[mobile virtualisation is an underhyped yet far-reaching technology. Guest author Steve Subar looks at virtualisation and how the technology will be elemental in enabling mass-market smartphones] Imagine one phone with two personalities – one to fit your personal life, the other for business.  Instead of carrying around two or more devices, you’d be able to access multiple virtual phones on a single handset. This article introduces mobile virtualization and the range of its use cases, with implications that span from silicon to smartphones to shrink-wrapped software to operator services.  It also expands upon two key applications: building mass-market smartphones, and enabling secure mobile services. What is Mobile Virtualization? Virtualization is new to mobile, but established in the data center, fundamental in cloud computing and increasingly popular on the desktop. Mobile Virtualization lets handset OEMs, operators/carriers and end-users get more out of mobile hardware.  It decouples mobile OSes and applications from the hardware they run on, enabling secure applications and services on less expensive devices today and deployment on advanced hardware tomorrow. Virtualization provides a secure, isolated environment for operating systems that is indistinguishable from “bare” hardware. This environment is called a virtual machine (VM), and acts as a container for guest software. A software layer called a hypervisor provides the virtual machine environment and manages virtual machine resources. Resources and performance of mobile devices differ markedly from data center blades and desktops. So do business requirements. Mobile virtualization is different from virtualization used in enterprise and personal computing in several ways: – Hardware Support: mobile virtualization focuses on silicon deployed in mobile handsets, primarily ARM architecture CPUs.  By contrast, most enterprise and desktop-hosted virtualization targets versions of the Intel Architecture.  Moreover, Intel and AMD augment server and desktop CPUs with virtualization support functions, in contrast to silicon in phones that does not (yet) include these capabilities – Guest Software: Data center and Cloud virtualization usually hosts multiple instances of a single guest OS:  thousands of Windows or Linux VMs.  Desktop-hosted virtualization usually invokes just one.  Mobile virtualization involves running multiple, diverse guest platforms: applications OSes (Android, Linux or Symbian), low-level RTOSes for baseband processing and other system chores, and also lightweight environments for specialized processing (shared device drivers, security code, etc.). – Performance: enterprise virtualization strives for maximum throughput for guest software loads.  Mobile virtualization must also enable real-time response for latency-sensitive baseband and multimedia processing on resource-constrained mobile silicon. – Suppliers: enterprise virtualization is dominated by offerings from VMware, Microsoft, IBM and Citrix and supported by open source projects like Xen and KVM.  VMware and Parallels supply the desktop-hosted market.  While several vendors field embedded virtualization technology (Wind River, Greenhills) only a few focus on mobile virtualization – VirtualLogix, Trango (now part of VMware) and Open Kernel Labs. Use Cases Mobile virtualization is a flexible technology with a range of use cases: – BYOD: lets you Bring Your Own Device to work, and switch among multiple virtualized environments, isolating personal and corporate applications and data. – Chipset Consolidation: merging multiple CPUs into a single processor running application and baseband stacks, to reduce BOM costs and simplify design. Lower BOM costs could enable a new wave of mass-market smartphones, shipping in greater numbers and driving growth in data traffic and ARPUs. – Legacy Software Support: in a new handset design, running unmodified, previous-generation software (e.g., a pre-certified baseband stack) in its own virtual machine – Security: using multiple VMs to isolate software stacks from one another, e.g., securing mobile payments or protecting programs used to access business-critical enterprise assets from untrusted open OSes and software – Multicore Support: managing available processor cores and mapping physical CPU resources onto “virtual CPUs” running actual software loads – Energy Management: shutting down CPU cores when they are not needed and migrating running guests to remaining core(s) – MNO Branded Services – using secured VMs to host operator-branded services – Mobile-to-Enterprise Virtualization (M2E): – using secured VMs to host enterprise applications and provide access to business-critical corporate assets, e.g., hosting the Citrix Connector to access a virtual enterprise desktop – Rapid Deployment: let OEMs and operators/carriers launch new versions of existing devices and rollout new services offerings on existing mobile hardware Most mobile OEMs and operators/carriers look to mobile virtualization to address a combination of use cases.  Let’s examine two of particular interest:  mass-market smartphones and secure services: Mass-Market Smartphones Smartphones increasingly drive the global mobile ecosystem. According to Gartner, total mobile phone shipments in 2009 surpassed 1.2 billion, of which 172.4 million units were smartphones, an uptick of 23.8% over 2008. Smartphones are critical to the fortunes of mobile OEMS, MNOs, chipset suppliers, and providers of applications and services – they drive data traffic, improve hardware margins, expand silicon design-wins, and drive software sales through app stores to increase post-load revenues.  However, broader adoption of smartphones has been slowed by retail pricing of smart handsets and cost of accompanying data plans. A mass-market smartphone offers smartphone capabilities at a feature-phone price point. To deliver such a high-functioning yet low-cost device, OEMs must deploy a full-featured open OS and applications on more modest mobile hardware. Current smartphones utilize high-end chipsets with dedicated CPUs for application and baseband processing. This approach contrasts with featurephones, where both stacks run on a single CPU and simpler embedded OS (Real-time operating system – RTOS). Virtualization enables OEMs to build smartphones with less expensive single-core chipsets (see figure).  Such chipsets can also enable using lower-cost components for other functions (display, battery, etc.) not compatible with high-end mobile silicon. The mass-market smartphone is more than just a concept touted by visionaries. Real devices have been delivered, such the Motorola Evoke QA4, with more to come. Secure Services Mobile virtualization also facilitates a range secure services, enabling enterprise-grade security on standard handsets. Virtualization can help secure mobile platforms, applications, and services by keeping trusted software to a bare minimum – the hypervisor itself and carefully chosen additional components – and then isolating them from threats arising from vulnerabilities and faults existing in today’s complex software stacks. Virtual machines, containing a bare minimum of essential software, can be dedicated to secure services. A single phone could contain a virtual machine optimized for execution of secure services, deployed side-by-side with other mobile software, with practically no incremental BOM costs. Secure service examples include: – Isolating software for mobile payments and banking – Hosting secure access to private medical records – Providing a platform for secure access to business-critical corporate data (as in BYOD and M2E above) – Enabling secure voice calling by isolating VoIP stacks from open OSes Building mass-market smartphones and deploying secure services with virtualization are complementary use cases and emphasize doing more with less:  virtualization enables deployment of smartphone capabilities on lower-cost hardware; it also makes possible the introduction of new secure services on currently-available mobile devices. Overcoming Challenges to Adoption As illustrated above, mobile virtualization offers a flexible solution to many design and deployment issues for devices and services on them.  Despite its many use cases and successful deployment in products shipping in volume, mobile virtualization faces systemic challenges to even broader use: – Perception of the technology as a viable alternative to legacy solutions, e.g,. a software solution to delivering lower BOM costs or to providing security – Concerns about performance overhead – The need to integrate mobile hypervisor as pre-load software, on a per-device basis (as opposed to post-load, application-style deployment) These challenges are gradually being overcome;  mobile OEMs and operators/carriers are increasingly attracted to the use of virtualization to bring down the cost of Android devices, while recent performance benchmarks at key OEMs have tempered concerns about the performance overheads. Mobile virtualization has been shipping in mobile phones since 2009. Despite challenges to adoption, the mobile/wireless ecosystem is turning its attention to this flexible technology, especially to bring down the cost of building and buying smartphones.  Coupled with emerging needs to provide secure services on mobile devices, mobile virtualization should play a key role in the deployment of the next 500 million phones. – Steve [Steve Subar is the President and CEO of Open Kernel Labs, a mobile virtualization firm] #meego #chipsets #vmware #smartphones #citrix #trango #symbian #okl #Android #ibm #microsoft #mobilevirtualisation

[Apple has been trumpeting their ‘new’ iPhone 4 FaceTime service, but where’s the novelty? Mobile video telephony has been around for at least 8 years now. Guest author Tsahi Levent-Levi reviews the state of the mobile video telephony market, the barriers to its adoption and what the next 8 years hold] The article is also available in Chinese. Mobile video telephony has already been in the market for over 8 years, in most 3G phones, but have you ever used it? Do you even know if your phone supports it? If your phone has a front facing camera, chances are it supports mobile video telephony. And if you live in Europe and Asia, chances are you have a front facing camera. With millions of users around the world equipped with mobile handsets capable of video calling, we should have seen more wide use of this technology. Why hasn’t this happened and where exactly is this industry going? The 8-year history of mobile video telephony Mobile video telephony started almost a decade ago. Sometime during 2002 I also joined the effort. It started by taking the consumer ISDN video telephony solution (that didn’t catch up), based on an ITU-T standard called H.324, repurposing it for mobile handsets and renaming it 3G-324M for no apparent reason. At that time, three organizations were involved: the ITU-T, the 3GPP (which focused on standardization) and the IMTC (dealing with interoperability between devices). In 2002, the companies involved with interoperability were Ericsson, Dilithium Networks, Packet Video, Radvision, Sharp, and Siemens. What handsets were on the market? There was one from Sharp and a couple of others from the Japanese market, only available in Japan. By 2004 there were 14, including Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm Samsung and Vodafone. It took about 4 years until you could safely say that each handset could connect to another and get bidirectional video. Throughout the years, the main stakeholders of the standardization and interoperability were the vendors providing the protocol stack implementations such as Radvision and some select handset and chipset vendors – namely Qualcomm, Nokia and Ericsson.  The rest took a more passive approach, either by making sure that their handsets interoperate or by relying on others to provide those capabilities. When it came to certification and validation of the handsets, the main stakeholders were usually the service providers themselves. Mobile video telephony today Fast forward to today, and you will notice a few important improvements to the initial standards: 3G-324M (a 3GPP specification), along with a GCF validation process, ensures that any handset coming to the market with video telephony can interoperate with any other handset out there. Putting the GCF test cases in place was a process of over a year, discussing the various tests that should be included and the creation of the ecosystem around it – mainly test labs and testing tools. Operators have mandated the inclusion of 3G-324M support in all 3G handsets that they sell to their customer base. Or at least that was the case up until the iPhone came along. Roaming agreements between operators in Europe and Asia have been put in place so that you can now dial an international mobile video call to others. With a few exceptions (dialing from Israel to Japan, for example) this service works flawlessly. Call setup time has reduced from 7-15 seconds to below 1 second using additions to the standard. This was pointed as a barrier for consumer acceptance of the service, and operators have worked to successfully remove the barrier. These days, standardization and interoperability efforts on mobile video telephony are limited. For the past 2 years it has been quiet in both fronts. The main reason? The standards have matured and interoperability is usually a solved problem. But still – consumer adoption is lacking. So what went wrong? We’ve got enough phones supporting video telephony, interoperability is as seamless as in voice calls, and connection times are shorter. Where’s the usage we’re all waiting for? Well, have you ever made a video call? Or received one? As someone who developed and then licensed 3G-324M technology to other vendors I did my share of video calls. Most of them work related. Very few were personal. The sticking points of mobile video telephony adoption Operators have been trying for years to get people on board their mobile telephony solutions, alas with little or no success. Several reasons have been offered to explain the lack of adoption. Yet none of these stand up to scrutiny. Pricing: some argued that the high prices of video calls (60 cents a minute in some countries but the same as normal voice calls in others) is the reason why people don’t use it. I think it is irrelevant, especially when people don’t really know how much they pay for the service. People didn’t use it a lot even when operators provided it at the cost of regular voice calls, and at the same time people are using the SMS service which usually has ridiculously high pricing. Video is unnatural: people like to see others but don’t like to be seen. Great, but how do you deal with the fact that for Skype, 36% of Skype to Skype calls are video calls? It can only mean that with the right implementation, people are quite happy to adopt video calling. The missing video button. People take huge amounts of images on their iPhones without having a dedicated camera button. Most use SMS all the time – teenagers use it as their primary method of connection with their friends, and there’s no SMS button either. On most handsets, doing a video call requires the same effort as sending an SMS (minus the typing the message part). While it would be nice to have a video button for video calling, it probably isn’t the reason why people don’t use it. While the reasons above have some truth in them, I think they are limited in their importance. There are other, more crucial barriers of adoption: Video Quality:  mobile video telephony today uses very little bandwidth. 64 kilobits per second. Compare it to a high definition video channel of 2-4 megabits per second and you have a truly low grade video in hand. While handsets had low resolution displays that was just fine, but today, when VGA is the norm and higher resolutions are coming to smartphones, there will be need for more bandwidth. Once more bandwidth is available, there will need to be better processors capable of compressing video – but that’s just a matter of time according to Moore’s Law. Coverage: in most countries, 3G coverage is partial, i.e. doesn’t cover the entire population covered by 2G. It means that if you want to call someone using video, you need to know where he/she is – your call might fail simply because the other party has no 3G coverage. Usability: when you interact with a mobile device today, you don’t hold it at head height – you hold it a lot lower than that. Video telephony requires holding the phone higher. It is for the same reason I surmised that the iPad won’t have a front facing camera – mobile devices don’t provide the experience you get by having a video call in a conference room or from your laptop. Camera positioning is key here: on mobile handsets, the front facing camera forces the user to hold his hand in front of his face in an uncomfortable position – especially taking into consideration that today’s video calls are usually long ones. Add to that the fact that you need to deal with the phone’s speakers or connect a headset, add the noisy surroundings, and you have a recipe for bad experience. Once the iPhone came along, operators changed their focus. From trying to get video telephony to be adopted and finding additional multimedia services, they went to putting their hands on shiny smartphones with touch capabilities. Apple has changed the attitude from “killer application” to the long tail of an application store. And now that the slew of Android devices are expected to come out, the resurgence of mobile video telephony requirements from handset vendors is being seen. While bandwidth and processing power will be solved naturally with faster, better and more efficient processors and networks, usability requires real innovation. It makes it the most critical component of all. The one to solve this problem will open up the mobile video telephony market for the masses. Where is mobile video telephony used? While we have no real mass adoption of mobile video telephony, there have been some notable trials that have been going on for the past several years around the world. The concept of mobile video telephony as a killer application was a wrong one, but the use of it as a building block by various applications can be found: Video Mail: video mail support has been deployed by multiple operators worldwide. It allows people to leave video messages from one to another and retrieve them later. In the same way that voice mail services suffered from the rise of SMS, so does video mail, which was already disadvantaged by the limited use of video calling services. Mobile TV and video on demand (VOD): while there are other options for mobile TV, mobile video telephony provides a solution that is standardized and available across most handsets on the market. Where mobile TV is fragmented between standards, video telephony can come to play. In Israel, for example, you can hook up to news channels from the phone in this way. Entertainment TV: Mobile TV is nice, but adding interactivity was thought to be a killer application, especially for sports programs and reality shows. Trials of connecting video calling with sporting events and big brother have been done, but none have caught up. PC-to-mobile: video calling over the desktop is used a lot more than over 3G. That being the case, the ability to bridge the two has been tried by a number of operators around the world. Banking: banks have warmed up to video communications. They use it to enable access to specialists in remote branches or to allow people to contact a bank clerk remotely. They offer some of these services from mobile handsets as well – using mobile video telephony. Another interesting use of video communication in banking is accessing ATM services through video calling instead of voice calling. Visual call centers: this is an easy one. Wherever there is a voice call center, a video one that allows mobile phones to call by video makes sense. Healthcare: Mobile video telephony is used today around the world by doctors