- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * MISE Business Model Seminar in Stockholm
- * Sun Microsystems Creates $200-Million Investment Fund
- * Votation.com Aggregates the Business Potential of Mobile Voting
- * Spinning out is different from spitting out
- * OpenGrid Tightens Motorola Ties
- * Kiss Your ASP, Says a Market Research Firm
- * Panasonic Launches Internet Incubator
Last week is gone and I am late with the newsletter. I will stick to the schedule as much as I can, though. The MISE Business Model Seminar a lot of time earlier this week. What has happened? Microsoft sets up a mobile Internet joint venture with NTT DoCoMo, for instance.
- MISE Business Model Seminar in Stockholm
The two seminars in New York and Stockholm are now behind and I have to say there is a lot of willingness in the organization to learn to do this right. Building new types of business models will only happen through trial and error but at the same time the need for a professional guidance is obvious. Our project team will put together a toolkit for building Internet business models and cutting partnerships with third party companies. You may expect lots of results and material on the intranet during the next ten days. The material from the Stockholm seminar will be available at the Web Academy site by the end of this week.
I have also established a web board on the intranet where people can go and discuss acute issues. Why don’t we all go and take a look and say something about what Ericsson should do with the extremely fast growing i-Mode service in Japan. http://webboard.ericsson.se/~webacademy. I will wake up tomorrow and hopefully find there a lively discussion on this hot topic.
Sun Microsystems Creates $200-Million Investment Fund
Sun Microsystems said it formed a $200-million investment fund focused on companies developing products and services based on Sun’s technology and platforms. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s vice president and general manager for development tools, was named vice president of Sun equity investment portfolio, effective December 1. Sun will partner with venture capital firms and investment banks and make minority investments in qualifying companies. Sun is one of the last large companies in Silicon Valley to move into equity investing in small companies. Last year it revamped its developer program. The “last mover advantage” has certainly offered Sun the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and maybe Ericsson should compare notes the the company. http://www.sun.com
Votation.com Aggregates the Business Potential of Mobile Voting
Votation.com, which provides election services using both the Internet and traditional paper ballots, telephonic and other mechanical means, said that it named Garret Fitzgerald, former prime minister of Ireland, to its board. Votation.com provides election services for governments, trade associations, labor unions, school districts, credit
unions, and corporations. The company is in the process of raising its first venture round. http://www.votation.com
Spinning out is different from spitting out
There are a number of product spinouts initiated at Ericsson at the moment. This is understandable, we need focus. I have followed quite closely the management discussions around one unnamed project which will eventually be spun out. It bothers me that the prevailing attitude towards this activity seems to be “spitting out”, i.e. people often just want to get rid off a certain project and lose their interest in finding out possible synergies.
The essence of the spin-out activity is to see whether we can retain some ownership and control and whether we can redesign the structure of constituencies for the company/product so that we get an optimal return on our investment (which has already been made!). In other words we are talking about getting our money back, not just getting rid off a problem.
OpenGrid Tightens Motorola Ties
Last week I wrote about OpenGrid, which provides wireless messaging, instant messaging, and wireless networking technologies. The company secured about $8 million from Motorola and Philippe Kahn, chief executive of Starfish Software, a subsidiary of Motorola, who is also Open Grid’s chairman. This week the company announced it named Janiece Webb, senior vice president and general manager of the personal networks group at Motorola, to its board.
Last week, OpenGrid http://www.opengrid.com
Kiss Your ASP, Says a Market Research Firm
Internet performance is too low to support serious transactional business by Application Service Providers (ASPs), and trends indicate that improvements may be inadequate over the next several years, a recent study has found. Northeast Consulting Resources Inc. reports that the growing complexity of Web pages and increased network delays will reverse improvements in Internet performance built over the last four years. Ericsson should use the GAA initiative to make sure we can actually benefit from this trend, i.e. that WAP over GPRS will increase the usability of hosted applications. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,1017752,00.html
Panasonic Launches Internet Incubator
The Panasonic Digital Concepts Center said it launched the Panasonic Internet Incubator (PII), a business incubator for early-stage Internet and e-commerce companies. PII, based here, provides companies with physical space, shared business services, onsite consultation from advisors, and relationships with professional services and capital investment
communities. Funding for incubated companies will be available through Panasonic’s parent company, Matsushita. Sounds like the early Ericsson CyberLab visions… http://www.vc.panasonic.com
QUICK TAKES – Shutterfly.com got $13 m to build an online photo distribution service, I wonder how they will relate to Fotonation… The c-to-c commerce space does not stop to fascinate me, look at Experts-Exchange, an online network of tech experts. Remember InfoRocket?… @Backup (online backup services provider) just raised $22 m. This company should join our GAA… Traffic.com, a provider of real-time and predictive vehicle traffic information raised a second round of $19 million, looks like a potential WAP partner… eCircles is typically the type of a sticky community service which would make a great partner for ChatBoard… PocketScience, which offers a service
that enables users to send and receive e-mail using a telephone handset, said it signed an exclusive revenue-sharing agreement with British Telecom to market its PocketMail service in the U.K… – (To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)
- SELECTED THOUGHTFUL READING – Jesse Berst of ZDNet lists the basic and mostly free Internet research sources… SpeakOut.com is developing a Web portal for political dialogue… MergerNetwork.com is an intermediary
Web site for finding qualified buyers and sellers of middle market mergers and acquisitions. It is a division of DealStream which develops online business communities… If you thought you had seen everything, how about charity portals: Charitableway.com… – (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.
