Ben Sassen's blog
Have you any idea who you're aiming for?
Have you any idea who you're aiming for?
3G is useless in a country where people cannot afford the handsets and where almost no 3G network exists.
The reuse and recycle principle is important here, there is more money to be made from diversifying and expanding upon very popular existing GSM and SMS markets than trying to invent new ones. Companies should be looking at ways of better exploiting what already exists than jumping on the newest technology and trying to force feed it to an unwilling market.
If you are a company involved in such activity maybe its time you reviewed where your resources are going a little more carefully. Are you making the most of what you already have and have you explored all the avenues available through it?
You're having a laugh mate!
I recently came across a full page advert in the FT digital business section placed by BT, the headline of which read 'Innovate or die: the new strategy for 21st century business'. This is incredibly ironic considering their own track record of being left behind in innovation...perhaps in this statement they are in fact speaking from personal experience?
In the advert Gary Bullard, BT's UK managing director of Global services mentions the success of on-line gambling websites over high street betting shops as proof that new competitors with updated networks will automatically out perform traditional companies who do not make sufficient use of technology, and, without any quantifiable qualification, states that "new entrants [to markets] are increasingly going to spring from nowhere". Ironic then that in the same issue of the FT there is an article about the ailing and continued downward spiral of the on-line gambling market, the bubble for which has definitely burst.
Marketing Made Not So Simple
Providing services is one thing, but making sure that those services are correctly targeted and capable of making a return is quite another.
On a recent trip to Poland I discovered a wealth of home-grown on-line applications and services on offer. Everything from Polish equivalents of Ebay to MSN and MySpace designed for Poles by Poles have been created, launched and are proving to be incredibly popular when compared to their U.S. designed counterparts. Although broadband internet and numerous Polish specific on-line web services have been available in Poland for sometime, the market is just beginning to try and find its feet so far as on-line sales and revenue goes, and is still looking for the right formula so far as marketing on-line services to public or business users is concerned. Herein lies an important challenge to this new market, and one that doesn't just apply to them, but to us all. How do you best attach value to, and extract revenue from your product? Many of the Polish services on offer are incredibly popular in their native country, in some cases having a total monopoly on the market for a particular type of application or service. However, despite their dominant position, many application and service providers have yet to attach any revenue mechanism to their products. This is partly to do with the tremendous under funding and resourcing of the entire e-commerce and internet services sector in Poland, with many companies being under-staffed, as in the example of one of Poland's most popular native on-line messaging services which is owned and operated entirely by the man that originally designed it, and staff being generally under valued and under paid. However, it is also to do with the unusual nature of the Polish market. In Poland consumerism is a relatively new concept. The highly developed consumer wants and needs of most evolved western markets, and the consumer models and marketing strategies that accompany them do not necessarily apply here. For example, having an on-line map service which shows you homes for sale in an area each time you try and look up a street is hardly going to be useful in a country where most people live in small shared rented apartments and have little in the way of bankable securities. As such a more in depth consideration of revenue strategy opportunities must be undertaken for this specific market, based on its individual qualities, needs and desires.
Lucrative future for people network orientated services
Over the past few weeks Yahoo has purchased a number of small startup 'social community' orientated websites/webservices, including Flickr and delicious. In an article in The Guardian technology section about the bright future of online people network services in light of Yahoo's recent acquisitions, journalist Bobbie Johnson talks to Yahoo's senior director of technology development, and speculates on the future importance of online social software services that use tags.
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Excerpts from 'Searching for a fresher taste' by Bobbie Johnson
What they're not telling you
Things move fast in the telecoms industry. So fast that the next big thing can easily become old hat before it has even reached customers, and so quickly that companies with their assets tied into heavy infrastructure can be top of the pile one day and scrabbling in fear of being left behind the next.
I first heard about WiMax about a year ago. At the time widespread excitement amongst businesses was just beginning, as the fantastic range of possibilities WiFi's standardised and certified version of wireless networking could offer was slowly being realised and standardised high capability broadband wireless was merely being whispered about by a few as a distant dream being slowly built towards.
