Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 03:45

Abhijeet wrote:I know people who have raised money in the Valley and others in Austin, and the typical investor profile is different. Money is money but investors who have "been there done that" are more valuable. There are just a lot more of them in the Valley.

Even the mayor of SV Robert Noyce moved out to Austin, TX where he later died.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 04:20

Mort Walker wrote:^^^Bahut tara tara ki gizmo hoti hai. ITvity akela nahi hai.

Jaise SLR ko P&S kehte hain kuch log

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Aug 2013 04:26

Mort Walker wrote:[Nothing wrong with 2nd tier UC, State University or community college. It is what you decide to do and where you go to graduate school. Getting in to Stan madrassa or UCB is challenge anywhere.

In fact one of the CTOs of Intel (oh probably to mid- 2000s) was a Community college grad.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 01 Aug 2013 04:26

Mort Walker wrote:
Suraj wrote:SV does have good schools. The entire swath from SF down to SJ has several cities with excellent schools - so much so that the top school districts have a $150K-$200K house price premium. You can literally have a collection of otherwise similar homes on either side of a street have appraised value that far apart, because one side of the street maps to the top school in the area, and the other to the less well-known one.
I'm sure they are good schools, but you have to put it in relation to other places mentioned. If there is a $150K difference between similar houses on the same street due to differences in the school attendance map, then there is something seriously wrong in that locality. There can be differences from town to town, but that level of disparity is disturbing.

It's not a unique phenomenon within a very narrow area - it's a common phenomenon throughout most of the peninsula. For scale, $150-200K compared to prices north of $700K minimum is not as big as it might look in isolation. In my own neighbourhood, tract homes within a few blocks range from $650K-$1.2M, with the school map being the primary delta between two otherwise identical homes. There's substantial price pressure from Indian and Chinese homebuyers who 'buy the school'. Anyway, OT for this thread.

Nexus 7 continues to get positive reviews with each passing day, while chacha ships mine from Kentucky. The next iPadmini apparently won't have a Retina display based on current iOS annotations, but that may change; AAPL seems to be planning to defer its release to early 2014. They're stuck in a hard place - competition catching up with the iPadmini but a substantial feature bump would further cannibalize the larger iPad sales.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 05:19

Raja Bose wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:^^^Bahut tara tara ki gizmo hoti hai. ITvity akela nahi hai.
Jaise SLR ko P&S kehte hain kuch log

Jab aap har samhe khilonay se khel karo gaye, tho haamara matlab samajh meh nahi ayega.

Use your tools wisely.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 05:21

Suraj wrote: Nexus 7 continues to get positive reviews with each passing day, while chacha ships mine from Kentucky. The next iPadmini apparently won't have a Retina display based on current iOS annotations, but that may change; AAPL seems to be planning to defer its release to early 2014. They're stuck in a hard place - competition catching up with the iPadmini but a substantial feature bump would further cannibalize the larger iPad sales.

Why didn't you order from Amazon and get it 2nd day?

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 01 Aug 2013 05:33

Didn't comparison shop shipping times.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Aug 2013 07:10

moving away from ITvity, boston and bethesda area of maryland have large clusters of medical research, a lot of it driven by NIH funding.
new jersey route1 towards princeton has cosmetic and pharma industry drawing on long history of chemicals industry in NYC region.
a lot of desis also seem to live in phoenix despite the heat..the local economy must be doing well.

a lot of things make the world go around, though SV gets all the publicity and has the brash attitude. most corporate R&D labs in non-itvity are spread all over the place like GE aviation is near boston, johnson & johnson bone implants near boston, GE in upstate new york somewhere, pratt & whitney near hartford CT .... NY state is a heavy hitting industrial, tourism, farming, dairy powerhouse imo with eggs in many baskets unlike wine & vegetables & itvity limitations of CA.

personally I never felt attracted to CA though I could have found some work there...I liked the pristine NY / new englandish woods and lakes and deep snow in winter vs the bare brown rocky mehican style hills and overflow of desis and crowding in CA.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 07:27

Mort Walker wrote: Jab aap har samhe khilonay se khel karo gaye, tho haamara matlab samajh meh nahi ayega.
Use your tools wisely.

Yahan to eletronic khilaunon ka dhaaga hai aur aap kuch aur hi khilaunon ki baat kar rahe ho. Context mein raha karo nahin to nonsense hi niklega na?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 08:08

^^^Kuch log ko non-CE nonsense lagta hai, tho hum kya kaare?

