CTIA Wireless
IT and Entertainment Roundup 2009
San Diego is a casual town so this year’s CTIA fit
nicely with an equally casual show, that felt more like a networking
party sprinkled with some striking keynotes and engaging sessions.
However, the biggest tremors were felt a day before the event
started with
Verizon getting in bed with Google and
AT&T embracing VoIP with open arms. FCC’s curiosity into the
wireless world has yielded more action in 3 months than many years
combined before. I was drawn more to the policy debate and the
implications to the wireless industry in the US and to the rest of
the world. There was intense discussion on appstores and their place
in the future, mobile advertising and its maturity, enhancing retail
experience, accelerated growth in mobile health in recent times, and
of course the tremendous growth in the US wireless data market but
if you already knew that. This note summarizes the observations and
opinions from the event, discussions, and briefings.
A friend of mine at the FCC invited me to the
FCC Broadband Field Hearing occurring simultaneously with the
CTIA at the University of San Diego. I am glad I went. The first
panel was on the App Ecosystem with a diverse panel of industry
verticals – rural, public safety, health care, environment, air
quality, health care complimented by the discussion of the iPhone
and its impact on the mobile industry. Chairman Julius Genachowski
is to iPhone what President Obama was to Blackberry. He described
his love for the apps with tender affection.
I am finding that the whole process of broadband
planning to be quite interesting. The proceedings have been open and
participatory, interest and feedback has been intense, and the
principles have been clearly stated. This helped with a broader
question that my CTO team for the
FiREGlobal panel (to be held on Oct 15th) is
addressing. We are tasked with a unique challenge of coming up with
technology solutions for better civic discourse and our team
consists of experts in the public and private enterprise to give a
set of recommendations. We are currently under intense discussions
and will unveil our suggestions on thursday. Stay Tuned.
Coming back to the FCC talk, Julius described four
key principles:
-
Most importantly
he described the spectrum shortage as a looming crisis and that
additional spectrum capacity is needed to handle the demand of
data traffic from data cards and smartphones (something we have
illustrated in detail in our paper -
"Managing growth and profits in the Yottabyte
era")
-
Removing red
tape to allow wireless carriers to build their network faster,
for example, the work with cell towers
-
Codify and
enforce net-neutrality policies
-
Operate more
openly
While 1) and 2) have been discussed in the industry
for some time, it is the mention of 3) and 4) that has changed
industry in more ways than one. AT&T's Ralph de la Vega took the
stage after the Chairman and
gave a spirited defense of the industry that requires no
regulation. Frankly, the mere mention of the word "open" has had
quite an impact on the industry in last 3 months. (I will be
moderating two panels at the upcoming
Open Mobile Summit on "What open means to apps providers" and
"Apps in the cloud" in Nov, 2009)
Of course, as always, it is from the details that the
devil flexes it muscles. How FCC will end up defining "open," "net
neutrality," "network management" and other key items will determine
the course of the industry. I wrote a piece that appeared in RCR
Wireless
“Defining Mobile Broadband” that outlined some of the same
principles but from an operator strategy point of view suggested a
much broader strategic imperative of building intelligent platform
to survive long-term. The recommendations we made in our Yottabyte
paper are being adopted and discussed much more openly since it was
released in July. Due to significant interest, we will some
follow-up research on the topic in the coming days, so stay tuned. I
will be giving a
ISACA luncheon keynote on the topic on Oct 20th. Of
course, our Mobile Breakfast Series panel on mobile broadband will
delve into the details of the broadband ecosystem on Dec 4th.
Be sure to register.
Each year our small community in Issaquah, WA
celebrates a festival “Salmon
Days.” As I was strolling around the hatchery, it helped me
prepare for my talk on the
Appstore ecosystem. The fish traveling upstream has several
parallels to the developers trying to make in the 80,000 db appond.
So, I focused my talk on how the ecosystem needs to come together
urgently to build the fish ladder to give more developers a chance
to make it to the next level to create a vibrant and sustainable
ecosystem. While Microsoft’s mobile strategy is disarray right now,
they are one of the few companies who understand the caring and
feeding of the developer ecosystem (another one is Ebay). If the
ecosystem focuses primarily on their profits and margins, the rich
ecosystem might be at a risk of collapsing.
I discussed several factors that can help foster a
healthier ecosystem starting with fish ladder. If you are interested
in the presentation, please drop me a line. There was pretty good
discussion from some experienced and successful developers. The
emergence of appstore mania has been a double-edged sword.
Developers are back in demand but their attention is finite and they
are forced to allocate resources accordingly. I was also surprised
to find out about the level of piracy and counterfeit goods in the
appstore and how little is being done to protect legitimate
developers. Some of the ladder factors I discussed were: greater
revenue share, connection with investors, iTunes and carrier
billing, location and presence, user profile and context, reports
and analytics, $0 signup and certification, better search and
discovery, social interaction and virality, flexible payment and
billing models, better networks and devices, reduced fragmentation,
more open APIs and marketing dollars. If you are interested, drop me
a line and I will send you the ppt.
I also had a chance to moderate a panel on
Mobile Advertising and the current state of affairs. While
mobile advertising is the only advertising sector that has shown
growth this year, it is not breaking out to stand on its own. Large
media companies are primarily looking mobile as a complimentary
channel though they are clearly enamored by its potential.
Lack of clear, uniform, auditable metrics is
another issue though various industry bodies have been working
together and some guidelines are expected to be released next
quarter.
Overall, the show felt like a sponsored networking
party with hardly any new announcements, the show floor was easier
on the feet, the attendance was down again. However, the hallway
conversations and running into friends and colleagues from the
distant past is always priceless. The only newsworthy highlight for
me was the emergence of mobile healthcare and mobile retail as
separate categories at CTIA. There is clearly much potential and
interest in these areas. We will have more on these topics in the
coming months.
Some of the news worth items were:
-
John Donovan,
CTO of AT&T opined on the growth in data consumption and how the
company is tackling the upsurge in usage
-
Qualcomm
released FLO TV service and devices but at $250 and $9/month,
it, like Kindle seems to be stuck in the
fidelity belly.
-
A number of
local search services/apps are popping up:
Geodelic,
Aloqa,
Decarta, etc. I built my first location app in 1996. 13
years hence, market seems to be coming around to the concept of
LBS.
-
Number of mobile
health companies were displaying their wares: Airstrip,
Corventis, TotGuard, Sensiotec, and others. Lot of investment
will flow into this sector in the coming days.
-
Companies like
Openwave and Bytemobile talked about solutions for mobile data
management.
-
Mobile Retail is
picking up with NFC and now Nokia's initiative of
Global Retail Executive Council
-
More Androids
are slated for release in 2010
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.
