Link to the Show / Show Notes[[libsyn_player]]
0.32 â Mark is back with Duncan Stewart.
1.23 â The guys start off with the consolidation of the Canadian software industry and the sale of one of Markâs stocks, Work Brain by Infor.
3.05 â Duncan laments the investorâs choice of Canadian enterprise software companies. Mark brings up the problem with the Canadian software industry â to scale you need to sell to the U.S. which is when youâll attract the attention of an acquirer.
4.09 â Is Canada the farm team for the global software industry? Canada certainly seems to be able to nurture small companies who get acquired once they become a mid-sized software company.
4.24 â RIM and Nortel managed to stay in Canada but Duncan is worried about the lack of obvious star companies coming into the âfarm systemâ.
5.20 â Mark goes back to an old hobby horse â the poor venture capital environment for tech start ups in Canada. He talks about AdScape, a company that moved to the U.S. but kept its R&D in Canada. When it was bought by Google, Canada didnât see any of the benefits.
6.04 â The Canadian VC/Angel community hasnât seen too much success that would recycle the available money through the system and start new companies. Duncan points out that the technology pool in Canada is very small.
6.55 â The guys segue onto the iPhone. Mark doesnât see the handset market replicating the conditions that the iPod succeeded in. Duncan says that the iPod raised the bar for Apple and the iPhone.
7.11 â Heâs curious to know how long the âcoolâ factor will last and how Apple will get into the carrierâs distribution channel. He points to RIM as the case study for getting a carrier to pimp their product.
8.56 â Mark is worried about the cost of the iPhone. Will the carriers subsidize it in the same way as the Blackberry is subsidized? As an enterprise device, the user rarely sees their bill at the end of the month; the iPhone is more of a consumer device.
9.40 â Duncan is concerned that the iPhoneâs WiFi offering may actually be a nail in its coffin. Because users would be able to circumvent the carrierâs network, they would get cheap calls through Skype. The carriers would hate that.
11.20 â Why would the carriers subsidize a product that would kill their profit margins?
12.00 â Mark brings up Rogersâ new wireless webcam which was launched by William Shatner last week. Heâs not sold on the video and wireless connection.
13.33 â EMI and non-DRM mp3 music tracks is the next topic for discussion. Bob Lefsetz ranted that music should be getting cheaper to encourage experimentation.
14.09 â Duncan illustrates his point with the fact that Vladimir Ashkenazyâs 1971 complete recital of Beethoven is in the top 100 songs on iTunes. The album is more than 10 hours of music, and was making the company zero dollars at its previous $100 price but is a huge hit at $29.99.
14.50 â Mark uses Allofmp3.comâs success of selling albums for $2 through a quirk of Russian copyright law. Mark will try out new music at $2 or $3 but not at $14.
15.55 â Mark is surprised the music industry has gotten its position on the web so wrong. Duncan compares it to the Sony Betamax debacle and says that entrenched positioning makes it hard to say youâre wrong before going back the iPhone.
16.24 â He reminds us of the small line between success and failure that Apple has seen before ranting about the music industryâs obsession with DRM.
Audio or text comments for Mark, Kevin and Duncan can be emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com.
Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.
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