Is Netbook becoming a Notebook? - Part 2

IDC forecasts that by the end of 2009 almost 20 million Netbooks would have been sold. This represents almost 12% of the entire Notebook market. To me this already is a sizable chunk of the mobile computing market.
Now step back and imagine what if Netbooks had entered the mobile computing space before the Notebooks did. Would we still prefer the Notebook to the Netbook? Think.

To me the real potential of the Netbook is as big as the Notebook market is today and the bottom end of the PC market. This is the real number of people who need Netbooks.



The question is how can we reach Netbooks to them faster?
Somehow companies seem to be in two minds about promoting their Netbooks. Perhaps because the more they promote these, the more competition they create for their own pricier and more loaded Notebooks.

But isn’t this cannibalization inevitable? After all sooner or later majority of consumers are going to realize that a Netbook can address their needs.

This situation somehow reminds me of the Film Roll Camera Vs. the Digital Camera conundrum 8-10 years back. Only thing that makes Netbooks poised for a still faster adoption is their lower price. (Digital cameras were very pricey at the time of their launch.)

If we think about the needs of the three potential user groups that we talked about earlier – it will become evident that there is enough room to market different kinds of Netbooks between these three groups. The frequent traveler is looking for a professional Netbook, the young girls is looking for a cute Netbook and the students just want their first digital workbook in the shape of a Netbook.

There is a huge market for these light & smart devices and we as marketers and manufacturers need to allow this market its rightful place be it the airport lounge for a frequent traveler, a studio apartment of a young girl, or a classroom anywhere in the world.

Is Netbook becoming a Notebook? - Part 1

(and Notebook is becoming a Desktop?)
Recently my Mandarin teacher introduced me to her newly acquired Lenovo ideapad – a Netboook. It is a small, sexy, simple and solidly built thing. Interestingly enough, my teacher already has a Notebook but she found it too heavy to lug around and thus the Netbook.
Did she compromise a lot for this portability? Not really – except for the fact that the screen is just about 12” & there is no DVD drive – there is virtually no perceptible difference in the performance. Even the smaller keyboard was not limiting in any perceptible way. Given that my teacher is not a graphic designer or a hardcore gamer, it is no surprise that Netbook is just what works for her.
I asked her about how often she used the Notebook, now that she had an alternative and as it turns out, her Notebook has now become her home PC.

To me, this kind of user is not an exception. In fact I would go on to say that majority of laptop users today, actually use their Notebooks to do similar things. Most of the time they are checking/sending emails, doing IM chats, creating and saving MS Office files, surfing the Internet, playing some flash games or saving an interesting video downloaded from some website or received in a mail from a friend. Come to think of it, there is not much other than this.



This usage behaviour is not new – what is relatively new is having the option of buying something like a Netbook. But there was and, in many situations still is, a perceptual block towards Netbooks viz. the fear of buying a slow performing computer that jeopardized everyday work, the doubt that the keyboard is too small to allow ease of usage etc. Increased adoption will potentially change all this perception. The more people see what a Netbook is capable of, the less they will doubt.

In this adoption cycle - the most potential group of users and most likely the potential blocks that could prevent them from choosing the Netbook could be perhaps be summarized thus:

1. Group 1: ‘Netbook is the new Notebook!’
Frequently traveling ‘non-organization man or woman’ who works for him (he might have a laptop and/or desktop as his home of SOHO computer)

Potential Block 1: “Does it look professional enough for that meeting?”
Potential Block 2: “Does it work seamlessly like laptops?”

2. Group 2: ‘Netbook is the way a computer should be’
A large group of young female users, who prefer ‘cute-portability’ to ‘pricier specs’. They choose the clear benefit of simplicity over the hard to understand definition of performance

Potential Block: “But I have not seen any of my friends using it. My boyfriend never suggested me I buy that. Is it a good choice”?

And now the largest and the most under-utilized user group
3. Group 3: ‘Netbook is a Workbook’
Students comprise the largest group who should be using Netbooks. Visualize the Netbook case as the new school bag.
Student applications are perhaps best suited for the adoption of Netbooks. No wonder this is the group that inspired the creation of Netbook first.

Potential Block: “My school tells me I can only buy XYZ brand of Notebook, I can get this at a special price”



Together these three segments can be really big. In fact the third segment by itself is a huge under utilized opportunity.

This post will be continued.

Making Engines AND Engineers

While sitting in a discussion on competitive advantage of nations, a thought crossed my mind “Japan makes engines, India makes engineers”. I realized, how the ‘Education and Opportunity’ landscape in India groomed world-class minds and yet we still had a long way to go before we could provide an ecosystem that could utilize many of the talented minds from India. Once we could achieve this, we would be able to develop breakthrough innovations and take them to the world rather than watch talented Indian minds work on breakthrough innovations for developed nations.



Arguably a large proportion of best Indian brains leave India in search of better opportunities. Iconic institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) have made a name for themselves and so have the professionals who have studied here. So, when I walked into a Television section of an electronics chain store in Chengdu (Central China), I was pleasantly surprised to discover THTF the brand name on one of the flat panel televisions on display. THTF is TsingHua TongFeng Electronics. Not just the name sound similar to TsingHua University, Beijing (consider it to be the the IIT Kanpur/IIT Mumbai of China) - it actually is a brand started by an entrepreneur who is a alumnus TsingHua University!

I realized that there could potentially be a big opportunity here. Although Hindu mythology does talk about not mixing Goddess Saraswati (Goddess of Knowledge) with Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) thus keeping education and accumulation of wealth apart. However, when I see the THTF brand, I cannot help but visualize the opportunity for some of the iconic educational institutions in India. They could perhaps give even more to the society, by leveraging their name and expertise to create opportunities for young minds to develop products and services that can also be marketed under their brands. Be it IIT, IIM or IISc (Indian Institute of Science). What can be a better Venture Capital (VC) fund or a Technology Startup than the one that can be mentored by our own experienced professors and lead by bright students while being supported by business leaders and investors!
Visualize consumer electronics brand supported by IITs displayed next to names like Sony, Sharp or Apple.




Engineers innovate & innovations rule the business world – there is no reason why we can’t better realize the hidden potential of the Indian innovation engine by leveraging the esteemed marques in the education arena!

At the face of it

Spot the driver in the picture that you see here, can you? Unlike India where it is much easier to tell the server from the one who is being served, in China it is very difficult. Usually you cannot tell who is who, at least in big cities. Because if the driver is wearing very clean, contemporary clothes and shoes, if he is busy keying in stuff into his PDA with the stylus and then we all sit together to eat, it becomes virtually impossible to tell one from the other. I am sure it might not be as difficult to tell the difference for people who know the language but sometimes (only sometimes) not knowing the language helps in gaining a point of view. Sometimes not knowing the answer is useful, because it helps you wonder constructively.

Coming back to the difficulty in telling one from the other, I think this a great sign. It means that the society is progressing at a pace wherein in there is lesser disparity, at least in some ways and some places. I am sure there is a long way to go but at least things seem to be moving in the right direction.

Now look at these two men below. Almost a contrast to the big city driver in their looks, aren’t they? Before you conclude that this is a ‘home theatres for the homeless’ kind of situation, I must add that these two men, staring at the bikini clad women on the screens, are sitting in an electronics super store in a tier 4 city in China and the sales woman is helping them choose the LCD TV that they should buy.
Surprising? Well, not really. In terms of money some farmers might be making as much if not more than the driver on the right in the picture above, however their expenses seem to be much less in the village. Add to it the price of a Chinese LCD TV does not make you mortgage anything to be able to own it!

I am sure the readers here would have read many stories about the poverty in rural China. However I feel that no picture is ever complete. If that is a reality, this is another reality. The way I look at these two examples is that technology adoption is moving down the economic pyramid. This is a great sign. I believe that technology adoption would further speed up the process of bridging the gap between the haves and have nots. Also, to me development (especially in a large country like China) cannot be a high precision activity. There will always be difference in the levels of development across regions and across occupations. However it is important to note that there is movement in the right direction and that to me is a very promising reality!

I can hear you thinking

I have always been a believer in this and I always will be. Best interface is the one that can read minds rather than wait for my hands to do something or my vocal cords to make some noise!
I wrote about this a few months back when I was passionately attacking ‘classical languages’ like English and others that we have grown up speaking and writing. I as I said then and continue to say now, these languages were not developed keeping computing in mind (read earlier post “Undocumented Irrelevance of the Written Word”).

They we designed for ‘classical social interface’. However as we interface with ever more powerful computers, ‘as our needs extend beyond classical social interfacing’ we need an interface language that that can match up to the task. So when something like Epoch (from Emotiv Systems, see more here http://emotiv.com/INDS_2/inds_2_1.html) comes over the horizon, I see hope.

I have not tried Epoch yet, from what I read and hear about it, it brings us a fair picture of the things to come and at USD 300/- (around RMB 2100/-) it is worth trying out to get a feel of how future interfaces might feel.
Epoch is fundamentally a mind reading headset that helps you interface with your computer (it uses the same technology as in EEG – electroencephalography but without the gel!). In other words if it works as I imagine, in the time to come, it should be able to replace your keyboard and mouse.
Though right now it seems to be more of an entertainment tool because the primary applications is immersive gaming but I feel it can become much bigger than this. It could be a dramatic shift in human computer interface. The iPhone technology ended the need to press a physical buttons because the screen became the button; the Wii technology ended extended human motion to real time onscreen responses, and Epoc promises to completely rid us from getting physical with our machines!
I might sound like a technology fanatic but if we were to think objectively, in the past we have been very unfair to the way computing works. The computing world is the world of bits and bytes, which of course is much more efficient than the human or physical world of atoms and molecules. However, just because we live in the less efficient world, we have always brought down the interface to the level of inefficiency that typifies the physical world. But with neuro-impulse interpretation, we stand to break free from the fundamental limitations of the molecular side of us being humans. To me, human neuro impulses come closest to the bits & bytes efficiency and accuracy paradigm of the digital world. Neuro impulse is like the digital side of our biological or molecular existence. Thus if we can set up an interface with our computing devices at the neuro impulse level, then we would be interacting with these devices in the most efficient way that biological evolution can permit us to, today.

Another key reason for me to stand by the neuro impulse future is that it promises to democratize technology in an unprecedented fashion. As I wrote in my earlier piece, people would not need to be ‘language-wise’ before they could start using the benefits of the new technologies.

It is worth thinking at what level would we be picking up neuro impulse – would it be just an impulse or would we need to wait for the impulse to be given a word form before it can be interpreted. Right now I guess we are at the latter, however I keenly look forward to language independent neuro impulse recognition for superior interface with computing and more importantly a better life!

Undocumented Irrelevance of the Written Word

Imagine – “Would we still be ‘writing’, had we invented a sound recording device before we developed the alphabet?”

Think.


I suppose the primary objective of the written word was, and still is, ‘to Record’. But then, isn’t it surprising that we still learn to read and write, when we can ‘record’ in many other, and much more efficient, ways?

We invented the written alphabet before the audio (and then a video) recording device. Had it not happened in this order, what we would have had today as language, would have been aural sounds & symbols as denotations. We would have been communicating and recording information by using sounds and symbols in place of writing letters and words.
We can argue, however, that characters or words are also symbols of a certain kind. No matter how correct this may sound, it actually is not. The fundamental difference between symbols and characters is that characters and words are a representation of meaning that may or may not resemble ‘that’ what it is representing. As Christine Kenneally writes in ‘The First Word’, a word is an arbitrary association between sound and meaning. There is nothing in the sound of a word that tells us what it means or what it does. So the word “Apple” does not look like an apple, does it?

May be it would be a good idea to try and step back in time and ask ourselves - out of all the, equally potent, senses that we as humans possess viz. the sense of touch, smell, sight, taste, & hearing, why did we consign the written word to the sense of sight?
The reason once again, perhaps, was that it was the best possible way of recording things for others to be able to see in the absence of the person who recorded it.

But this choice, to depend on verbal and visual mode of communication through written words, perhaps came at a huge price, a price that we as a species have paid in the past and are still paying, without actively realizing it.
The price is being paid in the shape of poorer development of our other senses for the purpose of capturing information, understanding information and acting upon it. What follows might not be the best example but I would still like to cite it in order to illustrate the point I am trying to make. I was amazed by how animals were warned much in advance of the disaster caused by Tsunami that struck many Asian countries a few years back. We as humans, with our ‘sophisticated’ early warning systems (based on written words and symbols!) were caught almost unaware, many of the other species were observed to be more prepared without any technology to back them.
Has our reliance on languages, especially the written word slowed down the development and evolution of our ability to sense things?
From the above example it does seem to have had a negative impact. It’s impact is such that many of the ‘lesser species’, as we hitherto believed them to be, are seemingly ahead of us in sensing & processing critical information about our environment.

Although I do not have empirical evidence but everyday observation tells us more about another weakness of the written word. Writing perhaps is among the most unnatural things that a child learns as he grows up. To me it seems that we are not biologically coded to write. Just observe how a child learns the spoken language effortlessly; however the maximum punishments that he gets are to do with memorizing & writing the written word. This is in sharp contrast to the seeming effortlessness with which he learns to speak, hear and understand the language.
The need for memorization through the written word slows down the process of learning. We easily forget that memorizing the things we learn, viz. spellings, dates, facts, formulas etc are not really critical. These are just facts and facts can be looked up. What really matters is how things stack up; or fit with each other - the stories, the frameworks etc. These frameworks become the operating system of our thinking, our point of view and basis of our judgment. Imagine how much better we would do for ourselves if we were not forced to memorize with written word as the guiding paradigm.
Even after having learnt to read and write, we spend a large proportion of advanced learning hours and years towards memorizing things. It is only when we leave the college and schools behind; when we start our lives at work that we really begin to unlearn that what we have remembered and start using the associative faculties of our brain viz. how things and concepts are interrelated, and thus what is the bigger picture.

The human brain has marvelous associative processing capabilities, however I believe that written languages, sub optimize its true potential. Could it be that we would have been a better thinking race had we developed a more natural approach to learning a language an approach that could have complimented our almost limitless ability to think?

To me, among others, one of the most important roles for language is communication. And in my understanding, communication is a subset of sensing. It is a way of being in touch with the world around us. However the very act of developing the written word seems to have discounted the importance of sensing.
In our desire to standardize and simplify things we have lost a lot of, those things that could not be written or read. This reality assumes ironical significance when we acknowledge that “large and perhaps the most critical part of all communication, is nonverbal.” Despite acknowledging the importance of ‘sensing’ that what is not being said or written, we are still stuck with the ‘written model of language’.

Having shared my understanding about the importance of sensing over listening and reading, I would now like to share with you a related observation, it is about everyday challenges that some of us experience but never really get to think about actively. Worst still, this challenge is often lost in the rough and tumble of our everyday work.
I am talking about the pace of our thinking. Doesn’t it occur to us sometimes that our speed of writing with a pen or pencil or using the keyboard is way behind the pace of our thoughts? Don’t we sometimes get frustrated when we lose thoughts and ideas just because we could not ‘document them’ when they occurred, only because we did not have the time to ‘put them down’ on a piece of paper, or a PC or our PDA.

Given these constraints of the written word, let us now look where we are in terms of progress that can potentially help us free human ability from the grips of the written model of language

1. Today we have both audio (and video) recording devices
2. However we still have large scads of ‘illiterate’ populations in different parts of the world
3. At the same time we also have people who are thinking fast enough to find the written word cumbersome and sometimes frustratingly redundant

Why then are we still unable to rid ourselves from the grip of the ‘written word’ paradigm?

1. The illiterate need to be literate first, before they can use technology, which of course, is predominantly language driven

2. Even those who are at the leading edge of technology adoption and are faced with impact of language as a pace retardant, still need to use the classical languages (English or any of the remaining 227 languages as options)


I see tremendous opportunity to enhance the role of technology as an enabler for people both at the bottom and the top end of the human development index.

On one end are number of technology-dark, illiterate communities across the globe. They can in fact reap the benefits of mobile personal technologies if they are given a chance to interface with these technologies, through a new standard of symbolic interface. This new standard would free personal mobile devices, among other, from the shackles of classical language(s) that hinder the ease of adoption.
This would help a large section of the third world to leapfrog into a technology integrated world that can enable, empower and consequently elevate the quality of their lives.

We need to ask ourselves what is easier and faster–
Waiting for the whole world to be literate before they can start using personal technologies that enable and empower and finally uplift quality of human life?
Or
Develop a new standard that helps these people bypass the digital divide, and make the human race more progressive?

On the other end of the human development index we have another set of technology users who can have the pace of their thinking unshackled from the tardy classical languages that constitute the standard interface for most of the personal computing technologies.

Computers and human brains process much faster than the speed at which we write or use the keyboard. This high speed processing can be utilized best by shifting to a more efficient language interface that is suited for high speed cerebral and microprocessor functioning.

Today we can only think of an interface driven by aural prompts.
We have seen some of these software applications being bundled & marketed as ‘added features’ in the personal entertainment and communication devices. Most of this voice recognition software has not proved to be robust or cost effective enough to attract large-scale adoption. But speech is once again only incrementally better than the written text.

The ideal interface that can do justice to the high speed processing is neural prompting. Perhaps what can be called interface at the speed of thought.
With the technological developments happening in area of understanding how exactly our brain functions (deconstructing regions in brain that are responsible for specific tasks), we might not be very far from actually mapping out the key functional areas of the brain which in turn would help us interface with the digital devices around us and do that much more efficiently.

Though this may be way too far in the future but as I see it, speech and text is not the destiny of language. The languages of future could well be neuro-impulse traveling effortlessly to and from digital processors around us and the neuro-biological cerebral processing inside us.

I am not building this case to garner support & throw the written word out of the window. However I believe that this is an honest attempt to try and sensitize many of us about the inherent weaknesses of the written word and the imperative to develop something better.

Today the written word has become a convention that nobody questions. Little do we realize that in a future integrated with personal technologies, the cumbersome nature of classical languages would retard the growth of mankind from becoming a more efficient race.

The written word or ‘Classical Languages’ as I prefer to call them, are a model from the past. -a past when ‘documenting’ was the only way to record. But as we move into a technologically enabled future, we would need to develop new languages that deliver greater efficiency and versatility - a new standard of interface that can do better justice to users at the two ends of the development spectrum.

In future language might have a bigger role to play than just ‘to record’. In the future language might as well be helping us create ‘new records’ as we reach new frontiers of human development!

Are we ready, already?


Saurabh Sharma

Cameraman, now reporting!

Deutche Telekom has unveiled the ultimate web reporter in the recently held CeBT Tech Fair in Germany. Web Reporter Lisa Molitor had a camera mounted on the left of her headset and there is a screen that covers her right eye. The screen displays that which the camera is capturing in real time. Lisa can also transfer the images and video she is capturing immediately using the wireless LAN to the company’s website.

Cut to field news reporters of today. The sign offs are usually “this is XYZ with Cameraman PQR at 123 for MNO news”. This is because news reporting (journalism) is a skill stream seen separate from camera work. But with innovations like the one Lisa Molitor was displaying, all this is bound to change.
The future camera person and the news reporter/correspondent are going to be one. News reporting would not be complete without equal dexterity in handling wearable or embedded technology like the one we just saw. It is about time reporters went tech and camera person became more content savvy.

In many way skills without scalability for technology augmentation would be incomplete skills. Technology would be enhancing every skills & trait. Individuals who acknowledge this impact of technology’s delivery enhancing potential would gain the most.
Some other skills that are most likely to be influenced by the advent of embedded and wearable technology would be Teaching/Training (virtual and real time), Medicine (virtual consulting, E-medication) and many more if not all the other occupations/professions.

Coming back to the example we started with, it is interesting to visualize the impact of these developments on the criteria of selecting future news journalists.
Would it be better looks or speed with better understanding and application of technologies?

No lungs to invest in eco stocks!

In the future there are no lungs! (and heart and kidneys etc. but more about these later).

In the future there are no lungs! (and heart and kidneys etc. but more about these later).

We would not need to breathe air (oxygen) because we’d be getting the Oxygen to our cells (for whom we actually breathe) directly through an oxygen-making source attached/embedded in our bodies.
No breathing needed, is no air needed is no lungs required. I’ll not dwell on this ‘ultimate outcome’ of Genetics-Nanotechnology & Robotics (GNR), but I’d sure like to share what I believe could perhaps be the implications of this.

Ultimately we’d not be requiring our environment, as we love to call and click it, anymore. And environment is air, water, other animals & plants (the latter, again, are important for the oxygen that they make for ‘us’),‘natural sights’ (as for the last one we’d be able to create natural sights virtually and they’d be as good if not better!)
All this could actually happen as early at 2045.

Pardon me if I am making this sound too simplistic but I am just trying to summarize the key resultants of the present day technology explorations in fewest and simplest words possible.

What role does environment have beyond Survival (oxygen) and Aesthetic experience (those poetry inspiring & relaxing sights!)?
Off late it has come to acquire one more important role – Return on Investments. People are investing (these are really big people)in eco-stocks because they see our environment under extreme pressure in the medium term (those melting ice caps are a part of this). The natural outcome of this warming of the planet & melting of the ice due to our present day over-abusive industrial behaviour would be a massive clampdown on environment degrading industries.
That would be the day when eco-happy/friendly companies & industries would have their real value be acknowledged by the fuming chimneys of present day industries.

But as I pointed out earlier, this is only in the medium term (20-years) because in the long run we won’t need non-polluting windmills just as much as we do not want smokestack economies today. Computation will ultimately drive everything that is important. This primary foundation for future technology thus appears to require no energy.We'd be able to harness the information(yes!) stored in 'seemingly' dead objects like rocks and even trees. (More in 'The Singularity is Near')

That, dear reader, would be the day when our existence will surpass our environment.

Bivergence 1; Convergence 0

I have been hearing about Convergence since I was in my post-graduate programme. It has been over five years now but where is it? It reminds of the optical illusion created by the two seemingly converging but otherwise parallel railway tracks or better still the the horizon - where the sky and the sea seem to meet!
I am yet to come across any product that does it all. Many of us still say that there would be that one device that would do everything and it’s only a matter of time before it is made available & affordable.
I want to believe it. But till such time that convergence becomes a reality, Bivergence seems to be ruling. Bivergence is about a personal communication device or technology with two key driving features.
Most of the products that are available today are live examples of this. Most of these devices are best suited for doing one or at best two things. Look at i Pod (Music & or Movies, but still mainly entertainment), The new series of phones from Nokia boast of a twin feature - Mobile connectivity & Music which effectively communication & entertainment, Sony Ericsson with Cybershot is a Mobile phone with a Camera but it still continues to be predominantly a communication device. Even Blackberry - the iconic mobile business backbone - is fundamentally a mobile phone with arguably the best emailing application (connectivity).
Step away from mobile handheld devices & we see that IP TV continues to be micro niche and DTH platform persists to be predominantly a Television service.
Despite all the future gazing about convergence, we are still living with products that are at best a duet of two kinds of applications. One of these applications is primary and the other only an additional feature.

What is still not very clear is are we only a product innovation away from convergence or would we have to wait longer for a mindset change that would help us accept a more ‘universal’ convergence product. And thus give marketers a reason to introduce that one ‘product’.