On Friday, RIM’s shares went from $24.08 to $27.28, a 13% increase. More than 14 million RIM shares traded, while 1.5 million is the average. This was caused by a rumor on Wallstreet that the company was going to be bought out or undergo a hostile takeover, with HP’s name at the top of the list of companies doing the buying, according to Reuters. [Brighthand]
Harvard Business School: Secrets of Successful…
Harvard Business School: Secrets of Successful Idea People.
Apple targeting corporate market with G5?
MacMinute reader Alarik Skarstrom reports that Apple purchased a two-page ad for the Power Mac G5 on the inside front cover of The Economist… [MacMinute]
Looks that way to me… I’ve seen the ads in Business Week as well as Fortune.
MSN preparing fall broadband launch
Microsoft plans to launch an enhanced version of its MSN service this fall as part of its efforts to tap broadband users for online subscriptions, according to the head of MSN. [CNET News.com]
PTT: The New SMS?
“The mobile world has been racking its brains to find something that will succeed on the scale of SMS,” comments James Tagg, managing director of push-to-talk startup FastMobile Inc.. “[PTT] will take off like SMS did. Our estimates suggest that push-to-talk could be worth 150 million ($173 million) in Europe over the next year, becoming a multi-billion-euro market in a few years.” [Ed. note: Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?]
Despite Tagg’s drum-banging, European carriers remain skeptical about the long-term benefits of investing in the technology. Few regional trials have been announced, and local analysts seem reluctant to take the service too seriously.
“There isn’t much evidence of PTT’s success in Europe at the moment,” says Ovum Ltd.’s principal analyst, Jeremy Green. “It is more of a toy and an interesting niche people will fool around with, rather than the next SMS. It won’t be a big earner like text messaging. I don’t believe it is a very big opportunity.”
U.S. analysts beg to differ, arguing that it is only a matter of time before PTT becomes a hit with European users. “I find it strange that we haven’t seen that much interest in Europe, as it is a very attractive product,” says Ken Hyers, senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR. “Clearly, the strengths of the technology will have to be explained to customers, but people aren’t stupid. They quickly realized that SMS is a useful technology, and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t see the advantages of PTT as well.” [Unstrung]
AOL corrects their counts…
The media giant hinted at that this week when Don Logan, the executive who oversees America Online and Time Inc., said one reason for the company’s unexpectedly high subscriber losses was the result of “cleaning up the files.”
People familiar with the situation say part of the cleanup involves the termination of subscribers generated by a little-known America Online initiative. Starting in 2000, AOL began selling limited-usage online accounts in bulk for as little as $1 to $3 a month to its marketing partners such as Target Corp., J.C. Penney Co. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. A regular limited-usage subscription at that time cost about $10 a month, while a regular subscription was slightly more than $20. The retailers then could offer the online service to their employees for a discount and pocket the difference.
It isn’t clear how many of those subscriptions were offered to employees or even activated. And there are no rules governing the reporting of such subscribers. [WSJ.com] (subscription required).
Motorola in Jordan push-to-talk trials
Motorola has signed an agreement with Jordan mobile network operator Fastlink to be the first in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region to pilot Motorola’s General Radio Packet Service (GPRS) Push-To-Talk (PTT) solution. Point-to-point PTT calls to individuals and PTT group calls have been demonstrated successfully at Fastlink’s facility in Amman.
According to Motorola, the company has GPRS PTT trials and demonstrations with other wireless network operators in EMEA scheduled throughout the remainder of this year. Commercial launch of Motorola’s GPRS PTT solution is targeted for 2004. [infoSync]
I find it very interesting that this is being tested first outside the US … far away from Nextel.
Actually here’s some more detail as reported by CNet:
On Thursday, Motorola announced that Jordanian carrier Fastlink will be the first company in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region to use push-to-talk (PTT) technology. Fastlink plans to introduce a pilot version of a service similar to Nextel’s popular DirectConnect, which creates an instant connection between two cell phones.
In addition, Nextel Mexico, owned by Nextel subsidiary NII Holdings, plans to launch soon its own DirectConnect-like service in Tijuana and in Baja California, Mexico, a source said. [CNET News.com]
RSS for Credit Card Activity
Here’s an idea that credit card companies should implement: an RSS feed of your credit purchases, in real-time. Basically have an RSS feed of every authorization on your credit card(s), as they happen. [Gadgetopia]
Interesting thought, but how would it be secure? Seems relatively easy to discover RSS feeds… which is also kind of the idea of RSS. I don’t think we want everyone browsing through our credit card purchasing habits.
Apple changing its basic strategy?
With Apple’s entry into the digital music business with the iTunes Music Store, which will be made available to Windows users later this year, “a fundamental shift in Apple’s strategy may be afoot,” David Zeiler writes in a SunSpot.net column. [MacCentral]
Web marketing sells like teen spirit
Smart marketers will use the Web if they want to harness some of that teen spirit, according to a new study on media consumption among young people. [CNET News.com]
MSN Outlook Connector
This morning, during Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ keynote at the company’s annual financial analysts’ meeting, a product manager demonsrated the Outlook Connector for MSN. The new product, which is testing and will release with the next version of MSN later this year, adds MSN e-mail, calendaring and contact management to Outlook. The connector takes advantage of new features in Office Outlook 2003 that allow the keeping of multiple calendar and contact databases. Microsoft is trying to solve the problem of someone that keeps work e-mail, calendars and contacts in Outlook but the same type of information and e-mail in MSN for personal use. The connector also makes it possible for the sharing of calendars and other information with family members and others.
This is a big deal. If you use a portable device or more than one computer it is not easy to mange across them with any of the services and your work info. I hope AOL is paying attention to this…
24-July-2003 — July Bandwidth Report
July Bandwidth Report — “As of June 2003, most users in the US connect to the Internet using dial-up modems… [WebWord]
Cable has 67% to 105% more users than DSL in the US, according to two recent surveys. Overall, broadband grew by .83% in June, with 36.7% of wired US users enjoying a high-speed connection.
Rich Media and Larger Ad Units Maintain Growth Levels
DoubleClick Inc. on Wednesday announced results of its Q2 2003 Ad Serving Trend Report, which reveals that rich media usage continues to grow quarter by quarter, while larger ads have surpassed the smaller options in popularity. The report also suggests that marketers, having mastered direct response on the Web, are now perfecting the art of online branding and creating more memorable ads that leave lasting impressions. This is evidenced by declining click-through rates — the lowest in six quarters — and higher view-through rates (assessed when a user takes some action on an ad within 30 days of viewing, but not clicking on it). MediaDailyNews 07-24-03
Read an Ad, Get Free Wi-Fi
At least one U.S. airline plans to offer free Wi-Fi Internet service, and phone calls for as little as 50 cents a minute. Business travelers, in particular, want both services. But they have reservations about a plan to subsidize the costs of the services with intrusive advertising. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
AOL Time Warner 2Q03 Notes
I still think the strategy of migrating the AOL base to a rich package of content, services, and software via 9.0 BYOA is the right strategy, but the subscriber drop-off is alarming. AOL management had to lower its outlook overall (total 03 revenues down mid-single digits) because of “limited visibility” into subscription trends.
Management is so focused on subscriptions that it risks losing sight of advertising. Yahoo had more marketing revenues ($220M to $180M) this quarter – for the first time ever. MSN doesn’t break out financial details, but is likely in the same range. Chairman Dick Parsons said, absent long-term contracts dying off, “AOL would have had a pretty good year” in advertising. I disagree.
AT&T Wireless gears up for 3G launch
The company says it has ordered the gear needed to meet investor NTT DoCoMo’s deadline for it to launch a next-generation cell phone network in the United States. [CNET News.com]
The U.S. carrier is facing a closing date of Dec. 31, 2004, to launch a high-speed 3G commercial service in four U.S. cities. If it does not meet the deadline, it will have to return about $6.2 billion of part-owner and partner NTT DoCoMo’s investment in the company.
Standards bodies define 3G as delivering 384 kilobits per second of Internet access to cell phones, which is about 10 times faster than the current AT&T Wireless network.
Cell phone service providers worldwide are building such networks because they triple the capacity for cell phone calls, allowing carriers to keep pace with the growing number of minutes used for such calls. To earn back construction costs, carriers plan to offer new services like downloadable videos or Virtual Private Networks.
AT&T Wireless has so far chosen Seattle and San Francisco for its launch of what is expected to be the first commercial UMTS service in the United States, said AT&T Wireless spokesman Ritch Blasi. Two other likely candidates are San Diego and Dallas, where the carrier has an ongoing UMTS trial, he said.
DMA Urges Schumer to Drop Do-Not-E-mail List Clause
The marketing association urges members to write the New York senator to remove the provision for a do-not-e-mail registry from his anti-spam bill. [internetnews.com: Top News]
How could I not link to this…
Backup Data on the Moon?
A California company intends to put servers and databases on the moon—seriously. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]
TransOrbital has had companies that want to back up critical data somewhere other than on earth express interest, and is working on ways to make the idea attractive. “We’re trying to develop some wider bandwidth laser communications going beyond the communication protocols developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that exist for use in space,” Laurie says. “It is feasible to have electronic data on the moon, and to receive it from earth, although delays are implied.”
Wi-Fi revenue predicted to fall as use climbs
While global Wi-Fi use is set to explode over the next five years, revenue from the technology is due to shrink, leading to a consolidation of the market, according to a report released this week by Pyramid Research LLC. Worldwide Wi-Fi users will number 707 million by 2008, Pyramid predicted, yet revenue per user will drop from around US$30 a month this year to $3 a month in five years. [MacCentral]
AMERICA’S KEY ‘INFLUENTIALS’ ARE WEB JUNKIES
America’s “Influentials” — a demographic of business networkers, news junkies and community movers and shakers — prefer the Internet to any other media for acquiring their daily information, according to a new study. Ad Age