After a weeklong schedule of jam-packed meetings with communication service providers (CSPs), OEMs, and etailers/retailers, and some great Jamón Ibérico, I believe it is fair to say that this Mobile World Congress was in many ways much more effective for the broader wireless ecosystem than prior ones.
Indeed the GSMA content team played a big role in providing this result by exposing issues, frictions and opportunities created from an ecosystem that is transitioning from connectivity to device centricity.
It was inspiring to see both CSPs (i.e.: Glen Lurie from AT&T and Vittorio Colao from Vodafone) and OEMs (i.e.: Ray Roman from DELL, Eric Schmidt from Google) lay out their different strategies to win in this brave new world.
Within the connected devices arena, two key developments caught our attention during the show:
- Smart Phones at its Apex: Whether it was Colao (Vodafone) discussing the 40 percent growth in smartphone shipments that he’d seen in Q4, or Schmidt (Google) touting sixty thousand Android devices shipped per day, it is clear that smartphones are driving the bulk of the category growth yet still have a long runway ahead of them. For reference, smartphones in North America and Europe have around 20 to 25 percent share of total handset shipments whereas in Japan it is 52 percent.
- Continued Momentum for Connected Devices: Indeed the momentum for connected devices continues at full force. Both T-Mobile’s announcement to launch a connected device competence centers combined with Ericsson’s press conference in which they announced research that estimated 50 billion connected devices by 2020, highlighted this momentum. Furthermore, GSMA’s announcement of industry guidelines to reduce design complexity and fragmentation in embedded mobile devices, underlined this trend.
As we had said leading into this event, we were excited about some of the changes that we were seeing in the way that this 2010 MWC was being structured (i.e.: “less homogeneous playing field with more degrees of freedom”). Doing this obviously paid off for both GSMA and the broader ecosystem. Hopefully we’ll see more of this at CTIA.
Having been to many Mobile World Congresses (MWC) in the past, I always looked forward to the large communication service providers (CSPs) keynotes. Whether it was listening to Arun Sarin (former Vodafone CEO) discuss the new features that Vodafone Live! had implemented (i.e.: WAP 2.0, WAP PUSH, MMS, LBS, etc.), or Didier Lombard (France Telecom CEO in transition) discuss his views on how FT had a leg up on convergence (i.e.: 2X, 3X, 4X), I was always there taking notes and trying to infer what would follow. Read More »
Like many other early adopters, I was waiting on pins and needles to get a glimpse of the rumored Apple tablet. Would this device be a web browsing appliance, a media player, an eBook reader or a gaming device? As my excitement grew, I began to realize it was actually less about the device itself and more about how I could consume and create all of my content in a new and more convenient way.
Really, what is more convenient than having everything I like to read, watch and play, wherever I am, on whatever device currently is in my hands? I am not alone in this thinking as it’s becoming increasing clear that consumers do not want their content on separate devices. Read More »
Paying homage to Mary Meeker (i.e.: Morgan Stanley), The Wachowski Brothers (i.e.: the Matrix) and Om Malik (i.e.: Giga OM), we designed the attached poster which captures the essence of this space. We hope you enjoy it and in case you figure out who “Neo” is, let us know. We have some clues.
Click here for a PDF version of this poster.
CES 2010 – Las Vegas, NV
A day does not go by at CES without a new connected device being launched and the analyst community having a feast on its feature/ functionality comparison vis-à-vis other benchmarks (i.e.: Kindle vs. Nook vs. Que; Acer Aspire vs. Asus Eee; iPhone vs. Nexus One).
Like many others, in the recent Nexus One case, Mossberg and Pogue dived into a feature-by-feature comparison and drilled down on minutia such as the capacity of user accessible memory of these new connected devices (yawn – who cares?) . It is surprising that few if any journalists/analysts (Frommer excluded) have highlighted the enormous and disruptive shift that the value chain buy flow is experiencing and the implications it will have in the broader ecosystem.
What is Changing?
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