Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

I am reading a book these days of which this is the second copy. The first time I bought it, I lost it while I had read only half. That was some months ago, I thought I would find it later so I kept looking… I gave up a few days ago and bought a fresh copy. It was a good book, good enough to force me to spend the money on it again.

The book is ‘The Lexus and The Olive Tree’. The writer is Thomas Friedman. It’s on the same topic as ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, but is easier to read. So I am reading it with more attention than I read the Clash of Civilizations.

We’re almost halfway into 2010, and this book’s first edition was written at the beginning of the decade. So while a lot is still the same, too much has changed.

The book talks about the telecom and the Internet revolution, globalization vs. protectionism, and other topics which are still relevant. Thomas Friedman does an excellent job of showing me how globalization isn’t just good and necessary, but how it is unavoidable. Friedman is a well-traveled writer and through anecdotes from his own journeys and meetings he makes it quite clear that whether governments like it or not globalization is going to happen, and that there is going to be a plenty of resistance to it because people see it as a threat to their culture.

“There’s no use protesting against globalization wearing a blue jeans.” Well the process is still on. Globalization isn’t global yet, but it’s pretty much everywhere.

But the book has its funny bits too. Thomas Friedman is an American patriot and he makes it a point to make it quite clear why America is so successful. He compares the American way of working to Japan and Europe and comes to the conclusion that they can’t compete with America, he mentions China but only to reject its ‘brand of globalization’. He thinks globalization can’t work without capitalism, and because China is communist dominated it is likely to hit some serious snags which will remove it form the scene. Well, Mr. Friedman. Heh Heh…

He doesn’t mention India and use the  phrase  ‘competition to USA’ in the same paragraph.

That was 10 years ago. In 10 years a lot hasn’t changed, but a lot has. America, the greatest place for innovation and business is now feeling the heat from India and China.

American senators want Indians to quit taking away American jobs (globalization goes full circle, you see the globe is round). They want Indian companies to quit coming to America, and they want Indians to quit working so hard on everything.

America is still the greatest place for business and innovation, but I see Indians coming back from America to innovate in India, and others who want to come back.

I love America, its culture, its freedom and its attitude. There’s no denying that, but in 10 years India has changed enough that the American president tells his country’s children to buckle up cause the Indians are coming.

If Thomas Friedman wrote that book again now, he would talk more about India and China than he talked about Europe and Japan.

Smartphones are the big boom in the US and the next big boom in India. With the arrival of 3G there will be compelling reason for mobile users to upgrade to a smartphone. There is a good scope for small players to make little fortunes developing and selling smart phone applications. That’s why I have been giving them a serious look starting this year.

The most popular smartphone platform is of course iPhone, but it hasn’t been able to repeat its success story in India because it is locking its services with a single player who is marking up the price very high. That’s why the number of smartphones sold could be well under 10,000 according to one study. Until iPhone makes itself an open platform which works with its complete capabilities on all networks and is available for a price at par with international prices there will be very little desire for customers to shift to iPhone.

This of course is the most compelling reason why I won’t be developing for iPhone. The second reason is Apple’s tight regulatory policies and their desire not to let any other marketplace bloom than their own. The problem is not just that Apple arbitrarily rejects and approves applications but also that it decides whether your application gets any exposure and paying Apple a cut of your profits is vital if you’re developing any app for iPhone. That’s like paying Microsoft 30% on every software you make for Windows.

Since Apple is making so much money off iPhone already I don’t think it should lock the developers down so hard.

There are some other platforms available as an alternative to iPhone. Android is small but it has the potential to be a winner just like iPhone. Development on Android is free and you can get all the tools from the Android website.

All the development is in Java so you can potentially re-use some of your code to make apps for other smartphones like Blackberry and Nokia.

So I am going to be try to be an early entrant on Android. Maybe beginning with a port of one of my core applications.

I’ve been a part of a small company from the last 10 years, watching, participating, helping it grow from shrimp-size to salmon-size. It takes time and effort to build a business and sometimes you’re up against market situations that cannot be overcome no matter how creative you are (for me it is software piracy).

But is that sort of thing the biggest challenge for a small company? I don’t think so. The biggest challenge in my opinion is finding skilled people and getting them to stick around.

We’ve got an enormous amount of training going on here in India, and there are a lot of qualified good people who have the skills and the drive to make things happen. Sadly they are not here for the likes of me. They’ve all been grabbed by the bigger fish in the pond who’re ready to offer them bigger salaries and better perks. A small business has to depend mostly on the promoter’s skills to grow until it turns into a mid-sized business at least.

I’ve learnt along these years that the people I’ve spent months training will leave for a small job in a big company. Nobody has the patience anymore to stick around and wait for a small company to get bigger and grab a bigger job. Is that because they don’t have enough confidence in the potential of the small company to get big? Or they would rather work in a bigger name as soon as they can?

So while bigger companies attract the star talent, the smaller companies have to depend on their entrepreneurs and untrained people who they will train so that they may become worthy of bigger companies.

Not that I find anything wrong with this system. After all small companies cannot afford to pay so much and they manage to get productivity out of their people.

Don’t ask me for any solutions to this problems though, I am still battling with this.