IMS is the Internet protocol Multimedia Subsystem, which is for GSM. For CDMA, the analogous system is MMD. This conference, unlike the World Handset Forum, was about what’s coming—not what’s “now” or what’s “new.”

IMS phones will be Internet appliances, for which voice will be a single application. Other applications could be live television, instant messaging, or a shopping tool for new music downloads. The conference was about infrastructure, technology, user experience, and getting to know the players, both the vendors and the buyers.

IMS has several UE considerations:
1. Pricing of application services, data, and voice
2. Cost conveyance to the consumer
3. Policy management: digital rights, pathways (SMS vs. email vs. IM…), moving identity from a personal device to another device, either another personal device or a shared public device (like from a mobile to a TV, either in the home or in a hotel).

There's a lot more after the break...

Continue reading "IMS/MMD 2006" »

Posted by Scott Weiss at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Snow will be the new screen candy on mobile phones, since there are few options for broadcasting content to phones: place shifting, one-to-one, one-to-many, and RF broadcast. RF broadcast, good old TV without cable, appears to be the most likely distribution mechanism, since with the digital broadcast, only a few simultaneous streams per cell can be transmitted. And with such a tiny device, there's not much of an antenna. Ergo, snow. Presentations from Informa Telecoms, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments informed this entry.

Mark Burk, a Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms, suggested that handsets for mobile TV will cost $150 more than existing 3G handsets. He said that 43% of the cost to consumers for mobile TV will be the handset for the 18-month period of the typical contract. He also said that consumers were willing to spend $10-15 per month for these services. I ask, what’s Mark been smoking?

Place shifting is the technical name for video podcasting, as users would choose what programs to watch and simply download them to their phones. This choice is a bandwidth constraint that will ultimately fail, unless it’s done through a USB cable or Bluetooth/WiFi to the home or work broadband connection.

One-to-one and one-to-many are cellular transmission of mobile content. This strategy could fail, since cellular sites can at most handle three or four simultaneous broadcasts, even with EVDO Rev. A and HSDPA deployments.

Broadcast using radio frequency (RF) technology will turn mobile phones into television receivers, giving them two radios. This concept makes the most sense, as it doesn’t impact the cellular network in any way. The challenge here is broadcast quality and spectrum allocation, both of which will be tremendous issues. The program guide and other content will stream via the cellular network. I see snow on screens in the future—isn’t that a step backward?

The program guide can also combine the three broadcast methods, not necessarily even indicating which is in use. The biggest usability challenge stated by all of the speakers is the channel change time, which is longer than three seconds.

Paul Scanlan, COO & Co-Founder of MobiTV spoke about the future of mobile TV.

2004: <1 FPS with MJPEG, then 5-7 FPS with MJPEG, GPRS & 1X-RTT
2005: 12-17 FPS, MPEG, GPRS/EDGE/EVDO
2006: 15-30 FPS, MPEG, UMTS/EVDO

I’m looking forward to 2007. MobiTV has a new, sexy program guide (EPG), which has up-sell area above the programming content, which they showed on the Sprint service. While watching content, they scroll up-sell opportunities for ring tones, voting (using premium SMS), and what appears to be sponsorship banner ads.

MobiTV monitors the broadcast traffic, down to each cell site. The Michael Jackson verdict was the most popular day in their history.

MobiTV believes in WiMAX as the future.

Cost Implications of Mobile TV & Video
David Carey, President and CTO of Portelligent gave a fascinating presentation about the cost implications of mobile TV and video on handsets. It seems to be about $60 for the Bill of Materials, though Mark Burk earlier said $150 to the end user. Portelligent creates "tear down" studies of handsets, where they "kill them gently," taking them apart and lovingly photographing every aspect of the design. The biggest costs didn't appear to be the chips, but the complicated double hinging mechanisms for the displays.

Posted by Scott Weiss at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently sold an Amp'd Kyocera Angel handset on eBay, and was disappointed to later learn that Amp'd requires all subscribers to purchase a new phone from Amp'd directly. They are the only carrier that I know of in the world that has this policy; all other carriers allow giving or selling phones to others.

Amp'd policy seems self-defeating to me, and borders on fraud. Their policy takes locking phones one step further, locking to an individual rather than locking to the operator.

What do you think?

Posted by Scott Weiss at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Usable Products Company recently completed a report called the Key Drivers to Media Downloads, which studies behaviors and attitudes of US consumers with regard to mobile phone downloads of music, video, games, ringtones, and wallpapers. The study found that $1.25 is the magic price for music downloads to phones, with the right to also download to a PC or MP3 player, otherwise known as a “dual license.” However, Verizon currently charges $1.99 for V CAST music and the Sprint Music Store charges $2.50 per download. These prices contrast with the accepted industry standard, Apple’s iTunes pricing of $0.99 per song.

Why are Sprint and Verizon charging so much more for dual license music downloads? There are several good reasons: the cost of the pipe, revenue sharing, customer support, and possibly even limited network capacity. “The pipe” is the wireless data connection that transmits the music from the data store to the mobile phone. Building the infrastructure to support music downloads has been hideously expensive, and the carriers need to recoup that cost. Apple’s iTunes does not have that cost: customers bring their own Internet access. Carriers share music download revenue with the service providers who provide the online music stores. Apple built and owns iTunes. Both Apple and the carriers share revenue with the media rights owners, but Apple’s volume is significantly higher, resulting in more favorable pricing.

The user experience of downloading media to mobile phones is awkward at best, resulting in a Customer Support nightmare for the carriers. Apple supports a single device, the iPod. Yes, there are perhaps a dozen different iPod models in use today, but they all have the same user interface and every iPod relies on iTunes to transfer music. Apple controls the ecosystem for iPod music distribution. Not true for Verizon or Sprint, who control only the network, not the software or hardware that must work together seamlessly in order for music to get to the phone. It is impossible to determine Verizon’s and Sprint’s network capacity, but pricing the media higher than customers will accept could be a way to keep consumption down in order to tune the network and grow it according to customer demand. However, that logic goes against common sense. Gouging the early adopters seems more likely to kill the service before it even hits its stride.

How did I arrive at $1.25 as the “magic price”? In the Key Drivers study, only 2% of survey respondents said they would pay as much as 30% more for a dual license. The ratio changes significantly as the price drops: for example, 11% of respondents were willing to pay 20% more for a dual license. However, 35% were unwilling to pay any extra to play music on more than one device. Usable Products provided this data and I decided that $1.25, 26% more than the $0.99 currently charged by iTunes, is exactly right. Only 13% of the respondents would be willing to pay $1.25, but that’s what they said. Once consumers realize the convenience of downloading music whenever and wherever they want it, I predict that music download services will take off.

In focus groups conducted by Usable Products in San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and New York, respondents were asked about the pricing of downloadable ring tones and music as compared to Apple’s 99 cents-per-song pricing. One respondent stated, “If I can get it online for $0.99, I wouldn’t buy it on my phone for $3” (Chicago, 14-17 year-olds). Another respondent stated, “If I had to choose between buying an iPod or a phone that plays music—but I’d have to pay more for the music on the phone—I’d just buy the iPod” (Chicago, 25-45).

We’ve established a disconnect between what the phone companies are charging and what consumers are willing to pay. Consumers want to enjoy music on their mobile phones. 62% of survey respondents want digital radio. 51% want downloadable songs. However, consumers don’t want to pay a lot more money for the privilege. They do not understand the additional hassle and costs involved in pumping music through the wireless pipe. Consumers don’t care and they should not need to care—that’s the phone company’s problem. However, the costs and operational issues of transmitting a large chunk of data through a wireless phone line are considerable. We know that, but once the problem is solved, the carriers should be able to make it up with volume.

In Usable Products' Media Download Usability study, respondents spent nearly five minutes to shop for, purchase, download, and install a 20-second ring tone—and only 73% of study participants succeeded. We’ve talked about pricing, and only now touched on the usability of these services. Downloading music is more complicated and challenging than downloading a ring tone. Fixing the pricing will be an excellent first step. Next up, usability.

Posted by Scott Weiss at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)