Versatile Amphibian

My predictions for 2013’s TMT trends have so far covered wearable computing , 4G and self-driving cars . In this fourth installment I’ll look at the emergence of truly digital business models in the book market. What it is: the speed at which ebooks have come to prominence as a viable alternative to print seems to have taken the publishing industry somewhat by surprise. So far the business model by which these digital books have been sold has been a carbon copy of the physical book market: titles are priced and sold individually, often for the same or a higher price than the physical version. But many of the models that have driven the growth – and death – of other media in digital markets are also feasible for print. And it’s these that I expect to come to prominence next year. My prediction: 2013 will mark the largest shake up in the business model and structure of the trade (aka consumer) book market since the paperback book.  The number of large publishers ...

In my first posts about 2013’s trends I covered wearable computing and 4G in the UK . In this third instalment I’ll look at the self-driving car, a long predicted technology that is finally ready for the limelight. What are they: pretty simple to describe! A self-driving car doesn’t need a human driver to get from A to B. The driver tells it where to go and the car does the rest, navigating, dodging other road users, swearing at bad driving and doing burn outs at traffic lights. My prediction: cars that self drive under certain circumstances will go on sale in 2013, starting with Mercedes’ flagship S Class and Audi’s A8 executive saloon, both of which are already announced. These first generation self-drivers can operate autonomously on the motorway, but not in urban areas or back roads. Second generation self-drivers, able to operate anywhere, are probably for 2018 or 2019’s models. Why I think this: Plenty of cars on sale in the UK today have elements of self-driving techn...

I’m 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. A short update this week - I blame Thanksgiving, even though I live in London. This week: More social/ Gaza news, Nokia leaves Windows (a bit), Steve hopes MS is becoming cool again, Apple UFO delayed Digital media After Penguin House, Harper Collins and Simon Schuster are in merger talks. Publisher consolidation is inevitable as innovation finally enters the book market via digital. http://paidcontent.org/2012/11/20/harpercollins-simon-schuster-reportedly-in-preliminary-merger-talks/ The Gaza conflict is another step in the digitisation of warfare, but it’s a two edged sword: the IDF has had to tell citizens not to tweet where rockets land to prevent social media being used for targeting by Hamas. http://www.fastcompany.com/3003212/israeli-military-citi...

In my first post about predictions for 2013 I covered wearable computing. In this second instalment I’ll look at “4G” in the UK, another hot topic amongst my clients. Apologies to non-UK readers for the parochialism – perhaps there will be some useful context for your own market within this prediction. What is it: “4G” is a term used to described the next generation of mobile network. 4th Generation networks offer a number of user experience advantages over their predecessors, foremost of which are greater connection speeds and quicker responses. In the real world this means less time spent waiting for web pages and Internet-connected applications to load and respond and smoother video when using cellular networks. In the UK we already have a limited 4G service delivered by Everything Everywhere; however it will be summer 2013 before we see the long term networks come on stream from the other UK networks (EE will also ultimately move their network to mirror their competitors). Pre...

Lots in the press today about Ireland's 4G spectrum being allocated. No real surprises in the winners, who were drawn from the existing network operators, but the price they paid was pretty astounding. The "on target" value of the spectrum was about EUR677 using my market model. As the link shows, Ireland achieved EUR855, 21% over the expected amount. I suspect that recent turbulence in the ownership of telecoms companies in the country has rather inflated the bidding for what is an important asset but in a small country with limited head room for growth in its telecom market. Still, this bodes well for a good result for the UK when our equivalent assets are auctioned in 2013.

The final part of my impressions from Newsxchange 2012 is the text of my own speech at the conference, which was 1/3 of an Associated Press session on the future of news broadcasting. My piece covered the effects of proper technology on the creation and distribution of news. I don't do much work in the industry, so this was set up as a techie's impressions of the future. Innovation in capture devices like the panoramic ball camera and Google Glass have been enabled by massive growth in the sales of smartphones and tablets, which next year are set to be the first billion unit a year computing category. And when you have a billion smart devices shipping, you have the manufacturing capacity for billions of fast CPUs, billions of DRAM chips and billions of CMOS digital camera chips. And what's more, there are tens of thousands of people with the software and hardware design skills to bring those components together into an amazing computing exper...

I’m 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: Gaza conflict spreads to social, Pebble suffers growing pains, Apple to lose tablet dominance next year, attacks Google with giant reptile Digital media The most interesting bit of this fluff piece on how people use their mobile phones is the proportion of UK consumers that think the devices stop them truly relaxing. I can’t decide whether uptake of wearables would make relaxation easier as the connected experience fades into the background, or harder because connection is even more persistent. http://www.mobile-ent.biz//news/read/half-of-brits-would-rather-check-their-tablet-than-speak-to-partner/019844 Israel’s offensive in Gaza has led to a rather public slanging match on social media, with Twitter hosting the brunt of the fighting. A couple ...

