I spent two days at the Open Mobile Summit last week where I chaired two sessions. This was an excellent conference - and a great success inspite of the train strike. There is a paradoxical undercurrent that spanned the conference: A large portion of the conference was spent talking about a closed platform(Apple) and to a lesser degree also Microsoft Everyone seemed to be saying If 'Open is good' - but then how come we all go to 'Closed'(iPhone?). This curious paradox underpinned the conference - and the answer to me lies in the distinction between a platform and an ecosystem. I believe that: A 'closed platform' works provided you have an 'Open ecosystem' BUT an Open platform (open source and / or open standards) without an ecosystem(open or closed) does not work. To put this in perspective: a) In this context, 'Open' was largely referred to in terms of 'Open source' and 'Open standards' for example: Android is Open source; Opera follows open standards; Symbian is now open sourced etc etc etc b) 'Ecosystem' is defined in terms of third party developers as in 'The iPhone has a vibrant ecosystem since third party developers flock to it' c) By 'Ecosystem', We are referring to a business model i.e. the litmus test is: Can third party developers make money? It seems that finally, everyone within the Telecoms industry agrees that third party developers are essential to a vibrant ecosystem (something that Google, Microsoft and Apple have known for a long time). In a recession, I think a vibrant, open ecosystem which benefits third parties is a good development and should be encouraged Here are some observations and contradictions in relation to Open: a) Vodafone talked about their appstore - but not if revenue share is 70/30(They did say it will be broadly consistent with the industry) b) Brands prefer closed platform(iPhone) but like the relatively open ecosystem(from Daniel Rosen Managing Director of AKQA c) The Mozilla Fennec mobile browser was deployed on the Windows mobile platform as were some of the initial HTML5 features d) Google Chrome is not a W3C standard - but architecturally one of the most innovative browsers e) All agreed that HTML5 is great and is 'getting there' - but I believe that an exception is not a standard. At the moment, HTML5 is a loose conformance and an agreement but yet cannot be called a standard To conclude my view is: If we define Open in terms of a vibrant commercially viable ecosystem for third party developers(and that definition makes sense since it is pragmatic in a recession), then I believe that: A 'closed platform' works provided you have an 'Open ecosystem' BUT an Open platform (open source and / or open standards) without an ecosystem(open or closed) does not work. A viable third party developer ecosystem may be far more important than other forms of 'Open' - specifically Open source or Open standards especially in a recession Thoughts?

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I asked this question to Vodafone at the Open Mobile Summit - but I want to ask it to all Operators who have deployed appstores. For years, Operators have said that they don't like third party applications on their networks since they will generate support calls. Now, in most markets we have had third party applications through the iPhone now for more than a year. Question is: Did third party iPhone apps lead to a deluge of support calls?(as Operators feared) Are there any numbers for support calls or was it(as I suspect) an overblown threat? Alternately, Apple a strong brand - are the suppoort calls going to Apple(if any); Or Is the price point low - and hence instead of support calls - do we simply have refunds? Furthermore, If Brands(like Apple) reduce supoort calls to the Operator - does it mean we will see stronger device brands - say Ovi - (Since that helps reduce support calls)? Well thats more than one question but all very critical. Ray Anderson founder and CEO of Bango had some unique insights and I have requested him to add his views - but I am keen to hear views from any Operators since it is a critical issue going forward

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I have long followed disruptive trends especially developments across the stack(and I include the Web and Social networking as a part of the Telecoms stack). Value is increasingly being abstracted to higher levels of the stack i.e. to the Web and Social networks and is being decoupled from Telecom networks. If you have not noticed it, the Web just moved. Both facebook and Twitter have almost simultaneously introduced verified identities in facebook names and twitter verified accounts When the Web drivesTelecoms, the Web always wins .. So, what does this mean for mobile apps? Link this to an older gizmodo story about facebook connect for iphone apps and you see why this is very significant .. Apps will be able to link up to and share data with your Facebook account, so your identity will be consistent and linked across apps through your Facebook account Telecoms has always prided in 'knowing the Identity/customer' - that just went away Once you have a 'verified identity' all sorts of services can come on top of it .. and these services will be network agnostic .. You can tie the Identity back to both Location and the social graph via facebook Interesting ..

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Could Operators offer QOS (Quality of service) as a service? Here is the rationale .. a) As I said in a previous blog, an all IP world, voice interconnect is not very clear As networks become all IP world through LTE , we realise that the handling of phone calls over IP in the mobile domain is non trivial. Normally, call handling is session based. With IP, that's not easily achieved(or at least needs more management in the mobile domain). Martin Sauter explains this issue in detail in his blog There is a (non) standardised solution called VOLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access). The current solution is cs-fallback (clunky) (i.e. going to circuit switched for voice and using a packet switched network for data) and the distant solution IMS IMS for all operators - is still a while away Hence, there is no clear way to do IP interconnect for voice b) (Mobile) Voice needs QOS (for that matter - any session based service needs QOS) c) Telecoms interconnect is hard to achieve - web interconnect has already happened and is easier. Skype, Google talk and any more voip services will also interconnect globally and are increasingly being integrated into the device since customers want them At the moment, Web based VOIP services like Skype are seen as a threat and operators still discriminate against them, (Only users who pay T-Mobile an additional £15 per month for the web 'n' walk Max product can legitimately use VoIP). But, Could this be an Opportunity? There is a possibility as outlined by Martin Sauter's article Operator QOS for Skype and co So, QOS could be a service offered by an Operator i.e. with the Network (bearer) as a platform. That's a powerful idea! i.e. Skype(or anyone else) would be able to do deals with network providers and ensure QOS for voice? Thoughts?

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There are some amazing conversations going on at Twitter and would be great if you can follow me on Twitter. I see a whole different conversation/feedback on my blogs at Twitter and its nice to see. Follow me on Twitter at @AjitJaokar

twitter follow conversations whole blogs amazing nice ajitjaokar feedback conversation great

CNET covers CNN's lapse as twitter shames CNN into covering the real beaking story .. This is a fascinating live exercise .. Its a lesson on how old media will be held accountable for .. and twitter is now the new 'citizen's journalism' #cnnfail CNET coverage HERE My favourite was @eadvocate who said eadvocateTo @cnn Thank you 4 following the Twitterverse for breaking news. Submit user-generated reports at iReport for us to review. #Cnnfail ha ha! Note that iReport says: TAKE NOTE:iReport.com is a user-generated site. That means the stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post. Only stories marked "On CNN" have been vetted for use in CNN news coverage. Do we care??

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There is something interesting going on at the moment .. While CNN is missing the whole Iran story - twitter is a part of the story itself .. One more reason to wonder about the future of old media ..

story missing itself whole twitter iran wonder interesting moment media reason future

Follow me on Twitter @AjitJaokar I have been thinking of the idea of a twitter phone for some time. The concept of a twitter phone is not new of course .. And INQ1 has already committed to one .. However, my ideas lean towards how to make a true OpenGardens phone through Twitter and the #cnnfail over the weekend gave me some more ideas Here, I am talking of taking the idea of a twitter phone to its logical extreme and approaching the idea from first principles. Specifically, Twitter is a co-creation platform and hence a twitter phone must also be a co-creation platform at its core This means, it needs to be more than the 'twitter app' on the phone(and every phone will have one) It means more than having twitter on the front screen (which Operators will fight) And It means more than worrying about cannibalising SMS revenue(which will be cannibalised for sure) Twitter is a combination of many things i.e. Instant messaging, Microblogging, content streaming(RSS like), Real time alert, Real time search, Citizens media, Communication medium and it is open and it's global. It is not for geeks since twittersphere says that 5 to 10 thousand people join it every day(and there are not that many geeks - that's mainstream ). Successful companies like Zappos have been built on it and Time magazine put it on its front page this week and techcrunch counts twitter as one of it's top sources of traffic So, I am not going to make an attempt to convince the still sceptical segment(especially in the mobile industry) - instead I will focus on how such a phone could be built on first principles 1) Functionally, a twitter phone would make the basics of twitter very simple. This means enabling the basic elements like tweets, replies, follow and so on 2) A twitter phone would also be minimalist - as is twitter itself i.e. it would add very little to twitter Now, here are features that make it really different a) I would like to see it as a pure social media, co-creation phone. So, #cnnfail would be more important than CNN itself! since #cnnfail is co-created content. But on a serious note - we want the ability to dynamically choose our own channels(twitter hashtags) and these may not be the CNNs of the world. This would be the ultimate OpenGardens phone! Complete choice to the user b) A retweet button since retweets are the new social currency of the web c) A visual interface based on mashups between twitter feeds and maps overlaying twitter feeds on a variety of maps. This has been done already in many ways the UK snow tweet , twitter vision and the UK holidays map as shown above So, there you go.Thats it. Completely technology agnostic and Open. The key is to make it a pure co-creation phone .. connecting people worldwide That would be truly open gardens and disruptive Thoughts? Some additional thoughts Here is an update on the twitterphone concept: 1) The history of single service consumption applications has not been great. Ex - espn phone(mvno). Note that here we are speaking of a communication led phone and specifically twitter already offers an existing community. The device manufacturer will not 'own' this community. They will rather leverage - participate in the already vibrant community B). The twitterphone may be low priced with a data only connection. C) Shock - horror! It may not even have SMS! D) Maps - this is an important feature. The visual interface could incorporate an overlay of twitter hashtags on maps. There can be many different types of 'maps' - ex a map of the London underground could be one. So the interface would merge(as chosen by the user) a map with a hashtag from a set of maps and a set of hashtags Follow me on Twitter @AjitJaokar and also will post under #twitterphone Image source: http://www.ukholsmap.com/

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Twice in a row (after Opera Unite) today we see cool developments for the browser. Layar - an augmented reality browser launches today. Claire, Raimo and Maarten founders of SPRXmobile are good friends since I spoke at MoMo Amsterdam last year and its great to see this(and also a European company launch such a cutting edge product) Great stuff guys and keep up the good work. Web site for Layar augmented reality browswer from their Press release - it's cool stuff :) The first mobile Augmented Reality browser premiers in the Netherlands How it works Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world. Dutch launch The premier launch is for the Dutch market. Launching content partners are ING (ATM's), Funda (houses for sale), Hyves (social network hot spots) Tempo-team (jobs) and Zekur.nl (healthcare providers). Layar will be launched per country with local content partners in order to guarantee relevent results for the end user. SPRXmobile is planning further roll-outs, together with local partners, in Germany, the UK and the United States this year. SPRXmobile wil continue with regular releases of new layers after each local launch. The Layar application will be available via the Android Market. Other handsets and operating systems are in development with a prime focus on the iPhone 3G S.

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Carnival of the mobilists 178 at Volker Hirsch's blog. Pity there are so few entries.

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http://www.avrenevents.com/FemtocellsEurope2009/Applications%20Showcase.htm I am attendin the femtocell applications live event (thanks to Andy Tiller - femtoforum board member) and also Oliver Chapman. femtocells are an important part of LTE and this event will shocase demos and services for femtocells. The event is invite only but you can ask for an invite through this link femtocell applications live event some more details below FEMTOCELL APPLICATIONS Live will bring together the latest examples of femtocell services* from vendors and operators, giving insight into how these services will enhance the 'digital home' and enrich the experience of consumers in the future . Since the early days, the femtocell industry has been discussing the potential for exciting new revenue generating services based around the femtocell. In this context, operators have consistently emphasised how important such services will be to the commercial success of femtocells.

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Opera Unite .. first impressions very interesting

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I asked this question at forumoxford - What is the best place(places) to track new devicesroadmaps of devices I got the following responses to find best places to know about new/upcoming phones www.phonescoop.com http://www.reghardware.co.uk/ http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,139102091,1,00.htm www.engadget.com mobileburn.com gsmarena.com mobilecrunch.com phonearena.com http://www.cellular-news.com/archive/Handsets.php http://wwww.gizmodo.com/ http://www.gsacom.com/ also thanks to @chetanSharma @telhajomar Moray Rumney(Agilent)

