Evolution of the Species

Pulling the Network Through

2009-11-22T00:25:00.006-06:00

Last week AT&T announced Synaptic Services. These will be on-demand compute and storage resources that can be scaled as needed and only paid for when used. There are no set-up fees and no minimum commitment requirements. AT&T will manage the network, server, and storage. Customers can develop and manage everything else as if these resources were their own. It sounds and looks like the Sun Cloud.

The Efika MX has no moving parts
and it's not much bigger than an iPhone!

For years, AT&T and other carriers have paid dealers and value added resellers commissions for selling network services. This seems to be something more. Synaptic resources could be made available to developers working within the AT&T cloud to offer their own applications, or storefront, while supporting a whole new world of customizable devices. It sounds and looks like Cloud City. Any guess which device we will be pulling with?!

R&B

Two Words on Chrome: All Day

2009-11-20T05:20:00.001-06:00

Following up on yesterday's blog...

It is a good video

In the press conference for Chrome OS, Google said they were working with hardware manufacturers, which they would not name, on developing Chrome OS machines. These will first be netbooks. Eventually Chrome OS could be in laptops and desktops, said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, but the focus now is on cheap machines "that you use all day and charge at night, like a cellphone."

Well, that all day part should be good news for ARM-based devices...

R&B

Greener on the Other Side

2009-11-19T13:45:00.006-06:00

This cow had a habit of going for the grass that he did not have. Nevertheless, between the fence and the simple, but effective forked stick placed around the cow's neck, this cow was 'locked.'

Will you be locked to your service provider?

As netbooks increasingly enter the mobile market, unlocking the netbook from a service provider may be a bit more problematic than swapping a SIM card or mastering a software tweak. It will be interesting to see if the quality and variety of netbook service offerings keep folks happy or looking for something more. As fast as technology evolves, two years is a long time to stay linked to a service contract.

A couple of weeks ago Google announced that you could use Google Voice with your existing mobile number. Your messages can now go to your computer or to your mobile as text, unlocking your messages from the service provider. Step by step, it seems the service providers are being herded by Google right to where Google wants them to be. If the service providers don't tend to favor the consumer a bit more soon, they could actually be the ones that find themselves on the wrong side of the fence.

R&B

Open Source Hardware Bounty

2009-11-15T13:35:00.002-06:00

The MPC8610 Open Source Mainboard Bounty has been published

The MPC8610 Open Source Mainboard Bounty will be supported by the power2people MPC8610 Developer Program. Please feel free to comment here or send us an email with any feedback or suggestions.

R&B

power2people MPC8610

2009-11-13T02:15:00.012-06:00

We are resurrecting a Developer Program around the Freescale MPC8610: power2people MPC8610. The goal will be to develop a new, community-funded, open-source hardware platform around the chip.

Look for more details on power2people.org soon

We met with our Freescale Sales Rep yesterday. We would not go quite as far as suggesting a comeback for PowerPC, but we have confirmed that the MPC8610 will be supported and available for "a long time."

R&B

Green Eggs and Ham

2009-11-09T02:10:00.010-06:00

The best selling children's book written by Dr. Suess was published in 1960. We have heard and read the story, many, many times...

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I will not eat them with a mouse.
I will not eat them here or there.
I will not eat them anywhere.
I do not eat green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

I would not eat green eggs and ham.
I do not like them Sam-I-am!

You can click through the image above to see an animation prepared some years after the book. The illustrations and rhyming dialogue have helped many children learn to read. The book also teaches valuable life lessons. Preconceived ideas can keep us from greater awareness. In the end, Sam's optimism and persistence is rewarded.

It has been more than two and a half years since we wrote about the First Rule of Advertising...

Yes, Friends, you can sell the EFIKA. You can sell it to the Bank. You can use it with a crank. You can sell them to a store, and for a plane, and for a car, and don't worry we will make more! They are so good, so good, you see! And, you can use them in-de-pen-dent-ly! You can use them at the Post. You can use them where they count most. So, please, sell them here and sell them there. Yes, Friends, sell them...

EVERYWHERE!

We certainly had Sam in mind. We still do with the new Efika MX. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-am.

