Asfvin Pugunisparam's Blog

The blog post titled “Goodbye Rogers” by Chris Umiastowski intrigued me in a number of way. Firstly i can sense from the title and after reading the article that he does not seem to like Rogers that much. But why? It seems that Rogers overcharges him for the landline and he could get  a better deal for his Internet in another company called TekSavvy that was also owned by Rogers. To me it seems that Rogers are having a monopoly on the telecommunication line and internet connectivity. For an example in the telecommunication  line in Canada, there are few giants corporations of what i believe oligopolies of company that running the show. Based on this link (http://www.rogers.com/cms/investor_relations/pdfs/At_A_Glance_Highlights-Rogers_Communications.pdf) Rogers is probably the most used wireless and telecommunication line. Fido is also one of the bigger companies that provides similar service. However as a Fido user i am rather dissatisfied with the connectivity and data plan that they offer and when compared to my friends who uses Rogers, their connection seems to be better. What is puzzling here is that both of the companies are owned by Rogers. Is Rogers trying to ensure its dominant by buying over other companies and making sure that companies services are not as good but cheaper than theirs? What is certain is that more customers are becoming more frustrated with Rogers services. 

Based on Loh, Wil Fred blog “Hurricane Sandy : An Unexpected Financial Crisis“, Hurricane Sandy has destroyed countless homes and reaped numerous lives in North America. Besides that, it has also caused the Wall Street to close for a full two days. As Wall Street closes down for a couple of days, the shares and stocks began to tumble and this has caused a rather severe financial crisis. This coupled up with the damages that Sandy has caused are the Financial Crisis that was described by  Loh, Wil Fred. However, although the total damage that Sandy has caused surpasses billions of dollars, i believe that it is not all bad news. According to the article “Against the Hurri-Keynesians” by Mark Thornton, the damage caused by the natural disaster could boost up the wage and demand for labor. This would prove to be a good thing for the economy and finance of the country because of the decrease in unemployment and increase productivity in the economy. Nevertheless, the silver lining to the disaster is not always applicable and with a natural disaster a country could also fall into bankruptcy.

http://mises.org/daily/2959

Based on Lau, Longwei post titled “Dell: No Longer Unique?” there are many questions that are remain unanswered for Dell in the future. As mentioned by him in his post, Dell is no longer the only company that uses virtual integration as a strategy; other players in the PC industry such as Lenovo are using the similar strategy to gain market share and more profit. What is clear here is that, it is time for Dell to start of a new strategy. The virtual integration strategy that kept the turnover rate of Dell low must now be reconsidered in order to progress and to improve their company. Dell should start researching about their point of difference and point of parity of their company and others in order to start making changes to their strategy.

Moreover, it is mentioned that tablets and smartphones are now possessing a huge market share in the electronic device market. If Dell were to think of making a tablet and launching it into the market, the tablet should follow cost leadership strategy. The reason is because of the numerous other competitors in the market such as Apple, Google, Blackberry and etc. The other reason would be that Dell is new to the Tablet industry and so in order to gain more popularity and recognition it must start as a cost efficient product first.

http://nicosiamoneynews.com/2012/11/15/mobile-devices-spur-dell-contraction/

This short article about reverse Brain Drain intrigued me. It is said in this article that India is currently facing a reverse Brain Drain where the intelligent people from India who fled to another country due to its economic meltdown are coming back there. Now, people are coming to India to further their studies and to find jobs. This situation is very different a decade or two decade ago where the economy was at slump and many of the intelligent graduates left to other countries to find opportunities there as they saw their future being bleak back at their hometown.  Currently, with the reverse Brain Drain India is gaining because now not only do they have more intelligent workers but they are more experienced as they have lived in overseas and have more potential to help out in the economy of the nation. So the two underlining questions here are that is brain drain a natural process that occurs in each country? or is brain drain a process that will eventually be beneficial for the country?

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-reverse-brain-drain-in-india-has-begun-/600146

Energy Aware Power Tab is a device which enables its user to check on their power consumption and see how much are they spending on their electricity. It needs the aid of a   smart meter or an electric meter which uses wireless to transmit information about the consumption of electricity to the tab and the tab will then show the amount spend with the current usage of electricity.This device will certainly come in handy for household to know the exact amount of electricity that are spend each day and also be a tool to help them to reduce the consumption of electricity by reducing wasteful acts that increases the usage of electricity. However, one would wonder whether the usage of the Power Tab is an effective device where electricity is cheap and abundant. How would the Power Tab help in reducing the wasteful act of household if the acts can be ignored as negligible cost. I believe that although the cost of an increasing consumption will not act as an incentive for the household to reduce their consumption, the awareness of the act will and with that it is hoped that there will be a more efficient usage of electricity

. http://www.energy-aware.com/

Recently after hearing about Urthe Cast in class i have decided to check out its official web page and managed to understand better about its function how the idea of satellite imaging of earth in a new way can make profit. Urthe Cast is a company that will install a couple of cameras on a the Russian section of the ISA and capture images of earth in a new defined way. The idea of capturing images and videos of earth and making them into a profit is really interesting. What is more interesting is how the top management of the company manage to come up with the idea. When first viewed of the videos that was promoted on the website, it was mind boggling and the thought of the cost of making this happen is unthinkable. Besides that, the method of it selling the data from its camera could possibly be a threat to Google and they might come up with similar ideas to counter Urthe Cast. Nevertheless, so far such news are not heard of. With the launch of Urthe Cast it is certain that it will trigger a new spur of innovation around the world.

http://urthecast.com/

Microsoft has recently launched its latest tablet, Surface in the market. Surface uses a modified version of Microsoft’s latest Window 8 known as RT. Surface seems to have numerous quality that makes it a good tablet. It is very durable and has a very tough screen and and comes with a keypad that is touch sensitive. However, it is priced at $499, which is roughly the same price as the new Ipad that was recently released. The question here is whether Surface can compete with the other tablets that are already in the market and especially Apple’s Ipad which has been dominant in the market. With the new features that Surface has and the program that it runs with, it might have a fighting chance in the tablet market; however, i believe that it will have difficulty in sales for the first few weeks or month until its competitive advantage over other tablet has been establish. Currently, it is just another tablet in the market with a pricey tag released from Microsoft. Nevertheless, the review of it as a hybrid of laptop and a tablet might be just the point of difference that it needs to attract consumers.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/microsoft-enters-hardware-business-with-surface-tablet/articleshow/16959823.cms

Recently Intel has announced its third-quarterly earnings and has managed to produce revenue that is more than what is predicted by most analysts. However, the revenue generated is still 14 per cent less than what they earned in the same quarter the previous year. The rapid decline in the revenue shows that there is major decrease in the usage of Intel powered desktops. The reason for that is because consumers have changed their preference to mobile electronics such as smartphones and tablets compared to desktops.  The lack of grip in tablets and smartphones market by Intel has made it worse for its sales. The shift in the preference of the consumers also shows how the technology has transcended. The desktop used to dominate other devices when it was first created but now has there are new technologies ( i.e. smartphones and tablets), the world is moving towards it.

It is predicted that in the next year, the sales for tablets will double and half of it will be Ipads. The market for tablets and smartphones are ever increasing and Intel must start to have a grip in the mobile electronics market to ensure that its sales does not continuously decrease.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/intel-profit-falls-as-consumers-shun-desktops-in-mobile-world/article4616623/

Recently after buying over Converse, Nike seems to be having more issues with workers abuse. The workers in Indonesia are being abused in their jobs and have no voice to complaint about it. If they were to complain , they would lose their jobs and will not be able to eat and pay for rent. Eventhough, Nike has heard all these complaints about the abuse that is faced by the workers, it is failed to stop it or at least to reduce it. It blames on the previous ownership of Converse and the contract that was signed to the contractors. Nike says that it is powerless and cannot do anything much to change the situation. What is startling is that, Nike being a giant compared  to Converse and saying that it does not have any persuasive power against them. This is the main cause for the employees to abuse their workers is because they have no teaching of business ethics. However, Nike says that they are indeed taking actions against the workers abuse as soon as possible. Nevertheless, soon seems to be something that takes a long time. One would question what is more important; the profits or the ethics conducted?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/nike-faces-new-worker-abuse-indonesia_n_896816.html

RIM’s newly playbook is anticipated to act as a lifeline or a support until the release of their new smartphone in 2013. However, does it prove to be a worthy gadget? The new playbook has certainly new characteristics that are appealing and is certainly better than the previous playbook. One of the prominent feature would be the 4G LTE. With the use of 4G LTE, potential consumers would be able to download in speeds as high as 40 mb a second. With the added features, It is clear that RIM has taken measures to improve their previous flaws by using a method of distinguish problems such as The Ishikawa diagram to improve their product. Nevertheless, similar to the first playbook the price of the new playbook is steep. It is sold at 549 CAD $. The high price would definitely be the factor that affects the sales of the playbook due to the high competitive nature of tablets nowadays. With Google releasing tablet such as nexus 7 for 250 CAD $, and with other tablets prices (except for Apple’s iPad) that are below 400 CAD $. It would be hard for it to compete with the other brands. It looks like RIM has made the same mistake as before.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/08/08/f-rim-playbook-review.html