- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * What Actually Is Personalization?
- * Demo 2001 Highlights
- Just came back from the EUS Sales Academy meeting. We have a great group of people trying to nail down these customers. If only they would communicate more between each other, life would be easier. With that I mean that when a mobile Internet solution has been offered (with or without success) to customer A, there should be a debriefing on how the rest of the organization could improve with a new customer. Having talked to the customer B and customer C accounts, this does not really happen. We should ‘hunt like wolves’, be smart and run that deer down by talking turns. At least so they said on my biology class.
What else? Hardcore Ericsson engineers are starting to visit mobile entertainment shows - they want to know what is going on outside the lab. That is a very promising sign. Read the report from Borje Ohlman - he has been on various datacom trains already before the platforms were built. http://switchlab.ericsson.se/users/boje/Dokument/NordMobEnt_rpt_Jan-00.html
Best regards
Tapio Anttila
WHAT ACTUALLY IS PERSONALIZATION?
You know those Ericsson mobile Internet branding values: mobility, personalization, convenience and ease-of-use. I started to contemplate their definition. Should we try to maximize them all? Convenience and ease-of-use - yes. Mobility as a capability should be maximized, whether people actually want to be mobile is a complex issue and Americans tend to simplify (generally speaking) their mobility to the home-car-mall trajectory. Therefore, in America in particular we need to build mobile solutions that integrate well with solutions already existing in homes, cars and malls.
What about personalization? In the name of usability, privacy and efficiency, our applications should be personalized as much as possible. But I live in a high-rise of 350 apartments where an even larger number of strangers are leading highly personalized lives. I can randomly sample them in the elevator and try to understand their personalized codes.
Humans are built to interact - sometimes they want to have full control, sometimes they want to let another person (or TV) take the lead. Therefore we should build our mobile Internet applications to allow for personalization, not to enforce it. There are lots of ideas waiting to be materialized in letting the mobile phone embed you in a community, in a flow of digital stories you consume. I can hardly wait for the day when I can drive down a street in Rio de Janeiro and be exposed to the web media produced by people living on that street. Uncensored and totally unpersonalized.
DEMO 2001 HIGHLIGHTS
No, I did not attend Demo this year - and I don’t believe anyone else from Ericsson did either. So let me bring the horse to the water so it can try to make its manager drink… There is a lot of press coverage on the show and there was indeed something noteworthy happening. http://www.demo.com/2001/onsite.html
Palm seems to have launched a Bluetooth-enabled carrying case and a full-scale adoption of Bluetooth at the show, with most Palms shipping with BT by the end of 2001. Analysts think Palm’s endorsement to Bluetooth might be as positive to the technology as in the case of Apple endorsing USB.
Microsoft launched their Outlook Mobile Manager which was said to be a result of the work at Microsoft Research. I wonder what the Ericsson/Microsoft joint venture has developed to make this even better? http://www.newsdesk.com/vnr/showdoc.htm?file=pr192405.txt
Are enterprise portals going napster? You might think so when reading the personal portal server announcement from 2Bridge. And there is of course a wireless play as well. Peer-to-peer is red hot right now, hopefully our Bluetooth-marketers take notes… http://www.newsdesk.com/vnr/vnrlatest-news.htm?show=155296
FileFish announced a new integrated mobile computing environment where files that actually exist in geographically dispersed storage systems (on any type of device) are aggregated under one persistent computing environment. SoftBANK and France Telecom are among their investors. http://www.filefish.com/
Quova announced a new service for web sites to do geo-targeting. This is the most aggregated level of personalization which is important when enhancing local community affinity in services. Personalization can make you freaking lonely… http://www.newsdesk.com/vnr/showdoc.htm?file=17376pr6.txt
PanGo Networks launched a framework for proximity-driven computing. This technology gives a user’s mobile device the ability to be aware of one’s environment and interact with context-aware content providers. The 802.11b hotspot networking scenario is one of the hot new areas and Pango sits in the middle of it. http://www.pangonetworks.com/
FineGround Networks launched a dynamic content acceleration technology which claims to accelerate performance 40x. http://www.fineground.com/
Tryllian launched their mobile agent technology and a related Agent Development Kit. http://www.tryllian.com/
Eyematic launched their facial sensing technology which makes it possible to create lookalike avatars from two photos. Now we can all be Ananovas. They are a developer on Qualcomm’s new BREW platform… definitely 3G. http://www.eyematic.com/demos.htm
There are just too many of these… please take a look at yourself, these are all quite interesting and relevant: www.dashbox.com, www.newzing.com, www.pocketthis.com, www.handson.com.
NEW MOBILE VENTURE FUNDS, INCUBATORS,…
Nokia intends to launch a USD 500 million fund to invest in mobile Internet start-up companies, mainly in the Asia-Pacific region.
INTERNAL DISCOVERIES
In my previous newsletter I presented Christoffer Andersson’s views on kJava development. I got a response from Ranjit Bhatia form an Ericsson Business Innovation -funded venture in Dallas - looks like we’ve got some Java-momentum networked together: “We have developed an application on SIM card and JAVA card which interfaces with a network enabler (developed here in Dallas) in the Service Network. Even though we are trying to develop the application on JAVA Card, the deployment of our application on Ericsson Mobiles look doubtful as Ericsson has not committed support for JAVA Card in the handsets. Both Nokia and Motorola have already committed support for JAVA card. After working on this area for last nine months, I believe kJAVA is the enabler which Ericsson needs to support in their handsets.” Ranjit is now in talks with Christoffer and other Java-proponents. If you can offer additional help, please do so - we need to catch the Java train!
QUICK TAKES
Vignette Corp. (Nasdaq:VIGN - news), a supplier of customer-driven Internet applications, announced that it has formed an independent company, SoloMio Corp., to develop a new type of software application for the wireless carrier market. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010207/tx_vignett.html
What do these “youngsters” (http://www.freedom.com/key_frame_board.htm) have in common with imode? They are the board of directors of the company Freedom Communications that owns the domain imode.com. Looks like the old economy is back and ready to pursue the American dream… What are they up to?
My friends at Atlas Venture are promoting their portfolio startup Mspect, a ‘mobile performance service provider’. They are building a worldwide infrastructure to measure and improve the performance of mobile Internet applications. We should perhaps partner with them for the ASP-hosted service network that Ericsson’s IFM group (Internet Facility Management) is building. Otherwise they will partner with the likes of Akamai. http://www.mspect.com/
Topia Ventures has developed a mobile agent technology that enables real-time collaboration and task scheduling on mobile devices. Available on as an ASP service starting 2Q01 for $17.95 per month. They currently work with Boeing Phantom Works to produce a solution for the US Army tactical battlefield operations. Sounds serious… http://www.topiaventures.com
Cambridge Positioning Systems, a provider of mobile location systems and services for mobile phones, said it raised $32 million in its third round. Participating in this round were new investors Ericsson Holding International BV and Intel Capital, and previous investors Alta Berkeley, Argo Global, CRIL, Infineon Technologies, Mustang Ventures (Siemens), Prelude Trust, Sofipa International, and 3i.
Kizna provide a new platform for creating collaborative applications that can be shared in real-time and synchronized from your wireless devices. Working with FusionOne. Main competitor Groove Networks. http://www.kizna.com
AdAlive is another of those companies developing interactive billboard solutions for the Palm economy - now serving at the American Airlines terminal at JFK in New York. They need to get serious and work with mobile phones, not just Palm devices… http://www.adalive.com/
Repeating previous mention of OpenDesign, a company creating a distributed software architecture for application developers to publish applications easier on the web: how can this Microsoft asylum be relevant to mobile Internet? Possibly through the managed service and hosting strategy of IFM. Note that most of the brilliant brains that developed the software that makes your PC freeze 
are now working for OpenDesign. http://www.opendesign.com/
ThinkShare Corp. (http://www.thinkshare.com), dedicated to delivering application solutions that enable Global 2500 companies to unlock the potential of their mobile workforce, announced $2 million in initial funding. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010207/wa_thinksh.html
And what else? Openwave announced their XHTML-compatible service network (!) platform with KDDI as a customer; Equant announced a global WAP roaming service in 22 countries; etc.
- (go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se for links to stories)
- The 3G Portal - http://www.the3gportal.com/
SNS Newsletter by Mark Anderson - http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/invest/trends/6112.asp - FierceWireless Weekly Newsletter - http://www.fiercewireless.com/
- Mobile Media Japan - http://www.mobilemediajapan.com/ (*NEW)
—–
NAM 3G Homepage - http://www.exu.ericsson.se/EUS/R/NAM3G/home/html/index.shtml
DIA Homepage (in memoriam) - http://dia.ericsson.se/
EIP Homepage - http://internetapplications.ericsson.se/ - Internal MVNO homepage - http://mvno.ericsson.se
- MI Competitor Intelligence in Outlook Public Folders: \Company Information\EIP\CB/M - Marketing (*NEW)
SELECTED THOUGHTFUL BROWSING
Did you know that the by 2005 the worldwide market for mobile robotics will have grown to $17bn? I guess this contributes to the good business case for IPv6 and peer-to-peer networking… http://www.activmediaresearch.com/mobile_robotics.html
Mark Anderson is writing in his newsletter about the ‘left-brain’ and ‘right-brain’ nature of various media. He points out that the qualities of DSL make it more suited to the office whereas cable is more suited to entertainment and the living room. This makes me think that the asymmetric nature of GPRS and the more symmetric nature of UMTS have significant ramifications: Is GPRS better suited for consumer applications and UMTS for business applications or vice versa? http://moneycentral.msn.com/invest/insight/homeauth.asp?a=3&d=144
Chris Shipley said something very interesting about the importance of peer-to-peer at Demo 2001: “We can’t ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ and condemn peer-to-peer along with Napster because downloading music is an application and peer-to-peer is an infrastructure. Distributed computing will enable scaling of the Internet so that Metcalfe’s Law will be fully realized and surpassed. Instead of the value of the network equals the number of the network nodes squared (value=n2), we’re suggesting a new formula where the value equals the number of nodes factorial (value=n!).” http://www.newsdesk.com/vnr/showdoc.htm?file=pr193264.txt
(go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se for links to stories)
IOW EVENTS CALENDAR
http://webacademy.ericsson.se/resources/majorevents.htm
IOW LIBRARY - RECOMMENDED READING
* * *
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.
