EightBlack.

The challenge with the online space is trying to get a handle on all the hysteria and noise.

Not a day goes by that Google doesn’t feature somewhere.

Corporate’s waded into the pool and starting buying again, with company’s such as News Limited spending up big ($1 billion so far and counting) on social networking sites like MySpace.

Yahoo’s made a bid of US$800 million for another social site, built and created by a 22 year old, still in University.

Closer to home, company’s like Seek, Hitwise and a host of others have either made it big or are about to.

To the average person in the street, this must seem like insanity.

One of the areas we operate in everyday is the mobile space and I still think there is plenty of room left for people to “cash in” so to speak.

The convergence of search and search technologies with the mobile handset is going to happen. And when it does, download speed, accessibility and reach will be something that you had only ever dreamed of.

3G is a start. But Australia is miles behind (not as bad as the US mind you) but still far enough to prevent the user really seeing whats possible.

Our client Hutchison is an interesting case. They were the first carrier in this market to forge ahead and build a totally independent 3G network. The competitors laughed - initially.

To date, Hutchison Australia have invested over $2 billion Aussie and have just been handed another $2 billion by their parents in Hong Kong (Li Kai Shing’s Hutchison Whampoa Limited).

Thats a total of $4 billion - even in Aussie dollars that’s a lot of moolah and as the great saying by a famous US Senator goes, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money…”

Now, there’s an absolute race with all the carriers to get onboard 3G - so important is it to Telstra’s board that they have made the rollout of a 3G network one of Sol Trujillo’s key management objectives.

One of the areas of opportunities lies within the area of mobile content.

We’re lucky enough to have a contract with Hutchison to supply them with mobile content, in the area of wireless financial data. It’s big business.

Features of 3G already include streaming video, data speeds that are useful, movie and music downloads etc.

But when Google gets involved and begins to integrate full search functionality into the mobile device, then the device stops becoming something that you either text a message on or speak to someone with.

It becomes THE device. Full stop.

And I think thats a much bigger part of the future than people are giving it credit for.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 1:23 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.