If you were at the LTE forum today, the biggest news is that SMART Communications is finally taking their LTE service out of closed beta and into commercial availability this coming August 25 2012. There is still no word on official pricing and specific devices (the up and coming iPhone 5 is rumored to have LTE connectivity) but it seems that NTT Docomo, SMART’s partner will be providing the hardware because of the similarity in the spectrum (maybe phones and dongles — who knows?!). Here’s a short list of LTE enabled sites from the beta, which means that more are coming.
So that’s that. August 25 2012. A completely new spectrum. Completely new technology. Huge network overhaul.
With the Internet bringing about revolutionary change to the way people go about their lives, I believe that the commercialization of 3D printing will make a huge dent on the current power structure in the world today. There are already a lot of “dated” copyright and patent laws that run into a bump with the availability of 3D printers such as the legal mess of printing Warhammer figurines.
Nonetheless, scaling a 3D printer to the level of constructing a home is already on its way. A 2,500 square foot home can be built in less than a day — 20 hours to be exact with walls able to withstand 10,000 psi of pressure (the average concrete structure withstands 3,000 psi pounds / sq. inch). Watch the video below.
The future has spoken: in the same way that there is a current demand for Internet specialists, the near-future will want the most creative of people to design blueprints which the world can print into something amazingly tangible.
Oh the possibilities! I thought this was a joke, but there is an ongoing project to print out a lunar base in partnership with NASA. OMG!
This is the recent IDC pie chart on smartphone market share globally. The chart compares 2011 to 2012 figures and shows the huge growth of Android at 4x that of Apple’s iOS. Context must be taken here that the iOS share is attributed only to one company — Apple while the Android market is shared by several manufacturers with Samsung leading the pack. What’s also apparent is RIM’s huge decline sharing the same market penetration as Symbian.
Despite Android’s fragmentation issues it isn’t stopping consumers from purchasing Google-OS powered devices simply because of the wide array of phones being made available.
UPDATE: Jack Madrid, a friend and country manager of Multiply has posted a much clearer statement on the current state of Multiply. A lot of people were confused with the “We are sorry” note earlier this morning (and I don’t blame them) because it was rather vague. Jack’s post is more concise and reassuring of Multiply’s growth.
Again I will copy + paste:
Dear Multiply Users, Merchants, and Shoppers,
In the past two years or so, Multiply has fully shifted its direction towards supporting and cultivating an already thriving e-commerce community. Since then, it has been our mantra to continuously pave the way for e-commerce in the Philippines while empowering the enterprising Filipino.
With everything that we’ve done to make your Multiply the way it is today, there’s no time for us to step on the brakes, in fact, our new journey has just started and we can assure you we’re all excited.
That being said, in our efforts to further strengthen the Multiply platform and our services as the largest social marketplace in the country, starting December 1, 2012, we will fully transition to e-commerce and focus all of our initiatives in improving just that.
To our valued Multiply users in the social media platform, we encourage you to download your photos, blogs and videos before December 1, 2012. On the other hand, we are pleased to inform our existing and potential sellers and buyers that you will not be affected by this transition at any time in the future.
We’re looking forward to your continuous support.
Thank you,
Jack Madrid
Country Manager
Multiply Philippines
EDIT: Changed wording of some paragraphs to better explain the shift. The original text I wrote gave the impression that the whole operation would be closing down (which was not intended). They are closing Multiply in its current form as a social networking site but will relaunch it in December as an eCommerce platform — the specifics of which we do not know. I have reached out to Stefan and awaiting a response.
Multiply has announced that it is closing operations in its current form; will focus on eCommerce
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A few weeks ago I attended an intimate press conference for popular social networking turned eCommerce site, Multiply. In that conference I met Stefan Magdalinski (@smagdali) the current CEO of Multiply. He revealed to us that Multiply will be bringing in new features that should mature by the end of 2012. As it turns out, these features include MULTIPLY ANNOUNCING THAT THEY ARE SHUTTING DOWN OPERATIONS in its current form. This means that Multiply will continue, but as a 100% eCommerce site as mentioned below. Actually, we don’t know for sure what this truly means. What we’re sure of is that Multiply as we know it will be gone. Here’s a copy + paste of the entire landing page when you point your browsers to the site:
Hello. Stefan here, writing you from Multiply HQ in Jakarta, Indonesia. As most of you are probably aware, Multiply’s mission has evolved over the past year and a half to become the biggest and most beloved ecommerce marketplace in two very exciting markets, Indonesia and the Philippines. As our focus has shifted, we have reviewed all of our operations, and made some decisions that will affect everyone here. From December 1st, we will unfortunately no longer be able to support Multiply in its current form – notably we will be removing the social networking and content sharing part of Multiply (photos, videos, blogs, social messaging, etc.). We have decided to discontinue providing and hosting these services, as we have concluded that other Internet sites who are committed to social networking services will do a better job serving you than we can. For our existing users of social networking features, we will be providing easy ways for you to either download your stuff (photos, blogs, content, etc), or migrate it to other online services. We’ll announce the precise details shortly. It will be your choice whether to download, migrate or just let your content lapse (and get deleted). For our existing ecommerce users (both buyers and sellers) in Indonesia and the Philippines, there will be no action required. Regarding any existing Multiply Premium subscriptions we will refund any unused balance, and apologize for any inconvenience this will cause. Please contact customer service to request a refund. Note that this is for Multiply Premium, not the ecommerce related Multiply Trust product. I am aware of how disruptive this news may be, and understand the disappointment that it may cause. Ultimately this was a business decision, critical to our to success moving forward. Instead, we are excited to pursue our own mission to give the 350 million consumers in Indonesia and the Philippines a great way to buy and sell items online. Our singular focus now is for Multiply to retain its status as a vibrant e-commerce destination in Southeast Asia in the years ahead. I suspect that many of you will not like this news, and am sorry to have to deliver it now. I hope that you will be able to understand the reasons for our decision and thank you for being a part of the Multiply community over the past eight years. Stef
As read above, you will be able to export all your data to other services. This news comes as a sad close to one of the biggest online properties in the Philippines. It is hopefully also a good thing to help push Multiply forward in the eCommerce space in the same way that Friendster transformed itself into a site for social gaming. It seems they are going head on to compete with Rocket Internet’s Zalora and Lazada if I am not mistaken.
OK so there are two parts to this story. The first part is based on fact while the other is chismis, but when you put both together, it sort of makes sense. So the story is that the First Philippine LTE Forum happens tomorrow, August 8 2012. If you look at the lineup, we have the following speakers:
Mr. Dirk Wolter–Chief Technology Officer, Mobility, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Ms. Carol Wan–Director, Business Consulting, Huawei Technologies Company Ltd.
Mr. Yoshinori Yasui– Senior Technical Advisor (Smart), NTT Docomo
Mr. Albert Nombres– Head of Solutions, Nokia Siemens Networks
Mr. Lawrence Macalintal—Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson Telecommunications, Inc.
The LTE forum comes at an “ideal” time, having heard rumors of the imminent LTE launch by SMART. This is really no secret as the telco has been working on a number of beta tests (I have been part of some) across the past few months.
Now the chismis: What excites me is that the rumored iPhone 5 will need to have LTE connectivity in order to compete with the market of powerful smartphones released by HTC and Samsung in the past few months. Is this their way of launching LTE into the smartphone space? This seems like a very tempting argument to make in favor of both the new data network launching very soon in the PH and a potential LTE-enabled iPhone that fits Asian standards.
