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iPhone is not a Phone, Its a Substitute for that Ferrari You Can’t Afford

admin · December 24, 2007 · 3 Comments

Time and again, people bring up the fact that phones with similar features from other vendors and on better networks may be available for way less than the cost of an iPhone. Its probably true that iPhone is not the best phone in the market today. But who cares? iPhone is not competing for the phone dollars but in stead is a possible substitute for the following:

  • Diamond Necklace for your Love: Guess what, she would love the iPhone more even if its not forever. (Okay, so she probably wants both.)
  • Expensive Shoes: With an iPhone in your hand, your friends will be eating out of the palm of your hands. Who looks down?
  • Employee Bonus: I recently asked a few friends in an informal survey – what would they be more happy with a 2% bonus increase or a new iPhone? These are all math and engineering whizzes earning over $100K and the answer was uninanimous – an iPhone. If I were an employer, I would be giving out iPhones not cash.

That Touch Screen Phone is Not an iPhone: Its a Phony

As expected, several other players in the market are launching phones that look like an iPhone, have perhaps even more features and are cheaper (or expensive if that’s what you want). The problem is that many iPhone buyers are not trying to buy a phone so competing as a phone does not really work. I feel bad for other vendors – even if they build a better mousetrap its still not an iPhone – its a phony.

Ten Million iPhones

There are news reports that expect Apple to reach its iPhone target of selling 10 million iPhones by 2008 to be reached by January, 11 months ahead. I am not surprised. I am on vacation in India where the iPhone has not even launched and I have seen a few people with iPhones and there is much talk by those that are in the know. The trendy elite. This implies two things – the success of the iPhone has a high likelihood; and, they don’t need to spend as much on marketing.

I also saw my 10 month old niece intuitively play with the iPhone flipping through the photo album. Clearly, she has no clue that Jobs is God or that Apple products are supposed to be cool.

What Would You Rather Receive?

An iPhone or a 0.5% cash bonus? Please leave your answer in the comments.

Office2.0: Ismael Announces oPhone – an Open Source Device Competition

admin · September 8, 2007 · 1 Comment

The final session of Office 2.0 was a VC panel discussion followed by closing remarks by Ismael Ghalimi – the organizer of Office2.0. Ismael had a hard time dealing with Apple this year even though he was doing them a huge favor by gifting everyone (except media) a free iPhone. But Apple made it really hard for him e.g., requiring individual orders (no more than 10 at a time).

The result: a competition to create a new device in a form factor slightly larger than iPhone with open source software and hardware. The participants can submit their plans for this device and the best entry will have the first order of 1,000 devices from Office2.0 – in addition to all the publicity, visibility and glamor that would come with such an honor.

As Ismael put it, its a stretch goal and it may be too hard but he is going to give it a try. And I personally think that with the caliber of the Office2.0 organizers and attendees – it has as good a chance of succeeding of coming to fruition as any angel/VC funded ideas. So may be the next hot device is going to be an oPhone and not a gPhone!

In all, it was a very nice conference and I am glad I attended. Kudos to Ismael and his team!

Update: Ismael has posted details of his oPhone – officially called “Redux Model 1” on his blog. Here is an excerpt:

The device we want to design and build, code-named Redux Model 1, is best described as a Mini Tablet. At a conceptual level, it would be similar to an over-sized iPod Touch, with no native applications at the exception of the web browser. It would be slightly thicker than an iPhone by one or two millimeters, and would be an inch smaller than a standard DVD case diagonally.

The concept for the device is minimalist (hence the name). It would sport a large multi-touch screen (no keyboard), have no more than two buttons (On/Off and Home), and provide a Mini-USB port, an SD Card slot, and a 3.5 mm mini stereo audio jack. It would support WiFi (802.11 a/b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0. It would not support any cellular network directly, but could connect to one over Bluetooth. Also, it would not have a camera nor any built-in GPS. As such, it would be a companion to a mobile phone, much like Palm’s Foleo (R.I.P.) was supposed to be. And because it would be so simple, yet larger than a phone, it should be relatively easy to design and build. It’s not a leading edge device in any shape or form, it’s just one based on a form factor that nobody really tried before, and as such it will succeed or fail not because of engineering constraint, but because of usability factors, which is exactly the field of experimentation that we have an interest in.

This is surely going to be very interesting.

Five Things I learned at IIT 2007 Alumni Conference

admin · July 8, 2007 · 4 Comments

Jeff Immelt addressing IIT 2007: “GE loves the IIT product- its graduates”
picture by PAN IIT 2007

I just spent last two days at the IIT 2007 Alumni Conference. I spent 4 years in the 90’s, the best 4 years of my life, in a small college town of Kharagpur. Although it does not have the quiet charm of a Chapel Hill (my graduate school town) or the romance of Austin – it did share some of the same qualities. Secluded from civilization, around 100 miles from Calcutta, Kharagpur is a town with very little except a very long railway platform and the IIT. The advantage of being so far away from civilization (and women – only 5% of the class – to our great dismay), the seclusion makes you bond closer with your classmates. Much like any great college in the US, IIT attracts students from all parts of the country, creating a small microcosm of India – with kids of all languages, religions, castes (yes, that too) and economic classes. The conference and speakers like Arun Sarin (CEO, Vodafone and fellow alumnus) sent me back to those golden years. In the short span of two days, I learned a few things about myself, careers and life that I would like to share.

  1. People love to help people: Yes, its not a revelation but in the cynical world we live in – we often forget how many people go out of their way to help each other. I heard stories of alumni coaching and reaching out. Delip Andra, CEO of Minekey, went back to his alma mater Kharagpur to incubate a startup and help students get a lesson in entrepreneurship. Arun Sarin of Vodafone used his influence to make India an important part of his company’s growth strategy. As he said and I paraphrase – I made it clear that I wanted this deal done. He mentioned how he often takes calls to refer his friends and alumni to VC’s. Raj Jaswa, Vish Mishra and Raj Mashruwala of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) shared tips on coaching and mentoring – and described how they have been helping young entrepreneurs.
  2. Adversity is the door to success: As I mingled with the alumni who have varied levels of success in their careers and personal life – this theme emerged again and again – what seemed like adversity at one point, in retrospect, turned out to be a blessing. A hedge fund manager from New York recounted this story: After graduating from IIT in mid-80’s with a degree in Naval Architecture – he joined the industry but the oil price collapse led to widespread recession in ship building and offshore platforms business. He did not loose his job but was forced to reconsider his options – opting to go to business school. Not only did that lead to a successful career as an investment professional, he now leverages the knowledge he gained in the lost years spent in oil & gas. As Steve Jobs, said in his commencement speech at Stanford University, the dots sometimes connect only in retrospect.
  3. No one regrets taking a risk, not even the ‘failed’: People that take chances, especially entrepreneurs, fail. Some of these people have become wildly successful over the years and as you would expect they don’t regret having taken a risk. The interesting and somewhat unexpected learning for me was that the people that never went on to be multi-millionaire successes also don’t regret having taken a chance. Almost universally, they told of how the experiences made them happier.
  4. Talk to the quiet ones: I am a pretty extrovert person (hence, the blog!) and as with most people I find it easier to approach co-workers and friends that are extroverts – its a lot easier. I learned this is not the best strategy. By way of example, I met a professional acquaintance I have known for over 2 years but who is rather quiet and I never took the opportunity to get to know him better. I got a chance to talk to him and I learned that we shared interests in value investing, studying human behavior and love of Warren Buffett. He had an extremely intelligent, deep and analytical understanding of the market. I met a few other people that were quiet but when I approached them and talked to them had some very interesting life stories.
  5. iPhone is popular: Don’t laugh. It may not seem like a learning but I found that the easiest topic to approach anyone at the event was to make a remark about the iPhone. It made people light up and talk – the ones that loved it and the ones that hated it. Standing in the queue or waiting for a talk to start, all I had to do to spark a conversation or get to know someone was say Did you get an iPhone? or Do you think iPhone is really that good? And three minutes later I was having an interesting discussion, unrelated to iPhone, about something we mutually cared about be it software, India or entrepreneurship.

Also: ZDNet’s Dan Farber has a couple of very interesting posts on the IIT 2007 conference including GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s keynote on Globalization, India and IITs and MR Rangaswami’s panel on Web2.0 with Google and WebEx panelists.

Bonus, 6th: Not related to IIT conference, check out this post, by Jason Corsello. As Jason says,

Just because a talented individual doesn’t look the part and lacks confidence doesn’t mean they can’t be a top performer..

Are you ignoring what true talent looks like? Can you tap into the unexposed skills of your employees?

Learning: Don’t judge too soon.

How smart are you if you turn down the iPhone business?

admin · June 30, 2007 · 1 Comment

Seth Godin has this excellent post on Verizon turning down iPhone business from Apple.

The Verizon guy who turned down the iPhone

Given the mass hysteria, it’s probably not so good to be Denny Strigl this week. He’s the COO at Verizon quoted with pride about turning down the iPhone deal (Verizon turned down iPhone’s advances.)

The reason you need to care about this: Almost everyone is like Denny.

Most innovative business people who dream of bizdev imagine that they can be just like Steve Jobs. Come up with a super idea, a useful service, a great gizmo and go to an industry leader. Sign lots of NDAs and go to lots of meetings. Demand that they change their ways in order to make your wonderful innovation a game changer, something that will fix their broken industry and make you both a lot of money.

