Mobile World Congress 2009

A few observations from meetings, exhibition and atmosphere at the 2009 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

 Main themes

Less hype, fewer people, less money, less WiMax, more of the same.

 Networks

-          Network spending in slowdown; mobile operators looking to get more from existing assets and less capex.

-          More agreement on that the roadmap from 3G through HSPA and its Revisions, then on to LTE (maybe initiall for hotspots, rather like initial 3G).  Much less talk of WiMax as an alternative to LTE in mature mobile markets.

-          Although the direction towards LTE has larger consensus, there is also agreement that capex limitations will push its implementation out further

-          Telstra in Australia making a big play of running 3G over 850MHz, so giving greater coverage, and upgrading rapidly through the gears of HSPA

-          Good explanation by Telstra of cost comparison between LTE and GPRS (LTE is approx 2% cost/bit of GPRS).  Also a possible new measure of base station efficiency:  kilograms per square metre per bit per second!

-          Telstra now claims SMS as less than 50% of data traffic

-          China Mobile pushing their TD-SCMA by trying to stress the importance of a roadmap of unpaired spectrum (on towards TD-LT(E))

-          Femtocells still something of a religion, led by faith rather than (yet by) reason

 Vendors

-          Blood on the carpet – a real sense of space and fewer people in the main exhibition hall for vendors

-          Chinese (Huawei, ZTE) even more of a presence than ever before.  This makes life awfully difficult for western-based vendors.  A quick Porter five-field analysis shows that the combination of intense industry (vendor) competition and strong customer (mobile operator) power puts great pressure on vendors’ volumes and commercial terms

-          Some vendors deciding to save cost and focus their activities via their pavilions, without taking up stand space in the halls (eg Cisco, HP)

 Devices and Operating Systems

-          All the consumer devices still in the shadow of the iPhone – which wasn’t even there.  Samsung (again) had a well set-out exhibition stand by theme (highdef multimedia, camera, music, comms)

-          Nokia starting to take a pop at BlackBerry (eg “BlackBerry tax” [the RIM relay]) to mask its own lagging in push email

-          Microsoft saying (again) it’s about to come good in mobile.  A slight irony that it is promoting itself as the platform of choice (slightly less ironic that a lot of appdev stands said “we’ve got our app working first on Windows Mobile, because that is easiest)

-          MS promoting Windows Mobile 6.5, partly in holding pattern till WM7

-          MS said that RIM’s and Apple’s vulnerability was the integrated nature of their hardware and software, and that the “open” Microsoft approach allowed more and more rapid innovation of device formfactor, price and features

-          MS claiming that Linux Mobile isn’t really “free”:  you incur costs for extra elements of the OS stack, eg photography, instant messaging.  These make it more expensive than paying the WM royalty (“which is less than the cost of the glass on the device”)

-          Market for devices is more sustainable at the moment at>$200 ex-factory cost.  This is growing a lot faster than cheaper featurephones

-          Qualcomm and Nokia have buried the hatchet on patent suits.

-          Hyundai entering the featurephone market??  They had a stand.  Maybe their satnav had broken down on the way to the Frankfurt Motor Show?

 Applications

-          Lots more booths with map-based applications (mainly GPS, rather than network-based)

-          More space (or maybe it seemed like that) with developers and providers of network optimising solutions and products, eg radioplanning, network management, sitebuild – ie reducing networks’ capex and opex

-          A sense that a lot of developers are at the same financial stage as last year

-          The nearest thing to hype at this year’s event was:  if you haven’t got an AppStore of your own, you’re in the wrong gang (at least for this year).

 Overall mood

-          Very quiet on the Monday.  More energy on the Tuesday, mainly in the developers’ halls

-          No sense of any major meaningful announcements

-          Could be some challenges next year for GSMA to persuade sponsors and booth-holders to stump up as much money

-          Very pleasant weather, so a relaxed atmosphere on the main outside areas

Broadband Speed - Disappointment Guaranteed?

An interesting post by Darren Waters, editor of the BBC News website's technology index. He has been monitoring his experience of broadband speeds on his Virgin Media "super highspeed" broadband service. For most applications the actual speed (ie how big the file is divided by how long it takes to arrive) is a lot lower than the headline speed of 50Mb/sec.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/02/speed_diary_day_five.html

The blog shows that the advertised headline speed is fairly irrelevant to the actual experience of an average customer, even when the provider can actually deliver such speeds reliably within the confines of their own network.

The limitations, especially in the newly designed cable broadband networks, are not at the access layer of the network (the wire from the local network node to the home). They are out in the internet world beyond.

It just goes to show that messages about headline speeds can only disappoint. Maybe it's time for Virgin Media to change their marketing, rather than fiddling further with their technology.

Digital Britain - interim report

Putting the Carter before the horse ?

Lord Carter’s interim report makes a good start at identifying action areas and key issues across the huge and varied arena of communications and broadcasting markets in the UK. But NetStrategics believes he has a long way to go before he can substantiate any real ways forward which will win general support – not to mention suitable funding ! There is more than a whiff of sanctimonious attitudes to digital inclusion and the UK content industry – the market should be encouraged to tackle these issues itself, and overall the report puts the cart of intellectual neatness before the horse of market complexity.

For a detailed critique of Carter's proposed 23 actions, please email me at huw.williams@netstrategics.co.uk