Peter’s Blog

What awaits the iPhone in Europe? - International Herald Tribune

Wow. What a stupid article. Don’t get it me wrong, it’s well written and I think the central point, that iPhone sales in Europe have disappointed, is correct. However, I think they completely missed the reason why. It’s simple: many Europeans are buying iPhones in the US. Cracked iPhones are much cheaper (would you rather pay €400 or $400?) and they’re really easy to get. I know lots of people that buy several iPhones when visiting the US, and there are even companies that give them away in contests here in the Netherlands. Consider this:

Fueling speculation about an imminent strategic change by Apple are early sales of the device in Europe. Strategy Analytics, a research firm in Milton Keynes, England, estimates that Apple sold 350,000 iPhones in Europe in the fourth quarter of last year, below what it claims is Apple’s internal forecast of 500,000 devices.

The research firm also estimates that iPhone sales slowed to 300,000 in the first three months of this year.

But we’ve also heard that 1 million US iPhones were never registered with AT&T. Assuming that 2/5 of those unlocked phons went to Europe (which seems to be a reasonable guess to me), that’s 100,000 extra phones ‘purchased’ each quarter in Europe, which means Apple is actually close to its targeted sales.

I just got off the phone with Charles Schwab and I’m got some stuff to say.

First, I was shocked when the person helping me didn’t know how to answer my questions immediately. I had gotten so used to solving my problems within a minute of calling Schwab that I was honestly surprised to hear the woman say, “I don’t know. Let me check with someone here.” It didn’t help that she and her colleagues ended up having to wrestle with the system for almost 30 minutes to delete an automatic transfer, disconnecting me twice while I was on hold. That being said, they solved the problem, were very friendly and helpful, and offered me $100 for my ‘troubles’. Now that’s how to ensure customer satisfaction! (more…)

This article is just amazing: cityofsound: Transport informatics

And Jack, you’ll like that Boston is doing some cool stuff with biking.

Bike network 2.0
Boston appointed a ‘bike czar’, Nicole Freedman, and her team has used Google Maps to create a set of bike routes across the city, based on the aggregated data from actual routes that cyclists took across the city“We found out where the actual desire lines are,” said Freedman, and has since extended the network to enable users to rate streets for bikes. It’s a little rudimentary at the moment, but shows the promise of such systems. Boston are building the city’s first official bike map from the results of the system.

Japan whale experiments bizarre: report - Breaking News - National - Breaking News

A review of the controversial scientific research conducted by Japan and its whalers has uncovered a list of “bizarre” and useless experiments, including how to cross breed cows with whales.Scientists have analysed 43 research papers produced by Japan over 18 years, finding most were useless or esoteric.

The scientific research included injecting minke whale sperm into cows eggs, and attempts to produce test-tube whale babies, News Limited newspapers report.

Oh, and the whales killed for ’scientific tests’? Their meat ends up in markets but apparently most of the population has lost interest in it – apparently it doesn’t sell well (I’m afraid I don’t have a link right now).

Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam - New York Times

Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.

No wonder Google is helping to build a new transpacific fiber cable.

While Ford, GM and Chrysler used to dominate American industry, you can’t really talk about The Big Three anymore. But there’s still one set of big three transportation companies: the main Dutch bicycle companies!

First, because I have one:

Gazelle

Batavus

photo credit: Eerko

Sparta

photo credit: Ibán

I can’t say that there are any sort real difference between the companies, though I do really like Sparta’s logo:

photo credit: Ibán

“Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business”

The most common of the economies built around free is the three-party system. Here a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties. Sound complicated? You’re probably experiencing it right now. It’s the basis of virtually all media.

In the traditional media model, a publisher provides a product free (or nearly free) to consumers, and advertisers pay to ride along. Radio is “free to air,” and so is much of television. Likewise, newspaper and magazine publishers don’t charge readers anything close to the actual cost of creating, printing, and distributing their products. They’re not selling papers and magazines to readers, they’re selling readers to advertisers. It’s a three-way market.

In a sense, what the Web represents is the extension of the media business model to industries of all sorts. This is not simply the notion that advertising will pay for everything. There are dozens of ways that media companies make money around free content, from selling information about consumers to brand licensing, “value-added” subscriptions, and direct ecommerce (see wired.com/extras for a complete list). Now an entire ecosystem of Web companies is growing up around the same set of models.

Great feature piece in Wired’s latest issue by Chris Anderson on why everything is becoming free. What Anderson says here about the media business model being applied to more and more industries ties in a lot with what Tom Foremski has been saying about Silicon Valley becoming Media Valley.

And walking the walk, Wired is giving away the print version of the issue (to the first 10,000). US addresses only, or otherwise I would have signed up. Though I got a year’s subscription to Wired free once with my $20 subscription to Salon, so I’ve already benefited. =)

Robert Reich’s “Totally Spent” Op/Ed in the New York Times is quite good.

A And the train arrived five days early, taking only 15 days. However, it’d be even faster if the containers didn’t have to be switched over to the Russian gauge and back again. If Russia switches their system, it’ll be even faster. And while herculean, it has been done before:

A similar break-of-gauge problem in the United States was solved in just 36 hours in 1886 by lining the entire rail network of the American South with tens of thousands of track workers and having them all heave one rail three inches closer to the other and spike it down again.

Apple sizes up Europe’s movie-rental market - International Herald Tribune:

After introducing a new online film rental service for American consumers last week, Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, said he was “dying” to expand the program to international markets, adding that this would happen later this year.

Such an extreme sacrifice will probably not be necessary; but in trying to establish European versions of the iTunes movie rental service, which allows users to rent films over the Internet and stream them to their computers or televisions, Jobs at times might feel as though he were banging his head against a brick wall.

Apple will have to confront legal and regulatory hurdles, copyright challenges, scheduling conflicts and technological issues that demonstrate that the European media landscape remains a patchwork of several dozen individual countries - not the single “internal market” that the European Commission envisions.

It might be a funny question to ask, but will Apple (and Commission push-back) be the one responsible for creating a true single market in media in the EU?