M6 Mobile and Orange celebrate

2 years after launch and one year ahead of schedule, M6 Mobile by Orange hits the 1M mark (767,000 subs EOY 2006) and claims a new target of 1.5M EOY 2008. France's most succesful MVNO is not a MVNO but a JV wrapped around a licensing agreement targeting the younger generation (15-25).

France Telecom's Lombard and M6's Tavernost confess today to Le Figaro they have other plans in mind, but not in the soccer rights field. Yet. More good news for Canal+, under pressure by France's Pro League : the LFP wants to maintain its contract at a high price in spite of the recent merger of TPS with Canal Sat, but was recently deterred (by a court ruling) from switching from a 3 to a 5 year contract in order to attract more bidders. M6 recently snatched rights for not so minor events, including part of FIFA World Cup.

M6 just developped new threads to an already impressive web (M6 Web manages over 50 sites including M6.fr, the country's second audiovisual website in audience after TF1), both in the small ads field :

• atonservice.fr : students jobs focused on services to individuals, likely to feed M6 Mobile's core target, already under the spell of the M6 Group for music.
• a 34% participation in PagesJaunes Petites Annonces (a PagesJaunes Group subsidiary), bound to boost another of their major verticals : cars and motors.

The fun doesn't come from Orangeworld but from a partner more fit for the job and that's OK for FT : keeping youngsters is a tough job and the Orange brand is there, ready to help them switch to more serious applications when the time comes.

Super 3G trials

NTT DoCoMo announces the end of Super 3G / LTE development in 2009, starting these days with an indoor trial at 300 Mbps downlink between two gizmos. You don't want to stay in that room unless you need a perm. DoC also created CXD NEXT, a 40/60 JV with Casio Computer mating cash registers with mobile devices. iD, FeliCa, ToruCa, and others are rumored to attend the wedding as key witnesses.

RIM announces the BlackBerry 8820, a dual mode 2GSM / WiFi smartphone. SMART enough to switch from one network to the other during a PHONE call. You wouldn't want to use WiFi for secured data sessions, would you ?

Orange UK and PC World announce the "free" laptop for £ 337 (£ 14.99 per month for 24 months, except the first 3 for half the price - and you get a 2MB connection with a monthly limit of 2 GB). You may prefer their £ 300 subsidy on a few other references, or another provider with a better and cheaper free package.

Informa informs us : 6.2% of all W-CDMA subs were HSPA at the end of Q1 2007 and 20.5% will be by EOY 2008. Oh BOY.

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.

Saint Hubert Mobile, pray for customer hunters

1.18% of the market, that was Frederic Nihous's score at the French presidential elections last April. Predecessor Jean de Saint Josse got 4.23% back in 2002. How much will Sebastien Harle d’Ophove get ?

The founder of Saint Hubert Mobile, the first MVNO by hunters for hunters, must be roaming the corridors of CPNT (Chasse Peche Nature et Tradition), the French pro-hunting pro-rural party / lobby who pushed Saint Josse and Nihous, not to mention 245 candidates for the recent legislative election. "SHO", who used to work for Belgian MNO Base, needs to build another base from scratch. And the first logical step is to try and scare up a few preys among the 420,645 people who casted a ballot for Nihous 2 months ago.

Oh my deer... niche marketing if I ever saw one !

Saint Hubert, patron of hunters, is hosted by MVNE Coriolis... not much of a guarantee either. These days, fellow French and European MVNOs are hunting investors more eagerly than they are hunting customers. Bad vibes for Ten Mobile, debitel, TDC... not to mention Amp'd in the US (under cash perfusion from Verizon Wireless).

easymobile tries to survive by changing business models in a Blyk. I come for free, advertising can finance everything, I'll grow the helluva big customer base and be the king of the hill.

How many "free" ISPs survived ? At least those could bloom in a dial-up, non-broadband era...

Actual hunters won't waste time nor bullets for such poor game.

MySpace, My Yahoo!, My Sun

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

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

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


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

Near Failed Communications

Can you hear me ?

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

Can you see me ?

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

Can you copy me ?

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

Can you read me ?

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

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

Y-Combinator, OutCubator, Germinator

Remember the bubble days, when people used to say the best way to make money in a gold rush was to sell picks and shovels ? We're back at it folks. The difference is today's diggers have less to spend on tools. Which doesn't mean the said tools are not getting any sexier...
Y-Combinator opened a catwalk for young models, basically providing speed dating services for VCious, older entrepreneurs.
OutCubator pushes virtual corporate hospitality to new heights. Stop struggling in your garage and let your Second Life avatar enjoy a red carpet for his pet projects !
Pimp my ride towards initial venture and IPO !

Vivendi Mobile Entertainment : Vizzavi's Second Life ?

The epitome of early WAP failures for many, Vizzavi happened to be a very successful portal : it opened the gates of Universal for Vivendi and of Mannesmann for Vodafone. Never mind the few commoners using the service door during the JV's short life.
This time, Vivendi Mobile Entertainment* means non virtual business. A paid business model leveraging on the group's successful subscription-based business models : Canal+ and SFR claim 10 and 18M subs in France, Vivendi Games 6M worldwide just for War of Warcraft, and Universal Music does sell a few tunes here and there too.
Somehow, the new portal will compete with a couple of powerful partners, but that could prove easier than growing up in a family of brands with strong egos. Yet, this time it may work, and not only because of the commoditization of broadband : Vivendi seems ready to play it smart and sexy.
Each member of the family looks fitter, more confident, a leader in his own field, more concious of its own role than a couple of years ago, when all frontiers were blurred but convergence still a joke.
I wish Cedric Ponsot and his teams the best, and the time of their lives.


* I prefer the full version to this Vivendi ME reminiscent of Windows Y2K OS

Dell @ Wal-Mart - everyday low profile

Michael Dell used to boast about a constistent strategy relying from the start on his own Intelligent Design. Then came the first Darwinian inputs : diversity with AMD (Intel partly outside), IdeaStorming for Ubuntu (Linux inside)...
Now this : indirect sales. Through no other than Wal-Mart if you please (one year after the trials in two malls - Dallas, TX and West Nyack, NY).
Shaking the very core of the Business MoDell... but more trivially following a natural trend : you cannot skip the real life presales customer experience.

Dell eventually realizes some of their customers like to be asked "what makes you unique ?" But some analysts will ask Dell "what makes you unique now ?"


sites : ideastorm.com, ubuntu.com.

Google too big to be true ? - discussion

(Following "Google's next moves" (20070518), answer to the question "So you think that they have gotten to the point where their size is getting in the way of innovation?")

Not that early. They are closer to Cisco circa Y2K than Microsoft right now. Besides, their DNA is supposed to protect them from the Redmond syndrom.
Yet, size does matter. Neither at the HR level nor at the geographical level (nice Mountain View over the valley), rather in the business focus area. Yahoo! did lose some focus at a certain point, Google may go too far the other way.
Google seem stronger and reached the stage where they cannot vanish overnight, but their model remains fragile, they are surrounded by big question marks, and their evolutivity is not guaranteed.
They grow a rather logical way, never going for real disruption nor actual pervasiveness, which makes them look titanic and overexposed to regulator radars considering their age. They are not competing with key customers, but they are turning into the web's Wal-Mart. It's difficult not to make business with them but you wish there were alternatives out there and would seize any opportunity to put some eggs in other baskets. Moreover, it will be difficult for them to switch to a different spot when needed.
So they are great predators, but I feel some unease as they grow. While analysts keep applauding each time they catch a nice prey, I remain cautious.

aQuantive, the ad fad and the virtual estate bubble

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

Google's next moves

(answer to the question "As the "Google-age" continues to unfold, what do you think their next move is in changing the universe?")

GOOGLE ARE NO MORE CHANGING THE UNIVERSE. THEIR AIM IS TO HAVE THE UNIVERSE NOT CHANGING WITHOUT THEM.
The bigger they get, the more it is difficult for them to anticipate next moves in their environment.
Thus, they must at least remain best followers in innovation.
A great capacity for evolutivity and integration is required. The star must become a galaxy without losing all constistence. Something like Cisco at the turn of the millenium.

