Mobile 2.0 and Emerging Mobile Media Services

In short, there weren’t any “earth shattering” announcements at this year’s 2008 Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM). This is consistent with what I had suggested when talking with Jason Ankeny at Fierce Mobile Content prior to the event.

However, we are seeing steady progress and pieces falling into place that will continue to sustain a thriving ecosystem centered around the mobile device. Mobile advertising, music, and TV are all making steady progress and are clearly “real” (i.e., showing early signs of growth and not simply existing in the existential sense of the word).

Of course, there was plenty of “buzz”…

Consolidation: beginning of the end OR being of the beginning

Corporate consolidation
It goes without saying that the Microsoft-Yahoo mating / stalking process was widely discussed. A notable announcement that also related to Microsoft was their $500M acquisition of Danger - the company started by Andy Rubin, who together with Rich Miner, co-founded Android.

We saw the coming-out of Movius (IP Unity meets Glenayre) which was akin to when we saw the successful launch of Motricity some years back at CTIA. Another content industry related announcement was the Mandalay acquisition of Twistbox.

Consolidation of operating systems
It appears that this is the beginning of the end of the highly-fragmented mobile operating system (OS) ecosystem. With Linux taking center stage at this year’s show, it is clear that Linux has a seat at the table going forward. The presence of both Google’s Android and the LiMo foundation was felt throughout the Congress. While Google wasn’t there front and center (e.g., big-booth or big signage), early demonstrations of Android could be found at a number of chip providers’ and handset providers’ booths. LiMo had more of an explicit presence and the demonstrations of LiMo systems were shown, arguably in a more mature form than the Android demos.

Although, it will take over 5 years for this OS consolidation to start to simplify, we will see rapid movement from over 30 operating systems down to a small group. Linux, Symbian and Windows will be around for the foreseeable future. I’d also add that Apple has clearly made a seat for themselves at the Smartphone table, but it is uncertain whether they can make an entry into the feature-phone world of operating systems.

Convergence and context

We are seeing a return of convergence. According to Steve Andrews, BT Group Chief of Mobility and Convergence, “2008 will officially be the year that convergence comes of age”. Whether or not it is co-incidental, this return of convergence (e.g., converged messaging) is happening at the same time the original convergence hype-sters are getting rebooted. Last year, I would have written off companies like Comverse and Openwave, but there is some interesting activity afoot. For example, the original team (Andre Dahan and John Bunyan) behind AT&T’s mMode and the original American Idol voting success is now at the helm of Comverse.

For Nokia, it is all about context. The president and CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said that Nokia will “reshape the Internet” by enabling a context-aware Internet. In the same EE Times article, they suggest that Nokia believes they, and not Google, will deliver “operator-independent, cross-platform phones through new software and services.” My recent blog entry entitled “Of Trolls and Droids: on cross-species development and the evolution of mobile tools and platforms” dealt with this topic in more detail.

Content, content, content…

Although we didn’t explicitly hear people asserting that content is king, the positioning statements (e.g., Nokia’s emphasis on context being central) and the sponsored articles in the Mobile World Congress Dailies had a number of related declarations: context is king (Colibria), customer is king (Telecordia), conversation is king (Southwing), etc.

Music
The key areas of content that were discussed last year, music and video, are still center stage. In fact, Billboard noted this leading up to their Backstage event. In Billboard Magazine’s Feb 16 article “Global Mobile: GSMA Mobile World Congress Will Explore International Growth of New Technologies”, Juliana Koranteng noted that music is making solid progress with handset manufacturers releasing more and more music-capable handsets. She also commented on the steady number of wireless music initiatives announced throughout the year that keep music as a key area to watch, e.g., Apple’s iPhone, Omnifone’s Musicstation, Nokia’s investment in the space, Motorola’s purchase of Soundbuzz, , Microsoft acquisition of Musiwave from Openwave.

I can confirm this music trend from my vantage point at Nellymoser as we are powering AT&T’s VIP Access mobile music service and Virgin Mobile’s Headliner mobile music service.

Mobile TV
The content hall (Hall 7) was dominated by Mobile TV providers. We saw the appearance of film celebrities “stumping” for mobile TV and mobile media. Robert Redford spoke at the Billboard Backstage event and Isabella Rossellini was taping a live interview on one of the booths during the event.

While technology fragmentation has stinted growth in a number of the mobile content areas, it is particularly noticeable in Mobile TV. There are very few handsets that have access to overlay networks (e.g., DVB-H, MediaFLO, T-DMB) and furthermore, the content providers have to deal with different deployments of these technologies across different operators and devices.

Advertising
It is clear that many are looking towards mobile advertising to be the saving grace of flattening on-deck operator sales. As with music and TV, advertising is making progress.

Of particular interest at the show was Nokia’s announcement of their own global ad network. Nokia launched their “carrier grade media” which aspires to provide a single marketplace to simplify the buying process within mobile advertising. Also see the Nokia article in the show daily. There was also news that the largest GSMA’s operator members (Vodafone Group, Telefonica, O2 Europe, T-Mobile International, FT-Orange and 3) have formed a mobile advertising measurement working group.

Consumer experience

Even though the iPhone has not seen the take-up internationally that we’ve seen in the U.S. (e.g., the higher-priced Nokia N95 far outsells the iPhone in the U.K.), Apple has left their indelible mark on user experience. To be fair, this lack of traction is likely tied to the iPhone being an EDGE device - all bets are off when the 3G versions hit the market internationally. Regardless, there was a lot of discussion related to how much Internet usage the iPhone was driving in both the states and Europe.

To date, the move from 2.5G to 3G has been underwhelming but it is clear from the show that we are making strong progress towards faster networks (e.g., HSDPA, LTE, WiMax). Certainly faster networks and more capable devices will make better consumer experiences possible.

The concept of personalization and customization as related to consumer experience received steady buzz. For example, Ad Infuse discussed how the user experience gets customized and Openwave argued for distinguishing between ‘participatory’ and ‘anticipatory’ types of personalization. From what I can tell, this is just another way of talking about preference and recommendation.

Widgets could been seen on a number of booths throughout the show. They seem to be used as a proxy for user experience, e.g., rather than directly tackling core user experience and design issues, widgets are offered-up as a short-term solution to the problem. They are clearly becoming a necessary feature for both devices and content offerings and as of the show, Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft have announced their commitment to open platforms for mobile widget development.

Conclusion

On a personal note, I’d say that moving from Cannes to Barcelona has changed the nature of the show. While I do not miss the taxi lines, I do miss having the social events and congress proximate to one another. Compared with CTIA, both operators and device manufacturers have a fairly strong presence and people come to the Mobile World Congress to do business.

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