Category Archives: Technology

The one thing that really helped Microsoft capture the personal computer market was its strategy to focus on software that goes on computers made by any computer manufacturer from IBM to Dell. That’s been the company’s strategy which has proven great for it over the years. Windows became the platform of choice for application developers due to its great reach in turn making it irreplaceable for the PC users. Apple on the other hand made really great Macs by developing both the machine and the software that goes on it. A semi-closed ecosystem with a handful of application makers (like Microsoft Office) making software for it. Apple found its niche in the cool and trendy crowd consisting of students, designers and artists.

Bring in the mobile space. The very strategy that worked against Apple in computers playing field is now proving to be its most valued asset. Apple is a company that controls end-to-end development of its mobile phone. It controls all three key elements of the phone – hardware, software and the chip component. This gives Apple an unprecedented advantage in providing integrated user experience. Apple is able to remove any friction between hardware and software. Adding the chip development expertise to this provides Apple accuracy in estimating the processor performance and map it to feature development. The out of the box experience that FaceTime delivers is one of the first examples of how vertical integration is going to do wonders for Apple.

The only other company that has all three elements of mobile phone under its control is Samsung. Samsung, the world’s largest conglomerate, has great expertise in chip development and hardware manufacturing. Samsung manufactured phones running Windows Mobile software have been around for a while, but Samsung launched its bada platform for mobile devices in late 2009 to have complete end-to-end presence in the mobile world and Samsung Wave became the first bada based phone to enter the market a few months back. All the elements coming together positions Samsung perfectly to be a challenger in providing vertically integrated experience on the mobile platform.

Now moving on to talk about the emerging markets. Mobile phone market is growing at a tremendous pace in the developing countries. India and China each have more mobile phone users than the total population of United States. If at one end a smartphone costs more than the monthly income of many people in these countries, it is a wannabe gadget for the growing middle class. While iPhone fanaticism is catching up in these countries as well, no one can dispute the unparalleled hold Samsung’s got in the Asian markets. Samsung has one of the most efficient marketing machinery and brand presence in the electronics market out there. This positions it strongly against Apple et al to get smartphone market share in these countries.

There’s still a while to go before calling out the winner in the mobile devices world. Apple, with its genius design and development of iPhone and iPad, has captivated the imagination of everyone from consumers to competition. But it will be interesting to see how Samsung and others fare in there in the coming years and what role the emerging markets will play in deciding the fate of these companies.

Information overflow is one of the biggest problems in the world. Today you can find a lot of information about any topic anywhere (well “almost” anywhere) instantly. There is abundance of information which has created a problem in itself i.e. how to use it without losing key data points? Companies have made fortunes by organizing, presenting and searching information.

Information abundance and availability has done great for the world. It has leveled the playing field in many ways. People can make informed decisions. You get the breaking news the same time as anyone else in the world. You can analyze the archives from years back just like anyone else. But even after having access to the same information some people can make better decisions than others. That’s because  just having information is not enough. The important thing is how can you leverage the available information?

Information can be leveraged by converting it into knowledge. Knowledge is a result derived out of the information through perception, learning and reasoning. Knowledge is precious.  It is actionable. The differentiating factor lies in how well you are able to extract the knowledge out of the information to make critical decision, how well can you apply the learning from historical scenarios to predict the future and how well you can apply analytical reasoning to reach to the optimal results.

Technology that plays a major role in organizing the information plays an equally important role in converting it into knowledge. Complex algorithms that would adapt with usage plays a critical role in knowledge generation. Another important element in this process is human input to absorb the knowledge and make decisions. The idea is to process the information and synthesize the data to derive intelligent conclusions. This is more of a cyclical than a linear process. A process where information flows in and gets processed, knowledge is extracted, decisions are made and the processing algorithm and decision-making process gets adapted based on efficacy of the results. The adapted infrastructure is used to further take information and produce knowledge.

From the premier of a country to the layman witnessing an event down the street, everyone has got a voice and the leading way to raise it today is through twitter. Whether you are a celebrity managing a PR disaster or a brand raising product awareness, the best way to do it is by being precise, direct and without filters. This is where twitter comes in play. A 140 word short message that you can send out to the world irrespective of who you are, where you live (almost) and what you want to say (risks exist!). All in all, twitter provides everyone with a microphone to express ones views loud and clear.

