Thought Garage

“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” – Anonymous. Few notable thoughts that are worth sharing and spreading.

Russian Outsourcing Branches Out
There’s plenty of conflict and chaos in the world, but the recent announcement by Russian IT outsourcing specialist Luxoft that it’s expanding operations into Vietnam ..

Free Market Data
Portio Reseach have just published a free downloadable PDF, which contains tons of market data on the state of mobile. It’s a taster for the whole report that they want you to buy (fair enough), but there’s loads of facts to get your mind around in the free version.

Christopher Alexander on the difference between a fifty-year-old carpenter and a novice
We may understand it best by comparing the work of a fifty-year-old carpenter with the work of a novice. The experienced carpenter keeps going. He doesn’t have to keep stopping, because every action he performs, is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter never takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can keep working, confidently, steadily.

Apple to tap solar power for iPhone?; Vodafone to get aggressive in Africa and Asia
Speculation is high this week that Apple could be working to tap into solar power to charge its growing range of wildly successful gadgets, including the iPhone. FierceMobile IT editorial

Google CEO: Mobile advertising to generate more revenue than today’s web
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the next major growth wave for Google in terms of search engine marketing is the mobile Internet. He cited the iPhone as the first mobile device with a good web browser and that more devices will come to market, enabling advertising to become personal. He predicted that within a few years, mobile advertising would generate more revenue than advertising on today’s web.

Asians and their love of all things mobile
The April edition of Telecom Asia had a great article about Asian mobile phone users, based on an Asia-Pacific wide survey of 16,000 consumers in 29 countries by TNS Global. So this is not just the wealthy parts of Asia like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong etc; but also includes the poor parts like India, Indonesia, Vietnam etc. And your stats-rat was of course immediately all over these numbers. Here is the big picture. There were about 1.4 billion people here in the 29 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, who have a mobile phone subscription. Or to put it in another way, 42% of all mobile phone accounts are here in Asia-Pacific. And now lets see what kind of findings we have from the TNS Global survey.

Tons of cash for IT workers yet job vacancies abound
IT workers have experienced the highest salary increases and lowest turnover of all other jobs in the past year. However, technology vacancy rates still plague companies. Is the skills shortage real after all?

Does Web Advertising Work?
Do Web Ads work? Does the vaunted Freemium model actually produce meaningful revenues for anyone but the largest services and content sites? How should Web 2.0 be monetized?

Huge achievement for the Telecom markets. The impact of having a mobile phone is quite far reaching than just enabling communications.  Cellular Phone became a life style for many, a life saver for some and integral part of their livelihood for a whole lot of others. As per the statistics, at the end of 2007, as per ITU report, one in two in the world now have a cellular phone. Wow!

Source: 49% of humans have mobile phones: ITU
THE number of mobile phone users world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent, the International Telecommunications Union has said in a report.

Africa showed the strongest gains over the past two years and more than two thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007, the ITU said. This is ‘a positive trend that suggests that developing countries are catching up,” the report said. Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in Africa between 2005-2007, and 28 percent in Asia over the same period. India and China added 154 million and 143 million new subscribers respectively. The global annual average growth rate stood at 22 percent, the ITU said.

Huge achievement for the Telecom markets. The impact of having a mobile phone is quite far reaching than just enabling communications. 

Cellular Phone became a life style for many, a life saver for some and integral part of their livelihood for a whole lot of others.

As per the statistics, at the end of 2007, as per ITU report, one in two in the world now have a cellular phone. Wow!

Source: 49% of humans have mobile phones: ITU
THE number of mobile phone users world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent, the International Telecommunications Union has said in a report.

Africa showed the strongest gains over the past two years and more than two thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007, the ITU said. This is ‘a positive trend that suggests that developing countries are catching up,” the report said. Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in Africa between 2005-2007, and 28 percent in Asia over the same period. India and China added 154 million and 143 million new subscribers respectively. The global annual average growth rate stood at 22 percent, the ITU said.

Image Credits: Photo by Yisris at http://flickr.com/photos/yisris/

Carnegie Mellon was the final stop on Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates’ recent tour of several nationally recognized universities. As founder, chairman and former CEO of Microsoft, Gates revolutionized personal computing in the digital information age. His talk at Carnegie Mellon concluded his farewell lecture tour as he transitions from Microsoft into his new role in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose mission it is to bring innovations in health and learning to the global community.

There was a significant hike in the prices of rice in US. Some varieties of rice is just not available any more in most Asian grocery stores.

I heard that American top leaders including George Bush blaming India and China for the shortage saying that people from those countries are eating more as the middle class is becoming wealthy. As stupid as it looks, even if that is true it only expose the real issue behind US’s own terribly huge consumption. [ Image Credits: Photo by Genemoo @ Flickr]

Read the other post where I learnt that the problem with what and how America eats is a lot bigger and worse than it appears What is wrong with what Americans eat.

I am trying to decipher the hidden meaning of these Market signals, and I found some surprising and totally shocking information on who consumes the most grains in the world. If I just say it, you probably won’t believe it. So , I found this article that substantiate in real numbers. I put the information represented in this article in charts so it will put the differences in better shape.

Remember Rice is an integral and key part of every Indian meal, and yet they consume so less.

Per-Capita Rice Consumption

Per-Capita Beef Consumption

So now you see the point. Somehow, Americans are totally eating all my rice, though rice is not a primary diet for them. Obviously, rice and beef is not everything that you will see stark and  huge difference in consumption. But you get the point.  Read the following article excerpts for more.

Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many. Total food grain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007. Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg.

In per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and thrice that of China. Grain consumption includes flour and by conversion to alcohol.  In fact, per capita grain consumption has increased in the US — so actually the Americans are eating more. In 2003, US per capita grain consumption was 946 kg per year which increased to 1046 kg last year.

By way of comparison, India’s per capita grain consumption has remained static over the same period. It’s not just grains. Milk consumption, in fluid form, is 78 kg per year for each person in the US, compared to 36 kg in India and 11 kg in China. Vegetable oils consumption per person is 41 kg per year in US, while Indians are making do with just 11 kg per year. These are figures for liquid milk, not for cheese, butter, yogurt and milk powders which are consumed in huge proportion in the more advanced countries.  A significant proportion of India’s population is vegetarian, and so, this is all the food that they get, apart from vegetables and pulses. But the source of carbohydrates and fats is mainly derived from food grains and oils.

URL: US eats 5 times more than India per capita – Times of India

Source: US eats 5 times more than India per capita – Times of India

Still not convinced, read this New York Times article “Rethinking The Meat-Guzzler“. One of the key take-aways from this article on typical consumption and the effect of producing that heavy meat demand how America is contributing to environment.

Doesn’t size of population in China and India matter?

It does. But that is not the point.  What gives the right to Americans to eat SO much?  And why people from other countries are so less privileged to access to food grains. So long, they couldn’t afford. Not they are catching up. If they do what Americans do, the whole world will be in deep trouble. For sure, because of its sheer size. In a global economy, every world citizen must adjust, and I guess it has to start from Americans as much as it is from China and India, for they eat so much of ‘every thing’ starting from food grains to meat and drinks to causing an alarming rate of pollution.