10 Things That Caught My Eye: Week of 3-21-11

Lots of tablet/mobile news to kick things off:

1. RIM is struggling to maintain relevancy and apparently co-CEO Jim Balsille’s comments during their earnings call on did not inspire much confidence that they can turn the tide as the stock slid 13%. Matt Drance sums up the reason for the poor response to the earnings call well: “RIM has two CEOs and three COOs. Why is anyone expecting straight answers from a company that can’t even decide who’s in charge?”
2. Samsung launched its new tablet lineup at CTIA, adding an 8.9” consumer version and a 10.1” business oriented tablet to the existing 7” form factor. Both are priced near the iPad2 entry point ($469 and $499) respectively, which is good. What I don’t understand is why launch two new form factors with a $30 spread? From a manufacturing standpoint I don’t see how this advantages Samsung in any way. From a consumer standpoint I can’t see who wouldn’t pony up an additional $30 to get an 11% larger screen and some additional software capabilities (even if you’d never use them). On the whole it is a good step forward for Samsung – the tablets have the new Android Honeycomb OS, benefit from the strong Samsung consumer brand and the pricing is now in the right ballpark. But while maybe this would make me consider the Galaxy over the Motorola XOOM, is there anything here that gives a buyer reason to choose it over an iPad…or the threatened/upcoming introductions of the HP TouchPad or RIM PlayBook? I’m not sold….literally or figuratively.
3. Larry Dignan says that the next big tablet battleground will be in the enterprise.  It’s a good article. If only someone had thought of this before…could anyone have been so prescient?
4. It’s easy to say that companies should leverage the social graph, but it’s another thing to do it. I thought this article on how Foursquare took up the challenge to create a recommendation engine was pretty interesting to read. I’m sure it only scratches the surface, but it gives an inkling of what’s involved.
5. I’ve said before that travel companies are sitting on a boatload of data, but like many industries, have a hard time turning that into actionable information. Thought this was a good article on how BI/decision science could alter hotel revenue management strategies in the future.
6. Rail is a sector that doesn’t get a lot of play in the media except for when President Obama called for an investment in high-speed rail in his SOTU…and of course the predictable calls from the GOP to stop all subsidies to Amtrak. But Kevin May wrote a really good piece on how the rail market is evolving and how companies like Amadeus, Travelport and PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit winner, SilverRail Technologies are increasing their efforts in the sector.
7. Great summary of the state of online travel flash sales. What’s really interesting is the demographics of those visiting these sites.
8. How open is open? Well it seems the definitions are shifting a bit to suit the organizations purpose (shocker) as Google says it won’t release Honeycomb to developers just yet according to this report from BusinessWeek. Timing aside, my bigger beef with Google’s interpretation of “open” is the fact that while they release the code to carriers and device manufacturers to be mucked about with after the fact, they don’t actually allow anyone outside of Google to contribute to the codebase as its being developed. But perhaps I’m picking nits. On a related note, OpenAXIS is adding “membership” to the definition of open.
9. Speaking of definitions, it seems multi-tenancy is still kinda murky to some. This should remind you that it’s still important to understand your software providers’ architecture.
10. SITA breaks ATPCOs monopoly on airline fare in the US and Canada. It should be interesting to see what innovations SITA brings to the space and how ATPCO responds.