There were multiple reasons for HP (HPQ) acquiring struggling smart phone pioneer Palm (PALM) for $1.2 billion a few weeks ago, including mobile computing, the WebOS, and core technology.

One of these reasons was to reinvigorate HP's (HPQ) mobile phone / smart phone offering. It's clear that Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, RIM's (RIMM) Blackberry, and Google's (GOOG) Droid are three of the current winners . . .

• in today's smart phone Tornado market for "business customers throughout the US / Western Europe"
• with "Tornado" being defined by us at Chasm Institute as a market that's growing at 45% or more (annulized, in units)

The good news is that this Tornado is currently raging - an ... Read More »

There are many devoted fans of Facebook - and also many, though fewer, devoted users of LinkedIn. A question that often arises is: "Who will be the social networking winner in 2011 and beyond - Facebook or LinkedIn?" Turns out, it is the wrong question. It's kind of like asking: "What's better, a digital still camera, or a digital video camera?"

The answer is that each of these two devices has its own specific role in the marketplace, as well as in the mind of the customer, and one device is unlikely to dominate over the other device anytime soon.

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Numerous news articles (Wall Street Journal, San Jose Mercury News, NY Times) have
been singing the praises of Palm’s newest user interface / WebOS platform.

Question:
So why the troubled Palm Pre quarterly sales outlook and market share disappointment? (Total worldwide smartphone shipments -- all brands -- in 2009 were 172.3 million worldwide, with Palm coming in a weak 7^th on the list of top vendors).

Answer: 
Our answer, based on one of our favorite Chasm Institute topics – is the important difference between Product and Whole Product. The Palm Pre does have some significant smartphone pe ... Read More »

A recent news article (San Jose Mercury News: 3/3/09) was very enlightening – and provided 2 wonderful reminders of confused thinking that even high-tech marketing folks can make. The headline stated “PC Market Weakens for ‘09”, and the very well-regarded Gartner Group was quoted as saying that “a 12% decline in global PC sales is forecast for 2009”. Sounds like only bad news here – but it isn’t so. Our 2-day “Strategic Marketing Workshop” addresses numerous errors + misunderstandings that high-tech professionals make. Here are 2 that showed up in the 3/3/09 Mercury News article:

Error #1  --  Averaging Your Market Data 

Too often, marketers lump together various product categories to come up with an ... Read More »

In its February 3 article, The Wall Street Journal described the grim news for Motorola last week – a shocking 51% drop in Q4’08 mobile phone sales, and a loss equivalent to $31 for each phone Moto shipped (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123359016405939667.html).

Given where Motorola’s product portfolio competes on the TALC (Technology Adoption Life Cycle), the prognosis is not good for survival beyond 2010. With their voice-based phones, cable boxes, and public safety radios in “mid-or-late-Main-Street," and their smartphone business struggling as a potential Tornado looms, there is clearly trouble ahead.

Google has just announced plans for "Google Chrome", a web browser intended to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.  Is this a "too late" entry into the market for browsers, or a sly move by Google ?

Depends on Google's real objective with "Google Chrome", which will initially be released as a beta version... 

Microsoft is clearly the "Gorilla" (not guerilla) of the browser market. And Google is the Gorilla of the Internet search market in the U.S.  That means they each enjoy greater than 40% market share in their respective markets, have > 2X the market share of their largest competitors ... Read More »