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Roundup of the first Mobile Breakfast Series event September 29, 2009

Posted by chetan in : 3G, 4G, AORTA, ARPU, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, European Wireless Market, Japan Wireless Market, Location Based Services, M&A, MVNO, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications, Mobile Content, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Gaming, Mobile Search, Mobile TV, Mobile Users, Privacy, Speech Recognition, US Wireless Market, Wireless Value Chain, Worldwide Wireless Market , add a comment

The views from the venue are stunning both at the crack of dawn and as the sun lit the valley

The first Mobile Breakfast Series Event was held at the beautiful Newcastle Golf Club on Sept 22nd with our elite panelists - Marianne Marck - SVP, BlueNile, Michael Mace, Principal, Rubicon Consulting, Mike Woodward, VP, AT&T, and Jim Hudak, VP & GM, INQMobile. Before I get into what was discussed, would like to thanks the founding sponsors - Openwave, Motricity, and Clearwire who stepped in right away to make the Mobile Breakfast Series possible. Also, Jeff Giard and Brendan Benzing helped shape the event along the way. Finally, thanks to the extended pacific northwest mobile community for such a tremendous response. Hope you guys keep coming back for more.

The diversity and the experience on the panel was apparent. Mike Woodward has a long history with ATT and has been managing the broad device portfolio for the company. Michael Mace with Rubicon worked with Palm and Apple and is a veteran of the mobile industry cycles, Marianne Marck with BlueNile has seen the growth of mobile digital content like few have and brought in the perspective from the developer and content provider point of view. Finally, Jim Hudak has worked in a wide variety of roles and is now with INQMobile which won the best handset award in Barcelona. This gave us a good forum to explore the various aspects of our evolving industry (Moconews coverage here).

The salient points of the 90 minute discussions were:

· The panel thought the big opportunities are in:

o Specialized devices, though there is little VC investment in the area, there is an opportunity to build something unique by verticals or segments

o Network Optimization and Management, given the tremendous growth in mobile data usage, more technologies are needed to effectively manage the growth

o Besides voice and data, location based services represent the biggest opportunity in mobile

o Empower Impulse buys, embed technology to make it simple for users to buy

o Taking advantage of the mobile browser economy. Companies like Skyfire are expanding the capabilities of the browser that enables better application reach and penetration

· ATT has experienced 5000% growth in mobile data usage in the last 12 quarters. And it is good for business but the future growth needs to be more effectively managed.

· Mobile data is clearly taking off but are there limits to this growth? Will everyone pay $50/month extra? It is probably not for everyone.

· LTE brings down cost of delivering the bits. If EDGE costs $1 to deliver one MB, then HSPA costs 13c and LTE is around 3c. There is significant motivation to move towards LTE.

· While the total number of apps downloaded have exceeded 2B, it is not clear if there are new companies emerging out of the app economy. Developers are still struggling to make ends meet and if we don’t cultivate the ecosystem, very few will be left at the end of the day

· For developers, browser provides the broadest reach but for some apps the richness of the feature/functionality is only available in client apps. Over the long run, browser platform is preferable and is likely to win out.

· Carrier billing is essential for the app economy to survive. Not everyone has iTunes interface for their appstores.

· Femtocells/WiFi play an important role in offloading traffic and providing consumers with better bandwidth and coverage options.

· 75% of ATT’s devices are converged devices. Significant uptick in the last few quarters. Data consumption has been growing as a result. ATT is investing $18B or so in upgrading the network as well.

· Mobile OS becomes less relevant over time.

· Cloud Computing is important for mobile to help with network management, storage, and user experience.

· Microsoft was a freakish event in history, something similar is not going to happen in the mobile space and the fragmentation is not going to go away any time soon.

· Developers like to get access to UI APIs that give them more control over the user experience. Access to location

· Mobile advertising promising but not there yet. Metrics and standards issues need to be worked out.

· TV is a passive experience, Online is less passive, and Mobile is interactive experience. We should be designing apps and services keeping that in mind.

· Handset has become a software business. Companies not having a concrete s/w strategy will be exposed

· We live in interesting times

If you liked the first event, you would love the next one.

The topic is Mobile Broadband and we are getting some of the top notch experts to discuss the very important evolution of the global mobile broadband markets. Date: Dec 4th.

