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Android founder Andy Rubin started Android in 2003, which struggled because of a lack of funding. Rubin had developed a phone called the Sidekick in an earlier venture, which had attracted the attention of Mr Page and Mr Brin. Google acquired Android, at the time just Rubin and a couple of employees, and started a secret project in 2005-2007. The project was to create a modern operating system for smartphones that would make it possible to have powerful internet applications. Google planned to give it free and make money on online ads that would come up on the phones. Microsoft made device makers pay fees for using its mobile operating system. By the middle of 2007 Rubin had 100 engineers working in the unit. By late 2007 Google had setup a consortium for an "open handset alliance" with 30 handset makers, including Samsung, Motorola, and LG, with the goal of building the new Android powered smartphones. In the fall of 2008 the first Android phone the G1 was introduced. Progress on the phone led to Verizon Wireless and Motorola working with Google for introducing the Droid Android powered smartphone in 2009. In 2010 Google made a failed effort to sell a Google branded HTC Nexus One smartphone direct to buyers. This was followed by the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google for $12.5 billion in 2011....

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The company that only a couple of years ago was coming up with new models and among the top names in the cell phone business, is now gasping for air as it struggles to keep its cellphone business alive. It is an example of how vigilant and on ones toes (how paranoid in Andy Grove's words), one has to be in the fast moving tech businesses. Losing its leadership position to Nokia and other rivals like Samsung and LG from South Korea, who had better strategies and newer models, Motorola has never recovered, and the way down has been steep and precipitious. Motorola's cellphone sales fell a huge 51% in the fourth quarter, matching in its magnitude the kind of breathtaking sales drops that have hit GM and Chrysler for January 2009. And things cannot get better when the loss of $595 million for the cellphone division (or $31 for each cellphone shipped), mean cuts in design and other needed staff. Motorola has been closing design centers and has laid off 25% of design staff. In total Motorola posted a loss of $3.58 billion for the 4th quarter 2008. The rest of the losses include writedowns and charges for layoffs of 7000 workers announced since October 2008. Motorola shares trade at $4.04 on the NYSE and Moody's has downgraded it to Baa3, the lowest investment grade rating. ...

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Craig Fugate, head of FEMA, a former paramedic and first responder during emergencies himself, is down to earth and understands the needs of communities to get back on their feet after natural disasters. He was appointed by president Obama in 2009. He is responsible for the makeover at FEMA since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans revealing the problems at FEMA.

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Jena McGregor's interview with Ben Horowitz of Silicon Valley. Horowitz says its best to keep the founder as CEO, because its harder to teach a professional CEO to innovate, than it is to teach a founder to be a CEO. Better to take the advice of one football sports team owner to his coach when told about injuries and problems: "Nobody Cares. Just coach your team." Best to focus on the task ahead than to get overburdened by thinking about the hurdles. Many companies make the mistake of overhiring and finding they are in trouble when business falls off. At that time a moment of honesty is essential, even though a trust with the employee has to be broken, one cannot hide or blame the employee- only by saying we screwed up and planned the business the wrong way, can one make an honest effort to recover. Not making the honest assessment and being frank with oneself and colleagues can be fatal for a young company. Andy Grove of Intel, cites this example in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive," - to shift out of the memory chip business and close plants was essential once it was clear the Japanese had an unsurmountable edge, a long term move into microprocessors had to start now for Grove and Intel in 1986. An outsider's impersonal logic and no emotional involvement had to be Grove's mindset, as if he was replacing himself as the new head of the business, going out one door and coming back in. Panasonic's moves in 2013 under CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga to exit the plasma television business and focus on new business opportunities, including electric car batteries, is a recent example. On motivation or purpose: no big vision has to be announced and repeated- it is enough to make being a good company at what you do the end goal, make craftsmanship or doing the work you enjoy and can contribute in the end goal and purpose. The modest and straightforward is enough reason for existence and doing very well. How important is training? A lot, a great deal more than one can imagine. People can be talented but not productive. Companies that have good and extensive training programs can do much better than companies that lack these programs. Managers who can continue this with on the job training are also valuable to build on training programs. Sony's Akio Morita personally interviewed new hires, new engineers joining the company at all levels- it is really the contribution of the thousands of engineers that he personally interviewed that built Sony into a global pioneer in electronics in his time. He says the future of the company is determined by the people the company hires. Goes even further, by saying the fate of the company is in the hands of the youngest recruit on the staff. Horowitz finds Jim Collins as management writer a bit abstract and mushy, he prefers Intel's Andy Grove and his books such as High Output Management, as more specific about how to manage business. One could add "Made In Japan," and Morita to the list....

