Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

[Anujan]

Another major issue specific to Android is the manufacturers have to update their skins (and test them) to run on the new Android version and then push out the 3000 variants custom for each carrier/country/religious ideology. All that takes time. Its essentially the old Symbian model in a new bottle.

So what if the model is superficially the same? There are subtle differences --

Symbian didnt fail because of a flawed model, it failed because (a) It didnt have a proper app store, it was a slapped on afterthought (b) Programming for it was a pain in the mush with cleanup stacks and "leaves" sprouting everywhere (c) It didnt support touch straight off the bat.

By the time it supported touch, FruitCo had walloped symbian in the high end market. GB could have made amends but in its infinite wisdom gave up and went with M$.

Symbian was developed by a phone company and it showed. The objective of running an OS on the phone was probably to customize it a bit here and there maybe add a few "apps" here and there. That was the symbian "model" -- Let OEMs and carriers write a few crapware.

iOS and Android were developed by computer companies and it shows. The objective of running an OS is to enable development of applications, period. You could *also* write OEM crapware if you wished, but OEM crapware was not the raisin dieter like Symbian. This is the fundamental different in the "models"

And that comes to the point:

Android developer base is magically more sophisticated?

Yes and so are iOS developers. Because there is a ton of money to be made developing for Android/iOS. Given the large install base, anyone developing an app for the desktop is forced to invest and develop for mobile too. Startups are dead if they dont have a mobile app. This drives investment, training and trained developers on Android and iOS. Symbian never reached that scale of app development and distribution.

The second thing is the app development model. All the sensors have HAL. The programmers program in what is essentially java. That makes a whole lot of difference.

[Raja Bose]

Another major issue specific to Android is the manufacturers have to update their skins (and test them) to run on the new Android version and then push out the 3000 variants custom for each carrier/country/religious ideology. All that takes time. Its essentially the old Symbian model in a new bottle.

So what if the model is superficially the same? There are subtle differences --

Symbian didnt fail because of a flawed model, it failed because (a) It didnt have a proper app store, it was a slapped on afterthought (b) Programming for it was a pain in the mush with cleanup stacks and "leaves" sprouting everywhere (c) It didnt support touch straight off the bat.

Actually the model is exactly the same for both Symbian and Android, in the context the comment was made in - which is device manufacturers adding their own skin and other stuff on top and having to maintain a bazillion variants of each for every carrier. That is another reason why I call Android the next Symbian. That pain and suffering from a device manufacturer's perspective has neither changed nor improved. App Store/Touch/Ease of writing apps/why Symbian failed etc. is irrelevant in this context. In fact Android:Touch-based app-centric mobile devices::Symbian:Non-touch-based/non-app-centric mobile devices. Back then you had S60/UIQ now you have TouchWiz/Sense. The only difference is becoz Symbian existed in a non-app centric world the platform vendor (Symbian Foundation) was not a commercial for-profit service provider whereas in case of Android the platform vendor (Chacha) is a service provider.

Anyhow it was too late for GB to go all in with something like MeeGo. GB had no muscle when it came to building a new app based ecosystem and the fact that it had burned bridges with every NAM carrier during the heydays of Symbian ensured that it had no leverage to get anybody to develop apps for it. Even Mickey which has a lot of leverage is taking multiple years to get on par with the iOS/Android ecosystems though it has improved slowly and steadily - GB has zero leverage there and would have just perished. The only 2 choices it had was going with Mickey and going with Android. Going with Android didn't make sense becoz Chacha was most insistent on GB abandoning its services and for GB the long-term money spinner is its services and not devices - the reasons were explained earlier (and why Sammy is going the same route). So all they had left was Mickey with its deep pockets as bonus. GB literally had to choose between the devil and the deep sea.

Symbian was developed by a phone company and it showed. The objective of running an OS on the phone was probably to customize it a bit here and there maybe add a few "apps" here and there.

That's becoz it comes from an era where embedded HW was way more primitive in capability as compared to non-embedded HW. Now the trend is where embedded HW will match desktop HW in terms of a lot of capabilities - case in point the next few generations of the GPUs going into Tegras. That is what is making ChipZ sit up since it never paid too much attention to embedded and concentrated on desktop/server/devices with power cords. Symbian was designed for running well even on low-end embedded HW so its a trade-off between optimizing for memory/power/cpu vs optimizing for app development/ecosystem. Symbian's demise is a natural evolution of the mobile industry (which mirrors the evolution of the larger computer industry). Back in the days no SW company could have developed something like Symbian becoz it required extremely serious telecom and embedded HW chops. In the same way no phone company can develop something like Android which requires expertise on an apps/services level.

The second thing is the app development model. All the sensors have HAL. The programmers program in what is essentially java. That makes a whole lot of difference.

That is unchanged from the past. Heck you could access all those sensors in Symbian from Java or even python. Nobody was writing directly to I2C or SPI and everything interfaced at a system level thru HAL. The problem is not accessing those sensors but doing something useful with them. Colour me skeptical till I see some real innovation using all those sensors which Sammy decided to check off a list. Till date I don't see a fundamental shift in HCI which can make use of those sensors in an useful non-gimmicky manner.

[Mort Walker]

^^^It may be a turd but its a sticky one - one without a viable alternative till date. That's the dream of every platform vendor out there. What's wrong with the others? Are they sleeping for decades and couldn't come up with a better OS despite all the ? BTW Mickey does not sell individual licenses direct to users (unless you buy a Surface), it sells volume licenses to OEMs and other retailers. So the number of licenses sold by Mickey will always be lower than the number of machines running Win8 and unless Mickey releases the actual activation numbers (which it never has for any version of Windows for whatever reason) at best those anal-e-cyst numbers are guesses.

Mickey needs to ensure barrier synchronization otherwise it will keep growing its legacy tail like it has till date. Hence, now they are doing it like FruitCo has been doing with OS X. Win 8.1 is same as an OS X upgrade pushed by FruitCo except you don't pay for it and your Visual Studio doesn't mysteriously stop working if you don't upgrade. FruitCo actually required me to upgrade my XCode which required me to upgrade my OS X all becoz I needed to use the new Twitter API in iOS

1. Windows was successful because it utilized the Intel x86 processor to its potential due to Office. The only original work there is Word and Excel - no doubt an achievement. We use it out necessity, not because we like it.
2. MSFT does indeed sell Windows 8 directly to the consumer see this link and this one too. It was free trial to some of us who had a developer account with MSFT when Win 8 was announced. It is bundled with OEM PCs, and people like me, immediately downgraded those PCs to Win 7. There's no anal-e-cyst here, but the real story of just lipstick on a pig. Windows 8 is a turd, no reason hide it, and Windows phones will also fade away like the Zune, so Nokia needs to go back to Symbian or just stick to mass sales for low end devices for the developing world. The better solution is to go Android.
3. Why should Visual Studio quit working on your Mac? It sounds like MSFT conspired with AAPL and forced you to install a patch to VS, and then you've got to turn around and buy the super expensive $20 OS X upgrade.

[Raja Bose]

2. MSFT does indeed sell Windows 8 directly to the consumer see this link and this one too. It was free trial to some of us who had a developer account with MSFT when Win 8 was announced.

Those sales volumes are negligible compared to their bulk licensing. That has not changed even with Win8 and unlikely to change unless Mickey goes 500% vertical which I dont see happening in the near future.

It is bundled with OEM PCs, <snip>

That's the main source of sales volume - its bulk licensing rather than retail.

Windows phones will also fade away like the Zune, so Nokia needs to go back to Symbian or just stick to mass sales for low end devices for the developing world. The better solution is to go Android.

WP is no Zune despite fervent hopes of many - Mickey is slow, sweaty and bald but not stupid. The last 3 decades have shown that Symbian is dead - there is no going back there, even Japanese companies stopped making Symbian phones by last year. Android can only be a solution if GB forks it like Amazon, otherwise it is not a solution for GB and may not be a solution for Sammy in the future either. In fact Chacha should divest itself of the Motor Oil albatross asap and strike a long-term exclusive partnership with Asustek for phones and tablets (or even buy them lock stock and barrel if so inclined).

3. Why should Visual Studio quit working on your Mac?

VS didn't quit working on my Mac, XCode did so any kanspeeracy is FruitCo exclusive onlee! But there was no kanspeeracy, it was good ol' highway robbery. Or rather I couldn't use new iOS APIs (like the Twitter API) which I needed for a book I was writing back then, unless I upgraded XCode to the latest version and I couldn't upgrade XCode to the latest version unless I upgraded to the latest version of OS X. At least unlike FruitCo, Mickey's upgrades are free and it's highway robbery is a less barefaced.

[Mort Walker]

Mickey is slow, sweaty and bald but not stupid. The last 3 decades have shown that

MSFT will always have its corporate sales and that will keep them profitable with steady revenue. They've seem to have made missteps on the Xbox with always on line and DRM, and most probably they will down hill ski on it or it too will go the way of the Zune. WP just doesn't have the developer base for it. It will be popular with early adopters and WP fanbois, but at this time it lacks mobile apps for business, scientific and engineering use.

[Raja Bose]

XBox always online is for its set-top box functionality. XBox is way too dominant for Mickey to throw it away and is also an example of how they dominate a new market after being a late entrant. If necessary they will downhill ski and if not, they will force the change. Zune:Mickey::NexusQ:Chacha - neither can be used to gauge their overall success or failure in doing business. That is the sweet position Mickey and Chacha are in - they can have 10s of Zunes or NexusQs but only need 1 XBox to gain a massive bump up in revenue and market advantage.

The 2 old fogies, Mickey and ChipZ are very similar to each other - they both know how to do business better than the rest of the industry and both are ruthless when it comes to focus and execution - FruitCo was like that under the Mahdi, under Bawarchi I am having doubts. Chacha is still growing and time will tell if they have that ability and if not they will go the way of SUN/DEC/SGI/Yahoo etc. FB I have my doubts about. WP developer base has actually increased slow and steady due to wider distribution and sales of WP8 phones (mostly from GB) across all price points. One thing WP has which Android doesn't is that the UX on even its cheapest phone is as good as the one on its flagships - that is the reason why they have gained a lot of mainstream apps recently. WP has office/lync the whole shebang - at least when it comes to business use I doubt anybody else is that well equipped. Anyhow Mickey's aim will be to converge and leverage - its not a silo'ed mobile onlee strat-e-jee but rather spread across PC/Home/Mobile/Cloud.

[Gus]

question here on high level trend -

will MS, Goog and Apple do more of having separate apps exclusively for their OS phones as time goes on? like how apple now have their own maps and google making it harder to sync in other phones etc?

Do we have to be more mindful of what applications we use in selecting the OS..whereas at this point, at least for the stuff that I do, the OS is not a make or break thing.

[member_20292]

WHere to buy an 11.6 laptop in India. ?

I saw some excellent Asus laptops in the mall and on ebay.in. Some of the one's on slickdeals.net as well.

However, none sufficed.

So, I turn to you folks in order to suggest to me , where I could buy a laptop smaller than 14 inches in India, which is light and has a price point of approx 25,000 Rs.

[member_20292]

Nokia is making great phones. Don't know why the sales are still sluggish.

Because whenever someone thinks Nokia in the US, they are reminded of the old 1100 phones.

Nokia phones are doing good in India though. Dumb phones as well as smartphones.
Because, in India, when people are shown a Nokia smartphone, they are like; wow, nostalgia etc.

Apple is doing well everywhere and it has an uber cool image. I kind of hate it though (secretly )

Doesnt allow me to do much at all. I currently rock a Samsung Galaxy S1, and just bought my mom a Nokia 620.
Will buy a HTC One in the near future. But I am still debating upgrading my old phone...since it just works well enough.

Like the Indian Air Force, I am now thinking missions and visions and capabilities, not getting brochuritis and lusting after features . Hence upgrading does not make sense to me at this time.

