The Future of Mobile a Segment Analysis by Gigaom Pro

The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

GigaOM Pro

pro.gigaom.com © 2011 GigaOM All rights reserved

MOBILE

The future of mobile: a segment

analysis by GigaOM Pro

- 2 - September 2011

Table of contents

Table of contents 2

INTRODUCTION – BY COLIN GIBBS, MOBILE CURATOR, GIGAOM PRO 6

MOBILE HANDSET SOFTWARE PLATFORMS: WHAT HISTORY CAN TEACH

US – BY DEREK KERTON 8

A brief history of mobile platforms 8

The lessons 11

What does the future hold? 16

TAPPING THE TABLET MARKET’S FULL POTENTIAL – BY COLIN GIBBS 18

Outlook 19

Companies to watch 21

The race to dominate 23

MOBILE SERVICES: THE NEXT FRONTIER IN WIRELESS – BY GERRY

PURDY, PH.D. 25

What to expect in 2012 27

Predictions 32

Wildcard prediction 32

M&A possibilities 32

CONNECTED DEVICES: OPPORTUNITES FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS –

BY LAURIE LAMBERTH 34

The current market 34

Outlook 35


Semiconductors and modules 38

Wireless access network 38

Device and platform software 39

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Cloud-based services 40

THE FUTURE OF MOBILE HEALTH, 2011–2016 – BY JODY RANCK, DRPH 41

What’s driving growth? 41

Movers in the next 5 years 44


HOW SOCIAL-LOCATION-MOBILE (SOLOMO) IS TRANSFORMING E-

COMMERCE – BY DR. PHIL HENDRIX, PH.D., AND ERIC RISELY 49

The social tsunami 51

Location: more than latitude and longitude 53

Mobile: the Internet in consumers’ pockets 56

Challenges for SoLoMo 57

Digital signals 58

Innovative new SoLoMo apps and solutions 61

Leveraging SoLoMo 62

THE NEW BREED OF MOBILE SEARCH ENGINES – BY PEGGY ANNE SALZ

64

Mobile search players: Google isn’t alone 65

Outlook 66


MAKE ME AN OFFER: HYPERLOCAL TARGETING IN MOBILE – BY GREG

STERLING 74

The rise of coupons and daily deals 74

Deals plus apps plus location: the rise of hyperlocal targeting 76

Outlook 76


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MOBILE PAYMENTS: THE NEXT IMPORTANT GROWTH IN THE MOBILE

MARKET – BY PETER CROCKER 81

Types of mobile payments 81

Outlook 83


THE FUTURE OF MOBILE ADVERTISING, 2011–2016 – BY NEIL STROTHER

88

Current trends and players 88

Outlook: what to expect in 2016 90

7 trends that will shape mobile advertising 91


A MOBILE VOIP AND CHAT OUTLOOK – BY PIM BILDERBEEK 96

Companies that impacted 2011 97

What to expect in 2012 98

Mobile operators vs. VoIP and chat vendors 99

Best-of-breed products and best-of-suite products 100

Monetizing VoIP and chat offerings 101


Future challenges and possiblilites 104

SOLUTIONS FOR A NEW AGE OF WIRELESS MOBILE BACKHAUL – BY

MONICA PAOLINI 106

Where we are now 106

New and old technologies 107

What to expect in 2011–2012 108


ABOUT THE AUTHORS 113

Pim Bilderbeek 113

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Peter Crocker 113

Colin Gibbs 114

Phil Hendrix, Ph.D. 114

Derek Kerton 114

Laurie Lamberth 115

Monica Paolini 115

Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. 116

Jody Ranck, DrPH 116

Eric Risley 117

Peggy Anne Salz 118

Greg Sterling 118

Neil Strother 119

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Introduction – by Colin Gibbs, Mobile Curator, GigaOM Pro

Mobile is today’s most dynamic segment in technology. The smartphone craze and the

rise of distribution systems like Apple’s App Store and the Android Market have given

birth to a surge in the usage of applications and the wireless web, and the desire for

mobile data will only continue to increase as more and more devices — from tablets

and cars to home appliances and health care monitors — become connected.

This report explores what the future holds for various segments of the mobile industry,

from hardware devices to mobile cloud services and wireless networking. We discuss

the roles of the major companies (namely Apple, Google and Microsoft) that have a

recurring presence across sectors, as well as the smaller players that stand poised to

disrupt.

Just as increased connectivity will fuel the growth of mobile data, so will the expansion

of the cloud, which promises access to content from anywhere, anytime. Those

undeniable trends will require the emergence of better ways to deliver content to users.

The build-out of 4G networks will help, of course, but LTE alone won’t be enough to

support demand. So carriers and their partners must increasingly look to off-loading

technologies such as femtocells (which route cellular traffic onto fixed-line broadband

connections) and Wi-Fi. Compression technologies that minimize the amount of data

in applications must continue to evolve, and network operators will increasingly

experiment with ways to minimize traffic and tweak their policies and data plans in an

effort to maximize revenue while limiting network congestion.

Of course, the industry faces its share of challenges, too. New technologies will emerge

for specific applications — many players are investing heavily in NFC-based mobile

payments, for instance — but larger obstacles exist in creating the business models and

infrastructure to support them.

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And important questions remain regarding the operating systems that support all of

this activity. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are clearly the two most important

platforms in mobile; whether there’s room for another (or even several more) is still

unclear. Microsoft hopes to change that with Windows Phone, which will get a huge

boost from the tie-up with Nokia, but the OS has yet to make much of a dent since its

launch last November. Meanwhile, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry line is

floundering in advance of the company’s first QNX handsets, which are expected early

next year. And it’s not too early to ask how long iOS and Android can continue to

dominate the market: History suggests that incumbent mobile operating systems are

vulnerable to a six-year cycle of dominance. In other words, the landscape is likely to

look very different in five years than it does today.

As discussions of entire industries often go, this one is not exhaustive, nor does it

encompass every single segment in mobile. Rather, it offers viewpoints on the state of

some of mobile’s most-talked-about areas today and explores where they will be

tomorrow.

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Mobile handset software platforms: what history can teach us – by Derek Kerton

In a short decade the mobile OS market has grown from a moribund, firmware-based

world of limited-capacity phones into the most hotly contested battlefield in

technology. Top Silicon Valley CEOs seem to agree that the future is mobile and are

staking their companies on that bet. The battles are raging not only in the marketplace

but in the courtroom, where patent lawsuits and court-ordered sales injunctions are

flaring up worldwide.

Where is the mobile handset market headed in the near-term future, and what advice

should its players heed? A look back at history suggests several clues.

A brief history of mobile platforms

The smartphone game didn't start with Android vs. iOS, or even Palm vs. Windows

Mobile, for that matter. The history of the mobile handset OS space runs deep: Here's

a quick look at some of the interesting players, with snippets from their memoirs:

Mobile

platform

History

Java (J2ME) One of the original mobile platforms, Java suffered from being “too

open.” Lacking a strong hand at the helm, Java failed to create a

completely standardized ecosystem that included catalogs, billing, etc.

DoJa The DoCoMo version of Java filled in the gaps left by Sun Microsystems.

DoCoMo’s dominant market share made this the de facto standard in

Japan, seeing as it was employed in the iMode system.

SavaJE A company and OS that extended the Java platform as an OS and VM.

The OS never gained traction; it was bought by Sun Microsystems, which

now belongs to Oracle.

BREW BREW was a J2ME competitor with a more regimented implementation.

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Due to Qualcomm’s strong leadership, fragmentation was reduced,

making it an early winner. It provided end-to-end architecture, and it was

the first to send checks to content companies in the USA.

WIPI Korea adopted Qualcomm’s CDMA technology, and some carriers

adopted BREW. Frustrated by yet another reason to send checks to

Qualcomm, the Korean government pushed for a home version of BREW

roasted from a different bean. It was mandatory for every phone in Korea

for a while, but it never percolated into export markets.

Moblin Sharing components with Maemo, Moblin was an Intel-backed effort to

build a mobile OS on the Atom processor family. Though it was aimed at

the netbook and MID range of devices, it never gained immense traction

(people preferred Windows for their netbooks, not MIDs). Moblin eloped,

and in February 2010 it married Maemo in a private ceremony in

Barcelona.

Maemo This Linux variant was being developed for MIDs and smartphones by

Nokia. The MID category never really took off, however, and Maemo did

not deliver a compelling user experience (UX). After being wedded to

Moblin (a deal by Intel and Nokia), it resulted in the offspring MeeGo.

MeeGo MeeGo emerged from the merger of Maemo and Moblin, and it was shut

down by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop shortly afterward. Intel was the only

driver; in early September Intel announced it would cease “due to a lack

of enthusiasm for the platform from handset and tablet PC vendors.”

Sadly, it was finally starting to look good.

PalmOS Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins are credited with launching Palm back

in 1994. By 1996, PalmOS was geek chic. By 1999 it was the “in” device for

both techies and hip NYC suits. This OS had a great run: It built developer

support, a web store and brand awareness, after which it made the jump

to phones (belatedly) and became the original smartphone. A promised

ground-up revision, the Linux-based version of the OS was very late to

arrive, and by then Palm had ceded the market to RIM, Microsoft and

Apple.

webOS While webOS was a great UX, it was too late to market. By this time,

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market success depended more on ecosystems, and webOS had none.

Palm did a terrible job of marketing the Pre device to carriers, and so the

writing was on the wall. It was recently killed by HP.

BlackBerry

OS

One of the great winners in the history books, BlackBerry OS is

beleaguered today, and it looks woefully dated next to the leaders. While

RIM pushed Palm out of the boardrooms, the shoe is now on the other

foot. This OS is strong in the enterprise but losing ground. A new RIM OS

has emerged on the Playbook tablet, but it is late to market in its

handsets.

QNX RIM purchased this OS in order to have a response to the modern

generation of smartphone OSes. QNX looks promising, but it is still a

little rough around the edges. The big challenge will be mustering

developer support. RIM plans on offering an Android virtual machine so

that its QNX devices can benefit from the wealth of Android apps.

Symbian Another formerly great mobile OS that’s been put down, Nokia was

always in the driver's seat on Symbian, even as it tried to offer it to other

OEMs as an “open” platform to use against the Microsoft-type opponents.

Channel conflict, however, meant that Nokia competitors never embraced

Symbian as much as they might have. Symbian is remarkably successful

and widely deployed, but the success is rightly considered a part of

history. The OS — even the latest versions — have looked and felt dated

compared to the market leaders.

Windows

Mobile

This OS is hard to discuss, since it's gone through as many name changes

as the artist formally known as Prince. Based on Windows CE, it appeared

on PDAs at the turn of the century. Originally it was considered too

cumbersome for the hardware of the day. Moore’s Law meant that the

hardware had to improve to suit the ambitious, colorful, media-ready

nature of the OS. That said, it never shed its dial-up, PDA, stylus-based

roots. It was glitchy, prone to crashes and often lost all data. Thus it was

no match for the reliable BlackBerry in the marketplace.

Windows

Phone

The most recent mobile OS out of Redmond has been lauded for its UX

and successful modernization to touch-based computing. That said, it has

not yet been widely adopted by handset vendors or developers. This is due

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to a change in the Nokia partnership, but Microsoft's deep pockets mean

that Windows Phone will not suffer a premature demise like webOS.

iOS In an era of the stylus and bifocals, iOS revolutionized the world with a

radically good UX. It brought the web to phones, made design relevant

and short-circuited the long carrier-managed road that developers needed

to tread to get their apps to customers. This attracted developers, which

now are the most compelling part of this powerful ecosystem.

Android Android owes part of its rapid rise to iOS. Carriers that didn’t have the

iPhone scrambled for a response. They tried the old guard (BlackBerry),

but when that didn't work, they reluctantly adopted Android from one of

their worst frenemies: Google. Android was pretty good, and it improved

fast. It has a powerful base of developers and a growing ecosystem, but it’s

not without threats: Lawsuits from Redmond and Cupertino have made

Android device manufacturing high risk. Despite that, and based on a

license fee of $0, Android seems to be making its way into many devices,

including CE-like car stereos and clock radios.

The lessons

The past 15 years of mobile OSes are extremely important and relevant today. This is

because the ecosystem dynamics remain valid: It remains a network economy, the

supply chain issues are unchanged, UX is an eternal virtue, and the innovators’

dilemma still makes incumbents slow to enact radical upgrades. Below we'll look at the

takeaways from this walk down memory lane and cite which cases are still relevant.

Avoid channel conflict. Channel conflict occurs when a stakeholder sends mixed

messages to a partner in the supply chain. For example, Nokia had trouble convincing

its competitors to use Symbian while Nokia still controlled it. Google is now in a

similar position with Motorola and Android. What, for example, will HTC think about

its OS partner offering a competing mobile phone? Especially worrisome is the fact

that Google is playing favorites, only releasing Honeycomb to select tablet partners —

including Motorola. Google needs to come up with a better answer than Nokia did to

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meet the challenges of channel conflict. Keep the Motorola patents and consider

divestment of the phone maker?

Work in six-year cycles. A model based on the OSes above suggests a six-year

dominant cycle for an incumbent platform. This doesn’t mean that the company

behind it won't stay in the driver’s seat but rather that it needs to throw out the old

platform and relaunch with a new one to remain competitive, as opposed to making

iterative changes.

Start fresh when necessary. The iPhone was so revolutionary that it changed the

way designers, developers and the mass market considered smartphones. Gone was

the stylus; in was touching and swiping. Features were integrated, not siloed as with

prior mobile OSes. Anybody still flogging an OS with a legacy prior to 2007 is bringing

a knife to a gunfight: Scrap it and start fresh.

Consider, for example, all the problems that RIM had in making its BlackBerry touch-

enabled or how Symbian was constantly reviewed as “looking dated” despite new

versions. Or how Windows Mobile v6.5.3 still had tiny stylus-like checkboxes to see if

you wanted your dial-up modem to dial a “9” before connecting “from the road” — in

2010! That embarrassing situation was fixed with Windows Phone 7, but a full redo

was necessary.

Offer useful updates. Steady OTA updates to an OS can add features, respond to

customer feedback, kill bugs and keep up with competitors. The process should be

relatively painless to users. IOS offers annual major updates and tweaks throughout

the year, making old phones seem new again. Android is similar, but its updates are

sadly often impeded by OEM, carrier “improvements” or customization. On the other

hand, RIM and Windows Mobile are known for offering updates too slowly, not adding

enough features in the updates and not fixing weaknesses — consider BlackBerry's

perennially weak browser, for example.

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Make the UX job number one. If the current political climate says, “It's about jobs,

Stupid,” then the current smartphone wars scream, “It's the UX, Stupid.” Products

with good UX sell more. People are less willing to tolerate bad UX, given that we now

know that products can be well designed. Gone are the old phone UIs where each

function was siloed. Today's phones have to delight users, surprising them with a

“sixth sense” of knowing what the user might want to do before he does it, putting

those buttons front and center — and maybe even skipping the button click.

Offer something for IT and something for users. We have learned that there

are two good ways to sell a smartphone: Offer a device that IT managers really like

(See: BlackBerry, Windows Mobile) or offer one that users really like (See: iOS,

Android). So where is the device that capitalizes on these two vectors and is pulled to

the market by both consumers and IT? There is opportunity here, but it is slowly

fading as iOS and Android make iterative improvements on their enterprise

credentials. We have yet to see the true “double play” phone that is a top choice for

both IT and consumers. RIM is still the IT darling but is lagging among hipsters. It

seems likely that iOS and Android will slide into this role, but the door is still open for

Windows Phone/Nokia to knock one out of the park or for RIM to offer a strong

consumer phone. Ticktock.

Keep a small dev team. With all the good OSes (whether they succeeded in the

marketplace or not), one thing sticks out about the teams that developed the platform:

They were small. IOS’ was under 100. Android was a small project inside Google, and

BlackBerry was small in the late ’90s. The team that made the Windows Phone 7 OS

was a small team spun out of Zune. Jon Rubinstein left Apple and put together a small

group that built webOS.

If you have a company of 27,000 engineers, don't ask them to collaborate on the next

big OS, please. It seems universally true that teams of fewer than 100 people produce

the best mobile OSes and the best devices. We would speculate the reason for this is

that, as phones and their UIs become less siloed and instead offer more integrated and

cohesive functionality, then the development team must also become more cohesive

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and integrate their work as it is in process. It is harder to build two systems that

interact symphonically when one team is in Texas and the other in Finland.

Create ecosystems, not just phones. Success is no longer just about producing

the best phone OS or the best hardware or even the best combination of both. Now a

successful OS must place itself at the start of a cyclical ecosystem based on the model

of OS -> device -> carrier -> developer -> consumer. Each of those steps relies on the

momentum and energy of the prior steps. If each step contributes positive momentum,

a virtuous cycle emerges and the ecosystem takes off. If any step neglects the platform,

the process halts. So, whether paid, incentivized naturally or threatened, all of these

stakeholders must be on board for ecosystem success.

Many will guffaw at the above inclusion of carriers, saying they are an impediment, not

an essential part of the ecosystem. That would be naive. Carriers are essential, not

because of their role as bit pipes but because of their powerful role in choosing and

subsidizing the handsets that actually make it to retail. WebOS failed the virtuous cycle

at the carrier stage. MeeGo and SavaJE stalled at the device stage. Symbian and

BlackBerry are losing steam at the developer stage.

To succeed today, every one of these stages must be seeded and cultivated, including

things like cash incentives, guaranteed minima, goodwill, good revenue splits,

“openness,” delivering quality, delivering on schedule, minimizing fragmentation,

offering tools and APIs, and always putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Avoid

things like missing deadlines, launching buggy software, bad SDKs, not sharing

revenue or failing to build alliances prior to launch.

Keep a strong hand at the helm. An ecosystem needs a hand at the helm. “Open”

is a popular concept, but it caused the limited success of Sun Microsystem’s Java in the

mobile sector. Standards-body-based decisions occurred too slowly, and serious

fragmentation occurred because of differences in opinion or an inability to wait.

BREW, in contrast, solved many ecosystem gaps through the benevolent dictatorship

of Qualcomm. Payments? Solved. Carrier catalog? Solved. Testing? Solved. By June

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2005, Qualcomm boasted cumulative BREW developer revenues of $350 million. That

may not sound like much today, but at the time, making any money at all as a mobile

developer was a radical success. Many developers didn’t like the BREW solutions (or

the rev shares), but the complaining subsided when checks started arriving in the mail.

Android is currently staring this same issue down, shifting from being open like Java

to being controlled like BREW. Many purists now complain that Android isn’t truly

open. No, it isn’t, but looking at past OSes (J2ME, Symbian, Moblin), it’s clear that

open does not correlate strongly with adoption and revenue generation.

Consider how many devices to offer. Conventional wisdom in the cellular phone

industry has been that to tap into diverse market segments, OEMs had to produce a

wide variety of device SKUs. Thus, firms like Nokia went to market with dozens of

phones every year. Apple, however, has shown that this might be a waste of resources.

According to recent Nielsen data, Apple has seized 28 percent of the U.S. smartphone

market, and it has done so with just one new phone each year that phases out the older

models. In so doing, Apple can focus its resources around its devices, retaining more

consistency with legacy devices. It can rally the accessory market around steady form

factors and can offer a very clear message to the market. Parts sourcing is easier,

economics of scale increase, sales forces fully understand the product and repairs are

easier: The benefits are huge.

There are psychological benefits too. In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry

Schwartz explains that having too much choice is paralyzing to consumers. Reducing

options actually reduces regret for buyers. The Android market is very different from

Apple: Dozens and dozens of phones with a large number of slight variations populate

it. According to Schwartz, this kind of product mix actually confuses the consumer into

inaction. Of course, we know that Android is selling very well, Schwartz

notwithstanding, but his theory is important to consider. According to the Nielsen

study, the feature phone users who are considering a smartphone are increasingly

confused about the options: Thirty percent of late adopters don't know what OS to get,

versus just 9 percent of early adopters. These users are looking for clear answers, and a

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4336719/Wireless-Publishers-and-Developers-Cash.html

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/proof-android-not-open-source-and-why-thats-good-169663

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large shelf of different Android handsets don't offer that. This is a necessary evil for

Android, being open to any OEM. But companies like Nokia and BlackBerry should

focus on attacking the market with no more than two devices: one mid-market and one

high-end.

Lawyer up. Mutually assured destruction, a Cold War concept, is supposed to mean

that no one wants to fire the first missile for fear of catastrophic retaliation. The term

is used now to describe a peaceful standoff among patent holders. But in smartphones

and tablets, we've gone past Defcon 2 and are currently at Dr. Strangelove. Sadly,

companies must spend massive resources on vague and obvious patents, licensing, and

lawsuits if they have any intention of being serious players in this market. This need

for a massive patent arsenal drove the Google purchase of Motorola (MMI), and it has

recently driven up the valuations of other significant patent holders.

What does the future hold?

Based on the above, we can expect iOS and Android to remain in very strong positions

for the foreseeable future. It will be very difficult for new or returning entrants to make

a big impact, but the deep pockets of Microsoft and the distribution of Nokia will make

Windows Phone significant going forward. Starting from just a 7 percent market share,

Windows Phone should grow rather than shrink. RIM's chances with QNX are decent,

and they depend largely on the speed of their execution; recent reviews of the aged

BlackBerry OS will barely slow the exodus. RIM needs to beat the others back from its

home turf, the enterprise, while making gains in the consumer segment. The only way

to do it is with a couple of very impressive QNX devices.

Google has a lot of IP legal battles ahead, but it has the wherewithal to fight them and

the patent portfolio to swipe back. Android is likely to prevail as a low-cost and high-

value OS. The challenge for Google will be to own the marketplace for Android, get

more billing data from users, and take a more active role in commerce. Meanwhile, we

shouldn't expect any new OS entrepreneurs to succeed in the current litigious climate.

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A startup company (like Danger, Inc.) could never launch into this shark-infested

water. Unfortunately, that's a serious impediment on innovation, holding back

progress.

BREW and Samsung's bada will see continued life in developing markets with some

rather functional near-smartphones. The world is full of people that don’t have $300

to $500 for a smartphone but still want to download apps to hurl birds at pigs. Yet the

developing world will get full-on smartphones in a mere matter of years: Moore’s Law

says that Android will continue to squeeze into cheaper and cheaper devices, as will

iOS. Huawei is offering impressive yet cheap smartphones, and the prices are dropping

down low enough that MetroPCS and Leap Wireless can offer them with prepaid plans

for less than $200.

The good news is that there is plenty of room to grow the low end and the high end as

new users join the cellular world and existing users move up the pyramid. According to

a UN and ITU study in 2010, developing countries accounted for 76 percent of the

world's total mobile phones, up from 53 percent at the end of 2005. This is where new

cellular adopters come from. Meanwhile, in the U.S., smartphone penetration

continues to surge as people upgrade from feature phones, with Nielsen reporting this

month that the 40 percent threshold has just been crossed.

Mobile OS growth really starts to get interesting when mobile OSes merge with other

CE-like tablets, embedded car systems and TVs. Tablet sales are just beginning to

displace laptop sales, as laptops once did to PCs. But the interesting implication this

time is that the substitution also brings about a substitution of OS from desktop to

mobile. This is an iPad story for now, but if Android fights off its lawsuits and manages

to remain free to use, then it has an advantage implicating itself into myriad devices.

Much like Alsace-Lorraine, “mobile” is very fertile ground that nobody wants to cede

too easily. Even entrenched leaders can be displaced as time, tech and power

structures change. The battles will rage, and nobody's dominance is assured to last.

http://www.gizmag.com/itu-tracks-the-decade-that-transformed-the-world/18016/

http://www.gizmag.com/itu-tracks-the-decade-that-transformed-the-world/18016/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace-Lorraine

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Tapping the tablet market’s full potential – by Colin Gibbs

Though tablets have been around for years, the real market for them was effectively

born in April 2010, when Apple released the iPad. The device was an immediate hit,

introducing millions of consumers to a new way to surf the Internet, use mobile

applications and communicate. Its successor, the iPad 2, was released in March 2011

with improved processing power and both front and back cameras.

Amazingly, though, no competing device has yet to make a dent in the market.

Devices running the Android OS currently hold 20 percent of the market, according to

ABI Research, but the firm also pointed out that “no single vendor using Android (or

any other OS) has been able to mount a significant challenge” to the iPad. Not that

there has been any shortage of contenders: Dozens of media tablets have emerged over

the past year in various forms and for various prices. Among the most notable are

Research In Motion’s PlayBook (running the QNX platform), Samsung’s Galaxy Tab

(Android) and Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad (webOS), but each of those would-be

competitors has struggled.

The consumer appeal of media tablets is obvious: Their superior processing power

and large, vivid screens provide a faster, more interactive user experience than

smartphones can deliver. They are lighter and smaller than laptops, which makes

carting them around easier. And their multitouch interfaces are simple and

intuitive enough for consumers of almost any age or level of technical

sophistication. Those same qualities are beginning to drive tablet adoption in the

enterprise, too, and that’s a market that also demonstrates tremendous promise.

For the space to reach its full potential, though, vendors other than Apple must be

able to compete with tablets in a range of price points and sizes. And those devices

will have to run tablet-friendly operating systems that support both consumer and

enterprise applications.

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/is-there-a-tablet-market-or-is-it-just-an-ipad-market-after-all/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/238007/android_tablets_grab_20_percent_of_market_share.html

http://mobileenterprise.edgl.com/top-stories/For-Tablets-in-the-Enterprise,-Opportunities-Outweigh-Challenges74687

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Outlook

Here are the primary factors and trends that will shape the tablet space over the next

three to five years:

Price. Because tablets are largely seen as complementary devices rather than

replacements for other gadgets, pricing is crucial. Apple has established something of a

standard in the minds of consumers with its $500 entry-level iPad, though vendors

like RIM and Motorola have had trouble bringing quality tablets to market at that

price. We’re likely to see that bar lowered as the market becomes more competitive

and as manufacturers’ supply chains evolve.

However, as tablets become more functional — to the point where they can replace

laptops — consumers will likely be willing to pay more. The market will eventually

support everything from cut-rate, no-frills tablets to high-end devices like the 64 GB

iPad with 3G connectivity, which sells for $830. And we may eventually see demand

for more-expensive devices with features such as high-quality video cameras and 3D

graphics.

Prediction: Through at least 2013, Apple’s combination of price and functionality

will be unbeatable. But Android tablets will catch up by 2014, eventually overtaking

Apple’s market share, thanks primarily to lower prices (just as Android has caught up

in smartphones).

Apps and operating systems. Much of Apple’s dominance in the tablet market is

owed to the company’s team of developers. Established iPhone developers were quick

to recognize the potential of the iPad, whose App Store now exceeds 100,000 apps.

That’s enormous compared to Android, which currently supports only a few hundred.

No other competitor can compete with Apple’s library, either: RIM’s QNX can support

Android’s little library and has about 400 titles, and HP’s webOS — which may be

living on borrowed time — has only 300 or so.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362572,00.asp

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/mystery-how-many-android-tablet-apps/

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The problem, of course, is a catch-22: Developers won’t invest the time and money to

build tablet apps for a relatively small audience, but consumers are unwilling to buy

tablets that don’t run a wide variety of apps.

I believe Android’s massive mobile audience and developer community will ensure

that its tablet library will grow drastically in the coming months and years. But

increased development of QNX apps will hinge on that platform’s performance in the

marketplace, which has thus far been disappointing. (Canaccord recently slashed its

2011 sales estimates for the PlayBook by nearly one-third; it now predicts RIM will sell

1.5 million tablets this year.) It’s unlikely that any credible developer will build atop

webOS until its prospects improve, and that seems unlikely. And while Microsoft may

eventually be a player in the tablet space, tablets running Windows 8 aren’t expected

until sometime next year.

Prediction: Android developers will drastically grow the library of tablet apps in the

next 12 to 18 months, essentially eliminating Apple’s advantage in terms of sheer

numbers. While those two dominate the mass market, much smaller ecosystems will

be established with RIM’s QNX and Microsoft’s Windows 8 platforms. No other OS

will cultivate a tablet app ecosystem of note.

Form factors. As the tablet market evolves, we will see an even wider range of sizes

and designs, from smaller gadgets that can fit in pockets to oversized devices built for

use by multiple people at one time. While smaller tablets have thus far failed to find an

audience, we believe there could be substantial demand for the 7-inch device that

Amazon is reportedly planning to launch, which should prove a more portable

alternative to the iPad. Meanwhile, tablets that are bigger than the iPad will emerge

based on use cases. One example of the latter is in-home gaming, where several players

can engage simultaneously.

Prediction: A handful of gadgets will be moderately successful based on form factor,

size and other variables, but the iPad has cornered the mainstream market because it

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/09/07/canaccord-slashes-rim-playbook-sales-estimates/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/09/report-first-7-amazon-tablet-to-cost-249.ars

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was the first to offer a simple, intuitive and affordable device that supports thousands

of applications. No single device will change that in the next three to five years.

The enterprise and education. As I wrote earlier this year, iPad owners are

increasingly taking their tablets to work with them and forcing IT departments to

support them. That trend will only continue as the consumer tablet space at large

grows, with the iPad leading the way. As the space matures, though, more businesses

will deploy tablets themselves based on specific use cases. Sales personnel, for

instance, might be issued larger, multimedia-centric tablets for on-the-go

presentations and videoconferences, while hospitals might equip doctors with more

data-centric devices for accessing electronic health records. And just as in the

consumer market, apps will be crucial for business tablet sales. Even the best hardware

will fail if it doesn’t run the applications that businesses need.

Prediction: Microsoft will arrive far too late to attract many consumers, but by the

end of 2014 it will gain a substantial foothold in the enterprise with tablets running

Windows 8. Meanwhile, the iPad will continue to gain traction in high schools and

higher education.

Companies to watch

Apple. While Apple hasn’t disclosed recent sales figures for the iPad 2, initial sales

reportedly outpaced those of the original device, and Seeking Alpha’s Jason Schwarz

recently predicted that the company will sell 20 million units during the fourth

quarter of 2011. And while many new tablets coming to market might have been a

threat to the original device, none can match the iPad 2’s combination of hardware,

features (such as two cameras), applications and price.

We believe Apple will continue to dominate the market, although less and less so as

the industry evolves. And we believe Apple will continue to lead when it comes to

innovative new features and services such as iMessage, which enables users to send

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/06/the-rise-of-tablets-in-the-enterprise/

http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-2-march-sales-2011-4

http://seekingalpha.com/article/288523-the-era-of-the-laptop-is-over-apple-to-sell-20-million-ipads-over-the-holidays

http://seekingalpha.com/article/288523-the-era-of-the-laptop-is-over-apple-to-sell-20-million-ipads-over-the-holidays

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text messages to other iPads and iPhones. Finally, we believe Apple has an opportunity

to build on its lead by offering a 7-inch iPad that offers increased portability. Such a

device could be offered at a lower price than the entry-level 9-inch iPad, and it could

compete head-on with the smaller, $250 tablet that Amazon is reportedly developing.

Google. Google’s platform was built specifically for smartphones, not for tablets, but

the company has moved aggressively to address that shortcoming with Honeycomb, a

tablet-optimized version of Android that was released earlier this year and that will

help grow the operating system’s market share. But Google also has a chance to

become a player in the hardware space with the recent acquisition of Motorola

Mobility. While that doesn’t appear to be Google’s objective — that acquisition seems

to be driven almost entirely by Motorola’s patent portfolio — it does provide an

opportunity for Google to increase Android’s presence in tablets by developing tablets

hand in hand with the platform, as I recently discussed. Googorola may not produce a

hit tablet, but the pickup will help Android narrow the gap with Apple’s iOS in the

coming years. And Google can continue to address Android’s fragmentation problems

with Ice Cream Sandwich, a new version of its OS that seeks to marry the smartphone

and tablet versions.

Research In Motion. RIM’s PlayBook was targeted exclusively at BlackBerry

owners (an ever-winnowing crowd) and came to market before all of its features were

fully developed and functional. So it’s no surprise that it failed to find much of a

market. We believe RIM still has a good chance to become a player in the tablet space,

however: The company’s messaging offerings are the best in mobile; its brand

connotes the kind of airtight security IT departments crave; and QNX appears to be a

world-class platform on par with iOS and Android. But the company must continue to

move aggressively to develop QNX and to improve the functionality of its PlayBook.

And for RIM to become a major player in tablets, that functionality must be accessible

to users with any phone, not just a BlackBerry.

Hewlett-Packard. HP will no longer produce tablets, but it could still be a

formidable presence if someone were to breathe life into webOS. The company has

http://gigaom.com/mobile/with-motorola-purchase-google-buys-a-seat-at-the-patent-table/

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/how-googarola-could-propel-android-tablets-into-contention/

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suggested it may sell or license the platform, which has led to intense speculation

about who might be interested. We don’t believe any serious company will invest much

in webOS, however: It has failed twice in the marketplace and is suddenly losing

developer support because it is in limbo. HP claims it will continue to develop webOS

products other than smartphones and tablets, although the company has yet to come

forth with any cohesive plan. Simply put, webOS is doomed unless it can attract strong

manufacturing partners willing to build smartphones and tablets running the

platform, which is why I believe the OS’ only real chance of survival lies in open

source.

Microsoft. While Microsoft seems like a natural fit in tablets, it failed to see the

market coming and is now paying the price. Its Windows Phone wasn’t built with

tablets in mind, and instead of simply tweaking the OS (as Google has done with

Android), it will attempt to build its tablet business on Windows 8. That could be a

huge differentiator in the enterprise, as the tight integration between tablets and PCs is

sure to appeal to businesses. But it also means that Microsoft will be very late to

market, as Windows 8 isn’t expected until the second half of next year. The company’s

dominant presence in the enterprise will likely translate to limited success with

business-centric tablets, but don’t look for Microsoft to have much of an impact in

consumer tablets for a very long time.

The race to dominate

Apple’s iPad will continue to dominate the overall tablet market for the next three to

five years, but iOS’ market share will dwindle as a range of Android-based tablets

make modest gains. Amazon has a chance to have an impact, too, if it truly can bring a

solid tablet to market for $250. Indeed, pricing will be crucial for tablet vendors in the

next few years: Those who can’t differentiate on price will have to differentiate on

features or technology. That won’t be impossible (RIM still has a chance to leverage its

mobile messaging expertise and superior security to have an impact in the market),

but it will be very difficult, given Apple’s supply chain and massive application

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/why-hp-should-make-webos-open-source/

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/why-hp-should-make-webos-open-source/

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ecosystem. Android will eventually grab a sizable market share, though, just as it has

done with smartphones. And while there is room for more than three players,

Microsoft — or another operating system provider — will have to move very quickly to

prevent this from becoming a two-horse race.

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Mobile services: the next frontier in wireless – by Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.

We are embarking on the next big movement of information technology: integrating

mobile applications with cloud-based databases and processing to enable mobile

services that will drive the future of mobility.

Mobile services are a new area for mobile because they involve more than just an app

and more than simply browsing to the cloud. Rather, they involve a combination of

applications, remote data and cloud-based processing that delivers value to the user.

Figure 1: layers of mobile service offerings

Source: Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.

As shown in Figure 1, mobile devices begin with the hardware. On top of that is the

operating system (OS), on top of which sits the browser, applications and services.

In mobile operating environments such as Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android, the OS is

more embedded and acts as more of a manager for what the user wants to accomplish.

In other words, users don’t see the OS in their devices other than to find and launch an

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application. The difference between mobile applications and mobile services is that the

latter provides access to resources such as large databases and demanding processing

that’s done in the cloud rather than on the device.

Examples of mobile services are Apple’s iTunes and Rhapsody (now spun out from

RealNetworks). Both services store music in a cloud-based library (the database). They

both provide local apps that manage the user experience. Users select or search for the

music they want to buy or hear, and the local app accesses the corresponding cloud-

based app that delivers the music to the device either as a rental or as a live stream.

Figure 2: hybrid mobile — cloud service architecture


As displayed in Figure 3 below, there are two major classes of mobile services:

1. Broad horizontal services that deal with most users’ requirements for

synchronization, such as Apple’s iCloud, which synchronizes users’ contacts,

calendar and email

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2. Vertical-market mobile services that provide services specific to the

requirements of that market, such as a pharmaceutical application that

synchronizes a vendor’s drug information for mobile devices used by field sales

executives.

Figure 3: horizontal- and vertical-market services


What to expect in 2012

The movers and shakers in mobile services that will make the most significant

development in 2012 are companies that have been the most active in the mobile app

space and have all either announced or stated intentions to include mobile services as

part of their product offerings in 2012.

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Apple. Apple is certainly getting attention in mobile services, both through iTunes

and through adding access to that service via the iPhone and iPad. Now the company is

making cloud-enhanced mobile services a core offering with the launch of iCloud this

fall.

An important part of the service will be the cloud-development environment. Just as

Apple created an application environment for third-party developers for iOS (which

has seen over 300,000 apps and billions of downloads), the company is creating an

iCloud development platform that will enable third parties to create mobile services

that provide a great local experience as well as support from the cloud, including

processing and access to large databases. Developers, then, will be able to create

iCloud-like applications that will offer the user a new world of beneficial services,

much like the App Store did when it launched in 2008. Apple will offer a set of iCloud

APIs that will facilitate developers’ building mobile services that provide both local

user interface and processing along with cloud-based management services — all

promoted by Apple. The number of Apple iCloud store apps will eventually equal or

exceed the number of apps in the App Store.

Appcelerator and Rhomobile. These two companies assist enterprise IT

departments and third-party software developers in creating mobile applications. In

addition, the development environments allow for interface to back-end resources,

most of which are cloud-based, such as databases, SAP environments or other

corporate resources. I expect to see Appcelerator and Rhomobile become important

enablers of mobile services by 2012, due to their getting traction in the stand-alone

apps environment today.

Facebook. Facebook has always emphasized mobile, with apps designed to keep

track of friends and easily post to the site. I expect it to begin offering new mobile

services in 2012 that have cloud-based services enhanced via local mobile apps. The

company will likely announce rich-media services much like Apple’s iTunes. And with

700 million users, Facebook has a tremendous opportunity to create mobile services

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that provide the benefits of a local app backed up by services and databases residing in

the huge Facebook environment.

Foursquare. The company popularized the concept of checking in to a location and

currently has over 4 million users. It’s one of the first mobile-centric companies that

didn’t start with a web focus and simply emerged with a mobile app. Now, however, it

has added web services such as allowing access to databases, finding other people and

providing coupons for restaurants. Foursquare can make the local apps more valuable

by adding cloud-based services that provide increased revenue for the restaurant as

well as additional services such as coupons for the user.

Funambol. This is a young, Bay Area–based startup that focuses on developing open-

source solutions for mobile with a focus on synchronization. Its MediaHub service

operates in a similar manner as Apple’s iCloud, only it synchronizes over the web to all

popular mobile devices — including those from Apple. Enterprises that support

multiple mobile platforms will likely be good clients for Funambol, since the

technology can support multiple mobile devices. Funambol could get very interesting if

it ends up partnering with someone like Rhapsody so it can offer fully licensed music

and other rich media services. However, in order to become a service used by tens of

millions of people that also competes successfully with iCloud, Funambol needs to

create partnerships with major handset makers and wireless operators, too.

Google. Android already has a 40 percent share in the smartphone market and has

surpassed Apple this year. It doesn’t yet provide out-of-the-box synchronization

services for Outlook or other mobile services, but with many pieces already working

that are web-based — such as Google Docs, Google Voice and Picassa — I would expect

that Google will become very active in the mobile services arena. Google has to convert

many of the desktop and online services into true mobile services by creating local

Android applications that provide a great local user experience to the mobile user,

complemented by services from Google’s online resources. A good example would be a

Google Docs application that runs locally but can access any documents stored online.

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Microsoft. Microsoft is creating a solid mobile services environment centered on the

Windows Phone. While the company doesn’t have much smartphone market share

today, this is expected to change significantly as a result of the company’s partnership

with Nokia, which will begin shipping Windows Phone smartphones in 2012. Solid

cloud-based services that are already present (Exchange, SharePoint, etc.) could also

give the company an advantage in mobile services. Microsoft and Nokia have to

demonstrate that their partnership produces handset devices and associated cloud-

based services that users will embrace as part of their rollout in 2012.

Qualcomm. Most people think of Qualcomm as a semiconductor company, but it

often plays outside semiconductor chips that go into mobile devices. The areas of focus

for Qualcomm’s mobile services initiative will be communication, information and

entertainment, discovery (including personalized and context-aware

recommendations), life automation (using digital technology to simplify life and

relieve daily hassles) and accessing relevant digital information to enhance users’

mobile interactions. These efforts are being managed via Qualcomm Labs in San Jose,

Calif. Of course, in order to compete, Qualcomm must move from ideas in a lab to

products that people can use. I expect to see specific ones announced in 2012.

SugarSync. SugarSync, a Silicon Valley startup that initially focused on

synchronizing photos across PCs, Macs, the web and mobile devices, has seen

successful growth and now has millions of users. Its offerings have expanded into

other forms of rich media such as video and music. With these new rich-media services

that are stored in the cloud, SugarSync is migrating toward the same place as iCloud.

To be serious in mobile services, SugarSync will have to form alliances with partners

that have access to licenses of rich media (TV shows, movies, music, etc.) rather than

just synchronizing a user’s content across different platforms.

Sybase. Sybase’s mobile platform allows enterprise IT organizations to easily build

mobile apps that can integrate with back-end management services such as those from

SAP (now its parent company). Note that the Sybase 365 division manages text and

http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/25/qualcomm-services-labs-unveils-four-cool-mobile-services-startups/

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MMS messages for over 100 wireless operators. The company is already building

mobile advertising and marketing through this network. It plans to leverage more

synergy between the Sybase mobile platform, the messaging operations and back-end

integration with SAP. Sybase is a strong player in the M&A market (see additional

comments below), so I expect it to make one or more acquisitions in the mobile

services arena.

Syniverse. Syniverse competes with Sybase 365 in the messaging arena. It manages

text and MMS messaging for a large number of operators as well, including the well-

known voting process for American Idol operated under AT&T and Fox. Syniverse has

related to analysts that its plans are to migrate its core messaging capabilities into a

number of mobile services. A good example would be to take its American Idol

franchise and build a family of mobile services. For example, it could provide

interesting statistics on the voting or provide discounts on products or services that the

person voting would like to receive.

Wireless operators. When thinking of mobile services and the companies that can

deliver integrated services (apps, cloud, databases), you have to include the wireless

operators such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. The enterprise group within

each operator works with companies and government agencies to facilitate the design,

development, deployment and support of mobile services. Watch for wireless

operators to take back some of the focus of apps and services that are mostly delivered

and supported by device manufacturers. For example, AT&T Wireless recently

announced the creation of its own app store. I expect that the operators will partner

with smartphone and tablet manufacturers to provide iCloud-like services.

Yahoo. Yahoo was one of the first companies to launch Intellisync for Yahoo to sync

between Outlook Contacts and Calendars (using a license from Intellisync). Now it has

integrated Rhapsody into its music services for mobile devices. Yahoo understands

mobile services, but it is currently in disarray over the firing of Carol Bartz as CEO.

Nonetheless, because Yahoo has integrated mobile services into its offering for years, it

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is still known as a mobile-friendly company, and it is considered one to watch in the

coming months.

Predictions

Apple will launch iCloud and restrict support to include only iOS devices. Anyone with

an Android or smartphone using an OS other than iOS will not be able to benefit from

these services. Also watch for the wireless operators to announce mobile services based

on their network expertise and strong relations with enterprise IT.

Wildcard prediction

Apple extends iCloud to all mobile platforms. Its philosophy up until now has been to

embrace interaction with the PC and Mac on the desktop side but to only provide

support for Apple iOS devices on the handheld and tablet front. Others, like Funambol,

will be able to leverage cloud-sync services across multiple platforms if Apple doesn’t

do it.

M&A possibilities

As with most industries, as companies become successful, they have the hard choice of

whether to sell out to a much larger company or try to remain independent. Since

many of the firms mentioned above have currencies in the form of public company

stock and/or cash, I expect to see a number of major mergers and acquisitions in 2012,

especially as the value of the stock in public companies improves from the recession

era’s low values.

Sybase has been particularly active in making acquisitions. The entire mobile division

was created by making acquisitions. For example, consider Afaria device management

(Xcellenet) and Sybase 365 messaging (Mobile 365). Here are a couple that seem

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plausible to me. I could see a major company realize that Funambol’s MediaHub could

be a great solution to compete with Apple’s iCloud. That company could acquire

Funambol and take its offering to tens of millions of users. Or, take Foursquare. It is

doing well and may be acquired by a firm that could take it into a number of markets,

even internationally. I’m sure there will be a surprise or two along the way.

Mobile services have been shown to be the natural evolution from mobile apps and

mobile web browsing. I expect to see substantial venture capital placed behind

startups in this new industry. Within five years, owners of smartphones will expect

that a plethora of services will be integrated into their devices with support from the

cloud and large databases. The challenge is to develop these services so that there is a

pleasant and natural user experience. Clearly, some of the most exciting days in mobile

and wireless are about to happen.

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Connected devices: opportunites for the Internet of Things – by Laurie Lamberth

The concept of connected devices goes by many names: the Internet of Things, the

Internet of Everything, the Networked Society, embedded wireless or machine-to-

machine (M2M). Whatever you call it, the connected-device segment is the fastest-

growing one in the global wireless industry. Forecasts are staggering: Cisco, IBM and

Ericsson have all laid down aggressive predictions ranging from 50 billion to 1 trillion

connected devices online before the end of the decade.

As the Internet of Things expands, everyday objects will become our intelligent

assistants; umbrellas will tell us when there’s rain in the forecast, commercial assets will

interact with the world around them instead of just standing by quietly. Home

automation systems, such as those from Control4, will allow us to adjust in-home

lighting and temperature, unlock or reprogram door locks, and monitor other

equipment in our homes — from any location.

The current market

Considering that the world’s mobile phone population broke over 5 million around the

middle of last year, are forecasts of 50 billion to 1 trillion connected devices in the next

decade outlandish? Cisco estimates that we ended 2010 with 12.5 billion connected

devices globally, depending on how they’re counted. Increase that number by 19

percent per year and you reach Ericsson’s estimate of 50 billion connected devices by

2020. That growth rate certainly seems possible given the flood of connected game

consoles, photo frames and other wireless doodads streaming into the market.

Fifty billion connected devices amounts to a modest 6.6 per person for the 7.6 billion

people expected to be on earth in 2020. The developed world will lead, with an

estimated 13 to 15 devices per person by 2020. At least half of those devices will not be

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cisco_50_billion_things_on_the_internet_by_2020.php

http://readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ibm-a-world-with-1-trillion-co.php

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/09/13/50-billion-connected-devices-10-years.html

http://www.ambientdevices.com/products/umbrella.html

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2011/08/interactive-vending-machine-expands-availability.html

http://control4.com/residential/products/

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/how-the-internet-of-things-will-change-everything%E2%80%94including-ourselves/

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personal: They will be sensor networks, asset trackers and other devices used by

enterprises and governments to monitor the environment, deliver services and

safeguard people and possessions. Allocating half of the count to industrial devices

drops the number of personal connected devices in 2020’s “first world” to six or seven

per person (or less), which seems low. We could easily wind up with more than 50

billion connections in 2020. Will we make it to 1 trillion?

Outlook

In its June 2010 research study “The Coming Age of M2M and Connected Devices,”

Connected World magazine parsed the connected-device universe into two segments:

single-purpose and multipurpose devices.

The former category includes e-readers, personal navigation units and vital signs

monitors, and these devices contain intelligence to collect and report real-world data

with little — if any — human intervention.

Multipurpose devices include smartphones and tablets, which are driven by human

interaction. They may collect real-world information themselves (such as location via

GPS) or gather it by using NFC technology to connect to single-purpose devices.

Examples of multipurpose devices include:

Fitness monitors that collect and report performance statistics to a cloud-based

wellness service, personal trainer or doctor

Scales that log and tweet your daily weight (presumably for crowdsourced

motivation)

Cars that sync entertainment and navigation content, monitor their own

performance and suggest places to visit based on your catalogued preferences

http://www.connectedworldmag.com/report.aspx

http://newyu.com/

http://www.withings.com/en/bodyscale

http://www.pcworld.com/article/234846/connected_cars_not_just_science_fiction_anymore.html

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However, before the Internet of Things can become truly mainstream, and before we

can properly manage the tsunami of devices and the data streams they generate, the

tools need to evolve. Extreme innovation will be needed at every level of the global ICT

value chain, from semiconductors and modules to wireless-access networks, device

and platform software, and cloud-based services.

On the hardware front, the chipsets and modules that provide physical and logical

interfaces to connect a device to a network will evolve by balancing the need for

smaller footprints and lower-power consumption with rising demands for onboard

features and applications. Highly integrated chipsets and modules that offer multiple

network connectivity options and onboard firewalls, encryption, VPN and other

features will get smaller and cheaper as we move toward 2020.

For instance, Texas Instruments’ Link line of wireless connectivity modules (WiLink,

NaviLink and BlueLink) are surface-mounted and range in size from 2.8 x 2.3 cm to a

mere 0.6 cm2. These highly integrated modules offer various combinations of Wi-Fi,

Bluetooth, BLE, ANT+, FM and A-GPS technologies. These combinations shorten

development time for devices that communicate over multiple networks, and they also

shrink product size and cost.

Wireless technologies will support much of the growth in device connections. These

technologies include NFC (Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, 6LoWPAN, ANT+), mid-range

networks (Wi-Fi) and wide-area networks (cellular, paging, private networks, satellite,

TV white spaces). Wired connections will also be important, although a good portion

of the world’s industrial equipment will begin to migrate from “plain old telephone

service” (POTs) to other communication methods during the decade; many of those

connections will go wireless.

Challenges for both wired and wireless network operators include expanding

bandwidth and network speeds to support bigger, more real-time payloads; providing

ubiquitous coverage; and building profitable business models. The bandwidth and

speed challenges aren’t new: Despite current technical complexities, we’ve met and

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?contentId=67453&navigationId=12859&templateId=6123

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12803&contentId=41247

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12761&contentId=29992

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overcome similar challenges before. Building profitable business models is trickier,

since connected devices carry significantly lower monthly service fees than the

network operators’ traditional voice and/or broadband packages. Mobile operators in

general have opted to support connected devices on a wholesale basis to save the back-

office cost of billing and supporting these low-revenue subscribers. Examples include

Sprint’s and AT&T’s support for the Kindle and Verizon’s backing of GM’s OnStar

service.

Device and service management platforms are also poised for dramatic growth. These

platforms must ensure that the massive device populations under their care are

perpetually updated with current firmware and apps, connected to the right network

on the right service plan and managed through a consistent user interface across a

hugely disparate set of network endpoints. Connected-device management platforms

from emerging players, including Axeda, SensorLogic and Eurotech, are giving

companies visibility and control over huge populations of connected devices. New

platform entrant Macheen is taking an innovative approach: Its white-label, end-to-

end device and service management platform is designed to “de-complicate” device

rollouts and allow device manufacturers to ship their products “hot in the box” with

built-in, ready-to-go mobile Internet connectivity.

All of these technologies — chipsets and modules, wireless networks and device and

service management platforms — are increasingly hosted in the cloud. Cloud-based

services such as Pedigree Technology’s OneView asset tracker and Data Online’s tank

monitoring service are expanding across segments ranging from medical billing to

“smart home” management to tracking your teen’s driving patterns. Fast, large-scale

databases, possibly featuring artificial intelligence, need to be developed to filter

massive incoming data streams for actionable events and trends in real time or near

real time.

http://www.axeda.com/

http://www.sensorlogic.com/

http://www.eurotech.com/en/solutions/everyware+software+framework

http://www.macheen.com/

http://www.pedigreetechnologies.com/

http://www.dataonline.com/

http://www.dataonline.com/

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Companies to watch

Semiconductors and modules

Bluegiga. Bluegiga is the first to market a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) device. The

technology should revolutionize a large number of segments due to its small form

factor and battery life measured in months or years. Bluegiga’s products include a USB

dongle and BLE modules and access points, which are targeted to electronic health,

proximity marketing and general markets.

Cinterion/Gemalto. Cinterion offers a broad product line of connected device

modules, some targeted to verticals such as automotive and all featuring onboard

security such as encryption and firewall. Its parent company, Gemalto, is heavily

invested in mobile payments and NFC technologies, giving Cinterion a significant leg

up in these segments.

Texas Instruments. Texas Instruments’ surface-mounted WiLink, NaviLink and

BlueLink modules combine wireless LAN, assisted GPS, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low

Energy, FM and ANT+ wireless capabilities and thereby support high-functionality

devices with a small, low-cost footprint.

Wireless access network

Encore Networks. Encore’s Bandit II Copper-to-Cell (CTC) router connects legacy

POTs connections to cellular networks, adding security features such as VPN, firewall

and encryption.

KORE Telematics. KORE is a global mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that

provides worldwide device connectivity through partnerships with Vodafone, Iridium

and a growing set of worldwide cellular network partners.

http://www.bluegiga.com/home

http://www.cinterion.com/

http://www.ti.com/

http://encorenetworks.com/press_release/press_release_1104_c2c.htm

http://www.koretelematics.com/

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Macheen. As previously mentioned, Macheen’s white-label MVNO strategy makes it

simple for device manufacturers to sell Internet-connected products “hot out of the

box,” meaning that they can be used immediately by consumers without time-

consuming or complex activation and setup steps.

Neul. Neul’s NeulNET base stations and terminals are the first wireless networking

equipment to be offered for sale that takes advantage of the new, free spectrum

available in TV white spaces.

Device and platform software

Axeda. The Axeda Platform enables rapid development and deployment of connected

device solutions and provides analysis, reporting and alerting tools along with pipes to

popular ERP platforms.

Eurotech. Eurotech’s Everywhere Device Cloud provides secure end-to-end

connections among a device and the apps and services that consume its data, through

the cloud.

Recursion Software. Recursion’s Voyager Platform and client software enables

connected devices to communicate among themselves, share data and applications,

and coordinate their activities, without human intervention.

Red Bend. With its roots in computer software updates — notably the original AOL

Internet Portal — Red Bend’s platform/client software is a highly optimized tool that

performs over-the-air (OTA) updates of device firmware and applications inside the

device’s memory constraints.

Smith Micro. SODA, Smith Micro’s “secure on-device API,” provides a consistent

cross-platform, cross-device interface to reduce development and support costs for

http://www.macheen.com/

http://www.neul.com/

http://www.axeda.com/platform

http://www.eurotech.com/best-tco

http://recursionsw.com/Products/voyager.html

http://www.redbend.com/

http://www.smithmicro.com/products/soda.aspx

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connecting a large volume of dissimilar devices and applications to mobile and wired

networks.

Cloud-based services

Aerotel Medical Systems. Aerotel’s wireless health hub collects and transmits data

from multiple medical devices within a home to a health monitoring center for real-

time response to emerging or critical conditions.

GeaCom. GeaCom’s Phrazer, a handheld device that allows doctors and patients to

communicate in multiple languages, facilitates communication to improve patient

outcomes. Phrazer also offers cultural cues and a multimedia touchscreen to display

relevant medical content.

IGPS. This GPS-enabled pallet rental service provides shippers with lightweight

plastic pallets that offer a comprehensive view of the supply chain and reduce theft and

shrinkage.

Kareo. Kareo’s cloud-based medical billing– and claims-processing app is building

interfaces for leading electronic health records (EHR) providers to simplify billing,

speed collections and improve medical practice management.

While these companies offer a large and diverse set of connected device solutions,

collectively they still barely scratch the surface of the opportunities that the Internet of

Things will enable.

http://www.aerotel.com/

http://www.myphrazer.com/

http://www.igps.net/

http://www.kareo.com/

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The future of mobile health, 2011–2016 – by Jody Ranck, DrPH

Mobile health — the use of wireless devices to manage health conditions, collect health

data, monitor vital signs, provide clinical decision support and access health

information — is in its relatively early stages. Nonetheless, the field has witnessed

accelerating growth since 2010 in the U.S. It has become a truly global marketplace,

with innovation and activity taking off from Africa to Latin America in the past few

years. Meanwhile, aging populations and health systems straining under rapid growth

rates during a period of economic decline have helped boost interest in mobile health

as a way to cut costs and improve continuity of care.

But the market for mobile health is not only focused on the sick, who at any given time

constitute roughly 5 percent of the U.S. population; it also includes the health and

wellness areas. Here we’ve seen products emerge such as Nike+ and Jawbone’s UP

(the latter is set to launch in late 2011). McKinsey & Company has estimated that the

current market size for mobile health in the U.S. is approximately $20 billion, while

the global market — based on surveys in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, India and

China — reaches nearly $50 billion. In the wearable wireless device category, the

market is expected to reach over 100 million units annually by 2016.

What’s driving growth?

Rising health care costs. Globally, nations are struggling to contain rising health

care costs that consume an ever-greater share of GDP. Indeed, global expenditures are

expected to reach $6 trillion by the end of 2011.1 In the U.S., the rate of growth in

expenditures has exceeded the inflation rate for decades, and it will soon account for

nearly 20 percent of GDP. Obesity alone in the U.S. costs nearly $147 billion a year in

direct medical costs, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention

(CDC). Chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, are becoming a

1 WHO National Health Accounts

http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003408

http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003408

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growing problem in the developing world as well. The World Health Report 2010

states that nearly 100 million people annually — 5 percent of the global population —

are pushed into poverty due to health expenditures, and non-communicable diseases

are considered an important driver. In China, the estimated losses in national income

due to diabetes, stroke and heart disease was estimated at $18 billion in 2005.

Proliferation of mobile devices. The rapid increase in expenditures corresponds

with a dramatic growth in access to mobile phones, with over 5 billion mobile

subscriptions registered globally. That accounts for nearly 77 percent of the world’s

population, according to the ITU. The growth of smartphones and tablets with higher-

resolution screens is creating new opportunities for applications that make

radiographic imagery more mobile — in the clinic and beyond.

Affordable sensor technologies. Another important driver is the proliferation of

affordable sensor technologies such as GreenGoose.com and Pachube. These wireless

technologies can monitor vital signs and transmit data to mobiles or other wireless

devices. The wearable or implantable sensors enable the creation of “medical homes”

that allow for better coordination and monitoring of care outside the hospital, which

results in lower costs and fewer iatrogenic illnesses. Similarly, Body Area Networks

(BAN) enable remote monitoring of patients. The hope here is to reduce the costs of

care associated with rehospitalizations, enhance access to care and improve drug

adherence by monitoring patient behaviors.

Aging demographics and chronic diseases. According to the U.S. Census

Bureau, the 65-plus population will grow from 35 to 70 million between 2000 and

2030. In Japan and in a growing number of European countries, the aging population

is creating a strain on health and social services, due to shortages in labor for health

care and increased expenditures and needs. AARP has estimated that the cost of

unpaid caregiving for family members in the U.S. accounts for over $350 billion

http://www.who.int/chp/ncd_global_status_report/en/

http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2010/06.html

http://www.greengoose.com/

https://pachube.com/

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annually.2 Over 50 percent of the U.S. population suffers from at least one chronic

condition, and chronic care accounts for over two-thirds of health care costs.3

Telemedicine and mobile health hold the promise of providing more affordable ways

to manage treatment of chronic conditions, facilitate business models for the medical

home and offer substantial cost savings from improving drug adherence and

monitoring vital signs. This can reduce rehospitalizations — a major source of

expenditures in the health system. Mobile applications that enable patients to monitor

diet, drug regimens and fundamental vital signs and those that connect patient and

provider teams to manage more patients at a lower cost than the current fragmented

and inefficient system will be highly sought after. Disintermediation and de-skilling

(that is, using less highly trained health workers in place of physicians) are likely to be

major examples of how mobile health can achieve both cost savings and efficiencies by

offering a technological approach where human resources are inefficiently allocated in

the present.

Regulation. The emerging trends highlighting the transformation of the cell phone

from a pure communications and data-enabled device to a medical instrument also

raises the issue of regulation. In July 2011, the FDA issued the first draft guidance

document on the regulation of mHealth applications. It signaled the intentions of the

FDA to regulate those applications that either transform the mobile into a medical

device or enable a mobile device to communicate with an already-regulated device.

Additionally, applications that transmit patient data are also likely to be regulated.

While the range of applications currently available in 2011 would most likely not be

regulated by the draft guidance, we can expect to see the trend moving more toward

advanced medical-device functionality and patient-data-centered approaches over the

next five years. Areas where this will happen include applications involving

electrocardiograms (ECGs are already regulated) and tablet applications that involve

MRI and other radiographic scans (the resolution of different screens may cause errors

2 “Valuing the Invaluable: A New Look at the Economic Value of Family Caregiving.” AARP Public Policy Institute, June 2007. 3 “Chronic Diseases: The Power to Prevent: The Call to Control.” National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2009.

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm263340.htm

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm263340.htm

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in diagnoses if not up to regulatory standards). In the global health arena, where most

applications are currently SMS-centric, the FDA’s regulatory approach will have a

minimal effect (likely impacting less than 15 percent of all mobile health apps in use

now) in the three-to-five-year frame. The attention will be on the regulatory impact of

remote diagnostics and the evolution of regulatory regimes in the coming years.

Movers in the next 5 years

In the health care arena, the question is always a matter of who pays. Without an

evidence base for early-stage ventures, it is often exceedingly difficult to find revenue

models until governments provide a reimbursement mechanism to pay for the devices

or programs. A large number of mobile health apps, such as those for diabetes (e.g.,

Welldoc, Glucose Buddy) or weight control (e.g., Lose It!), are currently consumer-

focused and will concentrate on the out-of-pocket expenses of consumers.

The challenge in the consumer market has been to build a business model from free or

inexpensive apps, ones that the typical consumer will use once or twice. The missing

element here is a connection to a health plan or ecosystem of incentives where the

consumer can see that use of the device translates into improved health outcomes

and/or cost savings. Some startups, such as ZenBucks, focus on monetizing the

behavioral change aspect of mobile health by offering reductions in health premiums

for adherence to wellness regimens such as diet and exercise. Other applications

provide a social-gaming context to incentivize behavioral change. While there is a great

deal of interest and certainly hype in the gamification of the health genre, the game

changer, so to speak, will have to come from the rigorous evaluation of outcomes.

One of the interesting trends emerging as the science itself develops is the integration

of personal health systems with environmental health. For example, little is known

about the environmental contexts for triggers of asthma. Asthmapolis is a program

that combines GPS-sensor technologies with asthma inhalers to map and collect public

health data on when and where asthmatics are when they use their inhalers. UCLA

http://asthmapolis.com/

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sponsors the PEIR, an urban-sensing program that uses sensors to map environmental

quality in situations as well as estimate one’s own contribution to poor environmental

quality through behaviors such as driving. The creative use of sensors, mapping and

mobiles could change the way we think about the very nature of health itself.

The personal monitoring trend is best typified in the Quantified Self movement, which

takes advantage of a range of monitoring devices to track one’s biological outcomes

and share this data with other individuals via Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

One manifestation of this practice is Patientslikeme.com, which recently demonstrated

the power of networked biocitizenry (citizens linking on the basis of shared biological

experiences such as diseases, exposures to pollutants, etc.) to track the reactions of

Lou Gehrig’s disease sufferers to lithium medical treatments. It resulted in the first

peer-reviewed journal article generated by patients themselves.

Companies to watch

The mobile health space is evolving so rapidly that it is difficult to forecast much

beyond the two-to-three-year time frame, given the way that platforms are changing

and driving down price points of medical devices while simultaneously making devices

smaller and more mobile. Below are some “best of class” examples of mobile health

applications from different points in the continuum or ecosystem. These companies

could indicate where things are heading in the next few years.

Epocrates. Epocrates is a mobile health company focused on health care providers

via applications designed to assist doctors with information about drugs, such as drug

interactions, decision support tools, medical news and diagnostic codes. In February

2011, the company went public with an initial IPO that raised $86.4 million before

costs.

Epocrates also has an EHR for small physician practices that is accessible via iOS, and

it has a SaaS product that integrates notes from exams and data from lab tests and

http://quantifiedself.com/

http://patientslikeme.com/

http://mobihealthnews.com/10136/epocrates-goes-public-raises-86-4-million/

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drug prescriptions. In addition, the DrChrono EHR app for the iPad enables text-to-

speech capabilities and can create clinical efficiencies and potentially reduce medical

errors leading to patient harm.

If Epocrates can demonstrate cost savings as well as improvements in quality of care,

over time we could see this integrated approach to the EHR and clinical support tools

via mobile platforms bring additional features with the potential to change the clinical

encounter.

Sproxil. Counterfeit drugs are a growing international business and public health

threat that compose a market ranging from $75 to $200 billion per year — nearly 15

percent of all drugs sold worldwide.4 In emerging markets, 30 percent of all drugs are

fake, and the counterfeiting problem is growing worse with increased technological

sophistication. This is leading to death and disability due to delayed critical care.

Sproxil is an Acumen Fund–backed firm that supplies mobile health applications by

utilizing SMS verification and a mobile product authentication service — in other

words, a scratch-off label that reveals a random code to enable users to dial a short

code for instantaneous confirmation of the validity of the drug. With the globalization

of pharmaceutical products and counterfeiting technologies, the future of Sproxil

would appear promising, given the active interest in the technology from the

pharmaceutical sector, which is rapidly entering the mobile health arena.

GenoMed. Observers of mobile health tend to focus on the U.S. and European

markets. However, South Africa is at the forefront of a great deal of innovation. Its

market contains unique characteristics that reflect both industrialized-nation

technological capacity alongside extreme poverty situations for testing the viability of

mobile health applications. GenoMed is a South African company that provides a

platform for building out an array of mobile health clinical-support applications that

cover the continuum of care as well as a range of settings: hospitals, pharmacies,

primary health centers, home-based care and self-care. Both public- and private-sector

4 “Fighting fake drugs: the role of WHO and pharma.” The Lancet, 377 (9778):1626, 14 May 2011.

http://www.genomed.com/

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organizations looking for customized mobile health solutions for developing-country

markets can have these solutions developed, tested and deployed via GenoMed’s

services. The Platform-as-a-Service model applied to developing countries could prove

to be a very successful approach for many other countries considering adopting mobile

health solutions but lacking the in-house expertise to scale the solutions in

challenging, low-resource contexts. We can expect business models such as GenoMed’s

to grow as the market for customized solutions in emerging markets continues to

increase at a rather brisk pace.

Healthline (see disclosure). Healthline.com, rarely mentioned in mobile health

circles because it is a health content provider and not an app, is the fifth-fastest-

growing website in the world, and it is perhaps the most successful semantic-

technology platform providing health content to major health players such as Aetna

and Kaiser Permanente. Armed with an array of symptom checkers and health

information portals, the site has become one of the first mobile-optimized major

intelligent health information services. The technology platform has become so

successful that even the competition (i.e., Yahoo Health and virtually any health plan

creating its own content portal) is now using Healthline’s platform. Healthline is in the

advertising business, and it is much larger than WebMD and serves the health

publishing, payer and provider communities. The semantic vocabularies it uses mean

that users of Healthline’s symptom checkers are more likely to be lead to an

appropriate product recommendation, which is one of the reasons why over 100

million users per month access the company’s services.

Disclosure: Healthline is backed by Reed-Elsevier Ventures, a venture capital firm

that is an investor in the parent company of this site, GigaOM.

Mobisante. Mobisante has become one of the pioneers in mobile health for its mobile

ultrasound device that enables diagnostic capabilities at the point of care. Images can

be transmitted via Wi-Fi or cellular network. Furthermore, the price point of the

device makes it accessible in low-resource contexts. The traditional ultrasound device

has been too expensive and too large to be considered a mobile device. Mobisante has

http://www.healthline.com/

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been successful at developing a Wi-Fi-enabled ultrasound device that can fit in your

hand. The average ultrasound device can cost as much as $100,000, while Mobisante’s

will sell for between $7,000 and $8,000. We can expect to see more examples in this

area with MIT’s NETRA project, which has dramatically reduced the size and prize of

the phoropter your optometrist uses to examine your eyes and has created a small

attachment for the Android phone that retails for under $100.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~pamplona/NETRA/

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How social-location-mobile (SoLoMo) is transforming e-commerce – by Dr. Phil Hendrix, Ph.D., and Eric Risely

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, the primary purpose of a business is to attract and earn

the loyalty of customers. For most businesses, this is easier said than done: Apple,

Starbucks and USAA are among the few companies that consistently win customers’

praise. As businesses seek customers and vice versa, disconnects between the two

often result in disappointment and considerable waste of effort and money by both

parties. Factors contributing to the divide include a lack of transparency (data does not

exist), limited visibility (data is inaccessible) and too little trust (data is not shared).

Figure 1: the disconnect between businesses and consumers

Source: Dr. Phil Hendrix, immr

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Fortunately, the confluence of social, location and mobile, or SoLoMo, as the VC of

KPCB, John Doerr, refers to it, is making data available to consumers and businesses

in order to improve the process and outcomes for both. For example, smartphones and

a new breed of powerful mobile apps, many of which are location-aware and tuned in

to social media, are empowering consumers and transforming the way in which they

shop. As consumers engage with SoLoMo — tweeting about their experience, checking

in, searching for nearby businesses, etc. — they are also generating digital signals that

are critically important to businesses. A large percentage of Facebook posts and tweets,

for example, contain opinions, both good and bad, about products, brands, retailers

and service providers.

For their part, companies are connecting with consumers via mobile channels (apps

and the Internet), integrating location-based services into their strategies, and “tuning

in” to social media. By mining the digital signals produced by SoLoMo, companies can

develop a 360-degree view that allows them to better understand consumers, monitor

their performance and adjust their strategies accordingly.

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Figure 2: the intersection of social, location and mobile


The social tsunami

The volume of content created by social media is expanding rapidly. For example,

consumers have posted more than 50 million reviews on TripAdvisor, making it the

first choice for travelers considering one of the 500,000 hotels rated. Nearly eight

years of content is uploaded to YouTube every day.

Individuals are also embracing social media as consumers. Among social network

users, one in four have Friended or Follow a company or brand. Forty-five percent of

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Twitter users share opinions about a product or brand more than once per day, while

34 percent share a link about a product or brand more than once per day. As suggested

in the figure below, the exchange of social media is affecting all aspects of consumer

behavior —facilitating the discovery of new products, artists, music, etc. This exchange

provides access to others’ ratings as they consider purchasing a product or brand, even

getting others’ opinions in real time before deciding whether to buy the latest fashions.

Figure 3: social media shaping consumers’ behavior


Social media has become an indispensable tool for consumers while shopping, too. A

recent study by L.E.K. Consulting found that “active mobile consumers” (60 percent of

smartphone owners) value customer reviews above all other sources, including friends

and family, independent product reviews, store displays and sales associates, who

http://www.briansolis.com/2011/08/the-end-of-social-media-1-0/

http://www.lek.com/sites/default/files/L.E.K._Marketplace_of_the_Mobile_Consumer.pdf

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ranked dead last. Yelp, TripAdvisor and other social media, of course, amplify and

make readily available this digital word of mouth.

Social media is even more useful when linked to location and accessed via mobile

devices. With geo-tagging, users can filter social media and access relevant

information on a smartphone “just in time” at the point of need, whether in a store,

restaurant or other location.

As Paul Adams (formerly with Google and now at Facebook) observed, “The world of

advertising will fundamentally change because of the emergence of the social web.”

Location: more than latitude and longitude

Location-based marketing has been around for quite some time. As Fred Wilson, a

leading VC and a managing partner of Union Square Ventures, observed, “Knowing

where someone is in real time — particularly if you have some context around that — is

an incredibly valuable marketing opportunity.”

Recognizing that proximity boosts relevance and response, companies such as

Placecast, Xtify and others allow brands and merchants to advertise and extend offers

within tightly defined geo-fenced areas. Newer solutions such as ThinkNear are giving

merchants greater control over offers introduced to consumers, based on proximity as

well as criteria such as time of day and demand. Reflecting the strategic importance of

location services, within the past year eBay has acquired two important companies:

WHERE, a pioneer in location-based advertising, and Milo, a shopping engine that

shows real-time product availability and prices in local stores.

Unheard of before Foursquare invented and popularized the concept, checking in is

becoming increasingly prevalent. Recent Comscore data shows that nearly one in five

smartphone owners has checked in at some location. While some observers have

criticized the merits and dismissed checking in as a passing phenomenon, with the

http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-left-google-what-happened-to-my-book-what-i-work-on-at-facebook/

http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-left-google-what-happened-to-my-book-what-i-work-on-at-facebook/

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/22/going-geo-loco-lessons-on-the-mad-scramble-to-exploit-location-data/

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/22/going-geo-loco-lessons-on-the-mad-scramble-to-exploit-location-data/

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/5/Nearly_1_in_5_Smartphone_Owners_Access_Check-In_Services_Via_their_Mobile_Device

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/5/Nearly_1_in_5_Smartphone_Owners_Access_Check-In_Services_Via_their_Mobile_Device

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recent deals between Foursquare and partners such as American Express, consumers

have even more reasons to check in, in more places. Although Facebook recently

“retired” Places, it is redoubling efforts to encourage members to geo-tag updates. As

Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider (the co-authors of Location-based Marketing for

Dummies) point out, the rich layer of location data allows Facebook as well as

Foursquare to personalize recommendations, ads and even offers. Integrating location

with CRM and (potentially) payments systems offers even greater benefits, including

fraud detection and nearby offers based on recent purchases.

Additionally, more and more social media is being geo-tagged, enabling consumers to

search for and find information specific to their current location. Google allows

individuals to search for results “near me now,” while augmented reality (AR) services

such as Junaio are making it easier for individuals to scan for and view information

about products, landmarks and other objects around them. While still in the early

stages, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet and other providers of location-specific

content and recommendations are integrating AR into their platforms.

Location can also be used to profile and understand consumers’ context. GeoIQ, for

example, is overlaying data on traffic, weather, demographics, spending, surrounding

stores and restaurants. This contextual information is proving very useful to

commercial and government clients, particularly when combined with geo-tagged

social media data.

As consumers browse in stores and other venues where information is often needed,

cameras and other sensors are transforming mobile devices into indispensable

shopping tools. Using the camera phone to scan bar codes and QR codes, consumers

can access prices, availability and even recent visitors’ comments on everything from

products in stores to menu items, museum exhibits and a host of other applications.

And with NFC on the horizon, consumers will have the ability to query any object that

is tagged. Narian Technologies just introduced a platform called NFC4All that allows

stores and other businesses to place tags that, when tapped, can trigger certain

preprogrammed actions: paging an associate responsible for the product, connecting

the consumer to a website, and showing offers and rebates available on the product,

http://www.amazon.com/Location-Marketing-Dummies-Lifestyles-Paperback/dp/1118022491

http://www.amazon.com/Location-Marketing-Dummies-Lifestyles-Paperback/dp/1118022491

http://blog.wcgworld.com/2011/09/location-last-third-of-the-holy-trinity-of-data

http://redesignmobile.com/2011/06/23/why-the-foursquare-and-american-express-deal-is-really-big/

http://www.nfcworld.com/2011/08/17/39138/narian-unveils-suite-of-nfc-apps-for-retailers/

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among other possibilities. The service is priced at $20 per month and 5 cents per call.

Narian’s goal is to make it easy and affordable for SMBs to deploy NFC.

NFC is also gaining traction with payments processors, device manufacturers and

retailers. While deployment will take some time, the technology has the potential to

make any object — products, packages, displays, posters, menus, bottles, etc. —

clickable. The opportunity to empower consumers and remove friction at the time and

point of need is enormous.

With GPS and imaging standard on smartphones and NFC’s emerging on the scene,

locations, places and even objects are becoming important new channels for

advertisers and retailers. However, key to widespread adoption is deployment as well

as consumer familiarity and usability. In a recent study Lab42 found that fewer than

half of consumers were familiar with QR codes, and only 13 percent were successful in

scanning a QR code when asked to do so. In New Zealand, mobile operators developed

an ad campaign to acquaint users with QR codes and their benefits. As more brands

and establishments introduce QR codes, they may use posters and personnel at the

point of sale to demonstrate the process to customers and offer sweepstakes, games

and other incentives to motivate consumers to try out QR codes.

http://blog.lab42.com/

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Figure 4: locative capabilities of mobile devices

Source: Dr. Phil Hendrix, “Location: the epicenter of innovation,” GigaOM Pro report, Feb. 2010

Mobile: the Internet in consumers’ pockets

Commenting recently on Steve Jobs’ contributions, Paul Saffo remarked, “Before the

iPhone, cyberspace was something you went to your desk to visit . . . now cyberspace is

something you carry in your pocket.” And more consumers are carrying smartphones

and the Internet with them. Horace Dediu's “countdown clock” estimates that by next

June more than half of the mobile phones in the U.S. will be smartphones. Over the

next few years smartphone adoption will continue to grow, with the number of

smartphone users reaching 110 million by 2015, according to eMarketer.

The ubiquity of smartphones, mobile apps and “the Internet in our pockets” is

reshaping consumers’ behavior. Within just five years, the percent of online adults

reading print newspapers has dropped from 81 percent to 73 percent, according to

Forrester. Over half of all local searches are now done on mobile devices. Nearly one in

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/media/steve-jobs-reigned-in-a-kingdom-of-altered-landscapes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/media/steve-jobs-reigned-in-a-kingdom-of-altered-landscapes.html

http://web.me.com/hdediu/Smartphonecountdown/Welcome.html

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four smartphone owners has downloaded a shopping app within the past 30 days.

While only 13 percent have made a purchase on a smartphone, last November, two-

thirds of shoppers used a price comparison app on Black Friday. Of course, Google,

PayPal, the payments processors (Visa, MasterCard and American Express), financial

service institutions and mobile operators (through Isis in the U.S.) are investing

heavily and competing to make mobile payments ubiquitous.

Challenges for SoLoMo

The mobile commerce ecosystem consists of a wide array of companies, including

advertisers, retailers, content providers, social media, mobile operators, app

developers and others. These companies face many challenges. Among them are the

following questions:

How do mobile commerce providers earn consumers’ trust, address their

concerns and motivate them to share their personal data?

Which companies will consumers trust with their personal data? How will

security breaches affect willingness to share?

How does transparency (e.g., prices and availability) affect businesses, especially

traditional retailers? Will this lead to greater “price harmonization,” as L.E.K.

Consulting speculates?

How can companies avoid consumer fatigue and potential backlash against an

ever-expanding array of personalized offers?

As argued below, the data streams generated by SoLoMo activities are enormous

but also highly perishable. How will companies leverage this data and

incorporate it into their processes to respond accordingly in real time?

As companies like PayPal, Wal-Mart and Amazon acquire and develop

increasingly sophisticated SoLoMo capabilities, will other businesses be able to

compete in analytics and applications?

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Digital signals

As consumers shop for, purchase and use products and services, as well as share their

views about them, an abundance of what we call digital signals is being generated.

These digital traces reflect consumers’ behaviors, interests and even intentions in the

aggregate and increasingly, with their cooperation and permission, on an individual

basis. Over the past decade companies have invested a great deal in SEO and SEM.

With the emergence of social media, leading companies are now focusing attention on

social media optimization (SMO).

The following illustrate companies’ efforts to manage and optimize social media:

Insuring that social media assets are tagged with the proper metadata, much

like web pages are tagged for SEO

Measuring the impact of earned media, so that the ROI of social media can be

quantified and compared to that of paid media

Conducting systematic experiments to test and learn how segments respond to

various social media appeals and campaigns

Using social media tools to improve customer service, innovation and other

critical business processes

The digital signals emanating from SoLoMo represent a new and different kind of data

— a combination of structured and unstructured data, from disparate sources, in

volumes that few companies are equipped to process, much less analyze and respond

to. To extract insights and act on these signals in a timely fashion, businesses are

turning to solutions for real-time processing and analysis of big data.

The following examples from DataSift, one of a handful of companies providing access

to real-time social media data, illustrate the scope and complexity of just the Twitter

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/02/social-media-optimization-smo-is-the-new-seo-part-2/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1746838/facebook-places-foursquare-social-medias-tiny-2-impact-on-businesses

http://datasift.com/

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stream. From the more than 200 million tweets per day, DataSift allows users to

extract and analyze relevant subsets in a variety of ways. For instance:

Track tweets from persons based on various combinations of whom they follow

— as an example, Lady Gaga followers who also Follow President Obama

Track 100,000-plus geolocations simultaneously

Classify and segment tweets by gender, political affiliation, authority and

interests

Detect tweets in over 30 languages, in real time

Record every tweet into a "very big" data store for later retrieval and analysis

with tools such as MapReduce and Hadoop

Large companies like Facebook and Google, as well as startups such as OneRiot (which

was just acquired by Wal-Mart), are rushing to mine such data and make insights

available to advertisers and retailers.

To improve relevance, user experience and of course click-through rate,

Facebook is testing real-time targeting of ads based on users’ posts and updates.

This fall, Wal-Mart will begin implementing solutions developed by Kosmix, the

social media analytics company it acquired earlier this year. For customers who

opt in (as will be the case with some products), Wal-Mart will personalize search

results and recommendations based on clues about the customers from their

Facebook or Twitter streams.

Google, of course, personalizes ads displayed with search results based on a

variety of criteria, including search terms and intent and location. With Google+,

additional insights from the consumers’ social networks can be used to tailor

search results as well as ads.

Using OneRiot’s Social Targeting Engine, advertisers from P.F. Chang’s to

concert promoter Live Nation have achieved CTRs on mobile ads as high as 2

http://walmartlabs.blogspot.com/2011/09/walmartlabs-oneriot-welcome-aboard-team.html

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-test-mines-real-time-conversations-ad-targeting/149531/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/how-your-social-data-will-power-walmarts-e-commerce-revolution/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/how-your-social-data-will-power-walmarts-e-commerce-revolution/

http://blog.oneriot.com/post/9995387267/adding-social-targeting-to-geo-located-campaigns-on

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percent (compared with the national average of .3 percent).

As these examples suggest, advertising and offers are rapidly moving toward real-time

personalization. SoLoMo digital signals, especially location, interests, intent and

context, will play an increasingly important role, boosting relevance for consumers and

yield for advertisers and merchants. Businesses that fail to tune in to and leverage

these digital signals will find it increasingly difficult and costly to compete with leading

companies.

Figure 5: SoLoMo generates important digital signals


http://blog.oneriot.com/post/9995387267/adding-social-targeting-to-geo-located-campaigns-on

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Innovative new SoLoMo apps and solutions

Listed in the table below are examples of apps and solutions employing some

combination of SoLoMo to empower consumers and transform shopping. Leading

investors are funding these and other SoLoMo companies, while consumers are

downloading and using SoLoMo apps in significant numbers. ShopSavvy, for example,

is in the top 1 percent of apps in the App Store. ThinkNear, a TechStars alumnus with

founders from Amazon, includes among its investors Google Ventures, Qualcomm

Ventures and IA Ventures (a firm led by former Wall Streeters that is focused on

startups’ harnessing and capitalizing on big data). With the average consumer

belonging to a dozen or more loyalty programs, Stampt is solving a significant problem

for both consumers and merchants, which is how to keep track of and redeem rewards.

http://www.thinknear.com/

http://www.iaventures.com/

http://stampt.com/

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Figure 6: SoLoMo startups transforming consumer experiences


Leveraging SoLoMo

Despite the challenges discussed, advertisers and retailers are leveraging SoLoMo to

devise and implement strategies that are more consumer-centric. An entire

infrastructure is emerging to support their efforts, led by companies such as DataSift,

Collective Intellect, Social Nuggets (see disclosure), Local Response, GeoIQ (see

disclosure) and a host of others. As shown in the figure below, SoLoMo can be used to

personalize, enable, engage and reward consumers more effectively. For example, with

SoLoMo retailers can recognize customers as they enter the store and provide them

http://collectiveintellect.com/

http://socialnuggets.net/

http://localresponse.com/

http://www.geoiq.com/

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with a personalized guide based on the customers’ interests and even previous

purchases; enable shoppers to share feedback with one another (which many online

retailers already do); reward consumers in real time with incentives and

reinforcement; and engage in many other ways.

Disclosure: Social Nuggets is an immr partner; GeoIQ is an immr client.

Figure 7: how retailers and advertisers are leveraging SoLoMo – the PEER™ model

Source: Dr Phil Hendrix, immr

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The new breed of mobile search engines – by Peggy Anne Salz

Smartphones capable of delivering rich mobile Internet services, along with the

proliferation of thousands of apps in over 120 app stores, are creating increased

demand for mobile search services of all varieties. However, universal search as we

know it — a space dominated by Google and Microsoft — is not suited to mobile. Its

method, based on keywords and designed to deliver results from the entire web based

on algorithms such as PageRank, is fundamentally flawed; on mobile devices, its

shortcomings are fatal. Put another way, because of form factor and the personal

nature of mobile devices, users can't sift through lists of blue links results; they require

answers that are genuinely useful and relevant to their preferences, past purchases,

browsing patterns and current locations, and that can be easily displayed on the device

screen.

Other limitations of traditional search include:

One-size-fits-all results. Whether you are a student, a scientist or a silver surfer,

Internet search engines deliver a similar set of results, regardless of individual

information needs. But as stated above, on mobile, we want results suited to our

individual needs based on our context (location, mood, need, etc.).

Search engine–optimized sites promoted over truly optimal ones. To

complicate matters, there is no cross-linking data to power PageRank algorithms,

which is a major reason why regular road tests reveal that Google — which invented

PageRank —falls short. And in may cases, Google results on a smartphone only include

mobile-optimized websites as a backup to full-size Internet sites. But those full-size

Internet sites are slow to load and difficult to navigate, as they require users to pan,

zoom and scroll, making the experience a rather dismal one.

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Difficulties connecting with under-the-radar indexes. Traditional search

tends to favor sites that enjoy mainstream popularity or that update content on a

regular basis. On mobile we want what we want, not what PageRank assumes we do.

Mobile users, particularly those who search and snack content to kill time during a

commute, expect (even demand) other content types to figure in their search results:

blogs, user-created music and videos, app stores and storefronts.

Mobile search players: Google isn’t alone

At the high end, StatCounter Global Stats reckoned that Google had delivered over 97

percent of the mobile searches worldwide as of August 2011. This was based on an

analysis of the “Top 5 mobile searches from August 2010 to July 2011.” While some

may question the methodology, it is generally safe to say that Google's share is more

than 90 percent, compared to a market share in online Internet searches of around 67

percent.

Google almost own this niche, but it’s unlikely the search giant will continue to

dominate in the future: Competition is on the rise.

At one end of the spectrum, mobile operators and handset vendors have a strong

position in the smartphone value chain that allows them to wield considerable control

over preloaded applications, home-screen settings and browser defaults, thus

influencing the success of mobile services including search. However, it is important to

note that this influence is waning as smartphone penetration trumps that of low-end

and feature phones. Why? Because in the smartphone space, the OS platforms (Apple,

Android) call the shots, effectively bypassing the mobile operator.

Google is also challenged by clever search companies such as Siri (acquired by

archrival Apple), Goby (a combination location, search and recommendation engine

acquired by location-based services giant TeleNav) and Zite (a personalized news app

for the iPad that automatically learns what people like to present them with more of

the same category news and information, recently bought by CNN).

http://techleash.com/2011/08/google-mobile-97-search-market-share-in-world/

http://www.zite.com/

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These and more are advancing (and becoming extremely attractive candidates for

acquisition) because they have harnessed powerful new enablers that include

personalization, semantics, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and the social graph

to deliver users more precise (hence relevant) search results suited to the mobile

platform — in some cases even before users explicitly request them.

This focus on what I call zero search (using implicit inputs or statistical models to

present users with results they are likely to appreciate as opposed to key words or

other inputs) is sure to grow as more companies release the means to make mobile

search smarter (and a no-brainer for users).

Outlook

In my own research for the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies within the

European Commission, I have identified dozens of alternative search engines and

services that are gaining traction.

Search can be defined in three categories:

Interface. Text (ChaCha), voice (Vlingo), visual (IQ Engines), navigational

(Boopsie), AI (ExpertMaker)

Sociable. Search assisted by input from social networks and communities

(Bing)

Actionable. Search that focuses on the quality of the results and includes

verticals such as local search (Poynt), app store search (Chomp) and mobile

video search (Vuclip)

As I have pointed out, mobile has whetted our appetite for more precise search results

relevant to us. This is where so-called “universal” one-stop search engines (such as

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Google) deliver too much of a good thing. And it's where more-focused, vertical-

specific search engines that only do one thing (local, video, social, voice) shine.

A 2010 survey of 2,666 mobile users in the U.S. and the UK — conducted by research

firm TNS Global on behalf of Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm subsidiary providing

discovery and recommendations solutions to mobile operators — makes a strong case

for the business value of more intelligent and personalized services. In fact, if services

were more personal and offered results more aligned with individual preferences and

profiles, almost 60 percent of respondents said they would spend more time accessing

content, and almost 40 percent would spend more money. Approximately half of

respondents in both the U.S. and the UK would welcome personalized

recommendations.

Given that we use our mobile devices to connect first and foremost with our social

networks, it's clear that this vertical is increasing in importance.

The rise of social search, and the increased efforts by Google and Microsoft's Bing to

integrate social into their algorithms, is a sure sign that social (also regarded the

Achilles’ heel of universal search providers Google and company) will be a component

of this new generation of mobile search services. While Google and Bing are locked in a

race for micro improvements of their algorithms, the big question is, Who will take the

lead?

Clearly, keyword search cannot keep up with the massive growth rate of the web. That

leaves the door wide open for companies with social baked into their DNA to win with

approaches that infuse human preferences and judgments into computer algorithms to

pinpoint truly relevant information and better answers.

Another hot area in mobile search is apps. App search is currently dominated by

classic keyword search and “find similar” solutions that rely on social graphs and

statistics. However, there are several new players (Chomp, Do@, FindAhh) with new

approaches that are gaining traction.

http://www.mobilegroove.com/xiamqualcomm-study-reveals-people-would-buy-more-mobile-stuff-if-they-could-only-find-it-are-mobile-social-recommendations-the-next-big-thing/

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The verticalization of mobile search will likely accelerate as we become more

sophisticated in our use of mobile devices and tablets to access and search the

Internet. And with this development will come an increased user requirement for what

I call precision search.

Why? Because while devices will likely pack more computing power, they will keep

roughly the same size displays, which are not suited to reams of results. Additionally,

the huge growth in data, the failure of filters and the lack of machine-readable

metadata will persist, creating a need for search that can focus on a specific query and

deliver genuinely relevant and useful results.

The latter issue cannot be overstated. The Internet was created without a structure for

machine-readable metadata, which is essential for high-precision and accurate search.

There are approaches that aim to solve this dilemma. HTML5 has been architected to

tackle the metadata problem. In the meantime, text classification is helping to create

metadata. Looking ahead, new solutions and approaches will certainly emerge to

address this problem -- and they will create new services as well as new opportunities.

Another challenge is the increasing complexity of what we are searching for in the first

place. Today's problems and questions involve many geographies, many disciplines

and many databases. From medical diagnoses to purchase decisions, search results

that are accurate to a user’s needs require much more than metadata. It is here that

technologies like AI are gaining traction. It is likely that AI will be part of the solution

for all the problems we face.

Against this backdrop, how will mobile search evolve in the next years? What services

will it enable? And what will our experience be?

In the short term we will see the advance of immediate, needs-driven mobile search

(our need to locate a business, to compare a price, to identify a building or landmark).

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Expect a proliferation of search services that use AR, picture recognition and input

from bar codes and scanners.

Mobile search trends

tech trends 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Semantic data leading edge leading edge early adopters early adopters mainstream mainstream

Artificial intelligence bleeding edge leading edge early adopters early adopters mainstream mainstream

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Mobile search trends

Realtime search past peak past peak

Social sarch early adopters mainstream mainstream late adopters late adopters late adopters

Augmented reality search early adopters early adopters mainstream mainstream mainstream mainstream

App search leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream mainstream mainstream

High precision search - In app search/mobile verticalsbleeding edge leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream mainstream

Humanllike recommendaitons bleeding edge leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream mainstream

Diagnosis bleeding edge bleeding edge leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream

Virtual Assistants bleeding edge leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream mainstream

Picture search bleeding edge bleeding edge leading edge early adopters mainstream mainstream

mobile web search evolution keyword keyword AI based searchAI based searchAI based searchAI based search Source: Peggy Salz

Mobile search innovation enabled by this new breed of vertical search engines and

apps will focus on the following:

Trusted recommendations. Mobile reaches and influences people throughout the

purchase funnel (awareness, engagement, consideration, conversion and loyalty).

Thus, mobile users are relying on their phones at every stage of the consumer journey

for shopping assistance, from deciding whether they want a product at all to

purchasing one and sharing their review with their social network.

To offer genuinely useful guidance to consumers making buying decisions, on-the-

move search apps must go beyond results based on popularity or PageRank and tap

into sources, including users’ social graphs, to deliver recommendations from trusted

experts and social networks. This approach also seeds a virtuous and lucrative cycle:

Greater precision in the results, because they are based on real people with real

opinions and influence, means equally high precision in mobile advertising. This

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allows brands to deliver the right message in the right context, encouraging an impulse

buy and even clinching the deal.

Virtual assistants. The web, and our lives, have become more complicated to

manage, creating a business opportunity for virtual assistants. Similar to

recommendations, these services will help tackle the information overload by

identifying what is relevant and interesting to every single one of us. In practice they

will “learn” our profile (drawing from a mix of implicit and explicit inputs) and alert us

to content and information we would likely appreciate. Siri, which was acquired by

Apple, is a perfect example of this. A summary in the Wall Street Journal captures it

best: A Siri user can simply say, “Tell my wife I’ll be 20 minutes late,” and Siri scours

the user’s social networks, address books and other programs, finds the person tagged

“wife,” converts the message to text and sends it directly to her phone.

However, use cases reach beyond the content to advertising, where virtual assistants

have a natural fit with the increasing focus on mobile relationship marketing (MRM)

and efforts of brands and marketers to engage with people at every stage of the

purchase funnel and beyond. MRM encompasses everything it takes for companies

everywhere, and in every vertical, to ensure continuous customer touch and

interaction, sustained support and service, and closer and more dependent

connectivity, as well as greater insight and intimacy. What is more capable of

providing support than an electronic concierge in the form of a virtual assistant? Don't

know what to make for dinner? Use your Kraft-branded virtual assistant to seek out

recipes, make your shopping list, check for coupons and discounts, and make sure you

get your loyalty points.

Diagnosis. The fit between mobile devices and medical applications cannot be

overstated. The advance of microsensors and the microsensor networks to support

them paves the way for medical services that provide personal and contextual

diagnosis. Complement this approach with AI (as some mobile search players such as

ExpertMaker do) and the ability to input contextual variables and the result is a search

service that is personal, scalable and far superior to services and apps that focus on a

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simple database search. A use case for this could be a person inflicted with a cold or

flu. A pop-up menu of options on the mobile phone allows the user to define and limit

his search by filling in key variables such as his body temperature, the type of cough

(dry, heavy, etc.) and the duration of the illness. Based on this input the user receives a

diagnosis and some treatment suggestions.

Multimodal. Visual search effectively processes a user’s visual query captured by a

mobile device’s built-in camera with the help of algorithms to return relevant digital

content based on its interpretation of the image. The strong interest of Google to refine

and enhance its own visual search applications, and its acquisition of UK visual search

startup Plink, in 2010, for an undisclosed sum, have triggered a flurry of interest and

activity, pushing visual search up the business agenda as companies and mobile

operators explore the logical link between search and commerce. Little wonder that

players like Amazon are in on the action, acquiring players with visual search

capabilities. Will visual search and image recognition be enough to move the field

forward? It's a hard one to call, but the value proposition is simple and powerful: What

you see is what you get. Watching a music video or passing a poster where you see the

purse to die for? Capture the image, upload it to the visual search service and find out

where it is on offer.

Companies to watch

Apple. In 2010, Apple bought Siri, a provider of a virtual assistant tool, and Polar

Rose, an image recognition and AI company. These acquisitions will almost certainly

allow Apple to make this functionality available to developers and so spark a raft of

services and apps that harness new flavors of search around precision and vision.

What can we expect? No clues yet, but the involvement of Apple tells us to brace for

the impact.

ExpertMaker. This European-based startup has come out of stealth mode to equip

developers and companies with tools and APIs, allowing the easy creation of a plethora

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of precision search services and apps. Look for recommenders, interactive shopping

assistants and more as the company gears up to name its first major customer.

Chomp. Using semantics, AI and machine learning, Chomp vastly improves app

search, allowing users to input more descriptive terms — such as “puzzle games" or

“kids’ games,” instead of just the broad category of games — to find (and discover)

apps that they would otherwise not know existed. The company may be in the early

phase of providing high precision, but it gives other apps search services a run for their

money.

Hunch. Hunch's ambitious mission is to build a “taste graph” that connects every

person on the web with their affinity for anything, from books to electronic gadgets to

fashion or vacation spots. Hunch combines algorithmic machine learning with user-

curated content. The goal is to provide better recommendations to everyone, and

Hunch is well-equipped for the task. Interestingly, Hunch asks searchers a lot of

questions, and users answer. Read this as a welcome confirmation that mobile is

turning search into a conversation, driving yet another nail in the coffin of one-word

keyword search.

Primal. Primal’s semantic user modeling technology is enabling the next-generation

mobile experience. Its engine manufactures machine-readable data that describes the

interests of end users at the very moment these interests are expressed. The semantic

data is experienced by end users as simple word associations, providing an intuitive

way to articulate their interests. In the background, Primal’s software agents process

this interest data to interface with the information and services on the web. It powers

big names including LinkedIn, Blackberry and the Associated Press.

Cortexica. Cortexica offers a bio-inspired vision system enabling intelligent image

recognition using principles derived from the human visual cortex. The company

offers an API today that allows app developers to upload images to be hosted and

matched against visual queries from an app. Granted, there are other companies in the

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visual search and image recognition space; however, Cortexica has advanced

technology that make it a front-runner in the race.

Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine. It offers a natural

language input interface (which means users can ask questions, not just input

keywords), and it has amassed huge quantities of data and knowledge that it uses

dynamically to compute answers. The goal is to be able to make all systematic

knowledge computable and accessible to everyone. The mobile apps for iPhone and

Android have attracted significant attention and following. The release this year of a

series of “course assistant” apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, including

calculus and algebra, point to a new niche market that Wolfram Alpha is well-

positioned to dominate.

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Make me an offer: hyperlocal targeting in mobile – by Greg Sterling

A 2010 survey of mobile operators in the U.S. and UK found that 61 percent of

respondents “thought that coupons or vouchers would become the dominant form of

mobile marketing by 2015.” While this is potentially overstated, the hottest

development in local advertising has without question been the rise of daily deals.

These, along with digital coupons, are now being comingled and distributed in mobile

and location-based apps. This marriage creates a potent hyperlocal marketing

combination.

The rise of coupons and daily deals

The daily deals phenomenon grew out of the 2008 Great Recession and the existing

popularity of more-traditional paper and online couponing. Coupon marketer Valassis

reported that in 2010 more than $450 billion’s worth of coupons were distributed in

the U.S., and approximately 88 percent of those appeared in newspapers and other

print media.

Despite their relatively small share of the market, digital coupons have grown rapidly

over the past several years. According to comScore, U.S. coupon sites saw 44 million

monthly unique visitors in the fourth quarter of 2010. Mobile couponing has also seen

significant growth, largely as a result of the iPhone and Android devices and their app

ecosystems. There are now literally hundreds of mobile apps that feature mobile offers

and coupons.

The rise of mobile offers and coupons is driven by the fact that they’re more consumer-

friendly than other forms of mobile advertising. As the marketing cliché goes, they

appear to consumers more like content than ads. Multiple studies from

InsightExpress, Harris Interactive, Opus Research, HipCricket, Interpublic Group and

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/61-of-carriers-see-mobile-coupons-as-the-dominant-form-of-mobile-marketing-by-2015-11065/

https://www.nchmarketing.com/ResourceCenter/searchresults.aspx?q=coupon%20facts%20report

https://www.nchmarketing.com/ResourceCenter/searchresults.aspx?q=coupon%20facts%20report

http://ir.comscore.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=538331

http://ir.comscore.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=538331

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others have consistently documented consumer enthusiasm for deals and coupons vs.

more-conventional mobile ads.

The versatility and popularity of coupons laid the foundation for daily deals, which

emerged in 2009 when a failed site called ThePoint reinvented itself as Groupon.

Groupon was called “the fastest growing company in history” by Forbes. LivingSocial

is the other market leader in deals.

Unlike coupons, which are free to consumers, daily deals require an up-front online

purchase. This variation on the traditional couponing model proved successful with

consumers and local merchants. The daily deals segment thus saw unprecedented

growth in 2009 and 2010, spawning more than 500 competitors in the U.S. and

emerging in more than 100 countries globally.

In the U.S. today, the daily deals market is worth roughly $3 billion, and it may be

worth as much as $6.75 billion by 2013, according to a forecast from Opus Research.

There are other even more bullish projections out there, too.

Beyond the two market leaders, a host of other Internet and traditional media

companies have embraced daily deals, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, AT&T,

the New York Times and Yelp. More recently, however, Facebook and Yelp scaled back

their efforts because of intense competition and somewhat disappointing sales.

Accordingly, we’re starting to see consolidation and attrition in this now overcrowded

market. The next 12 months should bring considerably more M&A activity, as well as

some failures.

The segment’s phenomenal growth is attributable to enthusiastic consumer response

to aggressive discounts: local restaurants and services at 50 percent off or more. But

Groupon’s or LivingSocial’s sales pitch was also persuasive to merchants: Buy actual

customers, not clicks. Business owners were convinced to sacrifice margins for the

promise of guaranteed revenues and new customers. Daily deals also brought e-

commerce to local service businesses for the first time.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2010/12/08/79pc-of-smartphone-users-want-mobile-coupons-accenture

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupon-facebook-twitter-next-web-phenom.html

http://searchengineland.com/as-others-scale-back-google-ramps-deals-program-91396

http://searchengineland.com/as-others-scale-back-google-ramps-deals-program-91396

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Deals plus apps plus location: the rise of hyperlocal targeting

Coupons and daily deals are now being integrated with mobile and location-based

apps. Groupon Now! and LivingSocial Instant are leading examples of this. In parallel,

more-traditional coupons and offers are being used as incentives for consumers to

check in to local stores and venues. Foursquare, Scoutmob and ShopKick are examples

of the latter. Foursquare also has a set of relationships with daily deals vendors,

including LivingSocial, AT&T Interactive, Gilt Groupe and BuyWithMe, among others.

A less-well-publicized but effective hyperlocal marketing tool exists in the form of

SMS-based geo-fenced alerts. One implementation is the program O2 More, powered

by Placecast and operated by UK carrier O2 (Telefonica). Marketers can send

geographically relevant offers and incentives to O2’s subscribers, who have previously

opted to receive them. The program has proved highly successful. In the U.S., similar

geo-fenced ShopAlerts programs exist through the carrier AT&T and retailers

American Eagle Outfitters and the North Face.

Outlook

The O2 program and the marriage of deals, location and apps point toward a more

ambitious goal for the industry: real-time, hyperlocal targeting. The concept of “right

ad, right time, right place” has been around for years. It’s held out as a kind of holy

grail for mobile advertising. There’s also a related conversation around mobile-ad

personalization, where location is just one element among several that form a larger

multilayered context for ad targeting (i.e., time, demographics and behavior). The idea

is to enable a retailer such as Macy’s, for example, to target “women over 35, in

downtown San Francisco on Thursday.”

http://www.o2more.co.uk/

http://news.o2.co.uk/Press-Releases/O2-Media-delivers-revenue-boost-for-Fitness-First-319.aspx

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These sophisticated targeting tactics are almost exclusively for national retailers,

franchises or brands operating in the so-called national-local market, rather than small

businesses. However, small businesses are also participating in mobile offer

distribution through a range of channels. There’s a growing ecosystem around deals

acquisition and distribution, for instance. Local sales channels and aggregators feed

deals and coupons to mobile publishers, developers and ad networks. Examples

include AT&T’s YP Local Ad Network, Local Offer Network, Wantsa and The Dealmap,

recently acquired by Google.

A number of challenges prevent the immediate realization of the hyperlocal or

personalized mobile advertising dream. Publishers, agencies and marketers struggle

with mobile platform fragmentation and less-than-optimal mobile analytics

capabilities. For example, Apple’s iOS 5 policy change, precluding device UDID

numbers from being tracked across a network, obstructs targeting and analytics,

though several ad networks are collaborating on a creative work-around.

Another requirement for the full realization of the “right ad, right time” vision is the

creation of dynamic ads: Ads that feature local messaging or personalized elements

have been shown to perform better than generic, national ad copy. But to truly make

ads personal and local (or hyperlocal), ad creative or other elements (e.g., maps, phone

numbers) need to be dynamically inserted, based on time, user location and other

variables.

Google is already doing this with phone and location AdWords extensions, which

enable national chains like Radio Shack to direct mobile users to the nearest store

automatically. Other companies such as Collective (which bought Tumri), Undertone,

iPromote, PaperG and Yahoo allow dynamic insertion of different creative elements,

such as background color, demographically targeted promotional messages or variable

discounts. Over time dynamic creative will become increasingly common online and in

mobile.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130775

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130775

http://www.google.com/support/richmedia/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157516&topic=24315

http://www.google.com/support/richmedia/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157516&topic=24315

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Mobile payments are another piece of the hyperlocal puzzle. Google, PayPal, mobile

carriers, Visa, American Express and others are racing to roll out mobile payments to

consumers and merchants. Without digressing into the challenges and mechanics of

these systems, which is discussed in another section of this report, deals and discounts

will be used to encourage consumer adoption of mobile payments. Google Wallet is

integrated with Google Offers for this reason. Google also sees deals and payments as

part of a larger strategy to track digital ad performance from the Internet, all the way

to the point of sale. Visa has also said that deals and offers will be an integral part of

mobile payments as well.

Over the next several years, we should see greater integration of PC ad networks,

DSPs, exchanges and mobile ad buying. In other words, online platforms will

increasingly enable mobile ads alongside PC advertising. (Google jump-started mobile

paid search this way.) We will also see dynamic ad creative become more mainstream.

Tracking and targeting will get better in mobile, aided by point-of-sale tracking and

integration. Marketers will increasingly be able to track how well online or mobile ads

generate actions, including purchases, in the real world. Deals and offers will be the

main vehicles but not the only tools to track offline action and purchase behavior.

Deals and offers will increasingly move out of the realm of email marketing and into a

wider range of contexts, including search and display — online and in mobile. Google

is already experimenting with “Offer Ads” in paid search, online and in mobile.

Companies to watch

Deals and offers are at the epicenter of hyperlocal mobile marketing. That should

continue into the foreseeable future. And while there are scores of companies shaping

mobile advertising, the following players are driving, or point the way toward,

developments that will impact the sector over the longer term. A few of these

companies are segment leaders, but in most cases they embody or represent an

important trend.

http://internet2go.net/news/ad-networks/nexage-and-dataxu-show-way-future-mobile-ad-buying

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Groupon and LivingSocial. These two are the undisputed leaders in the daily deals

segment. They will continue to define it and help drive its evolution for the foreseeable

future. Both have moved aggressively into mobile. Ultimately, however, LivingSocial

may prove the more sustainable company of the two because the company is more

thoughtfully managed. Though we haven’t seen its financial data yet, LivingSocial is

growing at a similar pace as Groupon, with likely far less spending on marketing. And

it has yet to make public gaffes like Groupon’s Super Bowl ad apology or leaked memo

during its quiet period.

Google. With its very recent acquisitions of two deals companies (The Dealmap, Zave

Networks), Google has affirmed that deals are a key part of its local and mobile

strategies. At the same time competitors Facebook and Yelp have scaled back their

ambitions. But Google is up to something much bigger: creating an integrated, end-to-

end system where PC and mobile ads motivate consumer actions offline and are

tracked to the point of sale. Google probably has more assets than any other

competitor in local-mobile and already is the dominant player in mobile advertising.

Foursquare. Foursquare’s bid to become mainstream is in part tied to offering

discounts and deals to check in (or return) to nearby businesses and stores. The

company has called its strategy loyalty 2.0. Using offers for loyalty — Groupons are

mostly for new-customer acquisition to date — will be critical for the evolution of the

space.

Facebook. After announcing it would aggregate and create its own daily deals,

Facebook recently exited the daily deals market with little explanation but an obvious

lack of traction. But it retained self-service check-in deals. Facebook also just

expanded the use of location on its site and is poised to become a massive mobile ad

network after the company goes public. These factors argue that Facebook will be a

force in local-mobile advertising, despite rejection of daily deals.

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/02/06/that-was-fast-groupons-super-bowl-ad-draws-backlash-video/

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/in-a-quiet-period-groupon-feels-the-noise/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/26/us-facebook-deals-idUSTRE77P6Q820110826

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XAD. An independent local-mobile ad network, xAD operates in both the search and

mobile display segments. It offers inventory to national advertisers and directly to

small businesses. The company is one of a very small number of local-mobile

specialists and is a likely target for acquisition in the near term. Deals are one type of

ad inventory the company distributes.

WHERE. LBS application WHERE built a coupon-based ad network and was a small

player, overshadowed by others until it was bought by eBay earlier this year. WHERE

now runs within PayPal. The company is working on a range of interesting initiatives

seeking to bring offline businesses and deals together with mobile payments and

related analytics.

Honorable mentions. There are other noteworthy companies in the local and deals

segment: AT&T, Wantsa and Scoutmob, among others. AT&T is the largest local ad

sales channel in the U.S. Wantsa is one of several companies building a “deal

exchange.” However its model is more sophisticated, and the company is creating an

AdWords-like bidding system for deals. Scoutmob gets a mention because the

company is using an OpenTable-like model for deals. Consumers are given incentives

to visit local stores and restaurants. Once present, customers unlock a deal. And rather

than paying 50 percent of the transaction to the deals vendor, merchants pay a lower,

per-customer bounty.

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Mobile payments: the next important growth in the mobile market – by Peter Crocker

The mobile phone is becoming increasingly multifaceted and integrated into users’

everyday lives; research has documented that mobile phone users are more likely to

leave their wallet at home than their phone, which makes the latter an ideal electronic

device to replace cash and credit cards.

The emergence of what we call mobile payments does just that, enabling users to make

purchases in brick-and-mortar retail stores and on the web using their phones. Much

opportunity lies in this space, not just for the big companies like Amazon and Google

but also for carriers, handset OEMs, banks and credit card companies.

Types of mobile payments

NFC technology has emerged in the past year and presents the greatest long-term

mobile payments opportunity. This space is very lucrative, but barriers to entry are

high: Vendors must maintain billing relationships, manage fraud risk and build

infrastructure to accommodate the technology to successfully enable mobile payments.

The existing incumbents in this space — credit card companies and banks — are

currently being challenged by wireless carriers and Internet players. The latter have

existing billing relationships and some infrastructure but have limited ability to

manage fraud and risk.

For now, Internet players and carriers have chosen not to compete in the NFC-based

mobile payments settlement market due to the additional infrastructure investment

required and limited experience managing fraud and risk. Instead, they are providing

mobile payments applications and platforms.

http://gadgets.emedia.com.my/tipslist.php?id=12&title=Cell_Phone_More_Vital_than_Wallet,_Poll_Finds

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Banks, handset OEMs and carriers are angling to gain more control of the NFC mobile

payments market by pushing their own on-device architectures to control the secure

element (SE), which stores users’ credit card numbers and payments credentials on

mobile phones. Banks and credit card companies are interested in embedding the SE

in a removable SD card that they control, while handset OEMs would like it

permanently embedded within the phone, so they can control it. Carriers want the SE

on the SIM card.

Another approach to mobile payments is the use of 2D bar codes to facilitate mobile

transactions, though this is a very nascent space. Currently, two large retailers,

Starbucks and Target, have deployed mobile gift card strategies using 2D bar codes

that allow them to complete transactions in a closed loop where the retailer controls

every part of the process. The closed nature of these solutions also requires that

retailers bear all the costs of implementing the system, limiting its widespread

adoption. We believe the launch and growth of NFC technology will ultimately replace

the 2D bar code solution as users become more accustomed to tapping to pay vs.

scanning.

Meanwhile, leading point-of-sale (POS) terminal vendors such as VeriFone have

launched smartphone add-on equipment that allows merchants to accept payments on

a smartphone. New entrants like Quicken and startups such as Square have also taken

advantage of this emerging opportunity. Today these transactions are predominantly

credit-card-based, but NFC technology can also be leveraged to process payments

between two NFC-enabled phones.

The mobile phone is also increasingly used to facilitate transactions on the web. Many

companies that provide payments service on the wired web have migrated their

solution to the mobile phone. That includes Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and

PayPal. These vendors typically offer stand-alone native applications, transaction-

based mobile websites and APIs that allow developers to integrate payments solutions

into their applications. Mobile micropayments vendors are facilitating mobile

transactions via text message. These services are primarily used to purchase virtual

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goods and services, such as new levels in video games or improved status in social

games. Users can set up the service to be billed via their carriers or credit card.

Companies competing in this market include Zong, Boku, AlloPass, mHit and MoPay.

Outlook

The total global transaction volume processed through mobile payments will exceed

$753.3 billion by 2015, rising from $31.8 billion in 2011. Mobile NFC transactions will

be the primary driver of mobile payments through 2015 and will grow from almost

$4.3 billion to $595.7 billion in 2015. A fair amount of infrastructure is already in place

to enable this. We see limited growth in SMS payments’ share of the mobile payments

market and expect the mobile web to process a smaller percentage of transactions in

the future. Mobile POS systems will benefit from the emergence of NFC technology

and total volume of payments processed via smartphone-based mobile POS systems

and will reach $52.8 billion in 2015.

While credit card companies have an important role in the mobile payments value

chain today, this position will be more aggressively challenged in the future. Isis, a

joint venture between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile that provides a mobile wallet

platform, has chosen to partner with the credit card companies for the short term, but

its ambitions to control the entire mobile payments ecosystem is not a secret and will

lead to competition with its partners in the future. Internet players such as Google are

providing significant value to the ecosystem through Google Wallet and Google Offers,

which enable merchants to build better relationships with their customers,

incentivizing merchants to invest in new NFC POS terminals. This strategy places

Google in a position between the user and merchant and will allow the company to

move up the value chain in the future.

The emergence of NFC and mobile payments provides the opportunity for merchants

to create new communication channels with their customers through special offers and

couponing. This will also generate opportunity for consultants to help merchants

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/mobile-payments-forecasts-technologies-and-opportunities/

http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/08/mobile-payments-forecasts-technologies-and-opportunities/

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discover the best ways to leverage this new technology. The emergence of mobile

payments also drives financial transactions through the mobile ecosystem, enabling

multiple industry players to add value and build business models to capture a share of

this flow of cash. This will lead to more capital in the industry, more investment, more

innovation and better experiences.

With the core functionality of payments undifferentiated, the ability to gain an

advantage will lie with controlling the customer and the ability to provide added value

on top of mobile payments. Capturing customer data that provides insight into likes

and dislikes as well as buying patterns will be vitally important to getting this right.

Carriers, banks, credit card companies and OEMs will battle to control the SE, which

will also allow them to control security and provide fraud protection. While each

player touts its solution as the most secure and raises questions about its competitions’

commitment to security, doubt and skepticism may arise around the safe use of NFC.

This could potentially slow widespread adoption.

Companies to watch

The opportunity presented by mobile payments has attracted many competitors, and

the space is quickly becoming busy. While there will be plenty of room in the market

for a multitude of players, a few early entrants and large players will provide

disproportionate leadership and influence.

MasterCard Worldwide. MasterCard has come to market with a number of mobile

payments offerings, leveraging its huge settlement network, brand name and wide

profit margins.

The company’s offerings include:

MoneySend. This service enables person-to-person transactions via a mobile

phone using SMS, web browser interface or native application, and a prepaid

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account.

Mobile Payments Gateway. The mobile payments–processing platform lets

financial institutions and mobile network operators deliver end-to-end payments

solutions through the MasterCard Network.

PayPass. This is a contactless payments service that allows users to make

payments using NFC-enabled POS infrastructure.

MasterCard’s greatest growth opportunity will be in PayPass, which permits the

company to control the POS infrastructure and how NFC payments are processed. This

advantage allows MasterCard to direct payments to its settlement service and facilitate

interaction between merchant and customer.

Isis. Isis is a joint venture between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile founded to create a

united mobile payments network across the U.S. that modernizes the current

payments system by integrating it with the mobile phone. The organization has

partnered with Discover and Barclays to provide banking services and with

MasterCard and Visa to handle transaction settlements. It plans on launching a pilot

program in Salt Lake City in early to mid-2012 and has a signed agreement with the

Utah Transit Authority to make the entire public transportation system Isis-enabled.

Nokia. Mobile payments is an important area for Nokia, and the company has been

developing relevant technologies and services for a number of years. Along with

Philips and Sony, Nokia established the NFC forum in 2004 to promote the use of NFC

technology, and it launched its first NFC-enabled smartphone in 2005. Nokia also

offers Nokia Money, a service that allows users to transfer money between bank

accounts using their mobile phone number as a unique identifier. Although Nokia has

lost significant ground in the smartphone market, the company still has tremendous

global reach, especially in developing countries, where it ships 77 percent of its phones.

Nokia also has extensive knowledge working with NFC technology that it can bring to

the market, and it has announced that all smartphones shipped in 2011 will include

NFC.

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Google. Google made a major play in the mobile payments market with its

announcement of Google Mobile Wallet. Google Mobile Wallet is a mobile application

that enables NFC-based mobile transactions. Google will not charge a fee for

transactions completed via its application but instead plans on driving revenues

through Google Offers, which provides Groupon-type offers to users. By pairing offers

with mobile payments, Google will make it much easier for users to redeem offers and

coupons through a single application.

Google also provides Checkout Mobile, a mobile web payments service that allows

mobile web merchants to link the Google Checkout Mobile website to their own.

Google’s control of the Android operating system places it in a unique position to

provide software support for NFC. Google has partnered with NXP to develop an open

software stack that will be integrated with NXP’s NFC controller and the Android

operating system. This software will make it easier for developers to create NFC

applications on the Android platform.

Amazon. Amazon already holds a strong position in the mobile payments market.

From July 2009 to July 2010, $1 billion’s worth of goods on Amazon were bought

using a mobile device. Currently the company offers two mobile payments services,

Amazon Mobile Payments Service, a set of mobile payments APIs, and Checkout by

Amazon Mobile, a mobile version of Amazon’s e-commerce checkout experience. The

company also offers applications that allow users to search for merchandise on the

web with their phones to compare pricing with similar items in the store. Amazon is

moving toward integrating mobile payments into the application and leveraging NFC

technology so that users can swipe NFC tags on physical merchandise. This will

streamline finding the item on the web. Amazon’s vast database of consumers’ buying

habits provides the company with an important position in the value chain, enabling it

to present targeted offers that can stimulate impulse purchases.

Zong. Zong allows users to make micropayments to buy online digital goods with

their phones. Users enter their phone number into an interface within a game or

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1451041&highlight=

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1451041&highlight=

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application, and charges are added to their wireless bill. The ease of use of the service

has been an important factor to the company’s recent success, leading to 3.2 billion

mobile users in close to 50 countries. Zong has also struck a deal to be a primary

vendor to allow Facebook users to buy Facebook credits using their phone. In July

eBay acquired Zong for $240 million in cash.

MFoundry. MFoundry is a provider of mobile financial services solutions. Its mobile

payments platform supports payments via SMS, mobile web and native applications.

Starbucks chose mFoundry to build its mobile gift card program using 2D bar codes at

the point of sale. The application allows users to check balances, reload their cards and

view transactions on their prepaid Starbucks cards. In over 1,000 Starbucks, users of

the application can also pay for their coffee using 2D bar code technology. Some of

mFoundry’s strategic investors include Motorola and PayPal, and 400 U.S. financial

institutions have selected mFoundry’s mobile banking solution. These relationships

will be key to mFoundry’s growing in the mobile payments market.

The mobile payments market represents a tremendous opportunity and has attracted

many large and powerful players. As the market evolves, vendors will have to walk a

challenging path of fierce competition, as well as cooperation with vendors throughout

the value chain. This balance of competition and cooperation will be the biggest

challenge for the market.

http://www.matrixpartners.com/site/press_detail/1216/

http://www.matrixpartners.com/site/press_detail/1216/

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The future of mobile advertising, 2011–2016 – by Neil Strother

Mobile advertising is for real, despite perceptions to the contrary. Spending in the

space will be approximately $4 billion worldwide this year. Spending by U.S.

advertisers will be over $1 billion. Granted, this is a fraction of overall digital ads,

which for the U.S. this year will be in the $33 billion range. Nonetheless, more

advertisers will turn to mobile in the coming years as targeting improves, audiences

build and results meet or beat competing channels.

To get a clearer picture of mobile advertising's future, it helps to first explore the

current landscape — the key driver and players involved today. With these as a

backdrop, a five-year outlook such as this comes into greater focus and leads to a

discussion of the major players to watch as 2016 approaches.

Current trends and players

The big driver for mobile advertising has been a tidal wave of smartphones, which by

the end of 2011 will represent 35 percent of all mobile subscribers in the U.S. This

wave will continue in coming years. Similar smartphone growth is happening in other

geographies. For instance, iPhone shipments to China have experienced a 142 percent

increase year over year, according to researcher IDC. And smartphone penetration in

Western Europe is expected to nearly match that of the U.S., at 31 percent by the end

of 2011.

This big shift to smartphones has important implications for advertisers. Why?

Because smartphone owners provide a rich target: They browse, search, consume

content and conduct commerce in and through their phones. Advertisers need to be

there at those critical moments of purchase decision making, which now take place on

smartphones — and to a lesser yet no less important extent on tablets.

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So which companies have the biggest impact on mobile advertising in 2011? Here are

the current top players. We’ll talk more about what’s in store for them in the future

later in this piece.

Google. The search giant is firing on most mobile-ad cylinders. For instance, it

recently announced results of its first mobile ad campaign, which integrated its AdMob

network with its DoubleClick ad-serving apparatus. This is an important step for

advertisers because it allows them to unite desktop and mobile campaigns in a more

efficient manner, thus reducing complexity. The advertiser was Intel, which ran a rich-

media campaign that generated a 19.5 percent engagement rate, with an average

display time of 15-plus seconds — three times longer than average DoubleClick rich-

media campaigns. OMD Director of Analytics Amit Prakash called it a “huge win for

advertisers.” And, by the way, Google claims a $1 billion run rate for all of its mobile

advertising — surely a sign of strength as the market matures.

Apple. The company’s iAd mobile ad program is still working out some kinks. Earlier

this year the company cut its minimum iAd buy in half, from $1 million to $500,000.

More recently, Apple has reportedly become more price competitive, allowing agencies

more flexibility and the capability to bundle campaigns, with prices for some

campaigns costing as little as $300,000. Still, iAd suffers from a perception of creative

control. Early on, agency people complained about delays in the creative process

because of Apple’s insistence on regulating the details. This has abated somewhat with

Apple’s releasing a new iAd producer tool, but the negative vibe still lingers. But Apple

plays for the longer term. And the company can take credit for plowing new ground in

this space by getting big advertisers to consider mobile ad buys in the half-million to

million-dollar range.

Millennial Media. Millennial is an independent mobile ad network that boasts

significant reach, but it must battle the two giants mentioned above. Despite that

challenge, Millennial delivers more than 23 billion unique mobile ad impressions per

month to 142 million unique users (92 million in the U.S.), and it has produced more

http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/08/intel-omd-delivers-engaging-rich-media.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-07/apple-s-iad-mobile-ad-service-said-to-cut-prices-as-clients-turn-to-rivals.html

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than 10,000 mobile campaigns so far. Millennial’s blend of premium publishers and

targeting capabilities gives it staying power.

InMobi. InMobi is another independent mobile ad network with broad global clout. It

got its start in India in 2007, and it has quickly grown beyond the Asia-Pacific region;

last year it entered the lucrative U.S. mobile ad market. The company serves nearly

47.3 billion mobile ad impressions per month to 314 million consumers in more than

165 countries. Another sign of growth: InMobi recently acquired Sprout, a company

that specializes in the creation of HTML5 mobile rich-media ads.

Microsoft. The software giant has skin in the mobile ad game, but it struggles with a

mobile phone platform that has stalled. Its mobile display ad network can reach nearly

50 million unique mobile users in the U.S. Its mobile search advertising solution

leverages partnerships with Bing and Yahoo, which boasts 28 million unique searchers

per month. But no one thinks of Microsoft as a front-runner in mobile, and the

uncertainty over its Nokia partnership clouds its future. Nonetheless, don’t count out

Redmond just yet.

Outlook: what to expect in 2016

There is no question that mobile advertising is in its early phase, and it still faces some

noteworthy challenges over the next five years. These include:

Device and OS fragmentation. Fragmentation creates hurdles for advertisers that

are seeking to target audiences with consistent experiences. Building ads for an iAd

campaign, for instance, and then having to convert to Android or a non-smartphone

platform creates hurdles for advertisers and their creative partners.

Lack of standards for ad measurement. This casts doubt on the delivery of ad

impressions and uncertainty over the ROI. Not everyone measures the same thing, so

advertisers aren't always sure of what their mobile ad dollars are paying for.

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Lack of scale. Lack of scale causes some advertisers to hold back when they can’t

reach a large-enough audience. Despite growing mobile audiences, buying a large

mobile audience can be difficult, especially for major brands accustomed to reaching

audiences in the tens of millions.

Lack of experienced mobile practitioners. This leads to lots of trial and error on

the part of people unfamiliar with the diverse mobile tools. For example, ad agencies

claim to have mobile experts on staff, but in reality few do, since mobile is still

relatively new and there are few people with experience.

These are not insurmountable issues. The industry has already made strides to address

them, particularly the standards needed for measurement, which the Mobile

Marketing Association has focused on. As with any new form of advertising, it will take

several years for these issues to abate.

7 trends that will shape mobile advertising

Seven trends will shape mobile advertising in the next five years. They are:

More-relevant behavioral targeting. Currently, mobile advertisers use traditional

methods of ad targeting: by device, demographic group, context, some location. These

make sense, as far as they go. But in five years, mobile ad targeting will become more

relevant to a person’s behavior and current location. For instance, online advertising

network Adverline has an AdNext server that builds a prediction model of spatial and

temporal relevance for delivering ads to mobile users. The company has tested this

with the COEX Mall in South Korea, and it found a 70 percent confidence level that

ads displayed are spatially and temporally relevant. This means that the ads relate to

where someone is likely to go next. This is powerful information for advertisers — if a

bit spooky for mobile consumers.

http://nclab.kaist.ac.kr/papers/Conference/hotmobile11-adnext.pdf

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Growing mobile search. Mobile search advertising is already a big driver of ad

spending; this is where Google currently makes much of its money in mobile. In five

years, this will still be the case, as people continue to use mobile devices to search for

products and services. What will change is that, coupled with better targeting, search

advertisers will deliver more-relevant ads based not only on location and relevant

keywords but also on more-accurate predictability engines.

Better analytics. Right now, the tools for measuring mobile ad campaigns lack the

sophistication that advertisers expect. The Mobile Marketing Association and other

groups, such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, have set up good guidelines. But

these are still evolving, and not everyone plays by the same rules. In five years, the

standards will have matured. Companies will agree more about what gets measured,

and analyzing mobile campaign effectiveness will not be as big of a hurdle.

Greater interactivity. Most mobile ads today are delivered as relatively simple text

or banner formats. They are clickable but not very interactive. Rich-media ads are

available, too, but they are not as widely deployed for a variety of reasons: more cost,

and not all devices render them well. In five years, interactive ads will be common, and

users will be expanding, collapsing and manipulating them in ways that are still

unfolding. This will unleash creative minds to show off their capabilities. Also,

technology like augmented reality will make the interaction with brands and the world

around consumers more interactive: Imagine looking at your mobile screen and

playing a Zynga game sponsored by Coca-Cola, based on your physical surroundings.

Commerce-enabled ads. Advertisers, especially retailers, have already started to

see the benefits of mobile campaigns that enable consumers to complete a mobile

purchase. For instance, movie tickets are easily purchased via a smartphone after

someone sees a trailer for a new film. However, most people don’t do this today. But in

five years this will become quite common, as advertising messages will be tightly

linked to on-phone commerce, and more ads themselves will be commerce-enabled.

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Mobile-social as the “personal cloud.” Today the mobile and social worlds

already collide with services like Foursquare and Gowalla. In five years, though, this

functionality will likely evolve into what some Stanford researchers suggest is the

personal cloud, which will be personal data that surrounds us wherever we go. It will

also be shareable with whomever we choose and will be used to make purchases,

among other things. Savvy advertisers will leverage this trend with relevant offers that

provide value but still respect user privacy.

Larger mobile ad budgets. In the past three years, mobile ad budgets have grown

from the low five digits to half a million dollars or more. In five years, advertisers will

regularly spend a million dollars on mobile campaigns as the targeting improves,

audiences build and the ROI metric tools become more robust.

Wildcard prediction. LivingSocial will become a major player in mobile

advertising. The conventional pick here would be Groupon. But LivingSocial has

something that gives it a leg up: a large investment from Amazon of $175 million.

Amazon itself is now in the mobile ad space on some Kindle devices. So it is

conceivable that LivingSocial will get the mobile ad piece figured out sooner than the

current daily deals leader.

Companies to watch

Who will be among the leaders in mobile advertising in five years? Some of the

companies leading the way today (and mentioned above) will fade away or be acquired

— Millennial Media and InMobi, for instance. Keep an eye on the following companies,

which will benefit from the coming trends.

Google. The company has many assets to keep it on top in five years; these are

Android, AdMob, search (down pat), smart people and a brand that shows few signs of

fatigue. Google also does analytics well, and it can leverage that in mobile going

forward. The only thing that could slow it down would be a major regulatory setback.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/may/mobisocial-050911.html

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Apple. Tim Cook’s new company may lack the advertising skills of Google, but it has

plenty of heft to keep it near the top come 2016: iAd, millions of devices, iTunes, apps,

developers and advertisers lusting to stay in front of the vast Apple audience. It doesn’t

have to be top dog. Apple can be satisfied with a smaller chunk of the pie and high

margins. Sound familiar? Apple also wins with interactive ads: It helped invent the

“shakable” ad. And mobile commerce is something that flows naturally from the App

Store and iTunes.

Facebook. The social juggernaut has the mobile user base to ratchet up its mobile

advertising game, and it will. Why? Because that’s where FB users will live in five

years: on their smartphones and tablets.

Twitter. Once it gets its advertising act together, Twitter is destined to be a player in

mobile ads. This is an opportunity it cannot screw up; if it does, look for another

company to swoop in and get this piece of its business in order (see below).

AT&T. The venerable telecom is trying to forge significant assets into a mobile ad

powerhouse, but it has yet to make a big dent. It has nearly 100 million mobile

subscribers, a large YellowPages sales force and the smarts of Maria Mandel (among

others) to make this a winner. In October, the company plans to open a media lab

facility in New York as part of its targeted advertising business called AdWorks. If it

can stay focused and bring all the pieces to bear, this could be a big winner.

Microsoft (think Nokia and Skype, too). Microsoft needs to get its act together

with Windows Phone 7 and Nokia. If it does and mixes in Skype along with its mobile

ad team, the combination could be a powerful one. Now show us it can be done.

Wildcard prediction. Amazon will become a power in mobile advertising. This is

not a big stretch. It already has ad-supported Kindles, and its pending tablet device

presents similar advertising opportunities. Mobile ads are in Amazon’s future. The

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20097369-94/at-t-punches-up-targeted-ad-business/

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only question is, How well can it execute here? Given its overall track record, chances

are good.

And who are the best acquisition candidates? InMobi and Millennial Media could be

swallowed by Microsoft or Facebook. A media company like Disney or Comcast-NBCU

could wade in and purchase Twitter. Don’t be surprised.

The big winners in mobile advertising will be those companies that leverage key

aspects of mobile: behavior, location, relevance and commerce. Couple these with

first-rate analytics that prove the ROI and you have a winner. Google, Apple, Facebook

and AT&T look like the top contenders in this space for the long haul. But the prize is

large enough that an unseen player could swoop in unexpectedly in a few years and

grab a share that topples even one of these supposed can't-miss competitors. That's the

great attraction of mobile advertising: It has so much potential it will entice the best

companies, whether they exist now or not.

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A mobile VoIP and chat outlook – by Pim Bilderbeek

Mobile voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and chat are the over-the-top (OTT)

counterparts of mobile voice and SMS, and the current uptake of this technology is

developing quickly. Juniper Research recently predicted that the total number of

mobile VoIP minutes would jump from 15 billion in 2010 to 470.6 billion by 2015,

thanks to the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks. The biggest boost will come from

the U.S., which will account for 135 billion mobile VoIP minutes by 2015.

Other drivers in this space include the fast-growing smartphone market and the rate of

mobile Internet adoption, the availability of all-you-can-eat mobile broadband bundles

and the high price of mobile voice and SMS (20 cents per message if you don't have an

unlimited plan).

For traditional mobile operators, the impact of an increased uptake of mobile VoIP

and chat is potentially devastating. Operators run a very real risk that voice and SMS

revenues will dwindle. A study by GSM and Wireless Intelligence estimates that global

mobile service provider revenues will be $1.1 trillion in 2012. In developed countries

such as the U.S., 70 percent of those revenues are derived from voice. If mobile VoIP

calls can be made for free on top of a $10 per month mobile broadband subscription,

mobile operators must either increase the price of mobile broadband or find other

potential revenue streams in the web economy.

However, despite its recent update, not everything is rosy for mobile VoIP and chat

vendors. Inhibiting the space’s growth are the inferior quality of mobile VoIP

compared to 3G, the bad handover of mobile VoIP calls between 3G cells, operators

that block or price mobile VoIP/chat traffic and the existence of large “barren” areas —

outside major cities and inside buildings — where 3G coverage is limited or only 2G or

GPRS and EDGE is available.

http://gigaom.com/2010/07/01/mobile-voip-forecast/

http://gigaom.com/mobile/global-mobile-revenues-will-be-1-1-trillion-in-2012-here-is-why/

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Mobile VoIP and chat is here to stay, although mass-scale adoption of end-to-end

mobile VoIP calling will not happen until 4G networks that are designed for mobile

broadband and OTT services are fully implemented.

In this piece, we look at the companies currently making noise in the mobile VoIP/chat

space, as well as trends and companies to watch closely as we move into 2012.

Companies that impacted 2011

Skype. Skype is the 800-pound gorilla in the mobile VoIP and chat market. Over the

past couple of years, it has been branching out from offering mass-market fixed VoIP

and video to mobile VoIP and Skype for Business (a professional version of Skype with

enhanced management features designed for home offices, small and medium

businesses, and large enterprises). Skype was acquired by Microsoft in May 2011. Also

in 2011, Skype and Facebook announced a video chat partnership that could be

extended to mobile platforms. And in August of this year, Skype acquired GroupMe,

adding group-messaging capabilities to its service. The company is also branching out

to the TV platform, forging alliances with HDTV manufacturers like LG and Samsung.

Microsoft. Until Microsoft acquired Skype, its main mobile VoIP and chat offerings

were Windows Live Messenger for consumers and Lync for business. Microsoft's

alliance with Nokia in February 2011 was a clear sign that Microsoft is tightening the

link between mobile hardware and Windows Phone 7. With Windows Phone 8 this

integration is likely to be strengthened even further.

Facebook. The leader in the social networking space has offered limited chat

possibilities for the PC and mobile platforms for some time now. Its ties with Skype are

increasing, bringing more flesh to the bone with video chat. In March 2011, Facebook

acquired group text-messaging startup Beluga, and in August, it launched its own

Messenger application.

http://gigaom.com/2011/05/09/why-microsoft-is-buying-skype-for-8-billion/

http://gigaom.com/2011/07/06/facebook-skype-video-chat/

http://gigaom.com/2011/08/21/skype-groupme/

http://gigaom.com/apple/microsoftnokia-partnership-not-enough-to-challenge-apple/

http://gigaom.com/2011/03/01/facebook-follows-our-advice-buys-beluga/

http://gigaom.com/apple/the-complete-guide-to-facebook-messenger/

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Google. With Google Voice, Google Talk and Gmail Voice, the company is quickly

becoming a large player in the mobile VoIP and chat market. The company extended

the reach of Gmail Voice to countries outside the U.S. in August 2011. With Google+,

Google entered the social networking space, and with Google Huddle it included group

text-message capabilities. With the acquisition of Motorola Mobile in August, Google is

opening up the possibility to tightly embed mobile VoIP and chat into Android mobile

handsets.

Samsung. With the launch of ChatON in September 2011, Samsung is entering the

mobile messaging market. Interestingly, ChatON brings text, group chat and image

and video sharing not only to Samsung's own bada OS-based handsets but also to iOS,

RIM and Android. In addition, Samsung is planning to extend ChatON to the PC

platform.

What to expect in 2012

We expect three themes to dominate the mobile VoIP and chat market in 2012:

The battle between mobile operators and mobile VoIP and chat players will

intensify.

Within the mobile VoIP and chat space, the market will diverge further into pure

play mobile VoIP and chat vendors like Nimbuzz and full social experience

players like Facebook.

Mobile VoIP and chat vendors will need to figure out better ways to monetize

their offerings and subscriber bases.

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Mobile operators vs. VoIP and chat vendors

The successful uptake of all-you-can-eat mobile broadband bundles has caused

operators to think hard about their mobile broadband business models. Already they

are replacing these bundles with data caps or pay-as-you-go pricing plans. Operators

justify such actions by the huge investments they say they need to build next-

generation networks.

But there is more: Mobile operators’ core revenue and profit base is at risk if mobile

VoIP replaces mobile voice and chat replaces SMS. The options operators have to fight

against this are limited, aside from data caps and price hikes on mobile broadband.

Blocking or placing a tax on mobile VoIP and chat to protect revenues is a possibility,

but not every country allows this behavior (e.g., Chile and the Netherlands with their

net neutrality laws). Also, this strategy opens up the possibility for competitive

operators to not block or tax mobile VoIP and chat, resulting in customer churn.

Selling mobile broadband as part of voice and SMS plans is another possibility, forcing

customers to buy SMS even if they might not want to use it.

Partnering

Another more-forward-looking approach for operators is to partner with mobile VoIP

and chat players. Operators like 3UK, KDDI and Verizon Wireless have proactively

partnered with Skype and offer handsets that integrate Skype. Vodafone made a

similar arrangement with Facebook. Hyves, the Dutch version of Facebook, has an

MVNO agreement with T-Mobile in the Netherlands. Other operators like Telefonica

(JaJah and BlueVia) and BT (Ribbit) are trying to create network APIs for SMS and

mobile VoIP to attract partners that are willing to share SMS and mobile VoIP

revenues. So far, these partnerships have delivered more users to mobile VoIP and

chat players and more mobile (broadband) subscribers to operators.

http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/press/news/vodafone_555blue.html

http://hyves.nl/

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Unbundling

Ultimately, the old (mobile) telco business model of selling bundles of service and

capacity is getting tired. Communications revenue growth is flattening worldwide, and

while there is still growth in emerging markets, the developed world is becoming

saturated. A recent study by IBM paints four scenarios of the telecom world in 2015;

none predicts the growth of communications revenue, and all predict the growth of

connectivity and content revenues. The (mobile) telco challenge is to profitably ride

out the current business model while at the same time positioning for the new world.

T-Mobile is a good example of unbundling. It takes the carrier-agnostic route,

positioning itself as an OTT VoIP player, and it has launched Bobsled, providing free

calling within Facebook. In the future, T-Mobile plans to include video chat and the

ability to place VoIP calls to mobile and landline numbers in the U.S. It will also offer

applications on smartphones and tablets across various mobile platforms, regardless

of the carrier that powers such devices.

The process of unbundling will likely be drawn out over a considerable number of

years. We will see emerging new models of unbundled service and capacity such as

webcos (OTT players), connectcos (so-called dumb pipes), capcos (for instance

Lightsquared) and servcos (for instance Vodafone selling location data to TomTom).

Wildcard prediction. Mobile operators open up the SMS walled garden and invite

social networking vendors to create apps that leverage SMS for a share of the revenue.

Best-of-breed products and best-of-suite products

Best of breed. Best of breed refers to products that are very good at performing a

single function, such as mobile VoIP or chat. Nimbuzz, WhatsApp, Viber, eBuddy,

Vumber, PingChat!, Fring, Tango, Kik and HighNote are examples of such products.

For these players, extension within the mobile platform (iOS, Android, WP7, Symbian,

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/ibv-telco2015.html

http://www.themetisfiles.com/2011/01/the-six-sided-telco-rolling-the-telco-dice/

http://www.lightsquared.com/

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BlackBerry OS) and the extension across platforms such as the home computer and TV

will be a key area of focus. Extension across the mobile platform will provide a large

mobile user base. Extension across platforms in general will provide the opportunity to

connect with the user base from other devices besides just mobile devices. The

increased user and device base will provide a larger audience to be monetized.

Best of suite. Best of suite refers to products that offer a collection of functions that

work well within a single service. Microsoft, Skype, Google, Facebook and Apple are

examples of vendors that already offer, or are planning to offer, a social suite that

incorporates mobile VoIP and chat rather than focusing on a single solution. For the

best-of-suite players, rounding out their offerings to include mobile VoIP and chat will

be a key area of focus.

Wildcard prediction. Watch the acquisition space of the existing best-of-suite

players mentioned here or device manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and others who

are acquiring best-of-breed vendors.

Monetizing VoIP and chat offerings

Let's face it: Aside from Skype, Rebtel, Truphone, Vyke or Voipbuster, whose primary

revenue streams are in paid voice minutes, none of the other mobile VoIP and chat

players are making any (serious) money. There are those who have a paid mobile VoIP

revenue stream, but they are small compared to, say, Skype. Most startups in this

space have focused on getting a large user base with free services.

For the large best-of-suite vendors, the mobile VoIP and chat revenue stream is of

lesser importance. The likes of Facebook are already getting their revenues from

advertising. Offering mobile VoIP and chat for them is more about increasing user

time spent on the platform than getting another revenue stream. For the best-of-breed

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vendors, for instance eBuddy, tapping into an advertising revenue stream seems the

most obvious choice.

Monetizing a chat or mobile VoIP service that other players give away for free will be

difficult. But there are other options: Nimbuzz (like Skype) is now offering games,

which creates the potential to make money from games vendors or users buying

games. Skype is adding an app store, which means it will get a cut of paid apps, and it

is also offering paid global Wi-Fi access. EBuddy is offering both a free app supported

by advertising and a paid pro app.

However, the most obvious way to monetize the investment is the exit strategy of being

acquired.

Wildcard prediction. A large mobile operator like Vodafone acquires a large mobile

VoIP and chat player like Nimbuzz.

Companies to watch

The best acquisition candidates are those with a sizable registered user base and a

cross-mobile platform solution. These include Nimbuzz (50 million users) and eBuddy

(40 million users). Other potentials are WhatsApp, Fring, Kik and Tango. Looking for

mobile VoIP and chat startups are social suite players that want to round out their

best-of-suite offering, device players that want to integrate mobile VoIP and chat into

the device, and mobile operators that are positioning for a changing business model.

In the pro consumer or business space, consider collaboration vendors adding voice or

chat like SlideShare adding Zipcast. Or think about gaming console players like

Nintendo and Sony or HDTV manufacturers like Samsung and LG adding more VoIP,

video and chat functionality through acquisitions.

http://www.slideshare.net/zipcast

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Aside from the M&A activity already mentioned above, next year will be another year

in which we will see most of the activities coming from the best-of-suite players. There

will also be some surprise from the likes of Twitter and WhatsApp.

Apple. In September or October 2011, the long-awaited iOS 5 will be released by

Apple. IMessage is one of the many innovations within iOS 5, and its impact will be felt

in the mobile operator space. The service provides unlimited text messaging between

iPhone, iPod and iPad devices. In addition, you can start a messaging session on an

iPhone and continue the same session on an iPod or iPad. AT&T is already battening

down the hatches, doing away with its $10 tier for 1,000 text messages a month for

new customers and instead offering a choice between a $20 unlimited plan or 20 cents

per text message. With messaging tightly integrated into the iPhone, iPod and iPad, a

quick uptake of iMessage within the large Apple user base should have a sobering

effect on SMS growth in developed markets.

Twitter. Twitter will be launching a phone-based photo service based on MMS;

BlueVia (Telefonica) APIs will be used as a key part of this launch. This could help

solve Twitter’s business model problem by generating cash payments to Twitter from

the operators for each MMS message sent. Wildcard prediction: Twitter revives

jajah@call (also Telefonica), which has remained in beta since its launch in 2009.

Facebook. The Facebook Messenger/Skype alliance will take off because the tighter

integration of social media and communications makes it easier for Facebook users to

extend and mix social interactions with voice, video and chat communications. Apart

from being a social network, Facebook will quickly become a worldwide directory that

serves as the launching pad for a large part of global mobile VoIP calls and mobile chat

sessions.

Google. Google will tightly embed Google+, Huddle and mobile VoIP and chat

offerings into Android (Motorola) mobile handsets. This will enable Google to compete

better with the integrated Apple iOS offering. Tighter integration will of course enable

http://gigaom.com/2011/08/18/att-tries-to-wring-every-last-cent-from-sms/

http://gigaom.com/2011/08/18/att-tries-to-wring-every-last-cent-from-sms/

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/26/telcos-could-be-the-key-to-twitters-revenue-model/

http://www.jajah.com/products/twitter/

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better competition for Google, but there is no guarantee that it will succeed in

surpassing Apple.

Microsoft and Skype. The Skype acquisition and Nokia alliance open up the

possibility for Microsoft to tightly embed mobile VoIP and chat into mobile handsets

without alienating mobile operators. This will result in deeper alliances with mobile

operators. Instead of operators’ subsidizing handsets in return for a two-year contract,

Microsoft could subsidize consumer mobility in return for a Windows Phone 7 or

Windows Phone 8 sale. Mobile voice and SMS revenue sharing between Skype and

operators could deepen alliances as well.

