Why Android has lower Internet usage

There is a lot written on how android users are less data savvy that their Apple counterparts.

The actual reason for the disparity is due to the profile of the phones that carry Android.

Apple sells one model of its phone and generates the huge numbers that it does. By contrast android and its partners generate their sales through hundreds, if not thousands of models of phones. Most of the phones which they sell are low end phones which are extremely inferior in quality and performance. The android developers on the other hand are forced to produce apps which can be installed on all Android phones. Now most of the android phones cannot run too many apps. They are not designed for that kind of performance.

The poor performance of most Android devices is the reason that they are not used heavily therefore consuming much lesser data.

Apple Maps - Australian Fiasco

So now the police have set about putting up warning about various mapping product. At least the Australian police seem to have cartographic experts who are qualified to put out warnings about cartographic products!

So a few weeks back I was driving from a place called Raichur (North Karnataka) to Bangalore. Yes its a place not too many people have heard about just like Mildura. I was using Google Maps for directions and somewhere along the way this wonderful app located me somewhere in the middle of Czech Republic. Obviously I was a little concerned when the map showed me off by a few thousand miles. To add to the misery, there not a soul in sight for kilometers and I had to continue driving hoping that the direction in which I was headed was correct. I was in Czech Republic for about 40 Kilometers after which it put me back in India.

Fortunately, I did not approach the police about the incident and also I do not believe that the Indian cops are very keenly interested in cartographic issues.

So, What is the point? Well, clearly nobody is perfect. The problem with Apple is that there are just too successful. They have the highest profits in the mobile industry. The company is therefore under a great deal of scrutiny. Also, the millions of blogs that follow the company need fodder to write about and hence they hang onto any obscure report that may materialise.

I would like to know how many of the blogs the Australian Apple Maps incident have actually spoken to the officer involved!

The blogging community need to leave Apple alone. They have made a mistake and have admitted to it. They are not crowdsourcing data, which means that their product development is on a different slope as compared to Google. Let them do what they believe is right and then time will let us know if the approach was right or not.

Till then, just let them be.

Italian Navy Flag

So half the Indian population does not know the Indian Navy Flag. Hence it's safe to assume that none of them know the flag of the Italian Navy

The media is advertising the Italian Navy flag to such an extent that whatever message Italy wanted to put across is done by the news. Don't make an issue of it and ignore it, the job of not getting the message out is taken care of.

But no... Their journalistic excellence has to shine through.

Why Apple will not allow widgets...

Well, to answer this question, we need to look back at Windows. So when you installed a program in Windows, the program was saved in a particular folder and then shortcuts were placed all over the system, in order ensure that you would be able find the bloody thing. Else, you would be required to meander through a labyrinth of folders to finally arrive at the ".exe" file that you may need.

For those who have used the Macintosh, they know that there exists an application folder where one could find all of the programs. They are saved there and could be simply deleted from there.

What makes the Windows a slower system is the redundancy. Widgets are the Android avatar of these same redundancies. You can have the same app accessed through the menu folder or through the home screen or widgets and so on. These redundancies slow down the performance of a system and at same time introduce a new layer that needs to be understood by the non-tech savvy user.

If you were to ask an average Windows user to tell you, where Chrome.exe can be located, I am sure they probably would not be able to locate it. Now, ask a Mac user where Chrome is installed and most of them would get it right. This simply due to the intuitive nature of design of the system.

The same will hold true Android Vs iOS.

Now, does this reduce possibilities for the advance users, well, it certainly does. But, Apple manufactures for the masses not just for the tech-savvy user. This is reflected in numbers. Samsung Galaxy S3 sells 10 Million units in 2 months, Apple sells as many iPhone 5's in 2 weeks or probably less!

Why Apple will not allow widgets...

Well, to answer this question, we need to look back at Windows. So when you installed a program in Windows, the program was saved in a particular folder and then shortcuts were placed all over the system, in order ensure that you would be able find the bloody thing. Else, you would be required to meander through a labyrinth of folders to finally arrive at the ".exe" file that you may need.

For those who have used the Macintosh, they know that there exists an application folder where one could find all of the programs. They are saved there and could be simply deleted from there.

What makes the Windows a slower system is the redundancy. Widgets are the Android avatar of these same redundancies. You can have the same app accessed through the menu folder or through the home screen or widgets and so on. These redundancies slow down the performance of a system and at same time introduce a new layer that needs to be understood by the non-tech savvy user.

If you were to ask an average Windows user to tell you, where Chrome.exe can be located, I am sure they probably would not be able to locate it. Now, ask a Mac user where Chrome is installed and most of them would get it right. This simply due to the intuitive nature of design of the system.

