Apr 2, 2012

USA - Samsung Galaxy Tab only serious rival to Apple iPad


"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" was Steve Jobs' legendary pitch some 30 years enticing John Sculley , then PepsiCo's president, to join a fledgling Apple Computers.

They both fell out subsequently. Sculley, 72, believes "the best part of my journey is happening now", being a "mentor, investor (he has a family office) and rainmaker working with talented entrepreneurs". Apple is still a part of his life - he uses the iPad, Macbook Air and an iPhone! In an email interview with ET , Sculley looks back at his career and also looks ahead at the tech world. Excerpts:

Do you think you could have answered that famous pitch by Steve Jobs differently?

No. I always would have wondered what I had missed if I hadn't accepted Steve Jobs' challenge to come and help him change the world.

What lessons can you offer India's IT companies on marketing in the US, competing better with IBM, Accenture?

The old BPO model is pretty mature. It was created before BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) mobility, virtualisation, cloud computing, cloud storage and cloud networks. Today, the shift is towards platforms-as-a-service which is quite different from traditional BPO transaction processing services.

Last year when I spoke at Nasscom, I talked about 'Expertise-as-a-Service'. I'm even more convinced this year that domain expertise and near-sourcing services will be drivers that will shape the next era of BPO. As successful as firms like Accenture have been, they carry a lot of legacy overhead making it challenging to adapt to the new ways to reinvent work.

Indra Nooyi is trying to take a health food approach, which is good in the long run but no one seems to be liking it. What advice would you give Nooyi?

I have been gone from PepsiCo 29 years so I'm in no position to offer insightful advice to Indra Nooyi. In the 1970s PepsiCo was a much smaller and less complex company. I was the first CEO of Frito-Lay International (the snack foods business outside USA).

I enjoyed this job even more than my 10 years as Apple CEO in the 1980s. Everything in those days was focused around the concept of what we called "experience marketing" (Pepsi Generation & Pepsi Challenge). When Jobs asked me how Pepsi did so well in the Cola Wars I said, "Because we market the experience, not the product." Jobs and I took "experience marketing" to Apple when we introduced Macintosh in 1984 at the Super Bowl.

What are the learnings from the cola wars that can be applied in the increasingly commoditised tech industry?

Technology is commoditising so quickly and the investments in R&D are so large that it's impossible for most consumer electronics companies to compete with Apple's iPad. Apple sells a complete end-to-end system; its technology is mostly proprietary; it's as superb at supply chain management as it is at a no-compromise product design; App Store and the Apple Store are as much a part of the "experience marketing" as the products themselves.

Where do you see Apple going?

I predict many good years ahead for Apple. The only serious tablet competitor in sight to the iPad at this time is Samsung's Galaxy. We know the landscape can change quickly but Apple has an extraordinary executive team. Companies like Sony are trying to deal with the challenges of the legacy businesses (like the money losing television unit) while Apple is riding a wave and can focus all its talent on the future.

Today the market is flooded with gadgets. Is there an end to this?

There is still an opportunity, especially in India, China and Africa for a very inexpensive smartphone. Many tech watchers in the US have pretty much written off Nokia and Microsoft as serious competitors in the smartphone market. I think Nokia and Microsoft may surprise the industry with a successful low-end smartphone.

I also think it is too early to count Windows 8 out as a mobile platform. The developer versions of both Windows 8 and Windows Mobile are impressive. That said, my focus is on BYOD and the enterprise cloud computing opportunity.

SANGEETHA KANDAVEL,ET BUREAU
economictimes.indiatimes.com



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