Internet Marketing: The challenge in penetrating Asian and African markets.

A recent release of Internetworldstats.com detailing the world internet usage and population statistics (Q1, 2009) points to a compelling opportunity for internet marketers and portal designers in Asia and Africa. With a weight-age of 70% of total population of the world and a lower-than-mean penetration, the internet revolution is waiting to happen here in the next decade. The good thing about Africa and Asia is that barring a few countries, most of these states are supportive of efforts to increase the telecom and internet infrastructure. However, the internet conquest here will have a completely different set of rules compared to North America, Western Europe and Australia. While the big and long term opportunities lie in Asia and Africa, one must not be unmindful of Latin America/Caribbean and the Mid East (or even Eastern Europe), which are the medium term opportunity spots. While N America, W Europe and Australia are the first wave internet states, L America, Mid East and Eastern Europe will be second wave internet states and Asia/ Africa will be the third wave internet states.

The rules of the internet conquest will have to change and will require some fundamental re-thinking of re-packaging the delivery. Here are a few pointers towards the new rules of the game:

1.English got Internet, where it is today, but going forward, English may be limiting. It is not hard to associate a higher penetration of internet with the English world (North America, Western Europe and Australia).
This thus places emphasis on language of internet delivery: Mandarin, Hindi, Malaya, Tamil, Urdu, Swahili and more. English literacy will not drive economic and human development in these states. The mode of deliverance will be the local language.

2.The spread of internet in N. America, W.Europe and Australia has largely been acknowledged to proliferation of personal computing devices
Penetration in the second and third wave states, will depend on Telecom penetration and hence the mobile phone/handheld devices will become the harbingers of the internet revolution. By handhelds, I do not mean the fancy up-market smart-phones but basic $40/60 phones.

3.Existing subscription or ad based models may not be useful for these emerging markets. Revenue, Profitability and Sustainability models find the internet business space to be extremely slippery even in English speaking regions where culture, usages and habits are somewhat contiguous.
For the second and third wave states, customization to language, habits, cultures, money usage, and payment mechanisms will pose a significant challenge to marketers.

4.The first wave states browse the internet on computers, laptops, net-books, tablets and smart-phones. There is a high per capita consumption of content, ads, minutes of usage, search for information etc. High Def Content including text, audio, video form a part of the delivery mechanism.
Device limitations will influence content delivery. Content focus has to be sharp and light. One will have to judiciously use the knowledge of the local markets, mix them up smartly with business objectives and keep the content sharp and focused. Content delivery will also be a critical variable. Keeping in mind the infrastructural shortcomings, content delivered may only be uni-dimensional in nature (only voice or only text).

5.The business transactions in the first wave states are credit/debit card based and have a narrow bandwidth of services. Booking airline tickets, buying books, music and flowers, accessing paid information or content is only a privilege of the top 5-7% in the second and third wave states.
The challenge is to cater to the basic needs of the population better. The delivery medium here has to be much broader and involve more public utilities, health services, department of posts, Agriculture and Labour ministries or groups, banking groups etc. This involves a re-defining of the eco-system of delivery.

6.The problem of platforms, browsers and OSs is a vexing one even in the age of computing devices. The adaptabilities and compatibilities will be another challenge when the medium of delivery shifts to a basic phone.
Thus the delivery medium needs to be platform agnostic and will sit on a server preceding the mobile phone in the value delivery chain. For eg. a server that processes a consumer request, links up to the relevant website/portal, accesses information, downloads it on itself and then plays it back to the user after customizing the content. (Eg. The server receives a weather update, visits the local meteorological department portal, downloads data, coverts it into local language text/voice and plays it back to the user.)

7.The purchase mechanism and purchase price is primarily on credit card/internet banking basis. This is a high security risk situation but the most prevalent one because of the purchase habits of the consumer in the first wave countries.
The Second and third wave user is a very cautious spender and frugal as well. He does not own credit cards and the payment mechanism will have to involve the Telecom Operator. Such tie-ups would be critical in bringing internet enabled access to the user. There is a space for MVNEs and MVNAs playing a meaningful role here connecting the Solution provider, Telecom operator, Finance provider, Systems provider etc.

Internet Marketers are yet to meet the real challenge of deep penetration in the Asian and African markets, and the pointers given above would be critical for building sustainable depth.

Demystifying Twitter (Part II):Usage Charecterestics

Contd from earlier post http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/06/demystifying-twitter-one-way-one-to.html

Activity levels of Twitter Users

Data collected from Twitter Grader (4.5 million users) has some interesting inferences that need to be taken note of:

1. 79.79% users failed to provide a homepage URL

2.75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile

3.68.68% have not specified a location

4.55.50% of suers donot follow anyone

5.54.88% have never tweeted

6.52.71% have no followers

9.06% of all Twitter users are inactive (less than 10 followers, 10 friends,10 updates). Of the ones, who are thus classified to be active, and have a bio, loaction, hompage URL:

1. Average user tweets .97 times a day

2. An average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total

3. The average user has a following to follower raio of .7738

In terms of content of tweets:

1.1.44% of all tweets are retweets

2.37.95% of all tweets contain an @ symbol (mentions)

3.33.44% of all tweets start with an @ symbol (replies)

Most users stretch the 140 character limit to the max in an attempt to get as much content as possible into every update.The distribution of postings over days and times of day shows us that business hours during the business week in the US are the most popular.

The maximum concentration of Twitter use is in US, followed by Canada and UK. Australia is the next in the list.

Demystifying Twitter (Part I): One way, One to Many Publishing Service

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter's purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool?

Here's sampling two independent studies on the Twittersphere (The Twitter eco-system):

1. A study on the user demographics and usage phenomenon by Harvard Business Publishing (Sampling about 3 lakh Twitter users)
2. Another study by Hubspot on activity levels of Twitter Users. (Sampling about 4.5 million users)

User Demographics and usage styles
Compared against other online social networks; 80% Twitter users have atleast 1 follower/following. This is in contrast to the online social portals, which register 60 - 65% single friend status. The other marked departure from social networking standards is the following/follower pattern. Most of the online social networks activity is focusssed around women, where as in Twitter, the activity is centred on men.

It might point to the fact that content produced by Men on twitter is perceived to be more compelling than a typical social network and content produced by women is less compelling (because of lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies etc)

The Twitter usage pattern is also very different from a typical on line social network and a Twitter user contributes very rarely --> The median lifetime tweets per user is one which translates to over half the twitter users retweeting less than once every 74 days.
At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue - Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia's edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

Contd...

Microsoft Morro on the Horizon

Microsoft Corp in a quest to provide complete security to its OS users would soon be launching its own antivirus app Code named-‘Morro’ at the end of 2009.
This news assumes significance as this antivirus would be completely free and would provide higher level of security due to close knit approach with Windows OS.Microsoft may be able to provide a great solution due to control over anonymous usage statistics of millions of PC’s.
This has sound alarms for commercial Anti-virus companies like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, earning majority of their revenues by protecting Windows PCs all these years. These companies also have significant presence in enterprise security market and attract huge revenues from it.
Today many users are forced to buy paid anti-virus to fight higher level of threats unleashed by malicious programmes and viruses. The availability of anti-virus app by Microsoft itself would avoid the security dilemma faced by OS users and may also increase its legal OS sales in emerging markets.
Microsoft through this initiative is trying to ramp up confidence amongst its customers, at the same time opening up a new revenue stream in future. The move may be late timed but indeed serve great purpose for users craving about better anti-virus integration in windows OS.

Indian Telecom Story (Part X): Gartner's predictions about the Indian Telecom Industry

Gartner has made public, its future growth prediction for the Indian Telecoms market. Here's presenting a few highlights of the same:

1.The Telecom sector revenues would touch $30 billion by 2013 registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.5 percent between 2009-2013. In other words the Indian Telecom industry with its low double digit growth numbers is now maturing as any other industry would.

2.The Telecom subscriber base is also expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.5 percent and would cross 770 million by 2013. This is somewhat in disagreement with DoT's figures of 900 million by 2013/ and 1.1 billion by 2015. http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/05/dot-in-first-ever-forecast-of-mobile.html

3.Mobile market penetration is projected to increase to 63.5 percent in 2013 from 38.7 percent in 2009. The main resons for this would be increased focus on the rural market, entry of consumer durable and electronic companies into the mobile handset segment, and cheaper handsets.

4.The churn rate - the rate at which a subscriber switches their operator - would cross 59 percent in 2013 from 53 percent currently. The churn rate is also not expected to shoot to a high level despite introduction of Number portability.

5.The number of people with prepaid connections,accounting for 93 percent of the subscriber base in 2008, will continue to swell to exceed 96 percent by 2013, surpassing 740 million. The postpaid to prepaid ratio will not see major up move as it is forecasted to exceed 29 million by 2013 just a small CAGR growth of 2.5 percent from 23 million in 2008.This could be a big dampener as it reflect the inability of Telco’s to garner post-paid users.

6.The revenues from data services will significantly contribute to mobile services in India, with a CAGR of 16.8% from 2009 to 2013. Growth will be triggered by increased adoption of value-added services, which are relevant to both rural and urban markets.The introduction of 3G in future could well land a helping hand in increasing Telecom sector’s revenues.

Quick Bite: Steve Johnson on Twitter (Covered by Time)

Twitter’s key elements — the follower structure, link-sharing, real-time searching — are here to stay. And every major channel of information will be “Twitterfied” in one way or another in the coming years.

Steven Berlin Johnson’s Time cover story: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html

Intel and Nokia join hands for Linux based Netbooks

Nokia, Intel explore the Open source route for developing the netbook. While this is a step in future for the likes of Nokia and Intel and an extension of their platforms from a new device perspective; it is also significant in terms of development of a third camp apart from Apple and Microsoft. It also holds a lot of promise in terms of benefits from open source. Reproducing the first reactions: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49302736,00.htm

Intel and Nokia have announced a long-term relationship that will see the development of Intel-powered, Linux-based handheld mobile-computing devices.

The partnership between the chipmaker and handset manufacturer was announced on Tuesday, 23rd June 2009. Under the deal, the companies will collaborate on several open-source mobile Linux software projects, and Intel will license HSPA/3G modem intellectual property from Nokia.

"This Intel and Nokia collaboration unites and focuses many of the brightest computing and communications minds in the world, and will ultimately deliver open and standards-based technologies, which history shows drive rapid innovation, adoption and consumer choice," Anand Chandrasekher, the general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, said in a statement.

The partners will cooperate on developing common technologies for Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo, which are both Linux-based operating systems. Moblin is currently under development for use in netbooks, mobile internet devices (MIDs) and other devices, and Maemo is the operating system that Nokia has used for its N800-series MIDs.

In September, Nokia said the next version of Maemo will incorporate 3G technology for the first time. Until now, devices such as the N810 have relied on Wi-Fi for their data connectivity.

"Enabling common technologies across the Moblin and Maemo software environments will help foster the development of compatible applications for these devices — building on the huge number of off-the-shelf PC compatible applications," the companies said in their statement. "The open-source projects will be governed using the best practices of the open-source development model."

The companies also said they will use open-source technologies from Mozilla, oFono, ConnMan, X.Org, BlueZ, D-Bus, Tracker, GStreamer and PulseAudio.

Nokia's handsets are all based on ARM-based chip architecture, which has become a key rival to Intel's x86-based architecture. ARM has dominated the mobile phone market, and the x86 is the basis of most desktop computing, but both are now targeting the netbook market.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Chandrasekher said Intel's deal with Nokia aims to "work this [x86-based] family of architecture into future mobile devices", but he declined to specify what kinds of devices were being planned, or when they might appear.

Kai Öistämö, Nokia's device chief, also said in the call that ARM-based architecture "continues to be an important part of Nokia's future".

Telecoms analyst Dean Bubley, of Disruptive Analysis, said on Tuesday that the deal suggests Nokia is not confident that its Symbian mobile phone platform — currently in the process of being open-sourced — will "scale to non-phone devices".

"There is clearly a concerted effort by lots of people, whether it's in the Android or non-Android Linux community, to have a go at Microsoft and Apple's incumbency in notebooks," Bubley said. "The first round of Linux-powered netbooks did not get acceptance in the mass market — average punters preferred XP because they knew how to use it. There is a vision that a Linux-based platform can change that, but I'm really not sure."

Intel is a prime backer of WiMax, a long-range wireless technology that is a rival to 3G. Bubley hypothesised that, in those markets where WiMax becomes popular, many users will still need 3G as a back-up, due to patchy WiMax coverage and the need to roam into non-WiMax-covered areas.

"Intel could want to create dual-standard products that use both WiMax and 3G," Bubley suggested.

http://www.cnn.com/mobile/218101057;jsessionid=KTNYFU0QUAWKKQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?cid=ChannelWebBreakingNews
http://www.telecoms.com/12299/intel-teams-up-with-nokia-to-build-mobile-platform
http://technology.iafrica.com/news/technology/1758481.htm

Crystal Gazing: Mobile Technologies that will impact 2009 - 10

Mobile technologies/trends to watch in 2009 and 2010
1. Bluetooth 3.0 —will likely include features such as ultra-low-power mode that will enable new devices, such as peripherals and sensors, and new applications, such as health monitoring. Bluetooth 3.0 is intended to support "classic" Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ultrawideband (UWB). It's possible that more bearers will be supported in the future. Wi-Fi will allow high-end phones to rapidly transfer large volumes of data.
2. Mobile User Interfaces (UIs) — UIs have a major effect on device usability and supportability. They will also be an area of intense competition in 2009 and 2010, with manufacturers using UIs to differentiate their handsets and platforms. Companies should expect consumer interfaces to drive new expectations of application behavior and performance. Better interfaces will make the mobile Web more accessible on small devices, and will be a better channel to customers and employees.
3. Location Sensing — Location awareness makes mobile applications more powerful and useful and will be a key component of contextual applications. Location sensing will also enhance systems, such as mobile presence and mobile social networking. The growing maturity of on-campus location sensing using Wi-Fi opens up a range of new applications exploiting the location of equipment or people.
4. 802.11n — 802.11n boosts Wi-Fi data rates to between 100 Mbps and 300 Mbps, and the multiple-input, multiple-output technology used by 802.11n offers the potential for better coverage in some situations. 802.11n is likely to be a long-lived standard that will define Wi-Fi performance for several years. High-speed Wi-Fi is desirable to stream media around the home and office. From an organizational perspective, 802.11n is disruptive; it's complex to configure, and is a "rip and replace" technology that requires new access points, new client wireless interfaces, new backbone networks and a new power over Ethernet standard. However, 802.11n is the first Wi-Fi technology to offer performance on a par with the 100 Mbps Ethernet commonly used for wired connections to office PCs. It is, therefore, an enabler for the all-wireless office, and will be considered for replacing older 802.11a/b/g systems in 2009 and 2010.
5. Display Technologies — Displays constrain many characteristics of both mobile devices and applications. During 2009 and 2010, several new display technologies will impact the marketplace, including active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors. Pico projectors enable new mobile use cases. Battery life improvements are welcome for any user. Good off-axis viewing enables images and information to be shared more easily. Passive displays in devices, such as e-book readers, offer new ways to distribute and consume documents. Display technology will also become an important differentiator and a user selection criterion.
6. Mobile Web and Widgets — The mobile Web is emerging as a low-cost way to deliver simple mobile applications to a range of devices. It has some limitations that will not be addressed by 2010 (for example, there will be no universal standards for browser access to handset services, such as the camera or GPS). However, the mobile Web offers a compelling total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage over thick-client applications. Widgets (small mobile Web applets) are supported by many mobile browsers, and provide a way to stream simple feeds to handsets and small screens. Mobile Web applications will be a part of most B2C mobile strategies. Thin-client applications are also emerging as a practical solution to on-campus enterprise applications using Wi-Fi or cellular connections.
7. Cellular Broadband — Wireless broadband exploded in 2008, driven by the availability of technologies such as high-speed downlink packet access and high-speed uplink packet access, combined with attractive pricing from cellular operators. The performance of high-speed packet access (HSPA) provides a megabit or two of bandwidth in uplink and downlink directions, and often more. In many regions, HSPA provides adequate connectivity to replace Wi-Fi "hot spots," and the availability of mature chipsets enables organizations to purchase laptops with built-in cellular modules that provide superior performance to add-on cards or dongles.
8. Near Field Communication (NFC) —NFC is emerging as a leading standard for applications such as mobile payment, with successful trials conducted in several countries. It also has wider applications, such as "touch to exchange information" (for example, to transfer an image from a handset to a digital photo frame, or for a handset to pick up a virtual discount voucher.NFC is likely to become important sooner in emerging markets, with some deployments starting by 2010.

World Internet Usage and Population Statistics

www.internetworldstats.com

The great Indian 3G auction

Government of India has settled for a reserve price of Rs.4040 crore for the long-overdue auction of third-generation (3G) spectrum. The minimum bid amount for pan-India spectrum is double of that recommended by the telecom department and aligns with the finance ministry's proposal, as the government tries to maximise the revenue it can earn from the auction. It has been decided that up to seven operators (with one slot being reserved for state-owned telcos BSNL & MTNL) will be allowed to offer 3G services across the country. The department of telecom (DoT) wanted a total of five operators. Executives with major telecom operators said the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) - the industry body representing companies that provide mobile services based on the GSM standard - would protest against the decision on the reserve price. Telcos are readying to lobby hard with the government to reduce the base price to at least Rs 3,540 crore per player, as most of them had factored this number in their calculations as both DoT and the finance ministry were close to reaching an agreement on this price. The government would get Rs 24,240 crore from auctioning 3G spectrum to six licencees. While the money would help the government lower the fiscal deficit, he added that the base price of Rs 4,040 crore would be on the higher side.

Is the Government killing the proverbial golden goose out here just to shore in money to lower fiscal deficits (Increased by the magnamity of populist policies)?

Telcos may restrict their 3G offerings to metros and category A circles which has a faster time to break even on investments
It will increase the entry barrier for operators
It will also increase the service costs for customers
It could restrict bidding to the six big Indian telecom operators
It will be quite difficult for new operators to participate in the auction, as they would need to invest an additional $1 billion for the 3G licences, over and above the investments they are making in rolling out their new 2G networks
The higher base price could lead to a scenario similar to Europe where telcos could not recover the costs they paid for 3G spectrum.
The higher the base price, the higher the tariffs, as telcos will have to make a business case of it

The government gains on two fronts: Increasing the Base reserve price by 500 crores per player (Rs.4040 crores against Rs.3540 crores) and increasing the number of operators from five to seven.

In a related development, GSM operators said the government must resolve all issues with allotting 2G spectrum before deciding on the 3G auction.The telecom ministry has decided that it will take a call on all issues related to second-generation spectrum - the airwaves on which all mobile services are offered at present, including the methodology for future allocations, the pricing for this scarce resource and the usage charges for utilising these airwaves only after the upcoming auction of 3G spectrum. Any ambiguity on issues related to 2G, especially in the current business and economic environment, could seriously dampen investor interest and adversely affect revenues that would be raised by the government through the auction process

Smartphones to replace Desktop Phones (North America) by 2011

Enterprises in North America will be supporting more mobile phones than desktop phones by 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner analysts said that although most users will still also have a desktop phone, mobile phones will become more prevalent and replace desktop voice hardware to become the primary device.

“The adoption and standardization of corporate liable mobile phones in the enterprise has been driven by the use of smartphones, wireless e-mail and the integration of these phones into IP telephony systems, while improved in-building coverage and lower mobile service costs have also played a part.,” said Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner.

Mr. Redman said that as spending on mobile communications services grows, and soon overtakes that of wired voice services, enterprises will need to plan how they manage usage, support and costs. Although mobile hardware costs are generally less than desktops, mobile services can still cost five times more than an enterprise-wired call and this could represent a huge shift in budget for enterprise communications services.

A Movement called Twitter

For an internet portal just two years in existence, the amount of news that Twitter has been making is like nothing ever before in the history of communications. Sample this:

The micro-blogging site has featured in Time some days back
Oprah Winfrey is the latest celebrity tweeting on the already huge celebrity list of Twitter
Iranians turned to the service to protest the results of their presidential election and get the news out …
… if that wasn’t enough, the importance of the San Francisco-based startup was underlined by the US State Department, which asked Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown on Monday because of the situation in Iran.
Reacting to the Iran situation, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said, “It’s humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that state officials find their way toward highlighting our significance.”
Access to the popular social networking service was blocked across mainland China on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown following calls for a re-evaluation of the protest movement that have been published on the Internet, and may have prompted the black-out
Twitter has been adding millions of users a month for the past several months and its website received 32.1 million unique visitors in April, according to comScore.
#cnnfail hashtag on Twitter, came out as a result of Twitter users venting out their frustration on CNN for not giving enough coverage to the Iran incident. CNN had to issue an official response to the allegations.

