Metue.com

Corporate takeover battles are full of strategic shifts, risks and gambles. Poison Pills, Golden Parachutes, Offers and Counter Offers.  It’s a brinkmanship game.  Intrigue and misdirection are to be expected.  Given that, absent all the evidence, it can be difficult to judge the good from the bad when looking in as an outsider.  One thing that’s not hard to judge is the explicit opinion of expert consultants.  And when one calls your plans “nuts?” That’s not good, far from it.  Still that’s exactly the boiling cauldron of hot water Yahoo’s board of directors and CEO Jerry Yang have found themselves in this week.

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Earlier today, in light of recent revelations about Yahoo’s handling of the Microsoft merger offer, investor Carl Icahn went public with his latest words discontent.  His letter, which was filed with the SEC as part of the public record, is reprinted below.

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[Update June 4: Japan was up for grabs and NTT DoComo was rumored to be front runner for local iPhone distribution there. In a surprise twist, Apple appears to have opted to give the lucrative contract to number three provider, Softbank. Softbank has just over 18.8m subscribers, equal to about 18.8 percent market share. They also have only about one third the subscriber base of NTT DoCoMo but they are growing more aggressively.]

The anticipated d-day (delivery day) for iPhone 2.0 is rapidly approaching.  With it, the buzz machines are in overdrive and speculation about features and functions is bordering on frenzy.  Some outlets are showing “leaked” pictures, others claiming the inside track on feature sets.  Amidst this circus, which seems to be running without need of further factual fuel, Apple has been steadily working a different agenda:  expanding their potential market through new global carrier partners.  The depth and scope of this new found reach, from India, to Scandinavia, to Hong Kong, by the numbers, and in graphics, is as impressive (if not more so) than the volume of hype.

This edition of Metue’s “By the Numbers” report takes a one stop look at the iPhone by carrier relationship.  Like the game of risk, this one is all about Apple’s sweeping tide across the map of the world.   

For the quick overview of this data, there is a visual map.  It shows existing market penetration and carrier partners.  (Clicking the link, or clicking the thumbnail image above, will feature the full size version.)  

For greater detail, tables presented below run through the data used for the map.  These include a chronological list of carrier partnerships announced along with the geography covered and total available subscribers per carrier. Click to Read More

At this week’s D6 trade conference a question was asked of Rupert Murdoch about Carl Icahn’s grab at Yahoo.  Mr. Murdoch, often frank and to the point, replied “that’s not serious. He just wants to make a few hundred million bucks.”

Accurate or off base, one mogul’s insight on another is always fascinating.  Here, I’d suspect the conclusion is true as well.  Icahn is a special kind of value investor – he looks for corporate weakness and tries to turn it into short term investment opportunity.  He’s an opportunist imbued with the mentality of a trader, together mixed in with the instinct of a predator and the guile of a poker player.  He’s honed his game over years of practice.  The playbook is in memory; tried and true.  Yahoo, as a target,  was looking weak.  The opportunity was there.

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Cable companies have been driving their use for years.  Building B, now called Sezmi, is pitching a unique flavor of their own.  Vudu has an on-demand-only version.  Netflix just began offering a variant with Roku. Tivo’s got a few too.  Still, for all the history, experimentation and evolution, despite the massive volume in use around the country, the days of the TV set-top box may be numbered.  At least that’s the case for Cable TV decoding boxes thanks to a new deal.

Tuesday, Sony signed an agreement with the 6 largest cable operators in the U.S. (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks) to standardize technology that will allow future TV’s to receive “two-way” cable services without the need of a separate, decoding, cable box.

The deal will pave the way for more “interactive” TV features in the future. 

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There you are, rocking out to your favorite rock song, drumming your fingers to the guitar riff… or maybe you are 30 minutes into an important phone call, the other person waiting for your reply…  or you’re working away on your laptop, caught up in the middle of something urgent. You’re doing something important. That’s always when it happens. The batteries die.   In the blink of an eye a digital nightmare begins.  It takes just a blip of a second but in that time unsaved work is lost.  Calls are missed.  Songs interrupted.   It’s something that’s happened to us all, a consequence of our digitally connected era.  And it is something inventors and engineers have yet to find a solution for.  But they are trying.

In Apple’s Cupertino research labs, one idea being explored is small scale solar.  In fact, according to reports on the Macrumors website Apple has even filed a patent that aims to harness solar power to fuel future generations of portable devices (iPods, iPhones, Macbook’s etc).

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From futuristic “Cloud Computing”, to search, from advertising to applications, Microsoft and Google have been battling each other for greater share of Internet audiences and eyeballs for a few years now.  By last June, digitally indexing books looked set to be another one of the fronts in which the companies would face off.   What a difference a year makes.  This week, Microsoft quietly discontinued their Live Book Search project.

In a blog post on May 23rd, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s VP of Search, Portal and Advertising, made the disclosure. Click to Read More