Updating My Smartphone Market Analysis: The Market Is At A Strategic Inflection Point

NOTE: My original post, originally published in January 2013, continues to be one of the most viewed on the site. Android and Apple have enjoyed an estimated 98% market share between the two, and many of my earlier projections regarding this market appear to have been borne out. However, the smartphone market has now matured to the point that it is at a strategic inflection point which has major implications for the future of this market and the major competitors. The rapid maturation of the smartphone market should have been foreseen: the rise of domestic Chinese competition combined with the predictable end of the Western consumer fascination with “the next smartphone”

The Rapid Maturation of the Smartphone Market Should Have Been Foreseen

The signs of a dangerous strategic inflection point in the global smartphone market have been evident for some time: the rapid rise of domestic Chinese competition combined with the predictable end of the Western consumer fascination with “the next smartphone.” Five years ago, Samsung Electronics, the South Korean technology giant sat atop the Chinese market, selling nearly one of every five devices there. Today, Samsung is an also-ran, controlling less than 1% of the world’s largest smartphone market. Samsung has trimmed local staff and last month closed one of its two Chinese smartphone factories. Surely, Apple must have been aware of this and the growing number of much lower cost domestic Chinese competitors that were already hammering Samsung. Apple’s release of a lower cost iPhone, the XR, in Asia in October 2018 appears to have been a case of too little too late. Sales of the device have been disappointing in both Japan and China, and Apple has been relegated to offering “trade-ins” to camouflage slashing the price of the XR. Apple had ample warning over at least a five year period.

Meanwhile, I sensed a very different kind of maturation of the smartphone market in North America and Europe. In what I like to call the smartphone market “Star Wars” phenomenon, each new generation of smartphones was greeted with a hysteria that was only paralleled by the Star Wars craze. This simply could not continue indefinitely. Beginning in 2017 it was apparent the smartphone market as a whole was already shrinking, and there was significant anecdotal information in the media that smartphone hysteria was waning, if not publicly available hard data. I began having discussions about this with Tim Bajarin, one of the top Apple analysts. As Apple moved to launch the iPhone X and broke the $1000 price point barrier it encountered clear if perhaps not overwhelming evidence that the smartphone market was softening: more people chose not to upgrade their phones. I like to say that the last major feature consumers seemed to want/need was water resistance, as so many had already experienced the disastrous “toilet drop.” I view the Bluetooth earbud phenomenon as a distraction and perhaps a hint of the coming change. Samsung flirted with water resistance as early as the Samsung Galaxy S5, perhaps because water resistance had become a standard feature in the Japanese market. By 2018, water resistance was standardized, and the market began experimenting with “the next big thing” for phones, folding screens. WTF? It was clear to me that the smartphone market had run out of gas, and was undergoing rapid maturation, as phones were no longer fascinating and novel, but just simply commodity devices.

To my mind, and IMHO, this has been a case study in a classic “strategic inflection point” that was missed by both Samsung and Apple. Samsung might be forgiven for being the first to cross into the inflection point, while the media was still promoting “the next smartphone” hysteria, and not yet recognizing the sense of the market. Apple has no such excuse. The rapid maturation of the smartphone market should have been foreseen by Apple. Apple’s most disturbing move was the decision to increase pricing rather than delivering greater value, at exactly the wrong time. The crucial rhetorical question is what are the larger implications for Apple’s future business?

Vendor Data Overview

Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 355.6 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2018 (Q3 2018), resulting in a 5.9% decline when compared to the 377.8 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2017. The drop marks the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the global smartphone market.

Quarter	2017Q1	2017Q2	2017Q3	2017Q4	2018Q1	2018Q2	2018Q3
Samsung	23,2%	22,9%	22,1%	18,9%	23,5%	21,0%	20,3%
Huawei	10,0%	11,0%	10,4%	10,7%	11,8%	15,9%	14,6%
Apple	14,7%	11,8%	12,4%	19,6%	15,7%	12,1%	13,2%
Xiaomi	4,3%	6,2%	7,5%	7,1%	8,4%	9,5%	9,5%
OPPO	7,5%	8,0%	8,1%	6,9%	7,4%	8,6%	8,4%
Others	40,2%	40,1%	39,6%	36,8%	33,2%	32,9%	33,9%
TOTAL	100,0%	100,0%	100,0%	100,0%	100,0%	100,0%	100,0%

2009 to 2012

In one of the most interesting high tech scenarios in years, the “smart mobile” OS (operating system) market is shaping up to be a classic Battle of the Titans. Key strategic issues, theories, speculation, and money, lots of it, are making this a great real-time strategy and marketing case study for management students of all ages (smile). So as Dell prepares to fade into the sunset, get yourself a drink of your choice, and some popcorn, sit back and watch it all unfold.

The best metaphor I can apply to this might be a “destruction derby” featuring at least two players, or perhaps a bizarre multidimensional Super Bowl or Rugby World Cup match, with four teams on one playing field with four goal posts at each cardinal point of the compass.. At the moment all four teams are tackling, passing, and running at each other in a confused pile. There are scrums, rucks and mauls in multiple locations. Two competitors, Google and Apple appear to be winning. The other two, Microsoft and Research in Motion, are pretty banged up, but still playing.

The two currently dominant competitors, Google Android with its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and Apple IOS are rapidly consolidating and expanding their global market positions, via partnerships, vertical integration, and application development ecosystems. Microsoft has publicly committed to spending massively to make Windows 8 the third OS option, but a recent IDC mobile OS market forecast projects Microsoft with only a miniscule share in 2015. Something tells me that Steve Ballmer will go on a rampage if that happens, rather like the video of him screaming and dancing on stage in my post “Extrovert or Introvert, Authentic Presentations Take Practice,” November 30th. http://mayo615.com/2012/11/30/introvert-or-extrovert-authentic-presentations-take-practice/

The key question is whether Microsoft or RIM, will be able to establish a third mobile OS to a survivable market position. It is not at all clear that either can do so at this point. The market is also speculating that mobile hardware market leader Samsung, is possibly considering making its own play by creating its own mobile OS ecosystem. While this may seem far fetched, this kind of vertical integration seems to be making a resurgence as a strategic move, after having been discredited. Then there is the perennial Nokia, who has seemed to be on death’s door, but may be coming back. As a strategic partner for Microsoft, Nokia’s fate may have a huge bearing on Microsoft’s strategy to reinvent itself as the PC goes into atrial fibrillation. Will Amazon enter the fray with its own smart phone entrant, and if so, with whose OS? Will Research in Motion and the Blackberry be able to achieve a survivable market share, or is RIM already a walking zombie?

Finally, in a kind of death dance patent dispute reminiscent of the film, Gladiator, Nokia and RIM are now locked in new lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, as if to say, “If neither of us are going to survive, we might as well kill each other for the entertainment value.”

Here’s a more concise overview of the race to be the third mobile platform:

The argument in favor of a third platform is straightforward and compelling: A new, robust competitor will prevent the dominant platforms from growing complacent or stifling innovation. Apple and Google are pretty happy with the status quo. Consumers are probably not consciously pining for a third mobile platform. Developers would happily get behind a third platform if it widened their revenue streams.
Microsoft has a head start: It launched Windows Phone in 2010, and tablet-friendly Windows 8 this year. It is experienced in building developer communities. However, Windows Phone has so far only managed a paltry 3 percent platform market share.
Amazon has the most potential to upend the market: A smartphone would be a natural extension of Amazon’s distribution empire, and its Kindle Fire tablet play. Unfortunately, the most recent E-reader forecasts show them in sharp decline as growth in full-functional tablets squeeze them out. Amazon has 106 million unique visitors accessing its sites, many of them with credit cards on file.
Samsung is a dark horse: Its dependency on Android may become a liability and push the South Korean manufacturer into the platform business. Samsung’s strength is its hardware sales prowess — Samsung shipped over 56 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012.

For Management students, this real time case study offers the opportunity to apply and ponder:

1. The time tested 1976 Boston Consulting Group (Bruce Henderson) “rule of three and four.” In a stable mature market there can be no more than three surviving competitors, the largest of which can have no more than four times the share of the smallest of the three. Here, the question is whether a third competitor can successfully emerge at all?

2. Barriers to market entry. Former Intel Marketing VP, Bill Davidow‘s book, Marketing High Technology, An Insider’s View, still considered the standard on the topic, suggested his own metric for a barrier to a new market entrant, or even a competitor just struggling to survive the market shakeout. The market entry barrier rule of thumb in dollars is three-quarters the most recent annual revenue of the market leader. In this case, that is a very big B number… Microsoft has the bucks, but is it just too late?

3. Vertical integration. Rumors of Samsung introducing its own mobile OS seem implausible, but hey Nvidia just announced its own gaming console to compete with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.

4. Resources and capabilities. It is necessary to consider the respective resources and capabilities of each of the many direct players, and those playing in related markets that bear on the mobile OS market.

5. Related markets, new markets, peripherally involved competitors and products which all could play a role in the eventual outcome of this. The integrated Internet HDTV market is only one example. Featuring Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Samsung, and the HDTV manufacturers, it could influence things. What if Amazon were to vertically integrate and introduce its own smart phone?

This is the hairball of this Century so far. Are you all still with me, here?

Why The Biggest Tech Companies Are Not In Canada

Mayo0615 Reblog from July 22, 2013

It dawned on me that my blog post from July 2013, still has particular relevance to the current situation in Canada. I discuss the longer term structural issues confronting Canadian entrepreneurs and Canadian venture capital. When I first arrived in Canada, I learned quickly that the Vancouver startup ecosystem was nothing like what I knew from Silicon Valley. My personal case study was Mobile Data International, a pioneering company in wireless data, well before WiFi and Bluetooth, that could have led the market and the technology. Instead, the company was taken public much too early. MDI was bought by Motorola Canada for $39 Million, in a hostile takeover, and was essentially moved out of Canada and shut down. Later, in 2012, I had another opportunity to be up close and personal with Canadian innovation, as a participant in the Canada Foundation for Innovation deliberations in Ottawa. These two experiences have played a major role in the development of my views on this topic.

The following reblog raises the tough questions that are holding Canada back.

From July 2013:

In 2013, ContentDJ founder Jerry Tian published a blog post addressing the issue of “Why Canada Has No Big Tech Companies” – Nortel is dead and RIM is quite obviously dying, he points out. Tian, who was himself responding to an interview with Boris Wertz, founder of Vancouver’s Version One Ventures, offers a thought provoking theory and one that applies to a large degree to all up-and-coming startup ecosystems.

The founder questions the commitment and willingness of Canadian investors and entrepreneurs to devote the ten years or more that it may take to build an independent multi-billion dollar company with staying power, rather than flipping that company for an eight, nine, or even ten figure exit – typically to Silicon Valley acquirers – and exporting that future innovation and wealth building. It’s a charge that could be applied equally well to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Boulder, and dozens of would be international startup hubs.

“’Silicon Valley is not a place but a state of mind,” Tian writes, quoting KPCB General Partner John Doerr. “Some of these insights are collaboration, competition, openness to innovation, failures and experimentation. Probably the most important one is the long term commitment behind technology companies.”

Of course, Tian and Doerr are spot on. What emerging startup hubs often miss when trying to “become the next Silicon Valley” – a flawed mission in and of itself – is that the grandaddy startup ecosystem is more than its physical infrastructure of entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, investors, service providers, universities, and the like. Equally important are the systematic irrationality and a feedback loop around the willingness to turn down the quick buck and go for the massive once-in-a-generation success story.

This isn’t the case with every company, founder, or investor, but it exists in enough density in the San Francisco Bay Area, and based on results to a lesser extent in Seattle, that these are the only two areas areas in the country that have led to multiple ten billion dollar plus technology and internet companies – the true giants that transcend their local ecosystems and seep into the lives of average consumers.

It is these companies, with their ability to attract talent, make acquisitions, invest in long-term R&D, and create systemic wealth that make ecosystems. And with very rare exception, getting to this scale requires a decade or longer commitment and a willingness on the part of founders and investors to turn down near and mid-term paydays. Similarly, it requires a vision and an ambition to build something that will be around forever.

Tian writes:

So, why is nobody talking about these acquisitions? I think it’s simply because investors are getting filthy rich off these deals.

And that’s exactly what not to do if you want to create the next Silicon Valley. You cannot sell the hen that lays the golden eggs for a few quick buck [sic]. Technology companies take 10 years to really manifest the value. To really build a billion dollar company, it takes tremendous multi-decade commitment. And that’s the biggest missing piece in Canada.

Like or hate Zynga founder and former CEO Mark Pincus, one has to respect him for saying that he wants to build a “digital skyscraper,” a company that would be around for 100 years. Pincus went further to say that he views serial entrepreneurship as failure and that he wants to run Zynga for the rest of his career. Ironically, he recently replaced himself as CEO, personally recruiting Don Mattrick for the role. But Pincus made the ego-busting move in an effort to return Zynga to its former glory and to get it back on that century-long track.

In his somewhat controversial on-the-ground reporting on the Chicago ecosystem last summer, Trevor Gilbert delved into “the Midwest Mentality” and the impact it has on the types of companies that are built there. Gilbert called Chicagoans “pragmatic.” Lightbank partner Paul Lee offered an example of this pragmatism, saying that Chicago startups typically focus on generating revenue from day one, rather than building a massive, but unprofitable user base, a la Facebook and Twitter pre-monetization. Profit is all well and good, and should be the ultimate goal of any business that wants to be around for the long term, but focus on it too intently early on and it can be impossible to invest in growth. It takes a special kind of vision and fortitude to look past the short term and make the big bets required to create massive companies.

This is not to pick on Chicago. A similar phenomenon seems to exist in LA where companies race out to a low nine-figure valuation and then either stall out in that vicinity or sell for sub-one billion dollars to a larger out of town acquirer. Call it the curse of the big-little deal – maybe everyone here just wants to see their name in lights. In a market that is desperate for success stories and validation, these medium-sized exits are hailed as “wins” – and they are, given the difficulty of building a hundred-million dollar company – but they often rob the ecosystem of potential multi-generational tentpole companies. This is a mentality that appears to have changed in recent years, but that change has not yet bore fruit in the form of LA’s answer to Google, Amazon, or Facebook.

New York has seen its own version of this phenomenon, with the ecosystem’s biggest success stories, DoubleClick and Tumblr, being exits to Google and Yahoo respectively. Local darling MakerBot followed suit, selling for $600 million in June. New York does have Fab, Gilt, and Foursquare all shooting for the moon but these companies and the ecosystem as a whole still must prove that they can sustain this ambition and parlay it into a giant company.

As Tian points out, part of the blame for these exits falls on investors. It’s not that investors aren’t interested in massive outcomes – they most certainly are. But not all non-Silicon Valley investors are equipped for the financial and time commitment it takes to create them. These investors, many of which operate out of first- or second-generation funds, often have smaller pools of capital to invest out of.

Write a $2 million check at a $10 million valuation out of a $100 million fund, and a 50x return looks pretty good, returning 98 percent of your fund. Make that same investment out of a $1 billion fund and the impact on fund economics is decidedly less interesting. This is one of the few arguments in favor of mega-VC funds. But it also benefits firms that are on their fourth, fifth or sixth fund and have less to gain reputation-wise with solid base hits.

Returning to Tian’s piece, he closes by writing, “If you are wondering why Canada doesn’t have the [sic] billion dollar company, it cannot be more obvious than this. Too many people are in it trying to get rich quickly off entrepreneurs. Not enough people have the gut [sic] and commitment to create or help create something truly meaningful.”

Tian paints with a broad brush, yes, which ignores many of the subtle nuances and external factors that contribute toward building massive technology companies. But there’s little arguing that people in Silicon Valley think differently. Armed by decades of case studies and social proof, the ecosystem has developed a healthy disregard for rationality.

Mark Zuckerberg famously did just that when Yahoo came calling. He was just 20 years old and Facebook, at less than two years old, was unprofitable with just $30 million in revenue. Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook’s board, which included Peter Thiel and Jim Breyer, turned down Yahoo’s $1 billion offer. When the elder advisors tried to convince the young founder that his 25 percent of that offer would be a big number he said, “I don’t know what I could do with the money. I’d just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have.”

Israeli social mapping company Waze just made the opposite decision, selling to Google for slightly more than that mythical $1 billion. Sarah Lacy cautioned Israel-bulls to “reconsider too much high-fiving over Waze.” While legendary local angel investor Yossi Vardi likes to compare Israeli startups to tomato seeds which need more experienced farmers to grow properly, Lacy believes that the country has the potential to build and sustain globally dominant Web companies without selling, offering MyHeritage as an example.

None of this is to say Silicon Valley is immune from this syndrome. There are thousands of entrepreneurs in the Bay Area who would rather flip their company than do the long, hard work of building something sustainable. But the sheer density of the ecosystem means that a dozen or so each year choose the road less traveled. Also, given the scale of the Valley ecosystem, building a big company is the only way to move the needle and attract talent and capital. Everyone in line at Philz coffee is working on the next “billion dollar business.”

Finally, Silicon Valley is a magnet for those entrepreneurs around the globe who want to build great technology companies, and the ecosystem surely benefits from this imported talent. This was actually Wertz’s central point in the original interview and is one that Tian touches on briefly. It’s a difficult problem to solve, given the power of knowing someone (or several someones) who has summited the mountain before and who can show you that it can be done. In each of these other markets, someone will have to be the first.

In many cases, it is highly irrational to turn down a nine- or ten-figure acquisition offer. There are real benefits to gaining access to the financial and personnel resources of a larger acquirer, ones that can often make or break the success of a still fledgling company. But, if there’s anything in Silicon Valley that Canada, LA, New York, and other startup ecosystems should aspire to it’s this willingness to roll the dice. Sometimes the shooter rolls a “7.”

“Culture of arrogance” felled Nortel, anti-climactic Ottawa U study concludes. Was RIM any different?

This is another on my series on industry analysis. The recent University of Ottawa study on the demise of Nortel Networks, tells us what many of us already knew. The most important constructive criticism of this study is that it should have been done years ago. The Nortel collapse was followed by a surprisingly similar scenario at RIM, now Blackberry. Mike Lazaridis, who served as RIM’s co-CEO along with Jim Balsillie until January, 2012, are generally considered to have failed to respond adequately to the market encroachments of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones, as Blackberry’s market share plummeted. I recently showed my undergrad and graduate strategy students a video of a Charlie Rose interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems. Chambers emphasized the acceleration of the Adizes corporate life cycle, in many cases to less than ten years, and the need for constant reinvention to survive in this challenging and rapidly changingnew world.

