>play: XOHM will Tear down this walled garden

Today at the >play conference, Mr. Rick Robinson of Sprint spoke about Xohm, Sprint's WiMax effort. In answering to an audience question about walled gardens and the restricted access to mobile Internet, Mr. Robinson categorically said, "Xohm will teardown this wall. We will provide complete access to Internet from a WiMax enabled device".
Sprint Nextel is clearly not afraid of being reduced to a bit-pipe (a reason most often attributed for the restricted Internet access from your phone). They are confident that a new content delivery model that is Ad supported, will let them earn from the Ad delivery and distribution.

It will be interesting how Nokia and Google's Ad delivery to mobile will play into this. Google has the most effective Ad distribution system for Internet and will leverage it for mobile Internet. Nokia is taking all the steps necessary for Mobile Ad delivery and it is doing it mostly through acquisitions. Nokia's new initiative "mosh" (short for Mobilize Sharing) was at display at the CTIA. When I talked to Nokia representative driving mosh at the CTIA, he said they have figured out a business model that delivers free content to the phones and supported by Ads. This Ad delivery is done using Enpocket's framework. So what will Sprint's Ad framework be?

As a side note, the way Mr.Robinson said it reminded me of President Reagan's, "Mr.Gorbachev tear down this wall".

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Mobile Alphabet Soup

The mobile standards are not for the faint of heart. Here is a soup, thanks to Wikipedia. I can honestly say I can talk about three of them, CDMAone, CDMA2000, EVDO. If you insist I can talk the level of bits, channels and network. We all need a device that is mobile, allows us to stay in touch with the world through voice, email, video and web. So the question to you and I as mobile users is, "why do we care about this soup?"

Mobile communication standards

3GPP / GERAN / UTRAN / LTE Family

2G GSM GPRS EDGE (EGPRS) EDGE Evolution (Evolved EDGE) HSCSD

3G W-CDMA UMTS (3GSM) FOMA UMTS-TDD TD-CDMA TD-SCDMA HSPA HSDPA HSUPA HSPA+ GAN (UMA)

Pre-4G UMTS Revision 8 LTE HSOPA (Super 3G)

3GPP2 / cdmaOne / CDMA2000 Family

2G cdmaOne

3G CDMA2000 EV-DO

Pre-4G UMB

Other Technologies

0G PTT MTS IMTS AMTS OLT MTD Autotel / PALM ARP

1G NMT AMPS / TACS / ETACS Hicap CDPD Mobitex DataTAC

2G iDEN D-AMPS PDC CSD PHS WiDEN

Pre-4G iBurst HIPERMAN WiMAX WiBro (Mobile WiMAX)

Frequency bands SMR Cellular PCS

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Mossberg calling for freer phones

Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal who usually keeps his writing to the technology sections, wrote a rare opinion piece, Free My Phone - WSJ.com.
Some time back Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, a well known proponent of Net Neutrality wrote a paper on Wireless Carterphone. Mossberg's call is very similar to what Tim Wu talks about in his paper, asking for the freedom to buy any cell phone you wish and use with any service provider. Mossberg's asks, for the same freedom we enjoy with buying computers and the choice of ISPs we have. This is the old carter phone rule that allowed people to buy any landline phone with a RJ11 port and plug it into the jack in your house.

I am glad Mossberg is very strong in his message:

It's intolerable that the same country that produced all this has
trapped its citizens in a backward, stifling system when it comes to
the next great technology platform, the cellphone....

That's why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the "Soviet
ministries." Like the old bureaucracies of communism, they sit athwart
the market, breaking the link between the producers of goods and
services and the people who use them.

The article goes on to talk about the absence of SIM card n CDMA phones, the locking of SIMS and the upcoming 700 MHz auction. However I do disagree with some of his claims regarding Apple's success in choosing its own hardware and software platform for the iPhone.

Both Mossberg's article and Tim Wu's paper are must reads if you want to understand why your phone is tied to your service provider or why Skype is not supported in iPhone platform.

mossberg, carter phone, wireless phone, iphone

Carbon Neutral TV Commercial

AdAge magazine reports that the Ad agency, Brooklyn Bros. shot what is believed to be the first carbon neutral TV commercial. The Ad agency developed a software that kept track of all the carbon generated by the cars, trucks, generators, lights, etc used in creating the commercial. They said that they generated 9 tonnes of carbon and paid $20 per ton to offset it. (I picked the photo above from Flickr that I found interesting and appropriate).

We already saw SimCity mixing global warming into their system. SecondLife can't be far behind, selling carbon offsets for LindeX.
What is next in mixing carbon neutral living and digital media?

1. Your cellphone network becomes carbon neutral. In addition to charging you overage for minutes you will also get carbon overage.


2. Carbon Neutral channel on Cable. All programs must be certified carbon neutral, and the Ads too.


3. BestBuy starts selling carbon neutral TV. It never turns on.


4. RadioHead releases a carbon neutral album, same old name your price, this time hosted on a website powered by power generated by crank turning delirious RadioHead fans who paid $300 for the album.


5. Bloggers start paying for carbon offsets for using too much of electricity in producing all those posts.


6. Google search results show carbon score for each web page listed. In addition to relevancy you can customize the search results to show first those sites that are carbon neutral.


7. Social networking sites for all those who are carbon neutral. Add to that dating sites that match you with others of same carbon profile.

Technorati Tags: carbon neutral, carbon ofset media

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Nash Equilibrium

Google Acquires Finnish Jaiku

This has been an year of acquisitions for Google. It's only October and Google has made 16 acquisitions. All in the ever popular Web2.0-Social networking area. This time is is Jaiku.
As it has been the norm, Jaiku is now closed to new users, "In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we've decided to close new user sign-ups for now,"

Jaiku is Twitter like, helping you leave digital breadcrumbs, through your mobile phone, about your whereabouts for people who do care so much about your mundane minutiae.

There isn't anything significant about the foray into Finland (no, it is not about taking the battle into Nokia territory). Or is there? Jaiku is now supported only on Nokia Handelds (specifically those based on Nokia software platform S60). So when Jaiku is integrated into gPhone software framework, Nokia may be forced to find its own alternative.

Now someone has to make a play on Twitter and Facebook real soon.

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Will Verizon Wireless acquire Sprint?

The Wall Street Journal Blog asks,
"Think of how much better long-suffering Sprint shareholders would have been expanding through another type of deal: say, a buyout offer from the likes of Vodafone Group."

Vodafone, is the part owner of Verizon Wireless, a JV. Technically I should have said Vodafone in the post title.

The answer however is, a resounding no. The law of conservation of good mobile customer states that there are no more new customers, growth can only be initiated at the expense of others or by acquisitions. Sprint would've looked attractive if it were the size of Alltel and acquiring it just to show subscriber growth would've been worth the deal.

At the current rate Sprint is losing subscribers and its current change of leadership, Verizon and at&t will step up efforts to acquire its subscribers not its liabilities. But will the Private Equities make a play to acquire Sprint? With $2.4 Billion in cash and $6.8 total current assets, it is a possibility. That sure will cause big hurdles for Wi-Max because the private equities are about cost cutting and generating cash flow, not about strategic growth in wireless industry.

What do you think?

[tags] sprint, verizon, vodafone, at&t, sprint acquisition[/tags]

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Purpose of Mobile Music is to Discover and Share

Your music is mobile as soon as you side-load it on your MP3 player. It goes where you go. But Mobile Music means something different. It is the ability to call-up music that you like on the go. You have a phone with MP3 player and high-speed anywhere data connection. You have mobile music when you can buy a song online through your phone. The mobile phone companies try to set the price leadership in mobile music by pricing the on the go downloads at least 2.5 times the 99 cent downloads from iTunes.

The market for this mobile music is not as big as the iTunes store, the market won't expand even if the songs were offered at 99 cents. The MNOs know this and are not tempted to get into a price war. An ABI research early this year said that an averag customer buys 8-9 songs a year. Mobile music purchase is not for the average. It is defined for those with a higher willingness to pay to get instant gratification. Does the market justify the operational costs? Verizon and Sprint don't break down the numbers but we know now that they had decided advertising mobile music is not a good strategy. There is no more Ads on calling up music on demand.

