The Nokia "Burning Platform" Memo

The Nokia CEO is reported to have sent an internal memo describing the issues that the company faces; this is likely a prelude to the changes that he plans to announce on 11-Feb (this Friday). The memo is available at http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/

It is funny how quickly things change. A few years ago (aroun 2007) when I was working at the another mobile phone company, we used to marvel at Nokia's ability to do the right things. While we were still debating which platform to build phones on and struggling to put together our platform, Nokia seemed to have it all figured out. They had Series 40 for feature phones, Series 60 for Smart Phones and Maemo for high-end devices. It seemed as though we were still fighting last year's battles while Nokia had moved on to worry about other things such as how to respond to the increasing focus on mobile internet services.

While Nokia is still a major player in the mobile business (one-third of the 300 million smart-phones shipped in Q4 2010 were from Nokia), the general feeling seems to be that Nokia needs to make some changes if it needs to remain a leader in this business; this sentiment is also visible in the CEO's memo.

A detailed analysis of the reasons for the unenviable position that Nokia finds itself in is more than I can attempt at this time. However it is interesting to reflect on how things have changed since the time I first started work on mobile phone software:

- 10-12 years ago, innovation in the mobile industry was centred around Europe and Japan. Nokia had the cool devices and DoCoMo had put together a cool mobile internet service called i-mode. Since the past few years, the rise of Apple and Google has led to the United States being the hotspot for innovation.

- The success of Apple and Google has meant that internet on mobile is similar to the internet experience on the desktop; in other words, services popular on the wired internet are also popular on mobile phones - Twitter & Facebook, You Tube, the same mail services etc. The talk about how the internet experience on mobiles would be something completely different from the desktop internet seems to have remained just talk. Of course the story is a bit different for feature phones where mobile-specific services based SMS and voice have provided a different flavour. But given the rate at which smart-phone prices are dropping, is the market for services created specifically for feature phones large enough and profitable?

- An article I read some time ago (I think in the Vision Mobile blog) talked about how the technology-centric view of operators where they thought about new standards and services to drive ARPU (e.g. MMS, Mobile TV) has not been a great success. Instead the app-centric model has prevailed - thousands of developers are busy identifying and addressing user needs and making money in the process (and generating data revenues for operators). I know from personal experience that a lot of the standards that firms in the mobile industry spent time developing haven't really taken off. For e.g. OMA spent a lot of time developing standards for things like MMS, (advanced) DRM mechanisms, Mobile Ads, On-Device Portals (DCD); I seriously doubt whether operators are making a lot of money from services based on these standards.

- Did Nokia find itself out of depth when it had to compete with Apple and Google as opposed to competing with other mobile phone vendors? While Nokia's mobile phone competitors played by the same rules as Nokia, firms such as Apple and Google did not.

The Nokia CEO memo did get a lot of press on 9th and 10th Feb. One interesting tidbit was a tweet from a senior Google exec commenting on the rumoured tie-up between Nokia and Microsoft that "two turkeys don't make an eagle". Given that Nokia was at one time evaluating both Android and Windows Mobile, this tweet seems to indicate that they have preferred to bet on Windows.

Browsing through related content brought me to an article from some months ago that mentioned that a senior VP in Nokia passed a comment that "Nokia selecting Android would be like Finnish boys peeing in their pants in winter to stay warm". While this sounded rather crude at first, the comparison is actually quite smart; i.e. moving to Android would provide some temporary relief but would be a bad idea over the longer run..

Today's Random Walk - From Salil Tripathi to You've Got Mail

One of the columnists I like reading in the Mint newspaper is Salil Tripathi. His article in today's (03-Feb-2011) paper was about the protests in Egypt and last week he had a column on the assassination of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab (Pakistan). His articles are available at http://www.livemint.com/saliltripathi

This post is the first one that I am writing after installing Zemanta, a tool to assist in blogging. I learnt about it through one of these seemingly aimless browsing sessions that serendipitously lead to a happy ending - at least a feeling that I haven't wasted my time.

I had registered for one of these mobile developer events scheduled for this weekend and received an email requesting that I reconfirm my participation. So I clicked on the link to do that and then started browsing the event site (http://bangalore.mobilecamp.in/) - the agenda, the organizers and so on. Many of the organizers had LinkedIn profiles and included links to their blogs. As expected, most were in zombie state, with a couple of entries soon after the blog was created and none thereafter. I suppose many of them had moved onto the convenience of Twitter.

