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Archive for April, 2011

35 Years & $317 Billion Later, Apple Intends To Dominate a Post-PC World

01 Apr


On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established a small company to sell personal computer kits hand-built by Wozniak. That company, as you probably know, was Apple Computer.

Thirty-five years later, Apple is now the most valuable technology company in the world. Its market capitalization exceeds $317 billion, trumping longtime rival Microsoft by more than $100 billion. And Apple’s iconic products sit on the desks and in the pockets of millions of people across the world.

Most people know bits and pieces of the Apple story, but the company has a complicated history. Some of us may not know, for example, that Apple had a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, who got cold feet and sold his 10% stake in Apple less than two weeks later. Everybody knows Steve Jobs, but they may not know Mike Markkula, one of Apple’s first angel investors and the company’s second CEO.

In the 35 years of Apple’s existence, the company has gone through hell and back. The launch of the Macintosh in 1984 and the coinciding “1984″ Super Bowl commercial remain symbols one of Apple’s highest points, but only a year later, then-CEO John Sculley forced Steve Jobs out of the company. A decade later, in 1996, the company was on the brink of destruction when it acquired NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back. In 1997, Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple to keep it afloat (something it probably now regrets), and soon after came Apple’s golden years with the iPod, iMac, MacBook, iPhone and now the iPad.

We don’t necessarily want to dwell on Apple’s past; you can visit Wikipedia if you want a lesson in Apple Inc.’s history. Instead, let’s focus on what Apple might do in the next 35 years.


What’s In Store For The Next 35 Years?


For the last 35 years, Apple has almost always been the underdog. While it languished, Microsoft flourished. In fact, Apple surpassed Microsoft in market cap for the first time last May.

For the next few decades, however, the technology titan will be incumbent. Apple has a giant target on its back, and it’s not just Microsoft taking aim. Apple also faces challenges from Google, Amazon and a plethora of mobile device manufacturers. While Apple is handily beating its competition today, the status quo could change at any moment.

And while Apple fends off Android, PCs and competing tablets, it has its eye on creating a post-PC world. Rather than compete on hardware specs, it competes on design and user experience. Its a world of mobile devices that Apple intends to dominate for decades to come.

Leading the charge is Steve Jobs, not only the company’s CEO but also its heart and soul. While he’s currently on medical leave, he did show up for the unveiling of the iPad 2, demonstrating things aren’t as dire as previously rumored.

Still, Apple will some day have to continue its quest to redefine technology without its iconic leader, and many question whether anybody can provide the design and product vision Jobs has imparted on the company he founded 35 years ago.

Even if you aren’t a fan of Apple products, it’s tough not to be impressed with what Apple has been able to accomplish since 1976. We wonder what products it will create and challenges it will face in the next 35 years. Right now though, the sun is definitely shining down on Cupertino.

More About: iMac, ipad, iPad 2, iphone, iphone 3g, iphone 3Gs, iphone 4, ipod, mac, macbook, Macbook Pro, macintosh, steve jobs, steve wozniak

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I Got .99 Problems, But Pricing Ain’t One.

01 Apr

From research done the Inon Inon Pricing Research Centre, and Leigh Caldwell:

Everyone knows – or thinks they know – that prices such as £1.99, £5.99 or £9.99 are optimal price points for retail goods. Customers read the first digit first, and the last two are ignored – or at least, they have much less cognitive impact. In general, consumers were thought to put a subjective value estimate of about ten per cent less on an item priced at £3.99, than one at £4.00.

This has been a fairly robust result in the past, and is intuitive for a number of reasons, “but WAIT!” say Leigh:

[And] the results were a surprise. At first we thought that the effect we have discovered was just a previously unnoticed artefact, hidden by the fact that no proper experiment has been published before. But after further exploration, we think it is also an effect of changing consumer preferences. As customers become more aware of marketing tactics and more cynical about any communication from companies, their psychology and behaviour inevitably changes.

So, to the results. The summary points are:

  1. Prices ending in .99 no longer have any advantage in consumer value perception, and do not lead to higher sales.
  2. The optimal penny value varies by country. In the United States, it is .01. So, instead of $3.99, companies should charge $4.01. In European countries, the optimal price point is different for different product categories, but there is a peak at .04 for many products. So, British or European retailers currently charging, say, £0.99 should increase the price to £1.04.
  3. By switching in this way to a “dollar-plus” price instead of “dollar-minus”, retailers can increase sales volume by an average of 8% and increase profit margins by 1-3% (depending on the exact price point).
  4. Consumers, when presented with the new price point, report an increased level of trust and affinity with the brands of the retailer and manufacturer. We believe this arises from the “honesty signal” that comes from abandoning a discredited and manipulative sales practice.

This is indeed very interesting, and I eagerly await reading the full study (which Leigh is offering as a pre-print!). Head over to Leigh’s blog for more rather counter-intuitive findings from his new research!

Update: If not a bit late, April fools!


Filed under: Economics, Society
 
 

Highest Mountains, Deepest Trenches, and a Doughnut

01 Apr

Highest Mountains, Deepest Trenches

A while ago something broke inside me. My deepest held beliefs were shattered. I started drinking again. Absinthe. I love absinthe. 69% ABV.

It started when I saw it. A glorious pie chart displaying growth rates. Growth! At first, I couldn’t believe it. I took off my glasses. Yes, growth rates. In a pie chart. I had to try it. Unemployment rates. Growth rates above 100%. Apples and oranges. Trends. Pies, pies, pies. And absinthe.

Now I’m playing with doughnuts. Mountains and trenches, from the Wikipedia. I don’t like it. It murmurs. Too much signal. I want pure noise. Maybe a 3D effect can help. I’ll try again.

Bye, Tufte. Bye, Few. Bye, Bertin. I’m almost free.

Oops. April 1 is almost over. Back to business then.

 

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Post from: Excel Charts Blog.

Highest Mountains, Deepest Trenches, and a Doughnut

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Web browser market share: Modern browser edition

01 Apr

March was a big month for Web browsers, with major new versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Both browsers have been suffering in the browser wars; Internet Explorer has steadily declined from its near-total monopolization of the browser market, and Firefox's growth has faltered, most likely due to strong competition from Google's Chrome.

With Internet Explorer 9 out for just two and a half weeks, and Firefox 4 available for only nine days, however, not much has changed so far. Microsoft's browser continues to shed market share, dropping 0.85 points to 55.92 percent. Firefox is essentially unchanged, at 21.80 percent. These new browsers may yet be influential in encouraging people to switch—but at the moment, it looks like the only people adopting them are users of older versions.

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10 ways you can help to build the Internet

01 Apr

On November 22, 1977 a van drove onto Interstate 280 and into history. Most histories of the Internet begin with the ARPANET, the US Defense department network that gave birth to today’s Internet. But the true Internet began when that van used TCP to bridge between three networks: ARPANET, a satellite network and a packet radio network. It’s this networking of networks — or internetworking — that first demonstrated the future Internet.

It was only in 1996 that this moment was recognized for its historical significance, and in 2007 it was celebrated with a special event at the Computer History Museum. Reflecting on those early days of the Internet, Vint Cerf — part of the original van crew, and by 2007 the chief Internet evangelist for Google, was quoted in a news story as saying: “A lot of people think the Internet just happened. But it was a lot of hard work.”
Cerf may have been speaking in the past tense, but the work isn’t done: new technologies and standards are developed all the time. And these are still early days: of the 2 billion people online today, only half were online in 2006. You can reckon that we’ve still got lots of growth ahead, not just in how many of us are online but in what we do there and how we do it.

