The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Sunday, 5 June 2016

WHY HAD TIM COOK COME TO INDIA?

We cannot take that something drove Tim Cook and he took an Indian sojourn just for that.

We cannot say but he is certainly not in the kind of circumstances (and his Indian itinerary suggests this as well), that he would be forced (by his inner call) to look for spiritual solace of Orientalism - like his company's defining soul, Steve Jobs, had done.

We also cannot say, again based on his entourage, his itinerary and his engagements that he was here, in this country, for a planned or random tourism trip.

But then, how can we take on the face value, the implicit and explicit contours of his long India visit, spread over four days - for the specific purpose of promoting Apple's business interests in India - given the facts that the sum total of the purpose of his visit was restricted to emphasizing on those very measures which have pushed Apple to the periphery of India's tech market - including the blockbuster segment of smartphones?

If Apple has just around 2 per cent market segment in India's smartphone market, projected to be second largest soon (globally), it is Apple's own doing  - with a blind race to establish iPhone as a super-premium model.

And the way Apple decided to do it - was reflective of how it treated India.

First, it would create a false impression of exclusivity by keeping a large market like India in the last rounds of iPhone launch.

Then, it would price iPhone astronomically high, making it, again, an exclusive possession of the very few, even if it was available on lower price points in other markets.  

And above all, it tried to dump its old models in India - as if Indians were not able to afford its latest launches. It always sent the message that Apple considered India a market only for its obsolete models - or a market for refurbished iPhones.

When every other company, including Samsung and the Chinese vendors, see India as a market with immense potential and make it a point to announce global launches simultaneously in India. They even launch specific models for the Indian market.  

By the time Apple realized where it erred, it had become too late. This long visit by Tim Cook, after the first ever dip in iPhone sales, shows that. Because it came too late.

Or Apple has really realized where it erred?

It doesn't seem so.

Especially after the indications that we are getting after Tim Cook's high-flying socializing and strategising stopovers in India.

Reports say the main focus of Tim Cook's India visit was convincing the Indian government about its refurbished iPhone business and setting up Apple stores without the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing clause.

These are again shabby and 'poor in taste' elements and emphasize Apple's superiority complex (if I take the liberty to use the term) - the very elements that have pushed Apple to a marketing oblivion in India.

And, if this was really the intent of Tim Cook's India vision, then it was so poorly thought. While others companies tried to own the Indian market in order to win it, the basic of any marketing strategy, Apple disowned the Indian customer - as if he never figured in the their scheme of things.

But if it was not so - then the million dollar question is - why Tim Cook made this India visit? 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/