Operators have barely scratched surface of “huge opportunity”
Mobile operators remain key to Blackberry’s plans for applications, according to RIM’s Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup – but they are also missing out on exploiting their core advantages, he cautioned.
As the industry debates what the role of operators should be in mobile applications, Kirkup told Mobile Europe that the company “still very much viewed carriers as key partners in our value chain.”
Kirkup said that whilst some new entrants had tried to “minimise the utility of carriers”, RIM has done several things that show its commitment to the carrier channel.
First off, the next version of Blackberry’s App World implements carrier billing, to enable users to put the acquisition of apps onto their mobile bill. Carriers will get a slice of the revenue for supplying this service. For developers the upside is that it is easier for them to bill, and the consumer experience could be made simpler, Kirkup said.
Kirkup added that RIM has negotiated pre-loaded applications onto its devices prior to launch, giving carriers a higher revenue share of that particular application, in return for the real estate of the application on the handset.
RIM is also working to share metadata across advertising networks, Kirkup said, including into the networks that operators either run, or sell into.
Finally, Kirkup said that Blackberry’s focus on compression, and efficient use of bandwidth, helps carriers reduce the data load they have to support, and also keeps users within capped data plans. The Blackberry 6 platform has a web rendering engine that can render a web page at about 33% of the amount of data carried compared to competitors, Kirkup said.
“Our background may have been in email,” he said, “but the way we developed our product means that efficiency has extended into how we deliver Facebook, or Twitter, or our core messaging applications.”
So what can carriers add to app developers and what, in Kirkup’s view, should operators be focusing on as their core capabilities?
“This really lines up with what we told them back at the GSMA board meeting back in February. The first is the billing relationship, which presents a huge opportunity that they have barely scratched the surface of. The second thing is they need to step back into their organizations and find the core pieces they have to add value – things like location.”
Kirkup acknowledged that operators had made some steps towards doing this, and mentioned the OneAPI initiative. “You might say they are two years too late doing this,” he added, “but we will see.”
Kirkup’s comments show that although there is a tendency to view the app stores as automatically a challenge to operator revenues, there is still a role for operators in the applications space. The door is open, but operators must work out if what they have to bring through the door is of value to those already at the party.