When you work in consumer electronics, one of the rules that gets drilled into you very early on is that you never do anything to disrupt the holiday selling season. In the US, the month between Thanksgiving and the end of the year can account for thr…

I’ve been hanging around television and broadcast folks for the past two weeks - from invited to speak about mobile and TV to the AIB Awards ceremony (AIB is the Association of International Broadcasters) in London last week to delivering…

I always wanted to do this blog .. so here goes ..

A marketing / branding person once asked me: Who did your PR and branding?

At first I thought that she was after some work from our company .. and since I had done the futuretext branding and logo myselves, I thought .. maybe she is criticising how it looks ..

But no ..

She went on to say .. It was fantastic name for a publishing company focussed on emerging technologies ..

This made me happy ofcourse ..

But should I have been happy?

The real story is far less flattering .. and here it is ..

I started with mobile messaging applications around 2000. SMS was the rage .. but MMS was emerging ..

So, originally .. I wanted to start a company based on messaging .. and beliveved .. and hold your breath for this .. ‘The future of ‘text’ is MMS’

So, that was the idea behind ‘futuretext’

Real marketing people like my good friend Russell Buckley(Now MD Europe of Admob) were wiser .. and warned that MMS was (is!) a dog .. It is never going anywhere…

This is very inspiring .. especially for people like me who never managed to raise any money in the dot com era when everyone else seemed to be .. but yet went on to set up a web based business post dot com - enjoy .. the antiportfolio ..

The ones I liked best are

Federal Express
Incredibly, BVP passed on Federal Express seven times.

Google
Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Notes: Let me say at the outset that I am a big fan of Google. This blog uses Google as an illustration in answer to the question Operators often ask; What can we do to differentiate against the Web (an euphemism for Google). Similarly, I have used Motorola’s Seamless mobility ideas since they are closest to what I am trying to illustrate on the network side. I am also reasonably familiar with the ideas of Seamless Mobility from the time I was on Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior keynote panel at Javaone

Today I spoke at the Mobile Wimax conference in Cannes. I have historically had an interest in Wimax and believe in its disruptive potential. One of the themes of the conference was : ‘Operator strategies for mobile broadband’. So, I discussed the following idea in my talk

P2P may be the killer application for the mobile networks because P2P is the biggest weakness of Google(and other web based services)

To illustrate this, I used the example of ‘Seamless mobility’ from Motorola - because in it’s ultimate incarnation; Seamless mobility is a very disruptive idea if deployed by visionary Operators…

Today has given us two fascinating news items for the U.S. Wireless market: Motorola’s Ed Zander is stepping down (and has already been replaced, so the company at least has good succession planning), and Sprint’s board declined an offer of $5 billion from SK Telecom and a venture fund, but required former chairman Tim […]

Motorola said Friday that Ed Zander will step down as chief executive on Jan. 1 after months under pressure for the sharp decline of the company’s once-hot cell-phone business.
Zander, 60, will be replaced by President and Chief Operating Officer Greg Brown, 47, as CEO.
Zander, who will stay on as chairman until the company’s annual shareholders […]

Many thanks for your comments on the blog Gillian Gibbons - teddy bear teacher …

As a technology blog, there is always the question if one should blog about something like this ..

However, I feel strongly about the issue and felt that in a small way(and especially as a British national) and an advocate for human rights - I could help by highlighting it.

Many thanks again. kind rgds Ajit

What do you think a powerful company wants more than anything? More power of course.

Such is the case of the world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart and its big ambition to dominate the mobile content arena. It recently launched Wal-Mart Mobile, an online store and WAP portal selling ringtones, games, and wallpapers.

While there are already many established companies jumping in this bandwagon, Wal-Mart will use its massive offline network to push this new venture.

It will be promoted in more than 4,000 Wal-Mart brick-and-mortar retail stores using shortcodes and other point-of-sale (POS) initiatives. Simultaneously, its online presence is also a big push.

The marriage of online and offline marketing activities has the potential to influence trial and purchase. This unique advantage puts Wal-Mart ahead of the competition.

The big question is, can Wal-Mart deliver the same cost advantage they now enjoy and promise everyday low prices…everyday?

Via Mobile Entertainment

See article.

As if we don't know…but a little confirmation really helps.

Google will probablybid in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming auction of wireless spectrum in the 700 megahertz band.

It basically means the search engine giant has officially declared a protracted war against the big mobile networks in an effort to gain a strong traction in the wireless industry.

“We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are. 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,” said Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, in a press release.

Consumers are the biggest winners because this bid will allow users download any software application they want on their mobile device, and to use any mobile devices they would like on that wireless network.

Still, I hope Google wins so it can spread its competitive spirit like brush fire and if they uphold their commitments, free the mobile consumers from cumbersome policies.

More details at the Official Google Blog

Via Marketing Pilgrim

Photo via nullgel

See article.

One subject I always hated at school was mathematics because it never seemed interesting to me but here two professors from Kyoto University and Tokyo National University have come up with Math Gates which is an interactive installation where visitors carry RFID cards with mathematic problem on them and the motive behind this is to reach a pre determined number. All this has been devised to get a better understanding of logic circuits of computer.

It seems RFID will surely develop interest for mathematics among all those who hate it and at the same ensure a better understanding of the logic circuits. Seems like professors have executed a pretty good job!!

Via tokyomango

See article.

With half of the world's population owning mobile phones, there's still plenty of room to introduce new mobile phones. The new study by MultiMedia Intelligence reports that the worldwide shipments of multimedia feature rich mobile phones will exceed 300 million units in 2008, outnumbering shipments of TV sets.

Multimedia phone is defined as a handset equipped with an image sensor, MP3 audio support, and video playback. It is estimated that 9 out of 10 handsets are multimedia phones by 2011. According to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer for MultiMedia Intelligence:

“Voice services are suffering under increasing price pressure, forcing operators to leverage data services to sustain revenue growth and offset declining voice ARPU. Handset manufacturers are racing to meet the consumer and operator demands for increasingly feature-rich multimedia handsets, while controlling handset cost and power consumption. The result is the mobile phone has become the world's most ubiquitous entertainment platform.”

Given the increasing number of multimedia phones, it is now a major factor to retain and gain new customers.

Via InformationWeek

According to WSJ, Google is to announce their Spectrum Auction Plan
and it is Bye-Bye Zander at Motorola

Now that I have the N95 8GB I want to upload some videos from my laptop to my mobile. It will be very cool to see an entire movie while travelling on an airplane or train.
When I first browse the video gallery of my N96 8GB I discover that the N95 8GB has integrated the full SpiderMan 3 movie. It’s amazing to see the quality of the movie on the mobile device.

Anyway I started to google to find a way to convert a DVD to N95 video using some free software.
This is a list of softwares I found and that I’m trying to use, feel free to add your favourite tools

Aiming to break the language barriers, Japanese electronics company NEC has developed the first automatic translation software tailored for mobile phones.

Although the technology to translate Japanese to English exists a long time ago, this is the first time it's used in mobile phones without any external help.

It can recognize more than 50,000 Japanese words and the translation process takes only seconds. However, Akihabara News pointed out, the software has a tremendous difficulty to translate some basic English words used in the everyday Japanese like for example “New York” or “Jet-lag”.

The software is in still in the development stage and hopefully all these problems will be resolved before its public launch. NEC is also studying the possibility of vocal translation.

If you're looking for a decent translation device in your mobile phone, you can try Steape's talking translator for cellphones.

Via Wired