Openwave on a key challenge telcos face

It’s to find correct balance between affordability and optimisation, it says and feels they are being excluded from monetisation of apps market, reports AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY

THE biggest challenge faced by mobile operators in Asia Pacific is to find the correct balance between offering their consumers affordable packages while at the same time optimising their networks, according to Openwave, which provides solutions to operators to create and deliver smarter services.

Openwave’s John Giere told Biz-IT that due to a lack of this balance, many telecom operators are being excluded from the monetisation of the growing mobile application market, which in the Asia-Pacific region is growing exponentially.

Mr Giere, who is senior VP of product and marketing at Openwave Systems, quoted research reports which state that the uptake rate of smartphones is increasing rapidly across the Asia-Pacific region.

“According to TNS research, Singapore holds the third-highest smartphone penetration rate globally, with 72 per cent of all mobile phones in Singapore being smartphones.

“In tandem, data usage rates have also been increasing in the region and this in turn leads to an increase in demand for mobile applications,” Mr Giere, said. The company is based out of Redwood City in the United States.

He noted that Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing mobile market in the world, with the increasing shipments of smartphones, massive amount of application downloads, as well as the surging usage of mobile data.

“According to IT research firm Ovum, at least one billion people in Asia Pacific will be connected to the Internet using their mobile phones by 2015. The firm predicts that Asia Pacific will dominate the mobile-only broadband market, with users estimated to increase from 119 million this year to 518.4 million by 2015.” Globally, we will continue to see growth in the mobile application market and it is expected to be worth US$30 billion by 2015, with the fastest-growing age demographic being the 25-34 segment, Mr Giere noted. He added that in terms of operating systems, there is a shift going on from current market leaders (Symbian and Java/FF) to the Android and Apple OS platforms. “Asia is leading the global trend of increasing mobile application downloads, accounting for 37 percent of the approximately seven billion apps downloaded globally in 2009.”

Mr Giere observed that his company works to engage various players from all sectors of the mobile industry to create a more sustainable and beneficial mobile ecosystem. “As part of the strategy, we have four key areas in which we offer solutions: Congestion Control, Ecosystem Monetisation, Price Plan Innovation and Messaging.”

The official added that the end result of this is not only to ensure smoother delivery of data to customers, but also to allow telcos to leverage on the changing usage patterns to create additional revenue streams. “Additionally, these solutions will also allow better understanding of the consumer usage patterns, allowing for more targeted and relevant advertisement and promotions to be sent to consumers and a more targeted and responsive audience.”

He noted that Openwave Amplicity is an ecosystem monetisation solution that allows operators to leverage on the value of their networks to improve the way content is distributed and monetised on the mobile Web. “It is an operatorsupported, open development platform that lets app developers go beyond individual operating systems to reach a much larger, but still highly targeted audience.” Mr Giere observed that this system leverages on HTML 5 technology to provide browser-based applications across multiple mobile platforms.

Another advantage of HTML 5 technology is the ability to allow developers and third-party content providers to create applications that rely contextual information to provide a more personalised experience for consumers, he said.

Openwave announced US$38.9 million in revenues in its fiscal third quarter ended March 31, compared with US$39.9 million in the prior quarter ended Dec 31, 2010 and US$40.1 million in the March quarter in the preceding fiscal year. Bookings for the third quarter of fiscal 2011 were US$48.1 million.

“Openwave believes that the Asian market will continue to expand and in support of this have recently opened an additional office in Kuala Lumpur in support of our regional plans,” Mr Giere said. He added that one of the recent projects undertaken by the company in Asia is the deployment of the company’s Price Plan Innovation solution in Sri Lanka. “In Malaysia, we are also currently working with a number of operators and are in talks with other telcos around the region to further develop the mobile ecosystem.”

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article originally appeared in 'The Business Times (Singapore)'