After Futurescape 2009: Mobile Lifestyle – Network Nirvana

This Mobile Monday Singapore event brought together industry veterans in the mobile space: Guest Speaker, Dr Geok Leng Tan (CTO, IDA Singapore) and a panel that included Mr Chris Chandler (Head of Mobile, Online Services Group, Southeast Asia at Microsoft), Adrian Ruzsicska (Marketing Manager, Games at Nokia), Ken Mandel (VP and MD of Yahoo! Southeast Asia) and Colin Miles (i-POP Networks).

(Picture above shows Dr Geok Leng Tan addressing the crowd.)

Closed vs Open Systems

Guest speaker Dr Geok Leng Tan touched on a few topics, and one of the more salient ones was the issue of closed versus open systems. He spoke about how the mobile space needs to move towards an open system. Using the example of the wired internet and its beginnings as a closed system, we saw it evolve to become a more open system. Dr Tan believes that people in the value chain will sort themselves out, and bring more services to the consumers.

In comparing closed systems with open ones, he believes that proprietary systems may be able to solve problems in the short run. But in the long term, it would be hard to compete with the brain power of everyone in open systems.

Strategy For Mobile In 2009

Adrian, representing Nokia said that it is giving the customer what they want. A trend now is that smartphones is broadly making their way into the hands of consumers, when it used to be a smaller crowd. With that in mind, should always remember that looking at what customers are looking for is paramount.

As per Chris’ role in Microsoft, his vision is to be able to allow people to communicate with everyone wherever you are. His work for services for Windows Live and MSN does that. He is working to push more communication channels to the cloud so that anyone can access it via the web or mobile.

Ken said that strategy is an important starting point for Yahoo. More people are going online through the mobile phone and in emerging markets, a new user’s first experience with the web may not actually start on a PC. Moving forward, a mobile campaign is about digital innovation.

“Network Nirvana”

From Chris’ point of view, “network nirvana” is not necessarily about networking devices or the internet. Rather, it’s allowing people to communicate and share in ways they could never do before. For example, being able to take your contact list and make sure it stays the same when you use email on the web or mobile phone. Or sharing information with people like documents, photos or text…and sharing information from sources such as Twitter.com. This is about sharing your experience.

For Adrian, in reference to the discussion earlier on closed versus open systems, Nokia has made big strides towards openness. And that everything it’s not quite “network nirvana” yet, they’ve very much listened to the customer audience and they’re hoping to get there: giving users access to whatever they want and wherever they need it.

As for Ken, he spoke about competition in mobile and the benefits to that. If there is only one player in the market, the onus is on that player to educate the market. But if competitors can grow the pie together, at least all will win. The more competition there is out there, the better you are at educating the market.

From left: Mr Chris Chandler (Head of Mobile, Online Services Group, Southeast Asia at Microsoft), Adrian Ruzsicska (Marketing Manager, Games at Nokia), Ken Mandel (VP and MD of Yahoo! Southeast Asia) and moderator, Colin Miles (i-POP Networks) (updated).

Is Advertising The Answer To Everything?

The panelists all acknowledge that advertising is definitely not the answer to everything. Advertisers will not pay for everything. But Ken commented that we do not actually know how advertising is going to develop on the mobile phone. We see inklings of it burgeoning by way of location-based services and others, but we are just at the tip of the ice berg.

How Best Can Developers Work With Their Respective Companies?

In answering this question, all three speakers agree that developers and engagement are important to the mobile ecosystem. Specifically for Microsoft, Chris mentioned their ISV programme and that traditionally, Microsoft have built a platform that developers build around or on.

For Nokia, Adrian said that services is an important part of engaging with customers, and that they are definitely eager to hear about the different opportunities and see how they can collaborate with developers.

For Yahoo, Ken emphasized that it is important to make the life of a developer easier. Rather than the developer wasting resources, they should focus their efforts on what they’re good at.

Attentive Audience.

Mobile Payments

Chris shared an interesting trend in emerging markets where the problem is that not everyone has access to credit cards. What people do is that one or two representatives who has this privilege access to credit cards purchase the mobile currency and then resell them.

And Ken brought up the point that without a doubt, mobile payments will be huge, but the key here will be that of micropayments.

Mobile Carriers To Make Content More Affordable For Consumers?

A member of the audience commented that it is usually the mobile consumer who has to pay for the application or content they are downloading or streaming. Is there a way forward to work with mobile carriers to make it less expensive for consumers?

Ken analogized the situation to the web and unlimited surfing. What we are asking for is the All You Can Eat plan equivalent for mobile. But if we were to put ourselves in the shoes of the carriers, they own the pipe, they built it, so they can charge whatever they want. He suggests that perhaps we should cut the carriers some slack and that they are just doing what is right for their business.

Along the same vein, Adrian acknowledges that carriers has had major infrastructural investment and that they need to cover that cost.