About Mobility

My good friend Michael Yuan (Ringful Health) put together a quick survey on BlackBerry to better understand popular BlackBerry versions and help them prioritize their product road-map. The survey results are public so everyone can benefit from this survey:

So, while we are working on BlackBerry versions of our apps, we are really interested in finding out where the “common denominator” is. Is it sufficient for us to target BlackBerry OS 4.6 and above? Or, do we really need to go all the way to OS 4.2 or even OS 4.0? Do we need to release a seperate app for touch screen BlackBerry devices? Can we rely on the BlackBerry AppWorld to distribute our app?

Read more about the BlackBerry survey and participate….

ceo

Rudy De Waele (@mtrends) has put together a collaborative outlook of the mobile trends for the next 10 years:

Update: Mobile Trends 2020 has been updated to include views from Russell Buckley, Tomi Ahonen, Yuri van Geest, Kelly Goto, Raj Singh, David Harper, Marc Davis, Loic LeMeur…

(You can find my contribution to Mobile Trends 2020 on slide #40)

:
To this end I have been writing down my predictions in mobile & wireless for a couple of years now. This year I thought it was the time to move on and do something different, so I asked some of my personal heroes in mobile to write down their five most significant trends for the coming decade.
:

For background information on how this came about see Rudy’s blog Mobile Trends 2020.

I am honored to be part of this collaborative effort one full of vision of the things possible during the next decade on mobile, together with an awesome/top group of Mobilists such as:

Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Gerd Leonhard, Timo Arnall, Carlo Longino, Katrin Verclas, Atau Tanaka, Alan Moore, Marek Pawloski, Ajit Jaokar, Nicolas Nova, Inma Martinez, Tony Fish, Jonathan MacDonald, Willem Boijens, Carlos Domingo, Russ McGuire, Raimo van der Klein, Michael Breidenbruecker, Robert Rice, Steve O’Hear, Ted Morgan, Martin Duval, Andreas Constantinou, Fabien Girardin, Matthäus Krzykowski, Rich Wong, Andy Abramson, Ilja Laurs, David Wood, Stefan Constantinescu, Henri Moissinac, Kevin C. Tofel, Felix Petersen, Tom Hume, and yours truly.

Below is the Slideshare which you can also download.

(You can find my contribution to Mobile Trends 2020 on slide #40)

Enjoy!

ceo

With my first blog post of 2010 I would like to wish you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

And with the new year and the new decade, I reflect on the previous decade and my involvement with mobile; writing this helps me remember the good and not so good times and prepare for the new decade of mobile.

2000-2009. Wow, ten years have past! Some good times and some bad times. I survived, making a living throughout the decade mostly working on mobile. Not too bad…

During the last decade I did a bit of everything: a software developer, architect, a products guy, CTO and evangelist, business owner, researcher, speaker and writer, startup founder, raise angel and VC money, board member, mentor, events organizer, standards bodies, blogger, open source, inventor, documentation and testing, marketing and managing people and products. Top to bottom, left to right. I did great on some and not as good on other. All that while being a husband and a father…

From WAP and cHTML, to web clipping, PalmOS and BlackBerry, Symbian OS, web and widgets, local/native apps, connected and occasionally connected apps, J2ME, Android and iPhone too. From device to network to server, J2EE and Servlets and containers, from XML to Java, PHP, C and C++, DBs and many OSes. Algorithms and patents. User interfaces and user experience. From social and user-generated content software before it was called that, to SMS, LBS, personal data and proximity before it was cool and/or massively used. Lots of other things as well. I remember ‘predicting’ that enterprise would drive mobile adoption, but boy, I was wrong — consumers did! I predicted that by 2006-2007 or so mobile would become what we all have been talking about, and off I was, but not as bad.

…and we are still not there but we are getting there!

During the last decade I started companies, and joined others; both small and large. From agentGO/AGEA, Aligo, Artemis Wireless Werks, to eZee and Motive/ALU. From helping raise millions of dollars in VC money, bringing software products to market, some very successful, to creating partnerships and relationships, almost getting acquired by BEA, to selling the company assets or dissolving the company, the last decade was a hell of a ride.

With Artemis Wireless Werks (my mobile services company) alone helped dozens of companies including Skyfire, AMF Ventures, OMTP.org, MediaSourcery, RGL Forensic Accountants & Consultants, Arrowhead Electronic Healthcare, Edioma, NAKA Media, Blim Law, Sun Microsystems, Nokia, Motorola Metrowerks, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, The Burton Group, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Santa Fe, Aligo, Datamaxx, IBM, Mobile Candy Disk, mLoc8, Salsa.Net, PodCast Ready and Kenosia. Thanks to all for the business!

Got the opportunity to speak on many conferences and wrote hundreds of technical articles on mobile and one book, and thousands of entries on my blog and other blogs. Contributed directly or indirectly to a few other books and wrote the foreword for one. Started 3 other books but didn’t finish them, and I owe book reviews to a number of friends, all great writers; sorry guys! I will review all the pending books! and should at least finish one of those books that I had started.

During the last decade I met wonderful and super smart Mobilists, some in person and others virtually, from all around the world, many becoming good friends even though some of them I’ve never met in person. Others who started in mobile at the same time as I did are still going strong on mobile — way to go! I also helped a number of students, some local but most from around the world, thanks again to the power of the Internet, some even throughout from their Bachelor to their PhD. I’m proud of them.

The space shuttle — my first job out of college in the 90s went through very hard times and a fatal accident losing all crewmen and the vehicle Columbia — glad am I to see the program continue, even though its end of life is to occur on 2010, to move forward into the next phase of the manned space program.

Also during the past decade (in 2005) founded MobileMonday Austin which today has close to 350 members and continues strong, and also was a founding member of the Austin Wireless Alliance and the Carnival of the Mobilists which also continue strong. Helping companies is a passion of mine and throughout the decade I helped dozen of companies with software to pure advice. Got involved with SXSW Interactive as an advisory board member focused on mobile which continues in 2010; hope to see you there.

During the same decade I spent a lot of time helping evolve J2ME by helping with the specs and APIs, writing about it, evangelizing, helping with the JCP and JavaOne and with the Mobile & Embedded Community. In 2009 I was nominated for the 2009 JCP Program Participant of the Year. It is sad for me that J2ME stalled towards the end of the decade (long story) but it is not dead and I think it will (should) live as the preferred development platform for Feature-phones.

Towards the end of the decade I co-founded eZee inc. a mobile marketing and interactive advertising company and joined the UT Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). I’m a proud alumni of the ATI with which I continue having a strong relationship. eZee’s technology was based on my vision of mobile with interactions between the physical and digital worlds and the user (and the analysis of such interactions), and the mobile user context while keeping the technology and adoption as practical to the times as possible — very interesting as in 2000 when I joined agentGO I focused on the importance of user-context and agent software and data as key ingredients to a successful mobile experience. So in many ways, eZee inc was the culmination of the previous 8 years of mobile vision and experience. And that vision is not dead!

And I ended-up the decade at Motive, which was later acquired by Alcatel-Lucent, where I work on software for Telcos in the areas of device management and call-center software and network stuff; things that typically happen “behind the scenes”.

The decade was hell of a ride, as I wrote before. I’m sure I’ve missed a number of things but the above is a good summary — I ended up writing much more that what I had anticipated.

2000-2009 was a decade of vision on things mobile, with lots of research, and partnerships, with some real deployments, with lots excitements and some disappointments. The mobile industry has taken a long time to evolve, mainly because of the operators, and as a consequence the technology took long to evolve and become adopted.

But it is happening now. I see it. I feel it. From the mobile lifestyle, to the ecosystem, from the operator to the developer, from the network to the devices. And as we enter the new decade, mobility will be even *more* pervasive. The technology, the devices and networks are catching up, and we will be able to bring to market all those product concepts that we have been talking about/researching over the last decade. For one, the users are ready with a next generation of users that if you think you and me are connected today, think again. Voice? Nah, only 1% of usage will be voice, and apps/data/messaging/social/media will be the other 99%, always-on/connected. Where 80% of the devices will be Smart-phones and Feature-phones will have 80% of Smart-phone capabilities/functionality. Hybrid apps (80% local/native and 20% web-based) will rule for the first half of the decade, and by the 2nd half, mobile web should rival local/native apps and/or complement them in ways that it is almost transparent when jumping from one to the other and back. The next decade will see Augmented Reality and digital/physical world convergence become a common tool, with the mobile handset right in the middle, and AR it will be standardized and absorbed into the browser as a view — similar to the “street vs. map view”. The mobile handset will also serve as the personal gateway to the Internet, providing the computing power to simple sensors and to the new 5th screen — AR visors/eye-glasses powered by the mobile handset.

And many thanks to all the companies such as Apple and Google and RIM and Nokia and Symbian and the other hundreds of super innovative small companies and people who made the difference during the last decade; while some made it and others failed, they all have a part and made important contributions.

So welcome to the year 2010 and the new decade… Let’s see what the new decade will bring us.

Let’s make it happen! Bring it on!

ceo

With this post I would like to wish you and your family a peaceful and happy Christmas holidays and an awesome, full of health and prosperity 2010!

ceo

Ajit wrote an interesting post titled Mobile Cloud Computing – the silver lining for Operators, where he explores Cloud Computing from an Operator perspective and discusses the synergies and opportunities for Carriers. He quotes an ABI Research report that states that cloud computing will become a “disruptive force in the mobile world: first is simply the number of users the technology has the power to reach: far more than the number of smartphone users alone. The second reason has to do with how applications are distributed today. Currently, mobile applications are tied to a carrier.”

Yes, cloud computing has in theory a great potential to reach great number of users because of the complex ecosystem that it involves – it is not only about end-users, but all the intermediaries as well, reaching all, working together.

The statement that mobile applications are tied to a carrier is a “yes and no” answer — if I’ve application A running on Android and iPhone, is that the same app ported to two platforms, or two different apps? There is no single answer as you may decide to track it as a single application on two platforms, or track each platform as its own application. And if I have a mobile web app, is that tied to a specified network provider? The answer is no.

One thing that caught my eye on Ajit’s essay was “the phrase ‘Mobile Cloud Computing’ itself has meaning only from an access standpoint. For instance, the ‘backup’ could work for any server (fixed or mobile).” But there are different views to (mobile) cloud computing in general and to better understand and rationalize (mobile) cloud computing in general — its benefits, drivers and economics, we must look at all its angles. Below I take a short stab at it, where we have:

1. Applications vs. Services or the combination.
2. The network of Constituents:
   • The PROVIDER of cloud computing infrastructure

     Provides hardware (HW) and software (SW) infrastructure, or applications and services, and/or all the above. Example are Amazon and Google and Rackspace, where latter is more on the HW side of the infrastructure while Amazon is both. Providers absorb most of the Capex behind powering (mobile) cloud computing.

     From the provider perspective it is about being competitive and win the business by offering pricing models that makes it attractive to their consumers. Attractive to customers is cheaper but reliable, and this is possible via hosted/SaaS/cloud-based approaches by deploying their own infrastructure or leveraging others.

   • The APPLICATION/SERVICES PROVIDER or (1st tier consumer) of cloud computing

     Are typically businesses consumers of cloud computing infrastructure and providers of applications and/or services. Examples like Google are both providers of cloud computing infrastructure and of applications and services. But the majority are providers of apps and services running on top of infrastructure provided by others (see PROVIDER above).

     From this tier-1 customer perspective is about minimizing IT Capex by moving such Capex costs to Opex. These customers look for pricing models based on number of seats and/or devices while minimizing their investment on expensive hardware and software and even IT operational investments; it helps them minimize risk ($) with respect to unknowns. They drive the Providers with requirements on scalability, high availability, multi-tenancy and security, to mention a few.

   • The DEVELOPER (2nd tier consumer) of cloud computing

     Are developers of applications and services. These applications are typically hosted on the cloud (see Provider above). Even client-based applications are increasingly consuming services on the cloud.Developers look to leverage the services which are hard to build but easier and cheaper to consume that gives them richness for their apps, with examples that include Maps and location, photos and storage. These developers offer their applications and services on the web via SaaS models running on other’s HW and SW infrastructure (see above).

   • The END-USER (3rd tier consumer) of cloud computing

     Are the typical end-users of applications. They don’t consumer services directly, but consume applications that in turn consume services on the cloud. These level of consumers really don’t care if the app is hosted or not. They only care that the app works WELL when needed with things such as security and high-availability and well usage experiences and etc, all being part of the package.

The following illustrates an example of this complex network of and between cloud computing participants:

Different constituents drive the requirements on different parts of cloud computing and in different ways. But at the end, cloud computing is mainly about economics and driven by providers and their Tier-1 customers, the application/services providers who in turn are driven by end-users and developers. At the end it is a network of application/services providers consuming other application/services providers via many infrastructure providers, and levels of providers and end-users and developers. SLAs are so important in this “new” world and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are probably one of the most important aspects to make all this work; does SLA equal trust?

From the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) cloud-based / hosting is becoming increasingly important, especially when doing initial deployments of new technologies as it helps them minimize risk with respect to unknowns. From the developer’s perspective their dependencies on services on the web continues to increase (i.e. connected apps); even their local/native connected applications are big users of services on the web.

From the mobile perspective, consumption of centralized applications (mobile web) and services (both mobile web and local apps) will continue to be the trend i.e. consumption of software and services as a service on the web/cloud. The idea of mobile handsets as “servers” or provider of services is a very interesting one indeed, but we are not there yet and it will take longer to get there.

ceo

We had a great MobileMonday Austin event on Dec 7, a full house and great speakers — what a great way to end 2009. Thanks to our sponsors and speakers:

David Gill (Nielsen), Austin Technology Incubator (Bart Bohn), Austin Entrepreneur Network (Hall Martin), Idea Finishing School (Dean McCall), Tech Ranch Austin (Jonas Lamis) and Erin Defosse, and startups Ringful, SocialMuse, MediaSourcery, AVAI Mobile, Edioma.

The 2010 calendar of events is being put together and is being published on an on-going basis — see http://www.mobilemondayaustin.org calendar of events.

NEXT EVENT

Our next event is with the new Android Dev Austin group, a new special interest group interested in Android OS and application software development, and put together in cooperation with the Austin chapter of MobileMonday. Our next event is as follows…

When: January 20, 2009, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Topic: Android Dev Austin

Agenda: In planning. If you are a developer or a startup of Android software and/or hardware and would like to present, please add your name to the registration page at http://groups.google.com/group/android-dev-austin/web/jan-2010-meeting or email me.

Where: Motive Building — http://www.motive.com

Cost: Free

To have an estimated headcount and for security (front-desk) please *add your name* to the following registration page: http://groups.google.com/group/android-dev-austin/web/jan-2010-meeting

Also, to keep track of Android Dev Austin-specific announcements, feel free to register at the Android Dev Austin mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/android-dev-austin.

ceo

A quick reminder of next MobileMonday Austin event, next Monday Dec 7 ‘09. We have a great agenda!

Hope to see you there!

When: December 7, 2009, 5:30 – 8:00pm

Topic: Central Texas Technology Incubators, Funding Sources and Mobile Apps Demo Night

Agenda:

• 5:30-6:15 pm — We will start by having a number of local startup companies demonstrate their products: Ringful, SocialMuse (Android Developer Challenge winner), Trust Nexus, MediaSourcery, AVAI Mobile, Edioma.
• 6:20-6:50 pm — We will have David Gill from Nielsen Mobile talk about the current state of mobile industry.
• 6:55-7:25 pm — We will have the Central Texas Technology Incubator panel with the Austin Technology Incubator (Bart Bohn), Austin Entrepreneur Network (Hall Martin), Idea Finishing School (Dean McCall), and Tech Ranch Austin (Jonas Lamis), with Erin Defosse, local entrepreneur and past Director of the ATI and AWA, as panel moderator.
• 7:30-8:00 pm — We will have Hall Martin of the Austin Entrepreneur Network give a presentation on Funding Sources.

Where: West Pickle Research Building, The Alamo room — see http://bit.ly/4Va4MW

Cost: Free. Pizza and sodas will be served.

Space is limited! To have an accurate headcount, please register by *adding your name* to the “December 7th Event page” at: http://groups.google.com/group/momoaustin/web/mobilemonday-austin-event-december-7-2009

If you are a startup or developer who would like to demo your applications, please send me an email to enrique dot ortiz at gmail dot com.

Thanks to our sponsor, the Austin Wireless Alliance! And to our Speakers!!!

ceo (@eortiz, @momoaustin)

In its 202th edition, the Carnival of the Mobilists continue strong. This week’s Carnival is hosted at the Mobile Strategy weblog where you will find a number of interesting blog entries from MOpocket, WIP Jam, MSearchGroovem, Mobile Manifesto and About Mobility weblogs.

Also if you haven’t seen last week’s Carnival (#201) visit Burning the Bacon blog.

ceo

Will RIM adopt Android? A very interesting thought indeed. But why or not would RIM do such a thing? Some thoughts below:

Why this would be unlikely?

• “Not built here” mentality — this is probably the biggest hurdle for them. There will be internal people resistant to the change, resistant to drastic changes and “throwing away” all legacy work, but sometimes, this must be done;
• “Why promote a competitor” mentality — this would be a weak argument, due to the “pros” – see below.

Why this would be likely?

• Deliver more value while reducing overall investments/expenses;
• Overall reduced Build of Materials (BOM) costs — reduced R&D related to OS; reduce OS team size that instead can focus on value for end-users (apps) and developers. No need to re-invent App Stores. Leverage Google infrastructure (such as Maps which will be an expected feature by end-users) while adding own differentiators on top;
• Android OS is advanced and customizable, and open — OSes are complicated and expensive handset elements. Android is based on Linux which is stable, which is open, and which is proven. The Android APIs are robust. The whole environment is open. And is community-based. Able to add own differentiators on top;
• Java-based satisfies current developer base — no new programming languages to learn or adapt to. Tons of tools that already exists, from UI to IDEs;
• Provides migration path — RIM can decide to continue exposing existing BB Java-based APIs and application life-cycles as needed on top of Android as a migration path;
• IDE tools already in place — Eclipse is a very good IDE. There is NetBeans too. Both are open and community based and very complete. There would be no need for their own BlackBerry-specific Java-IDE and that t team can instead focus on BlackBerry-specific extensions to Eclipse, NetBeans and/or other – in other words, a much cheaper route to developer tools than developing or maintaining developer tools from the ground up;
• Business models provided by Google — such as search, Maps, other and provide additional revenue streams for RIM.

As you can see, there are a number of positives for going the Android path; let’s see what will happen.

BTW, the above also applies to Nokia, but let’s see if they end up buying Palm instead…

CEO

Mark your calendars! The next MobileMonday Austin event is scheduled for December 7, 2009, 5:30-8pm.

For this event we will have a number of Central Texas Technology Incubators come in and talk about what and how they help local mobile developers and start-ups. We will also have a local Angel investor present on “Funding Sources”. And we will have some local companies demo their mobile products. It is going to be a very interesting and informative event!

When: December 7, 2009, 5:30 – 8:00pm

Topic: Central Texas Technology Incubators, Funding Sources and Mobile Apps Demo Night

Agenda:

• 5:30-6:15 we will start by having have a number of local startup companies demonstrate their products: Ringful, SocialMuse (Android Developer Challenge winner), Trust Nexus, MediaSourcery, AVAI Mobile, Edioma (Larry Upton).
• 6:20-6:50 or so we will have David Gill from Nielsen Mobile talk about the current state of mobile industry.
• 6:55-7:25 or so we will have the Central Texas Technology Incubator panel with the Austin Technology Incubator (Bart Bohn), Austin Entrepreneur Network (Hall Martin), Idea Finishing School (Dean McCall), and Tech Ranch Austin (Jonas Lamis), with Erin Defosse, local entrepreneur and past Director of the ATI and AWA, as panel moderator.
• 7:30-8:00pm we will have Hall Martin of the Austin Entrepreneur Network give a presentation on Funding Sources.

Where: West Pickle Research Building, The Alamo room — see http://bit.ly/4Va4MW

Cost: Free. Pizza and sodas will be served.

Space is limited! To have an accurate headcount, please register by *adding your name* to the “December 7th Event page” at: http://groups.google.com/group/momoaustin/web/mobilemonday-austin-event-december-7-2009

If you are a startup or developer who would like to demo your applications, please send me an email to enrique dot ortiz at gmail dot com.

Thanks to our sponsor, the Austin Wireless Alliance! And to our Speakers!!!

ceo
@eortiz
@momoaustin

BONDI 1.1 is now in Candidate Release and it is open to public for feedback.

Note that this phase will close on the 2nd of December so you’ll need to get your comments in before then.

See OMTP and BONDI at the betavine website.

What is BONDI?

In short BONDI is a set of specifications, reference implementation and compliance criteria for the creation of mobile web apps based on Widgets.

This means that BONDI widgets rely on the web-runtimes or browser as its execution environment. BONDI defines a set of APIs that provides BONDI widgets with access to the handset functionality such as access to camera, contacts and location information.

The BONDI official website contains all the information you need to learn more.

From the BONDI website:

During 2007 and 2008, it became increasingly apparent that the future direction and success of the mobile web could be harmed without a concerted effort to drive a standardized approach to how web applications access the key local capabilities on the mobile device.

If web applications had to use different APIs (for the same capability) on different devices and platforms, then development of web applications which work on any mobile device would not happen. On top of this, the risk of malicious web applications having free access to local mobile capabilities is unacceptable. Therefore, a need to create some form of security layer to protect the user from harm was essential.

It is with this background that OMTP launched its BONDI project with the aim of acting as a catalyst to drive the standardization of a small set of key interfaces from web services to mobile devices and also to put in place a well understood and user controlled security policy with which to protect the user.

BONDI consists of several activities, each of which interacts and as a whole builds towards the aim defined above.

Interface Requirements — A high level definition of the BONDI interfaces which include a dynamic API which is remotely updateable once the device is in the field

Security and Architecture requirements — Requirements for BONDI architectural constraints and for the security policy which protects the user from harm

API specifications — A set of Doxygen generated HTML pages that define the syntax and semantics of the BONDI APIs

Security Policy DTD — An interoperable XML description of the security policy which defines the access that a particular web application and widget will have to the BONDI APIs.

Reference Implementation (RI) — The RI is a real concrete example (using Windows Mobile as the platform) of how the interfaces and security specifications should be implemented. The RI SDK contains API documentation and example code.

Compliance Criteria — A set of criteria which may be used to judge compliance of implementation against the defined standard and RI.

The BONDI Reference Implementation has been created as an Open Source project. This enables both OMTP Members and Participants as well as non members to collaborate on the creation of a rapidly iterating and testable implementation in a public arena. The use of real code in a RI ensures that other implementations for different devices and platforms can be tested and declared compliant against well defined criteria.

ceo

It almost is the end of 2009. And where does near-field proximity communication-based applications stand? From mobile marketing, to customer loyalty, payments and authentication, to information exchange, transportation and health-care. Well, it still stands very far from its full potential.

Regardless of its potential and benefits to consumers (which is about convenience) and the real business models that exist, NFC have had major adoption (growing) pains. Pilots have said again and again that consumers do like the convenience, but it is the enablement problem what has basically prevented its adoption. It took Bluetooth more than 10 years and it will take NFC the same.

If we wanted to deliver the convenience benefits of proximity-interactions today, what is the answer? Will it be RFID or NFC the one that stands up at the end? Will it be embedded chip-sets, USB or microSD, or plain RFID stickers?

While not the perfect vision the NFC Forum members had, sticker (RFID) are the short-term solution for this today. Some call it an interim solution, but we will see.

From Blaze Mobile (to whom I provided my services to back when they were called MobileCandyDish), to Giesecke & Devrient, Alcatel-Lucent (my current employer), Oberthur Technologies, MasterCard, First Data, and Tetherball, they all are dealing with the realities of NFC and while waiting for it have decided to follow the “RFID sticker” route. Blaze Mobile was one of the first one years ago.

Stickers. But RFID stickers are very limiting as they are limited to “one function”. How many stickers can you fit, or want to fit, on the back of your phone? Yet stickers bring NFC close to reality. Expect branded and colorful RFID stickers of all kinds.

When I saw ViVOTech (a leader on NFC and contactless in general) recently announce their ViVOtag product; in other words, even ViVOtech has submitted to the realities of NFC, I said to myself, “NFC is dead, long live NFC” – this time is the sticker way. Yuck. See ViVOtech Launches ViVOtag.

There are other vendors going the route of USB or microSD NFC devices such as Tyfone, Giesecke & Devrient and DeviceFidelity. Another example is Sony — see Sony’s next generation Memory Stick which might potentially be integrated with NFC.

In the meantime Gemalto Boosts Rollout of SIM-Based Mobile Contactless Services and touchatag, an Alcatel-Lucent venture and Clear2Pay partner on technology for contactless payments.

And as I wrote before, Will the iPhone trigger the Mobile RFID/NFC revolution?

So there is lots of interest, noise and activity related to mobile NFC/RFID. It is a matter of time, I’m convinced. But the ideal solution is NOT stickers, yet stickers are the fastest and cheaper way to get there, and because of that, the best way to validate the applications and models. And once that happens, I hope that for the sake of the consumers themselves that we move on to a solution that allows for MULTIPLE applications such as smart-cards or handset-based (which includes USB or microSD-based) approaches.

Now, last but probably the top deployment reason why proximity interactions based on NFC/RFID are extremely important: to work around that pesky patent on barcode interactions (i.e. nn-ee-oo-mm-ee-dd-ii-aa); with the NFC/RFID path there is clear and well documented (including in the NFC standards) prior-art.

It is time for operators and device manufacturers to push for NFC. Yes, enabling NFC require investment but pilots already provided good results. Go sticker in the interim to validate, and remember that it is about the applications and usability. No need to wait on Apple, again, to define the path. (The exception to all this is Nokia who has been forward looking since day one, with the handsets, APIs, documentation and toolkit to make this happen.)

ceo

Will history repeat itself?

There was/is the 12 keys keypad cellphone.
And few care about Touch.
Then came the iPhone.
Now everyone loves Touch.

There was the operator Deck.
Everyone hated the Deck.
Then came Apple.
And created the App Store.
Now everyone loves the App Stores.
And everyone still hates the Deck.

There was RFID. Then came NFC.
With clear use-cases and business-models.
Yet it has taken forever to deploy this.
Pilots and more pilots, when it is going to end?
Embedded chip-sets or stickers.
But few seem get it. (Nokia does!)
Who is going to take the first big step?
Operators don’t get it. Or do they?
And stuck with pilots they are.
“Hey, this is great!”, the pilots say.
Enablement is expensive! That is what they say.
But guess what?
Proximity support, the iPhone will have.
And all of the sudden, “RFID/NFC on the go” everyone will want.

And I say, if the iPhone introduces support for proximity, it will trigger the mobile RFID/NFC revolution… Wanna bet?

Here, some rumors via the NFC World Blog:

NFC specialist Narian Technologies and who runs the Near Field Communications Group on Linkedin.com, has reported the following:

Had to share this news. A highly reliable source has informed me that Apple has built some prototypes of the next gen iPhone with an RFID reader built in and they have seen it in action. So its not full NFC but its a start for real service discovery and I’m told that the reaction was very positive that we can expect this in the next gen iPhone.

If Apple does it, expect every phone manufacturer and their sister to begin pumping out NFC enabled phones, at least for service discovery and sync.

This just reinforces what we knew based on the two separate patents Apple submitted that had the iPhone enabled to read RFID tags. I’m told that the touch project video and the BT SIG’s specs were all driving forces to push this forward as well as other factors.

Guess I’ll be touching my iPhone to my Mac to link them together to sync iTunes by next year.

Operators have so much infrastructure already in place and it has taken them so many years to take advantage of it in news ways — to leverage such infrastructure for their own benefit and the benefit of the ecosystem, by repackaging and offering this infrastructure as “open” Services: their payment system, their marketing/reach methods, their customer support systems and other…

Recently T-Mobile announced (PC World) that they will start support for on-bill Android App Market purchases; up to this point the only way to buy applications on the Google App Market has been via Google Checkout.

“T-Mobile will let its subscribers pay for Android applications on their monthly mobile bills starting Nov. 17, also introducing its own section of the Android Marketplace that day.”

These news though, I’m surprised, haven’t made much noise within the developer community yet. This announcement is VERY interesting and important. A number of us, including William Volk (Extremepreneur blog) have been advocating this as an important approach to help simplify the app store application purchase (and/or purchase decision) and as a way to better ‘compete’ with Apple who already have a robust, established, recognized and independent (from operators) billing/payment framework.

For developers, this on-bill purchase/payment support means (in theory) that because the process of buying apps is becoming simpler for subscribers (no registration required, one-click buy) the resistance to buy applications should be less than before, and thus we should see an increase on the number of apps being purchased on Android and thus the Android platform should be more attractive to target since again, in theory, the ROI for it should also increase as a result of the introduced app purchase simplicity.

“Brodman characterized T-Mobile’s billing system as a simple, “one-click” purchase method that doesn’t require the user to give credit-card information or personal credentials. So far, Android users generally have had to use Google Checkout to pay for applications, but Google has said it wants a variety of payment choices for the market.”

Is the fact that there hasn’t been much (positive or negative) reaction to this announcement an indication that on-bill purchases don’t matter? Perhaps it is an indication that this is just a no-brainer and was just expected. Time will tell.

T-Mobile has taken the first step into this combined billing approach to app stores. This will set a precedence that will not favor Apple. Little by little and over the years, slowly but surely, operators have been understanding (or forced to understand) and have been learning and adapting. This is the only way operators will regain their position and be recognized within the ecosystem in ways that allows then to compete with companies such as Apple and Google — by themselves becoming part of the ecosystem in positive ways. It will take them years still, but they are learning. We have seen the mobile/wireless industry transforming from 1) being operator-centered, 2) to recently becoming ecosystem-centered where the developer community and users and open systems are at the center and where the operator is not viewed as a positive contributor or partner. But if operators adapt well (and time is of essence for them) we will see 3) an ecosystem where the operator becomes a very important ecosystem partner, which is anyways what they always have wanted, to offer services and be recognized beyond a pure pipe.

Apple has iTunes, Google has Checkout and the Operators have a proven robust billing/payment infrastructure (and other infrastructure) already in place for years that now they can extend to app stores. Let’s see if they will take advantage of this new opportunity and let’s see how this will play out.

In conclusion, T-Mobile’s on-bill support will be a great experiment that will help determine if this converged or combined billing/payment approach will be a positive influence on people’s decision to buy mobile applications. Logic dictates that it should…

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Yes, navigation and maps is the killer app for LBS.

Now it seems that Google Map with support for navigation has the potential to disrupt the whole Nav systems market. And if Google decides to make this new app available across different handsets beyond Android, wow, all the Nav vendors are going to be hurting.

And how can others compete?

Google Maps Nav is a free app, the traditional Map app but now with real-time always up to date maps and nav info, turn by turn directions, live traffic information and even street view and other goodies such as Layers of information! You can see the video, and read TechCrunch’s article Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape: Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0.

(Side-note: Nokia paid $7.7 billion for NAVTEQ and yet I can’t recall anything from that deal with as much impact as this Google Maps Nav solution)

How can Google Map/Nav disrupt the whole Nav system’s market? Let me give you an example using TomTom since I’m more familiar with TomTom’s Nav system…

TomTom’s Nav app for iPhone cost $100 and if you add their $120 cradle the whole thing is $220. And I bet there are other “hidden” costs for things such as map updates; that is their cash cow.

Let’s now look at TomTom car nav system. Like 2 years ago my wife gave me a TomTom ONE XL as a present. I love the gadget I must say and it has saved my neck a couple of times already. My wife paid like $200 for it. Now, if I want live traffic (or other kinds of data) I have to pay extra (if I recall correctly, for each). And the big one – if I want to update my maps, I have to pay for new map content. Paying for new content is fine, it cost like $75 if I recall correctly. But, because I haven’t updated my maps in a while they want to charge me $75 for the next release after the one I’ve on the device, plus another $75 for the latest one. In short, they want to charge me twice! I felt that they were taking advantage of me by charging me for a version I won’t be really using and I realized map updates is their cash cow; I didn’t upgrade.

And now Google releases Google Maps with Navigation support, a complete solution, for free, for your smart-phone. Can’t wait to get my hands on it (seems I may have to wait for Android 2.0 or upgrade my phone).

You would think that after everyone gets hooked that Google will start charging after the Beta release, don’t you think? Maybe their business model remains search and advertising based, or they will have a new model around charging business to appear on their maps and layers.

…and once again, the mobile handset is at the center of disruption…

Google Maps Nav features:

• Search in plain English (watch video). No need to know the address. You can type a business name or even a kind of a business, just like you would on Google.
• Search by voice (watch video). Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.
• Traffic view (watch video). An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch toggles a traffic view which shows the traffic ahead of you.
• Search along route (watch video). Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
• Satellite view (watch video). View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Street View (watch video). Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.
• Car dock mode (watch video). For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

And yes, there is also a cradle coming for the Android-based phones that automatically will activate the Nav mode.

See the official Google Maps Nav website.

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