the earth. So said Archimedes. Well, Apple just gave iOS developers a bedrock foundation upon which to stand :
Apple Inc. said Thursday that it will publish the guidelines its uses to determine which programs can be sold in its App Store.
The move follows more than two years of complaints from software developers about the company's secret and seemingly capricious rules, which block some programs from the store.
Developers have had little guidance from Apple, meaning they often had to complete their programs only to find them blocked by the company.
In this sense, of course, “little guidance” means “Apple expected the developers were adults, and as such had hired competent legal counsel to inform them precisely of the applications the contracts would allow developed”.
Or perhaps we err. Perhaps there was also the sense that “little guidance” meant “Apple rejected our app even though we didn’t read our contracts, and even after Apple gave us specific quotation from those contracts as to exactly why our app was disallowed”.
We don’t want to paint too unbalanced a picture here, for there was fault to be found with subjective judgment calls made by Apple app-reviewers; however, we’re all human - right? To Apple’s credit they did respond when public pressure was brought to bear and it was the right call to make. But we still fail to see how the onus was not on the developers who surely knew they were fording deep and murky waters if they read and heeded their contracts.
If they read their contracts closely, and really just paid attention in general for the past five years, they would know, for example, Apple would not allow apps that would eat Apple’s lunch. Apple was completely unambiguous about this position, and always related them with crystal clarity, especially in the contracts one must sign to become an iOS developer.
So while is it true that Apple does carry some responsibility for not clarifying the rules early on, from our perspective Apple’s greatest crime may be they expected adults to be, well... rational adults.
Apple also said it will lift restrictions imposed earlier this year on using third-party development tools that "translate" code written for another platform. That means developers who work in Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash or Oracle Corp.'s Java language can convert their programs into iPhone apps without rewriting them.
Bully for Apple!
You can say many things negative about Apple, and some may be deserved; however, from a technological perspective one bets the proverbial farm against Apple at one’s peril. Not to put a very fine point on the thought, but perhaps one should refresh one’s memory as to the six reasons Adobe Flash is crap.
You cannot say Apple didn’t warn you, and we specifically direct your attention to reason number six :
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
The reason we cheer Apple on in this decision is two-fold : first, it is a PR win ranking among Apple’s best of all time. Second, it will allow the developers who choose to go down this road copious amounts of rope with which to hang themselves. To use the vernacular, these foolish developers will do Apple’s dirty work and rid themselves from the iOS gene pool.
We can think of no more fitting punishment of ‘rogue’ developers than for them to create ‘crap apps’ using third-party tools, then have them be wildly successful to the point tech support costs consume the company whole. After all, it wasn’t like they were warned, or anything.
Oh... wait... Yes, it’s exactly like that.
Crazy for Apple
Where does the media dig up so many inept reporters and how can we make money off Reuters being wrong, too?
MySpace has the most to be concerned about, having risen to prominence largely on the strength of musicians using it to communicate with fans. It already has taken a hit on the social networking front from the rise of Facebook. With iTunes attacking its music flank with Ping, MySpace will face even greater challenges.
But it still has some points in its favor. Artists of all stripes still maintain MySpace profiles. And MySpace Music, its joint venture with the major labels and Sony/ATV Music Publishing, offers artists far more promotional and media assets than Ping does.
Say what? Perhaps we are out of our league here, but it strikes us there is no marketing advantage greater than being on the #1 music store in the known universe. Especially so if one manages to either suck up to or be ‘discovered’ by Apple and featured during a keynote, or on the front page of iTunes.
There is no amount of money that can buy that level of exposure on MySpace. In fact, one could buy MySpace and turn it into your own personal promotion engine and not have the impact of a single day’s mention on the front page of iTunes. Call us biased and jaded (guilty! We are!), but that doesn’t change the fact iTunes has more ‘oomph’ than MySpace ever thought of having.
MySpace also has a leg up on concert ticketing. Ping has 17,000 concert listings provided by Live Nation, but MySpace's Ticketing & Events service -- introduced in April -- includes not only Live Nation but also several alternative ticketing vendors to provide a broader depth of concerts by the kinds of emerging acts that have defined MySpace's history.
In this case ‘emerging acts’ merely being a metaphor for ‘bands nobody has ever heard of’. And Apple features those bands, too. They do so in their commercials and on the front page of iTunes. Ask a no-name band which they would rather star in : an iTunes / iPod commercial, or MySpace? We are willing to be none of them would pick MySpace as their first choice. Well, that is they won’t so long as they have an iota of economic literacy.
And then there is this :
"There have been 10 billion songs downloaded from iTunes and 275 million devices sold," a senior executive at a rival social network says. "So that means they've gotten 36 purchased songs from each device. That's not a lot."
Really? Because according to our calculators that is an insane amount of money.
Assuming media reports are true, and Apple makes $0.35 off every song sold, then the math is elementary : $0.35 X 10,000,000,000 = $3.5 billion. Just off the music alone. And let’s assume $149 is the average price for every iPod sold (it isn’t, but let’s be conservative here). That means 275,000,000 X $149 = $40.9 billion in revenue since the iPod debuted. Assuming for the moment (again, conservatively) that Apple makes a 20% margin on every one of the above hypothetical iPods, that means $29.80 profit on each of those 275,000,000 iPods. That equals $8.1 billion in profit since the beginning of the iPod.
So 3.5 billion + 8.1 billion = $11.6 billion dollars (estimated) in profit since the debut of the iPod on 23 OCT 2001.
Now, we wouldn’t assume to know what your definition of ‘not a lot’ is, but $11.6 billion we would put in the ballpark of ‘oodles times gobs, raised to the power of lots’.
Additionally, Ping helps prevent users from ditching iTunes for one of its more socially focused startup rivals as it works on its cloud strategy. But until Apple adds such a service, or another way to stream full songs in iTunes without having to buy them, Ping will likely be limited to the iTunes faithful.
Whereby ‘limited’ Antony Bruno means ‘only 160 million users’, or roughly 159.99 million more people than will read his lunkheaded article.
Wherein We Call PC World Out
(sigh)
It almost ceases to be sport. Apple makes an announcement, and PC World posts a bone-headed, contrarian response befitting a teenager :
Despite all the hardware Apple introduced at its press event Wednesday, the most radical news was Ping, a social network for music that's launching as a feature of iTunes 10. I've taken a brief test drive of Ping to see what it's about, but even before updating iTunes, I knew Apple's new social network was not for me. Here are five reasons I won't be using Ping:
We don’t get it. We don’t burden the world with the top five reasons we won’t be sticking screwdrivers in our eye sockets, because - well, who cares? We believe the public at large couldn’t care less why you choose not to shave your angora cat, so why would anyone care about PC World not liking Ping?
Some people have heralded Ping as MySpace's undoing, but MySpace still does one thing extremely well: it lets you listen to a handful of the artist's best or latest songs, in their entirety. Ping does not. Apple says Ping is all about finding new music, but it's also about selling you more iTunes songs. That's a hard sell when you can only listen to 30 seconds of any track.
We hate to be sticklers for detail here, but between MySpace and Apple who has the bazillion dollar music market at their control? But in essence the argument the PC World advances here is choosing between an all-you-can-eat buffet of water and broccoli and a smorgasbord where one can have sample portions of millions of tasty dishes.
Yeah. Wow. What was Apple thinking with that?
At least on my PC, iTunes is an abomination. I will avoid opening it when possible because of how long it takes to load and how chunky it feels to operate, and that's not going to change because of a social network. Also, people whose work computers don't have iTunes installed won't be able to use Ping for the great American pastime of slacking off at work.
Seriously? Not being able to ‘slack’ off at work is a negative? What, is the author of this article, like, 15 years old? We’re sorry for the confusion, but for a second we mistook PC World as a serious journalistic enterprise, not the tech equivalent of Tiger Beat.
Social networks belong on the Web, simple as that. You click on someone's Twitter account from another Web page, and you're there. You visit an outbound link from someone's status update by popping open a new tab. One step -- pressing a bookmark button or typing a URL -- is all it takes to get to the social network of your choice. All of these actions get a lot sloppier when you add another layer of software, especially the painful iTunes. Also, the lack of Web access shuts out users of Android, BlackBerry and other non-iOS smartphones. That's lame.
Wow. Don’t tell Jared about the iPhone or the native FaceBook client that runs on the iPhone. Because, you know, that would be lame and everyone knows social networking is web based.
Oh, and don’t tell the people of Foursquare, or Twitter, or WhatsApp, Inc, or AOL, or Skype that social media is strictly web based. We don’t think they know, so why spoil the party?
Even among my best friends, there are only a few people whose musical tastes overlap my own. This presents a dilemma for using Ping: Ostensibly, it's a network for music discovery, so do I shut out the friends whose music I don't like, or follow everyone and try to filter out the awful stuff? This, of course, assumes my friends will even use Ping, which they won't.
We seriously doubt Jared has all that many friends that he need be worried about such trifles. But even if he did, had Jared been... oh, we don’t know... paying attention during the keynote he would have learned you can stop other people from seeing what you are up to. Or even pick and choose. It’s completely optional to get all touchy-feely with other music lovers.
Steve Jobs once said that multipurpose devices will always win the day over single-purpose ones, because people don't want to pay for something that only has one function. I think the same is true of social networks. Even though people don't pay money to use Facebook or Twitter, they invest time in cultivating an online presence. Ping is another potential investment, but it's only meant for sharing music. I'd rather stick with social networks that offer much more.
It may have escaped your notice, Jared, but iTunes does much more than one thing. And there is a unique culture on this planet for those who make music, and those who appreciate those who make music. And it just may be that those people will wish to congregate in groups.
