You get the sense that things are a bit different at this year’s Mobile World Congress. More at stake. Acknowledgment of the duopoly of Apple/Android and the futility of incremental. 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. Industry veterans Nokia and Intel, incumbent yet vulnerable, teamed up, Nokia having lost traction with an outdated Symbian and unproven Maemo, Intel having done well with Atom in larger devices but struggling to contend with Snapdragon/OMAP/etc. in smartphones.
But brightest spotlight might be owed to the announcement of Wholesale Applications Community, an agreement between 24 large industry players, consisting mostly of mobile operators but also a handful of handset majors (LG, Samsung, SE) who have neither wholeheartedly committed to Android nor developed a mature 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 which reflects how dire the situation is for operators, considering:
- Data is important as ever as voice revenues continue to decrease and messaging flattens out in US/WEU, making applications and search revenues critical
- Operators are increasingly pushed to the margins in apps. Fees made on data transfer–an operator sweet spot–while traditionally soaking up 50% to 60% of total app revenue, are expected to drop in share in the next few years, making way for content premiums and advertising revenues. I’ve got some data from Strategy Analytics showing revenues from data transfer falling 10% every 4 to 5 years. It’s precipitous.
- In search, I doubt the picture is any different. I’d feel comfortable with putting my money on search engines and ad networks as key beneficiaries.
All of this makes WAC big news. A difficult plan to follow through given their unacquaintance with software and the sheer number of founding members and platforms that this new standard needs to meet–we already see some of the difficulties Adobe faces with mobile Flash, even from its dominant base in PC. Things will, of course, get easier once they hook, say, Android as an anchor adopter, not inconceivable considering 10 out of 24 members are also part of the Open Handset Alliance.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Android, Atom, Google, Intel, LG, Maemo, Microsoft, Mobile World Congress, Motorola, Nokia, OMAP, Open Handset Alliance, Samsung, Snapdragon, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, Wholesale Applications Community
