Cheaper iPhone – Really now ?!?

As always Steve Jobs has worked his magic with the new iPhone 3G and we have New York Times headlines as follows:

Apple Aims for the Masses With a Cheaper iPhone – NYTimes.com

Is it really cheaper ?

• Earlier, it was $399 + $20*24 months = $879
• Now, it is $199 + $30*24 months = $919

Its funny that respected NYTimes would let a headline like this pass by…

Here is another take on the new iPhone price – “True Cost of an iPhone”.

Blogging using ScribeFire – nice tool

I just installed Firefox 3 and on a whim, installed this ScribeFire tool. It seems really simple and nifty – true Web 2.0 ishtyle

I think this might make me blog more often…

On Apple Business Strategy… How to increase profit by 20%

I have a simple suggestion to increase Apple (AAPL)’s bottom line by about 20% or $ 1.5 Billion of increased profit on top of their current $ 6 Billion earnings:

Open bundling of Mac OS X with Dell, HP, Acer & Lenovo… Imagine a “Dell Mac” !!

Here is a summary of how Apple might be able to get the 20% increase in Earnings:

• Global PC unit shipments from top 4 PC vendors (Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo) is about 120 Million
• Macs could easily become 10 percent of these PC shipments if the above strategy is followed.
• Mac OS X price is $129. Apple wont need to lower this price even for these vendors & the gross margin on OS X sales will be more than 95%.
• Any Mac OS X sales via these PC vendors will be direct profit to Apple.
• Current Apple Profit = $ 6 Billion
• Additional Apple Profit = $129 x 12 Million units = $ 1.5 Billion

20% increase in Apple’s profit and any related increase in AAPL stock price seems like a small issue… And it is !

But the bigger impact would be the penetration of Mac in the computer world. This will lead to pull-thru sales of more Apple gear – including Macs and other miscellaneous products. Of course, there might also be a small cannibalization of Mac hardware sales. As shown by the success of iPhone over other much better phone hardware from Nokia, LG, etc, Apple’s prowess is in their software portfolio. This strategy of opening up Mac OS X to be bundled with other PCs can leverage this and make a significant impact in the computer world – 30 years after Macs first made their big impact.

Now would be a good time to open up the bundling of Mac OS X to other PCs because:

• Microsoft Windows is in its weakest spot in a decade with Vista. Many people would be happy to run Mac OS X with Windows XP via VMWare or Parallels.
• With a slowing US economy (biggest Mac market), Apple is going to find it difficult to increase revenues – much less profit.
• With the success of iPods, iPhones, Apple is no longer solely dependent on Macs for their business. So, keeping OS X tightly bundled with Apple hardware is less of a strategic concern for Apple.

Most importantly, I would be able to buy a cheaper “Dell Mac”

Would a Universal currency bring us closer together ?

I just saw Sarkozy’s comment today that the strong Euro is causing economic problems in France. We’ve also been hearing about the weak dollar affecting the US. Brazil and India are also complaining about the weak dollar.

Here is a naive question I had posted earlier on Yahoo Questions:

Why can’t we use a Universal Currency ? Who will gain or lose with such a transition ?

Here are some problems that I see with the current multi-currency (Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen, Rupee..) system:

1) Currency conversions are unnecessary expenses that have to be borne by individuals and businesses.

2) Currency fluctuations are usually due to macroeconomic factors and can affect businesses adversely. Since businesses usually dont have any control over such factors, currency changes always come as a surprise to businesses (and individuals) disturbing careful financial planning.

3) In an increasingly global environment, different currencies make it harder for businesses to react quickly to business needs.
————————

Lets call our Universal Currency as “Money” or “Monies” !! Apart from solving the above problems, a truly Universal Currency can have another key benefit

*** Bring people together***. As a role model, Euro has already done this to some extent in Europe.

Leaving aside political hurdles, What are the potential drawbacks with this idea ?

 

I do understand that there are many political & economical issues before we can align everyone towards a single Universal currency. But Europe has done it successfully and many proud countries had given up their popular currencies like the Franc, Deutsch (?) Mark, etc. Here is a nice writeup on the advantages & disadvantages of a single currency – http://www.gocurrency.com/articles/universal-currency.htm.

My interest in a common currency is due to two reasons:

1) Remove wasted costs in conversions, unproductive currency speculation.

2) Psychologically it can be a huge factor in helping people feel united.

“No Internal democracy in Congress: Rahul Gandhi”

Interesting comments from Rahul – read here.

“India is a democratic country, but there is practically no internal democracy in any party, be it the Congress, BJP or any other,”

As I was saying in my earlier post “Next phase of Indian politics“, this is one of the key things that is going to change in the coming decade or two. Just like the Primary Elections in the US, Indian parties need to embrace internal democracy if they want to be relevant.

The Indian Paradox: Death amidst Growth… Just like Unity in Diversity

Two news snippets from “The Hindu” on Jan 31, 2008… The headlines and abstract speak for themselves. The articles are here and here.

Grassroots Citizen activism in India…

Some examples that I believe will eventually bubble into the political movement that I envisioned in my previous blog:

http://vijaysblog.wordpress.com/category/politics/

www.siruthuli.org/

Next phase in Indian Politics…

The next phase in Indian Politics is going to see the entry of young, educated, middle class Indians entering active politics. This is different from before.

Either the very richest “dynasties” came to power because of their connections or their privilege to focus on social problems as opposed to being bothered by the daily chores of life. Examples include the Gandhis, Scindias, Chidambaram, etc.

On the other hand, the “lowest class” (economically) of people came to power because they were oppressed for long periods of time and they struggled against this oppression. Capturing political power was a great way to improve their lot. Examples include Karunanidhi, Laloo Prasad Yadav, etc.

But going forward, young, educated, middle class is going to be the face of Indian Politics. Why ? Because the middle class is numerous in number and is becoming a strong political force, though they dont see themselves as such at present. At present, they are quite apathetic about politics instead focusing on their normal lives, savings, childrens education, future planning, etc. But a reasonable number of them are going past those issues already and are beginning to think of the environment or situation around them and about improving them.

They are going global and are able to see how their country could ideally be and are beginning to form a vision… This vision will translate to action. And political action is going to be one of the forces that will make this happen. Some examples of this are already visible – read about Lok Paritran, Lok Satta, etc.

It is going to be interesting…

My Review of Sun Secure Global Desktop Software 4.3

Originally submitted at Sun Microsystems

Sun Secure Global Desktop Software

Sun Secure Global Desktop Software 4.3

Pretty impressive technology.. But..

By Navanee from San Jose, CA on 8/15/2007

 

5out of 5

Pros: High Performance, Great Features, Price

Cons: Price, Poor Value, Documentation

Best Uses: Data Center, Cloud Computing Frontend

Describe Yourself: Business User, Network User, Value Oriented, Quality Oriented

Hi,

I just tried out SGD and was impressed with how quickly I was able to get it running and the excellent responsiveness of the GUI over a slow DSL line. The more impressive thing was how nicely it started working behind a proxy/firewall or without it.

Specifically, when the installer said, “you seem to have disabled telnet. But the ssh port is open and SGD will use it..”, I was indeed surprised. Other tools might have asked me to modify some setup .conf file.

My biggest gripe is the Licensing. Firstly it is just TOO expensive – close to the price of very low end PC. I’m still wondering if I need to consider alternatives like Nomachine-NX. Secondly, it was difficult to find clear documentation of how much one needs to pay and the licensing model.

I think Sun should take a leaf from EMC-VMWare’s book and reconsider the pricing model for SGD.

SGD is an awesome piece of technology – Don’t shackle & kill it under high price just because some competitors do it or if you think there is a market for it.

Read “Five Deadly Business Sins” by Peter Drucker below – http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113208353287697881.html?mod=2_1194_1

–navanee

(legalese)

Questions without answers on WWW ?

Recently, I was pondering (with friends S, V and P) whether we could come up with a list of tough questions for which we cannot find answers in the Internet…

Its quite interesting actually. If you removed questions of a personal nature (what was some unknown xyz person doing on 14th April 1989?) and kept it to questions of a general interest nature or even a particular area of knowledge, it is indeed hard to come up a difficult question without any answers online.

Try it ? At present, I can’t think of any great questions. But I’d like to create a list of top 10 difficult questions based on feedback….