Aap ki nai phunwa ki battery kon develop kaare ga? The people who are doing development in nano-structures to develop a fuel cell storage system and those determining how to put a charge on more surface area. Some pretty hard R&D which fueled the growth of SV in the late 1950s and 60s.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 01 Aug 2013 08:09

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoft ... e-surface/

Microsoft made $853 million in sales of its Surface tablets in the past fiscal year — almost as much as it had to write down as part of its recent price-cutting on the Surface RT tablets.

The company disclosed that revenue figure in a document it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

And that is not counting the marketing budget for Surface.

It is still early days for the tablet -- remember that PCs reigned supreme for over 40 years -- and in the early days there was Commodore, Atari, Osborn, TRS 80 and numerous others, before Wintel alliance pulled ahead.

Surface is probably suffering from the same syndrome as the Xoom -- Gen 1 hardware and software not very good -- but android hardware and software got better and Android tablet sales are picking up. Similarly if M$ executes well, they can ramp up tablet sales.

Having said that -- Surface Pro is too bulky to compete with the iPad and to small to compete with ultrabooks. Ultimately desktop class machines will converge with tablets but that will come in a generation or two of microprocessors. Surface RT was the unloved ugly child. If M$ had just introduced RT and Ultrabooks to mirror Apple's strategy of Macbook Air and Ipad, my hunch is that sales would have been better. RT is quite a good tablet and forces developers to make touch optimized apps. It was also in the right price range. But what did it in was numerous reviews that came out which said "Dont buy this, it is not "full featured" like the Surface Pro". But mango abduls didnt want Surface Pro either, it was bulky and costly. For the bulk and the cost, an ultrabook is a better proposition.

M$ could have forked its OS just like FruitCo did and done perfectly well. Instead they came out with Surface Pro -- which is not yet ready for prime time and Surface RT -- which was unloved because Pro existed. A lose--lose proposition.

I wonder what kind of powerpoint-giri went on to arrive at this: "Let us leverage our existing software base to sell a surface pro tablet, which when people buy a lot will cause developers to write apps for Metro, which will cause Surface RT to sell well. This way we will synergize our strategy and rapidly shift paradigms while hitting the ground running and leverage our strengths in verticals". In theory sounds good.

Hopefully they will up their game in their gen 2 fare.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 08:14

^^^MSFT has deep pockets and can throw enough sh1t around where some of it will stick. MSFT had no choice but to come out with the Surface Pro. Because the intention was to sell yet another Windows box, albeit in different packaging, to corporations and institutions.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 08:19

MSFT released Office for Android phones, but not tablets. They found yet another way to make money off of Android, but it took them a while. I don't think they give a hoot about WP and know it's going nowhere, so why not leverage Windows on other mobile platforms?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 01 Aug 2013 08:23

WP is not full featured yet, it will take them a few quarters to catch up. They cant simply walk away from not owning a mobile OS. Remember that they are a OS/Software company.

Many companies are moving to "bring your own device" model. If they dont have office for Android/iOS, they would have had a tough time selling their productivity apps to corporations whose workforce use Android/iOS.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 08:27

Mort Walker wrote:^^^Kuch log ko non-CE nonsense lagta hai, tho hum kya kaare?

Tau-ji dhaaga ka topic hai "Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread", wahan aap oil & gas aur world peace ki baatein karoge to nonsense nahin hoga? Context aur topic pata hai kisse kehte hain? Aap to angreji ke master ho, hum nahin

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 08:32

People are looking at the product (trees) and missing the process (forest).

Products live on for gen2, gen3 but without the process in place one cannot make a long-term bet. CE hardware development process (especially vertically integrated HW) is very much unlike software so mapping the same product development concepts which work for SW to HW is silly.

The reason for owning a mobile platform (or any platform for that matter) is the same reason why FruitCo owns everything, Chacha owns a browser and wants to own a full-fledged OS, why Sammy is working behind the scenes to achieve the same. Becoz if you don't own the platform, at some point you will get hamstrung by the person who does - alliances are not permanent, one's interests are.

Adrija · Post by **Adrija** » 01 Aug 2013 08:53

Gents, thanks for all the replies. One additional bit of gyaan please- I was specifically referring to the hardware part. India is already quite well populated on the fabless side (even if it is mostly MNCs with their research centres), but what foxes me is India's inability to break into indigenous hardware manufacturing a la Taiwan.

