CTIA Wireless 2012 Recap
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CTIA returned to New Orleans after many years and it was great to see the city revitalized and ready to host the wireless show. Overall there were no big announcements, no blockbuster deals, no zingers from speakers that made the headlines. However, it was good to take the pulse of the industry. We met with several prominent industry executives, long-time colleagues, and new entrepreneurs. This note presents the summary of my observations from the show.
Mobile Web and Apps – I had the opportunity to chair the Mobile Web and Apps event and kick off the proceedings with an opening keynote on the State of the Mobile Industry. It was based on our recent global market update that we released last week. In fact, many CEOs and speakers including FCC Chairman Genachowski frequently referenced from the research throughout the show. Wireless Week did a nice cover story based on the talk. There was good discussion and debate about what’s working and what’s not, how developers try to create demand and monetize eyeballs, the issues of security and privacy. Mastercard announced its payment developer APIs program. In fact, the show had the presence of all the major credit card companies. Payments, wallet, and commerce were the big talking point.
Operators vs. OTT – The theme of Mobile World Congress continued at CTIA with the topic dominating in both open forums as well as behind closed doors. While most of the ink has been focused on how OTT players are killing operator revenue streams, there is the untold story of operator collaboration with the OTTs. I wrote a piece on the topic for Synergy magazine “Mobile Operators and OTTs: Building a win-win.†The manner in which operators respond to the OTT opportunity/threat will end up defining their future in the years to come. Some operators like TeliaSonera have reacted by throwing their hands and just charging extra for OTT services while others like Telefonica are launching innovative services. We have looked at this topic in-depth for many years and have some more new research coming out in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
The challenge for some of the operators is in stark display. While T-Mobile’s Bobsled app garnered (95% users non-TMO customers) 1 million users, Viber announced the 70 million milestone. To be a relevant app, one needs scale. Operators have the advantage of providing better call quality. The call quality on many mobile VoIP services is subpar and enterprise customers (and consumers) will pay a premium for better call quality.
Digital Life and New Revenue Streams – In the US, AT&T dominates the connected devices spaces. Indeed in terms of rolling out new services, it is a step ahead of the competition. AT&T has been showing the Digital Life concepts at Mobile World Congress and at CTIA they announced the trial and actual product availability in 2013. This clearly bodes well for the industry for there are many adjacent industries where operators can play an important role. Other operators should pay close attention. We will be discussing the Connected Devices opportunities in detail at our Atlanta Mobile Breakfast Series Event on June 22nd with AT&T, Synchronoss, and CNN.
Traffic Growth and Signaling storm – As we have mentioned in our various research papers and research updates, mobile traffic is roughly doubling YOY in most major markets including the US. While data traffic hogs the headlines, signaling is becoming a menace to network management esp. Android which tends to be more inefficient in handling network resources. We will have a more in-depth discussion of these topics in our upcoming Yottabyte research paper.
TMO Acquisition – Last year, AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile rocked the industry and kept the regulators busy for better part of 2011. While there were no blockbuster announcements, T-Mobile’s acquisition of MetroPCS along with Nokia and RIM’s long-term prospects remained popular water cooler topics.
Nokia’s revival – Nokia has a lot to prove. Its future is riding on the success of the Lumia series of devices in 2012. Though it hasn’t exactly set things on fire, the sales are actually doing fine. It is amongst the top selling devices at AT&T and is showing stickiness. However, Nokia is getting crushed in other markets, so the net impact on overall cash position can be significant if it is not able to arrest the downfall in the next 3-4 quarters.
Small Cells – A couple of years ago, small cells and HetNets were just talking point. Now, operators are weaving them into their execution plans as they lay out their 4G networks. Given that mobile data growth is going to stay front and center for the foreseeable future, expect to hear about small cells and HetNets for some time to come.
TMO $4B network deal – Generally, the network deals of this size takes many quarters to iron out. T-Mobile moved fairly quickly to iron out its LTE rollout plans and its vendors. Not surprisingly, the spoils of the deal went to Ericsson and NSN. In light of the collapse of LightSquared, this deal might provide NSN a lifeline to continue operations for a few more years.
Mobile Wallets and Mobile Payments – While 2012 will not be the year of mobile payments; it certainly is the year of mobile wallets launches and lots of them. Every financial institution worthy of its salt has launched a wallet. We are just going through the early turbulence cycle of this new segment. However, the opening up of the payment APIs from the financial industry is leading to some compelling experiences and use cases.
NFC was absent – The talk of NFC as a payment solution was noticeably muted. We have always said that NFC will have more impact from other solutions than payment.
Verizon – LTE – Competing on LTE, the fight to build the fastest and biggest LTE network is on. Verizon has an early formidable lead but in 2013 rivals will start to catch-up.
Messaging innovation – As I mentioned to the NY Times and discussed it in our annual global mobile update, messaging revenue has started to decline in some countries. Some operators in Europe are in a state of panic. Chaos creates new opportunities. While operators have just given up on fighting the OTT war, others are gearing with new apps and services of their own (TU Me from Telefonica, Bobsled from T-Mobile, On from Orange). Several startups are also helping the operators innovate on the messaging front. SMS was invented in the early nineties but operators didn’t really take messaging to the next level for the last two decades. I met with a number of companies which are doing some interesting work on the messaging side – like ZipWhip, Maxx Wireless, OpenMarket, and others. Some of these companies are still in the stealth mode and expect to make some waves in the coming months. We will be taking this topic head-on in our Mobile Breakfast Series in Seattle (w/ AT&T, Groupon) and London (w/ Telefonica, Orange, Horizons Venture, Rebtel)
Sprint Guardian, and other apps – in line with generating more revenue form other apps, Sprint guardian was launched with Safely and the service is seeing pretty good traction in the early days and might be able to increase the lifetime value of the customer. Other US operators have similar services available on their network as well. Operators will have to invest heavily in VAS ecosystem and services to arrest the declining revenue in other segments.
FCC, Spectrum and Regulations – FCC continued to make its case for more spectrum via incentive auction. With a change of guard expected next year, it will be interesting to see how some of these efforts pan out. FCC should create parallel incentive programs like a $1B prize for tangibly solving the spectrum crisis w/o the need of new spectrum.
Absence of large players – The lack of any major announcements was only rivaled by the absence of the former CTIA heavyweights like Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, Motorola, and Microsoft. Others had fairly low-key presence.
Regulations – Regulations lag the technology industry progress and it is getting to the point that they might end up hindering growth esp. related to communication, privacy and monetization of network assets. It is time to consider bringing all communication, and data privacy rules under the same umbrella so both the telecom and Internet players are guided by the same set of principles.
Your feedback is always welcome.
Chetan Sharma
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 May 2012. The next Global Wireless Data Market update will be issued in Nov 2012.
Disclaimer: Some of the companies mentioned in this paper are our clients.