The Informer recently met with Lee Epting, an interesting lady who holds the position of director of content services for Vodafone. That a carrier should have a director of content services at a time when conversations about ‘pipes’ are so prevalent is fascinating in itself, but not nearly as fascinating as the fact that Epting joined the carrier when the wreckage of Vodafone 360 was still smoking and managed to salvage some of the ill fated project.
Petty squabbles, underhand tactics and stomach turning trials in Australia, with the masses waiting fervently for a verdict – it’s all making for compelling viewing. No, the Informer hasn’t been watching ‘I’m a Celebrity…’, rather the Apple-Samsung patent saga has taken another intriguing twist.
There was an unwelcome flashback to the grim days of the early noughties this week as struggling vendor Nokia Siemens Networks announced that it is to cut almost one quarter of its workforce. Some 17,000 NSN employees, 23 per cent of the total, are for the chop as the firm bids to try and save €1bn in operating costs by the end of 2013. Analysts speculated that the firm is gearing up for an IPO next year and that the cuts are designed to make it a more attractive prospect to potential investors. Certainly it is widely believed that Siemens has been looking to exit the JV pretty much since it was established in 2007. The two parents abandoned their search for investment in June this year, opting instead to inject $500m apiece into the firm at the end of September.
Cost of living through an economic slump? Ridiculously high. Getting consumers to part with their hard earned cash with nothing but a wave of the phone? Priceless. You can almost hear the *tap; kerchings* echoing throughout the industry as our plump but ever hungry financial institutions and payment providers continue their foray into the mobile market.
The Informer remembers a time when new phone launches were exciting occasions, as the masses would convene to see the latest device to capture the imagination of the public. There was a widespread quest to unveil the smallest phone consumers had ever seen. Sometimes, manufacturers would capture our attention by introducing interesting quirks, such as flip phones, so that you could feel like Captain Kirk when answering calls, and some even brought out spring-loaded sliding phones to make you feel as if you were Neo from the Matrix. Ah, that was when form factor meant something!
Against the backdrop of the Eurozone debt crisis, it seems a good week to be talking about financial performance. And as always there are winners and losers in the numbers game. The Chinese may be reluctant to help the Greeks out of their hole, but has anyone thought about asking Qualcomm?
Years ago, before smartphones and the mobile data explosion, industry conferences featured numerous presentations from operators and vendors that used hypothetical customers to explain the future of mobile communications. A stock image of a pretty young woman popped up onto the screen and the speaker would say something like:
“This is Susan. Susan is a 23 year-old junior advertising executive living in London and she just never seems to have enough time, what with her new career and her hectic social life…
As a London cyclist, the Informer has been known to bellow profanities at car and van drivers breezily using their phones for voice and non-voice services as they barrel down the city’s roads. They are either oblivious to or unconcerned by the fates of their two-wheeled colleagues, and that text message they’re sending is just so important.
The Informer feels like he’s just got back from the future. He’s been attending the inaugural Wired event in London, which is sponsored by Telefónica O2 and serves as a tank for some of the tech and art sectors most interesting brains to swim around in.
He’s heard about the origins of the digital universe from George Dyson, collaborative consumption from Rachel Botsman, and immortality from Richard Seymour, seen 3D printing in action and watched unmanned drones and robots zip about the place.
If there were a recognised scale for outpourings of grief, one that could be grouped with Beaufort (wind), Richter (earthquakes) and Scoville (heat of a chilli pepper), then it would probably be called the Spencer Scale. Named for the young Lady Diana Spencer, who became the Princess of Wales in marriage and the Queen of our Hearts in death, the Spencer Scale would rank all grief outpourings against that which swept the world like an epidemic in 1997.
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