Sucker punch
The blogosphere is still awash with analysis of Steve Jobs' appearance at the iPad 2 launch on Wednesday, with some people saying the reality distortion field went too far this time, others writing obituaries for the competition, but nobody's lacking an opinion.
Remarkably, despite providing little, if anything, that hadn't already been rumoured and broadly anticipated, the launch has already had an effect on share prices, most notably Motorola Mobility.
This is no coincidence, of course, as Moto is spearheading the Android fight-back in the tablet market by being the first to launch a Honeycomb tablet. The Xoom looks pretty decent, and may even be competitive on price, but the feeling that it still may not bring enough to the table to unseat the incumbent was reinforced on Wednesday.
Tech Trader Daily noted that shares in Motorola Mobility - the mobile phone half of the split-up company - were down by over five percent yesterday after a couple of analyst downgrades. One analyst said Moto's prospects are fading after the iPad 2 turned out to be more competitive than expected. Given what an incremental launch it was, you have to wonder what he was expecting, however. Go-faster stripes?
Unperturbed, Moto announced today that its strategic investment arm - Motorola Mobility Ventures - is investing in Moblyng, which develops and publishes cross-platform, HTML5-based social gaming for mobile devices.
"Moblyng was an early adopter of Android and is an industry leader in using HTML5 to bring cross-platform social gaming experiences to mobile devices. We look forward to accelerating the realization of their vision," said Harshul Sanghi, MD of Motorola Mobility Ventures.
The general consensus from the iPad 2 launch seems to be that it emphasised the software advantage Apple has. Not so much the OS or UI, but the apps. On top of that Apple launched some new pieces of software of its own that seemed to impress. If the chasing pack is going to take significant market share from Apple, these sorts of investments are definitely a step in the right direction.