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Introduction Last week, Opera unite was launched. The pre-announcement said that 'Opera will re-invent the Web'. A statement like that makes you sceptical, but in this case - from an innovation perspective, we were not disappointed. Opera Unite is significant and Opera deserves kudos for taking a truly innovative step even within a recession. The basics of Opera Unite have already been discussed before- but not how it could be used. Hence, I will cover a potential application of Opera Unite as I see it. Opera Unite is a classic disruptive application (in the tradition of crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore ) which says that a new class of customer will often take up a disruptive application and will sustain it till it potentially becomes mainstream. The attempt here is to find that new class of application/user. Specifically, I am going to co-relate P2P with the network/femtocell layer(i.e. a bearer aware peer-to-peer service) and in doing so - I see a potential reason for converged network Operators to consider Opera Unite. The intersection of Privacy,P2P, mobility/convergence is of research interest to me with my PhD work - hence I am interested in this topic from a broader perspective(and also this article will refer to some research papers). As I see it, there are two (sometimes contradictory) trends: On one level, we want to put information in the Cloud. At another level, we want some privacy for our data. We want to be 'Open' but we also worry about the power of providers to 'harness' the metadata and to co-relate data elements for 'advertising' and behavioural targeting. Couple this with developments on the network layer where networks are evolving 'beyond 3G' to LTE and we could have interesting applications. (Femtocells/ home gateways are an important part of LTE). Increasingly, we are seeing bearer aware applications i.e. services which will be able to leverage the power of the underlying network. Rather than trying to consider universal convergence, network operators may consider convergence between the 'home' (through home gateways and femtocells) and 'outside the home' (through the cellular network) Consequently, Opera unite could co-relate these network layer developments to the service layer through P2P and at the same time mitigate the privacy concerns of people What is Opera Unite Opera Unite transforms the browser into a server and it makes your browser a potential node in a peer-to-peer network. Thus, any content can be posted on your Opera Unite instance and it becomes available to others within the network. Peer to Peer is opposite to the 'Cloud' philosophy. Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is a method of delivering computer network services in which the participants share a portion of their own resources, such as processing power, disk storage, network bandwidth, printing facilities. Such resources are provided directly to other participants without intermediary network hosts or servers. Peer-to-peer network participants are providers and consumers of network services simultaneously, which contrasts with other service models, such as traditional client-server computing. The Web (in it's original Tim Berners Lee version) was always meant to be a 'Network of peers' the 'Client server' paradigm was added later since it made practical sense from an implementation standpoint. Thus, a return to a Peer to Peer mode would be indeed 're-inventing' the Web and bringing it to its grassroots. Centralization overcomes two problems of Peer to Peer: Availability and security. Availability implies that the content is accessible only as long as your node is on - and when your computer is shut down, the content disappears from the network as well. Hence, centralization was needed to overcome these issues. However, with centralization came the issues of data ownership and unintended use of data. By extension, decentralised Online social networks(Peer to Peer) could offer a solution to the problem by bypassing the current client server paradigm of the Web. Who could use this and why? Who could use Peer to Peer and why? Mobile network Operators are paranoid of Google.. and about a year ago when an Operator asked me the question: 'How can we(Operators) overcome the Google threat?' - I mentioned that Peer-to-Peer is a potential solution. Specifically as I said then in P2P may be Google's biggest weakness and an Operator's biggest asset: >>> And what has this(Peer-to-Peer) got to do with the Web and Google? Think server farms .. Google is client server .. It has to be .. if it needs to store, manage and index the Web. Indexing the Web, as we know it, has to be centralised .. Consequently, if a decentralised - P2P architecture takes off - then Google cannot match it because it is not in Google's DNA to do so(just as the Web was never in Micosoft's DNA) .. And furthermore .. it will be a service which people will want(Doubt that? - My Skype account shows 8,663,106 online at the moment!) This is classic Sun Tzu .. Unfortunately, more strategies are driven by Mickey Mouse than by Sun Tzu .. And I mean that quite literally .. in the sense that it is driven by the content industry aka the Disney's and the Warners of the world. The telecoms industry sadly does not realise that it is in the communication business - and not the content business. > My overall vision is: It is hard to sell capabilities of networks themselves(or for that matter to charge for networks). However, Operators can sell services. Customers understand services. They are used to paying for them. The basic version of the service could be free followed by some premium features. From a mobile perspective, services could be: a) Long tail i.e. completely decoupled from the device or the network(this is mainly in appstores) b) Coupled to the device - ex deep integration of a web service to the device(ex address book integration of facebook(INQ1) or Skype(N97) c) Coupled to the network Learning from Amazon (and the Web 2.0 in general), the more the customer interacts with the provider, the better the service could be because the provider captures insights and preferences from the customer and can use them to enhance the service. I have covered (a) and (b) extensively before. There were not many examples of (c) i.e. services coupled to networks. In one sense, services should not be coupled to networks. However, femtocells could provide an exception to this model by creating services which could be useful to the customer. From an Operator standpoint, they provide an opportunity for customers to stay on their network longer and to provide services that can be improved by usage.

