Technology
Sadly the watcher in not at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, although from London it would seem that the volume of announcements is best perhaps filtered through the lens of distance. In any event through the magic of twitter #mwc hashtags it seems possible to get live commentary on almost any session without needing to…
Mobile money is a recurrent theme for the watcher. See the mobile money overview post and Apple’s incorporation of NFC into iPhone post. As anticipated, all the industry players are jostling for position and there have been a number of recent announcements by UK mobile operators. O2 announced in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph…
“There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way…
It is a sign of the changing times that I learnt about LinkedIn’s IPO through twitter last night, and that LinkedIn itself blogged about it. Seasoned IPO watchers will be aware that process has been started with the filing of their S-1 Registration Statement at the US Securities and Exchange Commission. At this stage, details of…
My eye was caught today by a story on TechCrunch (an excellent blog BTW) that Apple may incorporate near field communications technology (NFC) into its next generation of devices, thereby enabling ‘real’ payments on the move. For those confused as to the difference between mobile payment for real and virtual goods the easiest way to think about it is to think…
In a week of Westminster resignations, with Andy Coulson accused of condoning mobile voicemail hacking and Ed Balls taking over as Chancellor you may be forgiven for having missed a couple of lower-key announcements. With Vince Cable professionally embarrassed from ruling on whether News can take a 100 per cent ownership interest in BSkyB, we…
As a new blogger, site statistics are a source of endless fascination. They are however useful – my post on TMT valuation multiples seems to have been wildly popular, so I thought it worthwhile to trawl through some other reports to see what commentators were predicting. PwC‘s technology insight presentation caught my eye. It is…
I get a regular selection of recent corporate finance deal activity summaries in my email. Last week, I got one from Regent. Their view was that with the exception of a dip in August, valuation multiples in the European TMT sector have steadily edged upwards over the year, with: price / earning at 16 (as…
Sadly I’ve not been in Las Vegas at CES, but remained at my desk in London reading the various updates. As the dust starts to settle it seems that tablets are the story of this year’s show. Not having had the opportunity to personally play with any shiny new toys, I am not in a…
I write today’s blog from sunny Switzerland. The news seems rather slow and I can’t bear to write a top ten lists of things that either happened in 2010 or to watch in 2011, so today’s post will try to explain what network effects (or externalities) are and why even in a minimalist government intervention…
First post. It feels slightly intimidating, so I thought that describing the thought process that has brought me here and what I want to achieve would be a good start. I turned 40 this year and it is the mark of a generational shift that I have ended up as a senior technology and telecoms lawyer without…