Wal-Mart's Vudu Trance - home entertainment and apps

mot-bile 2010 - What is exactly "home entertainment" according to Wal-Mart ? Everyday low prices for home movies or everyday more promotions for everything else on your TV screen ?

The Bentonville, AR giant acquired VUDU, Inc, an online video service embedded in broadband-ready TVs and Blu-ray players, and "combining VUDU's unique digital technology and service with Walmart's retail expertise and scale will provide customers with unprecedented access to home entertainment options as they migrate to a digital environment".*

But Wal-Mart also mentions VUDU Apps, a very crucial entry point in households for all sorts of services, including Twitter or Facebook, the kind of "web family names" we mentioned earlier as the hottest TV stars of the year (see "Skype on your TV : home improvement ?" - 20100106).

Wal-Mart was not the only bidder for this entry point : it won over direct rivals (Amazon & co), victims of Vudu curses (Blockbuster & co) media manufacturers turner entertainers (Sony & co), or the usual Redmond suspects (Micro and Soft).

Now back to the smaller screen, but still in the retailing arena : SK Telecom and Hana Bank eventually released their joint services** in Korea. Push and pull location-based marketing make sure you have always an incentive even if you came out without your paper coupons.

Note that in their latest TV ads, SKT are marketing Android a very cute way with a green robot dancing on "That's the way (uh uh uh uh) I like it", and that's likely to boost the brand's fun factor. The Android brand, I mean : the character bumps into SKT's dull "T" logo and roars at it... There was probably a smarter way of celebrating this encounter of the third kind.

* "Walmart Announces Acquisition of Digital Entertainment Provider, VUDU" (20100222)
** on this killer alliance, see "SK Telecom's Wild Hana Card" (20090612)

Rock n' Knols

At Google's, a knol is a piece of knowledge wrapped up in one webpage. Adsense and all Google Labs toys welcome. Everybody's invited, and one can easily imagine something like "tell us what you know about ABC" popping up each time you type "ABC" in Big G's search box.

At Google's, knowledge doesn't have to be checked. This ain't no wiki stuff : you can claim the Earth is flat and was invented 6,000 years ago, you can say Obama had an affair with Oprah and Osama, you can praise your sect and hire a new PR manager devoted to knols, no one will challenge it.

At Google's, volumes speak. Nevermind quality. Actually, with AdSense and Knols, Big G is bound to replace Wal-Mart as the biggest private employer.

Let's make it straight : Google Knols is the anti-encyclopedia, the mother of all hoaxes, an insult to the knowledge society. "Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing." For business, you bet.

The aim is not to compete with Wikipedia but to prevent Wikipedia from appearing all the time at the top of Google's search results. Instead of wasting the best advertising space, Big G will demultiply it and the beauty of it is everybody will do it for free.

Google is definitely not "[putting its] reputation on the line" : Google just doesn't care about its reputation.

Money can buy many things (including spectrum), but the era of a beloved Google seems over.

Dell @ Wal-Mart - everyday low profile

Michael Dell used to boast about a constistent strategy relying from the start on his own Intelligent Design. Then came the first Darwinian inputs : diversity with AMD (Intel partly outside), IdeaStorming for Ubuntu (Linux inside)...
Now this : indirect sales. Through no other than Wal-Mart if you please (one year after the trials in two malls - Dallas, TX and West Nyack, NY).
Shaking the very core of the Business MoDell... but more trivially following a natural trend : you cannot skip the real life presales customer experience.

Dell eventually realizes some of their customers like to be asked "what makes you unique ?" But some analysts will ask Dell "what makes you unique now ?"


sites : ideastorm.com, ubuntu.com.

Google too big to be true ? - discussion

(Following "Google's next moves" (20070518), answer to the question "So you think that they have gotten to the point where their size is getting in the way of innovation?")

