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August 2011
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The Insider -
In a blog picked up by TelecomAsia earlier this week, The Insider’s alter ego wrote about the lessons Apple’s departing CEO, Steve Jobs, might have taught the telecoms industry. It was full of the usual blah blah about the challenges Jobs and Apple caused the telcos and the disruptive nature of its products. He went on to say that it must have come as a shock that the iPhone, one mobile device, could have had such an impact on the telecoms industry as a whole. Make no mistake, it singularly... -
News this week that the caffeine beverage maker, Red Bull, will begin offering mobile services over the Vodafone Australia network later this year prompted The Insider to take another look at the resurging potential of the MVNO market. Red Bull is no slouch when it comes to brand marketing and awareness and has a tremendous record of supporting many winning ventures in motor racing and sports to build its brand. After investing millions in marketing, companies like Red Bull and Virgin, simply cannot... -
Ever wondered why CSPs make such a big deal about subscriber numbers? Are they just showing off, meaning to gall their competitors or just trying to make investors happy? Those of us with just the smallest sarcastic streak may link the fact that the marketing people, the same ones charged with generating new subscribers in the first place, may be justifying their enormous budgets by sprouting big numbers in the press. Whatever the reason, the number of subscribers attained, by whatever means, is... -
So, we are being led to believe that we are predominantly going online to watch videos and indulge in social networking, right? Well, not quite. According to the latest Pew Internet Project report in June, our predominant online use is for good old email and search. Yes, good old email. Not quite as archaic as its dinosaurian predecessor, ‘snail mail’, 92 per cent of adults who go online use email, with 61 per cent using it on an average day. Search accounts for similar figures with 92... -
Could this be the beginning of the next wave of the social networking phenomenon – mass buying power? We’ve already seen how effective word spreads on how good or bad a product or service is via Facebook and Twitter, etc. and the results can make or break a new product launch, even the companies behind them. Whilst governments and regulators nervously assess ways to control the enormous power of social networking inciting civil unrest, others are looking at the positive benefits of big... -
Latest Investment Values Facebook At $70 Billion . Spotify Valued At $1.1 Billion For Global Push . $800M Financing Round Values Twitter at $8 billion . Groupon Looks to Cash in with $750M IPO . Linked in IPO Valued at $4.3 billion . These are all headlines that have appeared in the last few weeks, despite an unsettled stock market, and there is something very ominous about them. For those of you around in 2001-2002 it smells very much like another ‘dot.com bust’ in the making. For those... -
There’s something strange happening in the US cable industry that may have relevance to our ongoing OTT (over-the-top) player concerns in telecoms. Ever-vigilant TM Forum contributor, John Wilmes, pointed The Insider to an interesting report that the US pay-TV industry lost nearly 200,000 subscribers in the second quarter. It seems they just disappeared! Ryan Lawler, writing for Gigaom , presented figures showing a net loss of 193,000 subscribers, and while losses by cable providers are nothing... -
A news story from Reuters today states that mobile data revenue is expected to jump 23 percent this year thanks to increased usage of smartphones and tablets, as the number of global mobile connections reaches 5.6 billion this year. Quoting research firm Gartner, it says that mobile data services revenue will total $314.7 billion this year, a 22.5 per cent increase from 2010, and added that, in four years, mobile data sales will reach $552 billion. In another stroke of reporting genius, the article... -
With all the ‘excitement’ around ‘pinging’ and ‘snooping’ in Europe, The Insider appears to have overlooked some of the more startling industry headlines in the USA, particularly, about ‘cramming.’ For those of you not acquainted with this quaint term, let me just tell you that ‘cramming’ is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading or deceptive charges on your telephone bill. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US...
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