Steve Jobs resigned

Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as-CEO-of-Apple.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Letter-from-Steve-Jobs.html

Jobs turned Apple around from the brink of bankruptcy.  It was no small feast to say the least.  What he and Apple impressed me most was the way Apple jumped in and woke up a very competitive and already booming cell phone industry by introducing iPhone.  In 2007, more than 1.1 billion units of cell phones were shipped, while there were only 271 million units of PC shipped in 2007.  Among those, more than 110 million units were smart phones. The number one cell phone vendor in 2007, Nokia, owned at least 36% of the overall cell phone market and over 50% of the smart phone market.  Nokia had a record revenue in 2007 at €51 billion, which was approximately $80 billion dollars on an average exchange rate of 1 EUR to 1.5 dollar.  While the whole electronic-hardware industry looked at the cell phone industry as the main source of demand, Apple walked in with iPhone and told everyone the king has no clothes on.  Given an average lead time of two years for a brand new cell phone, the iPhone project might have started in early 2005.  In 2005, North America was only a barren field for smart phones.

Apple's stock fell only slightly to $373.72, a drop of $2.46 or 0.65% today.  It seems that the market believes Apple now stands firm on the ground, not on Jobs' shoulder.  No matter it is an impression or a reality, Apple will eventually out-grow Jobs.  Some people in the Valley refer Jobs as "micro-management". That is an expression of their own preferences.  After all, Jobs delivered products, revenue and profit to underscore his leadership style.  Not many CEOs on earth can say the same, no matter what their preference in leadership styles is.

Seoul Sausage Co.

I just heard about this company from a friend who went to the 3rd Annual San Francisco Food Festival.

I was told its sausages were sensational.  What is more amazing is that this company has no store front, not in the on-line or mail order business.  It only does catering and participating in various festivity events. On the web site, the company states,

In less than one year this little dream has turned into the longest lines at street fairs, requests for private orders for wineries/chefs, catered events from movie studios & Fortune 500 companies, and requests to attend various festivals around the country. All currently with no food truck and no retail space, but simply word of mouth...

Of course, there are Facebook, Twitter and Yelp in the mix for such a viral marketing effect. This is a great example of finding a blue ocean in a red sea.  When I searched it online, the first few hits were the company's web site, Yelp review, Twitter link and Facebook page. On Yelp review, it has only Los Angeles, CA as a nominal address, but the area code of the telephone number is somewhere near San Jose, California. The telephone number in the company web page shows another area code from San Francisco. You can imagine how dynamic its operation is and a form of telecommuting the company employs.

This company addresses the real value its customers appreciate and cleverly bypasses the overhead that traditionally burdened this industry. At the same time, it leverages all the free marketing resources made available to it. This is definitely a new type of company that deserves a little more attention.

HP/Palm webOS deserves a true steward

Now HP's executive is saying "We stand by webOS", after offically abandoning it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-19/hewlett-packard-webos-software-bought-with-palm-not-dead-dewitt-says.html

I received the WebOS developer blog in my email with the title "The next chapter for webOS", signed by Richard Kerris VP webOS Developer Relations.  In it, it claims the development and innovation will continue, although the planned developer events around the world may have changes.  And one of HP's Senior Vice President Stephen DeWitt said in an interview, "The webOS is not dead... We’re going to continue to evolve it, update and support it. We stand by it."  If you look at the price of webOS tablet went down in the past weekend, those words carry neither weight nor meaning.

In my previous blog, I believed HP should go for products, not licensing business.  Even now there will be no webOS based product from HP, licensing it still makes no sense.  The licensing fee will not recoup the R&D cost, as shown by Microsoft Windows Mobile revenue.  A cost center will not result in a vibrant environment for innovation, which will kill webOS sooner than later.

HP should find a suitor for webOS and sell it, like Ebay eventually did for Skype. WebOS is modern and has a lot of value in it. It is not a burning platform like Symbian and Nokia Series-60. Find a worthy home for the team before they jump ship to Apple and Google and leave the webOS an empty shell.  After all, Palm's office is only 5 to 10 minutes drive away from Google and Apple's headquarters.

HP gave up on webOS

HP decided to stop producing tablets and smartphones based on webOS.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50543.php

It is really a sad yet harsh footnote to the cell phone industry.  I wonder what webOS folks would think if they look at the history of Google purchasing Android, Inc. and the rise of Android phones.  A little more than four years (August 2005 to April 2010) separated the fate of the two companies. Should I say the vision and execution of a company made such differences?  Excellent technologies can go only so far.

Now HP is going back to a Business-to-Business (B2B) company.  Look back not too far into HP's history. Carly Fiorina took HP past the point of no return to a PC OEM company.  The low-margin yet big-volume business impacted the company culture so much that the next CEO wanted a strategy for consumer products.  Or is it the big share of PC revenue demanded a consumer product oriented CEO?  So the next CEO, Mark Hurd, bought Palm and webOS. When Mr. Hurd left HP, the CEO followed, Léo Apotheker, decided otherwise.  People can say anything about his decision on discontinuing webOS.  But no one can say he made a wrong decision in buying Palm/webOS, because it was not his decision.  That fact makes him safe to call the shot in front of the board.

I registered as a webOS developer almost as soon as it is open to the public.  My attention to the platform however diminished as it has never gathered enough momentum.  I hope this blog will not become an obituary for webOS.  But hope against hope, who is to challenge Apple's supremacy of vertical integration?

Google Buys Motorola Mobility for its patent portfolio

Google is going to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50468.php

The patent war in the cell phone industry has not ended but Motorola Mobility has benefited from it already. Google is an Internet service company, a software company, but not a manufacturer, not an expert in logistics.  This is purely a acquisition for Moto's patent portfolio. I do not see Google running Motorola Mobility and producing Google phones vigorously.

Some analysts thought Microsoft might be a winner in this deal, because of doubts and distrusts towards Google among the Android licensees.
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=467053
http://allthingsd.com/20110815/u-s-carriers-silent-on-motoroogle-but-france-telecom-gives-it-a-thumbs-up/
It is just a wishful thinking, in my opinion.  Microsoft was in the market licensing its Windows Mobile OS when Nokia had 60% of smartphone market share in 2006-2007.  The fact of dominant Nokia did not help Mircosoft to a strong second place.  Instead, RIM's Blackberry filled the gap and rose to the second place in 2008 and 2009. When Apple introduced iPhone in 2007 and made its stand in 2008, Android was still in its infancy.  Most vendors went to Google and invested their own resources to develop Android phones instead of diving deeper into Windows Mobile.  Why is that?  I have my thoughts on that, though without direct proof.  It suffices to say Windows Mobile is not attractive enough to OEM vendors given all the incentives and the business environment.

Maybe Google will spin off Motorola Mobility and share the patent portfolio with it once the acquisition is done. After all, it is all about patents and it is better for Google and Motorola Mobility to run separately.