Digital payment: Apple Pay catching up with Google... and shaking up the market?

According to ITG*, 1% of all digital payments in USD last November were made through Apple Pay, compared to 4% for Google Wallet. The latter was launched on May 26th, 2011, the former last October 20th, and judging by the apparent success among early adopters**, Cupertino might have already seized an even more significant chunk of this fat holiday season pie. Over November, Apple barely scratched the surface, with a very early-adopter kind of retailer leading the pack: Whole Foods Market claimed 20% of Apple Pay transactions (28% in value)***.

But here, once again, Apple is leading in innovation rather than in invention, and this market pedagogy could also benefit Google itself, who didn't promote very much its own solution so far, but can leverage much wider platforms. The biggest loser could be PayPal, and ITG's Steve Weinstein thinks that they are likely to suffer against Apple Pay's much more user friendly solution. 

Needless to say, bigger players in finance are also paying attention. Many consumers still feel reluctant to make payments through other players than genuine financial institutions, particularly the ones that issue the reassuring plastic fetishes that, not so long ago, used to be referred to as 'smart cards'.

mot-bile 2014


* see "ITG Investment Research Report Finds Strong Apple Pay Momentum"
** key findings by ITG:

• 60% of new Apple Pay customers used Apple Pay on multiple days through November, suggesting strong customer engagement. In comparison, New PayPal customers used the service on multiple days during the same time period just 20% of the time.
• Apple Pay customers used the service roughly 1.4 times per week and used Apple Pay at the same merchant for future transactions roughly 66% of the time.
• Upon adoption of Apple Pay, the average consumer uses the service for approximately 5.3% of all future card transactions and 2.3% of all future card dollars spent.

*** Walgreens comes second (19%/12%), McDonalds third (11%/3%).

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"

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

As Daum goes (a bit) mAd, SK Telecom jumps to L Commerce and Mobile Virtual Banking Operator

I've been expecting a lot from Korea's leading portals Naver and Daum*, but so far, they've not exactly revolutionized mobile internet. For instance, they've only recently set a timid foot into mobile advertising**.

To their credit, it's hard to get a slice of the wireless pie consistent with their impressive web portal market share, even after the implementation of USIM cards, which undermined Korean MNO's lock on handsets, and even after the rise of smartphone apps, which also weakened their positions on the value chain.

According to KoreanClick, #1 NHN / Naver controls 63% of the portal market (31 M Unique Visitors for Naver.com in April 2010) and #2 Daum 21% (28.9 M UV), but #3 Nate (10% MS, 24.7 M UV) can leverage on key enablers provided by owner SK Telecom : the leading cellco, already a quadplay giant, has always put a lot of importance on Location Based Services and financial enablers.

That focus has become even more evident with the creation of the Hana Bank - SKT JV (see "SK Telecom's Wild Hana Card"), confirmed by the first services earlier this year***. The recently rebranded Hana SK Card targets 400 to 500,000 cardholders by EOY 2010.

SKT has also been redefining the "mobile wallet" concept over the past few weeks : leveraging on Visa PayWave radio frequency technology, the "T Smart Pay" (always that "T" umbrella brand of SKT's) concept allows the consumer to monitor up to 8 credit cards, 30 mileage / point cards, and 50 coupons with the same '13.56MHz RF SIM' card (always that "technerdy" trend of SKT's), to the risk of storing all your most critical information on one single device. Each time you present it for a contactless payment, you're proposed the choice between all registered cards.

Of course, Hana SK Card holders can also enjoy a simplified UI :



Here, SKT almost acts like a Mobile Virtual Banking Operator roaming on tens of rival networks and helping the consumer make the most of each buck, picking the best provider depending on the store, account status, promotion... Needless to say that this entry point will be massively exploited for contextual offers : ever since NATE Coupons, SK Telecom has been a major innovator in couponing and in July, SKT will launch 'L-commerce', a new set of Location Based Services bound to confirm the return of its mojo.

About ten years ago, I was impressed by how deep this player ventured into new trades like media or banking. Since then, SK Telecom didn't fully succeed overseas as a classic mobile operator, and at one moment lost some appeal as the marketing king at home, but lately, it seems to be experiencing a revival. Even telematics are back in fashion (SKT MIV / Mobile in Vehicle).

Note that on the more traditional battlefield, SK confirmed 8 more Android handsets by EOY (see "SK Telecom pushes Android"), and KT remains the most likely guess for the iPad exclusivity : Apple's latest gizmo is being approved for import, and TriGem, Samsung, and LG will suffer from a minimized delay before their own tablets****.

mot-bile 2010


* see "KT claims 500,000 iPhones"
** "Daum rolls out mobile advertising network" (JoongAng Daily 20100511)
*** see "Wal-Mart's Vudu Trance - home entertainment and apps"
**** see "Samsung S Pad in a Flash"

Wal-Mart's Vudu Trance - home entertainment and apps

mot-bile 2010 - What is exactly "home entertainment" according to Wal-Mart ? Everyday low prices for home movies or everyday more promotions for everything else on your TV screen ?

The Bentonville, AR giant acquired VUDU, Inc, an online video service embedded in broadband-ready TVs and Blu-ray players, and "combining VUDU's unique digital technology and service with Walmart's retail expertise and scale will provide customers with unprecedented access to home entertainment options as they migrate to a digital environment".*

But Wal-Mart also mentions VUDU Apps, a very crucial entry point in households for all sorts of services, including Twitter or Facebook, the kind of "web family names" we mentioned earlier as the hottest TV stars of the year (see "Skype on your TV : home improvement ?" - 20100106).

Wal-Mart was not the only bidder for this entry point : it won over direct rivals (Amazon & co), victims of Vudu curses (Blockbuster & co) media manufacturers turner entertainers (Sony & co), or the usual Redmond suspects (Micro and Soft).

Now back to the smaller screen, but still in the retailing arena : SK Telecom and Hana Bank eventually released their joint services** in Korea. Push and pull location-based marketing make sure you have always an incentive even if you came out without your paper coupons.

Note that in their latest TV ads, SKT are marketing Android a very cute way with a green robot dancing on "That's the way (uh uh uh uh) I like it", and that's likely to boost the brand's fun factor. The Android brand, I mean : the character bumps into SKT's dull "T" logo and roars at it... There was probably a smarter way of celebrating this encounter of the third kind.

* "Walmart Announces Acquisition of Digital Entertainment Provider, VUDU" (20100222)
** on this killer alliance, see "SK Telecom's Wild Hana Card" (20090612)

SK Telecom's Wild Hana Card

Since their coming out as an item on May 22, SK Telecom and Hana Bank have been advancing on their JV project (Korea's leading MNO taking 49% of Hana Card, the credit card unit of Korea's #4 financial group).

SKT seems to be seizing a great opportunity : Hana is lagging in the card business, and regulations were eased after the crash last autumn : big non financial groups, previously forced out, were ripe with cash. But even without Hana, SKT is not a small player in cards and financial services.

SKT's mother company, SK Group, boasts 30M OK Cashbag card members. The operator's own loyalty card is used by 40% of its 23M customers, and Moneta, its mobile finance / mobile payment platform, is already one of the most advanced on earth : wired and wireless, Mifare contactless payments for subway, hundreds of thousands of dongles across the country, 3G USIM / EMV Over-The-Air, T Cash / Mobile T-money - a partnership with T money... SK Telecom is the closest thing to a bank you can get in the MNO world.

Financially, the partnership could secure the MNO's business model in the long term at the national level, and facilitate the internationalization of its platforms.*

Hana doesn't bring much of a customer base, nor even disruptive solutions, but certainly new marketing opportunities. A more comprehensive understanding of customers would come handily for a mobile leader who tended to loose his fabled mojo.**


* see "SK Telecom's Semestrus Horribilis"
** see "KT-NTT Venture Forum". Well. The integration of Hanaro Telecom by SKT and KTF by KT didn't inspire much both leaders : triple and quad-play promotions badly lack imagination and appeal.

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)

Payez mobile, at last

If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. It's up to you, France, France...

Europeans were getting jalous of their Asian counterparts : while NTT DoCoMo, KTF or SK Telecom could do whatever they wanted in the finance area, European operators were caught in a stalemate with powerful financial institutions.

And nowhere was the issue more sensible than in France, home to the GIE Carte Bleue, the powerful lobby that brought you Moreno's smartcard but delayed the emergence of contactless and mobile payments for more years than needed.

So make no mistake : the "Payez mobile" trial is a turning point likely to set the pace for the continent and well beyond.

It just started (1,000 testers and 200 merchants expected overall in the cities of Strasbourg and Caen) with an aggressive TTM for full launch (2008). It will make more headlines during the Cartes & IDentification 2007 exhibition between the 13rd and the 15th of November in Villepinte.

The casting couldn't be much better :
- all 3 MNOs (Orange*, SFR, Bouygues Telecom), the most bank-compatible M-VNO (NRJ Mobile, a JV involving CIC bank, which already tried the concept earlier),
- the elite of French banks (BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole including LCL, Credit Mutuel-CIC Group, Caisse d'Epargne, La Banque Postale and Societe Generale), and
- the World's dominant credit cards (Visa, Europay / Mastercard), both sponsor members of the NFC Forum

Not to mention the French Government : this trial is under the umbrella of the regional TES cluster (Secure Electronic Transactions), which will certainly help this initiative play a key role in standardization at the European level (cf SEPA - The Single Euro Payments Area project).

On the technical side, another eminent member of the NFC Forum, Gemalto-Oberthur, provided the SIM cards and software.

Because this is SIM-based NFC. At a secured crossroads where both banks and operators put a lock on their valuable consumers.

This is about micropayments and the substitution of cash and the unsuccessful Moneo smartcard by the most personal and popular device, but who cares about handset manufacturers for such a trial ? No need to put those guys in a loop banks and operators took so long to weave.

Secured crossroads, double locks and narrow loops... the tie is tightly knotted around the customer's neck, but also between partners bound to cohabit on a tiny chip. Let's do business over the counter first - over the network is another story.

Let us not forget about that other success story of mobile payment, much less violent and involving Vodafone and Safaricom in Africa : M-PESA, a smart and simple but literally peer to peer system perfectly adapted to places where no banker ever set a foot (don't expect to communicate with one in your nearest field, nor even dozens of miles away), and where the very concept of metropolitan area network doesn't make much sense.

* France Telecom intends to keep the edge in certain strategical fields : they led the first trials in Rennes back in 2005 and are just starting another one in the same city for 2 months with 35 users. Main application : public transportations (bus and subway operated by the SNCF and Keolis). Bonus : a Tag 2D application (NFC chip on SNCF posters for passengers or ad viewers to download informations).

106.8% penetration rate for broadband

106.8% for Seoul, 99.2% for Incheon, 100.7% for Gyeonggi province... as of May 2007, 90% of Korean households had a fixed broadband connection, Jeollanam-do being the usual local laggard with a 58.4% penetration rate most G8 countries would dream of posting.

Mobility is also behind with 87.3%. Despite a nationwide HSDPA coverage, 3G remains an EVDO thing for SK Telecom (55% of total subs). With the technical help of DoCoMo, KTF reached the 1st million mark for HSDPA (about 10% of their total customer base + 42% for EVDO) and expect 2.7M for EOY 2007.

IPTV remains relatively low, but more than 500,000 households have already subscribed to HanaTV (Hanaro's VOD service), and after the recent opening by the regulator, KT can at last target 300,000 subs EOY for MegaTV (1M for EOY 2008). Mobile leader SKT is out of that race and tries to enter the PC to mobile communications business. For them, international activities and payment solutions appear once more as one of the few remaining drivers for growth.

NB : this photo "Wireless Korea" (2003) is available on SnapVillage.com as "power lines".

iPhone is not my Oyster 3G

Apple's iConic handsets started to fly off the shelves.
They do looks beautiful, provided you keep your gloves on. They have Apple fingerprints all over, but a rather black, Korean touch as well. They will give AT&T a boost, but on a 2G network and with a Blackberrish herd of servers to support the service. Jobs love Gates, but the iPhone uses the same H.264 video format as YouTube, and is meant to give Safari a boost in the nascent mobile browsing market*... are Steve and Bill considering keeping their marriage secret for another ten years ?

ip.access also offers good looking devices ; their Oyster 3G femtocells even won a GSMA's Global Mobile Award earlier this year. But Frost & Sullivan awarded IPWireless with a Technology of the Year label last march, and two months later NextWave Wireless (better known for PacketVideo and WiMAX) completed the acquisition of the TD-CDMA - TDtv champion...

