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perspective”, rather than a technical perspective.
“Clearly it will depend on Ovi being compatible
with a range of devices; if it is only available
on one or two devices, it may not be as strong
as Nokia would like it to be,” he warns. It was
a lack of handsets that brought about the demise
of a short-lived UK outing for i-mode, so
Short has experience of this. While the carrier
still supports the DoCoMo licensed service in
the UK and Ireland, it is phasing it out and
encouraging subscribers onto a re-jigged O2
Active portal.
A spokesperson for Vodafone told MCI
that its apparent change of heart regarding
Ovi is the result of natural evolutionary
processes. “Nothing’s really changed,” he
suggested. “This is just part of our on-going
collaborative work with Nokia reaching a
logical conclusion.”
The “logical conclusion” presumably being
that, as difficult as it’s been to build demand
for and loyalty to mobile services, two heads
are better than one. It’s hardly coincidental
that the term evolution crops up so often when
considering network operators’ data services,
since evolution in the classic sense of the word
boils down to a survival of the fittest. The
carriers’ policy of cautiously adapting their
offerings and letting the ‘failures’ fall by the
wayside until something works is nothing
more than good sense.
To risk-averse carriers, the alternative
offers the perceived threat of financial disaster:
remove the walls, give the subscribers
genuine flat rate data packages, then stand
back and watch voice and messaging revenues
dwindle away. This is the classic dumb pipe
nightmare.
Tony Cripps, a senior analyst at Ovum, reckons
a data pipe future need not necessarily be
a nightmare for carriers. “This is possibly one
of those things that has been built up over the
years that it would be a disaster if carriers
ended up becoming pipes,” he says, adding:
“Everyone thinks that it is a daft possibility
that just can’t happen.”
Cripps suggests an alternate “intelligent
pipe” reality could come to pass, where carriers
persuade subscribers to pay a premium
for guaranteed quality of service. Arguably,
however, that’s more or less what carriers have
been trying to do all along, consumers have
been given the opportunity to pay a premium
for—among other things—mobile email, MMS,
video calling and 3G streamed mobile TV, yet
mass market adoption has been frustratingly
elusive. Cripps reckons that until now the
56
One massive benefit that
the webcos have over
mobile operators—and
almost anyone else they’re
trying to work with on
mobile content of any
description right now—is
the loyal user base they
engender
networks haven’t been fast enough, and the
services not compelling enough to warrant
the extra consumer spend.
It all sounds eerily familiar: ‘build the
networks, and they will come’. The problem is
that once the carriers have gone to the expense
and trouble of buying licences, bringing the
networks up to speed and subsidising high
end handsets for their subscriber base, the
internet big boys will move in and collect
the takings.
“It’s difficult because one of the inevitabilities
for a long time has been that companies
like Yahoo and Google were going to try and
make their impact felt in the mobile market.
Frankly, I don’t think they see it as a mobile
market, it’s an extension of what they already
do,” says Cripps.
One massive benefit that the webcos have
over mobile operators—and almost anyone
else they’re trying to work with on mobile
content of any description right now—is the
loyal user base they engender.
“I think there is a lot of genuine stickiness
that comes with these things, whether
you’re a fan of Yahoo or Google, that may
end up determining what type of phone
you end up with in the future,” suggests
Cripps.
Yahoo and Google, while both basing their
business on search and advertising, do—as
Cripps suggests—seem to have slightly different
mobile strategies. Yahoo debuted its
Go platform at last year’s CES, and unveiled
three new developments one year on. Version
3.0 has a new user interface, and a new
personalised homepage. Perhaps the most
important change, however, sees Yahoo opening
up Go to third party content publishers.
The search firm unveiled eBay, MySpace and
MTV as key partners at CES.
The Java-based platform, once installed,
presents the user with mini-apps—widgets—offering
a range of services. The concept
is not dissimilar to the one used by Apple on
the iPhone’s idle screen—where the Yahoo
icon also sits—and also with Nokia’s WidSets
Java-based solution, which enables users to
tag content and apps for easy future access.
Go was well received by critics, though it is
fair to say it has not been a runaway success
in terms of installations.
It’s early days though, reckons Wilson:
“One of the things everyone underestimates
in the mobile world is time. We have agreements
with leading manufacturers like Nokia,
Samsung, Motorola, LG and RIM.”
Wilson reckons “quite a significant
number” of Nokia handsets are shipping
with the client pre-installed. Whether or
not that number is ‘significantly’ higher or
lower than the “tens of millions” of Nokia
handsets that the Finn says will ship with
WidSets pre-installed is another matter. “It is
complex working with these organisations,
getting it all to function, getting it approved,
getting it scheduled into their production
cycles,” she says. »
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