Sunday, September 7, 2008

IPhone - A miscalculated marketing campaign

5 reasons (oh, there are so many many more) as to why the IPhone is a miscalculated marketing campaign in India. To start with, I don't own one, would love to, but am not going to, because its priced ridiculously.

1. An unlocked IPhone in the US after penalties and a 30 day plan works out to $200 + $100 + $172 ~= $500 x Rs. 45/$ = Rs. 22,500 for a 8GB IPhone.
2. At Rs. 31,000 its still locked to Airtel and Vodafone, oh pray tell me why?
3. If AT&T can give me an unlocked IPhone at Rs, 22,500, I wonder what prevents our friends at Airtel and Vodafone? Perhaps they should render unto Cesar... :-)
4. No 3G in India for another 1.5 to 2 years.
5. The IPod Touch costs ~ Rs. 17,000

Either Apple thinks Indians are very rich or it must be something I drank last night. This is logic defying for what is arguably the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. (Okay I stretched that a bit, its China I'm sure) Apple could have had a lot more sales than Airtel and Vodafone are now witnessing. Look around and tell me how many IPhones you see at the company you work at. Meanwhile, I'll just wait a couple of years.

Emerging Storage Markets - Spotlight on India

India has a urban population of 286 million, with Mahrashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamilnadu, West Bengal and Andra Pradesh accounting for nearly 150 million of these urban people. Additionally, India has a 742 million rural population. Of the total population, some 68 million use banking services and 34 million workers are in manufacturing industries. With the highest person density between the ages of 20-45.
One can view this as huge human capital, which it undoubtedly is. Also, as the economy grows, this same population will result in a very very large data storage market. Consider that a market such as the united states with a population of about 281 million proves to be the largest storage market with its financial, utility and governmental needs (to name a few) fuelling over 50% of the revenues (unsubstantiated at this writing) of most storage companies. 20 years from now given reasonable economic growth India and China will prove to be markets of much larger magnitudes. Already most storage companies have a strong presence in both these markets and are very bullish about the future.

As an example, the drive by the Indian Income Tax department to move filing from paper to electronic forms. Even without a regulatory requirement like Sarbanes-Oxley, the sheer volume of data is stupendous. Take the State Bank of India, The Planning Commission, The Election Commission (Voter ID cards) and you have a database that needs replication, disaster recovery and high availability. Who is tapping these markets today. Oh yeah, we haven't even started with electronic ration cards (cards for availing produce at government controlled retail stores that offer fixed price to low income households).

Many decades ago the major car manufacturers of the United States worked with their government to build roads so that their own sales and revenue would increase, will our storage companies do the same?