market

Talk with John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, and he'll tell you that his website is one of his most valuable business tools. It's often the beginning point to a customer relationship and is also often the source of a deal closing. Few understand web strategy as well as SugarCRM.

JBoss might well be among that few. I was reading through an internal presentation from JBoss and continually find myself impressed by how well Marc, Rob, Bob, and the others grok'd the importance of the web to their business. JBoss knew who was hitting its website, what they were doing there, and how to nurture that initial interest into a sale.

Take a look at the slide to the right. IBM is the master of selling to the CIO and pushing its technology down into an enterprise. Open source generally works in the opposite fashion. You start with the developer/architect and "bottom-up" adoption of technology until it's pervasive enough to catch the CIO's attention...and her wallet.… Read more

I've definitely learned something in recent weeks about reacting to the inevitable problems that will happen in life--how it can be possible to turn a problem into a huge opportunity, but also how a problem can become an even bigger problem overnight with neglect.

Perhaps it was inevitable for Apple this year, as the nearly unprecedented iPhone hype from this summer was followed by a surge in Mac shipments. Peeved by their experiences upgrading to Leopard, some high-profile Apple customers have taken to the Internet in recent weeks to complain, suggesting that Apple is leading them on with the … Read more

Ed Zander is stepping down as CEO at Motorola, having overseen a boom time and a gradual decline. While there are probably many inter-twined reasons for Motorola's lack of performance after it hit the big time with the Razr, many will point to the lack of innovation following on the back of that spectacularly successful phone.

To his credit he was able to spot the potential of the Razr while it was still in development, and encouraged getting it to market rapidly. He recognized that it was just what Motorola needed to re-energize its image outside the company (which … Read more

Hewlett-Packard extended its lead in the worldwide PC market in the third quarter, increasing its shipments at more than twice the rate of the rest of the industry.

Shipments from all manufacturers increased to 68.1 million, or 13.8 percent, from the previous year, and 11.1 percent from the previous quarter, according to iSuppli, a market research company that tracks the PC industry. The third quarter is traditionally a good one for computer makers because of increased purchases during the back-to-school buying season.

HP's shipments gave it claim to 19.2 percent of the PC market, followed … Read more

The Putting People First blog by Experientia has pointed me toward the excellent essay "The Long Wow" by Adaptive Path's Brandon Schauer. Schauer outlines a vision of creating lasting customer loyalty and brand value that runs counter to the fixation on quick wins and instant gratification, which many companies, under the pressure of shorter product life cycles and CMO tenures, seem to pursue these days. He defines "The Long Wow" as "a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again."

This goes far beyond adding new features … Read more

Here's a link to a presentation I gave last week. Forgive me for the "conversation 2.0" moniker but it's a catchy way to pinpoint what's happening right now in the world of marketing. Marketers and brands have always had conversations, but at a much slower pace and mediated by professional parties. That's no longer the case. Conversation 2.0, that is, the Web 2.0-enabled conversation, shifts places and times; it is ubiquitous and doesn't pause--it is, in all senses of the meaning, a "never ending conversation."

Thus, "social … Read more

Once upon a time there were no iPods, iPhones, Xboxes, Blackberrys, or Tivos. Really, I'm not kidding. There were PCs, though. And they were really expensive. But we didn't have anything else to spend our money on, so that was OK. We paid $2,000 for our PCs and liked it.

Back in those days, there were three microprocessor companies--Intel, AMD, and a little Texas (it's an oxymoron, I know) company named Cyrix. If you don't recognize the name, that's because Intel had such a lock on PC makers back then that Cyrix's processors were sold primarily through the third-party reseller channel.

It's a popular misconception that Cyrix "cloned" Intel's processors. Cyrix's processors were actually all original designs. In fact, Cyrix's manufacturing partners--initially Texas Instruments, later IBM and ST Microelectronics--licensed Cyrix's designs for their own branded processors. … Read more

Last week, I explained why high tech isn't known for its stellar marketing. Well, if you'll permit me to continue to throw stones from the comfort of my glass house, I'd say its branding isn't worth a damn, either.

Mothers should love their children, right? Then why do high-tech mother companies give their spin-offs such stupid names? Do they hate their offspring? It's not that far-fetched. They already saddle them with tons of debt and other baggage. Maybe a stupid name is just their way of saying, "Don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out"?

Or maybe they're just trying to toughen the company up for the real world, as in Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue? I seriously doubt it. … Read more

A sense of order has been restored to the North American TV market this quarter.

A few months after newcomer Vizio stunned the flat-panel television industry by ranking No. 1 in market share for the second quarter of 2007, the old stalwarts have reclaimed their positions. Samsung moved back to No. 1 in overall flat-panel shipments with 11.8 percent of the total market, according to DisplaySearch. Vizio fell to No. 2 with a 10.2-percent share, down from 12 percent the previous quarter. The rest of the list includes Sharp at 10 percent, Sony at 8.6, and Funai (… Read more