iPad is the computer for rest of the world
January 28, 2010
Most of the industry has been underwhelmed with the iPad launch. I for one, actually think this is a great device. It may not be for us, techies, but for rest of the world, it is going to be a great device.
This is a device I can hand it my grand father and he won’t have much trouble using it. Compare this to handing him a laptop and training him about how an OS works, what a drive is, what a file system is, why he needs an anti-virus software etc. Ease of use is the key here. Infact, we have seen this with iPhone already. Every day I see many 2-3 year old having absolutely no problem using the device. That makes a HUGE difference.
In a country like India, there are over 500 million mobile phones. But there are less than 15 Million computers (connected to the internet). Why is this the case? One of the reason is, PCs are complicated to use/learn for non-techies. I think this device can address a broader market as it hides the details from the user.
Ofcourse, mobility is a another huge factor here. India has less than 40Million landlines compared to 500Million mobile phones. Morgan Stanley report on mobile internet says mobile internet will cross desktop internet usage very soon. It is through devices like this we will see this happening and it is through devices like these the internet will reach the masses worldwide.
Sure, for techies, it can be yet another device between phone and a laptop solving a specific need, but for the rest of the world, I think this will be a great device and mostly their primary computer. Yes, there are some missing features initially, but they’ll be addressed and that is the evolution of any product. We have seen this with the iPhone and I am sure we will see this with iPad.
Overall, I see this as a first major step in the evolution of mobile computing. We will see a flurry of devices in coming months and years. But end of the day, it is all about software. In this case, iPad has the software dumbed down to the masses in a great form factor and in my view, it’ll be a winner.
Google’s Disruption Leads to Commoditization
November 4, 2009
This is a post I wrote for CloudAve. I am including the entire post below.
Bill Gurly wrote up a great piece on Google’s disruption in the navigation market. It is a great read to understand the impact Google’s new navigation ‘feature’ will have in that market.
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That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!!
When you have a hugely profitable business, it is relatively easy to disrupt adjacent businesses which will hugely impact other players focused in that market. Google’s model is not new. We have seen this before. Microsoft disrupted Netscape by simply offering the browser for free and even included it in their OS, essentially killing Netscape whose business model was to sell a browser. When the oxygen supply of a vendor is cut, their business has to change quickly or it eventually dies, as we have seen with Netscape. For Microsoft, Windows & Office is their cash cow. They can afford to give away a browser with no impact to their bottom line. But in the marketplace, it commoditizes the browser and kills other vendors whose sole business is selling the browser (like Netscape). This is petty much what Google is doing in the Maps/Navigation market. As Bill mentioned, it will have a significant impact on vendors like Garmin, Tom Tom.
When you have one profitable business, it is not uncommon to give away something to disrupt adjacent markets. Apple, for example, focuses on selling hardware with software as a value-add to sell more hardware. When software is the value add, it can be cheaper than the other guys up north who solely rely on selling software. This kind of explains why the cost of Windows 7 is so high compared to Snow Leopard.
Google cannot continue disrupting all markets it enters. It needs to find alternative money making markets apart from search. If the search market gets very competitive (Bing?), it could spell disaster for Google’s core, cutting its oxygen supply. According to Eric Schmidt, Google Apps is the next big thing for Google. How significant will Google Apps be to their bottom line is yet to be seen – especially considering how low the margins are for business vendors compared to vendors serving the consumer market.
This disruption game is interesting. Microsoft makes money from Office & Windows and is trying to disrupt(?) search. Google is doing the opposite to Microsoft trying to disrupt(?) Microsoft with Google Apps & Chrome OS. These are just two companies. When we look at the bigger picture, we see many companies disrupting each other to establish their presense with consumers and businesses.
No matter who disrupts whom, it is only good news for the end user.
Connected car
October 3, 2009
I have long been waiting for a connected car – one that is connected to internet all the time (3G or EVDO or Wifi). Ideally it should include a Solid State Drive (Hard drives fail frequently due to motion) to store content (music, primarily).
The idea is, my car should connect to my home WiFi network and Sync music from my iTunes (or whatever the music library is). I hate burning CDs and I am not a fan of sync on my iphone and then connecting it to the car as these things need cables.
I finally achieved the first part – being connected on the go. First, I ordered a Sprint Mifi. This is basically a WiFi access point at one end and on the other end, it is connected to the Sprint EVDO network. This way, I am always connected as long as there is a Sprint signal. Because it is a WiFi network within the car, all passengers in the car can now be connected to the same wireless network.
One of the drawbacks of this device is the battery life which can only last for 4 hours. To have it permanently connected, I purchased a PowerLine Power Inverter. This basically connects to the car charger on one end and on the other end, you can connect any device with the standard power outlet or even USB.
A combination of connected power and connected internet makes my life better and the passengers happy.
Now, I am looking for ways to connect a hard drive to my car and sync it with my library.
Android is like Linux: Excites geeks, not end users
August 23, 2009
There has been some good discussion around Android recently and Daring Fireball blog has some very good points on the opportunity Android has in the market.
I 100% agree with him that iPhone needs competition. Unfortunately, the competition doesn’t look very good so far. While John Gruber makes a case where competition could exist if executed right, I don’t see some one gaining significant share in the market, atleast in the short term. iPhone seem to be couple of years ahead of competition in the market and so far, I still don’t see good competition for iPhone.
When hardware becomes a commodity, the value moves to the software. So the game suddenly shifts to the software vendor’s turf. Now, to provide better end user experience on an end user device like a phone, a vendor with expertise in both hardware and software has significant advantages in this market and there are not many vendors who do software and hardware and definitely not at the scale as Apple. This puts Apple much ahead of competition not just in the short term, but also in the long term. When they have a lead, it is tough to beat them, unless we see some blunders from them.
I love linux. As I geek, I spend lot of time with it and I don’t see how tens of thousands of companies (like Google) can survive without open source software like linux. That said, it is already known that Linux has not penetrated the desktop market as much as it penetrated the server market. Infact, I’ll go a step further and say that it is tough to find enough open source software with great UI/usability. On the other hand, more often than not, the server side stuff is pretty good for most of the popular open source software. I think this is true with Android. I played with it a bit and found similarities between Android and Linux (yes, it is the same core). Similar to Linux, Android has the same powerful stuff, but where it fails is the usability and the final touches it needs. I can never call any Linux software ‘pleasure to use’ (yes, including Ubuntu), but I can say that after using a Mac, for example. As long as someone takes the user experience and user interface seriously, I think Android will face the same fate as Linux.
If a new phone has to compete with iPhone, it is not good enough if it is 10% better than iPhone. It has to be significantly better than the iPhone. If it comes with a smaller vendor, it going to get much tougher.
If there is one thing I’d like to see in Android (or linux), it is the improvements to the usabiltiy and UI of the entire OS. It looks crappy, atleast to my taste. Attention to the detail is very important and it has to be a please to use. Unless someone comes up with an OS that is good for end users, they’ll keep loosing against Apple. Phone is the device that stays with us longer than any other device. It is not good enough if it is functional. It has to be ‘please to use’.
Marketing in Documentation
August 9, 2008
I was reading a document from Apple and found the following interesting…
This stuff is right in their documentation.
If you are wondering why you are using MS Windows or you already made your decision and would like to switch from MS Windows to Mac OS X please visit http://www.apple.com/getamac/ and use your Apple discount to buy a new Mac.
Are Social Networks Any Good?
May 13, 2008
I am not sure about you, but I am really tired of all the social networking news out there. I guess I am sick of the hype surrounding it and I no longer follow it.
I have a Facebook account (along with ton of others), connected to my friends, added Apps, joined groups, added photos, added videos….but, then what? What do I do next? Poke Friends?
After doing all these stuff, I noticed I don’t do much with that. I know I am not alone here. I really don’t see much value on these social networks to login regularly after connecting with people. If connecting with people is what these apps do, then I don’t think I need them as I am already connected with the people I care with in other ways (IM, Email, Phone etc). Unless social networking is built around the apps I use regularly, I think it is not going to go far.
I couldn’t care less on all the Social Networking related news lately. This ends my rant of the week, I guess 
iPhone Usage Stats
May 13, 2008
I was checking out my iPhone usage stats today and found that I did more than 1GB of data transfer on the iPhone just on the EDGE Network…excluding WiFi. This is freakishly high compared to my data transfer rates on my previous Blackberry Pearl.
The Data Received itself crossed 1GB and the data sent is around 200MB.
As I mentioned earlier, iPhone as an internet communicator impressed me more than other cool stuff. I can clearly see the change in my usage pattern and am sure I am not alone.
How does your usage stats look?
Another reason to use Online Apps
April 25, 2008
Here is another reason to use Online Apps..
For those who are heading to the US, here is a word of caution – the border agents can now search your laptop even without a cause.
This follows a US Federal Appeals Court ruling, earlier this week, that agents at the border do not need any “reasonable suspicion” to search through travellers’ laptops.
In other words, computers are like any other luggage going through the border, and hence, subject to searches at US national borders and airports.
More info here…
Tata Bags Jaguar & Land Rover
March 26, 2008
Today, Tata finished the acquisition of two major brands – Jaguar & Land Rover – for $2.3Bn from Ford. That amount doesn’t seem a lot for some reason.
On one side, Tata has the world’s cheapest car and now with this aquisition, they have a distribution network. It’ll be interesting to see how these brands will emerge under Tata’s leadership.
This is the second acquisition for Tata in 2008 that ran over $1Bn. More info on their acquisitions here.
Sync between iTunes?
March 18, 2008
I am trying to find a simple Sync utility that synchronizes all my music, podcasts (atleast the configuration of podcasts), videos etc across multiple iTunes instances running in different machines. Do you know if there is any? If so, please let me know. I have been looking for something like this for a while.
Interestingly, Apple’s Sync functionality, that comes as part of the .Mac subscription, works for most of the other applications except iTunes. While it could be because of copyrighted content Apple doesn’t want to enable sync for iTunes, Apple certainly allows us to share/copy music manually between multiple instances (3 instances) of iTunes. May be they don’t want to make it easier to sync the copyrighted content?
I am essentially looking for a simple Sync tool that keeps my music etc synced between my iMac, MacBook Pro and Windows PC. Do let me know if you have any ideas.
If we look at this broadly, the Sync issues exist only when the apps/data reside on the desktops. If everything is on the cloud, we certainly can overcome these issues. Can we expect a weB-based iTunes? May be it is too much to ask from Apple….atleast for now.
