Even as broadband penetration in the USA increases, many users are still frustrated with the lack of enough data transmisson speed to bring really great internet functionality to all the devices in your life.
Ralph de la Vega, COO of ATT, says that things are going to change fast and get faster. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley event he said that sometime in 2009 ATT would be able to deliver speed in excess of 20 megabits per second. That is fast enough to allow some spectacular streaming of data and video content, provide downloadable movies to a video capable phone with no wait times, and allow amazing on-the-road mashups for travel that could, for example, provide a driver with extensive real time traffic data and routing.
Sure, many great things can be done now at slower speeds but super high transmission rates are going to resolve some of the peskiest problems with data sharing applications and video.
"It's clear to us that we are in the very early stages of what I would call a wireless data revolution...." said de la Vega.
As we noted earlier this week, mobile is the most explosive market for online services. One of the bottlenecks there has been the lack of cheap bandwidth. With speeds like those discussed by de la Vega we'll see more people using their phones as modems for other applications or moving to ISPs like Sprint and ATT to fuel their home and laptop broadband as well as their phones. Although it is far too early to know how things will shake out in the broader market, high quality mobile broadband may bring an economy of scale to the mobile market that would change the game entirely as people may shift away from Cable, Satellite, and DSL broadband in favor of solutions integrated with their mobile devices.
Morgan Stanley has made available their Internet Trends report for 2008. The 72 page report covers: 1) Usage Patterns 2) Social Networking 3) Widgetization 4) Measureability 5) Monetization 6) Facebook Apps 7) Online Ad Spend 8) Online Video 9) Mobile Outlook 10) Emerging Trends 11) Recession Impact
ATT will be laying off another 4650 people, mostly in the residential phone portion of the ATT empire. This is a large number although it represents only about 1.5% of the total ATT global workforce. In December of 2006 ATT purchased Bell South for 86 Billion and announced 10,000 layoffs at that time.
ATT appears to be hurting as customers switch away from residential lines towards mobile offerings, and Verizon's new dominance in the mobile space as a result of taking away much of the 700 MHZ spectrum in the recent auction may be yet another hurdle for ATT to overcome as the mobile and VOIP landscape forces changes on all the legacy players.
Yahoo announced a new mobile search strategy for Yahoo OneSearch at the CTIA Wireless trade show.
Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo OneSearch said users will get "instant answers to any query, not just web links." This means that search results will expand from traditional hyperlinks into other media. A search for "New York" could yield subway schedules, for example, or a search for local sushi restaurants could bring up available reservations.
OneSearch will be incorporating voice-enabled technology similar to GOOG411. "Consumers can search for anything, including flight numbers, locations, Web site names, local restaurants, and more, by simply speaking," according to a report put out by Yahoo. More>>
Many phones now come equipped with the ability to find their location pretty much anywhere in the country using one of two common geolocation methods. The first is to triangulate off of pings on cell towers - using the phone network itself to figure out where the phone is in relation to various towers.
The second method is for the device to detect a wireless signals and send this back to the network computer which compares these to the signal's "IP and Mac addresses" and then uses a database of these locations to get an approximate location. Although most phones are not activated to do this the technology is here now and it's only a matter of time before you'll be able to locate your friends to within meters of their actual location.
Practical joke uses aside, this technology is very powerful in social applications where, for example, a Facebook profile could include the exact location of your travelling friends. Another exciting application of geolocation in devices will be cameras that tag the picture with the location automatically, making Flickr, Picasa, and other photo sharing websites much more robust as this will allow mapping photos to their locations around the world.
A major startup getting a major capital injection and lots of positive buzz is Loopt, which offers a great user interface with Dodgeball like capabilities for interacting with friends. However, at $4 per month I wonder if Loopt may have trouble gaining much traction as free offerings come on board quickly in the mobile space. $4 per month is a tiny fee, but people are increasingly sensitive to the nickel and diming of the mobile space. Google is likely to respond aggressively this fall with ad-supported mobile options and I think the "free services" model is very likely to prevail in location based services.
Garrett at ZDnet is reporting on what appears to be a neat mobile application from Google that will allow you to browse listings without typing. It does not appear to have launched yet but Garrett suggests:
The new feature, that from what I can tell is new, lets you browse through categories of businesses without you having to type a word on your mobile device.
Some of the most promising Mashups are in the mobile space, and thanks to the fact that many phones will soon be able to geolocate we should soon see mobile enhancements like this one from Google where you'll be able to have your phone automatically pull up relevant information for your current location. This will be wonderfully helpful for highly mobile professionals as well as great for tourists new to a region.
Yahoo announced today the impending launch in Q2'08 of onePlace, a mobile content management tool to enable consumers to better manage the wide selection of content available across the Internet. Yahoo! onePlace is expected to become available across hundreds of devices and mobile browsers globally.
"Yahoo! onePlace(TM) will bring together a consumer's interests, passions and important information into a single location - creating a rich and highly personalized experience. Everything is instantly organized, dynamically kept current, and served to them the way they want. So now, the content they consume and the way they consume it will be hyper-customized to their specific preferences and tastes."
onePlace will provide personalized views, dynamic content updates, and a mobile RSS reader. Users will be able to bookmark content online, keep it automatically updated with the latest updates, and assign categories and tags - or placed into customized "collections" that consumers create.
Email tops the list of the most requested service for mobile users. In a poll conducted by Webcredible, a UK usability firm, of about 1K mobile phone users they asked people 'Which service would you use on your mobile/cell phone if speed & quality weren't an issue?'. 33% said email would be their number one choice followed by 25% for social networking. This was followed by local info about their surroundings at 20%; travel, mapping, and directions at 13%; and not surprising, much lower on the list is online shopping coming in at 9%. Users are generally more interested in quick information seeking on the go versus shopping on their mobile device. Also, the smaller form factor inhibits usability for longer time period use, cumbersome keypad, ability to view images clearly, long and costly download times, and encryption security.
I didn't see any mention of texting. It is interesting, though, that social networking appears to be high on the wish list. According the Webcredible "One of the driving factors in enabling this will be the usability of the site and the skill with which site developers transfer from PC format to mobile format. Facebook has already developed a very accessible and usable mobile version of their site, ensuring its members get their daily Facebook fix".
Want to develop applications for Google's new Android mobile phone platform and make a cool $275K?! Google has put $10M into a competition to do just that. The idea is to develop a lot of original cool apps that are highly functional as well as usable. The apps need to access core Android functionality like location-based services, accelerometer and always-on networking.
The smartphone market is heating up and Google is looking to the development community to create the killer app that's going to make people switch to Android. Apple also recently announced that it will be releasing an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK in late Feb.
I'm a curmudgeon, a hard headed analyst. I compete with much larger agencies to help companies find alternative product strategies when first efforts are running out of steam. I point out weaknesses and overlooked opportunities, find partners, and debunk shoddy market volume figures proffered by staff in order to keep projects funded, or to justify their existence of such. My advice is often ignored - until much later after my contract is long over. That's when they dredge up my reports and presentations and go over them with a highlighter.
Strategies for Social Media, in particular, have been a challenge when soft pedaling my services in the outreach phase. Companies want to just jump in and create systems from whole cloth, offer white box services, or create Facebook apps - all without a thought as to what interactions they are trying to foster, who they are endeavoring to connect or enable, or what model they are trying to exploit. Forget any reality checks for monetization, even in the soft sense of labor savings or process streamlining.
No, when an organization has made up its mind, the strategic issues are often put aside, and the project proceeds apace to implementation. Bad for me, good for the latest crop of Social Media systems designers; all power to them. We will see how it shakes out, long term.
But I am a staunch advocate of applying New Age solutions to Old Economy problems.
My first exposure to the notion of Social Networks, Blogs, FOAF, Tags, and the like, was from a true visionary, way back in 2004. Kingsley Idehen, CEO of the under-reported and under appreciated OpenLink Software. Kingsley is a genius and a technological powerhouse, while Virtuoso Universal Server beats other web databases and middleware hands down, not to mention OpenLink Data Spaces as the solid outcome of social media, semantic web enabling technologies that properly leverage the power of Virtuoso.
The foregoing was not a shameful plug for a respected colleague, but an introduction to the idea that new solutions should be prime fodder for old problems. Kingsley understands this and he helped me to understand this paradigm when it was still a very fresh and not well understood concept. This was years before Facebook.
I approached OpenLink about a problem and opportunity in the independent automotive trades such as towing and mobile locksmithing. The background of the problem is interesting, and is my obsession regarding extended efforts to fund it as a venture or project, but the real message here is as follows:
Long before the buzz, social networks existed as natural, self-evolving ecosystems in the service sector - product service, skilled trades, artisans, professional services.
The mad rush to 'horizontalize' and 'advert-monetize' Facebook style systems is fine, but is diverting much well deserved attention from these mature markets which are models of living networks of social relationships.
As much as I hate the terms Web10 and Web20, I have to admit that there is a real difference to be appreciated in the technology that might have served in the 1999-2004 time frame and now.
The back end has matured, the front end is richer, the mobile tools repertoire is altogether fresh and virtually unrecognizable from a few years ago.
Some things the pundits totally missed: AppXchange, others, the sure and steady migration of what once were enterprise only tools to free and inexpensive platforms -
Open Source moves to mainstream; Google releases a fully fledged Mobile OS.
All of the above ripens the environment for preexisting social networks to amplify their models using technology that is becoming almost ubiquitous. What's holding them back is the lack of interest in the blue collar trades that soldier on without new economy advocates to give them true social networks of the Web20 and Web30 (whatever that is) world.
Shall we take an example of the old economy that has been overlooked by the frenzied evangelists of social networking?
Where to start? Shall we say, free-lance dispatching for independent towing, mobile glass installers, and mobile locksmiths? Ah...yes:
As outlined in the ThruDispatch pitch slides, the social model for the independent automotive trades is a 'native social model'. Independent towing owner / operators use a natural itinerant model to visit external agencies, such as police departments, parking lots, auto dealers, car auctions, etc.
These weary pilgrims wend their way through their local area, seeking to add clients to their work slate. They bank on their network to call them and requests towing (or locksmithing or auto glass repair), on an as needed basis. They have no intelligent work-flow. They might be heading in the wrong direction when a new job comes in. They are not exploiting the best that mobile technology could offer them.
Along with the, 'just visiting' model, itinerant mobile service workers are subject to external preemption, where casually affiliated agencies may use an alternate provider, gather lists of allied trade acquaintances, and join in the general free-for-all that is the independent services trade. It's a game of churn, and often the best candidate (selected for proximity, reputation, or capacity), is never considered due to the opacity of the model.
How would a social networking model preserve the best of the status quo for itinerant mobile services, while extending and enabling better visibility to enhance job/ price matching, and optimize work flow for both the job submitters and those who execute them?
Here are some ideas covered in greater detail in the ThruDispatch plan:
Multi-Cast open jobs with cost and time parameters to a sub selection of geographically appropriate mobile subscribers
Create a pre-execution view (for job submitter) of all possible job executors, with their ratings and merit figures
Create a 'Virtual Dispatcher" that monitors the progress of jobs in the execution queue, so that non-progessing jobs can be withdrawn and re-assigned, or so that escalating levels of alert reminders can be sent to keep the original executor on track.
Allow overlays and applications that take the basic fleet model, and extend it to include the composition of virtual fleets, made up of many independents.
Allow for the placement of blocks of future job orders that can bid on at a discount, in exchange for demand predictability, and payment advances that are carried by the portal operators, or external financiers.
This is a start, and a long article already. Next time - more on the actual model of interactions between job submitters and executors.
If the new age social networks, VC's, and mobile platform providers would give this model the time of day regarding partnerships or funding, this cohort of 3.5 million lone wolves would be worth $20 a month in per subscriber fees, additional revenue from handling their billing through card services, and other lucrative channels. What's the hangup?
Japan's top mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo is reportedly teaming up with Google to offer search and email on the company's handsets. Users will soon be able to access Google search, email, scehduling and photo-saving through NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode Internet network. The company is also looking at using Google's free OS for mobile devices to create the next gen handset which could result in a host of new services being rolled out by the two giants as early as mid '08.
AT&T held an analyst conference yesterday and Ray Wilkins, Group President - Diversified Businesses, was presenting the "advertising and search" portion of the allocution. The presentation shows that YellowPages.com currently generates approximately $550M in revenues and that AT&T is aiming at more than $1B in revenues in 2010 for the site. They also expect a good revenue lift from advertising appearing in U-verse, their interactive television product.
Other interesting data points include:
Print and Online Ebitda margins in the mid-40% range in the next three years
Mobility advertising starting end of 2008
2 billion search queries in 2008 and 3 billion by 2010.
Talk about portable widgets is not new. After all, 2007 has been proclaimed "Year of the Widget" by Newsweek. Though what I intend to discuss here is more about portability aspects and efforts in this direction rather than about widgets themselves. One of the early entrants in the market was Knofabulator (remember anyone?) which was bought by Yahoo. Then it seemed that they didn't know what to do with it and rebranded it but added no extra functionalities. A few days back it was in the news that Yahoo was releasing version 4.5 of its Konfabulator widget. The new version includes things like HTML and Flash support as well as a better user interface. However, Yahoo widgets are still only for desktops like Vista or XP. However, with Google releasing widgets for Mac a few days back, as well as Mac having widget support and Microsoft supporting widgets in Vista, Yahoo may find itself facing tough competition in a comparatively small market. Such widgets are important if we see them in the light of what is expected of applications in future. Application virtualization is gaining ground and also to be noted is the following vision of Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt.
