No reason was given for Sinofsky's departure

US software giant Microsoft has announced the immediate departure of Steven Sinofsky, head of its flagship Windows and Windows Live operations. The move came just a few weeks after the launch of the company’s next generation software platform, Windows 8, which spans both desktop and mobile devices.

Microsoft did not give any reason for Sinofsky’s departure but it raises questions over the future direction of its platform strategy. Windows 8 was billed as more than a simple product upgrade when it was launched, with Microsoft  positioning it as a multi-device strategy that would embrace modern diversity in devices used to access services and content.

With Sinosfky gone, Julie Larson-Green will be promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering while Tami Reller, who retains her roles as chief financial officer and chief marketing officer, will also assume responsibility for the business of Windows. Both executives will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Since 1993, Larson-Green has worked on and led some of the most well known products for Microsoft, including the user experiences for early versions of Internet Explorer, and helped drive the thinking behind the latest Microsoft Office. For Windows 7 and Windows 8 she was responsible for program management, user interface design and research, as well as development of all international releases.

Reller began her career in technology at Great Plains Software in 1984 and was the company’s chief financial officer at the time it was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

Microsoft is not the only major player to rewrite its team sheet. Apple recently announced an executive reshuffle, which will see the departure of Scott Forstall, one of the original architects of the Mac OS X operating system and head of the team responsible for the software platform at the heart of the iconic iPhone device.

Apple announced that Forstall will be leaving next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim. The company did not expand on his reasons for leaving, but rumours suggest he was given the push in the wake of the Maps debacle and issues with Siri.

Additionally, John Browett is leaving after only five months as head of Retail. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the retail team will report directly to Cook.

In other movements, famed designer, Jony Ive, who was responsible for everything from the iMac to the iPhone and iPad design is now going “to provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design.”

Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, will take on the additional responsibility of Siri and Maps, placing all online services in one group along with iTunes, the App Store, the iBookstore and iCloud.

Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering, will lead both iOS and OS X development. While Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Technologies, will lead a new group, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organisation and will also include the semiconductor team.

Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission

Future generations will “curse the missed opportunity” if the European broadband sector does not successfully negotiate the “tough political and investment decisions” that stand in its path, according to Neelie Kroes, vice president for the digital agenda at the European Commission. Kroes was speaking in the keynote session on Tuesday morning, and warned that Europe is “slipping behind” in productivity growth.

Fast broadband is essential to the growth of the cloud sector—something close to Kroes’ heart—as well as other emerging areas including e-government, telehealth, connected vehicles and smart cities.

“We cannot condemn people to a Europe of old, unreliable networks,” she said, urging national regulators to work harder to provide additional spectrum for advanced wireless broadband services: “Too few Europeans can enjoy LTE and national governments need to change that as a matter of urgency.”

If they don’t, she said, “manufacturers will ignore our continent’s needs”. This may well have been a reference to Apple, which opted not to support the main European LTE bands with the launch of the iPhone 5, restricting the device’s LTE capabilities to operators with 1800MHz spectrum.

Kroes made much of the role of member states’ governments in encouraging and promoting the development of fast broadband, both mobile and fixed. Private sector funding alone will not be enough to keep Europe competitive, she said. For companies looking at investment in new broadband infrastructure in Europe today, “the risk is too great and confidence too week.”

Pointing to “massive investment” in broadband infrastructure in markets like China, where 35 million fiber connections have been deployed in 2012, and the US, where high speed broadband passes 80 per cent of homes, Kroes warned of the dangers to Europe in falling behind.

International businesses will want to base themselves in markets with the best infrastructure, Kroes added, and Europe should not become complacent about its attractions. “It is easy to say that innovation will continue indefinitely, but will it? Europe’s competitive position is not carved in stone. We have talent, innovation and resource, but we need to create a digital single market,” she said.

In Europe only one million homes have fast symmetric broadband, Kroes went on, which is penetration of less than half a per cent. “We need fast broadband for all, and it is time for national decision makers to wake up to that.”

Governments should look to the potential benefits of broadband, she added. The European population is ageing, with one third of adults now over 65. Investment in the kind of broadband that could help enable great advances in telehealth could save significant sums in the cost of future healthcare services, she suggested.

The growth in cloud technology is spurring the requirement for Software Defined Networks

In parallel with the adoption of LTE in the wireless space, the fixed line community is undergoing its own long term evolution. Speaking to a small group of journalists and analysts outside the RAI yesterday morning, Ulf Ewaldsson, CTO of equipment vendor Ericsson, said the explosive growth in cloud technology was spurring the requirement for Software Defined Network (SDN) specifications for service providers and telcos.

“The architecture of the network must evolve to cater to growth,” Uwaldsson said, referring to forecasts that data traffic will increase 15 fold over the next five years, having already grown 104 per cent year on year between 2011 and 2012.

But Uwaldsson expects the extension of SDN to take some time, perhaps five or more years, using the already installed base of network equipment as the foundation. This approach, which Uwaldsson refers to as a “hybrid SDN”, is good news for operators which would likely be reluctant to splash out on yet another major network overhaul.

“The hybrid SDN comes first, allowing us to abstract the control plane from existing infrastructure,” he said. “This goes beyond OpenFlow into building a new layer of abstraction into the networks.”

OpenFlow is a communications protocol that gives access to the forwarding plane of a network switch or router over the network, but Uwaldsson wants to see SDN extended to allow all network entities from the cloud and data centres to be connected to OSS and BSS platforms. Building on the acquisition of Telcordia in 2011, B/OSS has become a key strategic area for Ericsson to focus on as it is so closely tied to SDN evolution, Uwaldsson said.

In some senses, the industry is also likely to benefit from an extended transition time to service provider SDN, as it will give those building the technology time to incorporate the network architectures of other industries, such as the media and others which have their own content delivery networks (CDN).

“The carrier has a very important role to play in this,” he said, “because we are moving away from a ‘best effort with a cool service’ approach to quality of service, where QoS is now the most important choice.” And that QoS functionality resides in the network.

In order to maintain QoS on increasingly congested networks, many carriers are looking at wifi as an offload solution. It’s now evident that most carriers embracing a hybrid network strategy will have a significant number of wifi access points sitting alongside their cellular network. But the greatest challenge in this environment is integration wifi technologies with those developed by the 3GPP.

Building on another acquisition, this time BelAir networks in April of 2012, Ericsson is now tackling the issue with a wifi controller interface that talks to the 3GPP core, allowing operators to apply the same policy control and charging mechanisms. The company unveiled the first product to make use of this technology at BBWF yesterday, with the launch of a stadium optimised wifi access point and controller.

Referencing its own research, Ericsson expects mobile data traffic to grow ten fold between 2011 and 2016, with video being the main driver, which will go hand in had with the ubiquity of wifi-enabled mobile devices. Based on documented experiences of network providers catering to the Olympics this year, Ericsson naturally foresees stadiums as one of the biggest generators of mobile video. As a result, these stadiums should be treated like very dense metropolitan ‘villages’ that require an overlay of small cells and wifi to address capacity requirements, but also need to be integrated into the macro 3GPP network.

Is the speculation about the death of traditional media premature?

It’s seen a number of false dawns, but with the activation of every new smartphone or tablet, the world’s digital media advertising inventory gets a little bit bigger.

Today, mobile is still a small if fast growing part of the advertisers’ arsenal. But forecast figures from Informa Telecoms & Media predict that annual revenues generated by mobile internet display advertising will grow strongly over the next four years, from $779.4m in 2009 to $7.54bn in 2015, at a CAGR of around 46 per cent.

So towards the latter end of the forecast range, the future gazers can finally herald the ‘year of mobile advertising’ with confidence.

Will King, head of product development at Unanimis, joined the internet and mobile advertising network when it was four years old, which was five years before it was acquired by France Telecom in 2009. Unanimis now incorporates Orange’s UK network and Orange Mobile Portals, which in turn incorporates the Blyk-powered Orange Shots initiative, into its own ad network offering.

“When you consider the (traditional) web versus the mobile, it’s clear that mobile is still nascent,” he says. “There’s a certain nervousness with advertisers, because you have an advertising schedule that makes use of established channels and brands. But look at mobile and you need some convincing. At this stage in the market we need to do a good job of explaining these benefits to brands, by helping them to understand what the channel looks like for them and how we can help them extend their digital activity. Mobile is a very natural extension of the web and brands are very comfortable online now.”

Rather than digitalisation swallowing up other advertising budgets as expected, brands now appear to want to play the strengths of different channels against the audiences they want to communicate with.

“Mobile advertising is growing very quickly but it’s still at a very early stage,” says Rob Jonas, VP & managing director for Europe & Middle East at mobile ad network InMobi. “The core advertising business in mobile is still around relatively straightforward text and display advertising and maybe a bit of search. Advertisers are still understanding how to make this work for them at scale in order to harness the power of the mobile device.”

Jonas picks up on the often referenced blue skies advertising techniques portrayed in the likes of the film Minority Report and calls it out as just that—science fiction. “Everything around location-based targeting, timeshifting and the multi screen advertising experiencing are all really interesting discussions, but it’s still too early for advertisers to have an appetite for this. They are still learning the basics,” he says.

“The core advertising business in mobile is still around relatively straightforward text and display advertising and maybe a bit of search. Advertisers are still understanding how to make this work for them at scale in order to harness the power of the mobile device.”

Even the hype about in-app advertising needs some tempering. InMobi claims the second placed spot in terms of mobile display advertising network size behind Google, with almost 105 billion ad requests during the second quarter of 2011, up 23 per cent sequentially. Although smartphones and tablets were the driving force behind this increase, delivering 39 billion requests, in- app advertising, while growing quickly, still only represents 17 per cent of all ads. By and large, mobile web browser advertising is still the favoured medium and WAP-based web browsing is still going strong.

“Browser-based ads are still the global, high-level leader versus in-app ads. And we still see a clear distinction between the mobile web and traditional web. Publishers may not have a mobile app strategy but they may well have a mobile web strategy as the mobile web gives you freedom across more platforms,” Jonas adds.

But that’s not to say adverts aren’t evolving beyond basic buttons and banners, with location enablement at the forefront of that evolution. Jonathan Milne, general manager of Europe at Celtra, a web-based platform for creating and tracking mobile ads, believes that location has the opportunity to be seen as “the most important thing in rich media advertising, its purpose is to make the ad relevant to the consumer.” Milne identifies the biggest problem with most advertisements as the lack of relevancy to the viewer, and as a result claims that his business is seeing unbridled appetite and demand for location capabilities. “We get involved in around 50 per cent of campaigns created on our platform and use our own tools for embedding store finders and dealer locators and we’re seeing growing interest in check-in functionality too.

“Brands are using the web to seed and distribute good content globally to their consumers as well as using the traditional ‘user interruption’ model.”

“In the future, most ads will be location aware in some sense, either by GPS or through triangulation of the user’s location. We can look inside the advert and add location services like a map to find your nearest store or check in services like Foursquare. The big questions are ‘where am I right now and what can I do here?’ Or ‘how can I get there?’” Milne says. In another example, he highlights the popularity of location sensitive content, in that ads are dynamic and able to show different content based on location, such as an automotive advertisement for a car with an image gallery that shows a user in California a cabriolet but a user in Alaska a 4×4.

Due to the increasing digitalisation of parts of the market, video makes for an obvious companion to marketing and is another content channel experiencing explosive growth—just look at YouTube. “Stuff like VOD (video on demand) set the agenda for digital marketing around video, and now we’re starting to see it grow,” says King from Orange’s Unanimis.

In July, Orange announced an exclusive partnership with online video provider Dailymotion to deliver integrated display functionality allowing advertisers to target specific audiences with localised content on Dailymotion’s platform. With 20,000 videos added daily to the site, the Orange advertising network will have the exclusivity to monetise Dailymotion’s video advertising inventory across the UK, Spain, Poland and Latin America.

“Video inventory is finite and the situation is maturing and developing to include new kinds of marketing. Dailymotion gives us a strong window into selling video display advertising to video advertisers against Dailymotion content, and gives us the opportunity to distribute content,” says King. “Brands are using the web to seed and distribute good content globally to their consumers as well as using the traditional ‘user interruption’ model. Dailymotion encourages user generated content and virilisation. It’s how advertisers have embraced the social environment to distribute their content. It’s part of their schedule.”

Indeed, larger brand advertisers are doing more cross-platform campaigns, using the PC, the web, offline and increasingly, mobile as well. It’s not uncommon for brand performance campaigns to have multi channel capability. And while there are experiments with NFC and Bluetooth-enabled advertising schemes, the high spend today in terms of mobile is about using the scale of the channel to deliver compelling ad formats, according to InMobi’s Jonas. “Smartphones increase the intensity with which users browse the web and give us the ability to serve more rich media capable advertising to consumers, such as the market’s first 3D advertising campaign we did for Samsung with CoolIris.”

As Celtra’s Milne adds, on a wider scale, the greater use of smartphone capabilities are around messaging, so advertisers can craft a call to action to the local culture, making for more effective and efficient ads. Unless brands can specifically target the right content relevant to each market, it’s like dropping a needle into a haystack. But as the guys who sell the ad inventory concede, the ad-buying market is only just getting to that point.

“We have the capability to do hyperlocalisation, but we’re led by advertisers and they’re not there yet,” says Jonas. “The most granular level of targeting is the major metropolitan area. Urban residents behave differently to non-urban residents and that’s about as granular as we get today. Yes, we have conversations about being able to target a male in a certain postcode who’s done these three things on their phone in the last six months. This is all theoretically possible, but it’s not really the reality for where the majority of advertising spend is going today.”

Orange’s King is in agreement: “As the market matures, we will see a mobilisation of peoples’ digital activity overall and there are very specific benefits that mobile can bring around hyperlocalisation, next generation services and point of sale. But today it’s about educating people about how mobile can be used so it can become a natural and obvious channel for digital marketing.”

There are of course, exciting opportunities involving the oft mentioned treasure trove of subscriber information the operators have access to, with regards to more granular targeting of adverts. “Operators have a very rich amount of information that could be layered into the advertising network to help with targeting, but historically they’ve been reluctant to allow access to this,” says Jonas. “Although there does seem to have been a change and we’ve seen more movement in that direction over the last six months. It’s an observation that appears in several conversations beyond the advertising sector operators are simply coming to terms with the fact that they need to work with third parties. “Effectively the operator is a media owner so they have inventory and, depending on how effective they are on selling that inventory, there’s potential to work with them. We’re seeing this more in markets in the Middle East and Asia where operators are more open to third parties,” Jonas adds.

But some operators, like France Telecom, are keen to keep their advertising initiatives in house through the acquisition of specific skill sets, as was the case with Unanimis, perhaps giving them more control over the very careful steps that must be taken through the minefield that is user privacy.

“The key thing with localisation is that mobile is personal and localisation is key to advertising growth, but there is also the question around users opting in to these services,” says King. “You have to bear in mind what it is appropriate for advertisers to know about users. Hyperlocalisation is a capability unique to mobile, but it needs tempering. In the web space we are in the middle of a process of legislation around privacy, about what can and can’t be used to deliver an advertising message. So a similar code of conduct should be expected for advertisers in the mobile space,” he says.

Several acquisitions, including Google’s $750m purchase of AdMob, appear to have validated the case for the mobile ad industry, but the case for more granular targeting of adverts through localisation and hyperlocalisation is still yet to be proved. “Location is still a small part of the market today but it has huge potential for the future,” says Jonas. “It’s just that you can’t force a new advertising format on a market that is not ready for it. You need to wait to introduce it at an appropriate time or in an appropriate way.”

Breon Corcoran, Paddy Power

Rob Define, eBookers

Jay Altschuler, Unilever

Fiona Hall, Waitrose

Deutsche Telekom records strong performance

German carrier Deutsche Telekom demonstrated its resilience to market forces on Friday, turning in

financial results that beat expectations on both the top and bottom lines.

Fourth quarter net loss improved from Eur750m in the last period of 2007 to Eur730m in 2008, while full year profits rocketed to Eur1.48bn, compared to Eur571m in 2007.

Fourth quarter revenues jumped 2 per cent to Eur16.1bn, while full year revenues were down 1.4 per cent to Eur61.6bn.

Once again, T-Mobile USA delivered the goods, continuing to post double digit growth rates, with revenue rising by 13.5 per cent year on year to $21.9bn. The US subsidiary’s customer base grew by 4.1 million over the course of the year, of which almost 3 million were gained organically. As a result, T-Mobile USA had 32.8 million customers at year end 2008.

On the fixed line side, domestic operation T-Home performed well, adding around 352,000 DSL net adds in the fourth quarter of 2008, giving it a retail customer base of 10.6 million. The carrier reckons revenue decline in this operating segment slowed down to 5.1 per cent in 2008, compared with 8 per cent in the prior year.

Commenting on the results, Michael Kovacocy, European telecoms analyst and sector strategist at Daiwa Securities, said that at first glance, the results look decent enough given the top line and bottom line beats. “It is clear that Deutsche Telekom has the scale to currently deliver resiliency in the face of macro-economic pressure,” he said. But warned that the company still appears “particularly exposed to a heavy dependence on its US operations for financial support. Now that a choice appears to have been made in the short term to reinvest cash into US operations at the expense of dividend progression, we would expect the value of US operations to become a focal point of discussion for investors.”

Pricing pressures and the spectre of net neutrality and other potentially value decretive issues hanging in the shadows also mean that the near term outlook for the US mobile market looks less than certain, Kovacocy said.

Taiwanese vendor HTC, maker of the first ever Android-based handset, was the only company to come out with a solid addition to it’s portfolio in the shape of the Magic handset, but Chinese vendor Huawei also confirmed its own foray into the Android handset space.

Huawei showcased its first Android-powered smart phone, and said the device will be commercially available in the third quarter. Huawei said it partnered with a design consultancy to develop a robust and user-friendly interface able to evolve with operators’ differentiation requirements. This suggests Huawei will be offering the gadget as a white label device for operators to brand as their own.

Smart phones are expected to account for more than 24 per cent of the global mobile phone market by 2011, and this figure is set to exceed 30 per cent by 2012, the Chinese vendor said.

Troubled Canadian kit vendor Nortel continues to shed assets from the safe haven of bankruptcy protection.

On Friday, as the rest of the telecoms world is shaking off the hangover of Mobile World Congress, Nortel struck a deal with kit manufacturer Radware, to offload elements of its application delivery portfolio.

Under the agreement, the products that are planned to be acquired by Radware include Application Accelerators 510 and 610; Application Switches (NAS) 3408E, 2424E, 2424 SSL E, 2216E, 2208E; and the Virtual Services Switch (VSS) 5000.

“We initiated discussions with Radware in late 2008, as part of our efforts to streamline investments around our future direction to speed and simplify business communications. Moving forward, Radware and Nortel will work together to ensure the transition is seamless to our customers,” said Joel Hackney, president of enterprise solutions at Nortel. “We remain focused on our Enterprise business to deliver our industry-leading networking infrastructure that comprises our end-to-end Unified Communications solutions, including real time and wireless networking capabilities, services, security and integrated applications.”

Under the terms of the purchase agreement, while Radware would assume ownership, product development and outstanding warrantees, the products would still be available and promoted by Nortel in an OEM relationship with Radware.

Nortel, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-January 2009, recently came under fire from WiMAX partner Alvarion, which was forced to write off $2.4m in lost equipment sales in its Q4 2008 results. The Israeli supplier had shipped the WiMAX equipment to Nortel as part of the two firms’ partnership, but Nortel’s Chapter 11 move means – the company says – that Alvarion won’t get its dues without a struggle. ]]> http://www.telecoms.com/2181/nortel-continues-to-shed-assets/feed/ 0 http://www.telecoms.com/2208/healthy-outlook-for-the-mobile-industry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=healthy-outlook-for-the-mobile-industry http://www.telecoms.com/2208/healthy-outlook-for-the-mobile-industry/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:16:42 +0000 James Middleton http://www.telecoms.com/?p=2208

The United Nations Foundation and the the Vodafone Partnership, in conjunction the Rockerfeller Partnership announced the launch of the mHealth Alliance at today’s Mobile World Congress.

Founded in 2005 with a £10m commitment from the Vodafone Foundation matched by £5m from the United Nations Foundation, the partnership has three core commitments. First to develop a rapid response telecoms team to aid disaster relief, second to develop health data systems that that improve access to health data and thereby helping combat disease and third to promote research and innovative initiatives using technology as an agent and tool for international development.

The initial aims of the mHealth Alliance are to grow donor support and membership. The idea for the alliance emerged from a July 2008 Rockerfeller Foundation-hosted Making the eHealth Connection conference on the future of mHealth, in which participants identified the need to increase collaboration in cross-sector and pan-regional partnerships and to use the advantages that mobile communications offer to help deliver better healthcare in the developing world. Markets that undoubtedly represent the best areas of growth for global carriers and vendors alike.

Participants included representatives of Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Qualcomm, as well as the Earth Institute, MIT and the World Health Organisation.

While all the talk at this year’s Mobile World Congress has centred on the launch of a variety of app stores, UK, mobile advertising-funded MVNO Blyk has launched On Blyk, a new content portal. The service is built primarily on messaging and is now available to all Blyk users in the UK.

Blyk aserts that most mobile content services at the moment are built on the assumption that users will find what they want by browsing to it. On Blyk is based on the insight that messaging is the simple dominant mobile behaviour for 16-24 year olds and that messaging can drive the discovery of relevant content.

The portal acts as a conduit for Blyk members interested in content from relevant brands or lifestyle choices; which moves away from the traditional mobile portal business model.

“We liked the proposition On Blyk offered us and joined the service when we realised the flexibility of the Blyk network. We can control price points, promotional activities and the discovery of our content, in a more efficient way than other operator offerings,” said Tony Pearce, Player X CEO.

On Blyk was developed in partnership with Velti, using elements of its Mobile Marketing Platform.

Meanwhile, in Greece, local operator Cosmote has spruced up its content offering working with Velti to integrate Volantis’ Framework and Storefront products. ‘Cosmote my view’ was deployed in mid-2008 and is now being rolled out to the operator’s full customer base. The new service has a portfolio of well-known content providers, as well as a series of microsites offering entertainment services.

“Our goal was to grow content sales and increase revenues through a more dynamic and personlised portal. Customers can have their own site for information, communication and entertainment, via a fresh services menu that addresses customer needs,” said Apostolos Andriopoulos, Cosmote Core Network and Services Director.

The explosive growth of wireless broadband is changing the nature of the business for kit makers, the head of mega vendor Alcatel-Lucent said during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

Speaking at the event, Adolfo Hernandez, president, EMEA, Alcatel-Lucent, said that next generation wireless broadband delivery is currently based on an unstable model which does not allow for enough synergy between open innovation on the web and network capabilities. And given the levels of data traffic predicted to hit mobile networks in the near future, the existing model is not sustainable.

“The introduction of the original iPhone raised bandwidth consumption by a factor of ten and the introduction of the 3G version raised bandwidth consumption by a further factor of three,” said Hernandez. “As more bandwidth becomes available, there is yet more demand for yet more bandwidth. Users are no longer passive consumers, they are active creators of content, the market is moving to a flat rate model so who pays to build the network?”

Hernandez argues that there is a need for a “high leverage network,” where the apps travelling over the network are aware of what the network can do, taking into account admission control, bandwidth allocation and Quality of Service (QoS).

However the waters are further muddied by the changing nature of the operator business, which is seeing lots of Pan-EMEA cooperation taking place between the independent units of multi-market players such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica. As a result, Alcatel-Lucent is changing the nature of its own business to dovetail with the needs of the market.

“In this difficult period for the market we need to take market share,” said Hernandez, “So we’re creating global teams to handle accounts and help us to become more agile. We also need a partner ecosystem, one company can’t do it all and we are encouraging others to do the same,” he said.

Earlier this month, the company said that fourth quarter revenues were down 5.4 per cent year on year to Eur4.95bn, while net loss sank to Eur3.87bn compared to a profit of Eur2.56bn in the same period in 2007.

Wireless access and convergence revenues took the biggest battering, down 15 per cent and 22 per cent respectively during the final three months of 2008, while impairment charges took their toll over the year.

For full year 2008, Alcatel-Lucent booked total asset impairment charges of Eur4.72bn, reflected in the full year net loss of Eur5.2bn.

Since January 1, a new organisation has been in place, with a newly appointed team to implement the new business model and execute a strategic plan to reduce costs by Eur750m on an annual run rate by end 2009. The realignment of management positions is underway as is the 5,000 reduction in the number of contractors.

Alcatel-Lucent is streamlining its product portfolio, refocusing its mobile WiMAX investment on what it calls the enhanced wireless DSL market opportunity, while at the same time significantly boosting investments in LTE. The company said it is also exploring co-sourcing and partnering options.

For 2009, the company expects the global telecommunications equipment and related services market to be down between 8 per cent and 12 per cent at constant currency in 2009. The company continues to anticipate an adjusted operating profit around break even in 2009.

Mobile transactions firm mBlox has launched the world’s first mobile cross operator ‘sender pays data’ trial in the UK this week.

The trial aims to remove consumer confusion over the purchase and download of mobile content, with mobile operators suffering criticism for stinging users with ‘hidden’ data charges.

The model allows content providers and service providers to bundle together the associated data costs for the purchase of mobile content on behalf of the consumer at the point of purchase.

However, not all operators are on board, with only four of the big five UK players getting involved in the trial, covering around 75 per cent of the market.

Four mobile content providers are involved in the trial: Fox Mobile Distribution; ShortsTV; Incentivated; and Creative North, encompassing film, music, games, marketing and education.

A ‘Zero Data Charge’ logo has also been developed to identify content available via the sender pays data trial, which will be displayed on web and mobile internet sites.

Disruptive VoIP player Skype has announced at Mobile World Congress that its eponymous VoIP application will be integrated on Nokia N97s from Q309.

The application will be integrated into the device’s address book and be visible to users as a mobile widget. Making the announcement both Scott Derchslag, COO, and Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype highlighted the success that Hutchison’s 3 has had with its fully integrated Skyphones. Since launch 500,000 Skyphones have been sold and users make one million, free, Skype to Skype calls every day. Over three quarters of all 3 Skypephone customers are new to Hutch.

There are, of course, a number of differences between today’s Nokia announcement and the very successful 3 project. First and foremost, today’s announcement does not include a carrier. As Durchslag noted, “a number of cracks have appeared in the walled gardens, we need to see the walls come down to make Skype Everywhere a reality.”

Therein lies the chief obstacle Skype faces in trying to reach mobile users. Carrier inertia on removing barriers to the full mobile internet remains strong. Josh Silverman: “There is a symbiotic relationship between the people who provide the networks, devices and applications. As we move forward people are expecting phones to get more like computers than phones. ARPU on the 3 Skypephone is 20 per cent higher than the next best. So, not only is it their most popular phone, it is also their most profitable.”

That there is a convergence between the mobile and internet world is undeniable. As Silverman noted communications is moving from a hardware business to software business. During the week prior to Mobile World Congress, consumers  in the UK and US were given access to a new VoIP offering from a firm called Vopium. The service is easily downloadable, like Skype, and enables consumers to make long distance calls at domestic rates by routing the call over IP networks. Unlike a similar offering by Truphone users do not need to dial in a separate number.

Mobile revenues may be taking a battering as consumers worldwide cut spending, but carriers can take heart in anticipated growth in the mobile broadband market, according to research released this week.

Speaking to telecoms.com at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, industry researcher Nielsen said that European and US mobile users intend to dramatically increase the use of mobile data services over the next two years, with a significant ramp up in the next 12 months.

Based on a study of more than 50,000 mobile users in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the US, Nielsen found that up to 71 per cent of consumers anticipate the daily usage of services such as mobile internet and more than half of the approximately 200 million mobile data users in those countries expect to increase use in the next two years.

Jeff Hermann, VP of mobile media for Nielsen Online, told telecoms.com,” there is a huge opportunity for operators if they get mobile data right.” According to the survey, operators can expect more network traffic from around 175 million consumers for services such as mobile internet, email, photo uploading and MMS.

“Mobile data services are not a luxury, but a necessity that consumers plan to purchase despite economic conditions,” said Pat Dolan, vice president, Europe, Middle East and Africa, for mobile backhaul specialist Tellabs, which commissioned the research. “By planning urgent and strategic network upgrades, operators can quickly and cost-efficiently address users’ issues and meet increasing demands on networks.”

