Apple iPhone: lousy logistics… Or not?

As I planned to purchase an iPhone 4s I first called my regular Mobistar dealer:

DEALER: -”Hello sir. Of the 30 phone calls we receive daily at our shop, 28 are about the availability of the iPhone…. Well, we have no iPhone 4s in stock, but we will receive a shipment next Friday.”
ME: -”Great, can you put one aside for me?”
-”I’m afraid not, sir. There is a waiting list of dozens of people.”
-”So how many units will u receive next Friday?”
-”2 (two)”

Then I called Vandenborre:
-”we have no iPhone 4s in stock, but you can order one.”
-”What is the delivery term?”
-”We expect 3 weeks”

Then I called another telco dealer, Sonal:
-”Unfortunately we have no iPhones 4 s in stock. However if you give me your business card I will call you whenever we have one available.”
-”Any idea when?”
-”We have absolutely no idea if and when we will receive a delivery”

So, you might conclude Apple’s logistics is really lousy. I don’t even think Apple really cares about marketshare on the short term. In my idea, they are just applying a brilliant logistics concept: to artificially create scarcity by making sure that unsufficient iPhones are delivered at unpredictable times in too few outlets.

Apple’s strategy is probably contrary to the Samsung’s of this world, that you can find by dozens of models and hundreds of units in every shop.

But it’s stronger than me: i’m ready to wait a long time and pay way too mich money for a device everyone else also wants to have but can’t get… That’s the effect of scarcity. Apple may not care about day to day marketshare, I think they know very well how to keep their margins high.

Lemarco realizes event video – iFacto event @ Delta Light on December 1st 2011

Most stories about Belgium are either funny or insignificant. This one is a none of both: Delta Light is one of those Belgian companies (located in the middle of nowhere in Wevelgem) who made it internationally with expensive architectural lighting solutions. A beautiful location for an event organized by iFacto,  who has been their IT Partner since years. iFacto asked Lemarco to realize the event video of their event organized at Delta Light on December 1st 2011:

Going mobile with your web site: maybe worth considering after all?

I must admit, I had always been sceptic about the necessity of making web sites ready for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

However, a Google research conducted with Ipsos on Smartphone usage opened my eyes. Some figures: 89% of smartphone owners use their device throughout the day. 81% use it to browse web sites. Even 48% to watch videos. Is a smartphone becoming a pocket PC, a desktop extension?

So in what conditions do people use it? 59% use their Smartphone while waiting (bus, shop, doctor..). 48% use it while eating. 44% while shopping. The conditions in which we consume online information seems to change drastically. It seems the desktop is not our main access point to the internet anymore. As Google says, the Smartphone has become people’s always-on companion.

Google created a very interesting web site where you can type in your own URM and check how your own site would look on a mobile device, including some interesting recommendations.

Waiting for the real innovation in business software

I just finished reading a book that will probably remain in my top-10 list for a long time: ‘The innovator’s dilemma’ by Clayton Christensen. The book was published almost 15 years ago. It hasn’t seen the rise of technologies like cloud, virtualization, smartphones and the iPad… But still, its conclusions are so true you can apply them to any recent market trend.

The book introduced the concept of sustaining vs. disruptive innovation.

Applied to business software: sustaining innovation is what you do when you listen to your customers, and stuff your solution with more and more new functionalities, or make it mobile, in the cloud, portal-based… All those nice things that you build on top of what you had already.

Sustaining innovations are good. You have to listen to your customers and make your solution more performant to address more complex needs.

But disruptive innovations are totally different. This is the kind of innovation that results from not listening to your customers in the first place. Its an innovation that puts the whole value network in a market upside down. Its something that makes established competitors unable to react appropriately (i mean what Steve Ballmer said about the iPhone and later the iPad).

Unfortunately, I can’t mention any disruptive innovation in ERP software, because there hasn’t been one for about 15 years. What I do know is that current ERP solutions suffer from severe ‘performance oversupply’ for more than 50% of the companies; and that one day a new competitor (certainly not an existing player in the market), will come with a simple, convenient, technologically not so advanced but cheaper solution that will put the whole market upside down. A solution that certainly will not arise from market research among existing customers, but from the brains of a smart who sees what customers themselves haven’t seen yet. A solution that nobody had asked for in the first place.

So, what solution? If I knew it, I would probably be writing this on my 45 ft. sailing yacht.

A society of ‘too much’

A major problem of our western world is that we have too much of almost everything:

We drive too fast
We work too long
Eat and drink too much
Receive too many emails
Have too many friends in Facebook
Spend too much money on holidays
Buy too expensive smartphones too often
Have too many TV programs to choose from
Drive too big cars with too much horsepower

The even bigger problem however is, that human race is genetically not ready to cope with a situation of having ‘too much’ .

Our genes are programmed to tell us we have never enough of anything: our genes tell us, whenever we have the opportunity: ‘hey, eat more, travel faster, conquer more territory, increase your circle of influence…’ Which was historically necesary for survival of the race, but not anymore in 2011.

I rarely read a business plan that says: ‘next year we’ll do less. Get rid of this or that customer segment drop this or that product’.

However, in my personal life I made a first step. I replaced my 500€ Samsung Galaxy S smartphone with a 130 € model from an unknown brand. You know what? I feel more Zen already with a cheaper smartphone. But, to be honest, the only reason i really enjoy Zen is that I can afford the other side of the medal.