Comme tout le monde j’ai essayé de comprendre les dessous de l’offre de FREE, comment peut-elle exister? Comment on-t-il fait? Avons-nous vraiment été des pigeons? Et l’impact que cette offre peut avoir sur ses concurrents.

Update: 1. Cet article a ses limites et a pour objectif de voir le problème sous un autre angle pour initier une reflexion plus construite. 2. Les commentaires font parties de la discussion. 3. Triste de lire certains commentaires haineux, ce n’est pourtant qu’une simple reflexion abstraite pour faire travailler l’esprit.

Update 2: Avant de lire cet article, regardez cette vidéo: http://www.ouest-france.fr/actu/actualite-video_-Face-a-Free-Orange-denonce-une-logique-purement-consumeriste-interview-exclusive-a-ecouter-_6346-2032554-fils-tous_filDMA.Htm

En conclusion, je pense que l’engouement face à cette offre est la preuve d’un pays en crise et d’une population appauvrie et que la supporter c’est rentrer d’un cycle qui ne ferra qu’empirer la situation. Explications:

Comment des sociétés endettés peuvent réduire leur prix dans un marché saturé?

Dire que Orange, SFR et Bouygues se sont foutus de nous c’est dire qu’ils n’ont fait que remplir les caisses depuis 10 ans or à ce que je sache Orange a lancé en 2006 un plan de redressement appelé “NExT” qui vise la réduction des coûts salariaux d’environ 10% preuve d’une société en manque de cash: 22 000 salariés sont virés. On pourra ressortir l’argument classique des cadres surpayés mais les cadres de FREE sont tout aussi bien payés et ces sommes restent insignifiantes comparées aux pertes totales.

Orange, SFR et Bouygues n’étaient donc pas en mesure de baisser leur prix. D’autant plus que la téléphonie mobile n’est pas un marché en croissance en nombre d’utilisateurs.

Quelle est la solution de FREE?

Vous me direz, comment FREE peut offrir de tels prix? En employant moins, outsourceant plus et en réduisant la qualité du service d’accompagnement.

Orange a quand même 1200 magasins en France, j’imagine qu’ils emploient en moyenne 8 personnes chacun soit un total de 10 000 emplois (~30 millions/an en coût salariaux fois deux pour les coûts de gestion). FREE c’est zéro emploi magasin et autant d’argent de sauvé.

France Télécom c’est 160 000 emplois dans le monde dont ~60% en France (soit 96 000), FREE? 5000. Je pense qu’il faut relativiser sur la mauvaise volonté de ces fournisseurs géants et comprendre que leurs anciennetés et leurs tailles augmentent le coût de leurs services.

Le Français ou les Français?

Le point clé du raisonnement est-peut être de se rendre compte que tout cet argent revient indirectement aux français. FREE ne fait qu’employer moins et tuer le marché du service de qualité.

Sur le plan international il est bon de noter que France Télécom est la 105º entreprise mondiale et que sa présence internationale rend non seulement la France plus puissante mais permet également de payer des français à partir d’exportation de services à l’étranger alors que c’est la tendance inverse dans toutes les autres industries. Chiffres clés: CA de 3,3 milliards en Afrique seule et 60 millions de clients à l’étranger. FREE? Zéro.

FREE avec sa stratégie ultra-cheap basée sur de l’outsoucing et possible grâce à sa jeunesse ne fait que profiter de l’obsession des français à payer moins suite à une crise surmédiatisée et d’un lavage de cerveaux par Xavier Niel.

Si toutes nos industries se déplacent vers le marché low-cost, on réduit les emplois dans notre pays, réduit la qualité moyenne des services, renforce les pays spécialisés en low-cost et appauvrissons la France.

Autrement dit: “Bonjour les Tinois”

PS: Je suis conscient que cet article a de nombreuses limites. D’autres pistes de réflexions sont à étudier comme les bénéfices économiques que génèrent une population surconnectée à coûts réduits mais on attendra les campagnes présidentielles pour ça En attendant je reste chez Orange.

Un peu de lecture:

• Le Plan NExT chez Orange
• Les conditions générales de FREE ne sont pas si belles
• Free: un bel exemple de différence entre valeur réelle et valeur perçue

education

1. Change the rewarding system to celebrate failure. Not only failure is key to accelerate the learning curve but it’s usually the first fear that stop students from becoming an entrepreneur. At school, failing is not perceived as an accelerator and slows down entrepreneurship.

2. Experiment to change the world instead of virtual project. I spent hours of courses trying to build stuff that have already been done. Not fun. Today technology can connect any problem to anyone who is willing to solve it. If teachers were pushing students to “try to change the world” during their courses, students would understand how motivational and amazing it is to be an entrepreneur.

3. Create a culture of “we”. At school, we don’t live or even learn how to build a great culture. Ranking students individually create selfish personalities. Schools keep promoting how much you can make with their diploma while the most important is how much your team or maybe your users can benefit from your work. Entrepreneurs have been raised to be altruistic.

4. Rethink the Business Model. Technology are moving about 10x faster than 10 years ago and it’s not likely to slow down. We can no longer let people who haven’t be facing to the “real world” for the past 5 years. School administration could offer projects and/or money to researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to tell their story about “How they fail or succeed?”. Knowledge has become real-time as well so teachers should go part-time and executives should go back to school.

But first of all, changes come from people. Students need to stand up and say loudly how bored they are at schools. Lots of them would become entrepreneurs if the system was celebrating innovation.

Our children will need a way better education system to face the very challenging world we’re heading to. We need to start to change it now.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Peter F. Drucker

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Ted: “We built our school like Fast-Food.”

“Taking Internet To The Next Level” est une conférence que j’ai donnée le 13 décembre dans les locaux de l’Iteem (une des rares écoles d’entrepreneur/ingénieur en France).

L’objectif de cette conférence était de démontrer que l’internet est en croissance exponentielle, que cela crée une montage de nouvelles opportunités et que le “web entrepreneur” n’a jamais eu autant d’avenir grâce à la magie du cloud computing.

“Je pense que les ingénieurs français sont très compétents mais que leur manque d’optimisme les empêchent de détecter les opportunités qu’offrent le web.”

Vous trouverez ci-dessous ma présentation qui résume les leçons que j’ai retenues des multiples conférences américaines auxquelles j’ai pu assister ainsi que de la création de ma start-up à Vancouver.

Si vous avez des retours, remarques ou questions, n’hésitez pas à commenter ci-dessous.

Let’s talk about 3 radical changes that are going to happen and will change the way the world works. Again.

1. Internet will become insanely fast.

Photo by Surrealize

The video below talks by itself: “speed”. Google has been insisting a lot on it recently and it’s because they know speed can open doors to a lot of opportunities. It’s not so much about storage (even if it will be nice to download a movie in 6s) but more about fast-connectivity and data-instant-transfer (ok the cloud). Speed can solve almost every problem, fiber optic will make internet 100X faster and helps internet to offer a way better User Experience. HD Movie, HD Pictures, Everything Streaming, Storing and sharing files instantly. Potentially even the theaters will be streaming movies, all thanks to speed.

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2. Everything will be moved to the cloud (yes, everything).

Photo by Yevgen Timashov

Most of people usually underestimate the power of the cloud. Cloud has just started and once you really understand what’s in Microsoft and Apple’s minds (I sneaked Microsoft just to be nice) you start to realize how their current moves makes even more sense on the long-term. Reasons why computers are getting thinner, cheaper and smaller is because everything is moving to the cloud: pictures with Facebook, videos with Youtube, Netflix and soon Google or Apple TV, video montage with Animoto, translation with Google Translate, and you know the rest.

Next will be the software entirely in the cloud and combined with massive storage and CPU power, once Internet will become insanely fast, our computer will get cheaper but way more powerful thanks to the interconnectivity it has with the cloud. You would be able to watch any movies, use any softwares, watch any TV channels, all on-demand. Plus all your datas will be synchronized across all your devices. Instead of buying a $2000 computer, we will be buying 10 times more monthly plans to satisfy our need. I don’t know if it’s going to be cheaper at the end but it will definitely be awesome.

3. VOIP & Voice translation will open the borders forever.

Photo by PhiNAPHantaSY

You talk to your car in English and it sends an email to your Japanese client’s phone in Japanese. You will be able to call anywhere in the world, not only with relatively no-costs but also with free translation on-the-fly. Voice Recognition + Cloud Translation Service + VOIP + Mobile connectivity = HUGE new opportunities. The mobile explosion has already given to most human being an access the net but Voice Translation on-the-fly is going to connect every person on earth. And I’m not even talking about the Voice Translation API Google will release.

4. Conclusion.

I hope you like the snapshot of future. Well, a not-so-far future. The first side-effect of the Cloud has already accelerated the pace of innovation by 8, but the second step will be far beyond any expectations we can have. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. Actually, maybe I can, because it’s probably just a matter of months.

What do you think? Anything else you see happening?

Worth taking a break, it’s fascinating.

1. Mark Zuckerberg about the Social Layer

From “How the social graph can be better than algorithms?”, “Why every softwares will be rethought around people”, “How Facebook is going to able it” to “Why openness in the future will create more value?”.

2. Eric Schmidt about the true Mobile Power

“How Mobile phones can replaced credit card”, “How much powerful a phone can be?”, “How to make (Google) TV smart?”. etc
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The shift that is happening is pretty crazy. Mobile & Tablets are blowing away the PC. But wait. The impact is bigger than we think, my friend Marty just came back from the future with a story:

“In China, I walking in a restaurant that I saw that 34″ screen showing not only my face but also of my best friends favourite meals that I’m more likely to enjoy. Then I started to realize that the menu was in mandarin so I asked to the waiter if I could have an english menu. Guess what?? She laughed at me. ‘Why don’t you get your phone to translate it? You Americans!’”

The cloud X building, face & voice recognition X translation on the fly X the social graph X miniaturization of the connected devices = Probably something you can’t even imagine!!

That’s it, now Internet is in the air. It is no longer true that internet is associated with a device. At least it won’t be in the future.

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In fact, it’s a pretty good news. It means that one way to innovate is to look around you and see if every moves, motions, interactions, facts or even relationships are stored somewhere. If not, there’s an opportunity to add value using technology to transform this data into something helpful.

The pace of innovation on the internet has never been faster, the cost of setting up outstanding web technology is so ridiculously low that thousands of start-ups are building the new tomorrow.

So what? Well, I don’t know… But I’m pretty skeptical.. Everything sounds great huh? Not really. Small businesses were just started to take off on the “new-affordable” web but now there’s no way they can afford a mobile App. At least until decent Mobile CMS start to show up. But if the web keep moving that fast, I’m scared that a new era will take place, increase the cost of ”being technologically remarkable”, and blow away bootstrapping start-ups. What do you think?

10 years ago, it costs 10.000$ to build a decent website, today it’s a cool mobile App, and tomorrow?

Have a look to how good we were 10 years after the TV went out, pretty shitty isn’t it?
How old is internet again?