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iPhone... part two
A few posts ago I wrote about how the iPhone (or full browsers on mobile phones) does not mean the end of mobile banking. And in that post I mentioned that I had some other reasons why mobile banking is different.
During the interim we've been interviewing candidates for a number of roles within Sybase 365, and with that post fresh in my mind, I thought I would ask the candidates the question iPhone vs. Mobile Banking. So here's some of the answers I got...
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New PocketBuilder Demos
I am finally adapting my PocketBuilder Demo applications, so they can be included in the PocketBuilder DVD.
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Coming soon - our 2008 mBanking Survey Report - sneak preview in Frankfurt next week
We finally completed our 2008 mBanking survey...
Last year we spoke to nearly 5,000 consumers across the globe on their opinions regarding mobile banking, so this year we looked to get a peer-based view. We interviewed banks about their plans for mobile banking services, and we got some very ineresting responses...
I'll be sharing some of the results here over the coming weeks, but if you are in Frankfurt next week, and would like to jump the queue and get a full copy of the report - here's what to do.
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CTIA 2008 - "The WiMAX Show"
After quite a bit of thought, I can still safely say that this conference had a definite “theme” about it and that was WiMAX. I think that a great deal of the heavy WiMAX presence was due to the WiMAX Forum’s strong promotion of the technology among companies at the conference. In fact, the forum provided a journey of sorts (called the “Walk of WiMAX” Tour), across almost 100 forum-member companies in the exhibition hall. The WiMAX Forum sponsored the WiMAX Lounge with live demonstrations of services in a strategically placed booth outside the main entrances to the exhibition halls in the convention center. I did see a nice demonstration of the capabilities that will be available, later this year, via Sprint’s XOMH service. So whether you needed antennas, WiMAX modems, consumer devices, USB dongles, base stations, testing/measurement instruments, or backhaul solutions for WiMAX, this was your show to attend.
I like WiMAX – and am looking forward to available deployments – with the new 700 MHz frequency bands, mostly allocated to AT&T and Verizon, the technology can certainly resolve some of the “last mile” issues – especially in more rural areas where broadband access is certainly hard to come by (e.g. see my previous blog on how I have to access the Internet). The WiMAX Forum even has a position paper on the new 700 MHz spectrum and WiMAX. The Forum suggests that by 2009, WiMAX will be 700 MHz band ready (right now, WiMAX is available for frequency bands between 2300 MHz and 3800 MHz). The bottom line is that a 700 MHz deployment of WiMAX in areas with lesser subscriber density can result in more broadband coverage and options, with fewer towers and larger cell sizes.
While WiMAX dominated the 4G technology, they were certainly not alone. An almost equal number of companies were demonstrating and promoting LTE (Long Term Evolution) equipment and services. LTE is seen as the 4G technology for most GSM and CDMA based networks, although I’m not sure how it would be in advancing fixed broadband around the world. LTE certainly has more nomadic capabilities (currently) than WiMAX.
As the industry slowly advances towards an more “open” IP-based mobile ecosystem, I do believe that we will finally start to see various services that will require more than just unfettered or unmanaged internet access. Of course, if the current 800-900 operators or so have it their way, they will never become just simple ISPs or “dump pipes” as they are sometimes called. Instead, there will even be more services that require some level of “management” – of things like dedicated bandwidth, latency thresholds, and of course, presence. The presence concept (or availability of a subscriber to accept one or more types of communications) will slowly expand from the Instant Messaging world of today to virtually all types of communications tomorrow. When most of the world is running 3G, 3.5G, and 4G data networks, I think you will start to see IMS begin to take hold to manage these capabilities.
But I digress – back to the show for a few more tidbits –
The handset vendors were all there in force. All except, Google (just like in Barcelona). I cannot understand WHY, why a company such as Google, who wants to play in this space; who has announced a major mobile platform (Android) does not have a strong presence – even just with information on their vision of the mobile ecosystem – and maybe some demonstrations of prototypes with Android. They could so be a popular and educational spot at this conference.
Microsoft announced Mobile Windows 6.1, which should be available soon and all 6.0 Mobile Windows users can upgrade. This will include a new Mobile Explorer browser with many features that look to me, to be very similar to Opera Mini.
Samsung, Nokia, LG and others all now have, what some to perceive as “iPhone killers” – still not much of an iPhone presence at the show, except for the AT&T booth. Touch screens are now definitely in vogue, as are fashion phones – the LG Prada, Samsung Giorgio Armani, Adidas and Bang and Olufsen, to name a few.
Finally, one of the more innovative products I saw at the show was a shoe (yes, a shoe) from a company called ID Conex. They create GPS and GSM enabled footwear, targeted for very specific vertical markets from military to care for the memory impaired.
With over 40,000 visitors and over 1100 exhibitors, this was truly a strong showing this year. Suffice it to say, there was little evidence of an economic downturn as this industry continually refreshes and expands.
Mi Vida Móvil
Working in the mobile industry, one would think that achieving a wireless life would be quite easy; however, the reality is that the mobile life (or wireless life, if you prefer) is not the easiest to achieve for many Americans. Over the past few years, I have managed to become relatively free of wires for a variety of communications functions.
Let’s take a quick inventory of how I’ve managed to achieve “the Wireless Life:”
1) My mobile device – my HTC Touch – a tri-band GSM device (GSM 900, GSM 1800, and GSM 1900 MHz) with GPRS / EDGE support. This is a great Windows Mobile 6.0 touch screen handset (and a nice iPhone alternative). I now use it for wireless access to my corporate email via Sybase Onebridge (a very capable alternative to Blackberry) as well as for Internet browsing via both Internet Explorer and Opera Mini. Opera Mini provides for a great mobile browsing experience as an entire web page is rendered and then by selecting a portion of the page that one wishes to view, the content is zoomed to readable (and scrollable up/down, left/right fashion). Opera Mini has done an incredible job of optimizing the downloading and rendering of web pages on a mobile device, which greatly enhances the mobile browsing experience. If you haven’t downloaded and installed the latest version, I highly recommend that you do so.
Of course for voice communications, most of the time I use a Bluetooth 2.0 headset and I do use SMS for both alerts and for quick P2P communications. I will also use MMS for P2P based rich media from time to time as well.
2) My home Internet Connection – also Wireless – satellite, to be exact – I use a company called Wildblue -- WildBlue uses Ka-band (transmit: 29.5 – 30.0 GHz, receive: 19.7 – 20.2 GHz) "spot beam” satellites to allow multiple re-use of the same frequency, providing higher capacity at lower cost compared to other available satellite systems. WildBlue launched service in 2004 and now operates 2 satellites. Virtually all of the continental United States is reachable via WildBlue. As I live in a very rural area, it is difficult for me to obtain broadband Internet service any other way. While there are a number of local wireless Internet providers (WISPs as their called), none of their services are usable at my location. I do look forward to some possibly newer technologies in the coming years such as WiMAX and possibly newer 700 MHz based services. Satellite Internet with 1Mbps downlink / 512Kbps uplink with the latency involved does not compare well to DSL/Cable/fiber services, given the alternative that I have, it does quite well. VPN connectivity is not screaming, but usable.
3) My home network is completely wireless – 802.11g – including connectivity to my main computer, audio/video components (DISH Network, DVR, TiVo, and DVD Player are all on my 802.11a/g network), and of course, my company laptop also uses it. My mobile handset also supports 802.11g, so it too can connect to my home network (and does, frequently).
4) My television content uses DISH Network –both standard and High Definition channels, although it is wired from the two satellite dishes to the receiver.
5) Even my weather station uses 900 Mhz links between the actual station sensors and the main console and computer interface (I am somewhat of a weather geek, but you can see my station data here.)
