Articles by Rob Enderle

Though they're often made fun of, millennials arguably are making a bigger impact on saving the planet than the generations that preceded them. It does seem strange to me that our governments haven't been more aggressive about protecting the environment, given that the cost of not doing so poses an existential risk to the human race. It seems ins...

I was moved by the recent news about a woman being shot in her home by a police officer who had come to check up on her. Once again, I found it frustrating that people immediately jumped to apply blame before all the facts were in, which tends to do more damage than good. From my reading, three mistakes contributed to the incident. The first wa...

One of the interesting and somewhat underappreciated aspects of the Qualcomm wireless event in San Diego a few weeks back is that 5G will make realistic augmented reality avatars possible. This advance will be possible because with high bandwidth and very low latency, processing could shift from the device to the cloud. Coupled with the rollout ...

One of the last major initiatives former CEO Steve Ballmer launched before he left Microsoft was its Surface effort. It was designed to address the concern that the iPod would take over the PC world. The iPod could have been such a threat, but Apple didn't execute. The offering is not only not a threat to the PC market, but looking rather long in...

Last week, I attended a Qualcomm event that took me through the coming wave of both 5G and Wi-Fi 6 products, touched on the millimeter wave, and at least spoke to 6G. From this, I think I can begin to picture the world as it will exist by the middle of the next decade, and it is kind of fascinating I've always enjoyed seeing companies apply their v...

Watching Brazil's rain forest burn is causing a lot of us to freak out a bit. Referring to it as "the world's lungs" may be an overstatement, but the rain forest is a critical global resource, and its destruction undoubtedly will do even more ugly things to global warming. Given that the U.S. government seems to be pro-global warming now, as it ...

Apple held its huge product announcement event last week, and what once had people besides themselves with excitement has become a near pointless program of copied features and missed expectations. It is a shame to watch -- much like it was when Apple fired Steve Jobs. It appears that the firm has forgotten what Steve did to turn Apple into a uni...

There was an interesting dialog between Elon Musk and Jack Ma last week. Two of the most powerful men in the world, they both have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Ma, who is the Alibaba Group cofounder and a huge advocate for the 12-hour a day six-day Chinese work week in tech, indicated that he believed AI would reduce the work week from 72 hours (where it now is in China) to 12 hours -- that is, three 4-hour workdays. I think he has firmly stepped away from his reality. ...

I'm struck by the extent to which Apple and Tesla are executing a model very similar to IBM's. While IBM has evolved to put the customer at the center always, Apple and Tesla are nuanced in that respect, much like IBM was in the past. I worked at IBM when it imploded in the early 1990s, so I think I can speak to what is in Apple and Tesla's futur...

I'm on the road about 50 percent of the time, and I'm often asked by those who don't travel much for advice on how to have a better trip -- what to carry with you, where to sit, how to manage frequent flier programs, and so forth. I figured I'd cover that now, given the kids are going back to school, and a lot of families are preparing to go on their last summer trip. ...

Like many of you, I'm tired of being upset about mass shootings and the government's seeming lack of progress to end them. I'm particularly tired of the partisan bickering around talking points that have no basis in fact. The left wants this to be about guns. The right, fearing that this effort will reduce gun sales, wants to blame mental illness and video games.

Like many of you, I watched eight-plus hours of Democratic debates last week, and they seem to be getting worse over time. The last effort made it look like CNN was trying harder to create drama than to help people make a choice among the candidates. We have a ton of technology -- some new, some in place for decades -- that could make this proces...

Launching a new car company and getting it to global scale isn't something that happens often, and it has been a long time since there has been a successful launch of one in the United States. Tesla really stands alone as the only new U.S. car company of scale since American Motors and Studebaker failed decades ago, when three auto companies then dominated the U.S. industry. One of those car companies, Chrysler, first was owned by Mercedes and then Fiat. ...

I was struck by a recent video of a soldier who apparently took some woman's parking spot and then went off the rails when she objected. He bad-mouthed the U.S. military and the U.S., abused his wife, and put his child at risk. A decade ago we probably wouldn't have seen this incident, but now there is a good chance that anyone who misbehaves, as...

There are several holidays tied to buying stuff. For Halloween, we buy all kinds of crap we shouldn't be eating and feed it to our kids. When Valentine's Day approaches, husbands and boyfriends live in fear of forgetting it, or getting their significant other's card, gift or flowers wrong again. Fourth of July is when we buy expensive things we ca...

Like a lot of you, after reading about the departure of Jony Ive, I'm trying to wrap my head around Apple without a design focus. (Tim Cook has disputed the WSJ article -- remember when the WSJ and Walt Mossberg were basically Apple's marketing arm?) Now this isn't as hard as you might think, given the last truly successful Apple product came out...

I watched the Democratic debates last week and was struck by three things: I'd likely rather watch paint dry; the application of technology to improve the experience was nonexistent; and I'd bet that if the Democrats don't up their game President Trump will have them to thank when he wins re-election. I'm generally frustrated about how little tec...

I'm giving myself extra wiggle room because we know things rarely happen as fast as we think or progress as slowly as we hope. We all thought we'd have flying cars by the end of last century, for instance, but we are due to be up to our armpits in them by the end of next decade if the impressive number of trials continue to go well. I'll close wi...

I attended Cisco Live last week, and one of the things that impressed me was how many amazing things the company has been doing that have nothing to do with products, services or revenue. Most companies have a philanthropic budget and donate, but they don't really seem to care if the money makes a difference. For most, philanthropy is more about ...

Amazon plans to begin drone deliveries within the next several months. The drones have become far more capable, safer, and less noisy, but there are five other problems that will need to be addressed before this delivery method reaches its full potential. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to drone delivery, which might be ideal for Ube...