WhatsApp. WhatsApp will move into the forefront because more mobile operators

will announce a drop in SMS revenues. WhatsApp’s capability of automatically finding

other WhatsApp users in your mobile’s phone book makes it easy to replace SMS with

WhatsApp texting. Let’s face it, in developed markets with expensive SMS offerings

and a smartphone penetration approaching 50 percent of the subscription base, this is

a no-brainer.

Telefonica. In September 2011, Telefonica restructured into four new divisions. A

new division, called Telefonica Digital, is a key element of the restructuring. With its

HQ in London, Telefonica Digital is tasked to be the place within Telefonica where new

business lines in the areas of cloud, entertainment, advertising, mobile health, M2M

and financial services will be created and managed. Internet telephony provider Jajah

will be part of this unit as well. If Telefonica executes well, we can expect new social

communications products that include mobile VoIP and chat to emerge from this unit

in 2012.

Future challenges and possiblilites

Long term, mobile VoIP and chat is here to stay once 4G networks are fully

implemented.

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For mobile operators, this presents the challenge of profitably balancing current

business models while at the same time positioning themselves for the new world.

Mobile operators can try to resist the uptake of mobile VoIP and chat at their peril. The

more innovative operators are already partnering with or acquiring mobile VoIP and

chat vendors or buys, creating their own offering.

Mobile VoIP and chat players will need to find a way to monetize their investments.

The options available are partnering with operators, creating paid mobile VoIP and

chat revenue streams, finding advertisers, creating app stores, launching paid apps or

finding an exit strategy through acquisition.

Social suite players need to add more communications options to increase the average

user time spent on the social suite. More time online equals more advertising dollars.

Finally, the device makers need to more tightly integrate mobile VoIP and chat into

their device models. A more tightly integrated messaging and communications

offering increases ease of use. It also increases the possibility to ally with operators and

share communications revenues.

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Solutions for a new age of wireless mobile backhaul – by Monica Paolini

Mobile backhaul used to be a boring business. In the days when voice dominated and

traffic loads were easily manageable, backhauling traffic meant leasing T1 circuits and,

where those were not available, setting up a microwave point-to-point (PTP) link. With

the growth in traffic, T1 circuits have increasingly been replaced by fiber, again

depending mostly on availability and cost. In Europe, operators have shown a stronger

propensity for wireless solutions: Three-quarters of backhaul links in Europe are

wireless. In the U.S., wireless backhaul has never been enthusiastically embraced, with

operators clearly preferring wireline options — even if that meant T1s — over wireless

ones (Clearwire is a notable exception to this trend).

The massive growth in data traffic driven by smartphone adoption and usage, coupled

with more spectrally efficient air interfaces such as HSPA+ or LTE, has added

increased pressure on backhaul requirements. The backhaul market has become a

much more exciting place, with better growth prospects, more innovation driven by

more-exacting requirements and greater competition. These factors are driving prices

to a point where even U.S. operators have taken notice and have begun to question

their own commitment to optical fiber. Over the next few years, we expect to see

increased adoption of wireless backhaul worldwide, with PMP and E-band

technologies delivering increasingly attractive and cost-effective solutions for the new

LTE networks.

Where we are now

The backhaul market is doing well, with a growing adoption of wireless links that is

only partially captured by the increase in revenues, as prices for equipment have

rapidly decreased over the past few years. According to Infonetics Research, the global

mobile backhaul equipment revenues were $6.8 billion, with a 10 percent growth in

2010, driven by the need of backhaul to accommodate traffic growth. According to

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Dell’Oro Group, mobile backhaul revenues will reach $9 billion by 2015. The transition

to Ethernet IP backhaul is now solidly established across operators worldwide, with

IP-based equipment accounting for 89 percent of backhaul equipment revenues, again

according to Infonetics Research.

New and old technologies

Microwave PTP links still retain a dominant market position that is to some extent

cemented by the decreasing equipment prices and improved performance. While there

is no sign that microwave PTP will cease to be a widely adopted technology for

backhaul, new approaches to backhaul are becoming increasingly attractive from a

financial and performance perspective.

Millimeter wave, E-band PTP links using the 70–80 GHz spectrum are becoming

increasingly popular, as they can use wide spectrum channels and therefore provide

substantially more throughput than a traditional microwave PTP link (up to 2,400

Mbps for E-band, compared with up to 300 Mbps for single-channel microwave).

Where available, E-band spectrum is typically cheaper than microwave PTP and less

heavily utilized. The main limitation of E-band solutions is that they have a shorter

range than microwave PTP, but that is not a big issue for the denser deployments that

today are the main targets of wireless backhaul. E-band backhaul still represents a

single-digit percentage of the market, but it is growing fast.

Point-to-multipoint (PMP) is another attractive alternative to microwave backhaul, as

it allows operators to deploy fewer radios, as multiple terminals located at the radio

access network (RAN) site typically feed to one radio located at the hub. For instance a

three-sector PMP network connected to 30 RAN sites has a total of 33 radios, three of

which are in the hub. A PTP network would have 60 radios, assuming one link per

RAN site. Fewer radios mean lower equipment and installation costs when deploying

the network and lower recurring costs (e.g., tower leases, power and maintenance).

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The limitation of this approach is that it becomes less cost-effective as the RAN site

capacity increases, because fewer RAN sites can share the same radio at the hub as

their capacity grows. Still, this is the technology to watch as small cells get deployed

and operators struggle to find space for all the PTP link terminals located at the hub

(in the example above, 30 of them).

PMP backhaul can use different frequencies. It can use microwave licensed spectrum,

but this makes it a line-of-sight (LOS) technology. This is also the case for microwave

PTP, but it imposes limitations in deployments in dense urban areas where LOS

connections may be rare. It can also use sub-6 GHz spectrum, which can support non-

line-of-sight (NLOS) links, but the licensed sub-6 GHz bands can be expensive or have

channels that are too narrow to provide the required capacity.

To date, PMP backhaul has been more warmly welcomed by mobile operators in

emerging countries, where PTP spectrum costs can be very high, and in Europe, where

operators have more experience with wireless backhaul and have acquired PMP

inexpensive licensed spectrum. In the U.S., PMP backhaul is very rarely used by

mobile operators, as PTP spectrum is inexpensive and, where available, operators

prefer fiber. With small-cell deployments, we expect U.S. mobile operators to become

more interested in PMP backhaul solutions.

There is no single technology that can meet the cost and performance requirements of

the entire operators’ coverage area. Multiple solutions will continue to coexist side by

side, each deployed where they fit best. For example, PTP microwave links for longer

connections between macro cells that do not require high capacity; e-Band for shorter,

high-throughput links; and PMP for denser, small-cell deployments.

What to expect in 2011–2012

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) and small cells will drive new requirements. The

increase in traffic load is — and will continue to be for a while — one of the key drivers

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for wireless backhaul growth, along with the introduction of new technologies like LTE

that will increase throughput requirements. Equally important, however, is the

transition from homogeneous macro networks to multilayer HetNet topologies that

include very dense small-cell deployments in high-traffic areas, typically located in

heavily built urban centers.

Base stations in small-cell deployments are typically mounted on non-telecom assets

such as lampposts, utilities poles or traffic lights, which are often difficult to connect to

the fiber network, even if fiber is available in the area. Likewise, PTP makes it difficult

to connect RAN sites in the small-cell underlay that are not in LOS with the hub, and it

often requires more radios than can be cost-effectively installed in urban areas. In such

environments, PMP solutions can be more effective at meeting the operator’s

performance and financial requirements.

The market will get smaller, cheaper and faster. Mobile operators are showing a

stronger interest in wireless backhaul, and they are pleased to find a more competitive

vendor environment where prices have dropped significantly over the past few years.

But the trend is clearly moving toward even lower prices, improved performance and

more compact form factors — requirements that have to be met to close the small-cell

business case. Most vendors have added product lines with more-compact, more-

power-efficient equipment that specifically targets the small-cell markets, and all the

companies listed below focus on the small-cell backhaul market as the most attractive

segment for innovative backhaul solutions.

Companies to watch

While we do not expect that the dominance of microwave PTP in the wireless backhaul

market will be challenged in the short term, we see that the most intense innovation in

this segment is taking place among less-established PMP and E-band vendors. This is

because these technologies are better suited than microwave PTP to meet the growing

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backhaul needs for high-throughput, dense urban networks driven by LTE and small-

cell deployments.

BLiNQ. Founded in 2010, BLiINQ has developed a NLOS, sub-6 GHz PMP backhaul

solution based on Nortel IP that it has acquired. It has a sharp focus on small-cell

deployments, where mobile operators have to backhaul traffic from a high number of

densely packed pico or micro cells, typically in propagation-challenged urban

environments. A BLiNQ Backhaul Self-Organizing Network (B-SON) solution makes it

easier for operators to install and reach small cells located at street level (and therefore

often not within line of sight to the backhaul hub) and to manage the backhaul for the

small-cell underlay. This is because the backhaul network used the self-configuration,

self-optimization and self-healing features supported by SON (self-organizing

network).

The major challenges to this solution are the limited availability of licensed spectrum

in the sub-6 GHz in channels that are wide enough to provide sufficient capacity and

the cost of this spectrum where available. There is a good market opportunity for PMP

mobile backhaul deployments in the 2.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands, however, where the

TDD spectrum (cheaper than cellular FDD spectrum) that BLiNQ uses is available in

many markets.

Bluwan. Bluwan is another company that has developed a PMP mobile backhaul

solution based on a proprietary fiber-through-the-air (FTTA) technology initially

developed by Thales for military applications. It works in the 42 GHz and in the 12

GHz spectrum that is available in some markets. The advantage is that these spectrum

bands come in wide allocations, which translate in high capacity. However, the short

range and limitations in propagation make this solution better suited for dense small-

cell deployments rather than for macro base stations.

Cambridge Broadband. Among the companies listed here, Cambridge Broadband,

founded in 2000, is the one with the longest track record in PMP. It offers yet another

approach to PMP: It works in the licensed 10.5 GHz, 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands, which

http://www.blinqnetworks.com/

http://www.bluwan.com/

http://www.cbnl.com/

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are available in many markets and can be used for PMP. These bands are also quite

inexpensive (especially when compared to microwave PTP), and they have better

propagation and reach than the 42 GHz band. Cambridge Broadband’s solution is a

cost-effective one for urban deployments that has been commercially deployed by

many operators in developed and emerging markets.

DesignArt Networks. Unlike the other companies listed here, DesignArt Networks

is not an equipment vendor. We include it in this list because its system-on-a-chip

(SOC) solutions provide a comprehensive toolbox to equipment vendors to address the

specific requirements for compact, low-cost and high-throughput small-cell

deployments. DesignArt chipsets can support PTP and PMP architectures in a wide

range of spectrum bands (from sub-6 GHz to microwave, including E-band).

One thing that sets DesignArt apart from others is the combined focus on the RAN and

the backhaul, which has led to the development of chipsets that integrate them. As

small-cell deployments become more widespread and denser, we expect mobile

operators to require the ability to have access and backhaul functionality in the same

box. While this is not a solution that could work at all locations (antennas for the RAN

cells and backhaul link may need to be mounted in different positions), it can help to

keep costs down.

Siklu. Siklu strives to make E-band a suitable backhaul solution for urban

deployments by providing a high-capacity, low-cost and compact PTP solution that

uses the E-band spectrum. As noted above, this spectrum band is increasingly

available and in most markets it’s inexpensive, but it has range and propagation

limitations that make it not suitable for some RAN sites.

Operators can deploy Siklu’s solutions to connect those base stations that are within

LOS and reach, and they can use alternative technologies to reach the rest. Siklu

expects to sell the all-outdoor, compact and highly integrated solution that the

company has developed in-house for $3,000 per link. The company is also working on

a second product that uses the same platform but operates in the license-exempt 60

http://www.designartnetworks.com/

http://www.siklu.com/

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GHz band. This will make it possible to reduce the equipment footprint further, and

therefore it is a solution that is even better suited for small-cell deployments.

Taqua. A switching vendor, Taqua has recently entered the mobile backhaul market

with an NLOS product targeted at small-cell sites — either 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi access

points used for cellular offload — using licensed sub-6 GHz bands. The product’s initial

focus is on the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands. It is a solution that gives mobile operators

great flexibility and the ability to reach street-level infrastructure with a simple and

fast installation. However, spectrum costs and limited availability confine the

addressable market to those operators that have access to the spectrum and do not use

it for access.

As mobile operators deploy LTE both at the macro and small-cell level, these

innovative backhaul solutions will have the opportunity to prove themselves and carve

a substantial niche in the wireless backhaul market. At the same time, established

microwave PTP vendors are fully aware of the evolution in backhaul requirements and

are working to increase capacity, reduce cost-per-bit and address the HetNet market.

The building blocks for an engaging technology and market competition are all there

and will keep boredom at bay for years to come.

http://www.taqua.com/

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About the authors

Pim Bilderbeek

After more than twenty years of working for IDC and a short stint at TNO, Pim

Bilderbeek established Bilderbeek Consulting in 2010. The company focuses on

helping telecommunications, technology professionals, business executives and the

investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and

business strategy.

Contact Pim Bilderbeek at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/pimbilderbeek/profile

Peter Crocker

Peter Crocker is the founder and principal analyst at Smith’s Point Analytics, a full-

service market research and consulting firm focused on the mobile and wireless

industry. Crocker has five years of experience in the mobile and wireless market, both

as an analyst and as a marketing professional. Prior to founding Smith’s Point

Analytics, Crocker was a senior analyst with VDC Research, covering the enterprise

mobility and mobile software markets. In addition to Crocker’s experience following

the market as an analyst, he has been instrumental in building business and guiding

strategy at mobile software startups, including Pyxis Mobile and Medxforms. Crocker

also has a background in financial service and consulting and holds an MBA from the

College of William and Mary. He has been a regular contributor to online and print

publications such as Mobile Enterprise Magazine and Rethink Wireless.

Contact Peter Crocker at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/petercrocker/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/pimbilderbeek/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/petercrocker/profile

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Colin Gibbs

Colin Gibbs cut his teeth in tech journalism during a five-year stint at the trade pub

RCR Wireless News, where he covered mobile content, applications, marketing and

advertising. During that time he co-founded the Denver chapter of Mobile Media

Mondays, a networking group designed to connect members of the wireless

community. His work has been cited by the New York Times, among other

mainstream publications, and he has been quoted in outlets including the New York

Daily News. Prior to the RCR gig Gibbs spent several years as a general assignment

reporter with the Denver Daily News, an independent publication, and as a freelance

sports reporter with the Denver Post.

Contact Colin Gibbs at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/colingibbs/profile

Phil Hendrix, Ph.D.

Phil Hendrix is the head of the Institute for Mobile Markets Research (immr), a

research organization based in Atlanta that helps companies better understand and

capitalize on opportunities presented by disruptive technologies. He combines a

unique blend of research skills (qualitative and quantitative), industry knowledge and

experience to help clients devise, validate and implement innovative, market-driven

strategies.

Contact Phil Hendrix at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/philhendrix/profile

Derek Kerton

Much of Derek Kerton’s insight comes from his strategic work with the innovation

groups from many of the world’s global fixed and wireless carriers. Kerton is the

principal analyst and head of the wireless practice for the Kerton Group, a consulting

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/colingibbs/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/philhendrix/profile

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firm focused on advanced telecom, and he is also the chairman of The Telecom

Council, an association for global telco executives and their ecosystem counterparts.

Internationally recognized for his telecom industry insight, he consults for companies

throughout the telecom value chain (NTT DoCoMo, SKTelecom, Disney, ESPN, Sony)

and the financial community on the telecom market issues (Credit Suisse, Merrill

Lynch, Dow Jones, Morgan Stanley). Kerton also sits on numerous advisory boards, is

frequent chair and moderator in telecom industry conferences globally, and is quoted,

published and interviewed globally on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg TV and in the Wall

Street Journal. More industry research, analysis and services are available from the

Kerton Group online at http://www.kertongroup.com.

Contact Derek Kerton at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/derek1/profile

Laurie Lamberth

Laurie Lamberth is an independent VP of Business Development who helps tech

companies drive new products and services from concept to market. She is an expert in

bringing together people, companies and technologies to produce extraordinary results

by delivering compelling end-user solutions that mash up connected devices, location

services and digital media.

Contact Laurie Lamberth: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/lamberth/profile

Monica Paolini

Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting. She is an expert

in wireless technologies and has helped clients worldwide to understand technology

and customer requirements, evaluate business plan opportunities, market their

services and products, and estimate the market size and revenue opportunity of new

and established wireless technologies. She has frequently been invited to give

http://www.kertongroup.com/

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/derek1/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/lamberth/profile

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presentations at conferences and has written several reports on wireless broadband

technologies.

She holds a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego; an

MBA from the University of Oxford; and a BA/MA in philosophy from the University

of Bologna.

Contact Monica Paolini at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/monicapaolini/profile or

at: [email protected]

Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D. is the Principal Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at MobileTrax LLC.

As a nationally recognized industry authority, he focuses on monitoring and analyzing

emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and

wireless data communications industry in North America. Dr. Purdy is an “edge of

network” analyst looking at devices, applications and services as well as wireless

connectivity to those devices.

For more than 16 years, he has been consulting, speaking, researching, networking,

writing and developing state-of-the-art concepts that challenge people's

mindsets, as well as developing new ways of thinking and forecasting in the mobile

computing and wireless data arenas. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and

Exercise Physiology from Stanford University; an MS in Computer Science from the

University of California, Los Angeles; and a BS in Engineering Physics from the

University of Tennessee. He is the author of three books.

Jody Ranck, DrPH

Jody Ranck has a career in health, development and innovation that spans over 20

years. His current work has emphasized global health, innovation and social media in

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/monicapaolini/profile

mailto:[email protected]

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public health. He is currently on the executive team of the mHealth Alliance at the UN

Foundation and consults with a number of organizations such as IntraHealth, Cisco,

the UN Economic Commission for Africa, GigaOM, the Qatar Foundation

International and the Public Health Institute. He was also involved as a convener of

the Rockefeller Foundation’s work in eHealth and mobile health through the 2008

Bellagio Summit.

His previous accomplishments have included working in post-genocide Rwanda,

investigating risk and new biotechnologies at the Rockefeller Foundation, working at

the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and leading the global health practice and Health

Horizons at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. He has a doctorate in Health

Policy and Administration from UC Berkeley; an MA in International Relations and

Economics from Johns Hopkins University, SAIS; and a BA in biology from Ithaca

College. Some of his honors have included a Fulbright Fellowship in Bangladesh and

serving as a Rotary Fellow in Tunisia.

Contact Jody Ranck at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/jodyranck/profile

Eric Risley

Eric Risley is the Managing Partner of Architect Partners. Previously the Head of

Software, Corporate and Investment Banking at Banc of America Securities, he was

responsible for some of the firm's largest clients. Risley was also the Head of

Investment Banking at Rutberg & Company, a highly respected wireless research

boutique, and ran Software and Internet Investment Banking at CIBC (and its

predecessor, Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.). For over 22 years, Risley has led and executed

M&A and capital-raising transactions for established companies such as AVID, CA,

Adobe, Oracle, BEA Systems and Veritas, as well as scores of young, emerging vendors.

Contact Eric Risley at: [email protected]

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/jodyranck/profile

[email protected]

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Peggy Anne Salz

Peggy Anne Salz is the chief analyst and founder of MobileGroove — formerly

MSearchGroove — a top 50 influential technology site providing analysis and

commentary on mobile search, mobile advertising, social media and all things mobile

at the intersection of content and context. Her report, “Mobile Search & Content

Discovery,” was regarded as the first in-depth study of its kind, establishing Peggy as

an authority on mobile search and content discovery technologies. Her most recent

series of practical how-to white papers covers the basics of mobile advertising and

mobile analytics, laying the groundwork for her next project: a global mobile

marketing thought leadership resource commissioned by the Mobile Marketing

Association (MMA).

Contact Peggy Anne Salz at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/peggysalz/profile

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is the founder of Sterling Market Intelligence, focused on the Internet’s

impact on offline consumer behavior. He is the senior analyst for Internet2Go, an

advisory service from Opus Research that tracks the evolution of the mobile Internet.

Sterling is also a contributing editor for Search Engine Land, the leading online

publication about the search marketplace.

Until he left in 2006, Sterling ran BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media program.

Before ILM he was a producer at TechTV. Prior to TechTV, Sterling was part of the

prelaunch editorial team at AllBusiness.com. And way back in the 1990s, Sterling was

a practicing attorney before leaving law to join the manic world of online marketing.

He is frequently cited and quoted in leading U.S. publications regarding the search,

local and mobile markets.

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/peggysalz/profile

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Contact Greg Sterling at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/gsterling/profile

Neil Strother

Neil Strother is a research specialist with a focus on the wireless and cleantech

industries. He is a trusted expert in the areas of mobile devices, services, content,

mobile advertising and smart meters, and he is interested in established companies or

startups focused on strategy, planning and analysis.

Contact Neil Strother at: http://pro.gigaom.com/members/neilstrother/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/gsterling/profile

http://pro.gigaom.com/members/neilstrother/profile

Documents

The Future of Mobile a Segment Analysis by Gigaom Pro