However one blog really caught my eye - it is at http://kwdinc.in/ and is authored by a young person called Kevin William David. I think it is a wonderful example of using the web to share your thoughts and also build a brand for yourself. When scanning through his entries I saw a link to Zemanta and that is how I landed up installing and using this tool.

I installed the plug-in for the Chrome browser and have this tool working for me as I write this entry. It has pointed me to a number of articles by Salil Tripathi - I saw that he has written occasionally for the Wall Street Journal and is the author of a book called "Offense: The Hindu Case". His article on someone arrested for venting his frustrations on Twitter about the closure of an airport is interesting. That piece is titled "Tweeting Fire on the Internet".

A piece of advice on reading articles on the WSJ - in case you are unable to access an article

directly on their site because it requires subscription, you can work around that by searching for the article on Google and then clicking on the link... and that is why I provided the title of the article and not the URL.

The plug-in also suggested a few images - I got a bit carried away and added three of them before settling for just one..

Incidentally I also opened a Twitter account this morning. I think I did create one a long while

Cover of You've Got Mail

back but never did anything with it and had forgotten my username and password. I followed a few people, scanned through their tweets and then got bored. I am not sure whether I should start using Twitter - I might just end up switching over completely and give up on attempting to writing blog posts. Even if I can convince myself that I will do both, is Twitter the best solution for the short update? Or should I use Facebook or explore similar solutions for LinkedIn? Ah.. the choices we all need to make in our daily lives.. I suspect I will feel important and agonize over this for a few days and then end up using none of the three.. Reminds me of the line from "You've Got Mail" -

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self

Just in case you are wondering - I had to Google for the movie quote and cut and paste it in here - Zemanta didn't find it for me automatically :-)

Moderates Versus Extremists

The Mint paper's Saturday supplement (Lounge) on 15 January 2011 had an article on a play titled Dara, being performed by the Ajoka theatre group from Lahore. This play is based on the life of Dara Shikoh, who was Shah Jahan's eldest son and his favourite; Dara was imprisoned and executed by his brother Aurangzeb.

Dara was a poet, painter and a Sufi and his conflict with Aurangzeb mirrors the ongoing conflict between extremist and moderate forces everywhere, especially within Islam.

I have often wondered about what attracts people to extremist ideals and leaders. I would think that in the battle for hearts and minds, the extremists would be starting with a significant disadvantage as they are often oppose so many things that bring pleasure and enjoyment - music, dance, arts, cinema, wine & spirits, a relaxed approach to life with fewer rules / restrictions.

I suppose that in societies where people are struggling to obtain basic necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter, security), the ability of extremists to oppose corrupt governments that have failed in delivering these basics makes them popular with the people. It is also likely that only the rich/ruling classes may be enjoying these "better things in life" and the extremists can therefore position these may also be positioning these pleasures as being associated with the corrupt rulers (and therefore guilty by association).

In some respects this is similar to the willingness of people to accept dictatorships as long as they deliver the basic necessities in life and continue to deliver on the promise of material development.

In well-to-do societies (for e.g. in the middle east, as opposed to Afghanistan), extremists may be appealing to a person's desire to live up to some ideals or to be part of something larger than themselves. Also the desire to preserve and project their identities as being distinct from the rest of society would lead them to embrace the more extreme form of religion that accentuates their differences and glosses over the commonalities.

My guess is that Islam in India too is seeing a struggle between the tolerant forms which assimilated with the majority Indian culture (for e.g. Sufi Islam) and the extreme versions that develop under the middle eastern influence (for e.g. Wahabi Islam). It is easy to take sides (or form opinions) in some cases - for e.g. there was the story some months ago of a Muslim girl and her family in a village in Kerala having to withstand pressure from the religious community in order for her to take up a job. Most of us would support the girl and her family in this situation.

However there are other situations where there is more grey instead of just black and white. Which side do we take when we see more and more overt signs of religious conservatism? For e.g. based on my limited observations from a few visits in the past couple of years and based on whatever I read and heard, it appears that more and more Muslim women in Kerala, even from middle-class families are opting to wear burqas, hijabs etc as compared to earlier. Should we be worried by this trend, assuming that it indeed exists? Or should this be interpreted as a positive development in that the community no longer thinks it necessary to fit in and instead are confident/comfortable in asserting their identity? And shouldn't the rest of us respect the community's freedom to dress as they choose?

On a related note, I had attended a lecture by M.J. Akbar at IIMB some months ago, where among other things, he talked about the French law that bans veils covering the face (loosely referred to as the burqa ban). M.J Akbar was critical of this law and argued that the ban was ridiculous for various reasons - covering the head as a sign of modesty is a cultural tradition (even all the pictures of Mother Mary show her with her head covered), the hijab is very similar to the habit worn by nuns etc.

While I agreed with a lot of what he said, I wasn't so sure about this point. While the government may have had other intentions, my understanding is that the ban was also to prevent communities from pressurizing muslim girls/women into wearing such clothing; in other words, once it is declared illegal, the community leaders cannot insist that women folk adopt this form of dressing. However it is also possible that women (and their families) who may have felt comfortable moving in public or taking up jobs when dressed in such attire, may opt to remain at home when the comfort of donning such attire is taken away from them.

"Ideas Don't Matter"..... and other nuggets of 'wisdom'

An interesting take on the "ideas versus execution" debate is available at http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/social-web/lets-end-the-ideas-are-worthless-myth/

The author (Nathaniel Whittemore) states that the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that "ideas don't matter and everything comes down to execution" is the result of the reductionist thinking that is common nowadays.

Reading this article brought to mind some of the peeves that I have been carrying around for a while now. In our desire for sound-bites, pithy one-liners and smart sentences that fit within 140 characters, a lot of the nuances and complexities that are associated with each of these issues are lost. The folks who originally coin the sentences may well be aware of all sides of the issue, and may often choose a one-sided (controversial?) headline to pique interest and attract readers.

However the issue is that their followers and others just see the tweet or the headline or first few lines of the blog post. A number of them are unwilling (unable?) to spend time to understand different aspects of the issue and instead choose to repeat this sentence as the gospel truth. And given our fascination with being connected or up-to-speed with all that is happening, a person who can string together a few catchy lines picked up from various popular sites can pass himself off as being knowledgable.

Another reflection of this problem is commonly seen in software companies; every now and then you run into a senior person who portrays himself as a rebel by making statements such as "documentation is useless", "CMM is stupid" or "there were too many issues so I rewrote the whole program a day before the release". Many of these senior people are often passionate about their work and good at what they do. However the juniors who work with them, pick up the attitude and not the skills or knowledge that are part of the package. These juniors then grow up and turn into insufferable loud-mouths without any of the mitigating qualities that their idols possessed.

I suspect I am beginning to echo the arguments made by Nicholas Carr in his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid"; the article does make interesting reading and I suppose the author can be forgiven for using an attention-grabbing headline to get us to read his work.

Push Email

One of my colleagues requested me to explain push email. I wrote up a brief description and was rather pleased with it (I guess my expectations/standards aren't that high these days..) so thought I'd post it on my blog. So here it is..

1. There are two options with respect to informing the handset about the presence of new messages at the server:
- Using IP
- Using SMS

2. If the SMS method is used all the issues of keeping the IP connection up and knowing the IP address go away. WAP Push can be used in conjunction with SMS. There is also an OMA standard on the format to be used when sending email notifications over WAP Push. Microsoft used to use SMS in one of their earlier solutions. However SMS involves additional cost/integration so is not preferred. 

3. If the new message notification has to be sent using IP:
- the phone needs to maintain IP connectivity.
- the server needs a protocol to send the information to the handset.
- the server also needs to know the IP address of the phone if it is initiating the data   transfer (as opposed to responding to a request from  the handset).

4. In GPRS (and I think 3G) networks, the IP address is assigned by the GGSN. The phone will have the same IP address as long as the same PDP context is retained. In other words, even if it moves to a different area (under a different SGSN), it will have the same IP address.

5. The client and server will exchange some kind of keep-alive messages in order to prevent timeouts that will close the connection. The timeouts could happen on the server (TCP connection timeout or application protocol timeout) or in the NAT gateway. The keep-alive interval needs to be configured appropriately based on the network.

6. The notification of new messages can be sent to the handset in response to a request from the handset. For e.g. Microsoft Exchange informs the handset of new messages as a response to a long lived HTTPS request. I guess some other solutions may be sending this information in response to an IMAP IDLE command. As the information is being sent in response to a client request, the server knows the IP address associated with the client

7. It is possible that some solutions allow the server to inform the client of new messages without a request from the client. For e.g. a number of Push email solutions involve a NOC (Network Operations Center) which may have some sort of integration with the operator network. Such an NOC will be able to know the device IP address even if the client has not initiated a request to it; for e.g. it may be able to do a phone number to IP address lookup with some box in the operator network. Such solutions may also involve some non-standard protocols for informing the client about new messages; for e.g. it could send a message using a proprietary format to a designated UDP port on the handset.

