Pavansut: The Monkey God

The pundits will of course claim that Apple had a mea culpa, but Steve Jobs cleared up the antenna issue demonstrating quite convincingly that iPhone 4 is not alone in this problem.  Of course, iPhone 4 is the market leader and media loves to take potshots at the market leader so iPhone 4 has become the poster child for this problem.  So I don't think media is going to let up on this till they find some other juicy morsel.  But the consumers have spoken - they love iPhone 4 and are buying it in spades.  Apple's announcement to give away the bumper or case for iPhone 4 will only drive more consumers towards Apple.  In fact I myself was in the ATT store today where I learned that the wait time for iPhone 4 is 2 weeks!!  
Obviously there will be a cost to Apple, but in the end the increased publicity and free case will translate into greater sales for Apple and a positive bump to the stock.  
With this announcement, Apple has once again demonstrated how to serve its customers.  Wha…

Apple Knew of iPhone Antenna Risks - WSJ.com: "The mounting iPhone 4 controversy has hit a receptive ear in Washington, as Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) Thursday wrote to Mr. Jobs urging Apple to come up with a 'permanent fix' to the problem at no cost to customers."
This is just plain funny! If any one cares about finding a solution to this problem quickly, it is Apple!!

F.D.A. Panel Votes to Restrict Avandia - Prescriptions Blog - NYTimes.com: "A majority of the advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration voted today to restrict the sales of Avandia, a controversial diabetes drug, because of its potential risk for causing heart attacks. The 33-member advisory committee was deeply divided. Twelve voted to remove Avandia from the market altogether; 10 for continued sale but with new label revisions and possible restrictions; 7 to add more warnings and 3 for no change at all.
But the votes can also be viewed as a decision by a majority, 21, to continue allowing sales of Avandia, with more restrictions. A final decision will be made by the F.D.A. at a later date."

Debate rages on the net about the value of today's ODAC. It will be interesting to see how the market place reacts to today's news. All this adverse publicity has already damaged Avandia, but after all this if the drug does stay on the market will it get any use at al…

"'When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards,' Randler told the Harvard Business Review of his research' [T]hey tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them. They're proactive.' (Not that evening people are life's losers: They're smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humor, other studies have shown.)"I N T E R E S T I N G !!!!!
I have no sense of humor, but have little bit of creativity. However, I did not get into "better" college even though I did get better grades - just not better enough! What does that make me!

My daughter who is currently visiting her grand parents in India has something to say to the Prime Minister of India.  This is the first time she is visiting after she started understanding things, and the amount of litter on the streets in India really bothered her.  So she dictated a letter to the Prime Minister of India (she wanted to send to the President, but I told her that the Prime Minister is the most powerful person in India and could do something about it).  Below is the text of her letter.


Dear Mr. Manmohan Singh,
Why is there so much litter in India?  It seems no one takes care of the earth here - and everybody throws litter without thinking.  If one person throws litter, other person watching this thinks it is ok to litter and everybody starts to litter.  So, can you tell people not to litter?

I learned in school that littering polutes the air and the environment, and people can get sick.  So my teacher told us not to litter.  So please ask people not to litter.

 I like …

Summer is a great time to take pictures of kids.  Colorful outfits with equally colorful background - just makes it so easy to take nice pictures!

Fred Wilson on avc.com has a nice blog post explaining currency risk in business that is worth a read. For those involved in the US business, currency fluctuations plays little role in day to day business (i.e. sales) so this notion of impact of currency fluctuations is at first a little difficult to understand. But gaining an understanding of the impact of currency fluctuations on your bottom line is critical in International business.

As FW's post says, even if nothing real changes in your business, the change in exchange rate over which you agree to convert the local sales into US dollars can have a significant impact on your profits. So, as it happend last year with the Latin currencies (which experienced significant depreciation over the year), while you might be "making your numbers" in local currency in fact in US dollars you may have under performed - simply because the local currency is not worth as much in US dollars any more.

One can only imagine the demo…

The drumbeat of negative news around the US Pharma continues unabated. The latest piece of bad news that Merck is laying off 15% of employees, comes on the heals of Pfizer announcement laying off ~20,000 employees after the Wyeth merger. According to a report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in the first half of this year alone drug makers announced that they planned to cut about 35,000 jobs. Bad news like this is enough to strike fear in the hearts of the most courageous pharma executives!

Except, perhaps if you are in the Indian pharma industry.

While the US pharma industry is buffeted by one bad news after the other, times seem to be downright giddy in India. In fact, all this bad news here in the US seems to be translating into significant opportunity for the Indian pharma industry. An article in NY Times seems to indicate that the Indian pharmaceutical industry will grow 13% this year, reminding me of excitement I felt in late eighties when the US pharma sector…

The South American heart break continued today with Uruguay losing to Germany 3-2. But the spirit and guts shown by the Uruguayans made the usually forgettable game a very memorable one. Up until the last minute, the Uruguayans played as if they were playing in the world cup finals showing grit and determination that has made them the talk of the 2010 World cup. The Germans won, but Uruguayans showed the spirit of winners. One can only imagine how the game would have ended if Diego Forlan's amazing kick at the last second had bounced in to the net rather than out of the net.

Of course, none of this means that Germany played poorly. Rather the Germans displayed their superb mastery through out the game with sharp passing and accurate kicks to the goal. Still, the team did not control the game as they have controlled the games until now, and in the end won but just barely.

Tomorrow we await the big game.