卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

Mao Zedong’s famous dictum says that “the guerrilla lives amongst the people like a fish lives in water”. Without the people, the guerrilla cannot live.

To survive, a large-scale guerrilla movement, or insurgency, must have a message, a purpose, that resonates to at least some degree with the feelings and beliefs of the population in which it exists. There must be enough people who are broadly sympathetic, in order to supply recruits, shelter, and material support.

What does it take to turn the people against the guerrilla?

The people of Afghanistan know what the Taliban are like. The Taliban used to rule the country, and their treatment of women, their bans on popular culture, their public executions, and so on, were not enough to make the people turn against them and stand up to them.

After the American-led invasion, the Taliban were forced to retreat to their heartlands, and the areas of Pakistan where they had deep support. And yet, people there are suddenly prepared to stand up to the Taliban, with force if need be.

What happened?

The Taliban destroyed mobile phone masts.

Claiming that the Pakistani military, and Western armed forces, were tracking militants by locating their phones, the Taliban opted to take down the network - and provoked an immediate and forceful backlash from the ordinary people, for whom the mobile phone has been a life-changing technology. Even the Taliban’s own fighters are angry.

According to Afghanistan’s Minister of Telecommunications:

“The people said please … repair the infrastructure and we will guarantee the security of the tower,” Sangin said. “We believe that if the Taliban continue with these kinds of activities the hatred will increase against them, and as a result we are awaiting a change in their policy.”

Of course, mobile phones are no panacea. We’ve seen plenty of examples of their use to enable terror and death. However, this example clearly shows how the mobile phone is successfully improving the lives of impoverished communities in developing countries, and bringing them the benefits of integration with the wider world.

According to Stephanie Martin, the new worldwide lead for IBM Developer Relations, the number of young new IT developers is falling fast in the US, but rising fast in East Asia.

“In China what we’re seeing is interest in core technologies in the open standards area,” Martin said. “We’re seeing the most interest in learning more about Java, JavaScript and SOA as well as how all those work together. We’re also seeing interest there in Web 2.0 technology.”

Japan and Korea are also growth areas for developers; the latter apparently seeing 57% more people join IBM’s Developer Network in 2007 than in 2006. What’s interesting is that this represents collaboration between skilled and enthusiastic participants, which will hopefully means rising standards. Add this to the innovation and experimentation we’re seeing in other fields (eg the approaches to mobile phone design I wrote about recently), and it looks like we can expect to see lots more exciting developments coming out of the Confucian zone soon…

A little behind the pack, the IHT has run a feature today on the Spice phone (previously discussed by the Times and Reuters). Niti is worried about the phone, and is concerned that it is patronizing the poor.

I don’t think that’s the case. Niti’s points about the value of the screen, and of data services are all valid. However… let’s remember that the purpose of a company, a business, is not to offer goods or services that ought to exist, but to offer goods or services that will sell… That’s over-simplistic, of course, but it will serve for now.

So, will the Spice phone sell? I think so… but to whom? The people Niti has in mind are, I think, economically-active adults at the bottom of the pyramid. Even if it’s being billed as “the People’s phone”, I don’t think it’s intended for that niche. If it is, then maybe it’s a case of Spice spectacularly misunderstanding the market, rather than being patronising. This segment does need the data services and are more likely to buy a second-hand but more versatile phone for the same price - or so I would have thought, but let’s not underestimate people’s liking for “new and shiny” versus “second-hand and grimy”.

So who is a more likely market? The IHT article backs up and extends my musings when I wrote about this before - a rather more affluent segment, who want a call-only phone for:

• the older generation, eg my parents, who simply want a phone they can use just to keep in touch - usually with friends or family whose numbers they have memorised anyway, from long usage with a landline (or which, more likely, are stored in a battered old paper address book that they certainly are not going to painstakingly copy into a phone);
• parents, who want to give a phone to their school-age child for safety, or for general contact needs, but don’t want the child to get immersed in games, constant SMS exchanges with friends, etc…
• … and who else?

Of course, these markets extend far beyond India. And perhaps I’m wrong - perhaps even at the bottom of the pyramid there is a demand? After all, who exactly is making the enquiries from Africa, Indonesia, etc?

So, some options:

• There is no market at the BoP; Spice are patronising the poor, with the attitude “These people don’t need anything more”;
• There is a market at a slightly higher income bracket, but a niche one (caveat: People’s Phone does not necessarily mean “for the poor”; the original Volkswagen - ie People’s car - was, after all, designed for the aspirational working class/lower middle class. BTW, I invoke Godwin’s Law here: no mention of That Name, please.);
• There is a market at the BoP, and I’ve misjudged the needs of this segment.

As I said before, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The phone hasn’t actually hit the market yet; let’s see how it sells…

Lots going on in the world of mobile telephony over the last few days…

The headlines seem to have been captured by India, where Mumbai-based company Spice - who, astonishingly, have no entry in Wikipedia (at least, not when I checked a few moments ago; no doubt one will appear in short order - have introduced the so-called “People’s Phone”. They’re targeting the bottom end of the market with a back-to-basics phone that does nothing but make calls. No screen, no SMS, no games, tools, calculator, nothing… just calls. According to the London Times, it’ll cost £10 - which, according to Yahoo! Finance means 27.83 Singapore dollars / 19.67 US dollars / 780 Indian Rupees / 141 RMB at today’s rates.

Reuters add more detail and insight. Spice will market the new phone “from Iraq to Indonesia“; apparently they believe that the key issue to breaking into the developing market, the bottom of the pyramid, is the price of the handset (my emphasis). Well, I’m sure they have done their research and know better than me - but that sounds very surprising to me. Cheap second-hand phones are already widely available through much of this market, it seems to me, and I’m fairly certain that an SMS culture is also well-established. That would suggest to me that the real barrier would be the cost of airtime, messaging, and other services. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it will be interesting to see how well this “People’s Phone” sells after its introduction next month. (It also seems to be missing a market; I know plenty of Brits of my parents’ generation who would be delighted to get their hands on a really cheap phone that does nothing but calls!).

A contrasting approach comes from Singapore-based Jurong Technologies. They’ve partnered with Infineon Technologies, TJAT Systems, and Brightstar Corporation to introduce a budget Smart Entry Phone, featuring various instant messaging services (Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ) plus email. According to the Business Times, it will cost “around $50“. Looking at everything else on the same page, I see that the Business Times explicitly says “US$” in other articles; I therefore conclude that they mean 50 Singapore dollars. So, that’s: £17.98 / 35.35 US Dollars / 1,401 Rupees / 253 RMB. The consortium also see Asian developing markets, and India in particular, as their main focus. Same questions, though - how will the airtime and services be priced?

That creates a very narrow price band between ultra-basic at USD19.67 at the very bottom, and email- & chat-enabled at USD 35.5… Where will other models fit in? What other combinations of features and price would compete?

At any rate, these examples show that the price of a new handset is falling significantly and rapidly, for both basic and more highly-featured models. I’ll take a look at what’s happening in China after I get there; I remain convinced that for all the headlines about India, there is much more genuine innovation going on in China, which will at some point hit other markets…

As for service costs, it’s very good news that China is about to dramatically cut the costs of roaming charges for calls made between provinces- by between 54% and 73% according to China Daily, which gives fairly detailed examples. That will make calling more affordable for migrant workers… What barriers are there “from Iraq to Indonesia”? And, of course, why does nobody seem to be talking about Africa?

Interesting articles:

• For the rural poor, cellphones come calling (Heather Timmons, IHT, on India’s rural market for phones);
• Mobile phone usage in China;
• Mobile usage trends in Indonesia (as seen from China; a little dated).

Update Feb 16:

China Digital Times has an intriguing piece about one Chinese blogger’s ‘participation’ in the meeting regarding roaming charges.

I’ve been under the impression that when the iPhone is launched next year in Asia, it will have Korean and Japanese input, but not Chinese. Unfortunately, I can’t locate the source that originally mentioned it. Anyway, it seems there’s already a hack that allows the ‘Sinification’ of the iPhone.

However… this only appears to change the menus. You know what I really want Apple - or someone else - to provide? I mean, come on: this is a touch-screen device. I want to be able to write characters on the screen with my fingers, and to have hanyu pinyin options. No small demand, I know, but with Chinese characters being used all over Asia, even the world, surely there’s a big enough market for someone to develop this…?

Interesting to see a lot of traffic recently coming from a post on Yahoo’s finance boards; this is to my post discussing the CECT T100 - the phone with biometric security. It seems I’m not the only one interested in what’s going on with Chinese phone design.

From that Yahoo! thread, I see that the T100 is available for CNY1380, or SGD270 - which is a pretty good price. Some Beijing-based friends are coming to Singapore soon; perhaps I should ask them to bring me one…

Apparently the T100 is being very well-received within China; at least, so say China Economic Review.

The development of biometric security for phones very much seems to be driven by Asian demand. A quick review finds that:

• LG are introducing fingerprint-access phones for the Korean market.
• Hitachi bringing out a model in Japan.

Singapore, of course, is home to the most notorious example of the dangers of losing your phone. My own phone didn’t have anything controversial on it in the least, but as our phones increasingly become our gateway to our online selves, our address-book of first resort, our digital recorders of our everyday curiosity…. the need for better security is clear. This is a trend to watch.

A year ago, I bought a Nokia 6708, largely for the stylus input and Chinese dictionary. I was pretty happy with it at first, but I have to say that I gradually became more and more dissatisfied. It blue-screened quite a bit, frequently hung and needed a reboot, and regularlt seemed to just turn itself off. It took ages to boot. The lack of letters on the keyboard gradually became a real nuisance. I found that I hardly ever used the Chinese dictionary. The USB connection to my Windows XP laptop was really fussy, and hardly ever seemed to work, so I couldn’t transfer files. The camera quality was pretty lousy. I began to think about getting a replacement.

Then two weeks ago I accidentally left it in a taxi. I’ve filed lost property reports, but it hasn’t shown up and probably never will. I’ve been using my old Nokia 6108, but it’s really obsolete now - especially as I can’t transfer my contacts from my laptop, and there’s no way I’m going to type them all in manually! I had been planning to hang on a few months until Meizu MiniOne is released, but now I can’t wait that long.

Actually, the timing is a bit serendipitous. I’d also been thinking that I need:

• a music player. The Zling Nax (Chinese clone of an iPod Nano) that I bought as an experiment is actually pretty crap, with terrible battery life and sound.
• mobile internet. The 6708 was actually internet-enabled, but my current phone plan doesn’t include data transfer; I signed up for this plan when I first came to Singapore in 2002! My contract has long since expired, but I’ve never got around to changing anything

I’m even more convinced that I need mobile internet after reading this O’Reilly Radar article by Peter Brantley. The points he makes about the way the Millennials (he just says “younger generation”) work - constantly online, social, self-organising, flat hierarchy - are spot on, and remind me of things I was thinking about quite a bit last year: how is this going to work out in Asia? The cultural changes and power shifts that are being driven by ubiquitous multimedia technology, social tools, and mobile internetmean that it’s not just about management styles any more. Here in Singapore, the government is reaching an uneasy modus vivendi with the internet-enabled voice of its citizens, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. During the recent protests in Myanmar, we’ve seen how important mobile phone cameras and internet access were - to the extent that the junta were forced to simply cut off all internet access to the outside world. China, of course, will be watching all of this very carefully indeed. However, I’m straying into what’s going to be a separate blog post!

So: I need a new phone, mobile internet, and an mp3 player. To get internet access, I need to sign a new contract. If I sign a new contract, I get discounts on a number of handsets, one of which is the Nokia N73 “Music Edition” which, to be honest, seems to cover all bases, except that it doesn’t have wifi… Seems to be a good choice, though, at S$368, which is what M1 are offering…

Recently, I got asked to write a piece, in 300 words, about the global economy. A tall order! Bearing in mind that the target audience isn’t likely to be particularly aware of what’s going on in Asia, I couldn’t assume any prior knowledge. So, I decided to pitch it in a personal narrative format. On the basis of this, I’ve been asked to rewrite it in a longer form, with a more political spin, which I’m working on. Anyhow, here’s the original version (all rights reserved, copyright claimed, yadda yadda yadda!):

It’s 7am in Singapore. The view from my desk looks over a patch of jungle to the sea, flat and glowing gold in the early tropical sunlight. In the distance are palm-fringed islands, part of the Riau archipelago. Through the open window, the birds chirp and whoop; whiffs drift in of the incense being burned by the elderly caretaker at the Taoist altar in the car park, many floors below.

It might be a Joseph Conrad story – apart from the gargantuan cargo ship, stacked high with containers, which floats lazily just offshore. It’s one of dozens that will pass my window today on their way to China, carrying scrap metal, pig carcasses, telecoms equipment, water treatment plants, and Swiss watches: the lowest and highest ends of what Europe produces. Later, the tide will turn, and yet more ships will slip into the channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, heading for the Indian Ocean, and carrying – well, most of what you’re going to buy anytime soon.

Also in view is Singapore’s Art Deco railway station, the terminus of a line that will soon be able to take goods and travelers non-stop through Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, up to China’s Yunnan Province. From there, one way leads to Myanmar and the new Irrawaddy shipping lanes, or on to India. Another way leads up to northern China, and onwards to the Central Asian ‘stans, or the Karakoram highway to Pakistan.

Asia is reconnecting itself, and forming once more into a market that’s been disrupted since the Europeans first arrived. As barriers fall, incomes are rising, creating an internal economy that might someday overtake the EU and US. There is a definite energy and optimism, as people look forward to a better future. Of course, there are less positive sides to this development – but there’s a lot of good news too, and today, it’s pleasant to watch the ships and trains pass on their way.