This infographic by MBAOnline.com highlights how Samsung is catching up with Apple in the numbers game and exceeds Apple in everything, except the thing that matters – profits. A key point is that Samsung’s R&D spending is 3 times that of Apple. Implications are long term …
via MBAOnline.com
Apple’s iPhone 3GS is now available in India for less than 200 USD (Rs. 9999).
Image via Wikipedia
This represents a price reduction of 50% over the past year or so and might signal a change in strategy. Apple might be finally moving to tap the riches at the bottom of the pyramid and trying to gain a foothold in the fast growing smartphone market of India. As this article correctly points out, the iPhone 3GS is still a superior when compared to the low-end Android phones offered to the Indian consumer. Coupled with its ability to upgrade to IOS 6, Apple might finally have a winner.
Or this might just be another ‘inventory clearing exercise’ as Apple readies for the launch of the iPhone 5. Either way, one hopes that increased iPhone sales in India will lead to an improvement in the Apple Experience and service coverage available in India.
On the heels of recent news that Samsung has overtaken Apple as the largest Smartphone manufacturer, one is seeing more aggressive marketing. There was a recent deal on Groupon in Hong Kong, which offered a Samsung Galaxy SIII in return for an iPhone 4S plus 90 US dollars. While this seems quite a steal, there were not many takers for this deal. This implies that either folks are not keen on the switch (iPhone 4 s to SIII), or that there are better (cheaper!) trade-in offers available in the Hong Kong market. Note that long-term contracts are not in vogue in this market, hence contract lock-in can be plausibly ruled out as the cause for low uptake of this offer.
Image via Groupon (Hong Kong)
A multitouch screen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A year ago, Corning shared a (rather long) video on their take of the role of glass in the future. They recently released Version 2 of this video
Corning’s expanded vision for the future of glass technologies. This video continues the story of how highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world.
‘A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision.’ showcases several technologies of the future – 3D holographic projection, electro-chromatic glass, multi-touch sensitive surfaces in wall and table formats and augmented reality, all riding on the back of high bandwidth, optical fiber driven broadband.
The original video is below:
Reliance Communications, India‘s second largest telecom operator, has announced that all Android smartphones sold in India for the next two years, will come with a free bundled 3G connection (albeit, with a 1GB limited download capacity). This marks the first major competitive move by a telco in this fast growing market segment, to grab market share by providing free connections. This will help moving consumers from the slower and cheaper 2G data connections (which cost 2$ a month for 2.5 gb) to the more pricier 3G connections (which cost $15 a month for 3 gb).
Android currently rules in India’s small, but fast growing smartphone segment. With its large installed base of cellphone subscribers, it offers a huge market opportunity, which Google seems determined to tap.
Image via Economic Times
RCOM and Google have entered into a two-year deal according to which all Google-endorsed android mobile devices from companies like Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson and LG will come with the telco’s third generation, or 3G, mobile connection with 1 GB of free downloads for the first six months.
Read more at Google-endorsed Android smartphone will come bundled with a Reliance Communications connection – The Economic Times.
This infographic, by mylookout.com, details the history (release milestones) of the iOS and Android operating systems. The data includes release milestones, number of activated smartphones using each OS and app availability over time.
See the original infographic here.
Box.net (which is moving from being a cloud based storage to a cloud based enterprise sharing and collaboration platform) looked at its 8 million users and developed the below infographic – a key highlight is that mobile adoption of box grew nearly 9 times in the past year and though iOS still rules the roost, Android adoption by businesses has seen a huge boost (10x for tablets, 4.3x for phones). India remains Android land – a majority of mobile Box users access the platform using Android devices.
Image by Box
See the original infographic here.
And the parodies have arrived. Less than 24 hours after Google showcased its Google Glasses in a G+ video post, the first (pretty good) parody (by Tom Scott) is here.
Google has posted a video about Project Glass – a concept technology that enables a heads-up display through a pair of wearable glasses. Termed Google Glasses by some, this product will enable users to access Google’s growing basket of services through a combination of voice and gesture commands. This product, which is rumored to hit the market by the end of the year (plausibly in a less finessed form?) and is being tested in the wild, will provide augmented reality displays by pulling data from Google Search, Maps, and Plus, and also have calendar, contact book, music player, and video conferencing capabilities. Images of the glasses show a rather minimalistic design, thus it is possible that the glasses will connect to a base station (an Android phone perhaps?) via bluetooth for memory storage, GPS, phone and internet access capabilities.
Image via Google Plus
The rapid proliferation of smartphones demands a rethink on the IT strategy front. This article suggests that CIOs should designate a ‘CMO’, who is responsible for taking advantage of the powers of customer engagement and empowerment that are provided by mobile apps.
The first step in CIO’s mobile strategy is to create the office of the chief mobility officer and a supporting mobile architecture team.
Apple iPhone 3GS, Motorola Milestone and LG GW60 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mobile apps give rise to several challenges, including multi-channel conflicts, a deluge of data and activity, and transaction-based business process atomization. This requires changes to the business (transaction-based interactions thinking) and technology (scalable architectures) fronts of the firm’s strategy.
Read more at Page 1 Five tips on developing a mobile app strategy – CIO UK Magazine.
