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.]

[Following the uninspiring announcements at the annual MWC show, Research Director Andreas Constantinou looks at the Megatrends that are shaping the mobile industry in 2009] After many months in the making, we ‘ve just released our annual Mobile Megatrends 2009. Last year’s Megatrends covered 15 trends for 2008 and got over 40,000 views at slideshare – we have no lesser expectations for this year’s edition. In this 2009 edition we ‘ve focused on fewer trends with deeper analysis. These are trends which over-arch the many micro-announcements which took place during the MWC week in Barcelona. The bigger picture that emerges in 2009 is not this or that App Store, this or that open source effort, or a new developer portal; these were just meta-effects set in motion by some tectonic shifts which started in 2008. [slideshare id=1071449&doc=mobilemegatrends2009visionmobilenew-090226011714-phpapp01] So what are the overarching trends of mobile in 2009? We ‘ve covered 8 core themes: – Eight Centres of Gravity, the New Rules of Mobile: how Google, LiMo, Nokia, Qualcomm, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Intel are consolidating power in mobile around complete vertical stacks (from hardware to services), essentially forming virtual centers of gravity and attracting mini-ecosystems around them. – Market Gravity, The Rise and Fall of Market Value: we explore how all market sectors (from App Stores and widgets to ringtones and location services) move across the lifecycle of market value: from novelty to differention and finally to commodity. We also discuss the concept of gravity accelerators or decelerators, forces which determine how fast each market transitions through this lifecycle. – The Software Industry is Consolidating: how Android and S60 are the remaining two choices for smartphone operating systems, what caused Linux to fade out, the landscape of today’s Linux market and Qt, WebKit, Flash Lite, Java ME, the four service delivery environments that are set to dominate. – Mapping Revenue Model Innovation – Value Quadrants: an evolution of a strategy tool we introduced back in early 2008, which explains how revenue models are changing, where the handset software value is migrating and what are some of the untapped opportunities in value creation in mobile. – Open is the New Closed: why ‘open’ is one of the most overstated terms of 2009, and how in practice open source is used to drive ‘closed’ commercial agendas in LiMo, Symbian Foundation and Android. The analysis also explains how open source licenses are almost orthogonal to governance models, and how source code control fundamentally differs from product control in this new era of openness. – The Mobile Application Store Phenomenon: digging beneath the often superficial coverage, this analysis explains what is the 5-ingredient recipe for a succesful Mobile App Store (MAS), why Apple and Qualcomm have been the only two that got it right, and why handset OEMs stand to succeed in developing MAS solutions, contrary to operators/carriers. – NaaS: Network as a Service: we discuss how operators/carriers are opening up their networks to third parties (Betavine, Orange Partner, Litmus, etc), and why the current offerings are currently too little too late. – Mobile Service Analytics: the Most Underhyped Opportunity: Last but certainly not least, we explain why service analytics present the most underhyped opportunity today, how mobile phones and networks are beehives of information with unprecedented richness and how startups are exploiting the opportunity today. We ‘ll be updating the Mobile Megatrends as new announcements are made during 2009, so new trends and information will be included over time. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas twitter: @andreascon

[Following on from three hardware related Nokia press releases, guest blogger Thomas Menguy discusses how these announcements fit within the new Nokia strategy] MWC is in full PR mode at the moment.. and the following three announcements from Nokia  show how the game is changing in Finland. Nokia selects Broadcom as a next generation 3G chipset supplier: “Today’s announcement with Broadcom is a further example of Nokia’s commitment to our diversified, multi-supplier chipset strategy,” said Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia. “This agreement, which targets low cost, high volume markets, demonstrates that we view Broadcom as a reliable supplier to bring the benefits of 3G to Nokia customers around the world.”… Then Nokia’s selection of the ST-Ericsson platform for Symbian/S60 phones: …Nokia and ST-Ericsson announced they are co-operating to provide the Symbian Foundation with a reference platform based on ST-Ericsson’s U8500 single chip… and finally how Nokia and Qualcomm plan to develop advanced mobile devices: …Nokia and Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) today announced that the two companies are planning to work together to develop advanced UMTS mobile devices, initially for North America. The companies intend for the devices to be based on S60 software on Symbian OS, the world’s most used software for smartphones, and leverage Qualcomm’s advanced Mobile Station Modem(TM) (MSM(TM)) MSM7xxx-series and MSM8xxx-series chipsets… What does this all mean? For years Nokia has been relying on Texas Instruments to produce its custom 2G/2.5G/3G chipsets. Nokia was designing the core chipset and letting Texas Instruments finish the integration and physically produce the chips: Nokia has been mastering the whole hardware IP of its phones, and has not been relying on generic chipsets for the vast majority of its production, with all the margins this implies :-). Nokia is now feeling the wind of change: from one supplier, the OEM is transitioning to three. Nokia has licensed its 3G hardware IP to ST (and presumably to Broadcom, rumors mentioned Infineon also), and will also use some “generic” chipsets. Texas Instruments has really missed the ball here, by stopping 3G investment (well they have made some, but failed to deliver), and being mostly ruled by business guys with no technical vision of where the market is going: How can a company with 70% of the billion units chipset market leave the market completely in such a short amount of time? Nokia diversification is part of the equation, for sure. And Nokia really seems to be shifting their focus: relaxing their efforts on the chipset front, not simply to cut internal costs but to invest, and my guess (as everyone else 🙂 is of course on Ovi, services, etc. PR after PR, announcements after announcement, product after product, Nokia is showing how serious it is about reinventing itself again. It won’t happen overnight, but it is coming, and it may be a game changer indeed. – Thomas

[PC and mobile ad networks are beginning to converge – guest blogger Raj Singh discusses how this evolution is a good thing for the industry.] When Admob first launched in 2006 (not saying they were the first), the focus was on creating a new ad network specific to mobile devices. This meant, when you bought an ad for mobile, it wouldn’t appear on your PC but only on your mobile device. Later that year, when Google launched their initial mobile advertising beta, PC advertisers were automatically opted-in for mobile – this created some commotion on the blogosphere andGoogle soon reversed their tracks and made it an opt-out. What’s interesting, is that Google’s initial gut may not have been off – the network or better known as inventory is blurring between PC and mobile advertising. I used to joke that when I did search several years ago on the Yahoo Mobile WAP site for pizza, that I would get a ringtone ad but when I did the same search on the PC, I would get national pizza ad, as you would expect. The reason for this, is the two different networks were treated separately – I would not get a PC ad on my mobile device even though the PC ad unit could have easily been presented as a mobile text ad unit. At the time, this made a lot of sense; why show an ad to a PC site if when the user clicks that ad, the site doesn’t render. The browsers were not up to par and so the destination pages would often crash the browser or not display at all. Today, browsers have significantly improved especially on the higher-end devices, those that get 80% of the browsing usage anyways. This means PC advertisers have less reason to be averse to displaying their ads on a mobile device since their pages will render. As a result, we are beginning to see a new trend line that has been forming over the past year, the convergence of the PC and mobile ad network. This is best exemplified in mobile search where the size of the ad network is critical to driving relevant results, much more than display advertising which has been difficult to target with the limited text and in-links in the mobile web. Try it now, go to m.yahoo.com and search.yahoo.com – I just searched for “pizza in san francisco”, notice how the PC ads are not yet displayed in mobile – it’s only a matter of time before they converge. Comments and discussion always welcome. Raj Singh

It’s hard to believe that it’s been twelve months since we published the last Print Edition of our blog. A lot has happened since then; we introduced the 100 million club, launched the Mobile Industry Atlas , worked on a zillion projects (long year!) and were voted the best blog in the Mobile Comms category by Electronics Weekly Magazine! To celebrate the past year of blogging we’ve published our Blog Print Edition 2009. Read on to find out how to download a copy. Looking for Bright Minds! The VisionMobile blog is a place where mobile strategists can voice, share and exchange ideas on market happenings and trends. It is a think tank for strategists who share a passion for uncovering the future of wireless telecoms. Our blog revolves around one key message: Distilling market noise into market sense. It’s about discerning technologies, vendors and the mobile markets, filtering the market noise and helping readers see out of the box. We are looking for bright minds with a passion for writing and flair for original, thought leading articles which cut through the hype and marketing noise into uncovering trends and new opportunities. Articles can be about market analysis and facts, observations on under-the-radar markets, analysis of technologies and their impact, etc. Company pitches are out, thought leadership is in. So, if you think you have an original idea or two to air, and want to get in front of of 1,600+ subscribers and industry insiders, do get in touch. And of course, we ‘ll be selecting the best articles to go into the next Print Edition of our blog Print Edition 2009 This year’s Blog Print Edition contains excerpts from a number of seminal articles which appeared on the blog in the last 12 months: – The 7 centres of gravity in mobile. Nokia+Trolltech+Symbian, Android, BREW+Flash, Adobe Open Screen, LiMo devices.. As the dust settles, we look at how the mobile landscape is shaping around 7 centres of gravity. – The darker side of Android. Can an open Android result in a closed phone? We explain why this will not be the exception, but the rule. – Watchlist: The 100 million club. We discuss the latest update to VisionMobile’s 100 million club, and the bigger picture that emerges from our research, including de facto standards and software that’s truly mass-market. – Value Quadrants: understanding value creation in mobile. How are the revenue models changing in the mobile industry? We introduce Value Quadrants, a tool that deciphers the multitude of revenue models and maps how value creation is changing in mobile. – Making money on the last mile: Introducing Channel ARPU. Has the industry been expecting too much from data ARPU? We revisit Channel ARPU as a new way of capturing not just the user’s wallet, but also his attention and heart. – Mobile software is dead. Long live.. mobile software. Mobile software has always been a tough business and is getting tougher. We explore how the value is migrating from embedded to downloadable software. – The Mobile Application Store phenomenon. Apple’s App Store, Android Market, RIM Application Center.. application stores are the latest fad of the mobile industry. We analyse the recipe of the mobile application store phenomenon and the movers and shakers of this virgin market. – Application Environments: Order from Chaos. Flash, Web Runtime, OSX, widgets, Java engines, Python.. the array of software platforms is chaotic to say the least. We dig deeper into application environments, explaining who’s what and identify 5 clear market trends. – The SIM card evolution: finally, a breakthrough? Is there a future for the SIM card in operator service delivery? We review the state of the SIM card industry, the commercial developments in the last 12 months and discusses why the role of the SIM may be indeed coming to a positive inflection point. – Mapping open source into mobile: who, where and how. Android, Symbian Foundation, Maemo, Trolltech… there’s been so much talk about open source moves in the mobile industry, but so little analysis on the big picture.  We distill market noise into market sense by mapping out three dimensions of open source in mobile: the who, the where and the how. – Community dynamics in mobile open source. How do open source communities work? We discuss how community dynamics can be mapped and better understood. Want to read more? You can download the PDF version here. Alternatively, if you would like a printed copy, email us your postal address and we’ll send it out to you (offer valid for the first 50 copies). – Vanessa

[Cloud Computing is the new buzzword, blogger Thomas Menguy tries to decipher its underlying concepts, the main actors, the business models and the implications for the industry ]. Cloud Computing is everywhere, and begins to look like the next big thing. But the term seems to regroup a plethora of new and old concepts with no clear consensus about it: everybody seems to understand what it is but when asked, having a clear definition is not so easy (I know, I’ve tried recently…and miserably failed 🙂 ). Here is my attempt to give it some sense. I’ll begin with some quotes grabbed from this nice video from the web2.0 expo Everything that we think of as a computer today is really just just a device that connect to the big computer we are all collectively building…Cloud computing : how computing services will be delivered in the future Tim O’Reilly Chance for developer to no worry about “things” …business concerns, scaling concerns Matt Mullenweg (WordPress Co-founder) A way to deliver services rather than applications completely independent of platform completely independent of physical hardware and I hope it works. Vamshi Krishna Mokshagundam Ok, so to sum up those gurus’ words, cloud computing seems to be about: Software Services deployment Transparent scaling of those services Reliability (no down time worry) Monetization handling Decorrelate the software from the physical hardware it is running on After this helicopter view, we can try to be a little be more educated, reading this excellent article from ExplainingComputers about the cloud may help: It describes a very good metaphor for all this cloud stuff: In his book The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr compares the growth of cloud computing to the development of the electricity network around a century ago. Before that time businesses had to generate their own power and therefore had to choose their location based on the available means of generation, such as moving water to drive a wheel or a supply of coal. However, with the availability of a reliable electricity grid to which they could connect, firms were increasingly freed from such constraints to focus on the other aspects of their business.In exactly the same manner we are today just about entering an age in which both individuals and organizations will be able to dispense with a large home computer or corporate data centre, and instead connect far leaner computing devices to cloud computing resources that will fuel their information processing requirements. It is therefore hardly surprising that cloud computing is also being referred to as “grid computing” or “utility computing” ExplainingComputers about the cloud: What a paradigm shift! Computing power data storage and services will soon be outsourced to 3rd parties. Now getting back to the industry, Cloud computing seems to be the sum of two concepts Software as a Service, or SaaS, perhaps you know it under another name : web 2.0 It can be described as desktop like application accessed within the browser (or a  RDA technology like AIR) and where the storage/processing is on dedicated servers. Those services can be free or not, here are some notable examples: http://www.salesforce.com/ : CRM for marketing/sales, per user monthly fee (9$ to 65$ a month) The excellent http://zoho.com free for personal use then few bucks per month/per user for business http://www.clarizen.com/ : project management software, per user monthly fee (around 20$ to 40$) Even IBM is going this route with https://www.lotuslive.com/ a kind of hosted Lotus service (I can’t get prices…) Of course : http://docs.google.com/ to store/share/edit office documents, free but has a paid version for enterprise. Of course Gmail is there also as Google web album (price depend on storage) Adobe plays the game with https://www.photoshop.com/ a kind of “online” Photoshop elements to store share and edit your personal photos, free for simple use, from 19$ to 129$ a year to grow the storage, different services are proposed if you already own Photoshop elements or premiere elements. Adobe also provides an office online collaborative suite: https://www.acrobat.com/ free to use, but acrobat desktop is heavily advertized across the tool. Apple MobileMe for photos, mail, events contact calendar shared between desktop and mobile (iphone) 99$ a year. Microsoft answer to Apple: SkyBox/SkyLine/SkyMarket (MobileMe+Appstore for WinMob). Microsoft has also some offers, around Microsoft live, http://home.live.com/, and some plan for hosted exchange services, I don’t have any price point to compare it to “standard” Exchange installations Of course I forget a lot of others, like Flickr, yahoo! services, etc. All those services have in common: Ease of use, not only for the service itself, but also for billing, maintenance, installation, deployment, etc. Affordable, price depending on storage/number of user/services accessed Neat and modern UIs Packaged and well defined services This is this last point that led some of those providers to open their infrastructures, putting in place the Next Big Thing : Hardware as a Service, HaaS Those SaaS providers have grown their infrastructure  to support scaling and reliability for their services…the next step is to open it and monetize it. So here is HaaS where the business model is simply to sell some RAM/CPU/Storage/Bandwidth/some services according to the needs of the customer. The real first One: Amazon EC2, part of Amazon Web Service (AWS) platform. A way to deploy and scale a web application, paying only for the resources it actually uses (prices are around 0.10$ to 0.80$ of cpu/hour, 0.10$ per GB transferred, 0.15$ per GB stored per month, 0.01$ per 1000/10000 PUT/GET requests).(side note: Adobe proposes LiveCycle ES on Amazon Cloud).  Amazon describes its solution as: Elastic: user can increase or decrease their hardware requirements within minutes Flexible: user can choose specification of each individual instance of computer power purchased Inexpensive: no dedicated capital investment required Reliable: make use of Amazon proven datacenter and network infrastructure. Google of course is there (do your self a favor and read this about the AMAZING Google infrastructure) with Google App Engine , free for now but fairly limited Little actors like Mosso,  GoGrid or 3tera are popping out on the same kind of technology IBM is jumping also with Blue Cloud HP, Intel, Yahoo join forces on cloud computing research For me Facebook is part of the game: easy way to deploy and monetize (?) social applications. Ning is another example (for social networks) And of course Microsoft with Azure: Azure seems to be really complete with a new OS, great marketing materials etc…but as always with MS not really available yet. Business model is again identical: you pay what you use as resources. See above a schema about those technologies. What is emerging is a new kind of OS capable to handle faulty hardware, load balancing, heavy multiprocessing and parallelization, virtualization technologies are key here (at least I understand the market cap of VMWare now!) , advanced storage technologies and databases. Google has built its own stuff (the three core elements of Google’s software: GFS, the Google File System, BigTable, and the MapReduce algorithm), Microsoft too (and present Azure as it is : a new OS), Amazon, Yahoo and others are using some Open-Source initiatives like http://hadoop.apache.org/ . A nice summary of what we can do with cloud computing, from the Yahoo white paper: What does it take to get the Next Great Thing off the ground? Now: Set up multiple replicas of a clustered data store Set up a system for indexing Set up a system for caching Set up auxiliary DBMS instances for reporting, etc. Set up the feeds and messaging between them Write the application logic Fairly complex system at first line of new codeOur vision: Write the application logic Use a hosted infrastructure to store and query your data => Or, as Joshua Shachter puts it: “The next cool thing shouldn’t take a team of 30, it should be three guys, PHP and a long weekend” Yahoo white paper This is all well and good but where is the catch? Many aspects are slowing this IT revolution Concerns around privacy and collusion: giving all my (as a company) data AND processing of my critical business to Amazon and Google may lead to collusion, Google is no more the “don’t be evil” it may have been, nor Microsoft or Amazon…Or even worse if I am a service provider new entrant (hum say like Nokia with Ovi for example), I just can’t use Google Infrastructure for that! How can I trust Google about my competing usage of its own resources to deliver a service …that competes with Google own ones? Concerns about stability. Most cloud vendors today do not provide availability assurances. This is particularly an issue with Mashups that need a set of web services hosted in various cloud computing environments, and many may stop working at any time. Seeing the MobileMe launch fiasco, Apple learnt how difficult it is! Concerns around security. The old dilemma: “should I put my money in a Bank or in my own building” …we all know the right answer now. Regulation issues:  For Example in Europe, some countries require services and/or customer data be retained within a country’s borders. This is new technology: even if simple, there is a learning IT service may feel threatened: after all the tedious tasks of updating, backup, hardware handling are now externalized… One key point seems to be that to be trusted cloud computing providers have to stop offering their own services and focus ONLY on providing a compelling and efficient cloud platform. Where is the Mobile industry: client side? As said by Tim O’Reilly in the first quote, ALL the devices are morphing to cloud access points, phones are on their way, MID and Netbooks are just showing it more clearly. The iPhone is the first real device to access the cloud effectively, and what is really interesting about it is that the browser is not the preferred choice to access the cloud: the vast majority of non-game iPhone applications are simply optimized front-end to a dedicated  SaaS! I predict the same for Android Marketplace…and many software actors will pop out  around this cloud interaction. Nokia is morphing into a cloud computing provider …but doing the whole stuff alone: Ovi being the infrastructure AND the service, and Nokia devices nice cloud front-end. Time will tell if an actor alone can handle those three aspects, Google, Microsoft and Apple are also trying… Where is the Mobile industry: server side? Doing this overview I was really surprised to not see the “natural” actors of this new paradigm: Who has a BIG infrastructure? Who can link this infrastructure to the final devices/customer? Who is deploying complex services to million of customers for decades? Who handles directly the customer billing? ….hum you guessed it : our beloved CARRIERS! Cloud computing would be a fantastic way for them to not fall in the dumb pipe category. Let’s face it, developing services has to be done by service providers, not operators (who wants to use its operator IM or mail? social network? photo sharing?) . If carriers were able to leverage their fantastic cloud computing capabilities, they may stop developing sure-to-fail-services and monetize their pipe not only to the final customer but also smartly from the service provider ( NaaS seems to be a first attempt but I still don’t understand the business model). Perhaps a bold statement, I would be more than happy to have some carrier comments on this one! Looking forward to your comments. –Thomas

OpenSource World, the biggest open source conference now in its 10th year, is fast approaching in August 2009. Previously LinuxWorld, the conference is expanding on open source software beyond desktop Linux, with two dedicated tracks on Mobile Open Source. I ‘m priviledged to be a member of the mobile programme committee alongside prominent open source figures Bill Weinberg and Rick Lehrbaum. Open to contributions The Mobile Open Source programme of the conference is now open to speaking proposals; presentations are invited on (or around) the following themes: Track 1. Mobile Platforms – Android, LiMo, Maemo, Moblin, OpenMoko and other Linux-based open source mobile platforms – Open SymbianOS – Shared Source around Windows Mobile – Browsers and Browser-based platforms – Mozilla/Gecko, Webkit, Pre, etc. – Open Source Java platforms – Application Frameworks: GTK, Enlightenment, Qt, etc. – Emerging form factors – MIDs, voice-enabled nettops, etc. – State of key platforms technologies – power management,  multi-core support, virtualization, etc. – Building and sustaining communities around mobile platforms – Platform licensing choices and impact Track 2. Mobile Applications – Mobile application development tools and techniques – Comparing application frameworks and paradigms – End-to-end applications development and deployment – Enterprise mobile application development, rollout and management – State of OSS applications technologies – VoIP, multimedia, etc. – Content and content management with open source software – Mobile application delivery – Working with operators, application stores and other channels – Licensing of mobile applications and content Please submit speaking proposals by February 20, using this online form. Please note: inspirational presentations are in, marketing pitches are out. – Andreas

[why do most phone user interfaces look alike? Research Director Andreas Constantinou reviews the technology and vendors that are making it possible for phones to adopt radically different UI Personalities, changing from a Barbie to a BMW at the touch of a button; and putting a new premium content market on the radar] Handset user interfaces today lack differentiation; while industrial design seems to leap ahead each year with fresh layouts and materials, the user interface retains the same monotonous appearance as in the last 5 years with lists, grids, text everywhere and icon menus for a topping. Even in the recent paradigm of touch-screen devices only iPhone has been a true innovator with the likes of Nokia’s 5500 resembling a touch UI welded on top of a traditional Symbian OS. So why don’t manufacturers produce unique handset UIs ? Why doesn’t each phone have a completely different UI, allowing users to select diverse phone personalities from retro to ultramodern or from macho black to girly pink? The bottleneck in user interface innovation The software development process is in fact the bottleneck in UI innovation. From a technology perspective, the user interface is made up of a set of core applications such as the idle screen, dialer main menu, inbox, contacts, calendar, camera, browser shell and settings menu. Core applications are designed on a product line basis, rather than a handset model basis, with UI specifications set in stone 18 months before handset launch. Individual core applications are customised to meet regional and operator requirements 6-9 months before launch. Core applications are written in native C language, mixing logic and presentation and fused together via a chain of static dependencies. This makes altering application look & feel as risky as a complex surgical operation, which carries a high opportunity cost; delaying a handset launch results in 2-3 million dollars per week in lost profits for a high-end model. Handset themes, i.e. skin-deep application colouring options today implemented on most handsets, are in effect superficial and do not affect the interaction and graphics design of the phone. All in all, UI innovation has hit a process bottleneck. UI Personalities A new class of technologies has been quietly in development since 2004, slowly making it into manufacturers’ product lines to revitalise the UI development process; these are software frameworks like that decouple application engine from the handset look & feel, across the entire core application suite, a type of software solution that we refer to as UI Frameworks. UIFs are designed for rapid development of new user interfaces, reducing the time to radically change the handset UI from 18 months pre-launch to post-sales; this enables the handset look & feel to change from a Barbie personality to a BMW one, while enabling a new market of premium downloadable content. Examples of diverse UI Personalities (source: TAT) The downside is a high upfront integration cost; a complete UIF integration requires an OEM to ‘rip out’ all of their core applications and rewrite the UI-related elements of each application; we understand that it takes an OEM 10 man years to develop the complete software for a key-based device using an existing OS core and a mature UI framework. Technical challenges must also be noted; UIF performance is an issue for handsets below ARM11, 300 MHz, representing a ballpark 90% of the handsets produced in 2008. Plus