View all entries in the 'Mobility' Category

Quit - the day before your big devcon?

by eleanor on 23 May 2005 @ 2:13 pm in Mobility   ++

Mike just IM’ed me a link to a piece that said PalmSource’s CEO David Nagel quit yesterday. Starting today and the rest of this week is the big PalmSource developer conference. What incredibly bad timing for such a disruptive announcement.

Supposedly it’s amicable enough that Nagel’s staying around for a few months as a consultant, but this is a ridiculous time for a CEO to quit. If this was in the cards - that is, known and planned for ahead of time - the timing couldn’t have possibly been worse.

We had Ewan Spence of All About Symbian and the newly launched All About Palm over last night along with some other mobility people, and Ewan talked about how Nagel was highly visible for his strong support to community efforts and seemed really appreciate his leadership within Palm. Think of all the developers who made their way out here only to be met with an announcement that surely puts the future of the company (and developer’s continued investment) in question.

If only we were checking our newsreaders instead of kiboshing and rearchitecting poor Russ’ homebrew java blog software!

What a message to send to your developer community and partners! Now, of course Ewan’s partner Rafe working away back in the UK posts this am wondering aloud if it’s a strategy mismatch. Everyone else seems to be just looking at it like a normal result of the company’s internal struggles, even the usually conspiracy-theorist Register.

You’ve got people like Russ who, even before he knew the news, took a shot at Palm for being “doomed” and even Mike saying how inconsistent their treatment of developers has been (I’m sure he’ll post on this later - check Bitsplitter for his thoughts). I’m not a developer, but the world of Garnet, Cobalt, OS changes, dev kit support and such permeates even the user experience. I should be able to find a tabbed browser for the Treo 650, but only one browser exists - in part due to how lethagic the developer community has become.

And it’s such a shame because the Treo 650 is a great device. Now I’m a huge fan of Palm going way back, but they’ve really earned it for me — this time with the hardware more than the software. And the split of the company into hw-sw means that when I say I love my Treo, the part I really talk about is the hardware. But how do you separate the hw of a device from the sw that runs on that device only? Companies can go thru mitosis, and Wall Street loves it, but sometimes it makes more sense than others. Like I love how I listen to music with my headphones, and when a call comes in, the display shows who it is, and lets me answer it with just a button. Who controls the magic there that makes the experience? Probably in that case PalmSource. This doesn’t bode well for me ever getting a tabbed Treo browser.

Hmmmm - speaking of Industry Standard - down the left side of the page, there are a lot of orphaned tech pundit blogs. A failed experiment?

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Time to close that browser again….

by eleanor on 19 Apr 2005 @ 1:07 pm in Geek | Mobility   ++

This isn’t a Moz dev update blog, but since I just posted on Moz upgrades on Friday, I’ll note that Firefox has a new vulnerability fix release. Upgrade today to 1.0.3.

Now I just have to go through all my open tabs so I can shut the browser down and run the install.

Tabbed browsing is a great thing, until I get to my Treo - and what is otherwise a good browser experience sucks because I never have only one tab open at a time. Hmmm too bad this article on a tabbed browser from PalmSource seems to be lying…. it’s awfully old to have not been released and findable by now.

Grump.

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Adobe+Macromedia: common cause in graphics & mobile, but where’s the blog platform

by eleanor on 18 Apr 2005 @ 12:01 pm in Strategy-Marketing | Mobility   ++

Adobe buys Macromedia. My response is “weren’t they the same company really anyway?”. Tomato tomato.

More substantively, this signals the quantitative impact of personal publishing platforms making the web accessible for a whole range of users (who might have previously turned to Dreamweaver or GoLive). The web has changed and these two giants must cope.

For Adobe, it’s also a natural step after Creative Studio, the megabundle they launched 18 months back. Back then, I expected them to experiment in the other direction — to go after the infrequent user market with on demand, not give a price break to their best customers. These are the tools of the trade for creatives, a cost of doing business; if Adobe was not able to maintain the perceived value of their tools among those guys, compared to, say, the Apple upgrade treadmill, what was next?

Today’s union makes plain the saturated, commoditized content creation marketplace. In pricing theory, bundling is a response to saturation. A user’s willingness to pay for each package on its own merits decreases as the functionality becomes more mainstreamed (despite the best attempts of vendors to feature pad); so you use the bundle to push more product, getting a little bit more from users who wouldn’t otherwise cough up. Adobe’s extracted as much growth as possible out of this bundle, and now has turned to snap up Macromedia, where it’ll bundlize and kill off products by the playbook. All business as usual.

We all publish and consume, but we’re doing it on these blogging platforms. Hard-coded, hard-copy marcom is marginalized. And what Adobe doesn’t have is a blogging platform to address this increasingly important element of content. Even worse, content management functionality is already evident in tools like WordPress. I’d look for blogging to be the next natural step here - either as an organic, as yet unannounced thing or that this behemoth will be the eventual acquirer of SixApart.

