Welcome to my new newsletter. I wanted to let everyone know that I have left Deutsche Bank, after almost ten years there. I have started working on something new. Part of that will include continuing to publish regular research, starting with  this note. I will be looking at the key topics in technology today. This includes subjects like mobile operating systems and the app economy, topics which I have been writing on for years. But I will also be looking at many other subjects. The distinction between hardware and software, or computing and networking, are getting blurrier all the time. These used to be discrete subjects, but increasingly they are becoming intertwined. So you can expect coverage of the changes in networking, security, Internet commerce and more. I also plan to look at over-the-horizon topics. Segments like Big Data and 3D printing are still nascent, but will soon have a far larger impact on technology.

One of my motivations for starting something more entrepreneurial is that research has not changed in a long time. The way that research is written today looks a lot like how it was written thirty or even forty years ago. We no longer print everything in hardcopy, and we have a lot more Excel charts, but the method of distribution and pace of change are still a lot like how they have always been. Financial research is a form of content, and it makes no sense that this can be the one form of content that will not be totally disrupted. Newspapers tried to stay unchanged, but are now rapidly succumbing to the inevitable. Video once came on thirteen channels with rigid schedules, but today everything is time-, place- and creator-shifted to some new model. Books. Music. If you are reading this, you probably do not need to be reminded of any of this. So we are going to try something different, and make the most of the digital tools now available.

I am working on a few other projects as well. This process has had a few wrinkles, but that is what change brings.

One of the other projects is to work more with private companies. As many of you know, I spend a lot of time engaging with private companies. Trying to understand their products and industry sub-segments. In the past two years, I have worked on the research side of ten IPOs, and watched dozens of others closely. Many of these did not go so well. So one of my future areas of emphasis will be helping companies bridge that gap of moving from the private to public domain. If this is of interest to you or your management team, please contact me.

I also plan to continue to spend a lot of time in China and Asia. The whole ecosystem is now tightly coupled. This is no longer merely “design being in the US and manufactured in Asia”. Market trends are increasingly being driven by changing demand patterns in Asia and the emerging world. For instance, the mobile software landscape in China is now much more dynamic than that in the US. We expect this process to spread to other industries as all things ‘cloud’ start to take hold in other parts of the world. In the past weeks, we have already worked with a Russian telco to look at new business models and disruptive technologies, and spoken at three China-centric conferences about technology exchange and long-term trends.

For this inaugural issue, I am starting a multi-part overview of the mobile OS ecosystem. Once its all uploaded, I will compile it into a PDF. Some light reading for the holidays.

As always, if you or your colleagues have any questions or comments feel free to contact us. And I remain open to suggestions….