To gain such a widespread popularity so quickly was made possible thanks to the mobile industry’s global platforms (networks, devices and application stores). Rovio promptly seized the opportunity fame brought, and started to include in-game advertisements into the free versions of the game. Much thanks to this, their latest game “Angry Birds Space” was downloaded 10 million times in the first three days.

Rovio has stated that they aim to grow to the size of Disney, and to breed a long standing pop culture icon among the likes of Mickey and Donald. And this game developer is seriously working on it – … building a franchising empire with plush toys, books, clocks, clothing, bedlinen, to mention a few items, and with announced plans to create Angry Birds activity and theme parks. The enraged birdies will also be seen in Disney’s home ground – in an animated TV series and in a feature length movie next year. This move is supported by the purchase of Kombo Animation Studio last summer and a recent acquisition of Futuremark Games Studio.

The game developer is aggressively applying the learnings from (mobile) digital distribution to its expanding franchising business. Rovio is using Amazon as one of their sales channels in order to create a global physical distribution and based on this success they have managed to close contracts with retail giants like Wal-Mart for both digital and in-store channels to distribute their merchandise.

Currently Rovio’s proclaimed value is several billion USD while Disney’s market cap is near 75 billion USD, so there is still quite a gap to close, but time will tell us whether in this mobile era an “entertainment house” would be able to pull it off, and if so, even more interesting is to see how quickly they will achieve this. Instagram mobile social photography network created value of one billion dollars prior to celebrating its second birthday – wouldn’t have been possible without the global mobile ecosystem. Neither would Rovio be where they are today if there wasn’t this huge global mobile platform to feed upon. There is certainly something in Rovio’s attitude, operating and distribution model that could teach lessons to the rest of the telecom industry suffering from lack of growth…

/Suvi

Suvi is a Senior Consultant at Northstream

Feedback to blog@northstream.se

Here, as in most other countries, enigmatic sizable organisms control the mobile life. The services they render are at the foundation of all the person above – and everyone else – long so much for, provided through dedicated networks, full of technology and packed with services. These providers differ. One is the oldest and biggest but not necessarily (and self-admittedly) the best in class in terms of service. The others are chasing the top dog´s market leadership with different strategies. One is the outlawish cheapjack, touting its price leadership ceaselessly, another one branded flashily and the third one seen as a bit more serious whilst not as cheap.

The trophy they are now all after is an elusive creature: customer satisfaction. No one was ever able to spot this one in the crossfire. Still, being the latest object of desire it is now the talk of town, or rather its absence. Studies underpin this famine and we have elaborated on it before (see our blogpost It´s not all in the network). What these studies don’t tell however is an explanation as of why. One would think it matters as the customer is king and such, and wanting to find a remedy calls for approaching the reasons behind. I go by the assumption that the underlying reason is in fact a lack of focus or attention. If you follow me in this and if there are different ways to pay attention then there must be several ways to customer satisfaction. If not all then at least many roads lead to Rome. Common wisdom would list the competitive differentiators as network, value added services, pricing and marketing, probably in that order. And these must all be seen as sources to derive customer satisfaction from.

Something dramatic occurs in the land of the battle: one of the providers whilst massively investing in its network in order to meet the increasing data hunger does something supposedly outdated, namely, launch a marketing campaign pivoting around exactly that fact. Hereby, it seems this provider puts the customer in focus, originating from his needs, flexibility and reliability of mobile services. This move would, elegantly enough, strike 2 out of the 4 customer satisfaction flies at one stroke. The hunt for the elusive creature is on it seems. Who will bring it in you believe? It is maybe so that this initiative suggest that everything could eventually be about the net – given the value it provides to the customer is accentuated and tied back to focusing on the customer and his needs. This could both prove a successful long-lived branding and a viable way out of (or to profit in) commodity hell (see our blogpost To commodity hell and back). Bravo!

Other members of the hunting club, follow this track! Do good and talk about it! After all, it might all be in the network.

/Franz-Josef

Franz-Josef Arnuga is a Consultant at Northstream

Feedback to blog@northstream.se

It is widely recognised that mobile data usage growth, whether on smartphones, laptops or tablets, will continue. In such a market situation, there are a number of challenges for the main stakeholders to cope with, operators, equipment suppliers and regulators alike. Mobile networks will need to accommodate significantly different volumes and types of traffic than today, adopt continuously evolving technologies and make more flexible use of the scarce resource of radio spectrum.

Previous Northstream white papers have discussed the generic opportunities and challenges LTE technology brings to operators and how to adopt a suitable migration strategy. Two of the major concerns have been how and when voice services could be offered and the availability of ample device portfolios. Voice over LTE will indeed happen soon, and could bring a boost to operators’ dwindling voice business, but that is a topic for another white paper. In this paper we instead put our focus on analysing the critical availability of suitable and plentiful LTE spectrum and how that can enable, or inversely prohibit, a continued strong growth of mobile communication.

First, a very simple and clean interface is critical for success, and second a somewhat narrowed down set of total functions and options making both setup and usage fool proof. With the smartphone app markets maturing after 3-4 years´ existence users have increasingly higher expectations in terms of usability and relevance. We do not have more time at our disposal, and for those short moments on public transport or cueing for coffee or lunch there is a full range of apps installed on my device fiercely competing for my short attention span.

Those risen expectations make that dumbed down apps will not find users´ acceptance. Fair enough, Angry Birds had some success (…), but shooting grouses fluttering over a screen will not win any future award. Now, you might say, this is a contradiction in itself saying we need simpler yet complex apps. Provenly it is not. Apple has showcased this quadrature of the circle to be possible. No matter if you are a follower of this religion or not, its core dogma is combining a rich set of features with a shockingly high level of simplicity and usability. The call for more Apple like apps is for power in function whilst usage being easy as pie.

Two examples where my need for a smooth smartphone app remained unsatisfied: a) Electronic business cards apps and b) password encryption and storage solutions, like Keypass. Even though there are many of both, cumbersome setup and usage have led at least me to conclude that none of the existing solutions can currently satisfy my requirements. Even though I am able to live without both I think about it as lost chances – for app programmers in unrept profits and for users in not available benefit.

An encouraging example is TED – Ideas Worth Spreading (which is always a great thing no matter how applied). The app allows me to easily bookmark my favourite inspiring clips, maybe because they are too long for a short metro ride to work or just because it is convenient. At home I can watch them on a bigger screen and without time pressure. But I would like to bookmark even clips watched at home on my lean-forward. App vs. desktop 1 – 0. Even better would be to have both integrated (remember the “old” 3-screen notion?). Registering an account at TED I would expect the following: videos bookmarked early in the morning on my way to work appear on my account for follow-up back at home. Integration is the name of the game. This will drive users to the app, make them initially potentially pay for it and eventually use it and spread the word about it.

To conclude in this sense, let me recommend a great app I just found through a review: Zite really is what I call an Apple amongst apps. It is easy to setup (took me 15 seconds to customize it); it is visually appealing, with headlines and pictures in the cover story panel looking as great as never seen on a small smartphone screen. It features this effortless way of using it with an interface that just seems tailor-made for my fingers and intuitions; tapping, swiping, everything works as my intuition suggests at the first approach: tap once to make the menu bars disappear, tap again to make them reappear; swipe left and right to browse between the sections initially set as preferences (arts, politics, etc.). Last but not least, it is functionally rich. By feeding a certain selection from a set of prestigious high-quality newspapers and magazines it makes me feel what no newsfeed so far have managed: this is one app that satisfies my daily needs in terms of news on my smartphone close to exhaustively. This and no less is what every app should aim for. Developers, please be inspired. Service Providers, please be encouraged to facilitate. Users, please make your voices heard. Wouldn’t it be nice?

/ Franz-Josef

Franz-Josef Arnuga is a Consultant at Northstream

Feedback to blog@northstream.se

Looking at the mobile operator industry in mature markets today one finds a similarity: they in fact offer a commodity too. A mobile operator’s service is something that people use every day but do not care much about it except when it stops working and when the bill arrives. Telecom operators have become utility companies and offer a service that most people find essential but uninteresting, just like a water or electricity company. There are two reasons this is bad news for operators.

First, offering a commodity means that you’ll have a hard time making people pay premium fees – because there is no premium in the service itself when there are others offering the same thing. Like electricity or consumer banking services. That’s exactly why someone invented the notion of “commodity hell”: once something has become a commodity there is no going back.

Second, offering a commodity also means that customers do not care much who delivers it – because the product or service looks just the same. Electricity isn’t differentiated between suppliers; as long as the bulb lights up when you flicker the switch you’re good. Most mobile operator customers reason the same way: if you can make a call from where you are and browse the web at reasonably high speeds you’re good. Today all operators can make that happen. That means there are few reasons for a customer to stick to their current operator if someone else offers the same thing but at a lower price. The perceived value comes from the device or from services, content and applications not provided by the operators. Customers are therefore not very loyal or engaged which means that they are easily lost to competitors.

Most operators are nevertheless doing financially well because of their oligopoly-like situation (which we covered in the November 2011 blog post “It’s not all in the network”) and because voice and SMS still contributes so much to the overall profit. In their frantic search for new service pricing models, operators should also consider the customer experience. Customer experience is all the things surrounding the service delivery before, during and after sales. That includes things like personalized offers, excellent online self-service, friendly staff and other aspects that make people feel “wow, great service”. Think Starbucks, where people pay more and queue longer to be able to say “wow, great coffee”.

Being “customer centric”, as many claim to be, isn’t the same thing as providing great overall customer experience. Nor is it equal to the quality of the network itself. Customer experience is the sum of the interactions that a customer has with the company and requires a multi-level, cross-functional approach to be fulfilled. In addition to a good network it involves IT, sales, customer service, product development and essentially anyone that ever provides the end-customer with anything.

The beginning to the solution for operators is to acknowledge the importance of customer experience and dedicate resources to it. Like airline Virgin Atlantic – also in a commodity industry – where CEO Steve Ridgway announced that £100 millions will be invested to “retain and enhance […] leadership in customer service and experience”. I’m intrigued to see who the first telecom operator to announce a similar program in 2012 will be.

/ Erik

Erik E. Byström is a Manager at Northstream

Feedback to blog@northstream.se

4T, the mobile payment joint venture established by Sweden’s mobile network operators Telia, Tele2, Telenor and 3, presented its strategy at an industry event in Stockholm on Wednesday.