Sprint Focusing M2M Development on Four Verticals

Sprint is broadening its machine-to machine (M2M) development initiatives to focus on four primary areas: connected transportation; connected meters, sensors and alarms; connected machines, screens and things; and connected personal devices.

Sprint has defined several sub-segments within each of the four M2M growth segments:

Connected Transportation – Fleet / Telematics / Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) / IVC Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEMS); Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) / Pay As You Drive (PAYD); and Public Safety / Emergency.

Connected Meters, Sensors and Alarms – Utility / Smart Grid; Water / Oil / Gas; Security and Surveillance; and Automation and Control.

Connected Machines, Screens and Things – Automated Teller Machine (ATM) / Point of Sale (POS) / Access / Vending; Digital Signage and Kiosk; Asset Tracking; and Embedded Routers and Modems.

Connected Personal Devices – Personal Gaming and Tracking; Personal Health Management; and Copiers / Printers / Scanners.

Sprint M2M focus

"We'll give you the phone and service, it's the data we want"

Some of the more-important revenue streams communications service providers have uncovered and discovered have been of the accidental sort. Some enhanced services, such as caller identification (caller ID) were essentially a byproduct of a conversion from analog to digital switching. The switches needed that information to work, but new features were possible as a consequence.

Many consumers considered "push button" phones to be a premium device when the transition to digital happened. Engineers would simply have said that using DTMF tones was simply a better way of inputting number information to switches that now were digital, in fact computers rather than electrical appliances.

There now seems a glimmer of understanding that among the next great wave of value provided by mobile networks, sensor data might prove an unexpected boon. There already is talk of the growing value of "machine to machine" networks, of course, where remote sensors such as meters and gauges of various sorts communicate with servers located elsewhere.

But there is something of potentially equally-interesting value growing, and like M2M, will be a business-to-business value, with potential revenue streams that match. "At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone's future whereabouts with 93.6 percent accuracy."

That, of course, requires the permission of the users tracked, as the data is personally identifiable, so there is an opt-in requirement.

In other cases, anonymous data might be equally useful, even when anonymous. Researchers are studying user data, in aggregate, to understand social effects, influence, the spread of ideas and trends.

Of immediate value to mobile service providers themselves are the business-relevant social effects uncovered in one study. By mining their calling records for social relationships among customers, several European telephone companies discovered that customers were five times more likely to switch carriers if a friend had already switched. The companies now selectively target people for special advertising based on friendships with people who dropped the service. That's a practical illustration of applying knowledge about social influence for a very concrete business problem.

Marketers try to use knowledge about social influence to reach people who, their social graphs indicate, can persuade others in their social networks, and who have bigger social networks. It takes little to imagine that firms will be eager to strike deals giving them access to opt-in data from mobile service providers that help them identify and reach such people.

All of which suggests that data mining for patterns could develop into quite a value driver and revenue stream. Perhaps it always will be a stretch to imagine a time when such data is so valuable that a service provider can afford to give away devices and services in exchange for opt-in rights to track and sell such information. But it isn't hard to see that it could become a major revenue stream, either.

Privacy issues have come to the fore in recent days as researchers discovered that Apple iPhones and Android devices track user location. There are obvious privacy issues, though it is likely the data actually is most useful for Apple and Google only on an anonymous basis, to build better databases about signal strength, network coverage, data usage, locations and times, all of which historically have helped engineers plan facility upgrades, for example.

The fear is that such data could be stolen, a genuine concern, or that personally-identifiable information already is being shared with third parties, a concern that might strike some of us as far fetched, though the danger continues to exist.

But if researchers are correct, mobile phones will have immense new value as sensors. The data the sensors monitor will have value for marketing, sales and promotion, as well as many non-profit endeavors. You can say its one application of M2M, or you might argue it is related but separate. Either way, mobile sensor data looks like a huge potential deal.

The Really Smart Phone - WSJ.com (subscription required)

IBM Likes M2M or "Internet of Things" Potential

Why IBM, among others, is bullish on the potential for using mobile broadband networks for all sorts of useful things other than Web surfing or voice calls from mobile phones.

412 Million M2M Subscriptions Globally by 2014, Juniper Research Predicts

The number of mobile connected machine-to-machine and embedded devices will rise to almost 412 million globally by 2014, say researchers at Juniper Research. That is one answer to the question many are asking about where service providers--mobile and fixed--will replace lost voice revenues with new services.

Though much discussion logically centers on new services or products that can be sold to end users on broadband connections, the attraction M2M represents is that it frees service providers from a frustrating reliance on selling more things to human beings.

Up to this point multi-service bundles have been a primary way service providers have increased average revenue per user. But there are limits to how much can be gained that way. As industry executives might put it, getting an additional $10 a month revenue from a consumer customer is a big deal, and hard to do.

Enterprise spending on communications is not increasing as much as some might expect, in part because organizations are using IP-based communications to get more for less money. The big exception has been mobility support, which likely is the fastest-growing part of any large organization's communications spend.

M2M services might represent less gross revenue per connection, on a monthly recurring basis, but there are lots of devices to be connected. In the Indian market, for example, Bharti Aitel is making a big push to complete reliance on mobile networks for meter reading, for example, says David Nishball, Bharti Airtel president of enterprise services.

http://www.juniperresearch.com/analyst-xpress-blog/2010/01/19/will-mobile-m2m-create-the-next-5-billion-cellular-connections/

E-Book Style Revenue Models Needed for Many Mobile Devices

As Apple plans to introduce a new mobile "tablet" device, and rumors grow that Google is working on a Chrome operating system tablet of its own, it is not hard to predict that much future growth for mobile service providers will be in providing broadband data connections for such devices, whether or not the actual first-generation devices from Apple and Google actually take off.

The reasons are drop-dead simple: most people who want a mobile phone already have one. The new growth frontier is for other devices that also benefit from a broadband connection, such as notebooks, tablets and e-book readers.

Shipments of mobile broadband-enabled consumer electronics are forecast to increase 55-fold between 2008 and 2014, say researchers at ABI Research. The market includes e-book readers, mobile digital cameras and camcorders, personal media players, personal navigation devices and mobile gaming devices. Total global shipments reach 58 million in 2014, says ABI Research.

One suspects sales of mobile-connected devices will hit critical mass only when a device is linked intimately with a content service that provides the revenue model. Not many consumers likely will spend much money to Internet-enable their cameras, for example.

Instead, what we probably will need to see are content services (e-book readers provide an excellent example) where payment for content subsidizes the use of mobile broadband access, with no incremental cost to the end user.

One suspects tablet devices likewise will achieve only modest success until video and other content services provide the revenue to support no-incremental-cost use of mobile broadband connectivity.

It isn't immediately clear how this might work for devices supporting multi-player gaming, for example, but e-book style models likely will have to be created for mass adoption of mobile broadband for gaming devices.

Consumers are not going to want to buy subscription plans for many discrete mobile devices at rates anywhere close to what broadband access now costs, either for smartphones or notebooks, for example.

Communications Key for Smart Grid, Survey Suggests

There's a key reason wireless service providers believe process automation (machines communicating wtih machines) will power the next great wave of wireless growth. It will.

According to a Pacific Crest Mosaic survey, electrical utilities consider two-way communications the most important technology in creating a fully operational "smart grid." About 60 percent of executives say that is the case. Smart meters, by way of contrast, are seen as "most important" by only 15 percent of respondents.

That should come as no surprise. Meters are a basic part of the utility business. So meters, at least for upstream reporting,  as such are widely in use. It is the ability to control the flow of electrons on the grid which is lacking. Local switches for such purposes already are available, allowing utilities to remotely turn on and off home air conditioning units at times of peak load, for example.

Two-way communications designed for power grid use also have been available for some time, allowing utilities to conduct such on-and-off operations. What is needed are more-granular ways of assessing, in real time, the state of the grid and power consumption, so the network of switches can be controlled.

That can be done using either wired or tethered communications. But wireless will appeal because the network already is available.

Barnes & Noble Runs Out of E-Book Readers, Demand Stronger than Forecast

Barnes & Noble says it has run out of available stock of the new Nook e-book reader. Customers who ordger now won't get it until the week of Jan. 4, 2010. "Preorders have exceeded our expectations," said Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating. The company says its $259 e-book reader "continues to be the fastest-selling product at Barnes & Noble.

That has been true for Amazon's Kindle, as well, which is the leading e-book reader at the moment. Analysts have been ratcheting up their sales forecasts over the past two years as consumers exceed earlier forecasts.

Apple, meanwhile, is rumored to be preparing a tablet style device that could double as an e-book reader, and, rumor suggests, will be available early in 2010.

So there is lots of "action" in the e-book reader space, interesting for what it implies about the future economics and distribution formats to be used by the publishing and news industries, the sustainability of "single-purpose" mobile device markets over time, contrasted with "multi-purpose devices," and the associated impact on mobile service provider business models.

There doesn't seem to be much question that distribution of print content now is at the beginning of a change that music already has gone through, and that video also is undergoing. Book distributors and publishers have to be wondering whether this is all such a good thing for them.

From an end user standpoint, one of the interesting angles is whether the e-book reader remains a stand-alone, single-purpose device or whether it ultimately becomes a feature of a multi-purpose device. The answer obviously has huge ramifications for smartphone, netbook and e-book providers.

There is no single historical pattern here. TV displays, home audio systems, microwave ovens and landline phones generally have remained single-purpose devices. The iPod has been a single-purpose device, but the "touch" and now the iPhone might be changing that situation.

Smartphones are multi-purpose devices. Portable navigation devices traditionally have been single-purpose devices, but the Motorola Droid is challenging that notion.

Apple's rumored tablet would be an attempt to provider a multi-function device, and that probably is the form factor necessary for such a convergence. Though people have speculated on smartphones becoming e-book readers, the challenges of form factor (small enough to fit in purse or pocket, light enough to use as a phone, plus large enough screen size to read) seem rather implausible in a single device.

Besides Amazon and Barnes & Noble, other companies offering e-readers include Japan's Sony, Britain's Interead, and Dutch company IREX Technologies.

Forrester Research estimates that three million e-readers will be sold in the United States this year, up from a previous forecast of two million units.

Forrester said it expected 900,000 units to be sold in the upcoming holiday season alone and for e-reader sales to double to six million units in 2010, bringing cumulative sales to 10 million units.

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney thinks Amazon will sell 1.5 million Kindles in 2009, up from his previous estimate of one million. Mahaney thinks Amazon will sell 2.7 million Kindles in 2010.

“Book applications for smartphones have the potential to become a bridge to other devices such as tablet readers and netbooks,” said Mr. Weiner. “Apple, for example, could migrate the more than 500 book applications in the iTunes store to a tablet device and Google, which recently announced a browser-based e-reader, could offer applications for Android-based devices of various form factors,” he says.