YouTube founder forced back to his old company

I just stole this laugh from Steve Chen ("mind if I send you back to YouTube?" - I consider his laugh as a "no", so here he is, back on YouTube):



Chen was invited to the 2013 Asian Leadership Conference (organized by Chosun Ilbo in Seoul), where he told his already rich (in every sense of the word) story.

According to him, the main reason why so few Korean start-ups make it to the world stage is that few have a global reach in mind in the first place, and that (a trait shared by many other countries) very few people are ready to "take the jump". I would also blame the weak SME ecosystem, with chaebols sucking out way too much value at the earliest stages of emerging technologies and innovations.

Chen started AVOS Systems with fellow YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. They are reviving delicio.us, which they purchased from Yahoo!, and launched Zeen (social media - DYI magazines), an interesting revenge of traditional media in our paperless, always-on world.

mot-bile 2013

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

2001 2011 2021 revolutions

The Nokia-Microsoft knot tying didn't quite come as a surprise - more the confirmation of a double failure, and the sign that times they have a-changed over the past decade.

Remember the time when both giants were competing for mobile data supremacy ? Well combined they still lead the smartphone OS barnum, but not as cultural leaders.

Ten years from now, we'll probably be laughing at the Apple-Google war - or rather at the Google-Facebook face off. Ten years ago, former webehemoth Yahoo! was licking his post-bubble wounds, toddler Google waiting for better times to consider its IPO, and Facebook was not even on its founders' brainwave maps (whoever said founders may be). Ten years ago, MNOs were trying to figure out how to recover from insane auctions for 3G spectrum.

2021 top duettists may not be born yet. Maybe Apple could be one of them. Not Apple the device manufacturer (still struggling with a sub-5% market share), but Apple the champion of cloud management services, and your favorite remote librarian.

But the next tide is coming. Take Southcentral Google, for instance : rumor has it they're considering a merger with fellow Baby Googles Southeastern Google and Northwestern Google. Announcements to be made in Seoul at the 5GLTE World Congress.

mot-bile 2011

Paul Allen v. Rest Of The Web : NTP Redux ?

Paul Allen's Interval Licensing is suing a few Microsoft foes : AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, YouTube.

The charges : patent infringement regarding 4 patents owned by Interval Licensing - as the name suggests, an empty shell meant to make as many bucks as possible out of
Interval Research "creations".

In this case, the patents protect : a "Browser (...) With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data", an "Attention Manager", and a system to "Alert(...) Users to Items of Current Interest".

Now this episode definitely became an "item of current interest" in a sector still shaken by the NTP/RIM battle over patents.

What puzzles me is to see Paul Allen, who only left the board of Microsoft in 2000, claim a leadership in browsers : Microsoft copied all major user interface disruptions from Apple, starting with the "windows" concept, and the company didn't believe in the internet, joining the bandwagon very late, starting the Internet Explorer project two years after Mosaic was created. Why not sue Mosaic then ? And IE for exploiting it ?

You may win your lawsuit, just like NTP did. But do you want to go down in history for that last caricature of Microsoftian Evilness ?

You'd better stick to rock'n roll, Paulie.

mot-bile 2010

5 trends for 2009 ?

. more concerns about health with the rise of femtocells
. vertical concentration in the media
. more big names (Yahoo!, RIM...?) change hands, more manufacturers go bankrupt
. DoCoMo goes shopping to pave the way for an international launch of LTE - Japan Inc follows suit thanks to a strong Yen
. a 3.0 FCC chairman with a web pedigree

Social networking for social networks

With Yahoo!'s oneConnect, mobile users will enjoy one interface to synchronise all their social networking services (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace).

Except for the "contacts" part of the services.

What a shame. Imagine Steve Balmer wants to become your friend while you're on the go...

Talking about Stevie Nowonder : he's daring to buy Danger. So Microsoft's idea of innovation is to purchase a netco that used to be hype in the mid 90s and a small manufacturer that happened to make one hype device in the early 2000s ? Danger is my middle name, but I just use the initial : D as in "Dfence"... at least SonyEricsson is joining the Windows Mobile wagon.

Social networking again : Orange and T-Mobile will launch mobile TV in the UK using TDtv technology from NextWave Wireless (formerly known as IP Wireless). No spectrum hassles here, unlike with DVB-H. And as we recently saw*, Orange will soon be able to put satellite on the top of it.

Qualcomm is fuming : no one wants its MediaFLO, nor its UMB, nor its 4G (key CDMA players, including Verizon Wireless, are going for LTE).

Maybe Qualcomm should have tried social networking instead of asocial pervasive licensing.

* see "Orange has its rights, Orange has it right" (20080210)

Your personal safe haven

I just answered a friend's question about convergence. Which led me back to a point I raised a couple of years ago*.

As the customer experience in a converging environment gains in seamlessness and fluidity, a sense of unease may be growing. Yes, as expected, the home and the office won back part of their central role. Yes, as expected, a main personal device allows you to switch seamlessly from a residential to a nomadic to a mobile mode. But at the same time, you are more and more led to grow what I call your "main ID" on distant servers.

Nowadays, social networks services get a major slice of that aggregate. It used to be your e-mail service provider, your homepage host or your blog dealer. It may be someone else tomorrow... and not necessarily that Microsoft-Yahoo! 800 pound gorilla (the latest Alien-Predator flick, or rather the latest 70s-90s revival).

But there as well, convergence is on the way. And the consumactor will be torn between the one-stop shopping need of a centralized management and the fear of leaving his most precious personality to one greedy corporation.

To me, beyond the access commodity, the core of the value shall lie at that level. And the best service providers will have to be as efficient, independent and trustable as top private bankers in charge of precious diversified portfolios (ie cultural rights, databanks, IDs...).


* see "Open Spheres, Personal Spheres, Shared Spheres and Safe Heavens" (20050520)

MySpace, My Yahoo!, My Sun

It didn't take long for Vulture Capitalists to start hovering above semelless Yahoo!*

For 25% to 30% of the bride, Ruppert Murdoch offers paper, and boy doesn't he have a lot of the toilet kind (tabloids, MySpace shares...) ?

Yahoo! may follow another lead, but this clearly reminds us the maverick netco has become a media among others, struggling to adapt to the times and spaces. And cheaper** than Dow Jones / WSJ... traditional papers with flesh on 'em.


* see "Near Failed Communications" (20060619)
** people are mentioning $9-12 bn (based on Y!'s valuation), but Sir Ruppert would have spent about half a billion overall.

Near Failed Communications

Can you hear me ?

Qualcomm makes sure everybody heard about PCCW's MediaFLO trial. From May 14 to November 13, 2007 (including the kick off of the 2007-2008 Premier League season, a PCCW exclusivity), the Hong Kong leader will try "to assess the potential business model of a commercial mobile television service based on MediaFLO - an open, mobile broadcasting technology - if such a service were to be launched in Hong Kong".
The service will be launched, all right. With or without Qualcomm is another story, but PCCW is willing, as Vodafone would say, to make the best of now TV. This quadplayer is already a TVNO (PCCW Media Limited) and a TV-VNO (PCCW-HKT Telephone Limited), and now TV claims 800,000 subs and 130 channels 4 years after launch (September 2003).

Can you see me ?

SK Telecom introduced their "3G+ Streaming Video Customer Center" to Korea's 160,000 hearing-impaired people. In such a competitive market, the niche is big enough to justify a specific answer, not to mention the obvious PR / image benefits.
SKT clearly mean go beyond appearances : 4,100 W120 streaming video-enabled handsets donated in April 2006, consultations Monday to Friday 9 AM to 6 PM free of charge with operators trained for all the needed languages (and the possibility of streaming video chatting), SMS transmission rates and call traffic rates offered, 35% discount off monthly flat rates...
The path is difficult : "to date, about 1,800 customers are able to use the streaming video service". Not even 5% of the 36,600 hearing-impaired people registered to the regular SK Telecom Customer Center...

Can you copy me ?

5 years after IPO, Yahoo! hired Terry Semel as their top gun. 6 years later, Jerry Yang takes his job back.
Yahoo! failed to compete with Google, but the incumbent gets ready for new bold strategic moves / partnerships / sales / all of the above.
If I were Big G, I'd be careful of the Airbus Syndrom.

Can you read me ?

Wibree joins the Bluetooth SIG - less tooth grinding for Nokia's researchers. So long babee wibro wanabeee.
The NFC Forum just e-mailed me some very disruptive news : unlike the rest of my daily spam, their previous e-mail couldn't reach my mailbox. Near Failed Communications ?

Still looking for the sign "Big bucks stop here".

aQuantive, the ad fad and the virtual estate bubble

DoubleClick @ Google = $3.1 Bn. RightMedia @ Yahoo! = $680 M. Real Media @ WPP = $649 M. aQuantive @ Microsoft = $6 Bn...
The Virtual Estate bubble keeps inflating. Six billion bucks, that's a lot of dough, even for Microsoft who never signed such a big check (except to its owners, that is). Besides, this QuadrupleClick extravaganza is equivalent to a 85% premium vs AQTN's Tuesday's closing price...
Is Redmond that desperate not to miss the next train and this discreet commuter living around the same station (aQ are based in Seattle, WA) ? At this price, they could even go for the real thing, a real adco.
Somehow, MSN's mother company was supposed to have at least some notions of advertising. Ditto Yahoo! & Co. One can wonder whether this really will add sense to Google, today's king of online advertising.
Well. For one thing, it was a matter of taking a fifth P, lifting a powerful leg to mark one's territory. And Razorfish (one of the franchises owned by aQuantive holdings) is not the smallest one in this pond. Actually, there was a competition raging for this prize.
Yet fundamentally, there is the necessity to distinguish the media from the advertising platform. In real life, Viacom enjoys strong positions both as a media and as an adco... but not on the very same turf either. That can be OK when you are a huge conglomerate with the ability to build Chinese Walls. But it can't work when you are used to grow following the microsoftian model.

3GSM 2007 - A brave new World ? A new and improved Vodafone ?

This week, Vodafone decided to send a few messages to the market :
- Purchase of Hutchison Essar ($11.7bn for a 67% controlling stake... provided Essar doesn't launch a counterattack tainted with economic patriotism*) : I intend to remain in the World's top 3 operators for subscribers and I'm gonna post exciting growth rates for the years to come. Certainly not for ARPU but I'm investing for the long term. And by the way : I'm still able to invest for higher purposes than the loyalty of my shareholders.
- Another deal with Orange on 3G network sharing : I prefer to invest on CAPEX in India where it will make a difference. I'm bracing for a fiercer competition in mature markets, where I will focus on service.
- An impressive collection of old and new partnerships with almost all major web players (Google for mapping, Yahoo! and Microsoft for IM, YouTube, eBay, MySpace...) : you think these newcomers are smarter and swifter, and you believe they will get the bulk of the value but look ! everybody wants to work with me and I'm certainly not begging for partners. They know who's ruling the game and you don't want to miss this train or else...

At last the big red machine decides to move. But I cannot see much disruption out there. It actually looks like their last smart move in Turkey, only at a bigger scale. I'd like to have more movements in the home / office spheres. Beyond WCDMA900, that is (Nokia providing UMTS900 for SFR after Portugal and Finland). To be continued...

Otherwise, 2007 doesn't look like a year for new paradygms :
- Qualcomm still wants to be the King of the Universe, but its Universal Broadcast Modem (UBM) combines MediaFLO technology, DVB-H and 1seg / ISDB-T without caring much for DMB... a slap on the wrist for those naughty koreans who want to kick it out of their country.
- Quadplays are getting mainstream. The Virgin-NTL combo, Virgin Media, charges £20 for 2, £30 for 3 and £40 for the first no-frills quads (the 125 pound gorilla offers unlimited calls in the fixed arena and 500 mn of mobile babbling plus a monthly data package including £60 in airtime and 1,000 SMS, along with the hardware - handset and PVR). Virgin Mobile will also strengthten its controlled distribution.
- Either terrified by Viviane Reding or cornered by an ever tougher competition, O2 extends My Europe to 31 countries. For £10 per month or £60 per year, business subscribers to My Europe Extra won't be charged for incoming calls whatever the network on which they are roaming. Intraeuropean calls will cost 25p per mn flat.

That could be the best news for 2007 (but for MNO shareholders) : the landline / mobile gap in calling rates is bound to decrease even before VoIP gets fully mobile. The competition goes beyond mobility and furthermore, from the customer's point of view, that's the minimum you could expect from convergence in a broadband world.


* Voda downsizes its participation in Bharti but still keeps a few toes in the venture.

iPhone, you Zune - soon on Apple TV

Apple reached an agreement with Cisco on iPhone trademark issues on time for MacWorld and the CES.
Apple reached an agreement with Yahoo! on mobile searches and Google on mobile mapping.
Apple reached an agreement with Microsoft on the compatibility between iPhones and Mac / Windows.
Microsoft warned Apple : phones are a tricky business and even Redmond eggheads are struggling. Adding a keypad to your iPod won't solve everything. If it were the case, we would be launching our own Zune phone. And if we knew how to solve anything, we would even have launched a good Zune in the first place !
Apple TV is not so HD (720p instead of 1080p), not so high storage either (only 40G), not so multimedia (games ?), and definitely not so innovative... but anyway, the iPod itself is far from being the best Portable Multimedia Player around. And Apple is Apple.
Is it ?
Apple is no more about innovation but about hype. Apple is no more "Apple Computer" but "Apple Inc". Apple doesn't make computers anymore ; Apple sells Apple.
Sony also used to enjoy the sometimes too comfortable position of the "cool" brand.
Actually, Sony should be leading the multimedia convergence, being into computers, TVs, handsets, game consoles, and even entertainment. It unfortunately tackled convergence with hardware solutions (Memory Stick) while Apple focused on software (iTunes, iPhoto...).
Neither will dominate because either way, the industry doesn't like standards owned by only one of them.
Apple TV will certainly contribute to the democratization of enhanced home entertainment. And iPhones will sell, even at such a high price. But the more they do, the sooner iTunes will be forced to open up, and Apple itself to change business models.

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.

AT&T U-Verse 1 - better than chapter 11

Born again AT&T introduced its U-verse concept at the 2005 CES, with the ambition of covering 18M homes by the end of 2008. FTTH IPTV services only started late last month in 5,000 homes in San Antonio, TX with the help of Verizon's FiOS network.
This offer would look rather disappointing to Korean eyes and wallets : no more than 6 megs, up to $120 per month for a wireless bundle... but hey that's a start and ain't that much competition in SBC's 13-state-wide kingdom, so let early adopters finance innovation.

AT&T already rules in SBCland with 7.4M ADSL lines, but they intend to reach 100% in broadband coverage thanks to various fibers in urban areas, satellite broadband in rural areas (Project Lightspeed is supposed to reach 5.5M low-income households by the end of 2009), and fixed wireless (WiMAX a top pick) to fill the blanks.

The first 13 states before the whole country... this state of the AT&T-SBC union address should resonate as a warning to competing superpowers : we're not only focusing on homeland security ; we're also preparing preemptive strikes everywhere. But the old Texan way : we don't want to make it sound like an aggression, so no need to add "bring it on".

