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OK, We Promise To Play Nice And Stop Litigating - Now Please Put Down That Treo
Computers | Mar 30, 06
Seems that Palm may have benefited big time from RIM's recently settled legal dust-up with NTP over the technology behind the BlackBerry. The Wall Street Journal says that, in the quarter ended last November, Palm's Treo sales nearly matched new Blackberry accounts, and that Palm executives privately expect Treo purchases to pull ahead of Blackberry by the end of the year.
Of course, much of Palm's recent success moving Treos took place before the settlement, when there was serious fear out there that RIM's pocket-sized heralds of e-mail joy might be silenced by a judge's gavel. With that risk eliminated, will the demand for Treos slack off, or did all that legal wrangling open a window of opportunity through which Palm successfully showed consumers the benefits of its product? Palm has made some smart moves, offering free 45-day trials of the Treo with Good Technology's wireless e-mail service. Some customers, notably potential corporate buyers, may have taken a second (or maybe first) look at Palm's SmartPhone. And the Windows version of the Treo works with RIM's BlackBerry Connect software, providing the kind of compatibility that might help break the "lock in" effect of the BlackBerry's wide acceptance. Some may still feel that the messenger cum phone combo is kind of a brick, but it does eliminate the need to carry an extra gadget around. Whether all this is enough to get users to abandon the little gizmo that for so long has lovingly screamed for its missives to be read (see Palm Embraces Windows For Treo, But Still Lacks Blackberry's "In Your Fact" Factor) remains to be seen.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Big Panasonic Plasma At Sharp Discount To LCD
Computers | Mar 29, 06
When it comes ringing up big numbers on the home entertainment cash register, there used to be few items that said "ka-ching!" louder than a big-screen plasma television. However, the products of two of the handful of manufacturers of screens at the rarified 65" size are displaying an interesting price relationship. Sharp's new LC-65D90U AQUOS Widescreen 65" LCD screen is selling at a considerable premium to Panasonic’s TH-65PHD8UK, the most popular plasma of the same size on PriceSCAN.com. It's worth noting that the Sharp has 1080p resolution, as opposed to 720i on the Panasonic. Now I'm not sure how much this means to the viewer who does not have the visual acuity of a peregrine falcon, and that goes for the plasma fans argument that their screens possess truer blacks than LCD. What is easier to see is that right now Panasonic's plasma is selling for a drab over $7,500, whereas Sharp's LCD is going for well over twice that.
Now we have seen some significant drops in the price of certain top-line plasmas, as exemplified in the graph of the Panasonic in question (below). We've also seen the withdrawal of Sony, formerly a major player in plasmas and now banking on other technologies. Panasonic, by contrast, seems to have increased its bet on plasmas. Look to see how long its price advantage holds as we move forward into a world of big LCDs.
Time Period: 9/19/2005 through 3/20/2006
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 5:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Maybe They Could Make The Little Alien Head With The Glowing Eyes Look Like Michael Dell
Computers | Mar 28, 06
Dell's recently announced acquisition of Alienware marks an interesting departure from the computer-as-commodity model the firm helped create, and within which the entire industry has been attempting to find a way to preserve margins. The firm itself has been experimenting with "value-added" design, and says it has sold out its limited edition $9,900.00 XPS 600 Renegade, a machine aimed at gamers that comes with a 30" screen, NVIDIA Quad SLI multi-GPU technology and a "True Fire" decorated case by Mike Lavallee of Killer Paint. The price point on such flame-embossed models might be just a smidge too high for the mass market, so enter Alienware, a brand loved by the game set and other consumers of high-performance graphics machines.
An indication of Dell's desire to prevent its generally rectilinear design aesthetic from infecting its new acquisition may be the announcement that Alienware will be run as a stand-alone enterprise with its design team kept intact and in place. Of course, Alienware's approx 200 million in revenue is so dwarfed by Dell's 55.9 billion top line that Reuters quoted a Dell spokesperson as calling the acquisition "financially immaterial". Alienware has always been a premium brand, and it's not clear yet to what degree Dell's marketing muscle can expand sales of so costly a set of computers. Perhaps Dell can bring economies of scale to Alienware's production, lowering prices and expanding sales. But Alienware's new owner would have to do this without ruining the brand's identity, as a member of Alienware's elite gaming clientele may not welcome the news: "Dude, you're getting a Dell!"
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Looking Backward, Dark Vistas
Computers | Mar 27, 06
An article in today's New York Times suggests that delays in the release of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system are largely attributable to Redmond's desire to maintain backward compatibility for software supported by earlier versions of Windows. This strategy is contrasted with that of Apple, which has a long history of having new versions of Mac OS not support applications developed for older vintages of that platform. This allows Jobs & Co. to be more nimble, offering new features (like 3-D graphics in OS X, for example) without having to worry about preserving the installed base's ability to run older programs.
Missing in this analysis is the downside of telling one's customers they should start using their legacy software backup disks as doorstops. For those who use their computers for more than the occasional game of EverQuest, making sure that "old" office suite or design software still works is a matter of no small economic moment. This is all the more true for proprietary business or research apps. That Cupertino doesn't dominate the market might just be related to the fear that one might have to chuck a significant investment in time and money on the whim of a guy in a black turtleneck who turned down his iPod just long enough to declare your corporate IT environment not cool enough to be supported by his latest insanely great new product. Indeed, had Apple taken the place in the market Microsoft currently occupies, capriciousness might have been added to the familiar sins of the near-monopolist.
To be sure, if innovation proves too difficult under Microsoft's policies of backward compatibility, then Mac, Linux and even Google's web-based computing might well be the beneficiaries. New features offered by competing technologies will become compelling enough to prompt abandonment of legacy apps as the current Windows ages. Likewise, should Microsoft itself abandon backward compatibility and therefore place buyers in the position of picking their computing platform de novo, then the firm's longtime customers (captives?) may feel free to choose other technologies based on their specific features, eroding Redmond's vaunted market share. However, if maintaining Microsoft's current strategy just means consumers must wait until Microsoft's current target date of January 2007 to buy Vista (an enterprise version is slated for a November 2006 release), I have a feeling many will judge keeping their old applications worth a few months of delay.
In any case, with the consumer version of Vista delayed, demand for new machines may prove softer than many had hoped for. Retailers and manufacturers have been given enough of a head's up as to let inventory management allow for this disappointment; still, look for some computer price weakness as we proceed through the year and into the holiday shopping season.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Samsung Wants To Make Your Notebook Lighter, More Energy Efficient, And, Oh Yeah, More Expensive
Computers | Mar 24, 06
Samsung is touting a new NAND flash-memory chipset for notebook computers, which, with its 32 GB storage capacity, is meant to replace the ubiquitous hard drive. At fifteen grams, its less than a third of the weight of a hard drive, and of course flash uses a lot less juice than spinning a disk, so the new technology could extend battery time between battery charges.
However, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Samsung intends to market this chipset for $200-$250 in 2008, while even today hard drives with twice the capacity are available for around 25% of this price. So you'd be giving up a lot of storage and green to save those extra grams, and current laptop batteries can already get you through a transatlantic flight filled with the joy of spreadsheets and Word documents. The value proposition here may not be compelling enough to get laptop manufacturers to dump their hard drives in a flash.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 2:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Sony To Offer Cheaper Playstation Portable As Playstation 3 Release Delayed
Video Games | Mar 15, 06
Sony just made the widely anticipated announcement that its release of the new PS3 console will be delayed until November. The culprit is – you guessed it – changing DRM standards for its high-definition Blue-ray optical disc player that's at the heart of the new device. Lest the consumer dwell on these problems, or worse, just go out and buy Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony also revealed that on March 22 they'll make a new version of the Playstation Portable (PSP) available for less than $200, which is to say it will list for $199, and that extra dollar in savings should set off a stampede of buyers who hate prices with round numbers. This does represent nearly a 20% reduction from the lowest vendor prices for the current PSP, and hey, fifty bucks is fifty bucks.
Anyway, the new PSP is said to support AVC MP Level 3, H.264 and hence allows video playback from Memory Stick Duos. It's otherwise supposed to be fully compatible with the content and network options already available for the PSP. So if you can hold off buying for a few extra days, you'll get pretty much what you would have by buying today, plus an extra fifty or so in your pocket.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD: Lock-In, Co-Existence, Or Irrelevance?
Electronics | Mar 9, 06
Last September, when Microsoft and Intel announced that they would back Toshiba's HD-DVD standard over Sony's Blu-ray technology, I speculated on whether this would be enough to create a "lock-in" effect, guarantying the former's dominance and consigning the latter to the fate of another Sony product: Betamax (see "Can Wintel Make Blu-ray The Next Betamax?"). Of course, Sony had its own backers at the time, including Apple, Dell, H-P, Disney and News Corp's Fox, and of course Sony promised to put its own offerings in Blu-ray format. This was always going to be a fight, but now, a variety of other factors may determine whether this turns out to be the VHS war redux.
First, a format-neutral method of obtaining content could dampen the ability of either standard to drive the other out of existence, that being downloadable video purchased online. During the videocassette recorder battle, home movie viewers were obtaining their movies from video rental stores, especially big chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Shelf space was and is at a premium in those stores, and thus they were heavily incentivized to see a single standard picked by the market, thus avoiding the need to carry duplicate inventory. Today, however, many cable services offer video on demand, and some have begun offering HD-VOD. If these offerings become as broad as the inventory of the video rental stores, than recorders with either the HD-DVD or Blu-ray standard might be used by the consumer. I say might because DRM issues remain to be worked out. But if the implementation of the HDCP DRM standard allows recording of HD-VOD (and this could entail single-player and/or single copy rules for burning disks) then your cable, satellite or phone company becomes your video store, the format for transfer works with either standard, and the lock-in effect driven by physical video sales and rentals goes away. This could also be true if video downloads with secure DRM become available along the iTunes model in music. Carrying multiple standards would become a matter of a little more server disk space, and while even a small difference in marginal cost could have an effect, it might not be enough to motivate online video stores drop a standard if each of these achieves significant market share early on.
Of course, the other side of the coin here is that cable companies are already offering Tivo-like HD-DVR recorders. You can't burn disks with them, but if the DRM associated with Blu-ray and HD-DVD should prevent the recording of VOD anyway, than the incentive to buy these new machines versus using HD-DVR is reduced significantly. Difficulties using these devices with much of the existing installed base of HDTV sets (they require a DVI or HDMI connection to facilitate HDCP, and many of the sets sold to date simply don’t accommodate this) already present impediments to a rapid acceptance of these new technologies. Toshiba and Sony may find that DRM issues, compatibility issues and competing technologies make their new products irrelevant in much of the market place.
On the other hand, maybe the DRM issues get worked out in such a way that cable, phone and satellite firms can support HD-DVR devices with Blu-ray or HD-DVD burners. Then those content conduits could take the place of the video stores of the VHS war, proving decisive in determining which standard survives. And of course there's always the possibility that the technical superiority of one format over the other could prove crucial: for example, there have been claims that Blu-ray disks are less durable than their HD-DVD counterparts. Add to this mix the distinct possibility that Congress and the courts could ounce again wade into the DRM debate, and you can appreciate how difficult it is to predict how all this will play out. With all this uncertainty swirling about Blu-ray and HD-DVD, don't be surprised if the initial rollouts of these technologies are met by a relatively small set of early adopters, and many consumers choose to simply sit on their hand and wait for greater clarity. After all, these machines are supposed to burn disks, not their owners.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
