Maria Azura’s new book The Social Factor writes about IBM’s very own experiences using social networking and describes the tremendous success that Wikis, Blogs, and other social tools have. The numbers are mind-boggling and were also for IBM beyond their highest expectations. This lead Maria to ask in her book:

Is there a correlation between the success of IBM and the social tools now used extensively by IBMers?

• within a year more than 150,000 IBMers were creating, accessing, or updating wikis, this represents about 40% of the total workforce
• after six months the active blogs topped out at approximately 5,000; the traffic continued to grow, however

The new Samsung Galaxy with its incredible AMOLED touchscreen seems to be the best Android phone ever. MobileBurn says, “It was so sharp, crisp, and colorful that the photos and videos just jumped off the screen.”Great set of other features too. (real n standard Wifi, 118g light, 9.9mm thin, 5 megapixel camera with ability to record 720p HD video). Apple should have maybe better sued Samsung and not HTC it seems as this Samsung Android mobile phone might become the best iPhone competitor soon.

After it now became official that Google decided to redirect its China Google.cn search site to its Hong Kong site Google.com.hk and with that step effectively leaving the China mainland Search market, the question coming up is what will that mean for the future?

Firstly, I think that the decision to leave China had mostly also to do with the fact that Google was unable to gain market leadership in China. It trailed its local rival Baidu. This IMHO had from a pure business point of view nothing to do with being censored or not but simply with the fact that Google like many other US Internet companies face fierce local competition and never gained the market share that they were able to gain elsewhere in the world. That is frustrating for them no doubt and certainly played a major role in its current decision to “pull out”. In fact they did not fully pull out but left all other businesses untouched - so far.

It has to be seen now how the Chinese authorities react and if they block the Hong Kong site entirely which they of course could easily do. That they filter the content that Google Hong Kong’s search finds is clear.

Now what will this mean for the future of China’s Internet business? One will see more and more local Chinese companies gaining more market share and dominating the Chinese market. Those companies will remain local and will enjoy healthy growth not needing any expansion outside of China. While it is a bit too early to say for sure but what could well happen is that the Internet will be divided into two. A Chinese one and a non-Chinese one. This of course will isolate China from the rest of the world something that is not good one would think. Cynics might also say a Google and a non-Google dominated Internet world. The other scenario could be that ways to circumvent censorship will become dominant and that grassroots movements will eventually practically open the Chinese Internet. That I doubt though. People assuming that - like Sergey Brin in the NYT - don’t take the huge effort into account that is being exercised by the Chinese government to control the Internet and censor website content and access. I once heard that there are more than 10,000 people employed in Beijing who search and then filter the Internet for unwanted website content. What happened now though with Google’s announcement is that the world is shown and talks about this Great Firewall of China and as a side effect “China is evil” rather than “Google is evil” is being spread.

Mr. Brin added that efforts by China, Iran and other governments to control online speech — a “half an Internet” approach, he said – will likely fail eventually. “I think that in the long term, they are going to have to open,” he said.

So how to deal with this is what every company needs to decide for itself. I for my part see this all a bit different. Having actually lived two years in the region (China and HK) I think one needs to be pragmatic and you cannot judge China with the rules that count in the US or Europe. We all know that also democracy in the Western world has its strong limitations, just looking at the heavy lobbying work that is so typical in Washington (I am sure also Google has its folks there as well). This shows that money has a huge influence on political decisions, something that people too often simply forget also because they depend on it.

The Google decision to redirect its search was at the end more of a face saving act for them than anything that reflects understanding of the Chinese circumstances and dealing with it in a smarter way. Pressure came up to finally do something after they noticed - and published - a sophisticated hacker attack and assumed it was Chinese government-sponsored. Now one needs to know that practically all business in China is in some way controlled by the government and large Chinese corporations are to a good part government-owned (e.g. Huawei). So I am sure that Google’s remaining business will also do business with the Chinese government or they will do no business. Of course that’s not in Google’s hands but the Chinese. Practically I think they won’t do much business there anymore and could as well simply entirely leave.

