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Everything You Need to Know About Facebook IPO [Infographic] | Smedio

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook IPO [Infographic] | Smedio.

40 Epic Marketing Insights From Google [Data]

Ever needed a compelling, reliable stat to help make a point, round out a blog post, or make your ebook even more data-driven? Think Insights with Google, Google's new information and resource hub for marketers, has got you covered!

Officially out of beta today, Google's new resource offers helpful tools, studies, trends, stats, and videos to give marketers the data they need when they need it. Use the Real-Time Insights Finder to gather information about your business' target audiences, or simply browse through the site's Facts & Stats. Pretty handy, huh? That's not all, so give the site a breeze-through, and start incorporating some valuable insights and data into your marketing efforts.

We've found some pretty awesome marketing stats you can use, for starters. Check them out!

Internet Usage

1) In the last 4 years, the web has gone from 100 million websites to 250 million. (Source: Netcraft, Dec 2010) Tweet This!

2) 75.5% of the US population uses the internet. (Source: eMarketer, January 2011) Tweet This!

3) Millennials engage in over 14 different internet activities, while those ages 65+ engage in mainly 7. (Source: Generations Online, Pew Internet 2010) Tweet This!

4) 67% of consumers researched online prior to purchase during the holiday season. (Source: Post Holiday Learnings for 2011 Google/OTX, Jan 2011) Tweet This!

5) In 2011, the average shopper consults 10.4 sources prior to purchase, twice as many as a year ago. (Source: Google/Shopper Sciences, Zero Moment of Truth Macro Study, U.S., Apr 2011) Tweet This!

6) Nearly 50% of US internet users will redeem an online coupon this year. (Source: eMarketer, May 2011) Tweet This!

7) Online advertising spending is shooting upward, passing the $30 billion mark in 2011 and approaching $50 billion in 2015. (Source: eMarketer, June 2011)

via blog.hubspot.com

Not only is Groupon expensive for merchants, it also damages their reputation: Study

New research conducted by John Byers and Georgia Zervas from Boston University and Michael Mitzenmacher from Harvard University reveals a fascinating downside to merchants running group buying deals: they hurt not just the wallet, but the reputation, too.

The hammer has hit the nail on the head many a time when discussing the financial burdens merchants must bear to endure the supposed benefits of tossing their lifeline into the firey daily deals space. But up to this point, no detailed, quantifiable research has targeted insight into another key aspect of how these deals influence merchants' success: reputation. 

My immediate guess was that daily deals boosted rep—a silver lining to the dark, shadowy cloud companies like Groupon hide behind. But as it turns out, the opposite is true.

This chart shows that running a Groupon offer has two distinct effects. The first is that you get a boost in Yelp reviews. The second is that more of your Yelp reviews are poor. And the affliction lingers: Yelp ratings increased in volume and continued to decline in positivity even after a full 6 months post-Groupon. Ouch.

The "why" of this effect remains unclear. Are merchants failing to deliver positive experiences to the influx of new customers? Are complex or erroneous Groupon deals causing confusion among consumers? Or are more bad businesses than good businesses using Groupon and simply getting more awareness of consumers, exposing their negative elements?

Whatever the reason, this is more convincing data suggest merchants ought to be wary of the daily deals space.

Credit: Technology Review, arxiv.org/abs/1109.1530.

Source: TechVibes : http://www.techvibes.com/blog/not-only-is-groupon-expensive-for-merchants-it-also-damages-their-reputation-study-2011-09-13#

 

More Letters from RIM Employees, following the initial BGR post below:

LETTER 1

This letter brilliantly articulated just about everything I’ve thought and/or heard relating to the company in the last two years.

I was an employee at RIM for a year and a half. I worked in the legal and business affairs departments, and despite having originally thought I’d landed the jackpot job-wise, it took no time for me to begin planning my exodus.

My first week started with a complete change in my title and duties without anyone telling me, and when I dared ask what was happening, the director (my boss) and her BFF the OD business partner ganged up on me and threatened to let me go, setting the tone for the remainder of my time there.

Over a year an a half, the four of us in the same position dwindled to just me and yet I was responsible for getting all four jobs done for the better part of a year, since this is how long it took the department to hire other entry-level people. Two individuals who had less education and experience (not to mention drive or intelligence) than me were promoted several times while my boss continued to tell me up and down that I had reached my ceiling at RIM due to my lack of education (two degrees!) and experience (5 years!)–as an administrative assistant. Rather than attempt to fight this system I figured I could transfer departments, only the company policy requires the supervisor to act as a liaison and reference for internal applicants. The insanely high turnover rate meant the department head wouldn’t let anyone go, in addition to refusing to promote from within (pets excepted). People were pitted against each other and an incredibly tense and hostile work environment was fostered. People around the office started referring to the office politics as “Survivor: RIM edition.” And we all remember the great movement to make recycling physically impossible across the entire company because one person let some confidential information slip.

Then, as I was saving up to return to school and make a better life for myself, I received a series of nasty emails from HR letting me know that since my boss had failed to log my vacation time a year earlier on SAP (despite my insistence on her doing it at three different times), I would have two full paycheques deducted to “pay back” the company for what was being portrayed as my mistake. I never received an apology and almost had to drop out of school due to the loss of a full month’s pay. On my last day my boss deliberately avoided me at all cost. The best part is that I recently heard that my boss just got promoted to the VP of the business affairs department.

I write this not to rant about my discouraging situation (it was a few years ago), but rather to relate that my experiences seem (even now as I maintain contact with many work friends) to be the rule rather than the exception across the company. Individuals who have fresh ways of thinking and who try to do things in new ways are not only reprimanded, but demoted (did I not mention I was also demoted at one point for asking too many questions?). Passive-aggression fills the halls where collegial interaction should thrive. The amount of red tape required to get just about anything done is exhausting, slowing progress and removing all incentive for employees at any level to innovate. Success cannot be borne of a 2005 status quo when the world looks a lot different now than it did even 12 months ago.

Despite what I endured at the company, I continue to support RIM as I love its products and sincerely wish it the best. Perhaps if it can take the recommendations from the employee’s open letter to heart, change will be ignited sooner rather than later, and employees and consumers alike will gain as RIM refines its most crucial relationships.

LETTER 2

Inside RIM there is a small-ish (maybe 200-300) group of employees who’s only focus is keeping the BlackBerry services (Email, Browsing, BBM, the network, etc) running for our customers. We’re a 24/7/365 organization, maintaining 10′s of thousands of servers, network devices, services and basically anything that keeps devices working with our service. Keeping this massive service running smoothly, and keeping visible downtime to a minimum is a monumental task, made worse by the poor management decisions we deal with every day.

If I could have time with Mike and Jim to talk about the problems I see, I would happily reinforce what your executive said, and add a few things:

1) No longer “In Motion”: The operations teams are full of extremely skilled and talented individuals who are excessively good at what they do — they were hired for that reason. We have pulled in resources from many of the best companies, from literally around the world. Many come with years of experience in the industry, and a lot of ‘been there, done that’ knowledge that is invaluable. However, each one of us has been handcuffed by overdone, poorly planned and every more poorly executed process. It can take weeks of time to make small changes, and months to make major ones. Whenever something goes wrong (incident, problems, even non-customer impacting) a lengthy and involved process of finger pointing starts, and without fail, a new process is born.  And, sadly, since the announcement came out about the financial problems and layoffs, it’s become worse. Many of the managers are saying we need to rely more heavily now than ever on process. To those of us who need to deal with this process, which consumes days of work generating documents that no one will read, it’s an obvious case of CYA on the managers part. If they say ‘but we followed the process!’, they seem to hope their heads won’t be on the line. We are no longer a company that is innovative and energetic, we are drowning in paperwork. RIM needs to capitalize on the resources they have — hundreds of very smart, dedicated and driven individuals that can solve problems without needing a flowchart or document. We need to get out of this process paralysis, and back “In Motion”.

2) AT&T: Internally, there’s a large joke that we should be called “RIM-T&T”.  A lot of our senior leadership has come from there, and they come in with ideas from an old, stodgy, process driven industry. Having worked in a telecom like position in the past, I know how much paperwork and process they love — AT&T (and Bell, and other carriers) are dealing with a century of regulation, knowledge and process. Maybe they have some great best practices, but you don’t see ‘new and innovative’ happening a lot at AT&T. It also opens up a lot of questions about business directions when many senior leaders came from one of our carrier partners. RIM is not AT&T. RIM is not Microsoft. RIM is not Google. RIM is not Palm. RIM is RIM, and needs a RIM created focus, RIM ideas, and RIM leadership.