The actual number of users of the micro-blogging service is hard to figure since Twitter can be accessed using personal computers, mobile telephones and dozens of custom-built applications such as the popular Tweetdeck.
The Twitter co-founders have reportedly passed up offers running into the hundreds of millions of dollars for the service and have so far only unveiled vague plans to turn it into a money-making venture.
Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist whose firm Union Square Ventures is an investor in Twitter, made it clear at the Twitter conference in New York on Tuesday that he believes Twitter has a bright— and profitable — future.“Links are the currency of the Internet,” Wilson, who sits on Twitter’s board of directors, told the 140 Characters Conference.
“If you look at the power of Google, and why Google is currently the king of the Internet, it’s that Google drives more traffic to more places on the Internet than anybody else,” he said.
“Social media, particularly systems like Twitter and Facebook that are good at driving traffic out into the Internet the same way that Google does are very important and powerful economic forces,” Wilson said.“It’s a natural thing for services like Twitter and Facebook to eventually figure out how to inject some sort of a paid model into their systems.“It’s the obvious thing to do and if they don’t do it some one will figure out how to do it as a third-party application, and people are already doing it as third-party applications,” he said.
John Borthwick, whose company Betaworks is among the hundreds that have developed tools for Twitter, said it is this “incredibly vibrant ecosystem of applications” surrounding Twitter that is one of its strengths.
Jeff Pulver, organizer of the 140 Characters Conference, said it is too early to tell exactly where Twitter is going, but “I think what we’re experiencing is something that’s much bigger than all of us understand.We’re living in a time where access to information is available to anyone and everyone,” said Pulver, a web entrepreneur. “The advent of Twitter has democratized access to information to everyone.
“When more and more people have real-time information we’re going to see transformations happen that no one expected,” he said. “Businesses will fail, others will flourish and there will be billions of dollars of opportunity created.”

The impact that this 2 year old micro blogging site seems to have in real time world is scary and there is little wonder that Google wants to either buy out or partner Twitter. Twitter’s ascent would not leave Google very comfortable. Would it?

Reference: http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/17131454/From-Time-to-Oprah-to-Iran-Tw.html?h=B
http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/03121331/China-blocks-Twitter-ahead-of.html?d=2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/5351937/Google-chief-hints-at-partnership-with-Twitter.html
http://www.watblog.com/2009/06/18/the-iran-controversy-and-the-importance-of-social-media-communications/

Will N 97 do it for Nokia? (gain Tech leadership)

The 3rd week of June 2009 is momentous in terms of the ground breaking new launches that we would have redefining the smartphone space. Palm is alll set for a return with its highly touted Pre challenging the iPhone. There are guesses and second guesses on whether Pre would be the iPhone killer. iPhone gets the 3.0 makeover which essentially puts it in par on many other departments as far as smartphone capability is concerned. However, iPhone will all be about the Apps that they can bring to the table. Nokia N 97 on the other hand is Nokia's flagship salvo to claim its own technology leadership space in the smartphone category. In as much as it will be against the iPhone, the battle between N 97 and iPhone will be one between Device and Markets. This article com compares the N 97 against the formidable iPhone on various departments.

N 97 versus iPhone
The fight between web-based and mobile-based players has officially started this week. On Monday, Apple announced its latest phone, the iPhone 3G S, which will go on sale next week. And on Saturday, Palm started selling the much-hyped Pre.
This comparison seems like one of hardware vs. applications. If this is a smartphone device market, the iPhone is four year late. If this is an app awareness market, Nokia is one year late. Analysts world over are watching these launches as a toss up between Device driven smartphone market or Apps driven smartphone market.
The Nokia N97 seems to have better hardware, where the iPhone 3G S and its App Store are second to none. The latest iPhone marketing campaign was smart enough to pinpoint the main competitive advantage into their next wave of customers: "there is an app for that."
The average iPhone user seems to behave either as a teen or a teen at heart, and loves having fun with useless and exciting apps thrown away as rapidly as they are downloaded, like a Facebook app. More than 1 billion downloads later, less that 5 percent of those who downloaded an iPhone application are actively using it after 21 days and only 10% of apps retain the audience attention, according to a PinchMedia survey. Nokia's target market demographics may be different, more for professionals and professional use.
The other differentiator for Apple is the "user experience": Understanding it, being in control of it and finding joy in handling it. Something that Apple does perfectly, and Nokia's Symbian-Interface does not do as well. Apple's forte is their vast experience with user industry-leading GUIs.
Neither T-Mobile and AT&T, the two US operators that could have subsidized the Nokia N97, has picked it up (yet?). As a consequence, at more than $600 Amazon price, the N97 is unlikely to be a threat to the latest iPhone in the US
Each of these devices can be bought for far less than the Nokia N97. The 16GB iPhone 3G S will sell for $199. And the 32GB model, which has the same amount of built-in memory as the N97, will cost $299 when the phones go on sale next week. Apple has also cut the price of its 8GB iPhone 3G, introduced last year, to only $99. The Pre, which also has a slide-out QWERTY keypad and a touch screen like the N97, is $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate.But there is a catch; these low-priced smartphones come with strings. Consumers must sign a two-year contract to get the discounted prices. And in the case of the iPhone and the Palm these phones are exclusive to one carrier. Subscribers are also charged an early cancellation fee if they terminate their contract before it ends.Even with early termination fees, the iPhone and Pre are still less expensive than the N97. For example, a new AT&T subscriber buying the 32GB iPhone 3G S will pay $300 for the device. If this subscriber cancels his service before the two-year contract ends, he will pay at most $175. Adding the early termination fee to the cost of the phone, the iPhone subscriber will still only pay $475 for the device. This is about $225 less than what he'd pay for the Nokia N97.
Just look at Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1, which went on sale last year in the U.S. with a price tag of $800. The phone has largely been a flop in the U.S.
Nokia must realize that it can't really compete in the U.S. smartphone market without a carrier subsidy. And it's difficult to understand why the company would not be able to strike deals with U.S. carriers. After all, it is the largest cell phone maker in the world.Perhaps Nokia doesn't think the U.S. market is worth the trouble. Even though the U.S. offers the biggest growth opportunity in smartphones, which also happens to be fastest growing segment of the mobile market, analysts say that Nokia could still maintain a market share position in the 30 percent to 40 percent range by selling devices throughout the world. But the U.S. market represents an untapped opportunity that could prove very lucrative for Nokia. And the longer it takes Nokia to bring an affordable hit phone to the U.S., the harder it will be for the company to get its fair share of the pie.

When will Twitter start generating money through the advertising medium?

