A new report shows that E-health can save each country tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars over the next ten years and energy savings of 25% can be achieved by smart grids. Additionally, patients and older people can be monitored by video nurses, linked to video-based community support networks.

Continue reading “Video Nurses: the Future of Health Industry?” »

Mobile commerce is potentially important for a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, IT, finance, retail and the media, as well as for end-users. It will work best in those areas where it can emphasise the core virtue of mobile networks – convenience.

Japan and Korea were one of the first to offer low-cost models to content providers, and the mobile content market is flourishing in those markets. Most of the proceeds flow to the content providers yet, in the rest of the world, the mobile operators are adamant that they want to have a much larger share of the spoils. Strategy Analytics estimated that Japanese consumers made contactless payments worth $900 million using their mobiles in 2006, including prepaid travel tickets. This can be partly attributed to Sony’s FeliCa contactless payments standard that has been adopted by banks and mobile phones companies.

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ICT industry will play a key role in dealing with problems such as global warming and saving energy. Simply by making processes and systems more efficient savings will start to occur naturally. Furthermore, by giving the end-users more control we will see an increase in energy efficiency.

Once the utilities are able to provide that level of decentralisation – with end-users increasingly taking charge of their own energy management – a large number of energy efficient devices and management tools will flood the market.

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A new report shows that the focus of wireless broadband, and in particular WiMAX has now shifted towards the area of mobility, although there will still be some opportunities in the fixed broadband markets.

WiMAX is well suited to the mobile sector as the future of wireless/mobile rests very much with ‘personal broadband’ - where broadband is delivered to individual personal devices which are enabled for mobility.

Continue reading “Wireless Broadband Better Potential for the Delivery of VoIP” »

The fact that Microsoft is prepared to bid $45 billion-plus for Yahoo is a sign more of desperation than of good business sense.

It plainly is an admission that Google is actually right about something Microsoft has been talking about for more than a decade, but has failed to anything much about. A new report shows that it was Microsoft who, in the 1990s, warned that more and more (software) services and applications would move to the Net. In those days we used the term ‘net-centric’.

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Developed in the United Kingdom, the first voice-verified payment processing system has recently been launched, substantially reducing the threat of credit and debit fraud.

The Voice Pay system uses a customer’s own voice as a means of digitally signing and authorising payments. It incorporates VoiceVault voice biometric authentication technology that is already in use by global banks, insurers and public-sector organisations.

Continue reading “Will Speaking into Your Mobile Pay the Bills?” »

The industry is still struggling to find products to entice customers into digital TV. The only country where this product has been really successful is the USA, which accounts for more than 80% of the global online video market – worth between US$600 and $650 million. Video-on-demand is still the main product.

However, all around the world entertainment companies are trialling new products and new formats. TV Norge in Norway is producing online episodes of their own FC Nerds football comedy; its business model is based on sponsorship. (They trialled pay-per-view and VoD but the viewers dropped by as much as 80%-90%, so they decided that the sponsoring model is a better way forward.)

Continue reading “Digital: the New Way of Broadcasting TV” »

Those involved in the m-applications, especially those with a marketing background, can intuitively recognise the enormous opportunities that exist, but they don’t necessarily understand the complexities of the industry. For the last decade most of them have been banging their heads against a brick wall – the operators – and they have finally given in. Dozens of these companies who have given up after years of trying. They are all disillusioned about the industry, and rightly so, as most of them had the right ideas, the right concepts and the right business models.

Continue reading “Mobile Phone Operators should Stop Meddling in Marketing Affairs” »

The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has warned that planned wireless broadband technologies pose a significant threat to the Asia Pacific satellite industry’s C-band services, if not the entire industry itself. According to CASBAA officials, if regional administrations allocate C-band spectrum to WiMAX services, the impact of a ‘spectrum grab’ by Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technologies could be disastrous.

At the same time, CASBAA noted, in addition to WiMAX, various 4G mobile telephony initiatives have been targeting the entire range of C-Band spectrum in meetings of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Continue reading “Frequency Threat to Hit Asian Satellite Industry Body” »

The existing advertising agencies will be with us for a long time to come.

However studies show that the biggest growth for the next ten years will come from the digital media, and this will most certainly involve massive changes for the traditional ad agencies. It will also mean that those who build up a good digital business will profit from the new trend; they will have a chance to dominate this market segment, and they will eventually also dominate the total market, as the traditional business becomes a smaller slice of the pie.
Continue reading “Traditional Advertising Agencies under Threat as Mass Media Takes Over” »