3) Poor leadership: My small team of people has over 75 projects assigned to us right now. Why? Because leaders are afraid to say no. And we’re not the only ones — if you polled the various teams around operations, you’d probably find each and every team / individual has a list that is completely unattainable. But, no one is putting a foot down to say “ok, enough”. No one wants to upset someone above them by saying “no, we don’t have the time” or “no, that’s not valuable” or “no, you clearly don’t understand what it is we do around here”. Instead, there is (again) a lot of CYA and placating going on. Add to this a lot of process, and you have a workforce that is unable to deliver things quickly, properly, or with any degree of pride in their work.

4) Morale: Being swamped by process, led by poor leaders, and buried in too many projects understandably leaves all of us feeling hopeless. When there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel, but you are still expected to work 12 hours a day (and only paid for 8), it becomes difficult to stay focused on what needs to happen to make things better. Then, throw in notice of layoffs without any discussion internally, defer promised raises, and cut out expenses that may have been used to bolster morale (staff social events, travel, professional conference attendance), and you have a large workforce of people who are disillusioned about their future. And we’re supposed to be working harder to make the company strong right now.

5) Guts: As the other writer said, there are far too many people sitting back and letting others do their work, and nothing happens to them. Everyone knows who these under performers are, but no one does anything about it. Having spoken very directly about this matter with a number of managers, the common thread is that it’s more work to try and get rid of them than to simply put up with them. A combination of laziness and poor OD processes is causing RIM to rot from the inside. We are actually happy to see layoffs here (assuming they don’t target us), because we’re hoping the right people are pulled out and that will open room for us to work properly, or even replace them with someone skilled and who wants to work hard.

6) Products: If you walk around and talk to RIM employees (in operations, I’m sure the development teams are better) about the products we make, you’ll find most of us a) don’t know anything about our new products, b) don’t like our current products and c) pine for the old products. There is so much secrecy in the company, no one knows anything about new things until we see it on the news. That means we’re not able to tell our friends and family anything about new things, and that reflects badly on RIM. The current products are slow and underpowered. It’s generally acknowledged that our devices are inferior to other devices, and indeed, many people have personal devices from our competitors. Our old devices, when we were leading, are snappy, nice to use and highly functional. We need to get back to that. Bells and whistles are nice, but when reading email on the device is difficult, I don’t care if I can play podcasts. Internally, the feedback we can provide is ignored or filed as a ‘bug’ and then ignored. RIM has a big set of internal testers, but ignores their feedback to their own detriment.

7) Sales channels: I heard someone telling this story around the office. Their sister went in to a local carrier store to buy a new BlackBerry, replacing an Android phone they didn’t like. They walked in with $400 in hand and wanted a BlackBerry, and walked out with an iPhone. When the sister asked the carrier sales rep for a BlackBerry, they talked her out of a BlackBerry by telling her how bad they are, then offered her an iPhone for $39. How could the sister resist, after having the Blackberry trashed (slow, useless, hard to use), and then a price like that for a competing product dangled in front of her? When our only avenue to selling our devices is through a ‘neutral’ 3rd party, and is just as happy to sell someone a competitors product as ours, we are at their mercy.

8) Marketing: My friends love to poke me and make fun of our ads. Sure, BlackBerry seems to be sponsoring a lot of concerts and baseball games, but looking at my circle of friends and family, no one cares about that. Our marketing is boring, our ads are plain, and completely uninteresting. The whole campaign around the Playbook seems to be “IT DOES FLASH!  LOOK!” … but honestly, my mother doesn’t know or care about that. She wants to know ‘can I play Angry Birds?”.

If I could only tell Mike, Jim and the rest of the C*O crowd one thing, it would be this: stop keeping the incredible pool of smart, talented and capable people handcuffed by poorly thought through process. It’s destroying the company, and destroying those of us that have to manage it. Being able to move quickly and innovate is what will save the company, and that goes completely opposite all our process.

 

RIM responds to open letter published by Boy Genius Report online:

 

An “Open Letter” to RIM’s senior management was published anonymously on the web today and it was attributed to an unnamed person described as a ‘high level employee”. It is obviously difficult to address anonymous commentary and it is particularly difficult to believe that a “high level employee” in good standing with the company would choose to anonymously publish a letter on the web rather than engage their fellow executives in a constructive manner, but regardless of whether the letter is real, fake, exaggerated or written with ulterior motivations, it is fair to say that the senior management team at RIM is nonetheless fully aware of and aggressively addressing both the company’s challenges and its opportunities.

