You get the sense that things are different at this year’s Mobile World Congress. More at stake, more for the take. Acknowledgment that incremental will not do against the duopoly of Apple/Android. Microsoft reinvents Windows Mobile. Motorola announces (though separate from MWC) the spinoff of handset+set top box. Huge players, whom you might not have expected to getting together, got together. Nokia and Intel, vulnerable industry incumbents, teaming up, Nokia having lost traction with its outdated Symbian and unproven Maemo, Intel having done well with Atom in larger devices but struggling to contend with say Snapdragon/OMAP/Tegra in smartphones.
But the most interesting might be the announcement of Wholesale Applications Community, an agreement between 24 large industry players, consisting mostly of mobile operators but also few handset majors (LG, Samsung, SE) who have neither wholeheartedly committed to Android nor developed a alternative, to create a standard for applications that will run on different OSes. Undoubtedly a move to turn the very tides that have turned against operators, control having shifted and continuing to shift toward disruptive handset manufacturers and search/ad networks (i.e. Apple, Google, and the like), and one that reflects how dire the situation is for operators, considering:
- Data important as ever in US/WEU as voice revenues continue to decrease and messaging flattens out, making applications and search revenues critical
- Operators are increasingly pushed to the margins in apps, where fees made on the data transfer (an operator sweet spot) have traditionally made up half to two-thirds of revenue, but expectation is that this drops quickly in the next few years, making way for content premiums and advertising revenues. I have some data from Strategy Analytics that shows data transfer dropping 10 percent every 4-5 years. It’s pretty steep.
- In search, I doubt the picture is any different. And while I don’t have data, I’d feel comfortable with putting my money on search engines and ad networks as key beneficiaries.
Which makes WAC big news. Difficult to follow through given the number of members and platforms this new standard needs to meet and the experience Adobe currently faces with Flash, but my guess is that it shouldn’t be as bad once they anchor Android as early adopter, which doesn’t seem inconceivable considering 10 of the 24 members are also part of the Open Handset Alliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment