State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

One of the early complaints about iPhone have been the missing multimedia messaging (MMS) feature. It took about 2 years to roll MMS out and one of the reason is said that AT&T was not ready to support that level of network traffic. Apple had to provide the software to support MMS as well. Well, now that MMS has been officially released worldwide, what does it tell the usage of MMS and the traffic tell us?

One of the interesting thing is that MMS as a general feature has been slow to take off. We discussed it here. Now that iPhone has support for MMS, there is additional info about the reasons and the problems associated with MMS. Cost and interoperability are two major factors. With AT&T, the price for messaging is included in the SMS messaging plans so its not a big deal. Interoperability and reliability of sending/receiving messages remains a concern.

Personally, I have been facing issues with sending messages on AT&T network after the MMS roll out. Even plain SMS messages have been failing and that almost never happened before. Here’s a quote from Computer World.

In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.

Given the amount of data that iPhone fans are already using on AT&T’s network for Web browsing, video, e-mail and social networking, it would take quite a popularity breakthrough for MMS to drag down the infrastructure through sheer traffic, analysts said. However, the carrier’s fears in one respect may have been justified, said ABI analyst Dan Shey.

Several factors have dampened the popularity of MMS, according to analysts and industry observers. A big one is that the messages still don’t always get through.

Related articles of interest:

• How could iPhone MMS crash AT&T’s network?
• MMS is live
• YouTube video on iPhone MMS

Well, among all the recent upgrade to iPhone software, my favorite remains cut and paste its nice to get multi media messaging – let’s see when it actually works!

I spotted an interesting article from WSJ,  The Joys, Pains of Switching Smart Phones. For those who want to switch from one smart phone to another, there’s always this excitement of trying something new combined with leaving something familiar and convenient. Then there’s the work involved in moving information from one handset to another. In the end its a matter of personal preference. Here’s an excerpt.

The old adage that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence can be extended to our technology cravings. Even the person holding the shiniest new gadget can’t help but eye a neighbor who has a different device and wonder, “What does that do that mine doesn’t?”

Thoughts like these are especially prevalent when it comes to the devoted owners of BlackBerrys and iPhones. All too often, the people carrying these smart phones are curious about what one device has that the other lacks.

The most outstanding observation from my switch group in favor of the iPhone was an appreciation for its applications, or apps.

They used things like driving directions for the first time because these apps looked and worked better on the iPhone than on the BlackBerry. And they went through a downloading frenzy during which time they found all sorts of apps for the iPhone, such as games, entertainment and those that enhanced business-travel productivity. “Browsing for games. Probably should leave the office now,” said one person’s notes.

Though Research in Motion’s BlackBerrys also run apps (including some of the same ones as for the iPhone), BlackBerry’s App World offers only a little better than 2,000 apps. Apple’s App Store boasts more than 65,000. A shortcut to the App Store ships preloaded on iPhones. BlackBerry App World is preloaded or virtually preloaded by carriers at their discretion, so a shortcut to App World may not be visible.

The most obvious difference between iPhones and BlackBerrys are the keyboards. The iPhone uses an on-screen keyboard, while the BlackBerry (except the touch-screen Storm model) uses a tactile QWERTY keyboard. As expected, the switchers had trouble using the iPhone keyboard—especially for the first few days. But after about a week, most people in the group had adjusted well to the on-screen keys and the iPhone’s auto-correct feature that fixes mistakes as long as you keep typing rather than stopping to fix an error. One person said, “I was a skeptic, and didn’t think the typing would work for me at all, but it actually hasn’t been too bad.”

The BlackBerry keyboard’s static position below its screen means all letters, numbers and symbols must come solely from pressing those keys; this is done by pressing ALT or Shift keys for numbers and symbols. Some switchers noted that pressing a button to change the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard from letters to capital letters or numbers took a bit longer than on the BlackBerry.

My switchers were ecstatic about using the iPhone’s Safari Web browser. They enthusiastically said searching, browsing and reading were all made much better and more visually pleasing compared with their experiences on the BlackBerry browser.

Business Week has a story about the new mobile net and the wave of privacy invasion about to happen. Part of it starts from Facebook going on smart phones and the popularity of location based services will make it worse. Even though many users may not know or care, a lot of information is being collected about you and your behavior. Excerpts from the story below. I think that very soon there will be a backlash against all this invasion of privacy and lawsuits will erupt.

Imagine that your business had a complete log of your customers’ wanderings—every trip to the grocery store, every work commute, every walk with the dog. What could you learn about them? Armed with that knowledge, what sorts of goods and services might you try to sell them? Just as important, if you made your best pitch—relevant and timely, of course—would customers concerned about privacy tell you to get lost? This isn’t science fiction. A nascent industry extending from the laboratories of Google (GOOG) and Nokia (NOK) to a host of data-fueled startups is wrestling with these very questions.

The privacy implications are considerable. Is it O.K. for a boss to hand an employee a Latitude-loaded BlackBerry and then monitor her whereabouts? Companies that operate fleets of trucks have tracked employees for years. But similar technology in cell phones would potentially let all sorts of companies monitor and measure employee movements. Latitude does offer cloaking options. A user can hide from certain people or ask to be located by city, not by street.

Resistance to mobile ads is showing signs of breaking down, at least in some quarters. When surveys ask users if they’re interested in receiving the ads, nearly everyone says no, says Greg Sterling, a senior analyst at Opus Research. But when asked recently whether they would welcome messages only from local businesses they select, 43% say they’d be “very or somewhat interested.” That number, says Sterling, is higher among the data hounds who use the iPhone, BlackBerry, and other high-end phones.

Telenor announced that it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring iPhone 3G to Sweden, Denmark and Norway in the coming months. More information will come later. Of course, there’s no way to tell if this agreement will extend over to other countries such as Pakistan.

As we discussed before, having an official carrier of iPhone does not matter that much in Pakistan. It is certainly a good marketing opportunity for that mobile network operator. For the consumers, it will allow them to get a brand new boxed phone (for a high price though) with proper support. Let’s see!

Recently Apple announced that 500 million apps have been downloaded from its trend-setter App Store. It has been a success story which changed how things got done in the mobile application area. The App store was a new way of selling apps to consumers (see this case study) and sharing revenues for apps developed by anyone – without the tight monopolistic control exerted by phone companies (mobile netwwork operators). Sure, Apple still has tremendous amount of control over the app certification and approval. Now Google and BlackBerry are following the path as well.

There are 10,000 apps out there for iPhone include games, corporate and professional apps like CRM, applications for photo editing, project management, and exercise routines. San Francisco’s Beejive Inc. gets $16.99 for an instant-messaging product.

Here’s a recent article from Business Week which talks about developer’s role and the future potential of the app store.

Besides Salesforce.com, Oracle (ORCL) is developing corporate software for the device. A growing number of startups are charging higher prices for software, including applications for photo editing, project management, and exercise routines. San Francisco’s Beejive Inc. gets $16.99 for a program that lets instant-messaging addicts stay in touch with friends on a variety of messaging services at the same time. Research firm Evans Data says 20% of wireless developers now create software for Apple, up from 8% six months ago. “That’s the biggest leap we’ve ever seen,” says Vice-President John F. Andrews.

Apple’s challenge in software will be to create a way for developers to make a healthy profit at the same time it does. The company has software tools that make it possible to create an application in weeks rather than several months. It also keeps just 30% of the sales price for applications instead of the 50% many wireless carriers charge. (If the application is free, Apple takes nothing.) And because the App Store is part of the iTunes online store, where 100 million people already buy music, a popular application can quickly attract millions of downloads—creating sizeable audiences that are attracting advertiser attention.

Developers are finding ways to make money while charging little or nothing for their software. Startup Tapulous has given away more than 5.5 million copies of its eponymous game, which tests music fans’ ability to tap their iPhone to the beat of their favorite songs. The popularity of the free offering has drawn advertisers and persuaded CEO Bart Decrem to start charging $4.99 for a version with more features. Decrem says the combined sales and advertising revenue allowed the 10-person startup to turn a profit in December, six months ahead of schedule.

Broker TD Ameritrade offers its stock-trading application for free and makes money from trading commissions. It didn’t have to pay anything for the software, either. A five-person outfit in Argentina called iStockTrader developed the program in exchange for a cut of any trades.

Apple’s rivals point out that these are early days. While mobile-phone giant Nokia is developing its own app store, it can also help developers get their applications pre-installed on mobile phones so consumers don’t have to download them. That can end up being more profitable for the developer than being in Apple’s App Store. “We want to make money for ourselves and our partners by maintaining the value so the price doesn’t gravitate to zero,” says Tero Ojanperä, executive vice-president of Nokia Services.

Still, Andrew Fisher, CEO of music-software maker Shazam, sees developers gravitating toward Apple because of the company’s momentum. It’s a twist on the PC market, where the best applications appeared first, and sometimes only, on PCs with Windows. This time, the one benefiting is Apple. “That’s the position Apple has established,” says Fisher. “[The more software they offer], the more justifications there are for people to buy iPhones.”

By Hamza Zafar

The mobile market seems to be developing by leaps and bounds across the globe, especially in the developing countries, where the use of mobile phones were not very common. New mobile markets like Pakistan, India, Brazil etc contributed widely to the growth of this sector. But still today, more than 70% mobile phone users worldwide do not make the most out of their phone. The main reasons behind this are awareness and lack of resources. A large majority makes its basic use only, i.e. Calling, while some others enjoy the benefits, like MP3 player, camera etc. Truth is that very few people in developing countries know much about mobile Internet. This scenario is not similar in European and Western countries, and the main reason for this is that majority of the people living there use mobile phones which can also be called mini-computers or well-equipped hand-held devices. They have everything, from text messaging to online streaming video access, but such privileges are not available to majority in the third world countries. The real reason behind this might be termed as ‘awareness’, but that’s not always true, since there are people who want to have all these facilities on their palm, but since they can’t afford such phones, they end-up using a low-end phone. If some of them manage to buy a feature-rich phone, they have to pay for expensive software to make the most out of it.

Now what’s the future of such people? How to make technology so cheap that everyone, from a company’s peon to CEO can have access to it? How to bridge this inevitable digital divide?

The answer of these questions are the indication of a BIG mobile revolution awaiting for us. How? Lets see.

Currently, we have iPhone and Nokia mobiles, which are considered top notch from every aspect. Other companies including BlackBerry and several others are not considered as good as them, especially the hot-baked iPhone with its apps. The normal prices of these high-end phones start above US$350, which could go upto $700 or more (You can buy a good laptop in that price with dual processors).

People living in third world countries have an average monthly income of $400-$900 (I’m talking about average) and its very obvious that they can’t afford such phones, its applications and their carrier packages, so they don’t buy it. They don’t buy it, so they also don’t come to  know about the potential which lies in it, or how it can help them. So, to make technology available to everyone, Chinese mobile phones are a very good solution.

Chinese mobiles can be considered as a blessing for those who have low budget for their phones. Within US$90, you get a phone that has a web-browser using EDGE, 2.0MP Camera, games, Touch-Screen (3.5 inch), Bluetooth, FM Radio and countless apps.

Sounds good, isn’t it? But what about the software? We have everything we need in Hardware with the blessing of Chinese technology but we definitely need a good OS and some worthy application to spice up the mobile experience. The software that come with the phone or are supported are not worth using, and most of the time they end-up crashing the whole system.

This is the place where Android could kick in. Yes, Android. T-Mobile is currently selling Android phones for hundreds of dollar, the major advantage you get from this is that all applications, including its operating system is not only free, but far powerful then Leopard 10, which iPhone uses. So, if the Android gets compatible with the $90 Chinese phone, consider the possibilities that could happen. People across the globe, rich or poor, with or without resources, would be able to get their hands on a $90 (or less) phone with web-browsing, camera, Bluetooth, touch-screen, Android open source platform, document editing and I don’t know what else.

All these massive helpful tools, wrapped up in a small touch-screen mobile with a price tag of $90 will create a big dent on Nokia, apple and other vendors, but our huge digital divide, between the developed and developing nations, or rich and poor people will shrink by a large means. All we need is someone, who could provide communication between the Chinese mobile manufactures and Android developers, and If that someone is Google itself, then believe me that iPhone would be doomed with all its apps.

So, the equation of future is,

Chinese phones + Android

Digital Divide Bridged!

The writer, Hamza Zafar, is a telecom undergraduate student at NUCES-FAST and can be reached at mail2hamza [at] gmail [dot] com.

Twelve recent, noticeable telecom and technology trends from Pakistan.

• Popular: iPhone 3G, Book your number by Zong, Mobile Internet with USB modems
• Success Stories: Zong brand launch, Telenor strategy
• Survivors: Ptcl, Warid
• On the defensive: Mobilink
• Wrong Turns: Tax increase on telecom, charging for customer service call
• Defying the odds: Entreprenurship continues to thrive and inspire
• Becoming mainstream: Social networking
• Getting noticed: bloggers and Internet users by Google
• Shift in business model: User generated content threatens traditional media
• Challenges: economy, energy & power shortage, political instability 
• On track: WiMAX with second commercial rollout
• Policy issues: Enforcement of new SIM registration policy, when to rollout 3G

This is getting really interesting; a new rumored device from HTC has now been surfaced out of no-where code-named HTC TOUCH HD. It looks like HTC is now going full device touch screen with the amazing screen size of 4 inches & astounding resolution of WVGA (800X480).

The HTC Touch HD is all poised to be the ultimate device in the much hyped TOUCH phone segment with all the making of the real I-Phone killer. The phone is rumored to be based on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional & will be running HTC Touch Flo 3D (just like Touch Diamond).

Below is some known specification highlights of HTC TOUCH HD, meanwhile the Touch HD is said to be due in Christmas means we can expect its announcement really soon. Read on for specifications.

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