Twitter is the million dollar baby and the trillion dollar question is “When will Twitter start generating money through the advertising medium?” . Towards this, I reproduce Biz Stone’s (Founder, Twitter) version of commercial usage, revenue generation, and advertising which he had posted on his blog.

Source: Does Twitter Hate Advertising? (Blogger): May 20, 2009

When we speak publicly about how Twitter might become a profitable business, we talk about the idea of commercial usage and then explain that we're still exploring what that means—that's true. We also say traditional web banner advertising isn't interesting to us which is also true. However, to say we are philosophically opposed to any and all advertising is incorrect.For a long time, we've said that we think there are interesting opportunities related to commercial usage. Businesses and individuals are getting value out of Twitter and we may be able to enhance that. We've just begun exploring in this area—early ideas include account authentication, management tools, and discovery mechanisms. We'll keep you posted.The idea of taking money to run traditional banner ads on Twitter.com has always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue. However, facilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways is compelling. We're going to leave the door open for exploration in this area.Do we hate advertising? Of course not. It's a huge industry filled with creativity and inspiration. There's also room for new innovation in advertising, marketing, and public relations and Twitter is already part of that. In fact, next month I'll be attending and speaking at the 56th annual international advertising festival, Cannes Lions 2009. I'll let you know how it goes.

Essentially, Biz Stone speaks about expanding the value in Twitter (related to commercial usage). Twitter is largely exploring the value that it can create and add to individuals and businesses as a meaningful, relevant and compelling way to make monies. Traditional banner ads are dismissed as a low priority activity which is low in the list of “ways to generate revenue”.

Blackberry: Ruling the US smartphone market

On RIM and Blackberry steady rise in Smartphones in US and world markets. The reasons for its performance are its competitive pricing, availability across carriers, business expertise (security, service and reliability for enterprise users), aggressive pricing and portfolio. This article also reviews the weaknesses in the RIM portfolio where it would need to work hard and work quick so not to loose edge to the sharp competition.
Resource:CNNMoney.com
Apple's iPhone 3GS and Palm's Pre has captured a lot of hype but don't count out Research in Motion's BlackBerry just yet, say experts.
While the iPhone enjoyed an initial pop in market share after the second generation version was released last July, that share has been nearly cut in half.
In the first quarter of this year, BlackBerrys had a 55.3% share, compared to 19.5% for iPhones, according to IDC data. Compare that with the third quarter of 2008, when BlackBerry devices controlled 40.4% of the U.S. smartphone market, compared with 30.1% for Apple.
Solid footing. Much of RIM's anticipated success lies in its ability to grow market share even as competitors launch new flashy devices.
Analysts expect that market share to grow into next year, despite the mostly negative reviews for its first touchscreen device, the Storm, and new launches from Apple and Palm.
A recent Yankee Group survey showed 41% of Americans plan on buying a smartphone for their next phone purchase, and 50% of those people plan on buying a BlackBerry. Only 25% said they would buy an iPhone.

Experts cite competitive pricing, business expertise and new consumer products as reasons for RIM's sustained growth.
Pricing. RIM may not offer the interactive operating system experience that the iPhone, Pre or Google's G1 phone offer, but RIM offers BlackBerrys that beat them in end user cost.
That's because every major U.S. wireless carrier offers at least one BlackBerry device, unlike competitors, which have exclusive contracts with AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. With the carriers fighting for customers, many offer discounted rates, including Verizon's aggressive "buy one get one free" promotion for its BlackBerry line.
Analysts say wireless providers can afford to offer competitive pricing because BlackBerrys cost less for them to operate than iPhones and Pres.
"RIM's design is much more bandwidth-efficient than its competitors, so carriers make the most money off the BlackBerry platform," said Nick Agostino, RIM analyst with Research Capital Corp. "Once two carriers in the same market offer BlackBerrys, they start to compete against one another and RIM is the beneficiary."
The campaign appears to be working. Exclusive iPhone carrier AT&T has as many BlackBerry users as iPhone users, according to Andy Castonguay, director of mobile device research at Yankee Group.
"The total value of a device goes far beyond the physical phone itself," said Castonguay. "Service, reliability and functionality all play a part in the total valuation, and BlackBerry continues to distinguish itself in those terms."
Enterprise. Most experts agree that RIM has solidified its standing at the business smartphone of choice, due to its focus on security and ease of configuration.
"RIM has been very aggressive in its enterprise server upgrades, making its software even more appealing to businesses," said Castonguay. "RIM has made a name for itself in security, service and reliability, which are fundamental necessities for companies."
Still, some think that RIM shouldn't get too comfortable as the enterprise leader.
"RIM is facing bigger challenges now from a competitive standpoint than they've ever had before," said Ken Dulaney, analyst at tech consultancy firm Gartner. "The user interface doesn't match up to its competitors, and many of our clients are breaking with their previous policies just to use the iPhone. IT departments are beginning to support anything with basic security features."
Furthermore, the company still has some ground to make up in worldwide smartphone sales. It controls just 20% of the global market, compared to 41.2% for Nokia.
The company is trying to broaden its appeal to global businesses, including world travelers with its new BlackBerry Tour, which can easily access foreign voice and data networks while abroad.
What's in store. BlackBerry has increased its consumer base in the past three quarters, according to IDC, but some analysts think RIM needs to establish itself as more a consumer device.
The launch of the BlackBerry app store has helped draw consumers, experts say, and though it lags behind the iTunes app store, it has grown to become the No. 2 app store. The Pearl and Curve have also sold well, and the Storm held its own after heavy subsidies from Verizon.
But most analysts agree that RIM will need to launch a competitor that looks and functions more like the Pre to continue to drive consumer demand. Both Verizon and RIM have hinted at a release of a touch screen device with a keyboard in the third quarter of 2009.
"The Pre and iPhone pushed the envelope in what the operating system needs to be in terms of flexibility and ease of use," said Castonguay. "BlackBerry will have to adapt its operating system to become much more consumer-friendly."

Who needs (or wants) another search engine?

VERSUS

Microsoft’s quest for search excellence now has a name: Bing and, whether Ballmer and Co like it or not there are parallels drawn between Google and Bing. Ballmer has made an attempt to consciously avoid pitting Bing directly against the god of search, however, on a competitive aspect, the comparisons are inevitable and unavoidable. Two smart things, that Microsoft (MS) has done with Bing is:
Position itself as a decision engine (rather than a search engine) à Meaning it provides results rather than search query results.
Unlike MSN and Live Search, MS has committed $100 million to marketing the product.