When I read this in a Twitter post I thought, “Wow, finally they get it and try to do something good and different to fight back.” Well, big was the disappointment then when I checked out their blog and Design by Community announcement. Very disappointing, very. This community campaign once more lacks any thought and preparation. Simply bad. I can’t believe that a company the size of NOKIA constantly screws things up so badly. They need help urgently but I fear for them that they won’t admit it.

Being in high-tech business for nearly two decades I have seen many new ideas come and many more never become mainstream or disappear after only a short amount of time. Also the time it takes - while it seems this is getting shorter and shorter these days - can be relatively long before a new technology becomes used and adopted by the masses.

One reason in high-tech b2b markets why it takes so long to adopt new things is that there is an existing working infrastructure that is good enough and does mostly the job. New things need to be substantially better (10x in price and features) to make a quick impact. Problem here is of course that what is better cannot easily measured and quantified often so it is not even obvious even if companies sales and marketing will find all kinds of use cases showing ROI in a short amount of time.

One other reason are the human beings themselves. Used to do it one way or the other for a long time make them feel comfortable, they enjoy a certain amount of security and the feeling that they can deal with it well. New things are for most people - in particular conservative ones and the older generations - seen more as a threat than an opportunity. Also there is not so much desire to really try out something new, “why change anything?” they ask themselves, “we are doing very well”, so there is no reason really to change anything. We have just seen such thinking with the old boy group at the world soccer organization FIFA (its president Sepp Blattner is 73 and enjoys half the voting rights, whow, how is that possible?) where they ruled out any technical aids such as goal cameras or sensors in soccer balls. This despite the public, practically all coaches and players in favor of using new technologies to reduce the amount of mistakes when it comes to goals and also it is used in other sports (ice hockey, tennis) already. The arguments that the FIFA published are some that could be easily applied to the nay sayers in technology, here an extraction:

Fussball muss, erstens, weltweit nach den gleichen Regeln gespielt werden. Für Teenager in einem kleinen Ort etwa sollen die gleichen Regeln gelten wie für die Profis. Zweitens bringt es nichts, die Verantwortung für einen Entscheid vom Schiedsrichter der Technologie zu übertragen. Selbst Zeitlupen würden keine Klarheit bringen, und zehn Experten hätten zehn Meinungen, wie eine Situation zu beurteilen sei. Drittens kann die Anwendung von Technologie wie zum Beispiel zur Überwachung der Torlinie (mit Kamera oder Chip im Ball) sehr teuer sein. Viertens schliesslich ist Fussball ein dynamisches Spiel und kann zur Überprüfung eines Entscheides nicht einfach unterbrochen werden.

Quite funny some of these arguments. They basically have only one goal: don’t touch our nice world and confront us possibly with challenges that we don’t understand.

Despite this NO, I am convinced that in only a few years, when some of these people are retired (finally) technology will come where it makes sense and where it clearly helps to make better decisions. Grassroot movements and opinions cannot be stopped, only delayed. New ways in discussing opinions in blogs, communities, news portals will help to keep the pressure up. Below an online survey done in the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger. 72% say about the FIFA decision “total nonsense”.

This question is something I have been asking myself for quite a while, and a recent article in The Guardian writing from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona reminded me of my own thoughts. Author Rick Wray said:

“Europe has become the ‘flyover states’ of the mobile industry,” says a ­senior European executive, referring to the disparaging term used to describe middle America by high-powered business travellers shuttling between California and New York.

“All the service innovation is being done on the west coast of the US, and all the manufacturing and technical innovation is being done in the Far East. All we’re doing is selling other people’s products.”

Quite frankly, it is not even a flyover state anymore since the traffic goes from the US west coast westwards to Asia. No need to fly across Europe. Rick Wray’s article is worth reading and I concur with his views but would like to add a bit more depth to it and look at some of the reasons, as well as what could be done.

The key reason is that IT, Internet and software innovations, a domain of the US for a long time now, is becoming the ruling power in the mobile landscape. The pure infrastructure business has been targeted by the Chinese government for more than 10 years now, supporting first Huawei and then ZTE, among a few others not yet widely known outside of China such as Datang. These companies profit heavily from government support and the enormous market growth in China, but are now also entering international markets everywhere.

Entirely busy with fighting these Chinese vendors, European infrastructure vendors focused on keeping their customers - the mobile operators - happy by providing more and more services to them (up to outsourcing the whole operation) but ignored the most powerful force, the end users. And that is what Google and Apple are after, the masses of end users, who will in the end decide what is successful. Some of the players have already dropped the ball, such as Siemens, first selling off its mobile phone business and then getting rid of its infrastructure business as well by forming a NOKIA-led joint venture. Now it seems they are trying to become a Chinese-style company shutting down one location after the other. But while cost cutting is inevitable for them, the real thing they should be doing is focusing on cloud computing, and getting extensively into innovative mobile service offerings that they then run for the operators.

They have one advantage that they could play nicely and that is the good long-term relationships with the mobile operators, who are facing similar pressures from the same US companies. The operators also own the networks - hundreds of billions $ worth of assets - and the clients using them. Something a company like Google would love to own, and use to augment their service offering. One note here: Google has the backend infrastructure already (data centers) but not the access networks - yet (for background info on Google’s latest FTTH project read here). I think there is also one other asset that I would play out: Google is seen as a threat by governments and increasingly individuals who simply don’t trust them. Operators - with their local ties to end users might have had customer support issues here and there, but at the least no-one thinks of them as a privacy threat; so this trust base could be used offering cloud computing services.

Mobile operators and the infrastructure vendors need to explore new business models and they also need to find a way to handle advertisements. The biggest threat I see for them though is the speed with which this transformation is happening. And speed has not been something they have been able to handle so far, mostly because their management do not understand the new challenges, threats and opportunities and what to do about them. Most importantly, they need to hire people for these positions who understand the IT and internet business and are not simply large company operational experts.

Now the world is growing together and even if the US president says in his speeches that America has to lead, I think big companies should not be seen as US-, Europe- or Asia-based organizations but as worldwide operating companies since none can survive by only serving parts of the world.

As expected there were fewer companies and also people attending but that turned out to be a plus for the event which seemed for once more manageable and under control than in the last few years.

There were a few other observations that I’d like to share:

Software is on the rise – no big news of course – for the very first time it became very visible or in fact hardware was hidden and not shown at all by the major vendors. I did not see one booth where boring racks filled with hardware and blinking LEDs was all there was. All vendors even if they sell hardware presented services, use of applications or high level benefits for the end users.

For the first time in 15 years, the award ceremony was open to all attendees and did not require attending the special – to be paid - evening event. 19 awards were handed out by Stephen Frey, who did an outstanding job moderating the vent. Interesting to see that the GSMA members awarded Steve Jobs with the Mobile Industry Personality of the Year award. This is remarkable not only because Apple does not even have a booth nor hospitality suite so completely ignored the event, but more so because the iPhone put many of the traditional mobile phone vendors under lots of pressure. Also mobile operators for sure see Apple with mixed feelings. Apple – together with Google - are forcing them to change their business models which means they have to think about how to monetize complete services and applications rather than reselling mobile phone connectivity only.

There were still some not purely data-focused but based on the good old voice service innovations that even won awards:

· Orange France high-definition voice

· Addafix GmbH with yellix – caller ID

Orange improved the voice quality in Moldavia by introducing an AMR-WB codec and plans to roll it out across Europe in 2010. They say that the quality of the sound is like having the other party in the same room. Of course only if that other party is on the same Orange network as well.

The startup company addafix Gmbh from Austria solves a problem that seems even more obvious but – astonishingly – has not been properly addressed at all by the mobile operators to date.

When one does not reach a called party the phone will display three or so alternatives that are closest to the current caller location. A service that seems quite obvious and something all mobile operators should have offered for a long time since at least triangulation as a means for determining the location of the caller is well known for about a decade and does not require GPS receiver chipsets in the mobiles. Such a service should immediately increase the revenue of the operators one would think. The free service is called YELLIX and can be downloaded onto your phone. Most smartphone platforms are supported.

Addafix was also the only company that won two awards this week in Barcelona. They were also a winner in the startup Mobile Premier Award on Monday, which was partly organized by MobileMonday who invited winners from different country organizations.

The prestigious mobile handset award was btw won by the Google Android phone from HTC: the HTC Hero with the Sense user interface.

For the very same reason that software is becoming the driving force, you can also see more software developer guys walking around with Jeans who attend sessions such as the Google Android Developer presentations. Once the news spread that Google again gives away a Nexus One to everyone attending, the lines at least quadrupled. Good freebees still attract the crowd. No change here.

Two companies that decided to not participate with a huge and expensive booth anymore were LG and interestingly NOKIA. NOKIA reportedly invited VIPs to a nearby hotel that they rented. Research in Motion (RIM) stayed at the premises and took lots of the LG space increasing its presence substantially.

A first attending the event was Skype who has also just announced a partnership with Verizon where thetwo will offer cheaper VoIP calls over the 3G EV-DO network. More such deals will be coming I think.

The discussion mostly heating up between the old telco mobile world and the PC/Internet players was who is going to pay for the to be expected all time record US$ 200 billion investments that will be required to install and rollout high speed mobile IP networks which is double what was spent on 3G infrastructure in the late 1990. Mobile operators seem to want to make sure that this time around they get a cut from the big new pie and not leave it to the Googles’ of the world alone.

Interesting times for sure are ahead also because of Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech where he announced a new Google mantra called “Mobile First”. Google’s top programmers are now concentrating on mobile as their primary focus. He said:

“The mobile phone is where computing power, interconnectivity, and the cloud converge and you need to get these three waves right if you want to win.”

The navigation software market seemed to have been under heavy commodity pressure recently. With Google providing free navigation now for all Android phones, NOKIA felt they had to pull out something too also in light of Apple’s iPhone success. Of course the $8.1 billion they spent on Navteq needed to also put to work quickly. Unfortunately they did once more not get the end user requirements and decided to confuse people by offering free maps (for some of their handsets) and free turn-by-turn voice-directed navigation (again for only some of their handsets and confusingly different ones than the few who have free maps).

So where is this all leading and what can we expect in this market to happen?

In my opinion NOKIA will once more not be able to profit from this new development. They did not only enter this opportunity too late, spending also way to much money on Navteq but also screwed it then up with confusing licensing terms and announcing FREE in the headlines when in fact the small print shows that this is only true for a few handsets. Google will go its path and probably soon offer the best location based and real world viewing experience and that for free. With that move they will put a huge amount of pressure on the other navigation companies to innovate even more and faster. Navigon and TomTom have clearly seen this pressure and reacted with price cuts and many new developments such as 3D map views, voice activation, alternative route suggestions based on driving habits or real-time traffic situations. Both offer their products now on the iPhone with nice mounting cradles to use it in the car. TomTom even has one with a built-in GPS receiver chip to improve the navigation for the iPhone and enable the iPod Touch as well. But both vendors face a dilemma that is hard to fight: pricing drops drastically while at the same time more and more devices and features seem to be required to be able to offset this trend with more unit sales. They need to streamline their production costs and reduce hardware to very few platforms while putting all efforts into software development. Location based services is the way to go as well as combining it with social networking but while this is easy to say it requires a totally new approach and most importantly new business models where also online and mobile ads should be looked at. Both companies need new talent that are experts in online ads and social networking. I doubt though that they will be able to pull that off quickly enough which will make them acquisition targets maybe for other mobile phone vendors. Of course currently their navigation devices are still better than Google’s since they can clearly profit from years of experience in the car navigation market, but that gap will shrink quickly in the next 2-3 years if not even faster.

Garmin needs to be mentioned as well. The company did a smart move understanding the danger of commodity markets obviously very well and was branching out into all kinds of vertical markets with specialized products (flying, boating, trucking, hunting, hiking and all kinds of sports). It will be much harder to compete against them by Google and since they are established now in many of these vertical markets TomTom and Navigon are simply too late to copy that business model and most likely also don’t have the cash to do so. So I think Garmin looks fine while the rest will face tough times ahead.

Got a new gadget. My Samsung D600 which I purely used for making voice calls got a bit aged now and I was in the market for a new phone. Having an iPodTouch for emails and surfing via WLAN I again was looking for a non-smartphone phone and had in mind something similar to my old Samsung which was one of the best phones I ever had. (light-weight, for a slider super slim fitting into a shirt pocket, long battery life, very easy to use, gorgeous color display, some basic software on board that I - admittedly - hardly used though, apart from the soccer penalty Java game).

During these smartphone times it was very very difficult to find anything even close to my beloved Samsung and I nearly decided to continue with it. But then NOKIA announced free turn-by-turn navigation and I decided to go for a NOKIA 6700 hoping to use it as a GPS and phone. Here now my first few hours of partly OK and partly frustrating experience that show how far away NOKIA is from becoming a software company and from Apple:

• it becomes very quickly obvious that NOKIA is trying to tie in their app and music store with over the air downloads. While this is certainly in the interest of mobile operators for the end user it means long download times and higher costs. For me as I already have the iPod Touch with many great apps I won’t use the OVI store at all also due to this annoying setup. nice try guys but this is amateurish.
• since navigation is now for free I was eager of course to try it out. After installing a bunch of software applications such as the one for synchronizing the phone with a PC (Mac is not supported - aeh!?), a SW update program and then a Map uploader program. In between things were hanging when Microsoft’s framework had to be installed. Overall I did not understand why it is not possible to simply have it all in one package. The average user will be struggling with all these software installs. So now eager to finally get it going I realized that I needed to activate the navigation service first for then it said I could try it out for 30 days. I am a bit confused now and not sure if that is indeed a trial only or a wrong info and I can use it for free as long as I wish. If I cannot I will give the phone back for sure as it would be a complete rip off…
• Now OVI has not only apps (that I won’t use as mentioned) but also  offers online file storage, Contact, Calendar, Mail and a Music store. File storage I won’t need as I will do that with my iPod Touch and a nice app, Contact I am using and sync worked well (unfortunately over the air so I will watch my bill because paying for Contact syncing is again BS and so far I have not found a way to sync with my MacBook), Calendar I won’t use but would have loved to, unfortunately it does not seem to support any other calendars right now, so entirely worthless since I for sure won’t start keeping a second calendar just for the phone, Mail I don’t need either since it only supports ovi.com mail extensions and I hate to have to joggle between different emails. The music store offers one year free music downloads, whow I thought, but then I realized only three mobile phones are supported and of course mine is not.

Summary:

While NOKIA is obviously trying to catch up with Apple at the current state they are hopelessly far behind them that makes it often not only frustrating but gets funny or if you are sentimental makes you feel sorry for them. The software remains a patchwork with way too many different applications that at the end don’t even do what people want to do. If you are a Mac user then you simply cannot work with a NOKIA phone properly. And even if you have a PC (which I do and used here) frustration is big. Now remember though that I only wanted a phone for making calls and a free GPS built in. Assuming the navigation is indeed for free then the phone is a high quality audio machine that works very well with a BT headset, stores a bunch of contacts even in the OVI application so does the job I wanted it to do. So while I am fine with this phone, NOKIA is in trouble and if they want to remain a significant player then they have to fully focus on end-to-end total user experience and usability.

Update: as it turns out the NOKIA 6700 has no free navigation included. Only free map downloads. NOKIA is not clearly stating this on their website and therefore one better checks exactly if your model has free spoken navigation as well or if you need to buy a 90 USD license to do that.