Mac ads haunt Steve Ballmer
Shareholders press Microsoft's CEO about Apple's marketing campaign
Image: Apple Inc.
Those Get-a-Mac ads make "you all look like a buffoon," one long-time shareholder (and father of four Mac-using children) told Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer at the company's annual meeting Thursday. "I'm just wondering why your marketing group can't do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you've got a real bad image out there."
"We all watch television," Ballmer responded, before quickly changing the subject to Microsoft's market share.
"The truth of the matter is, we do quite well," he said, according to TechFlash's Todd Bishop, who seems to have taken the best notes. "Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing, some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows; that's a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac."
Ballmer acknowledged that Apple (AAPL) had "picked up a couple of tenths of a percent of market share," an achievement some in the audience seemed to find laughable.
But as the Wall Street Journal's Nick Wingfield points out, citing IDC numbers, Apple's share of new PC shipments in the U.S. was 9.2% in the third quarter, up from 4.8% in the same period four years ago. (Worldwide share: 3.9% compared with 2.4% four years ago.)
Wingfield also took a crack at estimating how many copies of Window 7 Microsoft has sold, a number the company has not provided.
Calculated innovation: Is there a post-recession payoff?
Yes, you can create new products and services without betting the farm
By Ilana Westerman, CEO, Create with Context
Westerman: Innovation doesn't have to be risky. Photo: Create with Context
Many companies remain shell-shocked from the past 18 months of economic disaster. As such, innovation – despite its potential rewards – is not exactly in fashion right now.
Though gurus like Jim Collins and others extol the virtues of using the downturn to capitalize on market opportunities or a competitor’s weakness, companies today are more likely to take a wait-and-see approach to innovation: “Look for the quick bucks and the low-hanging fruit,” you might say to your management team.
But wait a minute: why not invest in innovation? And I'm not talking about focus groups and customer feedback surveys and Friday afternoon brainstorming sessions.
Economic indicators suggest that we are slowly pulling out of this global economic downturn. Despite the uncertainties ahead, this is the optimal time to think about innovation in a different light: what new groundbreaking product or service would truly resonate with your customers? It's probably something they can't articulate themselves. But it's worthwhile to take the time to discern what motivates your customers and how you could meet a need they don't even realize they have. In our work with clients, we call this calculated innovation.
When executives think about innovation, what often comes to mind is not far from the truth: engineers and marketing chiefs sit around a table and pontificate on the next big idea. This is fuzzy and abstract, and often not grounded in reality. Where do these ideas come from and how can you measure your risk?
No wonder innovation is scary for many companies. More
The man behind the netbook craze
A few years ago rivals mocked Jonney Shih, chairman of Asustek, and his purse-size laptop computers. Millions of netbooks later, Shih is having the last laugh.
Jonney Shih, CEO of Asus, in Taipei.
On a hillside above the Hsing Tian Kong temple in the northern reaches of Taipei, Jonney Shih sits on a wobbly stool next to an ornate low wooden table. Dressed in a taupe suit, white shirt, and silver tie emblazoned with jaguars, Shih, 57, cheerfully waves off three umbrella-wielding employees who try in vain to shield their boss from the hot sun and a swirl of menacing bees.
But Shih, who is waiting to be photographed for this magazine, sits serenely, perspiration-free in the sun, intent on a game of Chinese chess. "In Buddhism you learn to accept everything, to let it flow through you," Shih says. "Then you can slow down and think clearly."
It turns out the ferociously driven Shih is a less-than-model Buddhist. (Buddhists aren't supposed to be thinking about technology while they're meditating — something Shih is known to do.) But his ambition, combined with engineering skills and spot-on business instincts, also makes him the most brilliant technology executive you've never heard of.
He is the largest shareholder and chairman of Asustek (pronounced a-soos-tech), the $21-billion-a-year tech conglomerate that introduced the first netbook three years ago, ushering in a revolution in the stagnant PC industry. When it hit stores in the fall of 2007, Shih's $399 EeePC was derided by rivals as a low-power plaything. But Asustek, or Asus for short, went on to sell millions of the mini-notebooks and soon vaulted to No. 5 in worldwide PC market share. More
Google Chrome OS press event, 11/19
The crowd gets ready for the Chrome OS announcement. Photo: Jon Fortt.
I'm at Google (GOOG), ready for the Chrome OS press event to begin. Refresh this page for updates.
They're telling us they're getting started a little late because attendees got caught in traffic. That's nice of them, I guess.
Sundar Pichai is at the lectern. He says Google is a year away from launching Chrome OS, but they want to show off what they've done so far. (Big disappointment here; blogs had spread rumors that this was a launch.) They're open sourcing the project, and the code will be totally open.
He starts off talking about Chrome, the browser. He calls it the foundation of everything Google is doing with Chrome OS. One year after launch they have 40 million users. Google claims its Javascript performance is 39 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. It has had 19 stable releases or updates, and HTML5 is making the web more powerful. More
Sweet! Is Sugar the future of publishing?
The women-centric collection of sites is shaking up the web — and traditional media.
Lisa Sugar's celebrity blog morphed into an online empire. Photo: Sugar Inc.
The state of affairs in publishing is beyond depressing. Unless, of course, by publishing you mean the shiny new online-only startups who are behaving as if it were boom times for journalism. An example is Sugar Publishing, the 3 1/2-year old blogging company that focuses on young women. Run by the husband-and-wife team Brian and Lisa Sugar, the San Francisco company has 12 sites, 114 people, and boasts an online audience that's approaching that of Time Warner's (TWX) People.com (almost 8 million monthly visitors in October for Sugar versus 12 million for People, says comScore).
It gets better. According to Brian Sugar, his little company will be profitable this quarter as well as all of next year. What's more, only half the company's revenues come from advertising against the work of its journalists — a shocking figure given that traditional media companies get, well, all of their revenues from their scribbling. "Editorial is a marketing expense to drive people to something bigger," he says. More
Rumor: Apple tablet delayed
Steve Jobs' next big thing is being retooled, Asian supply-chain sources report
Artist's rendition. Image: Silicon Alley Insider.
Live by the rumor, die by the rumor. Or at least go on life support.
The Apple (AAPL) tablet computer that all Silicon Valley has taken as a given — but no one outside of Cupertino seems to have seen — won't be arriving early next year, as widely rumored, and may not appear until the second half of 2010.
This according to a report Thursday in DigiTimes, a Taipei-based daily newspaper that covers — with uneven results — every hiccup in the Taiwanese and greater Chinese electronics industry. At one point, MacRumors, which trades in Apple gossip itself, stopped citing the paper without heavy disclaimers about its track record (see here.)
David Pogue channels Britney Spears
The New York Times' columnist entertains IT types with a parody of "Ooops!… I did it again."
Pogue at Interop. Photo: Philip Elmer-DeWitt
David Pogue may review technology for a living, but give him half a chance and he'll revert to his first love: show tunes.
He did it again Wednesday, ending his Interop New York 2009 keynote at the Javits Center with one of his patented song parodies: "Apps!… I did it again," a Britney Spears classic (if there is such a thing) rewritten for the age of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.
The performance followed an address that entertained mostly by accident. In what he described in advance as an "exercise in idiocy," he attempted 15 live demos of his favorite gadgets and apps.
We lost track of how many failed, but it seemed like more than half. "Dr. Kevorkian, call me now!" he cried after one of his simplest — a demo of Google Info (800-GOOG-411) — was foiled by Interop's overloaded Wi-Fi circuits.
Below the fold: Pogue at the electric piano.
Still afraid of the "S" word?
Get over it: There’s good reason to share data with your customers, suppliers and subcontractors.
By Jim Lawton, senior vice president, D&B
Lawton calls for a new kind of collaboration. Photo: D&B
Toothpaste, dog food or children’s toys: Which one of these tainted products could have been prevented from coming to market?
The fact is that all of them could have been stopped – well before any consumers were harmed. How? Manufacturers and retailers could have shared “secrets” about supplier quality, preventing bad actors from getting their wares onto store shelves.
That’s a big change from the way most companies operate today. But businesses need to change their ideas about what matters – and bring ‘transparency’ into the supply chain that tracks the product at each stage of production.
Isn’t this heretical? Maybe. More
The iPhone is headed to Seoul
South Korea could be getting Apple's smartphone as early as next week
Image: iPhonAsia.com
According to wire service reports, government regulators finally cleared the way Wednesday for the launch of Apple's iPhone in South Korea.
The Korean Daily News reported Wednesday that KT Corp. (KTC) — the country's second-largest carrier — plans to start taking Internet orders for the iPhone on Thursday and begin sales on Nov. 28.
South Korea's largest carrier, SK Telecom (SKM), is said to to be in talks with Apple (AAPL) about selling the phone to their customers.
With 47 million mobile phone users and two of the world's largest cell phone manufacturers — Samsung and LG — South Korea boasts a vibrant wireless culture. Its capital, Seoul, is chock-a-block with Internet cafés, wireless hotspots and gaming areas (called "pc baangs") on nearly every corner.
Despite all that, South Korea is not the world's leader in terms of cell phone ownership — not by a long shot. According to the most recent survey at NationMaster.com, that distinction belongs to the United Arab Emirates, whose citizens carry, on average, a stunning 1.71 mobile phones apiece. By that measure, South Korea's .887 cell phones per capita puts them in 63th place worldwide. [More recently, the AP put South Korea's per capita mobile ownership at 93%.]
Qatar and Israel, two countries on Apple's "coming soon" list, are Nos. 6 and 7 in Nation Master's rankings, with 1.39 and 1.38 cell phones per capita respectively.
UPDATE: Dan Butterfield, who covers the Pacific Rim wireless market at iPhonAsia.com, suggests that the event next week might less than a full-fledged launch. Posting from China, he writes:
"There have been at least two previous reports of Apple’s imminent iPhone launch in South Korea in partnership with KT. Perhaps the third time is the charm? According to JoonAng Daily, KT plans to host an iPhone launch event on Nov. 28. The actual launch is rumored to be sometime in early December." (link)
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
