Apple's first fiscal quarter results set a world record for quarterly profits (not inflation adjusted) for public companies, according to S&P. Apple generated $18B in profits (+30% YoY), dwarfing the previous record set by Exxon Mobil, which earned $15.9B in the second quarter of 2012.
http://www.asymco.com/
For a mature company of Apple's size, a 30% YoY growth is staggering, and it's their best performance since 2012.
This is a part of a special series I want to start writing about, covering interesting technology companies and services in Japan. Most of the information I gather are from friends and colleagues, since my Japanese reading abilities seriously limits me from trying out a lot of these services.
Recently I learnt about a very interesting service called Yaki Niku Bu, which literally translates to a "Portion of Grilled Meat". Japanese YakiNiku is a popular cuisine, all over the world. And it's extremely popular among Japanese Women, a fact that I have always failed to understand. Steak and Grilled Meat
I was recently looking for a smarter way to draw my team's organizational chart. The longer, fancier way is to meticulously build the org tree using your favorite vector/office tool (like visio, powerpoint etc). It is perfectly doable for a smaller team. But what if your org has ~300 people.
I had a spreadsheet with Employee name, title and manager, and was looking for a programmatic way to automatically build the tree using the manager names. Visio has a way to import a csv into a org chart but since I don't have it and my coding being a bit rusty, I decided to look for an easier solution in Google docs.
Google recently unveiled the much leaked Nexus 5 and there weren't a lot of surprises. The Google flagship phone comes with a 5' 1080p display, the latest snapdragon 800 processor, the excellent LG G2 chassis with a super thin bezel, and finally, a decent camera sensor with optical image stabilization.
Besides the top of the line hardware specs, it's also the first device with Google's latest and greatest Android 4.4 KitKat OS, which brings a plethora of new features, under the hood optimizations and UX fixes.
And if all these weren't tempting enough, the attractive off contract unlocked prices $349 (16 GB) and $399 (32 GB), make it the best value smartphone on the market. It also performs respectably and in some benchmarks outperforms comparable models from Samsung and HTC sell for $250-$350 more.
img: phonearena.com
Now, if you already have a latest generation phone, be it an HTC one, Samsung Galaxy S3/Note3 or even a MotoX, there is probably no reason to change right now. They are all great devices and you should be getting a 4.4 update in future. If you are impatient, look out for a Cyanogen mod of KitKat soon. Wait and hust get the Nexus6 next year.
For the rest, preorder one right now, if you can still find it in your nearest play store :)
Repost from my consumeronomics blog - Title: Smartphone Cases: The Billion Dollar Accessory Business
img credit: HowStuffWorks.com
Smartphones are expensive and we like spending on cases and accessories that protect them, sometimes enhance them, and customizes them with each of our unique identity.
I personally have three for my Nexus 4, a plastic shell with a retractable stand to watch movies on the move, a soft shell rubbery case which is great to hold, and an armband for the occasional run. An ABI Research estimates that a smartphone owner will spend on an average $56.18 on accessories per device. Amazon's accessory cases and covers page contains a whopping 7.9 Million items.
ABI also estimates that smartphones drove $20 billion in aftermarket accessory revenues in 2012, and is expected to reach $38 billion by 2017. That's a Billion with a 'B' if you didn't notice.
Apple hosted its iPad centric event today in San Francisco, just over a month after its iPhone event. The invite had read "we still have a lot to cover", and as expected, Apple revealed a slew of products. Though mostly incremental, here is a run down of what's new.
Tim Cook's big reveal on September 10th, left a lot of us with mixed feelings. Amidst all the rumours, analysts and tech enthusiasts had expected Apple to announce two new models of their next generation phones. One, a premium, top of the line flagship phone, priced similar to last years iphone 5. And then a lower tier model aimed at emerging markets and budget conscious consumers.
On September 10th Apple announced 5c, a not so cheap, "Unapologetically Plastic" and colorful avatar of iPhone. With a new hard shell case, it has almost similar internals as last years iPhone 5, and is priced just $100 lower with contract than the more expensive and better built 5s.
Apple was quick to point out that 5c was no means meant to be a cheaper alternative. In all its marketing promos, Apple highlights design, fun and style, and never once mentions prices and features. In fact, the 5c, unlocked starts at a steep $549.
Apple recently announced that they had a record opening weekend, selling 9 Million iPhones.
This is quite fascinating, since it's 80% higher than last year's launch (5 Million). A key driver for this incredible figure is the first time, simultaneous launch in China. In fact according to Asymco, if you include last year's first weekend sales in China, the growth is actually a more modest but still strong 28%.
I was curious what population of Apple's customer segment would be interested in a cheaper looking phone with last year's specs. Would $100 lure them away from the iPhone 5s, which has far better build quality, a 64bit next generation processor, better camera and most importantly, the revolutionary touch-id sensor. Rather than cannibalizing their own product, Apple's play seems to be more towards attracting Android and first time buyers into their own ecosystem, meanwhile maintaining their high profit margins. But have they priced it too high?
Apple did not reveal the split between the two models, however initial reports suggest 5s outselling the 5c 2:1. Due to the lack of public data, I asked Google Trends, what people were searching for. And right now, iPhone 5s trumps 5c by 2.5-3:1. It's obviously unscientific to relate sales volumes with search queries and it needs to be taken with caution. However, it does reflect consumer interests around these two products.
Recent news suggests retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have already started discounting iPhone 5c prices by $50 (via gift cards) to counter disappointing 5c sales. Consumer Research firm NDP also reported Apple cutting back 5c production by 35% and increasing 5s production by 5s to meet demand.
Regardless of how this plays out, Apple is all set to have another record quarter. They will sell millions of new iPhones. Apple, recently in a regulatory filing, also said that its sales and gross margin for the quarter ending this month will be at the high end of its forecast of $34-$37 billion in revenue and gross margin of 36 to 37 percent. As a tech enthusiast, I am just excited to see what they have in store for us in their big reveal this October 22. New iPads, macbook pros, and maybe something magical that you can wear on your wrist.
File transfers have been notoriously painful between Linux and Android. While it works seamlessly on Windows, and on Mac you can use the Android File Transfer App, let me show you how to get his done on Linux. There are many ways to achieve it, but I'll use gMTP, which gives you a nifty little UI to manage file transfers. Later on, I'll also list other alternatives, in case this fails. So let's begin.
I have been an ardent Android user for the last couple of yea or so. I switched from an iPhone. I don't want to get the iOS vs. Android debated started here, but rather clarify the Android purchasing decision. How do you pick the right phone in a sea of hundreds of devices from more than a dozen handset providers. Here is a summary of things we'll discuss
1. Economics
2. Brand vs. Value
3. Hardware Features
4. Skins and Customizations
5. Android Version
Waterfall charts are very common. You see them everywhere. They let you visualize a series of Business events, drivers or activities to explain 2 data points. An example below is a 2013 Revenue waterfall for a Business. It explains where the incremental revenue in 2013 was generated from.
There are tonnes of excel tutorials out there, but here is one for google spreadsheets.
Back when I owned an iPhone, not too long ago, I stumbled across PlainText, a free app by the Writeroom team. It was a barebone minimalistic writing app which would sync with dropbox, enabling me to continue writing cross device and cross platform.
That's when I discovered art of minimalistic distraction free writing. All you get is a full screen of blank canvas. No intruding buttons, plethora of menu options or distracting bright colors. As a writer, you focus on simply transforming ideas into words.
When I moved to the Android platform, I was looking for a similar alternative.
If you had issues trying to create a bootable linux usb for a pc, from your Mac, the below tutorial might help you. Even though it sounds slightly ironic, creating a pc bootable linux distro from a Mac, it's a situation I recently faced. So sharing the workaround.
I have lost count of the number of hard disks I have lost over the years. One would expect after years of repeated mistakes, I am more prepared and the road to recovery should be easy. However, it wasn't. So this is what happend.
I found an interesting problem recently. We have a shared google docs at work for folks to sign up for hobby clubs. The idea was people to sign up against clubs by adding their names in a cell.
