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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...
ASE Cluster Edition Released
On Tuesday, we announced the release of Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition (I will call it ASE CE going forward). See this link for the press release.
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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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GSMA Mobile World Congress Day 3 – Found! Evidence of the Android
On the 3rd day of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, I think I found some similarities across many of the exhibitors – Mobile Advertising. Does this mean this could be the ‘theme’ of this year’s conference? Maybe, but likely not. With respect to mobile messaging, mobile advertising is a slam dunk and not that new, but virtually all of the companies with ties to the messaging world are now promoting their new mobile advertising related products. Well known names such as Telsis, Acision, and Comverse, which we talked about on my previous day reports, are in the thick of providing capabilities and add-ons to operator’s messaging infrastructures. Even the aggregators such as Netsize and mBlox are on the mobile-advertising-through-messaging bandwagon. Most provide in-network functionality for operators to exploit, such as ad-injectors and campaign managers with a host of reporting and tracking functions to provide feedback on message click-through results – clicking through to advertiser’s websites.
With the resurgence of mobile advertising around messaging as well as all of the various add-on capabilities around mobile messaging, I found it refreshing to see that vendors have not forgotten the “lowly” SMS message. Yes, that is the one that still accounts for over 50% of mobile operators’ data ARPU and the one that is still growing.
Diarmuid was right – we did see an iPhone – but it wasn’t working – neither were the GIANT iPhones in one of the operator’s stands.
So, I had heard that there were some primitive Google Android prototypes being shown. Like I said two days ago, I (and I think many others, if you read some of the various Mobile and Telecom publications available at this show) would have thought that the likes of Google and Apple would have been promoting their “thought leadership” here. Speaking of thought leadership, I think I read someplace that if the Apple iPhone is such a good IP based handset, with all of its browsing capabilities, then why do regular websites have to be optimized for the iPhone?
Now, back to the Google Android platform. I did find a demonstration – at the NEC Electronics stand. Now this is a functioning prototype, that the NEC engineers just got running a few days ago, according to Mr. Kuwahara, the NEC Sr Manager who was showing this (as well as some Linux prototypes as well), in an unassuming corner of the NEC stand. So here it is.
 My camera phone optics aren’t that good up close, but this is a picture of an MMS inbox running on the Google Android prototype. Of course, it supports just about any type of IM community that you could want, built in Google Maps, searching, SMS, GPS, and much more. I hope that Google / Open Mobile Alliance works out all the issues with the SDK, soon. Of course, I am happy to see MMS will not be forgotten in what I hope will be the new standard for open handset platforms.
HTC is another manufacturer that has stated that they will support the Android development platform, so I asked an HTC rep at their stand about it. He said, that while he could not discuss Android with me, he did say that they will release an HTC branded Google Android-based handset before the end of 2008. A scoop? Probably not, but HTC makes some great Windows Mobile handsets, so I would expect this to be a significant alternative to an iPhone, high-end Windows Mobile, or Symbian Series 60 device.
For Sybase 365, the GSMA Mobile World Congress was a great success. Everyone had productive meetings and this is an outstanding venue for executive leadership, sales, marketing, product management, and technical teams to meet customers, partners, and vendors across the industry. I for one, am coming away from this conference will a laundry list of follow-ups and new ideas for both the short term and longer term. I was also able to renew many of my professional industry contacts and have a better understanding of our customers, prospects and the general industry direction. Tomorrow, bright and early, I return to the US to get started.
So long, from Barcelona.
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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3GSM Mobile World Congress Day 2 - The Throngs Arrive
The first day of the GSM Mobile World Congress can lull you into thinking that the crowds are not that large and that the venue is not too spread out and day isn’t that long. Not so with the 2nd day. This is when most of the masses really start to arrive and the reality of the length of the MWC day begins to set in.
I took a walk over to Hall 8 today – one that is filled with the largest stands from Nokia, LG, Motorola, Ericsson, Huawei and more and was struck by the masses of black suits and jackets and literally wall-to-wall people. Amidst that crowd I ran into a former colleague and another current colleague – my co-MWC-blogger, Diarmuid Mallon. One thing that we agreed on was that there was no one stand-out product launch in the entire hall. All of the big core-network infrastructure providers and handset manufacturers seemed to be trying to outdo one another. But the truth of the matter is there were not any truly exciting, breakthrough products on display. Now, of course, if you walk into any of the booths (or stands, as they are called in Europe), you will see a dazzling array of technology, the latest handset innovations along with a cadre of sales and marketing and product types to tell you how much better they are than everyone else.
