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888.com mobile and other crimes 2006-12-07 01:07:00 You can draw but you can't hide. Poker and casino invaded our screens and not only in the late night hours where other non glamorous but lucrative programs used to rule (porn, TV shopping...). People enjoy watching other unathletic nobodies become wealthy superheroes just like that, sitting at a table. Later, when this audience turns to dumb online gaming automats, they believe each winning streak is due to their talent and each losing one to bad luck. Gibraltar-based virtual casinos can submerge all European medias with their greenbacks ; they know the ROI will be huge.And this goes far beyond the Rock and your usual sin cities : Macau SAR gladly returns to the colonial rule of the roulette, but Tony Blair also wants to turn Brighton & Hove into Western Europe's Las Vegas. Never mind those medical reports on gambling addictions (nor the statistical reports : half a million French citizens hooked to online poker within a few months !). In the US, one can wonder if the theo-cons who r
You are Commander of the T-World 2006-12-01 03:13:00 SK Telecom are sipping T more aggressively than a Liptonic britton. After TTL, Ting, TU Media* - , T Roaming or T-PAK**, they branded their new one stop online experience T-World
(tworld.co.kr), yet another layer between SKT and its services brands. The logo appears on many ads and looks like a big orangish T (which should please both T-mobile and Orange) popping out of a screen. It nurtures its own "events" such as a T World festival.The T World website mostly constists of a frame connected to all the other brands websites.... Definitely less interactive than "You are Commander
", SKT's latest MMORPG.Remember the MOMU*** ? SKT decided to launch an international version of its online Mobile Museum. Forget the "museum" thing. This "Global MOMU 2006" (eng.momu.co.kr) appears to be a display for SKT's latest services, technos and solutions ; the perfect pedagogic tool to serve its international ambitions.* now dubbed "Real DMB TU" - a positive way of distinguishing SKT's pay S-DMB from
3M DMB subs - SBSM on its way 2006-11-23 01:27:00 SK Telecom should hit the 1M mark by the end of this year for its TU Media S-DMB service (4% of which being in-car accesses). T-DMB claims 2.2M users because the service comes for free... but for the handsets, whose prices are bound to decrease : over 2.5M T-DMB devices sold this year, good news for Korea Inc.Now its KTF's time to shine with a first : W-CDMA - HSDPA SBSM handsets are to be released within days.And yesterday, the draw was held for Seoul Sup Hillstate appartments (Seoul Forest Hillstate). Among other home networking gizmos, the lucky winners will have an elevator waiting for them each time they park their RFID-enabled cars at their parking spot. From their terrace with jaccuzzi and BBQ, they will enjoy a breathtaking view on the Han river as well as on the collapse of the real estate bubble.
MVNO commodities 2006-11-10 14:41:00 In France, mass distribution eventually makes it into the MVNO arena* : after Auchan Mobile (by Auchan Telecom - auchantelecom.fr) on SFR, Carrefour Mobile (carrefourmobile.fr) picked up Orange. If Auchan's Hyperlibre prepaid cards claim a fun and content factor, Carrefour delivers a much cheaper message : mobility metaphorically lies on the same shelves as eggs, mineral water or pasta, the equivalent of commodities
in foods, basic products for which the World's #2 retailer holds an impressive market share.Not as impressive as that of #1 Wal-Mart if it were to purchase Carrefour... but right now, WM has its own fishes to fry in the US (Movida - only 100,000 subs to date and 500,000 expected by the end of 2007) or in Germany, where even hard discounter Aldi* struggles. A retail and / or financial know-how definitely makes sense for tomorrow's MVNOood (and Rabobank is considering its home market in the Netherlands), but it takes more to succeed than a strong brand or an expertise, be
Geotagging and slipping like a log 2006-11-02 07:43:00 Context, context, context, location, location, location...You already can sort your travel pictures on a map with Google-Picasa or Yahoo!-Flickr, and videos should follow soon. But you still depend on a mapping service provider for the location match. Storing is one thing, organizing another. And it's scary how much digital content you can produce and forget.. ' better let the techno do the job and slip a few logs while you sleep like a log !Some high end Nikon cameras already geotag directly photo-files through GPS plug-ins, and tomorrow's mobile picturephones / videophones should be able to do this seamlessly. Actually, your cellco should encourage you to upload any info you can add on any given location (photo, video, memo, the vcard of a store...), and share if possible. Eventually, I guess we'll virtually carve on every tree we pass by : here I took a picture of a monument, there some crook stole my handset, there again he used it to purchase a watch... and I guess here is the
Pervasive Korea in US, China, Vietnam... 2006-10-30 10:00:00 SK Telecom seems to speed up its internationalization process, more than doubling its subscriber base in Vietnam
within one year to reach the 1M mark and targeting 4M by the end of 2008, which would at last sound like a significant position overseas.But investors tend to be more impressed by less spectacular moves on more demanding markets and Helio doesn't seem to claim many customers in the US. Yet, SKT's UI, T-PAK, is coming up on some Motorola handsets soon. And NATE just locked interesting deals on mobile search engines with Google, and on telematics and in-car entertainment with GM Daewoo cars (TTM 2008) : telematics through NATE Drive, movies through Cizle, music through MelOn... Korea
's leading cellco is eventually leveraging on its Jeju Telematics trials*. Middleware, content and enablers are a surer bet than airwaves, even if Korea Inc keeps pushing its own technos : strong presence during the 2006 China
Int'l DAB/DMB Forum & Expo in Beijing, recent deal clinched on
MSN, Mobile Centric, Mobisud 2006-10-19 11:31:00 In the latest Orange - Microsoft deal, France Telecom's DNA prevailed over Hans Snook's. France Telecom the incumbent and former monopoly, not France Telecom, the brilliant innovator and solutions provider, father of the CNET (now France Telecom R&D).Competitors can worry now that two major predators team up in the convergence arena. They're meaning business, market share and furthermore, share of client.Bouygues Telecom remains a Microsoft partner, but with a less exciting revenue sharing deal and a smaller pie to share. And don't count on i-mode for a long lasting differenciation. Convergence ? Sorry lads, rival SFR keeps an eye on your pal Neuf cegetel (as a strong minority shareholder and a friendly M-VNO host for Neuf Mobile
) while building an ADSL offer on the ashes of Tele2 France."Mobile Centric" SFR also promotes its own SFR Messenger and a teletubby-sounding Happy Zone. Cute, but will this stop pervasive MSN and ubiquitous unik ?In a cross continental move, Vivendi is bui
DoCoMo beyond DoCoMo 2006-10-10 14:00:00 DoCoMo will soon expand its HSDPA coverage beyond
Tokyo in Japan's major cities. 33,000 FOMA HIGH-SPEED handsets were sold during the first month of operation last summer and the MOVA / FOMA ratio fell from 54% to 45% between end of March and end of August 2006.NTT DoCoMo's overall marketshare keeps going down too, but at a much slower pace (not even one point over the last two years). Churn rate even flirted with the 0.60% line lately. But MNP should boost it back up to 0.85%. And Softbank Mobile starts releasing impressive series of 3G W-CDMA handsets.i-mode still suffers at the global level and e-Wallet / m-payment services seem to be the only promising driver right now : end of August, DCMX claimed 800,000 users (the service was launched in April) and Felica almost one third of DoC's 47.1M customers (15.5M enabled handsets). Besides, iD will share a common platform (PoS reader / writer, data center) with JR East's Suica next January and others will follow soon afterwards (JCB C Read more:DoCoMo
Wibree 2006-10-10 10:46:00 Wibree is not the offspring of WiBro and Brew but Nokia's latest attempt to federate the industry in the near field communication arena (oh, by the way... the NFC Forum recently delivered their yearly press release : the relevantly named SmartPoster could help them post 4 specs within a 12 month span).Wibree's logo is a maritime and bluetoothish version of the golden goose : a four legged orange sea star laying blue eggs around. As a matter of fact, "Wibree technology complements close range communication with Bluetooth like performance within 0-10 m range and data rate of 1 Mbps. Wibree is optimized for applications requiring extremely low power consumption, small size and low cost". Beyond catching Dubya's brainwaves, this should include (according to the user cases proposed by Noknok's marketing geniuses) such applications as sports and health monitoring, entertainment management and ergonomics at work.I'm not sure dual mode Bluetooth-Wibree chips will reach the $5 retail price
Google DIY - SketchUp before YouTube 2006-10-07 09:24:00 Let your customers do the job. When you're nothing but an empty shell, where can you get substance for a better price ? Google
Earth was a really smart move to aggregate content and value but it takes time to build a virtual world... so why not ask your visitors to build their ownhomes ? See SK Telecom : an army of minimes designing their own environments and even paying for the virtual stuff they add (show me the acorns : cyworld's totoris) !Google may not end up hammering down competitors with YouTube
, they keep giving their users potentially dangerous tools and Google SketchUp
, an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program, could turn as addictive as Earth or even Hell. For those who tend to plan ahead at least. Probably not the kill app for the masses, but one for a rather interesting target for announcers.
