Stephen Jannise of Distribution Software Advice has looked at Oracle’s history of acquisitions and reached the conclusion that RIM might be on their list of next targets. But he wants to know what you think, so he has posted his thinking along with a simple poll to collect the input of others.
I’ve always known that Emily Green was a smart analyst of what’s happening in the telecom industry, but her recent blog post shows she’s also a smart traveler.
Here are a couple of quotes to give you a sense:
“I have been on a family road trip for the past week. Writing today from Richmond, Virginia, I am here to tell you that the best way to vacation in 2010, at least in the U.S., requires the following:” (You’ll have to read the post to find out what 3 things are required for the best vacation…)
“Once you have these three elements … here’s what happens: … You ditch all other means of navigation. … You have a richer view of the changing world around you. … You skip the hotel room Spectravision. In a shocking turn of events, the TV remote has sat untended on the bureau, because no one wants to watch TV. …”
This week I participated in the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco. For the panel I was on, I wanted to find a way to sum up the role of the mobile operator in the application ecosystem.
As I’ve often said, there’s lots of ways that carriers (in their Big Bell Dogma ways) try to force themselves into (or onto) the ecosystem that just plain don’t make sense. As I said at this conference a year ago, application developers want to move at Silicon Valley speed, not carrier speed.
That doesn’t mean that mobile operators are relegated to just being dumb pipes.
Instead, we need to understand where we do, uniquely, create value for the ecosystem. To me, it boils down to Bandwidth, Bills, and Bags.
For starters, we really are network companies. We operate billions of dollars worth of network assets that enable stuff (voice signals, web pages, mobile ads for “free” games) to get from the right point A to the right point B. Clearly, it’s more than just Bandwidth, but for the benefit of alliteration (so at least I can remember it), I’ll use that word to represent this vast array of assets. Carriers can contribute significant value-creation potential into the ecosystem by exposing those assets to developers to enable tremendous innovation (location, QoS, call control, performance data, etc.).
But, we aren’t just network companies. Mobile operators have long term relationships with our customers. I’ve chosen the image of the cellphone Bill to represent a complex set of interactions that provide the carrier with perhaps the most complete view of the customer that anyone has. On one hand, those bills can be a valuable way for developers to monetize their efforts, but even more, the information that the mobile operator holds about each customer is a veritable treasure chest. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of this treasure entrusted to us (consciously or not) by our customers. On one hand, we must defend the privacy of customer data “to the death.” On the other hand, as good stewards, we must enable the maximum value creation on behalf of our customers. We must enable developers to create capabilities that our customers can choose to approve the use of their data to make applications work better (e.g. location-based search) or even enable applications that simply aren’t possible otherwise (e.g. social location services).
Finally, we not only operate networks and maintain relationships with customers, but we also are some of the largest retailers in each of our territories. We operate thousands of stores where customers can walk in and interact with us. Historically, these stores were primarily sales locations. Increasingly, especially with increasingly complex products, these stores have become service locations. And in the past couple of years Sprint has introduced “ReadyNow” services to help customers fully use those increasingly complex products. While not yet on the order of Apple’s Genius Bar, ReadyNow is a valuable way that Sprint helps customers use their smartphones to do more than just talk.
I think my message was well received by the audience. What do you think? Does Bandwidth, Bills, and Bags communicate how mobile operators (like Sprint) are more than just dumb pipes, but rather value-contributing partners in the mobile ecosystem?
For years, we’ve talked about the cellphone as the swiss army knife.
And I’ve found the analogy to be really on-target. I’ve told the story many times about how I used to (pre-9/11) always carry a small knife in my pocket that had a small pair of scissors and a tiny screw driver. There were times when I found myself trying to demo the latest telecom applications at a customer site or a trade show and I’d use those scissors to strip a wire and the screw driver to lock down a connection. (Scary, I know…)
But, in reality, those scissors and that tiny screw driver were a poor excuse for real tools. They were incredibly valuable because I had them with me, but given my druthers, I’d rather use a real stripping tool or real screw driver.
Cellphones have been the same way. You can use your cellphone as a camera. You can use your cellphone to watch TV or movies. You can use them as an eReader. You can use your cellphone as a navigation device. And your cellphone is incredibly valuable for those purposes (relative to its quality at each) because it is always with you. (That’s a big part of McGuire’s Law of Mobility, by the way…)
But in reality, given the choice, most people would rather use a “real” camera, a “real” TV, a “real” book or eReader, or a “real” navigation device.
The EVO 4G is the first phone that really changes that reality. Its true broadband connectivity, high powered processor, 8MP camera, huge screen, and HDMI output make it truly competitive as a “real” product in each of those categories. Add in stereo Bluetooth, 720p video recording, an additional front facing camera for video chatting, hot spot capability, a digital compass, and all the applications in the Android marketplace, and suddenly the EVO becomes the ultimate “swiss army knife” capable of credibly replacing a broad range of products.
Wow.
I’ve spent the last two days in a meeting of Intel’s Communications Board of Advisors along with 20 other representatives from service providers around the world. It has been a very informative session. Since it has been under NDA, I can’t share with you the specific content, however, my key takeaway is public information and yet is eye opening.
It all starts in Intel’s wheelhouse - silicon. This week, Intel brought to market their Moorestown platform. Moorestown offers very competitive processor performance for the netbook and smartphone market. Intel would argue that Moorestown provides significantly higher performance than anything else on the market. However, the real game-changing factor here has less to do with performance and more to do with architecture. What Intel has done is take the same Intel Architecture (x86) that developers are used to developing for, which is always designed for forward and backward compatability, and driven breakthroughs so that it will work in a smartphone implementation with competitive battery life. The engineering achievements are huge, but the potential impact of having the exact same processor architecture in a smartphone as scales up to laptops, desktops, and even into data center environments has the potential to dramatically broaden the application landscape and sweeten the business case for mobile application development.
That Intel is pushing the envelope in the silicon space is no surprise. As Paul Otellini reminded us this morning, from an Intel perspective, at the end of the day everything has to conform to Moore’s Law and the laws of physics, and no one is better than Intel at scaling that Moore’s law progression into technology advances.
What was surprising to me is that Intel’s aggressiveness doesn’t stop at the silicon layer. As Otellini pointed out, Intel is increasingly becoming a software company.
On top of the silicon layer, Intel has made a big bet with MeeGo, a mobile platform intended to compete with the iPhone OS, Android, and other platforms. MeeGo has been contributed to the Linux Foundation, so it is truly open source with full transparency. MeeGo is the result of the combination of separate efforts from Intel and Nokia. By aligning with Nokia, Intel has significantly upped the ante in their software game, quickly translating MeeGo into a viable platform option that can gain operator support. MeeGo is intended to operate across smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops. I believe that much of the question of whether Intel will succeed as a software company rests in their success with MeeGo, so this really is a huge bet for them.
Finally, on top of the operating system sits applications. The third step in Intel’s aggressive agenda is with a new approach to the app store phenomenon. The AppUp Center supports applications for MeeGo and Windows on devices ranging from smartphones to netbooks to tablets to “smart” TV platforms (another part of Intel’s strategy). Intel is also positioning the AppUp Center as an app store behind the app store, so folks like us mobile operators could have a fully customized store without having to worry about managing the developer program behind it.
Bottom line, when looking at these three separate initiatives, Intel has aggressively moved to take the best capabilities that have driven their success in the PC world (backward and forward compatibility, scalability, a vibrant developer ecosystem) and brought it into the mobile world. They have also created and open sourced the replacement for Windows in that mobile world, and have learned from the recent history of what drives adoption and habituation (the app store phenomenon) and tied it all together into a package that is designed to be attractive to the rest of the ecosystem (operators, OEMs, and application developers).
This is a very aggressive agenda. It will be interesting to see how this big bet plays out.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but it still continues to puzzle me, so I thought it deserved its own post. Feel free to post a comment if you can help me figure this one out.
At the CES show earlier this month, Sprint dropped the pricing on dual mode 3G/4G plans to be the same as the price that everyone charges for just 3G ($59.99/month).
So, given:
So - back to my question - why would anyone buy standalone 3G, when they can get all the benefits of 3G, plus the extra benefits of 4G in a growing slice of the country, all for the same price?
My latest article on mobility for Christian Computing Magazine has just been published in the January issue. You can read the full article here, but here’s a snippet to give you a taste:
In the book The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christenson introduced the concept of disruptive technologies. “Disruptive technologies bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. “
Cellphones generally don’t provide as good of sound as their wire-line grandfathers. This is simply a matter of physics – the need to compress the audio signal to consume less available bandwidth, and then operating all of that in a dynamic, somewhat unpredictable environment. Wireless voice service also generally costs more than landline voice service. When initially introduced, the new value proposition of mobility only appealed to a very limited audience. However, as prices have fallen, call quality and reliability have improved, and as we have become a much more mobile and connected society, increasing numbers of us are cutting the cord and taking all of our voice traffic wireless.
The same phenomenon holds absolutely true for mobile data. Wireless data provides less bandwidth at a higher price than the existing wired solutions, initially addressing the needs of a very limited market. But technology advances and increasing scale have improved performance and reduced costs, which, combined with our increasing mobility, results in very broad adoption of wireless for data. Today, the wired Ethernet market is suffering at the hands of various flavors of WiFi. Meanwhile, mobile broadband choices (especially the now emerging 4G offers) are making it viable to cut the cord on data as well.
In Christensen’s terminology, the traditional telecom industry has been disrupted by new wireless technologies.
Wireless Connectivity Built In
However, I think there’s a larger (but hidden) revolution happening.I believe that, just as microprocessors have been built into virtually every type of product that has a power source, over the next several years; wireless connectivity will be built into virtually every type of product that has a microprocessor. For the past few years I’ve been tracking this trend with a monthly post at my blog called “Beyond the Phone.” I see this trend increasing, and becoming increasingly strategic to the definition of competition across industries. What does this look like? There are a couple of examples that are easy to understand.
Personal Navigation
The first example is GPS-based personal navigation devices (PND). You probably know these products by their manufacturers, with the industry leaders being Garmin and Tom Tom. This sector has come under tremendous pressure from cellphone-based navigation software in a typical Christensen-like disruptive play.Early cellphone GPS solutions cost just $10/month, putting price pressure on standalone GPS devices which typically cost (at the time) nearly $1000. To make matters worse, in 2008 Sprint started bundling free navigation service in their Simply Everything price plans, further pressuring PND companies. More recently, Google has started providing a free version of their Google Maps web-based service with turn-by-turn directions. While these cellphone-based solutions don’t perform as well as standalone units in terms of satellite acquisition, battery life, and in-car integration, they do offer hard to beat prices plus real-time information including construction detours and traffic delays.
Garmin, Tom Tom, and others in the PND business have responded with reduced pricing, but have also had to respond by integrating wireless connectivity into their devices in order to match the real-time information provided by cellphone-based solutions. (For example, see Garmin’s nuLink services.)
Electronic Book Readers
The second example is the electronic book reader market. eReaders have been available for years, with Sony being the most aggressive of consumer electronics companies in pursuing the opportunity. However, the market has been very limited.Just over two years ago, Amazon introduced the Kindle, an eReader with one very powerful differentiator – Amazon had worked with Sprint to integrate wireless connectivity into the device. This enabled Amazon to make it very easy for consumers to search Amazon’s large (and rapidly growing) catalog of electronic titles, purchase, download, and within about a minute, start reading a new title. The Kindle was an immediate phenomenon, and this most recent Christmas, Amazon (one of the world’s largest booksellers) sold more eBooks than physical books!
The company went on to launch two more versions of the Kindle with Sprint, including a version intended to replace your daily newspaper (in partnership with the New York Times and other publishers) and intended to lighten the load of textbooks carried by college students (in partnership with Princeton and four other universities). In the past few months, a number of competitors have launched eReader products with features similar to the Kindle, and Amazon has launched a new version of the Kindle with AT&T connectivity to expand globally.
More important than the actual devices, these eReader products are redefining the business model for publishers. Some believe eReaders can save the publishing industry, while others believe it will eliminate the need for publishers. In any case, the entire industry will be changed.
My interview at the Telco 2.0 event in December (from TelecomTV):
Rudy De Waele invited me to participate in a broad view of the coming decade. An impressive set of visionaries from across the mobile ecosystem provided their perspectives on the next 10 years. Set aside some time to be able to absorb the presentation below (you’ll want to view it in full screen).
Here are the 5 trends I contributed:
Over at Seamless Enterprise, I’ve just posted a set of ten predictions for businesses and telecom/mobility for the new year. In that post, I provide some commentary about each of the predictions, so head over there to read it, but here’s the list to give you an idea of what you’ll find:
You are currently browsing the archives for the Opinion category.
