EnjoyTech

Orange (France Telecom), one of the largest mobile operators in the world, issued a challenge " Data for Development " by releasing a dataset of their subscribers in Ivory Coast. The dataset contained 2.5 billion records, calls and text messages exchanged between 5 million anonymous users in Ivory Coast, Africa. Various researchers got access to this dataset and submitted their proposals on how this data can be used for development purposes in Ivory Coast. It would be an understatement to say these proposals and projects were mind-blowing. I have never seen so many different ways of looking at the same data to accomplish so many different things. Here's a book [very large pdf] that contains all the proposals. My personal favorite is AllAborad where IBM researchers used the cell-phone data to redraw optimal bus routes . The researchers have used several algorithms including supervised and unsupervised machine learning to analyze the dataset resulting in a variety of scena...

A lot has been said and discussed about RIM's downfall: indecisive leadership, inability to innovate at fast pace, and no clear path to recovery. I don't disagree at all with the analysis and the interpretation of the situation, but I do disagree with the conclusion that many people are drawing and vehemently disagree with their advice to RIM to keep trying to regain the smartphone market share. That train has left the station and RIM doesn't have a chance to catch up, even if they do everything that they could. But RIM may have stumbled upon something that they probably least expected. It's the BlackBerry Messaging, popularly known as BBM. We got to see the power of BBM during the London riots . During my recent trip to India, I firsthand witnessed how much of people's lives depend on BBM. These people were sad, upset, and depressed due to a RIM infrastructure outage. This is a phenomenal success. The recipe behind this success is quite simple: provide free messagi...

The two-third of world’s 4.6 billon mobile users live in the emerging markets. Millions of these users live below the poverty line and are part of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). Nokia is the market leader in these emerging markets, at least for now, with 34% market share. It’s clear from rapidly declining Nokia’s marketshare and an appointment of new CEO, Stephen Elop , that Nokia needs a second act. I believe the BOP is what could be the next big thing for Nokia. The recent NYTimes story highlights a Nokia’s service, to supply commodity data to the farmers in India, using a text message . So far, 6.3 million people have signed up for this service. Nokia is planning to roll out this service, Life tools, in Nigeria as well. This is part of their Ovi mobile business. I have written before on impact of cloud computing and mobile on the bottom of the pyramid and the importance of public policy innovation in emerging markets . The BOP is one of the biggest opportunities that Nokia curren...

Having worked on enterprise software product and go-to-market strategy for SMB (small and medium businesses), I can tell you that these are the most difficult customers to reach to, especially the S in SMB. It’s an asymmetric non-homogeneous market for which the cost of sales could go out of control if you don’t leverage the right channels. The competitive landscape varies from region to region and industry to industry. In many cases instead of competing against a company you would be competing against a human being with paper-based processes. Tomorrow I am speaking at the Razorsight annual conference on the topic of cloud computing. I am excited to meet their customers, the telcos. While I prepare for my keynote, I can’t stop thinking about the challenges that the telcos face and the opportunities that they are not pursuing. My keynote presentation is about how telcos can leverage the cloud, but this blog post is about how telcos can become successful enterprise software vendors and ...