The next frontier

The extraordinary growth in mobile data and associated services challenges traditional innovation and product development cycles used by the mobile device industry. Consequently, the industry's singular fixation on hardware specifications and performance measures has evolved to include a concentrated assessment of services-oriented offerings.

This is in response to both consumer needs and an industry reality, where formerly high-end-only features increasingly proliferate in lower segment handsets - thanks to persistent pressure on component costs. Subsequently, it has become far more challenging to rely on hardware specifications alone as a competitive differentiator.

The truth of the matter is that a growing majority of mid-tier handsets have a level of functionality that often exceeds the needs or expectations of consumers and operators. The exception is mobile device data speeds, which are naturally the core ingredient for enhancing the consumer Internet service experience. So, much now hinges on mobile Internet computing and the plethora of devices competing at the hardware level, which have cluttered the market in the last few years.

The mobile device world has forever been an ocean populated with various islands. Built on varying operating standards that delivered differentiated hardware hygiene factors, they in turn attracted consumers based on changing user interfaces, design form factors, screen resolutions and camera capabilities. Now both device manufactures and mobile operators are gravitating towards open operating platforms like Google's Android. These will deliver mutual service benefits as the relative base of these operating systems grows. This invariably suggests that operators or manufacturers that take too long to reflect on this reality will miss the abundant advantages and opportunities made possible by this dramatic rise in popular adoption.

Device manufactures and mobile operators are gravitating towards open operating platforms like Google's Android.

Teddy Maduna heads up MTN SA's device management portfolio.

The rising tide will dictate that consumers will now differentiate device capabilities through the bundled services each mobile device brand offers as an ecosystem, which facilitates mobile Internet computing.

Today, the device market is abuzz with the revolution of the smartphone. One wonders if anything can be deemed smart about a phone that has no integrated seamless service ecosystem, but projects itself to be classed as such because it has a touch-screen or qwerty keyboard.

Mobile Internet ecosystems will now define the phone.

Device-bundled services like Ovi, Windows Live or BlackBerry Internet Service typify the differentiated services that will now become the core offering. This goes beyond the boring and to some extent irrelevant device feature sets that may have no relevance in translating the service offer. The next frontier of the mobile device will be commanded by the ability for operators and device manufactures alike to expand and segment device offers. They will do so by virtue of the service ecosystems attached to each respective device brand, with opportunity to formulate some service scalability.

The frontier shift presents an encouraging paradigm that maximises value across the service chain. Device vendors will no longer impress themselves with the number of shipment pallets they deliver, but by loyal service subscribers instead. Mobile operators will have more reason to justify their investment in broadband infrastructure with sharply increased average data revenue. Consumers would truly know and appreciate a smartphone in its truest definition.

This emerging frontier will accelerate the consolidation of the different islands of operating systems. This will include the general fragmentation of device standards, as all in the chain seek to deliver a connected consumer experience, instead of focusing on specifications with no everyday applicability.

General strategic intents from operators and device manufactures would be mutual and symbiotic. Both would have a shared interest in retaining consumers, with the continued effort to advance the consumer service experience. This 'symbiosis' would almost suggest an increasing desire to cede as many suitable mobile devices into the hands of consumers as possible. The natural benefit of this would encourage greater business value from annuity service revenue and not just hardware margins, which are increasingly being eroded.

At the surface, the industry at large has seen the value of extending the mobile device experience to service ecosystems. It is now deploying (or planning to deploy) varying platforms and services that go beyond the na"ive push e-mail services. The need to encourage the growth of open operating systems for mobile devices and the benefits it represents cannot be ignored.

A good number of times l reflect on the ever-changing positioning of the mobile device: in the past few years it has gone from being a lifestyle gadget to one cluttered with long lists of hardware specifications. It has now veered towards an Internet service enabler that facilitates exceptional interconnectivity.

A revolution on how postpaid mobile contracts are sold can only be complementary if mobile operators in SA move away from the 'rand voice price plan by device view' to a 'rand service plan by device capability', as we move into the mobile data service paradigm.