Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Nokia Fends Off Google by Purchasing Symbian

Nokia recently announced their intention to purchase the remaining shares of Symbian and make the Symbian O/S available for free.

http://www.reuters.com/article/CMPTRS/idUSL246322920080624

As stated in the Reuters piece this was an obvious move by Nokia to head off Google's entrant into the free mobile O/S space; Android.

Device manufacturers, large corporations and even consumers now will have additional choice of mobile O/S because of this move. But is it necessary? Or desired? MySQL was purchased by SUN last year and has seemed to lose momentum. It will be interesting to see how Nokia attempts to invigorate the Symbian O/S.

If you are a mobile application developer wondering which O/S's you should be supporting take note of Symbian with it's European market share and keeping the geographical location of your target markets in mind; act accordingly. Android by Google is already delayed in its release. Remember never bet your business on vaporware! Build your apps for operating systems that are available today. Let your competitors ride the "bleeding" edge. Settle for the leading edge within a conservatively defined market space.


James Gingerich
http://softwaresalespersoneducation.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesg2006

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Microsoft Won't Be Saying "Yahoo!" a Year From Now!

By now everyone has heard about the $44.6 billion takeover Microsoft is making of Yahoo!

But isn't this just the mere mating of two dinosaurs in the online advertising space?

According to Forbes, ( http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-yahoo-merger-tech-cx_bc_db_0201dealstrength.html ) Microsoft's online business racked up $248 million in losses for the past quarter in December while Yahoo's income fell 23% from the prior year's Q4 to $268 million.

No doubt this is Microsoft's counter-punch to Google's left hook ... Google's web-based office application suite that has scored a direct hit on Microsoft Office's soft underbelly. Google also tagged Microsoft with a stiff uppercut by announcing this past Wednesday that its own earnings, largely from online advertising revenue, jumped 17% over the previous year to $1.21 billion! Any boxing fan knows that if you move in on an opponent too soon you're going to get tagged!

Perhaps one day Microsoft will be historically viewed as no more than a Mike Tyson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson ) of the software industry. "The baddest software company on the planet" who viciously knocked out early 19 or so opponents (Borland, Apple, Netscape, etc) before running into Buster Douglas (Google) who handed Iron Mike his first defeat. Any school yard bully is never the same after his first defeat.

And Microsoft will be no different. Yahoo plus MSN does not a Google make! Without a haymaker acquisition of a real quality search engine Microsoft will lose its fight with Google. Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo is nothing more than a desperate weak jab thrown in the last round of a fight that has already been decided.

Bill Gates' biggest fear during his long and successful career was that the next Bill Gates would do to Microsoft what Bill had done to IBM. Make a huge fortune on something the incumbent giant overlooked. With IBM it was Gates not the incumbent giant who understood the value of an operating system.

$44.6 billion for Yahoo clearly shows that Microsoft doesn't quite understand the concept of "value" in the online advertising space.

Could it be that Bill Gates' upcoming retirement is his way of throwing in the towel early to avoid the eventual knockout he forsees coming Microsoft's way?


James Gingerich

Sr Partner Account Manager
Sybase iAnywhere
jgingeri@ianywhere.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesg2006
http://softwaresalespersoneducation.blogspot.com/

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Do as I Say Not as I Do.

The Winner of the 2007 "Do as I Say Not as I Do" Award goes to Forrester Research.

Turns out that in November 2007 an employee of Forrester had their notebook stolen from their home.

Problem. The names addresses and Social Security numbers of past and present employees were on the notebook. Was the file encrypted or the notebook password protected? As yet we don't know.

Read the article for yourself at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2228887,00.asp .

If you google the terms "Forrester Research" and "Data Breach" ( http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=data+breach+Forrester+Research&btnG=Search&meta=) you find out that Forrester is one of the high tech industry's consultant companies. A Gartner competitor. They sell hi-tech consulting and research reports to large firms. They have published quite a few papers on the subject of data breaches and security and one would assume that they would have taken a little more care with their own data.

I wonder if any of the Fortune 1,000 firms who spent good money on data breach and security reports from Forrester will be asking for a refund?

James Gingerich
Sr Partner Account Manager
Sybase iAnywhere
jgingeri@ianywhere.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesg2006
http://softwaresalespersoneducation.blogspot.com/

Monday, January 21, 2008

Sun Acquires MySQL.

Why isn't the Open Source community protesting?

Where are the demonstrations?

Like the JBoss sellout almost a year ago. Nothing is said.

I wonder how much Martin Mickos made on this deal personally? The company was sold for over $1 billion. Did it make more than $60 million in revenue last year? Was it profitable? Or did the last two rounds of angel funding just manage to keep it alive?

How much of the $1 billion will go back to the Open Source Community?

Zero.

And therein lies the irony.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080116/tc_infoworld/94628;_ylt=AuY9uRHV5FNT737oee.BhMrw7rEF

Fanatic open source proponents who enjoy condemning commercial software vendors for charging for software need to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. For open source vendors have been exploiting them far worse than any commercial software vendor ever could.

Commercial software vendors pay wages. Developers get paid for the work they do. The commercial software vendors own the code.

Open Source software companies don't pay wages. Developers don't get paid for the work they do. The Open Source community owns the code. But the concept of MySQL just got sold out from under them for over $1 billion dollars.

If I was a developer who contributed to the MySQL code I'd be strongly asking; "Where is my dividend cheque?"

Martin Mickos is much more of a capitalist than Bill Gates ever was. He made his first billion from a software company much faster than Bill Gates and he managed to figure out how to run a software company without paying most of his developers.

Even Bill Gates wasn't able to pull that one off.

Congratulations Martin!

Remember Icarus from Greek mythology Martin? He flew to close to the SUN, his wings melted and he fell back to the earth. Could you be a modern day Icarus? Brought back to earth by a modern day class action law suit? I can't wait to find out how this chapter of Open Source mythology ends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus