thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
First of all, my dear readers, I want to inform you that we are going to focus more and more about mobile and technology industry from now on. The reasons are because there aint no more competitive and important for common people then mobile computing these days. In some blogs Ill explain why. For almos one year I remained with no updates here and now I wish to update you about all crazy turnarounds on this amazing industry and game. I hope with this you see as me how exciting is to see companies as soccer teams and get the reason why I linked both things on this blog. I believe you have noticed Im writing in English (duhh) and that is how we will talk from now on. Even loving to wright in Portuguese it is in English that we can bring more people to this conversation.UpdatesThere are so many turnarounds on mobile panorama that we could wright books about it. Most important facts are:As predicted on this blog, Googles Android OS has surpassed Apples iOS as the major smartphone platform on US Market on the ending of 2010 and then became the biggest smart phone OS in the world when surpassed Symbian OS in global market in February of 2010. Different from predicted on this blog the MeeGo Project runned by Nokia and Intel was partially aborted when the Nokias CEO, the ex-Microsoft , Stephen Elop, announced the adoption of the Windows Phone 7 as the Nokias major future platform. On the time of the announcement he argued Nokia could not get done as many phones running MeeGo as they would need to compete with Apple and Google. That statement became not trustable when the first (and last) MeeGo phone was showed in July. The N9 was the first phone to be completely operated by gestures, with no buttons, and the buzz about it setting the N9 as the most desired phone Nokia has ever made. Also, the N9 could be delivered 6 months before the first Nokia Windows Phone but even being ready to ship in the darkest quarter Nokia has ever had (with a crazy down on its sales) Elop refuses to sell the N9 on big markets as UK, Germany, and US. Those decisions that couldnt make sense for a Nokias CEO made me believe that Stephen Elop in not working for Nokia but for Microsoft as many people acuse him to be a trojan. For me it seems one of the biggest and most brilliant criminal actions ever made in business world that already punished with almost 60% of loss for Nokia investors since 11th February. They just make Nokia's industrial power, design and engineer know how all available for Microsoft's software when no other handset maker had interest on it without spending one dime on it. While Google had a amazing success over mobile they still face problems on expanding their dominance over Internet services as the Facebook now is the most used website in the US and also the one people stand for more
time, making Facebook a merchandising and marketing information giant. While Apple lost its leadership over the marketshare in Smartphone OS it still has the lead over profit margins and just because of that, Apple became the most valuable company in the world, surpassing Exxon Mobil. On tablets market Apple still is the winner unarguably. The iCloud was announced promising Apples view about cloud computing and the way to fight Google on Internet services. As Apple seems to be the major winner some facts make me believe that even if Apple seems to have won their battle against Google, it has actually lost it already. A deeper analysis about itwill be shown on my next blog.As predicted on this blog, the companies still aim to verticalse their resources on Internet services, software OS and hardware as the hierarchy for delivering value. Google just bought Motorola as a proof of that. Even being a coincidence as I don't believe Google has the intention to make money from building hardware, the patents they need for freeing Android's potential are the biggest part of their needs on hardware business. Watch this (quite ugly) graphic panorama of the industry and its three largest competitors with their best weapons on each layer of the delivering value chain and prepare for next blogs!
This night, at CES event, Nokia and Microsoft has showed its new bet for the american market. The new Lumia 900. A gorgeous 4.3' screened Windows Phone with all the hardware expertise is expected from Nokia and the new Mango Windows Phone in partnership with AT&T.While being a refreshing proposal about UX (but not a paradigma shift, indeed) this new OS that intends to chalange Apple and Google platforms doesn't ends the most painful problem of those who are trying to serve and feed those ecosystems with the most important thing for the end user: content. That painful problem is that most of those who want to get into the new era of smartphones and provide services and products to end users have to go through this dilema: which platform should we invest on?For answearing this question there are another pack of complex questions to answear like:Which platform is the most solid for the future?Which is the cheapest to develop for?Which is the easiest to develop