Tioga Venture Blog

Apple store in Paris : preview

Tomorrow is the grand opening of the first Apple store in France (saturday November 7 at 10am). It took a long time for French people to be able to enjoy the stores that Apple has been rolling out over the world. This is one is located Carroussel du Louvre, an underground mall located below the museum. This prime retail space probably comes at a hefty price but foot traffic will definitely be there.

Today was the press / business day. As I am not a 'professional' blogger, I just took a sneak peak through the window. No surprise : clean and neat aspect in the usual Apple color. As I use a windows phone and not an Iphone, I could take a reasonably good picture of the store to share with you - ironic isn't it if you see the previous post from my Tioga colleagues. Good luck for the opening.

Frederic HALLEY

Windows Cafe : "Iphones are not allowed!"

47, Bd Sébastopol in the heart of Paris is now a place of a new genre: first of its kind, unique in the world, trendy and cozy. Yet, when I took out my iPhone last week to immortalize this ephemeral space, I was - gently - hollered at!

The Windows Café is a 2 floor coffee shop entirely dedicated to Microsoft’s new Operating System, Windows 7. An army of Microsoft people are here to welcome you and make you discover the new OS possibilities through 5 interesting demo zones: Playground (PC customization), Safe Zone (security), Home Sweet Home (connection with other media devices at home), Zen Zone (data storage optimization) and Social Club (blog creation, Messenger use…etc). Also, you can attend numerous free workshops such as “Protect your children” or “I work from home”... etc.

You will learn a lot of tips and hints. My preferred: to clean your windows, wipe them. Its usefulness is debatable, yet typically the sort of feature that is impossible to discover by yourself! Many more are available.

This open place concept is a unique opportunity to discuss with Microsoft professionals and ask them all the questions you have had about the use of your PC, and maybe share new ideas on how to enhance it.

Of course you can simply have a fresh fruit juice or a coffee by the digital fireplace or around a card game on the ground breaking Windows Surface – prices are not especially high and seats are quite comfortable!

After an hour spent on all types of computers made available to the visitors, I could realize the impressive improvements since their previous OS, Vista. I now feel more enthusiastic about this new OS and I have a clear idea on how I will select my next computer.

Before leaving this warm place, I still took pictures with my iPhone. I should have listened! None ended up being of good quality - too dark for the low end camera. Bottom line: I cannot share visuals with you. But if you are around, you should definitely go and visit the Windows Café.

Hurry up, it is open only till the end of the year!

Nadir EL JOUAIDI

Note: The full program is available here

 

Windows 7 upgrade : not for me

If you have a PC and are connected to the web, you know that Thursday October 22nd is the big day : the launch of the latest/last of the Windows family product, Windows 7. Our regular readers already know that he discussion between the EU and Microsoft have ended on the good side for consumers : it will be possible to upgrade from XP or Vista to W7 without going through a full reinstall. Out goes the infamous E version.

Now the bad news : Microsoft will try to get as much as possible from you for this upgrade. If you are a consumer with 3 PC at home (not that average), you'll be somewhat fine : about 150€ for 3 upgrade is somewhat reasonable. However, if you are a professional, be ready to spend 289€ !! (seen on fnac.com for France). This is the price for 1 upgrade of 1 PC, just for the OS. Let me summarize my thinking as a professional:

• My 2 years old laptop is running Vista very happily. I know Vista has a bad press, but as far I am concerned I am very happy with i : no crash in 2 years. And I have for a coffee before I start working in the morning (and my PC boots)
• An average business laptop costs about 1000€
• As a small company, we don't have access to the interesting line of pricing at Microsoft
• All reviews on Windows 7 are very good, but as far I am concerned this is just the OS

Bottom line, I can either pay 300€ just to upgrade or wait next year, buy a new laptop (better and more powerful) and get Windows 7 and Office 2010 at OEM price, most likely around 1000€. That's simple : I'll wait.

To be exhaustive, this thinking is valid only for small companies. If you are managing a whole fleet of PC and have buying power, this is a whole different game.

Dailymotion : breakeven or not?

In an interview to the French news magazine Capital, the new CEO of Dailymotion revealed some breaking news : 
- the company just raised 15M€ - it looks like an inside round
- Dailymotion is now breakeven

The first part is not really surprising and I would argue that the existing investors didn't have much choice. The second information is much more surprising. In 2007, Dailymotion lost 14M€ on a revenue of 4,8M€ - these are the official numbers filed by the company at the 'registre du commerce'.

Let's extrapolate from the interview that the revenue grew 50% both in 08 and 09 that would mean around 10M€ revenue for the full year 2009. That would be an amazing performance knowing that the internet advertising market is flat or low growth in 2008 and 09 and that the ranking of dailymotion has been dropping constantly over the last months (see below the worldwide ranking of dailymotion.com from Alexa).

In the meantime, to be breakeven, management would have had to cost cut by 2 from ~20M€ a year to ~10M€. That is possible but difficult. At the same time, Credit Suisse estimated that Youtube is losing ~500M€ a year, showing it is very difficult to be breakeven in that business

Either we missed something in the above analysis, either Cedric de Tournay is being very positive in the media to give a positive spin.

Frederic HALLEY

Mobility update at EBG conference

Last week was the first post summer mobility conference of EBG. As usual, a good roaster of speaker with representatives of key players (Microsoft, Nokia, Orange) and some start-ups (Goojet). Market data provided by Comscore / Mmetrics.

The mood was pretty upbeat which feels good in the current economy. The elephant in the room was Apple - no representative in panel ... - with speakers trying to either capitalize, explain or compete against the Iphone tectonic shift.

Some interesting figures provided by Comscore :
    - 77% of Iphone users have apps on their phone (vs 36% for other smartphone users)
    - 85% of them browse the web (vs 52%)

There is clearly some self fulfilling prophecy as operators have pushed unlimited data plan with iphone first. Only recently have they started promoting these plans for other smartphones. Getting hit by a 100€ data cost over a month for browsing makes you rethink your usage pattern! (I can testify on that one)

Nicolas Petit from Microsoft was very upbeat about the soon to come launch of Windows Phone (aka Windows Mobile 6.5). Based on everything I have read and heard from Microsoft people, it is difficult to get as excited as he is. The 6.5 is not expected to get even close to iphone ease of use. That could be with Windows Mobile 7 in a year or so. More than 3 years behind Apple... On the positive side for Nicolas, France is where WM has the highest market share with 26% of smartphone.

From the Nokia side, Bertrand Dupuis was covering the different strategies and initiatives. Much expectations on the N900 on Maemo. That could overcome the slight disappointment on the N97 that has not been the expected Iphone killer. OVI has been somewhat slow to take up. Let's wait and see how it goes.

Back to Apple and the appstore. The 2bn downloads has just been passed recently. That means the current trend is close to 11 million downloads a day! However the top 20 downloaded applications are all free. The major paying category are mobile games far ahead of anything else. That makes me wonder even more why Nokia was never able to pull it off with Ngage which started earlier with the right games.

To conclude, I fully agree with Guillaume Decugis (Goojet) analysis on the importance of the iphone. Why is the iphone so important and so good? yes, the handset is good, the data plans offered are the right ones but more importantly it is a great distribution channel. It improves all steps of the buying process on mobile (discovery, payment, delivery, recurrent usage). In the mobile space, we were missing a great mobile only distribution channel, reasonably cheap and not fully dependent on the operators. Apple has shown the way. Let's see what Microsoft and Nokia will do.

Frederic Halley

Windows 7 in Europe : changes in the air

Apparently summer has been good for European consumers. The situation we described in a post in July has moved in the right direction. In some countries (including France, UK and Germany but not Spain and Italy), consumers will be able to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 - ie they will not have to go for a full reinstallation. That also means that the Windows 7E is getting scrapped. I am puzzled why this concerns only half of Europe but let's enjoy this major improvement.

The details have been posted on one of Microsoft blog here.

For a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of Windows 7, check the blog of Olivier Ezratty (in French).

Frederic HALLEY

Consumers protection? Really?

As a EU citizen, I am very happy that the EU commission is protecting me! Best recent example of the usefulness of Nelly Kroes and her team is the launch of Windows 7 in Europe. As everybody knows, Nelly Kroes has undertaken a crusade against US technology firm with a special care of Microsoft. The whole ideas behind her crusade is the protection of the European consumer. The principle sounds good, execution is awful.

Let's get into the details. Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 in October as a successor to Vista. All pundits recognized that Windows 7 is a much better OS than Vista. However, to please the EU, European consumers will get Windows 7E (E for Europe I imagine) which will not include a browser. Consequently, the migration from Vista to Windows 7 will be a long and painful process(See details here). Note that users outside Europe will be able to do a quick and simple migration. Anyone that has done a full migration from one OS to another understands what it means...

In summary, the bureaucratic decisions taken by the EU are making sure that consumers will be stuck to an inferior OS or spend hours trying to migrate. Consumers protection you said?

Frederic HALLEY

Cocktail AFDEL à Wimbledon

Pour une fois sur ce blog, un post en français pour un sujet français : le compte rendu du cocktail de l’AFDEL à l’ambassade d’Angleterre le mercredi 8 juillet.

Première découverte de la journée : il existe en plein Paris un terrain de tennis en gazon, comme le centre court de Wimbledon. L’accès reste difficile puisqu’il vous  faudra l’accord de l’ambassadeur de sa majesté pour pouvoir disputer quelques sets entre amis, mais c'est toujours bon à savoir.

Au programme du cocktail de l’AFDEL du 8 juillet, pas de tennis, mais la présentation du partenariat avec le FSI. Après l’introduction de monsieur l’ambassadeur, les présentations étaient assurées par Patrick Bertrand, président de l’AFDEL (et DG de CEGID) et Gilles Michel, DG du FSI. Dans l’assemblée studieuse, de nombreux dirigeants d’éditeurs français ou filiales de grands groupes internationaux.

Pour mémoire, le FSI est le fonds souverain dont la France s’est doté récemment et a pour vocation à investir dans des secteurs stratégiques. La bonne nouvelle de cette journée est que le FSI s’est intéressé très rapidement au secteur du logiciel qui est traditionnellement peu visible de nos instances gouvernementales. Les investissements du FSI ne seront pas uniquement « béton – bagnole » mais aussi High Tech. Parmi les premiers exemples, on notera notamment Gemalto et Nexans (pas vraiment logiciel, mais c’est déjà de la high tech). Reste à espérer que le FSI déploiera aussi des investissements sur des sociétés de taille moyenne. En effet, si les petites sociétés peuvent se financer assez facilement avec les fonds ISF et FCPI (voir le très bon blog de Jean Rognetta sur le sujet ici), il est par contre nettement plus difficile de trouver des tickets entre 10M et 100M€ pourtant nécessaire pour assurer la croissance internationale des entreprises de taille moyenne.

Pour plus de détails sur le partenariat et le communiqué de presse officiel.

Réjouissons nous donc de cette excellent initiative et attendons les résultats concrets.

Frederic HALLEY

Hats off to Instranet

One of the difficult thing in the marketing of a management consulting firm is that you cannot really discuss your customers and what you have done for them. Part of the job is not taking any credit for what you have done. It makes it even better when we can communicate on the success of some companies we worked with some time ago. Instranet (www.instranet.com) for instance was a customer of us many years ago - high tech years are like dog years. Instranet was started in 1999 by Business Objects employee number 1, Alex Dayon. They started as a content management software and web publishing vendor. Through the early 2000s Alex and his team refocused the company on being a niche CRM vendor focusing on complex customer support such as telecom.

In the summer 2008, Instranet was acquired by salesforce.com for 31M$ to complement its CRM offering. Interesting exit as Salesforce is not a very acquisitive company and hasn't done much shopping in Europe. Hence my congratulations to the Instranet team for what they have accomplished over the last 10 years.

What is strinking in Instranet's story is the quality of its management and, something very rare, its stability. The top 3-7 people who have been instrumental to the success of the company had been there since the very beginning. Interestingly so, most of them are still at salesforce.com close to one year after the acquisition.

You can find an interview of Alex Dayon here : http://www.neteco.com/286174-alexandre-dayon-salesforce-instranet-pme-comptes.html.

Details on the deal are available on the instranet web site.

Frederic Halley

Microsoft killing a good product!

I had been wondering for a few months what was going on with Microsoft Money. As a heavy user for more than 10 years (probably 15), I have a strong commitment - ie archive files -  in the product. The news has just broken that Microsoft is stopping Microsoft Money (see details and analysis  at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10261742-56.html. I cannot say I am very happy with that! Beyond my personal use, there is an interesting product strategy point.

The CNET article explains the challenges Money has been facing in the US where Intuit and Mint have taken strong leadership in the category. However, that does not apply everywhere. For instance, the French market will be left with no real offering in that category. Intuit/Quicken deserted the French market a few years ago and Money had a leadership - by default. I suspect this is the case of many European markets.

A few take away :

• big players want and need worldwide markets - and at least leadership in the US
• good markets can still be left unserved --> that means opportunities for local and niche players