The 3 Roles of Alibaba
Alibaba has a lot going on. Parsing through its S-1 is not an easy task. But I have begun to view the company playing three different roles: Alibaba as a commerce platform Alibaba as a ‘financial...
View ArticleBABA: Portfolio Manager Summary
Alibaba is a bet on the growth of commerce in China, not just online commerce but a broad definition of commercial activity. Alibaba is now deeply entrenched in China’s business future. As the economy...
View ArticleCES without the Selfie Sticks: The Affiliate Summit
Sitting in McCarran Airport, listening to the slot machines jingle, I feel an odd sense of deja vu. Somehow, I am back in Vegas less than two weeks after CES. I attended the Affiliate Summit West...
View ArticleChina VIE trouble for BABA?
That didn’t take long. Over the past few months I have been writing (also here and here) about Alibaba (Ticker: BABA). I mentioned one of the key risks with buying BABA stock is that when you do you...
View ArticleWhat Should We Be Looking For?
I had breakfast with Benedict Evans this morning. I enjoy chatting with him, and always learn many things, albeit at the expense of exposing the very large gaps in my reading of English Literature. One...
View ArticleWho Should Attend MWC?
How to approach Mobile World Congress? As I mentioned in my last post, I am now preparing for my trip to Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in two weeks. As with many things, I find that I can be...
View ArticleThe Global Handset Industry is set for Self-Destruct
If a person does the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different outcome, we call that insanity. If dozens of companies in a multi-billion dollar market do it, we call that the...
View ArticleMWC 2015 – A Year of Substance
It feels like the last few years, Mobile World Congress (MWC) has been filled with vague concepts and more marketing than substance. I think there is a change in this, evident at the show. Private...
View ArticleThis is not a post about Bubbles
This post is not about Bubbles, or the popping of Bubbles. If that were the subject, I would have to spend the first few hundred words arguing why I think we are in a Bubble, and let’s face it, that...
View ArticleThe Shape of Bubbles – The Madding Crowd
I posted earlier in the week about my guesses as to how things shake up if (when) the current tech cycle bursts (like a Bubble). And I realized I had forgotten a key component of how things will fall...
View ArticleTechnology as Debt
As a finance person working in technology, I have always been greatly intrigued by the idea of technical debt. This is the idea that as developers build technology products the realities of time and...
View ArticleSympathy for the Desktop – Playing PC Advocate
I think it is easy to forget how deeply embedded PCs are in the world. I was in a crowded San Francisco cafe last week in the middle of the day. Every one of the fifty-odd seats in the place was...
View ArticleThe Sci-Fi Vision of Telecom Operators
I have had a few conversations last week about the future of Telecom Operators. It started when Benedict Evans trolling Twitter with this comment: Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) 2/1/16, 6:13 PM The...
View ArticleD2D Report Preview
This week we are publishing D2D Issue #22, reporting back from our trip to China. Drop us a line or send us an e-mail if you would like to be added to distribution for the full report. Below are some...
View ArticleIs Funding a Game Possible?
Two of our favorite topics for posts lately have been about video games and venture capital funding cycles. In this post we are going to combine those two. Lately we have taken to pointing out...
View ArticleThis is why we can’t have nice things
Recently, a friend of ours at the Haas School of Business asked us to review a case study he was preparing to analyze the poor level of profits that handset makers suffer. As we worked through the...
View ArticleMac on ARM – a few thoughts from the trenches
A lot of smart people are saying that Apple is going to announce its own CPUs at their upcoming WWDC Developer Conference. Having spent many years working to build support for an ARM-based CPU, we...
View ArticleAnarchy in the OS – Revisited
The definition of a ‘computer’ continues to shapeshift. In the future, the term will become almost meaningless as highly powerful information machines get ever-deeper embedded in the fabric of our...
View ArticleEdge gaming components
Edge gaming is very much a platform business, meaning it takes a village to be successful, a whole ecosystem. As such this is not for everyone. By our count there are eight companies with some of the...
View ArticleThe Handset Industry is a Flat Circle
LG, once the third largest mobile phone maker, has announced that it is exiting the business. This news is not surprising, they have been losing money for years, but it is a good opportunity to review...
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