In the next week or so, the docs was filled with names and I wondered if there was a cool way to count the people who had signed up, using a simple formulae.
So here is the solution, which works both in excel and google docs.
I deal with huge data around dates all the time. Be it daily revenue, volume or activities. Though daily data is interesting, we often need to aggregate data into weeks, months or quarters, to see trends, forecast projections and track them against targets.
Here is a quick tip on getting you the year, month, quarter and weeks from a given date. Read on.
SUMIFS is probably the most useful feature, Microsoft rolled out in Excel 2007. It lets you SUM a range, using multiple criteria. For instance, in the situation below, if we wanted to find out how much John made in 2010 Q3, you could use this simple formula.
Now how do you do this in google spreadsheet? Unfortunately, it only has the older SUMIF formula, which lets you select a single criteria. Let's see how to make it work.
Are you curious, what the next iteration of Windows has in store for you. Windows 8 developer preview is now available for download. Head over to MSDN and give it a try. Virtual Box is a great free cross-platform Virtualization application which is easy to set up and lets you run different OS instances in parallel.
Below instructions are for Virtual Box on Windows 7, but should also work for Linux/MacOSX
1. Download and Install Virtual Box for your specific platform (Win/Linux/OSX)
2. Download the Windows 8 developer preview from MSDN. You can chose 32-bit/64-bit w/o Developer tools
3. Open Virtual Box, and click on New. You will be greeted with a VM set up screen. Give it a name and select Windows 7 (32/64bit) as OS
4. In the later screens, allocate 10-20GB (or lower) for the VM and chose dynamic expansion. This takes shorter time to set up and Virtual Box will dynamically increase the VM space as when needed to a maximum of the earlier chosen capacity.
5. Once the VM set up is done. From the Virtual Box home screen, select the VM and click Run. The first time, you would be greeted with a First Run Wizard. Select the Windows 8 Developer Preview file you just downloaded (*.iso file).
6. The VM would now boot with the iso, and Windows Installation process would begin. To switch controls back to your desktop OS, press Right Control in Windows.
7. Follow the instructions on-screen. Chose Custom (Advanced) as the type of installation.
8. That’s it. Wait patiently for 25-35 mins for the setup to complete. Once done, the VM will restart and you voila, you are right inside the new Metro UI. Do note, it’s a developer preview and could have loads of bugs and issues Enjoy!
9. Some helpful tips
1. Use windows key to switch to the start metro menu
2. Change windows 8 screen resolution (default on VM is 800x600) 3. Live tiles don’t work on a local Administrative account. Create a test user account to get the Metro Apps/Tiles working
4. Right Control-C to pass control back from the VM window
My last phone was an iPhone 3GS. I had queued over an hour at the Singtel office, alongside thousand others. This was July 2009.
Back then, the choice was almost too simple.
iPhone was the best touch phone money could buy. The first wave of Android devices were underwhelming (Remember HTC Hero and Magic!). Nokia was struggling to innovate. And Blackberries were (and still are) just dull and uninspiring.
Tumultuous times at HP. Just 49 days after releasing the first webOS based tablet, HP announced it is discontinuing its webOS devices. The company now plans to "optimize" the value of webOS after spending nearly $1.2b on Palm, a year back. HP could either sell or license webOS off to other manufacturers or more likely salvage Palm's patent portfolio, in a time where mobile patents are a premium.
The news was part of a bigger announcement with HP openly declaring its intention to spin off its low margin PC business and focus more on enterprise, software and consulting. HP shares immediately fell 20% wiping 12b of market cap in a single day.
One third of HP's revenue comes from PCs with an operating margin a bit above 5% (2010) compared with 11.7% from its overall operations.
HP seems to be taking a page from rival enterprise giant IBM, which successfully sold its PC arm to Lenovo in 2005, after a period of dismal PC sales.
HP's exit from both PC and mobile segment will definitely hurt competition. With the US and EU heading for another recession, it will be interesting to see how HP rebounds after the spin off.
Enjoy!
![[spincop1]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BC086A_spinc_NS_20110819192402.jpg)
![[HP JUMP]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BC069_HP_JUM_NS_20110818185131.jpg)