What else ? 3 items picked (almost) randomly :

. The EC and Viviane Reding keep pushing DVB-H. Sorry, no spectrum. And no cash back for those insane 3G auctions either.

. Saudi Telecom, a laggard in booming Middle East, eventually joins the investing frenzy. Malaysia's Maxis is their first foreign target ever. What a coincidence... after islamic banking, there could actually be a big market for islamic telecom... Infrastructure Shariah anyone ?

. Wells Fargo & Company and Visa USA pursue their NFC mobile banking trials. After Phase I (this spring : employees, Wells Fargo Customer Experience Research Lab) and before Phase II (this summer : employees, Visa payWave enabled merchants), WFC released their new CEO Mobile services (that's Commercial Electronic Office). Real customers - 300-500 Wells Fargo Visa cardholders - won't be involved before Phase III (this autumn ?). After that, you should be hearing about some operator... beyond Visa, that is.


*Safari's web browser usage share is well below 5%, but has been significantly improving lately.

Pay-Buy Mobile - DoCoMo inside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Green Taxi" - follow this cab

London invented pink cabs for the ladies by the ladies ? Seoul replies with its Green Taxis. Don't expect any environmental friendly gimmick : GTs are about removing the fear factor from the cab experience.
It's late and you're alone in the dark. Enter Travis Bickle with his mohawk (a.k.a. Robert de Niro in Scorcese's Taxi Driver). Friend or foe ? You decide to take the chance, but to play it safe you RFIDly download his ID (license plate) on your cell phone. Tadaa : your family knows who's taking care of you and where you are.
And Travis knows he's being watched. He also knows you don't trust him.

The Green Taxi concept ? A frustrated psycho killer driving a paranoid customer.

I prefer another killer application : 3,500 to 5,000 Korean cabs will accept credit cards, including seamless payments with your mobile phone.

DoCoMo beyond DoCoMo

DoCoMo will soon expand its HSDPA coverage beyond Tokyo in Japan's major cities. 33,000 FOMA HIGH-SPEED handsets were sold during the first month of operation last summer and the MOVA / FOMA ratio fell from 54% to 45% between end of March and end of August 2006.
NTT DoCoMo's overall marketshare keeps going down too, but at a much slower pace (not even one point over the last two years). Churn rate even flirted with the 0.60% line lately. But MNP should boost it back up to 0.85%. And Softbank Mobile starts releasing impressive series of 3G W-CDMA handsets.
i-mode still suffers at the global level and e-Wallet / m-payment services seem to be the only promising driver right now : end of August, DCMX claimed 800,000 users (the service was launched in April) and Felica almost one third of DoC's 47.1M customers (15.5M enabled handsets). Besides, iD will share a common platform (PoS reader / writer, data center) with JR East's Suica next January and others will follow soon afterwards (JCB Co.'s QUICPay and bitWallet Inc.'s Edy). But nothing really new under the sun : JR East and DoCoMo have been working on it for over a year*.
Well... "DoCoMo Vision 2010" is getting older and it starts showing. Multimedia and Ubiquity didn't bring any major disruption, and Globalization looks gloomy. In Europe at least. Teaming up with KTF was the smartest move in the past few years.

* see "Zero noodle. Korea goes South" (20050730)

Subsidies - 2nd Korean Wave

KTF ignited Korea's second round of handset subsidies* and SKT followed yesterday. Consumers don't quite understand the sophisticated grids proposed by the operators but the message is clear : you'll get more if you're a loyal big spender.
For example, at SK Telecom, you're still offered 70,000 wons if you joined the company during the last three years and if you spend less than 30,000 wons per month... but if you've been a client for over 8 years and spend over 90,000 wons per month, subsidies reach 240,000 wons and that's a 26% increase since March the 27th.
People who joined the back-then-not-yet-broad-bandwagon in '96 and spend about 80 euros per month are either business users or deep pocket early adopters (if not both) : core targets for such expensive next gen devices as DMB handsets.
The thing is SKT badly need to boost subscriptions to TU media and its business flavor TU media Corp**. End of March, almost all SKT consumers had WAP enabled (99.5%) and color (92.8%) phones. And it looks as if not everybody will need 3G (unless the operator gives up 2G) : EV-DO penetration reaches 44.6% (of which 90% are June enabled), but the score was already 38.3% end of March last year and SKT started before Japan's KDDI, a 96% 3G cellco***. The same could be said about Nate - active users stuck around 55% of the customer base.
Actually, from a wireless ARPU point of view, I'm not sure TU is such a great booster. But far beyond, the transformation of the cellco into a powerful multimedia broadcaster and content provider remains impressive.
SKT's other growth engines require time : m-commerce becomes mainstream (and it shows in ARPU), but international operations remain quite small (of the 20 M global customer bases, 19.7 M live in Korea...). We'll see how Helio** performs in the US.
And we'll aslo see how KTF performs in Korea with W-CDMA and his new international partner NTT DoCoMo...


* see "Saving private Korea Inc - back to subsidies, but no way back" (20060326).
** see previous posts on SKT's S-DMB service (TU) and US M-VNO (Helio).
*** even if you cannot compare the circumstances : SKT a leader in a pure CDMA country, and KDDI a CDMA laggard in a PDC country (who became #2 thanks to an aggressive 3G strategy).

SK Telecom - the year of the milking cow

I must confess financial data tend to bore me. SK Telecom's figures for 2005 look nice enough, even after retracting SK Teletech's sale*.
Considering the competitive circumstances, keeping a 50.9% market share and adding 750,000 subs inspires respect. The success of Wireless Internet (26.6% of all cellular service revenue) should be tampered by the vastness of the definition of "wireless internet", but no one can contest the achievements of MelOn and Mobile Cyworld, or the ingeniosity of the MNO's data plans.
2005 was yet another exciting year for them (even when followed from this not so exciting blog), but also a year of restructuration with spectacular changes in management and a significant marketing rationalization (the marketing expense to sales revenue ratio went down from 17.2% to 19.2%).
2006 should be less juicy from a financial point of view : SKT must invest in HSDPA, face the competition of DMB-T and Wibro at home, and push abroad... but the year could prove much more exciting from a strategical point of view, especially in the contents / partnerships arenas and in the US**.

* see "Hardware behind, hard work ahead" (20050504)

** see "Hello HELIO - here comes the sun" (20051118)

http ftth pfft

While Qualcomm are suing Nokia as a retaliation against a very much needed EU investigation on Doc Jacobs' licensing practices, DoCoMo are caught copying SK Telecom : they're taking a 42% stake in a record company (Tower Records), launching a credit card brand (iD™), and even contemplating investing in Asian MNOs. Taiwan and Hong-Kong look ripe enough but an assault on Korea would be a spectacular move (unless they manage to convert LGT to W-CDMA, they'd have to claim KTF).
Competitors badly need a boost, and both seem to focus on bigger pipes. Vodafone KK are trying as hard as they can to catch up, flexing their muscles in the wireless field (Ericsson just completed a big wave of HSDPA upgrade), but other kinds of fibers are expected to be needed. KDDI decided last month to absorb PoweredCom Inc, a TEPCO subsidiary (Tokyo Electric Power Company). We're talking about Fiber To The Home (FTTH), we're talking about convergence, we're talking about a born again MNO competing not only with the leading MNO but with the fixed incumbent. Sparks will definitely fly. Concentration is on the way this side of the Pacific Ocean too.

NRJ mobile and bank robberies

From radio to TV to mobile, NRJ Group are heading for a multimedia grand slam. Of course, NRJ owner Jean-Paul Baudecroux cannot leverage on as massive a blog pool as his rival and potential target Skyrock (Skyblog drafted millions and NRJblog followed with a me-too product - still considered as such by the public)... but he's the early bird and remains the helluva dealmaker. Plus he certainly took this media a better way than other players. To the point this French operator could export the concept to Scandinavia, where M-VNOhood started : NRJ/ENERGY operates in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, but also in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. Besides, they know about network operating since the NRJ Group owns the French towerco towerCast, also a SFR partner in their DVB-H trials (see "Satellite of love"*).
Far from your usual reseller, NRJ mobile can be considered a genuine M-VNO. They're not killing voice (35 to 55 cents per mn), they're not killing SMS (6 to 12 cents apiece), they're certainly not killing radio (15 cents per mn), and they're not even killing music : 2 euros per song, that will disturb neither their carrier (SFR), nor their carrier's owner (Universal), nor even NRJ's annoucers (SFR and Universal among others). The core target is young but not so cheap, and their vanity is rewarded : customers can pick their numbers in the 06.06 series (no doubt M6 Mobile is loving it).
NRJ's partners should know about overcharging services : CIC (10% of NRJ mobile) happens to be my bank...


