Report: LTE Connections...

By now, we’re pretty familiar with the term 4G LTE. But that in and of itself is somewhat surprising. It took 12 years for GSM wireless technology to reach one billion connections, and WCDMA took 11 years. But LTE will hit the same mark in just seven years of existence, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics . If you’re not familiar with the term, a brief explanation would be a faster fourth generation connection using “long term evolution” (LTE) technology, which means operators will be able to build upon the technology faster and more easily than implementing brand new systems. We’ve already seen a plethora of LTE devices hit the U.S. market, and now that the technology is established in major markets like Korea, Japan, and the U.S., the growth trajectory for LTE will only continue to rise. Strategy Analytics expects over 90 million LTE connections to be activated before the end of 2012, and that figure should reach the 1 billion mark by 2017. This is far and away the fastest implementation of new wireless technology to date. At the same time, however, previous technologies were born into a world with far fewer overall connections. LTE launched with over 6 billion connections in existence in the world, whereas CDMA was first revealed at a time when less than 1 billion connections had been activated. “The race is on for mobile operators to reduce cost per GB to match the rate at which revenue per GB is falling,” said director of service provider analysis Sue Rudd, in a prepared statement. “LTE is one of the key tools to deliver this improvement, with the early volume in LTE devices an encouraging sign for operators looking to maximize return on their LTE investments.” To her point, we certainly wouldn’t mind a reduction in data costs, considering that we’re more data hungry than ever and unlimited data has basically been nixed across the boards .

Create Your Series B De...

Editor’s note: Joe Kraus is a partner at  Google Ventures , focusing on mobile, gaming, and local services. In 1993, he co-founded Excite.com, an early Internet search engine. He also co-founded JotSpot in 2004, a wiki company acquired by Google in 2006. Follow him on his blog,  JoeKraus.com , and on Twitter:  @jkraus . One of the things I wish I had done in both of my companies (Excite.com and JotSpot) was to take a piece of advice that I now give most entrepreneurs I meet. That advice is: “Right after you sign your term sheet for your Series A, write the fantasy deck for your Series B (complete with whatever metrics, graphs and customer lists you would love to have).” I say this because of the way I’ve both done fundraising and seen it done. Whether we like to admit it or not, the way it’s usually done tends to be very haphazard and bottom’s up. It starts with… “We have about 4 months of cash left, it’s time to raise money”. With that statement, companies go about trying to weave together a narrative from the various facts that are true at the time. You look at your metrics, your sales, your customer lists and you try to create something cohesive. The problem is that it’s a bottoms up story; it’s composed of whatever facts are lying around. You didn’t set out twelve months before to create an intentional story. Your pitch deck ends up feeling a bit underpowered, a bit awkward. You try to emphasize the facts that look good and gloss over the ones that aren’t so hot. At the heart of the problem is that startups often get trapped being busy and making general “progress” instead of driving, intentionally, down a path toward a fundable story. A better approach is to use all the feedback you’re getting during your current fundraising process to create the ideal story for your next round. In the process of raising money (be it seed, series A or B), you hear from potential investors what they’re excited about and what they’re worried about. At the end of the process, you’re in a perfect position to create the fundraising pitch that would be absolute music to any investor’s ears. So, do it. Write your Series B deck immediately after signing the term sheet for your Series A. THEN, use this as your plan for how you spend that round of money. Use that presentation as the goal posts for the next 18 months. Begin with that end in mind and that presentation becomes your operating plan. Even if you don’t hit all of it, you will have a story and a company that holds together so much better than if you just run as fast as you can and try to create a story from the random assortment of facts that are lying around when you’re coming close to running out of money. [ image via the New Line Cinema film Glengarry Glen Ross ]

Ultra Disappointment? N...

This year was supposed to be the year of the Ultrabook. It was supposed to be the year where svelte notebooks became standard. It was supposed to be the year that Intel’s latest ultra-mobile platform gave Windows PC makers something to celebrate. But that’s not happening. At least not yet. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise. PCs are struggling in this age of the iPad and shipments fell 6% in the last few months of 2011. Gartner expects PC shipments to grow just 4.4% in 2012. A Gartner analyst told TechCrunch that consumers just aren’t replacing existing PCs with new models. The one bright spot is Apple who managed to increase its 4Q2011 shipments by 21%. Intel designed the Ultrabook platform to allow other PC makers to quickly replicate Apple’s formula for the MacBook Air. Intel coined the term Ultrabook to refer to a very thin notebook that uses a low-voltage CPU, SSD hard drive, long battery life, and ideally, a price under $1,000 — so in other words, a MacBook Air clone. The first crop of of these thin notebooks hit last fall from Asus, Acer, Toshiba, and Lenovo. These models were priced around $1,000 and offered a fair balance of computing power and battery life — but most reviews still favored the Ultrabook’s chef competitor, the Apple’s MacBook Air. Several key Ultrabooks were announced at CES 2012. Dell announced the carbon-fiber XPS 13, HP revealed the entry-level Folio 13 and high-end Envy 14 and Samsung unveiled the Series 5 and Series 9 Ultrabook, with the former challenging the traditional definition of an Ultrabook thanks to an optical drive. For the most part the tech press was generally excited about these new models. Besides the Samsung Series 9 which comes out next month, all of these models are currently available. But they don’t seem popular yet. The Asus Zenbook, which was released back in October of 2011, is the lone Ultrabook on Amazon’s list of best selling notebooks. Neither Best Buy nor Newegg list an Ultrabook on their best sellers lists. On all three sites consumers overwhelmingly favor inexpensive Windows notebooks or pricy Apple MacBooks. The Ultrabook is likely falling victim to past computer selling strategies. For years Windows PC makers raced to the bottom, conditioning consumers into valuing price over portability. Now, when PC makers are trying to hawk pricy, but very nice computers, consumers are seemingly ignoring the offering. They’re instead opting for cheap, bulky, but in many cases, more powerful notebooks than Ultrabooks that cost twice as much. CNET suggests that Ultrabooks are done, killed by the PC industry . By including optical drives and traditional spinning disk hard drives, they’ve diluted the meaning of the Ultrabook, says CNET. That’s fair, but at the same time major product changes cannot happen in a period of several months. Ultrabooks are just 6 months old. PC makers cannot simply pull the plug on their low price options, which consumers are currently favoring. Samsung, the main example in CNET’s article, is including familiar elements in its Ultrabook offering. Believe it or not, some consumers still want optical drives in their computers. They shouldn’t have to slum with an 8-pound monster just to have a DVD drive. It’s a bit premature to call Ultrabooks a failure. Intel delayed the next-gen platform that was supposed to drive Ultrabook prices lower while increasing their overall power. Meanwhile, retailers and PC makers must retrain consumers to stop looking at the raw clock speed and hard drive size and instead think mobility with low-voltage, but still capable, CPUs and small SSD hard drives. If these marketers do it right, the term Ultrabook will never be associated with a certain sub-set of computers. The average consumer will just naturally gravitate towards the new models that happen to be a tad more expensive, but also thin and light. When Intel unveiled the Ultrabook in the middle of last year, part of the excitement came from the high-end feel of the computers; MacBook Airs for the everyman. The move to thin and cheap computers will happen. Ultrabooks are still the future even if these notebooks do not fit Intel’s definition for several generations.

Actually, Searches For ...

Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that “Google+” was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit “ 10 million members ” a couple weeks after launch last summer. People wanted to know what this new Google+ thing was all about. And since it didn’t exist the year before, on a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical. If you are not paying close attention and hear that “Google+” was the No. 2 search term of the year, you might assume that a lot of people are still searching for it. But you would be wrong. The Zeitgeist site shows all sorts of stats about that pop in searches for “Google+” back in July. What you won’t find there is the overall trend of searches for the term, and the fact that searches have been declining. In order to find that you have to go to Google Insights for Search , a terrific tool that lets you plot search volume for any term. You can see the chart for “Google+” above. The trend is not good. There was an initial spike at launch, then a lot of hype around the 10-million-user announcement, and then a smaller spike in September when it opened up to everyone. Then the search volume just kind of peters out. Why is this important? Searches are an indication of pure intent. People search for what they intend to do. Venture capitalists look at search volume data all the time as a gut check to see whether there is any interest in a startup’s product. The same logic applies to products at big companies like Google. If fewer and fewer people are searching for “Google+”, it makes you wonder if anyone is actually using it. Remember, just because Google+ has tens of millions of registered users, that doesn’t mean those people ever came back after Google made them click to register. All you have to do for a reality check on this approach is compare searches for “Twitter” to “Google+” (see chart below). Interest in Twitter dwarfs Google+. (Don’t even try to compare it to searches for “Facebook”—that spike turns into a flat line). People search for what they intend to do or want to learn more about. They even search for “google” or “gmail,” but not so much for “google+.” The fact that the “Google+” line isn’t as big as the one for “Twitter” or “Facebook” would be fine if it was growing. But it’s not. It’s going in the opposite direction.

Google’s Fruitless Atte...

Last August, Google filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum to finally get a hold of the domains names goggle.com, goggle.net and goggle.org (don’t visit these). Yesterday, the organization dismissed its claims . That doesn’t mean the owner of the domain names – a shady company called Goggle.com Inc. – should break out the champagne just yet, though. The Internet search and advertising giant’s complaint in itself is interesting. Apparently, Google isn’t merely claiming that the disputed domain names are ‘confusingly similar’ to its trademark and that they currently lead to a website that hosts a phishing scam, but also that it had previously entered into a confidential settlement agreement with the former owner of the domain names. I’m lifting the relevant parts from the Forum’s decision (which you can also find here ) and copying them below, with emphasis added. Note that the complainant is Google; the respondent is Goggle.com Inc: Complainant states that it had previously filed a UDRP proceeding against the original registrant of the disputed domain names. Complainant states that the parties entered into a confidential settlement agreement and the proceeding was dismissed. Complainant further states that since the domain names have been subsequently transferred to a third-party with whom it has no prior dealings, the agreement was not set forth in the Complaint. Those trademark rights, in any event, predate the transfer to Respondent. Complainant contends that the disputed domain names are confusingly similar to Complainant’s GOOGLE mark . Those domain names contain a misspelled version of the GOOGLE mark where the domain names simply replace the letter “o” with the letter “g” and add a generic top-level domain (“gTLD”). Complainant contends that it has not authorized Respondent to use or register the disputed domain names. Further, Complainant argues that Respondent is not commonly known by the disputed domain names even though the WHOIS information indicates that the registrant is “Goggle.com, Inc.” because an Internet search does not return any results for that company name as a legitimate business. Complainant further argues that Respondent cannot claim to be offering legitimate goods and services through the domain names because it is diverting Internet users to a website that intends to copy the look and feel of Complainant’s website and deceiving users into signing up for expensive text messaging plans . Complainant contends that such use is invariably a “phishing” scam in which Respondent receives the personal and financial information of unsuspecting Internet users, and turns around to turn a profit with such information. Further, Complainant submits screen shot evidence to show that the website resolving from the domain name looks and feels just like Complainant’s official website while using a close variation of Complainant’s logos. Complainant alleges that Respondent gained possession of the disputed domain names in 2007 or early 2008. Complainant argues that Respondent acquired the domain names in order to effectuate some kind of phishing scheme in which Internet users are made offers for devices such as an “iPad 2” so long as they give personal information and sign up for text message plans for cellular phones. Goggle Inc., meanwhile, asserts that it purchased the domain names in good faith and on reliance of a previously signed ‘Co-existence Agreement’, which would mean rights transferred to the company when they bought the domain names. They also state that ‘goggle’ is a real word that has nothing to do with Google’s trademark, and that Google “does not have an exclusive monopoly on the term on the Internet”. They also note that Google’s possible motive in bringing this UDRP claim is “that it has recently launched a new mobile service called Google Goggles”. From the NAF decision (emphasis mine): Respondent asserts that it purchased and registered the domain names in good faith and on reliance of the Co-existence Agreement. Respondent attaches the Co-existence Agreement (between Complainant and Knowledge Associates, the original registrant) and a Purchase and Assignment Agreement (between the original registrant and a company identified as 1158860 Alberta, Ltd). Further, Respondent submits a letter, which was sent to Complainant before the purchase giving Complainant the right of first refusal as required under the terms of the Co-existence Agreement. Respondent states that it purchased the domain names from the original registrant based upon the Co-existence Agreement that was expressly placed within the Purchase and Assignment agreement, and that it has followed the required sections of that agreement. Lastly, Respondent states that the very terms of the Co-existence Agreement expressly and specifically contemplated such a future sale of the domain names and permitted such, so long as certain aspects of the agreement were also agreed to by the new purchaser. Respondent argues that the domain names all contain the separate and unique term “goggle,” and cannot be found to be confusingly similar to Complainant’s good mark . Further, Respondent references the Co-existence Agreement that states, “the word goggle will not be considered as a misspelling of the word google.” Respondent argues that the term “goggle” of the domain names is a real and separate word from Complainant’s mark, therefore permitting the Panel to find that the domain names are not confusingly similar to Complainant’s mark. Respondent also references the Complaint that states that “the manner in which Respondent is using the Domain Names” is the issue here. Respondent contends that such a statement is an admission by Complainant that the domain names are not similar to the GOOGLE mark, and that Complainant is trying to prove confusing similarity by bringing in Respondent’s use of the domain name instead of an objective analysis of the mark’s and the domain names’ similarities. Respondent argues that, contrary to Complainant’s assertions, it is in fact known as “Goggle” because its corporate name is “Goggle.com, Inc.,” and that it has carried out business under this name for nearly four years. Respondent submits its corporate registration as part of its annexes to show that it is in fact registered as a business under the “Goggle.com, Inc.” name. Respondent further notes that its banking information is under the “Goggle.com Inc.” name and that it receives all payments from third-party advertisers under its corporate name. Respondent contends that it is using the disputed domain names in the same manner as the previous registrant did for advertising and marketing solicitations. Respondent argues that such uses were known, accepted, and condoned by Complainant before it signed the Co-existence Agreement with the prior registrant. Respondent notes that it is able to conduct the same type of business activity under the disputed domain names because the Co-existence Agreement that Complainant signed contemplated such use by future purchasers. Respondent contends that Complainant’s recent objection about the recent use of “an arguably similar graphic logo” does not nullify Respondent’s long-standing use of the domain names for its advertising and marketing solicitations. Respondent also states that it removed the allegedly infringing logo from its website since that time, and that it has only been used for a short period of time. Respondent maintains that it has not violated the terms of the Co-existence Agreement, and that it has rights in the domain names. Respondent also argues that the term “goggle” of the disputed domain names is common and generic, and therefore, Complainant does not have an exclusive monopoly on the term on the Internet . Respondent alleges that Complainant has acted in bad faith and is engaging in reverse domain name hijacking by initiating this dispute. Respondent contends that Complainant is attempting to deprive Respondent, the rightful, registered holder of the disputed domain names, of its rights to use those names. Respondent contends that Complainant buried the fact of the existence of the Co-existence Agreement . The only reference to the fact of its existence was hidden away in the only footnote to its entire 15-page Complaint. Respondent notes that the terms of the Co-existence Agreement were all followed, and that Complainant had the right to purchase the domain names per that agreement and chose to let Respondent register them instead. Respondent further notes that Complainant’s possible motive in bringing this UDRP claim is that it has recently launched a new mobile service called “Google Goggles,” and wishes to use the domain names for its own gain. Therefore, Respondent contends that Complainant knew at the time of filing this Complaint that Respondent did not register or use the domain names in bad faith. The three-person National Arbitration Forum panel that made the decision to dismiss the case aren’t necessarily agreeing with either party. Rather, the panel says it declines jurisdiction in the matter and suggests national courts are better equipped to handle such ‘contractual or business disputes’. I suspect Google will indeed be taking this to court next. To be continued, sadly. Crunchbase GOOGLE Company: Google Website: google.com Launch Date: July 9, 1998 IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information.... Learn more