Japanese manufacturers (sony, panasonic, canon, sharp) have long been the established brand names for consumer electronics products until Korean manufacturers (Samsung,  read more »

FCC finally approved the rules for the new 700 MHz spectrum that will be auctioned off next year. Of course FCC is expected to raise as much as $10B-$15B from this auction but that's not the point. The most significant provision passed this time around is for "open access". 22 MHz of the 60 MHz spectrum will be auctioned off using "open access" provision which will allow any cell phone device and any software to work on the network built by an operator using this piece of the spectrum.  read more »

No one can argue that iphone launch had the sizzle that hasn't been seen before. Selling 500,000 phones in a little over a day (up to Saturday) is amazing. Consideringno 3G support,$499 and $599 price points and the fact that95% of the phones sold are the more expensive and higher margin version. This is new product introduction at its best.  read more »

I was at a business dinner organized by Silicon Valley Bank a few nights ago along with a few other CEO clients of theirs. It was good to hear and share thoughts about globalization, wage inflation, innovation and different views about the economy. Everyone shared their frustration about (difficulty in) hiring, wage inflation, on-site vs. offshore development etc. During the course of discussion, one of the CEOs asked me "will you start your next company in Silicon Valley"? "Absolutely" was my answer which surprised many CEOs. However, it shouldn't come as a surprise to mos  read more »

I have been fascinated by all the debate around the inefficacy of Cost-Per-Click (CPC) model prevalent with search engines and shopping comparison sites. In his December 4 article in the New York Times, Bob Tedeschi highlighted some of the online shopping newcomers who are attempting to differentiate themselves from the three leading, multi-million dollar shopping sites,  read more »

There was a well-written article in Wall Street Journal today about venture debt and its virtues. You can read the article summary here. You need subscription to read the complete article. Besides the fact that the article started with Retrevo, Pui-Wing did a good job of presenting different viewpoints about the venture debt from entrepreneurs, venture capital investors and venture lender  read more »

Jim Samples, the head of Cartoon Network resigned according to NY Times. Samples, who had been with the network for 13 years felt compelled to step down amidst all the public scruitny and bad press TBS got for the guerrilla marketing around''Aqua Teen Hunger Force''. Of course no uplift in viewership week to week despite the publicitydidn't help the cause. It underscores theresponsibili  read more »

A public apology and $2M settlement with local authorities is what TBS had to pay for their guerrilla marketing. Of course theygot the publicity that they wanted for their show in any case :-).Here is the link for more details.

Yes, we all know how big the search advertising market is. Just look at the results announced by Google last week. We also know that online is still only 6%-7% of total advertising spend in the US. So, what's going to drive the growth in online advertising? Will advertisers keep pouring more money into text-ads displayed right next to search results at the expense of print, radio, television, billboards etc? I think not! There are some really interesting things (call them experiments  read more »

It is very easy to get lost at CES when there are 2,700 exhibitors displaying 20,000 consumer electronics products. From the sentiment on the show floor, I gathered the following interesting trends:  read more »