Saad Fazil
Saad Fazil is a freelance writer covering the mobile space. He is the founder of Whizner Consulting, a technology strategy consulting firm. Prior to consulting, he taught Technology Strategy and Information Economics at Harvard College, and held business analyst, product management, and sales consultant positions at Kayak.com, Oracle, and Alcatel. He received his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He blogs at IT Valley and tweets at @sfrocks.
Recent Posts
3 reasons TV is about to get a facelift
GigaOm’s NewTeeVee Live event, which explores the future of TV, took place in San Francisco today. Though there were a number of interesting demos and presentations, three really stood out as being most likely to shape how we watch TV in the immediate future.
The first of these was Boxee’s announcement that it will be coming out with a dedicated Boxee box next month (which we covered briefly earlier today). Boxee is a software platform that… Continue Reading
iTunes turned the music market on its head. Could iTunes TV do the same for TV?
Rumors surfaced this week that Apple is in the process of putting together a $30-a-month iTunes TV offering. This rumored iTunes TV is supposedly something altogether different from the currently available Apple TV.
Apple TV is a piece of hardware that makes it easy to watch media (video, audio, pictures) on your regular TV. iTunes TV, on the other hand, would be a software offering that would allow consumers to watch “channels” on a PC for… Continue Reading
A review of location-based networks — and how they can grow faster
Location based social networking keeps getting tremendous hype, but the question is whether it will live up to its potential.
The buzz continued this week when Loopt, one of the earliest location-based social networks, announced the acquisition of GraffitiGEO. Loopt recommends places to go based on your location, and informs you of friends around you. Several industry observers have raved about the potential of location-based social networks for businesses and advertising. “Context awareness is critical when… Continue Reading
AT&T okays VoIP apps, but that doesn’t mean it’s payday for Skype
AT&T announced yesterday that it will enable iPhone VoIP apps on its 3G wireless network. You’d think that’d be great news for VoiP companies, and market leader Skype in particular, and indeed, Skype CEO Josh Silverman rejoiced, asking for even more concessions. But dig a little deeper, and the picture isn’t quite so rosy.
The VoIP market has low barriers to entry and limited revenue-generating opportunities under the current business models, so it’s no surprise that… Continue Reading
Which augmented reality startups will dominate? We rank them.
Augmented Reality — the ability to superimpose data and information over a view of the real world — is arguably hot these days, and there’s no scarcity of articles and blogs on the space and AR apps. VentureBeat first reviewed AR apps two months ago. As more time has passed I decided to take a deeper look at the technology, business models and utility behind the startups to separate hype from reality. To do so… Continue Reading
Voice startup RebelVox could spawn new breed of voice apps
Voice has been transmitted as data for a number of years now, through Skype for example. But the way we use voice hasn’t fundamentally changed: consumers still communicate and leave voicemails in very similar ways as before. Whether voice is carried over a circuit or packet switched network, or is carried as voice or data is immaterial to end users. Without doubt, consumers have benefited from lower costs, and perhaps to some extent, integration of… Continue Reading