Experian and comScore D...

Many people see the 30% of overall search share for Bing as a milestone of sorts. Of course, it is still taking Yahoo and Bing’s combined shares to compete with Google but we’re pretty used to that by now. So what’s the verdict? Well, if you like Experian’s Hitwise, Bing has hit the magic number with a combined 30.1% market share for April 2012 while Google gave up ground. But stop the presses! comScore says “just wait a hot minute!”. They are recording that Yahoo has slipped in share for the eighth consecutive month while Google is holding steady. Ouch! hese numbers show a combined share number of 28.9%. In the end, it’s all of a 1 percentage point difference but perception is reality, right? I have always felt that when Bing hits 40% of the market then we really have something to talk about. In the meantime, we are left with these monthly search non-events. What is your take here? At what point does Google really need to be concerned? Is it now or at some point in the future or not at all?

A Dreamy Look At A Woul...

This Nokia Lumia 850 is not real. It’s just a concept. But I would be proud to carry that phone in my pocket if it was real. The concept comes by way of The Nokia Blog , a fan site that found the concept made by Luxembourgish designer, BrianMFB. The 850, that once again is just a mockup, shows a slimmed down Lumia 800 that still regains a lot of the original character. The backside has tappered edges and flush mounted side buttons. The screen is a modest 3.8-inch as a 950 would likely have a larger screen. Nokia hit the 800 and 900 out of the park. Even Siri points out that the 900 is current the best cell phone on the market. Nokia will need an equally impressive showing to succeed the current lineup. However, if Nokia is smart, and yesterday’s rap video speaks against that thought , the company would let the current generation sit on the market for awhile. The 800/900 are amazing phones and do not need replacing anytime soon. Nokia’s money would be better spent in stronger marketing and bringing the phone to other carriers like Verizon.

Samsung Bets Big On Mir...

In the riveting story of consumer electronics, the lowly point-and-shoot camera is about to be cut. Its days are numbered and cheap cameras are becoming increasingly less relevant as smartphones steal the limelight. The point-and-shoot camera will soon be just a supporting character. Samsung sees the writing on the wall, too. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal , Han Myoung-sup, head of the company’s digital imaging division, indicated that the massive Korean empire will shift away from “low-end compact cameras” in an effort to concentrate on mirrorless cameras. This bet, which is the correct move by the way, shows the company’s foresight as it’s very similar to the one Samsung made several years ago when it decided to shift away from its own smartphone platforms and instead concentrate on Android. This will pay off big for Sammy. Mirrorless cameras have so far seen a slow start. The technology forgoes the tradition bulky and complex mirror system found in digital SLR cameras. A properly named mirrorless system sits in its place, allowing the camera body to be significantly smaller than DSLR. In most cases, mirrorless camera bodies are as thin as the compact cameras they’re attempting to replace. The redesigned camera sensor is then paired with an interchangeable lens system, which allows camera makers to deploy higher quality (high margin) glass lenses. As the WSJ points out , Samsung currently holds just 5% of this growing market, which is projected to rise 60% this year while point-and-shoot sales are decreasing. This focus shift should allow the company the freedom to further explore the market and position their mirrorless cameras as lovely companions for their widely popular Android smartphones. Samsung’s current mirrorless camera lineup employs several smart features that make the models a compelling companion for current Samsung customers. Samsung is building around a single platform that leverages proprietary sharing functions. A Samsung smartphone can easily share pics to a Samsung TV while a Samsung mirrorless camera is using the smartphone’s wireless connectivity. It’s a family built on sharing and Samsung is the only company with the customer and product base large enough to pull off such a hat trick. Samsung moved 20 million Galaxy S II smartphones in 2011. Samsung is the leader in TVs for six years running and sold two HDTVs every second last November. Much to Sony’s chagrin, consumers have been latching onto Samsung for the last several years and then just a few months back at CES 2012, the company unveiled its latest innovation that essentially connects all its products. Mirrorless cameras are a big part of that push. For the most part mirrorless cameras can command a higher margin than point-and-shoots. They’re positioned as a premium product even if the manufacturing cost is similar to cheap p&s models. But right now, the models are still somewhat rare and stuck in a niche spot between the low-end budget cameras and pricy DSLR. Samsung is attempting to break it out and own the market. This is the right move for Samsung. Moving away from budget cell phones paid off big time. Samsung is in a dominant position in smartphones. Doing the same with digital cameras will likely yield the same result. Look for Samsung to use similar tactics and flood the market with mirrorless cameras targeting different price points. But this is just part of a larger quest for Samsung. The company is attempting (and arguably succeeding) at becoming the global leader in consumer electronics. John put it correctly at CES: Samsung is the next Apple .

Mobile Could Be What Ma...

Photos, location, professional networking, or all your real-life friends… Instagram, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Facebook lead social networking today because they’ve found existing the types of networks to connect users around. Now a new generation of startups has been showing up in recent months, trying to nail another type of networking that so far has yielded no big success: small, very personal networks. Like you how use texts with your closest friends. These companies are looking pretty healthy — almost too healthy, if you look at some of their valuations versus their user numbers — and it’s because of how they’re using mobile. Path is the market leader here, even if the overall market is small today. Having relaunched last fall as mobile-only network for close friends that provides a cool spinny menu feature for actions like photos and check-ins, the company has shown enough progress that it was able to raise $30 million at a $250 million valuation. It reportedly had around three million users as of the April funding, with a half a million people on it multiple times per day. So, not that big. But it’s quality engagement, particularly for a mobile non-gaming app. Pair , which launched last month, may have finally nailed a social network for the monogamous . As of its marquee-investor funding round last week , it had 220,000 downloads (not bad for an app that is the opposite of viral). United Kingdom-based Cupple and Korea’s Between have already offered similar apps , with both claiming larger user numbers. High-quality smartphones seem to have set this new class of apps off: great photo and video recorders make the content  you share higher quality, and location and other device features help you easily show your friends what you’re up to every day. Designed properly, these mobile features can provide the intimacy that a previous generation of privacy-themed sites didn’t do on the web. Some top examples ended up as small acquisitions. Drop.io focused on files , and sold to Facebook in a talent acquisition, The Fridge went to Google , and a variety of others gradually faded away. But it’s easy to see a bubble in this set of niches. They’re all small by many measures. Facebook is at more than 900 million people. Instagram is somewhere around 50 million. Networks designed for as few people as possible naturally grow slower. So while Facebook is making money with relatively low-performing ads because it has so many users, that same possibility is further off for these apps. The photo filters on Path are one example of an alternative revenue stream, but one suspects this won’t be how the company ends up making its investors money. And yet, there is a world of possibilities. It’s easy to see deals targeted at anniversaries or happy hours be valuable to users. Or mini-games that come with virtual currencies built in. Will Facebook or other more mature networks compete directly? So far, the market leader has messed around occasionally with list features, but has avoided creating specialized networks. Its mobile app is bloated, it doesn’t pull together social and mobile features in a way that can compete against the mobile-first apps. But it already has a great asset in this contest: Messenger. The Beluga-derived mobile messenging app that keeps getting quality upgrades . All in all, the quality of the apps and the growth they’re seeing suggests that 2012 could be the year that private sharing networks finally came of age.

If Facebook Could Enter...

Editor’s note:  Henry Fong is CEO of Yodo1 . Yodo1 is a market entry specialist and full service technology provider helping Western game developers successfully gain traction in the China mobile games market. Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to China back in December 2011 created a storm of speculation on whether Facebook was preparing for a full scale entry into the most populous country in the world. Photos of Zuckerberg visiting Sina’s headquarters in Beijing, leaked by a Sina employee and reports of him meeting with other major Chinese Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba have further fueled rumors that Facebook is looking for a local partner to facilitate its China entry. Putting aside the rumors and speculation, there is little doubt that Facebook is looking for a way to enter the China market and the real questions lie not in the “if,” but rather the “how,” “when” and whether Facebook will be able to make a success of their China market entry when countless other western Internet juggernauts have bruised and battered themselves against the Great firewall of China. License and Registration Number Please… For Internet companies, the “rules” for playing in the China market are many and varied, the most basic of which includes the acquisition of an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license which only a local Chinese company can obtain. There are many ways and mechanisms via which Western companies can obtain this license, or at least obtain the rights to use it, the most popular of which is in the form of a set of Variable Interest Entity (VIE) agreements and structures. This mechanism is used by most of the local Chinese Internet companies that are listed overseas (hence making them non-local companies) and a good article explaining how VIE’s work in detail can be found here , compliments of the China Accounting Blog. Besides the ICP, a broad based Social Network platform such as Facebook will require a whole bundle of other licenses based on different core functionality including but not limited to a Network Culture Operation License, which is required for all gaming platform operators. Also needed, an Internet Publication License, a requirement for video and photo sharing services, Payment Service Operator license required for Facebook’s credits service and likely dozens of other licenses from a multitude of different government departments including: General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) People’s Bank of China (PBoC) Ministry of Culture of the PRC The Information Office of the State Council of PRC The State Administration of Radio Film and Television The Ministry of Information Industry To put things into perspective, here’s an example of the licenses that were obtained by a video broadcasting company operating in China and the scope of services provided by them is but a fraction of the services available on the Facebook platform. Rewriting the Book of China Entry or Same Book Different Chapter? Facebook’s formidable war chest of cash and equity value from their impending IPO provides alternatives for obtaining the relevant operating licenses through acquisition of local Chinese companies that already have them. However, this seemingly obvious path to a quicker China entry poses many other challenges, and one look at the trail of failed market entries by other leading Western Internet companies certainly paints an unfavorable picture. To provide perspective, let’s take a look at the China eCommerce space to get a feel of the challenges for leading Western players entering into China. eBay and Amazon have both tried their hand at the buy vs build approach to enter the market thru their respective acquisitions of Eachnet and Joyo.  Amazon’s entry into China though unimpressive, can be categorized as a “success” on relative measures if you compare them against that of eBay, arguably the most high profile and widely published “failed” China entry in the Internet space. After eBay’s 2003 acquisition of EachNet, then the leading B2C provider in China, eBay successfully eroded EachNet’s user base and leadership position into a blip on the radar screen and handed China’s B2C market to Jack Ma’s Taobao. This market has now grown over 100 times in transaction volume since eBay’s initial entry in 2003. The reasons for eBay’s China failure are many and varied, but there are a number of relevant chapters from “eBay’s book of disasters” that Facebook can learn from in hopes of avoiding a similar fate. Chief among eBay’s fatal errors is that they failed to understand what the Chinese consumer really wanted from a B2C service, focusing instead on replicating their global model that had proven successful in Western markets to the Chinese community who’s shopping behavior, culture, product needs and purchasing power were extremely different to that of their Western counterparts.  Concurrently, Jack Ma launched his B2C offensive with Taobao, a services that provided free listings with content and navigation tailored to the tastes of the local consumer. Today, Taobao is by far the dominant player in the B2C space and processes 79% of China’s online transaction value. Fight for Past or Fight for the Future?  Some Food for thought for Zuckerberg. Some would argue that the war for dominance of Social Networking in China has already been fought and won, with major players such as Tencent, Sina and RenRen each claiming a significant slice of the Social Networking market, each leading in terms of specific demographics, features or access methods. The challenge for Facebook is that its broad platform of functionality competes directly and extensively with each of the above existing leaders in the market, though less so with Sina whose primary social asset is the Sina weibo services which is more competitive to a Twitter offering than a Facebook. Before deciding how Facebook should enter the Chinese market, a more relevant consideration for Zuckerberg is what markets does Facebook want to compete on in China. Given the plethora of regulatory challenges and the steep learning curve that the company is likely to face, it might make more sense for Facebook to choose a new battle ground that has yet to see an entrenched player in the market, but is significant enough that success in this area would provide a significant footprint for Facebook to leverage its other services into the region. One such market that might make sense for Facebook to target is the market for smartphone services. China already has the largest install base of smartphone handsets in the world with an estimated 100m units and projected doubling of unit shipments by the end of 2012. The battle for this rapidly growing access method has already started with Sina and Tencent duking it out via their respective mobile Weibo (microblogging) services and RenRen’s initiative to expand their traditional Social and gaming services onto the smartphone platforms.  Facebook’s recent acquisition of Instagram provides an opportunity to leverage the app’s popularity among Chinese users as a potential route for a broader Facebook market entry in a way that is relatively non-threatening to Instagram’s Chinese partners such as Sina, whose social features are well integrated into the Chinese version of the app. At a macro level, the opportunity to dominant China’s smartphone market is HUGE, much bigger than what Instagram can provide today and potentially dwarfing the existing web-based social networking market in the coming years. Facebook and other players in the market have an opportunity against a limited time window to make a significant impact in this space where mobile social networking, smartphone payment methods, gaming and a number of other billion dollar plus markets are still in its infancy. What’s more, the smartphone platform war is an area that Facebook has yet to make a significant impact on in its home markets. The Chinese market can be a great way to experiment with new mobile services and business models quickly and cheaply in a market where there is only upside potential for Facebook.