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Jeffrey Immelt of GE makes a critical point in this op-ed article- that the concept of the US transitioning from a technology-based, export-oriented economic powerhouse to a services-led, consumption based economy was a bad idea because it would lead to a loss of jobs, prosperity and prestige. Immelt calls it "fundamentally wrong." In this piece he makes the point repeatedly and takes his role as head of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness seriously, saying that there is nothing inevitable about the decline of manufacturing in America, that it can and must be reversed. For over two decades business leaders have taken a complacent attitude about the effects of a continued decline of manufacturing in America and the loss of jobs in the US, even as they built plants and expanded overseas. Now for the first time Immelt articulates a new policy for government and business leaders. He says businesses should invest more in advanced products and technologies that create jobs in the US. In doing this he joins Intel's Andy Grove and other business leaders who expressed a growing frustration with the pessimism that this loss of jobs and competitiveness is creating among young people in the US, and the cloud it is creating about America's future. Immelt adds that it is imperative to care about what happens at home in the US, and the growing pessimism that lack of jobs growth in the US creates should not be accepted....

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Bush's last news conference, or exit interview as he called it. He thinks about Katrina hurricane relief failure but says 30,000 people were lifted off rooftops. Iraq, the security council resolution 1441 did make it clear- disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. He thinks the "Mission Accomplished" banner on an aircraft carrier after liberating Iraq was a bad idea, and "Abu Ghraib", a big disappointment". But regarding Guantanamo Bay and Iraq he thinks it may be that the elite and some some countries in Europe find it unpopular. Some say that the moral standing of the US is damaged in the world. But he says go to Africa, go to India, and ask about their view of America. Go to China and ask. "But people still understand that America stands for freedom, that America is a country that provides such great hope."

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Daniel Bell at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Andy Xie, economist in Shanghai, Zhang Habin, professor at Peking University, and Michael Meyer, author and hutong expert, talk about what issues are important. Bell says Obama mania is absent among the young in China, though they respect his intellectual abilities, and Chinese are not looking to the USA for ideals. They are looking to Chinese culture and characteristics, and democracy is seen in this light with emphasis on Chinese characteristics. This means the US has to engage at a deeper level with China. Treat China as an equal with something positive to offer, says Bell. Andy Xie is concerned about the US-China relationship, based as it is today on tenuous grounds, where what happens in Florida and California can have a significant and immediate effect on what happens in Guangdong. With 70% of the furniture sold in the US made in China, the effects are immediate when housing slumps. So he says the US lost 3 million jobs since the subprime crisis, and China lost 20 million jobs. And for the 5 million college graduates coming out in 2009, they will be adding to the 5 million college graduates from previous years who are seeking jobs. Ten million unemployed college graduates mean China is seeing whole new conditions as the backdrop of US-China relations. Habin says its important for the US to set an example in climate change and emissions of greenhouse gases. The US should sign an agreement with China with binding targets, make its technology available to China, and provide development aid to make this technology and other assistance accessible to China. Cooperation on this issue is vital to future relations says Habin. Meyer says the hutong, small enclaves of old Beijing with lanes and small homes, that the city officials call neighborhood slums, but actually have a sense of community and a vibrant life, are worth preserving. He questions the Walmart and Pepsi commercial culture, and questions building of the American car culture urban plan that generates pollution, lacks community feeling, and is not energy efficient. In fact he has a point here, because the US is shifting away from its own older urban planning design that encourages urban sprawl, as in California. The new Sacramento urban plan that is being adopted for the future in America has energy efficiency, more community and easy interaction, less urban sprawl in mind. See the link to this. But Meyer says Chinese planners insist on their right to make the same mistakes American urban planners made. And Meyer quotes the head of the first Chinese environmental NGO, who says, "if the Chinese want to live the American way of life we need 7 earths to support them". Which raises a disturbing question of the US postwar way of life with its large SUV's, urban sprawl, and less sense of community. Wouldn't the US have to join India and China in the worldwide scramble for resources to preserve this way of life? Just this week China signed $51 billion of deals for natural resources, see the link. And is the rapid decline of the SUV, just the first sign of changes that are taking place, with the economic changes in coming years leading to grappling with issues of better quality of life, smaller quantity of things, health and obesity and lifestyles, community, all coming to the fore. ...

