Posted: May 29th, 2010
This was the theme for Wednesday’s excellent Global Mobile Internet Conference dinner panel. Moderated by everyone’s favourite local blogger, Jeremy Goldkorn, the panel of speakers was a veritable who’s who of Beijing tech consulting. We were treated to some fantastic advice for those fresh-off-the-boat or yet to embark on their great Sino adventure.
Kaiser Kuo told us to seek local help and guidance and accept that, as a stranger in a strange land, someone might take advantage of you.
Victor Tong recommended establishing a family-like rapport with your core team of engineers/developers.
Richard Robinson and Alvin Wang both added caution to Kaiser’s comments: find a trusted partner with strong local knowledge and accept that you will be ripped-off at least once.
And finally, David Wolf reminded us all of the cha (茶) principal: C for Creativity, H for Humility and A for Adaptability. I like this acronym very much as it compliments my own advice to newcomers: “Don’t obsess about your Face, obsess about your Work.”
Image: James’ trusty Nokia E71
Posted: May 23rd, 2010
Frost & Sullivan agree with the Morodo Team: it is only a matter of time until Internet protocol (IP) becomes the principal transport for various access technologies. Most Mobile Network Operators are some way from launching their much-feted all-IP IMS networks., and we say: why bother?
As long ago as 1999, the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services, was defined and placed before the 3rd Generation Mobile Group (3GPP), ostensibly as a means of delivering Internet services over General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), the then Next Generation in high speed wireless data.
Gathering momentum through the latter part of the last decade, Mobile Network Operators, the International Telecommunications Union, 3GPP, device manufacturers and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) devised a framework of standards that define access, billing and control methodology for new network services under IMS. This ‘improved’ network architecture relies on the addition of an horizontal control layer isolating the access network from the services layer. In layman’s terms, the addition of a costly means of control managed by the Gatekeeper networks.
Within the mobile world in particular, the vision of IMS as a Rich Communication Suite (RCS) has become quite popular amongst the incumbents. Not only does IMS provide further protectionism and barriers to entry for disruptors, in the customer context, RCS is meant to offer an enhanced device phonebook, enhanced messaging and presence and advanced call functionality. In other words, very cool services that customers want to use.
The peculiar thing about IMS and its subset, RCS, is that there is absolutely no need for it, unless you are an incumbent operator intent on clinging to the remaining limits of control in your grasp. The base protocol for IMS is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a common Open Protocol defined by well-written community developed Open Standards that relies on base IP protocols (i.e. the ones we use to run the Internet today).
Quite simply, all of the enhanced features evident in IMS and RCS are available to Morodo today and if they are not already implemented in MO-Call for Morodo’s customers to use, they are either in development or in pre-launch alpha test. Morodo’s MO-Call client applications are fairly agnostic of network bearer technology and can originate and terminate calls over GSM, CDMA, 3G, UMTS, WCDMA, PSTN, WiFi, WLAN, WiMax and probably LTE too. More advanced features, such as messaging, rely on common IP protocols where these bearer technologies support them (which is in most cases).
The answer to the question ”What Is MO-Call?” It’s the next generation of Rich Communication Services available from any connected device, today. In MO-Call, Morodo has created all the services, features and functions provided and supported by a Mobile Network and VoIP Operator and presented them to a global market.
Posted: April 9th, 2010
Great news from Nokia yesterday: DRM free music coming to China. Whenever anyone mentions DRM free music, my heart takes a leap and I wonder whether they have really got it right this time.
Yue Sui Xiang, as the service will be known locally, is coming with music in a small group of new handsets yet to be released over here, these are the Nokia X6 32GB and Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5330, Nokia 5800w, Nokia 6700s, Nokia E52 and Nokia E72i. I wondered whether Nokia had updated the Chinese Comes With Music webstore? Grabbing my trusty E71, I fired up the browser on China Mobile GPRS and loaded the embedded home page. Imagine my suprise to see the image rendered above left: a blank page.
You would have thought that Nokia might have learned from the experience of the Ovi launch that it’s important to get it, well, as right as you possibly can first time. Given their available resources, how hard would it be to refresh a few pages before firing out a Press Release to the World?
And therein lies the problem. Whilst my mostly Western RSS was full of recycled Nokia puff this morning, local news was pretty quiet. Is saying you’re doing great things in China more important than actually delivering?
Just for research purposes, I hoofed it over to Baidu on the E71 browser and in just a couple of clicks (and barely ten seconds wait time) I had downloaded Lady Gaga’s Telephone, DRM Free. Didn’t pay a cent.
It’s a tough market to crack.
PS. If you’re interested in China Media news from a Chinese perspective, but you cannot read Chinese, I heartily recommend: Danwei.
Posted: March 9th, 2010
Over at GoMo News, Cian was wondering How do banks and operators feel about mobile banking? An insightful post that’s worth a read.
We all know this is one hot area and there are plenty of vendors out there ensuring that the ‘key’ aspect, Authentication, need not be beholden to the Operator; the game is still open to anyone.
Here in Beijing, China Mobile has a simple solution to all of those pesky commercials that have held up European Operator’s mobile money projects: buy a bank.
Posted: March 1st, 2010
Some very good news from the Symbian Foundation further to my 19th Feb post highlighting changes to the Symbian app approvals process.
Last Friday evening, I received an email from Symbian advising that Sogeti will remain a Symbian Signed Test House, and will accept Certified Signed submissions at a flat fee of €150 per submission. Also, the cost of Express Signed Content IDs will reduce to €15 from 8th March.
Thank you Symbian.
If you’d like some insight into the future of Symbian and Meego, Rafe Blandford and the team at All About Symbian have posted a great video of their MWC conversation with Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki. Worth watching or reading.
Posted: February 24th, 2010
Yesterday PocketGear announced their acquisition of Handango with a bold claim to being the world’s largest app store. With 140,000 apps, covering 2,000 devices and downloaders from 175 countries, they may very well be right, only GetJar comes close in cross-platform.
As GSMA members in the Wholesale Application Community have realised, addressing the mass market, device fragmentation demands app store consolidation. They’re a bit late coming to this party. In my view, the Operator On-Deck app store has about as much chance of success as the Operator On-Deck Internet Portal.
Congratulations PocketGear!
Posted: February 19th, 2010
Via Tomi Ahonen I discovered Mark Suster’s post App Is Crap. Mark argues that the app is a distraction from the main event in the browser. He’s right. The mobile web runtime environment could be delivering a whole lot more, and maybe it will with HTML5? Maybe it can already with Flash? When the network is fast enough and the device is truly open, the app will be dead. Until that time, it will be a closely guarded revenue generator in the value chain.
Just last week I received an email from the Symbian Foundation advising that Symbian Signed certification process is moving in-house, Third Party Approvals are no longer permitted. Symbian will be charging €120 a pop for signing approval, until now Test Houses such as NSTL, Mphasis and Sogeti, have priced out from €200 per app. Bravo to Symbian for realising a revenue stream, Apple should have made a tiered developer scheme with chargeable fast-track approvals available a long time ago, but this really does not sit well with the Foundation’s Open Source ethic. If the platform is Open, I should be able to pay any accredited expert to test my app and provide approvals based on published standards. Surely?
Nokia laid their cards on the table at MWC and without actually saying it made it clear that in their view Symbian has some years to run but the future is Meego. Sure, there is a lot of cool stuff coming for developers in Symbian^3, customers are going to love the fact that we can do more, but don’t palm us off on a nicer UI, better APIs and the illusion of Openess whilst maintaining a vested interest in the success of Nokia, the Ovi Store and Ovi’s own approval process.
Litigious words? Please don’t insult my intelligence by stating that the Symbian Foundation is independent of Nokia, who else is making Symbian smartphones of note? Soon there will be more than one hundred Android devices on market, Symbian needs all the help it can get, we’d like to give it but we’d also like to draw on a mercenary army of expert, experienced and independent testers to do so.
Via Tomi Ahonen I discovered Mark Suster‘s post App Is Crap. Mark argues that the app is a distraction from the main event in the browser. He’s right. The mobile web runtime environment could be delivering a whole lot more, and maybe it will with HTML5? Maybe it can already with Flash? When the network is fast enough and the device is truly open, the app will be dead. Until that time, it will be a closely guarded revenue generator in the value chain.
