The Constant Observer

Rajat Barjatiya, the brother of Sooraj Barjatiya has launched what is arguably India’s first mobile TV Soap.

“I hate to use the term first. I would rather say that we are among the first to make a serious attempt at doing this. We have produced a 90 episode series, with three minutes per episode, and it is in the humour genre,” Rajat said.

Quite clearly the trend is moving towards TV 'munching' as we have repeatedly stressed here on The Constant Observer

The series will be launched under the Rajshri Media Banner.

Mobile users in India are estimated at 291 Million according to latest reports and the number of users using the Internet from their Mobile phones is now 38 Million.

In my post on the Future of Mobile VAS in India, I spoke about the distributors, creators of content, and aggregators of content – those who modify content for phones and ipods. Rajshri Media is quite clearly a creator and aggregator combined. Such companies can become potent forces especially if they capitalize on early advantages.

Its not quite clear if Rajshri looks to charge users for these TV shows and it remains to be seen how they will make revenues.

I seriously doubt that users will access this mobile show on their mobiles. This statement keeping 2 things in mind:

-       High Download Costs

-       Low Download Speeds

As of now, for an average GSM user who does not have unlimited GPRS, it costs Rs. 10 per 10 kb. Add to that the cost of making a call. Even if the serial is free, it may cost a user about Rs. 50 to download one episode. Why would anyone spend so much time, effort and money to watch a soap? For consumers with ‘unlimited plans’, the speeds are too low and they too need to make local calls to connect via GPRS – here too the costs may be about Rs. 20 per download. 

One alternative is to sell the TV shows through the Rajshri portal and then allow users to transfer these shows to their phones or ipods to watch on the go. This defeats the purpose as the beauty with this series would be in the instancy of the distribution platform which as of now is hardly ‘instant’. Further, what stops users from viewing the series on their computers itself?

I have spoken about the problems with VAS in India in detail here.

Infrastructure to provide high speed internet over mobile phones still remains a problem which will have to be solved soon in order to maximize the capabilities of mobile Internet. A lot of phones are now available with Wi – Fi capabilities. In the future one may see 802.16 Wi Max enabled phones as well. That’s where the real action is going to be. High speed low cost internet over mobiles.  A few weeks back, a premier operator (Vodafone) experienced a failure of its voice services. Click here to read more on that.  If the infrastructure problem is not solved, and if there is no reinvestment into latest technologies by telecom operators, one can try and optimize the use experience and the prize of handsets as much as possible – the real fruits of internet over mobile can be enjoyed only with an infrastructure. 

1) The Amazon Kindle: 200 Books, the size of a paperback.

The Good:

Small Size

A Model that looks to earn revenues from the service rather than the product.

Battery Life.

Does not tire the eyes while reading.

The Bad:

Design

Does not read PDF’s

The ‘service’ can be cracked, giving users free alternatives.

2) The RFID Revolution: By tagging items and containers with tiny chips that can be interrogated wirelessly from a few metres away, companies will be able to streamline their distribution and delivery systems. RFID tags can act as wireless bar-codes on everything from cereal boxes to medicine bottles to expensive military hardware, enabling suppliers, retailers and government agencies to track inventory more efficiently and cut costs.

RFID is not new – the technology has been around for a while, 2007 was the year it’s potential use was put into use at certain places.

In the Future, RFID can possibly put into human beings, their emotions and impulses monitored and contextual marketing can be taken to the next level.

The Drawback of course is Privacy. Also, for a large scale RFID detection mechanism, large scale wireless networks need to be deployed. In India at least, we are far from that.

3) Biometrics: It’s all about uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.

Why it’s good:

Enhanced Security

How can it be taken to the next level:

If biometrics can identify human emotions along with identifying traits, we can expect the same level of contextual marketing that is possible with embedding RFID’s into human beings.

4) The Nintendo Wii: I spoke at length about ‘generic benefits’ that products seek to identify in my series on technological innovation – the Wii identifies that gaming is not all about graphics and appealing to the hardcore gamers.

The Good:

Cheaper

Easy interface

More multiplayer options

Takes gaming back to the basics without really doing so (only people who have used the Wii will understand this!)

The Bad:

Graphics – well but the graphics are good enough

5) Cheap Laptops: Rajesh Jain and Ashok Jhunjunwala have teamed up to form Novatium, a provider that hopes to pioneer the concept of a Net PC floated by Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

 The PC as we know it is a self-reliant machine, heaving with processing power, laden with software and stuffed with data. But in the age of broadband, it is unnecessary to house so much computing power in a box on your desk. Better to store the bulk of it on a central server, to which users can connect via the Internet.

Novatium’s PC will probably cost Rs. 2, 800 with a Rs. 399 monthly subscription.

Expect PC and hopefully Internet penetration to take off across our country.

Nigeria has also pioneered the one laptop per child policy – where a laptop costs as little as Rs. 4, 000 or $100.

6) API’s & Widgets: Application Programming Interfaces and widgets were included in Facebook, Orkut also opened up its platform to API’s. Deep integration into the social network, mass distribution etc. can lead to new opportunities that have mutual benefits. They are here to stay.

7) Social Ads: This is something else Facebook started this year to try and be worth it’s while.  Contextual Social Advertising allows advertisers to choose the key words for which it seeks to generate clicks and simultaneously gives the advertiser an idea of how many people fit the description of being likely to click on that key word. (a handy research tool for marketers and an exciting tool for advertisers to view since they anyway get the option of targeting specific audiences and now they can also know what they are looking at in terms of sheer numbers). I do confess however that the numbers can be slightly overestimated since not everyone will probably click on the links. To counter that Facebook has used a Google style fee collection method of Cost per Click (CPC) and also Cost per Thousand or Mille (CPM). 

For more on ROI on the Internet Walk into the World of Web Metrics. 

The Good:

Contextual

Social

The Bad:

The Numbers

8) GPS Cameras: Flickr has launched a geotagging feature on it’s website – to cut the long story short, camera manufacturers are now embedding GPS into cameras so that 1 drunken party can be differentiated from the others.

The Good:

Handy feature that makes photography more interactive

The Bad:

What bad?

All iPhone lovers, sorry the iPhone does not really figure on WATBlog’s list. Primarily because of:

No video recording

No real ‘unique’ features

Bundled with operators – against the economic idea of freedom.

If you hate us but still love the iPhone, read all about it here.

We come to the end of 2007, well almost, having covered many of the International stories of the dot com World. For many in the dot com World, the year was dominated by mostly one story – the huge amount that Microsoft paid for a miniscule stake in Facebook. At The Constant Observer, we covered it extensively as well. We dealt with why Microsoft may have paid such a sum and also how Facebook is trying to be worth its while. There were many stores like the Facebook Beacon story (where a girl got to know that her boyfriend had purchased an engagement ring from Overstock.com before he even proposed – through Facebook!), which we stayed away from simply because they probably aren’t as relevant for our Constant Observers. That’s another thing we try really hard to do – make stories relevant to you, and we will strive to better that in 2008!

Well Facebook is not the only website to look out for internationally in 2008 – there are a host of them. Here they are (and also why they deserve to be looked at!):

1)    Facebook: Wrote about this above but the most exciting thing happening at Facebook is Social Ads. Placing ads in a social context, where people get associated with products. Also ads are finding their way into people’s ‘NewsFeeds’ – that’s another way of making brands ‘social’. This makes their purchase about 3 – 5 times more likely according to a study by Wharton Business School.

2)    Etsy.com – A place to “buy and sell all things handmade”. Amazon revolutionized online commerce and ebay revolutionized 2^nd hand e – commerce, Etsy hopes to tap into  the trend of buying and selling handicrafts. This can have huge impact on the Indian Cottage Industries as well, expect a lot of Indian Internet Brokers in this space who will try and make a quick buck. Also expect a few “do gooders” who will try and give our cottage industry their due. It’s ironic that there is a mass medium for products that are supposed to be ‘niche’. That could be the only shortfall.

3)    MicroBlogging Websites Pownce and Twitter – The idea is this: text large groups simultaneously. Its similar to the “status update” on Facebook, only on a larger platform. For Twitter atleast, the messages are limited to just 140 characters and thus it is labeled as “micro”blogging. Pownce too has a message limit. Messages can be sent from phones, the Internet or IM’s. Expect a lot of conversations to happen in this space.

