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May 25, 2007

Intel has built a laptop just one quarter of an inch thicker than a Motorola Razr. In addition it is loaded with high-end features, state of the art wireless connectivity and other bells, whistles and microphone arrays. The laptop looks like jewelry according to some and is intended to get the market more jazzed about laptops and technology in general.

 

The question I have always had is why Apple designs look so good and why every PC maker can’t design worth a damn. Sony does it best but still, no one is as good at Apple.

 

Can’t someone even copy them??

 

In the car market, virtually the entire country of Japan copied Germans for a decade to gain share. The original Mazda RX-7 in the early eighties looked like a Porsche 924 from the front. You could only tell the difference from the rear.

 

Now of course Japanese makers have their own identities but when the Japanese auto makers wanted share – they looked to the Teutonic country for serious design inspiration.

 

So perhaps Intel will push the badly needed innovation along so other computer makers can take the ideas here and run with them.

 

Here is a BusinessWeek article for more.

May 25, 2007

May 25, 2007

I came across this study which shows students don’t care what country a cellphone comes from and I think in an increasingly global world this trend will continue. In the US, players like Nortel (yes they are officially Canadian but may as well be American), Cisco and Avaya have no problem taking the majority of communications spending.

 

I wonder how much of this spend in the US is due to corporate decision-makers identifying these companies as domestic.

 

Just as this is the case in the US, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Siemens enjoy similarly dominant positions in their home communications markets.

 

As these students who have less national loyalty enter the job market one can imagine the competitive pressures will only increase causing manufacturers to have a more difficult time competing in their home markets.

 

Thankfully this is a global trend and domestic companies should be able to make up for any lost share at home with increased share abroad.

 

One final thought. Would tech companies be better off branding themselves as American when they sell here? I think so.

 

Toyota who is not an American company has billboards in the San Francisco Airport touting how many people they employ in the US. By the way the number is north of $32k.

 

It seems to me that at least while there is some loyalty to country of origin, companies should play this card more.