Apple, MacWorld and Steve Jobs – the Wal-Mart Connection

Bentonville stands in the northwest corner of Arkansas only a few miles from Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. It is a little city in the Ozarks with a fine town square where once there stood a Ben Franklin variety store owned by Sam Walton. Today, that store on the square is a museum, and Bentonville is the headquarters of Wal-Mart, not just the biggest retailer in the world, the biggest COMPANY in the world. There is nothing fancy about Wal-Mart, and that certainly applies to its corporate headquarters, a nondescript brick building where every day suppliers from around the world come to peddle their wares. The place where would-be suppliers meet Wal-Mart buyers looks like an old Quonset hut from World War II. The hut […]

Surviving 2009

Microsoft

Microsoft may or may not make a deal for Yahoo’s search service.  What neither firm realizes yet is there is a better way to do searches with value advertising.  It will be easier than what Google is doing and can produce more tangible results.  Right now both firms are in the mind set of “competing with Google” instead of being creative and innovative.  When they start thinking independently and start tuning into what the customer needs, Google will have some competition.

Apple

If Apple would port its Mac software (iWork, iLife, Final Cut, etc) to Windows it could quickly OWN the software market.  Microsoft’s competitive advantage is not Windows — it is Office.  Apple could take them out if it chose to.  They won’t in 2009.  […]