Posted: June 6th, 2010 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
This week, not one, but two, heavyweight analysts have published reports that indicate the growing strength of Mobile VoIP. The first is from Juniper, and the second from Ovum. For the uninitiated, here are several of the salient points as we see them.
Mobile VoIP customers make more calls. It seems so obvious one wonders why the Mobile Network Operators took so long to do the math. Interrogating our database of heavy-use MO-Callers, we know that people who want to save money on calls do so because they make a lot of calls.
Mobile VoIP customers are “sticky” and less likely to churn away to alternative services. Again, seemingly obvious but give the people what they want and they’re happy, try and ban or block the services they want to use and hey presto, they move away.
Mobile VoIP and VoIP will not be free forever – this is not a race to zero. Frankly, we were unsuprised that Skype announced that they would begin charging for 3G Mobile VoIP calls in the New Year. The Telecoms Industry is struggling to find new data tariffing models to support the build and maintenance of high speed networks, everyone is making every attempt to sweat monetization at every point of the value chain.
So what does all this mean for Morodo? Well, we’re pleased to tell you that it’s all good news for us. Why?
Mobile VoIP is an offer that has yet to reach mass-adoption in any market. The more people putting Mobile VoIP in the press, on blogs, on TV, radio etc the better for Morodo.
Mobile Network Operators get Mobile VoIP and their interested. Regular readers of the Morodo blog will know that we presented MO-Call at the Beijing Global Mobile Internet Conference. We were very pleased at the number of approaches from Operators, most of whom just ‘got’ the business model right away.
Morodo’s network and apps sweat every network technology. Honestly, we read a lot about 3G, 4G, LTE, WiMax, EVDO, HSDPA etc. etc. ad infinitum. These are meaningless terms and acronyms to the consumer, they don’t care about the technology that provides the service, they just care that it works. Well, Morodo works on just about any network bearer you care to mention.
Pricing is not a zero sum game. We have always sought to keep our pricing as transparent and simple as possible. It’s what customers want. In the new era of unmetered charging (flat rate per month fees for usage) we know that we’ll have a lot flexibility to offer the market what it wants. And we know the value of giving the customers exactly what they want.
Posted: June 1st, 2010 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
Beijing’s annual Global Mobile Internet Conference was better attended than most GSM Mobile World Congress conference halls.
For two days, the great and good of the Chinese Mobile Internet regaled us with valuable advice, canny predictions and wonderful insight. As a cross-cultural affair for networking and business learning I cannot recommend this event highly enough, definitely one for your 2011 diary and beyond.
Morodo was on the shortlist of the Innovation competition for start-ups. I really enjoyed presenting MO-Call to the massed attendees and a stiff panel of experts. Thank you to the Dragons, Joe Jasin, Victor Tong, William Wang and Wang Ye, for the excellent advice and feedback.
Thank you also to Benjamin Joffe and Barrett Parkman, founders of the Great Wall Club, organisers of the event. Now I’m looking forward to catching up with all the new people we met.
Image: Duncan Leung
Posted: May 29th, 2010 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
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 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
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 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
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 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
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 | Author: The Morodo Team | Filed under: blog | No Comments »
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.
