Carriers to Create Single Open Platform for Mobile Developers
February 17, 2010 By: Janice PartykaWireless Pulse Newsletter, February 2010
Look out, Apple. The GSMA World Congress began the week with a bang. Twenty-four telecom operators with a customer group of about 3 billion announced the formation of the Wholesale Applications Community. The goal is to create one open industry platform for mobile app developers that can be used on any device, operating system, or wireless operator. If a developer creates an app for identifying the closest taxi, presumably she only needs to write it for this one standard API, as opposed to the endless variety of devices and operating systems. This greatly reduces the barriers for distribution and should diminish the number of unique apps available via any one channel such as Apple’s App Store. Members of the community will include AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, TeliaSonera, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone, among others.
Apple Takes Bite out of Location Ads
Apple made an ambiguous announcement about location-based advertising that has left many in the industry wondering. On its developer’s site, Apple states, “If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you…”
Does this mean that if I’m a devotee of Denny’s Restaurants, I can’t access an app that will provide me with a Grand Slam coupon when I am near one of their restaurants? But if the app helps me navigate to the location, I can get my free eggs? I think if apps are clearly identified as advertising, hungry users like myself should be permitted to opt-in.
Jeff Hasen of Hip Cricket, a mobile marketing company, reacts to Apple’s announcement: “Their statement is vague, but it appears that Apple is trying to get control of location-based advertising dollars, now that the brands are spending money. This harkens back to the days of the carriers’ walled garden approach, which was a paradise for the carriers for as long as it lasted. Will Apple succeed? I don’t know.”
Advances in Indoor Location
One of the last frontiers of location technology is “the great indoors,” needed for both E9111 emergency calls and seamless location-based services (LBS). The industry has been hunting for inexpensive solutions for determining accurate location within buildings and in urban areas.
Rosum launched Alloy, a chipset for determining location in indoor and urban environments using broadcast TV signals. The Alloy chip combines a TV tuner with baseband processing into a single chip. The Alloy client includes both the Alloy chip and assisted GPS (AGPS) to form a hybrid TV-GPS solution. According to Todd Young of Rosum, the cost of the Alloy client is equivalent to what vendors are now paying just for an AGPS client. The Alloy chipset eliminates the need for an expensive clock required by standalone AGPS. Young says Rosum is in talks with wireless operators and femtocell vendors.
Free Navigation
Following on the heels of Google’s free navigation offering, Nokia announced its own new free version of Ovi Maps with navigation. Nokia’s subscribers signaled their approval with more than 1.4 million downloads within two weeks. As shown by the remarkable uptake, Nokia has set the stage to attract a more massive user base to which it can promote additional services. The top five countries downloading the new application are China, Italy, U.K., Germany, and Spain.
Unlike Google, Nokia says that advertising will not be a major presence. Dominique Bonte of ABI Research sees Nokia’s strategy as a way to retain its current subscribers and attract new ones. Nokia is foregoing an already established revenue stream from navigation. One current user indicated she had purchased a 12-month license for Ovi Maps Walk and Drive Navigation in August 2009 for €130.
Google’s free navigation is starting in the U.S. where they have developed mapping. Nokia’s offering is available on 10 phone models, and by March will be on each of its new smartphones with GPS. Free navigation is available for 74 countries. As of today, Google Maps Navigation is available on only a handful of devices, in one country and in one language.
Asked about the fate of navigation applications that charge a subscription fee, Bonte says, “Navigation offerings that are offered via carriers are still well positioned. The carriers are packaging navigation as part of a bundle of services that provide subscribers value. Subscription-based navigation offerings without those partnerships will encounter more difficulty.”
Raining at Which Intersection?
Weather Central has announced the first offering for the LBS and mobile markets to deliver weather forecasts, updates, and alerts based on road segment codes. Weather Central enables LBS and other mobile providers to augment their products with the detailed weather.
Shut Down
The letter from Nav4All’s CEO to its 27.5 million users with 56 languages was somber. “It is with the deepest regret that we hereby notify you that the global navigation of Nav4All and the Tracking & Tracing will go offline in three days. The reason for the same is that the data license agreement with Navteq (a 100 percent Nokia subsidiary) was not extended, in a totally unexpected manner. It is not possible to implement data from another supplier in our Nav4All systems within the short term. The Nav4All navigation system was developed for Navteq data. Nav4All has therefore been constrained to stop”. The notice is dated January 28, 2010.
Cross-Platform Location Apps
Skyhook Wireless conducted a study of location-aware apps and found nearly 6,000 location apps on iPhone, 900 on Android and 300 on BlackBerry. Only 43 of these are available in all three app stores. Of these 43 apps, most are free, indicating that developers make their apps cross-platform as a way to increase download numbers, not revenues. Developers that are interested in high revenue tend to focus only on paid apps for the iPhone.
Strangely enough, Skyhook Wireless found that all paid cross-platform apps set different pricing points across each platform. BlackBerry versions were the most expensive, while iPhone and Android versions are usually set much lower.
About the Author: Janice Partyka
RSS
Become a Fan
Join our Network
Follow Us
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.