by Adam Hartung | Jun 21, 2019 | Newsletter Post
The newsletters of Adam Hartung.
Keynote Speaker, Managing Partner, Author on Trends
Responding to Market Disruptions? Get Ahead of the Next One!
Market Threat Assessments
Recent studies of senior managers have shown that being blindsided by a disruption is the largest unresolved concern in strategy development today. That fear is too often real because disruption typically begins where it is least visible to management- on the fringes of the existing target markets. And, once the disruption “pirate ship” is sighted on the horizon, not only is it probably too late, but companies react poorly.
Research of corporate responses to disruption has shown that most companies ignore the threat, fortify existing positions or attempt to buy innovation. The first choice is not an option for an ongoing business. Fortification through distribution changes, product model proliferation and discounting only buys some additional time while wasting resources. Once a disruption enters the market, there’s little time for organic innovation efforts or “random acts of innovation” (Forbes) so companies often make acquisitions attempting to buy innovation.
Sadly, given the risk profile and limited experience in innovation, these are often sustaining innovations which are swept aside by the wave of disruption.
A very large example is when Microsoft fell behind in the 
mobile market in 2014 and purchased Nokia, a weak player in mobile phones to get access to this market. The joint project, the Lumia phone, failed to catch on and Microsoft’s share fell by 50%- fail. Cisco tried to catch up with the photography trend by acquiring Pure Digital, the maker of low cost Flip cameras. Unfortunately, shortly after the acquisition, the high-resolution sensors included in smartphones took photography to a new level. Bye, Flip! Trend monitoring would have predicted this natural evolution as a high risk threat.
Even in successful acquisitions, founders often leave the firm, losing the source of innovative ideas long term. (Time, Inc.)
To anticipate external changes, marketing departments have embraced big data as a powerful tool to help companies identify new markets and consumer preferences. These tools use the past to predict the short-term future which is reasonable in a steady market. The problem is that big data cannot accurately anticipate dynamic disruptions.
But, you and your staff can.
Uncovering market opportunities that can deliver improved returns at a manageable risk for the firm is the goal. New products will also generate an increasing percentage of revenue leading to continued growth. Companies that master this process have a long range radar to identify potential opportunities in a process called, “continuous innovation”.
What’s on your company’s radar today?
Spark Partners is here to help as your coach on trends and innovation. We bring years of experience studying trends, organizations, and how to implement. We bring nimbleness to your strategy, and help you maximize your ability to execute.
Let us do an opportunity assessment for your organization. For less than your annual gym cost, or auto insurance premium, we could likely identify some good opportunities your blinders are hiding. Read my Assessment Page to learn more.
“Don’t plan for what you know. Plan for what you don’t know.”
Adam Hartung, Create Marketplace Disruption
For more on how to include trends in your planning, I’ve created a “how-to” that you can adapt for your team. See my
Status Quo Risk Management Playbook.
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by Adam Hartung | Sep 22, 2015 | Current Affairs, Disruptions, In the Rapids, Innovation
A recent analyst took a look at the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) on the demand for oil, and concluded that they did not matter. In a market of 95million barrels per day production, electric cars made a difference of 25,000 to 70,000 barrels of lost consumption; ~.05%.
You can’t argue with his arithmetic. So far, they haven’t made any difference.
But then he goes on to say they won’t matter for another decade. He forecasts electric vehicle sales grow 5-fold in one decade, which sounds enormous. That is almost 20% growth year over year for 10 consecutive years. Admittedly, that sounds really, really big. Yet, at 1.5million units/year this would still be only 5% of cars sold, and thus still not a material impact on the demand for gasoline.
This sounds so logical. And one can’t argue with his arithmetic.
But one can argue with the key assumption, and that is the growth rate.
Do you remember owning a Walkman? Listening to compact discs? That was the most common way to listen to music about a decade ago. Now you use your phone, and nobody has a walkman.
Remember watching movies on DVDs? Remember going to Blockbuster, et.al. to rent a DVD? That was common just a decade ago. Now you likely have shelved the DVD player, lost track of your DVD collection and stream all your entertainment. Bluckbuster, infamously, went bankrupt.
Do you remember when you never left home without your laptop? That was the primary tool for digital connectivity just 6 years ago. Now almost everyone in the developed world (and coming close in the developing) carries a smartphone and/or tablet and the laptop sits idle. Sales for laptops have declined for 5 years, and a lot faster than all the computer experts predicted.
Markets that did not exist for mobile products 10 years ago are now huge. Way beyond anyone’s expectations. Apple alone has sold over 48million mobile devices in just 3 months (Q3 2015.) And replacing CDs, Apple’s iTunes was downloading 21million songs per day in 2013 (surely more by now) reaching about 2billion per quarter. Netflix now has over 65million subscribers. On average they stream 1.5hours of content/day – so about 1 feature length movie. In other words, 5.85billion streamed movies per quarter.
What has happened to old leaders as this happened? Sony hasn’t made money in 6 years. Motorola has almost disappeared. CD and DVD departments have disappeared from stores, bankrupting Circuit City and Blockbuster, and putting a world of hurt on survivors like Best Buy.
The point? When markets shift, they often shift a lot faster than anyone predicts. 20%/year growth is nothing. Growth can be 100% per quarter. And the winners benefit unbelievably well, while losers fall farther and faster than we imagine.
Tesla was barely an up-and-comer in 2012 when I said they would far outperform GM, Ford and Toyota. The famous Bob Lutz, a long-term widely heralded auto industry veteran chastised me in his own column “Tesla Beating Detroit – That’s Just Nonsense.”
Mr. Lutz said I was comparing a high-end restaurant to McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Pizza Hut, and I was foolish because the latter were much savvier and capable than the former. He should have used as his comparison Chipotle, which I predicted would be a huge winner in 2011. Those who followed my advice would have made more money owning Chipotle than any of the companies Mr. Lutz preferred.
The point? Market shifts are never predicted by incumbents, or those who watch history. The rate of change when it happens is so explosive it would appear impossible to achieve, and far more impossible to sustain. The trends shift, and one market is rapidly displaced by another.
While GM, Ford and Toyota struggle to maintain their mediocrity, Tesla is winning “best car” awards one after another – even “breaking” Consumer Reports review system by winning 103 points out of a maximum 100, the independent reviewer liked the car so much. Tesla keeps selling 100% of its production, even at its +$100K price point.
So could the market for EVs wildly grow? BMW has announced it will make all models available as electrics within 10 years, as it anticipates a wholesale market shift by consumers promoted by stricter environmental regulations. Petroleum powered car sales will take a nosedive.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) points out that EVs are just .08% of all cars today. And of the 665,000 on the road, almost 40% are in the USA, where they represent little more than a rounding error in market share. But there are smaller markets where EV sales have strong share, such as 12% in Norway and 5% in the Netherlands.
So what happens if Tesla’s new lower priced cars, and international expansion, creates a sea change like the iPod, iPhone and iPad? What happens if people can’t get enough of EVs? What happens if international markets take off, due to tougher regulations and higher petrol costs? What happens if people start thinking of electric cars as mainstream, and gasoline cars as old technology — like two-way radios, VCRs, DVD players, low-definition picture tube TVs, land line telephones, fax machines, etc?
What if demand for electric cars starts doubling each quarter, and grows to 35% or 50% of the market in 10 years? If so, what happens to Tesla? Apple was a nearly bankrupt, also ran, tiny market share company in 2000 before it made the world “i-crazy.” Now it is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Already awash in the greatest oil inventory ever, crude prices are down about 60% in the last year. Oil companies have already laid-off 50,000 employees. More cuts are planned, and defaults expected to accelerate as oil companies declare bankruptcy.
It is not hard to imagine that if EVs really take off amidst a major market shift, oil companies will definitely see a precipitous decline in demand that happens much faster than anticipated.
To little Tesla, which sold only 1,500 cars in 2010 could very well be positioned to make an enormous difference in our lives, and dramatically change the fortunes of its shareholders — while throwing a world of hurt on a huge company like Exxon (which was the most valuable company in the world until Apple unseated it.)
[Note: I want to thank Andreas de Vries for inspiring this column and assisting its research. Andreas consults on Strategy Management in the Oil & Gas industry, and currently works for a major NOC in the Gulf.]
by Adam Hartung | Mar 27, 2015 | Investing, Mobile, Software, Trends, Web/Tech
Phablets are a very hot, growing market. Phablets are those huge phones (greater than 4″ screen size) that some people carry around. From almost nothing in 2012, over the last 3 years the market has exploded:
Source: Jay Yarrow, Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/in-one-chart-heres-why-the-ipad-business-is-cratering-2015-3?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alerts&nr_email_referer=1
The original creator of this market data, Kulbinder Garcha of Credit Suisse, thinks this demonstrates cannibalization of tablet sales by phablets. And this is supposedly a bad thing for Apple.
But there is another way to look at this. By introducing and promoting a phablet (iPhone 6+ and Galaxy S6,) Apple and Samsung are growing users of mobile media and mobile apps. As the chart shows, growth in tablet sales was nothing compared to what happened when phablets came along. So people who didn’t buy a tablet, and maybe (likely?) wouldn’t, are buying phablets. The market is growing faster with phablets than had they not been introduced, and even if tablet sales shrink Apple and Samsung see revenues continue growing.
Who wins as phablet sales grow? Those who have phablet products in the market, and newer versions in the works.
Source: Kantar WorldPanel and Seeking Alpha http://seekingalpha.com/article/3032926-microsoft-the-china-mobile-backed-lenovo-windows-10-smartphone-could-be-a-future-tailwind?ifp=0
As this chart shows, the companies who dominate smartphone sales are those who make Android-based products (#1 is Samsung) and Apple. Microsoft missed the mobile/smartphone trend, and even though it purchased Nokia it has never obtained anything close to double digit share in any market.
Unfortunately for Microsoft enthusiasts, and investors, Microsoft’s Windows10 product is focused first on laptop (PC) users, second on hybrid (products used as both a laptop and tablet), third tablets (primarily the slow-selling Microsoft Surface) and in a far, far trailing position smartphones.
Source: IDC
As data from IDC shows, Surface sales are inconsequential. So the big loser from phablet cannibalization of tablets will be Microsoft. Given its very small user base, and the heavy losses Microsoft has taken on Surface, there is little revenue or cash flow to support an intense competitive effort in a shrinking market. Apple and Samsung will market hard to grow as many sales as possible, and likely will make the tablet products more affordable. Thus one should anticipate Microsoft’s very small tablet share would decline as tablet sales shrink.
This is the problem created when any business misses a major trend.
Microsoft missed the trend to mobile. They didn’t prepare for it in any of their major products, and they let new products, like music player Zune and Lumia phones, languish – and mostly die. By the time Microsoft reacted Apple and Samsung had enormous leads. Microsoft is still trying to play catch-up with its “core” Windows product.
But worse, because it is so far behind, Microsoft’s leaders are unable to forecast where the market will be in 3 years. Consequently they develop products for today’s market, like tablets (and their hybrid products,) which we now see will be obsolete as the market shifts to new products (like phablets.) Because Apple and Samsung already have the new products (phablets) they are prepared to cannibalize the old product sales (tablets) in order to overall grow the marketplace. But Microsoft has no phablet product, really no smartphone product, and will find itself most likely writing off more future Surface products as its tiny market share erodes to nothing.
So this trend to phablets continues to make a Microsoft comeback as a major personal technology competitor problematic. Windows 10 may be coming, but its relevance looks increasingly like that of new Blackberry models. There is little reason to care, because the products are years late and poorly positioned for leading edge customers. Further, developers will already be onto new competitive platforms long before the outdated Microsoft products make it to market. Without share you don’t capture developers, without developers you don’t have a robust app market, without apps you don’t capture customers, without customers you can’t build share — and that’s a terrible whirlpool Microsoft is captured within.
Be sure your business keeps its eyes on trends, and does not wait to react. Waiting can turn out to be deadly.
by Adam Hartung | Jun 19, 2014 | Current Affairs, Disruptions, In the Swamp, Leadership, Web/Tech
Yesterday Amazon launched its new Kindle Fire smartphone.
“Ho-hum” you, and a lot of other people, said. “Why?” “What’s so great about this phone?”
The market is dominated by Apple and Samsung, to the point we no longer care about Blackberry – and have pretty much forgotten about all the money spent by Microsoft to buy Nokia and launch Windows 8. The world doesn’t much need a new smartphone maker – as we’ve seen with the lack of excitement around Google/Motorola’s product launches. And, despite some gee-whiz 3D camera and screen effects, nobody thinks Amazon has any breakthrough technology here.
But that would be completely missing the point. Amazon probably isn’t even thinking of competing heads-up with the 2 big guns in the smartphone market. Instead, Amazon’s target is everyone in retail. And they should be scared to death. As well as a lot of consumer products companies.
Amazon’s new Kindle Fire smartphone
Apple’s iPod and iPhones have some 400,000 apps. But most people don’t use over a dozen or so daily. Think about what you do on your phone:
- Talk, texting and email
- Check the weather, road conditions, traffic
- Listen to music, or watch videos
- Shopping (look for products, prices, locations, specs, availability, buy)
Now, you may do several other things. But (maybe not in priority,) these are probably the top 4 for 90% of people.
If you’re Amazon, you want people to have a great shopping experience. A GREAT experience. You’ve given folks terrific interfaces, across multiple platforms. But everything you do with an app on iPhones or Samsung phones involves negotiating with Apple or Google to be in their store – and giving them revenue. If you could bypass Apple and Google – a form of retail “middleman” in Amazon’s eyes – wouldn’t you?
Amazon has already changed retail markedly. Twenty years ago a retailer would say success relied on 2 things:
- Store location and layout. Be in the right place, and be easy to shop.
- Merchandise the goods well in the store, and have them available.
Amazon has killed both those tenets of retail. With Amazon there is no store – there is no location. There are no aisles to walk, and no shelves to stock. There is no merchandising of products on end caps, within aisles or by tagging the product for better eye appeal. And in 40%+ cases, Amazon doesn’t even stock the inventory. Availability is based upon a supplier for whom Amazon provides the storefront and interface to the customer, sending the order to the supplier for a percentage of the sale.
And, on top of this, the database at Amazon can make your life even easier, and less time consuming, than a traditional store. When you indicate you want item “A” Amazon is able to show you similar products, show you variations (such as color or size,) show you “what goes with” that product to make sure you buy everything you need, and give you different prices and delivery options.
Many retailers have spent considerably training employees to help customers in the store. But it is rare that any retail employee can offer you the insight, advice and detail of Amazon. For complex products, like electronics, Amazon can provide detail on all competitive products that no traditional store could support. For home fix-ups Amazon can provide detailed information on installation, and the suite of necessary ancillary products, that surpasses what a trained Home Depot employee often can do. And for simple products Amazon simply never runs out of stock – so no asking an aisle clerk “is there more in the back?”
And it is impossible for any brick-and-mortar retailer to match the cost structure of Amazon. No stores, no store employees, no cashiers, 50% of the inventory, 5-10x the turns, no “obsolete inventory,” no inventory loss – there is no way any retailer can match this low cost structure. Thus we see the imminent failure of Radio Shack and Sears, and the chronic decline in mall rents as stores go empty.
Some retailers have tried to catch up with Amazon offering goods on-line. But the inventory is less, and delivery is still often problematic. Meanwhile, as they struggle to become more digital these retailers are competing on ground they know precious little about. It is becoming commonplace to read about hackers stealing customer data and wreaking havoc at Michaels Stores and Target. Thus on-line customers have far more faith in Amazon, which has 2 decades of offering secure transactions and even offers cloud services secure enough to support major corporations and parts of the U.S. government.
And Amazon, so far, hasn’t even had to make a profit. It’s lofty price/earnings multiple of 500 indicates just how little “e” there is in its p/e. Amazon keeps pouring money into new ways to succeed, rather than returning money to shareholders via stock buybacks or dividends. Or dumping it into chronic store remodels, or new store construction.
Today, you could shop at Amazon from your browser on any laptop, tablet or phone. Or, if you really enjoy shopping on-line you can now obtain a new tablet or phone from Amazon which makes your experience even better. You can simply take a picture of something you want, and your new Amazon smartphone will tell you how to buy it on-line, including price and delivery. No need to leave the house. Want to see the product in full 360 degrees? You have it on your 3D phone. And all your buying experience, customer reviews, and shopping information is right at your fingertips.
Amazon is THE game changer in retail. Kindle was a seminal product that has almost killed book publishers, who clung way too long to old print-based business models. Kindle Fire took direct aim at traditional retailers, from Macy’s to Wal-Mart, in an effort to push the envelope of on-line shopping. And now the Kindle Fire smartphone puts all that shopping power in your palm, convenient with your other most commonplace uses such as messaging, fact finding, listening or viewing.
