This needs a lot more work, but since time is short, I may never get around to it, so here I provide the less than fully formed version. Om Malik today posted about the woes of a silicon valley VoIP startup that launched with much fanfare last year. In this post, Om says: the company…
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I'm a propellerhead. I'm admittedly outside the loop..
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2 days ago - Who knew a company could make clicking on ads so cool to all the cool kids http://t.co/b2QeEVLFim
2 days ago - But, what is it? Twitter, same question. http://t.co/fUruDXxsSB
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3 days ago - Nook lost $190m on $316m in revenue in the third quarter. So it burns a half a billion dollars a quarter to operate that business ($2b/yr)?
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business models
Andy and others on “free” business models
Andy Abramson refers us to Dean Bubley’s post on Pudding Media and Ike Elliott’s post on Free is Not a model and says: [it] pretty much sums up what I’ve been saying for years on Ken Radio..about the “If It’s Free It’s Me, If I Gotta Pay It’s No Way” crowd. While on the one…
Jaxtr math doesn’t add up
Jaxtr also seems to be another of these companies where the math just doesn’t work and one has to wonder on what basis they raised money and (supposedly) have received acquisition offers. According to Tech Untangled, they are signing up 16,000 accounts per day. That is pretty impressive, for sure (if true – and nobody…
Survey says more households with cell-only than landline-only
In a survey of 13,000 homes, Mediamark Research found that 14 percent of homes had only a cell phone and no landline, whereas only 12.3 percent had a landline and no cell-phone. Based on the comments around the net on this survey, it’s clear the trend is age biased, something confirmed by analyst Andy Arthur…
Vonage would be in the same mess even without the Verizon patent case
While the Verizon patent situation may be an accellerator (perhaps a very rapid one, if an injunction denying Vonage the ability to add customers comes down in the decision due April 24), it is my belief that Vonage’s problems go deeper than this litigation, and I’ve been saying as much for several years, at least…
When is Vonage a good acquisition target?
Andy says Vonage’s best move is a sale. That may be true, from Vonage’s perspective, but let’s look at the numbers. At a stock price of around $3/share, the market cap of the company is roughly $500MM, or about the same as the cash they have in the bank. At that point, $750MM looks like…
Open Telephony, beyond the abstract
Alec Saunders revisits the state of Voice 2.0 in a response to a post by Jim Van Meggelen regarding the lack of integration between PBX�s and carriers. At a recent telephony conference, we saw many telcos reporting about the progress on their open platform initiatives and how there was this glorious future for us all…
Vonage acquisition costs
I’m often asked “why does it cost so much for Vonage to acquire a customer?” The simple answer is that the demand is just not there. At the end of the day, they are selling something people don’t really want or need very badly. Us VoIP geeks assumed “if we build it, they will come.”…
As Vonage goes, so goes “Residential VoIP”
Vonage invented consumer residential VoIP as most people know it. We have to give them credit for that. Many people as late as 2003 were still saying the Internet could not handle phone calls at all. I think Vonage got people past that. In 2003, Vonage was the darling of the industry, representing the future…
No business model for standards-based VoIP
Clay Shirky gives us his excellent VoIP – Plan A vs Plan B article, where Plan A is a telco-clone provider (such as Vonage) and Plan B is a more radical alternative, in this case Skype. Clay makes it clear that Skype is only a metaphor for the Plan B model, but today the only…
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