Broadcom - Qualcomm - chips and magnum 2006-10-05 08:33:00 The "Anticompetitive" label definitely stucks to Qualcomm
these days. In the last throes of a Sun vs Microsoft like insurgency, Irvine based Broadcom claims some good news from the legal side. For all you know, the San Diego Fee Chargers could even enjoy a rather disturbing scissors crisis with decreasing CDMA fees and increasing legal fees...On the other hand, if Q manages to prevent B chips from cruising along the West Coast and beyond, its weakened competitors could land in a Middle Kingdom very much in need of patents. Beware, Doc Jacobs, be China aware... Read more:magnum
LocationFree TV by Sony - headaches for broadcasters 2006-09-27 16:41:00 You just purchased the rights for say, the UEFA Champions League for the whole United Kingdom. Unfortunately, thanks to such remote TV concepts as Sony
's LocationFree TV, you cannot make sure every viewer in Spain uses your channel.And don't you "It's-OK-for-me" me ; it's not as if the viewer watches your anyway free program along with your so profitable ads : this roamer actually enjoys the service he paid for in his home country, seamlessly and furthermore, YOUlessly.You may not know it but parts of your revenue may already be literally streaming away from you, and the beauty of it is there's not much you can do (unless Big Medias Inc manage to rule Internet 2.0).There is an international loophole similar to the one cellcos suffered with termination charges a long while ago. You want to keep an eye on the lunatics locking a few rights for the Tuvalu or Bermuda audiences. Read more:headaches
T Login for HSDPA, EV-DO, WiBro and YouNameIt 2006-09-20 10:26:00 SK Telecom having a knack for new brands and new technos, customers must be struggling to keep the pace with the operator's launching machine.T Login
isn't Deutsche Telekom's latest Business Unit but a key to all SKT wireless data accesses (3G EV-DO, HSDPA
, WiBro... or why not TD-SCDMA tomorrow* ?) for all devices (laptops, PMPs, digital cameras, car navigators...).And which common denominator connectivity do you think they picked up before embedded solutions - T Login inside - are available ? Neither Bluetooth nor a vulgar 802.1x wannabe, but Korea's ultimate entry point : the USB.Yet another proof of SKT's priorities, the first T Login modems will start with HSDPA and add WiBro on time for Xmas and at full throttle 3 months later**. Thanks to KRW 190,000 subsidies, retail prices are slashed to KRW 50,000 or about $ 50, which reflects the importance of this new entry point. SKT decided to boost the buzz by recruiting 30 "quality reviewers" on the web besides the usual pilot teste
GSM rules in the Americas 2006-09-05 11:01:00 It was only a matter of time with the TDMA migration but GSM eventually reached the 50% mark in the Americas
before the end of Q2 2006 (51%, up from 38% one year earlier).The situation remains better in Latin America and the Caribbean (63%) than in North America, where CDMA gained 2.8M subs compared to 3.8M for GSM and 505k for iDEN last quarter : considering TDMA lost 1.6M, this means the CDMA family still outscored the GSM-TDMA squad 51% to 45% in net adds. Spectrum hassles keep preventing W-CDMA from entering the Kingdom of Qualcomm, where Sprint just launched the Novatel Wireless S720 Sprint Mobile Broadband Card ; not much of a name but an EV-DO Revision A device nonetheless. The CDG is rejoicing but during the last five years, the CDMA roadmap has shrunk to a Data Only thing. I guess Doc Jacobs is working on a disruptive Voice over DO evolution... Reversal of fortune ?And oh - Happy birthday to GSM (15 years), cdmaOne (10 years) and CDMA2000 (5 years).
TD-SCDMA in Korea 2006-09-01 17:37:00 A few years ago, Korea
felt proud to be, along with Japan, the only Asian country without any Chinese minority. That became a handicap after 1992 and the Chinese boom, so Incheon and Busan built from scratch actuals Chinatowns within their city limits in order to lure their precious neighbors.These days, from a technological point of view, Seoul tends to play Beijing over Washington : the Government makes Microsoft and Qualcomm suffer and doesn't hesitate to risk its own jewels (CDMA2000 lead, KTX bullet trains) in order to please the Empire. The result can look weird : Seoul invested a lot to destroy an ugly overpass and restore the Cheonggyecheon, urban planners are wondering how they will get rid of existing overway / subway lines (ie Nowon - Sanggye)... but the city decided nonetheless to build an overway Maglev line in Gangnam only because it could help the country get juicy contracts in China.So no one should be surprised when Korea's leading cellco announces test TD-SCDMA base
MVNE and VMVNOs 2006-08-30 08:19:00 MVNOs are blooming but the most successful one (actually, the grand sugarmamma of them all) happens to be a virtual MVNO : behind a unique and powerful brand, the Virgin Mobile franchise looks like a financial chameleon. Each story depending on too many factors to build a case, all attempts for an international seamless player failed and there is no such thing as a pure player.Most MVNOs tend to communicate on partnerships rather than financial data. Amp'd can be a practical vehicle / advertising tool for content providers (MTV, UMG) or enablers (Qualcomm), but a sexy partnership with Break.com doesn't necessarily mean a wedding with breakeven.net. Even niche marketing experts can fail where they should sparkle : Movida are only proposing now the first prepaid plans much needed by a mostly un-banked core target and I wonder how many customers they average per POS (45,000 points of sale claimed mid 2006)...On the other hand, MVNE (Mobile Virtual Network Enablers) are all the rage. In
Record launch for Nokia 2006-08-28 11:45:00 Lassi Etelatalo won the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship with a new World Record
(89 meters) but an old Nokia
. The man is used to throw javelins but should try antennas as well - picture this : this human power-towerco covers 7,921 square meters.
Windows Lite live in Seoul - Special K fat (profits) free ? 2006-08-26 11:14:00 New OEM Windows
XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition versions are being delivered today in Korea. Following a 32.5 bn Won fine, "Windows XP K" goes either without the usual suspects (MSN Messenger, Windows Media) or with a full choice (all major messengers, a web link to all media players).PC manufacturers can test the new OS from now on but endusers won't discover this "disruptive innovation" before next February...Late as usual, but this time no bugs to be blamed. Especially not from a financial point of view : thanks to their brilliant R&D team (that's for Revamping & Delaying), Microsoft are about to save yet another Xmas season. Read more:Seoul
, Special
, profits
MySpace France : dial fr for Murdoch 2006-08-11 09:14:00 MySpace France
opened their beta version on the web*. Un-translated US banners feebly try to animate an almost empty shell but you can count on Fox Interactive Media for tying a few knots with local media partners.In France, Murdoch
's blog machine cannot leverage on a strong News Corp presence and worse, it will face a strong leader with a rather newscorpish look and feel : Skyblog sounds like a Sky branch and succesfully targets the illiterate. Yes, the global deal with Google can bring audience, but not substance... and especially not MySpace's trademark podcastable broadband-broadchested-six-pack-daily-mirrorish substance.MySpace France must be finalizing some partnerships with a cellco / M-VNO, and certainly with TV / radio channels. I don't expect Arte / France Culture executives to be shortening their holidays.* dial http://fr.myspace.com/ for Murdoch ; myspace.fr seems to be auctioned by its opportunist owner. Read more:MySpace
Cyworld vs MySpace... SKT has it both ways 2006-07-30 13:33:00 Is it the sky falling over MySpace
and Ruppert Chicken Little Murdoch or just acorns from his new Korean partner in the mobile arena* ? A few weeks after Helio, SK Telecom are about to launch Cyworld in the US. Right now, the beta version** only hosts 364 clubs but totoris are already up for grabs and unlike in Korea, there is a clear focus on the younger generations. Besides, there is more (Mini)room for actual pictures and actual goods for your totoris vs the usual virtual Minimes and virtual goods... which should mean a more direct broadband war to News Corp's podcasting giant. The question is : how long before cyworld gets mobile in the US too ?Next stops for the cyworld train : Europe, South America and India.* about the Helio-MySpace deal, see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220)** http://us.cyworld.com/
Zune - comin' down next ? 2006-07-25 09:08:00 There was a gap in Microsoft's anticompetitive maze and its name was iPod. The Zune
project is supposed to fill the gap and strenghten Redmond's portable multimedia player / game console front. Just like origami, Zune 1.0 will be a useless thing to please avid analysts and not so avid developpers. Just like origami, Zune is not even a brand. Since it's pronounced the same way as June, a reference in mobile multimedia, SK Telecom could even sue them. Besides, Zune.com doesn't belong to Gates yet but to Gate Market Research Limited*. So the teaser website is comingzune.com, which could mean we won't have a device for Christmaz but at earliest coming Zune or maybe Zuly 2009 because this is the way we work up in Washington. The least one could say is that one could see this iPod killer coming. iPod has been doomed for a while** and Microsoft has nothing to do with it : once again, apple have to become a more open community and to reach and federate far beyond their own customers. But
La3 Live - Berlin or Bust - Aussie Yield Management 2006-07-21 10:29:00 Remember when 3 snatched the mobile rights for the 2006 World Cup ? HWL's unit certainly didn't get all its money back but its PR teams make sure they made the most of it, even where they didn't pay. Some feed back from 3 World Cup participants : England, Italy and Australia. 3 UK claimed 3.6M viewings for its World Cup mobile TV channels during the competition. That's a 61% increase vs May and an average 106,000 per day but also, less impressively, the equivalent of one viewing per customer (3.5M overall). According to the operator, two programs proved quite successful : World Cup Highlights lured enough people everyday to fill Highbury (38,500 seats - make that one third of the total) and Berlin
or Bust did 17.5% of the traffic.The most popular World Cup TV highlights were about England's glorious victories against the World's top 3 teams (Trinidad & Tobago, Paraguay and Equador), Zidane's infamous nod on Materazzi, and obviously the most important Becks-free game (Spain vs Uk Read more:Aussie
, Yield
, Management
From Couch Potatoes to French Fries - World Cup and Giant Screens - the new mass media 2006-07-20 09:50:00 Flat screens didn't wait for the World
Cup to defeat old cathodic tubes, but the clear winner of the competition could be the Giant Screen.TV operators now enjoy new channels and propose an extreme customer experience : as the main public media
, TV follows the event down to the streets and stadia and while couch potatoes remain stuck on their sofas, masses now stand up in public places like French
Fries in cornets. The phenomenon even overshadowed such traditional semi-private diffusion sites as restaurants and bars.Giant screens really became mainstream during the 2002 World Cup
in Korea, when millions would hit the streets to follow the great campaign of the Taeguk Warriors. Back in 1998, public events would just gather a few thousands souls (ie in front of Paris' city hall). For the 2006 edition, which took place over 1,000 kms away, Parisians would flock by tens of thousands in the Parc des Princes, Jean-Bouin and Charlety stadia. Simultaneously. In a city where organizers tradit Read more:Couch
RFID shopping and 3G shutting 2006-07-17 10:14:00 RFID interactivity starts showing in various shops across Korea. Your mobile phone remains quiet but that shouldn't last long. Major retailers prefer developping their own screens to enhance customer experience : as soon as the shopper picks a product on the shelf, a screen nearby displays more information about it. Just a few items enjoy this feature for the moment but that could be a blessing - you don't want everybody around hearing about the performance of the hemorrhoid treatment you just discretely dropped in your caddy.Can things possibly go worse for LG Telecom Inc ? The Korean cellco will lose its 3G cdma2000 license, about $300M (the part of the license fee they already paid) + $100 M in fines, and finally its CEO. From the start, LGT was doomed for being Korea's only non-W-CDMA 3G license holder*. More bad news for Doc Jacobs in Qualcomm's former Kingdom...Things can definitely go bad in Korea : VK loses everything and one should expect more bankrupcies among Korea's sm
Long Term Evolution and short term profits 2006-07-11 08:17:00 NTT DoCoMo keep pushing LTE, 3GPP's new label for Super3G (beyond HSDPA and HSUPA - the last step before 4G), and sets an aggressive calendar : specs completed by the end of next year, TTM by the year of 2009.Not far from DoCoMo's home turf, both KTF and SKT launched HSDPA and WiBro. The former techno is meant to become nationwide and the latter devoted to dense urban areas only... which means pretty much the same both sides of the Han river. But for the moment, WiBro is only a laptop thing (over 300 bucks per PC card plus a 30 per month plan). Since the Korean netiquette prevents people from using their handsets in the subway (definitely a change for the better for passengers), I'm not so sure everyone will connect everywhere that soon. I'd bet a few more bucks on mini mobile TV players for short sessions. At home, even HSDPA cannot beat FTTH in the appateu areas.Did you know Korea still represented 37% of all license fees collected by Qualcomm last year ? No wonder their armies o Read more:profits
, Evolution
, Long Term
AT&T U-Verse 1 - better than chapter 11 2006-07-03 10:14:00 Born again AT&T introduced its U-verse concept at the 2005 CES, with the ambition of covering 18M homes by the end of 2008. FTTH IPTV services only started late last month in 5,000 homes in San Antonio, TX with the help of Verizon's FiOS network. This offer would look rather disappointing to Korean eyes and wallets : no more than 6 megs, up to $120 per month for a wireless bundle... but hey that's a start and ain't that much competition in SBC's 13-state-wide kingdom, so let early adopters finance innovation. AT&T already rules in SBCland with 7.4M ADSL lines, but they intend to reach 100% in broadband coverage thanks to various fibers in urban areas, satellite broadband in rural areas (Project Lightspeed is supposed to reach 5.5M low-income households by the end of 2009), and fixed wireless (WiMAX a top pick) to fill the blanks. The first 13 states before the whole country... this state of the AT&T-SBC union address should resonate as a warning to competing superpowers : we'r Read more:better
Wanted : a stronger Asian CDMA alliance 2006-06-26 15:55:00 In a rather Vodafonish / DoCoMish move, SK Telecom recently secured $1bn worth of China Unicom bonds - the equivalent of 6.6% in shares (if converted next year)*. The vehicle of this partnership, China Unicom Limited (CUHK), owns 100% of China Unicom Corporation Limited (CUCL), a mainland operator strong of 130 M subscribers of which 35 M are CDMA.SKT seems to claim the leadership in CDMA-3G-and-beyond across the world, their US M-VNO Helio being another key part of this vast jigsaw puzzle. Korea's leading cellco didn't get the 10% it wanted but had to do something : it can't support the evolutions of an ailing CDMA community on its own, China pushes TD-SCDMA and Japan's NTT DoCoMo drafted its rival KTF in an impressive regional W-CDMA alliance.SKT are also launching WiBro these days in Seoul, a few weeks after KTF** and also with Samsung. The Korean manufacturer is said to eye the Indian market for this "han-made" techno but doesn't bet everything on the same horse : a dual mode Read more:stronger
, Asian
Belle Labs and niche marketing 2006-06-21 09:27:00 Nature remains the best innovator.In Florida, Belle
, a 3 year-old and well trained bitch, saved her 34 year-old diabetic master thanks to two disrupting technologies : licking (her master's arm to check the level of sugar in his blood) and toothing (punching "9" on her master's handset to call emergencies - not with the paw but with a not-even-blue tooth).Try doing this to your girlfriend if she faints on the beach this summer : the baywatch squad will knock you rabid you flat in a second - besides, your insurance doesn't cover handset bites.We thought we knew everything about canine mobile connectivity*, but now we've got to get ready for SMS spamming from Lassie herself...
niche
marketing indeed.
Bunny tip of the day : don't you dare activate
Playboy Mobile
in the UK unless you can outrun greyhounds.
* in Japan, you can communicate with your dog and know where it is without leaving your office - hell, there are even dog-human translators out there !
Virgin SugarMama and the mother of all mergers 2006-06-19 12:44:00 After Fujistu and BenQ, Nokia inherits part of the Siemens DNA... Will a fourth wedding mean the funerals of Siemens ?To tell you the truth, no one cares : Siemens has never been the sexiest of all brands, nor mobile networks the most glamorous part of the business. The only question could be "WHEN will Ericsson tie the knot with another Asian partner ?" Meanwhile, Virgin
Mobile USA brings the old airtime-vs-ad concept to another level : teens are lured by a generous Sugar Mama (sugar daddies being not that PC) who offers airtime to those who give her some attention. It's an opt-in thing where innovation lies in the multimedia flavor of the candies :"ADTIME: Watch short online video spots and give your feedback. TEXTIME: Answer questions via text message. QTIME: Fill out brief surveys about brands, products, and services." Besides and unlike session-by-session formulas where people have to undergo ads right before calling, Sugar Mama smarly leverages on its customer's "spare time". T Read more:mother
World Cup Train - coverage and cover up 2006-06-10 10:45:00 TU Media, SK Telecom's satellite mobile TV operator, will launch World
Cup Train
s for the Korea-Togo game : on June the 13th, a KTX bullet train will leave Busan at 9:30 and another Seoul at 9:50. All passengers will follow the game on big screen S-DMB devices.This "event" is about coverage but also about covering up another event : TU Media's competitors just announced the coverage of Seoul's subway lines (1 to 4) with their own T-DMB techno. It's terrestrial, it's free, and you don't have to go all the way from Seoul to Busan to enjoy the games.T-DMB operators started much later than SKT but since they don't need to control the devices, they can leverage on a much bigger community for terminals. The mobile TV function logically became an extension of PMPs (such Portable Multimedia Players as ReignCom's iRiver Pocket TV) as well as other screens (ie digital cameras : Samsung's Miniket Photo). Read more:World Cup
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