TheBizofCoding

Competition is A Constant, Building Imaginative products is the True Variable

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:21:40 -0700

I loved this quote from a Yahoo! employee at Alan Wilensky's blog post on "Yahoo Culture - What was, is, and Could Be" (Alan's blog is creatively titled BlogWhine :) ). To repeat the original words, that I modified in the title, "Competition is a constant, and the execution of imaginative products is the true variable." This simple 1-liner captures an essential idea of great product management and I salute the un-named guy quoted in Alan's post.

You can't worry about competition too much or too little. Its a waste. Competition will always be there. But what you can do is build insanely great products that consumers would love. That will keep 'em coming. That is the only mantra. Amen.

My good-old-yahoo-friend Sridhar Ranganathan keeps coming out with witty 1-liners : "Winners take most of it" a Corollary to which was offerred by another good-old-yahoo-friend Ravindra “To Win in a Market, create the Market”. Have fun!

Top 3 Indian Websites By Traffic - Rediff, Naukri, Indiatimes

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:31:16 -0700

Mint has highlighted interesting stats for most trafficked Indian websites. Rediff.com, a horizontal portal, with 8.1 million unique visitors in the month of April 2008 reached 29% Indian netizens was ranked first. Naukri.com, the job search vertical, with 4.3 million unique visitors reached 15% of Indian netizens and ranked second. Indiatimes.com, a horizontal portal, with 3.1 million unique visitors had a reach of 11% and ranked third.

Ranks 4-10 are unequally spread between horizontal portals (3 - Sify.com, NDTV.com, Ibnlive.com) and vertical sites (Bharatmatrimony.com, shaadi.com, yatra.com, cricinfo.com, moneycontrol.com, techtree.com).

According to the Mint report Naukri.com (42%), has seen much greater ad revenue growth than the horizontal and first placed Rediff.com (8%). Apparently Ad revenue in India is flowing away from horizontal to vertical websites.

Managing India Centers of Software Companies – International, Multinational, Global, or Transnational Model?

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:04:32 -0700

India Development Centers (IDCs) of Software firms like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Adobe, Google – are basically run on a Global firm model. IDCs are steeped in the philosophy of making and selling “the same thing, the same way, everywhere”. After all Microsoft Windows, Google Search, and Yahoo! Messenger are globally used homogenous products, so IDCs would be primarily focused on developing such globally deployable homogenous technologies.

Secondarily, the India Development Centers also do some local modifications such as Indian language versions of portals (Google Search in Hindi), content, fonts, user interfaces (Microsoft Office in Indian Languages - Microsoft Bhasha site) etc.

Understanding International, Multinational, Global, and Transnational firms

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:51:08 -0700

In my previous post I had mentioned about the 4 types of classifications of Multi National firms by Bartlett, Brikinshaw and late Sumantra Ghoshal, in their book “Transnational Management” : (1) International (2) Multinational (3) Global (4) Transnational. Here is a detailed description of each type

International
This is the earliest stage of a company which tries to go from being a single nation to multi-nation company. Such companies regard themselves fundamentally as a domestic company with foreign appendages.

Relationship between foreign and home-country operations
The main role of the foreign outpost (s) is to “support” the domestic parent company in various ways such ass incremental sales of domestic product lines, supply raw material, or components for domestic manufacturing operations.

Management of foreign operations
Decisions related to the foreign operations are made on an adhoc basis.

Four Types of Multi National firms

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:41:33 -0700

In a globalized Tech World we are often consumers and /or employees of multi-nation or international companies more than firms that operate within the domestic confines of a single country. According to UN estimates by 1991 there were about 36,000 multi-national companies with 170,000 subsidiaries, and total revenue in excess of $ 15.5 trillion. Together these firms accounted for 25% of world’s GNP.

Bartlett, Brikinshaw and late Sumantra Ghoshal, in their book “Transnational Management” have classified 4 types of multi-national firms:

International
Multinational
Global
Transnational

Winning Against Odds - Persisting In face of Delays

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:32:06 -0700

Shilpan Patel has written a lovely post on his blog "Success Soul" about 7 habits to cultivate to fight against odds. I have seen several ups and downs in my life and career and even now I am going through a phase which I wish would pass away soon. In any case his words came as a refreshing reminder of whats important -- staying course when delay completely freaks us out and makes us want to give up.

This is what Shilpan has to say:

Is "Social" in Social Networking a Misnomer?

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:28:49 -0700

Real world Social Networks hold Social Capital for people in that network. With Social Networking going Online I wonder whether the Social Capital holds any relevance or value. In other words is "social" part of social networking just a misnomer? Is Social Networking just an advanced version of online communication tool rather than really enhancing what is considered Social Capital?

I recently did a short survey with friends and colleagues in my network and found the Social Networks are primarily working as communication tools. Social Networks and Social Capital as studied by Sociologists -- are subjects with much more substance than just communication and playing online scrabble. For example see this early paper "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital" (PDF) by late James Coleman (Univ of Chicago) in The American Journal of Sociology. (Its a 1980s paper)

Get 20% Discount for Blogworld Expo

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:40:53 -0700

The Blogworld Expo is around 10 weeks away and Know More Media is a sponsor and media partner of the event. The Blogworld Expo 2008 will happen in Las Vegas, Sep 20-21.

BizofCoding readers can receive a 20% discount off the price of registration by using the special Know More Media code when registering: KMVIP.

Interesting Blog Stats are on blogworldexpo.com:

There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs
120,000 new blogs are created every day
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006
51% of blog readers shop online
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week

Bill Gates Logs off Microsoft

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:19:21 -0700

Bill Gates logged off Microsoft finally. Its a inflection period for Microsoft and Bill G has been unable to steer his company anywhere near Google or show real leadership in the Web 2.0 world. For a man who has lead Microsoft through several controversial periods, its perhaps time to retire. But Microsoft is on shaky grounds as he logs off.

Bill Gates's role will be covered by 2 people: Craig Mundi and Ray Ozzie who are "Chief Officers" along with Ballmer (with others). Though these guys have significant achievements, none of these individuals have been a part of a significant Web revolution.

Microsoft's official statement:

Mobile Multimedia -- 7 useful primer references

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:13:34 -0700

Here are some useful references I have found for mobile devices:

Introduction to Nokia Series 60, Series 40, and Memo Platforms at the Nokia Forum.

Good Comparison of S40 and S60 platforms

3rd Generation Mobile Video Standard 3GP

Mobile Audio Formats (Nokia Presentation) pdf file and Glossary of Mobile Video terms

Accessibility solutions for Mobile Multimedia

Overview of supporting audio and video on mobile devices.

Convert Lakh, Crore to Million and Billion

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:59:39 -0700

If you regularly view financial reports of Tech players in India and US you would run into issues of Lakhs and Crores being used in India whilst Millions and Billions being used in US. At such times you need to do 2 conversions actually Dollar > Rupee and Lakh / Crore > Million > Billion

Here are some simple conversion tips to remember for such situations

1 Million = 10 Lakhs
1 Crore = 100 Lakhs
1000 Million = 1 Billion
1 Million Dollars = 400 Lakh Rupees = 4 Crore Rupees (@ a conversion rate of 1 US $ = 40 Rs)

I found this nifty web converter from Khitij consultancy where you can input a number and get its Lakh / Crore < > Million / Billion Equivalent. This utility also gives a cool converter for currency. This is a surefire way to get around.

No its not over yet. If you have the time to get more confused (or enlightened) go ahead and spend some time reading about short scale and long scale versions of numeric systems at Wikipedia.

Vodafone Pre-Registering Indian Subscirbers for iPhone

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:14:52 -0700

Vodafone has a live link on their website in India vodafone.in which allows consumers to pre-register for a 3G iPhone. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, both Voda and Airtel are planning to launch iPhone in India by end of 2008.

Voda is allowing both customers and non-customers to pre-register. You basically give your email, contact number and get a promise to be contacted when the pricing and other details are ready. So this seems more like -- contact me. Possibly Voda will see the number of interested subscribers to decide on the size of subsidy that Apple could be given in India for iPhone 3G. (Apple is getting $300 per iPhone from Carriers in the US for iPhone.)

Interestingly guidelines for India's 3G auctions are yet to be handed out by the Government of India.

How Much Does an iPhone 3G Cost Apple to Manufacture?

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:24:40 -0700

iSuppli estimates the cost for iPhone 3G (8GB) for Apple to be $179. At this cost and with a clever business Model, Apple will not only make solid profits but it will give a lot of pain to competition - NOKIA, HTC.

With the iPhone 3G Apple (AAPL) is changing its business Model from revenue sharing to a hardware subsidy. With a retail price of $199 Operators will provide a subsidy of $ 300 and the iPhone 3G will be much more profitable for Apple than previous versions. PC World estimates that competition will find it hard to beat Apple on Price "Similar products from rivals cost much more. Taiwan's...HTC...has priced the Touch Diamond at NT$23,900 (US$785) for its home market, while Nokia estimates its new N96 smartphone will retail for €550 (US$855).":

With subsidies from carriers, Apple will be selling the 8Mbyte version of the second-generation iPhone to carriers at an effective price of about $499 per unit, the same as the original product.

For the first version of the iPhone, Apple was given a portion of the wireless carriers’ revenue from service subscriptions. With the second-generation version, Apple is not garnering any service revenue, making it more imperative that the company cut a profit on the actual hardware through the carrier subsidies.
...iSuppli has observed that Apple’s iPod and iPhone products typically are priced about 50 percent more than their BOM and manufacturing costs. With the new iPhone sold at a price of $199 and the estimated subsidy of $300, Apple will achieve an even higher BOM/manufacturing margin

In a earlier popular post "How Much Does an iPod Cost Apple to Manufacture" I had supplied iSuppli's figures for previous generation iPhone's and iPods as:

iPhone 4 GB Retail Price $499 Cost of Components $ 230
iPhone 8 GB Retail Price $599 Cost of Components $ 265
Video iPod 30 GB Retail Price $299 Cost of Components $ 151
2nd Gen iPod 4 GB Retail Price $199 Cost of Components $ 72.24

Nokia to buyout stake in Symbian

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:09:11 -0700

Nokia under pressure from Apple's iPhone and Google's Android efforts has announced to buy over UK based Symbian -- the popular mobile phone OS maker. Nokia does not plan to control (and kill) the OS. Symbian OS will be available as open source (quite like Android) and the licence fee paid by phone makers will be removed:

Nokia will contribute the computer code behind Symbian's operating system to a new non-profit organisation to be called the Symbian Foundation. The foundation will make the code available for nothing to software developers, in a move aimed at spurring innovation on the mobile internet.

Apple iPhone Soon in India from Airtel & Vodafone

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:49:18 -0700

iPhone Lovers in India won't have to wait too long with Airtel and Vodafone (VOD) set to release the cool gadget before the end of 2008.

1) Apple and Airtel (India's largest private telecom operator) have announced the availability of iPhone3G in India by the end of 2008 (iPhone 3G, dubbed as a phone + ipod with internet , is set to be released on July 11, 2008 at a delicious price point of $199 in the US):

Bharti Airtel and Apple® today announced that they will be bringing the highly anticipated iPhone™ 3G to customers in India later this year. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

2) Vodafone has announced that it would bring iPhone to 10 markets including India.