Free mobile email strategy webinar – welcome to the email long-tail! July 1, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Handsets, Mobile Operator, News, User Experience.add a comment
WIF founding member, WDSGlobal is hosting a free webinar next week (Thursday July 9th). The topic is consumer mobile email; looking at why, despite strong demand and the availability of email-capable devices, take-up of mobile email in the consumer market has fallen short of expectations. You can register here.
WDSGlobal suggests that complexity of configuring email and managing settings across different handset makes and models, on native email clients, third party clients or web-mail services remains the number-one barrier to adoption today. The webinar will also introduce the concept of the email long-tail (see image).
In WDSGlobal’s words “If you think that providing support and settings for the top five email providers is enough, think again. There are millions of consumers currently using email accounts from any one of thousands of email service providers available to them today. Consumers want to be able to mobilize these accounts quickly and easily, this is the long-tail and this is where the revenue opportunity lies”.
The webinar will take place on THURSDAY JULY 9th 2009, at 11:00AM PST (Pacific Standard Time). You can register for free at the registration pages.
Navigate the ecosystem with the Mobile Industry Atlas June 24, 2009
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WIF Member / Blog Reader discount available…
Several months ago I was asked to contribute to Visionmobile’s Mobile Industry Atlas. Anyone that knows Andreas Constantinou and his team at Visionmobile, or reads the blog, will know that they publish some highly insightful material.
v1 of the Atlas was published last year and I was truly excited to be asked to contribute to the latest version.
I have my copy of the Atlas proudly displayed above my desk right now, and it’s genuinely a useful tool for getting an overview of how the mobile ecosystem slots together and who the key players are in each sector.
The Mobile Industry Atlas is a visual map of who’s who in the mobile industry, available in glossy A1 wallchart format. This comprehensive map showcases 800+ leading companies in 47 market sectors, spanning all major players involved from handset design through retailing including development and delivery of hardware, software, SIM cards, services and content.
In case any WIF members / readers etc are interested in their own copy of the atlas, we have negotiated a 10% discount (on single purchases only). Just use the following discount code when ordering: AP9899.
There’s more about the Atlas at the Visionmobile site and a video below.
Note - Visionmobile tell me that this discount code is valid until the end of July 09.
iPhone Tethering: Double-dipping and a mobile broadband smokescreen? June 12, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Mobile Operator, User Experience.3 comments
Maybe I’ve been living in a cave or something, because this practice is new to me.
O2 UK are charging 3G iPhone users a minimum of £14.68 a month if they wish to use their handset as a tethered modem even if they have an unlimited* data plan in place.
For those unfamiliar with this practice, tethering means connecting your handset to your PC (either via cable, Bluetooth or iR) and using it as a 3G broadband modem (much in the same way as a 3G dongle/air card etc). It’s a practice commonly used by business travellers who just want to sync up their email without having to pay for extortionate wifi access.
Am I the only one that thinks this is double-dipping on the part of the operator?
A little digging shows that this is standard practice in many other countries, most notably in the US where some tethering plans run at up to US$40 (on top of an existing data plan).
O2 has attracted some criticism for this announcement and the company’s twitter feed follows the party line in suggesting that tethering costs more as it uses more data.
The argument is that the data pull from a PC is greater than that from a handset. They also assume that adding connectivity to the laptop will move a users away from simple browsing to bandwidth hungry use cases such as torrenting. I still call this double dipping and the cynic within would venture that this is a smokescreen to ensure anyone that wants mobile broadband does so through a second-subscription and an operator-sold dongle / pc-card.
1) *Even unlimited data plans have a fair use policy. In O2’s case it seems to be about 1GB. If you exceed this, your operator will typically notify you and charge you or ask you to limit your use. Why does this allowance not apply to a tethered connection?
Yes, a tethered connection is ‘hungrier’ based on a richer web experience. But this is irrelevant surely? An O2 customer has already signed up to the unlimited data / fair use policy under their existing tariff so it shouldn’t matter how I use this data allowance. If I go over my limit quicker than usual because I’m using a tethered connection then that’s my fault and I’ll accept the punishment.
2) Many users who like to make an occasional tethered connection do so for small, low data use cases; for example syncing up an email account while travelling. Slapping them with an additional charge and allowance that they’d likely never reach seems somewhat distracted from reality.
3) The O2 / iPhone charge of £14.68 for 3GB of tethered data is identical to the charge for pay monthly mobile broadband (3GB allowance) – is this a strategy to ensure users who want mobile broadband do so through a separate mobile broadband tariff?
4) The O2 tethered ‘bolt-on’ is essentially the Pay Monthly mobile broadband tariff – will O2 be reporting tethered connections as a ‘mobile broadband’ subscription to embellish their mobile broadband connections?
5) This exposes the fallacy of the industry’s general approach to billing / tariffs.
Unlimited mobile data in reality means 500mb-1GB. An operator will use ‘unlimited’ as a strong advertising statement to attract users, knowing that 99% of them won’t even get near the fair use 500mb-1GB and that margins / network performance are protected. Is this a reaction to internal concern that when a handset is used as a tethered modem, a higher percentage of users will reach the allowance they have actually paid for?
6) Does this just apply to the iPhone on the O2 network? if so, why? There seem to be many happy Nokia owners tethering on the O2 network.
7) How can the tethered connection be detected? How does the network recognise where packet data is being sent to? It’s being requested via the handset so I assume the iPhone has a module that detects a peripheral USB connection.
7) Tethering to add an internet connection to a PC is nothing new. I was doing it several years ago via a GPRS connection. Some in the industry continue to embrace it and make it more accessible while others seem to view it as disruptive to their ‘dongle’ business and do what they can to bury it / make it financially restrictive.
When it comes to contracts…36 months sounds better than three years June 3, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Mobile Operator, News, Uncategorized.Tags: 36 month, contract, mobile, orange
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In 2007 it was the first to launch a 24 month contract in the UK. Now, Orange delivers another UK first, the 36 month (yes, that’s three years!) contract.
There was a time, particularly in Western Europe, when you could snap up a reasonable handset on a 12 month contract. By the end of last year, some operators had scrapped 12 month contracts altogether, with 18 months being the minimum.
The trend for ‘contract-creep’ began in 2007/08 and was a direct result of increasing competition, increasing churn and static ARPU.
The land-grab business models employed by the operators in the early-adopter years of mobile had stuck and consumers had become accustomed to heavily subsidized handsets. Every 12 months the latest handset could be yours for less than £30.
Add this subsidy (typically +£100), to other subscriber acquisition costs (advertising, retail stores, administration) and to subscriber management costs (everything from network maintenance to putting a roof over the support agents’ heads in the call center), and you begin to appreciate just how tightly margin are squeezed in a 12 month period.
No wonder then that operators had to make changes, not only to their operational efficiency but also to the way in which they acquire and retain subscribers. Cutting handset subsidies, no matter how attractive an option that may be to an operator would, in many markets, be suicide. Not only do they work to attract customers from rival networks but they are also a useful means of seeding the market with the latest (revenue-generating) applications, services and standards.
Appreciating the consumer’s attachment to a subsidised handset, it wasn’t surprising that 24 month contracts became the norm; delivering an extra 12 months breathing space within which the operator could recover their costs and build a more profitable subscriber base.
But what of a three year contract? Too much?
Orange’s public statement reads; “In the current economic climate, the demand for low-cost monthly plans which include a phone has materially increased. These new 36 month phone plans starting at £5 will provide light users with more choice since currently their only option is a pay as you go package. They are ideal for people who don’t want to go through a top up process, are happy to commit to a contract, want the security of knowing that they won’t run out of credit and who want a phone included in the package.”
Of course, the cynical will read this as an attempt to lock subscribers into lengthier contracts, discourage churn and increase the opportunity for upsell.
My first reaction was horror at the thought of having to use the same handset for three years. Closer inspection reveals that Orange will supply you with a new handset after 18 months. Although by that time, the supplied Nokia 2630 will almost be four years old.
