24 Carriers, 3 Handset Vendors Launch 3 Billion User App Initiative

A new consortium already including 24 global mobile service providers, Sony, Samsung and LG are creating a new applications community, allowing developers to create apps working across networks serving three billion people.

The new "Wholesale Applications Community" is a recognition of the role application stores now playing in fostering new applications and a great deal of the value of mobile broadband services.

América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are founding members.

Whether directly or indirectly, by design or by default, the new development community will compete with the Apple App Store as well as other app stores being created by Google and other device and application providers.

The real carrot for developers, if the initiative can iron out any number of important details, is access to a potential audience of three billion mobile users. In practice, discrete markets will be smaller, limited by natural language communities, for example. But it is an ambitious initiative showing access providers are not interested in forfeiting their roles in the application ecosystem to other handset or application providers.

60% of Calls are Video-Enabled on fring in W. Europ

After just two months, video over Internet calls account for more than 40 percent of fring's global call traffic, on devices capable of doing so, and more than 60 percent of its call traffic throughout Western Europe, where fring mobile video call usage doubles the leading PC-based video call services, fring says.

Fring launched the world’s first interoperable service between mobile video users of fring and Skype last November, enabling users to conduct video calls to other fring users as well as with Skype users using aWi-Fi or 3G mobile Iternet connection.

The majority of fring's mobile video calls are international.

Keep in mind that fring only works on devices running the Symbian or Apple mobile operating systems, including all Symbian 9.2 and 9.3 Nokia devices including the E71N95, N95 8G, N83, N97, 5800 and other Nokia touch-screen S60 devices and the iPhone and iPod touch.

Voxbone Adds Text Messages to Global Phone Numbers

Proponents have argued that  new IP-based communications would offer many innovative features not possible on older telephone networks. Voxbone, for example, now provides "global phone numbers" that are not tied to a specific country, and now has added text message support for those numbers, a feature that will be welcomed by users who see the advantages of a single, global telephone number.

Voxbone’s carrier and enterprise customers now can offer their subscribers one global number that can receive SMS messages at competitive rates, on mobile phones that do not have Internet access. In other words, it works the way the current services do, in terms of user interface and experience.

The move marks something of a potential breakthrough in "iNum" usage, as wireless subscribers from a growing number of prominent carriers, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, Virgin, and Boost Mobile, now are able to send text messages to iNum "phone" numbers.

The service is already available in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, at prices ranging from 10 to 20 pence per message in the United Kingdom., for example.

Voxbone will be adding reachability from more wireless carriers in more countries in the coming weeks.

The new feature highlights another interesting angle: Landline phones have not traditionally been able to receive text messages. It isn't entirely clear how many people would find this interesting or useful. But it could be done.

All iNum numbers have a prefix of +883, the International Telecommunications Union-assigned international code for the Internet, just as +44 is the code for the U.K. and +1 refers to the U.S.
As a wholesaler of direct-inward-dial numbers and IP transport provider, Voxbone receives calls, and now SMS messages, to numbers with this code and delivers them over IP to its carrier customers, for delivery to their end users.

Consumers Now Drive Unified Communications

A funny thing has happened to VoIP, unified communications and videoconferencing. Originally seen by many developers as products most important to business and enterprise users, each has gotten most traction in the consumer space.

 Analysts at Gartner, for example, now say that consumer markets, and not the unified communications and collaboraion vendors, are driving innovation in the UCC space.

Some 79 percent of respondents to a recent survey by Global IP Solutions said that they currently use a consumer application such as Skype as their primary videoconferencing application, for example.

Skype points out that more than 30 percent of its global user base uses the service for business, while “an average of 34 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls now including video,” says Josh Silverman, Skype CEO.

Skype also is used for international traffic and many businesses are becoming more open to using hosted solutions for business applications.

An argument might also be made that much of the value of UC or UCC actually is captured by use of relatively simple tools such as Skype, or Google Voice or any number of other rather easy to understand consumer applications.

9 Million Google Buzz Posts in 2 Days

Though it is far too early to say anything definitive about the potential success of Google Buzz, it probably is worth noting that Buzz users created nine million posts and comments in two days, buildiing on the strength of Gmail’s existing installed base.

I don't kow whether you consider that traction, or sampling. It does illustate the value of a huge installed base, huge name recognition and a cloud-based service, though. The day Google decided to go "live," it got noticed and used by enough people to create a substantial number of entries.

Also, one thing about "perpetual beta," which Google tends to rely on when launching new products, is that it does actually work. One of the "gotchas" Google Buzz rather quickly uncovered was a potential privacy issue. Under some circumstances, it might be possible for Buzz users to discover "follower" email addresses.

Google coders jumped on the problem and apparently have it fixed. And Google already is talking about launching an independent Buzz site that is not linked to Gmail accounts, to further address the issue. That's a fairly interesting illustration of how powerful social mechanisms are, though. Within three days, a potential privacy issues was uncovered and fixed, and enough users seem to indicate they want a version not linked to Gmail that Google already is considering that option.

Social Networking Grows as a Product Development Tool

Social media has become a bigger issue for a growing number of companies for several reasons. It represents a shift of where audiences are, so outbound messaging has to move that way as well. 

But that's the lesser factor. Social media means consumers are able to easily voice their thoughts about products and services. And most observers would agree that angry and unhappy consumers are more likely to complain than happy users are to praise. 

 

As much as retailers hate "bad press," they now also must contend with "negative buzz" from unhappy customers and users. All of that implies brands have to become more "proactive" about their reputations online. 

Still, even that is superficial in some sense. One thing product development teams have learned over the years is that bulletin boards, online comments and now blog posts and tweets can be sources of information useful for product design, upgrades and repairs. 

At a fundamental level, companies can launch products that have some element of unresolved "beta" elements and then modify products as feedback appears. 

“Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people's attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input," says Ravit Lichtenberg, founder and chief strategist, Ustrategy.com. 

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger,” said Ms. Williamson. “It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct," says Debra Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst. "Social media has already changed all that." 

No Way To Tell, Yet, Whether "Buzz" Has Any

Given that Google's "Buzz" application, which, depending on who one talks to is either a "Twitter killer" or a "Facebook killer," has only been live for several days, we probably should give our chattering a rest. Nobody can say whether connecting Buzz to Gmail will result in a viable and large social networking community being created, much less how it might affect Twitter, Facebook or other communities.

There's no question social networking has gone mainstream, and equally no question that "Google" is not one of the names that comes to mind when "social networking" is talked about. I don't know whether Buzz can change that.

In business, incumbency is a powerful thing. There's a reason iTunes owns the music space. You can point to ease of use, elegance or any number of other attributes that have lead to iPod dominance in the music player business, creation of a better way to buy and use music.

One can point to similar advantages for Google in search, Amazon in e-commerce or eBay in auctions. Once such leadership has been established, it is tough to dislodge.

So far, Buzz appears only to be "follower" on the technology front. It has some features of Twitter and some of Facebook, with the potential upside of being able to attract the Gmail audience. I don't know whether it is reasonable to expect people to abandon Facebook or Twitter for Buzz.

Facebook has surpassed 400 million active members. I'd say that is far past the point where switching behavior is "costless." As we like to say, Facebook has something of a moat around it. The ability to easily add third party apps or play games are examples.

Twitter arguably could be a different matter, as that app has gained less mindshare, or users, overall. Perhaps a "fast follower" approach could work there. Still, Buzz likely has most chance of succeeding if its users can uncover some new class of value that neither Facebook nor Twitter yet has done.

Right now, that might be hard to discern. But it's only been several days. We might be looking at years before any pattern emerges. Right now, Buzz does not have the feel of an innovation that creates an entirely-new category of experience. That could change. How it might change is the bigger question.

I'm using the app, but only casually. For me, that's not unusual, though. I use all my social networks quite casually.