Next up in my impressions from Newsxchange 2012, an interesting conversation between Erica Anderson (@ericaamerica, followers: 10,700), Head of News for Twitter and Rory Cellan-Jones (@BBCRoryCJ, followers: 42,000) the BBC’s technology correspondent and self-confessed Twitter-holic, about the use of Twitter in News Broadcasting. Erica is in charge of creating a mutually beneficial relationship between news organisations. She’s an former journalist for CBS News and citizen journalist for MTV. Since 2011 she’s been responsible for the health of Twitter’s relationship with news organisations, enabling them to use the platform to connect products, services and stories. Interesting initial revelation: there are no phones on the desk at Twitter. Erica came to Twitter having been on a personal journey to learn how journalists can learn about new tools and how to apply ethics to it in a much more connected world where there is a great deal of misinformation. Journalists need ...

I was lucky enough to be invited by the Associated Press to speak at the annual Newsxchange conference in Barcelona. As you’d expect for the premier gathering of the broadcast TV news industry, Newsxchange attracts some great speakers. I therefore thought I’d try and summarise some of the best sessions from the packed schedule. First up, my thoughts on a session entitled “Africa: defying stereotypes”. As you can imagine I was really looking forward to this session; however although I found it stimulating I was a little disappointed by some of the points of view put across by the panel of African news people and journalists. The primary contention of the session was that global news media persists in reporting Africa as a continent in strife. The compere, Yvonne Ndege from Al Jazeera said that this was not an accurate portrayal, throwing out the implausibly speculative stat that by 2100 (!) half of the world’s largest economies will be in Africa as evidence that “Africa” should be ...

As the end of the year approaches, many of my clients and Deloitte clients are thinking about what 2013 holds for the markets in which they operate. Predictions is something my colleague Paul Lee and his team do really well, so I won’t replicate their thinking. Instead, over the next month I’ll write down a few trends that I think will either gather or emerge in 2013. First up, wearable computing. What they are: Internet connected devices that are worn in place or instead of or in addition to conventional jewellery. Emerging categories include smart watches, personal health monitors, life blogging photo recorders and heads up displays. My prediction: each of the above products will be million unit+ per year categories in 2014, which means that they should be hundred-thousand unit categories in 2013. One or more of them will hit iPad 2 levels of distribution (10’s of millions) in 2015. Why I think this: smartphones are to mobile computing what laptops are to desktop – they’re a...

I’m 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. Just to warn you, this week I’ve been feeling particularly sarcastic. This week: the week of fear: cord cutting rife, consoles dead, apps will kill films, Galaxy smashes iPhone, China hacks Coke, LeBron kills NBA videogames & scientists laser paper FOR FUN! Digital media Panic! Cord cutting is rife again. Or perhaps not. http://allthingsd.com/20121107/cord-keeping-pay-tv-shrinks-for-the-quarter-stays-steady-for-the-year/#comment-703163289 An interesting use of images from Instagram to create an NBC news microsite on the US elections. This kind of thing certainly won’t replace mainstream news broadcasting, but it does add colour around the main HD editorial. Powered by Chute, by the way, which is an interesting little technology that enables social medi...

October was a $900m month for African telecoms investment, with mobile and backhaul infrastructure benefiting most from a sudden upsurge in activity. The biggest news on the continent was probably Vodacom, MTN and 8ta taking LTE live in South Africa. Third player, Cell C have also promised LTE before the end of 2012. As I mentioned in a previous post, LTE is slowly entering African markets although take-up will remain very constrained by the cost of end use devices for the foreseeable future. I also worry about the risk of returning to a communications infrastructure that it not compatible between countries. Chinese standards for LTE – proposed in a number of countries – won’t interoperate with the versions found in Japan, Korea and the West. Since it is business users that are most likely to use LTE in the early days, I worry that this will act as a small brake on intra-continental trade. There were two big stories in Kenya, where Safaricom is spending $161.7m to install 1,800km...

I've been doing a bit of analysis on smart device shipments and thought I'd share. My thesis is that the true impact of smartphones and tablets are in the supply chain effects of a billion unit computing device category. Smart devices aren't quite going to make it that far in 2012 - my estimate is that 700m smartphone and 125m tablet units will ship this calendar year - but it seems likely that with falling prices and ever-growing consumer acceptance they'll make it to a billion total in 2013. What this means is that the components of smart devices - processors, DRAM, screens, interfaces, cameras, GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular base bands - are all dirt cheap. Pennies or a few dollars for serviceable kit. That's massively reduced the cost of creating new categories of computing. Small businesses can once again engineer cutting edge products merely by virtue of their insight and ability to innovate. A fabbing plant and hundred-million dollar research budget are no lon...

The market went tower mad (or should that be "mast crazy"?) in October, with large sales of cellular towers in the USA , Brazil , Cameroon and Cote d'Ivoire . Nearly $3b was spent on assets that the buyers - generally infrastructure or private equity funds - thinking they will represent an excellent long term investment as the market goes increasingly mobile.* One thing I noticed in analysing the amounts being paid was that once again African operators sold off their assets on the cheap. The chart shows valuations of tower infrastructure globally for the last three years. The orange dots are African. Even if you remove the inflating effects of the USA from the data, it's clear that African countries underperform in asset sales. And these aren't wartorn countries ruled by tinpot dictators. Both Cameroon and Cote d'Ivoire are reasonably stable growth economies with 20m citizens. I suppose we should thank market capitalism for asset owners seeking an early...