Sorry to start off Monday with such negative news, but some details from this article in the NYT are interesting:

For weeks, there have been signs that the public was not buying new PCs over the holidays in the numbers many had hoped. Now add to them new figures from IDC, one of the best-known scorekeepers for the market, showing that worldwide PC shipments declined 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.

That decline was worse than the 4.4 percent drop that IDC had previously forecast for the fourth quarter. It was also a sign that the biggest thing to happen to the PC business in years — Microsoft’s release of the Windows 8 operating system and the millions of dollars that went into promoting it — did not rescue an industry that suffered a nasty sales slump for most of last year.

Then:

Microsoft and Intel will suffer further, with the Wintel PC market share expected to decline to 65 percent in 2013, from 72 percent in 2012.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that I find this hardly surprising.

Additionally, I think this great image shows exactly what Nick Wingfield, the writer of the NYT piece, was trying to explain. There’s certainly a trend in Wintel computers, and it isn’t a positive one.

Speaking of it being easier than ever to support indie creators, here’s a great tool if you happen to be US-based and want an easy way to accept payments, either one-off or recurring.

No love yet for UK folks, though.

Fred Wilson has some smart things to say about subscription revenue models for businesses:

The emergence of the subscription model has made the software business better. In the old upfront license fee model, software companies would trade at 2-4x revenues. Now they trade at 6-8x revenues. That reflects the recurring, almost annuity nature of the subscription model.

Whilst he speculates that “software is not the only technology orientated business that utilises a subscription revenue model”, I think he glosses over a few businesses closer to my heart: namely independent writing, podcasting — and even music and movie making.

It is now easier than ever to start a subscription-based, creative project and have it support itself sustainably, as the subscriber count grows.

Smart point by MG Siegler. I’ve been wary of Android as a business for a while. It certainly seems the only company making money from Android is Samsung.

Not Google, not HTC, not anyone else.

And Samsung, the biggest Android handset maker, is flirting with leaving the platform. This could be the story of 2013.

John Roderick is quickly becoming one of my favourite people.

Thanks to Gabe for the link. Looks like I’m going to have to start listening to this now.

Nvidia announced their Project Shield portable gaming device at CES on Monday, with no details on price. Or availability. Or battery life.

The Shield seems far too bulky and oddly shaped to carry around comfortably. It’s thicker and bulkier than existing portable gaming hardware and even thicker again compared to the average smartphone. Calling it portable is certainly optimistic — can you imagine this being used on public transport? It looks to be clunky and awkward in size, almost certainly too large for an average pocket. It also appears more delicate than a smartphone, with a hinged screen worth protecting. It may well be “portable”, but I can’t see this being used outside of the home to the same degree people use a Nintendo DS.

Fortunately, the Shield isn’t only trying to be a portable console. It has another trick up its sleeve.

Where the announcement gets really interesting is Nvidia’s integration with traditional PCs with Nvidia graphics cards. I’ve already pondered Valve’s interesting position in gaming and how it might create for an interesting future for consoles. Whilst the Shield isn’t a “Steam Box”, it’s possible to use the device as a controller for games on a PC and use the Shield’s screen instead of the PC to view the action. Essentially, the Shield becomes the screen and the controller for some of your PC games — in much the same way the new Wii U’s game pad acts as a screen and controller to the Wii U. Interesting.

Nvidia is presenting a device with two goals: to be a portable gaming system (running Android) and a way to play PC games in a more portable way… when at home. The Shield fails in the first goal — smartphones and existing gaming devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS do far better jobs at either being mobile and ubiquitous (smartphones) or being a “good enough” compromise of mobile and quality gaming (portable consoles). The Shield isn’t mobile when compared to a smartphone and it isn’t better than existing home consoles or PCs for gaming around the house. I don’t even need to mention how short the battery life must be when streaming HD video over Wi-Fi.

If you want a portable gaming device, either use your smartphone or buy an existing console — which will come complete with a rich ecosystem of top-tier gaming titles. If you want a controller experience at home with pleasant HD graphics, either use a cheap Xbox controller with a gaming PC or simply get a full console. They’re cheaper than ever. The Shield is trying to solve problems which have already been solved.

As it stands today — before the Shield even exists — dedicated electronics hardware is in decline. Gaming hardware is dying. I don’t have much hope for existing portable gaming consoles like the DS or PSP, so announcing a brand new device with very few gaming titles in an arguably worse form factor than existing products seems to be a sure failure.

The First Steam Box?

Another related announcement to come out of CES is the “Piston”, the first Steam Box device for use with Valve’s Big Picture mode. As I said over a month ago, whilst speculating about the future for Valve and Steam’s Big Picture mode:

If Valve released moderately powerful hardware, bundled with a “Steam OS” and took away the hassles associated with PC gaming, they could be on to a winner.

I still stand by this. Valve are in a unique position: they create hugely successful games, own an extremely popular gaming distribution platform and have a huge audience: as I write this, nearly four million users are online on Steam. I believe we’ll know much more about Valve’s Big Picture mode when first party hardware is released. Until then, I remain hopeful. As I said back in December:

I wonder if existing console manufacturers even consider Valve a threat to their business today. Perhaps they should.

Yes, that says Billion.

There’s been a total of over 40 Billion iOS apps downloaded in total, with almost half of those coming from 2012. These shockingly huge numbers start to paint a picture of how big iOS really has become — and how huge growth is still happening.

Turns out that our coins over here in the UK are rather beautifully designed. News to me.

Thanks, Vignesh.

When I read this, a few things struck me. Firstly, that’s a lot of iPhones.

Second, Horace doesn’t usually preface estimates with quite this many caveats:

So I’m very uncomfortable with my forecast and find it hard to defend this quarter. I considered not publishing one at all because it gives too much confidence when none is warranted.

We may be surprised when the real numbers come out. Horace’ll be biting his nails.

Dead on arrival.

This is certainly a win for the Leap Motion folks — but it remains to be seen how the technology will be used in Asus PCs. Will it just be another unwanted and bundled feature?

Leap Motion seems like a really cool idea, but there needs to be at least one “killer use-case” in order for it to really take off. Right now there isn’t one.

I’m still waiting for consumer units to ship, so friends of mine who’ve pre-ordered can report back and let me know how they’re using theirs. I’d hate for the Leap Motion to just be a gimmicky albeit cool demo. In order for it to be more than just an impressive trick, there needs to be awesome software.

In order to help awesome software get developed, the Leap Motion folks are shipping developer units in big numbers. There are certainly some cool demos on the Leap YouTube channel — but nothing which screams “I want this!”

I hope that changes soon.

Raging Thunderbolt educates:

The fallacy that Sully commits is called denying the antecedent. As Wikipedia, everyone’s go-to logician, says:

One way to demonstrate the invalidity of this argument form is with a counterexample with true premises but an obviously false conclusion. For example:

• If Queen Elizabeth is an American citizen, then she is a human being.
• Queen Elizabeth is not an American citizen.
• Therefore, Queen Elizabeth is not a human being.