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Will the iPhone 2.0 be enough for the US?
Boston's business community is filled with bloggers who offer opinions, speculate and - sometimes - even make news. Globe columnist Scott Kirsner compiles excerpts from some recent life sciences and technology postings.
The Apple faithful will be focused on San Francisco today, where His Holiness Steve Jobs will appear at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple is mum as usual, but everyone anticipates an upgrade to the revolutionary iPhone. Joshua Martin is a senior analyst at Yankee Group in Boston who focuses on media and entertainment. On its blog, he addressed the online buzz about iPhone 2.0:
One cannot turn the proverbial Web page these days without finding some mention of the impending next-generation iPhone. Here are the "facts" about the iPhone 2.0, as we know them today:
Despite the rampant speculation, the one question that seems to be oft ignored is: What else can we expect from Apple?
Surely, some consumers were persuaded not to buy an iPhone because it lacked 3G, but these people were certainly in the minority. The fan boys waited in line for hours for the EDGE version and will do the same for the next edition. But the challenge for Apple will be to bring the iPhone to the masses. Yes, adding 3G will be a boon for Apple in other countries where networks are more mature, but in the United States Apple will probably have to do more. Will 3G and GPS really be enough to constitute the next coming of the iPhone?
Link: blogs.yankeegroup.com
At the recent TieCon East conference in Waltham, techies wondered whether the Web 2.0 trend, exemplified by user-generated content sites like YouTube and social networks like Facebook, has become a bubble. Don Dodge, a New Hampshire-based Microsoft executive who blogs, spoke on a panel that explored that question:
Web 2.0 and social networks have already changed the way we interact on the Internet. There have been some successes like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, but future successes are likely to be smaller.
Valuations and expectations are reaching "bubble levels." New revenue models will emerge that leverage our social interactions. Most business cycles run for 10 years, and we are in the early stages of this social network cycle.
Macromyopia, the tendency to overestimate the short-term impact and underestimate the long-term results, is evident today. It is similar to the hype cycle: a period of early hype, followed by disillusionment, followed by real pay-offs and impact. It happens in every business cycle. The question is: Where are we now in the cycle?
Link: dondodge.typepad.com
Jeffrey Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners was one of the first venture capitalists in the Boston area to start blogging. He shared some insight into why VCs don't always return phone calls of entrepreneurs hunting for money:
As one wise old VC once told me, "The trick in this business is to spend very little time on a lot of deals, and then a lot of time on very few deals." In other words, see everything to be a better investor, but exert a very tough first filter so that you only spend time on very, very few deals.
In my experience, a typical VC has the bandwidth to actively "spend time" or actively work on only one to two deals at any given time and perhaps 10 to 20 in a year - as compared to those 300 to 500 they get exposed to.
What's surprising to me is that entrepreneurs often don't seem to know where they stand in the deal process. Admittedly, VCs aren't known necessarily as great communicators. But as an entrepreneur, you should know whether you are clearly one of the one or two most important new deals the VC you're talking to is working on. If not, then you know your deal isn't going to get done, and stop wasting your time.
Link: bostonvcblog.type pad.com.
Read a blog post worth sharing? E-mail kirsner@pobox.com.
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