4)    Seesmic.com – Youtube is now a place for a lot of porn, spoofs, professional marketing videos etc. Seesmic.com hopes to recreate YouTube from its roots and in a sense recapture the sense of spirit of what YouTube originally was. It is for people who want to put video diaries on the Internet. Hopefully Seesmic will become the home for a generation of opinionated, thrill and attention seeking web surfers. P.S. We have such a guy at WAT – Aamer, our WATShow host would love Seesmic. The challenge: How to stop it from going the YouTube way?

5)    Dooplr.com – A site for frequent travelers – the site tracks where friends and colleagues are and enables them to meet up at unexpected places. The trend I see is micro social networking. Watch out for a lot of micro social networks.

6)    Instructables – Another Micro social network which helps innovators and individuals can "share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others." Essentially, Instructables offers a forum where users can sign up for free and post instructions using words and pictures to describe the creation of just about anything. Instructable subjects range from art to cooking to technology to the well-named category "not liable." Users can post comments or opinions regarding different Instructables, which creates a forum for discourse and creativity amongst individuals interested in particular how-to projects.

7)    Google Knol – A Wikipedia copy – the only difference is that content is created by “experts” in a subject. Will be monetized. Not a brilliant idea but  has the backing of Google so it has to be put on this list!

8)    Mozy.com – This wins my vote for ‘Most Useful’ – you can back up 2 GB worth of data for free. For unlimited amounts, the charge is $5 per month,  which is pretty steep for us Indians – but 2 GB free for now is good. Apple has it’s iDisk which does something similar but this takes the idea to all Internet users.

9)    Orkut.com – It has opened up to API’s, its going the Facebook way. There are a few changes, more security (well a little more). It’s trademark simplicity remains. The challenge will be to integrate this simplicity with API’s. I think Orkut will succeed in doing so. India’s Youth Icon and a major hit in the Less Developed World – expect a lot from Orkut.

10) LinkedIn – Not an extremely new social network, but again a micro social network which has succeeded at maintaining quality. My pick for ‘most useful Social Network’.

In the previous article in this series, I wrote about innovation, generic benefits, and the nature of technology with respect to innovation.

Today I am going to try and stretch that concept a little bit more by bringing in another added dimension – that of the Value Proposition.

A Value Proposition is based on the “fundamental equation of business”

 i.e. Value = Benefits – Price.

In a sense a value proposition summarizes why a consumer should buy a product. So the “value proposition” becomes extremely important especially where the commercialization of new products is involved. This is because there is a risk involved with trying them (not all products are manufactured by Toyota or Sony or Reliance etc. and thus they do not have marketing economies of scale and an assured quality level with respect to the customers mind).

Since the Value Proposition is a summary of why a consumer should buy a product, it has an internal feature that can help the business as well. It thus becomes an automatic revealer of Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning for a company. So in a sense it is a clear precise statement of the customer targets for the product as well as a specification of the key benefits that will ultimately define whether the consumer will buy a product or not.

Consider the Value Proposition of a company I have written about many times over – Mobile Worx. It offers free VAS for mobiles over the Internet by showing people who want to download content – some advertisements. Now the consumer depending on who he is will view the benefits and the price he must pay. Remember, the services of Mobile Worx are not free because there is a time cost and a “mind cost” involved and also “there is not such thing as a free lunch” as economists would say! So looking at the cost benefit one can clearly outline the prospective user of Mobile Worx’s so called free value added services (VAS) – the user obviously will not be a top notch executive or CEO who does not have any spare time on his hands – that kind of a person will pay a price for the value added services he/ she wants to consume. The user probably will be a middle or a lower mid level employee who uses public transport or a cab, maybe even a chauffer driven car in some cases – and someone who has free time on his/ her hands. Whose per minute value is not as high as he/ she might like it to be. So obviously that kind of a person would find some sort of a ‘Value’ in the proposition that Mobile Worx looks to offer – and im sure they know that as well!

Another thing that firms must keep in mind with respect to Value Proposition is that they must learn to distinguish between “features” and “benefits”. I spoke at length about this in the 1^st post on this series as well.

The application of “features” and “benefits” with respect to Value Proposition is that features are something that the firm produces, benefits are something that consumers buy!   

