So here it is, after the announcement earlier this year from Apple to shift away from Intel towards Apple Silicon. Three events in a single year, from upgrades to iPad, iWatch, new services, and now the new MacBooks and Mac Mini!

While companies like Intel are struggling to keep pace, and NVIDIA facing production shortages. Apple used the time to jump ahead in many regards. We have all been waiting to see the actual performance of the new chip and when you look at it it's astonishing.

If you still need a reason to understand why you would create Apple Silicon instead of staying with Intel:
"Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let’s call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015."

I called it before and I have to repeat it here again. The PC components business with exchangeable parts and incompatibility has reached its peak.

The true integration of hardware and software is creating a better experience. Something that allows you to once again create differentiations far exceeding the sum of the single components.

Going forward

The new chip alone is well newsworthy. With better performance/power consumption and peak performance. But what should also be kept in mind is the added flexibility for new trends.

When we look at the PC ecosystem today, many tasks haven't been optimized as much as they could have been. Having a CPU required to be generic and the GPU, which got a lot of extra tasks over the year. From Bitcoin mining to Machine Learning.

With ownership of the chips, Apple can introduce hardware to solve common problems much quicker. Without having to respect the greater ecosystem. They need to make it work for their Operating System and their Hardware. No need to think about other components that are being produced elsewhere where they would have a lot less control.

This allows for much quicker iterations and innovation, while the modular world's inherent system will be left behind.

I am a massive fan of those platforms, while I admire crowd financing in general. What those two platforms have created is so much more.

It is a product management heaven. It takes out some of the broader issues during product cycles. You can test the demand for your idea, getting customer feedback, and, on top of it, you can finance it. It is allowing you to start and grow much more naturally without betting big.

And what comes out of it is also quite astonishing, as I go through all the items I bought there already. From super-fast drying towels to air purifiers and even personal air conditioning.

It also becomes a great source of physical products paired with software. So many day-to-day products get Apps attached to it to make it smarter and more convenient to be used.

But what all of it also shows is in the details, when you read between the lines of all those updates in those campaigns. The relationship between the factories and the inventors. Much of this wouldn't have been possible years ago, with hefty prices for tooling and a manufacturing process aimed towards cheap mass production.

While scale still supports lower pricing, it is nowhere near the level it was before. And this democratizes manufacturing access. It is giving more people the ability to create based on the shoulders of others.

This should also be a warning sign for many established companies, those who had bet on owning a factory as a competitive advantage and a barrier of entry. It has never been easier to create physical products, and consumers will love what comes out.

What we have seen for years in other industries and especially on the internet in the form of software, will also enter the physical world rapidly.

Not necessarily in the way some people have envisioned through 3D printers sitting in every household, but on a changing supply chain that simply got more accessible.

Checking my own Amazon order mails, I figured that many of them are lacking the purchased products. This made me wonder, from an e-commerce perspective, I would want them included.

It gives transparency to the customers and is generally considered good practice.

Some sources claimed how this might be related to optimization and how data access is being handled. Amazon is more than capable of sending out transactional e-mails, including order data, and they did so for a very long time.

The question was also asked by others a couple of months ago:

And I would like to point out the following replies that got me thinking:

When you dig into the topic, you find a few companies involved in analyzing your mails. While I assume they are not giving away 1:1 data sets about individuals but rather generalized reports.

One source of this seems to be Rakuten Intelligence (a dedicated company of the Rakuten group). Through Slice's acquisition, an E-Mail service that eventually became Unroll.me and helps to clean up your inbox.

Google is also doing it to some extent. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to create you those lovely snippets in GMAIL regarding your order. That they use the data to tailor advertisements shouldn't be surprising. I didn't found evidence of them giving away those data points to others, though.

When looking at this, I have two points that strike me as important.

E-Mails as a replacement for access to data

In a perfect world, consumers could pick up the data from company X and give it to Y to ramp up the setup. They could create quicker personalization and pre-setup for the customer.

But from this reality, we are seemingly still a good distance away. So E-Mails might provide something similar for some businesses.

Outfittery, the german curated shopping company, would benefit greatly from having the purchase history of clothing. They could be much quicker during setup with it, no longer requiring to ask for the size and clothing someone likes.

Bigger means getting targeted.

The Amazon case also shows how you have to start worrying about others, putting a target on your back. While from a business point of view, you want to communicate freely with your user, technology, and the increasingly unsecured channels might push you away from it.

For the small store, this might be less relevant. Giving away rough estimates of your purchases volume and items is often less relevant. But the larger you get, the more this becomes an issue, allowing competitors to jump in and disturb your business.

Overall

This seemingly is a data and analytics topic but also has privacy implications. As I didn't go deeply into this topic here, it leaves room for everyone to judge for themself how they think about this process in general.

However, getting " in-between " customers and their transaction becomes increasingly clear. Getting "in-between" customers and their transaction becomes from the possible way interest for others—masking services in a way that hides the fact that brings in money and value for companies.

The leading delivery service in Germany for mostly beverages will change ownership and become part of the Oetker group. Oetker on the other hand, owner of the largest brewery group Radeberger had to acknowledge that their clone "Durstexpress" may not take over the leadership anytime soon.

With an estimated price of 1 billion €, this marks one of the largest corporate/startup deals in Germany.

For this, I would overall congratulate everyone involved and especially the people behind Flaschenpost.

What makes this case so interesting for me is not inherently the financial and the deal. It is an acknowledgment of how brands are having trouble when they are pushed further down the funnel.
Because seemingly Flaschenpost has achieved something that many thought wouldn't be possible without a large marketing investment. They introduced owned brands for beer and other segments and gained relevant share in their store with it.

This adds to the already lengthy list of Amazon Brands that outpace household names as much as FB/IG and Google allows for introducing new brands at a much lower price.

The brand loyalty and the value of such is from my point of view decreasing every day. More and more cases show how the direct connection with the customer allows you to decide what brands customers want to buy.

Becoming an intermediate in any way, from online shop to service providers allows you to introduce brands and products at a cheaper rate with oftentimes more stability.

But this comes also at a price, as much as it helps the individual to create brands, it also means you are less likely to create a competitive advantage around it. Brands are coming and going at a much quicker pace.

What Flaschenpost now has to achieve is to stay relevant and not getting pushed aside by alternatives. This will be a hard task, given the fact that the packages are heavy and the workers are paid on the lower end.
Logistic optimization is a numbers game.

Competition comes from many sides, traditional retail is adding delivery capabilities. E-Commerce models for food are starting left and right. Mobility concepts are also spiking which either allow for better transportation of the products or combining it with other activities.

It might very well be worth it for Oetker to not get pushed out of the game, from a consumer standpoint I am not sure if this is really what I am looking for in the long run. Given my experience and those of many others where many have used it once or twice and then never used it again after having trouble with delivery windows.

Also, it seems to be very deal-driven right now, something that might be reduced once there are fewer competitors out there but for many products, people will just look where it is cheap and use than the source which fits best.
Leaving the 5. floor without elevator deliveries to Flaschenpost. Not sure how attractive this is going forward!

When you have a hammer, everything becomes a nail.

During my time selling pc components and systems, this idea floated around for years, creating a tiered subscription model for pc hardware. You would get updates according to your tier based on a pre-defined upgrade schedule.

It has some great benefits, including a much more substantial customer connection than a one-time purchase. You get more touchpoints like during the upgrades and would add a lot more value by offering extra services.

But as it is typical when you are product instead of customer-focused, you are looking for ways to sell your product differently or to different segments. When you look from the consumer side, you realize that this problem is solved much better technically with cloud gaming.

You have the same monthly subscription model, but instead of asking consumers to pay for the hardware that runs your games, you remove a necessary evil by letting customers only pay for what they want.

Sure, gaming pcs also have other possible use cases, but when you look into 1000$ graphic cards every year and adding the cost of the rest of the hardware with roughly 500$ and an upgrade cycle every three years to stay current. You end up with 1500$ for 36 months, which approximately equals 42$ a month. Much more than the 9.99$ something like Stadia or Amazon Luna asks for.

This is just one story of many. It only marks for me a very profound one.

As I have spent years in the category, you become more and more pulled into the narrative. You start to lose track of the big picture and the overreaching goals. You lose track of customer needs and instead focus on the business needs. Create more money, sell more, get customers cheaper.

When you start to lose track of the actual customer problem you are solving, you are not getting forced enough to innovate and disrupt yourself. You become so focused on re-purposing your current assets in new ways that you get blind to actual innovation and advancements.

Those disruptions are happening in every industry, with even the best companies in it. What is also good to keep in mind is that even relatively new industries are not protected against it.

Especially when the disruption might come from a not so obvious source.

Every week somewhere, a new skeptic comes out of hiding and sharing their insight into why Tesla is terrible—driven by the large stock value gain over the last year.

You hear the same arguments from those "experts":

Tesla is worth more than any other car company globally, while they are only selling a fraction of the cars others do.

While Honda and Toyota have a multiplier of 0.5, Tesla is rocking a 15. Based on EV / LTM Revenue

Tesla can also be no software company because they need to sell you a car first.

It's not profitable, and if it is, then only because of the certificates they sell (climate).

Robinhood and "stupid" investors have increased stock prices.

But they fall short in many regards. It isn't surprising that creating a massive physical and complex product is capital intensive. It requires large sums of investments and a great deal of innovation.

That it was even possible so late to enter the automotive industry given all those established brands is an achievement on its own.

And shows how behind the industry is and how actual disruption and re-thinking looks like.

But the main point is how people don't get the business model right. Putting Tesla in the basket of VW, Toyota is falling short.

Tesla is in the race for autonomous vehicles and what they have done in that space is outstanding. Instead of thinking from the car and car sales. It would help if you thought about the autonomous vehicle side.

They invested in creating cars as a means to gather data to create an advantage. Every day, Tesla gains ground by having more sensors on the street, pulling them ever so close to the actual game changer.

Imagine how many mobility topics we have from parcel delivery to the taxi industry. Getting into this segment with a working product is what the stock market reflects.

In the current AI space, data is more important than a brilliant new algorithm. With topics like Deep Neural Networks, the foundation is here, but the information is missing. Tesla investing in gathering the missing piece is what will make it all happen.

Over the last ten years, I tried to convince customers that choice is what they are looking for—offering PC systems tailored to their needs, with configurations sometimes boosting several millions of combinations.

But the reality is that most people have been sticking to the default configurations. They changed the disk space here, and the memory there or sometimes picked a different GPU brand.

When you have a look at the Apple lineup, you can also see this. How long did it take Apple to introduce more colors? How many different disk space options are there?

8.420.000 results for the search "iPad air 2020 64gb vs 256gb".

People don't know what to pick. They are so desperate to find help, even for the smallest of options.
This adds tremendous stress on customers. Imagine you would have added more and more choice. How should someone pick the right one?

The Choice Overload and Analysis paralysis are two explanations for our problems with making a decision.

There are many actions that you can derive from this. From an understanding of why Amazon Reviews are so powerful. You realize how personalization helps get input from users without them making an active selection.

You should ask yourself how beneficial another color or another product with only a few attributes changed is. Having the option to create many possibilities for consumers might put your customers in a paralyzing situation.

Finding a new solution to an existing problem is the life of a business.

So Microsoft is adding a price comparison functionality. Starting to compete in the market as Idealo, Google Shopping, and PayPal's acquisition of Honey.

After switching out the rendering engine in Edge with chromium, Microsoft focused on adding extra value and no longer having to play catch up. From the current looks of it, you will add products into collections right from the retailer's websites.

Those collections will then allow for price checks. This is interesting because it solves a fundamental issue in a different way: Customer Acquisition.

While especially players like Idealo have to either pay a lot towards search engines or pay a premium for app installs. Microsoft is adding towards an existing customer base a functionality.

With a target group that already was installing the browser before for other reasons. Also, it feels a lot more natural to combine your shopping cart in a browser (desktop) then on a third party website.

What is also interesting is the potential for this. As it allows for much deeper integration.

Missing is clearly a mobile equivalent of it.

On a side note, this could also be a solution for Outfittery.

Outlook

What is also interesting in this context is how added value is being created along the value chain. Imagine getting a note during PayPal checkout that the product you are about to buy it cheaper elsewhere.

Especially in the PayPal (Honey) case where PayPal also has all the info about the customer and doesn't require a potential re-entering of information.

But the same is somewhat true for Edge. I think it's not a long shot to assume it is possible to get customers to input shipping and payment information.

It will be interesting to see how this will balance out, as there are also many other players in that chain.

From operating systems (Mac OS, iOS, Windows, Android) to payment providers, and delivery helpers in logistics or even for digital goods.

When a year ago, Stadia entered the market. Many thought this would be the end of traditional Gaming PCs.
Today with COVID and other effects, we have seen this is not the case. But when we acknowledge that people are generally bad at predicting how long something takes. We are still on a path towards it.

With Sony and Microsoft offering cloud gaming and a reduced specced console. Amazon is entering the field with Luna and an ever-increasing game library on Stadia. The writing is still on the wall.

And for good reasons, technical issues and the battle for content aside. There is no inherent value of having games eating up 250+ GB of storage on local machines and the upgrades needed to keep up.

There are still some hoops to jump, from making more content available to players to improve the technical side. But that will come, with 5G around the corner and recent acquisitions in the gaming industry. You can see that the marsh for cloud gaming is not going to stop.

Yes, many of the current top e-sports titles are not available on cloud gaming. But this will fix itself as it will follow the consumers to there platforms.

There is also a shift happening on the content side. EPIC is creating based on the Unreal Engine, a new gaming platform with Fortnite. With concerts and other events are taking place inside.

Or Roblox, the "architects of play". Which creates the platform to create games on it in a completely new scale.

Gaming is not going away anytime soon, but PC gaming in its current form is on its way out. After the fact, people are still creating arguments about why it was necessary to spend 2.000 EUR on a gaming system. But this will come to an end. There is not enough value in this segment anymore.

Pair this with the current technology landscape, where Intel is battling with ARM and NVIDIA is pushing AI. Even those who profit handsomely over the years from the gaming PC are shifting away into new fields.

Gaming PCs where a means to an end, an itermediate between consumers and games. But once you start thinking about it, a good working alternative would be highly appreciated!

You buy products, you sell them.

Based on the effectiveness of your business you make a profit.

Easy enough right?

For years this basic model has been enough to create billion-dollar businesses around the world.
If I want to make it easy for me, I could point to Amazon. With cash cows like AWS and the marketplace model they run.

But there are also a lot more companies doing it right and understanding the current environment much better.
Picnic as one example of an integrated delivery company is able to create superior metrics and customer experiences. In many ways similar to AO even though the execution looks different.

Zalando and AboutYou are also adding services. From the AboutYou Cloud Infrastructure to logistic and vendor services and helping local players. Even in the second-hand market and curated shopping where they compete with Outfittery in Germany.

But why is it so important?

With an ever-increasing amount of solutions that create a layer on top of existing businesses. E-Commerce is there no exception.
Price comparison pages like Idealo and Google Shopping are abstracting away the seller.
Payment providers like Klarna and others are creating unified interfaces for there vendors.
Shopify is also offering an aggregation app.

Those layers will push the underlying players to an ever decreasing profit margin. Something that already is happening due to advertisements in Social Media and Search or other gatekeepers.

At some point, there is no longer a reason to have traditional retail in between. When brands are using infrastructure themself and no longer need traditional e-commerce.
Adding additional income streams is not only giving you something to fall back on. It also shifts your mindset in a way that allows you to see innovation.

Offering solutions to problems that can't be replicated easily.

There are waves when it comes to innovation and products.
It is a zig zack between aggregation and individualism.
Something that happens across industries.

From eBay and Amazon gathering sellers and aggregate them. To Shopify, which initially was based on creating individual solutions and are now on its way back to aggregation.
From having Netflix as the aggregator of video content to the current streaming wars.
As the streaming world gets ever so crowded, Google is getting back to where it has it all began—making content accessible for its users.

With Google TV, it creates the universal interface on top of all those available today—making it personal!
This is such a great move. There are existing players in this field with JustWatch. But here comes the second power kicking in. With the ability to create hardware products in combination with software, you outperform individual apps.

