Opportunities in Mobile 2.0

Lalit Bhise, Co-Founder & CEO, Mobisy
First of all, a disclaimer; Opinions mentioned below are purely personal and I am not someone who knows everything, in fact, I am hoping to get some interesting perspectives from the discussion on this topic!

I have been following the Mobile landscape for over a decade now. In the last year or two, ground beneath our feet really shook where I felt that Mobile ecosystem is changing rapidly.

There were three big news which were responsible for this.

1. iPhone and iPhone 3G launch from Apple

2. Google Android announcement.

3. Symbian open source announcement from Nokia

There were many other announcements from these three companies which were complementary to their direction but these were the really big news which changes everything.

Let us analyze these events in more details.

1. iPhone

Anyone who has used the iPhone will tell you that Apple has taken Mobile usability to a completely new level where a four year old can make a call, watch a youtube video and upload a picture to Flickr without any adult supervision !!! This level of usability has been unheard of in the Mobile Phone industry.

Especially, the usage of Mobile Internet is set to explode. In my humble opinion the uptake was low in the past mainly due to unavailability of easy to use applications.

Going forward, we will see plenty of news from many companies announcing their products on the iPhone, there will be many business models revolving around iPhone's safari browser and apps store. In general, it's a great time for everyone who wants to jump onto the Apple and Steve Jobs PR wagon.

2. Google Android

This was a little surprising and in my humble opinion was a reaction to Symbian's domination of Smartphone OS monopoly till date.
Google does not seem to be interested in actually building a phone but is very keen on building a Mobile ecosystem revolving around open internet access to applications and content.

Since there are no Android phones in the market yet, it remains to be seen what impact it may have eventually.

3. Nokia's strategy

Nokia is painstakingly trying to convince everyone about its internet vision with some success already. Be it their Ovi content delivery platform or the number of run-times they have launched for their Symbian phones over last year.
But most notable was their reaction to Google Android, which was to announce open sourcing of the leading Smartphone OS:- Symbian.
They have also acquired Trolltech adding another open source platform to their armoury (QT/Qutopia).

What's in it for entrepreneurs like us?

To me all these events point to a single direction, Mobile Internet coming of age or as some people like to call it, Mobile 2.0.

1. It has never been easier to be a Mobile Application developer:

For a long time in the Mobile ecosystem, prime software properties were Protocol stack software (2G, 2.5G, 2.75G, 3G, 4G etc), Mobile Operating systems(Symbian, Windows Mobile, Mobile Linux...),and Browsers(Opera, Openwave and so on).

Today there are multiple open source and almost free alternatives for all of the above, which essentially makes them a commodity and all this hints to a single fact, value chain in Mobile ecosystem is moving to services to users rather than the technology itself !! Which means as a third party application provider, you have never had it better. You have multiple choices of technology depending on your target user group, barriers to development are lowering all the time and big players are ensuring user awareness to capabilities of handsets.

2. Mobile Internet is the future, at least that's what Nokia and Google believe in:

Internet is a part of any standard iPhone or Android application suite. Nokia is bundling a powerful webkit based full web browser on their lowest end S40 phones.
Unlimited data packages are becoming commonplace with all the operators, which means today's mobile phone can communicate easily over Voice , SMS and via Internet.
Now think of the unlimited possibilities !!

It opens a whole new world of opportunities in terms of Business Models like advertising. Add to that the fact that Mobile Advertising is still in its infancy where majority of advertising is focused on spam SMS’s, I can't wait to see innovations happening in this market.

3. The India factor:

We have a huge growing market for Mobile handsets and Mobile Internet usage. Though the absolute numbers from TRAI will be debated upon infinitely, the enormous acceleration in growth cannot be denied. Which opens before us, a huge, relatively open market where there aren’t many established players yet to service unique Indian customers.

So now if you were to ask me where the next Google/Facebook will come from, I would say that India has a very good chance of producing one in Mobile Internet. Only if our home grown entrepreneurs take the plunge and innovate beyond the tried and tested routes !!

We at Mobisy are also trying to figure out our way in Mobile Internet so if you have any opinions or suggestions, please do comment !

Cheers.