It's no secret that Windows Mobile has hit a rough patch as the iPhone and Android-based smartphones have take center stage. Recent statistics from AdMob shows that Windows Mobile market share of Web surfing was way down during the past 12 months--more than 70 percent year over year.
Any number of people postulate that Windows Mobile will be dead, some say as soon as 2011, unless Microsoft figures out a way to not only make the operating system better but to convince users that they should care.
On the New York Times Bits blog, Steve Lohr wrote earlier Thursday on analyst Mark Anderson's comments suggesting that Microsoft abandon their consumer efforts entirely--that the company has lost the battle for consumers:
Except for gaming, it is 'game over' for Microsoft in the consumer market. It's time to declare Microsoft a loser in phones. Just get out of Dodge.
I'm not a huge fan of Windows Mobile, but Microsoft certainly can't give up on smartphones and really has no alternative but to make a big move in the mobile operating system space. And Windows Mobile is not nearly as bad as many people think--if you don't believe me, check out these results from mobile blog jkOntheRun.
I recently toyed with Windows Mobile phones at both Verizon and AT&T stores and I could absolutely see the appeal of the common desktop functional paradigm if I were a Windows user. But consumers are fickle and don't want to add an OS decision into their buying process. They just want the phone and its applications to work and be easy to use.
There remains a huge opportunity for Microsoft to take its dominant position and make Windows Mobile truly great, even if it means walking away from the status quo. And while that's not typically the Microsoft way, the company has shown with Bing that it can make those kinds of decisions (as well as less-positive choices.)
There are two very simple moves Microsoft could make that would not only shake up the whole market, but also build a path for the future:
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As we move toward 2010, there is little question that mobile devices and smartphones will continue to have a huge impact on the market. Research firm Nielsen predicts that smartphones will dominate market share by the end of 2011, with the iPhone and Android-based phones taking the lead spots by a wide margin over traditional cell phones.
As devices mature, Wi-Fi connections become more ubiquitous, and 3G networks become more reliable, consumers will start looking for new ways to use their smartphones as replacements for other larger devices, such as PCs and TVs. One area that has been called out for growth is mobile video and TV, as well as streaming movies directly to a mobile device.
mSpot CEO and co-founder Daren Tsui made the case to me recently that full-length streaming movies will be important to consumers in 2010 because people want entertainment on the go and on demand. Research suggests that the adoption curve will be lead by young males 18- to 24-years-old and parents with young children looking to keep kids distracted.
Not surprisingly, mobile carriers are very supportive of mobile movies. According to Tsui, mSpot has been powering mobile movies on the Sprint wireless network for three years and is currently working with other carriers to bring the service to their user base. Realistically, carriers will always be happy about services they can offer and charge for, but the real question is if they could handle an influx of users sucking down huge amounts of bandwidth.
The obvious obstacle to be overcome is the strength of the data network. Streaming full-length movies to a phone is data-intensive, and therefore relies heavily on a strong, consistently reliable network. Assuming WiFi is available, this is a non-issue, but, as an example, AT&T's 3G network has struggled with the data usage of iPhone users and you can just imagine what will happen when millions of people start streaming movies.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that my wife and I bring an iPod Touch out with us to entertain my 2.5-year-old with various games and movies. Pocket-size mobile devices, iPod or otherwise, can be great learning tools as well as distractions when things are going sideways or when you just want to go to a restaurant and not chase a kid around. That said, my iPhone/AT&T network experience has been so spotty that I would likely opt to keep the content local, though in an ideal world new content could be downloaded in the background.
Assuming bandwidth is not an issue there are many possibilities for mobile content to take the place of traditional PCs or print media but in the near term mobile content will be only as good as its data connection.
If smartphones aren't already helping us navigate the modern world, they are certainly on track to do so soon.
In Gartner's top 10 predictions for how consumers will use their mobile devices in the year 2012, location-based services landed the No. 2 position, just behind money transfer.
There aren't many surprises on the list, released Wednesday by the analyst firm, though I would have expected to see gaming enter the top 10 consumer applications for mobile devices within the next two years, especially considering the firm previously predicted that mobile gaming revenue would experience a compound annual growth rate of 10.2 percent between 2007 and 2011 with worldwide end-user spending reaching $6.3 billion in 2011.
Gartner's list is based on impact to consumers and industry players, with consideration of revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration. Depending on where you focus geographically, I would imagine that the order of this list could change pretty dramatically. For instance, mobile money transfer is popular in Asia and emerging nations in Africa, but far less common in the United States.
As with any other list of analyst predictions, there are a huge number of variables that can affect trends from one year to the next. Money transfer and near-field communication services are applications that could function on any kind of mobile device, whereas browsing and advertising are likely more relevant to smartphones, which Gartner expects to account for 45.5 percent of all mobile phone sales in 2013, up from just over 9 percent in 2008.
Previously, Gartner projected mobile ad spending worldwide to grow 74 pecent in 2009 to $913.5 million, but not really accelerate until 2011, when advertisers are expected to boost mobile spending as part of an overall shift toward digital marketing channels. By 2013, the firm expects mobile ad spending to surpass $13 billion, with the Asia-Pacific region leading the way, followed by North America and Europe.
Gartner's top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012:
- Money transfer
- Location-based services
- Mobile search
- Mobile browsing
- Mobile health monitoring
- Mobile payment
- Near-field communication services
- Mobile advertising
- Mobile instant messaging
- Mobile music
Research and consulting firm Tower Group predicted earlier this year that the number of people actively using mobile banking in the U.S. "will grow by more than five times by the end of 2013" representing a compound annual growth rate of 51.8 percent.
Gartner's complete list with accompanying analysis is available in the firm's newsroom.
As consumers increasingly purchase sophisticated smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Droid, they are developing expectations for how these phones allow contacts, calendars, e-mail, and social networks to remain in sync across all their devices.
One of the big challenges is that users don't always maintain the same source of inputting data--they switch from browser to desktop application to smartphone as their data access and entry point, introducing many variables into the data chain. And data integrity will only get more complicated as more applications become browser-based and keep no local data storage.
Most enterprise users have a local store in addition to the cloud storage, something that I still find puzzling from the T-mobile Sidekick outage, where consumer data that should have been in multiple locations (or at least present on the device) was thought to be lost.
The most common sync services are not provided directly by the mobile operator. Generally this is a good thing, as the more you can dis-intermediate the carrier, the more control you have over your data. But because the sync services are provided by others--notably Microsoft, Google, and Apple--you end up locked-in to their data structures as well as whatever privacy and data management issues that might arise in relation to advertising or other usage of your information.
Today, you can fairly easily sync your mobile device with most common online e-mail and PIM services although the BlackBerry, Droid, and the iPhone differ in their approaches--or at least in the visibility of how they work. For example, you can sync with Gmail and other services on the iPhone, but it rather perversely requires the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol.
By controlling the address book, Google and Apple effectively lock-in users to their sync service, leaving the carriers and devices to be easily replaced (minus the cancellation charges.) The user would barely notice the difference, aside from the sticker on his phone that says AT&T or Verizon.
Mobile operators do not want to cede control of the address book to Google or Apple, but they are late to the game and do not yet have sync solutions of their own. As a result, they are scrambling to add this functionality, but building a sync solution that works with all different devices and email services is no easy task, thanks to the widespread problem of device fragmentation in the industry.
One option is to deploy a white label solution, like the open mobile cloud sync offered by Funambol. Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco told me the company has been approached by many of the top mobile operators, with several of them looking to setup sync services for their customers. They all recognize the issue, and according to Capobianco can turn to Funambol as a way to quickly bring a high-quality solution to market.
With all the different players in mobile sync, users will begin to question who owns their data. Enterprise users, in particular, should have privacy concerns about trusting their data to someone else. In the case of Android users, there is a growing anti-Google sentiment, and if Google already owns your email, calendar, and search queries, do you really want them to own your phone contacts as well?
It's no secret that Japan has better mobile phones than the rest of the world. The country has also had access to better phone-based Internet services since the launch of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service all the way back in 1998.
Recent data from japan.internet.com (translated by whatjapanthinks.com) suggests that Japan's mobile phones offer users enough functionality that 49 percent of the respondents to a recent survey say a "mobile phone is enough" when asked what kind of mobile device they would most like to carry.
- Mobile phone is enough 49.2 percent
- Smartphone 22 percent
- Netbook 16.3 percent
- Notebook computer 8.9 percent
- MID/UMPC 0.3 percent
- Other 0.3 percent
- Don't want to carry anything 3 percent
In addition to the wealth of services and games, with the character-based typing you really don't need an iPhone or other smartphone unless you need to access corporate e-mail. While this can also be delivered directly to mobile phones, in my experience most companies don't allow access unless it's through a VPN.
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A recent study released by ABI Research says that limited processing power, battery life, and data storage will limit mobile application growth in the mass market, even among smartphones like Apple's iPhone.
But, applications that connect to cloud resources are much more likely to be successful than those that run only on the mobile device.
ABI Research predicts mobile cloud computing will deliver annual revenues topping $20 billion over the next five years. ABI Research senior analyst Mark Beccue says device fragmentation and memory currently limit the level of sophistication developers can deliver through mobile apps. By contrast, running mobile applications in the cloud will free up mobile processors while also enabling developers to create just one version of their application.
"Cloud computing will bring unprecedented sophistication to mobile applications," noted Beccue. "To mention just a few examples, business users will benefit from collaboration and data sharing apps. Personal users will gain from remote access apps allowing them to monitor home security systems, PCs or DVRs, and from social networking mashups that let them share photos and video or incorporate their phone address books and calendars."
Funambol, an open-source mobile cloud sync company, seems to agree with this view of the future. When I spoke to Fabrizio Capobiano, CEO at Funambol, he said: "Mobile cloud sync is emerging as a major new category of wireless services. Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Palm, and others recently introduced mobile cloud sync services and all mobile operators and ISPs are racing to keep up. Current solutions are fairly basic, but open source is enabling more flexibility and innovation among these folks because it is so easy to adapt."
You can hear more about open source and mobile cloud sync from Mike Taczak, a team lead for Webmail apps at Rackspace, as he describes how the company uses Funambol in the video below.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.
Despite concerns that people would forgo dietary staples like bread and milk before giving up their mobile phones, we can definitely expect to see companies and consumers cutting mobile expenses as they look for ways to reduce overall budgets and spending.
The slowing economy has yet to be felt by Apple, with the company announcing that it sold 6.9 million iPhones this quarter (compared with 1.1 million in the third quarter of 2007). With Apple as a clear leader in mobile innovation, will other mobile vendors be able to keep up as budgets are tightened?
Open-source mobile e-mail and platform provider Funambol, issued a paper yesterday outlining eight reasons why open-source push e-mail and mobile sync will triumph in a downturn. Not surprisingly, Funambol predicts that mobile customers will want more value for less.
Why pay $30 a month for a BlackBerry push e-mail service if there's an equally good open-source alternative available for $10 a month? Even better for the tight pocketbook, Funambol recently launched a free version of its open-source mobile push e-mail service funded by mobile microbanner ads.
... Read moreWhile flying from SFO to Newark last weekend, I repeatedly ran into a Mac OS X system pop-up telling me that the "Connection Failed." The cursed box repeatedly interrupted applications, including the QuickTime movies we were using to distract our toddler from flipping out on the six-hour flight.
After five days of punishment, I finally found the root cause: MobileMe.
If you are not a MobileMe user (I'm not), then you may/may not know that your credentials are stored in two different places: the MobileMe control panel and your user account.
During my trouble-shooting process, I fixed permissions, deleted old server connections, and deleted libraries. But nothing fixed the problem. Then I finally noticed that I had an iDisk icon on my sidebar (but nowhere else). When I tried to drag it to the trash, my laptop went into an endless loop and I had to finally reboot.
Having never used the iDisk and not having any applications that I was aware of using an iDisk, I started searching and figured out that it might be part of MobileMe. But when I checked the MobileMe control panel, the information was blank. Back to square one.
... Read moreAs reported on Moconews, T-Mobile USA is planning to launch an open development platform for all of its phone platforms from upcoming Android to Java to Sidekick and Windows Mobile.
From Moconews:
Starting this fall, T-Mobile USA will take the extraordinary step of ditching its traditional deck on the phone and replacing it with a platform that's open to almost any developer, multiple sources have told us. Think of *Apple's* App store, but for the entire carrier's handset line-up from smartphone to feature phone.
While this is an obvious attempt to compete with the iPhone App store it does a lot more to encourage ecosystems to be built around platforms that are not Apple.
With having gone open source, the mobile market is getting much more interesting. There are more possibilities to bypass the carriers stronghold.
If you want to see people get lit up about a service that they hate, but can't live without, ask them about their mobile phones.
Never mind the dropped calls or the death-grip lock-in, just the outrageous cost is enough to send people into a rage. So, today when Verizon and T-mobile both introduced new flat rate price plans (which are very appealing to heavy users) I would have thought that this would be viewed as a good thing--helping to retain the more valuable customers. Instead, analysts whined that this would undercut pricing. To an extent it will effect all pricing, but aren't happy customers the key to maintaining a successful business?
So, I have to ask, which is better for mobile phone carriers: unhappy shareholders or unhappy customers. My take is that if customers go away, shareholders will be far less excited than if they stay and commit to the service. This equation has been unbalanced for far too long.
