With an actual handset now launched, Google's Android platform looks set to become a runaway success, generating a new handset ecosystem of chip developers, software designers and application developers. Or does it?

T-Mobile's launch of the G1, the HTC-built device built on Google's Android platform and OS, generated big headlines recently. But, with Samsung and Motorola also slated to produce Android handsets this year, and with Symbian taken in-house and then due to be open sourced by Nokia, are we witnessing a deeper change in the mobile OS market. Far from consolidation in smartphone OS, it seems that operators are being asked to support a couple of major flavours of Linux (Android and LiMo), as well as Symbian, Windows Mobile, as well as Blackberry and Apple's proprietary systems.
So let's start by understanding what Google is up to here. First off, it's not really about the devices, says Gartner's Carolina Milanesi,

Milanesi says, "Google is moving into the mobile devices market not to become yet another mobile phone manufacturer but to enable a large addressable market for its services and applications. The G1 is the first of a series of devices that will come to market and will be optimised to offer consumers a superior experience when using Google services and applications. Without such services and applications the G1 will risk being "just" another teach screen device trying to compete for consumers' preference this Christmas."

"The G1 is the first device coming to market supporting Google's operating system Android. Although this will give us a taste of what the platform will be able to do, we are expecting some limitations given this is the first device," agrees Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "There will be more to come in 2009 when manufacturers such as Samsung and LG will deliver their devices."
And Cozza is bullish about Android's potential to dominate mobile Linux OS.
"Android has the potential to become the de facto operating system (OS) for Linux and we expect sales to reach around 10 per cent of the smartphone market in 2011," she says.

That demands a response from the other main Linux body, the LiMo Foundation. Although it has many big names on board, including operators, Limo Foundation suffers in PR terms from not being Google. Yet its chairman puts up a spirited defence of its role, and highlights problems for Google.
The LiMo Foundation's Morgan Gillis produced an official statement on the Google Android G1 handset, viz, "As an organization that was brought into being by the mobile industry to unlock innovation and catalyze choice throughout the value system — and especially for the mobile consumer — LiMo Foundation welcomes the launch of the G1 device using Google's Android platform. We believe that the G1, following after the 23 handsets already brought to mobile consumers using the LiMo Platform, provides further support to the widely held view that Linux is now positioned to become the most widely deployed OS within open mobile handsets.

"We also look to Google to use the occasion of the launch of the G1 to openly answer some of the important questions outstanding since the Google Android platform was announced almost a year ago: which services will be made available to mobile consumers on Google Android handsets but not on other open mobile handsets; will G1 users have an open and free choice about whether or not they subscribe to Google's services; why has Google elected to build its own handset platform rather than working collaboratively with the mobile industry on the available alternatives?"

There are also concerns in the market that although it may lead to a consolidation, eventually, around Linux, it has fragmented the Java environment.

Alex Moukas, CEO, Velti, says, "Android is good for the industry if it can help offer a broad, open, standard, platform on which people can build stable, consistent user experiences. However one challenge is that it has fragmented an already fragmented J2ME environment by creating yet another non-standard implementation. The fragmentation of Java means that developers might start looking elsewhere for mobile tools unless there is some consolidation; and Apple is doing a pretty good job of making applications easy to write at the moment. One thing that Android's launch does do is it drags mobile operating systems into the consumer psyche and handset purchase decisions even more. This results in the continual evolution of the mobile community and ultimately how people interact with each other, and how brands will interact with consumers."

So how will developers respond to this Open Source mobile platform. At the G1's launch, there was some criticism that the third party (ie non-Google) applications on display were fairly uninspiring and niche.

Yet one of the main mobile music application providers, Shazam's  CEO Andrew Fisher says, "For content providers and third party applications, the launch of Google Android is certainly exciting. Shazam is very interested in the Android platform and we will be watching it closely. Shazam's strategy is to partner with a wide range of handset manufacturers and operators across the world to offer our customers the very best music discovery and sharing experience. If Google can be half as successful on the mobile as it has been on the internet, consumers are set to have a great mobile internet experience."

For mobile email developer, Synchronica, Android becomes just another platform it has to support. Carsten Brinkshulte, CEO of Synchronica, talls us, Google Android is just another smartphone platform that will work with our mobile email and synchronization middleware right out of the box, just as we supported the Apple iPhone when it launched last year. Google Android will be addressing a very similar market to the iPhone: i.e. early adopter, wealthy, high tech users. Therefore, it's unlikely that we will see Gphones in the emerging or mass markets any time soon.

Brinkshulte also cautions against letting the hype take over around smartphone sales, counseling that the action will still be at the feature phone end.

"There's a common misconception that every time a major vendor jumps into the market, we will see smartphone sales surging. This does not reflect the reality. My prediction is that the Gphone will have very little impact on the mass market, which is dominated by feature phones," he says.
Rikke Helms, managing director of Global Telecoms at Dexterra and VP of EMEA, welcomes the development, as well. "Despite the odd bit of criticism received to date, Android is positive step for the mobile industry, and Google should be applauded for developing an open-source operating system that actually encourages more application developers to get involved, rather than locking them out. It must now take advantage of the huge market opening up for mobile business applications, as more and more enterprises demand bespoke software that caters to their own mobile workforce needs, rather than relying on the generic applications available on existing devices.
"As developers have been working with the Android platform for many months now, Google looks to have a huge advantage of being able to offer customisable devices to both businesses and consumers alike from the get-go," he says.

And yet all this has happened in parallel to a major movement in the Symbian sphere to open up its code and platform next year. Symbian and Nokia deny this is prompted by any pressure from other open OS environments, but there's little doubt in some minds this has been the motivating factor – make the OS open, goes the theory, and then differentiate and extract value at the applications layer. With years in the market and the bulk of smartphones sold, Symbian has two key advantages. And certainly it has attracted strong industry support for its Symbian Foundation vision.

The plans for the establishment of the Symbian Foundation and royalty-free licensing of foundation software are:
1) The acquisition of Symbian Limited by Nokia, expected to close in Q4, 2008, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
2) Software assets are contributed to the foundation, including Symbian OS and S60 by Nokia, UIQ technology by Motorola and Sony Ericsson and MOAP(S) by NTT DOCOMO and Fujitsu.
3) This contributed software will be available under a royalty-free license to foundation members from the first day of Symbian Foundation operations, expected 1H 2009.
4) The Foundation will work to unify the platform, with the first unified foundation release expected in 2009.
5) The foundation will work to make the platform available in open source by June 2010 (two years from the Symbian Foundation announcement)

Since June 2008, 40 companies have confirmed commitment to the initiative, including the ten initial board members: AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, and Symbian says hundreds more have expressed interest in joining.

Among them is browser company Opera, a company with an obvious interest in open operating systems, and having strong rival platforms to Android.

"Symbian Limited was one of the first companies to support Opera's vision of how the Web one day would be available on any device. Today, that vision is becoming reality," says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "As the market leader in standards-driven, cross-platform Web browsing innovation, we expect to offer our expertise in developing compelling and captivating Web browsing experiences. We look forward to the opportunity to join the foundation and help drive the ongoing evolution of the leading mobile operating system."

So it's clear that although there has been broad agreement for Android, it doesn't meet operators' stated aim of reducing the number of platforms they need to support, and it exists still in many minds as a vehicle for Google to dominate the applications and services market. With Google at best an uneasy bedfellow for many operators, there remains a great game to play for as the mobile internet, driven by increasing mobile broadband access, becomes truly mass market.

Will mobile advertising and social networking turn location into a money maker for operators? It seems directions are still needed, says David Adams

Might 2008 be remembered as the year when location-based services (LBS) finally started to take off? Until now, LBS technology has inspired more admiring remarks from gadget lovers than serious interest from business strategists. But according to research published by Gartner in February, the number of LBS subscribers worldwide will be 43.2 million at the end of this year, up from 16 million in 2007, and is set to reach an eyebrow-raising 300 million in three years' time. Revenues from LBS were expected to rise by 169 per cent this year, up from $485.1 million in 2007 to $1,307.3 million. Gartner predicts they could be worth more than $8 billion in 2011. Other research organisations have made even more striking forecasts: Berg Insight calculates that there will be more than 100 million mobile LBS users in Europe by 2012; and an ABI Research suggests worldwide mobile LBS revenues will reach $13.3 billion by 2012.

Well, we'll see. But after years when consumers and operators just didn't seem interested it does look like LBS has finally started to gain momentum. The in-car SatNav, has familiarised consumers around the world with electronic navigation and mapping, while various factors including the US government ruling that mobile phones should always be able to call 911 and competitive mobile and telco markets around the world, have led to the proliferation and refinement of GPS and other handset location technologies, just as 3G services and mobile internet use have also both been spreading at speed. At the same time, the focus of social networking has moved from the computer to the mobile in many markets.

These changes have stimulated huge growth in LBS application development. LBS applications being developed by software developers on a range of platforms including APIs developed by Google and Yahoo include some obvious ideas, such as restaurant or taxi finders, user review websites, and wikinear.com, which points users towards Wikipedia articles relevant to their location. Then there are also some useful applications of LBS for business users, such as fleet management, with LBS used as the basis for automated vehicle tracking, or Proxpro Prompt, software available to users of some BlackBerry devices in the US and Canada, which is integrated with the user's calendar and with traffic and public transport monitoring services, tells them when they should leave their current location and alerts them if a traffic or weather problem suggests they should leave early.

There are an increasing number of LBS social networking applications, including ‘find your friends'-type technologies like Twinkle and Whereboutz, along with potentially more complex technologies like GyPSii, developed by LBS specialist GeoSentric. The latter enables mobile users to interact with existing social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace and local information sources, alongside geotagging for user-generated photos, video, audio and text, a friend-finding application, and mapping and navigation capabilities. It is now available for more than 480 million China Mobile subscribers, following an agreement signed in the summer.

Mapping and navigation software continues to improve. GPS and navigation specialist Telmap has been working in this area for eight years. "It has been a very long road for us, given that we tried to imitate what you can do when you buy your new Mercedes, and you get an embedded [SatNav]" says CEO Oren Nissim. "Apart from screen size, which is obviously not in our control, we've done everything to reach that aim. We have got the software to the same quality level using only GPS – where in the car you have three or four sensors that will show the car's position." Telmap technology is being used by Vodafone users in Spain, Germany, France and Italy, as well as the UK, and Nissim says more announcements in relation to other operators will follow in 2009.

Google offers a geolocation API as part of its Gears software development technology, which adds new capabilities to web browsers – whether that browser is used on a computer or a mobile device.
Charles Wiles, product manager for mobile browser strategy at Google, envisages a wide range of potential uses. "At the obvious end, one of the companies we've worked with on the geolocation API is lastminute.com: we have done a really nice restaurant-finding application with them," he says. "So you could be using your mobile, go to lastminute.com, press find your location and it will just tell you the restaurants nearby. It's incredibly easy; better than typing in your location if your device doesn't have a qwerty keyboard – and often you don't know exactly where you are to start with."

There are other, more subtle ways of using location. Wiles says ITV News is considering using LBS provide mobile users with a certain amount of local news, content determined by knowledge of the user's location, even if the user is not actually conscious of this information being passed to the service provider.

Google's strategy is not driven by a desire to compete directly with the most accurate LBS. "Any operator can, in principle, implement a more accurate solution provider, and there's no reason they can't charge for that," says Wiles. "The important point is we're making it easy for users and developers to use location."

But still the mobile operators refuse to get swept away by all this enthusiasm. There have been some interesting developments over the last 18 months, including Vodafone's Telmap-based Sat Nav application, launched in the UK for users of the BlackBerry Curve 8310 at the end of 2007, but in the main they have remained cautious.

Fergal Walker, director of product management at 3, outlines a fairly typical operator's perspective. "There are two main reasons why LBS hasn't taken off as quickly as people expected," he says. "Firstly the GPS model – people are interested in navigation and specialist applications so there hasn't been a demand for LBS. The second is around privacy. People are very concerned about revealing their location. Unless the industry can find a way to reassure people that the customer can remain in control of information about their location it is going to remain a barrier to uptake."
But consumer preferences may yet be influenced by handset manufacturers. Nokia Maps, version 2.0 of which was launched in May, is available on a subscription basis, and incorporates a new user interface and multimedia city guides (including video and audio content, and editorial content from the Lonely Planet guidebooks). Maps covering 200 countries are available, with navigation services available for 70. Users of more than 40 handsets loaded with the S40 and S60 software can access at least some of the Nokia Maps services, and Nokia Maps can even function without GPS, using operator-positioning technology instead. There is also a social networking angle, in that users can share tips about places they have enjoyed with friends via email, mobile messaging formats or Bluetooth.

"Location-based services are popular because people are real, they are moving around, and they want to share information," says Christof Hellmis, director, navigation and routing solutions, at Nokia. He says the company's aim is that Nokia Maps will evolve as a platform, with more services added as they become available. It is also a hybrid solution, in as much as users can choose to download maps in advance of use, or to download directly from the remote server at the time. "This is a key differentiator: if somebody goes on vacation and doesn't want to have to pay high roaming charges, they can download maps before they go." Other handset players are also investigating the various routes into the market and will be competing with Nokia on subscription prices and terms.

But the effectiveness of LBS as a means of revenue generation for mobile operators is still far from certain. A growing number of players have expended a great deal of time and effort in trying to work out an advertising-based business model. The key, says Oren Nissim, will be in the way ads are targeted. "What we want to do is represent what ads can be shown to a user in a specific time and location," he explains. "If we could bring relevant information to the user he probably doesn't see it as an ad, but as a helpful tip." He gives the example of information about distances to petrol stations being passed to in-car, perhaps with some kind of discount offer incorporated in the message.
Bill Barnes, general manager for location products at middleware provider Openwave, believes it might be worth considering some slightly more abstract ways that mobile operators could seek to monetise some aspects of the data that handset tracking offers. "Where [operators] can track their subscribers in an anonymous way and offer some of the data they get about mass user behaviour to somebody else they'll have a set of data that is current or accurate at the time, as opposed to predictive or historical," says Barnes. "I'm sure there will be some creative things coming through connected to that. It's not going to generate millions, but it will be something they can use to generate a return from the investment they've made."

He is more sceptical about the monetisation of some other LBS applications. "I think some will have longer-term revenue applications," he says. "Clearly, turn by turn [navigation] is something people are prepared to pay for, particularly when you combine that with traffic information. When you get to services like ‘where's my friend? Where's my point of interest' – I'm not sure you're going to get people to pay for that."

So, will LBS remain no more than a ‘nice to have' add-on for mobile users, or will it help operators (and other mobile and internet players) generate revenues? Ultimately, even if revenue generation remains difficult, everything we know about online consumer-led development suggests operators would be wise to keep a very close eye on this area over the next few months. "We don't have any commercial applications on our network at the moment but are constantly assessing its potential," says 3's Fergal Walker. "The immediate area of interest for us is monitoring the emergence of location based social networks." That sounds pretty sensible.

Mobile Europe:
Can you tell us a little more about Zinwave to start with? Where it has come from and the market it operates in?

Luma Musa:
Zinwave is a UK company based in Cambridge, VC funded since 2005 after being spun out of a joint research project between the Universities of Cambridge and London. That research developed a way of transmitting Radio Frequency (RF) over multimode optical fibre, and Zinwave has now built on that to become a pioneer of a unique new active Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) solution for in-building wireless coverage.We launched our product, the Zinwave 3000, this year and are currently shipping to customers.

The in-building coverage market is going through a strong period of growth currently. In Europe up to now, in-building coverage has not necessarily been a huge topic, mainly because 2G coverage has generally been very good. But the advent of 3G has changed that. Obviously, 3G uses higher frequencies, meaning building penetration of the radio worsens. Although 3G has not really taken off yet in a mass way, usage is definitely starting to rise – and with this has come an increasing reliance on mobile data services and applications.

Added to this, users, especially corporate and enterprise users are becoming more and more demanding, expecting ubiquitous coverage for their wireless services and needs. This means that in-building coverage has, in a number of areas, rapidly risen up operators’ list of priorities.

Mobile Europe:
What emerging wireless services and applications for corporates are driving this?

Luma Musa:
In terms of corporate demands, there is of course mobile voice, but also mobile data – especially email. The growth of PDA and Blackberry usage is driving the demand for better wireless coverage inside buildings. The corporate user is going to want the seamless continuation of coverage indoors (whether in his office building or a public building.  And we have the advent of mobile broadband (whether WiMAX or HSPA)of course.

Also, in-building coverage for emergency services is becoming essential. In the US many cities and counties are enacting ordinances that require a certain level of wireless coverage for Public Safety services inside commercial buildings of a certain size, to ensure that police and the emergency services can communicate with their wireless devices inside those buildings.

Additionally, we are seeing real estate developers and property owners think in terms of adding value to their project by designing in indoor cellular coverage, so that large buildings, campuses and projects are built with the ability to provide coverage to their tenants.

Mobile Europe:
So what technologies are best suited to meet this increasing demand?

Luma Musa:
The traditional method available when an operator was faced with the need to boost indoor coverage, whether it be for filling in gaps in coverage or adding more capacity, was to add micro-cellular coverage  – essentially to throw more carriers at the problem. But with 3G that is just not cost efficient. And it’s also not efficient technically because in a CDMA environment, you have different cell characteristics, such as cell breathing, meaning that you can’t just add more coverage to an area without affecting other cells.

Pico-cells too have offered a solution, and they can often be the correct one. But the effective niche for pico-cells is for the smaller building and the SME. And with both these single technology approaches you will be tasked to provide coverage across all the likely service bandwidths, from 800MHz or 900MHz upwards.

Passive DAS has also been quite a successful solution, but the drawback there is that the RF signal does not travel very far over RF cable. You suffer significant signal loss with distance, and also with higher frequencies. It’s also, by its very nature, not manageable, being composed of Passive components.

This is why Active DAS with RF distribution over fibre cabling is now widely  becoming the favoured method of providing in-building coverage. Active DAS is fed from a repeater or a base station (BTS), and the signal is then distributed inside the building over fibre cable with remote units and antennas converting the optical signal back to wireless, and transmitting the signals at the locations they are needed. Active DAS systems have the advantage over traditional Passive solutions in large buildings and spaces where such systems encounter length limitations.

ABI Research says that the technology will have the most significant positive impact on in-building wireless coverage over the next five years. In its figures it forecasts that the revenues from the sale of Active DAS will have overtaken Passive DAS by 2009, with an estimated 19,000 Active DAS deployments taking place in the year, generating nearly $2.5 billion in sales. That’s quite large growth from $1.5 billion revenues in 2007. ABI also puts the sweetspot for Active DAS in buildings with a footprint of between 100k and 500k square feet.

Mobile Europe:
So what are the advantages of Zinwave’s approach to Active DAS?

Luma Musa:
Although there are other systems on the market, the advantages of Zinwave’s Active DAS system are many.

First, and uniquely, it is wideband; meaning you can deploy it to carry multiple services, independent of frequency using the same common hardware equipment. And the system is not just wideband over the fibre, but end-to-end, from the base station or repeater to the remote unit. In that sense it is service independent – being able to support any number or combination of services, protocols or frequencies. This also means that an operator, corporate or building owner can have peace of mind knowing that they have future protection if they need to add more services later.
Other competitive products on the market deploy service-specific radio units at the end of the fibre cable to provide the radio coverage. This means if you want to add more services, then you need to add units at the remote end, increasing cost and management complexity.

Traditionally, carrying wideband radio signal over multimode fibre would generate a “fluffy” signal, with reflectivity and other factors degrading performance, so that you couldn’t carry very high frequencies. Other solutions have been to carry the signal in low frequency and convert it up again.
Our solution, the Zinwave 3000, allows businesses and facilities to deploy a single centrally-managed platform to support multi-service/multi-operator wireless coverage. Any number or combination of services are supported – including 2G/3G to LTE; WiFi; WiMAX; TETRA; private mobile radio; RFID; DVB-H; etc – enabling simultaneous mobility for employees, consumers and emergency services. It is also the only active DAS system that can support Time Division Duplex (TDD) services.

Additionally, we support a very low cost of installation and deployment. It is a very simple architecture of primary and secondary hubs connected to remote units distributed around the building where coverage is needed. Our system is a true wideband system – so no parallel service specific units and no cabling overlays are required, keeping equipment and installation costs lower. This scalability and flexibility also ensures wireless coverage can be delivered to the most complex of locations and structures, including multi-building campus sites, high-rise offices, or large complexes such as airports. The Zinwave 3000 can utilise single-mode or multi-mode fibre (with a coaxial option), allowing the use of existing fibre infrastructure where available.

Mobile Europe:
What kind of environments require this multi-service approach?

Luma Musa:
A multiservice, multi-operator solution is often required, especially in multi-tenanted buildings where the DAS has to be able to simply and cost effectively provide this requirement. It’s about addressing the end customer need but also guarding the operator’s investment by having a solution that can grow, expand, and change with changing standards such as a move to 3G or LTE, and cope with frequency migrations.

Other vertical markets include any large buildings, public or private such as shopping malls and airports, hospitals, universities and campuses, industrial facilities and building owners for multi-tenanted enterprise buildings.

A multiservice wideband approach is really about offering service flexibility, as well as the ability to meet all a building’s users’ demands, whether that is for cellular voice, or provision of high bandwidth application to a notebook or PDA.

Mobile Europe:
So what challenges do you face getting these products to market, in terms of the possible concerns and demands of your customers?

Luma Musa:
I think there are different challenges in different areas. For operators, clearly meeting their approvals and certification processes is very important. And we are about to go into many operators’ labs to get approval. If you are going to take a feed from a donor BTS, the frequencies and carriers your service uses clearly mustn’t interfere with the operators’ outdoor network.

But, perhaps more of an issue for us is addressing operators’ concerns around the control of their networks. In-building coverage offers an opportunity for the business model to shift a bit. It’s possible a corporate, or building owner, or a wholesaler, would own the system themselves, or in some way share the cost of build-out with the operator. But this also means the operator should not need to worry too much about not being in control of all aspects of mobile coverage.

For vendors and system integrators it’s about simplicity and cost effectiveness so that systems can be designed and installed quickly and with minimum disruption. They also require flexibility; to support various multiple services, and legacy and emerging technologies and frequencies, and to cover various areas with varying service requirements. You have to remember different wireless services/applications or mobile operators’ services may be required on different floors or different parts of a building. Solutions also need to be able to accommodate new and emerging applications, to be future proof.
For corporates, there are questions such as: If not all your employees have a corporate phone, and you need a multi-operator system to support coverage – so who pays? If the corporate pays: decide on the right infrastructure, and think about protecting your investment with a system that is expandable for your future needs. You still need to engage the mobile operators as early as possible. If the operator pays, this is going to be your corporate provider, i.e. you get one operator network supported, think about asking your existing provider about other operators being allowed to connect to the DAS (there are various business models to allow this).

The good news is, with our solution, we are well placed to meet all these challenges, and help system integrators, operators, and their end customers design the solution that meets their needs, in a cost-effective manner.