Thursday, September 18, 2008

Is Mobile 2.0 making carriers redundant?

This week at OSiM 2008 in Berlin, I gave a talk about Mobile 2.0 and the role of mobile operators. It is a hot topic these days. Carriers have been totally marginalized by Apple on the iPhone: a device that could not be certified in their network, lacking most of the features they always requested, though they eventually certified it... They added MobileMe and the App Store. The carrier for Apple is just a pipe: a sales pipe, a data pipe. The same was true with RIM and the BlackBerry (and the comment was "it is a small market, not a big deal"). Now also Nokia is moving forward with OVI... And Google with Android and all their services and content. Not small markets anymore, a very BIG deal. The risk of being a (dumb) pipe is real and clear.

What can carriers do? Can they be still relevant? I believe so (despite the way I started my speech, but I was joking ;-)

However, they have to move FAST.

I suggested a few steps:
  1. Be open, open the network, devices, services and content. Walled garden will collapse eventually, and they will collaps inward (that's in your face ;-)
  2. Set up MobileMe & Appstore equivalents to get control back in services. T-Mobile is doing the App Store. Everyone should have a MobileMe solution (a.k.a. MobileWe, more in a separate post)
  3. Get developers and provide APIs for third parties to hook into your networks to leverage customer relationships, billing, services. You own the customer, you own the relationship, you own the billing, you know the profile of the user (key for mobile advertising). You are in control, until you give it away for good... And controls means a lot of money.
  4. Play greater role in helping users find relevant third party services and content (both mass market and long tail)
  5. Reduce data plan pricing, which will increase demand for and usage of data-intensive services (increase ARPU)
  6. Adopt open source methodologies and communities. There is no better model to innovate and keep up with the speed and diversity of this market.
Good luck to carriers. They have never been fast movers, but they have to move fast. I talked to a couple of mobile operators in Berlin and it seemed to me they got the message loud and clear. Therefore, I am optimistic (as usual).

Here you have the full slides, if you are interested.

Is Mobile 2.0 making carriers redundant?
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile open)
Posted by Fabrizio at 15:14  

7 Comments:

OpenID jackr said...  

Huh. And here I thought all I wanted from my carrier was better coverage and fewer drops!

Comment Posted at 15:59

Anonymous Kevin Smith - Vodafone Group said...  

Hi Fabrizio,

A very well-written blog and slideset, and hopfully I can provide some encouragement: the GSMA are running a beta project to look at operators supporting a common, lightweight, web-friendly set of APIs so that developers can more easily port their applications between network operators.

The 3rd Party Access project is being run in public (URL below) and we are asking all developers and operators to contribute. So far we have the major European, and some major Asia-Pacific, operators on the project team; and we have completed an initial set of requirements and specified draft of our first APIs (messaging and data connection profile, with more to follow). All the APIs will be open and evolve on our Wiki (we are working on test stubs, wrappers and SDKs).

Hopefully this will go towards meeting steps 1,3,4 and 6 in your list above.

Best regards,
Kevin Smith (Vodafone R&D)

GSMA 3rd Party Access
https://gsma.securespsite.com/access/entry/default.aspx

(Requires a name/email registration for access to Wikis and full details)

Comment Posted at 07:03

Blogger Fabrizio said...  

Hi Kevin,
awesome news. Thanks for sharing.

fabrizio

Comment Posted at 10:18

Blogger Soul_Est said...  

Hi fabrizio. I was wondering if you could also talk to Rogers, Bell and Telus about the same thing.

Comment Posted at 07:29

Blogger Fabrizio said...  

Sure! Do you have any good contacts there?

Fabrizio

Comment Posted at 16:50

Anonymous Italian colleague said...  

What you say is all good and true and some operators (one for example mentioned by you) are taking these suggestions. But all the points that you mention don't really say how to monetize and increase/sustain revenues. Any suggestions?

Comment Posted at 17:25

Blogger Fabrizio said...  

Well, data plan is one (and not small). Services is another one, including MobileMe ($99/year by Apple) and App Store (where Apple takes 30% of every application that it is sold through them). These are immediate, then there are the services linked to mobile advertising (which are down the road, 2009-2010) such as profiling, authentication and billing.

Cheers,

fabrizio

Comment Posted at 17:31

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