A breakdown of the top five services that non-users intend to start using shows that anticipated demand is not evenly split. US consumers will drive more new mobile internet use than Europeans. Around half of US non-users of the mobile internet intend to use it in the next two years, compared with a third of non-users in Europe. In the European countries close to 40 per cent of non-users also expect to start using MMS. Italy tends to be the leading adopter across all services, while Germany shows comparatively low adoption rates.

But pressure on networks will be compounded as 41 per cent of European and 71 per cent of US respondents anticipate daily use of mobile internet services. Mobile email is on a similar growth trajectory, as it is increasingly available through a range of mobile devices, according to Nielsen.

Taiwanese handset vendor HTC has unveiled its second Android-based handset under an operator partnership with mega carrier Vodafone.

The unveiling of the HTC Magic smartphone also marks Big Red’s first Android-powered handset, and will be available in the spring in the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy and France (via SFR).

Details of the device’s capabilities are scant however, but Voda did say it would be available from free on various price plans, the Magic has a 3.2″ QVGA touch screen display and features a trackball and navigational buttons, as well as a suite of Google applications.

Last week, Vodafone was among a handful of major operators committed to rolling out devices this year based on the LiMo Foundation’s flavour of Linux. NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, have all committed to deploying handsets based on the latest version of the LiMo Platform, and many are also members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which develops the software for the Google-backed Android platform, indicating that many carriers are reluctant to reduce their reliance on multiple flavours of Linux.

HTC is the maker of the T-Mobile G1, the world’s first Android-based handset.

Software giant Microsoft was banging the app store drum at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, confirming plans to launch a mobile content marketplace of its own in the wake of similar moves by Apple and Nokia.

Details of the app shop were thin on the ground however, with the Redmond Giant only revealing that the marketplace is due to launch in the fourth quarter of this year, with a showcase of around 20,000 apps, of which two thirds will be targeted at consumers.

Speaking to telecoms.com, Roderick van der Graaf, EMEA enterprise marketing manager for the mobile communications unit at Microsoft, was keen to point out the importance of mobile to the company. By way of illustration, when the firm introduces version 6.5 of its mobile handset operating system in the fourth quarter of this year, the word ‘mobile’ will be dropped from the branding.

“Mobile is a key part of Microsoft,” said van der Graaf, “but Microsoft itself is just a small part of the platform, which also includes operators, handset manufacturers and developers.”

Version 6.5 of the Windows mobile platform will see the company push even further into the consumer space with a flashier user interface and easier access to information by reducing the configuration and number of clicks required.

Microsoft is also jumping on another bandwagon by increasing its focus on the ‘cloud’. “Mobile isn’t just about the device, it’s about accessing information on any device,” said van der Graaf. “All a user’s information is in the cloud, where the internet, PC and phone are all integrated.”

Microsoft also confirmed the launch of its My Phone mobile data back up and restore service, following a leak about the offering last week.

Nokia and Qualcomm announced today that they are to collaborate on the development of WCDMA handsets, initially for the US market. 

It is a pairing that would have been unthinkable a year ago, when the two firms were locked in a legal battle that had lasted several years, and spanned several continents. That wrangle, over royalty payments from Nokia to Qualcomm, was finally settled in July 2008.

Now the two firms are to co-produce handsets based on the S60 platform that Nokia developed for the Symbian OS, using Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem chipsets.

“Nokia and Qualcomm are leaders in advanced wireless technologies, and this new level of cooperation would bring exceptional leaps in mobile performance to people around the world,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA  Technologies.

Carolina Milanesi, research director for Gartner’s Mobile Devices unit described the deal as a “win-win”.

“In today’s environment, Qualcomm needs Nokia just as much as Nokia needs Qualcomm,” she told telecoms.com.  “3G will be the next battleground in the low end handset space and Nokia needs to make sure that the Chinese vendors don’t get the upper hand in this market,” she said.

The two vendors have said the first jointly produced handset will be available in mid-2010, and will be compatible with the forthcoming Symbian Foundation platform.

Handset manufacturer and Microsoft Windows Mobile device specialist, i-mate, has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first lifestyle mobile with a lifetime warranty.

Designed to meet military specifications, the 810-F claims incredible durability but unlike other so-called ‘ruggedized’ handsets this one wouldn’t look out of place on the boardroom table.

The phone comprises waterproof rubber casing and exposed metal screws to lock in the factory seal, making it impervious to almost anything, and also features a full Qwerty keyboard, and an impact resistant touch screen.

The 810-F is designed around the MIL-STD-810F series of standards. These standards are issued by the US military’s Developmental Test Command, a body whose role is to ensure equipment can withstand the rigours of the most extreme environments. This means the i-mate 810-F can cope with pressure, heat, water, humidity, extreme shock, and is equally happy at a chilly -10C or sweltering 60C, and can be fully submerged in water.

