Colin Charles Agenda

What is the market share of BMW? Maybe 1 or 1.5%. But when one drives by, you either have one, or you wish you had one. Build products that people lust after; if you can do that, you don’t have to worry about market share. 

Paraphrasing Steve Jobs, via an episode of This Week in Startups.

Back in August, I wrote about how T-Mobile USA changes their pay-as-you-go plans. It is even worse than it seems.

I’m back again this month, and find that if I want to change to the $3/day unlimited calls/text/data plan, I have to wait till the next month (i.e. the next billing cycle). Previously this would just work immediately, as long as I changed it online. 

My options to get data now? Pay $10 for a 1-week High Speed Data Pass with up to 1GB of traffic to utilise. There’s also a $5 day pass. 

T-Mobile reminds me of my experience with DiGi. Both were underdogs. Once they get more market-share (in T-Mobile’s case, maybe a better network/selling the iPhone; in DiGi’s case finally getting a 3G license back in the day), they just can’t handle the load, and graduate from their underdog status to being worse than the incumbents. I’m still a T-Mobile & DiGi customer, but the question is for how long more?

I tend to travel on planes quite often, and I’ve always been annoyed by the fact that you have to turn off your electronic devices during take-off and landing. I thought life would be better when you could keep your tablets on in flight mode (thus not requiring me to carry physical newspapers on-board or even magazines). 

In the USA and in the UK, this is no longer a problem (it hasn’t been at least since the end of last year), I was always hoping that the Asian carriers I tend to fly (Singapore Airlines & Cathay Pacific in particular) would modernise.

Sometimes I fly to Singapore from KL, and that’s about a 45-minute flight. One day I measured how much time I was wasting without using electronic devices:

• 26 minutes 45 seconds upon takeoff – announcement, taxi, takeoff (KUL-SIN)
• 14 minutes upon landing – here during taxi, you can use electronic devices 

41 minutes wasted, is almost as long as the flight ;-)

So it is with great pleasure that since the middle of the year (July 2014), Singapore Airlines allows you to use your devices (not laptops, but thats ok – tablets/phones are good enough for now) in flight-safe mode, and Cathay Pacific just allowed this as of mid-September 2014.

Now, when will Malaysia Airlines, and AirAsia wake up? Presumably this has a lot to do with the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation.

There has been a lot of talk about apps generally not doing well. There may be truth in the matter.

Let’s take my mother, a classic example of someone who plays Candy Crush (made by King, whom are now public listed in London). She plays this mainly on her iPad, but also on her iPhone.

Life began quite simply by just playing the game. She got up to nearly level 500, and she only made 3 in-app purchases. Countless hours of entertainment, for what amounts to 3×0.99 cents. You don’t get much for $3 these days.

Then suddenly with the help of automatic app updates (and the fact that the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) needs to increase for earnings), she was required to login with Facebook finally.

She did, and started from scratch!!! Nearly 500 up there, and starting from scratch. You can’t imagine she’s pleased but she enjoys playing the game.

Fast forward to today, and the Facebook app logged her out. Candy Crush became aware & asked for a re-login. Lo and behold, the 70-odd levels she completed were gone and she had to start from scratch.

Her total investment in time? 8 months. Her total unrecoverable investment in in-app purchases? Less than $3. Her frustration levels? Like she wanted to throw the iPad at the wall!

What can we learn from this? Apps provide countless hours of entertainment for very little revenue to the app creator. App updates that break the database, eventually annoy the user. Is the user likely to continue with other games or apps? Possibly. But after a while there is app fatigue.

So it’s not about discovery. Sure the lists help. But being social (ie in-person) aids discovery too.

Being consistent, is key. Who downloads an offline travel guide, that gets updated and needs a resync, when you happen to be offline? I know a few offenders.

Splitting up apps that should be one – Facebook/Messenger, Foursquare/Swarm, etc. Then not providing a consistent interface, removing features or worse crashing when you’ve got to switch to the next app.

App fatigue is caused by putting the company or investor first, and the user last.

And as more contribute to the subpar user experience, the more smartphones will be whittled down to providing their basic functions provided for by Android & iOS with a sparse few extras. Overall, that makes the barrier to success much higher than before.

I’ve had a T-Mobile USA prepaid number for quite some time. It was a brilliant service – you turn on unlimited calls & data (200MB at high speeds, and then it goes down to 2G speeds) when you’re in town for a mere USD$3/day. If you can live with 2G speeds, it cost USD$2/day. And when you didn’t use it, you just went into a mode that would charge you upon usage. 

All this was and still is changeable online on your T-Mobile account. A bonus: add $100 credit, and you’ve got validity for 365 days.

Now, they’ve decided that the moment you go to one of those $2-3 plans, you can’t go back to the old “idle” mode. Now you’re charged a minimum of USD$3/month just to keep your number alive & active. So that’s $36/year to keep your number alive.

I don’t mind the extra charge, but I think its quite dishonest to change existing customers to this. A lot of people praise T-Mobile, but even they falter. 

I’m deeply saddened by MH17. I haven’t gotten over MH370 yet, and I can’t imagine how all at MAS, people flying it, and everyone involved react to all of this – 2 tragedies within 6 months is truly unprecedented. This is a long piece but just remember: This is not the fault of MAS. Stop blaming them. The plane was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why do I care? People that know me, know that I’m up in the air all the time. For those that don’t know me, last year I took over 12 trips around the Earth, and the year before that over 18 trips around the Earth (circumference of earth = 24,901 miles = 40,075 km). I’ve been doing this since about 2003, though nowadays I fly less – I just spend a lot longer at destinations.

People that know me also know I’m no big fan of our national flag carrier, MAS. I swore off them sometime in 2003 (becoming a SQ Gold loyalist then; and also a CX Diamond in 2012), and tried them again for a few legs in 2013 (London, Paris, Bali, Hong Kong, Singapore, Phnom Penh) as they joined OneWorld. I told myself that service still hadn’t improved (yes, they’re great – but when you compare them to Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines, there’s not much left to say).

That said, I’m a proud Malaysian. I will not forget where I was when I first heard the news about MH370 – I woke up at the Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta and was told of what had happened that Saturday morning. Messages started streaming in from worried folk all thru that week. I followed closely to see what was happening to MH370 over the entire search period, and sad to say the handling of everything was just poor – typical of the mediocre leadership in Malaysia. I still stand that the DCA chief, MAS CEO and Hishamuddin Hussein need to resign. It took weeks to release the cargo manifests, there was so much misinformation, so much confusion, and overall, it just put Malaysia and MAS in a really bad light.

Not over MH370 (we still have no idea what has happened or where the plane has ended) we are hit with MH17 (I landed in a Cathay Pacific plane in Los Angeles after radio silence for about 14 hours to text messages asking if I was ok – so turned on roaming data immediately to find out what happened in plane). MH17 is different: it is an act of terror. It is clear that MAS is not at fault at all. It was shot down.

However people are looking to appropriate blame – especially after MH370. Detractors (typically Malaysian’s angry with the current government, or “ex-Malaysians” who are now part of our diaspora) question why Malaysia Airlines flew over Ukranian airspace knowing that it was unsafe. Detractors wonder if ailing MAS was trying to save money by using the shorter route.

Here’s some news for you: MAS wasn’t the only airline using said airspace. Over 400 flights per day travel over that region including passenger jets from KLM, Lufthansa, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Air India. There are probably a lot more airlines that used said airspace (does anyone have a complete list?). British Airways and Qantas have changed route plans previously. Remember that this isn’t just for routes that do AMS-KUL, but also for routes that are like SIN-LHR and so forth. I’ve been flying over this airspace for a long time…

This data is all open nowadays (FT also has a good article: Downed Malaysian Airlines jet was travelling outside no-fly zone). Just ask FlightRadar24. Look at some of the graphics coming out of the NYT (very useful to understand that MH17 wasn’t doing anything wrong).

Singapore Airlines SQ351 (B777) and Air India AI113 (B787) were about 25 km from #MH17 when it disappeared. pic.twitter.com/BVDMlqGOjG

– Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) July 17, 2014

Yes, the FAA had issued warnings in April 2014. Eurocontrol said it was safe as long as people flew above 32,000ft. So the airspace was restricted but not closed. Operations departments at many airlines (MAS included) chart paths that are most optimum – this is what happened here.

Lufthansa defended its decisionto fly over this airspace:

“Every airline selects the routes that are the most energy efficient and which offer the shortest flight time, but we would never make a trade off between operational safety and cost”

In hindsight (everything is always clearer isn’t it?), people can say that aviators can refuse to fly said routes or ask the operations departments to re-route around conflict zones. Sure. That’s what everyone has done after MH17. But before, many commercial airlines were happily using this route.

Its appalling that airlines try to claim they’re safe and weren’t using the route before. Offenders include (read the thread):

For those of you wondering, Finnair does not fly over Ukraine. Your safety is our top priority.

– Finnair (@Finnair) July 17, 2014

Who then admitted to being wrong, and posting a corrected tweet (i.e. they don’t currently fly over Ukranian airspace).

Singapore Airlines says they’re not using Ukranian airspace any longer (read the thread).

Customers may wish to note that Singapore Airlines flights are not using Ukraine airspace.

– Singapore Airlines (@SingaporeAir) July 17, 2014

MAS its time to learn to be better – and comebacks are the best – Singapore Airlines made a comeback from their tragic 2000 incident – SQ006. Let’s not forget the 1997 SilkAir 185 incident.

MAS, don’t give up. People, don’t give up on MAS (MH17 was at full capacity probably due to fare cuts). I’m going to try to change some routes to take on more MH flights to support the local carrier. Malaysia needs a local carrier – and that carrier is MAS. Godspeed.

Update:

Der Spiegel has a good graphic on flights over Ukranian airspace pre-MH17 http://t.co/8egVInamHK (missing VS301) pic.twitter.com/o5clm7EvEa

— Colin Charles (@bytebot) July 19, 2014