Map shows connections made by SRI packet van experiment

Network map for packet van demonstration

When Cerf and his collaborators took to the Interstate, the hard work of creating the Internet was best left to the programmers. Today, thanks largely to social media, user-generated content and the emergence of the programmable web, you can help to create the Internet without writing a single line of code. You can help create the online world in which you and your children are going to live. You can take on some of that hard work. Here’s how:

  1. Tithe your time online. The Internet is not a religion (usually) but it is a community. The same way that members of a religious community might contribute 10% of their income to the church, members of the Internet community can contribute 10% of their time online to the health of the network itself. If the average American now spends 13 hours a week online, that means dedicating about 80 minutes to the kinds of active contributions described in this list.
  2. Be a good colonist. I wanted to tell you that you’re the Columbus of the Internet, but let’s face it, the Columbus thing didn’t work out too well for a whole lot of people. So do Columbus one better: as you help to discover this new world of the Internet, do it without the evangelizing, land-stealing and disease-spreading. Get to know and appreciate what already exists online and think about how to add to it. Try not to bulldoze anything (or anyone) who is already there.
  3. Make a node. The Internet is not a series of tubes. It’s a series of nodes and connections. You can make one of those nodes by creating your own blog or web site. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be useful or interesting to at least one other person.
  4. Aim for 49%. That’s the maximum amount of your online energy that should go into promoting the Brand of You. (If you think you can keep it to 48%, or maybe even want to be a human being instead of a brand, so much the better.) The other 51% can go to talking about other people and ideas and maybe even to just listening. This is the hard work of building an Internet that is not simply a monument to narcissism.
  5. Make a connection. Remember how the Internet is both nodes and connections? That’s not just a description of the Internet’s underlying architecture: it’s also a description of the way it connects information and people. You can make a connection between two pieces of information by posting a hyperlink: that is the most basic level at which the Internet connects something over here to something over there. Or you can make a connection between two people by introducing them via e-mail, tweet or blog post.
  6. Tell us how you did it. If you’ve ever been delighted to find a tech solution, recipe or business tip online, you know that a big part of the Internet’s value is the help it provides on just about any topic. You can help make our global repository of how-to information as complete as possible, by sharing the step-by-step version of how you’ve done something. It could be how to got your kid to sleep through the night, how to set up an RSS to email newsletter, or how to perform an emergency tracheotomy. Write (or photograph, or video) how you did it, and put it online.
  7. Report a problem. People often say that one of the Internet’s strengths is that it is self-healing. For example, if someone writes something incorrect on a Wikipedia page, somebody else will correct it. But as that example suggests, the Internet isn’t self-healing: it’s healed by the active participation of people who take the time to correct a mistake or solve a problem. And the first step to solving a problem is knowing it’s there. Whether it’s taking a moment to report a Twitter spammer, capturing a screenshot of an error message and sending it to the site in question, or letting someone know that you got a 404 on their blog, reporting a problem can help keep the Internet shipshape. If they don’t know it’s broke, they can’t fix it.
  8. Answer a question. How long to wait before sending a follow-up email when submitting a résumé? How do the Chinese concept of the self differ from the Western view of the self? How can I install Plex on my AppleTV? If the Internet now has 2 billion users, you can figure it’s got at least that many questions. Answer one every week.
  9. Add an issue to your basket. Political scientists like to talk about the “basket of preferences”: the assortment of positions on a range of issues that determine how a given person votes or engages in other kinds of political action. If your basket of preferences currently includes (let’s say) lower taxes, the legalization of gay marriage and stronger controls on carbon emissions, consider adding an Internet-related issue to your basket. It might be online privacy or net neutrality or Internet freedoms in China. Pick an issue and help to shape the policy environment for the Internet by voting or volunteering for politicians who champion that issue, by supporting lobbying efforts, or by engaging in direct action.
  10. Make something. I know, I know: you’re not a programmer. Neither am I. But you can actually help develop some part of the Internet’s technical assets, whether that’s by creating a customized widget or documenting a web application or making (and sharing) a pipe. Try it out and you will feel like a super stud. And you will feel just a little bit more part of the team that is making the Internet.

If you’re the kind of person who has always dreamed about moving into fully finished, fully furnished home, with everything supplied down to the last washcloth and spoon, then by all means sit this one out and let the rest of us do the hard work. But if you’re the kind of person who’s always dreamed about designing and building your own home, then roll up your sleeves: you’re going to be living a big chunk of your life online, and you get to help decide what that living space will look like.

And if you’re the kind of person who has always dreamed of living in a van…well, the Computer History Museum has just the place.