Articles by Rob Enderle

I was reading James Kendrick's column on Windows 8 tablets over on ZDNet last week, and he is clearly having trouble adapting to what is becoming a tablet world. James and I came from the first age of personal computers. I'm pretty sure he's younger than I am, and I think he is showcasing what will be a problem for many of us who grew up on PCs. Bigger is better, and tablets aren't bigger. [*Correction - Aug. 13, 2012] ...

We watch citizens overthrow governments and assume the same thing couldn't happen here. But we have had one big civil war in the U.S., and several states -- including California, where I live --have been talking about getting out of the U.S. for decades. What appears to keep us together isn'tthe political structure; I think you could argue the USSR's was actually stronger, and it fell. It is theappearance that the government is representative. What if a majority, or even a massive minority,believed it wasn't -- much like what happened in the Civil War?...

The details of the recent Colorado massacre are bothering me this week. What bothers me the most isthat both political parties seem to take an event like this and use it to further an agenda. Theright wants everyone to get armed, and the left wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. Thefirst would likely result in lots more people gettin...

I've been watching the battle for the White House with some trepidation, largely because I believe that given how dysfunctional Congress is, even a god would be ineffective as president. I voted for and have largely been disappointed in Obama who has so far repeated most of Jimmy Carter's mistakes. I haven't yet been a supporter of Romney, who ap...

I was doing background on a recent piece on Forced Employee Ranking, a process that ensuresincompetence in companies, and found that it was sourced, as a failure, to Jack Welch -- the guy credited with turning around GE. I began to wonder if much of what he was credited with actually created whatnow appears to be a cancer in that company, and in Microsoft, and that the reason folks haven't been able to fix it is because it came from such a well-regarded expert. But given how widespread this practice is, and how stupid and suicidal it has become, I now wonder if Jack should be credited with crippling the U.S. -- and I'll bet his practices weren't limited to these shores.

The last time we had a major "social networking" type of effort it was with collaboration, and theposter child for the effort was Lotus Notes. It largely failed -- not because the idea wasn't a good one,but because the company fundamentally didn't understand that the market was being made hostile tothe concept. In short, while collaboration techno...

The iPad is an interesting product. It is basically a light Mac netbook lacking a keyboard but with touch. Had any other company brought this to market, it probably wouldn't have sold. The most successful product in its class that isn't an iPad is the Samsung Galaxy tablet, and it so close to an iPad that a judge just concluded it's an illegal...

Last week, Microsoft effectively ended the model that created it. This shouldn't have been a surprise,as the model hasn't been working well for years and, as a result, Microsoft has been getting its butt kicked all over themarket by Apple. Well Microsoft apparently has had enough, and it decided to make afundamental change and go into hardware. L...

When testing a new operating system from Microsoft, finding the right hardware is often the biggest problem. Many of the negative reviews of Windows 8, including my own, are tied to the hardware that just wasn't designed for it I was at Microsoft's TechEd last week, and after hearing presenters drill down in detail on the specs for what an ideal Wi...

Windows 8 is a make-or-break platform for Microsoft and likely the most complex operating systemlaunch ever attempted. It comes at a time when Microsoft is losing share on both operating systemsand browsers, when Apple has once again replaced Microsoft at the top of the tech heap, and manywould argue Google is on a fast path to second place. Microsoft is bringing out its big guns, but itis far from the user-focused company it was when it rose to dominance. Still, it has far moreresources...

Any vendor can be beaten, and Apple was beaten badly in the years between Steve Jobs' terminationat the company and his triumphant return. On the other hand, Apple continues to execute very well,even though Cook is making what appear to be critical early mistakes in terms of priorities The company does look vulnerable, which is why I'm suddenly in ...

I've been up to my armpits talking about Facebook for most of this month, and maybe because I'munusually dense, just realized that Facebook is a new kind of dot-com. By this I mean its revenue andprofit are based on a series of false beliefs. Unlike the first dot-coms, which failed, Facebook does haverevenue and profit, but just like them it has b...

With Facebook now public, the search is on for that next big-idea company that can excite the market. Coincidently, Nvidia has its Emerging Companies Summit about this time of year, where it has a series of sessions that allow each firm the opportunity to present what makes them unique and powerful. Since I sat on one of the panels tasked with ...

Last week was rather quiet except for the increasing drama surrounding Facebook and what was to be their $100B IPO. It could still be, but thanks to its young, inexperienced, and clearly still-maturing CEO, it found itself digging out of an avoidable hole. Its experienced executive team was by all reports doing a terrific job until Zuckerberg decided to show up at an IPO pitch in a hoodie, showcasing what was seen as massive disrespect for the financial analysts he was meeting with. ...

This occurred to me last Thursday when first-quarter PC sales came out. Apparently, sales are up 21 percent year-over-year and HP retook the lead from Apple in this segment. In this report, Apple's numbers include iPads, and sales for iPads collapsed in the first quarter. This got me thinking of the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail w...

Last week, I was at the Dell annual Industry Analyst Conference, and it suddenly struck me that we are looking at a very different technology market this decade. Apple is expected to slide, largely due to the firm's inability to replace Steve Jobs; the dynamic that created Microsoft is changing, and analysts are questioning the firm's relevance as Dell and HP ramp up their own software efforts. ...

Demo is a fascinating show. What you see is a string of companies that each have six minutes to pitch their products to an audience of media, investors, other companies (who might buy them), and peers. My initial thought is that my friend Carmine Gallo, who wrote The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and teaches people how to present, could mak...

One of my favorite lines from the original "Conan" movie came when he was asked "what is the best in life?" Conan's response: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!" Maybe I watch too many old movies, but I could swear I saw three companies channel Conan recently. ...

The top technology company of the 80s was IBM, 90s was Microsoft, last decade Apple. No company made it across more than one decade as the top company and the trend was away from IT (IBM) and toward the consumer/buyer, suggesting that RIM's refocus on IT is clearly pushing upstream. What is also interesting is that the 80s' IBM and last decade's...

I clearly hit a nerve last week when I comparedMeg Whitman's moves at HP to Tim Cook's at Apple. I do sincerely think Tim Cook was set up to fail. Steve Jobs didn't hire Cook to replace him -- he hired him to do the jobs he didn't want to do. This is why a lot of great companies slide. The existing CEOs see replacement candidates as rivals, so they make sure they don't have the skills or otherwise can't do the CEO's job. ...