Mobile Musings, Mostly

A quick recap of the 7/28 Mobile Monday New York event held at the Samsung Experience Center in NYC. The topic of this event was “Viability and Monetization Potential of Social Networks”.

The event started with a series of 5-minute presentations by three companies..I have provided brief overviews below. Further on, I will offer my personal take on each of them.

• MOBOW : Are you an absolute microblogging/livestreaming addict ? If yes, then MOBOW might be a way to get your fix on your mobile device. Deepak Das, MOBOW Co-Founder talked about unleashing the potential of the address books on your mobile device. Mobow is tapping into the lifestreaming services bandwagon (like friendfeed, iminta, profilactic, identi.ca). But with an additional twist - they integrate lifestreaming onto your mobile device and within the context of arguably that most “social” asset, your address book !! They augment the typical phone conversation by integrating location, presence awareness, feeds (from Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn…) , etc. into your address book. They claim to have a WindowsMobile client ready, and are working on a RIM and iPhone version, and are also looking at leveraging XMPP .

• Next2Friends - As the name implies, Next2Friends is about live video streaming from your mobile device. Playing in the same space as the recently transitioned-to-beta Qik , Next2Friends has the usual embed-in-3rdparty web sites. Plus using Bluetooth-based proximity for targeted applications (yes, marketing was mentioned…), and also white labeling the entire application suite (for businesses/corporations looking to develop communities around their offerings or for specific events like product launches).

• Skyhook Wireless - Skyhook uses their database of several million WiFi access points, in addition to GPS data and cell tower triangulation as part of their hybrid positioning system (XPS). So unlike the previous two, they are primarily an infrastructure player who talked about their recent foray into providing location smarts for 3rd-party apps and websites through their Loki offering. It is available for developers through a Javascript API, or to end users via a downloadable application.

  Both MOBOW and Next2Friends are playing in a relatively crowded space. For MOBOW, figuring out how they can differentiate against and compete with the existing lifestreaming services (including Jaiku), getting an iPhone app out soon, adding XMPP into their roadmap, and leveraging GNIP are just some of the challenges in my opinion.

  In a similar vein, Next2Friends competes against Kyte and Qik. I do find Next2Friends white label idea intriguing as it opens up the opportunity to help organizations (from both a B2E and a B2C perspective) leverage these technologies. See this post from Jeremiah Owyang for a related discussion on how traditional Content Management System (CMS) vendors are angling to get into the social software space. Also check out the entire MoMoNY event captured via live video stream by Next2Friends, here.

  Much like WHERE , Skyhook wants to tap into the convergence of social software, location, and neogeography. And it seems like they have put a decent amount of effort into the Loki platform. As always, adoption will be dictated by how they evolve the platform, the reach they can get, and how they can set up the revenue model. As a personal user of the WHERE app on my iPhone, I can attest to the utility of such an application.

  These presentations were followed by Lubna Dajani providing a preview of the results that her organziation, Stratemerge is conducting on the “viability and monetization potential of social networks“. If you are interested in participating in this online survey, you can do so by going here.

  This was followed by a panel discussion on social networks moderated by Lubna and featuring six participants. The panel covered a variety of topics including privacy, potential winners, carrier attitudes towards social networks, role of advertising. The discussion was for the most part, fairly civil and stayed within script in terms of opinions from the various players (device OEM, carrier, ISVs, VCs), except for a little bit of back and forth on whether users really read the T&Cs from their carriers and how much control carriers continue to exert on innovative mobile applications.

As an avid NFL fan, I have been following the saga that is Brett Favre’s un-retirement. I don’t want to bore with you details as you can find it all over the web, including here.

Of particular interest to me is this news item that talked about Favre using a Packers-issued cell phone, and how the Packers organization then reviewed his cellphone records as part of their ‘tampering’ charge they filed (with the NFL) against the Minnesota Vikings.

This got me thinking about device management. Now what does that have to do with device management ? Bear (and no that is not a pun given the Packers’ much despised NFC North rivals)’with me, while I make the connection.

I spend a fair amount of time talking to customers about the implications of mobile applications (including devices) especially from a security, management, and operations standpoint. And a critical part of that discussion is ensuring the organization has clarity on the lifecycle aspect of mobile applications - procurement, provisioning, ongoing support (including theft/loss), and technology refresh.

Given the predominantly ‘retail’ procurement of mobile devices in most organizations, IT’s ability to ‘enforce’ much by way of policies is frankly, limited. However, when you consider the increasing amounts of corporate information (email, contacts, customer information, etc.) that makes its way onto mobile devices, IT managers need to define and enforce policies that safeguard the employees and the organization from security breaches. And that is where device management comes in.

Without a set of clear policies that define among other things individual vs corporate liable devices, the types of security measures required on mobile devices, etc. and the ability to enforce it with a set of automated tools (ie. device management software); IT managers can forget supporting mobile devices in a manner that other IT assets (laptops, desktops, email, etc,) are supported.

Obviously in this situation with Favre’s phone, we are not talking about the typical scenario (in terms of confidential Packers data). But then again it is not a stretch to imagine the entire Packers playbook fitting on an SD card. Imagine the brouhaha then !!! Then you just might hear mobile device management and its colorful vocabulary (kill pill, wipe, quarantine, etc.) on the next edition of SportsCenter….

I was on a panel discussion yesterday, titled “Wireless, the Internet & Open Access Initiatives”, hosted by the New Jersey Technology Council (NJTC). It featured a presentation from Maurice Thompson who is a Director with Verizon’s Open Development Initiative (ODI), something I have touched on in a previous post.

Maurice did a good job of laying out the key components of the initiative, as also some of the potential market segments that Verizon expects to see some innovative devices and solutions emerge as part of ODI. In particular, he highlighted how ODI is also expecting activity from markets that are not considered part of the traditional cellular market e.g. AMR/AMI in Utilities, health/telemetry/wellness, M2M, etc.

In the subsequent part of the event, some of the points that were highlighted by myself and my illustrious co-panelists (Chip Cleary and Susan Brazer) as also the audience were as follows :

• The current focus on ODI on devices, although laudable, is but one dimension of driving innovation - the others being the ability to develop and market compelling applications and services, as also a clear business model on how the various participants will make money. Till the latter two are included within ODI, it will end up being a “non-stock certification program on steroids.”
• On the same thread, how is VZW going to start “opening” up to allow developers to start leveraging things like location to build applications ?
• Has VZW thought about expanding ODI to include advertising (which might be integrated with VZW’s own advertising platform) as a possible monetization model for new applications ?
• In response to a question, Maurice indicated that ODI did not care about the device platform as long as it met the RF requirements and other certification criteria

Maurice was gracious in his responses to the questions and admitted that ODI is just getting started and so all the details have not been worked out.

Kudos to NJTC for setting up the event. If you are interested in learning more about ODI, you can find information here.

The announcement of the purchase of the rest of Symbian by Nokia and the concurrent launch of the Symbian Foundation attracted a lot of (web) ink in its immediate aftermath, including from yours truly.

Observers have commented on the implications of this announcement, but I would recommend a recent one from Andreas Constantinou on the VisionMobile blog. Andreas had done a good job of taking all the other events that have transpired over the past several months including the launch of the iPhone SDK, Android, Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech, etc. and created a framework to think of the evolving landscape.

He states that there are now seven centres of gravity in mobile..

As the dust is clearing after the storm, a new landscape is unveiling in the mobile industry; one where the balance of power is concentrating around 7 centres of gravity: Adobe, Apple, Google, LiMo, Microsoft, Nokia and Qualcomm.

By focusing on what each of these entities brings to the table from a technical and commercial standpoint, Andreas has provided some much needed perspective and a framework with which to track the evolution of the mobile space. Of the 7 players in Andreas’ list, two of them have not yet shipped a single device yet in 2008 - Google and LiMo (yes there are devices with common stack objects from LiMo that have shipped). So it will be interesting to see how the Android device launch pans out this year.

However, he has interestingly left out RIM from this list. Although a niche player in the enterprise segment, trying to expand into the consumer space, RIM has to be treated as a contender. They have a developer environment, solid install base, and decent carrier GTM relationships. How that translates into their ability to deal with the scale and resources that the others can bring to the market is open.

In this post, I look at the not too glamorous area of low cost handsets, using India as an example.

The breathtaking growth in mobile subscriber growth in India (e.g. close to 8million net additions/month for the past 6 months in India) over the past five years has been accompanied by a sharp decline in handset prices (more than 50%). This period has also seen penetration grow from less than 1% to close to 20%.

A report released by BDA, a consulting organization, in collaboration with Stanford University, also points out some interesting facts about the Indian mobile market. To wit

• 85% of the market is pre-paid, and accounts for 95% of net subscriber adds
• Effective tarrifs/minute have declined by 67% in the past five years
• Almost half of Indian mobile subscribers use Ultra Low Cost Handsets (ULCH) - handsets costing below $35 are typically classified as ULCH, while those under $50 fall into the Low Cost Handset (LCH) category

When you consider India’s per capita income of $4542 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms and $1089 in nominal terms, the real battlefield is not going to be in the high end phones (like Nokia’s N-series devices or the upcoming Indian launch of the iPhone), but in the LCH/ULCH category.

The Indian market has seen some pretty solid action in the past year when it comes to this category.

