Mobile Phone OS: Symbian vs. iPhone vs. Android

Now more than half of the world's population (over 3.3 billion people) owns a mobile phone. The competition in the mobile market is increasing with a series of OS released in quick succession. Though the chance of a single market leader is rare but the majority leader is bound to make immense profit. What makes mobile platforms simpler to predict than desktops and other general purpose computers is because it's almost completely a B2B business environment. The impact of B2B environment vs. B2C is can be seen clearly in portable computers (UMPC & Laptops). The distribution of OS in laptops is primarily a B2B decision and hence you will find no Linux laptops. The factors which will determine the leader:

1. B2 ABC of marketing
   
   1. Pricing: The fundamental difference between a B2B business and
      B2C business comes as the price of the software. Mind you I am talking about Total cost of ownership. On your desktop you can install any OS (free or otherwise) but most users do not use/get after sales service and maintenance. The condition is totally different for a mobile phone. Since you are getting a finished product, the vendor is obligated to provide upgrades and maintenance. This puts the pressure on the vendor to choose between propriety OS that provides after sales service or a "free" OS and train in-house experts.
      
   2. Integration of business systems: Integration of supply chain becomes a major issue for mobile phones. Desktops use standard OS, one size fits all but each mobile phone is unique. Mobile phones are extremely optimized. The machines are optimized for size, low power usage, high battery life, low weight and maximum features. The OS needs to adapt for the phone and quick prototypes are required by the OS developers. This requires extensive merging of supply chains. This merging is essential for faster development and feedback system. To implement this merging an extensive IT framework and collaboration managers are required.
      
   3. Supply chain management: There are two kinds of supply chain management: Push and Pull.
      
      1. Push: Push marketing is a simple chain. The suppliers add value to the product as it travels down the chain. The total cost of chain is generally born by the user.
         
      2. Pull: Pull marketing brings about excellent optimizations in the picture. Here the consumer becomes the primary master and demand commands the supply. Walmart is probably the most exquisite example of this framework.
         

      Mobile phones primarily are run by push marketing at the moment. The entire price of the product is born by the user and the choices to the user are fairly limited. It's amazing how ignorant most users are about their phones. Mobile market is already 3.3 billion whereas the total Smartphone market is expected to cross 1 billion unit mark by 2010. So even if some people prefer some particular OS in their smart phones, a majority of users still limited by the choices handed to them by their vendor.
      

2. Collaboration: The recent success of the iPhone despite several glaring flaws in the feature list and limited success of Symbian phones over the past few years shows that the major factor influencing consumer decision is still the hardware features in the phone. So the ruling of the roost will be decided by the collaborations that the software companies make with hardware developers.
   
3. Developers
   
   1. OS developers: Developers always play a decisive role in OS popularity but only if they participate in large quantities. However the chances that a public developer will contribute to an OS "owned by a company" is rare. I am not sure a lot of OS developers are going to develop Android for free. Also after the recent "opening" of Symbian platform, Android lost its edge. Nokia's existing infrastructure and a stable OS is going to give it a good advantage over Android. However how willing Nokia will be to work with other Cell phone vendors for promoting Symbian, remains to be seen.
      
      Bottom line both companies have to develop their own respective OS. The existing dominance of Nokia in the field and years of experience are definitely going to help Nokia here.
      
   2. App developers: After seeing profits made by iPhone in App development, and the millions of dollars invested by Google for development of Android Apps, this is one area you cant ignore. Free/paid apps, if easily delivered give the OS a much needed advantage. Companies are going to need much more than just money to attract developers. There are far more number of apps for Symbian than the iPhone but since iPhone apps are far easily manageable by a normal user they brought far more revenue to Apple than Symbian. Ease to install app and easy to develop SDK will be a big boon for the market. Quickly shipping out good SDK's will be crucial
      

There are several OS's with an early lead. Several features are present only in a particular OS and those features prevent migration of users from one OS to another (like exchange syncing). As the market opens up and standards are defined, soon every user will become fair game, competition will lead us to better, faster mobiles with more features. 

A Ride from Kolkata to Kharagpur

 

 

 

 

Challenges for India in 2008

As India steps into 2008 along with the rest of the world. The nation faces several problems in administration, health, finance, environment etc. Bustling population, spreading disease, malnutrition, illiteracy posing a larger thread than ever. Poised at this threshold the government and the citizens have to act quick to rise this nation from its current level to that of a secure home. This entry deals with the increasing administrative problems that are cropping up in India 

1. 
   Parliament: The largest democracy in the world also one of the
   largest(795 members)। It has a very fractured design, distributing responsibility and hence allowing faster decision making and efficient collaboration. However conflict in leadership has made it the playground for perpetual arguments instead of the powerhouse of progress. The continuous low attendance and lack of activity caused the nation loss of several hundred crore rupees in revenue in 2007. With only 46 bills passing in 2007 it was the most inactive year in last 7 years. Lack of activity and progressive leadership has one of the leading caused of this failure. 
   
2. Judiciary System: Perhaps the biggest strength of a
   democratic system is the freedom that comes with it, any violation of our rights can be challenged in the free court। The freedom to voice against the government or even the constitution. Today the liberal use of this freedom, along with lack of foresight of our government over allocation of judges has led to over 20 million (2 crores) pending cases in lower courts and over 3.7 million in higher court. The sanctioned number of judges is 14000 where as the over all demand is around 44000. The actual number is much less(around 12k). If this continues the judiciary system will collapse like here( 80 year old man dies without trial), though some hope is there. Its sad when things can be done so cheaply still we are not able to solve our problems. 
3. Bureaucracy: All across the world bureaucrats are blamed to be slow and inefficient. I will not argue these facts however Indian bureaucrats are certainly no different. Susceptible corruption and redtape, India is placed at 83 worldwide in corruption. There is a lot of scope for improvement. Till now the only improvisation suggested is to disinvest but other alternatives can be applied to bring competence in the system.
   • Pension: Of all the problems that India faces due to bureaucracy this one is one of the less obvious one. About 17 years back, India was a large slow train with crumbling large bureaucratic machinery. Several privatizations later, after India liberated the entrepreneurs from the bureaucratic chains, this bulky machinery is retiring. This is a big economic liability on Indian tax payers. Thousands of employees will retire this year creating a pension overload of lacs on Indian taxpayers. To tackle this certain initiatives are being taken 
     1. 
        Increase the retirement age to 62 from 60
         
     2. VRS(voluntary retirement scheme) to reduce the economic load
     
     
4. Tax Collection: : Less than 31.5 million people
   in India pay taxes in India। In a population of over 1.1 billion its a very small percentage. The archaic methods of tax payment and calculations have led India in this situation. This is arguably the biggest civil violation of Indian laws. You will be surprised to know that income tax in India is staggeringly high(over 30%) against 13% in Russia, 20% in Singapore etc . This violation is due to inept logs, old registry methods. It demands an overhaul of this structure to increase the tax paying population and reduce the percentage tax.

Constant work from various agents of government and more aware citizenship with an effective use of media will be required in the coming year. India is poised to grow huge with its booming economy. A urgent focus on spreading education and improving infrastructure will set the gear for India to enter the new era of development and prosperity.