Hey, Steve Jobs himself couldn’t do it at…

The million dollar question on Web2.0, SaaS, RFID and so many other issues for many of us is – are you going to be like AT&T or Verizon? And how do you know. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • Do I look at glass half full or half empty? This is not a spiritual or philosophical question although it does come from your very way of being. Verizion tried to figure out what %-age of the pie they will get (its-not-fair argument) rather than how can I turn this into a great opportunity for both sides.
  • Am I trying to hold back the inevitable? Imagine yourself in Verizon’s shoes – the COO didn’t turn down iPhone business (at least not in his mind) – he was trying to ‘preserve balance to the force’ by not letting equipment manufacturers and value added service providers become the dominant player in mobile. I doubt game theory arguments will do him any good now though.
  • Are you denying reality? Mickey Mouse taught us many years back that eventually you have to look down and see that you have walked off the cliff, and when you do – gravity will kick in. Its useful for businesses and individuals to check in with reality every now and then. If you think selling 50K worth of boxes and software to a restaurant for a POS system is going to fly in 2 years, you must stop and look below.
  • Are you giving up because of “your Verizon”? In your work and personal life, you will get turned down and rejected by your version of a Verizon – the trick is to keep looking and not give up. However, make sure you do look down (see previous bullet).

And if you need more motivation, read up Guy Kawasaki’s blog. He turned down the Yahoo! CEO role many years ago (pre-IPO) costing him billion dollars plus. And he is a very smart guy.

Apple insider reveals secret plan to launch revolutionary iCar

admin · June 29, 2007 · 3 Comments

Apple insider, Mr. Jeremy Core, inadvertently revealed the seeds of a plan to launch a car later this year. The exact dates are not yet known but it is slowly becoming clear as to what features this revolutionary new car will have, short after the release of the iPhone.

Is Apple right again? Do cars have too many wheels?

In a major departure from conventional cars, Apple iCar will shun some of the common features like 4 wheels and round steering mechanism. Apple’s Core said Steve thinks that 4 wheels are just too many and confuse the average user. In fact, insider sources reveal that Steve nearly threw a fit when he saw the early prototypes with 4 wheels and a spare saying “Do I really need all these.. you (expletive deleted)! Go get me a car with 1 wheel like the iPod or the Mac!” After several rounds of negotiations, which at Apple primarily meant firing of senior engineers and architects, Jobs relented to go with a three wheeled design.

Of Square Pegs and Round Holes
Among other features of the three wheeler car, is a square steering wheel. Although awkward to use and reported to poke injuries on sharp turns, it does make the iCar appealing to a certain market segment. Apple’s Core refused to comment on reports of injury and neither confirmed nor denied the leaked statement by Steve, “Most people don’t know how to drive straight and the square steering wheel will let these (expletive deleted by FCC)-ing morons know when the steering wheel is straight.”

Microsoft Rune
Microsoft senior executives speaking on condition of anonymity said that they find the whole idea of 3 wheels and square steering wheel ‘simple minded and not what we have heard customers are asking for’. In fact, he thought that there might be liability arising out of use of the words steering wheel when the actual shipping product is square. There are unconfirmed rumors that Microsoft is planning to counter with Rune (pronounced “ruin”), a car which will come with 7 wheels. Although most customers will only use 4, Microsoft product managers believe that enterprises want the added security that comes with extra wheels. The pricing for the Rune is not yet fully decided but will most likely be based on per-wheel metric. The other key features of Rune:

  • Lots and lots of windows. The standard 4 side windows in most cars will be replaced by many smaller dedicated windows – one for looking at the side street, one for looking slightly up at the street lighting and so on. You can go to the Control Panel and follow the 19 step quick setup wizard to customize these windows.
  • 6 Cup holders. Analyst from Gardener, Mr. Trim said that the cup holders will be slightly smaller than standard cups and will require customers to purchase new standard cups from Microsoft partners.

Integrated Experience with iGas
When approached for comments, Apple’s Core declined but mentioned the following features that are going to “Wow!” the customer in an apparent jab at Microsoft’s Wow campaign:

  • iGas Stores: The iCar will not run on gasoline currently available but will require a 90.5 octane that can only be procured from iGas stores run by Apple. Jobs believes that the current gas station experience leaves the customer with too many confusing choices and that iGas will provide a superior experience including hands-on car advice by Apple Machine Heads.
  • Pre-integrated and welded on Battery and other replacement parts: Apple has decided to enhance the user experience by completely bypassing the current car fixing industry known for over charging and other scams. In stead, you will have to ship, or drive the car to an Apple factory (in San Jose-California, Chapel Hill-North Carolina or Salt Lake-Utah).

The blogger (yes, me) conducted an informal phone survey of potential car buyers and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Here are some quotes:

  • “I can’t wait to go under 300K of debt to buy the iCar, it will be super awesome”, said 16-year old Michele. In an unrelated note, she is expected to be featured on MTV’s My Sweet Sixteen.
  • “Four wheels always seemed like an overkill, no wonder Detroit is going out of business”, said 32-year old software executive at a reputed German company.
  • “Round steerings are so totally square”, said 44-year old Chandra. As a vegan, she also appreciates that the iCar will have no leather parts.

What do you think? Will iCar finally break Toyota’s run to the top?

Note: I will reveal the first pictures of the iCar in next few days, so be sure to check back.

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