This is a weekly newsletter describing what happened on the Internet market during the past week and how that might affect Ericsson (as interpreted my me, Tapio Anttila, 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 (except holidays).

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I attended the PC Forum (http://www.edventure.com) in Arizona and here are my impressions after this event which gathered 800 influencers, among them (in the audience!) such names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bob Glaser (RealNetworks) and Marc Andreessen (AOL).

e-Merchandising was the most prominent new trend
Marketsoft Corporation (http://www.marketsoft.com) is a start-up taking sales force automation and lead management in an “extraprise push” fashion to the next level. The complexity of lead management is impressive (how to combine lead prioritization, channel management, backend legacy ERP systems, etc.). Claimed ROI potential to be 300 - 900 %. Impressive partners (Andersen, PWC, Seybold). Coined a term “reseller portal”. How about wireless Internet applications of SFA???
Blue Martini (http://www.bluemartini.com) gave a highly popular presentation. The company has an application server based solution for e-merchandising. How to set up a structure of business rules enabling dynamic merchandising, targetted selling, cross-selling, loyalty programs, etc. In other words: how to sell actively on the web. CEO was very interested in wireless Internet solutions. Portalians???

Responsys (http://www.responsys.com) is a cost-effective hosted web solution which enables e-businesses to acquire customers and build loyalty. A very important solution to facilitate online marketing and creation of new brands. Zopps should try this out.

Springfield Project (http://www.thespringfieldproject.com) is building an outsource service for small commerce operations (1-100 employees) to get access to more advanced e-merchandising solutions, normally available only to bigger players. Again - high relevance to wireless Internet, e.g. as an outsource “home” to WAP services.

Cha! Technologies, a micropayment service company is focused on single-click Internet payment services, which it calls “convenience e-commerce” The company plans to establish its 1ClickCharge (http://www.1clickcharge.com) service as the dominant payment service for Internet transactions under $20. This is a potential competitor for LINK and particularly EIPS. Patented authentication system, handles micropayments downto $0.10. Low transaction costs. Goes live 2Q99. Located in NYC. Origin from Israel (the technical team shared an office with the ICQ guys…).

A selection of useful contacts
Amazon.com is interested in wireless Internet as a distribution channel. I talked to Jeff Bezos who gave us a contact to go further. Pierre Siri from the Portalians project to follow up.

Met with Allan H. Stephan from http://www.stratos.com. He is an investor and he has in his portfolio a company http://www.inroad.com which is developing mobile information access technology to wearable computing devices. Sounded like very interesting for 3G and Bluetooth and he agreed. Oracle and SAP are partners, warehousing applications as a possible first focus. Working also with Nuance. Allan had also another company which was developing a “revolutionary portal concept”, he refused to tell more without an NDA. Development underway with CNN and MSNBC…

 
Met with PeopleLink CEO (http://www.peoplelink.com). They have developed instant messaging software over the last few years but have moved lately towards “community in a box” solutions and “community services outsourcing”. A very interesting company for Zopps.
 
Talked to Jomei Chang, Founder of Vitria (http://www.vitria.com) (and also founder of Tibco). She is running an enterprise applications outsourcing company. This should offer lots of opportunities for wireless Internet. She agreed. Should set up a meeting with her.
 
Wireless is still not an active topic
It is amazing how little mindshare wireless still has. And the little it has, it is all about 3G - no talk about GPRS or other migration phases. The big focus seems to be now broadband. The message from John Doerr was: “Let’s get broadband to Americans as soon as possible”. I talked to Release 1.0 Editor Kevin Werbach. He is interested in writing about wireless Internet (a major influencer!). Based in New York, he would like to find out more about wireless Internet and Ericsson. Had a breakfast discussion with Bill Howard, Senior Executive Editor of PC Magazine. Again, he knew very little about the future roadmap of wireless services, GPRS did not ring a bell. Bluetooth was his favourite: “It has the potential to make true the visions that never materialised with IrDA - I know nobody who would be using it.”
END NOTES - Sunil Paul at http://www.brightlight.com was said to be interested in wireless Internet, have to check it out. Esther Dyson pointed me to two companies: http://www.trustworks.com/ and http://www.orchestream.com whom she said to have an interest to work with Ericsson.