SEGA Rumours

I noticed this rumour at Pacific Epoch. They (EricWan) wrote that Changhong and Zarva Technology could be planning the purchase of SEGA's R&D team and subsidiary Sonic Team, which both are located in China.

Changhong and Zarva have a joint venture in IT field and Zarva Digital Entertainment runs SEGA's Phantasy Star Online in China. This is considered to be some sort of basis for closer cooperation, but I don't see, what's in it for SEGA.

UbiSoft Insists On Going Alone

UbiSoft repeated that they consider EA's offer hostile. Stock price of UbiSoft slipped over two percent. What goes up must come down. Seems like UbiSoft is not able to push the stock price so high that EA looses interest. As a result, we better start betting, when EA will accomplish ruling stake in UbiSoft. Man, that will be a dark day for European game industry (Disclaimer - I support free trade).

Vodafone Innovates Again

Mobile innovation meets the ski jumping. Vodafone will offer mobile TV content from ski jumping contests and also related ski jumping mobile game. Sounds interesting? Uh, not really. Vodafone's mobile content business starts to form a pattern "Brand names make popular games". From the business point of view, this is good strategy, just embrace the masses and give them simple ways to entertain themselves. What about the rest of us? If gamers are not a feasible market, why bother to push the envelope?

UbiSoft Strikes Again

Just couple of days after EA's announcement, UbiSoft had an announcement of their own. They boast with excellent sales of their Prince of Persia game. Franchise has amassed total sales of 1,8 million copies. Sort of an odd number to me. Usually companies celebrate round numbers. In this case, two million copies wasn't that far away. Could it be so that company tried to create some pricing pressures, good news could increase selling price and maybe postpone the purchase. Then again, EA has deeeep eeep eep pockets, making such attempts futile.

Christmas Holiday

Back at 28. or 29.12.

UbiSoft Fights Back

UbiSoft Entertainment SA is really giving us some entertainment. They declared EA's offer to be hostile. Now that's more like it - Good old French co-operation spirit. However they say that there still is possibility for negotiations, we just have to wait and see how this plays out.

The stake in this game was 19,9% ownership in UbiSoft. Just one fifth of the company's ownership, but EA would still become the biggest single owner of UbiSoft, therefore giving EA a lot say in the future of UbiSoft. Check back, I will follow the news and inform the developments.

Mobile Games In South Korea

South Korean market is speeding what comes to mobile games. There are about 500 domestic game developers, which introduce over 80 games every month. In a year this will total over thousand games. Several mobile games have managed to hit the one million mark in downloads during this year. Quite a demand there, right?

The estimates of the market size have risen from 218 billion wons this year to 300 billion wons next year. Both hardware and software still keep on improving so the future for mobile games looks bright. Based on those numbers, my calculator gives almost 40% as the growth percentage and quick look at the currency exchanges tell me that in euros it makes circa 150 and 210 million euros respectively. Huge.

Electronic Arts Buys A Stake In UbiSoft Entertainment

Oh my! For me this is bad news. I have been so proud of our European game companies. I must admit that UbiSoft has not been gushing cash but they have very strong slate of games. They are a sizeable game company so why this move? Can company of this magnitude still benefit from the benefits of scale (EA is about 6 times bigger than Ubisoft)? What can EA bring for UbiSoft? Layoffs maybe? Will EA eventually acquire all of UbiSoft? Uh, really hard to say what is behind this move. If I have to guess, I would say that Electronic Arts simply wants to buy some more market share and UbiSoft owners want to cash in after work (investment) well-done. So, sorry folks - no mysterious agendas here, unless EA wants to introduce their notorious working conditions in UbiSoft's development teams (heh, I just had to bring this up).

Ok, but the most important question must be WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE SETTLERS SERIES? I have some fond memories of listening Orbital while looking over my little settlers as they chop down trees and build the village.

Tom Online Buys Indiagames

Tom already has a certain reputation as a company that is doing well in internet content. This move brings a new steady cash flow for them and an opportunity to expand for large Indian market. Tom Online bought 80,6% of Indiagames with 17,7 million USD. Very good move indeed and at reasonable price.

This new development must give chills for Western companies. The two promised lands of outsourcing are combining their resources. Like in traditional industrial outsourcing, ordering companies are giving away their manufacturing and R&D. Soon we will probably have many companies, which - under their brand names - just distribute digital content for customers. There are few players who can do it with brand and money alone, but for the rest of you - hold on to your talent.

InfoSpace Doing Some Christmas Shopping

It is not long ago as InfoSpace announced their previous acquisition - IOMO. Now they have gone shopping again. This time it is German company called Elkware. Must be heartaching times for American company to buy European companies.

Let's hope that InfoSpace is able to put their acquisitions into work. It would be a shame to see them not able to realize the potential synergies. At first glance it appears that IOMO's and Elkware's games don't especially overlap, so it seems that this might make sense, but I guess we just have to wait it out.

Leiki Mobile Technology

Following I copied from the company's website:"Leiki Ltd produces mobile services that learn users' preferences. In other words, the services optimise themselves based on the behaviour of the users."

Very interesting. What do they think up next?

Mobile Games Are Pop

Just think of it. So many people have a personal mobile phone, compared to this, few people have personal computer - often families share one. Phones are used by young and old, men and women. This creates huge user base that could use phone to play simple and personal games. There is amazing potential unused in the area of mobile games.

Adults don't play games, they just don't have the time it takes. As I think of my parents, they sometimes get carried away with card games. It is always the same situation, few friends, talking, time... At that moment, a deck of cards is readily available, because it is easy to carry around and obtains huge amount of different game variations. I see other similar adult behavior all around, simple games, simple gear, lot of discussion.

Somebody really has to create a game that a group of people can play with only one handset, one shouldn't take the network gaming as a model for social games. Most people get more from intimate social activity with friends than from over the network social activity. If one limits the game design to "one-access one-terminal" -model, then we waste a good opportunity. Think of a deck of cards, when you think of mobile phone game.

Innovative Mobile Games

I read an article from the Miami Herald. Very interesting stuff there. They introduced Tomo Software, a company that develops massively multiplayer social experience. Their Sora City looked simple and fun.

Digital Chocolate is planning to release "Message in a Garden", which would be a variation of popular virtual pet genre. I prefer to water my virtual garden instead of feeding my virtual pet.

This is something that I have been waiting for. Western culture has to embrace more varied games if the companies on this area want to compete with those of Asia. That is the direction where one has to take a look.

Mobile Overtakes Land Lines

In their annual publication, Trends in Telecommunication Reform, International Telecommunication Union will conclude following: "Mobile phones are expected to generate greater revenue this year than traditional land lines."

The trend is not as strong in developed countries, since the historical investment for land lines has been sizeable, therefore the market situation is also more challenging for mobile devices. Only in two developed countries the situation is such that mobile revenue exceeds land line revenue. These countries are Finland and Portugal.

However, in developing countries, the existing land line networks are very scarce and many nations have jumped straight to the mobile technology, as it is cheaper and faster to install. It is because of these poor countries that mobile revenue overtakes the land line revenue.

Situation will be emphasized as mobile content becomes more developed. For now, much of mobile revenue comes from speech and not from data services. Now go and develop those games and other mobile services.

TV Shows Come To Mobile Phones

Recently there have been more and more news about mobile fitted series. Vodafone promised to deliver us series based on famous American TV series called 24. MediaCorp Studios is now planning to produce soap opera for advanced mobile devices. Best thing in these plans are that the shows are designed for mobile devices and are not just normal TV programs that are shown on mobile screen.

Khronos Mobile OpenVG Draft Out

This is an interesting project that has wide support, especially in the Asia they have signed up some new supporters. Asia happens to be the market area that will dictate the technological platforms of the future that gives bright future for this project.

Macromedia better watch out. They have Flash Lite, but they have fumbled with the monetizing models. I have no idea, why they stubbornly try to mass-license it via operators and manufacturers. Give free downloading option for those who don't have the luxury of like-minded manufacturer. If people start to use it then operators and manufacturers just have to follow.

At the same time it is evitable that it will be harder to make money with Flash Lite in a same manner as with Flash. Mobile applications just don't have similar ease of time and screen as computers so it is evident that people just don't want to see something wonderful in the mobile gadget. People want to get the information and that is it. For developer it might not seem worthwhile to invest into high licensing fees if all they do is to create nice looking buttons and text fields so that mobile user can get the information.

Now we just have to wait and see. Khronos will give strong alternative for Flash Lite and this might make Macromedia to change their present business model on mobile arena.

Macromedia Holds Mobile Content Contest

Here are the categories for the contest:

• Most Innovative Use of Flash Lite
• Best Animation
• Best Business Application
• Best Educational Content
• Best Game
• Best Interactive Content
• Best Productivity Application
• Best Overall Use of Flash Lite

Prices are consumer electronics.

Common Mobile Platform For Asia

Asiatele.com had interesting news on their website. Seven Asia-Pacific operators have teamed together to create a regional mobile infrastructure and common service platform. Potential is huge, since Asian mobile markets are a mixed bag, having few universal rules would ease cross-border interaction. It would be easy to introduce new service that would immediately be functional on several markets, travelers would be able to continuously use familiar services without bothering roaming limitations.

Alliance has tremendous workload ahead. Even the most simple services like call roaming does not work. Phones keep on choosing the operator according the strongest transmitting signal, therefore setting the present value of alliance into zero. However, alliance has announced that they are going to use about 40 million dollars to development in coming three years.

It is too early to say how this alliance will function, but it sure sets very interesting goals. Different language requirements are tough nut to crack though.

PalmSource Goes Linux

Company announced their plans to come out with Linux-based operating system for mobile and handheld devices. They are doing this because, according to them, it is fast to introduce and it is cheaper.

No question that they are doing this in order to penetrate the Chinese market. There you need to be fast and cheap. Thank goodness for China, you guys are saving the software world by making people to work not harder but smarter. This means that efficient solutions will overtake old and tired.

Good thing about Linux is that it enables software companies to modify according different needs. This is extra benefit on fast turning markets like various mobile gadgets. New features like camera, MPEG4, MP3 and IM, are constantly added and fixed operating systems just don't cut it fast enough.

China To Ban Football Manager 2005

The Guardian wrote today that even Football Manager 2005 is not officially sold in China, the Chinese government has ordered officials to search for pirated versions of the game. Why such drastic measures? In the game, Taiwan is presented as a sovereign state. Well, we just can't have that, can we...

Any game had better make sure that the content fits into the limits of acceptability of all target markets. With non-democratic and strongly religious countries this is a special problem.

European Galileo Is American GPS

Today the decision was not made yet. Hopefully tomorrow we will get good news from the ministers. Galileo is a satellite positioning system, which works in similar manner as American counterpart GPS. Background for the project seems promising: European and American systems will be compatible and private companies have promised to offer substantial financing for the project. If this enterprise is shown green light, the system will be in commercial use from 2008 onwards. Is that the time when the prices of positioning services will come down... Wait and see.

Apple iPod Is Going Down

No matter how dominating iPod's market share is, things are about to change for Apple. Taiwanese (whenever Taiwan is uttered in electronics design people start to have that certain look on their face) MSI will come to the markets with their player series, which is named MEGA (scary).

This Taiwanese gadget has everything that iPod has + (PLUS) it has video capabilities, you can use it as a simple VCR. Did I mention that it hovers in the same price group as iPod, so if you are not brand-devoted consumer, I recommend you to check this out.

MSI

Virgin China And Virgin India

Richard Branson announced that Virgin is in talks with Chinese telecom company. Discussion is about starting a joint venture in telecommunications sector. Apparently Virgin is to give their brand and Chinese partner would offer their network - convenient.

Virgin is doing the same in India, this lady sure knows her value. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if Virgin would ultimately pass Vodafone. Virgin brand is just so fresh and appealing. Vodafone is just known from their telecommunications services. Their cost structure is also much heavier than Virgin's. It makes sense to promote the brand, because in that way educating consumers about the services doesn't eat reserves. For loyal Virgin customer, it is no-brainer, which operator to choose.

Finnish Government Selling TeliaSonera

Decision of Finnish government to sell 250 million shares of TeliaSonera will have an effect on price of the stock. On the long run this is good news for the company, because no matter what they say, government can be bit over concerned with workers policies and other meaningless stuff like that. Europe is full of telecoms, which have government as a major stock owner. This will further open the way for acquisitions. TeliaSonera is gushing cash and it has strong presence on few markets, furthermore the market valuation is average so it would be a smart move for a big company like Telefonica to make the move. Maybe we will see an Asian operator moving to Europe or how about an American company. There are lots of choices so keep checking those financial pages.

Ok, I didn't really mean what I said about meaningless stuff...

Mobile Lottery

Finnish company EGET has new gaming platform that enables offering mobile lotteries and other legally licensed money games. Horse races, betting, gambling we can never hide these vices anymore as they follow us in our pockets.

Mobile Instant Messaging

It is here - again. Movial had this idea of mobile IM a long time ago, but as the product didn't break through to the markets, guys put it on hold for some time and made money with projects. Now they come again, but this time with partners.

This is a day that I have been waiting for. No more - ok, few less - calls that enquire, "Where are you?" People start maniacally check their smart phones to follow the whereabouts of their friends. Any dead moment is a chance to strike up a conversation and a best part is that you don't have to do it with a stranger.

Are you drooling when you think about the chances of GPS with IM? I'm not, but that's because neither are edible. I would also like to remind you about economic implications. Public transportation movements on your cell phone, taxi cabs, shops, bars and friends among all this activity. It will be better than TV, following your friend, while she is desperately racing the mall, trying to get to that last bus (never mind there is always another). Parents checking up on their kids, which brings me to the closing remarks.

Surely we have those people who offer us disguises. A locational distortion program that shows us playing PS2 at Tom's place, while we actually booze at Beth's. It will be fun.

Nokia Venture Partners Expands

Nokia Venture Partners has started a new 100 million dollars fund, which invests into fast growing tech companies, which already have a commercial product. Do you need extra sales via strong partner or is there otherwise good uses for cash? Ask for Markus Salolainen and Rob Trice, they are in charge of the money.

Smartner Mobile Email Partner

Smartner is a company, which I have been following for over two years now. Their middleware is just excellent. With it you can conveniently read your email on the move and it is not only about email anymore, you can have your office on your pocket. I had a chance to follow their first steps in Asia quite closely. I liked the product then and I like it now. Market conditions weren't the best few years back, but now the swing is on.

IDC just released a report called "Worldwide Mobile Middleware 2004 – 2008 Forecast and Analyses". In this report, Smartner is mentioned just after Research in Motion as a winner in middleware sector. Smartner sure has gone a long way to be trusted partner for many big players like IBM, Microsoft, Nokia etc. I hope that this latest news will help them to garner some valuable market attention.

Sari Baldauf Leaves Nokia

So, Sari Baldauf (prior her marriage Sari Niiranen) announced that she is leaving Nokia. Does anyone know who she was (good time to get to know someone, eh)? Here is Sari Baldauf's biography.

First of all she was born 10th of August 1955 in Kotka, Finland. She studied in Helsinki School of Economics (HSE) and got her Bachelor in 1977. From 1977 to 1978 she worked as a researcher in HSE and in 1979 she finally got her Masters.

At Nokia, she started in 1983 at the time of CEO Kari Kairamo. In the beginning her job involved strategic planning. With Jorma Ollila, she was one of the young and talented, who Kairamo gave special attention. She steadily got more demanding positions within strategic planning and business development.

1988 she was promoted to be the President of the Nokia Cellular Systems. She kept this position until 1996. At that point, she wanted to have a break and took much debated half-year sabbatical from the work. During that time, she traveled and got herself familiar with Asian cultures that she respected. When she came back to work, she did two years stint in Nokia APAC as an executive vice president. From that position it was back to shouldering the responsibility in Nokia Networks as a President, with special responsibility to China market (1997-99 she was in the board of Finland - China Trade Association).

As a manager she had a reputation of being supportive but demanding and, when needed, very tough. From her career choices (time off, Asian cultures, resignation), one can see that she has been guided by her personal preferences. That makes her quite unique, since she values herself more than stockholders demands. It will be interesting to follow what she will do in the future. Based on her positions in cultural associations, I would expect it to be more consulting type of work, instead of hard core management.

Mobile Trash Revisited

It appears that recycling companies are already doing the business that I just "invented". Many phones are just refitted and check that they are in working order and then they are shipped to a poor country.

So far so good and my plan is working smoothly. However, it is here where the problems arise. In Third World countries, there are even less consumer knowledge about environmental effects of lead or mercury, which most of gadgets contain. As a result, lot of electronics are abandoned to nature and not recycled in any way. Also there is almost no capital for advanced recycling plants, which could run efficien recycling operations.

Mobile Trash Problem

In Seattle Post, Ellen Simon wrote that old electronic gadgets are presenting a massive problem as what comes to recycling. There is just no use for old stuff as new and improved makes previous models obsolete. I have several old mobile phones, computers and gaming devices somewhere in storage, all in good working condition.

The army of variegated devices presents logistic problems beyond comparison. I wouldn't like to focus on this stuff if I was a recycler. Cars and other big stuff might be ok, but I doubt the profitability of recycling multitude of phone models.

Could there be another choice? Maybe we could extend the usage of one generation of these gadgets. We could put together associations, which would collect all sorts of devices and ship them into some Third World country. That country could benefit from these devices. They could have a kick start to their version of information society.

Finally, when the devices would really be completely broken, in that low-cost labor environment, these devices could be disassembled and recycled in a cost effective manner. Logistics must be a problem still, since I am not aware of this kind of program. On the other hand, I do know that there are several religious organizations, which organize clothes collections in order to help poor countries. What about including some new products to the palette?

Where Are You? I'm at...

That, I believe, is the most common topic in mobile conversations. Having the mobile phone enables us to fine tune our comings and goings. Very quickly we are so connected and entangled that we can't get out.

With 3G it will be like your closest people would be staying in "the other room" from where they can shout a word whenever they want. Constantly connected with your interest group.

Flash Browser Games

My weapon of choise used to be C-64. Wonderful piece of electronics. I was paffled to see what people nowadays do with Macromedia's Flash. Better quality than what it was with my trusty entertainment center.

Flash Lite has been getting some excellent reviews. I wonder how long it takes for me to be able to play better than C-64 games with my cell phone... But who could innovate something new as a mobile content. Not the old-school guys, they just want to remake what they already know. Innovation comes from the fact that it is all in the phone. I am afraid that we need to wait until the cell phone generation is old enough to code.

Breaking The Rules

For some time I was bolding the company names. I will drop that habit right here in the beginning. It will be just plain text, for a while at least.

Nokia Gives A Christmas Surprise

I have come to expect certain predictability from Nokia. Now they can't seem to keep it together. First they fumbled the organizational changes, they had issues with profits, they dropped the ball with market share and now we can enjoy this soap opera of management resuffling.

Today Nokia announced that Sari Baldauf and J.T. Bergqvist both from Networks division are going to leave the company in the early 2005. Great... not really.

Why are the key people racing to the door? Is it the bad times that broke their spirits? Do they fear that there are no more career advancement for them inside Nokia? Maybe I am just nervous because lot of my family's savings are invested in Nokia.

Bit more clarity, please.

Shanda Asian Dream In The West

New York Times had a nice article about IPOs in the States. Shanda Interactive Entertainment claims to be the biggest online-based game company in China (it pretty much is, so it is not only a claim). It was listed in May 2004 and the stock price has risen 268% from then. Very impressive! In October, they loaned 275 million dollars for ten years without interest (convertible bond offering). Evidently this is a company that has valuation and money. What are they doing with all this money?

They bought a controlling share of Actoz
They acquired QiDian
They bought rest of the shares of Digital-Red
They acquired BianFeng
They bought a minority share of Hao Fang or Holdfast

Hoarding up talent, eh. For me this looks like selling their simple idea of online gaming in Chinese markets for big money and then using that money to buy out competition and cementing that simple idea. Almost like mini Microsoft, but not quite like it... Let's see, it is market leader and has great management. Also, according to the Chinatechnews.com there are even some complaints coming from the street level, internet cafes do not appreciate Shanda's monopolistic business practices. Obviously all this works wonders, just check the stock price.

What if people start to question this simplicity? What if internet cafes integrate into even bigger chains and get a real market voice? What if competition is going to put out more interesting games? Valuation might come down, but luckily they still have this steady operator business and in-bought content. They will survive and go on, no matter the market conditions. I must congratulate the managers of Shanda. Great job guys.

If you are planning to invest into Asian online-game company, you better give some serious thought for Shanda. Hoovers is a good place to get some more information.

Singapore Suddenly Leads Mobile Content

ABC News noticed that MediaCorp Studios is planning 45-episode soap opera for 3G mobile phones. Episode length would be 2 minutes and feature media stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan. I am dying to see what kind of script tempo these episodes have. I suppose that The Bold And The Beautiful kind of acting cannot be expected. :)

Japanese Mobile Phone Music - IN STEREO

I envy them so much! Howcome Japanese have all the cool mobile stuff? Now they have plans of upgrading the sound quality in mobile phones into stereo. Think about the possibilities of surround effect. We already have 3D graphics, now graphics can be complemented with 3D sound. High quality streaming music is just a button away from you. No way to save it, just pay and listen away DRM-dream come true!

In Finland, TeliaSonera in cooperation with Sony has launced this mobile music streaming service, called StreamMan. Superb service, the only problem is that the mobile phone sound system is so low-fi. Hmm, it does have another negative feature - it is insanely expensive to use with Finnish mobile data prices.

That little techie in me wants to live in Japan.

China Blocking Google News

Reporters Without Borders recently condemned the move by Chinese government to block access to Chinese language Google News. This means that those Chinese people who want to use Google News in Chinese, have to use the moderated Google News service, which is in use in China. This is yet another example for mobile content company that has plans to expand to Chinese markets. Company had better make sure that their content does not violate any policies laid down by moody Chinese government.

Global markets are a challenge for content designers, it is possible to create unified content for all markets, but it might require so much market research that it could be better to use localizing services for different markets, in order to decrease the time in which the product is introduced to the markets.