Mike pointed out the mobile angle, which I had forgotten. Ah yes, that whole rich internet application and rich client space that Tokyo used to be so interested in. Even though we’ve neatly averted a public adoption battle between SVG and Flash (I bet we’ll see Flash endure — it’s got Laszlo extending its appeal, and holds a bridgehead between the desktop and mobile worlds), there’s a new rub: the adoption of AJAX for some of the more powerful (and attention grabbing) apps like Google maps. Taking a step back, this provides an interesting contrast between organic and strategic: we see two corp sponsored initiatives merge because they are owned and directed (and thus can be merged and killed off), while the AJAX methodology just continues to gain steam.

This is all very interesting, but I still wonder how real this is for the mobile space, at least in the US. It certainly remains far out. At last Wednesday’s 106miles, Mike and Russ slalomed questions from both Tantek Çelik (Technorati) and Dave McClure (SimplyHired) seeking to understand what the now of cell phone dev is. The answer for right now and the next 12 mos (given Russ’s “complete handset turnover every 18 mos” postulation and a camera phone penetration ramp up starting Nov 2004) is SMS is the lowest common denominator capability. But now we’re 1/3 of the way into a turnover cycle with camera phones, which give users the impetus to try out data functions, as well as have the larger screensize and resolution to enable meaningful gui interaction. If I were running a company with a mobile app, there’s no way I’d aim for the now in development; I’d aim for 6-12 mos out. Would someone want to receive job notifications via SMS from SimplyHired? Sure. Would I? No, unless their filtering system only sent me spectacular items; I’d rather browse via email.

More to the heart of the matter of rich clients on mobile - with cost, speed, screensize and network reliability still at issue, the last thing I’m concerned about is the immersiveness of the application. I’m sure we’ll get there, and bet that Adobe/Macromedia will play a part, I’d just be watching to see what happens in their core markets while they wait for the device market to catch up. And keeping an eye out for that blogging platform too.

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Free media - Orb now free

by eleanor on 28 Mar 2005 @ 4:17 pm in Mobility | Life-Culture-Play   ++

I’ve been playing with apps and javascript, and trying to tool up to commit to more immediacy and pertinence in blogging (and not go insane in the endeavor) . One find (thanks Tony Gentile) — SharpReader — has brought tangible progress already, in popping up to report that Ted Shelton just blogged that Orb is Now Free. Ted says:

Yes, there will be advertising in the future — but we know that this must be done the google way — advertising that is unobtrusive and adds value without inhibiting the core use of the service. And more importantly there will be content subscriptions coming soon — all kinds of new content that you can purchase through Orb…

But even if you never click on an advertisement and never purchase content, our core philosophy will guarantee you free access to your own TV, your own videos, your own audio, and your own photos… anytime, anyplace, any device.

This is a great move from Ted and the guys at Orb Networks, and should help drive adoption of mobile content - opening up new usecases and user communities. With my lagging-adopter experiments with Yahoo!’s Lauch music videos a couple weeks ago, I found that short advertisements did not mar the experience.

I’d love to use Orb to access my content (my Treo 650’s 1GB SD gives me an adequate daily soundtrack), but I still believe the killer hookup is between Orb and OurMedia (which launched last week to fanfare from all but me - belated congrats to JD and Marc!). Orb would make a fabulous engine to access OurMedia pieces - where the serendipity of boredom will drive user exploration of OurMedia’s quirky contents.

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Thomas Dolby, ringtone god?

by eleanor on 9 Feb 2005 @ 12:24 pm in Mobility   ++

This piece in the WSJ (paidreg req’d/paygated after 17-Feb-05 or sneak a peek here) was diverting in that way that only the WSJ can be. Their pop-culture stuff is among the quirkiest bits of trivia I acquire.

Thomas Dolby is apparently a ringtone wizard.

Although ringtones are typically just 30 seconds long, compared with three minutes for the average pop song, Mr. Dolby says there are similarities between composing pop songs and ringtones. “It’s helpful if it’s catchy,” he says of the ringtones. And, he concludes, whether one is writing a pop song or a ringtone, “A hook is a hook is a hook.” He says he wishes he had more time to make “real music,” but adds that with the ringtone phenomenon’s potentially limited shelf life, “It’s a case of make hay while the sun shines.”

I very much like his work (am listening to “One of Our Submarines” now) and was sad to miss his show in SF a couple years ago. It always interests me to see how people adapt their work to suit changing times. I can’t wait to play with the ringtone thing when I get my Treo650 (just a week or so!).

The article mentions a few other corp players - Retro RingTones and BlingTones (I marvel at $2.2B businesses that harbor such whimsically named players).

Retro RingTones, based in Half Moon Bay, Calif., with offices in Los Angeles and London, typically charges the phone carrier $500 to produce the ringtone and $2,000 more if it’s actually used in a phone. If a company wants to use the ringtone melody in a commercial, other fees apply — and if it becomes a jingle, a company may be charged $200,000 or more.

BlingTones, meanwhile, touts itself as “the world’s first wireless record label.” Just like a record label, BlingTones has “artists and repertoire,” or A&R representatives, who act as talent scouts, signing deals with artists — mostly rap artists and producers. BlingTones also commissions songs and distributes them for sale.

“Essentially, a record company is A&R, marketing, promotion and distribution,” says Jonathan Dworkin, a former manager of hip-hop artists who is now BlingTones’ vice president for A&R. “We provide those same services.”

Gosh I can’t tell you how I feel about ringtone companies having A&R guys…. Why are we supposed to pay for that overhead? When will they learn?

This all gets into the same sort of problem Ted Shelton of Orb mentioned during his MoMo presentation that content companies (and carriers too in this case, dammit) want to charge you anew for each format you consume - cd, walled garden download (AAC, ATRAC, WMA, SWMA, whatever others), streamed download (Rhapsody), and ringtone. While I don’t dispute the value of the implementation of the ringtone, the skill required to get it to sound right in that form factor and given the platform (specific phone), that’s paying the craftsman - the converter. That’s not paying for the copyright, which strikes me as off here, even though it’s clear legally (insofar as not being a lawyer I can logic my way through this stuff and am entitled to have an opinion). But I can see that if ads have to pay to use a jingle, perhpas consumers should pay to have the right to associate themselves with a song; it’s certainly grounded economically. But the creative communist in me howls wanting to know where that diverges from whistling and questions whether it’s not all just more marketing for the artist. Isn’t the artist can be said to be served by the consumer in this case, as it’s just more promotion?

Still, the best ringtone I’ve ever heard was this minor-key version of “Sweet Dreams” — more Manson than Eurhythmics — that Mike had on his Ericsson T68, which he typed in from a recipe he found online. That was the best thing about that phone.

(this is an old post that got caught in my drafts)

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On the coming mobileVideo revolution

by eleanor on 8 Feb 2005 @ 11:03 am in Mobility | Life-Culture-Play   ++

Mobile Monday was a huge success last night - with more people in the room than we can handle. Check out the audio recording of the evening, recorded and prepared by Niall Kennedy’s site for a link to the audio of the evening’s discussions. (updated: 11-Feb with link to audio)

Two of the presenters - Ted Shelton who just joined Orb as EVP/Operations and Alan Moskowitz, the Product Marketing honcho for Idetic (MobiTV) . Both these products stream video to your phone, so it was very good to have them present together.

After taking it all in, I was particularly struck that Orb’s model - streaming content that one legitimately owns - is slightly hampering to the network as your content is effectively beamed to you. That feels sort of kludgey as a permanent solution, especially when I’m especially tracking the emergence of device independent data access that’s predicated on your data being resident up in the clouds. MobiTV aligns itself with the content owners and streams content down to you as its service offering, so it fits my model of “do you really want to take your data with you?”.

I can see Orb’s point: one beaming, one viewing, with very limited (if any) caching is what’ll be demanded by the content mafia types (aka RIAA and MPAA and whoever else I fund the EFF to fight). So they have bandwidth hits for the upload and the download, as well as the mesh processing network that uses peer-to-peer to process the images. Will capacity become a huge issue if everyone is beaming personal content over the net? Probably. We’ve got all that dark fiber, that extra capacity left over from the buildout. That’s slowly being used as broadband adoption is coming along, but - and this has been what caught my eye in all the fuss over telecom mergers - the name of the game there is pure convergence, but it will also come with some bloody consolidation.

Before convergence became associated with the tech nirvana of delivering multiple services (i.e., “more”) it was usually associated with the traditional model of mergers and consolidation (i.e., all too often “less”). The things I read on The Wall Street Journal tend to focus more on this consolidation aspect - and I just wonder if the timing of these new consumer technologies is off. The networks have sat and prices have fallen. The companies have fallen too on hard times and the backhaul is just not as profitable as the good old days of rich long distance tariffs.

Down in the trenches, we see the carriers (who I have little sympathy for) getting squeezed as for one, the ambitions of folks like Comcast to deliver a premium cable broadband solution aren’t proving viable - even as broadband adoption is gaining (have to look for the link).

So what if, after many years, customers have gone in for broadband? Do those carriers really want applications that drive heavy usage of that resource? Ted looked like he was thirsting for the fight, and commented a couple times about shattering business models. I can’t help but think that the model of data in the sky would be so much more simpler. But the content mafia goes nuts over that. So Orb’s got a hell of an idea, but is set to dance a fine line. MobiTV is going with the proven model of walled garden, and it’ll work - bored people are happy to watch just about anything (think JetBlue) - as long as you can get news, sports and things like Discovery, many people will be very happy with this less personalized mode.

Some discussion followed afterwards (at the bar naturally). During a conversation on videoblogging, I thought of user generated content - the sort of stuff that the guys at Our Media are working on. If content is licensed under some friendly model (Creative Commons) it could go a long way to providing content for mobile users. These grassroots types typically look for exposure more than anything else. We could expect them not to be as eager at the content mafia to get in the way and demand a payment right then or impose other limitations. What might be even cooler is that this grassroots content will tend toward the shorter, more bite-sized experience, which was there really interesting request that the guy from MobiTV made. They’ve datamined their network to come up with all sorts of interesting slices on the user experience as their customers are roaming the world. They’ve found that content of under 6 minutes - with a discrete start and finish - seems to be most appealing to their audience. They’re doing professional, broadcast-style programming, so for them it takes the form of music video type stuff or comedy sketches.

Now this is an area where grassroots can compete and provide extreme value. Think of all those homebrew MoveOn commercials or Bush in 30 seconds. Think of that EPIC video. If someone can distill their homebrew message into something short enough to divert me while I’m waiting in the doctor’s office then I’ll be happy to consume. The viral memes that send these around the web thru IM or email or blogs can also send these to us precisely when we have time and want to be amused. How cool would it be to have a channel - like a RSS feed of microcontent like this? I would consume video like I consume MegaTokyo - because it is easy to just pull it up and look at it when I have a stray moment.

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iPass CEO at Stanford’s ETL

by eleanor on 20 Jan 2005 @ 10:49 am in Events & Happenings | Mobility   ++

I’ve had a hard time getting a bearing on just what iPass does. Their site is rather complex and detailed, so I went to hear their CEO explain his business to Stanford undergrads yesterday. Their CEO, Ken Dunman, spoke to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series on entrepreneurship and how iPass carved out its path. Ken gave an excellent summary of the company’s history, direction, and strategies during his hour long talk. Below are my notes . His slides, when available, will be posted here (or check the ETL site).

iPass has 400 people worldwide, with 15+ locations. 2004 saw $160M of revenue. They were founded 1996, based on the experiences of one of the founders while working in Japan and trying to connect back into the US headquarters IT systems. He was seeking a local connection with remote authentication, and that’s what they built. They initially targeted the globetrotting road warriors who needed access internationally no matter what the local conditions were. In their approach to building the company, the founders realized that they needed both a platform (the core purpose of the system) and scalability (to handle growth cost effectively and deliver excellent quality of service).

The service they enable off this platform is essentially firewall tunneling through to the corporate network to provide transparent access to the applications, data, communications (VOIP) and infrastructure as if the user was in the office at a price of $9.95 [ed. note - price per connection?? there is no upfront data on website, he says later all pricing done through corporate contracts].

They currently have as customers 237 out of the Fortune 2000, and 2300 customers in total. They do different deals for each customer, customized to their needs and their size, and with a duration of 2-3 years. On the buy side (where they buy access and capacity), they cleverly renegotiate every 6 months, pressuring carriers to lower their prices. Thereby they are able to create a nice buffer of profit and able to manage their bottom line.

Their core strategy relies on the theme that the only global network is internet. Incumbent carriers own the individual networks, but it is the value of the networks put together that is what will power the next generation of innovation. These carriers are still not tracking this market, so that is where iPass identified an entrepreneurial sweet spot (this was for the students, continuing the theme of entrepreneurship). iPass took a different approach than the carriers, putting everything into software that could be updated and expanded as necessary. They started with a software based approach to authentication, not the systems approach common to the carriers. From there, as they shifted to target the enterprise, they built out the software to flexibly work behind firewalls to handle the heterogeneous systems common to enterprise environment. They knew they had to work with everything agnostically because they lacked market power or size. To make this easier, iPass participated in standards bodies - contributing their ideas and helping to form the emerging standards. They coupled this with engineering, and several times pre-built a prototype solution, which they then sold to large customers - then they went to the standards bodies with a solution that already had the backing of customers. With this sort of presales commercialization, they were able to both craft standards that ensured their access (so they wouldn’t be locked out by proprietary solutions) as well as get a jump on having working code to implement the standard.

Ken summarized their current strategy, which I captured verbatim: “iPass has deployed a software-based global platform that enables it to solve the challenges of enabling, securing and managing mobility.” From my view, that shows that iPass is moving towards being able to support the sort of device-independent data access that I have been tracking as a theme. He then reviewed the shifts in iPass’ strategy over the years, that it was first focused on consumers (individual users), then moved to the enterprise (selling remote access across the enterprise) and finally to their current focus on building a comprehensive network where they can orchestrate secure access as employees move around.

Turning to explain the system behind the service, Ken went over how the device works in a graphical slide, similar to this graphic from their website.

I’ll sketch it out quickly since the slides are not yet available. They have client software on the devices. There are 300 network providers each with iPass Network Server software (running on an appliance?). A client connects with one of these network providers, and the request is authenticated and passed via SSL to the iPass network core transaction centers & clearing houses (of which there are 10+ worldwide). iPass authenticates the user and then contacts the hosted corporate data site of the client enterprise, which has the iPass RoamServer software running (on an appliance?). The successful authentication all around establishes an IP VPN between the remote user and the enterprise. I’d summarize it as a AAA ‘man in the middle’. Interestingly, on top of this, iPass can provide policy–based authentication where you define authentication access requirements - making it possible to send devices not up to spec (without updated AV files, if compromised, etc) into quarantineand there perform policy-based mitigation (update AV, clean, alert IT security).

They’re building their product line with a focus on the shift from securing communications and bits, to securing endpoint integrity. The question becomes ‘are both the device and the user allowed on the network?’. They’re looking to bring policy-based value-adds to deliver value over networks they don’t own (nor do they want to, they are a happy service provider). They’re looking forward to supporting technologies that serve a model where every new device is sold with wireless access. They want to integrate access to private corporate networks and the public internet via the 802.1x authentication standard. Following on this strategy, they acquired the Israeli startup Safe3W which has patent on device component fingerprinting. They create hash using the data (registration, serial, driver numbers) off the specific components present in a machine to create a unique fingerprint of its last known-authenticated state, and use that as the basis upon which to allow authentication. Personally, I wonder if that would include memory sticks, USB drives, and ancillary hardware (iPod, external drives) that tech-savvy users are increasingly adding on themselves to help them in their work (disabling this doesn’t work for power users, as Microsoft proved).

In closing, Ken emphasized the importance of architectural choices, that the architecture you lay down both liberates and limits; with startups, it must be cost effective initially, and then it needs to scale. He drew an analogy to the hedgehog concept from Good to Great - a book which he said he was sure all the student have read already (I have not, but consider this a strong recommendation). He highlighted iPass’ ability to integrate and coordinate diverse software systems over the internet, a middleman position with a lot of opportunity for value creation. He stressed the need to build in to the infrastructure and design the capacity for periodic reinvention (so you can respond to changing conditions). He also noted how important it is to provide integration points for partners because no one does it all on their own. He said that interfaces are not, and should not be afterthoughts, but be consciously designed.

Then the audience asked questions, which were mostly of a personal development nature. It was a good session.

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Wireless Communications Alliance Meeting and Expo Tomorrow

by eleanor on 11 Jan 2005 @ 5:39 pm in Events & Happenings | Mobility   ++

On the topic of wireless, tomorrow the WCA is having their annual thing at the San Jose Fairmont. A general session meeting with a panel of VC’s talking what’s hot/not, followed by a stroll thru the cocktail and hors d’oeurvres of expo-land. A good deal for $10.

I attended last year and it was a nice view of the industry. No time this year though.

Here are directions to get your discount from the WCA’s email:

****Registration to Exhibits****

1. For your convenience, please complete the exhibit registration form which can be downloaded in pdf format here. [ ed. note: as I recall they had those on hand should you forget/be without printer]
2. Under the heading $450 value write in WCA in bold letters.
3. Turn the completed form at the Exhibits Registration station for a complimentary pass to Exhibits and Reception.
4. Then proceed to our WCA registration table to sign up for our panel discussion [ed note: pay $10 admission] and to receive two complimentary drink coupons for the reception.

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Huge turnout for mobilemondays Jan event

by eleanor on @ 11:21 am in Events & Happenings | Mobility   ++

The MobileMondays event last night was huge . At least it stopped raining by the time we left.

Here is the presentation I gave with my conspiracy theories on what it will take to get mobility into the enterprise.

From conversations with attendees after, it’s clear there’s money to be made - but there’s still work to be done in figuring out how to put the pieces together and sell the value prop. The hard stuff - but we’ll figure it out.

If there’s real money flowing out of millions of little pockets for diversions, games and fluff - I am absolutely certain people will pay real money for access to apps and tools that make their lives and businesses more efficient.

So thanks to the guys from mobilemondays - Russ and MikeR and Romain from Orange and Eric Weitzman (who didn’t make it) and Michael O’Rourke from dimension7.

As a side social note, MikeR and I are planning on checking out dimension7’s media event Thursday night - IronVJ - a multmedia bakeoff with live voting by sms.

test modification

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Sprint/Nextel Match Continues US Wireless Carrier Consolidation

by eleanor on 10 Dec 2004 @ 5:01 pm in Mobility   ++

Today’s talk is about merger discussions betweeen Sprint and Nextel. The Feature has an excellent rundown with links to background information and analysis. US carrier T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, is definitely left standing alone. With the backing of their corporate parent and their strength internationally (67 million worldwide, 13 million in the US), they are not out of the running.

The Wall Street Journal also covers the story and has this to add:

Discussions between Sprint and Nextel are ongoing, these people say. There’s no certainty a deal is completed, they add, and like all discussions they could fall apart over issues both large and small. Verizon Wireless could also enter the fray. The country’s second biggest wireless operator uses the same cellular technology as Sprint, and has long had a sporadic interest in the carrier.

In the deal there are significant technology hurdles in the combination for the short term. Nextel - The Journal notes - would need to issue new handsets to its 15.3 million customers to shift over to Sprint’s CDMA network. But this is looked at as a relatively small issue, as all mobile players are focused on the future and their investments in cellular broadband technology - an area where neither player has made investments and there are room for synergies. This move comes at a good time for Nextel since they are making a major shift themselves. Nextel is about to swap their 800MHz spectrum for 1900MHz - a move the FCC is pushing to get Nextel off public safety bands and eliminate interference. The deal is good for Nextel, in that they’re being offered a good chunk of the valuable 1900MHz spectrum. However, Nextel runs iDEN, which is a separate and incompatible system (other carriers use CDMA or GSM). This iDEN network is fundamental to their popular push-to-talk (PTT) service, which enables high performance walkie-talkie functionality. Nextel is and remains the leader in this space, precisely because other carriers have had trouble getting PTT working on CDMA or GSM networks. So unless there is or will be some development that ports iDEN to 1900MHz, this deal with the FCC will effectively eliminate whatever portion of Nextel’s PTT and cellular service that relied on 800MHz. Depending on how much spectrum Nextel has in the 900 and 1500 MHz bands, it’s possible that Nextel won’t have to abandon iDEN in all areas - but surely this will impact the level of service delivered.

The FCC transaction forces Nextel to do the same engineering work that other carriers have tried in supporting PTT via CDMA — something it’s prospective partner Sprint has been unable to do effectively (or at least effectively enough to spur customer adoption and usage). Perhaps teams from the two orgs, working together, can puzzle this out. But this merger defintely makes for less immediate gain for both parties.

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Carriers and Handset OEMs clash on branding, experience

by eleanor on 7 Dec 2004 @ 3:21 pm in Mobility   ++

In early November, The Wall Street Journal had a piece After Long Peace, Wireless Operator Stirs Up Industry (archived here) that gave an interesting view into the power struggle between carriers and handset manufacturers. This links into the discussion of open vs. closed systems, since when carriers like Vodafone/Verizon want to ensure each handset’s interface is exactly similar it means there’s no customization possible — even by consumers seeking to change look-and-feel. This intiative leaves little hope for independent developers, and will tend to inhibit the improvements in user-interface design because it establishes a standard all phones must adhere to which will prove difficult to change.

We’ll have to track this issue as it develops. Today I saw one piece that would suggest that Vodafone is not unstoppable in this quest, and has seen slower customer adoption. The Feature has a piece this week (interesting reading on its own) that signals that the VodafoneLive! handsets have not had as much absolute commercial success as Vodafone indicated in The Journal article: “Merrill Lynch says only 12% and 14% of the Vodafone customer base in Germany and the UK, respectively, has migrated to Vodafone Live! handsets in the last two years.”

The article also has an interesting assessment of who it will be that will determine carrier profitability.

What is becoming clearer is the importance of the top 10-20% of the customer base — those high usage customers who are early adopters of new technology. The mobile operators who can win and retain those customers, typically the number one or two operator in a given market, will be in a much stronger position.

That group is exactly the group who can be expected to find least value in a unified interface, especially if it hinders access to the unique features of their new handset.

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Preminet explained

by eleanor on 6 Dec 2004 @ 2:36 pm in Mobility   ++

I’ve commented on Nokia’s new Preminet initiative several times already (micropayments post and open vs closed systems, with a vague generalization that it is Nokia’s answer to the Qualcomm-Verizon BREW system. WirelessWeek gives a much more thorough exploration of what’s the vision and intent behind this new service here.

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Microcommerce Viable, Gartner says

by eleanor on 3 Dec 2004 @ 4:35 pm in Mobility   ++

As I continue to catch up on back news, I see that research firm Gartner has blessed the emerging market of micropayments for digital content. InformationWeek reports:

Users of mobile applications already spend $570 million on ring tones, logos and screen savers annually, the company finds. By 2015, Gartner says, microcommerce for new products and services below $5 will generate between $60 billion (Gartner puts a 70% probability on hitting that mark) and $240 billion (60% probability) in revenue annually. E-commerce Websites and mobile commerce wireless networks are the major enablers of this trend. And music sales are rising thanks to the sky-rocketing popularity of portable digital music players such as Apple’s iPod.

Garter suggests companies think in new ways and consider microcommerce as a new opportunity to increase revenue in cases where a mobile-phone or Web infrastructure exists to create a viable business model.

That last sentence is worth re-reading…. e in the infrastructure exists. And where is that exactly true now? Only really tthrough the carrier networks, and upstart services like Preminet (What a dumb name - completely forgettable. I need to look it up each time!). This gets us back to last week’s discussion of open vs closed carrier markets.

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Growing consumer reliance on cellphones

by eleanor on @ 4:27 pm in Mobility | Life-Culture-Play   ++

So while in an earlier post I mention consumer willingness to pay for tech and communications, today I ran across a study from mid-November discussing the shift from landline to wireless calls among consumers.

An annual survey of U.S. households on the use of communications services has found that cellular phone users today are making 60 percent of their long-distance calls on their handsets, market researcher The Yankee Group said Wednesday. That number has been increasing steadily year over year, with 35 percent in 2002 and 43 percent in 2003.

The difference here is one of thrift - many mobile plans include long distance service. Perhaps another factor is the increasedly hectic schedule of people, where they instead choose to place long-distance calls when it is convenient - not necessarily when they are at home.

In a world where there are many emerging applications competing for consumer dollars, the landline long distance market seems a sure loser, something which big long distance players AT& and Sprint have realized.

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Doomed pay-by-cellphone scheme discussed in The Wall Street Journal

by eleanor on 1 Dec 2004 @ 3:12 pm in Emergent | Mobility   ++

More from The Wall Street Journal - this time about cashless payments via cellphone:

People in Watertown, Mass., who lose their wallets have a friend in cab company owner Moe Taha. He is happy to give them a ride — as long as they bring a cellphone.

Watertown Taxi uses a service called MobileLime, provided by Vayusa Inc. of Newton, Mass., which allows passengers to pay for a ride by dialing a number on their phone, pressing a couple of buttons and then giving the cab driver the last four digits of their phone number as they leave.

Back at the taxi company’s shop, software provided by MobileLime completes the transaction. “It’s a genius idea,” Mr. Taha says.

Now I don’t know how hard they had to look for this improbable example - but it’s fascinating to know that it exists. The cynical question I have is about the probability of losing a cell phone compared to the probability of losing a wallet!!! I hear frequent stories of people losing their cell phones, as anecdotal as that is.

I think they need to seriously re-evaluate the problem case they are trying to address here. Selling on the convenience of … what exactly? I wanted to type ‘almost hands free payment’ - but ‘hands free’ is not what we’re talking about there. Selling the service to cabbies that don’t always have the infrastructure to easily manage credit card transactions is probably a better bet, but still a hard sell (as the reason most cabbies don’t have the infrastructure for credit card transactions is because they prefer cash).

The piece continues:

Closely held Vayusa already has teamed up with about 80 companies in New England to support MobileLime, and 7,000 individuals have signed on to use it. [ed note - why are we reading about this when only 7K people have signed up?? Is there that little to write about???]

ViVOtech Inc., a closely held company in Santa Clara, Calif., also has developed software that could be installed in cellphones to handle payments by credit or debit cards designated by a user. The approach requires a special device at a store’s checkout station, which could be installed for roughly $150, as well as use of cellphones that have a technology called near-field communication, which uses radio waves in a special frequency to send data over the space of a few inches.

Phones with near-field communication technology are being developed by Philips Electronics NV and Sony Corp. Philips recently announced that Samsung Electronics Co. will begin equipping its cellphones with the technology as well.

Now, the NFC technology is emergent and will be important, but it will take more relevant applications to drive adoption. Let’s hope they’re bubbling up out there.

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Open vs. closed approaches of carriers, BREW vs Java

by eleanor on 28 Nov 2004 @ 11:32 pm in Mobility   ++

The distinctions between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ come up quite a bit in the discussion of the future of mobility and wireless providers - because some carriers have controlled both the transmission of data and what you can load on a handset. Developers froth and foam at the walled gardens and the difficulty of getting their applications out of paying customers. Since I’m posting for Japan, it’s probably worthwhile for me to explain the chaotic US carrier market as it related to our heterogenous networks, delivery platforms, and operating systems, so I will give it a shot.

Previously, Verizon was the largest carrier and able to provide subscribers with the security that comes from joining the largest and best supported ‘critical mass’ carrier. Developers were faced with the choice of developing via BREW and going in through the closed Qualcomm-Verizon system branded GetItNow, or going through decentralized channels to develop on Java for handsets using MIDP and Symbian based products (for a good overview of the complex world of Java on handsets - see the slides Bill Day developed for Nokia’s Tech Days last week). Many developers I’ve spoken with have cited Verizon’s 40 million customers as the reason they develop in BREW, despite the transaction costs of working with both Qualcomm and Verizon and the sense that it is a ‘walled garden’ with only limited areas of allowed development. The merger of AT&T Wireless and Cingular has shifted the conversation in a new direction, because now the dominant carrier in the US will be a GSM provider - the applications for which are developed primarily using the Java and Symbian operating systems. The new Cingular’s 50 million customers change the calculations, potentially to favor the more-open Java and Symbian world.

I’m tracking this for its likely impacts on innovation, startup formation and investment patterns. In the closed-system Verizon world, you can only download applications through their GetItNow program, and it is only feasible to go through the entire process of application validation and catalogue engtry for commercial applications. In the Java/Symbian world, applications are designed to be downloaded straight from the provider and publisher, but until the recent announcment of Preminet, there was no integrated application and delivery system available on the Java side. Java has always had the ability to support viral applications with free or shareware type licenses, or applications which are free but exist to drive revenue in other areas (think of a mobile app to enhance functionality for paid services, like Buzznet’s community photo sharing services). Now the Java side is supported by both the infrastructure and the flexibility to accomodate alternative business models.

As we’ve seen countless times, standards faciliate innovation by speeding adoption. Cingular uses the GSM /GPRS format that is in use throughout much of the world.

And Nokia’s Tech Days event is worth a second look - not only did attendees get free training, but they also received copy of Borland’s developer kit (essentially all you need to begin Symbian development). This signals a strong investment by Nokia in nuturing and growing its developer community.

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SBC’s Chair discusses intent to offer integrated cable, cellular, wireline service

by eleanor on 26 Nov 2004 @ 9:16 pm in Emergent | Mobility   ++

The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting piece with an interview with SBC’s Chairman and CEO, Edward Whitacre. I’ve posted the entire article here for those without subscriptions.

This piece is important for several reasons. First, SBC is 60% owner of Cingular (which is now the merged entity including AT&T Wireless), so this shows that SBC is planning on creating synergy between their wireline and wireless offerings as a strategic necessity. Secondly, he offers valuable insights into the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Even more subtly, I was struck by Whitacre’s assessment of personal technology:

I’m not a real techie. I have a computer at home, but don’t mess with it that often. I mean, what am I going to do with 200 e-mails a day? No, I’m really not very techie, but I can use a computer.

Believe it or not, I can even burn a CD, or I can buy a CD, take it home, and put it in my PC and then load it on my iPod. I looked last night, there’s something like 514 hours of music on it. I have Ray Charles on there, I have Steely Dan, I have the music from “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

This is an additional datapoint which is fueling a new theme I’m starting to track - consumer-driven adoption (I’m writing a longer piece with an overview of the themes I’m tracking - see .

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Institute for the Future report on location based services

by eleanor on 22 Nov 2004 @ 4:47 pm in Emergent | Mobility   ++

The Institute for the Future, a futurist think-tank in Menlo Park has been doing a lot of thinking around location-based services. Check out their report, Infrastructure for a New Geography. Some of it is pretty far out, and of questionable value, but their report of projects and companies involved is useful. Membership in the IFTF is available in the Technology Horizons Program for about $15K a year, with numerous benefits including reports like these, an annual conference and access to thought leaders.
[edited to point to the file on IFTF’s site, rather than to a local copy here, as requested by Sean Ness. It looks like they removed the original blog entry for this file. If this link goes dead, it’s because IFTF removed the file. Note that this price was that quoted for my employer in response to my question, “Exactly how expensive are you?”]

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Corporate mobiles, VOIP and convergence

by eleanor on 12 Nov 2004 @ 4:35 pm in Emergent | Mobility   ++

UK tech site The Register has a piece that synchs in with much of what I’ve been looking at in terms of converged networks, VOIP, mobility, and handling multi-mode collaboration. It’s a fact that cell phones are primary communication devices for many employees, just as its a fact that instant messaging is becoming an important tool of corporate communication. The idea of unified messaging as including delivery of voice mail, email, and faxes in one inbox is increasingly needing to stretch to include cell phone calls and cell phone voice mail. But this is a fairly complex issue due to infrastructre and costs.

One of the reasons organisations are holding back is the perceived cost of integrating mobile handsets into the corporate telephone network so they can become fully functional “mobile extensions”. Related to this, and a point made by many EVUA [an industry association made up of some of Europe’s largest multinationals] members according to Ed Vonk [ CEO of the EVUA] is a general lack of understanding of the extent of the problem and true cost of ownership of both the desk phone and the mobile [(see the article for more info on a survey of these costs]. Without these parameters tied down, it is hard to construct a meaningful business case, despite the advanced technology and creative services emerging from equipment manufacturers and service providers to encourage companies to go purely mobile.

Interestingly, though, Vonk sees a link between “fixed/mobile substitution”, as the industry likes to call it, and much of the investigation of IP Telephony that is taking place in the corporate sector at the moment. In his view “Going purely cellular for mobile users will ease migration to VoIP. You have fewer VoIP handsets to purchase which leads to huge savings”. He goes on to talk about a specific example, saying “One EVUA member migrated a large office to mobile only and VoIP simultaneously, avoiding the deployment of approximately 1,500 VoIP handsets that would otherwise have been needed. This was important because the handset cost was a very significant element of the VoIP investment as most of the infrastructure was already there”.

So this comes back to driving the case for enterprise adoption of VOIP. When we look at implementing corporate VOIP systems - we look at eliminating the charge for fixed POTS lines, upgrading the PBX, purchasing VOIP handsets, and possibly increasing bandwidth charges. The softswitch and handset investments require the most capital, but remains daunting.

However there might be another business case. The emerging US offerings of enterprise-class data services including unlimited data and the nascent offerings of VOIP calling via Skype that exist for HP’s iPaq 4155/4355 models might suggest a different model for convergence. Dual-mode handsets that allow for WiFi calling when available and utilize the more expensive cellular networks when it’s not. Handsets that would allow for constant access to email, IM, and voice mail.

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Titans Intel and Microsoft Commit to Location Based Services

by eleanor on 3 Nov 2004 @ 10:26 am in Mobility   ++

Microsoft and Intel both have plans to offer location based services within the next two years.
Intel says they’re working on it:

“Location-based services are certainly something that we’ve been exploring and have a lot of work going on in,” said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile Platforms Group.

“You can expect to see capabilities like that being brought on to the notebook marketplace, probably in the ‘06 timeframe would be my best estimate at this time,” he said.

Microsoft does too, but it’s due in the slip-and-defeaturing-prone Longhorn, so I consider this one less certain:

Microsoft Corp. plans to offer support for location-based services in the next version of its Windows operating system, known as Longhorn, which is expected to ship in 2006.

Microsoft executives have outlined some of the location-based services that they expect will become available. These include the ability for computers to switch default printers and automatically connect to a wireless network based on the specific location of the computer. In addition, users will be able to get directions and search for services offered by nearby shop.

Anyway, how useful is location based services on a laptop anyway? Who wants to fire up a laptop to find a good restaurant?

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