Motorola reports quarterly results. Good luck with the buyout, Google

Posted on January 27, 2012 by David Forbes

The Android phone business isn’t doing a whole lot to help Motorola Mobility, the company that Google is paying $12.5 billion to buy. They might want to rethink their purchase in light of the most recently numbers. They’re just terrible.

Motorola shipped — shipped, not sold — 5.3 million smartphones in the quarter. As a reminder, Apple sold 37 million.

For the full year, Motorola shipped — shipped, not sold — 18.7 million smartphones. As a reminder, Apple sold 37 million smartphones last quarter.

They shipped — shipped, not sold — 200,000 tablets last quarter. TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. As a reminder, Apple sold 15 million tablets.

For the year, Motorola shipped — shipped, not sold — 1 million tablets. As a reminder, Apple sold 15 million tablets last quarter.

The company lost $80 million in the quarter — $70 million of that was by the mobile division. The unit lost $285 million for the year.

But remember, Android is winning, because it’s open. Or something.

From Parsilemon.

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The iPhone, LTE, and battery life

Posted on January 26, 2012 by David Forbes

When the iPhone 4S was announced and was shown not to be LTE capable, a lot of the tech press and blogosphere were up in arms that this was going to damage Apple, since both Android and Windows Phone 7 were rolling out lots of models that were 4G/LTE capable. Apple was doomed™!

Well, not so much. So far Apple hasn’t been hurt in the least by not having LTE on the iPhone 4S. (LTE stands for “Long Term Evolution,” and is a faster and more efficient use of cellular bandwidth. It’s not exactly the same thing as 4G, but it’s close, and the terms are often used interchangeably.) They sold 37 million iPhones in three months, or about 5 phones per second, surpassing the birth rate of the world.

So why hasn’t Apple gotten into the LTE game? There are a number of reasons, from the relative scarcity of the proper chipsets, to the fact that those chipsets aren’t yet optimized for the iPhone form factor, and the fact that LTE still doesn’t have a lot of coverage compared to 3G (and outside of the United States, where the bulk of iPhones are sold, there is even less coverage).

But the primary reason may be Apple’s overriding insistence on maximizing the quality of the user experience. One of the biggest achievements of the iPhone in all its iterations was an incredible battery life. The executives at RIM (the maker of BlackBerry phones) flat out refused to believe the iPhone could get the battery life Jobs claimed when he unveiled it.

What does this have to do with LTE/4G? Take a look at the chart below, and all will be clear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apple is perfectly willing to sacrifice a bit of speed in order to maximize the battery life. That’s Apple’s priority. Other manufacturers, trying to create a differentiation with their products, are pushing LTE/4G phones for those who want them.

So far it looks like the competitive advantage goes to Apple. They will have to get on the LTE bandwagon sooner or later, and I’m guessing they’re working hard right now to find the right balance between performance and battery life for the upcoming iPad 3 and iPhone 5. I’d be surprised if the iPhone 5, at least, wasn’t LTE capable, but that’s all going to depend on the engineering. If battery life is not where Apple wants it, they’ll wait another year, regardless of the outcries from the tech press that such a move will Doom™ them.

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The fourth book in THE OSSERIAN SAGA

Posted on January 26, 2012 by David Forbes

I’ve been getting more and more emails from people asking when the next book is coming out (from as far away as Norway), and they’ve been coming with greater frequency, so I figured it’s time I responded publicly rather than one by one.

Unfortunately, the answer to “When will the fourth book be out?” is “Never.” The series is dead.

I had originally planned for four books and submitted a proposal for four books to my publisher, but I was offered a three book contract, which is  the standard when it comes to a new fantasy series. I was fine with that, hoping that the first books sold well enough that I could negotiate a big fat advance for the fourth.

And things looked good at first. The Amber Wizard sold very well right out of the gate, landing at number seven on the Borders/Waldenbooks (hey, remember those places?) paperback bestseller list. I was thrilled. It seemed my writing career was off to a good start.

But I couldn’t get any of the larger review sites or publications to review the book, which meant I got little visibility. I did receive a lot of feedback from readers through email or on Facebook, but it seemed like the readers who liked it contacted me directly, while those who hated it were the ones who posted reviews on places like Amazon and Goodreads. And I’m perfectly fine with people not liking what I write–there’s no such thing as a universally loved book. But for whatever reason, the people who did like it didn’t post online reviews.

The Words of Making sold in okay numbers, but not nearly as well as The Amber Wizard had. For whatever reason, the series wasn’t gaining any traction. The Commanding Stone came out right after the big crash of 2009 and disappeared without a trace. The sales were just terrible. No one was interested in the series anymore, which was a shame, because I thought the books got better as they went along. Certainly there are more things I would go back and change in the first one than the other two.

The original ending of The Commanding Stone was this crazy cliffhanger, but my editor made it clear I had to change it since a fourth book wasn’t guaranteed. It took a lot of rewriting to make it work, and one of the storylines–concerning the rise of the Adversary–wasn’t resolved, and now never will be. I’m sorry about that.

The dragon storyline wasn’t supposed to be resolved in book three. I had planned to carry that over to The Path of Ashes (that was the tentative title for book four, which I had also at one time called The Fell King). I think I wrapped things up as best as I could given the circumstances.

At some point I’ll post the original ending to The Commanding Stone to give readers an idea of how much I had to change, and what my initial plans were.

So that’s where things stand with the Saga. Again, I’m sorry I won’t be able to finish the story, but sales simply weren’t there to justify another book.

Posted in books, fantasy | Tagged | 2 Comments

Apple’s incredible blowout quarter

Posted on January 25, 2012 by David Forbes

From Bloomberg:

In looking ahead to the second quarter, Apple forecast revenue of about $32.5 billion and profit of $8.50 a share. That compares with average analysts’ predictions for sales of $31.9 billion and profit of $7.96 a share.

Except for the period that ended in September 2011, when customers put off iPhone purchases in anticipation of the 4S, Apple’s profit hasexceeded analysts’ projections in every quarter for at least six years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The quarterly results mark the first time Apple’s revenue topped Hewlett-Packard’s, underscoring how the company’s focus on sleek, touch-screen mobile devices has rearranged the technology industry’s pecking order.

Apple’s net income exceeded total revenue at Google (GOOG), Apple’s largest rival in mobile operating systems, for the period.

“Those numbers are just unimaginable,” said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management, which has $4 billion under management, including Apple shares. “It’s still an extremely well-managed company and they are showing that the product pipeline is sufficient even now to generate growth rates that are unrivaled.”

Read the rest here. The largest quarterly revenue ever posted by a technology company. And this in the quarter that saw the debut of the “disappointing” iPhone 4S and the rollout of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which was supposed to take a healthy chunk of the iPad’s dominance. (The iPad grew 111% from the same quarter the previous year.)

Apple’s continued success is simply stunning.

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RIM founders to step down

Posted on January 23, 2012 by David Forbes

From the New York Times:

 Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who made the BlackBerry a leading business tool but then presided over its precipitous decline, said they would step down on Monday as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of Research in Motion.

The two men, in developing the innovative device that was the first to reliably deliver e-mail over airwaves, turned a tiny Canadian company into a global electronics giant. But they are stepping aside after disappointing investors and leaving customers wondering whether RIM still has the ability to compete, and perhaps even survive, in the rapidly changing markets for smartphones and tablet computers.

Stiff competition from the Apple iPhone and phones using Google’s Android software drastically eroded RIM’s share of the American smartphone market to about 9 percent in the third quarter of 2011 from nearly half the market two years earlier, according to Canalys, a market research firm based near London. The company’s stock price reflected that by dropping about 75 percent in the last year.

Read the full article here.

I’m not a fan of BlackBerry or their products. I had to use a Storm 2 for a short while at work and it was by far the worst piece of shit I’ve ever had the displeasure of using, and that’s in any electronics category, not just phones. A horrible, horrible device.

I think this move is about a year too late. These guys were classic “head in the sand” leaders who couldn’t believe that anything could threaten their empire, and scoffed while Apple and Google ate their lunch. They’ve put all their eggs in the QNX basket, and there’s no turning back from that now, no matter who’s in charge. I just don’t see it happening. I think a full or partial sale of the company, like what’s been rumored the past few weeks, even though it was later denied, is really the only possible outcome for RIM.

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Morgan Freeman and a trunk full of suits

Posted on January 20, 2012 by David Forbes

I had this strange and vivid dream the other night that Morgan Freeman was the CEO of a company I apparently worked for. It wasn’t the company that currently employs me, however; I think it was some kind of technology start up. We were in a parking lot, and he was extolling wisdom of some kind to me in that smooth, authoritative, and convincing Morgan Freeman voice that is close to being the Aristotelian ideal of smooth, authoritative, and convincing voices. I don’t remember what he said, but I know he said it well.

What I do remember is that he decided he was retiring and was going to turn the company over to me. A big part of this transition, apparently, concerned what I wore. He opened the trunk of a gigantic car–kind of a Lincoln Town Car on steroids–and showed me at least thirty business suits that were hanging vertically in the trunk from a bar set across it from side to side. The trunk was probably fifteen feet wide–just absurdly huge. And the trunk was deep enough that that suits could hang down without touching the bottom of it. Completely impossible, but hey, I guess with Morgan Freeman, anything is possible.

He wanted me to see how one of the suits fit, so I tried on one of the jackets. It was too tight in the shoulders and too long in the arms. “I’m a 40 regular,” I said. “What’s this?”

“A 40 long,” he said. “It looks great.”

“No, it doesn’t fit.”

“You’ll be fine. A few adjustments and you’ll be ready to go.”

I remember sort of believing him and not believing him at the same time. I mean, the stupid thing really didn’t fit. But I had Morgan Freeman telling me it was fine. I felt conflicted. I wanted to look good in the suit, not like a monkey wearing circus clothes.

Then it ended, and I never found out if I took over the company or not. Rats.

I don’t usually remember dreams this vividly, which is why I felt like sharing.

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At last! TSA compliant cupcakes

Posted on January 19, 2012 by David Forbes

I’m sure there are a handful of decent, intelligent TSA agents working somewhere. But certainly not the assclowns who caused an uproar over the deadly terrorist cupcake in a jar.

The Silver Spoon Bakery is fighting back. At last. Your cupcakes will now be able to fly in peace.

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How Copyright Industries Con Congress

Posted on January 18, 2012 by David Forbes

In my previous life as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, I became curious about two implausible sounding claims I kept seeing made over and over—and repeated by prominent U.S. Senators!—in support of more aggressive antipiracy efforts.  Intellectual property infringement was supposedly costing the U.S. economy $200–250 billion per year, and had killed 750,000 American jobs. That certainly sounded dire, but those numbers looked suspiciously high, and I was having trouble figuring out exactly where they had originated. I did finally run them down, and wrote up the results of my investigation in a long piece for Ars. Read the whole thing for the full, farcical story, but here’s the upshot: The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the U.S. economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods. Beyond the obvious fact that these numbers are decades old, counterfeiting of physical goods imported in bulk and sold by domestic retail distributors is, rather obviously, a totally different phenomenon with different policy implications from the problem of illicit individual consumer downloads of movies, music, and software. The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000″ jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from.

Repeat a big lie often enough and it’s taken as truth. That’s the problem with anti-piracy legislation–the people writing it don’t even understand the scope of the issue, or what’s really at stake. The only thing we know for sure is that (a) piracy won’t stop, and (b) the entertainment/media conglomerates will abuse their power. They have in the past, every single time they’ve been given new powers to abuse. There’s no reason to think they’ll stop now.

Let’s stop this now. Sign the petition to stop SOPA and PIPA.

From Julian Sanchez writing at Cato@Liberty. Read the full article here.

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“Lawdy, lawdy, he’s great!”

Posted on January 17, 2012 by David Forbes

Muhammad Ali, talking about Joe Frazier after the “Thrilla in Manila.”

In his suite the next morning Ali talked quietly. “I heard somethin’ once,” he said. “When somebody asked a marathon runner what goes through his mind in the last mile or two, he said that you ask yourself why am I doin’ this. You get so tired. It takes so much out of you mentally. It changes you. It makes you go a little insane. I was thinkin’ that at the end. Why am I doin’ this? What am I doin’ here in against this beast of a man? It’s so painful. I must be crazy. I always bring out the best in the men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.”

Read the full article here, which was originally published in Sports Illustrated in 1975. (It’s a great read, trust me.)

And wishing a happy 70th birthday to “The Greatest.”

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A great explanation of why the Protect IP Act (PIPA) is not just boneheaded, not just dangerous, but evil, and must be stopped

Posted on January 17, 2012 by David Forbes

This is very, very serious, folks. I don’t usually fall into the histrionics trap of proclaiming “ZOMG this bill/law/rule/company is going to destroy the WORLD!” But in this case, SOPA and PIPA are pretty goddamn close to that fact. This is deplorable legislation, and needs to be completely beaten back.

Take a few minutes and watch this video. It explains quite clearly what PIPA is, why it won’t work, and why it’s dangerous (hint: because we can’t trust the entertainment industry or our government not to abuse their power).

I was going to write more on this, then I found what Cory Doctorow posted on Boing Boing and decided he’d already said it better.

Even though a substantial portion of my living comes from the entertainment industry, I don’t think that any amount of “piracy” justifies this kind of depraved indifference to the consequences of one’s actions. Big Content haven’t just declared war on Boing Boing and Reddit and the rest of the “fun” Internet: they’ve declared war on every person who uses the net to publicize police brutality, every oppressed person in the Arab Spring who used the net to organize protests and publicize the blood spilled by their oppressors, every abused kid who used the net to reveal her father as a brutalizer of children, every gay kid who used the net to discover that life is worth living despite the torment she’s experiencing, every grassroots political campaigner who uses the net to make her community a better place — as well as the scientists who collaborate online, the rescue workers who coordinate online, the makers who trade tips online, the people with rare diseases who support each other online, and the independent creators who use the Internet to earn their livings.

The contempt for human rights on display with SOPA and PIPA is more than foolish. Foolishness can be excused. It’s more than greed. Greed is only to be expected. It is evil, and it must be fought.

Read the rest here.

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