See you on the golf course, John, Cisco is in trouble

ballmerchambersLast week I began this series on large companies in turmoil by looking at Intel, which I saw trying to guarantee its future through enlightened acquisitions that actually emulated this week’s company — Cisco Systems. So if Cisco already knows how to assimilate other companies and technologies to stay ahead of the market, how can they have a problem? Cisco’s problem is their market is mature and being commoditized with all boats sinking. And this time there isn’t an obvious new idea to buy.

Cisco is a becoming a very expensive utility appliance.  The revenues streams at Cisco that are at risk:

–          Enterprise routers for T-1 services versus DOCSIS 3.1 and in the future 4G LTE-A

–          […]

By |December 4th, 2013|2013, Business, Companies, Internet|33 Comments
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Why Intel wants to be everyone’s chip maker

intelbrainThis is the first in a series of columns on the strategic direction of several major technology companies that have faltered of late. We’ll start here with Intel, follow in a couple days with Cisco followed by Microsoft, then see where it goes from there.

At Intel’s annual shareholders’ meeting last week the company talked about moving strongly into mobile chips and selling its stillborn OnCue over-the-top video streaming service, but the most important story had to do with expanding Intel’s manufacturing capacity. This latter news is especially important because if you look at the square footage of 14 nanometer fab facilities Intel says it will be bringing online in the next two to […]

By |November 25th, 2013|2013, Companies, Technology|46 Comments
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Scarface: He’s got Boris Yeltsin eyes

scarfaceLast Wednesday night I posted my most recent column, turned out the lights in my office, walked down eight stone steps, tripped and smashed my face into the side of our house with a thunk that brought everybody running. Ten stitches and two days later I took the picture you see here in which I look way better. So if anybody wonders why I was a no-show tonight at the Computer History Museum’s reunion for the Homebrew Computer Club, this is my excuse. I can’t see well yet and I sure as heck can’t drive. Woz didn’t make it either I’m told.

I wish I had been at the museum, of course. Those who were […]

By |November 11th, 2013|2013, Books, Companies, Family, Health, history, Uncategorized|49 Comments
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How I Refresh my memory

refreshlogoMy friend Paul Tyma (ex-Google, creator of Mailinator, occasional stand-up comic) released a mobile product this week and one thing I find interesting is the difference between how he describes it and how I describe it

Paul:  “Let’s say you had an important meeting with someone you really want to impress. A smart person would probably spend a non-trivial amount of time scouring the internet for information about that person. What are they tweeting about? If you’re LinkedIn to them, then go check out their LinkedIn profile. If you were really interested you might go look up their house on Zillow. Or see how their company’s stock price faired today on Yahoo Finance.”

Bob: “Let’s say you […]

By |September 27th, 2013|2013, Companies, Internet, Phones, Social Media, Software, Startups|24 Comments
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The Secret of iOS 7

airplay1The Innovator’s Dilemma, a 1997 book by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, made the point that successful companies can lose their way when they pay too much attention to legacy products and not enough attention to new stuff. They are making so much money they either don’t see a competitor rising up or are too complacent to feel threatened. In either case the incumbent generally loses and the upstart (usually one of many) generally wins. The best way for successful companies to avoid this problem is by inventing the future before their competitors do.

We see this pattern over and over in high tech. Remember Lotus? Remember Word Perfect? Remember Borland? And it’s not just in software. […]

By |September 19th, 2013|2013, Breaking News, Companies, Computing, Gadgets, Industry, Phones, Product Development, Technology, Uncategorized|173 Comments
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