Hook Mobile - Mobile Trading Community September 14, 2006
Posted by chetan in : CTIA, Gaming, General , add a commentGot a preview of the services coming out next week on all four operators. It is around Mobile Trading Community and using content to digitize trading cards, create some exclusivity and hence some viral effect. In future users can create their own trading cards for their social network. Carrier keeps 35% of the subscription fee. Hook Mobile gets 27% and rest goes to the content guys. This could be good for the MMS infrastructure that is collecting dust right now. And yes, you guessed it right; there is an Ad model as well.
CTIA’s Two Personalities - Entertainment and Enterprise September 13, 2006
Posted by chetan in : CTIA, General , add a commentI have been attending these shows for many years and for the first time it felt that the Enterprise personality was given its due respect and was on equal footing to its sibling personality - the glamorous, the attention-seeking “Entertainment”.
Several major M&A Transactions - Real/WiderThan, Fox/Jamba, Lucent/Mobilitec, Vivendi/Centerscore, Intel/Qualcomm, .. ok, last one is for a future CTIAs
more soon ..
Hello from CTIA, LA September 12, 2006
Posted by chetan in : CTIA, General , add a commentEven though one is left with a feeling “sameo-sameo”, there is genuine excitement and buzz. Both MES and MECCA had similar themes. I can probably boil down the most dominant theme as “build community, monetize by advertising”. There are different biz models to build community - some are doing it for free, some are doing it on a per transaction basis and others are trying to trap the users with subscriptions. The idea is to build the best Honeytrap.
More to come ..
Mobile Advertising - Japan numbers September 8, 2006
Posted by chetan in : General , 1 comment so farRecent survey from InfoPlant: 58.4% of respondents say they use mobile coupons and discounts more than once per month, with the main methods of access via leaflets and direct mail (63.3%), free papers (55%), and the mobile Internet (47.3%). The majority of respondents reported using mobile coupons or discounts 2-3 times per month (26.9%), followed by approximately 1 time per month (25.4%) and 1 time every 2-3 months (20.5%). In addition, 58.4% reported using them an average of about once per month, including some who used them more than once per week. Looked at by gender, females were more likely than males to use mobile coupons more than once per month (WWJ)
Mobile Advertising an $11B market in the next 5 years
Posted by chetan in : General , add a commentAdvertisers will spend over $11.35 billion worldwide to place ads on consumers’ mobile devices in the next five years, according to Informa
More details here.
CTIA
Posted by chetan in : General , add a commentIt will be a pretty hectic next week. I will be attending iHollywood Forum’s MES (Chetan Sharma Consulting is a research partner, check out our research in the analyst booklet), MECCA, CTIA, CTIA Press Reception, Moconews Mixer, and Mobilist Reception. Hope to see you there.
I have been having some pre-CTIA briefs as well as a ton of embargoed press releases. Will be covering all of the above in our CTIA bulletin next week. Stay tuned.
Future of Privacy
Posted by chetan in : General, Privacy , add a commentBruce Schneier has a very good essay on Future of Privacy. That’s one of the challenges that companies need to deal with in AORTA age. Companies that store individual’s data whether it is SSN in HR systems or search data at Google, adequate legal protections need to be in place otherwise the problem will keep magnifying with Moore’s law. Companies like Google need to be really careful and tackle it forcefully and proactively or they will be left in damage-control mode. Privacy is to Google what Security is to Microsoft. Deal with it and make it a competitive advantage, don’t deal with it head-on invite problems.
The Change Function
Posted by chetan in : General , add a comment
On my last trip to DC, I read through Pip Coburn’s “The Change Function”
It is one of the books I wanted to write -talking about why some technologies fail while others succeed. We dealt with it in some minor detail in our book “Wireless Data Services” primarily talking about some of the failures in the wireless industry such as Mobilestar etc. Pip’s common-sense approach is refreshing. It is so important to learn from history.
Definitely worth the read.
SOA - Strategy Oriented Architecture September 7, 2006
Posted by chetan in : General, Strategy , add a commentI attended a very well organized SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Summit by IBM this morning. Quality of speakers was very good and they covered a lot of ground. As I was listening to them, I thought maybe we can apply the same principles to Strategy and build a Product Strategy Architecture that amplifies reuse and flexibility. I will be flushing out these thoughts some more but would love to hear from you regarding the same.
Wireless subs cross 2.5B mark
Posted by chetan in : 3G, ARPU, BRIC, Carriers, General, Indian Wireless Market, US Wireless Market, Wireless Value Chain, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a commentWireless Intelligence released some numbers that confirms some of our earlier predictions. According to WI
The cellular world is about to reach the threshold of 2.5 billion connections. The last half billion have arrived in record time and were mainly added in the very high-growth emerging markets of China, India and Russia, although the US has also been growing very strongly as pre-paid rises in popularity. Our forecasts show that the market will now slow down slightly (although the next phase could not be described as ‘slow’), with 3 billion connections being reached by the end of 2007.
As we mentioned in our Worldwide market update, China and India were at the top with 66M and 56M net adds respectively and we will be reaching 3B shortly.
Welcome to new home September 6, 2006
Posted by chetan in : General , add a commentThanks for subscribing, for your support, comments and feedback. Please let me know your suggestions for areas to cover, companies to focus on, trends to keep tabs on, etc. They will go a long way in helping me keep the blog useful to you.
Best wishes and talk to you soon.
Sybase - the silent leader in mobile enterprise space
Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, Middleware, US Wireless Market , add a commentSybase has been quietly raking up revenues in the mobile enterprise space for some time. They announced that Sybase will acquire wireless messaging company Mobile 365 in a deal valued at $400 million.
July Systems Patents
Posted by chetan in : Patents, Strategy, US Wireless Market , add a commentOver the last 2 months or so, July Systems got awarded 3 patents, 2 in DRM arena
7,103,351 Policy service system and methodology
7,089,594 Application rights management in a mobile environment
7,076,562 Application intermediation gateway
I will be looking at the claims to determine if they have any broader implications. There are a number of other players who own DRM patents that get licensed, so it will be interesting to see what’s unique about these. DRM is a critical piece of the puzzle and if they are strong patents, company’s valuation would go up.
MVNO numbers
Posted by chetan in : AORTA, Carriers, MVNO, Strategy, US Wireless Market , add a commentMoconews broke the story about some real MVNO numbers. Amp’D claims to have garnered 50K subs. ARPU seems to be about $100 with data accounting for 30%. Still way behind estimates and forecasts and is the growth rate enough to save the company?
Nortel’s 4G optimism
Posted by chetan in : 3G, AORTA, General, Intellectual Property, US Wireless Market, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a comment
We, at Nortel, are very committed to 4G … Because OFDM and MIMO will drive 4G… which has significantly better economics than 3G with far superior APEX and CAPEX than existing technologies.
sure, but so did 3G vs 2G and 2G vs 1G .. if you couldn’t execute on a generation of technology, it is better to focus on the next round of evolution but claiming that it was because 3G doesn’t provide adequate benefits is not acknowledging reality. Granted MIMO and OFDM will play a critical role in evolution of mobile network technologies but there are a number of players who are ahead of Nortel. Nortel will probably need some good acquisitions to build up its MIMO/OFDM IP portfolio.