I also find rather clever their partnership with Yahoo! and Verizon Wireless "for a generation of tech-savvy consumers who rely on the Internet and wireless phones as their primary communications tools" (to wit : the smart ones who are leaving the incumbent - a speechless and voiceless carrier). AT&T position themselves as a central integrator of services : we help you subscribe to AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, and to Verizon Wireless as well if you need a wireless service, but you can still chose AT&T for voice services at home. Beyond the usual "free" LLO services (Call Waiting, Three-Way Calling, Call Forwarding...), the AT&T CallVantage package proposes well marketed bonuses :
- Call Logs (with "click to dial")
- Do Not Disturb (only emergency calls pass through)
- Personal Conferencing (10 people overall)
- Locate Me (when you're away from home, incoming calls track you by ringing up to five phones all at once or one right after the other)
- Web-Based Voice Mail (AT&T just couldn't not include it in such an offer)

Why is it so interesting ? I'm not sure it will work, but it's neither some double-stage VoIP thing like Skype, nor an ugly plug-in like Vonage's latest USB gizmo. It's a truly operated service from a genuine operator or better, a Virtual Network Operator on its own network. It's both a win-back and a win-period approach, an attempt to sublimate voice services and fully give them their value back. I wish it weren't that expensive and I wish it could go beyond fixed and mobile, and even beyond the now traditional homezone concept.

A new Vodafone vis-a-vis Japan

Far from Jean-Marie Messier's extravaganza at Quai Branly celebrating the purchase of Mannesmann by Vodafone and that of Universal by Vivendi (and matter-of-factly the launch of Vizzavi), Arun Sarin and Masayoshi Son shook hands at a Tokyo hotel to celebrate the sale of Vodafone KK - to Softbank (and matter-of-factly the launch of a 11 bn yen and 50-50 JV between Vodafone and Softbank).
We're not witnessing the birth of the next Yahoo! : because Son has been holding Sunnyvale, CA in his heart and wallet for too long, but also because this JV is more about actual mortar than virtual clicks.
The Indo-Brit and the Korean-Japanese will cooperate on handsets (development and purchase), software (creation) and mobile content (creation and distribution). No farfetched branding this time - only a sober Softbank Mobile Corp to replace the doomed KK, and no hint regarding the future of Vodafone as a brand in the archipelago.

Another good fairy over Helio's cradle

After the 65+ million MySpace members*, Helio LLC adds the half billion Yahoo! users to his wishlist.
Among the key features included in the partnership : Yahoo! Search (dedicated button), Yahoo! Shortcuts, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messengers and all Yahoo! content channels, plus cross-marketing operations.
More partnerships should follow, but the not-yet-born M-VNO already presents a healthy face. Technical witchcraft plus marketing know-how... SK Telecom's DNA starts showing.



* see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220)

Master Voda should gather force instead of pleasing the audience

Unsurprisingly enough, the Vodafone KK exception is over. Now, Japan Inc controls everything. AOL ? Nipponized. Yahoo! ? Japanified. By SoftBank, the country's #3 MNO's new owner. Vodafone ? Sorry lads, Masayoshi Son intends to get rid of the brand ASAP.
Arun Sarin will give the bulk of the cash (£6bn out of 6.8) to his shareholders ; more value for the short sighted. At least, Sir Christopher's successor starts preparing a much awaited coming out* : "We may no longer be mobile only. We may get into other services in the telecommunications space (...) not particularly (...) landline assets". A glimpse of a leader's grand vision or a shy follower's wishful thought ?
So the World's biggest mobile community focuses on Europe, with a few colonies around (as a MNO, M-VNO or reseller), and a big problem to solve in the US. I guess a smaller but stronger and more united Kingdom makes sense, but it would require a genuine shift in the business model to create long term value. Neither the flamboyant-arroGent way, nor the shareholder-first way - a different way.
When you think about it... what did this XXIst century commonwealth get for their £112 bn back in 1999 ? Arun Sarin plus Airtouch**... Time to prove all that was more than a touch of hot air.


* see last blog.
** allright... and some more paper to wrap Mannesmann up, not to mention a glass of Chivas Regal for J6M.

3Greenfield Japan

So Livedoor eventually didn't get a 3G license in Japan (see "Livedoor to incumbents : you've got mail"), and the winners are IPMobile, Softbank BB & eAccess. Actually, I'm not so sure one can talk about "winners"...

• IPMobile are already looking for M-VNOs to fill their TD-CDMA pipes (Roll-out : 3,000 BS by end 2007, 8,500 by end 2012 - QoS : 5.2 Mbps downlink, 858 Kbps uplink - TTM october 2006). M-VNOs can be turned down by DoCoMo (network saturation) and Vodafone KK (coverage), but will they really invest in UMTS TDD instead of IPMobile rivals' W-CDMA / HSDPA or KDDI's CDMA2000 ? The good news for IPWireless is their orders are up. The bad news is they might have to pay for them.
• eAccess branded their greenfield MNO eMobile, which sounds like immobile (fixed, unmovable). The fact is they don't seem in such a hurry : they didn't even complete their business plan before getting the license and their TTM is only March 2007 for a regional launch (National coverage is supposed to be completed by March 2008). eMobile aim at 5M subs after 5 years of operation but even after purchasing AOL Japan last year, eAccess only claim 2.1M subs - besides, dial-up still represents one third of their turnover. TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Systems, Inc) bring an interesting media / broadband / broadcasting flavor, but they just take 14% of the responsibilities. New partners are welcome but who wants to fight with DoCoMo at home, where even Master Voda struggles for his life ? If no one shows up soon, at least there will be some spectrum for sale.
• Among the three, Softbank looks like the little pig with the house made of stone : if the Yahoo! deals were already good clicks, Japan Telecom brought actual mortar and unlike Livedoor's Takafumi Horie, Masayoshi Son is now part of the Japanese establishment. TTM is not as aggressive as for IPMobile and one can smile at BB Mobile's "mobile triple play" (voice, video and data !) trials with LG Electronics and Nortel ("pre-WiMAX (802.16e)" + HSDPA), but no one should take TV Bank for a new gadget : this new venture will open early 2006 in East-Asia's leading hubs (Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo). And beyond Japan, Son opened a promising front in China through Taiwan.

NTT DoCoMo are claiming they fear no one and they could be right. But the chances of disruption remain unnerving enough.

Mevangelists, Chief Internet Evangelists and Intelligent Designers

After Chief Yahoo! (David Filo, Jerry Yang) and Chief Architect (Bill Gates, Karl Rove), enter Chief Internet Evangelist (Vint Cerf).
Google badly needed to surf the fundamentalists' wave. Their new Guru should hire top guns as deputies (I suggest a good televangelist and an ambitious m-evangelist), and quick please : believers as well as shareholders fear AOL could leave Google for the Church of MSN (by the way, the same AOL will let Total Talk, their young Canadian broadband preacher, cross the border with Mother Time Warner).
Hopefuly, Newborn Googlers can safely join the community now, thanks to "Google Secure Access". Note the reassuring rebranding of the formerly doomsday sounding feeva (see saturday night feeva - gloocalization)... I guess Google also found the right man for the much wanted position of Chief Internet Architect (CIA).

PayPal m-pilots and 90s revivals

Bango didn't wait one day and the beginning of the Mobile Content World forum to announce their implementation of PayPal. The M-content enabler had to surf on the other news of the day (eBay putting their hands on Skype).

A couple of months ago, operators would pull the plug on Simpay (analyze this : pulling the plug on a wireless project) and now, in a weird late nineties revival, mobilecos are talking next gen networks and fearing for their golden geese (screaming to the top of their lungs they might lose their dear voice ARPU) while ambitious dotcoms are splashing headlines with megabuck megamergers. The same dotcoms with about the same indecent market caps (eBay, Yahoo!, Google...), followed by the same usual suspect (Microsoft).

But this time, they're not only using paper which may end down the drain : they're laying actual greenbacks from actual profits. Even better : consumers are using their mobile payment solutions.