mAdSense and Google Phonies (Google Phones ?)

"Don't Be Evil" is embedded in Big G's DNA. They said we were the next Microsoft, they now say we are the next Apple. But we neither want to rule the hardware / OS entry point nor rule the hardware / DRM entry point. Do we ?
One thing is sure : if Google's plans remain evasive, their ambitions remain pervasive. And mobility a must have, whatever the path. Speculations, analysts and pundits keep fueling expectations (gPhone, WISP, M-VNO, VoIP, WiFi, WiMAX, mobile suites...), but Google shouldn't care about it.
... if it weren't for its shareholders... I don't want to spoil the party but $462 per share and $143 bn overall look like a lot of dough to me. Like that insane, neverending hike in the Vietnam stock exchange, not even dented by the Shanghai hiccup.
Come to think of it, the ultimate stage of mobile advertising by the king of online advertising will be called mAdSense.

What else ? The CeBIT is over. Which means it was open before. Talking about bomb news : cellcos are eventually realizing the golden years of mobile voice ARPU will soon be over and the bulk of mobile data is bound to go flat. At last.

What else ?
- BT and KPN are working on M-VNOs in Spain. Belgacom, Swisscom, Eircom declined to comment.
- Viviane Reding wants DVB-H to outperform Galileo and Airbus across and beyond Europe. China already decided to launch a competitor to Airbus and Boeing, another to 3GSM and cdma2000. Why not split from Europe over the GPS-killer / killee and why not launch a specific mobile.TV.cn ?
- The WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance (WiSOA) wants to promote both WiMAX roaming and the survival / resale of its exotic founders
- I'm still stuck with a broken foot and a broken club - I can't move and Paris Saint Germain keeps sinking towards second division. Mobility definitely sucks.

NTT - DoCoMo : remerge, split-up, disrupt ?

You don't want 65% of your group's profits wandering too far away. So NTT want DoCoMo back. But new entrant MNOs strongly disagree. While announcing the selection of Ericsson as eMobile Ltd's main 3G network provider, CEO Sachio Senmoto asked for an AT&T-like split-up of the whole shebang, including DoCoMo because of their 56% market share. NTT is already a patchwork of regional units, but who would dare touch m-Japan Inc's champ ?

eMobile's extreme request was mainly meant to prevent the reconstitution of NTTsama Bell. Even DoCoMo can be a struggling leader... but with the full back-up / backhaul of its mother company, no competitor could ever dream of annoying them.

I'd like to know what DoCoMo's top execs think about a remerger with NTT. The cultural gap with the fixed dragon has been widening for years, the group would be under even more scrutiny, and the "everything mobile / pervasive mobility" vision would badly suffer the contradiction... But shouldn't they somehow be asking themselves how much they need a truly convergent profile to remain at the top ?

Orange are logically adopting France Telecom's integrated vision and even at Vodafone, former Mannesmann - Arcor people keep pushing for a descent in the "fixed" arena (again, the other day, at the CeBIT, a Vodafone DSL revival). If I were DoCoMo, I would at least consider reviewing my 10 year old vision. And why not, seize the opportunity : escape the risk of NTT dragging down the company and demand a formal and final split-up. I want my liberty back, I want to deal with any fixed player I want or why not, build my own.



* More about eMobile : in "J:COM's quadruple play - within the fence" (20060210) and in "3Greenfield Japan" (20051113)

CeBIT unnovations

More than ever, the wireless circus focused on Barcelona rather than Hannover. That was Barcelona's first year and the CeBIT goes far beyond mobility, but still.
Samsung's 10 megapixel picturephone is no more a disruption than Sony Ericsson's 4 GB W950. xandros added UMTS to their Linux laptops but the technology was already a commodity. Microsoft eventually unfolded their Origami* but the UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer*) looks so much like the PDA all Samsung employees have been carrying everywhere in Korea for a couple of years. At the government's level, UK goes NGN and the EU goes RFID, but that's about time. I don't know how DVB-H is doing up there but France Telecom R&D seem to bet on Far East Asia (especially Korea and China) for mobile TV. What else ? Samsung will deliver DMB handsets in Germany on time for the World Cup, as expected**. With debitel as the entry point ; quite a disappointment. The industry eventually realize genuine VoIP over mobile requires HSUPA and a more mobile world requires more fiber. That was CeBIT CeLEBRATING 20 years of innovation.

Europe may remain the heart of GSM / 3GSM but for the rest, everything is being decided somewhere between Asia and America.


* see "Origami Project - a crush for paper tigers ?" (20060302). Before the take off, MS decided to nest their UMPC in the Windows XP environment : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc.
** see "Play it again, Samsung ?" (20060216).

Origami Project - a crush for paper tigers ?

Second week, second teaser on the Origami Project's website*. Microsoft being Microsoft and Origami being the art of paper folding, you must be patient and expect a full basket of wasted stuff before enjoying the real thing.
MS' viral marketing campaign started last year and will culminate next week at CeBit 2006. You can tell they're not familiar with viral marketing (except when it comes to spreading bugs, malware, spyware, stuporware...) : note the quantum leap between the first "hello" and the following "hi there" - what will it be next time : "Hang on", "Wait a sec'", "Got your attention ?", "Still there ?", "Pickaboo !"...?
The suspense is unbearable. How will the damn thing look like ? I guess something less steel-waffle-ish than Dualcor Technologies's cPC**, and something less ToysRUS-ish than the Ultramobile 2007 starring in last year's mini clips.
We already know its main and optional features : the PC DNA, the tablet PC assets (touch screen, pen, always-on, easy boot, easy break...), a medium-sized screen (rather 6 than 10 inches), wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, digital TV...), multimediapps (WMA & co, games, VoIP...), bizapps (MS Office, MS Server, MS Breakdown...), a few useful excrescences and holes (camera, USB port, card readers...), and of course the full Windows environment (including state-of-the-art BBS : Bugs and Blue Screen).
This iPod-killer / PSP-killer / mXbox was first supposed to cost under $800, then under $600, then again under $500... Come March the 9th, I expect under $400 and even under $300 for the launch : Microsoft are ready to lose more money than they did to help the Xbox survive its first years. Weakening Nintendo and Sony was a walk in the park, this will take much more.



* Origami project : www.origamiproject.com
** Dualcor Technologies : www.dualcor.com

Radio killed the video stars

More meshed potatoes ahead ? MusicFM are selling about 20,000 live streams from their website everyday thanks to 4FO's Potatosystem.

The format is neither "Red Apple" nor "Yukon Gold" but MP3 whose inventors, Fraunhofer IDMT (Fraunhofer-Institute for Digital Media Technology), initiated 4FO (4FriendsOnly.com Internet Technologies AG) back in 2000 with the help of the local university (Technische Universität Ilmenau). The payment system (Paybest) and DRM system (Game Feature Platform or GFP, also implemented on the Softgames portal) are home made solutions too. The business model gives the bulk of the money to the artist and co-founder Tim Renner, a former Universal Music top exec, makes sure no music major is needed. Most songs are performed by German alternative bands, only a few big names accepting this up-to-now-not-so-secure system. Yet it seems to be catching, thanks to a smart viral marketing tool : buyers can become reselling platforms and get a 20% discount on the song. Besides, MusicFM knotted a partnership with T-Online's Musicload portal.

Presented at CeBIT 2005 on a Nokia 6630, PotatoSystem Mobile Music Messenger enables "mobile music chat" and users to pre-listen the songs of other PotatoSystem users while sending SMS. Talking about viral marketing... But such synergies between radio and mobile wouldn't be a first : years ago France Telecom Mobiles (now Orange France) and a few partners launched a system where you could order from your mobile the song you were hearing on the radio as it was broadcasted. You heard a familiar tune but couldn't remember the artist or the title ? No sweat : you just needed to give the station's name and could purchase the CD instantly. At that time, people envisioned the handset as the ultimate remote control. At that time, people were focusing on the GSM - W-CDMA path and DAB or DVB were as good as DOA. At that time, Virgin Radio was preparing for radio over UMTS on the Isle of Man.
Whatever the techno, narrowcast fanatics should remember open minded people will always enjoy some kind of broadcasting. Even automatic shuffles on an iPod owner's collection of songs won't replace the editorial line of a good DJ.

Bad Boys over the Finnish line

Who said the bubble and strass years are behind us ? CTIA Wireless 2005 welcomed a new kind of keynote speaker : Sean "P.Diddy" Combs, Chairman of Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group. At the very moment another bad boy, WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers, was waiting for his sentence (85 years ? now that would be long distance, chum).
Another show, another miracle : at CeBIT 2005, Symbian announced their agreement with Microsoft (a license for Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol). After a key entry point for consumers (Windows Media Player, remember "the times they are a-changin" ?), the main gateway to the business targets (i.e. e-mail, calendar, addresses, files...). G-RIM prospects for BlackBerry, already threatened by new competitors signing operators by the dozen with their no-logo solutions (ie Visto) : Rest In Misery (BlackBury) or Resell It to Microsoft ?
But don't think Redmond has crossed the Fin(n)ish line yet. The momentum is on the likes of Samsung Electronic rather than Nokia, so Bill Gates had to listen to what President Hwang Chang-Gyu said at the second Samsung Mobile Solution Forum. Fortunately, the Korean maverick learned from Olilla's bravado and decided to declare war to... intel : you led the PC era, we will dominate the mobile age, and with a strong customer focus. In which case I strongly advise Samsung to adapt their speech to endusers. The six disruptive innovations announced to over 700 IT enablers in Taipeh would sound like a Star Trek dialect to the ears of John and Jane Smith : "1Gigabit mobile DRAM; a System-in-Package (SiP) that carries a 300MHz mobile CPU; a 1Gigabit (Gb) NAND Flash memory, a 256Megabit (Mb) mobile DRAM for mobile phones; a qVGA resolution, one-chip display driver IC (DDI); a 260K color DDI for active matrix organic light emitting diodes (AM OLED); and a 2.5-inch qVGA TFT-LCD for MP3 players". At this pace, they'll dominate the whole hyperspace before this small broadband world.