Former Nortel CEO John Roth

Former RIM CEO, Jim Balsillie

This is another on my series on industry analysis. The recent University of Ottawa study on the demise of Nortel Networks, tells us what many of us already knew. The researchers should be congratulated for their work and their conclusions, in what is an important case study of Canadian corporate mismanagement, which will help Canadian business avoid a deja vu. But many of us in the high tech industry already knew the answer in our guts. The most important constructive criticism of this study is that it should have been done years ago. The Nortel collapse was followed by a surprisingly similar scenario at RIM, now Blackberry. Mike Lazaridis, who served as RIM’s co-CEO along with Jim Balsillie until January, 2012, are generally considered to have failed to respond adequately to the market encroachments of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones, as Blackberry’s market share plummeted. There seems to be a pattern here for students of Canadian innovation and management. I recently showed my undergrad and graduate strategy students a video of a very recent Charlie Rose interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems. In that interview Chambers emphasized the acceleration of the Adizes corporate life cycle, in many cases to less than ten years, and the need for constant reinvention to survive in this challenging and rapidly changingnew world. This is now also true about the teaching of Information Technology to management students and to all undergraduate students for that matter.

Cisco System’s CEO, John Chambers discusses the acceleration of the corporate life cycle: Chambers Interview

Read more: Management in the Brave New World

TECHNOLOGY

‘Culture of arrogance’ felled telecom giant Nortel, study finds

JANET MCFARLAND

The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Mar. 17 2014, 2:16 PM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Mar. 18 2014, 7:16 AM EDT

The collapse of telecommunications giant Nortel Networks Corp. was caused by “a culture of arrogance and even hubris” that led to numerous management errors and weakened the firm’s ability to adapt to changing customer needs in a fast-paced industry, according to a new in-depth analysis of the company’s final decade of operations.

A University of Ottawa team of professors, led by lead researcher Jonathan Calof, released a detailed analysis Monday of Nortel’s failure, outlining a litany of complex factors that caused Nortel’s collapse in 2009, when the firm filed for bankruptcy protection and was disbanded.

The report is based on three years of research and dozens of interviews with former employees, executives and top customers to try to understand what went wrong at the company. The project was launched after former chief executive officer Jean Monty approached the research team and offered to contribute to the financing of the project.

The study concludes that Nortel lacked the internal “resilience” to cope with a changing external marketplace, and missed key opportunities between 2002 and 2006 to retrench as it struggled to survive. In the end, customers said they could not stick with Nortel as a “black cloud” formed over the company, raising doubts about its long-term future.

Prof. Calof said in a release Monday that the findings are “more than a Nortel story” and present broader lessons about preventing further failures of large companies in Canada.

“It’s our hope that this research will aid in educating tomorrow’s leaders,” he said.

The report says Nortel in its early days was a model of deep technological expertise through its Bell Northern Research (BNR) laboratories and its strong connection to customers, enabling the company to maintain a “first-mover” advantage in many markets. At its peak in 2000, Nortel was Canada’s largest public company, accounting for a third for the value of the S&P/TSX composite index, and employed more than 93,000 people worldwide.

But the authors concluded that Nortel’s growing dominance in its markets in the 1990s “led to a culture of arrogance and even hubris combined with lax financial discipline. Nortel’s rigid culture played a defining role in the company’s inability to react to industry changes.”

While Nortel doubled its revenue between 1997 and 2000 through a spree of expensive acquisitions – and tripled its share price in the same period – the company lost focus on profitability and was in a “precarious position” when the market for technology companies crashed in 2001, the report says. The report says its acquisition spree was a “complete departure” from Nortel’s established skills base and from its tradition of developing its own products.

“This approach proved to be a failure because ill-chosen and poorly integrated acquisitions defocused and overcomplicated the organization,” it concludes. “The company’s high cost structure and lack of financial discipline eventually led to financial ratios that were among the worst in the industry.”

The company also made a series of poor product-related decisions in the same period, including deepening its focus on the declining market for land-line technology and in the increasingly competitive optical market, while missing opportunities in the exploding wireless technology market, where it once had an early lead.

The researchers also concluded that Nortel made operational mistakes, including dismantling the centralized research and development platform from BNR “that was culturally and structurally optimized to create, innovate and develop telecommunications products using co-operative teams.”

From the era of John Roth’s leadership as CEO in the late 1990s onward, “it was felt by many R&D staff that management rarely listened to the engineers and that, when they did, they did not appear to understand.”

In the same era, Nortel gave more power to individual business teams, “which resulted in increased internal politics and fruitless competition.”

The report also says Nortel could have solved its problems in 2002 by retrenching and selling business units, but missed the opportunity, and again missed an opportunity in 2005 and 2006 to sell units and retrench in key business sectors.

“As difficult as it is to consciously reduce the size of a business by selling units, this study concludes that, in the case of Nortel, this option may have been the best and only alternative.

13 Best Tech Companies For Internships, According to Their Interns

No part of the tech job market is more insane than the fight for interns. A few of my UBC Faculty of Management students have recently been very fortunate to land internship jobs with excellent high tech firms based both in Silicon Valley and in the Lower Mainland. The more industrious and resourceful UBC students should use these network connections to compete for their dream internship or first job.

The 13 Best Tech Companies For Internships, According To Their

Interns

JULIE BORT

Reblogged from the Business Insider

Cisco interns

Cisco : Cisco interns

No part of the tech job market is more insane than the fight for interns. A few of my UBC Faculty of Management students have recently been very fortunate to land internship jobs with excellent high tech firms based both in Silicon Valley and in the Lower Mainland. The more industrious and resourceful UBC students should use these network connections to compete for their dream internship or first job.

The list includes: AMD, Blackberry (believe it or not), Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM Canada, and Intel. I would add three more with a major presence in the Lower Mainland: Hootsuite, PMC-Sierra and Samsung

Companies are looking to snap up brilliant young college grads before their competitors do. Interns are looking for the right combination of training and fun.That leads companies to shower their interns with money, perks and challenging projects.Some 4,700 U.S. companies are looking for interns today, but not all internships are created equally, according to job-hunting site Glassdoor. Glassdoor just published its annual list of the 25 best companies for interns and, not surprisingly, the list was dominated by tech companies.Glassdoor, which rates companies based on feedback from employees, looked at the feedback interns gave on 20,000 U.S. companies to come up with this list.

