Touted by an odd coalition, ICANN’s .xxx domain money grab has fallen flat on its face. The expected land rush of defensive buys to avoid stigma never materialized and the smut peddlers are happy with the way things are.
The engineers who warned Lightsquared’s service would disrupt GPS are vindicated. This proves that while you can buy influence by backing corrupt pols, you can’t change the laws of physics. The idea could still work, but investment in engineering instead of elections will be required.
Assuming Lightsquared does solve it’s interference problems, you could score some free wireless access via Freedompop. I expect AT&T and Verizon to spend large with pols to keep that from happening.
More Fourth Amendment abuse in the Senate: SOPA and Protect IP morph into the slightly less abusive OPEN bill. While it promises more due process, it still enables rogue agencies to violate the supreme law of the land. Meanwhile, Senator Wyden does some call out the DHS for going rogue showboating.
How to harass the competition without tarnishing your highbrow image. Wage war on rivals by proxy: Apple Gives mobile patents to a troll.
Comic Louis CK’s latest film goes direct to download for $5. Chances are he’ll make far more from self distribution then releasing through one of the big studios. Look for more big name entertainers to follow.
Another sign the patent system is broken: Google wants to patent the cloud as a print server.
The big music label cabal membership shrinks to three. EMI has been sold in pieces to Sony and Universal. Look for more lobbying to make back catalog copyrights immortal with few new releases outside formula pop. Expect the indie market to grow even a little faster as the old school record deal will be all but dead.
Patent insanity: Microsoft gets some DOJ scrutiny after abundant coaxing from Google and B&N. While Android device makers continue to bear the brunt of Redmond’s royalty rustling, Google is accused of violating the Linux GPL in Android. Meanwhile back in the troll dungeon, Righthaven gets another well deserved flogging.
If tablets really are consumption devices, then content is king. The $200 tablet wars appear to be confirming this before new devices even ship. This could spell much bigger trouble for the fruit cult than it’s 66% price premium.
More fodder for new wave of class warfare agitators? Apple and Oracle dominate in tech’s highest executive salaries. Naw, these companies tend to lean left, so they’ll get a pass. Will these over the top salaries cause a shareholder revolt? That’s not likely either.
New life for Moore’s Law: Changes in transistor geometry could push chip density even further.
Zombie former software maker returns to troll again. SCO to sue IBM one more time. I wonder if the judges that keep agreeing to hear these cases ever get performance reviewed.
A $7K open source electric car? A group of German designers say it’s true.
Dead canary in Apple’s smartphone goldmine? US Cellular rejects iPhone over heavy handed T and C’s.
Making knowledge more free in academia: Washington State adopts Open Courseware.
As cord cutting becomes the hottest home entertainment trend, Google toys with entering the the pay TV biz. It’s pretty obvious that making the poorly received Google TV platform viable is a big priority. Subscriptions are the the most likely key to getting Hollywood and alphabet networks the on board. To get the newly cable free consumer on board, GTV channels need to be a la carte or so cheap that no one cares about paying for what they don’t watch. That’s a tall order, even for the almighty searchzilla.
Thanks to Google for this one: The return of full blown browser wars is here. The return of cut throat competition will push the envelope farther, faster.
Karl Denninger makes the case that Amazon and Apple are toast in the long run. You can read the whole thing here. Some notable observations from the post follow –
Now on to Apple. There was a report out Monday that the firm had cut supplier deliveries by 25% out of Asia. There was a mad analyst scramble during the day to try to refute the damage that was rapidly accumulating in the stock, which was mostly successful. In my view, this was a fool’s errand and you were a nut if you followed people into the stock on that “dip.”
Apple gets a lot of its sales in Europe. But Europe is a train wreck economically. To believe in the forward story and that the production cut is not “real” you have to believe Europe will avoid a Depression. Given what’s going on over there, such a belief is an act of pure insanity.
Oh sure, they might not get the worst of it right now, but this is a forward projection, not a call for a crash in the morning. You also have to believe that the United States will not suffer the knock-on effects and that sales here won’t get hurt. And finally, you have to dismiss the fact that HP (HPQ) effectively destroyed pricing power for tablets with their “blowout” of the Touchpad.
The latter may well be a stake through the heart. HP’s “blowout” put the $99 price point in the mind of consumers and that is not going to go away. This sort of “ratchet” mechanism has a well-documented history in America, and once it takes hold it is almost impossible to get rid of. There are already signs that this pricing pressure is eroding the edges of everyone else’s tablets, with the first to succumb being RIM (RIMM)’s “Playbook.” This will reach Apple and margin collapse is a well-documented phenomenon that has a habit of trashing stock valuations.
First of all you might not have been a `nut` to have bought on the dip. Even if Xmas is flat, tablets are going to be the hot thing in tech this year. I suspect that Apple will sell all it has its hands on. So long as you intend to sell out near the end of Apple’s quarterly results one might make a small profit. Not a small feat in a down market.
But long term I think Denninger has it right. Jobs, the pirate that he is, had the pulse of what was hot as human factors and customer feel. Its been a signature mark of Apple and its CEO. But Jobs is bowing out now. His style of management only comes around about every 20 years or so. Not only that his imprint on Apple is probably its own curse. It been more than one company that lacking its signature captain has been cast adrift and floundered on the shoals of NoVision.
That ultimately will be Apples’ fate.
Amazon will also blow up; it shares Netflix’s former screwball P/E (currently 101).
(more…)
…Or why Apple’s Xmas may not be so stellar. Their Foxconn suppliers factory that builds the i’S had a major fire yesterday. GizChina has the story here.
The timing could not be worse. The plant was probably at full ramp up to get as much product into the store shelves before the Thanksgiving Black Friday appeared. Lack of unit sales will chew into Apple for the 4th quarter.
HT: GizChina
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