RIM recently confirmed that it is nearing the end of a major business and technology transition. Although this transition has taken longer than anticipated, there is much excitement and optimism within the company about the new products that are lined up for the coming months. There is a fundamental business reality however that following an extended period of hyper growth (during which RIM nearly quadrupled in size over the past 5 years alone), it has become necessary for the company to streamline its operations in order to allow it to grow its business profitably while pursuing newer strategic opportunities. Again, RIM’s management team takes these challenges seriously and is actively addressing the situation. The company is thankfully in a solid business and financial position to tackle the opportunities ahead with a solid balance sheet (nearly $3 billion in cash and no debt), strong profitability (RIM’s net income last quarter was $695 million) and substantial international growth (international revenue in Q1 grew 67% over the same quarter last year). In fact, while growth has slowed in the US, RIM still shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry smartphones last quarter (which is about 100 smartphones per minute, 24 hours per day) and RIM is more committed than ever to serving its loyal customers and partners around the world.

via www.bgr.com

Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM Exec tells all as company crumbles around him (via BGR)

As printed on the Boy Genius Report: (more to follow)

 

To the RIM Senior Management Team:

I have lost confidence.

While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.

Mike and Jim, please take the time to really absorb and digest the content of this letter because it reflects the feeling across a huge percentage of your employee base. You have many smart employees, many that have great ideas for the future, but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects.

Before I get into the meat of the matter, I will say I am not part of a large group of bitter employees wishing to embarrass us. Rather, I believe these points need to be heard and I desperately want RIM to regain its position as a successful industry leader. Our carriers, distributors, alliance partners, enterprise customers, and our loyal end users all want the same thing… for BlackBerry to once again be leading the pack.

We are in the middle of major “transition” and things have never been more chaotic. Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time. We urge you to make bold decisions about our organisational structure, about our culture and most importantly our products.

While we anxiously wait to see the details of the streamlining plan, here are some suggestions:

1) Focus on the End User experience

Let’s obsess about what is best for the end user. We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice — the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work. Android has a major weakness — it will always lack the simplicity and elegance that comes with end-to-end device software, middleware and hardware control. We really have a great opportunity to build something new and “uniquely BlackBerry” with the QNX platform.

Let’s start an internal innovation revival with teams focused on what users will love instead of chasing “feature parity” and feature differentiation for no good reason (Adobe Flash being a major example). When was the last time we pushed out a significant new experience or feature that wasn’t already on other platforms?

Rather than constantly mocking iPhone and Android, we should encourage key decision makers across the board to use these products as their primary device for a week or so at a time — yes, on Exchange! This way we can understand why our users are switching and get inspiration as to how we can build our next-gen products even better! It’s incomprehensible that our top software engineers and executives aren’t using or deeply familiar with our competitor’s products.

2) Recruit Senior SW Leaders & enable decision-making

I’m going to say what everyone is thinking… We need some heavy hitters at RIM when it comes to software management. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, no one is making or can make critical decisions, all the while everyone is working crazy hours and still far behind. We are demotivated. Just look at who our major competitors are: Apple, Google & Microsoft. These are three of the biggest and most talented software companies on the planet. Then take a look at our software leadership teams in terms of what they have delivered and their past experience prior to RIM… It says everything.

3) Cut projects to the bone.

There is a serious need to consolidate our focus to just a handful of projects. Period.

We need to be disciplined here. We can’t afford any more initiatives based on carrier requests to squeeze out slightly more volume. Again, back to point #1, focus on the end users. They are the ones making both consumer & enterprise purchase decisions.

Strategy is often in the things you decide not to do.

On that note, we simply must stop shipping incomplete products that aren’t ready for the end user. It is hurting our brand tremendously. It takes guts to not allow a product to launch that may be 90% ready with a quarter end in sight, but it will pay off in the long term.

Look at Apple in 1997 for tips here. I really want you to watch this video because it has never been more relevant. It is our friend Steve Jobs in 97 and it may as well be you speaking to RIM employees and partners today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY

4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us

We urgently need to invest like we never have before in becoming developer friendly. The return will be worth every cent. There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true — BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.

Developing for BlackBerry is painful, and despite what you’ve been told, things haven’t really changed that much since Jamie Murai’s letter. Our SDK / development platform is like a rundown 1990′s Ford Explorer. Then there’s Apple, which has a shiny new BMW M3… just such a pleasure to drive. Developers want and need quality tools.

If we create great tools, we will see great work. Offer shit tools and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see shit apps.

The truth is, no one in RIM dares to tell management how bad our tools still are. Even our closest dev partners do their best to say it politely, but they will never bite the hand that feeds them. The solution? Recruit serious talent, buy SDK/API specialist companies, throw a truckload of money at it… Let’s do whatever it takes, and quickly!

5) Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire

25 million iPad users don’t care that it doesn’t have Flash or true multitasking, so why make that a focus in our campaigns? I’ll answer that for you: it’s because that’s all that differentiates our products and its lazy marketing. I’ve never seen someone buy product B because it has something product A doesn’t have. People buy product B because they want and lust after product B.

Also an important note regarding our marketing: a product’s technical superiority does not equal desire, and therefore sales… How many Linux laptops are getting sold? How did Betamax go? My mother wants an iPad and iPhone because it is simple and appeals to her. Powerful multitasking doesn’t.

BlackBerry Messenger has been our standout, yet we wasted our marketing on strange stories from a barber shop to a horse wrangler. I promise you, this did nothing to help us in the mind of the average consumer.

We need an inventive and engaging campaign that focuses on what we are about. People buy into a brand / product not just because of features, but because of what it stands for and what it delivers to them. People don’t buy “what you do,” people buy “why you do it.” Take 3 minutes to watch the this video starting from the 2min mark: http://youtu.be/qp0HIF3SfI4

6) No Accountability – Canadians are too nice

RIM has a lot of people who underperform but still stay in their roles. No one is accountable. Where is the guy responsible for the 9530 software? Still with us, still running some important software initiative. We will never achieve excellence with this culture. Just because someone may have been a loyal RIM employee for 7 years, it doesn’t mean they are the best Manager / Director / VP for that role. It’s time to change the culture to deliver or move on and get out. We have far too many people in critical roles that fit this description. I can hear the cheers of my fellow employees now.

7) The press and analysts are pissing you off. Don’t snap. Now is the time for humility with a dash of paranoia.

The public’s questions about dual-CEOs are warranted. The partnership is not broken, but on the ground level, it is not efficient. Maybe we need our Eric Schmidt reign period.

Yes, four years ago we beat Microsoft when everyone said Windows Mobile with Direct Push in Exchange would kill us. It didn’t… in fact we grew stronger.

However, overconfidence clouds good decision-making. We missed not boldly reacting to the threat of iPhone when we saw it in January over four years ago. We laughed and said they are trying to put a computer on a phone, that it won’t work. We should have made the QNX-like transition then. We are now 3-4 years too late. That is the painful truth… it was a major strategic oversight and we know who is responsible.

Jim, in referring to our current transition recently said: “No other technology company other than Apple has successfully transitioned their platform. It’s almost never done, and it’s way harder than you realize. This transition is where tech companies go to die.”

To avoid this death, perhaps it is time to seriously consider a new, fresh thinking, experienced CEO. There is no shame in no longer being a CEO. Mike, you could focus on innovation. Jim, you could focus on our carriers/customers… They are our lifeblood.

8) Democratise. Engage and interact with your employees — please!

Reach out to all employees asking them on how we can make RIM better. Encourage input from ground-level teams—without repercussions—to seek out honest feedback and really absorb it.

Lastly, we’re all reading the news and many are extremely nervous, especially when we see people get fired. We need an injection of confidence: share your strategy and ask us for support. The headhunters have already started circling and we are at risk of losing our best people.

Now would be a great time to internally re-brand and re-energize the workplace. For example, rename the company to just “BlackBerry” to signify our new focus on one QNX product line. We should also address issues surrounding making RIM an enjoyable workplace. Some of our offices feel like Soviet-era government workplaces.

The timing is perfect to seriously evaluate at our position and make these major changes. We can do it!

Sincerely,

A RIM Employee

 

 

via www.bgr.com

Compare all the Tablets easily with this chart! Apple iPAD 2 vs. Motorola Xoom vs. RIM Playbook vs. Samsung Galaxy vs. HP TouchPad vs. LG Optimus Pad

Take a hop over to here to take a full look at this great chart they provide:

 

Google Acquisition History - Great InfoGraphic!

Research by Scores.org

Is a CDMA-version Apple iPhone on the Horizon for Verizon? Thoughts on the April 8 Apple iPhone announcement.

