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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates
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To: John Stichnoth who wrote (23632)4/27/2000 2:19:00 AM
From: shuebert  Read Replies (1) of 54805
 
Phone.com vs. Infospace

John,

Reading through the information on Infospace I was reminded of how difficult the business model Phone.com was for us to try sort out and how confusing the competition is. (I hope that is why there has been such little discussion of Phone.com--- I hope some are trying to sort this out and will discuss it later.)

The simplified model that still makes the most sense to me is what was described as the "browser/server/portal" model. (I think we left out the link to that article describing the competition in our report, it is:
news.cnet.com )

The way I am viewing it, the browser competition is a royalty game. The server competition is a gorilla game. The portal competition is a godzilla game.

My understanding is that Infospace is competion only in the portal (potential godzilla) part of the business. My guess as to why Infospace wasn't in Phone.com's last 10K is that Phone.com didn't announce the portal part of the business until last September.

Have you found anything on whether Infospace's platform includes a server? Can it operate without a carrier having UP.Link, Nokia's server, or Microsoft's server?

Infospace listed Airtouch as one of the carriers using it's platform. I found this interesting because Airtouch was one of the carriers I looked closely at because in 1999 Microsoft seemed to be claiming them as their customer. What I found was that Airtouch licensed Phone.com's server on February 2, 2000 and had their service with Phone.com deployed and in use by customers by March 15, 2000. I thought that quick deployment (6 weeks) was impressive and part of why Phone.com would be very attractive in a tornado for the "herd" of telco's scrambling to offer WAP.

With Airtouch also apparently using Infospace's "platform", it makes me wonder how these platforms are different and how they "co-exist" with a carrier. Is Infospace also receiving licensing fees from the telco's or are their revenues coming from the content providers, advertising, etc?

If Phone.com's "end-to-end" solution wins out and they dominate across the whole spectrum (browser/server/portal) obviously they will be more profitable than if they only dominate one portion of it. However, it appears to me that the server part of the model is the part that has true gorilla potential.

Susan
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