Not that early. They are closer to Cisco circa Y2K than Microsoft right now. Besides, their DNA is supposed to protect them from the Redmond syndrom.
Yet, size does matter. Neither at the HR level nor at the geographical level (nice Mountain View over the valley), rather in the business focus area. Yahoo! did lose some focus at a certain point, Google may go too far the other way.
Google seem stronger and reached the stage where they cannot vanish overnight, but their model remains fragile, they are surrounded by big question marks, and their evolutivity is not guaranteed.
They grow a rather logical way, never going for real disruption nor actual pervasiveness, which makes them look titanic and overexposed to regulator radars considering their age. They are not competing with key customers, but they are turning into the web's Wal-Mart. It's difficult not to make business with them but you wish there were alternatives out there and would seize any opportunity to put some eggs in other baskets. Moreover, it will be difficult for them to switch to a different spot when needed.
So they are great predators, but I feel some unease as they grow. While analysts keep applauding each time they catch a nice prey, I remain cautious.

MVNO commodities

In France, mass distribution eventually makes it into the MVNO arena* : after Auchan Mobile (by Auchan Telecom - auchantelecom.fr) on SFR, Carrefour Mobile (carrefourmobile.fr) picked up Orange.
If Auchan's Hyperlibre prepaid cards claim a fun and content factor, Carrefour delivers a much cheaper message : mobility metaphorically lies on the same shelves as eggs, mineral water or pasta, the equivalent of commodities in foods, basic products for which the World's #2 retailer holds an impressive market share.
Not as impressive as that of #1 Wal-Mart if it were to purchase Carrefour... but right now, WM has its own fishes to fry in the US (Movida - only 100,000 subs to date and 500,000 expected by the end of 2007) or in Germany, where even hard discounter Aldi* struggles.
A retail and / or financial know-how definitely makes sense for tomorrow's MVNOood (and Rabobank is considering its home market in the Netherlands), but it takes more to succeed than a strong brand or an expertise, be it in content (look at Disney struggle in the US and postpone its launch in the UK). A MVNO is a service provider and service should remain the major, even with a discount / content / mcommerce / mwhatever flavor. Pure players can succeed provided they can - well - provide and deliver the goods (ie TracFone - tracfone.com).
Consider Mobile ESPN's failure in the US : ESPN is a beautiful brand but only a one channel brand. Like TF1 Mobile, you like to have it on your mobile but you want all other channels as well. Quad players stand a better chance : Qwest Wireless makes a living, but US cablecos have yet to really enter the race (Comcast with T-Mobile again ?). In the UK, the NTL - Telewest - Virgin / NTV combo should deliver because Virgin being Virgin, Virgin Mobile refreshes the parts other MVNOs cannot reach.

Niche MVNOs keep blooming and ethnic MVNOs flourishing : MobiSud** targets Europe's Moroccan community, Ay Yildiz (ayyildiz.de) the Turkish diaspora and Red Pocket Mobile delivers 24/7 Mandarin and Cantonese service in the US. Others prefer to focus on the "international calls" dimension of the service across minorities, like Oblio Telecom's Bravo Cellular in the US or Ortel Mobile in Belgium (ortelmobile.be).
In a Marketing 101 frenzy, Firefly Mobile (fireflymobile.com) targets mobile kids, Xero Mobile (xeromobile.net) college teens***, Jitterbug by Greatcall (gojitterbug.com) seniors and technophobic Baby Boomers, and as the name suggests, GAYmobile (gaymobile.dk) doesn't target homophobes. No one dares launching a truly green mobile service but you can still subscribe to a feel-good provider : Call4care (call4care.nl), which federates all major NGOs including the Red Cross.
Yet, youth-oriented MVNOs remain the main variety.
And a demanding job. Ask Helio, which reached the audience it wanted, but not the kind of wallets it expected. The younger generations love the handsets but SKT and EarthLink would rather have them actually purchase the damn gizmos.
Amp'd Mobile isn't playing in the big leagues either with its 50,000 customers, even going on 150,000 by the end of the year. Yet, it goes international : Canada with TELUS (now a major shareholder) and Japan on KDDI (TTM march 2007). I don't think Amp'd impressive slugging average (a $100 ARPU) will remain that high when the saint subscribers go marchin' in, but Let's see if TELUS can be as efficient as Sprint Nextel with Boost Mobile (boostmobile.com).
To be continu'd.


* Virgin, FNAC or Darty happen to be retailers, but with a strong flavor / major.
* see "CAPEX and the city - curb your enthousiasm or six feet under" (20051205)
** see "MSN, Mobile Centric, Mobisud" (20061019)
*** if they really want to launch next January, they must first target deep pocketed and short sighted investors

CAPEX and the city - curb your enthousiasm or six feet under

Cheers : Vodafone had to release some exciting news to their shareholders ? Welcome to their global mobile TV service ! The content looks fine (top HBO series, the UEFA Champions League...), but we're talking 3G W-CDMA TV and this isn't likely to solve their capacity troubles : if you want to watch Sex And The City on your mobile phone, your operator needs to play Capex And The City first (or better : switch to DVB / DMB). Farrington Road Films understood so well how much work had to be done they named their m-soap "Brick' it". Who knows ? there are more 3G network operators in the UK than there were little pigs in the tale, and more than one could have a house made of stone.
Fewer fireworks for the launch of ALDI Talk ; the hard discounter doesn't care about 3G nor mobile TV yet : Medion mobile simply target 750,000 subs interested in the cheapest voice money can buy (5 cents a mn or a SMS among Aldi Talkers, but triple that if you want to reach anyone else). EPlus are supporting this MMinus, which could outperform USA's Movida despite the impressive Wal-Mart - Cisnero Group combo (it's the economy, stupid - who cares about services ?).
Remember Vivendi's Xfera ? The Spanish 3G greenfield MNO will as initially planned launch for the World Cup in June and draft 600,000 customers by the end of that year. Too bad our Don QuiXfera went for the 2006 World Cup windmill instead of the 2002 one. Hutchison Whampoa are considering taking over this X-file.

Wal-Mart : a Korean Wave after la Movida ?

Wal-Mart hired IW Group, Inc, a PR firm specialized in Asian American minorities, to launch their first ever Asian language ad campaign in the US, starting with low income minorities (first 3 languages : Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese, "everyday van lo price" and all that). But one could expect Korean or Japanese Americans to be targeted soon, IW Group's headquarters being located in L.A., the CEO and COO answering to the names of Imada and Song, and Wal-Mart holding a few stores in both Korea and Japan. Anyway this isn't just about respecting cultural diversity, and as Song puts it : "Asian Americans in general are fiercely brand-loyal, have the highest median household income in the country, and have a combined purchasing power in excess of $360 billion".
As expected , Wal-Mart should consider a Movida-like M-VNO for this yellow gold target and the said "brand" will be an issue (unless they opt for a P&G-like strategy). First the US and then overseas.
When I think about it... Europe used to mean one techno (GSM) but dozens of languages while the US meant one language but dozens of technos. It seems to me the King of Retail is following the same path as China : the next wave of cultural & economical expansion will not be blind monolithic imperialism but will leverage on each country's wide range of cultures.

Movida : the Generation Ñ M-VÑO ?

I've been asked a reaction to Movida Communications, Walmart's hispanic centric M-VNO on Sprint's network with the help of The Cisneros Group of Companies. The fact is quite a few people Googled this blog right after Cisneros' press release : the announcement was made on february the 22nd and I was mentioning Movida over one week earlier (only referring to the 3GSM congress moving from Cannes to Barcelona) ! Besides, I've always kept an eye on Wal*Mart, expecting some involvement in the mobile business from the World's dominant retailer.
Needless to remind you how powerful Walmart are with over 138 million visitors every week in their 3,600 units in the US and 1,570 abroad, how they impact the lives of over one million employees or how they influence whole markets, being by far the first customer of big companies (hence the P&G - Gilette deal), some smaller players sometimes even outsourcing their marketing units at the master of data crunching. So here's my reaction, beyond the usual platitudes going with Wal*Mart (like "whether you are an operator, a service/content provider, a retailer or a vendor, you need to pay attention") :

