Versatile Amphibian

I’ve had a busy week, so this is a small – but perfectly formed - collection of articles on the technology and media industries that have caught my eye. This week: Uniqlo reinvents alarm clock, Torygraph charges foreign Officers for access, EE launches UK LTE, Apple scandal as iPad secretly faster than... er... iPad Digital Media Social media sites continue to fragment – just launched is Mepedia a linkedin for those poor, stuggling millenials. Bless ‘em. http://www.fastcompany.com/3002455/mepedia-linkedin-desperately-unemployed-generation Apps are a growing part of branding, but most companies still make them joyless, semi-functional mini websites. Not Uniqlo. Their alarm clock app is bang on brand and on trend for the target market. Which I guess is... er... me? http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671109/uniqlos-smartphone-alarm-app-is-as-sleek-as-japanese-pants Disney got Star Wars for $4Bn. Here’s what it’ll make them back. http://www.statisticbrain.com/star-wars-total-franchise-...

This week I’m going to go counter-trend and say nothing about Surface or the tiny iPad or the sleek new Macs. You’ve all heard enough about those things and I can’t add much. Instead, this post is a collection of the less well publicised articles that have caught my eye. This week: CMOs slam mobile, Mayer prepares for Yahoo! future, Penguin House emerges from shadows, future of wearables and connected cars in focus Digital media CMOs aren’t happy with the results they’re seeing from mobile advertising. Not a surprise to me – the techniques of mobile advertising are not well established at the moment, so trial and error is inevitable. http://www.digiday.com/brands/brands-struggle-in-mobile/ Some Olympic Games sponsors saw a lift in brand awareness. I hope it was worth it! http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/topics/branding/some-olympics-sponsors-enjoyed-lift-in-brand-awareness-esteem-24181/ It is a little silly that ebooks are counted as software and therefore attract VAT in the...

I'm hearing a great deal about the current e-lending review that Ed Vaizey has kicked off and, since it's topical, I thought I'd offer some opinions. Commercial players in the book value chain - the government contends - are constraining the growth of that market and thereby making the library less relevant. I can’t help feeling that MPs are missing the point. First, some numbers. Public libraries in the UK cost the tax payer just under £1.2b in 2011. Amazingly, just £70m (6.5%) of that total was spent on books – less than was spent staff (more than half the total), “support services” (somehow discrete from staff: 14%) and premises (13%). Although funding declined a little in the downturn, it has been stable for the last couple of years and all the forecasts I’ve seen have it pegged to inflation here on in. The ebook market, on the other hand, is going gangbusters. Our latest numbers (October 2012) put ereader penetration of the adult penetration at 20%. The last offici...

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: Nintendo takes us inside Wii U, NYT plans pan-territory newspapers, Pinterest serves up inspiration and MS accidentally kills Surface Digital media Canada’s TV market grew this year. Cord-cutting is rife of course. Rife! http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2012/09/05/crtc-releases-market-growth-data/ I suppose it’s good to have your assumptions validated. Turns out that those who tweet the most have the most followers. I’ll stop there. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/most-active-tweeters-also-boast-most-followers-24064/ 70% of Pinterest users say they use it to get inspiration on what to buy, versus only 17% of Facebook users. I always divide these consumer behaviour statements by three to get to the actual...

September was a relatively quiet month in African telecoms, with only $377Mn of new infrastructure investments announced. That said, September tends to be a little quiet - only $134Mn was announced in the same month of last year. Major items of note were Monaco Telecom being unexpectedly awarded the 3rd mobile operating license to be issued in Mali and Egypt's Mobilnil receiving a $450Mn capital injection to pay down debt and provide around $100Mn of new infrastructure. At the other end of the scale, the US Trade and Development Agency are spending $80,000 to investigate the market for 2 IP exchange points in Libya, a precursor to a restarting of the wholesale telecoms market in the country. That's about it. Let's hope for a more interesting October!

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: $10 ereaders, AOL discovers social media, robots fly in formation, Vodafone eyes cheap SFR deal & Apple poaches Samsung’s chip guru Digital media CDNs account for 40% of the traffic flowing into ISP networks and I can only see their role getting more significant as the web gets richer in content terms and quality of service and latency become ever more vital in powering experiences like augmented reality. Doesn’t mean there’s much money in the industry, mind you. Moore’s Law makes the infrastructure side of the CDN business a Sisyphean task. http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2012/10/cdns-account-for-40-of-the-overall-traffic-volume-flowing-into-isp-networks.html This FT article about the unexpected benefits of digital ...

I sat in the audience at a Deloitte TV event last night, listening to another well judged analysis of data that showed how sustainable broadcast TV is against substitutes. On several occasions the facilitator – Ray Snoddy, for those who know him – invited the panel and the audience to explain why this analysis was incorrect. And as usual, no one could come up with anything. But I came away worried. Over my career I’ve been part of several attempts to disrupt scheduled network TV and come up on the losing side. Thankfully the hundreds of millions of dollars that supported that failure weren’t my own. So I’m long converted to the sustainability of TV, which retains its characteristics as entertainer, social enabler and mass market brand builder. Converts are always more zealous. Did newspaper executives in the early 2000’s also look at their data sets and come to the same conclusions about their own indefatigability? Slow grow assured, iterative substitution a distant threat. Y...