for?Which is the fastest to develop for?Which answears better our customer needs?Which is more used by our custormers?Which is more protected against frauds?Which is more fragmented?Which have users more likely to spend money?Which has more market penetration and on wich markets?Not to mention that not every content provider has money to invest in both iOS and Android. And that excludes a highly valuable long tail of small content providers that answer the needs of small niches of users.A - That said, why should those extremely important players pay attention to the Windows Phone?R: Because is the only who integrates smartphones with gaming consoles with PC plus a potential Windows 8 tablet? The power of that integration is still unknown.B - Because OEMs and carriers are tired of being pieces on Apple's and Google's chess? R: Carriers deffinetly aren't interested on Microsoft's proposal and that is publicaly known since a Microsoft executive stated that. Microsoft didn't handled none of its relationships with carriers well and even WP wasn't conceived thinking on carriers needs.R: Some OEM's could be looking for ways to distribute the eggs on different baskets but that doesn't applies to all of them like Motorola (who is 100% comited with Android as it is Google owned) and Samsung who is developing its own OS with Intel, the Tizen. The only relevant player which that comes to be true is HTC who, besides Nokia, is betting more seriously on Windows Phone but also not as comited as it is with Android.That said, the gorgeous Lumia 900 is the wrong answer to the real problem that is: Microsoft is designing its ecosystem for itself, not for those who should use it and make it full of value. The proof for my words came on today's CES: the presentation of OpenMobile's solution Application Compatibility Layer (ACL) technology that allows Android apps to run on any platform. The spontaneous initiative from OpenMobile simply shows how painful is that problem and also Microsoft's WP not only ignores that problem but also makes it even worser. Now you would have to
decide into three platforms! Another proof of my words is that the new Lumia 900 still has no NFC tecnology (near field connectivity). A feature available on all recent Nokia phones running systems that not WP, like the N9 and the 701. Why? Because Microsoft is not as interested on conecting its users with each other as it is interested on keeping your locked into them.Because of that lack of answering to player's needs I predict to Windows Phone the same relavance Google has with the Google +, which is: almost irrelevant. Windows Phone has not much time to prove its value. Soon, perhaps in the beggining of 2013, Sumsung, the biggest smartphone maker, and also one of the biggest TV, tablet and computers maker will be showing us its HTML5 focused and Linux based Tizen. A differential that promisses to ease the pain of developing apps to every OS. Besides that the known openess of Samsungs hardware and Linux software is expected to be delivered for the also friendly Samsung pricing. (Update 01/19/2012) Mr. Stephen Elop Nokia's CEO, as a representant of Windows Phone, is showing us Microsoft wants a war of ecosystems. He is giving us a war of ecosystems. But is his war of ecosystems what other players want? Is it good for consumers? Is it good for content providers? Is it good for carriers and OEMs?His war of ecosystems force users to a painful choice of buying one ecosystem that is always incomplete, whatever it is. His war of ecosystems forces content providers to be redundantly on all ecosystems.His war of ecosystems force OEMs to have redundant assembly chains and more assets do manufacture and market different phones with absolutely no benefit for them except of being less dependable on Google. Being anyway impossible to differentiate themselves from other OEMs inside Windows Phone ecosystem. Meaning Android still their 1st choice.His war of ecosystems forces carriers to spend marketing money in favor of ecosystems that bring them no value and don't help them selling more services. Considering Windows Phone is not customizable and Skype integration is a treat to voice revenues.Mr. Elop, people want the PEACE OF ECOSYSTEMS! They want ecosystems that communicate with each other and make it indifferent between platforms to provide content, services, devices and apps the same way they don't have to worry if web pages will be visited by Mac, Linux or Windows. Mr. Elop, ecosystems that live in war aren't good for the biosphere. What you are proposing doesn't make sense. Five years ago, when Apple came with its carrier unfriendly iPhone it had to turn carriers against each other so that carriers wouldn't unite against the iPhone. So Apple came exclusively to AT&T. That united other carriers against AT&T and Apple. So the other carriers united with Android started fighting AT&T + Apple.But on that moment the touch screen experience was exclusive for iPhone. Now the also carrier unfriendly Nokia + WP coalition, for being accepted in the game had to be exclusively with AT&T. And touch screen isn't any more exclusive.
Unarguably Apple has the leadership over this wave on technology industry. The iPhone did changed everything since 2007 and now the iPad is doing the same. Apple on the right moment provided the standards for the path of human communication and information computing right on the time when laptops and PCs where extinguishing most of their possibilities. And that tends to remain for some time as computing gets more democratic and powerful. One don't even need to think very much to see how most of smartphones today have an influence of the iPhone and how most tablets are imitating the iPad. And those shapes tend to stay in the industry for a comparable time as PCs, notebooks and netbooks have stood (and the PC in the shape we know it began with the MacIntosh in 1984) so we can bet smartphones and tablets will remain in the shape they are for at least one more decade. But even having a small share of cellphones today Apple has build for itself a brand that is so desirable that fans stand for days and hours waiting in lines for and pay for expensive gadgets that have profit margins around 50%, the highest in the market. All that has contributed for Apple to become the most valuable company in the world and facts like having more money then US government are also a evidence of power and success of Apple's strategy. But sometimes, things are not exactly as they seem. While Apple has set the standards over how are devices going to be for the present life cycle, and that means touch friendly, app friendly, stable and responsive, and easy to be learned and used by anyone, Apple's platform lost its position of largest OS platform in market share for Google's Android. Reasons for it was mostly because prices, as there are Android phones costing 1/3 of an iPhone, more heterogeneity (as commented on this article) of the hardware, and reseller friendliness as Google's Android became the preferred platform of most carriers as Apple showed it intends to bypass cellphone carriers and sell phones to consumer directly and also doesn't allows carriers to change anything on the phone. That doesn't seem bad at all since Apple has the largest revenue share keeping the largest profits. But on last quarter only 25% cellphones sold in the world where smart phones. And between them, only 20% where iPhones. Meaning only 5% of cellphones in the world sold where Apple iPhones. Also we have to remember that if only 25% of cellphones sold this quarter where smartphones a even smaller number of world cellphones must be smartphones. Just like computers have substituted typewriters, smartphones tend to substitute common dumbphones and that transition is just beginning. Cheap Samsung smartphones cost 189 US$ and cost 1/3 of an iPhone and soon there will be smartphones priced on 50US$ as there are already many common cellphones. The number of 3 billion cellphones in the world will soon be hit and passed. And the problem Apple is going to face is that
93% of smartphones sold in 2009 where priced on a 100US$ average. Only 7% where priced on a 350US$ average. And that is still far from the 600 US$ price of the iPhone 4. So, as cellphones get substituted by smartphones Google is already one step ahead over Apple and is much more likely to get a hugest bite from this market then Apple. Apple's business model has never been designed for low cost markets. But the problem is that low cost markets are more then 93% of cellphone markets today. Even don't make sense in big markets like India to try selling apps of 3,99 US$ for consumers that can buy meals for many days with this amount or even don't make sense a iTunes Store selling music that can be downloaded for free. On hardware side Apple's stile made it hard to think of different hardwares for phones that are supposed to run thousands of apps smoothly. So as Apple has the best margins in the world selling devices it has already lost in market share to Google and that tends to get worse as Google's Androids are much more prepared to go low cost then Apple ever thought being. But that is no trouble. Trouble is that both know future points to cloud computing and Google is also one step ahead on it. Google believes that in the future devices will be dumb monitors only capable of being online while most data and processing will be in the cloud. Of course some capabilities will be possible offline like offline mail or photos and music as computers already used today. OSs will be just very powerful browsers and oriented to get you to what really matters: the web. Google is also working on this vision a longer time as it is since 2009 it has already showed works on the Chrome OS and other works.Apple has just recently showed its proposition of cloud computing with the iCloud that intends to work on the opposite way of Google's. Apple's vision is more about a syncing between devices with the same account making everything always available offline. In others words Google's approach sees the cloud as the center while Apple sees the device as the center. Both views have their pros and cons. Some believe people won't trust all it's data, files and personal information to the cloud. But most agree that a cloud centered model would make devices cheaper and then is more friendly to most of users. The same thinking has already made possible cheaper and more mobile computers like the netbooks we know today. So, in other words, Apple's vision has no vision for maybe 80% or 90% of computing of the future knowing most of computing in the future will come from substituting the omni presents dumbphones today for little pocket computers as smartphones and tablets are already.That's not a problem at all for Apple continuing on the market. There is no other company today intending to fight for high margins markets that can provide such complete and
solid portfolio. But that is a big problem for Apple if it intends to rule this industry. We can't exactly understand why Apple fights Google when we can see their markets are completely different. But unarguably both companies are fighting for everything these days. And that seems to be a fight for their values and ideas. There is enough space in the market for both companies to live but there is not enough space for two companies that are prophesying the future of technology. And that is why both companies are fighting and that is the fight Apple has already lost and still didn't noticed. Google's vision will centralize most of creativity as it centralizes most of players and users and Google will be the next monopolist on tech industry as Microsoft was in the past. A Vision turnaround?It's said that good leaders are capable of creating good leaders capable of succeeding them. That the teacher who is not surpassed by his disciples is not a good teacher. That good leaders like to be surrounded by people better then they are. Now we see that Apple has been conduced until this leading point by Steve Jobs. And we see that his vision for Apple worked until now but we don't know if will work in the coming future. In next years we will be able to see if Steve Jobs has done the most important job that a teacher must do: create people that surpasses him. And according to recent problems Apple had to decide about Steve Jobs succession my bet is that SJ has failed on that. If any other person inside Apple realizes that Apple's vision is in trouble and decides to change it, then that would sound like saying SJ is wrong. And that would be heard as a blasphemy inside Apple. Apple was always conduced with tight control and iron fist by SJ. If we think Apple makes a very tough control of its products then you can imagine how their workers must be controlled. Its founder and genious leader insists to keep on work even when he looks more like a walking dead then a man. That's a serious example of person that can't let go. The only problem is that thigh control doesn't walk together with creativity. And now that Apple has to create a new vision if wants to face Google on ruling the industry this creativity is going to be more important then ever. So, I don't believe in any vision turnaround for Apple. And that is sad.
