Apple won about 8% of global business and government spending on computers and tablets in 2012, Forrester Research says, up from 1% in 2009. By 2015, Forrester estimates that figure will climb to 11%. The numbers exclude the iPhone, which may be the most widely purchased Apple product by corporate customers. It is often Apple’s gateway into a business.
All three brands were seen as innovative by consumers, so what sets Microsoft apart? While Apple and Samsung battle it out to reign supreme with the coveted Millennial generation, Microsoft has quietly stolen the consumer technology crown by becoming more trusted and essential across multiple generations. The very ubiquity that perhaps renders it uncool turns out to also be its strength.
In the OS market, Android continues to be the OS of choice across all devices (see Table 2). Gartner estimates that Android will reach 1.1 billion users in 2014, a 26 percent increase from 2013.
Mr. Zuckerberg says he is aware of the risks, but notes that user activity still is rising. The company does more than 35,000 surveys a day to monitor user sentiment, and the “driving force behind everything is that we’re trying to build the best experience for mobile,” he says.
When your own employees don’t use or support your product, the problem is with the product, not the employees.
Robert Scoble talking about Google Glass on Daring Fireball.
I’m trying really hard to avoid using my phone when I’m out in public, talking to friends, etc. Call it a semi resolution for 2014. I feel like my personal goal is fundamentally at odds with Glass-style wearable computing (meaning stuff that focuses on augmenting visual reality).
In a place where engineers have reigned supreme, the new tech talent war is for designers. Tech companies are focusing not just on the behind-the-scenes technology that makes a site or app run, but also how it looks to users and how attractive and intuitive it is — analyzing things like shadow, color and font.
“Silicon Valley’s New Obsession With Beauty” via the New York Times
Having worked on enterprise productivity software almost my whole career, I’ve seen firsthand the shift from basically ignoring design – “just make it grey!”, they said – to bringing design, interaction, and visual disciplines into the core product team.
Your pricing page is the center of your universe. Everything you do, from your marketing and sales to your product development and support, works to drive people to that page, convert them, and keep them coming back.
Yea. It’s that important.
“The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year” via Price Intelligently
Some super productive people don’t waste their time on the small daily decisions that take up much of our brain space. Prerna Gupta, chief product officer of social music app Smule says she’s able to tackle big picture problems by eating the exact same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. She calls it “reducing decision fatigue.”
“11 EXPERT TIPS TO HELP YOU BE MORE PRODUCTIVE IN 2014” via FastCompany
I only realized how much I try to “reduce decision fatigue” after a colleague saw my Outlook calendar several years ago and was “blown away” (his words) by the amount of personal appointments and color-coding – think “eat breakfast”, “vacuum house”. I explained that my calendar and ToDo lists help me establish daily routines and get certain things ‘out of my way’ that I know need to happen regardless of what else comes my way.
But the “no sales people” mantra isn’t what I’m here to take on. It’s the second belief system that is even more engrained and even more wrong. Many young startups are being advised not to have a professional services business and in my opinion this is a big mistake.
“One of the Biggest Mistakes Enterprise Startups Make” by Mark Suster.
When I first joined Microsoft ten years ago and started to build software in the Office group, I spent some time learning about how we actually sold the software to enterprise customers. I setup some coffees with “Field Sales Managers”, “Technical Account Managers”, and even got to listen in on a few sales calls with big enterprise customers.
My eyes couldn’t have been opened wider; the complexity of sales channels, SKU’s, and VAR’s made me quickly realize and appreciate the importance of a dedicated sales group. At the same time, I was concerned by how far removed I was as engineer from the actual customer – how do you balance out the complexity of selling to various, complex customers while not slowing down development?
Thankfully Office has a long history of rich and consistent interactions with its big customers. One of my favorite activities was participating in an internal conference each year where some of our biggest enterprise customers came to Microsoft campus for a few days. It was part networking event and part product demo fair, with the goal of getting critical feedback from our customers about what we were building in Office while we were still coding. It was incredibly helpful as an engineer to learn about the unique technology challenges they faced inside their companies (i.e. amazingly complex deployment topologies, geopolitical issues that dictated purchasing policy, governmental regulations, etc.).
I learned quickly that building and selling products to enterprise customers was complex, but more importantly that the best enterprise products are developed via great relationships between the product team and the individuals that will use it.
…In New York, at least, Craigslist went from being the centralized clearing house for everything to, well, a shitty alternative to other apartment rental and classified goods sites. And where New York goes, the rest of the world usually follows.
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3024211/nine-tech-companies-wed-be-surprised-to-hear-from-in-2014
Back in Seattle we used Craiglists for everything, but I’ve personally had a harder time selling things on it since we’ve moved to NYC. As surprised as I was to see them on this list, it does make me stop and question how they’re going to fare given how many new players are entering the sharing/selling market.
#neato 