One of the main advantages of this form of direct communication is that there is almost nothing lost in translation. The message reaches the audience as you want to send it. The chances of you being quoted out of context are less than ever before and the fact that it is on the web, the golden rule of “web never forgets” applies to your tweets to a large extent. Twitter has been more effective than other sources of information sharing like blogs, podcast and youtube. Reason being twitter is effortless. You can speak your head out and you don’t have to be a writer or photographer to do that.

Indian Premium League, one of the most lucrative sports league in the world, unleashed the power of twitter in one of the best possible examples of how dominating this medium can be. All through the tournament and scandals surrounding it, the role of major Indian newspaper and news channels was limited to quoting the role players from their twitter feeds. No major news conference, no people running with cameras and microphones, but as much, if not more, buzz and fan following, all through twitter.

The word of mouth social campaigns like Malaria No More and relief efforts in Haiti reached new heights with the help of twitter.

Twitter does a great job in leveling the playing field. You no longer have to wait to be reached out to or asked for an opinion. There’s the microphone for you and you got to leverage it to reach out to your “followers”.

With iPhone App Store having close to 100,000 applications, the most intriguing question is that can any other platform match the enormous ecosystem advantage iPhone has through these applications? On the flip side, top 40 applications in iPhone are really what 90% of people care about. So will Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile et al level the playing field by getting these top 40 applications on their platform?

Indirect network effect of the applications (apart from the design genius) makes iPhone one of the most wanted gadgets today. It’s the same network effect that gave Windows the edge in personal computing and is working for Facebook in social networks. But one industry difference makes iPhone more vulnerable than Windows in 90s and that is the openness of the competitive platforms. In the smartphone world, all platforms are open for software developers to launch their applications. The developers who wrote applications for iPhone will pretty much write applications for BlackBerry et al if they see traction for these phones and their applications in the market. If the competitive platforms are good enough to rope in the top applications on their platforms, they might be able to bridge the gap.

But then there’s the long tail. You go somewhere, you remember it because that was the place where you found that obscure song you were looking for, a copy of that biography you didn’t find anywhere else, or that phone application which helped you survive in a foreign country. With close to 100,000 applications, you can find almost anything in the iPhone App Store based on your needs at any given time and it will be a while before a competitive platform catch-up on that.

So will top 40 level the playing field? Well it depends. If the tail behind the head is long enough to attract the masses, the company with the long tail can survive the competitive attacks. What is required in this case is to make sure that the customers realize that you have got the long tail. Your communication with your target customer base should focus on, among other things, the long tail.

Cannibalization, in very simple terms, is losing market share of one product by introduction of a new product by the same producer. Talk about Hulu, and one of the things that come to mind is cannibalization of network airtime by broadcasting television shows online. But then talk about YouTube, DailyMotion et al and one of the things that come to mind is losing airtime to competition on new media channel. Which one sounds better? Losing market share to your own product or losing share to competition?

This is a classic question which every company needs to address to some extent while releasing a new product that in some ways is competing with a current offering.Whether it’s Coke launching Diet Coke or The New York Times investing in nytimes.com, you have to look in the issue of cannibalization. When does cannibalization make sense?

Short answer, when there is competition. Long answer, almost all the time. When you see an opportunity to come up with a new product to tap a new channel or a new way to fulfill some customer needs, you should go for it. Because the possibility is that the same opportunity is being discovered by other players in the industry irrespective of whether they are currently competing with you or not. Like Amazon never competed with Barnes & Noble through brick-and-mortar stores, but as Internet started gaining traction and Barnes & Noble delayed putting together an Internet strategy due to various reasons, including fear of cannibalization, Amazon discovered the Internet as a channel to sell books and took off. Parallels can be drawn, to some extent, in case of Microsoft delaying to put Office Suite online while Google Apps and Zoho tapping that market (though Microsoft Office losing share is not an issue at this time).

The point here is, more often than not, cannibalization is required. It should be seen as a growth engine. When a better channel of delivery emerges, people will notice it just like you will. If you go and tap it, you have an advantage of expertise of delivering product on the traditional channel and brand name over anyone else. You can grow the sum total of your business by using all the channels available. But if you sit and watch the show, someone else will develop the expertise and gain the first mover advantage on the new channel.

Accept the fact that change is constant. One way to grow in this changing environment is by keeping up with the change and if the only way to do that is by cannibalizing your own product, go for that. It’s much better than losing it to the competition.