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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Earlier this month, members of our management team sat down with Rob Bamforth of Quocirca in London to share insights on current trends in the wireless data industry. This week, we caught up with Rob again to ask a few burning questions which we thought would be of interest to our readers.

1) You’ve often been quoted as saying that people and their needs should be the driving force behind technology and that we should ‘avoid technology for technology’s sake’. Can you elaborate on this, specifically as it relates to the mobile industry?
Service value and user experience should come before megabytes, MIPs and megapixels. Technology products and services are too often sold for what they are, rather than what they can do.

2) What mobile phone features or applications do you think would make people’s lives more productive as opposed to more complicated? Are there consumer demands that simply aren’t being met right now?
I think the need is more generalized than specific, which I’d encapsulate as ‘fewer clicks between thought and action’. If the thought is ‘Get hold of Bill’, ‘When’s the next train?’, or ‘Where could my kids go to eat later?’, the last thing I need while mobile is to be clicking through lots of options and having to make lots of decisions.

3) What do you see as the biggest opportunities for wireless carriers to drive ARPU over the next 1-2 years?
Add value on the side, rather than on the network - i.e., don’t charge for music downloads or tune recognition, but instead take a slice on the purchase of a concert ticket. It takes a leap of faith, but good marketing has always involved loss leaders, low-margin teasers, etc., and the higher-profit-margin ARPU is made on the back of relationships in the mix, rather than as profit centers on each line item or service.

4) Are there any mobile or technology brands out there whose products or services you feel are doing a particularly good job of meeting consumer needs?
Apple (so far).

5) Some operators have hinted that they may institute data caps based on time of usage as a means to combat the stress that skyrocketing data usage is placing on their infrastructure. What are your thoughts on this? How do you think this will affect subscriber usage?
‘Just when they’re (subs) getting used to using it and demanding it, we’ll (operators) cap it’ – not a good idea. I always thought operators (and others in this space) should be making markets before making money – i.e., don’t take big margins during the fragile growth phase, but wait until a little later! I know it’s tough with investors breathing down your neck, but the model does work - it just needs patience, and sometimes deep pockets.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we sit down with other key industry influencers to discuss the trends and issues important to the mobile internet ecosystem. If you have any specific questions you’d like us to ask, feel free to leave a comment or send email to sinfantino@bytemobile.com.

-Stacey Infantino

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How are wireless network operators going to encourage new consumer growth but remain in control of their networks? How are they going to ensure continued delivery of profitable revenue-generating services?

These and other critical questions will be addressed tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. EDT, when Bytemobile hosts the first in its 2009 series of Mobile Minute webinars on challenges and opportunities facing operators today.

The May 27 event – Mobile Data Caps: Can Carriers Profitably Control Data Usage? – will be led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program. FierceWireless Executive Editor Lynnette Luna will moderate the discussion among John Jackson, analyst at CCS Insight and former vice president at Yankee Group; Larry Socher, global lead of the Network Offering Group at Accenture; and Adrian Hall, chief marketing officer at Bytemobile.

See here for details and registration instructions. The next Mobile Minute webinar – Making a Better Mobile Browser – will be held on June 18.

-Jaishree Subramania

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For months now, there has been a lot of buzz in the telecommunications industry regarding variable pricing plans for mobile data services. This continued to be a hot topic at CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas. Service providers such as Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon are doing more than talking about it, and all seem to have their own opinions on tiered-pricing business models.

Recent media buzz:

Variable Pricing Coming to Mobile Broadband? – GigaOm

Capacity Crunch Likely to see Data Charged Based on Time of Day – Moconews

Year of Flat Rate Data – Wireless Week

What we know:

Data traffic over tier-one wireless networks is growing at 10-15% per month, with 1-2% of users generating up to 50% of the traffic. Demand for richer mobile content such as video – plus the popularity of high-end smartphones such as the iPhone, promises to further accelerate traffic growth – and operators need to protect their network infrastructure. Since carriers have finite resources, rapidly escalating data consumption poses a very serious threat to their operations, service quality and, ultimately, their revenue growth and profitability. To cope with the stress, operators are imposing data caps on users, with premium fees for excessive usage.

What we think:

Operators need to consider alternative solutions, including smart optimization and adaptive service control, in order to manage latency and maintain the stability, availability and scalability of their networks. By increasing network efficiency and capacity, they can manage the effects of continued traffic growth within the footprint of their existing installations and scale their networks ahead of rising data demand. This will also help to ensure a compelling user experience. By customizing data plans and controlling service levels, operators can enforce fair-use policies adaptively without damaging customer relationships.

-Stacey Infantino

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