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Connected Services - Industry
Analysis
January 19, 2009
by: Tony De Ruvo
for: Gogobeans Product Marketing
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
1
The Basics 4
Market Positioning 5
Nokia’s OVI 6
Apple’s Mobile Me 8
Vodafone 360 9
Functional Comparison 10
Photos 10
Calendar 13
Contacts 14
Bookmarks 15
Privacy 15
Files 19
Folder Support 19
Maps 20
Social Networking 20
Music 21
Bookmarks 22
Notes 22
Handset Support 23
Nokia 24
Apple Mobile Me 24
Executive Summary
The mobile industry is getting very exciting these days. There’s a pronounced shift to apply “cloud computing”
advantages in the mobile space. Carriers, device manufacturers and Internet giants around the world are scrambling to
deploy the next generation of service directly to the mobile phone.
• Data usage and data plans are becoming the next big ARPU lift for carriers
• Thanks to iPhone deployment in major markets, flat rate data plans are a reality in some markets and will soon
become a reality in lagging markets
• The advancement and competitive pressures in the handset manufacturing space will see an increasing trend towards
powerful handsets. Customers are looking at their friends with iPhones and are wanting to have the same rich Internet
experience.
SMS was the mobile’s exclusive domain and email was exclusive to the PC world. The next wave was around Instant
messaging. Instant messaging’s popularity was mainly due to real time interaction and presence that Email and SMS
didn’t have. The next wave brought us Social Networking. Social networking facilitated sharing with your social circle
which IM/Email/SMS didn’t have. The next wave is upon us with initial deployments on carrier like Vodafone and OEMs
like Nokia and Apple. Connected Services will add a new layer of access, managing and selectively socializing your
personal digital life (more than just photos, but documents, favorite ebook, that movie you just bought, etc). Each way
has built on the previous wave and has garnered more users and more revenue.
• customer relationship - device makers have made huge investments in the connected services space in an effort to
catch the next wave and transition to mobile internet based services to complement their hardware. Nokia for example
has invested well over $1B in building OVI platform. As a result subscribers are potentially building a stronger
relationship with device manufacturers as opposed to carriers. After all, subscribing to Nokia OVI (and paying for the
service over the Internet), a user can pretty much change carrier with no loss of service.
• churn reduction - facilitating access to a subscriber’s personal digital life puts the provider in a very unique position -
that is being the “gatekeeper”. The investment commitments made by major players like Apple, Nokia and Vodafone
are directly correlated to the stickiness inherent with connected services. As subscribers accumulate their digital assets
with a service, it becomes increasingly difficult to shift to another competing service. As an example, a Nokia OVI
subscriber will have a difficult time transferring gigabytes of data to a competing service like Mobile Me - simply too
painful.
This analysis will cover the leading services that are starting to be deployed by industry heavy weights;
• Nokia OVI
• Apple’s MobileMe
• Vodafone 360
Legend:
Apple
Functions Gogobeans Mobile Me Vo d a f o n e 3 6 0 Nokia OVI
Photos x x x x
Social Networking x p p
Status notification x p
Bookmarks x x
Notes x x
Widgets x
Productivity Applications
Apple
Functions Gogobeans Mobile Me Vo d a f o n e 3 6 0 Nokia OVI
Calendar p x x
Contacts x x x x
Email p x x x
Files x x x
Carrier Environment
Apple
Functions Gogobeans Mobile Me Vo d a f o n e 3 6 0 Nokia OVI
White Label x
Remote wipe p x
Marketplace p x x x
Developer Environment
Apple
Functions Gogobeans Mobile Me Vo d a f o n e 3 6 0 Nokia OVI
The Basics
The common thread of the next generation of “connected” services revolve around the idea of users accessing portions
of their personal digital content, access to social networks and access to digital content like music, applications, etc.
Connected services are being deployed by both mobile players as well as Internet players. Some of the biggest
companies in the world are investing in the mobile-web Connected Services space. The four major players in the mobile
space have started deploying - Nokia, Apple, Vodafone and Google.
The biggest companies in the mobile ecosystem are investing billions in the mobile-web Connected Services space, or
the software and synchronization services to connect and deliver innovative user experiences on the phone, web and
PC, in an effort to build direct relationships with customers.
There are major global trends that are driving the new crop of connected services in the mobile space:
• Smartphone shipment and adoption has taken off in a big way - beating all market expectations from a few years ago.