R&B

P.S. Try a little green food coloring on the egg yolks and ham. It can make for a great after-story surprise for children!

Which Cloud Is Right for You?

2009-11-04T07:00:00.011-06:00

This announced today: Freescale extends product family that pioneered the smartbook category to address additional embedded markets. Genesi is pleased to be an important contributor to the growing ecosystem around the i.MX51.

What is in your Cloud City?

Cloud City was designed with a series of products in mind, beginning with the Efika MX. By expanding the i.MX51 family, Freescale helps us bring firmware, software and cloud computing support to new customers and new application. As web-connected devices are developed around this processor family, we will have a progressively growing host of resources organized and available.

Come see Cloud City and the Efika MX at the ARM Connected Community Technical Symposium in Tokyo next week. If you miss us in Japan, we will be in Korea, Taiwan, China, India and back in Europe before the end of the year (see Upcoming Events). Come find out which cloud is right for you and let us help you get connected!

R&B

Thinking Outside the Box: Customerization

2009-11-02T06:00:00.011-06:00

The latest Apple vs. PC ads are in circulation. If you are switching to Windows 7 you might as well switch to a Mac. Why not really upgrade? In the meanwhile, Intel has introduced The Intel Mobile Authorized Integrator Connection. The message from Intel to custom system builders and solution providers: Don't give HP, IBM, Dell, or Apple all the credit! Put your own brand on a custom notebook. You will have a unique product. You can make more money! The fact that Intel is doing this themselves is an interesting step in the white box PC market. With this trend, we can also expect Linux on the desktop to be increasingly successful.

If brand is everything, it seems everything is Intel

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as "a name, term, sign, symbol, or design or a combination of these, which is intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors." It seems if all the boxes are the same on the inside, it must be the capable and attentive customer support that is associated with the brand that makes all the PC sameness less obvious. This is a smart move by Intel, but could it be an indication of a increasingly fragmented market?

The Internet and cloud computing is reversing the what's inside trend once and for all. Presenting what's outside well is what is essential. The bandwidth available (how much and where) and the services provided (what and when) increasingly define the Personal Computer. Cost is also a factor. People expect more and more from their computing and communications resources. Customers want what they want when they want it, and wherever they are - inside, outside, any time, any place. To be "personal," customerization is the key. This will be the primary characteristic of the best PC to be.

R&B

Expanding Your Capacity to Choose

2009-10-30T06:45:00.003-05:00

That is what technology can do. That does not necessarily mean you will make the right choices. At issue is that you will have a full range of choices, from bad to good. But, before we go further, let's separate the moral judgment and/or esthetic opinion from the opportunity technology can provide. Access and opportunity is our focus.

What do you think?

The freedom to explore and develop an opinion is as important as the ability to share and refine it. In the history of human endeavor, never has the confluence of people and ideas been greater than what we can find through the Internet today. As access and opportunity reaches further into our world, technology must continue to progressively increase our opportunity to learn and to interact. Our hopes run in this direction. It is all very exciting to us!

By the way, that is Alain Colliard in his studio in Rouen, France. We think he is an Artist. You will have many choices if you visit: here.

R&B

Open Client for Smart Work

2009-10-28T09:30:00.011-05:00

Ready for Smart Work

We are excited to be entering a new high growth market that capitalizes on our system integration skills and and our cloudcity.me offering. With the i.MX51 at the core we are bringing a broad range of communication and computing technologies into a series of easy to use, consumer friendly devices.

Efika MX Open Client

Freescale Enabled, ARM Connected, Google Apps and Citrix Supported

R&B

Let Us Build a Smarter Planet

2009-10-25T03:00:00.002-05:00

The machine is us!

If you watch the video, it may occur to you that connecting systems are really about connecting people in more meaningful and productive ways. A smarter planet? It seems IBM is finally sorting that out...

More than the $3/month email service we mentioned at the end of Shift Happens, this past week IBM has finally jumped on the proverbial bandwagon: IBM and Canonical Launch Linux- and Cloud-based Desktop Software in the U.S. It is certainly about time the client became important again. It is a great vision. And, what do you know (?!), the announcement came just before the Windows 7 launch.

