Its been almost a year since I lost my iphone and AT&T insisted that I pay the total price of the phone (without the contractual discount) to get a new one, when I gave in to my student budget. Now its been a year and I am almost ready to sign a new contract and get a new smartphone, and wonder how much has changed in the past year, it feels like multiple generations since then.
Lets see, Foursquare became a rage (my friends insist on checking in even in classrooms and among mountain ranges). Netflix is on iphone, though with the tiered bandwidth pricing, this does not seem like a reason to celebrate. More and more content is available online. Facebook crossed 500m users (of which 100m use facebook for mobile) and Twitter crossed 145m users (a growth of 62% in twitter on mobile users). Location based marketing experiments grew and more promising applications emerged. The lead users have more and more reasons to live off their smartphones.
Android phones came in - in brands and price ranges. I dont know any of my female friends going for ‘Droid does’ maybe the dudes do. HTC came out with the first 4G smartphone with Sprint. While the long term fate of Wimax is questionable in a mature mobile market as the US, it is going to be the only 4g phone for at least a year until the Verizon LTE phones arrive. The ipad entered the market and ushered in a new era of netbook e-reader market place. The new favorite made entertainment on demand a reality and provided a user friendly interface for the uninitiated onto the internet.
The list goes on...but my choice still remains the iphone. It gets smarter and better with each generation, with video conferencing, multiple applications running parallel and better battery utilization. In the categories of user interface, content availability and appearance, it is still the best. Yes, it does lie in a carefully designed walled garden of Apple, but so do the Droids (Android), N/ E series (Nokia Symbian), Blackberrys and the Windows mobiles of the world. So the choice really is still pretty simple. :)
Monday, September 6, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Google Verizon net neutrality proposal
I do not want to critique the recent net neutrality legislative proposal introduced by Google and Verizon and take any side here - the openists or the deregulationists. A lot has already been said and I believe that there is a middleway of proving the basic internet freedom to the end consumer- freedom of choice of content, service, device and freedom of information about the internet plan. I have been following Prof Tim Wu of the Columbia Law School's ideas about internet regulation and am still waiting to hear what he has to say about this.
However, what concerns me about the proposal is that it was introduced by Google. Sure, the network providers have always be proponents of the deregulation of the internet. Carriers do not want to be a dumb pipe and have been looking for ways and means to develop a smart pipe equipped by the capability to provide faster or slower services based on the priority of data carried by them.
The argument that wireless networks are different (cited by Google-Verizon, and later supported by AT&T) is true to some extent. They do have technical limitations of bandwidth as opposed to the optical fiber cable. This was highlighted by the radical expansion of data bandwidth brought about the mass adoption of smartphones like iPhone. However, the carriers dealt with this issue by introducing tiered bandwidth usage based data subscription plans which was a fair 'pay by usage' model. The industry and the consumers accepted this model pretty well.
In the light of the industry decision making process proponed by the deregulationists, it is expected that the mobile networks will strive to provide a variety of content and services to the end users in order to continue being competetive. Any alliance with a web service heavy weight like Google definitely smells that network preference will not only be for certain services but for certain services provided by certain players. The next apparant step would be partnerships among mobile networks and web service companies leading to industry verticalization. Whether verticalization is good or bad is a question I have been thinking about.
That brings me to the topic of my thesis -"Evolving structure of the mobile industry" wherein I suggest that the mobile industry is moving from a modular to a more integral nature. I will look at this topic in some more detail- more to follow!
However, what concerns me about the proposal is that it was introduced by Google. Sure, the network providers have always be proponents of the deregulation of the internet. Carriers do not want to be a dumb pipe and have been looking for ways and means to develop a smart pipe equipped by the capability to provide faster or slower services based on the priority of data carried by them.
The argument that wireless networks are different (cited by Google-Verizon, and later supported by AT&T) is true to some extent. They do have technical limitations of bandwidth as opposed to the optical fiber cable. This was highlighted by the radical expansion of data bandwidth brought about the mass adoption of smartphones like iPhone. However, the carriers dealt with this issue by introducing tiered bandwidth usage based data subscription plans which was a fair 'pay by usage' model. The industry and the consumers accepted this model pretty well.
In the light of the industry decision making process proponed by the deregulationists, it is expected that the mobile networks will strive to provide a variety of content and services to the end users in order to continue being competetive. Any alliance with a web service heavy weight like Google definitely smells that network preference will not only be for certain services but for certain services provided by certain players. The next apparant step would be partnerships among mobile networks and web service companies leading to industry verticalization. Whether verticalization is good or bad is a question I have been thinking about.
That brings me to the topic of my thesis -"Evolving structure of the mobile industry" wherein I suggest that the mobile industry is moving from a modular to a more integral nature. I will look at this topic in some more detail- more to follow!
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Newspaper industry - Online business models in sight yet?
Eric Schmidt, in his address to the American Society of News Editors yesterday on April 11th praised the newspaper industry for their creativity and the very critical work they perform in bringing daily news to readers.
However, the rest of the digital world looked upon for some cues to any innovative business models which may salvage the online newspaper industry. The critical question still remains as to how can the newspaper industry devise new revenue models for sustainability. Many business models like the Freemium and advertising models are currently available but have been successful in online edition of only specialized magazines and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Total Telecom, to name a few.
The key may lie in the way readers consume information. While the previous generation of the internet was about data overload, the next generation is about personalization. As a user, I want my online aggregators and social sites to give me information I like and in the way I like it. At times, I would like to be suggested about news articles that may expand my current preferences. This is a beneficial model for businesses as they can devise targeted ads for me with high probability of catching my attention.
What is lacking in the online world is a lack of direct connection between social networking and the professional news generation. In twitter, my friend can provide a short news link from NY times but when I view the link, I am navigated away from twitter to the article. What I see here is lost opportunity for the advertizer to know about my preferences and why I found the newspaper article interesting as I decided to read it. If twitter could pull out the content from the news site and present it to me while within twitter, there could be a shared opportunity between the news site and twitter to provide advertizing targeted to my preferences ( as known to twitter).
This proposition has technical, business and legal challenges which need to be dealt with. A major technical challenge is providing browsing capability within twitter. However, the mutually agreeable contract sharing content and revenue between the news producer and the news aggregator would be the most challenging hurdle. The privacy concerns users may have might be overcome by providing them with an opportunity to set their privacy settings. Facebook has successfully set a precedent for personalized targeted advertising.
I know we are not there yet, but soon personalization of news content needs to be affected, perhaps in multiple ways. Only then will a reasonable advertising revenue could be generated for the newspaper industry.
However, the rest of the digital world looked upon for some cues to any innovative business models which may salvage the online newspaper industry. The critical question still remains as to how can the newspaper industry devise new revenue models for sustainability. Many business models like the Freemium and advertising models are currently available but have been successful in online edition of only specialized magazines and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Total Telecom, to name a few.
The key may lie in the way readers consume information. While the previous generation of the internet was about data overload, the next generation is about personalization. As a user, I want my online aggregators and social sites to give me information I like and in the way I like it. At times, I would like to be suggested about news articles that may expand my current preferences. This is a beneficial model for businesses as they can devise targeted ads for me with high probability of catching my attention.
What is lacking in the online world is a lack of direct connection between social networking and the professional news generation. In twitter, my friend can provide a short news link from NY times but when I view the link, I am navigated away from twitter to the article. What I see here is lost opportunity for the advertizer to know about my preferences and why I found the newspaper article interesting as I decided to read it. If twitter could pull out the content from the news site and present it to me while within twitter, there could be a shared opportunity between the news site and twitter to provide advertizing targeted to my preferences ( as known to twitter).
This proposition has technical, business and legal challenges which need to be dealt with. A major technical challenge is providing browsing capability within twitter. However, the mutually agreeable contract sharing content and revenue between the news producer and the news aggregator would be the most challenging hurdle. The privacy concerns users may have might be overcome by providing them with an opportunity to set their privacy settings. Facebook has successfully set a precedent for personalized targeted advertising.
I know we are not there yet, but soon personalization of news content needs to be affected, perhaps in multiple ways. Only then will a reasonable advertising revenue could be generated for the newspaper industry.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The first one..
I am a graduate student at MIT Sloan. I love all things digital - but would like to be in the business of organizing and getting them work together so as to fit the larger scale of human intention. No, this is not digital philosophy 101, but a more system dynamics view of things. I like to think about the value chain dynamics existing within the communication and information industries in general.
After a few years in product design, program management, and technology strategy consulting, I decided to step back to reasses my perspectives and realized that there was much missing. With my engineering undergraduate degree and couple years spent managing teams, I sure knew the best project management processes and product design lifecycles and principles. But most of what you learn while at work can be stuck into compartments of restricted practical experience. I wanted to understand what drives innovation, how can I make it a part of a constant learning organization. How are dominant designs affected by the industry and what are the factors of new product adoption. How to be constantly focussed on the customer and not the technology itself? How does a firm operate in the constantly evolving capital markets and regulatory landscape to create value through collaborative decision making across partners and complementers?
All this drove me to join the MIT System Design and Management program, administered jointly by the MIT School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management. The program instills a 'systems' view of things, explaining through concrete cases and business problems, how every system exists within a larger system and is co-existing with other systems. The cumulative value of these systems is more than the sum its individual parts. My cohort, which comprises of some of the most brilliant minds I have met, is using these concepts to become better problem solvers, product managers, entrepreneurs, change management champions whithin their organizations and shrewd technology/ business strategists. More about this program can be found at http://sdm.mit.edu/.
After a few years in product design, program management, and technology strategy consulting, I decided to step back to reasses my perspectives and realized that there was much missing. With my engineering undergraduate degree and couple years spent managing teams, I sure knew the best project management processes and product design lifecycles and principles. But most of what you learn while at work can be stuck into compartments of restricted practical experience. I wanted to understand what drives innovation, how can I make it a part of a constant learning organization. How are dominant designs affected by the industry and what are the factors of new product adoption. How to be constantly focussed on the customer and not the technology itself? How does a firm operate in the constantly evolving capital markets and regulatory landscape to create value through collaborative decision making across partners and complementers?
All this drove me to join the MIT System Design and Management program, administered jointly by the MIT School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management. The program instills a 'systems' view of things, explaining through concrete cases and business problems, how every system exists within a larger system and is co-existing with other systems. The cumulative value of these systems is more than the sum its individual parts. My cohort, which comprises of some of the most brilliant minds I have met, is using these concepts to become better problem solvers, product managers, entrepreneurs, change management champions whithin their organizations and shrewd technology/ business strategists. More about this program can be found at http://sdm.mit.edu/.
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