July 3, 2009
Carnival of the mobilists no 180 at m-trends blog
Carnival of the mobilists no 180 at m-trends blog
Rudy probably resting after Mobile 2.0! /great job as usual.
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July 2, 2009
Factors impacting smartphone market shares in 2009(and beyond)
@Tomi ahonen has a thread in forumoxford about the evolution of the smartphone market. Some excellent insights and here is my top factors that I think will impact the evolution of the smartphone market in the near future
For starters, I am not clear what exactly is a 'smartphone'.
Originally, with a Nokia hat on, it was S60 vs. S40 classification. Now it's more complex. - but even with that caveat and considering the iPhone as an example of a smartphone, here are the key factors that will impact the uptake of smarphones in my view
1) LTE deployment - Samsung and LG have learnt from working with the US market. US CDMA operators are deploying LTE more rapidly. Samsung and LG will benefit from that experience and could translate it to other markets
2) Will the open source trend on mobile device lead to more device manufacturers? Giving customers more choice?
3) Supply chain - In 2007 Nokia was the leading supply chain manufacturer for devices . Not so in 2009(its apple)
Supply chain leadership is critical as this article explains
4) Will Android come up with really compelling devices? The ad model will have limited appeal and ultimately will need more in terms of the device
5) Will appstores and apps drive devices? This is critical. Will people buy apps first and then devices? We could extend the same argument to services in general
6) Will Nokia be a brand which shakeup the ecosystem(like the iPhone)
7) What will be the impact of smartphones in emerging markets like India?
8) Will phones continue to be subsidised? Will people pay more for phones when they have recently paid a full price (as happened with the iPhone)
9) The full impact of Microsoft on the smartphone market is still to be fully felt. Windows 7, Azure and Cloud computing in general has the potential to make a difference to the smartphone market by leveraging data in a cloud across the PC and the desktop
10) Will Operators continue to deploy a suite of phones for different customer segments or will they focus on a few phones?
11) Conversely will device manufacturers choose Operators (like the iPhone and the Palm PRE have done) instead of deploying across all Operators.
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June 30, 2009
LTE focus event in Amsterdam ..
LTE focus in Amsterdam is an interesting, niche event which I will be speaking as a panel/analyst. Draft agenda below. Some interesting names and themes(spectrum, wimax etc). Should be interesting to attend and if you are attending we can meet
LTE Focus Amsterdam, 10 September 2009
Draft Programme
Track 1
The LTE business environment
Chaired by Stephen Lowe, Digital Communications KTN and Chairman, Broadband
Wireless Association
09:30 LTE Regulatory Challenges
Val Jervis, Aegis Systems Ltd
09:55 Making the most of the LTE spectrum
Nick Anderson, Technical Manager, Standards, IPWireless
10:20 The 3GPP standards roadmap
Speaker TBA, 3GPP
10:45 Implications of the growth in complexity of the wireless ecosystem
Moray Rumney, Lead Technologist, Agilent Technologies
11:10 COFFEE
Track 2
Technology challenges for LTE
09:30 Migration to LTE and its cost-effective deployment
Ljupco Jorguseski, TNO
09:55 Gathering intelligence in the LTE network
Keith Cobler, Marketing Manager, Tektronix Communications
10:20 Study case WiMAX & LTE in Indonesia: convergence, cooperation or
conflict
Gunadi Dwi Hantoro, Telkom Indonesia
10:45 Cost-effectively increasing network efficiency and capacity
Adrian Hall, Chief Marketing Officer, Bytemobile
11:10 COFFEE
PLENARY SESSION
Strategies for LTE deployment
11:30 OPERATOR KEYNOTE: Meeting the challenges of migration to LTE
Speaker TBA
12:00 ANALYST PANEL SESSION: Strategies, opportunities and threats
towards evolving LTE networks
Caroline Gabriel, Rethink Associates (Moderator)
Richard Kramer, Arete
Frank Bernhard, OMNI
Randall Schwartz, Wireless2020
13:00 LUNCH
Track 1: Realising a profitable LTE network
Chaired by Caroline Gabriel, Rethink Associates
14:15 The role of deep network sharing
Hans Kuropatwa, Ventura (former CEO Telenor Sweden)
14:40 LTE: how to transform a promising technology into a real business
Andrea Calcagno, CEO & EVP, WiTech
15:05 Maximizing services to ensure the lowest total cost of ownership for
migration to LTE
Bob Smith, Director Services Portfolio Development & Strategy, Motorola
15:30 COFFEE
15:50 Why LTE needs small cells
Rupert Baines, VP Marketing, picoChip
16:15 Leveraging Wi-Fi in the LTE network
Stephen Rayment, CTO, BelAir Networks
16:40 Building a 4G Wireless Ecosystem: The ng Connect Initiative's
benefits for service provider partners
Derek Kuhn, VP, Emerging Technology & Media, Alcatel-Lucent
Track 2: Enabling technology for LTE
Chair TBA
14:15 PANEL DISCUSSION: Chipsets and front ends for multi-standard
wireless broadband integration
Raj Singh, President and CEO, Wavesat
Eran Eshed, VP of Business Development, Altair
Avi Sharon, Director of LTE Marketing, Comsys Mobile
Ebrahim Bushieri, CEO, Lime Microsystems
15:05 The role of microwave packet radio in the evolution to 4G mobile
networks
Giacomo Mirelli, Director, Optics CTO for Mobile Evolution Transport
Architecture, Alcatel-Lucent
15:30 COFFEE
15:50 Bringing LTE to life: Field trials and deployment scenarios
Alexander Wörner, Operational Marketing Manager, Rohde and Schwarz
16:15 LTE transmitter PHY measurements in the field
Andy Standen, Product Manager, Anritsu
16:40 Speaker TBA
17:05 Conference ends
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June 26, 2009
Excellent paper - The Economics of Privacy in Social Networks
Dont miss this: The Economics of Privacy in Social Networks
This is a PhD interest for me .. so some of it a bit technical and analytical but overall there is something for everyone even if you dont like the data analysis ..
Must read ..
Posted by ajit at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Privacy seems to be the main differentiator for sense networks and I like that ..
Thanks to @FredMartinent for pointing me to sense networks.
When I first saw Sense networks, I thought that it is similar to Google Location aware applications
But then I noticed the privacy principles of sense networks and their emphasis on ownership of data
Privacy seems to be the main differentiator for sense networks and I like that ..
I highlighted a growing value of privacy in the blog Of Opera Unite, Femtocells Mickey Mouse and the Art of war ...
Empowering the user could be a good business model
As RFID and NFC get deployed in mobile devices, this model will become even more interesting
As I mentioned, it is also a PhD research interest for me.. so maybe more blogs on this topic
Update this is an excellent link
Dont missSome of it may be a bit too research oriented, but the ideas are excellent.
The Economics of Privacy in Social Networks
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N97 on Skype - Three questions to Three before I upgrade ..
N97 - skype priceplans are out
Three key questions for three re the N97
a) It has address book integration with skype? yes?
b) Does it allow SMS messages from Skype? ex: I can use skype to send a text message to most countries. Can I do so from the N97(including within the UK)
c) Does it allow skypeout? ex - I am in switzerland. I want to make a call from skype to USA. (thats skypeout). Is that possible?
Presumably if (b) and (c) are possible I pay skype rates(since I use my skype account)
If so, then do I pay anything extra?
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Seeking beta launch members for Mobile World Live
Mobile World Live contacted me about their beta launch(full launch in July). I know the people behind this venture and trust them and I have no hesitation in recommending them.
I may also be contributing to this site
Would be great if you can sign up to this Mobile World Live
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Michael Jackson's death and the problem of contextual advertising ..
The above screenshot comes from a footage of Michael Jackson's death as he was being rushed to hospital from his home.
Against this sad news is the surreal advertising of 'Great seats for Michael Jackson at O2 Arena'
You could call such advertising bizarre or callous or sad or stupid..
But it reveals a larger problem which advertisers never acknowledge .. That it is simply not possible to capture context accurately and dynamically
A lesson for so many in the mobile industry who strive to capture context with the goal of monetizing it from advertisements.
While advertisers may want to make us believe otherwise .. The world does not need such advertisements and no one REALLY knows the context in real time!
PS: This is very sad news. I grew up in India where Micheal Jackson was (and is) very popular. This was very unexpected.
Update
As we see large parts of the world unite to pay tribute to Michael Jackson, it is apt to read the news of the world's oldest musical instrument (35,000 years ago)
Makes you think .. we see the same beliefs from 35,000 years ago even today
"Music was used in many kinds of social contexts: possibly religious, possibly recreational - much like we use music today in many kinds of settings."
These flutes provide yet more evidence of the sophistication of the people that lived at that time
Professor Chris Stringer
The researchers also suggest that not only was music widespread much earlier than previously thought, but so was humanity's creative spirit.
"The modern humans that came into our area already had a whole range of symbolic artifacts, figurative art, depictions of mythological creatures, many kinds of personal ornaments and also a well-developed musical tradition," Professor Conard explained.
The team argues that the emergence of art and culture so early might explain why early modern humans survived and Neanderthals, with whom they co-existed at the time, became extinct.
"Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations," they wrote.
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June 24, 2009
50 Disruptive trends I am tracking at the moment ..
These are the disruptive developments I am tracking(In no particular order!). These are mainly 'cross stack' and they range from companies (Skype) to specific products(Palm Pre) to specifics(Android based netbooks). They dont include general themes like 'Open' and the 'Mobile Web' which I have historically tracked through this blog and my books
Can you suggest more? Am I missing any?
1) Can device mnufacturers who have no previous history be at an advantage?(Ex Palm v.s. Nokia)
2) How many appstores will an operator support?
3) How will Operators try to influence appstores?(ex provide APIs to
specific appstores?, to specific APPs within the appstores etc?)
4) Will RCS have a role to play in LTE?(ex in managing a session that
spans cellular and femto?)
5) Verizon is mandating Ipv6 - what are the implications?
6) What does Intel's acquisition of wind river mean?
7) What does Intel's emphasis on 3D mean?
8) What is the implication for video for Cisco's acquisition of pure
digital? http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/20/digitalvideo-apple
9) Facebook user names and verified twitter accounts are defacto identity systems. Through facebook connect - it is already possible for iPhone apps to have a facebook identity. Will this trend be extended?
10) Qualcomm talks of Smartbook (sub-notebooks which are connected and have a high battery life). This is a new category. Will we see more of this?
11) What about Android netbooks?(ex from Acer)
12) What innovation can emerge from emerging markets and could be deployed globally?
http://www.fastcompany.com/fast50_09/lists/the-most-innovative-companies-in-india.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/133/as-the-world-turns.html
13) Operators will find it difficult to charge for IP. But will they be able to charge for a different format(ex 3D) which will need some greater IP management?
14) Will we see an EU/Japan cloud?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10241081-62.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
15) Will smaller operators behave differently in a recession? Will they want to differentiate and innovate more?
16) IBM's 100million $ investment in mobile and what it means
17) The rise of Huawei
18) Opera Unite
19) Google Wave
20) Augmented reality browsers
21) Mobile payments http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10265243-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
22) Verizon's cloud computing ambitions
23) Microblog search http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10264633-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
24) Browser extensions http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10263598-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
25) Will Flash be used as an 'anti' iPhone?
