Nokia new chipset partnerships

Nokia today announced thier new partnership with ST Microelectronics and with Broadcom for supply of 3G and Edge chipsets.This announcements has consequence not only for Nokia ,ST Micro and Broadcom but also for the entire Mobile phone industry.
Before going further a brief overview of status of todays mobilephone chipset industry would give good starting point to analyse the impact of todays anouncement.Today for Nokia ,Texas Instrument is the biggest and sole supplier of chipset for WCDMA and Edge technolgies in partcular and also biggest supplier of GSM chipset .Infact there are only 2 real big palyers in entire mobile chip industry namely Qualcomm and Texas instruments who are able to provide complete chipset solutions for entire range of mobile technologies (Qualcomm for CDMA families technologies including WCDMA and TI for GSM family of technolgies EDGE,WCDMA,HSDPA ).Complete chipset solution means both application processor and baseband processor .Application processor vendors spaces is crowded including STmicro ,Broadcomm and infineon but TI and qualcomm are only 2 big players who can provide complete solution .The entry barrier for producing complete solution has been baseband processor part which is not only complex technologies but the basic technologies patents have been held by Nokia ,Ericsson and Qualcomm .Out of the 3 Qualcomm are in the chipset business and prduce thier own complete chipset solution(inclding app processor) which mobile phone vendors like samsung,LG use .Nokia for instance so far has partnered with only TI to produce wcdma chipset that are used in thier handset .Becuase of the factors explained above Qualcomm and TI dominate the mobile phone processor industry .
Today's announcments shows that Nokia is willing to partner with others other than TI i.e with ST Microelectronics ,Broadcomm and Infineon that not only gives flexibility for Nokia but also create 3 more players ,who can provide complete chipset solution in market place for other handset vendors like samsung etc .This invaribly will drive the chipset cost down for the entire mobile industry and also put total pressure on Qualcomm and TI .Qualcomm in particular espcially inlight of ongoing legal battle between Qualcomm and Nokia over WCDMA patents.
Nokia also announced that they woud be licensings its WCDMA ,Edge technolgies to other chipset vendors as well so that they can provide complete chipset solutions .This will not only generate extra revenue for nokia but also sends a clear signal that Nokia no longer on a longer run sees HW chipset as business crtical control point .

Surface Computing WoW

Microsoft today announced a new segment of computers called surface .This is not yet another incremental windows platform devices like Tablet PC or SPOT .This truly I think is great new product concept with cool technology in built into it .Yes in my world it is many times cooler than iPhone the reason I compared to iphone is simple because nowadays any product launched are compared with iphone for coolness. I would say just go to this link and spend some time to go through the Surface experience videos.
Surface is basically today a 30” table top computer with multi touch and real objects detection capabilities. These 2 new deadly features enable a new era of computer interactivity and usage. The cost of surface which is available from late 2007 is nearly 10000 dollars. there are couple of companies like T-Mobile who are partners .So initially this would be exclusive devices similar way to Plasma or big LCD displays used to be 5 years back ,seen only in trade fairs or Five star hotels .With time I am sure it would creep into living rooms. I have feeling this might be the next big thing in terms of financial impact to MS results and might even turn out to be the true replacement for windows as cash generating machine.
Let’s see time will tell whether this is truly next big thing from MS or just yet another attempt from Redmond giant which failed to make a mark in real life like tablet PC .My gut feeling is that it might be next big thing.

Joost an IPTV killer

For those of you who have never heard Joost or its previous name Venice Project it’s a P2P technology based TV Client. I have been a beta user of this for already 4 months now and have been amazed by it in all respect starting from usability to quality of video to ever expanding feature set. I am not the only one who has been taken over completely by joost experience Blogosphere is full of such stories. My Idea for this post is just to put my perspective and thinking when it comes to its use case and its potential to be a real IPTV kind of technology killer .By the way right now Joost Beta usage is only Invite only basis but I have couple of Invites left for Joost Beta testing so if anyone is genuinely interested leave a comment to this post with your email address or drop me a line.

Joost is yet another startup by Niklas Zennstrøm and Janus Friis they are same people who started Kaaza and Skype both products created wave and disruption in Music and Telecommunication Industry .Joost is their attempt to do same for TV industry I would say they have almost done exactly that .Joost uses P2P technology the same that is behind Skype and Kaaza but mixes with great TV like user interface and Internet ability to interact and communicate using social networks .In all it uses best of TV combines with best of internet and delvers it on optimized & cost effective P2P network. I would live rest of product experience to you to experience your self.

I read some blogs where people have connected PC to 37 inches LCD TV to watch Joost and their feedback has been extremely positive and their were really amazed at the ability of Joost Software and content to scale to bigger screen size without much compromise on video quality .So my belief is that if Joost or some one comes up with iTV kind of device to connect TV to internet and delver Joost on TV without any hassle (like Vonage does for IP telephony) then we may start to see joost being a real traditional TV displacer .Joost has required features set and technology to deliver really personalized TV content and also unable instant communication with their social network both of which is not possible using tradition Broadcasting TV technologies.

That leads to the title of my post if joost can deliver all and even better than what IPTV has promised what is need of expensive IPTV kind of technologies .The only reason I can think of is that IPTV though is expensive to roll out offers traditional big Telco’s (like Verizon, France Telecom etc) required tool to fight Cable TV providers who are in turn entering Telecoms domain by providing broadband and voip connection via cable. So basically IPTV is technology to support traditional Telco business model but not something that would really provide something new value for customers that cheaper alternative technologies like Joost can’t provide. So I hope finally Joost or similar technology finally survives and not IPTV kind of technologies.

iPhone

As most of you know that Apple Computers inc oh Sorry Apple inc has launched its own phone .There has been lot of hype and rumors from last 1 year about this product and finally when it was announced on 10th of jan, it got great review from both press and financial communities especially in later by taking apple stock up 9% and pulling RIM, Palm stocks by nearly 6 % and even Nokia and Motorola stocks by 2 %.My personal opinion on iPhone is mixed I think it’s a cool looking device from design point of view but would it reshape industry and shakeup already existing players as claimed by Apple and majority of press I strongly doubt so .

