I’m of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need
to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the
market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught
my eye.
This week: Spotify for everything, social advertising only
sort of works but everyone loves it, Apple returns to the US, Windows get
sticky for Microsoft. US planned to nuke Moon in ‘50’s.
Digital media
This is a well researched article on whether a “Spotify for
books” service could work. I’m undecided. I think that a subset of readers will
find this a valuable service, but in the early days the subscription charge
will have to be set high in order to create sustainable value. http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/05/can-a-spotify-for-books-really-work/
Meanwhile, the real Spotify has just passed the 5 million
paying subscribers mark. That’s pretty impressive and suggests that annual
revenue will be somewhere around $250M in the calendar year 2012. http://musically.com/2012/12/06/spotify-has-5bn-paying-subscribers-passes-500m-rightsholder-payments/
Red Box Instant – Red Box and Verizon’s streaming movie
joint venture – is delayed until the New Year. http://gigaom.com/video/redbox-instant-launch-date/
Internet advertising will overtake print in 2015. Perhaps. I’ll
be interested to see how the curated, written word news format develops in
emerging markets. There might be a little life in print yet. http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/02/forecast-internet-ad-spend-will-outstrip-all-print-in-2015/
The Daily, Murdoch’s ill-conceived tablet only newspaper is
closing its doors on December 15th. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Reputation equity is one of the few things print newspapers have going for them
right now. The Daily had none. Hence it failed. http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/03/news-corp-s-the-daily-is-dead-long-live-the-daily/
I agree with the author of this post – mindlessly collecting
social media rankings is pointless but something that many marketing
departments aimlessly pursue. http://gigaom.com/2012/12/04/social-media-rankings-perceptive-or-pointless/
And social ads are annoying, ill targeted but get this, also
“somewhat useful” according to Nielsen. Although I agree, expecting Nielsen to
get off the fence on this is like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas (or
anything else, seeing as they can’t reach the table in the ballet box and are
scared of pens). In my opinion. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012/
Still, marketers are always one for the Zeitgeist. They’re
super-psyched by social and mobile for 2013. Bless ‘em... http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/senior-marketers-social-mobile-in-vogue-for-2013-25117
...hence why 92% of agencies are using social in client
campaigns. I’d love to see the ROI calculations. What’s that you say? The
returns are HUGE? Because you value a “like” at $4? Of course... http://www.gotostrata.com/news-article/strata_survey_emerging_social_media_platforms_growing_market_share_w_adv/
...mobile isn’t much better in truth – smartphone and tablet
owners have a generally negative reaction to it. They’d better get used to it
though, since it’s here to stay. http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/Changing_Channels/AdReaction.aspx
Technology market
A great report on the platforms in play in the smartphone
market. Ars Technica are producing some great stuff at the moment. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-state-of-the-smartphone/
Samsung are in the process of doing an Apple and launching a
retail brand. A store has just opened in Paris. I worry about the onset of
hubris with Samsung – getting retail right is not easy, it requires genuine
understanding of consumer experience, which I’m not convinced Samsung yet has. http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/samsung-launches-a-new-mobile-store-in-paris-05-12-2012/
This is a classic – pointless – tech story. Rumour has it that
the Xbox 720 will have only a 1.6GHz processor, half the clock speed of its
predecessor. But clock speed isn’t directly analogous to processing power. Even
if it were slower clocked, the 720 processor likely has many cores and is much
more efficient than that in the 360. It may also have a comparatively low CPU
and one or more high performance graphics and even physics processors. So
there. http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/rumor-xbox-720-processor-clocked-at-1-6ghz-03-12-2012/
Nokia have suddenly had a mini resurgence and maps are at
the forefront – the only area where they’re effectively competing with Apple
and Google. Regular readers will know that I believe maps and street view
technology to be an exciting growth market due to the rise of self-driving cars
from 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20497719
Breakthrough technology
The rate at which password cracking techniques are advancing
is pretty scary – this monster, GPU-packing PC can break any 14 character
password in 6 minutes using a brute force approach. Any of you have a 14
character password? Thought not. http://securityledger.com/new-25-gpu-monster-devours-passwords-in-seconds/
Emerging markets
Syrian rebels are using Skype and sat phones in their
campaign to overthrow Assad. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-turn-to-skype-for-communications.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Microsoft is putting $75Mn into digital education programmes
in Africa. Admirable. http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/03/microsoft-invests-75-million-to-expand-digital-education-in-africa/
Superpower politics
Apple is struggling to keep up with demand for it’s
products. You can put that down to “supply issues” as this blogger does, or you
can put it down to extreme demand in a PC market that’s otherwise stagnant.
Windows 8 is the best thing ever to happen to Mac! http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2012/12/apple-having-major-supply-issues-new-imacs-and-ipad-minis-wont-ship-in-time-for-holidays.html
Curiously it seems that some iMac 21” models are assembled
in the USA. Is Apple coming home? Probably not – likely the supply issues are
causing smaller scale manufacturing centres to take up slack. http://www.maclife.com/article/news/ifixit_puts_new_215inch_imac_under_knife_assembled_usa
As these data on the Windows PC market show. Microsoft are
in a tough spot. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/windows-pc-retail-sales-fall-182512673.html
Just for fun
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