Which of today’s technology giants might still be standing tall a century after their founding?

A look at IBM, how they can keep up after a hundred years being in existence.
Nice post, nice view about the strategy and further, about the philosophy of companies like IBM, Apple, Amazon compared with Microsoft, Cisco,...
Short but nice read for a Strategy course.

Why Groupon is poised to collapse

Click on the link to read the review/ critic about Groupon.
Looks like they are carrying out a new way of financing, another type of mortgage lenders.

Another thought, if Groupon wants to stay there in the market for years to come, they might need good people in cash management, cash flow prediction, existing but a bit new type of job is there to do.

Apple WWMC 2011

From the time of my analysis (or or group project) of Apple in fall 2010, Apple has made a big leap with iPad2 and now with iCloud, iOS5 and all the things it has just announced last Monday, June 6th, 2011.

There's not a lot of things to talk about iPad2 for an 'Innovator' group. Yet, there are more and more people who own Apple's product. With iMessages and a lot of features that will be launched in fall this year, there will be a big group of people joining the club. Especially, when iMessage is free, there is no fee anymore to operators. People will just use it because their friends use it. iMessage is default when you send an sms. How much space will be left for eBuddy XMS and WhatsApp? Just space for people to send messages across platform (iOS to Android or Blackberry). It would be interesting to see the effect of iMessage in increasing iPhone users. Probably that is why Apple plans to separate the launch of iOS5 with the expected iPhone 5.

The analysis that we wrote about focus a big part on relationship between Apple and operators. However, once they have become big, it's the other way around; operators need them to attract more customers. The other relationship that Apple has is with third-party developers. A lot of people use iPhone because of nice, cool apps that are designed for iPhone. Now, Apple knows what are interesting to offer to its customers and take a big hit to the developers. iCloud will be there to replace Dropbox, iMessage to replace WhatsApp and the new successful eBuddy's product, eBuddy XMS, Instapper, Camera+ will lose its stand as well. The real threat that these companies should foresee is its dependence on Apple's platform (or any kind) to gain users and revenues, consequently.

Apple's stock price is way there to increase. Thus, for a time horizon of 1-3 years, I would buy its stocks. However, for a pension fund, I am not sure. For that time horizon, probably people will again dump Apple's products, becoming anti-Apple or like what they did before with Apple I and II. Apple now offers a lot of value to its customers. The chance is just that it will be dominant in the technology consumer market. Once, when people only owns iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, using iTunes, iCloud, it will have all the right to set the price to the market and control its relationship with all types of suppliers.

I am just here in one of the exciting time and have a little knowledge to think it will be interesting to see what will be going on in till the time I retire.