26) The impact of Intel Wind river acquisition
27) The impact of the Intel-Nokia partnership
28) Microsoft Hohm - Google power meter etc http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hohm_microsofts_answer_to_googles_powermeter.php
29) Palm Pre
30) Microsoft Cloud strategy and Azure
31) The tendency towards 'Green' phones and will that be a growing trend
32) The death of the feature phone market and the emergence of the smart phone market especially in emerging economies
33) Will smaller Operators and a consortium of smaller Operators act different? Ie be more innovative?
34) How many Operators will leapfrog to LTE?
35) The tendency of CDMA Operators to adopt LTE
36) Appstores
37) Microsoft Bing
38) HTML5
39) Opensorce uptake within micosoft
40) Femtocells
41) Google Flipper
42) VOLGA
43) Twitter search and APIs
44) Intel ATOM
45) Google voice
46) Skype
47) OMTP BONDI
48) Privacy, Identity and Reputation(PhD interest)
49) Nokia
50) Integrated design(beyond the UI - http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2009/05/the_myth_of_mob.html)
51) (Future and impact of) Internet of things. Thanks @Enrique Ortiz
52) Regional trends Thanks @Tomiahonen
m-wallets/m-payments in Africa(ex MPESA), MVNOs(in some markets), Dual-SIM phones, machine to machine communications
53) Ribbit and Google Voice
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/silicon-valleys-first-phone-co.html
Posted by ajit at 6:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
June 21, 2009
Of Opera Unite, Femtocells Mickey Mouse and the Art of war ...
Update
You can follow me on Twitter @AjitJaokar
a) Many thanks for the comments and feedback on this article. This is a conceptual article - hence the ideas are more a Gedankenexperiment(Thought experiment) as I often do on the OpenGardens blog
b) UPDATE ON OPERA STATS
>>>>
This may need a seperate blog .. but it seems Opera browser figures are a lot higher especially considering the global perspective
The newest State of the Mobile Web report: from Opera
Q1 report from Opera (slides 4, 19, 34):
StatCounter numbers:
I will probably do a seperate blog on this..
<<<<
c) I have been historically supportive of Opera's innovation in the mobile space such as with Mobile Widgets but not of it's stand in the EU over Web standards Microsoft vs. the EU: Can we legislate to force a company to use Web standards ..
d) Having said that, Opera Unite is true innovation and should be encouraged since it could be disruptive(like any peer to peer service) and needs radical thinking
e) In general, I am NOT a big fan of bearer aware applications, differential charging of IP, tying services to network types etc. However, I AM a big believer in femtocells and their potential for Operators because femtocells benefit the customer - and in doing so, if femtocells are adopted widely - could also be used for unique services which are bearer aware(ie tied to femtocells/home gateways. These will benefit the Operator. As a general theme, bearer aware mobile applications are still emerging
f) While I use Google as an example(since it is often a real question Operators ask - even if it is framed in context of the 'Web'), the concept is generic to web search as it works today.
g) Every new computing paradigm has a new market leader because the strengths of the existing one are tied to the current paradigm
Introduction
Last week, Opera unite was launched.
The pre-announcement said that 'Opera will re-invent the Web'. A statement like that makes you sceptical, but in this case - from an innovation perspective, we were not disappointed. Opera Unite is significant and Opera deserves kudos for taking a truly innovative step even within a recession.
The basics of Opera Unite have already been discussed before- but not how it could be used.
Hence, I will cover a potential application of Opera Unite as I see it.
Opera Unite is a classic disruptive application (in the tradition of crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore ) which says that a new class of customer will often take up a disruptive application and will sustain it till it potentially becomes mainstream.
The attempt here is to find that new class of application/user.
Specifically, I am going to co-relate P2P with the network/femtocell layer(i.e. a bearer aware peer-to-peer service) and in doing so - I see a potential reason for converged network Operators to consider Opera Unite. The intersection of Privacy,P2P, mobility/convergence is of research interest to me with my PhD work - hence I am interested in this topic from a broader perspective(and also this article will refer to some research papers).
As I see it, there are two (sometimes contradictory) trends:
On one level, we want to put information in the Cloud. At another level, we want some privacy for our data. We want to be 'Open' but we also worry about the power of providers to 'harness' the metadata and to co-relate data elements for 'advertising' and behavioural targeting. Couple this with developments on the network layer where networks are evolving 'beyond 3G' to LTE and we could have interesting applications. (Femtocells/ home gateways are an important part of LTE).
Increasingly, we are seeing bearer aware applications i.e. services which will be able to leverage the power of the underlying network. Rather than trying to consider universal convergence, network operators may consider convergence between the 'home' (through home gateways and femtocells) and 'outside the home' (through the cellular network)
Consequently, Opera unite could co-relate these network layer developments to the service layer through P2P and at the same time mitigate the privacy concerns of people
What is Opera Unite
Opera Unite transforms the browser into a server and it makes your browser a potential node in a peer-to-peer network. Thus, any content can be posted on your Opera Unite instance and it becomes available to others within the network. Peer to Peer is opposite to the 'Cloud' philosophy.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking
is a method of delivering computer network services in which the participants share a portion of their own resources, such as processing power, disk storage, network bandwidth, printing facilities. Such resources are provided directly to other participants without intermediary network hosts or servers. Peer-to-peer network participants are providers and consumers of network services simultaneously, which contrasts with other service models, such as traditional client-server computing.
The Web (in it's original Tim Berners Lee version) was always meant to be a 'Network of peers' the 'Client server' paradigm was added later since it made practical sense from an implementation standpoint. Thus, a return to a Peer to Peer mode would be indeed 're-inventing' the Web and bringing it to its grassroots.
Centralization overcomes two problems of Peer to Peer: Availability and security. Availability implies that the content is accessible only as long as your node is on - and when your computer is shut down, the content disappears from the network as well.
Hence, centralization was needed to overcome these issues. However, with centralization came the issues of data ownership and unintended use of data. By extension, decentralised Online social networks(Peer to Peer) could offer a solution to the problem by bypassing the current client server paradigm of the Web.
Who could use this and why?
Who could use Peer to Peer and why?
Mobile network Operators are paranoid of Google.. and about a year ago when an Operator asked me the question: 'How can we(Operators) overcome the Google threat?' - I mentioned that Peer-to-Peer is a potential solution.
Specifically as I said then in P2P may be Google's biggest weakness and an Operator's biggest asset:
>>>
And what has this(Peer-to-Peer) got to do with the Web and Google?
Think server farms ..
Google is client server .. It has to be .. if it needs to store, manage and index the Web. Indexing the Web, as we know it, has to be centralised ..
Consequently, if a decentralised - P2P architecture takes off - then Google cannot match it because it is not in Google's DNA to do so(just as the Web was never in Micosoft's DNA) .. And furthermore .. it will be a service which people will want(Doubt that? - My Skype account shows 8,663,106 online at the moment!)
This is classic Sun Tzu ..
Unfortunately, more strategies are driven by Mickey Mouse than by Sun Tzu ..
And I mean that quite literally .. in the sense that it is driven by the content industry aka the Disney's and the Warners of the world. The telecoms industry sadly does not realise that it is in the communication business - and not the content business.
<<<
So, if an Operator were to really think like Sun Tzu(strategic and disruptive) as per the ancient Chinese classic Art of War and not worry about Mickey Mouse(the content industry) - they could have a unique competitive advantage
LTE - femtocells, bearer aware applications and P2P
Much has happened since I made that comment in late 2007
Firstly, there is a clear move towards LTE and specifically femtocells
I have been following bearer aware femtocell applications for some time. and as I said in Femtocell(bearer) aware web services
>>>>
My overall vision is: It is hard to sell capabilities of networks themselves(or for that matter to charge for networks). However, Operators can sell services. Customers understand services. They are used to paying for them. The basic version of the service could be free followed by some premium features.
From a mobile perspective, services could be:
a) Long tail i.e. completely decoupled from the device or the network(this is mainly in appstores)
b) Coupled to the device - ex deep integration of a web service to the device(ex address book integration of facebook(INQ1) or Skype(N97)
c) Coupled to the network
Learning from Amazon (and the Web 2.0 in general), the more the customer interacts with the provider, the better the service could be because the provider captures insights and preferences from the customer and can use them to enhance the service.
I have covered (a) and (b) extensively before. There were not many examples of (c) i.e. services coupled to networks.
In one sense, services should not be coupled to networks. However, femtocells could provide an exception to this model by creating services which could be useful to the customer. From an Operator standpoint, they provide an opportunity for customers to stay on their network longer and to provide services that can be improved by usage.
<<<<
The co-relation
a) Femtocells/home gateways couple services to the network
b) Such services empower the user by making applications and meta-data resident in the home gateway(and with the Operator)
c) Opera unite also empowers the user by being 'anti-cloud'
d) The femtocell applications need a service layer which could be provided by Opera unite.
The privacy paradox
Anyone who researches privacy knows of the privacy paradox l aka while we are concerned about privacy - our behaviour does not reflect that trend(including mine I must admit). For instance,
A Pew Internet Study from 2005 showed that 54% believe that Web sites that track their behaviour invade their privacy. But the same study showed that 64% would give up personal information to get access to a Web site. In other words as the Forbes article says: Users talk the talk about privacy, but they don't change their behaviour.
Privacy alone is not enough .. We need more. So, bearer aware services could provide more especially if you extend the 'home gateway' to devices .. Probably a topic for a subsequent blog i.e. I am saying that the home gateway/femtocell may capture a lot of data about devices at home and users will be DEFINITELY very reluctant to let that data fall into the hands of search engines
Further reading
This is an emerging area and here are two papers of interest
Privacy, Cost, and Availability Tradeoffs in Decentralized OSNs(pdf)
The paper presents three schemes for decentralized online social networks. In all three, each user stores his own personal data in his own machine, which we term a Virtual Individual Server (VIS). VISs self-organize into peer-to-peer overlay networks, one overlay per social group with which the VIS owner wishes to share information. The schemes differ in where VISs and data reside: (a) on a virtualized utility computing infrastructure in the cloud, (b) on
desktop machines augmented with socially-informed data replication, and (c) on desktop machines during normal operation, with failover to a standby virtual machine in the cloud when the primary VIS becomes unavailable. We focus on tradeoffs between these
schemes in the areas of privacy, cost, and availability.
VISs self-organize into peer-to-peer overlay networks, one overlay per social group with which the VIS owner wishes to share information. This structure supports many of
the social networking features provided by popular OSNs, such as forming groups, finding friends, exchanging messages, etc. We use the word "virtual" because VISs can take the form of virtual machines, which offer important manageability and other advantages when compared to physical machines. The main insight behind this scheme is that users may be willing to replicate some of their personal data on machines belonging to social connections who would in any case have access to the data through normal OSN operations.
To conclude
I make the co-relation between LTE/femtocells and Opera Unite where I propose that a Peer-to-Peer network is philosophically compatible with femtocells and home gateways. Both of which could potentially empower the user and a bearer aware P2P application may be a unique competitive advantage to a Telecom Operator in an converged LTE scenario
Update: See this blog from Martin Sauter which also explains the same concept Opera Unite and the Anti-Cloud
Image source: wikipedia
he beginning of The Art of War, in a "classical" bamboo book from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.
Posted by ajit at 9:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext focussed on emerging Web and Mobile technologies. His thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, The OpenGardensBlog, was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide and he is best known for his books Mobile Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing. Two more books ('Open Mobile' and 'Beyond Web 2.0 – Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things') are being released in 2009.
