Links for Friday July 29th, 2011
India's Leading Export: CEOs: Long, but interesting article from Time about the success Indian's are seeing as CEO's all over the world. The article identifies a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting this thesis, but I thought this was the funniest:
Unlike Americans, they're well versed in negotiating India's byzantine bureaucracy, a key skill to have in emerging markets. And unlike the Chinese, they can handle the messiness of a litigious democracy. "In China, you want something done, you talk to a bureaucrat and a politician — it gets done," observes Ajay. "In India, if you talk to a bureaucrat or a politician, there are going to be 600 other people with their own points of view." There's an old saw about Asian business cultures: "The Chinese roll out the red carpet; Indians roll out the red tape."
Nintendo 3DS price slashed to $169.99 on lower than expected sales: The 3DS just doesn't seem like it's a very good product. There is still a chance that Nintendo can salvage this thing with fantastic software (they have done this in the past), but this big of a price cut, this soon, seems to be a bit desperate on the part of Nintendo.
iPhones and iPads drive Softbank’s explosive Q1 profits: I had to read this twice to get the full effect:
"Softbank’s net income for its first fiscal quarter of this year was ¥94.79 billion ($1.22 billion U.S.), which is up from ¥19.44 billion (around $250 million U.S. with current exchange rates) for the same period in 2010. Softbank says smartphones in general helped raise revenue, but the carrier has exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in Japan, where Apple is still the leading smartphone manufacturers by a wide margin."
That is quite a jump!
Why Google cares if you use your real name: From the "it's funny because it's true file":
"Remember, if you want to understand how corporations work, if you think about money, you're most of the way there."
(via Daring Fireball)
Everyone Borrows, Google Flaunts It: Intresting perspective, from David Barnard:
"In most of its products Google innovates enough that we view any similarities to prior art as borrowing, but Google+ is the most flagrant product ripoff I’ve seen from such a large corporation (Android being a close second)."
I think it might be a bit too early yet to pass a final judgement on Google+ — there is a chance that it could evolve into something very different than a Facebook clone. (via John Gruber)