Sony Ericsson is looking for people to run Developer World in Latin America (Sao Paulo). If you know someone fit for this, just let me know. There are three positions available:

• Manager, Sony Ericsson Developer World Latin America
  
  
• Communications Specialist, Sony Ericsson Developer World Latin America
  
  
• Business Development and Acquisition Manager (Latin America)

So if you are interested, drop me a line, and I will line you up for the selection.

John Stand in back in Brazil and MVNO moving closer

Once again John Strand is back in Brazil to talk about MVNO and the latest changes coming up.
He has also tapped into two more topics that operators are looking very much into:

• iPhone: What is the operator business case for this? There is a lot of hype here. At the end of the day it seem much better to receive customers with un-locked iPhones, than selling out own phones with subsidized subscription. Not really a surprise, but if an operators begin to make a business model out of it, things seems to really take off. Some MVNO operators are having 5%-8% os their subscriber base made of customers who brought their iPhones with them from other operators.
• Mobile Broad Band: Prices are dropping, and what can operators do to make sure that the service overall becomes profitable.

Furthermore John is also working on innovation in Pre-paid. Operators interested in co-developing this topic are invited to check it. Directly or though me.

This whole scenario has gained fuel this week with the rumors that the MVNO regulation is only pending approval at the council of Anatel, and will be issued for public hearing in short time. This could happen in a few weeks.

On September 22 and 23 John will meet retailers and speak at the 12th Retail Forum in Sao Paulo. The expectation on the who industry is mounting up.

I just hope that we are not in for some big surprises when the Anatel regulation is published. Some rumors have it that there will be very restrictive rules about Network Operators not being able to own interest in the MVNOs. This will take a good deal of the possible exit strategies away for MVNO investors. Let's hope that does not happen.

Globo in more mature Internet Business model

One of the worlds largetst TV broadcasters and Media companies Globo has been reported to change its Internet strategy, from the former concentration around the parallel content strategy on Globo.com, which was responsible for the complete Internet approach.
From now on each department (TV Globo, Globosat, Editora Globo, Globo.com, Som Livre etc) will deal with its own content on the Internet. Acording to the Brazilian newsletter "Teletime" each branch will use the Globo.com site as an umbrella.

This is the same conclusion that more mature markets has reached. One example is DR, the Danish stated owned broadcaster, which took the same decision a few years back. It makes much more sense to have the producers and owners that best understand their content settle the right approach for the Internet. This could indicate the Globo's investment in the Internet as a distribution channel has reached a critical mass where Internet marketing is no longer a scarce resource, but a part of the essential strategy that every branch or the company should consider. The strategy assimilates, or at least converge to a widely used traffic aggregation strategy, where large Internet portal owners launches several independent sites and services that reroutes traffic to affiliate sites in a move to keep the audience and advertising revenue growing.

Brazilians spend three time on the Internet than on TV

Delloite in Brazil has published figures from a new survey that shows that Brazilians spend three times more time on the Internet than on viewing TV.

81% claimes that the Internet is more important for intertainment than TV.

Even though that the assumptions for the figures probably should be better understood, this is an interesting trend. These figures raise some questions when compared with the NetRating/Ibope figures showing that Brazilian Internet users spend in average about 25 hours per month. From broadcasters we know that TV count for more than 100 hours per month.

Anyway...

This could indicate an accelerated convergance between the TV and Computer screen, and could also change the sceanrio for IPTV, bringing IPTV closer to the PC. It should still be remembered that the advantage of IPTV is the interactivity combined with integation with other commuincation service, such as SMS, MMS, Network Attached Storage (NAS), Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) equipment interworking with IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as the orchestrator, thus linking the virtual network with the physical digital home network. Besides that, IPTV only makes sense if it is linked with a broadband connection with Quality of Service (QoS). Whatever technology is engaged here, the essential is to have an operator which is ready to invest in productifying the solution to the end-user in order to accelerate the roll-out beoynd the "early adopter" segment.

The majority of the respondents in the survey also claim to be unsatisfied with the speed of their current Internet connection, and that they are ready to pay more for a higher speed. This should be good news for both operators and equipment vendors.

As mentioned before on this blog, this puts the media trategy of traditional broadcasting companies such as Globo, SBT, and Band under pressure, and they have to watch out for the Internet based Ad-providers with direct access to the end-user.

Monty Pyton leading the way

Now Internet users have got more light in the dark about how to deal with rights to content in the digital world. The Monty Python team has long been publiseized via non-authorized copies, and decided to make a different move.
Therefore the team created the Monty Pyton Channel on YouTube, with most of all the content that we all love, and made us who we are today.
Reports will know that the sales of Monty Pytons content at Amazon.com has increased by 23.000%.
Monty Pyton apparently continues to show us the way.