Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

As part of ongoing coverage of new technology trends, startups, and business models we have started analysing the local market segments and trends for technology companies. As a result of this, we will be publishing our reports on various sectors in the coming months. Most of the reports will be freely available on this portal. If any organisation is interested in understanding the new market forces and technology trends in the local market across IT (Enterprise, Product, Open source, SAAS, Cloud Computing, eCommerce), Telecom (Mobile, OSS/BSS), Media (News, Social Networking), Marketing/Branding, Green Tech (Sustainability, Carbon trading), R&D we can help them with to be ready and prepared for the future challenges. Following is the list of published reports and analyses. Australian IT Industry Snapshot - 2014 Digital Transformation Framework IT Strategy Framework Why Digital Transformation is not an IT Transformation Status of Mobile Advertising in Australia Digital Wi...

Telstra announced yesterday, the launch of their Bigpond Music Platform , a venture into the online music industry by offering tracks from all major record labels in a format (MP3) that could be transferred between most music players, including the iPod, Sony Walkman, Xbox, PlayStation 3 and home media centres. This offering is in direct competition to Apple's iTunes offering which is a walled garden or a closed system. It was clear how Telstra is opening up another front with Apple in their ongoing battle in the Media and mobile space. The next obvious step for this platform would be online rental movies as Telstra has a service for its rental movies under the  BigPond Movies Entertainment b anner . While pundits were still analyzing the impact of Telstra's new service, Apple has hit back with the announcement that movies from major film studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios In...

Telstra's CEO Mr. Sol Trujillo delivered $3.7 billion profit after tax and minority interests for the year ended 30 June 2008. Some of the key highlights of this report are Mobile services revenue grew 12.3% to $5.5 billion Retail broadband revenue grew 49% to $1.8 billion and ARPU increased 2.9%. Retail broadband customer numbers grew strongly to 3.3 million for the year resulting in a market share gain of 2 percentage points to 49% PSTN revenue was $6.7 billion, a 3.2% decline for the year compared with 4.4% in fiscal 2007. The number of retail PSTN lines has grown for 14 consecutive months. Retail sales revenue grew 5.9% for the year. Growth of 3.6% in Telstra Enterprise & Government 3G penetration more than doubled since June 2007 to 47% of our mobile base or 4.4 million subscribers, a feat unmatched by our global peer group. Optus & 3 were caught off guard, but the fight is on. Telstra continues to gain around 20,000 wireless broadband subscribers per month with 5...

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Innovation (CCI) presents findings, from the first survey undertaken by the Australian component of the World Internet Project, titled The Internet in Australia. This is definitely quite an intriguing work that reflects upon the activities of a general population affected by the Internet. Before I jump into my summary/conclusions, some of the highlights of this report for me are : Nearly 80% of home has broadband. Only 25.3 % of people use wireless devices to access the internet. Only less than an hour/week on a mobile device to access the internet. Email is the most popular means of communicating online. 82.8% of users never made an internet phone call. 20% of people use messaging daily. 59.2% of internet users pay bills online. Only 70.9% of rural households have broadband access compared to 83.0% of households in capital cities. Internet users spend less time watching television, listening to radio and reading newspapers than nonusers. Cop...

The  iPhone phenomenon is global and is doing well in terms of grabbing the market share from other handsets. In Australia consumer is crying, even though it’s a hit with the general public, courtesy of 3 telcos, which have got an agreement with Apple, Telstra , Optus & Vodafone. The main reason consumers are crying is that their pricing plans are the most expensive compared to the other 21 countries where iPhone 2.0 is launched. Well, there are no prizes for guessing that Telstra's plans are the most expensive plans. Most of us haven't been able to understand why Telstra is offering plans that are not suitable for a smart device like an iPhone - it's not a phone it's a mini PC. But now it is becoming clear why this is so. It’s not widely known that Telstra negotiated hard with Apple to allow applications like Whereis (Sensis) to be preloaded on iPhone. This is the usual territory for Telstra, Being the dominant player here they get away with most of the time with...

We published an extensive report on Australia's local search market in April 2008. At that time we found there are 18 local players in this space. Now within 3 months, this list has grown from 18 to 25. All these players are competing in this market worth $235 million as reported last year (2007). It is expected to reach $532 million by 2010. We have now further updated this list and the following are the players competing in this space: AussieWeb Local Search Brownbook ClickFind dLook Docoloco FreeConnect HotFrog Google Maps Local Search Solutions Local.com.au Nook NineMSN - My Local OurPatch Phone Book Rave About It RAYV Start Local Street Directory True Local VirtualMap Yellow (Sensis, formerly YellowPages) Vouchorgrouch Womow WhitePages (Sensis) Yahoo!7 ReachLocal As f ar as the top p l ayers are concerned, this h asn't ch a nged much since we reported l ast time. So, the top 5 players in this market according to their market share/business listing s are . 1. Yellow, My...

Background: I have undertaken this report to explore, learn and analyse the local online search and directories market to understand the developments that are taking place in this area. There are more than 18 players, from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to large corporations trying to get some share of this market. The main focus of this report is on Sensis and its competitors and how it can reinvent itself in a rapidly changing local market. Note: This report can be downloaded as a PDF from here . Introduction: Australia’s online search and directories market is rapidly growing and to this date, there are 18 players in this market segment , worth $235 million as reported last year (2007). It is expected to reach $532 million by 2010. Sensis, (owned by Telstra) is a dominant player in the directories market and Google in search. The online search market only represents a portion of the much larger local online advertising market. The local online advertising marke...