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[Which are the most ubiquitous mobile software products out there? Marketing Manager Matos Kapetanakis opens up our 5th edition of the 100 Million Club, the watchlist of embedded software products and talks about the really big numbers of mobile software.] Welcome to the H2 2009 edition of the 100 Million Club, the semi-annual watchlist of mobile software products that have been embedded in more than 100 million mobile devices since their release. Despite the apparent opportunity in the one-billion-a-year handset market, very few software companies have managed to overcome the commercial and technical challenges inherent in the mobile industry. Key highlights in this H2 2009 edition: – “The cumulative number of shipments of all the 100 Million Club software products up to the end of 2009 is 24.6 billion – an 11% increase since the previous half” – “The estimated 250 million cumulative shipments for Apple’s WebKit show that it is fast becoming a de facto browser platform.” – “BlackBerry is the next smartphone platform, after Symbian, that will break through the 100 million shipments barrier.” What’s new in H2 2009? So, what major changes have we seen since our previous update? First off we’re happy to welcome three new entrants to the Club: ARM, Mimer and Numonyx have joined, adding three new middleware products to our watchlist. Mimer has just broken the 100 million barrier with its SQL database engine, while ARM brings us Mali-JSR184, a 3D graphics engine for wireless devices. The Flash Data Integrator by Numonyx is already ahead of the game, having been shipped in more than 900 million devices. We have also had to remove three software products that have long been part of the Club. For different reasons, Mobile BAE by Beatnik and Picsel’s File Viewer are no longer part of the 100 Million Club, while Nokia’s Series 60 OS has been incorporated in the Symbian OS. (click to download) Growth in the 100 Million Club The H2 2009 edition of the 100 Million Club is comprised of 30 software products by 26 companies. The total number of shipments of all 30 products, up to the end of 2009, comes to 24.6 billion – an 11% increase since the previous half. In the previous edition, the Club featured 15 software products that exceeded 500 million shipments, 6 of which had also broken through the 1 billion barrier. The H2 2009 edition features 17 products with more than 500 million sales, 7 of which have surpassed 1 billion shipments. In other words, for the first time the majority of the products featured in the 100 Million Club have over 500 million shipments. In the second half of 2009, CAPS by Scalado and OKL4 by Open Kernel Labs managed to break through the 500 million barrier, while Myriad Group’s messaging client and Nokia’s Series 40 OS now have more than 1 billion shipments each. Category leaders: apps, browsers, middleware and operating systems Quickoffice wins by default in the embedded applications category, since it’s the only embedded application featured in the 100 Million Club. Adobe is still number one in the application environments category, with Flash/Flash Lite having been embedded in more than 1.3 billion devices up to the end of 2009. The growth of Flash Lite has decelerated significantly from 43% (1H09) to 15% (2H09) as share of devices sold with the software embedded; however the pace should be picking up pace again with Flash shipments later in 2010. Myriad Group, whose browser has almost twice as many shipments as the other category products combined, dominates the browser market. In the middleware category things are not that clear, due to the diversity of products. In absolute numbers, the messaging client by Myriad Group has the most shipments (1.2B) and vRapid Mobile by Red Bend shows the highest of growth over the second half of 2009. UI software is also highly penetrated within mobile devices, led by graphics engines by Ikivo, Scalado and The Astonishing Tribe which are at or around the 500 million mark. The operating system market features 6 products that have been embedded in more than 1 billion devices. It’s worth noting that mass-appeal operating systems like OSE, Nucleus and recently Series 40 have cumulative shipments numbering in the billions, while BREW has just broken past the 500 million mark. In contrast, most major smartphone platforms – Android, OSX, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry – apart from Symbian have yet to reach 100 million shipments. Finally, the input engines category features two products, both by Nuance inherited from the past acquisitions of Tegic and Zi Corp. As is evident in the chart, T9/XT9 is by far the most prominent, having been embedded in a staggering 4.8 billion mobile devices up to the end of the second half of 2009. 100 Million Club facts and trends Two companies account for 38% of shipments: Only two companies have multiple software products included in the 100 Million Club, each company featuring three products. The cumulative number of shipments of these two companies is 9.5 billion, representing 38% of all 100 Million Club products’ shipments up to the end of H2 2009. The software products are Myriad Group’s Browser, messaging client and Jbed and Nuance’s T9/XT9, eZiText and VSuite. WebKit on the rise: We estimate that up to the end of 2009 WebKit, the open source browser engine, has been embedded in more than 250 million devices. WebKit owes most of its market penetration to Nokia (Symbian shipments with the Series 40 contribution picking up), while its recent adoption by RIM can only accelerate its market penetration. Top revenue models: In this edition, we asked the 100 Million Club members to provide us with the top two revenue models for their products. The responses revealed that the most common revenue models for embedded software are per-unit royalties,followed by NRE (non-recurring engineering fees) for product integration or customisation. Despite the tight profit margins, handset OEMs and network operators are still paying for software on a per-unit basis, with the ‘paradigm shift’ to per-active user revenue models taking longer than most would have expected. What’s in stock for the 100 Million Club Our watchlist continues to grow, as more products make it past 100 million shipments. Blackberry should be entering the Club in the next edition (H1 2010), with OSX, Windows Mobile and the much younger Android lagging a further 6-18 months behind. The bigger picture of mobile software is very different than the industry hype would have us think. – Matos #packetvideo #rococo #ARM #opera #qualcomm #symbianfoundation #openkernellabs #100millionclub #nokia #nuance #Apple #mentorgraphics #tat #ikivo #scalado #bitflash #quickoffice #mimer #aplix #enea #numonyx #nxpsoftware #hicorp #Adobe #windowsmobile #redbend #Android #mobilesoftware #Blackberry #myriad #iphone #osx #access

[The acquisition by HP will not save Palm. Guest author Michael Valukenko explains why the sum of Palm and HP is close to zero] As an old-time Palm user, I was always secretly hoping for resurgence of this familiar and trusted company. At a rational level however, I didn’t believe that the new Palm stands a chance in rapidly changing smartphone market. See my earlier analysis in Who can save Palm here at the VisionMobile blog. HP’s acquisition makes Palm part of large and financially solid company, but doesn’t compensate for its other weaknesses. Smartphone competition today boils down to competition of service platforms with Apple and Google leading the way. Considering the realities of today’s smartphone market, there are very few real synergies between HP and Palm. The three missing synergies Today people don’t buy smartphones for their hardware, but for what they can do with them. This largely means software platform and services built around the phone. Both Apple and Google excel in this area, albeit using very different approaches. Palm’s WebOS offers a slick UI and a promise of simplified app development by fully adopting the web paradigm. But it lacks a clear differentiation (a killer use case) and an ecosystem unlocking the device into hundreds or thousands different things people could do with it. Let’s face it: It wasn’t that WebOS devices didn’t sell well because Palm lacked marketing dollars. They didn’t sell because they weren’t good enough compared to competition. HP marketing money and distribution muscle won’t save the day. Today’s leaders – iPhone, Blackberry and Android – all have clear differentiation: iPhone is all about entertainment and Internet and is backed by large iTunes user base. Blackberry sells mobile email and is backed by corporate IT adoption and a strong distribution network. Android seamlessly integrates with Google services promising free and open Internet. The vague notion of “HP Experience” looks pretty pale in comparison. Critically important, app developers and Internet companies already have their hands full with iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, not to mention the upcoming Windows Phone 7. What does HP have to offer in exchange for some mind-share? Any bright ideas? Last, but definitely not least. Mobile operators/carriers take on the lion’s share of smartphone promotion and subsidy costs, hoping to attract new subscribers and increase ARPU of existing ones. What can HP/Palm offer to convince operators to take marketing and subsidy dollars from iPhone, Blackberry and Android, and put them into HP/Palm?  I don’t see much. Do you? Clear differentiation, developer mindshare and operator subsidies  are all critical today for the success of a smartphone platform. All these were and remain Palm’s weaknesses regardless of its financial situation. HP does not complement Palm in any of these critical areas. Chasing the Apple dream A quick glance at HP earnings breakdown reveals HP as an electronics equipment company at its core. The company generates most of it revenues from selling printers, laptops, desktop PC and servers. Smartphone unit sales are catching up to laptop sales, while laptop margins are getting thinner and thinner. It is easy to see how tempting would it be for HP management to try to emulate Apple’s model of selling high-margin devices. However Apple owes much of its success to its vertical integration, which allows blending hardware, software and services into iconic products. This vertical integration is ideally suited for breaking new grounds and creating new product categories. It is critical factor in Apple’s ability to create such products as Apple Lisa, iPod, iPhone and iPad. As explained by Clayton Christensen in this seminal paper, vertical integration is an advantage in emerging product categories, where it helps to overcome technical challenges. Vertical integration however becomes a disadvantage in maturing markets, where flexibility, customization and modularity are of greater importance. It is difficult to see HP successfully reproducing Apple’s model. The opportunity to be the first with iPhone-like product does no longer exist. Is this good news? The deal doesn’t look particularly bright for HP shareholders. But may be in the broad scheme of things the deal is great news for many other people: Investment bankers will pocket multi-million dollar commissions, Palm’s investors and management will be spared from their misery, HP executives will boost their ego, business newspapers will sell some ads, and bloggers (including myself) will have something to write about. How do you think the acquisition will shape up for Palm and HP? – Michael [Michael Vakulenko has been working in the mobile industry for over 16 years starting his career in wireless in Qualcomm. Throughout his career he gained broad experience in many aspects of mobile technologies including handset software, mobile services, network infrastructure and wireless system engineering. Today Michael consults to established companies, start-ups and operators. He can be reached at michaelv [/at/] WaveCompass.com] #acquisition #claytonchristensen #ARPU #smartphone #webos #palm #synergy #hp #Blackberry #mobile #operators #mobileindustry #windows #subsidy #visionmobile

[The Wholesale Application Community has made big headlines in the last two months. But beyond the affectionate operator feelings and investments this signals towards developers, will the initiative succeed where JIL has failed? Guest author Simone Cicero digs behind the hype to see what lies behind the WAC buzz] Despite its impressive line up of network operators, the Wholesale Applications Community initiative has been greeted with skepticism across both industry-insider and developer audiences. Founded in February 2010, WAC is an initiative backed by 24 operators with the incredibly audacious vision of unifying apps distribution, packaging and execution. WAC’s mission is about realising “write once deploy everywhere” for mobile applications and enabling developers to “create applications for the long tail” (a concept that dates back to 2004) So how does WAC plan to achieve such ambitions? The operator-backed initiative has indicated it will provide: – a reference implementation for a web runtime environment as well as Network Operator APIs – tools for development including an SDK and an emulator – billing enablers and specifications for WAC compliant application stores (as mentioned in the FAQ) WAC = BONDI + JIL Like a phoenix, WAC seems to be born out of the BONDI and JIL initiatives and has committed to evolving BONDI and JIL into a common specification within the next 12 months. OMTP’s BONDI has been the most-successful operator-backed initiative aimed at developers. BONDI is in essence a specification of Device APIs for securely accessing device functionality (incl. status, sensors, telephony and SIM APIs) and user data (incl. phonebook, location and gallery). BONDI APIs are accessible from widget runtimes and should (theoretically) also become available via browsers. The BONDI project has attracted the interest of a few thousand developers and provided an official Windows Mobile reference implementation (with more unofficial implementation projects in the pipeline). We should also see deployment on commercial handsets by the end of 2010  with the first BONDI-compliant widget SDK already appearing from LG. The JIL (Joint Innovation Labs) project was created by four mega network operators (Vodafone, Softbank, China Mobile and Verizon) to hook operators within the App Store game, and control the app submission, billing and distribution process. JIL  is a realisation that the standards route (read: OMA or GSMA) is a turtle-speed approach in a rabbit-speed market. As such, JIL embraced and extended the existing W3C widget specs, adding its own APIs and security model.  However, despite the operator investments and ambitions, to date JIL has not delivered much beyond a widget spec and SDK. A third operator initiative that is part of the WAC scope is Network APIs, i.e. APIs allowing resources from the network (e.g. location, presence, user info) to be exposed programmatically to developers: in this area WAC will build on early achievements of GSMA OneAPI Initiative. In essence WAC is an attempt to wrap BONDI, JIL and Network API specs and tools into a single operator-led initiative. In parallel to the technical objectives, WAC aims to define a simplified distribution and deployment model for mobile apps. Rather than build its own Market WAC will probably seek to certify “associated WAC application stores” as well with third party markets offering WAC compliant applications. WAC challenges ahead To pragmatically assess WAC’s potential, we need to consider how it differs to what’s come before, the environment in which it plays in, and its stated ambitions and roadmap. Some industry observers compare the Wholesale Applications Community with the JCP (Java Community process) and Java ME in terms of the challenges of standardising app development and distribution. Despite being still the most used and, for sure, the runtime with the largest installed base, the story of Java ME as a platform has been undoubtedly fraught with strategic and execution flaws. Sun failed to see the opportunity of an app store; Java store is both a half-baked effort and a latecomer to the App Store market considering that Java ME was launched in 2001. Neither did Sun succeed at its main goal – promulgating a consistent runtime (open source or closed source) within the 1B-a-year device market by choosing to over-protect its traditional revenue streams coming from licensing and TCK testing. Sun also chose to license its reference implementation rather than impose a Sun-brewed, mobile Java runtime with consistency and compatibility as the first priority. In parallel, the design of JCP proved too slow and bureaucratic. The JCP members spent too long entangled in preferred ballots, drafts, reviews, public vs private releases, resulting in specs that were just too late to market. The best testament to that was probably the MIDP3 saga, which arrived at the era of Android and iPhone development that doesn’t need Java ME any more. With 24 operator members behind the WAC initiative, it’s going to prove hard to reach consensus amongst competitors. It’s also worth realizing that whereas Java ME has been loosely governed by Sun Microsystems (an entity external to the mobile value chain) the WAC consortium is led by operators who play a critical role in the mobile value chain and can, at least in the developed mobile markets, drive the product customization phase – and as such WAC is better positioned at – for example – mandating WAC runtime specs to be preloaded on an Android handset. At the same time, operator specs are seen by handset OEMs as long wishlists with the device compliance index being on continual decline for European operators. The timing of WAC is another challenge. Given that it will take (at least) 12 months to merge BONDI and JIL, the first WAC-compliant device won’t hit the market before mid-2011. Where will iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and the other competing platforms be in the next 12 months? What features should a developer expect from a runtime hitting the market in 18 months’ time? Not to mention that developer choices are already being set in stone as the major platforms lock-in developer mindsets (just look at how fast iPhone/iPad apps are ramping up now that that OSX is the number one choice for many mobile developers). Is there a future for WAC? The apps market is showing worrying signs for operators: mobile app stores are depriving operators from new revenue streams and pushing them further away from the customer front – only leaving operators with the cost burden of supporting customers in the post-sales phase and building out bigger, fatter bit pipes to carry the app-induced traffic. Once upon a time, operators were responsible for most technology innovation like voicemail, the 2-line-in-1-SIM, premium SMS and Multimedia MMS and high speed networks. Operators are still in the driver seat with 70% of the mobile trillion-pie flowing through the networks. In Europe, North America and the Far East, network operators still play the dominant role whilst in control of product ranging, subsidy, distribution and retailing decisions. Yet during the last few years, the ownership of innovation in mobile services and handset products is migrating from the operator hands to Internet/PC players, with operators left to play the role of bureaucrats, support providers and handset subsidization agents.  The latest operator innovation like RCS, JIL and network-exposed location seems only to reinvent the wheel. All this, while players from the PC/internet industry like Apple exploit the rivalry between operators by soliciting major subsidies. At the end of the day, the Wholesale Applications Community initiative is a knee-jerk reaction on the part of operators – an effort towards embracing developers and seizing the community of value-adding actors away from the likes of Nokia, Apple and Google. Now the question is how well and how quickly can WAC execute on the ambitious declaration of intents that WAC is today. WAC should exploit its stronghold to add value where gaps exist at present, rather than reinventing the wheel. As such, instead of specifying runtimes or gating (and chocking!) the application submission process, WAC should focus on mandating an affordable and consistent revenue sharing policy across operators. By facilitating micro-payments WAC could enable new service charging models such as pay per (single) use, giving developers important alternatives to the free, ad-supported or paid app options. Another key focus for WAC should be to empower developers with unique network-based APIs like user demographics and targeting and provide decent usage analytics (as mentioned by O2’s James Parton) and a recommendation engine to allow developers to better target the user audience and their application features based on the vast amount of demographics and usage information the operators/carriers hold in their network. Finally, rather than specifying a web runtime spec based on a lowest-common-denominator approach, WAC should embrace existing runtime specs as much as possible, and consider embracing HTML5 which seems to be unanimously adopted by the major players of the industry, including Nokia, Apple and Google. [Update: On May 5, WAC held an analyst webinar outlining a few important points. Specifically, Tim Raby, CEO of OMTP is acting as the interim CEO of WAC, while a formal Board for the non-profit organisation will be elected in July 2010. Secondly, WAC indicated it’s planning to standardise the commercial model (perhaps extending to the revenue share formula) for developers and ‘compliant’ app store owners. Developer documentation, developer events and further details on the mission and deliverables of WAC are planned for the second half of 2010.] What are your thoughts on WAC and the role of operators in mobile apps? – Simone [Simone is an mobile strategist, innovation specialist, technology addict and open source enthusiast, having followed the disruptive changes of the mobile industry over the last few years. Simone has served at Three’s Global Device and Application group and at as a consultant at Altran. You can also follow Simone on his personal blog at meedabyte.wordpress.com] #mobileapps #javame #mobiledevelopers #jil #google #nokia #Apple #jcp #lg #bondi #motorola #Android #omtp #iphone #samsung

[Is Android really open? Research Director Andreas Constantinou uncovers the many control points behind Android and explains why Android might be the most closed system in the history of open source]. The article is also available in Chinese and Greek. You thought Android was open? The Android governance model consists of an elaborate set of control points that allows Google to bundle its own services and control the exact software and hardware make-up on every handset. All this while touting the openness rhetoric that is founded on the Apache permissive license used in the Android SDK. [updated in response to reader comments]: Whereas Android is completely open for the software developer ecosystem, it’s completely closed for the handset OEM (pre-load) ecosystem. There is no other platform which is so asymmetrical in terms of its governance structures. Indeed, Google’s mobile platform is the smartest implementation of open source designed for driving commercial agendas. But before we dig into why, it’s worth discussing why Android’s success has very little to do with open source. What makes Android tick Despite early skepticism, Google’s Android operating system has been unequivocally supported by the mobile industry, including more network operators and handset manufacturers than one can count – with the stubborn exception of Nokia. Android managed to ramp from 1 handset model in 2008 to 50+ models announced for 2010 launch, leaving most industry observers in awe. The Android success has nothing to do with open source; it’s owed to three key factors: – Apple. As strange as it might seem, Android owes much of its success to one of its arch-rivals. Let me explain. With the unprecedented success of the iPhone and the take-it-or-leave-it terms dictated by Apple to network operators, the carriers have been eagerly looking for cheaper alternatives; as such the tier-1 operators have been embarking on Android projects to produce iPhones for people who can’t afford the iPhone and more importantly, without forking out the 300EUR+ subsidy needed to remain competitive in an iPhone market. – Network operators/carriers around the world are eager to differentiate. Android provides the allure of a unified software platform supporting operator differentiation at a low cost (3 months instead of 12+ months offered by SavaJe, which was also aimed at the MNO customisation market). For larger operators with a software strategy, Android also presents a safe investment, as the mainstream option for bringing down the cost of smartphones. That’s why most Android handset projects are backed by a commercial bipoles of operator + OEM deals, with purchase commitments and NRE fees coming from the operator. – Qualcomm. The $10B chipset vendor has been paramount to Android’s ramp up; manufacturers can take Qualcomm’s hardware reference design which is pre-integrated with Android and can go to market within an estimated 9-12 months (down from 16 months for the Motorola Cliq handset and 24+ months for the HTC G1). Besides Qualcomm we should also mention TI’s OMAP3 platform (on which Moto Droid is based) and ST Ericsson and Broadcom who are ramping up to offer chipsets with out-of-the-box support for Android. In other words, in an Android handset, most of the OEM budget goes into differentiation; compare that to Symbian where most of the OEM budget goes into baseporting (radio and functional integration of hardware) due to historical choices made by Symbian in 2001. All-in-all, Android allows OEMs to reduce their R&D budgets and invest in differentiation, which is mana from heaven to manufacturers. We should also not forget the ‘free factor’ (technically zero per-unit royalties for the public SDK) which stirred the emotional hype around Android handsets. All in all, the ‘open source’ marketing moniker has been very successful at triggering major industry disruption – incl. Nokia ‘s acquisition of Symbian and the derailment of Windows Mobile. Perhaps more importantly, the openness rhetoric and the Google aura has attracted thousands of developers on the platform, at a time when the money equation is sub-par; consider that – compared to the Apple devices – Android handsets are around 9x less in volume and paid-for apps are available in 6x fewer countries. Behind the Open Source facade What’s even more fascinating is how closed Android is, despite Google’s old do-no-evil don’t be evil mantra and the permissive Apache 2 license which Android SDK source code is under. Paraphrasing a famous line from Henry Ford’s book on the Model-T, anyone can have Android in their own colour as long as it’s black. Android is the best example of how a company can use open source to build up interest and community participation, while running a very tight commercial model. [updated in response to reader comments:] Again I ‘ll emphasize that the closed aspects of Android apply to the handset OEM (pre-load) ecosystem, not the software developer (post-load) ecosystem (see the comments section for a deep dive into pre-load vs post-load]. How does Google control what services, software and hardware ships in Android handsets? The search giant has built an elaborate system of control points around Android handsets. To dig deeper we spent two months talking to industry sources close to Android commercials – and the reality has been startling. From a high level, Google uses 8 control points to manage the make-up of Android handsets: 1. Private branches. There are multiple, private codelines available to selected partners (typically the OEM working on an Android project) on a need-to-know basis only. The private codelines are an estimated 6+ months ahead of the public SDK and therefore essential for an OEM to stay competitive. The main motivation for the public SDK and source code is to introduce the latest features (those stemming from private branches) into third party apps. 2.  Closed review process. All code reviewers work for Google, meaning that Google is the only authority that can accept or reject a code submission from the community. There is also a rampant NIH (not invented here) culture inside Google that assumes code written by Googlers is second to none. Ask anyone who’s tried to contribute a patch to Android and you hear the same story: very few contributions get in and often no reason is offered on rejection. 3. Speed of evolution. Google innovates the Android platform at a speed that’s unprecedented for the mobile industry, releasing 4 major updates (1.6  to 2.1) in 18 months. OEMs wanting to build on Android have no choice but to stay close to Google so as not to lose on new features/bug fixes released. The Nexus One, Motorola Droid, HTC G1 and other Experience handsets serve the purpose of innovation testbeds for Google. 4. Incomplete software. The public SDK source code is by no means sufficient to build a handset. Key building blocks missing are radio integration, international language packs, operator packs – and of course Google’s closed source apps like Market, Gmail and GTalk. There are a few custom ROM builders with a full Android stack like the Cyanogen distribution, but these use binaries that are not licensed for distribution in commercial handsets. 5. Gated developer community. Android Market is the exclusive distribution and discovery channel for the 40,000+ apps created by developers; and is available to phone manufacturers on separate agreement. This is one of the strongest control points as no OEM would dare produce a handset that doesn’t tap into the Android Market (perhaps with the exception of DECT phones, picture frames, in-car terminals or other exotic uses of Android). However, one should acknowledge that Android’s acceptance process for Market apps is liberal as it gets – and the complete antithesis of the Apple vetting process for apps. 6. Anti-fragmentation agreement. Little is known about the anti-fragmentation agreement signed by OHA members but we understand it’s a commitment to not release handsets which are not CTS compliant (more on CTS later). 7. Private roadmap. The visibility offered into Android’s roadmap is pathetic. At the time of writing, the roadmap published publicly is a year out of date (Q1 2009). To get a sneak peak into the private roadmap you need Google’s blessing. 8. Android trademark. Google holds the trademark to the Android name; as a manufacturer you can only leverage on the Android branding with approval from Google, much like how you need Sun’s approval to claim your handset is Java-powered. In short, it’s either the Google way or the highway. If you want to branch off Android you ‘re completely on your own and you need resources of the size of China Mobile (see their OMS effort) to make it viable (hint: China Mobile is the biggest network operator bar none). The Open Handset Alliance is another myth; since Google managed to attract sufficient industry interest in 2008, the OHA is simply a set of signatures with membership serving only as a VIP Club badge. Another big chapter in the Android saga is the CTS (compatibility test suite) which is the formal testing process by which a handset passes Google requirements. According to our sources, CTS extends significantly beyond API compliance, and into performance testing, hardware features, device design, UI specs and bundled services. CTS is based on the principle of ensuring baseline compliance, so it’s ok to add features, but it’s not ok to detract; compare this with Apple’s no-Flash policy. Note that beyond CTS compliance, there are additional commercial licensing agreements that OEMs have to sign for Google services and private line access. CTS hampers Android’s progress as well, as it precludes OEMs from creating stripped-down versions of Android that would fit on mass-market phones – those shipping in the 10s of millions. CTS – and forward compatibility to the pool of 40,000+ apps – is Google’s main challenge for hitting a 2-digit market share in the smartphone market. These restrictions – and frienemy relationship between Google and its OEM partners – have stirred up discussions of an ‘Android foundation‘ within OEM circles The Google Endgame With Android, Google aims to deliver a consistent platform to its own revenue-generating services. For now, this is the ad business. But in the future, Google is aiming at voice (reaching the billions who don’t have a data connection) and Checkout (i.e. becoming the Visa of mobile). Yet whatever the endgame, it’s worth realising that [from the manufacturer perspective] Android is no more open – and no less closed – than [licensable operating systems like] Windows Mobile, Apple OSX or PalmOS, Symbian and BREW; it’s the smartest implementation of open source aimed at driving commercial agendas. Android is much less about the do-no-evil rhetoric that the PR spinners in Mountain View would like us to think. [Updated in response to readers’ comments:] so, is Android evil? No, it isn’t. It has done no harm – quite the contrary, Android has boosted the level of innovation on mobile software. The point of the article is not to vilify Google or concoct visions of Darth Vader; but to balance the level of openness hysteria with a reality check on the commercial dynamics of mobile open source. – Andreas you should follow me on twitter: @andreascon [we are running on-site business workshops for companies who want to understand the commercials behind Android and OHA. Contact us if you ‘re interested. Or, if you are a mobile developer, voice out your views on Android and other mobile platforms in the biggest mobile developer survey to date. Join in at visionmobile.com/developers] #cyanogen #operatingsystems #qualcomm #governance #broadcom #google #Apple #opensource #Android #mobilesoftware #mobileapplications #ti

[Why are so many phone manufacturers trying to develop their own branded experience? Guest author Thucydides Sigs argues that there should be a limit to UX innovation and looks at what the phone industry can learn from how car manufacturers differentiate] In Mobile World Congress, during a special panel on “New Devices” Motorola’s VP of software, Christy Wyatt, made an interesting statement: “I don’t want the same phone as my teenage daughter“. This was followed by Ari Jaaksi, Nokia VP of Maemo – nodding his head in confirmation. Hmm. Last I checked, most soccer moms in the US either use an iPhone or want to get one. Most of their teenage daughters either have one or beg for one. And a surprising number of dads do as well. So why is it that Apple is doing quite well without customizing their iPhone, while Motorola and Nokia make a “Signature experience” such a core components of their strategy? Before we start, half of the challenge is due to terminology, so lets setup some definitions. For years, OEMs have been trying to create a unique “Branded Experience” that spans multiple dimensions: how the device feels, which functions and services are bundled, how polished the graphics look. Part of this “Branded Experience” is also how consumers launch or switch between tasks, i.e. the “User Interaction model” which is largely dictated by the underlying “Software Platform”. Most of the major consumer electronics brands have made significant efforts to establish their own “branded user experience”. Lenovo just showed their new U1 Tablet with their own OS and UX during CES, and Dell have been playing with “Dell Experience” on their Linux devices as well. Nokia, which could have been shipping millions of Android phones today, felt compelled to do their own thing and have been spending hundreds of millions on building their own software and services platform – included the user interaction model, consumer services and branded user experience; making an almost life or death bet that they can become a ‘real’ software company. The Phone Industry vs the Car Industry So why are so many device vendors chasing this illusive goal? What are they trying to gain? What kind of user experience customization that makes sense for an OEM? And what doesn’t? To crack this challenge, lets use the car industry as an analogy. Car vendors compete on industrial design, engine and performance, cost, colors, finish, entertainment, comfort and many other factors. But they don’t try to move the gas pedal to the other side just to have their own “Driving experience. Ford or BMW don’t say “We need to create our own driving experiences so we will use a joystick in the center panel and throttle on the door.” Why is it that the Car industry competes on “overall user experience” but mostly refrain from touching the “User Interaction” model ? Design constraints Any interaction design is driven by three constraints: (i) The human body physical constraints, (ii) the task at hand constraints and (iii) the established paradigm constraints First: the human body constraints. How many legs we have effects how many pedals we can use simultaneously. How we sit effects what we can do with our hands vs. legs. Same applies to the phone; the size of our palm, the number of fingers. These physical constraints limit the possible variations of both physical design and interaction design. Sure, you can come up with five pedals but you can’t reach them all at the same time. Or in the phone case, you can create a design with twenty main choices – but you don’t have enough fingers. And then there are the mental constraints of the human mind; how many choices we can effectively deal with at the same time, how we scan from right-to left and top to bottom, etc. Second: the task at hand constraints. You need to drive the car: control speed and direction simultaneously so you need to access both the steering wheel and pedals at the same time. Same with phones; when phones were used mostly for voice calls, you needed to easily access the 0-9 digits with your right thumb and all phones ended up with the 3×5 key matrix. Nobody thought to customize the experience by providing 0-9 keys in a single row.  Well – Nokia did decide to try a circular keyboard with the 3650 – and it didn’t go that well. Third: the established paradigm constraints: once a working interaction model is accepted, it reinforces itself as more and more consumers use it. It does not – and often is not – the best possible interaction model. It just needs to be good enough so consumers will keep on using it. And once they do – and more and more users do – it becomes very hard for others to transition to a different paradigm. So even if you have a better user interaction model, it is often impossible to change the dominant existing interaction model (the Qwerty keyboard is a great example here: suboptimal arrangement, but impossible to change the established paradigm). Small tweaks here and there (a la Manual vs. Automatic cars, Mac vs Windows, or Android vs iPhone) are possible – but there is only so much that makes sense to customize. Android didn’t really copy the iPhone – they are similar because of the human and paradigm constraints involved in small touch devices. Once you design an interface for a four inch touch device, there are not too many different choices. The designs just converge on similar concepts. Attempts to customize the UX beyond that are futile – they result either inferior user experience (because the human or service constraints are ignored) or just don’t get adopted for lack of critical mass. What actually matters What actually matters for a “branded experience” and where differentiation makes sense – is the services & features. Audi can compete by adopting their automobile industrial design language to the latest fashion, bundling “Services” like  infotainment system or features like ABS. In a similar way, phone or computer vendors can differentiate on slicker industrial design, bundled music or navigation services (Nokia attempts to do with Ovi) or features like inductive charging (Palm). Instead of OEMs focusing on strengthening their brand by building their own interaction model, they should focus on the consumers (what a novel concept) and what consumers want: which means empowering the consumers to personalize the device to their own needs. This is the powerful role the application store fills and why Apple can ship the same iPhone to the teenage girl, the soccer mom and the business daddy.  Not only is focusing on the services and app store good for consumers, it is also good for the OEMs: making consumers happy is the best thing you can do to strengthen your brand. And – there is a lot to gain by selling real-estate on their app stores: turning them into “Malls” and renting out sections. Turning the OEM into a ‘landlord’ who can ‘auction’ this ‘real-estate’ statically or dynamically to all application developers. VisionMobile have been covering this trend in their annual Mobile Megatrends report. So why are so many OEMs going down the slippery slope of “Branded User Experience” and end up with their own flawed user interaction model and a large software team needed to keep the effort alive? The faulty OEM logic First, because they are looking at Apple and getting envious. We industry insiders hate to admit it, but there is a strong Apple envy syndrome in the industry. The OEM false logic is something like this “Apple has high margins, branded user experience and owns the user interaction paradigm. So if we develop our own user interaction and create a branded user experience, we will have high margins” WRONG: Just pure faulty logic. The fact that lions have a mane does not mean that if you bought a mane wig you will become a lion.  There is much more to Apple’s high margins than owning the user interaction model. Second, when new usage paradigms emerge, and there is no dominant user interaction model, there are opportunities to innovate and be the first to build the new paradigm.  When the world was dominated by closed source software (the Microsoft era) this offered significant revenue upside. But we live in a different era – “Open Source” has changed the dynamics of the game. All it takes is that at least one of the software solutions be open sourced, and the upside from controlling the basic interaction model and underlying software platform is minimal or none. The company who leads this effort gets industry recognition, establishes itself as a thought leader and strengthens its brand – but it is no longer a sustainable source of revenues or competitive advantage.  To the contrary; quite possibly, they can turn into the “mule” which guides the rest of the industry and can be embraced and extended. Motorola’s Sanjay Jha realized this when he made Motorola embrace (and extend) Android. Nokia on the other hand could have been selling millions of fantastic Android phones with Ovi services if it wasn’t for their Finnish pride. When Microsoft had to fight Netscape in the mid nineties, it has done so by an “Embrace and Extend” strategy. It would be beneficial to many OEMs to remember this and put an end to their mediocre attempts to invent new interaction models. Instead focus on what matters to consumers; great app store, superior services and overall compelling device experience. – Thucycides Sigs [Thucydides Sigs – a pseudonym – has many years of experience juggling computing constraints, mobile software and consumers needs. With that said, imagine listening to a violin sonata not know who the artist is or who composed it. You end up having to listen more carefully in order to make a judgment. He can be reached at thucydides /dot/ sigs [at] gmail [dot] com] #christywyatt #nokia #mobilephones #Apple #AariJaaksi #mobileoperators #carriers #branded #userexperience #Android #carindustry #mobileindustry #iphone

[Just how smart can mobile apps get? Guest author James Parton explains why most apps today are pretty much dumb, just scratching the surface of what could be possible and describes how mobile operators can help power the next-generation of smarter, context aware applications] We have passed the point where there are now more people accessing the internet via a mobile device than via a PC, overall revenue from mobile apps (including ads, payments, and in-app transactions) is expected to grow to $17.5 billion in 2012 from $4.1 billion today, the iTunes store has delivered more than 3 billion downloads, 22 apps are downloaded per second from Nokia’s Ovi store, there are more than 30,000 Apps available in the Android store… you get the idea… There can be no doubt that the explosion of interest around the App ecosystem brought home just how important mobile will be as a future content delivery channel, typified by the increasing number of Apps being produced by leading brands. No digital marketer worth their salt would now neglect having an app story in their digital marketing plan, even if in all honesty some are not quite sure why! However, make no mistake that we are still firmly in the realms of a version 1.0 ecosystem. The App retail delivery platforms are still very basic; in fact they have not yet significantly evolved in terms of features and capabilities from the content delivery platforms that were offering mobile games, wallpapers and ringtones at the beginning of the decade. The Apps themselves are clearly “dumb”. What do I mean by “dumb?” The vast majority of today’s App’s sit on the customer’s handset and have no understanding, or appreciation of its context or the person using it. Yes, increasing numbers of Apps are using location to introduce geographic context, but that is hardly pushing the boundaries of the art of the possible. To take the App ecosystem to version 2.0, Apps have to become “smart”. I believe this is where Mobile Operators finally have a key role to play in the progression of the App ecosystem. Of course this role is not a divine right. The Mobile Operators need to go through considerable change in order to be able to contribute effectively. That change is both technological: opening up “smart enablers” to allow developers to easily consume these capabilities, and secondly: culturally – to embrace the independent developer community and relax their traditional command and control philosophy for mutual gain. So what does a “smart app” look like? Well consider today’s customer experience. You run an app and it is a one size fits all experience i.e. the app behaves exactly the same way for every one of its users, regardless of who they are, and how they are using it. Imagine a “smart” app that could customise the user experience based on intelligent, real time, information delivered from the Mobile Operator. Examples of Mobile Operator unique enhancements to the customer experience could include: On the fly customisation of the App UI based on a detailed understanding of the device currently being used. Remember that increasing numbers of customers are SIM swapping. How do you know that a customer using your service on a Monday via an iPhone is now using your service on a Tuesday using the same SIM in a 3G dongle connected to a Netbook? On the fly customisation of content richness based on knowledge of the users  current connection speed (e.g. 2.5g, 3G, WiFi). For example trying to force rich video content to a customer on a slower 2.5G data connection will probably deliver such a poor customer experience they will never use your app again. If you know in real time their connection speed, you can deliver the most appropriate experience. Personalisation of content and configuration of your App UI based on user demographics (gender, age, location, social economic profile, etc) Targeting & profiling of the audience based on segmentation information e.g. travel profile (stationary, commuter, jet-setter), spend segment (>€100 per month, €50-100 per month, €30-50, etc). Micro billing to the customer’s mobile bill or debits from their pre pay balance at VISA like transactions rates. In-App interactivity via messaging or calling Up -selling the customer from a basic service to a premium guaranteed service (for example low ping rate for multiplayer gaming apps). Then for the owner of the App, post usage analytics providing data like who, where, how long their users are consuming their services, and other customers of the Mobile Operator that match their current users profile, who could be targeted by a marketing campaign. Examples of the enablers that Mobile Operators could deploy include; quality of service, billing, handset information, customer analytics, network traffic analytics, messaging, call management, location, age verification, tariff information. The list can go on and on, and in fact in our own planning sessions we have identified over 50 potential enablers. This is a more intelligent way of developing not only the App, but also the business opportunity. Via the Network Operators turning their network infrastructure and assets into a plug and play platform, Mobile Operators become vital in the creation process of the second wave of ‘intelligent’ apps that can deliver far richer experiences for users which will drive adoption, longevity, and profitability. Evangelisation and education on the benefits of creating “smart” Apps is crucial – this won’t just happen by itself. We are at the start of the process, and many companies are only now trying to get to grips with their App 1.0 strategy. To ensure Mobile Operators both identify and capitalise on the opportunity to become relevant in the App ecosystem, it is vital they adopt an open and transparent approach. Therefore there cannot be enough effort to bring together the various players in the App ecosystem to share thinking, create strategy and influence product roadmaps, and marketing plans. A great example of this is the Mobile Entertainment Forums Smart Enabler Initiative. I’d strongly recommend you check it out and get involved. Critically the experiences and enablers I have described here are not commercial reality today. Talking and listening to developers will be essential to ensure that the Mobile Operators invest in the right technology enablers and introduce compelling business models to encourage their adoption. Of course enablers are just one piece of a complex App ecosystem. There are many other challenges that hinder unlocking the full commercial value of the market place, not least the fragmentation and choices available to developers at the handset Operating System level. However, our approach is the same: dialogue and insight. That is exactly why O2 Litmus has partnered with VisionMobile to undertake the largest developer research to date. We’re encouraging all mobile developers to participate, and we look forward to sharing the results with you all. Have your say at visionmobile.com/developers. I’d welcome your thoughts on both this piece and some key questions it poses: Have you used a Mobile Operator enabler? What was the experience like? What enablers do you need to make your App “smart”? How can we effectively spread this message? James Parton Head of O2 Litmus You should follow me on Twitter at @jamesparton [James is a Chartered Marketer specialised in Mobile. With an award winning track record of product delivery including twenty five major launches, featuring twenty first to market achievements, including MMS, mobile video, mobile music downloads, the UK DVB-H Broadcast TV trial in 2005, and the ticketing and interactive services supporting The O2 Arena in London. Recognised by Revolution Magazine as one of the “Future 50”, James is a regular industry speaker, panellist, judge, blogger, and has lectured in Marketing and New Product Development at The University of Oxford Faculty of Continuing Education and Reading University.] #networkapis #telefonica #o2 #carriers #operators #mobileapplications #iphone #networkoperators

