Before we get into our look at the week past, we have some actual Mobile Europe business to attend to.
First, the latest issue of Mobile Europe is now available to view. This issue includes an Insight Report on the mobile customer experience from Telesperience's Teresa Cottam, as well as features on mobile cloud services and on VoIP strategy. Please take a look.
Second, continuing the issue's CEM theme, we have a good-looking webinar up the barrel, taking place on 2 May. This webinar will be delivered by Aricent's Tom Lybarger, a man with experience in this area inside and outside of telcos. If you're interested in how to improve an operator's overall customer view, especially by making use of device analytics, then this is the event for you.
OK, parish announcements over, let's take a look back at what's been exercising us this week.
Well, first off, last week's prediction that we would see an EC Project Oscar announcement just as soon as the newsletter hit desks proved to be accurate. The Competition Commission delivered its verdict on its initial investigation into Project Oscar, the UK's m-commerce JV late on Friday (yes, even later than we deliver this email). And the verdict was…we need more time. So the EC has given itself 90 days to have a further look at the proposals for a consolidated m-commerce entity. Of particular interest is its worry that the JV could have the potential to damage, competitively, other m-payments initiatives.
The EC thought that by forming one big m-payments venture the operators have the potential to stifle innovation and competition from other providers. Yet the same concerns don't seem prevalent in Sweden, where the four operators have been given the nod to set up and start running 4T, their equivalent, from June this year.
One person we spoke to close to the project thought this might be because 4T has remained open technically – in that it hasn't specified a reliance on the Secure Element on the SIM, as is the case with the UK operators. This means that the 4T scheme doesn't rely on storage of sensitive details on the SIM – something that makes it more open to other players, this (admittedly Pro-4T) contact told us. It seems likely, as well, that the biggest difference is that in Sweden the JV is 4T, not 3T. That is to say, Three is part of the venture, instead of sitting outside slinging in its grenades.
Also this week, we saw the very endgame of several dreams of mobile operator-led IM. If you want more on this, read the Synchronica blog post linked to on this mail. But essentially, what we have seen in the last few years is the collapse of perhaps five or six business models predicated on the assumption that interoperable rich communications services would be a big draw, reach massive volume, and make everyone money. That has proved far from the case, and we now see Myriad Group as the ultimate consolidator of Oz, Neustar, Colibria, Followap, iseemedia and Synchronica, to name just a few. Whether that makes the future of operator-led rich comms any more attractive is still up for discussion. Or it make just mean that demand is much more aligned to supply. It's worth nothing, though, for those who throw RCS-e out there as a business case for their company's future revenues.
Talking of future revenues, we saw NSN make another quarterly loss – something that was used by Big Nokia to explain away its poor financial performance. To be honest, this was a bit like blaming the sun going down for it getting cold, when what you have done is failed to shut the front door, letting all the cold air in. NSN has been losing money for quarter after quarter and it announced its restructuring – for which it brought forward a 700m Euro charge into this quarter – early in the previous quarter.
Clearly that's not good, but it's a restructuring charge aimed at reducing overheads by a cool billion a year by 2013. Big Nokia knows that really its biggest current issue is not in its network business, although you wouldn't say that NSN is pulling up any trees, or out of the woods, or any of the other arboreal metaphors you have to hand. One aspect up for discussion here is that operators have been putting the wood on Nokia – hence it's not getting support in selling through the WP-based Lumia. That, I think, is way over-stating the case. My hunch, actually more than a hunch as it's based on several briefings, is that operators are fully in favour of a good Windows phone, and will support it if it makes sense for them to do so. But they can't make their customers buy the things – even by giving away $400 handsets, or an Xbox.
Another thing to point out. There are those who paint pre-WP Nokia as some pre-lapsarian Eden. It was far from that, especially as far as operators were concerned. In fact, the operator-baiting competitive Nokia positioning came from the old Finns – Ovi, Nokia Music, Messaging, Maps, Ad Network, Money. A trimmed down Nokia that makes damn good phones that can compete with Apple, albeit with a Windows App marketplace in the tail, is a sight more attractive to operators than a 50% market share beast attempting to convert that device share into a similar services share.
Too long didn't read version of the above paragraphs: "Nokia's current handset issues have got v little to do with lack of operator sentiment".
Right, I'm about to leave it there. Please note our other stories for catch-up: not least the notice that Free Mobile is joining SFR in France by looking to open up its WiFi network to mobile users so that mobile users can log on, automatically, to any available WiFi hotspot – residential or otherwise. Some of the implications of that are explored in my shortish post, again as linked to on this mail.
For now, though, have a thunderously good weekend.
Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe