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