By the 2nd day, people start telling things like: “have you seen so-and-so, or this or that product.” In one notable have-you-seen conversation I had, the person described a foldable display that folded around the handset. When unfolded, it something like a 6 inch wide x 4 inch screen – but in monochrome only. I may have to find that stand tomorrow, as this very small company might have some technology that we could all see someday.
If I were to have to pick a few messaging related advances from this show, I would say that I have seen some additional evidence that mobile advertising, using SMS and MMS might be starting to pick up some steam. Comverse announced their Mobile Advertising Solution that includes Mobile Ad Server, Campaign Management, Ad Targeting Engine, Multi-Channel Traffic Interceptors and Data Collectors, Ad Injectors and comprehensive billing and reporting tools. The other messaging network infrastructure providers also have some similar operator-targeted capabilities. Other content companies are starting to look at ways they can leverage messaging to target advertising to the almost 3 billion mobile subscribers around the world. Messaging based advertising is subtle, but definitely there.
The Sybase 365 stand was constantly crowded today with virtually everyone engaged with customers and meetings. We had a number of unplanned customer drop-bys as well as dozens of planned meetings and interviews. All available meeting spaces were continuously used. The cocktail reception from 5:00Pm to the show closing at 7:00Pm was a resounding success. Much thanks should go to Rhona Thauvette who did a brillant job of organizing Sybase 365's presence at this important event.
Where's the Mobile!
So Tuesday started with a small panic on the stand. No power, and a missing badge.
Ten minutes before the floor opens, and the power cuts from our stand and the surrounding ones. So no rolling-video, no demos, and more importantly no working coffee machine! Thankfully we get this sorted our before the first visitors arrive.
The badge was more of a problem. The badge was not so missing, as uncollected. A colleague had an early meeting, and couldn't get in as the queues to collect show passes/badges were enormous. Which got me thinking... where's the 'mobile' in Mobile World Congress?
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Reporting from Hall 2
Shows like Mobile World Congress (formally 3GSM) are like a marathon, you don't want to peak too soon, or else you'll never make it to the finishing line. With 60,000 or more attendees, four days and the show floor open 9am -7pm, this is a long show.
So during the few gaps in my schedule, I kept my roaming to just our Hall (2) and the neighboring Hall 1. As my colleague, Bill, points out in his blog there are some very interesting products out there, but at the moment a strong theme on the show floor hasn't become clear to me. Tuesday I will be venturing further, so I'm interested to see if this changes.
The great thing about MWC is that it is still inclusive, so you'll find everything here from the big infrastructure providers to MMS blogging portal providers. The sheer scale and range of the show is really quite something.
Speaking to the press and analysts today, mCommerce (mBanking and mPayments) looks to be a hot topic this year, with momentum being build on the various announcements and initiatives started last year. In the past mobile banking has been a real catch-all phrase, but now we are seeing some very clear lines of separation between mobile banking services and mobile payment solutions, both in the minds of banks/operators/service providers but also those offering products in this space. This is something you can read more about in Tuesday's MWC Show Daily, where we have an editorial on this very topic. And if you're not at the show, I believe you can find the show daily online.
If you're at the show, you can find us in Hall 2, booth 2A19.
3GSM World Congress - Day 1 - A Theme Looking for a Show
The first day of the 2008 3GSM Mobile World Congress is now in the history books and this year, there is a signficant lack of buzz around any one product or technology. While, some have said this is the year that 4th Generation will be on display, the average attendee won't see an overwhelming amount of 4G technology such as WiMAX or LTE. Still, if you look closely, there are companies promoting their latest WiMAX and either HSPDA or even LTE technology, in places, but it is not overly prevalent, especially given some of the other media promotion around that (see excellent Fierce Wireless Coverage) Another noticable (and I thought disappointing) lack of attendence is from Apple and Google. No where in the exhibits listings for stands and meeting rooms will you find a listing for Apple. You'll only find a single meeting room for Google. I would have thought that both companies would use this immense opportunity to further promote, what some say is fast becoming the benchmark for innovative handsets. There is no giant Google or Android Developer's booth where participants can learn all about the Android development platform or an innovative Apple stand, where Apple has dozens of iPhones ready for eager participants (most of which have never seen and played with an Apple iPhone) to see firsthand what all of the hype is about. I think that if these two companies want to become dominant participants in the mobile industry, they would have a strong presence at the largest, most well-attended mobile show in the world.
Speaking of handsets, a company that most have never heard, called i-mate was showing some fine Windows Mobile 6.0 handsets. In my book, the i-mate 9502 does just about anything your laptop can do, but in the form-factor of a mobile phone. Things like offering connectivity to external video projectors or monitors, so you can beam your Powerpoint directly from your mobile. This phone supports tri-band HSDPA and HSUPA along WITH WiFi plus quad-band GSM/GRPS/EDGE. It also sports a 3 Megapixel camera for both still and videos, a built in MP3 player, GPS and a 2.8" touch screen with a full QWERTY keyboard to boot. With any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a standard Video-Out cable, plugged into any monitor or even HD television, you can remotely control a Windows PC -- all with your mobile device. And this is no larger than an Apple iPhone. Of course, it supports all standard SMS and MMS messaging to boot -- something that iPhone STILL does not natively support -- at least the MMS part.
Speaking of iPhone and the concept of touch screens -- they are everywhere now. Of course, there's the HTC Touch in various models, LG offers a number of touch screens now, as do several others. Most notably, though Nokia has yet to offer a touch screen.
In the SMS world, there is still innovation happening there as well. I spent a little time today with a company called Telsis. Telsis provides core-network solutions to mobile operators for both text and voice services. An area that they have done well in are their Telsis Advanced Services Node or ASN. This can be added to an operator's infrastructure to provide value-added services around text messaging that are very similiar to many email services such as message archival, individual subscriber controlled black and white lists, an "unavailable" or "out of the office" response, diverted messages and more. All of these services are configurable by the subscriber via SMS. It is these types of services that can further help retain subscribers and keep the basis SMS fresh and new with new services. During the show, I'll also try to get around to a few other companies that are doing similar value-added services on top of basic SMS.
Like the 3GSM shows of the past, 2008 is packed and is massive in size -- in fact, the GSMA refers to the Exhibition Hall map as their "Village Map." And quite a "village" it is.
Sybase 365 had a constant flow of customers, media, analysts and prospects visiting our stand, throughout the day. Our meeting rooms were booked solid with still more ad-hoc meetings being added all the time. Tomorrow will be the same. Stay tuned. Also don't forget to read Diarmuid Mallon's show blog as well. Diarmuid always has some unique perspectives.
Next stop Barcelona
So next week is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona - by far the biggest show in the year for the mobile industry. Myself and, fellow blogger, Bill Dudley will be doing our best to capture the show via these pages next week.
Must dash, as the taxi will be here in a minute... now where did I put my passport?
Messing With Messaging
It has been well-reported in the industry media over the past few months about the continued, explosive growth of mobile messaging – especially SMS and, in many markets, MMS. Either as a result, or despite this success, there are a few gray clouds trying to obscure this success with short-sided improvements and changes.
Over the past few months, I have seen a number of articles and blogs either promoting or lamenting the concept of SMS home routing. This is where essentially, the receiving operator assumes responsibility for delivering (or not delivering) a message from another operator (e.g. the originating mobile operator). At first glance, this sounds good; however, there are fears that the receiving or destination mobile operator may “hold” the message if the receiving subscriber is roaming or has their handset switched off as well as a number of other possibilities. A nice little Wikipedia article provides a review of SMS Home Routing.
Without home routing, the sending operator would retry the message until it is delivered or encounters some permanent error. The originating operator knows the final disposition of the message. The key is, this is the “standard” model for SS7 delivery. For IP type deliver to operators, in a P2P SMS ecosystem, the handoff is, in fact, to the recipient SMSC. Originators don’t typically return a Delivery Receipt – even when requested. You might see this type of scenario with CDMA operators. So, in a sense, this is not that different from home routing. Once the message is handed off to the recipient operator, it is recipient operator’s job to get it to the destination subscriber. And I can say that this happens more than 99.9% of the time – even if the subscriber is roaming. However, the primary difference here is that we, as a hub provider, a greatly assured that the message does, in fact, get delivered to the recipient subscriber, and we do have internal procedures to assure this. In a true Home Routing scenario, that may not always be the case – especially when messages are sent directly between operators without an SMS hub providing value-added services in the middle.
In a hub-based ecosystem, the hub providers must contend with different delivery methods and different network types with various operator procedures. Consequently, the hub provider community is in continual communications with their operator customers and understands the nuances of Home Routing and can work to minimize their impact on cross-carrier SMS. Still it is something that we, as an industry, need to work together on, to make sure the impact of the operator benefits of this service are not overshadowed by the potential of breaking, what is one of the great strides we have made in SMS interoperability.
Another area that concerns me is the further promotion of SMS (and MMS) termination fees by some operators and smaller hub providers. Termination fees have their place, in that they help police operators from receiving too much unsolicited SPAM, thus protecting their subscribers. However, messaging termination fees do run the risk of undermining the success of P2P SMS vs. A2P (or Bulk SMS). Operators seem to lump termination fees for bulk traffic with those for P2P international (and sometimes domestic traffic). In markets where there are no termination fees, but tighter controls on bulk SMS, the marketplace has flourished. Just look at the USA, Canadian and Latin American markets and the recent success that SMS has played. However, when those markets without termination fees try to exchange traffic with markets that do require termination fees, there are sometimes problems with reach unless the hub providers can provide arbitration between the markets.
Overall, I don’t believe that Home Routing or expanded Termination Fees will have too much negative impact on the overall ecosystem; however, we, in the hub provider community that serves this ecosystem, must continue to evolve to meet these challenges and keep these gray clouds away.
Mobiles narrow digital divides
Mobile phones are bring more benefits than never having to hunt for a pay-phone and some small change. At the UN conference on Trade and Development it has been shown how mobile phones are narrowing the 'digital' divide between rich and poor countries.
Nearly 60% of the world's handsets are in developing nations, Which means more and more, someone's first experience of electronic communications won't be email or the internet - but instead SMS and WAP. We really are seeing the move from the internet world to the mobile world.
There's more on this story, here, at BBC news.
Kaazing - Real time messaging from a browser!!
I recently read about this company Kaazing. They were one of the participants in "DEMO". They claim to be solving one of the biggest deficiencies in Web 2.0 world, where this new breed of RIA cannot communicate in a bi-directional way in real time. If they attempt to do so like some of the companies like Meebo do, they will put tremendous pressure on network and resources.
http://gigaom.com/2008/01/28/demo-kaazing-turns-regular-browsers-into-real-time-apps/
From the very limited information available on the web, they seem to be translating java client code into javascript that can run inside the browser. I'm not very clear on how they accomplish the real time connectivity without the polling if the application running inside the browser cannot be listening on open socket connections. For them to solve the problem of polling frequently which they claim is issue with all the existing AJAX solutions, they'd have to start a listener within the browser and wait for the server to keep sending messages. I'd assume in a lot of cases, for security reasons, this may be disallowed. This may not be an issue for consumer applications which are the ones that they may target initially consider the deployment volumes of these kinds of applications.
At the end, it could be an application of messaging technologies with a different client consumer model but would probably be more relevant to this quickly multiplying number of AJAX applications.
Would be interesting to read more about their technology once they've more information up on their website.
Just Back From the Mobey Forum
I’m just back from the Mobey Forum meeting in Amsterdam. Mobey is a financial industry forum focused on mobile financial services and it provides great insight as to how the financial services industry is evolving in the mobile world.
Much of the focus of this meeting was the early NFC payment trials - that's where your phone is used as a payment instrument. The first thing that struck me was that trials these were not all bank or card issuer lead. In fact, two of the trials set up were by retailers. Of course, there is a traditional bank behind the payment, but the NFC payment application is very much linked to the retailer and not a bank. This approach could be potentially successful for a retailer because it is a great way for a store to engender customer loyalty - that is because the NFC application will only work for the particular retailer that set it up. This sort of set up does run the risk of consumer confusion with consumers having a variety of NFC applications for various retailers. I also think that this approach could be problematic and here's why - it has similiar precedence in the sense that branded credit cards don't necessarily lock consumers into a retailer.
The second thing that became clear from these trials was that there are still questionover how they can or would scale. At the moment, these trials are limited to a single phone model, the Nokia 6131 NFC, and secondly the deployment of the applications was not clear. And deploying these applications is currently relatively complex.
The purpose of trials is to identify what is complex and then to look for solutions...
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