The Smartwatch, now not a smart move

It's been nearly 1.5 years since Apple announced their own Smartwatch, the Apple Watch. While sales have been good at the start, it has been discouraging in the past year and nothing with a downward forecast all the way till 2017. Recently, Fitbit, an activity tracker acquired the most funded smartwatch maker on Kickstarter, Pebble to lay off the team and shut the product down! 

So not all acquisitions end with a happy ending.

This sounds grim, but in my personal opinion, the future smartwatches have been grim since day because, if you take a top down approach on the behaviour of people wearing watches:

1. Smartwatches, would only be worn, by geeks and tech enthusiasts, mainly driven by Apple users. Apple smartphone market share 12.5%  in the world.(https://www.statista.com/statistics/271496/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-vendors-since-4th-quarter-2009/)

2. Out of 10 of my friends, only 2 wear a conventional watch such as a G-shock.

3. Those who wear a luxury watch, won't replace a Rolex with a plastic watch. 

4. A watch is a symbol and accessory for a successful man, or a man who appreciates a good timepiece. I overheard a joke once, 'don't propose to me with a diamond ring, propose with a timepiece instead.' 

This is because a timepiece appreciates in value over time, while a smartwatch depreciates because it's a gadget.

Now, if you take a top down approach, filter from 1 down to 4, the market size of smartwatches isn't big.

A smartwatch can do many things such as monitor your heartbeat, your footsteps, let's see a preview message/caller, receive notifications with your app and many more. While it does many things, its main functions are to receive notifications, check the time and monitor your heartbeat and footsteps. Smartwatch app downloads haven't been fantastic, even AppAnnie doesn't have any tracking for Apple watch Apps.

You might say that there has been no killer application on the smartwatch to drive users, I think it's because a watch, needs to stay as a watch to tell the time.

Smartwatch manufacturers were hoping it becomes the next big thing, I highly doubt it but there might be a future in activity trackers. 

So, is there a future for smartwatches, maybe if the battery life is improved dramatically (up to 3 or 4 months at least). Still, I just look at my Mi Band 2 for the time.

Quote of the day 9th December 2016

I don't want to inspire you, I want to make you perspire.

- Jun King Sze

Quote of the day 28th November 2016

If you did something and there was no result, it's called being stubborn.
If you did something and there was some result, it's called being persistent.

- J K Sze

#sanity #insanity

Quote of the day 23rd October 2016

We cannot change the past if we want to change the future.

- Jun King Sze

Quote of the day 1st October 2016

People often want to believe, the unbelievable, but often cannot believe, the believable.

- Sze Jun King 

Overheard of the day, 22nd September 2016

From the recent BFM Breakaway 2016 as elaborated by @Afzal Abdul Rahim, here are the usual 3 type of ideas:

1. Authentic: an idea that is usually spawned by an internal problem, pain, experience, need or inefficiency/deficiency.

2. Original: an idea that is derived from no. 1, but witnessed and the solution from a 2nd or 3rd party.

3. Unique: a copy from any 2 of the above but improved to be different, much better, innovative, etc.

1 is the rarest, followed by 2 and 3, most common.

Quote of the day 26th August 2016

“The man who fears losing has already lost.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Quote of the day 26th August 2016

“The man who fears losing has already lost.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Quote of the day 25th August 2016

Try to fail, not try to not fail.

I would rather have tried and failed, than to have not try and fail.

- Sze Jun King

Quote of the Day 29th July 2016

Make everyday, a learning day

- Sze Jun King

Quote of the Day 5th June 2016

Be normal? Where's the fun in that!

- Raphael from TMNT Out of the Shadows

Quote of the Day 27th May 2016

10% of $100million, is a better than 100% of $10million

- Warren PJ

JK's Name Card Case made with LEGO

What's that, a block of LEGO?

It opens up to...

...be a name card case!

In search of a suitable name card case, it lead me to make my own and what better to build stuff with: LEGO!!!

Back in 2014, I was shopping for a name card case, one that was practical... but practical name card cases weren't funky or couldn't turn heads around = boring. So, I decided to take a look back at my hobby in LEGO and decided if I could make one on my own.

It didn't take long as I started building a model in my head (I felt like Emmet!), imagining the right pieces to build it with. In a matter of hours I came up with a few prototypes but these pics below is the best prototype made with knock off LEGOs first as I had some lying around. I had made a few others, but those would make the name card case stick out in your pocket like a hard on.

This version was slim, it could not hold more than 12 name cards, it was nice but impractical as I occasionally gave out up to 20 name cards at a networking session.

The design was also broad, it was 9 stud rows high x 12 stud rows long.

This was franken-pieced together with parts from various size and colours.

I didn't have enough wall parts, but it worked well as prototype.

So I had the prototype for over 1.5 years until I decided I knew what I had to finish building it, as I strove to improve its form factor and practicality.

The final vs prototype. The final  is 1 row shorter, much more compact that way.

Another side by side comparison.

When I showed my prototype to alanyuppie, he recommended I use the wall corners to complete the edges. This final version could hold more cards for sure. Tx Alanyuppie.

What's that hole in the middle for? Well, wait for it...

The inner pieces were added so that when pressed, the case and pieces doesn't bend inside. It serves as a structure to keep its shape.

  

Those pieces are to prevent name cards from slipping through the crack.

A gap was made so that you thumb or finger could comfortable take out name cards.

BTW, CardPow! is my cashback startup and I'm the creator and co-founder.

My name card case holds 20 name card with the following size: 90mm x 55mm. Anything smaller than this will fit. I can't remember the thickness, but it shouldn't be too thick. It held nearly 30 namecards of a thinner thickness.

I'm posting this up because if you Googled for name card or namecard case, you won't find anything so I'd here to stake my claim on this cool invention. 

BTW, you can customise it to your liking.

No idea what's this...

Well, if you'd like your cool factor to go up by 10,000 when you give out name cards (someone did say that to me), then please support it at LEGO Ideas here: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/142093

Clash Royale: What's it made of?

Clash Royale, the latest mobile game from Supercell, is well on it's way to making USD1 billlion in revenues a year after debuting with USD110 million in the first month. Source: Venturebeat

As a person who spent time studying games and understanding why it becomes such a success, I was able to tell that Clash Royale wasn't an overnight success. A lot of time and money was definitely put in research to understand the behaviour of mobile gamers today, which was inspired from a variety of games made in the last 10 years.

Here are the list of games that inspired Clash Royale:

a) Sangokushi Taisen is a collectible card and real-time strategy game based on the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history and the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The first version was released in 2005 and has spawned many sequels and variations such as a Mobile Suit Gundam version.

The game is played with the cards by placing them on a sensitive playing area. Movement in-game is done by moving the cards on the playing field, and card behaviour on the battlefield depends heavily on the card type. The game was widely popular in Japan and some parts of South East Asia, however the game is complicated to play at the start and requires a steep learning curve.

See video below:

b) Samurai vs Zombies Defense was first released in 2013 by Glu Mobile. You get to play as a heroic Samurai to defend your village against hordes of attacking zombies with allies to recruit and build defenses to stop them.

In this game, is a meter that behaves like the Clash Royale's Elixir, allows the Samurai to call more reinforcements to fight the zombies and reinforcements, just like cards the are also up-gradable.

The main difference in Samurai vs Zombies Defense is that the bar is up-gradable to fill quicker and store more whereas Clash Royale is limited to just 10 points.

c) Trading card games such as Buddyfight for instance employ 3 monsters on the battlefield, a center monster, left and right. Clash Royale also has 3: the king's tower and left and right towers. In trading card games, the monsters can be replacement but not in Clash Royale, as the game has been designed to be played quicker in under 5 minutes.

d) Insane level of online Japanese trading cards games: These games have always focused on insane amounts of levelling unlike from the West, like Magic: The Gathering. The leveling system allows users to merge cards of the same type to to improve its abilities, but in actuality, puts in more extended play value but even importantly, forcing a player to sink in time, money and effort in leveling it up. The attachment towards the card and game grows stronger: therefore players are less likely to leave. 

A good reference is Tower of Saviours, based off Puzzle and Dragons from Japan.

So, is Supercell the next Blizzard? 