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The Economst cites an IMF June 2012 paper by Arcand, Berkes and Panizza that shows private borrowing and size of bank balance sheets once it reaches 100% of GDP begins to slow growth. A second paper by Cecchei and Enisse Kharroubi at the Bank for International Settlements confirms this showing that at low levels private borrowing and expansion of bank balance sheets increases economc growth, but at high levels exceeding 100% of GDP a large financial system actually hurts economic growth. Andy Haldane of the Bank of England points out the fact that for the century to 1970 bank assets increased by an average of 0.6% a year faster than GDP in 14 large economies, but increased much faster after this with ratio of assets to GDP increasing by about 3 percentage points a year. Bank assets increased from 50% of GDP in the 1960's to about 200% of GDP by 2007, reaching 500% of GDP in Britain, 800% of GDP in Switzerland, and 126% in the U.S. The increase in world trade accentuated this period with trade increasing from 22% of global GDP to 33% in the period 1996-2008, and banking following this trend across borders to developing countries. At the same time excesses caused an imbalance with hyper growth in bank balance sheets through taking on more leverage and banking risks. The Economist sees this process going back in reverse as bank balance sheets shrink in the face of regulation and efforts for financial stability following the 2008 global financial crisis....

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Grove's take on what is going on in Silicon Valley, and interviews at startups and Labs like the Almaden Research Center by Steve Hamm. Grove is especially infuriated by the concept of an"exit strategy". Intel never had an exit strategy he says. It takes time to build important companies over along period and a different kind of attitude, and resilience. Steve Hamm visits all parts of the Silicon Valley to understand what is going on. Big companies won't come up with the next big development and startups aren't measuring up to the task. Yes things are happening in the area of electric vehicles, solar energy and green energy. HP sees more productive effort coming from software development than hardware advances. Overall short term thinking and risk aversion dominates, and Grove and Hamm do not see the kind of paranoid attitude and worrying nature and resilience, that got Intel to go back and develop new products and look for new opportunities after taking a beating from the Japanese, who at one time took over Intel's existing markets. ...

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"It may be that this iron curtain is small, unimportant and justified, but it is a bad sign." Howard Buffett took a stand in the House of Representatives against the VOA broadcasts being used inside the US in 1947.  Warren Buffett is the son of Congressman Howard Buffett of Omaha, Nebraska, who was on the Board of Education of Omaha, started a small stock brokerage firm, and ran for US Congress in 1942, reelected twice and in 1950. He also ran Howard Taft's Republican presidential campaign in 1952. Looking at Buffett in the FDR-Truman years- one sees a young Buffett in contrast to Warren Buffet's silence on the 2008 financial crisis, raising serious issues- about the Truman doctrine in 1947 on the floor of Congress, was Acheson falling dominoes analogy a dangerous one?  It worked in Turkey-Greece with $400 million in aid in 1947 but was Acheson/Truman using a dangerous analogy of dominoes that would later hurt the US in French colonial Indochina wars, and in the reference to protecting oil resources in Middle east in Iran, Iraq and Saudi to lead to wars that exist to this day in 2024? Wars DJT and Biden have both opposed in contrast to Reagan, Bush, and Obama. There is a huge contrast between the father Howard Buffett, descendent of Huguenot ancestors from 1600 New York, and the finance professional Warren Buffett who went to Columbia University in 1951-52 as student of Prof. Graham with 70 years in finance during which financial crises destabilized the US with Buffett not taking a stand. One hedge fund manager say it is pure nepotism to pass on the company Berkshire to Warren's son Howie. But he is not surprised- who else would be sure to keep the company headquarters in Omaha, keep things simple invested in index funds and much of it in a few companies leaving the investing to managers chosen by Warren, with Howie's job to make sure his father's principles remain. Howie is Warren Buffett's 70 year old son, who Buffett 90 years is setting up as his successor as chairman who will not do investing leaving it to managers, yet be able to change CEO's. Howie worked for a few years at See Candy, a Berkshire owned company before becoming corporate VP at ADM food producer, followed by working on his own farm in Decatur, Illinois which he enjoyed doing. At ADM Howie left after an anti trust investigation began, in which the company was charged with $100 antitrust fines for price fixing says the WSJ. What is Berkshire Hathaway? It is a trillion dollars of investment funds invested in a few companies under name Berkshire Hathaway, using some of the basic ideas of Benjamin Graham, a pioneer in careful investing, adopted by Warren. Where has Buffett put his money? Berkshire top ten investments are- about $90 billion in Apple, $70 billion split between Bank of America and American Express, $30 billion in Coca Cola, and $30 billion split between 2 oil companies Chevron and Occidental. He has not invested in pharmaceuticals or in renewable energy- in just a piece of America.This has generated a compound interest of about 14% over 3-5 years and about 12% over 10 years. He holds 30% of his investments in cash or fixed, mostly cash at this time. And holds the remaining 70% in stocks. ...

