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 (except holidays).

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There were no trade shows for me last week. But lots of other things happened. Come to my TapioFriendz Business Networking gettogether at O-Baren (Sturehof, Stockholm) on Wednesday 28 April between 6 and 10 PM to discuss and meet other colleagues!

Palm Reach WAP portal announced

Zaheed Haque used to work for Ericsson, a few months even with me. Now he has launched his own WAP portal called Palm Reach (http://www.palmreach.com). Zaheed is creating a WAP brand, collecting a database of early adopters, engaging a developer network, setting up a “studio” for WAP content creation. His marketing efforts are professional and ambitious: leading consultants in the wireless Internet space recognise him. “This is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in a long time. And it’s professionally done”, says Mikael Edholm from LME/DM.

I estimate that after the summer holidays Zaheed has a fully-built portal and Palm Reach is one of the leading WAP brands internationally. He wants Ericsson’s blood. He and his team sleep two hours per night seven days a week just because they know every minute increases their competitive advantage to big fat corporate acquirors such as Ericsson and even Nokia. This is the bleeding edge going commercial. This is why we need a venture fund. Why ignore the creation of perhaps $1 bn of market value? Why not take a piece of it?

In any case, we need to be faster ourselves.

The importance of identity management technologies revisited

A few weeks ago I wrote about identity management technologies as a part of communications solutions, mentioning we need to focus on developing these solutions. I had the opportunity to talk to Go Network people (http://www.go.com). Part of their technology requirements going forward is to find a strong solution for persistent identity management for the community members. Children in different age groups must be able to use the community with the parents resting assured that they don’t meet malicious online actors. We need to extend what we mean by communications solutions and cover new areas like this. The upcoming iPulse (LINK) product has great potential. To get an idea on the solutions, check Crayon Crawler at http://www.crayoncrawler.com.

WebFair - a community engine product from Germany

How will various brokers be able to facilitate commerce by organizing the participating actors in a community? How to mass-customize interaction with the customer? How to create a vertical industry marketplace or a commerce-enabled virtual trade show? Take a look at WebFair from Germany. They are in the process of establishing themselves in Silicon Valley. - http://www.webfair.com

Telia e-commerce active in Silicon Valley

Telia eCommerce AB is busy developing a Commerce Service Provider (CSP) offering, to be launched in May. Their CEO comes from SE Banken. The ambition is to have 1,000 customers by the end of 1999. The business model is primarily based on risk-sharing (service fee as a percentage of transactions, typically 2 %). The solution is based on Telia’s own transaction platform and an alliance with three leading Nordic banks.

Arabesque is the king of voice portals

The voice portal space (General Magic, Wildfire, Arabesque and a number of others) is consolidating. According to Jörg Ende who is running Deutsche Telekom’s venture fund in the Valley, the only one that makes sense is Arabesque due to its ability to allow operators to customize the service to their liking. DT is going to invest in Arabesque’s 2nd round in the coming weeks. And by the way, General Magic is up for sale. - http://www.arasys.com/ - http://www.genmagic.com - http://www.wildfire.com.

EPOC developers’ conference - finally!

Symbian will be organizing the EPOC Developer Conference on June 3-4 in London. To me the Ericsson Symbian thrust is still weak and unfocussed, particularly from the point of view of its US promotion. In the US there are two strong players - Microsoft and Palm - and Symbian and particularly Ericsson do not exceed the noise level. If you know better, let me know! - http://www.epocworld.com/epoc-conference - http://webacademy.ericsson.se/resources/majorevents.htm

END NOTES - That was all for this week, next week I will be in Stockholm which will leave plenty of time for reading in the plane.