What were the most important developments in 2008 for Indian telecom?

What will be the key mobility trends in 2009?

Come and share your views at MoMo. In true BarCamp style of user generated conferences, the December 2008 event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will be an open participatory workshop.

Every speaker will get 5 minutes to talk about:

• what he/she thinks are the top 3 important events of 2008 and
• his/her top 3 predictions for 2009

To register as a speaker add a comment to this post by using the form below. Please fill your Name, Designation, Company, Website in the comments box.

In case there are more speakers than available time, priority will be given to registered speakers and the order of arrival at the venue.

When:
Monday, 29th December 2008
6.30 pm - 9.00 pm

Where:
Cafe Coffee Day,
VS Khandekar Marg,
Near Railway Station,
Vile Parle East. Mumbai.

Directions: Google Maps link

The Mobile Excellence Awards were founded to recognize the best in mobile categories including media, marketing and technology within the mobile entertainment industry.

The competition finalists and winners were selected based upon strategic initiatives and objectives, impact of technology used, creativity, ease of use and reach, and execution and proven market success. Judges for the 2008 Mobile Excellence Awards were comprised of an esteemed panel of industry leaders and luminaries.

The 2008 Mobile Excellence Winners are:

• Best Mobile Start Up - EQO Communications

• Best Innovator, Mobile Technology – 2Ergo

• Best Mobile for Original Programming - Sony Pictures TV International, Afterworld

• Best Mobile Music – GracenoteBest Mobile Advertising - GoTV Networks for Crecent Heights

• Best Innovator, Mobile Entertainment – Transpera

• Best Mobile for Adapted Campaign - DirectTV/NFL

• Best Mobile Comeback – FusionOne

• Best Mobile Games - EA Mobile for Monopoly

• Best Mobile Community Fan Content – Vringo

• Mobile Ambassador Award – Jack Hallahan, MobiTV

• Peoples Choice Award – GoTV Networks

"We are very proud of all the 2008 Mobile Excellence Award winners. These companies are visionaries and creative leaders who are driving the transformation of the mobile entertainment industry," said Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday Global.

“We congratulate them all and look forward to seeing them all and other new companies participate in another successful and innovative awards program in 2009.”

The iPhone has by far the most WiFi usage, with 42 percent of requests coming in over WiFi instead of a mobile operator network. The inclusion of WiFi on popular new smartphones such as the G1 and BlackBerry Bold indicates WiFi usage will continue to grow in the coming months. WiFi only devices such as the iPod Touch and Sony PlayStation Portable also generated significant traffic.

AdMob statistics are based on its own service of more than 4.0 billion mobile banner and text ads per month. Other highlights from the November 2008 report:

• In the US, 8 percent of total requests in November were on WiFi networks, up from 3 percent in August. 42 percent of iPhone requests are made from WiFi, notably higher than most other WiFi capable phones which average between 10-20 percent. iPhone WiFi usage is generally higher on iPhone specific sites and applications than on normal mobile sites.

• In the UK, 8 percent of requests in November were on WiFi networks, up from 4 percent in August. After the iPhone and iPod Touch, the Nokia N95 and other N series phones are the leading WiFi devices.

• Worldwide requests were flat in November at 5.8 billion. Requests from North America, Western Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Europe each increased more than 10 percent month over month. These increases were offset by a decline in Indonesian inventory.

• The G1 (HTC Dream) generated 15 million requests in November and already represents 7 percent of all T-Mobile traffic. Android had a 2 percent share of smartphone operating system traffic in the US.

AdMob stores and analyzes handset and operator data from every ad request in its network to optimize ad serving. Each month, the Mobile Metrics Report aggregates this data to provide insights into major trends in the mobile ecosystem.

MobileMonday’s CEO, Jari Tammisto, met Tuesday with Mr. Ahtisaari. Besides bringing the congratulation of the MobileMonday community on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Tammisto also summarized MobileMonday’s plan to establish a research program to understand the needs of Africans, especially among women and children, and how those needs might be met with wireless services and connectivity in Africa.

The research will form a base on which MobileMonday would then pull together industry leaders and NGO’s to support permanent development plans. These will be introduced at the Digital Africa Summit to be held in Kampala, Uganda in May.

Mr. Ahtisaari expressed sincere interest in the MobileMonday’s plan and offered to support this with his personal African contacts.

The Nobel Committee rewarded Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his important efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts. These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to "fraternity between nations" in the Alfred Nobel spirit

Throughout all his adult life, whether as a senior Finnish public servant and President of the republic, or in an international capacity, often connected to the United Nations, Ahtisaari has worked for peace and reconciliation. For the past twenty years, he has figured prominently in endeavors to resolve several serious and long-lasting conflicts.

He played a significant part in the establishment of Namibia's independence; in 2005 he and his organization Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) were central to the solution of the complicated Aceh question in Indonesia.

The mobile industry has a social responsibility to enable developing countries to become wireless societies. We hope to enhance developments in children and women’s safety, healthcare, mobile banking, creative development, and literacy, commented Jari Tammisto on MobileMonday’s plans.

From end-2007 to end-2013, the global mobile market will see huge growth, increasing in size by over half (56%), according to the latest edition of Informa Telecoms & Media’s Global Mobile Forecasts to 2013.

It took over 20 years to reach 3 billion subscriptions, but another 1.9 billion net additions are forecast in just six years, with the global total nudging past the 5-billion milestone in 2011. With this extraordinary growth, total annual revenues derived from mobile operators will grow by over a third (33.9%), jumping from USD 769 billion in 2007 to USD 1.03 trillion six years later.

Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts more than three quarters (78%) of global net additions between 2007 and 2013 to come from markets in Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America, which will be the powerhouses of organic growth over the next five years. Astonishingly, nearly half (47%) of the 1.9 billion global net adds will come from just five markets – India, China, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. By contrast, the mature markets of North America and Western Europe will in total contribute just 8% of global net adds, reflecting the high level of saturation in these markets.

Globally, subscription penetration will approach the 75% mark in 2013, while some countries will push past the 150% barrier – Romania (152%), Russia (153%), Italy (168%), Ukraine (173%) and Greece (183%). Growth in subscriptions (the number of SIMs) will outstrip growth in subscribers (the number of unique users), pointing to greater multi-SIM ownership. The global ratio of subscriptions to subscribers will increase from 1.29 in 2007 to 1.32 in 2013. In Western Europe, the ratio will reach 1.55 in 2013, and even higher (1.75) in Eastern Europe.

The high growth potential of developing markets reflects the entrance of new operators, as well as improvements in regional network roll-out and rising competition, which is expected to lower the barrier for new subscribers.

“Reductions in voice tariffs, the option of very low-denomination prepaid top-ups and the greater availability of cheap 2G and 2.5G handsets will open out mobile services to low-income, low-ARPU subscribers who have never previously owned a mobile phone,” said Chris Stamatakis, research analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and author of Global Mobile Forecasts to 2013.

As the global subscription base expands, total annual revenues will increase to over USD 1 trillion in 2012. Voice revenues will continue to make up the lion’s share of total revenues, but will see slowing growth, and even a decline from 2010 onwards. With regulators worldwide looking to promote competition, forcing operators to push down voice tariffs, Informa Telecoms & Media expects voice revenues to peak as soon as 2009 in Western Europe, and even by end-2008 in North America. In more developing markets such as the Middle East and Asia Pacific, voice revenues will not peak until 2011, and 2012 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Operators globally will be challenged to generate sustainable revenues as average revenue per user (ARPU) continues to drop. To keep annual revenues on the up, operators will need to promote usage of data services. Annual data revenues, unlike voice revenues, will go from strength to strength, and will more than double from USD 148 billion in 2007 to USD 347 billion in 2013. As a result, the proportion of total revenues generated by data services will increase from less than a fifth (19.2%) in 2007 to over a third (33.7%) at the end of the forecast period.

With voice revenue streams diminishing, industry players will encourage data spend among subscribers by innovating in non-voice services and differentiating their data service offerings from those of their competitors. While 2G will remain the dominant technology generation by subscription numbers until 2013, its market share will fall from over two thirds (66.9%) in 2007 to less than one third (32.7%) in 2013, as 3G+ technologies continue to gain ground. 3.5G technologies accounted for just 1.2% of total subscriptions in 2007, but will represent nearly a quarter (22.9%) of the global subscription base by 2013 and exceed the number of 3G subscriptions.

“As more next-generation networks roll out, 3G and 3.5G traffic will grow vigorously and the number of global HSDPA subscriptions will increase exponentially in the short term,” said Stamatakis. “Furthermore, with migration to next-generation technologies already under way, with operators increasingly favouring HSDPA as they jump on the LTE bandwagon, Informa Telecoms & Media expects operators to focus increasingly on fulfilling consumers’ growing demand for mobile broadband – which is becoming the long-sought killer app for mobile operators.”

Steve Follmer consulted in Silicon Valley for many years, where he co-founded live365.com. He is currently between startups and analyzing opportunities in the mobile space. Steve holds a BSE degree from Princeton University.

MoMo Taipei 17 kicked off with a security presentation from one of our
sponsors, Thales Group. With operations in 50 countries, 68,000
employees, and 17 billion dollars in annual revenue, Thales is a world
leader in Mission-critical information systems for the Aerospace,
Defence and Security markets. Dr. Welland W. N. Chu, Regional Business
Manager for North East Asia for their 400 person Information Systems
Security group, delivered a convincing explanation of the importance of
this market.

Thales implemented the contactless cards and tokens for our MRT and the
tickets for our high speed rail, along with the readers on Taipei’s
buses and parking lots. Thales handles the payments securely, and
disburses the money. Thales technologies are used in payment terminals,
bank communication networks and the secure manufacturing of bank and
credit cards. In the financial sector, more than half the world’s banks
and most major stock exchanges rely on Thales technologies. With nobel
laureates on their research team, they also discovered giant mageneto
resistance, without which your hard disks and laptops would weigh 25 kg.

In vital markets such as security, there is of course competition. One
Thales advantage lies in their strong existing connections to
government, defence, and intelligence communities worldwide. If any of
our readers is unsure of the need for security, in response to a
question Dr. Chu noted that in testing customer sites they can
compromise 95% of their networks.

Thales system also features a unique ability to seamlessly traverse or
roam sundry fixed and mobile networks and protocols, while maintaining
ironclad security. A turnkey approach to security not only minimizes
training costs, it also keeps the network safe. Their product operates
on Windows mobile PDAs (about 12% of smartphones). Momo readers will
also want to know that Thales Transport’s new generation ticketing
system is ready to accept transactions by NFC.

Resources:

Thales
Smartphone

CyWee is a 1 year old startup, spun off from years of research at Taiwan
government-industry think-tank ITRI, with funding from ITRI and SBCVC. Their
CyWee Z is now for sale: a PC input device like a Nintendo Wii on
steroids. Check out their demo:

The Z is the only one of its kind with a
3-axis accelerometer and a dual-axis gyro. And rather than a bunch of cheap plastic
attachments, the controller itself bends and twists into 4 different
shapes: sports, gun, car wheel, and airplane yoke. Rather than being
limited to low res Wii graphics, the Z can drive any game on your PC,
since the Z maps useful keyboard strokes into physical actions on the controller.
It currently comes with support for 10 offline and 2 online games.

By some estimates “The total market value for PC gaming hardware
in 2008 was just over $20 billion, and that will grow to over $34
billion by 2012.” And as a 3D mouse, the Z is also part of the PC input device
market. CyWee plans expansion to the international market, and
has numerous other products in their R&D pipeline.

The Z is sold in Taiwan for NT$3990 bundled with 3 game titles, while supplies last.
Shopping at PC Home

Resources:

PC Home
Worldwide PC Gaming

The Mobile Peer Awards Barcelona are amongst the most influential events in the mobile industry and the point of reference in startup innovation during the Mobile World Congress.

Participation is free of charge and open to any startup willing to pay their way to the event. Innovative startups active in mobile technology or startups with a mobile product are invited to register to participate at mobilepeerawards.com before the December 31 deadline.

Each of the 68 MobileMonday Chapters (cities) will select their local startup nominee which will be announced on January 19, 2009. The Chapter organizers will look at three criteria when making their decision: • originality, creativity and innovativeness • technical and operational feasibility • economic and financial viability

An international jury of renowned industry experts, investors and entrepreneurs (to be announced soon) will then select the 20 finalists that will present on stage in Barcelona on February 16, 2009. Last year's jury included representatives from Telefónica, Vodafone, Google, Yahoo!, AdMob, MobHappy, GoMoNews, Nexit Ventures, and Xtract.

Those interested at becoming a partner or a sponsor to the Mobile Peer Awards during Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, can download the latest sponsorpack, or contact info AT mobilemondaybarcelona DOT com.

The MobileMonday Peer Awards are organized by MobileMonday Barcelona in collaboration with the entire MobileMonday Community. Previous Peer Awards winners included Realeyes 3D, Mobile Complete (now Device Anywhere) and Plazes in 2007; Buzzd, Funambol, Taptu and Kimia in 2008.