From wireless subscriber growth and platform earnings to wearables, broadband, and digital music, this archive records the questions shaping consumer technology in July 2015.
Monthly record
July, revisited.
An archive is most useful when it makes prior assumptions visible: which metrics mattered, what remained uncertain, and how a market looked before later developments arrived.
These posts examine public company reporting and product strategy across several connected sectors. They have been recast here as a reading guide, preserving the central analytical questions without treating estimates as settled facts.
Lead analysis
The mechanics behind wireless growth
A closer reading of subscriber churn, gross additions, and the different burdens carried by large and smaller carriers.
Earnings · Wireless
The key to T-Mobile’s growth
· Archive reading
This analysis considered why one US wireless operator was adding customers while larger rivals faced slower growth. The key distinction was not simply net additions, but the relationship between churn, gross additions, and the size of the existing customer base.
Low churn can materially reduce the number of customers a carrier must replace before it can grow. Yet that advantage changes as the base expands, making scale both an asset and an ongoing operating challenge.
Three entry points into the month’s analysis of advertising, device categories, and changing technology business models.
Earnings · Advertising
Facebook’s Q2 2015 earnings
Regional user growth, mobile advertising, and the cost of newer businesses were central to this earnings read. The underlying question was how engagement and monetization developed at different rates across markets.
Strong advertising performance did not resolve questions about audience growth, product fit, or engagement. The post separates short-term financial momentum from longer-term product challenges.
A comparison with the iPod framed the Watch as a companion device: one shaped by its relationship to a larger installed base, pricing, product differentiation, and slower replacement patterns.
