Tag Archives: Mobile

iMessage + Facetime = Skype ?

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One of the more suprising announcements in Apple’s WWDC keynote was iMessage in iOS5.

Besides the already mentioned fact that the operators will not like this replacement of their SMS services, especially as it seems to be seamlessly switching between creating a SMS and an iMessage message (see “Cult of Mac“).
But even more surprising is the fact that iMessage is not better integrated with Facetime. The features iMessage provides are very similar to the Skype Chat/IM function (conversations, typing indication). And now Microsoft (also offering a Mobile OS) will control Skype with it’s very integrated communication suite: voice, video, messaging.
Apple doesn’t seem to have a bigger communication suite strategy in place yet, but I assume it is already in the making.
Think of Facetime + iMessage + Mail (now with conversations in Lion) integration available on iOS and MacOS devices.

Apple, the new / old Microsoft

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Looking at all the new features Apple announced for iOS and MacOS during the WWDC keynote I had a strange feeling of deja vu.

Microsoft has been known and accused of copying successfull 3rd party applications from the Windows ecosystem and making them part of the operating system.
Now Apple feels a little bit the same, if you consider:
  • Reminders:          much like Things and similar apps
  • Reading List:        Instapaper
  • Camera features: much like Camera+ and other apps (e.g. grid, zoom, AF/AE)
  • iMessaging:         a lot like Skype IM/chat
  • Documents in Cloud: like Evernote
Not that this is necessarily bad and in many cases they added a special touch to it, e.g. Location triggers for reminders. But still it feels a little like the past Microsoft.
The major difference is probably that Phil Schiller called the Safari Browser a system component of the operating system, something that Microsoft has fought hard to avoid.

Mary Meeker publishes “Top Mobile Internet Trends”

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Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkens just released her “Top Mobile Internet Trends”. Overall interesting read. What immediately struck me were slides 4 and 5 showing the exceptional take-off for the iPad and the Apple App-Store. The interesting part is that iPad grew much faster than iPod and iPhone and the App-Store grew faster and bigger than iTunes. In both cases the key to this is in my view that those had no real competition at the time of launch.

The iPad created the market for tablet devices without any really competitor. At the time of launch the iPod had several MP3 player and the iPhone several smartphones as serious contenders for the market. Although finally they also re-defined their category the start was not as easy for them.

Similar is true for the App-Store. There have been already several MP3-download sites pior to the launch of iTunes, whereas for mobile phone application download sites they have not been any real competitors, despite some attempts by mobile operators and device vendors.

iNFC

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The new iPad will have cameras (front- and/or rear-facing), higher resolution (or not), it will be using carbon-fiber or still a unibody and it will support NFC or Near-Field-Communication. So the rumors go.

And NFC is also rumored to be part of the iPhone 5, in order to compete with Google’s Nexus S, which already supports it. NFC is considered one of the key elements of the final breakthrough of mobile payment, replacing credit card with smartphones.

But the much more interesting question is, if the next releases of Apple iOS HW really support NFC, what kind of applications will be bundled with it? Considering the past success of Apple being based on creating a complete environment for new products and features (iPod – iTunes, iPhone – AppStore) I doubt that NFC will be released without any application to make use of it. But will it be mobile payment, e.g. replacing the current partnership with Starbucks around mobile payment or will it be the a big bank or a credit card company that joins the launch? It could be like lining up of media companies and games developers with the launch of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Social customer acquisition

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Just following up on the owning the customer / softSIM post and adding the social network flavor of facebook, linkedin, xing and the cool technology of “bumping” information between phones (www.bu.mp)

What if you could just switch operators by “bumping” 2 phones. So if I’m with operator A and really like and want a friend to join, why not just bump the phones.

Ok, agreed, maybe this is not possible today and there are a lot of issues related to it: you need to sign a contract, transfer or change of mobile number, somehow the payment needs to be cleared, termination of the old contract.

But, if you could actually manage this within your backend processes the world suddenly looks different: very limited acquisition cost, acquisition by recommendation, leveraging social networks.

And this example shows the disadvantage telecom operators today have above Internet companies like facebook, twitter, etc. This kind of recommendations/social network scaling is very difficult and expensive to achieve.

Who owns the customer ?

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Again and again I come across remarks about the fight for ”who owns the customer”.

Especially in the telecommunications industry there is a lengthy debate about this with regards to telecommunication operators, device manufacturers, Internet companies, content owners.

My first point is that the question is wrong. It should be ”who gets permission to serve the customer”. Probably very much in line with Seth Godin (see Permission Marketing). Personally at least I don’t want to be owned by any company and if I feel that way they have already lost. I would also assume that most people would not feel owned by Google, just because they use their search engine (although in fact they are to a great deal)

The second point is that if your business is based on ”customer ownership” it might disappear pretty fast.

Most recently this was part of a debate on Apple’s rumored initiative to add a SoftSIM to the iPhone or iPad in one of the next releases. SoftSIM would replace the normal, physical SIM card and would allow customers to switch operators without replacing a card. (Obviously also without the hassle to get the card etc.)

The immediate reaction in the operator community was an uproar, because of the threat to loose “ownership” of the customer. Currently operators spend large amount of money (of which the management and distribution of the physical SIM cards is only one part) to acquire new customers. This obviously only works if the customer stays with the operator for some time so the initial costs can be refinanced by service charges.

