Anonymous posting from inside MSFT: “E&D is going through the biggest re-org the division has ever had. ERod has decided to pursue other opportunities effective immediately. TVM is no more. Windows Mobile is heading out of E&D and into Windows because Sinofsky pointed out Robbie’s continued failure in the mobile space during the December strategy [...]

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Sony Ericsson shipped 14.6 million phones at an average selling price of EUR120 in the fourth quarter, down from 24.2 million units at an average selling price of EUR121 a year before. Net sales fell to EUR1.75 billion from EUR2.91 billion, in line with market expectations. – We will see next week, but by my [...]

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Profit Capture of Incumbents. See the graph under the link provided (source: Morgan Stanley). In 5 years, Incumbent operating profits from the mobile phone industry went from 100% share to 39% share. If this is not indicative of a successful (i.e. disruptive) entry, I don’t know what is. I should also point out that Symbian, Android [...]

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On account of Apple having cash of nearly $35 billion(*) while Google has about $22b, Google still retains a lead in terms of Enterprise Value ($165b vs. $154b). EV gives a better perspective on future earnings potential. On the other hand, Apple is increasing cash more rapidly. I think $45b net cash by the end [...]

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Rob Glaser left Real Networks which prompted me to do some thinking. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane of Glaser quotes: In 2003: “It’s absolutely clear now why five years from now, Apple will have 3 (percent) to 5 percent of the player market. … The history of the world is that hybridization yields [...]

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Noted this in a business week article – not surprising: Even if it’s consummated, an Apple-Bing deal may prove short-lived. The person familiar with Apple’s thinking says Apple has a “skunk works” looking at a search offering of its own, and believes that “if Apple does do a search deal with Microsoft, it’s about buying [...]

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Nokia’s Android implementation could create a rich and market-leading total offering benefiting additionally from the Google ecosystem. Moreover, it would easy become a volume leader within the Android ecosystem. I asked this question from a former Nokia executive and his response was “you might as well ask why Muslims don’t eat pork”. But Nokia is [...]

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France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard in Les Echos (loose translation): “Remember that at Christmas, 77% of telephones with a fixed-rate tariff that Orange sold were iPhones! It’s amazing. I cannot say why so many other mobile telephone manufacturers have fallen so far behind and have been unable to catch-up.” — I am still trying to [...]

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I tend to agree that Android will have less success than the superficial analysis and industry hype suggests. Here’s what my friend wrote to me when I asked for his opinion on how much Android will actually benefit from the iPhone app ecosystem and the fact that a lot of app porting onto Android is [...]

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One observer has posted that WMM (Microsoft’s answer to iTunes App Store) has 520 apps in it now. The store launched in Nov 1 with 281 apps. That means there will be about 300 apps added in the first two months. The growth rate is therefore about 150/mo. This has to be the slowest growing [...]

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