Perseverance pays off with IIMA PGPX debuting as #11 in the FT Global MBA Rankings 2011

Our MBA programme at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad debuted at #11 in the FT Global MBA Rankings survey 2011. Not only are we ranked #1 in India but we're also ranked #2 in Asia Pacific.

http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings-2011

Years of perseverance and hard work by our Alma Mater, our professors, our alumni, employers (and not) and also our competition has helped us get here. With this proud achievement comes the responsibility of sustaining and accelerating the momentum and the attention to quality we have achieved thus far. We and future batches need to earn our keep in the corporate world as well as the past batches have. Our teachers have a lot invested in us. And we shall not let them down.

Thank you to our Alma Mater for its foresight and commitment to the programme.

Thank you to our professors for persevering in pushing us beyond our limits so that we could realize our potential.

Thank you to our alumni and peers for having earned us this respect through their years of fabulous work and hard earned success.

Thank you to employers who believed in the programme all along and trusted our ability to deliver on our promise.

And thanks to our peer schools in competition who inadvertently pushed us to excel 24x7x365. Please keep the pressure on!

So why are you doing an MBA at this stage of your career?!

Self initiated Leveraged Recapitalization...

6 months, 19 courses, almost 200 cases and $20,000 later a professor introducing a course on Mergers and Acquisitions explained to us the concept of Leveraged Recapitalization and the reasons why even healthy companies inflict upon themselves the degree of pain this process entails. I believe that term explains why we're here...86 professionals who were doing well in their careers, professionals who decided to inflict incredible pain upon themselves and borrowed heavily ($45,000) to finance that ordeal. Why, oh why do people do the darnedest things?! Leveraged Recapitalization. Read on, slowly if you must, and pause to draw a parallel between 'company' and 'individual'.

(© The following text is an excerpt from Prof. Ian Giddy's (NYU) note on the same subject)

• The primary objective/intent of the management of such a company is to purposefully and successfully use the leveraged recapitalization as a watershed event, employing debt's disciplinary effect to create a crisis that disrupts the status quo and promotes internal change to improve performance, thus increasing shareholder value. This process may include include establishing a new objective, changing compensation systems, and reorganizing manufacturing and capital budgeting processes.

Context: Career on cruise control, trappings of comfort, stagnating learning curve, no apparent threat on the horizon, life's good, why upset it!

• The technique can be used, and has been used, as a "shark repellant" to ward off a hostile takeover, actual or potential. This is done by adding debt, eliminating idle cash and debt capacity. Prospective bidders would face the daunting task of returning the firm to leverage ratios closer to historical industry levels. A high percentage of firms that adopt them are subsequently acquired.

Context: Younger, faster threats seem to emerge, threatening to nullify experiential learning with new skills and insights. Suddenly existing fences don't seem as high as when they were when they were erected.

The result is a far more financially leveraged company - usually in excess of the "optimal" debt capacity (read over-learned). At first the market value of the shares will drop. However in a successful recap the value of the dividend plus the value of the share itself exceeds the pre-recap share price. This is what we 86 hopefuls are trying hard to realize in this crucible called PGPX@IIMA.

Now you know, as well as I do now, why I'm doing an MBA at this stage of my career!

Wish us luck.

A tale of two businesses

If there was one article that most business graduate remember having read, it is an article penned by Prof. Theodore Levitt, Marketing Myopia. First printed in Jul/Aug 1960 - yes 50 years ago; Prof Levitt's work still stands the test of time - call it prescience, genius, or the result of plain uncommon common sense. Having read it again after a gap of 12 years, it made me look around and note how little so many businesses have learned since then. Every time a bookstore closes, a record store shutter comes down for the last time, a music label laments the impending death of circular optical media, Sony tries to sell us BluRay discs, a newspaper curses the advent of the internet, a television station balks at the very mention of the acronym IPTV, one is reminded of Marketing Myopia.

Technological progress is again reminding scores of businesses about the business they're really in and that while announcing their demise in the same breath. This note is about two businesses, rather one business and one brand that was the business itself not so long ago.

The troubling fact is that there exist 3 or more generations today that are troubled with the way of life that is threatened by result of businesses not knowing what business they are in. The newspaper is the best and most obvious example of one such business that seems to want to wish away the technological changes of the last decade - as they did of the advances made two decades before the last ten; when TV news channels crashed their party.

The business of 'news gathering and dissemination' found itself a slave of a very profitable trade in news printed on paper which became a global daily addiction. Those were the days when a lot wouldn't happen daily and if a lot did happen, few obsessed withe the immediacy of knowing that it happened. We just didn't have use for immediacy. That didn't mean we never would feel the need for immediacy - however trivial the content. So they ignored the ability of a powerful medium like television to help disseminate the news they were gathering. To the newspaper industry, not even the pain that TV was inflicting on Hollywood was any sign of things to come. So they sat back in the comfort of the assumption that an ever expanding population would assure profits. The rest is, like they say, history. Which newspaper today can claim to have started a television news channel? Right you are, no one.

While television stations continued to loot and pillage the newspaper industry's profit sanctuaries, their knee jerk reaction to the advent of the www was to offer their most valuable resource (no, not paper) news free of charge to a bunch of early adopters who in their respective nations were 'terribly affluent'. People who could afford a telephone line and an ISP subscription and a computer were deemed unable & unwilling to pay a paltry sum of money to access and consume news. Right. There is no going back from that model. Probably their only excuse could be "we thought the same 'paper' advertising model would work wonders for us again". It could've, but it hasn't, thanks to advertisers disrupting every square inch of digital real estate with banners of every conceivable shape, size and colour. It's no surprise that 'click through rates' are nearing levels that will soon require a parts per million metric to report. The digital edition never brought home the bacon, the bread the print edition was bringing was smaller each day and the newspapers turned to berate the "free-mongers" who don't care about their survival. Should they? So our 3 generations are now faced with an uncomfortable question "will the newspaper survive?!". It well may, it just won't be as profitable or sustainable a business as it once was. "It WILL survive profitable" retorts the indignant newspaper industry, "new homes are being created, new home always buy a newspaper. Rural folk, once literate, will read (buy?) the newspaper!" Allow me to burst your bubble of confidence. Yes, there was a time when a teenagers never read the newspaper, but when they set up home they'd subscribe to a daily newspaper. Today's teenagers too never read the newspaper, the difference is they never will! Not when they set up home, not ever. They've grown up reading news in digital form, they've evolved much like our ancestors did from communicating using cave paintings to using speech! As for rural markets, they have a rather imaginatively disruptive (irritating and infuriating to you as it may be) habit of leapfrogging technologies. You don't believe that? How's this...mobile tele-density in rural areas outperforms fixed-line tele-density by a factor of thousands, rural India has taken a liking to DTH television over cable TV (do you have a DTH connection at home Mr. Editor?). Farmers are already controlling gadgets on their farmland using mobile phones, heck, who do you think will be more adept and amenable to controlling other gadgets in a "connected home"?!

Dear newspaper industry. Mobile enabled Micropayments and the guts to put up paywalls around content you believe is valuable and unique - is it?; may well be your last chance to realize that your real business is the business of news gathering and dissemination and that's what consumers pay you for. Another topic for another day, coming soon.

The brand that epitomized the very business if stormed and defined for the better part of two decades was in the business of "connecting people". And it believed that the hand-phone was the only way it could connect people. Or so it would seem, from the ease with which social networking and phones that promised seamless, joyous, wonderful social networking took their business away. Nokia too believes that the ever expanding population of emerging countries will help protect its profit sanctuary. Wrong again. That profit sanctuary is getting smaller by the day and your emerging population seems to be leapfrogging technology generations in adopting however-crummy-Chinese qwerty phones for Rs.2000+ The less said the better about the premium smartphone market.

I have yet to come across a simpler more powerful and enduring promise than "Connecting People". It still is yours, but it won't be for long. Facebook (and sites before it) demonstrates what connecting people means in a world beyond hardware - in fact it is your hardware too which is helping Facebook connect people, but users aren't crediting you with that, neither are advertisers. That's where the money is going and will continue to go. And there is talk of Facebook exploring the possibility of co-developing a phone. I hope for your sake and the sake of the respect your brand has built that it is you who they're partnering in that venture. Lifeblog had promise, if only you hadn't awarded it the proverbial 'step-motherly treatment'. Lifeblog came onto the scene when Facebook was a sperm of an idea in Mark Zuckerberg's mind. Lifeblog could have been Facebook. Lifeblog could have assured that your phones kept pace with changing consumer needs and that they sold for a premium. You had the idea, the quality, the know how, the resources and the trust of a ginormous installed base to exploit! You had everything.

Now what? First the obvious way out, make a phone that unseats the iPhone as a phone to die for and I may anger the legions of Apple fans by adding that leave aside the brand and the phone can be easily bested. However we all now that the brand is inseparable from the product. Especially in Apple's case. So, easier said than done. But if anyone can do it, you can. And no you can't do it with Ovi alone. Second option, embrace Facebook. In 2007 you could've bought them lock stock and barrel. But you could still raise the money to buy out Mark Zuckerberg if you were to convince a financier with the cash flows from the combined force of Nokia's hardware + Facebook's interface. Since you still enjoy technical superiority over other phone makers, have the experience needed to construct a great phone, have a rock solid brand name and still command an overwhelming customer base, maybe a merger would release the best value from the two companies after all. You have MeeGo and Ovi, they have a ready, tested. trusted platform that can be turned into an OS - more content that many could wish for. The last option is to vacate the top of the pyramid and to go after the bottom and the middle of the pyramid. Not an option we'd expect Nokia to exercise.

The business environment around us is replete with businesses, as Prof Levitt puts is "that were once growing but are very much in the shadow of decline" because their top management "failed to define broadly the business they're in and to carefully gauge their customers' needs."

The lesson we managers need to learn from such instances is

1. An expanding market alone never guarantees/assures one of sustained profits for an expanding market is served by expanding options/choices as well.
2. That our products and services have no substitutes; that no has the wherewithal to take us on head-on. They need not, they'll come from around the corner.
3. Economies of scale and falling unit costs - product or manpower; merely mean we're exhausting places to run to. Places others have already occupied or are too small to accommodate our expenses, and
4. Over-investing and over-obsessing with continually tinkering and improving products and services through expensive research and training and in doing so ignoring the real needs and evolutionary direction of the very markets that keep us in business.

For entrepreneurs, there was never a better time to launch your idea against just such an erroneously defined business by starting small and "thinking small" as Professor Levitt's article goes on to explain. I urge managers to read Marketing Myopia every time they're about to a decision that affects the future of their business unit or the business itself. It's worth it, every time.

The Commonwealth Games - Who's in charge of the clattering train?

Who is in charge of the clattering train?

The axles creak and the couplings strain,

and the pace is hot and the points are near,

and sleep hath deadened the driver's ear,

and the signals flash through the night in vain,

for death is in charge of the clattering train.

Quoted in "The Gathering Storm" by 'Winston Churchill', these words capture so well the utter chaos that the CW Games have come to signify in our lives. Everything that could go wrong, did, and then some more. It is as if our politicians have taken the word Commonwealth too literally and decided to share this wealth amongst themselves and their cronies. Why did this happen? Because our elected representatives put their selfish interests before the pride and honour of the nation yet again and it just that this time the train ran amok, unexpectedly. The sheer scale and scope of corruption brought the scam to light.

It's a shame that we as a nation can sit back and watch this gang-rape of our wealth - wealth we actually don't have and shall have to fund for years to come. Rs.70,000,00,00,000 is how much money that has been spent on bringing shame and humiliation upon the nation. That sum is larger than the GDP@PPP of almost every country in Africa and then some more! But why look that far, how many villages could have been electrified in this sum? How many citizens could have had access to clean water in this sum? How many Naxal areas could have been developed with Rs.70,000,00,00,000? How much more could have been done...

So should we tide over the troubles, the adverse publicity, the derision the Games will bring us and forget the incident ever happened? Or should we as a nation ask for an account of what was spent? Will the Right To Information act help bring the perpetrators of this act of treason to justice?

How things haven't changed!

During the course of attacking a case analysis for our marketing class I chanced upon a treatise on effective frequency of advertising written in 1885 - yes 125 years ago; which seems more to mock the way our industry plans for brands in this day and age rather than lend it credit for having learned much. Any nay-sayers have merely to watch one whole Hindi movie on a mainstream channel and count the number of ads that're repeated, and those that're repeated in a single break! So have we learned much, or have we not...you decide.

Thomas Smith, a successful London businessman, wrote a guide called "Successful Advertising" in 1885. His recommendations regarding advertising frequency are still being cited today - as defense for a barrage of commercials that a viewer is subjected to. My favourite is #18. And those weren't gender neutral times, so pardon Mr. Smith for being 'sexist'.

1. The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.

2. The second time, he does not notice it.

3. The third time, he is conscious of its existence.

4. The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.

5. The fifth time, he reads it.

6. The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.

7. The seventh time, he reads it through and says, "Oh brother!"

8. The eighth time, he says, "Here's that confounded thing again!"

9. The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.

10. The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.

11. The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.

12. The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.

13. The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.

14. The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such a thing a long time.

15. The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.

16. The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it some day.

17. The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.

18. The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.

19. The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.

20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.

So was 3+ was just us (including me) flattering our learning curve? Seems so, doesn't it?

An aid to diagnosing Class Participation

Doc Cormoli, good friend, cohort-mate, classmate and above all a jolly great fellow to know came up with this God-awesome aid to diagnosing the kinds of Class Participation which eager, over-eager MBA-hopefuls spew in class under the fear of or the desire of that elusive 20% of the final grade in every subject. This "aid" is by far (including all the assignments we submit for grading) the best and most original piece of work this batch has produced thus far! It's worth a read, re-read, re-re-read...I'll read this piece every time I feel a bit low in life...

Doc, you're da maaaan!

Enjoy!!!

___________________________________________________________________________

Dear All,

It is rather upsetting to see everyone mocking the act of CP (Class Participation).

However, I cannot blame those of you who do, as none can claim to have had access to medical education. Being in that “privileged” position, I now bring it upon myself to enlighten all of you!

Following extensive research on the acts of CP over the past few months, I have concluded that CP is a grave illness, the likes of which the medical fraternity is still struggling to fathom. As such, we should not mock or chastise those who are afflicted and who suffer tolerantly.

As an aid to rapid diagnosis, I am forwarding the commonest forms of the illness identified till date, with easily recognizable signs and symptoms.

WARNING: The following content contains explicit medical terminology and descriptions which may be deemed offensive by some. Persons with delicate sensibilities are advised not to read further, and to delete this mail immediately. Author cannot be held responsible for any consequences of ignoring this warning.

An aid to diagnosis of CP:

1. Acute CP – the freshly infected person presents with a sudden unprecedented bout of CP. If neglected, it may progress into the chronic form.

2. Chronic CP – a case of neglected acute CP, who has now turned chronic. However, it is usually self-limiting, and is likely to end in April 2011.

3. Cerebral CP – actually a very desirable affliction, where the CP benefits those who suffer from it, as well as others around the patient.

4. Benign CP – a CP that is neatly excised by the Professor without further complications.

5. Malignant CP – Usually spreads rapidly and erratically, involving many systems, and occasionally extending to the whole class. Needs intensive and focused therapy for recovery of the main topic, failing which the class cannot survive.

