Online Pricing: App Store Wars
February 16, 2010
Apple has figured out online pricing for music. The digital chains are attached to the children of the people at the Barcelona mobile hoe down. I am not sure Apple’s model applies as well to audio books and videos, though. I will admit that the iPhone App Store has been a bit of a surprise to me and my goslings. The iPhone was good looking and easier to use than some of the mobile clunkers I had previously owned. But the different pieces worked reasonably well with iTunes, the iTouch, the iPhone, and the App Store snapping my wrists together quickly.
A few moments ago I popped open my newsreader and saw a headline that caught me by surprise, probably not the magnitude of the surprise that the Apple vertically integrated approach to gizmos evokes, but close enough for an addled goose in the snow.
The article was “Two Dozen Carriers Worldwide Unite against Apple’s App Store.” After a bit of clicking, I noticed that dozens of comments were flashing around the Internet. The basics, according to MocoNews.net, a publication “healthily obsessed with mobile content”, reported:
Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create an “open international applications platform,” which is obviously in direct response to Apple’s success with its own iPhone App Store. Release. The announcement was made this morning at Mobile World Congress. In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three device manufacturers—LG (SEO: 066570), Samsung and Sony, Ericsson—are also supporting the initiative. All combined, the group reaches 3 billion subscribers worldwide, making it easily the largest app-store initiative.
Several observations:
- In the online monetizing wars, victory goes to the outfit who figures out how to get money and keep others out. The reason that there are a couple of big companies controlling information in certain market sectors is not an accident. The market coalesces around services that amass high value content. Music is not a must have to me, but I think Apple has done a good job of turning information about which I care not a whit into a must-have information type for its customers.
- Developers go where the money is and keep poking their heads up and honking when a potential new source of money lands in their pond. Developers are paying attention to Android because it is Google, free, and gaining support. If anyone puts a dent in Apple’s shiny vertical consumer combine, it will be Google. Then guess what. Google will be the “new” Apple. It is not Google management acumen; it is the way online markets work for certain information types. I know you don’t believe me, so take a gander (no pun intended) at the online vendors of legal content.
- The Balkans approach to battling a service-device chain is going to be an interesting management problem. Sony, for example, should have been Apple. Apple grabbed a space Sony dominated and then went at the children of Sony executives. Keep in mind that the folks running these companies united against Apple can find the root cause of Apple’s success by talking to their children. If there are any young employees around, ask them.
Now is it fair, just, and right to join together to beat up on a company that was on death’s door with a boss who was on death’s door? In today’s world, I know two dozen companies who think that this type of behavior is just ducky (no pun intended).
My thought is that the telecommunications companies have problems beyond Apple. Maybe the Balkans’ method is the new management revolution? I will keep an open mind.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since the write up is about management strategy, I will report scribbling for no dollars to the Federal Consulting Group, a very strategic operation. Do you read its reports? I think the telecommunications companies do. Check ‘em out here.
Googler Alfred Spector Grants Interview
February 15, 2010
TechRadar ran “Google’s Alfred Spector on Voice Search, Hybrid Intelligence and Beyond”. If you are a Google watcher, you will want to read this write up. The “hook” for the story is voice search. Now before you get too excited, the Googler does not mention that the voice search interface for a search engine is the product of top Googlers Sergey Brin and Monika Henzinger. You know Mr. Brin, but Ms. Henzinger may be even more intellectually adept. You may want to snag a copy of US7366668 because it can provide some useful insight into the references that Mr. Spector makes in his comments.
Second, you need to know who Alfred Spector is. He’s been at Google a couple of years, joining in 2007. Prior to founding Transarc Corp., he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. Like most Googlers, he has a wheelbarrow full of awards, including his being inducted as a Fellow of the ACM in 2006.
For me, the key points in the write up were:
- Google’s voice search has come along rapidly.
- Voice search is important in mobile search.
- Machine translation is coming along.
Okay. I understand.
Was there a nugget that makes the goose’s feathers stand up?
Yep, and here’s the key comment in the article. Mr. Spector is quoted as saying:
“It’s very difficult to solve these technological problems without human input,” he says. “It’s hard to create a robot that’s as clever, smart and knowledgeable of the world as we humans are. But it’s not as tough to build a computational system like Google, which extends what we do greatly and gradually learns something about the world from us, but that requires our interpretation to make it really successful.
How are these human inputs integrated into voice and other tough information problems? That question is not answered. My new Google study on rich media does describe some of the systems and methods that Google uses. Surprising stuff and not in Mr. Spector’s comments.
When Mr. Brin or Mr. Page “invent” something. Do you think that invention is important? I do. That “hybrid intelligence” stuff is interesting as well.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I mention a patent, I will report my hopeless state of poverty to the USPTO, an outfit with a surfeit of financial and intellectual riches.
Google Flashes Star Trek Gizmo
February 8, 2010
Short honk: In 2006 one of my partners and I made a series of presentations to Big Telecommunications Companies. After about 15 minutes of introductory comments, I perceived the reaction as my bringing a couple of dead squirrels into the conference room, chopping them up, and building a fire with the telco executives’ billfolds. Chilly and hostile are positive ways to describe the reaction to my description of Google’s telecommunications related technologies. Fortunately I got paid, sort of like a losing gladiator getting buried in 24 BCE in a mass grave.
You can see telco woe when you read and think about the story in the Herald Sun, “Google Leaps Barrier with Translator Phone.” The story apparently surfaced in the paywall secure London Times but the info leaked into the world in which I live via Australia. The key point in the write up was the sentence:
If it [a Google phone with automatic translation] worked, it could eventually transform communication among speakers of the world’s 6,000-plus languages.
Well, if it worked, it means that the Googlers’ voice search, machine translation, and low latency distributed computing infrastructure will find quite a few new customers in my opinion. Think beyond talking, which is obviously really important. I wonder if entertainment executives can see what the telco executives insisted was impossible tin 2006.
One president of a big cellular company in the chilly Midwest said in a very hostile tone as I recall, “Google can’t do telecommunications. It’s an ad company. We’re a telecommunications company. There’s a difference.”
Oh, is there? Bits are bits in my experience. I used to watch Star Trek and so did some Googlers assert I.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I will report non payment to the FCC, a really great entity.
Attensity Goes for Mobile
January 21, 2010
I saw the headline “Attensity Announces New Mobile Features for Attensity Analyze for VOC”. VOC means voice of the customer. The acronym is gaining popularity as a synonym for customer support. As you know, customer support sounds so darned good and so easy to say when giving a sales pitch. But when you buy a gizmo and have a question, customer support is almost as bad as having a kidney stone when you are having a root canal. I find the “your call will be recorded for quality purposes” one of the most memorable pieces of disinformation I have encountered. When one gets to a person, I find that the individual reads a script and often does not listen to my question.
I lost a bank ATM card whilst undergoing a security check at Boston Logan airport on January 6, 2010. When I arrived in Philadelphia, I discovered that my bank ATM card, a gift card for a book store, and a handful of business cards were missing. I called my bank and requested that the card be “killed”. I was rushing to a connecting flight, and the bank reluctantly agreed to “kill” the card but only after I agreed to a $10 service charge, providing my social security number twice, my address twice, and verification via a “yes” or a “no” that I had an account at the bank. That made a wonderful impression on me because I don’t think there are too many people who knew the card number, my social security number, my bank account number, and my middle name. The institution? Ah, the fraction bank, Fifth Third.
Customer support, therefore, raises some sunken baggage, and I think the VOC acronym is designed to dance around the connotations of customer support. Well, I learn quickly, so this news story is about customer support. Attensity, according to the news item,
announced new mobile functionality for its award-winning Attensity Analyze for VOC. … Attensity Analyze for VOC offers users deeper capabilities for understanding and acting on customer feedback.
The story continued:
The new mobile functionality for Attensity Analyze for VOC enables users of mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone, the Verizon Droid, and the Google Nexus One to analyze Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback across a variety of customer conversation channels including emails, CRM notes, survey responses and social media. Users can select any of their Attensity Analyze dashboards and switch between various views from any mobile device. Interactive drill-downs allow for deep exploration of data, while automatic issues and topic alerts allow customer service professionals and executives to be alerted in near-real time to potential crises or issues with their company or their competitor’s products.
If you are struggling with your own organization’s customer support demons, you may want to check out the Attensity offering. Sounds really good. Just like an executive’s promise that his / her company provides customer support.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2010
Oyez, oyez, oyez. (I think I needed three oyezs to check out Google deduplication method revealed in US6658423.) I received no dough for this write up. I will report this sad fact to the Federal Reserve Bank in St Louis, a publisher of economic research on many topics often unrelated to monetary policy.
Google and the Real Estate Squish
January 18, 2010
When I was putting the finishing touches on Google: The Digital Gutenberg, I did some testing of the “old” Google Base. That service, before it underwent a major overhaul, included job listings and real estate listing. You may have stumbled upon real estate information when you were searching Google Local. I found that for certain areas, the system would provide pictures of houses for sale and in some cases backlinks to more detailed listings. If you navigate to Google Local and run the query “condominium Baltimore Maryland” you could (at 9 24 am, January 17, 2009, see this result set:
I have written extensively about various Google technologies that make this type of service possible. These include the programmable search engine invention and the work of the dataspace team, among others.
I read in “Google to Scoop Up Real Estate Sites” that some talk about Google purchasing real estate services. My research indicates that acquisitions are an easy way for Google to acquire expertise. The potential of Google’s providing a meta service to organize and make coherent the patchwork of services related to real property has been on the Google radar for years. My recollection is that Google patent documents from the early 2000s reference these types of applications.
When thinking about real estate, it may be helpful to keep in mind the range of services that a real estate transaction requires. My hunch is that real estate is one exemplary application of Google’s approach to online services.
To sum up, if the publishing and telco sector thought that Google was disruptive, wait until the real estate food chain figures out what’s about to happen. Once again: when you see overt instances of a Google application, it is too late. This is the gap problem that befuddles a number of companies affected by the Google’s expanding technical domain. Visualize a hard copy publication containing houses for sale and rent. Visualize a Google real estate service on a mobile device. Yikes, bad news for the directory crowd do you think?
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2010
Ah, gentle reader, no one paid me to put this shameless plug for my Google monographs in this blog. I will report this to the US Department of Housing & Urban Development.
Personalized Playlists
January 15, 2010
I read “PerfectStream: The Future for Personalized Video Playlists, Advertising?” and thought that it was a good idea. I think that the sentence that snagged me was:
Munich-based PerfectStream is taking the business-to-business route and hopes to license its technology out to media and tech companies that already have professionally-produced or user-generated content. It came out of stealth this week and has raised funding solely from Brandenburg.
I recall reading about personalized playlists somewhere else. Maybe a Google patent application. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2010
Sad to say a freebie. Possible patent research ahead. I will report my non-compensation to the ever vigilant USPTO.
Quote to Note: Apple Exec Turned Googler Comment
January 10, 2010
“Live from Las Vegas: Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin” provides one view of the Google Android play. The statement is attributed to Andy Grover, founder of Danger, a mobile computing company. Here is the quote:
No one’s breathing down your neck, he says. No one’s trying to upsell you.
Consumers may perceive the Nexus One’s marketing one way. Telco executives don’t feel Google’s breath. Google is standing on the doorstep drooling. Google’s customer support unit may feel more heat than those valiant workers anticipated.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2010
A freebie. Due to the references to heavy breathing I will report my unpaidness to the director of the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
Gune: Mobile Metasearch
January 6, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Gune, a mobile metasearch system. The reader’s link pointed me to “Gune, a New Mobile Search Engine.” The write up said:
The new Gune solution comes as a meta-search system, meaning that it looks over other websites and provides users with a single page of results, optimized for access from mobile phones and smartphones. At the same time, the solution consults other search engines to deliver the results, and the popular Google and Bing are on the list.
The developer of the service is Handcase, a developer of mobile software based in Brazil (where I used to live). You can reach the Gune service at this page. When I get more details, I will report them. Maybe I will have to make a trip to Brazil to research this company in person. In the meantime, a news release is here.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 6, 2010
A freebie. I will report this to the Brazilian embassy in Washington, DC. I can hear the music of Carlinhos Brown now.
Toktumi Forced to Learn How to Surf
December 27, 2009
Short honk: Gigaom provides a “surf or die” example in “When Google Attacks: Toktumi’s Tale”. The write up summarizes what a mobile phone gizmo maker did to stay in business when Googzilla strolled into its market. Interesting example of scrambling on a digital surf board. Key sentence for me?
Sisson managed some of this by using Google’s own services to help expand his business. Reasoning that potential Google Voice customers would search for the term on Google, he bought a Toktumi ad against Google Voice searches. He said the whole experience actually helped Toktumi because it educated consumers and businesses about the benefits of a hosted PBX. It doesn’t hurt that Toktumi lets users bring in their existing telephone numbers, rather than assigning them one.
Better than drowning.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 27, 2009
No one paid me to write this. I think I have to tell the poobahs at TRICARE Management, who do care._
Cha Cha Dances Cheek to Cheek with Investors
December 25, 2009
Short honk: TechCrunch reported in “ChaCha Raises Another $7 Million” that Cha Cha raised more money. The story reported that the mobile search company has raised lots of money. The company said:
ChaCha is like having a smart friend you can call or text for answers on your cell phone anytime for free! ChaCha works with virtually every provider and allows people with any mobile phone device – from basic flip phones to advanced smart phones – to ask any question in conversational English and receive an accurate answer as a text message in just a few minutes.
The idea is that a human can answer a question more effectively than a search system. Delivering human powered search results to a mobile device is the unique selling proposition for the Indiana company. Big bet. Maybe a big payoff?
Stephen E. Arnold, December 25, 2009
A freebie. I drove around Indianapolis today (December 23, 2009). No one paid me to do this. I would have paid to leave the state. Too flat. I will report this to the Carmel (Indiana) Police Department.
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