Wonder how / when products morph into something else?

The 'shelf-life' of products has decreased from decades to months : In the
'good old days', you could be sure of having the same old Ambassador or Fiat
car for years, the only difference being the addition of a cigarette lighter
or some such trinket with different versions being distinguished as 'Mark
1', 'Mark 2' etc.

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?


Your guess is : Sony, Canon or Nikon.?


Answer : none of the above. The winner is Nokia, whose main line of business
in India is not cameras, but cell phones.

Reason being : most people don't really need a camera, but will use them, if
these cameras come bundled with cellphones.?


Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the stand-alone camera
outright? At present, cameras in cell phones are not so sophisticated, most
not having a Flash or better quality lenses, but its just a matter of time,
before?these are on the market.


Who is the biggest in the music business in India ??

HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma ??

Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30
seconds or so), Airtel makes more money per day than what music companies
make by selling music albums (that run for hours).


Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service
provider with the largest subscriber base in India.?


That sort of competitor is difficult to detect... even more difficult to
beat (by the time you have identified him as a competitor, he has already
gone past you in sales).?


But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing
easy, you can't be farther from truth.


Nokia confessed, that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit
that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future.?


But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you??


If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It
is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails... as it is about
hidden competition


Know what the latest computer war is about ??


What is tomorrow's personal digital device gong to be ??


Will it be a jazzed-up Mobile or a Palmtop with a net-phone ??


What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak?


Explanation ??


Sony defined the market in the field of Audio... remember the Walkman /
Discman ??


What did Apple do to Sony ? Sony never expected an IT company like Apple to
encroach into their audio domain.?


Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has
both audio and video capabilities.?


So, what about cameras ? ? ?"Elementary, dear Watson".?


Kodak had defined its business as Cameras.?


Sony re-defined its business as digital cameras, which led to the downfall
of conventional cameras.


In the digital camera, the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn
between going digital and sacrificing money on film technology or staying
with films and getting left behind in digital technology.?


Undecided, it tried to do both and lost its market share to Sony.?


The same was true for IBM, whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing
the true potential of the PC. Today, Chinese manufacturers are dominating
this field.


Bill Gates declared that the Internet is a just a passing fad !?


Google is now challenging its domination of the computer field, not in
hardware, but in software.?
The point is not who is today's competitor ??


Today's competitor is obvious. He can be countered.


Its the hidden competitor, who sneaks in from out-field, totally redefining
the rules of the business.


Who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India ? Singapore
airlines? No, neither was it Air India / Indian Airlines.


The answer is Video-conferencing and webex services of HP and Cisco, who
have suddenly made physical travel redundant, since you can now
tele-conference or see your complete team in several countries real-time,
without having to leave the Office.?


Who is the biggest competitor in the Travel business ? ?Not the airlines or
the railways or even the transport companies.


Senior executives in India and abroad were compelled to use
video-conferencing to shrink travel budgets. Internet came to their rescue.

?

Remember the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies ??


Outsourcing has meant that the techie can stay at home and earn much the
same, without having to leave the country.?


India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They are now
going a-begging. Blame it on recession ?! ?

Maybe...but then again, its really not smart to have to emigrate and spend
in dollars, when you can earn abroad and spend it at home.


Remember the VCR craze ? Between 1988 and 1991, the prices of the now
defunct VCR crashed to one-third of its original level in India.?


Similarly, the PC's price has plummeted...lakhs to a few thousands.?


India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly
different. So were the icons.?


> The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag.?

The filmi gods were the Khans ...Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan.?

The film line was all about big money.


That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 overs cricket.?


Then came IPL and the two markets merged into one.?
IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to
the length of a 3 hour movie.?


Cricket became the film industry's competitor !?


On the eve of IPL matches, movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners
requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls, to hang
on to their audiences.?


If IPL is to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films
have to sequence their releases, so as not clash with IPL matches.


As far as the audiences are concerned, both serve the same purpose in India
'3 hour tamasha' (entertainment).?


Look at the products that have vanished in the last 20 years.?


When did you last see a Black and White movie ??


When did you last use a Fountain pen ??


When did you last type on a Typewriter ??


The answer for all the above is "I don't even remember !"?


20 years back, what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning ? The
answer is ?the?ubiquitous?alarm clock.?


The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be
physically keyed every day, to keep it running. It made so much noise, by
way of harsh alarms, that it woke up the entire colony.?


What do we use today for waking up in the morning??


Cellphone !?


An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning, thanks to the
entry of the digital clock and now the cell phones.?


Swiss watch companies are as scarce as water in the Sahara. The IT industry
proved to be their downfall.


You never know behind which bush your competitor is hiding !


Nowadays, you can't be sure, whether the product that you buy today, will
even exist next year.?

VCRs, LPs, Tape-decks have already become extinct.

Even Laptops have all but?disappeared from the consumer's Radar, with the
appearance of sleek new Netbooks :)

Wonder how / when products morph into something else??