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Interview: Phil Garfinkle
Phil Garfinkle is a highly successful technology visionary, bringing a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur, CEO, and investor, with a focus on emerging technologies. He has held a number of management and engineering positions, is an active angel investor, and holds many patents. In addition to joining Gabriel Venture Partners, Mr. Garfinkle is an active Board member in a number of technology companies. Prior to Gabriel, he was a founder of Yazam, a global VC firm, which was sold to US Technologies. Mr. Garfinkle founded PhotoNet Japan, which went public in 2002. He also founded PictureVision (Chairman, CEO, and President), which was sold to Kodak, where he also served as a General Manager and in the CTO’s office. In addition he helps organizations refine their business approaches, raise capital, and find their path to success.
What will be the key issues in developing new services and applications over the next three to five years?
There are so many innovative technologies being developed globally that operators will have many different approaches and products worthy of commercializing, both for consumers and businesses. Constantly needing to decrease service costs due to competitive pressure and consumer expectations, operators need to make innovation paramount in order to maintain a strong and profitable business.
Adoption of more standards will be key in driving the execution of innovative ideas, since standards often make the leap to a new application less risky. Clearly, having a proprietary approach preserves the market a bit more for a specific operator, but at some point the need to integrate capabilities provides more benefit to the broad consumer base to keep the need for a specific feature relevant.
Linking products and services together will also promote interesting new applications, such as using GPS to locate your dog or maybe even your kids! Applications that improve our lives will be accepted by users with open arms, while others will merely linger.
What’s "going mainstream" in three to five years?
Most new services will leverage the increased bandwidth available for both mobile and fixed environments. Some applications that will certainly be available from an operator near you:
• Wireless payments / billing via cell phone: Imagine going to a vending machine and calling a special phone number. You get your product and via your caller ID, it bills the purchase to your cell bill.
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What will be the key issues in developing new services and applications over the next three to five years?
There are so many innovative technologies being developed globally that operators will have many different approaches and products worthy of commercializing, both for consumers and businesses. Constantly needing to decrease service costs due to competitive pressure and consumer expectations, operators need to make innovation paramount in order to maintain a strong and profitable business.
Adoption of more standards will be key in driving the execution of innovative ideas, since standards often make the leap to a new application less risky. Clearly, having a proprietary approach preserves the market a bit more for a specific operator, but at some point the need to integrate capabilities provides more benefit to the broad consumer base to keep the need for a specific feature relevant.
Linking products and services together will also promote interesting new applications, such as using GPS to locate your dog or maybe even your kids! Applications that improve our lives will be accepted by users with open arms, while others will merely linger.
What’s "going mainstream" in three to five years?
Most new services will leverage the increased bandwidth available for both mobile and fixed environments. Some applications that will certainly be available from an operator near you:
• Wireless payments / billing via cell phone: Imagine going to a vending machine and calling a special phone number. You get your product and via your caller ID, it bills the purchase to your cell bill.
Next page
