The Android debate

When anyone talks about Android there is a lot to be said, be it “Android is the most popular Smartphone OS”, to comments that it’s “the stolen OS”.  Steve Jobs even stated he would “kill Android”. But there is no getting away from the fact that Android is a feature rich OS, that it has now almost 40% of the Smartphone market share (though Smartphone’s don’t even make up 30% of the overall mobile market) and that Google owns it, and now a mobile phone company…

Competition

There are so many Android devices out there now, and from a range of manufacturers, so much so, that getting your hardware noticed is tough. When you walk into a store and see so many phones all running the same OS, how do you set your hardware out to be different (especially to the average mobile punter). Price…Oh dear…

Poor mans iPhone

So many people who have Andoird have it because they couldn’t justify getting an iPhone. I know many people who have opted for Droids because of price, but they really wanted an iPhone. The same applies to the “kids” that have Androids. Essentially many have them because of price, and once they get a little older move over to the iPhone. That must be a worrying trend. However,
is it a surprise? Probably not since Android feels like a cheap clunky copy of iOS in so many ways…

 It’s free, it’s Google

One of the reason Android has been a success is that is been seen as the free OS, allowing many a manufacturer to ship it on their devices, enabling Android devices to be “cheap” and swamp the market. That is essentially how Android has got it’s market share, and there is nothing wrong with that.

But is it really free? In the past couple of months we have seen a number of patent deals being agreed with Microsoft for Manufacturers being allowed to use Android. In addition to that, we have seen Apple halting many Android devices due to patent infringement. These are problems manufacturers can well do without. Ask yourself, as HTC or Samsung, do you really want to spend a lot of time on R&D only to have your devices stopped from getting to market? Do you want to have to pay a third party company license to use software that essentially belongs to another company? No you don’t…

Throw into the mix that Google now owns Motorola and has effectively secured its own hardware for mobile devices. This must be a worry for HTC, Samsung and all those that sell Android devices. Do you really believe that Google will continue to provide updates to their OS to give away to competitors of their own devices? If they do, then that’s crazy business thinking from Google.

 

Nokia?

I have read many a comment in the past day or so that Nokia should have opted for Android, or they should be making Android devices as well as Windows Phone. But that makes no sense from a business point of view. The Android market is all ready crowded, and how does Nokia regain its Smartphone market share by entering a dog fight with pretty much every other manufacturer
out there? Especially when all they can compete on is price and some nerdy hardware specs (maybe some design too). That’s just too tough. Throw into the mix the hassles you can have with Android and the fact that Google now owns Motorola, and Android looks very risky…

Windows Phone makes perfect sense to me. In many ways it is the overlooked OS, and that’s because no one really knows about it (phone nerds do, but who else). Not many have actually seen it advertised or ever even noticed it in stores. So for Nokia, Windows Phone market is easier to enter, and they know they can sell aggressively against the other Windows Phone competition.

The Windows Phone OS is good, very good. Pretty much everyone I have seen play with it, likes it, they find it intuitive, they like the live tiles and they love it’s simply integration with social media.  It provides something very different to Android and iOS, and as such, that means making a Nokia device stand out on a shelf is made that much easier.

Finally, Microsoft want to get involved in the mobile world, and they know Nokia are the biggest mobile brand out there (still), and that Nokia can get Windows Phones into the hands of millions of people, and ensure Nokia and Windows Phone grab market share.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nokia grabbing Smartphone market share quite quickly, which I am sure will make other manufacturers look closely at Windows Phone and start investing more in that OS. It is already happening to some extent with HTC and Samsung…

To finish…

Android has shocked us all with how much market share it has grabbed, but should we have been surprised? In many respects it’s a free, clunky version of the iOS that DOES cost manufacturers in terms of licensing etc etc. Now that Google owns Motorola are companies confident that they will be given the same OS to compete with Motorola? How many other instances of Android devices being banned can we expect?

All in all, Android may have shot to popularity, but there are many question marks above it, and it seems many more are being raised as time moves on. Will these question marks deter manufacturers from using Android? I believe they will over time, and I believe that Windows Phone will be there to grab market share – and that at the front of that pack will be a company from Finland, a company we all used to love…A company called Nokia…

NHS needs to get efficient…It needs ECM and BPM

Let’s face it the NHS is a great example of diseconomies of scale, and a great example of the lack of administration efficiency is shown with the amount of paper that is getting generated and pushed around. In the past 2 years, the boards of NHS trusts, created at least 22 million paper documents over the past two years. If that figure itself isn’t a little worrying, then just think, we are only talking about documents generated for communications to senior managers and to each other! The South West Essex Trust alone generated 333,000 documents, that’s just mad…

The department of health spent close to half a billion pounds in fees to external consultants in the year 2009-2010, so why has no one in the NHS really adopted ECM on a large scale? Just looking at these paper figures alone, it is very clear that each NHS trust should be using some form of ECM solution.

So just what could ECM do to help make savings in the NHS and raise efficiency? Well for starters, it can remove the majority of the paper costs, increase the efficiency of sharing knowledge, rationalise communications through knowledge and content sharing and increase collaboration.

I don’t want this post to turn into a long list of all the benefits of ECM, I have written many other posts on these and there are so many out there, rather it was just to highlight the fact that the NHS should be embracing Enterprise 2.0 concepts, ECM and BPM.

I will leave you with this thought, the health watchdog, the King’s fund, reports that while the number of staff rose 35% from 1999 to 2009 (to 1,117,000), the number of managers rose by 85%! Now please someone find me any example in the public sector where this kind of in-efficiency and top heavy organisation is a success….I bet you can’t, because any organisation in the private sector that was run in this fashion would be long bust…The NHS needs to get efficient just like any private sector organisation, it needs BPM, ECM and hell of a lot of dead wood removing…

Pre-Budget? hmmm

Now I’m in no way an economics expert, nor am I a stong member of any political movements, however, I am a Director of a company trying to make its way in this current economic climate, and as such, I like many others, will be paying attention to today’s pre-budget announcements…

On my drive to work this morning I couldn’t but hear lots of discussions with regards to the current economics of our situation and the current politics that now goes hand in hand with it. This is one of my many concerns of the present situation, that politics blinds the actual economics required in situations like this.

The cold facts

There is a lot of talk about trying to tax the mega wealthy, which too many people sounds like a great plan. However, the cold facts of life are that these people are highly mobile in regards to where they can work, but also that they will, and always will be, great at finding ways in which to pay less tax. It’s a cold fact, that Margret Thatcher extracted more revenue from taxes than previous governments by actually taxing less. This is simply because the lower tax meant the mega wealthy didn’t try to avoid it, plain and simple. Today I have heard tax bands of 50% and people calling for even higher tax bands, however the cold economics is that this will only lead to less revenue coming into the government…

In the past 13 years the size of the public sector has grown and grown, so much so that now figures state there are around 7 million people employed by the public sector. This is a hell of a lot of people and puts a great strain on the government’s resources, but does this mean the government should try to extract more money from the tax payer to accommodate this level of spending or should they look at other ways of improving their situation? I have worked with public sector bodies and unfortunately, many people will disagree with this I am sure, the public sector has it easy! The fact of the matter is that the quality of life working for a public sector is far better than that working in the private sector, though arguably the rewards in the private sector can be far greater (arguably). Please don’t get me wrong, doctors, nurses, bus drivers these people don’t get an easy ride, but people forget just what the public sector is. It is much more than the people you and I meet on the “front line” so too speak.

Efficiency

As a director of a company and as a BPM consultant I am constantly looking at ways in which companies can raise efficiency to increase ultimately their profitability. In times like these, efficiency is key to survival and growth, not the amount of money you turn over, or in the government’s case “bring in”. From just my own exposure and more importantly, people I know working in the public sector, it is clear that there is so much that can be done from an efficiency point of view. Ironically this may mean greater investment in areas, however that investment will ultimately raise efficiency of the public sector and therefore decrease its burden on the government.

The public sector is a prime example of a company (or in this case government) working with dis-economies of scale. This basically means they are so big, and when they continue to grow, they become even less efficient. Why is this? Typically this is because of the increased level of “red tape”, administration, lack of people wanting to take responsibility, and even worse, people looking like they are working but actually not contributing much. In organisations of such scale, it’s very easy to keep on board a lot of “dead wood”, simply because its hard to grasp who does what and what actually needs to be done.

Any solutions?

If you looking for an in-depth budget here please look away, all I believe needs to be done is to address the efficiency level within the public sector and the economy as a whole and to put money into people’s pockets. If people have money in their pocket, they spend, if they spend the economy grows. Simple…. The key in doing this is to make things as simple as possible and where complexities are required, ensure these are broken down into smaller more simplified chunks (simple business sense really). Here are some simple ideas:

1. Scrap tax credits etc – in-place address the income tax bands and NI contributions people pay. Lower wages and people currently on tax credits simply aren’t taxed. There is no need for the added red tape of administering tax credits.
2. Increase the income tax bands – there is nothing wrong with more and more bands that come into effect the more you earn. It has always struck me how odd it is to have people charged at 40% who lets say earn £50,000 per year, and charge people who earn £1m a year again in the 40% tax band….
3. Utilise VAT correctly – this is effectively a tax on spending, which is ok, however if too high people don’t purchase products at the end of the day. It is therefore essential that this is kept at a rate that brings in as much revenue as possible, without stopping people purchasing items. A VAT sliding scale (in reverse) could be an option. With goods that cost more having a lower tax rate.
4. Address stamp duty on housing. The problem with stamp duty is that it hinders the house market, which is one of the big factors in any economy. You don’t see any houses on the market for £255,000 for example, simply because in effect with the added stamp duty the buyer has to spend another 3%. In this situation how can the housing market be truely effective and help economic growth?
5. Promote growth and small businesses by introducing a sliding scale for corporation tax. In addition, help small businesses employ people by reducing or removing small business contributions on PAYE and NI.
6. Look to promote other industries within the UK. At present we are a services economy, which has many good sides and downsides. Ideally the economy should be more “rounded” and include manufacturing for example. Taxation in this country and unions make it hard for manufacturing to survive, this needs to be addressed.
7. Reduce the amount of admin across the public sector. If needs be invest in IT and technology to raise efficiency. This ultimately will lead to vast reductions in the cost of running the public sector. This more than likely will result in reductions of staff, however, it should not impact front line services / people, in-fact it should free up greater investment in these areas.
8. Invest in the country’s infrastructure. This is a classic example of spending to get the economy running. By making investments in the country’s infrastructure you put money in the workforce pocket, and you build greater future efficiency for the country. (Infrastructure need not be just roads etc).

I’ll finish there…..This is far too long a post that isn’t work related and some of us need to get back to work to ensure ends meet…