From: "Gustaf Rosell" <gustaf@xpedio.com>
> At 10:29 2001-11-13, Tony Chan wrote:
> >I'm sure everyone has seen this, but what the hell is going on?
> >
> >http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/011112/hsm038_1.html
[snip]
> Essentially it is not saying anything except using standards that all
these
> already had agreed upon, so there must be some kind of hidden agenda.
> Probably combined with a scared me-too attitude from many of the players.
I'm having a tough time reading between the lines, not least because there
are so many of them. But there is grist for the mill here. For example:
This press release is from Motorola, and Chris ("chip off the old block")
Galvin's quote is the first out of the gate. Further down, though, you find
a reference to the announcement having been made by a top *Nokia* exec, not
Motorola. Maybe the definition of leadership *isn't* getting out in front
of the crowd when it starts moving in some direction, waving your hands and
shouting "follow me, follow me!", but don't tell Galvin that, because then
he'll be just another sheep in the flock, shopping for baa-ing lessons. So
maybe the joke's on him? (If there's a wolf swimming in this ocean of wool,
my bet is on Nokia.)
Then there's the ordering of names: service providers first, alphabetical
order; handset and equipment makers next, likewise in alphabetical order;
and finally, just "Symbian", which could be in alphabetical order *or*
reverse alphabetical order--one of the perks of uniqueness, I suppose.
Maybe being on the bottom of a list like this makes you more fundamental
somehow; and anyway you have to admire Symbian's bravery in signing up to be
the little life-raft churning in the wakes of all these supertankers. If
this is anything like other conglobulatory standards-settings arenas I've
had the misfortune to be mauled in, however, the message is: "The standards
are whatever these software guys can actually implement."
The only unrecognizable name, to me, was mmO2, a BT divestiture. Oh, I'm
sorry, it's a "demerger". (A word that would seem to imply that the
disposed entity had an independent AND roughly equal existence at some
point; but let's not split hairs, shall we?). And O2 is slated to become a
brand. (BT itself is not listed as a co-signatory at this particular Yalta
conference. I guess they've had enough.) So maybe this is a debutante
coming-out party? If so, she should come out, already; www.mmo2.com still
takes you to something heavily BT-flavored and BT-located.
My deepest, most paranoid suspicion: truly global roaming (all continents)
is about to be cartelized. Why? To milk the globetrotter class. This is a
more elusive market after Sep 11, but it would have become one anyway given
that we're now some months into a global recession. Cutting back on
vacation travel is one of the first belt-tightening consumer moves. (Not
counting all those pink-slipped dot-commers, who mostly haven't seen a
recession in their post-college working lives anyway.) I.e., this
initiative isn't for mainstream consumer benefit--there's nothing binding
here about domestic markets, which could stay as proprietary as they already
are for some time--but rather about a group of companies trying to get a
jump on one of the few remaining ways to make money in a largely stricken
industry. So let the hunt begin.
I say "paranoid", but this isn't necessarily bad, in the long run. The
benefits could trickle down.
And anyway, as Andy Grove said about his industry "Only the paranoid
survive."
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
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Received on Wed Nov 14 08:14:16 2001