Michelle Sklar of bnetTV interviewed Joel Brand, vice president of Product Management at Bytemobile, at International CTIA Wireless 2010. In this video clip from the show floor, Brand discusses the impact that mobile data has had on operators’ networks and highlights Bytemobile’s market-leading optimization solutions.

See the entire interview below.

For more information on Bytemobile’s Optimization solutions, click here.

-Stacey Infantino

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Mobile Minute kicked off the new year and the new decade with its first webinar – “Next-Gen Data Services: Adding Value to Traffic” – on February 4. You can access a full replay of the webinar here and on the Mobile Minute page of our website.

The event’s approximately 460 registrants came from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. Attendees represented a broad cross-section of wireless network operators and other participants in the mobile ecosystem.

FierceWireless Editor Phil Goldstein moderated a panel consisting of three speakers: Fabio Mungo, chief technology officer of Accenture Mobility Operated Services; Scott Lane, director of 4G Product Marketing at Sprint; and Joel Brand, vice president of Product Management at Bytemobile.

Fabio Mungo led off the discussion with an overview of the mobility market, its drivers and the impact of those drivers. He characterized it as a ‘market of mass niches’ rather than a mass market per se, indicating that entertainment and data products would drive the U.S. segment to $200 billion in 2010. Mungo cited the interconnection among multiple devices and applications as a key cause and effect of the ‘always connected lifestyle’. He added that low-cost devices and ubiquitous connectivity will continue to spawn a wealth of new mobile applications and business models.

Scott Lane cited the magnitude of the mobile data revolution as comparable with – or potentially even greater than – the PC and internet revolutions that had preceded it. From the carrier’s perspective, the three critical elements for success are: 1) a network to process and deliver the data traffic; 2) spectrum to provide ample capacity for the network; and 3) devices to deliver value to the consumer. Lane also discussed the details of Sprint’s 4G network build-out based on WiMax technology.

Joel Brand focused his presentation on mobile data rate plans of the future, which should balance the respective needs of consumers, carriers and content providers. He cited the impact of flat-rate pricing on the data traffic explosion and subsequent evaporation of data revenue in proportion to volume, as well as the side effect of network resource monopolization by a small percentage of users. The challenge for carriers is to map rate plans to user needs and preferences and to communicate with their customers in order to build value over time. Brand closed with a brief overview of Bytemobile’s WebGate™ Service, which provides carriers with numerous capabilities to meet this challenge.

The webinar concluded with a robust question-and-answer session in which Mungo, Lane and Brand fielded inquiries ranging from ‘Is it necessary to proxy all traffic through a service delivery platform in order to add value?’ (no) to ‘What specific mobile data applications will generate more revenue in the next four to five years?’ (video). Also, the following poll question was posed to the participants and yielded an interesting mix of responses:

Other Mobile Minute events are being planned for the coming months. We will cover these events on our blog and website as part of our ongoing efforts to provide thought leadership and consultative education to the rapidly evolving mobile internet space.

-Jaishree Subramania

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As part of our ongoing guest perspective Q&A series, we recently spoke with Scott Ellison, vice president of Mobile & Wireless at IDC, to get his thoughts on the current mobile data trends that are shaping the telecommunications market.
                                                

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On June 18, we conducted the second webinar of the 2009 Mobile Minute series – “Making a Better Mobile Browser”. Led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program, the event attracted 317 registrations and 126 unique live visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. You can access a full replay of the webinar on the Mobile Minute page of Bytemobile’s website.

FierceWireless Editor-in-Chief Sue Marek moderated a panel consisting of (from left to right below) Mark Donovan, senior vice president of Mobile and senior analyst at comScore; Phil Parry, mobile browser interaction manager in the Design and Usability unit at Orange Group; and Adrian Hall, chief marketing officer at Bytemobile.

Mark Donovan began the discussion with a profile of the mobile market segments today, indicating that mobile media users – defined as browsers, application users and downloaders – had grown 24% from last year and now constituted the largest segment at 35%. The key drivers include device technology, network speed and adoption of unlimited data plans. Donovan noted that the U.S. had surpassed Europe in data plan penetration and that growth will accelerate as networks become faster and data costs stabilize. He cited browsing and social networking as the fastest growing mobile data activities, with the latter increasing 170% from last year, followed by applications at 111%. In the U.S., daily news and information access on mobile devices is overtaking the circulation of daily newspapers. Donovan concluded with a review of the leading smartphone domains, which are dominated by social networking and community services, news and information, and entertainment. Excluding social networking, web search, weather and news are the leading mobile browsing genres.

Phil Parry of Orange followed with the operator’s perspective on the mobile browsing platform and business model, noting the fragmentation of the market and the pros and cons of the PC internet experience and the mobile internet experience. Parry categorized the challenges to be addressed in closing this gap as user, economic (operator) and developer issues. He echoed Donovan’s point about smartphone penetration as a major factor in the evolution of web browsing technologies and then focused on the competitive landscape for web runtime platforms, which is moving toward service discovery and personalization. Within this context, Parry noted that today 58% of Orange subscribers search the Web through Orange World, the operator’s portal, while 78% circumvent the portal for direct access. He summarized the mobile platform and web-based application development environments and the balance between portability and performance. In conclusion, Parry stated that Orange would support the development of best-of-breed mobile web services with a unique operator-based platform and continued focus on the design of the user experience.

Adrian Hall’s segment of the panel played off of Donovan’s and Parry’s segments and shared Bytemobile’s experience in working with more than 100 operators worldwide on the evolution of their networks and data services. Hall underscored the importance of personalization to the success of the mobile Internet, highlighting Bytemobile’s Widget Bar as an example of a smart browsing tool that enables customization of the user experience from within the network and supports the implementation of new business models. He also reminded the audience that content adaptation has valid uses cases for all mobile devices – including even the highest-end smartphones, such as the iPhone and the new Android devices. Hall closed with a quick summary of Bytemobile’s product portfolio, again relating key points back to the comments of the other two speakers.

Following the individual presentations, Sue Marek took selected questions from the webinar participants. These questions ranged from the match-up between application requirements and browser capabilities to battery life, from the fragmentation of the mobile space to social networking opportunities and the impact of bandwidth constraints on application developers.

In addition, the audience was polled on the multiple-choice question heading the chart below:

The response emphasizes the fact that improving the mobile browsing experience is a multi-point solution – diversity of opinion notwithstanding, there is no single answer. Moreover, the Bytemobile product portfolio supports either directly or indirectly the key components of the solution.

Please note that the next webinar on mobile multimedia and the changing wireless traffic mix – also to be led by FierceWireless – is scheduled for July 15. You can register here.

-Jaishree Subramania

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