Recent Endorsements

You've left us really enthused about the whole digital dimension and we're looking forward to developing our plan with your support.
Simon Beardow - Deputy Director, British Council, Vietnam

Saturday 7 August 2010

Upwardly and Outwardly mobile in China

BEIJING - OCTOBER 21:  A Chinese visitor speak...Image by Getty Images via @daylife

According to Shan Phillips, Vice President, Greater China, Telecom Practice, The Nielsen Company, widespread ownership of mobiles is only a fairly recent development in China, but consumers there have fully embraced the technology.

Further more they are putting it to use in a far more robust manner than their US and European counterparts.

Landlines are either a thing of the past for consumers or they have leapfrogged this requirement and gone directly to their mobile for the web and voice communications.  Parts of the Indian subcontinent have experienced a similar trend.

As Shan Phillips states, they don’t require hardwired Internet access for their fix of the Web. With mobile phones, everything they need is in the palm of their hand.

Competition amongst providers is getting increasingly tough with even the world's biggest phone company, China Mobile,experiencing  a slump of 10 percent from a 12-month high set on Aug. 10, 2009.  The costs of promoting third-generation wireless services has also contributed to its slowed earnings growth.

Analysys International reports that the second quarter of 2010 saw the domestic mobile phone sales volume in China reach 59.16 million units.

Meanwhile 3G mobile phone sales reached nearly 150 million units in the first half of 2010.  It is the lure of being able to use abundant mobile phone functions which has ensured that "intelligent" phones have the highest uptake.

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Friday 6 August 2010

Waving Goodbye

Image representing Google Wave as depicted in ...
Hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread, Google Wave was set to revolutionise our lives.  Now the plug has been pulled.

A number of these big ideas miss the mark because they do not meet a market need; they are clever ideas with nowhere to go.

The functionality of Google Wave is of interest but it should always have been part of a larger application suite, not a release it its own right.  Its cleverness masked its purpose, users couldn't grasp the concept and it withered at the vine.

When even the company finds it difficult to explain a products purpose in life (it was meant to make email obsolete) you know it is going to have problems surviving long term.





Liane Cassavoy of PC World in her article Google Wave Flops: What Google Service Will Go Next? predicts that Google Buzz and Google Fast Flip could be next to go.

She may well be right as I for one will not be "buzzing" this article.
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Tuesday 3 August 2010

Will This Online Video Company Survive?

Image representing Jason Liebman as depicted i...
Finding a market niche in the online world is tough going but Howcast seems to be surviving.  Forming alliances with the big boys such as Yahoo!, AOL, Hulu and Microsoft's MSN has certainly helped.

Howcast streams over 25 million videos a month and was founded by Jason Liebman (pictured) a former Googler.

Approaching two million downloads across iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry phones, Howcast claims to be "the #1 mobile app for instructional content - wherever you are".

The are some offbeat "how to" topics waiting to be discovered and shared. These include:
  • How To Survive a Bear Attack
  • How To Pick a Karaoke Song If You Can’t Sing
  • How To Stop Blushing ( presumably after the bear attack?) and
  • How to Walk in High Heels


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