So the end result (for a consumer) of doing business with a firm is that a benefit obtained.

Many firms make features and sell features. The consumers look for benefits – and there is no middle ground and thus fewer purchases. Thus firms must look to integrate features and benefits and maximize marketing potential especially for new technologies. The relationship between features and benefits is key.

Consider Google Docs. Agreed it is a Google product and hence MUST be good but look at how they have integrated features and benefits. They have enough features that will benefit the average user such as font tools, size tools, basic spreadsheet and graph tools. They have at the same time ensured that there is no feature overload – which would lead to the service being slow (and pointless) because then the opportunity cost of buying a pirated version of MS Office becomes lower. So there are no fancy features for high end users and thus Google is quite clearly targeting the average user as of now.

Again I want to take the opportunity to remind you that it would be great if we can make this series conversation like – do keep asking me questions and challenge what I write so that the series can be more engaging and mutually beneficial.    

Till then Enjoy The Constant Observer!

I just happened to see 'Taare Zameen Par' - Aamer Khan's directorial debut - Fantastic FilmMaking by the way - innovative and emotional, New India at it's best. 

Thinking back on the film i noticed how the script writer must be a great observer - and so too the director. Notice how in the film 'boarding school' is the last resource for mischievous children - heard that at middle class Indian homes?

Also, how many of you have had a teacher in school who pronounces thirsty as tirsty - and says that children go for 'susu'. Attention to such detail really gets me going - and really that translates to the film making process as well. I loved the consistency in film making be it the slow shutter movement in a long shot that leads to a close up or the shots with beautiful natural lighting. 

Noticing how children move, what they say ("now to you're gone"), and the way they emote and form companionships is really explored quite well in the film - and its all non verbal. 

Observation i think is essential to understanding oneself with respect to society apart from societal understanding at large.  

If you have any Interesting Observations do Share them with me!

I leave you with a Beautiful Song

Let’s first take a look at the approach taken by firms towards innovation.

Too many firms today believe that there is a trade off between the “engineering” approach to innovation or the market driving approach to innovation and the pure market driven approach to innovation.

The engineering or market driving approach basically assumes that consumers do not really know anything and as a result of that, engineers must go on “innovating” without really bothering to ask them anything.

The pure market driven approach to innovation looks at innovation from a level of customer feedback to new ideas – this often results in “me too” – not truly innovative products.

What ‘innovators’ and marketers fail to do often is identify generic benefits to consumers. By identifying generic benefits a firm virtually lets the consumer guide the product developer and marketer through the innovation process. For example – the generic benefit that consumers may look for with respect to social networking is that they can be an enhanced version of what they really are – a social network allows them to be cool and fun – and this will guide the innovator on a social network to have adequate applications that make the user seem more ‘cool and fun’. So you will have a ‘FunWall’ or an application that tells the user which celebrity he or she looks like (and inflates his/ her ego) – or you may even have a ‘if I was a drink I would be’ (and no matter what drink you are you are bound to sound cool!). I have picked up these examples from FaceBook and again I think this is where they have got it right – the correct innovations that identify generic benefits.

Btw: NEWSFEED – All Social Network Watchers – Facebook just overtook MySpace in terms of visitors to the site according to alexa.com

Innovation it must be considered is understood as something new or novel. While that may apply to technologies and the functionality of features – it does not really apply to the generic benefits – they virtually stay the same.

So this shows that customers may “know what they want” without really “knowing it” – great isn’t it!?

So when a customer is choosing a new technology, fundamentally he is buying a benefit.

Thus a technological strategy should begin with the fundamental need of customers and work with a problem solving approach, an approach that satisfies a need and improvises a benefit. Such an approach is balanced in a sense and it thus diminishes that perceived trade off between being market driven or engineering driven.

I hope to make this series an especially insightful, long and interactive one. Over the course of the series I will be outling certain generic benefits, certain things innovators need to keep in mind while designing new products, and also various feature trends that are the real winners because they combine generic benefits. I will also try and make the scope broader if I have the capacity.

It would be great if we can make this series conversation like – do keep asking me questions and challenge what I write so that the series can be more engaging and mutually beneficial. 

The number of ‘active’ Internet users in India currently stands at 32.2 million. In my post on the real internet ‘user’ I pointed out the problem with the word ‘active’ and other things that may be painting a picture that’s less than accurate with respect to the number of Internet users in India.

If the figures of the TRAI are to be believed, then it seems like mobile internet is overtaking broadband in a big way. Again the question is how often are people logging in? How much time are they spending? What is their use experience like? What are the capabilities of the Internet vis mobile?

Here are a few reasons as to why the mobile internet phenomenon is likely to be more sustainable than the Internet revolution:

-       There are low start up costs and low barriers to entry. A mobile phone is relatively cheaper than a computer. So it is more accessible than a computer.

-       A mobile phone is with a person most of the time. Well a laptop can be with a person as well but the real mobility factor inherent in a laptop is minimal – especially while travelling in crowded spaces which is what a lot of our country’s socio demographic spatial scenario is like.

-       Currently, Internet on the go is not available by any players other than telecom players. They use a GPRS or a CDMA format. So there is technically no high quality broadband on the go currently available. So in a sense, the same speeds for the internet on a laptop and the internet on a mobile are technically available. One has to also keep in mind that there are higher start up costs to use the same internet that is available on a mobile phone on a laptop. It costs around Rs. 3000 to buy a USB stick which gives you access via CDMA from Reliance or Tata Indicomm. For the Airtel GPRS enabled USB’s, the cost is slightly higher. So there are obvious cost advantages for the mobile as well.

One of the key learning’s from the mobile Voice revolution in India is that simplicity is the key to success. With a large population, that’s not extremely literate, success initially comes if a device offers obvious benefits that are simple and easy to access.

In developed countries the name of the game is ‘feature richness’. That phase will come to India as well – but maybe a few years later. Initially its all about getting individuals roped in to a technological phenomenal where there are no or low ‘perceived’ barriers to entry. The access to internet via mobile must not ‘appear’ elitist. If it does the entire brand of ‘mobile internet in India’ will have an intimidating feel which is never a good thing because operators can make revenues only if they rope in more people and have them using the Internet via the mobile often. 

In terms of allaying such fears of the Internet being elitist I do not see much in terms of communication happening. A heartening case study in terms of a brand that’s doing a lot of good to the mobile internet scenario in India is Tata Indicomm.

Tata Indicomm’s cheapest mobile internet phones cost around Rs. 2, 300. They have reasonable browsing capabilities and have been taken on by consumers in a big way.  

Apart from offering low cost phones, Tata Indicomm now offers internet packages that are extremely reasonable. 99 Rs/- a month unlimited access. Such pricing strategies will go a long way in accelerating the growth of mobile internet in India. For mobile Internet, pricing is the key element of the marketing mix that will probably allay fears of mass users. I don’t see any other operators doing enough. Some of the plans on Airtel and Vodafone are ridiculously expensive. On the GSM operators, one can pay a monthly fee of about Rs. 500 for unlimited access. For those not willing to pay those kind of fees, the cost is about 10 paise per 10 KB. On standard mobile browsers, a site may take up to 100 KB to load. So that model, even though it seems cheap, really isn’t.

This takes me to my next point – the mobile internet browser.

One of the other innovations that may aid the spread of mobile internet in India is the mobile internet web browser. On a normal mobile web browser, as stated earlier, it may take about 100 KB to load a website. So generic web browsers are taking up a lot of bandwidth that’s not necessary and also time, which makes the use experience less effective.

Apple has gone a step ahead by releasing Safari Mini. There is also Opera Mini. Both these browsers are extremely effective in the sense that a page takes about 15 KB to load.  The problem with these browsers is that they are not effective when it comes to the installing of mobile applications which have to be installed only through the generic mobile browsers. I see this problem being resolved very soon as phone companies will probably buy out technologies that will make the use experience better for their customers or integrate their services with these web browsers.

Specific specialized web browsers are also really effective when it comes to the arranging of content on the mobile screen. In a sense this is one more thing that probably hook the users on and give them an incentive to browse again.

Infrastructure to provide high speed internet over mobile phones still remains a problem which will have to be solved soon in order to maximize the capabilities of mobile Internet. A lot of phones are now available with Wi – Fi capabilities. In the future one may see 802.16 Wi Max enabled phones as well. That’s where the real action is going to be. High speed low cost internet over mobiles.

