Buzz of the week: 25-Aug-08

1. Verizon and Google near signing mobile search deal

US giant Verizon is nearing an agreement with Google on a wide-ranging partnership, the Wall Street Journal said, citing sources. The deal under discussion would make Google the default search provider on Verizon devices and give it a share of ad revenue, the paper, quoted by a Reuters report, further said. The deal is not yet final and the two sides are still negotiating on key issues, such as Google's desire to save information from user cellphone searches, it added. More here.

2. Virgin completes Helio acquisition

Virgin Mobile USA completed its planned acquisition of Helio. Helio shareholders SK Telecom and Earthlink have received shares and limited partnership units equivalent to 13 million shares of Virgin Mobile stock valued at $38 million. In addition SK Telecom and Virgin Group will each invest $25 million in Virgin Mobile USA. SK will have a 17 percent investment in Virgin Mobile and two seats on the Virgin Mobile board of directors. More here.

3. Nokia unveils iPhone rivals

Nokia unveiled two new high-end phone models, the N79 and the N85, as the firm battles against increasing competition from the likes of Apple and Samsung, a Reuters report said. The news lifted shares in Nokia more than 2% as it reassured investors the company was on track to refresh its offering for the key Christmas sales period. More here.

4. India 3G bidding to include CDMA

India has decided to auction CDMA licences for 3G services, a change in policy that means Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices will have to bid for spectrum they were previously guaranteed of getting, a Reuters report said, quoting a government official. No. 2 mobile operator Reliance Communications and sixth-ranked Tata Teleservices are the only operators with major CDMA operations in India, where the GSM platform dominates. More here.

Thank you very much,


RamP!

Mobile Internet Usage: BRIC vs America and Europe

Research from Nielsen Mobile, shows that entertainment-themed websites are the most popular with mobile Internet users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets. This stands in stark contrast with the American and European markets, where information and news draw the most mobile Internet browsers.

According to a new report out from Nielsen, entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top 5 categories visited in all four BRIC countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings. More here.

Buzz of the week: 18-Aug-08

1. Google/HTC readies Android-powered phone

Google is teaming with T-Mobile and HTC to launch a new interactive smartphone. The phone will feature a touch screen and a slide-out, five-row keyboard, The New York Times reported. The phone will run on Google's Android software and, like Apple's iPhone, allow consumers to download new applications. More here.

2. Gartner sees rise in telecom spending

The economy may be stuck in low gear, but telecom and IT spending will continue to be strong for at least the next three years, says research firm Gartner Inc. The firm expects 2008 spending to increase 8 percent to $3.4 trillion. "The U.S.-led economic downturn shows no sign of causing a recession in IT spending," said Jim Tully, an analyst with Gartner. Tully also said information technology spending rates will slow down in the coming years, "but the fundamentals remain strong (as) emerging regions, replacement of obsolete systems and some technology shifts are driving growth."

Services and telecom products are expected to continue to dominate IT spending budgets, and together should account for $2.8 billion of 2008's IT spending and almost $3 billion in 2009.

3. Apple issues iPhone fix

According to the BBC, Apple has released a software update, which it is believed aims to stop signal maintenance problems that result in dropped calls. True to form, Apple has not said which bugs it has targeted. More here.

4. Google launches Youtube mobile advertising trial

In its continuing effort to monetize user-generated video aggregator site YouTube, web services giant Google is now testing display ads on selected YouTube mobile clips in the U.S. and Japan. "This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube," reads a post from YouTube product marketing manager Christine Tsai on the Google Mobile Blog. "It will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones." Tsai notes that Google plans to explore additional new approaches to mobile advertising in the weeks ahead. More here.


Thank you very much,


RamP!

Planning a trip to Munnar

For the last several years, October, December and April/May are the months to go on a long drive somewhere with my wife and kids. Typically in October we head towards some beach and in summer towards some hill station. December, usually is a low cost vacation visiting relatives in and around Mysore, my home town. This time for a change, we are headed to Munnar.

For some reason, I'm addicted to planning such trips and this addiction is so much that my wife believes that I can have an alternate career as a tour operator. Not a bad idea given how ill informed most of the travel people that I run into. Of course such indifferent tour operators are the primary reason why I started planning all my trips, all by myself. Thanks to internet, a ton of information is available in the form of blogs, travelogues and on the portals of the online communities of travel enthusiasts. All these make the job a lot easier than a trip to your neighborhood tour operator.

This time we chose to go to Munnar, a hill resort in the Idukki district of Kerala. I've been to this place twice during my bachelor days and simply love this place. I'm lot more excited this time, because I'd driving.

Typically, this is the process that works for me in planning my trips. Once the place is decided, I rely primarily on two sources - Outlook Traveller's Getaway Guides and HolidayIQ.com to select a decent place to stay. After identifying an approximate route map using a set of maps (I've all sorts of maps ranging from the India road atlas all the way to the district maps), I browse Team-BHP's travelogues and route information forum. Most information (distance between towns along the way, places to eat, petrol pumps, ATMs, current situation of the road and related tips) is directly available in this huge community of travel enthusiasts. These days, I've also started using MapMyIndia.com, which gives fairly good route map between any two places in India. The next step is to collect adequate information about the place, things to do, things to buy etc., I rely heavily on VirtualTourist.com for this information. Getaway guides also contain very useful information. Armed with all these, I plan out the complete itinerary. Since it is a vacation, we don't very strictly stick to the plan, but believe in the philosophy of "plans doesn't matter, but planning helps". This process has helped me travel peacefully and enjoy every moment of all our, including the one to Singapore and Malaysia.

Now, I've no idea what is so interesting in browsing the few websites mentioned above and going over maps. But it is addictive. Bunch of people in my network simply call me to get my suggestion on where to go, how to go and what to do. Perhaps there is some merit in considering an alternate career as a travel consultant.
Thank you very much,

RamP!

Strategy School 10: The Configuration School

10. The Configuration School: (Strategy formation as a process of transformation)

This post is continuation of my previous posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

This school differs from all the others in one fundamental respect: it offers the possibility of reconciliation, one way to integrate the messages of the other schools.
Among the types of stages within an organization we find:

• Stage of development
• Stage of stability
• Stage of adaptation
• Stage of struggle
• Stage of revolution

Premises of the Configuration School

• Most of the time, an organization can be described in terms of some kind of stable configuration of its characteristics: for a period of time, it adopts a particular form of structure matched to a particular type of context which causes it to engage in particular behaviours that give rise to a particular set of strategies
• These periods of stability are interrupted occasionally by some processes of transformation- a quantum leap to another configuration
• These successive states of configuration and periods of transformation may order themselves over time into pattern sequences, for example describing life cycles of organizations
• The key to strategic management, therefore, is to sustain stability or at least adaptable strategic change most of the time, but periodically to recognize the need for transformation and be able to manage that disruptive process without destroying the organization
• Accordingly, the process of strategy making can be one of conceptual designing or formal planning
• The resulting strategies take the form of plans or patterns, positions or perspectives.

Critique of the Configuration School

• Organizations come in “many shades of gray and not just black and white”!

Thank you very much,

RamP!

Strategy School 9: The Environmental School

9. The Environmental School: Strategy formation as a Reactive Process

This post is continuation of my previous posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

Leadership as well as organization becomes subordinate to external environment. The environmental school has its roots in contingency theory, which grew up to oppose the confident assertions of classical management that there is “one best way” to run the organization. To contingency theorists, “it all depends”: on the size of the organization, its technology, the stability of its context, external hostility, and so on.

Premises of the Environmental School

• The environment, presenting itself to the organization as a set of general forces, is the central actor in the strategy-making process
• The organization must respond to these forces, or else be “selected out”
• Leadership thus becomes a passive element for purposes of reading the environment and ensuring proper adaptation by the organization
• Organizations end up clustering together in distinct ecological-type niches, positions where they remain until resources become scarce or conditions too hostile. Then they die.

Critique of the Environmental School

The greatest weakness is that environment is often so abstract and vague.

Thank you very much,

RamP!

Strategy School 8: The Cultural School

8. The Cultural School (Strategy formation as a collective process)

This post is continuation of my previous posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

Culture was "discovered" in management in the 1980s, thanks to the success of Japanese corporations. They seemed to do things differently than Americans. All fingers pointed to Japanese culture, and especially how that has been manifested in large Japanese corporations.

Bjorkman has pointed that radical changes in strategy have to be based on fundamental change in the culture. He described this as happening in the following 4 phases:

• Strategic drift
• Unfreezing of current belief systems
• Experimentation and re-formulation
• Stabilization

Premises of the cultural school:

• Strategy formation is a process of social interaction, based on the beliefs and understandings shared by the members of an organization
• An individual acquires these beliefs through a process of acculturation, or socialization, which is largely tacit and nonverbal.
• The members of an organization can only partially describe the beliefs that underpin their culture
• As a result, strategy takes the form of perspective above all, more than positions, rooted in collective intentions and reflected in patterns by which the deeply embedded resources, of the organization are protected and used for competitive advantage
• Culture do not encourage strategic change; at best, they tend to promote shifts in positions

Critique of the Cultural School

Cultural school should be faulted for conceptual vagueness. It can discourage necessary change. It favours the management of consistency, of staying on track.

Thank you very much,

RamP!

Buzz of the week: 11-Aug-08

1. App store download exceed 60M in the first month

Consumers have downloaded more than 60 million iPhone applications in the month since Apple opened the App Store, the computing giant's CEO Steve Jobs revealed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. While a majority of the applications were free, Jobs said that Apple still sold an average of $1 million a day in iPhone apps, generating about $30 million in sales so far--if sales continue at their current pace, the company is poised to earn at least $360 million in new revenue from the digital storefront. "This thing's going to crest a half a billion, soon," Jobs said. "Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time. I've never seen anything like this in my career for software." But Jobs said Apple stands to derive minimal direct profits from the App Store, claiming the 30 percent of application proceeds the firm retains are just enough to cover operating expenses. Jobs said iPhone application earned about $21 million during the first month, with the top 10 developers raking in roughly $9 million. He declined to update sales totals on the iPhone 3G itself. More here.

2. US: Mobile data market grows by 40 percent

The U.S. wireless data market grew 40 percent in the second quarter compared to year-ago totals, generating $8.2 billion in data revenues, according to a new report issued by advisory firm Chetan Sharma Consulting. Mobile data has now yielded $15.7 billion in the first six months of 2008, a 38 percent increase over the first half of 2007 and on pace to reach $34 billion for the year.
Some Q2 highlights:

• Overall ARPU among U.S. operators increased by $0.46, with average voice ARPU declining by $0.05 while average data ARPU grew by $0.50.
• Verizon Wireless leads in data ARPU with $12.58 (or 24.4 percent of total revenues), followed by Sprint at $12 (or 21.4 percent), AT&T at $11.59 (or 22.9 percent) and T-Mobile USA at $8.60 (or 17 percent).
• Verizon generated an industry-record $2.6 billion in data revenues, followed by AT&T at $2.5 billion. Both operators are on target to exceed $10 billion in annual data revenues, and together they account for 62 percent of the U.S. market's total data services revenues.
• Non-messaging services account for 50 percent to 60 percent of U.S. operator data revenues.
• Venture investment in mobile is on the decline--during the first half of the year, private wireless firms announced $1.8B in 173 financings, compared to $2.7 billion in 209 financings over the first six months of 2007.

More here.

3. Study: 56 percent of consumers have never viewed mobile video

While video-capable mobile handsets are now present in nearly one-third of U.S. households, 56 percent of consumers have never viewed mobile video content according to a new study issued by market research and consulting firm Parks Associates. The report argues that mobile video is largely the victim of a chicken-and-egg dilemma: Consumers are reluctant to pay for a new, unfamiliar service, but will remain unfamiliar with mobile video until taking the plunge. Parks Associates suggests mobile operators can solve the problem by offering more mobile video programming for free, contrasting the success of free mobile TV efforts in Japan and South Korea with disappointing uptake for premium services in the Italian market. More here.

4. T-Mobile to launch first Android phone in late'08

T-Mobile USA will debut the first mobile handset based on Google's Android operating system, The New York Times reports. Citing unnamed sources briefed on the operator's plans, the NYTYouTube video, and according to the report, a person who has seen the Dream up-close confirmed it is indeed the same phone depicted in the video. The retail release date of the HTC Dream hinges in large part on the device and the Android OS earning network standards certification from the Federal Communications Commission--execs from T-Mobile, Google and HTC all hope to officially announce the Dream in September in an effort to cash in on the lucrative holiday season. The Dream is expected to be the sole Android-based device released in the U.S. during the remainder of 2008. More here.

5. Leap and others ask FCC to deny Verizon/Alltel merger

Leap Wireless along with a group of rural carriers and associations including the Rural Telecommunications Group, NTELOS, SouthernLINC Wireless, SpectrumCo, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO), Mobi PCS, Revol Wireless, LCW and Denali Spectrum have petitioned the FCC to deny the proposed merger between Verizon Wireless and Alltel.

Leap and the other parties argue that the merger reduces the competitiveness of the wireless industry by eliminating a major regional carrier, exacerbates roaming issues by having fewer major roaming partners (particularly for CDMA carriers), and allows a mega-carrier to increasingly control spectrum.

Leap asks the FCC to do the following before it approves the merger: revise the existing Roaming Order by eliminating home roaming and "in-market" exclusion and initiate a rulemaking on spectrum caps. More here.

Thank you very much,


RamP!

US: Carrier Metrics for Q2 and OEM Sales

During the second quarter of 2008, U.S. wireless carriers kept their average revenue per user steady thanks to growing data revenues. In addition, churn levels remained low while net adds climbed (at least for some operators). (Source: FierceWireless)

Mobile phone shipments in the U.S. managed a 5.3% increase in the second quarter, as cellphone companies beat the weak economy and posted strong results. Strategy Analytics, an independent consulting firm, said 41.9 million cellphones were shipped in the quarter, up from 39.8 million a year earlier.

Motorola managed to cling to its lead in U.S. market share at 26%, South Korea's LG made a return to No. 2 in the U.S. market as it sold 16.8 million phones in the first half of the year and aims to hold 22% of the market by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Research In Motion Ltd.'s (RIMM) Blackberry phones gained a double- digit market share for the first time in the U.S.

Thank you very much,


RamP!

Strategy School 7: The Power School

7. The Power School (Strategy formation as a process of negotiation)
This post is continuation of my series of posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

Politics thus becomes synonymous with the exploitation of power in other than purely economic ways. This would obviously include clandestine moves to subvert competition, but it also include cooperative arrangements designed for the same effect (such as alliances). Power relations can surround organizations; they can also infuse them. Need to note two types of power relations:

• Micro Power deals with politics within the organization and
• Macro Power concerns the use of power by the organization

Premises of the power school

• Strategy formation is shaped by power and politics, whether as a process inside the organization or as a behaviour of the organization itself in its external environment.
• The strategies that may result from such a process tend to become emergent, and take the form of positions and ploys more than perspectives
• Micro Power sees strategy making as an interplay and sometimes direct confrontation, in the form of political games
• Macro Power sees the organization as promoting its own welfare by controlling or cooperating with other organizations, through the use of strategic manoeuvring as well as collective strategies in various kinds of networks and alliances

Critique of the power school

• While it is true that political dimension can have a positive role in organizations, this can also be the source of a great deal of wastage and distortion in organizations.

Thank you very much,

RamP!

Strategy School 6: The Learning School

6. The Learning School (Strategy formation as an emergent process)
This post is continuation of my series of posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

According to this school, strategies emerge as people, sometimes acting individualy but more often collectively, come to learn about a situation as well as their organization's capability of dealing with it.

Principles of the learning organization: (Joseph Lampel)

• Organizations can learn as much, if not more, from failure as from success
• A learning organization rejects the adage "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".
• Learning organizations assume that the managers and workers closest to the design, manufacturing, distribution and sale of the product often know more about these activities than their superiors.
• A learning organization actively seeks to move knowledge from one part of the organization to another, to ensure that relevant knowledge finds its way to the organizational unit that needs it most.
• Learning organizations spend a lot of energy looking outside their own boundaries for knowledge

Premises of the learning school:

• The complex and unpredictable nature of the organization's environment, often coupled with the diffusion of knowledge bases necessary for strategy, precludes deliberate control; strategy making must above all take the form of a process of learning over time, in which, at the limit, formulation and implementation become indistinguishable.
• While the leader must learn too, and sometimes can be the main learner, more commonly it is the collective system that learns: there are many potential strategists in most organizations.
• This learning proceeds in emergent fashion, through behavior that stimulates thinking retrospectively, so that sense can be made of action.

Critique of the learning school:

• There is always a danger of going to the opposite extreme - no strategy, lost strategy or wrong strategy.

Thank you very much,

RamP!

Buzz of the week: 4-Aug-08

1. Yahoo board unscathed from annual share holder meeting

Yahoo's board emerged largely unscathed from the company's annual meeting as a subdued crowd of shareholders raised few questions about the directors' rejection of Microsoft's €30.4 billion (US$47.5 billion) takeover bid, an Associated Press report said. The report further said some shareholders expressed displeasure by opposing the re-election of Yahoo's current directors, but the resistance wasn't as intense as last year, when three directors were rejected by more than 30% of the vote. More here.

2. Verizon strike averted for now

Verizon Communications and the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions agreed to extend negotiations just after midnight Saturday, and the unions agreed to postpone a strike. The CWA, which represents about 50,000 of the 65,000 workers affected, issued a statement saying that progress has been made on issues such as job security and ongoing funding of health care coverage for active and retired workers, but also that further discussion was need to work toward a contract settlement. Verizon also issued a statement saying it continues "to negotiate in good faith to achieve new contracts for our employees." More here.

3. MobiTV passes 4 million subscriber mark

Mobile broadcast service provider MobiTV announced that its managed mobile television and radio network now tops more than 4 million subscribers. The milestone follows 10 months after MobiTV passed the 3 million benchmark--the firm first launched service in late 2003, and now boasts more than 50 channels, availability across over 350 devices and partnerships with more than a dozen operators, including AT&T, Sprint and Alltel.

"We see MobiTV as a continuation of the home viewing experience. Because it's on a mobile device, when there is something important going on and you're away from home, [mobile TV] is the natural place to go. We're very big believers in streaming live video, and we believe it's critical to building usage habits, but it's only part of the whole system" said MobiTV chairman and CEO Charlie Nooney. More here.

4. Sanjay Jha named CEO of Motorola Devices

After months of speculation, Motorola has named Sanjay Jha CEO of its ailing mobile devices division. Jha will also be co-CEO of Motorola, sharing the responsibility with Greg Brown. Jha, a well-known wireless industry executive, was considered a rising star at Qualcomm where he was the firm's COO. He joined Qualcomm in 1994. Len Lauer, Qualcomm's executive vice president and group president, will replace Jha as COO. More here.

5. Qualcomm working on Android platform

Qualcomm confirmed that it is working on a mobile phone platform that will be based on the Android operating system. During an analyst conference in San Diego last week, Qualcomm executives said that the company anticipates a large number of Android phones will run on Qualcomm platforms. Qualcomm is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, which promotes the Android platform. In addition, Qualcomm and several other manufacturers exhibited Android-based prototypes or proof-of-concept devices at the annual Mobile World Congress industry conference in Barcelona last February. More here.

6. Rumor: Apple to launch iPhone Nano

Apple is poised to launch a nano-like edition of the iPhone, according to The Daily Mail. Citing an unnamed source who said the nano device will boast a scroll-wheel on the back and a display screen on the front, the newspaper said the phone will hit retail in advance of the Christmas holidays, with Apple's exclusive U.K. partner O2 targeting pay-as-you-go subscribers unwilling to pony up the iPhone 3G's retail price. But rival British pub The Guardian scoffs at the report, suggesting it is nothing more than a PR stunt engineered by O2. Time will tell. More here.

Thank you very much,


RamP!

Reading list for Aug'08

Last month, I chose a rather heavy set of books and this brought in some discipline of daily reading. Here is my reading plan for this month.

Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck

I first read about this book in Guy Kawasaki's blog and immediately got interested. The authors talk about six principles ("SUCCES") that link sticky ideas of all kinds - Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Story. You may also want to watch a video clip of the authors (Dan and Chip Heath) talking about this book.



The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on what matters

I'm not sure how I ran into this book by Peter Block. The review of the book was very interesting and I got this book. This particular comment on the book triggered my interest "We too often ask "How?" which focuses too closely on the practical way of getting something done and is actually a subconscious expression of society's emphasis on control of people, time, and cost. Instead, our concentration should be focused on "Why?" In other words, we need to pay attention to what really matters to us personally, from heart-felt commitments in our private lives to the creation of projects in the workplace".


Branching Streams flow in the darkness: Zen talks on the Sandokai

I became a big fan of Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki after reading one of his celebrated books "Zen Mind, Begginer's Mind". Shunryu Suzuki also formed the San Francisco Zen Center. The Sandokai is a poem and this book is a collection of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki on Sandokai. Sandokai addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist.

Thank you very much,


RamP!