iakttakelser (observations)

A post from asymco.com by Horace Dediu has the original story . Here it is with kind permission: Two years ago: With new netbooks, laptops, desktops, and, yes, a smartphone, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci explains why he expects to soon overtake No. 2 PC maker Dell via  Acer Boss Lanci Takes Aim at Dell and HP – BusinessWeek . Today Acer CEO and President Gianfranco Lanci resigned with immediate effect. Acer is in trouble. You can read more on Acer’s current problems in the wake of the downward revision of its sales targets for two quarters here:  Acer Should Overhaul Its Operation: Stan Shih | CENS.com – The Taiwan Economic News In a nutshell, whereas Acer under Lanci took aim at Dell and HP, it seems that Apple took aim at Acer. And whereas Lanci missed, Apple’s aim was true. What is interesting here is that Acer had a very disruptive approach. They used the low end “netbook” concept to take share from incumbents motivated to move up-market. But what went wrong?...

A post from bloomberg.com by has the whole story . Here is a part: Speeding up Nokia’s product development is at the top of Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s agenda as he tries to meld the Finnish company’s handsets with Microsoft Corp. software to narrow the widening gap to Apple and Google Inc. Photographer: Henrik Kettunen/Bloomberg Every summer for the last four years while  Apple Inc. (AAPL) shipped a new iPhone,  Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)  managers vacationed at their lake cottages in Finland. “In mid-July, Nokia House is a ghost town,” said  Adam Greenfield , managing director of Urbanscale, a design consulting firm in  New York , who worked for Nokia from 2008 to 2010. “If you need a decision and the key person’s at the summer cottage? Forget it. You’ll resolve that issue in September. It’s something that hampers their agility.” Speeding up Nokia’s product development is at the top of Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s agenda as he tries to meld the Finnish compan...

A thinner glass is a stronger glass. Strange but thruee. A post from VentureBeat by Devindra Hardawar has the whole story . Here is a part: Despite what you may think, the iPad 2’s thinner glass screen doesn’t make it more fragile than the iPad 1’s. In fact, its thinness offers a level of flexibility that soundly trumps its predecessor, according to a stress test by  repair site iFixyouri . We’ll likely see other manufacturers offering ultra-thin glass screens as well. Glass is among the heaviest elements of a mobile device, so being able to move to a glass screen that’s both thinner and stronger is a coup for Apple. It’s a big contributor to the iPad 2’s thin new design. At .62 millimeters thick, the iPad 2’s glass screen is 27 percent thinner than the iPad 1’s (which is a “hefty” .85mm in comparison), according to  iFixit .

Future IT has three devices, or form factors; mobile, tablet and TV. I like that! A post from VentureBeat by Dean Takahashi has the whole story . Here is a part: Samsung offered a window into the future with a broad discussion of the forces driving the smart mobile device market and the different fundamental components it is making to serve those markets in the future. The U.S. division of Korea’s  Samsung Electronics  took a deep dive into its mobile technologies today at its local U.S. chip headquarters in San Jose, Calif. today, highlighting everything from the coming flexible screens for tablet computers to dual-core processors for smartphones. The company’s marketers tried to present the idea that no one is better positioned for the future of mobile electronics than Samsung. The company competes with other integrated technology companies such as Sony, LG, HP, and Apple — but few can boast of the technologies it showed off today. Samsung’s bet on mobile stems from ...

A post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) by Steven Sande has the whole story . Here is a part: Putting a device that is already thin and light onto a weight loss program seems like an exercise in futility, but it's something that Apple engineers love to do. The entire line of MacBooks has become lighter and thinner over the years, and many were surprised when the new  iPad 2  weighed in a full 15 percent lighter than the original device. How did the Apple engineers accomplish this feat? Analysts at  IHS iSuppli  performed a detailed teardown and component cost analysis of the iPad 2 and found several factors that make the new iPad the light and thin supermodel of tablets.

I love this title. And it makes me remember  Nvidia CEO: Mobile computing poised to disrupt PCs and servers  telling that even processor production is now just services. A post from GigaOM by Om Malik has the whole story . Here is a part: For nearly a decade, I’ve had an unwavering belief that all devices will have a connection to the network — wireless or otherwise. Any devices that have software to take advantage of network- and cloud-based smarts would find eager takers. The combination of hardware, software and connectivity would be key to the future of the hardware. That shift is now happening, as seen  in the growing popularity of Wi-Fi and the huge jump in Wi-Fi traffic . Because of this shift, we are seeing a re-definition of the consumer electronics landscape. It’s not a surprise a hardware-centric company like Sony found itself at a disadvantage, and upstarts like music gadget maker Sonos  and forward-TV-anywhere device maker Slingbox found success a...

