When I see the news about HP, Nokia, and RIM, I feel like the end of an era may be at hand. But I admire the courage that HP’s leadership has in looking to drastically change its core business. Margins on PCs are very slim and so in order to generate a good chunk of revenue, the company has to generate a tremendous volume. I remember whenever I’ve had to buy a PC, I’ve always looked for the best price with the best specs. A couple times, I’ve even built my own computer back about 10 years ago because it was cheaper back then to do so. Today, with the slim margins, the competitive nature of the industry and the commoditization of PCs, it makes sense for companies to HP to really think about whether it’s in its long-term benefit to continue to pump out a commoditized product. The difference between a company like HP and Apple is that Apple is vertically integrated and can control the entire end-to-end experience from a hardware and software perspective. Companies that use a licensed OS cannot do this.

Regarding Nokia, I think we will see the Nokia-MS partnership bear fruit in the next year or 2. And to be honest, I hope to see some innovation from them. Competition is the best driver of innovation and personally, I would hate to see a company like Nokia continue to struggle.  They’ve decided to focus on Windows for their smartphones going forward and have also recently announced their intention to penetrate the North American market by being very aggressive with pricing.  To be honest, I think there’s a good chance they may be able to do pretty well, if the recent Meego N9 is any indication of where things are going.

And finally RIM. I’ve been a BlackBerry user for the good part of almost 10 years before moving over to Android for work purposes. They have a lot of work to do to begin excite people again en masse. What the BlackBerry does well, it does exceptionally well, but these features (aside from perhaps BBM) are not sexy features that people get excited about and cause them to spend a lot of money. Imagine you are looking to buy a car and at the dealership the salesman pitches the following attributes of the car you’re considering: fuel efficiency, number of airbags, number of cupholders, and the comfort of the seats and ergnomics. These are all important features for many people and may in fact be the key differentiators that people look at when trying to decide 2 identical cars. But, they are not ‘WOW’ features. Wow features when purchasing a car are things like: horsepower, torque, external styling, the way the ‘electric blue’ color looks, alloy rims on 19″ wheels, and overall sex appeal. Some of RIM’s competitors just have more ‘sex appeal’ and this is what drives mass consumption and genuine excitement. It sounds like RIM is looking to change things up with QNX and I do hope it goes well for RIM. Again, it is better to have more competitors to drive innovation and also for people to have choice.

Overall, it appears that the industry is heading towards a state where it will be a clash of platforms that are anchored by hardware manufacturers.  In other words, I think in the long-term (relatively speaking), we will see Google-Motorola anchor the Android platform with several OEMs also producing Android phones, Microsoft-Nokia anchoring the Windows platform with OEMs also producing Windows Phones, and of course Apple with iOS and RIM with QNX.  It looks like a formidable battle.  My the odds be ever in your favor!

In a way, great engineering, wonderful code and elegant mathematics is a form of design.

How important is design to you and what role does it have in society?

Today was a good day. It was a good day at work for me and a good day for tech geeks out there. Apple finally held its product announcement event and to nobody’s surprise, a tablet was presented to the public.

Here are my thoughts on the iPad in point form.

- Most significant factor is the pricing. $499 starting price is awesome!

- The Apple cool factor. There is no denying the impact Apple’s brand and industrial design has on people’s purchasing decision. It is what allows perfectly rational people to pay more for products that otherwise might be sold for less by other manufacturers.

- The iPad allows Apple to capture part of the growing netbook market without bringing its Macbook line downmarket. The challenge is really convincing people that an iPad is really all you need if you’re looking for a netbook (even if you’re one of those people looking at the new netbooks out with Intel’s “Pine Trail” atom processor).

- Along with a surprisingly low price, the other significant factor may be revealed in the coming weeks in the form of additional content deals. Apple has shown that it can help content providers and publishers stay relevant in the digital age.

- I feel that typing might be an issue on this device. I can see typing being a bit cumbersome.

- The smaller than expected flash hard drive capacity was a disappointment.

- Battery life could be better.

- Lack of USB ports.

- Flash support and multi-tasking capabilities yet to be confirmed.

Overall, I feel that the device will be successful. It will likely impact netbook manufacturers, but not as negatively as the impact the iPod has had on all the MP3 makers last decade. For smartphone makers, it might cause some people to opt not to get a smartphone and get an iPad while keeping their regular feature phone a bit longer. I can see some people delaying their smartphone purchase, but the iPad will not replace the smartphone.

It looks like Apple did a good job of making sure the iPad isn’t a do-it-all device to prevent cannibalization. Their ideal consumer is someone who uses an iPhone for everyday mobility, an iPod nano for the gym, an iPad for light browsing and multimedia, and a Macbook Pro/iMac for heavy computer use. In other words, this is a complementary device that perhaps completes someone’s consumer mobile needs.

What are the essential elements required for a country or a company to be globally competitive? This is a discussion that has probably been beaten to death by many think tanks, consultants and people wanting to have a great discussion but something that I’d really like to learn more about.