The N9 isn’t perfect, by any means, and the lack of applications is particularly frustrating (a lack of a real-time bus and train information apps in particular was annoying) - however it does make you remember some of the classic Nokia DNA which is missing from the Lumia. One simple feature which I’ve loved on Nokia’s since the first smartphone the 7650 (and probably pre-that) was the alarm clock.

First off, when you set the alarm it lets you know exactly how long it was until the alarm was due to go off - there are few things more satisfying than getting an early night and seeing that you message you have 10 hours until your alarm (although the downside of getting in from a late night and seeing “you have 2 hours until your alarm” but them’s the breaks). It also paid no attention to the condition of your phone’s battery. The phone could be dead, turned off and left for days, but the alarm would still pipe-up. This meant you weren’t late in the mornings even if you forgot to plug your phone in, but also made searching for a device with a dead battery misplaced or hidden somewhere around your house easier (which neatly leads us back to the dangers of mixing toddlers and mobile phones).  Finally the mixing-desk/concentric circles way you actually set an alarm on the N9 is truly a thing of beauty.

Hopefully Nokia will have a chat with MS and try and bring some of this stuff to the next Lumias…..

Last August I had what could be best described as a little temper tantrum about the state of the Android Marketplace and the dearth of quality official applications. But a year on I’m more mature (mostly) and so is the Android Marketplace.

When I last wrote on the subject I complained that big news outlets like Timeout, BBC and The Guardian were ignoring Android and catering just for the iPhone masses. ‘Limiting their market potential with every day they neglect Android in favour of iPhone only,’ was how I put. Well it seems that all three (and others) have sat up and taken notice of the big green Android-shaped opportunity in front of them. Time Out launched in March, BBC in May and The Guardian joining the party today. What’s more, sitting down with my iPhone-wielding colleague and comparing the apps side by side, the Android versions are pretty much as polished as their iOS counterparts.

The release of The Guardian’s app also happened to coincide with the release of a report from analysts Ovum saying that more apps will be downloaded this year on Android (8.1 billion) than iPhone (6 billion), finally marking the long predicted shift towards Google’s OS. Interestingly, however, iPhone will still account for the majority of paid applications ($2.86 billion of paid app revenues that versus $1.5 billion for Android). In fact, some people would argue that revenues are the better metric for judging the success of a platform/app store, something I would be inclined to agree with, yet it’s fair to say Android is making strides.

So what next for the apps market? Hopefully we’ll see not just more apps, but better quality applications from developers trying to set themselves apart from the masses. Also, I expect more varied pricing such as the subscription model used by The Guardian on iOS or the in-application micro-transactions model usually reserved for games being applied more widely. One thing’s for sure though, things look a lot better for Android users now – who knows, we may even get Football Manager this year?

*Sorry, this was solely used/created for the purpose of achieving a Googlewhack**

**Admittedly not an actual Googlewhack, but you get the point

This summer the US operator consortium Isis – comprising AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon – announced it had signed up Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express as payment partners. In the UK a similar operator led consortium made up of Vodafone, Telefonica UK and Everything Everywhere also launched. Meanwhile Citigroup and MasterCard joined the Google Wallet bandwagon while rumours of an Apple-PayPal partnership abound.

Perhaps NXP was a little hasty with positive NFC predictions and these will ultimately appear at some point next year. Alternatively, maybe this is further proof that we’re simply revisiting the NFC hype-cycle of a few years back. After all the NXP news follows research from online retailers Retrevo which found the public appetite for the technology distinctly underwhelming. NXP raised the age old payments issue of the business model. Who gets what cut? Who is going to make it worthwhile for device manufacturers to add it to handsets?

Perhaps the imminent iPhone 5 will arrive packing NFC and justify the hype or perhaps it won’t – nobody yet seems sure. It would certainly be out of character for Apple to be so early with a new technology like NFC (remember the first iPhone was 2G). The alternative is that NFC-based mobile payments may have the same impact as Apple’s take on video calling in FaceTime - the big new addition to the iPhone 4 (ie. neat technology but no real public demand).

Further complicating matters is that NFC technology may still not be ready for mobile transactions. Nokia’s beautiful-yet-doomed N9 has NFC but it lacks the security for payments – this is true of several NFC enabled handsets. Transport for London said SIM-based NFC is not yet fast enough for m-ticketing use. It seems too early to make a call on whether the current mobile-NFC hype is justified. I wouldn’t bet on it quite yet.

"But is it 4G or is it 5G?"

The two technologies are of course LTE Advanced and the humorously entitled WirelessMAN-Advanced (aka. 802.16m and WiMAX 2.0). These are patently not 5G technologies in any technical sense. Yet it is difficult to imagine how they can ever be marketed as anything else. The existing WiMAX and LTE networks have already monopolised the 4G moniker despite both being 3G standards. Sprint has dubbed its WiMAX network 4G as has Teliasonera with its LTE deployment. Over the next few years many more LTE networks will be rolled out and inevitably be billed as 4G – the numerical system has become such an easy way for consumers to understand the evolution.

With the next (next) generation of mobile broadband technologies now on the horizon we’ve already seen an early use of the term 5G in a non-tech magazine - namely British Airway’s Business Life. This has already resulted in industry push back with the GSMA’s Director of Technology penning a letter of complaint. But how can the press be expected to know any better when the industry itself in such a state of confusion?

South Afican operator Cell C dubbed its HSPA+ network 4G and was rapped by the South African advertising standards body for deceiving the public while Sprint and Teliasonera get away with it. HSPA+ networks are actually causing confusion everywhere. Presumably in an effort to avoid misusing the term T-Mobile US has heavily advertised its shiny new HSPA+ network as delivering ‘4G speeds’ but not as a 4G network. (Update - T-Mo US has now dropped the ‘speeds’ messaging and claims it has the the largest 4G network in the US).

There seems to be a widespread tacit acceptance that labelling some 3G technologies as 4G is reasonable but doing the same to others is an offence – apparently punishable with legal action. How the industry reacts to this situation will be fascinating. For some an obsession with the distinction is just idle pedantry but for others it represents the active deception of consumers.

He’s smarter than your average bear

In 2010 we have seen the emergence of a new category of handsets - the “sub smartphone” (aka the Yogi Phone). Handsets like the Samsung Wave and the HTC Smart exhibit traits of both feature phones and smartphones, positioning them somewhere between the two. Making them either dumbed-down smartphones or souped-up feature-phones, depending on how you look at it. With iOS and Android driving wider interest in smartphone features, such as downloadable applications, there is clearly an opportunity here for handset manufacturers to capitalise on this by bringing these features to cheaper, mass market phones.

Inevitably, the emergence of this new class of handset has also brought up the old debate of “What is a smartphone?”. While the term is in fairly common parlance (due in part to the recent growth in sales), but you might be surprised to learn that there is no industry standard definition for the term.

It’s an issue that’s been bugging me for a while, and back at Mobile Congress in February I conducted a straw poll with a few industry analysts who cover the handset market. Analysts can normally be relied upon to help define the boundaries of a given market and so I thought I’d ask them “what is a smartphone?”. In short, there was no clear answer and each analyst house has its own definition. However, what I did find is that there are some common factors which can be used to define whether a phone is smart or not. These are, in no particular order:

1. Handset Functions (Multi-tasking, full web browsing etc)
2. Hardware (Processor size, GPS, WiFi etc)
3. Operating System (iOS, Android, WinMo etc)
4. Development capabilities –(User installable apps, Open APIs / Native development available)

So what does this all mean? As this market segment continues to grow, I think its increasingly important that the term “smartphone” gets a clear definition. I’d like to see the major analyst firms to come together and agree a definition, or if this isn’t possible, maybe it’s up to one of the industry bodies like the GSMA or the ITU to take leadership and define it, like they do with communications standards.

N.B. Interestingly, it looks like the people have taken this into their own hands  and a Wiki has been set up to categorise smartphones. Hopefully this will help to lead to some kind of consensus. Watch this space…

UPDATE (15/09/2010) - The link to the Wiki has been fixed (it should direct to http://www.wikismartphones.org/). However, at time of posting, this website appears to be offline.

It goes without saying that in the UK (and the rest of the world) there are currently more mobile phones running iOS than those running Android, but for how long? UK sales of Android handsets quadrupled in the most recent quarter from a 3% share of smartphone contract sales to 13.2% . By comparison, iPhone market share fell from 75% to 64%; still impressive but a pretty sharp drop nonetheless. In the US Android is making similar strides and the Google backed OS is predicted to surpass the global installed base of Apple in 2012.

Why then, do corporations like the BBC continue to ignore what is forecast to soon be the dominant mobile OS when developing their official apps? Even at present there is a user base large enough to justify the investment. It’s fair to assume that Android/Symbian/Blackberry users pay their TV licenses just the same as iPhone owners so it’s only fair they get access to the same services. In this sense the BBC is fairly unique but other app developers are equally guilty of overlooking other OSes . While other app developers don’t have the same obligation as the BBC they are limiting their market potential with every day they neglect Android in favour of iPhone only.

It’s interesting to consider where the iPhone app bias comes from. Apple is largely responsible for the popularity of mobile apps, with the App Store a major selling point for the iPhone. Where Blackberry has email or the Palm Pre has had multi-tasking, Apple has a rich catalogue of varied applications. The popular conception of the typical iPhone user also contributes to this; a consumer of premium, high-end products who has the disposable income to spend on apps. Someone also recently suggested the people commissioning these apps, particularly for news outlets such as Time Out and The Guardian are more likely to have iPhones themselves. All these factors contribute to a mentality that iPhone is the only platform to develop Apps for.

Perhaps the news that Android handsets are outselling iPhones will make developers sit up and take notice of the opportunity being missed. Android will soon make the move from sizeable minority to clear majority and those who act on this quickest are sure to benefit in the long run. But maybe the tipping point has already been reached. We’ll start to see apps for both Android and iOS and I won’t have to shoot jealous glances at the App Store while the Android Market isn’t looking anymore. Here’s hoping.

Still, this all got me thinking – why isn’t it possible for my phone or PC to monitor the apps and features I actually use and once I’ve been using it for a certain period of time then offer me a simplicity button which hides the things I never use? Microsoft does have a variation on this with the taskbar on Windows and its “you have unused items on your taskbar” message. However, with Word it would be truly great – a single button to hide all the complexity, cutting things down to a really simple, interface tailored to me. Similarly on the mobile, where UI space is at far more of a premium, it would rid me of everything from SMS delivery reports to the pointless EA Games Pack (which currently has top billing on my phone’s menu).

As per my One Button Phone concept, I’ll stand by the phone for the investors wanting in on my latest big idea.

Apparently nobody in the industry has escaped the dreaded mobile broadband capacity crisis without at least a few sleepless nights. It was only relatively recently that operators were desperately wishing their 3G networks could get a little action. The old adage, be careful what you wish for, has rarely seemed so apt and backhaul providers have been milking it ever since. We once thought a dazzling combination of fibre backhaul and LTE would save the day but it’s becoming clear that data usage is rising much faster than the wireless upgrades. LTE simply isn’t the knight in shining armour coming to rescue us from this crisis.

Naughty HTC Desire

So where does this leave operators? Well, scrapping the all you can eat bundles can only be step one of the strategy. Actually, the data caps aren’t designed to limit the rocketing traffic on mobile broadband networks, they simply allow operators to charge the bandwidth hogs more than the honest Joes who are terrified of being separated from Facebook during their journey to and from work. They actually allow operators to derive more revenues from those who are most responsible for their rising costs (ie. network upgrades). However, if network upgrades won’t resolve the capacity challenge they still have a problem. The likely solution seems to be, at least in a large part, traffic management. This allows operators to improve the consumer’s mobile broadband experience without having to add more capacity. Put simply, it prioritises certain traffic, such as time sensitive voice or video – nobody really minds if their email has a two second delay but that kind of gap in a multimedia session is unbearable.

The interesting thing is that the technology behind traffic management might also present a better solution than data caps. The problem with data caps is consumers don’t really know what, for example AT&T’s new 200Mb limit actually means. In the world of modern smartphones the situation is further complicated as your phone is frequently consuming data even when you’re not using it. Case in point – a friend of mine just got the much lusted after HTC Desire from 3 on tariff with ‘unlimited’ internet which in reality only covers 500Mb. Within one week she received a warning that she was about to exceed her monthly data allowance. She consumed no multimedia. None. She just downloaded and used a small number of apps all of which have been synching and pinging the network non stop. This isn’t an isolated incident either as the Android forums attest.

So what’s the solution? Either, subscribers are going to have to just suck it up and download a data counter app – something that may simply be anathema to the non-tech savvy – or operators could start charging by application rather than data. Traffic management solutions can enable exactly this. Operators could then offer an expensive tariff for the most time sensitive applications, and therefore most network intensive, such as heavy video and VoIP and then offer dirt cheap tariffs for email and basic browsing. Consumers would understand the tariffs (thereby increasing their appeal significantly) as well as receive a user experience tailored for their usage while operators would monetise their networks most effectively and ease the mobile broadband crisis. Trust me, traffic management and the whole issue of network intelligence is set to be the new IMS, WiMAX, UMA .. err rock and roll.

The Dell Streak is much more of a traditional mobile device, with built-in cellular connectivity and the ability to make phone calls. The iPad conversely is not only physically less mobile (being bigger), but only comes with cellular connectivity as an optional extra and even with this is unable to make phone calls.

Dell’s Streak runs Android on a five-inch touch screen and boasts a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, along with 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity as well as GPS.

0range, Vodafone, O2 and 3 are now offering iPad specific tarrifs, with T-Mobile the only one not joining the party (http://www.telecoms.com/20529/3-pushing-tablets-to-uk-users/).

While these new devices might have slightly different dimensions and functions, making them suitable for different uses, what is clear is that neither quite fit in the traditional smartphone or laptop categories. We have had a couple of iPads in the office for a few weeks now and had a chance to play with them.

While the device has some interesting features, such as instant-on and ease of use, making it ideal for hassle-free couch-surfing, I question how much they are likely to get used outside the home. Anyway, it’s certainly a new and interesting market, but we will see over the next few months if there is a need and as such demand for this new category of device.

On a general note, despite rumors before the show that attendee numbers would be down from last year, the show certainly seemed as busy as previously and was definitely more upbeat than 2009’s show.

From our perspective, the major themes at the show were:

Operating systems

• Windows Phone Edition 7 - With a design dating back nearly 10 years, Windows Mobile was well overdue an overhaul. With a dramatic redesign, this is Microsoft’s attempt to both catch up with Android and iPhone from a UI perspective and also to reduce fragmentation across the platform by standardising the look and feel of the OS. We will have to wait and see how much of a success it is, because there aren’t any phones available with the new OS yet.

• Android - A slew of new Android handsets were announced as expected. The majority of these were very similar touch screen offerings of which there are many, though there were some new form factors, most notably the XPERIA X10 Mini Pro from Sony Ericsson. The Nexus One, despite the confusion it might have caused Google’s partners and the wider handset community was undoubtedly a central part of Google’s move to reign in fragmentation on the Android platform, caused by the custom interfaces built by HTC and Motorola among others. However, with a large percentage of the new Android handsets sure to be shipping with custom Android builds, it doesn’t look like this move did much to stem this tide.

Sub-Smartphones

Two significant handset launches at the show heralded the emergence of a new category of handsets - the “sub smartphone”. The Samsung Wave and the HTC Smart both exhibit traits of feature phones and smartphones and they fit somewhere between the two, either as a dumbed down smartphone or souped up featurephone, depending on how you look at it. With the iPhone creating interest for smartphone features such as downloadable applications, there is clearly an opportunity here for handset manufacturers to capitalise on this by bringing these features to cheaper, mass market phones.

Applications

With the launch of the Wholesale Applications Community and the inaugural “App Planet” zone in Hall 7, applications were clearly a hot topic at this year’s show. Contrary to popular belief, Apple didn’t invent the mobile application (just speak to a Java developer if you are unconvinced), but the real success Apple has seen is due to its excellent delivery system which simplifies the discovery, payment and installation of apps to the point where your granny could do it. If anyone else hopes to also succeed in this market, this will be a vital focus for them.

Networks

On the infrastructure side of things, MWC ‘10 wasn’t a vintage year in terms of flashy announcements or big news. However, there was a growing consensus that the ‘capacity crunch’ much touted over the past two or three years by the majority of vendors is finally upon us, with smarter phones and datacards stretching networks to breaking point. What has become clear is that there is no one solution that will provide the instant fix (while retaining the all important profit margins) but rather a combination including the likes of LTE, traffic management and femtocells. While the hype around these technologies was less than in previous years, there was very much a feeling of work being done and progress being made.