Article 14; The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up

This week’s article is titled “The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up” and was written by Steve Lohr of the New York Times. The author refers “Fleet-Footed Start Up” to companies that make there way into fruition via a slimmed down business plan. The recent surge in the popularity of companies starting this way is first seen through the example of Eric Ries of Grockit, an online education network. Supposedly he is the man who actually coined the term “lean start-up”.

“His inspiration, he says, was the lean manufacturing process, fine-tuned in Japanese factories decades ago and focused on eliminating any work or investment that doesn’t produce value for customers”. Also a proponent to the subject of lean start-ups is a man coming from an entirely different perspective than Ries. Steven Blank, a 56 year old “serial entrepreneur”, describes it as “lean manufacturing for start-ups”.

“Since 1978, he has been a founder or early employee in eight start-ups, both winners and losers”. His job today is to “advise start-up companies and teach at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley”.

As far as internet companies are concerned, the author notes that they “have steadily taken advantage of the falling costs of getting up and running — often spending just hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the millions that were required several years ago”. He also adds that “the lean start-up formula adds management practices tailored to exploit the Web environment”.

The goal as seen through the eyes of Mr. Blank is to “accelerate the pace of learning. A start-up is a temporary organization designed to discover a profitable, scalable business model”. The author further comments that “many young Internet businesses have embraced the lean start-up principles of beginning small and getting products into the marketplace quickly in pursuit of paying customers.”

Finally, the change that Ries and Blank have been part of is affecting the investors themselves. These venture capitalists will have a shrinking role in seeking and backing promising young entrepreneurs.

Main Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/business/25unboxed.html?ref=technology

Second Article:
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/09/lean-startup.html

Article 13; Getting What You Pay for on the Mobile Internet

This week’s article response is to an article written by Kevin J. O’Brien of the New York Times. The article delves into the current craze for mobile data sharing via the mobile networks that are becoming more and more popular these days. The subject is mainly of deciding whether or not to continue down the road of “all you can eat” type mobile plans for consumers. This type of plan is what the industry calls plans that include unlimited services on smart phones.

The spotlight on the subject falls on a Nordic Telecommunications operator. “When TeliaSonera, the Nordic telecommunications operator, switched on the world’s fastest wireless network last December, customers quickly ratcheted up their consumption of mobile data tenfold”. This network is called L.T.E, or “Long Term Evolution”. It is with this relatively new technology that researchers feel the all you can eat mentality will not hold.

The problem is that “network operators fear that flat-rate plans will eat into profits or even fail to cover costs”. Obviously, before too much of that would be allowed to happen, the market would shift to higher pricing to balance with the huge upswing in demand. “Finding a way to make mobile profitable in the medium and long term is one of the industry’s big priorities,” said Mike Roberts, an analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

To better explain the effect of L.T.E in Sweden, I quote Anna Auguston of TeliaSonera: “In 2009, the mobile data on our network in Sweden increased by 200 percent but the number of subscribers increased just 60 percent”. According to Anna, “Clearly, it was not a sustainable model from a business perspective to have a single, flat rate”. As it stands, “top executives at AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica have all recently called on the industry to move away from flat-rate data plans, although only Vodafone so far has attempted a tiered pricing plan.”

Main Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/technology/internet/19iht-tiered.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology

Second Article:

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/12/will-flat-rate-pricing-make-mobile-data.html

Article 12; Apple Edges into Selling of App Ads

This week’s article was obtained from the New York Times website, and was written by Brad Stone. The article is titled: “Apple Edges into Selling of App Ads”. The article discusses the new desire that Apple Inc. has to include ads in all of the applications that function on their products.

New software has been developed called iAd which can be used on the iPhone, iPod and iPad devices. The offer from Apple to application developers was to give them 60 percent of all revenue obtained from the ads that ran on their programs. Steve Jobs, chief of the Apple company, commented that unlike Google: “Search is not where it’s at” on phones, he said. “People are not searching on a mobile device like they are on the desktop”.

For this reason, Apple looked to adding ads to applications for maximum exposure to mobile device users. To the consumer, this is good news in terms of cost. “This is not a get-rich-quick scheme for Apple,” Mr. Jobs said. “This is us helping our developers make money so they can survive and keep the prices of their apps reasonable.”

Michael Gartenberg, a partner with the consulting firm Altimeter Group, added the comment that “It shows that Apple is really committed to building out a rich apps ecosystem, which has always been their main differentiator from competitors”.

The iAd software will be part of version 4.0 of the Apple iPhone Operating system. “That software will also include one much-anticipated feature, the ability to run multiple non-Apple applications at the same time”. This feature will not fully run on “older iPhone 3G.” That is, some features of the new 4.0 version will not work. As for the release date of the new OS version, “the new software will be available for owners of recent iPhone and iPod Touch models this summer, and for the iPad later in the year”.

Main Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09apple.html?ref=technology

Second Article:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-iAd-Could-Generate-Billions-in-Revenue-Says-Analyst-136641/

Article 11; Across the Country, Fans Gather for iPad

The apple iPad is a new device that hit the streets early on Saturday April 3rd. The article chosen for this week’s blog discusses the significance of the release of the new device and why people react the way they do to electronics produced by the Apple Corporation.

The title of the article is “Across the Country, Fans Gather for iPad”, and was written by Brad Stone of the New York Times. The fact that people are becoming so infatuated with the release of the iPad can be explained by nothing other than “it’s a culture”. One fan quoted in the article was reported saying: “No other company can drop a device and generate this much energy. Every big brand is envious of what Apple can do”. That statement cannot be too far from true. Specifically for this new iPad device, there has been an enormous amount of buzz in the media anticipating its release.

Jessica Pansica, a 30 year old married woman living in San Francisco further strengthens the claim that Apple followers are part of a culture and a community. “I have no idea what he’ll do with it”, she said of her husband. “I’m sure he’ll use it a lot, whatever it is. He told me I’m not allowed to open it”.

Another Apple customer, Tracy Kahney, was reported saying: “We’re totally excited. It’s going to change everything”. She was there in line with her nine year old son Lyle, who “fidgeted uncomfortably in the cardboard iPad costume she had made for him”.

As far as the actual performance of the product, the author says that the iPad has generally reviewed well. There is one major drawback however that does not seem to faze the number of folks anxiously awaiting its release. “The ability to run more than one application at a time, for instance, and lack of support for Adobe’s Flash, which means video on many web sites will not play”.


Main Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/technology/04ipad.html?ref=technology

Second Article:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-04/apple-s-ipad-probably-beat-estimates-signaling-tablet-revival.html