Product lifecycle

Bajaj's announcement to stop the production of scooters by the end of this fiscal clearly indicates that the era of scooters has ended. The product category of scooters has reached the decline stage or infact is on the extreme end of decline. While the Bajaj scooter has a long chequered history, it is important to see the transition in culling a product contributing little to revenues. Infact this situation came first in front of Bajaj in the early 90s when Hero Honda had gained significant motorcycle market share. Hero Honda is no:1 in India in the product still in the growth phase. Coming to online social networking, email... this segment has reached the mature phase.

Nokia's ovi service is offering nothing new. Just a package of online services bundled together offering nothing new. It also cannot replicate Apple.I expected a lot more from Nokia considering their development standards to be top class. They entered a segment in the mature phase, offered nothing new, ran a bunch of onlines ads on websites like orkut and the results are here to see. Offering a website supplementing Nokia users (which already exists) would have done the job. Why divert from the core competency ? You end up making a product, which is no match for the biggies existsing and essential create a burden for the organization by making a non-revenue generating (profit eating) unit.

Ovi's public release was august 2008. Their early buzz catapulted by the Nokia brand got a lot of users. But its been a decline since then. The trends since Jan 2009 clearly tell the sorry state of Ovi. There is need to redesign the service offerings by Ovi. In terms of value offerings, Nokia's Ovi is just a me-too kind of service.

The product-lifecycle is an essential step and hence needs to be incorporated in the Idea screening stage in any product development. This will atleast relieve the company of the costs associated with pursuing a bad idea.
Product lifecycle image source[ :http://www.trumpuniversity.com/business-briefings/lib/resources/images/graphs/product_life_cycle.gif]
OVI logo source:Wikipedia

Giving the finger to a scripted life!

It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age. ~ Warren Buffet. You have plans for your life, career etc. You've built an entire script but what is this based on? Scott at Ted talks about how almost 80% of the people around the world don't like the job they do. In his career, he found one day that most of the job he did was automated by his competitors. Building the resume was clearly not way forward. It was during that time he he heard the quote by warren buffet, " It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age ". This was when he left his job. While there are know universities, which talk about finding your passion, Scott talks about a lens that can help in finding the job we love.

Twitter and the world of hate - Delhi Gang Rape

Common wisdom says that venting out reduces frustration. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs help us achieve the same. While what normally starts as a "venting out" experience, I suspect is turning out to be an anguish enhancer. When I look at trending topics on twitter all what I see is a world of "Hate". Small pieces of hate messages turn out to be a big collective bunch of hate. Take the case of Delhi gang rape and some ill-minded comments of politicians and spiritual gurus. What started as scattered bickering remarks against a comment made by "Asaram" has now become a full fledged ball of rage. This rage was "non-directional", had no agenda and was oriented towards sarcasm and wit. While Delhi gang rape highlights poor governance, societal problems and problems of law and order, venting out on a forum that accumulates the frustration by many such people only adds to the low well-being. It is time we use some discretion and post messages that...

Twitter vs. News - Effectiveness in building relations

Social Media has been termed as an effective way to build relationships. Brands are trying to harness this capability by building social presence on this new media. Celebrities today account for the maximum amount of followers on the web with twitter being a fine example for this. But is this new media effective in creating relationships with this vast list of followers, which celebrities often tend to have? In an interesting research by Lee and Jang , they explore the effectiveness of celebrities in building social presence on new media. They compare twitter and a news website to check the relative effectiveness of enhancing social presence. While the traditional PR machinery used by celebrities might give them news coverage, they contend that their tweets can reduce the barrier of relational development as compared to a news website. Their findings are counter-intuitive and very interesting.

Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

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