Linked List: February 27, 2012

Monday, 27 February 2012

Ze Frank has a Kickstarter campaign to bring back his show:

In 2006, I launched a show called “The Show With Ze Frank.” It was one of the most strange, exciting, difficult, and amazing things I have done so far. I think it is time to do something similar, what with the economy in the crapper and the election coming up. If Newt can do it, so can I. So can we.

Hell yeah, I’m in.

Why Android Is Faring So Much Better in Phones Than Tablets ★

MG Siegler, responding to the aforelinked “there’s no organized way for consumers to recognize it as a viable platform” interview with Andy Rubin on Android tablet sales:

Okay, if that’s true, why isn’t the same true for Android phones, which are obviously selling very well?

It may be because the organizational entity that Rubin fails to mention isn’t Google, but the mobile carriers. And right now, the mobile carriers don’t matter nearly as much in the tablet space as they do in the smartphone space.

Maybe that changes, maybe it doesn’t. But to me, this is Rubin essentially admitting that Android’s rise in smartphones has less to do with Android, and more to do with the carriers. In that light, Google’s decision to turn their backs on their original ideals for Android and instead get in bed with the carriers was a smart one.

My hypothesis has long been that Android has very little traction in and of itself. What has traction is the traditional pattern where customers go to their existing carrier’s retail store to buy a new phone, listen to the recommendations of the sales staff, and buy one of the recommended phones. Tens — hundreds? — of millions of people have done this and walked out of the store with a new Android handset. (By my theory, this is why Android phones are so under-represented compared to the iPhone in terms of usage — things like mobile web traffic. A lot of people think of them just as phones.)

There is no such traction for the idea of going into your phone carrier store and buying a computer. That’s why carrier-subsidized netbooks didn’t take off, and that’s why carrier-subsidized Android tablets haven’t either.

Google to ‘Double Down’ on Android Tablets in 2012 ★

Nilay Patel, covering MWC for The Verge:

It’s no secret that Android tablet sales have lagged far behind Apple’s iPad, and Google’s planning to do something about it. In a meeting with reporters today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Android chief Andy Rubin called the 12 million Android tablets sold thus far “not insignificant, but less than I’d expect it to be if you really want to win,” and said that “2012 is going to be the year that we double down and make sure we’re winning in that space.”

Rubin said that the biggest problem for Android on tablets is “there’s no organized way for consumers to recognize it as a viable platform,” and that Google wants consumers to see its tablets as part of the broader Android ecosystem.

In a separate article, The Verge confirmed with Rubin that Google’s “activation” numbers include each unique device only once, and don’t count based-on-Android-but-not-using-the-Google-experience devices like the Kindle Fire or Barnes and Noble Nook.

Apple has sold a little over 50 million cumulative iPads to date. Just me or does it seem like you see a lot more than five iPads per Android tablet in the wild? (A guess: a lot of junky 7-inch Android tablets gathering dust in drawers.)

The Eleven Companies That Have Been the Biggest by Market Cap ★

Interesting visualization from the New York Times.

Eric Raymond’s Advice to Mobile Carriers: Drop the iPhone ★

Eric Raymond, back on February 8:

OK, so there might be a second level to the argument: each carrier might be thinking that if it doesn’t carry the iPhone it will have its marketshare eaten by others that do. The trouble with this theory is that Android is still growing userbase and marketshare faster than the iPhone. And though T-Mobile (the one carrier without iPhone) ain’t doing so well, nobody in the industry thinks lack of iPhone — as opposed to, say, weak execution and lack of the capital mass to pursue its buildout — is its problem.

Actually, that’s what everyone in the industry thinks is killing T-Mobile, including T-Mobile’s CEO:

Without the iPhone, T-Mobile lost 706,000 contract customers in the fourth quarter of 2011. In fact, Apple’s iPhone was mentioned a total of seven times in a press release issued by T-Mobile, well more than any phone that the carrier actually does offer.

“Not carrying the iPhone led to a significant increase in contract deactivations in the fourth quarter of 2011,” T-Mobile USA President and CEO Phillipp Humm said.

Back to Raymond:

From any carrier’s point of view, the case for dumping iPhone, or at least threatening to do so in order to renegotiate Apple’s subsidy requirement away, seems pretty open and shut.

The problem the carriers face is not that they can’t turn a profit selling the iPhone. It’s that selling an iPhone is not as profitable for them as selling other cheaper phones (which cheaper phones still come with the same data and voice plans, and same two-year contracts, as the iPhone). But if they don’t carry the iPhone, customers who want the iPhone will leave for a carrier that does carry it. What the carriers want is a world where the iPhone doesn’t exist or isn’t so popular.

Dell Executive: ‘We’re No Longer a PC Company’ ★

Nicole Kobie, PC Pro:

Speaking at the launch of new enterprise hardware at an event in Twickenham, West London today, the president of Dell’s enterprise solution group Brad Anderson said: “We’re no longer a PC company, we’re an IT company.”

I say just shut the company down and give the money back to the shareholders.

(Via The Verge.)

Arrested for Breaking the Law of Large Numbers ★

Dr. Drang:

I don’t really have a problem with the central premise of the article, which is that Apple can’t grow forever at the pace it’s been at recently. I’m not sure why such a self-evident truth needs to take up space in the New York Times — any company that’s growing faster than the economy as a whole can’t continue to do so forever because eventually it would have to become larger than the economy it’s part of — but then I don’t understand why the Times publishes a lot of things.