Mobile World Congress 2013: Unleash The Fox! Back To The Nineties!

In Barcelona, the hunt for the next killer app after Lionel Messi has started again, but for the moment, Mobile World Congress 2013 delivers at the hardware, OS, MNO levels. Vintage stuff.

Adding more flesh to its recent CES promises*, Mozilla decided to disclose** an impressive starting lineup for Firefox OS:

• devices? ZTE and Alcatel are there, LG's on board, Huawei will follow later this year
• apps? Facebook stars from day one
• cool factor? Mozilla unleashed its fox, and the long tail is now meant to set the whole sector on fire. Firefox OS joining Firefox Marketplace and Firefox fo Android, the predator is one search engine shy of splashing a Google-Android-Chrome-Killer tatoo across its chest. Even the Android dude got his tee:
  
• operators? check! This neither-Apple-nor-Google-nor-Microsoft OS comes as a blessing for MNOs that are desperately trying to recover their 2G mojo (see "joyn or die? forget about KakaoTalk and Anipang?"). Telefonica sums best the industry's mood by saluting "a major step to bring balance back to the telco sector", and America Movil is "committed to launch Firefox OS phones in Mexico and all possible markets during 2013". Completing the 17 member list are China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telenor, TMN, and VimpelCom.

Google must be preparing its own announcements, probably further down value chains and value galaxies (e.g. a music streaming service, according to the Financial Times). And meanwhile, execs reassert that virtual reality is the future of mobile... the occasion to re-mention Ingress game platforms, or augmented-reality-enabled eyewear Google Glass(es).

Just like Firefox OS, the Nokia 105 is meant for the masses: a cheap candybar handset with a late nineties look, and a tempting price tag (EUR 15). It's resistant, it consumes little power, and it would sound smart as a fox if Chinese manufacturers were not able to deliver the same kind of object at an even cheaper price. Nokia seems to be stuck in the 1990s, at a time when global marketshare in volumes was all that mattered. They'll get less press coverage for their Lumia 520 on Windows 8, but maybe that was the aim of the game: avoiding the comparison with Samsung on image.

Will the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 live up to the hype? Until we get the answer, the Suwon-based giant keeps leveraging its subbrand: after Samsung Galaxy Camera, here's a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet (Q2 2013), a supposed iPad mini killer. I can't wait to drive my Renault Samsung Galaxy LTE-Wibro Hybrid, to e-mail e-icecubes from my Samsung Galaxy Fridge, or to airkies these fancy apartment plans to my Samsung Galaxy Augmented Reality Printer.

Augmented reality sounds like material for pre-Lehman bubbles, something from the early Noughties. If you want something really ninetiesish, dig MasterCard's marketplace approach: MasterPass, a Visa's V.me-too.

Aah, the nineties... In 1996, after surviving 3 start-ups in 3 years, I joined for 7 years a French start-up that would become Cegetel and later SFR Cegetel. The shareholders were:
- Compagnie Generale des Eaux (44%), a French conglomerate recently converted to telecoms (SFR, partly held by a pure mobile player called Vodafone)
- Mannessmann (15%), a German conglomerate recently converted to telecoms (D2, Mannesmann Arcor, Omnitel...)
- British Telecom (26%), an international telecom institution that needed to set foot on new territories as deregulation reached further across its empire, and
- SBC (15%), the most ambitious of all Baby Bells

If you followed the turn-of-the-millenium sit(ele)com featuring the trio Klaus Esser - Chris Ghent - Jean-Marie Messier, plus Li Ka-shing as guest star, you already know what happened to each party.

SBC would resurrect Ma Bell and become the new and improved ATandT. British Telecom would remain a serious player and drop its MNO activities, but still enjoy its moments of fun (BT just purchased ESPN's operations in UK and Ireland). Mannesmann would bite the forbidden fruit Orange before being wolfed down by Vodafone. CGE would become Vivendi, spin off its formerly-core-but-still-cash-cow utility business, become Vivendi Universal, then Vivendi again. Vodafone would remain Vodafone, only bigger.

Today, Vivendi is getting rid of its formerly-core-but-still-cash-cow telecom operations in France (SFR, eyed by - among others - Ypso/Cinven/Carlyle), Brazil (GVT), and Morocco (Maroc Telecom). Canal+ shall become the new "core utility", the other gems being Universal Music Group, and Activision Blizzard, both leaders in sectors subject to profound changes.

Is virtual reality truly the future of mobile?


mot-bile 2013

* "I see through you: City of Sin, Screens, and Smartpagers"
** see "Mozilla Announces Global Expansion for Firefox OS"

Cloud Portability

You is everywhere. Ubiquitous, yet with different levels of thickness depending on platforms and contexts. A change of temperature, and parts of your cloud precipitate into big drops for everyone to look and feel.

You is the marrow of the backbone. The bread earner for a Google or a Facebook, maybe a former unwilling employee of a Yahoo! or a MySpace.

You is stuck in a net, hooked, dependent. You has the mother of all monkeys on you's back. You can't kick the habit. You can't see a future without the virtual past you amassed over the years.

You probably doesn't remember Tripod, the killer app of yore. Picture this: a customized homepage, featuring whatever you fancy about you...

You, online.

Tripod joined Lycos (yeah, go-get-it Lycos, a star of the silent internet times - limited colors, dial-up, only background track the faxlike connection), and followed its master to Germany (Bertelsmann), Spain (Telefonica), and Korea (Daum). Now both brands belong to Ybrant Digital (India). Tripod fetches domain names for the digital marketing group. Unlike most internet ventures, Tripod took some time to deserve its brand: is still walking around, but with a cane. At least, they're making a few bucks with the brand. Yahoo! totally euthanized Geocities.

I'm not digressing. Lycos was the first netco to make a decent living. And the most disruptive moment I remember about Tripod is when they announced the portability of homepages. Competition remained one click away, but you could switch with all your belongings.

Social network portability is much more complex. Friendships and synapses reach beyond simple pages or links. But we'll have to get there some day.

And who knows, 20 years from now, some South Sudanese venture shall sell capacity under the brand Facebook.

mot-bile 2012

UK 1 down, France 1 up ?

All options on the table for T-Mobile UK ? France Telecom - Orange officially not interested, Vodafone and Telefonica - O2 considering the case, 3 below the radar.

Considering the value suggested by DTAG's own finance czars (less than the fees paid for their 3G license nine years ago), one way of optimizing the garage sale could be to sell chunks of spectrum to North Korean investors (insisting on potential health hazards), infrastructure to Myanmar, and customers to, say, one or two M-VNOs. Or even Three.

T-Mobile UK boasts 16.7 M customers, including Virgin Mobile UK. Virgin Mobile France is still officially hot for France's fourth license, along with partner Numericable-Completel*. I think that just like Iliad-Free, they're even hotter for any deep pocket investor with a MNO background (Orascom ?).

Whether France gets a fourth 3G MNO or not, UK will have to go down to a more reasonable level than the initial 5.

European incumbents will probably get a better ROI in India. Vodafone Essar didn't wait for the upcoming 3G auctions (more spectrum, more markets available), and invested with infrastructure partner Nokia in seven new regions.

You know the heyday of the Empire is over when a portion of India looks more exciting than UK as a whole.

* note that Numericable, a customer service laughing stock a few years ago, has been taking things seriously recently, particularly since Pierre Danon joined.

VizaOzavi and other bull's eyes

What's in a name ? With zaOza*, Vivendi decided to drop 2 "vi"s at the edge of Vizzavi, and to add a bull's eye in the middle. Like : this time, I don't want to mess around but to go for the real thing ?... Maybe they purchased Activision to enhance their eyesight and optimize their chances to hit the said bull's eye.

Vodafone and Telefonica are into better targeting too : the Anglo-saxon leader and the Latino leader took a stake in Amobee Media Systems, a mobile advertising joint.

The Shoogle application must target Parkinson disease victims, blurring the frontier between handsets and handshakes. Next time you go to the pub, don't forget to fill her up with scotch.

SMobile Systems targets the soft spot of mobile linux : the first Android app is as sexy and useful as Norton. SecurityShield is the name, paving the way for developpers the game.

Elsewhere :

- NFC takes the tube - the London Underground before a greater coming out ?
- Outdoors, the OFCOM allows UK Broadband switch from TD-CDMA to WiMAX. If they can make it, that is. WiMAX seems to be losing ground in the US, where Verizon picks LTE.
- Korea keeps migrating at high speed : HSDPA claims 3.2 M subs end of Q3 2007 (2.02 for KTF). Users are discovering the beauty of (U)SIM cards and the easyness to drop a handset or an operator for another.
- Turned down by Sprint-Nextel (while KTF and DoCoMo snatched each 17% of U Mobile in Malaysia), SK Telecom takes 38.89% of Hanaro Telecom (including a 25% market share in fixed broadband). SKT discovers true convergence even later than Vodafone - and postpones a much needed boost in internationalization.


* the commercial name of "Vivendi Mobile Entertainment : Vizzavi's Second Life ? " (20070526)

Android Paranoid takes a LiMo

First step towards "commercially deployed" Android handsets (H2 2008), The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is to be revealed tomorrow by the Open Handset Alliance, a Linux based initiative involving Google and 29 more or less famous members : When you open a handset, what will you see then ?

1) 2 charismatic netcos not used to this kind of initiatives : eBay and Google.

2) 4 manufacturers : struggling Motorola*, swift HTC (used to paving the way for new OS sponsored by wealthy players), and the usual Korean duet LG* and Samsung* (putting eggs in any basket popping up anywhere - the question is which one joined first to get the other one moving). Moto, LG and Sam were members of the LiMo Foundation, but so were NEC and Panasonic, not to mention Ericsson (without the Sony part).

3) 7 operators : NTT DoCoMo*, China Mobile, T-Mobile, KDDI, Sprint Nextel, Telecom Italia and Telefonica. That's an impressive crew and customer base, but these people are not always used to working together. And a most eminent Founding Member of LiMo didn't climb on board of that one ; Vodafone clinched a different kind of deal earlier with Google (KTF and Softbank also passed that move, but DoCoMo also speaks for the former and the latter prefers a Disney mouse than a Linux pinguin these days). France Telecom snubbed both initiatives.

4) a flock of enablers : Qualcomm*, Broadcom*, intel, TI Audience, Marvell, NVIDIA, SiRF, Synaptics, PacketVideo, Esmertec, Ascender, LivingImage, NMS Communications, Nuance Communications, SkyPop, SONiVOX, Aplix Corporation*, Noser Engineering, TAT - The Astonishing Tribe AB, Wind River*.

5) a pinguin, which didn't need all this mess to exist.

6) a new "tech" label or brand : Android.

What's in a name ? An android is a robot made to resemble a human being, and should respect Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics :
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Android is not a cute name. It's rather scary than sexy. But it's real. Not just hype. Something you build to achieve tasks. Say - you want to get some burdens off the shoulders of i-mode developpers, for instance. Say - you think Orangeworld and Vodafone Live are sexy and you want to make them look corny or obsolete.

So you bring two big names from the web. But these are also enablers facing tough competitors. Will the whole ecosystem follow ?


* these members of The Open Handset Alliance (openhandsetalliance.com) are also Foundation Members of The LiMo Foundation (see "LiMo - stretching Linux Mobile" - 20070223).

Bouygues not for sale ? How about TF1 ?

France's new president makes no secret of his friendship with Martin Bouygues, Arnaud Lagardere, Serge Dassault or Vincent Bollore, major players in France's industrial and communications landscape.
As soon as Sarko got elected, L'Expansion revived rumors of a takeover of Areva and its nuclear gems by Bouygues, and the eventuality of the sale of Bouygues Telecom for EUR 8+ bns. Sarko loves Amerika but AT&T may have other fish to fry than a small spot in the middle of a saturated Europe. Deutsche Telecom just sold its ISP in France (Club Internet), but KPN (a fellow DoCoMo partner) confirmed its interest. And Telefonica has been expecting some reciprocity since Orange entered its home market. Even Vodafone could prefer 100% of France's #3 to 44% of #2 SFR....
Whatever. Bouygues doesn't seem as focused on communication as it used to. Lately, the group lost TPS to Canal+, the battle for TNT / DTV's best slots, part of its soccer rights to France Television, plus his Darth Vaderish leader Patrick Le Lay is about to be replaced by Nonce Paolini, a man who was deliberately sidelined during the elections nights, these key moments when medias meet with all politicians...
Beyond Bouygtel, the sale of TF1 would be a major hearthquake.
Vincent Bollore hates Bouygues and provided the private jet and yacht to Sarkozy for his Malta honeymoon with France. Silvio Berlusconi loves Nicolas Sarkozy and has unfinished business with France. He would be delighted to help Bouygues refocus on its core industrial activities. Bouygues Telecom could be sold once the question of the 4th 3G license is closed, opening a new era of partnerships at the wireless as well as the landline level (Free Iliad ?).

TDTV and femtosales

TDTV seems to have gained a few steps since last year*. Vodafone, 3UK, O2 / Telefonica and Orange have been trying IPWireless's mobile TV solution in Bristol, and unlike for DVB-H, spectrum is available in many countries.
But IPW are facing an impressive bunch of haves and have-mores from Europe (Nokia / DVB-H), the US (Qualcomm / MediaFLO) or Asia (Korea Inc / DMB). Plus lobbying has never been their main asset. Yet Voda, 3, Telefonica and Orange do mean something in Europe. Especially when you need to speed up the delivery of handsets.
I remember the first 3G+ femtocells I ever saw working were IPWireless's UMTS-TDD dongles...
To be not seamlessly continued...

* see "TDtv and IP fews" (20060213)

Pay-Buy Mobile - DoCoMo inside

KTF will pioneer GSMA's "Pay-Buy Mobile" initiative in Korea this summer, a couple of weeks after SK Telecom's launch of a service with Visa International (30,000 3G subscribers from April on).

PBM combines NFC (which should please Nokia) with SIM/Cards techno (which should please operators), and the initial casting of 14 operators from 3 continents looks strong : overall, AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom claim 900 millions subs.

Yet, don't look for a SK Telecom, a Orange, a Telefonica or a Vodafone out there. The Sympay syndrom ? The fear NTT DoCoMo might steal the show and try to make PBM converge with its own initiatives (FeliCa and EDY through BitWallet) ?

Don't look for a bank either. At this stage.

What I do see though, is a transcontinental initiative with a GSMA label. And only a crosscontinental move could force a change in Europe, GSMA's birthplace. Up to now, a lobbying deadlock has been preventing operators and financial institutions from reaching an agreement and m-payment from progressing towards standardization. No-one wants to lose ground on one's home turf (mobility, financial services), and no-one wants a competitor to succeed (ie banks blocking deals between cellcos and more reactive players like Visa or Amex).

Should this G14 federate a few institutions across - say - Asia and North America, things may change. No financial institution will want to lose the face on that one for too long.

DoCoMo did put a few coins in AT&T and KTF. An expensive dime at a not always relevant time. We are about to know if they were just playing with one-armed bandits or really expecting some payback.

MSN, Mobile Centric, Mobisud

In the latest Orange - Microsoft deal, France Telecom's DNA prevailed over Hans Snook's. France Telecom the incumbent and former monopoly, not France Telecom, the brilliant innovator and solutions provider, father of the CNET (now France Telecom R&D).
Competitors can worry now that two major predators team up in the convergence arena. They're meaning business, market share and furthermore, share of client.
Bouygues Telecom remains a Microsoft partner, but with a less exciting revenue sharing deal and a smaller pie to share. And don't count on i-mode for a long lasting differenciation. Convergence ? Sorry lads, rival SFR keeps an eye on your pal Neuf cegetel (as a strong minority shareholder and a friendly M-VNO host for Neuf Mobile) while building an ADSL offer on the ashes of Tele2 France.
"Mobile Centric" SFR also promotes its own SFR Messenger and a teletubby-sounding Happy Zone. Cute, but will this stop pervasive MSN and ubiquitous unik ?
In a cross continental move, Vivendi is building a telecommunity MVNO on SFR's network through another subsidiary, Maroc Telecom. MobiSud* will naturally serve France's strong Moroccan community as a start, but Telefonica should expect quite a few skirmishes accross the Mediterranean ring.

* dot fr or dot com ? Both have recently been locked, the latter by the adco JumpFrance.

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.

Voda results and a DVB-H Kartel

German MNOs definitely took their time to answer debitel's M-VNO - DMB combo*. Vodafone, E-Plus, O2 and T-Mobile unsurprisingly decided to push DVB-H, but their joint approach may prove counterproductive : it looks like clumsy lobbying from all 3G auction winners / losers (Telefonica included), with the benediction of the main lobbyist behind European UMTS then and DVB-H now (Nokia, a former Finnish timber company building forests for towercos). The message : we paid the price for your bad spectrum allocation management so this time let us do our job. We'll take care of everything and TV operators will enjoy an efficient one-stop-shopping system. Mobile TV belongs to us not to them, we need to recover some of our losses thank you.
Losses ? Voda painted their net loss of 21.9 billion pounds a rather T-Mobilish pink in a "Delivering against expectations" section where they "meet or exceed all financial guidance for FY05/06". Meet "financial guidance", the latest financial indicator... a sure hit after the 2000-2002 EBITDA wave, even if all analysts are not bound to dance on this one that easily.
Other remarks :
- over 5% of total revenues for the FY (10% for the last month) were generated by "3G devices", which means "3G" itself delivered much less than that.
- one year after the French NO (to the constitution as well as to the sale of SFR), Europe seems to have stalled. Spain looks fine but Voda warns the audience : fiercer competition in 2006 means weaker results ahead.
- messaging put aside, data jumped an impressive 60% but only represents 3% of controlled service revenue. Revenues can be "stimulated" but margin will improve much quicklier across the Red Empire through a much less glamour "disciplined execution".
- dividends are definitely following a positive curve but in such a context that sounds like a strategical dead-end
- The Verizon Wireless operation comes handy and I'm not sure it will be the case in the future. I see neither strategic vision nor long term commitment in the following statements : "Vodafone's board will always consider shareholder's value", "Vodafone is happy to remain in the US with its existing stake". Actually, I don't think shareholders are happy to remain with the existing lack of strategy.

Now moving on to the "Mobile Plus" revolution (which could be translated by "we cannot survive as mobile only but we cannot scream our loss of face so loudly so let's label fixed services as mobile extensions") : Vodafone At Home and Vodafone At Office were very much needed, and tapping into the advertising well makes perfect sense, but the company seems to define itself as a follower.

If I didn't expect Voda to turn into a daredevil overnight, a cultural shift demands at least some affirmation from a leader. Here, a "customer demand led" Vodafone cautiously dips a timid toe inside the fixed arena ("only the fixed services customers want") and doesn't even expose its own brand in the advertising field where it is so much relevant : to me, leveraging on Google only, a rival in location-based services, instead of developping the Vodafone brand is a strategic mistake.

Well... I've definitely not been very kind to Vodafone lately, but I'm holding no grudge against them. Only expressing some frustration considering what they could do. I felt the same about Orange a few years ago and I hope it won't take them as much time to deliver.

* see "CeBIT unnovations" (20060312)

iPub by O2 - boozer friendly

InfoSpace designed this pub-like environment for i-mode ; a perfect wrap up for their popular games (Pub Pool, Pub Fruity, Pub Darts) and the ideal platform for evolutions (Pub Brawl), synergies with Telefonica (Pub Tapas ?), or even sales of music (Tom Waits' "The piano has been drinking" ?) and movies ("Barfly" ?). Even if O2 is no more listed, shareholders can order a Pub Fish & Dips, but smoking remains forbidden. The bartender charges a boring £3 per month. One could have expected a volume based billing system - by the pint.

Play it again, Samsung ?

Mainland Chinese mobile TV operators ordered 500,000 Samsung DMB-T phones, but in Hong-Kong SAR / Xiang-gang, big figures don't necessarily mean good news :

1. Hutchison Whampoa sold a 10% stake in 3, but to Goldman Sachs and for a lousy 420 million euros. They keep delaying the IPO and see their deal with Skype fall in the shadow of Telefonica's "Plug'n Talk" VoIPo3G solution (even if, for the beginning, it is limited to laptops & PCs through USB & Memory Sticks).
   
2. PCCW Wireless added 310,000 new 3G subscribers in January, but without disclosing the cost of their welcome packs (six month of line rental fees, 10,000 mn of local calls per month, unlimited SMS, unlimited 3G browsing... why did only 310,000 take it ?).

The Chinese jackpot was just one part of Samsung's PRsenal in Barcelona : the kings of crossbar confirmed their ambitions for DMB-T in Europe (trials with TF1 - Bouygues Telecom starting later this month, SGH-P900 on time for the 2006 World Cup, undisclosed negociations with several MNOs...), but will also be ready for DVB-H (SGH-P910) and MediaFLO. Besides, Koreans (for a start) will enjoy an exciting SPH-B4100 which allows simultaneous T-DMB and S-DMB*. There's also fish to fry about Microsoft (i320 with Windows Mobile 5 and a keyboard), HSDPA (Z560) and naturally WiBro (a new device - M8000 - and a new deal : Telecom Italia will use Samsung Wibro solutions next year).

To celebrate in music, Samsung decided to showcase a supposedly customer-oriented (but MNO / CSP driven) SecureMMC application lyrically dubbed "Music download service supporting OMA v2 DRM & MMC with Beep Science"... Play it again, Sam ?

Another player put his cards on the table : Option exhibited GlobeTrotter FUSION+ HSDPA (a HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE / Wi-Fi / PEPPERONI / ANCHOVIES combo Data Card) and GlobeTrotter GT MAX (a tri-band HSDPA / 3G UMTS Data Card already snatched by Cingular GlobalConnect for a promising new plan : unlimited at home + 100Mb abroad). Down the corridor, CSI Wireless tried to plug their fixed wireless (GSM or TDMA) phones : Series 405 (basic) and Series 415 (speaker phone capability + internet access & email via PC).

As expected, HSDPA is getting mainstream (ie Intel working hand in hand with the GSMA to boost embedded HSDPA in laptops) and HSUPA starts making noise far beyond the darkest alleys.

As expected also, "mobile TV" is more often heard than "wireless data". But even if "mobile goes TV" looks strong in the charts, this is only 3GSM radio, and we soon will move back to the "TV goes mobile" tune**.

* 2 channels at the same time, in other words. On the same mini-screen ? Korean will soon outclass Japan in miniaturization. When you think Ninendo consider adding a mobile TV tuner to their DS Portable gaming systems...

** the Murdoch lads managed to sell once again their Sky By Mobile (skybymobile.com) concept. This BSkyB's mobile counterpart to Sky By Broadband leverages on the whole Sky machine : Sky TV by mobile, Sky News, Sky Bet, Sky Digital, Sky Sports (including the Baclays Premiership and UEFA Champions League)...

Telefonica's Northern Exposure

£17.7bn. Again, a lot of dough. But this time and even if this is Halloween, Telefonica is not going for spectrum or spectre with a greenfield operation in Germany : O2* are a full grown operator with positions in both the UK and Germany, not to mention other remains of the British Empire.
If Telefonica Moviles manages to be swift and efficient, Vodafone and T-Mobile should start worrying. This could also prove to be a clue for the future of T-Mobile USA within the pink team.
Whatever. Europe is catching up with America and the wave of concentration ain't over yet. Expect more Air France - KAL - style operations as well as a few low cost airlines crashes.

* about O2 : "Superfast me, O2" (20051023), "Brand new KPN - Brand new USA - Same old standards" (20050901), "One month oxygen supply" (20050827), "Over the air" (20050409)

Endemobile reality check : mobile soaps and bubbles

Endemol's Peter Bazalgette announced two new mobile channels : Extreme Reality Channel and a future Comedy channel.




Freemantle Media Licensing Worldwide announced a mobile version of The X Factor with MIG (Mobile Interactive Group).
Freemantle's rather classical approach shouldn't bring much disruption to the market. No big Fear Factor for Endemol : they intend to shake mobile TV the way they did with SMS (remember Big Brother and Veronica ?) with "a non-stop parade of the bizzarrest and weirdest video clips from the world of entertainment". According to the not so entertaining Endemol Mobile website, content will partly be "based on the huge back catalogue of Endemol".
I wonder what's more depressing : an microerzatz of existing soaps or the most extreme worst of reality TV trash, straight from the bin. 3G is fine, wait till they get 3D and odorama...

TDD & TDMB, not so TDous

After all, TDMB still has a chance in Europe. Part of the lobbying I mentioned about LG is about the easiness of piggybacking on existing DAB networks, whilst DVB spectrum remains to be seen. And LG are starting this month a T-DMB trial in Regensburg, Germany, supposedly under the helm of the EU IST CELTIC Project, CELTIC standing for Cooperation for a European sustained Leadership In Telecommunications. I guess Nokia appreciates the joke, especially since they are part of CELTIC's Core Group (the same can be said about BT, FT or Telefonica). And CELTIC's "Call 2 projects tackling convergence" still includes WingTV, a program devoted to Nokia's DVB-UMTS integration. Fixed incumbents are already involved in such trials, but they are also busy taking shares of IPTV market as quickly as possible in a competitive DSL world. France Telecom's MaLigne TV could go international with a more colorful branding (the color of a juicy fruit, for instance), and Telefonica's Imagenio could leverage on the operator's reconquista of the Americas. Mobile broadcasters will be stronger if they already are strong IPTV leaders...
TD-CDMA have been back from the dead for months : Orange in France, T-Mobile in the Czech Republic, Nextel in Washington D.C.... even Japan reserved the 2GHz spectrum for IP Wireless' beloved technology. TDD could prove a quick fix for such US players as Sprint-Nextel or T-Mobile : W-CDMA is on its way (in different bands) and the HSDPA -HSUPA have the favor of many GSM players, but TDD could deliver earlier and cheaper coverage without major spectrum hurdles (especially compared to demanding HSUPA). Beyond data cards or dongles, handsets are yet to be found, and the industry needs more than IPW partnerships with Atmel or Teleca to solve this.

Row vs Wide(band)

Enough of Korea's DMB ! Let's see how Europe's DVB-H is doing.
The ETSI's official mobile TV techno since last year, DVB-H was considered more suitable than UMTS (capacity is an issue, even with the release 6 and MBMS - Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service), DAB (the name sums it up : A stands for Audio and V for Video*), or Korea's DMB (even DMB-S requires costly terrestrial re-transmitters for an efficient coverage... and operators DO have to roll out UMTS anyway). Besides, the techno was pushed by a European player with kind of a telecom background : Nokia.
Nokia 7710 s were used for the bulk of the early trials of DVB-Handeld :

• an international triple play last year : M1 in Singapore, Sonera - Elisa in Finland and the more surprising Crown Castle in Pittsburgh.
• a spectacular spring-summer season featuring Canal+ (w SFR) and TPS (w Bouygues & Orange) in France or Telefonica in Spain
• a much awaited september trial with Ariqva's (formerly NTL Broadcast) : it's in Oxford, Shorts** are provided and O² capacity is required but the 500 users shouldn't have to row (Nokia said the batteries were powerful enough)

The US are clearly a key market : this is the place where all technos cohabit, where broadcasters rule over mobilecos... and if I can make it there I'll make it anywhere***.

No wonder the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI) published a paper on "How Korean Telecom Companies Can Enter the US Satellite DMB Market ". The US have the same digital broadcasting standards as Korea for TV (ATSC or 8-VSB is different from Europe's DVB or Japan's ISDB - among the promoters of this "US HDTV" are USDTV), but for radio they have HD Radio (datacasting over digital radio as developed by iBiquity : terrestrial or satellite, XM Radio and Sirius Satellite leading on the sat side) instead of Korea's DMB or Japan's ISDB. Korea seems to dump ATSC for DMB for TV as well but since DVB-S already proved sustainable with SKYLife they gave DVB-H a symbolic try : KBS were the only broadcasters to play with the Ministry (MIC) and two broadcasting associations (the Korean Broadcasting Committee and the United Broadcasting Union). Of course, they are now playing along the others on DMB.

Nokia's approach of the US market doesn't look much impressive at first sight : I had to do something in the US but couldn't clinch any deal with any mobileco, so I took a towerco along with Idetic's MobiTV (major channels for $10 a month). But Crown Castle are a key partner for Verizon or Cingular in the US, and also an operator since they own their own frequencies : they paid $12.6M for a 10 year terrestrial license (5MHz, L-Band spectrum 1440-1790 MHz). Crown Castle also selected DiBcom for PC accesses, a French company seen at 3GSM and backed by an interesting crew : France's SGAM & Credit Agricole, USA's Freescale / Motorola Ventures, Australia's Convergent Technologies, Israel's Vertex Management, and Germany's Cipio Partners... both DiBcom and Convergent Technologies seeming rather Windows friendly companies.

The fact is that unlike DMB, DVB-H selected Windows Media for audio (WM along with AAC, vs BSAC for DMB) as well as for video (WM9 along with MPEG4 vs MPEG4 only for DMB). So we are not talking only about Nokia, but about a Nokia - Microsoft duo. Of course, Microsoft should also play competitive technos****, but what a pair for mobile TV...

* Yet, Virgin Mobile are investigating mobile TV over DAB (1,000 users in South-West England thanks to BT Livetime, BT Wholesale and Digital One's network). They're also soft-launching W-CDMA in few cities. In both cases, VirginRadio happened to play the crash tester for the Virgin Group : an early adopter of DAB (first trials 10 years ago), VR had already been available on 3G for a couple of weeks ("3G radio" with Sydus).

** Shorts International (A.K.A. Britshorts Ltd, also an Orange partner)

*** How about China then ? They do use DVB-T but are considering their own Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) standard while testing all others, including DVB-T, ATSC and ISDB-T. Mobile ? Don't mention it yet ?

**** This time, Qualcomm looks in a difficult position : they spent $800 on MediaFLO which won't be delivered before next year and neither Microsoft nor Korea are on board. The FCC seems more attracted by the "TV-Fi" concept.

Zero noodle. Korea goes South.

Wireless goes TV : the latest Samsung TV phone for TU Media has a stand so that the user can watch it without holding it. Next disruption ? I suggest the integration of the "mobile TV" in a 1950s piece of furniture...
TV goes wireless : China's Haier claims the world's first UWB HDTV. Remember the first 802.11b TV ? I don't give a damn which techno makes it provided "zero noodle" happens before "zero paper".
Korea goes South :

• It may take BenQ some time to catch up with LG and Samsung in the mobile handset business, but Taiwan is already ahead of Korea as far as LCD screens are concerned.
• One year after turning down Qualcomm's EV-DV chip, LG Telecom will fulfill his 3G duties in Korea with Qualcomm's EV-DO revision A erzatz (EV-DO rA ble ?). Sign of the times : LG just applied for a wireless license in China and among the 8 players to apply, only Amoi prefered CDMA to GSM.

Japan goes West : Mobile payment 1 : 0 Mobile philantropy (injury time).

• NTT DoCoMo are pushing as hard as ever in the mobile payment arena. One day after clinching a deal with East Japan Railway on common infrastructures for Suica and Osaifu Keitei, they announced a JV with ULTRA d.d.d., the Slovenian owner of Telargo (a mobile assets management specialist of which DCM will take 49%) and the much more interesting

M-PAY...

While DoCoMo are pushing, Arun Sarin is considering an end to the Vodafone Ka Ka in Japan.

West meets East : China Netcom and Telefonica decided to work together on their core businesses and, more spectacularily, to share managerial best practices and seats at each other's Boards and Committees. The Carlos Goshn's effect ? Expect some wireless byproducts (Goshn in a clamshell ?).

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.

2005 : how about Europe ?

So 2004 is over, with WCDMA reaching the 16M user mark globally (up 60% since end of Q3), essentially thanks to three players : DoCoMo (migration speeding up in Japan), 3 (cheap voice sells and there's no better way of attracting stupid European men than displaying some soccer action) and Vodafone (at last at ease with marketing). As expected, the technology is starting to catch up with CDMA2000 (145M users end 2004, up from 100M in july, thanks to 107 operators covering 53 countries) : WCDMA just represents 10% of the total 3G customer base, but already 32% of Qualcomm's Q4 royalties (up from 12% one year earlier). And doc Jacobs is speeding up on HSDPA.
But Qualcomm are also investing in Europe, and a much clever way than they did with Dolphin (a genuine TETRAgedy). The cdma family is saved, Brew enjoys its own market like any Microsoft me-too product, and the battle may well move closer to the enduser. Look how Mr Q purchased Europe's Trigenix, a specialist in user interface. Look how they sell their mobile broadcasting MediaFLO techno in the US : it's all about user experience (no progress bar, less consumption, easy shuffle...), at a time when Orange marvel at the daily 25 mn their Orange Intense early adopters spend on live TV in France... but don't realise yet this may not be the best technology to perform this basic task.
Another interesting move, from Asia to America this time : the SK-Earthlink JV, a MVNO projecting 3M subs and a $2bn turnover by the end of 2009. Smart move from both players - a perfect match in a coopetitive world. The days of the merger with Mindspring long gone, Earthlink claims about 5M subs and its wireless MVNO experience shows a strong focus on business and data services. SKT has it all, plus the wireless expertise, the consumer focus and the entertainment touch. Wireless internet services represented 20% of their 2004 ARPU, almost 24% during Q4 (24%, that's about the percentage of the mobile users who had some mobile multimedia experience beyond sms in France !). Yet if they want to implement all their success stories in the US, SKT should expect some resistance from powerful lobbies (ie banks vs Moneta, music majors vs MelOn...). But they survived portability and managed to gain more than 400K customers last year. And succeeding in the US is a strong commitment.
How about Europe ? There was a time when its players ruled 2G. Before the 3G licensing madness, a few did have some vision but much too early and with the wrong priorities (remember Telefonica ?). So forget about an aggressive agenda in Asia or in the Americas. But who knows ? Sometimes it pays not to be the first to blow a bubble.