It’s all about data

This year the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona had a much more optimistic feel towards the global telecom market, a contrast to the uncertainty that gripped the event in 2009. Mobile data; the continued development of great mobile applications; the growing importance of smartphones; the rallying call around LTE ; and the need to manage costs and optimise operations were amongst the main talking points this year

A sense that the telecom industry and the global economy at large had seen the worst of last year’s slowdown was palpable at Mobile World Congress 2010, though the industry knows better than many others not to celebrate prematurely. Service operators are listening more closely to their subscriber bases and choose more selectively where to invest the next CAPEX dollar, focussing more acutely on what will drive usage and margins, rather than what is fashionable.

It appears that all roads in the modern telecom era arrive at mobile data. Sure, network operators in less developed markets are still investing in 2G technology, and continuing to sweat their GPRS and  EDGE assets, but the direction in which the market is very clearly headed is placing as many intelligent devices in the hands of an increasing proportion of the global telecom subscriber base.

In Barcelona Microsoft unveiled its Windows Phone 7 Series, the new version of its mobile operating system for smartphones. The OS comes crammed with applications including social networking and content capabilities, with  Microsoft looking to appeal as much to the consumer market as to business users with the OS.

The first phones running Windows Phone 7 Series will be on the market by Christmas this year and Microsoft has already signed up operators such as AT&T, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Sprint, Vodafone and Telecom Italia in order to push the OS.

Microsoft’s arch-rival Google has placed mobile at the centre of its strategy, and CEO Eric Schmidt outlined that the company’s programmers are now concentrating on mobile as their primary focus; under the ‘Mobile First’ mantra.

Schmidt said three unique areas had now converged on the mobile device: computing power; interconnectivity and the cloud. In some emerging markets Google claims it has found that more Internet searches are being conducted over mobile devices than PCs.

With respect to Google’s own smartphone OS, Android, Schmidt said the platform was running in 26 different devices and that handset vendors were selling more than 60,000 Android devices per day.

Should devices be the one prong ensuring the continued successful uptake of smartphones, then the applications themselves and the user-interface to access the services would be another crucial area. Cognisant of this point, some of the world’s largest mobile operators came together in Barcelona to launch an open international applications platform.

Dubbed the ‘Wholesale Applications Community’, the platform will combine 15 of the world’s largest mobile operators, including NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Korea Telecom, America Movil, Orange, and AT&T, the alliance aims to create a wholesale platform for mobile applications that provides a single point-of-entry for developers.

Such a wholesale model would rival proprietary application stores established by companies such as Apple, which allow access to such content only through their own devices. The operators within the Wholesale Applications Community aim to use common open standards that will allow developers to create applications across multiple platforms.

In Barcelona, the applications rush resonated with the Middle East region as well, as highly visible Qtel Group announced a slew of applications-related initiatives. Amongst other things the Gulf player announced it would offer mobile money services across the 17 markets in which it operates. Its portfolio will include international remittance, mobile payments and recharge facilities.

Speaking to Comm. late last year, Qtel Group CEO Nasser Marafih said the origination and proliferation of content and applications in the Arab World remained an ongoing challenge, and he believed the private sector needed to take an active position on the matter, aided by government encouragement.

Qtel also chose this year’s Congress to enter a MoU for an exclusive marketing partnership with Universal Music, through which the operator will offer unlimited music to customers across all its markets. The plan is to first roll out the service in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

Qtel’s content and applications agreements follow on from MWC 2009 where the operator became a board member of the Mobile Entertainment Forum EMEA  Chapter, and this year the two organisations announced they were to co-found an MEF office in Doha that will be sponsored by Qtel.

Etisalat in the meantime, having marked its first year of partnership with Barcelona football club as the official international partner, launched the ‘Etisalat Barca Mobile’ platform through its online gateway, Weyak. The Barca Mobile service will offer updated information, providing videos, facts, profiles, news, scores and other such club-relevant details.

And while the global economic downturn had also impacted M&A activity, industry sentiment is that as markets rebound, so too will operators’ appetite to expand their operations through acquisition. Naguib Sawiris, the outspoken chairman of Orascom Telecom forecast that the global operator market is on the verge of a major reorganisation, which would see many smaller players acquired.

“Personally I think by 2011, the operator market will look significantly different, comprising a number of big players,” Sawiris said.

He didn’t rule out his own company from the forecast of the impending M&A malaise, though Orascom can hardly be viewed as a ‘small’ operator, with 70 million proportionate subscribers at the end of 2009.

However, interest in Orascom’s African assets by South Africa’s MTN Group has given credence to Sawiri’s predictions, and it appears to be only a matter of time before other players weigh-up the benefits of being independent operators as opposed to being a part of a larger group.

Bharti Airtel’s US $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain Group’s African assets, while necessitated by shareholder pressure, is also likely to raise the profile of opportunities available on the continent.