I can’t help drawing parallels to the financial crisis. People saw the dangers in what was going on but as long as there was no crash nobody dared to blow the whistle. Is it the same with mobile phones and radiation? There has been no glaring cases yet so we keep on going. The extreme width of the outcomes from various studies is scary. It should not be that hard to determine.

Does a phone to your ear for 1 hour a day emit enough radiation to trigger tumours in the brain? Pretty straight use case to investigate and phones have been around long enough now to have some kind of track record.

The potential value destruction to come if mobile phones were unanimously deemed dangeruous is of course not good. But ignoring it would be worse. Being part of the industry it is hard to disucss the possible demise of your own livelyhood. But I rather do that than mourn human lives lost to a “Phone Cancer”.

Please help me dig up reports, studies and names of researchers in this field. This will be a long term mission of mine to get a straight answer.

Click this link for the answer.

With the risk of it being hot air I still hope initiatives like the Ericsson-UN talks will change things for the better. But there is much to be done. Much much more. I am thinking of some concepts for eco-games and apps. Not stuff that will change climate, but increase awareness. That is the first step. When you are aware of a problem and how you can attack the problem you have the tools to act. And it is a bottom-up movement that will change this. CEOs and their spin doctors can do somethings, but as long as it is part of corporate marketing and PR more than changing the attitude person by person it will be more hot air than real change. But it helps and I am happy to see the efforts. But it is just one small part of the total effort needed.

A short but important post after a heavenly vacation in Sardinia. Now I am back in the saddle again. Charged and ready to go. Hypercharged.

I continue my short series of telecom and wireless in a larger perspective than just mobile entertainment and apps. It must be the effect of watching our garden explode with new life again that triggers this.

In the environmetal debate the mobile industry is not very present. Despite the graduation from only offering token “green telecoms” slots at conferences, to being a real subject, wireless has not made it to the main stage of the climate discussion.

What’s worse is that at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December wireless is not even on the agenda. At MWC in Barcelona, claims were made that the CO2 emission in connection with “running” a mobile operator’s customer for one year corresponds to the CO2 emission from one hour of car driving. I will not argue the facts but if we assume that the order of magnitude is somewhat right, the implication is pretty substantial.

We need to get beoynd “let’s use more energy efficient servers and low energy bulbs” when it comes to seeing what telecoms can do for the environment. It still seems like most of the discussion is on renewable energy etc. Even though some sober calculations show that some so called solutions are completely unrealistic. David MacKay’s book Without the hot air reveals has some good examples for you.

In the light of the fact that telecoms already do a lot for the environment, but surely can do much better, it feels criminal not to make use of this and create some impact. Politicians, time to talk to the telco execs? Telco execs, time to talk to the politician about other things than radio spectrum and license auctions? The self proclamied recovered politician Al Gore has started to bridge the gap somewhat. His keynote speech at CTIA in Las Vegas in March touched on this. Hopefully he will be able to drag telecom as a climate changer for good onto the world stage.

A final word goes to the hosts at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December – please put telecoms on the agenda and invite the key players from the telecom industry!

Anyway, if a consumer has to make the choice between keeping up their mobile phone service usage and a new handset I would say in 10 cases out of 10 that they would go for the service and wait till they have come out of the recession to get a new handset. If that assumption is true, wouldn’t you have to stretch the definition of a (usually high end price) smartphone seriously all the way to include pure budget price phones?

And where is the profit for the handset manufacturers? Are they able to subsidize their own market shares through this crisis?

What’s your take? Will consumers postpone handset upgrade in order to be able to afford paying for their mobile services habits to keep them unchanged?

Why? How?

My thinking is that mobile calls, sms and mobile internet is a “must have”. A new cool handset is still “nice to have” items. If you accept that analysis it is hard to see how handsets in the expensive end will sell well in a receission when people tend to look at what they spend. Even the sales numbers from some of the big operators give some indication on the willingness to spend on these items in the current climate.

Good news for mobile services is that there is still a market. There will be a consolidation which will give the survivors a stronger position in many dimensions. Better negotiating power, more users and finding good acquisition candidates. So again, I repeat my bullish outlook for inventive mobile companies with a sound balance sheet. Preferrably with additional distribution channels to mobile operators’ portals.

I do not place a penny on high end smartphones as the way out of this recession for the mobile operators. Better to build on existing defendable positions and features. One thing to not forget in that is pure hardcore customer service. T-Mobile UK and Netherlands loosing customers now, as reported here. Anyone seen their customer service winning any awards lately?

For my own businesses though I find it much more useful to run a few off the charts what-if scenarios. Then you are ready when something whacky happens. So these days I think in terms of “so what if so and so happened out of the blue, what would we do? What would Superman do?”.

Here are my  five scenarios  to be prepared for in 2009. If you know what you would do if any of these things happened you are little better prepared than the rest of the pack.

1. Nokia looses the top positions in handsets to Android and open source OS based phones (and yes the iPhone as well of course).

Well, I consider Palm and maybe even Motorola already dead. Call me a cynic if you like. Even by picking Nokia this one is almost qualifying as an extrapolation of current events and maybe the least bold scenario. The real effect here would be increased competition in the mobile entertainment space. The reason being that it speeds up the convergence between “the two Internets” – the mobile and PC experienced internet. Since competitive advantage in our industry is based on skills in how to overcome the fragmentation in technologies and non-compatibilities. I.e. we have learnt how to tweak and short cut in an ecosystem that is very rudimentary no to say flawed. As the ecosystem improves and turns into a normal operating space as the Internet for PCs is already alot of our special mobile skills are worth nothing. Zero. Zilch. So make sure you can offer experiences that stand out when the user experience shoots up. Get the customer base to grow fast so you have a tribe of loyal followers.

2. Major mobile network operator goes bust.

Why not? There are some serious refinancing of debt needed this year among many MNO’s in Europe and North America. Will they manage to get through the year? We have heard abot cost cutting and staff reductions for the last three months now and I take it that we will hear more. When it comes to government bailouts, I truly hope there will be none if a telco knocked on the government’s door. There is a difference from saving a vital function in society (moving money around) from saving a company that makes less than it can produce the service for. Especially when there are eager competitors in every market that could provide the service without interruption (almost), should a player go bust. Implications? You might loose that lucrative MNO contract when your customer goes bust, and they might drag you down as well if they have large unpaid bills they owe you. This is more or less practice by the large operators to first of all have 90 days payment terms and then pay late on top of that. If you are in a growth situation with a MNO and your service/game sells really well and expands, the light in the end of the tunnel might be an oncoming train. That revenue you booked might not materialise. Action: Clear up your accounts receiveable and get paid or pull the service. At least play hardball to let your customer understand that they must have mistaken you for a bank.

3. Research reports really prove that mobile phone radiation is a real health hazard.

No we are getting into the real earthquake-like scenarios. Say that the NIH or some other serious institution can prove that a) the radiation from phones and base stations are seriously altering human tissue and b) old research has been tampered with driven by commercial interests and some of the manufacturers’ CEOs will stand trial for this deception. Implication: Severe drop in mobile phone use. Fixed broadband explodes.

Fixed telephony revival. We start to plan our day again instead of “I’ll text you when I’m there” lifestyle we live today. Mobile phones with an airplane mode are still used for off-line things like playing games once downloaded or transferred from PC to phone. Action: Start a recycling business for mobile phones.

4. All mobile content becomes free before the advertisers are ready to pay for the advertising needed to fund the industry.

Back to a safer prediction maybe. We have seen alot of free ad-funded models for mobile in the last 6 months. In my business I have tested a few myself. It is defenitely a model that makes sense and will prevail. The problem is that we have been double-whacked here. The big advertisers were not convinced at the time when the financial crisis reached its climax in the autumn of 2008. So now there are sites, services and ad agencies chasing very few ad dollars for their things. Some had already made a 100% commitment to the consumers for a free service. Implication: In 2009 you can probably not run a profitable business on a free ad-funded model. Action: If you have the financial strength, optimise the business and hold on to the cash as much as you can. Evangelise the advertising world. Join up with ad-agencies and ad networks to to this. If you need to make a profit sooner rather than later to survive, add premium features, find banner swaps for no-cash customer acquisitions, Evangelise as mentioned above. Or, call it quits and start from scratch with the money you have left. Maybe a credit collection firm?

5. A major government is overthrown  by a grassroots movement using the mobile phone as primary tool.

If Obama could win an election with digital media as a large piece in the puzzle, why not do the opposite. Here I think of much of the developing world where we easily find a few governments that should go if the countries in question are to thrive. Common to these countries is that the penetration of mobile phones are far higher than PC internet access penetration. Implication: Revival of democracy and citizen engagement and empowerment to organise, debate and finally make their will heard. Action: Pick a country, go there and start building the service and team. Might not pay your mortgage today, but if you can live off your savings for a while you are in for something to talk to your grandchildren about. It is all about leaving the world a tiny bit better than you found it.

2009 is already a week old, are you prepared?!

Let me know what you think. But make those contingency plans first. Make up your own what-ifs and make sure you know how to act if they become reality.

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So now my mind is racing with ideas. What about all independent merchants in countries like South Africa and India? There the mobile web browsing has come very far and the penetration by far outnumbers fixed internet access penetration. Multiple opportunities for local businesses to really enhance their power in the digital world. Now we are moving beyond the famous examples of fishermen texting to get market prices of their catch they are about to land etc. Now you can build and edit your mobile web front-end directly from your phone. I have a list of many business opportunities arising with a strong and simple mobile phone enabled web editor, which this in effect is.

On my flight back from Oslo I will work more on this list of opportunities. Maybe something to stick in the hands of a microcredit organisation to help boost their borrowers’ businesses?

A truly Orwellian system is being put in place. The more cynical among us would rather say that they finally has passed a law that now legalise what has been going on all the time. Either way, just so you know out there. If your phone traffic or email is routed via connections in Sweden (which is common even if you are not calling to Sweden) there is someone, or at least a machine, listening. And with some (un-)luck you might even end up in a database as a potential threat. Exciting stuff to call or email Sweden in the future!

Scary and pretty strong breach of personal integrity if you ask me. The reactions have been pretty strong since the MPs have totally missed what a deeply rooted opposition there is among the people they serve in the constituencies. If I were one of the 143 MPs that voted for this new law, I would not hold my breath to get re-elected in the next general election.

Similarly I would not like to be the system administrator at the Swedish Parlament or the National Defence Radio Establisment after the recent suggestions from people that organised opposition against the law that all Swedish citizens whenever they send an email they  cc both the MPs who voted for this law and the FRA. Pretty cool idea, sort of a self-policing low-budget system version of this 1984/George Orwell law we now have to live with.

You have been warned!