Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Marissa Mayer Doing Search Could Get Interesting

Marissa Mayer
Marissa Mayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Search is, after all, the fundamental operation on the web. Steve Jobs left the PC to Bill Gates when he returned. But there is no post-Search like there was a post-PC. Search is here to stay. She does not have to become number one. All she has to do is become a strong number two and shine elsewhere. Mayer seems to be saying the Yahoo search results are already pretty good, but search results presentations could be vastly improved.

Marissa Mayer Aims Yahoo’s Guns at Google Search
Yahoo search was one of three parts of the company Mayer called out as in most urgent need of an overhaul, along with Yahoo Mail and the Yahoo.com homepage ..... by far the most lucrative business at Google, where Mayer once headed its search product ..... All of the innovations in search are going to happen at the user interface level moving forward and we need to invest in those features both on the desktop and on mobile .... Yahoo, presumably, can improve its search engine by simply wrapping Microsoft’s search infrastructure in an improved user interface. ..... Yahoo helps power searches on the Siri digital assistant included with Apple iPhones and iPads.
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Nexus 4 Is Back

Monday, January 28, 2013

Has Apple Peaked? (2)

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC
"Has Apple Peaked?"
Has Apple Peaked?
Has Apple peaked?
at one point some $57 billion was wiped off Apple’s market capitalisation, roughly the equivalent of the entire value of Ford, a carmaker..... First, Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder and creative genius, is dead. The iPhones and iPads he sired still generate gargantuan profits. But his successor, Tim Cook, has yet to prove himself capable of bringing new breakthrough products to market. Second, Apple’s fantastic profit margins—38.6% on sales of $55 billion—attract competitors like sweetshops attract six-year-olds. ..... The firm’s price-earnings ratio—11.6 at close of business on January 23rd—is not much different from Microsoft’s .... Only one of 60 analysts tracked by Bloomberg had a “sell” recommendation on Apple before this week’s stockmarket fallout. ..... Apple bungled the introduction of its new mapping app, and there were rumours of cuts in component orders for the iPhone 5. ..... Apple could produce an iPhone for less than $150 to broaden its appeal. .... the best way for the company to prove it is not past its prime would be for it to disrupt another big market ..... All eyes are on television (though Apple is also exploring the potential of other markets, such as wearable computing ..... Competition is now tougher in its core markets. Rivals will not let it disrupt new ones so easily. ..... Apple won’t crumble, but it has peaked.
Suing Samsung was the beginning of the end of Apple. That was Apple saying it was not going to innovate anymore, not fast enough, not for enough people. Apple suing Samsung was a symptom.

Apple messing up maps on the iPhone was also a symptom. Apple firing Scott was another symptom. Scott messing up maps was Scott telling Tim Cook, you are no Steve Jobs. If Scott had apologized as Tim Cook had demanded Tim Cook would have kept him around? That is not the tech way. It is not about apologizing. It is about "simply working."

Apple is no longer in the lead in either the smartphone or the tablet space. And it is not going to be able to do TV. Apple is done. To put it politely, Apple has matured.
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