to communicate between peers and consult with specialists. An example of such a use is an Israeli hospital where doctors use mobile phones during their daily rounds and surgery procedures. Hard of Hearing (VRS): Video Relay Services enable deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate with the world by way of a mediator who communicates with them through the use of sign language using video communications. The ability to do that on the go adds an important mobility aspect to the service. What becomes apparent from these use cases is that video is not used as a bidirectional conversation, but rather as a one-way real-time video communication for the consumer who wants to see the person they are talking to. The healthcare example really is a key one here. Mobile video telephony is used today and can be used even more when expert advice is needed from people who are on the go. It is where this system excels. What’s next? We do have mobile video telephony, with all of its benefits and faults. But where are we going with it? The next step will be a migration of the service from circuit switching to packet switching – to become all-IP. This will require two major changes: Migration from WCDMA/HSPA to LTE, where an all-IP network will be the norm and network capacities and bandwidths allocated for each phone will increase. Replacement of 3G-324M with a different standard that runs over an IP network. Probably as part of IMS (IP Muiltimedia Subsystem). While Apple just came out with their front facing camera and FaceTime service on the iPhone, it is still quite limited: it runs over WiFi, only between iPhone 4 devices and uses a protocol that Apple plans to open. For mobile video telephony to become a valid solution it needs to use an open standard, run everywhere and be interoperable across devices. When will that happen? At the very least 8 years from now it will require the creation of the necessary ecosystem of companies who care. The problem is that these companies are currently focused on providing the basics of the LTE infrastructure. This requires them to rethink their voice and SMS technologies in initiatives such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE). Once they will have the attention span to deal with mobile video telephony over IP networks, they will have a lot of work to do. Standardization takes time and patience. The winner though won’t be the one who brings better bandwidth or improved video quality to his mobile device. It will be the one who will solve the usability issue. Why? Because it is the hardest of the problems, and it is the toughest problem to solve. Bandwidth and processing power will be solved for all competitors – solving usability will be an innovation that can provide real added value. The moment that happens, you can be sure that mass adoption of mobile video telephony will become a reality. – Tsahi [Tsahi Levent-Levi is Director of Technology and Solution at Radvision. He has been involved with the mobile video telephony market for 8 years, dealing with design, development, standardization, interoperability and marketing of such technologies. You can follow his personal blog at http://blog.radvision.com/voipsurvivor/.] #mobilevideo #facetime #telephony #h324 #iphone4

[Android has triggered more changes to the mobile industry than anyone had imagined. Research Director, Andreas Constantinou looks at the profound changes taking place and how the handset OEM market is shaping up]. Mobile industry connoisseurs used to smirk at the notion that the mobile industry was any similar to the PC world. How can the two industries be any similar when the software, services, channels to market, operator control, regional economics, and range of experiences were all so different. This is so last decade. The march of software has irreversibly changed the economics of value in the mobile industry. Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone have caused disruptions that threw all analyst predictions off the chart. Industry pundits used to project a linear growth for ‘open’ operating systems (Symbian, Windows Mobile et al) that saw them take over an increasingly large share of mobile handsets sold. But the evolution of software has been anything but linear in the last two years; Google’s Android, an operating system that was greeted with skepticism in 2008 become a launchpad for just about everyone working within the mobile industry. Network operators/carriers saw Android as an opportunity to reduce their dependency on two players, Apple and RIM whose stellar sales were depriving operators from any negotiating power. Operators have always tried to divide and conquer amongst their suppliers, for example working in 2002 with HTC and Windows Mobile to reduce their dependency on Nokia, or in 2007 using a three-pronged OS strategy (WinMo, Symbian, Linux) to reduce their dependency on Microsoft. Android allows operators to deliver iPhone or BlackBerry –like devices at much higher levels of customisation and at much lower subsidies. Handset OEMs saw in Android the opportunity to develop iPhone clones at less-than-iPhone prices for operator customers. In 2008-9 most Android projects were kicked off by operators, while in 2010 OEMs are investing in Android big-time. LG and Samsung, who used legacy real-time OSes for 90% of their high-end phones in 2009 have now 10s of Android projects in the pipeline for 2010-11. Software developers saw the opportunity to enter the mobile ecosystem of downloadable apps – in the role model set by Apple’s App Store – in the most approachable and developer-friendly platform ever created for mobile. But the biggest changes are yet to appear. Android has triggered a mass arrival of 10s of ODMs from China and Taiwan eager to create me-too touch-screen handsets. Qualcomm and Mediatek, the chipset vendors powering the majority of feature phones today have launched or preparing to introduce out-of-the-box Android designs that reduce the time to market for Android handsets to 6-9 months (or circa 3 months once Mediatek’s design hits the market). Platform development for Android has dropped to the $300 per engineer-day mark, while big outsourced development centers are being set up in Asia dedicated to Android handset development. All these developments will allow Android touch-screen handsets to hit the €150 mark retail price. The new world order: Lead, innovate or assemble. The developments triggered by Android have made it possible to replicate the economics of the PC industry, leaving mobile industry insiders dumbfounded. Last decade’s rules and role models no longer apply. Instead there are three role models emerging for handset manufacturers in the world of commoditised software: leaders, innovators and assemblers. Assemblers. Dozens of contract manufacturers can now take Android and deliver fully-featured, high-end handsets at made-to-measure requirements, but at price points and wow-factors only enjoyed previously by top-5 manufacturers. Think iPhone me-too experience at €150 retail price. Innovators. The price pressure from assemblers will force the top-5 OEMs to innovate-or-die. With the innovation moving out of the pure user interface domain, widgets or touch innovations or no longer the ‘wow’ factor. To claim higher prices at €300 (and a respectable margin above the BOM) the top-10 OEMs will have to innovate. Handset innovation lies in three elements: firstly, novel industrial design (think Nokia’s ‘listick’ or sports handsets of 2006) that will break the boring mould of today’s form factors and plastics. Secondly, novel use of sensors that will enable user interactions only imagined so far. Thirdly, use of shelf space within the commonly used applications (idle screen, menus, browser chrome, app store) to promote and monetise from third party content. Yet innovation will have to be balanced with application compatibility. Already we ‘ve seen how Android implementations have created fragmentation headaches for developers. Leaders. To reach the top-tier of handset pricing (circa €500) handset manufacturers have to deliver new product experiences. This is the privilege enjoyed by Apple, RIM (and Amazon Kindle to an extent) who have integrated hardware, software and services under the same roof. You can buy Mediatek-powered iPhone clones in China (Shanzai in local speak) for $75, but the experience is laughable to an iPhone user. Only by controlling and integrating hardware, software and services under the same roof can a manufacturer deliver new product experiences that can command top-tier retail prices. Mass producers. Naturally, emerging markets where retail prices are at circa €50 make up the majority of the mobile handset market – at least revenue wise. And while assemblers can produce low-cost devices, they won’t have the economies of scale to make a profit at €50 retail price. Mass producers, i.e. companies with the supply chain sophistication and negotiating power of Nokia and Mediatek can do that. The picture that emerges for the mobile handset market in 2015 (the predictable future) is surprising in many ways. We estimate that the top 5% of the market will command as much revenue as the bottom 50%, but with a higher profit – for example Apple and RIM today bring in around 55% of the industry’s profits. The middle two segments (what some observers call mass-market smartphones) will generate much higher revenues. The mobile industry is starting to look scarily close to the PC industry, both in terms of business models and profit vs revenue patterns. What do readers think? Is the PC future for mobile inescapable? – Andreas you should follow me on twitter: @andreascon #revenues #operatingsystems #profit #mobilephone #rim #margins #google #valuechain #nokia #Apple #lg #windowsmobile #Android #handsetmanufacturers #samsung

[Android fragmentation is only getting started. Research Director Andreas Constantinou breaks down the 3 dimensions of Android fragmentation and argues how Android will become a victim of its own success] The article is also available in Chinese. There’s been plenty of talk of Android fragmentation, but little analysis of its meaning and impacts. As far as definitions go, the best way to look at fragmentation is not from an API viewpoint, but from an application viewpoint; if you take the top-10,000  (free and paid) apps on Android, how many of these run on all the Android-powered phones? For Google’s Android team, fragmentation is what keeps them up at night. Fragmentation reduces the addressable market of applications, increases the cost of development and could ultimately break the developer story around Android as we ‘ll see. Google’s CTS (compatibility test spec) is predicated on ensuring that Market apps run on every Android phone. Android handsets have to pass CTS in order to get access to private codelines, the Market or the Android trademark as we covered in our earlier analysis of Google’s 8 control points – and yes, Google controls what partners do with Android, contrary to the Engadget story. The 3 dimensions of Android fragmentation Many observers would point to fragmentation arising as a result of the open source (APL2) license attached to the Android public source code. Reality however is much more complex. There are 3 dimensions of Android fragmentation: 1. Codebase fragmentation. Very few companies have taken the approach of forking the public Android codebase, as permitted under the APL2 license; Google innovates so fast (5 major versions in 12 months) that once you fork, the costs of keeping up-to-date with Google’s tip-of-tree are increasing prohibitively over time (Nokia found out the hard way by forking WebKit and then regretting it). The main fork of the Android codebase is by China Mobile (the world’s biggest operator with over 500M subscribers) who has outsourced Android development to software company Borqs. China Mobile cares less about keeping up-to-date with the latest Android features as the China market operates as an island where cheap, fake (Shanzai) handsets are predominant. Mediatek, a leading vendor of chipsets shipping in 200-300 million handsets per year plans to make Android available, which could mean another major fork. Cyanogen and GeeksPhone also fork the Android public codeline, but they are designed for a niche of tech-savvy Android fans. 2. Release fragmentation. Google has released 5 major updates to Android in 12 months (1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and recently 2.2), all of which introduce major features and often API breaks. You may notice how accessing the Android Market from a 1.6 versus a 2.1 handset gives you a different set of apps. So much for forward compatibility. AndroidFragmentation.com (a community project) has documented several cases of release fragmentation arising from releases which break APIs (e.g. 2.0 SDK breaks older contact apps) or from inconsistent OEM implementations (e.g. receiving multicast messages over WiFi is disabled for most HTC devices). Release fragmentation is the victim of Google’s own speed of innovation – and Andy Rubin has hinted there’s more major releases coming out in the next 6 months. It’s clearly a sign of how young, agile Internet companies know how to develop software much better that companies with a mobile legacy; major Symbian versions take 12-18 months to release. Release fragmentation is particularly acute due to the lack limited availability of an automatic update mechanism much like that found on the iPhone. We call the phenomenon ‘runtime aging’ and it is directly responsible for increasing the cost of developing applications. Tier-1 network operators see handsets in their installed base with browsers which are 1-6 years old – that’s how hairy it can get for mobile content (and software) development companies. [update: we understand that certain Android handsets come with a firmware update (FOTA) solution available from Google and other FOTA vendors, but it is installed reactively (i.e. to avoid handset recalls) rather than proactively (i.e. to update all handsets to the latest OS flavour)]. Google itself reports that the Android installed base is split between devices running 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1 versions (or at least for those devices accessing the Android Market). The detailed breakdown as of mid May 2010 is as follows: Release fragmentation is also arises out of Google’s elitist treatment of its OEM partners. Google will pick and choose which private codeline is available to which OEM based on commercial criteria (contrary to Michael Gartenberg’s story). Take for example how Sony Ericsson’s X10 (running on Android 1.6) came to market after the Nexus One (running on Android 2.1). Ironically, both handsets were made by HTC. [correction: the X10 was developed by Sony Ericsson Japan] 3. Profile fragmentation. Android was designed for volume smartphones. But it arrived at an opportune time – just after the iPhone launch and just as consumer electronics manufacturers were looking at how to develop connected devices. This resulted in two effects that Google hadn’t planned for: – Android was taken up by all tier-1 (and many tier-2) operators/carriers hoping to develop iPhone-like devices at cheaper prices (i.e. lower subsidies) and greater differentiation. That meant that while operators funded Android’s adolescent years (2008-2010), they niched Android handsets to high-end features and smartphone price points. – Android is now being taken up by 10s of consumer electronics manufacturers, from car displays and set-top boxes to tablets, DECT phones and picture frames. The Archos internet tablet was just the beginning. Each of these devices has very different requirements and therefore results in different platform profiles. The timing of Android’s entry into the market has therefore resulted in two implications related to fragmentation. Firstly, Android’s official codebase isn’t suited for mass-market handsets (think ARM9 or ARM11, 200-500MHz). To get to really large volumes (100M+ annually), Google will need to sanction a second Android profile for mass-market devices. This is a Catch-22, as a second profile is needed to hit large volumes, but it would also break the Android developer story. Secondly, every new platform profile designed for different form factors (in-car, set-top box, tablet, etc) will create API variations that will be hard to manage. That’s one of the key reasons behind the Google TV initiative and the Open Embedded Software Foundation. However even Google can’t move fast enough to coordinate (manage?) the 10s of use cases and form factors emerging for Android. All in all, Android fragmentation is going to get far worse, as Android becomes a victim of its own success.But hey, would you expect to have a single app (and a single codebase) that runs on your TV, phone and car? And there the opportunity lies for tools vendors to provide app porting tools, compatibility test tools and SDKs to help bridge the gap across the eventual jungle of Android fragmentation. And for those looking to better understand the Android commercials we offer a half-day training course on the commercial dynamics behind Android. What do readers think? Do you have any fragmentation stories to share? – Andreas you should follow me on twitter: @andreascon #cyanogen #fragmentation #htc #operatingsystems #forking #borqs #google #nokia #motorola #sonyericsson #Android #mobilesoftware #mobile #geeksphone

[Sales of mobile phones remain healthy, but can the same be said of the software designed for them? Guest author Morten Grauballe offers a biological metaphor to check the pulse and visualise the evolution of the mobile software business.] The app store “Long Tail” has recently dominated strategy discussions in the mobile industry. The Long Tail is a captivating and inspiring notion that challenges companies to think beyond mass production and mass retailing. The mobile software market is, however, far from mass production and mass retailing. Tight coupling of software and hardware, combined with platform fragmentation, have created a mass market for mobile phones, but not for mobile software. Hence, the tail is wagging the dog (and its organs) in the mobile software strategy discussion. I ‘d like to use a biological metaphor – the notion of the 11-Organ System – to represent the core value-adding elements in mobile software and discuss how Apple, China Mobile, DoCoMo, Google, Nokia and RIM have utilised these core organs to their benefit. The 11 Organs interact to create the mobile software. The Long Tail App Store The Long Tail concept was coined in a 2004 article by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson to describe the notion that a large share of consumer needs rest within the tail of a statistical normal distribution. From a marketer’s perspective, this means you need to sell large quantities of unique items – each in small quantities – often combined with large quantities of a few very popular items. The idea was coined to describe phenomena in online retailing where companies such as Amazon for books and eBay for auctions were able to cater – profitably – to very small, unique segments of the market. The digital economy allows these retailers to decouple stock from purchase. Later, the notion was proven to apply to some of the most successful business models today, namely Apple’s iTunes music store and Google’s search advertising model. Lately, the Long Tail has been used to describe and propagate one of the biggest hype waves in the mobile market, namely the app store. Apple recently passed 200,000 applications in its store; fanning the enthusiasm for all major players to develop their own app store strategy. Whereas books, auctions, music, and to some extent search are well-understood businesses with relatively straight-forward Long Tail effects, the essence of the mobile software business is generally not well understood and analyzed. So, before we pin the app store Long Tail on Eeyore, it is worth taking off the blindfold in an attempt to understand the essence of mobile software. The Organ Systems of Mobile Software Like biological systems, the software on mobile phones has value-creating subsystems. The Long Tail app store is like the tail on mammals. It does not have a function without being attached to a healthy body full of strong and interconnected value-creating systems. Apple knows this. Google knows this. Nokia knows this. DoCoMo knows this. They all have strategies in place for these value-creating systems. Mammals generally have 11 organ systems (see note at the end of the article for a biology refresh). To stay true to my metaphor, I break down the most advanced smartphones into 11 organ systems – five core infrastructure systems and six application level systems. There are of course many more ways these systems can be broken down (see VisionMobile’s Industry Atlas for examples). The five infrastructure core systems are: Operating system: On a high level, the key value of an operating system is to be found in the abstraction of the hardware into a set of APIs against which applications can be written. More fundamentally, this process of abstraction has a significant impact on the characteristics of the system, including usability, battery life and privacy. There is a long discussion taking place within the industry as to whether the OS is a commodity or not – I believe not, but I ‘ll leave that debate is for future article. Let’s instead list the current choices available in the mobile market: Android, Bada, Blackberry OS, Brew Mobile Platform (BMP), iPhone OS, LiMo, Maemo, MediaTek OS, Nucleus, Series 40, STE OS, Symbian, Web OS and Windows Phone OS. Application Execution Environments (AEEs): Most phones have one or more AEEs that attract developers and hence enhance the ability to “wag the tail”. The list of AEEs is long, but should include Java, Flash, widget and and web runtimes. AEEs and operating systems are generally complementary, but as the recent spat between Adobe and Apple has shown, these value-creating systems do not always coexist peacefully. Software Management System: From a strategy analysis perspective, this is probably one of the fastest developing value-creating subsystems. Software management addresses two ‘bodily functions’: The in-the-hands user experience. Apple has made 22 versions available for its phones since June 29, 2007. That is one release every 6 weeks. Most of the features released have addressed the user experience by enhancing features or the usage of features. In the end, this generates revenue and builds an ongoing relationship with the user. Repair and correction. The ability to protect the phone depends on the strength of the security system (see below), but also on the system’s ability to respond to issues in the system, whether malware or not. Software Management allows us to respond with new pieces of software when needed. Security System: The security system is very similar to the integumentary and lymphatic systems in humans. It protects the system from external threats. Parts of the security system should be built into the operating system, but other parts are application-level components, such as lock and wipe of the device. Business Intelligence System: Similar to the nervous system, the business intelligence system allows you to understand what is going on in the entire organism. This ranges from understanding usability issues over performance problems to actual defects in the system. You want to know what works and what does not work for the particular user, which apps are used the most, which services work and which not, how does service usage vary across devices, etc. The six core application systems are: Peer-to-Peer Communication: Voice communication is often overlooked in strategy discussions of mobile software, but it is one of the most used applications on any mobile phone. It might be a baseline feature, but it needs to be done well. Integration with other value-adding subsystems is quite important too. Peer-to-Peer Messaging: This includes everything from SMS over instant messaging to push e-mail applications. Similar to peer-to-peer communication, it is generally not considered sexy at this stage of the market. It is however the second largest revenue generator after voice communication and thus should not be disregarded. Search: Most phones already have Web search functions. However, the future of search is in the location-based services (LBS) area, where digital search is combined with the physical presence of the user. Advertising is a part of this subsystem as it connects sellers with buyers of products and services. Content Creation: The biggest craze in the market is social networking. Every new phone has social networking capabilities galore closely integrated into the contact manager. Content creation, however, also includes pictures, video and other types of media produced by the consumer. Most of the data produced by the consumer needs to be shared somehow. That is where the key value creation of the mobile phone comes in.. sharing! Content Consumption: Compared to creation, content consumption is so yesterday. The consumer expects easy access to a catalogue of games, music, video, etc. Browsing: This is such a crucial application that I have classified it as a system of its own. The browser is used as the basis of many of the other systems. Actually, most of the other applications can run via the browser and hence it is even possible to classify the browsing subsystem as an infrastructure subsystem. Choose your Organs before Pinning on the Long Tail There is no need to have the perfect business model for each of the mobile software organ systems above, but you need to have considered all of them and, if possible, have three or four strong organs to support an independent software strategy that can then carry a Long Tail app store. Let’s consider a few examples: Apple has been the most aggressive on the OS side, publishing native APIs to developers and building a large developer community. Apple’s software management strategy is well-synced with its OS development and is a real strength. With iTunes Apple also is very well placed in media consumption. Apple’s weaknesses are in the areas of AEEs and search. China Mobile has recently put its weight behind the OPhone, which is running a completely customized branch of Android. The OPhone version of Android is managed by a company called Borqs. At launch, handsets were available from Dell, HTC and Lenovo with plans for further handset models from Samsung, ZTE, Phillips, Motorola and LG. By having Borqs in between Google and themselves, CMCC achieves greater ownership of the operating system and its APIs. This is, of course, expensive as Borqs need to track new versions of Android and migrate China Mobile-specific changes across to the new versions of the OPhone OS. DoCoMo has traditionally been focused on content-consumption and browsing with its i-mode services. i-mode nicely mixes Java, Browsing, Flash and e-mail into a very strong application suite. Customers know what they are getting. These services are built on top of two different operating systems, namely Linux and Symbian. So far, DoCoMo has not exposed native APIs to developers, but has focused on Java. The content market is therefore very strong in Japan, but the software application market is not well developed. Recently, DoCoMo has released its first Android handset, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, which gives it access to the Android market. This is the company’s first experience with an application market. Google has combined the introduction of the Android operating with a strong suite of applications (Gmail, Google Maps, GTalk and Android market). While on the surface Android is an open source project, you only get access to the application suite if you agree to Google’s commercial terms.  There is no surprise that Google’s strengths come from its applications – it has less control of the core infrastructure components. RIM has full control of its OS and has used Java as the AEE to create a third-party community of developers. The real strength in the RIM offering, however, is peer-to-peer messaging and this is the subsystem that ties RIM to its users. Over the last three years, RIM has made improvements to the subsystems that are more focused on mass-market consumers, such as content consumption/creation, but it is not considered to be its strength. Nokia is active in all the subsystems above. Focus is probably one of the weaknesses of the Nokia offering. Traditionally, Nokia has been focused on peer-to-peer messaging and communication, but recently it has moved aggressively into search and content consumption, which are emerging as their new areas of strength. Taking inspiration from Blue Ocean Strategy, it is possible to create an Organ Map. I have included an example below. (Each area included in this map warrants its own discussion, so please take it as an educated view rather than a universal statement of truth). Getting started on your own Organ Map Any serious player looking at the app store Long Tail needs to look at the organ system above and decide how to build a serious software strategy first. Some companies, like HP with their Palm acquisition, are at a cross-road and should make tough choices up-front. Others are in the middle of executing on their software strategy and need to evaluate progress. In both cases, key questions to answer are: –        Which organ systems are the focus of my strategy? –        What is the right mix of core organs to application organs? –        What level of control do you want to exert over each organ system? –        How will the chosen organ system allow me to build a relationship with my customer? –        How do the organ systems interact to realize value for the customer? –        How are my organ systems mapping against the competition? Through the discussion around these questions, you should document the criteria by which you and your organizations determine the scoring of each organ system. That will answer questions like, what is a high-end offering in the browser space and who is offering this in the market. To have a truly independent strategy, the choice of organ systems need to include at least one core organ system over which you can exert a high-degree of control. This does not have to be complete ownership of the organ system, but you should be able to determine the roadmap and direction of the organ system. The Long Tail as a Greenhouse for New Organ Systems Once you have a nice set of organ systems up and running, the real point of the Long Tail app store is to act as a greenhouse for new organ systems. By monitoring the sales statistics and trends on your app store, you get a very good view (from your business intelligence system) as to what the next organ system might be. It is no coincidence Apple just added iAd to iPhone OS v4. They are on top of their business intelligence game and have been tracking advertising in their app store for a while. As apps or features develop into viable businesses, they get promoted from the tail to the body. They become new organ systems for the value-creation machine called Apple. What are your own thoughts on strategy as a biology metaphor? What other examples of use of software-based organ systems have you come across? What Organ Systems does HP currently have that would render Palm as successful business? Which new ones should they build? – Morten [Morten Grauballe is EVP Marketing at Red Bend and ex VP Product Management at Symbian, and has been in the mobile industry long enough to boast both scars and medals] Note 1: The 11 major organ systems of the body are: (1) The integumentary system is the organ system that protects the body from damage – it includes nails, skin, hair, fat, etc. This is the largest system making up ~16% of the human body. (2) The skeletal system is the structural support system with bones, cartilage, ligaments and tendons. (3) The muscular system is the anatomical system of a species that allows it to move. (4) The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body (5) The endocrine system is a system of glands, each of which secretes a type of hormone to regulate the body. The endocrine system is an information signal system much like the nervous system. Hormones regulate many functions of an organism, including mood, growth and development, tissue function, and metabolism. (6) The circulatory system is an organ system that passes nutrients (such as amino acids and electrolytes), gases, hormones, blood cells, etc. to and from cells in the body (7) The lymphatic system in vertebrates is a network of conduits that carry a clear fluid called lymph. It is used to fight diseases and transport fluids from the cells. (8) The respiratory system’s function is to allow oxygen exchange through all parts of the body. (9) The digestive system is the organ system responsible for the mechanical and chemical breaking down of food into smaller components that can be absorbed into the blood stream. (10) The urinary system is the organ system that produces, stores, and eliminates urine. (11) The reproductive system is a system of organs within an organism that work together for the purpose of reproduction. #mobiledevices #network #browser #rim #google #nokia #chinamobile #Apple #operatingsystem #organs #xray #palm #docomo #hp #mobilesoftware

[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