Communities Dominate Brands

Finally a President who truly understands. And I mean President of a COUNTRY..

Mark these two items onto your long-term radar. Colombia is the country. You heard it here first - Colombia is propelling itself into that position of leader in the digitally converging space - that it will soon in the next decade be called the "South Korea of Latin America". I kid you not. You can throw these words at me early in the next decade if it doesn't happen. But I have seen the ultimate reason for why Colombia will follow South Korea, and pull itself out of the class of Developing World countries and into those of the Developed World (like South Korea did in essentially only 30 years) - and the driver of that transformation will be how much Colombia will evolve into a true "information society" and eventually even rival Singapore, Japan, Finland etc.

And the reason for that - here is the other name you should put into your long range radar - this guy will be famous eventually for much more than being a popular, successful and re-elected President of Colombia - it is Dr Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Presidente de la Republica de Colombia (often called President Uribe in the Western press). This guy is one of the truly rare ones, he might become a future Secretary General of the United Nations or might win the Nobel Peace Prize or something in that class. He's a most popular and successful President of a rapidly improving nation of 44 million very poor people in Latin America, but this man - boy this man will truly still exceed these levels and do more for mankind. I'm sure of it.

What brings me to sing the praises of some obscure Latin American head of state? I spoke today at Andicom the big telecoms event here in Colombia. And while I've done Andicom before, this event today was unique to me. Just that the local Minister of Communciations of Colombia, Maria del Rosario Guerra spoke to the conference - tells you something. I do 20 of these kinds of events every year on all six continents, but it is rare for an event to feature a Minister responsible for the telecoms/mobile/communication sector. Yes, I've done several such events too, but that the currently active Minister for this industry bothers to show up at a telecoms conference in that country, that is a pretty good measure of being at a top-level telecoms event.

But what if the programme lists the opening presentation to be given by the current President (or other ruler) of the country? Could you imagine a TELECOMS conference in London featuring UK's Prime Minister Gordon Brown opening the event? Or a telecoms event in America where George W Bush shows up to give opening remarks? Not in at least one lifetime of conferences all around the world.

But yes, this was no typo. Today (or technically yesterday by the time this blog is finished, its just about midnite here in Cartagena) the agenda featured President Uribe. Not via remote connection either. In person. And for those readers who aren't that familiar with Colombian geography, Cartagena is not the capital, the President needed to fly 2 hours from Bogota just to reach Cartagena (and then return of course). Yet the President addressed this conference.

So - lets imagine any current ruler speaking by some weird happenstance, at a telecoms conference. Say France's President Nicolas Sarkozy speaks at Idate, the big French telecoms event. What would he say, and how long would he speak? It would be 15 minutes, certainly not more than 30 minutes. And it would be a scripted speech, written by his speech-writers of course. It would mostly talk about how great France has been in telecoms, how there are current challenges, but how the Government has been supporting the telecoms industry and that the President hoped the industry could gain great success. And end it with the typical Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite; Vive La France etc. The speech would have perhaps a 5 minute section on telecoms - at best - with a couple of jargon items relevant to this industry (telecoms in this case) that the President would not really know, but were stuck into the "standard speech" to try to make it relevant to this industry. While the President could deliver much of the speech without looking at his notes - when this 5 minute section on telecoms was delivered, the President - any head of state of just about any country - would need to read carefully from paper (or telepromter) the exact words, not knowing the internet from mobile, far less what a 3G was or how something can be social networking..

I don't mean to dump on President Sarkozy or the French, this would be true of the heads of state of just about any country, from China to Finland, from Canada to Kenya.

But no. Not with Dr Alvaro Uribe Velez, Presidente de la Republica de Colombia. No no no, Mr Presidente, no. This man came in with a real speech.

Not some quick notes of 15 minutes. No, Presidente Uribe spoke - get this - one HOUR and 30 minutes - to a telecoms conference (with an audience of 3,000). Many in the audience are foreigners - this is a famed international conference, so he's not even talking to mostly his "voters." There are big delegations from nearby countries such as Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica etc.

One hour and 30 minutes ? Who is this guy, an ex Ericsson Colombia CEO perhaps? No, this man is not a telecoms geek at all. He's an ex attorney. Lawyer by trade. And no, this was not a scheduling error by his PR people. President Uribe isn't a novice and new to this game. Colombia had a one-term limit in its constitution to the President, but he was so popular in his first term, that the country made an exception for him to allow him to run for a second term. This man has been President of a nation of 44 million people - which still faces a civil war and very bloody continuing domestic narco-terrorism. Yet the attorney has managed to pick up enough of a vocabulary in telecoms to be able to speak on this topic for 90 minutes. Who is this guy?

So yes, you expect something like the "Colombia is great" speech, peppered with how his government is better than previous governments and has been a strong supporter of this industry - ie telecoms. And yes, of course, he is a politician, he did touch on those topics. Out of 90 minutes, he spent less than 10 minutes on his administrations achievements.

And yes, of course this kind of speech will have many "relevant" and "related" issues - such as the current economic crisis and for example schooling needs (and achievements) in Colombia, etc. Typical "politician stuff". Yes, there was plenty of that as well.

But out of his speech about half was solidly on TELECOMS topics !!!!

Who is this guy?

So yes, he must have a good staff and great speech-writer, and perhaps someone on his speech-writing team is a solid geek and knows the jargon. So yes, you'd expect he read the telecoms parts of the speech carefully from the papers of his printed speech.

No. He spoke the whole 90 minute presentation out of a couple of short notes - no printed speech at all (and no telepromter). He spoke of amazing things (for a national President or head of state) such as the technical aspects of calling centres, of using mobile technology to allow electronic payments of toll roads, of e-government initiatives and its finer details, of virtual teaching improving the quality of education (oh my god, really, ohmygod. who IS this guy, if he is fluent on virtual reality, who is he? Is he a secret reader of the CDB blog?). He spoke of the power of digitally connected citizens in a modern democracy !  (His presentation could have been inserted verbatim as a bonus chapter into our book Communities Dominate Brands, the government chapter - and all of it would have fitted in. Yes, he clearly communicated that Colombian electorate and society needs to evolve to capitalize on "communities dominate" ha-ha to improve their democracy!!!!!!! )

He even discussed undersea internet cables both on the Caribbean sea and the Pacific Ocean floor - explaining briefly why the two seas were so different and why the Pacific cable is now needed. How many of OUR READERS could discuss telecoms at this level, on so wide a range of topics and areas.

All of this speaking straight to the audience, not out of a printed speech, and almost never even glancing at his notes. He KNOWS this stuff. He knows THIS stuff? He knows this... STUFF. Who is this guy? A long-sitting respected President of a very "real" country (not some tiny country of a handful of people) and a country facing enormous problems. And somehow this - ex-attorney - had amassed so much knowledge into one of the most complex and demanding industries - as regular readers of our blog know - I often say with a straight face - telecoms is far more complex than rocket science. But yes, President Uribe is fully fluent in the finer points of telecoms and how it impacts a nation on the macro level.

WOW.

Now, I'm not ga-ga over President Uribe because he happens to know my industry so remarkably well (for a politician). I am ga-ga over President Uribe, because he knows the one industry, that the big United Nations studies have provent to give the biggest benefit to a nation's development. Investing in telecoms and IT infrastructure is the single best thing a nation can do to improve the living standards of any country in the Developing World - bigger benefits than building airports or railroads or highways or water systems or electrical grids etc. The biggest benefit - quantified by the international development bodies - is to invest in IT and communication industries (and of course, increasingly in mobile). And yes, the next best thing for national growth, of cousre, is to invest in education.

And so, President Uribe spent about half of his speech on telecoms matters, and about 10 minutes on the current global economic crisis (and even here he mentioned how it impacts the telecoms sector) - but the only other topic that got about 10 minutes of the remaining time, was... education !!!  Yes he talked also about how Colombia is investing in the highways and all the "usual stuff" but yes - to this telecoms audience he also stressed how much Colombia needed to also invest in education - and then AGAIN, he spent a lot of time showing how much the government is doing and will do more, to bring efficiency gains to education - out of telecoms, virtual classrooms and broadband internet connectivity and all  !!!!

WHO IS THIS GUY?

So. Let me be perfectly clear. This is the first time ever, that I have heard of a head of state, who truly "gets it" about how critical the investment in telecoms and IT is to any country's development, in any Industrialized Country, or any Developing World country. And he is not only personally convinced about it, he is so committed to it, that he flies 2 hours to visit this techno-geeky nerd conference of telecoms propeller-heads, to speak 90 minutes and fly back to Bogota to continue running his country.

So mark my words. President Alvaro Uribe Velez will propel Colombia into ever more rapid hypergrowth in the IT and telecoms sector. Because of the "perfect storm" of the domestic industry growing, the customers (citizens) gaining and participating, with the government fully engaged - and funding - these developments at such a high priority - this means that Colombia is already today on the trajectory to pass Argentina, Brazil and Latin American leader Chile in this area. It will only take a couple of years and we start to discuss a "Colombian miracle". Who knows, there might be a book there for me too, ha-ha, to provide a parallel case study to my Digital Korea book..

And its not at the expense of education. He and his administration are drastically improving Colombia's education system as well. Now Colombia has the turbocharged engine to push the country in every possible measure, to capture a leadership position in the globally connected information society of the future.

And one last little tidbit. The organizers of the event, Cintel (great guys if you need to work with the telecoms industry in Colombia by the way, super competent) - have a reputation of bringing world class leaders to Andicom annually. So who do we see at the exhibition? South Korea's U-City concept of course (as I discuss in Digital Korea), the shining example of working protypes and commercial products to illustrate how a digital home, a virtual office, an e-health system etc might work. So Colombia is already learning from the world leaders. And this is how serious President Uribe is about it - he spent personally at least 15 minutes, accompanied by the Minister of Communications, in the U-City exhibition, and not just walking past - he was talking with the experts. He knows this stuff.

I am so impressed, truly. And I am so honoured to have been involved in this event today and again, President Uribe even came over to the VIP guests (the other speakers) and shook hands with all of them before he delivered his speech (so I got to also shake hands with him).

I am so totally his fan. Can you imagine if your government head somehow know of a part of what we blog about. I don't mean the head of state was reading our blog or book, but would be that interested that the busy politician would know of Cyworld and Blyk and Flirtomatic and blogging and citizen journalism and engagement marketing? You know that ruler would soon have his/her country on amazing hypergrowth..

So yes, mark my words. Colombia is the rising star of Latin America and we'll soon start to compare it to South Korea. And this man, Dr Uribe, the President of Colombia. He will do far more still in his career, certainly with Colombia and then most likely more on the international scene. He could seriously be a Secretary General of the United Nations one day, that level of brilliance and achievent (and collaboration too). Follow his career..

More Engagement by Mobile from Japan - select your hairstyle on your phone

The Japanese are really getting fast up to speed on engagement marketing, and using the mobile phone for it. The latest example came to us via our friend Tim Harrap, who found it at Japan Marketing News. It is a service called Ez My Styling, on mobile phones on the KDDI network in Japan. Users send the picture of their face to the service, and then can play around with various hairstyles to select which hairstyle best suits them. Then - of course, this is engagement marketing and mobile allows us the ways to convert interst into action - the service offers the recommendation of where is the nearest hairdresser who does that particular hairstyle - and of course when you show up at the hairdresser, you show the picture of which style you want. Brilliant. Using mobile to engage with customers, and to drive traffic to your stores.

Talk to the computer, Read the phone?

I'm at the annual Andicom conference in gorgeous Cartagena Colombia, the big telecoms event for the Andies region of Latin America. I'll be doing my 7th Mass Media bit (no surprise). But today I was talking with a group of colleague and someone mentioned a quote from Bill Gates. I don't have the exact quotation, and on a quick Google search, was not able to find it yet - I'm sure I'll find it soon or if someone from our readers knows it, please post a comment for us.

The quotation was roughly that in the future "we will talk to the computer, and read the mobile phone" (where currently we read text on the PC screen and we talk on the mobile phone). Please note that is not the verbatim quotation, so please don't spread that quotation for now. I will try to get the correct wording of it, and will blog with that when I have it. But yes, as a thought, this is indeed an interesting thought and one we can easily agree with and have many early bits of evidence that this is going to be the case.

So yes, you are reading my blog right now. You are literally reading from the PC screen via the internet. That seems to the "the right way of things" and very natural to us. If you talk on a device, you talk on a phone, which obviously now for most people on the planet, is no longer a landline phone, it is a mobile phone (ie cellphone). We read computers and we talk to phones.

Fine. But what is this talking to the computer? Well, it starts with Skype. Already over 130 million people talk on a PC (and internet) based service. What may have seemed an odd idea a decade ago - that "normal" people would use a PC to do voice communications, is now reality for over 10% of all internet users - and for one in seven owners of a personal computer. One element of Bill Gates's quotation is starting to happen.

Of course the main thesis of the idea is that the clumsy user-interface of the personal computer - the keyboard and mouse - is going to shift to voice recognition. There are ever better voice recognition applications that already exist to do anything from basic PC operation by voice, to rather well functioning real time dictation ie speaking directly to create a letter or other text document or file. Yes, that part of the migration is a near term future and many companies are working hard to turn that into a reality.

There is more to this, of course. We also go from "reading" the PC (or internet) to "watching it" and to listening to it. From early applications and services that were very strongly text-based, we now have pictures, videoclips, music files, and all kinds of streaming services and even IPTV and the ever more advanced multiplayer online virtual environments. The PC is evolving far beyond text as either an input or output standard format.

Meanwhile what of the phone? Specifically the mobile phone (cellphone), obviously. We are well on the way to shift our phone behaviour away from voice calls to more advanced visual services, starting with basic SMS text messages. Already today, three out of every four mobile phone owners worldwide is an active user of SMS text messages - that means more than twice as many people send SMS text messages than the total user base of the internet. These active users of SMS average sending out over 3 SMS text messages per day (the leading country Philippines, averages 20 sent per day). In all countries we see the same trend that people now actually prefer using SMS texting to making voice calls on their mobile phones. We've reported here on our blogsite about this in the UK and Ireland already years ago (as in Scandinavia and the Philippines for example) but more recently the same trend has been reported in New Zealand, in China etc.

What do we read? Its no longer just SMS from friends. We've reported of all kinds of innovations in this space, from reminders and alerts, to actually reading full books, released as mobile books. Remember, five out of the ten best-selling printed books in Japan last year, started out as mobile phone books (even written on mobile phones by young new authors).

From SMS texting it is then a much smaller step into other text and messaging based services, from sending and receiving picture messages on the MMS service, to Twitter and all kinds of mobile blogging solutions; and from there, a small step to video sharing such as using Qik, or doing your online dating and flirting on a service like Flirtomatic, etc. So the phone was once a device we talked into (and listented to) and it is now moving beyond voice calls.

As this shift happens, the advertisers are rushing in as well. More people receive advertising on a mobile phone than on the internet - or indeed on a TV set (Juniper says 1.5 billion people this year will receive an advertisement on their mobile phone, contrast that with 1.3 billion internet users, and 1.5 billion TV sets in use in the world this year).

