Linked List: January 7, 2014

Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Fast Company Profile of Incoming Apple Retail Chief Angela Ahrendts ★

Jeff Chu, in a profile for Fast Company conducted entirely before Ahrendts took the job at Apple:

For a talented and ambitious merchandiser like Ahrendts, though, revitalizing Apple’s enormous retail business might be the ultimate challenge. The Apple Stores’ annual revenue of just over $20 billion is more than six times Burberry’s, its 30,000-strong staff is almost three times as large, and — due respect to the trench coat — its products have insinuated themselves more thoroughly into consumers’ daily lives.

Interesting comparison to today’s App Store announcement. Apple’s retail stores, which the company started in 2001 and which sell hardware costing thousands of dollars a pop, generate $20 billion in annual revenue. The App Store, which started in 2008 and predominantly sells apps costing a few bucks a pop, is already at $10 billion in annual revenue.

Yet Apple’s retail business has also fallen into relative stasis. Its per-square-foot sales are still the envy of retail — just over $6,000, about twice what runner-up Tiffany records — and net sales rose 7% in fiscal 2013, but per-store numbers were flat, since Apple opened 26 new stores during the year.

Per-store revenue growth would be good for Apple, no doubt. But if Apple’s per-square-foot sales lead the industry, twice that of second-place Tiffany, combined with the fact that Chu himself acknowledges receiving excellent customer service from the stores, what justifies Fast Company’s headline, “Can Apple’s Angela Ahrendts Spark a Retail Revolution”? Just like with Apple’s products, the key to its future retail success is more about iteration than revolution.

When was the last time Tiffany’s retail experience underwent a revolution?

Yahoo Tech ★

Yahoo’s new David Pogue-helmed tech site launches with the simple (and exclamation-mark-free) name Yahoo Tech.

Update: There’s some dispute over what constitutes an exclamation-mark-free name. Here’s what I mean: Yahoo’s logo still has the bang. And some of the headlines end with one — “Come Take a Tour of the New Yahoo Tech!” — but there, I think it’s clearly meant as punctuation for the headline, to convey a sense of Pogue-ish happy enthusiasm, not as part of the name of the site. E.g., here’s Pogue’s first paragraph:

Let us take you on a tour of the new Yahoo Tech. Hey, that’s the site you’re on right now!

I’ve never included the bang in Yahoo’s name, but for years, they tried to assert that the bang was part of it. That one should write, Yahoo! is a website, and not, Yahoo is a website. Thankfully, they seem to have abandoned that under Marissa Mayer. Even the <title> tag on the Yahoo home page now reads simply “Yahoo”.

Android Tablets Now Being Positioned as TVs ★

Makes sense — small tablets are a great form factor for a portable “TV”. But it doesn’t make much sense to pit these against iPads or high-end Android tablets in terms of market share categorization.

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact ★

Here’s a phone announced at CES that caught my eye: the first top-tier specs Android phone in a roughly iPhone-sized form factor. Finally.

Apple: App Store Sales Top $10 Billion in 2013 ★

Good tweet from Horace Dediu on the notion that digital distribution doesn’t pay.

Jessica Lessin: On the Information and How We Operate ★

Jessica Lessin:

Mr. Graham’s said that the reason for the interview was for a profile of his wife, which we published. That is true. But it is only half the story.

The on-the-record interview covered significantly more topics than we could include in the profile of Ms. Livingston. It was more than two hours. Given the unusual length and breadth of the interview, we decided to publish it as a story.

But we didn’t spring it on him. Quite the opposite. We notified Mr. Graham and his PR person and went the extra mile and refreshed their memory on some of the topics. No one expressed any objection.

The lesson: if you’re speaking to a journalist on-the-record, treat everything you say as part of a carefully considered interview — never a casual, off-the-cuff conversation. If you’re speaking off-the-cuff, make sure you emphasize the entire conversation is off-the-record before it starts. And be sure to clarify that both sides agree on what “off-the-record” means.

When a (Partial) Tweet Becomes an Ad, What Are the Rules? ★

Interesting question here. I think whatever you tweet is effectively said in public, and thus quotable. My problem with this ad isn’t that they quoted A.O. Scott against his wishes, but that they edited the tweet without indicating that they’d done so. He did not tweet what their ad clearly suggests that he tweeted.