6. Delusional CP – the sufferer tends to share experiences and/or ideas that do not have any connection to the topic being discussed. S/he may also feel that his/her is the final word in CPs, and no further discussion need be held.

7. Myopic CP – the afflicted normally do not have any idea of what is going on, but catch a glimpse of a few key words in the case, and voila! We have a CP.

8. Obstructed labour CP – here, the nulliparous CP’er is repeatedly obstructed by the multiparous CP’er and fails to deliver his/her CP. Usually requires intervention by the Prof for successful delivery.

9. Diarrhoeal CP – an extremely grave condition, in which the sufferer is in obvious discomfort, needing to have a go at it repeatedly. The rest have to patiently await their turn.

10. Constipated CP – not as debilitating as the previous. The afflicted are usually not satisfied with the first attempt, and will make another attempt. Quite possibly, if given sufficient time at the second attempt, they will then be relieved.

11. Appendicular CP – named after a vestigial organ, the main characteristic of this CP is that no one knows why it is there or what function it serves. Occasionally causes trouble. If removed, it isn’t missed.

12. Incontinent/flatulent CP – as the name suggests, it occurs at the most inappropriate moment, and can be immensely embarrassing to all who witness it. Helplessness arises from the fact that once out, it is uncontrollable.

13. Paralytic CP – a recently discovered form, where a cold call for CP usually leaves the infected person paralysed in thought, speech, and action.

14. CPhobia – also caused by CP, but seen in the non-infected who have had continuous exposure to CP’ers. Characterized by severe panic attacks and/or a feeling of doom on catching sight of a raised hand and/or eager face.

15. Premature ej@©μ#@tory CP – the sufferer lets out a CP long before it is expected or needed. The topic of CP is supposed to be discussed later or in the next session. Usually results in a dissatisfying experience for all involved.

16. Amnesic CP – characterized by competing vigorously for a chance at CP, then forgetting what was to be said.

Please note that the above list is not exhaustive as research still continues. Recognizing the increasing gravity of the situation, a helpline is being proposed, and will soon be operational.

An Anti-CP vaccine is currently undergoing clinical trials (self-testing by yours truly) and has shown promising results. However, it needs further modification as it is currently ineffective against Paralytic CP and CPhobia, and also causes drowsiness as a major side-effect, which may be unacceptable to some.

Volunteers for further trials are welcome.

With regards,

Doc Cormoli

How green was my valley...

The first part of this post is a blog-post by a close friend of mine who was intrigued by a media owner friend who seemed confident that their in-house creative services department would help them bag big business and subsequently could turn into a viable revenue stream. Famous last words? Read on and please do comment.

Your new creative agency - the media owner

I was having lunch the other day with a media owner. He was asking me for some people he could hire for starting an in-house creative department. A few things emerged from that conversation:

1. Clients just don’t seem to have the budgets to pay for new creatives or a medium specific execution (say a print ad that needs to be reworked for OOH). They are the ones asking if the media owner could do the production too.

2. A lot of his clients are new to advertising, and to the medium. He’s growing the long-tail.

3. He wants to move beyond media budgets i.e. Increase wallet share from the client (media+creative).

4. Consolidate the media budget & throw in the creative execution for free - particularly for large MNC clients who don’t have in-market specific creatives.

5. Media agencies are increasingly coming to him with content/integration/production ideas as part of the media buy.

5. The media owner has most of the production talent in-house, though they are mostly involved in putting out his product into the market.

6. Other media owners already have established in-house creative teams/agencies. So this model clearly works.

When I asked him about the consumer strategy, brand-fit, execution details etc - he was fairly confident that it could be worked out. He wasn’t really seeing spectacular commercials coming out into the market anyway.

My recommendation to him was to just have a roster of freelance creative talent whom his company can tap upon, depending on the projects. Saves the media owner from the hassles of managing a department & the associated costs. I did refer him to a friend of mine, a suit, working in a creative agency, for being the go-to person he could hire on a full-time basis to do project management.

