What goes up doesn’t come down

The China Daily today tells us of the 99th launch of China’s Long March rocket series. Congratulations are due to China’s rocket scientists - we’ve come a long way from the days when it seemed like one in every two launches ended up making an unscheduled early re-entry. (On my own first stay in China in 1995 an acquaintance from Boeing told of an embarrassing incident in which a satellite launch ended up exploding shortly after take off, raining pieces on the VIPs assembled to view it, and tragically killing several farmers working in nearby fields).

The current launch involved two satellites - one to be used for scientific research, land surveying, crop yield estimation and disaster forecasting, and one that will be used for research into micro-electronics. All doubtless good practice for the next manned Chinese space mission, due in September 2008.

WOM power

A recent GTF story caught our eye. It says that all the technology, advertising, and media hype in the world still doesn’t outdistance WOM - word of mouth. In a recent survey of business managers on what influences their business purchases, 53% gave word of mouth recommendations as their first choice.

How do WOM recommendations spread? Mobile, email? No, the story says it’s passed on by old-fashioned face-to-face communication. So, the moral is, if you want to promote your product or service, get out there and network.

Africa’s mobile explosion

An interesting story from Total Telecom shows that Africa has become the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, expanding by some 45% over the past year, according to new data from Wireless Intelligence. This is primarily because it’s coming from such a low base, but the trend is certainly encouraging. Even so, the continent still has a relatively paltry subscriber total, with just the 200 millionth subscriber being added in the first quarter of this year.

Penetration is highest in Southern Africa at 80%, thanks to South Africa’s highly developed market. West Africa, which grew by an incredible 75% over the past year, is catching up fast, while North, Central and East Africa all have a long way to go, with the latter two markets having penetration rates of just 20%. Political and economic development in West Africa is helping spur things along there, while increased competition between operators like MTN and Celtel, among others, are also doing their bit.

Google Babel?

Following our post about suicide seats, a reader has written in with the following Google translation (from French) for the description of a children’s camp in Normandy:

Clubs of horse, clubs of veils, clubs of veils with tanks and covered and discovered pools. It, being in Normandy, also has a Museum of Unloading.

Who needs YouTube when you can have this much fun clicking on Google’s translation tools? Definitions for a Museum of Unloading (and why it should be in Normandy) gratefully received - or other similar Google Babel offerings.

 

Many thanks, Jochen!

Nice to have fans at the European Commission. As mentioned not long ago, GTF recently published the EIU’s e-readiness rankings for 2007, which separates the digital leaders from the laggers among 69 countries worldwide.

Well, a few days ago, we heard from Jochen Jesinghaus, who works in Italy in an EC unit which specialises in the aggregation of complex indicator systems. In other words, Jochen and his colleagues transform Excel spreadsheets into something that the rest of us, including MEPs and EC bureaucrats, can easily read and interpret.

Jochen wanted our permission to weave some of his magic with our rankings, putting them into a dashboard format.

The result can be seen here, in glorious colour. Go ahead and click on your country or the countries you are interested in.  The results are dramatic. And thanks again, Jochen.

Want to buy a phone?

Last week Nokia announced a deal with China Postel under which the Chinese firm would spend around US$2.5bn acquiring its phones for distribution around China - and that’s just this year. In case you’re wondering how many phones that gets you, reports suggest it’s around 20m (over 100m units were sold in China in 2006). Engaging China  suggests that the move is a sign that China’s main distributors are moving towards stocking a more limited range of better-known brands as the market matures - Postel has been China’s leading distributor for eight years, with about 30% of the market last year. 

On reading the report I couldn’t help wondering whether we’re seeing mobiles becoming a low-margin high-volume commodity in China. The failure to move forwards on 3G must be limiting opportunities for selling high-end phones with more value-added features and higher margins. That could have worrying implications for the mobile manufacturers - China is Nokia’s biggest single market, accounting for 12% of net sales last year.

Suicide seats and Japanese phones

Phones come with everything things days. Japanese phones, however, are miles ahead of the ones we use. According to the latest statistics from the country’s Telecommunication Carriers Association, a whopping 74% of the country’s mobile phone users are now carrying around 3G devices. For the less techie types, that’s a phone that can connect to the internet at hyperspeed.

Just what are the Japanese using these ultra-sophisticated handsets for? I went to the EZweb home page of KDDI, the country’s leader mobile network operator to find out. My Japanese being about zilch, I clicked on Google’s translation service, which gave me this.

Music, Movies, Shopping, Games, Entertainment, Learning and Reading, so far so good. EZ Nabi Walk and EZ Suicide Seat, however, gave me pause. I think we are talking about personal sat nav, which sounds like a great thing to have when travelling or just getting from A to B in a new part of town. But an EZ Suicide Seat?

Further clicking - with the handy translator - yields the explanation that the “suicide seat” function is for using the sat nav function while being driven in a car. It’s called that, the site explains, because ”the person who sits in the suicide seat supports the driver.” I guess that’s up until he or she commits suicide.

To be fair, Google admits that this translation service is still in beta.

There’s no place like home

According to a recent post on the GigaOm site, some new research from the US is showing that no less than half of the people in the US who moved house in the fourth quarter of 2006 dropped their landline service. This kind of trend is pointing to a massive passive-to-hostile attitude toward landlines. Clearly, once a customer is given a choice, he or she abandons the landline along with the curtains and carpets. The last refuge of service providers wanting to sell landlines are the big bundle of services which, not surprisingly, are getting cheaper all the time.

But bundled of not, the more bouyant mobile phone business is not likely to offer solace for long. According to new data in the UK, we’re using our phones less and less as we switch over to texting. The survey, of nearly 3,000 UK mobile phone users, reported that pre-paid customers make about 10 calls a week, down from 14 last year. Contract customers make around 27, down from 35 in 2006, but are now sending a whopping 46 text messages a week, up from 32.

Curiously, these kind numbers are not scaring away investors from the telecoms space. A private equity group snapped up a controlling stake in fixed-line Bulgarian Telecommunications Company this week for a cool US$1.5bn, even though its mobile division ranks a paltry third in the country with just 14% of the market. And that’s just Bulgaria. Over in Malaysia, a local tycoon is laying out $4.6bn for the rest of the shares it doesn’t already own in Maxis, the country’s largest mobile operator. It’s the second largest deal this year after Vodafone’s US$11bn foray into India to buy into Hutchison Essar.

Deals like these are starting to look a bit risky…