I am this week in Sweden's capital, visiting a major wireless infrastructure vendor for one of our customers.

I have been here before but somehow this time I noticed a couple of things that are quite nice here at the Arlanda airport and I thought want to share them with you. I case you have been here already, I suggest you skip this post, unless you want to know what I saw too.

First of all on arrival I noticed that they have wooden floors here that are waxed with machines to keep them nice and polished. Probably not the most economic way at all (stone floors are easier to maintain) but it makes for a pleasant walk and optical impression as well as radiating some warm energy (no I did not have too much wine last night).

On the way to the exit I walked by a very long wall (200m or so) with lots of pictures of famous Stockholm residences from sports, politics, music etc. saying "Welcome in My Hometown". I thought that is a great idea too.

Then I took the Arlanda Express (brings you into Stockholm in 20min). The announcement at the Stockholm Centralstation (major train station in Stockholm) said welcome to Stockholm to all visitors and the ones coming back. I never heard such a welcoming greeting. Usually it is done by a soulless voice like the time recording lady, but this was different. He really meant Welcome to visitors and the Stockholm people. Small thing you might think, but it just added to the very pleasant experience. How far things go can be seen also on the airport's website. Take a look at this funny one.

Now this is what I call nearly perfect marketing experience creation, something every product manager has to go through to be able to make the customer experience - especially the first - a very pleasant and satisfying one. Great job Arlanda folks!

Last week's announcement that Bertelsmann will pay 4.5 bln EUR to the Belgium 25% stake owner GBL to avoid a public listing of those shares, seems to me the beginning of the end for this family run business. This is not a small amount for Bertelsmann and means that they have to sell off other units now to be able to reduce the debt. Most likely the BMG music group which delivered about 10% of the revenue and gross profit in 2005. Of course negotiations will be tough since any potential buyer knows that the Mohn family has to sell now.

This is once more a family decision that serves to protect their interests and has not much to do with economic sense. Of course everyone working in management positions at Bertelsmann knows by now (see e.g. former CEO departures such as Mr. Middlehoff's) that it does not help to think outside of the Mohn family box. In light of that the current CEO's statement on their website is not more than wishful thinking:

Bertelsmann is an enterprise for entrepreneurs – a decentralized, international and innovative company that grants its executives the greatest possible freedom. The world's best artists, journalists and executives work here and serve up the world's best media products."
Gunter Thielen, Chairman & CEO, Bertelsmann AG

The four German mobile operators (T-Mobile, O2, E-Plus, Vodafone) will trial mobile TV services during the Soccer World Cup in four German cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich). A limited number of handsets will be given to selected people (such as journalists) to test the service, which will include 16 TV channels and six radio stations. The four operators also announced that they plan to jointly build the infrastructure and provide the content distribution. Exact service launch and pricing is still open. Start should happen sometime in 2007 and prices are to be expected within the 5-15 EUR range. Also still open are country-wide frequency allocations which should happen finally end of this year. The chosen mobile TV standard will be DVB-H which will probably mean that no other standard will see widespread adoption in Germany from now on.

The FAZ has put together the following info graphic which shows that private equity is on a roll and also delivers best results.