Collaboration is More than "Communications"

Collaboration is much more than communications, as Dave Michels points out. That is an area of fuzziness when we now speak of "unified communications and collaboration."

Communications is supposed to aid and foster collaboration. "Unified" approaches are supposed to help.  Sometimes they do. But not always.

Some of us are unfortunately old enough to remember when new investments in local area networks and related technology were supposed to improve productivity. Then we went for a decade without seeing measurable productivity gains people could agree on.

Then we had a decade when those investments finally seemed to pay off. The point here is that productivity gains sometimes require retraining people, so processes can be redesigned. And that can take a while. More than just a couple of years, as it turns out.

That does not mean IP communications will fail to deliver meaningful productivity gains. It does mean we often overestimate what is possible in the near term. But we also tend to underestimate what is possible longer term.

Somebody recently reminded me that some of us can remember a world before "Carterfone." Others just "heard about it." Of course, the Carterfone decision happened about 42 years ago. The issue then was simply the legal right to attach a modem to the public switched telephone network.

Where we are today began with Carterfone, but has far outstripped what anybody might have believed was possible. One suspects the world will be affected far beyond what anybody now can imagine in another 40 years.

We are likely then to face incredulous looks when people are told how work and play was mediated by networks in 2010. "That's all you could do?" is likely to be their response. Of course, in 2050 we will be about as far from Carterfone as Carterfone was from the invention of the telephone.

We will get further than any of us can now imagine. But we can go a decade or so before any important innovation has time to really change the way people live and work.

And some innovations just never have too much long-lasting impact. ISDN, ATM, and OSI come to mind. Don't worry, in some ways they are just like Carterfone: steps on a long journey.

What Does iTunes and App Store Behavior Indicate?

About 75 percent of iTunes digital music buyers are 25 or older, says Forester Research analyst Mark Mulligan. I admit I haven't been paying any attention to the demographics of iTunes downloaders, so that comes as a surprise to me.

Apple iPhone app "for fee" downloads, on the other hand, seem to be growing at a faster rate than iTunes songs did. I haven't seen age demographics on iPhone downloads, but it stands to reason that users 25 and older are the dominant iPhone demographic. In 2008 and 2009 it appears that about 30 percent of iPhone buyers were younger than 25.

What might all that mean? Mulligan argues that music products are not as interesting to buyers as applications are. He also argues that music is not as important to buyers under 25 as it seems to be among users older than 25.

The implication there is that iTunes and music downloads have not quite caught on with younger users as one might casually assume is the case. One might note that music purchases might be more common among users with higher disposable income, which would skew to older demographics.

One might argue that music is just as important to younger users as older users, but that sideloading or illegal downloads are the dominant acquisition method.

Mulligan's observation is that the music industry still has not found a way to increase the attractiveness of its product among the upcoming generations of consumers.

I'm not entirely convinced that conclusion is completely warranted. It might be the case that downloads are driven by users 25 and older, just as music downloads seem to be.

On the other hand, one has to note that gaming applications are arguably more popular with iPod "touch" users, use of which definitely skews to the teen market segment. I'm not sure how downloading of paid apps stacks up in that demographic.

One might argue that what iTunes and the App Store have shown is a clear value for users as a means of content and application distribution channel, irrespective of age. So far, "free" apps seem to constitute 85 to 90 percent of all downloads from the App Store.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in 1986

Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 1986. Times do change! Kind of like looking at your high school yearbook, eh?

Google Adds "Nearby" Function for Search

Location has become an important part of the way we search, the Google Blog says, in something of an understatement.

"Simply put, location changes everything," Wired technology writer Mat Honan has said. That might be an exaggeration, but one intuitively can sense the potential to change behavior in the real world, if people easily can ascertain what is around them.

The key for marketers is to understand what kinds of information people want when they're tied to a certain place. One analogy might be that search solved the "what is" problem. Social networking provides a "who" context filter. Location awareness changes the "where" context.

In the early going, people are going to experiment with retail location offers. just as in the early days of the World Wide Web companies put up brochures online. But as the Web moved from static to active, interactive and real-time applications, so will the use of "location" features.

One might say the shift is from manually searching for "what is around me" to having that information show up automatically, without having to ask. Promotions and advertising will be important, but so will new applications that relate to where a person is, right now.

That might mean on-the-spot offers for travelers waiting to board a flight, missed connection options, or seat upgrade information.

"If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information," Google says. "Starting today, we've added the ability to refine your searches with the 'Nearby' tool in the 'Search Options' panel.

The search process also has been revised, Google says. If "Minneapolis" is the query, results will be returned for "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities," as well as "Minneapolis."

Regulatory Pendulum Swings: But Which Way?

In the telecommunications business, the regulatory pendulum swings all the time, though slowly. So periods of relatively less-active regulation are followed by periods of relatively more active rule-making, then again followed by periods of deregulation.

It has been apparent for a couple of years that the regulatory pendulum in the the U.S. telecom arena was swinging towards more regulation.

What now is unclear, though, is whether such new rules will largely revolve around consumer protection and copyright or might extend further into fundamental business practices.

Current Federal Communications Commission inquiries into wireless handset subsidies and contract bundling, application of wireline Internet policies to service wireless providers, as well as the creation of new "network neutrality" rules are examples.

But so will the settting of a national broadband policy likely result in more regulation. And there are some voices calling for regulating broadband access, which always has been viewed as a non-regulated data service, as a common carrier service.

One example is a recent speech given by Lawrence Strickling, National Telecommunications and Information Administration assistant secretary, to the Media Institute.

He said the United States faces "an increasingly urgent set of questions regarding the roles of the commercial sector, civil society, governments, and multi-stakeholder institutions in the very dynamic evolution of the Internet."

Strickling notes that “leaving the Internet alone” has been the nation’s Internet policy since the Internet was first commercialized in the mid-1990s. The primary government imperative then was just to get out of the way to encourage its growth.

"This was the right policy for the United States in the early stages of the Internet," Strickling said. "But that was then and this is now."

Policy isues have ben growing since 2001, he argued, namely privacy, security and copyright infringement. For that reason, "I don’t think any of you in this room really believe that we should leave the Internet alone," he said.

In a clear shift away from market-based operation, Strickling said the Internet has "no natural laws to guide it."

And Strickling pointed to security, copyright, peering and packet discrimination. So government has to get involved, he said, for NTIA particilarly on issues relating to "trust" for users on the Internet.

Those issues represent relatively minor new regulatory moves. But they are illustrative of the wider shift of government thinking. Of course, the question must be asked: how stable is the climate?
Generally speaking, changes of political party at the presidential level have directly affected the climate for telecom policy frameworks. And while a year ago it might have seemed likely that telecom policy was clearly headed for a much more intrusive policy regime, all that now is unclear.

A reasonable and informed person might have argued in November 2008 that "more regulation" was going to be a trend lasting a period of at least eight years, and probably longer, possibly decades.

None of that is certain any longer. All of which means the trend towards more regulation, though on the current agenda, is itself an unstable development. One might wonder whether it is going to last much longer.

That is not to say some issues, such as copyright protection or consumer protection from identity theft. for example, might not continue to get attention in any case. But the re-regulatory drift on much-larger questions, such as whether broadband is a data or common carrier service, or whether wireless and cable operators should be common carriers, might not continue along the same path.

You can make your own decision about whether those are good or bad things. The point is that presidential elections matter, and the outcome of the 2012 election no longer is certain.

Nexus One for Verizon

The Google-specified Nexus One, released on T-Mobile USA's network in January, will launch on March 23, 2010 on Verizon Wireless, a source says.

Verizon will introduce the Nexus One on the day the International CTIA wireless show begins, Neowin reports.

Pricing and terms of use are not known but likely will be "competitive" with T-Mobile's positioning.

The Nexus One is available for T-Mobile on an unlocked basis for a price of $529. Consumers can also order the phone through T-Mobile for $179 with a two-year contract.

Palm in "Death Spiral"?

"Death spiral" is not a word any company executive ever hopes to see or hear in the same sentence as the firm name. But that's what Barron writer Eric Savitz now does. "I fear Palm has begun sliding into a death spiral," he says. "Palm is simply too small, too poor and too weak to compete in a market where some of the world's most powerful companies are vying for supremacy."

Though its competitors will not lament the potential loss of one contestant in the market, the webOS software Palm developed also is described by Savitz as "brilliant." Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal in a review last summer called the Pre "potentially the strongest rival to the iPhone to date."

"There's just one problem: No one is buying the phones," he says. Palm now says revenue for its fiscal year, ending in May, will be well below its previous forecast of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. The problem, Palm said, is "slower than expected consumer adoption of the company's products." In other words, the Pixi and the Pre aren't selling.

Whether Palm somehow can pull off a turn-around is not clear, nor is it clear whether the company will wind up being sold to another firm. But webOS is yet another illustration of the fact that in the technology business, the "best" product does not always win.