Seeing how Apple’s negotiating stance is with Cable and Content providers for Apple TV & how Google did the same w/ Issuing banks, which pretty much amounts to : “Allow us to take over your relationship with your customers” and “Let us repackage your offering” and finally “Sit still while we turn you in to a dumb pipe”, I gotta ask – Is this a case of Disruptors becoming dumber or Disruptees becoming smarter? I mean, everyone on the planet has read Clayton Christensen’s book by now. Who just sits there and waits to be made irrelevant anymore?
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Drop Labs – Skating to where the puck's going to be.
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Carriers: We are here to help!
MWC being in full swing, has brought a truck load of new product launches and partnerships(too many that they start blending with each other to form one amorphous blob). But what caught my eye was an announcement from Jason Donovan, an AT&T executive on how it is considering a way to let app developers pay the cost of the data traffic associated with its usage instead of passing on the burden to subscribers. AT&T believes that it will roll out this service sometime in 2013, and that there is already rising interest from companies that hope to rely on this the feature to incentivize customer adoption. I believe AT&T is right in that there are firms who believe this to be a good thing. And one among them would be Isis. Let me explain why, before delving in to why overall this has the potential to be a really crummy idea. Continue reading
Vinod Khosla on Retail & Emerging Payments
It was Vinod Khosla’s Cliff notes on “What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial” that turned me on to Dr. Saras Sarasvathy’s brilliant paper and other works on effectual reasoning vs causal reasoning. Likewise, he is prescient in his post on Techcrunch about the areas in mobile and internet today that are silent performers. And alongside the well known areas and ideas such as Big Data, Data Reduction, Internet of things, I found the following section(s) that I have reproduced below: Continue reading
Google Wallet Hacks – Why the sky is not falling
This bit of news landed on my feed today morning and left me much distraught. Every time there is the slightest murmur of a security issue around mobile wallets, the tech media and blogs – ever so informed, has to find the nearest tallest tower to shout it out from. It serves as a doubled edged sword in that it both leads to public humiliation at the town square for the brand in question, plus it further spreads FUD and instills a deep sense of mistrust towards that digitization of wallets and ends up being applied quite broadly which is quite unfair. Continue reading
Did Google Wallet land it’s Second US Carrier – AT&T?
After the brouhaha over Verizon Galaxy Nexus and Google Wallet a few weeks back, it seemed that none of the Isis Carriers will allow Google Wallet on their networks. Sprint, absent from the Isis partnership has, and is a Google Wallet partner. But this past week, news emerged that Google Wallet can be installed and works on the Galaxy Nexus in the AT&T network. Is this evidence of AT&T warming up to Google Wallet and signal the coming of Google Wallet on other AT&T NFC equipped phones?
Sorry to break your bubble, but the short answer is NO. Continue reading
iPhone 5, NFC & iWallet – Pick Any Two
Being on Week 3 of a self imposed Google Wallet embargo, I had instead been writing about the ongoing turf wars between Platform providers and Carriers, which is starting to sound like an episode of ‘Mob Wives’. Though the bulk of it was to be focused on Android, it became impossible to ignore rumors around iPhone 5 and NFC. Now that iPhone 5 is a mere couple of quarters away, the rumor-mill has started to churn yet again on the possible inclusion of NFC along with iWallet – Apple’s own mobile wallet initiative. Most of these indicate that an Apple mobile wallet initiative equipped with NFC is a sure bet. I on the other hand (and ever the doubting Thomas) – am not so sure. For the rest of this post I shall lay out reasons why I believe NFC and iWallet are far from a sure bet to be included in iPhone 5. Along with it comes the caveat that my Crystal Palantir that helps me see in to Infinite Loop, Cupertino has malfunctioned, which has left me equally in the dark as to what Apple may choose to do in Q4 2012. Whatever happens, I have attempted to paint the broad outlines of an Apple mobile wallet strategy, regardless of it being proximity or cloud based. Continue reading
Google Wallet, Meet me at Camera 3
I really didn’t intend this to be my next post on the DROP Labs blog. I was not planning to write about Google Wallet – again. I have an unhealthy obsession towards it, evidence of which can be found here, here, and here. After the last one, which chronicled my On the road experiences, I pretty much decided not to write about it for a while. There were other things I wanted to write about – Issuer strategy on mobile wallets, Ongoing turf battles between Platform providers/Manufacturers vs Carriers, and then it happened again. Continue reading
On the road with Google Wallet
I rode about 900 miles in the last four days, cutting across Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to be together with my family for Christmas. I figured this would be a good time to put my new Galaxy Nexus and the Google Wallet app through its paces. Following are my impressions from it, which as a whole was very cool and satisfying. But (and there is always a but..) it also brought to surface some serious handicaps, which though not Google’s fault, could bring its wallet initiative down like a lead balloon. Continue reading
Retailers – Wake up and smell the napalm
Amazon seems unstoppable. The online juggernaut is poised to grab additional market share from local retailers this holiday season by equipping its smartphone app with a $15 incentive (or call it what it is – a bribe) for customers. It is available to anyone who while perusing the aisles of a local retailer in search of their object of desire, instead of adding it their cart, scans the barcode, finds it on Amazon and buys it outright from the online retailer. Something equivalent to being enticed to use your wife’s cellphone to call your love interest. This surely has infuriated the ranks of retailers (even those with an online presence but have a bone to pick with Amazon) and has led to cries of unfair practices. The fact that Amazon does not have to worry about paying sales tax (outside of California at least) adds more fuel to the fire. Continue reading
Trouble brewing for Google Wallet
I believe in Google’s capability to actually pull off mobile payments. I believe they do get it. With all its initial failings, its misplaced loyalty towards NFC and the existing payment rails, I believe they truly have a shot at fixing payments and closing the loop in local commerce. Let’s look at what is going right for them: Android is fast becoming the dominant ecosystem on mobile, with over 200 Million devices so far, and 550k activations happening each day. They have made Android a force of nature, that is now slowly eating away at Apple’s market share. They have a mobile wallet initiative out at front, at least more than a year before the closest competitor they have – in Isis. They have had some notable successes with retailers (for e.g. Gap) and has partnered with NJ transit for payments. Formidable partnerships with Citi, FirstData and MC should be all that is enough to prod more issuers in to joining Google Wallet. Despite all this momentum, Google Wallet does not seem to be having a good day so far. Continue reading