The first time I left my house to go to the hostel my mother packed an alarm clock with me. It was my most precious possession. Every night I would wind up the thing which would wake me up the next day. Without this I couldn’t had survived the military regimen.
The other day I accompanied my eighty year old mother to the market. Our old alarm clock had finally stopped working. We were disappointed. We hunted all around but we just didn’t find a shop where they could repair the clock. Neither could we find a shop selling mechanical alarm clocks to replace it.
When I read this interesting article Have Breakfast or be Breakfast by Professor Y.L.R. Moorthi from IIM Bangalore I realized the whole world had switched over to cell-phone alarms.
According to Moorthi some of the biggest companies in this world have faced competition from quarters they never expected. And guess what, many of these giants lost or disappeared from the scene.
Examples –
• The largest camera sellers in India – not Sony, Canon or Nikon but Nokia cameras bundled with cell-phones.
• The biggest music business in India – Airtel. By selling caller tunes.
• The toughest competitor to airlines – video-conferencing services.
• Who is giving the Indian film industry nightmares? IPL cricket with its shorter 20-20 version. This three-hour tamashaa (entertainment) is pulling the crowds away from the multiplexes.
Which set me thinking about navigation charts. In India BA paper charts rule. It used to infuriate a senior Indian hydrographer to no end. In his interaction with commercial shipping industry he found no one seemed to be using Indian charts. Once on a visit to a premier shipping college this hydrographer found under-trainees being taught from Capt Puri’s book on Chart Work where it stated ‘charts mean BA charts’. He found many navigators had not even heard of National Hydrographic Office at Dehra Dun which makes Indian charts.
Today who is the serious competitor to BA charts? Not NOAA or any other HO but C-Map charts now taken over by Jeppesen. In the eighties and nineties Dr. Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti had led Navionics and C-Map digital charting companies respectively and created a market in the light marine sector where there was none. UKHO probably lost the opportunity here because developing electronic charts would have affected its colossal paper chart business
The big question is who will be the competitor to UKHO and Jeppesen tomorrow?
I don’t know. The competition could be lurking anywhere. Maybe it will be one of these cell companies or Yahoo or Google. If cell-phone companies can somehow enlarge the small screen then the map agencies will find them a difficult competitor.
We have to wait and see how the future unfolds.
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