References:
The following websites contain additional information:
- GPRS Core Network (including IP address mgmt): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Core_Network. 
- Using NOCs for Wireless Email: http://www.blackberry.com/select/get_the_facts/pdfs/infrastructure/gartner_pros_and_cons_of_using_NOCs_for_wireless_email.pdf
- Difference between Windows Mobile and Blackberry Email: http://www.techatplay.com/?p=482
- Understanding Microsoft Direct Push: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997252(EXCHG.80).aspx
- LEMONADE for Mobiles: http://www.lemonadeformobiles.com/quick.html
- IMAP IDLE: http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html

Mani Shankar Aiyar vs. Suresh Kalmadi

Mani Shankar Aiyar (MSA) was in the news last week on account of his comments on the Commonwealth Games - that he would be happy of the Delhi edition was a flop as it would discourage us from hosting more games and we would instead spend the money more usefully (on sports facilities in villages etc). This led to Suresh Kalmadi, the president of the Indian Olympic Association and one of the main organizers, labeling him as anti-national.

NDTV interviewed MSA as part of their evening news program. He said that he had been against the idea of hosting the games even when he was sports minister in the last government and quoted a line from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland":

"I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs, Perceived the scene and foretold the rest"

He prefixed his quote with a statement that Prannoy Roy (the interviewer) would need to explain this to Kalmadi since he probably would not understand the meaning :-)

I wonder how many of the current generation of politicians (Rahul Gandhi, Joytiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Akhilesh Yadav..) are interested in (or capable of?) quoting poetry. The only person who comes to mind is Sashi Tharoor. (I confess that my statements are based on the little I have seen of them in a few TV interviews so I may have misjudged their interest/abilities). Maybe this a skill that is no longer valued and holds no attraction for the "younger" lot. Does the inability or lack of interest in such areas reflect the fact that a well-rounded education (where people read for the love of reading) is not as common as it used to be?

I guess being impressed by such skills can be viewed as being a bit of a snob, but I am willing to plead guilty on that count. And MAS may score debating points but I suspect Kalmadi will still be there, holding onto his posts, long after MAS is gone.

Coming back to MAS - I narrated this interview story to a friend of mine and he told me another incident involving MAS and Natwar Singh, both alumni of St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Natwar Singh once remarked that "everything he was, was because of the college" to which MAS retorted "why blame the college?"

Kalmadi was part of Sharad Pawar's NCP for some time before returning to the Congress party. One story I have heard is that when asked whether Kalmadi's exit was a loss, Sharad Pawar replied to the effect that "Yes... even when you throw out cow dung from your courtyard, you also end up throwing out some mud.. and Kalmadi is more than cow dung".

So acerbic wit is not the sole preserve of the Doon / Stephen's / Oxford brigade..

Clayton Christensen on measuring your life

A friend of mine pointed me to an article by Clayton Christensen this morning. Christensen is best known for his work on innovation (his book "The Innovator's Dilemma" is a classic) so I was intrigued to see him writing about a "soft" topic such as guidelines for finding meaning in life. The article is available at http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1.

Christensen cites Frederick Herzberg's insight that the most powerful motivator in our lives is not money; instead it is the need to learn, contribute and to be recognized. He then shows how management principles can be applied to our personal lives: individuals need to find their purpose in life (just as companies need to find their mission and strategy), and  allocate resources (time, energy, talent, money) in line with their stated purpose. 

Christensen also talks about the importance of creating the right culture within the family (similar to creating a culture within a company). If we have a 2x2 matrix where the two dimensions depict the extent of agreement on goals and the extent of agreement on the steps towards attaining the goals, organizations/families need to use "power tools" (force, threats) when in the bottom left whereas having the right culture would enable them to operate in the top right quadrant.

When reading this article it struck me that I could not articulate a purpose statement for my life. I was reminded of the fact that I have been drifting along for quite some time now. Although I had made some half-baked plans some time ago I had not acted on any of it. 

I ended up spending quite a bit of time in office doing some web searches and reading some of the material I found; one website that was quite useful was  http://www.theonequestion.com. I have also been toying with the idea of working with a personal/life coach and found a few of them in Bangalore. I plan to follow up with them in the second week of August.