Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

One of our eagle-eyed readers (thanks, Raphael) sent me a note that Microsoft today announced a bingified version of Firefox.

Today in London at its big conference, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop announced its next generation phones, Lumia (Windows Phone 7.5 based) and Asha (S40 based), which we were told means “Hope” in Hindi. Although Asha is an interesting device for many emerging markets, it’s the Lumia that is most important to Nokia’s future and the announcement the market was anxiously awaiting. So while Nokia introduced two new Windows Phone smartphones of nice design (the Lumia 800 for the premium market and a slightly less costly version of the 710), and three S40 devices aimed at the market between feature phones and smart phones, overall the announcements at Nokia World disappointed on a number of accounts.

Forrester analyst Mike Gualtieri published a brave blog post today. It starts with “poor Linux.” Can you guess what follows?

Apple is rumored to be bringing out a Smart TV shortly. TVs are both one of the most popular consumer products and one of the most difficult to be successful at doing. The latter is exemplified by failed efforts from Dell, Gateway, HP, and Pioneer, all of which tried and failed at selling TVs. One of the most memorable moments was when then CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina, got up and gave a speech on how her HP was never going to bring out a me-too product right before announcing HP’s TVs, which really weren’t different than other products in market.

There is an interesting report circulating this morning, courtesy of Geek.com. Volkswagen requires its suppliers to use IE6 when using Volkswagen applications. More than 10 years after its release, IE6 is still deeply entrenched in some environments, but has become virtually meaningless everywhere else.

In October 2001, Apple promised to unveil a revolutionary media product. Few of us expected an MP3 player. Who could have predicted that a little white box would lay the foundation for an empire that turned into the world’s most valuable IT company ten years later?

Windows XP turned 10 Years today. The OS was tremendously successful for Microsoft and led the OS global OS market until September 2011. Happy Birthday!

There is not much we know about Boot To Gecko, Mozilla’s thin layer OS platform that will enable mobile devices to boot to a web interface that leverages open source APIs. CTO Brendan Eich recently revealed a bit more about the software that is scheduled for first demos in the first quarter for next year.

The Internet is at war. In fact, the whole consumer market is actively engaging in many wars across many different levels. The thing is, while we know that there is a “browser war” going on out there, we find ourself wondering what exactly is going on. Who is actually fighting and how? We are all familiar with the “big 3” and I would even risk saying “big 5”: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome Browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Opera’s Opera Browser. But what are they fighting for? Market share? Mozilla will tell you that they are fighting for the open web, and yet, no one else is. At the end of the day, regardless of the individual motives of the companies, this whole war is about who has the browser you should use.

Apple’s cost of the iPhone has been inching up and it appears that the new iPhone 4S is the most expensive iPhone to build since the original iPhone in 2007.

I’m at the McAfee Focus event this week. They had Sir Richard Branson on the stage talking about leadership. He has an interesting take on leadership and Steve Jobs. Branson was one of those featured years ago in Steve Jobs’ think different campaign. Called Here’s to the Crazy Ones, the commercial ends with the thought that the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are often the ones who do.

Apple reported yet another fantastic quarter that brought in more than $28 billion and wrapped up Apple’s first $100 billion fiscal year. Unfortunately, the iPhone did not meet analyst shipment expectations, which sent Apple’s stock below the $400 mark again.