Our good friend Om Malik has kindly consented to moderate the event. Current confirmed panelists are Scott Richardson, former Chief Strategy Officer and now Strategic Advisor at Clearwire and Ken Denman, CEO of Openwave. More panelists to be confirmed in the coming days. Registration is open at http://mobilebreakfastseries.com/

Finally, we would love to hear your feedback. Please help us shape the event and make it your own. How can we make it better? What topics would you like to see discussed? Which speakers would like to hear from? What venues work best for you, etc? Answers will help shape the future events so every bit of feedback is much appreciated. If you could please take a short survey and let us know what you thought of the event as well any guidance on future events, that will be great.

Thanks and see you on Dec 4th.

Global Wireless Data Market Update - 1H 2009 September 21, 2009

Posted by chetan in : 3G, 4G, AORTA, ARPU, BRIC, CTIA, Carriers, Enterprise Mobility, MVNO, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications, Mobile Content, Mobile Ecosystem, Speaking Engagements, US Wireless Market, Wireless Value Chain, Worldwide Wireless Market , 6 comments

Global Wireless Data Market Update - 1H 2009

Download: PPT | PDF

Executive Summary

The Global Wireless Markets continued to grow rapidly especially in India and China where the carriers (together) are adding around 20M new subscriptions every month. China crossed the 700M subscriptions mark in July while India’s total went past 450 in Aug. Overall, the global subscriptions penetration is above 64%. During 2009, services revenues further tilted towards data services, increasing 21% from 2008 EOY.

The overall global mobile revenues (including equipment) for the year are expected to stay flat as the impact of recession was felt in many geographies in the first half of 2009. While countries like US, Japan, China, and India showed very little signs of pullback, most of Europe (except France) and the developing world are expected to experience a decline in overall service revenues in 2009. For the first time, mobile data contributes approximately quarter or 25% of the total global service revenues. Additionally, except for India, all major markets have their data contribution percentages above 10%.

For some leading operators, data is now contributing over 40% of the overall revenues. However increase in data ARPU is not completely offsetting the drop in voice ARPU for most operators. From the true and tested SMS messaging to the new services such as Mobile Advertising, Social Networking, Commerce, Mobile Wallet, and others, different services helped in adding billions to the revenues generated in 2009. US continues to lead Japan and China in total mobile data revenues by a healthy margin.

NTT DoCoMo continues to dominate the carrier ranking in terms of mobile data service revenues, however, Verizon Wireless which became #2 replacing China Mobile is slowly edging towards the #1 spot and is likely to overtake DoCoMo within the next few quarters.

The velocity with which the smartphones are being introduced into the market, one wonders if in five years, we will be using the moniker to describe devices and if the "dumbness" in the device market will be practically eliminated. Led by Apple’s Appstore success, significant investments are pouring into the appstore world. In parallel, the debate over apps vs. mobile web is intensifying. The implications of the transition will be significant on the ecosystem on many levels.

Though 4G as a standard hasn’t been defined yet, the discussions around LTE (and to some extent WiMAX) grew intense and started climbing the slippery slope of the hype curve. Many prominent operators have come out in support of LTE with Verizon being the most aggressive in launching their next generation network in 2010.

Chetan Sharma Consulting conducted its semiannual study on the global mobile data industry. We studied wireless data trends in over 40 major countries - from developed and mature markets such as Japan, Korea, UK, and Italy to hyper growth markets such as China and India.

This note summarizes the findings from the research with added insights from our work in various global markets.

Impact of Global Recession

Telecom in general fared better than other industries. In some regions, it hardly caused a tremor. However, in most nations, the impact was acutely felt by the operators. Amongst the operators we studied, only 3, SK Telecom, O2 UK, Telefonica, T-Mobile Germany and Austria, Vodafone Germany and Italy, KTF experienced increase in both the data ARPU and overall ARPU during 1H09 (and some of increase was due to the fluctuation in international currencies).
Looking at the data at a country level, almost all nations noted a decline in overall ARPU and majority in data ARPU. However, almost everywhere data for 1H09 improved over 2H08 indicating that the recession had a worse impact on the wireless sector last year compared to this year and in general the conditions in the telecom microcosm are improving globally.
Rule of Three is kicking in most markets with smaller players having to consider the M&A option to remain viable. T-Mobile/Orange, Bharti/MTN tie-ups are just the start of that process.

Service Revenues

US extended its lead over Japan as the most valuable mobile data market in service revenue with US adding $20.6B vs. $16B for Japan in 1H 2009. China with $8.6B was ranked number 3. US registered the highest growth amongst the top 3 with over 39% increase from EOY 2008 levels followed by Japan and China at 5%.
The top 10 nations by service revenues are: US, China, Japan, France, Italy, UK, Germany, India, Spain, and Brazil.
The top 10 nations by data service revenues are: US, Japan, China, UK, Italy, Germany, France, Korea, Spain, and Australia.
NTT DoCoMo continues to dominate the wireless data revenues rankings with almost $8B in data services revenue in 1H09. Almost 45% of its overall revenue now comes from data services. DoCoMo also crossed the 50M or 90% 3G mark in June.
NTT DoCoMo was followed by Verizon Wireless, China Mobile, AT&T, KDDI, Sprint Nextel, Softbank Mobile, T-Mobile USA, O2 UK, and China Unicom to round up the top 10 operators by wireless data service revenues.
The top 10 global operator groups now account for over 63% of the global mobile data revenues.
Each of the top 5 carriers are expected to exceed $10B in yearly mobile data service revenues in 2009
Data revenues for the top 10 operators increased 10% from 2H 2008 and now account for almost 48% of the global mobile data revenues though their subscriber share is around 30%.
The biggest jump in data revenues was experienced by Verizon, AT&T and Softbank. DoCoMo suffered a 2% decline compared to 2H08.
Most of the operators in developed nations are contemplating future strategies to boost data revenues such that the decline in voice revenues is at least compensated for. There are very few operators who have experienced increase in overall ARPU.
China reported approximately $8.5B in data revenues for 1H09 and the percentage contribution from data services is around 28%, data ARPU is around $2.7. For India, data ARPU continues to stay around $0.50 as most of the new adds are voice only subscribers and there is continued price pressure in the market.
China Mobile remains the most valuable telecom operator with over $200B in market cap. It is followed by Vodafone at around $122B. Telecom groups in mature markets are under enormous pressure to either come up with a global expansion strategy or accelerate their existing plans.
In 2009, SMS’s vice like grip on data revenues continues to loosen a bit with many carriers seeing an increase in non-SMS data revenues. On an average, Japan and Korea have over 70-75% of their revenue coming from non-SMS data applications, US around 50-60%, and Western Europe around 20-40%.
NTT DoCoMo has been at the cutting edge of the mobile data evolution by creating new markets. They are exploring new technologies and social experiments ahead of almost anybody else in the market. Our long history with the Japanese and Korean markets has taught us that while the individual strategies in each market will differ, one should study the trends, technologies, and ecosystem dynamics in these markets to get a sense of what’s coming.

ARPU

Most of the major operators around the world have double digit percentage contribution to their overall ARPU from data services. Operators like DoCoMo, and Softbank are over 44%. KDDI, 3 Australia, 3 Italy, 3 UK, Vodafone UK, O2 UK, KTF, Telstra, and 3 Sweden exceeded 30% and many others are on the verge of crossing the 30% mark.
3 Australia reported the highest increase in data ARPU from 2008 with 31% growth. Other notable percentage increases in ARPU were from 3 Italy, SK Telecom, KTF, T-Mobile Germany, 3 Sweden, and T-Mobile Austria. The Japanese operators saw a decline in ARPU by 3%. In terms of absolute dollar amount, NTT DoCoMo leads the pack with $25 data ARPU.
The biggest percentage contribution by data ARPU has been consistently registered (since mid 2002) by two Philippines carriers – Smart Communications and Globe Telecom with over 56% (or $3) contribution coming from the data services. Philippines is also the most active messaging nations where users average a message/hr round the clock though US txters have had the most acceleration in use.

Mobile Data Traffic

We have been calling attention to the tremendous increase in mobile data traffic for some time. The discussion has hit mainstream and many operators are scrambling to nail-down their short-term and long-term strategies to manage the data traffic growth in their networks. See our paper on the subject "Managing growth and profits in the yottabyte era." The recommendations discussed in the paper are slowly been adopted by various vendors and operators worldwide.
The global mobile data traffic is expected to exceed an Exabyte for the first time in 2009. In fact, the data usage is growing so fast that next year, the two territories experiencing the most growth - North America and Western Europe are going to exceed an Exabyte in mobile data traffic.
2010 will also mark the first year when the total number of mobile broadband connections will exceed the total number of fixed broadband connections.

Subscriptions

The global mobile market continues to grow at an explosive pace and is expected to go past 4.5B subscriptions in 2009 and is likely cross the 5B mark in 2010. The global mobile subscriptions now represent over 64% of human population on Earth.
China and India continued their red-hot growth in 1H09. Combined, they added 132M new subscriptions with India easily surpassing China in each of the last 12 months in terms of net-adds.
China crossed the 700M subscription mark in July while India’s total went past 450 in Aug. In total, China is still years ahead. In the meantime, US crossed the 90% subscriptions mark earlier this year.
In the last 10 years, the growth patterns in the mobile industry have completely reversed. In 1998, the developed world accounted for 76% of the subscriber base, in 2008; the percentages have flipped with developing world now accounting for 76% of the subscriber base and are likely to increase to 85% by 2018.
The top 10 nations by subscriptions are: China, India, US, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Italy.
China Mobile became the first operator (and likely to be the only one for a very long time) to cross the 500M mark. It remains the #1 carrier in terms of the total number of subscriptions followed by Vodafone at 264M. Telefonica, América Móvil, Telenor, T-Mobile, China Unicom, TeliaSonera, Orange, and Bharti Airtel round up the top 10 largest telecom groups in the world.

Others

Messaging still accounts for the lion-share of data service revenues. However, other services such as Mobile Music, Mobile TV and video streaming, Voice navigation, PNDs, Mobile Games, IMS, LBS, Mobile advertising, and others have gradually chipped away the share from messaging. Alternate devices with wholesale cellular agreements are also flooding the market. In Japan, Mobile Commerce is expected to do much better than Mobile Advertising. Though not much talked about, enterprise applications are also being adopted widely esp. in North America as more workers become mobile and corporations seek efficiencies in their operations and supply-chain.
After falling below the 100M/quarter in Q1, Nokia rebounded to sell 103M units in Q2 09. Samsung also exceeded 50M with a strong second finish at 52M. LG finished a strong third with almost 30M in its bag and Motorola showed signs of strength by selling close to 15M units.
The second quarter was dominated by two blockbuster launches of iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. While iPhone continued to attract new customers, Pre suffered from a less than adequate launch strategy. By lowering the 3G device price to $99, Apple set the new bar in smartphone pricing leaving the rivals scrambling for response. The release of a slew of Android handsets sets up the stage for fierce competition during the holiday season and into 2010.
China and India represent the biggest opportunities for the Infrastructure providers. China launched 3G across the three operators earlier this year. India is also going through its 3G spectrum policy and is likely to resolve some of the contentious issues shortly. Some of the biggest infrastructure contracts are coming from these two countries as they look to expand coverage into rural areas.
Deployment of 3.5G technologies is in full swing. However, it is the discussion of 4G that is occupying the headlines, even though 4G hasn’t been fully defined yet and the current candidates for 4G are nowhere near the performance goals of 4G (150Mbps/50+Mbps). Many larger operators have laid out their plans for deploying LTE starting next year.

As usual, we will be keeping a close eye on the trends in the wireless data sector in our blog, twitter feeds, future research reports, and articles. The next US Wireless Data Market update will be released in Nov 2009. The next Global Wireless Data Market update will be issued in March 2010.

Your feedback is always welcome.

Thanks.

Chetan Sharma

Disclaimer: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.

Mobile Application Store event at CTIA September 20, 2009

Posted by chetan in : US Wireless Market , add a comment

My good friend Ajit is hosting the first ever Mobile Application Stores conference at CTIA with a great lineup of speakers. Details below:

The Mobile Application Stores, Strategy and Deployment conference http://www.mobileappevent.com/ is proud to announce its all-star speaker lineup for this unique event. Mobile Application Stores is a partner seminar of International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment October 8th in San Diego

Mobile Application Stores is the only conference to focus exclusively on the business of mobile applications and will focus on the tremendous opportunities in the mobile apps stores ecosystem. The event is designed to give a complete understanding of how to capitalize on this dynamic market.

Featured speakers for the event include:

• Dr. Jin-Sung Choi Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Head MC Global

Product Planning Team, LG Electronics Korea

• George Linardos Vice President, Product Management, Media, Nokia

• Ilja Laurs Founder & CEO, GetJar.

• Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer,OMTP

• Mike Merril, CEO-Smart Phone Technologies

• Ajit Jaokar, President-futuretext

• Chetan Sharma, CEO, Chetan Sharma Consulting

• Jouko Ahvenainen, Founder, Grow VC International

• William Volk, CEO, PlayScreen

• Sena Gbeckor-Kove, Chief Technology Officer, imKon

The timing is perfect for an event like this. The Apple Appstore announced its billionth download in less that 9 months after opening and the recent launch of LG’’s Applications Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile as well as Android and the Blackberry App World are making tremendous impact in the mobile marketplace.

Mobile Application Stores is co-located with the largest wireless event in the U.S., International CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment.

Registration is only $295 at http://www.mobileappevent.com/

About Mobile Application Stores: The Mobile Application Stores event is produced by futuretext, a London based research, consulting and publishing company. For additional information, please contact Larry Lockhart at NextVision Media at 727-388-9849 or Larry@nextvisionmedia.com or Ajit Jaokar Ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com The web site again for registration is: http://www.mobileappevent.com/

Mobile Breakfast Series – we are all set September 18, 2009

Posted by chetan in : US Wireless Market , add a comment

Really excited about the upcoming Mobile Breakfast Series on Tue, Sept 22nd. Working out the kinks, taking care of last minute details. We have had a great turnout and support from the mobile community in pacific northwest. Additionally, thanks to folks who are making the trip from California, Oregon, and British Columbia. Your support is much appreciated. The quality of attendees is just excellent. See the graph below for yourselves

Thanks to our generous sponsors – Openwave, Motricity, and Clearwire for making this possible.

State of the Union: Where do we go from here?

The Mobile Industry has been growing by leaps and bounds. We will take a stock of where we are as an industry and how are some of the battles, opportunities, and challenges are shaping up for the near and distant future. We will discuss Open, Appstores, Mobile web, Mobile Commerce, 4G, Business Models, Consumer Behavior, Smartphones, and much more. To help us guide through the discussion are some of the best minds in the industry.

Mike Woodward, VP, Mobile Device Portfolio, AT&T

Marianne Marck, SVP, Technology, Blue Nile

Michael Mace, Principal, Rubicon Consulting

Jim Hudak, VP & GM The Americas, INQMobile

See you there

Events this month September 5, 2009

Posted by chetan in : US Wireless Market , 1 comment so far

Sept is turning out to be a busy month. Events i will be attending are as follows:

First up is Mobilize on Sept 10th

Ultraband: A Fast Platform For Innovation

When the nation of Korea commits to providing its citizens with 1 Gbps wireless broadband by 2012, the world’s innovators should sit up straight and listen. It’s a clear sign that bigger and bolder things are coming. We assemble a panel of world-class thought leaders from the worlds of broadband, wireless and consumer services and ask them when we will see true Ultraband appear — and what innovations and costs that future holds. A must-attend panel for entrepreneurs, strategists and product managers to gain essential insights ahead of the curve.

Moderator - Chetan Sharma President, Chetan Sharma Consulting

Phil Asmundson Vice Chairman and National Managing Partner – Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Deloitte LLP

Ken Denman CEO, Openwave Systems

Abhi Ingle VP, Industry and Mobility Application Solutions, AT&T

Rick Keith Senior Director of Strategy, Broadband Access Solutions, Motorola

Then, i fly to Toronto for Mobile Media Week. I will be giving a keynote on “Mobile Data Tsunami” and how we manage this growth. And right after will moderate a panel with Motorola, Verizon, and Canwest

The Mobile Data Tsunami Keynote with Experts Symposium
Chetan Sharma – President, Chetan Sharma Consulting & Author: Wireless Broadband ~ Mobile Advertising
Michael Dixon – VP Wireless Networks, Motorola
Aditya Khurjekar – Director, New Business Development, Verizon
Paul Burns – VP Digital, Canwest Broadcasting

Then, we our inaugural sold-out Mobile Breakfast Series event in Seattle on 22nd where i will moderate a panel on “State of the Union” with

Mike Woodward, VP, Mobile Device Portfolio, AT&T

Marianne Marck, SVP, Technology, Blue Nile

Brendan Benzing, SVP, Product Management, Motricity

Michael Mace, Principal, Rubicon Consulting

Jim Hudak, VP & GM The Americas, INQMobile

Then, i fly to Dallas on 24th to participate in 3G Americas Analyst Summit.