David Haskin's Most Recent Posts

Palm and Motorola changed the nature of mobility in the 90s but both are now staggering. A close look finds that both companies have one problem in common -- and it has nothing to do with the iPhone.

Paying to get a bloatware-free laptop is like giving bullies your lunch money to avoid getting beat up. No wonder Mac market share is increasing so rapidly.

It's bad enough that Nintendo scored a virtual zero in the latest Greenpeace rankings of consumer electronics vendors. What's truly galling is its attitude toward corporate responsibility.

Technical limitations and monopolistic thinking mean that, despite predictions, mobile broadband won't replace Wi-Fi hotspots for a long, long time.

There are a lot of benefits to advertising on mobile phones. Unfortunately, none of them accrue to to users.

A European cellular operator is showing us the convenient, flexible future of mobile VoIP, but don't expect U.S. carriers to hope on the bandwagon anytime soon.

As Mozilla is learning, cellular operators don't want open Internet access on their 3G networks. But the winds of change are in the air.

Does Gary Forsee's forced resignation as CEO of Sprint indicate the eventual end of the company?  I believe the answer to that question could be yes if the board and shareholders have lost their nerve for the company's WiMax gamble. 

Clearly, the board held Forsee accountable for Sprint's significant loss of cellular subscribers to its larger, more aggressive competitors, Verizon Wireless and AT&T.  In addition, the board seems to be fearful that Sprint's attention to its core cellular business is being compromised by the mobile WiMax network it is building.

Sprint and Clearwire will team to provide nationwide mobile WiMAX service, which is yet more proof that, in business, rarely do courage and vision go unpunished. 

In simple terms, Sprint had the vision and resources to develop a bold if risky plan to roll out mobile WiMAX nationally.  The Clearwire deal highlights how Sprint's shareholders and Wall Street analysts lost their nerve.

Sprint will either succeed wildly with its WiMAX initiative or fail miserably and become a takeover target. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

I came to that conclusion while working on a special Knowledge Center feature on international wireless data connectivity for the print version of Computerworld, which appears this week. In my part of the package, I discuss the confusing welter of future wireless broadband technologies. The flavor of mobile broadband that we're closest to seeing is mobile WiMAX and Sprint's effort is currently the largest deployment in the world, by far.

Leave it to the recording industry to do the right thing, then charge extra for it.

Steve Jobs deserves credit for lobbying record companies to drop digital rights management (DRM). He finally convinced one -- EMI -- to drop DRM on its music offered via iTunes. That's good news for those of us who regularly wrestle with DRM, which can truly gum things up on media players and computers.

But if you want DRM-free music, you'll pay $1.29 a tune, a 30 percent premium charged by the record company and iTunes to do the right thing. Its kind of like a pet food company taking toxic material out of its product and charging more. Or a car company fixing a poorly engineered engine and charging more.

The mobile industry is abuzz about mobile advertising. To me, it's a bit like watching bulldozers tear down a section of rain forest to put in a strip mall. The time to stop it is now.

Mobile advertising was a hot topic earlier this century before the bubble burst. It is certainly the driving force behind all the buzz recently about an alleged Google phone and is a red-hot topic at this week's CTIA Wireless trade show in Orlando.  Yahoo! also is pushing hard into mobile advertising.

Apple could unleash Apple TV this week, and this device, not the iPhone, could become the most important Apple product launch since the original iPod.

That's because the stakes are much, much higher for Apple TV than iPhone. If iPhone succeeds, it will bring lots of revenue into Apple, but it basically is just an iPod with phone capabilities and a unique user interface. Apple TV, however, could open a whole new market for Apple and also has the potential to bring Internet distribution of movies and television into the mainstream.

WiMAX provider Clearwire cleared about $600 million in its initial public offering Thursday, prompting me to wonder: Are the cellular carriers punting away the billions of dollars they've invested in their 3G cellular data networks?

First Palm and now Alltel. These two companies reportedly are on the sales block and, while there might be sound business reasons for acquisitions, neither deal would be good for consumers.

Palm seemingly has lost its ability to innovate at a rapid enough rate. It's not that company isn't smart enough – it is. It's just that the company isn't big enough – it doesn't have enough resources – to innovate at the breakneck speed required for success in today's mobile industry. It's the big players like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung that have those kind of resources.