Before arguing for my case lets compare iPhone feature set with already existing phones feature set, there are billion phones sold every year with hundreds of model so we need a phone to compare with ,since one of the common way to compare is selecting a phone in same price range, so for comparison purpose lets take iPhone 4Gb that should cost 500$ with 2 year Cingular contract so retail price should be around 650-700 $ approximately and Nokia N95 which would retail around same price point or even less including cost of 4GB SD card. I don’t want to rewrite the 2 specs here but key features comparison

Feature	N95	iPhone
Camera	5 mega pixel with Carlzeiss optics	2 mega pixel
Video	Capture at 30fps (DVD quality)	No data
Display	2.6" 16M color TFT, 240x320 resolution	3.5” 320 x480
Data access technologies	HSDPA (1.8 Mbps) WiFi Bluetooth	EDGE(236Kbps) WiFi Bluetooth
Input Method	Keyboard with joy stick	MultiTouch
SW platform	S60 open (i.e. variety of 3rdparty native apps can be downloaded)	OSx closed (i.e. 3rd party apps cant be added)
Navigation	Built in maps with GPS for real time routing	Static map no navigation features
Browsing	Full HTTP browser (Based on safari) with ability to zoom in and zoom out using keys	Full HTTP browser (based on safari) with ability to zoom in and zoom out using touch

As you can see from above N95 beats iPhone a long way in terms of features .Infact apart from Touch and huge screen pretty much any phone in the price range of 250$ retail without any contract would beat iPhone in terms of features and functionality .So which makes you think what is that so great in iPhone it can charge that high price my reasons for it are

• Apple has used high resolution big screen and lots of sensors since the usage of these components are very limited their cost tends to be dispropertionately higher making total BOM cost of iPhone higher.
• Apple thinks its multitouch UI is unique killer feature coupled with its cool design and brand can charge very high premium.
• Apple experience is worth the premium

Having said that personally I don’t think pure touch enabled devices are good for phones .in fact Apple is not the first company to try only touch enabled device many companies have tried before without much success to name a notable few HTC,LG etc .Of course apple claims that they have solved those problems with their new UI but I think touch only has a input has some inherent problems like no tactile response for the user which is very important and secondly you cant design touch only phone for one hand operations (i.e. you can perform tasks using only one hand) which is very important as each one of us have experienced using it in one hand(for example while driving car etc).Then the claim that iPhone user experience is intuitive is also little bit overstretched because whole generation of people esp. in Asia and Europe have grown up sending SMS using keypad for that generation using keypads is more intuitive than touching characters on screen to send SMS.My basic point is intuitive is more to do with how used to you are with a device and system .I would have agreed with Steve jobs if he had introduced first mobile phone in the world and said that its intuitive but unfortunately he is at least one decade late .So it might be that consumers might feel that this whole new touch UI is more difficult to use than keypad based.

I would argue that iPhone if it turns out to be highly successful in spite of problems discussed above would remain as niche segment because of its high price. Many people with whom I discussed this issue of iPhone high price tend to say, wait for some time iPhone prices will go down the same way as iPod prices. I would say iPod price story is different because of one simple reason the most critical component from price perspective in iPod is flash memory the prices of it has fallen drastically not only because of ipod but mainly because of flash memory usage in many other digital devices like camera, phone and even in PC which drove the volume which made prices fall and subsequently apple could drive its cost down .But in case of iPhone the key differentiating component the high resolution big touch screen and sensors are also the most critical from price perspective and today their usage is very limited unless suddenly other phone manufacturers and other segment device vendors start using same component there prices would remain high making very much difficult for apple to bring the prices down .

So in short, I don’t think it is going to change mobile industry landscape. But certainly it’s one of the cool devices I have seen and more importantly managed to raise the level of debate in already established players in this industry like Nokia and Motorola which is great achievement for any company especially if they are new entrant to that segment.

Why Nokia should buy Yahoo ?

This is a speculative posting but with some logical reasoning behind it. Today beginning of new year I was going through my last years postings and the posting about Microsoft buying a stake in Yahoo started as a trigger point for this posting .Before I go further 2 important facts

• Nokia announced recently in its investors meet in Amsterdam that Mobile devices convergence with Internet as next big growth opportunity and would like to transform itself as Internet Company.
• Yahoo in 2006 has not performed well to the expectation of investors and also compared to competitors .which has lead to not only changes in yahoo management team but speculation that it is up for sale .Speculation about Microsoft buying a stake in Yahoo was one such news .

Above 2 points are facts combining them lead to the speculative topic for this posting.

Nokia as you all know is the no1 mobile phone manufacturer with around 34% market share. It has around 90 billion $ market capitalization with more than 10 billion $ cash reserves in spite of nearly 3 billion $ annually it spends in share buyback programs. So pure numbers terms it looks like a great company to invest in .But unfortunately the share prices is showing no signs of growth in spite both top line and bottom line for the company is growing quite decently, compared to other players in its industry, of course it pales compared to growth shown by Google .But the basic reason being simple that they are in totally different industries. Google ,Yahoo and MSN are in what is called as xSP or internet based services be it search,e-mail etc segment which are growing at average more than 30% with nearly 50-60 % margins.Were as Mobile phone business though growing at 15% worldwide but much of the growth is coming from low margin business in developing nations so basically dragging down the overall margins even for industry leaders like Nokia infact that is the reason for bad performance of Nokia's share .But if you look further down the line at some point most of the internet services are going to be accessed by mobile devices as both mobile networks speed and device capabilities improves which presents huge opportunity for growth .But it not only provides existing internet big players like Google, Yahoo and Man’s to extend their services to mobile but also provides opportunity for new players to enter and capture market same way as Google and yahoo entered the market .It is this big opportunity that Nokia was talking about in Amsterdam and that it would like to take a big pie of that market .Accessing Gail through mobile phones, Uploading pictures taken by mobile phone directly to photo sharing websites like Flicker are just few example of services that are available in few high end handsets that would be common services in all majority of mobile devices.Nokia's N series high end devices already come with preinstalled software to all the above listed services and many more .Presently Nokia is partnering with Yahoo, Google,eBay to provide those services but in future as it rolls out similar services across all its portfolio it would definitely would like to have those pre installed services to be its own so that it can capture more value in the chain .The reason why it is not launching rival services but partnering with existing players is simple

• Existing players have great brand name already for those services
• Nokia doesn’t have expertise in those service area and it takes time and effort before it has those expertise in house
• Most importantly today’s mobile internet service market size is not big enough to provide pure mobile internet services it has to be in conjunction with regular pc internet services.

