Will Vonage's wireless services strategy succeed?

Vonage is planning to offer wireless services in second quarter of 2007. Since Vonage has been facing stiff competition from cable companies in VOIP space, it is looking to diversify its service offerings, and provide a bundle of services, and essentially become an MVNO that provides mobile services along with VOIP. We all know successful MVNOs including Virgin Mobile, that just play in mobile space.

MVNOs are about brand, and a segment of the user base to which carrier does not want to market or support. Virgin Mobile plays to the young audience and offers phones targeted to that segment of the market. Vonage is going to offer services to general consumers and small businesses, and that is very price sensitive market. Vonage will compete with the likes of Comcast, that provides all the services what Vonage is thinking of providing. If Vonage can not add any other differentiators to its service, it will have hard time selling its service.

Other than bundling its VOIP software on mobile phones, Vonage will have to provide other mobile device management functions and mobile applications that make the user's life easier. I would love to see applications like easy location based content share.

What is in Palm's future?

The pioneer of PDAs is rumored to be up for sale, according to this story on engadget.com. Of course what is interesting is not that Palm is up for sale, rather who the buyer will be. Lots of names doing the rounds, including usual suspects like Motorola, Microsoft and Nokia. Some even suggest HTC (the phone manufacturer itself).

Question is - what is up for sale? Ever since Palm started shipping phones using Windows Mobile, the Palm OS was dead right there. Hardware is not an issue in any case, because that is already outsourced. What is up for sale then, is Palm brand. The brand itself has taken a lot of beating in last few months and years, and certainly its value has diminished. But it is still a recognized brand.

Probably most of the above mentioned phone makers will not be interested in Palm. In this fixed-mobile convergence, enterprise mobility age, it would not surprise me if a company like HP or Dell might be interested in Palm brand. Remember HP bought BitPhone (mobile device management software vendor), and then turn around and sell complete enterprise solution.