My Parchment

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

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Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Wikipedia: What links here, links there.

Let me take some blog space to give kudos to Wikipedia, the largest free source of information on the web. It is unbelievable to see how Wiki (as it is popularly known) has mushroomed into such a huge information warehouse. The farthest of topics seem to have been covered on Wiki, that's what surprises me. I am totally hooked to Wiki if I need some information. You can edit, add content, and everything is linked! Hats of Wiki, cause I can see it "Open Source" is finding its way into this world.

Some famed knowledge banks:

(1) Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.com
(2) How Stuff Works, www.howstuffworks.com
(3) W3Schools, www.w3schools.com
(4) OCW (Open Course Ware), MIT, ocw.mit.edu (class lecture videos, notes, assignments,etc. I also followed classes on General Relativity & Managerial Accounting!)
(5) Slashdot, www.slashdot.org.

Of course there is always a concern about the authenticity of information on Wiki, but hey! you aren't going to write a technical paper with wiki as a reference, You are just acquiring knowledge free of cost.

Chintu

Ford Motor Company : Under Siege


It seems like the automotive sector is taking a huge hit or let me rephrase american auto manufacturers are in deep distress. The leaders of this miserable run, as you must have already guessed - GM & Ford. Both giants are undergoing some radical restructuring to get out of their slump. The question is will that cut the chase against the very successful Japanese & German counterparts? Or do they need to go all out and beyond to quell investor fears?

Competition in this industry has always been stiff. If you are not cutting costs by capitalizing on economies of scale you need to rethink operational strategies. Toyota has become massive and is growing comfortably on this front. Their cost leadership is working very fine and revenues from sales are showing huge spikes. On the other hemisphere BMW is raking good profits with its excellent branding and product differentiation strategy. They also seem to be finding innovative ways of doing this by being both effective and efficient. Either way, both are leaders in their segment.

But Ford is the one that is seeking guidance under the mentorship of Alan Mulally from Boeing. Billions to be invested in layoffs, buyouts, buybacks, restructuring, re-engineering (BPRs) are on the cards for Ford. Like 'The McKinsey Way' describes, identifying mutually exclusive key issues to a problem and deriving a rigid hypothesis is crucial. One hypothesis might be 'Giving Ford a corporate Image makeover' or 'Repositioning Ford cars'. In the last few years the industry has seen a major shift of focus. There are more and more organizations/auto manufacturers investing on fuel efficiency, economy, reliability and environmental causes. Billions of $'s are being flushed into R&D towards this cause! At this hour, is Ford lagging on those fronts still struggling with its "high durable, rugged, pick-up truck image" when small, economy, efficiency and environment friendly is in.

Will the new Chief, Alan Mulally help pull Ford out of its slump? Personally this would be an excellent strategy management case study for a B-school!

Chintu.

Not until recently did I know that Ford owned volvo cars. Read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo

Friday, September 22, 2006

Apple's Showtime impresses Wall Street

Clad in his informal self, black shirt and blue jeans, Steve Jobs the Obsessive Chief of Apple, Inc. staged the event. "Showtime" is an annual event when Apple releases their proprietary products and services to the public in a grand way. Their secrecy is well guarded, analysts speculate of possible innovations, and Wall Street awaits in high expectation. But time and again, Apple (AAPL) makes investors & consumers happy with its splendid releases! This year was no exception, only even better. For all you Macheads its Showtime long awaited for.

iPod Product Line Reincarnated. In the highly volatile and price sensitive market of mp3 players & mobile devices only 2 things matter - product upgrades or price cuts. What if offered you both! Yeah.."ultimate bang for the buck" or if neatly put - VALUE, & Apple did just that. They remastered the iPod product line with several features and reduced prices across the board.

The iPod has been beefed up with a higher capacity (80 GB), software addendum like alphabet scrolling (much needed! I had have been turning the wheel through time), gapless playback, games published by Apple / EA & longer battery life! The popular Nano, has been given a makeover with a neat aluminum casing, longer battery life, thinner physique, a higher capacity (8 GB) option, brightness control & a 21% price cut! That's the icing on the cake. The last on the line - iPod shuffle stunned, by being the smallest player available, with a clip to slip into your pocket, why? Because its too small to hold! All this at $79.

Apple is a true example of employing brand leveraging to maintain market share! No doubt that the next generation pods are going to be winners in sales.

There's one more thing. No. Its not done yet, iTunes 7.0 was released too with some updates. Beautiful ones! 3 types of views of the albums, with moving CD rack displays, gapless playback & the best of them all was the newly released video download service. Long awaited, Apple now provides Disney banners for $ 9.99 on the day of DVD releases. All this can be seamlessly synced into the iPods for mobile viewing. With this he closed the session leaving the audience contented and was about to leave when he said...

There is no better Communication than the message -
"Movies playing in an iPod near you"

And theres one more thing. This was clearly the winner for Apple. Nicked "iTV", Jobs introduced an Apple box with a few slots. iTV allows the TV in the living room to be wirelessly connected to the computer (Mac or PC! mind you..). Now that completes Apple's challenge of moving Digital Media to the living room. iTV is planned to hit the shelves Q1 2007 at $299. Jobs demonstrated iTV on the projector by playing "Pirates of the Caribbean" of high definition. iTV supports set top boxes and comes with a remote. So watch out before you invest on DVD players.. iTV could be better!

Late entrants into the market Microsoft announced its own mp3 player - Zune. Only pluses of Zune are larger screen and WiFi enabled to share music between Zunes. Entering so late in such a mature market requires a high degree of product differentiation, but that would drive up prices. Looks like MS does not stand a chance against Apple, maybe its fighting the Creatives and the Sandisks. Apple is the market leader and looks to hold onto that position for sometime.

Icing. Wall Street is happy. Investors + Consumers are happy. Stocks driven up by a few points. Apple is doing its job well or rather..Jobs is doing Apple well!

Watch the webcast of "Its Showtime" on apple.com