Bullywood v. TikTok?

So this time, India decided to ban TikTok permanently*, depriving the Chinese platform of 17% of the world population, and of a nation that will never reach herd immunity when it comes to dance and music.

The 59 Chinese apps banned by India

India will survive: it's much easier to replace an app with tens of existing rivals than, say, to dump Huawei for another 5G provider.

TikTok will survive, but that sets a disturbing precedent. Somehow, ByteDance has been exposed to this kind of risks ever since they swallowed Musical.ly two years ago, and many consider TikTok as a Trojan Horse for Beijing more subtle than WeChat. So when it spread even faster than coronavirus*, calls to flatten the curve multiplied. And when Zhang Yiming hired former Disney streaming boss Kevin Mayer to lead TikTok and to become ByteDance's COO, some saw it as - beyond the obvious reach for proven talent - a telltale sign that some sort of sheep's clothing was required to better face upcoming legal battles over US national security. Obviously, proposing distinct platforms for the Chinese market (Douyin) and overseas isn't enough.

The weeks and months to come will test many nations, players, and sectors as TikTok extends across new territories and verticals (health, education...). ByteDance could prolong its success with other assets such as Xigua Video, an even more direct competitor to YouTube: with its limit of 60' loops, TikTok itself can't go further than 2 hand washings, and you can imitate Twitter and double your core limit once, but your concept has to keep some consistency. Of course, along the way, ByteDance will further perfect its already impressive A.I. know-how (something among others that Vine didn't have).

Can TikTok's momentum be broken by this single setback? No. But if the US or the EU start weighing in, things could change.

One thing is sure: India is changing. And even before this episode, Narendra Modi was benchmarking China for online censorship***. This is not just about banning 59 apps from a coopetitor nation, but in the process, about rounding up all players in a most pervasive, theoretically open ecosystem.

mot-bile 2020

* along with 58 other apps, starting with WeChat 

** mentioning killer apps during a lockdown sounds obscene because it is, but TikTok and Zoom purely seized the moment
*** see for instance "India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship" (NYT 20190214)

Triple Play, Triple Aggregation

SK Telecom confirmed April 5 as the date of its 5G launch - as soon as Samsung Galaxy S10 5G handsets are delivered (monthly plans expected around KRW55,000 / $49 per month). 

As expected, promoting a 'Social VR' experience well ahead of 5G ("Ready Player oksusu Social VR?") turned out to be a smart move to detect the levels of bandwidth required for an optimal user experience (e.g. 4G LTE too slow for rapid eye / head movements): Korea's leading MNO intends to leverage 5G compression technologies to speed up VR sessions by 30%, and to combine 5G with 4G and wifi where available to allow the download of a 2 Gb movie in only 4 seconds, dubbing the concept 'Triple Aggregation'.

While operators work hard to make the most of their costly pipes, other players parade with seemingly effortless solutions, but will Google Stadia fulfill its category killer potential? Announced at the Game Developers Conference by Sundar Pichai himself, the cloud-based platform and its Stadia Controler would love to piggyback the kind of boosters SKT has in store, but regardless, YouTube and Google Home integration will definitely help.

Apple had to react, but could only display an Apple Arcade that smells like 1980s spirit. Yeah! exclusive games! only on iOS, Mac, Apple TV! to download from your Apple Store! 

Even if that's in a different field, Apple TV+ is also about defending the Apple creative ecosystem. Maybe they will eventually netflixize their game the Alphabet way.

Anyway, Cupertino pulled a much more interesting card with their Apple Card, which should quickly allow them to show us some money.


mot-bile 2019

* see "SKT says 5G network is tested, ready to go"

Google's Gtown wins over ZeeTown and the Large Apple Collider

As soon as Facebook revealed the plans of Zuckerbergville ("Zee Talk of Zee Town"), Google presented its future headquarters on its official blog*.

Big G will still reside in Mountain View, but in North Bayshore District. And double its capacity to 20,000 employees.