• Around the same time as the iPhone was launched in the US in 2007, India’s Reliance Communications launched monochrome handsets (Classic 202/203/204) with one model (the Classic 202) priced at $19 (777 Indian Rupees) , followed later in 2007 by a sub-$25 color handset in the same series.
• Not to be completely outdone, Nokia launched six low cost models, priced in the $50-$90 range (2000-3500 Indian Rupees).
• Vodafone Essar launched two GSM handsets priced in the $30-45 range. This product comes from Vodafone’s collaboration with ZTE to manufacture Vodafone-branded LCH/ULCH for emerging markets.
• Spice Mobile announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress their $20 ‘People’s Phone’. This is the same Spice Mobile that has been in the news recently as being in merger talks with Sony Ericsson, possibly as a way to complement the latter’s portfolio with much needed devices in the lower price range.

As a reference point, Nokia’s recently launched E66 and E71 are priced at close to 23,000 Indian Rupees, while the 8G iPhone is rumored to retail in India for about 30,00 Indian Rupees.

As the BOM (Bill of Materials) for LCH/ULCH has fallen to below $20, device OEMs (and their operator partners) will be eager to push these devices out in emerging markets. But are there some interesting applications that can be provided on these devices - something which these customers really value (besides the low price itself) ?

Could we look to what Dean Bubley writes about - potentially interesting capabilities in Nokia’s Series 40 6th edition ? He specifically points to the following features in S40, which might in the next couple of years, with a potentially new Linux kernel pave the way for mobile internet on the LCH/ULCH landscape :

• Webkit-based browser capable of rendering “the real Internet”
• Support for Adobe Flash Lite 3.0
• Suport for Javascript & Ajax
• Developer support for Nokia’s Widsets widget platform applies to S40 too

Yours truly will be participating, along with representatives from RIM and Vodafone in a panel discussion on “Mobile - The Opportunity for Developers and Business People” hosted by the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) on July 14th in New York City.

The event is free, but you need to register, which you can do here.

Should be a good event to meet other mobile industry folks in the Big Apple. Hope to see you there.

In what seemed like a nearly orchestrated set of of announcements starting about 18 months ago, several major US banks announced extensions of their online banking to a mobile device. The list included Bank of America, Citibank, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and SunTrust among others.

While the functionality offered (account balances, transfer between accounts, bill pay, etc.) was not really revolutionary, the approaches taken by these banks are slightly different. Whereas Citibank and Suntrust have you download an application on to your mobile device, others like Wachovia and Bank of America make you point your mobile browser to a special URL to start accessing the functionality. Basically, they fall pretty clearly into the those old chestnuts of mobile applications - mobile browser and downloadable application.

Of all the major banks in the US offering this type of ‘mobile banking’, Bank of America has been pretty actively reporting the adoption rate - reaching their one millionth unique active mobile banking customer (Citigroup claimed to have 30,000 users in March 2008). BoA report close to 100,000 users/day on peak days. Just for some perspective, BoA has about 25 million online banking users, which means they managed to move about 4% to try mobile banking in one year. And that is with a mobile browser !!

The same BoA release talks about “two-thirds of Bank of America’s mobile bankers are under 35 years old and four-out-of-five are under 45 years old, as Gen Y and X consumers who have embraced mobile web technology are similarly driving mobile banking usage.”

And yours truly (long-time BoA customer) was one of those who gave it a try when it was first announced. However, I have never used it since the first day I tried it - I never was in a situation where I had to whip out my mobile device to check my balance…

According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, 53% of US consumers have no interest in using their mobile device for banking; but 16% of consumers already use their mobile device for some form of banking. Compare that to a TowerGroup report from late 2007 that predicted more than 40 million US consumers using mobile banking services by 2012 (growing from 1 million in 2007).

So while these launches are a big step forward in mobile banking, they are still not compelling enough for most consumers. Things start getting interesting when banks start offering more advanced services like person-to-person (P2P) money transfer, mobile wallet, etc. A few transactions are especially worth tracking in this context :

1. Bank of America’s investment in mFoundry (a mobile banking technology provider)
2. Citigroup’s newly formed JV (called Mobile Money Ventures) with Korean carrier SK Telecom
3. Qualcomm’s acquisition of Firethorn (another mobile banking technology provider)
4. Investments in Obopay (a mobile payments company) by both Qualcomm and Indian wireless carrier Essar Communications (now majority owned by Vodafone)
5. Nokia’s formation of a JV with Giesecke & Devrient (2nd largest smart card manufacturer)

In upcoming posts, I will look at how and why non-traditional financial services players like device OEMs and wireless carriers are trying to get into this space, which parts of the world we are seeing some early indicators of customer adoption, and what that tells us about the (potentially different) value propositions of mobile banking services for different consumers.