But introducing Bing didn't answer the most relevant question: Who needs (or wants) another search engine?
The only real answer for that question would be to provide a search engine that would actually be worthy of using instead of Google -- one that would be so compelling that we'd want to change our habits to use it.
Bing isn't that search engine. It's just another nice Web site. If it wasn't Microsoft that was launching it, one would probably never even hear of it. Not because it doesn't have good ideas. It's just not earth shattering -- and that's what it would take for most people to break their Google habits. Although Microsoft is positioning Bing as a decision engine, it actually plays like a bunch of individual applications, each with interfaces that are together and sometimes look and feel similar. Moreover, a lot of these features are reminiscent of other websites/platforms.
When you scroll over a result on Bing, it displays a shape to its right. Hover your cursor over that shape to see a preview of what's on the page behind the link. It's a lot like the images that ask.com and those look-ahead browsers that predated Internet Explorer and Firefox. The maps section has all the same capabilities as Google maps or Mapquest but feels faster and displays the info in a slightly different way. Breaking down the results according to category, is much like Vivismo's Clusty search engine. But it doesn't do as good a job of categorizing as Clusty. A lot of other browsing /navigation capabilities at Bing are very inspired from other websites (example: Kayak.com for travel links etc).
Thus with no definitive features or interface that define it to be radically different from the existing stuff available on the net, MS is merely putting together few different things together on the same website. With the fierce pace at which Google is innovating presently, MS needs to relook the paradigm. Presently MS is re-packaging stuff. But to out do Google, one would need to out innovate them. Looks like MS is not doing much of that.

Indian Telecom Story (Part IX): 400 not out

In the newest release of subscriber figures by TRAI, 11.90 Million users were added in April 2009 as against 15.64 million in March 2009.The number of mobile subscribers in India crossed the 400 million mark in April, putting the country on track to reach its goal of 500 million customers by next year. The rise took India’s total wireless subscriber base to 403.66 million, TRAI said. The slowdown in subscriber growth came after cellular operators withdrew special deals on offer during the final months of the fiscal year to March when the firms sought to boost revenues to help their annual accounts.
But India remains the world’s fastest-growing mobile market and analysts say the government’s target of 500 million mobile phone users could be reached ahead of schedule.The total telecom subscriber base made up of wireless and landline customers stood at 441.47 million at the end of April compared with 429.72 million in March, TRAI added.Total penetration stands at close to 38 telephones for every 100 people, TRAI said.

3G Deployments
India has said it will stage its much delayed auction of third-generation (3G) wireless spectrum by year end.Third-generation wireless service allows voice, data and video to be sent at high speeds to mobile devices and is viewed as the next major booster driving growth in India’s telecoms market.The Congress-led government had forecast the auction could raise Rs400 billion rupees ($8.5 billion).
But since its re-election last month, it has backed off that forecast, saying the global financial crisis could reduce the windfall.India’s newly reappointed telecoms minister A. Raja has also said he will seek to push cheap local mobile call rates even lower to spur cellular growth.
Local mobile calls now cost as little as one cent a minute while long-distance rates vary from two cents to four cents a minute.Raja says he wants to cut the local rate to less than half a cent a minute

Worldwide Mobile and Smart Phone Sales: Q1, 2009 Company and OS updates

Source: Gartner

Continued from earlier Post:http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/06/worldwide-mobile-and-smart-phone-sales.html

Reference/ 2008 Market share archives:
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/mobile-operating-systems-by-market.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/smartphone-market-share-update.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-nokia-blinked-in-america-classic.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/smartphone-market-share-update.html


1.Nokia continued to lead the mobile phone market, but its share dropped to 36.2 per cent from 39.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2008
2.Samsung retained second place and improved its market share as its sales totalled 51.4 million units.
3.After dropping to the fifth position in the fourth quarter of 2008, Motorola overtook Sony Ericsson to regain fourth place.

4.Positive performance by Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple showed that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ success.
5.Much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products, both in mid-tier and high-end devices.
6.“’Touch for the sake of touch’ was enough of a driver in the midtier space, but tighter integration with applications and services around music, mobile e-mail, and Internet browsing made the difference at the high end of the market.”
7.Symbian accounted for 49.3 per cent of worldwide smartphone operating systems (OS) market share in the first quarter of 2009, down from 56.9 per cent share in the first quarter of 2008.
RIM’s smartphone OS market share reached 19.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2009, up from 13.3 per cent share in the first quarter of last year.
8.The iPhone OS accounted for 10.8 per cent of the market, up from 5.3 per cent market share in the first quarter of 2008.
9.Nokia’s worldwide sales reached 97.4 million units in the first quarter of 2009, due to reductions in inventory in markets such as Asia/Pacific and Latin America. This was the first time Nokia’s sales dipped below 100 million units since the first quarter of 2007. The real impact of the current market recession was on the average selling price (ASP), which saw an 18 per cent drop year over year. Nokia managed to grow its sales in the smart-phone segment by introducing the Nokia 5800 into more regions.
10.Samsung had a very successful first quarter of 2009. With sales of 51.4 million units, Samsung's market share grew 4.7 percentage points to 19.1 per cent. It returned to double-digit profitability due to a good product mix. Sales of its Omnia, Tocco and Pixon handsets continued to benefit from strong consumer interest in touchscreen devices. The arrival of the Tocco Ultra Edition late in the first quarter of 2009, and the announcement of its first Android-based product, the i7500, will help Samsung in a highly competitive second half of 2009.
11.LG sold 26.5 million units in the first quarter of 2009, growing its market share by 1.9 percentage points year over year. The company benefited from a very strong portfolio of touchscreen, messaging and imaging devices. The new LG Arena device showcases a new user interface that demonstrates a positive focus on improving usability. However, LG’s biggest challenge is to become competitive in the smartphone segment as services and applications become more important to customers.
12.Motorola continued to experience significant difficulties even in its home market, but it had a solid quarter with prepaid operators Boost Mobile and Tracfone. It expects worldwide sales of iDEN handsets to be up 50 per cent in 2009 compared with 2008. These factors will help sustain Motorola until it revamps its portfolio in the fourth quarter of 2009. Motorola has committed to Android not only to revamp its position in the second half of 2009, but also to produce long-term performance improvements. How Motorola will be able to differentiate its offering when so many players in the mobile device market will be delivering Android-based products at the same time will be critical for Motorola.
13.Sony Ericsson lost market share compared both with the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2008, with sales of 14.5 million units. While the recession contributed to this decline, a weak product portfolio was also a factor. The product features that helped Sony Ericsson become one of the world's top vendors — imaging and music — are now too common to serve as a differentiator. Sony Ericsson is late to catch on to the popularity of touchscreen devices and has a limited smartphone portfolio. While its focus on services through Play Now Arena is important, Sony Ericsson needs to ensure its devices include the most desirable applications and features for consumers

IE-free Windows coming to Europe: Microsoft bows to pressure

Reproduced from http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39441298,00.htm
Countering pressure from European regulators, Microsoft plans to ship the newest version of its Windows operating system in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser.
The abrupt reversal comes shortly before the European Commission is due to rule on antitrust charges brought against Microsoft in January, claiming that the world's largest software company abuses its dominant position by bundling its Internet Explorer browser, shielding it from head-to-head competition with rival products.
Until now, Microsoft has claimed that the browser was an integral part of the operating system and should not be pulled out, but it now plans to do that for a European version of Windows 7, due to be rolled out later this year.
Microsoft deputy general counsel, Dave Heiner, said in a blog post on the company's website on Thursday: "Given the pending legal proceeding, we've decided that instead of including Internet Explorer in Windows 7 in Europe, we will offer it separately and on an easy-to-install basis to both computer manufacturers and users."
European regulators, which had suggested Microsoft offer a choice of browsers on its operating system to open up choice for consumers, gave a frosty response.
The European Commission said in a statement reacting to Microsoft's move: "Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a web browser at all.
"Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less."
The Commission is still weighing whether Microsoft's bundling of the browser has been abusive, and what sanctions to bring as a result. It is still possible that the Commission will force Microsoft to include other browsers with its operating system, a move the company has been determined to avoid.
Microsoft's move could yet be a boon for competing browser makers such as Google, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software, whose complaints spurred the European Commission case against Microsoft.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is used for about 60 per cent of global internet traffic, Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 per cent, and Opera is at four per cent, just ahead of Google and Apple's Safari, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.

