AmazonFlix?

Heard on the tech street that Amazon is looking to gobble up Netflix. I love both the companies and use them pretty avidly. Almost daily in fact. Problem is how well can Amazon take Netflix to the next level? Few hunches:

1. Netflix is unchallenged. It single-handedly killed the Blockbuster dinosaur with innovative technology and superbly easy to use web interface. Amazon is a major retailer for DVDs and BlueRays so on the surface this is a marriage made in heaven. Marry the content of Amazon to the neat distribution of Netflix. With the streaming vidoes taking off, this is only gonna go to the next level. Neat!

2. Amazon owns IMDB, the most popular site for anything related to movies. This can be and will be well leverage by Amazon in tying up with user-ratings and related stuff for Netflix, which already developed/is developing complex matrices for understanding user patters in movie tastes and preferences. IMDB rocks, I personally go there almost daily and this should help both the parties integrate better.

3. With Comcast and ATT trying to stream movies along with gaming devices like Wii and PlayStation joining in, there is a war out there to get movies to users. This reaching out effort will be good for users, as prices get low and choices improve. I guess it wont be long before Kindle starts streaming movies and here Netflix technology will help Amazon get an edge over the iPad, if at all. This is a really interesting space to watch. Media distribution over Internet almost killer Warner with its incompatible marriage to AOL but newer channels will emerge. Set-top boxes, gaming devices, iPads will all be eager to stream movies as they become distribution channels. The key is to ink smart deals with the studios who might not be over-cautious in releasing their content. Warner already has a wait-list on Netflix for its new DVDs so sales can be as much front-loaded as possible thus shifting rentals to the backburner. Naturally, studios would want to sell DVDs than rent since margins will be greater.

I think Amazon and Netflix make a good pair. Lets see what happens!

iPad - A Quick Review

With the fervent will of a reformed smoker, I watched in awe the live blogging of Apple's iPad launch today in San Francisco. As a preamble, I have been waiting for this day with a great anticipation of waiting for my favorite rock band's new album. It was worth the wait, as its a good album :)

The Internet has been burning with rumors, heard-on-the-street gossip and smack talk about the iPad (iSlate, iTablet, iWhatever) since more than a few weeks, with the madness reaching a crescendo today. There are reviews and 'expert' opinions for you to read just by typing A into Google (well not exactly but try App..).

Here is a quick review from an avid iPhone, iPod user and a serious Apple fan. Cutting to the chase:

1. The iPad is the most important product from Apple not after 1984 as reported but after 2007, i.e., after the iPhone. Its hype definitely should not take anything away from this cool device. Its a perfect piece for the net-savvy, Facebook generation looking for one gadget to aggregate Internet, Mail and Media. I dont believe the argument that there is no market or there is a small market for the iPad. People actually thought there was no market for music players back in 2000 and then we got hit with iPods. Well, thats an other story. Tablets are going to be big with every major tech company trying to do something concrete in this area. Even a retailer like Amazon has Kindle, which kind of competes with tablets. Intel has Moorestown and Moblin OS just for Tablets and so on.

2. I do have a few nitpicks. My three major complaints about the iPad are a) It doesn't have a camera and that hurts. Its an easy thing to do Steve, you have it in the iPhone (and even iPods though its for video), so why miss it on this? I would have loved to webcam with the iPad in my lap but I will have to wait for that. b) Its storage demands more. I mean, I understand this is not a storage device but a streaming device. But come on, media files (HD videos and all those books and songs), eat up space like a hungry wolf. 16GB can just store a few HD movies along with pix and songs, that just does not cut it. The iPad should have started at 128GB and upwards. c) Flash stupid! I mean, whats the whole deal with not playing Flash? We are not asking for Silverlight, just good old Flash from good old Adobe.

3. The pricing is not surprising. I never for a second believed the 'expert' analysts predicting that iPad was gonna be about $1000. Are you kidding me? Why the hell would Apple price iPad at $1000 and have a Mac Book at $1200? I thought it was going to have a simple pricing structure of around $700 and I was about right. I did this by taking the simple average of iPhone (about $200 with contract) and basic Mac Book (about $1200). But Apple came up with the somewhat complex matrix of two basic models -- one with WiFi 802.11n connectivity only, the other with both WiFi and 3G. The 3G models are $130 more than non-3G models, prices vary depending on memory.

Tablets have been around for a while and the last time there was so much hype on a tablet, they were commandments written on it. But seriously, remember iPaq? Even the name is eerily strange with the i in front but whatever happened to it when Compaq was gobbled by HP. There are many more tablets in the last few years but none that can offer the functionality of iPad. At least for now.

Here are some of the cool things to be done on the iPad:

- iBooks: What iTunes did to music, hopefully this will do to publishing. Read and buy books on the go. Kindle is cool, I checked it out but who wants so many devices? I cant watch videos or email on Kindle and I am not going to buy 100 devices for 100 things. Like in 2000, when you had laptops, Blackberries for email (berries could not talk then), mobiles, pagers, PDA like Palm and Trio. Hell, Dockers even made pants with 8 pockets for all these devices. Nobody bought these devices after the tech crash and last I heard, Dockers discontinued these pants.

- iWorks: Adds cool business functionality to the iPad. iWork is a neat way to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and its friends with MS Office.

- We have the good old iTunes, and App Store of course.

Well, 2 months to go for delivery and I am still saving up for my iPad. Lets see how many iPads will be sold in 2010. But today sir, was a good day to be alive.

Moblin O/S 2.0 from Intel - A Peak...

Will Google Be The Next MS?

I hope we will not hate Google as we do Microsoft (not all, maybe most) now in 2010. But in 2020, chances are the World is going to be so much more connected and Google will play such a huge role in it that it might just become another behemoth creating unintended consequences of dislike.

Take the mobile market now for instance. Only the uninformed would think that the underpinnings of this market are established and that PC will remain what it is today. Just as computing shifted from mainframes to mini to PC to laptops, its gonna shift to mobiles. MS was smart enough to milk the PC OS for decades before paradigms started shifting against it. Windows Mobile is a clunky and idiotic OS masquerading as a 'smart' mobile OS. It was made for a different paradigm and its dead or going to die soon. Google is exactly in the place MS was in late 70 and it knows that. Enter Chrome OS for PC and Android for mobile. A one-two punch to take on both the markets and converge it later as the dust settles. Meanwhile, hardware on mobiles will be commoditized just like PC hardware was in the 80s and 90s. So who makes the hardware of your phone will be irrelevant as long as it runs a hybrid version of Chrome and Android. I dont care if its HP or Dell or Lenovo or Acer as long as the network dictates to me that I buy Windows and I get a nice PC for cheap. I am not loyal to either Dell or HP, sorry. Likewise, future will not care if Nokia or Samsung or someone else makes your hardware but Google wants the winning OS to be Android. But there is a gap. Not all phones are made the same, and that gap is between regular phones (Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson etc) and smart phones (Blackberry, iPhone, Droid etc). Here, the ace in the hole is not Web OS or RIM (although Blackberry is still the numero uno smartphone to beat), its a no-brainer folks, they taught us this in kindergarden, A for Apple.

Apple made its own hardware and OS in the 80s and into 90s and just managed to survive the PC onslaught. It stood alone with its loyal fanbase and the headwind called iTunes changed the course of that company. Just so, in 2010 and beyond, if iPhone can expand its niche to a large enough marketshare, i.e., network, (which it is) its going to be THE company to beat Google (Wonder how many such strategy meetings on the future of mobile computing Eric Schidmt was part of when at Apple board, phew). So Apple is the thorn in the flesh for Google not MS, too bad tech blogs dont even talk much about MS these days not even after the successful W7. I wish Apple made a search engine, it would probably look and work so cool that we might even stop interacting with other humans (thank God, Steve Jobs never thought of a search engine :)

So imagine a website, when you enter with the intention of buying a nice smartphone. You pick what display size you want, the hard disk capacity, memory, and other guts, choose a carrier (hopefully ATT, TMobile, Sprint and Verizon will agree to be on the same page), and finally pick the software that runs these parts together. Google hopes its gonna be Android and it might just be. Commodity hardware, Common software, ring a bell?

But the trump card for now is with Apple, iTunes and App Store. The integration of iTunes/App Store with iPhone is the challenge to beat for Google. But watch how the bargaining power of Google is increasing. Personally, I am writing this free blog provided by Google and if I need to search any damn thing/info on the net, I verb where you all verb. I am thinking of consolidating all my mails into Gmail soon etc etc. Its easy to watch 2010 is when the World is gonna take steps to move to Google Apps. MS Exchange Server makes way to Gmail and its pack of apps. Chrome will be the browser to deliver these apps and Android the OS to run them all, nice picture. So from neat little apps to OS and all the search in between, monopolized in the hands of an erstwhile start-up we all grew up loving and using.

But it scares me that in the next 10 years, if I do update this blog, I dont want to look back and see the graves of future Netscapes, and other innovators with a cold knife in their backs. Ultimately, for innovation to succeed, there should be no such back-biting evil. And Google, did I hear you say "Do Know Evil"? Lets hope the company and its triumvirate leadership is listening.

PS: 2010 will also be the year when I move from Windows OS to Apple tablet, long time coming, i-whatever!