Interesting thought, gives another angle to thinking about how our lives are changing. Meanwhile I'll pay attention to all the presentations here about the scene in Latin America and blog about that later in the week. Meanwhile, if any of our readers knows the Bill Gates quotation, please post it for us in the comments or send me an email to  tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com  so I can also include the real quotation properly attributed and hopefully even in context..

Join us at Oxford 2 day course about 7th Mass Media on Dec 3-4

Alan Moore and I have the pleasure of presenting a course with our friend and fellow blogger David Cushman (best known as the digital evangelist for UK giant print publishers Emap, who now are part of Bauer Media). Our brand new course is about Mobile as the 7th Mass Media channel - and obviously themes Alan and I regularly talk, write and blog about.

The course goes for the full 7th Mass Media story, comparing it to legacy media, showing how mobile can enhance existing legacy media content and services; then how mobile has its unique 7 benefits - and how we can build great services around those, and also gives tools for the attendees to go beyond the obvious copying of the internet and other legacy media onto mobile, and actually create what we call "magic" - services not possible before. Over the two days we will cover in detail and depth all of your favourite 7th Media examples such as Blyk, Flirtomatic, Tohato, Cyworld, Admob, BMW, MyNuMo, etc.

The course is remarkably inexpensive for a two day event, it costs only 795 UKP - less than a typical telecoms conference would cost you for one day - and includes lunches. Its held at the beautiful Oxford University campus. Oxford is easy connection from Heathrow for foreign attendance, and also Oxford area hotels are far less expensive than London hotels. With our previous courses we've had some of the true thought-leaders and innovative companies in attendance from all around the world, and the reviews of our courses have been exceptionally good. We hope to make this our best course yet.

To see the agenda, or to sign up, please go directly to the Oxford University pages at this link:

http://cpd.conted.ox.ac.uk/electronics/courses/7th_mass_media.asp

Its December 3-4, two days filled with info and tools and stats and examples, plus the chance to pick our brains during the course and the breaks. Its truly worth it. We hope to see you there!

Coach leathergoods latest fashion brand with its own phone

The Japanese invented the fashion-branded custom phone years ago, when Benetton released its first phone models on the NTT DoCoMo network. Since then we've seen various traditional fashion brands getting into phones from Prada with LG, Dolce & Gabbana with Motorola and Armani with Samsung. Now the latest to get into it is leather goods brand Coach, which will release custom Coach-designed phones (made by SonyEricsson) as a premium luxury phone product in Japan, on the KDDI network, and available in November. We heard about it from our friend Tim Harrap, who found the story at the Japan Marketing News website.

So iPhone reached 11.6 million unit sales in past 12 months

The numbers are in. Apple says it has sold 6.9 million of the newer 3G iPhone. When we add the last four quarters of sales of the original iPhone (which totalled 6.1 million, but 1.4 million of those were in the last two quarters of Apple Fiscal Year 2007) we get a total of 11.6 million iPhones sold in the past 12 months.

Good result, Apple. It fits well with our original forecast, and also fits with the assumptions we made right after the iPhone was announced, that Apple could only reach this level of sales with some severe cuts to the profitability of the iPhone. Obviously by cutting the price down by two thirds - Apple did resort to severe price cuts and thus cuts to its profitablity to reach this.

I noticed the early press were reporting that Apple says it has beat the "market leader RIM/Blackberry" this past quarter. That is very misleading Apple propaganda, however. RIM and the Blackberry are not the direct smartphone rival to the iPhone (except perhaps in the USA, which represents only 8% of the world's mobile phone market). First, for the past full year, RIM sold over 20 million Blackberries - so to celebrate their one new model, and its one good quarter of sales is certainly a misleading statement, when over the past year RIM has sold about twice as many smarthphones as Apple.

But the real rival to the iPhone is the Nokia N-Series (and E-Series) smartphones. They sold about 80 milloin units this past quarter. So Apple did not sell better than the market leader, in fact Nokia smartphones outsold Apple by a ratio of 12 to 1..  Sorry Apple, lets tell the truth next time, ok?

But yes, good result by the novice handset maker. Selling 11.6 million mobile phones in one year puts them around the ranking of about 10th to 12th largest maker in the world. Out of all mobile phones sold this year, it is of course less than one percent. But out of all smartphones, Apple has now about 6% market share, and that is a very impressive debut for the new smartphone maker. Lets see Apple now grow this strongly for the next year.

For those who want my more considered views, anticipating this level of sales over a week ago, you might want to read my longer blog putting the 10 million annual sales level in context.

Nuggets and Tidbits from Asia Digital Media and Entertainment Forum

I spoke at the Asia Digital Media and Entertainment Forum last week and took notes on several interesting tidbits.

Taiwan Public Television Network gave an interesting presentation and discussed High Definition TV. The interesting number for readers of our blog - 60% of Taiwanese HD TV viewers never view ads (ie they skip ads). 30% view ads sometimes and only 10% view TV ads regularly.

MediaCorp Singapore gave a great presentation about digital radio, and of services that go "beyond radio". A good example was using the DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) technology to update digital "e-billboards" that we see a lot here in Asia. The idea is, that you don't need any physical cable connection to the billboards, yet they can be updated remotely, simultaneously, and in real time. An interesting angle to DAB that I had never thought of. Also the idea of updating car mapping info - where are the roadblocks and traffic congestion etc. Yes, that can be done on cellular networks ie 3G data, but that means each car mapping service will consume some telecoms traffic bandwidth every time there is an update. DAB (and other broadcast digital technologies like DVB-H, DMB etc) can be used for this in a far more efficient way. Interesting..

China Netcom was at the Forum and spoke of digital convergence. One of the points they made was that also in China (as we've recently seen in many other countries) today SMS text messaging is the most used service on mobile phones - ie no longer voice calls.

As to me? I spoke of the Seven Mass Media and gave examples where legacy media are gaining new abilities through digital platforms and through convergence; and then discussed the sixth mass media channel - internet - and the seventh - mobile - and how they are now innovating in the media space. The event was very interesting.

Seize the day, or walk this way.. feeling green? use Carbon Diem

I heard of this via our friend Steve Epstein and this sounds like a pretty clever way to bring green values into daily life, and using location-based info of the phone.

The idea is that this new service, Carbon Diem, will monitor your movement. It then uses a clever algorithm to determine your method of movement and its impact to carbon. If you move walking speeds or bicycling speeds, you don't burn carbon. But if you move in say car speeds, lots of carbon. And I guess (I don't know) that it knows from the pattern, if you are in a train or bus (lots of regular stops, and obviously a regular route) and then calculates a smaller carbon footprint. And if your phone disappears at one airport and two hours later appears at another airport in a city a thousand kilometers away, it knows you've been burning some serious carbon in the jet you took...

Clever idea. Check it out at the Springwise site where the press release is featured. Thanks Steve!

Greatest form of flattery: Blyk clone in Croatia Tomato Plus

Our friends at Mobhappy report that Croatia has now a Blyk clone. Launced by OutThere Media, the service is called Tomato Plus, and it is on the Vip mobile operator network. They give out 50 minutes of calls and 50 text messages per month, in return for up to 10 mobile ads per day, but apparently are limiting that for now to 5 or 6 messages per day.

Yes, its a clear sign you are a success, when you have others copying your idea. Congrats Tomato Plus for this launch, and congrats Blyk for this clone and no doubt many others.

A philosphers guide to Creative Destruction

Taking the creative destruction out of capitalism is like taking the crucifixion out of Christianity

Seems such an appropriate comment in reference to my post Faust Banking and Trust

You took home almost half a billion dollars, whilst your company is bankrupt and our country is in crisis. And that's difficult to comprehend for a lot of people. I have a very basic question for you - is this fair? Asks the chairman to Lehman Brothers CEO, Richard Fuld