Category: Telecom

Michael Mace writes: “I think there’s a role for mobile video, but considering the limits on user interest, and the huge technical and business challenges, it’s not going to be the great horizontal application that drives the mobile data market. At best, it’ll be a nice add-on for entertainment-focused users who want video in addition to their MP3s and games.”

Nokiia writes about its re-organisation, which heralds a shift from a pure devices services to a blended devices-software-services strategy:

“The convergence of the mobile communications and internet industries is opening up new growth opportunities for us, both in the devices business as well as in consumer internet services and enterprise solutions. Growing consumer demand for rich, mobile experiences creates an opportunity for change. Nokia will bring these capabilities to the broadest range of devices and price points. This unleashes the power of Nokia’s device volumes, now coupled with new services and business solutions. This distinctive approach sets Nokia apart from point solutions vendors,” said Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. “We believe this new organization can capitalize on these opportunities while allowing us to increase the effectiveness of our investments and the efficiency of our operations.”

Under the new organization, Nokia’s current business group and horizontal group structure in the device business will be replaced by three main units: Devices, responsible for creating the best device portfolio for the marketplace; Services & Software, reflecting Nokia’s strategic emphasis on growing its offering of consumer internet services and enterprise solutions and software; and Markets, responsible for management of Nokia’s supply chains, sales channels and marketing activities.

IndianTelevision.com writes about a talk I gave at an IAMAI symposium on “Enterprise Mobility.” My talk was on Invertising.

Jain implored upon all corporates to create a friendly relationship with the customers through the mobile network. He talked about how “sounds of silence can be converted into sounds of money”.

He said, “Small ads, news and movie theatre updates, shopping discounts and serial timings should be provided by the mobile operators. Mobile-centric advertising has the potential to grow annually to Rs 20 billion. The pull mails should be converted to push mails and spam into subscription.”

He further explained that there can be growth in mobile advertising when customers pay for each detail they receive in their mobiles. Corporates can also double their income via network marketing and advertising.

Business Week writes: “All those YouTube videos and MySpace pages zipping back and forth on the Net have revived the telecom industryand charged up the economy.”

Investors saw some $2 trillion of market value vanish in a little more than two years–twice the damage caused by the parallel bursting of the Internet bubble. Amid the wreckage, some predicted it could take a decade or more before the industry would climb back and fill all those empty pipes that starry-eyed executives had buried beneath the earth and oceans.

Over the past year, however, the telecom industry has roared back to life. Credit a steady rise in appetite for broadband Internet connections, which enable easy consumption of watch-my-cat video clips, iPod music files, and such Web-inspired services as free Internet phoning. Indeed, this year broadband adoption among U.S. adults is expected to cross the important threshold of 50%. Capital spending is on the rise as companies invest to build high-speed networks.

[via Anish Sankhalia] Bob Frankston writes: “Telecom is about services delivered over the last mile. Our connected neighborhood gives us the opportunity to discover the unanticipated. Instead of waiting at the end of the last mile we should look within our first square mile and see the possibilities, not just the choices offered.”

The New York Times writes:

After some hits and misses in creating content for cellphones, ESPN thinks it knows how to keep up with its fans as they go about their days. Cellphones and other mobile devices, says ESPN, are natural platforms for its content. Consumers waiting in line, riding a bus or sitting in a cafeteria will use their phones to watch sports commentary or to check scores just as often as they glance at their wristwatches or so the thinking goes. In ESPNs view, it is only a matter of time, and mobile technology upgrades, until phone watching is as common as phone calling.

People talk about it being the third screen, says John Zehr, senior vice president for digital video and mobile products at ESPN. I talk about it being the first screen because its the closest to you.

BDA has published a report with CII on “Wireless India.” Excellent reading on what we can expect in the coming years.

WSJ writes:

Wireless phone carriers and the makers of hand-held gadgets like the BlackBerry have long had a symbiotic relationship. Carriers sell the BlackBerry to subscribers, putting it in the hands of millions. In turn, the carriers get to charge their subscribers not just for voice but for pricier data service as well.

Now, a turf war is looming between the two camps, as lucrative new services such as video, games, and maps move onto mobile devices. Each camp wants to control the new offerings, and the gusher of revenue they could produce.
…
At stake for consumers are what services will be available on their mobile phones and whether they’re free or cost a monthly fee. The wireless Web is taking off more slowly in America than overseas, and one reason is that U.S. carriers tightly control what applications are available on mobile devices. That’s a contrast with Europe and parts of Asia, where carriers’ control is less tight and where wireless services have been more broadly available for years.

Om Malik writes about the changes the phone from Apple will usher in:

Break the Wireless Walled Gardens: iPhone is fully functional iPod, with full tracks of music. Do you need to download ring tones for $2.99 a pop, when you get a full song for a third of that price? Ditto for Wallpapers, and themes, and everything else that is being sold on the carrier deck.

Shift of control to the customers: If the embedded (Safari) browser if it performs the way as hyped by Jobs & Co., will give us the choice-control we have on the web. Search engines to web sites nothing will be determined by the wireless carriers who have thus far done nothing but create barriers between what we want, and giving us what they want to sell.

Victor Keegan writes in The Guardian:

Tomi Ahonen, a strategy consultant, points out that whereas porn and gambling drove revenues on the internet, five content groups are more successful than adult material on mobile phones: music, infotainment, images, videogames and web browsing. He reminds us that in 2005 one annoying ringtone, Crazy Frog, outsold all of iTunes. A key reason is that most content on the web is free whereas mobile phones arrived with a payment system pre-installed for calls, followed by a premium service for texting. If the web had had its own payment system it would have taken a different course.