the most important thing mentioned in the article is "targeting the five billion people who live outside the current 'traditional' smartphone market." - whoever understands this will be the world leader in the future ... even the companies like Nokia and Yahoo that looks like failures today can comeback because they understand these 5 billion people better than many others , but somehow the noise of 'traditional' marketers has disillusioned their original strategy... someone has to just pick-up those threads and bring back these companies on track.
i guess it depends how you look at it ... for $100m they are certainly going to get huge mileage for their Brands - its like marketing drive for HP, WebOS, WebOS App catalog etc. + they will make some money by selling apps. Also one has to remember that this brand value creation will help them fetch more $$$ when they decide to sell their h/w business and WebOS business (either the whole OS or licensing it) - All in all $100m is worth loosing (spending) :-)
In fact they should turn this accidental success into super-success by creating HUGE WebOS ecosystem for at least a year and then decide what to do with it - they can get more money by selling or licensing the whole ecosystem with millions and millions of users worldwide than wrapping things up pre-maturely ... also can you imagine how much they could make if they start streaming & selling music, movies, ebooks etc. thru their ecosystem ...
Pg, is there any way you can make your demo day a live event (may be on justinTV) - and to add the spice you should also make it interactive where viewers can rate each startup with proper scoring system - and if you and startups are comfortable then you should let all the VCs and Angels be able to see scores & ratings coming in live from all over the world (however this may also have negative impact but nothing wrong to try it).... this way investors would right away know what is HIT & HOT !!!
Also Federal Judge rejected Apple's bid for injunction against Amazon for using the term "App Store".... So why are they after the small people like GetJar??
i have seen even funnier (or say worst) situation where they called a VPs and asked him to select the people to layoff by the end of the week, the VP fought back trying to save jobs of the team members but somehow management forced him to pick maximum number of members whom they then laid off on friday --- come monday they gave pink-slip to the same VP... the person was stunned !!!
they didn't laid-off VP for fighting back but it was pre-planned & scripted by HR.
"If you live in the U.S., you can't really understand their power," says Paul Jacobs, CEO of chipmaker Qualcomm
Very well said ... i guess north-american critics sometime have difficulty in understanding emerging markets and the brands that are popular there - the power of those brands and the market itself is greater than the rest of the world combined ... whoever wins these markets (emerging and yet-to-emerge) will be the ultimate winner (in long term of course).
Respect is the most important thing (whether or not deal goes thru) ... Nokia respected Google as one of the largest platform creator but in respond to that they didn't receive (i guess) the equal treatment as a largest phone maker (just because it is going thru bad phase) ...
i guess its better to put all your energy and ficus on one platform - they've amazing h/w capability now the only thing needed is to innovate with the strong collaboration with someone who has deep pocket,strength and speed .. so MS fits the bill perfectly ...
Also by the time Nokia settles down with restructuring and market gaining, it wont be surprising if MEEGO also succeeds (even a little bit as Intel's power wont let it die easily) then Nokia will be the first one to join-in ... MEEGO by the way has very strong vision and it is the only platform that can threaten Apple and Google put together ...
I guess what he meant is how google is over-confidant, non-respecting and may be little bit arrogant ... There is no doubt that Android is big now but it is also true that Nokia is the biggest cell-phone maker and the marriage of these 2 would have been revolutionary ... Google may not regret of this blunder but if MS & Nokia execute well then MS would be laughing for pulling this off ...
Also whether critic believe it or not but the TRIO (MS, Nokia and Skype) is a lethal combination in terms of innovation (if planned and executed well) - these 3 can create something very disruptive that Elop is talking about ...
i always wonder why dont we have atleast one country on this planet that has some kind of fast-track approval process for this kind of research and solutions ???
also it shouldn't be costing millions - something like this should be self funded by the govt. ... tax payers are made to pay for many stupid things but research like this should be treated as "Too Big To Fail" !!!!
dangerously low birth rate will be the biggest impact in long-long term - i wont be surprised if every other men uses this technique secretively to NOT to have a child ... as someone mentioned here "A SEXUAL REVOLUTION" is underway ...
This is going to change the world ... this is by far going to have deepest sociological impact (good & bad) on the society ... because many men will use this secretly without telling their partner to avoid having kids ... which eventually will bring enormous decrease in population ...
Now someone should come out with novel technique to avoid STD without using condoms ... combination of these 2 techniques will be VIOLA !!!!! :)