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CTIA 2009 Roundup
http://www.chetansharma.com/ctia2009.htm
CTIA 2009 in Pictures
CTIA provided a boost to
the Las Vegas economy by hosting the 2009 International CTIA in the sin
city. Prior to the show, we knew that the attendance will be down due to
the economy and it was clear from day 1 that it will be a less busy
event. Attendance was probably down 30-40%, Exhibitors seemed down by a
good percentage as well with many opting for meeting rooms instead or
skipping the show altogether. The big double story compounds were
downgraded to smaller fields. Samsung and LG didn’t plaster the town
with massive banners, taxis weren’t covered in advertisements. It was
not all bad though, the probability of being trampled by humans reduced,
taxi lines were shorter (though no less annoying) and the quality of the
show was still pretty good. We had a jam packed schedule. This note
summarizes the observations from the show.
Numbers CTIA
released its semi-annual numbers. For 2008: 270M subscribers, $148
billion in service revenues, $32 billion in data revenues (just for
reference, this is more than the total global Hollywood box-office
revenue which came in at $28B), 2.2 trillion in MOU, 1 trillion TXT
messages. You can checkout our annual US data market analysis which was
released last month
here.
Etech Contest –
Prior to the event, CTIA invited us to judge the Emerging Technology
Contest. It was fun reviewing the various entries.
The award winners are announced here. Congrats to all.
My CTIA started early
with a couple of sessions at the pre-conference event -
BRIC Mobile Market Summit. The quality of the discussion was pretty
good. I gave a talk on the Opportunities in the Indian and Chinese
mobile markets and discussed where the opportunities in these two
fastest growing markets as well as dispel some myths that engulf most
companies.
After that, I joined the
panel with other experts in the industry to have a lengthy discussion of
the trends and opportunities in these markets including Latin America.
Unfortunately, our
workshop on “Monetizing Mobile User Generated Content” got canceled due
to low attendance or maybe folks are just not interested in monetizing
these days. I will be discussing some of the similar themes in my talk
at the
NAB Show (MES) in Vegas on 22nd April. I will also be
moderating a panel on Innovations in Mobile Experiences.
If interested, clients of
Chetan Sharma Consulting can request the slides from any of the talks.
Themes: The main
themes of the conference were: Broadband (primarily around 4G and
LTE with sprinkles of WiMAX) and data usage, Green, Mobile Health,
Appstores, Rich Communication and Social Networking.
Broadband
4G – My first 4G
project was back in 2003 for NTT DoCoMo when 4G didn’t even enter
industry’s vernacular. Most operators were figuring out their 3G
strategies. Six years hence, we have come a long way. Broadband, 4G, and
LTE were the core themes of the conference and there was visible
progress from the last CTIA with more test results, actual devices, and
real demos. While the current reports suggest that some form of
deployment will take place in 2010, we don’t expect the “real”
commercial deployments before 2011, LTE voice will even take longer. So,
where does this leave WiMAX. With each passing day, the role of WiMAX as
a niche technology is affirmed. The backhaul bottleneck problem is also
becoming prominent and the enhancement of backhaul is behind the RF
infrastructure to provide any substantive improvements in data
throughputs at least in the near future.
I will be moderating a
panel on 4G at
Future in Review (FiRE) conference considered by Economist the
best Tech conference on the planet (panelists include executives from
Telstra, Qualcomm, Clearwire, and others) to get delve deeper into the
evolution of 4G.
The Broadband Stimulus
– Many companies are eying the $8B broadband stimulus package. The
process of how they are going to be granted seems chaotic with
unintended consequences. My feeling is that it is a lost opportunity.
Instead of just looking at incremental enhancements, US could have been
bold and improved existing and new broadband deployments by over 50-60
times. (More
discussion here)
Mobile Health
Keynotes – I
thought Dr. Eric Topol, Director, Scripps gave perhaps the most
effective keynote addresses in recent memory. Keynotes are generally a
drab affair. Instead of inspiring through vision many put the audience
to sleep with their product announcements. Dr. Topol’s speech was so
rich in content, his words were filled with such passion, and his
articulation was so inspiring that most entrepreneurs in the room were
energized to make a difference. I commend CTIA for inviting him. He is
joining Qualcomm’s Don Jones (a fierce proponent of mHealth) and others
to form the first ever
Wireless Health Institute in San Diego. Expect some really cool
stuff to come out of them. However, to be most effective, health
institutions need to get on board with the program starting with the
simplest of things like “txt messages.” Come on folks, move into the 21st
century!
Health – For the
first time, there was significant discussion on mobile’s impact on the
health care industry. My masters is in Biomedical Engineering so it is
great to see the marriage between the two industries. I strongly believe
if we can get past some of the bureaucratic nonsense, mobile can have a
significant lasting impact on the quality of life and healthcare in both
the developing and developed nations. Some of the stuff is really
amazing (iBrain, iPill, iShoe, you get the picture). I will have more
discussion on the subject in the coming days.
Applications and
Services
You say appstore, I
say appworld, you say market, I say marketplace – I have been
working on appstores for so long that I can’t help but be amused by the
recent frenzy of appstores sprouting like mushrooms. I think overall it
is good for the industry as each of the providers will push each other
in areas of innovation and pricing models thus opening up the industry
for developers and consumers. However, the fragmentation also increases
as a result and something has to give because developer’s attention and
resources are finite. There aren’t many companies who can pull-off a
successful developer program (this is one area where Microsoft has some
advantage because of significant experience in cultivating developers).
Apple’s model has already forced carriers to accelerate their short-term
and long-term strategies. T-Mobile USA saw the writing on the wall
earlier than most and is further along in its plans. Current
implementations are still quite primitive with much potential for
improvement.
Rich Communication
– Talked to some companies (Aylus, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, etc.) about
rich communication services that integrate various experiences on the
mobile device including chat, voice, data, social networking, video,
etc., onto a single screen. The user experience is enhanced leading to
newer sources of revenues for operators.
Netbooks also seem to be
on operator roadmaps with 33% of these devices expected to be sold
through the carrier channels in 3 years. Will Nokia and Motorola get
active in this space? Or will the new entrants use netbooks to enter the
phone market? Inspired by Kindle, many players are getting bolder and
investing in application specific devices (a trend we wrote about in our
mobile advertising book last year). Examples: a cool new wireless video
game console –
Zeebo being launched in Brazil and
nuvifone being launched by Garmin and Asus.
Mobile Social
Networking – Some interesting social networking features and
functions are coming down the line. I am convinced that carriers need to
treat social networking as a core service rather than a bolt on
application. I almost wrote a book “The Facebook Effect” but 3 books in
a year were too many so taking a break for now. (Maybe the next one will
be “The Twitter Effect”).
Mobile Advertising
– Though we have been involved with several mobile advertising projects,
at the show, it felt the segment excitement was quite flat and many
companies are struggling to stay in business. The consolidation hasn’t
come yet but things are likely to start changing in the next few months.
I also think that industry needs to start thinking about much more
compelling and engaging closed-loop creative experiences rather than
just impressions. Also, third party verification is needed (who is going
to step up?). Finally, the role of the mediation layer is becoming
important. The real substantive announcement came before CTIA with four
major US operators agreeing to collaborate on best practices. Kudos to
MMA for orchestrating the agreement.
Green
Green is the new black
– With so much focus on cleantech and global warming, vendors are
stepping up and making a dent in the carbon put out by the industry.
There were some really cool solar chargeable devices as well as
applications that keep the users green-aware. Being green is a
competitive advantage.
Miscellaneous
Devices – The
quality of devices that coming out keeps getting better. Stuff coming
out from Samsung, LG, and INQ is pretty darn cool (Motorola, Nokia, Palm
have some good stuff coming out as well). There were some neat concept
phones on display as well (I know, I know, we are ways out but I think
we will see some of these come to light sooner than we think). I thought
one of the coolest new device was from LG – GD900 with transparent
keypad. Samsung’s DLNA and AMOLED based devices were also quite good.
They were also showing the WiMAX Smartphone Mondi. ZTE is also planning
to enter the US market in a big way. While new Androids were hard to
spot, several of them are scheduled to be released in the next few
months.
NTT DoCoMo – Each
CTIA, I love spending time in DoCoMo’s booth as they are always at the
cutting edge of what’s to come. Downloading your digital key to your
handset to open your hotel room by waving your phone, controlling every
piece of equipment in your home via your cell phone, i-concier: your
friendly on-screen butler, separable phones were some of the highlights.
Best booth: Most
Creative – SpinVox, Most Hip – LG
Interesting companies
– While it is difficult to meet each of the upcoming startups, couple of
companies caught our attention:
Waze out of Israel with its crowd-sourcing based approach to
real-time traffic information and
Kovio with its ability to lower the cost of printed silicon.
3G connection – My
3G connection was so good throughout the show that I didn’t need to lug
my laptop around and did 100% of my communications for 3 days from my
phone.
Your feedback is always
welcome.
Thanks
Chetan
Disclaimer: Some of the companies mentioned in this note are our clients.
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