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MEMBER PROFILE
We catch up with another new member company this month: Terry Hughes of otaView tells us about his company and the future of wireless applications.
I moved to Canada from the UK 2 years ago. The European wireless market is several years ahead of North America, so I found my European experience to be in demand. I therefore founded otaView, a sales and business development consultancy company. otaView helps Canadian companies that need to expand into new geographies and markets, and we also help any company wishing to expand into Canada, which is now seen as a high growth market by wireless companies.
Unlike other consultancies, otaView isn’t a high level strategic consultancy, instead we are given specific tactical goals and we execute on them, e.g. finding new partners, developing new lines of business, developing major accounts, or helping to close major deals. I have found the Canadian government and the industry associations like WINBC, WiTec Alberta and WIP to be really supportive, which puts Canada in a good position in preparation for the forthcoming wireless revolution.
When I say “revolution” I really mean it. Back in the mid 1990s, while I was at Vodafone in the UK, we were desperately trying to work out how we could encourage people to send text messages. Now, just 10 years later, those same people in Europe are using their phones routinely for email, multimedia messaging, video calling, Skype, being part of global communities, music downloads, surfing the internet … and of course their mobile phone is now their main phone rather than a luxury for occasional calls.
The enablers are all now in place for this revolution to happen; high speed networks, ubiquitous internet, smartphones, tons of content, a true convergence between voice and data, and a growing acceptance of the cellphone as a personal entertainment device. For those reasons I firmly believe that North America will close the gap on Europe, and that excites me.
What fascinates me the most is that it is impossible to predict which services will be “killer apps”. The industry has had many false dawns including using WAP to browse the internet, location-based services, WASPs (wireless ASPs) and MMS (all four are finally coming of age). Conversely, who would have predicted that plain old SMS would still be so popular in today’s multimedia world, did anybody imagine that the Blackberry and email would be the big driver behind GPRS adoption, and I’ll be honest ….
I never believed that people would want to download ringtones and games by the million! So what will be the next “killer app”; location-based mobile communities, NFC (Near Field Communication) for m-payment, or the much hyped mobile TV? Or maybe it will be something that nobody has even thought of yet. And will we accept advertising on our cellphones? All I hope is that Canada produces yet more success stories like RIM, and that otaView can play a small part in that success.
Terry Hughes is CEO of otaView. He may be reached at: thughes@otaview.com
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SPIF 2007 TESTIMONIALS
"The constructive feedback, both during preparation and through the event itself, has been extremely valuable and has helped us secure our early stage financing in 2006..."
Guylain Roy-MacHabée, President & CEO,
Rx Networks, Inc.
"Being chosen to present at the WINBC's Service Provider Investment Forum 2007 provided an opportunity to share our vision with about 30 world leading telecommunications companies at the same time - something that would have been impossible without the proactive facilitation of WINBC . Thanks."
Andre Brisson,
President & CEO,
Whitenoise Laboratories Inc.
WINBC EVENTS
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