Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • How Google could be about to disrupt the telco industry

    How Google could be about to disrupt the telco industry

    Google are in talks with Hutchison Whampoa for the Hong Kong based conglomerate to provide global roaming for Google’s proposed mobile phone network reports the London Telegraph.

    Hutchison, who recently agreed to buy UK operator O2 for £10.2 billion from Spain’s Telefonica, are one of the quiet global telecommunications players with services in East Asia, Europe and Australia. An international roaming agreement with Hutchison would give Google a substantial global headstart.

    While the mobile phone angle is the obvious service for a global cellular network, another attraction for both Google and Hutchison is the Internet of Things. Being able to offer a worldwide machine to machine (M2M) data service fits very well into Google’s aspirations with products like Nest.

    For the mobile phone operators, the prospect of Google entering their market can’t be comforting with the search engine giant having three times the stock market capitalisation of the world’s biggest telco, China Mobile.

    It may well be however communications companies have little choice as the software companies start to take the telcos’ profits just as they have done with many other industries.

    Should the story be true about Hutchison and Google being in talks it will probably be the start of a massive shift in the global communications industry and one that will see many national champions threatened.

    Google’s global network ambitions could change the future of the Internet of Things industry.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Microsoft in Middle Age

    Microsoft in Middle Age

    One of the great business stories of today is how Microsoft is reinventing itself in the face of a totally changed industry. With the company turning 40, The Economist has a look at the business in its middle age.

    The Economist concludes CEO Satya Nadella is making the important changes to the business that founder Bill Gates couldn’t make because he was too protective of the company’s core products and that Steve Ballmer, Nadella’s predecessor, wasn’t interested in making as he sweated the existing assets.

    As this blog has pointed out before, The Economist notes the profit margins of the cloud and mobile services Nadella is focusing on are far slimmer than those Microsoft are used to from their server and desktop products.

    Those fat profit margins were the reason why Nadella’s predecessors had little reason to refocus the company but towards the end of Ballmer’s leadership it was clear Microsoft couldn’t resist the shift for much longer.

    Microsoft’s dilemma was clear to the stock market as well with The Economist having a chart showing the relative performance of IBM, Microsoft and Apple over the last 35 years.

    share-price-value-of-tech-stocks-ibm-microsoft-apple

    When Microsoft peaked in the late 1990s, the company was worth over twenty percent of the total tech sector’s valuation – today Apple has stolen most of that value.

    A particularly jarring from The Economist’s graph is just how much IBM dominated the tech sector a generation ago and its steep decline following the introduction of desktop computers.

    IBM’s decline in its dotage is exactly the fate Nadella is trying to avoid for Microsoft, with companies like Google, Apple and Amazon as competitors he has a tough task ahead of him.

    Similar posts:

  • Who owns a smartcar’s smarts?

    Who owns a smartcar’s smarts?

    Automakers Say You Don’t Really Own Your Car states the Electronic Frontiers Foundation.

    In their campaign to amend the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act to give vehicle owners the right to access and modify their automobiles’ software the EFF raises an important point.

    Should the software licensing model be applied to these devices then purchasers don’t really own them but rather have a license to use them until the vendor deems overwise.

    Cars, of course, are not the only devices where this problem arises. The core of the entire Internet of Things lies in the software running intelligent equipment, not the hardware. If that software is proprietary and closed then no purchaser of a smart device truly owns it.

    Locking down the smarthome

    This raises problems in smarthomes, offices and businesses where the devices people come to depend upon are ‘black boxes’ that they aren’t allowed to peer into. It’s not hard to see how in industrial or agricultural applications that arrangement will often be at best unworkable.

    Four years ago tech industry leader Marc Andreessen pointed out how software is eating the world; that most of the value in an information rich economy lies in the computer programs that processes the data, not the hardware which collects and distributes it.

    That shift was flagged decades ago when the initial fights over software patents occurred in the 1980s and 90s and today we’re facing the consequences of poorly thought out laws, court decisions and patent approvals that now challenge the concepts of ownership as we know it.

    Is ownership outdated?

    However it may well be that ‘ownership’ itself is an outdated concept. We could be entering a period where most of our possessions are leased rather than owned.

    If we are in a period where ownership is an antiquated concept then does it matter that our cars, fitness bands, kettles, smoke alarms and phones are in effect owned by a corporation incorporated in Delaware that pays most of its tax in the Dutch Antilles?

    Who owns the smartcar’s data?

    The next question of course is if the software in our smart devices is secret and untouchable then who owns the data they generate?

    Ownership of a smartcar’s data could well be the biggest issue of all in the internet of things and the collection of Big Data. That promises to be a substantial battle.

    In the meantime, it may not be a good idea to tinker too much with your car’s software or the data it generates.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Then they came for the sheepdogs – drones take to the farm

    Then they came for the sheepdogs – drones take to the farm

    While we focus on how technology is changing the workplace and displacing jobs, we often overlook how it affects animals as well.

    A video posted by Irish farmer Paul Brennan shows how a drone can be used to herd sheep, putting the humble sheepdog out of work.

    The possibilities in using drones on farms are endless, they free farmers up to do substantially more tasks and if they’re equipped with sensors to communicate with stock, crops or farm infrastructure they can be pulling in more information about the property.

    For the poor sheepdog this isn’t the first time a farm animal has been displaced. Until the arrival of the steam engine and then farm tractor horses had been an essential part of agriculture for thousands of years.

    But while news isn’t good for sheepdogs not all animals are intimidated by drones as one unfortunate owner found out when he decided to harass a mob a kangaroos.

    Similar posts:

    • No Related Posts
  • Could a robot put you out of business?

    Could a robot put you out of business?

    Transaction based businesses are in the firing line as robots and algorithms are taking over the tasks that are the mainstay of many service businesses.

    In How To Know if a Robot Will Take Your Marketing Job, Gartner consultant Martin Kihn identifies two factors that indicate roles at risk of being overtaken by technology.

    “The two dimensions relate to the things computers do best: (1) repetitive tasks, and (2) structured data,” states Kihn. “If you’re a knowledge worker, your biggest enemy is routine. To the extent your work is predictable, it’s codable . . . and you’re a target.”

    Kihn describes a curve where repetitive, structured jobs are at risk of automation while at the other end are more abstract analytic roles which are relatively safe from the algorithms and robots.

    will-a-robot-take-your-job

    While Kihn is focusing on marketing jobs, his message is clear for all occupations and businesses – if your company makes most of its revenue from low skill, easily automated tasks then it is ripe for being overtaken by algorithms or robotics.

    Even for businesses that are higher up the value chain, there are roles that can be replaced within the enterprise; a good example are the mining companies replacing high paid drivers with automated pit trucks.

    There are even many management jobs that may be affected as artificial intelligence advances. Approving spending or hiring requests for example can be largely dealt with by algorithms with only the rare exceptional case requiring a manager to intervene.

    So the executive suite may well be just as vulnerable as the lower status roles in an organisation.

    MIT professor Andrew McAfee who Kinh quotes has been clear that we’re on the cusp of massive change in the workplace as robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence progress. It may well be there are far more jobs and businesses at risk than we think.

    Similar posts: