The new conventional wisdom is that sooner or later, consumers will have to start paying for some of the stuff they currently get for free on the Web.
But will they actually pay up? Here, the conventional wisdom is not so helpful. Nor are studies predicting consumer behavior.
Sure, your iPhone may be cool. But can it turn your oven on, against your will? That feature, apparently, is only available on certain Sony Ericsson models.
From the “that makes sense” file: Smartphones like the iPhone and the BlackBerry now account for almost one in three phones sold in the U.S. And if they keep getting better and cheaper–remember when iPhones sold for $600?–that share is only going to increase.
BlackBerry’s new Tour has garnered fairly positive reviews from the geek press. But you know who really loves it? Oldsters in the 35-49 age bracket. Or at least that’s what a new online brand survey says.
Poor John Squires. The Time Inc. SVP seems like an affable fellow. So what has he done to deserve this impossible task–figuring out a digital strategy for Time Warner’s publishing unit? Or, to put it in Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore’s words, figuring out “how to put the genie back in the bottle”?
The Palm Pre debuts this week. Next week, we should hear about a big update for Apple’s iPhone. And by the end of the summer we’ll have new phones running Android platform. So who’s going to emerge as the winner? Easy, says Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney: It’s Google. But Mahaney isn’t talking about Google’s smartphone platform. He’s talking about Google’s core search business, which he thinks is finally about to see significant lift from mobile users.
Mystery solved, sort of: AT&T is taking the blame for crippling the SlingPlayer iPhone app. The company’s rationale: The iPhone’s too powerful, and our network isn’t powerful enough.
Next to no news from the Apple earnings call this afternoon, which is just the way Apple execs like their earnings calls. Once again, the company provided no information about CEO Steve Jobs’s health except to note that he is still scheduled to come back to work in June. And the company continued to pooh-pooh the concept of netbooks–supercheap, supersmall laptops with very little horsepower that are the hottest part of the PC business right now.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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