iPhone Marketing
As I was being a bit lazy (on a conference call), I caught this post from the latest Apple insider. Mike Abramsky, an analyst, details how he believes the iPhone will mature :
Abramsky speculated that upcoming iPhone software updates would include new widgets, peer-to-peer applications (chat, picture messaging, social networking), location-based services, MMS support, home networking, and possibly some integration with Mac OS X Leopard.
“No word however on integration to Microsoft Exchange,” he wrote. “It appears to us that Apple, classically, has more pleasant surprises in store for iPhone fans and investors.”
After speaking with Joswiak, the analyst also made changes to his predictions for future iPhone models. Although he spoke of “higher resolution” iPhones earlier this month, Abramsky now says he expects Apple to differentiate its iPhone lineup not by features, but by price and memory capacity. The move, he explained, would be similar to how the company grew its iPod lineup, simplifying market positioning.
“This affirms our view of a lower priced ($349-399) iPhone [in the fourth calendar quarter of 2007 or first calendar quarter of 2008], with a higher priced version at higher capacity, to expand its market opportunity,” the analyst wrote.
I personally find this fascinating, as Apple plans to differentiate the iPhone not by features, but by price and performance. If you recall, for most of era of competitive phone service, market success was found only through variations in price, as the basic service was essentially feature complete, and value added services had benefits which were only marginally valuable. Could it be that Apple has already caught on to what took telecom 100 years to understand?
WITA : An Architecture Standard for Telco Mashups
One big difference between the Web world and the telecom world are standards. I don’t mean that they use different standards (although they do), they have a different approach the standards entirely. Other than the two worlds of standards represented by the Telco and Web world, there’s a third sort of standard - an implementation standard. A “this is how we tend to do this sort of stuff” standard. For instance, there’s really no one PSTN standard - it’s just how we have put together many other standards to make something that works. We need to establish a standard for Telco Mashups; a set of conventions as to how we tend to write these applications. Since I’ve been at this, I’ve noticed a standard pattern I’ll call the Web Integrated Telco Architecture - WITA. From where I sit, the an application written to the WITA standard is more scalable, more reliable and easier to write than anything else I have seen put forward for telephony enabled services. As I put together my telco mashup applications, and see companies like Gaboogie and Twitter do the same, I see that we all use approximately the same approach. If we can standardize it, give it a name, we can build the community quicker.
- Voice XML: WITA uses VXML to handle inbound interactions with human beings, and most outbound voice messaging applications use VoiceXML to make those messages rich an interesting. The VXML scripts are delivered by a web services application, and post the inputs the collect to a web services application.
- Ruby on Rails : WITA uses Ruby on Rails to implement the web services application. It’s responsible for putting the logic on top of the database, and for rendering views to the user in the form of VxML scripts, Web Services APIs and graphically intensive web pages.
- Telco Web Services : WITA uses telco web services to deliver telephony features such as outbound messaging, conference calling, click to dial and SMS messaging. These web services are called from the Ruby on Rails frame work, and provide the scaling and reliability components of the architecture.
The Game’s Afoot
A massive shout-out to my man Dean at Cognation, who has taken up my recent challenge about the future success (or lack thereof) of Ooma. From his recent comment :
Ok Thomas I’m prepared to step up and take that bet from you, easy money in my books.
In 12 months from now I bet that Ooma will still be in business and am prepared to wager a dinner here in New York.
Reply post here to your blog to accept so we have this on public record.
It may be because of some of the consulting projects I’ve been involved with here at www.Cognation.net but I think Ooma have capture some very interesting aspects;
1/ Ease of use and design (so sorely lacking in a large number of basic projects I see) their ATA is ‘the’ best ata I’ve seen, nothing revolutionary but it’s just well designed plain and simple.
….and whats dissapointing about this fact is that with all the brains in the voip industry no one else came up with this design until now.2/ Ease of uptake (keeping original number is such a barrier to entry to skypein and similar - yes I’m looking at you Grand Central).
3/ Ease of implementation in their business model (peer to peer using existing ethernet/internet infrastructure with zero billing - how easy is that).
Like I said easy money and I look forward to accepting your bet.
I’ll set up a page on the www.cognation.net website to track developments over the next 12 months.
Now, since they’ve raised a bazillion dollars, there’s no reason why they should EVER go out of business, so we’ll need a better measure than the doors closing. That aside, I’m up for this bet, partly because I think it will be fun, but partly because I love dinner in New York. I’m betting that ease of use, ease of implementation and ease of uptake will spiral into the ground because it’s simply not that valuable to the target customer. I say we pick a number of Ooma subscribers, and let’s see if they go over that number. I’m not going to suggest that Ooma get a five million subscriber number, like the iPhone - or even a moderate number, like a million, that Vonage had. Can anyone think of a good metric? Outside of dinner, it’s not that I’m hoping for Ooma’s demise. In fact, I’d be tickled pink for them to succeed. My breath? Not holding it. I’m just hoping, just like many others, that this is the last effort at a business model that seems to fail nearly every time it’s tried.
Paprika
Recently, the man in the Purple Shirt challenged the community to finally come up with compelling real time communication services. I suppose it was spoken during a moment of frustration for Jeff, as this industry has spent a lot of time and energy making these wonderful IP based technologies, but we are still doing pretty much the same old things with them. For those that do make something that turns him on, he might provide some early-early seed capital, and more importantly, he would provide some visibility and friendship. I applaud Jeff’s continuous efforts to move voice technology forward, and as I’ve said before, I’m here to add my efforts to his. To help developers, Aswath pitched in by providing some pointers to how he’d do it. Well, here’s what I have to add to the discussion, and it’s a single word.
Paprika
To use voice in a compelling way, recognize that voice is a spice, not a main ingredient. Voice and other real time communications brings out the flavor in some other application, but it isn’t the star. A compelling application starts with solving a real customer problem, and unless your customer happens to be a telco, carrying voice probably isn’t the issue. The issue is something else. Take any vertical and check to see if I’m right. Here’s a classic example: entertainment. American Idol had an innovative idea, which was to make a TV show where the people emotionally enroll in the outcome. If you think about it, it’s just like sports: people watch because they care about their team. But how did they deeply involve the audience? They made them vote. How did they make it compelling and unique? They made them vote using text messages, which made the process unique and pandered to their core, young audience in one fell swoop. Brilliant. Compelling.
Why do we have such a voice services focus? My bet is that telephony has been so hard, for so long, that the people involved only know the telecom industry. We don’t know the problems faced in other verticals because we’ve been so focused on the problems in ours. I bet you that if you spent just the smallest amount of time looking at transportation, or financial services or education, you’d find all sorts of places you could sprinkle basic communications into the mix to make it more delicious. Because we haven’t done that, Jeff’s food is bland and boring. He deserves better, you deserve better, and most importantly, customers deserve better.
Apparently, I’m irrelevant, repetitive and nonsensical
Oh my, Google is on to me. As I logged into my blog this morning, a large red box stopped me in my tracks. Apparently, Blogger thinks that this log is a spam bog. What’s a spam blog?
As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.
Shoot. You know you’re in trouble when even a Google robot thinks that your posts are irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical. Did I say that they were irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical?
Aspirin or Penicillin?
Is your business selling aspirin or penicillin?
Is it aspirin? Does your customer have a headache, and if he would just take your product/service, he’d get rid of it? Does your customer have achy muscles, and a few pills would put him at ease? Or is it penicillin? Does your customer have a life threatening illness? Is he more than uncomfortable, more than achy? Is he truly sick, and in trouble? Without your product, how in trouble is he? I’m sure it is obvious by now, you want to sell the anti-biotic, not the analgesic. If you avoid taking aspirin, you can get through the day. It’s optional. If you avoid taking your penicillin, you might not have another day.
So, let’s take that filter against today’s whipping boy, Ooma. Is there any customer in the world to whom Ooma will be penicillin? (Not from where I sit.) And if so, would the medicine be generic? (Yup).
Ok - that’s the easy part. Why is this so? I firmly believe that Ooma is aspirin because they have a horizontal product in an unregulated space, and it’s really hard to differentiate the service to create any sort of brand loyalty. Outside of branding, horizontal products and services very, very rarely have points of competitive advantage other than price. In an unregulated space, businesses and consumers have choice. Although every business or home needs phones, they don’t need Ooma phones. In phones, it’s hard to make a brand. Apple is going to have the best shot of anybody, ever, of doing this, and the jury is still out.
Simply put, Ooma, and every company like it, sells aspirin, because it’s an aspirin market. The basic issue with Ooma, and the cap on their success, isn’t the team, or funding, or even their feature set. The basic issue is in the market they pursue.
Is your business selling aspirin or penicillin? Here’s a hint - the first step is to find the market where the customers have a fever.
Technorati Tags: ooma, telco mashups, thomas howe
Enterprise Telephony Business Case : Morisky Surveys
I’m often asked to give an examples of a business case for a deep integration of the business process with telephones, so here’s a good one for you: Morisky Surveys.
Application of the Week: Ooma -Yes! We’ve hit the bottom!
How long have you been saying that carrier based telephony is a race to the bottom? Well, you can stop saying it, as we’ve arrived. When you purchase an Ooma phone, you never need to pay for your minutes again. You might shell out four Bennys for the privilege, but that’s it. Yes, that’s it folks - no more paying by the minute ever again. We’ve pressed the bottom button on the ol’ telecom elevator, and the doors have opened. And what I love about this story is how complete the bottoming out is. Andy is always telling me to be as positive as I can in my posts, and when I criticize, to give an example of somebody who’s doing it right. A challenge here, my old friend - but I’ll try.
Will it blend?
Well all know that the iPhone will mash, but will it blend?
Hello to the VON Show?
I think I should make an honest apology for underestimating Jeff Pulver and his organization. I was wrong.