Archive for March, 2005
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Friday, March 18th, 2005The business/technology experiment that is Skype continues to evolve with the launch of two new fee-based services. SkypeIn is particularly intriguing because it gives Skype subscribers a telephone number for the first time. It’s a nice complement to SkypeOut, which makes it possible for Skype users to make calls to people on the PSTN network. [...]
CallVantage: Big Spending, Few Customers
Friday, March 18th, 2005According to News.com, AT&T's CallVantage service had an underwhelming 53,000 VOIP customers at the end of 2004. Om Malik provides all kinds of scenarios, including a suggestion AT&T could bail out of the retail space and focus on the wholesale market. So what should people read into the CallVantage numbers? Perhaps consumers are down on [...]
Nortel's New Executive Mandates
Friday, March 18th, 2005I had a brief, but interesting, interview yesterday with Nortel Networks CEO Bill Owens and Gary Daichendt, who was recently hired as president and COO. Aside from the obvious plan for Daichendt to eventually replace Owens as CEO, I was struck by their intention to use Nortel as a platform to promote integrity and ethics [...]
Wireless Porn is Hot
Thursday, March 17th, 2005Personally, I don’t get it – or use it, for that matter – but wireless pornography is expected to be a “hot” market over the next five years. Strategy Analytics now expects spending on pornography will rise to $5-billion by 2010 from $400 million in 2004. This is an upgrade from an earlier forecast of [...]
There's Gold in Them Thar Patents
Thursday, March 17th, 2005NTP Inc.'s success in extracting US$450-million from Research in Motion has several interesting angles — highlighted perhaps by how the three-year legal dispute fits into a larger trend involving the pro-active exploitation of patents and intellectual property.
While the focus on NTP has obviously been its wireless technology patents, there has been little attention paid to [...]
Wireless Internet Use Growing
Thursday, March 17th, 2005A new survey by Ipsos-Insight, which seems to love doing studies on the Web, suggests the number of wireless Internet users climbed 29% in 2004. The biggest gains happened in the U.S. and Japan where 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users appeared. If the survey is accurate, it should be a huge [...]
Nortel Wins Deal in Cisco's Backyard
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of Cisco's executives suites after Nortel won a US$5.6-million contract from the city of San Jose to provide city hall employees with a new communications system. It's small deal but Cisco has its corporate headquarters in San Jose so you'd figure they would go [...]
Yahoo's 360: Good and Bad
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005Not sure what to make of Yahoo’s new Yahoo 360 service, which will combine a new blogging tool with a variety of Yahoo’s other products such as instant messaging, radio and photo storage. As a blogger, I’m intrigued by technology that enhances how blogs look and feel, so Yahoo’s efforts should be applauded. On the [...]
RIM settles NTP Dispute…for US$450M
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005After battling it out for three years, Research in Motion has finally conceded defeat in its patent dispute with NTP Inc. The price of patent freedom: US$450 million. At first blush, it appears to be a staggering number but perhaps it's a “bargain” compared to what RIM might have been forced to cough up if [...]
Jobs vs. Ebbers (Smart vs. Dumb)
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005Doesn't it seem karmic or ironic that on the day WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers is convicted on nine counts of fraud, it is disclosed Apple CEO Steve Jobs was only paid US$1 last year and received no stock options or restricted stock. It is a classic case of avarvice vs. strategic/marketing intelligence. Ebbers was a [...]
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