Word: analysts
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...given the rapid growth and expansion of both personal blogs and networking sites like Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace. Harnessing the power of social networking is viewed as a key component of the soon-to-explode local advertising market, which will be worth $10.9 billion globally by 2009, according to analysts Kelsey Group. The individual pages contained on any of these sites or their blogging cousins may appear trivial: minutiae about cats' feeding habits, or the favorite break-up songs of teenage girls. But companies are banking on the notion that, in the aggregate, these pages represent a gold mine...
...secede. Northern hard-liners, who had to be strong-armed into signing the deal, now have more reason to be wary of southern intentions. "In the north, Garang was perceived to be somebody that supported the view that voluntary union might be possible," says David Mozersky, a senior analyst on Sudan at the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. "Without Garang there, those elements may try to undermine [the deal] because they see its full implementation as a threat to the regime...
...more bad news for RIM. Because the BlackBerry is mainly limited to e-mail on its proprietary platform, many execs are switching to smart phones like Palm's Treo that run content-rich software from start-up Good Technology. "The BlackBerry is all work, no play," says ThinkEquity analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez. "Do you really want to carry multiple devices if you can carry one?" Good, which has grown its subscriber base 50% over the past six months, lets customers access e-mail on a variety of operating systems and mobile devices; Cingular and Sprint have already signed on. Jittery...
...Maytag's competitors in Asia can take advantage of cheaper labor costs, but LG's and Samsung's real advantage is quality: $1,000 washing machines compete with the best ones from GE and Whirlpool. "They're really competing on products, not price," says Eric Bosshard, an analyst at FTN Midwest. Maytag has been slow to keep up; its last new front-loading washer debuted in 1997. Until those new product lines are ready, Maytag can't take advantage of lower costs at its newer, more efficient plants in South Carolina and Mexico, which make them. To stay afloat...
Bells and whistles aren't enough. "People will pay for products they understand the benefits to," says Peter Greene, an analyst with the NPD Group. The most successful new products are "consumer driven, not engineering driven," he says. Their benefits are obvious: whisper-quiet dishwashers or space-saving stackable washer-dryers rather than just machines with more powerful motors. That trend affects every consumer product, he says. Look at MP3 players. Before the iPod, they competed on how much memory they had. Apple figured out that the experience of the gadget mattered more and killed the category...