Archive for November 2009
Nokia – The story of an Awesomely Innovative Company getting Out-innovated
Motorola is a classic American company founded in 1928 with a history of working with Radio technology. It started manufacturing car radios and slowly started manufacturing walkie-talkies (2-way radios), cellular communications infrastructure and Wireless Phones. As a pioneer of radio technologies in the US, the largest customer of Motorola was the US government who procured radio communications equipment for the military. Even NASA used Motorola’s technology in all the human space travel and the first words spoken from the moon by Neil Armstrong was through a Motorola Radio. Motorola is also credited with many industry firsts including the launch of the first Commercial Cellular phone the DynaTAC, microprocessors that powered the early Apple, Atari and Commodore computers, the invention of the Six Sigma Process, creation of the first digital cellular system and phones in 1991 and enjoyed the title of the leading manufacturer of Cellular technology in the world until 1998. When I arrived in the US in 1994, the rich lawyers, salesmen and doctors had Motorola car phones. The form factor of the cellular phone was not compact enough to be carried around in a purse or your pocket. By 1995/96 Motorola had introduced a series of cellular phones which were not quite compact but were portable enough (Pictured here). They were very sought after in those days and the very wealthy people in the US owned them (very similar to the early days of the mobile phones in the Indian market when the phones and the service were expensive).
Rediff Losses Widen Even As It Invests In ‘Improving Customer Experience’
Rediff just announced their earnings for this quarter as reported by ContentSutra. Seems like they are tailspinning towards the deadpool.
Quoted – ” Nasdaq-listed Rediff.com (NSDQ: REDF) India Ltd today said net loss for the quarter ended 30 September widened by 84% to $2.61 million, from $0.41 million during the corresponding quarter last fiscal.Total revenues dropped 43% year-on-year to $4.19 million. Revenues from India Online dropped 45% y-o-y to $3.08 million.”
October 2009 browser stats – Firefox overtakes IE6
Quoted – “Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). Safari increased 0.18 percentage points (from 4.24 percent to 4.42 percent) while Chrome once again moved further away from Opera: it gained a worthy 0.41 percentage points (from 3.17 percent to 3.58 percent). Opera slid 0.02 percentage points (from 2.19 percent to 2.17 percent). Although IE’s decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse). Still, given that IE6 had 23.30 percent of the market in October, this means that Firefox has now surpassed it:”
Both Sides of the Table – A Blog maintained by an Entrepreneur turned VC – Awesome!
How profound? – “I think the sign of a good entrepreneur is the ability to spot your mistakes, correct quickly and not repeat the mistakes. I made plenty of mistakes.”
Add this Blog to your reading List
Live Ted India Coverage from Indiatimes.com
Very impressed with Indiatimes Coverage of Ted India. Check it out at http://ted.indiatimes.com/ Really seems like Indiatimes is being reborn. Now I hope they can fix their Integra/SSO issues. Would love to start using my Indiatimes mailbox hosted on Zimbra 
Indian Internet Industry Watch – Updated 5/11/2009
Demographics
Total Population -> 1,166,079,217 (2009 est) [1]
Age Structure -> 0-14 = 31.1% ; 15-64 = 63.6%; >65 = 5.3% [1]
Urban Population -> 28% of Population [2]
Adult Literacy Rate -> 66% (2007 est) [3]
Youth Literacy Rate -> 82% (2007 est) [3]
English Speakers as per 2001 Census -> 10.66% of population (100M) [4]
English Users (Latest Estimates) -> 33% of Population (350M) [5] [6]
* Users are defined as people that can read but cannot understand spoken English or Converse in English
Economic Indicators
GDP (PPP) -> $3.3 Trillion (4th in the world) [7]
GDP (PPP) per Capita -> $2,780 (130th in the World) [8] * the distribution of wealth is so skewed in India that this number looks really bad. If someone has data on what the middle class (~300 million folks) makes, it would be am interesting number I bet.
Technology Indicators
Internet Penetration as of Nov/08 per ITU-> 81M (7%) [10]
Broadband Penetration as of Jun/09 per TRAI ->5.3M (<1%) [10]
Venture Capital Indicators
Investment by VCs July to Sept Qtr -> US$77M [11]
Number of deals by VCs July to Sept Qtr -> 17 [11]
PS: I usually watch these numbers once a quarter and wanted to make sure I share it with the startup folks.
RIP Nokia N-Gage
I had blogged in one of my earlier articles about how wrong Nokia had got the mobile gaming market. The news today as reported on TechCrunch is that Nokia is killing its Ngage platform and the Service that distributed games for the crappiest gaming device ever built. I am hoping to make a similar post on Ovi in a year or so. Seems like Nokia’s problems are never ending.
More Reading:
Sony Ericsson XPERIAX10 based on Android Announced – May bring Sony Ericsson back from the dead
Can’t wait for this cool Android phone Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson to come to India. I want….I want…..
Why the Great Indian Media Companies will Fail on the Internet…..
Since my move to India in 2004, I have worked with several of the Telecom and Media giants in India at a very strategic level and spent a year at Yahoo! India after the Zimbra acquisition. Over time my belief that the Online Media industry in India is in big trouble has been reinforced time and again. Every single meeting I have had with stalwarts in the Media space continue to reinforce my beliefs as I can see the “cluelessness” in their minds about the online space. The big three tend to believe that their brand will carry them through the digital era and they refuse to believe that powerhouses in the worldwide Print industry have fallen prey to the smaller, nimble highly technology savvy digital companies which is what will happen in India if they fail to wake up from their slumber. While these large media companies continue to invest in their digital businesses heavily the results are shoddy. Even the true Internet players from the early days of the Internet era in India like Rediff and Sify continue to underwhelm the market with poor product offerings and declining ad sales. Let us take a closer look at the digital industry in India: Read the rest of this entry »
