I've noticed many writers I follow have been linking to Mr. Thompson's writing on his Stratechery website a lot recently. I subscribed to his site, and I'm very impressed. He seems to know a lot about tech company business models (particularly Apple, Google, and Microsoft).

His latest piece about how to understand Google is spot on:

Google is much more successful, relatively speaking, selling Nexus tablets than they are Nexus phones; they sell 10% of all Android tablets, but a tiny fraction of Android smartphones. I don’t think this is a surprise; the go-to-market in smartphones is much more complex due to the involvement of carriers. Google isn’t great at dealing with such complexities, and given the fact they’re a horizontal player, aren’t that motivated to get better. Tablet sales, however, are much more transactional.

Also, this footnote is accurate, and rather humorous.

To be clear, the decision has already been made; any pundit that suggests this year’s iPad mini will be in any way influenced by the Nexus 7 is an idiot .