Windows and a big hard drive are being pushed by Linux and a data plan. With Windows 7 ready for release, we made a short marketing list. Here is what we came up with:

• Better
• Newer
• Easier

In reality, this translates into the coming of an end to Vista support and more hardware sales for HP, Acer, Dell, etc. Our bet is that it will still be easier to just buy a new PC with Windows 7 installed. So, how much longer will this cycle work? For Microsoft, who appears to be shouldering the bulk of the incremental burden of the massive industry-wide price declines, it is hard to know. The rumor is Microsoft paid a good deal of money to Acer to keep Linux out. With all this pressure, it seems inevitable that there will even be a Wincloud in the not too distant future.

As cloud based services and cloud hungry devices become more prolific and capable, the challenges to sell one cloud service over another will increase. The smart client will get the best service, because it will 'learn' the best service. With more virtualization there will be more sharing - both in the cloud or on a single client with multiple users. It is the combination of application and data that connects a smarter planet into us and not the other way around. The Internet was built with a lack of central control in mind and though it might seem otherwise, it looks like things are still heading in that direction.

R&B

Different Enough?

2009-10-14T09:50:00.003-05:00

Historically in big business, companies competed with rivals that had comparable resources and capabilities. As communication and computing at the user and enterprise level evolved along with the Internet itself, the world began to change. Not only did more smaller companies become more frequently successful (such as Google, RedHat and Amazon), but bigger companies became more nimble and moved into new businesses (at least those that remained successful). Apple's iPod and iPhone became leading standards in their respective markets as Apple moved beyond its computer roots. Today, Nokia announced the release of the Booklet 3G netbook. The competition for a finite number of consumers increases. The evolution must continue. The immediate question: is the Booklet too big to be a phone and not useful enough to be a laptop?

In the USA, Booklet 3G at Best Buy:
$599 or $299 and $60/month (for two years)

Looking around the consumer electronics industry, Microsoft and Sony introduced video game consoles in an attempt to dominate the home consumer market with a digital hub to replace stand-alone consumer electronic devices, such as DVD players, and to interconnect with high definition televisions, personal computers, MP3 players, digital cameras and frames, etc. In all product categories, Sony faced competition and potential cannibalization. The long-term goal of the PlayStation was to pull everything together and maintain superiority with the sum of the parts (Blu-ray was also in this direction). Coming at the challenge from a different direction, Microsoft looked to establishing the Xbox as the home hub to protect and extend its software businesses. If an Apple product became the hub of more iHomes, Microsoft’s software business would suffer.

Likewise, Nokia now adopts a necessary and more aggressive strategy to maintain their leadership in the mobile hardware business. They not only have the iPhone and BlackBerry to worry about. Dell, Acer and Asus have their netbooks and are new entrants into the smartphone business. The market is becoming very competitive and increasingly cluttered. Thinking again about the video game console, perhaps, we can learn from Nintendo.

iSuppli thinks the 10.1" screen is the right size

In contrast to the PlayStation and the Xbox, the Nintendo Wii focused on the game playing experience and was not positioned as a digital hub. The Wii’s most innovative feature was a new, easy-to-use controller that appealed to both new and hardcore gamers. The Wii has few of the expensive digital hub features built into the rival consoles and thus made its debut with a lower retail price. The Booklet 3G is yet another netbook based on the Intel Atom and Windows. Will a bare bones ARM, open source software based netbook and an even lower retail price with better power efficiency be different enough? We will know soon.

R&B

Sprechen Barcode?

2009-10-07T06:01:00.000-05:00

Celebrating the first patent of the barcode

Google in barcode. Did you know that 57 years ago today the first barcode patent was granted? The barcode shown is an ASCII character string (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.). A string is a sequence of characters that represents data values. You can find barcodes everywhere. Google uses their own open source barcode project, ZXing, to generate barcodes. It is used in Android.

ZXing meaning Zebra Crossing...

Over a year ago we joined the Association of Coupon Professionals. There is an Internet Coupon Taskforce and a GS1 Databar Taskforce. Google was still a member when we joined.

Barcodes and mobile phones will undoubtedly pair to trigger the advent of widespread electronic coupon use. Connecting buyers and sellers in this way will trigger a whole new wave of consumer benefit. There is plenty of inefficiency to remove from the current world of primarily print coupon use.

The most simple rules to follow in a digital world are probably the same as they have always been: the wider the funnel the more successful the program, and, if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. Coupons exist to turn prospects into customers. Awareness creates consideration, which yields selection and redemption. Selling more product is the objective. Keeping track of all that should be something we can manage. Digital coupons should lead to less fraud, greater accuracy and more possibilities of analysis.

We can see all this coming together through Google. Coupons and the transactions they lead to are a logical extension of search and AdWords. Today, Google AdWords works with certain third-party providers to offer promotional coupons to new AdWords advertisers. If you signed up for AdWords through one of these third-party providers, you can receive a promotional code to enter in your AdWords account. Why not take this process one step further? What we need to do now is mash this up with Google Analytics, Google Apps and Google Checkout. Could we call it a Goopoun? We could, but a Coupoogle might sound a little better.

R&B

Shift Happens

2009-10-05T10:05:00.013-05:00

Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.

Seymour Cray

Thirteen years ago to the day, Seymour Cray, died of injuries sustained in a car accident. Cray is considered by many to be the Father of Supercomputing. The Cray XT system series scored ten systems in the first 50 on the latest TOP500 List.

Supercomputing today: The TOP500

The main objective of the TOP500 list is to provide a ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications. This past June's list had two systems achieving a petaflop (quadrillions of floating point operations per second), one from IBM (NYSE:IBM) and another from Cray (NASDAQ:CRAY). Scoring at the TOP has historically given supreme credibility to the companies involved (and the institutions that use the systems). Performance is the trick, but could it be that a more important gauge of accomplishment is ascending?

More than performance: Gapminder

"Does your mindset correspond to my dataset?
If not, one or the other needs upgrading, isn't it?"

Gapminder runs from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) datacenters. Google.com runs from Google datacenters. YouTube runs from Google datacenters. Adwords and Adsense run from Google datacenters. The list goes and grows on. Google's sites are the most visited in the world. The most powerful supercomputers are funded by Governments and yet Google's datacenters process more data from more locations and more often than any Government. Even more significantly, this immense supercomputerness was funded by user search and advertising profits and not Government budgets. The Google offering and dataset grows. This drives the Google mindset.

Shift happens: IBM Launches Secure, Reliable Cloud Email Service for $3 per User. It seems the IBM mindset is being upgraded.

R&B

Can You See Me Now?

2009-10-01T08:21:00.001-05:00

That will be the next big catchy slogan: Can you see me now? Video iChat is certainly coming to the iPod Touch and it now appears that Cisco is stepping up the pace to reach the single consumer. Cisco has made an offer to buy Tandberg: Cisco agrees to buy Norway's Tandberg for $3 bln.

In 2005 we published Compoogle

The ideas are still the same. The integration is more complete. We have lived through the painful evolution from the 5200B, to 5121e, to the i.mx51. It seems we are finally getting there...

11/29/05: So, what is next?! The compoogle, because it is easier for a computer to become a mobile phone than a mobile phone to become a computer. Thanks for all the support Google!

...and Services, and Tools, and, and, AND!

R&B

Crowd Sourcing

2009-09-27T07:55:00.006-05:00

This week Citrix Systems will release a Linux ARM client for their increasingly popular virtualization software. We have been testing the software for a few months, first with the beagleboard, then with a Freescale i.mx51 Reference Design and lately with the Efika MX. Check it out: PowerDeveloper i.mx515 Project #775.

CloudCity Demo User Citrix starter set (on a Mac)

From across town or across the globe the product is ready for customers. What is even more interesting is that third party applications and solutions that work with Microsoft Office can also be added. We have recently deployed a plug-in that supports Medical Dictation and Document Management Software for Health Care Professionals through Cloud City. The possibilities are immense. The opportunity is vast.*

A message to our language and localization partners: the business model is scalable and customer-driven. We can get you set-up and running in less than a week: Cloud City and Google Apps Customization. With one Efika MX you can begin to develop your new business.

A message to customers: the network is more powerful than any stand-alone computer. Our computers are managed by professionals so you don't need to. Our service is reliable and less expensive. Let us and our partners manage your information and communications technologies.

The Efika MX

Support will be provided through PowerDeveloper and the new EFIKA MX DEVELOPMENT BLOG. More standardize applications that can be customized for partner or customer use will be added to Cloud City as the evolution continues.

R&B

* The virtual desktop represents an enormous market opportunity. The sheer size of the current spending on desktops (both hardware and support costs) is estimated to be close to $500 billion annually. According to IDC, the desktop is the single largest line item in most IT budgets at close to 60% of the total. A desktop virtualized also represents the largest potential for cost savings. Desktop virtualization could easily reach $5-10 billion in annual expenditures, dwarfing the current market for server virtualization, currently estimated at roughly $2 billion. While annual expenditures for servers is at $50-55 billion, PC’s costs are at $175+ billion. More importantly, due to the geographic disparate nature of PC’s, the annualized cost of maintaining PC’s for enterprise customers is close to $350 billion a year in desktop support/maintenance. Combined with the Citrix offering, Google Apps and a few more useful features the Efika MX Open Client is as ready as it needs to be to get moving in this direction.

The Whole Meal Deal

2009-09-22T13:05:00.007-05:00

Dell's purchase of Perot Systems should be of no surprise. Everyone wants to grow up to be IBM. Software and services accounted for 81% of IBM's 1H09 revenues and 92% of the profit (Caris, IBMNote091809). Over the last 16 months the services revenue from EDS has helped HP when PC, printer and datacenter sales have been down. Perot Systems, which will still operate with the same name, finally gets the hardware credit it needs to support more significant deployments, and Dell gets a significant boost in the services direction. Hardware costs are more easily explained as part of a package.

No need to change the image as it makes the point

The next step will be working on the ecosystem to build more packages, or said another way: hardware+software+services solutions. IBM gets a great return licensing third party software, pulling it all together and profiting from the sum of the parts. Come to think of it, Apple essentially does the same thing. The iPhone has a BOM of $150, but is sold for much more and into the future. The big breakthrough will occur when the first OEM catches on. Enterprise applications can support multiple customers with application and data isolation across a distributed network of servers and virtual machines now. Increasingly, the most efficient way to provide services is from remote facilities and it just might be hosted by someone other than IBM, HP or Dell/Perot Systems.

R&B

What's Next

2009-09-17T11:11:00.005-05:00

Updated:

Efika MX Developer Edition v2.0 On Sale

Two days ago we published a blog about Apple. We have had some insightful comments. Thank you to those that posted.

What interests us most is how Apple achieves success. We think Apple has been driven for years by what people do with the products they sell (emphasis on the word 'do'). If you can see through the product, you can see through to what is next. People don't change, but if you can help them do what they do already better and more easily, they are sure to subscribe to your offerings, in more than a manner of words.

Please take a closer look

Apple has created a publishing environment and digital distribution system by keeping that whole value chain in mind and managing it each step of the way from the core processor (whatever it was/is) to what the user wants to do. Though tightly managed the Apps Store and iTunes have grown in relevance to users and in value to Apple (see chart). This trend is likely to continue.

As we think to our own infinitely less successful efforts over the last few years, we have attempted to take the same approach with much fewer corporate resources by engaging developers, users and others to participate with us in the creation process relative to the development of the platform itself. This includes hardware and software and their practical application. Being much smaller than the venerable Apple, we needed lots of people working with us.

By design our focus had to be broader though admittedly this often distracted us from the focus one needs to be commercially successful. Nevertheless, it has been gratifying to see the support for things like the power2people AROS USB Bounty recently completed (over $4000 mostly community raised and paid to the successful Developer), the EFIKA being used to build a kiosk for a major US corporation three years after the last board production (scroll down the thread to see the site in action), and the release of MorphOS 2.3. We even had a Sun Microsystems Developer contact us yesterday, as he was testing JDK/JRE 1.5.0 for the latest update. He has two Open Desktop Workstations. There running well. Sun bought them in 2005.

With this sense of community participation, we read the latest PR from ARM: ARM Announces 2GHz Capable Cortex-A9 Dual Core Processor Implementation. With this stroke ARM will cover the full spectrum of processor potential. Their business model is more open to the involvement of others. There have succeeded where PowerPC failed. We have no doubts the ARM Connected Community will continue to grow. Communities build volume. Opportunity encourages participation. Innovation finds a home. That is what's next. There be more Apple-like companies becoming successful with ARM. The evolution will continue...

R&B

Next Blog

2009-09-15T21:44:00.007-05:00

We really have been busy. We have had enough email with subjects like It's not the moment for silence! and Are you alive?! In fact, we have just been very busy. We appreciate your concerns. Thanks.

We will write about this tomorrow or later this week...

What is more interesting -- the nano with a camera, the iPod Touch with Apps, but without a monthly service fee, or the AppleTV, now with 160GB at $229, but still without a web browser. What do you think?

R&B

Efika MX On Sale Now!

2009-08-25T00:30:00.012-05:00

The Efika MX Open Client is on sale now in the Genesi online store.

Volume discounts will be available for CloudCity franchisees

Support will be provided through PowerDeveloper. Software will be released in real time as progress is made. The Citrix client is available for testing...

...and works well!

The virtual desktop represents an enormous market opportunity. The sheer size of the current spending on desktops (both hardware and support costs) is estimated to be close to $500 billion annually. According to IDC, the desktop is the single largest line item in most IT budgets at close to 60% of the total. A desktop virtualized also represents the largest potential for cost savings. Desktop virtualization could easily reach $5-10 billion in annual expenditures, dwarfing the current market for server virtualization, currently estimated at roughly $2 billion. While annual expenditures for servers is at $50-55 billion, PC’s costs are at $175+ billion. More importantly, due to the geographic disparate nature of PC’s, the annualized cost of maintaining PC’s for enterprise customers is close to $350 billion a year in desktop support/maintenance.

Combined with the Citrix offering, Google Apps and a few more useful features the Efika MX Open Client is as ready as it needs to be to get moving in this direction.

R&B

Slow but Steady...

2009-08-21T12:15:00.007-05:00

We would like to report that we will have the new Efika MX Open Client on sale this month, ~~but it appears we will have to wait until late September~~ and it is! (updated: store). The first objective was to get Citrix running well on ARM and to bring up a number of other applications and special features such as localization to CloudCity. Microsoft Office works well.

The addition of many x86-only applications are planned

The devices are looking good and the form factor is certainly small. You can see clouds reflected in the image below. From the left you can see a SIM card, a Euro, a US Presidential Dollar, and a Texas State Quarter.

Our first franchisees will begin testing next week

Google Voice has added an interesting dimension to the whole offering. We are almost there. Stay tuned!

R&B

Call Me!

2009-08-20T04:17:00.001-05:00

Years ago we each met Debbie Harry, though not at the same time. As a fellow panelist, I met her couple of times at Interactive Television conferences in the early 90's. She was a musician thinking digitally ahead of her time. For you younger readers, she was and still is a singer-songwriter known more popularly as Blondie. She had a big hit in 1980: Call Me. The bridge of the original English language version also included "Amore, chiamami" and "Mon cheri, appelle-moi" (Italian and French respectively).

Now Google is getting us all into the act
International releases are also sure to follow

Yesterday, Andy Kessler posted a blog titled: Why AT&T Killed Google Voice, which to his distinction was also published in the Wall Street Journal. Our favorite sentence: Technology doesn't wait around, so it's all going to happen anyway, but it will take longer under today's rules. Incidentally, I met Andy at the same before-the-Internet-took-off Interactive Television conferences. He usually spoke on the investment oriented panels with folks like Vinod Khosla. They have done well.

Technology does not wait, because people won't and it really is all about people. Regulation springs from authority, authority established by government, government formed by people, and hopefully for people, that do call each other, and often. Google Voice is going to lead to much bigger things, plenty of change included. People will still be calling and with video, but as the data rates go up and up, governments and businesses will have to adopt because people will do what they have always done whether across the room or around the globe. If it is easier and less expensive, which it is, Call Me is likely to take on a whole new dimension. Blonde sang it: anytime anyplace anywhere anyway, anytime anyplace anywhere any day, anyway...Call Me!

R&B

Big Man

2009-08-17T05:43:00.016-05:00

It could be captioned...

What is the Big Man going to do?

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) reports quarterly earnings tomorrow. In a few words, the economy is tough, HP runs second (or third) to Apple in consumer/PC product innovation (that is growth), behind IBM in the enterprise business (server, storage, services), and the printing business is a low/no growth market. To make matters worse, the average selling price of the notebook has fallen below the average selling price of HP's consumer desktop. What is the big man going to do? How much more fixing and cost-cutting is possible? Maybe things will pick up when kids head back to school...

In the meanwhile, we caught this gem over the weekend from Dell: "In an effort to expand its Linux offerings, Dell is researching new netbook-type devices and will soon offer netbook Linux OS upgrades, a company official said on Wednesday. The company is researching the possibility of offering new Linux-based mobile devices called smartbooks, said Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager for Linux clients, at the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco. The company will also upgrade its Ubuntu Linux OS for netbooks to the latest version in the next few weeks ... Smartbooks with Arm chips have inherent advantages over x86 chips like Atom, such as lower power consumption and longer battery life, according to Finch. The chips are also becoming more powerful, as indicated by the growing number of applications on smartphones, he said. 'I think it's natural and reasonable for us to begin looking at them as they begin scaling their processors up."" *

Well, that's a surprise?! We have to ask: will the potential of further smartbook/netbook cannabilization of the notebook market and even lower average selling prices bring a smile to the big man? If the herd heads that way, will the Hurd follow?

R&B

* Dell Looks to Linux to Expand Netbook Presence

Anticipating the Storm

2009-08-12T15:10:00.001-05:00

This morning it was still raining in Taipei. Taipei rests on the northern side of the island and is protected somewhat by higher elevations. The three to four meters of rain that fell over the weekend took a much heavier toll in the south. The subsequent flooding has created more trouble in the form of landslides. There are still many homes without power and without water. Agricultural losses will be calculated in hundreds of millions of dollars. Morakot is one of the worst typhoons to strike Taiwan in 50 years.

Everything shut down in Taiwan late last Thursday

Taiwan's IC Industry produces roughly 80% of the world's contracted output. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has the world's largest semiconductor foundry. It is clear that the move from semiconductor leadership to system leadership is underway. The netbook/smartbook market is and will be significantly effected by companies and managers based in Taiwan. But, as these companies have moved further out into the supply chain, they have run into the software problem.

There are three key elements to the supply chain. First, the ability to forecast sales to the consumer. Second, the ability to specify the products and components required to produce the products that the consumer wants, and, third, the ability to skillfully manage the necessary inventory based on the specifications and market requirements against the demand. Inventory based on tangible physical goods is one thing. 'Inventory' based on software and the people that create it is another.

What we have today is an expectation that the use of Linux is going to reduce the cost of a netbook/smartbook by the cost of Windows. The cost of support is also not being properly forecasted. Asus has made this mistake once already. Without the proper anticipation, after-sales support won't be considered as part of the supply chain until it is too late. There is a a lot of money and big companies rushing into this market. If things keep going the way they are, there will very likely be corporate conflagrations of mass proportions.

R&B

You're Pulling My Leg!

2009-08-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

No, we are actually pulling your ARM(!), right though, that is, to the user. They get the hardware and then they get to do something with it. Let's pick up where we left off last time...

Basic User

The Basic User does not need too many options. Google Apps and a pay-as-you-go virtual machine are enough to get things started. Google Voice will make for a nice added basic feature.

Options can be added...

From there, we can head into a few directions. The service can be offered with a combination of the ad supported, subscription or per-download models. Further applications can be introduced with taste-tests that transition the user from basic and free to advanced and payment levels of interaction (also known as freemium). Within applications, micropayments can be introduced to provide virtual content and/or services. Credits can be exchanged, rewarded or redeemed. We believe electronic coupons will produce a viable and measurable advertising vehicle within this domain.

So, who will pull the hardest? The carriers that want to sell network, the technology companies that develop and promote devices, or will it be the companies that produce and manage content, including advertising? How about a combination of those or some form of mutation with a loss-leader out front? Certainly, a process of natural selection is underway. A fiercely competitive environment is coming.

R&B