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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (23198)	4/21/2000 9:06:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 54805

shuebert and I are collaborating on a project Hunt report on PHCM. It's not the easiest of business models to understand. Our present target for publication is next Friday. In the meantime let me address the topic. WAP is a proprietary standard owned jointly by the WAP Forum members. My understanding is that it has not been released into the public domain in the same way Linux has been, for instance. This became clear from the Geoworks try for revenues from its contribution. Nonetheless, as far as analysis of PHCM is concerned, it should be treated as a non-proprietary standard. Revenues that might be realized from its "proprietary" properties, if any, will be negligible, imo. The Gorilla characteristics, if they develop, will be from the various applications that PHCM has developed and continues to develop. Of particular importance may be the UP.Sdk, software development kit environment. If PHCM can get their SDK accepted as the standard, they will gain a position in the WAP world similar to Oracle's in the SQL/RDBMS world. Their claim to Gorillahood will depend on the value chain that develops around their applications, rather than lots of specific IPR's. (The SDK of course is a copyrighted piece of software). And related: The FM spends a good deal more time focusing on the value chain, not IPR's, as the central measure of pongidity. All the IPR in the world doesn't make a gorilla if no one else depends on those ideas, or if they don't build a barrier to entry. OTOH, very little or no IPR is needed if a value chain develops around your product. After a lengthy discussion upthread, no one around here could provide a cogent explanation of what makes Oracle's product different than Sybase's, to give it gorilla advantage. I have come to understand that what is different is that so many developers understand the little quirks that Oracle has introduced that are different from Sybase. What makes Oracle so hard to displace--i.e., the gorilla--is the number of Oracle developers that are out there. And that is the level at which PHCM is fighting for gorilla status. btw, WAP has apparently won the war as the standard of choice for internet access via wireless devices. Now, the battle is who will win the war within WAP, or will we end up with a bunch of princes? Best, John