Business Survival Tactics

In the ever changing world of Business, most especially IT, a company needs to stay relevant, profitable, and most importantly ahead of the game.
According to an FT article published on June 6 2011 on page 24, confirmation was that the success of Microsoft Xbox Kinect controller was making "..the Nintendo Wii become a lot less relevant". As we know, Nintendo pioneered the concept of getting gamers off the couch and unto their feet, which in some cases led to physically fitness. Their sensor technology also made it possible for non hardcore gamers to love game console, helping drive the mass market strategy the console gaming market thrives on. Nintendo led the market when they first released the Wii console, making them a market leader, but guess they failed to act quicky with an upgrade or enhancement. Microsoft acted swiftly with a very innovative concept of doing away with the hand held hardware and went for total contoller held concept. Microsoft Kinect device was released in Nov 2010 and 8 months down the line it was confirmed to have sold about 10m of the device worldwide, thats an average of 1.25m per month. This will of course slow down in the next couple of months, but Microsoft is now expected to show off more games that uses the device in order to further drive sales.

Have learnt couple of things in the past few days, some of which are:

1. Ensure that you own a larg proportion of the Business flow. What am saying here is that as a hardware manufacturer, ensure you have a market share in Software as well. Apple remains a good example here. It's just a matter of time before Google acquires a (pc or tablet) hardware manufacturer in order to further it's world domination.
2. Be very innovative. Innovation does not just relate to IT sector. Apple in the IT sector does this very well to the extent that they can sell you sand as an innovative idea. 
3. Patents, patents, patents. If your idea happen to be a genius one, recommendation is to go through the pain of getting the idea or part of the concept patented. A dating website(yes, dating website) by the name of Eharmony took a patent (No: 6735568) around the subject of "Method and system for identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship". If you can't come up with all the patents, best you buy one, Facebook did just this, but acquiring relevants patents that belonged to Friendster.
4. Security and compliance. Financial institutions are obsessed with compliance, as they know it comes at huge cost with hefty fine from the local regulators if they get it wrong. Unfortunately a well know brand by the name of Sony failed to secure(and encrypt) key customer database as a group hacked into the server and compromised about 100m customer information

Business Takings

As we all know that the cost we(customers) buy things in the store is most of the time more than 100% the cost of manufacturing. But what a lot of people do think is thats a lot of profit to the company, well, not true in most cases. Theo Pahitis did the breakdown of a daily store takings as narrated below*:

• First and foremost you have to pay UK VAT (you really do not ant to piss him off)
• Remove the cost of stock sold to the customers, which is usually about 50% of the takings
• Rates, rent, electricity, etc all cost about 20%
• The staff that worked hard on the shop floor cost 15% of the takings
• Warehouse, buyers, distribution network, etc cost about 10% of the takings.
• This now means that the 5% is left as the profit, thats of course if the buyers got it right.

*reference to Britain's Next Big Thing shown on BBC2 on 3rd May 2011 at 8.00pm UK Time

Osama Bin Laden Finally laid with gun shot

A text hit my inbox on 2nd May 2011 at exactly 08:47 stating Osama Bin Laden has been buried according to a US news channel. Initially, thought I was having a nightmare, secondly questioned the text message because you need to catch someone (or at least they need to be in sight) before you can kill. Leaned over reluctantly to grab the Freeview remote control, flicked over to the trusted and somehow reliably BBC news channel, and behold it was true that Osama Bin Laden has indeed been killed.

Osama (aka The Prince, The Emir, The Director), has been considered by the United States of America for the last 10 years as the most wanted man in the world and public enemy number 1 since the tragic incident in September 11 (9/11) attack, which caused the death of about 3000 people as well as other terrorist incidents round the world.

Of course the killing of such a "hated" prominent (if not one of the most famous person on the planet) figure will draw a lot of attention, celebration, questions of the strategy, controversy, and of course the conspiracy theories.

Implication
The note on the UK Foreign & Commonwealth website reads "...The death of Osama Bin Laden will have important consequences for the security of our people at home and abroad and for our foreign policy..." The first thing that obviously comes to mind is that Al-Qaeda members or those that believe in Osama Bin Laden ideologies will retaliate in the next couple of months, weeks or even days, hence the public have been warned to be vigilant but not scared. Most of the US and it's allies consulates round the world have been told to review their security strategy.
One thing everybody(at least all the so called experts) mutually agree on is that the killing of "the director" does not mean Al-Qaeda will now cease to exist or terrorism become to a thing of the past. So why kill him?, I sense you asking, well it's was one of the mandate Obama promised the AMERICANS when he came to power in 2008, and of course it has more or less become an American obsession to capture or kill this public enemy number 1. Also, lot of money(we talking billions of USD) has been spent (especially in Afghanistan) to capture Osama and also combat terrorist activities. Loads of US, UK, and other allies lifes have been lost as part of this quest also, one cannot put a price on that.

You could say Obama is officially the luckiest benefactor of the killing of Osama, considering the campaign for the 2012 US election is about to kick-off, now who won't vote for a leader that made an obsession of the Americans come true?, well maybe those that really hates him of course!.

Questions
Jay Carney (White house spokesman) confirmed today(3rd May 2011) at the White house press conference that Osama resisted arrest but was not harmed when the US Special Forces confronted him, but he was still killed. How he resisted arrest without any weapon is still not clear, confirmation is that pentagon are still reviewing the videos from the event.  Some unproven theory is that US wanted him dead than being alive any way, and moreover Osama will indeed preferred to be killed rather than being taken to US to face some long and hard jail sentence.

Why was he buried at sea?, "The burial at sea of Osama bin Laden has drawn criticism from Muslims in Saudi Arabia, his birth-place, and elsewhere in the Islamic world, amid concerns that his body was not handled according to the correct religious rituals..." is the opening statement in this Financial times article. The Americans no doubt where not ready to have him buried on land as they don't want him to have shrine where his followers go to pay respect. But, US did confirm that Saudi Arabia said NO when asked if they will take the dead body.

Where are the key evidence(e.g. Video)?, well Pentagon are still reviewing all the necessary evidence, and are expected to make it publicly available when deemed appropriate considering it's a very sensitive subject.

Pakistan-US Relationship
US went into Pakistan to execute the operation without informing nor being detected by the owner of the land (Pakistan) of which they (US) are not apologetic. Even Mark Lowenthal (former Ass Dir, CIA) agrees with the Obama administration did the right thing, when he was interviewed by BBC new channel.

Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) [Pakistani premier agency] have come under fire for what some have described as incompetency, and to some extent unbelievably funny, considering the guy they have been looking for was leaving comfortably next door to their Army barracks.

If it was an even playing field, then Pakistan can revenge by having one on the US for making them look so stupid, but that will not happen considering US gives aid to them(Pakistan). US will like the relationship to continue as they still need to continue relationship in fighting the terrorists in the region, and of course reduce the Pakistan home grown terrorists.

Pakistan remains key to the US and vice-versa. But lesson learnt from this is that AMERICA does not factor in the feelings of it's allies, and not reluctant to step on their toes. Their motto(in my view) is lets do it, and we can discuss the implication at a later date (i.e rather say "sorry" than ask for permission).

An element of "lack of trust" is the main reason here, a rumour has it that some key Pakistani's do indeed know Osama was residing in the building where he was captured and executed.

Guess overall, lesson learnt is that if you hurt or offend the AMERICANS to the extent which Osama did, they won't mind spending all the money in their treasury piggy bank to hunt and kill you.

Mobile Ads

On my return from work and looking around the web for latest technology update, I came across this short video courtesy of the BBC. It's about the rapid developing market for mobile advertisement. One of the people interviewed did estimate that the mobile ad revenue will grow to $20bn by end of the year(2011), that is staggering. Even just having a small percentage market puts one in a good position. Take a look at the video. FYI, if you can't view the video this might be due to geographic restriction.



Of course Google and apple already has a presence in the market via the "Google Mobile Ads" and Apple iAd respectively. The free apps we get on the Apple and Android platform also have to be funded some how, hence advertisement on such medium is one of the key means.

The video highlighted that the key to success on the platform is showing the right message to the right person at the right time, the keyword there is "right".