display

Tim Cook was asked the first question (on the iPhone portfolio). His answer is paraphrased here:

We haven't so far. That doesn't shut off the future. Why? It takes a lot of really hard work to do a phone right when you manage the hardware and software and services in it. We've chosen to put our energy on doing that right. We haven't been focused on working multiple lines.

Think about the evolution of the iPod over time. The shuffle didn't have the same functionality as other products. It was a really good product, but it played a different role — it was great for some customers it was strikingly different than other iPods. The mini played a different role than the classic did. If you remember when we brought out the mini people said we'd never sell any. It was too expensive and had too little storage. The mini proved that people want something lighter, thinner, smaller. My only point is that these products all served a different person, a different type, a different need. For the phone that is the question. Are we now at a point that we need to do that?

…

At a macro level, a large screen today comes with a lot of tradeoffs. When you look at the size, but they also look at things like do the photos show the proper color? The white balance, the reflectivity, battery life. The longevity of the display. There are a bunch of things that are very important. What our customers want is for us to weigh those and come out with a decision. At this point we think the Retina display is the best. In a hypothetical world where those tradeoffs didn't exist, you could see a bigger screen as a differentiator.

Full interview here, answer begins around minute 37.

Here is how I interpret the answer:

• The iPhone portfolio may still arrive. It hasn't so far because the cost/benefit is not there for Apple. On one hand it would take a great deal more sourcing effort and risk while dealing with constraints in production. On the other it would not not offer meaningful additions to the customer base. At least so far. The economics and the demand may change (or have changed) and the time will come for a broader portfolio.
• The comparison to iPod is not entirely appropriate because as a music player, the iPod had a relatively small set of jobs to do. It was hired for exercise, escapism, isolation, etc. It was not hired for apps and services which extend the medium itself. In other words it was not a computer. As a computer, the iPhone has a near infinite set of jobs to be done and it's the hundreds of thousands of apps which help it perform them. But as a result the iPhone needs to conform to the dynamics of ecosystems and that means consistency of APIs and user experience. It cannot vary in terms of input methods, or be below minimum requirements of screen size or memory and power.
• Because of the rapidly expanding job space, Apple believes the iPhone was not "good enough" for all these years. The improvements shipped for each generation were all "meaningful" in that they were valuable and absorbable. Users would use the new features (like better screens, cameras, battery, etc.) and they were willing to pay for them (as evidenced by the sustained high average price).
• On the question of what the extension might be, changing screen size is one dimension but it has to be balanced by performance gains that don't detract from other dimensions. Engineering is all about compromise and consumers pay Apple to make these compromises in an intelligent way. Apple does not come to an answer to the question of balance by launching many products and seeing what works. It cannot afford to dilute its brand with a long list of failures. Other brands may not be affected by trial-and-error approaches to the market but they are discounted by the customer accordingly.

 

As first introduced last week, Samsung's revenues have grown primarily due to the expanding volumes of smartphones. In today's post I convert the revenues and operating incomes to US Dollars and compare them to a set of companies.

First, I should note that Samsung has changed both the designation of its divisions and the way it reports revenue. Broadly speaking, Samsung Electronics has four major divisions:

1. Semiconductors. This includes memory products as well as systems such as CPUs.
2. Display products. This used to be called "LCD" but has been re-named Display Products.
3. Telecom. This is mainly mobile phones but includes additional products and services for telecom operators and PCs. The division has recently been re-named IM (IT and Mobile communications).
4. Consumer Electronics. This group has changed names from Digital Media and Appliances to CE. The majority of sales value comes from televisions but also includes consumer electronics and appliances.

The company further combines Semiconductors and Display Products into a group called DS (Device Solutions) and Consumer Electronics and IM into DMC (Digital Media & Communications).

I tried to reconcile these various nomenclatures with color coding in the following graph. Semiconductors are blue, Display components are red, Consumer Electronics are Yellow and Mobile are grey.

Each gridline represents $10 billion.

One more point to note about revenue recognition: Relatively recently the company has switched from reporting consolidated revenues to gross revenues. This means that current sales include inter-segment sales. So, as much as it is possible, the data above shows sales from division to division as well to external customers.

When it comes to reporting operating income, the company offers four segment values: Consumer Electronics (Appliances, TV, "Digital Media"), IT and Mobile (including mobile phones), Display Panel (formerly LCD), and Semiconductor.

I used the same color coding to show the income values in the same scale as the graph showing income:

It's now possible to compare Samsung Electronics with Google, Microsoft and Apple in terms of divisional (as a proxy for product-line) revenue and profitability over a five year period.

At this time, a portion (majority?) of Samsung's grey area in the operating income graph represents the vast majority of profits obtained from Android across the entire ecosystem.

Guessing the next Apple product has become the parlor game of choice for a whole generation of technology journalists and analysts. The premise of the game is that given a track record of breakthrough products, there is always another one just around the corner. Being the one to predict this next breakthrough product creates credibility and demonstrates the domain knowledge of the predictor. If the prediction fails to materialize there is consolation in dismissing the actual announced product as disappointing, unsophisticated or, worst of all, uninteresting.

Most often, these guesses are as much a reflection of the analyst as they are an analysis of the company. Too many predictions are designed to impress or demonstrate the imagination or knowledge of the predictor. They typically anticipate a giant leap of functionality, power or market re-structuring. They envision revolution not evolution; a cutting of the Gordian knot not a polishing of ugly rocks.

Yet nearly all of Apple's launches have been sustaining improvements in existing products, technologies or platforms. To name just a few:

• The iPad is an evolution of the iPod touch
• The iPod touch is an evolution of the iPhone
• The iPhone uses OS X and Objective C from the Mac
• OS X came from NeXT
• The app store market model came out of the iTunes store
• The iTunes store came from iTunes which came first to the Mac as a media sync tool for the iPod
• etc.

John Gruber explained the process last spring as it relates to many of Apple's launches. Although the iPhone did introduce a new user input method and experience that takes consumption in a new direction, its building blocks were there for all to see for many years. The iPhone is a natural evolution of the computer with a handy little "Phone" app.

Likewise, the iPod came seemingly out of nowhere but by watching the original launch you see it as part of a "media hub" strategy that envisions the Mac as a personal server. The very products which ended up disrupting the Mac/PC began as extensions of their victims.

You can trace the DNA of almost all of Apple's products to previous products. If Apple did not have these foundations, the slow-motion revolutions would not have happened. Rather than a deliberate big bang, Apple's disruptions are the result of a discovery process. A test, iterate and improve loop. This is why they seem obvious after the launch but also why they seem to be such an anti-climax.

Therefore, the challenge of predicting Apple's next product should be tackled not only through an act of imagination but by carefully projecting the current products and understanding where they can evolve.

So it is that I approach the question of Apple's TV disruption. My working assumption about the next Apple TV is that it already exists. It's none other than the existing Apple TV, improved.

Here are the clues or hints I noted:

• It uses iOS and the hardware from the devices that run it. It originally ran a PC architecture and shared a kernel with Macs.
• It has been integrated with iTunes media stores (with the notable exception of the iTunes app store)
• It has begun to introduce channels other than downloads (ESPN, Wall Street Journal) thus establishing its own distribution for traditional content
• It is a global product, depending only on the Internet protocols and independent of the balkanized cable standards
• Through AirPlay it is integrated with Macs and Apple devices.
• Through display mirroring, iOS devices can use the TV as an external monitor and can even change their own behavior when doing so

This last point is intriguing. I have not seen discussion of this feature, but if using an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S with iOS 5 and an Apple TV with the latest software updates it's possible to have an iOS device become a controller for TV-based game experiences. Developers are already using the API. When using a pinball game with screen mirroring, the device becomes a controller while the action takes place on the big screen. Switching display mirroring off bring the action and control back onto the small screen. There are still problems with lag and the processors are over-taxed on high frame rates, but the APIs are already there for developers. (I could also mention the potential of new a Bluetooth standard for better wireless response).

What these signals point to is Apple defining the TV as an iOS portfolio product. This means integration with iTunes, including an app store. This, in turn, means unleashing developer/creative talent through new monetization opportunities. This means new user experiences in discovery. This means FaceTime-like communication through the TV. This means many other things but mostly it means that the TV will be a platform product.

The only challenge is a (currently lacking) smooth interface. Perhaps that's where voice comes into the picture. But whether that is built-in at the next rev of the product or not is not the story. The story is going to be the sustaining improvement in the original Apple TV. A wonderfully asymmetric product begging to be ignored. A product that because of its apparent lack of success, effectively hides all its secrets in plain sight.

The bottom line: HP's decision to bundle a tablet computer with its new $399 printer could make trouble for competitors.

HP's New Tablet Could Be an iPad Spoiler - BusinessWeek

HP took the control panel display from a printer and made it detachable. The idea, according to the manager in charge, is that this will encourage printing. Printing is a good business for HP because they manage to charge $7500 per gallon of ink.

I suppose there can be some sense to this idea but I don't use inkjet printers so I can't judge how popular this can be. But the headline suggestion that the new display panel cum web pad is "an iPad Spoiler" calls into question the author's motivations. Maybe he did it for a bet.

But the real gem is a quote from Richard Shim an IDC PC analyst who says "Everyone is trying to figure out the opportunity for these types of devices, how to position media tablets in a way that they don't cannibalize other businesses."

That's an interesting comment coming from a PC analyst. It says that the vendors in the industry are already feeling that the iPad is substituting regular PCs (and hence the need for a response that is sustaining not disruptive).

This acknowledgment means it's only a matter of time before the idea of iPad as PC morphs from crazy talk to conventional wisdom.

"Conventional notebook PCs are 'motherboard-centric,' with all the other functions in the system—-such as the display, the keyboard and audio—-peripheral to the central microprocessor and the main printed circuit board at the core," Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager for iSuppli, said Wednesday. "With the iPad, this is reversed."

User interface components total 44% of the total bill of materials (BOM).  The display is 26% and the touch assembly is 12%.  Memory is 11% (16G variant), processor is 10%, and case a 4%.  Batteries make up a large part of the rest (37%).

I knew of Dick Brass at the time when he was promoting ClearType inside Microsoft. We met his team to consider licensing our table recognition algorithms for the production of ebooks for Microsoft Reader, an early ebook reading solution for the PocketPC. It was then I learned about plans for “reading solutions” from Microsoft, almost 10 years ago.

Now he writes about the tragedy of Microsoft’s complete absence from the future of mobile computing.

"...why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter."

Part of the answer, Brass writes, is that Microsoft put too much faith in aggressive managers (like himself) who nurtured a culture of conflict. But mostly, he says, it's because of inter-departmental bullying by Microsoft's established divisions and a "dysfunctional" corporate culture that thwarts innovation.

To support his contention, he offers a couple of telling anecdotes in which he does everything but name names:

Microsoft's ClearType display technology languished in the lab for years, he says, because engineers in the Windows group "falsely claimed" it made the display go haywire, the head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches, and the vice president for pocket devices was said he’d support ClearType only if Brass transferred the programmers to his control.

In 2001, the vice president in charge of Microsoft Office refused to modify Word, Excel and Outlook to work properly with Brass' tablet. Result: "if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow... To this day, you still can’t use Office directly on a Tablet PC. And despite the certainty that an Apple tablet was coming this year, the tablet group at Microsoft was eliminated."

Brass believes that the intense, sometimes cut-throat, internal competition that Bill Gates fostered among his managers has devolved into something uncontrolled and destructive: "The big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence."

He also gives a nod to the modular/integrated dichotomy to which we are always pointing accusing fingers:

“Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware. This made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but now makes it far more difficult to create tightly integrated, beautifully designed products like an iPhone or TiVo. “

"It’s not an accident," he writes, "that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left."

Read More (New York Times)...