So big question is what will Nokia do in future, definitely Nokia don’t want to miss out next big mobile internet service opportunity but just partnering with existing xSP players .so option is either build its own services which is expensive and risky or just buy existing player though its expensive .So my bet is that it might take the acquisition route .so next question is which one, among the big players who have complete portfolio of services namely Google,MSN and Yahoo only Yahoo is potentially up for sale. And more importantly among the big three only Yahoo has community based services at core which fits quite well with mobile internet services where media and other content sharing is at heart and search is one service unlike PC internet services where search is heart and the key .

Is Wikiasari Google killer?

Wikiasari is a new community based search engine being launched by Jimmy Wales. For those of you who don’t know he is the founder of Wikipedia which really showed for the first time the power of community and in my opinion it is also the first killer product based on user generated data. I am not going to talk about wikipedia because everyone knows how useful and great it is .The basic reason for this posting is Wikiasari I think this might be the real product to compete against Google .

First of all there is little information available about wilkiasari except that, it will use user/community input to generate search results which is different from what Google for example does –Google basically uses algorithm to create search results without human interaction. There have been several attempts before also to generate search results based on user ratings or user bookmark data etc but none has been successful to beat algorithm based Google results. It is widely accepted fact that user/community input based search engines would be better than algorithm based search provided someone gets the right way to use user/community input. It is like an open secret that everyone knows but no one knows how to get it right, there are lot of examples like everyone knew digital music players (mp3 players) is big thing many attempted to enter that space like creative, Sony etc but it was apple with ipod and itunes that got it right and was successful.

I think wikisari might be the search engine that will finally get the right way to use the user input ,the reason for my thinking is simple that its founder knows really well how to use community .If there is anyone who can get it right it would be him his records speak for itself when he started wikipedia people questioned that how can user generated knowledge be equal to Britannica were the content is generated by professionals but he showed the way and now wikipedia is accepted as trusted place to find information .

So in short Wikisari with right approach and right people driving it now has the real chance to be a Google killer.

IPhone, Google Phone what next?

Today I was reading articles about Google phone and I have been reading similar articles about Apples IPhone over last few months .One question that has always poped in my mind is why is such speculations about these 2 companies in general and also pertaining to their speculated phone plans in particular. In this posting I try to put my thoughts and answer to those questions.

Both Apple and Google have been phenomenally successful companies in post dot com bust days, Creating a legions of fans both in consumer and stock market world .Both these companies offered easy to use products and were able to monetize their success with consumers into real profits gaining them star status in stock markets. Both these stocks have high valuation compared to their counterparts in their industry with PE of 58 for Google and 38 for Apple. Which basically means markets expects their financial performance in future also to be spectacular. So what it means in reality to these 2 companies is that they should churn out again world beating products like Google search or Apple Ipod to generate high growth and justify their present high valuation .Considering the fact that both these companies are leaders in their respective markets with high market share they both are forced to view market opportunities in other industries .But in reality there are very few industry or segments were there is huge revenue potential to justify these companies attention .As I have already posted in my earlier postings I believe one such field is converged device markets space with smart phones as first products with huge potentials in near term future .So it is quite logical for analyst and industry observers to speculate that these 2 companies will launch phones .

Having put my thought on why there are speculations about these companies launching phones in earlier paragraph, I will now try to put my thoughts on what are the chances that these speculated phones if launched will be successful. First I would say it will be really challenging task for both these companies to develop and launch even a moderately good phones .But the markets expectation is that they would be able to launch phones that not only leave up to their brand name but also challenge the industry leaders which according to me too much to expect .Some of the reasons for such pessimistic view are

• Mobile phone is still complex industry both because of technology involved and also due to non existent standard hardware architecture .What it means is it is not easy for new players to come and produce good phone without prior experience and IPR in this industry. So they can’t rely on ODMs alone like in other electronic and PC industry. One example to prove my point is Microsoft is working with HTC for at least 3-4 years now they are able to produce decent phone after several mediocre attempts. So both apple and Google have any prior experience or IPR in wireless handset industry are in serious disadvantage.
• Customers: Even today mobile phones major sales channel is mobile operators which mean phone manufacturers need to work with them to produce operator specific variants which are not easy especially for company like Apple which is known to be company that loves to control total user experience. And wouldn’t like to make compromise with operators on this issues.Ofcourse they can try to sell directly to consumers but without operator subsidies for device the price wont be attractive for mass consumption meaning it will remain niche market.

So not limited to above 2 points but also due to many other reasons like competition from existing well established brands like Nokia, Motorola I think the chances of apple and Google pulling of successful products in this space is very low –But at the same time if they eventually launch phones as speculated and are truly successful it would be really a remarkable achievements and proves that both these companies are really not ordinary companies.

X-Series Do or Die for 3!

For those of you who have never heard 3, it’s a pan European 3G only Mobile operator owned by Hong Kong based Hutchison Whampoa Limited .3 announced last week that they are launching X-series Mobile broadband offering which allows consumers to unlimited data access at fixed price similar to what fixed broadband users are used to .I try to explain why this is such big thing and according to me has a potential to disrupt the existing business of mobile operators.
To begin with 3 was one of those who bid and bought 3G spectrum in Europe at bloated prices in late 1990s on top of it 3 was new entrant with plans to build pan European 3G only network .Basic Idea being that they thought that 3G and its services is going to be real killer and its worth investing huge capital to roll out the network and service. Of course it is true that all other mobile operators like Vodofone, Orange, and T-Mobile also banked on 3G while bidding for spectrum along with 3 but one major and crucial difference between 3 and others is that 3 is pure 3G operator while others are dominant 2G players with already successful 2G business. So what happened between late 1990,s and till now 2006 as it is evident now is that other than 3 other operators after the tech bust downgraded their 3G expectation and tried to concentrate on 2G at the same time rolling out 3G in much more conservative way. But 3 which had relied on 3G had to rollout network and services in more aggressive way like bundling huge voice minutes in their basic 3G plans and also trying to lure customers with its own data services .As it turned out that all these actions didn’t help their bottom line and their own 3G services uptake being low and forced to improve their financials fast they were forced to think differently to lure customers and one important initiative in that direction is X-series launch.
Today most of the mobile operators who have launched data services have launched data plans which is based on the concept of charging users based on how much traffic they generate.(i.e. users have to pay a fixed price per MB of data they send or receive )similar to early days of fixed broadband plans. Basic Idea or strategy is that operators would like to offer their own services at fixed price per service which would include data costs example: In US Cingular, Nextel and other have launched mobile phone based navigation service which cost user 6-9 $ per month which includes data costs, By using this strategy they would like to control the services that are delivered to consumers and also have good margins. In short in future as and when most of the mobile services including voice are going to be delivered on packet network they wouldn’t like to be like end up like Internet service providers (ISP) just providing data pipes at fixed cost. So this is a kind of common strategy the entire mobile industry agrees and adopts including 3 till recently.
Due to the reasons mentioned earlier as 3 was forced to change their strategy they launched X-series .which basically provides unlimited data access to consumers at fixed price, ofcourse 3 is also bundling some of common internet services by partnering with Google, Yahoo, Skype and other big internet brand name so that these partnered services work seamlessly out of box. But the crucial thing from consumer perspective is it is unlimited data meaning that consumers can pick and choose their own service and even replace some of the rebounded service at no extra cost .So basically allowing access to internet same way as we do with fixed broadband believe me its big change compared to the present state .
Finally if this service is successful it will bring down 3 margins further but at the same time it increases its revenue and customer base to which if it is innovative can provide its own services and make margins.
Most importantly if it successes then it force other operators at least in Europe to offer similar services meaning forcing them to abandon walled garden approach to data and embrace open internet approach to data. It is also beneficial for handset vendors like Nokia who have invested in open mobile SW platform like S60 and smart phone development as it is most likely that smart phones would be the phone of choice for consumers using unlimited data plans. Most importantly it gives consumers freedom and choice to services.

Motorola and Qualcomm VS Nokia

Motorola last week announced that it will use QUALCOMM chipsets for its 3G phones, Its already using Qualcomm chipset for its CDMA portfolio both 2G and 3G but this announcement extends it to using QUALCOMM chipsets for WCDMA (European or GSM evolution to 3G) phones .This is significant development for overall 3G handset market and in particular to Nokia . This posting tries to explore the reasons and its implication of this deal.

Before going into details of this deal let me try to paint the current 3G market place broadly. Today we have basically 3 competing technologies for 3G namely CDMA 2000, UMTS and TD-SCDMA .CDMA 2000 and UMTS provide evolutionary path to their respective 2G technologies namely CDMA and GSM.,While TD-SCDMA is home grown Chinese version of 3G technology. GSM is dominant 2G technology having 80% of total 2G market place with rest of the market covered by CDMA.CDMA has dominant presence in US with 2 namely Verizon and Sprint-Nextel of top 3 biggest mobile operator using this technology and has also presence in Brazil, China and India but recently there has been news that both in Brazil and India the CDMA operators are planning to migrate to GSM .So when it comes to 3G it is oblivious that GSM operators will evolve to UMTS and CDMA operators will evolve to CDMA 2000.As discussed above UMTS is going to be dominant 3G technology and of course CDMA 2000 networks will also exists but predominantly only in US ,Which means Motorola number 2 handset vendor in the world needs to have good market share of UMTS(3G) handset even to maintain its current position .

Today 3G phone markets is dominated by Nokia because of its technology leadership in WCDMA and also its scale which translates into its ability to produce cheapest 3G phone which in turn translates into great market share and margins.Nokia uses its own radio modem chipset and Texas instruments (TI) Application processor in its 3G phones and also collaborated with TI to design one of the world’s first single chip WCDMA chipset i.e. both radio modem and application processor sits in a single silicon .Which translates to smaller and cheaper phones giving Nokia further edge against Motorola in WCDMA handset space. On the other hand Motorola nearly 2 years back spun of its Chipset business into separate company called Free Scale. This was recently bought over by private equity investors moving Freescale further way from Motorola. Motorola was cornered and had to look out for external silicon partner to have any chance to fight Nokia in 3G phone market.

Qualcomm a wireless technology provide rose to fame and made most of its money from selling its CDMA chipsets and licensing its CDMA Intellectual property Rights (IPR) .When its come to CDMA it has most dominant position both in terms of IPR and CDMA chipset market share As discussed earlier as CDMA technology market share dwindles and CDMA camps 3G technology only dominant in US, it needs to expand into GSM and UMTS space .WCDMA the radio technology used in UMTS is built on basics of CDMA technology which means some of the basic IPR of CDMA is also relevant for WCDMA and which gives a logical edge for QUALCOMM because of its strength in CDMA.Which it would like to use to generate its second wave of revenue stream .Precisely this issue has landed them in confrontation with Nokia. Nokia claims to have maximum number of essential IPR in WCDMA space and would like to get license revenue for it from Qualcomm same way as it pays to license CDMA IPR from QUALCOMM for its CDMA phones. But QUALCOMM as it tries to enter into WCDMA space with its chipsets claims that its IPR portfolio is superior to Nokia and it doesn’t have to pay anything. This conformation between Nokia and QUALCOMM has not yet concluded the result of which has profound impact on Qualcomm ability to make cost effective WCDMA chipset which has impact on its ability to take market share in UMTS handset market .

As I tried to explain earlier this agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm looks like a logical alliance to fight against a common enemy Nokia .From Nokia perspective this is the strongest challenge that they may face in its race for 3G handset market leadership positions.

Blyk is it killer service?

Blyk is Pan -European free mobile operator .yes you have read it right they are planning to offer mobile service free of cost based on advertisement model. You have heard a lot about free WLAN access but free regular mobile service which most of you would be paying nearly minimum of 30- 50 Euros per month is going to be offered free is hard to believe but if all goes well according to this company they will be launching this service in UK in mid of 2007 and soon expanding to rest of Europe.

Lets start analyzing this company and its model from checking who are its founders .It is started by none other then former Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietilä ,which is one of the main reasons which makes me feel that this is serious company and not a dot com kind of company trying to ride the advertisement based success of Google. The company as not disclosed many details except that its services are free and revenue model is based on advertisement so it leaves people like me to speculate on what kind of model and services it can be. To begin with my primary assumption is that this doable the reasons for this are

• Due to convergence and emergence of VOIP technology the cost of per minute voice has come down considerably making it this kind of free service possible .For example skype founder recently said cost of voip call is so negligible that when delivered in volumes it is almost free which made them to provide skype PC to PC calls free.Ofcourse VOIP PC to PC is different from mobile calls but there are indications that cost of mobile calls are heading in same direction which is making some operators in UK to bundle unlimited UK to UK mobile calls as part of decent monthly subscription plans. So if Blyk comes up with smart way of delivering most of calls on voip making cost per minute almost negligible they have big piece of puzzle solved.

• Blyk is MVNO meaning that they don’t have to build capital intensive network and bid of scare and costly spectrum they lease network from exiting operators at whole sale price .so which means they don’t have much of fixed cost and can easily expand as customer base grows .Of course European regulations regarding MVNO also help them
• Most important thing is if advertisements are delivered in a non intrusive way this medium (i.e. mobile advertisement) has potential to be most important and effective medium for advertisers even better then internet PPC (pay per Click model) .Because this not only delivers all goodies of internet based advertisement but has potential to take it better level in terms of targeted and timely advertisement using both mobility and location metrics and tools .So in short it has potential that advertisers may shell out more money then in pure internet model. This means that theoretically Blyk potential revenue opportunity is enormous.

So after going through things in favour of Blyk let’s see some potential huge problems

• Most importantly these kinds of free services have been tried out unsuccessfully in 1998-99 in South Korea .Recently Xero an new American MVNO with 300 million $ funding plans to start partial advertisement based services where consumers by seeing or listening to advertisement can accumulate free voice minutes. This service seems not to have picked up so in past none of these kind of services have picked up. So based on history Blyk chances look bleak but again it might be Blyk chance to create history.
• Another big hurdle is typically for this kind of service to work there needs to be decent number of customers ideally in millions and definitely not in thousands because as discussed earlier more the customers lesser would be cost per minute and also most importantly from revenue generation side advertisers are not attracted by small numbers as their cost of producing mobile specific advertisement content may not work out .So in short from both cost of operation and revenue generation side it is absolutely must that this kind service gather quickly good number of customers to keep it rolling .which is typically very hard thing to do .But again you may never know the real power of free service .

So in all I would say this company is certainly a company to watch in 2007 .It has great potential to disrupt entire mobile operators space and become next Google or at the same time high chance of failure and become yet another failed company .But I hope it succeeds.

Sony Ericsson buys UIQ

Sony Ericsson (SE) announced that it is buying UIQ.For those of you who are not aware of UIQ its subsidiary of Symbian providing UI layer on top of symbian OS.UIQ is the UI layer that runs in SonyEricsson popular P900 series smartphone.offcourse no financial details were disclosed about the transaction by both parties .I will try to put my thoughts why did SE buy UIQ and what is the future looks like

To answer the question why did they buy lets try to discuss about symbian ecosystem.Symbian is the dominant Smartphone OS with more than 70% market share.Symbian similar to Linux world doesn’t provide its own UI layer but there are many options available for mobile manufactures like S60 Nokia’s own layer on top of symbian, UIQ from UIQ technology which is subsidiary of Symbian ltd and MOAP which is UI layer by NTTDocomo.But if you look closely which of these UI layer ,its Nokia S60 devices that accounts nearly 60% of generic Smartphone market share and close to 80% of symbian devices market share .Rest 20% of symbian devices are dominated by MOAP in Japanese mkt and also UIQ devices whose biggest customer is SE.Now Symbian itself is privately owned company with Nokia being the biggest owner with 47.9% followed by Ericson and SE combined together hold 28% and rest is owned by Panasonic(10%) ,Siemens (9%) and Samsung(4.5%).As you can see Nokia is not only the biggest share holder but also the biggest customer of symbian .It also as S60 layer on top of symbian which it licenses to other symbian phone manufacturers like Samsung,LG etc and UIQ is direct competitor to it .UIQ as mentioned earlier is a subsidiary of Symbian and had SE has its major customer .In this environment it is oblivious that Symbian shareholders would not be interested in pouring symbian money into UIQ development in long run so my guess is that since SE was dependent on UIQ was forced to buy UIQ and continues it development same way as Nokia does S60 and in process making symbian as pure OS vendor .

Now lets try to predict the future of this acquisition.SE for now as said that it would like to keep UIQ has separate company and not only develop it further but try to license it to other symbian phone manufactures meaning that they would like to place it as alternative to S60.Ok that’s what SE aims to do but would it be able to do lets put this way that I am little bit pessimistic. Reasons are straight fwd

• Today’s symbian volumes are coming from Nokia and its S60 devices they are not going to license UIQ
• To develop and maintain SW platforms is very expensive with low volumes it becomes much more difficult .so with SE present volumes it may become difficult to develop and sustain UIQ.
• UIQ will try to get other license but most other major symbian license like Samsung are already S60 licensee

So in short my thinking is that in market for symbian phones there is space for only on UI platform and that at this moment seems to be clearly S60 so future of UIQ looks bleak but again who knows SE may become biggest Smartphone vendor which gives the volumes to sustain platform development cost .:)

End of Mobile email Consolidation?

Motorola on Friday announced that it is acquiring Good Technologies for undisclosed amount. Good Technology a Santa Clara based company which provides primarily email solution for enterprise customers. Though the amount is not disclosed I can make an educated guess that it should be around same amount as that paid by Nokia to acquire Intel sync (450 million dollars).In Mobile email segment RIM (makers of Blackberry Devices) has around 59 % market share followed by Intellisync with 9% and then Good technologies with 8% . This post tries to analyze wider implication of this deal on mobile email segment.

Mobile email or Push email (i.e. technology that enables access of email in your wireless devices like mobile phone PDA etc) is pioneered by blackberry devices (RIM).As the technology matured the other mainstream Mobile device vendors like Nokia, Motorola etc started offering similar services in there portfolio and even started producing devices similar in form factor to blackberry (Nokia E61 and E62, Motorola’s Q).around same time there started popping up device independent pure wireless email SW solution vendors like Intellisync,Good Technology,Visto,Seven to name a few noted vendors .Device vendors like Nokia ,Motorola typically provide support to many email solutions in their devices .But at the same time both Nokia and Motorola started to diversify into Enterprise Solution business in which email solution is first and import segment which enterprises are embracing now So they had to develop or buy companies with this technology .So Nokia acquired intellisynch and Motorola on Friday bought Good technology. Now life for independent Mobile email solution vendors like Visto and seven is tougher of course right now they are concentrating on Mobile operators to reach customers but as this technology matures and it becomes as integral part of devices the chances for independent companies to survive narrows down. My guess is that companies like Visto would be acquired by big companies like IBM, HP etc who are big Enterprise SW vendors who might be interested so that they can expand their offering to enterprise Mobility Space.

Who needs UMA ?

Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) allows mobile operators to offer their mobile services over Wireless LAN and other such technology. So basically what it means in short is operators can now offer cheap VOIP calls.Inspite of operators worldwide embracing this technology as one of tools to fight both pure VOIP providers (Vonage, Skype etc) and other Convergences challenges I would argue in this posting that this may not be the answer nor stop operators from being just a bit pipe providers like today’s ISPs.
T-Mobile in US and Orange in Europe are first few big operators to launch UMA services but many other operators are planning to do same in the future .So from end user perspective what it means is for example if you subscribe to this new T-Mobile Service by paying 19.99$ per month + your regular mobile plan cost+50$ for new handset that supports this technology+WLAN Router from T-Mobile +of course you need to have some sought of broadband connection at home after having these thing, what you get is that you can make unlimited phone calls within US when you are in home or near any T-Mobile wi-fi Hot spots .So you may be wondering what is new you get from this technology compared to using regular VOIP service like vonage or from cable operator what you get unique is that you can seamlessly move between home and outside and your mobile phone uses appropriate technology seamlessly .
Mobile operators after rapid growth in 90s are facing this problem that their basic voice business revenue is slowly down as voice traffic is moving to VOIP and at same time they are not able to generate any new killer data service which could yield better margins faced with this solution they teamed up with network infrastructure vendor to come up with this UMA technology which basically allows operators to utilize wide availability of broadband at home and provide VOIP services themselves at the same time keeping close control over who enters their network .For more details you can visit www.uma.org .
Though it looks like perfect solution for operators problem I would argue that this doesn’t serve end-user (i.e. consumer well) and hence their success will be limited at best .Basic reasons are
Cost: Cost of UMA service is still huge compared to other solutions like Cable VOIP providers or pure VOIP players like vonage .The reason is pretty obvious Mobile operators had to invest on new UMA equipments and subsidies UMA phone cost.
Smartphone’s: In future when there is wide spread availability of smart phones end-user can install skype or Google talk kind of VOIP clients as they do on PC and they have VOIP solution at no extract cost and more over this solution would work every where unlike UMA which works only in home and other restricted environment .Check www.fring.com if you have Nokia S60 Smartphone you can download free Google talk and skype client.
Unlimited data Plans: Soon operators will start launching widely fixed prices mobile data plans like what is available in broadband connection when this happens coupled with Smartphone availability makes UMA irrelevant. Already some operators like T-Mobile in US and Vodafone and orange in Europe have started offering this kind of plans but as it becomes popular it becomes even more cheaper for example in Finland you can get 1Mbps unlimited mobile data plan from Elisa for 30 euros.
So in short my argument is Mobile operators can invest and build these networks like UMA or IMS to offer services in controlled way but because the services they are offering can be delivered independently also without these kind of specialized network infrastructure at much cheaper price their services will not take off and finally they will be forced to just provide data connections (Data pipes) and let the consumers choose which service they would like to use in similar way to internet .I hope they release sooner than later and save money buy not building these kind of specialized networks .

Impact of technology on Financial services industry if any !

Internet and other technologies have significant impact on almost on every industry some of these industries business model have been significantly modified.Oh you may be wondering this are known issues and that why am I writing these in my posting, The reason is recently I stumbled upon one website which is offering a kind unique financial service though at first I was impressed by its services but soon it struck me that how much unique that service is in financial industry. My point is that financial industry which basically the kind of industry most suited to embrace internet and change their business model has not changed a bit especially in terms of business model .
Financial services industry which encompasses everything from personal banking to investment banking which forms the heart of capitalism is most suited to be most impacted from internet .Reason for this is at the heart or basic function of this industry is to act as middle player between the movement of capital (money) from where it is available to where it is needed. so in old days these middle player where much needed because of lack of communication and information about both players involved in the transaction, so theoretical internet which enables both communication and information flow across the globe should have drastically changed this industries landscape and reduced the other industries dependence on it .But what happened in reality is industry embraced internet and other technologies to improve internal productivity but protected their basic business model completely .
But slowly we are seeing some attempts to change that, of course they are very very minor attempts .I am trying to list some of them
Google attempts to use internet and auction based system to allocate its shares in IPO is one attempt to remove investment bankers service for that activity.
Prosper.com: Interesting service on net the one I mentioned in my first paragraph. its kind market place where individuals group together to finance another person .So essentially acting like some sort of bank but the whole process is transparent and more benefiting to individuals .Of course the risk mgmt and other things are still there but as this site attempt to mitigate that by using credit rating among peers I hope some of these methods will be successful. Think of similar kind of solution for raising capital through debt and other instruments be opened up and transparent to be participated by individual rather then the present structure of multiple layers then it may impact hugely the business case of many banks .
Zecco: A start-up that will allow consumers to trade stocks for zero commissions, versus $10 to $20 that many online brokers charge today.Intrestingly it has quite powerful backers like backers of Skye ,former Dutch Coco Cola CEO.It is intresting test case .This if successful to attract not only individual consumers but also fund mgr and other big traders then Brokerage firms revenue stream may be impacted -
Another very small example is that nowadays small web 2.0 companies are sold in auction in EBay .Think of situation were there is open trading place for companies themselves .The significant part of IB business would be effected .

Of course those entire example I put fwd are very minor but those ideas really catch up then we can see lot of changes. The most important thing why it has not happened is due to the fact that when it comes to money individual wouldn’t like to experiment and take risk but rely on time tested and trusted banks even though it may cost in terms of money .But my thinking is that over period of time as some people dare to try like in prosper.com other people will join later as they see it working and also much more beneficial to them.

Opensource router takes on Cisco

As I had written in my earlier posting about voip and open source and its impact on telecommunication network equipment business I would like to present another example that proves my earlier posting .I was reading this article in redherring I would recommend its worth to read it.
In short a start up called Vyatta is providing open source based router sw bundled on standard server HW from dell. For those of you who have been working or associated with telecommunication business know how radical this change is compared to the present models and practices.Ofcourse this wont make Cisco out of business or infact effect thier bottomline immediately ,but it is one clear trend if continues and gains momentum like it happened in pure SW area, then we may expect drastic change in business environment .Initially atleast this startup is targeting at small enterprise were this product suits well.

Open source and VOIP is nightmare for Network Equipment vendors

Inspiration for this post is an article I read in Linux world about how an university made huge savings by shifting to open source PBX from Cisco one, for those of you who is interested in reading this article here is the link .Though I have been following open source projects in the field of telecommunication in general for more than 4 years I have never been more convinced then now that these projects are going to impact networks vendors bottom-line and hence a serious opportunity for other players to entire the space .

It is pretty clear and accepted fact that Linux in Operating system space, MySQL in Database space, JBoss in App server space to name a few not only posed serious threats to traditional Software vendors but forced the industries business model for ever .IBM is a solid and biggest example the company that not only embraced open Source SW but also used it effectively to turn around its business and revenue from pure product based to today’s predominantly services based business. It is worth to note that before the rise of Linux which basically formed the nucleus/heart of open source movement the commercial proprietary SW ruled the market and had good pricing power making SW industry as one of the elitist and high margin industry .But the whole landscape has changed in span of little more than half decade .My point of writing this issue is to form a basis for comparison with what is happening today in telecommunication equipment business.

Telecommunication industry has not changed much from business model perspective from the days of first PSTN network nearly more then a century before. as a result of which you can see handful of big players who are there from nearly century controlling most of the market (eg Ericsson,Alcatel,Lucent to name a few).But things are changing rapidly after internet boom with IP establishing itself as undisputed layer for carrying traffic which resulted and gave opportunities for companies like Cisco to be created .But though there was some rationalization happening w.r.t to networking technologies but business model ( i.e still customer needs to shell out per licensee fee) didn’t change .But now I think with advent of VOIP to mainstream business coupled with open source movement in this field would definitely change the landscape,VOIP forms the nucleus/heart of open source movement in telecommunication industry same way as Linux formed the heart of open source movement in SW industry. Now the interesting thing to watch is which big telecommunication player would embrace open source to propel it next stage same way as IBM did it in SW industry? I guess there needs to be similar kind of crisis as experienced by IBM in one of the big telecommunication players for it to embrace it .So far telecommunication vendors are trying to merge among themselves to survive but it wont be too long when one of them at least is forced to embrace open source ecosystem and subsequently change its business model. Which may well form the basis for their survival in converged world also?

European operators Convergence Strategies

This posting continues on the convergence topic but from different player (i.e. Operator) perspective. Trigger for this posting are two separate announcements from two European telecom giants. Telecom Italia confirmed that it is restructurings its telecom business into two separate units one focusing on fixed business the other on Mobile .Where as at the same time worlds largest mobile operator Vodafone announced that it is teaming with BT (British Telecom) to provide fixed broadband service under its brand to its UK customers .Idea behind this posting is to try to figure out underlying strategies behind these companies.

Telecom Italia presently has 40 billion Euros debt at the same time the group has quite large sized fixed (includes broadband) and mobile business. Many pure large mobile operators like Vodafone would envy and love to have such strong fixed business. Basic reason being that in converged market if they own both business they can bundle services better and in turn increase not only customer base but also churn out better operating margins. But for Telecom Italia story is different after failing to leverage both business together they announced that they would separate it into two separate independent entities eventually as many expect that it may sell its separated mobile unit for an estimated 35 billion euros .which could be used to clear debt and in turn will allow it to concentrate on fixed business .Already it has announced content deals with Fox to stream its movies for its broadband customer base .So in short strategy seems to be that it would concentrate only on fixed business but the same time expanding itself as Multimedia content provider. My view is that they may partner with some mobile operators to bundle services if the market looks attractive for bundled services .instead of owning all network to deliver those services in-house.

Vodafone on the other hand which is presently a pure Mobile player it has been speculated for long time that it would acquire some major fixed player ,took a another interesting but similar approach ,it tied up with BT to offer broadband services under its brand name in UK.Vodafone in 1990s was known for acquisition based mobile growth strategy .the underlying logic at that time being that scale matters and being a dominant global pure mobile player gives the required edge to maintain high growth rate .But in last year or so as in western markets the mobile subscriber growth totally slows down with no significant data revenue streams visible at the same time to offset the slow growth on pure mobile voice revenue ,Vodafone was under severe pressure to have a convergence strategy to sustain growth .The option was to go into acquisition spree as at did in 1990s only this time target being fixed Telco so that they can offer bundled services . Or partner with fixed Telco. It is with BT announcement that it is at least for now clear that it would pursue partnership route to converged services.

So basically one thing that can be concluded is that 2 big operators find that partnering route to converged services is better then owning all networks themselves to deliver those services. From my view point it makes a perfect sense to partner then to own all networks themselves .Reasons are many but most important among them is with present technologies there are no synergies to own all networks i.e. there is no significant advantage to be gained .The situation may change in future when single network can provide all services with good quality which in my opinion is not true at least at the present stage .Though you may argue how about IP as underlying tech to deliver all services but in my opinion we may have to really wait for some more time to really happen because with present available deployed network technologies none has bandwidth that can provide all services .Let me leave to next posting what I mean by it and try to argue with proper examples.

Nokia Buys Again

Nokia buys again this time a Location based application provider Gate5.As suggested in my earlier posting that Nokia will buy more application providers in different strategically important domains this buy from Nokia justifies my statement. In this posting I will try to put my thoughts why Nokia bought this company.
To begin with Gate5 is a smaller company then their recent acquisition Loudeye.It has 70 employees and is based out of Berlin Germany. The financial terms were not disclosed but it definitely has no impact on Nokia quarterly results which indicates cost of the aquisation should be very low .Gate5 basically has Navigation applications portfolio targeting both in car navigation systems and Smartphone and PDA market .The part which interests Nokia is navigation application portfolio for S60 Smartphone. So the basic logic and reasoning behind this buy seems pretty clear that Nokia would like to ship this software as default in their high end N Series Devices which are expected to have inbuilt GPS receivers’ question might be is why couldn’t Nokia partner with some other more established and popular navigation SW vendors like Tom-Tom ,Route66 or Navicore who also have similar offerings My guess is that Nokia would try to push in long term to have GPS revivers in mid range phones also and would like to ship navigation SW as part of basic device offering so as to have a competitive offering. So in such a scenario to have cost effectiveness it is better to have application in house rather then through partnering process. Another interesting move might be that they start bundling this navigation SW with their Bluetooth enabled GPS receivers so as to offer complete solution rather then selling just GPS receivers to customers like now .So in all it makes sense to acquire company like Gate5 .
Another interesting thing to note is both gate5 and Loudeye buy are though strategically crucial for Nokia they went and bought small companies with tech assets rather then buying big companies with already established customer base for example instead of buying gate5 Nokia could even have bought much bigger and established company like Tom-Tom .This basically shows that Nokia thinks it has great brand value and the converged space is still infancy stage and hence by acquiring small tech focused companies today it would be in great position in future when this market hots up .And another thing is that Nokia would still like to be primarily device vendor but at the same time wouldn’t like the value to be taken away by SW and application service vendors hence would like to bundle crucial applications and services itself in devices and use it as differentiating factor w.r.t to competitators.I would say all of its competitors including Motorola are lacking or unclear about their strategy in this space i.e. converged device space)It would be definitely would be good to see how these companies react if and when this market of truly converged devices happen and also worth to watch is weather Nokia startergy really pays off .

Nokia Buys Loudeye what next?

Nokia buys Loudeye a Seattle based company for 60 million dollars recently. For size of Nokia this deal is nothing financially but a significant strategic move .It also indicates company’s intention to move fwd in new direction. I will try to justify my statements .As noted in my previous posting regarding zune about changing value chain and relevance of horizontal business in new converged space, this move from Nokia fits into that space.

By buying Loudeye Nokia would be launching some kind of music download service the scope and functionality we need to wait, but it looks like it will be competing with itunes and other service available today. Some analysts were questioning the logic of this move because it puts at risk Nokia's relationship with operators who are planning or have launched similar services themselves. In my opinion even though operators are big and important player for Nokia today but at the same time considering long-term future it should position itself in right direction in that context this Nokia move is strategically important it clearly shows Nokia willingness to look beyond present and also take some amount of risk so that they have right things in place for converged space.

So what do I mean by this is simple that in converged space in which digital music is one segment the value in the chain is not determined yet i.e. who make most money is not clear weather it is converged space device vendors( like Nokia,Apple,Samsung) or Horizontal components’ vendors (Like Microsoft with horizontal SW,TI with hardware chipset) or pure network service providers (Vodofone,Orange,Cingular) or application service providers (Google,Yahoo,iTune,Youtube etc).Of course all these segments and players are required but most important thing is which among these segments were most money will be made is big question and would be answered only by time . In this uncertain stage all the above listed players are trying to position themselves either by entering into each other segments so that they would be able to capture most value.

So Nokia a dominant mobile phone vendor is trying to position and transform itself to face new converged market place. First of all it is positing itself as major player in converged device space by launching different products with multiple capabilities most prominent among them is N series devices which have multimedia capabilities like camera, Music and video playing capabilities. They are trying to enter horizontal segment by licensing there dominant SW platform S60,the basic motivation to enter this segment is to make sure that other horizontal segment players like Microsoft doesn’t take away major portion of value in converged space. Now that leaves then service space it is here Nokia has no presence and acquisition of this new company helps it establish one service in music space. But of course for it to be truly big player in this pace it not only has to expand its service portfolio but also link it seamlessly with their device offering in similar way as apple did it for music. So it is clearly trying to be application service provider and may acquire many companies in this segment in future. Service providers like You Tube may be attractive target .I will hold my thoughts about potential targets for Nokia for my next posting.

So basically at this stage of converged space it seems that services are going to be critical component of the value chain and also important is to tie and bundle devices with services.

Microsoft announces Zune is this the way forward?

Microsoft confirmed their plans to launch digital media player and associated ecosystem which looks similar to ipod ecosystem.Ok this news is reported extensively in media my aim is not describe zune or predict weather it can make a dent on Apples ipod market share .But the idea here is to explore what does this move mean for future of digital players (which can include mp3 players, Internet tablets, Smartphone’s or so called converged devices) ecosystem.

If you go back in history to the time just before PC revolution the whole concept of horizontal hardware and software platform concept (i.e. like Windows + Intel platform (Wintel)) was not in existence .Apple, IBM and many other companies at that time introduced PCs with both HW and SW built in house, Infact this kind of system is known as closed systems and even Microsoft came into existence as a subcontractors to develop DoS OS for IBM PC. It was later that Microsoft and to a Large extent Intel which joined forces to create this new ecosystem of hardware and Software platforms, i.e. Microsoft and Intel by themselves will not produce PC but will supply horizontal platforms so that any other player can combine both these platforms and produce PCs.As result of this new ecosystem new players like DELL could enter and change the entire competitive landscape of the PC segment .I would attribute the high rate of growth of PC to this ecosystem because this lead to competition in market place which in turn lead to reduction in prices. But at the same time if you look at Apples Mac story during the same period even in spite of being technically superior product lost market share and was relegated to a minor niche player in PC segment .Some of the business pundits call Apples reluctance to give its superior OS as software horizontal platform to others including competitors as on of the biggest business blunder as they predict that if apple had horizontalised the sw platform Microsoft had no chance of survival .But that is any way history .one thing that is clear is Microsoft strategy of horizontalisation was more superior and successful strategy to Apples closed ecosystem strategy .

So my big question is Microsoft strategy of horizontalistion (Microsoft’s Music SW which is licensed to many HW mp3 vendors like iRiver) or Apples closed ecosystem (ipod is another great example of closed ecosystem) is most suitable for new digital world?

Ok now you may say that Microsoft had already embraced closed ecosystem in gaming console market by successful introduction of XBOX to compete against Sony’s Play station .But my point is Microsoft entered gaming console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo for the first time with Xbox they never tried to change ecosystem unlike in music player segment were first it took PC like approach relaying on many other players to make digital media players by just providing Software .But by the announcement of zune it has accepted that the old model was not working and it is forced to take Apples approach of closed system to compete with iPod .So big question is Microsoft going to revisit its strategy in many other segments were it has tried to play pure software vendor role and has not faced any considerable success .one such very lucrative segment on top of my mind is Smartphone segment so far it has licensed it its windows Mobile platform to many vendors like Motorola and Samsung without much of success to gain considerable market share from Nokia in that segment .Whatever little success that it has got in Smartphone segment has been in Enterprise segment and that to especially in North America. While Nokia which seems to be main rival to Microsoft in that space has not only has 60+% market share by its own phones but also played Microsoft horizontalisation game by licensing Nokia Smartphone SW platform (S60) to many of its competitors like Samsung,LG, Lenova etc.

Though I have raised more questions then answers but one thing is for sure all companies are fundamentally reevaluating their ecosystems and business models so that they are not left irrelevant in new digital converged world. Consolidation that is happening in industry (see earlier postings on this topic) is one such measure after reevaluations. Who knows it may be the time for Apples closed ecosystem to succeed.