Steve Jobs - Life Lessons

Steve Jobs as a person needs no introduction. People know him as the founder of Apple and as an amazing leader. But there are lot of intricacies involved in his personality worth knowing to truly understand why he got the success he got.

                               

Steve Jobs thorough his career had revolutionised many industries. He single-handedly transformed computer industry with Macintosh, Animation industry with Pixar, Music industry with iPod and iTunes, Mobile Phone industry with iPhone and Tablet industry with iPad. His genius lies not in the result but in the process and the way he did it. Everybody knows how and why he created these industries. But let us look at some situations where he exhibited a flash of brilliance that was needed for the day.

1. Fonts in Macintosh

Computers back in 1984 were majorly used in the field of research and publishing. When Steve and his team were brainstorming for the breakthrough features that needed to be put in Macintosh, Steve came up with this idea of having different typefaces (fonts) in word processing software. When they executed this idea and released the product, this feature became the talking point and a huge success as publishers instantly fell in love with the feature. Only later in 2004 when Steve gave his commencement address at Stanford, did he mention that the idea of different fonts came only because he had dropped out of his college and dropped in calligraphy classes. It is hard to believe but the truth is if Steve Jobs hadn’t taken calligraphy classes we wouldn’t have had this feature of fonts.

So he said to all the young graduates that attended the ceremony not to ask the question of why when you are learning. In his own words, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

2. iPod and the Aquarium

Steve Jobs was a micro manager and he used to handpick the design himself looking at the prototypes. When a designer showed him a prototype of an iPod, Steve was not satisfied with the size as it didn’t fulfill his his vision of “1000 songs in your pocket.” Steve asked the engineer to make it smaller for which he got a reply that minimizing it further is impossible. He stood up took that iPod and threw it in the aquarium in his office and showed him the water bubbles emerging from it. Then he said to the engineer with his ever passionate tone. “Tell that you can’t do it. Don’t call it impossible. Go back and rework.”

3. Being a Control Freak

Steve approved a Prototype of iPod and the manufacturing facility was about to start the trial production of iPod when Steve halted it saying the socket into which the headphones went was “defective.” Engineers were called to Steve Jobs’ office and Steve started to complain that the socket was not “clicky” enough. Engineers didn’t understand the problem and Steve started telling that click is the only feedback a user gets when he inserts the headphone into the socket. When he hears it, he feels content that he inserted it properly. So I want sockets to be reengineered. 

Here’s a CEO complaining about sound that came when you inserted your earphones into the socket.

4. Stepping into the Shoes of a User

Steve being a CEO of Apple had used products of different competitors so that Apple as a company was never behind the competitors’ offerings. Whenever he opened any box of an electronic product, the user manual used to say “charge for 8-16 hours before switching it on.” Steve as a user was irritated on seeing this. Steve then called the lead of iPod project Tony Fadell and said to him “I don’t want to see this in my product. User should start using iPod from the instant he sees it.” Tony Fadell presented him the problems from manufacturing perspective on how difficult and lengthy manufacturing process will now become as they needed an extra hour to charge the batteries. Steve then asked the product’s hard disk to be tested for an extra hour versus 10 minutes they did till then so that the quality assurance is higher and batteries would charge.

From then, every electronic product started coming with at least 50% charge so that users need not wait impatiently for the product to charge.

5. AM/ PM in an iPod

Interface engineers in iPod's team were having a heated debate on which font to use for the new clock face they were designing. They tried different fonts but it was affecting the aesthetics of the clock design. When Steve Jobs walked in to the lab, engineers explained him the problem. Steve Jobs as usual within a second came up with an amazing as well as aesthetically pleasing solution - He said "Use a white face if it is day and use a black one if it is night." 

Now talk about spontaneity. Anyone?

6. Success through Cannibalization 

Sony had been the king of consumer electronics in the 20th Century. Experts believe that Sony had necessary technology to make iPod before Apple but they chose not to because they are worried if the sales of the CDs would drop as the consumption pattern changes. Nonetheless Apple did it and as a result Sony’s sales dropped. Steve learned this lesson fast. In 2005, when iPod has been the primary revenue generator for Apple, Steve Jobs asked his strategic team to name a product that can kill iPod. Everybody said mobile phone with music capabilities has the ability to kill an iPod. Steve said “Let’s do a phone.”

And the rest was history.

7. Attention to Detail

This is what Steve Jobs said to Vic Gundotra, a google executive on the phone on Sunday Morning. "So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve. "I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have a team member of mine fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?" 

But in the end, when we think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, just think about this call a top level executive of google received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson we all as future leaders should never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. 

This is the reason why Steve Jobs was such a person whose personality is worth emulating, whose actions are worth imitating and whose words are worth inscribing. 

He is not a coder, he didn’t know how to program, he didn’t learn design academically. But this is how he described himself:

“Musicians play their instruments.

 I play the orchestra” 

Uber and Ola- The new revolutions in transport.

On a sunny (I'd rather say hot) Wednesday afternoon, I was waiting for a bus to get a ride to a friend’s place nearby. As always the frustration to wait for public transport, the convenience of having AC in a cab and laziness to walk last few metres after getting down a bus influenced me to open apps that are present under “travel” category in my phone. So I opened Uber. Requesting for a ride, the driver arriving there and me getting in to the car hardly took 5 minutes from the tap of a button. The conversation I had with the driver influenced me to write this column. 

After I got in, the first thing he did was to confirm my Identity and started to write my name in a book with the odometer reading beside it. I asked him the reason for doing it. He said in elegant English, “Sir, I have been getting wrong readings in Uber dashboard while I have been riding longer distances than what is being showed. So I wanted to confirm whether it is any technical error and wanted to report it.” I was offended when he said he found fault with technology. Geek in me came out brashly and explained him how navigation works and said that mighty Google powers Uber’s backend of navigation. He listened patiently and said to me, “Sir I have been getting cancelled rides and some non payment issues because of combination of wallet and cash. I just want to make sure that there is no foul play. Nothing against Google or Uber.” There’s a shiny Asus phone plugged and set in a stand on the car. I asked him whether he purchased it. He said that Uber gave it to him. “I was offered Samsung and Asus. I hate bloatware in Samsung and touchwiz is laggy. So, I have selected Asus.”

Then our conversation moved from technology to revenue models. I asked him, “How do you make profits from Uber? We pay a mere Rs. 7/Km and is it even viable for you?” He smiled and said, “Sir, apart from whatever you give us, we get an incentive of Rs. 100 or Rs. 125 based on the type of car whether it is a Sedan or a Hatchback. In addition to that for each hour we login, we get Rs. 200 irrespective of whether we get rides or not. I asked him whether those incentives remain forever. He said that starting from 1st Nov, prices of Uber are going to be increased with all the incentives for drivers cancelled and the new price is going to be Rs. 16/Km and are going to serve sub-urban as well. I was surprised and agitated at the same time and said, “How could they do that? Do they even realise that people are going to desert them if the prices hike outrageously high?” Then he said to me, “Sir, you can’t desert us. You know that, we know that, Uber knows that. Will you now after enjoying the private rides go back to footboard rides on a bus? Uber went as far as to rent Audi s and Benz s for Rs. 25000 a day from top celebrities only to attract people to Uber. They are even showing losses in the profitable counterparts only to provide free rides and promos and push this concept aggressively in India.* Bitter truths are hard to digest and I countered him to back his claim. He replied wryly, “Surge pricing. Surge pricing is a strategy to test your spending capabilities. There are 20 lakh cars in Hyderabad which are registered to Uber and let’s say, 25% of them are offline. There would still be 15 lakh cars on roads and rarely will there be a deficiency. Even at the time of surge where the prices would go 3 X or 3.5 X, people are not stopping. And recently when Uber started charging Rs. 18/Km after 16 Km, it didn’t deter people from taking a ride.” Now I didn’t have anything to speak. 

My destination arrived and while he was pressing “End trip” on his console, I asked him, “How much do you make?” He replied “Rs. 65000 - 80000 a month.” As I readied myself to pick my bag I have promised it to be the last question and asked him “What is your qualification?” “M.Com.” Understanding the bafflement on my face, he continued speaking “I didn’t want to work under anyone. I love driving and wanted to be my own boss and thankfully technology is allowing me to do it.” 

If technology is allowing a man in his 30s to follow his passion, giving him financial freedom, and is encouraging public to lead a better way of life, I’ll indeed call it Revolutionary in bold and italics :)

*I was unable to confirm the claim.

Ad-Blockers and the Business Reality.

By now as I write this article, many publishers would have already started creating technologies that bypass adblockers for running their businesses. Recent move by Apple to move out of its values (or what they have spoken till now) to provide content blockers on its mobile browser is really catastrophic for the publishers. The move could take ad-blocking on the mobile web mainstream, with serious implications for any business with a stake in online ads. I liked adblockers. In fact, I absolutely loved them until I really thought of it deeply by putting myself in the shoes of publishers. The reason I used the word catastrophic is because it really is if Apple does that in such scale. It is estimated that 60% of web traffic today comes from Mobile devices out of which many (not majority) are iOS devices. Now that Apple is giving an option for its users to download adblockers and use them in Safari, Apple is not just killing Google and Facebook which primarily rely on Ad business, they are giving a death call to publishers.

Where did it all start?

Google is the first word that comes to anybody's mind if one thinks of the word free or ad. Google is not giving everything free for philanthropy. It is creating a business model around a service where the primary service is given free to the users (at least on disguise) but charges users in the form of their data. Tim Cook recently said, "if somebody are making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. As far as we, Apple are concerned, you are not our product." Apple tried and tried hard to convince people to move away from free services like Google to protect their privacy. But at the end, every user votes for themselves on the tradeoffs on whether or not he wants contextual services (Google Now) by sacrificing privacy, whether or not he is ready to trust all his personal collection of photos to one company for free (Google photos) or paying for it. It eventually boils down to the user on tradeoffs he's going to make. The problem now to Apple is that they are unable to turn enough of the users away from Google. 

We read many blogs online everyday. It is estimated that more than half of the publishers rely on Google's AdSense for the ads to be served. Whether they use Google's services or anybody else's, Apple allowing content blockers on their web browsers implies, revenues for many blogs is going to plummet. It has been just a day that iOS 9 is released which support adblockers and all the apps that are adblockers are already topping the charts on the App Store. Users are surely annoyed about the ads and my personal experience says that content blocking allows you to load your webpages as quick as twice as fast depending on the density of media these ads deploy but blocking them altogether is harsh. 

Apple may come out and say, we care about user experience more and all the other things less but on the way to their vision they have to look back and reflect upon casualties of their decisions because they are no more a startup. Their decisions do not create ripples. Their weight now disposes water from the ocean to the bank. Some even say that the debut of both Apple news app and content blockers is not a coincidence but a conspiracy. I'm not going that far to suggest the same but can say with some certainty that Apple is having a cruel laugh as they are now successfully blocking revenue sources of Google.

What should publishers do now?

Big companies that rely majorly on ad revenue like Google, Amazon, Facebook are purportedly paying millions of dollars to major adblocker players like ABP to whitelist their ads. Now that Apple is personally involved in this they seem to have upped the ante. It is rumoured that Adblocker plus creator is now working alongside Google to block the adblockers. (what an irony!) Google has already updated Youtube's code and is penalising users that use adblockers by forcing them to see the whole ad taking away the option to skip the ad. 

All these futile attempts aside, if we speak of current ads, they are cluttered, passé and an overhaul is long due. Now all the publishers should seriously consider revamping the ads and should think of  ways to deal with adblockers. One way is to politely ask users to switch off adblockers. (A publisher can know whether or not a user is using an adblocker by running a simple html script) Second way is to deceive adblockers by serving inline ads. Curated ads is another way to deal with the problem. Rather than serving up random ads that come directly out of Google's servers which are often deceptive, publishers can always serve users with better, contextually relevant ads which serves the purpose of one, better user experience and two, the probability for the ad to be clicked. 

Its now on the publishers come up with a business model around the new developments of adblocking and strive to serve it's readers.

iPhone, iPad Pro and Apple TV - The Critique.

Tim Cook started the keynote by saying "We are really firing on all cylinders and we are about to make some monster announcements across several of our product lines." Boy they indeed delivered on what they have promised. Its been almost 4 years since Steve Jobs passed away and the flow of ideas is still consistent from Apple. Whether you like Apple or not, these keynotes are phenomena in themselves. Nobody seems able to replicate the scale and energy. Apple Keynotes are the least acknowledged among the best products of Steve Jobs! Now let's look at what's changed.

iPad Pro

This is BIG — both in size and scale! The new iPad Pro is a monster with 12.9" screen 78% larger than the standard 9.7" iPad. iPad has been a huge success initially but gradually the sales are slowing down - a concern for Apple. Nothing is really wrong in recent iterations but its just that people are upgrading their iPads less often. Apple is not shying away from doing whatever necessary to increase its sales. Deal with IBM to develop enterprise applications is an example on how far Apple is willing to go to revive the growth of iPad. Not stopping there, Apple even gave its keynote space to Microsoft to debut its Office suite on iPad. There was a stunned silence from the audience when Apple put Microsoft's name on the screen but thats the distance Apple is willing to go if they see an opportunity.

There is a lot of discussion on the internet that Apple is doing things Steve Jobs hated - the stylus. But the fact is when Steve said about stylus, he was referring to mediocre styluses on resistive touch screens. Not the kind of stylus Apple debuted through "Apple Pencil." If History was any evidence, Steve Jobs always did things he said he would not. He said iPod with video would fail and the next year, first iPod with video capabilities came out. He said he would never do a phone. iPhone was a history. Steve Jobs was an amazing in flipping and flipping is an art. Things do change and you have to change accordingly. Be rigid and you are preparing your route to oblivion. Moreover Steve Jobs' parting advice to Tim Cook is to "Do what's right. Never think what I would have done. Just do what's right."

iPad Pro could have many implications and many use cases that we never would have imagined. Through iPad Pro, Apple is clearly targeting photo-editing professionals and enterprise employees who run multiple apps side by side. New Photoshop app from Adobe and might of iPad to support multiple apps with 4 GB RAM is the evidence. This potentially could have a huge impact on the industry and its up to the developers now to decide on the places and use cases they take it to.

Apple TV

Apple has always been the company that started with a less - capable but user friendly operating system and add features to it over time based on the advancements of the hardware. They did the same with iPad where they took mobile operating system iOS to a bigger canvas when the competitors are trying to port stripped down versions of Windows on to the tablet hardware. There lies the brilliance of Apple. They are doing something similar with the Apple TV. While the competitors are out with game consoles that can do a bit of entertainment, Apple started with entertainment and overtime started giving gaming capabilities to this device. This is a completely different animal when compared to X box or PS both in price and positioning. Apple has a large advantage in the form of developers and the community is ripe with innovations. They are making unique value proposition with developers, thanks to Apple users who buy more when compared to the users of it's competitors. Siri integration into Apple TV is great and with the same pace we are nearing a day in the future where we would finally cut the cord!

iPhone 6s and 6s plus

Now we come to a product that is earning 56% of the total revenues for Apple. Whether Apple admits it or not, iPhone is the most important product for Apple. Smartphones are maturing and innovation in this sector is drying up. Making things work is where Apple really relies on.... Until now. With force touch, Apple is taking advantage of its unique strength - hardware-software integration. It might take some time for competitors to come up with similar UI as hardware and software manufacturers are different. While Apple's force touch user is neatly implemented, it takes time getting used to as there is some learning curve involved. In the end, this gesture adds another UI interaction and as Apple is opening up the API of force touch, its time for developers to start fiddling with it and come up with new features. The only downside of force touch is that Apple can not be free from fragmentation of Apps now . Now that the new iPhones require different apps written to make use of force touch, there would be some fragmentation involved.

The updated optics and the live photo feature are the other talking points of iPhone. The live photo feature might shake the industry and may give Apple a first mover advantage as facebook and instagram have already announced that they would start supporting this new format. Though similar feature already exists in some phones of htc, Apple nails in implementation yet again. Making use of screen as a flash for selfies is one another nice implementation. For this Apple included a chip in the iPhone that drives the brightness of the screen 3 times more to its normal brightness. This great additions make this iPhone a compelling purchase!

All said the iPhone is on route to reign the title of "best smartphone in the industry" yet again and Apple, as always is going to remain the market leader. 

Here's the full keynote.

Apple is not going anywhere. It will remain to be the market Leader. Period.

I recently read the engadget's article "Much ado about nothing" on Apple watch. I could understand two things from the follow up articles:

1) Editors or whoever wrote those articles use Android because at first they said there's nothing in it to entise the buyers. Then they said, Apple watch would have been a good deal if it is not dependent on phone. Then they said, it should have been allowed to sync with Android. What can you understand? They are sad that they can't use Apple watch. As simple as that.

2) Engadget learned the business mantra: Criticise Apple after the event to attract Android Zombies and give thumbs up for the Apple products in the reviews to attract Apple users.

Many today call Apple's strategy towards Apple watch as a "Me too" device. No understanding at all. I am not saying that the only reason you see "smart" watches from other companies is because of Apple's decision to create one and they caught wind of that but we have to acknowledge the fact that once rumours of Apple making a watch surfaced years ago, everyone jumped on the "get into Apple's future market" bandwagon. They produced a bunch of forgettables (Okay some are good) not wearables and rushed to the market with devices. I generally don't defend criticisms as the products speak for the brand but the intention of this article is to assure all my think alikes that Apple is not going anywhere. Have some patience and wait for the reviews. 

"Not innovating the way they used to" and "Apple's innovation is dead with Steve Jobs" are the other criticisms I hear a lot. Its even more disturbing to hear from people who doesn't understand the way a company works and known Steve Jobs since his death. Products get mature and refined. Innovation is less of a thing in a mature market. It's just how things work. And Apple of them all is the best in making things work. A lot of thought process goes into the features that go into Apple's products. I saw this image floating around internet and I laughed my guts out at it. Android users say that they had this inter app communication two years ago. Dear Android zombies, inter app communication you speak about in your products doesn't even come close to what Apple is doing through extensions. In android you have a subset of data process through the controller into another app. In iOS that's different. You can provide a whole interface of one app in another through extensions. And about that widgets, Apple had widgets long ago in Mac. And Android had this widgets now and they say - we can glance information whenever we want. The same "whenever we want" is applied in iOS exceptionally well by making the decision to have those widgets in notification centre! Android zombies have to come to home to view that "glance-able" information. For us now, its a swipe away. It is obvious that many of the features will debut in Android first as a handful of manufacturers are working on it. That may not be possible for Apple but they take a lot of pride in having executed every idea just right. I want you all to remember one thing. "New is easy. Right is hard." 

I called a subset of people in Android community as Zombies in this article because it is their opinion that people aren't allowed to have their own opinions or tastes. Some websites seems to be heavily funded (even the biased writing to increase reader base is opined to be funded) to hate on Apple. The good news is it won't matter. Apple is already on it's way to hit yet another all time high. And I think Apple watch is not late to the market. Did y'all forget that Apple debuted iPod two years after flash players debuted? Did y'all forget that iPhone was debuted in an ocean of mobile phones? Did y'all forget that iPad was not the first tablet? The same is going to be with Apple's watch. "New is easy. Right is hard!!"

I used to respond to criticisms made by android users on Apple aggressively. But after watching this video, I just want to smile at them in response and my whole perspective towards them changed.

Well now I can see some red faces. That's not my intention. My intention is to say that I will have my own tastes and preferences!

Is Xiaomi's Mi3 the new sensation?

Snapdragon's 2.3 Ghz quad core processor, 2GB RAM, 5 inch IPS Retina display with 1920 X 1080 resolution, 13 MP Primary shooter, 2 MP Secondary shooter, 3050 mAh battery....... If these were specs of a Samsung's or htc's flagship phone, I would't be writing and you wouldn't be reading this. But these are the specifications of a sub 15000 phone (Actually 13999/-) which made no compromises stating its economical price as a reason. This phone came from a company called Xiaomi (pronounced Shiao-Me) and the name of the mobile is Mi3.

As soon as I took out Mi3 from the box, I felt my adrenaline pumping. Watching all the reviews and coverage surrounding it, I expected it to have a cheap plasticky feel to it. Apparently, I was wrong. Edges are clean, buttons are tactile, no light leaking from the panel whatsoever, display was stunning and the speaker grills were chiselled to perfection. 

Display is stunning in this phone with superb viewing angles and excellent colour representation. Resolution is 1920 X 1080 and you get a density of whopping 441 pixels per inch. As you can tell these pixels can't be discerned by a human eye. Colour representation is apt and brightness levels are good. I didn't have any sort of difficulty in handling this phone under sunlight and at the same time it did't strain my eyes under the blanket at night with automatic brightness turned on.

Performance is this beast's forte and it does exceedingly well in this aspect. Throw at it the best titles of action and racing games that are high in graphics and detailing, Mi3 chews them apart. It recorded geek bench and sun spider scores on par with many flagships. Coming to camera, both primary and secondary shooters did fine. Image quality is pretty good but detailing could have been better. Pictures taken in day light are unaffected but at nights, noise does its part to affect the quality of the picture. 

Battery life is the primary reason that we use our mobiles little less than what they are capable of these days. But take my word beyond a doubt that Mi3 will not disappoint you in this aspect. You can have your data turned on, put the brightness to your comfortable zone, use it as much as you want, you'll still have 30% juice left at the time of your dinner. Here I'd like to mention a software feature that I liked. Mi3 will be able to switch to "Marathon" mode automatically whenever it gets below the percentage of battery we decide. If we want that point to be 20%, after Mi3 gets to that point, it automatically turns off the data, reduces the brightness and makes necessary adjustments so that you could still get more than 10 hours of standby time. Whenever you connect your phone to power source, it switches off the "Marathon" mode and returns to normal mode. There are apps that provide such functionality but doing this natively is quite nice.

You'll also get Xiaomi's free 5GB cloud storage to host all your contacts, settings, phone logs, messages, photos, etc.. There are built in security features like "Find my phone." Mi3 interface takes a lot of design cues from iOS. There's no separate launcher for apps like many android interfaces does and this needs getting used to if you've already used some android mobiles. 

Mi3 has got plethora of sensors like GPS, GLONASS, AGPS, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Accelerometer, Digital Compass, Gyroscope, Barometer, Proximity Sensor, Dual LED Flash and all the sensors that you'd expect in a premium phone. All in all this is a compelling purchase no surprise that the second phase sales of 10,500 devices got over in just under 5 seconds in flipkart. The only place I felt Xiaomi could have done better is in manufacturing of charger. If there's a part in the whole package that feels a little cheap, it is the charger. It is solid but a little bulky considering the design of the chargers of its counterparts. But the functionality of the charger is fine. Mi3 charges up pretty fast.

Now finally to the justification of my title - I can just say that 10500 units being sold out just under 5 seconds is a testimony to the fact that Mi3 is indeed revolutionary but I'll not end here. Let us look at the market scenario. Emerging markets like India and china are full of people who are budget buyers. They instantly fell in love with Mi3, no wonder sellers chose India as the target market after China. Many companies should acknowledge the fact that Mi3 is a storm or else they are going to loose market share pretty fast and will be irrelevant soon. What is the first company that comes to your mind when I say that the sales of that company may hamper? If you are thinking of Samsung, you've probably guessed right. Samsung was comfortable a year ago having their flagships offering the features the premium buyers wanted and at the same time catering to the needs of budget buyers through their less powerful cost efficient phones. That scenario has just changed now. Mobiles like Mi3 are offering the same specs as Samsung's 25000 priced phone is offering at much lower price. Xiaomi is posing a greater threat to Samsung by fixing Mi3's price point below 15000. You might think, even Apple gets affected from phones like this. If you presume so, you don't know Apple and its loyal customer base. As I've already said, buyers of iPhone are aware of the thin line between owning a smartphone and owning an iPhone. They would have anyway bought those cheap phones from Samsung if they are like normal buyers.While Apple had reported 12% growth over previous quarter, Samsung's shipments fell in no of units sold. With mobiles like Mi3 giving Samsung a run for its money in economical markets, Apple is already there waiting in premium markets. Mi3 may not affect the sales in countries like US because it is quite unlikely that Xiaomi would take the risk to launch Mi3 in US for its stringent IP protection laws unlike markets like India and China.

With advent of Mi3's interesting things are going to happen in mobile space. Smartphones are going to get cheaper and cheaper (Moto G had got straight Rs. 2000/- price cut in flipkart). End of the day buyers of Economy market are going to get beautiful and tasty benefits with the debut of Mi3.  

Doubt not Mi3 is not just another cost efficient mobile, it is going to create a silent storm. Period.

Apple - Looking like doing things it shouldn't be doing..

Yes this is different. Apple under the reigns of Tim Cook is different to what Apple under Steve Jobs is. Remembering from the past, one of Jobs' last advises to Tim Cook is to never ask what Steve would have done. Just do whats right. He may be right from his Disney's experience but one gets a serious doubt that Cook may be taking this advice too seriously than what Jobs would have hoped for. At least that's my opinion.

And the results? iPad Mini cannibalizing the sales of iPad 4 thereby driving lesser profits for the company. One might argue that this product is for portability lovers and it is different from bigger iPad and truly so... But the rumors of a cheaper iPhone dubbed iPhone 5c are really terrifying if we dig deeper. What's Apple's north star? Doing the best but not doing the most! But painfully and much to many's surprise, for the first time, Apple's trying to sell the most for the first time with iPhone 5c!

Previously

Let's observe the previous scenarios where Apple tried to do just this. And with this thought, they ended up doing Mac Mini. Here Apple successfully produced a product that had a prize tag to bring it to affordable range to many. Here what I want to double upon is that this is the area where the type of the product allowed such budget constrains. One might argue that it is still costly but for Apple's quality assurance, it is quite affordable.

But at the end, Mac Mini didn't lure Macbook buyers to this less profitable product. Its altogether a different breed and didn't hurt sales of Macbooks as the customers buying this product are the first time Mac buyers. But does the same theory apply for iPhone 5c?

iPhone 5c

Going by gut instinct and by observing Jobs for several years (at least  from the time he had returned to Apple) one will say that Jobs wouldn't have approved this product.

Many part leaks suggest that iPhone 5c is indeed in the picture. Now what happens to the market share if cheaper iPhone becomes a reality? Yes the market share for iOS indeed increases but will it that be at the cost of draining profits for the premium iPhone? Is that feasible? Jobs once said "We prize aggressively and go for volume." If that mantra works here, we could indeed see more and more people foray in to the iPhone space. But the profits from the premium iPhone decreases. If Jobs' mantra works here, profits from the cheaper ones will be so much more that they may indeed gain more profits than the previous model of selling only premium iPhones. At least they might end up producing just as much profits as the previous model. But that celebration is not going to last forever for Apple. 

Here's Why

People are gonna absolutely like iPhone 5c. Budget buyers are going to love this and cannot live without this. But will that relationship last forever? There's a difference on where a user might opt for iOS or Android in a given budget. The average user (I don't mean them less intellectual but most in number) opts Android for that it looks interesting. For an average user, iOS is boring. They don't have widgets, live wallpapers, plethora of customizations like themes, etc.. alike Android. iOS is for people who are sturdy going and people who wants stability and take things one at a time. Moreover people don't want to buy premium apps. They want to sideload them. People don't want to buy music. They listen by sending through Bluetooth. People don't have internet connection too often. So its very tough to exchange photos. Most % of the budget buyers don't have computers in their homes. No computer implies no iTunes and no iTunes means it is very difficult to maintain an iPhone (People might have more resources in relatively richer countries like US but we are speaking of volume and should look at India or China). All these adds up to insecurity among iPhone buyers and they are going to hate this. Buying and maintaining iPhone requires spending money for the content but that's not the case that Budget buyers might feel happy doing.

There will still be people who understand these implications and truly know why they are buying an iPhone. These people would have opted for a premium iPhone by any means by going through the difficulty of earning more money. But these people who would have bought a premium iPhone will now turn their wallets to a cheaper one! 

So on the long run, market share increases, profit decreases and it will be painful to see. Apple is never feared of cannibalizing its own products but this is definitely a different scenario. 

Then what should Apple do?

If Apple really has this candid notion of making iPhone available to budget buyers, they should differentiate cheaper and premium phones so much more to an extent where the old premium buyer should still opt a premium one for the extra features it had to offer but cheaper iPhone should welcome only the new buyers. Yes it is very very tough to achieve but has to be done to truly dive in to mass market and still get the same or more profits!

(Throughout my article I've referred to terms Premium iPhone and iPhone 5c. By them what I mean is that the premium iPhone is one that is available now which costs around $650-$700 when unlocked and $200 on a contract. And iPhone 5c is the purported cheaper unlocked iPhone under shelves which is yet to be unveiled which is rumored to cost around $300-$400)

Update: Turns out, they have great advisers than what I had expected them to have. iPhone 5c is not unlocked and costs $99 on contract! Guess what? It costs $549 off-contract. Just a $100 shy of iPhone 5s. So, I believe there will be no decreasing profit as they seem to have making same amount of profit on 5s and 5c