Gutenberg started lonely in 1450, but already 50 years later print presses where all over Euorpe! A post from Economist's View by Mark Thoma has the whole story . Here is a part: More here:  Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press, Vox EU .

Programmers and architechts love to rewrite code. To finally get it right. 100% right. But it seldom happens. Rewriting code often kills startups. So be warned! A post from VentureBeat by Steve Blank has the whole story . Here is the last part: CEO’s face the “rewrite” problem at least once in their tenure. If they’re an operating exec brought in to replace a founding technical CEO, then it looks like an easy decision – just listen to your engineering VP compare the schedule for a rewrite (short) against the schedule of adapting the old code to the new purpose (long.) In reality this is a fools choice. The engineering team may know the difficulty and problems adapting the old code, but has no idea what difficulties and problems it will face writing a new code base. A CEO who had lived through a debacle of a rewrite or understood the complexity of the code would know that with the original engineering team no longer there, the odds of making the old mistakes over again are high. ...

People in The Apps Lifestyle needs better apps. More and better apps. And whatever can bring down the time of production and make the business model better is sorely needed. I discovered Heroku three months ago, and this was love with first sight. But I clearly see the it's not well suited to for instance iOS apps. So welcome StackMob - you're needed! A post from TechCrunch by MG Siegler has the whole story . Here is a part: It was almost exactly two years ago that  we first wrote about  a company called  Heroku . At the time, the Y Combinator startup was little more than a good idea: ease the development and deployment process a lot of other startups face by putting it in the cloud. Last month, Salesforce bought them for  $212 million in cash . It’s no wonder that a new startup,  StackMob , doesn’t mind being called a “Heroku for mobile”. Truth be told, that is a pretty good way to describe what they’re doing. They’ve created a cloud-based system to eas...

Apple has the double amount of cash than the stock value of Nokia. They use their cash however, to strengthen production and supply. A post from asymco by Horace Dediu has the original story . Here is with kind permission: When I wrote suggesting that the “best use of cash” was not acquisition but  integration of manufacturing  under the Apple control umbrella, the rumor that set off that discussion was that Apple was  financing new facilities  for its suppliers. Those rumors were quashed, but we now know there is something to them. During the September and December quarters, we executed long-term supply agreements with three vendors through which we expect to spend a total of approximately $3.9 billion in inventory component prepayments and  capital expenditures  over a two-year period. We made approximately $650 million in payments under these agreements in the December quarter, and anticipate making $1.05 billion in payments in the March quarter. ...

Tine har nok hatt en viktig betydning for bøndene. Men desverre har de hatt en katastrofal virking på matproduktene i Norge. I motsetning til Spania, vil Tine sentralisere alle produkter til noen ytterst få produksjonsteder og kutter ut alle produkter de mener ikke gir skikkelig profitt. I Spania finnes det tusenvis av meierier som hver har mange oster som leveres til markedet. De har smakløse produkter som ligner på Norvegia og fantastiske oste-familier som Manchego. Og spanske husmødre vet hvilet distrikt og hvilket meieri de skal kjøpe fra. Og hvilken lagringsgrad, det finnes minst fire, som de skal ha akkurat den dagen. Og husmødrene er villige til å betale for smak. Det er slett ikke den spanske Norvegia som stilles bredest ut i butikkene. I Tine vil de ha det anderledes. De vil ødelegge en merkevare som G35 og istedet lage en barnevariant tilsvarende Norvegia. Og i prosessen ødelegge meieriproduksjonen i Gudbrandsdalen. Jeg fatter ikke at bøndene mener de er tjent med Tine....

Apple has reportedly $50B and growing. May be they should follow student in disruption Horace Dediu advice? A post from asymco.com has the whole story . Here is a part: Toshiba plant to make LCD panels for Apple : report | Reuters. Apple will invest in a portion of the investment for the factory , the Nikkei said. This is one of the more interesting news items I’ve seen for a while. [UPDATE] Toshiba denies rumor Apple will invest in mobile display subsidiary There was a time when Apple designed and owned factories. From an interview with John Sculley: That went all the way through to the systems when he built the Macintosh factory. It was supposed to be the first automated factory but what it really was a final assembly and test factory with a pick-to-pack robotic automation. It is not as novel today as it was 25 years ago, but I can remember when the CEO of General Motors along with Ross Perot came out just to look at the Macintosh factory. All we were doing was final ...