Ramana garu, RB mahdi, I understand the bit about infrastructure and politicians (the former may improve but I seriously have doubts on the latter front), what I was wondering was - in addition to the infra part- if there is any specific way to kickstart the hardware cluster e.g., test lab, etc

Fabs- I fear India is coming from the wrong end of the stick- a fab should be the culmination of our efforts and not the starting, otherwise we will end up in a situation like 1Si of Malaysia....just my perception, would love to be corrected by all you much more knowledgeable mahdis here

TIA

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 08:54

Raja Bose wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:^^^Kuch log ko non-CE nonsense lagta hai, tho hum kya kaare?
Tau-ji dhaaga ka topic hai "Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread", wahan aap oil & gas aur world peace ki baatein karoge to nonsense nahin hoga? Context aur topic pata hai kisse kehte hain? Aap to angreji ke master ho, hum nahin

The discussion was on all areas of electronics that ultimately affects CE. You kept bringing up the gap between SV being far ahead of other localities in startups, but never specified the industry and it remained ambiguous. Pyaare, people can not read your mind. I stated there are startups in other industries as well outside of SV. I simply stated an example of the fastest growing startups. FYI, the oil & gas industry in the US does a hell of a lot of work in specialized software tools and specialized industry specific electronic devices. It is experiencing a lot of growth in the US and there are a lot of desis working in that area as well.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 09:21

^^^Yes by that lahori logic, lets talk about labour unions in mines too then coz that affects CE too or perhaps the diarrhea suffered by Rahul Gandhi during UP tour - I am sure we can find a link to CE there too. Or even better the pr0n industry since they too do a lot of specialized software and I am sure a lot of desis work there too.

Is Silicon Valley known for Oil and Gas? How about NYC/Boston/Seattle areas? What kind of stuff do you think gets discussed on this thread? Oil and Gas? Composting techniques? Then where is the question of anybody (except perhaps you) mistaking what the context of my discussion was?

Kyon itne pakau ho tau? Chill karo aur apna constipation door karo pehle! Its not Sunday yet

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 09:25

Anujan wrote:WP is not full featured yet, it will take them a few quarters to catch up. They cant simply walk away from not owning a mobile OS. Remember that they are a OS/Software company.

Many companies are moving to "bring your own device" model. If they dont have office for Android/iOS, they would have had a tough time selling their productivity apps to corporations whose workforce use Android/iOS.

They made their mobile OS, its called Windows. Which will probably work well in a few years, but not now.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 09:34

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Yes by that lahori logic, lets talk about labour unions in mines too then coz that affects CE too or perhaps the diarrhea suffered by Rahul Gandhi during UP tour - I am sure we can find a link to CE there too. Is Silicon Valley known for Oil and Gas? How about NYC/Boston/Seattle areas? What kind of stuff do you think gets discussed on this thread? Oil and Gas? Composting techniques? Then where is the question of anybody (except perhaps you) mistaking what the context of my discussion was?

Kyon itne pakau ho tau? Chill karo aur apna constipation door karo pehle!

I don't think you understand. Go back and read your own post. You stated SV is ahead of other areas and then sited startups. I only mentioned an example of oil & gas and you're having menstrual cramps about it.
Non CE discrete electronic component development is important. Sure it will become a commodity down the road, but your analogy is similar to someone approaching Intel in the late 1970s and telling them not to worry about development on the 8086 processor as it will become a commodity.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 01 Aug 2013 09:45

Raja Bose wrote:People are looking at the product (trees) and missing the process (forest). Products live on for gen2, gen3 but without the process in place one cannot make a long-term bet. CE hardware development process (especially vertically integrated HW) is very much unlike software so mapping the same product development concepts which work for SW to HW is silly.

Like Zune and Kin.

Actually, Zune h/w was pretty good as they used good quality audio DACs, too bad the s/w sucked.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Aug 2013 10:14

Mort Walker wrote:You kept bringing up the gap between SV being far ahead of other localities in startups, but never specified the industry and it remained ambiguous. Pyaare, people can not read your mind. I stated there are startups in other industries as well outside of SV.

Right on the dot. SV and electronics - leave alone IT - is not be all and end all. There is a much wider world out there. The sooner we realize the better for Indian job creation.

A $3 Billion fab would create hardly 3000 jobs - the same invested in light manufacturing would have an order of magnitude higher impact on job creation potential, even after taking into account the lower average salary for the latter.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 10:20

^^^That logic does not work in real life except in jholawallah conferences and India Habitat Center lounges. Why make them mutually exclusive? Its like saying let's first ensure everybody has roti kapda makan before trying to build a rocket to launch satellites.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Aug 2013 10:27

They are not mutually exclusive, but if yoiu have less than $3 B in your kitty cannot start a fab, can you? simple combinatorial bin packing, sire.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 01 Aug 2013 10:41

mat guru, i read from you few posts of yours that you are into combinatorial. I have used ACTS from nist.gov. contact: Rick Kuhn if you are interested. It is a great tool to have, for generating combinations... but you may perhaps, derive your tree/decision graph ahead to arrive at your 2 to 6 way interactions.. normally to arrive at combinatorial testing needs. of course, you need to narrow your needs from it.. but it gives you tons of data, and in most cases, I have to just give this generated data set to my testing team, to narrow to a a set of boundary values. very useful for RTS and MCDC V&V that is required for safety-critical systems.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Aug 2013 11:28

Sw is the tail end of the thing...expertise in board level design and manuf, chip level design and manuf, fpga, analog electronics, optical technology, machine tools, vast width of metals and plastics tech , chemicals making, consumer durables of a high std , medical devices and tools , pharma , automobiles, shipbuilding, engines, coatings and paints, good books form the broad base of a "strong" power like france, germany, japan and now Soko. ofcourse khan has all these in spades.

all of these need high end corporate R&D to come up with products that sell around the world.

fab fab fab is like sw munnagiri...just a highly visible symbol of power but khokhla without the underlying base

Cheen is making strong progress in EVERY ONE of the above.

from the narrow perspective of NRIs in USA, they can exert the most influence in SW & finance , followed by HW, followed by a smattering of indic Phds and managers in senior posts in brick and mortar industrial cos like GE or GM. maybe thats why the debate never comes to what indians in india (aka GOI) needs to enable local industrialists to do. just a few selective FDI and TOT cannot pull up bhutan let alone India.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 11:42

matrimc wrote:They are not mutually exclusive, but if yoiu have less than $3 B in your kitty cannot start a fab, can you? simple combinatorial bin packing, sire.

Who is the we? Dont we have companies in our country who are fiscally capable of building a fab - we do. But then just having the money is not enough....the support infrastructure needs to be there. And those entities which have that money to build the fab, won't be just re-purposing it to say build a factory building mopeds either. So its an academic discussion at best. At the very least, India needs to have its own fabs for its defence needs and those fabs are never the TFTA cutting edge ones like what Sammy or ChipZ are building right now.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Aug 2013 11:48

at present defence needs are being met through singapore and taiwan fabs. the chandigarh thing burnt to the ground. but with GOI tendering like it does for fresh ceiling fans and chairs...

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Reposito ... 090500.png

HLEC - high level empowered committee

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 11:51

Mort Walker wrote: I don't think you understand. Go back and read your own post. You stated SV is ahead of other areas and then sited startups.

Yes in context of ITvity....go and read the post again yourself and while you are at it, read the title of this thread. Does it say "Oil & Gas" anywhere? We have a separate Oil & Gas thread on BRF if you are so interested, this ain't it. Kyon super comprehension man ka re-incarnation banne ke chakkar mein lage ho, tau ji?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Aug 2013 11:54

Singha wrote:at present defence needs are being met through singapore and taiwan fabs. the chandigarh thing burnt to the ground. but with GOI tendering like it does for fresh ceiling fans and chairs...

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Reposito ... 090500.png

HLEC - high level empowered committee

^^^

I didn't know the Chandigarh fab got destroyed in a fire!

I wonder if it was sabotage or just sarkari competence?

But then there is a corporate legend that Intel once burnt down its own fab in Malaysia or some such place.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Aug 2013 12:37

latest revelation about the NSA - suddenly all that stuff seen in hollywood movies about real time tracking and having all a persons record at fingertips doesnt look far fetched.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/31/nsa-xkeyscore-leak/

it shows sites in places like india and brazil which in public would never allow a US presence. but you never know what GOI has agreed to behind closed doors.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 01 Aug 2013 13:05

SCL complex website Annual report says they are refreshing the 8" Fab lines. as of end 2011.

See, having your own fab has its advantages. Imagine a team of Indian engineers deciding to build their own scaled down x86 processor? Or even an a custom one with its own instruction set? What if they convince the defence establishment that a Indian processor developed within the borders ensures integrity. That is among the first steps one needs to put in place to create an ecosystem of its own. Having that single IP , you basically cut off money going to ARM or Intel for licensing. YOu create jobs not just at the manufacturing level, it goes to the software stack, the software and the front-end. And all this can happen within the country. This is not about 3000 jobs. It is about something much larger and bigger and moving up the knowledge economy. And believe me, when the fab is there, entrepreneurs! and! experts! will! come!
As RB said, the same can be said of ISRO where the investment is very large. Yet, ISRO today employs 1000s, sources components from so many different companies , creates jobs , enables new research etc. Without an ecosystem, you are perenially hooked like a junkie. Look at Data Patterns in Chennai - that is the kind of stuff we need to move into. And we have a huge internal market.

Of course, for all that, the vision must be there. This is the reality in India.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Aug 2013 13:06

good article from anandtech on how vendors detect apps and control their cpu and gpu frequency for safety and to look good on benchmarks
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7187/look ... galaxy-s-4

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 01 Aug 2013 14:12

Neela wrote:SCL complex website Annual report says they are refreshing the 8" Fab lines. as of end 2011.

See, having your own fab has its advantages.

I believe most fabs around the world are concentrated in the USA and EU. Some in Ru, some in East Asia. Probably less than 20.

I know that the govt of India had a policy that tried to explore this earlier. My chaiwallah was involved in scouting out the scope for a fab. The policy failed and we dont have a fab here.

I believe that apart from vision , mission etc....we need to get the hell out of the way of other people. Us Indians mind other Indians matters too much.

The govt of India should streamline and reduce rules. Let Laissez Faire economics work its magic for a while.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 01 Aug 2013 14:15

In no country has a fab been setup with Lassy Fair policies - all have needed extensive government support initially.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 01 Aug 2013 15:42

Adrija wrote:Just out of curiosity- all ye hi-tech electronics hardware tek-neeki faith-fools (Neela,Mort, mahadevbhu, Raja Bose et al) - what would it take for desh to build a hi-tech hardware manufacturing cluster like Taiwan/ Unkil/ France? Are there any "core" set of areas which allow for us to be able to span the entire chain, all the way from design (fabless houses) to ODMs? Any good studies on how Taiwan did it and over what time?

Thanks a lot!

First to accept that Chinis and Taiwanese are ahead of us. Then start outsourcing some of their work to India. That is step one

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 01 Aug 2013 15:43

Raja Bose wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:If you look at the history of Silicon Valley, the electronics industry got a big boost from the late 1950s onwards due to US development in defense and aerospace coupled with quality higher education from the likes of Stanford and Berkeley. Similarly the areas around Boston have a lot of the same companies, but Boston has more quality higher education centers.
Yet neither Boston nor Seattle nor NY area nor RTP nor TX have managed to match Sillycon valley....if anything the distance has increased. So what is that missing piece? Is it just a lead start and momentum? Is it something else?

It is your esteemed highnesses presence that bejewells it thusly.

ducks for cover.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 01 Aug 2013 16:27

Mort Walker wrote: For new developments, such as in battery technology or quantum computing, I'm not sure they will be in SV.

Battery technology supply chains are THOROUGHLY penetrated by the cheenis and the koreaans. The manufacturing of it, is going to be there onlee.

Innovation wise, expect the labs at Argonne, Berkeley, UT-Austin, and others in sillycon v to come up with the next big thing. But. Taking advantage of that next big thing, via manufacturing is another matter ALTOGETHER.

For; a lot of Li Ion technology is old. And the Rn D cycle is long as hell. There is much more development, in terms of rote, repetitive testing that is required. Much more so than in other fields. (or maybe not)

In battery technology, DEPLOYMENT, is more important than DEVELOPMENT. See the experience of the flaming batteries in the Boeing's. Perfect airplanes with thorough years of testing behind them. I , for one, don't believe that they bought their plane batteries off of eBay . --and still entire lines recalled due to batteries being fire hazards.

Something similar happened to the Chevy Volt.

Tesla does interesting things; takes existing form factor of laptop batteries, and figures out how to put them together to minimize thermal runaway.

It is this sort of sidey engineering, finanical models for deployment, schemes for financing, that are important for battery development and deployment today, rather than any high faluting RnD.

Thus, for an ecosystem to develop around batteries, Shanghai is as good as Sillycon Valley. {Maybe even Sahranpur

}

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 01 Aug 2013 16:35

abhischekcc wrote:In no country has a fab been setup with Lassy Fair policies - all have needed extensive government support initially.

I do not for one moment believe that the Govt cannot do it. GoI machinery can swing into action if needed. The problem is the govt keeps asking what we can do when every single paper, the pen to write, the stamp , the file, the file cabinets is all in the govt's hands.

Govt support is needed for something like 15 years! Tax breaks, duty waivers on imported machinery etc . Land, water , power, roads , communication hubs, also needs to be in place.