About
I grew up in India and graduated from Mumbai University (Bachelor of Engineering — Electronics and Telecommunications). After school, started out as a software engineer working for a start-up in Bangalore (India’s silicon valley). In early 2000 I moved over to Santa Cruz, California and joined a local start-up (acquired by a larger public company in 2005) which was pioneering in camera phones. Santa Cruz is a small touristy beach town just 30 mins away from the bay area.
I helped develop their media messaging software from scratch and launched the first multimedia messaging service in North America. Few years ago I assumed the Product Management role and since then have been managing the multi-million dollar business for the company.
Due to my engineering background I have keen interest in technology. I am drawn towards products and services which exhibit the right mix of simplicity and sophistication. I am of the belief that a great product is partly art and partly engineering. Being close to the bay area have had much exposure to great companies and entrepreneurs.
Being and entrepreneur myself and having an in-depth technical understanding allows me to look at new products / services in a unique way and offer commentary about their social and strategic impacts. Being somewhat of a visionary, I do offer recommendations periodically on improve existing services.
On the personal side I love great wine and am somewhat of a foodie. This blog was launched in mid July 2007 to provide my thoughts and commentary on the various technology and services. Check out my profile on LinkedIn or Facebook and feel free to send in your comments. Also don’t forget to subscribe my blog RSS feed with full content.
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Abhishek Tiwari’s Facebook profile
Abhishek,
Great to read your post!!!
I have to question a couple of your observations to entice a bit more conversation….
I guess I am not as bullish on the opportunities as you and would caution the developer community not to get too excited too quickly. yes, these are great indictators, but are they signals or smoke and mirrors?
Google’s play in the space has definitely caused movement, however, one has to ask how material this will be on the near to medium term. The old saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, may be a key driver to the participation of the current carriers with the Open Alliance. I would also contend that the carriers are curious as to how receptive the small data user community would be with an open platform. Those of us interested in playing around with our new mobile “hardware” to customize our user experience are truly in the minority…this is not for the masses at this stage and therefore, provides the carriers with an opportunity to let someone else do the testing/trialing, while garning the strong PR of “openness”.
There is still a lot of risk on the carrier…what happens when the open handset crashes or gets attacked by a virus or just basic, conflicting applications! The call is going to go to the carrier and they are going to look like the bad guy, irrespective of the cause or blame.
Additionally, G will need a strong carrier partnership to get out of the box in the near/medium term as the 700 MHz auction is at least a couple of years away from operational reality.
The 700 MHz auction is another interesting question of gamesmanship. Does G have any true history of managing the massive amounts of hard assets required to maintain a network? The capital requirements are incredible and will have a material impact on their capital structure. This will be a very interesting challenge for them to incorporate into their current corporate culture. Not saying that they couldn’t do it, just stating that this is not their historical competency.
VZW being open….hmmmm….sounds nice, but the devil will be in the details. Anyone who can source a CDMA handset and get it on the network will take a load of development and costs. Sourcing these handsets for something under the $350-$400 mark will be very difficult and highly UNcompetitive against a portfolio of highly subsidized handsets. Possible in the medium/long term, but I would not expect much in the way of penetration or marketshare in the next 18 to 24 months, which is a lifetime in this world.
According to the recent press, Xohm appears to be under pressure to launch. I truly hope that this is not the case, but one has to ask how a carrier would make money on a network like this….price it too high, and the market ignores it….price it too low and they devalue their 3G offering. Advertising is a possibility, but with the current CPMs dropping, hard to believe that they could garner the required levels to offset the huge capital investment. The next 6 months of Xohm will be very telling as to the viability of an open network. We have already seen numerous city wide Wifi initiatives come tumbling down due to the business case.
With the true rationale of the industry leaders’ chess moves unknown, I would not be so confident that the walls are coming down. The doors may be opening wider and new business models may be considered, but, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, including market readiness/interest, before this becomes a Nirvana for the masses. Its not like the masses are running Linux at home!
As always! A pleasure to be able to contribute additional ideas….
John,
Thanks for visiting my blog and for the detailed comment. I do agree with most of your views.
Frankly I am somewhat skeptical of the whole Google wireless initiative too. Yes I do appear very enthusiastic in my posts.
I think I am more excited about the fact that someone is pushing the envelope really hard in this direction, which is making everyone think. Even if Google ends up not contributing directly they would have influenced others significantly. Check out my high level analysis on Android.
With respect to the carriers, your assessment is dead on. They do not want to look like the bad guys here. They also know that their future is similar to that of the ISPs, where they eventually will become wireless pipes. Their moves are to simply trying jump ahead of the curve and gain some PR.
2008 will be very interesting as the details emerge.