All things considered, I’m not sure Orange’s package is attractive enough to mask the desire to lock subscribers into longer contracts. Yes, £5 a month is probably the cheapest contract on the UK market today but Virgin Mobile will give you twice the monthly minutes, a better handset and will only ask you to sign for 18 months for £8.50 a month.
The total cost of both contracts may be almost identical but if we are talking ‘choice’, freedom, flexibility and, in an age of austerity, the ability to budget and cut costs to reflect changes in circumstances, I’m not 100% convinced that a 36 month lock-in is going to appeal to a great many consumers.
Of course, Orange started the trend for 24 month contracts in 2007 so I wouldn’t bet against the rest of the industry following closely behind.
Although, be warned; in the US, where long contracts are the norm, there have even been subscribers who have died and still been taken to court for not completing their contracts first!
Mobile Telecommunications: “Resilient, but not immune…” June 1, 2009
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Just how hard the economic downturn is hitting the mobile industry depends on who you speak to. Certainly, on the front line the handset manufacturers are battling with a new age of austerity that has seen many consumers reign-in the frequency with which they upgrade their handsets. Nokia, in particular, has seen quarterly sales fall below 100 million units for the first time in two years. It also lost 3% market share during the first quarter of 2009.
At the other end of the spectrum, more than one mobile network operator (MNO) has tried to appease shareholders by claiming that the industry is largely recession-proof.
Obviously, that statement is not entirely true, even though as an industry it’s expected that telecommunications will fare better than most, the rationale being that a) consumers will not dramatically change their ‘usage’ patterns b) communication has embedded itself as a core component in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Love/Belonging) and c) post paid contract users are signed into 24 month subscriptions, assuring the service provider a relatively secure cash-flow forecast.
On a more strategic level, much of the industry’s ability to remain buoyant is thanks to the critical intersection of technologies, standards and services that has occurred over the last 12 months. Touchscreens have kept us excited about handset form factor, application stores have promoted a move to broader mobile application adoption, mobile broadband has allowed the MNOs to leverage their network assets outside of the handset and the launch of Android prompted the market’s leading OS provider, Symbian, to take the leap into the world of open-source.
Importantly, while all of this helps to maintain the industry, the combination of these intersecting developments and an economic downturn can do nothing but shake-up the establishment. Where MNOs sat comfortably at the centre of the mobile ecosystem, power is quietly being diluted across a more horizontal powerbase, with end-user revenue being shared with software and service providers such as Apple and Google, and even smaller third-party developers who, just two years ago, would have been challenged to break-down the walled gardens being operated by the MNOs.
That’s not say that MNOs are on the fast track to becoming the dumb-pipes that so many predicted. Even if they can’t rule the mobile internet with an iron fist, MNOs still have core assets that, correctly leveraged, will ensure their ‘value-added’ survival and differentiation against the global brands of Google and friends. Not least is the billing relationship held with the end-user and the control of the SIM, a core component in any trusted transaction or requirement for ID management.
The topic of industry resilience to economic conditions was raised at a recent panel discussion I attended. Unlike most conferences, seminars, roundtables etc, populated by members of the industry with their own self-protectionist agendas, the answers given were candid, honest and extremely insightful; especially those from Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent and Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services whose comments caused spontaneous applause from the audience.
Hosted by Gemalto at a private event in France (26 May 2009), the panel comprised Jean Louis Mounier, Senior EVP Innovation & Service Factory, SFR, Olivier Piou, CEO Gemalto, Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services, Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent and Michel Combes, CEO Europe Vodafone Group.
Here’s a selection of key comments / soundbites offered by the panellists.
————————————————————————————————-
Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent
“There is no less appetite [for end-users] to communicate in a recession”
Michel Combes, CEO Europe Vodafone Group.
“There is a pressure on revenue, not on usage. The industry is of course affected; it is resilient but not immune. For example, there is a tangible decrease in roaming traffic as businesses cut back on international travel.”
Olivier Piou, CEO Gemalto
“In the west we tend to think only of the first 300 million users; the high-end users. What should be of more interest now are the other 3 billion. They have very different requirements for handset features and operator services. In India one of the key features on a handset is the flashlight. It’s invaluable in rural areas with no street lighting.”
Jean-Pierre Temime, Head of Strategy for France Telecom’s Enterprise Communication Services
“As an industry we are not very good at pushing through new services. After three years of hype there is still very little in the way of mass-market adoption of mobile TV, M2M, contactless transactions and LBS.”
Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent
“There is no problem with technology. Instead there is a desperate need for business models that customers appreciate. We have trained customers for free a internet. Consumers are used to paying for access not for services. It’ll be hard for anyone in the industry to change this behaviour”.
Ben Verwaayen, CEO Alcatel Lucent
“Let’s be honest, who would win a battle of the brands between Apple and SFR? There are some key things that mobile operators need to start leveraging in order to differentiate themselves, because brand is not enough. In particular a) Trust / ID Management – the SIM is the core element in the chain for ID management and it’s a trusted module. The mobile operator has complete control over this entity; b) Billing for micro-transactions – the existing billing relationship between mobile operator and consumer is unique and highly conducive for commerce.”
Vodafone’s app-store. Can MNOs compete with OEMs? May 14, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Mobile Operator, News, User Experience.2 comments
App Stores really are the modern-day gold rush. Where Mobile Network Operator’s (MNO) had their content portals, handset manufacturers saw an opportunity to build brand loyalty by making available a sea of user-generated ‘content and applications’ to enhance the use of their devices.
Although still in its (relative) infancy the app-store path has been well-trodden thanks to the efforts of Apple, Android, Nokia Ovi et al. Now Vodafone becomes one of the first major MNOs to embrace the app-store model; but can the MNOs compete?
The MNO certainly has several advantages. Billing, for example. The MNO owns the billing relationship with the consumer, affording a more impulsive buying experience for paid-for applications. What may, on a manufacturer’s store, require a credit card, paypal (or other third party mechanism), now appears on the consumer’s airtime bill or get’s deducted from pre-pay credit. Easy.
MNOs may also allow developers to leverage core network assets. LBS (location based services) is the most obvious example, and developers working within Vodafone’s Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) initiative will soon be able to leverage subscriber locale to enable a host of third party applications that tap into the current zeitgeist for geo-tagging, location etc.
However, in the manufacturers’ favour is the ability to provide developers with access to a handset’s core functions. This affords tighter integration and a host of ‘consumer’ use cases for otherwise mundane handset features (accelerometers anyone!). Both Android devices and iPhones demonstrate this very well.
There are often more than a thousand different handset makes and models on an MNOs network, making it impossible for an MNO sponsored app-store to deliver this degree of personalization across its entire subscriber base. Instead, as is the case with Vodafone (see the official press release), it’s likely that MNO app-stores will focus predominatly on mobile internet-based apps.Far easier to control and maintain a consistent user experience across a wider base of device types.
Mobile Broadband: Not so Plug and play April 28, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Is mobile broadband in danger of becoming the industry’s latest white elephant? There’s already a wealth of industry reporting speculating over the sustainability of current business models. Price wars (the price of mobile broadband here in the UK has dropped 30% in the last 12 months) and hardware subsidies are already threatening subscriber profitability, suggesting a need to a) increase pricing for bundled deals b) move majority of subscribers onto pay as you go or c) restrict bandwidth hungry apps such as P2P file sharing.
But the problems, it seems, are even greater.
Over the past few months we’ve been working with WIF founder WDSGlobal to conduct research into subscriber profitability (forget ARPU – it’s profitability that should really be measured).
Full findings from the study are available by downloading the FREE REPORT, but in summary, mobile broadband services are more expensive to support than any other wireless service and are endangering subscriber profitability for many mobile network operators.
The study found that the cost to support mobile broadband products and services is up to 200% greater than the cost to support traditional wireless products such as mobile phones. This means that despite revenue uplift from increased data usage, actual subscriber profitability often remains unchanged and sometimes even worsens.
The area of greatest concern came from USB and PC Card modems. These are sold to allow subscribers access to a mobile operator’s 3G HSPA or EV-DO mobile broadband services from a laptop or netbook. The average duration of a technical support call for such products is 28 minutes. By comparison, a technical support call for a mobile phone averages just less than 10 minutes.
The findings come from analysis of more than half a million ‘technical’ support enquiries. More than 600 wireless devices were represented in the study, which spanned a six-month period between September 2008 and February 2009. Of the bottom 20 mobile devices ranked by Average Handle Time (the duration of a support call), 13 were USB or PC Card modems.
The problem is not always with the technology itself but the necessity for these products to be installed alongside third party hardware and software outside of a mobile operator’s control.
Traditional wireless products are largely in the control of the network operator; it’s their SIM card, they sold the handset and it’s attached to their network. Mobile broadband introduces the need to manage a wireless product on a third-party device such as a laptop. You have to contend with hardware performance and conflicts, driver incompatibility and buggy software. Diagnosis and fault resolution therefore becomes more complex, negatively impacting support times. Add to this the fact that many products have not been adequately tested prior to launch, and the result is an expensive burden on existing support infrastructures.
The study also cites ‘aggressive’ connection management software (the software bundled with the modem) as a key cause of user frustration. During several test cases, installation software looked to make registry edits deep within the PC’s operating system. Most popular anti-virus applications immediately blocked the installation, regarding it as a security threat. In other cases, connection management software looked to hijack control of all network connections, overwriting user’s existing configurations and impeding WiFi access.
The cost of handling customer care and support calls has an immediate bearing on a subscriber’s profitability because, like cost of acquisition, handset subsidies and network maintenance, it forms part of the cost of maintaining a subscriber on a network. Therefore, it’s imperative for mobile network operators to better manage the process of testing, launching and supporting mobile broadband services.
Typically, the lowest Average Handle Times are associated with older, entry-level devices. These are not subject to high data demands and are typically limited to basic voice and messaging functions. Generally, as device complexity increases so too does the Average Handle Time, and the cost-to-support; however WDSGlobal notes that Average Handle Times are also impacted by the network to which a device is attached and the end-user’s price plan.
A full copy of the study can be downloaded for free at www.wdsglobal.com/mobile-broadband
About the Study
The study focused only on technical support calls. Tier 1 calls, relating to general billing or coverage enquires would be subject to much lower Average Handle Times (AHT) and were not included.
WDSGlobal audited 635,971 in-bound support calls taken between September 2008 and February 2009. Only mobile devices that presented more than 50 support enquiries during this period were included in the study. In total 698 mobile products are included; averaging 911 support enquiries per product. To protect WDSGlobal customer confidentiality, the total for a device’s Average Handle Time has been averaged across all networks and price-plan types.
OTA configuration for Android March 10, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Handsets, User Experience.Tags: Android, configuration, G1, OHA, OMA CP, OTA
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Some interesting work from WDSGlobal who have just contributed a new project into the Open Handset Alliance’s Android Project.
The standard Android build does not include any provision for the OTA (over the air) provisioning of APNs. These control how your handset connects to data services such as Internet.
Not really a problem for the G1 because it was locked to the T-Mobile network. But fast forward 12 months when you have multiple vendors launching different Android devices and users churning them between networks and you start to see the problem. As a data-centric OS it needs to be as simple as possible for someone to churn their Android device onto a new network and get data connectivity.
There is of course an industry standard for the configuration of data settings called OMA CP. It’s implemented in the majority of handsets released today – just not Android ones. WDSGlobal’s project simply extends the OMA CP standard onto the Android platform.
Can (and should) MNO’s charge for premium support? March 5, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Mobile Operator, User Experience.add a comment
As mobile device and service complexity proliferates, so too does the demand on mobile organizations to deliver effective, comprehensive and efficient customer service. Unfortunately, the high level of technical proficiency and expertise expected by today’s consumer often comes at the cost of operational profitability.
It’s no wonder then that many organizations are looking at the precedent set by the IT industry for ‘premium’ customer care. Will the mobile consumer pay for a more comprehensive, specialized support service?
In a sector in which charging for support is a rarity, organizations have little in the way of market precedents from which to base strategic decisions.
WIF member, WDSGlobal has written a new paper ”Commercialization of MNO Technical Support”. It presents the challenges and considerations that will be faced by mobile operators looking to define a strategy for the commercialization of their technical support services. It also explores the variety of charging mechanisms available to mobile operators, investigates market precedents and provides a number of models that can be used to evaluate the scope, positioning, appropriateness and price point of a premium support offer.
WDSGlobal is making the paper available for free at
http://www.wdsglobal.com/news/whitepapers/20090301/20090301.asp
Touchscreens. Innovation vs Herd Mentality February 25, 2009
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Handsets, User Experience.3 comments
When it comes to handset design and innovation, the mobile industry has a strong herd mentality, often driven by short product lifecycles and a strong reliance on the Asian ODM powerhouses (frequently resulting in a parts-bin approach to handset development).
One of the strongest currents over the last 12 months has been the trend for touchscreens. After the iPhone and early LG devices, nearly all major handset manufactures have released devices that feature a touch-input mechanism; even RIM, at the vanguard of business mobility.
While I would like to believe that this signals a trend towards greater experimentation in user interface design and progression towards gesture-control and other innovations, the cynic in me sees an industry selling itself short and disappointing consumers with ‘me-too’ products that at best fail to meet consumer expectations and, at worst, simply aren’t fit for purpose.
Remember, the UI is merely the window into the handset. It is the means by which we navigate and interact with on-board features and services. The success of touchscreen must, therefore, be intrinsically linked to a device’s operating system and menu hierarchy.
Now, I’m by no means an Apple fanboy, but the iPhone works because the device’s OS compliments touch navigation. Clean hierarchies, graphical menus, strong integration with hardware (e.g the accelerometer). Arguably the iPhone OS was only ever designed with touch and gesture in mind, the same can’t be said for any other OS, even Android. Simply porting a touchscreen UI onto a legacy OS, or iteration such as S60 Touch, is going to yield challenges as legacy code does battle with new input mechanisms and changes in the ways that consumers interact with their devices.
This is the difference between Touch Enabled and Touch Optimised.
That’s not to say that everything should be Touch Optimised. Indeed, this is the trap that many seem to fall into. There will always be applications and products that simply don’t suit touch as the primary method of navigation and input. Outside of basic SMS and IM (which can be satisfactorily serviced via virtual keyboards), messaging is an obvious example and a full QWERTY keyboard will usually win favour amongst business users. Even a basic T9 keypad has the upshot of being operable with one hand.
A more pragmatic approach to touch should be adopted. Development and design decisions must be based on qualified and considered use cases and evaluation of which interactions benefit the most from the natural flow of touch and gesture.
Touch, for touch’s sake, may build early market share and tap into the current Zeitgeist, but I suspect that it may come at the cost of long term brand loyalty and credible evolution of touch, gesture and haptic control. Only last week a study of nearly 20,000 consumers by Reevoo.com found that half of the 10 least popular phones were touchscreens. Only the iPhone and LG Renoir made it into the Top 10. Users cited some very basic complaints, including icons that simply weren’t big enough for ‘male fingers’. A quick check of the ‘Introduction to S60 Touch’ guidelines published by Symbian shows a recommendation that icons should be no smaller than 7mm x 7mm with a 1mm gap between. Quick, go grab a ruler; that’s pretty small.
Clearly there is a need to evolve traditional handset form factors and user interfaces. The way we interact with our devices has moved on, so too has the core use case for mobile devices. Indeed, one of the touchscreens greatest benefits is its ability to free up valuable real estate on the front of a device and allow visual content to finally be viewed on a respectable screen size.
The way in which we interact with a mobile device will, to a certain extent, always be limited by its physical form factor; a fact that will mean compromises will always have to be made. The danger is that to try and remove these compromises, designers and UI specialist will be tempted to integrate several input methods within a single form factor. Can current form factors accommodate new developments in pressure sensing or resistive technology casing (essentially turning the entire unit into an input mechanism)? Can these technologies co-exist and how long before we overwhelm the user to a point that UI advancements actually become counter-productive?
