Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 10 Feb 2013 01:13

Lets ser how Mort Ji reacts to this:

MY CT: This is caused by Apple(and Samsung). They have with their logistics(don't know too much about this subject) wizardry created shortages which is making hard for anyone other than Apple/Samsung to release products in adequate quantities.

Everyone from Nokia to HTC to LG to Asus to Microsoft to Motorola?? etc etc are facing these shortages. For example just look at number of markets where Nokia haven't yet released any lumia phone.. And that is as HUGE reason for Apple and Samsung's success. In fact this does not get too much attention.

Case in point: One X deserved to do LOT better than S3

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 10 Feb 2013 01:17

^^Samsung faced huge shortages for the S3 when it was released. Nobody except Apple is immune, though they had some shortage problems with the iPhunwa 5.

Success of S3 vis a vis HTC One X was because of Sammy's marketing blitz. HTC couldn't come close to matching it.

Surya · Post by **Surya** » 10 Feb 2013 01:46

well you provide 2 units to a retail outlet - easy for sold out effect

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-blows-su ... 000011080/

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Feb 2013 02:02

^^They are sold out online on Mickey's stores. I doubt Mickey's stock of the products is low since they make 'em themselves and the NE blizzard doesn't affect availability in case of online orders. What Mickey needs is a strong start like Sammy had with the original Galaxy - it takes time for a device to sell at Galaxy SIII levels and they have the deep pockets and heavy cash flow to wait unlike someone like Motor Oil or GB.

I might get one once the excitement dies down since the stylus feels much better in some ways than a $2K Wacom Cintiq. I don't need to buy another touch cover since I can just use the one I have with my Surface RT.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Feb 2013 02:06

anmol wrote:Lets ser how Mort Ji reacts to this:

MY CT: This is caused by Apple(and Samsung). They have with their logistics(don't know too much about this subject) wizardry created shortages which is making hard for anyone other than Apple/Samsung to release products in adequate quantities.

There's no conspiracy there, its sound planning on part of Bawarchi (he is a supply chain guy at heart after all). Sammy ofcourse does get priority for its in-house stuff which is selling well. I haven't heard of any parts shortage in case of Mickey's Surface since a lot of their key parts are designed and built in-house (touch window, housing, cams, keyboard, chassis, surface finish ityadi).

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Feb 2013 02:13

anmol wrote:Lets ser how Mort Ji reacts to this:

MY CT: This is caused by Apple(and Samsung). They have with their logistics(don't know too much about this subject) wizardry created shortages which is making hard for anyone other than Apple/Samsung to release products in adequate quantities.

Everyone from Nokia to HTC to LG to Asus to Microsoft to Motorola?? etc etc are facing these shortages. For example just look at number of markets where Nokia haven't yet released any lumia phone.. And that is as HUGE reason for Apple and Samsung's success. In fact this does not get too much attention.

Case in point: One X deserved to do LOT better than S3

Anmol ji,

No conspiracy here. I was in desh last year when Sammy released the S3 world wide. Fantastic marketing blitz by Sammy. Full page ads in ToiLet and TV channels. They had the entire 4 story side of IGI parking building as one big S3 ad. It was released to all carriers world wide at same time within a couple weeks. Sammy took a page from Apple and out did them. HTC on the other hand, from what I saw last May-June in desh, no marketing or remnants of it when it was became available in late April 2012. A big drawback to the HTC One X is also a lack of removable storage.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 10 Feb 2013 03:17

There are a lot more things to selling phones than just making cool phones.

Most phones are still sold through carrier stores. The size of ad displays in carrier stores, which phone they push as a "Hero device", how much commission the abduls there get on each device sold, availability in a vast majority of carriers, number of countries it is rolled out in, amount of carrier subsidy, TV/Radio ad blitz all matter. Even if you see carrier ads ("Switch to verizon! Buy a Iphunwa!!") some devices get mentioned, some dont. Verizon droid campaign for example, mentioned only Moto.

Sammy knows how to sell CE devices, they make a lot more CE devices than just phones from Refrigerators to TVs. Their ad and branding spend ityadi gets amortized over many products. HTC is a smaller company, sell only phones (and a few accessories). How much do they spend on Ad? Which includes wining and dining the tech writers, having launch parties, ads during prime time, huge displays in electronics stores. It is not just purely the merit of the devices.

Many companies also dont know how to produce/transport and sell millions of devices. Even demand forecasting, pricing and predicting yield (fraction of rejected devices) is a black art. Fruitco and Sammy has much expertise in this. FruitCo tracks their aluminium supply from the mines! So go slow on the CT.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Feb 2013 03:36

Anujan wrote:FruitCo tracks their aluminium supply from the mines!

That is fairly common actually - its not a Mahdi/Bawarchi inspired tradition.

Sammy does it, GB does it, I hear now Mickey does it. Many moons ago I recall reading an article on how GB ensured that it didn't source raw materials from conflict-ridden regions. Hard for most consumers to visualize that sand, silica, aluminium and other raw stuff mined by grimy sweaty workers get molded into the sleek iPad Mini they love to fondle so much. Speaking of sand, there is a certain type of sand sourced from NZ which might just revolutionize the touch technologies.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 10 Feb 2013 06:36

At&T and IBM were the baps of this tradition where the former had ships to lay submarine cables.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 10 Feb 2013 08:36

matrimc wrote:At&T and IBM were the baps of this tradition where the former had ships to lay submarine cables.

They were at a different level when it came to their respective businesses, though. Atty&Tee wasn't just a telephone co then. They were THE telephone co. Ditto for Instant Banana Mousse. They grew so large and dominant as to be threatened with the Sherman Antitrust Act for monopolizing their respective industries. FruitCo, while masters of supply chain management, leveraged and finetuned the outsourced ODM supply chain onlee. Even Chacha doesn't have a monopoly of search*

* I'm not familiar with the details of the EU tamasha regarding that. Presumably they just whined 'we're not a monopoly onlee! user has to type bing dat cam onlee!'

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 10 Feb 2013 08:39

dunno, i might lose the employee kith quota on the phone service.. so might have to shift, because this guy is quitting sprint. now, either i look for another bakra or pay the heck and decide verizon or att. att would be useful if i frequent to desh.

i am not sure about the contract on the device.. not clear yet.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Feb 2013 09:33

SaiK wrote:dunno, i might lose the employee kith quota on the phone service.. so might have to shift, because this guy is quitting sprint. now, either i look for another bakra or pay the heck and decide verizon or att. att would be useful if i frequent to desh.

i am not sure about the contract on the device.. not clear yet.

So you were pretending to be some employee's bhaiyya ji all this time? ATT would be useful if you frequently goto desh, verizon would be useful if you frequently want to make telephone calls.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 10 Feb 2013 09:40

yup... those muffat days are nearing end. in the sense, i got a good bhaiyya plan - except deal for the talk time, and all data services are FREE as in freedom.

but, sprint sucks on coverage exactly where i want it to be connected.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Feb 2013 10:30

If you travel outside of the US frequently - that is about once a year. Then get the Nexus 4 and go with TMO. TMO has plans that do not provide subsidized devices and are cheaper than ATT and VZW. But of course, check your coverage with any carrier.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 10 Feb 2013 13:04

HTC Butterfly launched in India at - hold your breadth - INR 46,000 onleee....

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 10 Feb 2013 13:50

Why are handsets so costly in India? Even considering unsubsidized pricing in rest of the world.

negi · Post by **negi** » 10 Feb 2013 16:10

^ To paraphrase a hindi movie diaogue "Hamare gaon mein aisa hi hota hai" (That's how we roll in our neck of woods). The craze for mobile handsets in India is far higher than the first world (at least when compared to US) . The companies are just trying to squeeze as much as they can out of the Indian junta for instance if you buy a pair of Levi strauss in a mall in India you will be surprised to find that you get a second grade quality cloth for as much price as you would pay for the same at Macy's and this despite Aravind mills supplying a major chunk of the cloth to LS&CO . Basically the branded items or anything for that matter which comes under the 'luxury' tag is marked up by at least 100% than what it actually should be in India.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 10 Feb 2013 19:52

Anujan wrote:Why are handsets so costly in India? Even considering unsubsidized pricing in rest of the world.

Premium handsets are imported, so price usually includes VAT and other taxes that marks up the handset 15-20%. The Rs.46K = $850
I do recall the S3 selling for ~Rs.31K when first introduced. It seems Sammy is better priced in desh.

The HTC Butterfly has battery life issues. In that size it is better to stick with the Note II at this time.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Feb 2013 01:52

Good article in Reuters about FruitCo/Sammy fight

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/ ... 1Q20130210

Meanwhile, Nick Bilton reports in NYT that FruitCo is working on a watch. Take it FWIW, but I think it will be awesome and FruitCo will be the first company to come up with the radical innovation of putting a clock on people's wrists

You can see your wrist and Boom! you can tell the time. It will be magical

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Feb 2013 01:53

Anujan ji, I think Sony already has it for sale in BBY.
How is this for a Smart Watch?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Feb 2013 02:01

I know I know. There are also other Companies like Pebble ityadi.

I mean all snark aside, I think FruitCo is best positioned to give us a great watch. Watch has the following features/characteristics. It has a small display (UX if you scale down a phone UI will suck), nobody likes charging their watch everyday and the list of things it can do is a subset of a phone. On the positive side, it is truly personal and you can easily look at it. Maybe you can use it to get rid of passwords. Maybe you can use it to pay for stuff.

So to come up with the right set of things it could do and to make it truly useful, requires a bit of thinking.

If you think about it, tablets vs Laptops are in the same league. When compared to laptops, tablets cant be used for typing well, (apart from M$ tablet), other tablets can do only a subset of what laptops can do ityadi. But users still like tablets because they do a subset of things very well. Apart from that, they last longer than laptops in terms of battery life (apart from M$ tablet

), lighter, quicker boot ityadi. So all credit is due to FruitCo to have come up with the right subset of use cases and features to make tablets interesting (when compared to those horrible resistive touchscreen windows pen tablets that M$ put out before that). I like my N7 because I can read my books one handed and check email and youtube while doing that. I use a laptop for everything else. So I think a tablet is truly more useful in a subset of use cases (amount of books I read has skyrocketed) and not merely a fad created by FruitCo marketing pixie dust.

A watch with right use case will be a demonstration that FruitCo hasnt lost its magic after Mahdi. That is why I personally am excited.

negi · Post by **negi** » 11 Feb 2013 02:07

Watch industry is a completely different ball game; most of the boys like mechanical watches even a non gadget type guy like me once blew a huge amount on a simple German WW-II flieger watch . Apple will have to price it right moment it goes above 4-500$ mark potential customers might then think of buying a Tag which gives one as many brownie points as having a Apple device if not more and then a mechanical watch if taken care of outlives it's owner can't say that about electronics packaged in plastic.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Feb 2013 02:17

OK I am keeping my mouth shut on this one.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Feb 2013 02:25

Why Bose-O? Your gyaan is much solicited.

Meanwhile, it will be useful to realize that we are in step 1 of FruitCo 10-step fanboy cycle I posted some time back

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Feb 2013 02:27

Watch as a time keeper and providing a mechanism to quickly checkout alerts is totally redundant. It extends mobility to a higher level (that too is arguable as it needs to be in close vicinity of an associated smart device). It may augment asthetics/lifestyle of person wearing it. It will tread into the space of Rolex and the likes and the dynamics will be akin to those. However, there is a stigma associated with being an Apple "fanboy" so pushing these type of products to high end customers paying Rolex kind of moolah is a highly suspect business model. It is has to play in the existing market (extending mobility and lifestyle aka fanboyism to loyal customers). JMHO.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 11 Feb 2013 02:33

I saw the article about the iWatch a few days ago. I'm an old timer who still wears a watch and knows the importance of time keeping. My whole professional and private life is based on being a master time keeper using precision oscillators. If anything is not an atomic clock reference then Mort isn't interested. What happens when you don't have accurate time keeping? The CEP of your mijjle gets messed up and you don't hit the target.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Feb 2013 02:37

I use a Casio waveceptor for the same reasons. I suspect that any smart device especially if it syncs with NTP will be as accurate.

negi · Post by **negi** » 11 Feb 2013 02:41

Well obviously iWatch will have it's lovers the types who want something more than a 'wrist-watch'. However I was only speaking from a serious watch aficionado's perspective men who like to splurge on watches will rather invest in a mechanical watch than a digital timepiece for them accuracy has never been an issue; else a 25$ quartz will beat the shit out of a 8k$ Rolex submariner which can run at least 2-3 secs slow/faster per day.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Feb 2013 02:55

Folks..given that Heins saab promised to upgrade Playbook with BB10, I am planning to get one off for $149 - 16GB variant (32GB going for ~$170). Think it is best value by far to help during travel or for bed time (after hex) browsing

. Any better suggestions?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 11 Feb 2013 02:56

Anujan wrote:I use a Casio waveceptor for the same reasons. I suspect that any smart device especially if it syncs with NTP will be as accurate.

NTP ultimately uses GPS or atomic clocks for synchronization. Your Waveceptor may be more accurate since it gets synchronized to WWV at NIST. If iWatch is synchronized to your computer getting an NTP synchronization, you may introduce time errors over a period of several days.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Feb 2013 03:11

Anujan wrote:Why Bose-O? Your gyaan is much solicited.

Meanwhile, it will be useful to realize that we are in step 1 of FruitCo 10-step fanboy cycle I posted some time back

Anujan-ullah, prick up your antennas and ye shall find - all involved companies are in the Bay Area. Who all, I cant tell.

That being said, watch is a tricky area from a UX perspective. Its kinda like the TV in a different scale. Now off to computer history museum's secret restoration facility - will pay my respects to the Whirlwind computer.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 11 Feb 2013 03:18

Not quite iWatch takniki, but here's some interesting developments in the GPS sports equipment field. I used to have a GPS watch and now have a GPS/heart rate/cadence monitor from Garmin (Edge 500) that I use for runs and rides. It's 'old fashioned' - I have to wear an HR strap, and it has to be started and stopped manually to report live cumulative stats. It can be summarized online, but needs to be physically connected to the PC and uploaded to connect.garmin.com .

Now there are some new products like the Garmin 510 and the pathbreaking Motoactv from motor oil co. These enable live tracking on the website (the ad shows biking coach at home tracking his riders as they ride around Italy). They have touchscreens. There's cellphone integration, which lets you use the data connection to maintain a deferred live connection with the tracking website. Of course this eats battery. No more plugging device to PC to upload stats. It also updates you on weather live, using weather information pushed from phone app to device, so you can turn back before you get drenched.

FruitCo, if they develop something new in the wearable space, would also very likely look at integration and leveraging with other iThings you have on you. Why duplicate functionality and cannibalize sales of a more valuable product (iPhunwa) for one that gives less by autonomous functionality to the user (iWatchwa) ? Instead make it such that iPhunwa user has a magical-er experience with iWatchwa as well

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:03

Anujan wrote:(apart from M$ tablet),..(apart from M$ tablet )

Matador for anmol? be careful, he might gore you.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:05

negi wrote:^ To paraphrase a hindi movie diaogue "Hamare gaon mein aisa hi hota hai"

or this colorful phrase I heard on a train between Itarsi to Allahabad - 'jidhar ka kAsTh udhar hI jaltA hai'

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:09

Anujan wrote:I like my N7 because I can read my books one handed and check email and youtube while doing that.

How good is N7 for PDFs? or is it better go for N10? I was put off because of the lack of external storage (uUSB or SDC or watchamacallit).

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:11

Raja Bose wrote:OK I am keeping my mouth shut on this one.

So, you know what shape it is going to take? Spill the beans, babu ji.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:14

Well I have both N7 and N10. I suggest that you beg borrow steal a friends N7 and N10 before you make a decision.

I like the fact that N10 is faster and the front facing speakers *really* make a difference. The screen is bigger and wide bezels are easy to grip. OTOH I like the fact that N7 is easy to carry and read books and stuff in the airplane. I can be a bit careless because it is relatively cheap. Also I am a old fashioned laptop type so for anything that requires a bigger screen I use a laptop. I have some music on N7, but mostly use an iPod touch or my N4. My gym has a iPod connector so I have most music there. So lack of space hasnt bothered me. It is really your preference.

Also N10 resolution is insane and books look better than print. The only reason I don't use it more is because SHQ took it from me.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Feb 2013 05:21

Oh K. I don't travel at all (very rarely anyway). So N10 probably is a better bet. I better try it out. I was quite excited when Moto Droid came out (I was and still am on VZ and there was no iPhone for VZ at that time) and was underwhelmed by the touch performance. It was very sticky compared to a lowly 8 GB iPod touch. Hope things have changed for the better in that space. The thing is that takla discontinued Kindle DX (I didn't get it because it had only 3G - no WiFi). I feel more comfortable with E-paper display. The internet connected tabs are too much of distraction. I will keep checking BRF too frequently and no reading gets done.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Feb 2013 07:57

OK boys and girls, let's see how much you ITvity abduls know your computers

These pics are from the visit I got invited to today at the Computer History Museum's collections facility. It is the world's largest collection of historical computing artifacts, ~100,000 out of which ~1500 are on public display. This was the first time external visitors were allowed to see the entire collection.

Q.1: What computer is this and why is it famous? (I don't expect people to get this one easily so the answer is given below)

Answer: Clicky for answer
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Q.2: What computer is this? Who built the hardware? Who built the wooden case? [I discovered this tucked in a remote shelf in the warehouse and sent the curator running to check its pedigree. Everybody went mucho when she looked up the info on their DB and came back with the result ]

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Q.3: Why is this bike in the museum's collection? [At least 2 abduls here should know the answer otherwise 1000 stribes to them]

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Q.4: Who is the person under the Red Arrow? Why is he famous?

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Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 11 Feb 2013 08:06

matrimc wrote:
Anujan wrote:(apart from M$ tablet),..(apart from M$ tablet )
Matador for anmol? be careful, he might gore you.

On Mickey side of the ring we haaaavve anmol!!!!!! Aaaannnnd on the Android side of the ring we have Mort!!!!! FIGHT!!!!