Coming up: Economics of ebooks/readers – a detailed study

Watch this space closely as I collate information and present an analysis on this shortly. Someone left a feedback for me that I was totally deviating from the primary objective of this blog – Economics and Finance and I think their point is indeed valid. I have been all over the place again. I need to refocus my priorities on this blog’s original objective with which it was setup 3 years ago and that is to concentrate on Economics and Finance.

Just look at the competition in this field:

1. amazon.com kindle e-book reader

2. Barnes and Noble Nook e-book reader

3. iRex, (a Royal Philips spin-off in 2005) e-book reader

4. PlasticLogic e-book reader

5. Sony e-book reader

This will be an interesting analysis.

The amazon kindle 2 now available for the Indian market – I am going for it!

amazon.com kindle2 (India)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/amazon-kindle-2-review/

amazon.com listened to me as I prayed for an International version of the kindle as Jeff Bezos wrote what sounded like music to my ears (rather what looked like a treat to my eye – since I was looking at the screen as I read it!)

This is not the first time that such customer centric companies such as Google, Apple, amazon.com have listened to our concerns and addressed them!

I had blogged earlier here, here and here on how and why the amazon.com kindle is not available for purchase in India and who it’s competitors were and what were the tricks of the trade one had to adopt to lay one’s hands on one of them albeit with access to less than half the features. Now we have ALL the features PLUS an affordable kindle almost at our fingertips! How cool can it get?

I did some quick checks and here are some bare facts before we start counting the chicken before they hatch:

IIFT EMIB

IIFT EMIB 2004 - 2006 (Source: http://www.iift.edu)

It’s been exactly five long years since I joined for my EMIB (Executive Masters in International business) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi! I joined it on 9th August 2004. Time flies! But can say for sure that this degree has been my best investment made on education till date. With zero opportunity cost (it was held only on weekends – non stop for one and a half years) and the schedule was honestly grueling with no respite and kept us busy on weekdays with assignments, quizzes every weekend, mid-term exams, classes and of course, the end terms.

Comparison of revenue per employee/IT products versus IT services

Take two top companies in their respective sectors:

For a change, for IT products, we don’t choose Microsoft but choose Apple Inc. for IT products. As expected, we choose India’s media IT service darling company, Infosys Technologies Ltd for IT services. Let’s see how they compare on this one metric.

From Mckinsey – building innovation/innovation hubs in the world!

Goes to show how poor India is when it comes to innovation. We don’t even figure on this heat map. For a larger link to this picture, please see: http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/innovation/building-an-innovation-nation

Should a recession affect your purchasing decision making?

Is the reduction in purchasing decisions/actual purchases made a good thing or a bad thing during recessionary times. While technically, India is still motoring along at over 5.5% GDP growth and is tipped to be the 2nd fastest growing economy in the world for 2009 (a miserable year for other world economies), should the discerning consumer cut down on his purchases of items?

Berkshire Hathaway Annual report 2008 / a must read

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2008ar/2008ar.pdf

You can’t be mistaken when you are reading from the greatest punters in the Financial space – Warren Buffett. The Chairman’s letter to shareholders did not dissappoint me. It was filled with the usual interesting titbits on his insurance ops and business, the concept of insurance ‘float’, his profit margins, the stake he took in Goldman Sachs, GE etc. during the troubling cashflow starved times of late 2008, the usual caveats on on the derivatives business and the future of Berkshire! Oh btw – there was no mention of “fruit of the loom” as marketwatch said there would be!

As I have said many times before, I am a self proclaimed protege of Warren Buffett and anything he does interests me. His annual reports are always looked forward to by much ado and this time was especially different to get the views of the man who I consider is king in stock market investing alongwith with his mentor Ben Graham and associate, Charlie Munger.

Minyanville – http://www.minyanville.com

Image courtesy: http://www.minyanville.com

This is a great financial news/information website. Very analytical and thought provoking articles posted here.

Why I feel SONY BRAVIA pricing is optimum now

Two economic concepts we learn from the below link of the “SONY way” are:

1. Horizontal division of labor – SONY practices this as is clear from the link – what is horizontal division of labor? The answer can be found at this link.

2. SONY is currently facing a low margin, high turnover business in LCD TV’s and cannot exit it easily. If it reduces prices to match competition (typical of a red ocean strategy), then it has to drive up volumes (on its sales channel) to make up for it’s lost margins.

Source: http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/eng/20081222/181031/

The Satyam fiasco – Ramalinga Raju’s misadventures

Sorry for not blogging about this earlier. I did not have access to broadband Internet at my home for the last 3 days and was working off my Blackberry for office related tasks.

While the economic and financial implications have been written about far and wide and everyone is busy reading the tea leaves, what are the lessons one take’s away from this? Before I begin my analysis, I would like to remind my readers that I had blogged on Corporate governance and sound accounting practices as early as 1.5 years ago on this very blog: http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/importance-of-accounting-for-the-business-world/ and on http://www.accounting101.wordpress.com AND on Corporate Ethics here: http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/corporate-ethics/ more than TWO years ago!