End of Summer Digest

Summer is over, but the tech industry is heating up for a promising Q4 of launches, news and interesting turn of events. On the up we have the TV industry that insists on plugging ever more features, touch less or otherwise, into the old TV set. TechCrunch reports that Cognitive Networks Partners With LG To Bring Interactivity To Smart TVs  , so much so that viewers can ''get discounts, maybe order pizza and other goodies'' while watching their favorite show.

Mobie Industry Review is asking if Nokia Lumia 1020 is finally the phone to redeem Nokia and convert you to the Windows Phone platform. Betting on the camera yet again, the N team promises:
  
''Unlike any smartphone in the market today the Nokia Lumia 1020 reinvents zoom, enabling people to discover more detail than the eye can see. With Nokia’s innovative PureView technology, including optical image stabilization, the device is able to produce some of the sharpest images possible by any digital camera. [...]

 The Nokia Lumia 1020 will arrive first on U.S. shores exclusively with AT&T, with sales expected to start on July 26 at a price of USD 299.99 on a two-year contract. The Nokia Lumia 1020 is then expected to arrive in China and key European markets this quarter. Nokia plans to ship an exclusive variant of the device with Telefonica to select European and Latin American markets. The Nokia Lumia 1020 will be available in yellow, white and black.'' 

The proof is in the pudding and we'll see if Q4 results will confirm the long-awaited wind of change for the Finish company.

Penalty for Apple as China Labor Watch (CLW), a US-based charity, released a report last month, about the working conditions surrounding the production of the new cheap iPhone. ''Apple's unkept promises: Cheap iPhones come at high costs to Chinese workers'' talks about the excessive number of underpaid hours Chinese workers put in to make a living and stresses that the company's statements on tightening control over its outsourced supply chain do not match the reality. Here is also a video accompanying this report:

Mobile banking and payment the French way

Last week I found myself queuing in a bank and while rolling my eyes around in search of visual distraction amongst the redundancy of impersonal banking promo, I noticed something resembling an iPhone. Getting closer, I realized it was a flyer advertising the institution' s mobile banking and payment services executed in ... an attention grabbing way.

So I decided to look into what are France's biggest banks doing in the area of mobile from a communications stand point. I went on their websites as any potential customer would do when informing him/herself about what's on offer and noted my first impressions, browsed around and here is what I have found:

BNP Paribas

• General Presentation: Streaming down from their on line banking strategy, BNP Paribas mobile banking and payment offer is well presented within a dedicated section of the website. It also features a partnership with the mobile operator Orange and offers for customers.
• Access: Accessing the mobile section is easy: click on the main website's navigation button ''Mobile''
• Service structure: The mobile service gathers under one ''catalogue'' application ''All my Apps'' the mobile banking and the mobile payment services, with supporting functionalities such as auto assistant  property damage declaration (via phone call), travel assistant, money transfer, NFC,etc. The partnership with Orange lets clients choose a new  package and a handset or a NFC sim card. If you choose to recycle your handset with love2recycle.fr, you get a discount applied to your new phone. You can choose your new handset without leaving the bank's website. 
• Multimedia: Presence of promo videos, however their soundtrack is a bit distracting from understanding the message, it is assumed that the target audience is the young and hip who can grasp tech savvy offers on the go. The iPhone look alike print flyer is attention grabbing but its cluttered with info and visuals.
• Con: My first impression was a bit confusing, it took some time to make sense of it all.
• Pro: Comprehensive offer under one umbrella with good user interface. For the mobile payments, integration with Orange and choice of package. Good presentation: what you see is what you get.

Societe Generale:

• General presentation: SG 's services have a dedicated  ''.mobi'' domain. It seemed to me that practicality was emphasized above fresh, hip packaging which might be a reflection of their target market for this particular service: a cautious, mature customer.
• Access: Not so easy if you don't know the .mobi address (which is accessible only from the phone) : societegenerale.mobi. The mobile service is buried within the website and it requires several click throughs. 
• Service structure: Standard mobile banking functionalities within a downloadable app. A currency converter is a welcomed addition to the basic bundle of your account, savings and expenses, etc.
• Multimedia: no distracting soundtrack, a simple, guided tour of the app which I think does its job well. 
• Con: It seemed too generic.
• Pro: Focused to the management of ones account/money. It also indicates the different ways of reaching the service: sms, store, QR, PC. Simple and clear. 

Credit Agricole

• General presentation: Mobile services labelled as'' My mobile Bank'' dedicated space. Friendly user experience yet simple and clear. 
• Access: Easy access through a navigation button on the homepage. 
• Service structure: Offer tailored to the banks main financial and insurance products. In the insurance category, the standalone app allows for taking pictures of the damage done to property and send the declaration via the app. However, unlike in BNP Paribas' s case, apps are individually downloadable (about 6 of them) as opposed to having them under a master-app roof, in one download. Also all of them are Paribas's branded, while CA mobile payment app KWIXO redirects to a 3rd party.
• Multimedia: Each app linked to a different location, whether app store or external 3rd party website, on which explanation is provided.
• Con: One app wasn't available; six individual downloads instead of merging all in one.
• Pro: Simplicity and the picture functionality in the property damage declaration app. 

Innovation Needs To Lead Events

Today`s and , most probably, this week`s favourite quote comes from Paul Saffo`s article about ways to rescue Yahoo, published in The New York Times, and it goes like this:


"Ultimately, innovations need to lead events. Trouble begins the moment a company is forced to respond to events, and the greater the lag, the greater the potential for disaster." 

Paul is a forecaster who explores change and I stumbled upon him through twitter (he was tweeting about Nasa`s discovery of the first planet in the habitable zone of a solar system similar to ours, which was pretty interesting to further investigate).

Back to the quote: the fact that innovations need to lead events is proving ever more true today, when technological progress,  interconnectivity over networks and the growing influence of communities have raised the bar high, making competition fearsome, bloody and unforgiven. Paul is talking about Yahoo, but also look at RIM, the manufacture of Blackberry, the hit phone and the competitor to the iPhone only a couple of months ago. The innovation it brought to market, its USP, is quickly fading. No "new, cool stuff", no honey. Their tablet business looks to me as an example of following the events rather than dictating them, and the results are showing: the reality failing to match their growth and revenue forecasts. RIM needs to fix its organizational structure and sit down at the design table/screen and think about the next great thing it can bring in mobile.

This is an interesting time as well: you can not hide behind past laurels any more. The digital plus the crisis have thrown all of us out of our comfort zones: starting with the job market and how you approach your career to the rise and advance of the open, shared and increasingly participatory business models and non-traditional ways of leading and managing companies. Take the newspaper industry: the past years have witness the decline in advertising revenues in the Western world by approximately half! Old players that have been around for decades where thrown into a downward swirl reversed only by those who caught up rapidly with today`s change/consumer habits.

Some went digital or partly digital, some re-enforced their quality and usefulness while others went against market trends and forecasts proving that given the right formula, digital is by now means a threat. Still, most are following trends trying to respond, but few are setting them and we all know which one is better.

Innovations need to lead events. Today, we have all the tools, ever more than a couple of years ago, to break rules, create and  redefine conventions. In this aspect, it becomes quite simple.

4 different ways you can learn about wireless networks on the web

If you have a mobile phone or a computer chances are you heard about  wireless networks. If not, then this post will help you learn more about it. Here are a couple of resources on the web that I found useful.

• wikipedia

Start with open source encyclopaedia, a succinct summary of wireless networks, citing cambrige.org and the GSM Association amongst other sources, that gives you an idea of types of wireless connections, their uses and some environmental concerns. 

• International Telecommunications Union

ITU shortly, is dedicated to connecting all the world`s people; they allocate global radio spectrum and satellite orbits which is pretty cool.  Their glossary is written in an accessible technical jargon. On networks, I found the Cellular Radio entry which defines the technology that has made wide scale mobile telephony possible. The Cellular Radio family includes the first generation FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) systems, the basis for the first generation cellular radio systems, TDMA and CDMA, the current generation digital technologies that support high bit rate voice and limited data communications and 3G systems,  that support voice and high bit rate data allowing mobile multimedia applications. 

The glossary must have been written some while ago as in the 3G entry it says:"It will be the basis for a wireless information society where access to information and information services such as electronic commerce is available anytime, anyplace and anywhere to anybody." Some of us are already living in this information society while a good chunk is slowly getting there.

• wisegeek

WISEGEEK has some useful tips on 2 and 3G networks, how they work and how to find out whether your carrier is offering a 3G network or not (the UMTS standard for example ). They say that globally, 3G systems have been operational since 2005, for a whole picture, jump here. 

• slideshare

For those who like graphics, slideshare has a bunch of presentation done on this topic, you can start with Wireless and Mobile Networks that gives a good outline and lots of illustrative material to help you sort out the technicalities, although I have to admit, it assumes some prior telecommunications knowledge.


While also surfing slideshare, I found a presentation on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) by Guoyuo He at the Helsinki University of Technology, that, was quite tough worded  for my level, but from which I subtracted 2 slides for this post to show what is it that the 3G and the future 4G networks are bringing to the table:

...and if you know other sources that are accessible for the non-technical pleb, share your link below.

Harnessing the power of technology to increase sales

The advance of the web and the ubiquity of smart and feature phones are at the forefront of the new trends and shopping patterns swiping over the retail sector.  For Japan and many other Asian/Southeast Asian nations these changes are an indispensable part of the new normal for a long time now, while we in Europe and North America, are still scratching our heads on how to harness these effects. (Just to open a parenthesis, we are so delayed in our response that to bring us on track would require an urgent update of all textbooks now in use in the educational institutions as a minimum. That of course implies new research in the area, new teaching approaches,etc.)

In this blog I want to concentrate on the retail sector and how technology can help spur sales since to me, as a shopper, the need for having my favourite outlet online, updated and mobile optimized or being guided through a mall parking lot to catch an empty spot is so obvious that I am asking myself what is the management thinking about nowadays.

So, here it is, a couple of simple steps to put your shop up there and engage with your most loyal customers in this day and age:

·         Embrace the change and do it FAST! Technology has stolen shoppers from brinks to on-line so use technology to get them back. Google tells us that 79% of smartphone internet user use their devise to help shop so:

o   Create a website(if you don’t have it already …which would be pretty lame)

o   OPTIMIZE your website for mobile. A mobile screen is about 20 times smaller than an average computer screen. On mobile we do 10 other different things while browsing/scrolling, attempting to cross the street and talking to our companions, not forgetting that some of us wear glasses so please OPTIMIZE.

o   Update your website daily. UPDATE-that is what we want, not posts that are one week long: one week-not cool, one day/a couple of hours-cool to very cool!

·         Strategize! For the retail sector I would think information +engagement=footfall=increased sales.

o   Use the on-line platform described above to feed content to your followers/subscribers/army: promotions, events, guides, schedules, interactive,…We`d love to know who will be featuring in your next ad campaign or what is it that the next car model will bring.

o   Engage-this is key!  Internet and mobile phones have been around for some time, but very little has been done to engage with consumers and I am not talking about email notifications...only. Only lately are we realizing this potential.  Think, plan and implement unique ways of making your army of followers ACTIVE. Go where they hang around (facebook, twitter, foursquare,..) and tell them: Hey guys, hey little monsters and loyal fans, hey community-let’s play! Find Willy`s new Gucci sunglasses or his recent something something. Make it fun and interactive and you will have them all. Create mobile clubs with perceived increased value and benefits (coupons, etc). Aren`t we living in an era of democratization of luxury goods and services? There are millions of ways, so analyse the data, learn and do it.

·         Start with local. Local is important: tap into the neighbourhood layout (Are there any coffee shops on your customer`s way? How is the traffic today? etc.) Think of partnerships, deals and synergies, combine resources, think context and join hands with other business to help each other.

·         Collect data intelligently and responsibly to make your offer to the customer personal, fun and useful.

As the mobile/on-line industry is relatively young, there are no wide established success formulas, but there are plenty of singular cases where companies have successful approached technology. So it is a trial and error phase for businesses to figure out how to ride this wave right but on the other hand it also gives them plenty of room to be the first at establishing standards, benchmarks and successful models.