Last week, at the 3GSM World Congress conference in Barcelona, the CEO of Symbian welcomed the Apple iPhone’s move into the US market. Nigel Clifford, the CEO of Symbian, stated:
“The American marketplace is an underdeveloped marketplace for smartphones. This could educate the American consumer that there is more that you can do with a phone than treat it as an email device.”
This view has also been shared by a Nokia executive in the past. Will the iPhone revolutionize the cell phone market as Apple claims it will? To a certain extent yes it will, especially in the US considering how far behind the US is with cellular technology. Many of my friends know about my disappointments with the services offered by US carriers and the phones offered by carriers here in the US in comparison to what is offered by carriers in Europe and MENA. Hopefully the iPhone will help drive carriers to implement new mobile services here in the US, and will help drive the general US population to start thinking differently about smartphones.
It has been a while since Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt has been elected to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) board of directors. So far, no one has seen any direct consequences of what I call the “strategic partnership”, other than Google showing more support for the Mac OS with the release of compatible applications.
Other than that, nothing has really been disclosed as to how the two innovative companies may collaborate. On the other hand though, a whole bunch of rumors have been circulating about the Apple iTV, Apple’s potential mobile phone, Google’s plans for YouTube (especially getting a proper business and revenue model in place), and a potential Google mobile phone. The rumors have been flying all over the place in terms of what Apple and Google might be planning for these products.
A few months back Apple announced what has become known as the “iTV”. The only other piece of information related to that iTV is that it would be available in the first quarter of 2007. Nothing on what the iTV was supposed to do, the specifications, or how it would operate was released. But supposedly the iTV is supposed to stream one’s digital multimedia content from a computer to the television.
I don’t know if I’m the only one thinking this way, or if anyone else has been thinking the same way as I am but hasn’t been vocal about their thoughts, but wouldn’t it be logical for Apple to integrate Google’s YouTube with the iTV? This would essentially mean free on-demand video content for the consumer served right to one’s television, while Google, Apple, and the content providers reap the benefits of the revenue from the advertisements displayed while the on-demand video is being served. And if the iTV really does catch on just like the iPods have, Google and Apple will have set foot into a market which will only prove to be beneficial.
Who would have ever thought that online search would have a huge impact on a company’s ability to sell or attract customers? A recent article on CNN Money titled Get right with Google describes how small companies can lose up to 20% of their revenues due to losing their rankings on Google for specific search keywords or keyphrases. This problem probably does not only exist for companies that depend on Google (the article probably focused on Google due Google being the leader in market share in terms of online searches), but probably also exists for companies that rely on any of the top search engines to generate traffic to their websites.
Online search engines have become a great marketing tool for many companies, especially for small companies that couldn’t afford expensive advertisements in publications and other types of media. But at the same time such companies that just rely on search engine marketing are at a huge risk of losing a lot of their business due to the fact that search engines are constantly refining the algorithms that are used to rank websites based on certain keywords and keyphrases. That makes one wonder how a company can stay on top of all the advances that take place on the internet?
There are probably hundreds and hundreds of ways to do so, but a very simple, cheap, and cost-effective way would be for companies to use a free online analytics tool, such as (and by far the greatest free one out there) Google Analytics to monitor website traffic and keyphrases that lead to the traffic. Any anomalies that are noticed should be immediately looked into and tested against various variables and benchmarks (such as looking up certain keywords or keyphrases that were generating the most traffic for the website from a search engine) and test the page rank of the company’s current website against the past page rank. Since almost all search engines claim that their search algorithms are proprietary, the only way to go about improving page ranking is by visiting websites that have “stolen” the website’s spot on the search engine and analyze the way keywords are used on the website, what websites link to the website, the way the link structure of the websites work, etc. From this point, the company’s website must be modified to match the new trends that are allowing for other websites to perform better with that search engine.
Under the Money section of USA Today there was a short article titled Microsoft offers ability to bill usage hourly. Microsoft has released a solution for the consumers of lower income countries which will allow them to have access to a computer. This new solution is known as FlexGo, and has been launched in Brazil and will be launched in Mexico, China, Russia, and India over the course of the next 90 days. What this solution does, is that it allows for a consumer to have access to a personal computer in a much more affordable manner.
FlexGo makes consumers pay for roughly half the price of a computer up front. The consumer then must purchase prepaid cards in order to use the computer at home. The prepaid cards will be based on an hourly rate, and will connect to a service to verify the access codes on the prepaid card. Whenever the time on a prepaid card runs out, the consumer no longer has access to the computer until the consumer purchases another prepaid card. This works in the similar manner that prepaid mobile phone lines work.
Microsoft seems to have figured out a way to market computers to people that usually wouldn’t be able to own their own computer. Not a lot of details are available at the moment, but what is known is that a computer running Windows XP that comes along with a 17-inch monitor that would usually sell for around $600 will be selling for between $250 and $350. With the price comes 10 hours of usage time. After that, every additional hour will cost approximately 75 cents. Microsoft has teamed up with the Chinese Lenovo Group to manufacture and distribute the FlexGo machines in China and India. This move by Microsoft most probably directed to compete with the $100 laptop that is being developed by AMD, Google, and Red Hat.
No information is available on the Microsoft website about the FlexGo solution. Press releases have been the only source of information as of right now.
For as long as we have known Google, they have simply target the consumer rather than businesses. Yes, Google does have their corporate search solution available for businesses to purchase, but for the most part that is not the market that they are targeting. This might change in the near future for all that we know.
The co-founder of SAP, the world’s biggest business software group (according to the Financial Times), said that SAP is open to be bought, with only three buyers: IBM, Microsoft, and Google. Being bought out by either IBM or Microsoft, as IBM does compete with SAP and Microsoft having approached SAP a few years back with a purchase proposition. But why Google?
No one really knows if Google would really be interested in acquiring such a company, but what is known for sure is that Google has almost double the market capitalization of SAP ($112 billion vs. $64 billion, respectively). Would the acquisition of a company such as SAP leverage Google in terms of its competition from Microsoft? Would the acquisition of SAP by Google create more competition for Google from the likes of IBM? The answer to both these questions is surely yes. It would be great to see Google acquire a company like SAP and increase its potential for providing innovative solutions to businesses.
Any comments or responses from anyone majoring in MIS or currently in the MIS field?
While browsing the internet for interesting articles, I came across an article titled The Microsoft malaise, Commentary: Eight signs that the software giant is dead in the water written by John Dvorak for MarketWatch. Dvorak gives eight reasons as to why Microsoft isn’t doing anything interesting or innovative (read my blog post titled: Innovation is the Key to Success). Reason #8 presented by Dvorak reads:
Preoccupation with Google. Microsoft is too easily distracted by successful companies who are not competitors. There is a deep-rooted belief that if a company like Google is successful, then they are an enemy per se. So the company obsesses on what Google is doing rather than concentrating on important Microsoft projects. Now Microsoft is about to do a deal with Yahoo to flank Google. This old-lady-like skittishness is unbecoming for a company this size.
Dvorak also cites two more reasons that support his theory that Microsoft isn’t doing anything interesting. Both of these points point back to Microsoft getting into the advertising business through MSN rather than concentrate on what it does best, which is publish software. A few days ago, Microsoft announced that it would be dumping several billion dollars into research and development going towards its internet business which led to Microsoft’s share price dropping around 10% to date as a result of that investment eating away at earnings in the upcoming future.
Personally, I would have to agree with Dvorak on the matter. Microsoft does not belong where it wants to go. Instead of investing the billions of dollars in an attempt to compete with Google, which does a fine job with online advertising, Microsoft should be able to better assess its situation and invest that money to come up with something innovative for a change.
What baffles me the most, is that Microsoft is always obsessed with its competition, even companies that are not direct competitors, instead of worrying about what its direct competition, such as Apple, have planned for the future. Someone should let Microsoft know that they should be more concerned with Apple very slowly gaining market share, especially with Boot Camp under development, which could mean serious trouble for Microsoft in the long-run.
