Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
from MediaFile:
GlobalMedia-Baseball exec frustrated, but shies off lecturing Jobs
One of Major League Baseball's top executives may not think Apple's iTunes app store is particularly user friendly, but he's not about to offer advice to the hottest technology executive on the planet. Robert Bowman, the head of MLB Advanced Media, the league's Internet and digital business, loves apps. He wants his sport's games and other content to be on every wireless device out there and think apps will begin to shape how websites are designed. "We actually think it's going to invade the website. We think people like apps," he said at the Reuters Global Media Summit. "They're easy to understand. They're compartmentalized. It's a quick way to get information." That said, the Apple and Google app stores leave a lot to be desired, Bowman said. "The app stores are not well laid out. The app stores are very hard to figure out. Even Apple ... they do a great job, but they're hard to understand. The Android app store is very hard to understand, so it's hard for people to find the content." But, when asked what he would do to improve Apple's app store, Bowman demurred. "I don't think I'm going to get very far giving Steve Jobs advice," he said of Apple's renowned CEO. "He's done pretty damn well not listening to me for the first 57 years of his life and so I'm just going to continue to let him not listen to me." Bowman acknowledged that the Android app store leaves him "a little bit more frustrated." However, the baseball executive is not alone is finding the app stores frustrating. Despite charging $14.99 a pop, baseball has sold nearly 600,000 apps this year between the Apple and Android platforms, he said. Bowman also dismissed questions about the future of set-top boxes or big TVs, saying both are not going anywhere. "I don't think there's any history of media dying," he said. "I still listen to radio in my car. "The big TVs aren't going to go anywhere. It's like the automobile," Bowman added. "We're a country that likes big TVs.
(Reuters photo)
from MediaFile:
SanDisk on bullets and phone wars
Watch out for that smartphone! The iPhone, Android phones and the like are the weapons of the latest technology war, in the view of flash memory maker SanDisk, which supplies the memory chips that hold pictures, video and apps to the phone makers.
"We sell them ammunition. There is a war going on and we sell the bullets," Eli Harari told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
And bullets are selling briskly, even in the developing world, where people without computers are buying $20 phones and then adding a gigabyte or two of memory to hold all their pictures, the CEO said.
Apple's iPhone is coming under more fire from Google's Android platform and world handset leader Nokia. "Android phones are exploding," he said.
"The Android operating system on various platforms is going to give the industry a fighting chance against Apple. It remains to be seen what Nokia is going to do. I would definitely not write them off, although they clearly have fallen behind," Harari said. (Picture by Reuters/Bob Galbraith)
from MediaFile:
“The Cloud” overhyped? Brocade says not there for business yet
Say it's not so -- 'the cloud' isn't ready for prime time? That's the view from networking company Brocade, whose marketing chief compared the hype to the rush years ago to call center outsourcing.
All those applications and data that live off your computer somewhere in the Internet make up the cloud, from Google word processing software to your home pictures and video, and it is hot, hot, hot. But Brocade chief marketing officer John McHugh told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco that big business was not ready to embrace it for sensitive data and the most important applications.
"There's lots of issues. They're being skirted over because they are really tough and there are no obvious solutions for them today," he said. It will take "years" before big companies do that with important data, he said.
The cloud company he envisions will have no hard assets, essentially being an all-Internet endeavor. "This technology really isn't done yet," he said.
The consumer side is moving more quickly. An avid iPhone user, he raved about the impact of mobile devices, to the point where they are threatening to make PCs obsolete.
"My home PC -- I could very easily retire that in another year or two," he told the Summit. McHugh's PC still gets pulled out for complex design work, but for keeping contacts, writing notes, finding directions, even banking, it's all gone mobile. "Did anyone really see that coming?" he asked.
from MediaFile:
Verizon Wireless CEO: We don’t need the iPad — yet
Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdams kindly spent some time with us this afternoon and spoke at length about the future of LTE (Long Term Evolution) 4G high speed Internet from the No.1 U.S. wireless phone company.
Asked if there was "any hope" that Verizon would have the iPad anytime soon, McAdams laughed:
Any Hope!? Any Hope!?
For McAdams tablets will be a big part of Verizon's offering in the second half of 2010 with Android-based tablets from the usual suspects including Motorola, LG and Samsung.
Asked again if Verizon would do an iPad deal, McAdams said there was "no reason" they couldn't do a deal, but then didn't share the reason why they haven't done one until now.
Of course, the background to this is the market-defining success AT&T has had with both the iPhone and the iPad 3G. Yet the Verizon Wireless chief is confident the future of this market is bigger than Apple.
I don't believe the iPad is a game-changer but I do believe LTE is a game-changer.
iSkyscraper? If you were Apple, why not?
If you had paid $3.5 billion for a skyscraper named after bankrupt automaker General Motors, wouldn’t you want a tenant to come in and pay you another few million to rename the building, with the added bonus of giving it a name not associated with a failed recipient of government largesse?
Boston Properties, which bought the building last year, located at the southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan, is not known to be shopping around the naming rights to the building, but a top real estate broker in Manhattan, known as the “Queen of the Skyscraper” has one suggestion if ever it is : Apple.
The GM Building is home to Apple’s sleek flagship store, well known to the hordes of tourists and New Yorkers alike, and the maker of the iPhone enjoys top brand name recognition and public affection that Apple is a logical choice.
“If I were Steve Jobs I would be negotiating now,” said Darcy Stacom, the CB Richard Ellis broker who handled the transaction. (She hastened to add she has no knowledge of whether Apple is or might be interested.)
What’s more, she said, the building is home to CBS News’ national daily broadcast, so a massive audience hearing, “Live from the Apple building in New York…” every day would be a major coup for the retailer.
The naming rights to such a marquee building can be cost millions (they are not typically sold outright, but built into rents.) Then again, few companies, Apple among them, can afford that luxury in this market. And even if, as Stacom says, it takes a while for New York to get used to a new name, they may be eager to forget GM.
(Reuters photos)
Actually I disagree for exactly the reasons the broker make the suggestion in the first place. Apple is not “the establishment” quite the contrary; taking over such a building would alter that perception quite drastically in the eyes of many apple fanbois and girls.
Verizon and iPhone: Deal or no deal?
Verizon Communications Chief Financial Officer John Killian had a lot to say about how well his company’s smartphone and data business is doing, but skirted the elephant in the room at the Reuters Global Technology Summit: Is his company going to strike an iPhone deal with Apple?
Killian refused to comment on whether Verizon is talking to Apple about selling the iPhone once rival AT&T’s exclusive contract with the iPhone maker ends next year.
“Our PDA, smartphone and data business is growing incredibly nicely,” Killian said. “Our strategy is to have multiple devices. I’m not going to comment on Apple or the iPhone, but… we don’t feel we’re going to be at a market disadvantage in the PDA space as we go through today or 2009.”
So, no iPhone deal, then? Again, Killian avoided answering directly.
“We have a range of different devices with different manufacturers, and we’re continuing to evolve that. We’re going to have a series of introductions this year, we’re not dependent on any one vendor.”
But surely, Verizon must miss the publicity that all things iPhone get? After all, the iPhone — and Apple products in general — seem to drive people into paroxysms of delight, especially at trade shows like CES and CTIA. Does Verizon not feel the pressure to do something big and showy?
Killian’s response: “I don’t want buzz, I want volumes, cash flow, profitability. I want things that allow us to do that and I think our lineup is allowing us to do that.”
First of all, Verizon Wireless kills At&t in every way sept the iphone! I was with verizon clear back in 1996 and left because I thought a cheaper company would be better, I cruised through almost every available cellular carrier and found my way back to Verizon Wireless because of how great their service is and their customer service blows everyone else away too! But… I will be headed to the inferior network of At&t when my contract is up because the iphone is just that cool… Business get’s done with the iphone… Please Verizon, for your die hard loyal customers, work with Apple, pound out a deal, and let us, as valued costomers, be on your network, with the amazing iphone!
Apple’s iPhone takes slow boat to China
In China, Apple’s iPhone commands a strange presence. Perenially “coming out”, already widely available on the black market, viewed with trepidation by local telecom players but with undisguised lust by affluent consumers.
Sanford C. Bernstein Toni Sacconaghi thinks the wildly popular device will arrive in the Middle Kingdom before the end of the year, after a long haul of negotiations with state-run telecom carriers keen to control the content to be sold over the gadget.
Some sticking points thus far: Sacconaghi says Chinese typically spend $10-$15 per month on data services — everything from stock quotes to weather forecasts — wheareas your typical iPhone user in the developed world now spends $70. That limits the Chinese carriers’ ability to subsidize the iPhone. But the analyst thinks that in one to two months Apple may unveil a cheaper version of the device that can lower the cost of the phone to lower-paying Chinese customers.
“You’re struggling with how to monetize the iPhone”, he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit. “It could be used to let carriers pay less.”
Though conceding that negotiations on that front between the consumer electronics giant and carriers in the world’s largest telecoms arena have been “opaque” at best, Sacconaghi thinks Apple is getting tougher.
“It’s a testament to the fact that they’ve been negotiating pretty tough” that the iPhone’s introduction had been delayed,” he said.
Problem is, Apple may be underestimating the Chinese government’s tendency to want to control content — especially mass consumer content — and its distribution. Apple, which also jealously guards ultimate control of the applications or programs sold through its Apps store, may have finally met its match.
Apple will continue to have trouble breaking into the Chinese market, not only with the iPhone but with their computers as well. Although Apple’s computers are popular there with those working in the arts, or people who like the company’s design over function, many Chinese websites, especially e-commerce sites, have compatibility problems with Mac. Whether that will change on the web designer end or Apple’s software changes remains to be seen.
Say what? I could have had me a download on my old Nokia?
Williams did credit Apple with one thing — a knack for design: ”They pioneered new ground by taking this beautiful display size and doing a display-only product. That was pioneering”. Symbian software is used in about two-thirds of all smartphones but of course not in the hugely popular Apple iPhone.
Apple introduces iPhone
3.0 OS software
development kit in
March 2009
The problem for Nokia has been the network operators. Nokia and the Operators fight to own consumer loyalty. Operators don’t typically want to allow phones on their networks to download apps from Nokia or other developers. Apple’s success has been in their ability to strike up agreements with the operators, but then again, it has limited them to only offering service through typically one operator.
Stupid picture frames
Sehat Sutardja, the CEO of chipmaker Marvell, doesn’t have much respect for digital picture frames. “It comes with a dumb processor – a really, really dumb and stupid processor,” Marvell’s founder said while speaking at the Reuters Summit on Monday.
Sutardja is not dumb. He is an engineer who claims an impressive 154 patents. He is also co-founder of Marvell, which sells computer chips that make devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry “smart”.
He told Reuters that he wants to start selling similar chips to companies that that make digital picture frames. Adding features like video games, Web browsing, e-book readers and scrolling stock prices. “You already pay for the nice screen, the box, shipping, the power supply,” he said. “The difference is just the CPU that you need to put in that box.”
Electronics makers are already sampling Marvell’s “smart” chips now for picture frames and Sutardja says that they could have new products on store shevles within a year.”We don’t know when they will hit — whether it will be Christmas or Mother’s Day.”
(Picture: Reuters)
