Month: February 2011

Is Microsoft buying Nokia? An analysis of the acquisition endgame

In a surprising move, Nokia and Microsoft decided to enter a strategic relationship for the OEM’s smartphone business. While the marriage appears promising at the outset, Research Director Andreas Constantinou argues that the only way for that marriage to succeed is for Microsoft to acquire Nokia’s smartphone business.

VisionMobile - Nokia & Microsoft deal_pic

The Elop and Ballmer duo on stage on February 11th was the main topic of discussion at this year’s Mobile World Congress. The reverberations of the Microsoft-Nokia announcement were felt even by the huge green robot tucked away at Google’s stand in Hall 8.

Following the news of the Nokia and Microsoft tie-up, Stephen Elop’s appointment to the helm of Nokia seems like an arranged marriage – and one whose best men were the carriers who wanted to avoid an all-out Android coup. It was also a marriage of desperation, which Elop memorably described in his memo as ‘jumping into the unknown’ from the ‘burning platform’ that is Symbian.

A marriage of desperation
Microsoft has been desperate to see its mobile business succeed. After a decade of lacklustre efforts at mobile device sales and severe product delays, Microsoft was getting desperate; it needed to stop the churn of Microsoft users to the Apple ecosystem and plug its $1 billion-a-year operational costs for its mobile phone business. Even having spent most of its $500M marketing budget for WP7 it had only got breadcrumbs in terms of sales, with Microsoft reporting 2 million shipments but no comment on sell-throughs (which leads us to suspect this was not more than 1 million of actual end-user sales).

VisionMobile_Smartphone_Sales_2010_pic

Nokia has been desperate seeing its platform play fail spectacularly in comparison to its newfound competitors; Apple who had amassed a developer ecosystem and operator demand which was second to none, and Android who in 2 short years matched Nokia’s smartphone sales in Q4 2010. MeeGo was trumpeted as the big guns in Nokia’s arsenal in February 2010, but once again Nokia’s software R&D failed to deliver on the promise. More importantly, despite the 10+ acquisitions during 2007-2010, Nokia failed to amass a strong-enough developer and services ecosystem on Symbian, Java or Qt that could compete with Apple or Google. Like Elop said in his now-famous burning platform memo, “our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem”.

It was in an act of desperation that led Nokia to befriend the lesser of two evils in the shape of Microsoft. It is ironic how in mobile the least enemy is a friend, much like how carriers backed Android in 2008-9 to fend off Apple, and backed Microsoft in 2003-5 to fend off Nokia.

The courtship
Despite the surface-level coverage of the Microsoft and Nokia news, not much has been said about the two giants’ courtship and even less on the prenuptial agreement. According to our sources, Nokia asked both Microsoft and Google to bid for its smartphone business, with the help of a small army of McKinsey suits. Following a long negotiation cycle with both parties, Nokia came to a straightforward conclusion; it would back Microsoft who’s total bid equalled more than $1 billion (including patents, licensing fees, marketing support and revenue shares) and not Google who’s bid was about half that. Funny how cash-rich platform vendors are buying their way into the market these days.

Nokia announced its decision to Microsoft and Google on February 9th , only 2 short days before the Ballmer/Elop press conference – which prompted Vic Gundotra to pen the tongue-in-cheek tweet “#feb11 “Two turkeys do not make an Eagle”, scornful of both Nokia and Microsoft.

The last-minute decision meant that Intel heard the news at the very last minute, and in turn had to ask its MeeGo partners on Friday night (Feb 11th) to remove the mention of Nokia from the MeeGo PR quotes going out on the following week at MWC. This is the stuff industry disruptions are made of.

 

A chemistry mismatch
What Nokia announced was not just a marriage; it was a radical change in its business model, from a vertical powerhouse to an assembler – which is what prompted us to question the motivations and the end goal for Elop.

We already knew that Symbian had been demoted to an internal-only OS (see earlier analysis – Symbian is dead, long live Symbian). However we were expecting to see Nokia take a more measured stance; for example using Windows Phone 7 in certain markets (especially in North America where carrier handset subsidies are OS-led) or taking a classic dual-supplier strategy by inking deals with both Microsoft and Google.

Instead Elop presented a terminal picture for Symbian which would be destined to ship on only another 150 million devices until being completely replaced by WP7.  Elop knew that an all-out replacement of Symbian with WP7 would mean haemorrhaging valuable brainpower as the 7,000+ Symbian staff had spent 15 years on the anti-Microsoft camp. These are the decisions made by boards with long-term strategy agendas, who see organisations made up of ‘assets’ and not ‘people’.

Besides the death blow to Symbian, Elop relegated MeeGo to an R&D project with just a single device launch in the horizon, if any at all (which carrier is going to subsidise a platform that’s dead on arrival?). Moreover Qt’s future seems uncertain as it has no place on Windows Phone (Microsoft wouldn’t allow copyleft software to be used with Windows Phone), plus it is too heavy for S40 class devices and MeeGo is too small an addressable market to justify the Qt ongoing investment. Qt (and its 400 thousand developers) need a new home.

Nokia Mobile Devices Net Sales Mix

What appears somewhat suspicious is that Nokia went not for a tactical, but a deep partnership with Microsoft, solidified by the multiple revenue streams exchanged between the two companies, a kind of revenue ‘keiretsu’ that ties the two giants in a longer commitment.

More importantly, the marriage to Nokia’s smartphone business seems like it’s lacking in chemistry. For the last decade, Nokia has operated as a vertical silo, owning and integrating all value elements, from software, UI, industrial design, services, app store and developer ecosystem. That silo has now huge holes punched through so that it can accommodate Microsoft’s horizontal software-licensing business model. This situation is somewhat like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

There are fundamental conflicts here, as both Microsoft and Nokia want to own the developer experience (think APIs, support, tools, developer marketplace, conferences, marketing), and the application discovery and delivery process (think Windows Marketplace vs Ovi Store). This is a chemically unstable mix that won’t survive the test of time. It would be like having Nokia owning Office while Microsoft still runs the Windows business. Yet at the same time Nokia has little value to offer other than design, development, manufacturing and sales of handsets in the picture Elop and Ballmer painted. Something’s not right.

Moreover, Microsoft faces a fundamental customer imbalance on its mobile platform. With such a strong endorsement of Nokia, Microsoft has placed too much favour and device sales expectations on a single vendor.

Microsoft did not only hurt the feelings of HTC, Samsung and LG (previously committed to launching 50! Windows Mobile handsets) with such an imbalanced endorsement. More importantly, with Nokia volumes likely to ramp up fast, Microsoft will have to deal with a single-customer monopoly and end up financing Samsung, LG or HTC towards ramping up Windows Phone production to balance it up. Windows Phone may quickly end up looking like a platform of unbalanced OEM interests – much like Symbian Ltd or Symbian Foundation were – and we know how these panned out.

There are two more troubling clues in the way this ceremony was setup. Despite fundamental changes to the handset business, Elop made no reorganization in the NSN business which is performing at marginal profit (operating margin at only 3.7% vs 11.3% for handsets). As Tomi Ahonen points out, Elop seems to be ready to get rid of NSN. Plus there was no announcement of Ovi plans or clear strategic guidance with regards to the Nokia services business.

 

The acquisition scenario
There have been earlier rumours of acquisition discussions between the two companies. We now believe that the only scenario for the Nokia and Microsoft partnership to succeed is an acquisition scenario; Microsoft buys Nokia’s smartphone business, while Nokia gets more resource to play with what it does best – that is creating mass-market phones at unbeatable levels of supply chain efficiency, unmatched supplier bargaining power and customisation to 100s of variants per handset model for distribution to diverse global regions, channels, carriers and retailers.

From a financial standpoint, Microsoft capitalisation stands at $220B, more than six times Nokia’s market cap of $33B at the time of writing. Microsoft would also acquire a high-profit margin business that would go a long way in helping the Redmond giant push its Entertainment and Devices division at high profitability levels for the first time. Despite Microsoft being a software business, it has experience in running hardware products, with the Xbox business doing well recently on strong Kinect sales.

For Nokia, a joint venture would make more sense than a pure sale of its smartphone business, given that the hardware giant is an important component of the Finnish economy. It would allow Nokia to focus on what it does best and substantially increase its S40 R&D budget (as Elop already announced it would) to rework its aging feature-phone OS. A joint venture would also allow Nokia to make a comeback when they are ready to take on the high-end phone market again.

Besides, with shares recently hitting a 13-year low and Nokia being owned by American institutional investors, the Nokia board has little they can do in the face of potential suitors. This makes Nokia a very interesting acquisition target, not just for Microsoft but for anyone with cash at hand and mobile ambitions, including Chinese, Korean and Japanese suitors.

The acquisition scenario would allow Microsoft to leverage on Nokia’s accounts with carriers across the world to woo them into moving subsidy budgets from Android into WP7. This is all too important, as the Microsoft brand enjoys little consumer awareness compared to Apple and Android, meaning that Microsoft is more dependent on carrier subsidy and marketing budgets than its nearest competitors.

Fundamentally, we believe there is no place for Nokia, an all-in-one integrated handset OEM and services company, in the new telecoms value chain. The old guard of top-5 OEMs are squeezed between leaders (Apple, RIM) who lead in terms of performance & profits, and assemblers (Huawei, ZTE, Dell, Acer) who lead in terms of me-too designs & razor-thin margins (see our earlier analysis on the evolution of the handset value pyramid). Nokia’s business needs to break-up into independent, self-sustained entities, particularly the smartphone business (within Microsoft’s new home) and the mobile phone business as an independent entity that can focus on competing with PC-borne assemblers.

The Microsoft-Nokia acquisition might not have been planned from the outset, but it is a scenario whose viability has been ensured from the outset. There are no conspiracy theories here, except that Elop (as the 7th biggest shareholder of Microsoft) would benefit greatly from trading Microsoft shares with Nokia ones, only to see them boost in value after being repatriated.

Let the debate begin!

– Andreas
you should follow me on Twitter: @andreascon

Andreas Constantinou is Research Director at VisionMobile and has been working in the mobile software industry since 2001, when he fondly recalls being a member of the team behind the very first Orange-Microsoft handsets which set the world of telecoms software in motion.

One cuckoo, two turkeys and three horses; how the mobile race has changed

[How do Nokia’s options look in a post-Microsoft and Google world? Why does Google’s strategy with Android resemble a cuckoo’s routine practice of planting its eggs on other birds’ nests? Guest author Delius Observer examines the similes and shows just how much nature has to teach us]

One cuckoo, two turkeys and three horses; how the mobile race has changed

Vic Goduntra, a vice president of engineering at Google, recently tweeted that “two turkeys don’t make an eagle”, echoing an earlier comment made several years ago by a Nokia executive about Siemens and BenQ merging their mobile units. His snipe, was a cheep, premature call as Nokia gets rescued from those icy Atlantic waters by the rich, (white) knight in shining armour. However, in chirping away, Vic would also have known that Nokia’s only other choice to escape from the burning platform would have meant succumbing to Google’s Androidian Cuckoo Strategy, and that would have been a lot worse. What just happened between Nokia and Microsoft should be a wake-up call for the mobile industry.

Google’s Androidian Cuckoo Strategy
 The cuckoo, which at first glance has the appearance of a glamorous, aspiring bird of prey, is in fact a brood parasite – a cunning species that lays its egg in another bird’s nest and, in doing so, tricks the host to raise the chick as their own.

In one fell swoop, the cuckoo will turf out one of the host’s own eggs and slyly lay one of its own. Sitting cosily under the warm breast of the host, the parasitic cuckoo egg incubates and then hatches – a little earlier than the rest, naturally. With the egg’s kernel breaking through the shell, its natural reflex is then to immediately dislodge the other eggs from the nest – a well-designed, dominant, first mover advantage. In doing so, it quickly becomes the only chick left resident. Now at the exclusive beck and call of its foster parents, it has the sole monopoly on food supply and attention. The young cuckoo quickly fledges, and rapidly leaves the foster nest in record time. And so it continues, with the cuckoo returning again the next season.

This story should be a familiar one, as it is a story that is playing out across the globe where the poor unknowing parents think they are delivering their own beautiful offspring, but are instead just acting as surrogate hosts to a far grander plan. Cuckoos are, as the BBC’s ‘countryfile’ website states: “nature’s hustlers, cheats that have perfected the ultimate long con”.

This is the story of Google’s Androidian Cuckoo Strategy and the handset manufacturers who play surrogate host in order to raise Google’s young Andricks. Google started this strategy by designing an ecosystem that it cunningly called “open”. Of course, because the offspring’s eggs are delivered out in the open air, many have drunk the deceptively refreshing ‘Kool Aid’ of “open”. The real story, however, is a far subtler affair. Whilst the egg and bird may be open and free, the point of conception is still very much done on a private branch, with the DNA of the next egg always a closely guarded secret – even to those inside the fuzzy ecosystem.

“Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me”, says one new Gingerbread fledgling, as the other birds look on, green with envy, wondering why their offspring have been Froyo’d.

The many handset manufacturers that have joined the Google flock are hoodwinked – and they’re all now singing the same repetitive, robot-like call. Now the birds are just the servants of the dominant master cuckoo. Of course, Androidian Cuckoos have ruthlessly quick development cycles and the Andricks are out of the door in no time, but in doing so, the process sucks most of the energy out of each foster parent. Meanwhile, danger lurks in the grasses as the mighty Oracle hisses over the heart of the cuckoo’s Harmonious virtual machine.

Whilst a few birds are today flying high, others are bewildered and disoriented, trying to work out what exactly is going on. For some it will end in pathetic, dismal fatality. But, a few will no doubt adapt their defenses to overcome the parasite in more imaginative pathways to survival. For, as Dr Nicholas Davies of the University of Cambridge states, with cuckoos “over evolutionary time, the hosts fight back so that the poor cuckoo has to work incredibly hard to be lazy, simply because it has to overcome all of these defences. What we witness is a fantastic arms race between parasite and host.”

And what of Google’s proverbial ‘don’t be evil’? Nicolas continues: “So, we know how the cuckoo pulls off its dastardly plan, but still haven’t answered the question of why. Is it a cruel or evil bird? Of course not; this is just nature at work, and perhaps one of the best examples of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. The arms race will continue with both sides evolving to protect themselves or deceive the other, but our fascination with the cuckoo will remain. After all, everyone loves a rogue.”

Indeed we do, and the rogue’s quip about turkeys was typical of its scheming behaviour. From a mountain view they look down and think one should aspire to be eagles, when what they should really be doing is taking a long, hard look in the mirror and owning up to the mobile industry that they are in fact nothing but a conniving cuckoo – albeit a successful one.

Microsoft + Nokia: running with four legs
In the past few months Nokia realised that in order to halt its slide towards irrelevance, it had to take its head out of the sand and instead take a leap of faith. The brave gamble that Nokia has now chosen is perhaps not the ideal one, but it was the only strategy available for long-term survival and is a bold rejection of the short-termism demanded by short-sighted investors in accepting the call of the cuckoo. In tying Nokia and Microsoft together they have created a rather old-fashioned type of partnership but it will be a partnership of bones not a collection of feathers.

Have no doubt about it, Nokia is “all in” with Microsoft and, yes Vic, four legs are indeed better than two to compete in this race. The trick will be to rapidly get those legs working together, and come up with a pedigree that can run the course. Can they do it?

The jury is currently out and they need to move exceptionally fast. They need to accomplish two feats rapidly; prove the financials and fix the developer message.

Step one is to actually sign the agreement and rapidly prove to both the investment community and the wider ecosystem that they can make the financials work. Indeed, it seems that perhaps one of the reasons why the Capital Markets Day felt like a damp squid, was not because Mr. Elop couldn’t sell the story to investors, but because the guy he’s negotiating the finer details with was sitting right next to him. A complex partnership like this will take time to put together with details of licensing costs, patent portfolios, split revenue shares on search, advertising and mapping as well as marketing contributions, let alone Nokia’s own complex reduction in costs associated with substantial redundancies and the reductions in OPEX that are needed.

The other thing to fix is the confused developer message. One thing that I had expected to hear on Friday was that Qt would run on Windows Phone. In hindsight, however, perhaps this doesn’t make sense. Qt is a fantastic technology but, like many others, it hasn’t reached critical mass. What is needed in this battle of ecosystems is a huge ‘network of externalities’, with a wide range of designer and developer tools. Only with Microsoft do you get that. It is all the more puzzling that Nokia didn’t go ‘all in’ from a developer perspective and instead chose to play coy. In choosing Microsoft tools for Windows Phones and Qt for Symbian and MeeGo, it has created yet another confused message for developers. Developers cannot get economies of scope by using Qt for some dying platforms and Microsoft for others. Nokia must be more courageous. Dust off the old Microsoft Silverlight agreement and get that environment up and running again on Symbian and Series 40 as a stopgap over the long harvest season. This will create the bold message developers urgently need. In this battle of ecosystems Nokia’s strategy cannot afford to be half-cocked.

What lies ahead
As we look ahead to the coming weeks and months, here are a few predictions:-

• Nokia is able to get Windows Phones out the door in record time, taking advantage of Microsoft’s Chassis Specification, a strategy which follows the tight, vertical integration of Apple’s iPhone without the overheads. Whatever the perception, it’s faster to build a Windows Phone from scratch than a cuckoo because of the chassis design.

• There will be an increase in the use of patents to fight the cuckoo club and the almighty Apple. However, Nokia’s earlier Symbian and MeeGo open source strategies may well come home to roost, as they gave away core assets which many vultures will circle around.

• Nokia competes well in the next billion market by using the lower cost base of an enhanced Series 40 platform and creating a smartphone-like experience in the sub $75 market.

• In the long-term, Nokia will realise that there is no division between smartphones and mass-market phones, and will combine those two groups together.

• Members of the cuckoo club finally realise their long-term future only lies in commoditisation and they seek to either combine with other cuckoos for short term economy of scale, or search for the assets that enable them to co-exist profitably with the parasite.

• Someone writes a loving obituary for the truly open, benevolent and well-meaning MeeGo; bless it. RIP. No doubt a resurrection under a different name will happen at a later date.

A three-horse race
Nokia emphasised during its Capital Market Day that the smartphone business is now a three horse race. As things stand, that looks like wishful thinking. But if Nokia and Microsoft can execute with incredible speed and agility in the coming months (and it’s only months they have), then they’ve a shot at getting a thoroughbred in the running.

So which horses do Google, Nokia and Apple have in the line up?

Seabiscuit – the real Trojan horse of the race, full of cuckoos. This one’s been leaving fragmented crumbs all over the place but is currently the bookies’ favourite. This is a wild one for sure! It’s been a fast sprinter but will need to be careful it doesn’t split in two or get strained on the third furlong by its supporters pulling out.

Northern Dancer – the dark horse in the race with the odds currently against it. It will use the Seattle based white knight to give it the extra feet needed and use a range of betting operators to increase its odds. With thoroughbred development tools, attached to a large existing ecosystem, it now has the combined power for survival. It will need to ensure that its more old-fashioned, deep partnership style has the staying power and agility. They have a lot of catching up to do, but don’t write this horse off just yet!

Pegasus – the last horse is not just easy on the eye but is also nothing short of magical. Not only does this white horse have a vertically integrated set of four legs, but it also has wings too and is riding high. This one can’t put a foot wrong. But the dynamics are changing, and how long it can remain so high and mighty remains to be seen.

How the mobile race plays out in the months and years to come depends upon how the various parts of each ecosystem and the punters place their bets.

But, whatever happens, just beware of the cuckoo.

– Delius

[Delius Observer is a pseudonym and can be reached at deliusobserver@gmail.com]

The Android Monopoly and how to harness it

[Behind Android’s stellar success is a love and hate relationship with handset vendors. Android is a critical launchpad for PC-borne OEMs like Dell and Acer, but a short-term life support for mobile vendor incumbents like Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Research Director Andreas Constantinou looks at how OEMs can leverage on virtualisation to get the best of both worlds with Android; the burgeoning app ecosystem, but without Google’s lock down of experience differentiation]

VisionMobile blog - The Android Monopoly and how to harness it

From an underdog to ubiquitous manufacturer support, the Android platform has come a long way since its introduction in 2008. Almost every single device vendor (except for Apple and Nokia) has launched Android devices, while Sony Ericsson and Motorola are betting their margins and future on it.  The phenomenal rally behind Android is – in a nutshell – due to 4 factors: the operator demand for a cheaper iPhone, the burgeoning Android developer community, Android’s market readiness (3 months to launch a new handset) and the ability to differentiate on top of the platform.

A monopolist on the rise?
Year after year, Android keeps on surprising industry pundits. Google’s software platform saw 100% quarter-on-quarter increase in the first 3 quarters of 2010. The last quarter of 2010 saw Android go chest-to-chest with Nokia in terms of smartphone shipments, in what CEO Stephen Elop called ‘unbelievable’. With such meteoric rise, analysts are beginning to talk about a potential Android monopoly in the future market of smartphones, contested only by the Nokia-backed Windows Phone.

The Google commoditization endgame
Is Google the biggest benefactor the industry has seen? Not by a long way.

Google runs a hugely successful advertising business and needs to bring as many eyeballs as it can onto its ad network. To this end, Google’s agenda is to commoditise handsets by forcing smartphone prices down (see our analysis on the $100 Android phone) and having its ad network deployed on the broadest possible number of smartphones (via closed apps like GMaps and Gmail).
Moreover, Google’s agenda is to commoditise mobile networks by flattening the mobile termination barriers and removing volume-based price plans that telcos have traditionally built.
At a 10,000 ft level, Google’s strategy is based on deceptively simple microeconomics principle; to drive up the value of its core business (ad network) it needs to commoditise the complements (devices, networks and browsers).

Android as the centre of a 5-sided network

Naturally Google is hermetically closed in all aspects of its core business. The Android Market, GMaps, Gmail, GTalk are ‘closed source’ and the Android trademark is commercially licensed. This means that while Android is open source, Google uses the Android Market and trademark to enforce strict compliance of Android handsets to Google’s CDD and CTS specifications. See our earlier analysis on Android’s hidden control points for how Google runs the show.

So Google is by no means a benevolent benefactor. Like any other company out there, it’s in it for the money; a rationally-driven business of the platform era, out to commoditise the mobile handset business with a free-for-all carrot.

Winners and losers of the Android game
For handset manufacturers, Android is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it offers OEMs a low-cost-base, rapid time-to-market platform from which to build differentiated designs. This is manna from heaven for PC-borne assemblers who use Android as the pier from where they can gain firstly a foothold in mobile and secondly global reach.

At the same time it’s a curse; Google’s control of Android compliance means that it deprives OEMs of all points of differentiation: user interface, hardware features and industrial design – except for (you guessed it!) price. Which means that with Google defining the Android experience, there’s little differentiating a Sony Ericsson handset from an Acer handset. With Acer happily operating at 3% profit margins, Android is to Motorola and Sony Ericsson just a short-term life support.

OEM + Android - Winners & Losers

Nokia too evaluated Android before hoping on an strategic partnership with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7. As Stephen Elop said during the press conference with Steve Ballmer, “we assessed Android […] but the commoditisation risk is very high”. In sight a potential Android monopoly threat operators, too and getting wary of over-supporting Android.

 

 

Best of both worlds
Confronted with Android’s two-faced agenda, major handset vendors have been apparently plotting how can they get the best of both worlds; the burgeoning apps ecosystem but without the Google’s control of the user experience. Three approaches have emerged.

1. The Do-it-yourself approach: By virtue of the open source (APL2) license, any handset vendor can take the public Android codebase, branch it, tweak it and deploy it on handsets. China Mobile has commissioned Borqs to develop the oPhone spin-off while Sharp has released handsets based on the Tapas spin-off also for the Chinese market. However, branching Android means that you miss out on the 130,000+ Android apps as Google won’t give you access to their app distribution system – which is ok if you ‘re targeting China, but unacceptable if you ‘re targeting any other region. Moreover, the Google Android codebase moves faster than any other platform (5 new versions within the space of 12 months) meaning that it’s near impossible to maintain feature parity in Android spin-offs – the same reason why Nokia publically regretted forking WebKit in the past. Lack of feature parity means that an Android spin-off would breaks the developer story and stays behind the competition of Android Experience and Partner phones.

2. The virtual machine approach: Myriad announced Alien Dalvik , a solution it claims can run Android apps on non-Android handsets, including on Maemo.  Alien Dalvik is a Java SE virtual machine designed in Zurich and China by the same ex-Esmertec guys who started off the OHA consortium. Myriad has released a demo of Alien which however hides the real issues behind a pure virtual machine approach: the lack of 100% API compatibility and most importantly access to the distribution of 130,000 apps available through Google’s Android Market.

3. The Virtualisation approach: the third and most promising approach is to run a complete replica of the Android platform within an isolated, ‘virtual’ container using mobile virtualisation technology (from Red Bend, OK Labs or VMWare – see our earlier analysis of virtualisation technologies). The virtualisation approach offers a sandboxed, complete version of Android (including the apps ecosystem) which co-habits the same handset as the OEM-specific core UI and applications. Virtualisation technology is mainstream in cloud and enterprise, but applied only in a limited context in mobile to reduce hardware costs or run enterprise micro-environments (the type Barack Obama enjoys in his virtualized BlackBerry cellphone).

The real opportunity with virtualisation is to deliver the best of both worlds for handset OEMs who want to leverage the 130,000+ apps ecosystem, but maintain their own apps experience and signature user interface. A virtualized Android co-inhabiting with the native app experience (think S40, Symbian, QNX, BlackBerry OS 6, Web OS, or Bada) would allow OEMs to resist commoditization while having ample degrees of freedom to differentiate.

The question is: will Google allow OEMs access to the Android Market and the Android trademark when the platform is run within a virtualized shell?

Such an approach would allow Sony Ericsson, Motorola, RIM, HP and the others not to compete against Android and neither to surrender to Android – but to leverage Google’s network effects and harness the Android innovation wave.

Comments welcome as always,

– Andreas
you should follow me on Twitter: @andreascon

Mobile Megatrends 2011

[We ‘re excited to release our fourth annual Mobile Megatrends 2011 – themed around what else? how software is fundamentally changing the telecoms value chain. In this fourth annual research presentation we take a deep dive into the many facets of change in the mobile industry; the DELL-ification of mobile, the battle for experience ecosystems, apps as web 3.0, the use of open + closed strategies to commodise + protect and how telcos can compete in the age of software.]

After many months in the making, we ‘ve released our annual Mobile Megatrends 2011. It’s our fourth and biggest Megatrends research we ‘ve published to date featuring 68 juicy slides with detailed analysis on the future of mobile.

[slideshare id=6863232&doc=mobilemegatrends2011visionmobile-110209095522-phpapp01]

(want more? Contact us to schedule an on-site Megatrends workshop)

We take a deep dive into how software economics is fundamentally changing the telecoms value chain setting new rules for innovation. We ‘ve broken down the 2011 Megatrends into 8 core themes:

[poll id=”12″]

1. The DELL-ification of mobile: The world of handset OEMs has been irreversibly changed by software and Internet players. All traditional top-5 OEMs (from Nokia to Motorola) that used to enjoy a combined 80% market share in 2008 are now reduced to below 60%, while Internet players are reaping the majority of industry profits and market growth. The OEM market now seems destined to match the shape of the PC manufacturer market, made up of price-led assemblers (Dell, Asus) and performance-led leaders (Apple). For the old guard of top-5 OEMs, the race is on to innovate or die.

2. Software: the new era for telecoms: Besides Android and iOS headline grabbers, more than 30 software platforms have risen and (mostly) fallen in the last decade; Lesson learned: big bucks and software DNA are critical success ingredients for software platforms. The 10 or so remaining software platforms are battling for mass-market smartphone reach below the $100 retail price barrier. At the same time, every major industry player – from telcos to facebook – are striving to grow their own ecosystem, spanning from UI to social networks. However, in the software era of telecoms, not everyone is born equal. Speed of innovation, addressable consumer income and access to a partner ecosystem are all home turf for Internet players, while telecoms incumbents (from Nokia to Vodafone) are taking small, naïve steps. The new rules are: if you can’t innovate in software, you will be replaced sooner than later.

3. The battle for Experience Ecosystems. Convergence between telecoms, PC and Internet has long been talked about. But it’s not about the all-in-one all-powerful smartphone. Convergence is proving to be not about technology, but about experience convergence; how the user experience can ‘roam’ from one screen to the next (phone, PC, TV, mp3 player, etc). Apple is the poster child of experience roaming by consistently integrating the key experience ingredients – from UI and industrial design to an apps ecosystem – across multiple screens. The next battle in mobile is to build experience ecosystems which create user lock-in and cross-sales – and therefore present a sustainable strategy for both handset vendors and telcos to survive commoditisation pressures.

4. Apps are the new web. Everyone wants to compete with their own app store these days, but only a handful of app stores are above the developer radar. Why is creating an app store so hard? Because a successful app store needs 5 unique ‘genes’ from 5 different ‘species’ across the value chain. And thanks to app stores, apps succeed where the web failed; in discovery, personalization and monetization. Apps are in fact a new information paradigm, which the web is adopting. Supported by web benefactors and technology commoditization, web is becoming mainstream application development platform, in what could be could termed the web 3.0.

5. Open + closed: two sides of the same coin. Android took the mobile world by surprise when it launched a free-for-all software platform. But like Qt, MeeGo, WebKit and many other open source projects, ‘open’ is only the tip of the iceberg, since Google et al are using closed governance models to control the direction of the product. Besides open source, ‘openness’ is used as a business strategy to commoditise product complements while closing off other products to protect core assets; in Google’s case commoditizing handset and networks while protecting its own ad network.

6. Developers, the engine behind telecoms innovation. Mobile software developers have come a long way, from back office engineers to front row success stories. However the mobile developer market is still in its infancy. We present a novel way of looking at the developer journey and reveal how most commercial products cater to just a narrow section of that journey, with opportunities abound for catering to the needs and wants of telecom’s innovation engine.

7. Communities: the new currency. Communities are the new frontier for differentiation in the mobile industry. Everyone has tried creating their own communities – from Nokia to Vodafone – but only companies with social DNA have succeeded. Why is that? while you can buy an audience (eyeballs or subscribers), you can’t buy a community (the user interactions). Building a community is a form of art where tools and techniques are being explored, from game mechanics to religion engineering. One thing is certain; that communities are now a core asset in customer attraction and are expanding into communication networks and handsets, with Facebook leading the way.

8. Telcos: stuck in the telecoms age. Telcos are in the midst of an identity crisis and losing control point after control point – location, discovery, billing and authentication – while having no innovation to show in their core voice and messaging business. Yet the real value of telcos is still untapped with micro-billing, customer insights and retailing channels gone largely unexplored. We present 8 novel strategies for telcos and argue why WAC (the telcos’ answer to competing in the software age) is repeating history mistakes and is ultimately misguided.

Want to dive deeper into how software is fundamentally changing the mobile value chain? Contact us to schedule an on-site Megatrends workshop.

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Comments welcome!

– Andreas
follow me on twitter: @andreascon