The Catalyst Code

Apple’s iPhone is scheduled to hit the Cingular shelves late June. Until then Apple is following the tight integration/walled garden strategy that made its iPod-iTunes combo the gorilla to beat in the digital music world.
A recent posting on seekingalpha.com noted that Apple is also keep third-party apps off of iPhone. The author speculated this […]

VuDu, which was profiled in the biz section of today’s New York Times, is the latest entrant into the race for viewing movies at home on television. With some ex-TiVo execs in control, this new company is going to be challenging Apple, Microsoft and a host of others.
Using computers to distribute and play movies […]

“Sold on eBay, Shipped by Amazon.com”, says the headline in the biz section of the NYTimes today. This is a great example of Amazon’s efforts to use a catalyst strategy to drive growth and profits.
Originally, Amazon was an on-line version of a large bookstore. But with its investment in a software platform for buying […]

Apple provides a cautionary tale to anyone who is thinking about the catalyst strategies that have driven much of the IT growth in the last twenty years and are powering Web 2.0 ahead.
Apple’s profit soared to its highest quarterly level according to the company’s second-quarter release yesterday. Interestingly, although almost half its profits […]

On Forbes.com today, I have an article that argues that its the form factor that will save the newspaper industry from further demise:
“The newspaper business has a simple model: charge advertisers for getting access to readers whom you attract with relevant content and cheap prices. That’s been a great model for a few centuries now, […]

Those who share my skepticism of the future of contactless in the U.S.–or at least the hype surround it–may see the same thing going on in London where merchants have been slow to join the move to contactless.
I actually think contactless will take eventually off in London. Lots of Londoners have contactless cards that […]

MySpace got slammed in BusinessWeek for preventing people from using third-party widgets for their pages.
I think they got a bad rap. MySpace is a platform where people can meet just like a shopping mall, a nightclub, or the floor of an exchange. Companies that operate these kind of platform businesses have to do two […]

Look to Asia if you want to see what’s going to be happening on your mobile phone in the United States in a few years.
The Japanese and Koreans have been far ahead of us in introducing mobile phones. And they are creating lots of services on top of those phones that will migrate to […]

In a recent American Banker (subscription required) article, Dan Wolfe asked “How Far Will In-House Shift Go at B of A?”
That’s in response to reports that this enormous bank will scale back its bill-payment relationship with CheckFree. It is a good question not just for this Charlotte-based megabank but for all the banks that are […]

Visa has increased its interchange fee rate again, continuing a trend towards higher interchange fees. Merchants will no doubt complain about the rapacious card systems and policymakers may increase their scrutiny of the systems that handle an ever expanding portion of transcations in this country.
But before everyone gets of their cudgels it is important […]