Articles by Rob Enderle

OK, last week was a really interesting week. We had AMD basically divorcing itself from Intel's model after living under Intel's shadow from inception; we had Google repeating yet another of Microsoft's greatest mistakes; we had IBM repeat a famous political debate by basically saying Oracle wasn't an enterprise vendor anymore; and we had Harry Potter's author begin to kill off publishers and book stores. ...

Last week, HP started down the unfortunate path of taking Oracle to court over the statements it has made about Itanium, the technology HP shares with Intel. This is reminding me a lot of an ugly divorce -- and given that the 140,000 customers Oracle and HP share are kind of like their kids, I think some strong parallels can be drawn. I'll close ...

Apple and Microsoft are competitors, and while both companies are clearly more concerned with Google than each other at the moment, they serve as a great example of why good, well-funded marketing is important. Apple leads the world in the art of crafting perceptions. Though it has a market share that is near insignificant against Windows -- eve...

Last week marked the beginning of a big experiment for me: first living and then retiring outside of the U.S. I figure there are a lot of boomers like me who are exploring this idea as we become increasingly concerned about the costs of living in our chosen country and the inability of governments to balance budgets. My wife and I looked at Cos...

This is turning out to be an amazing decade, with companies getting a rebirth, other firms getting new identities, and still others sliding into delusional obscurity. I understand Bill Gates has wandered quietly back into Microsoft, and he is part of the reason a lot of kids are saying "Bing" instead of "Google" at the moment -- which is good, because both Apple and IBM have passed Microsoft in market capitalization this decade, something that should have been impossible. ...

The Intel-Apple war has been on a break ever since Intel won and Apple moved its PCs to x86. However, Apple has clearly been itching for a rematch with the iPad, and it has been chewing up PC market share at an impressive rate while Intel's been caught napping. Well, Intel has promised 10, count them, 10 new iPad butt-kicking tablets at Compute...

Last week was a really interesting week. Google brought out its Windows-killer product, the Chrome OS, to generally good reviews -- but most of the folks I know who have covered the desktop for years are convinced it will fail. Google also brought out a home automation product and announced a robotic car technology, all of which could benefit from some Apple magic. ...

This last few weeks has been kind of amazing as I've watched companies like Oracle and Cisco, which are well regarded for brilliant moves, seem to suddenly act as if they were naked and wanted to run with scissors. Then, when I was convinced that I'd seen the worst, Sony decided to piss off the open source crowd and now is likely looking at the de...

There is this debate going on in the analyst community with most arguing that the tablet market is like the PC market was, and Apple will once again be overwhelmed -- in this case largely by Google and Android. But a few of us, mostly me, are arguing that it is behaving much more like the iPod market, and Apple will emerge preeminent unless something big changes. Let's see who is right. ...

I've been watching some of the drama surrounding Donald Trump, the concerns surrounding the air traffic controllers, the close call with the first lady, tourists being shot in Florida, U.S. citizens being shot off their jet skis, the inability to control spending -- and the "Shrek" version of "I need a Hero" started playing in my head. We have children committing suicide at an increasing rate and even folks jumping off the Golden Gate bridge again here on the West coast, and I really think a lot of this can be connected back to a government that has simply forgotten about the fact that the country is made of individuals who worked together to fix problems -- not politicians who complained about them. ...

Last week was a busy week that seemed to be filled with crazy people -- some in a good way, most not so much. The most annoying story was that Cisco, which currently has market share leadership in digital cameras with the Flip, is shutting down this half-billion-dollar acquisition after screwing it up. On a positive note, Microsoft surprised us...

Last week, another iPad competitor bit the dust, and so far no vendor has even come close to bothering Apple in the tablet space. In the smartphone space, the only thing that seems to hurt Apple is the carrier and the anticipation of its next phone, which is due shortly but rumored to be delayed. If this were a poker game or any kind of sport,...

Two books came out last week: Idea Man, about (and by) Paul Allen; and The Steve Jobs Way, about (but not by) Steve Jobs. These books reveal differences in the approaches the two men took to achieving their goals, showcasing why Apple is so successful and why other companies just can't make the grade. I think by looking at these two men, we can ...

Last week, Oracle FUD-bombed the Itanium processor. Like Oracle's own SPARC chip and PowerPC at one time, Itanium was supposed to be the future for most everything -- but all of these chips ended up on the largest and most fault-tolerant systems each company supports. Announcing the death of any one of them puts question marks on the class -- a...

Last week, I was at the HP analyst event where DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg got up on stage and gave an example of what every speaker should do -- tell a story. Behind him slides went by, and we even saw a preview of one of the coming movies. Looking back, it was one of the two best presentations of the event. The other, by Chandrakant Patel -- on powering a data center using cow dung -- was actually just as fascinating for much the same reason. ...

I'm writing this before the iPad release last week, so you now know what I don't -- whether it met expectations. I imagine Apple sold out, but things aren't looking so rosy at the moment, and I wonder if it will sustain the kind of growth the iPad 1 did I remain concerned that no other Tablet has shown anywhere near the success of the iPad and that...

The biggest event last week was Apple's launch of the iPad with Steve Jobs presenting it. While many seem to see the new iPad as an iterative release and not as exciting as the first one, I think it will quickly eclipse its predecessor. It is vastly more capable and moves even closer to being a full PC. Fortune released a piece last Thursday th...

Last week, I tried to come up with some epic things I would like to think I'd do were I given six weeks to live -- a rumor that's been floating around about Steve Jobs -- and was as insanely wealthy as he is. The purpose was to focus on something other than the end we will all eventually share. One of the folks commenting on the piece thought I...

One of the sad rumors to break last week was that Steve Jobs may have six weeks to live. I've had several people close to me die of cancer. One stepmother was given a few months, but she actually lived more than a year and did a number of amazing things. Another stepmother died two days after the initial diagnosis, and my uncle died ugly in three months. ...

I'm writing this at the IE9 launch, which happened last Thursday, and this morning I had an epiphany. Don't worry -- I'm pretty sure my meds will kick in momentarily, but until they do, it strikes me that with all the focus on innovation and Apple, Apple doesn't really innovate that much. What it does is focus and out-execute every company it competes with in most every product. One exception is Safari; Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation and Google regularly kick Apple's butt.