That is also why churn (i.e. loosing customer to the competition) is considered to be a bad thing. But what if you re-define the operations to streamline the acquisition of new customers. In saturated markets, i.e. with limited number of additional customers, churn usually works in all directions. You loose some customers and you gain some customers (from your competition). If you could make acquiring new customers more effective than your competition, you could immediately create a business advantage.

So don’t try to own the customer, get the permission to serve them and serve them more efficiently.

Now the GSMA (the organisation of telecommunication operators) seems to have taken up initiative to work on a SoftSIM (or embeddedSIM) standard. However, the officially stated driver is the increasing number of connected devices.

Nokia – Apple – Hardware – Software

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Over at daringfireball John Gruber has an interesting piece on the challenges Nokia and especially their new CEO is facing. The main conclusion is that Nokia today is a Hardware company that needs to turn into a Software company in order to compete on the level of Apple and RIM rather than HTC.

Competing with Apple? The success of Apple is not so much based on either Hardware or Software, but on creating a perfect combination of both with an unbeatable user experience.

The iPod has a cool hardware and a great form factor, but only with the integration in to iTunes and the simple way to synchronize and buy music, did it become the success it is today. The iPhone and the iPad have incredible hardware, but only in combination with the AppStore and the very consistent user interface did they become so successful.

Moving from cost efficient hardware focus to perfect user experience is a big step to take.

#momoMUC: some thoughts on yesterday’s Mobile Monday Munich

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We had a very hot mobile monday yesterday with a perfect line-up of speakers and presentations as it turned out afterwards. Here are my personal thoughts and takes on this.

Thomas Aidan Curran, CTO Software, Deutsche Telekom opened with a view on how exposing operator assets will create new value and opportunities for app developers and Thibault Rouffineau (wipconnector) closed with some excellent remarks on how the same story about convergence got sold/promoted and told in the last 10 years, repeatedly. Whether you wanted to sell IMS, WiFi Infrastructure or Samsung TVs.

The same is actually true for the opening the network operator assets to application developers. Proposals and standards on how to do this have been around for at least 10 years. I also have to confess guilty of promoting and telling this story at one point in my career in telecommunication.

However, all the claims did never, at least up to now, materialize substantially and are now warmed up with the WAC (Wholesale Applications Community), developer garden (a Deutsche Telekom activity), betavine (driven by Vodafone), OneAPI ( by GSMA, the global mobile operator community). And also the API content is the same for the last 10 years: calls = initiating calls from the web, messaging = sending sms and mms from the web, charging = making use of customers operator prepaid or postpaid payments for applications, location information = identifying the location of the mobile. As this has not worked for the last 10 years the question is why should it work now or more precisely what would it actually take to make it work?

And here as a side-remark comes the link to the ICQ presentation of yesterday night. Alex Erlmeier, ICQ showed the ICQ client on different devices: the iPhone, windows based, Blackberry based and also mentioned integration with facebook, twitter and other social networking sites. But at no point did he mention any integration with an operator network or operator APIs. Question is: why?

One additional point Thomas mentioned in his initial presentation was the complexity of devices and how operators might help and support here, but again ICQ – and if you look at other mobile client based application like Foursquare, Gowalla it is as well true for them – obviously didn’t need any support in creating their applications for different devices.

So just defining and publishing an API is probably not enough.

Looking at the current best-in-class examples there are 4 things it takes to create a vibrant and successful application developer community.

  1. It needs to be cool: brand and devices. iPhone and Android smartphones are just much cooler than Java featurephones
  2. It needs to be easy I: development environment. I don’t want to debate the quality of Objective-C, but give the developer a complete environment for writing and testing applications.
  3. It needs to be easy II: community and support. There needs to be a supported community where you can get help for app development.
  4. It needs to be business: app store. You need to give the developer an easy way or at least the option to publish, promote and to make some money with their application.

So Apple and Google obviously score pretty high on all points, whereas you see that Blackberry and Nokia/Ovi have some shortcomings in several points (at least the coolness factor).

But telecommunication operators – at least what is visible in the market besides the high aspirations – have not even started to embrace the full picture.

So what can they do:

  • Focus on their strength:  local / regional brand, don’t try to fight on a global scale
  • Pick a community to start with and select one where your assets are of value
  • Fully embrace them with support and marketing help
  • Provide end to end development environment and tool set
  • Show them how to make money

Yes, all this does not come for free, but as I said, it takes more than publishing an API to play in the application space.

Push Notifications: Amazon, Apple and Android moving forward

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Amazon just announced and released the next service on their Web Services / Cloud Service for Notifications (Amazon SNS), giving applications http- or email-notifications for free (up to a limit).

At the recent keynote announcing the new iPhone OS 4 Apple also introduced improved push notification support for the iPhone through a always-on IP connection.

Obviously also for Android such a service is available through Xtify. This even supports geo-location based notifications.

In parallel the GSMA, the global organization of telco operators is working – in the 3rd attempt – on standardization of push notification APIs within their OneAPI activity. This API will allow to directly interact with the network operators infrastructure. The first version works with SMS and MMS, i.e. once operators have implemented the APIs and opened to application developers (access conditions still to be defined).

So the question is whether there is still a need for such operator based APIs in the future?

Well, the key difference is that those APIs would work with any kind of device based on SMS and MMS (obviously with limitations in on-device application integration). Looking at the betavine community, endorsed by Vodafone, as an framework for implementing, supporting and testing the OneAPIs, a focus is on developing countries. There extending application support for simple devices will a major driver for extending their value.