Jim Harris

Technology

2018: Huawei’s Year of Opportunity

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Becoming The 2nd Largest Smartphone Maker Globally Smartphone OS war is over. And Android won: Android will finish 2017 with 85.1% market share and iOS 14.7%, predicts IDC. So, there are only two operating systems left standing. Android is dominant by market share and sheer volume of units shipped but Apple is taking the lion’s share of revenue and profit. From the chart above it’s clear that the open source Android operating system was a profoundly disruptive innovation to Symbian, Blackberry and Windows, driving their smartphone market share to basically nothing. Why 2018 Will Be A Great Year For HuaweiHuawei surpassed Apple in market share globally in July 2017 according to Counterpoint. With the release of the iPhone 8 and X, Apple has regained the second spot but some fundamental shifts are favouring Huawei’s continued rise. Samsung Crisis on Note 7 Exploding BatteryOne: Samsung seriously faltered with the fiasco of the exploding Note 7 batteries. Up until that point, I had been a Samsung fan and had been an avid user of the Note 4. I had been planning on upgrading to the Note 7 but the fiasco turned me off. The product recall cost Samsung $6 billion and the stock price in the short term lost $17 billion. The biggest hit, however, was to the company’s reputation. Harris Poll ranks the reputation of the 100 most visible companies in the US and in 2017 Samsung dropped dramatically. In 2016, it was ranked … [Read more...] about 2018: Huawei’s Year of Opportunity

Still paying a fortune to the cable company?

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This column began with a Rogers bill. I was paying $200 a month for cable and a PVR, and feeling gouged. I set about to explore alternatives. The term “cutting the cable” has become popular—a Google search nets 63.6 million results—and there are many alternatives for people frustrated with traditional cable providers. … [Read more...] about Still paying a fortune to the cable company?

2013: mobile continues its march, PCs still sell and no one wants UHD TVs

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Two recent tech events highlighted a fascinating sea change in the global consumer electronics (CE) market. Only two categories in the market are experiencing growth: smartphones and tablets. They combine for 40 per cent of CE sales, worth one trillion dollars annually, but every other category is contracting. This trend was evident at both the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions 2013. Here are the key insights:[...] … [Read more...] about 2013: mobile continues its march, PCs still sell and no one wants UHD TVs

Smart TV’s are re-inventing TV

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The TV has been left behind. It’s a dumb device in an era when notebooks, tablets and smartphones can do so much more, and younger people have responded, surfing the Web, watching YouTube and engaging in social media more than they watch television. All this means TV has been losing its relevance in the digital era.[...] … [Read more...] about Smart TV’s are re-inventing TV

Newspapers are suffering

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It’s easy to blame craigslist, but the real culprit is economic short-sightednessFor newspapers it has been death by a thousand cuts: American readership has been falling by more than 700,000 a year since 2000, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), and revenue was already down when the recession came along and shot another body blow to advertising income.[...] … [Read more...] about Newspapers are suffering

Going green is expensive – myth or not?

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Some executives believe the myth that going green is expensive—and I don’t blame them. When Conservative MP John Baird was Environment Minister, he told a 2007 Canadian Senate hearing that meeting our Kyoto goals would manufacture a recession. I ran into John in Toronto shortly thereafter and asked if he’d seen the just-released McKinsey & Company study showing that 40 per cent of the CO2 we have to cut in North America to meet our Kyoto goals would be highly profitable, and if society invested those profits in the next lowest-cost solutions, we’d get all the way to achieving the Kyoto targets at no cost to society.He hadn't seen the study and wasn't interested when I offered to send it to him.[...] … [Read more...] about Going green is expensive – myth or not?

Smartphones and Tablets are killing other devices

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Tablet PCs and smartphone sales are growing exponentially year over year and, as they incorporate more and better functionality into their core operations, other consumer electronic categories are in decline. The Apple iPad exploded on the scene in 2010, selling 15 million units. Sales grew 222 per cent in 2011, to 56.5 million units (estimate). iPad sales are expected to grow 59 per cent in 2012 and will likely break 100 million units, according to Steve Bambridge of GfK, a boutique research firm working with the Consumer Electronics Association.Read the rest of my column at: http://www.backbonemag.com/Magazine/2012-02/smartphones-tablets-killing-other-devices.aspx … [Read more...] about Smartphones and Tablets are killing other devices

How Skeptics v Realists view Global Warming

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Here is a great graphic from Think Progress Green from an article by Brad Johnson "AMS Certified Meteorologist Mark Johnson Claims ‘Earth Hasn’t Warmed In 15 Years’ ". It shows how the skeptics make deliberate misinterpretations of temperature data. The graphic can be seen originally at Skeptical Science: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1. … [Read more...] about How Skeptics v Realists view Global Warming