Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"The salvation for operators are the tablets and smart phones"

"Many treat me like a guy who is crazy and I accept it." This has been submitted Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank Mobile, the third mobile phone company in Japan in the inaugural session of the third day of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, where he has not hesitated to issue a challenge rivals: if operators do not forget to voice services and become data and Internet companies are doomed to ruin.

They are, without doubt, a unique executive. The richest man in Japan, but is Korean, sees opportunities where others see danger. Faced with complaints that have been heard in the MWC of the big operators such as Vodafone, AT & T and Telefonica on the enormous investment effort that must be done to address traffic growth, the president of Softbank believe that this explosion of data on mobile Internet precisely its lifeline.

Their analysis assumes that a "really depressing" for operators. While the number of users has slowed dramatically, has increased only by 1.5 in the last five years, the revenue per customer known as ARPU falls sharply (42% in five years) by the reduction in tariffs. And to top it off, operators must meet a millionaire investments to accommodate the explosion of network traffic.

"What is the solution?" Asks Son. "The solution is called smartphones and tablets," he answered himself. For Son, the only way to survive is to win market share and increase ARPU. And that can only be done leaving behind the voice and data focusing on, stop being so "dumb pipes" (dumb pipes, one of the terms used in this Congress.) Softbank follows this line to the letter.

Not one of his clients have connections as the previous GSM-standard mobile phone, all these have a smartphone that allows them to connect to the Internet and consume data traffic. The result is that 54% of client revenue comes from data Softbank, the largest ratio in Japan and probably the world, surpassing NTT Docomo.

"Since I bought Vodafone Japan in 2006 I got that Softbank is the most profitable operator. Sometimes madness has its rewards." Son, who returned to claim to be the man who has suddenly lost money (an estimated 70,000 saw disappear billion in securities in the technology bubble burst in 2000), believes that if operators are betting on tablets - "the only device with which you are connected everywhere, even in the bathroom" - will see their revenues, improve profitability and will meet the necessary investments.

The chips should be safer at the same meeting, though more restrained, was Paul Otellini, Intel president, who opted for greater connectivity among all devices so that they can freely exchange content between them, and have the same passwords, so that the user has a consistent experience, regardless of the terminal you use to connect.

Otellini said the chip industry should be prepared to set up an architecture that adapts to any device and operating system. For the head of Intel, one of the new challenges is to give greater security to the chips that incorporate smart phones, which increasingly contain more personal and financial information of its users.

The other two challenges are able to improve the energy efficiency of appliances and ensuring connectivity between them. The chief executive of Cisco, John Chambers, opted for video services as an engine of growth in the coming years (65% of mobile traffic will be video in 2015), "if we can create an architecture" around new demands "more visual, more social, more personal and mobile." Chambers is not for many joys.

After 16 years in office, he begins to question his leadership last week after presenting disappointing quarterly results. Carol Bartz, president of Yahoo, bid for content. His site offers 45,000 different covers, every five minutes, allowing a better understanding of audience tastes. In that personalization is part Livestand, Yahoo! platform that helps producers of magazines and newspapers to offer content tailored to each user.

Bartz also bet on the cloud services (cloud computing) and noted that Yahoo has one of the largest private clouds in the world, with 200 petabytes of data, 50 terabytes added every day.

No comments:

Post a Comment