- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Wireless IT 2000 - a Major Success Almost without Ericsson
- * Hiring Help Needed!
- * Bluetooth and Personal Area Portals
- * Mobile Content Delivery Networks
- * New Mobile Venture Funds, Incubators
- * Mobile Internet Information Sources and Marcom Opportunities
I spent most of last week at the UMTS 2000 conference in rainy Barcelona and missed the web release party of www.umodels.com… Stock prices of Silicon Alley Internet companies are tanking (should we start calling it ‘Bellywood’?) but that does not prevent them from innovating with style.
On another note, I would urge my readers to boycott Iberia as an airline. They decided to fly with an airplane with a faulty door that actually opened at some 200 meters altitude as we were landing. Suddenly I felt like being part of a James Bond movie.
Of the numerous industry news during the last two weeks, I would like to lift up the Nokia mPlatform launch which support open protocols and APIs.. Watch out, Phone.com! You can do it, Ericsson, we are almost there! I would like to hear from you how close to shipping they are. http://www.nokia.com/networks/services/apply_mplatform.html
Best regards
Tapio Anttila (3G Media - NAM 3G - EUS)
WIRELESS IT 2000 - A MAJOR SUCCESS ALMOST WITHOUT ERICSSON
I just visited Wireless IT 2000 show of CTIA in Santa Clara. According to the organizers, it was the largest trade show ever organized at that venue - and it was purely about mobile Internet in the hart of Silicon Valley. Ericsson had a small 10×10 foot stand featuring Mobile Applications Initiative whereas our competitors Nokia, Nortel, Lucent and so forth were there with a massive presence rivaling that of the larger annual CTIA show. Moreover, we did not have enough senior people manning our booth.
We have somehow missed to understand how trade shows evolve as mobile Internet emerges. Nokia did exactly the reverse: they stayed away from Wireless IT two years ago when the show still was too much about ‘wireless data’.
Enough criticism, let’s focus on scaring you instead. There is an extremely promising startup in Israel called Net2Wireless. They have a technology platform which enables session control over 2.5G networks such as GPRS and 1XRTT. Their technology also adds overlay compression of 10X to multimedia, enabling high quality transmissions over 2.5 networks. Ericsson is already talking to them (please give your feedback to Philippe Charas and Dov Shoob). The big news was that Net2Wireless has cut a distribution agreement with Lucent and was featured in Lucent’s partner portfolio at the show. The company is carrying out field trials with Nextel and they are about to start their first GPRS field trial with BT Cellnet.
HIRING HELP NEEDED!
In my new job responsibility at NAM 3G at EUS, we are hiring with a hectic pace. The entire unit will reach 50 people within a month and I am staffing up the ‘3G Media’ unit with some ten people. I would like to use this opportunity to invite you to send me your CVs if you are interested as well as (and perhaps in particular) try to find excellent talent outside of Ericsson who would be suitable for the positions below and willing to relocate to the wonderful city of New York (part of the activity located in Berkeley, CA).
There might also be weaknesses in how I have structured these positions in which case I would like to hear your advice and suggestions for improvement.
3G EVANGELISTS. Responsibilities include developing the Ericsson 3G value proposition to new entrants in the 3G game, such as ASPs, portals, media companies and financial services companies. These companies should consider participating in developing 3G businesses, particularly in an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) role.
SOLUTION MANAGER - TERMINALS. Responsibility for creating a winning device strategy for 3G in the US, including Ericsson devices and others. Strong focus on Bluetooth.
TERMINAL ENGINEER. Also called the ‘terminalhead’. A technical sales support person who participates in technical customer meetings, evaluates technical feasibilities and writes technical specs.
SOLUTION MANAGERS. Responsible for putting together white papers and other sales material on 3G solutions fit for the US market as well as adjusting them according to the requirements in the RFPs from customers. Focus on understanding the DIA value proposition and adapting that.
APPLICATION ALLIANCE MANAGER. Helping to build the ‘3G extension’ to the MAI Lab at Berkeley, including a third party terminal testing capability. Strong partnering, marketing and evangelism skills required.
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERS. Managing our part of the MAI 3G lab activity, SDK development and technical development in cooperation with MAI partners.
GADGET GOD. A junior person responsible for evaluating new mobile Internet devices and services from Ericsson, our competitors and customers. The person will create a program to enable our entire team to test a selected portion of these for learning and sales support purposes.
Please note that we are most interested in external hires and people with experience on the US market. However, this does not prevent you from introducing yourself to our organization with your CV anyway. Please email your resumes to liz.ianace@ericsson.com.
BLUETOOTH AND PERSONAL AREA PORTALS
What will eventually threaten the portal position of operators? Andy Seybold (www.outlook.com) recently voiced his opinion which to me sounds quite obvious: with a plethora of devices connected via Bluetooth in a personal area network (PAN) to a radio unit, what prevents private label devices owned by large consumer brands to become offline portals that are programmed to reach for optimal connectivity via Bluetooth? Ericsson invented Bluetooth and I think Ericsson should become the leading platform vendor for personal area networks. The phone-centric vision does not hold in my opinion since the world requires more and more modularity from your personal area network. For instance the ability to add memory to your PAN which is crucial in optimizing the ‘memory bandwidth’ of a GPRS solution. Another point is that the Japanese will win when it comes to all those accessories that connect to a mobile phone. Why not turn the threat into an opportunity and becom a leading platform provider?
MOBILE CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORKS
Most of you certainly know Akamai, a content delivery service which sells its distribution services to the content industry so that they can better reach ISPs. The same is starting to happen in the mobile world on an international level. Last month I wrote about the Finnish startup OpenMobile (www.openmobile.com), now there seems to be another one called MobileWay (www.mobileway.com) which is setting up a global distribution network for 2G, 2.5G and 3G content and who claim to have a relationship with over 60 GSM operators. They offer the content industry a unified interface to mobile content distribution while preserving the access-control, flow-control and billing rules of individual network operators. Traditional value chains are falling apart! This model would offer the European and Asian application developers a strategic opportunity to enter the US market and thereby solidify the position of GSM.
No wonder Clinton got worried and last week ordered FCC to come up with urgent measures to secure the competitiveness of the US wireless industry. And to find more spectrum from somewhere and fast. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001013/tc/telecoms_wireless_dc_2.html
NEW MOBILE VENTURE FUNDS, INCUBATORS,…
In the first quarter, US VCs pumped $622 million into wireless equipment and service providers, according to VentureOne, a research firm that tracks VC activity. If this investment pace continues, this year wireless startups will raise double the amount they did in 1999. Read the excellent article from Red Herring. http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue83/mag-money-83.html
Cardinal Venture Capital, which invests in early-stage technology companies, has launched a new $75 million fund that will specialize in wireless communications, Internet infrastructure, and broadband products and services.
MOBILE INTERNET INFORMATION SOURCES & MARCOM OPPORTUNITIES
Nothing found for this issue.
ERICSSON IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Singapore operator Mobile One delivered an ultimatum to GSM Association, basically saying that the latter is not doing its job in fortifying the position of GSM. Also last week, James Healy, the Chairman of GSM Association and an American, stated publicly that leading GSM handset vendors are ’sitting on their laurels’ and opening the market for new entrants such as Handspring and Palm. In an earlier issue of IOW sometime in May, I suggested that we arrange Mr Healy an early retirement - I think he lacks understanding and political motivation to work for our cause.
Remember my earlier newsletter where Scott Lipsitz wrote about an idea to have Ericsson employees invest in the Ericsson Venture Fund and thereby incentivise employees to find opportunities for the company? Well, that is exactly what Goldman Sachs is doing, according to one of their brokers I met on a flight yesterday. Now the Ericsson argument goes that our employees are supposed to perform their job activity and not spend their time on finding opportunities. Well, maybe we could find a balance in this, we are all grown-ups, aren’t we?
QUICK TAKES
Ericsson, Vodafone and Geovector launched a trial of Geovector’s pointing technology in New Zealand. With a one dollar ‘compass’ chip and GPS technology in the phone, you can pull information from the Internet about objects you are pointing at. Cool! Geovector is a SF startup headed by execs from Pixar and Disney. (www.geovector.com)
Zowi formed an alliance with American Express for a stored value card offering for teenagers and young adults. This could well be extended into m-commerce. I first met with Zowi roughly two years ago - another missed investment opportunity for Ericsson. (www.cobaltcard.com)
Japan Inc Newsletter writes about the strategic maturity of Japan to adopt server-centric mobile webtone model and particularly Java: “Applix has already convinced over half of Japan’s cell phone makers to adopt its tron-based middleware and Java solution. This means that there could be as many as 10m users in 12 months time wanting to download Java applications (Applix says they’ll support flash RAM cards on the phone with 8MB of memory) to run offline. This is going to be a huge boost to Japan’s software and infrastructure industries, on the order of what we’ve seen with i-Mode.” Do you agree?
InPhonic is launching a private label wireless distribution service where consumer brands are offered phones and service agreements as a B2B offering. This trend will become increasingly popular when Mobile Virtual Network Operators gain in popularity. (www.inphonic.com)
Digital Mobility has taken the wraps of MICode, a mobile Internet programming code for mobile phones that has been designed to be as simple as punching in a Videoplus code on a VCR. http://www.digimob.com/
Palm and Delphi, along with the Mayfield Fund, are setting up a new company, MobileAria, to deliver wireless services on the road. http://www.mobilearia.com/home.html
Riot Entertainment, a Finnish mobile entertainment startup, just received $15m financing with Nokia and SoftBANK participating. That is a lot of money for a Finnish content creator - now wonder Clinton is worried for Hollywood being left behind ;-). http://www.riot-e.com/
ClickServices closed a $12m round and now adds Cisco as a strategic partner. It has attracted customers including BidCrawler.com, PurchasePro.com, SINA.com and UpsideToday, along with XO Communications (formerly Concentric Networks), Bowstreet, Pixo and Diversinet. Watch out! http://www.clickservices.com/
UIEvolution is developing software to enhance wireless gaming and was founded by former Microsoft software architect Satoshi Nakajima. The venture started as an outgrowth of his work at Ignition, which gave UIEvolution its initial funding. This is Craig McCaw’s old friends in action! http://www.uievolution.com/index.htm
A revolution is happening again in Canada: a Vancouver-based company Cell-Loc launched in July a location information service company TimesThree which is providing location information as a service to service providers. Their partners include SignalSoft, OpenGrid and Wysdom which are all blue chip startups… www.timesthree.com
Theo Kanter, one of the inventors of Ericsson Phone Doubler, is now a researcher at KTH in Stockholm. You should check out his work on ‘event-driven, personalizable, mobile interactive spaces’ at http://psi.verkstad.net/Results/conferences/huc2k-report.htm and http://psi.verkstad.net/Talks/Theo-HUC2K.ppt.
And what else? Yahoo made a deal with Speechworks to develop voice-based mobile services, Travelocity launched a mobile travel booking tool with AT&T, Verizon and others, Sonera reached a GPRS roaming agreement with Equant (very smart),
(To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)
- SELECTED THOUGHTFUL BROWSING
Who will be first with a smelly mobile phone? It was only a matter of time before the sense of smell went digital.
DigiScents, Inc. (www.digiscents.com) an Oakland, CA start-up, is now harnessing smell. Using genomics DigiScents first indexed scents. Based on the data, it then designed iSmell, a device that dispenses scents from a disposable cartridge. In March 2000, Oakland-based DigiScents released a software developer’s kit for use of the PC-based iSmell with video games. In November, the firm will release the Internet compatible version for use with
applications such as Flash and Java Script. And RealNetworks will deliver DigiScents’ ScentStream software with its RealPlayer G2. Given that I found this at the respectable Edgar Online News and that it is not April 1, I guess I have to believe this is true…
Wapitover, an online one-hour luxury delivery service in London, partnered with Ann Summers, a lingerie retailer. Within an hour, Londoners can be proud owners of lingerie, leather bondage goods, various sexual tonics, vitamins and other sexy delights. A spokesperson for Ann Summers maintains there is great potential for this market. The only obstacle to this service could be that customers would not be able to view their purchases on their mobile unit. But then again, customers can always use their imagination.
A new service in Germany offers busy female professionals a mobile phone reminder of when they are most fertile. Users register at Zappybaby.de and are sent phone messages free of charge. Apparently a typical message goes something like: “Achtung! The five best days for love are starting.”
Tired of the same old online chat paradigm, with the little windows, “buddies,” and so forth? MIT’s Media Lab presents Chat Circles, a new way of interacting, based on the idea of a physical party, wherein each user occupies a movable colored circle, and can only chat with those circles that intersect his or her own. Way to rethink a paradigm, guys! http://chatcircles.media.mit.edu/
(go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se for links to stories)
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This is a 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 the Next Generation Mobility unit of EUS, based in New York City and San Francisco). The report will be published twice a month. For subscriptions go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se/elists.
