Raj Singh’s Mobile Life

Device Patent Wars

Came across this graphic in the NY Times showing the recent device patent wars:

Note, I modified the image and added that Android logo next to HTC :) Also note, that this image doesn’t show all the lawsuits that have been settled (eg Kodak has settled with Motorola). This image also doesn’t show the platform guys, specifically Microsoft and Google.

In any case, looking forward to seeing how this will play out. You have to assume that Google had indemnified HTC for any Android related claim – if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here. I haven’t looked at any of the patents in question but I imagine a number of them are tied to the Android UX (and maybe the WinMo UX as well). Will Google retaliate by slowing the upgrade cycle of some of their critical apps on iPhone. It’s happening already with Google Maps on Android feeling a generation ahead than the version on iPhone. Obviously, big dollars are at play with rumors of Apple making $100M a year from Google search.

Thoughts?

Is Apple Making a Mobile Wallet Play?

Probably not apparent to all folks but a fundamental reason that in-application advertising performs so much better than mobile web advertising, is because there is a very clear path to an ecommerce transaction. Most in-app ads lead back to the iPhone app store from which another app could be purchased meaning it’s truly performance-based since it can be measured and optimized. Mobile web advertising was always at a disadvantage since it rarely led to a transaction (ie Is the user as likely to purchase a product through Amazon on his phone as he is on his PC?). The answer is no, since it’s so painful to enter credit card details into a mobile device (via app or browser).

Now, you could argue that merchants could integrate with Paypal and use them to process transactions on mobile under the assumption that it is more likely that a consumer has his credit card details cached with Paypal versus the merchant itself (exceptions maybe being Amazon). However, in an informal poll amongst my friends (non-techies), a surprising number of them did not have their credit card or bank account associated with their Paypal account (and I live in the Bay Area!). In addition, Paypal may not yet have that global footprint plus merchants definitely want to process the transactions through their own system for data collection, reporting, handling chargebacks and of course lower fees.

The alternative to a cloud-based payment system (a la Paypal) would be to store the payment details on the device itself (ie credit card details encrypted and stored on the mobile device). In this model, the browser or an app could conceivably request the details from the device/OS and form-fill the credit card purchase page. There were some under-the-radar examples of pieces of this at MWC with one SIM card provider storing CC details on the SIM.

Going back to the Apple question, what’s interesting is that iTunes is similar to Paypal and Amazon in that they have a large number of registered users with cached credit card details (cloud-based payment). With the recent Quattro acquisition, you have an interesting scenario where Quattro could go to the publishers and while selling ads, offer iTunes as a payment gateway. Effectively, if Amazon (or an equivalent) wanted to buy product ads on the iPhone, they could and then process them through iTunes as the payment gateway to avoid the huge drop-off that usually occurs when the user has to enter CC details into the payment landing webpage on a mobile device. This would mean that yes, ecommerce transactions could be as likely on mobile as they would on the PC, if not greater since it’s effectively a one-click experience across the whole web. This of course assumes that Apple adjusts their rev-share for non-app store digital products to be in-line with CC fees (and of course that they are willing to deal with all the pains of being a Paypal (eg chargebacks etc) but it is quite a unique advantage that Apple, as an OEM has given all the user CC details they hold.

The same scenario is actually possible with Google Checkout and Android but they have by far fewer stored credit card details (today) but maybe that will change. Nokia with their bundling of Openbit as part of the OS, may have a play their as well.

Payments and advertising is definitely looking exciting!

Top 6 Reasons Why Nokia Doesn’t Have a Capacitive Touch Screen

Disclaimer: I have a lot of friends at Nokia; this is meant to be friendly and I do look forward to your awesome phones this year!

6. Double-tap for zoom is great but come on guys, we’re still working on integrating login across Ovi. Pinch and zoom, that’s complex software!

5. We are focused on the variants between N90 and N900. N1000?! That means we have to change our manufacturing process, errr!

4. Apple-spat! Patents on multi-touch? Ha, we’re saving pennies aka margin on every device, you wait and see!

3. As any prudent company, it’s our fidicuary responsibility to provide a stylus to all of our enterprise customers.

2. If you were smart, you’d see that in the recent handset reports that we dominate in emerging countries. We don’t need capacitive to differentiate! We’re GOD in Africa and India!

1. You do understand we live in Finland. This is not the Bay Area, gloves don’t work with capacitive!

Looking forward to seeing that capacitive Nokia :)

Mobile Trends 2020

So I was fortunate enough to participate in Rudy De Waele’s mobile 2020 predictions collaborative. Thanks Rudy for assembling a great group of mobile visionaries, thought leaders and entrepreneurs. Check it out below:

Mobile Taking a Cue From the Travel Industry

Just finished a week at CES – I’m exhausted! On Wed, I attended the ATT Developer Event. One of the first announcements of the day besides BREW which I found amusing was that ATT was now working with Orange and America Movil. The specifics were not clear but basically if you submit an app in the ATT app store, you could seamlessly submit it to Orange and America Movil (and vice-versa). In addition, the dev programs and other tools etc would be merged – it was the beginning of a tighter partnership. As I was listening to this announcement, I was thinking Travel Reward Programs – not that this is the first instance of a set of operators working together but the way it sounded, I wouldn’t be surprised if your ATT or Orange etc subscription entitles you to receive special cross-operator benefits – this is definitely coming.

Later that the day, we had our next instance of the classic “timeshare presentation”. We sat through a presentation and we got a free phone – this seems to be the trend at many of the recent developer events I have attended. It’s only a matter of time before they’ll not less us watch the presentation because of some screening (ie when real timeshares don’t let you participate because your wife isn’t with you, ha!).

Next comes an Orbitz like model for voice and data :) Not just discounted minutes when it’s off-peak (some operators already do that) but pricing that is determined in real-time, an operator as a service (SAAS) – now that would be amazing.

CTIA Party Analysis

Happy NYE everyone!

Not sure if this is interesting or not but I was able to pull this together pretty quickly. I looked at my CTIA schedules for the past few years and graphed some data around the parties that I was invited to – I was curious to see if there were any trend lines and/or anything that may have pointed to the recession. FYI, CTIA attendance last year was down approximately 20% but the number of exhibitors held strong.

This first graph shows the total number of parties I was invited to – nothing too exciting there. I also graphed the number of parties that were actual parties as opposed to events organized by press, organizations etc – I figured this may more accurately represent party budgets at each of these events. The party count has remained fairly constant…

This second graph shows who is throwing the parties. The infrastructure category includes aggregators which almost always seem to throw parties (makes sense). I bundled mobile advertising into marketing, I was expecting that group to continue to grow but interesting to see it went to dead zero in the Fall of 09 (or they didn’t want to invite me :) – possibly because of the ad recession, they became much more exclusive with their invites. Content companies continue to hold strong although the mix has definitely changed (not represented in the graph). Less ringtone companies and more software companies. It also seems press / org events have grown – that doesn’t surprise me since these are cheaper to host and are probably mostly gatherings.

This last graph is very telling and shows how most companies have only thrown one CTIA party. I would imagine this is because it was their launch party and/or they couldn’t justify the ROI on throwing any additional parties. Only 2 have thrown 6 parties in the past 4 years which is almost every CTIA event.

Anyways, this is very unscientific and only represents parties that I was invited to at CTIA – please comment if you see any other interesting trends from these graphs.

Geo-Monopolies?

These past few Qs has seen some significant pain coming to some OEMs such as Nokia and SonyEricsson. Don’t get me wrong, I have friends at both of these OEMs and I think they both produce amazing devices but I’m wondering if there is an another reason for their pain.

Yesterday, I went to the T-Mobile store to look at some device packaging. I specifically wanted to see the images on the boxes. In 2005, when I last did this exercise, you’d often see details such as megapixels, video support, screen size and 3G written on a box. This time, it wasn’t a single detail about the device but actually the logos of each web service that worked (ie Facebook, Youtube, Pandora, Google, Twitter etc). I’ve knew this trend was coming and it is something I’ve been evangelizing for the last couple years – it’s about the services the device supports and not the device specs (or at least not as much).

What’s interesting though, is if you are start to look at each of these logos, you realize they are all US Web 2.0 companies. A monopoly by normal definition is usually when a company has an over-riding control of a specific vertical such that they can dictate the terms for the rest of the ecosystem (ie owning the entire operating system space, ha!). Horizontal monopolies are less common these days but I’m wondering if the US has a geo-monopoly on Web 2.0? Is that even possible and obviously not in the traditional sense.

Given that the next generation devices from TVs to vehicles to phones and other electronics are going to be differentiated by the services they include (ie access to Twitter and Facebook, or being able to search via Google or watch video via YouTube) – this points to an interesting problem. If you are an OEM and you do not have significant marketshare in the US, how do you convince the Web 2.0 folks in the US to build to your platform first (this is under the presumption that most Web 2.0 startups / companies will build for their home territory first). Sure, they may be able to pay these Web 2.0 companies to build for them or incentivize the top 10 guys but how do you convince the long-tail which easily represents 70-80%+ of all the apps / services and usage.

What’s even more painful is that the pain has a downward spiraling effect – ie, Nokia has to convince these Web 2.0 developers to build killer services to sell more phones but if the first doesn’t happen (or to the extent necessary), the 2nd issue becomes an even larger problem. I guess you see the same effect with the brains of Silicon Valley – there is no brain drain IMO, if anything, I see more and more very talented people choosing to live here.

Taking this a step further, you could being to look at Web 2.0 as a resource. Resource control spread by geo is well understood (ie gold and oil are great examples). Can Web 2.0 be considered a necessary resource like gold or oil?

Interesting thought experiment, I would love to get your feedback.

Measuring AT&Ts Network

I’ve been meaning to this post for a while – it’s inspried by a similar analysis of Vodafone coverage in Germany via WirelessMoves. Note, I’m definitely not an expert when it comes to carrier infrastructure especially since I’ve spent my whole career on the software side of the mobile biz :)

Anyways, I recently read that it’s estimated that ATT has approximately 50K cell sites in the US. I’m not sure what’s the split between GSM and UMTS base-stations but from a subscriber standpoint, I have read that approximately 30% of US subscribers are 3G subscribers meaning they have a 3G handset and are connected over 3G. In any case, let’s do some simple math assuming all 80M ATT subscribers were connected over the 50K cell sites. This means each cell site is serving 80M / 50K = 1600 customers. Base stations are usually split into three sectors meaning each sector covers 1600 / 3 = 533 customers. Now, the average ATT subscriber uses 760 voice minutes each month so now multiply 766 min * 533 customers and you have 408,278 voice minutes per sector. Now obviously, most of the calls are within a certain set of hours each day, I will assume 16 so you then have 408,278 minutes / 30 days / 16 hours = 850 minutes per sector per hour. A sector is typically equipped with 2-3 transcievers which can each server between 6 and 8 voice calls meaning the potential maximum would be 60 minutes * 3 transceivers * 8 voice calls = 1440 minutes per sector per hour – I have no idea if that is reasonable or not :)

Lots of assumptions here and I’d love to get some more accurate data. It’d be interesting to look at data consumption per sector and see if we are really under-capacity. Obviously, it’s not as simple as 50K cell sites since there is quite a bit of tower leasing meaning only partial capacity as well as a significant number of subscribers being prepaid and/or part of an ATT MVNO (ie Tracfone estimated at 14M prepaid subscribers). We also assuming an even distribution across the country which definitely doesn’t hold, you’d expect a higher density within urban centers.

In any case, interesting as it is – let me know if you have better data.

Mobile Cloud Computing

Just did a guest post for Textopoly (great mobile mktg shop) – check it out here.

Mobile Beyond & NARIP

Just did a Podcast i-view for Brian @ Mobile Beyond on Skyfire and mobile cloud computing. FYI, Brian has some interesting content on his blog so definitely check it out.

BTW, NARIP asked me to link to this – I did a simple write-up on how to distribute music via mobile.