There's been a few pieces that stood out from Businessweek lately on the success of both Apple and Amazon.
The Mar 26 edition had a tremendously interesting "Opening Remarks" essay by Peter Burrows and Jim Aley. Titled "iPad: The PC Killer" it covers Apple's dominance with the iPad and Burrows and Aley offered up some ideas that seem to make a lot of sense... with the first two being around why the iPad has done so well and third around business conditions it created. In terms of product success, the authors note both how Apple able to take a longer view approach to a market given fewer product offerings and that the iPad helped by being a follow-on product to the iPhone (a positive both in terms of consumer familiarity with the concept and Apple utilization of the iOS software and App Store).
Most interesting to me from the piece was the idea put forth by Burrows and Aley that the iPad so dominates the market that competitors can't expect to simply offer up a comparible alternative (like HP did with the TouchPad) and expect it to sell. If a product offering in the same pricing or performance ballpark as the iPad, customers will simply pick what they already know to be good. There is still success that can be had by other companies, but it either through breakthrough competing technology (which nobody has brought yet) or slicing off a piece of the market and going after that. This approach of "competing by not really competing" has been successfully done by Amazon with positioning its Kindle (and now Kindle Fire) at price points where consumers don't need to choose between them or the iPad.
Related to this idea of Amazon doing well, there was an interesting piece by Brad Stone on the Businessweek site. "Why the Amazon Naysayers Should Be Scared" looks at the recent excellent financial results from the retailer, with improving margins while at the same time making large investments in infrastructure (facilities and people). Pretty interesting stuff from Stone that also makes reference to Amazon focusing efforts on publishing and the Kindle with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently saying that "16 of our top 100 bestselling titles are exclusive to our store.”
It's pretty remarkable what Amazon has done in the area of publishing and an additional Businessweek story hammers this home with "Amazon vs. Publishers: The Book Battle Continues." Also by Brad Stone, the piece is primarily about Amazon wanting to move towards print-on-demand publishing (with one usage being their CreateSpace division that I used for my book) and the traditional publishing houses fighting them. I wrote about and linked to another Brad Stone story on Amazon from a few months ago and it really seems as if Amazon has a more profitable path forward than traditional powers in the publishing industry and these existing companies fighting an uphill battle to keep things as they have been.
Fascinating things going on in this industry and it takes me back to a blog post done here three years ago on a Time Magazine feature about the economics of written delivery.
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Ford in India & iPad for Work Pieces from BusinessWeek
Two interesting stories from the Apr 12 issue of BusinessWeek.
The first was titled "Alan Mulally's Asian Sales Call" and details how Ford Motor Co. and it's CEO have been focusing on expanding it's minimal 2-3% market share in India, China and surrounding countries. On the heels of other posts I've done on Ford lately, it really does seem the company is both making good moves and has a huge opportunity to grow.
The second was "The iPad, Your Newest Workplace Productivity Enhancer" about... yep, the iPad. The new boy wonder device from Apple has been pretty much everywhere lately including a recent cover story in Time linked to in this post, but what was interesting about this BW piece was the notion of the iPad for work. With someone like Marc Benioff of Salesforce making quotes about the iPad, perhaps it's applications (no double entendre intended) do go beyond entertainment to work functional.
The first was titled "Alan Mulally's Asian Sales Call" and details how Ford Motor Co. and it's CEO have been focusing on expanding it's minimal 2-3% market share in India, China and surrounding countries. On the heels of other posts I've done on Ford lately, it really does seem the company is both making good moves and has a huge opportunity to grow.
The second was "The iPad, Your Newest Workplace Productivity Enhancer" about... yep, the iPad. The new boy wonder device from Apple has been pretty much everywhere lately including a recent cover story in Time linked to in this post, but what was interesting about this BW piece was the notion of the iPad for work. With someone like Marc Benioff of Salesforce making quotes about the iPad, perhaps it's applications (no double entendre intended) do go beyond entertainment to work functional.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Apple iPad & New Media: from Time Magazine
Some really interesting writing from Time Magazine lately about the iPad, it's potential impact and the related area of journalism and new media.
To the iPad itself, the April 12 issue gave us a cover image of Steve Jobs and mention of two stories within the pages (but, more later on this idea of "pages").
First was "The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?", a fanboy piece penned by novelist and screenwriter Stephen Fry and second was "Do We Need the iPad? A TIME Review" by Lev Grossman.
Grossman wrote a number of nice things about the iPad, but also noted that it's usage appears to be "lovely for consuming content, but not creating it"... which echoed what I've seen from writers such as Jeff Jarvis in his BuzzMachine post "iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator."
Fry's essay takes a very different approach in that he writes of his visit to Apple headquarters to speak with Jobs and his lieutenants responsible for running various facets of company business. While not having anything that would contradict the idea of the iPad as being for content consumption, Fry presents a compelling vision of it being an elegant and personal device for it's intended purpose... allowing users an immersive user-friendly experience with the things they want to access on a computer (including, but not limited to: music, videos, pictures, games, books and websites).
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While the iPad itself is simply a device, the Editor's Letter from this April 12 issue gave a glimpse of at least the potential for it to change markets (in this case the field of Journalism). In "Ushering in a New Era", Richard Stengel writes of Time's efforts to get a version of the magazine available for the iPad.
In the same category of "Journalism: Where it's Been, Where it's Going" was an essay by Alan Brinkley from the April 19 issue of Time. "What Would Henry Luce Make of the Digital Age?" covered the co-founder and former head of Time Inc. and addressed how he might have approached the current business climate and rush to digital facing print media.
What media should do doesn't have an easy answer, but is a fascinating topic. In February of last year I linked to and wrote about the Walter Isaacson Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper" and also find interesting (and encouraging) people like the aforementioned Jeff Jarvis and his BuzzMachine blog (and teaching around Interactive/Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Journalism School).
No way to tell where things with media will wind up, but ranging from the guys writing about and working on it to the new products coming up in the space (even if they're designed more for content consumption than creation), there's a lot of interesting stuff going on around this field of new media and user experience with media new and old.
To the iPad itself, the April 12 issue gave us a cover image of Steve Jobs and mention of two stories within the pages (but, more later on this idea of "pages").
First was "The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?", a fanboy piece penned by novelist and screenwriter Stephen Fry and second was "Do We Need the iPad? A TIME Review" by Lev Grossman.
Grossman wrote a number of nice things about the iPad, but also noted that it's usage appears to be "lovely for consuming content, but not creating it"... which echoed what I've seen from writers such as Jeff Jarvis in his BuzzMachine post "iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator."
Fry's essay takes a very different approach in that he writes of his visit to Apple headquarters to speak with Jobs and his lieutenants responsible for running various facets of company business. While not having anything that would contradict the idea of the iPad as being for content consumption, Fry presents a compelling vision of it being an elegant and personal device for it's intended purpose... allowing users an immersive user-friendly experience with the things they want to access on a computer (including, but not limited to: music, videos, pictures, games, books and websites).
-----
While the iPad itself is simply a device, the Editor's Letter from this April 12 issue gave a glimpse of at least the potential for it to change markets (in this case the field of Journalism). In "Ushering in a New Era", Richard Stengel writes of Time's efforts to get a version of the magazine available for the iPad.
In the same category of "Journalism: Where it's Been, Where it's Going" was an essay by Alan Brinkley from the April 19 issue of Time. "What Would Henry Luce Make of the Digital Age?" covered the co-founder and former head of Time Inc. and addressed how he might have approached the current business climate and rush to digital facing print media.
What media should do doesn't have an easy answer, but is a fascinating topic. In February of last year I linked to and wrote about the Walter Isaacson Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper" and also find interesting (and encouraging) people like the aforementioned Jeff Jarvis and his BuzzMachine blog (and teaching around Interactive/Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Journalism School).
No way to tell where things with media will wind up, but ranging from the guys writing about and working on it to the new products coming up in the space (even if they're designed more for content consumption than creation), there's a lot of interesting stuff going on around this field of new media and user experience with media new and old.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
BusinessWeek Story on AT&T Problems
Pretty interesting cover story on AT&T in the in the Feb 15 issue of BusinessWeek.
The story is titled "AT&T's iPhone Mess" and stood out to me as it's got multiple angles worth reading about, with one leading to another.
First, I'm a huge fan of the iPhone and am usually interested in reading about the device itself and ramifications of it... in this case, to basically swamp the AT&T data network that provides net access for the $30/month that most iPhone users pay.
Second comes the interesting question of how companies reach for short term profits vs long term investments... with the apparent answer in this case being this one large company metaphorically squeezing the lemon and neglecting needed network investments.
Lastly, what AT&T has created is a situation ripe for the forces of Social Media. If people feel that they're being shafted by a company, there's so many avenues to communicate disgust to the masses.... and communicate disgust people have, in forums ranging from blogs to Facebook and even the simplest not even media form of Social Media, word of mouth.
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From the same BW issue came another piece tied to Apple... only this one even more so. "An iPad in Your Pad? It's Up to the Apps" is a short commentary about the content that should be available on the iPad, and how important the availability of worthwhile content is to the future success of the hardware.
Personally, me thinks the content will be stellar (maybe not at first, but not far in the future) and I think the device will be, for lack of a better word, rad.
The story is titled "AT&T's iPhone Mess" and stood out to me as it's got multiple angles worth reading about, with one leading to another.
First, I'm a huge fan of the iPhone and am usually interested in reading about the device itself and ramifications of it... in this case, to basically swamp the AT&T data network that provides net access for the $30/month that most iPhone users pay.
Second comes the interesting question of how companies reach for short term profits vs long term investments... with the apparent answer in this case being this one large company metaphorically squeezing the lemon and neglecting needed network investments.
Lastly, what AT&T has created is a situation ripe for the forces of Social Media. If people feel that they're being shafted by a company, there's so many avenues to communicate disgust to the masses.... and communicate disgust people have, in forums ranging from blogs to Facebook and even the simplest not even media form of Social Media, word of mouth.
-----
From the same BW issue came another piece tied to Apple... only this one even more so. "An iPad in Your Pad? It's Up to the Apps" is a short commentary about the content that should be available on the iPad, and how important the availability of worthwhile content is to the future success of the hardware.
Personally, me thinks the content will be stellar (maybe not at first, but not far in the future) and I think the device will be, for lack of a better word, rad.
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