Marketing theorists had said that the four important variables for targeting a market are Place, Product, Price and Promotion. The famous marketing mix. Knowing the place where you put your business you can know what kind of person has an access to this place, if they are wealthy or not, for example. Knowing that you have a better idea of the price range your product can have. Also what kind of product it must be, high or low quality, for example. Knowing the product and price range you have a better idea on how to promote this product. Being it a high luxury item you may choose to promote it on a business magazine, being a simple product maybe newspaper could be a better idea. Internet is changing all this. And mobile Internet even more. Since you have Internet at anytime and anywhere just by caring your phone it doesn't matter anymore where your customer is. He can always be consuming your products. If he is at the WalMart looking for buying a computer he can also be looking through his phone how much is this computer on Ebay. Since he could be anywhere is also more difficult to target him your promotion through some old medias like an outdoor panel, for example. But also much easier through some other forms of media. Just like Mobile and Internet ads. This reality tends to evolve to another reality where place and promotion will matter each time less for marketing decision process. If your customer could be anywhere and reachable all the time by Internet the only variables that matter will be those intrinsically related to the act of creating offer. Just Product and Price. In the future all you gonna need is to create your product, put it on Internet and leave for Google to find your customers. In fact that is a reality already. And that takes us to another little thing.The Gold of the next Age As we talked some time ago about powerful companies like Google or Facebook that have millions or billions of profiles inside their data centers that could easily influence the result of an election if using this information as base for marketing strategies for politicians. That is the gold of next age: DATA. That is what Google is seeking for. DATA. Or did you really believed they give you that beautiful Android OS for free because they practice the "don't be evil" philosophy? hahahaImagine all that researches that needs thousands of randomly selected people to answer questionnaires about what do they think about some politician or about some behavior, the time you wake up and what kinds of food you prefer. Those kinds of researches are incredibly expensive and hard to conduct. Some researches go meet the individuals directly and some other try sending on-line questionnaires boring as hell that makes you answer anything randomly just to get rid of them. That is how marketing research happens today. "Show me your phone and I'll say who you are"But that is not how it works for Google
or Facebook. Google and Facebook have so much information that they doesn't even need to create a random sample. They can have the population itself! They don't need to interview individuals. They can just pick the information from users accounts. They don't need ask you things and you can't lie to them. They can know exactly everything from you. Everything you do on your browser (and perhaps also outside), everything you have on your phone, is being observed and analyzed. Your entire identity is there. Gigabytes of information you don't even think you have. Of course they don't have a plan to fuck up with your life but they can use all that data for good and bad. In case of bad, to manipulate societies political processes on their own favor. And in case of good?People. The fifth P of marketingIf you know the person, on an individual level, you don't need anymore your marketing strategy to be based over place, price, promotion and product. Simply you can find a consumer to any kind of product you make. Google could find them for you. Anywhere. Its the long tail. If Google have found even consumers for this bizarre products then there are consumers for everything. That amount of information that can link you to infinite demand could be even more raised if mobile operators start exploring the unbelievable amount of information that only them can provide. Such as location, presence, user profiles and platforms for applications; as well as device and network APIs There are more then 5.3 billion cellphones in the world. Trading and using all that information as products or services will surely be the future of marketing being reachable for great corporations but also for little business. In some way that we still can't imagine. You can start it nowSupposing that you have a local business, like a bar or pub, have read this article until now, and understand the importance of knowing your consumer, the fifth P of marketing. And understand that in the end the action of trading is the action of establishing relationships inside society. That it is all resumed by one single task: generating value for people. Then why not start it simply? Get to know them. Give your consumer a free Coke for each check-in they do on Foursquare and Facebook. Give your consumer a free Coke for they liking you on Facebook. Giving these little incentives to your consumers you get as a payback: - the profile of your consumer. - the publicity of your business inside their social medias. - the possibility of immediately attracting your consumer's friends to joining him on drinking some Coke - you build a direct and permanent relationship with him (through Facebook feeds)- with Facebook feeds you can keep them up to date about your news, special promotions and events (like Brazil's soccer game :) - you can build a community around your business - through facebook your consumers can build friendships and relationships with themselves- through facebook your consumers can discuss and give you permanent feedbacks