Apple’s iPhone has changed market perception of what a mobile phone is capable of doing. Users around the world
are now expecting mobile phones to do more than just make “voice and text” calls.
• Smartphones are becoming as powerful as personal computers where just 5 short years ago.
• Flat rate and lower cost data plans are occurring in most mature markets around the world. While it has taken over 20
years for the mobile industry to move towards flat rate calling plans - it has only taken 5 years for unlimited data plans
to show up.
• Fierce competition in both the wireless carrier and OEM space. Both these key segments in the mobile value chain are
experiencing fierce competition both internally (with like competitors) and externally (with large Internet media
conglomerates). Connected services is seen as a way to effectively “lock” in existing customers and increase barriers
to exit.
Market Positioning
This section will deal with overall positioning of competing connected service in the marketplace. This whitepaper
measures two key metrics to a winner connected service:
• number of supported devices: The hallmark of a great connected service is the ability to deliver that service on as
many devices as possible. This offers the most flexibility to the end user - thus making it useful.
• number of supported applications: Connected services should have the ability to adapt and be flexible enough to offer
as many services as possible.
Nokia’s OVI
Pro’s
• synchronization tools is very effective, giving customers on the phone access to some digital assets (like photos and
contacts) in the event of no connection to the Internet.
• wide breadth of “mobile” specific applications like maps on the go.
Con’s
Apple’s Mobile Me
Everything in sync, Anywhere you are
Pro’s
Con’s
• Mobile Me works only on iPhones and iPod Touch units - doesn’t port to any other Smartphone platform
• Support for only 6 applications - photos, calendar, contacts, files, email and bookmarks
• No provisions for social networking - either home grown or popular social networks like Facebook
• No software development kit to allow design and deployment of new connected services applications
Vodafone 360
Bringing your world together
When users tap into a contact, they’re offered options to call, text, email, instant message and location nudge – through
which they can broadcast their location to selected contacts.
Vodafone’s long term strategy for this product offering is two fold - (i) customer retention and (ii) trojan horse to attract
customers from competitive networks. The open nature of the service means that an O2 user, for example, could
communicate with contacts through the Vodafone service and buy applications from Vodafone’s new app store (also
announced under the 360 umbrella) virtually at the touch of a button.
Asked if ‘360’ would be used as a ‘trojan horse’ to take revenue from rival operators, Pieter Knook, director of internet
services, replied: ‘Yes, you could certainly say that.’ 1
Knook also emphasized that 360 is a tool to improve customer retention in the face of competition from Apple, Google
and Nokia Ovi.
Pro’s
• Connected address book allows instant updates of friends changing contact details
• Synchronization with phone address book (available on Samsung’s H1 only - with plans to expand to other handsets)
• Can be used by customers that are not Vodafone 360 users (i.e. users from competing wireless networks)
Con’s
Functional Comparison
Photos
Photo uploading and sharing is common to all services.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Upload photos from PC x x x x
Upload photos from x x p
mobile
Share via email x x x x
Share via connected x
friends
Photo Albums x x x x
Location tagging x x p
Public rating x
File attachments (add x
more digital assets to
albums)
Privacy levels 2 (public, private) 2 (public, private) 2 (public, private) 4 (public,
network, friends,
private)
Calendar
Two connected services have chosen to deploy calendar native applications - Nokia and Apple. Apple has the advantage
in that they have a large installed base of users using iCal on their Macs. Nokia on the other hand has no real installed PC
user base and must rely on users using the native application directly on the mobile phone (it is not clear if this is a large
number of users). Apple also has the advantage of using a relatively open calendar standard called iCalendar.
Gogobeans has opted for a much more open approach to the Calendar function - namely using mobile web calendars
like Google, Microsoft web calendar and a whole host of popular web 2.0 online calendars. This offers the maximum
flexibility to end users that must manage not only their calendars but that of friends and colleagues.
We feel that having “yet another” calendar application is the last thing the market needs. In fact studies show that the
greatest barrier to calendar usage on mobile phones is that users don’t want another calendar app to manage. Further,
the trend is to share calendar information amongst friends and colleagues. Gogobeans allows users to get easy access
to many different types of calendars from the same interface.
Contacts
Standard feature of all connected services with Vodafone 360 using the address book as the principle function of which
all the other features revolve around.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Contact entries x x x x
Socially connected x
contacts
Import from popular x
services
Gogobeans has implemented the address book in a unique fashion. Gogobeans platform allows the following enhanced
contact features:
• Users can create individual contacts entry into the principal address book that is accessible across any connected
device
• Users that connect to their friends on the Gogobeans platform enjoy the latest updated contact information
• Import existing contact information from popular services like Hotmail, Yahoo Address Book and Gmail (with duplicate
block function)
• Import contact information from standardized CSV file (great for large databases).
Bookmarks
So much of our lives revolve around websites we find important - like personal banking sites, airline schedules, etc.
Gogobeans has a unique product offering allowing our users the ability to save all their bookmarks in one place - on the
cloud. In fact our users find this function one of the most useful of the service - saving thousands of websites for easy
access while on a mobile phone.
This feature should not be underestimated - it’s quite difficult to type website URLs into a 12-key mobile phone. Further,
searching through a large list in the mobile phone’s browser bookmark list. Users’ increased usage of Internet services
and the need to have it bookmarked on a mobile phone is becoming an important feature in the future.
Gogobeans uses the latest in Java bookmarklet software (compatible with all popular PC based browsers like Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome). Users simply drag and drop the “BeanIt” bookmarklet on their browser’s toolbar.
Any web page they surf to they can simply one-click on BeanIt save it to their personal account in the cloud. Once it’s in
the cloud it becomes instantly available on any mobile phone.
Privacy
The trend towards cloud computing comes with the ability to access personal information anytime and on any device as
well as opening up new ways for “data” to interact and collaborate. This opens up issues around privacy and security.
Gogobeans is the only connected service in the marketplace that adds two new levels of privacy settings.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Private x x x x
Public x x x x
Members only x
Connected Friends only x
(VIP)
All of the digital assets have four privacy settings ensuring the maximum flexibility for our users.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Messaging - Internal mail x
POP/IMAP support x x x
branded email address x x x
Status Updating/Twitter x x
like feature
With the exception of Gogobeans, all other connected services have deployed branded email service (i.e. xyz@me.com,
xyz@ovi.com and xyz@vodafone360.com), as well as supporting native clients to manage external email services like
Gmail, Yahoo, etc. In the case of Apple, Exchange Email service is also supported.
Gogobeans has not launched comparable email applications and is presently planning to deploy comparable services in
the near future. We deem POP/IMAP support to be important in order to round out our messaging service offering.
Gogobeans views branded email applications (i.e. xyz@gogobeans.com) as a very low priority because;
• what the world doesn’t need is “another” email service. There are plenty of popular and ubiquitous email services and
we feel that adoption rates for xyz@gogobeans.com will be very low
• user behavior dictates that providing seamless integration to existing mega services like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.
This feature is in the pipeline and is currently undergoing testing.
• This type of messaging ensures that there is no spam or phishing in the inbox. Only your trusted and connected
friends can view and respond
• Ideal for communications within a corporate team where there is no chance of mail messages being forwarded outside
the internal communication channels
• Ideal for consumers that are want a light mobile experience without the need to open a dedicated mail client and want
to simply message friends or groups of friends.
• Interface shows mail messages in two locations - via the “Inbox” bean which looks similar to a traditional email list or
viewed as a time-based sequential conversation between friends.
Our mobile interface ensures that every WAP enabled mobile phone will be able to enjoy the benefits of “mail messaging”
amongst connected friends.
Files
The cornerstone of connecting to your digital life is the ability to store and share files - after all files are an important
component of user’s digital assets. Vodafone 360 has opted out of digital storage primarily because the 360 philosophy
is built around social communications (i.e. the connected address book) and not digital life as with the other services. The
other reason might be that Vodafone has recently signed an agreement (Oct. 2009) with a 3rd party cloud provider called
Mozy.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
file upload - browser x x x
file upload - PC client x x
backup/storage 3rd party
sync with device x x
folder support x
Folder Support
The only service that supports sharing (or bouncing) folders with literally unlimited files is Gogobeans. With our interface,
members simply create a folder (or alternatively any digital asset) and then simply drag and drop files into the folder. From
there its a one click process to share with connected friends and anyone with an email address. In fact like all other
digital beans, all four privacy settings are available on a folder by folder basis. What’s more, every file in the folder can
have different privacy settings apart from the folder ensuring the maximum flexibility.
Maps
Maps and GPS support is directly supported by Nokia and Vodafone. Apple has partnered with Google Maps to deliver
an integrated experience via an application. Nokia has invested $8.1B (US) to buy NavTeq and has since integrated the
functionality with it’s OVI offering.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
GPS enabled x 3rd Party x
Voice guidance x x
Social Networking
Gogobeans is the only service in the competitive mix that has an integrated social networking engine very similar in
feature to popular SNs like Facebook.
• members have to invite each other and connect to each other to share private information much like Facebook
• support for a News Feed like service called Gogo Buzz. With this, members log on and can view in a list format what
other connected friends are doing (only if what they’re doing is designated as “public”).
• Gogobeans social networking module can be easily integrated with existing application store or informational portals.
This will encourage content discovery in a way that’s simply not available today anywhere. For instance member “A”
buys a mobile Golf game, this activity is listed on member “A” friends News Feeds. As member “A” friends log on they
will see that a Golf game has been purchased and can decide if they want to buy it as well - essentially the best referral
is from a friend.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Socially connected to x partial
popular networks
Ability to “connect” with x
trusted friends
News feeds of network x
activity
Popular social networks will be the preferred way most users will interact or “socialize” with each other. Gogobeans
doesn’t aim to replace this behavior, in fact it would be impossible. Rather, the Gogobeans platform can be considered
more of a “anti” social network in that all digital assets are never displayed to outsiders or connected friends. This is a key
differentiator. The market is looking for a “more” private way to interact while at the same time enjoying the ability to share
with communities.
• typically in a corporate/enterprise setting Gogobeans excels in that nothing is public, no digital asset can be viewed or
shared unless the owner gives authorization.
• in a consumer setting, early indications (late 2009) are showing a back lash to social networks like Facebook in mature
markets (i.e. the USA/Canada, parts of Europe). This trend is primarily due to people realizing that on a social network
your life is forever public. Gogobeans allows effortless socializing of personal digital asset to trusted friends only.
• carriers are in a unique position to offer socially networking features because they already have communication data
amongst subscribers - this can be used to create a social map on the Gogobeans platform to encourage sharing,
interacting and collaboration.
Music
Mobile devices are really replacing not only MP3 players but other forms of media players like home stereo systems. The
iPhone is the gold standard for delivering a great music experience to the end user.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
play media (audio/video) x x x x
media store x x x
socialize media x
synchronization with PC x
Bookmarks
The digital life world is presently separated into two categories - (i) what personally belongs to you and resides on your
hard disk and (ii) what you perform on the Internet like searching, reading, finding information, research, buy, sell,
communicate, etc. Keeping track of sites that you want to visit again is quite easy on a PC based browser but more
cumbersome on a mobile browser.
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
general bookmark saving partial x x
bookmarklet support x
synchronization with PC partial x
sharing bookmarks p x
Notes
The simplest way to get text from a PC to a mobile phone is probably an application like notes. With notes, users simply
create an unlimited
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Notes - simple text format x x
synchronization with PC x
sharing notes p x
Handset Support
Deploying connected services adds a level of complexity in delivering benefits to the mobile phone. The obvious
challenge is how to deliver a seamless experience to the highly fragmented mobile devices. Gogobeans has taken a web
2.0 approach to the challenge. Deliver services to the widest spectrum of users and handsets by WAP/XHTML and
provide open platform APIs to the development community to design client side applications (like contact sync, etc).
Nokia OVI • Present support is Symbian Series 60 version 3.0 with installed client
• Presently no support for older models including no WAP/Internet Portal
Apple Mobile Me • iPhone and iPod Touch
Vodafone 360 • Samsung H1, Nokia 6210MR, N85MR, N96MR, 6730
Gogobeans • Services delivered on all WAP 2.0 phones with support for older WAP 1.0
• Client application available for Nokia Series 60 version 3.0 and select Samsung phones
(coming soon)
We believe that this is the strongest approach and the best route to the widest deployment and usage. The advantages
to the carrier is
Apple Mobile
Service Nokia OVI Me Vodafone 360 Gogobeans
Search on Description p p x
Search on meta tags x x
Search on Asset type p x
Search the social network x ? x
Search from handset p x
Nokia
• Nokia partially supports search on digital asset description.
• The search doesn’t apply in a global way. In order to search for a photo the user must be in the “photo” section of the
service, similarly to search for a contact the user must switch views to contacts.
• Most users when searching for digital assets it is generally to access their own digital assets - this feature is not
implemented on the OVI service. When searching, the results span across the network and not the users own account
Apple Mobile Me
• No provisions for meta tagging digital assets.
• Partial support for searching on asset description doesn’t extend to photos, files and calendar events
• Search on the iPhone does not include files and photos
Our API approach ensures easy integration cycle and more importantly a venue for developing new and innovative
applications according to market needs.