There are excellent guides available to enable your wireless networking on your Debian and then choosing Tata’s apn to access the Internet. I would not go in those details. I had used a 3G stick and after ensuring the proper network coverage, on a Windows machine, added it to my Debian based laptop. Although recognized, it failed to connect on to network and neither there was any way to install the company issued dialer.

However, it worked fine in Windows world; it was auto-recognized and I could work on that. What I noticed was the horrible lag and the ping times, clearly making it useless for any one for online gaming. It’s next to impossible. At the same time, the video buffering was relatively smooth although nothing to write home about.

With pathetic “download limits” and huge costs, I had to nix the plan of going in for Tata Docomo; although I must confess that they have a reasonably good customer care. My point of contact has been their on line chat and their email’s work, albeit very late. This, in my opinion, is better than the other companies who don’t give a shit about after sales.

Would you go in for an expensive hardware and huge recurring monthly expenses? 3G is NOT for the data but for more efficient spectrum utilization. The voice market dominates because these operators have no intention of improving on the value added services.

Thats where their bread and butter lies. If 3G data services were really to become “cheap”, to so called “market forces” would determine the outcome. I find it amusing when people crow about prices coming down eventually. There would never be an “unlimited plan” because shoring up the capacity on wireless networks is a huge sunk in investment which is not easy to recover.

For the time being, this is a worst case alternative to a proper wireline/wifi model. If you don’t have any other frigging option in this heartless world, go for it.

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Opera Mini

http://imgur.com/PZwCF

If you look carefully, bulk of the developing and the underdeveloped countries utilize the mobile web to access social networking sites. US (and some other developed economies) are lower down the scale.

Interestingly, the data transferred per user is a pathetic 7 MB (averaged over the month perhaps?) which means that operators are still being generous with their limits. However,  this is a crude approximation. For once, we have a clear proof that mobile internet is definitely a part of their value added services kitty but is NOT the revenue driver for them. They are offering it because there is no alternative.

This also explains their aggressive stance to get the 3G spectrum; primarily to add more voice customers than to offer data services.

If you look at the snapshot of the popular phones, Nokia is still leading the pack but majority of them are NOT smartphones. These java based handsets are pathetic in terms of functionality and at best useful for “checking the status updates” on Facebook.

A surprise entry is that of “Micromax” handset; they have capitalized on aggressive marketing and low price entry point.

Unfortunately, this does not portend good for the broadband initiatives. A cursory glance at the top sites (Google leads the pack) is only indicative. Google has benefited from being the default search engine on the browser and hence the port of call for any search. I barely use my handset for GPRS (or EDGE) for web surfing because smartphones (and their form factor) is basically useless to transact anything useful. For me, the only reason to invest is for email.

Nevertheless, this report can again be questioned in terms of “growth of users”. It is not clear about how the methodology has been arrived at and what has constituted the “growth in real terms”. However, one thing is clear. Most of the web sites focused on Indian content don’t have mobile strategies to counter the growth in the user base. Pathetic.

Indeed, with majority of the young adults unable to read/write or even engage in meaningful conversations on Indian polity, this “dumbification” was expected.

Facebook, although shows some presence (in terms of mobile access), mobile broadband is still “not hot” in US of A. There could be myriad factors but then Opera’s state of web access is best a “snapshot” of the handsets and it’s deal with the OEM‘s to bundle the product.

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I have experimented with the tone and tenor of the write ups here. It’s impossible to update on a daily basis although RSS as a delivery mechanism is very powerful in it’s context; it’s easy to set up feeds to keep the blog updated regularly.

However, I personally feel that the sector as a whole has not evolved to a meaningful extent to report on the events. Vodafone has been dragged to the court. Airtel has botched up it’s 3G offerings. 2G scam has caught up with its final actors. However, this is still the “tip of the iceberg”. A lot goes behind the scenes and some unlucky few get caught up in the swirl. Indeed, they are just minor fronts for the systematic loot.

Writing on all this is a chore. It’s pathetic to repeat the same thing ad-nauseum.

Image via Wikipedia

Hence, I prefer to write when I get a sudden burst of “inspiration”. This blog has definitely morphed from it’s rigid confines of Indian Telecom to something more of a “digital narrative”.

I could also write on the operators elsewhere; unrestricted data does not flow uniformly. Yet, in most of the developing countries, scarcity is something that is engineered. It holds no relevance for most of us to know about what AT&T is doing with it’s T- Mobile acquisition. Further, we have distanced ourselves, not only from the advertising, but also from reporting any industry sponsored events. I routinely get invitations (off and on) but they are mostly from clueless PR executives.

Daily updates is beyond the scope. Writing is a passion and needs to be stoked. Yet, there is no point in being pointless either!

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Although I cannot publish the site stats here, but surprisingly, I am still seeing Internet Explorer 6 in the stats. While Windows remains a dominant platform, most of them are using a mix of Firefox and Explorer. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see Opera and none of the stats suggest that mobile browsers are being used in any way. ( I wonder when would Internet Explorer die and wither away).

I was keen to implement some plug in for mobile browsers but gave it up because I was not able to test it extensively. In any case, I recommend Opera Mini alone; with it’s latest update it inherits the best of the mobile browser breed. Specifically it’s tap to zoom since I was never a fan of the mobile version.

Image via Wikipedia

Firefox rules on my desktop now (Opera’s extension system leaves a lot to be desired), still it is maturing at a rapid pace.

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I had the unfortunate instance of coming across an Idea Cellular subscriber. The complaints were related to call drops and inability to connect to international numbers.

While mobile number portability is an attractive option, yet the only drawback is that it cannot transfer the remaining balance to the operator you wish to get ported to. Repeated emails to their customer care went unanswered; I am glad we got rid of it.

A recommended option is to avoid it totally and look around for MNP.

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Image via CrunchBase

I have argued against excessive reliance on social media; it is a stupid decision to hail Facebook and Twitter as the “next destination”. This is the problem with the marketing executives either from the mobile companies or handset manufacturers. For example, it’s not difficult to miss the blurb that accessing Facebook is “easy” by a “single click button”.

The experience on ground is different. Let’s assume, for a moment that there are over 600 million users. How many of them are active? What is the “engagement matrix” on the web site? What is the actual cost retrieved by

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook from it’s advertisers; i.e. how effective is advertising on the platform? Is social engagement really effective? I mean, it’s stupidity to see links from Facebook friends streaming in Bing (which has implemented the feature and live on to crow that they are up in the pissing game with Google).

If you dissect the issue further, accumulating a number of “likes” on the platform does not mean that it likely to translate into action. I was moved by this interesting blog post and they

Image via CrunchBase

gave explicit reasons why they are moving away from facebook hype: (emphasis mine)

1. The Facebook API changes too often. The plug-ins are buggy, the API changes without notice rather often, and there are too many rules constraining how developers can use the API in building applications. As a platform, it is unstable, period. ……

2. Facebook is overhyped. Personally, even though Facebook actually has 600 million active users, developers still tend to overestimate how many people actually 1) have a Facebook account, 2) use it regularly, and 3) are comfortable using it as a third-party authentication method. Many consumers across different niche markets are simply not familiar with how Facebook works; developing Facebook-only applications marginalizes this segment of users, who may be substantial in number.

3. Facebook is still mainly social for most, and exclusively social for some. We are still not completely convinced that Facebook can be an effective platform for any commercial activity…….Of all the new variants of ecommerce, the one that might actually take off is, in our view, mobile commerce.

More interestingly, Facebook and other industry “leaders” are opposing the proposed bill to protect the user’s privacy. I am not sure how this is going to pan out but this is good enough indication that some sense has dawned to protect the users from advertising onslaught.

California could force Facebook and other social-networking sites to change their privacy protection policies under a first-of-its-kind proposal at the state Capitol that is opposed by much of the Internet industry……social-networking sites would have to allow users to establish their privacy settings…

….like who could view their profile and what information would be public to everyone on the Internet – when they register to join the site instead of after they join. Sites would also have to set defaults to private so that users would choose which information is public

These measures would not apply to India or it’s privacy laws though I heard they have been tightened in recent times; the impact on end users has not been discussed.

There’s one more compelling reason to avoid reliance on Facebook; falling traffic. Countries that were on the path to early adoption is seeing a fall in the traffic (perhaps an indication of slow and waning interest).

The average decline over months has yet to become negative, though. There are other possible factors at work, too, such as bugs in the Facebook ad tool that we get this data from…. in order to identif the long-term directions here is crucial for planning how to capitalize on Facebook’s success, or lack thereof.

It is most likely to be argued that India would perhaps be a “fantastic growth opportunity” but is corporate gibberish. Even if the “dark populations” are lighted up, in absence of aggressive promotion of localized content, it is unlikely to see a massive expansion. It seems that most of the companies keep their “outposts” in India to hire cheap labor for “translation” efforts. It’s not a generalized statement, but thats the reality. Again, there is NO reliable data to break up the traffic specific to the sites or universally agreed metrics to track traffic to popular sites (however, Opera Mobile‘s stats are likely to be more reliable).

Where do we go from here? It is important not to rely completely on the “social aspect” of the net. It is a matter of time before it fades away for perhaps a better “personalized approach” (more so as semantic web matures and we have better ontology) to deal with. That also comes as a rider but there is no “perfect ideal approach”. This is something that the next generation access devices and advertising agencies should keep in mind before they can actually deliver better “value added services”.

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A lot has been made up for Google Chrome OS and it’s notebook. It transpires that Samsung and Acer would manufacture laptops for chrome OS.

Is cloud computing inherently better than the “offline model” we have come to rely on? If the recent Amazon outage is any indication, I would prefer not to stick with it. In the same vein, I prefer my data to stay with me.

However, there is a huge business opportunity lurking behind such an initiative. Manufacturers in India (for netbooks/laptops/tablets) are dependent on Microsoft for a tapered down version of it’s utterly useless operating system. They could have easily sponsored a home grown “Indian initiative” for Linux and installed it on a bare bones hardware with Wifi and 3G connectivity. I reckon that using ARM processors, a basic display unit with a keyboard would suffice the price limit of around $200-250. It can be done.

One doesn’t need dual cores to run the fancy software; in any case, I hardly use the computing power at my disposal. But there was no choice in the market. Antix (a derivative of SimplyMepis) or even Arch Linux are good enough alternatives (not to forget Fluxbox and XFCE or E17) as the alternative desktop platforms to power the applications.

The telecom companies could have easily subsidized the model, charging it in their monthly bills. A win win situation. An operating system free of any hassles and companies get to spread the hardware with bundled data plans. I had earlier explored the same option but I guess the fancy CEO’s (who are glorified assholes anyway), are not interested in the blurb.

So you’d find the Vodafone Zoozoo enticing people to try out 3G in a market where computing is still a luxury and smartphones market sorely limited.

Thats stupidity compounded by assholism (of the extreme); because crores are being spent on advertising to milk the few customers who venture to buy out the expensive data plans.

Blah blah blah.

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As per the blurb on Forbes,RIM Looks To Revive Smartphone Push With BlackBerry 7 – Great Speculations – Buys, holds, and hopes,

…..the introduction of the latest version of its smartphone operating system BlackBerry 7, and unveiled two new BlackBerry Bold smartphones based on this OS.  The new OS has a few improvements over preceding versions like faster performance for touch-screen navigation, web browsing, video and gaming and support for Near Field Communication technology.

The problem with Blackberry is that for a long time, it has been a “de-facto standard” for the enterprises. Over a period of time, it was forced to look at the growing market share of the other companies; most notably Apple. Of course, I was smitten by it, at some point in time, but after my Android experience, I doubt whether it is really required. Of course, it comes with it’s warts and all, but indeed, it was for the first time that I actually owned a touch phone that worked.

Hence, it is not surprising that with about an average hardware component, Blackberry should flounder. Reports of it’s “imminent demise” are probably over-rated by it’s detractors but it still capable of fighting in with the punch. This is not an endorsement (like what a twerps do on their twitter accounts); however, the major sore issue (with ANY smart phone company) is the lack of a decent after sales service.

Of course, RIM India was under a lot of cloud in recent times (it’s still not clear whether it has been sorted out or not), still is a matter of concern. Hence, even though Blackberry Messenger is a great option (surpassed by an interesting “WhatsApp” on Android), it makes reaching out to your contacts a breeze (in these so called flotsam called as “Social”).

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For long, I have felt the need to do a “consumer survey” which is motivated by real customers than the paid for shit stuff that most telecom operators crow about. It is impossible to capture data from the cross section of the user population and the retards who crowd on the forums would not be able to grasp the import of this exercise.

I realize the difficulties inherent in this exercise immediately. First and the foremost is lack of actual “complaint data”; TRAI does put up the figures online but there is a mechanism where these operators have to report back the action taken on the complaints. This is a good mechanism but I don’t see it enforced or whatever TRAI does, they are clueless idiots to make this data work for a better policy formulation.

Ditto for the existing delivery of the complaint mechanism. An aggrieved customer calls the operator in call center, is given a complaint number (not always) and no time frame for the resolution. I am presuming that their workflow is designed for the said purpose. Like any corporate organization working on “cost savings”, this is possibly “outsourced”. A smart team utilizes “dumb terminals” clogging up the bandwidth for most of “executives”. All the while, these brainless sods make the customers wait even more utilizing the spectrum.

This is a “presumption” but this workflow is bound to keep the customers “unhappy”. Billing and metering issues are definitely top of the list; unfortunately, even these thorny issues are not resolved in their entirety.

What needs to be done? Actually, this could easily be a dissertation exercise, capture and visualize the data and present a solid case report to the telecom companies. However, the implementation needs money and I am unlikely to see any movement on that count.

I could help with some possible criteria; reach me on the email (under “contact”).

One more thing. Reliance, Aircel and Airtel easily top the shit list.

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The entire article can be viewed here; although I don’t wish to skip over the juiciest parts (and something that I have always mentioned in this blog that is patently wrong with the auctions and the way it has been handled).

On First Come First Served Basis:

The Committee note that the First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) basis for the issue of Licences and Allocation of Spectrum has been followed by the Department on the argument that the announced UASL guidelines have made it open for new licences to be issued on continuous basis. The Committee’s scrutiny of the records reveal that in the Basic Service Licences guidelines, there is a reference to FCFS but nowhere in the UASL guidelines, the term FCFS has found a mention implying thereby it has no sanctity. In fact, on 24th November, 2003, the then Minister of Communications and IT had approved the Department’s proposal to give licence Spectrum on FCFS basis, but it was not codified in the UASL guidelines. Thus, there has been no such legally established principle as ‘FCFS’, at best it can be termed as a prescription to be followed for grant of licence/Spectrum…….

On Role of Media:

The Committee note that the brazen irregularities in the allotment of 2G spectrum and UAS licences were unravelled by some investigative journalists much before the Radia tapes came into the public domain. A journalist who played a stellar role in exposing the irregularities, on being asked about the sources of his information, replied that the information was collected through the RTIs and from some public-spirited insiders…..

Presumptive Loss:

….Intriguingly, neither the DoT nor the TRAI has quantified the precise loss. Unfortunately, the DoT instead of admitting an unconscionable act, advanced the plea that theoretical exercises based on economic modeling are fraught with simplistic assumptions and that no methodology can be suggested by them to calculate the loss…..The Committee feel that giving dual technology licence to the CDMA operators and new UAS licences in 2007-08 at a price determined in 2001 was not only imprudent but also smacks of a design.

Shortcomings in the Implementation aspect:

….While the first phase was implemented, the second phase was conveniently and intentionally, as subsequent events substantiate, overlooked. In the process, devising an efficient allocation formula for Spectrum alongwith an appropriate price remained unachieved as delinking the price of Spectrum from the issue of licences was given a go bye, disregarding the Cabinet decision. The Committee are deeply distressed that due to violation of the Cabinet decision and as a consequence of such deliberate omission, the issue of UAS license and allocation of Spectrum in 2007-08 at the price discovered in 2001 caused a staggering, but wholly avoidable, revenue loss…..

The Committee also desire that the price of Spectrum be delinked from the issue of licences without further delay and seek explanations as to why this important decision has not been implemented as yet…..

Role and Responsibility of TRAI:

The Committee note that the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are not binding upon the Central Government. But it is mandatory for the Government to seek recommendation of the TRAI in respect of matters pertaining to the need and timing for introduction of new service providers and terms and conditions of licence to a service provider. But the Committee are surprised to note that while seeking TRAI’s recommendation on 13 April, 2007 on various issues, the DoT did not seek recommendations on grant of new licences despite the mandatory requirement. Even though the decisions of the Government is final whether to accept or reject the TRAI’s recommendation, not seeking such recommendations at all speaks volumes for the DoTs malafide designs to circumvent the established provisions in the TRAI Act..

So now we know that TRAI basically is a useless toothless regulator.

But TRAI is not above all. So read the following:

Besides, the Committee find TRAI’s flip-flop in its recommendations also contributed towards the Department’s arbitrary and unilateral decisions. For example, in 2003 TRAI recommended that as the existing players have to improve the efficiency of utilization of Spectrum and if Government ensures availability of additional Spectrum, then within the existing licensing regime, they may introduce additional players through a multistage bidding process as was followed in the case of introduction of the fourth cellular operator.

The bad news:

One aspect that engages the attention of the Committee is the fact that worldwide, especially in the developed countries, the licensing and Spectrum related functions are actually performed by the Regulators and not by the Government unlike in India. The Committee consider such a practice as one of the main reasons for the DoT’s arbitrary decisions in dealing with the consultation process with the Authority.

The big players have engaged the Department of Telecom and the TRAI executives get exemplary post retirement benefits as fancy board members. Of course, they are there to liaise with the existing bureaucrats setting up huge questions on conflict of interests. I really don’t know whether these clauses are in built in their “rules” but if you look at the RTI applications to make their assets public, these faceless bastards need to be more accountable. Not all of them are like that but the blackest of the black sheep are bringing a huge shame to rest of the community.

Pathetic. Ours is totally a banana republic.

On 3G Spectrum (Which I personally feel has been “over-inflated”):

The Committee are happy to note that the auction of 3G Spectrum through an open and transparent bidding process has established the true value of the finite scare resource. However, as apprehension has been raised at many quarters that by paying such hefty amount to get 3G Spectrum, the successful bidders might pass on the burden to the consumers, the Committee impress upon the TRAI to keep a watch on the development in this regard and protect the interest of the consumer in tandem with the DoT.

Hope you are feeling bad enough by reading this sorry state of affairs.

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A little while back, Rajesh Jain had run a “Big Idea for India” contest. He has touched on many issues in his previous posts; there was a lack of serious debate on Broadband. This contest was open to all; I had mailed my entry to Rajesh on his email.
He had received over 150 responses for the same.

Jain announced the winners recently; in which yours truly has also figured (the names are in an random order). The contest was judged by Jain and Atanu Dey (whose blog is linked to in the blog roll in side bar). Of course, he has been a huge influence in shaping up my thought process and I owe a lot to him.

The post, in it’s entirety follows here. For the regular readers, there is nothing new because I have already touched on these issues in the previous posts extensively.

This is one answer and highly underrated option. The following scenario is envisaged:

1) Optic fibres running across to get the data without caps. We need fibre to home instead of outdated copper. Last mile access is contentious; while opening up last mile for private players is contentious, this needs to be debated. Britain has opened it up under strict regulations and British Telecom has been forced to upgrade it’s infrastructure to retain customers.

2) Heavy public investment for scalable architechture. Not 3G guzzling up spectrum but community Wifi’s (pay per use or perhap involving the municipalities making the people accountable directly for the level of involvement).

3) Create an ecosystem of open source applications to harness ideas; make it easier for people to access services. (Open Source standards promote interoperability; closed source is meant for perpetual profiteering at public’s expense).

4) Opening up the Government’s accumulated data through API’s etc; create models around it. For e.g., data from GPS installed in public transport would easily display the estimated arrival time through SMS if needed on the mobile phones. (“Hacker culture” is missing in India; most of the Bangalore flotsam is moronic army of debuggers and script kiddies).

5) Teleconferencing would make it easier for people to people contacts; Gujarat has shown the way! Why can’t India have something similar to Skype? (There is a move to have something similar in the GNU world where encryption would be based on open standards).

6) Education sector would get a boost; not only invite faculty, stream educational videos, hold tele-sessions but teach kids for a wonderful world of Internet. (Pilot experiments in Bihar/Gujarat have been well received; the idea needs scaling up).

7) Spin off benefits from e-commerce applications.

The potential is huge; if you are planning it to share with BJP, the easiest way out is to break the ISP‘s monopoly, hold TRAI responsible for execution (not DoT) and revise Broadband definition to at least 2 Mbps (UNLIMITED, WITHOUT any caps).

Thanks Rajesh!

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Opera Mini has touched over 100 million users riding on exclusive deals with various operators. It should indeed be a moment of pride for them; but at the same time, earning undisclosed revenue from Google as the default search engine.

This news comes at the heels of launch of new Opera Mail (link to their mail blog) which gives away 1 GB of free email space and full IMAP access. As a long standing customer of Fastmail (full enhanced access), I can testify for the service as near perfect. In the past 4 years, it possibly had about less than an hour of a downtime. My Opera had been conceptualized as a community based effort and has undergone radical changes in the past few years. And it has become better over the past few years of usage; interestingly, Opera has the best sync among the browsers baked right in.

Indeed, it has been at the innovation curve and nothing really beats it’s mobile offering. As a testimony to it’s growing user base, even Youporn has a dedicated option for opera mini users

Opera has done the right thing to bet it’s money on mobile offering. While it’s desktop may not be a hot property (I no longer use it because of Firefox 4), I would be on it’s on long term growth in mobile and connected devices where it is poised for a massive leap in times to come. And yes, one of the most understated technologies from Opera- it’s widgets. As standalone “objects”, they are platform agnostic; i.e. they can run on ANY platform if coded for. Much like the RSS feeds though.

I am unlikely to see any improvements in it’s feed reader in the near future (or atleast the company has not communicated anything so far). If I were to take a decision, I would market the desktop browser as a “content discovery engine”. The RSS feeds be contextually linked in form of tags (incluuding the emails) based on the text of the email/feeds coming through.

Email is the next logical option; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a basic form of email delivery through the mobile browser in times to come or at least some form of email notifications. Fastmail has the infrastructure to scale up; but I think their servers are going to be different but with the same Cyrus backend and absolutely topnotch IMAP services.

Where next? Opera, being opera, can code browsers alone. M2 Mail client is the best cross platform client out there (I think after thunderbird), and there is some talk to replicate the same “format” on the web. Nevertheless, the minimalist outlay is going to work fine though.

Since, my enhanced fastmail option lets me choose aliases (multiple though), I am a proud owner of two different aliases with Operamail domain

Way to go Opera.

Polish up your desktop browser, more (since we need the best and nothing but the best), and I would be glad to come back to it again

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The beauty of the mobile browser is that it is cross platform. I have covered this browser (for mobiles) in earlier write ups too but I think the most significant advance is the pinch to zoom that has come in Opera Mini.

I am currently upgrading the app from Android Market; nevertheless, I suspect that financial agreement with Google stays. Of course, you could always sync with Opera Mobile (the buliker cousin minus the “pre-fetching” of content), but I prefer Mini because in India, the GPRS sucks. I think Opera has a lot to gain with HTML 5 specifications. This would eliminate Flash completely and possibly deliver the videos in real time reducing the overheads in terms of infrastructure.

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Which is better? iPad 2 or Kindle?

It’s hard to decide on the specifications and my only interest to put up the post here is to mark a shift in the way Internet is being accessed in other countries. US remains a competitive market; partly because the mechanisms of delivery exist there. In India, people expect it for “free”. This is also one reason why I strongly oppose the “limited broadband” because that would affect the way users interact with the medium. However, rest assured that market is not mature enough for the numbers; there is no strong “demand” to question the pathetic supplies as yet and voice calls dominate the Indian market overwhelmingly.

Register has an interesting write up on upcoming Kindle. I remain deeply opposed to concept of “Ecosystem” which tends to track the users over a period of time to target advertising. There are credible alternatives in Open Source and in recent times, there is a huge surge of developer interest in polishing the user interface. ( FYI, everything on my system is Open Source alone barring a few proprietary codecs and Flash- I am still waiting for HTML 5 to mature so that I ditch it for good).

Kindle and iPad are ugly vestiges of ecosystem (as I mentioned above) which hardly merit attention. I think it was Amazon that has pioneered the use of a recommendation engine to it’s visitors. Apple tracks its payments through it’s iTunes interface keeping a lion’s share of the revenues. The content creators have nothing else but to gnash their teeth because iPad owners (and I would say a huge bunch of idiots and suckers) are most likely to loosen their purse strings for paying up the cash.

Hence it becomes imperative to check out what the linked article has to say.

It is not clear why Apple has delayed enforcing the rule – clearly designed to protect its own revenues, but also its position as the primary point of contact for the user’s mobile activity – until 30 June, since it already barred the Sony Reader app from its App Store last month on the basis of the same terms and conditions….Currently, its Kindle for iOS ereader app handles all ebook sales through Amazon’s own Kindle web store, with the revenue divided only between Amazon and the publishers. The more successful Apple’s tablets and apps are, the more difficult it will be for Amazon to walk away from its iOS platform – but it could whip up a dangerous level of consumer, developer and even regulatory opposition to the iPhone maker (though, as the proud owner of a closed ecosystem itself, it would need to tread carefully).

How do they monetise their platforms:

Amazon is rumoured to be planning a scheme where it will give away free Kindle ereaders, for instance, to customers who commit to certain levels of ebook purchasing, newspaper subscriptions or the Amazon Prime service. And of course, Amazon has an established retail platform and experience that commands high levels of awareness and trust, unlike the other tablet makers. It could enhance this with its own tablet because it could take its own 30 per cent cut of in-app purchases.

How is this going to affect the netbook sales:

For every 10 tablets sold, five netbook or notebook sales will be lost in developed markets, it estimates, limiting notebook growth to 8 per cent year-on-year in 2011, and pushing netbooks into a decline of 13 per cent, to 34 million units. Many areas – especially the US, western Europe, China and Indonesia – will suffer from overstocked retail channels for mobile PCs, although the iPad’s impact on emerging markets will remain minimal.

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow though I am sure that the manufacturers have built in supply chain efficiencies and they could foresee such an event. If I had piles of cash, I would enable Linux on all the netbooks and sell them at subsidised prices or give them away for free with a bundled service. Though this unlikely to happen but if anyone from the telecom industry is reading this, this is your last chance to popularize the 3G offering. Get into hardware sales, bundle it with 3G, work out the costs of supplying it to remote areas and you have assured locked in customers for say, 3 years. The specifics could be worked out but a mobile netbook with open source applications is a great “killer option”. If you choose to support Microsoft Tax (like you as assholes are capable of), this would be unviable in the long run and MS wants Windows 7 or whatever number of their crappy operating system you can imagine to run on the “tablets”. I mean who wants to deal with such demented idiots anyway?

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Here’s the vision:

Hope you enjoy it.

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If for anything, I remain obessed about Opera. True, that their desktop product is sucking up in a big way (with the random crashes and unfixed bug reports), but there is imminent launch of Opera Mini 6 (with it’s app store baked in).

It’s good to be excited about a software that makes it easy for Internet access. We are still to see the way opera mini on it’s various platforms, be disruptive.

Of course, there if Firefox for mobile; but we’d let it wait. Mozilla needs a lot of work to make it happen. I am still waiting for it’s Jetpack API to mature which would make the extension ecosystem cross platform (if I am not mistaken- much like Opera’s Widgets concept). A brilliant idea but far ahead of it’s time since the widgets can run on any platform. It’s too bad that most of the tech writers are craving about Chrome’s apps which are crappy useless bookmarks.

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I have explored various other aspects of mobile internet in recent times. It would not be worthwhile to cry myself hoarse about the pathetic mobile access in India (which I have done repeatedly) but lets take a look at how the platforms are evolving based on the Mobile version of “broadband”.

Unfortunately, this write up draws inspiration from the western markets because the traditional mobile industry in India has not matured beyond the typical value added services of ring tones. I find it really hard to swallow if someone points me towards the mobile “games”. Yes, there are enough idiots to crow about the viability of mobile games as a money spinner but we could safely ignore them.Including the myriad “research firms” that pay money to get “quoted” in mainstream Indian press and financial dailies.However, it could be different if we have something like “Indian version” of Angry Birds. (Disclosure: I have that on my Android handset and ABSOLUTELY love it. With their shift towards in-game payment options), they would be justifying the huge surge of interest from venture capitalists.

This brings Indian media into picture. Over the past few weeks, I have been interacting with some people regarding “upgradation” of their web sites. They are badly coded examples of the worst case scenario of “Indian outsourcing”. I have tried, in recent times, to make a shift towards Drupal and understand that it is a sum of all aspects that needs to work in different browsers with cross platform compatibility. Unfortunately, they don’t realize the importance of having a proper mobile access stripped of advertisements.

Hence, a “mature” access device is unlikely to make a dent in India. The success of iPad hinges more from how Jobs has been able to “distort the reality” with his marketing gimmicks and how the whole ecosystem has been designed to keep the customers locked in. However, given the form factor, Jobs has been able to hit the sweet spot; a readable touch screen with mobile access.

There are people who swear by Flipboard but I haven’t really found a good RSS reader with capability of semantic linkages. Zeta has been launched recently with a lot of promise and cluster fuck advertising but since I don’t have an iPad, it is unlikely I would do any kind of a comparison between Zeta and Flipboard. I am stuck to Google Reader because thats unfortunately, the only in-browser app that works (others are plain useless with perhaps a bit of exception to RSS Owl or Blog Bridge).

Murdoch had launched “The Daily” with a lot of hype; but a few weeks later, there are people leaving him away in droves.There has been a lot of explaining behind this because arguably the fundamental reasoning behind iPad apps is flawed. For those who are watching the media space (and betting on Indian version of tablets) are going to be highly disappointed but well, they are unlikely to invest in resources which cannot be monetised (given the huge levels of piracy and nearly absent mechanisms of micropayments in this technology backwaters of the world).

So this effectively boils down to lack of developer interest in creating applications (hey what would you get with a huge army of morons and script kiddies who can’t even code a single line of software), lack of venture capital and inability to sustain a start up. (I strongly suggest that you read Shyam’s write up on the same issue). To quote selectively:

The main problem is that the Indian market for digital goods and services is tiny. In a non-existent market, neither product finesse nor pricing can make much of a difference. There is barely enough size in the digital domain to sustain large profitable companies.

Ironically, mobile companies are the only ones to push for content. However, therein comes the “platform interest”. Would you invest money in something that works across all handsets with rival operators? Or would you invest in something that would be locked up for your own network alone? Either way, the thorny issue does not yield any straight answers.

Hence, I find the obessession with pumping up digital content a tad boring. Not because I don’t want to consume but the options are sorely limited. Eve for 3G access, companies forbid “tethering” (not that no one cares a rats ass fuck about it) but they expect the 3g phones to have gigantic screens that would solve the issue. This would also explain that one reason why the prices are so high. Apart from the sunk costs, most of the operators are well aware that Internet access on mobiles would broadly mirror the broadband access on land lines i.e. a huge mass of zombified idiots would access only Yahoo or Facebook. It cannot be wished away because they would only cater to the mass of idiots without bothering about the “outliers” like us because there is no “real space” created.

No one wants to spend money to “change the habits” for content access. They would rather fill up the channels (and “news”) with “Bollywood flotsam” and fake celebrities prancing around either naked or raved out with hollow sockets floating around in public perception. (Okay well, I am biased since I find most of them really retarded).

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I had previously written about Opera stepping in Mobile store. It has now gone live where it attempts to detect your language as well as your platform.

The other major players are not happy about it but then web is all about disruptions. They have to accept new players or ship out of business.

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So, talks have included discussion of Deutsche Telekom owning about 50 percent of a combined T-Mobile USA-Sprint, or T-Mobile continuing on their own using spectrum acquired from Clearwire to fuel further network upgrades. It’s not clear where any of this leaves Clearwire, though you can expect all of this to be sorted out within the next three to six months, and we may have some juicy Clearwire inside information shortly.
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Granted, Mediacom realized the error in part because our users were informed about their connections and started to complain. Mediacom also failed to inform users that the test was ongoing, and still hasn’t made an official comment on the matter likely due to legal concerns.
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