Tomorrow's Apple iPhone announcement is supposed to be about iPhone OS 4.0.  In the past Apple has avoided outlining new iPhone OS features prior to a new model's announcement.

Given the last minute details when Apple announced the press conference, I initially thought that Apple was just trying to overwhelm the media prior to Microsoft's mobile-related announcement coming on April 12th.  If this was the case, however, Apple would just pick the same day as Microsoft.  Apple would not want to beat Microsoft's announcement by 4-days and risk being caught out of the news cycle.

Given that most Apple technology experts still expect a new iPhone model this summer, why the announcement so close to the launch of the Apple iPAD last weekend?  The only two reasons I can think of:

1) It has become increasingly difficult for Apple to keep its enlarged and rampant iPhone developer community under NDA.  Each iteration of software code released to developers, gets picked-apart for clues by the Apple fanbase for new models and unannounced products.

2) Verizon's recent comments courting the iPhone and rumors coming to me from U.S. sources increasingly point to a Verizon-version of the iPhone, which would require CDMA and/or LTE. 

Given that the only other large telecom markets offering CDMA handsets are in South Korea (which has many GSM overlays) and Canada (with both Telus and Bell Canada moving to HSPA+), Verizon is the only major provider Apple would be designing this for.  Telstra has basically scrapped its CDMA offering in Australia.

LTE would be a game changer for Verizon and an insult to AT&T, afters its multi-year exclusive partnership with Apple (not to mention the pricing flexibility it has provided Apple with the iPAD!). Apple support at this late stage for CDMA, may sell an extra 2-3M iPhones to starving Verizon customers, but would Apple want to support Verizon's CDMA "legacy network" at this stage? 

Do you think we could possibly hear "Oh, and one more thing" from Steve Jobs with a possible CDMA iPhone announcement tomorrow?

Apple's iPAD is a lost naming opportunity. Apple should have expanded on its iTouch product branding.

Apple Inc., a company that normally takes great care in keeping its product names highly descriptive and simple, stumbled last week at the launch of the its iPAD web tablet device last week.  It seems a lot of people, especially women just did not take kindly to the iPAD name.

The Apple iPAD, is basically an iTouch (WiFi-only models) or an iPhone (WiFi/3G models) with a larger 9.7" screen and using the same iPhone operating system and capable of leveraging the iPhone App Store.  Of course, some existing iPhone features have been stripped out (the camera for instance) and Apple does not see too many users wanting to hold up the bulky device to the ear and talk into it, replacing their mobile phone.  Other key features users were hoping to see are still sadly missing: Multitasking support in the OS, Flash player support, and dual-cameras for video chatting.

As an owner now on his third iTouch, I just cannot understand why Apple picked to build a new product category under the name "iPAD" when it could have easily extended its popular "iTouch" product branding to the new tablet devices.  Customers and the press would have easily understood the capabilities and the method of operation with a simple name like:

•    iTouch 10", or
•    iTouch XL, or
•    iTouch Pro, or
•    iTouch Tablet

Of course, Apple is the same company that made popular the iPOD brand to represent its portable music/media device.  Not exactly the Sony "Walkman" brand simplicity out of the gate, but Apple made iPOD work for them!  The only thing that matters is success, and Apple is way out in front of everyone when it comes to portable digital music players, touchscreen mobile phones and now larger touchscreen mobile tablets.

On a side note, an overseas contact of mine estimated that the iPAD build cost for a company ordering parts in the millions per year, would be around US$171 for the 3G 16GB unit and about US$17 less for the simpler WiFi-only model (not including the microSIM card or packaging).  I'm sure iSuppli will publish their own tear-down cost estimates in the coming weeks.  Add in R&D amortization costs, packaging, shipping, Q/A and Sales costs, and Apple still has plenty of room to make its 40%+ margins plus throw in some AT&T commissions and margins on App Store and media content sales and you can see why Mr. Jobs wants to build this into a key fork in Apple's income stream.

Personally, given that I have continuously upgraded my iTouch annually from 8GB, to 16GB and now 32GB, I am trying to quash any inner thoughts to purchase an Apple iPAD in its current first generation.  I'm sure that by Fall 2010 or at least in Winter 2011, Apple will have at least upgraded the iPAD product line to include at least one camera, multitasking support and upped the base memory to 32GB.  Hopefully, Apple also will give the users what they want and stop playing their corporate games and support Adobe's Flash Player.