Jim Morrison, CEO of i-mate, said: “Until now, users have had to choose between a compact phone that incorporates the latest features, or one that was big, bulky and very very expensive that could cope with the rigours of a harsh working environment and survive use during adventurous outdoor pursuits.”

If you want to check out the device at Mobile World Congress, look for the girls dressed as Lara Croft.

Industry body the GSM Association (GSMA) has launched a website that it hopes will become the go to social network for companies that operate in the cellular industry.

Much like popular social networks such as Facebook or, perhaps more appropriately, the social network targeted at executives, LinkedIn, the beta version of Mobileinnovation.org enables individuals to upload full company profiles, videos and logos.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, GSMA chief commercial officer, Bill Gajda, said: “the innovation portal will help move from events such as this to a 24-7 innovation community.”

The service features ‘matchmaking’ functionality to help align firms with shared interests, selective search functionality and the ability to form discussion groups. Carriers will be able to post RFIs enabling developers to respond.

The success of the proposition relies on members posting extensive details about themselves. The theory runs that the more they post and link with other firms, the more rewarding the experience will be for everyone.

However, this could all end up being yet one more thing that stretched marketing departments need to take on board and it is difficult to see how the profiles on the portal will be richer than existing company websites, whether the search function will be any better than the likes of Google and whether the discussion groups will avoid becoming thinly veiled new business pitches for the vendor community.

Almost half of UK mobile users don’t understand what mobile broadband can offer them. Moreover, better customer service would encourage mobile users to spend more.

These are some of the findings from a survey released today by Convergys, a billing and OSS provider.

“The findings are not exactly new,” says Mark Hennessy, director of products and solutions at Convergys, “but show that operators still need to do a lot more to improve customer service. It’s a problem that hasn’t gone away and operators could lose out on mobile broadband revenue as a consequence.”

Convergys’ 2008 UK customer scorecard research, based on a YouGov poll of 2,143 adults during February 2009, shows that customers are most open to advice and offers when adding or changing services.  When focused on getting support, customers want to be treated well by knowledgeable employees who can address their needs on first contact. 

“Service personalisation is not high on people’s agenda but problem resolution is,” says Hennessy.

The survey found that nearly one in five mobile users (17 per cent) would pay a premium for excellent, responsive customer service.  Meanwhile, only five per cent said they would opt for a package with the lowest cost and worst service.  The Convergys research shows that UK customers rate the quality of customer service and the quality of the product / service being offered as more critical than price or brand.

“These data show that customer service can drive operators’ revenues from mobile content.  What’s more, consumers are actually ready and willing to open their wallets,” adds Jean-Herve Jenn, president, international, for Convergys.  “The key lies in giving customers advice and offers which are tailored to their interests.  The good news is that operators already possess the data needed to turn content into cash – and an outsourcing partner focused on customer service can do the rest.”

As the credit crunch takes its toll on marketing budgets across all sectors, mobile advertising is being championed as a cost effective and measurable marketing medium.

Speaking with telecoms.com at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, mobile advertising firm Gigafone said that mobile allows advertisers a more focused and effective use of their advertising spend and gives agencies and brands a better return of investment.

With the unveiling of its Ochre platform, Gigafone claims it has created a marketplace for agencies and brands to target consumers via the mobile.

“To date it’s been too hard to do mobile advertising, the platform was too fragmented,” said Andrew Grill, head of business development at Gigafone. Ochre claims to be a vendor agnostic platform designed to provide brands, agencies and mobile operators with a simplified view of the advertising ecosystem – campaign creation, planning, distribution and result measurement.

Measurement is the keyword. “We’re giving advertisers ways to measure the effectiveness of mobile advertising,” said Grill. “Budgets are being cut everywhere so if we can prove the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, brands will invest.”

But Grill acknowledges that the mobile requires a new way of thinking about advertising. “You can’t bring the traditional internet advertising model over to mobile, and while TV may be cheaper, mobile is measurable and around 15 times more effective,” he said.

Ochre claims to allow advertisers to choose the best mobile delivery channel for individual campaigns through an intelligent analysis and reporting facility, which ‘learns’ from previous campaigns.

It seems as though the mobile industry has been obsessed with advertising for the past year or so, hyping the medium up as ‘the next big thing’ in terms of revenue generation. But sceptics have warned that the market has become so consumed by short term hurdles that it is failing to focus on the longer term strategic issues required to turn mobile advertising into a multi-billion dollar industry. One of these hurdles is technology, which Gigafone claims to have overcome by being technology agnostic and operated as a third party service, rather than something the operator rolls out itself.

Other commentators believe that people take more notice of a mobile ad than advertising on TV or on a PC screen, and with a billion new phones being bought every year, the potential market is huge. ]]> http://www.telecoms.com/2240/measurability-key-to-mobile-advertising-success/feed/ 0