Tuesday, January 18, 2011

TECH Update: Corporate Review

With so much going on with the tech world it's about time you got an understanding of everything happening on the corporate level of these companies. This analysis will inform you and help you understand what strategies, trends, and technology to look forward to as our world becomes smarter, faster, and more efficient.


As you know when I talk about technology, I'm never one to directly comment on recent news because I'm not into rumors and fabrications put out by different companies until I see tangible results in the market; because of this, you notice some of this news is fairly recent, while other parts of it is rather old (just a month of so, but YEARS in the tech world). 2010 was a huge year for technology, CNN compiled  a short list of the 10 most significant gadgets of 2010.  From the list we can understand corporate strategy to getting consumers to chose their product over others. The Kindle 3 grew greatly in popularity despite the launch of Apple's iPad because of smart marketing decisions on Amazon's part. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has been the only real challenge to Apple's iPad in the tablet market since its launch. This was a result of close work between Samsung and Google; a smart move by the Korean company since it recognizes that Google's platform is much easier to install and popularize. Apple's MacBook Air is also important because as Steve Jobs said, it is the future of all laptops. Jobs is foreshadowing his company's direction to laptops. He believes that laptops will be as thing as the MacBook Air and all their memory and content will be filled in "the cloud." Google is working on an OS Chrome for notebooks that would do just that. Soon, these corporations' strategies will give us much lighter, and much faster computers. Another notable technology mentioned was Windows' Kinect for Xbox. This is significant because Kinect is the first mainstream controller-less system for gamers to use. Its massive popularity and impressive sales shows there is a clear market for it. This technology won't only change the world of gaming, it will change how we interact with all technologies when applied in different circumstances. 

Although a bit of old news, Motorola has split up into two companies. As a single entity the company was struggling for a while and investors were waiting for the split to happen. Now, there is Motorola Mobility which owns all the smartphone assets and Motorola Solutions which owns all public safety equipment assets. To those who know, Motorola has been famous for its Droid line of phones that have shown themselves to be a good challenger to Apple's iPhone. 

There has also been a large hype around Facebook possibly going for an IPO soon. I believe that it won't go public for some time (at least 2012) but there are very good signs that it is establishing itself to do so. If anything, there will be a point where the company will be forced by the SEC to go public (after it has surpassed a certain limit). With Gold Sach's latest investment into Facebook valuing it as some 50 billion dollars, and its under the table works at rounding up investors, Mark Zuckerberg is finally realizing that he's got to go public (although he hates it, click here for why Facebook accepted the deal with Goldman). Recently Facebook did a 5-1 stock split for all private investors in the company which attracted significant attention. You see, investors want to invest in Facebook by trying to buy off stocks from Facebook employees en masse. This brings up a question as to whether you should invest in the company if/when they go public. Here is a glaring case for why you shouldn't invest in the tech company.

Finally, with the big news that the iPhone is coming to Verizon, many who feared it would hurt AT&T were wrong since it has taken adequate steps to get other smartphones on its network from Android, Blackberry and Windows systems as well as extended 2 year contracts and dropping the iPhone 3GS price to 49 dollars. This company has made a very smart move at reducing the effect of Apple breaking the exclusivity deal with it and protect it's user-base and investments. 

Speaking of the iPhone, I read a really interesting piece about how history is repeating itself. Apple's iPhone was a huge success, but because it has so many restrictions what its apps, and only licenses the software to be used on Apple made phones, Apple will drown in a sea of Androids.  This is similar to what happened when Apple gained a lot of attention for its desktop computers in the 90s, but because of strict restrictions, Apple allowed Windows (who licensed its technology to be used on every other computer on earth) to drown out all Macs. Althoguh gaining in popularity, Macs are still considered a niche product, and some fear the iPhone will be next unless Apple changes strategy.

Finally, looking to the future, there are 10 websites that you should watch over the next year since they may change the Tech world scene significantly. Click here to read more.

In other fun news, IBM's Watson wins in Jeopardy! The supercomputer beat the two all time winners of the hit TV show quite easily. Oh, technology how wonderful you are!

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