Friday, October 20. 2006
- More and more bad reviews of the new - delayed - Sony Reader ebook suggest that this product seems to not fulfil the high expectations we had. Criticism is about useability and the download store. I suggested some time ago that it will probably take Apple to make this category finally a success by offering a full user experience. Of course book reading is maybe not what the iPod crowd is doing in their leisure time so we will, unfortunately, never see this happen and have to live for some time with second class products from the named company...
- "Business is very, very good here at Google", is what its CEO Eric Schmidt told analysts and then the numbers more than proved that he is right. Doubled profits from a year ago, 70% higher revenues from a quarter ago. Yahoo on the other hand is quite in the shade, so its CEO sounded much different: "I am not satisfied with our current financial performance and we intend to improve it." Of course Yahoo is still doing great and most companies would wish to have their results, but Google is setting the tone and Yahoo and analysts compare with them.
- Another company that seems to be doing things right is Ericsson (see CEO's report). This is in spite of strongest competition from China (although we have not heard so much recently anymore from Huawei and ZTE). While their competitors are busy with mergers (Lucent/Alcatel and Nokia/Siemens) they are taking the opportunity to grow their business in all areas. Most importantly, the Marconi purchase seems to be showing positive results as recent customer wins show. The fact that they are very late to the WiMAX markets does not show - yet. Of course they also know that bringing out a new technology like WiMAX with carrier grade performance and reliability cannot be done in a rush. So it has to be seen how fast WiMAX proponents will be able to get their product testing done, in a way that they are stable and do not crash in the field when put under real world stress for the first time. Finally, its mobile phone joint venture SonyEricsson is doing well with a growing market share and successful product launches. In short the Ericsson motor is firing on all four cylinders: Mobile Networks, Fixed Line Networks, Services, and Mobile Phones.
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