Entrepreneur: noun – antonym: French Government

From dictionary.com:

en·tre·pre·neur: noun
A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk [emphasis added]

From the theatre of the absurd:

A year ago, the Elysée had published a summary (. pdf) on the creation of investment funds, which explained that the objective of France Patents would enable SMEs to more easily sell their inventions, by delegating their marketing [to] the state company [emphasis added]

The French government proposes to make itself an intellectual property dealer.

The Minister of Higher Education and Research, Valérie Pécresse, the Minister for Industry, Energy and the Digital Economy, Eric Besson, and the Commissioner General for investment, Rene Ricol, give this morning at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris launched the “ Patents France . A project that made the company’s common commercial State and the Caisse des Depots a purchaser and reseller of patent licenses that researchers will be encouraged to deposit in greater numbers.

Isn’t ‘French state marketing company’ an oxymoron?

I really don’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or both…

Samsung drops Symbian, Android gains momentum

We were interested (but not surprised) to see in Fierce Wireless Europe this morning that Samsung will no longer develop smartphones using the Symbian OS.  The major handset makers are all racing struggling to catch up to the iPhone user experience and realizing that Symbian will not enable them to do so.

This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Samsung Bada, a new platform for mobile apps to run on Samsung devices.  Bada will be targeted at lower tier "transitional" devices rather than flagship smartphones -- the real news here is an increased focus on Android.  Now Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony Ericsson are all becoming more aggressive in Android.

The smartphone OS battle is shaping up to be a three horse race between iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.  Apple's iPhone maintains a strong lead, but the combined efforts of five major device makers is resulting in rapidly improving Android devices (such as the Droid and Droid Eris) and a robust application ecosystem.  As my colleague Michael noted earlier in the week, elements of the Blackberry experience are starting to seem clunky by comparison.  But Blackberry maintains the lead in productivity applications and integration among them (email, messaging, contacts, calendar, phone), and this part of the experience will remain an important driver of smartphone adoption in the near-term.

In this intense competitive environment, Nokia must come up with its own answer to iPhone and Blackberry or will continue to bleed smartphone market share.  And smartphones are where all the money is.  Within 5 years, smartphones will represent over 50% of global device shipments, 75% of industry revenues, and roughly 90% of industry profit potential. The players gaining share in this segment are the market leaders of the future.  The players losing share in this space will face dire financial consequences.

Iguana Theory of Broadband Revisited

When I was a kid I wanted a pet iguana, and the one thing I remember about iguanas from my childhood is that an iguana will grow to the size of its cage. If you want a small iguana, build it a small cage. If you want a very big iguana, build it a big cage. Unfortunately, this fun fact about iguanas turns out to be a myth.

Do iguanas grow to the size of their cages? Do people find ways to use whatever broadband is available?

More recently, in the age of the dot-com bubble (c.1999-2002), I heard the same theory applied to broadband. “If you build it, they will come,” was the mantra repeated by many long haul fiber network, metro fiber ring, and global undersea fiber companies. At my prior firm we termed it The Iguana Theory of Broadband: Build a really big cage, and people will dream up new and innovative (and profitable) ways to fill it. Unfortunately, this also turned out to be false - or at least overly simplistic - and led to a fiber glut and dozens of bankruptcies.

But now we are seeing broadband speeds soar:

• Comcast launched 100 Mbps service in Twin Cities in September


• Cablevision launched 101 Mbps back in April


• Verizon bumped the speeds and added tiers into its FiOS offer back in June - with plans ranging from 15 Mbps to 35 Mbps to 50 Mbps at various price points

At the same time, however, we hear Verizon CTO Dick Lynch proclaim that metered broadband will be the pricing paradigm of the future and that "the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unacheivable." Which is it going to be? Increasing performance at a flat rate? Or metered rates limiting demand?

New technologies are continually being developed to enable increased download speeds and drive down the cost per megabyte delivered. For most customers most of the time this has resulted in a balancing point: DSL, FiOS, and cable modem services have had fairly constant pricing while increasing download speeds over time.

If the iguana theory of broadband holds true, at least for some period of time, then pricing will remain relatively flat. If the iguana theory of broadband proves false and demand outstrips supply, then prices will increase and metered pricing could work. If the iguana theory proves false and supply outstrips demand, then broadband prices will fall, creating a difficult competitive environment for broadband service providers.

The following diagram lays out these three simple scenarios:

For metered pricing to work, demand for broadband data services must outstrip supply

So, which scenario is most likely? What are we trending toward? As we see data points that suggest one path or the other, we will be sure to point them out.

Tidbits about Snow Leopard

The great site Tidbits just picked up on the plight of snow leopards, that Amy commented on a few days ago:

Snow Leopard

As I was watching for the umpteenth time the astonishing footage of the snow leopards, with my Mac having just been upgraded to Snow Leopard, I found myself asking whether as a species, in particular an endangered species, snow leopards should have some sort of recompense for Apple using their name, beyond raisingawareness and the activities of independent retailers:

On a lighter note, the power of punctuation and the hazards of the autocue

As I hope is sometimes apparent from how we write, not just what we write, I love language. As part of that, believe it or not, I love punctuation. I'm also a huge believer in speaking extemporaneously, because you really know and care about what you're presenting, rather than from a script or prepared notes; in my case an autocue is not a luxury that's typically available. Now I recognize that newsreaders cannot master every item, but the power of punctuation and the hazards of the autocue are beautifully illustrated by this clip, from the BBC:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loWFypHb48k&hl=en&fs=1&]