Junior employees

Alarm Clock points to Kwiry, an offline tagging firm.

San Francisco-based Kwiry was founded 8 months ago by a couple of junior TellMe employees – Ron Feldman (now CEO) and Jon Sugihara. The startup says it “will revolutionze the way you interact with your offline world. Bookmark information you see in your offline world to store in your locker.

Just curious: who or what is a junior employee? Does the “junior” matter?

Apple market share, Paul Thurott, and Wall Street

USAT heaps praise on Apple’s marketing, but with multiple mentions of the market share remaining at around 3%. Here’s the deal if Apple wanted market share increases, it can do go after it aggressively. Why wouldn’t want to do it? Because they’d have to do it at a loss. Imagine a world where Apple prices Macbooks and Mac-Minis at $499 and $299 – there is no doubt they would fly off the shelves like hotcakes (or iPods), but the margins would be miniscule and the support costs would balloon out of control.

Lumping Apple’s share against the global share is a complete waste. Apple simply does not compete with Lenovo in China or HCL in India. Secondly, comparing Apple’s share with all PCs shipped is another waste. It’s sorta like comparing Ford Focus’s share as a percentage of shipments that include Man trucks and Starcraft buses . Apple’s corporate share, despite banks and some retailers (JCPenneys) adopting Macs, is 1%. The only comparison that makes sense is Apple’s share of the consumer shipment market in the U.S., and that’s not 3% or 4%, it’s much higher, as RDM astutely observes.

One important thing to consider: Wall Street is more concerned with how much a company earns and not what a company grosses – and by that variable, Apple is killing them. Apple is more efficient in generating income from that small share than Dell or HP are with their “dominant” share of computers sold. I’ll take the free cash flow over marketshare any day.

In a recent article, Paul Thurott asks:

Why is the Mac community so fixated on Vista lately? Is it just because Vista is out now, or is there a feeling that Microsoft finally got it right this time?

The more interesting question is why Windows acolytes seem overly concerned with Mac OS X. Maybe it’s a lack of confidence with their product or maybe it’s linkbaiting. If it is true that Mac users are mentioning Vista more these days, it’s probably because Mac fans sense that Apple has a chance to take advantage of Microsoft’s monumental stumble. In any case, I can assure Mr. Thurott that it’s not because “Microsoft finally got it right this time“.