The same will hold true Android Vs iOS.

Now, does this reduce possibilities for the advance users, well, it certainly does. But, Apple manufactures for the masses not just for the tech-savvy user. This is reflected in numbers. Samsung Galaxy S3 sells 10 Million units in 2 months, Apple sells as many iPhone 5's in 2 weeks or probably less!

Apple Sales - A little perspective

Apple is a victim of its own success.

Everybody who writes about Apple or critics it has lost all sense of objectivity. This is a direct result of the performance that Apple has been able to show, which itself defies objectivity.

Now, the analysts are crying hoarse that Apple has only managed to sell 5 Million iPhones in the first 3 days, not booked, sold! 

Let us just add a little perspective to this. The so called Android jaggernaut which is supposedly outselling iOS, whose poster child is Samsung's Galaxy S3, only managed to sell 10 Million unit in 2 months. Apple managed to sell half as many in 3 days! (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57477475-94/samsung-galaxy-s3-hits-10-million-sales-mark-early/)

If we go a little further and take Nokia Lumia as an example; although it is an unfair comparison to compare Apple with a firm that is hanging onto dear life; they managed 4 Million in an entire quarter. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-19/nokia-reports-lumia-sales-topping-estimates-as-losses-widen.html)

So considering this, 5 Million is 3 days is huge. Analysts who have come to expect more and more just because Apple has been able to beat their expectation year after year, quarter after quarter. It is not going to go on forever. They need to start putting things into perspective.

 

Conservation

So, there is a lot of talk about how we are leading lives which are unsustainable in the long run. Societies have needs that are unsustainable, population growth is unsustainable, consumption growth is unsustainable and on and on...

But think about it, is the entire capitalist economy not about growth? And if this economy has to thrive and survive and deliver consistent growth, how is that going to come about, and manage to co-exist with the concept of sustainability?

 

TED_Tristram_Stuart_The_global_foo.mp4 Watch on Posterous

 

If you watch the TED talk that is posted above, you would note that in developed nations food production has now peaked to 4 times the average requirement. This means that the ease with which food is now being made available ensures the demand for more. 

Businesses by definition need growth and in order to grow they make product or services that people would want. Most often these are products or services that would make lives easier! This is the root cause of the problem of sustainability.

I had a moment of epiphany today, when I was forced to take bath in cold water due to the lack of electricity and noticed, how much less water I used! The odd temperature of water made it uncomfortable for me hence I used less of it.

Now, in my experience the moment you make things harder for people, the better they become at conserving!

Let us say, you supply only cold water during winters in the pipes. Well, I do not foresee many taking those long showers. Water Conservation!

For that matter, if bread was not supplied in the supermarket and one was forced to bake the bread themselves, I do not suppose that the ending pieces of the loaf that most throw away would ever be thrown away. Food Conservation!

Let us say that the furniture business model involved building the furniture by yourself. A model that is the grandfather of Ikea, which involved some sawing and shaving the wood to put the end product together; the demand for wooden furniture is sure to plummet. Timber Conservation!

The underlying idea being that in order to conserve something, you need to make it harder for people to acquire and use the same. Businesses would never want to do this; it is sure to cause their value to disappear, if such practices are adopted. Over the centuries, man in his constant pursuit to make lives easier has simplified consumption. This consumption now threatens to cause the problems in the future, simply due to its unsustainability.

We need to start thinking about the kind of growth that should be avoided. Unfortunately, currently we are replete with only this kind of growth.

How many businesses would be willing to sacrifice growth to ensure sustainability?

Apple Maps

Well, the much anticipated iOS 6 is here. It brought in a lot of changes (beautification) to the general user interface and it is swell. They were going to bring beautification to the Maps application as well and had demoed how the new Maps is going to look. Understandably, everyone was eagerly awaiting the same.

The rumble of disappointment grew louder and louder as the 19th Sep progressed. Many users found error in the rendering of satellite pictures and still others found their cities missing. In my own case, the entire street that I live on, does not seem to be listed at all.

Just to render some perspective to the situation, the same street, was missing in the Google Maps App two and a half years ago. Kudos to Google for having improved their app so much over this period of time. 

Now, any cloud based app requires usage over the cloud by many for all issues surrounding the service to be ironed out. There has always been a hue and cry about Siri when it launched, with many describing the issues that they faced (thankfully they had the prevision to release it as a Beta). The same issue was faced when Mobile Me was released and Apple eventually pulled the plug on the same and upgraded to iCloud. Many forget that Mobile Me was the reason iCloud seemed to just work!

I myself have written a lot of hate mails to Google about the shortcomings of Google Maps in India, assuming that everything was perfect in the US, only to find out later that such problems do in fact occur and upon being reported they are corrected.

This has become a classic case with Apple, getting slippered after a new cloud based app roll-out.

So what is the issue now? Apple has introduced a product that does not have as much run-time on field as Google has had. Therefore there are more holes in the Apple product as opposed to Google. Oh, yes Google has holes, on a recent trip by road to certain interior parts of India, Google Maps suddenly showed me to be in Czech republic. It corrected itself a few minutes later, but well. Apple will need a lot of run-time to compile more data from various users and improve itself which will happen over the course of the next year.

While some of the whining is over public transportation not being mapped and so on, which I frankly feel is just a matter of adding another layer; the more critical failing will be the lack of sufficient business listings across the world.

Now, Google being in the search business means that they have an interface on the net, where business owners can go and list their businesses which can then be reflected on the Maps. This is the main tool that helps update their Maps application and makes it highly relevant in all geographies. Apple is not in the search business, hence they need to figure out, how that are going to get this data. This area is going to be harder to plug and more difficult to work around.

Also, Apple tends to focus on their primary markets US, Europe and China. What about plugging data in other geographies? It is going to be a monumental challenge! When an American with an iPhone travels to India, he is going to expect it to function just as it would in the US. Being able to meet those expectations is going to require more on-field resources and data gathering. That is going to prove to be a road-block at the moment. I wish to see how they plan to work their way around it!

What is the solution?

Buy more geography specific mapping companies.

Nokia seems to claim that theirs is the most comprehensive mapping solution, more so that than Google; well, buy Nokia; they will sell out for pocket change.

Double down and setup ground level teams in every country where they have operations and make the maps app really robust over the next 3 years. A very painful and arduous task which will pay dividends in the long run.

 

Leave Mark Alone...

At the time that the Facebook IPO was put up and the company was put up for sale, everybody knew that Mark Zuckerberg was going to lead the company and that he was going to retain the majority voting rights. He had unequivocally announced that nothing was going to change at Facebook. Then why the hue and cry??

Facebook was a company that had little revenue to support its valuation. The company was to be listed at 100X. Or in layman's terms 100 times the earnings that the company generating. Now, in the investment world for a fairly mature firm 10X to 15X is considered fair valuation given decent prospects in the coming years. For a high growth company, which happens to be the case with smaller firms due to the base effect, a higher multiple of 30X to even 150X in certain cases are considered.

Facebook will be a decade old, in another couple of years. A seventh of the world population is on it and another sixth (china) is banned from logging onto it. Such a firm by no means can be considered a growth firm. The first five years can be considered growth stage, this company was well and truly beyond that.

There were a few investors (Peter Thiel and company) who invested early into the company. Since Facebook was in no hurry to list, all the other VC firms that had not invested into Facebook early enough thought; ah, shucks, we should have invested there... So they did invest at whatever valuation was demanded by the team as facebook, with the last investment round of funding coming from Goldman Sachs at as abominable valuation (50 Billion USD). Now, in order for these latecomers to justify their investment, they needed to further inflate the valuation. Hence at the time of the IPO we landed up with a $100 Billion dollar valuation.

Every soul that invested at that valuation was foolish. There was no way that the company could have ever supported such a valuation. It was designed to fail. 

The stock is taking a drubbing not because of the way Mark is leading the firm, it was designed to take a drubbing.

Stop blaming him, blame the investment bankers who sold the IPO.

Apple - Samsung Trial

All the mobile manufacturers are not going to remain knotted-up in arbitrations and trials forever. They will eventually reach a settlement. This fact was known even before the verdict that came out last week. This was the precise reason for which Judge Koh had mocked the lawyers of both the firms for wasting the courts time, during the arbitration stage.

The only real change that comes about due to the verdict is the negotiating power. The reason the CEOs of Apple and Samsung could not reach an agreement earlier, when the court asked them to seek a solution outside of court, was because of neither knew where the negotiating power really lay.

If you look at it from the perspective of game theory, the two sides were not reaching a state of equilibrium due to the lack of clarity over the worst case outcome.

That has been cleared out by this verdict, for the purpose of both sides. If Samsung is facing up to trouble today, Apple knows what trouble could head its way another day.

I predict that settlements will come thick and fast over the next 3 years or so and a new system for sharing patents like the FRAND will emerge. Then they will eventually fight over that as well. But that is for later. This one was just about creating the negotiating platform.

 

Apple - Samsung Trial

All the mobile manufacturers are not going to remain knotted up in arbitrations and trials forever. They will eventually reach a settlement. This fact was known even before the verdict that came out last week. This was the precise reason for which Judge Koh had mocked the lawyers of both the firms for wasting the courts time.

The only real change that comes about is the negotiating power. The reason the CEOs of Apple and Samsung could not reach an agreement earlier was because of neither knew where the negotiating power really lay. That has been cleared out by this verdict.

I predict that settlements will come thick and fast over the next 3 years or so and a new system for sharing patents

Olympic Graveyards

I often wonder why countries/cities decide to host the olympics...

More importantly why do cities that are extremely well know decide to host the olympics?

The rationale happens to be that the hosting of the Olympics will provide economic stimulus and spur growth for the region where it is being hosted. Well, that may be true if one of two conditions are met:

1. The games are conducted in a city that is not very well known across the world. In such a scenario there is an intense focus created on the city, which did not exist earlier before the games.The names of Olympic cities are generally repeatedly talked about in press and news and get very well internalised in the minds of people all over the world. It can be expected that since the city was not known well earlier, like in the case of Beijing, the investment and new infrastructure will be used by tourism and the roll-on business generated in the future.

2. The other case where the Olympics can be held is if the city is using its existing infrastructure to host the games. In the case of an established city like London or Paris, an event is not going to generate any further mileage in terms of tourism. These are very well known cities and international tourists are not going to suddenly want to flood the city because an event was held. To the contrary generating new infrastructure adds a huge burden to the city and additional business that dont find use after the games. Athens is a shining example of what happens when a well known city splurges on an event that is not going to bring additional tourist flow in the future.

In my opinion London too will have an Olympic graveyard, now that the games are over.

Price of Petrol

The Indian petrol story is one that never seems to stop fascinating me. The budget each year outlines a massive bill towards subsidisation of fuel.


Ok, agreed we get fuel cheaper than the rest of the world. The subsidization of the fuel is paid by the government (with our tax money). So in effect, the people of the country are paying the price of fuel any which way.


When you break the price of fuel down, one would notice that almost 45% of the price that we pay comes in the form of Excise Duty, Customs Duty, Sales Tax and VAT; which again goes back to the government. 


So if the government were to just hold on to the same price of petrol and reduce the taxes that were being charged, the oil companies would be better off and they would not need to the tax money to survive anyway. I do not suppose that the government is paying more than 50% of the cost of fuel as subsidy!


Why cant they just remove the taxes/lessen them considerably and ensure that they dont have the onus of ensure the survival of the oil companies on their head? Why this convoluted nonsense? 


They give us subsidy and take it back as taxes!

Satyamev Jayate

Speaking for myself, I found the program to be a disappointment after all of the hype and marketing that surrounded the build-up. Aamir Khan attempting an Oprah Winfrey!

Issues are known. There are several problems with the Indian society, the way it has been conditioned traditionally and the way we have come to accept its shortcomings as a way of life. There are root causes to each one of these issues which need to be identified and there are inspirational tales of how people have managed to solve some of these issues, maybe even from other countries.

Instead Mr. Khan bring a parade of victims and sheds a few croc tears on the show as well. And what is with a bunch of idiots sitting in some village claiming they do not have girls to marry and taking pot shots at Salman Khan?? Shameful.

The case of female infanticide finds its roots in the dowry system, a point he never seems to touch upon. Obviously, the rates are going to be higher in urban India, city dwellers have to pay a larger dowry. Abortion becomes economically viable!

Example:

Cost of Abortion - Rs. 15,000    

Dowry in rural India - Rs. 1,00,000   

Dowry in Urban India - Rs. 50,00,000

Who has greater incentive?

This is a fake show meant to play on the emotions of people and increase TRP. 

I am also tremendously appalled by the people who, after watching the show, seem to react as if this was a taboo that they had never heard of! Its is something that has been going on for years, just does not get reported as much as rape and murder, those are more juicier stories.

Just creating a one-sided law against dowry is not the solution, there needs to be a better answer. Once, this is addressed, female infanticide will come down automatically.

Spoof Ads

In corporate rivalry one often notices the arrival Spoof and Jab advertising taking pot shots at the rival company. I was watching the latest Samsung super bowl ad, again taking a shot at the queues of crowd waiting for the iPhone. It made me realise something fundamental.

Most companies that decide to go after their rivals with spoofs generally do not have anything of their own to sell. Why would a company buy the most expensive air time in the US just to make fun of another.

Samsung uses Android which does not allow them to create a unique experience for its users. The hardware is not unique either. This leaves them with nothing to sell.

I feel sorry for the company.