MVNOs take off in France

According to the French NRA, the ARCEP, the country reached a 82% penetration rate end of Q1 2007 with a total of 52M active accounts, including overseas regions and territories.
This base grew by 7% over the last 12 months : 4% for MNOs, and a solid 302% for M-VNOs, whose market share eventually took off from .91 to 3.42%. During Q1 2007, they even snatched 11.5% of net sales for prepaid and 15.8% for postpaid.
The percentage of users of multimedia services remained stable at 29%, and the number of SMS by active users at around 30 per month. But ARPU didn't nose dive (EUR 36.4 / month, -6%) because voice remained strong : traffic gained 14% and call termination wholesale cuts didn't kill the golden goose. But Viviane Reding's roaming wars haven't started yet. And French M-VNOs are not voice killers. Yet.
Even price-centric M-VNOs (ie Tele2 Mobile, over 350k subs) or mass retailers (Auchan Telecom, Carrefour mobile) can't go far. Data-centric Ten or M-VNOs with an ethnic / geographic focus (MobiSud, Breitz Mobile) won't bring the whole house down. Nor will such players as Coriolis or Transatel. "Entertainers" NRJ Mobile and Virgin Mobile play the card of rates a more subtle way, offering more for the same price. Both are enjoying a good position on the market (over 300k subs), the latter contributing to the success story of Omer Telecom, the Phone House / Carphone Warehouse VNO behind Breizh Mobile and the Virgin Mobile JV.
But triple- / quadplayers hold the best entry points as mobile voice rates start converging with landline ones, as mobile and landline start making one. neuf cegetel started ahead of Free Iliad, but Orange and SFR, now also an ISP, won't let their market share shrink that easily. The timing seems definitely interesting for the sale of Bouygues Telecom*.

* see "Bouygues not for sale ? How about TF1 ?" (20070509)

Bouygues not for sale ? How about TF1 ?

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

MVNO frenzy and extreme hangovers

Sprint welcomes another MVNO, and the utterly bankable KDDI Mobile brand has a crystal clear ambition : selling more Kyoceras in the US.
Meanwhile and closer to Japan, Google Phones are being made in Taiwan by HTC and cobranded by the MNO. The utterly bankable Google brand is definitely not meant to become a MVNO. Yet.
The so nineties Blyk concept is gathering an impressive pool of advertisers for its pan-European launch on Orange networks.
The so eighties Sonopia's DIY MVNO / MVNE concept is gathering an impressive media coverage. Get cool calling cards with your company's logo, grow as big as AT&T in less than two weeks... ego will sell this summer.
But the so Y2Ks WiFi - 3G PC Card concept doesn't sell : Helio Hybrid ends a partnership with Boingo going airbuso...
The MVNO primaries are definitely not over, but Amp'd clearly feels a Joementum - I don't have New Hampshire's figures (nor Canada's, for that matter), but this natural born winner is approaching the 200,000 subs mark (100,000 EOY 2006), with a 84% postpaid customer base (just slightly down from 89%), and ARPU remains strong at $100. Do you want the sign that says "purchase me right now" or the one that reads "wanted : Vegas wedding chapel" ?
Someone must clean this crowded place one way or the other, even the most extreme. Fortunately, ExtremeMob (extrememob.com) is not the mafia's MVNO but the result of a deal between Xebra Limited and Vodafone UK. This fall, Extreme Mobile Limited will target the X generation with all the Weapons of Mass Disruption of the Extreme Media Group (extrememediagroup.com) : Extreme Sports Channel, Ex Publishing, Extreme Entertainment (content), Ex Events, Extreme Retail and even Extreme Hotels, Extreme Parks, or Extronics. "ExtremeMob is more than just about extreme sports, it’s about being an integral part of the lifestyle of under 24’s". The handset shown in the press release goes with an extreme headset, and the said "under 24's" may go with an extreme hangover thanks to Xebra's Extreme Drinks.
ExtremeMob can claim the Pole position : Xebra was recently purchased by Centernet / NFI Midas.

UNOMobile, COOP and TIM : mobile sells in Italia

"Parlare di più, pagare di meno". Talk more, pay less ; that will be UNOMobile's moto. Is this Carrefour unit a full MVNO or only an ESP (Enhanced Service Provider) ? Anyway, another retailer is launching a MVNO in Italy : COOP will propose CoopVoce to its 6.5M members and their families (18M people overall), aiming for 1M subs in 3 years with a EUR 200 M turnover. CoopVoce will be hosted by TIM.

"Talk no more, unless I pay less". That could be the reason why AT&T declined the same TIM (through the Olympia-Pirelli-Telecom Italia cascade). But American Moviles and France Telecom (now with Morgan Stanley) remain in a shopping mood. For them, it could be "Parlare di più, pagare di piu".

"Parlare di più" ? Vodafone seems to perfectly understand the Italian MVNO dialect : Vodafone Italia will host both UNOMobile and Poste Italiane, and it is even using the same language to talk to fellow brits (BT aims at 10% of the biz market with its convergence offer, but needs a godfather to enter it).

* branded 1Mobile - with the same 1 as the group's trademark logo for its first price products (see unomobile.it - still at the "coming soon" stage).

Just trying Frappr - feel like joining ?

Helio to hit 100k subs, and to be hit by Earthlink's 10K

According to Helio / Helio powered by SK Telecom, the Hollywood MVNO is "on the path to surpass 100,000 subscribers by early in the second quarter of 2007" (NB : 10 month after launch) and claims an "ARPU of over $100 per month", 25% of which from data services. The proof of concept for their device driven innovation strategy reads in some interesting figures :
- a WAP penetration of over 85%, an average 400 SMS per customer (merry Xmas - those were the stats for December 2006 so you won't get any data regarding the recent launch of Helio Music) - over 70% of Helio members use MySpace Mobile
- over 80% of Helio Drift members have downloaded GPS-enabled Google Maps™ for mobile and about 70% have downloaded Buddy Beacon


According to Earthlink's 10-K, Helio Inc as well as Helio LLC (the opco) are Delaware corporations. This isn't Tinsel Town and the balance sheets are not unleaded. Up to now, each partner has spent $214M in cash and non cash assets ($40M for Earthlink's 27,000 wireless subscribers transferred in 2005, along with equipments and other assets). Each partner will spend 6 more millions in August but beyond that, there is a big question mark.

One thing is sure : the company will keep losing money for a while. Big time, because this is cellular business and even for a M-VNO with a low CAPEX, S curves tend to develop fat bellies. FYI, 2006 revenues reached $46.58M with a full launch in July (68.7% service, 31.2% equipments and other) and accumulated deficit stood at $233.7M. Provided ARPU remains at the same high-usage-low-hanging-early-adopter level, 100,000 subs would mean $120M, and an average customer base of 150,000 over the year would barely match 2006 OPEX ($186.5M). Not only does EY have "substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern", but even a massive success of HELIO would only make things worse in the short term (acquisition costs).

SK Telecom and Earthlink own each 47.8% of the operation. Earthlink can't afford losing money at this pace for long, and SK Telecom could seize the opportunity to take a clearer lead. Or to bring in one ov'em "potential outside investors" (up to now, "outside investors" represented "approximately $8.0 million of funding").

At this stage and especially after the recent US-Korean FTA, I don't see SKT pulling the plug that early. Even with such a fierce competition, it wants HELIO to "achieve or maintain adequate market share or revenue or compete effectively". One one hand, we should see more "Helio powered by SK Telecom" (MySpace's exclusivity is over and the Cyworld brand could blossom beyond the platform). On the other, SKT won't wait 25 years to welcome HELIO's 3 millionth customer.

The fun is just about to start.

Google TiSP - US Open at Flushing Windows

Big G's top execs kept a poker face each time they were asked how their ISP plans were doing ? They just answered with a royal flush.

Forget about PLC (PowerLine Communications) : even in its Beta version, Google TiSP (see Google Box below) sounds like the perfect solution for broadband applications. And Google does have the content to fill the pipes (for those who subscribe by the end of the first day of April, Google Music offers a free download of Screamin' Jay Hawkins's famed "Constipation Blues").

Google Labs are already working on premium add-ons. Rumors mention cross marketing with Nike for Google Air Freshener.