Operators wishing to avoid becoming the ‘dumb pipe’ in a market where traditional revenues are falling must instead provide the ‘smart pipe’. The smart pipe generates a revenue share of the value added services in addition to the traditional services.  Many new mobile applications are being developed and it is already big business, but with flat rate data services the operators will generate no new revenue from these unless they get smart.  By opening up some additional network functionality through secured APIs, a charge can be levied for the use of the VAS.  Instead of paying for each application the subscriber wishes to use, the subscriber will pay according to their consumption of the services.  The NaaS benefit for the subscriber is that they only pay for services consumed, they don’t have to buy applications or have a specific phone type.  The benefit for the operator is the generation of additional revenue via the revenue share with the developers of the services.

If the iPhone could not run applications it would just be a basic ‘dumb phone’, and if the networks cannot offer value added services they are just ‘dumb pipes’. The NaaS model offers operators the opportunity to become the ‘smart pipes’ and take a slice of the growing value added mobile services and applications market.

Applications for mobile are a different matter.  “There’s an app for that!” but most subscribers don’t have a mobile that runs the app!  The majority of apps run on top of the phone OS, some simple ones such as games are written in J2ME but these run in the foreground and the phone cannot do anything else while the app is running.  So even if each app is developed for each smart phone OS (and there are quite a few), the app still only reaches less than half of the potential subscriber base since most people do not have smart phone devices.

So what is the answer? There seem to be two potential solutions that might work:

1. A standardised OS to be adopted by all device manufacturers.
2. A standard UI made available on all devices and apps run in the cloud.

It is clear that solution 1 is highly unlikely to happen and that solution 2 most probably will! The standard UI that will be adopted is the web browser. Although incompatibilities currently exist in this area, these issues are being addressed and HTML 5 with good media support ought to become universally supported on mobile browsers.

PC and mobile applications are probably heading in the same direction towards a client - server or browser - cloud implementation.  In the case of desktop applications, there is a shift towards software as a service (SaaS) with the driver being an alternative revenue model rather than a compatibility issue.  With the mobile the compatibility issue will drive serious developers to develop cloud-based web applications to provide ubiquity across devices.  Will this kill off the phone-based application?  Probably not, but it will change the dynamics of the industry and we may see the more serious applications being cloud-based solutions.

We all know the pain involved in moving our applications and data to a new desktop computer.  When changing mobile in the past it was just a case of copying contacts, but now you will have data, settings and applications – it is getting just as complex as moving to a new PC.  By holding apps and data off of the device enables them to be accessed from any device (browser) and so the pain involved in changing hardware is greatly reduced.  The issues of storing, back-up and virus control can also be addressed via this model, however data ownership, service level agreements and security issues do become concerns.

Today’s youth is growing up in a society where ownership of content is not as important as access to the media on demand.  The same is becoming true of applications which need not be owned, but access to a connected service is desired and control (ownership) of personal data is what is important.  Social networks are a good example of these cloud-based services that are available to both fixed and mobile devices.  Applications, e.g. iPhone apps do not command high prices – they are often free or just a few dollars.  They command little real value and are quickly disposed of. Whereas, connected services that can work on any device have a higher value and so a better commercial model can be developed.

We foresee that cloud or network services are the future since they have the capacity to deliver valuable connected services to mobile.  Mobile-based apps have emerged strongly, but then so did snap-on covers, mobile screensavers and ringtones.  Novelties eventually lose their commercial value – whereas serious connected applications and services will deliver real revenue in the future.  The current phone-based app stores are not the golden goose some seem to believe.  Perhaps the gold is actually hidden in the cloud!

2. Mobile Remote Control
The mobile phone is a convenient device to uses as a universal remote control. They have the capability to send duplex data over the cellular network, via Bluetooth or using WiFi. Thus, it is possible to communicate with almost any device in the world that is wirelessly or IP connected. A common applications area of the mobile as a remote control will be in home automation. Standards like x10 enable electrical devices to be switched remotely via the IP network, webcams are easily connected and motion detection allows the security to be monitored remotely. Mobile is much more convenient than the PC for remote control functions since it tends to be with you at all times. Some new devices are also being fitted with NFC technology which provides a good degree security for applications such as operating door locks.
Remote monitoring and controlling of the home will become widespread during this decade. The interface with your home may have a familiar look and using social network APIs has been suggested. Talk to your home in the same way as you communicate with your friends. For example, it is possible to automatically send you a Tweet when a door lock is activated. Similarly you may Tweet a message to your home which can be an instruction to switch on the heating. Security issues aside, it does make some sense, why do you need a new application and interface when you already have a familiar one to hand?

3. Augmented Reality
The traditional view of augmented reality is of a display that superimposes data on top of a real image in real time (such as head-up displays for cars). Mobile phones are now able to determine their location and some already have digital compasses. It is thus possible to augment data related to the users current position, the most obvious application is to provide a map or photographic view of their current location augmented with additional data relating to a local resources relevant to the subscribers current context.  Augmented reality applications and games will emerge and generate significant revenue within the next ten years. Mobile gaming, where the real environment is the background to the game, has the possibility to get gamers out of their bedrooms and back onto the streets to play some 21st century games involving real physical activity!

4. Mobile TV
In Europe DTV-H (digital television – handheld) standard will be incorporated into new phone devices in the coming years. This combines the world’s two most successful consumer electronics products (i.e TV and the mobile phone). By the end of the decade almost all phones will be capable of receiving mobile TV and we will snack on short programs, news summaries and video clips. Over time TV content will become tuned to delivery on the mobile.

Mobile TV on-demand is attractive; however the demand on the cellular infrastructure once mobile TV becomes popular would not be sustainable without additional bandwidth infrastructure. In reality higher bandwidth infrastructure is being installed but if the bandwidth is used it needs to be paid for. In all probability both broadcast and cellular on-demand models are likely to co-exist in most countries. It is the level of service offered and charging models that will differentiate these two types of mobile TV service.
Towards the end of the decade autostereocopic 3D displays (i.e. those not requiring special glasses) will have advance sufficiently and become standard on higher-end mobile phones.  A significant proportion of 3DTV and 3D games content will be available as these devices roll out.

5. Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising is going to become a very significant business. Why did Google buy AdMob a couple of months ago for $750 million? Google’s entire business model is based on advertising revenue and they understand the business of making adverts relevant. Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless for $250 million and claim they will shake up the market! So, the big hitters are definitely arriving in the mobile advertising marketplace and we can expect significant developments in the next couple of years. Adverts will be delivered alongside mobile content or embedded within content. Ad agencies will learn how to use the mobile media and advertainment content will grow on mobile to ensure the subscribers are engaged and not turned away. By the end of this decade mobile advertising revenue is likely to exceed that of on-line advertising.

6. Mobile Brands
Throughout the world we have seen the proliferation of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). In some counties there can be tens of MVNOs hosted on a single network. This has been possible due to the creation of multi-tenant service delivery platforms. The MVNO does not own any part of the physical network infrastructure, instead they just “rent” the required capacity from the operator or the mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE).

It has become much easier to host multiple tenants on a single platform so there is no reason why brands, such as High Street retailers, cannot simply establish a mobile arm to their existing business giving a one to one communications channel between the brand and their customers. These new mobile brands would take the form of a branded reseller and the brand themselves would not need to be directly involved in running the network.

Imagine Oxfam shops in the High Street offering Oxfam branded SIMs where the profit share from the phone revenue supports the charity. They might also accept your old phone for recycling and possibly sell second hand phones in their shop. During this decade we will see a rapid growth in well known brands establishing a mobile arm to their businesses.

7. Device Convergence
Consumer devices are converging at a surprising rate. You can watch TV, listen to music, make phone calls and watch DVDs on your PC, your games console plays DVDs and connects to the Internet, and TVs have become home entertainment centres, mobile phones are used for games, music and displaying video, etc. These devices have many things in common (visual display, user input interface, communications, audio system and processing capability).  While the general capabilities are converging each device is optimised for its intended environment. The TV is dominated by the visual screen, has good audio but a limited user input capability. The mobile phone is optimised for mobility and has restricted user input facilities and a small display. Games consoles are obviously optimised for games and may use a TV as the display device. The PC has the best user input devices (keyboard and mouse).

Device convergence can go further through technical innovation, e.g. with the emergence of pico projectors the display capabilities of mobile devices can be greatly enhanced. However, what is equally likely to happen is that we may connect available resources when appropriate. If a mobile device requires a better output device and a TV display is available then they will be paired together and communicate with each other.

Another change we will observe is a move towards what we may term device shifting. The concept of time shifting has been widespread for many years through the use of recording technology which allows us to delay the viewing of broadcast media.  We have also seen place shifting through the use of remote logins where you can access your data or media from any place via a remote access point. Device shifting refers to the ability to transfer media from one type of device to another and to have that content suitably rendered for that device. For example many games have been produced for large format games consoles but eventually become available for small phone devices with many different screen resolutions – the adaptation for each phone variant is done automatically so only a single source code version is required. The Web is another area where device shifting is used to render web pages suitable for mobile devices but avoiding having different variants of the pages.

During this decade we will see more device convergence and common content will be used between different device formats via automated device shifting technology. We will also see a marked decline in traditional desktop PCs in the home since their functions will be better served through the use of alternative devices; netbooks, TV systems with wireless keyboards, entertainment consoles and mobile phones. The need to run software packages such as word processers will be catered for through the growing use of software hosted on a remote server rather than running on the local machine.

8. Software as a Service
The idea of software as a service (SaaS) has been around for the last decade but it will become the dominant software model during this decade. Most offices, homes and mobile phones are plugged in to the internet and now that we are all connected the SaaS model will grow in importance.

In the mobile world this is a model accepted by subscribers accustomed to paying for services as they are consumed, whereas, the PC model is one of purchasing, installing and running software. This PC model became well established prior to the Internet being available and will not be changed overnight. Advertising will play a key part in the SaaS model since you can expect that some basic services can be funded by advertising, whereas premium services, especially those for business, will be on a pay as you use basis.

9. Evolution of Apps
In the last couple of years the number of applications being loaded onto smart phones has seen massive growth. Gartner predict the mobile apps market will reach almost $30 billion by 2013 (i) Over the next decade many apps will become genuinely useful tools. Apps will start to become connected and will rely more heavily on external services including many provided by the network operators – such as call control and automated messaging. Government and public services will use apps to connect to subscribers in areas such as health care monitoring and providing automated public information services which target the correct people.

Technology that will become increasingly useful within applications is location and presence. Forget the term location-based services (LBS), but rather think of location-aware services and context-aware services. Existing tasks and applications will be enriched by adding the dimensions of real-time location and presence. Semantic web technology will increasingly be used to access contextually relevant information for use within applications.

10. Something Unexpected
What we can predict with some certainty about the future is that our predictions will be inaccurate. In the next decade something will emerge in the mobile market that will become unexpectedly successful. In the 90s it was SMS in the 00s it was probably ringtones. Who predicted these correctly? Anyone that possesses such foresight is sure to find success this decade.

What we really need!
We are groaning under the weight of more and more new technology. We get frustrated dealing with technology that ought to be simple to use but rarely is. As Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy once said “Life’s bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.”

If we are to sustain our consumption of new mobile technology then substantial progress in the area of seamless convergence and intuitive standardised user interfaces is required.  Maybe progress has been too rapid for evolution to shape the best interfaces. If you look at the motor car, the user interface evolved to become a fairly universal standard which enables us to step from one car to another with ease and without the need for a heavy user manual.  Some smart thinking in terms of our interfaces with mobile technology is thus required. We have seen that the technology can do almost anything imaginable, but we are incapable of doing much with it unless we invest significant time trying to understand how to use it. Unfortunately that “investment” often becomes worthless when the next generation of technology arrives.  Our homework for this decade should be to figure out a better way to interface man to the ever evolving mobile machine. Each time the technology advances the interface should evolve; not be completely redesigned!

(i) http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/4952-4952/, 22 January 2010

Obviously “free” has to be paid for somehow and there are established revenue models which tend to fit 3 general categories.

• Cross-subsidies: This is a well understood sales method where the revenue comes from an alternative but normally related and essential source, e.g. sign a new contract and get a free phone, free printer but you must buy the ink refills, etc.
• Ad-supported: Again a well established model where the content is free but will contain embedded advertising. The advertising income obviously pays for the service and is widely used to support media content such as commercial radio and television and for services such as free internet search.
• Up-selling: This is well exemplified by the freeware model used to distribute software. Essentially the basic product is distributed free, but a more sophisticated premium version can usually be purchased. Hence it is sometimes called the freemium model. This is often used by small companies who do not have great routes to retail markets and whose products are relatively unknown. Note that this is different to the shareware model where there is a free trial, but the product does have to be paid for if you continue to use it.

There are many other free models including community based services and open source products. However the revenue models for these can be convoluted or can be largely altruistic where the revenue model evaporates. Therefore, we only concern ourselves with the three above.

To consider if a free model would work for an operator take the scenario of a new MVNO. Free would be a good way to attract new customers but could they profit from such a model. You can make the argument that if they offered broadly similar services to their competitors with no added value or differentiation they would attract very few customers. The differentiator however can be free value added services and if these services are attractive new subscribers will be attracted to the MVNO.

A hybrid cross-subsidies/ad supported model has been tried by new MVNOs in the past. Most notably by Blyk who tried to have a free service (free calls and texts) with the subsidies coming from advertising which their subscribers agree to accept. The initial problem with this model was that adverts were not very targeted so their value to the advertisers was low and it was difficult to support the free model for calls and texts. However, mobile advertising is not yet mature and Blyk is to be congratulated as a pioneer of the ad-supported call model. While Blyk is not a brand other than as an MVNO, its stated aim is to connect relevant brands to subscribers.  Their MVNO in the UK closed about 6 months ago but they are planning to launch in the Netherlands during 2010.

Branded resellers and MVNOs with existing established business that can be enhanced by introducing a mobile channel probably stand most to gain by considering a free model. First consider a cross-subsidy applied to an example of a cable TV service. If there was a mobile channel associated with this company the subscriber might be able to access TV content via their mobile service for free. The benefit for the CATV brand is that they will have revenue from both mobile and CATV. The mobile TV content is free for the subscriber since the CATV subscriptions and mobile call revenues cross-subsidise this. The CATV company has increased overall revenues, the subscriber has a clear benefit by subscribing to their mobile network and the MNO benefits by the brand bringing more subscribers to the network.

Now consider the ad funded model. A brand, say a supermarket, may already have a customer profile through a loyalty and rewards card, so they can leverage this into an advertising model where relevant offers are sent to their subscribers. Advertised offers take the form of discounts and extra loyalty points based on purchases made. The mobile channel allows offers to be sent in a timely manner based on location, shopping history and current context. The service to the subscriber is a way to discount their shopping through discounts and loyalty points – possibly the points can even be used to buy top-up credit.

Finally we consider the up-selling model. As an example, imagine a retailer specialising in contemporary music and related merchandise. By establishing a mobile channel as part of the brand, music clips or tracks can be provided regularly to the subscriber, the genre of music can be adapted to the preferences of that subscriber. If the subscriber wishes to have the complete track or album they would need to purchase this, and they would continue to receive a free but limited service irrespective of their purchases. The purchases would help tailor the service for each subscriber and it is logical that up-selling of merchandise related to the artist of interest would also occur at the checkout phase.

So it seems that “free” could work very well for mobile brands, principally MVNO and branded resellers, where existing business can be enhanced via the mobile channels. The revenue to support the free service is generated by sales which are directly related to the brands normal business in addition to the revenue from the mobile service. In many cases, the free model is likely to be a hybrid model, indeed a combination of all three (cross-subsidies, ad-supported and up-selling) within a business model for branded mobile services seems very likely in the near future.

Traditionally, CDRs are analysed to determine data on network performance by detecting dropped and blocked calls and for calculating or verifying customer bills. IPDRs are also used for performance monitoring and for detection of improper use.  FTRs are used to provide statements, for auditing and to detect fraud. With data mining these records can reveal even more about an individual and about groups of people. When combined they can give real insights into customer behaviour. Increasingly mobile operators have access to, not just CDRs, but to IPDRs from mobile browsing and FTRs from mobile payment systems. It would be naive to think operators will not utilise this data for customer intelligence and marketing activities. Without compromising customer privacy it is possible to intelligently match services and advertising to individuals based on the customer insights derived from live and historical data. The key to the privacy concern is that personal data is never given out to third parties unless of course the subscriber requests this via opt-ins. Third parties may provide the services and advertising, but the context matching needs done within the network operators domain if they are to have 100% control over the use of the data.

It is suggested that operators may abuse customer data privacy issues for commercial ends, but the evidence appears to be the complete reverse. Operators fear that if privacy is compromised, or is perceived to be compromised, their name will be tarnished and the commercial impact will be a lot of churn so their approach is a very cautious one. Meanwhile in the market for phone based applications the market is much less restrained. For example the free to download application for the iPhone called “Date Check” (i) allows you to enter a name and phone number, and the application’s “Sleaze Detector” looks for personal data about a person; if they are married, their marital history, property ownership, crime details including sex assaults, drug arrests and drunk driving, if they live alone with friends or parents. While this may seem like an invasion of privacy this information is available on request in many countries. The same is true of financial data where credit checks on individuals are very frequent.

In short, mobile operators have access to very useful data that give insights into customer’s behaviour, interests and financial status. However they are being very cautious in their use of this data since they have a lot to lose if they get the privacy balance incorrect. The mobile applications industry has less to lose and the attitude towards customer privacy is consequently more cavalier. Just because it is legal to access certain types of personal data does not automatically make it acceptable to the customer, and this fact seems to be well understood by most mobile operators.

(i) http://www.intelius.com/mobile, accessed 17 Nov. 2009

A developer of desktop applications does not really have the same dilemma due to the monopoly held by the Microsoft Windows operating system so the initial target platform decision is usually a no-brainer.  For web applications we have do the benefit of industry standards maintained by W3C so properly constructed web applications will work equally on Firefox, Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc.

So, the problem for phone applications is that there is no standard (or no platform monopoly).  Obviously J2ME is a Java standard for mobile devices but the code still needs to be optimised for different device capabilities so a single code solution does not cover all devices and accessing services of the mobile device from J2ME can be difficult. The BONDI open source project is enabling web applications access to local capabilities on the mobile device which is another step forward. However, developing ubiquitous applications for mobile remains extremely difficult due to the variety of device platforms on the market.  Modern SIM cards are now effectively smartcards and can be programmed, so an alternative to programming on the device is to programme the SIM card. Of course you need an arrangement with the operator to place executable code on the SIM but this can lead to a much more ubiquitous solution. The SIM platform is based on standards and is the same regardless of the device carrying it.

The traditional view of mobile apps is that they run on the phone platform, but as we get bored with novelty apps (virtual pints and the like), apps must become useful and may require services that exist external to the mobile device. This takes us into the domain of cloud computing and enables extremely powerful application to be created by using services already available via the Internet.

Artilium’s ARTA platform enables many network services to be made available to developers and standards are being developed for these types of services through the GSM Association’s One API project (i). By developing applications based on services available in the cloud it is possible to create useful applications which are not restricted to a particular type of device.

As an example, imagine building a worker management application which can display the location of all employees and route calls to their fixed line when they are in the office. To build this application we would use our thin location client on the SIM (note that this is a service not a phone application). We would use ARTA APIs for call routing and a service such as Bing Maps for the location display. Note that to build this application we have used a phone service, a network service and a third-party web service. You could not develop this application on an iPhone and even if you could, it would not be ubiquitous! 

(i) http://oneapi.aepona.com/, 30 Oct. 2009

A cliché used to illustrate the concept of delivering relevant services is the example of walking past Starbucks, your phone beeps and you have been given a voucher for a free cookie if you buy a latte. Obviously the story ends happily with a fix of caffeine and sugar and thoughts of how the phone could be so clever and predict your need for refreshment. While there is some value in this model, the alternative view might be – if I was needing a coffee and had the time I would have gone into Starbucks anyway (without the voucher). If I was on my way somewhere I would be unlikely to stop just because a local voucher arrived, that would not be relevant and could be considered as spam.

The traditional view of location based advertising is therefore a little suspect because just being local, but not being relevant, is nothing more than localised spam. So while location is important it is pointless without being combined with relevance. Now consider that many product and service offers are about predicting who the service is relevant to in advance and offering the service to them or even creating anticipation well in advance of the likely point of sale.  Let’s modify the Starbucks example slightly. Location histories may indicate that you are often in the centre of Brussels between 9.30am and 11am on a Thursday.  An offer might then be sent to you on a Tuesday evening with a proposition of a free cookie at Starbuck’s on a Thursday between 10am and 11am with the additional incentive that a second coffee is half price. You may then think “Hey, how lucky, I will be in Brussels at that time on Thursday so why don’t I arrange to meet my friend in Starbucks for a coffee”.  This offer is more likely to be taken since it is relevant and may fit well with existing plans.

Of course the second scenario may still not be totally relevant and there are likely to much better scenario examples, however, it is possible to monitor which services or offers are accepted, where and when they are accepted and try to learn from the user behaviour.  The user responses are used to train the relevance system based on positives in a reciprocal way to training a spam filter on negatives.

The “pre-destination” concept of predicting a probable future location can be implemented using Artilium’s always-on location technology since location histories can be stored and processed. So if you combine this relevance capability with other customer intelligence parameters considered in previous blogs, such as disturbability and establishing interests, you will see that we are not that far from Google’s original spoof concept on April Fool’s day back in 2000. 

(i) http://www.google.com/mentalplex/MP_faq.html, 06/10/09

• Statistically, at what time of day do they accept most calls, relative to those rejected?
• Which callers are they most likely to accept calls from?
• What proportion of calls are accepted/rejected on different days of the week?
• When are subscribers active themselves, i.e. making most calls?

From these metrics extracted from historical call records, it is possible for a subscriber’s disturbability to be quantified for a given caller, at a given time, on a particular day of the week. There are clearly times when a subscriber may reject more calls than at other times e.g. some subscribers may refuse to answer calls during their lunchtime, and obviously you have little chance of getting your call answered in the middle of the night. Certain callers may always get their calls answered, whereas other callers might be considered unimportant and are rarely answered. The patterns may change significantly on different days of the week especially at weekends. The times when a subscriber makes most calls themselves also seems to be an indicator of a good time to call them.

So given that the network might know the disturbability of subscribers how can this information be utilised to some advantage? There are a number of ways to usefully use this information but the two obvious benefits are suggested to be:  a) giving an indication to a caller the best time to call a particular person and b) as a method to automatically screen incoming calls.

Imagine that the contacts list on your phone can be used to view your contacts name along with the following presence information: proximity, availability and disturbability. These are all useful parameters in determining when you might interact with friends and colleagues.  Proximity indicate the opportunities of meeting in person, the availability may indicate if they are busy (e.g. in a meeting) and the disturbability indicates if now is a good time to contact. Note that availability and disturbability, while related, do not indicate the same thing. It is entirely possible for someone to be busy in a meeting, but to be disturbable by some callers, but not by others.

To screen calls a subscriber may set a threshold which means that any incoming calls scoring lower than the disturbability threshold are automatically rejected without the phone ringing – so the subscriber is not disturbed.

Of course, the CDR statistics need to be interpreted carefully and certain exceptions need to be taken into account.  For example, a missed call may not have been intentionally rejected and so if the call is returned quickly it should be treated as an exception within the statistics. Similarly if the caller immediately tries again and this time it is answered this is also an exception. In many countries missed calls are intentionally used to convey a message (i) (e.g. ring me) and these factors need to be carefully considered.

When combined with other personal presence and subscriber profile data, disturbability can also be used to detect a subscribers willingness to accept not just calls but other content, services and possibly advertising. From a revenue generation perspective this is where disturbability may find its real value.

(i) The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via Intentional “Missed Calls” on Mobile Phones, Jonathan Donner.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donner.html, 15 September 2009.

When a user has visited one site where the demographics are known and then clicks through to another site, the demographics of the new site can be predicted by summing the portions of the demographic data from each of the proceeding sites that brought users to the current site.  With a reasonable sample of reference points or “known truths” and by tracking click activities via cookies, reasonable estimate of a users’ gender and age can be established. Quantcast is one company at the forefront of extracting demographics from browser activities (i).

Short-term interests can be established based on current browser activities and by correlating this with longer-term interests. Long-term interests can be established by looking at the content of URLs and establishing relationships. The normal place to start analysing URLs is via the metatags, any highlighted data (e.g. headings, capitalisation, bold etc.) and by extracting any search terms. Of course the number of times a page is visited and time spent on a page will influence the analysis. Hyperlinks often indicate related content and by measuring the content similarity of multiple linked pages the URL content data can be enhanced even if the user does not follow that link. Measuring the content similarity of multiple related pages (e.g. from hyperlinks, browser sessions or from a number of sessions) can be very processor intensive but it often reveals superior user relevance data to that obtained from just the metadata. Latent Semantic Analysis and Cosine Similarity are two potential techniques for measuring the relationship between sets of text and for extracting any correlated meaning. Phorm is one of the leading companies active in the extraction of meaning from browser activity (ii).

Commercial intent is a very useful parameter to establish in order to offer relevant services and goods where revenue can potentially be generated. There is a higher commercial intent when a user intentionally searches for and/or browses through commercial content where items are for sale. Where the subscribers’ interests obtained from previous browser or purchase history indicates specific interests, the estimate of commercial intent will increase when the current browsing aligns with one of these interests.  Microsoft has already released simple tools to establish on-line commercial intent (iii).

In summary, from mobile browser history it is possible to establish a user’s age, gender, interests and their commercial intent.  There are a growing number of companies with an active interest in this area and a number of software tools are becoming available. Using these tools, and with the access to rich data sets and the processing capabilities of the ARTA platform, the relevance of services offered can be highly tailored to each user.

(i) http://www.quantcast.com/, 18 August 2009
(ii) http://webwise.phorm.com/, 18 August 2009
(iii) http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/, 18 August 2009

Rich sets of network functions are starting to being made available for developers through Artilium’s technology and also via operator APIs such as those offered by the Orange Partner network (i). For example, these cover cell-ID location, voice, SMS, email, personal profiles and many web APIs too (Orange is both an MNO and an ISP). There are other examples out there e.g. Betavine from Vodafone and Litmus from O2 being just two other UK examples. OneAPI (ii) is an attempt to standardise the network APIs such that an application designed to run on one network, can also be run on a different network without having to be rewritten. So why is there so little press about these developments and so much hype about the iPhone Apps?

Well, first the APIs are still limited and they are not standardised yet. However, the potential for network centric applications is huge if APIs and data can be exposed in a safe way, and of course this is another problem – exposing potentially personal data has permissions and security issues. While Artilium’s Mobile Applications Platform addresses this problem by using opt-in only methods and by allowing the user total control over the use of their data, nervousness still exists within the operators. As more standardisation appears however we will find that cross network applications will become possible and the public will be more receptive to the idea of sharing information, such as general location, with applications that use this data to provide relevant services.

Novelty applications such as virtual beer drinking will eventually lose their appeal, just as novelty ring tones have. More serious network application will become useful aids to everyday life and will therefore not be discarded. Receiving a re-assuring automatic text to say both your children are safely home from school and to have your calls diverted to the correct assistant while in a meeting will be more commercially viable applications than a daily virtual pint! Device centric applications will always be limited by the device capabilities and so will continue to be suited to games, novelties and occasional use application which are on-demand rather than always-on. Network centric applications have the potential to be much more useful than device centric applications since they can be always available and may provide automatic services such as alerting services that do not require to be initiated by the user. The network also allows services to be delivered, not just when they are requested, but also when they become relevant. Thus the network applications and services they deliver can adapt to the users context.

The network applications market is obviously lagging behind device based application at the moment, but given the power of the networks to run serious applications, it is not a market that the MNOs are ignoring. The evidence is clear that network based applications market will emerge and the feeling is that this market will outstrip the device applications market within a few years. If you think about it the only Killer App on your device tends to be your contacts list – and in reality this would be better to be set up within the network rather than stored on your phone. That way you don’t lose all you personal contacts when someone steals your phone!

(i) http://www.orangepartner.com/site/enuk/access_orange_apis/p_access.jsp - 13th July 2009
(ii) http://oneapi.aepona.com - 13th July 2009