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Posts Tagged ‘Cusp’

Android’s American market share soars, WinMo pays the price

Mobile manufacturer and platform market share stats for the US are in for the month of January thanks to comScore, and as usual, they tell a fascinating (and somewhat unpredictable) story of what’s actually going on at the cash registers. Motorola — which has long since fallen off its high horse on the global stage — still maintains a commanding presence in the American market by representing some 22.9 percent of all subscribers, though that’s down 1.2 percent from October 2009; that’s particularly interesting in light of the Droid’s success, and a possible sign that smartphones still aren’t on the cusp of dominating the phone market overall. Samsung recently touted the fact that it had held onto the States’ overall market share crown, though Sammy was undoubtedly referring to sales, not subscribers — in other words, there are still a ton of legacy RAZRs out there inflating Moto’s stats.

Turning our attention to smartphone platforms, BlackBerry OS, iPhone, and Android all saw gains, while Windows Mobile and Palm both saw significant downturns. You might use Palm’s loss of 2.1 percent of overall market share in a single quarter as a big nail in webOS’ coffin, but we’re inclined to believe this includes legacy devices — and considering the huge installed base of Palm OS-based handsets (Centros, for instance) that are coming off contract these days, it’s neither surprising nor alarming to see that kind of drop. Android’s gain, meanwhile, likely comes in large part from WinMo’s whopping four percent loss — it’s no secret that WinMo 6.x is well past its expiration date with customers leaving in droves (even before Windows Phone 7 Series announcement), and our informal observations lead us to believe that many of those folks are heading for Android. After all, it’s kind of convenient that Android gained 4.3 percent and WinMo lost about the same, isn’t it? BlackBerrys still dominate the American smartphone landscape, and the iPhone market looks like it might be mature for the time being — Apple added just 0.3 percent to its market share in the quarter, possibly a sign that folks are holding out for whatever Cupertino brings us come Summer. Is this a sign that Palm needs to step up its game yet again? Undoubtedly — but at the same time, we wouldn’t call the loss of those Palm OS subscribers a death knell just yet.

Android’s American market share soars, WinMo pays the price originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Open Thread: Old Fogeys v. Young Whippersnappers, Ageism in Tech

In the past, we’ve talked a bit about issues of gender and technology, but today, this blog post brought another important aspect of tech and discrimination to our attention.

We polled some of our friends on Google Buzz and asked whether ageism is something they’ve seen at work or that has effected their lives. And the responses were interesting – although some say they try to be as even-handed as possible, others said that age discrimination exists at both ends of the spectrum, especially when it comes to landing a job.

Let us know your experiences and opinions in the comments.

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What Experts Say

A 2001 article from CIO started a conversation about ageism in IT. The response was dramatic. “Within days of being asked ‘Do CIOs Discriminate Against Older Workers?’ about 200 readers had posted answers; a majority of them gave a resounding yes… workers age 55 and older make up only 6.8 percent of the IT workforce.”

A couple years later, a 2003 study from the International Journal of Selection and Assessment explored how older and middle-aged programmers fared in the tech workforce. Results showed “that age was negatively associated with both annual salary and job benefits levels.”

But in 2009, another study showed what could have been seen as a turning tide. “The study, ‘The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom,’ found that… the United States might be on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom – not in spite of an aging population but because of it… The average age of U.S.-born technology founders when they started their companies was 39.”

What People on the Ground Say

Perhaps the graying set are doing well as entrepreneurs, but what about when they apply to be programmers, information architects, web designers or other traditionally “young” jobs?

In a lively conversation on our Buzz account, Aaron Hayes told us that ageism is alive and well, saying, “I turned 40 this year, and even though I can write Python circles around some… [and] have run several of my own small businesses – somehow, because the metabolic process of my cells has been occurring for several solar rotations beyond a subset of unspoken rules, I can be dismissed by some as a viable candidate for a startup.

“And this apparently because people that have experience clearly can’t have youthful enthusiasm, or passion.”

Even though, as Ruggero Domenichini said in the same thread, older employees might have “less ego, nothing to prove, been through failure [and] lived more.”

And person after person said that they had either hired older programmers and been totally pleased with their fit and performance or – in one case – not hired someone because of age and regretted it ever since.

What Do You Say?

We’re interested to know what your experience has been, either as a younger startup exec faced with hiring decisions or as an older programmer working in IT.

On a personal level, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the older techies in my life – especially as I begin to earn a few gray hairs of my own. My old-as-dirt dad is a fabulous network engineer, and a lot of the best developers and entrepreneurs I know have lived long enough to have a mature, realistic and stable view of their abilities, the ecosystem and their colleagues.

And in an amendment of the famous “Never trust anyone over 30″ quotation, I’d have to say I’d gladly take the word of a 50-year-old who knew his stuff over a 25-year-old entrepreneur starting his first company. And the hypothetical 25-year-old would do well to take his older colleague’s advice seriously, as well.

As always, let us know what you think in the comments.

Discuss

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Week in review: Threadsy tests a way to ‘abhor’ Facebook posts, YouTube serves 1 billion daily pageviews

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Should you be able to “abhor” Facebook posts? Threadsy says yes — “Oh, ‘I bought new socks’ status update. How I hate thee. And now you literally can hate them.”

Virtual goods sales to hit $1 billion as social games pay off big — “Thanks to the astonishing growth of games on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, the U.S. virtual goods market is poised to clear $1 billion in revenues in 2009, more than doubling from a year earlier.”

Web technology is about to change how we learn — “The education industry is on the cusp of being massively disrupted by innovation in Web technology.”

The making of Zynga’s Cafe World, the fastest growing social game in history — “These numbers are unheard of and they raise a lot of questions. While other game makers toil for naught, Zynga makes it look so easy.”

HP brings touch to the mass market with new laptops and desktops — “The highlight of today’s 10 product introductions are laptops with multi-touch touchscreens that work with Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system.”

And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or just fun:

YouTube now serves more than 1 billion money-losing pageviews per day — “Fifteen million viewers watched CSI on Thursday night, making it the most-popular show on television. On that same day, YouTube served over a billion video clips — 66 times the number of views CSI got.”

Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years — “Venture capitalists are a breed in decline.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Technology, not policy, will save the world — “‘I love technology,’ Schwarzenegger said.”

Siemens closer to dominance with $900M in turbine contracts — “Engineering giant Siemens has made its presence felt in the wind business, winning six contracts to build 565-megawatts worth of wind turbines, valued at more than $900 million.”

Aardvark opens to the public, becomes a destination for questions — “The company, which started in 2007 and has grown to about 30 employees, offers a way to tap your social network for answers.”

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If Jason Calacanis Is Against Apple, Who Can Be For It?
It is the end. Jason “The Animal” Calacanis is thinking about maybe quitting using Apple products, reporting that the company has gone all corporate and mainstream and that Steve has lost his hippie, dippy LSD edge. Look at this language, people:

Years and years after Microsoft’s antitrust headlines, Apple is now the anti-competitive monster that Jobs rallied us against in the infamous 1984 commercial. Steve Jobs is the oppressive man on the jumbotron and the Olympian carrying the hammer is the open-source movement

For folks in the tech industry, this is not a new discussion. Another radical visionary, Steve Gillmor, has been hosting this discussion since Apple’s draconian iTunes updates led smart people to *downgrade* their software. Think about that mind bomb for a second: people downgrading their software to maintain their freedoms–is this a William Gibson novel?

Steve Jobs is on the cusp of devolving from the visionary radical we all love to a sad, old hypocrite and control freak–a sellout of epic proportions.

This is not the thought process of a well man. Perhaps Jason spent too much time next to his Tesla roadster or maybe the stress of running Mahalo has finally gotten to him but someone needs to send Jason an iPod Shuffle STAT. Intra-cardial insertion of the Shuffle, much like the needle in Pulp Fiction, has been known to snap anti-Apple zealots out of their madness.

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