Versatile Amphibian

I'll be clear up front, I'm not convinced that the iTablet actually exists - Apple are very good at mis-information and the online community sometimes needs to curb its enthusiasm! Anyway, here's my "Christmas list" for iTablet functionality: 1. At least 6 hours of battery life/ 1 week of standby 2. Integrated HSDPA and wifi 3. Reasonably priced books on iTunes! 4. Some mechanism to attach a keyboard and use it like a netbook 5. A decent GPU (iPhone games were my guilty pleasure in 2009!) Not much to ask, is it? I think I'll be okay on 1,2 and 5. I think 4 is pushing it, as it'd cannibalise Macbook (Air) sales. #3 remains to be seen. My view is that books have far less replay value than movies - I wonder whether a "books as a service" model similar to LoveFilm would be more likely to succeed than a straight up iTunes music model. I've forgotten how many times I've passed a paperback book onto a friend. The same simply isn't possible ...

A colleague and I have been thinking about some of the developments in mobile and have come up with an idea about the structure the mobile industry seems to be heading towards and the strategic issues that could result from the journey towards it. Conceptual at the moment, but it might be interesting, so I thought I'd share: We started with the premise that consumers have become ever more handset-centric, particularly post-iPhone. Operators have therefore moved from subsidising the expensive handset to enable consumers to access their service, to financing their access to devices; We wonder whether this leads to a different view on the operating structure of mobile Telcos. The long anticipated netco/ servco model may be an intermediate state, but perhaps a more apt analogue of the operator’s future model is that of an automobile manufacturer; Why do we say this? Well, the modern auto manufacturer is as more of an assembler of components into a product than a vertically integrated ...

I thought the news that Reliance Mediaworks is to acquire iLab was worth sharing. The business case for this kind of acquisition feels very strong and it may turn out to be a shrewd move on Reliance's part. In the short term there's the obvious benefits of linking the growing Indian-language production industry back to its biggest market. In thr future, however, the expansion of digital production capability worldwide and the growth in the extend of broadband infrastructure in India could lead to a lucrative business outsourcing metadata tagging, rough editing and the like, taking advantage of the low cost of file transfer in the digital production environment. Interestingly, this is something we suggested for the Digital Production Partnership (PDF), in 2008, hence I'll be watching its success or otherwise with interest.