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Australian anthropologist Genevieve Bell heads a group of 75 people at Intel Labs working to figure out all the ways technology affects people and society. Here she talks to NYT's Quentin Hardy. She says there are three areas in which technology is changing the way we live, and act, and our relationship to society. Like electrification the digital revolution is changing the concept of time, introducing new ideas about availability and response time. Here she points out the need to leave some parts of the day for disconnectedness, to preserve quiet time in our lives for recharging and getting a sense of who and where we are. Then there is the idea of space, of imaginary space when connecting to people in distant places, and physical space such as at airports and public places with wifi and internet to connect. After space and time come social relationships, about relating to one's fellow human beings. With this comes ideas of privacy, security and risk. With changes in how we view time, space and social relationships, comes anxiety. Social movements are likely to develop around ideas of government and governance, on issues such as what it means to be unequal and denied economic opportunity, when the digital revolution itself is opening up new visions of what is possible, just as electrification did at the turn of the twentieth century....

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General Electric, GE, experienced a steep decline in the last decade. The worst news came in 2018 with the loss of half its share price and market value. One story tells about an employee who was forced out of retirement back to work seeing the loss of value in GE shares in 2018. Rarely has a company of this size seen a fall in stock price this steep, for a stock that was once seen as safe for widows. About 60% of GE business comes from jet engines, electric power generators and wind turbines. GE now plans to sell its health care business and other business that do not relate to core infrastructure in energy, aerospace, and other markets. Under Jack Welch a faulty model of adding diverse businesses that had nothing to do with its core business and expertise in infrastructure were added. A home mortgage lending business was added and GE Capital expanded. NBC Universal was added with little justification in a period when CEO's acted without much consultation. The home mortgage lending unit collapsed with large losses during the 2008 financial crisis and GE's share price dropped drastically to $6.00. Under Welch's successor Mr. Immelt the GE Capital unit was shrunk in size, but losses continued to mount. An oil field service unit was added which also sustained losses.  Immelt's successor Flannery faced a loss of $15 billion from the financial lending unit. Sale of some businesses was not sufficient to meet the loss. Flannery is now taking GE out of all the businesses which were not core business. The NBC Universal television business was sold to Comcast in 2013. GE Healthcare is next. This closes a bad chapter in GE's story under Welch and Immelt. GE's dividend was cut for the second time since the Great Depression. The story of GE is also the story of American business during the last two decades, with icons such as GM, Ford and GE suffering decline, businesses that operated like little fiefdoms of old nobility in Europe, with CEO's operating in a CEO centric culture, not tolerating contrary opinion for informed debate on issues facing the business. Alfred Sloan founder of Genral Motors called constructive debate central to good management. Later Intel CEO Andy Grove coined the phrase constructive confrontation as a way of constructive debate, and the CEO was shown as the first of equals. The CEO centric management ignored these warnings and admonitions in running their fiefdoms.   ...

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The Journal's Jeff Bennett talks with Rodney O'Neal, the CEO of Delphi Automotive. O'Neal says Delphi's success depends on focussing on advanced technologies where emerging market producers are less able to compete. He has focussed on 33 product lines which are 'green,' safe' and connected.' If it doen't create value then revenue and cost numbers are wrong, is O'Neal's lesson from the bankruptcy filing. He likes the chaotic discussion coming form strong debate, where views are expressed with passion and counterpoints made, and he takes this debate seriously, because as he sees it choosing the right course is a significant task in itself, which takes much time to correct if wrong. There are major improvements in emission and fuel economy ahead and a high tech future for the automobile industry. He see America's future in high-tech where America can do better than emerging market producers, and ensuring that the steady flow of exceptional American talent continues to be channelled properly....

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Corporate customers now make up about 20% of RIM Blackberry customers, down from 71% in 2007 when the Apple iPhone was introduced. This means competing with Apple and Samsung in the consumer phone market. Business users bring more revenue per customer. A looming threat to RIM is the BYOD trend with companies allowing employees to bring their own phones and giving access to corporate data networks. Some companies are giving the new Blackberry 10 a try. Blackberry shares are up 41% in the last 3 months. Yet the challenge of keeping business customers and building a customer base in the consumer market against established competitors in 2013-2014 is a daunting one. RIM's global market share is 4.6%, according to IDC.

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David Barboza of NYT describes the hidden subsidies China gives to Foxconn for its plant in Zhengzhou, in a poor region of China. The factory there makes about half a million iPhones a day. These subsidies include incentive packages, infrastructure building, local government help of about $1.5 billion. As a result Apple has high margins. For a 32 gigabyte iPhone 7 that costs $400 to make, the retail price is about $649 in the U.S.  The hidden subsidies is why Apple can maintain dominance as profits are reinvested. And the result is that with only 12% of the smartphone market Apple can take in 90% of the profit, according to Strategy Analytics. Barboza looks back at Apple before co-founder Steve Jobs left in 1985 as focussing on manufacturing at plants in Colorado and California. By 2001 with iPod sales soaring the move to China under Cook, who previously worked for Compaq, was underway. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the move to China for manufacturing accelerated. The reason: only China offered the kind of subsidies, the speed of approval and building of infrastructure facilities, the local government support, the hundreds of thousands of workers, and the best tooling engineers, to produce in huge volumes with speed, and maintaining quality levels. Earlier plants including one in Colorado Springs that this Lyrarc editor was invited to visit just prior to Jobs rejoining Apple had many quality problems, so much so that Apple had a large part of the manufactured personal computers set aside for rework. The quality levels were dismal, defects were unbelievably high. This is the Apple manufacturing process and plant that Jobs must have seen when he returned, and which he hired Cook to fix. Not only were costs higher in the U.S., (subsidies in China came later) when Jobs looked at the manufacturing quality and the inability to get the quality he needed from American workers and engineers at that time in the 1990's, only then did he turn to China- and the more he saw what was possible to accomplish there he sensed an unusual opportunity to finally put the ghosts of memories from competition with Microsoft at rest, and to surpass everything that had been done in Silicon Valley. The result one of the most ingenious and large manufacturing networks in the world, huge profits for an American company, except for one thing- it would not do much for American workers. ...

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Mims raises questions about how productive current investments in Silicon Valley are in tackling real problems we face. He points out that advertising represents about $100 billion in an economy of $16 trillion, yet most startups focus on advertising revenues. Is $1.2 billion invested in Uber ride sharing service too much when other startups tackling bigger problems could be funded with some of that money, is a question raised by some in Silicon Valley.

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2013 will be a crucial year for Windows mobile software, according to IDC. IDC analysts say developer support is critical and mobile platforms that fall below 50% in support from developers 'very interested' in developing apps for them are likely to see a gradual demise. IDC's quarterly surveys of more than 4800 mobile apps developers shows Windows 8 tablets having such support from 33% of developers and Windows phone 7 software having 21% support. Research in Motion (RIM) has a mere 9% support for Blackberry phones and 8% for the PlayBook tablet. The figures for Apple iPhone are 85% and iPad are 83%, followed by Android phone 76%, Android tablet 66%.