Blog articles from 09/2014

In my last blog post , I commented on the AVG Technologies NV acquisition of San Francisco-based Location Labs . This week, I was given the opportunity to discuss the merger with Location Labs’ CEO, Tasso Roumeliotis, and Jason Finkelstein, the company’s vice president of marketing. We discussed the company’s history, the fit between the two companies, and the business of selling value-added services. Background and Company History Location Labs began as WaveMarket...

Alongside the headline-grabbing Apple Watch and the new, improved, and enlarged iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, comes the most eagerly-awaited news for those in the payments and retail space: Apple Pay. Apple has sat aside and watched while major competitors got a several-years-long jump on the mobile payments marketplace, only to founder and generate very little traction. As is its custom, Apple strategically assembled all necessary pieces of its planned product first and then waited for...

In a feature-packed event, Apple unveiled its next generation products and new services. while the two iPhone 6 models are impressive from design to specs, the real show killer is the new Apple Watch. Introduced with the familiar “one more thing” tagline, the Watch is a square-sized timepiece billed as “an intimate way to connect and communicate,” and a comprehensive health and fitness monitor. Although it is thicker than I think, the clickable crown on the side is a true...

As I've studied trends in the Internet security and parental controls market over the past year or so, multiple conversations with major players in this space have come back to one main thought - it is incredibly difficult to sell stand-alone features in this market. No matter how innovative a solution may be (for example, the ability to analyze a child's activity on social networks to determine the threat level), product managers believe that their ability to integrate features into...