Reflections

A stunning news on a news daily, relating to an App Interface of a very popular service brand, caught my attention : Uber may have been secretly recording your iPhone screen, even when the app is closed. Will Strafach, a New York-based security researcher, discovered that the taxi hailing app had received a special permission from Apple to access the screen-recording feature. The company, however, rejected the security breach fears, stating the code was installed to improve the experience on Apple Watch version of the app . = Now this is frankly stupidity on a colossal scale; accessing a user's screen even when the app is closed ... where are we going as an industry? By what stretch of imagination, strategy, morality or intelligence is this an advance? How far are we going to allow apps, internet and computers into our lives? This has now lead me to question the entire Smartphone aspect : I think there is a need for users to take their personal lives off the Smartpho...

INTRODUCTION The telecom sector has been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons – rising stress, high debt, loss making or low profitability, mergers, job losses and lot… this sector is one of the high-points of the India Growth story. For this to happen in this showcase industry seems strange from the outside… the reality is, in my opinion, the exact reverse. The seeds of the stress were sown right at the beginning ; all hints to this reality were ignored, and by everyone. I do not recall anyone pointing these, self included; though I did come close, to be honest . Yet, when I now look back with my experience garnered since then – there can be no doubt : the seeds of the problems were inherent in the model itself… SYSTEMS & PROCESSES It wasn’t, for the most part, deliberate; the decisions that were reached were all rational decisions made by rational people. They may not have been the right ones, as we know from hindsight, but they were decisions reached with a st...

Recently, we saw a very interesting, and for Smartphone and Telecom trade pundits and employees, monumental occurring – a recent report of marketshare showing that the top 5 brands in the Indian Smartphone market are not Indian. On top of this is a constant lament by Media and Telecomists {to coin a new term} alike, that Indian Handsets Brands are not making it; that Indian  manufacturing is not picking up in this industry. Let us try and place things in perspective first, before we try and understand what can be done to improve the situation; or, indeed, whether it can be improved. In this article, I focus only on the perspective, and an overall market analysis of the two markets in general terms as well as specifically Teleocm / Device terms. After that perspective, I then introduce the basics of the competitive scenario. The reason for that is you need to understand the two markets and their difference to make a meaningful comparison, as well as figure out the way forward....

UNDERSTANDING THE SMARTPHONE MARKET The market for Smartphones in India is one of the most talked-about in pink papers as well as white sheets alike, with regular articles on top and budget smartphones making headlines all too often; yet, paradoxically, it is the least understood outside the trade, i.e. those of us who are actually in the handset trade. For the pink sheets and white sheets, it is the Apples and the premium phones that matter, or the budget smartphones with a range of online as well as offline offerings being highlighted. This is a very simplistic look at one of the most complex markets in my experience, which spans telecom services, data, insurance, FMCG/D  - for a number of reasons, some known and some unlisted insofar as my reading goes. The pace of technology development is one of the well-understood reasons; as is the pricing factor. These are just of the factors that make this market such  a fascinating yet complex study. The speed of change m...