Vendor vs Competitor

As part of Motorola Mobility, Google will get a huge number of mobile patents. When compared price quoted in the recent patent auction, 12 odd Billion dollars for MMI seems like a bargain. This deal might also help to reinvent GoogleTV. But Android now has to take a different course.

A few years back with PlaysForSure, MTP and WMP Microsoft managed to establish and support a reasonable ecosystem competing with iPod, iTunes and Apple store. All of that died when Microsoft launched Zune player. Zune itself didn’t adhere to anything that Microsoft advocated. Suddenly from being a reliable partner, Microsoft became a competitor in the eyes of media player manufacturers. Now there is no PlaysForSure and of course no credible competition to iPod.

Android changed the mobile phone arena completely. It lent reliability and brand name to not so trust worthy devices like Samsung mobiles. It helped Apple’s competitors to gang-up and compete as a united front. It helped to pitch feature against feature instead of one brand vs another or one device vs another.

Now with MMI under Google’s fold, will other mobile manufactures trust Google? Will Open Handset Alliance be still relevant? Will MMI get any additional advantage over others w.r.t Android? Google tried to address these concerns by saying that MMI will be a separate entity. But still, Google has to take care of these things for Android to survive. If not…

Samsung already is promoting Bada platform along with its app store. If it sees any foul play by MMI, it might shift its entire focus to Bada OS. Although questionable, Samsung might be able brush up Bada OS/store and make it reliable. Then that will demarcate clear battle lines.

Apple with its own OS

Motorola with Android

Nokia with Windows Phone

Samsung with Bada OS

Blackberry with QNX

Fringe players LG, Sony Ericsson, Asian mobile manufactures and new entrants will be facing the cross fire. Only exception will be HTC. HTC diversifies its platforms and tries to be everyone’s ally. Now will be forced to take a bet.

Next thing to watch is any developments from Samsung and HTC.

JIT Inventories & Lead Time

Most of us know that Dell transformed the PC industry by successful Direct Selling. With Direct selling it is easier to adopt ‘JIT Inventories’. So you no longer have to estimate the demand for products/components/inventories and stock them. No need for ‘storage space’ for inventories; no need to lock up capital in inventories. In electronics industry, the value of the components fall drastically over time, with low turn around time for inventories, value of inventories doesn’t fall too much and ‘cost of goods’ will be less. So far so good…

One of the key requirement for this business model is, source of inventories/goods should be closer to its destination in terms of time. This will ensure lower lead time.  In US probably that’s the case. I think Dell forgot about ‘lead time’ in a few other geographies.

Subsidiary companies have to share the same vision and mission with their parent company. But not all the business practices need to be shared. Different geographies have different operating environment. One need to adapt his business practice according to the region he is operating in. In Dell’s case, shared mission should have been low lead time, not maintaining JIT inventories.

In India if I place the order for a PC component with Dell, Dell takes a lead time of 2-4 weeks! As they don’t maintain inventories locally, they have to ship it from China/Malaysia! In case of other manufacturers, new PCs lie in their/distributor’s/retailer’s godown for weeks. Instead Dell takes lead time. So I don’t mind this lead time for new PCs. For PC components, this lead time is irritating. My Laptop battery is down; it suddenly went down without any sign of degradation. Now I am forced to use it as a desktop PC for close to a month!

This is inspite of charging me Rs.4900 for a 6 cell battery! Yes sir, I am locked with Dell as I can buy it only from Dell. [Lithium Ion batteries are actually a commodity. But Dell and other PC manufacturers use different mechanical design to wrap batteries for different laptops. So batteries cannot even be reused across different laptop models from Dell.] But so is others using consumer durables from Samsung, LG and Eureka Forbes. These guys charge 3-5x the actual price for spare parts. But Dell is charging me 10x the actual price and still takes such a long lead time.

Major portion of Dell’s revenue comes from corporate and government customers. Those customers also need to bear with this problem. When I want to upgrade my office PC with a 1 GB RAM, Dell charged Rs.4300 for it. (In open market it costs around Rs.1200.) And I have to wait for 3 weeks to get the RAM!

Its time for Dell to revisit its strategy before someone solve this problem.

Don’t be Evil!

Does it sound familiar? Well, that’s a good sign. First let’s define what evil is. Is earning profits a evil? Hold on, I am not going to discuss about ‘Human face of Capitalism’ or ‘Right to live’ or ‘Purpose of Life’ here. I will leave that to my anonymous blog (Yes, I do have one). Someday I also want to talk about ‘Corporate Mottos, Visions and Missions’ and its practical relevance. But for now let’s stick to Google’s business philosophy.

How many of you think that the stuff available over the Internet should be paid for? At least I haven’t thought so. Until recently, I had a feeling that what ever is available over Internet is free; Internet is open, if someone charges for some service then he is exploiting me. But how different is this service over internet is different from service over traditional channels? It doesn’t sound odd, if someone charges for something outside Internet!

Probably it is due to historical reasons like Internet being popular primarily among College-going-students. But it is also because of a few giant corporations promoting this image. For example, Google tries to give all the information for free and generate revenues through ads. It even buys out small service providers and makes their service free there-by attracting more users to its fold and hence more ad revenues. So what, it’s all looking good…

But, what is happening to so many industries that depend on providing these services? Aren’t they getting killed in the process? I would think Google follows ‘Disruptive Business Model’. It tries to make everything free and kills every other player in the Internet to retain its top-slot or at least to sustain in the business.

Someone please define what EVIL is…

Of iPhones and iPeoples

 

[I originally posted this on Google Reader as a note]

  

Will iPhone be the turning point to Apple?

 

I am actually asking this question in a negative sense. Will the failiure of iPhone bring Apple to reality?

For a long time I have been predecting that iPhone will be a failure. Recent happenings are in support of my predection. Apple has to realize that this is a completely different arena.

Nokia is not Creative!

Teleatlas and Navteq are not EMI, BMG and Universal!

Verizon and AT&T are not Rapsody!

And finally not all Phone users are modern day hippies!

Already this industry is being controlled by the likes of Verizon, AT&T and Qualcomm. I would be glad if someone can unseat their power and facilitate faster convergence and open standards. But Apple is not the one who can do it! Hope this misadventure makes Apple realize and change its Arrogance and take-it-or-leave-it attitude! Apple has lots of strengts which I still admire. If it can at least recognize that people are more than a-moron-to-pay-apple, it sure can challenge rules of any game!