- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Palm Reach Continues to Recruit from Ericsson
- * A Packed Web Academy Seminar Coming to Stockholm on Oct 26!
- * What’s the Nokia/Visto Deal?
- * What is the Motorola Camp up to These Days?
- * When Building the Market, Companies Don’t Stick to Their Core Business
- * Building the ‘Folkhem’…
- * Discovery Channel: Meet the ‘Home-Grown Marketing’ at Ericsson
- * Improvement Opportunities at Ericsson
Last week I spent two days in Geneva, if you want to know what really happened, don’t ask me, go to http://www.wirelessgeneva.com, what a great site! Big news? Too many, let’s just mention the Nokia/Palm deal and the i-Mode announcement to surpass the 2 million subscriber mark and the launch of their exporting the i-Mode solution to operators abroad.
Telecom 99 was extremely successful for Ericsson. Let’s reinforce this message by putting the ship on the right course on the mobile Internet marketing arena as well: We are the leading company in mobile Internet and the world knows it. But the Americans don’t.
Want to start a discussion on the weekly stuff in this newsletter? I will be meeting today the corporate IT people to discuss setting up a discussion forum for IOW, hopefully we will go live next week!
- PALM REACH CONTINUES TO RECRUIT FROM ERICSSON
Palm Reach WAP portal (http://www.palmreach.com) from our friend Zaheed Haque (ex-Ericsson) from Stockholm is going to so a US launch at Wireless IT show in Santa Clara (CA) on Nov 2-3. They will probably show also the prototype of the GSM 1900 version of Nokia 7110. Heading that launch will be the new head of the PalmReach US operations, Tim Meyer, who just resigned earlier this week from Ericsson CyberLab in New York.
Back in Sweden, Palm Reach has grown to some 12-15 people and some two weeks ago they hired a new CEO, Anders Hall… from Ericsson (ECS, Kista).
According to my sources, Zaheed has sworn to stop recruiting from Ericsson… I took Zaheed away from my Oct 26 seminar in Stockholm, I thought he has slowed down, I will see whether I should try to put him back.
A PACKED WEB ACADEMY SEMINAR COMING TO STOCKHOLM ON OCT 26!
The Web Academy Fall 99 Seminar with a focus on Internet Business Models is building up nicely, more event info at http://webacademy.ericsson.se/projects/bm/main.htm. We are busy filling up the HF Filmsalen. If you still want to join and listen to our numerous guests from Silicon Valley and you think this could be useful in your work, please send me an email and I will certainly find you a seat.
Also, why don’t you all go ahead and send this newsletter to all your contacts at Ericsson who might find this useful.
Even if you would not make it to the seminar, please join us at the pre-event cocktail on Monday October 25 at O-Baren at Sturehof (@Stureplan, Stockholm). It is always useful to meet new colleagues and char informally with our seminar speakers. No registration necessary, we will start at 7 PM.
WHAT’S THE NOKIA/VISTO DEAL?
I got an email from the company SwiftTouch (http://www.swifttouch.com/whatis.asp) suggesting that they have a solution with which we could beat the Nokia deal with Visto (http://www.visto.com) in the online calendaring space. Do you know anything about this deal? Can you also please send me some comments on SwiftTouch if you feel strongly about it. Here’s what I was told:
“SwiftTouch is a premier on-line contact management system. We have a couple of patented capabilities vis-à-vis a Visto which uniquely allow SwiftTouch to maximize value to the ‘road warrior’, our target customer. Our service is a natural for the WAP environment, and we plan a WAP release in the very near term, allowing all Outlook (and other PIM) data to be downloaded to any WAP phone.”
WHAT IS THE MOTOROLA CAMP UP TO THESE DAYS?
Motorola Pager Division said to me at Telecom 99 that they will not develop any Springboard modules for Handspring, they don’t believe in the concept. In the instant messaging space, Motorola announced cooperation with AOL to port ICQ onto most o its devices. I saw the AOL Instant Messenger work on a Motorola PageWriter 2000 in Geneva…
Help! Philippe Kahn (who sold Starfish to Motorola a year ago) has set up a new company, Open Grid (http://www.opengrid.net), partly financed by Motorola. The new company is heavily into instant messaging. “OpenGrid offers key core wireless Internet solutions that include wireless messaging and instant messaging, as well as wireless networking. These solutions, which make up our Open Interchange, enable end users to intelligently manage their Internet experience anywhere, any time and on any Internet-enabled device.” The company secured last week $8 m financing from Motorola and Philippe Kahn himself.
WHEN BUILDING THE MARKET, COMPANIES DON’T STICK TO THEIR CORE BUSINESS
i-mode being exported (LINK) to operators in foreign countries. The NTT DoCoMo service has now over 2 million users, an incredible growth in 9 months. How could the i-Mode solution be adapted to GSM? GPRS? What is the value of business models, service integration experience and other ancillary value NTT DoCoMo can offer in other countries? What is they form an alliance with Andersen Consulting to deliver this value?
Telia Mobile International in Sweden will launch a new web site to promote usage of services and their DOF concept to other operators .The site is official, but you may want to take a look at http://www.teliideas.com/.
Sonera has a technology transfer strategy whereby they offer solutions and consulting to other operators, primarily the one in which they have an equity stake. In other words, Sonera is not an ‘operator’ any longer, it is 50 % a technology and solutions vendor. It is both a competitor and an attractive global partner for Ericsson, by the way.
Summa summarum: Companies need to move up and down in the value chain to learn to act in an emerging market. This does not mean they need to decide to permanently shift to this position. Ericsson needs to execute these shifts in order to learn and it needs to hire good marketing people who secure that existing customers and other constituencies (distributors, etc.) perceive this activity as mutually beneficial.
BUILDING THE ‘FOLKHEM’…
I start having opinions about Ericsson working with the cool Swedish Internet startups and helping them to make a global success. Let’s take Boxman, the music store Ericsson is working with at least through the Ericsson Mobile Internet portal. What are we actually doing?
First of all, we are potentially creating the next successful international enterprises who employ Swedes and pay taxes in Sweden. There is no reason to assume that Boxman would not be successful. Secondly, since our Western neighbor called USA has a bigger market and companies there have access to lower cost of capital, it is fair to assume that there will be companies who will be even more successful than Boxman, such as Amazon.com and MP3.com. Those companies will need to pursue global expansion which leads to assume that they would pay sizable premiums to acquire a leading European player, such as Boxman. Which again would lead to assume that Boxman executives have taken some MBA classes down in Lund where they have been told they should have a so called ‘exit strategy’ where they either try to go public or be acquired or both.
If Boxman gets acquired by Amazon it means someone gets a lot money. That someone is probably a Swede who has recently moved to Cayman Islands… The exit strategy was possible partly because Ericsson acted as a strategic partner to Boxman and helped build this wealth. The point is Ericsson does not benefit from this wealth creation because Ericsson does not have an equity stake in Boxman.
Like my friends say in Silicon Valley, it is not wise to aid the creation of a category leadership without taking an equity stake. It is like being the casino owner and giving customers earmarked cards…
DISCOVERY CHANNEL: MEET THE HOME-GROWN MARKETING AT ERICSSON
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the most important standards body for Internet infrastructure. One of their tri-annual meetings was arranged in Sweden in July 1995. Out of 600 people, five were from Ericsson (I was actually one of them). Since then, tens of top researchers and product developers have formed an ad hoc organization which participates in the IETF work, guided by LME Corporate Technology. Their mailing list is eriietf@kk.etx.ericsson.se. The best starting point to find out more might be David Partain’s home page at http://www.lmera.ericsson.se/~epkpart .
However, building the future of the Internet is, even in the standardization meetings, not only technology. The IETF maling list has recently started discussing about the ‘t-shirt issue’ or the ‘psychological warfare’ which in the management literature is normally referred to as marketing. The engineers see (quite rightly) an opportunity for Ericsson to act in these meetings as businessmen, wear Ericsson T-shirts, show that the top experts from Torrent or ACC actually are part of the Ericsson credibility, show off latest Ericsson mobile gear, use Ericsson wireless LAN cards, chat with chatboards.
My question is: How come nobody in the marketing department has found this opportunity to promote Ericsson?
IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES AT ERICSSON
Regarding the WAP applications database at Ericsson (re: my IOW previous issue), there is one already, go to http://consulting.ericsson.se/wap. Great stuff!
Ericsson should start slowly hitting the “top 100″ lists. Here’s where: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3965.html
Who will secure the ‘up-and-away’ scenario solutions for Ericsson? Let’s face it: the majority of visionaries believe in the long-term vision with intelligence in terminals. One of the problems at Ericsson is that while business innovation will take place on the up-and-away side, most of the business developers get paid by the service mania side (operator segment). Comments? Maybe I need to clarify this next week…
QUICK TAKES – Voice-enabling websites is something Ericsson should be known for, iFace is a player in this area with a brilliant one-liner “e-commerce communications”… Kerbango Internet radio will be the first standalone device
to play Internet audio… This wireless time-invoicing outsource service RedGorilla is kind of interesting, can you please check it out at http://www.redgorilla.com/tour… Metricom gets $300 million MORE from Paul Allen, MCI Worldcom is apparently less interested now ater the Sprint deal and Paul Ahad to secure that the Ricochet 2 deployment proceeds on schedule… How about Ericsson seriously focussing on server-side computing and thin clients? How about companies like NeoPlanet?… How to buy the music you are listening to on the radio? The dream has come true in the solution Connexus is offering… America Online launched AOL Hong Kong amid doubts about its late entry into that highly saturated market and its ability to expand into China… Ericsson should not miss the HP e-Services Developer Conference in Santa Clara on Nov 8-10… There will be more quick takes next week as I will have more time to catch up what has happened… – (To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)
- SELECTED THOUGHTFUL READING – Wall Street Journal has launched an information source for startups at http://startup.wsj.com, some parts are even for free… – (go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se for links to stories)
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This is a weekly newsletter describing the non-confidential part of my work during the past week and how I see market evolution affecting Ericsson (as interpreted my me in my role working for LME/DMA in San Francisco as a business developer with a focus on Internet applications and enablers). The report will be published every Monday. For subscriptions go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se/elists.
