Tom Foremski: IMHO

November 6th, 2009

Scary study on how lack of IPOs is harming US economy

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 3:16 pm

Categories: Business strategy

Tags: Stock, Stock Market, IPO, Financial Planning, Investment, Financial Services, Finance, Tom Foremski

The lack of IPOs is certainly harming the Silicon Valley economy. With few IPOs, capital isn’t being returned into the VC funds, and the cycle of innovation is sputtering.

A new study describes the larger picture.

Grant Thornton, a large accounting firm, has published a study that shows the connection between IPOs and the health of the US economy.

And it shows how new listings in Asia are helping to shift wealth and competitiveness outside of the US.

Here are some of the findings:

The scale of the decline in IPOs:

- Just 12 companies went public in the US in the first half of 2009 - 4 were non-US.
- 1997 was a peak year for IPOs, since then it has declined 39% (55% decline if adjusted for GDP growth.)
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November 6th, 2009

AT&T shows new technologies including a "telesole" for shoes...

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:14 am

Categories: Wireless

Tags: AT&T Corp., Laser, Speech Recognition Technology, Speech Recognition, Emerging Technologies, Tom Foremski

Yesterday I was at a demonstration of new AT&T technologies and apps at its annual technology showcase in San Francisco.

There were about a dozen demonstrations. They are designed to show off the kind of research At&T is working on in its labs.

I also had a chance to ask John Donovan, chief technology officer at AT&T if Apple’s success in attracting more than 100,000 apps had affected the research projects at AT&T and if any apps projects had been cancelled.

He said that there hadn’t been any effect on research programs and that the company was working on platform technologies and specialized apps that require tight integration with networks.

He did say that AT&T would soon be releasing some apps of its own such as one that allows users to quickly report any dropped calls and other problems.

These are some of the things I saw:
Read the rest of this entry »

November 5th, 2009

Steve Jobs: Silicon Valley's Babe Ruth (and Fortune's CEO of the decade)

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:06 am

Categories: Business strategy

Tags: Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Apple Inc., IPO, Financial Services, Finance, Tom Foremski

I wasn’t that impressed when I first met Steve Jobs in the mid-80s. He was already hailed as a “visionary” but I just viewed him as being lucky - right place, right time.

It wasn’t until he had come back to Apple and reinvented the company time and again, and taken risks and failed at some things that I began to appreciate his talents.

In Silicon Valley it is very rare to be able to continue being able to build new businesses and continue being successful. Steve Jobs has done that time and again. And he has built incredible shareholder value.

For example, the New York Post, Oct 21, 2009 reported:

shares of Apple soared to a new yearly high and helped Apple’s market cap sail past search-engine giant Google for the first time, reaching $179.3 billion, vs. Google’s market cap of $174.3 billion.

Money invested in Apple on the day of Google’s IPO would have returned far more profit. And the company continues to beat Wall Street expectations nearly every quarter.

Do we have to mention Pixar? The studio hasn’t had a single flop - what other movie studio can say that?

You might not like Apple’s marketing or the legions of obnoxious fan boys, and you probably wouldn’t enjoy working with Steve Jobs because of his notorious micro-management style but you have to give credit where credit is due. Steve Jobs is Silicon Valley’s Babe Ruth - he continues to hit them out of the ball park.

Here is Chris Foresman at Ars Technica:

Not a bad list of accomplishments for a man that, despite a bout with cancer and a recent liver transplant, is still a decade away from retirement age.

Fortune Magazine writes:

Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

I’m looking forward to Steve Jobs next decade. There’s still room on the scoreboard.

November 5th, 2009

GOOG Chief: Silicon Valley's secret is its weather

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 9:24 am

Categories: Culture

Tags: Silicon Valley, Google Inc., Weather, Venture Capital, Investment, Finance, Financing Startups, Tom Foremski

Silicon Valley has a solid history of 40 years of innovation, it has the best public and private universities plus numerous colleges; and it has the largest venture capital investment community. But what is it’s real secret?

“When I’m asked about this, and I’ve been asked this for years, I answer this the same: It is the weather. There’s a reason why generations of young people who are willing to challenge assumptions and so forth have ended up in the Bay Area, and the weather is not a small part.”

That’s what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google told the Wall Street Journal.

I think the weather is a nice cherry-on-a-cake thing to enjoy. But I think people are here for the cake, the layer cake of fine universities, venture capital, and the smartest collection of people on the planet.

I’ve never had anyone tell me that they are here for the weather. Yes, people do say how nice it is that they don’t have to dig their car out of the snow each winter day, as they did in Michigan or elsewhere.

But if the weather is the draw then shouldn’t Silicon Valley be concerned about innovation centers springing up in Hawaii or in the Caribbean? Is the secret to innovation as simple as that? I don’t believe it.

For starters, San Francisco weather, where I live and where a lot of startups are based, isn’t that great. We get four seasons in one day, and three of them aren’t anything to write postcards home about. Some districts, like the aptly named Sunset, might not see the sun for months in the summer. Its residents have a pasty white sheen, no matter what their ethnicity.

So we will see Google recruitment posters on campuses promoting the good life: sun, fun, and php? It would seem so.

November 5th, 2009

Is Nvidia planning to add X86 compatibility to its chipsets?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 12:57 am

Categories: Business strategy

Tags: NVidia Corp., Intel X86, Processors, Chipsets, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Tom Foremski

Intel could be facing a new challenge from its Silicon Valley neighbor Nvidia.

EETimes reports:

”We believe Nvidia could enter the x86 CPU business,” said analyst Doug Freedman of Broadpoint AmTech. ”Nvidia could become a supplier of x86 CPUs by necessity to preserve both GPU and chipset revenue.” Nvidia (Santa Clara, Calif.) has been quietly hiring former employees of Transmeta, a now-defunct, x86-based processor supplier. ”We believe internally developed x86 solutions are more likely than external acquisitions (i.e. Via Technologies),” he said in a new report, referring to rumors that Nvidia would acquire Taiwan’s Via. ”We believe that Nvidia has hired former Transmeta staff extensively, and that instruction code “morphing” requirements have declined as more x86 instructions have come off of patent coverage,” he said.

Nvidia needs an X86 capability so that it can better compete against Intel in key markets such as netbooks — a fast growing sector.

It used to be a big project to create an X86 compatible chip, it required establishing a “clean room” where engineers could reverse engineer the microprocessor instructions. But with patent restrictions expiring it could be a faster process.

In today’s world graphics processing functions are very important because of the proliferation of graphics user interfaces across nearly all computing devices, and also a wide variety of web browsers available for different types of computers. And video also plays a big part in the user experience. These all rely on graphic processors rather than general purpose microprocessors.

While Nvidia has some of the best graphics processors it can’t sell chipsets that also include X86 technology, essential for Windows operating systems and Windows applications. Chipsets with X86 processing capabilities reduce production costs which makes them popular with manufacturers. Nvidia is locked out of these large chipset markets unless it can add X86 compatibility.

Hiring former Transmeta engineers indicates that Nvidia might try the approach that Transmeta used in developing low-power X86 compatible chips. It created a very high performance processor using what is known as a RISC architecture and then ran the X86 code in a virtual environment.

Nvidia, armed with X86 technology, could become a formidable competitor to Intel, and also Advanced Micro Devices in several key markets. It would be a very smart move.

November 4th, 2009

iSuppli: Cloud data storage market growth marred by privacy and security issues

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:57 pm

Categories: Business strategy

Tags: Data Storage, Privacy, iSuppli Corp., Storage, Security, Hardware, Tom Foremski

Market research firm iSuppli expects revenues from shipments of cloud storage systems to triple by 2013 but growth could be much better if concerns over privacy, security and other issues were removed.

iSuppli reports: “Global cloud storage system revenue is set to rise to $5 billion in 2013, up from $1.6 billion in 2009.”

Fang Zhang, storage analyst for iSuppli, said,”A few areas—such as government, finance and health care—may never move to cloud storage in the face of difficult issues related to privacy regulation, lack of adequate standards, potential power outages, and safeguards on physical security, access control, and speed.”

The same concerns over data storage in the cloud are the same ones that must be harming the uptake of cloud computing in general. It would seem that solving the issues around privacy and security of data are the keys to much faster adoption of cloud computing in general.

November 3rd, 2009

Are iPhone users really as vacuous as this study reveals?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:44 pm

Categories: Research

Tags: Apple iPhone, Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Tom Foremski

Retreevo, the electronics retail store, has published the results of a study of iPhone users:

The highlights:

- iPhone users are more attracted by a partner’s cool gadgets than their college degree.

- 20% of iPhone users watch adult material on their phones (seems very high to me.)

- One third think “old gadgets” are a “turn-off.”

- one-third have broken up with their partners by text or email.

- one-quarter have broken up with their partner because they spent too much time on their mobile device (I’m not surprised they spent a lot of time on their mobiles if this is the kind of iPhone user typified by the above behavior.)

I use an iPhone but I don’t identify with any of these users. How about a comparison against Android users?

November 3rd, 2009

Looking beyond iPhone or Android - Ribbit creates a software "clone" phone

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 12:23 pm

Categories: Business strategy

Tags: Software, Apple iPhone, Phone, Ribbit, Telecom & Utilities, Tom Foremski

Ribbit, the Silicon Valley based subsidiary of BT, the UK telecom giant, this morning launched its Ribbit Mobile service which offers a suite of products ranging from control over phone lines to transcription of voice mail — all managed from a web browser.

Ribbit is an impressive company. You can read more about the company and the Ribbit mobile service here.

Writing about Ribbit I was struck by one of the features of Ribbit Mobile that allows you to “clone” your phone in that you can make calls seemingly from the phone, via any web browser. It’s very handy if you’ve lost your phone.

What intrigues me is that if this concept is taken a little further, it potentially creates an end-run around the “phone wars.” All this discussion about which phone is better goes away.
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October 31st, 2009

GOOG is not making phones or buying newspapers

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 2:10 pm

Categories: Culture, Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Phone, Telecom & Utilities, Tom Foremski

Google’s Andy Rubin, head of the company’s Android development, would like to clear something up: Google is not in the phone-making business.

Google: We’re not making Android hardware

On October 20 I wrote: There is no Google phone

I didn’t need to call up Google to ask, I knew there was no Google phone because I have been reporting on the company since its very beginnings and know and have met their founders and most of their top executives.

Every company has a core philosophy and culture and once you understand it it helps to guide your reporting.

The Street.com originated a story that Google is working on a phone. It clearly does not understand the company.

Google is not building an Android phone, nor will it buy a newspaper, like some have said it should buy the New York Times. Google doesn’t need to be in the phone business or in the newspaper business — it can benefit from other companies being in those businesses.

People think that companies can jump from one business into another. Companies are like trains on a track — once they are on one track it is very difficult to shunt them onto another track — even if it is an adjacent track. Even if it makes good business sense (which in both these Google examples does not make good business sense.)

October 28th, 2009

40 years ago the Internet was born - now it devalues everything it touches

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 9:20 pm

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Guardian, Internet, Tom Foremski

There are millions of people being disrupted out of their jobs thanks to the Internet. Is it a good thing? I think so…

Let’s take a look at its beginnings:

The first command typed in was “lo” which crashed the entire Internet - all two machines. Internet Reaches 40th Birthday Milestone

Undergraduate Charley Kline was given the simple job of logging on remotely from UCLA to the SRI machine; his one command was “login”.
The first attempt, however, proved too much for the “interface message processor” or IMP for short - the system crashed as young Charley reached the letter “g”.

… 12 years on, only 213 computers being linked up to the network.

The Guardian is collecting stories for its “A people’s history of the internet.“

To mark the 40th anniversary of the first stirrings of the internet we asked you to tell us your experiences of life online. Hundreds of you responded, and here we present an interactive documentary of your stories and videos, alongside our own research and interviews with key figures (About this project)

Without doubt, the Internet is the most significant collection of technologies ever created. It enables huge numbers of new types of businesses and services, many of them replacing pre-Internet businesses.

Anything, any service, business, that can be digitized is now open to disruption because of the Internet. The Internet devalues everything it touches.

I define “devalues” in a monetary sense, dollars and cents because clearly it creates tremendous amounts of value. Read the rest of this entry »