Since the iPhone 6s was released last month anyone who has used the device says it feels like magic. Apple – as a platform company – is so far above the competition it’s hard to fully grasp. There are reasons why pushing down on 3D Touch feels better than any device people have ever touched, […]
In tech and in business (and in economics), network effects measure the value of a product or service against the number of people using it. When a network effect is present, the network becomes more valuable to each user when a new user is added. The internet is perhaps the most famous stack with network […]
Podcast with Benedict Evans talking about ‘first brain’ computing, indoor location, and smart devices as ‘mouse cursors for the physical world‘.
We are quickly approaching an era where smartphones, watches and computers are extensions of us as human beings. They predict what we want to buy, when we should be hungry, what type of music we want to listen to, at what time. They even help cars navigate to where we stand, the driver simply a […]
When Tim Cook was interviewed by Charlie Rose after Apple’s mega launch event a few weeks ago, he scoffed at any mention of competitors, highlighting only Google as Apple’s arch-rival. Apple and Google are entrenched in a modern version of the PC war, and are the only two players with relevancy at the operating system […]
In networking there’s a saying called the last mile problem. It goes as follows: the last mile—or ‘edge’—of the network is the hardest to reach. In mobile, distributing intelligence to the edge has posed an even greater challenge. Why? Because mobile users are always roaming, their location constantly changing in relation to the network. The […]
In June of this year, I had one of those incredible experiences working in technology where you see or hear something and know that the world has changed. It happened while I was sitting in bed at home, watching Apple’s WWDC conference, having just finished the developer session on a new framework called iBeacon. Later […]
In mobile, particularly in consumer markets, there has been an ongoing debate about when or if Android will become the first platform that sophisticated startups develop for. Often times, this argument is wrongly centered around vanity metrics for Android such as worldwide shipments or installed base of each platform. The reality is that platform constraints […]
One fascinating benefit of today’s converged hardware / software platforms is how a new technology can be “turned on” via OS upgrades, allowing instant network effects at the platform and ecosystem level. Apple’s iBeacon is a model case for this and below are some thoughts on how new capabilities brought forth in iOS7 have the […]
An alternative title for this piece could be ‘Why Vertically Converged Mobile Platforms Have Won Over Modular’. Over the weekend Ben Thompson wrote an eloquent essay relating the iPhone’s success to disruption theory in mobile / consumer markets. Mobile has always been evolving differently, and 3.5 years ago I wrote a post called The Genius […]