The Search For An “Open” Mobile OS

I remember the battle for capturing the title of “Open” in the computing world and now it seems that the same battle is making its way into the Mobile Computing world with the launch of Google Android. Let’s look back at a bit of computing history for reference: Microsoft used the word “Open” in their battle with Apple and we all know the history after that. Sun Microsystems was the king of “Open” when it bet the whole company on this word until Linux arrived and took the title away by confusing “Open” with “Open Source”. Is history going to repeat itself in the Mobile Computing world? In this Blog, we will address Mobile Computing Platforms and which of the platforms qualify for the word “Open”.

What we learned from the PC experience was that the Mobile Computer has to be open not just to application software but also to third party hardware. So next time you’re shopping for a Mobile Computer/Phone ask about the following to establish if the Mobile Computer is Open from a hardware perspective. Does the device offer the following?

- An ability to change your battery without having to pay an additional hefty fee to the manufacturer?
- An ability to easily add memory without having to go back to the vendor or ship your device to the manufacturer?
- A standard computer connectivity interface like USB or Bluetooth?
- A standard RCA headphone jack that can be used with the hands free device of your choice?
- A power supply that works across global power outlets or at least offers the ability to charge the device from your PC?
- GPS that doesn’t drain the battery every time you use it

If you evaluate mobile phones on these features, some will fail. So, my conclusion is that we are still far away from getting to the Open Mobile Computing world from a hardware perspective.

So now you ask what will make your mobile computer/phone more open from a software perspective. Well that’s where the Mobile OS openness counts more. Here is a somewhat simplified version of questions you should ask to establish if a particular Mobile OS is more open than others in no particular order of importance. Does it offer:

- An ease of software development in form of software tools, documented APIs, development kits and application examples?
- Support of software developers in form of bulletin boards and developer forums?
- The ability to run applications in the background?
- A light OS in terms of limited demands on hardware requirements?
- A secure OS so that damage caused by viruses and worms can be prevented?
- A simple or Universal Application Signing where an application that has already been certified once can work on any mobile network?

From an end-user perspective an Open OS results in the ability to have many applications running in the background, but hopefully your Mobile Phone won’t be prone to the same performance problems that have plagued our PCs.

Here’s a sample of popular mobile OS’s and how they compare to one another:

R. Paul Singh CEO
PixSense, Inc.





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A Question of Mobile OS Congestion

If I were to ask you what operating system your computer runs on, chances are that you could answer without a second's pause. But if I were to ask you the same question about your mobile phone, it’s likely that you would draw a blank. And who could blame you, really? Even if you were familiar with the names of five, or maybe even ten Mobile Operating Systems (OS), knowing which one runs on your phone is a challenge because of a lack of standardization and consolidation in the mobile industry. It’s clear that we’re moving into this new territory of Mobile Computing where even today’s low-end mobile phone is more powerful than many of the early PCs (CPU power and memory).

What will it take for Mobile Computing to become reality? Imagine a world where mobile phone users everywhere intuitively know what their mobile handset has to offer and how to use all the new power at their fingertips. A reality where applications, that simplify a consumer’s daily life, will be the primary reason for buying a new mobile phone – and the aesthetic sex appeal of the mobile handset takes a distant second. A reality where there would be fewer, more uniform mobile operating systems, just like the PC. Needless to say, many things have to come in play for Mobile Computing to take hold and be embraced by masses. I will devote some of my next few blogs to this topic. Let’s begin with the issue of the Mobile OS.

The Mobile OS is one of the few topic where the metaphor "variety is the spice of life" does not apply. While there are enough claims by "industry experts" for each new OS launch that it will become the unifying factor, much like MS DOS, there are an equal number of claims, if not more, that such universal integration will not occur. Since the beginning of 2008 alone, at least three new mobile operating systems, including iPhone, LiMo, and Google's Android, have been released. As if the existing plethora of proprietary operating systems (Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia’s recent purchase Symbian, J2ME and its various incompatible cousins, Qualcomm BREW and Mobile Linux) were not enough.

Theoretically, in the worldwide mobile industry, where four to five hundred new handsets are launched every year, the market would weed out less common or less popular operating systems in favor of moving towards a somewhat unified platform. The results are just the opposite, as new ones keep coming out of the woodwork while the old ones continue to linger, thereby forcing application developers to support several operating systems in order to become marketable. Can you imagine the plight of mobile application developers who have to support all these environments? The test matrix for supporting a single application across most of these operating systems is almost cost prohibitive.

The only beneficiaries of this rapid and rampant deployment of new mobile operating systems are the OS developers and the press, who gains yet another product subject to write about. However, this situation leaves virtually everyone else on the losing side. It’s time for all mobile software developers and users to rise together and begin boycotting new Mobile OSs rather than embracing them. It’s time for every mobile phone consumer out there to be aware of the operating system their phone uses – and its limitations – and demand a unified platform so that the era of Mobile Computing can become a stabilized evolution for new applications.


R. Paul Singh
CEO, PixSense, Inc.




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Lessons from a Mobile User Generate Content (UGC) Portal

I usually don’t write about PixSense’s products and customers. Recently, however, I was questioned at great length about our experiences by many of our potential customers after they read our announcement of exceeding one million unique visits in less than a month after launch. Considering it to be a well worth milestone achieved, I decided to share it on a public forum and get comments from others on their experiences and thoughts on UGC portals.

Most of us are familiar or avid users of UGC portals. However, as of late, they seem to have become specialized in terms of media sites (Flickr, Photobucket and Snapfish, YouTube) and social networking sites (FaceBook, Friendster and MySpace). Maybe, it’s due to the fact that there are specialized devices for each; digital cameras for photographs, camcorders for videos, and PCs for maintaining contact information and uploading and viewing the media. One of our customers/partners launched a mobile UGC portal in China and wasn’t sure as to what areas to focus on initially. Looking at how broadband UGC sites have developed over time, it’s natural for us to speculate whether our mobile UGC portal will become a photo site, video site or a social networking site?

When you look at today’s mobile phones, a 5MP camera is becoming commonplace (At this point, I would add that I do feel empathetic for all of us in the U.S., where a 2MP camera is still the standard camera phone offered by our mobile operators) and so our logical speculation was that we would become a mobile photo destination. But wait, taking a YouTube style video is possible from most new moderately priced camera phones too! So, why wouldn’t our mobile portal be a destination for videos? Lastly, consider social networking sites: At a very basic level, it’s a combination of an address book, e-mail and the users’ media. Every mobile phone has a very potent address book. That, coupled with the users’ mobile media and text messaging capabilities indicates that social networking should dominate the mobile environment.

So, what have been the results so far? In less than four weeks, over 12,000+ media pieces were made public, and probably the same numbers were kept private. About 60% of the public media comprises of user generated videos, while the rest is comprised of photos. Interestingly, videos started out slow, but now seem to be dominating photo uploads. Like other media sites, there are lot more viewers than creators, the ratio being 100:1. Interestingly, users are viewing the content not just from their web browsers, but also from mobile devices, using WAP connections. Moreover, users are sharing media with their friends, with some sharing it from mobile to mobile, but most through their existing social networking sites.

Summing it up, here is a quick overview of some of our findings on mobile user generated content sites and how they differ from broadband user generated content sites:

Mobile camera phones are an integrated device. As they come equipped with capabilities for both video and photo capturing, mobile UGC sites will be able to host and manage both, and hence, stand out (i.e. these sites will have no difference and will host both videos AND pictures).
There is a higher percentage of content creators in the mobile UGC world than in the broadband UGC world. Why? Maybe it’s because it is easier to create, upload and publish content from a mobile device using the right software (like our partner, Paiker, has experienced).

Most people want to post their content to more than one social networking site directly from their device, which, in this case, was a mobile camera phone. Would users shift away from their existing social networking sites to start using mobile social networking sites? The statistics don’t support this; users still want to use their preferred social networking site. A mobile UGC portal, thus, needs to be able to integrate with already preferred social networking sites. Offering familiar media-posting destinations coupled with an ease of mobile media management, makes for the ultimate mobile UGC experience.

What are your experiences? Similar or Different?





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Apple’s Impact on Mobile Operators – Forbidden Fruit or Newton’s Apple

All of the mainstream media, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, are ripe with stories about the number of applications for iPhone. Apple took the bold step of crossing the Atlantic and Pacific regions simultaneously, launching in over 20 countries, in one shot. Amidst the Apple iPhone application mania, the most consequential news, which seemed to miss the media’s attention, was that Apple became the new arbiter of all applications running on the iPhone. Interestingly, all of its mobile operator partners were happy (or at least appeared to be happy on camera) to not only surrender control of the iPhone application store, but also the revenue stream to Apple. This is welcoming news to all application developers, including my employer, as application developers get a healthy 70% share of the application revenue from Apple. This plan leaves mobile operators with just the data revenue and completely cuts them from the application revenue stream. Is this akin to the sin of Adam and Eve, eating the forbidden fruit, or is it more like the discovery of the force of gravity that Newton experienced with an apple falling on his head?

Remember the days when Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were all the rage? AOL was the darling, as well as UUNET and PSINet, amongst hundreds of other local ISPs. Where did they go? The only names that remain are our telephone and cable companies, like Comcast and AT&T, who have become the new ISPs. What have the ISPs been reduced to? Just commoditized data pipes on which many Internet brands, such as the real value-added players like Google and Yahoo?

Is this the beginning of the same commoditization of mobile data services? Just looking at the U.S. market, where many of us are used to buying unlimited Internet access every month for a set price, it seems very likely that we will see unlimited data plans and very little control of the mobile operator on the value-added services, unless mobile operators see the light and make the necessary changes that are required to move forward.

Research in Motion has been offering e-mail services worldwide to its network of Blackberry users. However, unlike Apple, Research in Motion didn’t manage to convince mobile operators to make them the arbiter of applications running on Blackberry. Instead, there are many sources for Blackberry applications, but mobile operator decks remain the most popular, even though BB lovers are calling for RIM to take control of its application platform. Nokia has been trying to reinvent itself as an application developer, competing with many of its application developer partners, as well as with mobile operators’ offerings. Many mobile operators have been resisting this movement, but some are giving in. Google, with its mobile OS Android, is going to try to become an application hub as well. Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind and, while I was writing this, Microsoft announced its entry into the mobile applications world too.

Bottom line is that there is a battle brewing between handset manufacturers and mobile operators to offer applications to mobile subscribers directly. Will mobile operators give in and let every other handset vendor control it’s own destiny, like some did with Apple? Or will they retract and act against these moves? T-Mobile announced its intention to compete with the Apple store. So one would have to wonder if this is indeed a wake-up call to mobile operators: Maybe now is the time for them take this battle seriously. And more so, since mobile operators have a lot of power, given the amount of subscriber data that they're able to track.

Despite this power, the relationship between mobile operators and their subscribers can, at best, be described as a love-hate relationship that starts and ends with a monthly bill. The relationship between mobile operators and software developers is not always a great one either – marred sometimes by bureaucracy delaying the launch of applications or by greediness in taking a much larger share of the revenue.

It is time for mobile operators to take control of their application revenue streams. Otherwise the only thing they will have to contend with is a monthly bill for Internet access, just as the case is with ISPs. I am sure there are many recommendations that the industry can offer, but I thought I would add some personal suggestions to the mix:

- Encourage applications that enable mobile operators to extend a relationship with subscribers beyond the monthly bill
- Refocus on application portals by rebuilding, marketing, and selling them prominently amongst the operators’ offerings
- Refuse to sell handsets that don’t offer open and well documented software development platforms
- Allow for faster and standard ways for developers to launch applications on mobile operator portalsAllow application developers to acquire a larger revenue share of the application – remember that the PC industry exists today only because of application developers. As such, applications cost more than the hardware they run on. If allowed to flourish, this will be the future of mobile applications too.





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With the Arrival of 3G Networks, What More Can Mobile Operators Do?

Over the course of time, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with mobile operators who have either invested millions or are about to invest millions of dollars in the development of 3G networks. Amidst the discussions with them a question still looms in my mind: What can our 3G network subscribers do now, and where/how can we make more money from our subscribers? In the quest for the answer, I started researching, using Google.com – using keywords such as “3G applications”— and, to my dismay, found the first 100 search results disappointing. That’s why I decided to write this piece myself; hoping it will answer many of the questions that continually arise. For example: What can we do with 3G now besides selling a 3G enabled Apple iPhone?

Let’s take a closer look at the following questions:
- Is 3G everywhere?
- What is 3G anyway?
- What are the most commonly mentioned applications of 3G?
- Which 3G applications can Mobile Operators deploy today?

Is 3G Everywhere?

There has been a lot of talk about 3G investments in Europe and the US which inevitably resulted in a near ubiquitous 3G adoption. As I was researching for this article, I stumbled across the fact that China Unicom announced that it plans to spend $14.5B on a 3G network infrastructure (http://www.theregister.co.uk/). According to articles by my friend, Om Malik, on Gigaom.com, India appears to be prepping for 3G wireless broadband, with the government all set to start selling 3G licenses. In Asia, SingTel lead the way as the first to deploy 3G in 2005. According to Cellular-news.com , the CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that, as of Q1 2008, Indonesia had more than 16.3 million CDMA2000/3G subscribers – putting them in the lead in Southeast Asia for 3G CDMA subscriber growth. So, the bottom line is that 3G is a solid presence in most of the developed world and will be available in all emerging countries within the next couple of years.

What is 3G anyway?

According to Wikipedia, 3G is the third generation of mobile phone standards and technology, superseding 2G, and preceding 4G. 3G is based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) family of standards, under the International Mobile Telecommunications program, IMT-2000. It includes HSPA data transmission capabilities which can deliver speeds of up to 14.4Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8Mbit/s on the uplink. It is based on CDMA technology, which is dominated by Qualcomm.

Let me now try a simpler way to explain 3G. Remember those days when we used dial-up modems to access the Internet (or maybe you are too young to remember). Believe it or not, many people in the world still rely on dial-up connections to reach the Internet or use their 2/2.5G mobile data connections. 2G is to dial-up connections what 3G is to broadband Internet, with the mobility added to the mix. In the simplest terms, 3G means faster internet access from anywhere, anytime and anyplace. Therefore the first obvious place for 3G to compete is with Wi-Fi on various laptops – nothing new here but just a different technology competing for the corporate dollars for wide area network (WAN) access on the move.

What are the most commonly mentioned applications of 3G?

For the purpose of this article, I want to focus on 3G applications built for mobile phones only – and not standard computer applications. In researching through many sites including www.3g.co.uk/, http://www.3gnewsroom.com/ , http://www.umtsworld.com/ , here is a list of the most common application categories for 3G applications:

- Mobile Internet access
- Digital TV Broadcasting
- Mobile Commerce
- Location Based Services
- Interactive Gaming
- User Generated Content (UGC) Management

Certainly, mobile Internet access becomes a reality with higher speeds just like many applications came to light with the broadband access on the PCs. Therefore it was no surprise that the 3G iPhone dominated any and all searches of 3G applications on the web since its web experience far superseded that of any other phone. The next three applications are neither a direct result nor an obvious outcome of the 3G infrastructure and so they can’t be readily deployed without other major investments in the infrastructure.

Which 3G applications can mobile operators deploy today?

There is a lot that has been written about mobile Internet access and interactive gaming. So, instead, I will focus on UGC management applications - another application type that can be deployed today and doesn’t seem to get enough attention from the media (though many analysts including Juniper Research have done some excellent research on the potential of this market). Many of you are wondering what this UGC market is – and as soon as I start naming the businesses that fall under this category, every one of you will agree that you are an avid consumer of this market and contribute significantly in terms of content, advertisement eyeballs, and other various forms of purchase. Yes, I’m talking about the first wave of the UGC marketplace in the form of media sites including Flickr, PhotoBucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly and YouTube. Then the wave of social networking sites came crashing in, including FaceBook, Friendster, Hi5 and MySpace, just to name a few.

Now that you realize the potential of the UGC market, think of the pain and complexity users experience when posting their content, with a mish-mash of USB/FireWire cables connecting a device to their PC, while ensuring a broadband connection is secured, and then having to manually input the location of their media (if needed). In contrast, let’s look at the 3G phone: a continuous broadband connection, 2+ mega-pixel photo/video camera equipped, your contacts (friends and family) always at your fingertips, AND, with many phones, even location tagging is enabled through GPS or cell tower identification. Hopefully you now see the potential – as a 3G mobile operator – a new ability to initiate, cater to, and develop existing and new mobile user-generated content communities. The categories of applications are both similar to, yet different from, what has been enabled through broadband Internet on PCs. The various applications can be thought of as catering to three functions mobile subscribers want to do with their media:

- Preservation / archiving of users’ media including contacts, pictures, videos, ringtones, SMS and music
- Sharing of users’ media both on a one-to-one basis as well as one-to-many basis giving rise to many new services including mobile greeting cards and video SMS, to name a few
- Publishing users’ media on social networking sites or public forums or creating a social networking site itself

In my next blog entry, I will address more details on some of these applications, as well as address some of the issues and challenges that plague this market, and how mobile operators can begin to deploy and monetize mobile UGC services.

R. Paul Singh
CEO, PixSense, Inc.

Note: If you have any stories/examples of the Mobile Operator experience in deploying mobile UGC applications, please email to us at marketing@pixsense.com

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Nokia and Apple; the McCain and the Obama of the mobile industry

From newspapers to magazines, from the internet to the television, all attention is on Obama – the undeclared winner of the race before it is even over. Oops! I meant the Apple iPhone. Then there is McCain struggling to get attention, despite having all the experience in the world – kind of like Nokia.

The parallels don’t stop here. Message of change with not much talk of substance is what defines Obama and the iPhone. Of course, Obama’s message is sexy and attracts a lot of attention from the youth market and many foreigners – even the ones that can’t vote. It’s the same story with the iPhone, a riveting sex appeal and deafening attention from the world over, including from the ones that can neither buy nor afford it. McCain, on the other hand, keeps talking of his experience, like Nokia, vocalizing their extensive knowledge and experience of the mobile industry.

Let’s now turn our attention to the mobile industry and look beyond the hype at an attempt to uncover the real deal behind the Nokia/iPhone war. Nokia makes phones for the masses and so, for comparison purposes, Nokia’s higher-end ‘N series’ phones, like the N82, N95, should be compared with the iPhone.

What is the basic purpose of a phone? To make calls anywhere, anyplace. If you call someone from your address book, probably both phones provide a similar experience. However, my test of a phone is to make calls with one hand while driving and when I put both of these phones to test, the iPhone failed me while most phones with keypads like Nokia worked well. Having a standard RCA phone jack gives us the flexibility to buy headphones of any type – Apple does a good job by equipping the iPhone with the jack, and finally Nokia is learning and standardizing on it. Wearing headphones in both ears has been deemed illegal in many states before the current cell phone laws came into effect. In the case of the iPhone, the way in which headsets are packaged, most users tend to wear headphones in both ears which may be illegal in many states. Nokia, and many others, who had this advantage are giving it up by packaging stereo headsets. Voice quality, although subjective, is surely somewhat better with Nokia’s headset than with the iPhone. Now, on to using the iPhone away from your home network – Yes, you can use AT&T and pay as much as two dollars per minute, but if you want to unlock your iPhone and use the local SIM of the country that you are visiting, don’t expect help from AT&T, which it seems to provide for other phones.

Web browsing is a new purpose introduced by iPhone, with all previous attempts being sub-optimal. There is no doubt that Apple wins here, hands down from every other vendor. Needless to say, with iTunes and iPod’s success, the iPhone offers a much superior experience. Unfortunately, with the limited memory on the iPhone, I wouldn’t use the iPhone any more than I’d use my iPod Shuffle.

Email is another function that the Blackberry streamlined, and just like the iPhone excelled at Web browsing. Needless to say, the Blackberry is the king of the email functionality hill, and the iPhone has a long way to go to catch up. In addition, the absence of a real keypad ensures the sad fact that the iPhone may never be able to catch up on email functionality. Nokia did well on its E Series, although its N Series experience can only be termed sub-optimal.

Five mega pixel cameras and great branded lenses are the hallmark of Nokia’s new phones, including the N95. The iPhone, however, has a long way to get there, but more pictures are being taken per phone by iPhone users because of the bigger screen size and the pictures just look better on the iPhone screen. However, don’t try shooting a video with the iPhone yet, since it doesn’t support that feature, while many low end phones already come equipped with that capability.

The part that really surprised me was the attention that the Apple developer kit and other third party software got from the media. Hello! Symbian (and hence Nokia) has had one of the best developer kits in the industry for a long time and have applications in the thousands available. True, Nokia and Symbian failed in hyping it up, but the fact is that Apple came fashionably late to this party and simply stole the show. Apple has created a revenue model for its software developers, and Nokia needs to learn while it fruitlessly tries to be Google rather than making money for its developers, and hence, for itself.

Extensibility is another area where the iPhone gets zero marks. I’m shocked at how little has been written about it in the press. You can’t replace the battery yourself and the memory is not extendable either since that’s how Apple chose to differentiate its models. On the other hand, most other phones come with a removable battery that you can buy anywhere. Memory is also pretty much standardized in the form of MicroSD cards for most phones. Oh yes, if you want to charge your iPhone without a PC/Mac, be ready to shell out another $20 for the charger, since Apple chose not to supply one.


R. Paul Singh
President & CEO
PixSense.com



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