Blizzard made very successful PC games (Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo) based off inspiration from game types such as Dune, Warhammer 40,000, Everquest, Ultima and DOTA, In the recent years, their game offerings have dwindled because there has been lesser PC games to be inspired from as more developers shifted focused on mobile games.

Even if Supercell did rip off games from other genres, they must have put in a lot of time and money in research to understand the behaviour of mobile gamers, to arrive at the current most popular game that everyone wants to play, because the games mentioned above have been around for many years and for Supercell to adapt a game that fits to a global audience is no easy feat.

Up next, I'll share what was the formula for Clash Royale's success.

Clash Royale is currently available on iOS and Google Play Store.

Understanding the Customer Journey

With the internet, with social media and with more choices that can ever be, customers have moved from fragile to brittle.

Earlier today I had a visit from an autogate repairman whom I contacted using Servis Hero. I had a chat with him about it. He had started using recently after his spouse decided to register for him, as he was good in English. He gets a lot of request for quotes and he also replies the quotes through his spouse but the conversion rates were really low, not because of the poor English quotes, but because he felt that his customers didn't understand what was quoted to them.

Customer today can get rattled easily with simple terms, technical jargon's or lengthy quotes, and when this happens they focus their attention on what they are familiar with: the price. 

While a service provider can be genuinely offer a great deal, a customer however has failed to grasp it due to their current brittleness cause by new business environments: the internet, social media and overwhelming choices. In this case, customers rattled by the price could choose not respond and seek out other service providers, but most commonly revert back to the conventional method of referring from a friend.

Time is wasted, but to a customer, time may not be the concern.

It is very important for all startups when trying out new business models, to spend a little time to understand a customers journey and take that into improving a better standard operating procedure, towards a perfect business model. After all, understanding your customer is part of what startups must do today to disrupt the old ways.

Quote of the Day 17th March 2016

"Being in the Wrong, gets you to the Right."

- Sze Jun King

Quote of the Day 9th March 2016

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change -”

― Heraclitus

Cockroaches in an Organization

Sometime ago I had a chat with my wife it made me realise that there are cockroaches working in an oragnization.

What is a cockroach? An 8 legged insect that feeds on scavenging anything they can find. Cockroaches are found everywhere in the world, but most notably they can survive a nuclear winter.

Now, what about a cockroach in an organization? 

Let's take Mr. A, he has work a company for 30 years. Throughout the 30 years, he's been a diligent worker who does what he is told do, but not very efficient or effectively. He has slowly risen through the ranks but eventually hits a ceiling at middle management where he cannot progress any further. He might have gotten lucky with a promotion if someone decided to kick the bucket earlier.

While he may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, Mr. A has evaded several round of layoffs because he's a hardworking, utility worker and doesn't cost as much as the seniors. As a grunt, Mr. A lacks creativity and innovation, because he is a utility worker: not smart like a worker ant and not dumb like a lemming. 

In his 30 years, Mr. A constantly takes a lot of scolding, even some very embarassing ones for his mistakes or lack of inefficiency. He absorbs them, doesn't hold any grudges and always hopes the problem goes away... which does over time and people forget. He may even succumb to taking the blame and accepting a pay cut, but he does this so he can keep his job.  

Always willing to please, Mr. A gets along well and tries to remain neutral as much as possible. Once they find a comfortable place to scavenge for the rest of their lives, they will continue to do so. 

So, a cockroach in an organization is a person who will do anything and everything, to keep his job, won't be very good out it, rarely thinks outside the box or creatively. They work hard i.e. scavenge to keep their job. These cockroaches can be found commonly in large and established MNCs and even small companies.

The cockroach can be anywhere aged 35 to 45, usually with a family or planning to start one. These cockroaches commonly engage in repetitive duties such as in logistic, sales and sometimes finance. 

A cockroach is detrimental in a startup, because everyone in a startup needs to think and operate as independent as possible to save cost but most importantly, pivot and innovate quickly. Cockroaches are there for the ride, not being able to contribute can drag the team down. Startups need to identify these cockroaches as soon as possible to avoid wastage and them sucking up necessary resources.

Unlike the definition of a cockroach startup, this is different.

Quote of the Day 15th February 2016

It's the little victories that win the war.

- Jun King, Sze