This is not a game changing smartphone in comparison with iPhone 5 or Galaxy S 5. But, as another salvo in the ongoing war for controlling the retail marketplace this is another game changer. It continues to help everyone think about how they shop today, and in the future. For anyone in retail, this may well be seen as another important step toward changing the industry forever, and making “every day low prices” an obsolete (and irrelevant) retail phrase. And for consumer goods companies this means the need to distribute products on-line will forever change the way marketing and selling is done – including who makes how much profit.
by Adam Hartung | Apr 1, 2014 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Swamp, Leadership, Web/Tech
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast” (Alexander Pope)
As it does for most investors. People do not like to accept the notion that a business will lose relevancy, and its value will fall. Especially really big companies that are household brand names. Investors, like customers, prefer to think large, established companies will continue to be around, and even do well. It makes everyone feel better to have a optimistic attitude about large, entrenched organizations.
And with such optimism investors have cheered Microsoft for the last 15 months. After a decade of trading up and down around $26/share, Microsoft stock has made a significant upward move to $41 – a new decade-long high. This price has people excited Microsoft will reach the dot.com/internet boom high of $60 in 2000.
After discovering that Windows 8, and the Surface tablet, were nowhere near reaching sales expectations after Christmas 2012 – and that PC sales were declining faster than expected – investors were cheered in 2013 to hear that CEO Steve Ballmer would resign. After much speculation, insider Satya Nadella was named CEO, and he quickly made it clear he was refocusing the company on mobile and cloud. This started the analysts, and investors, on their recent optimistic bent.
CEO Nadella has cut the price of Windows by 70% in order to keep hardware manufacturers on Windows for lower cost machines, and he announced the company’s #1 sales and profit product – Office – was being released on iOS for iPad users. Investors are happy to see this action, as they hope that it will keep PC sales humming. Or at least slow the decline in sales while keeping manufacturers (like HP) in the Microsoft Windows fold. And investors are likewise hopeful that the long awaited Office announcement will mean booming sales of Office 365 for all those Apple products in the installed base.
But, there’s a lot more needed for Microsoft to succeed than these announcements. While Microsoft is the world’s #1 software company, it is still under considerable threat and its long-term viability remains unsure.
Windows is in a tough spot. After this price decline, Microsoft will need to increase sales volume by 2.5X to recoup lost profits. Meanwhile, Chrome laptops are considerably cheaper for customers and more profitable for manufacturers. And whether this price cut will have any impact on the decline in PC sales is unclear, as users are switching to mobile products for ease-of-use reasons that go far beyond price. Microsoft has taken an action to defend and extend its installed base of manufacturers who have been threatening to move, but the impact on profits is still likely to be negative and PC sales are still going to decline.
Meanwhile, the move to offer Office on iOS is clearly another offer to defend the installed Office marketplace, and unlikely to create a lot of incremental revenue and profit growth. The PC market has long been much bigger than tablets, and almost every PC had Office installed. Shrinking at 12-14% means a lot less Windows Office is being sold. And, In tablets iOS is not 100% of the market, as Android has substantial share. Offering Office on iOS reaches a lot of potential machines, but certainly not 100% as has been the case with PCs.
Further, while there are folks who look forward to running Office on an iOS device, Office is not without competition. Both Apple and Google offer competitive products to Office, and the price is free. For price sensitive users, both individuals and corporations, after 4 years of using competitive products it is by no means a given they all are ready to pay $60-$100 per device per year. Yes, there will be Office sales Microsoft did not previously have, but whether it will be large enough to cover the declining sales of Office on the PC is far from clear. And whether current pricing is viable is far, far from certain.
While these Microsoft products are the easiest for consumers to understand, Nadella’s move to make Microsoft successful in the mobile/cloud world requires succeeding with cloud products sold to corporations and software-as-service providers. Here Microsoft is late, and facing substantial competition as well.
Just last week Google cut the price of its Compute Engine cloud infrastructure (IaaS) platform and App Engine cloud app platform (PaaS) products 30-32%. Google cut the price of its Cloud Storage and BigQuery (big data analytics) services by 68% and 85% as it competes headlong for customers with Amazon. Amazon, which has the first-mover position and large customers including the U.S. federal government, cut prices within 24 hours for its EC2 cloud computing service by 30%, and for its S3 storage service by over 50%. Amazon also reduced prices on its RDS database service approximately 28%, and its Elasticache caching service by over 33%.
To remain competitive, Microsoft had to react this week by chopping prices on its Azure cloud computing products 27%-35%, reducing cloud storage pricing 44%-65%, and whacking prices on its Windows and Linux memory-intensive computing products 27%-35%. While these products have allowed the networking division formerly run by now CEO Nadella to be profitable, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain old profit levels on existing customers, and even a tougher problem to profitably steal share from the early cloud leaders – even as the market grows.
While optimism has grown for Microsoft fans, and the share price has moved distinctly higher, it is smart to look at other market leaders who obtained investor favorability, only to quickly lose it.
Blackberry was known as RIM (Research in Motion) in June, 2007 when the iPhone was launched. RIM was the market leader, a near monopoly in smart phones, and its stock was riding high at $70. In August, 2007, on the back of its dominant status, the stock split – and moved on to a split adjusted $140 by end of 2008. But by 2010, as competition with iOS and Android took its toll RIM was back to $80 (and below.) Today the rechristened company trades for $8.
Sears was once the country’s largest and most successful retailer. By 2004 much of the luster was coming off when KMart purchased the company and took its name, trading at only $20/share. Following great enthusiasm for a new CEO (Ed Lampert) investors flocked to the stock, sure it would take advantage of historical brands such as DieHard, Kenmore and Craftsman, plus leverage its substantial real estate asset base. By 2007 the stock had risen to $180 (a 9x gain.) But competition was taking its toll on Sears, despite its great legacy, and sales/store started to decline, total sales started declining and profits turned to losses which began to stretch into 20 straight quarters of negative numbers. Meanwhile, demand for retail space declined, and prices declined, cutting the value of those historical assets. By 2009 the stock had dropped back to $40, and still trades around that value today — as some wonder if Sears can avoid bankruptcy.
Best Buy was a tremendous success in its early years, grew quickly and built a loyal customer base as the #1 retail electronics purveyor. But streaming video and music decimated CD and DVD sales. On-line retailers took a huge bite out of consumer electronic sales. By January, 2013 the stock traded at $13. A change of CEO, and promises of new formats and store revitalization propped up optimism amongst investors and by November, 2014 the stock was at $44. However, market trends – which had been in place for several years – did not change and as store sales lagged the stock dropped, today trading at only $25.
Microsoft has a great legacy. It’s products were market leaders. But the market has shifted – substantially. So far new management has only shown incremental efforts to defend its historical business with product extensions – which are up against tremendous competition that in these new markets have a tremendous lead. Microsoft so far is still losing money in on-line and gaming (xBox) where it has lost almost all its top leadership since 2014 began and has been forced to re-organize. Nadella has yet to show any new products that will create new markets in order to “turn the tide” of sales and profits that are under threat of eventual extinction by ever-more-capable mobile products.
While optimism springs eternal long-term investors would be smart to be skeptical about this recent improvement in the stock price. Things could easily go from mediocre to worse in these extremely competitive global tech markets, leaving Microsoft optimists with broken dreams, broken hearts and broken portfolios.
Update: On April 2 Microsoft announced it is providing Windows for free to all manufacturers with a 9″ or smaller display. This is an action to help keep Microsoft competitive in the mobile marketplace – but it does little for Microsoft profitability. Android from Google may be free, but Google’s business is built on ad sales – not software sales – and that’s dramatically different from Microsoft that relies almost entirely on Windows and Office for its profitability
Update: April 3 CRN (Computer Reseller News) reviewed Office products for iOS – “We predict that once the novelty of “Office for iPad” wears off, companies will go back to relying on the humble, hard-working third parties building apps that are as stable, as handsome and far more capable than those of Redmond. It’s not that hard to do.”
mobile market in 2014 and purchased Nokia, a weak player in mobile phones to get access to this market. The joint project, the Lumia phone, failed to catch on and Microsoft’s share fell by 50%- fail. Cisco tried to catch up with the photography trend by acquiring Pure Digital, the maker of low cost Flip cameras. Unfortunately, shortly after the acquisition, the high-resolution sensors included in smartphones took photography to a new level. Bye, Flip! Trend monitoring would have predicted this natural evolution as a high risk threat.