So what is the true purpose of Mobile Music? The Wall Street Journal says

"The purpose behind wireless music downloading is to finally go beyond
music playback -- where the iPod and most MP3 players are stuck today
-- and address music discovery," says Forrester's James McQuivey.
"Because sometimes you want to tell your device what you want to hear,
and sometimes you want your device to tell you what you should hear."

I think this is absolutely true. The power of Mobile music is in finding local music (buying songs of a band playing in your coffee shop from your iPhone) and sharing music from a central location.

Apple is moving towards another form of sharing. The deficiencies quoted in WSJ article are already addressed by iPhone's design and its ecosystem.

"I still think the PC is the place where consumers want to have their
digital library -- and it's certainly where they want to store and
manage that library," says Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin,
who ticks off a list of advantages PCs have over mobile devices: Their
user interfaces are more convenient, they're harder to lose, and
they're easier to back up.

Arguably iPhone offers the best and the simplest user interface among mobile music devices. With iTunes integration they can easily provide music backup through their .Mac hosting service. While Apple does not believe in subscription model for music, it already has a subscription model for its .Mac file storing and web hosting service. An iPhone user with .Mac account can seamlessly buy songs on the go from iTunes store and have it sent to storage in her .Mac account. The iPhone will support streaming music from our playlist on .Mac or your friend's shared list.

I think Apple is
also best suited to deliver SlingBox on your iPhone/iPod Touch from
your Apple TV at home. At the simplest form, the current Apple TV can
support (with just software upgrade) web streaming of music and videos
on your home computer to your iPhone.
The next step is to have Apple TV support Cable input and let you watch TV on the go.


The real purpose of Mobile Music is sharing. It needs a perfect ecosystem. Apple has it.

Technorati Tags: mobile music, ipod touch, iphone, music sharing, mobile music streaming

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Free the music?

>play Music panel will discuss the current state of digital music and the emerging path as the business models change. Is free the new business model? Giving things away for free isn't new, people have been giving away software, books, ideas, knowledge, art all for free. There is a great study on the economics of open source by Professor Eric Von Hippel of MIT. The argument applies to any creative work that previously had a price but is now given away. In a recent article Michael Arrington of Techcrunch says, albums and singles will cease to be the source of revenue and will become marketing tools for other services (like concerts).

I will be very much interested in asking one of the panelists, RealNetworks , who have a subscription model, how the "free music movement" will transform their business model. Will Rhapsody/RealNetworks and others such services will become marketing channels rather than remain as digital music stores?

Join us at >play on October 27th to ask your questions.


Technorati Tags: >play, play conference, haas, berkeley, digital music, drm, rhapsody, realnetworks, music subscription

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Sprint: Changes Ahead

The Wall Street Journal reports on the board's search for a replacement for Sprint's current CEO. The problem is the lingering doubts on Sprint's strategy of investing big on on WiMax vs. stemming subscriber turnover. Are these two mutually exclusive options? It is easy to say "Exploit before Explore" but the truth lies in between.

Sprint needs to stabilize its current subscriber churn and start creating churn away from the other two providers. In the cutthroat competition for subscribers it is an established fact that all good subscribers are already taken and growth can only be engendered by churn from from others. Verizon is doing it with on the network side, with better coverage and at&t is doing it on the handset side with iPhone. Sprint can't ignore its current churn rate of 2.5% per month.

But Sprint also needs an answer for the future. It cannot give up the 4G battle to others. Besides it needs an answer to the big pipes Verizon, at&t and Comcast have into customer homes. If Sprint can make WiMax the unified strategy to deliver a true quadruple-play it stands to gain market share, especially given the problems Verizon and at&t are facing with their fiber solutions and the slow uptake.

The questions should be:

1. What are Sprint's short term goals and measures to achieve these?
2. Has Sprint accurately estimated the risks in WiMax, rollout?
3. Has Sprint correctly identified the market segments that will take up this new network?

If the board does change the CEO, it should be because it did not receive convincing answers to these questions and not because WiMax is an expensive undertaking.


Technorati Tags: sprint, verizon, at&t, WiMax, Forsee, churn, 4G, quadruple play

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