The scenario has changed now.Our latest cellphone boasts of 600Mhz processor,384 MB RAM,upto 32 GB memory card and many more things….
Google Nexus One has a 1 Ghz processor.A speed i thought was just restricted to PC.
Why is the mobile becoming so smart ?
Mobile is no longer a phone its a companion and the mobile companies are ensuring that they provide you with the required features.
The buzz word these days is the ‘App’,short for applications.
After the integeration of a PDA and a phone,the ‘smartphone’ required nothing less than a revolution.

I remember that in 2005 these Apps started to come up with the symbian operating system where people around the world shared apps through the internet.
Games,basic applications,calculators etc were the favourites those days.We had a Nokia 3230 at that time and we really enjoyed putting a lot of softwares in it and that was the plus point of Nokia.No other brand was offering a similar experience.
Then came something which changed everything.The iPhone(or the iPod Touch to be precise) which changed the way world looked at smart phones.

A concept called App Store where you can download free or paid apps.Apps to do anything.From your social media to your monthly budget,there is an app for anything.Games to die for and softwares to make your life easier.
There are currently about 200000 apps for the iphone and the number is growing as this post is being written.
These apps are not just time pass stuff but has serios uses too.You can be online from anywhere,mail from anywhere.SMS might soon become a thing of past.You can browse internet through high end browsers or watch videos on YouTube.All through Apps.
Now even Google has jumped into the so called App Revolution with the new OS called Android.

Android is a very powerful OS .

Android too has a Android market (similar to Apple App Store).The total number of Apps on the market are just rising by the day.There are about 70K apps right now.
A person can mange everything through phone.Gmail,Gtalk,WordPress,FTP,Yahoo,Facebook,Twitter,Songs,Push Mail etc etc are just few apps.One can navigate through GPS and Google Maps from anywhere in the world with pin point precision.You can find information about any logo or picture in the world through Google Goggles or sail through constellations or galaxies using Google Sky Map.
There is an App for almost anything these days.On a show on Discovery Channel, a person demonstrated an App for driving a Car by just tilting your iPhone(using a Hardware interface in your car) .
Nokia as a company is facing a lot of heat for ignoring the App World.Even they have an App world of their own known as Ovi but freelance developers(the backbone of the Apps) are ignoring them due to old Symbian OS.
Nokia is a perfect example of how Apps can affect your bottom lines.
Still there is a long way to go before these Apps along with a good smartphone totally replace the need(or want) of a good laptop.TMSbee was still much comfortable writing this post on a PC rather than a ‘Smart Phone’ !

© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

We all have heard/studied/read about the Product Lifecycle(PLC).The concept says that Product like a human being has a finite life.It grows, matures and then dies.

Lets take an example.Floppy Disk is no longer available now but it was a hot cake at one time.Even till 2001-02 floppies existed in market.The product just died.

Brands on the other hand don’t exactly follow a life cycle.Brands can be immortal unless they commit suicide.Brand and product are closely related.A brand is nothing without a product or service but brand can evolve over the time.

Continuing with our floppy example,Sony,Seagate all had their floppy disks,but the brands didn’t die after the death of floppies.

Sony today is preparing market for BluRay.Seagate is a market leader in hard disks.

The brands lived.Coca Cola is a brand that is immortal.Brands who realized that they need to evolve survived, rest have died.

There were brands in India like Campa Cola,Gold Spot etc,today they have died and are no more.

Either they were killed by the bigger brands or customers rejected them.If Campa Cola could have gone into a slightly different beverage market,they could have survived.Parle did survive as a brand.Today its a big brand.

Thums Up as a brand could not be killed even after Coca Cola tried its best because the consumer demanded the drink.

Some years back,there was a series of TV commercials in India for a brand called Home Trade.The ads featured Sachin Tendulkar,Shah Rukh Khan,Hritik Roshan but the brand was never heard of after the ads.The brand died instantly.

So do brands die ?

Yes and No,Brands are not created by TV commercials or campaigns,they are for the consumer/customer to test and trust.Once a name is in customer’s mind,its a brand.But the life of the brand would be decided by the fact whether customer sees the brand as a friend or a foe.

e.g. Whenever Maruti comes out with any new car,people accept it and trust it because Maruti as a brand is a friend to many target customers.Same is the case for Apple as brand.

Many would argue that once a brand is established,its immortal.But its not the case.Luna was a brand which was highly valued and popular, today the moped is no longer in production nor any other vehicle is produced with a Luna logo or brand.

So Luna is alive in history and not in reality.

Brand unlike a product can live for ever,if managed properly.Here comes the role of Brand Management.

Brand can undergo a physical change too.Like many brands keep changing their color,the look,the identity or image.This ensures freshness and long life.

Coca Cola,Nike,Adidas,Google,Microsoft are kind of brands which will ‘never’ die(hopefully) because they have evolved over the time,adding more products to their arsenal.

If a brand keeps evolving,it will never die,It can’t.

But it can commit a suicide.

What Say ?

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© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

iPad is not a laptop,its not just an ebook reader,its not a phone,its not just a music player,its just as Apple calls it the iPad.
I own an iPod Touch,the first of such black,single button smart devices by Apple.I am happy with it and use it to the fullest.When i see an iPhone,it just looks the same,same look and feel,same functionality only that it can be used to make calls.
Now when i saw iPad on net it looked like an inflated iPhone(or iTouch).

Jobs with iPad

It again has a single Home button with Multi-Touch interface very similar to the previous devices.

So Does Size Matter ?

If i have an iPod Touch or an iPhone,buying an iPad is a very tough decision.Apple seems to be over obsessed with the idea of having touch based smart devices.Similar was the case with Nokia once.Which ever phone or model you buy in a price range,you get same Symbian interface.Symbian 60,40 etc were part of all the phones that were launched by Nokia.Just the shape and sizes were different else internally all were the same(Line Filling).

Apple has decided to take on Amazon’s Kindle with its iPad in one way or the other.

Critics have not taken iPad very well.The reviews are mixed.Instant comparison with Kindle is being done.

But now i think is this new category of smart devices encroaching laptops ?

In the first Press Conference,Steve Jobs demonstrated how the iPad is used for surfing the Web with Apple’s Safari browser. He typed an e-mail using an on-screen keyboard and flipped through photo albums by flicking his finger across the screen.

The CEO says the iPad will also be better for reading books, playing games and watching video than either a laptop or a smart phone.

There can be a lot of questions asked to Steve on the last claim.Is iPad better than a full fledged laptop when it comes to performance,usability,scalability and ease of use ?

The price of iPad is ranging from approx 499 $ to 800$.Should i buy an iPad or a netbook which might come at a lower price and can perform tasks as i need.

With Apple iPad,I am stuck to Apple’s apps(which don’t come for free majority of time).I would be stuck to a non flash based browser.iPad doesn’t even support multitasking like a basic PC(or even Mac for matter of fact).

These kind of tablet PC is not a new concept or a product.Microsoft introduced it in 2001 with little success but Apple has a history of marketing things in a way no other have done.

Amazon’s Kindle has already created a lot of buzz in the market in recent times.Critics claim that Its an Apple’s extension into Kindle’s territory.

But iPad seems to be an incomplete product as of now.

The Worst Part

1) No Camera

2) No multitasking

3) No USB

4) AT&T locking for 3G

5) No flash support

6) Poor name

Apple is positioning it as a breakthrough product which is better than a smartphone or a laptop but with above list it seems Apple has tried to reinvent the wheel with iPad but donno how well ?

Check out Steve Jobs unleashing iPad to the world

Now lets see how the actual market tackles the product.Would it get the same respect as they gave to  Amazon Kindle or would iPad be Kindled off ?

HP Slate is also just around the corner.Similar product,similar category and similar targeting.Will HP learn from Apple’s mistakes ?

What Say ?

© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

So whats the offering ? Is it just another ‘me-too’ touch phone in the market or is it THE phone we had been waiting for ?
If it has Google’s name attached to it,it ought to be good.The initial reviews are good.



Analysts say the phone(to be sold directly to consumers) is not expected to dramatically alter the carrier-hardware vendor relationship the industry relies on, nor is it likely to yield a revenue windfall in the short term, though executives said it could be profitable.

Google plans to use what it calls a “superphone” (the first of many types of smartphones that it will make) to expand its reach from the PC to the mobile world and ensure its online products and ads get prominent placement on a new breed of wireless Internet devices.

The highly anticipated Nexus One, which marks the first time the 11-year-old Internet search titan has designed and sold its own consumer hardware device, could provide Google with a viable challenge to the iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

After iPhone came into the market,it witnessed many of its touch clones(not cousins) bombard the market.Each and every cell phone manufacturer(even Nokia) came up with their own ‘iPhone’.

All phones without keypads,rectangular in shape,with normally one (or max 2-3) button were common in the market.

Now the next question is Whats the price and Where is it available ?

The Nexus One is available “in large quantities”  at Google.com/phone. An unlocked GSM version of the phone that will work in most countries is $529.

Google is also offering a subsidized version of the phone – also unlocked – through T-Mobile for $179. The service plan offered by Google is 500 minutes/unlimited SMS/unlimited data for $80/month. T-Mobile’s termination fee is $200, and some users might be tempted to buy the T-Mobile version and terminate immediately, paying just $379 for the unlocked phone. Google says that users terminating too soon will be charged the full price of the phone, however. But even the T-Mobile version of the phone can be used overseas on trips by slipping in a different SIM.

Google will ship the unlocked version of the phone to customers in the U.S., U.K., Hong Kong and Singapore. In the Spring they say they’ll add a CDMA version of the phone through Verizon, and set up a European store with a carrier plan via Vodafone.

U.S. users can also use the unlocked phone with AT&T, although the phone’s radio isn’t able to use AT&T’s 3G network.

The bad news for India right now is that its not available in India.

The Nexus One is an important milestone in the smartphone market. This is a software company, frustrated with making compromises with hardware manufacturers, that has taken the product bull by the horns. HTC makes the phone, but the branding is mostly Google and it’s clear that they directed every aspect of the development of this phone. It’s Google’s vision of the perfect Android device, from the huge and beautiful screen and massively fast Snapdragon processor to the software elegance of Google Navigation, Live Wallpaper and the Voice Keyboard. When combined with Google Voice there is no phone on the market today that can touch the Nexus One.(Source : TechCrunch)

After reading and researching about Nexus,it seems to come up as the biggest competitor for iPhone.The “smartphone” market which was witnessing a battle of sorts between iPhone and Blackberry is set for a War now.

So how would Nexus One fair in the market ? Would it bite Apple or RIM where it would hurt them the most ? Is Microsoft observing from the flanks ?

Lets wait and watch.

What Say ?

© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

Lets have a look at this commercial of Windows 7 which came much before its release.

Just give attention to words the kid says in the end ,” I am a PC and more happy is coming !”

This reminded me the ever going war between PC and MAC depicted mostly in the PC Vs MAC ads from APPLE.

After seeing the above ad i was really waiting for the Apple’s response to Windows 7 and a few days back they responded and in what manner !
Just check out the ads out of the many ads released by Apple MAC.

BROKEN PROMISES

The first Ad ‘Broken Promises’ is awesome.I could not help but laugh on Microsoft.Microsoft has done this in the past.Windows 7 is mainly being positioned and perceived as a better replacement for Vista.The reviews,developers,testers every one is comparing Windows 7 to Vista.No doubt they are praising 7 but its not a paradigm shift in the OS market.Windows 7 is quite similar to Vista as in look and feel and many other features.
Its more compatible,more secure and more stable but is not much different from Vista as far as an average windows user is concerned.Now with 7 users are again on cross roads whether to stick with current operating system (as many people did when Vista was launched) or upgrade to 7.Here is where Apple strikes hard.
The next ad in the series does exactly that.
They say when you need to upgrade,redo everything,move all your stuff,then why go to a PC(windows),why not a MAC.

TEETER TOTTERING

This ad shows a windows XP user moving to a MAC.

Yet another ad MAC shows that people are moving to MAC rather than Windows 7.

PC NEWS

Ads and jokes apart,I and majority of my friends are Windows Users.I currently use Vista and would definitely try Windows 7 as soon as i get the chance.

Windows 7 can give Microsoft what Vista could not.Lets wait and watch.

Meanwhile enjoy more Apple Ads here and CNET.com review which says

The good:Strong design and Microsoft don’t always go together, but they do in Windows 7. Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they’re a pleasure to use.

The bad:Performance is still hit-or-miss in Windows 7. At the ripe age of seven, Windows XP still performs better in some categories.

The bottom line:Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it’s where Microsoft needed to go. How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.

What Say ?

© 2009 – 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

Something similar has been done by HCL with their latest laptops ‘ME’.The commercial highlishts the same fact of personalization through the laptop.My Music,My Way etc.

Wipro also had launched their Ego laptops sometime back.

All three laptop brands have one thing in common i.e.You,me,us.

In the morning i found my TOI with a yellow Front page.It was actually a Yahoo! ad which said ‘The Internet is under new management.Yours.Its Y!ou.’

Why are all these companies giving so much stress on personalization ?

Why all of these are technology companies ?

The answer to second question is a bit obvious.The products made by such companies give us the power to bring about a new change. A writer can share his views on his blog,a musician can make music on his laptop.A small time movie buff can make a movie and share it with the whole world.So these companies are banking on that and are marketing these product with a touch of You and Me in their products.

I always heard that famous line ‘Customer is the King’,but now i feel that the time has come to make him feel as one.
Currently its fresh,its helping build a nice brand image for the companies.I just wish that this concept should not become repetitive and redundant.I don’t wish to see a soap or an undergarment company using a similar concept to sell their products
After having said this,I think why not?
What Say ?

© 2009 – 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.