Executive Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt, spoke at D: Dive Into Mobile today in New York City, and shared some impressive stats. Android is available on 320 different carriers across 160 different countries. There are 700,000 apps in the Google Play Store, and 1.5 million Android activations every single day. Eric claims that activations will hit the magical one billion mark by the end of this year. However, there is still a long way to go. Google’s goal is to reach everybody, and Eric believes that smartphone manufacturers will quickly get to the $100 price point which is important for “those next five billion people looking to get connected”.
Here’s a phrase I’ve never heard during a doctor’s visit: “We need your data, girl!”
I was at MDRevolution’s La Jolla, Calif., office about a month ago, sitting in on a consultation as a patient huffed away on a treadmill. A staff member hovered nearby, monitoring the patient’s heart rate and pushing her to keep up the pace. As the staff member took note after note on the patient’s performance and tapped away at a calculator and keyboard to analyze the results, I felt like I was in a research lab, not a doctor’s office — and a lab modeled after a gleaming Apple store.
According to its founder, cardiologist Samir Damani, that’s the point. The office — with its sleek, spa-like aesthetic and shelves of connected devices — is a showcase for a data-driven future of medicine that puts technology at the center of the patient experience and moves actual doctors into managerial, less visible roles.
As the era of the more-affordable “$1,000 genome” draws closer, the phrase “personalized medicine” is popping up all over the place. But for the most part, matching medical treatments with a patient’s genetic profile is an option for only the wealthiest Americans.
With his patients, Damani is trying to create customized health care that is more accessible and affordable — and he’s doing it by blending cardiology, nutrition science and genetics with emerging mobile technology. But that’s just the first step: He believes he can build a big business by using the data he’s gathering and the algorithms he’s creating to design software that will allow employers and hospitals around the country to replicate his approach.
“I got tired of people saying this is what it’s going to be like. I said, ‘I’m a 37-year-old cardiologist, I need to know what it’s going to be like today,’” said Damani, a slight, well-dressed man with a seemingly boundless memory for medical literature.
So, in 2011, he rustled up $1.6 million in angel funding from several local MDs, Ph.Ds and other supporters (no traditional “vulture capitalists” allowed). He hired an IT guy, an office manager, a metabolic specialist, nutritionist and medical assistant and, about a year later, opened up his doors — all while keeping an active cardiology practice at a local San Diego clinic.
A new medical specialty?
Since launching in February 2012, MDRevolution has worked with about 250 patients; about a quarter of them have a chronic condition, and the balance are people who are generally in good health and who are willing to take that extra step to stay that way (patients continue to see their regular primary care doctor in addition to Damani). He says that each of the last 60 patients has seen statistically significant changes in every health marker analyzed, including weight, body mass index, metabolism and visceral fat (the notoriously hard-to-lose fat that accumulates around organs).
Damani’s model? A new patient starts with a spin through a lab to determine their resting metabolic rates, visceral fat levels and other fitness indicators. They also get a genetic assessment that tells MDRevolution whether they’re a slow processor of caffeine, whether they’re genetically inclined to overeat, and whether they have any other nutrition and fitness-related predispositions. From there, the practice uses proprietary algorithms to craft personalized health plans that include guidance on things like how high and how often to push their heart rates while exercising, what kinds of food to eat, and the types of foods to avoid.
As patients follow the program, fitness trackers like Fitbits (see disclosure), wireless Withings scales and heart monitors report progress back to MDRevolution, while a website enables specialists to give encouragement and direction online. For the genetic assessments, the company partners with Pathway Genomics and 23andMe, and it uses Qualcomm’s 2Net platform to integrate all of its technology. For the 10 percent of patients who live outside the area (and even for some who live close by), Damani conducts virtual visits via Skype.
The financial model
Just about every week, a new activity tracker, personal genome service, iPhone-based medical device or online patient program hits the market. But for the most part, those tools and services exist in isolation. MDRevolution is a first stab at trying to show how mobile health tracking tools, genomic assessments and personalized coaching can work together to show real results.
The fact that the company is based in sunny Southern California is no accident. Between wireless health leader Qualcomm Life, genetics company Pathway Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute and plenty of other National Institutes of Health-funded research institution, San Diego is a hotbed for health innovation and research. Scripps is also the academic home of Eric Topol, a longtime cardiologist and researcher as well as one of the most influential voices in digital health. Before launching MDRevolution, Damani published several peer-reviewed articles with Topol, who he said has been a mentor.
As health reform pushes medicine to a model that rewards doctors based on how well they keep patients healthy, not just the procedures they perform, more doctors are turning to concierge-style practices in which patients pay an annual retainer for a higher level of care. One Medical Group, which has offices in five cities, lets patients book appointments online and renew prescriptions as well as email with doctors. CarenaMD, in Seattle, offers patients 24/7 virtual doctor visits via webcam.
MDRevolution says its model is closer to a gym membership. Patients pay between $25 and $75 per month (depending on the level of service and attention needed) for access to the clinical lab and personnel, as well as its web-based service. The practice also takes most insurance plans, so each time patients visit the office, they’re also charged a co-pay.
Brad Lally, a 46-year-old San Diego executive with an outdoor sports company, said he decided to see Damani in 2011 after a brief episode of cardiac arrhythmia. He wanted to try treating his heart condition without drugs, and also wanted to get rid of his belly fat. In addition to putting more proteins and vegetables in his diet, MDRevolution told him to do metabolic interval training workouts twice a week to push his heart rate into the anaerobic zone. Since genetic testing revealed that he was a slow caffeine metabolizer, Damani’s team told him to stay away from evening cups of coffee.
For the next 12 months, he reported his workouts and diet to MDRevolution — even on frequent overseas business trips his blood pressure cuff sent back data — and received nearly bi-weekly feedback from staff. After three months on the program, he says he lost 10 percent of his visceral fat and increased his resting metabolic rate and VO2 level — two measures that Damani believes are more predictive of heart health than cholesterol — by more than 10 percent. It’s been a year since he finished the program, and he said he hasn’t had any heart irregularities. Even when he slips, he said, he knows how to quickly correct his diet and exercise plan.
“It’s empowering to know what’s going on,” Lally said. “And the level of interaction you get — it’s really good. It’s nothing like what you get with your regular primary care doctor because they’re so busy seeing patients.”
The real ‘billion-dollar’ business
As MDRevolution tries to help patients reach new levels of fitness and heart health, it is building a robust data set to support what Damani said could be the company’s real ‘billion-dollar’ business idea: a patient-engagement platform.
RevUp, which MDRevolution uses internally for its 250 patients, is a web-based dashboard that aggregates all of a patient’s information, from fitness trackers and other devices to genetic and other health data. It provides each patient with a personalized health plan, including custom fitness and nutrition guidelines depending on their needs and goals. Physicians and other health experts can use it to track patient progress and send updates and guidance. Corporate and health system administrators are able to see what employees are doing in aggregate but not an individuals’ specific information.
According to a recent study from human resources company Aon Hewitt, the average employer spends about 40 percent more on health care now than it did six years ago. Another report found that poor health costs the U.S. economy $576 billion annually, with nearly 40 percent of that due to employee absenteeism or low productivity.
To address those issues, companies like Keas, Healthrageous and ShapeUp pitch employers on corporate wellness programs that integrate with digital devices to keep employees active, healthy and out of the doctor’s office. Damani argues that RevUp will have an edge in this market because its program is backed by clinical results.
He says the data that he’s compiling with just 250 patients is already leading to fresh insights. For example, he said, people can increase their heart and lung capacity independent of age, and women increase oxygen consumption (an indicator of fitness) slower than men. When the company reaches 1,000 patients, he believes, their research could be used to influence public debate about how to maintain health in the population at large.
“Our competitive advantage is that we have a lab driving the software. We’re always going to be creating software based on needs for the practice and outcomes,” Damani says. He says that while other corporate wellness programs tend to only focus on basic health markers like cholesterol and body mass index, the indicators underpinning his program (resting metabolic rates, visceral fat levels and oxygen consumption) will prove to be the key to preventative medicine.
Can MDRevolution compete against tech companies?
The ultimate plan is for the dashboard to serve as a vehicle for gathering even more data, he said; creating a repository that could be a licensable asset in itself. It could also inform the development of future products or make MDRevolution a valuable partner for companies developing medical devices or conducting clinical trials, he said.
With a doctorate, a master’s degree and a medical degree, Damani is clearly not one to shy away from a new challenge. But in turning MDRevolution into a technology company, he’s moving into an uncertain and increasingly competitive terrain. While Damani has led the company so far — he said it has already signed up four corporate customers, a mix of companies and hospital systems, and should be profitable by next year — running a doctor’s office arguably requires a different kind of skill set than building a technology company. The company now employs 15 people, but only the COO, CTO and a new database manager have technical backgrounds. Six contractors work full-time on its software development, and Damani said he plans to bring several programmers in-house in the next year.
Damani may find that the market for his data isn’t what he anticipated. Abhas Gupta, a partner at venture firm Mohr Davidow Partners who focuses on digital health, said that he’s seen promising health startups that have amassed strong and unique datasets but that haven’t been able to generate revenue like they expected. “Who do you sell that data to?” he asked. “There may not be individuals ready to do something with that data.”
The new role for doctors in a tech-driven world
One thing patients at MDRevolution don’t see much of is a doctor. The practice is still small enough that patients know Damani oversees the entire operation but he has delegated much of the day-to-day interacting to patients to metabolic experts and nurse practitioners. Even though the office sees patients five days a week, his face time with them is just five to eight hours weekly. He says MDRevolutions in other locations could operate with barely any doctor oversight at all. (To bill as a doctor’s office, they will need to be led by doctor, but day-to-day operations could be entirely run by a nurse practitioner, he said.)
It makes you wonder if Vinod Khosla’s controversial prediction that technology will replace 80 percent of medical experts is coming true. Damani said his vision isn’t one that minimizes doctors (although the impending doctor shortage means the country will have to make do with fewer doctors, relatively speaking) or one where doctors play CEO and tech entrepreneur. But it is a world where physicians will have to adapt.
“Physicians are going to have to be in a management role as opposed to being the primary person seeing [patients],” he said. “Most physicians out there are unhappy. Because cost-containment pressures are so great, they’ve become assembly-line type physicians who see as many patients as possible in as little time as possible. I want to offer those doctors a new process.”
One of the hardest places to get capital to commercialize a great growth idea is within corporate america. Startups can tap the venture capital market. Corporations can go to the general capital markets by issuing stocks or bonds. But let’s say you are a general manager or director/VP level of a business unit or brand within a corporation. Your options for funding a corporate idea are very narrow — basically, you have to go through the often bureaucratic and political process of getting a budget from the managers above you. Many great commercial ideas never blossom because they get choked out by internal politics, risk avoidance, shorter payback horizons, or perceived lack of capabilities.
Companies need a different process for funding innovative projects. I call this idea “innovation capital markets,” and it’s a system that’s a hybrid of venture capital, general capital and corporate budgeting. Innovation capital markets would fund specific innovations vs. entire corporations. These might be innovations with a risk/reward profile that go beyond the typical corporate budgeting process. It might be growth platforms that are ‘orphans’ who don’t fall within a current business unit, like how Redbox was started with McDonald’s. It could be where a mid-level executive turns to after internal budget process has ended with a “No,” and which allows them to turn to pre-vetted, NDA-signed investors who have an appetite for a new kind of investment. The investment would have the upside of an entrepreneur but the assets of a large enterprise.
The inspiration for this idea came from the show Shark Tank. The first time I heard about Shark Tank, I thought it was just another reality TV show. When I tuned in, I was surprised to see that legitimate business was being conducted. By some measures, the Sharks have invested $20 million in over 100 companies. The average valuation for the companies is about $500,000, and entrepreneurs sold about 30-40% of their equity.
The notion of applying the Shark Tank model inside companies was created by one of my clients, a large consumer packaged goods player. It set up an offsite with their top executives and created an internal Shark Tank-like contest to pitch new business idea. For two days, three teams of executives worked into the night pouring over consumer, retailer, and financial data to come up with disruptive ideas to drive growth. On Day Three, each team presented to a panel of “sharks,” consisting of members of senior management, myself, and Mark Cuban, who they’d brought in for the event.
The event was a huge hit. Much of that was due to Mark Cuban, who was in full Shark Tank persona. Folks who were taking a while to take the stage were told to walk faster. Others with pre-ambles longer than 5 seconds were cut-off and reminded that this wasn’t a history class. Cuban acted as a human TiVo device for meetings, allowing us to fast forward or go back on the key parts of the meeting. Watching executives pitch to Cuban was an object lesson on the importance of the 30-second elevator speech.
He asked salient yet sharp questions and had everyone in stitches as he good-naturedly poked and prodded each presenter, bringing an entrepreneur’s lean mindset to the discussion. Those who asked for more money were asked what they spent now and why that wasn’t sufficient. “So you’re telling me you want another $20 million for smart marketing,” he’d ask, skeptically. “What does it say about the first $20 million you’ve already spent?”
Overall it was great watching an idea go through approval to funding at light speed vis-à-vis typical corporate America timing. Mark immediately came up with a cool cross-pollination idea to have the company participate on a future Shark Tank episode with an investment of his. The startup gets a connection with a multi-billion dollar company, while the company gets some earned media to show its entrepreneurial chops.
The Shark Tank event has had a lasting and meaningful impact on the company already. The winning team won largely because it embraced the classic HBR Marketing Myopia concept of building a growth strategy not on the products they sell, but rather the end benefit or job it provides. Those who were poked and prodded while presenting were given kudos by their peers for their courage, and set a great example that it is okay to endure a little embarrassment to push potential ideas with big economics. The company is working more collaboratively cross-functionally, at a faster, more urgent pace and with careful attention to cash flow.
Innovation capital markets are a huge category creation opportunity. Not just for entrepreneurs within Corporate America and investors, but for companies themselves. I have to believe that the overall innovation success rate (the paltry 10-15%) would have to go up once senior management saw which ideas were getting funding and which mid-level executives were generating them. Imagine a world where individual investors could get in involved. Couldn’t you imagine mom investors jumping on board the Swiffer investment? Or perhaps the fun Flip Video recorder (which I miss terribly) could have survived within Cisco? Wouldn’t M&A success rates also improve, as VCs and their portfolio of companies and strategic buyers within Corporate America collaborate more closely?
Just think if innovation capital markets existed decades ago for Xerox Parc within Xerox. Would we be buying xPods, xPhones and xPads at Xerox stores all over the country?
The Open Networking Summit (ONS) is underway in Santa Clara this week, and software-defined networking (SDN) news is everywhere. ONS created a visual.ly infographic to depict the SDN revolution and LightReading interviewed Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation, on his thoughts about the new SDN landscape. The Open Networking Summit conversation can be followed on Twitter hashtag #ONS2013.
LSI introduces ARM-based Axxia 4500 processors. LSI introduced its Axxia 4500 product family of communication processors designed to accelerate network performance while supporting increasing traffic loads throughout the enterprise. Designed for software defined networks as well as enterprise and data center networking applciations, the Axxia 4500 is LSI’s first ARM technology-based communication processor family. It includes LSI acceleration engines and includes up to four ARM Cortex A15 cores with a CoreLink CCN-504 coherent, QoS aware interconnect in 28 nanometer process technology. It features up to 100Gb/s of L2 switching function to reduce board space and bill of material costs. “As more business and personal information moves to the cloud, the need to access data quickly and securely from any location, at any time, is critical and is forcing customers to look at new ways to manage this traffic,” said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, Networking Solutions Group, LSI. “The networks that carry the data are being tasked to do more than ever before, and the Axxia 4500 communication processor family is purpose-built to deliver the high performance required by these demanding trends.”
Extreme Networks Showcases SDN solutions, partnerships. Extreme Networks (EXTR) announced that at the Open Networking Summit (ONS) this week it will be highlighting Software Defined Networking (SDN) strategies, technology and multi-vendor interoperability demos with Big Switch Networks and NEC. ”The SDN market is rapidly evolving and we ship Ethernet SDN solutions from the campus to the data center that leverage our hallmark performance as well as innovations via the ExtremeXOS operating system,” said David Ginsburg, CMO for Extreme Networks. “At ONS, we are furthering our Open Fabric approach to the edge and data center by showcasing unique, first to market performance capabilities, partnerships with leaders like Big Switch and NEC, and extensive interoperability tests and performance demonstrations based on OpenFlow.” Extreme Networks supports Automated Flow Management and hardware-based Quality of Service with traffic shaping and QoS for its SDN-enabled Ethernet switches. Its ExtremeXOS modular OS for Ethernet switches provides QoS profiles for SDN traffic with support for bandwidth rate limiting, and rate shaping with single or dual rate QoS policies and configurable drop policies.
Ixia IxNetwork OpenFlow test solution. Ixia (XXIA) announced that it now enables service providers to fully benefit from the reliability and scale of standards-based software-defined networking technologies, including OpenFlow. With the new v1.3 protocol, service providers will gain increased value from the greater scale, reliability and features available. Ixia IxNetwork is an off-the-shelf, standards based OpenFlow test solution with OpenFlow v1.3. IxNetwork speeds application delivery across the network by allowing users to test and validate network infrastructure, capacity and scalability. “As the OpenFlow standard continues to develop and expand, it is critical to have test tools available for development and predeployment testing,” said Michael Haugh, Senior Market Development Manager, Ixia. “By providing the industry’s leading OpenFlow test solutions, being an active member of the ONF, and serving as the chair for the Testing-Interop Working Group, Ixia continues to contribute significant advances to the industry.”
BlackBerry Remember is one of those features that will make everyone’s life easier. Whether you’re a student, professional or parent, BlackBerry Remember will help you stay organized. Here’s how:
One application. BlackBerry Remember syncs memos and tasks from Outlook and cloud-based services like Evernote, enabling you to keep track of notes, to-do lists and reminders all in one place.
Multimedia friendly. BlackBerry Remember is more than a traditional notepad. You can snap photos, take videos, record voice notes and attach documents directly within the BlackBerry Remember application. Need to flag something but don’t have time to type notes? Add a voice note instead!
Part of the end-to-end BlackBerry 10 experience. With BlackBerry Remember, you can flag content from anywhere on your device. For instance, if you’re browsing through your photo album and find a photo you’d like to flag, all you have to do is tap ‘Share,’ select ‘Remember’ and add a description. You can also flag other items, such as Outlook attachments and webpages from the browser.
Helps you Keep Moving. With the functionality to attach Adobe Reader and Documents To Go files in BlackBerry Remember, it’s easier than ever to update business documents while on the go.
User friendly. As demonstrated above, you can access BlackBerry Remember with a few taps. Similarly, the application is fully integrated with the BlackBerry 10 hub, making the experience intuitive for all BlackBerry 10 users, no matter what your needs.
How will BlackBerry Remember help you stay organized? For information to help you get started, check out this video.
BlackBerry fans who love big displays should be very happy with the latest research note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. Per Barron’s, Misek believes that BlackBerry is working on two to three new models that will launch by the end of the year, including a 5-inch “Z10-like device” that will likely launch in the holiday quarter. Misek says that the other two devices will be “a mid-range (i.e., ~$400) keyboard” device like the upcoming BlackBerry Q10 and “a mid-range touch” device. Misek also refuted reports that the BlackBerry Z10 was seeing high return rates and said that “our checks indicate typical return rates” so far.
It seems these days that everyone is storing their files in the cloud–or telling you that you should. But as many firms know, the challenges of effectively managing and collaborating on digital files isn’t automatically solved just because your organization’s files live online.
Whether project team members are in the home office, visiting a satellite office, working in the field or on the road they need to be able to access and edit documents on the fly – and sometimes feedback is needed by multiple remote parties in a very short time period. And while these users are collaborating, they need to be confident that they are always seeing up-to-date files – including comments that may have just been added by a colleague on the road 30 seconds ago.
To solve these challenges, Bluebeam® Software has developed Revu, a PDF-based markup and collaboration solution for document-intensive industries. Revu’s integrated cloud technology, Bluebeam Studio™, allows users to store, access and edit files in the cloud, even if Internet connectivity is lost, from a desktop, tablet PC or iPad. When working with PDFs, multiple users can collaborate in real time by using the software’s customizable PDF markups to annotate a single copy of the same PDF – all while Revu automatically tracks who said what, and when. With solutions like Bluebeam providing real time, anytime and even offline collaboration, it’s important to take a look at your organization’s approach to cloud computing. Are you just storing files in the cloud? If so–why?
Yesterday I attended the hearing session for HF985…
HF985 (Johnson) Telecommunications enforcement authority clarified, new requirements for tariffs added, proprietary information protected, criteria for certificates of authority specified, alternative regulation plans terminated, definitions added, technical corrections made, obsolete provisions removed, and conforming changes made.
The hearing was informational only. It was interesting to hear the different parties present the issues. I’m going to leave my notes pretty much asis with the understanding that the video is here to fill in the blanks.
Bill summary:
A rewrite of Chapter 237. It’s an effort to modernize telecommunications policy – in the words since the breakup of the bell companies. There are 25 sections of the bill. Many are repealed:
1-7 – includes definitions; basic service is a one unbundled single line (aka POTS)
8 – effective July 1, 2019 – Commerce duties are transferred to PUC.
2-3 – telecos can provide reduced rates to schools, gov agencies t al
9 – basic telecommunications services at reduced rates
11 – Telecos charging ICC fees will continue to file tariffs but may also create contracts with providers
12-16 – PUC’s power in terms of investigation, complaint investigation,
15 – PUC find wholesale service, establishment of rate and price,
16- 17 – confidentiality, discrimination prohibited / information subject to protective order
18 – allows LEC who has not been compensated by another provide to discontinue providing service
19 – telecos can’t slam (changing a user’s local exchange carrier without the user’s permission)
20 – Assessment of costs
21 – how advanced service providers will assess charges (for hard of hearing and low income services)
22- sets fee to serve them
23- no more third-party charges on end customer bills
24 – certification, registration & mapping – Advanced providers must register with Commission
25 – Related to AFOR (alternative forms of regulation). AFORs gives greater flexibility to regulators-providers negations.
We will work on this in the interim and talk about it in 2014.
Testimony
Scott Bowler with Frontier
Serve 190,000 lines in MN; we support the bill
7.25 million lines in Minnesota
4.25 are wireless;
1 million are cable or VoIP;
1.5 million are provided by ILECs
Right now only ILECs are regulated
There is a robust, competitive marketplace; the state law should reflect this.
This might be a deregulatory bill – but the industry has taken the lead when most of the providers are not beholden to regulation.
Other providers obtain wholesale services from ILECs. This has been done with ICC. The FCC regulates most of those responsibilities.
Other states has taken similar steps with no negative impact on customers.
QUESTIONS
So is Commerce going to give up regulation?
Yes.
How do we make sure there is transparency?
This won’t affect USF or other charges.
Brent Christensen – MN Telecom Alliance
Represents more than 70 independent providers
Consumers have a choice now. Less than half of this group has a landline and that’s indicative of the state.
The breakup of AT&T, the 1996 Telecom Act has brought about changes but Minnesota has not kept up. The industry has changed.
User charges that used to be controlled by PUC.
I have three numbers coming to my smartphone
– landline – regulated by FCC, PUC & Commerce
– Cell number –regulated by FCC
– Google Voice isn’t regulated at all
This bill maintains oversight between wholesale transactions; it maintains basic phone service for folks who need it.
We will continue to work with industry and consumer groups on this bill.
QUESTIONS
Who are major stakeholders?
Wireless providers, CLECs, cable, VOIP providers, Commerce, PUC.
How many states have made this change?
10 states have enacted legation or are working on it. WI, IA, IL, IN are working or have worked on this. The FCC’s plans have spurred action.
Tariff is related to service fees, which is regulated by FCC.
Does this regulate in broadband areas too?
Broadband is not regulated; it’s regulated by FCC. There’s a distinction between the broadband pipe and the VoIP services that run over broadband.
How does this relate to last mile broadband?
You’ve got broadband that comes to your home – over that you get a range of services such as TV, phone, and access to the Internet. Those three services are regulated very differently. We’re looking only at telephone services.
Peter Brickwedde – Department of Commerce (Department of Government Affairs)
The Department has been working on this for several years.
We’ve been working with MTA and hope that continues. We may have differences but work together.
Concerns:
The State does need to modernize. But that does not mean deregulate. We want to focus on consumer protections.
The FCC is not settled yet. The situation is still fluid. We will continue to monitor.
QUESTIONS
What are your concerns?
Basic service – narrowing the definition is a primary concern
Not having a regulatory entity at the state level to turn to is a concern
A venue and method for complaints are concerns.
Who is regulated and how?
We could put together info to share after hearing. Otherwise I think folks have covered
State regulated traditional wired services and
Wireless is regulated at federal level.
Non-traditional services (cable) regulated at local and federal level.
There is a distinction between phone service and broadband. And the FCC is moving towards a broadband world of regulation.
When do you think things will be settled (at FCC)?
It is difficult to know. And it’s a good reason to really examine the landscape. A flexible regulation scheme that is not tied to technology will be helpful.
We expect movement later this year.
There seems to be some concern about pricing. Is that due to last of oversight?
That is the broad concern. We are trying to highlight the possibility of cost going up and consumers having nowhere to go to complain.
Wouldn’t the PUC take the complaints?
The concern is that under the current process the PUC take complaints and the Department of Commerce investigates. This bill would eliminate that review. The FCC is setting some rates – but the details will be the tricky part and how does the State protect.
And pricing fixing there’s concern over mergers?
Those issues are addressed in research notes – Commission will be addresses in PUC.
The state will not be protect consumers in mergers as we did with CenturyLink – Qwest merger.
Are there issues with losing state regulation?
Without Department of Commerce & PUC having jurisdiction a small business would not have a state-based recourse if they were having problems with their services.
Brent –
If someone has a compliant now, they file with PUC. Department of Commerce investigates complaints with PUC. This bill would eliminate some of that now and by 2014. We’re no longer monopolies. We’re regulated by the consumer. They have choices. Businesses with 4 lines or more are already deregulated.
The reason for July 1, 2019 date – PUC & Commerce not regulate local service rates and access changes (long distance payments to local providers) but the FCC essentially takes these off the tables by the FCC.
Call completion is a big issue for us – but it’s up to the provider who will work with the FCC or do a workaround.
Dan Lipshultz – Larson Baudette (represents CLECs – such as Integra)
– ILEC – incumbent local exchange carrier – traditional phone companies (such as US West)
– CLEC – competitive local exchange carrier – new providers (post 1996)
Our retail services are regulated by PUC.
Our clients believe the best protection for consumers is competition.
First broadband service was DSL. It was invested by bell monopoly. First providers was a CLEC.
The consumer – think about your office. You have a phone and laptop. Both are hardwired and connected to Internet. Every business has a hardwired phone and computer. Your phone and broadband are coming from ILEC or cable. We rely on landline service for voice and broadband.
It’s the pipe that matters. We need a statute that supports open market, which means opening up the pipes. It will never make sense to rebuild infrastructure time and time again.
A large ILEC will try to keep competitors out. Every company wants to be a monopoly. TO protect the consumer we need regulators to make sure the pipes are available to everyone.
Texas homebuilder and noted political donor Bob Perry has died at the age of 80.
According to a report from The Dallas Morning News, Perry died in his sleep on Saturday night or Sunday morning at his home in Houston. The cause of the death has not been released
In the late 1960s, Perry started a homebuilding business in Houston called Perry Homes. The company is now one of the largest home builders in the U.S.
With the success of Perry Homes, Perry became wealthy, and used his wealth to support conservative political causes. He was a major donor for both George W. Bush and Rick Perry (no relation) during their campaigns for Governor of Texas. Perry was also reportedly donated over $900,000 to the Texas Republican Party in 2002.
During the 2004 election, Perry was the largest single donor to the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, donating over $4.4 million to the group. Since that time, Perry has donated millions to organizations dedicated to electing Republican candidates, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
SocialFlow said it raised a $10 million Series B round in a deal led by Fairhaven Capital and joined by existing investors SoftBank Capital, RRE Ventures, AOL Ventures and Betaworks. Also in the round were new investors kbs+ Ventures and Rand Capital Corporation. SocialFlow is developing social media marketing products.
PRESS RELEASE
SocialFlow Secures $10 Million Series B to Grow Market Share As Advertising Spend Goes Social
Company leading the charge to explain the who, what, when and where of intelligent social media marketing and engagement
NEW YORK—April 16, 2013—SocialFlow, the leading social media marketing company, today announced a $10 million round in Series B funding. Fairhaven Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors SoftBank Capital, RRE Ventures, AOL Ventures and Betaworks, as well as new investors kbs+ Ventures and Rand Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:RAND). SocialFlow will use these funds to accelerate its range and reach, expand its product portfolio and further develop its partner base as the market for intelligent social network engagement and analytics platforms expands.
This market expansion is being driven by the need of brands and publishers to identify optimal points of engagement – in real-time and with context relevance – among the millions of conversations being held every minute within the social networks. According to recent analyst reports:
· Corporate investment in interactive marketing programs will exceed $76B in the US alone by 2016, with social media marketing program spending growing to 26% of all advertising spend, according to Forrester Research;
· Advertising is, and will continue to be, the largest contributor to overall social media revenue and is projected to have totaled $8.8 billion in 2012, according to Gartner.
SocialFlow co-founder and Chief Product Officer Frank Speiser developed the company’s proprietary technology to enable brands, agencies and publishers to actively follow conversation flows across social networks, selecting the right points of engagement with key audiences for when they are most likely to be motivated to action. More than 70 enterprise customers across publishing, consumer products, retail, automotive, hospitality and more use SocialFlow’s Cadence and Crescendo platforms as a central part of their social media publishing and digital marketing engagement strategies. Today, six of the ten largest media companies are actively using Cadence and brands such as Walmart, Pepsi, and Burberry are leveraging Crescendo to connect with customers when and where they want to be engaged.
“In the past year, we have seen a significant change as companies integrate social media marketing into their overarching business goals and make it a lynchpin of their ongoing customer acquisition, engagement and loyalty programs,” said SocialFlow CEO Missy Godfrey. “With the support and partnership of Fairhaven Capital and our existing investors, SocialFlow has the resources to take full advantage of the tremendous market opportunity to help companies develop meaningful relationships across all social networking platforms.”
Rudina Seseri, Partner at Fairhaven Capital said, “As social media becomes the de facto mechanism for brands to communicate, the ability to analyze and act upon this information in real time will be critical. SocialFlow’s innovative approach, established mindshare with brands and publishers, and clear technological leadership has enabled it to rapidly move this market forward and to create real value for its customers and partners.”
About SocialFlow
SocialFlow is the premier social marketing optimization technology company that enables the world’s most powerful brands to drive superior results connecting their earned, owned and paid media strategies. For further information, please visit www.socialflow.com and follow us on Twitter @socialflow
About Fairhaven Capital Partners
Based in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, Fairhaven Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to a thesis-based approach to investing in North American technology companies. This approach focuses investment efforts on markets where emerging companies and technologies can create significant value. The Fairhaven team is focused on themes in the enterprise, physical technologies, media infrastructure and security markets. For more information, visit www.fairhavencapital.com.
Metro 2033 taught me one thing – post-apocalyptic Moscow is a dangerous place. Aside from mutated monsters and neo-nazis, players also had to contend with malicious spirits of the dead and those weird ooze blobs that killed framerates the world over.
In Metro: Last Light, it doesn’t look like things have gotten any better. In fact, things may have gotten worse. To help you survive in this environment, the developers at 4A Games have thrown together a couple of videos with survival tips.
The first explores the different factions of the Metro and the areas they inhabit:
The second explores the different enemies – both human and mutant – that players will encounter:
Metro: Last Light launches across the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on May 14.
“The era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is one of a variety of environments that IT will need to support”, Van Baker, Gartner research vice president, says. The days of Windows as the applications and device hub are over.
The implications are huge for businesses, which must adapt to something else, too. While native mobile apps are all the rage today, their future is uncertain. Gartner forecasts that by 2016, more than half of those deployed will be hybrid, and that’s good for any platform favoring HTML5, including Windows.
Post-PC is a Lie
Baker and I disagree on one important point, however. There is no post-PC era. It’s a fiction perpetrated by Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who when alive wanted to sell more devices, and for analysts like Baker who want clients to buy more reports and services. We have entered the contextual cloud computing era, where context and not device or location determines tech’s usage.
Context isn’t new in business computing, but accelerates because of cloud benefits. BlackBerries, laptops and PDAs — going back into the last century — were contextual devices around which employees commingled behavior and data. The trend simply accelerates, as consumers purchase more devices and bring them to work. Employees have more choices, not just Windows PCs, and for tech all the more personal.
In this rapidly evolving future, where the cloud makes content and data available anywhere, anytime and on anything, context is king. There is no post-PC, rather the personal computer changes roles, being one of many platforms. During the transition, platform creators and developers emphasized apps, like they did for the PC — and many are native. But that’s not a sustainable approach because of contextual demands — your professional or personal stuff available on anything. Developers make do by creating apps for each platform, which isn’t a sustainably sound strategic approach going forward. There is too much investment in too many places.
As businesses support more devices, they should add them to existing applications and platforms, rather than supporting them separately, Gartner recommends. That’s actually good for Windows’ longevity, being the incumbent and because of development priorities Microsoft made for the current desktop and server platforms. Windows 8’s Modern UI is all about active content, and developers using HTML5, JavaScript and native code to write apps and to support connected services.
BYOD Jungle
“The BYOD trend and the increased pressure on organizations to deploy mobile applications to accommodate mobile work styles of employees will lead businesses to manage a portfolio of mobile application architectures”, Baker says, “and hybrid architectures will be especially well-suited to business-to-employee applications”.
HTML5’s role cannot be understated. “While hybrid apps will be the majority of enterprise mobile apps, web technologies like HTML5 will make up the most commonly used languages for building mobile applications by 2015”, David Mitchell Smith, Gartner vice president, predicts.
That’s good for cross-platform development, which is more sensible when supporting so many devices — everything from legacy Windows to mobile operating systems like Android, BlackBerry, iOS or Windows Phone.
Where Windows sits on the enterprise will greatly affect many IT developers’ choices about what to invest in and where. Those decisions aren’t easy because adoption of other devices is an accelerating trend.
As I explained three years ago: “Mobile device-to-cloud competition’s shifting relevance bears striking similarities to the move from mainframes to PCs, and it is a long, ongoing trend. Microsoft’s newer problem is sudden and unexpected: Competing operating systems moving up from smartphones to PCs or PC-like devices”.
Out with the Old
Looking at past historical trends, the pace is slow at first reaching a crescendo, where there is a dramatic shift to the new from the old occurring within a short time span. Some older technologies continue for a time and disappear, while many others remain but in new niches. Some recent, and not-too-hard-to-grasp, examples:
Cottage industries and factories
Horse drawn carriages and trains
Trains and automobiles
Telegraphs and telephones
Mainframes and PCs
Digital music downloads and CDs
We’re at the accelerating end now, where much changes fast in a short time. For example, between October and March surveys, Twitter usage dramatically shifted, according to Strategy Analytics. On laptops, the number dropped to 64 percent from 77 percent, while on smartphones and tablets rose to 71 percent from 65 percent.
“The immediacy of Twitter communications requires devices which are close to hand at every waking moment,” David Mercer, Strategy Analytics vice president, says. “By definition this suggests mobile phones and tablets should be preferred devices for Tweeting and the survey evidence points clearly in this direction”.
Twitter, like many other cloud apps and services, is highly contextual and personal. Business mobile apps will be increasingly so as organizations establish sound policies about devices used for home and work purposes and maximize their benefits.
Again, the trend accelerates. Signs are everywhere. Many IT organizations may find their businesses on the short end of the curve and using BYOD as means of making do while catching up. But decisions they make in process, about Windows’ role and supporting and managing new platforms, matter now. It’s one reason to anticipate hybrid mobile apps, at least in the short term.
As for Windows, it’s changing role is inevitable now. The question to be answered: What will be Windows new role in a one-of-many world?
Later today, Facebook will unveil an update for their iOS app that brings chat heads, stickers, and news feed improvements.
First up, iOS users will be able to use chat heads – one of the main features of Facebook Home for Android. Of course, these chat heads won’t work on your iOS home screen, only when you’re using the Facebook app. But it will let you keep multiple conversations going much easier when you’re inside the app.
As with chat heads on Android, you simply tap them to open up the chat thread, and drag them around and place them wherever you want on the screen.
Last week, on the same day Facebook unveiled Facebook Home for Android, they also brought chat heads to Facebook Messenger for Android – you know, to throw Android users with device not supported by Facebook Home a bone.
The update also brings stickers to the iOS app.
Also, we’re finally getting those changes to the news feed on mobile that Facebook announced but is still slowly rolling out on desktop. According to Facebook, the biggest changes will be seen on the iPad, “where you’ll see brighter, more beautiful stories.”
Facebook says that the update will be ready to download later today in the App Store.
Most people think so — analysts polled by Reuters this month predict that the Japanese currency will fall 18 percent against the dollar this year. That will bring the currency to around 102 per dollar from current levels of 98. And all sorts of trades, from emerging debt to euro zone periphery stocks, are banking on a world of weak yen.
Now here is a contrary view. David Bloom, HSBC’s head of global FX strategy, thinks one-way bets on the yen could prove dangerous. Here are some of the points he makes in his note today:
– Bloom says the link between currencies and QE (quantitative easing) is not straightforward. Note that after three rounds of QE the dollar is flexing its muscles. The ECB’s LTRO too ultimately benefited the euro.
– The BOJ surprised investors with the scale of its bond buying plan relative to the size of its economy. But Bloom says the Fed has actually tripled its monetary base since 2008 while the Bank of England has expanded it fivefold. The BOJ on the other hand plans to double it over the next two years.
– Bloom calculates that the BOJ plan relative to Japan’s monetary base justifies a yen/dollar depreciation of 15 percent. Instead the currency has fallen almost 30 percent since October. The yen would have merely moved to 88 per dollar from a November level of around 80, had the market known the BoJ planned to double its monetary base, he says, adding:
So the Bank of Japan’s actions have not been as awe-inspiring as some claim, and may very well be priced in.
And even if the yen does weaken further, Bloom says the benefits to Japan will be somewhat negated as other countries, especially neighbours in Asia, also try to dampen their own currencies. He says:
The currency war has just been raised another notch, and the yen will not have a free ride.
And what of the implications for global markets? The reckoning is that the prospect of further yen weakness will be the catalyst to push trillions of dollars currently locked up with Japanese households, mutual funds and insurers out into the world to seek yield. This too should not be taken as a given, Bloom warns. He reminds clients of 2000, when markets anticipated a wave of money flowing out of Japanese Postal Savings accounts into overseas assets as time deposits matured. That did not eventually happen. Nor did the yen weaken much.
The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm based in Cleveland, has promoted nine professionals to partner, principal, or director, including Joe Lee, who joined Riverside in 2006 and has just been promoted to partner, and Jack Nestor, who joined the firm in 2005 and has also been promoted to partner.
PRESS RELEASE:
The Riverside Company, having set firm records for total acquisitions (36) and exits (14) in 2012, is announcing the promotion of nine professionals to partner, principal or director.
Co-CEO Béla Szigethy said the promotions are a good indication of the vibrancy of Riverside.
“In a dynamic and challenging private equity landscape, The Riverside Company is constantly striving to find and recognize superb employees. Riverside has navigated the difficult environment that’s continuing to shake up the private equity industry,” said Szigethy. “We’re thrilled to be able to reward and recognize the professionals who have helped us deliver results over these years.”
Co-CEO Stewart Kohl noted that the nine promotions were hard-earned and well deserved.
“Riverside has a wonderful tradition of growing our transacting talent to reinforce our unique culture. It’s important for us to encourage excellence and reward our best talent,” said Kohl. “That’s especially true now, as our industry becomes more competitive and doing great deals gets more difficult and more important every day. We’re grateful to have a wonderful global team, and we always enjoy promoting the best of them.”
Riverside’s promotions of senior professionals include:
Joe Lee, to Partner. Lee started at Riverside in 2006, and has worked on six Riverside platform deals in addition to many add-ons. Lee was the lead transactor on the recent successful realization of Wildlife International. He is based in Cleveland.
Jack Nestor, to Partner. Nestor began with Riverside in 2005, and has led seven platform deals for the firm, including the successful 2012 realization of HEALTHCAREfirst. Nestor is based in Cleveland.
Peter Schaberger, to Partner. Schaberger has been with Riverside since 2005, and has led or been involved with the acquisition or management of seven platform companies, several add-ons and four exits. Schaberger is based in Munich.
Lars Eriksson, to Principal, UK, Nordic & Baltic Countries, Origination. Eriksson has played a key role in the identification and acquisition of numerous opportunities in Europe since joining Riverside in 2007. He is based in Stockholm.
Marty Graul, to Principal. Graul joined Riverside in 2007. In his Riverside career, he has worked on the acquisition of five platforms and three add-ons, in addition to four exits. He is based in Dallas.
Jeremy Holland, to Principal, Origination. Holland joined Riverside in 2010. He has revitalized Riverside’s Origination presence in the West. Over the past two years, Holland has sourced and worked on six acquisitions. He is based in Los Angeles.
Meranee Phing, to Principal. Phing joined Riverside in 2005, and has completed four platform and two add-on acquisitions, as well as four exits. She is based in San Francisco.
Monica Chase, to Director, Fundraising & IR. Chase joined Riverside in 2007. She plays a key role on her team, having participated in the raising of six fund vintages, and working with investors globally for all four of Riverside’s fund families.
Sarah Spencer, to Director, Strategic Analysis & Sourcing (SAS). Spencer has been with Riverside since 2005, and has played a key role in the successful efforts of SAS to identify efficiencies, reduce expenses and monitor portfolio performance. She is based in New York.
The Riverside Company
The Riverside Company is a global private equity firm focused on acquiring growing businesses valued at up to $250 million (€200 million in Europe). Since its founding in 1988, Riverside has invested in more than 300 transactions. The firm’s international portfolio includes more than 75 companies.
Xiaomi has big ambitions this year after unveiling the Mi2S and Mi2A, and plans to ship 15 million smartphones, as well as expand sales beyond Asia. Co-founder and president Lin Bin, spoke at D: Dive Into Mobile in New York City. Despite only selling Android phones for three years, Xiaomi has generated $2 billion in revenue on 1.7 million phones. While this doesn’t sound like a lot compared to other manufacturers, the Chinese company has adopted an online-only model from the beginning. The phones are unsubsidized, priced at the bill-of-materials, and manage to sell out in minutes. Lin on the success of the Mi2:
“Last year, when we announced the Mi2, for 3-4 months we’d have hundreds of thousands of units available, and they’d be gone within two or three minutes after we posted availability online.”
Since they’re selling phones at the bill-of-materials, there is little room for profit. To make up for that, Lin says that a good portion of profits actually come from sales of accessories. Going from selling 1.7 million phones overall to shipping 15 million phones in a single year, is quite a leap. However, Xiaomi claims to be working hard on distribution, particularly in China where they want to get phones to users within three days after purchase. By expanding into Hong Kong and Taiwan, the company is able to get valuable feedback on if making Xiaomi phones available on carriers, is a good move.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has been talking at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference and he revealed some numbers about the company’s performance. The figures are certainly impressive: more than 200 million users and 12 billion outbound messages per day. In terms of active users, WhatsApp is now bigger than Twitter. Yet the company hit 11 billion outbound messages per day on New Year’s Eve, 2012. In August 2012, WhatsApp announced it was handling 6 billion outbound messages a day. Is the service’s messaging volume growth really decelerating this rapidly? From 6 billion outbound in August, to 11 billion in December, and then to 12 billion in April 2013. These are terrific volumes and they make WhatsApp one of the most fascinating and valuable app companies in the world… but its growth rate now seems to be falling quickly.
The modern infrastructure has advanced beyond the standard server. Now, with BYOD, IT consumerization, cloud computing and big data – there is a greater reliance on the data center than ever before. More organizations are looking for way to optimize their data enter environments in an effort to meet industry demands. Through advanced technologies including virtualization, and high-density computing – your company can revisit the data center infrastructure conversation. This means planning around new platforms which are not only capable of handling current computing needs, but future growth demands as well.
IDC finds that higher utilization of IT assets and operational efficiency — which results from running more virtual machines on new-generation servers — reaches a plateau and often levels out at a certain point. This happens because the shift to virtualized servers often leads to strains in other areas of the infrastructure:
Virtual server sprawl increases server/storage/network stress and the accompanying administrative burdens required to deal with this stress. This makes support/maintenance more challenging and threatens application performance.
Handling this anticipated pressure by overloading/overprovisioning storage and data network facilities forces time-consuming, costly, and often unnecessary hardware upgrades.
Application performance and recovery behaviors (data recovery and cleanup) on error conditions can vary unexpectedly, stalling plans to migrate more business critical applications to virtual environments.
There is no question that the IT landscape will continue to evolve. As companies face a future in which they will need to deploy and effectively use hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of server (and/or desktop) application instances in a virtual environment, they should consider deploying optimally (e.g., densest, greenest, simplest) configured converged infrastructure systems (server, storage, network) that are managed as unified IT assets.
In this white paper done by IDC and sponsored by VCE, you will learn about the interesting research done with five organizations. The research revolves around research with five companies that have implemented Vblock Infrastructure Platforms. According to the research in this white paper, VCE shows substantial business benefits associated with IT convergence and improved asset sharing.
IDC and VCE results also indicate reduced IT costs per unit of workload, faster deployment, and reduced downtime. These organizations reported reducing calendar time for deployment of new infrastructure from five weeksto one week and reducing staff time to configure/test/deploy by 75%. Download this whitepaper to learn how your environment can benefit from a new converged infrastructure. This includes learning how to utilize the reduction in infrastructure hardware costs and IT staff time to manage operations – which will not only lower the average annual datacenter cost but also help increase efficiency and scalability.
Google is running a doodle on its homepage in India today, celebrating the 160th anniversary of India’s first passenger train journey.
On April 16, 1853, the first passenger train service went between bori Bunder in Mumbai and Thane, covering a distance of 24 kilometers (21 miles), hauled by three locomotives, Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan, according to T. Stanley Babu’s “A shining testimony of progress” (as cited on Wikipedia).
According to the article, “This was soon followed by opening of the first passenger railway line in North India between Allahabad and Kanpur on March 3, 1859.”
For an industry whose lot in life is to invent the future and challenge the status quo, technology’s giants are astonishingly stubborn when faced with change. And no two companies personify that more than Microsoft and Intel — the glimmer twins of the personal computer revolution. For decades the PC buying cycle left these two companies sitting on a mountain of cash higher than even the highest Himalayan peaks. I guess when you are sitting at such heights, it is hard to look down and recognize that the base is being chipped away.
To be sure, I am not saying that Microsoft and Intel are going to go away tomorrow. Their fiscal muscle is enough to put even Popeye to shame. And monopolies (even quasi-monopolies) take forever to fade.
But for the first time they are facing a challenge that is much more profound and broader than they have ever faced in their monopolistic lives: competition and changing tastes. How they deal with these changes is going to write the next chapter of their corporate history.
PC sales horror show
But let’s take a step back. The signs of crumbling came last week when research companies like IDC and Gartner shared data that showed double digit percentage declines in PC sales during the first quarter of 2013. To be sure, the first ninety days of the year are relatively slow for sales of consumer goods, considering that people go on a buying binge during the holiday season, but still a 14 percent year over year decline during the quarter is not something to skim over. It was so bad that even downward trend defying Apple PC sales are expected to head south.
Many media reports blamed the Windows 8 operating system for this debacle, but this is the fourth quarter in a row we have seen PC sales sagging; we can’t blame the new operating system. The reason why media and analysts continue to make that correlation is because we have in the past made that correlation: new Windows equals big PC sales, almost like clockwork every three or four years. Except now it is not true because our relationship with PC (as we knew it) has changed.
The new personal
It has been just about six years since Apple’s iPhone launched and changed our expectations of computers and our relationship with technology. It became more intimate and personal than either Intel or Microsoft had imagined. It wasn’t as that the companies were unaware of mobile phones, or that iPhone was the first smartphone — Nokia and Palm had been selling them for quite a few years — but the iPhone and later Android phones became truly “personal.”
They made us spend less and less time on our PCs. They were always there, and even when the PC sat on the table, the phone in your hand was more fun and easy to use. And then three years ago came the iPad (and later other tablets) to take away even more of our attention from the PC. And when the iPad launched, I knew my PC was going to become less important. The iPad was my slate of imagination.
In the end, an increasing number of people are finding that they don’t need a whiz-bang PC anymore and they don’t need to upgrade because they can do a lot of things on their iPad or Kindle Fire or Samsung Android tablet.
The signs of this change were obvious to anyone who was paying attention. When Apple dropped “computer” from its name, the late (and then chief executive) Steve Jobs pointed out that it was a sign of the times and where the world was going. Here is what I wrote then:
Apple is making the phone do all things a computer does – surf, email, browse, iChat, music and watch videos. Nary a keyboard or mouse in sight, and everything running on OS-X. While I am not suggesting that this replaces our notebooks or desktops for crucial productivity tasks, the iPhone (if it lives up to its hype) is at least going to decrease our dependence on it.
The future is here
Six years later, the world has really changed for the twin gods of the PC. Unlike Apple and Google, who have hitched their bandwagons to wireless devices, Microsoft and Intel are still weighed down by the legacy of their past. I mean, it is hard for Microsoft to look beyond the profits from Windows and Office. It will always look at the future through the lens of those two products. I have been suspect of Intel’s ability to come out ahead as well.
Intel, too, is so married to the idea of selling more expensive PC chips and silicon for servers that it doesn’t know how to readjust its focus and its fiscal models around a world that wants lower priced chips for a different and always shifting market. Since then the world has embraced the little pocket marvels with amazing speed and that in turn has unleashed a new cellphone economics. The mobile chips are getting faster and faster. And thanks to demand that far strips the demand of classic PC devices, they are getting cheaper.
The mobile phone market is so big that it has attracted all sorts of chip makers into the business: Qualcomm, MediaTek and Nvidia are some of the players in the mobile chip business that are relentlessly flooding the market with faster, cheaper and more powerful chips. They are being helped by ARM Holdings, which keeps beefing up its chip technology and expanding its possible uses by focusing on not making chips, but instead licensing chip designs to others like Qualcomm.
Intel has to react to these guys; not to Advanced Micro Devices, the perennial also-ran that was always weighed down with an anemic balance sheet and an inability to compete even when it had better chips. And we all know, Qualcomm is no AMD. MediaTek knows how to play the mobile chip game better than anyone else. What does Intel have to show for its mobile efforts?
Change is hard
A lot of noise – press releases, product releases and a handful of devices. Sorry, but I remain resolute in my belief that the company’s DNA is making this transition to anywhere computing very difficult. That inability to change is reflected in the company’s current dilemma over the chief executive position. In an article this week, The New York Times detailed the likely replacements for outgoing CEO Paul Otellini.
Analysts say the two top contenders to be Intel’s next C.E.O. are Brian Krzanich and David Perlmutter, who are close to Intel’s core business. Mr. Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer, oversees its fabrication facilities. Mr. Perlmutter, the chief product officer, oversees chip design. Renee James, the head of Intel’s software group, is considered a more remote chance to run what has long been a hardware company. And Stacy Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, is well liked inside and outside the company, but like Mr. Otellini, lacks an engineering background, which diminishes his prospects.
Regardless of who becomes the new Intel chief, the problem is that they were all weaned on the classic PC business, one that is changing with the rise of smartphones and tablets and lower power anywhere-computing devices.
That said (and as my wise colleague Kevin Tofel continues to remind me), Intel is doing relatively well with its Atom lineup of chips and he feels it is one of the reasons why Microsoft RT on ARM devices is facing challenges.
The full Windows 8 tablets that run on Atom processors priced at the same price as RT devices (and with the similar battery life) should give Intel some hope. However, their addiction to the PC-style model and hefty margins that come from being almost monopolistic are going to challenge Intel in the future. As I wrote in the past, companies are defined by their corporate DNA and that determines their outcome.
Microsoft too has similar challenges as it grapples with the idea of competition and a world it doesn’t and can’t control anymore. More on that another day, but in closing, I would like to repeat what I said at the start of this piece: the companies that spearhead the talk of disruption and innovation are the ones who are afraid to disrupt themselves.
