With Mobile World Congress 2013 underway, Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!, talks Phablets, connected cars and HTML5.
We again resisted the temptation to join 70,000 others in Barcelona this week for Mobile World Congress. So, what did we miss? Well not that much, seemingly.
Lot of new devices were announced and / or launched. They all look pretty much the same – the phones are getting bigger and the tablets are tending to get smaller, so a new category of Phablets is emerging. With form factors converging we are at that stage where mobile is like the TV markets – every device looks similar and the content is increasingly the same.
Size matters but does brand? Can Samsung continue to be the main competitor or will formerly strong players like LG and HTC come back? Are we moving to a world where the hardware is less important and device makers are looking to the content and services to differentiate?
The operators still don’t like the OTT players – GAFA to you and me. They all lined up to complain about the pressures on their business and how they should have a bigger share of the spoils. Now they said pretty much the same thing last year and we haven’t seen that much action.
If you compare the constant innovation from GAFA – the stuff that fills Fix pretty much every week – with initiatives from the operators it’s clear where the energy is.
To be fair, this is starting to change. Weve is up and running. Orange has bought the rest of video service Daily Motion and O2 is looking for content rights to buy – saying they came close to beating News Corp to the Premiership mobile rights.
As their business comes under pressure from cut price players, operators are looking at content and services to differentiate.
The one area where there was real news in Barcelona was around operating systems. Browser firm Firefox is developing a new mobile operating system to compete with iOS and Android and has attracted a lot of support from both operators and device manufacturers.
Aimed at lower end users in developing markets, it seems these key players are keen to try and slow the growth of Android in particular. Because of the Firefox heritage the OS will be open and apps can be developed as webapps – which is another boost for HTML5.
Samsung have officially announced their Tizen OS – developed with Intel. This has been known about for a while but with Samsung dominating Android sales, this OS gives them a lever if Google should choose to give Motorola any family favouritism.
And in another OS twist, Palm webOS (once seen as the key competitor to Apples iOS) has risen from the ashes having been bought by LG. But they plan to use it on their smart TVs, rather than their mobile devices.
Does any of this really matter? We saw research last year that a large proportion of smartphone users have no idea what OS they have on their phone. Real people don’t buy Android phones; they buy a Samsung, an LG or an HTC. Ultimately all they really care about is whether the phone does its job and they can access the best content and services.
You will have spotted that we think the whole market is getting to a stage where the content and services are what really matters. So rights owners and developers are key to the success of the whole ecosystem.
3 or 4 years ago this was quite a simple business. You made an app for the iPhone and you had a huge potential reach of the available audience – and had the best infrastructure for monetising the reach you achieved. Until a year or so ago it was the same with tablets – create a native app for the iPad and you were sorted.
Now with so many form factors and different OS, this one approach doesn’t work. Being on the iPhone is like being stocked in Waitrose – it can be really good for a niche player but most brands need to be in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrisons too. Otherwise you’re leaving money on the table.
And to stretch the analogy, you really don’t want the hassle of remaking the product for each distributor. So we believe these new moves are a further boost for creating your content and services in a web focused way – yes, HTML5.
Other Mobile World Congress news
GAFA didn’t really show up in Barcelona. Having had a huge Android stand last year, Google made do with an Android party this year – with Florence and the Machine and Tinie Tempah. Facebook had plenty of people there, but it was quite low key.
Connected cars was a big story this year, with a number of marques showing how the car is becoming a mobile device (sorry). One of the things we have talked about for years is finally happening – Ford will partner with Spotify to offer an in car music service that doesn’t require flimsy CDs.
Mastercard have made their move into mobile money with Masterpass – a mobile wallet that enables people to store their card details and loyalty cards in one place. It also acts as a digital checkout service for retailers – online and also offline, through a QR like code that can be used in store.
And Visa have announced a partnership with Samsung to have their NFC solution in the Samsung wallet. Oddly though this doesn’t seem to have made it into the new Samsung wallet announced at MWC – where the influence of Apple Passbook is quite clear. And as further support to our point about walled gardens it looks like this app will only be available through the Samsung appstore – meaning brands that want to maximise distribution for their loyalty cards have yet another player to deal with.
