Vodafone’s FemtoCell sting

The last Vodafone advertisement in the London underground raised me a smile:  it features its new service Sure Signal. This ad is terribly true and funny: your life becomes a nightmare when your home isn’t covered. Your just hang through the window hoping to get an additional signal bar.

Vodafine Sure Signal Ad in the London Underground

How is it really working. Well it’s quite simple: you install a Vodafone BTS in your living room, connect it to your broadband modem and switches on the whole. Then you get a Vodafone signal in your home and usually a bit beyond …

The offer is quite simple too, you pay a one off £50 or £5 per month depending on your plan.
The ad is enhancing the change in quality of life this solution has brought to many people…

Vodafone Sure Signal Offer

But let’s think twice: these very people are just paying to improve the Vodafone coverage and don’t get anything in return. Furthermore they pay the CAPEX of this coverage extension but the OPEX too as the FemtoCell is connected through the home broadband which can be from any provider.

One would expect with this offer to get at minimum a discount on the calls you are making from home. This isn’t the case with Sure Signal. After all you are paying for the infrastructure and around 40% of the calls are made from one’s very home.
Furthermore by-passers in front of your home or neighbours may use the Femtocell you are paying for. I’m pretty sure you won’t get any revenue share from Vodafone for those calls.
My advice to these ‘desperate out of coverage’ VF customers would be switch mobile operator ! And my advice to Vodafone UK guys: don’t take consumers for fools.

Apple integrated business model

I didn’t get the chance to play with the iPad for a few minutes yet. So I can’t tell anything about the look and feel, the design or the UI. Nevertheless the videos are impressive. Have a look at Engadget iPad guide or Telcoms.com article.

Apple iPad

What I really find impressive is Apple business model. As far as I know this is the only integrated manufacturer. Apple controls all the key items of its value chain:

• the CPU with its new A4
• the OS: iPhone OS, MacOS X
• the software: iWorks
• the hardware: iPhone, iPad, iPod and Macs
• the content aggregation: iBooks, iTunes
• the service: MobileMe

Apple Value Chain

It looks like the IBM good old days, but in a much more competitive environment.

Apple A4 CPU

By controlling the whole value chain, Apple is in position to extract all the value from it, leaving to its competitors or partners only small bits of it. And by controlling every bolt Apple is in position to provide an outstanding experience that reinforce the consumer value proposition.

Apple has just created a virtuous circle which generates more and more value, unless a part breaks down or the ship misses direction. Then the card house may fall, but not for the moment.

Europeans aren’t charismatic. Are they?

I start to believe that Europeans aren’t charismatic at all. We are overflowed by information about the latest Apple, the latest move from Google with its Android, the rumours about the new Windows Mobile 7, etc.

On the other hand the coverage of Nokia and Symbian is so thin that you would expect that Nokia is just a niche player in Eastern Syldavia and Symbian an assembly language for an exotic 8-bit CPU.

According to the latest figures for 2009, Nokia is still number one with 39% market share. As regards Smartphones, Nokia shipped 20 million devices which amounts 40% smartphone market share. Ok, Nokia isn’t still very strong in touch screen only devices.

	Devices Shipments (Millions of Units)		Market Share (%)
	Q4 ‘09	2009	Q4 ‘09	2009
Nokia	126.9	431.8	39.10%	38.10%
Samsung	69	227.3	21.30%	20.10%
LG	33.9	117.9	10.50%	10.40%
Sony Ericsson	14.6	57	4.50%	5.00%
Motorola	12	55.1	3.70%	4.90%
Others	68	242.8	21.00%	21.50%
Total	324.4	1131.9	100.00%	100

source: Strategy Analytics

The real issue here, at least for us Europeans, is that all the buzz and Public Relations in the High Tech Industry are made in the US not to say in California. Even though the US isn’t the most advanced Telecom market in the world.

Are Europeans less charismatic?Is there a language issue? I don’t mean for the British and Irish. Would it be better if we had in Europe a region where all the innovative companies concentrate?

The source of this ‘under coverage’ of European ITC business is, I believe, a mix of all of these reasons. But the big main reason is just that journalists are lazy, especially the American ones.

Linux vs. Windows a benchmark

I found out this very interesting benchmark on Linux and Windows the other day on Tuxradar.com:

> View the benchmark

The synthesis of this benchmark would be this:

Linux Windows Benchmark synthesis

Booting up time are nearly the same around 60 secondes. Linux is faster at shutting down 9 secondes vs. 14 secondes. Linux is better at copying file to HD or USB sticks. Windows is better at the Richards benchmark which measures the pure performance. And of course Linux is free which isn’t the case obviously with Windows even though the price is concealed in the price of your new computer.

These results may explain why Google wants the laptops running Chrome OS to feature a SSD drive instead of a Hard Drive. Chrome OS is based on a Linux Kernel hence its performance shouldn’t be far from this benchmark unless you change the hardware to fasten the whole system.That’s exactly what Google is endeavouring to provide an outstanding experience and make a real difference with Windows.