So here’s an update on the smartphone wars:

The competition is only going to grow more heated. Android doesn’t just use different carriers, different manufacturers, and different software than the iPhone; it represents a different vision for the entire mobile industry. Apple exerts complete control over the iPhone. It builds the hardware. It designs the operating system. It runs the marketing campaigns. And it curates and polices its App Store, refusing programs it deems potentially offensive or a threat to its own business. (A quick sampling of apps that Apple has rejected, at least temporarily: Google Voice, iBoobs, and a political cartoon app from Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore.)

Android, by contrast, prides itself on its lack of control. It gives away its operating system for free to anyone who wants it—though manufacturers must submit their phones for testing if they want to access its app market or run optimized versions of Google apps. Android doesn’t review apps before they’re added to its marketplace, pulling them only if users complain, and manufacturers can and do modify the look and feel of the OS on their phones.

This is not just about phones. Mobile devices are quickly becoming our primary computers. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales of smartphones topped sales of PCs and laptops. And tablets—such as the iPad and new Android devices like the Motorola Xoom—are widely seen as potentially replacing the personal computer. The split is reminiscent of the PC platform wars back in the 1980s and ’90s, only now Apple is competing with Google instead of with Microsoft. Customers are squaring off into separate camps, identifying themselves as iPhone or Android users much as desktop users declare themselves Mac or PC people. And just as in the formative days of the PC industry, the result of this showdown will ultimately shape the future of computing.

One link led to another and then to a very nice piece that not only tells about Martin Cooper, but also locates the equipment that made the first mobile call possible.

. . . Google announced a free navigation service for mobile phones on Wednesday that will offer turn-by-turn directions, live traffic updates and the ability to recognize voice commands. The service will initially be available on only one phone, the new Motorola Droid, but will be expanded to more phones soon.

In a briefing on Tuesday in advance of its announcement, Google said that the service might be supported by advertisements in the future. That would make driving directions the latest form of information to shift from being a paid service to one that is ad-supported.

“This is consistent with a certain pattern of Google, where they are able to build volume and usage of a product and then subsidize it with advertising,” said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligent, a research firm. The losers, he said, were companies like TomTom and Garmin, along with the cellphone carriers, which offer navigation services by subscription.

Full story.

Global Telecoms Business, a journal for communications service providers around the world, has named Tata Communications (formerly VSNL) CEO N Srinath has been as one of the 10 most influential telecom personnel.

Among the top 100 telecom personnel named by the magazine, N Srinath has been positioned at number 8. He has been credited for transforming Tata Communications in an international company and for the acquisition of networks like Teleglobe and Tyco Global Networks.

The list tops with Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at number two.

Other Indians in the list are Bharti Enterprises Chairman and Group CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal (at number 35), Bharti Airtel CEO and Joint MD Manoj Kohli (number 39) and CEO of Motorola’s mobile services division Sanjay Jha (number 41).

Tata Communications’ President of global data and mobility solutions Vinod Kumar at number 68 and former CEO of Vodafone Arun Sarin at 71 are other Indian in the list.

Business Standard

VirtualLogix is a provider of real-time virtualization. Its technology enables the mobility of applications from the desktop to devices, improves quality of service and security in an open mobile world, and will enable a new generation of dynamic individual user experiences. Motorola and others believe in the technology and decided it was worth investing in.

Currently, programmers have to rewrite every application – be it a game, social networking service, or other feature – for each of the various operating systems, including Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, or Google’s Android. The tinkering can take months. But virtualization software would enable a mobile-phone maker to add features regardless of the operating system. So Motorola could grab a Web-browsing application written for one system, an e-mail application for another, and calling features designed for a third OS, and elegantly integrate them onto one phone. That could significantly speed up the phone-design process.

Read the full article in ‘The InformationWeek’ here.

Long the preserve of businessmen in power suits, mobile email is about to hit the masses with one in five email users accessing their accounts wirelessly by 2010, according to Gartner.

Monica Blasso, the firm’s research vice-president, said mobile email had moved beyond the BlackBerry and was increasingly a feature of even low-cost mobile phones, driving consumer adoption.

“By 2012, wireless email products will be fully inter-operable, commoditised and have standard features,” she said. “They will be shipping in larger volumes at greatly reduced prices.”

Today there are less than 20 million wireless email users worldwide, but this will grow to 350 million, or 20 per cent of all email accounts, by 2010, she said.

Blasso added email-enabled phones traditionally lacked consumer-oriented features like cameras, music players, video players and GPS navigation, but this was not the case anymore.

Even the BlackBerry, once chunky and bland, now offers all of the above features in the new BlackBerry 8800 device. Other mobile email devices, like the Motorola MOTO Q 9h, the Palm Treo 750 and the Samsung BlackJack, were all designed with aesthetics, usability and fun features in mind.

The devices, Blasso said, were becoming more personal as the line between personal and professional life blurred.

Robin Simpson, mobile and wireless research director at Gartner Australasia, said mobile email access in Australia would soon be offered for free as part of mobile phone contracts.

“Once email becomes available more or less free of charge by default on your mobile handset, people will gravitate to that rather than just continuing to use SMS,” Simpson said.

He said mobile email uptake in Australia had been held back due to the high access prices charged by carriers, but recent price competition, particularly driven by Hutchison 3 and Virgin Mobile, indicated prices would drop rapidly.

“The interesting thing is that SMS, if you look at it in terms of actual cost for the data, is really expensive, and where we’re heading is you’ll get a free email package when you sign up to your monthly plan,” he said.

Asher Moses
July 27, 2007 – 12:35PM

http://www.theage.com.au/news/mobiles–handhelds/for-sms-the-days-are-numbered/2007/07/27/1185339221496.html

Sapna Agarwal / Pune July 16, 2007The rural markets account for around 5 per cent of the national GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) handset sales. The figure is expected to rise to 25-30 per cent, adding around 100 million new cellular subscribers by 2009, according to a recent study by LIRNEasia and AC Nielson.
The statistics are significant for vendors such as Nokia, LG and Motorola, who are engaged in major brand-building initiatives across villages through ‘touch-and-feel’ experiences. Under the initiatives, the handset firms will introduce low-priced entry-level handsets and make them available in mandis, haats and rural retail chains. Nokia, for instance, has already announced localisation measures, which include developing strong regional content capabilities. Besides, it is also launching a new range of Nokia 1200 series priced between Rs 1,600 and Rs 5,000. The range will sport features suh as FM radio, General Packet Radio Service or GPRS (to surf the internet), camera, shared phone books and cost-tracker – a new feature, which will tell the user how much talk time is available and the cost per call.A recent Nokia study revealed that mobile phones were means to overcome infrastructure hurdles. The report also noted that prospective rural subscribers were reasonably heavy users, making an average of 40 calls a month. “Mobiles have the potential to increase a family’s savings by reducing the rural consumers’ unnecessary travel expenses for procurement of raw materials. Besides, farmers are using the phone to get prevalent market rates for farm produce through voice and SMSes and even GPRS if available,” said Devender Kishore, director, marketing, Nokia.

The survey further said, “With limited sources of getting news and entertainment coupled with hectic work schedules, mobile phones with features such as FM radio and GPRS, are a necessity in the rural areas.”
Following the survey, Nokia has announced a tie-up with Malayala Manoroma and launched a portal, where all the Nokia GPRS-enabled handsets users in Kerala will be able to get national and international news in their native language. “We are in the process of tying up with 10 other vernacular content providers in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada in association with leading media houses across India,” said Devender Kishore.

In the first call Mr Baber described the view, how cold it was and what he wanted to do when back at base camp; he then rang his wife and children.

The calls were made possible when China set up a mobile base station with a line of sight to the north ridge.

Mr Baber set off from the UK for the Himalayas on 30 March and since mid-April has been getting used to living at high altitude.

Prior to 15 May, when the final ascent began, Mr Baber and the other members of the expedition had been trekking up and down Everest to familiarise themselves with the route and prepare their bodies for the punishing ordeal.

To make the call at the summit, 8,848 metres, Mr Baber had to contend with high winds and temperatures of -30 degrees. The call was made to a voicemail account created by sponsor Motorola to ensure the attempt was recorded.

Mr Baber also did not have much time to make the call because those climbing Everest typically only stay at the summit for 15 minutes. Making such a call is dangerous as talking into the handset meant he had to remove his oxygen mask.

Batteries for the Motorola handset he used were taped to his body to ensure they stayed at a high enough temperature to power the phone.

Mr Baber also claimed a separate record for sending the highest text message.

From base camp before making the attempt to reach the summit of Everest, Mr Baber said: “Everest symbolises the greatest challenge to any climber.” He added that making the call from the mountain was a “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO

Making affordable phones and targeting consumers with smaller budgets have now become priorities for the largest companies in the sector who were all present at this week’s 3GSM trade show in Barcelona.

“There are between 2.5 and 2.8 billion people who have a mobile phone: the next billion will come from the high-growth market,” said David Taylor, strategy director for Motorola.

The areas representing the most opportunity are Asia, Africa and the Middle East, he said.

According to European telecommunications institute Idate, the average spending per user is about 26.50-37.50 euros (34.8-49.2 dollars) per month in industrialised countries, but this figure falls to about 8.20 euros in the newly targeted emerging countries.

But seriously, if people are upgrading phones in less than 24 months on average, the second-hand market must be huge.   Is this the answer to solving the affordability barrier at the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Cellphone Envy Lays Motorola Low – New York Times

Motorola’s fortunes have plunged along with the price of its Razr. Its profits have collapsed, and it announced plans last month to lay off 3,500 workers. Since last October, its stock has dropped 30 percent, attracting the attention of the billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn, who bought 40 million shares last week on a bet that he could push the company to do better.

At first glance, the company’s troubles are puzzling. Almost one billion mobile phones are sold worldwide each year, and Motorola has almost a quarter of the market. Consumers are also replacing their phones faster, on average less than every two years.

But the cellphone business is still relatively young, and Motorola is learning a cruel new lesson about consumer tastes in phones. An industry that has focused more on microchips, screen size and data speed is finding it has more in common with the fashion business.

This is good news for the bottom of the pyramid. The Shoestrings:2 findings indicate that at the bottomof the pyramid (BOP), 28% use second hand handsets, purchased for about USD40 on average, about half the price paid by those who are using brand new handsets. LBO also notes the large number of illegal second hand handsets being imported and sold, illegally, offereing a cheaper alternative. The new handset released by Motorola brings down the price differential bewteen brand new and second hand handsets considerably; for about USD6 more, low income earners can get a brand new handset with a warantee, which is also legal, many at the BOP may opt for the brand new one. As a result, the second-hand market is likely to shrink.

Read LBO article

The first Keynote speaker, Zhengmao Li, VP China Unicom, described the efforts of the Chinese govt and his company in building a harmonious digital society. Thanks to the govt’s policy to provide access to ICTs on an equitable and affordable basis, more than 97 percent of administrative villages in China have a phone.
The second Keynote speaker, Tom Philips, Chief Regulatory Officer at the GSM Association forcefully argued that USO programs in most parts of the world have not resulted in improved access but have rather harmed the objective of connecting those who currently do not have access. Mobile telephony provides service to 2.5 billion people, 80 percent of them are connected via GSM. The GSM Association identified the cost of a handset to be the single biggest barrier to ownership. In order to reduce that barrier, a new initiative was launched that resulted in the $20 mobile handset developed by Motorola.

However, some of the other barriers to access revolve around governments. High taxation on mobile services has been identified as one such barrier. In some countries, mobile providers are the single biggest tax payers. In Mr Philips’ view, USO funding policy is holding back ubiquitous telephone service rather than promoting it. A study of 90 different countries found about a third of them collect USO funds. Mobile networks currently cover 80% of the world’s population. Mr Philips asserted that 100% coverage of population is achievable if USO fund can be directed for mobile network deployment rather than to landline and fixed infrastructure. Of the $6 billion that is being collected in USO funds from around the world, excluding the USA, only quarter has been spend on the telecom sector. By the end of the decade, USO funds globally will rise to $10 billion.

Although the mobile industry has contributed $2 billion out of the $6 billion in USO funds collected, Mr Philips argued that only $75 million, or less than 1 percent, has been put back into the mobile sector. This is especially surprising considering that mobile technology is seen to be 10 times more cost effective than fixed in providing connectivity to the unconnected.
Mr Philips argued that USO programs should be phased out over time. The $4.4 billion in unspent USO funds should be spent for what it was collected for–for connecting those who are not connected today by the most cost effective manner.

An excellent panel discussion followed where Martin Hilbert from ECLAC, Roger Marks from IEEE and Rob Frieden from Penn State participated. The video from this session can be found here [140MB!]

Roger Marks, Chair of the IEEE 802.16 Working Group discussed the initiative to develop a nationwide broadband wireless acess system for low cost access by finalizing a new standard.
Martin Hilbert, disagreed with Mr Philip’s view that USO programs should be phased out. According to him, GSM Association’s $20 Motorola handset was too expensive for the vast majority. Hence, he argued, that universal access funds are absolutely necessary to provide access to everyone. He estmated that higher end of society can spend about $50 a month on ICTs versus $2 a month for the poorer people. In his opinion, a poor person would have to spend a year’s salary in order to buy a $20 mobile phone.

Rob Frieden, Professor at Penn State University while assessing United States’ USO program seemed to agree with many of Tom Philip’s arguments. The US has the world’s largest USO program that has collected around $30 billion over a 20 year period. In his view, any USO mechanism based on voice minutes per use will trend to “0.” He argued that you cant
fund universal service if the service costs nothing, as voice calls move to the Internet.

USO funds are a distortion of the marketplace especially if it is not spent. It tends to perpetuates the status quo and voice services. He gave the example of the US, where for many years wireless service didn’t even qualify for USO fuding. This is the case in many developing countries currently. The other major problem is that USO disbursement is not calibrated to the expendable income of the beneficiary. Any US rural resident is eligible for USO subsidy disregarding the person’s income and ability to pay for communication services.
Rob Frieden upheld the Grameen model as something all USO programs should try to emulate. The Grameen Phone model
is private, not govt, its entrepreunerial, its foward-looking, its inexpensive its self-sustaining, its streamlined and its successful. All the criteria one would want to see in an USO progran. When juxtaposes with USO programs in the US and elsewhere he finds that they are: Government driven, distorts the marketplace, promotes interest of incumbent carrier and status quo, bureaucratic, complex, vulnerable to fraud, and not necessarily successful.
He concluded by describing what USO programs ought to be. In his view, USO programs ought to be technology neutral that promotes universal access, create incentives for demand aggregation by community champions, encourage competition by reverse auction for access to subsidy etc.

“T-Mobile is interested in the replacement or displacement of landline minutes,” said Mark Bolger, director of marketing for T-Mobile. Wi-Fi calling “is one of the technologies that will help us deliver on that promise.”

Major phone manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are offering or plan to introduce phones designed for use on both traditional cell and Wi-Fi networks. Samsung said last week that it had begun to sell its dual-mode phone in Italy.

Full story

The GSM Association recently announced that its Emerging Markets Handset program is exceeding expectations: mobile operators in Bangladesh, China, India, and Russia have already purchased 12 million of its Ultra Low Cost Handsets (ULCH). But will the initiative reach the rest of the three billion unconnected peoples in emerging markets? Under current cost models that is unlikely.

The problem is that even at US$30 the ULCH’s price is too high for at least a billion of this population.

The annual gross per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa is just US$371. It is unrealistic to expect people there to spend 10% of their annual income on a mobile phone. So semiconductor vendors, such as Texas Instruments, Freescale, Philips, and Infineon are continuing to reduce the Bill-of-Materials for ULCH even further, heading towards US$20 and US$15 in the next few years.

But will ULCH markets stall before a low enough price is reached? Alan Varghese, Principal Analyst, Wireless, at ABI Research doesn’t think so. “We may see trends similar to those for the conventional handset in the developed world. In the early years, it was purchased primarily to transact business; it was only when prices had dropped that handsets penetrated the mass market.”

Something similar is starting to happen in the developing world. In South Africa, software vendor Sharedphone enables the use of the ULCH as a mobile payphone. Local entrepreneurs buy this phone and sell airtime at the roadside. For such a “service provider,” the $30 price is not prohibitive; it is far cheaper than setting up a conventional payphone.

Because per-minute call charges are high, most calls are short and businesslike: Where can I get the best price? Is my order ready? Meet me tomorrow. The “mobile payphone” is facilitating commerce even in regions otherwise lacking in high technology.

What does this mean to handset vendors such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, and LG Electronics?

Varghese says, “They have to think about how they can further enable varied uses such as the ‘mobile payphone.’ They could add value, for example, with software to manage the whole transaction: making the call, presenting the consumer with a summary of call-times and charges, and keeping track of repeat customers in order to offer discounts.”