Evolution of mobile phones: from fridge to cutting board

I bought my first mobile quite late, at the end of the 90’s. It was a Siemens C35. It was quite popular at that time and one of the reasons was that it was small (it was also remarkably easy to use). People that bought their phones just one or two years before were now frowned upon for walking around with a so called ‘fridge‘. That’s what we called the huge phones made just a few years earlier.

In the following years phones continuously became smaller and thinner. There were exceptions » Read more…

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Microsoft rapidly losing market share in PC market

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In 2011 Microsoft will lose a significant part of it’s market share in the PC operating systems market. In a market where Microsoft is traditionally very dominant with about 90% of all devices on the Internet running Windows, it will lose about 10% market share in this year’s PC sales alone. You might think, where does this guy get this idea from? How is this possible? Well, it’s due to the definition of “PC” that Microsoft uses. In the traditional PC market, this year’s market is estimated between 361 and less than 400 million pieces. That excludes about 53 million expected tablets. » Read more…

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BrandZ: Apple overtakes Google as most valuable brand

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In the brand value ranking maintained by BrandZ, Apple has now succeeded Google as the most valuable brand with a value estimated at $153 billion. That’s a 859% increase since 2006, the year before Apple introduced one of it’s biggest hits until now, the Iphone (announced in January 2007). In the BrandZ ranking IBM remains third.

Comparing Apples with ‘peers’

It’s interesting to remark that in another ranking by InterBrand, Apple scored only 17th in last year September’s assessment with a value of only $21.143 billion. That’s almost 8 times less. This should all have to do with the methodology differences in measuring the brand value. » Read more…

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Microsoft and Mozilla moving the Web towards Apps

Apps vs Web

Apps vs Web

Previously I wrote about the battle between Apps and the Web, how the battle drove an upward spiral where both are getting better and better and how Apps and Web will inevitably grow together. Mozilla (the developer of Firefox) and Microsoft (Internet Exporer) are now both taking their own steps towards that.

Today Internet Exporer 9 has been launched. It offers lots of improvements and it would go too far to describe them all here, but one of the interesting things related to Apps and the Web is that a website now easily (virtually) becomes an App, by ‘pinning’ a website to the taskbar, like you could already make a shortcut to any other application on your Windows 7 taskbar. » Read more…

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Lack of sleep helps make optimistic decisions

Sleep deprivation makes flipping coin look like good odds

Sleep deprivation makes flipping coin for profit look like good odds

Entrepreneurship is about taking risks. Calculated risks. Top managers take big decisions every day. They have busy schedules and some only sleep a few hours a day. Research now shows that sleep-deprivation makes decision making easier. Not better though. Ever seen a CEO that always presents optimistic plans? It might be because of his lack of sleep.

According to an article in the Journal of Neuroscience described on physorg.com, sleep-deprived individuals in a study “tended to make choices that emphasized monetary gain, and were less likely to make choices that reduced loss”. The study is the first that shows that lack of sleep impacts the way the brain assesses economic value, increasing sensitivity to positive consequences and decreasing  sensitivity to possible negative consequences of decisions. » Read more…

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The value of a first experience

A first experience should WOW!

A first experience should WOW you!

In the last few days I had my first experiences with Tiger Airways, a low budget airline operating from Singapore. And the experience was good. The ticket to Singapore was quite cheap, considering that we bought it one day before. The process of buying a ticket was not that excellent, but still OK. Like other cheap airlines they add extra cost for about everything that is optional: for bringing (any) luggage, for choosing a seat in advance and for an option to do online checking later. In the plane all catering is optional and therefore has a price. However, if there is anything annoying about buying cheap tickets, it’s the disappointment at the end of the process when they add the fuel and airport tax » Read more…

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Freakonomics

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner shows how statistics can be used to explain a wide range of phenomena or maybe even EVERYTHING that people do in the world. Levitt and Dubner base their analysis of the world on three basic flavors of incentive: Economic, social and moral incentives. A combination of these incentives explains all human behavior, according to the authors. And they use numbers to prove it. Most importantly, they manage to do that in an easy to understand way. This way, they explain for example what schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common, and why drug dealers still live with their moms. » Read more…

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Choice as a detractor

Don't make jam of your portfolio

Don't make jam of your portfolio

A friend once told me a story of an experiment conducted in a supermarket. In two different time periods the supermarket offered two kinds of portfolios of jam. In the first setup the shop offered a number of shelves  with numerous kinds of jam. Different fruits, different pot sizes and different brands. Many choices. In the second setup the supermarket  offered a single large shelf of strawberry jam of brand x in one standard pot size. One choice. What was the result? Contrary to expectations, more jam was sold in the single strawberry jam setup.

Why? Because people hate complicated choices. » Read more…

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A video a day – amazing online numbers for 2010

YouTube announced that in 2010 our world wide population watched a total of 700 billion YouTube videos.  That’s 700,000,000,000 views with 6,887,400,000 people (at the time of writing). Or just over 100 movies per Earth citizen. In 2010 the Internet penetration rate further grew to 28,7 % to about 1,966,514,816 people on June 30, 2010, twice as much as in 2007. That means nearly 2 billion people watched 700 billion movies, or an average of just over 354 movies a year each. Excluding countries where YouTube is forbidden (like China, 420 million Internetters) or where it is not yet available, that’s well over one video a day per Earth citizen with access to YouTube. » Read more…

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Civilization V: an example of breaking the learning curve

Civilization V

Gimme Five!

I’m a huge fan of Civilization, the computer game series created by Sid Meier. And I have spent many hundreds of hours in the last two decades playing CIV I, II, III and IV. So buying the most recent part in the increasingly less accurate trilogy of five was a logical step, and based on the professional reviews, I expected a lot: better graphics, better battles, better development system, etc. Everything better. So my expectations were high. Well, after playing it, I’m a bit disappointed. Here is why.

It started with installing the game. I had to accept an almost infinite number of license agreements and terms of use, one after the other warning me to return the game to the shop if I did not agree with them stealing my privacy information. After clicking a lot of “Yes I Accept” and then waiting a long time without a clear progress bar, I finally got started, at least I thought. » Read more…

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