SK Telecom keeps Hoppin

While I was blogging about KT's cloud computing services, rival SK Telecom was presenting its own cloud computing platform to the press, N-Screen.

The idea is to make convergence as seamless as possible for the enduser and service providers : the platform automatically recognises the device and adapts the content to it, and all DRM hassles have been taken care of in advance.

There too, your handset is as more a smartphone as a smartTV enabler. It's a Samsung device, of the now well established Galaxy S family, and it's branded Galaxy S Hoppin (among other characteristics : Android 2.2, 1 GHz CPU, 4-inch Super AMOLED display...). Subventions included, it will cost you KRW 300,000.

SKT has already been advertising massively for Hoppin, with an enduser glued to the screen in every context, even asleep. Since Hoppin is also the name of their cloud computing service, they will eventually communicate about other devices (TV, PCs, tablets, fixed phones... - note that more and more models of fixed phones feature a color screen in Korea).

N-Screen is an open platform, meaning first of all that everybody is invited to join. To prove successful, that should include, beyond endusers, more than a few content providers or handset manufacturers.

Same story for Android platforms : SK Telecom boasts about its close partnership with Google in hardware and software development (GED / Google Experience Device, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom Tablet, LG Electronics G-Slate...), and it is a clear leader at the handset level (SKT sold 83% of all Android handsets in Korea and now averages 20,000 units a day), but the operator is still struggling at the BtoBtoC level, even if developers are proposed a "T Academy" to create more apps for the "T Store".

This press conference followed the announcement of a partnership with Japan's KDDI and Softbank Mobile for NFC-based mobile payment. Smart Poster will be operational in both countries and aims for the global market. Local competitors with exotic proprietary solutions, take notice :

The aim of the trial test is to establish mutual compatibility between countries using NFC as a common international standard instead of existing local Korean or Japanese mobile financial service methods. Currently in Korea, telecommunication companies provide mobile financial services such as credit cards, public transportation, stock trading and banking using a finance-enabled USIM chip called the 'Combi Card'. While Japan's finance service utilizes a self-developed method called 'Felica' by installing a second chip, apart from the USIM, within the mobile device

NTT DoCoMo, a partner of KT, must have appreciated the ironic tribute. Some may hear some bitterness in the tone : as we often mentioned earlier, SKT has somehow abandoned its cultural and innovative leadership to Korea Telecom. It reshuffled its management and pledged to develop a "young, speedy organization", to promote "openness" and "collaboration", and to regain confidence overseas.

MelOn recently made it in Indonesia, and this partnership with Japanese MNOs is really significant, but it will take more to be recognized as a major value aggregator at the international level. Let's see how the new management takes up the challenge.

mot-bile 2011

Super 3G trials

NTT DoCoMo announces the end of Super 3G / LTE development in 2009, starting these days with an indoor trial at 300 Mbps downlink between two gizmos. You don't want to stay in that room unless you need a perm. DoC also created CXD NEXT, a 40/60 JV with Casio Computer mating cash registers with mobile devices. iD, FeliCa, ToruCa, and others are rumored to attend the wedding as key witnesses.

RIM announces the BlackBerry 8820, a dual mode 2GSM / WiFi smartphone. SMART enough to switch from one network to the other during a PHONE call. You wouldn't want to use WiFi for secured data sessions, would you ?

Orange UK and PC World announce the "free" laptop for £ 337 (£ 14.99 per month for 24 months, except the first 3 for half the price - and you get a 2MB connection with a monthly limit of 2 GB). You may prefer their £ 300 subsidy on a few other references, or another provider with a better and cheaper free package.

Informa informs us : 6.2% of all W-CDMA subs were HSPA at the end of Q1 2007 and 20.5% will be by EOY 2008. Oh BOY.

Pay-Buy Mobile - DoCoMo inside

KTF will pioneer GSMA's "Pay-Buy Mobile" initiative in Korea this summer, a couple of weeks after SK Telecom's launch of a service with Visa International (30,000 3G subscribers from April on).

PBM combines NFC (which should please Nokia) with SIM/Cards techno (which should please operators), and the initial casting of 14 operators from 3 continents looks strong : overall, AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom claim 900 millions subs.

Yet, don't look for a SK Telecom, a Orange, a Telefonica or a Vodafone out there. The Sympay syndrom ? The fear NTT DoCoMo might steal the show and try to make PBM converge with its own initiatives (FeliCa and EDY through BitWallet) ?

Don't look for a bank either. At this stage.

What I do see though, is a transcontinental initiative with a GSMA label. And only a crosscontinental move could force a change in Europe, GSMA's birthplace. Up to now, a lobbying deadlock has been preventing operators and financial institutions from reaching an agreement and m-payment from progressing towards standardization. No-one wants to lose ground on one's home turf (mobility, financial services), and no-one wants a competitor to succeed (ie banks blocking deals between cellcos and more reactive players like Visa or Amex).

Should this G14 federate a few institutions across - say - Asia and North America, things may change. No financial institution will want to lose the face on that one for too long.

DoCoMo did put a few coins in AT&T and KTF. An expensive dime at a not always relevant time. We are about to know if they were just playing with one-armed bandits or really expecting some payback.

DoCoMo beyond DoCoMo

DoCoMo will soon expand its HSDPA coverage beyond Tokyo in Japan's major cities. 33,000 FOMA HIGH-SPEED handsets were sold during the first month of operation last summer and the MOVA / FOMA ratio fell from 54% to 45% between end of March and end of August 2006.
NTT DoCoMo's overall marketshare keeps going down too, but at a much slower pace (not even one point over the last two years). Churn rate even flirted with the 0.60% line lately. But MNP should boost it back up to 0.85%. And Softbank Mobile starts releasing impressive series of 3G W-CDMA handsets.
i-mode still suffers at the global level and e-Wallet / m-payment services seem to be the only promising driver right now : end of August, DCMX claimed 800,000 users (the service was launched in April) and Felica almost one third of DoC's 47.1M customers (15.5M enabled handsets). Besides, iD will share a common platform (PoS reader / writer, data center) with JR East's Suica next January and others will follow soon afterwards (JCB Co.'s QUICPay and bitWallet Inc.'s Edy). But nothing really new under the sun : JR East and DoCoMo have been working on it for over a year*.
Well... "DoCoMo Vision 2010" is getting older and it starts showing. Multimedia and Ubiquity didn't bring any major disruption, and Globalization looks gloomy. In Europe at least. Teaming up with KTF was the smartest move in the past few years.

* see "Zero noodle. Korea goes South" (20050730)

Count your beams

NTT DoCoMo's expansion strategy has always been clear : globalizing, diversifying beyond voice and widening the reach of mobility itself.
Internationalization's been quite shaky for DoCoMo the investor, and rather disapointing for DoCoMo the Application Service Provider / Licensor : FOMA remains basically local and i-mode subscriptions remain minor overseas. Yet, step by step, more spots are covered. Israel and Russia are joining the i-mode community and even if the service manages to limit it's penetration to 5 to 10% everywhere it exists, that's sustainable. Not the massive revolution many dreamt of but DoCoMo didn't leverage on their 1999 momentum. By the time i-mode reached Europe, WAP was back on tracks with decent services and a better business model.
Diversification beyond voice is no more a strong asset for DoCoMo, who don't even rule in the area. They're better at widening the reach of mobility. The collapse of Simpay definitely means good news for FeliCa but I'm not sure ToruCa™ can make it overseas. This information-capture concept requires handset upgrades (coming up soon in Osaifu-Keitais), but also specific writers / readers at the other end. Asking consumers to wave their handsets in front of new devices doesn't appeal as much as leveraging on RFID or even improving the good old beaming system so that they can transfer pictures or videos from their handsets to their TV sets.
Just like FOMA with W-CDMA, IrSimple is supposed to be an IrDA improvement - in other words : DoCoMo gains a TTM advantage in the short term and potential fees in the longer term. ITX E-Globaledge Corporation and Sharp joined this new "global standard". Simplicity is very much needed. Humility could help too.

Hardware behind, hard work ahead

The very day TU Media's satellite DMB service was launched, SK Telecom sold their handset manufacturing unit SK Teletech to Pantech & Curitel (P&C moves closer to the Samsung - LG duo but remains a relatively small player internationally). Whatever happens to Moneta ? Dongles can be found all over Korea and mobile banking / finance seems catching but SKT may end up joining the Sony - DoCoMo felica stream.
Anyway SKT confirm their switch from customer-techno-centric to customer-content-focused ambitions, and Hallyuwood should bring better differenciation and higher added value in the long term provided the MNO manages to lock a nice position there. Their market share is shrinking but still strong and this is certainly not the time when short term shareholder ROI should be put first.

mobile payment : hibernation is over for the Near Field Communications forum

Showtime for FeliCa Networks : the DoCoMo-Sony JV will provide chips for all Japanese MNOs. KDDI signed the agreement last September and Vodafone KK just joined suit right after one more lousy month (their market share is not likely to improve dramatically until they replace that problematic 2G of theirs with a reliable and comprehensive 3G service). Just to remain one step ahead, DoCoMo announced at the same moment a deal with East Japan Railways around this mobile payment enabler developped by Sony Corp but with a specific branding ("mobile suica").
When 3 fierce competitors on a major W-CDMA vs cdma2000 market decide to use the same solution for such a key entry point, one can expect a big boost for mobile commerce. We're talking about Vodafone, DoCoMo (who as usual insists on the packaging of the solution with i-mode), and KDDI (a relatively small player but the herald of the CDMA Development Group in a huge market).
This surely is bad news for such competitors as Moneta (time will tell whether they can make it abroad as a solution as well as as a business model), but this goes far beyond the mobile players' arena : the likes of DoCoMo and Vodafone don't want Procter & Gamble / Procter & Gilette dictating them the way mobile payment will work (remember RFID ?), and Sony are just pleased to open a real new biz opportunity to brighten their IR slides. Yet in Japan Sony is much more than the Sony you know and the conglomerate just reorganized their financial businesses' organisation around Sony Life Insurance Co., Ltd., Sony Assurance Inc. and... Sony Bank Inc. Because Sony is also a bank and because SK Telecom is almost a bank, reproducing the successes of mobile payment overseas will certainly not be a walk in the park (the French MNOs know very well you cannot make mobile payment happen without involving big banks).
To know where the wind is blowing, watch out for potential changes of memberships in the various m-payment fora : will Sony or FeliCa join the Mobile Payment Forum (the only cross-industry m-payment forum) ? will DoCoMo join simpay (the operators' forum where Vodafone has a seat) ? or will Vodafone simply let his KK collect some Ks on its own in Japan ? will all these players keep staying away from the Mobile electronic Transactions forum ?
Even better lads : along with many other organizations, that MeT forum and the Mobey Forum (the one meant for and by the big banking institutions) just announced they joined the NFC Forum as non profit members. Yeah, the very forum I was mocking at the other day because of the abandon of its website released a bombshell on february the 24th. Sony happens to be a founding sponsor member of this forum, along with Nokia and Philips (LG and RF Micro Devices being non sponsor members and Korea's ETRI a non profit member). So in their first press release in ages, the NFC Forum announced a potentially disruptive conference at CTIA Wireless 2005 next month and an impressive cast of new members : Microsoft, Visa International, MasterCard International, Samsung, Motorola, NEC, Texas Instruments and Panasonic / Matsushita Electric Industrial Co become both new sponsor members and members of the board (just to make sure you know both where and how hard the wind is blowing), and Gemplus, Logitech, Smart System Technologies Inc, Skidata AG, Cetecom Spain, Giesecke & Devrient, JCB Co Ltd, 3ALogics Inc join as non sponsor members.
Well. Nice crowd, but still no MNO to be seen.
So you thought Vodafone & DoCoMo were wise enough to chose the same solution in Japan ? They're just about to realize that while their US counterparts (Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Cingular, Sprint-Nextel) demonstrate the advantages of wireless retailing in New Orleans, LA, the whole industry will signify their independance in the same Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.