Just last week I received an email from the Symbian Foundation advising that the Symbian Signed certification process is moving in-house, Third Party Approvals are no longer permitted. Symbian will be charging €120 a pop for signing approval, until now Test Houses such as NSTL, Mphasis and Sogeti, have priced out from €200 per app. Bravo to Symbian for realising a revenue stream, Apple should have made a tiered developer scheme with chargeable fast-track approvals available a long time ago, but this really does not sit well with the Foundation’s Open Source ethic. If the platform is Open, I should be able to pay any accredited expert to test my app and provide approvals based on published standards. Surely?
Nokia laid their cards on the table at MWC and without actually saying it, made it clear that in their view Symbian has some years to run, but the future is Meego. Sure, there is a lot of cool stuff coming for developers in Symbian^3, customers are going to love the fact that we can do more, but don’t palm us off on a nicer UI, better APIs and the illusion of Openess whilst maintaining a vested interest in the success of Nokia, the Ovi Store and Ovi’s own approval process.
Litigious words? Please don’t insult my intelligence by stating that the Symbian Foundation is culturally independent of Nokia, who else is making Symbian smartphones of note? Soon there will be more than one hundred Android devices on market. Symbian needs all the help it can get, we’d like to give it but we’d also like to draw on a mercenary army of expert, experienced and independent testers to do so.
Image: Rohde & Schwarz
Posted: January 30th, 2010
How many people are shopping to pre-purchase an iPad this weekend? I have no idea; I’m not a gambling man. If you asked me to hazard a guess? Maybe not so many right now, but wait until a toddler picks one up.
OK, stop laughing, seriously, if my son was still four years old, I would buy him one. The iPad looks kid-proof, no moving parts, no camera, hey, not much of a battery charge, what could possibly go wrong? Like the OS, net access is easily controlled.
The iPhone isn’t something you can give a child to play with, it’s mummy or daddy’s phone. An iPad will keep the little blighters occupied for hours without being an inconvenience when you want to communicate. When they’re asleep, you can use it to read a book, watch a movie, play music, catch up on your mail, browse a newspaper or flick through a magazine.
The iPad has all the makings of a very attractive family computer middling-income folk and if you’re a harrassed parent, the price is just something you’ll put on the credit card.
How many people are buying an iPad this weekend? I have no idea, I’m not a gambling man. If you asked me to hazard a guess? Maybe not so many right now, but wait until a toddler picks one up.
OK, stop laughing, seriously; if my son was still four years old, I would buy him one. The iPad looks kid-proof, no moving parts, no camera, hey, not much of a battery charge, what could possibly go wrong? Like the OS, net access is easily controlled.
The iPhone isn’t something you can give a child to play with, it’s mummy or daddy’s phone. An iPad will keep the little blighters occupied for hours without being an inconvenience when you want to communicate. When they’re asleep, you can use it to read a book, watch a movie, play music, catch up on your mail, browse a newspaper or flick through a magazine. You’ll pick it up as easily as you put it down.
The iPad has all the makings of yet another connected device middling-income folk wouldn’t want to be seen without. If you’re a harrassed parent, the price is something you’ll just put on the credit card.
Image Babesta
Posted: January 25th, 2010
Speaking at MIDMEM, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher stated that his ‘name that tune?’ app generates some 300,000 track purchases every day. From song tagging, he estimated a 13% conversion rate. That’s quite impressive, even off the back of 50m downloads.
Attributing the success of the app Fisher recognised the value of covering all mobile platforms, not just those most popular in the press. I completely agree, commercial app developers should be embracing device and OS fragmentation, not choosing sides.
We live in a world with some 2,000 different global name brand legacy and new model mobiles, if you’re serious, it’s not hard to keep them covered.
via musically
Posted: January 20th, 2010
Here we go, Opera comes out fighting ahead of MWC and buys up mobile advertising management AdMarvel. Opera CEO, Lars Boilesen says:
“In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity. Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising,”
Riding on the back of positive reviews for Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile 10 and the recent mass exodus from IE, things are looking up for Opera.
Bottom line: would I pay Opera to manage my mobile ads? Yes, I would, as they have proved yet again, they know and understand mobile.
This was the theme for Wednesday’s excellent Global Mobile Internet Conference dinner panel. Moderated by everyone’s favourite local blogger, Jeremy Goldkorn, the panel of speakers was a veritable who’s who of Beijing tech consulting. We were treated to some fantastic advice for those fresh-off-the-boat or yet to embark on their great Sino adventure.
