Versatile Amphibian

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: BT’s vanity project lures starlet, Fortune 500 oblivious to the Internet, Nigeria’s 1st mogul, Google slaps Alibaba & Acer, iPhone best Apple ever Digital media US TV ad spending continues to grow ahead of the market. Dead format, of course. In its death throes. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/television/data-dive-us-tv-ad-spend-and-influence-22524/ That said, US pay TV households do seem to be falling a little – down 1.3% in Q1. I’d like to know exactly where this Neilsen data came from though – it’s not perfectly clear and may be self-reported. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/television/number-of-us-pay-tv-households-down-1-3-y-o-y-in-q1-23361/ A presentation on social media ROI by Altimeter. Succinct and fun. http://www.slideshare.n...

I could - if I were a positive person - be feeling quite smug about getting 10 from 12 predictions about the iPhone 5 launch right (see below). As it happens though, I'm rather annoyed with myself in that the two things that I really thought would happen and mark a true "iPhone 5" - a new name and a new case design - didn't happen. And I'm not alone. Online commentators of all shapes and sizes are up in arms about the "safe" iPhone launch. This is a small problem for Apple (poor lambs) in that everything they say is expected to be revolutionary. iPhone 5 will be a massive success, but it will never have the impact of the original iPhone or of the iPhone 4 when it appeared. Why? Because the iPhone is now a cash cow. A BMW 3 Series. It's the best in class (and the new specifications suggest that it will comfortably remain so), so radical innovation in it is now far too risky for Apple to contemplate. Slow evolution, premium pricing, clear and pow...

So the big day has arrived. Early evening UK time Tim Cook will take the stage and - doubtless after significant preamble - will reveal the 6th iteration of the iPhone. Here's my predictions for what we'll see in the iPhone 5... or maybe not... Core features: A bigger screen (100% certain). But how big, that is the question? My guess is a 16:9 aspect ratio 4" display with Retina. Covered in Gorilla Glass, obviously. Faster processor (100%). I expect an "A" series quad core, 1,200MHz CPU with a seperate high performance multicore graphics processor. This will almost certainly be the debut of the A6 CPU, probably paired with 1GB of RAM (up from 512MB in the '4S). Expect the new iPhone to mirror the new iPad and exceed the processing capabilities of its competition. No change in internal memory (99%). I expect 16, 32 and 64Gb to remain the capacity options for the new device. With iCloud now firmly established it would seem strange to increase capacity, pa...

In the UK we've long celebrated the dearth of news in the summer months as silly season , a period in which the (somewhat removed) heir to the throne behaving like a normal 28 year old man makes headline news. Just as traditionally, the technology industry likes to celebrate the end of the summer hiatus with a raft of new product announcements. With a new iPhone and new version of Windows on the cards, I thought it was worth running down my expectations for the next couple of weeks. Apple are still keeping us in the dark about the date for their much anticipated press conference, which is expected to be on the 12th of September. I anticipate that invites for this event will emerge just before 3pm GMT on the 5th, to coincide with the Nokia/ Microsoft presentation. iPhone 5 (likelihood: 100%) will be launched at this event, featuring a larger 4" touchscreen (90%), LTE for the US (90%) but not other markets (50%), NFC (75%) and the usual increase in processor and bus speed...