The CTIA show this fall was somewhat of a disappointment: I spent an hour on the job floor and the last 30 minutes were painful as I was struggling to find anything new and interesting to see.  Not that there would not be a lot happening in the industry - it is just that the telecom industry is in the process of transforming and merging into other industries, becoming ‘B2B’.  No wonder the keynote speaker Edgar Bronfman Jr. from Warner Music called the show a ‘music conference’.  CTIA will transform in the future increasingly into a B2B industry show, serving consumer-facing verticals as the dreams of the carriers about becoming media companies gradually fade.  Branded services and MVNOs will become the obvious choice for grabbing the attention of the consumer, just like fast -food chains and cappuccino-cafes populated the streets of East Berlin after the iron curtain fell.

The competing mobile entertainment events MECCA and MES had drawn the Maginot line at Union Square and MES folks were throwing a fairly successful event on Nob Hill. Zahava Stroud told me that their event was so successful that the folks at MECCA have asked for their help to stage their next event.  Maybe it all ended well after all and we will see only one event at the next CTIA in Las Vegas. Anyway, hats off to the Strouds: they seemingly pulled off a successful event under heavy competition and as the underdog.  That’s what America is all about!

There were some signs of the walled garden crumbling.  Ex-Verizon Paul Palmieri received spontaneous cheers at the Hotel W lobby by appearing as a reformed venture capitalist wearing a shirt and khakis.  Paul is now a venture partner at Acta Wireless. The man must have some serious deal flow after all his years at Verizon as the gate-keeper. Paul.palmieri@actawireless.com.

Warmest regards,

Tapio Anttila

www.anttila.net

 

 

QUALITY-OF-SERVICE EXPECTATIONS: THE POWER OF JUST-ENOUGH

Let’s take up this simple but powerful concept under some scrutiny as the mobile industry seems to ignore it over and over again. 

Mobile industry operates as a set of service businesses.  Mobile entertainment constitutes a B2C service business and follows the business logic of any service business such as a coffee shop, car dealership or a bank:  The service provider sets certain quality expectations for their service and matches it with a carefully researched pricing.  Then a successful service provider executes on those promises by exceeding the perceived expectations just a little, so that the resulting positive customer experience contributes to strengthening of the brand without compromising profitability.  It seems to me that the mobile entertainment industry often forgets this fundamental law of business.

First of all, let’s tackle the hype of mobile video.  I have been a proponent of broadcast mobile video technologies such as DVB-H, DMB and MediaFlo because they have actually been designed to scale and it is possible to define service quality expectations for those services.  For video over cellular networks there is no way these expectations can be defined and successfully managed.  As a case in point, Analysis has finally come to the rescue of the undersigned and released a report that states that cellular network capacity will be fairly soon saturated and unable to cope with the anticipated demand.  http://www.analysys.com/default_acl.asp?Mode=article&iLeftArticle=1970&m=&n=.  But congested or not, the more serious issue will be the unpredictability of service quality.

Secondly, let’s take a look at all the non-cellular wireless access technologies.  In the case of WiFi in particular it is rather difficult to define a service quality expectation and tell people when they have an open unencrypted access point available for use.  This is why the T-Mobile/Starbucks deal is so brilliant: those expectations are crystal clear: you see a Starbucks sign, you can get WiFi.

Thirdly, conspiracy theorists might argue that the current poor quality of US wireless networks is partly attributable to the carriers’ unwillingness to raise the service quality expectations to a level that does not support profitable growth. In other words by keeping the expectation of the overall service quality low the carriers have a much easier time preparing themselves for the shift towards earning money from wireless data and B2B networking and billing services:  it is acceptable for a mobile video session or SMS message transfer to fail, a voice call fails, too.  ‘Raising the bar’, the marketing slogan of Cingular, implicitly alludes to higher overall service quality promises, a powerful (and risky) statement.

Finally, considering this simple logic of managing service quality expectations also explains why mobile entertainment is taking off at the cost of applications designed for enterprise and personal profitability use:  productivity applications and services carry a much higher service quality expectation as those services will be used to provide other professional services in other industries (= make money at the risk of getting sued).  The biggest accomplished of CTIA (in my view) since its inception is that a few years ago it helped pull the wireless industry from its myopic focus on enterprise wireless services and to introduce the wireless business opportunity to the entertainment industry.

MEMORY IN MOBILE DEVICES

I have been an avid reader of the monthly Hot Topics columns of RTT Online (http://www.rttonline.com/hottop_frame.htm).  A word of warning:  these guys talk technology.  But they also have a great insight into what the future will hold for mobile communications from the technology perspective.

One of those issues is the advancement of processing power and memory on mobile devices.  How fast will we reach certain levels of memory on mobile devices to enable meaningful mass storage for multimedia?  How does this all relate to the evolution of the transmission bandwidth (network computing)?  Will the future be server or client -centric?  How about battery life? To really understand these issues one needs to combine technological and socioeconomic understanding.  For the former, RTT Online seems to be an inexhaustible wealth of seemingly unbiased perspective.

I was discussing a recent university research on this topic with Geoff Varrall, one of the principals at RTT Online.  I just wanted to offer to you a quote from him as food for thought and recommend warmly that you take his monthly newsletter as a part of your bedside reading. 

NEWS IS GOING LIFESTYLE

I recall battling at Macromedia for the need to develop and package content based on lifestyle segmentation, something engineers traditionally develop a deer-in-the-headlights reaction for. For example, in a lifestyle-based service for teens CNN is not relevant as it has not been adapted to the needs and language of the demographic.  So in comes Al Gore with his TV channel Current, targeted for the tail-end of the Gen-X generation and also providing news-like content - a worthy goal indeed.

(Well, German churches have been carrying out SMS sermons for some ten years now and the Chinese have transcribed Mao’s teachings into both SMS poetry and rap songs so it is time for the news media to take notes…)

Lately we have also seen the art of televised news take a more and more personal approach when preparing to fight off the surging wave of bloggers as news providers, aggregated and published by future media powerhouses such as Yahoo.  Those watching CNN have certainly been exposed to the oh-so-personal and ever-so-emotional Aaron Brown and Wolf Blitzer.  News has become entertainment and those of us enlightened enough to see the apocalypse of civilization coming will take refuge at responsible blogging sites (or mobile podcasts) or resort to New York Times.

But hey, we will all make more money when the masses rediscover news in a fun format.  Just consider this announcement that really got my attention:  “The Associated Press plans to launch “asap,” a multimedia news service targeted at an 18 to 34-year-old audience that will combine audio, video, blogs and wireless text…”.  http://www.ap.org/asap/index.html.  We’re talking about a ‘white label’ news agency…

There is certainly both a positive and a negative side to this trend but it very much talks to a major shift in society for the empowerment of the individual as a content provider - something so relevant for the mobile industry.

SOME COOL COMPANIES

IceMobile.  IceMobile revealed its VideoCall2TV product line, enabling viewers to express themselves instantly by making a video call from their 3G mobile phones to a TV program and participate in the show with live video images. IceMobile is the first company in the world to offer this full service package to TV producers and broadcasters.  http://www.icemobile.com/

Comverse. I cannot help agreeing that their new social avatar innovation ‘Klonies’ could be a major success.  We need more of these innovations that are based on out-of-box thinking and that create a totally new form of communication, thus opening up genuinely new revenue streams.  http://www.klonies.com/   http://www.comverse.com/news/news_big.asp?cat=65&newsid=872

AirTroductions.  Dating services for people on-the-go are mushrooming, here’s the latest.  Not necessarily using mobile phones but teaching people to customize and enhance their social environment in a mobile context: http://www.airtroductions.com/Anonymous/SystemInfo.aspx?id=6

Blinx.  Talking about video blogs and personalised media channels which would be easy to use…  when will a solution like Blinx be available for mobile devices?  http://www.blinkx.tv/

GREAT GUYS & GALS OF THE INDUSTRY

Robin Chan. Moving from mForma in New York to head up the VCast service of Verizon Wireless.  robin.chan@verizonwireless.com

Alex Barkaloff. Started a while ago heading up the LA presence for NellyMoser. alexb@nellymoser.com

Patric Carlsson.  Has a lot of fresh business development experience in the premium SMS area and is looking for his next gig in the SF Bay Area.  patric@gerbsmanpartners.com  

Plus I know a lot of people who would rather be somewhere else than where they are right now.  I am happy to tell you more in confidence. With 1,390 connections I still rank as number 189th  most-connected on www.linkedin.com out of 3.8 million profiles on the system.

RECRUITING

Corbis Mobile: 

Director, Account Management and Operations Manager - both based in Seattle.  For more information: http://www.corbis.com/corporate/Employment/Jobs.asp

Disney Internet Group – Mobile Publishing:

Senior Manager Account Management: 

Oversees all content distribution in North American and leads team of account managers.  Must have relationships with carriers and an entrepreneurial drive.

 

Key Account Manager

Manage key WDIG key carrier accounts driving revenues and developing close operating relationship with your carrier partners

Further info: ivan.lopez@dig.com

EVENTS, BLOGS & SOURCES

My favorite news sources:  I have only time for two these days:  www.moconews.net and www.digitalmediawire.com.  That will get you covered. 

Of other news sources you should notice Wireless Watch Japan (http://www.wirelesswatch.jp/).

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Disclaimer:  Opinions presented herein are those of the undersigned and do not represent the position or message of any company I might be affiliated with.