Netvibes is a company which had initially announced a widget platform to make widgets that can work on Vista, Google, Mac, and even Yahoo widgets. It is called Universal Widget API and has the aim of "build your module once, deploy everywhere". Other companies in this space are Musestorm and Clearspring. Musestorm enables non-programmers to develop rich media widgets and Clearspring specializes in distributing widgets as well as analytics and API. The next step, of course, would be for these applications or widgets to run on mobile as well. For instance, I am sure Google's Android which is to be released next year with Open Handset Alliance will soon be integrated with their Web ToolKit so that applications can run over mobile, computer, and web. And won't that be cool?
Google just announced that it will apply to bid for wireless spectrum in a January FCC auction. Google will bid on a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services. "The spectrum in question has powerful propagation properties. It will give customers the right to use any application on any mobile device", said Ram Shriram, Google's Founding Member and Board Member.
"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are," Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a press release. "Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet."
The Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today announced it has launched the NASDAQ Internet Index (Nasdaq:QNET). The Index is a new benchmark designed to track the performance of companies engaged in a broad range of internet-related services such as:
1) internet access providers 2) internet search engines 3) web hosting 4) website design 5) internet retail commerce
"The NASDAQ Internet Index is comprised of securities of companies that are at the forefront of internet technology. They are leading innovators in providing faster internet access, creating more intuitive e-commerce experiences, and developing the second generation Web," said NASDAQ Senior Vice President Steven Bloom.
However, they NASDAQ did not provide a break down of the index composition. Many in internet industry have relied on Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) to be a proxy of the internet industry. Why not! Google operates:
1) the largest search engine 2) the largest online advertising network 3) the largest online video site 4) the third largest social networking site 5) one of the largest payment flow services, email and mapping services
Soon Google will be a big player in: 6) mobile applications 7) productivity applications 8) online storage services (other than email)
You read that right! Per Steve Horowitz, Engineering Director at Google, "there is actually no gPhone". What is for sure though is Android. Sergey Brin describes Android as a new open source operating system and software platform for mobile phones which allows you to write services and software on mobile phones. Watch the video! For more on all things Android visit http://code.google.com/android/.
Rumors that Google might buy Sprint appear to be mostly just that - silly rumors to catch a headline in our "rumors first, real news later" tech blogosphere. Not so much that a Google buys Sprint deal would be a bad idea - for Sprint it would be the rescue they can only dream about as shifts in subscribers and the mobile landscape do not appear to favor Sprint right now. As a Sprint customer with 4 phones on the plan you’d think I’d be rooting for them, but my misadventures with bad coverage here in Oregon and back east, the overhyped Treo 650, and a ringtone scam I had to *remind* them remove too often has basically soured this customer.
Google is clearly entering and effectively destabilizing and reinventing the mobile market. Google has already taken a major first step in the direction with the Open Handset Alliance. More about Open Mobile .
It is also true that Google can keep a secret as the recent Myspace “Open Social” partnership made very clear. However I have a strong hunch Google will move towards mobile marketing more indirectly than managing their own mobile network.
Cleverly, Google is poising themselves to be a gateway for most mobile advertising which is where the “extra” cash in the mobile equation is now laying on the table as "all you can eat" data plans dominate and cell phone saturation approaches.
The Open Handset Alliance phones will combine with mobile services and ads to bring a lot more advertising revenue into this market fairly fast, and Google is making sure a Google mobile OS, or something very compatible, is waiting there to scoop up the bucks.
Why buy the mobile cow when you can get all that mobile milk for free?
Yahoo! will not be focusing on mobile as Google is doing. Instead Yahoo will be focusing on selling ads for the mobile platform, reports the Globe and Mail.
"Yahoo is working on a number of deals that enable it to sell ads across carriers", said Marco Boerries, GM Yahoo Mobile.
Yahoo has been inking deals with network carriers to bring mapping, email and other features to mobile internet users. These services will be accompanied by Yahoo ads.
Boerries doubts Google will be able to sell enough advertising to cover the costs it will incur from its mobile business model. However, if Google succeeds in doing so, Yahoo is open to adopting a similar software-based model.
Google Gadgets was the topic of discussion for Jeff Huber, VP of Engineering, at Google in a presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit. Jeff explained that gadgets are representative of the programmable web. Gadgets are being created using rss, html, flash, and css and that gadgets are open, easy, mashable, packable, portable, and embeddable. He went on to say that gadgets serve to disaggregate the web and are socially distributed.
There are 20,000 gadgets on over 100,000 sites and a billion are served each week via syndication. There are also gadgets being embedded in gadgets eg. Google Maps. According to Huber, "what rss did for content, gadgets are doing for apps. It is the power of the open platform and open distribution system that is responsible for growing gadgets versus as a company trying to do this. It is an open ecosystem that is democratic and self-sustaining. The platform is fast, open, and easy. The web is the platform."
Out Googled is a period series covering the strategies of companies and even entire industries to counter the enterance of Google (GOOG) in to their domain.
At its core Google is search and advertising, however the company has many tentacles and its looming presence can be felt in many areas such as; - online applications - mobile & telephony - ecommerce & content - social networking - gaming & virtual worlds - hosting services - measurement & analysis - publishing & broadcast - space technology
Google is rapidly moving into new markets and reshaping existing industries. As long as there is a web component to a product, given its sheer reach and power, Google is possibly better positioned to serve the needs of the 6 billion plus addressable market for web based products independent of platform.
So what is your Google strategy? Send us your story.
Google announced the availability of AdSense for Mobile, its service for placing contextual ads with mobile web content.
AdSense for Mobile is identical to AdSense for Web sites, which places ads on participating publishers' sites that correspond to the publishers' content.
"We've just launched AdSense for Mobile, which can help you expand your online content to new platforms," said Alex Kenin, AdSense product marketing manager, in a blog post." If you have a Web site optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers."
Mobile advertising is expected to generate about $3 billion by the end of the year and $19 billion by the end of 2011, according to ABI Research. There are about 6.6 billion people in the world and about half that many mobile phone subscriptions, according to The Mobile World, a U.K. mobile phone consultancy.
Publishers of Web sites designed for viewing on mobile phones now have the option to make some money through Google's (GOOG) AdSense program just like publishers of non-mobile Web sites.
AdSense for Mobile will be available in 13 countries: England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan.
Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK) is financially struggling, as the mortgage crisis deepens and Americans jump "home", internet access is one of the first to get cut. So today the company jumped ship on its committement to build a Wi-Fi network with Google in San Francisco. Earthlink CEO called San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and said we are out.
Earthlink won the right to build the Wi-Fi network along with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which was expected to be the first in the country. For more on how the housing crisis is affecting Wi-Fi deployment in the U.S. click here.
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was recently asked how he would define Web 3.0 and what Web 3.0 means to Google.
I am paraphrasing below so watch the video as well.
Web 2.0 is a different way of building applications using Ajax as the underlying technology.
Web 3.0 are applications that are pieced together which are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, apps can run on any device (PC or mobile), apps are very fast, very customizable, apps distributed virally by social networks and email, not store bought.
It's a very different application model from the mainframe era and PC industry, likely to be very very large, low barrier to entry, new generation of tools being introduced by Google and others make it relatively easy to do, solves a lot of problems, and works everywhere.
This major shift demonstrates that the computing platform is transitioning from the desktop to the web. Microsoft's Windows division reported revenue of $3.808 billion in the quarter ended June 30. During the same period, Google posted revenue of $3.872 billion. Microsoft's Windows has an operating profit of $2.8 billion or 74% profit margin while Google's operating profit was $1.1 billion or 29% profit margin. Microsoft is projecting revenue growth of 9-10
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Want to develop applications for Google's new Android mobile phone platform and make a cool $275K?! Google has put $10M into a 
Japan's top mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo is reportedly teaming up with Google to offer search and email on the company's handsets. Users will soon be able to access Google search, email, scehduling and photo-saving through NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode Internet network. The company is also looking at using Google's free OS for mobile devices to create the next gen handset which could result in a host of new services being rolled out by the two giants as early as mid '08.
Google will bid on a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services. "The spectrum in question has powerful propagation properties. It will give customers the right to use any application on any mobile device", said 
"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are," Chairman and Chief Executive 
At its core Google is search and advertising, however the company has many tentacles and its looming presence can be felt in many areas such as;
Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK) is financially struggling, as the mortgage crisis deepens and Americans jump "home", internet access is one of the first to get cut. So today the company jumped ship on its committement to build a Wi-Fi network with Google in San Francisco. Earthlink CEO called San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and said we are out.