Better to create than predict - from Silicon Valley

Monster Employment Index Europe

2012-02-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have been following the US Monster Employment Index for a few years now. I have not paid much attention to the Monster Employment Index Europe. There was something caught my attention in the latest (January 2012) report.

The summary of the 2012-01 Europe Index reported,

The Monster Employment Index Europe grows 9% on a year-over-year basis.
Germany is the only country to demonstrate strong annual growth at 30%.
The Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and France continue to report negative growth rates.

I use the US Monster Employment Index as a simplistic current-to-leading index for the US economy. I would imagine there are many differences between US and European economies due to the regulations and political reality. The Europe Index reports only on seven countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, and United Kingdom. Though not covering all of the European Union countries, it is interesting enough for me to keep an eye on from time to time. I looked back to last year's numbers, this downward trend has started around August/September time. If the Europe Index bears a similar characteristics to its US counterpart, the western Europe except for Germany is close to another recession.

Some media thought that Germany's export has benefited from a weakened EURO. If not, there would have been fewer people that can afford their new BMW and Mercedes. I don't know whether that is true or not, but I wonder Germany can single-handedly pull the whole EU along with it. It is troublesome enough to worry about the bad sovereign debts. And now the economy of Europe is in a shaky state. Maybe that explains why all my mutual fund holdings that have European exposures are in retreat.

Screen size of a smart phone

2012-01-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

The Android phone industry just hands out one oversized Android phone after another.

Let's look at these big phones.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G, 135 x 67.9mm with 1280x800 pixels (aspect ratio 8:5)
Samsung Galaxy SII 125.3 x 66.1mm with 800x480 pixels (aspect ratio 5:3)
HTC EVO 3D 126.1 x 65.4mm with 960x540 pixels (aspect ratio 16:9)
And Samsung Galaxy Note trumps all of them at 146.9 x 9.7 mm with 1280x800 pixels.
(For reference, iPhone 4S 115.2 x 58.6 mm with 960x640 pixels)

I don't understand why all the obsessions with a gigantic screen on a phone. Without a big hand, one can hardly wrap his/her thumb around to touch the right spot on the screen with one hand. A purse or bag is required to carried it around. Putting it in a pocket is possible but it takes away too much precious real estate of a pocket.

Another problem is the aspect ratio of the screen. It already presents a design challenge for me when designing a universal game for both iPhone (3:2) and iPad (4:3). But I can make an excuse between a phone and a tablet. Stretching images into a different aspect ratio does not make it picture perfect. The other choice is to fill un-used space with background color or image. There are many blogs and articles discussing techniques dealing with this issue. But none has talked about how to test and see the user interface on different screens without buying all of them.

Bigger screens will not make those products more appealing to consumers, when human factors are taken out of product design. I also wonder whether Samsung and HTC care to tend Android application and game developers. The two leading Android brands behave like pure hardware manufacturers that don't seem to appreciate the importance of consistency to the ecosystem which adds value to Android phones. At the same time, I heard it is the carriers who drive product specifications. Well, carriers have never had a love for third party developers.

Kindle Fire

2011-11-23T11:46:00.001-08:00

Kindle Fire is not the champion for Android tablets, but it is the right product for Amazon.

I watched review and comparison videos on YouTube as I have not bought a Kindle Fire yet. From those videos I had the impression that Kindle Fire is not as fast as Apple's iPad 2. The page loading and refresh speed is slower than that on iPad 2. The touch response does not seems to be as smooth. By most measures for a web browsing device and a game console, I doubt it can compete with iPad 2. Nevertheless, I still think it is a good and smart product.

I have complained about last generation's Kindle reader earlier this year. This new generation of Kindle answered my complaints. The touch screen takes away the clumsiness for users to interact with contents. Compared with the previous generation, Kindle Fire provides all the needed improvements in terms of color display, faster page flipping and rendering. It also provides a comparable video experience as iPad 2. Given its price, it is an adequate tablet but an outstanding content viewer. It is exactly right up Amazon's alley for all the digital contents it wants to sell.

Kindle Fire is a smart product with a right compromise and feature focus. I may buy one for my daughter to read on. But I am sure she will ask for my iPad when it comes to Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Young users do not settle for their game experiences.

No more mobile Flash

2011-11-14T22:50:00.000-08:00

Adobe gave up on mobile Flash.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/09/us-adobe-apple-idUSTRE7A84NO20111109

Now it is even more obvious that HTML5 is the technology of choice. HTML5 originated from the grudge of companies that wanted to break free from a dysfunctional consortium, W3C. It is not every day that an open standard comes out winning. Nokia/Symbian used to be the major licensee of mobile Flash. But Symbian is no longer a viable platform. Windows Mobile is going with Silverlight. Google has been a major champion for HTML5. It is up to Adobe to work on various hardware compositions with Android licensees. I don't know whether Adobe had planned for all the factors or whether Adobe has done its best to meet the challenges head on. The consequence of the announcement is that Adobe has not just given up on mobile Flash, it also sent a disturbing signal to its developer community.

Developers invest in technologies that they can leverage upon. When Adobe stopped the development of mobile Flash, it means all the technical know-how and the digital assets invested in Flash are not going to be applicable on mobile devices. Mobile devices are the new frontier. If developers have no Flash but HTML5 on mobile devices, the future investment of their money, time, and brain power will go to HTML5. The death of mobile Flash is not just the end of Flash on mobile devices. It will soon drag down the desktop Flash with it.

HP's next tablet is Windows 8

2011-11-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

HP's new CEO, Mrs. Whitman, said the next tablet product from HP will use Windows 8.

http://moconews.net/article/419-hps-whitman-were-going-to-make-windows-8-tablets/

Two features caught my attention when I took a look at those Windows 8 introduction videos for the Metro Interface, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihcIlg37QKU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHrcz7zcm_8. One is the touch area outside the visible part of screen and the other is the support of the original windows interface. A touch area outside the screen requires the same high density touch sensory to be integrated beyond the viewing portion of display. The desktop Windows user interface requires more memory. Both add to the BOM cost.

Based on the iPad 2 3G tear down, the BOM cost is around $326. This number came with the fact of Apple's own A5 processor and the low memory usage enjoyed by iOS. A WiFi-only iPad 2 would cost even less. Enough hand-held Windows devices had suffered under-provisioned hardware and failed so far. HP's decision of adapting Windows 8 will put itself between the choice of higher cost per unit or unsatisfactory user experience. Mrs. Whitman has one shot on this one. A decision of using Windows 8 may seem to be a no-brainer. It may turn out to be an ill-thought decision because it seemed to be such a no-brainer.

Will HTC have its own OS

2011-09-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

Rumor has it that HTC is contemplating on buying an OS for itself.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50859.php

"We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse." HTC Chairwoman, Cher Wang said in an interview. She went further on, "Our strength lies in understanding an OS, but it does not mean that we have to produce an OS."

It takes approximately $40 million dollars annually to maintain a team of 200 for mobile OS R&D. It is quite affordable to today's HTC. But what will be the strategic position for this OS? If the new OS is to replace Windows Mobile OS, an annual operating cost of $40 million can justify some $70 to $100 million royalty paid yearly for Windows Mobile licenses. But Windows Mobile OS is not the one making HTC feel naked. It is Google's Android, which does not have a royalty based license.

Maybe the whole thing is just some psychological response to Google's buying Motorola Mobile. Or maybe it is because HP's webOS is available at this inopportune time. HTC did not express this idea in such a way as "We'd like to build our own team and our own OS". HTC actually had an small Linux team before. Without a strategy in mind and a concise goal to develop OS in a culture dominated by hardware business, acquisition will not add value. The interesting part is that, though everyone in the mobile industry thinks OS makes a difference, not many companies got it right or even bother to approach it. If Google is to build its own hardware business, what can HTC do? Without an alternative, what HTC should keep an eye on is companies like ZTE, not Google's Moto.

Steve Jobs resigned

2011-08-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as-CEO-of-Apple.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Letter-from-Steve-Jobs.html

Jobs turned Apple around from the brink of bankruptcy. It was no small feast to say the least. What he and Apple impressed me most was the way Apple jumped in and woke up a very competitive and already booming cell phone industry by introducing iPhone. In 2007, more than 1.1 billion units of cell phones were shipped, while there were only 271 million units of PC shipped in 2007. Among those, more than 110 million units were smart phones. The number one cell phone vendor in 2007, Nokia, owned at least 36% of the overall cell phone market and over 50% of the smart phone market. Nokia had a record revenue in 2007 at €51 billion, which was approximately $80 billion dollars on an average exchange rate of 1 EUR to 1.5 dollar. While the whole electronic-hardware industry looked at the cell phone industry as the main source of demand, Apple walked in with iPhone and told everyone the king has no clothes on. Given an average lead time of two years for a brand new cell phone, the iPhone project might have started in early 2005. In 2005, North America was only a barren field for smart phones.

Apple's stock fell only slightly to $373.72, a drop of $2.46 or 0.65% today. It seems that the market believes Apple now stands firm on the ground, not on Jobs' shoulder. No matter it is an impression or a reality, Apple will eventually out-grow Jobs. Some people in the Valley refer Jobs as "micro-management". That is an expression of their own preferences. After all, Jobs delivered products, revenue and profit to underscore his leadership style. Not many CEOs on earth can say the same, no matter what their preference in leadership styles is.

Seoul Sausage Co.

2011-08-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

I just heard about this company from a friend who went to the 3rd Annual San Francisco Food Festival.

I was told its sausages were sensational. What is more amazing is that this company has no store front, not in the on-line or mail order business. It only does catering and participating in various festivity events. On the web site, the company states,

In less than one year this little dream has turned into the longest lines at street fairs, requests for private orders for wineries/chefs, catered events from movie studios & Fortune 500 companies, and requests to attend various festivals around the country. All currently with no food truck and no retail space, but simply word of mouth...

Of course, there are Facebook, Twitter and Yelp in the mix for such a viral marketing effect. This is a great example of finding a blue ocean in a red sea. When I searched it online, the first few hits were the company's web site, Yelp review, Twitter link and Facebook page. On Yelp review, it has only Los Angeles, CA as a nominal address, but the area code of the telephone number is somewhere near San Jose, California. The telephone number in the company web page shows another area code from San Francisco. You can imagine how dynamic its operation is and a form of telecommuting the company employs.

This company addresses the real value its customers appreciate and cleverly bypasses the overhead that traditionally burdened this industry. At the same time, it leverages all the free marketing resources made available to it. This is definitely a new type of company that deserves a little more attention.

HP/Palm webOS deserves a true steward

2011-08-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Now HP's executive is saying "We stand by webOS", after offically abandoning it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-19/hewlett-packard-webos-software-bought-with-palm-not-dead-dewitt-says.html

I received the WebOS developer blog in my email with the title "The next chapter for webOS", signed by Richard Kerris VP webOS Developer Relations. In it, it claims the development and innovation will continue, although the planned developer events around the world may have changes. And one of HP's Senior Vice President Stephen DeWitt said in an interview, "The webOS is not dead... We’re going to continue to evolve it, update and support it. We stand by it." If you look at the price of webOS tablet went down in the past weekend, those words carry neither weight nor meaning.

In my previous blog, I believed HP should go for products, not licensing business. Even now there will be no webOS based product from HP, licensing it still makes no sense. The licensing fee will not recoup the R&D cost, as shown by Microsoft Windows Mobile revenue. A cost center will not result in a vibrant environment for innovation, which will kill webOS sooner than later.

HP should find a suitor for webOS and sell it, like Ebay eventually did for Skype. WebOS is modern and has a lot of value in it. It is not a burning platform like Symbian and Nokia Series-60. Find a worthy home for the team before they jump ship to Apple and Google and leave the webOS an empty shell. After all, Palm's office is only 5 to 10 minutes drive away from Google and Apple's headquarters.

HP gave up on webOS

2011-08-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

HP decided to stop producing tablets and smartphones based on webOS.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50543.php

It is really a sad yet harsh footnote to the cell phone industry. I wonder what webOS folks would think if they look at the history of Google purchasing Android, Inc. and the rise of Android phones. A little more than four years (August 2005 to April 2010) separated the fate of the two companies. Should I say the vision and execution of a company made such differences? Excellent technologies can go only so far.

Now HP is going back to a Business-to-Business (B2B) company. Look back not too far into HP's history. Carly Fiorina took HP past the point of no return to a PC OEM company. The low-margin yet big-volume business impacted the company culture so much that the next CEO wanted a strategy for consumer products. Or is it the big share of PC revenue demanded a consumer product oriented CEO? So the next CEO, Mark Hurd, bought Palm and webOS. When Mr. Hurd left HP, the CEO followed, Léo Apotheker, decided otherwise. People can say anything about his decision on discontinuing webOS. But no one can say he made a wrong decision in buying Palm/webOS, because it was not his decision. That fact makes him safe to call the shot in front of the board.

I registered as a webOS developer almost as soon as it is open to the public. My attention to the platform however diminished as it has never gathered enough momentum. I hope this blog will not become an obituary for webOS. But hope against hope, who is to challenge Apple's supremacy of vertical integration?

Google Buys Motorola Mobility for its patent portfolio

2011-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

Google is going to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50468.php

The patent war in the cell phone industry has not ended but Motorola Mobility has benefited from it already. Google is an Internet service company, a software company, but not a manufacturer, not an expert in logistics. This is purely a acquisition for Moto's patent portfolio. I do not see Google running Motorola Mobility and producing Google phones vigorously.

