Surfing on mobile web at MWC2010 One more time I attended the mobile industry annual party. It's been over a decade by now, good time to measure the change since 2000 - most of the promises have been held : subscribers grew 10X, smart phones exceed 50% of shipments, bandwidth is finally there with 3G bundles and first LTE deployments live, mobile web nearly ubiquitous (Ovum estimates : 95% of traffic is data, 60% of which HSPA). Not everybody in the industry was partying tough : Google has entered the game, opening the show while Nokia and HP were quietly exited the main exhibition to organize side parties. Overall, business and climate was cold and rainy in Barcelona this year. In summary :
Money and innovation is moving to applications. Cloud and web players dominate the battlefield.
Money and innovation is moving to applications. Innovation could be seen mostly at the edge. I attended the Mobile premier awards (MPA) masterminded by Rudy de Waele where 11 out of 49 start-up nominees were awarded prizes by the 500-audience and official judges. Layar won two awards for their augmented reality platform, Taxipal and PercentMobile won awards from the MoMo community and audience respectively. At the Fira, I spent some time in Hall 7 was re-named App Planet, featuring a start-up App Garage and developer workshops. I supported there a HP Labs project Friendlee nominated for an RCS innovation award. The start-up meeting from Finland and Israel organized by FinnMob and IMA was great. At the forefront of user experiences, augmented reality was demonstrated by 20 start-ups at a showcase organized by Vodafone, and PEREY Research & Consulting. VCs were attending these applications events including Accel Partners (check Rich Wong's pres at MPA) , Endeavour vision, Bluenove, Blumberg Capital, Sofinova Ventures . One VC advised on applications in adjacent industries : "these opportunities will exceed those of LTE infrastructure; find them by following your passion". This view is reflected in the drop of VC investment in traditional telecoms in 2009 : $1.6 billion, down 33% from 2008 and only peanuts were served at start-up parties ;-) On the operator side, 24 of GSMA members anounced the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an open industry platform for mobile app developers to reach a market of 3 billion subscribers. They endorsed standards from the The Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) group created by Asian operators in 2008 including SDK, widgets and BONDI . On the vendor side, Sony Ericsson announced their creation platform for facilitating user generated content. Cloud and web players dominate the battlefield.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote, - timidly read from a script as is if uncertain how to address legacy telco audiences- emphasized “Mobile First” strategy, featuring Flash and speech recognition : "the job here is to create magic" . 60,000 handsets running Android system are shipping/day (20 million this year). One Android device I previewed with Allen Prohitis is HP's Airlife 100 smartbook anouncing a 10" touch screen, Qualcomm's Snapdragon-3G chipset and 12 hours battery - interesting departure from Win7 within the HP Mini family. HTC announced 2 Android handsets : the HTC Legend and HTC Desire. What was the industry reaction ? Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo responded with a partnership with Intel to release Meego, the union of 2 Linux platforms – Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo . OPK modestly stating "the MeeGo platform is set to revolutionize computing" but you will have to wait : a baseline in March for Intel Atom and N900 but other devices later in the year. Which wave should a developer surf on, in the Android, Chrome, Maemo, Windows ocean ? Symbian Foundation just launched Symbian^3 an open source platform and a developer forum. And Microsoft announced its Windows Phone 7, a complete new release. Chip vendors such as ARM, Qualcomm, TI will also edge their alliance bets. I am a fan of BONDI, a smaller initiative for the mobile web which aims at reducing mobile browser fragmentation by releasing W3C-compliant widget APIs as the application run-time for mobile devices. They released version 1.1 at MWC on a number of different O/S including Android. And Opera announced Mini 5 beta is support to Android, complete with newest features that had been late to arrive.
Advanced technology is like magic said Arthur Clarke, author of the novel 2001 Space Odyssey . This was echoed in Google’s video of young end-user needs. With so many technology innovations in 2008, mobile applications environments may look like magic. Among others : Apple iPhone and Appstore have been the talk of the town, Adobe’s Open screen project should enable more visual experiences (such as Flash in Brew), Google launch of Open Handset Alliance's Android and G1 phone introduces new players in the game, Nokia acquisition of Symbian and its release into the Symbian Foundation consolidates its importance, LiMo compliant devices have been released, lots of developments have occurred in the mobile browser area such as OMTP launched the BONDi project. How can we summarize this for developers of magic communication services ?
In this post I look at 3 levels of mobile software : 1. Mobile operating systems 2. Application execution environments and ODPs 3. Mobile browsers and widgets
To measure progress toward magic in the last 3 years, I also checked Tom Godber 2007 summary and Andreas Constantinou's 2006 report
Commoditization of operating systems The fragmentation of platforms is the biggest problem for application developers. Ricardo Varella of Yahoo! summarized bluntly his frustration during September’s Mobile Monday London. This seems to consolidate slowly into 4 smartphone OS choices : Symbian, Windows, Linux, Mac OS. And the trend of royalty-free, open source licensing will help unleash more innovation (except on Microsoft platforms). Gartner estimates the following smartphone market share
Symbian 57% Windows 12% Linux 8% Mac OS 3% Other 20%
Symbian The Symbian Foundation platform should soon become available under a royalty-free (Eclipse EPL) license. This will leverage the leading market share(200 million handsets, 235 models 5 OEMs, 4 million developers,9000 applications). Different user interfaces variants exist today, and a choice will have to be made in favor of S60 (Nokia, 60 million) but discarding UIQ (Motorola / Sony Ericsson, 6+ models) and MOAP-S (NTT DoCoMo/Fujitsu/Sharp/Mitsubishi). Nokia will also contribute the Qt UI framework from Qt Software (acquired from Trolltech in June. Ari Jaaksi's Blog provides a good discussion of the merit of the Symbian Foundation.
Windows Mobile Licensable OS without consortium-contribution model, Windows CE kernel source code under shared source licenses. Windows Mobile 6 was released at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 and currently includes : .NET compact framework, ASP.NET mobile (renders markup on different mobile screens), Silverlight for mobile (leverages code for browser-based applications).
Linux Android has attracted much of the publicity around mobile Linux, putting some of the more experienced suppliers under its shadow. Rich Miner presented Google’s Android and G1 at EmTech08 future of mobile panel in September, one day after the G1 launch : "platforms should be driven by human factors, created by creative software developers, using contemporary tools". Linux aplication platforms include :
Open Handset Alliance (Google's Android) LiMo foundation has attracted more than 50 members and 23 commercially available phones. Other linux mobile contributors include Access Azingo Purple Labs leverages 1 billion browsers installed base (acquired from Openwave) Wind River Systems (acquired MIZI Research) MontaVista (Mobilinux, platform) NTT DoCoMo (MOAP-L platform) Nokia Maemo an open source product since 2005.
Fragmentation of application execution environments
At the AEE level with virtual machines and visual programming differences across devices, operators and other variants. Several suppliers announced this year their own ideas on how cross-devices should be implemented.
J2ME Java ME is the market leading platform with over 2 billion handsets today and there is innovation announced for 2009 with a mobile edition of JavaFX allowing rich internet applications (RIAs). But device fragmentation remains and J2ME provides multiple configurations of Java virtual machines or profiles, such as the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 1.0, 2.0, 2.1 (MSA), the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.0 and 1.1, and the Connected Device Configuration (CDC). Applications need to target a specific profile, as profiles are assembled for a specific configuration and there are multiple implementation of JSR software libraries including : Mobile User Interface Customization API for Java ME (JSR 258) CDC 1.1 (JSR 218) Foundation Profile 1.1 (JSR 219) Personal Basis Profile 1.1 (JSR 217) JSR. Some example of platforms include
Esmertec (Jbed JVM technology is implemented on more than 200 million units including Android platforms) Aplix (JBlend is embedded on over 650 phone models) XCE (mostly deployed in Asia) Google Android JVM, called Dalvik, does not support JAD/J2ME directly but the J2ME MIDP RUNNER for SDK 1.0 allow running J2ME applications without code change.
Adobe Flash Flash is a a clear favourite for designers and developers and is available on more than 500 million handsets (this is Gartner estimates, Adobe forecasts growth to 1 billion by 2009) and is. Adobe made news in May with by announcing the Open Screen Project. Together with 20 companies (excluding Apple, Google, and Microsoft) it will enable Flash and AIR runtime technology to be updated over the air on phones and mobile Internet devices. Adobe also skips licensing fees for devices and opens up the SWF, QVM, FLV/F4V specs (it does not make them open source) with FlashCast protocol and AIR players to follow. This includes the licences for video codec such as ON2, Sorenson, H.264, ACC and Nellymoser. The main benefit for developers is that Adobe supports a community-driven porting of the full platform. Apple iPhone remains an exception, apparently due to processor speed limitation as disclosed by Steve Jobs in March – though Adobe has a version available for iPhone emulators.
Microsoft Silverlight Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to Flash, and comes with great developer tools, even if it does not have the design community. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering RIA .NET based media experiences. Microsoft announced Silverlight for mobile will be available initially on Windows Mobile and Nokia S60. Recently at PDC 2008 Microsoft (Amit Chopra and Giorgio Sardo) demonstrated services that play media, handle gestures, animations and web services and leveraging Visual Studio SDK. Earlier in the year, Microsoft (Amit Chopra) announced the mobile plans at MIX 2008.
Qualcomm BREW BREW (Binary runtime environment for wireless) runs on BREW RTOS with an installed base of 150 million CDMA handsets from 45 manufacturers. This year it added Flash support to the existing UiOne user interface and APIs for C/C++ and Java. It implements a transaction-based shared revenue business models, claiming 1 billion $ earnings by 2500 developers in 2007.
ODPs to hide fragmentation On-device portals (ODPs) have progressed in recent years, leveraging mobile clients on AEEs or RIA technology, customized for accessing and interacting with content and information. ODPs typically improve visual user interfaces and response time with caching. But they still implement proprietary frameworks and require OTA download to multiple handsets as we wait for more ubiquitous AEEs or the emergence of mobile web technologies. Some examples include :
BlueStreak Technology MachBlue platform with APIs and SDK, for designing mobile multimedia content delivery. Streamezzo delivers Universal Software Platform for delivering rich media mobile services on clients compatible with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Brew, Java, Linux, Android, and Apple’s proprietary iPhone O/S. It references 50 customers among mobile operators, handset manufacturers. SurfKitchen is a full ODP suite for content download, Widget configuration, streaming media, event management Action Engine ODP platform offers usability, strong OTA update and management, and advertising. Clients run on Java, BREW handsets. Cibenix On-Device Portal (ODP), launched an idle screen-based dashboard for ONE in Austria Tech Unified mPortal provides ODP clients for J2ME, Symbian
Innovative browsers environment ? In 2008, the innovation trend converged towards browsers as mobile execution environment. Over 100 million mobile Ajax browsers have been shipped on smartphones like the iPhone and N95. Mobile browser-based applications leverage all fixed web developments such as client-side scripting and presentation : HTML, XHTML (WAP profiles), CSS, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest (AJAX), JavaScript extensions for handset APIs. This promises to bring the community of 25 million web developers to mobile.
Two early limitations of mobile browsers are starting to be addressed : - Access to phone features : there are minimal and incompatible implementations of APIs available. OMTP Bondi initiative issued in August draft specifications for standard APIs that will gives a widget or website control of application invocation, camera, call log, location, storage, messaging, PIM, device status, user interaction this is complemented by a framework for stronger policy and security. OMTP expects compatible handsets to be available in 2009. - Network limitations : REST/XHTML are heavy protocols not optimized for low bandwidth and error-prone radio network. Proxy based browsers (such as Opera Mini, UCWEB, TeaShark) attempt to optimize network traffic using a network-based proxy server to compresses pages and interactions received by a thin client browser. Browser platform examples include :
S60Webkit a webkit opensource browser ported to Symbian OS release 3 (S60) by Nokia Opera Mobile 9.5 has been installed on 100 million phones complemented by Opera Mini (proxy based) and Opera and an SDK. Teleca offers Obigo for Symbian, Windows, Linux complemented by messaging applications Access offers NetFront mobile browser (300 million installed in embedded devices) Mozilla mobile Firefox is available for Windows mobile and Linux platforms. Safari a webkit opensource browser ported to Mac OS X by Apple UCWEB Technology UCWEB, Version 6 is popular in China with 11 million downloads TeaShark a free browser
Mobile widgets Widgets (window gadgets) offer the most innovative application environments for handsets. Defined in W3C widget 1.0 , Widgets are client-side web application for displaying and updating local or remote data, packaged in a way to allow a download and installation on a client machine or device. Widgets typically run as stand alone applications outside of a web browser (on the idle screen or as other applications). Typical examples are accessories (calendar, address book), information services (weather), they are displayed on menus or icons or the idle screen. Widgets are developed using web technology including HTTP 1.1, SVG, XMLHttpRequest, HTML4, ECMAScript, CSS21. John Puterbaugh provides more comments on mobile widgets on his post Some of the popular environments and libraries include :
WidSets mobile runtime for MIDP 2.0 J2ME, SDK (XML, CSS, Helium), by Nokia in 2006 Bluepulse mobile runtime for MIDP 2.0 J2ME Yahoo! http://mobile.yahoo.com/gallery mobile runtime for Yahoo! Go 3.0, iPhone, Windows Mobile device, Nokia S60, Blueprint SDK (XML, server-side PHP, JavaSscript). Opera Widgets Bling Software http://www.blingsoftware.com, AJAX mobile runtime for MIDP 2.0 J2ME and BREW. Webwag mobile runtime for MIDP 2.0 J2ME, SDK (XML, CSS, Helium), APIs Zumobi widgets with zoom-space user interface for Windows Mobile and RIM, spun out of Microsoft Joemoby WidX mobile runtime for MIDP 2.0 J2ME, compliant with the W3C draft specifications Bicon over 7000 widgets for RSS feeds, Web searches, microbloging, advertising Mywidz (beta version) mobile widget editor and community services for end-users Celltop mobile client framework based on widgets, includes personalized content, messaging, unique design of two rotating cells.
Blue Ocean strategies in telecom from around the world
The content, information and opinions shared on this blog are mine and do not reflect information from my current customers. Claude Florin. claude@florin.ch
Innovation could be seen mostly at the edge. I attended the Mobile premier awards (MPA) masterminded by Rudy de Waele where 11 out of 49 start-up nominees were awarded prizes by the 500-audience and official judges. Layar won two awards for their augmented reality platform, Taxipal and PercentMobile won awards from the MoMo community and audience respectively. At the Fira, I spent some time in Hall 7 was re-named App Planet, featuring a start-up App Garage and developer workshops. I supported there a HP Labs project Friendlee nominated for an RCS innovation award. The start-up meeting from Finland and Israel organized by FinnMob and IMA was great. At the forefront of user experiences, augmented reality was demonstrated by 20 start-ups at a showcase organized by Vodafone, and PEREY Research & Consulting. VCs were attending these applications events including Accel Partners (check Rich Wong's pres at MPA) , Endeavour vision, Bluenove, Blumberg Capital, Sofinova Ventures . One VC advised on applications in adjacent industries : "these opportunities will exceed those of LTE infrastructure; find them by following your passion". This view is reflected in the drop of VC investment in traditional telecoms in 2009 : $1.6 billion, down 33% from 2008 and only peanuts were served at start-up parties ;-)
On the operator side, 24 of GSMA members anounced the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an open industry platform for mobile app developers to reach a market of 3 billion subscribers. They endorsed standards from the The Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) group created by Asian operators in 2008 including SDK, widgets and BONDI . On the vendor side, Sony Ericsson announced their creation platform for facilitating user generated content.
Which wave should a developer surf on, in the Android, Chrome, Maemo, Windows ocean ? Symbian Foundation just launched Symbian^3 an open source platform and a developer forum. And Microsoft announced its Windows Phone 7, a complete new release. Chip vendors such as ARM, Qualcomm, TI will also edge their alliance bets. I am a fan of BONDI, a smaller initiative for the mobile web which aims at reducing mobile browser fragmentation by releasing W3C-compliant widget APIs as the application run-time for mobile devices. They released version 1.1 at MWC on a number of different O/S including Android. And Opera announced Mini 5 beta is support to Android, complete with newest features that had been late to arrive.
