{"id":5749,"date":"2013-09-23T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5749"},"modified":"2013-09-22T23:36:34","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T03:36:34","slug":"how-fast-industries-can-change-mobile-phones-and-solar-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/how-fast-industries-can-change-mobile-phones-and-solar-power.html","title":{"rendered":"How fast industries can change: mobile phones and solar power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nIn only half a dozen years Microsoft went from laughing at the iPhone\r\nto admitting MS had none of the mobile phone or mobile device market,\r\nwhile Apple became the most valuable company in the world.\r\nAnother entrenched industry, electric power\r\nwill also change radically in only a few years,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nsolar power will win like the Internet did<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nMG Siegler of Google Ventures blogged this on ParisLemon 20 September 2013,\r\nWhat A Difference Six Years Makes…<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

Steve Ballmer, 2007<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Steve<\/a>\r\n

Right now we’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero<\/em> phones a year.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Steve Ballmer, a few months later<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

It’s sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody.<\/p>\r\n

Now we’ll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Steve Ballmer, yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Mobile devices. We have almost no share.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

And it wasn’t just\r\n\r\nSteve Jobs riding Moore’s Law on an iPhone<\/a>:\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nGoogle and Samsung and HTC and others have slid up that exponential slope\r\nto spread smart phones around the world, while Steve Ballmer\r\njust resigned as CEO of Microsoft after presiding over losing\r\nits place at the top of the tech pyramid.\r\nUtility companies that don’t get on with solar are going to slide\r\noff the top of the heap just like Microsoft did.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nPaul Bowers of Georgia Power and Tom Fanning of Southern Company\r\nknow this history.\r\nWill they be Ballmer or will they get on with solar power?\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNo, they can’t be Steve Jobs: they’ve got lifer utility boards to\r\nanswer to.\r\nBut they don’t have to invent solar power or even rooftop solar with microinverters:\r\nthat’s already been done.\r\nSO’s famously\r\n\r\nlargest private R&D operation in the U.S.<\/a>\r\ncan do what neither Apple nor Google nor Microsoft can do:\r\nit can design, implement, and deploy a smart grid<\/a>\r\nto power Georgia and the southeast with solar power inland\r\nand wind offshore.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In only half a dozen years Microsoft went from laughing at the iPhone to admitting MS had none of the mobile phone or mobile device market, while Apple became the most valuable company in the world. Another entrenched industry, electric power will also change radically in only a few years, and solar power will win […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18,19,132,23,24],"tags":[122,8701,8708,8709,8741,6974,8702,12,7,6976,1024,8713,8714,108,6973,1059,6,6975],"class_list":["post-5749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-georgia-power","category-history","category-internet-access-speed","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-apple","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-history","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-iphone","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-microsoft","tag-paul-bowers","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-steve-ballmer","tag-steve-jobs","tag-valdosta","tag-zune"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1uJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5749"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5757,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5749\/revisions\/5757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}