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These are the disruptive developments I am tracking(In no particular order!). These are mainly 'cross stack' and they range from companies (Skype) to specific products(Palm Pre) to specifics(Android based netbooks). They dont include general themes like 'Open' and the 'Mobile Web' which I have historically tracked through this blog and my books Can you suggest more? Am I missing any? 1) Can device mnufacturers who have no previous history be at an advantage?(Ex Palm v.s. Nokia) 2) How many appstores will an operator support? 3) How will Operators try to influence appstores?(ex provide APIs to specific appstores?, to specific APPs within the appstores etc?) 4) Will RCS have a role to play in LTE?(ex in managing a session that spans cellular and femto?) 5) Verizon is mandating Ipv6 - what are the implications? 6) What does Intel's acquisition of wind river mean? 7) What does Intel's emphasis on 3D mean? 8) What is the implication for video for Cisco's acquisition of pure digital? http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/20/digitalvideo-apple 9) Facebook user names and verified twitter accounts are defacto identity systems. Through facebook connect - it is already possible for iPhone apps to have a facebook identity. Will this trend be extended? 10) Qualcomm talks of Smartbook (sub-notebooks which are connected and have a high battery life). This is a new category. Will we see more of this? 11) What about Android netbooks?(ex from Acer) 12) What innovation can emerge from emerging markets and could be deployed globally? 13) Operators will find it difficult to charge for IP. But will they be able to charge for a different format(ex 3D) which will need some greater IP management? 14) Will we see an EU/Japan cloud? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10241081-62.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 15) Will smaller operators behave differently in a recession? Will they want to differentiate and innovate more? 16) IBM's 100million $ investment in mobile and what it means 17) The rise of Huawei 18) Opera Unite 19) Google Wave 20) Augmented reality browsers 21) Mobile payments http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10265243-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 22) Verizon's cloud computing ambitions 23) Microblog search http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10264633-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 24) Browser extensions http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10263598-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 25) Will Flash be used as an 'anti' iPhone? 26) The impact of Intel Wind river acquisition 27) The impact of the Intel-Nokia partnership 28) Microsoft Hohm - Google power meter etc http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hohm_microsofts_answer_to_googles_powermeter.php 29) Palm Pre 30) Microsoft Cloud strategy and Azure 31) The tendency towards 'Green' phones and will that be a growing trend 32) The death of the feature phone market and the emergence of the smart phone market especially in emerging economies 33) Will smaller Operators and a consortium of smaller Operators act different? Ie be more innovative? 34) How many Operators will leapfrog to LTE? 35) The tendency of CDMA Operators to adopt LTE 36) Appstores 37) Microsoft Bing 38) HTML5 39) Opensorce uptake within micosoft 40) Femtocells 41) Google Flipper 42) VOLGA 43) Twitter search and APIs 44) Intel ATOM 45) Google voice 46) Skype 47) OMTP BONDI 48) Privacy, Identity and Reputation(PhD interest) 49) Nokia 50) Integrated design(beyond the UI - http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2009/05/the_myth_of_mob.html) 51) (Future and impact of) Internet of things. Thanks @Enrique Ortiz

news operators intel html appstores subj google cnet acquisition identity facebook impact palm microsoft smaller cloud mobile nokia apps river