Ideas and analysis from the Creative Strategies team.

Technology strategy, semiconductor architecture, product experience, and the future of work.

Latest articles

October 8, 2021 · Carolina Milanesi

Surface Laptop Studio: The First Convertible Worth Having

I am not one for sensationalistic titles when talking about a product, but I must admit talking about the new Surface Laptop Studio like the first convertible worth having is the best way to summarize how I feel about this product. At what has now become an annual Fall appointment, the Microsoft Sur

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September 21, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

iPhone 13 and Apple Silicon

For years now, Apple’s tight integration of its products and Apple Silicon have evolved in lockstep. From my point of view as an analyst, and one that has been doing semiconductor industry analysis for over 20 years, Apple’s silicon strategy has been fascinating to analyze. From a big picture viewpo

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September 15, 2021 · Carolina Milanesi

Putting Apple’s California Streaming Into Context

As is always the case with high-profile launches, we got to Apple’s California Streaming event with plenty of rumors to consider. Of course, most of what was expected did materialize on stage, but many of the details certainly helped paint a much better picture of Apple’s view of the market and how

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September 8, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

AirPods and AirPods Pro: Delighting Customers by Exceeding Expectations

In a first for the Delight Scale, we are publishing the scores for two products by the same brand in the same family. Our product research on AirPods and AirPods Pro yielded some consistent insights across Apple hardware products. One of the staple benchmarks of the Delight Scale is the ability to m

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August 19, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

The Metaverse and Reality

I’m fond of saying that all science fiction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever we see in science fiction inspires human ingenuity to pursue it. In a way, this is happening with the Metaverse because when you hear “visionaries and futurists” talk about it, it ends up sounding a lot like the Matr

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August 12, 2021 · Carolina Milanesi

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Delivers Confidence on Galaxy Z Fold Line

For Samsung, summer has traditionally been synonymous with the Galaxy Note, but in 2019 the top-of-the-line model had to share the limelight with the Galaxy Z Fold line. Then, in 2020 the Note even had to share the stage with the Fold family. If you follow the smartphone market, you can understand w

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July 28, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

Intel Returning to Form

On Monday, Intel held an event to outline the next 5 years of their process technology roadmap. In addition, there were a number of technical announcements where they highlighted some of the benefits of their transistor design and packaging technology that will come to their latest chips over the ne

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July 22, 2021 · Carolina Milanesi

Alexa’s Evolution Into An Ambient Assistant

At Alexa Live 2021, Amazon’s annual developer conference focused on skills and services built for Alexa-enabled devices, the company shared a long list of improvements both from a features and developer tools perspective. Seven years in the making, Alexa now counts hundreds of millions of devices in

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July 21, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

The PC Category Resurgence

Few technology categories have taken more abuse and had opinions formed than the PC category. While the PC is not the primary computing device of billions of people, that crown belongs to the smartphone, it is still the second most adopted category of computing on the planet. The current PC installe

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July 15, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

Apple and Developer Satisfaction With App Store

536 developers for Apple’s software platforms participated in a study Creative Strategies fielded in late May. What makes our study results particularly interesting, is the makeup of our panel ended up being small business developers making less than $500,000 a year from their apps. With 55% of them

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July 7, 2021 · Ben Bajarin

For Peloton Owners, Hardware + Software = Delight

We were excited to run our Delight Scale on Peloton and see if it truly stood up to the glowing fanfare coming from consumers on social media. Sure enough, Peloton scored a 960, out of the possible 1200, on our Delight Scale with some of the most overwhelming positive sentiment of any consumer produ

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