Mobile Repair Culture

On the last night of my most recent trip to Delhi I spent an evening trying to understand India's informal mobile phone repair culture by visiting Karol Bagh Market. Throw in the noise, heat and smells of Delhi and you already have a rich consumer experience.

As in Nehru Place, Delhi many of the mobile phone shops and street kiosks offer mobile phone repair service. Many of these guys can strip and rebuild a mobile phone in minutes. How do these kind of services affect the mobile phone user experience? What happens when everyone has affordable access to these kind of services?

Side-note: a lot of the hyperbole surrounding western hacker culture makes me smile compared to what these guys are doing day in day out.

Changing Face Of India

Since many people in India's countryside often need to share one phone, Nokia's new models include features enabling multiple users for each handset. For the first time, the phones have a call-tracking application and a multi-phonebook to make phone sharing simpler for customers at the bottom of the pyramid. The low-cost cell phones will have FM radio and even a flashlight at prices as low as $19.

Kallis King - A tribute to the allrounder

I was a huge Kallis fan when he came to India for the first time and mesmerized everybody on and off the field. I must pay tribute to Jacque Kallis. Recently I’ve been on a private little ‘Kallis watch’ as he approached 235 Test wickets, Sobers’ mark. His 3/31 yesterday took took him to 236.

Kallis passed Sobers’ 8032 career runs ages ago, and now he’s above him on the wickets table. So Kallis is officially the top allrounder in cricket history.

Kallis for all this while faced criticism for batting for himself or getting runs against the minnows.But this is the main point: Kallis is not Ponting or Lara or Sehwag. He is not Viv Richards or Barry Richards or indeed Garry Sobers. He came into the South African team when ‘90 for 5’ was our all-too-regular scoreline.
In his seventh Test, he had to bat all day against a full-strength Australian attack in Melbourne to save the match. This is how his playing personality was shaped. Kallis took the approach of Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid, the path of Steve Waugh, not Mark – eliminating risk, protecting his wicket, allowing others to bat freely by being ‘Mr Reliable’. Calling this selfish is to misunderstand the interplay that cricket imposes between team needs and personal goals. Calling it slow or boring is to ignore one of cricket’s delights, the inch-by-inch battle for domination, as different from the Lara or Sehwag approach as trench warfare is from mounted charges, but no less enthralling.
Criticizing Kallis for not batting like Lara is like criticizing A R Rehman for not playing as well as Adnan Sami– it is beside the point.

Kallis’ real problem is that he hasn’t ‘marketed’ himself well. Steve Waugh and Rahul Dravid are rightly revered for their role and contributions – but Kallis is Steve Waugh together with Jason Gillespie in a single player, Dravid and Javagal Srinath rolled into one. He deserves his spot up there with Sobers.

Please notice I have not used 'Sachin's' name anywhere. People please stop comparing him to ANYBODY. He is just ONE.

Shashank

Monopoly- Microsoft, Google

There are only a few people in this world who enjoy monopoly in their industries. Carlos Hemu, Microsoft, Google, all middle east royal families and George W. Bush enjoy it to an extent that there exists no competition and no threat in near future. For purpose of this blog, I will stick to Microsft and Google - my all time favorite topic.

Monopoly exists in industries due to an entrepreneur's unique vision and industry leadership. Microsoft had the unique vision of PC's and its implementation on a marketing and strategic point of view was undoubtedly the best ever we had. All those guys who hate Microsoft cannot help acknowledge this fact.
Google on the other had a very simple vision to remain simple. Thi was google what it was in the beginning but just after that, they grew from strength to strength. Page ranking improvements, web page crawling, shadow programming, google maps, ok I can talk about google's history and features forever. They changed how internet is used forever. Today, in the business field, they are best known for their unique revenue model for AdSense and AdWords.

Yes, there have somethings in common - innovation, untapped opportunity, growing market, absence of competition and CRITICISM.

We forget to realize these companies are successful for the same reason they are criticized for.
Microsoft has a policy of a fixed license fee per machine for the OS. It costs them less than a dollar to make one additional copy/license (marginal cost =0). And the product life is 3-5 years after which the product is replaced by the whole Industry and is deemed to be accepted as a standard everywhere. Its an ongoing stream of revenue which cannot be stopped in a day.

Google took the unique privilege of killing privacy. The success in the later years came to Google not just because of its improved algorithms but success to create bots/robots to read, interpret, execute information about a user in the way it wants and take advantage of the user's RELIANCE on Google. They kept integrating and innovating, resulting in a vast monopoly which was thankfully cut short by a fraction by the Chinese govt.

Today, it is hard to imagine life without Google and Microsoft. There is lot to learn from Bill Gates and Larry Page but what stands out it the acceptance of user after all harsh criticism due to absence of a suitable alternative product. In a world of free trade and free laws, there exists no competition and the entire trillion dollar industry rests on what these companies have to exhibit.

Shashank

Google Again

I got an informal feedback that some readers were not able to understand the 'user' and 'commodity' relation in the blog written day before - Google and its commoditization. What it means is - We, the users use google as a search engine and in turn google showcases this power ( number of users using google) to attract advertisers. So what happens is, the user become the product manufactured by google and consumed by the advertiser. In the mean time as the product is a living thing enjoys the benefits in the transformation. Hope this explains it all, otherwise do not hesitate to leave a comment.

The blog from now on will not showcase any personal diary expressions but have topic specific blogs. Hope this would make a more interesting reading.

cheers

Shashank