Month: March 2015

Please welcome the Wireless IoT Forum

It is a new week (well, nearly) so it must be time for a new Internet of Things consortium or standards initiative. Please welcome the Wireless IOT Forum which is being established with William Webb, President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) as its head. Wireless IoT Forum launches to drive Internet of Things development This blog has already addressed the multitude of standards in the Internet of Things space. In fairness this new grouping aims to bring … Read more…

IBM – $3billion in IoT and Weather Company tie-up

While there is nothing particularly exceptional about an Internet of Things – related announcement, this one is pretty big, at least in dollar terms. IBM has announced this morning that it will create a new Internet of Things business, consolidating its existing activities in its Smarter Planet and Smarter Cities initiatives. The numbers are quite striking – $4 billion to be invested over three years, and 2000 consultants, developers and researchers assigned to it. The key capabilities IBM will bring … Read more…

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries – Four years on

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is the book that spawned a movement, and is widely regarded as the start-up manual of choice by would-be tech millionaires. This is the book that popularised the term Minimum Viable Product, introduced the term ‘to pivot’ and espoused the concept of validated learning as the main measure of progress for tech start-ups. However, notwithstanding its success, I feel that Ries’ approach could be a bit more nuanced. Agile software development lends itself very well … Read more…

The battle for the mobile wallet heats up

It was easy to be distracted by the wondrous devices on display at the Mobile World Congress a couple of weeks ago, with smartphone vendors scrambling over each other with new device launches. However, some of the more significant announcements were not about phones or networks, but about the rapidly-shifting mobile payments landscape. Google shifts gear Google have made two major payments-announcements over the past month or so. First they bought Softcard (formerly called Isis) from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon and … Read more…

Wired: Who cares what OS your car runs?

Excellent article on how a new front in the smartphone Operating Systems war – the car. Ford neatly summarises the auto manufacturers’ positions: ““We don’t want the customer to base the choice of a $40,000 car on the $300 phone that they carry in their pocket,” The article however misses the point that it is by no means a foregone conclusion that either Apple or Google will dominate the dashboard – don’t forget that the useful lifetime of a car (13 … Read more…

FT on the state of the Telco Industry

In the first of a number of Mobile World Congress-themed posts, here’s the Financial Time’s take on the state of the telco industry. With the billing relationship being undermined by app stores, customers feeling stronger affinity towards their smartphone vendors and applications, and competition driving down both revenues and quality, it is a tough time. Yet Ericsson’s CEO sees opportunities too: “Ten years ago, they all did the same things. But now carriers have suddenly got a lot of options … Read more…