[Is Adobe’s mobile strategy doomed? Mark Doherty guest author and Platform Evangelist for Mobile and Devices at Adobe responds to the recent criticism and argues that the best is yet to come] Today Flash is used for the 70% of online gaming and 75% of video; driving innovation on the web for over a decade. Flash Player’s decade long growth can be attributed to three factors: Adobe customers such as BBC, Disney, EPIX, NBC, SAP and Morgan Stanley can create the most expressive web and desktop applications using industry leading tools. The Flash Player enables unparalleled cross platform consistency, distribution and media delivery for consumers on the desktop (and increasingly on mobile) A huge creative community of designers, developers, illustrators are involved in defining Flash, and hence driving the web forward. Now, as consumers diversify their access to the web they are demanding the same experiences irrespective of the device.  Content providers and OEMs across industries recognize this trend and are delivering Flash Player and AIR as complimentary web technologies to extend their vertical propositions.  The process of actually delivering this is not trivial, and was made more complex by a failing global economy, but we are on schedule and the customer always wins. Where we ‘ve been The success of Flash on mobile phones has been second to only Java in terms of market penetration, but second to none in terms of consistency.  According to Strategy Analytics, Flash has been shipped on over 1.2 Billion devices, making it the most consistent platform available on any device. Adobe announced in 2008 a new strategy for reseeding the market with a standardised Flash single runtime, creating the Open Screen Project, an alliance of mobile industry partners to help push this new vision.  So why the change of plan? In the historically closed, or “wild west” that is the mobile ecosystem, web content providers and developers have found it too difficult to reach mobile devices. In practical terms, it was too difficult for the global Flash community to reach consumers, and to do that in a manner consistent with the consumer reach of desktop content.  Japan has been the most successful region because of deep involvement from NTT DoCoMo and Softbank, and by enabling the use of consistent web distribution. That said, agencies such as Smashing Ideas, ustwo and CELL (sorry to those I’m missing out) have established valuable businesses in this space by building strong partnerships with OEMs. On the top end of this success scale, Forbes recently announced Yoshikazu Tanaka has become the first Flash Billionaire with the incredibly successful Flash Lite games portal Gree in Japan.  (Gree is a “web service”, not desktop or mobile, and is indicative of what can be achieved using Flash as a purely horizontal technology across devices) In all, our distribution and scaling plans worked very well for Adobe, but outside Japan the mobile “walled gardens”, and the web on devices today, didn’t work for our customers.  The cost of doing business with multiple carriers in North America and Europe and the lack of web distribution to a common runtime left our customers with few choices. It was time for a new plan. Open Screen Project Delivering on the Open Screen Project vision at global scale with 70 partners is a huge task; it was always going to take about two years.  We are very much on schedule with Flash Player 10.1 and AIR, although eager to see it rollout. However, describing the goals of the Open Screen Project in terms of dates, forecast market share, Apple’s phone or their upcoming tablet, specific chipsets or Nokia hardware is to miss the whole point.  The Open Screen Project is not a “mobile” solution; it’s about the global content ecosystem. In summary – connecting millions of our developers and designers with consumers via a mix of marketplaces and the open web. Google and Microsoft are great examples of companies that have competitive technologies and services, but both companies still use Flash today to reach consumers.  Google use Flash for Maps, Finance and youtube, and Microsoft for MSN Video and advertising.  So indeed we have a co-opetition between Silverlight and Flash, or Omniture and Google Analytics, but together our goal is to enable consumers to browse more of the web on Android, Windows Phone and other devices in the future. Today, over 170 major content providers (including Google) are working with us right now to optimize their HTML and Flash applications for these mobile devices.  In the coming months we’ll begin the long roll out process, updating firmware, enabling Flash Player downloads on OEM marketplaces.  We’re projecting that by 2012, 53% of smartphones will have Flash Player installed. It’s really exciting to see it coming together and so many big names involved, why not have a peek behind the curtain? Flex Mobile Framework To enable the creation of cross-platform applications even simpler Adobe is working on the Flex Mobile Framework. Essentially we have taken all the best elements of the open source Flex 4 framework and optimized it for mobile phones. Using the framework and components you will be able to create applications that can automatically adapt to orientation and layout correctly on different screens. The most important addition is that the Flex Mobile Framework “understands” different UI paradigms across platforms. For example, the iPhone doesn’t have a hard back button and so the Navigation bar component will present a soft back button on that platform. In terms of developer workflow we expect that all background logic of applications will run unchanged.  User interfaces and high-bitrate video will need some adjustments for some hardware, though most changes will be basic changes like bigger buttons, higher compression videos and to adapt HTML for mobile browsers. Over time with the Flex Mobile Framework, our goal is to enable our customers to create their applications within a single code base, applying some tweaks for each platform for things like Lists, Buttons or transitions.  In this sense we can expect to enable the creation of applications and experiences that are mobile centric, and yet cost effective by avoiding fragmented solutions where appropriate. We are aiming to show the Flex Mobile Framework later in the year, and I’d love to see it supported in Catalyst in the future. The Year Ahead Throughout 2010 we will see Flash Player 10.1 on Palm’s WebOS, Android 2.x, with Symbian OS and Windows Phone 7 coming in the future. In addition to that we also have plans to bring Flash Player 10.1 to Blackberry devices, netbooks, tablets and of course the desktop. For less powerful feature phones we’ve got Flash Lite, and all of these platforms will demonstrate Flash living happily with HTML5 where it’s available. Adobe AIR 2 is also in beta right now, enabling users to create cross-platform applications that live outside the browser on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. AIR is of course mobile ready, and later in the year we’ll be bringing AIR to Android phones, netbooks and tablets. On top of that, you will also be able to repackage your AIR applications for the iPhone with Flash Professional CS5 very soon. The rollout and scale of Flash Player and AIR distribution over time are now inevitable, and largely committed over a year ago. There are risks of course; these ecosystems are moving targets just like they have always been.  However, I’m extremely confident that we can build upon our previous successes, learn from our mistakes and innovate faster than any of our competitors. – Mark Doherty Platform Evangelist for Mobile and Devices at Adobe #flashlite #adobeflex #webos #openscreenproject #symbian #Adobe #Android #flash #mobile

[Where is Adobe really heading with Flash in mobile? Guest blogger Guilhem Ensuque deconstructs Adobe’s recent AIR and Flash mobile strategy and argues why Adobe should go back to the drawing board] The article is also available in Chinese. Seen from the outside, Adobe’s mobile game plan is an extension of the same strategy that took them to near-ubiquity in the desktop browser. It’s about putting the Flash Player everywhere for free and cashing-in on the designer and developer tools – plus distribution and analytics services (see the Omniture acquisition). Adobe bets its mobile future on taking the Flash runtime to a forecasted 50% of smartphones by 2012, according to the company. This strategy has worked well in the past for Adobe in the browser and desktop space. The mobile business is however a completely different animal – which is why Adobe’s strategy will fail. Here’s why. The two iterations of Adobe’s mobile strategy Adobe’s mobile strategy v1 was Flash Lite. It has enjoyed massive deployments – more than 1.2 billion devices to date according to VisionMobile’s 100 million club. From a financial standpoint however, Flash Lite royalties represent less than 1.5% of Adobe’s overall revenue. More importantly, based on discussion with people familiar with the matter, I would estimate that only ~3% of Adobe’s 1million+ mainstream Flash developers customers have been creating Flash Lite content (although no public data is available). What’s the lesson here ? It’s that subsidizing the Flash Lite runtime penetration into 40-50% of devices did not translate automatically in developers adoption. From the developer’s point of view, Flash Lite indeed lacked a direct content/apps distribution channel in the pre-App Store and “walled gardens” era. It also had different APIs compared to the “full” Flash, and integrations in OEMs handsets were fragmented. Adobe’s Mobile Strategy v2 was announced in May 2008 as a complete reset of their Flash Lite strategy, aiming to address these obstacles. With the Open Screen Project (OSP), the mainstream Flash Player (v10) and its sibling the AIR runtime are now at the center of the Flash Platform “galaxy” across all types of terminals – desktop, smartphones, TVs, and more. With this strategy reset, Adobe is going back to square zero to infiltrate the mobile device market with a consistent runtime. Adobe pledges to waive royalty fees for partner OEMs who are collaborating in the Flash/AIR integration effort on their platforms, ensuring over-the-air updateability and consistency. In addition, OSP partners allow distribution and monetisation of Flash content and AIR apps through their app stores (and also through Adobe’s own Distribution service). Adobe v2 strategy is in essence a pledge to its key customers – organisations like digital agencies paying for design tools and media outlets paying for flash video delivery servers. A pledge that the Open Screen Project will extend the reach of their current technology and people skills investments to the mobile masses – and succeed where Flash Lite hadn’t before. Sounds good on paper, but … Time for a reality check Almost two years after the launch of the Open Screen Project, the results are somewhat lukewarm: Flash Player 10.1 is still not released publicly on any mobile device (expected some time in 2010 for some platforms). Flash Player 10.1 will not run on existing Symbian S60 devices (reading between the lines of this Symbian Foundation announcement and that Nokia whitepaper). Flash Player 10.1 will not run on existing Windows Mobile 6.5 devices (see here). Flash Player 10.1 will only run on devices that have the very-latest mobile chipset architecture (Cortex-A8 or above – see here). And finally, Apple has slammed the door shut in Adobe’s face with the iPhone and now iPad staying decidedly Flash-free. In short, it is not yet possible to deploy “full” Flash content to any mobile device. And even when Flash Player 10.1 is finally released, it will only address a minority of smartphones. The promises to OSP partners and Adobe customers have yet to live up to their expectations. At the same time, Adobe is planning (hoping?) that Flash will be deployed on 50% of the smartphone base by 2012. Adobe developers looking for alternatives. While waiting for the OSP to bear fruit, developer mindshare has been drifting towards alternatives with proven market traction – most notably the iPhone’s XCode/Objective-C environment, developing apps on demand from brands or for sale on Apple’s App Store. Bridge technologies have also emerged to fill the void. For example, OpenPlug’s ELIPS Studio allows Actionscript developers to build native cross-platform mobile apps, while Appcelerator’s Titanium and ANSCA Mobile’s Corona are trying to lure Flash developers away from Actionscript to Javascript and Lua programming, respectively. The Google-Adobe “co-opetition” Adobe places high hopes on its OSP partners, first and foremost Google, who demo’ed Flash on the NexusOne in Eric Schmidt’s keynote at Mobile World Congress. Adobe is banking on the success of Android as the vehicle to deploy Flash far and wide into smartphone land. Yet betting on Google’s helping hand is far more risky than it sounds. Adobe is in fact competing with Google in many areas: Advertising & Analytics: The more ‘paid search’ dollars go into Google’s AdWords/AdSense, the less dollars go into premium ‘display advertising’ campaigns designed by digital agencies that buy Adobe technologies. Google Analytics also competes directly with Omniture, Adobe’s latest USD 1.8 Billion acquisition. Online services: Adobe has launched the Photoshop.com online service, betting on its brand to attract consumers who want to edit and share photos. No luck, Google has just acquired Picnik – another image editing service. The two also compete in other online services like document sharing or web conferencing. Web standards: Google is a heavy backer of HTML5 (in W3C and with Chrome). HTML5 is seen as a long-term alternative for Flash on the web, including for video delivery. Video: Google’s YouTube is already repurposing its content to the MPEG4/H.264 format instead of Flash Video so that it can play on the 50+ million iPhones/iPods. And an HTML5 version of YouTube has just been launched. Google has also acquired On2 technologies, developers of the VP series of video codecs and holders of a significant patent potfolio. Some, like the Free Software Foundation, have called upon Google to opensource this codec and free it from patent royalties. Such a move would resolve the current HTML5 video codec dispute and make the proprietary Flash Video redundant. Other Adobe partners hedging their bets ? Beyond Google, I would argue that Adobe’s strategy with the Open Screen Project is putting it on a collision course with too many other players for it to succeed. As Francisco Kattan (former Adobe exec) puts it on his blog: “The strategy to differentiate with applications is not limited to Apple. RIM and Samsung have made recent moves that point to their aspiration to differentiate their devices with applications (although neither can afford to pick the Flash battle at this time; their positions are under attack by Apple and Google and are too busy playing defense)”. Indeed Samsung’s Bada and RIM’s SuperApps are vertical propositions that attempt to create “stickiness” with application developers through proprietary APIs and distribution systems, going against Adobe’s ambitions for a consistent horizontal environment. To second Francisco’s analysis, I would also add Nokia to the list of Adobe Open Screen Project partners who are at the same time buidling up a vertical applications and developer ecosystem with OVI and its associated runtimes, Qt and WebKit. The major OEMs are not sitting idle and waiting for Adobe to deploy Flash/AIR and own the service delivery platform. They are trying to replicate Apple’s formidable hardware+software+services model while grappling for developer and consumer mindshare. The fallacy of a unified mobile user experience Adobe’s unified Flash Platform strategy is built on the premise that designers and developers (i.e. Adobe’s key customers) can create content that spans all terminals, form-factors and interaction experiences – thanks to a ubiquitous consistent runtime. Yet, the freedoms enjoyed by Flash developers in the context of windowed desktop user interfaces and multi-tabbed browsers simply cannot apply in mobile phones environments. There are driving forces in the mobile space beyond the developer or designer’s control that constrain what is displayed “on the glass”. For example: limited screen real-estate, end-user need for coherence between different applications, interaction with the native device UI for priority events like incoming calls, OEM or operator branding, design guidelines pertaining to most application stores, the list goes on and on. What needs to be on Adobe’s drawing board Instead of coaxing its OSP partners into adopting the Flash Player and AIR in all their designs (a “cathedral” vision), Adobe should embrace the diversity that they offer (a “bazaar” vision) – by using its tools to expose the strengths and idiosyncrasies that make each mobile device different. Tools are Adobe’s core strength (and a massive proportion of its revenue). Photoshop and Dreamweaver are the de-facto tools when it comes to graphics and website design. A success that Adobe built without having to put any proprietary image codec or browser on every desktop. Adobe is already experimenting with a new tools-centric approach rather than a runtime-centric Flash/AIR strategy. Here are two examples: The CS5 packager for iPhone, allows Flash designers to create native iPhone apps. The joint effort with Nokia allows WRT widget development in Dreamweaver. Along the same lines, Adobe needs to go back to the drawing board and redesign its mobile strategy around a consistent toolset, rather than a consistent runtime. Here’s how: Open source the Flash Player code, and hand over its governance to an independent organization (ala Eclipse). This would share the costs of Flash Player development, its porting to devices, and increase reliance on Adobe’s tools. Note that Adobe has taken already some timid steps in this direction with the handing over of the Tamarin virtual machine to Mozilla. Massively contribute to open source HTML5 browser implementations (WebKit or Mozilla, or both). This way, Adobe would regain credibility and influence, to balance the dominance of Apple and Google in that area. Make Dreamweaver the best toolchain for mobile web apps by providing extensions for the multiplicity of mobile widget APIs (JIL, Nokia WRT, BONDI, Palm WebOS…) and making sense out of the Javascript/CSS UI and MVC frameworks quagmire at the tools level. Push the envelope with Catalyst. An area currently underserved in mobile is the designer-developer workflow. The new Catalyst tool from Adobe is very promising here, especially if it’s blended into the native user experiences afforded by the underlying mobile platforms. Make Flex the best toolchain for native mobile apps by severing its dependency on the FP/AIR runtimes, giving it the ability to build natively (like the CS5 packager for iPhone) and exposing the specific native services and UI components of each platform (from iPhone to BREW). This is particularly promising as the Flex toolchain (ActionScript / MXML / Flex Framework / Flex Builder IDE) is light-years ahead of the existing mobile C/C++ SDKs in terms productivity and capabilities. It also holds great potential for bridging fragmentation between mobile platforms. In conclusion, Adobe’s runtime-centric mobile strategy with the Open Screen Project has been based on naïve assumptions: going back to square zero post Flash-Lite, and sowing the smartphone fields with a consistent, heavier runtime across all terminals. But this strategy is suffering from implementation delays and from its dependency on partner co-opetition. More importantly, it proposes to developers a horizontal contents & applications distribution vector at a time when the industry is going vertical. Adobe should instead refocus its resources on a tools-centric strategy allowing “Write Once, Tweak for Any, Build for All”. – Guilhem [Guilhem Ensuque is Director of Product Marketing at OpenPlug. He has more than twelve years of experience in the areas of mobile software and mobile telecoms. Guilhem was a speaker at last year’s Adobe MAX conference. His favorite pastimes (beyond mobile software strategy!) include making his newborn daughter smile and sailing his Hobie Cat with his girlfriend. You should follow Guilhem on twitter @gensuque_op] #developertools #mobilestrategy #strategy #Android #actionscript #osp #walledgardens #iphone #flashdevelopers

[The PC-esque commodisation of the mobile industry has been prophesied many times before, but never before has it become so lucidly clear. Research Director Andreas Constantinou uncovers the dynamics of the mobile industry that will lead to a Wintel future, and the impending disruption to the network business model] We ‘ve all heard this before. The story of the bit-pipe future for mobile networks/carriers and the threat of Google and Facebook to the mobile industry status quo. But this time the facts are clear; the dice has been cast and is pointing to a Wintel future for the mobile industry. Bear with me – this is a long argument. The virgin years of mobile The mobile industry has rapidly evolved through two decades: – 1990s growth: The 1990s was the decade of unrestrained growth, building up huge empires on thin air (a.k.a. radio spectrum). Operators invested on building networks with worldwide reach, on increasing spectral efficiency (more bits per pipe, setting 2G to 3.5G standards) and snapping up new subscribers – 2000s competition: The 2000s was the decade of competition, reality check and disillusionment. Operators invested in competing with more complex tarriffs, deeper device subsidies, unique devices (custom or exclusives) and bundling fancy services on the device (from mobile TV to myFaves and social networking). Next up: survival The 2010s decade is about survival. It’s no secret that ARPU (average revenue per user) has been dropping for the last few years, and the much-promised data services have failed to deliver. Plus networks are threatened by the establishment of over-the-top services like OEM-own services (Apple App Store, Nokia Ovi, Sony Ericsson PlayNow, RIM Blackberry services), the entry of alternative payment providers (Apple iTunes, Paypal Mobile, Google Checkout), alternative voice providers (Skype, Google Voice) and of course the myriad of social networking services (epitomised by Facebook and Tencent). So, how are operators differentiating today beyond tariff games? – Investing on device subsidies: Network operators are spending big money to snap high-spending customers away from their competitors; for example investing 300-400 EUR on the top models from RIM, HTC/Google and Apple (case in point: Orange France). The subsidies are recouped back from such customers in around 9 months, but without factoring in the disproportionately high cost to the network, where the cost increases linearly per-MB consumed. All this, for a short-lived advantage, no stickiness to the network. Worse than all – operators are pouring marketing and subsidy investments into the same companies – including Apple, Google and RIM – that aim to commoditise their network. – Selling broadband Internet dongles and mobile WiFi (MiFi) hotspot devices at flat-rate bundles that aim to drive revenues, but at the same time lead to surging network OPEX costs. To appreciate this irony, consider that operator marketing budgets are never linked to the network infrastructure OPEX budgets; and so marketing groups may spend away into fancy deals, while resulting in alarmingly high network costs, especially for network maintenance and upgrades. Operators are investing into the bit-pipe business without knowing how to monetise it. – Customising devices (a favourite pastime of operators) like Vodafone 360 and Orange Signature that aim to deliver own services on the mobile, while limiting the experience to high-end devices. Although 360 has some strategic attributes (locking customer contacts into the network), its execution has been inefficient to say the least with a team of 250 people at Vodafone needed to launch the service (which could have been accomplished with perhaps 50 people in a software startup environment). Operators are pushing Internet brands to the forefront of the customer experience (see Skype promos from Three and Verizon) for a short-lived advantage of customer attraction. To sum this all up; operators are investing in their demise, pouring money into the same Internet companies that aim to commoditise them into bit-pipes. Worst of all is they ‘re drawn into a inward spiral, a black hole that is near impossible to escape from; as an operator, if you don’t have the latest devices and cheapest tariffs, your competitors will. The loss of control points The situation is much more dire, as the current balance of power in the mobile industry is about to be shaken up. Operators control around 70% of the mobile industry pie of $1 trillion, thanks to three very important control points: – device subsidies: operators (with few regional exceptions) pour large marketing budgets into promotions and device subsidies, thereby in effect dictating terms to their handset suppliers. Only Apple has been able to challenge this status quo to date, but on a tiny 2% of the mobile market. Yet, a new disruption is appearing in the form of Android that might extend to well beyond a tiny market share, to significantly drop retail price points and render subsidies meaningless (more on this Wintel phenomenon later). – mobile termination: by design, mobile operators are the exclusive gateway to reaching any specific subscriber. That’s how operators have been able to charge ridiculously high voice and roaming charges (incl. receiver pays model). However, mobile termination is slowly coming under threat as more and more services are being delivered over the network like social networking and VoIP, while flat-rate tariffs for mobile Internet is becoming the norm. Consider that Google might at some point offer free voice calls amongst Android device users. It’s a question of when, not if. But abstracting the service from the underlying network carrier, the service providers assume the mobile termination gateway role, by acting as the service transport across networks and devices. – payment broker: The premium SMS boom is the best example of how operators have leveraged their billing relationship outside their network, charging often 50-60% commission for reverse billing, i.e. the ability to charge users for a ringtone, game or televoting from their mobile phone bill. Yet, Internet players are now carving up their niche into the operator-own game in the form of Apple App Store (no doubt to be transformed into a payment gateway for third parties) followed by Paypal Mobile and Google Checkout. Wintel and the Google game A very important change in industry dynamics is underway. Google’s Android has morphed from a feared entrant to a loved ally, with all handset manufacturers (except for Nokia) investing in Android-powered handsets thanks to Android’s low cost of creating a differentiated handset. In parallel, chipset vendors led by Qualcomm and Mediatek are rolling out out-of-the-box solutions that pre-integrate hardware + a software platform + applications (e.g. Android Market), that can be easily differentiated in both plastics and UI. These out-of-the-box solutions will rapidly decrease in price led by the impending price competition amongst chipset vendors (led by Mediatek exports) and the advancement in silicon manufacturing (with sub-40nm chips squeezing smartphone capabilities in feature-phone price points). Combined with Android (low cost of UI differentiation + bundled apps market so incremental revenue) this should lead to a diversity of Android-powered phone at $100 retail price points in the 3-year horizon. This is a game where Asian mobile and consumer electronics manufacturers will gladly play, by creating low-cost, on-demand phone + service solutions for media brands and operators. This is the Wintel game of the PC industry, making its appearance in the mobile industry; only the title of ‘Intel-inside’ is still up for grabs. What’s more, with smartphone prices at $100 dollars, the operator subsidies are going to become meaningless, in effect creating a handicap for network operators and a sudden loss of negotiating power. The tables are slowly turning. What about Symbian and Windows Mobile, you might ask? We believe Symbian will become a Nokia-only operating system (more this on a future post), while Windows Mobile is driven by short-lived motivations today (a fresh UI and an operator interest in it), which can easily be delivered by Android, once UI design and technology firms release customisable layers on top of Android (something that Ocean Observations is hinting to be working on with Brandroid = Brand + Android). What about Apple, Nokia and RIM; the few tier-0 handset OEMs that have developed vertical propositions (from hardware to services) will still be able to command premium prices; making this so very similar to the PC industry where you can buy an Apple computer at premium price or get the same functionality for half the price in a PC clone. The shock to the operators will be like the shock that the music industry got when they woke up one day and realised that the Internet has disintermediated their brick & mortar business model. All is not lost Operators can still get their act together. It’s rare that operators have invested in long-term strategy – see Orange’s investment in mega-SIMs in 2007 (albeit betting at the wrong standard). And there might be the odd operator that has the conviction and foresight at the management level to achieve such long-term planning. We ‘ve long advocated that operators should platformise (read: Network-as-a-Service) while creating new control points and meaningful brand deliverables – for a brief analysis see our Mobile Megatrends 2010 deck, especially the chapter on ‘new smart pipe strategies at the intersection of brands and consumers’. Or drop us a line. Comments welcome as always, – Andreas #vodafone #qualcomm #chipset #mobilephone #rim #wintel #nokia #orange #verizon #facebook #commoditisation #strategy #sonyericsson #Android #bitpipe #handsetmanufacturers #mobileindustry #subsidy #networkoperators #lowcost

[The economic realities will lead to a roller-coaster ride that will shake up the mobile industry. Guest blogger Richard Kramer talks about the impending price war, the implications for industry growth, and how this will alter the landscape of device vendors in the next decade] With all the discussion of technology trends on the blogosphere, there are some harsh economic realities creeping up on the handset space. The collective efforts of vendors to deliver great products will lead to an all-out smash-up for market share, bringing steep declines in pricing. In November 2009 I wrote a note about what Arete saw as the impending dynamics of the mobile device market. I called it Demolition Derby. This followed on from a piece called Clash of the Titans, about how the PC and Handset worlds were colliding, brought together by common software platforms and adopting common chipset architectures. As handsets morphed into connected devices, it opened the door for computing industry players, now flooding in. New categories of non-phone devices A USB modem/datacard market of 70m units in 2009 should counted as an extra third of the smartphone market, as it connected a range of computing devices. By the end of 2010, I believe there will be many new categories of non-phone mobile devices to track (datacards, embedded PCs, tablets, etc.), and they may be equal to high-end smartphone market in units in 2011.  Having looked at the roadmaps of nearly every established and wannabe vendor in the mobile device space, I cannot recall a period in the past 15 years of covering the device market with so many credible vendors, most with their best product portfolios ever, tossing their hats in the ring.  I see three things happening because of this: 1. First, a brutal price war is coming. This will affect nearly every segment of the mobile device market. Anyone who thinks they are insulated from this price war is simply deluded. I have lost count of the number of vendors planning to offer a touch-screen slim mono-bloc Android device for H2 2010. The only thing that will set all these devices apart will be brand, and in the end, price.  Chipmakers – the canaries in the handset coal mine – are already talking about slim HSPA modems at $10 price points, and $20 combined application processors and RF. Both Huawei and ZTE now targeting Top Three positions in devices, with deep engagements developing operator brands. They are already #1 and #2 in USB modems.  Just look at the pricing trends ZTE and Huawei brought to the infrastructure market; this will come to mobile devices. 2. Second, growth will rebound with a vengeance. I expect 15% volume growth in 2010, well ahead of the cautious consensus of 8%.  I first noted this failure of vision in forecasting in a 2005 note entitled “A Billion Handsets in 2007” when the consensus was looking for 6% growth whereas we got 20%+ growth for three years, thanks to the onset of $25 BoM devices. Consumers will not care about software platform debates or feature creep packing devices with GHz processors in 2010. Ask your friends who don’t read mobile blogs and aren’t hung up about AppStores or tear-downs:  they will simply respond to an impossibly wide choice of impossibly great devices, offered to them at impossibly cheap prices. 3. Third, the detente is over. The long-term stability that alllowed the top five vendors to command 80% market share for most of this decade is breaking down.  This is not simply a question of “Motorola fades, Samsung steps in” or “LG replaces SonyEricsson in the featurephone space”.  Within a year, there could be dangerously steep market share declines among the former market leaders (i.e. Nokia) to accompany their decline in value share. Operators are grasping control of the handset value chain; many intend to follow the lead of Vodafone 360 to develop their own range of mid-tier and low-end devices. Whether or not this delivers better user experiences, operators are determined to target their subsidy spend to their favourite ODM partners. In developed markets, long-established vendors are getting eclipsed: in 2010, RIM or Apple could pass traditional vendors like SonyEricsson or Motorola in units. RIM and Apple already handily out-paced older rivals in sales value, and with $41bn of estimated sales in 2010, are on par with Nokia. Hyper competition So where does this lead us? Even with far greater volumes than anyone dares to imagine, there is no way to satisfy everyone’s hopes of share gains, or profits. With Apple driving to $25bn in 2010 sales and Mediatek-based customers seeking share in emerging markets, the mobile device market is entering a phase of hyper-competition. It is all too easy for industry pundits to forget that Motorola and Sony Ericsson collectively lost over $5bn in the past 2.5 years. More such losses are to come. Never before have we seen so many vendors acting individually rationally, but collectively insane. Albert Einstein once famously said that “the defintiion of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result”. The men in the white coats will have a field day with the mobile device market in 2010. – Richard [After four years as the #1 rated technology analyst in Europe, Richard Kramer left Goldman Sachs in 2000 to form an independent global technology research group. Arete has 10 years experience dissecting the financials and industry trends in  semis, software, devices and telecom operators, out of offices in London, Boston, New York and Hong Kong. Richard can be reached at richard [dot] kramer [at] arete.net] #vodafone #chipset #appstores #rim #zte #odm #nokia #smartphone #lg #softwareplatforms #motorola #technologytrends #sonyericsson #Android #mobile #operators #mobileindustry #huawei #pricing #subsidy #samsung

[Following a week of frantic announcements and marketing hype at MWC 2010, VisionMobile’s Research Director, Andreas Constantinou looks at what really matters – the under-the-radar trends that will make the biggest impact in the next two years] 1. Building developer bridges If there was a theme to this year’s Mobile World Congress it was Developers. This year’s App Planet show-in-a-show gathered 20,000 visitors, making the stands of LTE vendors and the CBoss showgirls look pale in comparison. Imagine that. After years and years of efforts in ‘pushing’ the next-gen killer technology (on-device portals, Mobile TV, widgets, ..), the mobile industry is finally seeking inspiration beyond its own confines; at the software developers that will generate even more ‘apps for that’ and drive innovation that will actually pay for the bandwidth investments. The race is on to grab the best mobile developers – and the mobile industry is spending big money on it. This year’s sponsors of mobile developer contests and events are not just platform providers or handset OEMs. Just look at the some of the sponsors of the WIP Jam developer event at MWC: Qualcomm, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, NAVTEQ, O2 Litmus, Oracle. Developer mindshare is expensive as developers have to be attracted away from other platforms which they have invested in; and as such we would argue that the average DAC (developer acquisition cost) is much higher than the average SAC (subscriber acquisition cost). Thankfully there are plenty of marketing budgets to throw into the challenge. Palm is spending $1 million to build its own developer community in a dire effort to win back its once-thriving community of mobile developers. It’s ironic given that it only took the mobile industry 20 years to learn what the software industry understood since the early 1990s; that the smartest people work for someone else, but they will gladly work for your platform if you give them the right tools and audience. And it’s most appropriate that this realisation is happening right now, as the two industries are coming together in the post-iPhone era. One of the big announcements at this year’s MWC was the Wholesale Application Community (WAC), the new operator collaborative effort at connecting to developers. WAC is born out of the merge of two initiatives: OMTP’s BONDI (device API specs for securely accessing user information on the device) and the Joint Innovation Lab, JIL (which besides the hype has had delivered only a widget spec). WAC is an intent of operator collaboration, but one which yet needs to decide what it will be delivering. The GSMA App Planet, WIP Jam, WAC and many other initiatives are trying to capitalise on one of the hottest, yet perhaps understated trends of 2010: building commercial bridges or matchmaking platforms between software developers and the mobile industry. Next question: what’s your platform’s DAC (developer acquisition cost)? [shameless plug: at VisionMobile, we ‘re running the biggest mobile developer survey to date, spanning 400+ developers, 8 platforms and 35+ data points across the entire developer journey. Best of all, the results will be freely published thanks to the sponsorship by O2 Litmus] 2. Quantum leap in mobile devices Industry pundits have been overoptimistic about the dominance of smartphones, time and time again.; but contrary to predictions, the smartphone market share has remained at circa 15-17% of sales as phone manufacturers have remained risk averse; Instead of porting high-cost, high-risk operating systems like Symbian and Windows Mobile on mass market phones, OEMs have preferred to patch their legacy low-risk RTOS platforms with high-end features (read touchscreen, widgets and the like) – see earlier analysis here. Yet the mobile software map is about to change rather abruptly; not because of Android, but as chipset vendors make the leap to sub-40nm manufacturing. Chip cost plays a major role in handset BOM (bill of materials) and that cost is directly proportional to the surface area of the silicon (excluding royalty payments). With the move to sub-40 nm manufacturing processes, you can fit a GPU (graphical processing unit) and even ARM Cortex architectures within the same die size. This means that the smartphone BOM will reduce from $200 to $100 in only 2 years, based on our sources at chipset vendors – and implies that MeeGo, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android can penetrate into a far large addressable market than was possible before. Adobe is banking on this very trend, planning (hoping?) that Flash penetration will reach 50% of smartphones by 2010, or circa 150M devices sold per year. Similarly, Nokia sees revenue contributions from S40 handsets dwindle from around 55% in 2009 to 35% in 2011, replaced by MeeGo (circa 10%) and Symbian (circa 55%) – see slide from Nokia’s Industry Analyst event. This also goes to show Nokia’s continuing investment in Symbian, at a time when the future of the Symbian Foundation is shady. Virtualisation technology is further accelerating the BOM reduction, by allowing the likes of Android and Symbian OSes to sit on the same CPU as the modem stack. OK Labs introduced off-the-shelf reference designs for virtualised Android and Symbian earler in 2009, while at MWC 2010 Virtualogix announced similar deals with ST Ericsson and Infineon. The third (and last!) virtualisation vendor, VMWare (who acquired Trango), is yet to make a similar move. Last but not least, we are seeing new attempts at re-architecting low-cost smartphone software. Qualcomm is making a comeback with its BREW MP software positioning this as a feature-phone operating system and getting major commitments by AT&T. Kvaleberg (a little-known Norwegian engineering company) has productised its 10-years of feature phone integration know-how into Mimiria, a feature phone OS with a clean-room UI architecture that makes variant creation a swift job requiring only 2-3 engineers to customise. Myriad has announced an accelerated Dalvik implementation to speed up Android apps up to 3x, allowing those to run more comfortably in mass market designs. 3. Analytics everywhere Another under-the-radar trend at MWC 2010 was analytics, which was making inroads into the feature set of products across the spectrum – from SIM cards and devices to network infrastructure solutions. Application analytics is the only visible tip of of the iceberg for now, with analytics services available from Adobe, Apprupt, Bango, Distimo, Flurry (merged with PinchMedia), Localytics, Medialets, Mobclix and Motally. There is also plenty of innovation to be had here, with a startup (still in stealth mode) delivering design-time analytics on the type of applications and their use cases. Or another startup which is delivering personal TV program management, and monetising (among others) on the analytics on what TV programs users are watching, searching and sharing. Moreover, analytics is slowly penetrating into operator networks for delivering smarter campaign management, subscriber analysis or network performance. There is a long list of vendor solutions here from Agilent, Airsage, Aito, CarrierIQ, Rewss, Umber Systems, Velocentm Wadaro and xTract among others. One related under-the-radar announcement was that from SIM manufacturer Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) who is launching a product for measuring network quality on the handset. Taking analytic to the next level, the GSMA and comScore recently launched the Mobile Media Metrics product. This is the first census-level analytics product for measuring ad consumption and performance, starting with the UK market, which follows the lucrative business model of TV metrics. Analytics is indeed the most underhyped trend, whose magnitude the industry will only realise in 5-10 years from now. 4. Mobile identity in the cloud Cloud storage for personal data is ubiquitous on the Internet; Google Buzz, Facebook and Dropbox are perhaps the epitomy of this trend. The mobile industry has traditionally fallen behind, but is rapidly catching up in 2009-10 with the cloud-stored Windows Mobile UI, the social networking connectivity layer on the idle screen as seen in Microsoft’s One App, the socially-connected handsets from INQ Mobile, HTC and Motorola (Motoblur), and the 10+ solution vendors who offer addressbook syncing solutions (Colibria, Critical Path, Funambol, FusionOne, Gemalto, Miyowa, Newbay and many more). We used to think of user data as migrating from the SIM card (the operator stronghold) to the handset (the OEM territory). Now the data is once again migrating away from the handset to the cloud, the home-turf of Internet players. This is the next battlefield, in the landgrab to define the interfaces that determine access to our mobile identity. There are two camps competing here; the Internet players who have defined user data access standards (Google, Facebook and Twitter), versus the players who have defined mobile data access standards to date (network operators – see Vodafone 360 and handset OEMs – see Nokia Ovi). This is one of the important battles that will determine who can reap the most profits out of user information by controlling the interfaces that connect them to the outside world (for background see Clayton Christensen’s thesis on the relationship between interfaces and profits). And it’s also what network operators should be rushing to standardise right now, in one of the last battles that will determine their smart-pipe vs bit-pipe future. Comments welcome as always, – Andreas #mobileidentity #operatingsystems #mobiledevelopers #smartphone #hardwaretrends #wac #analytics #mobile #handsetmanufacturers #networkoperators

[What is behind the announcement of Meego operating system by Nokia and Intel? Guest blogger Thucydides Sigs deconstructs what Meego means and its importance to the mobile industry] How much substance is behind the noise of Nokia’s and Intel’s announcement of Meego? A few points to consider. Nokia, who feels threatened by Google’s Android and Chrome OS efforts, is putting significant  efforts in order to expand into other device categories and bring its Ovi services to more consumers in more places. So a move that brings Maemo – together with Ovi (and the underlying Web-runtime apps and Qt cross-platform) to Intel chipsets is a straightforward strategic win. It will allow OVI services – such as Maps – to get into non mobile devices, especially Automotive (which has been a strategic focus for Intel) and other connected (but wired – after all power consumption is Intel’s Achilles heel) devices such as home phones. So is Nokia going to bet it’s future Linux devices on a group of Intel engineers? Nokia is smarter than that: Intel software engineering has never been something to write home about. And Nokia has always been careful in maintaining and winning control over strategic areas. So Nokia will either maintain a parallel internal effort or maintain tight control over the ARM port and the overall MeeGo architecture. Is MeeGo going to really bring Ovi services & Maemo into the hands of tens of millions more consumers? Well, MeeGo open’s a door, but success will depend on the quality of Maemo and Ovi experience. Maemo v6, due late this year, will be catch-up to where Android and WebOS were half a year ago, and were Apple was a year ago. So it is still one or two years behind the rest of the industry. That said, Maemo does not need to be the best – it needs to be good *enough* for ‘mass market’ consumers, so that combined with Nokia industrial design expertise and marketing power, an “object of desire” can still be delivered. It’s this consumer “Desire” that brings us to the Ovi Services angle – and the question of how good will Nokia Services offering will be. Studying the NexusOne, it is impressive to see how Google seamlessly connected it’s many service offering – creating a compelling integrated experience. From a photo gallery that is both local and web (Picassa), through Google Voice (low cost calls, transcribed voice messages) and an almost perfect navigation and mapping experience (including turn-by-turn voice instructions and maps). Contacts, Email, Calendaring are the basics that are a must have. And Google is quickly expanding into other services (note the recent Aardvark acquisition and Buzz launch). Yes, MeeGo gives Nokia a vehicle to bring Ovi to some other device segments, but can Ovi compete effectively with Google’s breadth of services? What about Intel? It has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a software strategy which does not seem to show a clear path to recouping the investment. Moblin, has not been able to ship in any significant volumes, is inferior to either ChromeOS or Android from a software platform perspective, and lacks any kind of services offering (which is why they needed Ovi). If Intel thinks that software is another part of it’s vertically integrated stack that will differentiate the chipsets, then it does not make sense to open it up and make it an open industry initiative. If Intel truly believe that Moblin should be open and used by competing ARM chipset vendors, then what does it gain from spending those hundreds of millions of dollars on the effort? Open Source: ChromeOS, Android and Maemo are creating a very different software ecosystem then the one Intel got used to with Microsoft in the 90s. None of the software players is going to generate significant revenues on the device side. Intel exec’s might  want to re-read Andy Grove book, step outside the box and ask themselves if their software effort still makes sense in the 2010 industry context. And while Intel is spending time on building this software strategy, the chipset market is experiencing a disruptive change, shifting from computing power (where good enough performance is delivered by both Intel and ARM), to battery power and mobility where ARM is clearly superior.  It might be better for Intel to focus it’s efforts back on it’s chipset technology and fix its power consumption problems, because when it comes to wireless devices (either within the home or outside, anything that is not tethered to a power cord), their offering is inferior to ARM, and no amount of software will be able to cover this gaping hole. What about the rest of the chipset industry? Would the other ARM chipset vendors, such as TI, Qualcomm, Broadcom and nVidia follow path and join MeeGo? It’s hard to imagine that any of those companies will want to entrust their software strategy in the hands of Intel: not only is Intel a direct competitor, it software skills leave a lot to be desired, and it’s long term commitment to the space (as outlined above) is not clear. Is Nokia’s involvement enough of a carrot to entice those vendors into MeeGo? Having Maemo running on top of MeeGo will make insertion into Nokia easier, but Maemo is open source and there is nothing holding the chipset vendors from porting Maemo to their chips on their own or with the help of other independent 3rd parties. So we suspect Nokia will give it a modest try, but when it comes to purchasing chips, power, performance and cost will still be the over-riding criteria for Nokia. So, lots of noise that those two monkeys are making, but little impact. MeeGo seems to be cute (qt) and (h)armless, but not a big industry changer. – Thucydides [Thucydides Sigs – a pseudonym – has many years of experience juggling computing constraints, mobile software and consumers needs. With that said, imagine listening to a violin sonata not know who the artist is or who composed it. You end up having to listen more carefully in order to make a judgment. He can be reached at thucydides /dot/ sigs [at] gmail [dot] com] #nexusone #moblin #nokia #maemo #webruntime #intel #strategy #chromeos #mobile #phone

[People have got location all wrong, argues guest blogger Jane Sales, co-creator of flook. Rather than treating the market for location-based applications as a single monolithic entity, Jane breaks it down into use-case-driven segments and makes it concrete by showing the key iPhone applications in each segment.] As the author of a location-based application, I get into many discussions with fellow technologists about the future of the consumer location-based application space. Which app is going to win – MyTown, Foursquare, Urbanspoon, Yelp or perhaps flook? Many of my conversation partners believe that there will be one single winning application – one, and only one, location-based application that people install on their iPhone, iPad or Symbian device. This is a technology-based argument – applications are described as competitive if they use the device’s GPS silicon to determine location. And the argument is unrealistic, to say the least. Do we really believe that Grindr (used by gay people to find nearby partners) co-exists on a device with LocalPicks (used by people of all sexual orientations to find dinner). This is almost as incredible as the claim that UrbanSpoon (also used to find dinner) is a competitor of Bump (used to exchange contact details) because both make use of the iPhone’s accelerometer. Joking aside, the point I am making is ‘it’s not about the GPS, stupid!’. I wonder why analysts are so prone to put a plethora of different applications in the same bucket and say that they are “competing for the location-based mobile application space” – which is like talking about an app “owning the mobile accelerometer application space”. Presumably this is because the location industry is only now coming of age, and understanding of this market is still immature and to some extent ill-formed. There are more than 100,000 applications in the iPhone App Store today. Analysts predict that there will be 300,000 by the end of November 2010. It’s safe to bet that thousands if not tens of thousands of those applications are location-based.  Not only that, but new portable computing platforms such as the Nokia Netbook and the iPad now include GPS silicon in addition to LAN and WAN radios. I expect this trend to push down into lower-end netbooks and laptops. Furthermore, we are already seeing the direct creation of geotagged photos by Nikon’s P6000, and I expect more digital cameras to include GPS silicon over time. Location is becoming a standard computing resource, but that doesn’t mean that all location-based applications are competitors with each other. A common mistake made in technology analysis and trend prediction is to focus on the technology and what it can do rather than the users and what they want to do. We need to return to first principles and consider the use cases rather than the technology employed to achieve them. It became clear to me that to find likely winners among mobile location-based applications, I needed to subdivide the space according to use case. So, beginning each use case with the words, “Near me, I want to”, I listed all the major goals that ordinary people have when they are out and about (see diagram below). Please note that this diagram is not intended to be exhaustive. For example, I have not included niche use cases (such as “I want to add a datapoint to OpenStreetMap”) or any enterprise use cases (such as “I want to track my deliveries”). I’ve included examples of the major iPhone applications within each use case, highlighting the market leader(s) in each case in orange. Potential threats in each use case are shown in red. Broadening this analysis to all mobile applications across platforms, and then to all location-enabled devices is left as an exercise for the reader. Having broken down the location-based service market, it then makes sense to open the discussion on the winner(s)emerging within each use case. In the rest of this article, I will review and analyse the use cases, categorising each of them using the following variables: 1.  Number of app installations: an indication of relative market size within the examined use cases. (huge, large, medium, small, tiny) 2. Volume: frequency of use. (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or infrequently) 3. Market turbulence: will this market remain in flux, or settle out to show one or two winners? 4. Number of majors: is this use case likely to be owned by just one or two players? Or is it more likely that many competitors will continue to share the use case, each concentrating on a different aspect that appeals to different people? Use case: I want to find out where I am and how to get somewhereNumber of installations: hugeVolume: daily-weeklyMarket turbulence: settledNumber of majors: < 10 This is the standard navigation use case and is the most mature segment of the location industry; it has existed in specialised devices long before GPS silicon found its way into mobile phones, and continues to exist in those specialised devices today. Evidence shows that personal navigation can achieve well over 100% penetration – not just per person (I have a TomTom device for driving, a Magellan one for trails and an iPhone for everything else) but also per device (I purchased OffMaps for my iPhone even though I already have a good free navigation system in the shape of Google Maps – OffMaps offers me mapping without data downloads which is useful for locations with no cellular coverage, or for when I’m roaming). Opportunities: indoor navigation As we all know, GPS navigation is hampered by a lack of a clear view of the sky, sometimes even failing to operate well among tall buildings, let alone indoors. Continuing technological innovation will open up indoor navigation – most current systems rely on Bluetooth transceivers. Micello Indoor Maps (now acquired by Here) is the only application in this space that is available for iPhone today. Use case: I want to search to find the nearest XNumber of installations: hugeVolume: hourly-weeklyMarket turbulence: settledNumber of majors: 1 or 2, plus large verticals The generic location-based search space is large, frequently access by users and hotly contested by search providers. Google is of course top of the pile, and will ensure it stays there. It is difficult to see who has the resources to oust them. Yahoo has failed to date, particularly on mobile. In the iPhone space, a move by Apple away from Google Maps as the built-in map application would be disruptive, but I do not believe it is likely. Significant search verticals do exist today (some are listed below). Those who provide functionality that Google does not (listed in parentheses after each vertical) are likely to continue their success. Those that add innovation and efficiency in user interface compound their advantage (UrbanSpoon is a key case in point). iPhone applications such as AroundMe that aggregate common verticals (providing access to nearby coffee shops, petrol stations, cashpoints and more) are successful, but are vulnerable to Google, having little defensible IP or innovation in UI. Significant Search Verticals 1.  Restaurants – hotly fought over in the iPhone app space, with applications such as Yelp, UrbanSpoon, LocalPicks, OpenTable and of course the traditional guide books such as Zagat and Michelin (Google beater: user generated reviews, editorial content, booking engine) 2.  Real Estate – several players in the iPhone space, such as Zillow, Trulia and more (Google beater: access to proprietary data). 3.  Travel applications – iPhone applications such as Lonely Planet (Google beater: editorial content). Sub use case: find things that my friends like Several mobile applications (for example, Loopt, Rummble and Whrrl are betting on the recommendation aspect of local search: the theory goes that better search results are obtained by providing personal recommendations from my friends. In my experience, these applications suffer from the ‘empty room’ syndrome – I don’t have enough friends on any given service, and hence my experience using them is impoverished (as an aside, that’s why we implemented a follow model in flook for finding local secrets, rather than mandating mutual friendships). Sub use case: I want to find my friends iPhone applications such as BrightKite and Loopt allow the user to find her friends, as do check-in games such as Gowalla and Foursquare (discussed later). Again this use case suffers when only a subset of your social graph is using the service, and this is what makes it so vulnerable to the threat from Facebook. Today Facebook owns more of the social graph (for friendship, not business relationships) than any other application, and the company has also shown that it can make great mobile applications. But to date Facebook has not chosen to add location to the mix. When it does (and surely it is when, not if), then both the previous sub use cases are threatened. Facebook has the social graph the incumbents lack and the brand recognition to take these use cases mainstream. Sub use case: I want to meet strangers There are two main aspects to this use case – meeting strangers for sex, and meeting them to talk. Strangely (or perhaps not!) the former is far better catered for than the latter in today’s iPhone marketplace. The difficulty with using an iPhone application to find someone to share a conversation with, particularly for women, is this – how do I know what the other person’s motives are, and why should I trust them? Considering this real user concern shows us a couple of opportunities (not threats, since there are no real incumbents today).  LinkedIn could allow us to meet and greet nearby business people, either if they vouched for by our own contacts, or, if we prefer, if they are merely working in the same field as us. Similarly Facebook could introduce us to friends of friends, enabling us to choose our own risk profile based on how far away in the social graph we will allow our potential conversation partners to be. As an aside, here is an interesting observation supporting my assertion that location is not a single product space: Facebook and LinkedIn use the same “technology”. They both map the social graph, and yet they fulfil different user needs: “I want to stay in contact with my friends” vs “I want to discover business opportunities through people who have worked with people I have worked with”. Use case: I want to explore and discover new stuffNumber of installations: large-hugeVolume: hourly-weeklyMarket turbulence: turbulent, becoming settledNumber of majors: 1-3 It’s important to differentiate this use case from search. Users search for what they know is out there, whether it’s a pizza restaurant or the nearest ATM. Users discover something they didn’t expect. Discovery is exploratory and the user is open-minded, whereas search is task-based and the user is narrow-minded. This use case is in its early days in the location-based marketplace, and there are few applications dedicated to discovery. Even if an application is open as to what it finds (and very few are), then most applications are dogmatic as to “search order.” For example, Foursquare adds user tips to each location. Finding something cool in one of these is not totally expected and is not usually a subject of a search (as such). However this location and its attached tips are always further away than the previous location and its tips – ordering is strictly by distance, limiting the discovery aspect somewhat. UrbanSpoon has a discovery aspect too – and one that has proved very popular with its users. They shake the iPhone, and, one-armed bandit like, UrbanSpoon rotates its reels and suggests somewhere unexpected to eat. But this discovery aspect is tempered by the narrow subject matter – don’t turn to UrbanSpoon unless you’re hungry. Tellmewhere claims to deliver recommendations based on your previous preferences. Similarly Sherpa claims to have a unique learning system to deliver content learned from the user’s likes and dislikes. In practice, I’ve found the value added above the standard search provided by, for example, Yelp or Rummble, to be nugatory. Nevertheless, I’m watching both applications with interest. My own application, flook, also plays in the location-based discovery space. Since flook is new compared to the other applications I’ve discussed, I hope you’ll forgive me for giving you a quick overview of flook and pointing out those aspects of our service that back up my assertion. Flook lets users discover and share local secrets in the form of flook cards – these are full-screen images with overlaid text that can be flipped to show a map and comments on the back. Flook shows the user all nearby cards, whether their subject is a local restaurant or some cool street art – hence we are not narrow in subject matter. Also, flook cards are not shown to the user in strict distance order – instead, a card that is deemed “interesting” is pushed nearer to the user, using our Stream Position Algorithm (SPA). Our thesis is that someone would rather walk five blocks for free pizza at an art gallery opening night than one block to a run-of-the-mill pizza restaurant. Use case: I want to have conversations with people nearbyNumber of installations: largeVolume: hourly-weeklyMarket turbulence: turbulent, becoming settledNumber of majors: 1-5, standards emerging This market segment is nascent. Apps such as graffitio, in which users leave messages at “location-based message boards” are finding it hard to attract the number of users necessary to avoid the empty room syndrome. Geo-located tweets and their support in applications such as Tweetie 2are an obvious incomer to this space, although even with the massive number of Twitter users, it is rare to find a conversation taking place between nearby strangers. Presumably this is because Twitter is real-time – miss a tweet and it’s gone, whereas graffitio’s message boards can wait hours for a new comment. Flook too plays in this space. It’s early days, but we are finding that conversations between strangers are happening more frequently than we expected – perhaps because flook lends a conversation the concrete subject of a particular flook card and its photograph. Use case: I want to express my feelings about a placeNumber of installations: mediumVolume: weeklyMarket turbulence:  becoming settledNumber of majors: 5-10 Analysis of user-generated content (UGC) applications suggests that around 10% of users create the content that the other 90% of users consume. This is borne out in my own experience with flook. Clearly then, any UGC application must take note of this key use case, encouraging the production of great content for its main search or discovery use case. This encouragement can be in the form of rewards – Gowalla’s badge for checking in at five tech start-ups is an example – but is often associated with the sub use case I show in the diagram – that of gaining reputation for content creation. My investigation of friend-based recommendation-based search applications shows that they often ignore the need to reward their users, presumably in the belief that altruism towards friends is sufficient to encourage content creation. Users can express their feelings about a place using a variety of media – the spoken word with AudioBoo, text with Rummble or a geo-located photo with Flickr. Flook and postcard creation applications such as PostMan offer the ability to combine a photo with a few well-chosen words. In addition, the user can commit variable amounts of time to self-expression – from the couple of seconds to make a geo-located tweet to the hour or so to write a detailed, thoughtful review for Yelp. Because of these varying user needs, my expectation is that there will continue to be a variety of applications playing in this space, with one or two owning each content/time subdivision. Note that this use case – the need to express one’s feelings and be creative – clearly differentiates these UGC applications from check-in applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla (discussed in the next use case) – and yet analysts continue to pit these applications against each other. Use case: I want to play a gameNumber of installations: hugeVolume: dailyMarket turbulence: perpetual fluxNumber of majors: many It is clear from experience that games, and even games categories, come and go. People complete games, or tire of them, and historically have shown fairly low allegiance to a particular brand or experience. There are three major types of location-based games in the market today. Treasure hunts have been around for a long-time, with geocaching pre-dating GPS silicon on mobile phones – although there is now an iPhone application for this too. Gowalla plays in this space too, with the user unearthing “virtual gifts” when she checks into a new location. Check-in applications include MyTown (the clear market leader), FourSquare and Gowalla. They get their name because the user “checks in” to a particular location to say she is there – this information can be sent to her friends via Twitter or Facebook if she chooses. Games vary in their strictness – you have to be very close to a location to check-in with Gowalla, less so with MyTown – and in the number of check-ins they allow per hour, from an unlimited number with MyTown to very few with Foursquare. Yelp has recently added check-in to its offering, and because of its size and its stature as a serious application rather than a game, I regard it as a threat in this area. Whether or not you agree, it’s clear that there are many very similar check-in applications on the iPhone alone, and consolidation is likely. There is already beginning to be a backlash against the mindlessness of the check-in applications – here the Guardian points out that there needs to be more depth to hold user attention. A third-type sub use case has been tried on the iPhone, but not yet very successfully – the alternate reality game. This is where the game overlies its imaginary world on the external reality – converting your local coffee shop into a den of werewolves, for example. There is clearly an opportunity for Blizzard to charge their 11.5 million World of Warcraft users for mobile gaming, or to offer rewards or coupons for in-game check-in to real world locations. If Blizzard fail to move, there is a huge opportunity here for a new player. Use case: I want to read local newsNumber of installations: largeVolume: dailyMarket turbulence: flux – market is youngNumber of majors: many, at least nationally This is a nascent market, and a difficult one to crack, since local news providers are fragmented. Foursquare’s partnership with Metro could lead the way. News aggregation applications such as Broadersheet are ideally placed to move into this area. Use case: I want to find out what jobs I have to do hereNumber of installations: smallVolume: dailyMarket turbulence: flux – market is youngNumber of majors: 1 or 2 A minority market, with OmniFocus owning the space at the moment. Use case: I want to map my routesNumber of installations: small-mediumVolume: daily-weeklyMarket turbulence: flux – market is youngNumber of majors: several, probably aimed at verticals Many sports enthusiasts are interested in this space, and there are a variety of iPhone applications serving it, such as MapMyRun and Trails. In this use case it’s probable that a variety of applications will continue to serve their specific sports or niches. Use case: I want to track my child or petNumber of installations: smallVolume: daily-weeklyMarket turbulence: flux – market is youngNumber of majors: many This is another nascent market, and not likely to be a major one. There are no current iPhone applications in this space. And finally.. This concludes my dissection of today’s consumer mobile location-based application space, with particular reference to iPhone applications. What are your thoughts? I welcome your comments here or by email. – Jane [Jane has been working on mobile devices since 1995, when she joined Psion to run their operating systems team. Jane was the lead author of Symbian OS Internals, published by Wiley in 2005, and the sole author of Demand Paging on Symbian, published by Symbian in 2009. She is currently a co-founder of Ambient Industries, whose application flook the location browser is available as a free download in the Apple App Store. Ambient Industries is funded by Eden Ventures and Amadeus Seed Fund. Jane can be reached at jane (at) flook (dot) it] #location #whrrl #lbs #mytown #gowalla #foursquare #facebook #yelp #tellmewhere #flook #urbanspoon #rummble #brightkite

[Where’s Google’s Android going? Guest blogger Ben Hookway uncovers the race for low cost Android taking place behind the scenes of the mobile industry, and how this may change the face of Android as we know it] Low cost Android devices have been forming a large part of R&D activity for some time now. Behind the scenes of the mobile industry all major players – including semiconductor vendors, software vendors, software services companies, ODMs, OEMs, and network operators – are putting considerable resources into rolling out low cost Android phones. It’s a silent revolution in the making that, once set in motion, should see Android shipments lift off from the single-digit millions. So how low is ‘low cost’? Reports of $75-$110 reference designs are emerging from Asia; these are fully featured touchscreen devices, albeit with an EDGE (2.75G), rather than a 3G baseband chipset. Why the interest in low cost Android? Low cost means volume which in turn means market share, and a consistent platform for the provision of services. There are multiple parties with a compelling interest in having a low cost Android device. Semiconductor companies are under pressure to better address the market for  Android platforms. Qualcomm is the overwhelming leader in 3G chipsets for Android phones in Western markets. Their competition such as ST Ericsson, Broadcom and Infineon are responding and a low cost Android niche may be a way for them to break into the current Qualcomm dominance. The majority of handset manufacturers are investing heavily in Android. With so much effort going into a single platform, there is an inevitable pressure to be able to scale that platform on as wide a range of phones as possible. While the lion’s share of press coverage is on ‘smartphones’, the mass volume still is in lower end devices. Network operators are already developing and deploying ‘operator packs’ comprising of specific operator applications and service enablers, designed to run on Android devices. Longer term, Android may end up affording operators the standardised  platform for devices they have been craving for years; a standard platform they can consistently deploy their own ‘pack’ on. That’s assuming operators can gain access to low cost, mid-range Android devices on which they can deploy standard operator packs on and therefore extend the operator experience to the mainstream consumers.  Moreover, with subsidies widely practiced in the mobile industry, it is in the best interest of the operators to reduce the cost of Android phones. Google’s brand power hurts Android differentiation There has been much mainstream publicity on the launch of the Nexus – yet another Android smartphone – which does not seem to be materially different from – say – the Motorola Droid. The reason for the mainstream press is simple. Nexus is a phone sold by Google, not by a phone manufacturer. The brand is king here. As an experiment, I did a straw poll on my Facebook network of (mainly) non-industry friends. Out of 100, only 2 people knew what Android was in the context of mobile phones. They all knew who Google was though. Google is a brand people will buy, Android is not. This powerful brand recognition enjoyed by Google forces Android-based manufacturers to further differentiate their devices. After all the general public will buy a Google phone over an Android phone so you had better come up with something different. This may force manufacturers to ‘hack’ Android more and more in order to differentiate, and low cost could be a means to the same end. So if low cost Android is going to emerge as a category how are we going to get there and what are devices going to look like? Perhaps more importantly, would you buy one? If the user experience is radically different to Android smartphones, is there still a place for a low cost Android device? For example, if you didn’t have fancy graphics, smooth transitions, or if the touchscreen was a bit harder to use, or even if there was no touchscreen at all? Low cost means design sacrifices Well, the cost of phone components is going to have a big influence on what low cost Android devices look like and what are they capable of. They may even be unrecognisable as Android phones by current standards. As an example, iSuppli’s teardown of a G1 estimated the cost of components as $143.89. Of this cost; – Baseband (ARM11 for multimedia, ARM7 for modem): $28.49 (20% of BOM) – Touchscreen: $19.67 (14% of BOM) Baseband and touchscreen are the two biggest cost factors. Reduce the requirement for expensive processors and touchscreens and you go a long way to lowering costs. Therefore, running an Android device on a single core chip would reduce costs significantly. A single core EDGE chip sales for well under $10 – but the question is how to run Android on it. A quick tech lesson in basebands is in order here. Baseband chips are needed to run the modem (software) stack in a phone. To run a modem you need a real time operating system such as Mentor Graphics’ Nucleus or ENEA’s OSE. However, each chip core (CPU) can only run a single OS, and the modem needs an RTOS to power it, so how do you run Android? Virtualisation to the rescue The answer may lie in virtualisation of the modem chip. Using hypervisor technology from Open Kernel Labs or Virtual Logix, it is possible to run two operating systems on the same CPU. This would enable the RTOS and Android to co-exist on the same core, and open up single core EDGE chips to Android. Such an approach requires close cooperation from the RTOS, semiconductor and virtualisation companies, but could lead to a significant cost reduction for markets that do not need 3G capability. To touchscreen or not to? One of the largest cost factors in building an Android device is the touchscreen. An Android device could be built that eliminates the need for a touchscreen – but would it be a hit with consumers? If an attractive feature phone can be produced with Android at the right price point, then does the consumer care what OS is under the hood? I would argue the vast majority of consumers don’t care. Such a device may even run a restricted number of applications with no access to an app store. Would you use an Android phone with no touch screen and no QWERTY keyboard? Probably not, but then if you are reading the VisionMobile blog, I’m guessing you are not your average consumer? The operator would appreciate having the same “standard” platform to deploy their operator packs on; the OEM would appreciate having the same platform to develop their ‘signature’ apps on, even if it this platform have fewer features. With a smaller, non touch screen devices, graphic processing requirements are reduced, and therefore processor requirement and cost is reduced. However, there is an obvious side-effect here; will the applications developed for Android touchscreen devices also work on low-cost Android phones?. Would the buyers of the non-touch devices care or even know? I would contend that the consumers that buy low-cost devices over the next 2-3 years won’t care about the apps. If the consumer wants a mid-low price touchscreen phone then there are a wide number of feature phones available (see Guy Agin’s excellent article on dispelling the smartphone craze). The inevitability of low-cost Android All in all, the push towards low cost Android is inevitable. There are simply too many companies in the value chain who are racing to differentiate with low-cost Android. But due to cost reasons, the form factor, functions, target segment, and use of the resulting devices is going to be significantly different from what we understand as an Android phone today. Comments welcome as always, Ben [Ben Hookway works for Mentor Graphics in Business Development. He has founded, financed and sold companies in the mobile software sector over a 15 year career] #operatingsystems #Android #mobile #handsetmanufacturers #networkoperators #lowcost