After Blackberry Canada Faces An Innovation Drought

The sale and breakup of a flagship technology company is a reoccurring theme in Canadian business. But this time is different. If BlackBerry Ltd.goes, there is no ready replacement. That’s a telling switch from the situation Canada faced with the sale of Newbridge Networks in 2000 and the demise of Nortel Networks in 2009. More than a decade of declining business investment in research and development has left Canada without an obvious BlackBerry successor. Despite bright spots in Waterloo, Ont., and Ottawa, the country’s performance on most of the important benchmarks of innovation has been deteriorating for years.

Yesterday’s announcement that Microsoft will buy Nokia’s smart phone business for $7 Billion, serves to underscore the points made in this post, written before the Microsoft announcement. Speculation that Microsoft might buy Blackberry was wishful thinking at best. Nokia is a much more obvious fit with Microsoft, which adds yet another wrinkle to the mobile market landscape, but is unlikely to have much impact on the current dominant players. Some observers are speculating that as Microsoft enters the mobile device business, it may worsen the prospects for Windows Phone. Time will tell.

In a series of earlier posts I have focused on Canada‘s “natural resource curse,” and its effect on government investment in innovation. The “natural resource curse,” is a now well-established economic phenomenon, in which economies that focus heavily on natural resource exploitation typically under perform more diverse economies. Venezuela is a good example. The Harper government has seemed content to focus merely on tax incentives to stimulate innovation, as the info-graphic below shows. The result has been a catastrophe for the Canadian economy, and a precipitous decline in Canadian productivity (which is largely driven by innovation), particularly vis-a-vis the United States. This issue has also been a continuing editorial topic in the media over the last few years, with little or no result. Arvind Gupta, CEO of MITACS, a leading non-profit R&D firm, has argued forcefully that Canadian needs to create an innovation czar, as was done for the “Seize the Podium” initiative for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This has also fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa. A recent article from the Globe & Mail serves as yet another data-point in Canada’s disturbing decline in innovation and productivity.

REBLOGGED from the Globe & Mail

If BlackBerry is sold, Canada faces an innovation vacuum

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Aug. 17 2013, 8:00 AM EDT

More than a decade of declining business investment in research and development has left Canada without an obvious BlackBerry successor. Despite bright spots in Waterloo, Ont., and Ottawa, the country’s performance on most of the important benchmarks of innovation has been deteriorating for years.

Blame business. Governments have kept up their end of the bargain by bolstering research funding for firms and universities – to the point that Canada now ranks first among the Group of Seven industrial countries in higher education research. And the number of Canadian science and engineering PhDs has soared in recent years.

Yet, R&D performed at the corporate level keeps slipping. From 1.14 per cent of gross domestic product in 2006, private sector spending on R&D declined to 0.89 per cent in 2011. By that measure, Canada fell to 25th from 18th place among the 41 countries measured by the Organization for Economic Co-operation Development.

The result is an innovation bottleneck. An abundance of science is generated in university labs and startup firms but most of it never finds its way into commercial applications. Risk-averse banks and too many businesses of the bird-in-the-hand variety remain the weak links in Canada’s innovation system.

“We punch above our weight in idea generation,” observes Michael Bloom, who leads the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for Business Innovation. “But the further you move towards commercialization, the weaker we get as a country.”

If Blackberry is sold – as seems likely after the board announced a strategic review and hired investment bankers – it will most likely be carved into pieces. That stands to make Canada’s innovation situation worse. The company, which benefited from government grants and loans in its early days, has given back by nurturing the countless startups for which BlackBerry is a customer or mentor. Nortel played a similar role in its day. The loss of an anchor can compromise an entire ecosystem of innovation, making it even harder for startups to make the leap to commercialization.

Ironically, Mike Lazaridis, the creator of the BlackBerry and the company’s long-time co-CEO, opposed the dismantling of Nortel – “chopped up and sold off like so much cordwood,” in his words – telling a parliamentary committee in 2009 that “the most important research programs are performed in close proximity to the headquarters of global leaders.”

“We can’t lose all of those [flagship] companies,” Mr. Bloom insists. “It’s crucial that we have successful enterprises and that they grow. One of the big issues is having the management capacity to keep the innovation going.”

The next BlackBerry need not be a tech firm. Innovation can be driven by any sector, even the old-economy resource extraction business of the oil sands. But tech firms remain by far the most R&D-intensive players in any economy.

Hence, the tech sector is a key barometer of a country’s innovation strength. And innovation matters because it has a profound influence on our living standards – it is “the key long-run driver of productivity and income growth,” the OECD says.

Somehow, Canadian business didn’t get the memo. At its peak in 2000, Nortel, the now-defunct Canadian telecommunications equipment maker, spent $6-billion on research, a sum that dropped to $1.67-billion in 2008, just before its bankruptcy. Even then, Nortel remained Canada’s R&D leader.

Luckily for Canada, BlackBerry hit its stride before Nortel collapsed. Almost by default, the Waterloo-based firm became Canada’s biggest R&D spender. But even with outlays of $1.54-billion in 2011 – some of which was spent developing its line of BlackBerry 10 phones – its expenditures on R&D were barely a quarter the amount Nortel was spending a decade earlier.

Indeed, overall R&D funding by Canadian firms has fallen in both real and nominal terms in recent years. Canadian companies allocated $14.1-billion for research in 2012, down from $14.9-billion in 2006. Though the recession may partly explain the drop, R&D spending does not appear to have picked up with the recovery.

This is not where Canada needs to be in a world in which knowledge-based capital is increasingly supplanting physical capital and labour as the main driver of productivity growth, competitiveness and standards of living.

Yet, despite countless warnings, Canadian businesses remain oddly complacent.

“We tend in this county not to look at the true market opportunity of innovation,” Mr. Bloom adds. “If you only see a market of 35 million people, you’re going to see more risk than if you see the market as Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Americans see risk, but also great opportunity.”

It’s no coincidence that many of Canada’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators have been immigrants. Unlike his American counterpart, the average Canadian business graduate does not dream of becoming the next Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs or, for that matter, Peter Munk.

Mr. Lazaridis and ex-BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie notwithstanding, how many Canadian entrepreneurs and innovators have truly changed the world, or aspire? By all accounts, not that many. A Conference Board study released last month found that only 10 per cent of Canadian firms (almost all of them small ones) pursue “radical or revolutionary” innovations. Large firms focus at best on “incremental” innovations.

A 2012 OECD study identified what it called the “striking paradox” of Canada’s innovation record. Despite one of the world’s best educated populations, strong institutions, deep economic integration with the world’s technology leader (the United States) and “ample public spending in support of innovation, Canada’s business innovation activity is by any aggregate measure lacklustre.”

The Paris-based organization zeroed in on the difficulty innovation-driven firms here face in obtaining credit, given the forbidding collateral requirements set by banks and the country’s relatively small venture capital sector. It also noted a higher reliance of Canadian firms on government to “motivate” investments in R&D compared with other countries. And it underscored the weak quality of management in Canada vis-à-vis the United States: “One reason for superior U.S. performance is competition and market discipline. Well-run firms are rewarded more quickly with greater market share, while poorly managed firms are forced to shrink and exit,” the study said.

Changing the culture of Canadian business will not be easy. Some argue it may only get harder as the oil sands become the country’s dominant engine of growth. Could Canada revert to its default setting as a resource economy with a bunch of satellite industries focused on servicing the oil sector?

The OECD study noted that “resource-rich” countries like Canada and Norway have weaker innovation records than “resource-poor” counterparts such as Israel, South Korea and Japan. “The presence of resource rents might itself dull the drive to innovate,” the report said, by attracting labour and money to extraction businesses that conduct less research.

Resource wealth need not be destiny, however. The oil sands employs a slew of scientists and engineers working to improve productivity and reduce the sector’s environmental impact. “The cost of production in the oil sands has come way down in the past 20 years because of innovation,” Mr. Bloom adds.

Still, governments could do more to drive innovation in the oil sands by putting a higher price on carbon emissions and setting stricter regulations for restoring land affected by bitumen mining. The payoff would extend beyond the environmental benefits to include the commercialization of new technologies.

What more could Ottawa and the provinces do to improve Canada’s innovation performance?

That question has led to the felling of entire forests over the years, most recently with the 148-page report tabled by a federally-appointed panel led by Open Text Corp. executive chairman Tom Jenkins.

The federal and provincial governments have long sought to spur research spending with generous tax incentives. (R&D tax credits cost Ottawa $3.5-billion in 2011 alone.)

But while the incentives have generated plenty of work for accountants, they have yielded only mediocre innovation results.

Based in part on the panel’s recommendations, Ottawa is scaling back tax incentives starting next year, particularly for large companies, and putting more money into direct research grants and vouchers. The latter will enable startup firms to pay universities to conduct research on their behalf and get management advice from business experts. Another major shift is the rewriting of the National Research Council’s mandate, directing it to conduct applied research commissioned by businesses.

Big business and academics have roundly criticized the changes. The former argue they will be penalized under the new tax rules, while the latter fear that “pure” research could suffer. But if creating the next BlackBerry (and the next one after that) is the end goal of Canada’s innovation policy, Ottawa appears to be on the right track.

As the Jenkins panel concluded, “the federal government needs to focus its innovation support more sharply on the strategic objective of growing innovative firms into larger enterprises.”

It can’t happen fast enough.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Should Microsoft buy Blackberry?

Readers of this blog will recall last week’s post on the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) report on the mobile phone market. The problems for both Microsoft and Blackberry were exposed again for all to see. Microsoft’s Windows Phone market share at 3.7%, would have been even smaller without Nokia. Blackberry’s situation was even more dire. A few months back Microsoft and Blackberry opened another new patent war on each other, as if this would somehow help their situations.

This week Blackberry has announced the inevitable search for a potential buyer to take the company private, as has also happened recently with Dell Computer. The suggestion that Ballmer and Microsoft should consider purchasing Blackberry is actually a potentially very interesting idea. A broader market consolidation, with much larger implications, may be on the horizon.

Readers of this blog will recall last week’s post on the International Data Corporation‘s (IDC) report on the mobile phone market. The problems for both Microsoft and Blackberry were exposed again for all to see. Microsoft’s Windows Phone market share at 3.7%, would have been even smaller without Nokia. Blackberry’s situation was even more dire. A few months back Microsoft and Blackberry opened another new patent war on each other, as if this would somehow help their situations.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Should Microsoft buy BlackBerry?

BY NATHANIEL MOTT
REBLOGGED FROM PANDODAILY ON AUGUST 13, 2013

BlackBerry was the undisputed king of thesmartphone market for years. Now, after ceding themajority of its marketshare and valuation to Apple and Samsung, the company hasput itself up for sale. Speculation that it will be acquired by Microsoft, its primary competitor for the bottom of the market, runs rampant, partly because the two companies are said to have considered such an arrangement before.

So hypothetically, if that deal goes through, what would a world in which Microsoft acquires BlackBerry look like? In theory, the two would be able to combine their strengths — those being Microsoft’s growing media empire, and BlackBerry’s experience developing hardware — and finally pose a threat to Apple and Samsung. In practice, such a world is unlikely to exist, largely due to the capricious smartphone market.

Microsoft needs Nokia. The smartphone-maker’s products are said to represent 80 percent of globalWindows Phone handset sales. Nokia warned investors in March that a Microsoft-built phone could threaten its business; it’s unlikely to stand by if Microsoft acquires BlackBerry and puts the company’s decades of experience with hardware to use. (Never mind how delighted consumers and investors might be to see Nokia cut ties with Windows Phone.)

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is already under pressure from shareholders to “choose another road” lest it find its way to hell — it isn’t hard to imagine that sentiment being expressed louder and louder if Microsoft were to acquire BlackBerry.

The idea that Microsoft and BlackBerry would simply combine their marketshare and begin posing a larger threat to Apple and Samsung is flawed. Microsoft would have to leave BlackBerry alone, allow it to build the same products it’s been building, and perpetuate a business that put the company in a position to be acquired in the first place for that to happen.

Assimilating BlackBerry into Microsoft and using it to create Windows Phone products might alienate users who still appreciate BlackBerry’s phones and operating system. Making Windows Phone resemble BlackBerry’s software might do the same to all the people who like Microsoft’s mobile operating system. A combined company might be able to find a middle ground that leads to future gains, but it’s unlikely that the new marketshare could be found by combining the current numbers.

And then there’s Microsoft’s newfound emphasis on devices and services. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is reorganizing the entire company to make devices like the Xbox and Surface tablets central to its purpose — bringing BlackBerry into the fold might facilitate that process, but it could just as easily cause problems.

Or again, if the two companies are kept separate, why bother purchasing BlackBerry in the first place? (Insert “for the patents, stupid!” comment here.) It’s not like the company developed a tablet that proved to be more popular than Microsoft’s Surface tablets, and people aren’t exactly lining upto purchase its latest smartphones, either. As “a former high-level source intimately involved in Microsoft’s acquisition strategy” tells Fast Company:

What Google did with Motorola is insane. Everyone was like, ‘Oh it’s about the patents.’ It turns out that it wasn’t about the patents — they actually want to get in the business of building devices. That was an expensive way to do it. I think Microsoft thinks that if you want to build your own devices, you hire new designers, get new hardware guys, and do it.

It’s a better path than acquiring a huge company with a completely different business model.

Could Microsoft acquire BlackBerry and turn it into something useful? Probably. BlackBerry’s patents, its enterprise-facing products, and its broad reach could be appealing to any buyer willing to pay the proper price. But such a deal is unlikely to change BlackBerry’s slide to the bottom of the smartphone market — and, since Microsoft has made gains because of that slide, slow Microsoft’s already sluggish ascent.

Latest IDC Mobile Market Report Underscores Importance of Industry Analysis

Students of Industry Analysis will note the importance of high technology industry analysis firms, like International Data Corporation (IDC), which this week issued its quarterly reports on the state of key technology markets. The report has been seized upon, sliced and diced by the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other media sources. The technology blogosphere is alive with comment, PandoDaily, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Gizmodo have all been furiously offering their own spins on the IDC Report. It is amazing to see so much of the industry talking about nothing else but IDC today. Similar firms like Forrester, Gartner and others offer similar industry analysis reports, but IDC is the big dog, and the mobile market is their dog food.

Android OS Was on Nearly 80% of Devices Shipped in the Second Quarter, IDC Says

Students of Industry Analysis will note the importance of high technology industry analysis firms, like International Data Corporation (IDC), which this week issued its quarterly reports on the state of key technology markets. The report has today been seized upon, sliced and diced by the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other media sources. The technology blogosphere is alive with comment, PandoDaily, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Gizmodo have all been furiously offering their own spins on the IDC Report. It is amazing to see so much of the industry talking about nothing else but IDC today. Similar firms like Forrester, Gartner and others offer similar industry analysis reports, but IDC is the big dog, and the mobile market is their dog food.

But There’s More…..

Some of the best industry trend information is not immediately obvious, buried in the depths of the report….My favorites

1. Microsoft’s Windows Phone is going nowhere fast at 3.7% market share. Microsoft shareholders are rumored to be agitating for change, and Steve Ballmer’s head may be on the block. Without Nokia’s support, Windows Phone would have an even smaller share of the market. Microsoft’s catastrophic blunder with Windows 8 has only added to their woes. IDC had previously correctly predicted this in 2012, which shows the reason for the immense interest in the IDC report.

2. Blackberry, despite doing an admirable job of turning things around, is still in freefall. Simply too little too late. This week’s latest resignations of key executives serves to underscore IDC’s analysis

3. The tablet market is a very different market from smart phones. It appears to be driven by the emotional devotion of iPad users, The entire tablet market seems to move on Apple’s moves, and the lack of any new iPad launches has depressed the entire market, This could suggest, as Blackberry’s CEO has said, that the tablet is not really a viable market. It may be squeezed between smart phones and the residual laptop market, and eventually disappear.

Read on….

Google Inc.’s Android software continues to steamroll the competition in smartphones, posing bigger problems for companies like Apple Inc., Microsoft and BlackBerry Ltd.

New data Wednesday from research firm IDC found that Apple’s share of the globalmarket slid to 13.2% in the second quarter from 16.6% in the year-earlier period. Handsets running Android, meanwhile, jumped to 79.3% from 69.1%.

The signs are particularly ominous for one-time market leader BlackBerry, despite some high-profile product announcements recently. Devices running its software accounted for just 2.9% of global smartphone shipments in the three months ended in June, compared with 4.9% for the same period in 2012.

Android is given away free to handset makers by Google, whose strategy is to make money on advertising associated with mobile devices. It has long powered smartphones offered by industry giantSamsung Electronics Co.,005930.SE +0.08% but has lately also benefited by Chinese companies such as Lenovo Group Ltd., 0992.HK -0.68%Huawei Technologies Inc. and ZTE Corp. that are grabbing a bigger chunk of the smartphone market.

“You are seeing tremendous growth in the developing world,” said Steve Mollenkopf, president and operating chief of mobile chip giant Qualcomm Inc. QCOM -0.58% Companies selling there are “picking up Android and driving that.”

Market share, of course, isn’t the same thing as making money. Apple earns more profit from its iPhones because it can charge more than rivals can. Its average sales price, excluding any carrier subsidies, was $710 in 2012, compared with an industry average for smartphones that year of $407, IDC estimates.

Smartphone Smackdown

Samsung, which is No. 1 by unit shipments, and No. 2 Apple account for essentially all the industry’s profit, Canaccord Genuity estimates. The firm puts Apple’s second-quarter smartphone operating profit at $5.99 billion, with an operating margin of 33%; it estimates Samsung’s profit at $5.63 billion, or 19%, including both smartphones and other handsets. Many others are losing money in the business, it estimates.

But high prices aren’t helping Apple’s share in some markets, said IDC analyst Ryan Reith, especially in some developing markets where most smartphones get sold for $390 to $450, he said.

Apple, which is expected to announce new products this fall, has also suffered from the lack of new handsets to drive demand now, Mr. Reith said. Apple’s shipments did grow 20% in the second period, IDC said, though lost share because the smartphone market grew more quickly. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

BlackBerry, which launched its new operating system in January, was overtaken as the No. 3 supplier of smartphone software in the second quarter by Microsoft Corp., whose share in smartphone software grew to 3.7% from 3.1% last year.

The Canadian company accounted for roughly a fifth of smartphone sales in 2009. But the impact of its new line of phones has been slight so far.

BlackBerry is “in a really tough spot right now,” Mr. Reith said. “They’ve shown their cards and the industry really hasn’t reacted the way they had hoped.”

A BlackBerry spokesman declined to comment.

Read more: following are my previous posts on the evolving Mobile Market Mega War:

Mobile OS Market Share: War of Titans Worth Following

Multidimensional Mobile Market War: Silicon Rust Belt

Mobile World Congress: Mega War Gets Even Weirder

Microsoft’s New End Game Strategy: Pray

Integrated Big Data, Cloud, Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?

Mobile World Congress: Smart Mobile Mega War Gets Even Weirder

New developments in the global smart mobile and tablet war at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain, continue to add to the intrigue, infighting and mega dollars being bet on this market…with little impact so far on the probable outcome. I have spoken with two colleagues who are in Barcelona this week watching it all unfold. Blackberry (the former Research in Motion), Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Microsoft, are all struggling and at risk, and making bold survival moves, with mega dollars. Meanwhile, Google and Android continue to consolidate their market dominance globally, but not without major worries about Samsung “wearing the pants” in the Android market.

Mobile World Congress This Week

Blackberry (the former Research in Motion), Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Microsoft, are all struggling and at risk, and making bold survival moves, with mega dollars. Meanwhile, Google and Android continue to consolidate their market dominance globally, but not without major worries about Samsung “wearing the pants” in the Android market.

First, Hewlett-Packard, which in my opinion damaged its brand irreparably two years ago, with moves out of, then back into, both the tablet and PC markets, has left consumers and industry analysts befuddled. Years ago there was the bizarre acquisition of the Palm handheld OS for $2 Billion, which is now a boat anchor. Recently, HP again blundered in its acquisition of British software firm, Autonomy for $11.1 Billion. Previously, AOL‘s acquisition of Time Warner in 2000 has been considered the worst corporate deal of all time, but HP has stolen this title from AOL with the Autonomy deal. The HP brand also still retains the old “plastic pocket protector” engineer geek image, which simply does not play well against Apple or Google. However the move to Android on HP tablets makes good sense, and is a major slap in the face to Microsoft. IMHO, HP’s situation is analogous to Blackberry. Despite recycling CEO’s and moving to the dominant tablet OS, Android, the market window has closed for HP. The industry trade and business press has been asking editorially if all of the bad news and blunders are more than just coincidence, as if a jinx has descended on HP. with the ghosts of both Hewlett and Packard rising out of their graves in despair.

Blackberry has done everything right. It is difficult to find any fault with the efforts of the new CEO and team to turn the company around. Nevertheless, finding a realistic and reasonable scenario where Blackberry survives is increasingly difficult. Corporate and U.S. government customers are leaving the Blackberry fold. Some argue that Blackberry’s secure networking is the corporate jewel. However, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Samsung and General Dynamics announced a partnership to provide end-to-end mobile device security down to the application layer, providing a direct competitive threat to Blackberry.

Microsoft must be reeling from HP”s decision to switch to Android, and frankly the image around Microsoft’s investment in the Dell privatization, looks more like paying for a destitute friend’s funeral. Some have speculated that Microsoft’s investment is also viewed very unfavorably by other PC makers, making matters worse. Nokia, Microsoft’s anchor device partner for Windows Mobile, would be negligent if they were not scanning the market projections for Windows 8, and pondering HP’s decision to jump to Android. Nokia’s best option for survival at this stage may also be to switch to Android. All of this is surely making Microsoft executives nervous.

I have real doubts seeing any these competitors achieving survivable market share positions in the market. I am not prescient, but my gut, after years of working in this space says no.

Samsung Share of Global Android Device Market

WRT Google, Android and Samsung, the Wall Street Journal yesterday published an an article aptly titled, “Samsung Sparks Anxiety At Google.” As I suggested in my last post on this topic, Samsung has become so dominant in the Android OS market, controlling over 40% market share, that Google correctly sees significant risk in any renegotiation with Samsung. Google is hopeful that new Android devices from HTC and HP will apply competitive pressure to Samsung, and diminish its negotiating leverage with Google. Earlier rumors had Samsung considering launching its own OS to compete with Android. This seems far fetched in the larger scheme of this market, but stranger things have happened.

More on the Mobile World Conference and The Smart Mobile Mega War next week.

Mobile Market Share: A Multidimensional War of Titans Worth Following

NOTE: This post, originally published in January 2013, continues to be one of the most viewed on the site. As Google and Apple now are estimated to enjoy 98% market share between the two, many of my projections regarding this market appear to have been borne out.

Here’s a more concise overview of the race to be the third mobile platform:

The argument in favor of a third platform is straightforward and compelling: A new, robust competitor will prevent the dominant platforms from growing complacent or stifling innovation. Apple and Google are pretty happy with the status quo. Consumers are probably not consciously pining for a third mobile platform. Developers would happily get behind a third platform if it widened their revenue streams.
Microsoft has a head start: It launched Windows Phone in 2010, and tablet-friendly Windows 8 this year. It is experienced in building developer communities. However, Windows Phone has so far only managed a paltry 3 percent platform market share.
Amazon has the most potential to upend the market: A smartphone would be a natural extension of Amazon’s distribution empire, and its Kindle Fire tablet play. Unfortunately, the most recent E-reader forecasts show them in sharp decline as growth in full-functional tablets squeeze them out. Amazon has 106 million unique visitors accessing its sites, many of them with credit cards on file.
Samsung is a dark horse: Its dependency on Android may become a liability and push the South Korean manufacturer into the platform business. Samsung’s strength is its hardware sales prowess — Samsung shipped over 56 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012.

For Management students, this real time case study offers the opportunity to apply and ponder:

3. Vertical integration. Rumors of Samsung introducing its own mobile OS seem implausible, but hey Nvidia just announced its own gaming console to compete with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.

This is the hairball of this Century so far. Are you all still with me, here?

The Rapid Maturation of the Smartphone Market Should Have Been Foreseen

Vendor Data Overview

2009 to 2012

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The 13 Best Tech Companies For Internships, According To Their

Interns

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Android OS Was on Nearly 80% of Devices Shipped in the Second Quarter, IDC Says

But There’s More…..

Read on….

Smartphone Smackdown

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