James Siminoff

The Coffee Market

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

There are 2 businesses that I will never go into, restaurant/hospitality and airlines.  So this post in no way is trying to elude to my entrance into the coffee market but I do think that it is becoming an interesting market and opportunity for entrepreneurs.

The coffee market is being split into 2 distinct verticals, high end (where Starbuck’s used to be) and low end (Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, 7-eleven, etc.).  The opening that I see becoming clearer and clearer to the market is the high end.  Starbuck’s in its quest to grow and please the stock market continues to bring itself down market, calling coffee, well coffee, as they do now was a really bad idea.

My wife used to be a Starbuck’s person, on a dialy basis, now she likes going to a slightly more expensive and boutique coffee house called, Cafe Luxxe.  I have gone with her a few times to Luxxe and if my business senses are correct then Starbuck’s is going to experience a lot more pain in the future.  The local “influencers” have all switched from the local Starbuck’s to Luxxe and at almost any time of day Luxxe is crowded and the 2 Starbuck’s down the street are much lighter on traffic.

I ma sure that there are a lot of Luxxe’s in markets like LA that are taking the influencers business.  The problem for Starbuck’s is that some owner/operator shops will start to expand to be small local chains (Luxxe is adding a 2nd location next month).

Starbuck’s will be in a bad spot when it has smart high end local competition and the low end is already too established to compete with.  Also its infrastructure is already built around high end which is going to make it very tough to compete profitable there if that is where they go.

My call is Starbuck’s short and local regional chains long.

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The biggest Apple Announcement Today

Image via Wikipedia

The biggest Apple Announcement Today Apple announced 2 big new things today, a new iPod and a upgrade to iTunes.  However I think that the biggest piece of news that Apple had come out today was that NBC came back onto iTunes.  NBC was the first big network to break off of the iTunes platform.  There coming back shows Apple’s clear dominance in the content area.

I also think that in the next few years Apple TV, which has done nothing so far, will gain a lot of momentum.

Testing the Blackberry Bold vs iPhone 3g

Guess it is time to buy an iPhone…  This is a great comparison between the 2 platforms and it shows that Apple is really close to taking the enterprise market.

bijan:

The new Blackberry Bold is supposed to ship in October.

Luckily I got one yesterday thanks to a friend (i’m not sure I’m supposed to say his name or not).

I’ve been using various blackberry models for years until the iPhone 3G came out. The built in MS Exchange support & address book search was the clincher for me and the App store is just too much fun. I got my 3g iphone on opening day and have been using it as my main squeeze ever since.

But the iPhone has real shortcomings. My biggest issues are:

-no email search

-no copy & paste

-it doesn’t roll between 3g and Edge as nicely as it should

Because of these things, and the new look of the Bold, I thought I’d give this new Blackberry model a test run today.

Observations:

1. Keyboard. It took awhile but after a few months, I actually prefer the iphone keyboard to the Blackberry Bold keyboard. I think the Bberry Curve has the best keyboard. The keypad on the Bold seems too close together or something

2. Email simply works better on the Blackberry. I forgot how smooth things work like drafts, forwarding attachments, offline editing/deleting etc.

3. The Blackberry has a task manager that wirelessly syncs with the tasks on MS Exchange server. The iphone doesnt.

4. I miss copy & paste and email search.

5. The browser on the Blackberry Bold is slow and ugly. I tested it directly against the iphone on a variety of sites and the results were consistent. The iphone was at least 2x faster vs the Bold on 3g. Once the Blackberry finally rendered the page it didn’t look good or in some cases it didn’t work at all. I ddin’t test wifi.

6. I missed the 3rd party iphone apps that I rely on these days (e.g. Twinkle, Yelp, Shazam, Google mobile, Mobile Fotos).

7. I like the iphone calender better than the blackberry calender. I especially like how meeting invitations are handled on iphone.

8. The Blackberry Bold is big and feels even bigger. It’s also thick. They should have made this machine in the form factor of the Blackberry curve. The screen is very nice although it almost looks smaller than the curve. The resolution has improved.

9. The iphone camera quality is better - although its faster on the Blackberry.

10. I still don’t like the phone part of the Blackberry. I like the phone app on the iphone.

11. I think the iphone handles SMS generally better than the Blackberry. although why doesn’t the iphone support MMS yet.

12. I’m glad the iphone doesn’t have a blinking red light like the blackberry.

13. I love having photos, videos and tunes with me everywhere. the blackberry “media player” just doesn’t compete.

14. The software and UI on the Blackberry bold is pretty much the same old thing. I didn’t see anything new.

15. It is possible to use the same AT&T sim card in the Blackberry Bold and iphone. The trick is to ask AT&T to add the Blackberry data plan to that sim card and give them your Bberry serial number. Just tell customer care that you are only going to use your Blackberry. Once that is done you can move the SIM card to & from the iphone and everything (voice & data) will work fine. The only thing that won’t work with this set up is Apple’s Visual Voicemail. That’s okay by me because I use PhoneTag.

The iPhone has plenty of things that need improving. My friend Jason thinks that the 2.1 upgrade is going to be a major fix. It may even bring world peace :)

I don’t know if he’s right or wrong. But I’m willing to wait because right now I’m happier with the iPhone 3g than this Blackberry Bold.

TC50 Day 1

Well I spent half the day at the TechCrunch 50 event in SF today.  Jason and Mike put on a great event.  There are lots of people out there talking about the things that went wrong but to me the hardest part of an event like TC50 is getting the right audience there and that is something that they were definitely able to accomplish.

So far the companies that I saw were OK but I am there more to socialize.  Certain conferences like this are so efficient as you can have quick chats with 10-20 people a day that you would otherwise have to plan meetings with and take a lot more time to see.

I look forward to spending some more time there tomorrow and then it is off to CTIA, the next SF conference that I am attending this week…

I look forward to going home on Friday!

SF Week

Image via CrunchBase

Next week is a big one in San Francisco.  TechCrunch 50 is Monday-Wednesday and then CTIA is Wednesday through Friday.  There are just so many people from all different areas, VC, Entrepreneurs, Mobile execs, etc., coming in for both events that I have basically been able to book meetings the entire week.

So I will be camping out in SF from Sunday-Thursday, should be a fun week and I am looking forward to some amazing meetings that I have already set up.