Summit Notebook

from Sakthi Prasad:

The brave new world of Ideas

The world was built on ideas and in the absence of innovation, mankind would have continued to live in stone age.

Of course, Rostow Ravanan, chief financial officer of Mindtree, would subscribe to the view that new ideas are absolutely necessary to promote business growth. Well, who wouldn’t? While talking to journalists at Reuters India Investment Summit, he vigorously defended his company’s foray into designing smart phones saying it is a new idea, which may as well pay off.

Ravanan, in a philosophical manner, said the world is “spermicidal” and is designed to kill new ideas -- but that will not deter a company like Mindtree in pursuing business opportunities. Just because the smart phone market is perceived as crowded, it is not a good enough reason for Mindtree not entering the market.

 When he was pushed by Reuters journalists to provide some color and details regarding the company’s smart phone project, he evaded the volley of questions in an innovative manner: He said he is paid not to reveal the details before the official launch.

Lenovo’s next big thing?

Electronics is a tough business, with most manufacturers working tirelessly on what they hope will be the next big thing, even as they survive on razor thin profit margins.

Lenovo, the world’s No. 4 PC brand, hopes it’s on the brink of such a blockbuster, although CFO Wong Wai Ming was coy about disclosing any details.

“I would like to think we are the only people to think of that product,” Wong said at the Reuters China Investment Summit, discussing the ongoing convergence between small web-linked PCs and smartphones that increasingly resemble mini computers.

He said three years ago the cellphone and PC were distinct markets, but with the advent of the netbook — a low cost PC designed to access the Internet — the convergence between the two products is coming, and soon, by some accounts.

“We obviously believe we can probably come up with a product, whatever you call it, that will give the best customer experience in using that gadget,” said Wong.

Lenovo’s larger rivals all offer smartphones or have announced plans to do so, most recently Dell through a tie-up with China Mobile.

“We have been actively spending a lot of research money and product development money in coming up with a product,” Wong said.

Dell’s enterprise chief pooh-poohs netbooks

Netbooks: flavor of the month? Not according to Dell’s Steven Schuckenbrock.

The PC giant’s head of enterprise sales was quick to point out flaws in the stripped-down, no-frills mini-computers that have garnered rave reiews for their ultra-portability and anywhere-connectivity.

“Netbooks are a secondary device. The user experience of a netbook is just not as good. It’s slower than a conventional notebook computer,” Schuckenbrock said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.

Perhaps that’s why Dell was slow to get into a space dominated early on by aggressive Taiwanese upstarts like Asustek. Dell, the once-preminent U.S. personal computer manufacturer, which has steadily given away market share to rivals from Hewlett Packard to Lenovo, unveiled its first netbook only in September.

Schuckenbrock, however, acknowledged that the netbook was an ideal device for non-demanding consumers. “I carried one with me on the road this week to check it out. A great device. Light, easy to use. But a different performance. If I’m in my office, it’s probably not gonna work.”

Which is fine by some investors. Dell had endured criticism from the Wall Street community for appearing at times to see-saw between different and sometimes contradictory corporate strategies, from its initial tardiness in latching onto the netbook craze to its flirtation with the hand-held device market.

Verizon and iPhone: Deal or no deal?

Verizon Communications Chief Financial Officer John Killian had a lot to say about how well his company’s smartphone and data business is doing, but skirted the elephant in the room at the Reuters Global Technology Summit: Is his company going to strike an iPhone deal with Apple?

Killian refused to comment on whether Verizon is talking to Apple about selling the iPhone once rival AT&T’s exclusive contract with the iPhone maker ends next year.

“Our PDA, smartphone and data business is growing incredibly nicely,” Killian said. “Our strategy is to have multiple devices. I’m not going to comment on Apple or the iPhone, but… we don’t feel we’re going to be at a market disadvantage in the PDA space as we go through today or 2009.”

So, no iPhone deal, then? Again, Killian avoided answering directly.

“We have a range of different devices with different manufacturers, and we’re continuing to evolve that. We’re going to have a series of introductions this year, we’re not dependent on any one vendor.”

But surely, Verizon must miss the publicity that all things iPhone get? After all, the iPhone — and Apple products in general — seem to drive people into paroxysms of delight, especially at trade shows like CES and CTIA. Does Verizon not feel the pressure to do something big and showy?

Killian’s response: “I don’t want buzz, I want volumes, cash flow, profitability. I want things that allow us to do that and I think our lineup is allowing us to do that.”

SanDisk’s Eli sings the Blu-Ray blues

The flash memory business may be suffering its worst slump ever, but SanDisk CEO Eli Harari is carving tombstones for other businesses.

The No.1 endangered technology, Harari said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Tuesday, is the Blu-Ray DVD. Because the discs don’t work with smartphones, which consumers are increasingly using to watch video, Harari says their days are numbered.

He did not give a time frame for this extinction, though he did note at one point that the average period of time it takes for a new technology to render an existing technology obsolete is five to seven years.

Floppy discs, once a standard component on PCs, have been replaced by flash-based USB drives. And photographic film for cameras has become a fading memory since the advent of digital cameras.

Of course, SanDisk has been striving for several years to make inroads in the market for music CDs, offering prepackaged tunes on its flash memory cards, but CDs have yet to disappear.

And the long-hyped solid state, flash-based hard drives are still struggling to compete with the traditional mechanical hard drives found in most PCs today.

Harari said the battle with hard drives is still in its early days. But compared to his DVD death sentence, he seemed somewhat more accommodating for hard drives.