e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[emit]

A Brave New World

3/14/2002

The mobile Internet market is in a state of flux. From collapsing share valuations of debt-burdened telcos to the ever-increasing number of small, content and application provider start-ups emerging, it is clear that long-term predictions are risky, if not foolhardy. Nevertheless, some recognisable trends are emerging from the chaos that operators must carefully scrutinise if they are to capitalise on the potentially huge revenue opportunities to be made from a pervasive network that affects almost every aspect of consumer and business life


Over the past two or three years analysts have released research and figures suggesting the market for mobile Internet services will very significant and will grow at a rapid rate. Gartner believes that there will be over one billion wireless Internet subscribers by 2005 and that almost 60 percent of all new Internet-enabled devices will be wireless.It is not hard to draw one’s own conclusions from figures like these. But no one can really estimate how big the mobile Internet will really be. Like fixed line Internet, adoption of the mobile Internet will be driven by three main factors: function, content and relative cost to the end-user.

An increase in functionality is directly proportionate to the increase in bandwidth. With 2G technology, it is possible to stream 9.6Kbps over a GSM network. With GPRS, operators will be able to deliver 57Kbps, ultimately leading to 2Mbps with 3G. This evolutionary path will allow for the exchange of new data types, including full email services for business users and high quality audio and video services for consumers.Accessing content on the mobile Internet will be a very different approach than it is with the fixed line Internet. Mobile Internet content will not be free – users will pay for content that is of intrinsic value to them personally via micro-payments to their phone bills and online banking mechanisms for larger payments.

Entertainment and information management applications may well become the biggest content ideas on the mobile Internet as operators develop both their own, and co-branded content which captures users’ imaginations.Cost is the major inhibitor to any market adoption, however, there are powerful market forces working together to ensure that mobile Internet connectivity will be affordable. Competition between European service providers, for example, will help drive down prices. The other determinant is massive investment in backbone infrastructure should ensure that there is no capacity constraint to drive up prices.Mobile Internet technology must be open and transparent if it is to succeed and achieve mass-ubiquity.

Partnerships which offer sustainable value propositions and close relations between service providers, content owners and major IT companies will see the mobile Internet emerge into a working reality over the coming years. Major players in the technology world, such as HP, have recognised this need and are committed to promoting common, open standards through partnerships between the major players in the infrastructure and device worlds, and the applications and content environments. An environment such as HP’s mobile e-services bazaar fits this mould perfectly as it brings together many different parties to work on services and solutions to cater for operators in this brave new world of telecoms.And it is a brave new world.

2001 marked the end of the beginning for the telecoms industry. It marked the end of the first 125 years of telecoms and heralds the transition to a new phase in market development. The underlying problem today is with legacy behaviour and structure of an outdated and mature industry. The old business models clearly no longer work in the emerging ‘Infocomms’ sector, however, as yet few companies have really recognised this and acted upon it. The longer they wait, the worse off they will be. Telcos continuing with the old model of cutting debt and operating costs in the hope that they will survive this recessionary period are fooling themselves. This is not enough: they must embrace the new realities and adjust their structures and models in line with the new market conditions if they are to survive.Sue Uglow, principal analyst at Ovum, thinks telcos and investors have failed to realise that the telecoms industry has changed forever.

“It’s taken a year or so for competitors to realise that such conditions require a fundamental re-focus of their activities, not just a tweaking at the edges. At last, we are seeing some significant changes in the supply environment, as telecoms faces up to the reality that the old world has gone forever.”Uglow believes a new Infocomms industry is emerging that is centred on five key elements: content/information; applications platforms; transport; delivery and service. In addition, functions such as systems integration, operational support systems and software are becoming increasingly important as networks and content are integrated across multiple platforms.

In future, the transportation and delivery elements of the Info-comms supply chain will decline in importance, and content/information and service provision will become the central elements around which customer-centric solutions will be built.Info-comms players have to realise that that users do not demand technology, they demand solutions enabling them to do things more effectively, or to do new things altogether. Horizontally focused organisations need to identify sources of expertise outside their own environment – and maybe outside telecoms – to unlock new revenue sources and achieve rapid time to market, lower capital expenditure commitment and lower operating costs.Another issue facing both mobile and fixed network operators is that end-user ownership is changing.

The companies that best understand end-user behaviour are the one best placed to manage the end-user relationship and these are often not the telcos themselves, but other specialist players like system integrators, large software companies, retail chains or utility companies.“Everything will become a service,” says Peter Vesterbacka, global leader of business development at HP’s mobile e-services bazaar. “From games to healthcare solutions, to whatever, it’s all about services.”Vesterbacka and HP regard the issues and challenges facing operators as a significant opportunity for the company to promote its e-services division. HP has a global sales force with relationships to operators, service providers and utility providers. “Mobile e-services will be the biggest market ever. There will be one billion mobile phones in 2002.

That’s a huge opportunity and operators cannot afford to miss the boat,” he says.HP envisions a new kind of mobile experience – a world where users draw on all the resources that surround them in each new environment that they encounter, not just a single mobile device. Mobile services should be delivered in a world where the ‘always on’ capability of networks ensures that e-services can be rapidly deployed, easily managed, and scaled to meet the demands of the mobile market.This new paradigm promises to transform how businesses operate and serve their own customers, as well as change the way consumers lead their lives on the go. The key to servicing this new market, as we have seen, lies at the intersection of appliances, infrastructure and e-services.HP fuels development of some of the most useful mobile e-services through its Mobile e-Services Bazaar.

The Bazaar represents a business model that is unique to HP. Located in centres around the world, the Bazaars are centres of innovation for emerging mobile technologies, and are, in essence, e-service business creation hubs. They act as a resource for companies that want to build their own e-services and for customers who wish to leverage the ecosystem that the Bazaar offers in order to turn ideas into reality. Currently, there are more than 450 companies around the world that are Bazaar members.Dale Vile, service director at analyst firm Quocirca, says that the opportunities for operators lie within the provision of end-to-end services for consumers or for businesses.

“It’s a new sales proposition and suppliers must get the route to market right.” He believes that IT solutions companies, like HP, can be big help to operators in this endeavour. “It’s an IT solutions sale, not a comms sale. Someone has to knock on the IT director’s door and this is where the strength of someone like HP lies because of its existing communities and channels to market,” says Vile.One of the ways in which HP can assist operators create value within their networks without shouldering the burden of a huge IT deployment and management project is to outsource aspects to HP partner companies like End2End.End2End are a Wireless Application Infrastructure Service Provider (WAISP) that build and manages service solutions on behalf of operators allowing them to develop hosting and content aggregation services, applications development without over extending the management, investment and technical skills set of the operator.

An example of this exercise can be seen in the alliance between the UK operator One2One, End2End and HP last year to provide innovative wireless data services and solutions to One2One’s customers. End2End delivered a turnkey, carrier class solution for the hosting, managing and supporting of wireless e-services to the small and medium business sector of One2One’s customer base. In addition, consumer services such as games and personalised entertainment products can now be delivered to mobile handsets via SMS and the emerging wide variety of wireless devices and PDAs can also be expected.This has assisted One2One in generating income from the provision of wireless services – a theme that will become increasingly important as the UK operator’s business model embraces 3G mobile technologies.

Atta Miettinen, chief applications officer for End2End, says there is a gap between the application and content provider and the network operator. “From our point of view, we can facilitate this access from our build out of data centres across Europe.”As operators seek to expand the revenue-generating potential of applications and content they face two choices: do it themselves or outsource it. End2End can build the connection to the network and billing system so only one system integration is required. For example, Swedish operator Telia Mobile is running services from many different application providers which End2End host on its own platform. “Telia have one agreement with us and we partner with the leading application programs like Nokia Forum and HP’s mobile e-services Bazaar,” says Miettinen.End2End have a fairly good understanding of what operators are looking for in mobile data services.

Miettenen says the company has a dialogue with 35 out of 57 operators in Western Europe. “We are updating our product roadmap now and talking to handset manufacturers in Europe to understand the form and function of future devices. We’ll use that roadmap as a basis for creating a relationship with our customers in the future.So what of the future? If we wind the clocks forward, what do we find? Quocirca’s Dale Vile, says that individual companies and well known brands will want to be at the centre of the wireless web and the mobile channel will become one of the dominant channels, like the Web or TV, for reaching consumers. Companies like Coca Cola and McDonalds will seek to exploit that through SMS and WAP services.Operators need to work with early adopters in order to be capable of delivering richer and more sophisticated services.

“Consumers do business with business,” says Vile. “Operators should not be arrogant that they will be the prime point of contact for consumers in this respect. They need to understand the importance of working with third parties and IT solution providers to deliver this access to consumers, thus ensuring they are not left out of the equation.”Most of all, mobile operators need to stimulate the consumer mobile market by helping companies to exploit this channel. IT suppliers can help operators in this respect by helping them sell to enterprise companies and thereby creating a valid place for themselves within the value chain, other than just as access provider.

Operators have a brand for voice but little else Branded content provides trust and that is what consumers are confident with so operators must learn to work with merchants, applications and content providers and figure out how to add value. Unless they do figure this out by working with the likes of HP and End2End, the merchants and other providers will do it for themselves, relegating the operator to mere ‘carrier’ in this new world order.
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Oct 31, 2001 - HP Delivers Digital Entertainment Center to Retail Stores
Natio HP Delivers Digital Entertainment Center to Retail Stores Nationwide Easy creation of personal playlists and custom CDs and easy
transfer of music to select portable MP3 players and compact
flash cards;
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=816927


Remember CPQ & HP Merger and our tie to Lu VR in portables.

Mar 12, 2002 - Network designer Lucent Technologies and technology and solutions provider Compaq Computer Corp have entered into an agreement to accelerate the availability of wireless device capabilities.Compatibility will provide Compaq device users with high-speed mobile data solutions such as wireless web browsing, mobile e-mail and video streaming


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