Navigating Amazon II

Thank you all who pointed out similar chatter prior to today’s rumors/news.

So yes. A Palm acquisition was suggested by Presprit back in June 2009 on one of the forums on Precentral.net. This was around the time when Kindle was still new and a Palm acquisition was not only far-fetched but highly over-valued.

Daily Finance has also suggested Amazon as a dark horse. But they say that with Palm, Amazon could move into the mobile arena. I doubt Amazon has aspirations in the cellular/smart phone space and that could in fact be detrimental to Amazon’s long term strategy of SaaS, PaaS, etc. Of course the other bidders mentioned by them, and by almost every place is Lenovo. While it may make perfect sense, for Lenovo to compete on an OS front with its partners would again be a distraction – at least in the shorter term.

Comments on “Who Is Going To Buy Palm”, published last month, on Business Insider also suggest Amazon as a great suitor for Palm.

Brian Lawe of MyStoreCredit.com had suggested last year, on TechCrunch, that Amazon buy Twitter. Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that, but given the synergies he has detailed, I say Bezos, you out there reading the chatter?

All the more reinforces my previous post. Just wanted to update with these smaller details. More later.

What would Amazon do? – Navigating Amazon I

There’s more to what I say here. But I’m pressed for time and this should go out before the world spins more than necessary.

Here’s the meat: Amazon, although with roughly only about $6B in the bank, should grab Palm.

Amazon has a lot vested in its Kindle product line and having a highly qualified OS team and valuable intellectual property will really advance its goals as well as secure its product aspirations. There’s a strategy with which this will work, but Amazon, if you’re listening – go do it. You’ll thank me later.

Yes, there are better suitors for Palm. But for Amazon, Palm acquisition is going to give it a clear edge in the impending battle it faces versus Apple and give a great advantage versus iPad.

HTC, in a dire need for patents, should be snapping up Palm without blinking, but this acquisition is not goint to unleash the innovative potential of webOS or Palm as a device. Google seems the next possible candidate and it could, in turn, indemnify HTC. But the result will still be the same – no innovation, more nukes.

RIM, on the other hand, would be a great suitor. There is, after all (as depicted by fantasies around the iPad) a large segment of the market that requires a “smart” handheld device sans the phone.

But Amazon, you’re it. Think of the amazing things you could empower your customers with, the SMB ones, when you give them not only “Amazon Services” but a device that runs on a proven and advanced platform (webOS) for which there already exists a developer community, and a lot of respect in the open source world. And think of the places Kindle will light up due to now unleashed potential.

And while you’re at it, you know your Amazon Video on Demand really sucks. What you also need is Netflix to square that off and be able to pair it with any multimedia device you plan to offer under the Kindle line. And call it Rejoov, not Rekindle J (that’s a pun, but hey if you like the name, I like it too).

There’s more too. Square off your Platform as a Service offering and grab iPass and Zoho. You’re already competing with Salesforce.com and Oracle. And given your offerings of Amazon Web Services, EC2, Fulfilment by Amazon, Amazon Payments, and Mechanical Turk, these two will square it all off and give a complete end-to-end solution for the small and medium businesses – a segment that is highly lacking.

Yes, go now. Thank me later.

Hope

“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.” Nelson Mandela in a letter to Barack Obama

It has been almost two weeks since (ex-) Senator Obama transformed into President-Elect Obama and the world is eagerly awaiting the final transformation to President Obama. But the focus of this post is not Barack Obama, but rather the rejuvenation of a forlorn concept of hope. For that matter, I could’ve started with Nelson Mandela, the day he was released from jail. Or talked about Martin Luther King, Jr. Or about the independence of Namibia. Or about Ron Clark and how he brought about the change in outlook towards imparting education to the less fortunate. Or about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone. I could go on, for surely the list is endless, and moreover, continuously growing.

And then to majority of us, hope comes in various forms and attached with various strings. The adage “this too shall pass” is one form of hope that is making many of us move forward, living our lives, however mundane they may be, and dealing with whatever life throws at us. Destiny, fate, meant to be… whatever you call it, at the end of it all, we realize, all if it is deal-able. Our lives, our selves, our souls, and the issues and circumstances we face, they are all malleable. While dealing with life, albeit overlooking “living” the very same life, many of us come out heroes, in our own special way. Like the author of The Abstract Spirit. She is grappling the void in her life by fighting to fill it up, to call on her own self to full potential and realizing herself as nobody made her realize. People like these deserve the badge of heroes and have earned their way in the list of people I mentioned at the beginning.

Reading through her brand new blog, the job hunting days resonated with mine. It is amazing how we pin our worth on the hope that someone else will value us by giving us a job. And if we get rejected, we lose all sense of our own worth. And then my friend c at Piece Republic talks about the full circle of life. While starting off at the little stream, we form a view of the world, our own personal view that becomes highly precious. We hold on to some form of it as we go through the process of life, adding, adapting that view according to the new pieces of information and experiences we accumulate through our lives. Somewhere along the way we come across the dangerous concept of dreams and hope and decide to give our lives a direction or provide a destination to the direction our lives are already headed in. Some of us may even attain the goals of our lives or arrive at the destination we dreamt of and hoped to get to. But at the end of it all, once life turns full circle, we all wither and die, and no matter how we plead at that point and give proof of our contributions and impact and the changes we help brought or the revolutions we helped feed or the rebellions we helped propagate, at that point in time nothing else matters except for one thing. And that is the lesson to the end of the game. We contribute to the generation in front of us, pass the baton and move on, making space for more achievements and contributions.

The lesson at the end of it all is that there is hope. Hope that someone somewhere is going to pick up from where we left off. Similar to changing jobs. Someone is bound to replace us and pick up things from where we left. In the Abstract Spirit, the mom and the wife and the creative soul is converging into one big force that has been capable of generating 3GB (and counting) of creative work, some very cool children (I’m sure) and a great marriage that despite its ups and downs gives the comfort that the better half is there, ready to be shaken out of their (inward) lives, but there nevertheless to become the haven of tranquility and comfort we had once known them to be.

Fear is the single most deterrent to hope. What if my hopes get killed again, what if my dreams get trampled over? Lisa Nowak at the Tao of Webfoot was wondering just that when she heard that Obama had won the elections. She wanted to wait till the next morning to believe it. And coming back to the point with which I started – the election of Barack Obama has caused the resonation of yes we can in each and every soul around the world. It has touched everybody and it has ignited the realization that what was previously in the realm of impossible very much resided all along in the confines of the possible. But the fire starter that started it all, will he be able to come up to our hopes? Will he be able to one day come out and say yes we did! Will the fire of hope start more and allow the light to be carried on for generations to come long after we’ve withered away even from memories?

Dante, in his Divine Comedy has said – “Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.” The world smells of this sort of place upon entering which the concept of hope is all but vanquished. Every day is the dawn of a brand new world. Not only the day that saw history being made when Obama got elected. But every day. Things will fall apart only for the pieces to be picked up by those who have found new hope. But will that hope turn a full circle and allow us to fight our fears? Only time will tell.

Bail Me Out First

Or why I oppose the bailout of the Big 3 auto makers. The US has a thriving auto industry – it’s just not GM, Ford, or Chrysler. Moreover, it is their US sales (or lack thereof) that is affording them the luxury of rushing straight to zero value. Do not pass GO; do not collect $200. It is true that US sales are their bread and butter. And thus they are running around Capitol Hill, empty chalices in their hands in lieu of the begging bowl.

The doomsday scenario that is being painted by protagonists of a bailout just for the automakers – read: the Big 3 – are trying to make fools of an already fooled gang of taxpayers. They are basically asking the taxpayers to foot the bill of the decades long mismanagement and strategic failures that the Big 3 have called their business plan and model. And these failures and mismanagement are across the entire structure of these individual corporations. From quality of the cars they produce, to customer service, the technologies and development of alternative fuel cars, the auto workers, to the ability to produce the cars and trucks at an economically viable cost, they have achieved nothing but failure. Yes they embarked on a very enthusiastic restructuring campaign, but it was too little too late and too misdirected.

Let’s tackle the first issue of employment and then I’ll move on to the individual companies.

They’re saying that almost 300,000 3,000,000 workers will be without job if the big 3 are allowed to fail. There is an entire ecosystem attached to these automakers ranging from parts suppliers, to media companies, to towns and villages that survive solely due to their presence. All of this is at peril because the big 3 are in jeopardy. The industrial Midwest will be seen collapsing due to any allowed demise of the big 3 on top of Detroit and surrounding areas. Some part of the East Coast will also fold. While I agree with the general direction of this domino theory, the magnitude as well as the unraveling of this house of cards is entirely misconstrued and highly exaggerated.

Consider this: in the absence of Peak Oil and of any crisis, sooner rather than later, all production of cars by GM, Ford, and Chrysler, would have to be moved to areas which afford a lower cost of labor. Not to say they aren’t doing that already. In this inevitable case, there will be loss of jobs, and also the possible sprouting of ghost towns. So why cry foul?

Secondly, in the ecosystem that surrounds car production in the US, there would still exist manufacturers other than the Big 3. Given that due to recessionary period, consumer spending will be curtailed and the amount of cars sold per month would be highly limited and unchanged by the plethora of choices presented to the car buyer. In that event, the participants in this ecosystem will have to cut down on their production, capacities, and reach and breadth of their participation. If Big 3 are non-functioning, it will not change the fate of the auto worker or of the industry.

There are still cars running on the roads of the US and the world. If Big 3 are allowed to fail, the production of parts and provision of services for them will still continue. So again, quit crying foul and asking for a bailout. It’s about time GM, Ford, and Chrysler owned up to their actions.

Then there is the question of the adverse effect on national security due to the possible demise of these three entities. The argument goes that in the event of war, there is a need for as much manufacturing capacity as needed and any failure of the Big 3 will result in the shrinking of this availability. So, what world do we live in exactly? The days of conventional warfare are long over, so anyone still living under the ghost of WWII should open their eyes and look around them. And in the event extra capacity is needed, the US will continue to have an industrial strength that will be considered amongst the greatest in the world.

Now a few sound bites on the individual companies.

Chrysler is now Cerberus’ love child. Bailing out Chrysler would mean bailing out the private equity firm. Now which tax payer will accept that? Certainly I won’t!

GM relied, from time immemorial, on the sale of gas guzzlers. And going off on a tangent, remember who killed the electric car? So the technology is there, but the impetus to convert that into a commercially available transportation mechanism was never found. GM could’ve been the first to the market with its Volt, only if they had found their conscience. And what’s more – they took Saab and totally plasticized it – similar to the surgical methods Ford performed on the Jaguar and Land Rover.

Have you seen Fords lately? Their designs have certainly improved a lot – at least in the aesthetics. From a usability and mechanical perspective, Fords are far behind. And while Ford was going down the charts, it dragged Volvo with it. Its amazing how Mazda has been able to keep itself away from getting corrupted. I think everyone will support their decision of buying their remaining 33.4% stake off of Ford.

The only way to bail out the automakers, in the long run, is to bail the consumer, the tax payer out. How to do that is the subject of another post. Allow the Big 3 to file for Chapter 11. That way they will still exist, but get away from the shackles of the UAW. And in no way should the Fed assume responsibility of their employee pension funds and provision of health benefits. And I say in the long run because the onslaught of the current global recession and its ensuing woes will make it impossible for a quick fix for the auto industry.

So before the advocates of an auto bailout package shift their weight, bail the tax payer out first. Bail the consumer out first. Bail me out first.

Zero

Or the preface. As with beginning anything, there has to be a prelude, an introduction, an opening sequence, so does my new presence or state of being. Throughout the journey that you and I are about to embark on, there will be unfurling of plays – play on words, play on numbers, on value and wealth, on entities, on people, societies, educations, history, trends, philosophies, opinions, outlooks and plights and the confluence of all this considered.

The entity Zero is a very powerful and unique one. It signifies nothingness as well as an order of magnitude. It details a beginning, but also guarantees an end. In fact it was the invention of the zero that propelled mankind leap years forward. And yet it represents the ultimate opposite to every level of measure in existence. Which leads into this final statement: the zero signifies madness and sanity in one digit; a mélange of coherence and of chaos in its denotation.

A few reference statements to keep handy:

Newton’s Zeroth Law: At any instant of time, an object responds only to the forces it feels at that instant.

The Zeroth Law of Value (as I call it): If you transfer a dollar from your right pocket to your left, you are no wealthier – Merton Miller(1986)

Law of the Pendulum: “… the pendulum, which is that it makes all its vibrations, large or small, in equal times…” – Galileo Galilei

“You spend a billion dollars here, and a billion dollars there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money.” – (late) Sen. Everett Dirksen

The Law of Zero Return: Return on Investment = Inflation + Taxes

Law of Zero Correlation: “There is a point in the growth of the system at which there is no longer any correlation between educational attainment and either the distribution of educationally relevant attributes in the population or the distribution of non-educational social goods ordinarily associated with educational attainment – Thomas Green

Law of Zero Free-Expansion Effect: “During a free expansion, the energy remains constant”

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics: “If two thermodynamic systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third they are also in equilibrium with each other.”

So the corollary is this:

Given any society with a certain level of skill and education level and a certain level of employment and investment opportunities (independent of asset class, as long as the asset classes function completely within the said society), the initiation of momentum in any given factor (as in whether the factor is internal vs. external to the society) will govern the direction of motion within that society and also the nature of it (constructive vs. destructive). The momentum of internal factors will have to be generated within the society and will translate into maintenance of the equation in society (not to be confused with social equilibrium), and in that process the motion will possess both constructive and destructive characteristics, equal in energies. The duration of time from the point when the factor (internal or external) impacts the society, till the nature of the motion is obvious (referred to as an event), is independent of the magnitude of the momentum, direction of the resulting motion and its nature. Each event will govern its own duration of time which may not be equal across multiple events. A combination of societies will function as one society, and a combination of events will function as one even; however, a combination of factors may not be mutually exclusive and thus cannot function as one factor.

All of this is to lay a preface for the future posts. In the current catastrophic economic and financial environment, it is imperative that the confluence of all the above factors be stated as one intertwined and dependent set of variables. This will allow us to hunt down value within each society, people, entities, assets, trends, opinions, and plights.