Waterway? Check. Highway? Check. But the rendering is much sexier and futuristic, and there's a nice video to support it (YouTube of course):

With its organic touch and absence of cars, Gtown looks more like a city of the future than Zeetown, probably because Google is much more into hardware innovation than Facebook. Furthermore, the architect is not a 85 year old legend (Zuck's Gehry) but two fun looking younger guns: Bjarke Ingels (Bjarke Ingels Group) and Thomas Heatherwick (Heatherwick Studio). Where Z looked for a brand, G went for sense and the essence. 

Granted, I'm unfairly comparing headquarters with employee quarters, and the constraints are not the same. But these projects speak volumes about differences in approaches and projected images.

Nothing as scary as the dystopian panopticon / large apple colliderish Apple Campus 2 announced two years ago. Now that's One Infinite Loop if I ever saw one:

Consistent with a hardware manufacturer used to proprietary systems...

mot-bile 2015

* see "Rethinking office space"

With WhatsApp, what Facebook gets is what you pay

With 450 M active users of one of the most pivotal services - messaging, WhatsApp is already an interesting catch for Facebook. But the best thing about WhatsApp subscribers is that in order to keep the service after the first year, they must pay a fee. Only 99 cents a year for now, but on a messaging platform, you can plug in an infinity of free or paid apps.

How many of these 450 M active users are actually paid subs? Probably much less than the half, since the bulk of the growth has been made over the past 12 months (e.g. 350 M active users back in October 2013). The key question is how many will want to pay knowing that Facebook will be tempted to peek into their messages and somehow monetize stuff. Beyond advertising, off limits according to Facebook; WhatsApp already pledges to bar ads, and Facebook needs new kinds of revenue streams, preferably CtoC or BtoC for a change. I bet that WhatsApp user fora are going to scrutinize any changes in the fine print of privacy and terms...

Business models are one thing, brands and platforms another: they too open up new horizons for Menlo Park at a time when churn rates get worrying.

Today, Google rules with the two most powerful search engines, its main service and YouTube... but both are free. Facebook already raised many eyebrows when it launched its vanity URL service precisely because terms and conditions opened the door to future fees, and a non-free Facebook could be the final straw for many users on the verge of deleting their accounts. Keeping WhatsApp as it is sounds a wiser bet to collect recurrent fees from hundreds of millions of endusers, but wisdom doesn't seem to exist in Zuckerberg's dictionary.

Anyway, the winner is WhatsApp founder Jan Koum: waiting one year before giving in to Facebook's siren calls proved very profitable for him.

mot-bile 2014

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

Skype keeps moving, Google googling

Microsoft purchased VoIP 1.0 leader Skype. Not for the technology but for the address books and the entry point to interhuman communications, something Redmond still has trouble getting into.

Google Music sounds like Google Book redux. No agreements yet, but a statement, and an invitation to store your stuff on Big G's cloud. You know, Google, not the major media company but the tech nerds with the big servers that never crash (take that Jeff - see "Melting clouds"). And as YouTube turns 6, Google promotes user generated quality content (YouTube Next, YouTube Creator Institute, YouTube NextUp...). So beyond storage, the idea will soon be to source new talents and to give everyone the opportunity to broadcast oneself.

The main news here is not the service but the branding: it's not "Google Music" but "Music Beta by Google", which allows a future brand to fill the blank (ie a future purchase), but furthermore echoes Google's pervasiveness on Android. In Korea, for instance, a country where it was lagging far behind Naver or Daum, the company managed to accumulate an impressive content far beyond mobile searches, through its no-logo apps and in particular in the LBS fields (maps, places...).

The debate shouldn't be only about collecting personal data but about dominant position in collaborative contents.

mot-bile 2011

Samsung SH100 : from your camera to your social network

A Wifi camera, a keyboard enabled touch screen, a remote viewfinder Android app and voila, your picture straight to YouTube or to your Facebook page.

You can bet the said app will itself be connected to the existing Samsung Mobile Print app, which allows me to print wirelessly from my Samsung Galaxy phone or my Samsung Sens laptop to my Samsung Printer.

Sooner or later, my Samsung Fridge shall join the party to spit shopping lists out, but I don't have the Wifi model yet.

Next thing you know, SGR-1, Samsung's killer-robot that has been patrolling the DMZ since last year, will update his status on his twitter account ("shot a crane today - getting rusty I guess").

mot-bile 2011

PS: and as far as Samsung's army of 400 lawyers is concerned, they just sent one message to Apple : bring it on (see "Samsung Electronics cleared of infringement of Japanese patents" after "Apple heart(break)s Samsung")

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

YouTube sails away from Viacom in safe harbor

Google soberly* claimed victory over Viacom in a legal battle about copyrighted contents illegally uploaded on YouTube : removing them swiftly guarantees the portal a "safe harbor".

In Lingua Googla, the act of cleaning up the mess is reworded as "work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online". This is not policing but good editorial business.

In other words : Google, the piggyback media, is relegating Viacom into commodity categories. The real media is not Viacom but Google.

mot-bile 2010

* "YouTube wins case against Viacom"

Google TV - watch for commercials

At Google I/O 2010, developpers were offered Frozen Yoghurt and a nice cartoon. FroYo is Android 2.2's nickname, the cartoon an introduction of Google TV* :



Nothing disruptive here. The message to developpers ? Come join our ecosystem, dig this Sony screen, check that Logitech box and wireless keyboard (and you haven't seen our Google Tablet yet), hear that Intel inside jingle from our teevee, enjoy these Android apps, enhance your tube with YouTube, watch those flicks on Jinni.com, see how this Flash animation rocks... We don't do Jobs, we do our job, folks.

mot-bile 2010

* google.com/tv

Lagardere Active meets YouTube

An interesting partnership was announced at the 2010 MIPTV between Lagardere and YouTube for the international distribution of online videos, ranging from short programs to fictions and documentaries.

Turning the group's traditional media brands (ie Elle) into truly multimedia cash machines... this 3-year agreement is vintage Didier Quillot, who already boosted digital revenues to 7.5% of Lagardere's total turnover.

YouTube / Google promotes its own key features : advertising and DRM, with the IDfication of each content and the total control of diffusion for each region. Of course, this is pure streaming and no download is allowed.

Both partners will share advertising revenues, and the enduser will access new contents for free :
. short in-house programs (caranddriver.com, elle.fr, europe.fr...) : 7,000 by summer 2010, 15,000 by EOY. Distribution : 45% for the French market
. long programs (Lagardere Entertainment) : 315 hours by summer 2010, 600 by EOY. Distribution : 80% France 20% International
. TV programs and cartoons from Lagardere channels, including TV archives. Distribution : 100% for a French audience.

mot-bile 2010

Mating season for media : Steve & Ruppert / Time Inc, Conde Nast, Hearst & Meredith

Gossip of the day : Hearst heart Time heart Meredith heart Conde Nast. It heard it through the newsvine, or rather the NYT : "Group of Magazine Publishers Is Said to Be Building an Online Newsstand", the fabled "iTunes for magazines". The New York Times itself being an item on the Amazon Kindle platform*.

The previous day, the same NYT had a story about that flirt between Murdoch and Balmer : jealous of Google's curves, Baldy would like to keep the moghul's treasures for himself : only Bing would be able to reach inside its pages**.

In Korea, courting may turn predatorial : antitrust laws allow press groups to develop bigger TV channels. Big fishs are literally venturing into / vulturing around the pond.

The hate / love relationship between traditional media and new media remains in this transitional phase when nothing seems to be granted, even for major stars. No one seems to be sustainably bankable.

So major studios people tend to cling to behaviors they feel comfortable with : investing in the latest technologies to appear up to date, promising blockbusters with Ocean's Twenty Six castings... but they still have no script, no storyboard, and no director whatsoever.

So what they're basically trying to do is to put everybody together for one night in some sort of Kodak Theater, betting on favorable buzz outside and last minute deals inside, forcing smiles and spotlights to the point no outsider may notice the collection of butcher knives.


mot-bile 2009

* Speaking of platforms and music : Brian Stelter also mentions in his article YouTube's Vevo music video platform.
** "News Corp. Weighs an Exclusive Alliance With Bing" (NYT - 20091124)

Viacom - vae victis, YouTube

Viacom had better prove the importance of copyrighted content for YouTube users : the traditional media giant had its nextgen rival (now a Google brand) ordered by a NY judge to release user data, but at the bulk level. So no User-Generated Discontent ahead : John and Jane Doe shall remain anonymous criminals. And the blame (if any) on YouTube's broader shoulders. Or the shame on Viacom's, should the figures turn out to be disapointing.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, another safe was apparently cracked as the European Commission allowed NRAs to open for WiMAX part of the 2.6GHz spectrum devoted to FDD / TDD. Not the kind of news John and Jane Does love to download, but who knows, some may find some value in it.

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.

CES 2007 - a cup of T before China-To-The-Home

Another year, another light bulb show on The Strip. The 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show shouldn't bring major disruptions, only display the ability of some players to deliver more goods after Christmas.
Sin City ? Forget the booze and take a cup of T : the time has come for the mass market to hear about terabytes more often. Massive hard drives on one end, heavy entertainment on the other, and FTTH in between, the dice are rolling.
Spin City ? From "Let It Snow" to "Get It Now®", Verizon Wireless adds V CAST Mobile TV to V CAST Music, V CAST Video (YouTube ? YouBet !), Mobile Web 2.0(SM) and co. Yet, VZW won't be the star this year. Qualcomm ? He'll try to fool the paparazzis with his former Korean proteges (Samsung SCH-u620, LG VX9400), but Samsung and LG already displayed MediaFLO handset last CES 2006 and both are openly courting DMB and DVB*. Besides, Qualcomm is still being sued in Korea, where Microsoft is strictly monitored and Intel just decided to cancel a promising R&D center.
Sim City ? Is K-Pop still ruling the show ? LG's Points Of Presence also include dual format Blu-Ray / HD-DVD players and drives, and as far as content (with himself) is concerned, Bae Yong-jun just listed part of his company in Japan, where Yonsama on mobile keeps selling (there, this utterly corny hallyuwood fake is still considered a great actor)... put Helio On Top of it and you may think Korea holds a full house. Except China's massive investments in R&D and entertainment start showing. If not this year, on time for CES 2008.


* speaking of T, DVB-H and Las Vegas : I didn't hear any bird sing on the Hiwire / T-mobile trial.

Skype Web TV - Life is a Venice beach

"The best of the Internet with the best of TV" ? Here's The Venice Project by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom*. Maybe the founders of Skype were jalous of MySpace and YouTube. Maybe they think they could have asked more from eBay.
If they want to outscore these video whiz kids, I'm afraid they'll have to offer the worst of the internet with the worst of TV... in which case they'd better rename it The Santa Barbara Project.
Unsurprisingly enough, the techno relies on peer-to-peer and the founders are not worrying about DRM issues. They can talk about advertising revenues but they can't fool us. Their customer is not the end-user anymore. They understood the customer is really king when he means business and offers big bucks. Especially when he knows how to negociate with major broadcasters and editors. Heck, he could even be one ov'em.
For those who missed the previous platforms, please take your ticket.

* "according to FT.com : Skype founders to offer web TV" (20061217)

Google DIY - SketchUp before YouTube

Let your customers do the job. When you're nothing but an empty shell, where can you get substance for a better price ? Google Earth was a really smart move to aggregate content and value but it takes time to build a virtual world... so why not ask your visitors to build their ownhomes ? See SK Telecom : an army of minimes designing their own environments and even paying for the virtual stuff they add (show me the acorns : cyworld's totoris) !
Google may not end up hammering down competitors with YouTube, they keep giving their users potentially dangerous tools and Google SketchUp, an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program, could turn as addictive as Earth or even Hell. For those who tend to plan ahead at least. Probably not the kill app for the masses, but one for a rather interesting target for announcers.