Juha Christensen's Mobile Experiences

HotWheels Micro Segmentation - a sign of things to come in mobile?

I was in FAO Schwartz in New York recently and saw a very interesting micro segmentation concept in children's toys: In the middle of FAO Schwartz they have placed a set of displays with touch screens. Through a simple User Interface the customer (mainly boys between 3 and 12 that day) select the car, what color the car should be, what wheels should go on it and so on - way more features than Scion, another company in the micro segmentation game, offers.

After making your selections, you wait three minutes and a fully customized car appears in the tray to the left of the display:

Mobile segmentation is lacking far behind.  I am convinced that micro segmentation will come to lead the mobile industry. While operators and handset manufacturers do some segmentation today, they are fairly broad and coarse in their segmentation. "Youth" for example is the current favorite segment in the mobile industry. It is a broad segment you could apply to at least a 1.5 billion people on the planet. If instead you micro segmented your way down to say "sub-urban music centric mid teens in the Chicago area" you have a true micro segment.

Annual Symbian Old Boys Dinner

Each year we have a Symbian Old Boys dinner, normally in connection with 3GSM World Congress. People from the founding team at Symbian join at the dinner and talk about the industry, what they have done in the last year and what's interesting that year at 3GSM.

This year we met at the excellent Restaurant Gaig in Barcelona and spent four hours dining, chatting and enjoying some good wine.

Maeda san was of course there from Japan

Jeremy Copp and Axel Bernstorff

Jim Brown

Two days of back-to-back Engineering Reviews

My voice gone, I have just ended two days of intense Engineering Reviews holed up in a conference room at Sonopia's offices in Kyiv. I continue to be impressed with how fast the team is scaling and coming together, considering how fast we are growing it.

Engineering Reviews at Sonopia are intense, long days with lots of slides, demos, debates, brainstorms, problem solving, people discussions and action items.

Chernobyl - 20th Anniversary

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster and I find myself in Kyiv once again, only 50 miles from where the blast happened. I remember the day it happened. I was in Copenhagen, about 800 miles North East of Chernobyl. Swedish scientists discovered excessive amounts of radiation three days after the explosion that sent radioactive material from reactor four miles into the air. The Soviet government kept the news under wraps for days, while people went on with their life nearby, building up lethal or debilitating amounts of radiation.

Greenpeace now think 90,000 will eventually have died from the accident, while the IAEA thinks 4,000 and WHO estimates deaths at 8,900.

The truth is we will never know. The only silver lining (and it is hard to find) is that studies of nearby vacated cities will show us the impact of dirty bombs, which the Chernobyl explosion resembles. By studying the cities and how radiation developed we can perhaps learn enough to reduce the impact of a act of terrorism using a dirty bomb on a major metropolitan area.

It might make sense for the Sonopia Foundation to donate funds to help children suffering from the disaster. Children in Ukraine and Belarus are still dying from Thyroid Cancer and Leukaemia.

Back on Mac

I just bought my first Mac since 1994. I was a big Mac fanatic for long time, ever since I saw the light in 1984 and bought my first Mac 128. It was because of the vision Steve Jobs and Apple set out back then that I moved to California in 1988. I worked in Cupertino, on the corner of Stevens Creek and de Anza, mainly in the OS field with printer drivers and with graphics software.

I have long said that the day a Mac that runs both Mac OS and Windows became available I'd buy my next Mac. That day was today, and just 2 hours ago I bought a new 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro. I have long been amazed about the fact that HP, Dell and others haven't been able to make hardware that is nearly as attractive as Apple. Having worked with execs from both companies, all of whom have impressed me as smart, product savvy and market oriented people, I am surprised that all attempts at doing this have failed. I have my theories about the reasons, but the bottom line is that Apple is now going to make an impact on the PC market, more that people I know inside Apple believe (or will admit they believe: It is not popular to believe in Apple as a great PC manufacturer if you're inside Apple).

Poul Ernst Jessen in Silicon Valley

Met up with Poul for a Fry's visit and some fine Mexican food from Consuelo's in San Jose. Poul is one of the financial analysts in the mobile area I speak to the most.  As usual it was interesting catching up on the latest in the industry with Poul. It's clear that both the handset manufacturer and operator landscape is under development, and this is creating opportunity in the equity market. However, Poul and I ended up talking more about broadband as well as the current IPO market for wireless start-ups.

There is no doubt that the current market is optimal for IPOs and share issues, as witnessed by Opera completing a oversubsscribed NOK 211 million ($33 million) share issue Friday. In speaking to multiple Investment Banks over the last months, both international, boutique wireless bankers and local Scandinavian banks, there is little doubt that investors now understand that wireless services and applications are still in their infancy, that consumers finally are starting to use wireless data services, and that small growth companies probably offer the best ticket to capturing value in these markets.

A day in Munich

Spent a day in Munich, did an interview with a very promising and competent candidate. Had a few meetings, managed to get some Käsespätzle and stop by a couple of stores in the center of Munich. The more time I spend in Munich the more I like it.

Leaving Kyiv

I enjoy my stays in Kyiv. One of the enjoyable things about leaving Kyiv is loading up on English and German language newspapers. On the flight to Munich I was catching up on FT's analysis on Yulia's post-campaign promises (photo taken on a Lufthansa aircraft).

Tapio in Kyiv

Finnish Hollywood transplant Tapio Antilla, possibly the most networked person in mobile content and most likely one of the most read by mobile content insiders (though his MEOW Newsletter), was in Kyiv simultaniously with me. I introduced Torben Majgard from Touchlink Mobile to Tapio a few months ago, and Tapio is now on assignment for Touchlink.

Tapio and I are EODs (Equal Opportunity Drinkers) as we prove here; Tapio with a White Russian, me with a Black Russian, enjoyed at Galleria above Bessarabsky Market in Kyiv after a long workday.

Election Day in Kyiv - March 26, 2006

I spent election day in Kyiv on meetings with busienss colleagues, and a bit of networking with friends there. Most of my meetings were on and around Indpendence Square where the Orange Revolution took place just over a year earlier.

Much to my surprise it was a very quiet day in Kyiv. No orange flags, no last-minute demonstrations and no tents (unlike the last election). I caught up with my friend Petro Koshukov, who as usual provided the most lucid insight into the issues and expected outcome of this election.

Petro was fresh off interviews with CNN and BBC. Beginning of the day: Not a lot of people at the polling stations, but during the say the lines were 1-2 hours long.