Posted on 23. Sep, 2008 by Brian Kirk in NetworkIP Blog
I was reviewing my notes from last week’s Mobilize conference & I found myself asking where was Apple? This 1-day conference featured eight panel discussions with talent from the major mobile network providers, the mobile device manufactures, the mobile operating systems, & a variety of companies that specialized in mobile application development & marketing. The panel discussions consisted of topics ranging from the development of mobile applications with Location Based Services (LBS), to the hurdles associated with mobile carriers, to investment strategies in the mobile market space. Regardless of panel topic, I noted a recurring theme throughout. Not one panel discussion could avoid bringing up Apple & what they had done with the iPhone. It felt at times like the entire conference consisted of people asking how do we keep up with Apple, or is Apple’s approach the right approach to take, or what will Apple do next?
I scanned the list of conference attendees that was handed out at the beginning of the conference & there wasn’t a single person in attendance from Apple; nor was anyone from Apple participating in any of the panel discussions or keynote presentations given that day.
So here I sat in a room full of very talented people from some very reputable & large companies who could not help but analyze Apple & what Apple has done to the mobile market.
I find myself asking why Apple would have been there. Apple has set the standard. They’ve raised the bar with mobile devices & mobile application development & distribution. As a result, we find ourselves trying to catch up to Apple. While we sit here discussing how Apple approached the mobile market, they continue to innovate. I’m sure from time to time that they find themselves at conferences looking for answers to questions & to get a feel for a market. Of course they appear to do their own research in many other ways. Apple doesn’t wait for an industry to shift, they shift an industry.
Can other mobile device manufactures & mobile operating systems surpass Apple? Is today’s release of Google’s Android operating system on HTC’s G1 an example of this or will Apple continue to shape the mobile industry?
Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka
Posted on 26. Aug, 2008 by Brian Kirk in NetworkIP Blog
We are excited and proud to announce that NetworkIP has been recognized by Inc. and included in the 2008 Inc. 5000, which represents the 5000 fastest-growing private companies in America. For more than 27 years, the Inc. 5000 has served as a benchmark for the most innovative, dynamic and successful companies in the nation and we believe that this recognition speaks volumes of what we have achieved at NetworkIP over the past 10 years.
Much of our growth this past year is contributed to additional volume achieved by our existing customers, new services being offered by Jaduka and from our strategic partnerships with companies such as Cisco, Dell, and Nortel Networks. As a result we have been able to offer a wider variety of telephony services with great quality and at a low cost!
We want to thank our customers for trusting us with their businesses and following our lead in developing strong and reputable brands for the consumer. And of course we couldn’t have achieved this level of success if it weren’t for our talented team of employees! We owe a big thank you to them for all of their hard work and dedication to perfecting the solution we offer today.
Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka
Posted on 28. Jul, 2008 by Brian Kirk in NetworkIP Blog
I commented last week on how many businesses are turning to innovative telephony services such as conferencing to avoid the high costs associated with employee travel. Today while reading about Netflix’s second-quarter net income, which climbed 3.8%, I thought to myself “How did they do it?”
In the middle of googling for other reports about Netflix it hit me – technology is saving their business!
As the price of gas continues to rise, so do the cost of going to the movies. As a result, more consumers are staying at home to watch movies & many of them are renting those movies through Netflix. Unfortunately for Netflix, higher fuel prices are also driving up the costs to deliver movies to the consumer’s mailbox. Netflix’s margin is already pretty thin & those margins can be completely eaten up if you have a consumer base that is exchanging movies almost as fast as they get them. Netflix’s subscritpion model allows their users to exchange as many movies as he/she wants per month & their subscription fee stays the same. This model works very well for the consumer & until recently worked for Netflix too.
Rather than drastically changer their model & risk loosing existing subscribers, Netflix responded with an innovative solution using technology to their advantage. This new solution actually provides more to the consumer & cleverly works in Netflix’s advantage too!
First Netflix began offering a “Watch Instantly” option from their website. Users were allowed a certain amount of hours per month to watch streaming movies to their PC for free. Netflix realized very quickly that this feature resulted in the shipment of less movies to their consumers because they were watching more movies on-line. The costs for Netflix to offer live streaming videos versus mailing movies was significantly less & they quickly removed any maximum on the amount of viewing hours they offered to their users in hopes that the number of shipments required would continue to drop while usership would continue to rise.
Netflix also just announced a deal with Microsoft to stream movies directly to a user’s Xbox 360 game console. It obvious that Netflix is looking to offer their consumers as many options as possible to view movies as long as it doesn’t involve shipping that movie to the consumer. Again, the rationale being that as more users view their movies on-line, the less likely they are to order their movies through the mail & the net result is higher margins & ultimately more profits for Netflix.
Each day I imagine more things that companies can do with technologies to save their company time, money, & resources. One of my greatest pleasures at work is seeing so many companies actively taking advantages of the technologies that we & Jaduka have developed to save money & improve their business processes with communications.
Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka
Posted on 26. Jun, 2008 by Brian Kirk in NetworkIP Blog
In a previous post I commented on how the open-source development community responded negatively to comments made by Dr. Ari Jaaksi, VP of Software & Head of Open-Source Operations for Nokia. Dr. Jaaksi suggested that the open-source community needed to learn a thing or two about the mobile space & that the community needed to change their current approach for developing software applications due to the out-of-date business rules that are still enforced by the mobile industry.
Two days ago Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, made a very different statement when they made a move to buy up the remaining ownership in the smartphone software maker Symbian. If the $410 million deal goes through, Nokia will retain 47.9% majority ownership of Symbian. This move by Nokia indicates concern for those lower-cost mobile phone operating systems from Google Android & the LiMo Foundation.
With the mobile market heating up & businesses moving quickly to develop mobile applications it is key for Nokia to be running an OS which is widely accepted by the development community. Today, Symbian is used in two-thirds of smartphones being sold. Symbian’s closest rival is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS, which has just 13% of the market. Of course, both Apple & Google plan to gain a piece of this market very quickly. Apple has been making a lot of noise with its new software release for the 3G iPhone & although rumored to be behind Google is sure to gain a significant piece of this market when its Android software is released.
The good news for application developers & businesses is that we’ll have options when deciding which devices & operating systems we want to develop applications for. Because of the increased competition in this market both device & OS manufactures will be more likely to bend & do more to ensure we are using their solution & not their competitors.
Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka