It was nice knowing you, Malcolm Collins.
Collins, who has headed Nortel's enterprise business since 2002, is
leaving the company (was he pushed or did he jump?). His departure is
part of a reorganization by Nortel to “better meet the needs of global
enterprise and carrier customers in the converged marketplace” -
whatever that means. Nortel will be split into two business units: the
enterprise and packet networks division will be headed by Steve
Slattery, while Richard Lowe, who was president of Nortel's CDMA
business, will head up the mobiity and converged networks unit. So now
that CEO Bill Owens has revamped the executive suites, how about
articulating some strategic vision?
Friday Morning Bytes: Cool Events, P2P, Emily Chang Rocks
Event Envy: I'm not a big conference fan but it's difficult not to get a bad case of event-envy when it comes to things such as Demo, GnomeDex, CES and Web 2.0,
which takes place next week. If you're into technology, these are the
places to discover what's coming down the pipe. I either need a
different job or a bigger travel budget – and a Walter Mossberg mandate!
P2P is Evil: A new study
came out yesterday about file-sharing activity in Canada. Apparently
12-to-24-year-old account for 21% of the population but 78% of illegal
downloading (even though it has yet to be determined if downloading
music is illegal yet up here). The music industry, which claims retail
sales of music have tumbled $541-million since 1999, suggests – this is
huge! – that people who “steal” music are also more prone to unethical
or illegal activities such as cheating on exams. Anyone thinking someone in the music industry recently saw Reefer Madness?
Emily Chang Rocks: Finally, if you're into Web services, you must swing by eHub today. In fact, do it right now. Emily Chang has put together an awesome list of new services, applications, blogs, sites and resources. (Hat tip to Rick Segal)
Virgin Canada Drops Pre-Paid Prices
Just when you thought Canada's wireless industry had all agreed (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) to “pricing stability”, Virgin Mobile Canada
comes and wrecks the party by offering a new pre-paid plan featuring
10¢ a minute calls (plus a 40¢ a day fee). It's a huge drop given
Virgin was charging 25¢ for the first five minutes and 15¢ afterwards.
So what does it mean? For one, the CEOs of the big three- Telus, Bell
Mobility and and Rogers – probably had a collective temper tantrum,
crossed Virgin Canada CEO Andrew Black of their Christmas lists and did some ARPU recalculations. As for Virgin, it's difficult to tell what it means. The 10¢ a minute plan – known as Day2Day – is part of the Virgin U.S.
rate package so the Canadian offering is not new. Then again, you hear
so little about how Virgin is doing in Canada – partly because the
target audience is the teen set and that's a demographic I have no
insight into. If you talk to Rogers and Telus, they'll tell you their
pre-paid sales have not been affected but I wouldn't expect them to say
otherwise.
RIM's Going to Make it After All
Apologies for title's reference to the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show,
but when will people stop saying “Sure RIM is a great company but there
are only xx million Blackbery users?”. Maybe today is the day after RIM
said it expects to have five million subscribers by end of fiscal 2006
while sales will be about $2-billion. Say what you will about the Treo 700w, et al but the Blackberry remains the
standard for mobile e-mail. Things could really interesting if
RIM can upgrade the Blackberry's telephone and Web browser.
Going back to my riff earlier this week
on the all-in-one wireless device, what about the idea of a Treo iPod
that would feature Treo's strong calendar, contact and Web browser
features
with the 4GB or 6GB of iPod goodness? Do you think Palm and Steve Jobs
can
ever dance now that Palm is dating Microsoft – even if Palm CEO Ed Colligan is giving away Bill Gates' cell phone numbers to anyone who wants it.
VoIPSupply.com Moves into Canada
VoIPSupply.com has reached out to Canadian consumers with the launch of canadianvoipstore.com. Aside from selling in Canadian
dollars, the site will offer more than 1,000 different SKUs. Given Voxilla
moved into Canada earlier this year, perhaps it's a sign the market is
expected to gain strong momentum now that Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Cogeco
and Videotron are offering service – along with Vonage, AOL, BabyTel,
Primus, etc. (The only one missing from the party is Telus but they've
got a pesky strike to resolve). According to Seaboard Group, there will be 4.02 million VoIP subscribers by 2008 compared with 417K by the end of this year. Montreal-based BabyTel, which aside from desperately needs a new name, recently moved into the U.S. market.
The Best Skype Ever!…a.k.a. Another Upgrade
Given it's been in beta since August, no one should be surprised by the launch of Skype 1.4,
which offers ways for users to personalize the service with ringtones,
sounds and photos. The most interesting part of the press release is
that Skype has signed up another two million users since the eBay deal,
an now has more than 56 million. The software been downloaded nearly
175 million times.
