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[Research Director Andreas Constantinou, discusses the latest update to VisionMobile’s 100 million club, and some surprising facts about the companies that dominate mobile software] In this H2 2008 update we ‘ve identified 26 software products from 21 companies which have shipped on more than 100 million handsets cumulatively as of the end of 2008. We ‘ve had a few important changes in the who’s who of the 100 million club; the introduction of HI Corp’s MascotCapsule 3D, a graphics acceleration software that has shipped in 490 million mobile devices as of the end of 2008, and embedded in Japanese, but also European handsets. Other noteworthy changes are due to the consolidation that is underway in the mobile industry; Nokia completed the acquisition of Symbian in November 2009. Esmertec merged with Purple Labs to form the Myriad Group (with 2 products in the 100 million club; Esmertec’s JBed and the ex-Openwave browser). Nuance acquired Zi Corp (as part of its string of 15+ acquisitions in the last 4 years), making Nuance the only company with 3 products in the 100 million club. (click to go to the download page) Traditionally we have looked at the cumulative shipments of mobile software products (the orange-red bars on the chart) – and the sea of challenges that keep them constrained to a small portion of the one-billion-a-year handset market. In this update we have also compared the 26 products in terms of penetration in the mobile market as part of the devices sold (the blue bars on the chart). What are some of the most popular software products in mobile? Looking at the headlines one might suggest the Symbian operating system, or the Opera Mobile browser. In reality Opera and Symbian/S60 are in only 2% and 6% respectively of the devices sold in 2H08. There’s far more successful companies in terms of penetration of the sales base: – ENEA’s OSE: Founded in 1968, ENEA is a Swedish software & services company which offers network management software, development tools and real time operator systems. The OSE RTOS forms the basis for both radio stacks and application stacks for many handset models from Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia and others. All in all, we estimate that OSE has been embedded in 32% of all handsets shipped in 2H08. – Mentor Graphics’ Nucleus: Founded in 1981, Mentor Graphics is a US-based  hardware and software design solutions. Its Nucleus real-time operating system has powered both radio stacks and applications in billions of mobile handsets – we estimate that Nucleus is embedded in 34% of handsets that shipped in 2H08. The secret behind Nucleus’ success is its revenue model which is based on per project or site fees, rather than per-unit royalties. – Adobe’ Flash Lite is another success story. Flash Lite has been embedded on over 950 million mobile devices as of the end 2008, hitting the 1 billion installed base in 2009. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Flash Lite installations is closed to third party developers, which Adobe is now trying to fix with the Open Screen Project. It’s interesting to note that under OSP, the Flash 10 runtime will be available for zero royalties for product implementations which meet 3 criteria: a) the Flash runtime has to be certified for compliance with Adobe’s test suite, b) the runtime is open to developers and third party content and c) the runtime is updateable over the air, so that the installed base can be continually brought up to the latest version. There are many more notable software products with high penetration within devices sold which often shy the headlines: Myriad Group’s (ex-Openwave) browser (still at 24% of the sales base due to feature phone embeds), Beatnik’s MobileBAE audio codec (21%), BitFlash’s SVG engine (18%), NXP Software LifeVibes audio/video middleware (23% – which recently also broke into the ‘500 million club’), Red Bend’s vRapid Mobile firmware update technology (18%) and Nokia’s Series 40 operating system (19%). Last but certainly not least, Nuance’s (ex-Tegic) T9 predictive text engine is embedded within an impressive 56% of all devices sold. We ‘ve analysed other noteworthy aspects and insights of the 100 million club in previous articles: – Only 26 products have made the 100 million club, a tiny figure compared to the 250-300 companies that license embedded mobile software products – not to mention the circa 30,000 mobile software developers (see analysis in the earlier article mobile software is dead.. long live mobile software). – The emergence of de facto software standards like Flash Lite and WebKit (see our analysis in the earlier article The 100 million club: the bigger picture of mobile software), compared to closed-door standards like the LiMo Foundation (see our critical analysis on Why the LiMo Foundation needs to go back to the drawing board) – The challenges of pre-load mobile software vendors; long sales cycles, deteriorating per-unit royalties and costly product adaptation (as highlighted by Morten Grauballe’s original The inner secrets of the 100 million unit club which provided the inspiration for the launch of VisionMobile’s 100 million club) Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon #100millionclub

[Intel buys embedded software company Wind River with a 40% premium. What is the hidden asset that silicon vendors value beyond standard metrics? Guest blogger Andy V. O’ Lay believes there is no more point in differentiating hardware and software in the mobile arena. The race to SHW has started…] A previous post (Mobile software is dead… long live, mobile software) highlighted the shift of mobile software development to post-load applications, enabled by the sudden proliferation of App Stores. Among the roadblocks in the embedded, pre-load business, two major issues were stressed: – For software vendors, it is difficult to fight commoditisation and the related price-erosion while scaling up shipments. Only those vendors who have some unique IP managed to go down this route. – Beyond the first design-win, deploying software across a variety of platforms and customers is a logistical nightmare. Less than 10% of the 250 mobile software companies we know have made their way to VisionMobile 100 million club charts. Since then tables have turned and the mobile embedded software landscape has been considerably modified. Intel acquired Wind River, one of the champions of mobile software deployment, pioneer alternative business models favouring professional services fees for software integration, customisation, certification and indemnification. The Intel-Wind River transaction is worth considering, not only because Intel agreed to pay a 40% premium over the stock price, neither because of the $884 million price tag (quite a lucky number even outside of China). It is a meaningful acquisition because it values mobile software companies on a totally unusual scale: what if IP was not a software company’s main asset? What Intel has bought and why The press release claims that “the acquisition will deliver to Intel robust software capabilities in embedded systems and mobile devices”. Beyond such obvious statements, we must consider the fact that Wind River is all about delivery. The company brings enviable competence to ‘irrigate’ equipment manufacturers with new technology and more importantly, help with the painful integration process that will transform a collection of best-of-breed modules into a coherent product. This type of competence is fundamental for an ambitious silicon vendor like Intel with PC-centric views on the mobile market. Indeed, it can take years to transform a design-win into a running line at the wafer fab (silicon speak for manufacturing line) and the key to hardware success is software. We are not talking of specific software IP modules like a protocol stack, a midi engine, a browser or a codec. We are talking about system skills, and the capability to support large manufacturers on their own premises with outstanding engineers. We are talking about blurring the line between the system provider own workforce and the one of its customers. We are talking about permeable boundaries between supply and demand. And like Intel, I would argue that mobile software companies are instrumental in making silicon solutions pervasive, because they tick two major check boxes: reference design and support. The hidden asset of mobile software companies Mobile embedded software companies (e.g. Myriad, Access, Aplix, NXP software, Azingo) have a unique understanding of products as a hardware/software system. They understand how silicon can be leveraged, encapsulated and productised to fast-track device delivery. Beyond specific IP, these companies have the capability to build the very first product that will feature a new chipset. This is the reference design check box. A reference design is not a half-baked breadboard; it is a scale 1:1 device, ready to ship. The absence of such capability has drained Texas Instrument, once the mobile silicon leader. Alternatively, true reference design has been instrumental in the success of Qualcomm and Mediatek. Mobile software companies have a structural asset: in order to promote the adoption of their modules, they have deployed local workforces to support each of the big handset OEMs. Their engineers are often working on the same premises as their customers, they eat at the same table, drink the same coffee (or tea) and solve issues together. On a P&L sheet, they call it Professional Services. On the Balance sheet, it should be called customer relationship. This is the support check box. Support is not a way to charge more than just royalties, it is about making sure that the product will actually ship. Support is the last mile, the distribution channel that delivers a facility right into the customer premises. Support is what made Ericsson or ST successful; it is what was valued when NXP was acquired… and this is the rationale for Wind River’s acquisition. What Intel has incidentally bought The power to harm is seldom the main reasons for investing, rather the cherry on the cake. Whether used as dissuasion or tactical weapon, it should not be disregarded. There are a few nasty decisions that the “new” Wind River could be taking, which would seriously impact competing developments. Yet, it would be interesting to understand what is Intel’s competition: Qualcomm? Google? LiMo? Along the same lines, it is interesting to note that although Wind River does not pretend to be an IP company, it has acquired almost accidentally an interesting patent from FSM Labs regarding virtualisation. I wouldn’t think this patent has a wide scope, but in the hands of Intel lawyers, it could scare some people off… and more about virtualisation in a future post. Where does the industry stand today? On the silicon side, we have an interesting situation with 3 big vendors. – Intel has just acquired support capabilities, yet they miss a fully baked reference design. – Qualcomm has a complete reference design, but they lack support capabilities, especially to address European markets. – ST-Ericsson is difficult to read, they should have capabilities both in terms of reference design (from Ericsson) and support capabilities (from ST and NXP). Yet it is unclear whether such capabilities will survive the painful merger exercise. On the software side, with Nokia acquiring Trolltech last year, and now Intel buying Wind River, the number of mobile software companies with a system-wide scope (capability to write/integrate modules at all levels of the software architecture) and Linux capabilities is reducing quickly: Access, Aplix, Myriad, NXP Software… who will be next? The key point here is the hidden assets. Mobile software companies are bought for what they enable, not what they earn. Trolltech allowed the creation of a single application environment on top of Nokia S40, S60, and Maemo where Nokia can base both its Ovi *and* its ‘signature’ apps. Wind River equips Intel with a heavy-duty support channel. Access and Myriad both have an important hidden asset: operator-compliance. Two words that Apple and Google are slowly learning to spell. The future is reunification So Intel, who was already lining up hundreds of software engineers solely dedicated to Moblin (not counting the 5,000+ Moblin community), is now acquiring 1,600 software engineers who will “more tightly align their software expertise to Intel’s platforms”. This is a visionary move. Hardware (HW) and software (SW) guys realising that they need each other to grow. So what does this mean? – HW needs SW to sell. – SW needs HW to scale. – there is no longer HW and SW; there is SHW (read Systemware, pronounce chew, and remember you read it here first). On the mobile racetracks, there is no room for two-seaters. Wintel has lost its initial, Qualcomm never got one… We all are Berliners. – Andy [Flashback. Three years ago. An influential venture capital firm gathers its telecom think tank off-site. During the wine-tasting session (wine-tasting is the venture-capitalist equivalent of engineers coffee machine) somebody asks: what is the only billion dollars mobile software company? Silence. More wine-tasting. No spit. Then comes the answer: Qualcomm. Hardware is also the future of mobile software.] Bright thinker looking for bright readers? Join us at the VisionMobile blog, the stage for mobile industry thinkers.

[The iPhone has ushered in a new era of user experience on mobile hardware. But the business model Amazon negotiated with Sprint set a precedent that could radically reshape the future of the industry, writes guest blogger Stefan Constantinescu] In Europe people smirked; EDGE only, 2 megapixel camera, no MMS, is this a joke? Contrast that to America, which at the time was still known as the “Land of the Motorola RAZR,” the radical idea of having the full internet in your pocket was new and exciting. Nearly 10 months later, in November 2007, it would be Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos that would climb on stage to show off his device: the Amazon Kindle; expensive, single purpose, limited content, by some accounts it was quite difficult to look at as well. Why is it then that the Kindle is more important to the mobile telecommunications industry than the iPhone? The Kindle is the first device to be sold with lifetime cellular connectivity included in the purchase price and therefore it is the first device to carve out a path towards a new business model for operators. Apple had the opportunity to change things. They could have sold the iPhone unlocked from day one and educated the American public about SIM cards and why buying a device from an operator on a two year contract is unwise. They could have launched the iPhone internationally, unlocked, without having to negotiate with operators due to the fact that many people in Europe and Asia are used to paying full price for their device and buying a SIM card + service separately. They could have prevented the large exodus of iPhones that were meant for the American market, but ended up on the international grey market, from ever happening, but they didn’t. Apple launched a revolutionary device and to buy it you had to go through the traditional channels. Amazon’s Kindle however, once you purchase the device and turn it on, it connects to Sprint’s network automatically without any user configuration. Unlike buying a subsidized netbook from an operator today, where you still have to pay a monthly fee, the Kindle is connected for life after you make that initial purchase. Intel has already admitted that the speed-wars are over and now their future will be focused on high volume shipments of their Atom processor, they even licensed their Atom intellectualy property to TSMC; the goal being to connect more and more devices to the internet. With all of these new devices connecting to the network, be it our cars, our refrigerators, our power meters, our televisions, anything and everything, how exactly does one enter their WPA2 security key on a toilet which has a single button, flush? This little convenience, connectivity out of the box, has huge ramifications for the mobile industry if operators choose to play their cards right. We’re entering an era defined by people’s expectations of being able to browse the internet and access their favorite services on most, if not all, of the new devices they purchase. Today operators cry foul when people demand that they turn into dumb pipes. Operators today still believe that innovation occurs at the core of the network, versus the edge. Operators come up with poor reasons, even poorer attempts at new businesses, and some are beginning to adopt defensive tactics such as limiting what can be done on their network in order to protect the business models that have been allowing them to expand for nearly 3 decades. The Kindle was the first step in a new direction. Sprint effectively became a pipe for Amazon’s customers to purchase books and read Wikipedia on an electronic ink display. These new devices that will soon connect to the network, the cars, the televisions, the toilets, can either depend on users being knowledgeable and willing to configure the correct settings for access, or the device manufactures themselves can negotiate with operators beforehand to allow said devices to have connectivity out of the box. According to an interview with Glenn Lurie, President of Emerging Devices for AT&T Mobility, a unit that opened in December 2008, his goal is to “develop relationships in the ecosystems around […] devices and launch those devices wirelessly enabled.” Later he added “you can imagine we’re talking to every OEM on the planet, there are a lot of people that build devices.” I’m going to speculate here and say that this unit, Emerging Devices for AT&T Mobility, was launched as a direct result of the Amazon Kindle. The revenues operators can expect to receive from device manufactures will start small. Roger Entner, SVP, Nielsen’s Head of Research and Insights for Telecom, estimates that Sprint is receiving only $2 per Kindle subscriber per month, but just as data traffic, and in turn data revenue, leapt passed voice on landlines, the same will happen sooner rather than later with mobile operators. The question is: are operators ready to experiment with new business models, billing methods and dealing with new customers that are device makers versus the individual? The modus operandi we’re used to today is operators buying hardware, attempting to create a unique software experience, and then selling the final product to the consumer. In a brave new world why can’t it be the device makers who go to the operator, buy network access in advance, and then sell their devices directly to the consumer? People would not have to buy network access and therefore churn, meaning customers leaving your network to join a competitor’s network, would be reduced. People would not have to care about paying a monthly bill, since it is the device manufacture covering the expense. People would no longer be tied to 1 or 2 year contracts and be stuck with a device they dislike; they would simply use a gadget until they no longer fancy it and buy another. The benefits for the operators are clear. One customer, paying one sum of money, for one month of access, for one device, one customer you have to compete for every 1 to 2 years due to their contract expiring, is a profitable business to be in, but it isn’t forward thinking since the size of that market is limited to the population of a city, state or country. Having device manufactures purchase network access, with the amount of devices a consumer has today and will probably own tomorrow, has the potential to push penetration numbers past 200%, even 300%. Less money will be spent on advertising the operator brand since it becomes irrelevant. Less money will be spent on hiring software engineers to create those unique software experiences on devices. Less risk of ending up with excess stock somewhere in a warehouse because the devices an operator purchased for the Christmas season were not as popular as predicted. The benefits for device manufactures and the consumer are even more clear. A greater number of devices connecting to the network, more services being used, zero headache configuration, unlimited access. Additional revenue can be extracted by charging more for a device to maintain a small margin on the network access or by partnering with service providers to make their service the default option. The Amazon Kindle carved out a new business model, time will tell whether or not it becomes the de facto revenue generator for operators. They are pipes after all, but why is that such a bad thing again? [Stefan Constantinescu is a guest blogger, currently job hunting, a former Services Strategist part of Nokia’s Corporate Strategy Team, and a former blogger with IntoMobile.] Bright thinker looking for bright readers? Join us at the VisionMobile blog, the stage for mobile industry thinkers.

[Mind the gap! Are mobile operators allowing Google to take over territory in customer (self) care? Guest blogger Wouter Deelman looks at the present situation and what mobile operators can do to regain lost territory.] You might not have noticed, but behind the scenes mobile operators are quickly losing territory in customer (self) care to Google. Operators consider customer ownership one of their primary assets, and make great strides in reinforcing their brand at each and every customer touchpoint, from logos on the handset plastic, to on-device portals, branded retail stores and exclusive handsets. Such marketing moves are very visible and make industry news headlines. Yet, mobile operators don’t seem to be aware that Google is staking out territory in the field of customer self care. Traditionally, customer support was provided by operators through call centers. But with costs of on average 10-15 EUR per phone call (source: Mobile Handset Analyst, November 2007) and decreasing ARPU levels, operators have been reducing call center resources in favour of web based customer self care. But most end-users don’t bother visiting the website of their mobile provider for support, let alone dialing its call center. Finding relevant information on a mobile operator website is is challenge, despite significant investments in staffing, content management systems and good looking website designs. In response, consumers just apply the survival strategy they learned when dealing with a crashing program on their computer: just Google! So what is today’s situation, how are mobile operators faring when it comes to customer (self) care? Qelp conducted a small, simple test for six of the UK’s largest mobile operators. Suppose you’d like to get email working on your Nokia N96. More and more consumers just Google the error message or for example “Nokia N96 email set-up”. The table below summarizes your experience when you are based in the UK: searching the operator’s website versus a search with Google.Option A: Search operator website for “Nokia N96 email setup”Website resultsHelp section resultsO2Generic email instructionsGeneric email instructionsVodafoneCommercial product offers“We couldn’t find any pages etc.”OrangeCommercial product offersGeneric email instructionsT-MobileMostly commercial offersMostly commercial offers3No resultsBlackberry and generic emailVirgin MobileNo resultsNo resultsOption B: Search with Google for “Nokia N96 email setup” + operator name. What are the results on Page 1?O2No results for o2.co.ukVodafoneResult nr. 3, vodafone.co.uk forum: “Go to Nokia.com for internet settings”OrangeNo results for orange.co.ukT-MobileResult nr. 1: product offer for Nokia N96 from t-mobile.co.uk3No results for three.co.ukVirgin MobileNo results for virgin.co.uk The above results speak for themselves. For an end-user seeking help to get a service up and running on his mobile phone the answer is not just a few clicks away. Also the mobile operator seems ‘invisible’ for Google, unless it comes to commercial offers. If one looks somewhat closer at the Google results, result nr. 1 at page 1, lists a site called ‘Know Your Mobile’ with detailed instructions for email setup on a Nokia N96, almost exactly what we are looking for. (however the instructions are still generic and we still need to find the correct settings to access the mobile network). Vodafone and O2 use forums, apparently in an attempt to let customers sort out their issues among themselves, facilitated by a moderator. But, is it good marketing for a mobile operator if a customer is overloaded with the frustrations of other customers while he is trying to hook up his shiny new smartphone to the network? The stats behind the chaos To appreciate why customer service is such a complex issue for mobile operators, it is worth looking at the following stats: – For the first time in mobile history the handset market is shrinking. Yet smartphones, abundant with complex functionality, are still a growing segment which now represents 13.5% of the global market. – A study by Mformation revealed that “Set-up issues prevented 45% of people from upgrading to new, more sophisticated phones” while “61% said phone set-up is as frustrating as changing a bank account.” – The complexity of mobile internet set-up on a new mobile phone is illustrated by this top-10 device management challenges which Qelp put together based on experience with multiple operators. – “Only 20% of a phone’s services and features are used regularly” found a study by WDS Global in September 2008. – Already in 2005 a study by Olista reported that only “2% of end-users would seek assistance from their mobile provider” to get mobile internet working. Recently Google has been rolling out a new search feature called Options, allowing users to filter results more quickly. Our test for the search “Nokia N96 email setup” now shows “Forums”, “Reviews” and “Videos” as filters. These options do not bring us any closer to a meaningful answer for our issue today, but one can expect web shops, forums and blogs to act upon this change and ensure that they rank even higher when applying these filters. Can operators get their act together? Is there anything mobile operators can do to stop Google’s invasion of their territory? Shouldn’t operators have the ambition to help customers get any service up and running at first attempt within 3 minutes? Smartphones represent only 13.5% of the market, what if this number grows to 20 or 30%? How are mobile operators going to stay “in touch” with customers and deal with the growing complexity of their questions? There are still options, but operators will have to get their act together. Here’s a few suggestions: 1. Significantly improve the user experience of their websites. For example, by using better site search and helping visualise complex user instructions. End-users love YouTube, Maps, Streetview, Flickr and  know a how picture tells a thousand words. Operators already use such tools in marketing, so why not in customer self care as well? 2. Ensure that mobile operator websites are discoverable for Google by applying search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Mobile operator KPN has been optimizing parts of their website for Google indexing. A recent experiment of KPN showed that some 30% of end-users try Google first to get their phone problems sorted out. (disclosure: KPN is a Qelp customer). 3. Be present in social networks, forums, blogs, even on an experimental basis – this would give give operators bonus points with early adopters. See for example how Comcast is using Twitter. 4. Provide on-device, mobile phone based, customer self care. Voice search and device based solutions are becoming available from companies like Nuance (SnapIn), Ydilo/Movidilo as well as Qelp. But also Google is entering the game with voice search for iPhone and of course Android phones. Some of the above would even help operators obtain a first mover advantage rather than remaining in a defensive mode. A mobile operator is in the best position to know the user’s phone number, their device, voice/data usage and their location. Who would be in a better position to address the user’s need for support? – Wouter [Wouter Deelman is founder and CEO of Qelp. Qelp delivers mobile operators on-demand software to help increase revenues per user and reduce call center costs.]

[What makes up the mobile user experience and what are the mechanics behind it? Research Director Andreas Constantinou introduces several important concepts behind the mechanics of the user experience; the user journey, core vs downloadable apps and the future of power apps] The user experience (UX) has been probably the most talked-about topic in the mobile industry, mostly because we all know that the UX suffers and we all have suggestions of how it can be improved, especially in the post-iPhone era. The (graphical) user interface has been the aspect of the UX which has garnered most attention historically, and countless software vendors have demonstrated solutions to improve the UI, from better text engines to gesture-based widget navigation. However, few have actually suggested what the UI really is or how it works. What are its mechanics, or what makes the UI tick?. Here I ‘ll attempt to do just that. User interface = user-facing applications A fundamental fact is that the user interface is made of a series of software applications; the idle screen, the menu app, the inbox, the camera app, the browser, the music player, a games or other downloaded application, etc. The ‘user journey’ is comprised of navigating in and out of different applications all of which collectively make up our perception of the phone’s UI. The handset OEM integrates the applications horizontally into each other, so that the end result is a seamless flow that hides the application boundaries. The following diagram is a graphical illustration of the user journey in the form of a circle, with selected core apps shown as an example. The diagram illustrates several important properties of the user journey across the UI: – The idle screen forms the beginning and end of each usage ‘trip’ – The idle screen, dialer, menu and sms/inbox applications take up the lion’s share of the user journey. We ‘ve used arc lengths to illustrate the percentage of time each application is active, but it is by no means exact; in fact it is oversimplified in purpose. There are few published studies into the topic of application usage as a proportion of the user journey, with a notable one being Nokia’s 360 programme (see this presentation for example). – The arc length is proportional to the commercial importance of each application; the more an application is used, the more is the ‘usage surface’ and the commercial value of the inventory which it exposes. Among other things, this explains why Google opted for an operating system (Android) and not a browser for mobile phones, since the browser only makes up circa 5% or less of the user journey (see our earlier analysis). Core vs Downloadable applications Another important notion in the mechanics of the user interface is the distinction between core (embedded) and downloadable apps. By core apps we refer to the set of applications which: a) form the vast majority of the user journey and b) are pre-loaded or embedded into the handset ROM at the point of manufacture. Core applications are typically the idle screen, dialer, main menu, settings menu, browser, inbox, calendar, contacts, camera and multimedia player. Downloadable applications are all apps which can be downloaded post-sales, i.e. by the user. There are fundamental differences between core and downloadable apps, which impact the developer audience, commercial relationships, technical integration, accessibility and overal commercial importance of these applications. The next table summarises the fundamental differences between core and downloadable applications.Core applicationsDownloadable applications95% of user journey5% of user journeyIdle screen, dialer, inbox, calendar, contacts, ..Games, utilities, news, business, lifestyle apps,..Embedded at pre-load phaseDownloaded at post-sales phaseInterconnected horizontallyIndependent / not connectedOpen to 2nd parties (OEMs and partners)Open to all 3rd party developersNative appsNative, but also Flash, Java, Python, etc appsDeeply integrated into device APIsLightly integrated into deviceAccessed via 0-2 clicksAccessed through menus, i.e. several clicks There is a lot that can be said about the above attributes, and each one is an article in its own merit. For example, widget-based navigation allows downloadable app usage to take up much more than 5% of the user journey; the limited accessibility of downloadable apps on mass-market phones is what justifies the tiny share of the user journey. Another notable point is that technically all operating systems enforce tight technical boundaries between core and downloadable apps, while Android and WebOS are the new OS generation that is breaking down these technical boundaries. Commercially though, no OEM or operator has yet allowed users to replace core apps with downloadable ones, due to the implied increase in support requirements and related liabilities. Overall, the difference between pre-load and post-sales installation of applications has huge ramifications in terms of technical and commercial route to market and barriers to entry; for example, any one can write an addressbook application on S60, but only the OEM can make this the default addressbook application, or offer access to otherwise ‘hidden’ APIs for integrating the app horizontally into the other core apps. Blurring boundaries and the future of power apps One of the most interesting developments in the mobile handset industry is how the pre-load and post-load boundaries are starting to disappear. For example mobile software management solutions are allowing modular installation and updating of core apps during the post-load phase (see our earlier research report on mobile software management); platforms like BREW MP, Java (on S60), and S60 are featuring modular updating and/or dynamic module loading; Android and WebOS are offering a simplified application environment for core apps open to all 3rd parties; Core apps are increasingly integrated with the network and internet cloud, as is the case with H3G’s INQ1 mobile phone which integrates Facebook, MSN and contacts into the idle screen. Moving forward we see the development of four ‘power apps’ which will deeply integrate into the service cloud, and will also take up an increasing share of the user journey: – the idle screen app: idle screen apps are being productised by handset OEMs (see Nokia’s S60 and S40 latest Home screen product) and consolidate an ever increasing amount of local device info (e.g. contacts) as well as service alerts,  status messages and advertising inventory. – the Phonebook 2.0 app; the addressbook will evolve into offering a people-centric view of the world, with Facebook, MSN, MySpace, Twitter, etc connectivity, but also contact-centric actions (select contact, then click to SMS, call, locate,invite, etc) – see for example Voxmobile’s pioneering work in this field. – the Calendar 2.0 app; the calendar should evolve into offering a timeline view of your schedule, as well as a history of photos, texts, emails sent (ala Nokia Lifeblog), probably combined with events happening in your area, notices of which contacts happen to be in the same city (via Dopplr or Tripit), weather updates, etc. – the Location 2.0 app;. currently location apps are map-based, in other words they offer a 2D map-view of the world around you, with related attractions or utlities which are nearby. We can argue that the location apps of the future will have maps as just one of the many views; event-based views are another interesting concept, which would show you what’s happening around you, alert you to promotions, who’s nearby etc. Ultimately, tomorrow’s mobile applications will offer zillions of alternative mashups of information in the device, network and web; but I would argue that the phonebook, calendar and location apps will form long arcs or cardinal points within the user journey, simply because this is how we humans are used to conceptualise the physical world; by the people, time and space around us. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon

Did you miss our first free webinar on Mobile Open Source in March? We had to turn down lots of attendees, as the 50 places quickly filled up in the first 24 hours leaving many people on our waiting list. We will be repeating this webinar on Tuesday 19th May at 16:00 CET, and our registration form is now open. The webinar is now closed. This 30 minute webinar offers insights on open source economics, who’s who in mobile OS, licenses vs governance models and how to leverage open source in your strategy. This webinar offers a 10,000ft view of mobile open source, including: – How open source maps into the mobile industry – Why does the industry use open source and what are the related business models – The diversity of community cultures and governance models – What are the four roles your company can play in OSS? – When to use open source and when not to – Why open source is a radical change to how you manage software Click here to register for this event. The webinar is now closed. Places are limited to the first 100 registrations and are on a first come, first served basis. This is a ‘teaser’ webinar with selected extracts from our one day deep-dive 360° workshop on everything that is mobile open source, from economics and business models to license best practices, software management guidelines and 20+ case studies of real world lessons from open source use in the mobile industry. –    Vanessa twitter: @visionmobile

[Mobile widgets: hype or paradigm shift? Research Director Andreas Constantinou talks about the commercial reality behind widgets and compares and contrasts 8 widget platform solutions to shed more light into this new driver of mobile service adoption]. What’s in a widget? It’s amazing how such small pieces of cute graphics are managing to create such a hype wave in the mobile industry. What widgets lack in size, they gain in terms of market expectations; most European tier-1 operators have deployed or getting in proposals for widget-based solutions, while for handset manufacturers (e.g. N97) widgets are the latest must-have feature to drive up selling price in the footsteps of the iUserExperience. The concept has come a long way; widgets as single-purpose, windowed, mini-applications, were introduced by Apple’s Dashboard, popularised by Yahoo’s Konfabulator and mass-adopted through Microsoft’s Vista. Yet while widgets are nice-to-have on PCs, they are a must-have on mobile; in a sense, mobile is the promised land for widgets,since their properties make them ideally suited for this domain; small screen space, limited memory requirements, quick to download due to small size, visually unobtrusive and condensing a diverse set of complex information onto a compact 4×4 grid. There’s plenty of demand for widget-driven solutions; operator rationale for sourcing widget solutions varies, but generally revolves around three axes: – a tool to increase mobile Internet usage on mass market handsets (like Opera Mini for everything beyond the web) – a customer acquisition tool for attracting customers onto a data plan – a tool to both discover AND deliver operator services So what about technology supply? The hype wave has triggered the launch of a wide range of solution providers. Beyond the mainstream mobile software providers (ACCESS, Opera, Picsel, Sun, SurfKitchen and Yahoo), there are manufacturer-led solutions (Nokia WebRuntime, WidSets and Motorola WebUI) as well as numerous smaller mobile solution vendors (Insprit, FeedHenry, Streamezzo, Ulocate, ViaMobility, Webwag and Zumobi). A fun part of what we do here at VisionMobile is vendor comparative analysis (e.g. see last year’s Mobile App Store analysis). We ‘ve spent quite a bit of time talking to widget solution vendors and comparing and contrasting their commercial attributes. For this analysis, we looked at 8 mobile widget products: Nokia WidSets, Nokia WRT, Opera, Access, Motorola WebUI, Yahoo Blueprint, Sun Java ODP and SurfKitchen Widgets. We selected major solution providers; Nokia with two widget solutions (with WidSets now being merged under Ovi), Opera (a strong performer with Vodafone and T-Mobile deals), Access (one of the earliest to roll out widgets with operators in Japan), Motorola WebUI (great vision, albeit slow to execute), Yahoo (impressively executed Yahoo Go! strategy, now extended to widgets, Sun (Internet and Java centric vision, but well resourced) and finally SurfKitchen (veteran in mobile software and ODPs, and recently extending onto widget deals). We ‘ve summarised our comparative vendor research into the table below. There’s quite a lot of data in this table – so we ‘ve added a PDF version after the click. So are widgets just another iFad ? We would argue that they are not. Widgets are perfectly suited for discovering and delivering the 100s of operator services that so far remain hidden behind WAP menus, premium SMS shortcodes and cryptic USSD instructions. Equally importantly, we believe that widgets will be also instrumental for exposing network services to third party developers (i.e. using widgets to wrap network APIs) and also engaging users in a social discussion around widgets (including service) discovery and sharing. We ‘ve only seen the tip of the widgets iceberg. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon

(see visionmobile.com/maps for the latest Edition of the Mobile Industry Atlas) The whole team are excited (and relieved!) to finally announce the launch of the second edition of our Mobile Industry Atlas. The Atlas has been three months in the making with our team and network of advisors involved in the immense task of filtering and reviewing 800+ leading companies in the industry. This is the first time someone has put so many companies into one map and really distilled the complexity of the mobile industy into clear sense. The Atlas is twice the size of our already successful first version – spanning 47 market sectors with up to 20 companies each – and also includes category definitions. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1HFPsOrSVA You can purchase an A1 wallchart or download a sample of the Atlas here. This latest version showcases 800+ leading companies in 47 market sectors, spanning all major players involved from handset design through retailing including development and delivery of hardware, software, SIM cards, services and content. The Mobile Industry Atlas maps the players involved from the core value chain framed by those who offer services, products and infrastructure to the two centres of gravity: the handset manufacturers and the network operators. Core value chain: the vendors who form the backbone of the handset lifecycle, from industrial design houses to distributors and retailers. Market sectors: Industrial design, user interface design, reference hardware designs, system integrators, ODMs and elec. manufacturing services, handset OEMs, mobile network operators, MVNOs, SIM card OEMs and appl. vendors, distributors, retailers. Handset Manufacturer software, hardware & services: the vendors involved in providing software, hardware, technology (IP) and services to the OEMs during the design and development of the handset. Market sectors: Input technology, plastics and mechanics, silicon, multimedia chipsets, baseband and application processors, operating systems, widget platforms, multimedia middleware, browsers, application environments, UI frameworks, software services. Network Operator infrastructure & services: the vendors involved in providing infrastructure, software and services to network operators. Market sectors: Content network and radio infra, service delivery platforms, mobile device management, content retailing and billing, SMS-MMS gateways and aggregators, call completion, voice messaging and voicemail, mobile commerce and payments, mobile service analytics, traffic and content optimisation, MVNEs, mobile video and music platforms, customer support services. Content and service delivery to Network Operators and Handset Manufacturers: the vendors involved in providing content, services, technology (IP), tools and software to handset manufacturers and network operators for the deployment and delivery of value-added services. Market sectors: Mobile content, games publishers, mobile advertising, mobile search, mobile messaging IM & VoIP, mobile social networking, location based services, email – contacts backup/restore, on-device portal solutions, active idle screen solutions, developer tools, targeting and personalisation. The map also depicts the stage where each core value chain player is involved along the handset lifecycle, from product planning through design, implementation, sale and in-life use. The Atlas is available to order here in A1 glossy wallchart format. Thank you to everyone involved for all their hard work in getting this Atlas produced. – Vanessa twitter: @visionmobile

[Is Google the great benefactor, or is there a bag of tricks hiding behind Android? Research Director Andreas Constantinou explains how Google may be using commercials to deploy services on Android phones, why Android is not that well designed for the mobile industry and how Google can overcome its challenges] Android was launched in November 2007, breaking new ground with open source in the mobile industry. Single-handedly Android triggered the Nokia S60/Symbian merger and open source roadmap, and pre-empted the openness of the LiMo foundation (Linux-based) initiative. [updated: this post has been featured on the Carnival of the Mobilists! Thanks Tam.] The hype tsunami that has followed Android is well documented in the blogosphere. So are the mis-steps that Google made away from its openness pledge, including working behind closed doors with selected developers and restricting applications from its Android Market. What seems to be still a puzzle is how Google is using Android to further its primary goals; making more money from ad inventory sales. And whether Android is the panacea it’s promised to be;  HTC is only producing devices so far, Arora devices have been delayed indefinitely and many OEMs are promising but not showing any handsets. Google’s bag of tricks If the entire Android software stack is open source and freely available to download, modify and reuse, how does Google deploy its services and ads? Surely, Google is not just a benefactor to the mobile industry, there must be something that it gets back in return to the 300+ man years it has put into the effort already, especially as Google is a publicly traded company. There’s two tricks up Google’s sleeve that we ‘ve been able to deduce based on public info: – Android Market (or any part of the marketplace) is closed source and Google-proprietary. And it’s not just the on-device storefront that Google holds the key to (which is easily replicable), but the whole marketplace, distribution and – more importantly – the developer ecosystem behind it. – The Android source code is not productised. You need (in our estimates) 1+ year of productisation efforts and Google’s help to develop an Android phone. By the way, this is true for any phone; even if Symbian’s source code was open source from inception, it would still take OEMs 3+ years to reach a level where they can produce differentiated phones fast enough. In short, Google’s professional services are much needed by an OEM producing Android phones. In exchange for Android Market and professional services, I would assume that Google can demand a tall order in return; – bundling of Google apps (and thereby exposure to Google’s services) – access to usage analytics for Google phones – and thereby helping Google target ads more finely and increase CPCs and CPMs.. surely a highly controversial topic for which Google ought to be keeping the details close to chest.. Designed for 3rd parties, but not 2nd parties and handset OEMs. Google has released a ton of source code under the APL2 open source license; just have a look for yourself at source.android.com. Android has been designed exceptionally well for 3rd party application developers; the programming paradigm of Intents and Java-SE environment make programming apps a breeze. We tested Android against S60 for developing a PhotoEditor and a Mapping application (with two developers per OS) and the results were crystal-clear: development time and emulator debug time was less than half in the case of Android, compared to S60. However, when designing Android, the Google team had the PC paradigm in mind. And in the mobile industry, it’s not 3rd party developers who create phones. It’s OEMs and their partners (so-called 2nd party developers). And the needs & wants of 2nd party developers are very different to those of 3rd parties. OEMs care not just about speed of app development, but the speed of variant management; i.e. how quickly can you take one Android phone and create a second one that looks very different in a fraction of the time. Android is poorly designed in going from n to n+1 variant. You need to be re-customising the Java code for each app separately, playing with XML templates and inheritance operators alone will not help. In general, variant management is a major thorn for handset manufacturers and no-one has solved this issue completely (mostly because OEMs are extremely risk averse these days). Moreover, the APL2 licensed source code at source.android.com is missing several key components for productising mobile phones: – language packs: Google promised 7 languages for 1Q09, but that’s already passed. You need support for 50+ languages in order to launch a phone globally and Google certainly has a lot of catching up to do in comparison to S40 and S60. – bluetooth drivers: most phones need them – DRM support for content: often required by operators and content providers in Europe. – operator compliance software and certification: one of the main omissions in Android that stalls product delivery into European operators. This is not something that was intentionaly left out, but assumedly comes from the PC-centric mentality at Google HQ. – theming support Google has decided to control the roadmap and the code checkins (even cupcake is a development branch not the productised code); and so each OEM who has to develop operator packs, language packs, etc doesn’t have a straightforward way (or any obligation!) to share the developments with the Android community. In plain English, this calls for reinventing the wheel for each OEM that builds an Android phone. This is a very hard problem to solve and not one that either LiMo or Symbian Foundation have got a solution to yet. Android is a victim of its success To the surprise of most industry observers, the industry (including operators and handset OEMs) have shifted from criticising Android in late 2007 to adopting Android in late 2008. So what does this mean for Google? It means that up to 2008, Google was working with one OEM (HTC) and one operator (T-Mobile). And since 2009 it has to work with nearly 10 OEMs (Motorola, Huawei, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, Acer, Lenovo, Archos, Garmin, Toshiba) and several operators (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile China Mobile, ..). You would think that Google’s mighty 20,000+ workforce can easily cope. But the 100-strong Android team that Google acquired isn’t showing signs of scaling to match the demand; at least the roadmap seems to lack the pace of development, let alone innovation that is expected from Google. Overall, Google should seriously struggle to meet demand from OEMs in 2009. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see half a dozen phones launch in 2009. What Android needs most What Android needs most is for the key productisers within the industry to step up and take a leading role in offering an out-of-the-box Android-based stack. Here I ‘m referring to chipset vendors (e.g. Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson) and system integrators (e.g. WindRiver, Teleca) to provide complete stacks including a UI personality framework, operator-compliant packs and test suites, language packs, app store (doesn’t have to be Android Market) and post-sales software management tools. The role of system integrators can also act as a gap-filler for OEMs looking for expertise in Android phone development. I would say Android has a window of opportunity that lasts until end-2009 to win the OEM’s support. In 2010, S60/Symbian is going fully open source under the EPL license, and OEMs (in theory) will be taking more package owner (i.e. product influencer) seats away from Nokia. So unless Android can cater to the needs of the mobile industry (and not just 3rd party developers), OEMs might have a change of heart in 2010, back to S60 as the strategic platform of choice for smartphones, which can’t be so bad after all with 200+ million phones in the market. I hope that Motorola, having banked its future on Android really knows what it’s doing. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon (while on the topic of market insights, make sure to check out our hugely successful Mobile Megatrends 2009 series below.) [slideshare id=1071449&doc=mobilemegatrends2009visionmobilenew-090226011714-phpapp01] #Android

So, what’s your Open Source strategy? Open Source is one of the most misunderstood topics, yet one which has already created significant commercial disruptions, like Android, Symbian Foundation, WebKit, and Sun’s Java. Want to learn more about Open Source and how that applies to Mobile? We are hosting a FREE webinar on March 31 at 16:00 CET. This 30 minute webinar (followed by 15 minutes Q&A) will offer insights on open source economics, who’s who in mobile OS, licenses vs governance models and how to leverage open source in your strategy. [update: webinar is now completed – watch this space for a repeat of the webinar] This webinar will offer a 10,000ft view of mobile open source, including: – How open source maps into the mobile industry – Why does the industry use open source and what are the related business models – The diversity of community cultures and governance models – What are the four roles your company can play in OSS? – When to use open source and when not to – Why open source is a radical change to how you manage software Click here to register for this free event. [Update: the webinar has now completed – watch this space for a repeat of the webinar] Places are limited to the first 50 registrants and are on a first come, first served basis. [Update: we ‘ve already had 30 registrations, so places are running out fast!] This is a ‘teaser’ webinar with selected extracts from our one day deep-dive 360° workshop on everything that is mobile open source, from economics and business models to license best practices, software management guidelines and 20+ case studies of real world lessons from open source use in the mobile industry. – Vanessa

[The LiMo Foundation has been one of the driving forces of mobile Linux. Andreas Constantinou goes behind the scenes to find out why LiMo is still catching up with Google and Nokia and why LiMo’s effectiveness will be limited – unless it goes back to the drawing board] LiMo Foundation has been one of the most important and momentous landmarks in the history of the mobile industry. It was launched by the crème de la crème of the handset OEMs and network operators with a Linux agenda, and marked the promotion of Linux into the commercial arena of mobile operating systems. It also seemed to not just preach, but also practice openness with a publically available 200-page documentation on its governance model. Many believed that this industry consortium would make a real difference – including myself. But that was January 2007. Things are somewhat different in 2009. Today LiMo has only achieved a minimal software denominator across its 33 ‘LiMo-compliant’ handsets,  while market-leader S60 is opening up their roadmap and codebase and Android OS devices are coming out from from HTC, Dell, Huawei, Garmin, Fujitsu, Archos, China Mobile and O2. LiMo has amassed impressive political capital, but seems to have done little in advancing mobile Linux operating systems (or fending off the Linux volume decline).  At the same time, the battle for software control has moved from the middleware layer (where LiMo focuses), up to the application and service delivery layer where Android and Symbian Foundation focus. LiMo needs to go back to the drawing board. The foundations of LiMo From six founding members in early 2007 (Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, DoCoMo and Vodafone) the LiMo foundation has now grown to over 50 members. The annual fees run at $550K for board members, $275K for non-board members and $40K for associate members. The two higher price tiers allow members to ship devices with LiMo code. LiMo is thus handsomely funded to the tune of over $7M annually. The Foundation is working on ‘commoditising’  a set of middleware software components which have been contributed by its members; the first release (R1) includes a range of components, including telephony, networking, certificate manager, media manager, ODBC drivers, HTTP/WTCP components, telephony framework, messaging framework, app launcher, GTK+ and window manager. The sum of R1 modules form 3-5% of the software that goes into a mobile handset, but LiMo compliance applies (for now) to a much smaller subset of R1. LiMo’s common code is a set of modules being built through member contributions. This gives LiMo an advantage in selecting among several competing contributions (in some cases, up to 4-5 contributions) for each module.  Indeed LiMo claims to have built a target library of important middleware building blocks through member contributions. The common code is contributed under LiMo’s Foundation Public License and is royalty-free. The additional (differentiated) modules are can be contributed under common open source licenses or under a RAND-type (Reasonable and Non Discriminatory) license. LiMo has garnered an impressive industry backing in its two first years. Besides the global reach of its OEM and operator/carrier members (from Japan to Europe, North America and LatAm), LiMo has subsumed the LiPS foundation and its key members (most notably Orange and ACCESS), and formed ties with OMTP’s BONDI initiative. In short, LiMo Foundation has built an impressive amount of political capital and committed resources within the short space of two years. Indeed one of the main benefits of LiMo reported by software vendor members is the visibility and awareness they gain thanks to LiMo’s industry efforts and the access to operator key execs, which would otherwise require 6+ months of business development efforts. One of LiMo’s key differentiators is the IP safe harbour that it provides; its members agree to not assert patent claims on common code that is distributed among members or commercially distributed to non-members. According to LiMo, the patent holders of the Foundation collectively own more than 300,000 patents. LiMo challenges and plans 2008 has been a year of teething problems for LiMo: – LiMo Foundation Chairman and architect Greg Besio left Motorola while LiMo was still gathering momentum. – Board member agendas have been polarised and as a result decisions have been taking too long to make – R1 has provided a very basic platform, on top of which OEMs have had to in-source many additional components which delayed the time-to-market. –  We understand that LiMo compliance has been at a module-by-module-level; the 33 LiMo-compliant handsets feature a small subset of release 1 (R1) modules referred to as type 1 (T1). – The barrier for third party contributions has been high, with $40K annual membership fees. –  Software vendors like ACCESS, PurpleLabs (now Myriad) and Azingo who have been champions within LiMo have all been delayed to market by at least 12 months. Based on discussions with software vendors, we believe that a significant part of that delay is attributable to their activities within LiMo, which typically involve following operators’ moving targets in baking the latest features (flexible UI, Flash Lite, WebKit, touchscreens) into the OS. This has been a crucial setback to the Linux commercial community as a whole, while Android and Symbian Foundation have already caught up on ‘openness’ and devices launched to market. Fortunately LiMo is making some sincere efforts to propel itself back into center-stage. – 11 operators have made commitments to specify and deploy LiMo-compliant handsets. – LiMo hired an Open Source manager in 4Q08 to realise LiMo’s commitment to contributing back to open source communities; – moving forward LiMo will also be lowering the minimum participation fees (currently at a high $40K annually, compared to the $1,500 of the Symbian Foundation). – The release 2 (R2) of the common code is intended to include many more components, such IMS, location, PIM and DRM components. The minimum compliance threshold should be increasing as well. R2 is an intense multi-party effort; code is being contributed by at least 10 members. Integration services are provided exclusively by WindRiver, while compliance testing and certification are provided by WindRiver and IEEE/ISTO, an independent certification agency.  We expect the first devices that are fully R2 compliant to launch from 1H10 onwards. Why LiMo needs to go back to the drawing board LiMo is making earnest efforts to revitalise the mobile Linux industry. However, I believe the issue lies much closer to LiMo’s core focus. The Foundation has been created in order to accelerate commoditisation of the middleware (core building blocks) of Linux-based OSes. And here exists the following paradox; on one hand there are economies of scale to be gained by agreeing on a common set of middleware across Linux-based phones. On the other hand, middleware has little (if any) sale value; the control points (and sale value) has moved up to the service layer and application environment layer (read: Android and Qt). OEM differentiation rarely comes from the middleware layer, but always comes from the application layer. Moreover, network operators may be overpromising their allegiance LiMo, but when it comes to buying LiMo handsets, they will only be doing so if these handsets: a) come with a consumer-appealing industrial and UI design b) support the latest operator services and c) carry no recall risks, as often is the case with maturing software. These purchase criteria are particularly important, as tier-1 operators are the primary drivers of the LiMo ecosystem and its commercial significance. No matter how promising are the pledges of operators like Orange and Vodafone to support LiMo handsets, we have seen such pledges face the grim reality time and time again (e.g. see past cases with SavaJe and ACCESS). Last but not least, middleware requires hundreds of man-years to optimise, integrate and customise to each hardware platform as well as processor and memory architectures. It is not something that needs transparency or more source code. It needs more expertise. For the same reason, even if Symbian source code was widely available on introduction, it would still take a handset OEM more than 3 years to be able to produce handsets fast enough and reliably enough. The issue with LiMo is that it focuses on standardising middleware and not the service delivery layer, unlike Android, Qt and WebKit open source efforts. While LiMo may claim that its members should be allowed to differentiate on top of the middleware, here we have another classic case of an industry consortium outpaced by technology adoption; in the space of the last three years (2006-2009), the value line has moved above the application environment and service delivery layer, most visibly with the adoption of Android and Qt application environments as well as the WebKit browser core. I would argue that if LiMo wants to be making an impact on tomorrow’s handsets, it needs to refocus its ‘standardisation’ efforts on the browser and service delivery layer; for example, accelerating the development of WebKit-based browsers and browser-based applications (much like WebOS has showed is possible). WebKit is one of the frontiers of the mobile value line (therefore a non-differentiating feature) and can become a common substrate for the delivery of next-gen operator services, with the help of LiMo and its operator backing. Moreover, by focusing on the service delivery and application development layers, LiMo would effectively reduce the cost and time-to-market for full application suites (what Qtopia struggled with and what Android has addressed so elegantly). I was a huge fan of LiMo on launch, and I hope I’ll continue to be. But, for its own sake, LiMo needs to go back to the drawing board. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon (while on the topic of market insights, make sure to check out our hugely successful Mobile Megatrends 2009 series below.) [slideshare id=1071449&doc=mobilemegatrends2009visionmobilenew-090226011714-phpapp01] #opensource

Welcome to the 165th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists! This week’s Carnival is hosted by VisionMobile! This week has seen a truly diverse amount of topics keeping bloggers busy from App Stores to Net Neutrality and Voice… Given the fact that the highest selling handsets in Europe last year were NOT Smartphones, Ian Wood at Digital Evangelist asks just what should you be developing for the App Store and discusses the probable failure of the App Store. Another person discussing App Stores is Volker Hirsch at his Volker on Mobile Entertainment blog. Microsoft has a central market place for Windows Mobile applications in the making and Volker looks at whether the Microsoft App Store is better than Apple. There are more and more data and statistics coming in showing the extent to which the iPhone is becoming the dominant mobile internet device and mobile software ecosystem. James Coops at mjelly provides a collection of iPhone statistics and data sources on App Store for anyone interested on the topic. Over the past two years Martin Sauter at the WirelessMoves bloghas written a number of posts on how to do voice calls over LTE and the lack of a simple and straightforward voice solution. In his latest blog post he writes about the Voice over LTE with GAN (VOLGA) forum creation. Developers, testers, product managers and designers spend too much time creating products in terms of screens with known sizes says Barbara Ballard at her Little Springs Design Blog. In her post Photoshop layout is not your friend, Barbara says that while this methodology was never actually good, it’s particularly bad in mobile. It will cost you time and money. Have you been following the major debate in Europe about Net Neutrality? Ajit Jaokar certainly has – he provides a balanced ‘unsexed up’ perspective of this debate at his OpenGardens blog as he tries to untangle the various threads of the Net neutrality argument. Recently Google announced that they will start ‘behavioural targeting’ for web searches. Andrew Grill writes at his London Calling blog about what this move could mean for mobile advertising. Mark van ‘t Hooft over at Ubiquitous Thoughts also discusses Google and the announcement of their new service, Google Voice. Mark is interested to see how the voice and internet-based components of this service will interact and interface with each other. Chetan Sharma at AORTA asks what’s your carrier strategy? Go global or go small? Chetan works with a ton of mobile startups and entrepreneurs and one of the questions that he addresses is invariably the carrier strategy. How do you decide which carriers to pursue and if you go for smaller operators or go for the big ones? Finally, have you ever wondered how to copy PC bookmarks to UCWEB? You have? Well Dennis Bournique at WAPReview provides a detailed step-by-step guide to importing these bookmarks. The post of the week honours go to Ajit Jaokar and his ‘unsexing’ of the Net Neutrality debate; Ajit untangles the many debates and sub-topics behind Net-Neutrality in one of the most thorough posts on this topic. Chetan Sharma comes at a close second for his analysis of operator strategy for mobile startups, and especially for his analysis for top-10 operators in terms of mobile services revenue. Great work Ajit and Chetan! Next week tune in to wipJAM for the 166th installment of the best of the mobile blogging- and please keep those thought pieces coming! – Vanessa twitter: @visionmobile (while on the topic of market insights, make sure to check out our hugely successful Mobile Megatrends 2009 series below.) [slideshare id=1071449&doc=mobilemegatrends2009visionmobilenew-090226011714-phpapp01]

[Why is that that voice, the only ‘killer application’ making up the lion’s share of revenues has seen hardly any innovation? Andreas Constantinou looks at the developments underpinning a new trend; voice as a platform for innovation] Fortunately, a new wave of innovation is taking shape, with voice is becoming a new platform for building services and revenues. Yet, operators need to face their worst fears (read VoIP) before they can learn how to use their data networks as a means to reinvent voice for the 21st century. Voice innovation behind the scenes This article comes as an accidental discovery and a personal Eureka moment. I attended the excellent Emerging Communications 2009 conference in San Francisco, where I found the beliefs of the mobile industry confronted by the fast-paced, brimming-with-innovation world of the Internet and the restless, open minds of the Bay area. If there was one theme for the conference it was voice as the new platform for innovation. Perhaps the most pivotal announcement of the conference was Skype’s pledge to release its signature Silk codec for zero royalty. Silk is the wideband codec used in the latest version of Skype and has proven performance/bandwidth benefits (based on Skype’s benchmarks) on both networked and wireless environments. I expect Skype’s announcement to gradually reverberate across the voice communications industry in the next few months. It will spell trouble for the voice codec providers (e.g. Microsoft, VoiceAge and Global IP Solutions), but will also improve quality and interoperability on Skype and other VoIP platforms that span mobile and PSTN worlds. See also this review comparing Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP, initiatives which are both instrumental to opening up the Skype network to cloud telephony innovation. Wideband (high quality) speech looks set to arrive via the PC space into mobile; the latter has been suffering from the limitations of the GSM 3.5Khz narrowband codec. It takes some sibe-by-side comparative listening of wideband and narrowband speech to understand how poor our beloved GSM quality is. The eComm 2009 conference has also set the stage for many showcases of voice as a platform for innovation: – Skype now offers voicemail transcriptions over SMS (although poorly executed – see analysis) – Companies like Voxeo, Adhearsion, IfByPhone and Ribbit allow developers to develop connected telephony applications on smartphones and the web; in effect opening up cloud telephony to a wider audience of mobile developers and applications beyond the traditional mainstay of the enterprise. – Fonolo allows ‘deep dialling’ into complex IVRs through a simple web interface. The service renders horrid customer support IVR menus into a webpage of menu nodes where the user can click and get connected. – VoxBone offers incoming direct PSTN-to-VoIP numbers in 4,000 cities and 50 countries – A growing crowd of VoIP providers (Skype, Fring, Truphone, Gizmo5, Nimbuzz, iSkoot, Yeigo, Terrasip, Mobivoip) are trying to push their applications despite the headstrong resistance of the mobile networks. – Visual voicemail has come into the limelight thanks to the iPhone, even though it has existed as a service with Comverse back in 2002. The Visual Voicemail market is now supplied by Silent Communications, Acision, Comverse, Hullomail, YouMail, and uReach. Voice Instant Messaging Perhaps the innovation that’s most likely to create an impact to end users is voice instant messaging. ‘Hold on’ I hear you say… this sounds too much like push-to-talk (PTT), a service that has met with success with Nextel/Motorola but has failed miserably everywhere else. Why is voice instant messaging likely to succeed where PTT failed ? ABI’s Mark Beccue suggests that push-to-talk (PTT) has failed because most operators have not realised PTT is a business application. I beg to differ. The reason for the failure of PTT is that it is network-centric, and standards-driven. As such PTT has created insurmountable barriers to entry, as it has to be supported by both network and all the devices in order to work – plus it has no chance of working across network operators/carriers as a result. Add to that the fact that operators have seen PTT as a cannibalisation threat to SMS and pressed hard on the breaks. Fortunately, a new breed of companies such as Palringo, RebelVox,  Kodiak Networks and Push to Talk Ltd, is helping reinvent PTT as Voice Instant Messaging (aka voice SMS). [updated: Sony Ericsson Research has also released a voice messaging client called Hanashi.nu] The use case is pretty similar to PTT; sending instant voice notes as a more expressive means of communication to SMS. Indeed, with voice instant messaging the communication medium is much more nuanced and expressive than SMS, while avoiding the calculated and intrusive characteristics of live calling. At the same time, the technology (and hence commercial implications) of voice messaging are very different to PTT: – a voice instant messaging application on the device communicates via IP to any other equipped terminal. S60, Android, Sony Ericsson JP8 and iPhone devices can support such voice instant messaging applications. – The network is the IP bearer, not the gatekeeper. Cross-network interoperability is a given, by design. – Flat rate data has become the norm in most networks, ticking off a critical success factor for voice instant messaging. – The intelligence is on the handset, allowing messages to be sent and received even when coverage is intermittent. User experience matters. – The operator can still monetise through per-voice-message fees, through distribution agreements and billing mediation. The operator can also offer extend services such as routing the voice message to voicemail if the handset is not yet enabled, and therefore offer an even more powerful service distribution & discovery asset to secure its role within this new market. More importantly, voice instant messaging can act as a revenue booster for mobile operators. The extension of the per-message billing model is straightforward, and asynchronous messaging is a clearly different means of communication to circuit-switched, live voice. Complementarity, not cannibalism [Updated: Solaimes, a PTT technology provider, offers some innovative examples of using voice messaging services in mobile CRM – see comments]. An even more advanced twist to voice instant messaging is the technology being pioneered by RebelVox, which fuses the boundaries between spontaneous voice messages and live calls. Thanks to what the company terms ‘audio time shifting’, the technology allows you to fast forward through a voicemail message and join the caller as she is leaving the message. Or fast forward through a recorded conference call by only listening to one person’s thread. Perhaps the most inspiring new forms of voice innovation were described by Martin Geddes of BT at the eComm 2009 conference (see Martin’s recorded presentation); imagine a customer support service which drops you a voicemail message in response to your query (especially critical when you are roaming or when the call center is closed). Or warning the caller that the recipient may not want to be disturbed when their phone is on silent. What’s more interesting is in how BT and other operators (Orange, Vodafone, O2) are opening their network APIs to third party developers in the form of Network-as-a-Service (see our earlier analysis of the NaaS market). Cloud-based telephony APIs combined with network-based subscriber intelligence and device-based voice messaging will lead into trully innovative new applications. However, for that to happen, mobile operators need to face their worst fears (read VoIP) and appreciate how voice over the data network can really complement, rather than cannibalize their traditional services (pretty much the same learning experience that operators went through with WiFi). The future for voice is certainly bright. Looking forward to your comments, – Andreas twitter: @andreascon (while on the topic of market trends, make sure to check out our hugely successful Mobile Megatrends 2009 series. Full presentation below.) [slideshare id=1071449&doc=mobilemegatrends2009visionmobilenew-090226011714-phpapp01]

[Managing an open source project is not just about choosing your contributors.. Ã…se Stiller, breaks down the complexities of OSS software in the supply chain and introduces a new set of KPIs for evaluating communities.] This is good news for all of those who believe in Open Source as a way to cut costs, improve quality and get away from supplier monopolies and black-box software. With OSS, mobile software companies and handset manufacturers can focus on the real thing; to make money, and not how to squeeze the most out of every license and supplier agreement. Why open source challenges conventional software wisdom Open Source in the supply chain introduces some interesting challenges; like – how a software vendor can keep ahead of competition when the repositories are public, and – how can they stay in control of the product roadmap, when all the usual control mechanisms lose their charm overnight. There are a number of aspects in which companies will need to change processes and policies to adapt to this new Open Source world, i.e. – Sourcing process and inbound licensing – Product planning and product control – Project management and production control – Product outbound licensing to customers, partners and open source communities and IP control. Each of these is a topic for an article by itself, but here I will focus on the first topic; how to manage open source as part of the software sourcing process. Unfortunately the usual complexity in software sourcing will not go away with Open Source, but the challenges will come in a slightly different flavour.With OSS there will be no more…… but instead we must…Tedious negotiations over details in the contractPut in substantial amount of time to figure out how the license terms will work with the specific component, product and market.Nightly panic attacks over liability clausesSweat over the risk that we lose the rights to use and distributeTravel to suppliers in faraway places to ask nosy questions about finances and quality effortsSpend hours on understanding the impact of Governance models of Open Source projects OSS or not, when sourcing we still have the same needs for a future proof-solution, technical requirements compliance, legal bullet-proofing and sound financials. But let’s walk through these one step at a time. Sourcing with Open Source The starting point for software sourcing is the identification of the requirements, followed by the Build Or Buy decision (B/B). The following diagram shows how the sourcing previous works with proprietary software (left) and OSS software (right). The first action is to capture software requirements; this is no different for OSS than for proprietary software. Then instead of the usual RFI & RFQ (Requests for Information and for Quotation) the technical investigation of the OSS is managed in-house, and the Total Cost of Ownership is a result of internal budgeting, not the bottom line in a tender. The licensing of OSS is generally much easier, as all the terms and conditions are known from the start – and that’s a refreshing change! I must admit though that some licenses are tougher than others to analyze, such as GPL. It takes a good technical insight to fully understand the risks. Another thing to take into account is obligations that will be inherited downstream. The license must be agreeable to all links in the value chain. Key performance indicators for Open Source projects Now to the most radical change; the supplier assessment and control. Forget about traditional Key Performance Indicators as assessment tools, they won´t work. We can however attempt to identify a new set of KPIs for Open Source communities; KPIs that are measurable and offer a standardized way to evaluate the governance model. For this we must ask the right questions about the community and convert these answers into quantifiable values. First let’s identify what is important to know about a community serving as a supplier, and why. How can we assess the community’s ability to deliver according both now and in the future? The first two community KPIs we need to evaluate are the visibility of plans and the visibility of code. We then need to evaluate who much influence can we exert of the OSS project development plans (as we won’t have any supplier contracts and control mechanisms). We therefore need to evaluate a third indicator; the influence over the decision process. Influence as a KPI is multi-dimensional and therefore we need to break it down into measurable components: (the below are a first attempt, feel free to add and suggest better names). – Decision accessibility: What does it take to get into the deciding team? – Changeability: Can we post a change request? – Openness: Can we contribute a new feature? – Priority: What is our importance to the community? The questions above are only a subset of a more substantial list of questions that we use, but I won´t bore you with the details here. The last resort – and one of the true benefits with Open Source from a sourcing perspective is the option to fork. This too must be evaluated and the forkability depends on factors like the modularity and documentation. When we try to measure the forkability what we are really trying to measure is the cost of the development needed for the branch now and in the future, as well as the cost to backport changes from the tip of the tree into our branch. In proprietary software sourcing this option corresponds to bespoke customization of the product, and the issues are basically the same. With Open Source there is a chance you will have followers that will share the burden, but worst case you are on your own. Managing the change OSS software sourcing is a new type of strategic alliance and it takes new ways to evaluate and manage in the supply chain. We are facing a mini revolution and the traditional control mechanisms are becoming obsolete. In this article I have dealt solely with the impact to the inbound licensing process. Naturally many other working processes are affected and up for re-evaluation in the light of this way to cooperate cross company borders. Embracing Open Source brings a need for change and change needs to be managed. I´m sure we will see some interesting organizational theories and models dealing with these issues but unfortunately we cannot wait; we must start the change process now not to lose assets, employees or customers. Looking forward to hearing your opinions and experience on this topic. Ã…se Stiller [So, what’s your open source strategy ? VisionMobile’s workshop on Mobile Open Source is an on-site crash course offering a 360° analysis of economics, licensing, governance models, communities, mobile Linux, standards and 10s of case studies and real-world insights.]