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Mobile Access : Tablets and ecosystem

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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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Kickstarter campaign for India’s Bone Business.

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Wired (magazine)

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This is “out of context” post but I would like to highlight a kick starter campaign for a journalist, whose work I greatly admire. He’s written about the “grave diggers” of India; a rather quirky issue to write but is one of the dark “underexposed” issues in India.

Scott Carney is out there to raise funds for his planned documentary but prior to that he needs to raise funds for a trailor.

You can read more about this here.

Scott has a web site and the link to his other projects is here. His book on The Red Markets is due soon around June in India (based on communication with the author). His write up appeared in Wired recently.

I appeal to all to donate generously.

You can watch the video below:

 

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After a long hiatus

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I wish I could have more time packed in the day than the alloted 24 hours. Residency is killing and about time I updated this blog too. I am slowly making a comeback to my online avatar.

I still can’t promise anything on a regular basis partly because that the Indian Telecom market has become moribund. There seems to be nothing new happening. We are not seeing any fresh initiatives as yet and the broadband scene is hopeless. VSNL has definitely cut in rates for the international bandwidth; it failed to enthuse any furious write ups even in those financial dailies that swooned over the corporate chutzpah.

Hutch was embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with Essar holdings over the sale of Mumbai licence recently. Though it did get a significant coverage, the whole issue died down a natural death in a couple of days. Mobile phone connectivity seems to have taken a hit after the intelligence agencies deemed that growing subscriber base without proper verification could hurt India’s security interests. The fall out of this was on expected lines. Once the subscriber verification could be underway, it would expose hollow the claims of the Telecom operators about their fabled valuations and the millions of subscribers. It could hurt them right between their legs and each one of them could cut a sorry figure. Except for Tata’s who have nothing to loose and were insisting that the verification indeed should be carried out.

BSNL Broadband has introduced no new tarrifs except for making some gentle folks getting mad with exasperation. We are still stuck up in the kbps mentality without making any head or tail out of it. Their customer care could take the take for easily being the lousiest idiots on planet Earth.

Mercifully, the One Laptop Per Child Project has been called off for India. Someone somewhere in the deep dark recesses of the babudom realised the futility of this approach and announced that India wont be a signatory to Negraponte’s maniacal illusions.

Open Access and Open Source still has the same acrimonious debates happening for itself without any solution in sight.

Japan is coursing ahead with the roll out of Fibre to Home connectivity. Europe is embracing Wifi in a big way. Internet is making supposed pots of money for the video hosting sites. US is about to see trial runs for WiMax with Springtel (?) planning to invest in bug bucks for the same. Gigaom has seen a transformation of all sorts and they have morphed into some kind of a online publishing company. They have a “dedicated” Indian “correspondent”, a title that was “bestowed” on me some time ago. The fat chap hasn’t lost weight (or so it seems).

Surprisingly, the entry for Tata Indicom- Looting Customers? is seeing a second rank in Google search for Tata Indicom Broadband. Given the number of comments, it seems that they are making a mess of themselves.

Last but not the least. I read about the clumsy net censorship being put across. The babus (or anyone of their ilk) brought out a blank order against blogspot, I believe. They could be easily circuvented by using anonymiser services or RSS feeds. If it isn’t laughable, what else is? They could have either ensured complete ban or else avoid being ridiculed across the blogosphere. The commies find freedom of expression to hard to bear. Luckily, your “favourite” blog wasn’t on the banned list. Either the telecom companies like being drubbed about and called names or they are being staffed by lobetomised morons incapable of acting in good faith and wisdom. I’d favour both the scenarios in equal proportions.