MUMBAI MAYHEM

Mumbai or Bombay which is the gateway for Brand India has been hit again and hit hard.Its not just a random blast this time,its an direct attack ,a siege .Its not just another terror attack which will be forgotten next week and It should not be.

Reports say that there were 5 bomb blasts ,and also armed gunmen have taken atleast 50 hostages in TAJ& OBEROI ,Trident hotels.Half of the hostages are said to be foreigners.Cops,including several chief officers have been killed.As of now 60 people have been feared killed and 200 injured.Click here for latest reports

The mumbaikars were considered the most resilient people,but the fact was that they had to get used to the terrorist attacks which happens atleast every month in form or another as if it is a natural phenomenon, because they have no place else to survive in this great democratic country.

Its time to stop mourning and start acting,

India are you listening???

New Bond Vs New Coke

Prof Ray says "The 'Quantum of Solace' Bond is one that's turned Rambo, and that's a no-no."
As a bond fan, I too said no no when Bond became like Rambo & Bourne.However QOS has got the opening amongst all Bond movies and still raking up the box office to become the most commercially successful Bond film ever made.

Unlike the new coke,the new Bond has become a hit in the market by breaking all box office records by previous Bond movies. Does that mean they have got the balance of retention & alterations correctly? May be or may be not, but for me the next one will not be a Bond movie but a decent action movie. (See My review of QOS)
Which made me think what if the new coke was actually successful but a considerable population missed the classic version?

Of course ,they can sell two versions of coke at same time but when it comes to choosing only one of them which what will you choose? Will you choose to serve the existing market where your brand has a strong positioning or jump on to the new segment where you have to alter the brand image? I think it will be the sales figures which will have a final word. So its highly probable that atleast the next couple of Bond movies will be packed with nothing but action.

Apocalypse coming in 2012

Mayan legend has it that  on 21.12.2012 , the B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar gets completed and it is said that it will cause a major change in the world,more like a apocalypse due to tremendous natural disasters.

Now that's a great story to make a Hollywood blockbuster .Atleast Roland Emmerich thinks so. His last movie 10,000 B.C. was not very successful.But Roland says his next film "2012" will sure make up for it.This time he sticks to his formula of a apocalyptic disaster story with a huge budget which promises mind blowing visual effects.

The blockbuster director who gave hits like Independence Day,Godzilla,had earlier said he won't be doing any more disaster movies. His recent movies "The Day After Tomorrow" was also blockbuster based on effects of global warming . But Roland says "…This whole movie I'm doing next was inspired by just the phenomenon of the internet when you type in Google, '2012', you get 240 million hits. That's a lot. And it's just, so many people write about it, believe it, that our world comes to an end in 2012. I said wow. I kind of said before I will never do a disaster movie again. I said, for this idea I have to do it again."

                                                      Trailer of 2012

Hopefully we get to see the movie before the world ends...

Nilekani's India Dreams

Infosys Technologies Co-Chairman, Mr Nandan M. Nilekani is bringing out the India he has imagined in his mind in his first book, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century.

“It’s a definitive book on India,” says Penguin Books’ India managing editor Udayan Mitra on Nilekani’s debut offering. “It’s the kind of book that has an international appeal. Nilekani has been in the forefront of IT revolution in India and is one of the most recognized faces globally”.

Indeed, everyone who have read Thomas Friedman's "World Is Flat " will know Mr.Nilekani.After all it was his words which propelled the book's theme.

Imagining India is divided into four parts: The first dwells on topics, including globalization, India’s demographic advantage, the changing role of the entrepreneur and technology. The second is about the infrastructural challenges and the third looks at issues such as conflicting political ideologies, labour reform and higher education. The last section deals with democracy and technology, health, pensions and entitlements, the environment and energy.

It will be launched on 24 November in New Delhi,  followed by other Indian cities, Bangalore including Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. The book will also be released in the US and elsewhere in 2009.

Iphone-not so "happening" in India

When Apple set 100,000 as its sales target for the iphone in India for the period till Dec 2009,they thought they are being humble because of the fact that in India around 120 million handsets are sold every year of which 4 to 5% are smartphones.

But now they realise that it will be very hard to reach this modest target.Livemint.com reports that only 11000 iphones have been sold so far out of the 50,000 of the initial shipment.

So what went wrong? Is it the price? not really...because Nokia's iphone killers are doing well although they are priced same or even more(30k+range) than the iphone in India.Its too early to quote numbers of the N96 but sales is brisk according to sellers.

Two main P's that Apple got wrong are Promotion & Place-that is they did not communicate properly to the Indian consumer why they have to pay three times more than the US price.Also only the service providers  promoted and not Apple despite its retail presence. And Airtel and Vodafone thought since its The Iphone it will sell by itself and only a low level of promotion was done(only some printads ands billboards that iphone is available)    

Then Place i.e. distribution, when retail is growing in India,Iphones are sold only through the service provider outlets and not through other mainstream retailers.Meanwhile the availability of Nokia phones is much much greater in the Indian Marketplace.

If sales of iphones is to be pushed it should be done immediately by collaborating with other organised retailers  because the time is running out and before you know it consumers would have forgotten the iphone.

Who's watching Who

Although we knew before,now we have proof. Hubble has snapped up pictures of a planet orbiting around a star outside our solar system.For the first time there is an opportunity to study the nature of an other solar system other than ours.This may help us to understand and arrive at generic patterns across several solar systems.

The planet, Fomalhaut b, maintains an orbit around the star Fomalhaut and has three times the mass of Jupiter. "Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," said Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley.

So we can see it will take an awful lot of time to study and to compare & contrast with our system.I think we need lot more  Hubbles if we hope to do so.

LCD-LG's Conspired Dealing

LG Display Co Ltd, Sharp Corp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd have pleaded guilty in a price fixing conspiracy of Liquid Crystal Displays between the period from September 2001 to June 2006

ZDNET reports "The price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cell phones, and numerous other household electronics every day," Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's antitrust division, said in a statement. 

Electronic majors like Apple, Dell & Motorola are the most affected companies due to this price fixing conspiracy.While Chunghwa is paying US$65 million and Sharp a fine of US$120 million,LG Display has agreed to pay a US$400 million fine, which is the second-highest antitrust fine ever imposed.

Observers say that during 2000 Korean & Taiwan companies were producing excess LCD glass which forced sellers to sell US$5-10 below the cost . So the companies agreed to a price fixing collusion which resulted in the increase of prices.

Whatever the reasons may be now LG, Sharp ,etc might lose many of its valuable customers like Apple ,Dell etc unless they do a intensive damage control.