Mobius 2006 Thailand: Day Two
After publishing my Mobius 2006 Thailand Day One article immediately after the first day, I have to admit I was proud of myself - normally it takes me many days to transform my session notes into a complete article, so this was a big improvement over previous Mobius events. Well, you know what they say about being proud of yourself - here I am publishing the day two article (a much shorter piece to begin with) a full week after it happened. I was essentially busy and/or travelling from the second day of Mobius through until Tuesday AM, and have been catching up on email and other tasks ever since. So you'll have to pardon the lateness, but here's the Mobius day two article.
Derek Brown, BMO Director (Marketing Director) for Microsoft Thailand, started day two with a session called "Emerging Markets & The Next Billion PCs". His introduction was a brief overview of how the Pocket PC
launched and how the first "Pocket PC Wireless and Beyond" event came to be (the precursor to Mobius). There was some wistful (and wincing) talk about the Palm-size PC evolution into the Pocket PC, and the things that Derek oversaw during his time on the Windows Mobile team in Redmond (including the infamous Mobile Experience Tour). Living in Thailand, Derek had a unique perspective on the military coup that occurred, and he showed us some photos of what things were like in Bangkok. Soldiers, tanks, and guns ? but everything was peaceful, people were posing for photos with the soldiers, citizens handing out flowers and cheering for the military. It's about as benign as a coup can be.
Thailand is an emerging market, with 65 million people, and most of the population still lives in rural communities. Piracy is a concern Thailand ? Microsoft believes in bringing technology to people, but as a business they also want to sell software. Respect for intellectual property is lacking in Thailand ? there's about 79% piracy rate, which includes software piracy, movie piracy, and other forms of IP theft. He discussed open source and governments ? Microsoft is happy to compete with open source solutions, but they dislike government edicts that give an unfair advantage to open source solutions. [more]
Derek Brown, BMO Director (Marketing Director) for Microsoft Thailand, started day two with a session called "Emerging Markets & The Next Billion PCs". His introduction was a brief overview of how the Pocket PC
launched and how the first "Pocket PC Wireless and Beyond" event came to be (the precursor to Mobius). There was some wistful (and wincing) talk about the Palm-size PC evolution into the Pocket PC, and the things that Derek oversaw during his time on the Windows Mobile team in Redmond (including the infamous Mobile Experience Tour). Living in Thailand, Derek had a unique perspective on the military coup that occurred, and he showed us some photos of what things were like in Bangkok. Soldiers, tanks, and guns ? but everything was peaceful, people were posing for photos with the soldiers, citizens handing out flowers and cheering for the military. It's about as benign as a coup can be.Thailand is an emerging market, with 65 million people, and most of the population still lives in rural communities. Piracy is a concern Thailand ? Microsoft believes in bringing technology to people, but as a business they also want to sell software. Respect for intellectual property is lacking in Thailand ? there's about 79% piracy rate, which includes software piracy, movie piracy, and other forms of IP theft. He discussed open source and governments ? Microsoft is happy to compete with open source solutions, but they dislike government edicts that give an unfair advantage to open source solutions. [more]