And I left the lunch thinking that we media agencies haven’t quite leveraged the media owners fully enough yet.

PS: There’s no such thing as a creative agency & non-creative agency.


My two bits...

I believe you had the misfortune of sharing a meal with an extremely myopic media owner who rather than concentrating his/her resources on doing what this person's employer does best - regaling the customer; seems to want to adopt all the inefficiencies of a system that's struggling to bear its own weight under the guise of expanding their business.

The very reason our industry is unwell is that it has itself blindly chosen to believe what it does best - amplify a point of differentiation for a brand or create one when none-exists; rather than look to see what and how we could mechanize/streamline operations that do not need 'talent' anymore. It is these inefficiencies that have us pinned to the wall, inefficiencies that clients have indirectly demanded of us and we have willingly obliged for a few dollars more. Now these very clients (or their superiors) need some (and for some that amount is significant) of that money back, not because they 'need it' but because it could be put to better use elsewhere. That, however, is a debate we could have on your previous post on 'free services', a debate we can well address in part here.

What we have effectively done is fail to see the crest of that virtual wave of growth and lose ourselves in the belief that every service we provide is essentially labour intense – where intensity was either measured in junior bodies or an equivalent senior body. You know that as well as I do, we all have managed offices. That merely shifted the inefficiency, from many to a few. Take the erstwhile full-service agency. If it had not added inefficiencies in bulking up its “creative thought factory” and ignored efficiencies that the relatively “mechanized” delivery system for creative elements – media had to offer, we would never have had a ‘media agency’. Clients pushed back on inefficiencies and the powers that be hived off the part they thought would help win them the war. Then it all went astray. The creative agency neither rid itself of labour intensive inefficiencies nor rid itself of its addiction for easy money and the media agency went the same route as the creative agency of yore – merrily adding the same inefficiencies to its lean operations without addressing the growing and unnecessary call for more and better differentiation of services. Advertisers are equally to blame. The market, you will agree, if full of one too many undifferentiated products. Products that have manufactured differentiation from dental-health-aided-nirvana to interview-winning-fairness-creams. Don’t take my word for it, just ask the likes of WalMart et al. The fact remains that there are massive induced and inbred inefficiencies in the system that need to be addressed before we find more inefficient solutions looking for a fresh problem. It is not to our credit that we’re “starved of talent good enough to make a difference” but it is a shame that despite a growing, educated workforce, talent seems to want to avoid an industry that makes it exert more animal effort to do better what he/she is already doing rather than change the tool-kit itself.

So what services would we see going “mechanical”? That debate I’ll reserve for a few days more. However I will leave readers with some keywords. Buying, auction, early-bird, knowledge (not information), placement, google (or search engine), automation, planning, monitoring, staffing, cross industry savings.

Coming back to the media owner, what sense would it make for them to add a labour intensive, thankless process to their operations to help make up for a forward-team’s inefficiencies? How long is it before the same demands are made of the media owner by the advertiser as those they make of their creative agency? It is their programming and customer marketing teams that are their forward teams. If these forward-teams can’t regale the customer (and attract eyeballs) anymore they’d better start looking for someone who can!

In-house creative departments are best reserved for advertisers on the margins, advertisers who either know that their product/service isn’t differentiated enough to warrant “forced creative solutions” or seem only to want to pinch an extra penny today only to throw it away tomorrow.

So yes, your media owner friend doesn’t know that his/her ship’s sinking, and if it isn’t this hole will surely sink it.

Why a Google-world gives me comfort...

"Having heard the strategy for Android based phones first hand, I can tell you why this is a very flawed perspective. The telecom analyst, Jack Gold's perspective comes close to the company philosophy. As they did with many of their web products, this is just a beta launch. You should see some great products coming out close '10 Christmas shopping season. "

Cost is about the carrier

Industry analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates agreed that potential customers would do well to think about the long-term costs before snapping up the latest and greatest mobile device.

"What customers and users need to be thinking about is that the service plan cost is all about the carrier, not the device," Gold said

Google's revenue model is not the same as that of Apple. The models are poles apart.

Apple extorts 30% or more of your monthly bill's value from the carrier - it's a fixed sum mostly and may also feature an ADDITIONAL variable revenue stream. You never get to see that even though you've paid a massive premium for the phone. Lock-in periods ensure that they recover the cost of the phone entirely and then some more. What the networks hate even more is that while Apple uses the phones which the networks bleed over for selling content over the itunes platform they never get to see that revenue. All they get is the passthrough cost of using the network bandwidth - which is a commodity now - and may soon be free. And given that most iphones are wifi ready and with wifi being ubiquitous even their bandwidth usage seems to be dropping. So for a network, selling iphones is increasingly a not-so-necessary evil. Every network is rooting for an iphone killer - which is a matter of time.

Now for google's model. Google has made it's millions riding the ad-funded content route. They make advertisers pay top-dollar to reach google customers. Google ostensibly reaches many many more people than apple's products do - including those who use apple's products. For google every new venture is an experiment towards perfecting their $30+billion ad-revenue model. They have no interest whatsoever in making money from hardware. And hardware too is becoming a commodity - any detractors might just want to observe the number of and sophistication (which is a term that conjures up different meanings for each person) of the smaller brands in the market. Yes, it's important for google to get a wider footing in the mobile market with a GREAT device which, like Sachin rightly pointed out, is probably a few months away. The Droid's mew avataar is expected anytime soon. As is a slew of WinMo7 phones. Rumours have it that Sony is about to cave in to the Android OS. LG's on the bandwagon, Samsung is joining in. Nokia will cave in eventually when Symbian crumbles. (3% of the mobile phones - smartphones; sold globally account for 35% of the profit. These figures are expected to read 10% and 55% in 2012. Nokia has close to zero% share of that market). Google is testing the market with phone after phone - all using the Android platform, which arguably, is FAR superior to the iphone's OS. And google may one day give a ad-supported ad-sponsored phone away for free (or almost), while agreeing to share the spoils of the ad-revenue with the operator and the device manufacturer. It's a thought, nothing's impossible.

Content, is another ball-game altogether. Admittedly google is struggling to aggregate content which users would like to pay for. Apps, for one, music and e-commerce applications come next. The rest are small-potatoes. Apple still leads the pack because of the itunes store. However we all know that with content being platform agnostic, people are finding alternate routes to sate their hunger for content. Google's now beginning to sell movies, music and serial episodes on YouTube - this began a few weeks ago. YouTube has more visitors than itunes will ever have. Major label and studio owners are quite keen on harnessing the strength of YouTube and one would want to watch that space keenly. What's more, Google is working with TV manufacturers and processor manufacturers to sell TV sets that're always-on, cloud computing devices. Winter 2010 may see the first such TV's hit the shelves. Then google has a shot at the global TV ad market!

As for developer delight - well Apple makes you jump hoops before agreeing to have your app featured on itunes. I guess Sandeep would be able to shed more light on this bit.

I'd still bet on a Google-world. The cloud is real and they're the cloud - or most of it, at least :-)

Now all I hope is that they don't play "net-neutrality surrender-monkey" and disappoint us all. Google, please don't do that, we wouldn't want to love you any less.

Cheers!

The psychology of a recruiter

The greatest ironies of the Indian education system - one that so beautifully and painstakingly explains game theory to us using the Cournot Nash theory and what-have-you; is that it effortlessly plays candidates into the hands of wily recruiters. Recruiters know our strength is academic knowledge and that our game-plan would be to steer interview accordingly, so why would a recruiter not drive the conversation down the road of business practice and current events - which is subject matter the recruiter is comfortable with? And then why is it that we're given so much to do academically that there is precious little time left to pursue extra-curricular reading and learning? By God the world needs more doer-managers and fewer management theory-spewing lemmings.

Is Apple mortal after all?

One of the enduring mysteries of medieval France revolves around whether the French queen, Marie Antoinette, ever actually utter the phrase, "Let them eat cake"? Another enduring mystery of our times seems to revolve around whether the Czar of the technology design world Steve Jobs, famously retorted to a customer "either hold the phone a different way or buy a case!"

Apple, after long denying the "Antennagate" phenomenon finally, bowed to public pressure applied by legions of fans who usually explain away every Apple design flaw gratefully as the "price of genius" and/or "the price of being given the opportunity of owning an Apple product".

That it took no less than a visibly weakened Steve Jobs to address public and admit that he was "stunned and upset and embarrassed" to learn about the iPhone's design flaw that in his words "is not unique to the iPhone4" and in the same breath claim that "this has been blown so out of proportion that it's incredible", seems to bely the triviality of the issue. Mr. Jobs, you wouldn't have handed out $29 x 3 million worth of cases ($87,000,000 + transaction costs) if you sincerely believed that "we're not feeling right now that we have a giant problem we need to fix". You're an incredibly smart businessman, probably the brightest ever, so we don't quite believe you when you say it's a "small matter" and you "aren't worried" about it.

Apple also claims that the main problem is actually with the software on board the phone that shows a stronger signal when the reception is not actually that strong. Does the software do this by itself? Or was it designed to show a signal stronger than the actual signal reception capability of the phone? That we'll never know. Signal strength is a critical USP for many a phone manufacturer. Yes, maybe all phone manufacturers resort to dialing up 'signal strength' and then maybe none of them do that. The point is Apple wasn't "that sort of a company" to start with. A dialed up signal display isn't an inadvertent flaw, Mr. Jobs - and maybe it was done knowing well that the phone's new antenna design wasn't performing quite as well as Apple expected it to? Because now that you mentioned it, we (commoners) can't help but think that way.

The crux of the matter is that like Toyota, Apple took its time to admit to the presence of a problem or let's say admit to a consumer perception of a problem when none may have existed (or if it did exist it didn't warrant a global media frenzy). The fallout from this episode is that Apple now seems to be very mortal after all. It's products have shortcomings and defects (serious or not) which its legions of die-hard fans and new-found fans are finally coming to admit - in public. Is this a sign that Apple's customer base has grown far beyond the numbers that qualify as a "cult"? Has the Apple fan-base been contaminated by "ordinary mortals" drawn to its admittedly fashionable and oh-so-sexy persona? Does this new legion of not-so-forgiving consumers/fans spell further trouble for Apple? Was Apple meant to cater to these "masses"?

Apple's success lies in making and marketing fabulously designed products that perform almost as admirably or not as another functional brand in the market, to a customer base that can well afford the equally fabulous price-premium Apple demands as a membership to an elitist club that is second to none. Few humans can deny that an Apple product does not stir desire in them. Suddenly more than a few humans could afford to join 'the club' - Apple's ambitions made it so. The problem - for Apple, is that these new-kids-on-the-block aren't as price insensitive as the 'fanboys' are and neither are they as forgiving of "minor issues common to all phones that have been blown so out of proportion". This a new breed of consumer, a breed VERY different from the one that made Apple a boutique technology player.

Apple must carefully consider its ambitions and and match its own attitude and delivery with the expectations of the new consumers their ambition will attract. The consumers that made Apple the uber-successful company it is today are the "common lot" and not the 'fanboys'. Mr. Jobs and his company would do well to spend more time understanding the inhabitants of this new territory of the market they have occupied and possibly change either their approach to product design and/or quality management, or their approach to tackling problems when they crop-up. Like Toyota did, Apple must not believe it is immortal, even if they say they aren't, because when they say "we aren't perfect" they should sound like they mean what they're saying and are saying what they mean.