doom and gloom

Announcing the release of our new research report, The Sky Is Rising

The stories show up in dribs and drabs. They explain in simple, yet frightening terms the terrible, catastrophic conundrum Android users find themselves in.

There is malware designed to exploit users as there always had been, but now it’s after Android devices.

Surely, if these doom and gloom reports are accurate the sky must be falling, and it is landing primarily on Android.

Musician (Gang of Four) and marketing guru, Dave Allen, recently put up one of his insightful blog posts, questioning where the real disruption in online music is these days, and complaining that all of the services we see out there today are basically just "creating radio on the internet." And they're all almost identical.

For all the stories of doom and gloom in various entertainment industry segments due to "piracy," the deeper you look, the more you realize that each of these areas seems to be growing quite nicely, contrary to what's being claimed.

Remember last week, when we showed the US Chamber of Commerce's propaganda video in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, in which various artists claimed that their industries were being "hurt" by internet piracy?

Last year, we were one of the only ones to report on Will Page and Chris Carey's analysis of the UK music market, which showed (contrary to all the whining and complaining out there) that the music industry was actually growing, if you stopped focusing in on just recorded music, and looked at the overall industry.

This was a point we'd been making for years, and it was great to see some economists -- especially economists who work for the industry make that point.

The movie industry keeps sending very, very mixed messages. It keeps insisting that its business is being decimated by file sharing, but then keeps putting out reports bragging how well it's doing.

Reader ethorad points us to a page put up by the UK Film Council about the movie business in the UK, where it makes a pretty compelling case that the movie business is thriving, despite all the reports of doom and gloom.

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel.

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If bargain movie rentals are your thing, then you’ve probably already happened on those bright red self-servce kiosks that dispense movie renta

Cyber Cynic: "...Microsoft's future might best be served in releasing its own version of Linux that he's a Linux fan.

Wrong, this prophet of Windows doom and gloom was Keith Curtis, a former Microsoft Research staffer. Could he be right?

I think the answer is yes and no."