A Dramatic Change in Core Functionality

What is the core value of enterprise application? What is the core value for any PC application used by consumers? In times past, one might have answered "productivity" for an enterprise. In the consumer space, entertainment probably rivals productivity.

And though those might still be the right answers going forward, there's something new afoot. How are productivity and entertainment realized?

Increasingly by use of social and communications mechanisms, ranging from email, messaging, downloads, uploads, managed and hosted services, cloud computing and social networking.

Software increasingly works because it is connected to other software and other people. In some real sense, even when productivity or entertainment is the "value," value is realized only in the form of communications and connected computing.

As Bill Gates steps from history's computing stage, that's the observation that occurs. Bill Gates deserves thanks for personifying the "PC era." Maybe we don't have a name yet for what is coming, or any single person, company or application to define it.

Who could forget Time magazine naming the "PC" the person of the year? Who thinks it will be so easy to tag what is coming?

Why People Miss 30-50% of Calls

According to studies sponsored by Nokia, people who carry their mobile in their pockets sometimes or always miss 30 percent of inbound calls.

People who carry mobiles in their handbags sometimes or always miss half of all their inbound calls. That's reason enough for mobile providers and device manufacturers to investigate other ways of distributing the inbound call function.

It's hard enough to connect with a person when busy and unavailable to speak immediately. It's even harder now that so much voice traffic has shifted to mobile methods. Now, even when a person is available, calls are missed simply because the "alert" function has failed.

Some of us try to get around this problem by putting devices into "vibrate" mode. That works well enough until the phone is out of the pocket and sitting on a desk someplace. Then we forget that there won't be an audible tone--and we miss calls that way.

Three Screen Ads: Heat More than Light

At least some tier one service providers have high hopes for advertising spend based on targeting techniques and availability on three screens (TV, PC, mobile).

You see huge numbers around online ad spending, mobile ad spending or targeted ad spending. Nobody knows what will happen, except that share will continue to shift from existing media to online and mobile.

It doesn't seem so clear to me that new ad revenues will be transforming for either cable or telco providers, though.

Cable has been at the ad game for quite some time, and the overwhelming amount of money made by ca cable operators comes from recurring services.

In fact, cable modem and voice services already surpass total ad revenues. As a new revenue stream, it's important, to be sure.

The issue is how significant targeted advertising can be, when location and other attributes are easy to assimilate as part of the placement decision. If history provides any guidance, the answer will be "far less than you think."

Cable TV Model for Some Parts of the Content Ecosystem

"An unconstrained profit-maximizing platform charges a positive fee to the other side of the market if and only if content providers value additional consumers higher than consumers value additional content providers."

In other words, platform and service providers have opportunity to earn revenue from content partners when new, emergine or highly-focused content partners want expedited carriage, placement or promotion on platform portals.

It's the same sort of thing the cable industry long has had as a business practice. Popular networks get paid, low-viewership networks often must pay to get carriage (shelf space). In a service provider context, the analogy is that promotion, targeting, location, billing and other features and services can be so useful a content partner might be willing to pay to obtain them.

If, on the other hand customers highly value a particular content provider, a rational platform simply will make sure the popular provider is well supported, and will do nothing to impede customer access.

It's still an emerging sort of thought, and the services and applications platforms can offer partners isn't so well developed. But it is coming.

IP-Based VPNs to Surpass Frame Relay, ATM in 2009

2009 should be the year the installed base of IP-based virtual private networks surpasses the installed base of frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode sites, Vertical Systems Group forecasts suggest.

The shift has been going on for years, but a crossover point would be significant, as it will be when the installed base of IP phone systems surpasses that of digital systems.

Adoption of the ascendant technology gets a boost when vendors begin to slow and end development of legacy applications and gear.

Sprint Wins with Instinct

Sprint Nextel Corp. has broken company sales records with its new Samsung Instinct, leading to temporary shortages of the touch-screen phone in some stores, the company says. Despite placing what it calls the largest-ever initial order for a 3G handset, Sprint still underestimated demand, apparently.

E-mail access, Internet browsing, GPS navigation tools, interactive maps and one-touch click-to-call access have met "extremely heavy use," the company says.

The phone costs $129.99 with a two-year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate. The obvious observation: iPhone has had a transforming impact on handset design.

Intel Sees "No Compelling Case" for Vista

New York Times staff reporter Steve Lohr says Intel has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” an Intel source says.

To be sure, large enterprises have all sorts of applications that might have to be upgraded or modified when making a major operating system change. Consumers don't generally have those problems.

Still, it's a bit striking when a major Microsoft partner makes a decision like that. Chipmakers like it when new operating systems and apps require lots more powerful processors and lots more memory. Except when it's their money, apparently.