• My first thought is AOL and Telefonica definitely missed the opportunity a couple of years ago. I can understand no US MNO wanted to open their gates to the then aggressive hispanic leader, but AOL did have at one moment both an Hispanic and a MVNO drive. Well AOL kind of drowned under their own ambitions so I can understand too... as Lenny sang it : so much Time wasted, playing games with love (…) But Baby it ain't over 'till it's over (actually Cisneros does own AOL Latin America Inc !). Of course this is not only about the US : Telefonica knows Walmart holds important positions in Mexico, Argentina or Brasil. And once WMT master the craft of ethnic marketing in mobility, they can consider other targets in Germany and the UK, even if they only rely on Wal-Mart Supercenters or Discount Stores without any Neighborhood Markets. And while they're at it, they can switch to their own brand and sell their always everyday low price service anytime anywhere including Korea and China. Walmart may not be as fun as Virgin nor Walton as sexy as Sir Dick, the perspective can lure new partners : Wal-Mart just signed a deal with CMT (Country Music Television) early march, but as CMT puts it "The two companies are exploring possible opportunities to expand the promotional program to other MTV Networks music services", the said promotional program including "digital media extensions"...
• My second reaction is Cisneros seems a smart move : there is some competition with Wal-Mart (retail in Puerto Rico) but mostly a perfect complementarity. Wal-Mart partners with a czar in hispanic entertainment and broadcasting (Univision, Venevision, Caracol, Claxson Interactive Group, Eccelera, Playboy TV Latin America & Iberia...). Wal-Mart partners with a great marketer very much familiar to the core target. Wal-Mart partners with an influential player : Gustavo Cisneros holds seats in the media commissions for the UN and the World Economic Forum, and the group knows how to work for/with big partners (ie AOL Latin America, DirectTV Latin America, Pizza Hut). Wal-Mart even partners with a company involved in telecoms, ISPs and mobilecoms : at home, Cisneros hold participations in Telcel Venezuela, Americatel (fixed line services) or Business Service Provider. Talking of which the choice of Sprint makes all the more sense that the ailing MNO joined forces with Nextel, more focused on biz targets.
• Now regarding the service (TTM S1 2005) : pay as you go vs prepaid looks fine (especially since Cisneros notices that it amounts to 90% of the hispanic wireless business), and I just love the "For English Press Two" claim. Movida branded phones (and cards) mean Walmart wants to control as much as they can their manufacturers, maybe also that they already plan their own brand. It will be interesting to see who will join (speaking Chinese may help).
• How about the figures, then ? Movida target today's 40 M US Hispanics (17% of all Americans by 2010), and Virgin Mobile USA claim 3 million customers after 2.5 years. I have no idea where the penetration stands among the Hispanics but it may be around the national average (a quite low 61%)… Even with all competitors clinching deals with the remaining Hispanic partners, I don't think the Wall*Mart - Cisneros combo can fail and do under 5 million within 3 years. That would be 13% of their core target, and not necessarily the lowest half of the 25% most cost oriented Latino shoppers.

RFID - you're in the Army now

Korea and the US are simultaneously pushing RFID the way they're used to push new technologies. Amerika focuses on sekurity applikations, targetting crossborder hoppers, drug dealers, Kerry voters and other terrorists (in other words : federal and military spendings will as usual show the money and accelerate the private sector's ROI), while Korea plans to maintain its R&D edge in mobility, the MIC leveraging on ETRI's work to launch a Mobile RFID Forum and get some handsets ready by 2007. Up to now, the biggest RFID lobby was EPC Global Inc, EPC standing for Electronic Product Code because the killer app used to be "revolutionize the barcode". Unlike that old tag, RFID provides an ID for each item and can be read at a distance of a few meters without being directly beamed at - some kind of a short range GPS. Provided your system covers the right areas with the right techno and the right links to the right databases, this can be the ultimate "spyware / spywear" all experts in tracking (retailers, marketers, supply chain managers, security managers, customs officers...) have been dreaming of for ages. A quick look at EPC Global's board and you meet major league marketers (Gilette, P&G, Johnson & Johnson), retailers (Wal*Mart, METRO), and pervasive computing heralds (HP, Cisco)... plus the office of the Secretary of Defense (bekause this is Amerika and this is where frequencies meet wallets).
As usual, mobile players seem remote. Yet, RFID being about Radio Frequency IDentification, every player with some ambition in the wireless and/or customer control fields has been keeping an eye on the issue. Some vendors already claim so called "mobile RFID solutions" (ie the chip triggering applications in Nokia's Field Force Solution). The first MNOs which will come to it will have a strong marketing / commerce drive and a tradition of launching technos that are potentially "coopetitive" with theirs. Once again, you can bet a buck on Korea.