GSMA adopts OneVoice - by Jeremy Green
The OneVoice initiative, which aims to resolve the conundrum of how to handle voice (and SMS) services under LTE, has been adopted by the GSMA in a move designed to further cement the centrality of IMS as the royal road to services in mobile communications.
OneVoice was announced in November 2009 by a group of operators and vendors. The breadth of the backing then seemed to demonstrate that both groups were confident that IMS, or rather a restricted subset of IMS features and functionality, would be ready in time to obviate the need for 'interim solutions' to the problem of how to do voice in LTE.
Adoption of OneVoice by the GSMA - already on something of an LTE high as a result of a simultaneous announcement that Verizon Wireless, KDDI and China Telecom are to be joining the association in reflection of their commitment to LTE - is a further vote of confidence for the IMS-based approach.
Fears that operators would adopt a plethora of different interim solutions, leading to fragmentation and incompatibility between their offerings, appear to be receding. This in turn strengthens the business case for LTE, because it makes it a stronger candidate for the wholesale replacement of the existing mobile network. It is only this wholesale approach that enables the savings implicit in the more efficient operation of LTE to be realised.
RCS inches forwards - by Jeremy Green
One can only hope that the GSMA's decision to adopt OneVoice does not consign it to the same standards-body limbo as the Rich Communication Suite (RCS). RCS, also a GSMA initiative backed by operators and vendors, was intended to be the mobile industry's answer to over-the-top players' realtime communications services and VoIP offerings.
Two years after launch, there is little to show for it but a string of pilots and demonstration projects. Last year the GSMA announced a trial by the three French operators, which would test RCS interworking; this year it is announcing another trial, involving Japanese operators. Telefonica and Orange in Spain have declared their intention to carry out pre-commercial interoperability tests, and Wind and Telecom Italia have reported the successful conclusion of a similar exercise in Italy.
The French trial is still ongoing, and there is no publicly available news about how it has gone or what has been learned. And the specification has now reached Release 3.0, which includes support for features such as location sharing and enhanced presence information. We question whether Google and Apple will be particularly concerned.
Operators challenged to make global app store standard work - by Tony Cripps
The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) - founded by 24 of the leading global mobile telcos and supported by the GSMA and handset OEMs Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG - has tasked itself with the job of uniting the developer communities of its members and building a wholesale ecosystem for mobile application developers, offering a single point of entry and ease of distribution to a total user base of over 3 billion customers.
On the face of it, the logic of WAC seems clear. Most of those 3 billion subscribers are currently denied participation in the rich man's game of downloading custom-built apps onto high-end handsets, and even converting a small proportion of that number into downloads could reap benefits for operators and developers alike.
However, the question marks over whether it can achieve its goals are sizable. The initiative is dependent, at least initially, on the JIL and OMTP BONDI stacks for its device-side application environment. A common cry in the early days of WAP was "Where are the phones" A similar issue arises here. Even when JIL- and BONDI-compliant devices hit the market in large enough numbers to overcome this shortfall, will the developers actually care
To succeed, the WAC operators will have to overcome the sometimes considerable prejudice that developers have towards operator-driven developer communities -for reasons of perceived equitableness, visibility, (in)competence in software matters and various other factors. If the 24 operator members of the WAC can overcome those misgivings, they will deserve to bathe in that glory.
Samsung's first wave of Bada handsets - by Adam Leach
Samsung has announced its first Bada-based handset, the Samsung Wave. The handset features HSPA, a 3.3-inch AMOLED display, Wi-Fi and a 1GHz processor. Samsung is aiming squarely at bringing smartphone economics to the mid-tier market with this handset, which is reflected in an unsubsidised price of €330.
The key to Samsung's success with Bada will be its ability to attract developers to its new smartphone platform. To achieve this, it is imperative to offer a compelling developer experience. However, the other side to providing quality SDKs, tools and processes for developers will be deploying devices that will sell well to consumers. Taking a page from Apple's playbook, Samsung knows that developers are consumers too, and that creating a handset that is attractive to consumers is essential to a successful software platform.
According to Samsung, the company shipped 227 million units during 2009 and the best performers in its portfolio were the Star, Jet and Corby - for example, the Star shipped around 10 million units. All of the handsets were based on Samsung's internal operating system, which has now evolved into Bada. It is likely that the 2010 successors to these products will all be Bada-based, which will represent a significant addressable market for Bada applications.
It is still early days for Bada, but we expect that the platform will be one to watch in 2010. Samsung has proven experience of building keenly priced hardware that can achieve high volumes in the market; it remains to be seen whether it also has the skills in software to complete the offering.
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