Another MVNO Bites The Dust
This time it’s Disney’s family-centric MVNO that’s calling it quits.
By the looks of things, it appears as if 2007 is the year of death for MVNOs. Is the MVNO a doomed business model?
I could make snide jokes about the power of The Mouse, but I won’t. The truth is, it’s sad to see another wireless company fail at making a go of things.
The Walt Disney Co. today announced that it will shut down its Disney MVNO, with operations set to cease on December 31.
Current customers can continue their service until that deadline. Disney is working on setting up a reimbursement program for qualifying members, but full details of that have not been released yet.
The MVNO was run by the Walt Disney Internet Group. Based on its recent recommendation to the Walt Disney board, the decision was made to close the venture because of industry competition.
The MVNO model has proven, as we’ve seen with other companies this past year, to be a difficult proposition in the hyper-competitive U.S. mobile phone market.
In assessing our business model, we decided that changing strategies was a better alternative to pursue profitable growth in the mobile services area.
-Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group.
The Walt Disney Internet Group pitched the idea of licensing out its Family Center suite to other carriers in a manner similar to ESPN’s licensing deals.
However, with two of the four major wireless carriers already offering similar services, Disney might face an uphill battle on that front.
With Amp’d Mobile recently unplugging, and ESPN Mobile whiffing at bat — both companies with major backers — it’s hard not to question the MVNO business model. Can it really be successful?
Helio doesn’t seem to be doing that badly (though it is burning through a hell of a lot of cash). Virgin Mobile USA and others have been around for a while.
Clearly there is some formula for getting it right. It seems finding that formula is the real key.
Google Shows Off GWT Apple iPhone Tools
The team behind the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) have released a handy little article on how to develop web applications for the iPhone using GWT.
First off the block is the GWT Feed Reader, a feed reader interface optimized for the Apple iPhone.
Don’t let the name fool you. This isn’t an iPhone-optimized Google Reader site, rather it combines the Google AJAX Feed API with a user interface geared for use on the iPhone.
But because, frankly, it blows the pants of the the existing Google Reader mobile interface, I really wish it was a Google Reader interface.
However, the Google AJAX Feed API lacks many of the features found in Google Reader - like search.
Still, if you’re a developer looking to build an iPhone optimized version of your site, GWT could help kick start your efforts.
The blog post says that “the primary take-away from this project is to say this: the Google Web Toolkit can be used to create applications that, in the same code base, work well on an iPhone and a traditional desktop browser.”
Apple iPhone Boosts Google Maps Usage
It would appear Google owes Steve Jobs a round of beers.
According to GigaOm, the iPhone has boosted the popularity of Google Maps like never before.
While she didn’t give specific numbers, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products, told Om that the company saw a significant uptick in Google Maps usage shortly after the iPhone release in July.
That trend has continued for the past two months, Mayer said, and “maps usage hasn’t stopped rising.”
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for YouTube, another iPhone feature Apple has promoted heavily.
Meyer says that the phone’s YouTube functionality has not caused any major upsurge in video viewing.
Of course, that may be attributable to YouTube’s already gigantic user base, but AT&T’s slow-as-molasses EDGE network certainly isn’t helping matters.
RIM BlackBerry 8820 - Oh My, Wi-Fi
The BlackBerry 8820 is RIM’s first foray into integrated Wi-Fi (802.11 a,b,g) and sometimes it even works.
The 8820 is nearly identical in every way to the well-received 8800: same form factor, same 4.8-ounce weight, same OS, same trackball navigation system.
The only real difference is the iPhone-like addition of a Wi-Fi radio, which offers a vast improvement in speed when browsing the web or checking e-mail over the EDGE alternative.
Alas, the Wi-Fi implementation here isn’t nearly as seamless as Apple’s.
The 8820 sometimes manages the handoff between the two networks fairly well, but in my tests it often had trouble dropping the 802.11 signal and reconnecting to the Wi-Fi network.
At the end of the day, the 8820 is no iPhone killer, but it doesn’t do a bad job giving Apple’s iPhone a pretty good shiner.
Disney Mobile Virtual Network Operator Dying?
Is The Walt Disney Co. about to kill its MVNO play?
Surely Mickey and the crew will not meet the same fate as the ESPN MVNO and Amp’d Mobile, right?
Nothing is definite yet, but according to Dan Frommer at the Alley Insider, Disney CFO Thomas Stagg is far from impressed with the MVNO’s performance:
Disney CFO Thomas Staggs didn’t quite write the Disney Mobile “virtual” wireless carrier obit today, but his message was clear: it’s sucking wind. At the Merrill conference in Marina del Rey, Staggs said Disney has seen “some challenges” distributing its family-oriented MVNO, and the company is “in the process of evaluating where we sit.” Staggs said the service has received “strong response” from parents, but that the MVNO business needs scale to be successful (which it lacks). He said it would be too early to project the MVNO’s losses in 2008: the company will analyze the MVNO during its budget process and “decide just what our plan is going forward.”
That hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement of the Disney MVNO model.
I have to admit that for years I thought the MVNO model made perfect sense.
It looked to me a lot like the long distance re-seller model of the 1980s and in the early 2000s, Virgin seemed to show that MVNOs could post solid growth numbers.
Since then, however, few MVNOs have been successful. OK, that’s putting it mildly. Most MVNOs have burned out like a dot-com in the first quarter of 2001.
ESPN, also a part of the Disney empire, shuttered its MVNO and even Helio, Sky Dayton’s much-hyped play in this sector, recently trimmed jobs.
In fact, even Virgin Mobile’s subscriber numbers may not be as strong as the wireless industry assumed.
If Virgin Mobile isn’t doing that well, then what hope do these other MVNOs have?
What do you think? Is the MVNO business model dead?
Verizon Wireless Private Network
A new service being released by Verizon Wireless today offers VPN-esque security. It is called the Verizon Wireless Private Network.
Verizon Wireless had it made in the shade. They could have just called the new security offering VPN: Verizon’s Private Network. It makes perfect sense and dovetails nicely with the actual acronym.
I guess they didn’t want to mess with it, though. Too bad, VPN has a better ring to it than VWPN, which sounds like a Volkswagon that never made it off the drawing board.
Security is a crucial aspect of enterprise operations, especially for firms that manage highly sensitive data such as financial or health organizations.
These firms need to be able to secure data not only on the device where it resides, but also the networks through which it travels to reach the backend servers.
This is where VPNs come into play, which create the secure tunnels between the mobile device and home office.
Private Network takes our enterprise customers’ ability to communicate over a secure network to the next level by recognizing their wireless devices on the network — no matter where on the network their employees or their devices are located.
The Verizon Wireless Private Network gives customers the management tool they need to run their businesses for optimum efficiency and security.
Source: Rob Miller, vice president-marketing for Verizon Wireless
According to Rob Miller, one of the most essential benefits of Verizon Wireless Private Network is that customers can use existing IP addressing, network routing schemes and protocols to identify and communicate with corporate wireless devices.
The service costs $500 to set up and will work with PC Cards, PDAs and smartphones, embedded laptops and modems.
For SMBs that already use Verizon Wireless’ services, this can be a solid alternative to scouting out a third-party supplier of VPN services.