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Monday, April 07, 2003 |
More on Hot Spot Uptake Hot spots aren't seeing the numbers yet they need to survive: T-Mobile once again says they're not promoting their service, which is specious (see my earlier comments). The crux of the article is this: Wi-Fi use "is certainly not growing at the same pace as its footprint," said In-Stat/MDR analyst Amy Cravens. "We are seeing an increase in locations, but not a significant increase in usage of those locations." This is what's motivating Intel's Centrino campaign: even though it's non-unique to stick a Wi-Fi card into a laptop, Intel would like to make the idea of wireless access with a laptop so compelling that people dump their 1997 to 2001 laptops and upgrade to a 2003 laptop. Especially businesses. I keep finding out more and more about how business purchase cycles are several years long, and thus there are plenty of laptops running Windows 98 and NT which could add Wi-Fi but not with the kind of ease and reliability of using it under Windows XP with the latest, greatest battery-shepherding technology. Businesses don't want to insert PC cards in thousands of laptops; Centrino avoids that even if it's nothing particularly special....
Most relevant anecdote here is that HotSpot growth is exponential, but usage is not nearly there. Will this lead to a boom then bust in HotSpot initiatives?
11:51:28 AM 
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Are You Ready For This? : Shared broadband access has driven demand for home networking so far--but this year, sharing entertainment will be the big lure, according to a new...
Not at all surprising....sharing media b/w PCs and traditional consumer devices is the real killer app of home networks, not sharing the broadband connection itself.
11:09:08 AM
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MMS needs Digital Rights Management standard : "On top of all the other challenges facing MMS before it can become the success that the mobile operators are hoping for and boost...
I've come across various news stories and product companies focused on delivering content to mobile devices, and invariably they talk about their DRM solution. What gives? Are we all talking about the same thing here? DRM appears to have gone from being a relatively clearly defined technical problem space -- e.g. secure, policy-based content distribution -- to being a marketing phrase similar "CRM". Most of the "DRM Solutions" I've seen for wireless are really no more than access control systems tied to subscriber accounts.
As phones do become fuller clients that can download and then re-direct and send, which MMS promises to enable, this could be somewhat of an issue, but no different than what we have today with email, where users have decidely rejected DRM technologies. It looks to me like an implicit collaboration between the carriers and content companies who are hoping to keep mobile a closed space, walled garden approach.
11:00:28 AM
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The Evolution of Consumer Payments : Changes in consumer payment technologies---how will it effect digital content payments?...
This piece in Finance Times talks about the emerging standardization of wireless payment technology by major credit card and payment technology providers. Based on ISO 14443, these approaches use very short-range wireless radio to comunicate between a secure, personal device and a payment collection interface. This is akin to systems like "SpeedPass" for tollroads and gas station pumps. Makes sense to me.
10:54:33 AM
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Is Site Registration Based on a Fundamental Marketing Error? : An argument by Barry Parr that targeting by demographics is usually the wrong way to target online advertising. "On the Web, you can target...
This is decent piece on why profiling of users is not nearly is useful as profiling of user context. Hearing Sergery Brin from Google talk about AdWords and the drive to contextual, content-driven advertising really drove this home for me. I'd much rather have ads based on what I'm reading about/seeing than ads based on consumer profile meta-data. Of course, it raises interesting questions like "what advertisement would I see if I'm reading a story about the bombing of iraq?". Lockheed-Martin?
10:40:42 AM
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Sony TV Would Grab Streams From the Net : Sony is developing a plasma screen television set that's intended to tune in streaming video from home networks and the Internet as easily as...
It's great to see a mainline consumer manufacturer start to imagine this stuff in primary devices. Why only the flatscreen, I don't know, as this is all generally needed in any digital-enabled TV. Lately, I've been playing around with a variety of hardware/software combinations that attempt to redistribute PVR and other recorded audio/video content from home networks into televisions and stereos. Most of the products are still too awkward and unreliable to stand-up to consumer acceptance.
10:37:33 AM
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Bertelsmann's DRM Services Company Restructures; Exits Publishing : Bertelsmann's Digital World Services (DWS), its DRM service provider business, reduced its staff in order to focus exclusively on the wireless market.nbsp It is...
Seems that first and second generation DRM providers are still struggling to find a robust enough market. Everyone in DRM and micro-payments seem to be heading to wireless because of the apparent willingness of consumers to pay for content on mobile phones. Is it inevitable that content on wireless goes the way of the web, or is there something special about mobile content that I'm missing?
10:33:57 AM
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© Copyright 2004 Jeremy Allaire.
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