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"

South Cow-rea already cow-nected to 5G

Lazy MNOs usually settle for milking the cow, but SK Telecom is neither lazy, not your usual MNO. And in its latest presentation, the Korean leader suggested to IoT-ize the cow in order to generate new applications and revenues:

LiveCare: "oral implant of bio capsule in cow, extract real-time information through LoRa, provide analysis through Web/app, alert and message to farmer" - that was Korea's version of the classic 'you have two cows' parable.

Of course, LiveCare was only a niche app illustrating the way the MNO intends to leverage its core techno and infra (network, A.I., cloud, data) to boost new business (e.g. IoT, commerce, media).  

A couple of days ago, BT CEO Gavin Patterson called all players to 'build a strong business case for 5G', and measuring bovine farts doesn't exactly sound like the next killer app... unless you replace cows with humans, and alerts with A.I.-picked medical or culinary recommandations customized for your microbiome (expect more A.I. news from SKT, already present with NUGU or Aibril - the latter with IBM Watson -, and recently joined by Hyundai Motor Company, Hanwha Asset Management, and the Canadian Element AI in a USD 45M fund to invest in A.I. and smart mobility).


SK Telecom is already 'building a strong case for 5G', particularly with its rival KT about to showcase its own flavor during the Pyeongchang 2018 olympics. And SKT are not just into testing earlier than others (e.g. recently 4G LTE-5G internetworking, or VR 360 over 5G with Samsung tablet-size device), or even into going commercial earlier than others, but also into building a stronger 5G standard (e.g. recently pushed for 200 Gbps packet swiching), and a stronger technological environment around 5G (e.g. recently 4.8 Gbps WiFi with 802.11ax in Bundang, or 5G-PON / Passive Optical Network distribution).


'Building a strong business case for 5G' will be more fun for marketers. Even if it starts, as usual, like with 3G or 4G, with existing services that will saturate the previous generation anyway, like HD video these days, a booming category if we ever saw one. 

'Building a strong business case for 5G' will also demand a touch of emotion, so I'll finish this focus on SK with their latest ad for 5G. It features an endangered species, Jeju-do's haenyeo (female diver):




mot-bile 2017

Pitching Google Pixel in 3 strikes

Google unveiled its Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL handsets.

What strikes first is the convergence of communication codes between Google, Apple, and Samsung, confirming the difficulties of differenciating in commoditization times. That said, Samsung has beefed up its human side, Google its pedagogy dimensions, and Apple... well Apple remained Apple.

What strikes next is the focus on image, from the name (Pixel), to the pitch ("highest rated smartphone camera", "Unlimited storage for all your photos and videos"). This is not only a Google Phone, but also a Google Camera, and a boost for Google Photos. The Pixel is marketed almost like a featurephone, with a message more... focused than its competitors, even if Apple did stress iPhone 7's "advanced new camera systems", and even if Samsung's ill-fated but polyvalent Galaxy Note 7 offered new arguments ranging from sensors and lenses to Samsung Cloud.

The third strike comes from Google Assistant. We knew it existed, we knew it had in its DNA the capacity to help you defeat LEE Sedol*, but its namelessness makes it an even scarier A.I. monster, plugged to both your personal environment (controled by Big G), and to Big G's phenomenal reach in queries about anything, anytime, on any platform. Yes, Siri has a name, but its brains have just been purchased by Samsung, who snatched Viv Labs, the startup created by Siri founders.

But if one player has been struck out here, it seems to be - for the moment at least - Andromeda: the OS of Google Pixel is Android 7.1 Nougat, not Google's hybrid Android-Chrome OS. And Pixel was the perfect alibi, since the brand was introduced on Chromebook...

For Google, launching a competitive smartphone was probably more urgent than rolling out its new convergent OS.



mot-bile 2016


* see "Man v. Machine, Garry v. Gary"

Big Fun v. Big Data (Seoul Digital Forum 2012 - Day I)

Over the past quarter of a century, I've survived countless seminars and conferences on innovation, most often as an attendee, sometimes in a different role (organizer, speaker, moderator...), but never with a "Press" badge hanging from my neck. I did just that yesterday. Just for a change, and for fun. What I didn't expect was a trip down memory lane.

First of all, let's set things straight:
0) (to those who knew me in my previous lives) I'm not missing the old times, simply enjoying it, as I've always done ever since I was a teenager. When you're into innovation, you always learn from such fora. And as usual I'm not as much interested in new gizmos (SDF is not the kind of vehicle for that anyway) as in the evolution of the ecosystem, and particularly how it is perceived by its key players, by newcomers, by outsiders.
1) I didn't steal that badge. This is the 9th Annual Seoul Digital Forum, and I happen to blog about Seoul (SeoulVillage.com) as well/poorly as about innovation (mot-bile)*. Besides, ever the caring city for its own diverse ecosystem, Seoul Metropolitan Government recently appointed me as a friendly neighborhood media. For good measure I even brought my old camera (I spared you the press-card-in-the-fedora-hat-band part).
2) I'm an author and a conceptor, not a journalist. I'm not covering an event, just feeding my poor brain with stimulating bits that, at the other end of the system, usually come out as junk as silly and useless as K-pop, only less entertaining, and with more traces of biased opinions in it. If you happen to read it, that's your problem. And if you like it, that's a problem for your shrink to solve.
3) As it turns out, when you have a "Press" badge, your body is also fed with stimulating bits in a cosy Press Room. But you quickly burn the said bits between levels B1 (Vista Hall, Keynotes) and 4F (Art Hall, Press Conferences). And perks are balanced by the fact that if you want to get a good spot, you apparently have to wake up in the middle of the night. My initial spot was really really bad: believe me, you don't want to have Steve Ballmer so close to you.

Seoul Digital Forum 2012 delivered the goods, kicking off with an impressive roster**. Day I started with a guest star who, for a reason that still baffles me, was dubbed a "visionary". Of course, Steve Ballmer is by no means a visionary: this hulk of a boasting salesman is more into products, functionalities and business management than into human beings and vision. Not even convincing as an industry (ex)leader. But life is unfair: nowadays, targeting 450 million devices doesn't sound that sexy when 900 million people are already familiar with the Facebook interface.

Steve B. left to a certain Brad McCabe the Steve J. part of his sales pitch for Windows 8. Tough Jobs, even if Android and Google are the main competitor, not Apple. Brad sounded very happy when he mentioned brand new apps "right out of the box"... but that's precisely a vocabulary Microsoft should ban in places like this. You're not supposed to be shipping boxes anymore, and you don't want people to visualize Skydrive as a UPS truck navigating the cloud (with Google Sky or Google MistView?). That said, Windows n does propose interesting features that Windows n-1 didn't have, starting with the 'blue screen' part of the demo (now a classy grey signals the usual glitch). That was my first stop down memory lane.

I certainly didn't expect disruptive points of view from Warren EAST (ARM) or Mike HARRIS (Gartner) either, only a fair and balanced appreciation of a very wide array of sectors where both maintain a now exoticly limited role in the chain. Both specialists confirmed the obvious market trends (did I mention the cloud?), except of course their own shrinking businesses. For this second station along memory lane, I thought about all those players who managed to survive in such an evolutive environment without really evolving themselves.

Bell Labs also lost some of their luster over the past decade, narrowing their scope to remain competitive in key areas in spite of a struggling mother company (Alcatel-Lucent). But Bell Labs remain a very special player in RD, with a focus on vision and values. And here, at a time when pure research is sacrificed on the altar of short term profits, talent is still measured by surprise more than results. This may sound like happy hypey talk from a Silicon Valley youngster, but Jeong KIM is a bashful, soft spoken leader, truly willing to promote well being at all levels (physical, mental, societal). Yes, technology does save lives, but it's also becoming ever more pervasive (and even intrusive, for instance with somatic network implants), and generating an ever increasing volume of information. All this means a bigger impact zone, higher stakes, higher risks of privacy breaches at the micro level, or massive destruction at the macro level. As an echo to the Big Data promise of managing the unfathomable, KIM quoted Asimov: 'science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom'. In that context more than ever, a sound education proves crucial. Memory lane station 3: in the eyes of Mr KIM, I saw the wisdom I met in so many researchers who really care.

On a lighter note, Phil LIBIN announced that he'd just signed the lease for Evernote's Seoul office, and that new talents were welcome. His 4 year old start-up keeps gaining new fundings and new users (32 millions as we speak), and the founder himself seems to have gained a few kilos in the process. Can LIBIN's "second brain" (that's how he describes Evernote) keep growing at a faster pace than his body? I was almost wondering when I heard him disregard competition as something he should not worry about - a diplodocus kind of reasoning if I ever heard one (and boy did I hear some as a former strategic intelligence nerd - memo lane station 4). But Evernote's CEO seems to be developping new synapses and neurons (or, as he puts it, A.I. as in "Augmented Intelligence") all right, and particularly in Korea, where a local cellco could soon follow NTT DoCoMo, and where a partnership with a major manufacturer covering a wide array of devices could help him develop an even sexier and more seamless user experience. When I asked him up to where he wanted his second brain to grow, LIBIN answered that Evernote would help users think smarter, that soon suggestions would come to them. And as I pointed out the risk of giving in to Big Data, he said, in substance, that it was not compatible with Evernote's DNA. Let's see how Evernote evolves, evolution being a process relying most heavily on genetic mutations.

Speaking of a major Korean manufacturer covering a wide array of devices, Samsung was represented yesterday by CHANG Donghoon: the head of the design team that delivered the Haptic or Galaxy series is confirming the user-centric approach of a company willing to make the most of foldable displays (remember flexible AMOLED?), sensors, context awareness, invisible and transparent technologies, seamless transitions, natural interactions... That brought me further down memory lane: we'll always be staring at exciting stuff, like what Pranav Mistry does at the MIT Media Lab with his Sixth Sense prototype, and for the magic to work and the engine to rock and roll, there must always be some level of reality we've not quite reached yet.

Reality hit home a long time ago for mobile operators, so I was surprised to hear SK Telecom CTO BYUN Jae-woan mention as something new the fact that cellcos were not at the center anymore, and that they had to abandon their telco mindsets, to reconsider their environment, the way they defined themselves. Memory lane, continued: I really enjoyed working on it in the late 90s for a major player, and was saddened to see SKT waste their considerable advance in the middle of the noughties when they forgot to adapt to a more open environment.

Yesterday, the moment I really felt home was when Ben CERVENY (frog design) pleaded guilty: yes, plays and games are major drivers for innovation. Yes, tech design IS game design, and yes, futility can lead to utility (and yes, to achieve that it takes a lot of work and energy). Memory lane: the first start-up I survived (back in 1993-94) was the French leader in online gaming, and the ultimate lab that got me ready for everything that came after. As it turned out, the same company popped up a few stations later: our marketing used to rely on both Big Data and anthropology, and here was Intel's Genevieve BELL, an enthusiastic anthropologist, showing pictures of both the idealized and the actual home environment of TV viewers. One one side, an impossibly neatly sitted Ingals family smiling from their sofa, on the other a pot-bellied couch potato staring from a jungle of a room. Genevieve commented on the way electronic devices were treated very much the same way our anthropologist pointed out the location of the Minitel in a customer's messy living room.

A good forum on innovation must be spectacular and entertaining, and we had the right people for that:
- Hiroshi ISHIGURO and his more or less humanoids (Geminoid, Telenoid, Elfoid, and, as the ultimate alien, Ishiguroid himself),
- Aaron KOBLIN (Google Creative Lab) and his worldwide web of artworks,
- Marc ABRAHAMS (Ig Nobel Prize) and his Miss Sweetie Poo. Note that all forum organizers should use this major innovation: have a 8 year old girl come to the speakers each time she thinks they talk too much, repeating "please stop, I'm bored" until they give up. Low tech, but kawaiily efficient.

Even more spectacular?
- Josh NESBIT's low tech smart(and caring)phones,
- Mikel MARON's grassroot initiatives to put marginalized communities not only on the map*** but behind and all around it (Groundtruth Initiative, Open StreetMap...). Note how, on this photo, Mikel's body language speaks volumes the above mentioned Steve will never read.





Empowering people, making a fair democracy possible, filling all kind of gaps... that's what smart networks should be all about.

mot-bile 2012 / SeoulVillage 2012
* among other nonsensical and poorly written blogules (nothing serious, it simply has to come out of my system).

** program of Day I:
Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address: WOO Wongil (Chief Executive Secretary, Seoul Digital Forum / President and CEO, SBS)
Congratulatory Remarks: LEE Kye Cheol (Chairman, Korea Communications Commission)
Keynote Address:
-"A New Era of Opportunity" - Steve BALLMER (CEO, Microsoft)
-"Technology and the Opportunities for a Better Society" - Jeong H KIM (President, Bell Labs / Chief Strategy Officer, Alcatel-Lucent)
-"The Future of IT: Learning from Coexistence Leadership"
- Warren EAST (CEO, ARM Holdings)
-"Enabling Equal Information Access to All Users" - T.V. RAMAN (Research Scientist, Google)
-"Technology, Film, and the Future" - Chris COOKSON (President, Sony Pictures Technologies)
-"Personal Cloud: The 'PC' of Tomorrow" - Mike HARRIS (Group Vice President, Gartner)
-"Shaping New Hopes in the Smart Era" - PYO Hyun-Myung (President, Mobile Business Group, KT Corporation)
-Special Address - PARK Won Soon (Mayor, Seoul Metropolitan Government)
-"Appropriate Technology: Simplicity brings hope to the digital age" - Paul POLAK (CEO, Windhorse International / Founder, International Development Enterprises - IDE), YOO Youngje (Professor, School of Chemical Engineering, Seoul National University / President, Scientists and Engineers Without Borders) - moderator CHANG Soo Y (Professor, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, POSTECH / Codirector, Sharing and Technologies Incorporated)
-"Smart life enabled by mobile technology: an industry ecosystem will enable user experience" - BYUN Jae-woan (Head of Technology Innovation Center and CTO, SK Telecom)
-"Big Data and our future"
."The key to popular understanding of data is play" - Ben CERVENY (Founder and President, Bloom Studio / Founder, Experience Design Lab, frog design)
."Extending Humanity with technology" - Aaron KOBLIN (Creative Director, Data Arts Team, Google Creative Lab)
."Making one world through Big Data" - LEE Bong-gyou (Professor, Graduate School of Information and Director of the Communications Policy Research Center, Yonsei University)
."Interface: the window that changes the world" - CHANG Donghoon (Senior VP, Head of Design Group of Mobile Communications Division / Head of Design Strategy team at Corporate Design Center, Samsung Electronics)
-"Interface and Humanity":
."Genealogies of anxiety and wonder: our past and future with computing" - Genevieve BELL (Director, Interactions and Experience Research, Intel Labs, Intel)
."Devices, platforms, and a new way of life" - Phil LIBIN (Founder and CEO, Evernote)
.Initially scheduled: "User Interface Designed to Fix Personal Health" (Aza RASKIN)
-"Robots, games, and humor"
."The future life supported by robotic avatars" - Hiroshi ISHIGURO (Director, Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Osaka University)
."Behavior-change Games and Habit Design" - Michael KIM (Founder and CEO, Kairos Labs)
."Research that makes people laugh, then think" - Marc ABRAHAMS (Founder, Ig Nobel Prize / Editor, Improbable Research / Columnist, The Guardian)
-"Technology, Humanity, and Collaboration":
."Expanding the reach of technology" - Josh NESBIT (CEO, Medic Mobile)
."Mapping the invisible: Open Source Mapping and Visible Communities" - Mikel MARON (President, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team / Codirector, Ground Truth Initiative)

*** note that yesterday, Seoul Mayor PARK Won-soon also mentioned a collaborative use of the map (on trial before the monsoon season): citizens spot problems, locate and report them on the map to shorten delays and improve accuracy.

---
UPDATE 20120524 (photos) ---
UPDATE 20120525 (dang, forgot Phil's pix as well)

Daum TV + or -

From its brand new Space.1 (spacedotone) headquarters in Jeju-do, South Korea, Daum Communications announced Daum TV and Daum TV+.

Daum TV is an Android base OS for smart TVs, Daum TV+ a set-top-box running on Daum TV. But since Daum doesn't provide any access, it cannot deliver as many goods as its rivals (and certainly won't fight with them for content rights), but that's an entry point for Daum Cloud services. A not-quite VNO planting a device at the heart of households.

The gizmo, a small black cube, will sell at E-Mart for KRW 199,000 (USD 174.9) and that's quite a bet. Daum already saw Google storm through the Korean market via Android smartphones, they don't want to miss the TV wars. But here, Daum is also up against Google and Apple, who can leverage on a global reach. Even Samsung is pushing Android instead of its own Bada...

To sum it up, this black cube is supposed to be a category killer, with the biggest players around as targets (operators, MSOs, manufacturers, OS...), but not much of an army of services or contents to support it.

Good luck.

mot-bile 2012

Facebook's Initial Privacy Offering

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

My Wall and Wall Street are about to become an item: we're all going public, and you'll have to issue a profit warning each time I unlike you nth kitten picture.

Yet Facebook Initial Public Offering remains a non-event: Facebook has been milking our relationship from the beginning, and even with his 11M+ friends, Mark Zuckerberg has never been much of a philanthropist. The question was "when", and the answer is "now".

Now the other question remains: until when?

It doesn't have to come from the next big thing (a 4D, 5G meshroom cloud? the SOPAtriot Act?): remaining at the top happens to be difficult, even for a free, pervasive platform. And even a 800 pound gorilla can get off your back (I recently mentioned the potential Tripodization of Facebook: "Cloud Portability"). Furthermore, money won't do you much good without a vision. Look at Rupert Murdoch, who after losing over half a billion bucks on MySpace, delivers his pearls of conservative wisdom* for free over Twitter. And speaking of doing good: Google started being evil after its IPO...

... Come to think of it: Zuck started as a bad guy.

mot-bile 2012

*if such a thing exists.

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

Huawei Vision : a view from the cloud

Huawei Vision runs on Android 2.3 but comes with a 160 Gigabyte spot in the cloud for every owner, positioning the Chinese player at the strategic gateway between that soft spot and its own hardware (scheduled for September in China, along with 4G). Apps agregation starts with the usual suspects : music, images or video that you may not want to transfer forever from laptop to laptop or to XX century storage solutions (ie CDs, DVDs).

Hardly disruptive : Alibaba just launched a similar concept, and of course Apple made a splash with its iCloud earlier this year. But Huawei was supposed to be essentially about hardware.

Sounds like that business model may not be sustainable anymore. Clouds may pass in the sky, replaced with new UFOs, but the truth is starting to sink in : smartphones are not much smarter than computers, and differenciation is getting more and more difficult every year. Worse : product cycles are even shorter and being cool never lasts long.

Food for thought for Samsung, who's been threatened by the Nokia syndrome even before claiming the leadership in handsets. But at least the Finns did venture into new business models. Never forget that OVI preceded Apple's App Store iOs by one year.

Of course, back then, Jorma Ollila was already gone, and Steve Jobs still cool.


mot-bile 2011

KT and Softbank wed in the cloud

Two years after the merger of Korea Telecom with KTF, the group claims 27% of its turnover in the "non-communication sectors", and targets 45% by 2015. "Non-communication" covers "convergence, IT service/media and global operations", which have something to do with communication but nevermind :
- 'Communication' means wired and wireless comms + call centers (KRW 18 Tn in 2010, 22 in 2015).
- 'IT service/media' stretches over 'SI/NI, cloud, solutions, contents', so typically Software as a Service (SaaS)... (evolution 2010-2015 : KRW 2 to 6 Tn).
- 'Convergence' includes 'communication-finance convergence' (KT will absorb BC Card and challenge more directly Hana SK Card or the duo SK Telecom - Hana Card), 'car' (KT Rental), 'security', 'ad/commerce' (evolution 2010-2015 : KRW 4 to 8 Tn).
- 'global operations' collects the rest : 'investment, IT and communication' (!), and probably real estate (evolution 2010-2015 : KRW 1 to 4 Tn)

In this last category, KT intends 'to expand its global markets for Smart City, Cloud, and ICT Solutions', and 'to secure more than ten new business items, such as Smart Home, Smart City and Digital Signage', or to 'develop globally competitive products and services and consider expanding its business worldwide from the launch of a project, as in the case of KT Kibot and CCC'. For your information : KT Kibot is a cute robot.

CCC means, of course, Cloud Communication Center. And that's where Korea Telecom and Softbank decided to create a 51/49 Joint Venture next September : a huge cloud data center will be created in Busan, with a back-up system in Seoul. A smart risk management move from ethnic Korean Masayoshi Son : the March 11 earthquake + tsunami followed by Fukushima meltdowns caused major business disruptions and massive energy shortages. This center will start with a 6 MW capacity (the equivalent to 700,000 PCs or 10,000 servers according to KT), and quickly reach 20 MW. A dedicated 10 GW line will secure the traffic and that's another reason why Korea's second biggest city was chosen : it's very and one of the closest to Japan (210 km or 130 miles), with all the right IT and human connections.

Yet. If Korea is spared by tsunamis and earthquakes, it is frequently attacked by North Korean hackers, and that's the reason why mobile banking and finance, a traditional strong point in the country, is not booming as fast as smartphone sales.

NFC-based Google Wallet* will have to overcome even more resistance there considering the company's image in Korea these days and the intense lobbying campaign from local netcos against its potential dominant position.


mot-bile 2011

* see "Coming soon: make your phone your wallet"

Don't catch a Chromebook cold

In "A new kind of computer: Chromebook", Google announced for June 15th the first Chromebook computers from Samsung and Acer.



Big G claims 160 million Chrome users, and that's more likely Chrome the browser than Chrome the OS. The new devices are supposed to take 8 seconds to boot. How long to catch a virus that may leave you with a useless piece of metal desesperatly knocking on the cloud's door ?

mot-bile 2011

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

Melting clouds

Amazon claims its Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) "changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use".

Quora, Foursquare, Reddit and co didn't pay much when, the other day, the said elastic snapped (or as Einstein would put it : EC2 = Mess*) : their customers couldn't reach the service.

Sony also faced down servers issues with its PlayStation Network, but the trouble went even further : it appears that accounts were hacked, password and credit card details potentially stolen. Not the best context for the Sony Tablet launch.

This tablet runs on Android, an OS under scrutiny these days, just like rival iPhone : users start wondering about what happens to the huge amount of data generated by their compulsive smartphone behaviors, and their blind acceptance of countless obscure authorizations. They're afraid of Apple and Google might abuse their power, and they're right. But they should be worrying even more about what might happen when really bad guys reach their supposedly safe place in the cloud.

mot-bile 2011

* not yet a car crash ("Amazon Cloud Drive, cloudn't it ?") ?

Amazon Cloud Drive, cloudn't it ?

Most retailers dream of emptying their shelves. Amazon dreams of seeing his customers leave their stuff in its warehouses. That's called living in a cloud. And these days, preempting cloud space is about keeping your feet on the ground.

Here's the claim:

- 5 GB of free online storage
- Unlimited access from any computer
- Never worry about losing your files again

Here's the catch:
- 5 GB doesn't mean anything these days (ie ADrive has been offering 50 GB for years), but you're invited to buy additional storage and conveniently enough, the stuff you purchase on Amazon store is not included in the 5 GB
- unlimited access from any computer, but forget about your iPhone (only Android does it for mobile devices - and needless to say, Cloud Player doesn't read iTunes)
- never think about changing providers : try moving once you've uploaded the whole shebang

But that's OK. Once again, Amazon shot first among the big non operator fishes. Amazon acted as a leader. As the Kindle proves, it's not a silver bullet, but this shot in the cloud is certainly not a lost bullet.

mot-bile 2011

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

SK Telecom keeps Hoppin

While I was blogging about KT's cloud computing services, rival SK Telecom was presenting its own cloud computing platform to the press, N-Screen.

The idea is to make convergence as seamless as possible for the enduser and service providers : the platform automatically recognises the device and adapts the content to it, and all DRM hassles have been taken care of in advance.

There too, your handset is as more a smartphone as a smartTV enabler. It's a Samsung device, of the now well established Galaxy S family, and it's branded Galaxy S Hoppin (among other characteristics : Android 2.2, 1 GHz CPU, 4-inch Super AMOLED display...). Subventions included, it will cost you KRW 300,000.

SKT has already been advertising massively for Hoppin, with an enduser glued to the screen in every context, even asleep. Since Hoppin is also the name of their cloud computing service, they will eventually communicate about other devices (TV, PCs, tablets, fixed phones... - note that more and more models of fixed phones feature a color screen in Korea).

N-Screen is an open platform, meaning first of all that everybody is invited to join. To prove successful, that should include, beyond endusers, more than a few content providers or handset manufacturers.

Same story for Android platforms : SK Telecom boasts about its close partnership with Google in hardware and software development (GED / Google Experience Device, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom Tablet, LG Electronics G-Slate...), and it is a clear leader at the handset level (SKT sold 83% of all Android handsets in Korea and now averages 20,000 units a day), but the operator is still struggling at the BtoBtoC level, even if developers are proposed a "T Academy" to create more apps for the "T Store".

This press conference followed the announcement of a partnership with Japan's KDDI and Softbank Mobile for NFC-based mobile payment. Smart Poster will be operational in both countries and aims for the global market. Local competitors with exotic proprietary solutions, take notice :

The aim of the trial test is to establish mutual compatibility between countries using NFC as a common international standard instead of existing local Korean or Japanese mobile financial service methods. Currently in Korea, telecommunication companies provide mobile financial services such as credit cards, public transportation, stock trading and banking using a finance-enabled USIM chip called the 'Combi Card'. While Japan's finance service utilizes a self-developed method called 'Felica' by installing a second chip, apart from the USIM, within the mobile device

NTT DoCoMo, a partner of KT, must have appreciated the ironic tribute. Some may hear some bitterness in the tone : as we often mentioned earlier, SKT has somehow abandoned its cultural and innovative leadership to Korea Telecom. It reshuffled its management and pledged to develop a "young, speedy organization", to promote "openness" and "collaboration", and to regain confidence overseas.

MelOn recently made it in Indonesia, and this partnership with Japanese MNOs is really significant, but it will take more to be recognized as a major value aggregator at the international level. Let's see how the new management takes up the challenge.

mot-bile 2011

Communication-finance convergence: KT joins SKT

Seems like SK Telecom's debuts as a credit card operator (see previous posts about the SKT-Hana Bank deal) spurred the competition. Korea Telecom announced yesterday that their participation in BC Card, the national leader, would increase from 1.98 to 35.83% after purchases from Woori Bank (20%) and Shinan Bank (13.85%). KT also negociates a further 4.03% participation with Busan Bank.

Lucky Koreans MNO: they can become content majors or financial institutions just by signing checks. And they formed a common lobby with other financial institutions to promote mobile banking in Korea (SK Telecom and KT with Mastercard, Shinhan Card, Samsung Card).

"Finance-communications convergence" comes handy as MNOs need to completely revamp their business models : voice revenues keep decreasing, and the data equation went crazy.

Significantly, KT is now insisting on Wifi coverage in its smartphones advertising campaigns, and promoting uCloud for consumers also as an IPTV service (Smart TV tomorrow I guess). Remaining a leader in cloud computing is an absolute must... and it sure beats car rentals as diversification (KT are also campaigning about that peripheric service of theirs).

mot-bile 2011

Followers and leaders, hardwares and clouds

CES 2011 will probably celebrate Korea Inc's 3D, smart TVs, or cloud computing successes (see how Korea Telecom markets it's ucloud beyond business and professional targets, towards consumers).

And in retrospect, 2010 clearly marked a turning point for Korea : this is probably the year leadership spirit became mainstream.

I'm not talking about the "can do", "CEO me" spirit, but about a cultural shift from an eternal best follower to a trend setter.

Ever since I first came to Korea 20 years ago, business management has been based on international benchmarking, and executives obsessed with what others were doing overseas. Still now, you can feel this Japanese Complex (how to kill the economic father), or that CEO Complex (how would Steve or Bill think or do ?) almost everywhere, but a top down revolution is trickling down the hierarchy : start thinking by yourselves, go set the pace, all that come on, be a Tiger kind of stuff.

New generation of US-grown Ivy Leaguers instilled strategy into Korean boardrooms, converting top chaebol owners to quality, sustainability, and proactivity. Most notably, Hyundai's Chung Mong Koo or Samsung's Lee Kun-hee had to literally shake their own companies to force much needed cultural revolutions. A couple of years later, both companies shine among the top stars of 2010, but both have yet to confirm and to reach new levels in order to secure their recently claimed leaderships.

There's little choice for them : even if Samsung increases by 18% its research and development investments, competition remains fierce, and Chinese players keep catching up in all major innovation fields.

But this Korean revolution also faces two major homegrown bottlenecks : a SME ecosystem and an education system unfit for the challenges to come. Because paradoxically, the most connected country on Earth generated monsters hampering the emergence of a truly efficient network society.

Of course, this is a country where netizens have more power than anywhere else, but precisely because there's a wide gap between the people and the politic, economic, or media elites. Indeed, Korean society it as the same time too connected and too disconnected.

But let's get back to business, where evergrowing and ever more agile chaebols leave no room for manoeuvre to SMEs : small fishes can only grow dependent from bigger fishes as clients or providers... or end up as trophies in their acquisition sprees. Even at the peak of the economic crisis, SMEs had a tough time hiring or keeping talents because everybody wants to work for a big brand.

Big fishes are only starting to realize they need stronger players around. Take mobile applications, for instance : for years, the most advanced country in mobile multimedia was lacking a balanced ecosystem because operators wanted to control the whole chain and push their own solutions. The irruption of Apple in the local pond did not only wake up the smartphone market at the hardware level, but also the complete middleware and application ecosystem, forcing everybody to open up new stores and to look for new partners. If Korean mobile industry took over Europe ten years ago, it is only catching up now by moving towards a more open ecosystem, fitter for innovation*.

As usual, major cultural changes can't happen without a top-down intervention, and it sometimes takes a whale to set the pond in order : last year, the Korean government had to coerce industry leaders into collaborating with each other as well as with smaller companies on key R&D fields, because that was the only way to compete at the global level.

As a matter of fact, Korea's ultra-competitive culture doesn't prepare for coopetition nor for next generation partnerships : it's all about winning against competitors, being number one, nixing the Other.

The same can be said about Korea's ailing educational system. Ailing ? Korean students fare so well worldwide that this system is often praised as one of the most efficients... but record denatality and suicide rates tell a completely different tale : this system is now completely corrupt and must evolve. If Korea reached the top thanks to a merit-based, social-ladder-friendly educational system, it will collapse if it persists into this unfair, money-based nightmare where creativity is totally castrated, and where young humanoid robots compete in the ultimate dystopian race for conformity.

So instead of celebrating 2010 as the year of the confirmation of Korea as a global power in such various fields as economics, Olympics, or diplomacy, I'd like to expose 2010 as the year the Korean model reached its limits.

As we've seen, change is coming. And I'm confident it will quickly radiate across a society which enjoys an amazing ability to embrace change. The 1998 crisis could have brought an abrupt end to the Miracle on the Han River, but the country somehow managed to rebound, leveraging on regional opportunities (struggling Japan, booming China), but mostly on its own dynamics.

Seoul, the capital city, is showing the way by embracing cultural diversity and collaborative sourcing of new ideas to stimulate the SME ecosystem, to improve everyday life and international competitiveness. And at long last, the national government is reconsidering SMEs as a priority. Unfortunately, the much needed reform of education is not on the agenda of this otherwise very conservative power.

Now is the moment. Flush with money, surfing on an unprecedented wave of international recognition, Korea must have the courage to change key parts of its DNA if it wants to remain a top player.

mot-bile 2011

* Apple itself is not really a model of open business, but that's yet another story

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go

The day after Steve Balmer shook hands with Lee Sang-chul to celebrate a strategic partnership in cloud computing between Microsoft and LG U+ (formerly LG Telecom), Google's Andy Rubin and SK Telecom's Bae Joon-dong did the same over Android Market, to boost the Korean developer ecosystem around the robot version of Shrek (this green Android oger has layers too, beyond the OS stage).

Significantly, the deal was at the CEO level for Korea's #3 MNO and at the VP level for the leader.

Steve Jobs didn't need to show up in Korea, where the Apple-KT partnership ignited much delayed smartphone boom (see previous episodes). Furthermore, he wouldn't be welcomed these days : the war of words between Apple and Samsung has turned nasty in the UK, where the latter countered repeated attacks by the former with a comparative ad in spite of specific orders from Seoul headquarters : Samsung is certainly a major competitor to the iPhone (half a million Samsung Galaxy S sold during the first month), but also a major provider for Apple.

If the Microsoft / Number 3 model is a classic, the Google-SK Telecom deal could prove a game changer in a country where the 3 major operators dominate too much the value chain / value cloud for app providers to multiply, thrive, and become global players.

But overall, between Microsoft, Apple, and Google, Korea Inc somehow confirms its return into the US Inc technosphere of influence.

Korea Telecom's idea of diversification ? Setting up KT Estate, a real estate arm, to manage its already impressive assets : 30% of revenues last year !

mot-bile 2010

Open Spheres, Personal Spheres, Shared Spheres and Safe Heavens

The fierce debate between Qualcomm's Dr Irwin Mark Jacobs and Forrester's George F. Colony at Seoul Digital Forum 2005 somehow seems reminiscent of the early 2000s war between Bill "Pervasive Computing" Gates and Jorna "Mobility Rules" Ollila.
Why oppose the PC vision to the mobile age mantra ? Broadband Korea proves the handset remains relevant in a VDSL home advertised on TV with the intel inside jingle. Instead of talking about "X-Internet" (for extended internet), Colony should consider dropping the obsolete "PC" term : the PC as we know it is as dead as the mobile phone, long life to the Hubs.
Let's forget hardware and consider the spheres we live in : the Open Spheres, the Shared Spheres, the Personal Spheres often blur and sometimes use the same device (ie the various users environments of a shared home hub), the mobility factor being yet another dimension. In this wild wall-less world, one of the key issue remains security. That's where your most personal device can actually become a key, the kind you never leave far away from you. But not a universal one either (the so-called universal remote control) : not that many people put their car keys on the same ring as their home keys and even fewer would hook both to their mobile phones.
Another spot (or maze of spots) you want to consider is what I would call your Safe Heaven, where you keep your valuables. It can be a portable vault and/or a few remote servers but it's somewhere on the map and you can't afford excluding it from your closest environment.
Even if you balk in front of the one-stop-logging perspective (and you do have a point there), this cloud of references is as consistent as your self, as unique as your fingerprints, your ultimate ID.
Please don't let anyone - and certainly no corporation - steal your DNA (Digital Networking Agility) nor even do any kind of research on it.