[Vayutuvan]

> Mickey is slow, sweaty and bald but not stupid

They hide their stupidity in their deep pockets under a wad of cash. When some stupidity comes out a few greenbacks take a ride on its back.

[Raja Bose]

question here on high level trend -

will MS, Goog and Apple do more of having separate apps exclusively for their OS phones as time goes on? like how apple now have their own maps and google making it harder to sync in other phones etc?

Do we have to be more mindful of what applications we use in selecting the OS..whereas at this point, at least for the stuff that I do, the OS is not a make or break thing.

No the trend will be to push services into other platforms both for wider customer base and also to use as bait to attract people to one's own platform. Chacha's main revenue source dictates they spread their warez far and wide. Some of Mickey's revenue sources dictate the same. Only FruitCo is exclusively walled garden.

[Mort Walker]

I hope someone here, in the Bay Area, is attending Google I/O.

Sammy is going to announce an S4 Google Edition with plain Android!

[Raja Bose]

^^^^Not Sammy, Chacha. They just showed it off on stage without any of the Sammy TurdWare.

[nachiket]

^^^^Not Sammy, Chacha. They just showed it off on stage without any of the Sammy TurdWare.

AoA! The ideal Android phone. Good thinking by chacha. Now if they could just convince the carriers to sell it at a discounted rate on contract. Otherwise, it will cost a bomb and be stillborn.

[Mort Walker]

^^^^Not Sammy, Chacha. They just showed it off on stage without any of the Sammy TurdWare.

I thought you considered Sammy a turd in both h/w and s/w? What gives?
Anyway, believe whatever you want. Sammy has shipped 6 million S4 units and is making money hand over fist - they are the leader in hardware. If Sammy ever decided to do Windows phone, then its game-set-and-match for HTC and Nokia.

[Mort Walker]

AoA! The ideal Android phone. Good thinking by chacha. Now if they could just convince the carriers to sell it at a discounted rate on contract. Otherwise, it will cost a bomb and be stillborn.

$650 unlocked including boot loader on Google Play. Yes, expensive, but if ATT follows TMO's model where you bring your own phone for a discounted monthly price, then there is a savings.

[member_20292]

^^^
good news for me....

the htc one will drop its price down, and i will buy it.

right now 650 $. if sgs4 is 650 ..then htc one will become 575 soon.

[Anujan]

Would have been nice if HTC one came with stock android.

[Raja Bose]

^^^^Not Sammy, Chacha. They just showed it off on stage without any of the Sammy TurdWare.

I thought you considered Sammy a turd in both h/w and s/w? What gives?

Sammy s/w and device build quality is indeed a turd - no change there. As far as internal HW is concerned, don't be surprised if they dump Exynos and go with QCOM in the next GS. Sammy does WP devices, nobody buys them. The only advantage Sammy has in Android is it came in early and did deep collaborations with Chacha with an eye out for its own future services plus its massive distribution channels - HTC/LG didn't do that and are paying for it. Doesn't make Sammy's devices magically wonderful. Motor Oil, the less said the better since Chacha helped them massively during '09-'10 and despite being the 1st out with a mainstream droid phone, they effed up.

[Raja Bose]

Anyway, believe whatever you want. Sammy has shipped 6 million S4 units and is making money hand over fist - they are the leader in hardware.

I remember when people trotted out the same blinkered BS for GB back in '05 when folks complained by crappy Symbian phones GB was shipping and guess where it got them. People never learn from history....sigh.....history does repeat itself. Sad indeed.

[nachiket]

Would have been nice if HTC one came with stock android.

+1. The HTC One is truly a beautifully constructed phone. I'd go so far as to say that even the Mahdi would have approved of its design and build quality.

[Mort Walker]

<snip nonsense> As far as internal HW is concerned, don't be surprised if they dump Exynos and go with QCOM in the next GS.

You need to keep up on engineering h/w development my friend.
The QCOM Snapdragon SoCs are better for LTE implementation where the SoC doesn't use as much current. The multi-core Exynos architecture isn't quite there yet, but will be, the Note II uses a Exynos 4 and the Note III will use new Exynos 5 Octa, as these phones have the battery capacity.
On a related note, as AAPL will not use Sammy for the fab of the A7, Sammy will be doing the fab for Nvidia Tegra SoCs to help them keep fab costs down.

[Raja Bose]

You need to keep up on engineering h/w development my friend.
The QCOM Snapdragon SoCs are better for LTE implementation where the SoC doesn't use as much current. The multi-core Exynos architecture isn't quite there yet, but will be, the Note II uses a Exynos 4 and the Note III will use new Exynos 5 Octa, as these phones have the battery capacity.
On a related note, as AAPL will not use Sammy for the fab of the A7, Sammy will be doing the fab for Nvidia Tegra SoCs to help them keep fab costs down.

And what does all this irrelevant hand waving about NoteII/NoteIII/Tegra/AAPL/A7 have to do with Sammy dumping Exynos and moving to Snapdragon for their next GS? Its not Sunday yet Mortullah....when you typically post incoherent nonsense and other assorted lahori logic.

Anyway, believe whatever you want. Sammy has shipped 6 million S4 units and is making money hand over fist - they are the leader in hardware.

oh wait! By that argument did you just inadvertently claim that Windoze is wonderphool onlee!

[Mort Walker]

Sammy does WP devices, nobody buys them. The only advantage Sammy has in Android is it came in early and did deep collaborations with Chacha with an eye out for its own future services plus its massive distribution channels - HTC/LG didn't do that and are paying for it. Doesn't make Sammy's devices magically wonderful. Motor Oil, the less said the better since Chacha helped them massively during '09-'10 and despite being the 1st out with a mainstream droid phone, they effed up.

Sammy doesn't do WP because it is a turd. The ATIV effort was never promoted because it was a waste of time and money and Sammy's chairman said as much.
But do pay attention to what Samsung Electronics does. Being prominent in the manufacturing of DRAM, NAND, SoCs, LCD panels, OLEDs, and Li-ion batteries gives Sammy much more engineering ability than competitors. MOTO had the engineering resources to be a real competitor, but once it broke in to Mobility and services, the key engineering development personnel were let go and the company was squandered. Basically, it was gutted before GOOG bought them. I don't think they can come back. It is reminiscent of 3Com and USR.

[Mort Walker]

You need to keep up on engineering h/w development my friend.
The QCOM Snapdragon SoCs are better for LTE implementation where the SoC doesn't use as much current. The multi-core Exynos architecture isn't quite there yet, but will be, the Note II uses a Exynos 4 and the Note III will use new Exynos 5 Octa, as these phones have the battery capacity.
On a related note, as AAPL will not use Sammy for the fab of the A7, Sammy will be doing the fab for Nvidia Tegra SoCs to help them keep fab costs down.

And what does all this irrelevant hand waving about NoteII/NoteIII/Tegra/AAPL/A7 have to do with Sammy dumping Exynos and moving to Snapdragon for their next GS? Its not Sunday yet Mortullah....when you typically post incoherent nonsense and other assorted lahori logic.

Anyway, believe whatever you want. Sammy has shipped 6 million S4 units and is making money hand over fist - they are the leader in hardware.

oh wait! By that argument did you just inadvertently claim that Windoze is wonderphool onlee!

If you understood your own statement about QCOM and Exynos and what it has to do with fab, then you would understand. Sammy is not dumping Exynos. Using QCOM Snapdragon was done for a specific reason. Try and understand that.

[Raja Bose]

But do pay attention to what Samsung Electronics does. Being prominent in the manufacturing of DRAM, NAND, SoCs, LCD panels, OLEDs, and Li-ion batteries gives Sammy much more engineering ability than competitors.

If you really want to know why it doesn't help them if turd hits the fan, go back and read thru the discussion on HW commoditization I had with Anujan (esp. the last post in that). All the things you listed give Sammy an advantage in manufacturing and possibly in sourcing (just like it did to GB in the past) but that does not save Sammy from facing the consequences when a better product or category of product comes up and kicks them in the nuts (just like it did to GB). And don't forget Sammy is not the only one innovating on the above so its not like they have a lock on R&D in any of those components or their sourcing - Chipanda is snapping at the heels. In fact doing everything on their own makes them vulnerable to death by a 1000 cuts becoz such companies come equipped with a strong NIH/insular decision making process when it comes to sourcing and don't mend their ways till it is too late. The big advantage Sammy has which nobody seems to notice or wants to ignore is the historically strong backing from the Korean Govt. and the massive leverage Sammy gets from that in many trade deals. Even back in the days Motor Oil/GB/Ericsson etc. would complain about that.

[Mort Walker]

^^^Nokia never had the same advantage as Sammy. Yes, they are a mobile company with lots of R&D, but they simply aren't the manufacturing giant like Sammy who has much production capability and knowledge. The chipandas are not hot on the heels of Sammy. As far I know, I'm not aware of the chipandas having 20 nm fab capability, nor are they making fast DRAMs, nor are they making cutting edge display panels or batteries. Mobile computing is a significant part of Sammy's business, but they are big in semiconductors and provide parts for their parent the Samsung conglomerate. Yes, they do get strong backing from the SK govt. like the other Chaebol companies of LG, Hyundai, and SK Group, but so what? In they US the big defense contractors get support from the US govt. both moral and financial.

I can understand not liking the UI on the Galaxy S series, but calling the Sammy S4 a turd is really uncalled for. BTW, the 6 million S4 units shipped will be sold and activated by end of June. Right now the only figures available are units shipped. By contrast WP have been available for the last 7 months and barely 3 million in use for what was suppose to be a technological achievement. If that doesn't smell like a turd, then the Yamuna east Delhi smells like roses.

[Anujan]

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a talib in school " you study well. There is a danger that you won't and start failing exams. I fail exams, the only way for me is up. What would you rather choose? "

Okay then.

Every company's business model is under threat. It is called competition. Some are successful now - they have the money and time to prepare for the future. They certainly didn't become successful due to chance. Some others are not so successful now. They might in the future. Who will you bet on?

[Raja Bose]

^^^Nokia never had the same advantage as Sammy. Yes, they are a mobile company with lots of R&D, but they simply aren't the manufacturing giant like Sammy who has much production capability and knowledge.

You really need to upgrade your knowledge mian. GB used to design and manufacture all its components including the ICs and had its own fabs - do you think Sammy is the first mobile manufacturer to do that? Heck, GB was the first one in the mobile industry to come up with regulations regarding sourcing conflict minerals from mines - thats how deep their manufacturing base was. That is why I said having such capability is no guarantee of anything. In fact it can go the other way and increases one's liabilities during tough times - it happened to GB, it can happen to Sammy. Thinking that type of capability is somehow a hedge against competition is quite naive.

I can understand not liking the UI on the Galaxy S series, but calling the Sammy S4 a turd is really uncalled for.

Sorry to hurt your feelings.

....nor are they making fast DRAMs, nor are they making cutting edge display panels or batteries.

Have you done any sourcing lately? Probably not. In case you don't know, most of the ODMs don't buy these parts from Sammy and neither are the Sammy parts uniquely cutting-edge (as in no other vendor can supply them). And don't confuse HW components which are manufactured by Sammy as a CM vs their own in-house tech. For example, the GB PureMotion display with fast refresh rates/ClearBlack etc. is not Sammy technology, its only contract manufactured by Sammy (and CMI). Recently Sammy got into trouble with GB and LG for allegedly stealing their display tech while acting as CM. Sammy Displays facilities got raided multiple times for that (last one happened 2 weeks ago).

Some are successful now - they have the money and time to prepare for the future. They certainly didn't become successful due to chance. Some others are not so successful now. They might in the future. Who will you bet on?

That's why they say, "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance." In fact the rule rather than the exception in ITvity is the incumbents die with new blood taking over. Very few incumbents keep surviving multiple upheavals without mutating into something else or being rescued from death's door (ChipZ, NetZ, Mickey are exceptions, not the rule). As Andy Grove said, "Only the Paranoid Survive".

[Mort Walker]

Yes, Nokia was producing ICs, but they didn't have the fab capacity that Samsung has.

Samsung makes some 40% of DRAMs on the market. They also make a significant percentage of displays both LCDs and OLEDs. Yes, they've been raided, but so far nothing has stuck. It sounds like LG & Nokia can't keep up with Sammy. Even though Sammy is CM, they do learn from the manufacturing process. Is it unfair? Perhaps so and maybe everyone should quit buying from Sammy.

I don't source parts for the CE world, but as a duffer I do know a teeny tiny bit about sourcing electronic components. The problem is finding parts for mass production from a reliable source that is also cost effective, and Sammy is that.

[Raja Bose]

Yes, Nokia was producing ICs, but they didn't have the fab capacity that Samsung has.

Is that your belief or a fact? At one time Nokia used to produce every processor which went into its phones and it used to sell ~1B+ phones a year (each phone had ~3-5 processors) - does that sound like small fab capacity to you?

Its not about "learning" from the manufacturing process - they are accused of stealing proprietary technology which may also include manufacturing process steps (in displays it frequently does). When signing an agreement with a CM, it is standard to have clauses in the written contract that all tooling, molds, drawings, code, protos etc. will be destroyed completely once the contract ends. So to answer your question, no it is not right for a CM to "learn" from the manufacturing process. There's no conspiracy against Sammy by LG/GB - Sammy has been caught stealing that's all. This is not some mom & pop operation running on scout's honour.

Well I do regularly source parts for CE so have to deal with cost/reliability/compatibility/volume and if you think Sammy is somehow the only one with a reliable cost-effective cutting-edge displays, batteries etc. today, you need to upgrade your knowledge of the HW industry. When I said Chipanda is snapping at the heels, I ain't kidding. Just follow for example, what folks like Foxconn are up to, it will make you dhoti shiver. I wish Indian ITvity could do what Chipanda has managed but our fatkats are busy investing in coconut plantations and being slumlords while spouting BS gyaan like that most admired company founder.

[Anujan]

Longish post so please bear with me:

All this "hardware is getting commoditized onlee" and "vertically integrated ecosystem play" and "good polished UX" all miss a central point. All of the above can explain why previously profitable companies gradually decline, but cannot explain the sudden death and upheavals of companies. Two examples come to mind:

1. Kodak and polaroid dying in a span of 4 years
2. Blockbuster dying in a span of 3 years

What happened in each of the cases?

1. People started shooting in digital cameras. That meant that film companies' sales tanked. They still had the margins mind you, their market just collapsed. Now Kodak was at the forefront of imaging, their patents are still worth a huge deal. They saw the digital revolution coming, but simply spent the time denying it "serious photographers will never shoot digital" and "digital can never match the quality of film" and "film has some inherent advantages, it is hard to make light thin digital camera sensors" etc etc. All of which was false.

2. What happened to blockbuster? Two things: (a) Emergence of DVDs meant that DVDs could be mailed out cheaply and quickly (casettes were to bulky and heavy to store, mail out and process) (b) Emergence of internet meant that customers could browse DVDs online instead of driving to a store and walking into a store. Blockbuster kept denying this trend "Netflix does not give the experience of a physical store" and "there is no human touch" etc etc.

The same happened to Nokia.

When iPhone was introduced, Nokia actually said (IIRC paraphrased) "We make sure if phone drops it is robust, lets see how FruitCo builds a robust phone" they actually said "We have better camera, GPS and 3G on our phones!!". IIRC they also said "people dont like large touch screens, they are afraid of breaking it". when android came out they said "We don't see this as a threat." and "We take it seriously but we are the ones with real phones, real phone platforms and a wealth of volume built up over years.".

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/symb ... relevance/

They didnt see a fundamental shift in the industry:

1. Cell phone service cost was dropping, so people had more money to spend on devices (or in the case of US, pay the same monthly service fee, but carrier applies a part of it to phone subsidies)

2. The essence of smartphones was that it was first a laptop and then a phone. People were simply spending more time on the phone and less time on laptop/desktop for maps and email and news and music etc.

They were essentially competing with the internet and the PC -- and lost.

In mature markets all this UX and non-turd and polish and choice and ecosystem and all that give marginal benefits to competitors. Take the PC industry for example. Some buy Macs -- arguably they are better constructed with more thoughtful features right up to the power connector. But PCs sell more: They sell in more pricepoints and have better selection of games and applications. The key point is though -- both PC makers/M$ and FruitCo run profitable businesses (well, except dell). So does UX and polish and ecosystem matter all that much in the game or survival? Not really. OTOH, does identifying shift in the industry and following it matter? Absolutely. If you dont, you risk getting blown out of the water like M$ and Nokia in Mobile.

Here too execution is everything. I am sure Nokia produced its fair share of Powerpoints on where the cell phone industry was going. But they get no brownie points. Take for example -- Anybody remember UMPC? Way back in 2006 Intel said that future was all mobile and they would make power efficient mobile chips and M$ signed on to make "mobile experiences" and they came out with a nonsense like this:



After displaying nice powerpoints, Intel went on to make power hogging server class chips. Nobody can blame Intel for not seeing that Mobile was the future, they simply didnt take much interest in it. Same thing with M$. Nobody can fault them for not seeing tablets coming -- in fact Billy G was the biggest proponent. Except, they didnt do much about it. Last quarter FruitCo sold ~20 million iPads, M$ sold FruitCo's rounding error.

This is what Samsung did best. Identified an industry shift, moved their phones to the mobile OS which had the best shot of competing with the iPhone and executed well in producing phones that customers wanted. You can nitpick whether S4 has plastic back or whether Qualcomm chips are better, point is they made millions of phones at the right time, of the right kind that users wanted.

Will Samsung catch and ride the next industry shift? That is left to be seen. Will M$ iterate and catch up? That is left to be seen. They did well with XBox. They sucked with Zune, Kin and Bing.

Meanwhile, Sammy atleast went to Pakistan and has a turd while M$ and Nokia were sleeping and just suddenly woke up.

[Raja Bose]

They didnt see a fundamental shift in the industry:

You answered your own question why pursuing a HW onlee strat-e-jee makes one vulnerable. Becoz if you have a HW-onlee strat-e-jee and that is the reason for your dominance, you will not survive the above, period.

1. Cell phone service cost was dropping, so people had more money to spend on devices (or in the case of US, pay the same monthly service fee, but carrier applies a part of it to phone subsidies)

If that was really the case, people would buy unlocked off-contract devices which is what GB exclusively sold in US for a decade and GB would not lose out. In reality, the opposite is the case, the amount of money people spend on a mobile device has not really gone up significantly (taking inflation adjustment and rise of overall disposable income expenditure into account). It has nothing to do with cell phone service plan prices dropping.

So does UX and polish and ecosystem matter all that much in the game or survival? Not really. OTOH, does identifying shift in the industry and following it matter? Absolutely.

Guess what, if you don't have the former (esp. the ecosystem part), you are dead when the latter happens becoz it is a guarantee you will miss some fundamental shift in the industry and so as a CEO the question is do you want to be in a position where you put all your faith in predicting where the industry will go 500% accurately every time or do you want to ensure that you have some failsafe backup (that's what those former list of things provide)? If ecosystem didn't matter Chacha would not be in the Android game, if UX/polish didn't matter Chacha would not be doing Project Butter and really drilling down on UX and UI performance. But at the same time any platform provider like Chacha or Mickey will say the above (that ecosystem etc. doesn't matter) to their HW partners becoz the last thing they want is the HW partners to go "wtf am I taking all the tangible risks with the lowest RoI??" and start having wet dreams of doing their own thing (then who will build devices for the platform vendor?!). Sammy is asking that question now and in the next few years we will see how they respond. LG/HTC don't have that luxury yet. In case of GB, probably the only thing which saved it from imploding like Palm was its Location&Commerce asset (aka NAVTEQ) which doesn't make any HW but has solid long-term cash flow from automotive/defense/govt/3rd party vendors such as PND manufacturers etc. So you bet ecosystem/services/UX etc. matter.This is no rocket science and there is nothing fluffy about what makes the mobile industry tick. It is certainly not by having the ability to predict future events with unerring accuracy becoz that is not an option - industry realities are way too harsh.

This is what Samsung did best. Identified an industry shift, moved their phones to the mobile OS which had the best shot of competing with the iPhone and executed well in producing phones that customers wanted. Turd or no turd. You can nitpick whether S4 has plastic back or whether Qualcomm chips are better, point is they made millions of phones at the right time, of the right kind that users wanted.

Actually Sammy went with Android becoz Nokia dominated in Symbian (& Sammy played 2nd fiddle) and OHA gave it the chance to become #1 - plain and simple. All the curated corporate history about how their CEO had a glorious vision about the future of mobile while communing with God on the mountain top is frankly BS best left to coffee table history books. And as for the argument that "XYZ is producing products sold in millions, clearly their product is fantastic and they will continue doing so" - the exact same thing was said about many other mobile & ITvity companies back in time, most of them are dead now. That shows how specious these kinds of arguments are. It is a typical boardroom argument made by YumBeeAye giri practitioners and amazingly it gets recycled every decade or so. I guess not learning from history is an in-built mechanism to ensure that new blood can dislodge the old, otherwise there is no evolution.

In the end, it is important to remember that while trends in the industry have changed, the fundamentals have not really changed. So there is nothing magical which is happening now which makes the risks of yesteryears go away - it is old wine in a new bottle.

[Anujan]

The 2 old fogies, Mickey and ChipZ are very similar to each other - they both know how to do business better than the rest of the industry and both are ruthless when it comes to focus and execution - FruitCo was like that under the Mahdi, under Bawarchi I am having doubts.

There are key differences between M$ and ChipZ.

ChipZ never had any credible competitor in desktop/server/laptop class processors. Yes they had AMD, but AMD was perennially in the deathbed. When compared to other competitors like IBM and Sun (with their POWER and SPARC), Intel was demonstrably better -- higher performance, lower power consumption and lower cost.

Where they did have credible competition, they have almost never succeeded. Even before ARM, in the early 2000's TI sold more parts than Intel. Intel wanted to compete with TI but Intel's DSP effort simply wasnt good enough. Their Dialogic division never put out anything useful. They tried competing in a half-assed way against TI and then just gave up, thinking that their core Desktop/Server processor market was secure, had high margins and they wont go chasing the cents/chip DSP market. Same thing happened with XScale. Cents/chip margin, not a challenge to their central business, they sold it too. They saw a threat from NVidia and ATI, spent a boatload of money on Larrabee, that didnt work out -- Intel never produced a decent workstation class GPU and they shelved it. NVidia's attempt at GPGPU was a dud, Intel's dominance in servers and desktops was secure.

Outside of their core server/desktop offerings, everything Intel did -- including ill fated Itanium and the IXP line of network processors, has been a big dud. OTOH, competing with intel in server/desktop offerings means huge amount of capital investment in manufacturing and semiconductor research which only 2-3 companies in the world can afford.

In essence, nobody made anything as good as Intel did. And when Intel tried to take market from others, they crashed and burned.

OTOH One can argue that Mac has a competitive OS to M$, their core product. There are also a profusion of "good enough" products that compete with M$. There is google docs, Office packages from FruitCo and other vendors, semi-decent Linux platforms which can do most tasks that people want in limited settings. This is where salesmanship from M$ is an important factor in their market dominance.

[Raja Bose]

This is where salesmanship from M$ is an important factor in their market dominance.

That states a fundamental truth in ITvity which was told to me by the 1st VC we ever had (he is one of the original SGI founders) many years ago: "It is not the technology which sells your product." And I have heard the same thing from pretty much every seasoned angel/VC that technology is necessary but it is not sufficient. Great technology, bad marketing/distribution/business model ensures a certain fail. But so-so technology, good marketing/distribution/business model ensures a success. No wonder Sammy can sell millions of turds now.

[Anujan]

And as for the argument that "XYZ is producing products sold in millions, clearly their product is fantastic and they will continue doing so" - the exact same thing was said about many other mobile & ITvity companies back in time, most of them are dead now. That shows how specious these kinds of arguments are. It is a typical boardroom argument made by YumBeeAye giri practitioners and amazingly it gets recycled every decade or so. I guess not learning from history is an in-built mechanism to ensure that new blood can dislodge the old, otherwise there is no evolution.

That is a strawman argument that I never made! Infact I made the opposite argument and actually took the pain of writing a long post. I argued that Nokia sold millions of phones, didnt see the shift and is having a near death experience. Sammy saw the shift and is making millions of phones. Making a fantastic product is not the reason for selling millions of phones and killing your competition -- seeing the shift is. I even pointed out how PCs and Macs compete, a bit of polish here, a bit of choice there, but sell well have have good margins.

Ergo, It is a retrospective argument on who saw the shift. Sammy did, Nokia didnt.

The argument needs to be read as "Those who are selling millions of units now and werent before, saw the shift, those who were selling millions of units before and arent now, didnt see the shift". Obviously seeing the shift once and being ready for it is no guarantee that they will see the shift again. M$ is a prime example -- arguably they saw the shift to personal computing and had 4 decades of dominance. They didnt see the shift to the internet or to mobile, which is surprising. But true.

[Raja Bose]

^^^It is an example of an incumbent's dial-e-amma. BTW Sammy didn't see the shift either but got lucky wrt timing when they made the switch to Android/OHA (reason why is mentioned in my previous post). In fact before that Sammy was planning to do its own thing to go against Symbian when OHA was formed and they jumped after putting their plans on ice. Now those plans are getting dusted off and warmed up again (The core reasoning behind doing Tizen/Bada/BS is coming from almost decade old Sammy strat-e-jee, its not something new they cooked up).

Mickey has a disconcerting habit of missing the boat, constructing a raft and then sinking the boat. A large part of it is due to their corporate culture where focused execution and scale is worshipped, ground-breaking innovation not so much (at least in terms of first-to-market products) despite having a huge R&D arm and pretty much the #1 industrial research lab in the industry right now. So they are rarely the first but they typically bulldoze thru if it is deemed important enough. A recent example of that is their UI design. Mickey as a company is not historically known for UI or even good UX yet within a short span they have created a consistent look and feel across their native and web app products with fluid UI. Meanwhile Chacha's Gmail UI has gone from bad to worse over the past two years. Despite having a headstart in terms of a superb webmail solution which everybody loved for its clean functionality (Hotmail was a turd and Yahoo was so-so), now they are facing competition from outlook.com which is closing the gap in terms of active users rapidly while ensuring excellent UX over gmail and leveraging parts of gmail which people still love (such as gtalk integration), adding other conveniences like Skype integration while denying Chacha the revenue stream it gets from gmail (ads).

[Anujan]

Not just incumbent's dilemma but too much power-point giri.

Take FruitCo for example. They saw that MacOS cannot run on a phone/tablet form factor. So they had a different OS on phone/tablets, different processors on phone/tablets. It is quite a brave move, because you start with a sum total of zero applications and now you have two OS teams each working on different things. And then you have to figure out how your desktop OS can sync with your phone/tablet OS and what activities are done across them and how they may be synced.

M$ on the other hand wanted to produce a tablet. Their solution? Remember the M$ tablets of early 2000's? Enable a stupid "pen mode" and sell windows. Then there is all this mental masturbation of "convergence". Sure sounds like a good idea on a powerpoint, but users dont seem to care. Neither do developers. Same thing with Intel, apparently they want "investment in x86" to continue to mobile and tablets. It still might be a good idea by 2014, but till then platform builders and developers dont care that PCs run x86 and tablets run on ARM. Sure "unified instruction set on all class of computing" sounds like a good idea, the colors look nice on powerpoint, but neither device makers nor developers seem to care.

I would argue that incumbent's dilemma is actually greater when you are second to the market and not first. Take for example Surface Pro. Why should I buy one? Because it can run your familiar windows apps that you already purchased. But the very same reason makes it have a shitty battery life and is heavy and is more of a laptoplet rather than a tablet. i want a tablet, so I will buy an iPad. Now take Surface RT: It cannot run legacy windows apps. Why should I buy one? Because it is from your friendly trusted company M$. Well, no thank you, I want to buy a iPad because it has a better selection of Apps. So conclusion is that I will not get a surface pro or RT, I will get an iPad. Being second to the market, M$ should have had a hair-raising incumbent's dilemma to actually go out and make tablets -- Surface Pro or RT. Neither of them are better than an iPad.

OTOH, if M$ said "F-it, we will fork" and produced the first M$ tablet before iPad running Surface RT, it would have been a HUGE hit. Their market projections would have shown that the money they would make would far exceed the licenses not sold because people bought a tablet instead of a laptop.

[Anujan]

Mickey has a disconcerting habit of missing the boat, constructing a raft and then sinking the boat. A large part of it is due to their corporate culture where focused execution and scale is worshipped, ground-breaking innovation not so much (at least in terms of first-to-market products) despite having a huge R&D arm and pretty much the #1 industrial research lab in the industry right now. So they are rarely the first but they typically bulldoze thru if it is deemed important enough. A recent example of that is their UI design. Mickey as a company is not historically known for UI or even good UX yet within a short span they have created a consistent look and feel across their native and web app products with fluid UI. Meanwhile Chacha's Gmail UI has gone from bad to worse over the past two years. Despite having a headstart in terms of a superb webmail solution which everybody loved for its clean functionality (Hotmail was a turd and Yahoo was so-so), now they are facing competition from outlook.com which is closing the gap in terms of active users rapidly while ensuring excellent UX over gmail and leveraging parts of gmail which people still love (such as gtalk integration), adding other conveniences like Skype integration while denying Chacha the revenue stream it gets from gmail (ads).

I am not sure missing the technology boat and playing catch up is comparable to UI design. Given enough money you can hire good UI and UX designers, especially if it is deemed as a priority from higher ups. For large companies like M$ and chacha, it is just priorities, not really the ability to execute. Yes outlook.com is pretty, yes they have integration with chat -- but how difficult is it given a competent product manager and a good Software team? On the flip side, how difficult is it for chacha to hire their designers to work on gmail?

OTOH, missing the boat is usually because companies dont realize how strategic some product is.

A good email service is a strategic investment. Your email in Gmail drives Google Now cards which show you package tracking information from online shops, your next flight (because the flight confirmation is in your email), the boarding pass when you arrive at the airport (because the check in confirmation is in your email) and directions to hotels when you land (because hotel confirmation is in your email). Gmail is essential because it syncs your android contacts, settings and apps. And now you can send money from one gmail user to another.

The boat that M$ missed with email is the realization that the person who controls your email controls the trove of your personal information. They had a headstart with hotmail, but never really used it to their full potential. They simply saw it as a tool to send and receive emails.

The person who controls your personal information can provide a lot more products and services based on that information. Nice pretty UI and trying to deny ad revenue is all nice and good, but the stakes are bigger than that. I am sure M$ has come to that (late) realization. I am sure chacha realizes that too, because they have built products powered by their email. I am sure both can spare a few UI designers and product managers for this high stakes game, and that has nothing to do with ad revenue from the core product.

[Raja Bose]

Yes outlook.com is pretty, yes they have integration with chat -- but how difficult is it given a competent product manager and a good Software team? On the flip side, how difficult is it for chacha to hire their designers to work on gmail?

On paper it is easy, in reality it is a lot more difficult (and the difficulty is not really technical). Otherwise Chacha would have done it already and they started over 2 years ago Anyhow the UI example was given as an example of focused execution, not comparison with missing the technology boat (Mahdi's role in making UX center stage doesn't fall in that category). Another example of focused execution is Mickey's Azure which overtook Chacha's App Engine in an area which would be considered traditionally Chacha's strength.

A good email service is a strategic investment. Your email in Gmail drives Google Now cards which show you package tracking information from online shops, your next flight (because the flight confirmation is in your email), the boarding pass when you arrive at the airport (because the check in confirmation is in your email) and directions to hotels when you land (because hotel confirmation is in your email). Gmail is essential because it syncs your android contacts, settings and apps. And now you can send money from one gmail user to another.

Yet now Gmail looks to be in the danger of losing its leverage. That underlines an earlier point - one can push into all sorts of functionalities but if UX is bad and using the app/service/device is painful, the customer will fly away if given a chance. Adding functionalities is much easier than ensuring good UX - the process to do the former is well-defined, the process for the latter is not. It is easier to add in the above mentioned functionality as opposed to changing the UX in a way which works better (without ripping out the entire system). UX is very very important and in fact, one can reliably detect the watershed between when a technology transitions from a specific user base to mass market by looking at when a fundamental shift in UX happened. This is true for the entire computer industry as a whole, not just mobile.

Not just incumbent's dilemma but too much power-point giri.

Take FruitCo for example. They saw that MacOS cannot run on a phone/tablet form factor. So they had a different OS on phone/tablets, different processors on phone/tablets. It is quite a brave move, because you start with a sum total of zero applications and now you have two OS teams each working on different things.

The only reason FruitCo could make that move was becoz of the Mahdi. No engineering-centric regular company whether it be Mickey or Chacha can pull that off becoz it requires a person who is product-centric to be in a position of absolute power where he can kick mush and take names and crush any nay-sayers at the SVP level who whine about legacy. In fact except for Takla I don't see anyone who even comes close now and even Takla is far from the Mahdi.

Take for example Surface Pro. Why should I buy one? Because it can run your familiar windows apps that you already purchased. But the very same reason makes it have a shitty battery life and is heavy and is more of a laptoplet rather than a tablet. i want a tablet, so I will buy an iPad..

If you want a tablet onlee you will never buy a Surface Pro - in fact, you are not supposed to. Surface Pro is not a tablet and Mickey is under no illusion that it is - they designed it exactly for what it is namely, people buy Surface Pros becoz they want a device with laptop functionality which can behave like a tablet once in a while - earlier they had to carry two devices, this allows them to carry one. Interestingly even in my small sample space all sorts of unlikely people who would never even purchase a laptop have purchased a Surface Pro (eg. teachers and Kumon instructors). Its funny to see every tech blog/geek/anal-e-cyst go "Surface Pro is a baaad tablet!!!! JEEHAAARD!!!" becoz they completely miss the point of a device like Surface Pro. Even funnier is that the mango customers don't have that blind spot and actually like the product (not the least for the fact that it doesn't need to be taken out of the bag during security at the airport becoz it is classified as a 'tablet'). In fact this is one of the few recent times when Mickey has actually come out ahead of the curve. In context of tablets Android is the #2, there is no #3 yet. Mickey's slow roll-out of the Surface Pro is other countries is primarily due to saturation of production capacity (they don't use an ODM which should provide a hint of where they are going long-term). Now coming to SurfaceRT, the usual refrain is "No Apps!!!!! Weak!!!!! JEEHAAARD!!!!". Yet one of the most tech savvy persons I know of (he is a CEO of a company which makes one of the well known EDA tools out there) bought the SurfaceRT instead of the Pro. He has ditched his MacBook Pro and travels just with the SurfaceRT. He can check his e-mails, video conf over Lync/Skype, write glorious plans, do ppt/excel giri with customers and that's all he needs. In case of the Surface, the rest of the industry is reacting to Mickey the way Mickey typically used to react to FruitCo products (remember the 10 step Fanboy cycle?).

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On another note, incumbent's dial-e-amma is always greater for the #1 in the market - they stand the most risk of missing the boat when a fundamental shift happens becoz they have most to lose if they have to abandon their legacy tail/current way of doing things which made them dominant (and the legacy tail is longest for the one who is most dominant - thats the flip side of being dominant). But then they may have a lot more to lose if they don't shift. That's the dial-e-amma and leads to some half-a$$ed attempt to have one leg in one boat and the other leg in another causing mucho pain in the groin!