Week of June 23, 2008

Helio Says Goodbye

Friday, June 27, 2008

While not a major player, Helio was the company that basically embraced the iPhone idea before Apple did. Helio was a mobile operator that linked their high end phones to a single carrier (marketed through their own company). This is called a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), and while Apple wouldn't admit to being one when they launched, their agreement with AT&T was little more than a transparent MVNO. There ended up being two major differences between what Helio did and what Apple did:

1) While Apple is linked to a specific carrier like an MVNO, Apple let AT&T handle all the carrier marketing and fulfillment. This allowed the iPhone to get tremendous marketing and coverage within AT&T stores and its website. Helio did it all itself, which gave it no marketing partner with the scope and power of an AT&T or Verizon.

2) Apple's iPhone really is revolutionary, while the Helio phones-despite being very good-were simply improvements on already tried and true mobile technology.

The importance of this story is how Google has learned from it. Like Apple, they are focusing on carrier partnerships, rather than creating their own mobile network. And, also like Apple, they are focusing on some groundbreaking technologies in their phones.

Dramatic Change To Internet Domains Coming?

Thursday, June 26, 2008

ICANN, the organization that oversees domain names on the Internet, has proposed the most dramatic change since it launched years ago: The ability to create customized top level domains. This means that rather than being limited to .com or .net or the less used .info, or .biz, a company or organization could create their own domain. For example, Chevrolet could adopt .chevy as their domain and then launch, cars.chevy or trucks.chevy. Before you decide to run out and purchase your radio station as a domain, however, note two things: This is just a proposal and the fees are going to be substantial (with the guidelines of $50,000 to $100,000 per domain as the fee).

It is debatable whether such domains make sense today, with users still used to typing ".com" by habit, but with wider adoption, this could make Internet addresses truly unique in the future, with everyone having a different top level domain, and .com domains becoming a relic of the past.

Nokia To Take Symbian Open Source

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Symbian is the most-used mobile phone operating system in the world. It was owned by a coalition of handset manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola. Nokia has just confirmed it is buying out its partners and will own Symbian 100%. But that's not the real story. Nokia also announced that the Symbian OS was going open source, which makes it a major threat and competitor for Google's Android OS, which hasn't even launched yet.

The story here is that in the mobile world, we have two competing views of the future preparing to battle: The open software model, embraced by Nokia and Google, and the closed system, embraced by Apple and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft. The real battle, however, is clearly the companies that can combine their software model with handset manufacturing-Nokia and Apple. As we've noted in our Pollack Media Confidential newsletter, history tells us that this battle won't be kind to Apple, which faced a similar battle in the PC market and watched Microsoft gobble up huge market share with its more open software platform.

Online Ad Spending In 2007 Up $1 Billion

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Ad Age released their annual survey of ad spending trends, and the news was fantastic for online, and not so good for others. How good was it for online? An increase in spending to the tune of $1 billion. Here's the pertinent quote: "Put another way, these top-tier marketers increased measured internet spending by $1 billion; slashed newspaper spending by $674 million; and cut TV budgets by $406 million."

Google Android Phone Launch Hits Some Snags

Monday, June 23, 2008

From the "it's a good problem to have" department, Google is going to have to delay the launch of its Android OS and associated phones on Sprint and Nextel networks due to the large amount of resources being dedicated to T-Mobile's fourth quarter launch. The downside for Google is that the Android system won't launch across multiple networks in 2008, but the positive sign is that the interest from T-Mobile is enough to make Google comfortable focusing on them. In real terms, a major launch with T-Mobile is probably worth more than a number of smaller announcements across more carriers. The question is thus: Will the Google phone be T-Mobile's bet against AT&T's iPhone? It looks that way, which is very good for the handset market and consumers.