This week, a premier operator (Vodafone) experienced a failure of its voice services. Click here to read more on that.

If the infrastructure problem is not solved, and if there is no reinvestment into latest technologies by telecom operators, one can try and optimize the use experience and the prize of handsets as much as possible – the real fruits of internet over mobile can be enjoyed only with an infrastructure that’s superior. 

An emerging technique for new product development and technology optimization called ‘evolutionary design’ makes sure that while solving the problem of developing the ‘optimum’ product; a computer possibly runs through more than tens of millions of possible solutions.

To be entirely honest, evolutionary design is not a completely new concept. It has been used for quite a while in the development of aerodynamics for cars (supercars mainly), the modification and optimization of plane wings, and other aerodynamic related fields. The problem with evolutionary design was that it was restricted only to the larger firms who could afford the super computing power needed to generate more than 10 million ‘product gene’ modifications. The interesting development has been that primarily, the cost of super computers has fallen and this technology now comes within the reach of firms, which may not be mammoth in terms of turnover and market capitalization.

 As the name suggests, evolutionary design uses some mechanisms inspired by biological evolution: reproduction, mutation, recombination, and selection. This is done so with the help of an evolutionary algorithm, which takes into account all the possible solutions to altering a problem. It does so through the mutation of a basic blue print.

Anyone who knows the basics of evolutionary biology will tell you that most mutations are worse than the original. Few are progressively better. With respect to product and technology development, an evolutionary algorithm ‘identifies’ these better mutations and thus makes it possible for existing products to be more efficient.

The Evolutionary Algorithm for Products works like this:

1) It takes the design parameters such as length, width, height, current, voltage, material etc. into account.

2) It treats each aspect of the product as a different component.

3) It then tries to put together all possible combinations of the different aspects of a product and come up with the best possible solution.

Here are a few examples on product innovations that have come forth through evolutionary design

‘At the University of Sydney, in Australia, Steve Manos used an evolutionary algorithm to come up with novel patterns in a type of optical fibre that has air holes shot through its length. Normally, these holes are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, but the algorithm generated a bizarre flower-like pattern of holes that no human would have thought of trying. It doubled the fibre's bandwidth.’ (generated from The Economist)

There are also other uses, which have been developed with respect to cochlear implants. The cochlear implant is often referred to as a bionic ear. Unlike hearing aids, the cochlear implant does not amplify sound, but works by directly stimulating any functioning auditory nerves inside the cochlea with electrical impulses. External components of the cochlear implant include a microphone, speech processor and transmitter, which also provides an individual to adjust the sound for quality and amplification. So in essence, about 20 or more combinations of electrodes need to be precisely adjusted for EVERY individual in order to adequately stimulate the auditory nerve! Evolutionary algorithms are now allowing doctors to solve the problems of patients within weeks (a task that previously could often take years).

Evolutionary design could affect ‘super specialized’ businesses as well. A research team at Stanford University prepared a Wi – Fi antenna for a company that did not want to pay any patent fees to Cisco. The team basically fed in all the possible product dimensions and specifications into an algorithm and developed a product that worked around Cisco’s patent and was actually a better product!

So in a sense this is the death of new product development right? Well not really – as new individual needs evolve and people look for new benefits from technology, new products will automatically evolve. Also, evolutionary design develops the most optimum design for products with a given set of ‘raw materials’ so to speak. So in a sense it only develops the ‘best possible solution’ from what is fed in to it. There may be inputs for development that product developers and researchers may still not have discovered the use of. One must keep in mind that an algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions.

Also what Evolutionary design does is that it makes the product perform better. Now with respect to commercial and business products, this means that there will be fewer product defaults and a benefit in overall productivity hopefully. What evolutionary design still cannot do is this – it cannot create a better ‘use experience’, which may arise out of software that is culturally ingrained (eg. Linux is a better programming platform and technically the ‘superior software’ but Windows still sells more as it is psychologically and culturally accessible).

The aesthetic design element will thus play an even more important element in the purchase decision of consumers while deciding which product to buy because most of them will be ‘superior performers’.

It will all boil down to who understands the consumer better, creates a better brand and use experience keeping in mind culture, values, traditions, personal goals etc. (or will we have an optimizer for that as well?)