Versatile Amphibian

On Tuesday, the UK Government released the Chancellor's Autumn Statement , an important statement of policy at a time when a double dip recession seems increasingly likely (if one believes the doom-laden rantings of the popular press, at least). In amongst the sensible stuff about public sector pay caps (about time, given the upcoming strike action by middle class, home owning unionists masquerading as "working class" activists) were two statements about the digital economy. Just when you thought the lessons of the risible Digital Britain/ Digital Economy policy failures had been learnt, here comes another misguided governmental attempt to interfere in a functioning commercial market. The concept is to assign £100Mn for two things: 1) Improving mobile coverage in the UK up to 99% of the population 2) Urban broadband fund to create up to 10 “super-connected cities” This is a laudable goal, but as usual there’s nothing in the document about how this will be implemented. The...

New technology With all the fuss about ARM vs Intel in the PC/ server/ mobile/ any other device market, it’s easy to forget the other alternatives from AMD. Sadly, “Bulldozer” seems to be representative of the speed of their new architecture, not its effect on the competition. Some commentators – like that linked – believe that multithreaded processes in servers will allow AMD to regain ground against Intel. They miss the point – this is a desktop chip and will compete against other desktop chips. Against these, and against server-specific products, it will get annihilated by the competition. http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/231903448 Darknet activities such as this are a core part of the – accidental or deliberate – effort to segment and even weaponise aspects of the Internet. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/11/the-darknet-plan-netroots-activists-dream-of-global-mesh-network.ars Breakthrough technology Given the criticism that so...

Business model evolution Apple’s new patent, if implemented in hardware, represents another nail in the coffin of mobile operators slightly pathetic attempts to monopolise the nascent NFC market. NFC in phones is a neat technology, but frankly offers limited additional customer benefit above conventional payment and access technologies. If payment in particular is such a draw, then the industry should ask itself how much consumers are willing to pay for chip and pin. The answer, in case you’re wondering, is “zero”. More sensible to make this a very minor part of the phone architecture. http://www.nfcworld.com/2011/11/09/311213/apple-patents-sim-within-secure-element-technology/ And just to ram home the point, news of this collaboration between Intel and Mastercard demonstrates how likely it is that the secure functions of NFC terminals will lie off the SIM card. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/13/mastercard-and-intel-partner-to-secure-and-simplify-online-and-nfc-payments/ New technology ...

I’ve just returned from a week in Tokyo. Having just recovered from the jet lag, I thought I’d share some experiences and impressions about media and technology landscape. The first thing to say is that Tokyo is a beautiful city. It’s very clean and for the most part rather peaceful. This is helped by the nature of the traffic. Besides the ubiquitous Toyota Crown taxis, almost every other car was either a hybrid or a tiny Kei car – a glimpse into the future of European cities as fuel prices rise and taxes on gas guzzlers become ever more punitive. Beautiful or not, this year’s earthquake has had significant effects on life in the city. Since the well publicised issues with their generation capacity began, Japan has suffered with undersupply of electricity and this is manifest in the fact that none of the offices I went to were using their air conditioning. Something I hadn’t really appreciated is that modern office blocks are so well insulated that even the body heat of those inside cr...

Here's a few stories that I've found interesting this week from across the digital world. Digital media Mobile advertising is clearly a market with much growth in it, particularly in developed markets. I wonder, however at what point this will merge with traditional online and which set of business models will win out. http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/11/07/orange-venture-fund-mobile-digital-start-ups.htm The headline is slightly misleading, as the volumes required to access the best discounts continue to rise, but the analysis is typically cogent and demonstrates the very small size of the content delivery market worldwide, despite all the hype that surrounds online video. http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2011/11/cdn-pricing-stable-in-q4-down-about-20-for-the-year.html HTML 5 has really blossomed this year and Adobe’s announcement that Flash is to leave the mobile platform (albeit slowly) illustrates that fact. How long can Microsoft persist with Si...

I'm on a week-long trip to Japan to visit with some clients. Although not a reason for my trip, a subject that's come up several times is the alarming recent spike in cyber attacks on Japanese companies. One senior executive at a global electronics corporation told me that they were responding to at least one serious attempted breach every day; another - more worryingly a significant player in the defensive industry - reported similar issues. This goes to show that the recent London conference on cyber security was very topical as this is a global issue, at least for those companies that embrace and participate in market capitalism. There is clear danger of reaching for apocalyptic scenarios when discussing this topic, but I for one am concerned about the threat of cyber warfare perpetrated by China, Russia and others to the world's economic and political security. The regimes mentioned are not in any way wedded to the market economy - they and their puppet companies partic...

Investment in African telecoms picked up in October after a slow September, with $284Mn announced, principally in mobile, with the exception of Liberia and Sierra Leone receiving World Bank funding to connect themselves to the ACE subsea cable system. Biggest deal this month was the conclusion of France Telecom's protracted takeover of Congo Chine Telecoms. FT paid $125Mn for DRC's 3rd largest carrier and an additional $71Mn for 2MHz of 1800 and 10MHz of 2100 spectrum to boost capacity - necessary given DRC's 72Mn population, much of which remains unconnected. At $92.6 per subscriber, the deal looks like a good one for FT and further strengthens its grip on Francophone Africa.