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I am a bit of a watch nut and especially a lover of watches which are rich in technology. As of today I don't wear one because my mobile phone has pretty much replaced it but the last one I loved to wear was the Tissot High-T which was a Microsoft SPOT watch allowing me to keep up to date on news and my calendar. Microsoft SPOT technology used FM frequencies to send data signals to a range of devices from watches to coffee makers which kept you informed of changing weather. What was amazing about the Tissot was the fact that it alerted me 15 minutes before every meeting I had. At a trade show where I had to hop from booth to booth, the watch reminded me with a subtle vibrate function that a meeting was imminent. A quick glance at the watch let me know where I had to go.

The High-T stopped charging so I sent it back to the factory to have it fixed. Tissot kept the watch, told me it was discontinued and then gave me a credit towards a new watch which by the way sits unopened in my house in its original box.

I read with great enthusiasm that inPulse will have a new watch designed to work with Blackberrys and it will likely function a lot like the old SPOT watches (the service was also discontinued) but even better as it will alert you to messages, callers and other bits of information tucked away on your device. Why would you want to use this watch? Well, you could glance at it to check Caller-ID before you take a call. Or you could scan the subject line and sender information of your e-mail before taking out your smartphone. Another benefit is it will not need a $10/month service plan as it should just use Bluetooth to work with the information on your Blackberry.

Photo courtesy of Crackberry.com

 In short, I think this watch is something people who are on the leading edge will jump on but the average user may find this solution to be bulky and geeky. I am looking forward to seeing it in action. If they get this thing to work with an iPhone I will likely buy one.

Terrestar Networks is one of the newest companies on the satellite scene having launched a satellite in July of this year but as is often the case, the newest tech companies have some of the most interesting technology as they have no legacy challenges to speak of. The company's CTO Dennis Matteson was quick to explain to me the goal of the company is to change the paradigm of satellite communications allowing consumer level phones to have the power of satellite communications.

In a recent conversation with Iridium, their research showed that their traditional customers did not want to have a more gadgety phone but instead they enjoyed the rugged reliability which their devices brought to the table. While I am sure the research is accurate, I have to wonder if there isn't an entirely new market of consumers and businesses who would pay to have a satellite radio in their devices. The goal of these customers would be to incrementally improve their outdoor coverage while outside of traditional areas where they can get 3G/4G connections.

As part of my meeting, I had a chance to discuss the new Terrestar phone which will be resold by AT&T and marks the first time a major carrier will be a satellite distribution partner. It will be very interesting to see what consumers think. For now, the satellite coverage is in North America only and when you leave the cellular network your call drops and you must call again over satellite. This limitation is imposed by AT&T for now so users don't get surprised by large phone bills but Dennis tells me in the future this does not need to be the case.

Check out this video of our discussion and the very slick, Blackberry looking device he brought to our meeting. It can do quadband GSM making it a world phone as well as 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, 2.0 GHz Satellite and more.

Speaking with Sprint's Wayne Ward you come away amazed at the potential ahead for wireless carriers in the burgeoning machine-to-machine or M2M space. Just what exactly is M2M? It is simply machines communicating with machines. Quite often this interaction is to satisfy the needs of a person, corporation or system - for example when an automobile senses a mechanical problem and signals the manufacturer for a wireless diagnostic which determines the car needs service and subsequently alerts the driver.

In other cases sensors communicate with backend systems which perform some action as a result of the conditions where the sensor is located.

Wayne explained the opportunity in M2M and moreover that human subscribers in the wireless market have reached saturation with most of the growth coming today from switchers (churn) and prepaid users. He said emphatically on a recent phone call, "The M2M market is wide open."

If there is one thing which is happening faster than change in the communications space it is the pace of convergence. Social networking widgets on televisions, cars which sync with music players, phones with GPS, PCs which double as home entertainment systems, photo frames which can receive MMS photos, there seems to be no stopping this trend.

The consumer, business, wireless and wireline businesses are converging as well and to respond to this new landscape, Sprint has rolled up a few of their existing units into a new Emerging Solutions unit to specifically focus on M2M and mobile computing.

The M2M category alone is massive and Ward is right to be enthused. These are just some of the markets touched by this technology: remote monitoring, asset tracking, fleet management, telematics, automation and control, automated meter reading, smartgrid, point-of-sale/ATM and wireless routing.

Sprint has had many challenges lately such as massive customer churn and general customer dissatisfaction. To fight back, the company is obviously looking at new markets such as M2M and the company touted its relationship with Amazon's Kindle as a major step forward in a new market. While the amount of money being made from the Kindle so far is not great, it is certainly a huge account you didn't want to see go to AT&T. Well, Amazon did leave Sprint for AT&T recently and one reason for this move was the need to access the GSM as the Kindle goes global.

Update: Here is an official statement and clarification from Sprint on the matter:

The Kindle DX will continue to operate on Sprint's network -- existing Kindles currently in use or already in the sales pipeline will still be powered by Sprint. We continue to enjoy a great relationship with Amazon. Though we are disappointed in their decision to work with AT&T for their international version, we understand their international strategy.

A consistent theme on our call was that Ward wants to see M2M getting pushed by other carriers as it grows awareness and the market. Just as the push-to-talk market grew more quickly when new players entered the market, he expects the same thing to happen in M2M.

He then explained how Sprint's various networks can serve the company well in the M2M-based world of the future. Often thought of as a liability in the world of wireless voice the combination of iDEN, CDMA 1xRTT, CDMA EVDO and 4G is a benefit in this new machine-driven world. The reason is, each of these networks has various advantages in terms of speed, performance and/or cost and subsequently the broadest array of networks is best in this new world.

I mentioned the Kindle is not a massive moneymaker and that should get you wondering about this market - can it generate serious revenue for Sprint and others? Ward says the old models of ARPU, subsidies and churn go out the window with M2M and instead there is a much lower ARPU and a small or nonexistent subsidy. What you get instead is a healthy customer lifetime value and higher profit margins. Why? Well, one reason is there is no human interaction as machines deal with rate plans and other issues without using customer service reps.

So what does Sprint's Wayne Ward want to see? Among other things, more M2M adoption which will lead to cheaper chipsets which will lead to even more adoption. He tells me there is lots of business in the pipeline and his company is talking with enterprise customers and their supply chains as well as chipset vendors, module vendors, 3^rd party application vendors, software developers, healthcare companies, VCs and many others.

To me the potential of this new market is massive. Coincidentally, I recently decided to purchase a GPS device because it could connect to the internet and I pay $10/month to keep it connected. What does Ward think about M2M's potential? He summed it up nicely by saying, "There are billions of machines we can assign an IP address to and wirelessly enable."

To stay up to date on the rapidly growing M2M space be sure to attend TMC and Crossfire Media's M2M Evolution Conference and visit M2M Evolution online.

In February of 2007 I asked candidly if the fact that Verizon chose not to carry the iPhone will be remembered as a telecom blunder and more importantly I predicted in a year's time that we would look back at Verizon and say they really screwed up.

I still believe I was right about my prediction, just early. You see Verizon Wireless is still performing well from a financial perspective and thanks goes to the company's foresight in building a great network which consumers want to leave but just can't because it is that good. Another reason the company has done well to date is it has been able to steal share from Sprint.

But it is clear that the iPhone has exceeded the expectation of most every analyst and Verizon is finally scared. The first retaliatory shot fired by Verizon was carrying and marketing the Blackberry Storm and now Storm 2 - both touchscreen devices which are extremely iPhone like in their functionality and form. It is evident that this move was not enough and so the company has teamed with Google to bring out Android based phones.

But this is still not enough. Apple has a cult-like following and every application written for the iPhone makes it that much more difficult to compete with. Verizon realizes this and even has its own app store competition in the works.

But what has to drive Verizon execs crazy is the billboards and TV ads for iPhones and iPods. Apple is one of the best marketing companies around and certainly they are great at developing a handful of products consumers lust after.

In order to combat the marketing part of the equation, Verizon is coming out with an ad campaign taking aim squarely at the iPhone's weak points. And it should be mentioned there are lots of them.

Verizon's new ads target iPhone shortcomings

Some of these include no multitasking, no physical keyboard, a measly 3-megapixel camera, lack of customization (well without jailbreaking anyway), no widgets, no open development, no infrared camera and no battery changing.

A full two years after the iPhone was released, there may be finally a capable competitor in Motorola's new Droid phone. It has a 5 megapixel camera, 854x480 resolution, a 3.7" touchscreen, microSD slot, a decent sized keyboard which pulls out and a whole lot more.

But let us not get too hung up in feature envy as they can lead you astray. All too often the media (myself included) has focused on features when the user interface and subtle issues like being able to browse the web quickly are more important to users. Having said that, the inability to run any application you want and lack of multitasking are major iPhone drawbacks. The term jailbreak is appropriate because it allows you to break free from the closed application prison Apple puts its customers in.

The success of the iPhone should have taught mobile device makers everywhere that users want a polished product which has a very slick UI and they want to be able to surf as fast as an iPhone 3Gs and they want the phone to have a slick ad campaign which reinforces their decision to not buy an Apple.

Finally they want consistency. They don't want Verizon to abandon this ad campaign after they buy their phone. The phone is now like the car, people want it to be cool and hip and they want positive reinforcement. Porsche owners love to see Porsche ads and the same goes for the cell phone purchases consumers make. Droid is a very cool and hip name. It resonates. But if I have to state an early concern it is the squareness of this design. If we have learned anything from Apple it is that design matters. In other words, two years after the iPhone was released, Motorola has come out with a phone which looks worse. To me this is a signal that the company doesn't get design -still. And this should scare Motorola investors as Apple came up with the iPhone idea after their mobile phone joint-venture with Motorola failed and Cupertino realized that the mobile device company can't design a decent product.

What we know is Apple could use some real competition and RIM is certainly proving it is a contender. But let's look at the rest of the field. Microsoft's mobile initiatives are dying on the vine. Palm's Pre is a decent phone but it needed to come out before the iPhone because at this point I am not sure they can take share. Sony Ericsson and Nokia are choking. It is up to Google and in this case Motorola to provide resistance but one has to wonder (and excuse the Star Trek reference - but when discussing Droid - does one have a choice?) will resistance be futile?

The next time you are in a restaurant listening to some captivating tune and see other people in the restaurant signaling for others to be quiet as they hold their phone up to the ceiling, you may be witnessing someone using Shazam (dare I say Shazaming?) to try to discover the song which is playing. I have used the service quite often and I think it is amazing. It doesn't always work but when it does I am thrilled as without it, I am not sure how I would figure out what I was listening to.
 

The company just announced it got funding and moreover they have 50 million users worldwide with 15 million added since February of this year. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) gave the company an undisclosed sum from its iFund which contains a cool $100 million which is being doled out to an iPhone developer near you.

Currently you can use the service for an unlimited amount of song discovery but going forward you will get five free songs per month and have to pay $4.99 for unlimited usage and other features. The company also plans to sell tickets to concerts and other media like video.

The ability to decipher the entertainment a person is enjoying could be a big step towards personalizing content delivery based on personal taste. In other words, if Shazam was to run on a mobile phone all day while it deciphers what you listen to on the radio and watch on TV, it could collect all the pertinent information needed to construct a personalized playlist of television programs and songs you may like.

Of course, this functionality may not be on the company's roadmap but if you start to integrate technology from Pandora and Slacker you could come up with some really interesting applications which could increase the relevancy of programming and advertising.

Of course KPCB is a top firm having funded very successful companies such as Google and Amazon. They must know Shazam has significant potential. It will be great to see how they navigate the mobile landscape to turn song discovery into profit.

A fascinating bit of reporting from the Wall Street Journal confirms some things that many in the communications industry already knew and some things we didn't.

1. eBay doesn't get Skype - this is as obvious as it gets.
2. The current Skype Management and investors don't want to deal with Niklas Zennstrom or Janus Friis
3. Mike Volpi, past Joost CEO wanted to change Skype's underlying technology to SIP - knowing this would upset Skype's founders Zennstrom and Friis - Coincidentally about five years ago at ITEXPO Niklas Zennstrom was giving a keynote and at the end of the presentation Andy Voss, founder of Session Border Conrol company Sansay asked why Skype doesn't support SIP. Zennstrom replied accurately that there are far more Skype endpoints than SIP endpoints.

What amazes me the most about this situation is that to all the people who understand Skype, there is a tremendous amount of value in the company and it is worth fighting over tooth and nail. To those who don't understand it - eBay for example, there is limited value.

This story keeps getting more interesting.

In the last two weeks I drove (well I was in the car anyway) for more than 1,500 miles meeting with tech companies in Montreal, Ontario, Massachusetts, Rochester, NY, Los Angeles and San Diego. The last stop on my latest trip was at CTIA where I saw dozens of companies from around the globe.

Most of my travels involve learning about companies in the communications and technology space and often advising them on how they can be more successful. Sometimes I get to see some very innovative solutions which I can't share at the time for a multitude of reasons (embargos, etc) and other times I get a firsthand look at things which I share as soon as I can. In many cases, companies ask me about TMC's experience in helping companies with their thought leadership, branding and lead generation activities.

As CEO of a media company which builds online, in-person and print communities for millions of global purchasing decision-makers each month, I have an unusual role of also writing about many of the companies, products and services I see. What is fun for me is finding new ways to bring buyers and sellers together. Buyers want to quickly learn about which products they should consider before purchasing and sellers are looking to sell as much as they can while spending the least amount in doing so.

It is an amazing place to sit because extremely often I see industry-changing technology which languishes because an engineer sets the marketing budget and has the corporate communications skills of sheetrock. Remember, I have an engineering degree so I feel I am uniquely qualified to beat up my brethren. Then there are the companies I visit where their products shouldn't be accepted for free, yet they sell in volume and make massive margins because they are able to communicate the benefits properly.

Then there are a slew of "Hail Mary" companies which have really cool products but no business model to speak of. Sometimes I can convince the founder of such a company to modify their offerings to actually make money but other times the companies die on the vine because they think they know best - after all, I just meet a thousand companies plus like them a year - what do I know?. Sometimes though the amazing happens and they  get purchased by a Google, Cisco or Oracle and thus the "Hail Mary" designation.

I am thrilled to act as a trusted advisor on PR and marketing issues and I figured it is unfair for me to only share information with people I choose to visit and subsequently I spoke on a webinar a month or so ago about hosted SEO which was well-attended and generated lot buzz in the industry. So many companies wonder about search engine optimization and what the trick is to ranking high. While there are lots of factors to consider, the basic premise is to write lots of content which people want to read and share with others.

SEO consultants get paid to help companies rank higher and in some cases they can boost a company's search rank for a while. But in the end, steady and relatively large amounts of content are what companies need to generate to rank high on various terms.

I could go on about building communities and improving SEO for hours - I am truly passionate about figuring out how to instantly bring a group of people with similar interests together on a single web portal. Coming from the world of magazines, it used to take TMC six months to build a mailing list and in many cases you really needed 18 months to do it right. Oh and did I mention you had to mail at least half a million subscription offers and it would cost you about $400,000 at a minimum to rent lists, print and mail your subscription forms? To show you how much things have changed, TMC has been involved in projects in the past few months where we built communities on new topics which are up and running and attracting hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of a few weeks. It is truly amazing to see how media has evolved through the use of news-generated, laser focused community building.

Again, these topics are a major passion of mine and something my team at TMC has gotten great at focusing on. The next webinar I will speak on takes place Thursday of this week, October 15^th at 12:00 PST and on it I will discuss how you can partner to boost your search engine marketing. I look forward to seeing you there. Be sure to register now so you don't miss it. As a reminder, you can view the archive if you aren't around at this exact time. Just be sure to register. Also, be sure to bring any questions you have. I look forward to answering them this week.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today talking about Dallas-based venture funds which flopped by investing in telecom and networking companies. It explains that funds in Silicon Valley and Boston are doing better than those in Texas, Washington state or New York.

Coincidentally, today there is also news that online video company Ooyala has now raised $20 million and online video conferencing company ViVu raised $3 million. Both as you guessed it are based in Silicon Valley. Most importantly of course is the fact that wireless equipment maker Mass-based Starent Networks just got sold to Cisco for $2.9 billion.

If history is any guide and this trend continues, we can expect Mass and Silicon Valley to be parts of the country which recover more quickly from the economic downturn than the rest.

Where is my Mobile Data?

An overwhelming amount of wireless, communications and tech news is the best way to describe the last few weeks. Perhaps one of the most important nuggets is a catastrophic loss of T-Mobile USA Sidekick customer data and if you have one of these nifty little gadgets, be aware the wireless carrier asks that you not reset it. This issue highlights the problems with SaaS and cloud-based services. Google, thought to be the gold standard of hosted data companies has suffered outages and so have Amazon and Salesforce.com. The one constant here is cloud-based services seem to be as error-prone as CPE equipment which makes sense. If it can better, it will gain a larger share of the data center pie.

Android is Everywhere

But for Google, cloud computing is just one of many projects they have their hands in. Last week at the CTIA show in San Diego I witnessed Google Android everywhere... Android has even caused Verizon to start getting along with the search leader. And you wondered why that Nobel Peace Prize was awarded. At the same time, Microsoft rolled out Windows Mobile 6.5 and this platform is just not cutting it as it is tired and old. Once upon a time I marveled at this OS but then again I did the same with my Commodore 64 back in 1982. Yes it's getting better, but I used it myself and wasn't too impressed. One thing for sure is the web browsing on an iPhone 3GS seems to be far superior to either competitive mobile OS.

Will a Mobile Search for "Microsoft" Show Results?

The scary part of this equation for Microsoft has to be that they are in danger of losing the mobile device OS race altogether. And this is where Google and Microsoft will tell you the future of search is. In fact, Google is looking to tightly couple search with mobility in a way which will offset their inability to effectively compete with the sheer slickness and elegance of the iPhone.

AT&T Hates Google and Apple Learns From Decades of Defeat

Two points worth mentioning are that AT&T may be distancing itself from Google (hint, they aren't friends) and moreover, Android has some challenges ahead of it - primarily figuring out what Android really means in a world where open source platforms are able to grow in various and competing directions quite rapidly. The problem of course is for users and developers looking to easily roll out apps across a broad range of platforms which are all supposed to be equivalent. In reality they aren't and developers have to deal with individual phone models when programming for Android. The process is not as easy as it should be. Finally the concept of Apple owning the hardware shows how this can be superior to the open hardware scenario. Sure, it can cost more for non-open hardware which is controlled by a single provider but Apple seems to have learned from its experience of getting kicked in their rear by Microsoft in the eighties. They have realized it makes sense to price mobile devices reasonably (or have the carrier chip in as needed) so they can profit from software and music. Back in the eighties when we were all listening to Journey, Apple didn't get a cut of every piece of software on their platform. Now (what do we listen to nowadays?) they do. So for Apple, they have to be price competitive with their phones as they make it up on the backend.

Microsoft's Acquire or Die Mobile Strategy?

Going forward, Microsoft has its work cut out for it if it wants to be a major player in mobile search. After all, they are losing share and quickly in the mobile world. It seems they need to try and pick up Nokia and/or RIM and tell those pesky regulators this is the only way they can compete effectively with Google Android.

Why Develop a Revenue Strategy, We are having too much fun Prematurely Aging Ballmer?

Then again, some will point to the fact that Google hasn't figured out their mobile search strategy - and to some degree they are right. But to me the model is pretty obvious. Dominate the apps and service market by giving it away and then experiment endlessly by showing ads in various formats until you find a way to make money without upsetting (too many) users or advertisers. This is not rocket science as Adwords was born in this manner and YouTube is the latest Guinea pig. Just recently in fact, the company started to insert ads in the Google Maps application of the iPhone. Of course this is likely the reason Apple decided to buy a mapping company - they either don't like the idea of the company behind Android profiting from their platform or they are interested in getting a piece of the advertising pie for themselves. Maybe both - stay tuned.

Spare some Change? Here's a Decade's Worth

The one constant in communications is change and more change. We have ourselves an industry where new paradigms are invented constantly and new competitors emerge from unlikely areas. All the while, existing players have to learn how to navigate alliances and competitive sets to emerge as credible and profitable players in a mobile, broadband and fixed-line ecosystem of dizzying complexity.

From where I stand, fewer things can be more exciting. But for the companies making the products and those looking to partner and purchase, try not to blink or you could miss major and ground-breaking news. This is not Internet time, we have gone to the next level - things are happening at optical or photonic speed. Boy is it exciting. I'll have more to discuss soon but for now I need to brew a fresh pot.