iPhone in India shortly/comparison with the Blackberry

I have been contemplating purchasing an Airtel Blackberry since 2005 February when it was new in India but was driven off by their lackluster customer service agents in Jayanagar, Bangalore then.

http://www.blackberry.com

I again rekindled my interest in the Blackberry in 2006 May but it fizzled out back then.

I finally decided to buy it on two seperate occasions in 2007 (once when I lost my Sony Erickson 810i in August 2007) and again when I lost my Nokia N 73 in December 2007) but given the rate at which I was losing my mobiles, I decided against making such an expensive purchase!

Now, I am captivated by what the Apple iPhone has to offer (when it is launched in India later this year). I am equally captivated by the Blackberry 8820 series and am trying to see if I can ask one of my associates/peers to pick it up from the USA and then unlock the phone in India and use it with Airtel - lets see.

Now, lets take a sneak peek at what the iPhone has to offer. http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Its a fantastic gadget and is at the top of the mind recall on every gadget lover’s shopping list. I have registered myself with Airtel when they do start selling the iPhones in India (expected around Diwali).

Hooked onto wireless and to my DELL Vostro 1200 notebook

I was never a firm believer in notebooks till I bought this DELL mini. The amount of deliberations I made and the thought process that went into analyzing the investment of about half a lac on this utility item would have driven most of the people around me crazy! And, that is not even my usual nature - I am a spontaneous decision maker - if everything about a cost-benefit analysis looks good, I don’t think much but this was different.

Procured my new DELL Notebook - the Vostro 1200 (mini notebook)

I finally received my DELL Vostro in 7-days flat since ordering it last Friday. I am a true DELL fan and as you would find on earlier posts have read up every book and article on DELL’s strategy of Direct sales to consumers/businesses and the Direct model. I admire Michael DELL’s guts to take on the established players such as IBM, Lenovo, HP etc. who used to go through distribution channels. All my systems on the last 3 years have been DELL branded - my DELL Inspiron 6000 that I bought from Texas in 2005, my DELL Vostro desktop that I bought in 2007 or my latest acquisition - my DELL Vostro 1200 mini notebook!

Ecofinglobe.com and its statistics from an year ago

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back - you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

Texas Instruments - BA II Plus Professional Financial calculator acquired!

I bought this advanced financial calculator (the Texas Instruments BA II PLUS Professional) for all my complicated calculations and to manage my portfolio of assets. Actually, this is primarily used only by CFA’s and CPA’s as its one of the only two authorized calculators for their examinations etc. Its cool!

Blogging guidelines - my two cents

What are the important factors one needs to consider before one begins to blog:

1. First, get over this obsession of Google adsense. 99/100 bloggers I meet first think of making a quick buck on adsense rather than focus on quality of their blogs and its relevance towards the topic(s) chosen! This is really very disturbing statistics.

Lost my N73 too

I lost my 4-month old mobile - my dear N-73 again last Friday. This time, it had software from Micro Tech running on it that helped me track the new SIM# of the culprit within hours of its getting stolen but because I did not want to alert the thief, I registered a lost mobile case with the Whitefield police station but they did nothing to solve it as yet - its been 7 days running now and I have been persistently following up with them daily for any status update on this.

Bought a Nokia N73 Music center edition/my older Sony Ericsson W810i

I had to make an emergency purchase of a brand new mobile Nokia N 73 because my 6-month SONY Ericsson W810i got stolen from my car yesterday (that is a different story altogether and I lost some precious data on that). I also realized all this crap about IMEI number rendering one’s handset useless etc. is all pure BS. There is no one to assist and the maximum your service provider will do is to disable outgoing calls on the old stolen piece and supply you with a duplicate SIM card after proper due diligence. The police does not do much either - they showed me a long list of files stacked to about 3 meter height and all of them were cases reporting lost/stolen mobiles.

This new black N-73 set me back by about Rs. 17.5K and my Sony cost me Rs. 20K in all.

I had absolutely no complaints with my Sony W810i (apart from the other cool features, it also had a game called JC does Texas which I would play regularly!) and actually went to the extent of picking up the same piece from an authorized Sony showroom but then I realized that I might try Nokia from a Nokia Priority dealer - for a change. I have read terrific reviews on the Nokia N-73 as well so hope to put it to good use.

Yet another 3-in-1 purchase!

Decided to junk my older HP 640c inkjet printer at home and the 2300c scanner to go in for an all-in-one piece called the HP F 300 series.

This comes with a printer, a scanner and a copier at an extremely affordable price point of about Rs. 4.5K.

The quality of prints/copies rendered is also pretty good.

Cellular phones - economic analysis of this industry

This is an interesting topic and has a connection with the objective of this blog.

How often do you (in India) swap your mobile for a better piece? 5 years, 10 years? Nah! Its as simple as <1 year for the younger demographics and even 2 years is considered an upper limit to discard that old mobile and go in for the new funky design with a lot of value added features and yes, you guessed it right, at a price point lower than that of your existing mobile when you purchased it an year ago!

How did all this happen?

Towards 2002 and 2003, there was a major mobile revolution that swept most parts of India and add to that the lowering of tariffs and call charges including STD/ISD with stringent competition to our cellphone providers from VoIP technology had a lot to do with that bubble.

It is estimated that there are over 100 million mobile users in India’s 1 billion populace (that is still only a measly 10% of its populace so cellphone co’s - you know the amount of reserves and untapped territory you still have to cover!)

Out of this, the # of GSM subscribers are 75 million and # of CDMA subscribers are 25 million!

India is the 5th largest mobile savvy country in the world.

China leads the pack with over 400 million subscribers. The others in the pack are:

USA

Japan

Russia

Such statistics would make the inventor of the cellhphone, Marty Cooper, proud indeed - the pioneer who invented the cellphone on a busy NY city day - who used to work for Motorola (NYSE: MOT)

http://www.cellular.co.za/cellphone_inventor.htm

I did not want to be left behind so I have a tunraround time on my mobiles of about 2 years (on an average).

My first mobile was an Alcatel purchased in mid-2003 that I held diligently for 1.5 years.

I exchanged that for an advanced Motorola E398 in Jan 2005 and held that for 2 years 2 months till it was time for me to replace it for a more funky model from SONY Ericcson - the 810i Walkman with a business companion!

Yes, I am a gadget freak.

I purchased a HP iPAQ PocketPC way back in 2003 from Texas for $199. I hardly use it today except to listen to songs or use the MS Excel spreadsheet!

I purchased a Canon 2 mega pixel camera in 2004 and purchased a more advanced Canon 7.2 mega pixel - Japanese make from NY, USA in 2006.

I purchased a notebook (earlier references made to that piece) and even sold it recently a month ago since I was again not using it!

However, the mobiles you get nowadays are extremely handy. You can listen to music, take calls on your way back home, send out SMS’s.

This SONY Ericcson W810i even has cool accessories that include a Bose twin speaker arrangement allowing me to play my FM station or my favorite MP3’s/videos loudly running on battery power! Isn’t that cool?

This is the beginning of the mobile revolution and it will take India by storm in the next decade! Mark my words!

On a side note, the depreciating value of mobiles are really bad since there is so much competition that prices keep getting driven lower and lower. The piece I bought in 2005 cost me Rs. 15K. The one I purchased yesterday cost me the same amount for a much better feature set!

When I casually inquired from the shopkeeper for the resell value of my older mobile, he quoted, Rs. 2500! That is a depreciation of almost 90% from its original base price - astounding! This just gives you an idea of what competition can do in a hyper competitive market such as the mobile market!

We had a similar economic study done on the calculators and the type of market that was - it was a competitive oligopoly. The mobile market is something similar and no longer dominated by Nokia alone. There are other larger efficient players such as Motorola with its models such as the Moto Razr, Krzr etc. SONY Ericcson etc.