There has been much furore and inaccurate juxtaposition in the press of announcements by the GSMA and he SIMalliance over the last few weeks, trying to pitch a SIM card v embedded world, an angle that missed many of the key nuances around the announcements. these announcements were interspersed with rumours that Apple’s next generation of iPhone would not incorporate a USIM module.

With responsibility for looking into and forecasting the growth of the embedded market, these announcements got me interested. We have recently written about the consolidation among module makers in the M2M space, with SIM card players such as Gemalto, looking to move up the value chain into being a complete module player.

While the rumour about Apple’s next-gen iPhone is just that (a rumour), it seems as though the SIMalliance and GSMA are on the same page in their approach to the future of the SIM card, namely that personal devices and automated modules will require different means of distribution and activation, but that USIM cards will still have an important role to play.

We recently discussed in-depth the growing importance of M2M service platforms as a means of activating and managing the more than, Strategy Analytics believes, 4.6+ billion connections (excluding handsets and smartphones)  that will likely be in place by 2020. Many of these connections will be legacy M2M applications like smart meters and cars, but many will also be data devices like personal navigation devices (PNDs), tablets, eBook readers and laptops. what is clear is that the Embedded service platforms that are being built today for M2M applications, will tomorrow be used as the de facto means of activating and managing billions of connections globally, including handsets and smartphones.

It is clear that mobile operators are concerned about the possibility of the SIM card being replaced by a vanilla module/soft SIMs, as with it goes not only customer attachment and identity, as well as the SIM-only business, but also lowers the barriers to customers switching carriers and will force selection on key criteria such as quality of service, incentives and best tariffs/deals.

If Apple were to pursue this route, then it would clearly put the balance of power towards the OEM, reducing the power of the carrier. However, not only would this be just one OEM, but Strategy Analytics believes that this vision is over-simplistic and that the SIM market has a longer shelf life than some are predicting, with different distribution channels for high visibility consumer products and B2B M2M deployments (even if consumer activation, provisioning and management will be done via embedded service platforms). Moreover, while consolidation in the M2M module space suggests the model will change, regulation would likely slow the switchover considerably.

It is clear, however, that carriers need to think carefully about their embedded service platform strategy, as the question is less about SIM v embedded, and more about the next phase of building analytics into embedded service platforms to ensure consumer and business customers remain satisfied and that carriers can target them with the right products and services.

Andrew Brown

With the ever intensifying app war out in the smartphone marketplace, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has upped the ante by offering a new push service for BlackBerry software developers to enable rapid delivery of application-content to BlackBerry smartphones. It’s no secret that RIM has a market leading user experience for mobile push email, underpinned by it’s “ground-up for wireless” network architecture, but finally RIM is taking the game to Apple and Android developers where all the noise is being made, by leveraging its network operations centre (NOC).

Push applications are not new to the BlackBerry, but access to the required BlackBerry APIs and other resources was costly in the past and the necessary fees were prohibitive to many application developers. It seems as though access to APIs in version 5 of the handheld software is going to be a game changer.

The push service is being made available in two tiers:

• BlackBerry Push Essentials is a free service while
• BlackBerry Push Plus has a free tier and paid tiers, but essentially allows a host of monitoring and scheduling tools as well as offering pricing tiers for very high push notification loads (10,000+)

Developers are required to meet some baseline criteria

• Applications must provide a one-time message to indicate push usage to the user
• Software must indicate higher data pricing when roaming and that users should check with their carrier for data pricing
• Apps must allow users to switch pushes on or off
• Users must be able to remove the app and/or change BlackBerry smartphones

RIM is bullish about the offering, which it describes as: “…unlike alternative push solutions that can only notify users that new content is available for download because of push message size limitations, with the BlackBerry Push Service, full content (up to an industry-leading 8KB in size) is pushed to the device and made immediately available for use."

I’m excited by this announcement. As expected, most of the focus has been on consumer content, especially news, stocks and sports, but the real value is in how this changes, or rather enhances the BlackBerry user experience. RIM’s architecture facilitates "listening" for content updates, instead of having to initiate what can be lengthy processes via comparable mobile app push services. The service will run on BIS and BES and will put itself in a strong position for business applications, by bringing updates to the user, rather than a user foraging for information. There are already some solid examples of push app technology, from patient information in healthcare and sales force automation to emergency response.

Competition is fierce, and the number of personal liable devices forcing their way into businesses will keep growing. With BESX RIM is allowing IT departments and administrators to “bend without breaking” while this announcement sees RIM really starting to extract maximum value from its architecture, which will allow the company to differentiate itself from competition. RIM is now effectively placing itself both in the minds of consumers and businesses.

Andrew Brown

The announcement is not yet cold, but already opinion is polarizing surrounding Apple’s new iPad. The product will appear in 60 days with WiFi and in 90 days unlocked with AT&T data plan for $629 and $29/month. Moreover, the inevitable debate around the device’s suitability and fit for the enterprise market is already heating up.

Some are making the assumption that the iPad will slot it’s way into business via users and be welcomed with open arms. Others will say that it will be shunned outright like other tablet products and will face the same fate as Apple’s sub 5% global market share in the PC market.

So let’s look at a few ways enterprises are going to change in the future:

• Over the next few years, enterprise technology and telecommunications purchasing decisions will be based on the preferences of individual employees, rather than traditional IT department criteria. In the past, hardware and software manufacturers targeted their latest products toward the enterprise market, and specifically the gate-keeping IT department.
• The shift to three nines from five nines reliability is driving greater scrutiny of application deployment and usage. A principal driver for this change is cost. A fragile economic recovery this year is likely to keep businesses focused on identifying unnecessary products or services.
• Businesses will start to look more towards distributed architectures such as cloud computing: energy efficiency and cost saving, thin client growth driven by virtualized data enters and increasingly the next step-towards cloud services (for example Google Apps). This new mindset will change the role of the equipment users need-and add major value to the role of the smartphone, tablet or even thin client that allows for access to information from any location.

So where will iPad find itself in the enterprise?

• Statements such “70% of Fortune 100 companies are evaluating the iPhone” or “20% of companies in the US are evaluating the iPhone”, assume that the iPad is the same as the iPhone. This is questionable as it assumes that users will be enthused by the iPad in the same way as the iPhone, surely flawed logic? The product categories and usage patterns are different in many respects and initial responses appear somewhat underwhelming!
• Why reinvent the wheel? Why should users or businesses substitute their or PCs (notebooks or netbooks) to make way for an iPad, when fully fledged devices are cheaper and supported by massive developer communities and support hundreds of thousands of applications?
• It gives Apple developers yet another device. Write once, deploy on iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad
• What about mobile management? Support for mobile devices (including notebooks) is still not widely deployed and many companies are not even aware of how important this is. In order to ever meet governance and compliance criteria this is still an issue that is a long way from being resolved, irrespective of how devices enter an organisation.

It’s very early to praise or condemn the iPad, or really predict where it will go in the Enterprise, but one thing is for certain-Apple has it’s work cut out to revolutionise the market for tablets in the same way it revolutionised the market for smartphones!

Andrew Brown

The hype and excitement surrounding the Android platform has intensified with the recent release of Google's own handset running the OS, Nexus One. Offering high levels of user-customisation, social networking integration and a 'desktop-like' mobile browsing experience, the device is very attractive to consumers...but is the operating system anywhere close to ready for the Enterprise? Leaving aside the iPhone effect (consumer desire to use their own smartphones within a company) and the need for corporate devices to have some kind of roadmap (RIM BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices offer this to business via carriers), there are still a baseline set of criteria that a platform should meet: An 'Enterprise-ready' operating system should offer the features required by a mobile user as well as conform to the security policy defined by the IT department: Features

• Wireless access to corporate email (usually Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange), contacts and calendar information, ideally updated via 'push' with no user-interaction required. All information exchanges between the device and the server should be secure. Access should preferably be available via both cellular and WiFi connections.
• Support for Virtual Private Networking (VPN) infrastructure enabling access to internal corporate applications and network resources
• Corporate IP PBX support providing free calls over WiFi when in the office between internal extensions, and landline-to-landline call charges for landline numbers.

Corporate Email: At the time of writing, only Android 2.1 features native Exchange support, although only the Nexus One features this version of the OS. HTC-branded Android devices such as the Hero and the Tattoo both already feature HTC's own Exchange client which supports full mailbox synchronisation including subfolders as well as contact-lookup and out of office support. Other third party applications such as Moxier Mail, Nitrodesk's Touchdown and Dataviz's RoadSync are all Exchange ActiveSync licensees, that support baseline Exchange policies VPN support - Android 1.6 (Donut) brought with it support for Virtual Private Networks, including PPTP, L2TP and IPSec protocols as well as certificate authentication. IP PBX/VoIP Support: SIPdroid is a free-to-use VoIP client for the Android platform that can be used to interface with any IP PBX that supports the SIP standard. Security Naturally there are perils to and open source operating systems (besides fragmentation), such as the ability to freely manipulate and exploit vulnerabilities in the platform. How does Android stack-up here?

• Application-sandboxing: In Android all applications must state what hardware resources and file locations they require access to, and only those areas will be permitted by the operating system. It is not possible to alter these once installed without at least requiring approval by the user. This approval is requested during the initial installation and can be viewed at any point within the Applications setting menu.
• Remote Device Wipe - Although part of the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, it is not currently supported on the HTC Exchange client. This is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0. A third party Exchange ActgiveSync solution would be required to enable this functionality. Any device marked for wipe from the Exchange server will not be able to synchronise any new information, but any information held on that device will not be erased.
• password Usage - It is not possible to enforce use of a password on the Android platform using the Exchange ActiveSync policy without a third party application. Again, this is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0 However it is worth noting that Android does support the use of hand gestures as a form of unlocking a device, rather than an alphanumeric password:
• Corporate Usage Policy - It is not possible to remotely enable or disable hardware or software elements on the Android platform at this point, neither does the OS support on-device encryption. However, companies such as Sybase support the Android platform http://www.sybase.co.uk/detail?id=1064587

All in all, Android is nowhere near mature enough yet for a typical business to support Android as a credible platform. Third party providers may be offering the “plumbing”, but there are still a lack of basic enterprise functionality (policy support, password, remote wipe) to make it a credible choice…yet! Andrew Brown

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA