Articles by Rob Enderle

Like a lot of folks, I'm a tad sick of Intel. Last month we learned of its second big security scandal in as many years. Once again, the company not only neglected to disclose the problems in a timely way but also lacked a plan to recall the failed parts. Once again, buyers likely will have to cripple their Intel processors if they want to use th...

I went to Lenovo Accelerate last week and feasted my eyes on one of the most innovative PCs I've ever seen. However, as I absorbed the rest of Lenovo's announcements, I realized I was looking at just the tip of what could be a significant coming change in personal computers -- one that could eclipse every change we have seen so far. I'll share ...

Apple, Google and Microsoft are three very powerful companies. Two of them had big events last week -- Google I/O and Microsoft Build. What I found interesting was that both Google and Microsoft largely were on the same page about focusing on the customer. Both Google and Microsoft have been making massive advancements with artificial intelligence...

I spent a good deal of my educational and early career as an analyst doing research at scale. In fact, the way I got into the executive resources program at IBM was through one of the largest research projects my division had ever undertaken. A recurring issue with those who attempt to address the diversity and inclusion problem is that in the a...

Tesla sure didn't have a good week last week, given the kind of press coverage it got. (I just did a search and this was the top result when my search box autofilled "Tesla is going bankrupt" -- apparently this is a popular search topic.) The company's latest quarterly results were astonishingly bad. I'm not that worried about Tesla going away, though, as its products are far too popular for it to disappear. On the other hand, management clearly needs to be fixed. ...

The big news last week was that Apple finally agreed to settle its fight with Qualcomm. Kudos to Tim Cook, because I've known a lot of CEOs who rather would have fought to the death than admitted they were wrong -- and not only wrong but acting disingenuously the entire time. (Fighting this to the death would have been far worse.) What spurred the...

Last week I attended a coming-out event for some of Qualcomm's latest processors, a massive update on its artificial intelligence effort (which included an innovative Quantum element), and a connection to 5G most likely didn't see coming. I think this is a game-changer. The nature of the San Francisco event was to highlight a counterintuitive im...

There should be no argument that we live in a diverse world, and that the technology industry doesn't reflect that diversity. The lack of diversity in employees makes it very difficult for companies, both in and out of the tech market, to address their increasingly diverse customer base effectively, whether buyers or end users. This has resulted...

One of the things I mention very infrequently is that I was groomed to be a CEO from a very early age. At IBM, I was part of two programs. One was a unique Tiger Team effort designed to correct underperforming units by eliminating problem executives, and then replacing them with team members until new and hopefully better executives could be found. The other was the firm's grooming program for top executives. Those were on top of my three management degrees and Certified Management Accounting certificate. ...

I spent last week at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference, and I expect this will be the last year it will go by that name. The company has evolved significantly during the last decade with robotics, artificial intelligence, and even complete workstations and servers taking it well beyond its GPU roots. My bet is this will become Nvidia's Developer Conference going forward, as the firm displaces Intel in the hearts and minds of developers and buyers. ...

Elizabeth Warren's desire to curtail Facebook, Amazon and other companies that have misused their massive power -- or may do so in the future -- is well founded. The U.S. appears to be trending toward civil war, and I'd place social media in general on the wrong side of this trend. I do think most of us want to avoid that war. However, just as y...

The tech market is defined by its battles: Microsoft vs. IBM; Apple vs. Microsoft; Netscape vs. Microsoft; Google vs. Microsoft. If Microsoft were a person, it likely would have PTSD. Then there was Apple vs. Google, and now the big one is Apple vs. Qualcomm. The screwy thing for me is that Huawei represents a far greater threat to both companies...

TheMobile World Congress, which kicked off on Monday, is the annual event where everyone who hates Apple goes to grouse about their profits and point out Apple's lack of real progress. That's pretty much everyone who is anyone, aside from Apple itself, which also is at the event. Much like CES often does, MWC tends to spin pretty hard toward the "...

One of the biggest problems for those of us who have electric cars is charging. Chargers that drop the charging time to a few minutes have been coming to market, but the cars that can use those chargers haven't yet begun to ship. What this means for most of us is that we are talking anywhere from 45 minutes to several days to fully charge our car...

Last week, like a lot of you, I imagine, I watched the State of the Union and tried to figure out what was true and what was fiction. Tied into several of the live-streamed press fact-checking streams, I found that the comments validating or invalidating what the president said came in so far after the comment was made that it would have been better to skip the speech and wait until the next day when the talk and the feedback were better matched. ...

I've been watching antitrust cases actively since the 1980s. I had to study historical antitrust cases going back to Standard Oil and RCA, in order to ensure compliance with a related consent decree When I worked at IBM. Each of the other cases had one thing in common: Both of the companies being charged were massively and obviously monopolies. ...

Intel released earnings last week, and it was ugly. Yes, the company beat expectations on the bottom line, but it missed big on the top line and the outlook was dismal. Looking under the covers, the company is a mess. The expected CEO announcement -- it has been operating with an interim CEO -- didn't occur. AMD's earnings are expected to be ver...

Things have been changing at an almost unprecedented rate with regard to power structures. The last time I saw this happen was in the 1970s when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took off. Suddenly a lot of the off-color, sexist and racist jokes that many executives regularly told could get them fired. A surprisingly large number of people got reassigned, fired, demoted, or otherwise punished for the same behavior that previously had made them "one of the guys."

To suggest that electric cars are having a painful birth would be a colossal understatement. Tesla clearly plowed this field and quickly recognized that the lack of a charging infrastructure was going to be a problem and, with reasonable effectiveness, dealt with it tactically. However, those "tactical" chickens are about to come home to roost and it probably won't be pretty. ...

We are approaching critical mass on a number of technologies that we will see increasingly this year. This wave will start at CES, where we will see an impressive number of attempts at personal robots and AI-powered digital assistants. Most will fail. However, both the failures and the few successes will set the stage for the first true mobile personal robots that will arrive in the following years. ...