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Posts Tagged Mobile

Innovation Matters!

Innovation matters. Big time. And, it makes a great difference to organization performance. I spotted this interesting blog post on Techcrunch, showing some interesting analysis of the mobile handset industry. An analyst from Deutsche Bank, Brian Modoff, pulled off this interesting analysis, showing that despite a small share of handset units and handset revenues, Apple and RIM have done a stellar job of garnering industry operating profits share. Its a disproportionate share!

Here are the charts:

handsets-profits

handsets-revs

Fascinating stuff!

5 comments June 2, 2009

iPhone Apps I Cannot Live Without

iLove iPhone – despite some of its limitations. It is not only the gorgeous interface and the reliable performance I like, but it’s also about the apps which add functionality to the device. The App Store has been a great succeess, with over 25000 apps and over 800 million downloads since its launch in July 2008.

I have about 80 apps on my iPhone. While I use many of these applications on-and-off, there are some which I use daily. These are apps that I love and I would dump the iPhone if these apps were not there!

So, here’s my list:

ReQall: This is my favorite app for setting reminders and getting things done. ReQall trumps in providing a dead-simple way of adding reminders from the phone – voice. It lets you add reminders by voice by recording a message within the app and ReQall transcribes it for you. It sends back reminders in the form of emails and SMS. They even have some great pro features now. And, did I forget to mention that they have a great “Memory Jog” feature.
Evernote: Again, a top-notch app. It is a simple note-taking application which takes notes in the form of text, voice and pictures. The great things is that is supports optical character recognition. So, you can search for text right inside the pictures! The package is complete with all the various access options that Evernote provides – it is easily accessible from the web, desktop app and the iPhone app – all in sync. There are many note-taking apps, but none like evernote.
Nimbuzz: If you are not my grandpa’s grandpa, I would assume you use IM (Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN etc.). Nimbuzz provides an extremely comprehensive IM suite with support for all major IM services, VoIP over wifi and “dial-up VoIP over 3G”.
Shozu: If you are a shutterbug like me, you have the need to click and post. Shozu releases the pictures on the phone and can upload to multiple websites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Twitpic, Smugmug, Photobucket etc.
Facebook: Needless to explain!
Twitterfon: If you are a twit-addict and don’t want to dole out a couple of dollars for a paid app, this is the one for you. Great interface. Great functionality. It supports retweeting, opening of links, follow / unfollow, twitter search, viewing of trending topics and searching of twitter users by location. It also has a great little bookmarklet for the iPhone Safari browser which lets you post links from Safari.
Brightkite: I use this as an “add-on” twitter app. I use this to share interesting places, restaurants, bars or simply my location with my friends. It detects your location and can post a link to your twitter / facebook about your location on a map, with details about the place you are at.
Bloomberg: This is my news app of choice. Despite the fact that I love Google Reader for the iPhone, Bloomberg does a great job with business news. You can customize the news section and also take a look at leading indices, stocks, bonds, currencies etc. The app is slick and fast.
Wikiamo: This simple app lets me search and browse through Wikipedia in a format that’s friendly for the iPhone screen. A must-have.
Zyb Sync: If you are always worried about losing your contacts in case your phone is lost or gets “bricked”, this is the app for you. Zyb is a great app that can backup your contacts on the Zyb website. You can even edit your contacts on their website and sync back. Zyb was bought over by Vodafone and should be a very reliable service.

A lot of these would change with the launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and its various features. I am waiting patiently for a brand new lineup of apps this summer. What are your current favorite iPhone apps?

2 comments March 26, 2009

How Social Media Changed My Media Consumption Habits?

The term “social media” is not just a hype-word for me. The web has made far-reaching changes to the way many of us consume media. Here are the top 6 ways in which my media habits have changed.

From a content “consumer”, social media encourages people to also create content. So, I no longer am just a consumer, but a part of the ecosystem of producers and consumers. I write articles on my blog, create photographic content, video content etc. And, it’s not that I had a major change in my life which made me a “content producer”. It’s is the very nature of the “wikipedia economy” to make people “active”, rather than “passive” in the ecosystem.

Social media has weaned me off traditional media. I hardly read the newspaper these days. It’s quite a big “object” to hold in the hands anyway. Instead, I prefer to read all the news / blogs via Google Reader on my iPhone. It is always available, easy to use and serves me fresh content.

Not that I am a big TV fan, but I was quite sure that people cannot imagine their lives without the idiot box. But, I can see a lot changing there. More and more video content is moving to the web (Hulu, Youtube, on-demand movies etc.). Not only this makes content available on demand, rather than fixed show timings, it is also a great way of content “discovery”, rather than being tied to the content you subscribed for. Also, there are possibilities to buy specific content that you like and watch it at your leisure on the phone or computer. So, I don’t like all shows on Discovery Travel & Living, but I can definitely buy Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations through iTunes.

I have an audio cassette of one of my favourite artists, but I don’t know how to play it. With music moving to digital formats, we made the content more portable. The iPods provided a great interface to run through and organize your music on-the-go. And, then phones doubled up as your music player. Even more, now I don’t necessary have to store music, I can hear it streaming from the web legally though sites like Last.FM, Pandora etc. While the radio still is in fashion (somewhat), you have tons of web apps offering streaming radio.

The social media makes the content timeless for me. So, I am free to go back to look at the content repeatedly with ease.

Best of all, my content is no longer confined to me. It’s out there in the open – for sharing. Always available to everyone – on demand!

Many of these changes we see in this new web-driven world are very disruptive, changing attitudes, behaviour and even ways of doing business.

What changes did social media bring to your life?

9 comments February 21, 2009

iPhone – Smart Enough?

Alright, I finally managed to buy myself (and my wife) the mighty phone – the iPhone. It was a long wait, but Singtel and my ABN AMRO credit card worked hard to get me the much-awaited phone.

Much has already been written about the capabilities & quirks of the phone – whether its the elegant multi-touch screen or the lag-free user interface or the average 3G performance or the restrictions imposed by the ‘closed’ operating system. I quite like the phone. But, given that I use mobile phones extensively for much more than making calls, I do feel that the iPhone needs to grow up – just a little bit:

My basic expectation from a smartphone is ability to multi-task. For the uninitiated – simply put I must be able to listen to music, browse the web, view a spreadsheet and chat via IM at the same time. I loved my Nokia E series devices for this. Unfortunately, the iPhone just can’t do it! You can work on one application at a time.
Secondly, to customize a phone so that one is able to ‘power-use’ it, there has to be a lot of applications available. Sure, we have the Apps Store from Apple, and some of the apps are great, but the I didn’t find the assortment complete.
Again, a smartphone without VoIP capabilities is difficult to digest for me. Sadly, it is not possible to talk to people over Gtalk / Skype etc. at the moment. Hoping that Fring comes up with something soon.
Finally, I still share the gripes of so many other iPhone owners about the usual things – no SMS forwarding, no Video recording (despite being Youtube capable), no Business Cards, average PIM capabilities etc.

Really hope that we get around some of these in the not-so-far future.

Update: I am quite unhappy with the battery performance even after the 2.0.2 update. I am just getting about 2 hours on 3g data connection and about 3 hours on EDGE. To put things into perspective, my nokia E51 could be on EDGE on push mail all day on a single charge!

1 comment September 1, 2008

What I Want from Google

Google is becoming an increasingly integral part of our lives. At first, it was pure-play search and targeted ads, then came along a whole bunch of communication services like Gmail, Gtalk, Orkut, Blogger etc.. We got Youtube, Picasa, Desktop Search, Reader etc.Then, they started offering hosted services like Docs, Google Apps etc. Finally, as the mobile web took off, they got busy in bringing Google services on mobile devices. I personally spend lot of time using the Google Mobile App and the Google Mobile webpage. As Google continues to touch our lives in more and more ways, I really feel they could do a bit more for us consumers, so that we stay hooked (and click on more ads!!). Here’s a short wishlist:

First things first – let’s talk about Gmail – the killer email service that gave Yahoo and Hotmail the jitters of their lives. Now, Google provides its Gmail users complete access through POP3 / IMAP, so that they can access their mails from a desktop client like Outlook or from mobile devices. They also have a neat application for mobile phones, that brings the real Gmail experience on the small screen. But, this application misses something which is the “in-thing” today – push email or the ability to fetch email as soon as it arrives, without having to manually check mails. I think this should be an important addition to the product.
Gtalk was “love at first sight” for me. The neat, simple interface was a great relief from that of Yahoo Messenger. I got hooked. And then I wanted it on my mobile phone as well. Apparently, Google does offer a Gtalk client for Blackberry phones, but not for others. What sin has Symbian or Windows Mobile committed? I agree that there are tons of companies offering Gtalk clients like Talkonaut, EQO, Nimbuzz, Fring, Morange etc., but I really don’t feel very comfortable keying in my password on these applications. After all, I use my Gmail for receiving statements from my bank account.
Google has a wonderful collection of essential softwares which it bundles and offers as Google Pack. Can we have something like that for mobile devices? A single download that offers essential communications, productivity, entertainment and security tools.
And, how about a Google Mobile Suite – a collection of apps that provide close to full-blown (with all the limitations of mobile devices) experience of all Google services.
Currently Google allows its mobile users to access Google Docs on their devices. But, users can just view their documents and not edit them. There are so many smartphones out there in the market which suffer from the same handicap – their devices come installed with Office-like software that enables them to view, but not edit documents. How about Google removing this handicap and getting more eyeballs on Google Docs!
Google acquired Jaiku, a micro-blogging service, sometime back. Google – can you please give us some information on what are you doing with this? Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms are going to eat you for breakfast. It would be great to have a Google micro-blogging platform which is well integrated with Gtalk, Gmail, Orkut, Reader etc.
Finally, I know you have a great SMS search service. India has one of the largest number of mobile users in the world and SMS as a service is quite cheap. People do not hesitate to pay premium charges for SMS to vote for their Indian Idols or participate in a game show. I am sure that Google’s SMS service can take off in a big way. Most mobile users in India still don’t use GPRS/Internet on their phones, so SMS can play a big role in bridging the information divide. But, there are two stumbling blocks – awareness and localization. How many people know of this service? A miniscule proportion. First of all, Google should popularize the SMS-based search service. In doing so, they need to push mobile operators as well, since they pocket the lion’s share of the SMS revenues. Secondly, if they succeed in providing the service in local languages, the potential simply doubles or maybe even more. Instead of going to ITC’s E-Choupal centers to get weather information or commodity prices, farmers would get the information in their fields, in their palms, whenever they want. That’s going to be huge!

Dear Google, a little more is all we want!!

4 comments May 17, 2008

My Very Own, Personal Jesus Christ!

I had read this piece recently where I discovered a new term “micro-boredom”. Its is basically about extremely small slices of life where one is ‘bored’ or has nothing to do. The article also goes on to talk about how technology provides a much needed escape route from micro-boredom, by filling in those small slices. If you think of it, a mobile phone offers you the privacy equivalent of being in a locked room. There is just very little distance between you and the screen of the phone to allow for intrusion. I have always thought that Indian youth are just so hooked on to their cell phones (always checking SMS, checking for missed calls, doing ‘nothing’ with the phone in a CCD) because of the sheer absence of privacy and personal space in our ‘other’ social life. Personal space is now the screen.

I have my own bouts of micro-boredom and when I think of it, I love the way various companies are tapping into my ‘nothing-to-do’ space. And, it’s far from being intrusive, but is actually quite helpful at times.

I use a Nokia E62 with Symbian O/S. It helps me check my company’s emails (MS-Exchange) with Mail for Exchange and sync my phone calendar/tasks/contacts to my Outlook. Google went on to create a suite of service for the hand phone. So, I can check my Gmail, add reminders to the calendar, watch Youtube videos suited for mobile phones, catch up on Google News, check out my Google Docs and catch up with my favourite feeds using Google Reader. They even created a handy application for Google Maps, which you can download to your cell phone. It is really useful – so when I have to find out where my hotel is located in Mumbai, I know where to look for it! Then, somebody realized that there has to be a better way to browse the net on a small screen and we got Opera Mini. Ideal for browsing, Opera Mini optimizes the internet for your cell phone. I use it to update my Twitter status; send private messages over Jaiku and connect with people on LinkedIn. It also has a feed aggregator and easy management of favourites. Yahoo Go puts in a host of Yahoo services in your palms – push email, weather updates, news, calendar and of course, Flickr. I browse through my albums, catch up on old times and share a laugh with myself at times. Then there is WidSets. It allows me to add tons of widgets to my application window – Twitter, Gmail, Jaiku, Feed Reader, Weather, Sudoku and tons of other time-killing games. I also micro-blog at Tumblr. So, you have this cool application called Tumbla, which lets you post text, quotes and pictures to Tumblr. In the evening, when I get a message that I need to be in Delhi for an urgent client meeting, I use applications from Jet Airways and Yatra.com to book my flight tickets on the go. Did I mention that I like to track the stock markets? I use Markets on Mobile from Moneycontrol to get updtes on my portfolio and the markets in general. Sometimes, when I get up in the night, I even use it to see how the US markets are doing! Whenever I feel the urge to chat up with a friend, I log onto my Gtalk / Yahoo Messenger. There are tons of options for this like Talkonaut, Morange among others. Though multiplex movie tickets are pretty steep these days, whenever I feel like I use the application from Book My Show to book movie tickets. What’s more, it even allows me to choose the seats of my preference. Oh yes! I swear I use my phone to talk as well.

So the other day, someone asked me “Don’t you get bored staying by yourself?” Nah! No way! Micro-boredom has evaporated into thin air! My phone is my saviour – my very own, personal Jesus Christ.

Salvation lies in your hands!

1 comment March 22, 2008