Android beyond the phone….

Google shows some startling statistics that there are around 550,000 android based activations per day, and 250,000 apps in the Google Market (this figure does not include third party application stores). The emergence of the android OS among a myriad of devices has enable android to have a 36% market share in the Smartphone market. Despite the fragmentation issues which the OS pose among diverse hardware, and, the user interface being not as consistent in look and feel as the Apple iOS, a profound adoption of the android based devices is evident. However the story does not end there…

The Android OS has transcended from the Smartphone, tablet device, to be adapted to the STB (Set Top Box) market, primarily for Interactive TV and Video services. The key proposition in this is the Android architecture framework.

Android is a software platform, rather than an OS. This helps exploit the potential for deployment across a much wider range of device. The Application framework in Android presents high level services to the application in the form of Java classes. Through the combination of layers and the enabling environment for software reuse, Android goes beyond standard Linux in the provisioning of everything needed in an integrated manner. Furthermore Android Webkit2 UI library is ported across many platforms such as Symbian OS, GTK, Qt, iOS and also embraced by several media SOC manufacturers such as Sigma Designs.

The only aspect lying between the Android capability and the Set Top Box, is the market requirement, and specifically between the “lean-forward” and “lean-back” market. Whilst “lean-back” viewing such as TV viewing at home presents an overwhelming requirement to watch TV and VoD rather than interactive services such as Facebook, Twitter and other apps etc., the “lean-forward” viewing such as OTT,PC-TV presents a good opportunity to provide an admixture of content and applications much akin to what is available in the appstores. Obviously these markets present different challenges to IPTV manufacturers in the whole value chain from encoding, ingest, encryption to delivery, in terms of their positioning.

Notwithstanding, the Android Framework can be the common glue amongst these two markets from a middleware platform perspective, as its feature rich modular framework and consonance to work among devices and STB, will present the ideal platform for service providers.
This does not avoid the Holy Grail for service providers (1) Know your market and the product positioning (2) Holistic technology vision for addressing these market requirements

Rising up to the challenge for Telco's

Telco's the world over are faced with tough challenges in survival in the face of high competition briniging about customer churn and reducing ARPU. Case in point is the imminent acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T in the US. The downfall of T-Mobile may be due to the shift of customers from T-Mobile to Verizon due to Verizon being the second operator on iPhone. Think again - how would operators wise up to the dilemma of having (say in AT&T perspective) 130M customers with around a USD 60 blended ARPU vs Facebook having a soaring 500M customers with around USD 20 ARPU.

It is evident that mobile applications/smartphones are shoring up the demand for mobile connectivity. An app in a store typically priced at USD 2/= does not take into consideration the cost per bit accrued to the operator as a result of acquiring and delivering the content from network to the device. The splurge of data and content from apps and the evolution of the appstore model has necessitated the operator to scale the network in capacity in exponential proportions. This has also brought about the shift of the pricing models of Telco's from the 'All-you-can-eat' model to the Tiered pricing structure as evidenced recently.

What are the pointers for Telco's in the context of this trend of increased data usage.

(1) Cost per Bit - Telco's have to be conscious of the overall cost structure in serving the customers from customer acquisition -> service delivery -> operation and maintenance. Leaner processes supplanted with increased/rational automation of these processes should help in the long run, and moreover transcending to managed service offerings should also contribute to keeping the bottom line low for the Telco.

(2) Business Model agility - Telco's should move into creating business models and relationships in a dynamic manner and more importantly the internal business processes should support this robustness. This is most important as Telco's would need to have business relationship with their stakeholders such as customers, suppliers in order to form B2B or B2B2C business relationships.

(3) Service Delivery - Telco's should invest on Service Delivery Platforms, that facilitate rapid service creation from orchestration, work flow, to service on-boarding, deployment and service billing. Also central to this will be the ability for third party app development and integration of Telco capabilities such as Content (Voice/Data/Video), Signalling, Network/Information Management, Provisioning and Billing. Hooks to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter etc. would also be a nice to have.

(4) Cloud and Content Strategy - With cloud opportunity set to explode Telco's should evolve and adopt a cloud strategy looking at all dynamics such as the overall market, sevices, network, devices. The Content streategy should be tightly ingrained and manifest from the evolution of the cloud.

(5) The Network - The all IP network from the data centre -> core -> distribution/aggregation -> access should be based on guiding principles (i) Delivering customer expectation on defined QoE on services (ii) Support the roll out of wired or wireless access (iii) Should support end user device ubiquity

Apple iOS 5 - To Be or not To Be

In the backdrop of Steve Jobs introduction of the iCloud and iOS 5.0 at the WWDC 2011 conference it is interesting to see the feature set of iOS 5 in the context of the Appstore developer community and the Appstore market.

The primary features of the iOS 5 are, Notification Center, iMessage, Newsstand and Reminders.

Notification center essentially lets you see all the recent notifications pertaining to calls, sms, email all on a single interface and thereby direct access to the respective application. Also twitter messages can be invoked in any interface of the iOS and does not require you to cut and paste the content to the twitter app. Newsstand is a repository of books, papers and magazines wherein registered magazines are seamlessly and automatically downloaded to the Newstand for easy reading. Reminders can be set on tasks which are based on time, place and context and moreover location based reminders can be set using the sensory system of the phone. iMessage gives opportunity to do free messaging across iphone, ipad etc. simlar to Blackberry Mobileme service.

These are some of the 200 odd features of the iOS 5 and further illustration of the features can be seen at the Apple website http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/gallery.html

All well and good...however as I observe these features or similar type of applications are developed by the Appstore developer community. Eg. ibooks, foursquare and many other messaging and productivity apps. On the one hand Apple kindles the innovativeness by promoting the Appstore and developer eco-system, on the other Apple embeds similar features in the iOS to be in step with the market as illustrated above - thereby stifling innovation. Clearly the iOS has to be a lean and an agile framework, and more importantly Apple should attempt to promote their products and services by leveraging and promoting their best in class apps found in the Appstore. Undoubtedly the 80:20 rule should play in the Appstore market where 20% of the Apps are generating 80% of the revenue.

Google heats up the Game Market

After years of not caring, Google yanked all the console emulators from the Android Market. Never fear, however, you can find them many of them (for free even!) at the off-market Android store SlideMe.

Yongzh, the guy behind some of the most popular Android emulators around–including Nesoid, SNesoid, and GameBoid–dusted himself off after being booted from the Android Market and put his emulators up on SlideMehttp://bit.ly/ioYBg8 (source howtogeek.com).

Where 2.0

In the middle of observations that iOS4 operating system tracks the user location from the Apple iPhone and collects in a database in an unencrypted format, the Where 2.0 conference was held in the Santa Clara, USA last week, which saw giants such as Facebook, Google and LBS providers such as Foursquare, Groupon discussing there strategy in terms of location based services. www.where2conf.com

Despite the downside in privacy concerns in location based services, as enunciated above in the Apple cases (Apple eventually rebutts the claim saying there only collecting hotspot information from phones), there is a widespread traction and relevance to location based services in Smartphones. The location information and the corresponding context of the location in terms of the user preference and social and crowd sourced information surrounding the location presents a value proposition, which differentiates the smart phone from other conventional phones no matter what the access technology is (2G,3G,WiFi and LTE).

Increasingly application service providers will tap this value proposition, to create myraid services for diverse lifestyles, entertainment, productivity etc based on IP technology. I envision there will application specific smart phones having specific characteristics such as sensory, memory, etc. to address a particular need, which would go beyond the need to using the smartphone only for voice communication purposes. The smartphone would progressively be less costly to afford such solutions in the long term.

In this context the service providers thought process and business model would be interesting to see, in how they address this burgeoning market.

The advent of the Tablet PC....

Two weeks back Steve Jobs, introduced the newes iPad, termed the iPad 2. Some of the unique features in the new iPad are the front and back camera support, less weight and form factor, improved pixels density, and improved processing capability compared to the older iPad. However compared to the other tablets in the market such as Motoral Xoom the iPad 2 is still under spec in terms of processing power.

The unique selling point, in the success of the iPad story is the intuitive user interface, which is seamlessly extended from the iPhone to the iPad. This USP and the cloud based Appstore portends a great future to Apple and other similar products.

Almost a decade ago SUN microsystem was promoting its mid range unix variant servers and PC's to the market on the notion of the 'Network is the Computer'. However a decade has passed with the user device taking centre stage with Network being subservient and moulding to the requirement and necessities of the device and content which is delivered to the devices/users.

The Network Service providers delivering internet services to customers has to be conscious of the end user requirements on the one hand, and constantly re-engineering the network to the vagaries and demands these devices pose in terms of the signalling and traffic to the network, on the other. A correct judgement on the user base/applications and device planning will be mandatory for NSP's to the plan their Base station, IP-RAN, backhaul and core requirements. From an application perspective the necessary PCEF and PCRF infrastructure will also be of a high necessity as in the present context The 'Application is the Network'.