Monthly Archives: July 2012

If Devices are Merging with the Software Companies Is the Network Next?

  By Carl | July 9, 2012 - 12:06 am | Opinion
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My cynical friends are arguing about who is the better acquisition for Microsoft?  RIM or Nokia.  The argument starts with a very good analysis from John Gruber about Microsoft’s Surface announcement and that from a marketing perspective MSFT cannot get out of its own way.

However, at the end of the day I am still not sure this makes sense.   We will include this in our discussion on Apple Tel to be held on August 16th.   Join us by clicking here to register

To Review here are the market caps that matter

COMPANY STOCK SYMBOL MARKET CAP
AMAZON AMZN 101 B
Apple AAPL 567 B
ATT T 208 B
Clearwire CLWR     2 B
Google GOOG 191 B
Intel INTC 132 B
Microsoft MSFT 254 B
Nokia NOK     8 B
Nuance NUAN     8 B
Oracle ORCL 142 B
Orange FTE   33 B
RIM RIMM     4 B
Sprint S   10 B
Telefonica TEF   19 B
Verizon VZ 126 B
Vodafone VOD 138 B

 

I dont find the tablet particularly as strong as everyone else does.  As a matter of fact.  I find it less and less intriguing for business work.  While most of meetings were innudated with iPads a year ago the PC has come back strong.

I believe companies are lemming like when it comes to decisions.  Google made GoogleTalk and Froogle at the sametime which made ebay knee jerk to buy Skype.  I can make a case that Microsoft made the Skype acquisition just to get it out of proximity to Avaya which could have really used it.  But like other Venture funds Silver Lakes goal was maximize revenue not find synergies.

Now comes the integrated hardware story and candidly i don’t like it. I can not afford to buy an Apple toaster everytime they decide to screw around.  I find myself in the apple store these days almost as much as I am in the grocery store putting up with the near genius of barring me from touching my machine in a useful manner.

Candidly Apple’s biggest genius is the fact they have “insourced” the truck roll to retail outlet.  I never walk into an empty store.  It’s clear I am in the Whole Foods computer market.  I make an appointment and wait.

If this is the future of computing we should stop talking about the cloud.

I am having a rough time buying that hardware integration is essential for today’s software.  I think the history of Nokia’s Symbian problems should make Microsoft shy away (since it can’t resolve its own legacy issues).

At least RIM has a JAVA story that can match well to the Windows  Server migration strategy.  One other thing we should notice.  RIM has hired ex Microsoft exec Alec Saunders, who is evangelizing development efforts and I think he is making headway.

However, the story is not about a phone, it’s about the network of resources

Given the fact that we use a smart phone only 15% of time to talk I think the term smart phone is rapidly becoming the 2012 version of Vint Cerf’s “Horseless Carriage”.  I think Microsoft should as Henry Sinnreich says, “Leave the Dead to Bury the Dead.”

If you are looking for the blue ocean strategy for Microsoft,  I think the launch pad is xbox.  They have included augmented reality and what they should do is embrace and expand beyond the iPad.

What should Microsoft do next?  I think the answer is to get Voice Recognition rock solid.  From that point of view, I would suggest that Nuance is the only company in the market worth buying.

If we are going to get to our Star Trek future the voice recognition is the path.   However, almost everything I know about voice recognition is based on software not hardware.  I cannot make a case that the hardware is the important part of this equation.

I don’t think the device of our future has fallen into our lap yet.

And if Apple wants to own a network, someone is going to have to show me how the margins improve for them.

 

A Century of Links Can’t be Ignored, but Can be Debated

  By Carl | July 2, 2012 - 7:47 pm | Uncategorized
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Rarely do I let the here and now interfere with my writing about the future. Companies merge and divest in their own time at their own speed. When Rupert Murdoch, says he is splitting the assets and then in talking with David Faber http://bit.ly/LcyR8Z it becomes clear all he is doing is doubling the accounting. I just let it pass. When people call for RIM to split and give up the handset business, while ogling over the tight integration of Apple. I let it pass.

However, CenturyLink seems to have merged the worst parts of its acquisitions. The US West assets that became Qwest and were merged with Century Links’s other acquisition of Embarq seems to have given us a less than perfect discussion. While Craig Moffet has been a fan of Qwest’s “leave it in” strategy of keeping the cash cow copper milked in the outside plant, Qwest has been doing some very nice solutions with Ethernet for other wireless carrier’s backhaul.

However, my former colleague Peter Copeland was given the task of advocating the copper DSL alternative in favor of WISPs. I feel for Peter. He is a brilliant guy. Peter did his best in his analysis to paint the picture that CenturyLink wanted to defend a century of copper being used to link things together today.

However, the analysis shows the problem with the FCC’s transition of the “voice” network. As I have pointed out several times, we are becoming a wireless not a wireline world and we are only using our smart phones 15% of the time for voice. The burden of migrating the old infrastructure is not about maintaining status quo copper, it is to “ensure universal availability of modern networks capable of providing advanced mobile voice and broadband service ”. In my area I have had fun showing the shucking of copper http://youtu.be/PnEb3bT_ctY that is going on by my local operator.

More is the pity.

When Peter is charged with defending the cash cow and suggesting that WISPs are not an alternative, he has to ignore the impact of Cooper’s law on wireless and Metcalfe’s law on network build outs. In other words, he has to isolate the future from the current moment in time. The technological arguments made in the separate document run against the commissions own experience in looking at the opportunities with Wi-Fi and TV White Space. Brough Turner does a great job exploring the future here http://blogs.broughturner.com/2011/10/valuing-the-white-spaces-above-3-ghz.html and for the real engineers his further link to Wikipedia should be read.

However, this is a simpler discussion. Is it time for the USF replacement CAF to be a step forward or merely a maintenance plan. In Centurylink’s arguments the old is advocated without a migration strategy and that flies in the face of the CAF goal to “minimize the universal service contribution
burden on consumers and businesses ”. As our friend Richard Shockey would point the technology that CenturyLink is advocating is suffering from an end of life cycle that is going to keep increasing the costs.

After a century of copper and quarter century of USF, the time has come to see the future fulfilled with something that expands the core of competition and not lifelines links to the past.

If I am making sense to you and more importantly if you have a goal of seeing the unserved or underserved have access to the same experience as the rest of us. Please file with the commission your comments http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs// .

My other invitations to participate:
To all my US readers Happy Independence day, The Internet has given us all a lot of independence, I am hoping that it will always do so. Even if the ITU wants to mandate the way our equipment works.

For my friends hoping to see the product guys exert some power, I wrote this article http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/topics/4g-wirelessevolution/articles/2012/06/27/296580-apple-tel.htm Join us on the conference call August 16th to see if Apple Tel is the answer. http://www.zipdx.com/Form/EventCall/vWN3lxlgEW?embedded=1

And on the M2M side, Matt Gleeson tells me I am about proactive systems. I think I am just advocating logically. What do you think? http://m2m.tmcnet.com/topics/m2mevolution/articles/296575-will-video-surveillance-jo-the-rest-us-m2m.htm Join us on the webinar. July 11th. http://bit.ly/QifrOn

Tell us about your use of the Internet http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/internettime and your concerns about Net Neutrality http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NetNeutrality .

Again, I appreciate your reading these articles to the end and I look forward to hearing from you.