Is Bing the sound of search? (Part IV)

Do we need another search Engine?

I have to wonder whether users are really crying out for a new search engine.

The only real answer for that question would be to provide a search engine that would actually be worthy of using instead of Google -- one that would be so compelling that we'd want to change our habits to use it.Bing isn't that search engine. It's just another nice Web site. If it wasn't Microsoft that was launching it, you'd probably never even hear of it. Not because it doesn't have good ideas. It's just not earth shattering -- and that's what it would take for most people to break their Google habits.Although Microsoft is positioning Bing as a decision engine, it actually plays like a bunch of individual applications, each with interfaces that are together and sometimes look and feel similar.

Will $ 80 Million buy Microsoft Traction?
Microsoft will spend $80 million to get us to try its new search engine, to be called "Bing." Could that possibly work? (Well, at least it's not caught in the confusing branding world of "Windows Live" . . .)
Consider.
We all used to use Yahoo or AltaVista until we switched to Google. We stayed with Google because it was better.
Now Google is more than just habit. Google has our IDs, customizes our searches, searches our desktops and our email and delivers neatly integrated Maps, reviews, and video searches. It works. There is every reason to stay and no reason to leave.
But $80 million buys enough impressions to get people to try something new.
For this to make the slightest dent, here's what has to happen.
First, the search has to be better.
Second, the search has to be qualitatively different. Not just better search, but "holy cow this is different." Like it was when you first tried an iPhone, or first saw TiVo. This could be a better way to organize different media. It could mean connecting with social applications. It could mean searches that get better at understanding meaning so we all don't have to think in Boolean logic. Frankly, if I can imagine it, it's not different enough. So it has to blow all of us away.
Third, it has to integrate with everything else, better than Google does.
And finally, it has to work equally well on all browsers, all devices, and all PCs, even Apples and Linux machines.
Thus from what it looks like, Bing will bring in some new features to the game and the search ineterface but even with its $80-100 million moneys on advertising, it will be far before it does something radically different to outmode Google totally. That too at a period of time, when Google itself is innovating so furiously all over. Unless Bing has more to it than we have seen till now, it is destined to the same fate as .NET, Zune and Vista.....

Is Bing the sound of Search? (Part III)

Taking on Google

Talking to the Journal, Mr Ballmer conceded that the new name and new look would not be enough to immediately tip the scales: "To make our 8% grow significantly we don't have to capture the imagination of everybody, but we have to capture the imagination of some. We have to grow our brand equity." It will take years to chase down Google, Mr Ballmer told the paper.

Steve Ballmer also acknowledges: “There is no way to change the whole game in one step.” But search “deserves a good feature war.” And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward. But is it enough to get people to switch? Bing is certainly not a game-changer, but it does cut out a lot of the back and forth that happens with so many searches today. If Bing can help people find what they are looking for faster, it will put pressure on Google to keep advancing the ball as well.

Microsoft's research suggests that up to 60 per cent of queries are not answered by current search engines, and that 50 per cent of all searches are in fact repeats of previous questions. Bing aims to be better at working out what users are really looking for. A search for the website Facebook, for example, would display just one result linking to the site itself, but give users the option of displaying further results about the site.

After a botched up attempt to acquire Yahoo, Bing, it appears to be taking no chances. Ad Age reported the company plans to spend as much as $100 million advertising the search engine.

Mike Nichols, a general manager in the Microsoft search group, said the company isn't banking on beating Google but does want to transform its also-ran search image.'We want to capture a unique position in consumers' minds. They need to know why is it that they should use this product.As opposed to saying, we're a new search engine, we do everything a little bit better than the other guys.'

Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said he thinks Microsoft's search results are usually on a par with Google's and combined with the extensive ad campaign, Microsoft has a chance to increase its share.

In the final part of this post, we would analyze on the Search Market and Google Dominance and whether or not will Bing be able to buy in some Traction.

Is Bing the sound of Search? (Part II)

The Differentiators

Even though Bing is differentiated than Google in some ways, by Ballmer's own confession, Bing is no Google killer and Microsoft isn't positioning it that way.

The differentiators by Bing offers several new features intended to help people perform faster, better searches with less poking around on Web pages they find through the search engine.

These include:

A set of navigation and search tools called an Explore Pane which includes a feature called Web Groups. These organize search results in the pane and in the results.

Related Searches and Quick Tabs features that provide a sort of table of contents for search results.

Best Match highlights the engine's top pick and Deep Links shows off more of the resources on a Web site in the results.

Quick Preview offers a preview of search results during a mouseover so people can decide if they want to leave the search page and click on a link.

On the surface, Bing has a distinct gloss. The home page features a rotation of stunning photography, for instance, which can be clicked on to produce related image search results. But the most significant changes are under the covers. “We have taken the algorithmic programming up an order of magnitude,” says Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi. Each search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. These sections can include anything from guided refinements and a list of related searches in the left-hand pane to images, videos, and local results.

"I’ve been playing around with a preview version of Bing for about a week. It is designed to be “more of a decision engine,” says Mehdi. Bing helps people make decisions through guided search and a focus on task completion. In a time when a new Website is created every 4.5 seconds, information overload is becoming a real problem. ” People are getting hundreds of thousands of links but not getting what they want,” says Mehdi. Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. It also acts more like a destination site for certain searches. Travel and product searches bring in comparison pricing, reviews, images, and more. Hulu videos can be played within the video search results. Bing pulls in data from other Web services when it can so that you often don’t have to leave to get the information you want.

Refer for all blow by blow details: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/bing-microsoft-prepares-for-war-with-a-revamped-search-engine-screenshots/

Bing features a full-screen picture on its home page that will be updated daily - rather like Google's regular logo changes.

Bing also lists related search terms on the left, not at the bottom of the page like Google does.

Once results have been displayed, a column on the left hand side suggests further related searches.

Bing also keeps a record of recent searches even if the user isn't signed in to a Windows Live account, and allows people to e-mail links from that search history or post them on Facebook.

For some types of queries, Microsoft is positioning Bing as a destination rather than a quick gateway to other sites.

Shopping with Bing, for example, is a bit like shopping on Amazon, with ways to narrow results by price, brand and the availability of free shipping, without leaving the search page.

Head to head comparison of results: http://searchengineland.com/microsofts-bing-vs-google-head-to-head-search-results-20006

Worldwide Mobile and Smart Phone Sales: Q1,2009 Industry update

Source: Gartner
Reference/ 2008 Market share archives:
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/mobile-operating-systems-by-market.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/smartphone-market-share-update.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-nokia-blinked-in-america-classic.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/03/smartphone-market-share-update.html

1.Worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 269.1 million units in the first quarter of 2009, a 8.6 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2008.
2.Smartphone sales surpassed 36.4 million units, a 12.7 per cent increase from the same period last year
3.Overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since 2001.
4.Since 2001, this was also the first time the market contracted year over year during the first quarter, a period traditionally helped by strong seasonality in the Asia/Pacific market. The channel intensified its efforts in the first quarter of 2009 to reduce the levels of stock it holds. Stock reduction is intended to minimize capital investment in response to low consumer confidence.
5.Sales into the channel were just short of 244 million units in the first quarter of 2009, while sales to users were just over 269 million units — a difference of 25 million units, compared with 17 million units in the fourth quarter of 2008, the biggest difference ever recorded
6.Channel inventory reductions will continue into the second quarter of 2009, albeit with lower volumes
7.Smartphone sales represented 13.5 per cent of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2008.
8.With inventory-reduction efforts expected to continue in the second quarter of 2009, although to a lesser extent than what we have seen so far, and better-than-expected figures for the first quarter of 2009, overall sales to users for 2009 will remain considerably higher than the sell-in that many vendors are expecting
9.Device vendors will focus increasingly on smartphones, improved user interfaces and services to differentiate themselves and fuel consumer demand.

Is Bing the sound of search? (Part I)

Microsoft's search solution has meandered a long course with no definitive direction. From MSN search to Live Search, Microsoft's efforts have preliminarily been non starters of sorts. With Bing a.k.a Kumo (in its developmental days), Microsoft is trying its best to arrive at its best Search Solution till date. Launched formally on June 3rd, 2009, Bing is Microsoft's latest attempt to step into the search domain where they have been minnows for a while now. Google rules the search kingdom with a 64.2% market share followed by Yahoo at 20.4% and Microsoft owns a miniscule 8.2% market share. Google's search dominance translates in $4.7 billion revenue where as Microsoft's attempts have seen it incurring losses in the online ad business. To mount a credible challenge to Google, Microsoft tried taking over Yahoo last year. But after Yahoo rebuffed its $47.5 billion offer, Microsoft turned its attention to improving its own Live Search.

Bing helps people make decisions through guided search and a focus on task completion. In a time when a new Website is created every 4.5 seconds, information overload is becoming a real problem. People are getting hundreds of thousands of links but not getting what they want. Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. It also acts more like a destination site for certain searches. Bing pulls in data from other Web services when it can so that you often don’t have to leave to get the information you want.


Bing's search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. Microsoft is positioning it to be “more of a decision engine”.

WiMAX: Why will it stick?

Doomsayers and analysts have in the recent past rubished future prospects of WiMAX in the face of a greater acceptance (by major operator/Telecom consortiums) of its competition standard LTE. Nokia has gone to the level of stating that it was withdrawing its investments in WiMAX since it believed that WiMAX was the analogical equivalent of Betamax in the war of standards. Read the reference story and an earlier post on this subject.

A recent market survey by Maravedis, "WiMAX and Broadband Wireless Access Equipment Market Analysis, Trends and Forecasts, 2009-2014," has come up with a few interesting and noteworthy points on the viability of WiMAX as a technology standard.

1. Inspite of a tough year 2008, and a growing buzz about the 3GPP backed LTE being the telecom standard, the WiMAX ecosystem experienced a healthy growth in 2008 and mobile WiMAX has made significant inroads (although short of targets)

2. Over 1.2 million WiMAX complaint CPEs and embedded chipsets supporting mobility were shipped in 2008. MIMO mobile WiMAX devices being a new entrant into the market the previous year, new deployments in various regions worldwide created a substantial market for MIMO mobile WiMAX terminals and infrastructure equipment. Expansion of existing WiMAX networks and conversion of some existing networks from fixed to mobile WiMAX has also contributed to these numbers.

3. Contrary to belief, WiMAX equipment demand didnot taper and operators continued rolling out infrastructure, sourcing terminals and adding new users using 802.16d - 2004 technology. CPE shipments reached 880000 in 2008.

4. US $145 was the ASP of a mobile WiMAX device during 2008 and by the year end USB dongles were selling at prices between $60-70 for high volumes.

5. Mobile WiMAX devices shipped in 2008 were mainly indoor units.

6. 40% of mobile WiMAX devices had embedded VoIP capabilities and about 7% had other advanced functunalities such as WiFi. USB dongles accounted for 34% of total shipments and were operating almonst all in the 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz spectrums.

7. Korean vendors (Muyngmin, Modacom, Samsung) accounted for 36% of all mobile WiMAX terminal shipments. Taiwanese vendors (Zyxel, Asus, Gemtek, AWB) accounted for 25% of terminals shipped.

8. WiMAX market infrastructure: Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, Alvarion and Motorola were the key suppliers of WiMAX equipments and 151,000 sectors were shipped at an ASP of $11,500 generating $1bn in revenues.

9. In the Chipsets makers, the market was dominated by Beceem, GCT and Sequans. Intel and Runcom had a stake in the Wave 1 devices capable of MIMO operations and with very limited support of mobility. Samsung's own chipset solution gained 7% of the market share.

10. In light of recent technical and commercial wins by LTE, WiMAX is not certainly an all conquering solution, but Maravedis predicts that there will be an accumulated 75 million WiMAX subscribers by the end of 2014. Service revenues generated by BWA will reach US$15 billion in 2014 and WiMAX equipment market will reach an annual US$4 Billion in 2014, from over US $2 billion at the end of 2008.

What the report seems to be poiting at it that, though LTE has the backing and auspices of a majority, it is unlikely that LTE would deploy sooner than 2012. That gives WiMAX a 3 years headstart and it could greatly benefit WiMAX since, Proprietary and fixed WiMAX equipment markets will continue to grow organically to meet the needs of WISPs and vertical segments. These 3 years and the market traction would become a strong foothold for WiMAX in the face of competition from LTE as the 4G Tech Standard. WiMAX may not be the winner ultimately, but given its earlier time to market, it will not be the looser as well. The eco-system will thus have both tech standards and rightly so, because there are nuances in WiMAX that LTE cant better and vice versa. In effect, there are parallel markets that could thrive under both these technologies. After all, one technology standard may not be the healthiest thing in the market.

So much so for the analysts, doom-sayers and nay-speakers for WiMAX.

http://eetimes.eu/wireless/217702210;jsessionid=45LJQIUTXXLIYQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN