The folks who follow Amazon Sales Rank over time know that the Sales Rank tends to fluctuate and one needs to look at them over a period of time to draw any meaningful conclusion. The chart at http://charteo.us/amzn/compare/B000JLKIHA,B000H0QDCC/
looks at the Sales Rank chart for Apple 80 GB iPod Classic (Black) and Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Media Player (Black) over last 3 months. Yes, the chart is live and compares Sales Rank for last three months from whenever you at it. The chart does show a spike in sales of Microsoft Zune during Oct.-Nov.'07 time frame, but then it levels off. In contrast, Apple iPod sales have been steady and better than its competitor for most of the time. The bump in Sales Rank of Zune could have been due to heavy discounts or special promotion campaign or both.
There is another factor to consider -- both Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune are available in different models and different colors, and each one gets its own Sales Rank. So comparing Sales Rank by picking a single model, even over a period of time, is misleading. As Sales Ranks are not additive, you can't simply add Sales Ranks of various models (or combine them in some interesting way, though this may be possible with some advanced math) to arrive at a single statistic.
An article titled "IT Doesn't Matter" by Nicholas G. Carr published in May 2003 issue of venerable Harvard Business Review, announcing the elevation of IT into a mature infrastructure, in the same league as rail-road, electricity and hence incapable of providing any strategic advantage, seems to have generated good amount of controlversy. Fortune columnist David Kirkpatrick wrote in his column Stupid-Journal Alert: Why HBR's View of Tech Is Dangerous: "One of the article's most glaring flaws is its complete disregard for the centrality of software." Pete Delisi wrote in SOUND OFF column of CIO magazine: "What I believe he misses is that IT is not only a transport technology, as are all the other technologies he compares it to. IT is also a "processing" technology capable of doing more than carrying electronic signals or goods, which basically arrive at their destination without major value being added by the technology in the transport process."
The HBR article defines IT (Information Technology -- if you are still wondering) as the technologies used for processing, storing, and transporting information in digital form. But still uses specific embodiments of IT such as number of hosts connected to the Internet as an indicator of IT's overall maturation. Conclusions drawn from state of a specific IT segment cannot be applied to the the whole of IT. I agree that the Internet itself may be in a fairly advanced stage of development. But then, the Internet, however important, is just a segment of IT and cannot be equated with IT. IT is much broader and has seen evolution of many such segments: Transaction Processing, Personal Computing, Desk Top Publishing, Multi-Media and so on. The Internet is only one among many manifestations of IT.
In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of the HBR article -- It takes a fairly narrow view of IT. It may be okay to compare the Internet with Railroad but it is not fair to compare IT with Railroad. Comparison with the general category of Trasnportation would be more appropriate. Maturing of Railroad did not preclude aviation based transport or even the network of highways for the ground transportation!
This happened with me around a year ago. I deposited a cheque of $4.01 at the ATM ( got from one of those mail-in rebates ). THe ATM helpfully asked if I would like to take out money from the deposit. I pressed YES by mistake. This is where the interesting bug reared its head. The ATM will allow me to enter only $20.0 or more but a subsequent logic will not let me take out $20.0 as the original deposit amount was less.
There was no way I could get out from this loop. Eventually I left the ATM without my ATM card and the ATM in a deadlock !!
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The folks who follow Amazon Sales Rank over time know that the Sales Rank tends to fluctuate and one needs to look at them over a period of time to draw any meaningful conclusion. The chart at http://charteo.us/amzn/compare/B000JLKIHA,B000H0QDCC/ looks at the Sales Rank chart for Apple 80 GB iPod Classic (Black) and Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Media Player (Black) over last 3 months. Yes, the chart is live and compares Sales Rank for last three months from whenever you at it. The chart does show a spike in sales of Microsoft Zune during Oct.-Nov.'07 time frame, but then it levels off. In contrast, Apple iPod sales have been steady and better than its competitor for most of the time. The bump in Sales Rank of Zune could have been due to heavy discounts or special promotion campaign or both.
There is another factor to consider -- both Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune are available in different models and different colors, and each one gets its own Sales Rank. So comparing Sales Rank by picking a single model, even over a period of time, is misleading. As Sales Ranks are not additive, you can't simply add Sales Ranks of various models (or combine them in some interesting way, though this may be possible with some advanced math) to arrive at a single statistic.
I do a bit more analysis od Sales Rank charts of different iPod and Zune models in my blog post at http://charteo.us/The-Myth-of-Microsoft-Zune-Beating-Apple-iPod-as-Holiday-Gift-Item/.
From my weblog:
An article titled "IT Doesn't Matter" by Nicholas G. Carr published in May 2003 issue of venerable Harvard Business Review, announcing the elevation of IT into a mature infrastructure, in the same league as rail-road, electricity and hence incapable of providing any strategic advantage, seems to have generated good amount of controlversy. Fortune columnist David Kirkpatrick wrote in his column Stupid-Journal Alert: Why HBR's View of Tech Is Dangerous: "One of the article's most glaring flaws is its complete disregard for the centrality of software." Pete Delisi wrote in SOUND OFF column of CIO magazine: "What I believe he misses is that IT is not only a transport technology, as are all the other technologies he compares it to. IT is also a "processing" technology capable of doing more than carrying electronic signals or goods, which basically arrive at their destination without major value being added by the technology in the transport process."
The HBR article defines IT (Information Technology -- if you are still wondering) as the technologies used for processing, storing, and transporting information in digital form. But still uses specific embodiments of IT such as number of hosts connected to the Internet as an indicator of IT's overall maturation. Conclusions drawn from state of a specific IT segment cannot be applied to the the whole of IT. I agree that the Internet itself may be in a fairly advanced stage of development. But then, the Internet, however important, is just a segment of IT and cannot be equated with IT. IT is much broader and has seen evolution of many such segments: Transaction Processing, Personal Computing, Desk Top Publishing, Multi-Media and so on. The Internet is only one among many manifestations of IT.
In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of the HBR article -- It takes a fairly narrow view of IT. It may be okay to compare the Internet with Railroad but it is not fair to compare IT with Railroad. Comparison with the general category of Trasnportation would be more appropriate. Maturing of Railroad did not preclude aviation based transport or even the network of highways for the ground transportation!
This happened with me around a year ago. I deposited a cheque of $4.01 at the ATM ( got from one of those mail-in rebates ). THe ATM helpfully asked if I would like to take out money from the deposit. I pressed YES by mistake. This is where the interesting bug reared its head. The ATM will allow me to enter only $20.0 or more but a subsequent logic will not let me take out $20.0 as the original deposit amount was less. There was no way I could get out from this loop. Eventually I left the ATM without my ATM card and the ATM in a deadlock !!