As you can see, there are very few wires. When I travel, I use my mobile device very heavily – either via GPRS/EDGE or 802.11; I am almost always connected, including both in Europe and Asia. When possible, I use my laptop to access the Internet wirelessly, which I am finding that I do more and more and use my Ethernet connectivity less, with one exception – when I am my Sybase 365 office, I do use a wired connection.
So what about you?
Have you achieved “La Vida Móvil” yet?
Or is the only wireless in your life your cordless phone and maybe mobile phone?
TechWave 2008 Call for Papers... Now open
We are now accepting speaker proposals for the 60 and 90 sessions at the upcoming Sybase TechWave conference August 4 - 8th 2008.
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A great way to finish a week...
It is always nice to finish the week a positive note, and that's exactly what myself and the marketing team did this week.
We've just finished looking at the initial results from our latest mobile banking survey, and very interesting stuff it is. Last year's survey provided some great insight in to how consumers view mobile banking, and this year's will report on bank's attitudes to mobile banking.
It's been a mammoth effort for our research agency, as they have been conduct interviews with banks across the globe.
I'd love to share some of the results with you... but unfortunately I can't, at least not just yet. If you are attending any of our mCommerce events over the next few months I can promise you a copy of the results will be yours to take home.
However, we can give you a sneak peak (just don't tell anyone - it will be our little secret); as we managed to slip two results in to a recent press release. So mum's the word...
All done, see you next year
So the show has finished, and I'm back in London.
Mobile World Congress 2008 was a great show for us, and in particular for our new mCommerce group. But after 4 days of 9am-7pm, I'm glad to be home.
So some (random) closing thoughts on the show and what we saw...
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Microsoft acquires Danger...
Microsoft is on an acquisition spree, having recently tendered an offer for Yahoo, acquired mobile device manufacturer "Danger". For those who aren't hip (Don't follow the technology Paris Hilton uses), Danger makes the popular device "Sidekick" and provides the associated software stack. It provides an equivalent to Blackberry device but targeting the consumer market unlike Blackberry, which started in enterprise world but has started to get into the consumer market with its sleek Pearl devices.
What does this give Microsoft?
a) Strong consumer device - Microsoft has been device agnostic until this point partnering with various device vendors. This gives them a proprietary device platform, although it runs its own OS and not based on WinMobile. This sort of gives them a lead into consumer space where WinMobile has been primarily prevalent in the smartphone segment with its big footprint. This may allow them to offer carriers a smaller footprint device targeting customers, but I am not sure how its going to effect their offering into consumer device manufacturers looking for smaller footprint OS.
b) Good mobile internet platform that can provide mobile internet experience that has been popular among its consumers.
c) Best of all, a good set of people who understand the consumer market. It took a long time for Microsoft's gaming division to understand their
target customers and this acquisition sort of accelerates their effort in mobility space.
d) Good way to compete with Blackberry environment in consumer/prosumer space with an unique "always on architecture" but a better set of applications.
On the other hand they have to continue to work with device manufacturers to make sure they gain traction for WinMobile as they may think MSFT will start preferring the SideKick and will push it. I think its in MSFT's best interest to separate the OS and user applications in Danger's platform and start providing those as services to various carriers and manufacturers and bring the advertisement platform into the mix with mobile eco-system. There are very good comparable devices and they lack the services that are integrated as good as SideKick does and they should work with device manufacturers to extend that support and not try to push SideKick too much and alienate their partners.
Lets see what the future holds..
Show me... the mobile
My jacket is getting heavier. Heavier everyday. Particularly the left-hand side.
Why? Well the right-hand side is filling up with business cards faster than I can get rid of my own. But the left-hand side is jangling with coins. Euro coins.
Whilst the UK is 'in' Europe, it's yet to enter the 'Euro-zone'. So all this week I have been building up my collection of loose change. Before getting that first coffee of the morning, working out which coins to use is which is beyond me, so just hand over notes, and continue building my collection of coins.
Wouldn't it be great not to have to use cash... well at the NFC Forum lunch today we saw a glimpse of that future.
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