Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Steve Ballmer’s big platform change

    Steve Ballmer’s big platform change

    All Things D today reports that Microsoft is considering a major restructure to reflect changed computing markets.

    One of the big messages from The State Of The Internet report is we are seeing three simultaneous changes to the computer industry – the shift from personal computers to smartphones, tablet computers and wearable systems – and Microsoft is at the centre of these transformations.

    One graph, first released by Aysmco and expanded in the Meeker presentation, illustrates how fundamental these shifts are to Microsoft’s business.

    mary meeker computingmarketshare-640x480

    Microsoft’s domination of the computer industry was almost total at the beginning of the century and remained so until the iPhone was released in 2007. Then suddenly things changed.

    With the success of Android and the iPad, the market shifted dramatically against Microsoft and the WinTel market share is now back to 1985 levels when the Commodore 64 was a credible competitor.

    The change that Microsoft faces shouldn’t be understated, although the company’s strengths with products like Office, Azure and Hotmail (or whatever this year’s name for their online mail product is) give the once untouchable incumbent some opportunities, particularly in the cloud.

    At the end of Mary Meeker’s presentation at the D11 conference, Walt Mossberg asked her about Microsoft’s view that tablets and smartphones are just new computing platforms. Meeker dismisses that with the observation that the data is clear, the market has shifted to Apple and Google.

    “Google and Apple are driving innovation,” says Meeker. “Microsoft is not.”

    The numbers aren’t lying for Microsoft. That’s why Steve Ballmer has to move fast and think creatively about the company’s future.

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  • Dicing up the mobile web

    Dicing up the mobile web

    Last week we had a series of reports on the changing web from Cisco, IBM and Ericsson along with Mary Meeker’s annual State Of The Internet presentation.

    One thing all the reports agreed on was there is going to be a lot more data pushed around the net and the composition is changing as business and home users adapt to smartphones and tablet computers.

    Cisco’s Visual Networking Index forecast online traffic would triple by 2017 while Ericsson’s Mobility Report predicts mobile internet traffic will grow twelve times by 2018.

    What’s notable in those predictions is the amounts and types of data the different devices use. Cisco breaks down monthly traffic by device;

    • Smartphones 0.6 GB
    • Tablet computers 2.7 GB
    • Laptops and PCs 18.6 GB

    In one way this isn’t surprising as the devices have differing uses and their form factors make it harder to consume more data. Cisco also points out that data consumption also varies with processor power. As PCs are the most powerful devices, it makes sense they would chew through more information.

    Ericsson breaks down data use by application as well as device and that clearly shows the different ways we’re using these devices.

    internet data traffic by mobile device

    Notable in the graph is how file sharing is big on PCs but not on tablets or smartphones while email and social networking take up a bigger chunk of cellphone usage.

    What’s also interesting in Ericsson’s predictions is how data traffic evolves. It’s notable that video is forecast to be the biggest driver of growth.

    ericsson-by-data-traffic

    Both Ericsson’s and Cisco’s predictions tie into Mary Meeker’s State Of The Internet presentation at the D11 Conference last week.

    It’s worth watching Meeker’s presentation just for the way she packs over eighty slides into twenty minutes with a lot of information on how the economy is changing as the internet matures.

    What all of these reports are telling us is that our society and economy are changing as these technologies mature. The business opportunities – and risks – are huge and there isn’t any industry that’s immune to these changes.

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  • Enniskillen and the G8’s Potemkin Village

    Enniskillen and the G8’s Potemkin Village

    In the middle of this month the G8 group of world leaders will meet in Northern Ireland when the UK takes their turn to host the annual conference.

    With the leaders of eight of the world’s biggest economies – which includes Canada but not China – coming to visit the Northern Irish government is anxious to present a prosperous face to the world, including allocating £233,000 to give Enniskillen’s town centre a ‘facelift’.

    It seems a good chunk of the facelift money has been spent on creating fake shops in the distressed town’s centre.