OEMs are too cash constrained and wary of competing handset launches to focus on a radical software redesign. Due to these challenges, very few UIF products exist, namely Acrodea’s Vivid UI, TAT’s Cascades, Digital Airways’ Kaleido and Mentor Graphics’ Inflexion, in order of market penetration. Qualcomm’s uiOne HDK is effectively a UIF solution bundled with a complete application suite, while Adobe’s Flash UI can been stretched to deliver UIF functionality on an application-by-application basis. Vendor profiles: TAT, Digital Airways and Acrodea The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) is a software company developing graphics rendering and UI framework technology for mobile phones. Founded in 2002, the company employs 140 people with headquarters in Sweden and offices in Korea and the US. TAT has seen its Kastor 2D/3D graphics framework embedded in over 200 million handsets across 5 out of 6 top OEMs as of mid 2008. The company reports that Motorola, Asus and one more tier-1 OEM have licensed TAT Cascades (a UIF product), and expects Cascades to have been embedded within 30 handset models released to the market in 2008. On legacy platforms, TAT’s customers typically apply Cascades functionality to 3-5 core applications, while in new platforms, the product is used across the complete user interface. It is also worth noting that the Vodafone Simply series of five handsets launched between 2005 and 2007 featured a UIF product based on Digital Airways‘ Kaleido. We understand that Digital Airways is also behind the Porsche P9522 handset introduced by Sagem in late 2008. Acrodea is a Japanese mobile software vendor offering graphics, messaging and gaming middleware. Founded in 2004, Acrodea employs 127 staff with offices in Japan, Korea, Finland and California and reported revenues of 3.1 billion yen (circa $35 million). Acrodea’s Vivid UI is a UI framework that has been deployed with operators DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank in Japan across 70 handset models and 30% share of handset shipments as of mid 2008, according to the company; the Vivid UI engine has been powering the idle screen and main menu across these handsets. The business case for Vivid UI varies per operator. Since November 2006, DoCoMo has been offering a “Kisekae Tool” service which allows users to download branded UIs for $3-$5 each. As of August 2008, the KDDI Naka-Change service offers branded UIs to buy through its retail stores via a cable connection. SoftBank’s “Onajimi Sosa” service on the other hand uses Vivid UI to help users transition from one handset menu system to another. Operators provide the Vivid UI SDK to content providers who develop branded content; as of mid 2008 there are 100s of official (on-portal) and unofficial (off-portal) content providers of Vivid UI – based content. Revenue is shared based on existing operator models, while Acrodea monetises under a per-unit royalties models plus NREs. The potential for downloadable UIs cannot be understated; the ‘Kisekae Tool’ service alone is a fast growing one, expected to reach revenues of $100 million-a-year by end 2008, according to Acrodea, particularly as the addressable market expands beyond 30% of handsets sold. Outlook: UI Personalities as a new form of premium content UIF technology is poised to break through the bottleneck of user interface innovation; despite the technology adoption moving at a slow pace since 2004, 2008 has been the year where at least two tier-1 OEMs have incorporated UIF products in their product lines.  The main technology inhibitor – the multi-million opportunity costs associated with revamping software development processes – is slowly subsiding, opening up the potential for a new market of UIs as premium downloadable content, following in the footsteps of Japan. We believe that UI Personalities will eventually emerge as a new premium content market in Europe and US. We see this first happening in 1H 2010, where tier-1 OEMs with an aggressive service agenda will be deploying own premium UI portals in Europe, in partnership with branded content providers. Less aggressive tier-1 and tier-2 OEMs will be approaching the market via tier-1 operators. Overall, we expect a new premium content market of downloadable UI Personalities to emerge in Europe and US. Following in the footsteps of Japan, this market may also compensate for the declining market of ring-tones, wallpapers, music and other commoditising forms of content. Moreover, we expect to see downloadable UI Personalities resist price erosion for two reasons; firstly, UIF technology cannot be easily standardized across handset OEMs; secondly UIF technology can permeate the entire look & feel of the handset, resulting in high-value, deep forms of branded content that engage the buyer across the user journey, even adapting to handset usage and context. Comments welcome as always. – Andreas

[Adobe just released and new way to package Flash Lite Applications for S60 and WindowsMobile: this announcement, if linked to the announced Google native client, the Adobe Alchemy product and other industry initiatives is an indication of where the desktop and mobile development are going. Blogger Thomas Menguy tries to bring some coherence to these seemingly uncorrelated initiatives]. At one time application developers were targeting OSes: Windows, MacOS, Unix. At one point the target began to move towards runtimes (or Application Environments as discussed in this earlier article): the web browser, Flash player (inside the web browser), Java VMs, .NET, and more recently Java FX, Silverlight, AIR… In all cases each runtime is imposing its own development environment, tools, SDK and above all a development language (Java for the Java VMs, Action script for Flash/Air, Javascript for the web browser, C# for .net). And of course the runtime has to be installed on your final target, BEFORE deploying your application or content. But the lines between tools, languages and runtimes are now blurring, as evidenced by several industry moves: Mobile Open OS are all offering solid and robust application and content management (the Mobile Application Store syndrome). A runtime sandboxing its dedicated content from the rest of the system is seen like an unnatural way and bad user experience for handling content. Google has a framework (GWT: Google Web Toolkit) to develop for the web browser runtime … except that the development language is NOT javascript You develop in Java In Eclipse or NetBean You can use a RAD The Java code is compiled in Javascript and will run in a browser not a javaVM (except for development) This brings a kind of unified approach for the client and the server OpenLaszlois a great RIA development platform …without a specific runtime : You develop in the OpenLazlo language : LZX, a specific XML + Javascript You compile your code for flash or DHTML (a Java version exists but doesn’t seem to be supported anymore) so you can select your runtime! .Net /Silverlight You can choose you development language VB#, C# or action script All are compiled to the .NET bytecode runtime Microsoft is releasing its “Expression” line of tools to bring ease of development to the designer/developer Adobe AIR You can develop in Flash/Flex/Action Script or … in AJAX (Javascript)+HTML The Air runtime is in fact an aggregation of a Web Runtime (Webkit) and a standalone Flash player Your applications are deployed …nearly like any other application on the underlying platform. The ‘nearly’ is important because the AIR runtime installation is still visible, as is the application air packaging Adobe is releasing Catalyst, a very nice WYSIWYG application prototype IDE targeted to designers with strong links to CS4 Google Native Plugin Allows to develop and reuse C/C++ code … in the browser use a raw GCC toolchain (and so the browser plugin has certainly to embed an OS independent dynamic loader…reminds me something we are doing for years at Open-Plug 🙂 ) Haxe: An Action script like language you can compile to … php, C++, java and of course ActionScript Unification of the client and server development The adobe Alchemy project (for the techies, explained here): Compile any C/C++ code to ActionScript byte code to be run in a flash player (examples of Doom, here,  and Quake running in Flash are now famous) And the announcement triggering this analysis: Adobe Mobile Packager Development in CS4, with CS3 device central Flash Lite Application is packaged in a “standard” .CAB file for Windows Mobile or an .SIS file for S60, with everything needed to make your application run Flash Lite applications are no more second class citizens, you don’t have to open the Flash runtime anymore to launch such applications SonyEricsson Capuchin … is at the end the way to package flash lite application in a java jar file. All those examples are depicting underlying trends: We see, more and more a decorrelation between the development environment and the targeted runtimes Many development languages are popping out, and we won’t have a “one language fits all”: developers will tend to use What they know , and it’s even easier now with all those tools Reuse legacy code as much as possible What fits best for a particular task What can help with client/server development Ease of development and tooling seems to be key, especially looking at Microsoft and Adobe strategies The on device final Application Management is left to the underlying platform/OS and will be more and more abstracted for the developer that is targeting multiple platforms with a single application development environment. From what I see today, I tend to think that Adobe is getting it right, little by little, especially thanks to their very strong tooling offer (CS4/FlexBuilder/Catalyst)…and we may see other initiatives from other players like Nokia or even Google to accelerate the development and deployment of services (web or not). Interesting times for a developer! Looking forward to your comments. Thomas

[Android, Symbian Foundation, Maemo, Trolltech… there’s been so much talk about open source moves in the mobile industry, but so little analysis on the big picture.  Andreas Constantinou distils market noise into market sense by mapping out three dimensions of open source in mobile: the who, the where and the how.] The Android launch, the Symbian acquisition and open source roadmap, Intel’s Moblin 2.0 and OpenedHand acquisition, Nokia’s adoption of WebKit as a feature of the S40 platform, the Trolltech acquisition and incorporation of Qt on S60, Purple Labs acquisition of Openwave and Sagem assets, AOL’s Open Mobile Platform… it seems that in the space of just one year open source has transitioned all of a sudden from geekware for Linux enthusiasts to a succesful commercial alternative to closed-door standards.  Moving forward, 2009 will be the year of maturity for how open source can be used as a tool for cheaper, faster collaborative software development, which reduces barriers to entry and breeds innovation. Yet rarely do analysts, bloggers or media cover the big picture of open source use in mobile; in other words who is using open source, where are they using it and under what terms (i.e. the license and governance terms). Here I ‘ll attempt to do just that; paint the big picture of mobile open source against three dimensions, the who, the where and the what 1. The Who’s Who Who is who in mobile open source? The following table provides a near-complete list of who’s who, from operating systems to development tools and industry initiatives. Naturally, the table excludes the 100s of smaller open source software projects that have been used in some capacity in one phone or other. Table: who’s who in mobile open sourceLinux support packagesWind River (also one of the most prominent integrators for mobile Linux stacks), MontaVistaOperating systemsfor feature phones: Purple Labs; for smartphones: Azingo, Access Linux Platform, A la Mobile, OpenMoko; for MIDs: Intel Moblin, Ubuntu Mobile. Also OKL4 is virtualisation (hypervisor) software for mobile phones.MiddlewareGNOME’s GTK+ and related projects (e.g. D-Bus, Gstreamer), the graphics subsystem of Nokia’s Qt and the db4o database engine.Application environmentsGoogle’s Android, Nokia’s Maemo, Nokia’s Qt, Eclipse eRCP, Sun’s Java phone ME, Motorola’s Java MIDP3, AOL’s Open Mobile Platform and Nokia’s Web RuntimeBrowsersApple’s WebKit (on the verge of becoming a de facto standard for web-centric service delivery) and Firefox MobileService deliv. platformsFunambol (consumer email sync), Volantis (content adaptation)Development toolsEclipse Foundation (manages the Eclipse IDE, used as the basis for Nokia’s Carbide, Wind River tools and many others). Plus RhoMobile – a new set of open source developer tools for creating connected enterprise apps on smartphones.Industry initiativesSymbian Foundation (EPL license), Open Handset Alliance (APL2 license), LiMo Foundation (open source as it builds on top of Linux), GNOME Mobile and Embedded (LGPL-licensed GTK+ and related software) There are also a couple of initiatives which are associated with ‘openness’ but are not related to open source; Microsoft Shared Source is a complex array of 10s of different licenses involving access to source code for Microsoft software, only two of which have been approved by the Open Source Initiative, the gatekeeper of open source license compliance; and the Adobe Open Screen Project which does not employ open source licensing at all. 2. The Where Where is open source software used in mobile phones ? The following table provides a 10,000 foot view of where open source licensed software is used within a mobile phone, from the kernel to applications. The rule of thumb is that the lower you go towards the base of the software stack, the more open source software you ‘re likely to find. Table: where is open source used in mobile phone softwareKernel + base oper. systemIn a Linux-based OS, 90% of the kernel and base OS (drivers, base services) is community-sourced and unmodified, while 10% is community sourced and modified. The drivers for the modem stack are always closed source.MiddlewareWhere GTK+ is used (e.g. traditionally NEC and Panasonic phones), about 30% of the middleware stack is open source licensed based on the GNOME family of multimedia middleware (e.g. Gstreamer, D-Bus)Application environmentsThe percentage of open source software ranges from 100% in the case of Android and OpenMoko to 0% in the vast majority of feature phones where a proprietary Java ME engine is used.ApplicationsApplications are nearly 100% closed source, with the exception where WebKit is used as the browser. Open source licensing is also used in server software; most notably in Funambol’s email synchronisation server and Volantis’ Mobility Server, a device identification and content adaptation framework. Network infrastructure vendors like Nokia Siemens sell Linux-based boxes and software, but that doesn’t really imply an open source product. 3. The How How is open source used in mobile? In other words, what are the licenses and the governance models employed in open source projects? Several major mobile open source projects use a weak copyleft license (e.g. EPL, LGPL or MPL). Generally speaking, weak copyleft licenses carry some obligations for publishing source code modifications if distributed, but clauses around derivatives are less strict so can be used with proprietary software. The APL2 (non-copyleft) license is also popular – it is used in Google’s Android, Motorola’s planned MIDP3 release and AOL’s Open Mobile Platform.  Note how the GPL license, by far the most popular license in PC and Internet OSS projects is rarely used in mobile. This is one of the reasons for the zero adoption of Sun’s Java phone ME by handset OEMs and the same reason why Qt will have to be re-licensed under a more permissive license if Nokia wants to see it adopted by other handset OEMs. Governance models vary widely; from Funambol’s moderator-based incorporation of contributions, to a single-company control over contributions, as is the case with Apple’s popular WebKit browser core. There’s lots more parameters to a governance model – particularly control over the release schedule, membership-only access, membership fees and IP ownership, but this a lengthy topic that deserves a separate discussion. The next table summarises the license type and governance model (how contributions are managed) for popular mobile open source projects (see also earlier article on community dynamics). Figure: comparing community governance models and licenses for popular OSS projects Here it’s worth shedding some light over a common misperception; an open source license does not imply a zero licensing cost. For example many Linux-based OS vendors like Wind River, Azingo and Purple Labs are charging per-unit royalties for the software. As another example, the Symbian Foundation has vowed to release Symbian OS code under an EPL license, while members of the Foundation will have access to source code under a zero royalty license, for a flat membership fee of $1,500 per year. However the Symbian Foundation hasn’t publicised the fees members will have to pay for shipping handsets with the Symbian Foundation code; if the Foundation is to support is sub-500 staff (numbers according to Lee Williams), then the effective license fees should be in the region of millions of dollars per year per member. Updated: OK Lab’s OKL4, a virtualisation (hypervisor) software engine is available under a dual license (commercial and a copyleft-like license similar to the one used by Sleepycat). OK Labs does not open contributions to the OKL4 engine, but instead supports a community of value-add software contributors that develop on top of the OKL4 engine. Comments welcome as always. And thanks to LinuxDevices and the O’ Reilly Radar for covering this article. – Andreas [If you ‘d like to find out more about open source in mobile, check out our 360 degree workshop, a one-day deep-dive into everything and anything 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. You can also download our free research report on GPL2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses,  their roots, consequences and repercussions.] Update: We ‘ve been voted as the best blog in the Mobile Comms category by  Electronics Weekly Magazine! #opensource