Follow-up: More Facts About $35.00 Indian Tablet

A NDTV report with Indian Union Minister of HRD Mr.Kapil Sibal with a working prototype of the $35.00 Tablet computer.

Gadget Guru - NDTV LINK



See a video from a few other Indian Tech wizards from a company called AllGo Systems at Trade show in Florida, USA.

Are the economic experts reallly that stupid...?!?!?!

In the last quarter of 2009 there was great deal of optimism that the global economy was on the verge of turning around, but the US economy was doomed to complete annihilation, which was the reason gold was having such a great run up.

Now I'm not an economist or an expert on the subject, but I have studied it a little and do read a bit, more than anything I like to look at facts before making any kind of predictions.

Anyone who claims to be an economist even as a passing dilettante on the subject usually has reams and gobs of paper pass under their nose that would show factually where the fault lines are in the global economy. Yet, there is either a global conspiracy to suppress the evidence or the academics who teach the subject have no idea what they are talking about these days, or even in the past when were proven dead wrong(!); and still fail to admit that the academic theories they have grown up studying and teaching are fundamentally flawed in this new age of instant global inter-connectedness!

Let's get to the real issue - a great global meltdown is staring at us in the face yet nobody sees - EUROPE!!! All everyone can report about is the failures of the American economy, which are miniscule compared to what has already happened in Europe, is now happening, and will unfold in the coming months!!!

Greece is just the very "tiny" tip of the financial meltdown volcano that will erupt if people these so called economic experts do not take their heads out of places where the sun don't shine, and start initiating more sound economic polices rather than blow air as they did at the WEF recently!

Anyway, to satisfy my own curiosity and see how and why my hypothesis may just be right I created the following tables to analyze and draw my own conclusions. The information is as of 2008, so still current.

Rank	Country	GDP in Billions	% Debt. Of GDP	External Debt. in Billions	Per Capita Debt	Per Capita GDP
20	United States	$14,260.00	94.35%	$13,454.00	$43,793.00	$47,440.00
19	Hungary	$196.60	105.76%	$207.92	$20,936.64	$19,553.00
18	Australia	$800.20	111.38%	$891.26	$42,426.18	$36,918.00
17	Italy	$1,823.00	126.71%	$2,310.00	$39,741.00	$30,631.00
16	Greece	$343.00	161.17%	$552.80	$51,483.00	$30,681.00
15	Spain	$1,403.00	171.70%	$2,409.00	$59,457.00	$30,589.00
14	Germany	$2,918.00	178.48%	$5,208.00	$63,263.00	$36,320.00
13	Finland	$193.50	188.55%	$364.85	$69,491.00	$36,320.00
12	Sweden	$344.30	194.34%	$669.10	$73,854.00	$37,334.00
11	Norway	$275.40	199.02%	$548.10	$117,604.00	$53,738.00
10	Hong Kong	$306.60	205.85%	$631.13	$89,457.00	$43,847.00
9	Portugal	$236.50	214.38%	$507.00	$47,348.00	$22,232.00
8	France	$2,128.00	235.95%	$5,021.00	$78,387.00	$34,205.00
7	Austria	$329.50	252.63%	$832.42	$101,387.00	$39,887.00
6	Denmark	$203.60	298.32%	$607.38	$110,422.00	$37,304.00
5	Belgium	$389.00	320.31%	$1,246.00	$119,681.00	$36,416.00
4	Netherlands	$672.00	364.88%	$2,452.00	$146,703.00	$40,558.00
3	United Kingdom	$2,226.00	408.22%	$9,087.00	$148,702.00	$36,358.00
2	Switzerland	$316.70	422.48%	$1,338.00	$176,045.00	$43,196.00
1	Ireland	$188.40	1266.45%	$2,386.00	$576,805.00	$42,110.00

I have highlighted the US and six largest economies in Europe.


Just look at the per capita debt per person vs the per capita GDP and draw your own conclusions from the comparisons. By the way the population of US is approx. 311 million, while the population of European Union for those wanting to do more analysis is approx. 500 million.

Besides the teetering economies that we are already aware of Iceland and Greece, there are greater underlying problems in Europe specially in the realm of politics and it's proximity to Russia and the turbulence that arises from the Middle-East. Let's not factor out geo-politics when it comes to the occurrence, division, and allocation of natural resources, and ethnic tensions in the region.

If anyone of the readers was a betting person and was aware of the geo-political-economic world order which country would you place your bets on... to successfully emerge intact with the least amount of collateral damage from the current economic crisis?

"Mercy killing of Brands... Pros & Cons"

A really thought provoking issue. Secondly, what a question... probably good enough for a Phd dissertation in marketing.

Anyway, to keep it simple and see other viewpoints also. My take is fairly simple - business is there to provide a return on capital employed, when there is no significant return on the capital employed either in the short or long term the business should be liquidated. Obviously, this is a very simplified scenario, hopefully all due diligence is done and all tangible and intangible cost benefit scenarios have been objectively evaluated.

If after doing all the above there is a negative trend for future ROI yes by all means the brand should be killed, otherwise it will negatively impact the overall business, giving a perception that not just one brand is doing poorly, but the entire business is also subject to the same malaise.

To touch upon GM, in my opinion they were too slow and too late in pulling the plug on - Oldsmobile, and even to some extent are doing the same with Buick now. GM makes some of the best vehicles around technology wise, but their perception is that of a stodgy car manufacturer.

The reason you think of "mercy killing" or using the proper term in my opinion "euthanasia", for a brand at-least, would be mainly because the product, service, and it's communication is no longer relevant to the market audience the - consumer. So removing any support would not really have a backlash from the customer. If enough consumers really wanted to use the product or service you wouldn't be thinking about "mercy killing" a brand.

If you look through the marketing history of the major FMCG organizations worldwide there are numerous instances of killing off various brands and not all of them mercifully! In 1993 Phillip Morris Companies, killed off their corporate name when they renamed themselves Altria.

Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons to initiate the killing of established brands, this may sound quite shocking, but look at the marketing from Microsoft which has a history of such behaviour. BTW, I do not want to get into discussing the merits of the product itself.

In 1995 they purposely killed "Windows X.1" OS to introduce "Windows 95". Then in 1998 they killed "Windows 95" to introduce "Windows 98". In 2000 they killed "Windows 98" to introduce "Windows ME". In 2001 they killed "Windows ME" to bring out "Windows XP", and this year they officially killed "Windows XP" to introduce "Windows Vista".

In each cycle of killing off a major brand MS had a perfectly good product at the stage and an established revenue stream that generated billions of dollars, yet they chose to start completely afresh rather than create a line extension.

The above was done as part of a planned strategy known as phased obsolescence, which is based on the theory that if one rests on their laurels too long someone will come and eat their cake, so rather than have that happen one eats their own cake and goes out searching for more. Again another simplistic viewpoint, but it should get the message across.

Hopefully, that provides some fodder for thought. There will never be a right or wrong answer to a query like this, only hindsight will make us comment more on the merits and demerits of each.