IN THIS ISSUE:

* In Search of Haijo Purpose

* Ericsson Foresight - Get Involved in Picking the Winners

* Mobile Virtual Network Operators - a New Internal Study

* New Mobile Venture Funds, Incubators

* Mobile Internet Information Sources and Marcom Opportunities

 

Let me start by congratulating the 1000th subscriber to Internet Opportunity Watch, Mr Kay-Man Chan, who has started two weeks ago to set up the Edgecom presence on the US West Coast, based in the Bay Area.  With over six year at the IT and Telecom practice of Ernst&Young, Kay-Man is ready to bring his contribution to mobile-enable businesses in the heart of the dotcom revolution. And as a consultancy advising operators on their business strategies, Edgecom holds the keys for Ericsson to understand what kind of mobile Internet solutions we should offer.  Please contact your local Edgecom representative and demand this service from them (you will have to pay, though)!  Also, please introduce yourselves to Kay-Man at kay-man.chan@ericsson.com.

The event of the past two weeks was the wildly successful Ericsson Developer Conference in Santa Clara, staged by CyberLab New York. Over 400 people attended and nearly 200 were reportedly turned away due to lack of capacity in the venue.  Topics covered the entire scope of EDAP from WAP to iPulse and participants were very satisfied, particularly with Ericsson’s humble approach to invite the industry to cooperate rather than dictating the rules.  It is noteworthy that a number of senior Silicon Valley VCs attended, for example Neil Weintraut from 21st Century Venture Partners, the man behind AvantGo (http://www.avantgo.com).  Just remember now that this was only a good start, and Ericsson’s presence in Silicon Valley is still screaming for reinforcement.  Reaping all the benefits from educating the VC community on mobile Internet is a real ‘low-hanging fruit’.

For the next issue I will cover one of the most prominent mobile events of the year, DemoMobile 2000 in Los Angeles.  You can preview the agenda on http://demo.com/demo_conferences/dmsched.html.

Best regards

Tapio Anttila

IN SEARCH OF HAIJO PURPOSE

I have been trying to clarify for myself what the ultimate “raison d’etre” for Division Internet Applications (DIA) is.  Is it there to make profit?  Or satisfy the needs of infrastructure sales?  Or perhaps to create market value? I have understood all this is being clarified with record speed now when the vacations are over.

Want to know my personal opinion?  I start to see DIA more and more as “the internal Phone.com”, a unit which craves for being spun out, wanting to take a real fight with the real Phone.com.  The more time passes, the more Phone.com will have built essential applications and enablers into its portal offering.  It also increasingly accumulates global presence and customer base.  For DIA to compete with Phone.com, it need to redefine the rules, augment the scope of a mobile Internet solution beyond the evolutionary capabilities of Phone.com.  This is what adding the service network layer into the offering can do.  But what if the customer does not know all we are planning to do or able to do?  In order to win, we need to build a compelling story around the roadmap, a story which explains why an operator should stay with us from day one.  And we also need to be able to proceed with small steps in making the solution evolve gradually as a commercial product. Think big and act small!

Another corollary of the above thinking is that DIA will be in a competitive situation when infrastructure sales is putting together end-to-end solution offerings including network infrastructure, applications and terminals - the latter also from third parties.  Could it be that infrastructure sales is obliged to consider an outside “DIA” like Phone.com as the application (=portal) provider?  Yes they are, particularly if a customer requires it.  DIA has a number of ways to improve its position:  1) make sure the service network will be an integral part of infrastructure (this approach is doomed to fail as I understand), 2) regard infrastructure sales as its most important customer and distribution channel and 3) start operating like a real business with similar metrics by which the market judges Phone.com.

I recommend to go for alternatives 2) and 3).

ERICSSON FORESIGHT - GET INVOLVED IN PICKING THE WINNING TRENDS

Magnus Karlsson at LME has launched Ericsson Foresight, a new common corporate unit. “It will be an interesting and challenging task involving the analysis of changing trends in society, new ways of working and disruptive technologies. We are looking for creative and driving persons to join the unit”, says Magnus.

For more information about the unit, including open positions and how to join the Foresight Community, take a look at http://inside.ericsson.se/foresight

MOBILE VIRTUAL NETWORK OPERATORS - A NEW INTERNAL STUDY

Will strong players such as Disney, AOL, Virgin, ICA and VISA become dominant players on the mobile arena in a few years from now?  I think this is inevitable through them taking various roles as ‘virtual operators’.  ERA just released the report of an excellent internal study on the topic.  Please contact Melih Tufan at ERA to get a copy.

NEW MOBILE VENTURE FUNDS, INCUBATORS,…

Sprint PCS and eCompanies Wireless have formed an Internet incubator, eCompanies LLC, dedicated to the creation of companies that offer wireless consumer services, business services and infrastructure. Sprint PCS will invest $15M in the Santa Monica, Calif.-based incubator, reportedly the first of its kind. This announcement somewhat stole the steam out of the announced $300m Ericsson-Investor-MerrillLynch VC fund, at least from Silicon Valley perspective.  Sky Dayton is the founder of Earthlink and has more credibility together with a concrete operator Sprint PCS than a rather ‘faceless’ Swedish-East Coast ‘foursome’…

MOBILE INTERNET INFORMATION SOURCES & MARCOM OPPORTUNITIES

The Wireless Multimedia Forum (WMF) is arranging a conference in San Jose on November 6-7 called WISE Wireless Internet Services Event.  We should probably consider taking part in it.  Also, I don’t know if we ever joined this association, I guess we see it as conflicting with 3GPP. (Hmm, Jussi Koivula from Sonera Corporate Technology sits over there on the same Finnair flight to Helsinki, maybe I should go and ask him… Sonera is part of WMF.)  http://events.stardust.com/wise, http://www.wmmforum.com. 

All signs speak for the upcoming CTIA Wireless IT show in Santa Clara on October 16-18 to be wildly popular.  Mobile Internet is now so hot in the Valley that a major event like this will become not only a major educational event for the technology and VC communities but also a dealmaking event.  Fortunately Jacob Goldman took the initiative to speak there on mobile financial services so we are not totally left out. http://www.wirelessIT.com 

The Internet World Wireless show, produced by Penton Media, will be held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City, from Feb. 21-23, 2001.  This is a new show that focuses on the latest technologies and applications of wireless systems for Internet and network applications in the home, in the office and in the field.  Here we have a chance to support this event from early on, hopefully this is being planned.

ERICSSON IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES

The T28 World has started shipping in California!  Retailers in New York told me the same will happen there in two weeks.  Now you can pass on the good word to everyone to go get this cool phone!  But first a word of caution, at least for all of you in the US.  I needed to find an answer for a friend so I embarked in a project to research where one can buy one.  With lots of perseverance and industry insight, I managed to complete the task in 30 minutes (!).

First I went on the web.  The site did not say that the phone is shipping but I took the dealer locator and got up a dozen Circuit City stores  (why only them?).  I called one of them and the sales person made me feel embarrassed over that I even asked.  “Ericsson?  We have only one model, I already forgot what it’s called.”

Then I called 1-800-Ericsson. They only sell accessories but I thought if I ask for accessories they will be able to tell me where I can buy the phone. They did, but only the third person and after my insisting on it.  Then a call to PacBell store revealed the secret: the phone is available, although in back order since it obviously is quite popular.

Seems like we could try to make buying our phones a bit easier?

QUICK TAKES 

Check out the new Nokia mobile lifestyle community on the web at http://www.thefeature.com/index.jsp.

At the end of September Microsoft is expected to forge a mobile Internet alliance with British Telecom (BT) to develop mobile devices and software for business users. (source: The Independent). Hah! Hopefully our JV with MS has something to do with this.  By the way, the JV has been vary quiet lately and several people have complained to me that this is affecting our operator sales.  I asked the JV what is going on and they assured me that lots of good development is underway.  Maybe it would be good to brush up the marketing program a bit, though?

Unstrung.com has an article on ThinAirApps. Another mobile Internet platform company in the enterprise messaging area. http://www.unstrung.com/server/display.php3?id=200&cat_id=6

CMGI’s AdForce LLC unit, an online advertising firm, formed a strategic alliance with OpenGrid Inc., a provider of wireless Internet business services. AdForce will serve, target and track advertisements to wireless devices, including cell phones, in conjunction with OpenGrid’s wireless services.  Please take OpenGrid seriously.  http://www.opengrid.com

Conita  recently launched a sophisticated voice product for cell phones designed is to allow mobile professionals to use their cell phones for single touchpoint access to the corporate network and the Internet. http://www.conita.com/

Intrinsigo provides the services and software that enable the creation, distribution and management of media rich, interactive content for users of networked and wireless PDAs. Intrinsigo is currently developing relationships both with branded content owners and with the distribution channels that reach wireless handheld users on a subscription basis. Sounds like a tier-1 partner candidate for SA Mobile Portals!  http://www.intrinsigo.com/

Infogation, a developer of telematics software and services that connect cars to the Internet, said it has raised $3.5 million in its first round of funding. This baby from San Diego is worth checking out.  http://www.infogation.com

VoiceGenie Technologies, which builds and deploys infrastructure that enables voice access to Web content from a telephone, said it raised $10 million in its seed round.  Looks like more and more speech technology and voice browsing companies emerge, encouraged by the successful IPOs of Nuance and Speechworks.  http://www.voicegenie.com

Sensatex/LifeLink is developing “Smart-Shirt,” a wireless platform for remote healthcare monitoring. Sensatex’s board of directors will include Ronald Gelman, former chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s pharmarceuticals
and diagnositics division, and Frank Young, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. http://www.sensatex.com

And what else? AOL acquired Quack.com for voice browsing, Amazon launched a mobile auction service (http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/help/mobile-alerts-summary/104-5891278-4328755), Nokia introduced  a chat phone, HandSpring PDA will have cellphone capabilities by the end of the year…

(To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)

SELECTED THOUGHTFUL BROWSING

You certainly already know about this one… it has reportedly become so popular that their personnel has not had time to ship anything since all their time has gone to replying to all the questions from journalists.  A new company claims that it will soon allow residents in Copenhagen to order marijuana over their WAP phones. http://www.wap.com/share/osas/cache/artid200077.html

“Vomit shouldn’t really be a part of whether he likes you… join eCrush.com!”  Ever wondered why i-mode is so successful among those Japanese teen girls.  Take a look at eCrush.com, a website dedicated for females between 13 and 23.  An idea ready to be wapified! And the first time I see “vomit” used as a sales argument in this context. (I am sure 95% of you engineers did not get this one - I bet no woman ever made you vomit…)  http://www.ecrush.com/

Wow!  US m-commerce solutions market will surpass Europe in 2005, says Datamonitor.  Common language and the sizes of financial and media industries add to the momentum.  http://www.datamonitor.com/press/presshome.asp