La vie est elle un long fleuve tranquille?

European discrepancy in voice calls originated from mobile phones

I came across an interesting piece of public research from Analysys that focuses on Fixed to Mobile substitution, aka as FMS. The graph below describes the rising share of mobile calls as a percentage of the total calls.

But what is interesting is that they specify that there is a fairly wide spread across the European region, ranging from 18% in Germany to 70% in Finland. That is the surprising part. Germany is THE country of FMS, with O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile having launched home zone solution. Their figures are from Q1 2006, so I would expect that in Q1 2007, that percentage has shot up. Also, only 35% of voice calls are originated from a mobile network, this  clearly showing that FMS has a lot of potential for growth.

Slow convergence of users towards FMC?

Yet another report that claims that FMC is not getting as much interest as the industry hype would suggest. This one (brief highlight from consulting paid-for report) is interesting as it it focuses on the interest of businesses for FMC solution. I will put a slight caveat as it focuses on US market and the dynamics between US and EU market are not exactly like for like though general trends such as Wi-Fi being only use for data and not voice is something which is quite "market agnostic".

In the consumer segment, we have already seen the failure of FMC solution in a market where simple FMS solutions exist. In effect, in Germany T-Mobile pulled the plug on its T-One solution which was competing against the Home Zone solutions of Vodafone ZuHause, BT Genion and TMobile @Home. This clearly shows that when consumers have the choice between a user friendly, simple voice solution such as Home Zone and a complex solution that mixes Wi-Fi, UMA, Bluetooth, GSM, etc... there is no doubt about which ones is going to make market inroads.

Again, I believe that usability (at the right price point of course) is key to ensure the success of any new service based on technology. Therefore, mixing too many technology hoping "soccer mom" i.e. lambda users will be able to deal with them is laudable but very ambitious in my views.

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Unearth the data and make economics visual

Just found through Pisani's blog a very interesting video about a Swedish professor who developed a tool to make statistics visual and therefore give them powerful sense. I highly recommend to look at it, it's here

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A different perspective on GPS and Sat Nav

Read a very intersesting article on Sat Nav which has a very different perspective on the impact of people dropping map for more high tech services. The little piece of trivia which is fascinating is that a recent survey by National Geographic Kids magazine found that
20 per cent of children in Britain cannot find their own country on a
world map. This and more here

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Consumers threshold for web pages

There is an interesting piece of analysis on web usage made by Akamais and Jupiter Research. Amongst other information, it states that on-line shoppers see the speed to load webpages as a key requirement for succesful on-line shopping. It turns out that 4 seconds is the acceptable threshold.

Usability of on-line services drives expectations on the mobile space. Users also want fast access to mobile services, otherwise they just drop it. This of course also applies to location based services. The technologies to date (and notably Cell-ID, the mostly used technology) have been failing to spur services for two main reasons. Lack of accuracy and latency effects, ie: time to provide the location to the user is too high.

Hence why I believe Seeker Wireless is well positioned to lead the way fwd in the LBS space. As an example, the HomeZone service Seeker has developped has a latency below 3 seconds, primarily due to the mobile delivery elements more than the Seeker part itself. This fits perfectly the user expectations when it comes to usability.

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Seeker Wireless

 

Been very very lazy on the blogging front, things have been a little bit too hectic, new job, new baby, new flat... Things are not quietening down on any front but will try to update a bit more this page. Will also try to split personal blogging things and professional ones but that require getting my head round on how to make it work...

On the job front, joined Seeker Wireless, a start-up providing a location technology with a very smart product which is basically handset based rather than network based. Loads of benefits from a commercial point of view which should address many of the issues and disappointment that the industry has seen so far. More details on a later stage on another post...

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Vox - New 6Apart service

It seems that 6Apart, the owners of Typepad the blogging platform which I am using, is launching a new service called vox. I have to say that I am slightly confused. It would seem from a very brief read that this is a blogging solution with some add-ons for social networking. You get invited, making you feel special, it taps into the local community, has a "myspace"  feeling with a Skype-look-a-like front page (not the one Skype has now, the one a long while back when it was crisp), talks about video and audio, which you can do anyway on typepad, etc, etc...

I may get it wrong, but I am not clear with what 6Apart is trying to do, aside from developing a me-too social networking thing. Oh well, it's not original but why shouldn't they after all. I guess the cash cow of Typepad allows them to test other ventures. As long as they don't get distracted from providing a good service on Typepad...

Point in case

As per my previous note, just found this on YouTube. This is probably quite high-end and I am trying to find out who is Spirit Pictures and AMDS but do I need to say more! 

Gorilla Marketing, Jumpcut and the big Hollywood studios

Found in smartmobs relating the fact that big studios are jumping in the bandwagon of on-line video. Warner has tapped into Jumpcut to support the marketing of a to-be-launched movie. In essence, Warner has made available stills and clips of the movie and promotional material is being made by Jo-blogs who are creating loads of movie trailers. Clearly the question is whether Jo-blog will be happy enough to have his ideas (ie: the key thing in our society) being used by big studios just for free or whether there will soon be people entering agreement with the studios to monetize their creativity. Does this ring the end of big marketing agency? Not quite so, surely, but the start of a trend for sure. It is also very interesting to see that Hollywood is getting into the social networking thing (which Jumpcut is part of) after having fought all the P-2-P sharing phenomenum. I'd say that you can not have it all ( l'histoire de la cremiere et de son joli posterieure pour les lecteurs francais). Also, it is good to see that, as  Benkler explains in his very interesting "The Wealth of Networks", there are more and more non-market based initiatives being taken by market based companies - sorry, this may sound a bit criptic but I would highly recommend Benkler's book who is available under Creative Commons.

Finally, whilst this is marketing initiative is only available in the online fixed world, no doubt this will spread very quickly in the mobile word.

Félix au Parc

Eventually got round to try Jumpcut, which allows to edit videos and publish them. Below the first "movie", I think it is a big jumpy but the interface is decent.

Je viens enfin d'essayer Jumpcut qui permet d'editer et de publier des videos. Ci dessous le premier "film", ce n'est pas tres fluide mais leur interface est relativement correct