Some analysts thought Microsoft might be a winner in this deal, because of doubts and distrusts towards Google among the Android licensees.
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=467053
http://allthingsd.com/20110815/u-s-carriers-silent-on-motoroogle-but-france-telecom-gives-it-a-thumbs-up/
It is just a wishful thinking, in my opinion. Microsoft was in the market licensing its Windows Mobile OS when Nokia had 60% of smartphone market share in 2006-2007. The fact of dominant Nokia did not help Mircosoft to a strong second place. Instead, RIM's Blackberry filled the gap and rose to the second place in 2008 and 2009. When Apple introduced iPhone in 2007 and made its stand in 2008, Android was still in its infancy. Most vendors went to Google and invested their own resources to develop Android phones instead of diving deeper into Windows Mobile. Why is that? I have my thoughts on that, though without direct proof. It suffices to say Windows Mobile is not attractive enough to OEM vendors given all the incentives and the business environment.

Maybe Google will spin off Motorola Mobility and share the patent portfolio with it once the acquisition is done. After all, it is all about patents and it is better for Google and Motorola Mobility to run separately.

Patent suit Nokia vs Apple

2011-06-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Nokia and Apple settled their law suits over patent infringement out of court.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49560.php
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/nokia-likely-netted-600-million-plus-in-apple-patent-settlement/50590

It is said the settlement included a one-time payment between $550 million to $600 million. Apple and Nokia agree on some cross-licensing terms, with a patent license fee up to $11.5 per iPhone sold paid to Nokia. It looks like a victory to Nokia from the result. It is also in a way good for Apple to conclude this fight with Nokia. Based on the latest financial reports from both companies, as of Q2, 2011, Apple has $29.2 billion in cash or cash equivalents, while Nokia has about $16.5 billion. The amount of $600 million is approximately 2 percent of what Apple can pull out of its pocket. With the quarterly iPhone shipment reaches 18 million units, the royalty payment to Nokia is close to $210 million. With Q2 2011 EBITDA income at $7.9 billion, this is affordable to Apple. It is though a boost to Nokia's quarterly EBITDA income of $778 million.

At this point, Nokia has lost one quarter of its global cell phone market share (from 36% down to 27%) and over 50% of its smart phone market share (from around 55-60% to between 20-25%). Nokia lost not just market share, revenue, but also the waning cost advantage associated with scale. Did its patent portfolio protect the company and its shareholders from those aggressive competitors? This patent portfolio did not even help Nokia executives to keep their jobs.

There are two other threads of events worth watching for. One is the patent fight between Chines vendors Huawei and ZTE. Will this domestic dispute result in any legal precedent or will it settle out of court? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49538.php

The other one is the patent auction by Nortel and Google's intention in Nortel's patents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/technology/05google.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/14/us-nortel-idUSTRE75C5WT20110614

A complacent company sued an innovative company and get paid. Do patent laws really encourage innovations?

HP webOS for OEM to license

2011-06-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

HP is entertaining the idea of licensing its webOS to other vendors. Or is this just an indication that HP has not sorted out its strategy for webOS?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/hp-ceo-idUSN0116927120110601

It can be a good news for the industry. One more contender means more choices. But this is just on the surface. Windows Mobile has shown that OS licensing is not a lucrative business in the mobile phone industry. If webOS can collect US$10 a piece, a volume at 3.5 million units a quarter, which is roughly Windows Mobile's 2011-Q1 shipment, makes US$140 million a year. It does not seem to be a reasonable payback for the US$1.2 billion paid for acquiring Palm. It may not even be enough for the operation cost for the business unit. Google Android makes money from advertisement revenue, not licensing fees. What is the leverage that HP can get by licensing webOS out? In the meantime, HP has to make it cost-effective for device vendors to invest in webOS. How many vendors have the extra budget and human resource to take on another OS, chipset, and board support package integration? HP did not talk or hint on intellectual property indemnification. With Microsoft onto everyone who is licensing Andorid, that is also an issue HP has to address when going to partners. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsofts-next-cash-cow-android/12998

The talk from HP's CEO seems to be a spillover of internal disagreement on future directions. It has been a year since HP acquired Palm. There can be some pressure built up over what webOS can do for HP. But it is clear to me, licensing webOS out will not help HP, only to create distractions.

Value add

2011-05-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

Intel is talking about thin and light PCs, again.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-31/intel-seeks-to-challenge-apple-s-ipad-with-new-ultrabook-pcs.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/computex-2011-intel-unveils-ultrabook-talks-medfield-tablets/6004

Since 2007, there were Ultra Mobile PC, netbooks, and OLPC (my blogs on UMPC). It was clearly the writing on the wall for the system vendors that the mass market was ready for easy-to-use computing devices. But to Intel and Microsoft, it was just a series of protection measures to delay and deter. Intel gave up StrongARM and kept its low-end CPUs one or two steps behind what the market needed them. Microsoft tried to put a limit on netbooks to under 9-inches upon its OS licensees. Maybe it was important to protect the margin of company's bread-and-butter products. But to end users, those decisions did not add any value to them. In the end, competitors step in and eat their lunch. Companies tried to protect their profit margins by preventing new product categories from happening ended up losing more.

All those decisions must have gone through a lot of deliberation, market data analysis and signatures from layers of directors and VPs in both companies. In the end, the defense looked like being built more along departmental business lines than to the battle front line. If Intel and Microsoft had worked with the trend and all their partners, the market might have been filled with different kind of interesting products than just overwhelming Apple iPad and upcoming Google Android tablets, neither uses Intel processors nor Microsoft OS.

Speaking of surprised development and different revenue sources. A Citi analyst said Microsoft makes five times more income from Android than from Windows Phones, thanks to patent licensing fees.

http://gizmodo.com/5806227/did-you-know-microsoft-makes-five-times-more-money-from-android-than-from-windows-phone

Of course, this is not a development Microsoft would like to see. After all, no company is operating and competing in a vacuum. Market cannibalization is not a complicated concept, but can be so hard to get it right for a big company.

Google mobile payment and PayPal

2011-05-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

Google just announced it is entering the mobile payment market and PayPal responded with a lawsuit alleging Google misappropriated its trade secrets through hiring its former employee.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49343.php
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49351.php

I just blogged my idea that eBay should spend the proceeds from selling Skype's stake on mobile payment solution for its PayPal division. I believe money and brand name are very important for this emerging product. PayPal's suing Google seems to indicate that PayPal thinks the same way. There are a lot of mobile payment start-ups. I just did a quick search, and within 5 minutes, I got company names like Square, Corduro, Boku, Billing Revolution, Mobillcash, and Zong. But PayPal did not go after any one of them. Instead, PayPal cared about what Google is doing so much that it went to court to prove a point.

There is a quote in Bloomberg's report on this lawsuit:
“Silicon Valley was built on the ability of individuals to use their knowledge and expertise to seek better employment opportunities, an idea recognized by both California law and public policy,” Aaron Zamost, a Google spokesman. In a way, the series of events is a norm in the Valley between companies, employers and employees. I hope this lawsuit is a PR stunt by PayPal. Tomorrow, it can be Yahoo, Facebook, or Microsoft buying a mobile payment company to compete with everyone else. PayPal has so far enjoyed a perception of providing credit card/banking services without being regulated as a bank in the US. The benefit to its users, individuals and merchants, is that the money stays in PayPal's domain to lower cost. Otherwise, it is like a money transmitter business which has other costs associated with its products when the money has to go in and out. A segmented market will not provide such cost benefits and PayPal probably understands that.

春聯與對聯

2011-05-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

我的第四個 iPhone 軟體, 春聯與對聯 (Chinese Couplets), 今天進了App Store.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chinese-couplets/id438346456?mt=8

就像前三個產品一樣, 書的內容都需要經過一番校對和整理。我常用網際網路上的內容來和我的資料比較。但是這次的經驗, 倒是非常獨特。或許春聯和對聯不是太冷門的題目, 許多網站都有相關的內容。但是這些內容的抄襲率太高, 而且錯誤百出。我有時只是為了搜尋一個特定的詞句, 可以找到十多個有相同內容的網頁。而當中的錯誤也都十分相似, 甚至雷同。古人印書, 因為交通及通訊的不便, 校對是件難事。所以一篇文章或是詩詞常有兩三種版本。今天的電子刊物也能有類似的現象, 也讓人開了眼界。

Monster US Employment Index April 2011

2011-05-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that it is time to revisit Monster US Employment index to wrap up my experiment since early 2007.

According to US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the last recession started from December 2007 and ended in June 2009. (http://www.nber.org/cycles.html) The recession lasted for 18 months and is having a slow recovery. The diagram based on Monster US Employment index seems to demonstrate something we all are aware now. But back in 2007 and early 2008, it hinted a recession that NBER did not announce until late 2008. This chart also echos another known fact, a slow recovery with job creation lagging the economy recovery.

I wanted to revisit Monster US Employment Index because of my last blog on LinkedIn. Usually, one single company's revenue is hardly any indication of US economy. However, LinkedIn's revenue source was so tightly related to employment and recruiting activities in US. It would be interesting to compare its revenue trend to US economy, like the way I used Monster's employment index. But no hurry. The indices from the first two years of Monster's publication were not that useful as Monster did not have enough market coverage and history. Give it another year, I'd like to compare LinkedIn's revenue growth alongside with Monster Employment Index. Maybe it will just give me a set of economic indices of my own.

LinkedIn IPO and job market

2011-05-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn IPO hit a high note on the first day of IPO, $94.25. The price range of the first trading day was between $80 and $122.70, far above the proposed price, $45.

There are many blogs and articles on this topic already, sour grapes, sweet lemons and covetousness alike. I am not an analyst and I am not here to offer my prediction of LinkedIn's stock performance. What I care is whether LinkedIn's going public is any indication of Silicon Valley's job market and next step in the World Wide Web Industry. One article I came across presented a rosy picture, claiming LinkedIn will be a $25 billion company by 2015.
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/linkedin-ipo-new-ipo-linkedin-revenue/5/19/2011/id/34648
It said in the article, "Let's say LinkedIn grows revenues at 95% in 2011, 75% in 2012, 60% in 2013, 45% in 2014, and 35% in 2015. That would put 2015 revenues at $2.6 billion. Doesn't seem crazy." Note that the majority of LinkedIn's revenue comes from corporate employment and human resource activities. (see LinkedIn S-1 amendment filing, http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000119312511064249/ds1a.htm) If the projected revenue comes true, it is indeed a pretty good picture for the job market. Furthermore, half of the active users of LinkedIn are in US and the majority of LinkedIn users are in the western world. For LinkedIn to grow by leaps and bounds, it will depend a lot on the health of US and Western Europe's economies.

What if LinkedIn can grow independent of US economy? That is even better. To me, that means the social media model works and more jobs will be created in this domain. Well, that is too rosy even for a dreamer like me. I was tracking Monster's US employment index in 2007 and 2008, before Fed acknowledged recession in late 2008. Although employment index is not a formal economic indicator, it was an hair-raising experience to observe the close correlation between the employment activities and the livelihood of US economy during that period.

The Economist believes that Silicon Valley has another Internet bubble. (http://www.economist.com/node/18681576) If I count the first Internet boom from 1998 to 2000, Web 2.0 hype from 2006 to 2007, and this new bubble of 2011, I see tides, not bubbles. If LinkedIn can keep up a decent rate of growth, we will see more such bubbles in the future. Or high tides, if I may.

曰線月線不如內線

2011-05-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

這應該是美國近年來, 最大的內線交易案.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/05/galleon_trial_0

我有個在臺灣的朋友, 認為美國與臺灣股票巿場的潔淨透明程度, 半斤八兩. 如今看來, 這看法也有它的論點. 但是以追查內線交易的努力而言, 美國仍是略勝數籌.

如果今天有個上中學的孩子跟我聊起這個案子, 我要用什麼角度來提供我的看法? 這些涉案的主角, 在利用提供內線的高階主管之餘, 不忘訕笑 "都是人渣". ("Everybody is a scumbag", see economist's article) 可見 Mr. Rajaratnam 也有是非之識. 只是利害權衡之後, 依舊挺而走險.

聖人有云, "及其老也, 血氣既衰, 戒之在得". 如果這麼好戒, 也無庸聖人贅言. 美國的杜會福利基金, 到2036年就要用完了. 對於沒有內線的大多數人, 也只能 "血氣雖衰, 勉力為得".

Microsoft to acquire Skype

2011-05-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Microsoft agreed to buy Skype for 8.5 billion dollars.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576314854222820260.html (The Wall Street Journal)
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-buys-skype-for-85-billion-creates-new-business-division/9406

I don't understand why Microsoft needs to buy Skype. Mr. Ballmer said "this deal will let Microsoft be more ambitious, do more things". Some columnist said it is all about advertising revenue, and some analysts said it is about acquiring access to the 650 million Skype users worldwide. According to the article by WSJ, there are 170 million people logging in to Skype every month. MSN had near 500 million monthly users by end of 2007, when Bing was not even part of the MSN family. Hotmail has at least 360 million users and MSN Live Messenger already has 330 million users in 2009. Skype is popular on PC as a video/audio communication application, and 90-plus percent of PC's on earth use Microsoft Windows operating system which is pre-loaded with Messenger and Internet Explorer pointing back to MSN family of services. It means that 90-plus percent of Skype users are either already Microsoft users or accessible to Microsoft. I don't see what Skype can do for Microsoft in terms of advertisement revenue and access to user base that Microsoft cannot do with its MSN service. It is neither more ambitious nor doing more things. The number does not add up.

This purchase is not for VoIP (Voice over IP) technology as Microsoft has that technology already, and VoIP is not worth that much money. I wonder Microsoft will actively promote Skype on Windows Mobile. Mobile telecom operators are already antagonized by Skype. Skype loaded Windows Mobile will automatically take itself out of the A-list from many mobile operators. In the office, users who use Skype are probably not paying customers, though most of them pay for other Microsoft products. At home, there may be some opportunity for Microsoft. I hope Microsoft will keep the application simple. Product integration based on the buzz word "synergy" will only bring confusion to end users. Will MSN Messenger be on the chop board? I hope not yet fear so.

Skype's shareholders are big winners. Among them, EBay owns thirty percent of Skype, and can finally conclude its chapter on Skype. I would like to see Microsoft spend that kind of money on mobile payment solutions. It is the place Microsoft's brand name and technology can play a role. By the same token, I would like to see EBay use the proceeds to beef up its Paypal for mobile payment. It is a battle ground where money and brand name make a difference.

I am a Skype user. Lately I am experimenting with Apple's Facetime on iPod and iPad. End users don't have a say in a big acquisition like this. We vote with our daily usage and, ultimately, our buying power. It is good to have alternatives for an end user like me. And I like the alternatives I have seen so far.

Developers, Phones, and Applications

2011-05-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

I recently read two articles that underlined my long-time viewpoint on applications, devices and developers.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/48888.php
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215832/Developers_not_phones_driving_mobile_banking_apps_

A lot of factors come in to the decision of whether to develop for a platform. It can be the accessibility to programming interface and talent poll, platform capability, application characteristics, cost and overhead, etc. Nevertheless, the dominant criterion is the volume of shipment. If a platform is sold like hot cakes, it is definitely worth taking a look. But the usefulness of this rule of thumb decreases dramatically from this point. The mystery lies within the percentage of addressable and target demographics among the user base of a particular platform.

As volume shows itself as an absolute number, yet it is a relative term. Look at this article from more than three years ago.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/whats-an-iphone-14-3m-windows-mobile-phones-sold-in-the-past-s/
I knew it had a wrong argument when I saw it three years ago. But I did not realize how wrong it was. In 2008, Windows Mobile shipped more than 16 million units of smartphones, roughly a quarter of what Nokia had shipped for the same category. Windows Mobile had more developers than iPhone OS or any other smartphone OS at that time. Microsoft was the number two smartphone OS provider and Windows Mobile was the number three smartphone platform. The number however did not carry it further. BlackBerry caught up from behind in 2008 and stood firm as number two smartphone platform (23M units in 2008 and 34M in 2009). It, too, lost momentum.

Many users of BlackBerry and Window Mobile phones are in for the access of corporate email. When the user population is so fixated on getting one thing, how can any application developer add any value to the platform? I had a colleague who said he could not get used to the touch screen of iPhone. He missed the qwerty keyboard of his old phone. When I asked what kind of applications he used on his phone most of the time. Unsurprisingly, it was the email. Being an application developer myself, I would not poll his opinion on user experience of a small device. Such a consumer is not among my target audience. This fact pretty much cut the majority of Microsoft's 16 million or BlackBerry's 23 million of 2008 out of the equation. After that, it hardly represented a volume of interest.

HP/Palm's WebOS would serve as a contrast. It has, in my opinion, an equally capable platform as any other OS, and a set of elegantly designed programming interface. But, alas, it has no volume.

Angry Birds and product packaging

2011-04-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

I played "Angry Birds" on my iPod Touch. It is so far the most popular mobile game on iOS and Android platforms. And it is not limited to male players.

It is a touch-based game, using different birds as projectiles to crash pigs hiding in a structure or out in the open. It is rated for 4 years old and older (4+). After playing it for a while, it seems to me Angry Birds is an artillery and dive-bomber game packaged with cute cartoon-like graphics. The red bird is a typical projectile shot in a parabolic trajectory. The little blue bird resembles clustered warheads. The fat black bird penetrates building structures with delayed detonation. The bloated white bird is similar to a dive bomber or ground attack aircraft.

My point is not to call out those similarities or to upset anyone. It is a successful software product executed by a 12-member team from a company with 50 or so employees. If the product were delivered as an artillery and dive bomber game, it would have lost most of its female players, which is half of its current player base. More importantly, the viral marketing effect would dissipate with halved customer demographics. (The interview with the creator, Peter Vesterbacka. http://technmarketing.com/iphone/peter-vesterbacka-maker-of-angry-birds-talks-about-the-birds-apple-android-nokia-and-palmhp/)

I played another iPhone game, Metal Core. It is almost the same type of game as Angry Birds. I believe its sales number is far less than what Angry Birds has achieved. The bird-against-pig game is not about any brand new idea that no one has done before. It is all about packaging. It will not be surprising if copycats of Angry Birds show up on iPhone App Store, since the birds are not original either.

Second and third iPhone applications

2011-04-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

My second and third iPhone/iPad applications are now on the App Store. They are Chinese calligraphy copybooks (字帖) using Chinese Surnames (百家姓) for model characters.
百家姓字帖-仿歐陽詢體
(http://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/chinese-surname-calligraphy/id427523658?mt=8) and
百家姓字帖-仿顏真卿體
(http://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/chinese-surname-calligraphy/id431207772?mt=8)

It was a fun project to work on. I reused the code from my first product and spent a little more time on the contents. It was a quick and easy job for this new product release. The aspect of "universal application", Apple's lingo for applications designed for both Apple iPhone and iPad, was what I was experimenting with. For an image-centric calligraphy model book, it seems to be a fit for a universal application. However, it is not that straightforward for other types of applications. For other product ideas that I have, it may make sense to put more user interface elements into the iPad branch. If I choose to go down that path, The "universal" application may become two applications that present different user experiences. I am not sure user experience bifurcation is a good idea. Maybe my thinking of putting more ingredients to a bigger screen is on a wrong track.

That aside, it was fun to design and create an application for two different types of devices. The visual impact from a bigger screen compared with that on a smaller screen is obvious. Supporting universal application may put more design constraints on a product. But I think it will be a basic requirement for many future applications from me.

Amazon Kindle experience

2011-04-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

I bought a 6" Amazon Kindle device recently to save bookshelf space. But the user experience really fell short.

I have used the very first generation Kindle. At that time, I was evaluating the Kindle device for a work related project. I understood it was the first generation, and Amazon was not an OEM vendor. Even that its industrial design and build quality left much to be desired, I was willing to give the first generation Kindle full credit. It did what it was set out to do: to put an e-reader in front of the publishers and to persuade them to go digital. In the long run, Amazon can make a fat margin on digital contents by saving a lot on inventory, facility and distribution.

More than two years later after my first encounter with Kindle, Kindle made quite some changes to its appearance. With more and more books piling up on my bookshelves, I thought it is time for me to mingle with Kindle. I bought a couple of Kindle books and started reading. The experience was not satisfactory. It is maybe that the e-ink display took too long to refresh. It took too long to flip a page. It is fine to read a book sequentially for the first time. But after a while, I need to use those books as reference books and go back and forth among pages regularly. It is really annoying and counter productive to wait for page refresh in order to flip 3 to 5 pages.

My experience with Kindle may not be applicable to all Kindle users. Different types of books warrant different usage patterns. But I think it is time for Kindle to revamp. It was a good work to pave the digital way all the way here. Nevertheless, the gap in user experience is increasing. One misstep, the path will turn to iPad and put Amazon to a peripheral position in providing digital contents. Without a leading position, it will undercut the margin Amazon could have hoped for in promoting all those digital books and magazines.

Nokia picks Microsoft Windows Mobile

2011-02-11T12:24:00.000-08:00

It finally happened. Symbian is gone and Nokia's mobile Linux platform, MeeGo, is in serious doubt.
Bloomberg
mocoNews.Net

Nokia gave up Symbian long time ago, right at the moment it bought Symbian and made it an open source. Nokia did not want to admit it in the hope of protecting its share price. Now, what would Qt of Trolltech do? Nokia bought Trolltech in 2008 with the intention of creating a uniform interface across S60, S40 and its then Linux platform, Maemo. Now S60, which sits on top of Symbian, bade its farewell; the visibility to Meego's future is unclear, and it does not add value to unify S40 with high end platforms. What does Qt plan to do with its API to Windows Mobile? Or not? Or will Nokia spat Qt out like EBay spat out Skype? Windows Mobile developers don't need Qt. They have been doing their trade for many years under Microsoft's leadership.

As Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra commented on Nokia's decision in his tweeter post, "Two turkeys do not make an eagle." He actually quoted this from Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's ex EVP. Ironically, Vic Gundotra is an ex-Microsoft employee.

"Two turkeys make a bigger dish", I might add. Big mobile carriers do not want Nokia tread the Android path, afraid it will create an Apple/Google duopoly. But a join force between Microsoft and Nokia will not prevent it from happening. It is not because Windows Mobile is not good enough, but Nokia will not do it whole-heartily. Nokia did not kill MeeGo to show its resolution. It needs MeeGo for leverage. On the other hand, Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, needs Windows Mobile to keep MeeGo from becoming complacent. Will this strategy work? Not for a big organization like Nokia. It just creates confusion, grudge and diversion. This reminds me of Gil Amelio, Apple's ex-CEO before Steve Jobs's come-back. Amelio cleaned the house so Jobs did not have to. Maybe that is what Elop will be in Nokia's history.

I am glad I have not spent time in developing applications for Symbian/Qt phones. It will take a lot for Nokia to restore trust among developers. Maybe Nokia will continue to be the king of low-end mobile phones, though the king knows he has very little on him. After all, the world still needs a lot of low-end phones for a long time to come.