Microsoft acquires Nokia's phone business

Almost a year back I wrote about Nokia’s chances of a possible revival. However, the just announced acquisition of Nokia’s mobile business by Microsoft came as a total shocker. It was a parting shot by  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to the tech world. After a somewhat turbulent 13-year run,  Ballmer is to retire from Microsoft . Ballmer’s  attempts in the past to get his hands on mobile device business has been disastrous. With the acquisition of Nokia’s mobile business, I hope Ballmer has not put the final nail in Nokia’s phone handset coffin.

Back in 2007, an eccentric Ballmer had pooh-poohed Apple’s entry into mobile phone business.  His take was that apple phone was priced heavily and it did not have a key board for handling emails. The success of the iPhone had proved Ballmer wrong. Yes, Apple iPhone was priced heavily but Apple proved that every cent spent on an iPhone was worth it and consumers did not care about the price if the product was filled with innovative technology and ease of use. And with a plethora of apps to download from Apple app store , the Apple gadget demonstrated boundless capabilities. Ballmer in his 13 years tenure as CEO failed to capitalize on several new consumer technologies and lost out to Google and Apple.

With the acquisition of Nokia phone business, Stephen Elop, the Nokia chief executive who was hired from Microsoft in 2010 will transfer back to his former employer. Elop entered Nokia like a trojan and as a first step steered Nokia’s adoption of windows mobile software in its Lumia range. A bold step by Elop but with just about 4% market share in phone software, windows mobile software just did not make the cut. To Microsoft and Ballmer it was a desperate attempt to establish a foot print in the mobile business. We all know Microsoft could not make a mark in the gadget segment beyond its successful Xbox game consoles. However it did make sense to Nokia especially when it was struggling under huge financial losses.

Finland’s greatest success story is over and finns are trying to make sense of what’s left with some even vowing to switch to a rival phone such as Samsung. You can’t blame them. At its peak in 2000, Nokia generated 4% of Finland’s gross domestic product and Nokia was a national pride.

Could this deal be similar to the failed takeover of Palm by HP? Could Microsoft pull off a surprise with new innovations on Nokia phones? Only time will tell. Let us wait and watch.

Solar Scam: Could it eclipse a sunshine industry in Kerala?

While Kerala is still reeling under a scam termed as ‘Solar scam’, the guts of a lad who approached me recently to consider installing solar panels to bring down my energy bills totally took me by surprise. I asked him why at this juncture one would market a product when hearing the very term ‘solar energy’ raises many eyebrows? He said calmly that he is aware of the present issues and explained the business model to me convincing me that no upfront investment is required.  Payment is only required after installation of the solar energy infrastructure and after I am totally satisfied with the result. Sounded like a fair deal and his explanation put me at ease as my apprehension lowered considerably.

As one politician in Kerala puts it ‘Solar energy has become a dirty term now’. A fraudulent solar energy company which used 2 women to create extensive political contacts and conned many has been hogging the headlines in the media.  The turn of the events had all the ingredients of a soap opera such as women, sex and politics to keep everyone hooked. The question now is, could the solar scam eclipse a sunshine industry?  Despite all the hue and cry, the total sum Team Solar could raise by offering to install power units was less than Rs 10 crore going by the complaints from cheated customers and prospective business partners. But the damage the scam has done to the solar energy sector, a fast growing industry in Kerala, is incalculable.

An electrical engineer who recently set up a solar energy solutions start-up with his peers had trouble finding office space in Kochi as building owners suspect some sex scandal.

Solar energy had emerged a sunshine industry in the past five years because of a high level of public awareness about green energy and thanks to government support. Kerala’s draft solar energy policy aims to generate 500 MW by 2017. Last year’s monsoon failure and this summer’s long power cuts gave a boost to solar energy.

I strongly feel that one should not allow a few con (wo)men to ruin the prospects of such a high growth industry. It will be a shame if multinationals wanting to invest in this sector and young engineers wanting to launch start-up shy away from this high potential business segment.

Oh My God

Well folks, it has been a while since I updated my blog. A number of things have kept me busy over the past few months and hence I have had no time to get my act together and update my blog.

What prompted me to find sometime to write this entry is after watching recently the movie ‘Oh My God’ a bollywood comedy film. I usually have very little expectation on Akshay Kumar starrer movies but I was pleasantly surprised to find this movie taking an unconventional route from  usual hindi movies.

The plot of the movie revolves around the character Kanji Lalji Mehta played by Paresh Rawal a middle class Hindu-athiest who owns a shop that sells Hindu idols and antiques. One day, a low frequency earth quake destroys his shop and the movie goes further about how he fights against all odds to get compensated for his loss. When his insurance company declines his claims citing reason that damages caused by natural calamities classified under  ‘act of god’ is not claimable, Kanji files a law suit against god, implying a fight against godmen who accumulates wealth from the common man. What a novel concept.

At a time when a set of fraud godmen commercialize religion reducing God into an industry, the relevance of the subject is admirable. Questioning the dangers of blind faith, the film unearths several hypocrisies deeply rooted in our society and it is thought provoking.  It highlights rituals like, in the name of feeding god, how devotees pour several  thousands of litres of milk that go wasted in some temples when 100’s of less privileged people wait outside for a single meal.

This movie showcases the various myths, outdated traditions and customs of most of the religions, which have lost their significance during current times. However, people in almost all religions and faiths are still not able to get away with them and blindly follow so many things in their life without questioning the significance of the same. Due to such blind following, most of these are proving to be detrimental to the human life giving a scope of proliferation to all those false prophets and priests who are capitalizing on the lack of knowledge of truth of the devotees.

When spirituality overtakes humanity it just serves no purpose at all. Spiritual paths and practises that distance us from what it means to be human are not good for humans.

The message here is, believe in God but not blindly. while following regular faiths of visiting temples, or other religious places come out and help those who are in needs.

Gangnam style - The most watched viral video on the planet

A hugely popular video and currently a rage among youngsters and elders alike is gearing towards the most watched viral video on the planet. It has been predicted that in all likely hood, the South Korean singer PSY's viral video Gangnam Style will hit 1 Billion views on youtube by the end of 2012, a feet that has never been achieved by any artists. Channelmeter a popular site that tracks viewing statistics of youtube videos, predicts that Gangnam Style's viewership will surpass that of Justin Bieber's hit video 'Baby'. 

One may be wondering as to what is the secret of success of this particular song and its accompanying video? Firstly let us analyze the video in a little more details. 

Here is the synopsis of the video. PSY is lounging at what looks like a sandy beach, but the camera zooms out to reveal he is actually at a playground. The video alternates between the playground, where a boy dances next to him, and a row of horses in stalls, where PSY performs his signature "invisible horse dance". PSY is shown horse-dancing on the roof of the ASEM Tower before the camera zooms out to reveal the Trade Tower in the background. As PSY (and two girls) walk through a parking garage, they are pelted by pieces of newspaper, trash, and snow. At a sauna, he rests his head on a man's shoulder, while another man covered in tattoos is stretching. He sings in front of two men playing chess, dances with a woman at a tennis court, and bounces around on a tour bus of seniors. The scenes alternate quickly until there is an explosion at the chess players. PSY walks towards the camera, exclaiming "Oppan Gangnam style". He and some dancers perform at a horse stable. He dances as two women walk backwards. He dances at the tennis court, a carousel, and the tour bus. He shuffles into an outdoor yoga session. He dances on a boat. The camera zooms on a woman's buttock, then shows PSY "yelling" at it.

At a parking lot, PSY is approached by a man with a red Mercedes-Benz SLK and a yellow suit; they have a dance duel. He then appears in an elevator underneath a man who is straddling him and thrusting his pelvis. The man in the yellow suit gets in his car and leaves. In a subway cabin, he notices an attractive young woman dancing. At one of the train stops, he approaches the girl in slow motion, and she does the same. Both scenes alternate quickly till they start to embrace. He then tells the girl "Oppan Gangnam style", and they horse dance along with some others at the train stop. He also surfaces from a spa and horse dance across a pedestrian crossing.

PSY sings to the girl at a night club as people in all sorts of costumes walk behind them. He raps "seriously" in an enclosed space, but when the camera zooms out, he is actually sitting on a toilet with his pants down. PSY and a large group of dancers do the horse dance and strike a final pose. After some additional footage of the dance duel, PSY says, "Oppan Gangnam style", and the video finishes with a cartoon graphic.

The video has enough ingredients to keep you hooked. You can't help but sit and enjoy the video over and over again. It is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Call it goofy, wacky or even vulgar. Endorsements from prominent figures like the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, British Prime minister David Cameron and Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt are no mean feet and tremendously helped further popularize the song. 

"Gangnam Style" is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam district of Seoul, where people are trendy, hip and exude a certain supposed "class". The term was listed in Time's weekly vocabulary list as a manner associated with lavish lifestyles in Seoul's Gangnam district. PSY likened the Gangnam District to Beverly Hills, California, and said in an interview that he intended a twisted sense of humor by claiming himself to be "Gangnam Style" when everything about the song, dance, looks, and the music video is far from being high class.

People who are actually from Gangnam never proclaim that they are—it's only the posers and wannabes that put on these airs and say that they are "Gangnam Style"—so this song is actually poking fun at those kinds of people who are trying so hard to be something that they're not.

—PSY

The song talks about "the perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to get wild." 

As for the genre of the song itself, it has been said that the song is a fusion of LMFAO's synth based party music and Ricky Martin's Latin dance music with some South Korean charm thrown in. The outcome is a lethal combination of absolute music madness.

Whe cares if the dance moves are goofy, the music video is far from being standard and song's genre is a combination of several artists' work you have heard in the past. None of them matter as long as it gives sheer fun for nearly 5 minutes. Isn't that all of us need?

So put your worries aside and make some dance moves in Gangnam style!

Kingfisher airlines - What went wrong with the king of good times?

King fisher brand has always been synonymous with good times or so what we thought. As the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced the suspension of flying license of Kingfisher Airlines on 20 October 2012, seven years after it commenced operation, the already financially crippled airline came to an abrupt halt.

The  good times can not last for ever. Can it? Once voted the best carrier in India, the business model of Kingfisher Airlines was always a recipe for disaster. At least that is what the media reports. Its flamboyant owner Vijay Mallya has been the target of media bashing ever since troubles surfaced in Kingfisher airlines.

KFA was an airline for people with a taste for luxury.  Fliers were treated to expensive wine, quality food and best entertainment facilities even on domestic flights. The airline staff were the best paid in the country until they stopped receiving their salaries from early 2012.

If everything about the airlines is so good, what could have gone wrong? Mr. Mallya wanted every one to have a good time. There is nothing wrong with that. Well, it would have been ok if the money splurged was from his own pocket. He borrowed money from the banks. The airline has never made profits to sustain in the business. No body is going to give Mr. Mallya a blank check to splurge forever. The airline’s in-flight service standards were set too high to maintain for a long time which made it out of bounds of the country’s biggest consumer section , the middle class.

When the going gets tough, the tough goes partying. Mallya, an industrialist and a liquor baron known for his flashy lifestyle and lavish parties,  is away jet setting in his private jet.  KFA is saddled with a loss of Rs.8,000 crore and a debt burden of another Rs.7,524 crore, a large part of which it has not paid since January. It was declared a non-performing asset (NPA) by bankers earlier this year. Kingfisher's lenders include banks such as SBI (State Bank of India), Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, IDBI to name a few.

Every individual is plagued by hard times, but how one goes about it is a matter of one’s position in the society. We begin with the aam admi who are identified as the ones who do their grocery shopping with ration cards instead of visa cards. These modest, hardworking people pray that they should be blessed to earn enough money to afford two square meals. Then you might belong to the class who constantly wail about their back-breaking work schedules, spend most of the days in a cubicle. These hard-working but not always modest people pray solemnly before an idol with several incense sticks: each stick denoting a 1000 rupee increment in their salaries. Next in line are the Page 3 elites whose idea of a prayer is to brainwash the Gods to take their side by offering golden doors to guard them at night in exchange of financial blessings. No wonder the incense sticks always take a back seat in front of god.

That is exactly what Vijay Mallya did recently to wave off his financial problems. His latest offering to god is a 2 kg gold-plated door for a temple of Lord Subrahmanya at a cost of a whopping Rs 80 lakhs.

After a bit of deliberation, one does feel regretful for Vijay Mallya. He had such a fine thing going. He was raking in billions from the liquor industry. And then he was an unfortunate victim of the ‘aviation virus’, infected by the bug that once bit Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic. And then he met the perpetually unlucky Capt. G.R Gopinath. Anything Capt. G.R. Gopinath touches turns to dust. He palmed off his worthless Deccan Airways to Vijay Mallya.

Things took a new turn when Vijay Mallya squandered away some more money to buy IPL Cricket team called Royal Challengers. Whatever liquidity was remaining was sucked up by the IPL cricket team. Whatever money Vijay Mallya made out of the liquor business snatched away by Kingfisher and Royal Challengers.

But what is more worrying is that Vijay Mallya has become an “inspiration” for other businessmen as well and let to their ruin as well. The latest casualty is T. Venkattaram Reddy, who was such a successfull and sober businessman, who created the Deccan Chronicle empire. However, after he was bitten by the “Vijay Mallya bug”, and splurged millions on the “Deccan Chargers”, a motley team of cricketers. Money which ought to have been spent on expansion plan for Deccan Chronicle was spent on having late night parties with celebrities. To make matters worse, T. Venkattram Reddy even splurged money on an aviation company called Aviotech, a chartered flight service.

Well, the predictable happend. To tide over his liqudity problems, T. Venkattram Reddy allegedly committed fraud and forged share transfer documents, meant for pledging with the lenders. Lenders of Deccan such as Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Canara Bank, Corporation Bank and Yes Bank stare at the spectre of losing a substantial part of their lending (as high as Rs 4000 Crores).

So what is next for Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher airlines? Would raising a few thousand crores rupees salvage the flawed business model?  A foreign partner taking a stake in the airline may not help matter much either unless the business model is overhauled. Kingfisher needs an able leader to fly the airlines and unfortunately that able leader is not Vijay Mallya.

The rise and fall of Nokia

Unless you have been living in a cave, chances are you would have used one of the above phones manufactured by Nokia.

Not so long ago, the 13-note ringtone of a Nokia handset was the de facto soundtrack of the mobile revolution. The world's largest cell phone maker for more than a decade, the company was a leading innovator in both design and technology that helped bring wireless life to the world.

Before it became a dominant player in mobile, Nokia was a shapeless conglomerate that had manufactured everything from paper pulp to rubber boots to cables. In the 1980s, its CEO decided to try and latch onto the boom in consumer electronics, including handsets, which led it to team up with a pair of Finnish telecoms on an undertaking that would change its fortunes, as well as the future of the cellular industry. 

That project was the first digital telecommunications network, known as the GSM. At the time, Europe was dominated by a balkanized mess of analog mobile networks that varied country to country. This setup presented a logistical nightmare for companies in the business of making phones, which would have to build different models to meet the specifications of each individual market. As far back as 1982, engineers had been trying unsuccessfully to unify the continent under a single system. Nokia and its partners managed to get the network up and running in Finland by 1991. That year, the country's prime minister used a Nokia phone to place the first ever call on a commercial GSM Network. 

GSM took off -- not only all over Europe but also in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere.

All of this might just sound like neat history for tech nerds. But the change to digital had profound impact on phone technology. Perhaps most importantly: It enabled text messaging. Because Nokia had invested so much money and research into digital networks, it was ready to dominate markets where it was adopted. By 1998, Nokia was the leading handset maker in the world, with more than 22 percent of the global marketplace. It would peak at around 40 percent in 2008. 

Nokia won by offering customers phones that were more advanced and better dressed than their competition's. Unfortunately for them, they weren't ready to do the same when it came time for the next transformation of the mobile industry -- when Apple convinced customers they should all carry small computers in their pockets instead of boring handsets. 

It's tempting to try and characterize Nokia's failure as a classic instance  of the "innovators dilemma" -- the theory that path-breaking companies often focus so hard on protecting the market which made them successful that they miss the next big thing that will disrupt the market. And to some degree, Nokia was guilty of sitting on its laurels. For instance, it missed out on the flip phone trend that helped revive Motorola's fortune early in the aughts. But it wasn't late to the smart phone game. As early as 1998, the company was talking about "putting the internet in every pocket." And in 2007, the year Steve Jobs unleashed the iPhone on the world, Nokia fans lined up outside stores to buy the company's new N95 smart phone. 

The execution simply wasn't there. The design wasn't as appealing to shoppers. The operating system, Symbian, was clunky. Apple got the formula right, creating a phone that not only doubled as a fashion accessory, but also became the defining consumer item of its age. Samsung followed suit with its hot-selling Droid-powered models. Nokia, in turn, focused more and more on selling commoditized phones in developing countries, which increased their market share, but did little to improve their long-term outlook as more of the world embraced iPhone-style devices. 

Nokia's Lumia 900, which runs on Microsoft's Window's 7 mobile operating system, seems to have recaptured that combination of elegant function and design that once defined their best products. But sales have been slow, and it may not be enough to save the company from its immediate problems.

Can Nokia ever bounce back again? Some analysts believe yes.  Windows mobile operating system is projected to expand in market share more than any other. The Android system from Google is expected to decline the most. Samsung is reported to be looking at the Blackberry 10 from Research-in-Motion. Even with the manifold weakness of RIM, Samsung needs to look beyond the Android particularly after its recent loss in the Apple v  Samsung court case.

The table below lays out the findings from the research of the International Data Corporation

Worldwide Smartphone OS Market Data

Smartphone OS	2012 Market Share	2016 Market Share	2012 - 2016 CAGR
Android	61.0%	52.9%	9.5%
Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile	5.2%	19.2%	46.2%
iOS	20.5%	19.0%	10.9%
BlackBerry OS	6.0%	5.9%	12.1%
Others	7.2%	3.0%	-5.4%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	12.7%

Secondly, Nokia still sells the second most mobile phones in the world.  Nokia feature phones sales are still very desirable in countries such as India and Indonesia.

Lastly, it is easier for companies at the lower levels of a sector to move up with new products than it is for the elite to begin to offer stripped-down versions at cheaper prices to the masses. The car industry demonstrates this: Toyota started off selling economical cars before introducing the Lexus. The same with Volkswagen. But efforts by BMW, Mercedes etc to sell cheaper models to a broader class of consumers have all flopped. It should be easier for Nokia to sell more advanced smartphones than it will be for Apple to market a low cost version of the iPhone, if it would even choose to go that route.

Will you ever buy a Nokia phone again? Who knows? Many mobile makers disappeared from the market as fast as they appeared. But Nokia stood the test of time. Nokia synonymous with popularity still stand a chance to stay afloat much longer.

Barfi - Hindi movie review

Writer/Director Anurag Basu gives us a visual treat with his latest offering Barfi. The movie depicts love through the emotional expressions of its lead characters. It has plenty of goofiness, pranks, moments of laughter,

Set in Darjeeling in the ’70s, the film is essentially about Barfi’s (Ranbir Kapur) relationship with the two women in his life – Shruti (Ileana D’Cruz) and an autistic Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra). Shruti falls to parental pressure to marry a ‘normal’ man, but cannot come to terms with the fact that she is still in love with Barfi.  The film revolves around a series of events in which all three characters discover what love really is. The movie unfolds through the eyes of the various characters whose life has been touched by Barfi, and there is enough mystery in the story to keep you hooked.

Most of the dialogues come in the form of narration, but the scenes are so beautifully crafted that you don’t really miss the dialogues at all. Anurag Basu has put his heart and soul into the film. The Chaplinesque humour is refreshing, and the situational comedy is adorable and entertaining.

Ranbir Kapoor is a pure joy to watch. He has proved yet again that he is a force to reckon with. You can not imagine anyone else but Ranbir who could have pulled such a brilliant act. Priyanka’s de-glamourised role as an autistic girl is very convincing. Hats off to Priyanka for her brilliant performance. Ileana who has more screen space than Priyanka also did an excellent job. Though her character delivers minimal dialogues in the movie, she is very expressive.

There are moments of sheer joy on certain scenes. In a certain scene the release of water bubbles that envelopes fire flies, a drawing on a canvas initially fools you to think Barfi does the drawing on the canvas, Barfi’s goofy act with a stuffed dummy to name a few.

The other highlight of the movie is the music by Pritam. Pritam has composed one of the best soundtrack of his career. The song titled “Aashiyan” leads the pack.

Barfi  is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise repetitive masala plots often seen in Hindi movies. The movie is crafted well and it is a cinematic treat. One must appreciate the courage for chosing a plot that revolves around a speech and hearing impaired lead character paired with an autistic female. There are minimal dialogues in the movie but it has enough ingredients to keep the audience engaged thoroughly.

Highly recommended.