Articles by Rob Enderle

The market is in a planning cycle, and analysts are being asked to take a look in their crystal balls and describe what 2013 will look like. Clearly, we will have more bandwidth, 3-D TV will be ramping, and most of us will either be using tablet devices for something or moving to the next big thing. I'm going to look out to 2013 and make some ...

I'm writing this from the Volkswagen/Audi event at Stanford University in California where the German Chancellor is presenting the first robotic car designed to race, without a driver, up Pikes Peak. The event is to open the Whale; the Stanford Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory, which, somewhat sadly, came shortly after NUMMI, the last California car manufacturing site was closed. Earlier this month, I was at HP Labs and saw technology that could vastly alter how we build cities and how we create personal electronics -- as well as a potential iPad killer, being developed initially for the U.S. government, which isn't a tablet. ...

I seem to be getting an increasing number of calls asking me whether Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have a chance as a governor or a U.S. senator respectively. Both are uniquely capable, and both have histories that suggest good management skills that would be critical in California -- a state that desperately needs them. Both are Republicans dur...

Last week was one hell of a week. We had the formal launch of the Core Wars between Intel and AMD, and a little product called the "iPad" entered the market. My biggest concern, thanks to the Lifeboat Foundation, was the Hadron Collider and whether I'd even wake up today. (Since you are reading this, I'm assuming we woke up today.) Thank goodness much of the related news had to do with April 1st pranks. ...

I've seen some amazingly great movies in the last few weeks. I was at Disney World to see "Alice in Wonderland" in IMAX 3-D and watching that movie on a Disney property for this ex-Disney employee was truly magical. Last week, I was at DreamWorks to see "How to Train Your Dragon," and the movie engaged me heart and mind in what was also a magical experience. It is amazing how far we have come, but DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, who spoke to us for awhile, along with a presentation by PhaseSpace, showcased that future films could not only be even more amazing, but also be made for less -- and more often. This last is largely due to technology from companies like HP and Intel, which is what I'll focus on this week. ...

Some weeks, truth is stranger than fiction. As I was thinking that nothing strange would happen this week, up pops a new Google hire, Tim Bray, and he starts trash-talking Apple Let's see -- Google is under investigation by the FTC, stock is down 10 percent, Wave and Buzz are crap, and it is getting its butt kicked out of China. And its new advocat...

I've been struggling with the Google model, which survived the dot-com mess, but its success seems based largely on the belief that advertising can fund everything. If the users are unhappy, well it doesn't really matter. In fact, Google's customers (the folks paying them money) and the folks they actually serve are quiet different, causing me to question the viability of many of their non-search efforts. Often we look at Microsoft's struggle to expand out of Windows and Office and find the result troubling, but if we look at Google's ...

Last week I was asked to comment on a study of CEOs. It found that young ones do better than old ones do, which kind of pissed me off. At the same time, like a lot of folks in my business, I've been looking back at the lessons learned from Steve Jobs, who is kind of the CEO gold standard, and comparing him to Eric Schmidt, who appears to be the most highly paid empty suit since John Sculley, and thinking about the differences. ...

This isn't to ask whether it will be successful. Apple is a master at setting goals and then exceeding them, and a lot of folks are clearly excited about the iPad -- but the first generation iPhone was kind of a mistake that got corrected in later versions. As I look at similar products that seem better thought through, I'm increasingly thinking that Steve Jobs' initial concerns with this offering were well founded and that, at least initially, the iPad will have trouble reaching its potential. ...

This past week, two rather interesting events got me thinking about how Apple, Google and Microsoft seem to be changing places. Microsoft announced Windows Phone Series 7, and Google announced Buzz (also known as "Buzz Kill") into the market. Microsoft kind of pulled an Apple with this, in that it stepped away from the field and created someth...

I spent last week at the annual Intel analyst conference and was impressed by what I saw, but I started connecting the dots between what Apple is doing with the iPad, Google is doing with the Nexus one, Microsoft is doing with the Zune and Xbox, and Intel is doing with its Atom/Moblin efforts, and I had an epiphany. I checked my meds and confirme...

The iPad has captured much of the technology coverage so far this year. It is a poorly named copy of a product that Microsoft launched nearly a decade ago, based on a concept Steve Jobs personally thought was stupid: the tablet computer. Yet Apple has effectively convinced the market that its device is new, different and desirable -- and managed to create a major industry event around it. ...

The technology and consumer electronics markets are awash with companies that seem to be barely meeting expectations or are, like Sony, Sun and Yahoo, on and off death watch. They aren't alone; the relatively new Obama administration seems to also be failing, and the latest State of the Union address wasn't particularly inspirational. Apple jus...

This is an Apple launch week, which means we'll be on pins and needles until we actually know what Steve Jobs is going to have on stage in San Francisco. While there is a lot of drama with any big Apple announcement, there is substantially more with this one, including the unprecedented number of leaks, the location of the event itself, and the ...

Last week, I spoke about how CES was back, and I gave some of the highlights. However, there always are discussions and trends going on behind the scenes, almost-invisible products, and impressions that take a while to form that can be even more interesting. There was one keynote that came close to being the worst I've ever seen; Panasonic kicked...

I was at CES last week, and the magic was clearly back in this show. In the past couple of years, CES has been dominated by one device -- making it more like a one-product waste of time. Two years ago, everyone was talking about the iPhone, making many of us wonder if we were at the wrong event. Last year, it was the Palm Pre, which turned out to be a bit of a flash in the pan. This year, it seemed at first that the Google/HTC Nexus One would steal the show, but there didn't appear to be any lasting buzz on that device by the end of the first day. Attention had shifted elsewhere...

Each of the last five decades in technology was defined largely by the decisions of one of the major vendors: the 1970s by AT&T; the 80s by IBM; the 90s by Microsoft; and the 2000s by Apple. Google is the favorite for defining the 2010s, or teen decade -- and that's a good focus for discussion as we get ready for a battle royal this week between the company of the 2000s and the company of the 2010s.

From a technology perspective, this decade -- with Apple and Google being exceptions -- sucked. There were some interesting things that happened that set us up for the teen decade, though, and that fuel anticipation for the 20s, which a hundred years ago, was actually a decade of wonder and excitement (and had a better name). Rather than focusin...

This is the question that is floating around this year. What is strange is that people act like the anticipated Apple device is made of fairy gold and powered by gnome breath. It will do everything and anything you want because we all know it is surrounded and protected by Steve Jobs' now-famous reality distortion field. Archos has had products...

I've often wondered what you would get if you combined Apple and IBM. The two companies have little overlap today in either customers or products, and both have what the other lacks to grow their respective markets significantly. While the cultural issues would likely make such a merger not only inadvisable but impossible to actually do, both firms could learn a lot from the other. ...