In the last six months, there has been a paradigm shift in the mobile content and applications space.

Mobile ringtone sales have flattened out, and sites offering free content — such as getjar, gamejump and mobile9 — have become increasingly popular. Savvy users are using the Google and Yahoo!, search boxes on operator portals to search for free mobile games and ringtones. This clearly is having an effect on network operators’ content revenues.

The iPhone App store, which has generated close to 200 million downloads in four months, has shown that there is a strong demand for mobile content and applications when they are offered in a user-friendly manner. The Android Market has also seen its fair share of success when it comes to user downloads of relevant applications. On the back of the iPhone App Store and the Android Market, RIM has announced the RIM App Store to promote the development of applications for the Blackberry.

Nokia has decided to open up the Symbian platform following its acquisition of Symbian. This will help developers exploit device capabilities through open AP

Is which were previously private and therefore needed to be licensed separately.

Operator developer networks such as the Orange Developer Network and Vodafone Betavine have been around for some time but so far have had limited success.

A few salient questions arise:

• What role do operators play in these new application development environments?
• What advantages do the iPhone/Android/ RIM stores provide over operator content/application stores, or vice-versa?
• Can operators collaborate with the iPhone/Android Market/RIM stores to create a win-win situation for everyone?

My view is that operators can make third-party applications much more relevant to the mobile consumer by leveraging the user profile information maintained in their networks.

Operators are the only entity in the value chain with a holistic view of the consumer based on user browsing behavior, purchasing history, and demographic and phone plan information. Subject to the appropriate legal clearances regarding privacy issues, operators could potentially share this user profile information as well as real-time location information with third-party applications through the iPhone/Android/RIM application developer networks. The entire ecosystem would benefit from such a collaboration.

Of course, we would welcome your thoughts on this topic.

- Saurav Chopra

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This summer, we followed a number of mobile companies that attached themselves to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Companies like NBC Universal, Lenovo and Zumobi leveraged the popularity of the Olympics to extend their mobile initiatives. After the Games concluded, we surmised that the next major current event likely to extend the buzz in the mobile community would be the presidential election. To our surprise, however, there hasn’t been much activity. With the exception of Obama’s iPhone application, which beyond the iPhone community went unnoticed, and the controversial robocalls, we haven’t really seen either candidate leveraging mobile devices as a campaign or communication tool.

Ironically, the most relevant announcement to date has come out of the UK, where a company announced a service that will allow mobile users to access US election results. This is a great example of how not only the UK but also the rest of western Europe is consistently pushing out new and innovative mobile services. The most interesting part – this provider is offering a service to subscribers in one country for an election in another!

Four years out is a long time, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll see a paradigm shift in mobile politics as we approach 2012.

- Stacey Infantino

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Today Blackberry officially announced the launch of the Blackberry Storm, positioning it as the first real challenger to the iPhone.  Haven’t we heard that claim at least a half dozen times in the last year? (Samsung’s F700 and Instinct and LG’s Vu and Voyager, for example.) Not surprisingly, the Blackberry Storm addresses user-identified weaknesses of the iPhone with a removable battery, a 3.2-megapixel camera with video capture, cut-and-paste editing features, and built-in picture messaging. The iPhone has yet to really penetrate the enterprise, so the key advantage of the Storm could be Blackberry’s strength with corporate email and security.

What people aren’t talking about with the launch of new high-end, touch-screen phones is the impact these devices have on mobile data consumption and network infrastructure. The Blackberry Storm and the iPhone are great for browsing the web and quickly consuming mobile content, resulting in traffic growth like we’ve never seen before in the mobile space. Research shows mobile data growing at a rate of 10-15% per month for tier-one operators. This rapidly escalating data consumption poses a serious challenge to their network infrastructure.

To cope with the increasing stress on their networks, operators are looking to data caps imposed on users and next-gen technologies such as LTE and WiMAX. These solutions are not entirely viable, as enforced data restrictions are likely to result in subscriber opposition and the deployment of 4G technologies is still years away. In the interim, operators should take steps to improve overall network efficiency and capacity, manage data traffic and ensure the scalability of their network, while continuing to deliver a superior user experience.

Bytemobile solutions offer operators high levels of scalability and traffic control, enabling them to protecting their existing infrastructure investment through smart, adaptive optimization.  Since data traffic expands to fill the bandwidth available for it, the value of optimization is perpetual.

- Stacey Infantino

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I go to the gym every day for an hour and a half. Some say I’m crazy, but I think of myself as a “heavy user”. Thankfully, there aren’t too many like me. Otherwise, the gym owner would go out of business, as her model is to oversell memberships under the assumption that only a small percentage of users will actually utilize the gym’s services.

This is also the model of the wireless carriers when they sell unlimited (“all-you-can-eat”) data plans. It still works because the mobile browsing experience is… well, less than ideal. Apple has started to change this with the iPhone. In some European countries, a small percentage of iPhone users generate as much traffic on the network as all the other smartphone and feature phone users combined. This is because iPhone users are using the device like a laptop – they browse wherever their mind takes them, unlike users of less capable phones which are browsing only specific sites. Similarly, a small percentage of laptop users with wireless USB dongles and PCMCIA cards generate 90-95% of the traffic of major carriers. What do you think the impact of millions of iPhone and iPhone-like users is going to be? Thankfully, Bytemobile optimization solutions allow carriers to manage their investment in denser network coverage, but this is only a cost control measure.

Every business owner knows that cost control is not enough. It must be supported with solid top-line growth. Even gym owners have found incremental revenue opportunities in clothing items, power bars, personal training classes, day-care facilities, and towel services. Every gas station owner knows that almost 50% of the station’s revenue comes from the convenience store rather than the gas pumps. In the telecommunications business, these incremental revenue opportunities come from “value-added services”.  The wireless carriers figured this out long ago. They all sell ringtones, logos, games, and other items on their portal sites.

The problem is that iPhone and smartphone users not only browse more, but they also browse differently. As indicated earlier, they browse wherever their mind takes them. Now, that presents a much bigger challenge to wireless carriers, as they need to control not only the iPhone device itself, but also the mind of the iPhone user. Maybe “mind control” is a bit much, but how would you characterize an internet business model that is based solely on influencing users via search results, advertisements and peer pressure (a.k.a. social networking)? As the wireless user accesses the World Wide Web and leaves the mobile portal behind, he/she is exposed to the influence of internet giants like Google, which has figured out how to turn the power of influence into a cash machine. How can the wireless service provider gain back the user’s mindshare? This, my friends, is the multi-billion-dollar question.

There is hope. The wireless carriers sit on the link between users and content. In fact, they are the link. If they don’t like the content available to their users, they can block it or slow it down. There are obviously legal questions here, but some carriers are so concerned about P2P (peer-to-peer) traffic that they have taken their battle to court. They can cap unlimited data plans. It’s clearly an oxymoron, but nevertheless they can do that. However, these are all cost control measures. What about mindshare? Well, if you think about it, the path to the mind is through the eye. This is why value on the Internet is measured in “eyeballs”. Wherever you browse in the maze of the World Wide Web, your eye will find information in the form of subtle and not-so-subtle advertisements. As the gatekeepers of the Internet, the wireless carriers are vey much in a position to capture eyeballs by overlaying advertisements and other information on every website you visit, whether it is on or off the carrier’s portal.

Intrusive? Not necessarily. Unlike most of the sites that you browse, which bombard you with ads or force you to watch a 15-second pre-roll video, the carrier can provide you with relevant, useful and timely information that actually enhances your browsing experience. The carrier knows your mobile device, it knows where you are, it knows what all the other users are doing on the network, it knows what is popular on the wireless Internet, and it knows exactly what you’ve been searching on Google lately. This is not an invasion of privacy – it is simply the reality of being the access provider. With Bytemobile Web Fidelity Service, carriers can harness the power of influence in an intelligent way that adds value not just for themselves, but also for you, the end user.

- Joel Brand

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