I’m a big fan of digital challengers to old technopolies — I’ve moved everything I can from big telco to MVNOs, big bank to neobank, cable TV to Netflix and its ilk, from big taxi to ride hailing. But there are plenty of challenges. One of them is this, highlighted by Chris Skinner on his … Read more
photo @arubin via twitter The smartphone hasn’t changed much, at least in terms of proportions, since the first iPhone (the iPhone belatedly adopted the 16:9 aspect ratio most other phones had long assumed in 2012 with the iPhone 5). Yes, Samsung made it bigger, an idea considered dumb at the time but one which has … Read more
The transcript of my BBC World Service piece on wearables. Reuters original story here. Forget ‘wearables’, and even ‘hearables’, if you’ve ever heard of them. The next big thing in mobile devices: ‘disappearables’. Unless it really messes up, Apple is going to do for wearables with the Watch what is has done with the iPod … Read more
The path to a wearable future lies in academia | Reuters: My oblique take on wearables For a glimpse of what is, what might have been and what may lie ahead in wearable devices, look beyond branded tech and Silicon Valley start-ups to the messy labs, dry papers and solemn conferences of academia. There you’d … Read more
This is a column I did for the BBC World Service, broadcast this week. There’s been a lot of talk that the big boys — by which I mean Apple and Samsung — are about to launch so-called smart watches. But how smart does a watch have to be before we start strapping them to … Read more