Worldwide Wireless Data Trends - Mid Year Update 2006

 

 

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This research note summarizes the wireless data trends in over 40 countries and the analysis of over 30 prominent operators.

• Wireless industry crossed several milestones this past 6 months - 2 billion GSM subscribers and is on its way to the quickest billion subscribers within the next 2 years. 100M 3G subscribers with 66% coming from WCDMA (40% of these from Japan) and rest from EV-DO.
• Japan led the way with approximately $10B in wireless data service revenues for the first half of 2006. US and China followed with approximately $7B and $5.5B respectively.
• The #1 carrier worldwide in terms of total wireless data revenues for the first six months of 2006 is NTT DoCoMo with over $5.1B in data revenues. It was followed by China Mobile ($3.9B), KDDI ($3.3B), Verizon Wireless ($1.9B), and Cingular Wireless ($1.9B). Sprint Nextel, O2 UK, Vodafone Japan, SK Telecom, and China Unicom filled the rest of the top 10 slots respectively.
• China crossed the 400M subscriber mark and is on its way to cross the half billion subscriber mark in 2007. As first discussed in our “India’s Wireless Market” report, India is rivaling China’s monthly net adds of 5M/month and crossed the 100M subscriber mark making it the fourth largest subscriber base after China, US, and Russia. India will cross Russia later this year and the US by 2008 to become the second largest wireless market.
• Western Europe officially crossed the 100% wireless subscriber penetration mark (due to multiple SIMs) with several nations reporting up to 115-120% subscriber penetration. In spite of crossing 70% penetration mark, US wireless market shows no sign of slowing down and is strongly progressing towards another record year with over 25M net adds in 2006.
• In terms of total subscribers, China Mobile with 274M subscribers is way ahead of the second ranked Vodafone, which has 187M subscribers. China Unicom, América Móvil, Telefonica, SingTel, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), and Orange (France Telecom) are the next six largest telecom groups in the world. In terms of individual carriers, Cingular and Verizon now occupy the #3 and #4 spot respectively ahead of NTT DoCoMo, which is at #5. The two Chinese carriers round up the top two positions and are likely to stay perched at their lookout vistas for some years to come. Telecom groups in mature markets are under enormous pressure to either come up with a global expansion strategy or accelerate their existing plans. Carriers in Japan and Korea are the most under duress.
• Japan became the first nation to have more than 50% of its subscribers using 3G. Korea is close second. 3G is starting to pick-up steam in both western Europe and North America as discussed in our cover story article “3G: Hitting the Mass Market” published in Moconews.net and Wireless World Magazine. Since then, we have presented our research at IEEE, CINA, EMC, Carriers in US; in Japan, Korea, and Russia; and later this year in India.
• China and India represent the biggest opportunities for Infrastructure providers. China has postponed its 3G decision for the umpteenth time and is having technical and political problems to get something in place before the 2008 Olympics. India is going through its 3G spectrum policy but unlike China is likely to resolve the issues in short order. Ericsson just scored a $1B contract with Bharti. BSNL’s tender is worth 2-3 times more.
• In terms of data ARPU, Japan continues to lead the pack with 28% of its revenues coming from data services amounting to almost $17 data ARPU. Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, UK and South Korea also registered significant data ARPU. US crossed the ($5, 10%) block, where $5 is the data ARPU and 10% represents the % share of overall ARPU. As of June 2006, US stood at ($6.3, 12%). For detailed US Wireless Market update, please see “US Wireless Data Market - Mid Year Update 2006” ( For more details, please refer to the 9-box diagram in the ppt or the 2006 paper – “Worldwide Wireless Data Trends”; for 2005 comparative numbers, please refer to our paper from last year titled “Perspectives: Wireless Data ARPU”)
• NTT DoCoMo’s position at the top of the wireless data world has been challenged recently by several carriers esp. by its archrival KDDI which surged past DoCoMo for two straight quarters. Their data coordinates respectively stand at ($17.3, 28.9%) and ($16.5, 28%). However, it is 3 UK that is inching towards ($20, 30%) mark with $19.3 data ARPU contributing over 25% to its overall ARPU. 3 Italy with ($15.6, 34%) is also amongst the leaders.
• The biggest % contribution by data ARPU has been consistently registered (since mid 2002) by the two Philippines carriers – Smart Communications and Globe Telecom with almost 50% (or $3) contribution coming from data services.
• Even though China reported approximately $5.5B in data revenues, and the % contribution is over 20%, data ARPU is around $2, confirming what we already know – it’s a volume game. For India data ARPU is just over $1.2. Approximately same for Brazil and Russia. Actually, in 2005 the overall wireless service revenues in US were two times the overall revenues of the four BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries combined. So, lessons are pretty clear as to which markets to approach for what products and services.
• We will have to look at the EOY 2006 numbers but there are some indications of cooling down of data ARPU growth in mature markets of Japan, Korea, and UK. So, while % contribution will increase due to declining voice revenues, data ARPU will not make up for the loss. Most of the mature markets face the same dilemma. In fact, comparing EOY 2005 to 2004 numbers, only a handful nations registered positive increase in overall ARPU with Canada ($3), Korea ($3), Mexico ($1), Taiwan ($1), Brazil ($1), and Chile ($1) showing an increase. For majority of the other nations, the ARPU declined, for example by $2 for US, Thailand, India, Australia, and Argentina. Nigeria recorded a massive $23 decline.
• All the carriers in the top 10 wireless carriers by wireless data revenues list exceeded $1B in data revenues for the first six months of 2006. China Mobile and China Unicom benefited from their huge subscriber base of 274M and 135M respectively while DoCoMo and KDDI did well because they are generating over $17 (or 28%) in wireless data ARPU.
• Carriers with nationwide 3G networks and good distribution of handsets are seeing up tick in data ARPU. The Japanese and Korean carriers along with operator 3, Verizon, Sprint Nextel are all seeing benefits of rolling out their 3G service. Deployment of 3.5G technologies such as HSDPA and EV-DO Rev A (and B) are also gaining momentum. Networks are getting deployed and market is being seeded with some of the early handsets.
• In terms of applications, messaging accounts for lion-share of data revenues. However, other services such as Mobile Music, Mobile TV and video streaming, Mobile Games, IMS, LBS, Mobile advertising, and others have captured industry’s imagination. Though not much talked about, enterprise applications are also being adopted widely esp. in North America as more workers become mobile and corporations seek efficiencies in their operations and supply-chain.
• In Japan and Korea, consumer messaging revenue only accounts for 30% of the data revenues, rest is from multimedia applications, browser traffic, and other infotainment applications. It is almost the reverse in Europe with 70-80% (on average) of the data revenue is coming from messaging. There are some exceptions like Vodafone Spain, Telefonica Moviles Espana, and Eurotel, who have over 40% of their data revenues coming from non-messaging applications. For North America, the data revenue from non-messaging applications (excluding transport) is around 20%.
• China Mobile is challenging Vodafone’s supremacy as most valued telecom operator. For a brief period in August, it was valued higher than Vodafone and is likely to overtake the crown as China continues to add significant number of subscribers while Vodafone struggles.
• WiMax is gaining some traction both in the developed and developing world. However, the case for mobile WiMax is still quite questionable. By the time the embedded devices come to fruition, 3G devices will be quite pervasive and the WiMax services will not be able to compete on price alone. And, a sub $30 WiMax handset for the developing world is nothing short of a pipe dream at this point. WiMax for backhaul makes sense, and some niche scenarios for fixed wireless services will also be successful, but clearly, we will not be witnessing replacement of cellular anytime soon. Free Wi-Fi movement scored more deployments around the world though the business model to support them long-term stays unproven.

Your comments are always welcome.

See you at CTIA.

China 3G

Bloomberg.com reports China may delay issuing licenses for high-speed mobile-phone services to the first half of 2007 because locally developed network technology isn’t ready for commercial use, researcher Norson Telecom Consulting said. Telecommunication cos in China, the world’s biggest wireless mkt by subscribers, are looking to 3G services, which offer users faster downloads of videos and music on their handsets, to spur spending.

India - Driving the Next Phase of Global (Wireless) Expansion

the article is online now http://www.chetansharma.com/India_July06.pdf

INTEROP Russia: BRIC Wireless Markets

6 cities, 5 time zones, 4 countries, 10 days. Last week was quite hectic but it was great. From the exquisite towering cathedrals in St. Petersburg and Kremlin to serene Stockholm, from a midnight stroll in daylight by river Neva in St. Petersburg to 4am walk in Gamla Stan (Stockholm), from reading the subway maps in Russian to catching a soccer match in Amsterdam, the trip was quite memorable. In Moscow, I was speaking at the INTEROP conference on the topic of “BRIC wireless markets – lessons, opportunities and challenges.”

This note highlights some of the points discussed during the talk.

BRIC which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China collectively represent the biggest and fastest growing wireless subscriber block. While the sheer volumes represent enormous opportunities for the near and distant future, there are significant challenges and risks associated with these markets as well. Unprepared and naïve companies have been chewed and spat out in no time.

First, let’s do the numbers:

•         Over 682M subs by 2005

•         BRIC markets will account for over 50% net adds 2005-9

–        Net adds – 159M in 2005

•         Subscribers – Brazil (87M), Russia (125M), India (75M), and China (393M)

•         Penetration – Brazil (46%), Russia (86%), India (6.3%), and China (30%)

•         ARPU is low – Brazil ($13), Russia ($7), India ($10), China ($10)

•         Data ARPU is low - $0.8-$1.5

Of course, since Dec 2005, the growth has continued unabated. China surpassed the 400M mark while India crossed the 100M mark and both countries show signs of continued growth. India is on the verge of another surge due to rural network expansion in 2006. However, both countries have some tough 3G spectrum decisions to take care of (have been delayed several times), particularly in China where the government is favoring the controversial TD-SCDMA and carriers opting for standards such as WCDMA. With Olympics looming in Beijing, this makes for an interesting dynamics.

BRIC markets share some characteristics but are also unique in how they have progressed and in how they should be approached. The primary growth drivers with some degree of variability have been:

•         Prepaid dominates

•         Pent-up Rural demand

•         Market reforms driving the industry

•         Competitive pressures on big carriers

•         Low-priced handsets

•         Some of the lowest infrastructure costs

•         Lowest tariffs

•         Carriers profitable despite low ARPUs

As highlighted in our report “Indian Wireless Market” back in May, India and China are adding on an average over 5M subs per month. That is in contrast to 5M net sub adds per quarter in the US and less than a million net adds per quarter in Japan and Korea. With the penetration rate at 12% and 30% respectively for India and China, these nations will continue to add approx 60M subs per year for the next 3-5 years.

Despite the growing subscriber numbers, pressure on ARPU remains strong and the ARPU has been on the decline in all BRIC countries. Data ARPU for BRIC countries is also small compared to some of the other established markets and is bound to stay that way for the foreseeable future. We will cover worldwide ARPU trends in a forthcoming paper. Stay tuned.

Summary of Lessons and observations

•         Government participation essential – Unified telecom Policy

•         Highly price sensitive markets

•         Data applications used as a churn-prevention tool

•         Role of competitive forces an foreign investment is quite important – lowers costs to consumers which stimulates growth

•         Low or zero import subsidies on parts or finished goods

•         Operators control the value chain

•         Operators can lower cost of infrastructure by accepting lower busy-call completion rates

•         Revenue-sharing arrangement with vendors vs. pure licensing deals

•         Low price demands innovation, participation in local economy

•         Network-sharing for rural expansion

•         Role for lower frequency bands (450MHz)  is important

•         Localize data applications

•         E.g. India – Cricket, Bollywood, Education, etc.

•         Significant IP issues especially in China

•         Rural markets key to future growth

•         Consumer driven markets, Poor Enterprise markets

•         Minimal market for foreign application developers

•         Should partner, acquire, or build-up local expertise

•         WiMax is attractive but cost considerations are more important

•         BRIC markets important for infrastructure players, not that much for application developers

•         3G is in planning stages, spectrum issues need to be resolved quickly

•         Considerations for other growing markets like Indonesia and US

Overall, BRIC markets represent significant opportunities but they are not for the faint-hearted. Amidst all the talk of BRIC wireless markets, it is easy to forget that US still remains and will remain the highest revenue generating market in the world for some time with close to $44B in carrier revenues in 2005, almost twice to the second player — Japan and twice of the revenues generated by the carriers in BRIC countries, combined. However, US market presents its own set of challenges and idiosyncrasies. Wireless is doing wonders in BRIC markets and there are tremendous opportunities.

There were also a couple of interesting INTEROP keynotes from Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick.

Overall, it was an action packed conference, covering variety of themes including Wireless, VoIP, and Security. The trip left me longing to return to the region at the next available opportunity.

Your comments are always welcome.

Chetan Sharma

India Challenges China as Fastest Growing Mobile Phone Market

India Challenges China as Fastest Growing Mobile Phone Market 

 

 Adding five million subscribers per month, India will become
the world’s second largest mobile phone market by 2008

May 8, 2006 – St. Louis, Missouri – The pace of India’s mobile phone market growth is accelerating and the country is on track to surpass Russia and the U.S. in total subscribers. That is one of the conclusions of the updated 86-page report, India’s Wireless Market: Model for the Next Phase of Global Wireless Expansion, released today by Datacomm Research Company.

“The number of mobile phone subscribers added each month in India has more than tripled over the past year,” said Chetan Sharma, President of Chetan Sharma Consulting and the report’s author. “India passed Japan in total subscribers last month.  Within the next few weeks, India will break through the 100 million subscriber barrier,” he added.

The updated version of India’s Wireless Market: Model for the Next Phase of Global Wireless Expansion provides a comprehensive, accurate, up-to-date, and actionable report on India’s wireless market. The study is based on in-depth interviews with executives at operators, application developers, manufacturers, and other players. The report describes India’s market, value chain, competition, and regulation and identifies the best and worst money-making opportunities.

Additional conclusions found in the updated version of India’s Wireless Market: Model for the Next Phase of Global Wireless Expansion:

1.       India’s wireless boom is largely the result of government decisions favoring competition.  Both developing and developed countries can learn from India’s regulatory, network infrastructure, handset, and value-added service innovations.

2.       India will spend several $billion on wireless infrastructure to accomodate subscriber growth, improve rural coverage, and add advanced services. Significant opportunities exist for leveragin the 450 and 800 MHz bands.

3.       India’s consumers require low-cost handsets.  Handsets are now available for as little as $40.  However, many Indian consumers will spend a little more for enhancements such as the ability to download and play music and games.

4.       Thanks to low per-minute charges (under $0.03), most Indian consumers pay less than US$10 per month for voice service.  Wireless data yields higher margins for operators, providing incentives for affordable text, music and video services. 

Full Press release here

CTIA and Mobile Entertainment Summit Roundup

My week started with a presentation on “US Wireless Market: Trends, Technologies, and Opportunities” to the CTIA-bound Japanese delegation that included very knowledgeable executives from NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Kyocera, Mitsubishi, Base, MCPC, Vodafone, and Willcom. During networking, had some interesting conversations with our Japanese friends regarding content business, UMA, WiMax, 4G, and new business models.

Spent next three days attending Mobile Entertainment Summit (April 4th; Chetan Sharma Consulting was research partner for the event) and CTIA (April 5-7th), talking to companies, looking at demos, visiting with colleagues and friends, and just absorbing the atmosphere and distilling things down to “what does this mean?” Below is the summary of key observations, thoughts, and digressions.

General atmosphere – As expected, the show grew bigger in terms of attendees (over 40K) and exhibitors marked by return of double story booths, glitz, and million dollar marketing budgets. Samsung and LG clearly were dueling it out for the most recognized brand out there trying to out-do each other in invoking a subliminal conversation with the customers. There was tremendous excitement at the opportunities, fear of missing it out, and yearning for figuring things out to ride the wave.

Booth of the show award is a tie between LG and Motorola with Samsung close behind. Honorable mentions: Philips, Lucent, and Siemens.

Typically, the main CTIA show focuses a lot on infrastructure, middleware, network, and handsets. This time, it was also about applications. There are readjustments going on in the value chain and with the looming consolidation wave, the rubric cubes will be rearranged in several sub segments. Wireless email had already starting shifting that way even though we are below 10% penetration.

Convergence was a big theme of the show. Consulting firms Deloitte and PwC released their reports on the subject and every major infrastructure player was talking about the impact of Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC). Convergence across PSTN, Cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, Cordless Telephony Profile (CTP), Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) were all discussed in some detail. From a consumer point of view, it comes down to how fast the network is upgraded to provide the functionality and the number of devices in the market to take advantage of the feature-set at reasonable prices. Until then, it is just talk.

Positioning – Several companies are coming around to what DoCoMo taught us about i-mode. It was all about – improving the life experiences of customers. Nokia’s tag line changed from “voice goes mobile” to “life goes mobile” and “work goes mobile”. MTV expresses itself as a “content experience” company. Microsoft is all about “Discover, Innovate, Deliver” while Motorola wants to produce “must do” experiences.

Mobile TV is another area that is priming up for some consolidation as various components are commoditized (esp. for Unicast). It is not that, we are done with the innovation in this segment, in fact, we are only getting started, however, the drive will come from how the video content is packaged with other pieces of content and applications and made more interactive with humans and machines. The number of companies in the space almost doubled since last show (Ortiva, VectorMax, Snell & Wilcox, NMS, Nexage, Vimio). Everyone agrees that MobiTV has a huge advantage. It is a good case study of “first mover advantage”. It will be interesting to see if they can build on their success and compete effectively against broadcast solutions. Broadcast is the future of MobileTV. Mediaflo rocks. Key questions are: can the carriers get the business model right at launch that promotes usage and will the political and regulatory climate foster Mediaflo growth in light of DVB-H (Modeo in US) and DMB. Japan, Korea, and US are fertile ground for this battle. Qualcomm is working on Mediaflo as well as DVB-H chipsets. Slingbox was also showing their place-shift mobile video solution. It will be interesting to see how carriers block-and-tackle this one.

AORTA and 3G revisited – Since the article “3G – Hitting the Mass Market”, the tipping point assessment has been validated by several other analysts. In US and Europe, 3G deployments will start hitting critical mass in the first half of 2007 and we are getting closer to the vision of Always-On Real-Time Access (AORTA).

Mobile Search – During last couple of CTIA shows, mobile search has been an upcoming thing. During the last six months, 3 of the top 5 carriers have launched mobile search solutions with some incredible returns and actual impact on the bottom-line. Some branded solutions have also been launched and various business models are being tested. One can feel the tension between carrier-branded search and solutions from the likes of Google, and Yahoo. Who can build a better mouse-trap? Will carriers cede control and help non-carrier solutions with carrier-resident data? Feature-set is straightforward. Question is what customer data can one use to enhance the user-experience. If carriers are smart about it, they will work with white-label vendors such as Infospace (also Medio, Jumptap, etc.) to develop some really neat analytics that feeds back into user experience. Voice search solutions are also becoming more prominent. In the last 6 months, Voicebox, Voicesignal, Promptu, and V-enable have announced voice search solutions.

User Interface is getting better – Players in the value chain are paying more and more attention to the user-experience. As predicted, MVNOs are having an impact on how device manufacturers and carriers think about customization. Amp’D, ESPN, Disney, and Helio all have custom clients. Rather than relegating the user experience on device browser and archaic transcoding solutions, these MVNOs want to provide a controlled and immersive user experience. With 2^nd tier device guys eager to do what-ever-it-takes to make the user experience attractive, mainstream device manufacturers and carriers will need to get their acts together in a hurry. Verizon’s announcement (about using Flash) is recognition of this trend. Also, there were some apps with really cool UIs from startups such as DSI.

Community and User-generated content – There was tremendous activity in the mobile community and user-generated content space, from blogs and SMS to video and music content around community networks. Indeed, it is all about communities and user-generated content plays an incredibly important role in it. Though we have seen significant amount of growth in ringtones, graphics market, this will explode when UGC (including music, video) is put into the mix. This has been validated by multiple data points, the newest one being from 3 in Europe through seemetv service. How quickly will carriers embrace this so that the poor schmuck with 10 goofy videos with no technical capability gets to put their content for sharing, for barter, or for sale. Companies such as Intercasting, Juicewireless, AirG, SMS.ac, Bango, Blogstar, Helio (Myspace) are coming at the opportunity from different angles.

MVNO launches Since last CTIA, ESPN Mobile and Amp’D have launched. This CTIA marked the launch of Disney Mobile and the concept resonated with most attendees esp. folks who have kids. They also got their handset strategy right by pricing it for mass consumption. Service will become available in June. Helio is supposed to launch around the same time. In the meantime, Vegas started taking bets on which MVNO will be the first to fold. As I have discussed in prior articles, MVNOs have clearly raised the bar on user experience and will continue to push the envelope. The willingness of Asian manufacturers to customize at a frantically rapid pace is going to put pressure on the big boys and is already having an impact on their strategy and roadmaps.

Enterprise – Though there were a couple of Enterprise pavilions, the substance was pretty light. Revenue potential of enterprise solutions is equally big if not bigger than the consumer segment, yet it fails to get attention beyond mobile email which itself is becoming a commodity play. It should be noted that there were a couple of vendors that are trying out new approaches to the consumer email such as using MMS for email (Memova).

Mobile Diagnostics and Performance measurement – With the advent of 3G and numerous data apps, the impact on network storage and performance is enormous but is often not talked about. The amount of bytes generated in 3G networks is many times more than 2G and 2.5G networks. As such, the networks need to be planned and monitored appropriately. Testing and simulation of applications, services, and handsets also become more important. Companies such as Vallent, EMC, Keynote, Schema, and Argogroup are looking at the problem from different angles.

4G – Though no body in the industry agrees what it is, some semblance of “Beyond 3G” solutions started showing up at the show from IMT-Advanced solutions from DoCoMo (1Gbps) to WiMax pavilion. Samsung had the WiBro gear at the show – handsets and infrastructure – very cool to see things end-to-end. WiBro trials are ongoing in Korea and we are likely to learn a lot from the results that will help decision makers in the WiMax segment. However, we are still a long ways away (200 before we see any meaningful mass market penetration for mobile WiMax (There are a number of trials going on around the world from DoCoMo, Willcom, Softbank, KDDI, Sprint, SKT, and KT). It should be noted that US spectrum auction is slated to start June 29^th, 2006. It will be interesting to see who ends up with what esp. Clearwire and if any of the non-traditional players such as Google, Disney, DirecTV, and Microsoft make a run for it.

Near Field Communications (NFC) – DoCoMo has had success with FeliCa (Sony’s technology) launch in Japan. Things are increasingly looking bright for NFC-based solutions (mobile wallet, venue check-in, authentication, etc). Mastercard is running some trials on East coast. Cingular has been running some trials in Atlanta area using Nokia phones with Philips NFC technology. In addition to contactless payment capability, NFC-equipped phone can also read data from compatible tags, opening new content discovery avenues. The biggest challenge is of course getting the required infrastructure in place and endorsement or participation by at least one or two major retailers such as Starbucks or McDonalds. Many companies from Philips to smaller players such as MobilyT had neat NFC prototypes. Paypal also launched its mobile payment solution. Many companies are looking to bypass carrier billing so they have more control – it will be an interesting battle to watch.

M2M – With most major western markets reaching saturation, focus has been shifting to M2M applications and device-to-device networking. In addition to the big players such as Siemens, Motorola, and Phillips, newer players such as Esmertec were discussing the potential and applications.

Chinese presence – In the CTIA roundup one year back, I noted “Chinese are coming”. If there was any doubt, it was pretty clear from this show that Chinese wireless players are going to be significant force to reckon with. They are already making an impact in markets outside China, such as in India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Booths and showcases from ZTE, UTStarcom, and Huawei rivaled their western counterparts. Noticeably, several software and SI Indian firms also had presence at the show.

Handset business will continue to be brutal. Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Nokia all had a good line up of new handsets. Chinese manufacturers such as Techfaith wireless and Amoi also had some sleek handsets on display (Amoi even had knock-offs of Razr and iPod phone)

Mobile Advertising – Not much substantive progress since last time, except for more talk, and more companies popping up. The concepts and business models are starting to get more serious discussions from carriers, content providers, aggregators, and advertisers. Some interesting ad performance tools are also coming up (Integrated Media Measurement Inc.). It comes down to who has the relationship with the customer, what’s the depth of consumer profile information, and the trust-level established with the customers. ActionEngine’s MSNBC launch, new startups Rhythm NewMedia and VibesMedia, and Free DA (supported by Ads) were among the highlights in this area.

Location Based Services – I remember working on LBS solutions back in 97-98 timeframe and the technology was going to change the world (in the US). Largely due to FCC’s inability to enforce its own rulings, we didn’t see much progress for a number of years. Though Nextel has been providing LBS in the enterprise sector, it was only recently with Sprint opening up its APIs for selected developers that we are seeing some LBS based apps for the consumer sector e.g. FindIt. Disney Mobile is also making location a key feature of its offering for kid-tracker types of apps.

Microsoft dominance starts – It has taken a number of years, but shift is noticeable now. With smart phones penetration increasing, Microsoft is starting to dominate the high-end market. A good percentage of new smart phones are running MS software though Linux is also making some inroads in this market (DoCoMo, China). If the battery power issues can be resolved and the OS moves into the sub-$200 market, it will accelerate MS’s dominance of handsets. There was also talk about Opensource OS for mobile devices.

Open gardens – Pretty soon, being “open” will be considered a competitive advantage. At the two extremes are T-Mobile International (which gave up and opened up its greenhouse to the likes of Google) and Verizon (which might be one of the last ones to open up its nursery). Then we have carriers such as Cingular who are slowly but surely opening up access and getting closer to the i-mode model (e.g. recent Myspace announcement)

Misc. – Impatica was showing their solution of running PowerPoint from blackberry. Pretty slick and easy. Another interesting app I learned about was that of using SIM as a token generator for authentication. This can be really handy for corporate security.

Later this week, I am leaving for Korea to meet with some really smart guys in the wireless industry and experience the wireless broadband capital of the world first hand.

Your comments are always welcome.

Copyright, 2006 Chetan Sharma Consulting. All Rights Reserved

CTIA week

This week will be pretty exciting and busy. Monday starts off with a presentation and reception to the CTIA-bound Japanese delegation with folks from NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Vodafone, Kyocera, Willcom, Mitsubishi, and Base. Tuesday off to Vegas for iHollywood and CTIA. Spending the day at iHollywood event and ending the day with CTIA press reception. Wed and Thu at CTIA with meetings, presentations, and of course the most interesting part - walk through the show floor. Looking forward to meeting old friends and colleagues and new faces.

Governor’s Reception

Earlier this evening, attended Governor’s Reception with Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire. I first met her at the Korea-US pacific states Joint conference where she was the co-chair and i was on the US advisory committee for the wireless and multimedia conference last year. Gov. Gregoire is passionate about international trade and you can feel the energy in the room while she was speaking. Very impressive. She understand globalization and the new rules of the game. What was striking was her vision to look beyond short-term to 40-50 years down the road so one can lay the foundation of solid educational system and economic vitality. It was her 8th event of the day with one more to go and yet she spoke as if it was her first.