Boom in smartphones. Is their room for new players such as Dell?

On March 11, 2010, in Uncategorized, by rohit
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Smartphones are growing at a rapid speed in the mobile handset market. There are few evidences to back this statement.

The report of IDC says that the converged mobile device market has seen a growth of about 30 percent in 2009. The report also mentions that this growth momentum will continue even this year.
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Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, believes that the market for smartphones will split into high-end segment and low-end segment. He says that this is a trend that is speedly eroding the feature phones market.
The Yankee Group’s survey of 2009 had found about 43 percent of consumers of US plans to take smartphones their next mobile device.

Well, one question arises. Is is that all these reports is a gesture to smartphone market for new vendors?

If you look at the recent news of Palm and Garmin, it indicates that the market of smartphones is in fact not profit panacea that one would expect. According to Palm, the manufacturers is now expecting a full-year revenue going below what it had estimated earlier of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. The reports of Garmin is also similar. The company is till date “disappointed” with its nuvifone products sale. These can also give a jerk to new players in the market such as Dell, LG, Acer and other.

Ramon Llamas, analyst of IDC’s smartphone, said: “Instead of, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ it’s turned into, ‘If you build it, will they come?”

Lamas further mentioned that the two, Garmin and Palm, faced unique challenges. So far the marketing effort of Palm targeted the “Valentine’s Day” potential customers and not the traditional smartphone early adopters. He explained that Garmin suffered promotional scarcity and its ecosystem too much relied on interest in mapping and directions.

John Jackson, the CCS Insight analyst, said: “We knew that Palm would launch the Pre into the teeth of new flagship products (or revs of products in Apple’s case) from Apple, RIM, HTC and others.”

Jackson added further, “The same is true for Garmin, compounded by the issue of Google (and now Nokia) basically undermining the navigation proposition with freeware. Without a portfolio, a limited number of stock-keeping units (one in Garmin’s case and basically two in Palm’s case) are that much more likely to get lost in the mix. Apple is the exception, but that success story is well known at this point.”

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Nexus One in India to cost less

On March 9, 2010, in Uncategorized, by rohit
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Google is going to strip down its Nexus One phone in India. After making it available for sale in many countries around the world, the company is planning the launch of its cheaper model in India and other developing countries.
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It is believed that the Indian version of Nexus One will be thinner than the original version launched recently across the world. It is also reported that the newer version of Nexus One will have fewer features in comparison to the original one. Moreover, the Indianised version of Nexus One will be priced lower.

This unofficial report or a rumor of Nexus One originated from Twitter, the social networking site. On it a TV producer posted a comment that spread this news.

The strategy that Google is having for India is that to get more customers and enable to make them use the services of Google through the platform such as Android.

India is the fastest growing telecom market and every year the country adds about 18 million new mobile subscribers. Moreover, around 127 million of the wireless subscribers in India access data services and due to this the country has emerged to be an important market for mobile advertising as well as other mobile services.

In the Indian market Google is also looking forward for the high usage of its internet based services. According to a report last year in September 2009, Internet users in the country had spent up to a third of their online time on the Google websites.

Recently Google has been trying out several offering in India like the Google Phone Search, Google SMS Channels (SMS-based mobile communities), Google SMS Search (search using text).

Not only in India, Google is also set to launch the slimmed Nexus One phone to other developing countries also such as Brazil.

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Mobile is new, web sites are old school

On March 5, 2010, in News, by rohit
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Web sites are becoming an old school day by day with the burgeoning requirement of mobile for every industry and business. This message was very much clear at the Mobile Premier Awards held at Mobile World Congress last month.
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The entrepreneurs and investors were eager to offer predictions and tips in the award ceremony to business owners to prepare a mobile strategy. The suggestions were as mentioned below:

The first tips given was that every company or business should try becoming “visible” on the mobile devices. Mobile consultant Chetan Sharma said, “The idea is that if a consumer is looking for you on the run, your info must be available in any format where they are looking to consume that information — or else you miss an opportunity.”

The smartphones are unable to access most of the Web sites and more to this the content of many sites is not coded as per the devices that people carry on the go. Even the small screens, mobile browsers, the operating systems and search engines on smartphones has certain limitations. Take for example the flash content of dance clubs and restaurants. It cannot be visible on mobile devices as it is on computers.

Chetan Sharma recommends the companies and business owners to check the business directories, popular apps for mobiles, map and review sites to see whether your company is listed there or not. He adds that if it is not listed then list at least the basic details of the company such as location of the company, the contact information and also some short description on many free sites and free apps.

Few examples he gives which are easily accessible through mobile like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Nokia’s Ovi Prime Place, Microsoft’s Bing Local Listings,Yelp and Foursquare.

Chief executive of Percent Mobile, David Harper, said that companies and business owners much optimize the existing Web content of their companies. He also suggests to use free WordPress Mobile Pact for the official blog of the company to convert the blog in a fast loading format which is also easily readable on the small screen.

Suggestions are okay, but it is necessary to keep in mind that the mobile and personal computer audiences are different. A computer audience may be interested to see flash and videos where as the mobile audience only needs information.

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Last quarter income down, but Dell well tuned for Mini 5

On February 28, 2010, in Dell Mini 5, by rohit
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Dell faces a drop of six per cent in its income even though there is a good level of demand by consumers for netbooks and laptops which have brought up shipments.
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Dell announced this drop recently and contrary to it there has been signs of more spending in the critical business sectors.

In the recent quarter the earnings of Dell fell to $334 million, which is 17 cents per share.

However, the revenue of the company was increased by 11 percent to $14.9 billion and the gross profit margin was 17.4 percent.

In the holiday season it was noted that consumers bought low cost netbooks and laptops. This has made the shipments to be higher by 29 percent. It is said that these low cost notebooks and laptops gives less profit to the company.

The recent dismal results of Dell are sharply in contrast to Apple. It has been seen recently that Apple has taken the high road if we talk of personal computers and other products.

Though Dell has a hold on much higher market than the Apple overall, but the company has been fighting in lower margin end of those business that it has pioneered.

Well, the forthcoming tablet products of Dell may do some magic in the graph of income. The Mini 5, which is the first of the tablet series, is going to be launched very soon and it will be competing Apple’s new iPad neck-to-neck.

Mini 5 is also a mobile apart from being a table computer where as the new iPad of Apple is a web-enabled tablet device. Mini Five has only 5″ screen, much smaller than the iPad. Mini 5 will be using Google’s Android operating system.

One more pinch of information to share here. Recently the competitor HP had also announced a strong PC and business server sales, which is a trend that has been also reported by Intel just last month.

Let us know what you think whether Dell’s income will have a magical rise with the launch of Mini 5.

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