The future through 'WIndows'

Microsoft, one of the largest companies in the world, is known to follow a me-too strategy. Right from their operating systems for personal computers, Internet Explorer, Xbox, Zune, Windows Phone operating system and now ‘Tulalip’, Microsoft’s answer to Facebook and Google+ have all never been an illustration of the Blue Ocean Strategy.

I wouldn’t want to get into the nitegrities of how they muscled their way into the markets or how Bill Gates allegedly ditched IBM and launched DOS or how he kept competitors at bay by enforcing a monopoly for Windows for several years as this is all passé. What I would instead like to focus on is how they are working towards building an ecosystem which will leave us with brand ‘Windows’ being omnipresent.

Microsoft has been synonymous to computing for many of us. Microsoft NT being one of its first commercially known graphical operating systems has had several successors. DOS, an OS made for IBM way back in 1980 is widely used even today and with Windows 7 striking the right chords with the customers, they still dominate the OS market.

So what is it that makes Microsoft a company to look forward to in the future? I would believe that there are a lot of factors that need to be accounted for to answer this question. In this article, I will be highlighting some of them.

If you are a working professional, it is almost a given that you would be using MS Outlook in office. Just like the Windows OS has dominated the world, MS Outlook has tamed its way into our office laptops and desktops. Its integration with the MS Communicator sure helps in making communication a lot simpler than it earlier was. E-mail is not the only thing that it offers as we now see a gamut of features ranging from blocking work calendars for appointments to sharing desktops and working with remote access, all this with a highly secured Microsoft Exchange Server.

After a hectic day in office, as we reach home, we find an Xbox 360 waiting for us. Although the Xbox is several light years behind Playstation, the significance of it might be understood as you read on. However, what Microsoft holds in its arsenal as the ace of spades is their cutting-edge technology called ‘Kinect’ (see video). Although we see a lot of videos of Kinect on the internet for gaming, the use of this technology can go beyond one’s imagination.

Coming to the 'idiot box', a device which keeps us glued for hours, Microsoft’s MediaRoom, a platform for Smart TVs has a decent demand amongst the smart TV platform providers. However, what excites me the most is the way it seamlessly integrates with Windows for phone and PC. With mobile users being flooded with a wide range of platforms, Smart TVs certainly seem to be the next big thing!

Now, just think of outlook, communicator, Xbox integration, Kinect capabilities and integration with your Smart TV, all this in a 4inch device lying inside your pocket. Isn’t that intriguing? No matter which mobile OS you preach, the fact is that WP7 aka Mango is an operating system one just can’t ignore. The recent update that Mango received (WP 7.5) has made it even more desirable. The biggest strength of Mango lies in the weakness of its competitors. Android’s weakness lies in the fact that no matter how expensive your droid is, they all look the same!! iOS, although is beautiful, looks exactly how it looked in 2007, when the 1^st iPhone was launched. What Mango brings on the table is what they call ‘live tiles’, a concept (soon to be a part of Windows 8 for desktops) which helps it stand-out in a very crowded market. Their eco-system is fast approaching ‘completeness’ with Nokia stepping in and adding on to the existing offerings.

Microsoft is certainly not the only one moving towards an integrated eco-system as Google and Apple seem to move in the same direction. What one needs to see is to what extent Microsoft can differentiate itself from the rest.

Mirror mirror on the wall, what does mobile technology bring for all?

Henry Ford posing next to Ford Model - T

“I will produce cars in any color of your choice as long as it is black” – Henry Ford to a customer who asked him to sell a car with a color apart from black in 1914.

I wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had given users of the iPhone pre-installed Angry Birds as the only app accessible to them. Some of the crazy Angry Birds fans might settle with that but most of the users would want a wider choice of apps. More options are always good.

Henry Ford could afford to not have a customer centric approach because he knew that there were no other car manufacturers at that time who made affordable cars.

Today, insatiable human needs and a perfectly competitive scenario is driving innovation to levels unimaginable to most of us. The cool and crazy gadgets shown in the James Bond movies are becoming a reality. The old saying that ‘if there is a will, there is a way’ leads us to a new saying, ‘if there is an idea, we will find a way of doing it’.

Picture this: It is one of those chilly days when you just want to reach home and get into your bath-tub with nice warm water. But for this, you will need to first reach home, turn-on your water heater and wait for the tub to be full. How you’d wish you had some magical control through which you could have the bath-tub ready and you could just jump into it and relax. ‘Your wish is my command’, said Larry Page when he unveiled the ‘Android@Home’ framework this year at the Google IO 2011. Google plans to take mobile convergence to the next level by offering Android@Home, a framework that allows an Android phone to control all your appliances at home from wherever you are. So start your washing machine when you want or schedule your vacuum cleaner to turn on by simply adding a reminder to your Google Calendar. One amazing demo that Larry Page gave at the Google IO was a concept, Android-powered device hub called Tungsten. Using RFID embedded into CD cases the device was able to detect the CD and add it to your library. Another touch and it started automatically.Now, doesn’t that sound exciting?

Watching 3D movies is always fun. We have seen a few television manufacturers who have recently launched 3D TV sets. So with this feature available on these two screens, how can the mobile screen remain out of the picture! Both LG and HTC recently launched handsets with 3D screens which allow its users to view 3D content without 3D glasses! The user can also capture 3D images using a pair of cameras provided on the phone. I wonder how the experience of watching a movie like Harry Potter would be on a 4inch 3D display! With so much happening on the 3D front, how can Google stay out of action! Recently Google introduced 3D Google Maps which gave a 3D view of buildings and streets. I don’t really know if this would help us in finding our way when we are absolutely lost, but it definitely looks good!

Another very exciting development is gesture recognition on mobile phones. The recent launch of the Nokia N9 created waves amongst the technology enthusiasts. The very fact that the phone had no physical buttons (except for a couple on the side for volume control and camera) but relied completely on swipes excited me a lot. But what if I didn’t even have to swipe? What if all that I had to do is wave at my phone to send a message? Or nod my head affirmatively to receive a call? On July 26^th, Qualcomm announced that they will be launching a new version of the Snapdragon Processor with gesture recognition capabilities. Hmmm…. I wonder if using these capabilities, my phone would automatically make a call to my best friend when it saw me frown!

Well, time will tell! Till then, enjoy the exciting innovations that the little hand-held device called the cell phone brings to you in the coming future.

Say Hi To Brand 'Jobs'!!

'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.’

—Steve Jobs

It all started way back in 1984 when an emotional Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh. He always did it in style didn’t he? A young dashing man walked across the stage to unveil the machine that redefined computing. His journey with Apple was nothing less than a roller-coaster ride. But, this article isn’t about his journey with Apple. You would find many highlighting that on the internet. The question I want to discuss at Teched is, is brand ‘Jobs’ larger than brand ‘Apple’?

If you have seen the video of the launch of Macintosh (incase you haven’t, I insist that you should), you must have noticed how Jobs unveiled the portable PC from that bag, removed a floppy from his pocket and witnessed the crowd go bizarre. But there was more to it than Macintosh. That evening in 1984, saw the launch of brand ‘Jobs’. Everything changed for Apple after the voice from Macintosh thanked its ‘father’, Steve Jobs as the audience witnessed the man showcase breakthrough innovations year-after-year.

When we think of Steve Jobs, we get an image of a man wearing a full sleeved black t-shirt, blue denims and oval shaped glasses. One would also associate Jobs to innovation and charisma. Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field", a term coined by his colleagues to describe his ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of superficial charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and makes them believe that the task at hand is possible.

Year-after-year, Jobs represented Apple and showcased their innovations. He became the face of the company. People started associating Apple to Steve Jobs instead of associating it to its products. This was evident when Jobs went on a medical leave for 6 months in 2009. This very announcement resulted in a major drop in Apple Inc.’s stocks. In 2010, at the WWDC, Apple was to launch the iPhone 4. But the crowd didn't seem to be interested in checking out the new offering. They, instead were all there to get a glimpse of their hero. This was evident from the fact that the tickets for WWDC which generally take about a month to sell out, were actually sold out in just 8 days. The standing ovation that the audience gave when he appeared on the stage just reiterates his popularity.

With increasing competition in the market, the audience for ‘smart devices’ is now divided. There are people who would swear by an Apple product while the other set of people are the ones who have migrated to competitors like Samsung and HTC. I personally belong to the second set of people as I believe that Apple products no longer define industry standards in-terms of innovation. However, I also believe that Apple has something that no one else in the market has; Steve Jobs. His existence in itself is a major crowd puller.

I believe that the popularity of brand ‘Jobs’, is largely because of the success of brand Apple. Jobs would not have been looked upon with trust had Apple not produced the kind of products they actually did. Looking at it from the flipside, Apple wouldn’t have been the company it is today without the charismatic Jobs spearheading it. So is Jobs a larger brand than Apple? I don’t really know and honestly, it doesn’t really matter as long as the genius called Jobs continues to innovate and take Apple Inc. to new heights.

People believe that Apple might find it difficult to sustain itself in the absence of Steve Jobs. But for now, with Jobs around, all I would like to say is, “Say Hi to Brand ‘Jobs’!”

Osborne Takes Over Nokia!

As most of us would have known, Adam Osborne was the first to make a portable computer called ‘Osborne 1’ in April 1981. It weighed around 12kg and was sold for US$1795. It sold 10,000 units in the very first month which then, was a phenomenally large number. One would expect him to be known for this outstanding feat but this was not the case. In 1983, Adam Osborne bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing. In anticipation of something better, people opted to wait for the launch. The number of orders declined drastically and before Adam could release the new versions, he ran out of cash and had to file for a bankruptcy. This phenomenon was referred to as ‘The Osborne Effect’.

In 2011, exactly 30yrs from the launch of ‘Osborne 1’, we see a similar occurrence. This time with Nokia, a company which once ruthlessly dominated the handset industry. Nokia, the Finnish giant, founded by Fredrik Idestam and Leo Mechelin, has over 132,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of over €42 billion and operating profit of €2 billion as of 2010. To name one of it’s several achievements, the Nokia brand, valued at $29.5 billion, was listed as the eighth most valuable global brand in the Interbrand/BusinessWeek Best Global Brands list of 2010. However, owing to the growing competition, in July 2010, Nokia announced that their profits had dropped 40%. In Feb 2011, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft, the last viable option they could see to bring back the lost pride.

One would expect this move to bring a glee on the faces of its investors. The Nokia-Microsoft deal appeared as one of the most ‘perfect deals’ by analysts. However, something that nobody had thought of happened and one witnessed Adam Osborne take-over Nokia. This is when the Osborne effect started giving nightmares to Stephen Elop (Nokia CEO).

In the excitement of Nokia signing the dotted line with Microsoft, they seemed to over-look the fear Nokia lovers would have. The fear that Nokia would probably abandon Symbian, their OS which took them to new heights. Initially, this fear resulted in a drastic decline in Nokia sales which was when Nokia made a formal announcement that Nokia will continue to support Symbian atleast for the next 3 years. They also promised to launch 20 Symbian-based handsets in 2011. This somehow was not convincing enough for the smartphone users and Nokia sales further declined. In this period, Nokia lovers decided to wait for the Windows based Nokia phone instead of buying the existing Symbian based handsets. To add to the problems, Nokia realized that their first phone with Windows would come to light only by the end of 2011.

Till now, Nokia dominated the emerging markets like India and China, but, the local players in both these countries started eating-up Nokia’s market share. Meanwhile, with the reducing number of Nokia users, the trend-setting OVI store seemed unviable to them and so was terminated in many parts of the world.

Recently, Nokia  announced that their forecasted sales for the next quarter would not be met owing to the changing market trends. This announcement took Nokia shares to a 13yr low with investors willing to exit the company. There are now rumors in the market about Nokia facing a major cash crunch and that Microsoft might take-over the handset manufacturing company.

The company seems to be in great trouble with sustainability issues seem looming over it. A technology enthusiast like me can only hope that Nokia would somehow survive till the launch of their ‘W’ series phones and come back with a bang in the race to become the leading handset manufacturer.