During 2009, traditional media industry has been battling hard against P2P services. Legal woes against P2P services like Pirate Bay, Mininova and isohunt gave the impression to some analysts that P2P was more or less over. Besides, a massive communicational campaign to “educate” users about downloading legal content, the rise of streaming content as the main internet source of traffic and legal actions against individuals put a question mark about the sustainability of this technology in the future.
continue reading »
The consulting and Digital Marketing Company Multiplica just released a new study comparing source of revenues and business models from Top 100 web 2.0 sites today. Multiplica analyzed companies like Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, and Wikipedia Among others.
The study gives a pretty good picture about today’s web 2.0 business models and some ideas on way forward that I would like to share. continue reading »
According to a very close source to the microblogging company, Twitter will get 25 millions dollars due to their search agreements with Google and Microsoft. These revenues would be enough for Twitter to break even before end of this year according to the same source.
continue reading »
According to Reuters, Telefonica just bought Jajah, the VOIP service provider, for 200 Millions dollars. Jajah currently has around 15 million subscribers that can make cheaper phone calls on their landline and mobile phones via its site. There are seven key points for understanding Telefonica´s strategic move.
continue reading »
The world has achieved 4 Billion mobile phone users according to latest report from WCIS. With more than 60% mobile penetration, service providers are looking on how to onboard the next billion subscribers that will come mainly from emerging markets like China and India. According to UND studies, this segment lives on less than $2USD a day.
Therefore, operators wanting to seize this opportunity must find ways to reach less affluent markets in cost-effective and profitable ways. Doing business with the world’s 2 billion poorest people – 1/3rds of the world’s population – will require radical innovations in technology and business models.
But for companies with the resources and persistence to compete at for these customer segments, the prospective rewards include growth, profits and incalculable contributions to mankind.
continue reading »
If there is something that keep CEO’s at night in today’s mobile telecom industry is the scary thought of becoming a “Dumb pipe”. At least this is what most Telco analyst has predicted as the worst future scenario for mobile operator’s fate.
In a open an booming web 2.0 landscape, Telco’s have little or no control on several aspects of the eco system. The control rests either with the internet/web 2.0 disruptive innovators like Google, Yahoo, FaceBook, Twitter or lies with the OS system holder Nokia, Apple, Google, Palm, Microsoft among others.
The operator has been squeezed in to the value chain making their money through connectivity and that’s it. It is exercising less and less control over Content, Consumer or the Devices.
With voice moving towards zero tariffs (Skype, Google and others) and mobile broadband commoditizing fast, the margins of the operators who have been the unchallenged players in the Telecom eco-system is under huge pressure. In Summary, the operator is at a threat of being used simply to transfer bytes to and from the customer’s device and not being able to increase their position or add any additional services besides simple network access. The scary dumb pipe scenario is coming to chase mobile operators as it happened with ISPs some years back.
continue reading »
