Pre-Emptive Mobile World Congress Activity!

Chris and I attended Openwave’s roundtable this morning. The morning was put on by the lovely folk at Bite Communications to showcase OpenWave's service developments since MWC 2010 and ahead of all the hubbub and chaos of Barcelona. (A marvellous idea if I do say so myself and delivered in the red room at the Covent Garden Hotel.)

The Covent Garden Hotel

Thoroughly wired on Monmouth coffee from the infamous establishment opposite the hotel, I was ready for a morning of industry discussion taking in moments on intelligent data pricing, network traffic optimisation, content and developer vs. operator needs arguments, privacy and personalisation features and the ability of the mobile browser as distributor of APPS and VAS. I won't lie, some of the industry's best analysts brought the discussion to a denouement with talks of Japanese virtual girlfriends, mobile porn searchability, and inadequate marketing personalisation of shampoo adverts for bald men. Some highlights below!!

Openwave Pre-Barca Meeting, Covent Garden Hotel



The event collected about 8 industry analysts around a table for candid discussion. Up showing some slides and demos were John Giere, Senior Vice President, Products and Marketing, and Christian Goswami, Director, Product Management, UK, Openwave.

Background - Video is coming, get your networks ready! 

As we all know, mobile data usage is up, with the most part of this made up increasingly by video. ( Ed update - 02/02/11 - Cisco: Mobile video will make up 66% of data traffic by 2015) The 1/2 yearly growth of video consumption is beyond 100%  - a phenomenal leap. New trends like 3D or HD on mobile will also increase need for data optimisation.  Although operator mobile data revenues are growing as well (Softbank is the first operator to state that over half of its revenues (around 55%) are now from data alone), they are not offsetting traditional revenue losses. In short, the operator nightmare continue: OTT services continue to disintermediate service providers. 

Knowing Your Subscriber, Personalising Your Service:  

The problem cannot be tackled by infrastructure or software alone, but by knowing customers in more detail and acting accordingly. (Great lengths of the roundtable were dedicated to the breadth of knowledge operators 'apparently' have about their subscribers but sit on - too concerned about breaking subscriber trust or lack of knowledge of how to utilise??) As such Openwave have partnered (as per MWC 2010 announcements) with F5 (lovingly named after tornado nomenclature due to the founders interest in such extreme weather patterns) to deliver data feedback across all layers of the network from user -device-network-service.

Managing Traffic - in Mature AND Growth Markets:

Things are getting busy out there

Openwave are developing services for congestion aware optimisation of traffic - apparently with more sophisticated methods of compression technology. 'Favouriting' content- Ie. Popular videos can be identified through analytics, cached, treated for optimisation and then made more manageable - is one way to do this, although optimisation for live content remains more expensive.

This type of service is important when considering the wrangle between content providers who want rich content experience vs. network operators who want to manage bandwidth, and the issue remains not just for mature markets but also for growth markets in urban high usage areas – Nairobi etc. But questions remain about identifying subscriber usage patterns and then feeding this back to the subscriber-  for example, if a consumer has 5 most used URLS, and these can be focused and identified for a discount – will said user be alarmed that Mr. Operator now knows his choice of website preference (whether this is Tesco, Naked 'Ladies', or any other such questionable sport!) Nudge nudge wink wink ;) As with so many things, one guesses the outcry will only become audible if it outways the benefits of the service for the end user. The OTT providers seem to have proved this point with the amount they have chipped away at assumed privacy to date in partnership, with consent, and almost overnight.

Forget Block Tiered Pricing; Welcome to Personalised Pricing  

Openwave have been tracking the rise in tiered data pricing.

In 2010 there were only 12 tiered pricing plans, in 2011 there are 50+ and still counting. Crude data plans based on volume consumption are now more sophisticated, based on,

·         Functionality

·         Time used

·         Traffic category (video, web)

The onus of Openwave’s work in this area =

·         Simplicity

·         Contextualisation

·         User engagement and self care – ie using a gauge icon to know how much data is being used

It will be interesting to register whether this 'how much gas is in the tank' style self-care by subscribers actually limits data consumption by giving a more accurate indication of how pricey it can be? ((All very interesting for our review day on Intelligent data pricing  - if you wish to be involved contact me at sophie.powell@informa.com)) As before, will people appreciate discounts if they acknowledge their browser activity specifically? I certainly can recognise the interest in more tailored pricing plans which make sense and deliver an air of clarity.

Mobile Operator App Distribution??

At MWC, Openwave will be announcing AMPLICITY - their venture with Getjar to deliver apps distribution via mobile browser. The service gives operators some way to bring back their own branding of apps and lessen device specific OS' which currently lead the siloed way. Clearly, there are questions of limited distribution, and with an operator by operator approach (starting with Sprint), one wonders, aren't WAC already doing something similar?? But their argument is that working with the giant of mobile app distribution, GetJar, and an SDK for all OS’ the operators will be well placed and taking an active role in VAS over their networks...One might question whether what they are really after is a new way to get back closer to their consumers.

What is the business model?

Usual model  = 60/70% rev to developer and 30/40% aggregator - apart from some oft quoted cases!!

AMPLICITY = with an increased personalised service through optimization and personalisation operator can showcase better metrics (click throughs etc) and therefore claim a bit of this pie so it becomes a 3 way rev share.


Whilst there are other ‘browser as a distributor issues’ = 1. Need connectivity, 2. OK for lite apps, less good for ‘heavy’ apps, this is another example of operators still! trying to be involved in the latest communications revolution.

Indeed, lots was mentioned about Operators Now Trying to Do Something with the Wealth of Data they have on subscribers –with lots of data collection projects happening frantically being prioritised across the network spectrum - (contact us about our own future mobile voice event)...With operators equally delighted about new modes of connectivity and frightful about data congestion, it was an interesting point made by John Delaney that with the influx of tablets, the larger form factor is making them increasingly used in the home so running on wifi home network not cellular.

Judgement: a sophisticated negotiation of MWC hysteria in the relative calm of London