e-Trading Reviewed

(Europe – Stockholm, Sweden) For the past week I have been annoyed at an article in a Swedish newspaper, Computer Sweden, about a so called expert in e-trading talking about how many Webshops have to close their operation down. He talked about how the market is overmatured with way to many players on the market and how most of them have to shut the business down. Well, I do not agree on this analysis.

Last month there was a report saying that about 70% of all Webshops are making a profit. The rest expect to at least break even sometime this year. The e-market is still a new market with an amazing growth at about 25% per year in the US alone. The markets value is about 3% - 5% of the total trade. Just by looking at these numbers one can understand that the growth potential is enormous. This means that there is room for many more Webshops than today. The market will evolve and of course anyone who do not have god handling of his own economy will go under, but there is room for many more businesses especially for those focusing on a particular area with a clear value proposal. In the past year we will see many more Webshops arising and will probably see a higher quality on the technical solutions while the distribution options will slowly improve over time. A more global scale of business will be the best bet for those that want to truly prosper in an increasingly competitive world.

Predictions for mobile future

(Europe – Stockholm, Sweden) Two days ago Apple introduced its new mobile phone the iPhone, which by the way is a trademark of Cisco, and now the two companies will go into a fight over it at the courts. For a change I thought that the below extraction of an article on the BBC homepage could give you a notice on how the future might look like for mobile phones.

”The mobile has changed beyond recognition over the last 20 years but that is just the start of things to come in the next two decades, says mobile communications expert Dr William Webb.

It is 2025. Your mobile is now much more than just a communication device - more like a remote control on your life. You still call it a "mobile" from habit but it is an organiser, entertainment device, payment device, security centre and so much more. On a typical day it will start working even before you wake.

Because it knows your travel schedule it can check for problems on the roads or with the trains, and adjust the time it wakes you up accordingly, presenting you with the best route into work.

It can control your home, re-programming the central heating if you need to get up earlier and providing remote alerts if the home security system is triggered.

It is your payment system - just by placing the phone near a sensor on a barrier, like the Oyster readers in use today, you can automatically pay for tickets for journeys, or buy items in shops.

Digital toolset

It is also your entertainment centre when away from home.

As well as holding all your music files, as some phones today are becoming able to do, it will work with your home entertainment system while you sleep to find programming that will interest you and download it as a podcast so they you can watch it on the train or in other spare moments.

It will intelligently work out what to do with incoming phone calls and messages. Leaving home without your mobile...will become rather like leaving home without a wallet, keys, music player and mobile all at once. Because it knows your diary, it will know, for example, to direct voice calls to voicemail when you are in a meeting, perhaps providing a discrete text summary of the caller and the nature of their call.

With its understanding of almost all aspects of your life, many new services become possible.

For example, a "good food" meal planning service could send daily suggestions for your evening meal based on learned preferences, previous selections made and the likely contents of the refrigerator.

The latter might work by uploading the bill from the weekly grocery shop and then removing those items it deduces have been used for meals earlier in the week or which are out of date.

With an understanding of location, the mobile can provide directions, alert the user to friends in the vicinity or update the family "who's where" map (a little like the device the Weasley's have in Harry Potter books) so that members of the family know where each other is.

Leaving home without your mobile, bad enough already, will become rather like leaving home without a wallet, keys, music player and mobile all at once - quite unthinkable. And in the nicest, most helpful and useful of ways, your mobile will guide you through life.

Travel planner

So what will this apparently massive change in our relationships with our mobiles require in the way of new technology or extra expenditure?

Actually, surprisingly little.

Now that we have widespread cellular coverage, with high speed data networks in many homes, offices and "points of congregation" such as coffee shops, we have all we need to signal to the mobile.

What we do need is better mobiles and more intelligence. Mobiles will continue to get steadily better, with higher resolution touch-screens, speech recognition that really works and much greater memory and storage capabilities.

Running on these mobiles, and also on home and wide-area networks will be increasingly intelligent software, able to learn behaviour, predict needs and integrate with a growing number of databases, such as transport updates from major providers.

So instead of the train company sending you a text to tell you of delays, it will send it to your mobile, which will analyse it in conjunction with your travel plans and modify those plans if needs be.

This evolution will be a slow but steady progress, as each few years mobiles get slightly better, intelligent software evolves and the various providers of all the necessary input data, such as transport organisations and shops, gradually make the data available in formats that become increasingly useful.

No more than 10 years ago the mobile was purely a device for making voice calls. Now it is a camera, music player, organiser and texting device in addition.

This is only the start of an evolution over the next 20 years that will turn it into our trusted and indispensable companion in life.”

Looking in the Crystal Ball for 2007 – A e-Business Perspective

(Europe – Stockholm, Sweden) One week into the year 2007 and we still have not seen anything spectacular in the world of e-business. I guess people are still digesting the Christmas season and by tomorrow things will get back to normal. I must say that I expect much from this year. The end of last year turned up the heat for the e-business world with the YouTube-Google deal. What can we expect from this year then? Let us look at the crystal ball.

e-Trade: The e-trade is steadily growing year by year. This year will be no exception. As more people get used to using credit cards for e-shopping the more the market will grow. The flexibility of e-trade is turning shopping into a heaven for budget conscious consumers. I also think that companies will improve their e-trade offerings and flows. Most sellers are still learning how to create the perfect shopping experience. One of the companies that I think sets the standard is Nike. Check out their website, you can even customize your own shoes, bags and clothes. Cool stuff.

3G: Mobile telephony is moving into the next phase. As Sweden is one of the leading markets in Europe when it comes to mobile telephony I am seeing some interesting development the last month or so. Telenor, one of the Nordic operators says that they will only sell 3G phones in their stores. So the shift that everyone in the business has been waiting for has started. Much has to be done but at least I am noticing some activity. So the 3G market will move up, more and more people will use the 3G nets, but not for data, just for talking. The pricing of data use is ridiculously high and until it comes down, we will see a low use of data.

Mobile solutions: The gadget world has produced many interesting products last year and it will continue to do so. We see more and more products with WiFi and WiMax solutions. Small portable games such as PSP or Game Boy and more Blackberry looked devices. I think that this will make producers of mobile services a nice incentive to step up their efforts of creating exciting new services, but do not expect much to happen until the end of this year.

Web 2.0: The Web 2.0-fication of the Internet will continue with increased speed. It is like throwing out the old and updating with the new. The interesting fact is that the revolutionary solutions are coming from one or two people companies. Flickr is one of my favorite services that were started by photograph enthusiast. I am wondering though; will one of the big companies, such as Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft create the next big thing?

Communities: More communities for 2007. What I see is happening is just the fact that the community world is getting scattered. Like flies to honey a community is created on a weekly basis. The fact is though that they are specializing on one or more topics such as music, video, traveling etc. This is one of the many proofs I see of MySpace decreased world domination. Even though it is a great service with constantly evolving technology there is a magic wand of people’s boredom. Just as communities previous to MySpace suddenly lost their appeal the same will happen to MySpace, but of course in a much slower pace. So for this year, keep a look out for the next big community, or more correctly for the many new communities. I think that we will not again see the size of MySpace in one community.

Video: As video became popular 2006 it will continue to increase in popularity for the whole of 2007. More and more YouTube sites will appear but it will be just like the MySpace it will be the king of Internet for a long time to come. My experience with sites like YouTube is that the one that has the most content wins. I keep visiting that site time after time even though other sites are giving me a better user experience. Video blogging is a phenomenon that will take off this year but the problem is that the content that is produced by these blogs are just as many written blogs, weak in content. What I mean by that is that what is said in these blogs is interesting for just a handful people. An interesting phenomenon that will definitely increase this year is the fact that video blogs will lead to more and more people becoming famous and even getting into mainstream media as reporters, presenters etc. So, for this year, keep the look out for more video content.

TV: TV on the Web is the next big thing. Why shall I as a viewer being forced to watch whatever is being presented. There is at least one interesting project that we know of that will probably have a big impact on the TV world, the Venice Project by the Skype founders. This development combined with the YouTube phenomenon is creating a new and interesting world. Combine this with the 3G platform and it make a very interesting 2007. So, more media and more freedom of TV for this year.

Music: The digital music field will keep growing as more and more legal sites are being introduced. I think it is not a fair off bet that music will grow at least with 25% this year.

e-Government: More and more governments are realizing that the digital world is bringing them many advantages. This development will increase during the year all over EU and the US but do not expect miracles. Things in these sectors happen slowly.

Virtual Worlds: The leading virtual community Second Life saw a great leap in number of new users during 2006 and has now over one million registered users. The virtual worlds are according to my opinion and research a sleeping bear. The benefits for all parties, particularly for companies are so high that I expect it to have a big impact on the way companies conduct business. An example is the way business traveling will change in favor for virtual meetings. In this year I expect the virtual worlds to continue growing but we are still at the early adoption phase.

So all these areas have a great future for 2007, but I must say it is fairly easy to predict such a development since all areas have already seen growth. So if I would pick a wild card for this year I would say that the world of news will be attacked. We can already see with blogs and podcast how news are spreading beyond established media, but this time we will have bigger impact since more and more video-news are produced. Check this site to see what I am talking about (http://aliveinbaghdad.org/category/video/). This site is made by Brian Conley that saw online video not just as another medium for entertainment, but as a vehicle to drive home the impact of the Iraq war on ordinary civilians. Through interviews with Iraqis and images taken by Iraqis themselves, Alive in Baghdad gives online viewers a unique window into a war zone. It won best video blog at the first annual Vloggies held in San Francisco on Nov. 4 2006. So what do you think will be the big thing for 2007?

Conclusions from the 2006 e-Business World

(Europe - Stockholm, Sweden) Two days after New Years Eve, I am starting to digest the increasingly hot e-business market in 2006. Looking in the back mirror the most significant change was the rise of the video. Amateur video on the Internet. The YouTube revolution will have a big impact on upcoming e-business development both on consumer and on business markets. The YouTube effect is the first look at a paradigm shift on Internet user behaviour. People are increasingly feeding their underlying needs of receiving information and entertainment through video. The Web 2.0 innovation, which lets everyone create and share information easy, is feeding this need which will grow stronger and stronger for years to come. As more and more companies have been forced to review their business models the confusion is total. During 2006 we have seen three categories of companies. Those that understand and embrace the change, those that are forced to change and those who resist the change. Unfortunately the latter are the biggest group.

The past year has also increased the speed of innovation. There are many factors for this increase of speed such as more programmers out there, easy tools for creation, increased VC money, and of course a new generation of people grown up with computers. The mash-up world has created many new interesting services that are fuelling the speed of the e-world. More and more business areas are being under attack. Skype introduced IP-telephony to the big masses and forced telecom companies all over the world to review their prices. Now the founders of Skype are trying to do the same for the Television world. People have for long expressed the need of controlling their own TV behaviour but the TV companies have not listened. Now we are up for big change and a very interesting 2007.

The community phenomenon has also been one of the main focal points of last year. MySpace was the big winner with plenty of media exposure which let it become the biggest community on the Internet. If you remember many “experts” predicted that the Internet would make people less social. They painted a picture where everyone was locked into their rooms leaving it just to do life needing activities. So what happened? The prediction went the other way. People started to communicate more. Actually studies have shown that people actually increased their social contacts and their network of friends. The community phenomenon is playing on this human based need of being together.

The telecom companies are slowly starting to realise that they are not just technology enablers but communication experts. As mobile communications during the year have increased in importance all over the world the telecoms are forced reluctantly to change their core business model. The understanding of the user though is still at its infancy. On oligopoly markets the change comes slowly but a revolution is in front of us. New technology such as WiMax and initiatives such as Fon shows us that the powers of telecoms are decreasing and with decreased power comes change.

The latter period of 2006 has shown us the long awaited breakthrough of 3G usage. Although the usage among consumes are still low it is slowly moving towards higher levels. Next year will be interesting to follow as more and more consumers start demanding mobile communication.

2006 was also the yea of gadgets. I have never experienced such an explosion of electronic gadgets. Apples iPod was a huge success. 85% of the total MP3 market owns an iPod. New computers, new chips, new TVs, new mobiles…well basically everything was updated. Since the world economy grew with healthy numbers people in the developed world consumed gadgets as never before. These gadgets are transforming our needs for technology and are creating new markets for the witty company.

Since competition and speed has increased on all e-markets the consumer has gained more power to make or break a product or service. This gives us a very interesting outlook for next year. Our next post will in fact take a look at the year to come and what type of services will increase.