When discussing this, it is worth noting that Amazon is also offering something similar, as does Apple. But the integration is much lower. I would also argue that Google has the better history when it comes to organizing data. The output of my Fire TV is low in regard to recommendations.

And for $49.99 including the device, I guess it is worth a try!

While EPIC was able to get the attention of its Fortnite community and some free rider. The judge seems less impressed with the performance of EPIC in court so far.

Here are the important parts:

Judge Rogers questioned Epic on when, exactly Apple became a monopoly given that its App Store rules have remained unchanged since the App Store launched, which Epic had no solid answer for, responding only that it was a monopoly when Fortnite came to iOS in 2018. She also said that walled gardens have existed for four decades and that what Apple's doing isn't too different. "They created a platform," she said

She also reiterated that Epic Games made a "calculated decision" to defy Apple's App Store rules, and the court doesn't provide injunctions for contractual disputes. Epic was "not forthright," she said. "There are people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you did, but it's not honest.

Epic Games continued to argue that Apple has an App Store monopoly and charges excessive fees, but the judge pointed out that the 30 percent rate that Apple collects is the "industry rate" collected by PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Google, and more. "It's all 30 percent and you just want to gloss over it," the judge said to Epic's lawyers.
That doesn't look too great for EPIC so far. Which has hoped those key elements alone would carry them.

EPIC is doing a very poor job of providing substantial evidence for there case. This makes sense given that their popularity was build upon that system that they now criticize.

Judge Rogers regardless said she would be up for a jury trial in July next year. Not sure if EPICs pockets are that deep ...

Linear TV is getting a beat down for years, revenue is declining, and the usage is going down. Only a few big cows fill in gaps that don't care too much about ROI on their ads.

With second screen usage going up, more and more longstanding industry elements are on the decline.

TV is the largest owned screen in the world today, which makes it a perfect device for a great many thinks —from video conferencing, watching your movie, or playing games.

As such, the device has a centerpiece in every apartment and is oftentimes placed very central. With added products like Apple TV, Chromecast, or Fire TV, we enhance the functionality.

But while many companies like Netflix and others create a large business based on those screens, the underlying product is only the vehicle. An oftentimes dumb device that fulfills a narrow but important role for others.

That will change more and more going forward with Samsung and others invading the screen and using their device to spy on users.

With the device being able to track usages of applications and screen times, it can understand the user, which can then be leveraged towards advertisements, either directly or indirectly.

I wouldn't be surprised to have the device play out more personalized ads during linear TV. Reacting based on the cable signal, "here comes a 30-second window for ads".

The same goes for all those ads being shown in the interface.

While I understand this move in general, it comes unprepared and not communicated well. We have ads on Fire TV for years, and Android / Chromecast also has them. So it's not all about ads or no ads. It is very much about buying something without and then getting it in your face without consent.

I imagine you could run a special version of each TV with and without advertisement—Discriminating based on the consumer's price sensitivity. Much like Amazon does it with the Kindle.

Advancements in the underlying technology standard for cellular networks is going on for years. But 5G is, in many regards, different, as it seems to power the entire next generation.

A Brief History

1991 - 2G

SMS, E-Mail, and internet text become available.

1998 - 3G

Apps, Websites, Videos, Pictures

2008 - 4G

Higher speed / Larger Data

2020 - 5G

Internet of Things paired with enormous data

The jump from 4G to 5G will increase the average speed from 25 Mbps towards 200-400 Mbps. Latency will go down from 20-30ms to <10. And bandwidth will raise to >1gbps.

But what powers the Internet of Thinks is the number of devices possible. With 4G, we had 100 000 devices per square kilometer. 5G will boost this number by a factor of 10!

While it looks from the outside very much like a fundamental improvement, what it will bring for consumers is massive.

From mobility to factories, from personal usage to company cases.

It will lay the foundation for autonomous vehicles and many other large scales connected use cases.

I am very excited about this topic and the potential it brings. While still being less optimistic about the adoption rate and implementation. Because it already starts to feel again that Germany and other European countries will fall behind in this segment.