Molecularist

Excellent article on Jorma’s keynote at CTIA yesterday. To me, there’s nothing new – voice is still king, pay attention to the emerging markets, and so on. Read it. It’s well written, covers all the key things we really need to deal with instead of ‘is it thin’.

Link: Ollila warns wireless sector on emerging markets | The Register.

Jorma Ollila used his CTIA Wireless 2006 swansong to tell delegates they need to address the needs of low-income and developing markets by providing phones and services that customers want and can afford, to achieve continued growth. Complexity of technology, in areas like DRM, must also be solved.

Here are some other similar articles by ZDNet and Forbes. Of course, Ollila’s impact is much greater than mine. 🙂 But, it’s good, nonetheless.

A nice article on Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila, who will be stepping down in June.

Link: USATODAY.com – For CEO who remade Nokia, one bold departure deserves another.

Ollila made Finland a world power in cellphones. Today, he gives the keynote at the huge CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas as a last hurrah before stepping down as CEO of Nokia on June 1.

"It’s healthy for a company to have change," Ollila told me on the phone from Helsinki a couple of weeks ago. "And I’ve done my bit."

No kidding. Ollila is not just any old CEO who might tinker with strategy, play golf with retired sports figures and lend the corporate jet to politicians. Ollila made one of the more daring decisions in business history and spent the next 14 years making that decision seem brilliant.

One possible factual error: There are at least 2 billion mobiles out there, that’s how many subscribers there are.

And very good analogy to GM, who should really get out of the car business…

Thanks Peter for the link (and the following ones too).

Phil has generated some more discussion on this new development to old bad telco habits, here in Finland (link below).

Sigh. We always think unbundling service from transport is best for
the industry. They tried it in the US with fixed line phones and DSL.
They tried it in the US with long distance. They tried it in the US
with cable.* Yeah, there was a temporary burst of innovation and
value creation. But, look at those industries now. Same old monopolies
have returned or reformed. Same old lock-ins and anti-competitive behaviour.

Then, what is the solution? Are we the ones with the blind-spot here, not the service providers?

Link: Finland for Thought � Bundles vs. non-Bundles | Politics, current events, culture – In Finland & United States | An American’s blog in Finland.

Regarding the spirited Finnish mobile industry debate below – Jouni AKA MRKTNGman from Nokia’s S60 blogs did a little number crunching. He compared the prices of a bundled package vs. non-bundled package – The consumer will pay an extra 3,58€/month (for two years) to get an awesome Nokia 6630 for “free”. Not a bad deal for poorer people (students especially) who wants a fancy smartphone but can’t afford the 299€ to buy the device at the shops…

*And France is trying to do it to iTunes and Apple.

I had heard about this, but it only hit me last Friday when I happened to go into the shop to ask some questions.

Seems like my operator, Sonera, is going to charge customers something like 0.45 cents a call, on top of the per minute rate, unless they sign a 1-year contract. When I mentioned that it was news to me, that I know of the change, but not of the surcharge (which it is), and that I must have missed it.

Well, he told me that they just sent out the warning to customers – sure enough, a week before the change – and I found it waiting in my mail box.

I get the one year contract, since I have 4 subscriptions with them, have never really had a problem, and have no problem signing up for another year. The other gotcha that I saw once reading the contract is that it renews teh lock-in automatically.

My take on all this? It’s a step backwards for the mobile industry. Aren’t we all trying to get away from contracts and subsidies? I also think this quick switch by my operator will cause a tremendous consumer backlash. Or at least I hope so.

But, then if I rolled over so nicely and harmlessly, I expect most others to do as well. I stayed becuase I genuinely like my operator (I think they’re the best I know of). It sucks that their need to keep me happy has vanished in a simple lock-in contract.

Link: Finland for Thought � Liberalization in the Finnish mobile phone market | Politics, current events, culture – In Finland & United States | An American’s blog in Finland.

Currently in Finland, operators are not allowed to include free/discounted mobile phones with their subscriptions. So Finns are forced to purchase a seperate operator plan and a seperate phone. This will all soon change, thanks to a little liberalization in the mobile phone market…

Janne has some funny comments on mobile travel guides. Gotta say, he’s right.

Link: ButtUgly: My most hated mobile applications, pt I

I’ve had a very bad day today, and I probably managed to piss off quite a lot of people. So I figured I might as well get this one (and the few next ones) off my chest as well.

Over the years, I’ve seen all sorts of wearable/ubiquitous/mobile applications, that just get me easily in the state of mild enragement. Let me list my top peeves in this blog, and be warned that there will be plenty’o’ranting. Not all of the following text is to be taken completely seriously.

This will be a series to which I’ll be posting daily until I run out of holy steam.

And part 2 of this series has already been released here. It’s about the proliferation of dedicated buttons. Seems like Christian Lindholm’s legacy is slowly fading here from what I can see by the phones coming out. Different times, different designs.

Maybe.

And remember, 80% will be in emerging markets. Are you ready to capitalize on all those new subscribers who have no PC or fixed line phone, aspire to have access to Web services, and don’t speak English?

Link: Nokia – Nokia outlines industry dynamics and growth at AGM – Press Releases – Press – About Nokia.

Ollila also gave a revised estimate for mobile device market volume growth in 2006. "Due to strong subscriber growth, we have now updated our global mobile device market volume estimate for this year," said Ollila. "Nokia estimates that in the year 2006, the mobile device market volume will increase globally 15% or more from our estimate of 795 million units in 2005. Previously, we estimated that the global mobile device market volume would grow 10% or more this year from last year’s estimate."