Korea : Nexus One in June, more robust networks in sight

Korea Telecom announced Google's Nexus One (HTC on Android FroYo) for June 2010.

Since Samsung preempted the green android territory and even protected the brand for handsets*, KT will have to find a different angle.

June, World Cup, Frozen Yoghurt... expect something fresher for this smartphone / app phone. Patbingsu style.

KT claimed its 700,000th iPhone sold in May, and boosted wireless data traffic by 17.5 in Q1 2010 vs Q1 2009. Q2 should be much more impressive as smartphones rise on track with 5M units sold by EOY 2010.

And 3D TV is becoming a reality (also on time for the FIFA World Cup), 3D is bound to pop up on Korean mobile phones as soon as possible. It's a matter of pride for Samsung and LG, it's also a priority for local authorities who are planning the country for very very high speed broadband.

That's for 2013. But mobile network capacity will become critical much earlier, even with LTE, and Korea's dominant operators (SKT and KT) are intensifying their aggressive race for WiFi hotspots.

mot-bile 2010

* see "KT claims 500,000 iPhones"

M6 Mobile and Orange celebrate

2 years after launch and one year ahead of schedule, M6 Mobile by Orange hits the 1M mark (767,000 subs EOY 2006) and claims a new target of 1.5M EOY 2008. France's most succesful MVNO is not a MVNO but a JV wrapped around a licensing agreement targeting the younger generation (15-25).

France Telecom's Lombard and M6's Tavernost confess today to Le Figaro they have other plans in mind, but not in the soccer rights field. Yet. More good news for Canal+, under pressure by France's Pro League : the LFP wants to maintain its contract at a high price in spite of the recent merger of TPS with Canal Sat, but was recently deterred (by a court ruling) from switching from a 3 to a 5 year contract in order to attract more bidders. M6 recently snatched rights for not so minor events, including part of FIFA World Cup.

M6 just developped new threads to an already impressive web (M6 Web manages over 50 sites including M6.fr, the country's second audiovisual website in audience after TF1), both in the small ads field :

• atonservice.fr : students jobs focused on services to individuals, likely to feed M6 Mobile's core target, already under the spell of the M6 Group for music.
• a 34% participation in PagesJaunes Petites Annonces (a PagesJaunes Group subsidiary), bound to boost another of their major verticals : cars and motors.

The fun doesn't come from Orangeworld but from a partner more fit for the job and that's OK for FT : keeping youngsters is a tough job and the Orange brand is there, ready to help them switch to more serious applications when the time comes.

La3 Live - Berlin or Bust - Aussie Yield Management

Remember when 3 snatched the mobile rights for the 2006 World Cup ? HWL's unit certainly didn't get all its money back but its PR teams make sure they made the most of it, even where they didn't pay. Some feed back from 3 World Cup participants : England, Italy and Australia.

• 3 UK claimed 3.6M viewings for its World Cup mobile TV channels during the competition. That's a 61% increase vs May and an average 106,000 per day but also, less impressively, the equivalent of one viewing per customer (3.5M overall). According to the operator, two programs proved quite successful : World Cup Highlights lured enough people everyday to fill Highbury (38,500 seats - make that one third of the total) and Berlin or Bust did 17.5% of the traffic.
  The most popular World Cup TV highlights were about England's glorious victories against the World's top 3 teams (Trinidad & Tobago, Paraguay and Equador), Zidane's infamous nod on Materazzi, and obviously the most important Becks-free game (Spain vs Ukraine - how many 3 handsets for the Rafael Benitez squad in Liverpool ?). The Berlin or Bust program was specifically designed for the event and users didn't have to pay anything to view it... well anything but 30 second ads for Canon, thanks to 3's marketing partner 4th Screen Advertising.
  In order to keep the show rolling and do better than the English team (no Berlin, just bust and crack some nuts), 3 offered through its Pilot Pitch unit a prize for the best mobile TV concept : TV producers can earn up to £50k for the funding of a pilot.
  -
  
• In Italia, Tre bet on DVB-H technology with the usual suspect (Nokia). La3 Live and its 9 channels were launched on June the 5th, right before the World Cup. The daily costs depends on the duration of the formula : 3 euros if by the day, 1.5 euros if by the week, 50c if by the semester. 3 expect 20% of the pop to use mobile TV by 2010 and targets 500,000 users for La3 Live by the end of the year. After 6 weeks of operation closely linked to the major sports event of the year, the cellco claims 110,000 users, and only give few insights about usage patterns (mostly outdoors, 40% of the time during office hours).
  -
• In Australia, 3 used the World Cup as a perfect yield management tool for its network : the games were played late at night and for AUS$ 8, you could have unlimited WC packages (videos, highlights and scores). On June 21st, 3 claimed 300,000 views after 12 days of competition and right before Australia-Croatia. Sessions lasted an average 6 mn, but some watched the whole game vs Japan... I hope none of these happy fews enjoyed a battery failure right before the Hiddink Boys' late come back.
  

Note that during the competition, 3 knotted a partnership with Yahoo!, who happens to be the FIFA's top internet partner.

From Couch Potatoes to French Fries - World Cup and Giant Screens - the new mass media

Flat screens didn't wait for the World Cup to defeat old cathodic tubes, but the clear winner of the competition could be the Giant Screen.
TV operators now enjoy new channels and propose an extreme customer experience : as the main public media, TV follows the event down to the streets and stadia and while couch potatoes remain stuck on their sofas, masses now stand up in public places like French Fries in cornets. The phenomenon even overshadowed such traditional semi-private diffusion sites as restaurants and bars.
Giant screens really became mainstream during the 2002 World Cup in Korea, when millions would hit the streets to follow the great campaign of the Taeguk Warriors. Back in 1998, public events would just gather a few thousands souls (ie in front of Paris' city hall). For the 2006 edition, which took place over 1,000 kms away, Parisians would flock by tens of thousands in the Parc des Princes, Jean-Bouin and Charlety stadia. Simultaneously. In a city where organizers traditionally avoid cannibalization among sportive / cultural events. And Germany itself enjoyed a new phenomenon : hundreds of thousands of ticketless foreign supporters took their cars, trains and planes just to join these giant screen parties (and that beer, too, maybe...).
Under such conditions, the battle between smaller screens (PC vs TV) looks almost trivial... and the very little screens have to position themselves a new way. Handsets can help the TVless supporter following games live or goal by goal, but they also remain the personal tool of individuals as well as small group of users for coping with a mass of supporters located either on the same spot or accross the globe. I guess by 2010 cellcos will package some solutions for such public game sessions the way they do now for music concerts.
During this World Cup, they noticed a very weak traffic during the games, but incredibly hot flashes during the breaks and at the end of the games, for voice as well as for data. For them, here lies the dilemma : if I get the rights for the event I have to invest heavily in order to cope with time and space peaks, and if I don't get them my network is as good as dead during one month...

World Cup Train - coverage and cover up

TU Media, SK Telecom's satellite mobile TV operator, will launch World Cup Trains for the Korea-Togo game : on June the 13th, a KTX bullet train will leave Busan at 9:30 and another Seoul at 9:50. All passengers will follow the game on big screen S-DMB devices.
This "event" is about coverage but also about covering up another event : TU Media's competitors just announced the coverage of Seoul's subway lines (1 to 4) with their own T-DMB techno. It's terrestrial, it's free, and you don't have to go all the way from Seoul to Busan to enjoy the games.
T-DMB operators started much later than SKT but since they don't need to control the devices, they can leverage on a much bigger community for terminals. The mobile TV function logically became an extension of PMPs (such Portable Multimedia Players as ReignCom's iRiver Pocket TV) as well as other screens (ie digital cameras : Samsung's Miniket Photo).

Watcha sure, but who's gonna paya

Under the "Watcha - TV goes mobile" motto (but with a SGH-P900), debitel started their T-DMB service on time for the World Cup*. Fernsehen macht Spass but also money : €9.95 per month... I'd rather invest in a digital TV USB key or player (both are selling fine in Korea and advertising started in Europe).
In a quite sober press release, Samsung reminded their readers they also provided DVB-H handsets for the Italian market - it's not us vs them, after all. This small operation with a minor VNO is just a PR thing... we don't want to fight with European majors - nor leave them in the hands of Nokia.
If European big league MNOs are definitely interested in mobile TV, right now they're doing a lot of noise at the top of their voices. Actually, voice reached its top and time has come to slash roaming rates. The anti-Vodafone alliance reacted to Vodafone-and-3's announcements but once more, a not so impressive way : T-Mobile, Orange, Wind, Telecom Italia, Telenor and TeliaSonera proposed common goals for October (retail max €0.45 / mn) and next year (max €0.36 / mn), but Telefonica-O2 declined in order to salvage their golden goose beyond the 2006 summer season.

* Watcha : www.watcha.de and www.debitel.de/tv.

A fine slap on the wrist

1.78 billion seems quite a heavy fine but we're talking Korean Wons and not even 2 million bucks. Korea's Fair Trade Commission found out a collusion meeting occurred between the 3 MNOs on June 24, 2004 in order to put a stop to flat rate systems, an attractive concept for customers but a repulsive one for shareholders. For a much milder crime, French operators had to pay hundreds of millions (Euros this time).
Competition again : SK Telecom said their new HSDPA service* would mark a shift in the market "from membership-based competition to service competition". Don't expect this elaborate wording to mean "price war" either. I guess it will go beyond the cultural shift where average customers won't have to take a ticket to be served at the customer service boutiques (VIPs should still enjoy the operators' lavish lounges).
What does this "+ life"** mean then ? A better customer experience for videocalls, downloading and roaming. Videocalls will become faster and cheaper : a W Standard Rate is comin'up soon at a mobile theater near you at 1.3 won per 0.5k packet. Automatic roaming just started with 02 in Frankfurt, Hannover and Leipzig - a 100% coverage for Korea's first round in FIFA World Cup 2006. Voice calls to Korea range from KRW2,444 to KRW2,826 per minute and videocalls stand at KRW 5,829 per mn. Still not cheap.


* see last post "Commercial HSDPA live in Korea" (200060517)
** SKT labels the service "3G+" or more simply "3+"... which makes Hutch a Three Minus ?

Commercial HSDPA live in Korea

SK Telecom launched its HSDPA service in 25 cities yesterday and intends to cover 84 by the end of the year. KTF will follow in June with 50 cities.
Dubbed 3.5G and announced at 5.76 to 14.4 mbps rates, HSDPA will be limited to 1.8 mbps at the beginning due to the lack of handsets : the only one available right now is a W200 Samsung slider model costing 800,000 wons without subsidies. SKT expect handsets to allow 7.2 mbps rates next year and 14.4 in 2008.
W-CDMA was almost shunted in Korea, but KTF are eventually leveraging on their partnership with NTT DoCoMo for the World Cup : as the official sponsor of the Korean Football Association, they're advertising about successful roaming video calls between members of the official supporter group (Red Devils). Meanwhile, WiBro trials started rather discretely in Seoul : only a few southern areas like Gangnam-gu or Bundang are covered and a WiBro Bus* will roam the streets to draft testers. Subscriptions are expected to be twice the cost of a fixed broadband connection.
As for DMB, Korea Pool, the joint negociating arm of all three broadcasters, clinched a deal with InFront to make sure all 64 games are broadcasted. No one will lose and certainly not consumers.

* KT WiBro Experience Bus : www.ktwibrobus.com. Note the pedagogy of WiBro : allIP + Triple Play (Data, Communication, Media) = Personal Broadband.

Digital rights and sports wrongs

Netcos, telcos, cellcos, ISPs... Look at them fight for the rights to broadcast the 2006 FIFA World Cup and other major sports events. Did they only read the labels beforehand ? Did they even check what came in the package under the nice wraps ?
Partners and official sponsors are associated to the successes and failures, the world records as well as the criminal ones. Eventjackings by terrorists ? I'll take it. A Julifest project by German and Polish neo-Nazis ? On the house. Athletes on steroïds ? Don't mention it (official MLB broadcasters ESPN don't : actually, they will even air a 10-part series on the rise and rise of pristine Barry Bonds...).
Much food for thought, a lot of trash for sewers, but as an accomplice, you cannot join the bashing crew.
Sir Ruppert found the right angle. As usual, it's not the moral one : after joining News Corp, the MySpace community kind of turned into a web tabloïd for the masses by the masses. Because bashing became the new National Pastime, here's your DYI O'Reilly Factor, your own ultimate real-TV-over-you-name-it.
MySpace Mobile will be launched at about the same time as ESPN mobile*. On the same Sprint 3G EV-DO network. Expect a full coverage of the World Series.

* see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220) and "SK-Earthlink - postponing and smartcasting" (20051021)

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).

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.

Mobile Real TV - LG and the H-free handset

Nokia are to duplicate in the Netherlands their Finnish Mobile TV experience, with KPN starring as Telia-Sonera and Nozema Services + Digitenne as Elisa. In this RealMobileTV* show, you don't care where the customers come from : whatever the casting, everybody ends up telling how great the experience was. Plus PR people can relieve themselves in public (in Dutch for Nozema or in English for Nok-Nok).
This time, the plot is about mixing broadcasting and mobile with as many users as possible and in a truly mobile environment (thus the coverage of railways and motorways). The Finns provide the already vintage DVB-H 7110 plus a IPDC solution (sounds like the heavy metal version of IP), the Dutch their bad taste for programming (remember where Endemol and Big Brother came from ?). Nozema already confessed an affair with the Wi-Fi - WiMAX - Mobile-Fi (802.20) family.
But guess which manufacturer could make mobile TV on handsets a true hit in Europe ? The inventors of DVB-H, Nokia ? Nah... LG decided to launch their 3G - T-DMB phone next year in Europe and China. LG-V9000 will be up for grabs Q1 2006, on time for the 2006 World Cup in Germany : LG happens to be a top sponsor and intends to become a top lobbyist for the Korean norm. Even if the Chinese team didn't make it through the qualifiers. Even if T-DMB competes more directly with DVB-T (already commercialized in many European countries) than with DVB-H. Even if no DMB network has been announced yet in Europe.
Well. LG are also into bigger TV screens, and you don't have to be a mobile operator to roll out DMB. Consumers shouldn't give a hyphen provided the service works. They might even dig the motto used to sell this rolla : "personal mobile (digital) TV".

* guess what : realmobiletv.com is available but mobilerealtv.com has already been locked by some guy living on Sunset Bvd. If he sells Palms, I gather they're not of the tree kind.

One month oxygen supply

O² + FOOT = MMS² is the official equation, but I gather O² are more interested in boosting the value of their company than MMS traffic. The exclusivity is only valid for the duration of the FIFA World Cup (June 9th - July 9th, 2006) and the German territory but getting soccer rights always pleases the audience (beyond dumb couch potatoes, dumb analysts).
Neither 0² nor Infront Sports & Media would show us the money but Oliver Seibert wouldn't give the rights to a 8M customer base holder for a song. New partners will come and / or parts of 0² or even the all shebang may be sold by the time of the kick-off and I don't think this deal will change anything. Consider it an insurance policy for the existing customer base.
Yet, Germany remains the biggest potential growth engine for this operator. Locking this kind of deals is a nice quick fix but they badly need some new partner to help them consider strategy beyond today's "our primary strategy is to create shareholder value".

"Protect Dokdo !" but save your soul

KT's mobile arm turns into Korea's mobile army : KTF co-developped with North Korean people a wireless game called "Protect Dokdo!" where the players are supposed "to stop the invasion of Dokdo by Japanese pirates".
After surfing on the 2002 FIFA World Cup wave with a smart moto "Korea Team Fighting", KTF openly contributes to the anti-Japan fad growing within the whole region. The fact is Japan has been committing hara-kiri for years in a suicidal surge of revisionism, denying its past and blocking its own future, rewriting history books, forging archaeological proofs, and among other unnecessary provocations claiming the Korean islet of Dokdo.
In order "to help Koreans feel national pride" and "to raise interest in the issue of Korean sovereignty for the island of Dokdo", KT Freetel offered the download of the game for free for over a week. And to make it even more martial, a "Fly the Korean Flag" service marked Korea's Independance Movement Day. The operator is even considering new "public contents to inspire patriotism and pride in Korean culture and history in the teen and twenty-somethings, the heaviest users of KTF wireless service magicN".
Don't get me wrong : I do support Korea's national team, I'm pleased to hear about a collaboration between Hanguk and Choson and I'm very much in favor of an end to deliberate revisionism from the other side of the former "Sea of Korea"... but this Short-sighted Messenging Service is totally insane and irresponsible. Far beyond bad taste, committing oneself to propaganda is just wrong. There are more clever and positive ways of bringing people together and answering to Japan's dumbest dieharders.
KTF would better stick to soccer and accept both an offside and a yellow card. Stephane MOT