Neither Data nor Gadgets

Heard of Amazon Dash? It’s supposed to work like this: you are walking around the house, notice you are running out of cereal or whatever, point the Dash at the carton and bingo! The item just got added to your shopping list. Of course, some items don’t have bar codes or maybe you threw away the carton, in which case, you speak to the Dash to add the item. Right now, it’s a (very) limited edition gadget only available in 2 or 3 American cities.

I remember reading this article that said:

“Amazon doesn’t innovate by crafting new product categories, like Apple does. It also doesn’t make much money selling its hardware. Instead, it takes all the data it gathers as the world’s biggest online retailer, breaks down exactly what’s available and what consumers want, then produces a piece of hardware that it can sell cheaply in order to bring consumers into its ecosystem.”

That’s Big Data in action!

Google too has a huge amount of information about us and uses it to make money via ads. Apple and Samsung don’t have too much data on us, but they make money via their gadgets.

So where does all this leave Microsoft? They don’t have any best selling gadgets; nor do they have too much data about us. Apple and Google made the operating system free; and nobody wants to pay for apps on their phones and tablets. It’ll be interesting to see how Nadella tries to steer Microsoft through such stormy seas...