Beyond the ken: Time to pop a 'Tablet'

Beyond the ken: Time to pop a 'Tablet': "There has been such a frenzy in the tablet market over the last few weeks , that I could not resist but blog. To start of the blog , a brief..."

Time to pop a 'Tablet'

There has been such a frenzy in the tablet market over the last few weeks , that I could not resist but blog. To start of the blog , a brief about the happenings in the tablet arena:-

1) Apple announced its iPad version 2 today!

2) Announcement happens at a strategic time when the Motorola just announced about its Android powered Zoom !

3) 10 new tablets are going to be released this year!! (One of them being from India [NotionInk])

4)HP about 6 hours ago announced their Tablet rendition running on WebOS( Palm developed platform)http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/02/09/hp.webos/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

My favorite pick of the 3 has got to be the first! Apple could not have found a better time to shake up consumers and deter their focus away from "Android" . Its all so fair :) .Whats better the pricing beats the c*** out of all other tablet players. For 500 bucks I get a world class , cool gizmo with backed by a App store. Xoom which is priced at 800$ cannot even match up to that price point. If there can be one it is going to be the technology behemoth HP. They have not officially revealed the price of the tablets yet. But my hunch is it will be priced anywhere between 600-800 bucks. They after all have to recover their money from the Palm acquisition.

So one starts thinking why is that Apple always comes out victorious in these battles (Atleast for now!). I start digging for facts and data out there on the net and I landed back to the birthplace of these technology gizmos 'Fox-conn'. As I had previously mentioned Foxconn based out of China is one large gigantic organization that churns out hardware for many of Worlds leading hardware suppliers in the world. OK , so what? Motorola/HP can outsource the manufacturing of these gizmos to Foxconn, and Presto !

But there is more than it than meets the eye. I went out researching (Googling if you may) how Apple reached the enviable position it is now. So ,the turtleneck shirt wearing executives at Apple have laid out a more elaborate strategy from 2001. They simply played by the books. Vertical integration across the supply chain albeit a step lower. They went ahead and placed orders for the hardware components required to manufacture these gizmos well in advance and to the tune of 10m+ !

So semiconductor manufacturers like Samsung (Ironic!) , LG , Phillips etc have their their hands tied down by contractual agreements with Apple to serve it. Whats more Apple which is sitting on huge cash reserves ($50 B +) have gone ahead and implemented strategically in many of these manufacturer labs to augment the production. Two things that jumps out are

a)Apple places orders well in advance

b)They are not looking to set up their own labs . A very good ploy I must add.

So finally it becomes zero sum game , where Apple so eliminating the competition out on price. The recent news about HP touchpad did not shake up the stock market hawks simply because they did not place a $ figure. This indicates a price point has been established by customers at which they expect the luxuries of a tablet are served to them. Adding to it, rumors are rife that iPad2 is going to be sold much cheaper. Of course it was going to be , Apple was going to pull this one out of its sleeve any moment. Again playing by the textbooks : Economies of scale , with large cash reserves they can afford for mass volume discounting and completely squeeze out the competition out of the market.

I am not much of an Apple fan but my hunch is in the long run HP is the only potent competitor that can carry home sizable chunk of the 'Tablet' pie.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Beyond the ken: The Lampoon show called CES

Beyond the ken: The Lampoon show called CES: "All the technology evangelists and vultures watch with bated enthusiasm the CES every year , year after year . This year’s CES did not disa..."

The Lampoon show called CES

All the technology evangelists and vultures watch with bated enthusiasm the CES every year , year after year . This year’s CES did not disappoint at all. Almost of records of sort , more than 20,000 new products were unveiled in under flashing neon light in those 4 frantic days that lasted . Samsung alone unveiled 75 of them!

I was left scratching my head , mopping my brows….really? 20,000?? That’s a lot of products to be released in one year! To imagine what goes into making one product :- Business strategists strategizing , technology strategists huddling to put in effect those strategies, scored of powerpoint shuffling , outsourcing to China (Foxconn anyone ?) , export , import and whole gamut of power economics in play! But what good are these features for an already placated palate of consumers today. Getting antiquated in the technology industry is much faster than you think. In a recent interview by Ray Kurzweil (https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_Technology/BT_Strategy/IT_growth_and_global_change_A_conversation_with_Ray_Kurzweil_2728?gp=1) , he said technology evolution is exponential and human needs are linear. Somehow what happened at CES does not add up to what he proclaimed? In a hyper consumerist economy, consumers demand seems more exponential than linear or is it? The craze to deliver value have in a lot of sense off tracked many companies today who are venturing out into different domain in an effort to be different (Very Un-Warren Buffet I must admit). We have Dell entering the tablet market with Dell Streak which failed to ignite any fire from the moment it was launched.

But is it wrong to experiment fly into unchartered territories? The problem is it is unchartered for you but very much disturbed, disrupted by others (Competitors). I say companies today are in zero sum game of Least common denominator (LCD). The LCD being more products under least cost possible. Burn , slash , reorganize , restructure our cost centers and keep churning out products with stagnant value. This by itself is the weakest strategy of this new techno era. What one should really care about is elevating the numerator which is where all the moolah is bound to lies- Delivering high value! Value in products delivered. That alone is the single reason why Apple survives and sustains. High value for a not so low LCD , when other ‘Smart’ players are battling it out in the market for the supremo position.

Tying this back to the organization I am currently working with, I now begin to realize and appreciate their strategy – To create a large numerator. They exited out of the denominator game 2 years ago.

Looking forward to more insights from my friends!

PS:- Pardon me of all the typos, too lazy to do a cross check :P

'Defibrillator'ing my blog back to life!

Hello Human Beings, Greetings! It has been almost 2 long years since I visited my blog and things have changed a lot since May 2009.

After a brief stint with an IT company , I joined the Kelley School of business to pursue my Masters in Information systems. I have been enjoying my course so far and right now I am doing an internship with an Insurance Giant here in US!

My intent of return to the blog is to post my learnings from this internship (whatever little that maybe!). The reason being this particular company is undergoing a sea change of transformation in the way it does business. This transformation has it effects in all spheres of biz, be it IT /HR /Finance etc and I wanted to capture all of the "effects" (Good/bad) of these changes.My prime focus area would be IT. The initiative being Lean IT. To fill in more information I would be calling for help from my other peers who are doing internships with the firm.

And finally the blog would however not be restricted to IT only and would cover any topics under the sun from Politics to Finance to general business !

Adios!