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49.000 suits in line for taxis, food and mobiles!
So, back home safely from another February week in Barcelona. Were my expectations met? Well, for a starter the weather was not as one would hope as Tlaloc detained the city and let go of his grip only the very last day. But other than that it was a pretty fruitful week in terms of meeting friends, colleagues and business partners, though I think I’ll shoot the next guy who says he is a market leader....
But how about the more serious expectations I voiced last week before boarding the plane to Barcelona (see blog posting right below)? 1) LTE; indeed it was omnipresent and probably the most used and seen acronym in this three-letter nirvana of ours. Most system vendors had live test beds with LTE (Ericsson demoing 1Gbit/s), most handset suppliers showed a line-up of LTE dongles (including water proof ones!) and some even displayed plain handsets with LTE capabilities, and of course every radio testing and network tuning company pronounced their LTE readiness and expertise. But different from previous experiences of flat-out optimism you didn’t get the feeling that the industry is losing it mind (again, read ‘3G launch’) and suggesting to let go of everything else and make a full-fledged leap into the next generation. At too many previous MWCs we have faced over-hyped acronyms that later on have proven to be nothing more than just a hype, or at best too early for their own good. So maybe this more careful approach will allow expectations and reality to stay closely hand in hand. We know for sure that LTE performs quite well for being a new technology (see our earlier postings on the subject), but at the same time the creep-crawl-walk-run approach is the sensible one this time around, as well. 2) Google’s Eric Schmidt; Maybe it was not as Kennedy in Berlin, but he certainly was the main attraction of the event. He humbly embraced the mobile industry and its advancements, and expressed his commitment to be a part of it (although being provoked and questioned from the floor by a Danish Consultant …). He (Eric) also noted something we have voiced in our predictions some time ago i.e. that North America may be on the verge of taking over from Europe as the driving force behind the continued mobile applications and device evolution. 3) App planet; Well, if there had to be one hype area maybe this is the one. Applications and app stores being the name of the game right now, this much pre-announced initiative carried quite some burden of expectations. Indeed, praise and applauds to all the innovative developers in Hall 7 that wrestled each other to stick out, but unfortunately many of them probably passed unnoticed, or close to, very undeservingly. Not because of bad ideas but because of a poor floor structure and an inexplicable belief that it’s more important to display the company name rather than what you actually do. The hype around application stores has to a large extent been fueled by Apple’s and Google’s successful entry in this space. So who are the winners when also Ericsson, Samsung and WAC (24 Operators plus GSMA) and others launch their respective flavors and initiatives of application stores? Well, we believe that in this case ‘first mover’ really do mean advantage. As a final remark I think one other observation is worth thinking about; 10 years ago, when the MWC was still in Cannes (those were the days my friend…), all leading system vendors at the time (Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Alcatel, Lucent and Nortel) had both handsets and infrastructure in their portfolios. Today you find that at the Chinese vendors only. What can we make out of that? Haven’t got the faintest idea, but it’s for sure an interesting development to start thinking about.
24 Feb 2010 | Northstream
Vamos a la Fira, oh o-o-o-oh
I admit it upfront, this is my 20th Mobile World Congress (missed the one in Nice 1991, wonder why, now I remember, I was busy building a GSM network). 650 people at the first one I attended in Rome (we thought it was huge) and now probably close to 50.000 people. I’m not alone doing this yearly pilgrimage, in fact, almost all of the original 650 attendees still do it. Hi Tom, how are you, Good to see you Dick, You haven’t changed a bit Harry (and he believes me!!). There must be something special about it. For our business it’s special because it’s the only way we can meet a great portion of our global customer base in one place in 4 days. Is also special to us because Northstream was officially launched at the Mobile World Congress many years ago (in Cannes 1999, back in “the good old days”…).
So, what more than nostalgia and meeting good friends brings us to Barcelona yet another cold February week. Well, this year, three things stick out to us: 1) LTE; Although it’s been on the agenda for at least the two last MWC’s it will be for real this year, networks are in service and are being rolled out around the Globe. From the strong interest in our recent blog post about the only commercial LTE network in the world (just scroll down a bit), we know it’s hot. We have more test results to share in Barcelona for those who are interested. 2) Google’s Eric Schmidt is giving a key note presentation; the leading internet player comes and talk to us. Almost feels like when Kennedy came to Berlin in 1963 (No, I was not there). I hope this will give inspirations to bring telecom and internet even further together. 3) App planet. We are truly excited about GSMA giving so much focus to applications this year; it indeed reflects the buzz in the market and one of the challenges for many to find its proper place in. We will certainly spend time at the App planet in Hall 7 to find out the latest and greatest in that space and how it can expand the boundaries of revenue- and profit making opportunities, for all. BN P.S. Feel free to reach out to us in Barcelona (or before or after as well of course). From Northstream you will find Bengt Nordström, Jonas Twingler and Joonas Merenheimo on site, contact details to be found under “Leadership team” on this site.
12 Feb 2010 | Northstream
iPad…Can’t help falling in love...
Reactions to Apple product announcements follow a familiar pattern. First, hype-building speculations and guesses around the specific nature of the announcement. Second, bashing comments and complaints on what was announced. It remains to be seen this time around if the third phase will be repeated, the one with general amazement over the market’s demand for Apple’s latest gadget...
After last week’s iPad announcement, the overall scepticism and questioning have been noticeably fierce. Critics come at the iPad from two angles, the smartphone perspective and the laptop perspective. Although having correctly placed the device in-between these two mobile device types, the pundits somehow fail to address it as a new device type. Instead, the iPad is criticized for not being both a smartphone and a laptop. As usual, we see a human need for categorizing the unknown while wanting to include all the known functionalities of perceived similar things. In our view, the iPad can be considered to represent a new mobile computing device category, a tailored combination of functionalities enabled by hardware, software and cloudware innovations channelled through a user friendliness-prioritized user interface where multi-touch is the key. True, there have been several attempts at this tablet space before, and the outlook of the iPad beyond the niche of Apple fanboys is uncertain, but we can quickly list three aspects speaking in favour of the iPad:
One could go on and point to the competitive price of the iPad, the sad state of netbooks, which come close in the comparison game, the still-leading multi-touch interface, and, indeed, the overall strength of Apple in deselecting features rather than going down the traditional path of making spec lists longer and longer. But, the iPad is probably even more interesting from an interoperability and connectivity perspectives. In addition to the external interoperability aspects listed above, it fits into the user’s “internal cloud” of social interaction and media consumption by sharing data with other user devices, such as the iPhone and a home PC, either via the home WiFi network or the cloud. Further, by freeing the 3G iPad from the operator’s grasp, Apple has taken yet a step at giving the user full control over connectivity. Prepaid mobile broadband service offerings are soon as flexible as those for voice, allowing users to pay by day, week, etc. Some users will clearly prefer capping their monthly use, while some will want unlimited data for their peer-to-peer gaming. Only the SIM-card itself remains as a small nuisance. It remains to be seen if Apple will be able to fully resist allowing operator –locking of the iPad outside the U.S. but the intention seems clear: This time users will be able to choose a data plan of their choice on the iPad itself and cancel it at any time. The next step is of course for Apple to provide the plan as an MVNO... But, it is still only speculations, from us as well as others. For now, we can lean back and spare both vitriol and excessive hype for a while. However, we can safely predict that we will see people lining up for iPads as they are released at Apple Stores and that we are less likely to see exclusive lines at any operator stores. And we feel we can also safely predict that Apple, along with other non-traditional telcos, will continue to unpredictably rock the foundations of what used to be a fairly foreseeable industry.
04 Feb 2010 | Northstream
Mobile World Congress, or just a Mobile Congress?
As tradition calls for, in couple of weeks the Mobile World Congress will gather the mobile industry in Barcelona for a traditional celebration of past achievements and stimulating discussions about the future. In all its splendor and thousands of mobile executives and experts, this time it will however be obvious that something is missing in the room. It’s fair to believe that particular attention will be placed on applications this year, but the world’s leading distributor of mobile applications and “re-inventor” of the mobile phone, Apple, is not participating. Similarly, the world’s largest mobile devices company, with the largest base of apps-ready smartphones, Nokia Mobile Phones, will also not participate in the event. Is this an indication that mobile device and apps leaders seek fortunes and new revenue streams parallel to the mobile operators?
Apple, having transformed the mobile phone playing field with its iPhone, has demonstrated its capability to disrupt and change a prevailing ecosystem. In 18 months the App Store has become a large operator-independent sales channel for innovative mobile software. Nokia, a broader mobile device innovator with overwhelming success in bringing affordable mobile phones to the masses of the world, is pursuing a similar path of independence from the mobile operator community e.g. through its Ovi Store. Whether or not the iPhone (or its mobile apps store) has replaced sliced bread in the hyperbole could be discussed but the next mobile innovation is likely to again come from Silicon Valley, and Apple’s iPad appears as yet another example. On the other hand, irrespective of whether or not Nokia Life Tools or Nokia Money will build the middle classes of Africa and India, Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the alternative, rather Nokia is set to continue dominating the volume business of mobile phones for the masses. But, both fancy smartphones and native phone applications need connectivity. Honor to those who honor should receive; HSPA+, LTE, shared networks, capacity wholesale, backhaul optimization, energy-saving access and transport solutions etc. are all big leaps for the telecom industry that make way for more traffic, higher data rates, less expensive bits, more cost-efficient network operations and service provisioning, etc. That’s where telecom operators and suppliers have their key roles, where they will prevail and should focus. The product of their great work is a giant platform for innovation, unleashed creativity and business entrepreneurship of mobile device manufacturers, internet online service providers, media companies and new start-ups that in turn will generate new ecosystems, new gold mines and new ways of thinking and using mobile access to communication networks. This is the field of the new breed of ‘mobile telecom players’, enriched from a perspective where users were put in the first room, and where market principles of trial and error apply. In many ways those perspectives are synonymous to the internet revolution, and largely California – its universities, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. The Googles, Twitters and Apples of the world is a blessing for the mobile industry's continued growth. Without new services, new thinking, new use cases and new paradigm shifts in the user plane there will not be enough returns from growing networks, capacity and capabilities. We will miss you at the party, please come next year.
02 Feb 2010 | Northstream
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