Versatile Amphibian

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week – pirates take over your 3-D printer, antivirus, military industrial complex, the EU goes 1984, the world realises that Chinese data might not be all it seems while Apple continues to take it over New business models A nice analysis of Google’s earnings, which were released late last week. The headlines are that although Android devices are being “lit up” at a rate of nearly 750,000 a day, most of Google’s mobile revenue comes from search on iOS. Google also persist in saying that Motorola will stand alone and not receive preferential treatment – not sure I buy that, but stranger things have happened! Revenues outside advertising were very low. Goes without saying... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jan/20/google-financials-android-m...

Having written previously about how the proliferation of devices and device formats creates a complex supply chain problem for digital content distributors and retailers, I thought it was worth writing about how the production technology market is affected by the same trends. Post capture production was traditionally a business of tape-based cameras, consoles, decks, switches and related technologies for the purpose of content capture, manipulation, management and storage. It has historically been a hardware market with defined replacement cycles and, in the case of cameras, a lucrative ongoing revenue stream in tape sales. As editing became file-based and output formats proliferated, more attention focussed on the need to create automated workflows for content production and distribution (an integrated production system). This move to file-based media threatens the traditional post-capture technology model as increasing proportions of post-capture technology is moving onto software th...

New investments in African telecoms infrastructure fell 42% in 2011, from $17.6Bn in 2010 to $10.2Bn in 2011. While at face value this seems like a profoundly negative thing for the continent, the story is actually still mostly positive for its population. In total, the average African citizen benefited from just under $29 of new infrastructure since January 2010, often coming from a very low base. Many countries, such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi experienced quantum leaps in backhaul and access network connectivity, taking them from laggards to leaders and closing the gap to traditionally leading countries like Kenya and Ghana. There are also a number of mitigating factors that should be taken into account when looking at the raw numbers. First amongst these are the effects of the Arab Spring uprisings, which began in the early part of 2011 and rumbled on throughout the year. Egypt and Morocco suffered worst in telecoms infrastructure terms - shown below - receiving only nominal...

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week – Retail Fights Back, it’s Zuck’s year in the Netherlands, how Microsoft is making games gamier and dreams of an iPad duck hunt. Emerging technology Why do I need this? I want a camera to start super-fast, be incredibly reliable and focussed (sorry) on taking brilliant pictures. Do I need a jury-rigged smart phone O/S for that? Of course not. I predict... Fail. http://www.slashgear.com/polaroid-sc1630-16mp-smart-camera-runs-android-10208386/ A big moment for Nokia and Microsoft. The 800 has received great reviews, but the sales figures I’ve seen have been a bit lacklustre – only a few tens of thousands of units finding a home in the UK since launch. I hope the 900 does better as I’m very bullish about Nokia – they remain great engineers and use ra...

Despite Apple’s continued (official) non-participation and the announcement that this would be Microsoft’s last year , CES 2012 proved to be a bumper year for gadget spotters. 20,000 new devices were launched in the course of a week and although I expect that more than a few will fail to achieve the lofty aims of their promoters, they serve to demonstrate the electronics business’ believe that even a weak economy can’t dim consumer appetite for devices. With so many devices finding their way into the eager hands of consumers this year, I thought it was worth going back to a subject I first talked about after last year’s NAB – that of content clearinghouses. This is a concept that I often get asked about as the buzz surrounding Verizon’s VDMS launch is still reverberating around the carrier industry. The following is a brief introduction to the concept, technology, business model and market for content clearinghouses and in-network media engines. The challenge of mass distribution of ...

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week – businesses binge on social, Google gets it wrong in Kenya, CES points to everything going wireless in 2013 and my ultimate home goes on sale. Digital media I’ve always thought that companies having social network accounts is a bit like expecting consumers to talk to a building. In my mind, it is much better to expose individuals within the organisation, so customers can talk to a real person. Anyway, this research just shows the level of experimentation major brands are undertaking in social – not much in comparison to their overall PR spend. http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/enterprise-companies-overload-on-social-media-average-178-accounts-20608/altimeter-corporate-owned-social-media-accounts2-jan12gif/ New business models Google has a num...

I had a discussion with a colleague today, in which he claimed that consumer data will soon become a driver of mobile revenues in Africa. Suffice to say, I disagree, but he wasn’t to be shifted. So I did the following calculation to back up my point of view. Taking Safaricom as a good baseline (because it is large, technically and commercially sophisticated and based in Kenya, where the populous is relatively rich and educated), I first calculated the maximum possible capacity of their 3G network. Safaricom has about 1,300 3G sites. After overheads, those sites can physically serve about 86TB of data in a year if they are 100% utilised all the time. Safaricom charges about 1c per MB for data, meaning that if fully utilised all the time, the maximum return the network could produce today is $860Mn. There are 5.1Mn 3G subscribers on Safaricom, so data ARPU in this scenario is about $14. All well and good, except that the maximum utilisation of the network is about 60% in the real world –...

Although Nigeria and South Africa received by far the largest share of the $10.2Bn of investments in African telecoms infrastructure announced in 2011, the biggest winners were citizens of Zimbabwe. In absolute terms, Nigeria ($3.3Bn) and South Africa ($1.8Bn), represent 50% of the total investment, but at $54 per person, Zimbabweans benefited from more than twice as much investment per person as Nigerians ($21) or South Africans ($37.50) and received more than double the continental average ($24). Much of the new $700Mn going into Zimbabwean telecoms was spent on mobile data services, either direct to modem or to 3G handsets, taking advantage of new sub-sea bandwidth - such as that provided by SEACOM - to provide Internet connectivity to consumers. Zimbabwe, it must also be remembered, has been a significant beneficiary of Chinese investment dollars for all manner of infrastructure projects. Worst off of the large nations were citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo ($2.75), whic...

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week – mobile applications the must-have gift for Christmas, how to make a very cheap computer very expensive and how to use a watch to avoid getting mugged. New business models Smartphones are now a must have device and there are signs that consumers are beginning to utilise apps in a much more meaningful way. I got an iTunes voucher for Christmas... which I spent on music. Perhaps I’m now a Luddite? http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/daily-app-downloads-more-than-double-on-christmas-20539/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink Although, according to Comscore MORE PEOPLE ARE DOWNLOADING APPS THAN BROWSING! Freak out mobile industry! Or, alternatively, this isn’t statistically significant. Let’s see how this one goes – pe...

$723Mn of investments in African telecoms infrastructure were announced in December 2011, taking total publicly released investments for the year to $10.2Bn. Towers remain a hot market, with American Tower and Vodacom investing a total of $264Mn for a Ugandan towers joint venture. My estimate is that American Tower paid about $175,000 per tower, which looks like a good deal for Vodacom - $100,000 is the mean value for towers in comparable African markets this year and the only emerging market deal to top this was American Tower's almost simultaneous acquisition of 2,500 Pegaso PCS' towers at $200,000 per unit in the much larger and more mature Mexican market. If this Uganda deal was the largest of the month, probably the most important news was Cameroon's activation of 10GBit/s of metro fibre in the second city of Douala. This upgrade from the previous 20MBit/s loop should have massive benefits for the public and service sectors in the city. I think that this kind of small ...