Why we behave the way we behave

"1984 is so popular because it's trivial and it attacks our enemies. If (George) Orwell had dealt with a different problem-- ourselves--his book wouldn't have been so popular. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published" - Noam Chomsky 

Noam chomsky was talking about 1984, George Orwell's classic novel that depicted a fictional dystopian system in future (1984 was future when George Orwell wrote that Novel) where people are always wary of 'Big Brother watching' from everywhere. It was a story of clear good vs bad, us vs them that fits well with our simplified mental model where problem is always 'out there'. But if at all, speed of information flow has changed drastically from Orwell's time. Pervasive connectivity and information sharing of 21st century, among many other things, also are bringing many facets of our existence close to each other, [somewhat like a cubist painting]  forcing us, sometimes, to look at the problems as extensions of our own being.

Consider, for example, the following cases:

• Krishnan is a young software programmer and is regarded by his friends as one with high analytical skill. Krishnan got very offended when he was prodded by one of his colleagues to try a non-vegetarian dish.  "I am a brahmin!" He told his friend, in a tone of stern rebuke. His friend was surprised with the reaction for he thought food habit is one's personal choice and should not have anything to do with one's cast/community identity. However, Krishnan with his high analytical faculty could not see for himself that he is correlating two unrelated aspects of his life. 
•  Pavan, an NRI, came to India to marry his long-time girl-friend. Otherwise quite liberal minded, and an advocate of gender equality, he did not see anything wrong in his family's expectation that all expenses of marriage must be borne by his fiancee's family. 
• Mrinalini is a retired college professor and is a mother of a son and a daughter. Although quite progressive in her views she is steadfast that her son should not be asked to enter kitchen nor he should be asked to serve his food by himself. Those jobs are either for her or for her daughter. She cannot see that this viewpoint of hers is starkly inconsistent to her otherwise progressive outlook.
• Many otherwise reasonable and educated people were shown in many news channel who wholeheartedly believed in and prepared themselves for doomsday prediction imminent on 21.12.12 although NASA and other scientists have been diligently explaining in various media that all predictions are unscientific and unsubstantiated.
• In the context of attitudes towards rape,an  Open magazine article tells us that, "for victims above 12, their(victims') behaviour comes under scrutiny. There is always a suspicion that this girl must have done something that led to it. Since anyone below 16 isn’t old enough to give consent, the defence is always trying to prove the girl to be above 16. When it comes to victims in the 16 to 18 age group, “the court almost never believes it was rape”.

I guess I needn't tell that all names above are fictitious which only means that names do not bring any additional import to the situations they describe.  The cases are not about the person as much as about the inconsistencies that they portray. When we look at those incidences together, the import and irony of Mr. Chomsky's comment are unmissable: We are pretty good at objectively analyzing an event when it is far removed from our own everyday behaviour and experience. But we are poorly equipped to see the inconsistencies, for what it is worth, in our personal viewpoints and therefore behaviours.
Many would argue that it is simply due to the fact that our belief-system is not amenable to rational analysis and our behaviours stem from long-held views and beliefs that became part of our identity as we grew up, quite unconscious of the very process. In other words, our behaviours, views and their inconsistencies are in essence, an expression of our self-inconsistent identities. An identity is self-inconsistent because certain aspect of  the identity is inconsistent with some other aspect of it and different situations evoke different aspect of the identity and therefore if one were to find rational correlation among all the viewpoints, one is bound to fail miserably.
That brings forth two questions:
1. Is Identity a solid unchangeable entity?
2. How does the Identity form?
There are many scholarly article written by eminent psychologists that tell us that identity is quite malleable and plastic as opposed to what is commonly believed. Sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously we pick and drop elements of identity to adapt to our environment. For example, we pick up food habits, outdoor and indoor activities based on what majority stakeholders in our available social circles, like. One interesting observation that some of my friends made is relevant. It seems that many american-resident Indians adopt an US persona when they travel to India but act from the Indian persona when they are in US.

Self portrait by Salvador Dali

It appears that one's identity has few layers, the core of one's being mostly remain unchanged through various experiences but upper layer keeps continuously expanded, compressed based on psychological effects from those experiences. The core of our being determines our attitude to our basic needs of life, how we relate to others, what we look for in our lives. It also defines our primal fears and our perspective about God. This core Identity shapes up mostly when we grow up as children. Essentially emotional in nature, the formation continues till teen-age and remains very much unchangeable afterwards unless one goes though certain experiences that shakes up the very basis of one's existence. This core Identity is shaped by behaviour and beliefs of our parents and our immediate family, our teachers, our social structure and the emotional experiences that we undergo as children. We learn mostly when the parents and teachers are not trying to teach us. As a child one's critical reasoning faculty is under development and trust becomes his/her encompassing filter for information. Any information that comes from that trust circle is very likely to be taken as testimony [ref] unless that information challenges existing world-view in which case the world-view will be adjusted suitably. However it is very rare that core content of this identity change drastically after one grows up. In other words through this continuous and very active process of psychological dialectics we build up a lens, quite early in our life, which pretty much defines our beliefs, our values, our moral fabric, the way we see ourselves vis-a-vis others when we grow up. Eventually that lens defines one's identity, becomes the windshields through which one sees the world and the reflection of her along her journey of life. One therefore can understand why we are unable to look at our own inconsistencies objectively, even if that inconsistency is very apparent.    Perhaps we can make an attempt to be aware of those inconsistencies and since childhood is the most important and therefore most vulnerable time for every person, as the parents of our children, if we are more conscious of our own limits of rationality and our beliefs, we probably would help them to develop to better grown-ups, little more consistent than we have been, little more rational in their outlook and behaviour, more objectively aware of their selves in respect to the rest of humanity and universe.
That appears to be the best gift a parent can give to his/her child. Life for them would then be not a fearful and isolated sojourn of survival of selves but a ceaseless opportunity to learn about the wonders and elegant laws of nature, which we are intricately and inextricably part of, as a single undivided whole.

21.12.12, Mayan Long count Calendar and collective fascination to Doomsday

My friend's ten-year-old son was not his usual self; he was not talking, asking questions or showing any interest in chocolate bar. He, his father told, could not sleep last few days because he is very afraid. "Why?", I asked. He said, his son has been reading all stories of global warming and doomsday prediction and is very worried now about future in general. I was almost choked in my attempt to restrain my sudden urge to laugh. Kids, I know from experience, take it as personal insult when adults do not take them seriously. Only if they knew that adults become adults only when they learn not to take all that is said and professed with utmost seriousness! Fact is our daily newspapers in desperation of making everything in print newsworthy, put colours in order to catch readers' attention. Often that makes a docile information like certain end of counting cycle, an ominous prediction! Mayan long count calendar ends their longest cycle on a day which incidentally happens to be 21st December, 2012 in Gregorian calendar (there are different opinions on the accuracy of the date). As such this snippet of information is simply an archeological artifact. A curious mind could find interest in how they calculated and why they started on the day that makes the end day of the day coincide with winter solstice but nothing can catch everyday-person's imagination unless it can be translated to something ominous, some startling prediction, that aligns with his innate fear. Evolution has made our emotion particularly biased towards fear. Fear has been one strong guiding emotion that helped us, the human species, to survive against ruthlessness of nature but in the 21st century, when our everyday existence is less connected to natural cycle, fear has been out of job and has become a tool in the hand of institutional PR machines, Religious zealots and attention hunting media. Doomsday prediction is one easy way of grabbing attention, albeit an innocuous, harmless one. Unless someone becomes possessed by his fear [I am not making any connection to Connecticut shooting as yet] there is very low probability of any physical or psychological harm to anyone from this type of prediction. So I told him, only the stupid believes such kind of extreme prediction and being afraid of such stuff where one cannot do much is not a very intelligent behaviour. For a kid, it is embarrassing to feel afraid but not as much as to live with a stigma of being considered unintelligent. So that worked and next time when we met he ensured that I am updated that he is not afraid any more!

Mayan Calendar: photo of stone artifact,
courtesy: http://blog.needsupply.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/mayan_calendar1.jpg

For those who are curious to know more about Mayan calendar, this  wiki page provides a good synopsis. It seems that Mayans may have understood the precession of equinox, but perhaps not as precisely as we know today. It is highly unlikely though that they understood the basic science behind it or actually made any connection to it [Science as we know, did not have any explanation before Newton]. Far less probable that they could connect it to galactical alignment [Solar system appear to be crossing the equator-equivalent of milky-way galaxy for last few years, although many object to use of the concept of equator in the context of galaxy]  as many doomsday predictors have alluded to.
But all these illustrate an interesting aspect of human thought process. Psychologists tell us that human mind as such is not adept to comprehend statistical patterns and more often it replaces that searching process with causal analysis by drawing line with only two dots, sometimes even approximating the second dot. More startling the conclusion is, more it is capable of invoking innate belief system where the answer is made readily available. In its bias towards definite actionable knowledge, the mind often makes mistake of substituting with belief for missing facts, succumbing to known fear instead of diligent fact-finding, choosing to panic without being conscious of the choice. It requires lot more emotional awareness to be not swayed by meaningless sensationalism and active opinion campaigning process, prevalent in digital media.
On a more factual but less dramatic note, scientists made a prediction in june this year that, a giant gas cloud is on a collision course with the black hole in the center of our milky-way galaxy, and the two will be close enough by mid-2013 to provide a unique opportunity to observe how the super massive black hole named Sagittarius A* [mass equivalent to mass of 4 million suns] sucks in material, in real time.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/95982/gas-cloud-will-collide-with-our-galaxys-black-hole-in-2013/

And here is one recent photo that NASA published that shows the location of the super massive black hole at the centre by capturing X-ray burst which likely to have happened due to a large mass of gas that got sucked by the black hole Sgr A*

However this event is very unlikely to impact us, the earthlings, at least for now.

Microsoft's online adv business after its first quarterly loss and aQuantive writeoff

We are continuing with your fictitious Microsoft interview in this post too. You were little lost in your thought when the interviewer came back with another person. Customary to strange interviewing process, the interviewer stepped out of the room 30 minutes ago, requesting you to wait for a while. 
The interviewer simply introduces his companion as a colleague who works in Microsoft’s online advertising vertical. For our convenience, let’s call this colleague of the interviewer, interceptor. The interceptor thanks the interviewer, greets you nicely at which point you notice that the interviewer gets up and takes leave from both of you. As the interviewer walks out of the room, the interceptor tells you that he would like this to be free-format discussion rather than a strict question-answer session. This is a new tack and it could mean that he will judge you based on how forthcoming you are in picking up the leads and how resourceful you are in fleshing up the conversation.
So, you start neutrally, “I read that Microsoft wrote off aQuantive and took a hit of $6.2 billion in its quarterly result. But you guys must be seeing this for some time?”
His eyes flickered, “Yes, you could say that.” He seemed to weigh his words before going any further. You decide to use silence as your tactical tool. Finally he spoke, “Online Advertising itself is a very new area and is going though continuous changes both from providers and advertisers’ point of view. Market saw explosive growth of online advertising spots in last two years, far exceeding the demand. In the hindsight, Microsoft may have put a little too high price for aQuantive.”

This is as far as it could get, you realise. You decide not to press further.  The interceptor goes back to more familiar line and asks you to talk about your experience, your achievements, and your failures. These are fillers and you know that all you need is repeat your well-rehearsed pitch, not too aggressive, neither too submissive, not too short, neither too elaborate, leaving pointers that lead to known territory, your space of comfort. You know that he will play with them for next 30 minutes. The important thing here is to maintain the flow but to not make any obvious mistakes. Eventually he will move to the ‘challenge’ phase. He will use chosen few questions as deal-breaker, assuming you have managed to maintain his interest till that point.

“What in your view is situation with online advertising space?” he changes the line and gives you a large canvas.
“Online advertising is the future, no doubt, but it is highly likely that advertising itself will see a large transformation before we reach there.” His eyes tell you that you have grabbed his attention. Now you need to carefully steer it.
Basic purpose of advertising, to start with, is to reach out to its potential buyers. It starts with a process of building general awareness of the product, its functionality, its value both at functional and emotional plane. In a world that is information-deprived, such as in the post internet-era, advertising was essentially broadcast. Print media or TV/entertainment media were the avenues to reach its audience and the advertisement content producer’s sole aim was to create content that sticks in viewer’s mind the longest. Building a brand is all about creating lasting impression in customer’s mind, creating emotional connectivity with customer’s thought process.

In the internet-era, information access has been practically ‘on demand’. It is buyers’ media now.  While TV and print media advertising continues and will continue to remain broadcast in nature, internet advertising must be focused on customer’s need and reaching to customer when his need arises. If broadcast advertising is more ‘push’ type, internet advertising is more a ‘pull’ type. Depending on the type of information that a person is searching/reading in the internet, the advertising agent has to pick and display the ad. If the agent provides too many irrelevant display ad, the viewer/user may block the content. So the role of the advertising agent is much more delicate, much more crucial here. With doubleclick, if Google has showed how to appropriate the value of display ads, it is also largely using its strength and dominance of its search engine. Microsoft with aQuantive and Bing although tried to emulate the model, fact that Bing commands a lot smaller share went against the model. Of course, with meteoric rise of Facebook, like the interceptor said, supply of advertising spots exceeded the demand by a large magnitude, bringing down the tariff of internet display ad overall.

Note : The average cost to reach 1,000 people with an online display ad fell to about $11.50 at the end of 2011 from $13.35 in late 2009, according to SQAD Inc, which tracks negotiated ad deals – source: Reuters

“Interesting! So how would you correct the course for Microsoft, if you are allowed to? What changes will you bring in?”

This unmistakably is the challenge question. Shying away is not only inappropriate, it will weaken your position. You must take this square on and try to be crisp while you are on it.

“I would start with basics. Microsoft is what it is because of Windows. I will start there. Windows is not only an operating system, it is a complete platform with whole lot of computing resources and with lot of crucial user-specific private data. Transferring the data outside user’s device would be tantamount to violating user’s privacy, so I will incorporate a sophisticated analytical engine inside Windows. It will continuously scan the information content being read/browsed and create a some sort of a live ‘top of mind’ list. When the customer invokes Explorer, I will provide a space which user can disable or resize or run in the background, if he likes to, but like news feed, this space will show display ads or links to the company that is absolutely relevant to his ‘top-of-mind-list’. More it is contextual, the better. Once this done properly same scheme can be used for Windows Phone too. Fact is with Phone the potential is lot higher. The phone soon is becoming the electronic gadget that will treble as communication device, entertainment device, gaming device as well as mobile commercial device and if I have a sophisticated platform like Windows, I will take full advantage of it by incorporating an analytics engine that maintains a live four dimensional profile of the user, the four dimensions being location, time, finance and emotional/behavioural state. With voice-assistance, I suspect that this, if it is done properly, it will be immensely useful to the customer too. Look at how popular Siri is for iPhone/iPad users and this will be lot more smarter that Siri! For amnesiacs, it will take the role of careful companion.

We will feed this engine with all the relevant advertising content which will be entirely contextual where high premium will be attached to relevance and physical/temporal proximity. That would not only create the channel that Microsoft is looking for, it will also be welcomed by its customers.

However, with the knowledge that Microsoft always works on competing strategies, I suspect that Microsoft’s post-aQuantive engineering team already is working on this line for it is the only way to deliver the promises of internet-based advertising which essentially pulls the right ad at right time to the right person, as many say!”

You did not notice when the interviewer came back but you seem to notice their momentary eye-contact as you were coming back from the whiteboard. You know that you have been fairly logical and accurate but were you a bit too assertive?

The interceptor tells you that he thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and gives you his card, when you realize your second interviewer is a Vice President in Microsoft.

How would you design a smartphone for Neanderthals?

If you have been in the software industry for a while, it is likely that you know about famous questions that are supposedly asked in Microsoft Interviews. Questions like ‘How would you move Mount Fuji?’ or ‘how would you design Mr. Bill Gates’ bathroom?’ are so publicized that there are popular books that are written entirely on Microsoft interview questions. Imagine yourself sitting in one such interview and the interviewer throws the question nonchalantly to you. Now that Microsoft is seriously investing to establish itself as serious Mobile Operating System player [marketing campaign for Windows 8 in so advance shows how serious they are!], you better be prepared to expect such questions.

Smartphone for Neanderthals, a species that got extinct 30,000 years ago?? What would a species that barely might have learnt to speak [even that is debatable], do with an advanced communication device like smartphone in a world where the most advanced technology perhaps was about making a stone axe!

While they may be perfectly legitimate questions, you also know that, putting them across is not an option. It is the interviewer who gets to ask questions and only right that is given to you as an interviewee is to answer them sincerely.

Since the interviewer did only ask about handset device, you assume that interviewer already has some kind of teleporting technology and also the right to erect wireless towers going 30,000 years back in time. Your job at present is to decide about the form-factor and necessary functionality that would be useful to Neanderthals.

So you start jotting down few artefacts that you know about Neanderthals.

1.  Neanderthals are not Gorillas, they are almost like us, so they can learn faster.
2.  Neanderthals had no script, which means no SMS.
3.  Would they know numbers?  Very unlikely so no number keypad is needed, in fact no keypad is needed.
4.  How would they identify each other? Visual cue should work, so the contact book would simply have images of different people.

Wow, that is good progress and in just a matter of minutes! You mentally pat yourself. In fact you now have started enjoying the exercise. 

Those artefacts tell you that your form factor design should be very simple and mostly visual. That means you need two powerful cameras: one for watching the caller and the other for capturing the environment. Will it be confusing to use two cameras? You take a mental note that you will revisit that later. Next, you need a large LED display, may be a AMOLED, that gives bright pictures but also is more flexible and sturdy. It also will double up as touch screen where any visual cue can be treated as a clickable object. Each visual object will have a sound profile so that communication is closer to their senses. Poor Neanderthals do not have alphabets or numbers, right?  So the device will look like a large rectangular tablet so that it is easy to hold in hand. Powerful microphone and speakers should be fixed on that.
What about battery recharge. Since neanderthals would not have any electrical charging facility of their own [except those that would be installed by the interviewer], you decide that you will equip the device with high-density thin solar-frame on the back and side faces of the tablet.
Now that you have decided on the form factor, you realise that two digital cameras, preferably with a wide-angle and auto-zoom lens, would be useful, one at the front and the other at the back of the display. Both would capture and transmit the feeds simultaneously, so no control is needed. It would in fact be a videophone. Caller will see the feeds coming from the receiver while the receiver will see the feeds from the caller.

Okay, good so far! Wait a minute, didn’t the interviewer mention, ‘smart’? He definitely did but what does it entail to make this device smart?

Your geek friend’s face flashed in your mind. With a few exceptions like when is sleeping or is in toilet, he spends almost all his time with his Android smartphone. His facebook updates (accompanied with photos and video captured in his smartphone camera) come almost every 30 minutes and updates include the most mundane things like how his pet dog licked his face in the morning or what he is taking for breakfast or how he showed his affection to his girlfriend in the café last evening to more esoteric stuff like how he realized that he is a genius. His phone is practically his all-weather companion, a kind of surrogate for a living friend who listens to him all the times without talking back and fills his personal space which otherwise is almost devoid of any human touch. You felt you have hit a streak of discovery. Neanderthals inhabited a world that was psychologically similar to your friend’s world: cold, isolated, paranoid. That tells you that they would have similar need for exhibitionism and emotional warmth, although they would not have internet or facebook.

So you deduce that smartness for a communication device in this world would necessarily entail a capability to communicate emotionally; the device must not only be 'always on and connected’ it also must be able provide a sense of emotional presence. It should be able to sense his mood and reciprocate with empathy e.g. when he is emotionally down, the device automatically would pick the video of his most pleasant experiences in the past and play them for him, or when he is afraid, it should assess the situation and suggest him possible choices and/or play some visual cues which can help him regain his courage. Based on his physiological condition and weather condition, suggest him to take shelters, pick certain herbs or wear clothes. All these are in fact technologically possible, they require few more sensors like temperature, humidity, around a terabyte of space for data storage, an application that maps facial experession and voice cues to emotional artefacts and a sophisticated analytics engine which will sift through past and present data feeds in real time.
Once such a phone is built, it will also become the smartphone for the facebook+ generations. This capability will convert the existing smartphone into a really intelligent personal companion gadget in addition to its present use for mobile communication, entertainment and online gaming.
However, it is more likely that data storage and large part of the analytics will transition to a computing cloud infrastructure maintained by the Operating System provider. This strategy, for example, is already adopted byApple for its iPhones with Siri and other apps.

You confidently finish your exposition. Your eyes did not miss the appreciative smile of the interviewer. So, you ask, “If I may ask, why Neanderthals?”

The interviewer magnanimously obliges, “Could any other way drive the point better?”

You acknowledge that he has a point there. Genesis of technology for future lies in understanding the basic human needs that remained unchanged through cycles of evolution for almost a million years.

Next disruption after smartphone

In Feb, 2011 I wrote in this blog, "it appears that soon smartphone by itself will be considered as a separate segment, decoupled from GSM/CDMA/3G and soon 4G handset market. People's expectation and usage of these device are going to drive this transformation where iPad-like device and smartphone will merge to create one single smart-mobile-device segment." I thought it would be interesting to do a reality check.
First, on smartphone, Gartner's May 2012 report says, “Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level. For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9 per cent of overall sales for Samsung as opposed to 16 per cent for Nokia”  Gartner provided a table on comparative positions of different Smartphone OS in the report which shows Android's global dominance in 2012 and loss of market share for both Nokia and Microsoft.

Gartner Table :
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q12 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	1Q12 Units	1Q12 Market Share (%)	1Q11 Units	1Q11 Market Share (%)
Android	81,067.4	56.1	36,350.1	36.4
iOS	33,120.5	22.9	16,883.2	16.9
Symbian	12,466.9	8.6	27,598.5	27.7
Research In Motion	9,939.3	6.9	13,004.0	13.0
Bada	3,842.2	2.7	1,862.2	1.9
Microsoft	2,712.5	1.9	2,582.1	2.6
Others	1,242.9	0.9	1,495.0	1.5
Total	144,391.7	100.0	99,775.0	100.0

Source: Gartner (May 2012)

So, I appear to be on track this far. How about iPad and iPad like devices? Let's again go back to Gartner. Gartner says, "Apple's iOS continues to be the dominant media tablet operating system (OS), as it is projected to account for 61.4 percent of worldwide media tablet sales to end users in 2012."
Gartner's projection for this segment:

Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

OS	2011	2012	2013	2016
iOS	39,998	72,988	99,553	169,652
Android	17,292	37,878	61,684	137,657
Microsoft	0	4,863	14,547	43,648
QNX	807	2,643	6,036	17,836
Other Operating Systems	1,919	510	637	464
Total Market	60,017	118,883	182,457	369,258

Source: Gartner (April 2012)

Although there is clear dominance of Apple in this segment, Android tablets are forecast to account for 31.9 percent of media tablet sales in 2012, as per Gartner. Gartner dutifully adds that once Windows 8 is realeased, it will become a game changer in this segment. Apple, however, will continue to dominate the segment for entire forecast period.
Numbers always make a very strong case, however they rarely tell the full story.
Will the consumers keep buying both smartphone and tablets? If they do, how will they use these two device differently? Tablets for reading document, watching media but smartphones for rich communication, or so does it appear.
But how strongly can one hold on to that argument? At the end, it is just the screensize that makes the difference, doesn't it? Both smartphones and tablets at present, are primarily touch-screen based. Communication protocol stacks are available on both the devices as part of the OS [Operating System], although may not be enabled. So why would you carry two devices if one single device can provide both viewability of iPad or Amazon Kindle and rich communication capabilities of a smartphone? In fact, if you had options you are likely to consider little larger screen size for tablet, especially for watching HD media content. What if the screen were foldable? That would let us spread out the screen when we need and fold it neatly to fit into smaller dimensions of smartphones when we do not need. That way smartphone could double as media tablet.
There is another option too! Thanks to large scale proliferation of 3D content, people are getting comfortable to wear special glasses. What if we could have a special viewing glass for display device? That glass would convert the smartphone to media device. Fact is however futuristic they sound, the technology is almost within our grasp. We already have OLED display that is as flexible and hundred times as thin as human hair. Called spintronics OLED, they promise to be more efficient and brighter compared to present OLEDs Within a year or two, these devices will replace all exisitng display devices on tablets or smartphones.
Thanks to continuous miniaturization of processors, multi-core CPUs already are finding their ways to smartphones, which means computing bandwidth will never be a bottleneck for these devices. One can expect to watch 3D media content over these mobile devices in very near future. If there is anything, the question is how fast will be the transition of these technologies. Given that almost entire electronics manufacturing of the world is getting concentrated in China and its neighbours, it is very likely that technology replication will be rapid bringing down the overall adoption cost dramatically for the entire handset industry. One in fact can expect that the technology upgrade will be viral pushing the latest of technology changes to the cheapest of the devices.
So it is quite apparent that display device will bring the next disruption to this segment. When it will, it is expected to sweep all the three segments of smartphones, tablets and laptops converting them to a single unified huge segment of mobile devices. It is too be seen who will ride that wave of disruption. Will it be a chinese player, this time?

Nokia in 2012: a luminous end of a glorious past?

Recently I walked into a local cellular phone shop and asked for a not too inexpensive but sturdy phone set. The salesman asked me if I am looking for a smartphone. I said that I have nothing particularly against smartphone as long as it is stable and inexpensive. Fact is I have personal allergy to all these marketing terms especially when everyone knows that there is nothing smart in a smartphone. The salesman gave me too sets, one Samsung 'Guru' that cost around Rs 1800 and another Samsung Galaxy SII, that costs around Rs 17000. Being a majorly Nokia user so far, I was a little hesitant. "No Nokia set?", I asked.
He said, "Sir, we do have Nokia set but my honest advise is that you do not buy Nokia. The Nokia phones are not like those in past, quality dropped drastically."
"Even for the basic sets?"
"Yes, Sir, even for the basic sets, we get so many complaints every month these days that we warn customers upfront; after that, of course it is their choice if they still like to buy Nokia set".

Yesterday, a friend of mine called me and told that he needed to replace his old handset with a new one and asked me if I had any suggestion for him. I told him, quite unconsciously that he should consider samsung or Sony-Erisson or blackberry models but not Nokia.
But I am sure I was not the exception. Nokia clearly lost its customer loyalty drastically in last few months. It is said that problems do not visit alone. If the customers and shoppers complain about detoriating quality of Nokia phones, the market is exceptionally pessimistic about Nokia's future. Rating agencies like Moody, S&P have downgraded Nokia's credit rating to junk status.
For last one year, we have been witnessing the impact of Nokia's CEO's landmark direction change and one does not need to go too far to sense how well Nokia is doing. Internet is abuzz with reports about how Lumia turned out to be a dud, how Nokia lost 52% of market share in just few months, how Mr. Elop, the ex-Microsoft Nokia CEO has wasted billions of dollar (e.g. in Lumia campaign) and made Nokia taste loss in last quarter by taking successive wrong decisions. Now it is debatable if Nokia would have fared better had Mr. Elop not taken those bold decisions. Fact is symbian was a dying elephant albeit 57% Phones in the market had symbian OS when Mr. Elop took over. People blame that, between 2003 and 2008, 'rather than spend its resources on building a next-generation software ecosystem—an OS that depended on novel interfaces and sensors, that allowed for outside development, that offered a brilliant user experience—the company “managed down” its cash by paying huge dividends and buying back its shares." During that period, Nokia spent 27 billion euros in dividend and share buy-back - a clear sign of organization trading long term engineering future with short-term stock appreciation. Were Mr. Elop's manoeuvre successful, Nokia could truly turn around and challenge iPhone dominance riding high on Lumia and Microsoft WP7.

Summary of the present situation

1. Nokia wanted to cannibalise Symbian with Microsoft OS but market cannibalised Nokia smartphones with Samsung and others. Android proved to be much stronger market force than WP7.
2. Nokia's deteriorating engineering focus had its toll in the low-end basic phone category too; customers are moving to alternatives to Nokia sets. People expect mobile phones to be lot sturdier than PC. Call-drops due to poor quality of handset cost customers money and fact is Samsung low-end phones are lot more stable compared to present Nokia models.
3. While Apple, Samsung, HTC have successfully established themselves in the tablet space, Nokia missed the bus altogether.
4. Nokia's network division, once a very strong market force is also struggling against Chinese competition from Huawei and ZTE, even after merging with Siemens Network.

It is interesting that all the present predicament of Nokia are hinged on single failure: its successive unsuccessful attempts to secure its platform strategy.

Is this the end of  a Glorious past?

Many argue that from where Nokia stands today, it is very difficult for it to get itself out of the mud and only viable option left is buyout by Microsoft. Although Nokia's past and stack of IP would be valuable asset for Microsoft, it is very likely that a direct buyout would bring the combined net worth further down, effectively eroding the value of Nokia to zero. A better path would be if Microsoft lets Nokia find its survival path rather than direct buy-out.
But then Nokia needs to change in many front. It must figure out its strategy for low-end phones where stability and robustness count higher than features. On the high-end segment, it has to open itself for multi-platform strategy like HTC and Samsung rather than firing all guns on Lumia. That should help Nokia to find its competitiveness against Samsung and HTC.  But above all, Nokia must find one software that its engineering should focus wholeheartedly.  Something like a platform-independent Nokia mobile software that can work seemlessly on both Android and Microsoft Windows. Alongwith that a great developer SDK could be a game changer. It could help Nokia to capture large unorganised app ecosystem making the Nokia Mobile software the de-facto platform for mobile app development. That would help Nokia to integrate tablets into its product portfolio like Apple and Samsung. On the technology front, using its strength in wireless technologies, Nokia could focus to bring the first stable 4G (LTE) smartphone that can seemlessly transition from 3G and 2G networks.
But then that would take time and lot of patience from the market. Question is if Nokia has so much time!
 Last year we witnessed Motorola going down the same trajectory ending with Google's buyout. Will 2012 witness fall of another hero of Telecom yesteryear? Negativity brings more negativity but gratification of 'I told you so' is too pale to such a loss if that happens.
A company that in its more than 150 years of history changed its core business 17 times to remain relevant and successful, if turns itself to such an end, it is not only painful, it is demeaning too.

the Software Industry and its malaise

First Quarter results of the companies are coming out. While TCS reported the strongest result of all the biggies of India, others did not fare too badly. Infy's and Wipro's results may be a bit disappointing for their shareholders, but it is still not something to be alarmed about.  Irrespective of the results, all have expressed high confidence in the long term growth of the sector and the prospect for their organization, although hardly there were any mention about their future growth engines. If there is anything, there is a mention of cost rationalization in Wipro executive's statement: "We have improved our people pyramid cost. Our margins have expanded by 60 basis points because of the higher proportion of freshers." With consistent downward pressure on outsourcing pricing, it is only rational that cost of service must be brought down to maintain profitability margin. And Wipro is not alone there. Almost all Indian medium and large software companies have adopted this method of cost reduction i.e. by increasing the share of freshers and junior practitioners in its employee-base. The trend is not limited to service-based profit centres like Wipro, Infy, the trend is equally strong with Indian cost centres of large software MNCs. A casual scan on all job portals will tell you that demand, wherever there is, is almost always in 0-8 years experience bracket.
So what happens to not-so-junior practitioners? That's a question, both media and company executives would like you to not ask, which gives a perfect alibi to talk about in this blog.

Big Fame of software Industry and its blindside

Software Industry got its fame particularly on couple of accounts:

1. Spectacular company growth and
2. Spectacular increase in salary during boom time.

First one brought a lot of eager shareholders and fans and second one brought many people fresh out of college opting to join the IT industry. In US, there was another very strong incentive, possibility of a startup company making big and its employees retiring rich on its shares at young age.  Retire by 40 was the catchline, not too long ago. In India, since successful startups hardly come by, one incentive that worked for it was 'assignment abroad'. However none, if you look closely, actually are about structural strength of the industry. If one compares the industry with other engineering industries [with an obvious exception to Financial Engineering Industry], there is a stark difference. In those companies a typical growth incentive was to participate and contribute to large and complex engineering projects and thereby make one's mark in the Industry. Credibility and market value of a firm in those Industries were expected to grow only when the firm brings out better products, executes engineering-wise ambitious projects. That was good incentive to retain experiences and knowledgeable people. In Software Industry, it is generally accepted that technology changes lot faster. So organizations need people nimble and adaptable enough, who can learn fast and deliver faster. It is also commonly accepted that younger people are more adaptable and faster than older colleagues. Naturally software firms tend to bias towards younger lot. Most of the companies prefer average age to be closer or below 30.That needless to mention, helps the company in keeping the cost down. The tagline is bring more people at the bottom of the pyramid and flatten/trim the middle layers of the pyramid as much as possible. Net effect, as engineers become senior they become more vulnerable to be replaced by younger ones. If you are thinking this is only true for Indian software Industry, think again!
A recent article in Bloomberg talks about how software professional in US are vulnerable to lose job as they approach 40. The article argues that unlike legal, medical or educational profession, software engineers tend to be less desirable as they age.  The article observes,"even if the 45-year-old programmer making $120,000 has the right skills,“companies would rather hire the younger workers.”  To add to their woes, the article reports, there are young engineers from India with H1-B visa who are cheaper and easily available to American companies. The author clearly is unaware that same treatment is meted to experienced professionals in India.
'So what?', you may ask, 'if the industry prefers younger population, as long as the Industry grows? It is not that all the people above 40 are getting laid off!'
Absolutely! But is the Industry really growing? If the industry really could grow as it used to be there won't be any need to remove people. And secondly what happens when one trades experience with cost?
Let's look at each question carefully.
If we look at the results from Indian software vendors, it is fairly evident that they are struggling to maintain even low double-digit growth rate [previously average rate of growth used to be 35%] and if we follow closely executives' discourse, it is clear that they are focussing more on pushing the bottomline in order to improve profitability. Above 95% utilization of existing resources and reducing average cost/resources figure prominently in strategy-speak. Even a college kid understands that only when the topline projection flattens, people get forced to find ways to push the bottom-line further. If this is true for Indian Software vendors, let's look at IBM. One blogger observes that IBM's strategy to improve EPS [Earning/share] in next 3-4 years hinges upon reducing cost of their work-force. One may argue that it is in tune with global macro-economic scenario; if the global economy is in tatters, software industry cannot escape from that. While that statement is generally believed to be true, one cannot miss that Apple also became enormous during this time. It is those software firms that primarily look at cost arbritage for software development as the primary determinant, are particularly finding growth as challenge and that covers majority of the known software houses.
Coming to the next question, let's look at the effect of reducing senior people from rosters. Long-time customers [e.g. Walt Disney] are walking away from companies like IBM because they do not find the quality and timeliness as they used to get from IBM earlier. Many attribute that to large segment of young relatively inexperienced work-force who fill the botttom rank of IBM's cost pyramid. You can bet that other software vendors face similar challenges. Customers often complain about skill and experience inadequacies in the vendors' resources and relatively  poor (technically speaking) fixes or long fixing time for a customer issue. There is overwhelming belief in many of the software companies that Quality processes adequately take care of loss of experience. Those who have seen it from close quarter, know well that it is cultivated myth. Fact is impact of loss of experience never seriously mattered to those who matter in these firms. It is not much of surprise that Sofware engineering fares lot worse compared to other engineering stream when it comes to long-term quality [durability, scalability, maintenability] or execution success rate. Standish Chaos 2009 report showed only 32% success rate for software projects. Dr. Dobbs journal who question methodology of Standish Chaos report, report for 2010 from their own survey

Ad-hoc projects: 49% are successful, 37% are challenged, and 14% are failures.

Iterative projects: 61% are successful, 28% are challenged, and 11% are failures.

Agile projects: 60% are successful, 28% are challenged, and 12% are failures.

Traditional projects: 47% are successful, 36% are challenged, and 17% are failures.

Irrespective of which side you are, it is not a pretty picture, even though you may question about sampling universe. Any other engineering stream report lot better statistics.

So what is it really?

One can blame on many things for that bad score, like poor requirement definition or poor change tracking or poor project execution, but chances of getting it right is low. Fact is software Industry is not going to be like any other Industry. Most of the software projects, successful or not, very rarely finish the way they were envisaged in the beginning. Understanding what is to be developed, many times build up gradually. Because of this reason, the cost of repairing an error is less of a consideration in determining 'success' of a project, which for any other engineering trade, constitutes one of the primary metrics. That translates to real lack of motivation for creating objective measure of cost of losing experience and skill depth but there are both carrots and sticks to reduce the project expenses. Company managers take this advantage by stressing (quite mechanically at times) on following process at the cost of prople but that hardly solves the issue, as the scorecard shows. Quoting Steve Jobs [source], "Companies get confused, when they start getting bigger they want to replicate their initial success and a lot of them think well somehow there is some magic in the process of how that success was created so they start to try to institutionalize process across the company. And before very long people get very confused that the process is the content.” The managers forget that process is not the end goal but the product is and it is peeople who develop the product and more experienced a person is better is his output quality. Following process can be easily monitored but hardly that guarantees great product. In other words, one can keep expanding the base of pyramid but that will never give a company run-away success or high double digit growth. Having the right vision for the product/solution for the customers, getting the right people who know how to develop product and retaining them are critical for that. That needs inspriring leadership, creative passion for the products/vision, skill depth and experience which the organizations trade for lower expense today. As long as the executives are measured against the numbers but not the creative forces that they unleashed in the organization, it is very unlikely that the present scenario of the Industry will change. 

Finally India figures in 4G map

Yesterday, Airtel launched 4G service in Calcutta, first time in India. When I wrote my post, "will India leapfrog to 4G?" few months back, little did I imagine that it will be so soon, although it definitely gives a sense of pleasure to see it coming in real. Airtel picked the TDD-LTE as the technology and ZTE, China as its technology partner. With Airtel already adopting it, we can expect Reliance to follow the suit some time this year. That would make LTE-TDD the technology of choice for 4G in entire south Asia with China taking the lead. It also looks like that China's dominance in 4G technology space will be complete. Why Airtel chose ZTE:

• ZTE says it is a leader in developing LTE technologies and has applied for 381 essential patents (EPs) for LTE standards, which account for approximately seven percent of the total number of EP applications globally.
• ZTE has won 30 contracts for LTE commercial application and has deployed test networks in cooperation with more than 100 operators across the globe.
• To date, ZTE has signed three contracts related to deploying and upgrading 3.5GHz TDD-LTE networks in Asia-Pacific and Africa.
• ZTE is a major global vendor driving the use of 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz bands. The use of these bands has now been approved as an industry standard by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project.
• ZTE also has helped operators like Japan's Softbank, Sweden's Hi3G and China Mobile successfully deploy TD-LTE networks.
• and ZTE is dedicated to becoming the world's No. 1 TDD-LTE brand. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ZTE filed for the most PCT patents of any company worldwide in 2011 with 2,826 filings.

Sounds great! Since the number of 4G handsets available in India is quite low at the moment, Airtel is launching dongles (made by ZTE) with the SIM cards built in. The tariff also looks quite reasonable compared to existing ADSL+ or 3G broadband rate. Presently they have three plans:

plan name	rentals (per month-INR)	free quota (GB)	speed post FUP (kbps)
breakfree	999	6	128
breakfree max	1399	9	128
breakfree ultra	1999	18	128

Airtel says they would be starting pan-indian broadband service soon. Although theoretical limit for 4G service is 100 Mbps [download] and 40 Mbps [upload], one cannot reasonably expect that speed with Airtel at present; 128kbps for that matter is a good starting point.

What made Airtel launch the service so early? It appears that world, primarily led by Chinese technology developers, are moving for fast 4G adoption. This Financial report article said that China telecom has decided to accelerate its 4G deployment. Deployment also became more cost-effective with average cost coming down to $10K for converting a 3G Base Station to 4G Base station. China telecom has invested most of all the telecom operators on 4G trial so far. They have good reason to accelerate the 4G deployment. But it appears that many countries will be in 4G map before this year ends. Srilanka already is, for example. While European and US operators may be slow with 4G deployment GSA expects that south asia will drive the 4G deployment this year. As per their latest reports there are 300 operators invested in 4G and 347 LTE User devices launched by 63 vendors.

While Network side deployment is going on full-swing, one area that concerns the market is there are not many 4G handsets available. Handset technology is little more tricky since it involves voice, video telephony and roaming over 4G and probably 3G and standardization effort continues to be an ongoing process. However all existing handset leaders are gearing up to launch 4G-enabled smartphone sometime this year looking at both China and India as the major market segment. In fact there is already news  that Apple's iPhone 5 as well as new iPad will support LTE-TDD.

Overall, it looks like, 2012 will be a very exciting year for high-speed mobile telephony and Indian consumers are not going to be left behind.

In case anyone is interested, 4G World Asia is scheduled on 21st May in Singapore