Mobile devices continue their surge and Apple's vision of the rapid emergence of the mobile environment for computing is paying off. iPhone sales doubled to nearly 7 million units in Q2 - largely from internal sales improvements. Mac sales also improved. As the WSJ noted Apple's Earnings Call Reporting a "Staggering" jump in iPhone sales. Here's an excerpt:
The results were well above Wall Street expectations; analysts had expected a rise of about 37%, compared with earnings a year ago adjusted for an accounting change.
“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever,” said Chief Executive Steve Jobs in the company’s release.
On its earnings call, expect Apple to give more details on sales of iPhones and Macs, as well as its newest product, the iPad, which launched this spring. Apple Analysts also will be looking for information on Apple’s guidance for the next quarter. Apple said it expects fiscal third-quarter earnings of $2.28 to $2.39 a share on revenue of $13 billion to $13.4 billion, but the company is typically conservative in its forecasts.
Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance recently wrote in the NYT that companies are "Slowly" Joining the Cloud. They're joining alright, but probably more quickly than people might realize. This is particularly true when one realizes how fast startups and smaller more agile firms are jumping onto the Cloud bandwagon because it just doesn't make any sense not to. Here is a direct quote from the article.
When given a clean slate, many new companies have chosen a full embrace of the cloud model, figuring the technology industry has matured to the point were these types of services make basic business sense. For example, Arista Networks, a five-year-old company that makes networking equipment, runs its sales software with a cloud software company called NetSuite, its corporate e-mail on Google Apps, and other Web infrastructure with Amazon.com.
“It’s so much easier,” said Andreas von Bechtolsheim, the co-founder Arista and Sun Microsystems and one of earliest investors in Google and VMware. “For a new company like us, you would just never build a traditional data center anymore.”
And this is where the real story lies. You see while larger organizations might be wary of the Cloud, each day they fail to shift their IT infrastructure to the Cloud is a day the competition is gaining a leg. Ironically, the ROI for larger corporations adopting the cloud is much higher than for smaller ones from a strictly cost benefit standpoint. From a strategic point of view the ROI is even higher.
Yes companies are adopting the Cloud and for the ones doing it slowly or not doing it at all, they best reconsider their long term viability.
A recent Pew Internet research project on the Future of the Internet included a survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders to reveal perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered.
The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The report addresses thought on the following issues:
“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.” Read more...
The survey results are based on a non-random online sample of 895 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.
Watch Vint Cerf of Google talk about the future of the Internet below.
With more than 100 million TV subscribers in the US big cable, satellite, and telco carriers are in good shape. However, a recent report shows more and more viewers are "cutting the cord" and watching their favorite shows via over-the-air antennas Netflix, or the Web.
TechCrunch recently commented on a report from Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group, which addresses viewing trends that might be trouble for companies like Cablevision, Comcast, DirecTV, and Time Warner. Almost 800,000 households in the US "cut the cord," and ended service from their cable, satellite, or telephone company TV providers turning instead to Web-based sources like Hulu, iTune, Netflix or even over-the-air antennas for their favorite shows, according to the report. As TechCrunch points out, the 800,000 cord cutters represent less than 1 percent of US households subscribing to traditional service sources. However, by the end 2011, the report estimates the number of cord-cutting households in the U.S. will double to about 1.6 million.
Even more interesting is the report's assertion that US TV watchers are getting use to online video, with about 17 percent of the US TV audience watching at least one or two shows online a week, up from just 12 percent in 2008, and set to rise to 21 percent this year. The rate of this change will accelerate in the coming years as the Internet continues to offer more variety and higher quality options at a much lower cost. Watch Ian Pearson talk about the future of television.
At “Chirp”, Twitter’s developer conference, the company unveiled promoted tweets, new mobile apps, an enhanced geo-tagging feature, a link-shortening function, live search and the sale of its archives to the Library of Congress. That is a lot to talk about at a single event, but its not surprising given what's been going on with Twitter for the past year.
Augie Ray from Forrester shared this view, "Twitter's been under a lot of pressure to be a more transparent business. Now the company has come to a point in its maturity where it's starting to operate much more as a business and less as a startup."
The announced changes are not without skeptics. Some feel the promoted tweets are intrusive and third-party app developers are concerned Twitter is trying to put them out of business. But Twitter has also been criticized for taking too long to unveil its long term plans. Developers were unclear about where they should invest their efforts.
Here is an overview of the latest changes coming to Twitter with much of it based on David Goldman’s recent CNNMoney.com article “Twitter grows up: Take a peek inside”: Thanks David. Also, watch the video about foursquare's reaction to Twitter.
Promoted tweets: By far the most significant announcement. When users search with select keywords, a tweet from a company that bought those keywords will appear at the top of the feed. Companies that currently feature ads on the site include Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500), Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) and Sony Pictures.
Though the current model is still in the experimental phase, the company is hoping to succeed by making the promotional advertising more closely reflect individual users' interests.
Ensuring Twitter remains consumer-driven and not overly corporate is key to its survival, said Bob Pearson, president of the Social Media Business Council. "The reason Twitter is successful is because it has allowed customers to find what's relevant to them," said Pearson. "If Twitter starts deciding for people what's important, that's not going to work."
Mobile apps: Twitter recently unveiled an official BlackBerry app, and bought the most popular Twitter app for Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone, called Tweetie. The company also plans to soon release an official Android app.
Twitter had previously relied on third-party developers to allow mobile users to access their Twitter accounts on their phones. Apps like Twidroid, Tweetie and UberTwitter were some of the most popular, but there were dozens of others.
Twitter nabs top app maker
It comes as little surprise that having no official mobile app was a barrier to new customers. When people searched for a Twitter app, many were confused about which one to use. While an official Twitter app hasn't made third-party developers too happy, Twitter made it clear that those developers are still hugely important. "It's not a coup against developers," said Ray of Forrester. "It's absolutely clear that Twitter is very committed to improving its platform for the development community."
Geo-tagging: Another big announcement was the unveiling of a "Places" function that would better allow users to see where tweets were coming from. Twitter will keep a database of restaurants, bars, parks, stations and other public arenas. Developers use that data to create tools like check-in, similar to other location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Though some believe this poses a direct challenge to some of the more entrenched location-based services, Twitter argues that the new functionality is more of a complementary service.
It's more likely that Twitter would use the information to provide more relevant tweets about a specific area or place than hand out virtual points, badges or rewards like Foursquare's check-in.
Link-shortening: Since Twitter only allows users to post 140-character messages, URLs can take up a large chunk of the space for tweets. Services like bit.ly have become popular ways to shorten links to post in tweets. But using those services is cumbersome because users have to go outside Twitter's world to create those links.
Lawbreakers foiled by Facebook
Like with geo-tagging and mobile apps, the announcement made some developers nervous about the viability of their link-shortening services. But the barriers to creating link-shortening were so small (just register a two-character ending) that the business model of those services was questionable anyhow.
Archives: Twitter sold the rights to its archives to the Library of Congress, making them searchable on Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). All public tweets, dating back to the very first one on March 21, 2006, are now hosted in the government's Library of Congress. Users can access the archive by selecting the "Updates" option on Google's search page. The new feature adds a timeline at the top of the results page that shows the relative volume of tweets about that topic.
Live search: Lastly, live Twitter feeds began appearing in Bing search results pages this week. Twitter feeds have already been showing up in Google's search results for awhile, which served as the first source of revenue for the young company.
Mobile devices continue their surge and Apple's vision of the rapid emergence of the mobile environment for computing is paying off. iPhone sales doubled to nearly 7 million units in Q2 - largely from internal sales improvements. Mac sales also improved. As the WSJ noted Apple's Earnings Call Reporting a "Staggering" jump in iPhone sales. Here's an excerpt:
