Googlogic

Has Google lost the fine art of going to market?

Chris O’Brien of Mercury News asks whether Android is going the way of Google’s open social initiative (to counter Facebook). The challenge starts off way Android figures down the list of operating systems for smart-phones. At the top of the heap are BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Symbian. This last one is produced by a consortium of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world, including Ericsson and Nokia.

Given that Symbian will soon become open-source, Android’s pitch appeal – one of developer freedom, pales. Throw in the fact that a group called the LiMo Foundation is developing a Linux-based operating system for mobile phones, and Android becomes just one of three open-source options after counting in the restricted freedom allowed to developers by Apple’s iPhone. And then came Chrome browser from Google stable. It turns out that even that will take a while before it becomes the choice browser in Android phones.

So why is Google doing this? Here’s how I can explain it.

Google sees everything as a media real estate. Be it the web pages where its ads are served up, the videos on youtube and now to operating systems and open source applications. It can’t have enough of walls to stick its bills. It is fearful that some day it will exhaust its relevance if web goes out of fashion and so it wants an upper hand on anything that remotely seems like competition. There you get it. Competition. Google feels it’s easier to chase than to lead. So up comes a feature rich product that the world loves, say iPhone, Google wants a slice of that. It goes ahead and develops Android – the open source operating system. Microsoft leads the browser market? Google wants a piece of action there. In comes Chrome browser. Google can’t afford to lose consumer mindshare. It just has to be there, at the core of people’s mind. Think media mileage, consumer outreach, think Google!

Didn’t we express shock when Google paid $3.1 billion for YouTube? Now we wonder the same way how Android or Chrome browser will make money. May be, we’re wrong. It’s advertisement for Google, the way Google builds its brand value. The money it makes the old fashioned way – by serving ads. And that’s not going to change anytime soon!!!

Except if a web equivalent of Wall Street meltdown threatens redefining the space…

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iPhone check

Total strangers sidle up to the iPhone owner with a look of wonder and start asking questions about the gadget… Among friends and colleagues, the iPhone owner assumes the mien of a knowledgeable conjuror, wowing everyone with the neat tricks the gadget performs.

That’s not entirely surprising, given the extent of media coverage that the July 2008 global launch of the iPhone 3G has received in international media: stories of mile-long queues outside stores, across countries and continents, have routinely made headlines.
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But can it cook? check out this popcorn!

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Will iPhone replace blackberry?

Since the iPhone went on sale last summer, amid long lines of shoppers and media adulation, the contours of the smartphone market have begun to shift rapidly toward consumers. An industry once characterized by brain-numbing acronyms and droning discussions about enterprise security is now defined by buzz around handset design, video games and mobile social networks.

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R.I.M.’s greatest challenge in a consumer-driven smartphone industry may simply be creating devices that people admire and covet as much as the iPhone. Despite the faithfulness of its flock, R.I.M. is not there yet.

Why are they missing the point? iPhone has so many apps on its face that if the user uses it to slowly thumb-type an email, he’s locking himself out of other terrific features that iPhone has to offer. RIM Blackberry all the while, is an alternative dispatch outfit.

What say you?

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That's a bit rude

Call it downright rude – or is it? We are talking about 33% price slash of the 8G iPhone here – down from $599 to $399 in 60 days flat. The hottest tech product of the year driving it up the wherever of its early adopters…

Now El Jobso comes up with a consolation. A $100 refund for those who camped long hours to get their mitt on the gadget that now feel ripped.

But did Apple have a choice? The technology has become almost a cottage industry – recent testimony came by the way a rookie 17year old picked the AT&T lock and traded the unlocked iPhone in for a cool NISSAN 350z car.

Are you considering buying one now that the prices have been slashed? My advise – wait… Soon your cornerstore guy will assemble one for you for $100 or even less, just that the label will bear his name even as the functionalities will be in tact. I mean, it’s way too overpriced even now…

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Another way to get that new car

So you now know AT&T lock on iPhone can be picked.

George Hotz, the 17 year old that hacked it open, has traded his unlocked iphone for a cool Nissan 350z (costs between $ 35 - $40k ). This is after rejecting several million $ bids that he got in ebay from sources he could not verify.

Cool way to get a cool car ? Parents would be mighty pleased to pay its insurance…..

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Now don’t hurry and get into the “business” of unlocking iPhones… You could well be in for more trouble than cars…

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Using iPhone minus AT&T

Hackers love freedom; and are most turned on by any cool gadget that is restrictive. iPhone seems to be their latest object of dissection since Apple has a two year service contract with AT&T that binds its iPhone users to its network. Their efforts reached a milestone on Thursday when George Hotz, a 17-year-old from New Jersey, posted a tricky but apparently effective method of getting iPhone to work on compatible systems other than AT&T like T-Mobile in the US or a variety of overseas carriers.

Taking off on that, the folks at iPhoneSimFree.com have devised a method that leaves virtually all the iPhone's features intact (except for visual voicemail) and adds some choices to the menu. Engadget watched a demo of the entire process and concluded, "We can confirm with 100% certainty that iPhoneSIMfree.com's software solution completely SIM unlocks the iPhone, is restore-resistant, and should make the iPhone fully functional for users outside of the U.S." They plan to "sell" licenses for their key – so next time someone wants to gifts you an iPhone, don't say `no' if you are living outside the US ; just tell them to load in the "patch"...!

AT&T is certainly not amused. How about Steve Jobs? He might pretend ire but will have to struggle hard to conceal his joy over the prospect of increased iPhone sales even in non AT&T serviced territories.

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Now, wait a minute.... What will be FSJ’s take on this AT&T upstage by third parties ? I go that FSJ is quite an in-the-face type…loves all freetards and hates anything that shuts itself out (calls Microsoft "Beastmaster"). I can already hear him saying "let AT&T go to hell" !
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Update : The frigtard did react. Here.

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A costly bargain !

Cheapskates of the world, wait ! Not yet time to buy that iPhone.

Apple, always secretive and tight-lipped about its supply-chain and manufacturing arrangements, almost never says anything in public about its suppliers, not even to disclose names. So it's left to teardown firms such as Austin-based Portelligent, to sleuth out not only who supplies all the parts but what it costs to make a device.

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Early strippers that took the iPhone apart found out it just costs $265.83 to make the high-end model priced at $599 – a juicy margin of more than 55% for Apple [apparently net of tax and SGA adjustments]. Let Apple enjoy while it lasts. Soon some rundown Chinese firm will figure out how to make it at 1/10th cost and start sucking those margins out.

Talking of Chinese handsets, the bargain doesn’t just stop at cheap rates. You also get more `functionalities’ thrown in than you had asked for. Shopping around for Chinese bargains can get serious, like this Motorola customer who had to pay with his dear life - courtesy, a pyrotechnic fatality offered by a cheap battery. Lucky if the scar's just nipple deep.

Sad, really sad…

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It's the cool app that matters, stupid...!

God probably wouldn't mind if He looked like Steve Jobs.

I just can’t stop wondering at the way Apple’s ( and with it Steve Jobs’ too ) fortunes swing. It hit the roof with Mac in the 80’s and then it slid underground for quite a while when Microsoft took centre stage. As Microsoft was looking invincible, Apple upped the ante with its iPod – a mega hit. And while it stayed hit, now at California Electronic Show (CES), Steve Jobs eclipsed Bill Gates by pulling yet another rabbit – the iPhone. Going by the immediate upward propulsion in Apple’s stock price, the rave reviews are not entirely stage managed.

None could’ve ever given the college dropout, whose biological parents gave him up for adoption, such a chance. Jobs has presided over four major game-changing product launches: the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone; five if you count the release of Pixar's Toy Story, which I'm inclined to. He's like Willy Wonka and Harry Potter rolled up into one.

Jobs’s zealousness about product development— and enforcing his personal vision—remains as relentless as ever. He keeps Apple’s management structure unusually flat for a 20,000-person company, so he can see what’s happening at ground level. There is just one committee in the whole of Apple, to establish prices. I can’t think of a comparable company that does no—zero—market research with its customers. Ironically, Jobs's personal style could not be more at odds with the brand he has created. If the motto for Apple's consumers is “think different,” the motto for Apple employees is “think like Steve."

Apple’s arrogance can inspire resentment, which is one reason for some of the glee over Jobs's stock options woes: taking pleasure in seeing a special person knocked down a peg is a great American pastime.

Apple’s iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices --such as an iPod and a phone -- and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton -- who knew a thing or two about apples -- they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It's a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.

The only bitter after-taste can come in the form of an adverse outcome of a Cisco lawsuit against the trademark iPhone ( which it only recently applied to a Linksys VoIP phone set ). Anyone unglued about the name of this product is seriously logic impaired. It doesn't even matter in the slightest.

But then who cares what this is called ? Apple could call it the Apple Phone. It could call it "French Canadian Genitalia" or even "the Hebrew Profanity" and still sell it…

It’s the cool app that matters, stupid.

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