* by the way, TF1 & co have just started their T-DMB trials in Paris on October the 15th (one month after DVB-H), I'm sure with the blessing of LG (see "Mobile Real TV - LG and the H-free handset").

Handle with e-care - China-aware pro gaming

Still keepin' an eye on SKT's stats, and especially TU media (following Slomobile TV) : now covering 84 cities, the mobile TV service claimed 200,000 subs after almost 5 months of operation. That's about 1,400 customers a day, but this average is supposed to be 2,400 nowadays (the first 100k took 2 months and 22 days, the last 2 months and 6 days). 90 more days at this pace would bring them over 400k subs at the end of the year and I guess they can push to an average 3,500 with the high season coming but they'd need a strong 4,500 to reach their original 600,000 target.
More impressive : last summer and 5 years after launch, e-Station (SKT's e-CRM portal) signed its 10th million customer. The service averages 160K users per day (70% being in their 20s-30s) and 16.4M acts per month (about 3 times as much as over the phone). Many MNOs would die for such figures.
For those as well : over 94% of SKT's customers are equiped with cdma2000 phones, now dubbed "2.5G"*. 84% have color screens and 52% are active Nate users. The mobile portal keeps improving and proposing new services, but the operator knows "wireless internet" is not the only field beyond voice. Hard to tell how m-finance and banking are contributing.
As far as international is concerned, I'm still expecting some juicy fruits from the SKT-Earthlink partnership, but the only news came from the MNO's professional gamers' team, T1, which drafted two Starcraft players from China. I don't know whether these hardcore gamers are ready to die for their new bosses but the mobile arena could be safer than a PC Bang : a 23 year old Briton, Darren Prior, was recently saved by his LG U8210 during a bank robbery, the handset stopping the bullet.
Welcome to Korea, the country where operators become bankers and handset manufacturers life insurers.

* still no specific statistics for EV-DO, but good news for 3G UMTS : since SKT are preparing commercial launch of HSDPA early 2006 (Nortel-LG to deliver the goods), they are pushing W-CDMA as well in the South : commercial launch this November for Jeju-do, Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do + Busan.

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.

Cyworld and Nespot, WMD and WWF

The day SKT announced mobile Cyworld's millionth subscriber, KT celebrated Nespot's 500,000th client.
Cyworld mobile was doomed to succeed : it took almost one year to reach the 500,000 mark (last Feb), but about half this time to double the score. SKT target 1,5M users end 2005, of which 800,000 "active" (vs 600,000 now, an active user being defined as having used the service in the past 30 days). They could do even better considering this crowd would be equivalent to less than 10% of all Cyworld users - plus mobile videoblogs have not been launched yet. Anyway, "Dotori"s keep flying over the air : Cyworld's virtual currency was already stronger than your classic loyalty program's miles, it is now becoming a perfect and not-so-informal complement to SKT's WMDs (Weapons of M-banking Domination : Moneta & co).
KT are also strenghtening their positions in the mobile arena through key "fixed" assets but significantly, while SKT's entry points usually depend on customer centric services, KT's more often rely on offer-creates-demand-hardware-and-network-based solutions. Nespot took about 3.5 years to hit the half-a-million spot (a World record for 802.11b access services) : launched in feb 2002, it claimed 502,031 subscribers on August the 16th, 2005 thanks to an impressive army of 13,222 hotspots. But the fixed incumbent plans to reach 170,000 areas by the end of the year, put Blackberry in its Swing phones and launch new W-LAN-based home networking applications*. I wonder whether KT expect to multiply by 12 their Nespot customer base or consider locking key locations for other technologies as well (Wibro ? HSDPA ? HSUPA ? all of the above 2Mbps ?).

* Like KTF a few weeks ago, KT picked a pet-centric app to make it sweeter to the eyes of the public - as far as acronyms are concerned, their PR teams must be more familiar with WWF than MBA.