    In a little over two weeks they and other leaders will gather for a G8 summit at a golf resort in Enniskillen. And as the date approaches the cleanup is moving into high gear. It includes new coats of paint on houses, tidying up lawns, and putting up fake storefronts on shuttered businesses.

    For the visiting dignitaries, their advisors and the media caravans that follow them, Enniskillen’s shops will be looking prosperous when the reality is very different.

    “The County of Fermanagh has suffered terribly as a result of the credit crisis and the resulting recession,” says Dan Keenan of the Irish Times.

    Fermanagh County’s efforts to present a brave, if false, face to the world is symptomatic of the Western world’s refusal to accept the consumer based economy that drove the Corporatist model of government over the past fifty years is over.

    Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signalled the end of the Soviet experiment, the global financial crisis of 2008 marked the end for the big spending, big debt era which had driven the Western economies through the last half of the Twentieth Century.

    Unlike the Soviets, we refused to accept the game is up and have kept a failing economic philosophy alive with massive borrowing and money printing. In this respect, we’re dumber the Russian communist leaders who accepted the reality of the world they found themselves confronting in 1989.

    All of which will probably amuse Russian President Vladimir Putin as his motorcade speeds past the repainted shopfronts of Enniskillen and no doubt he’ll be thinking of the face Russia will present next year when they host the G8 Summit.

    Perhaps its time for the G8 leaders to invite the People’s Republic of China to join their privileged club – at present Japan is the only non-‘white’ nation.

    If the G8 decide to let the Chinese join, there’s the South China Mall that would be a perfect counterpoint to the Potemkin Village of Enniskillen and the world’s great leaders can continue to believe that the business rules of the 1980s still hold true today.

    Yesterday’s men are still pursuing yesterday’s dreams, dressing up Enniskillen may cater to their fantasies but it won’t help today’s economy.

    Picture of a propped up facade courtesy of Ingolfson through Wikipedia Commons.

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  • 57 million websites and nothing on

    57 million websites and nothing on

    Twenty years ago, Bruce Springsteen sang about TV having 57 channels and nothing on.

    While little has changed on TV, today the web has 57 million websites* offering little beyond click bait and a quick rewrite of someone else’s work.

    At the moment that model works for the kings and queens of the digital manor who pocket a few pennies for each of the ten stories their overworked interns pump out in a day but it’s hard to see how that form of publishing adds value to the audience.

    The 1990s television stations and cable networks got away with no adding value – and still do today – because they are in industries that are tough for new entrants to enter.

    But on the web there are far fewer barriers to new entrants which means offering 57 channels with nothing on, or 57 million websites with no real content, isn’t a long term path to success.

    *a wild guess

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  • Who will fill the online advertising opportunity?

    Who will fill the online advertising opportunity?

    It’s been a big week of reports with three major sets of findings being published; Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, IBM’s Retail Therapy and, the biggest one of all, Mary Meeker’s annual State Of The Internet.

    With a PowerPoint overview weighing in a 117 slides, this year’s state of the internet is a meaty tome with some fascinating observations that compliment Cisco and IBM’s findings which hopefully I’ll have time to write about on the weekend.

    On slide five of the State Of The Internet is what hasn’t changed Meeker describes the $20 billion internet opportunity being missed.

    Basically online advertising is not keeping up with the audience, the time spent on media versus advertising spend is lagging.

    mobile-market-opportunity-mary-meeker

    What’s notable is that this is the third year that Meeker has flagged this disconnect, yet advertisers still aren’t moving onto the web in the way audiences are.

    The print media industry though seems to be dodging a bullet with a disproportionate amount of advertising continuing to spent on traditional advertising – 23% for only a 6% share of consumers’ time which implies there’s still a lot of pain ahead for newspapers and magazines.

    For the online media, it shows there’s a great opportunity for those who can get the model right.

    What that one graph shows is that the disruption to the mass media publishing model is a long way from being over.

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