- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Phone.com Launches Mobile Portal
- * Winners and Our Picks from the Internet Outlook Show
- * One-Stop Shops for Mobile Services and Products
- * Professional Services Industry Should Go Wireless
- * Wall Street Pick of the Week
I am currently refocusing my activities to drive the business model project for the wireless Internet management team. Look for a project site under Web Academy early next week. Main news last week? HandSpring launch drove 4 million hits per day to their site. HP cut a WAP deal with Nokia. And now this Phone.com…
- PHONE.COM LAUNCHES MOBILE PORTAL
Phone.com did it again. MyPhone is a turnkey service provided to wireless network operators to help them quickly establish an Internet portal presence. Through this customized OEM service, the operator can offer their subscribers valuable information services, which are delivered directly to their microbrowser-capable wireless phones and their PC. Phone.com will focus on professional services and infrastructure sales while the operator can focus on building brand recognition and subscriber loyalty.
A natural reaction for Ericsson would be to launch a massive program to deliver professional services (against a fee) to help leading websites worldwide build “application dialtones” which adhere to open standards (basic service) and which exploit the enhanced features of the Ericsson infrastructure (premium service). Where Phone.com brings to a “novice” operator an elementary customizable WAP-tone, the Ericsson service portal should be the next step, a massive clearinghouse of “Ericsson-approved” application dialtones. Ericsson’s reputation as a constant innovator and champion in global technology transfer should encourage operators to accept a revenue-sharing relationship with us.
The WAP server products should be transformed into massive open source projects which attract innovation which we in turn can capture and build into our products and professional services. WAP as a product is dead.
By the way, we have no time to waste.
WINNERS AND OUR PICKS FROM THE INTERNET OUTLOOK SHOW
Investors’ Choice award winners were announced at last week’s Internet Outlook conference which I attended. The ten winners were chosen from 83 presenting e-commerce companies by audience polling and an investor panel. In alphabetical order, the winners were BizRate.com (customer satisfaction research), Blue Martini Software (e-merchandizing software), ChannelPoint (healthcare insurance “channel booster”), eCircles.com (closed community portal), ELetter (outsourced mailing service for SMEs), epinions.com (consumer-guided shopping portal), FairMarket (outsourced auction service, just made EBAY’s stock drop), Financial Engines (advanced individual investor advice), Prio (web-based consumer promotion services), and Sandpiper Networks. It is a good exercise to study how each of these companies is claiming a new category leadership and how they plan to build sustainable competitive advantage. One of my favorites was the collaborative party organizer Evite.com.
Also, I organized a tour for our e-business executives and co-located it with this event by reserving a hospitality suite at the conference hotel. This proved to be a great formula to pack brief and useful meetings into the calendar of five Ericsson people. The costs were limited to my conference fee $1,700 and the suite being $300 per day. I got to go round the conference hunting down people while the others stayed in the room the whole day;-). Here is a list of companies we met (*) and also others I picked as potentially useful technologies for either our operator extranets or mobile phone distribution channels: www.accrue.com, www.acuity.com, www.askjeeves.com, www.bizrate.com, www.bluemartini.com (*), www.bluestreak.com, www.brightware.com, www.broadvision.com (*), www.categoric.com (*), www.continuity.com, www.delanotech.com, www.digital-impact.com, www.egain.com, www.encommerce.com (*), www.extricity.com (*), www.intervowen.com (*), www.kana.com (*), www.keynote.com, www.liveperson.com (*), www.moai.com (*), www.netgen.com, www.netdialog.com, www.netpcs.com (these guys work with our professional services unit in Canada!), www.netsales.net, www.newchannel.com, www.personify.com (*), www.servicesoft.com, www.tradingdynamics.com, www.trivida.com, www.websentric.com, www.whatshotnow.com (don’t laugh!), www.wirelessdirect.com (*)
As a general observation from the event, the customer support space seems to be extremely congested. Anything we do there had better be well introduced to the market. http://www.tpsite.com
ONE-STOP SHOPS FOR MOBILE SERVICE AND PRODUCTS
Mobile service and mobile phone comparison shopping sites will be a huge business in the US in the future. I have earlier written about the leader in this space, Point.com (http://www.point.com), as well as more e-commerce oriented WirelessDirect (http://www.wirelessdirect.com). A newcomer Cellmania.com (http://www.cellmania.com) has taken a similar approach but adds a sense of community to the equation. The site provides recommendations and allows users to post comments. Like Point.com, Cellmania is trying to build an organization that will attract national communications carriers and other partners. Their site was built by Broadvision (http://www.broadvision.com). One of the more interesting twists in this equation comes from Decide.com, which launched today. In addition to quantitative information on handsets, plans, and service, the site provides thoroughly researched qualitative data on coverage and call quality. You are able, for example, to hear audio files of cell call sound quality in specific metropolitan and urban markets. Decide.com (http://www.decide.com) hopes to forge an ongoing relationship with its customers by informing them of new services and money-saving call plans as they become available. And they’re not stopping at cellular services. Decide.com will add land-line calling plan comparisons in the future. All sites are logging eyeballs and are deep into transactions.
The future for such sites is extremely good, and next year more than 83 million U.S. residents will spend about $36.4 billion dollars on cell phones and wireless communications devices. But the real play here is only just beginning. The winner in this space will be those sites that offer a variety of communications plans, including long-distance and broadband Internet access service plans and equipment. Partnering with players like this is a natural part of Ericsson’s distribution strategy and the first steps have already been taken. All these companies are located on the US West Coast, mostly in Silicon Valley.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES INDUSTRY SHOULD GO WIRELESS
Portera Systems (http://www.portera.com) released Tracker, a $10 per month/per project Web-based management application aimed at consultants. Tracker can be customized to fit the needs of individual projects and consultants and automatically generates private URLs and email notifications relating to milestones, projects, and other tasks. Portera is one of several companies now focusing on the $1.2 trillion professional services industry and recently acquired ConsultLink.com a directory of 24,000 technology consultants. Ericsson will face the challenge of making sure that operators get high-quality application dialtones from thousands of application service providers worldwide. Portera is an example on what is to come…
WALL STREET PICK OF THE WEEK
MapQuest continues to come up with new stories. They seem to be gearing up for the launch of location-based services and Ericsson should consider that one of the wireless players will eventually partner with them. What would that mean? “Mapquest continues to add services to its offerings. In an agreement with SpeechWorks International, Mapquest users will be able to receive driving directions over the phone. Based on SpeechWorks’ speech recognition technology, other options will also be available, including e-mail, fax, MP3 file, WAV file, send to my pager, send to my Palm Pilot, “send to my cell phone” and “send to my voice mail”. Beginning in Q1:2000, Mapquest business customers will have access to SpeechSite, a service that helps find and get directions to nearby business locations. Mapquest also announced an agreement with AdAce to provide local and regional advertising services to small businesses in Mapquest’s Travel Guide and Point of Interest areas. We believe these new services could generate incremental advertising revenues for Mapquest.” – Michael Graham, Sr Software Analyst, BancBoston Robertson Stephens (http://www.internetstocks.com)
QUICK TAKES – DealTime.com just got $20 m (!) venture financing to develop further their comparative shopping service. This is a somewhat of a competitor to Livemind, both highly relevant to wireless Internet… StowAway is a full-size expandable keyboard for Palm and Handspring organizers… The free service Desktop.com will let users customize their desktops with a range of Web-based programs, including word processing and games, and link up with other Web services, news feeds and e-mail services. Another startup in the same space is MyWebOS.com. GPRS Applications Alliance should take notes… Universal inbox start-ups like OneBox.com (went live last week) and others, while focusing on big-name portals and partners, have been slow to ink deals with cell phone makers. One of the exceptions appears to be GetMessage.com, which just closed a deal with Samsung… DotBank.com provides person-to-person payment services over the Internet. Reminds me of Confinity which Nokia financed… 7C, a UK-based provider of outsourced customer relationship management services for e-commerce companies, received $16 million in venture funding. The funds will be used to develop technology for 7C’s Customer Contact Centres. Maybe we can sell them something, tel. 01746 764909… – (To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)
- SELECTED THOUGHTFUL READING – You should perhaps consider subscribing to the free service of McKinsey Quarterly on the web. They are not all as bad as the ones who show up at Ericsson
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ … Outch! I missed this event which took place five blocks from my home http://www.pacificnews.org/youthexpo/index.html our youth culture tiger team should bookmark this site http://www.pacificnews.org/ … You can patent your ideas at http://www.uspto.gov/teas/index.html for $245… – (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.
