Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
The pace at which the mobile industry is changing right now has made crystal-ball gazing more difficult than ever. But I am going to give it a go anyway. Here are four predictions for 2011, the year in which a new network standard, Long-Term Evolution or LTE, will really take hold.
Firstly, mobile phones are going to get bigger and not just because of the popularity of tablets. The fast-growing demand for mobile video and online gaming means people want a handset with a sizeable screen that can display multimedia in all its glory. A secondary consideration will be the need to fit two or more antennas into handsets designed to take advantage of the MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) capabilities of HSPA+ and LTE networks, which enable mobile data to be transmitted much faster to and from a device.
My second prediction is: There will not be a LTE iPhone in 2011. Apple Inc. takes a cautious approach to new network technologies. The original iPhone didn’t support 3G, never mind HSPA. Moreover, Apple’s strategy of selling one iconic device, rather than a portfolio, needs scale to work and whilst 2011 will see many LTE networks launched, it will be 2012 before LTE coverage is extensive enough to attract large numbers of users.
But some developing markets will be early adopters of LTE. This is my third prediction. To justify the investment in LTE, an operator needs to see a discontinuity in either technology, business model or market demand. In some developing markets, all three of these are happening at once and LTE will prove to be a very cost-effective means of providing broadband services to many communities in Africa and developing Asia.
My final prediction is the death of the term “4G,” which has been so broadly-used as to make it meaningless. Consumers in the United States, right now, are being offered a range of so-called 4G services, none of which are compatible with the other. That causes confusion and mobile operators will find positioning a product or service as 4G will hinder their efforts to sell that product or service. So, the term “4G” will die out during 2011.
Why should you believe me? At the end of 2010, RCR Wireless News published an article in which I made five predictions for 2010. How did I do? My safest prediction that mobile broadband take-up would accelerate has clearly happened. Lower tariffs, cheaper and more enticing smart phones, broader coverage and the increasing availability of pre-paid mobile broadband offerings, means the global mobile industry is on course to add 170 million new HSPA connections this year, according to Wireless Intelligence. In 2009, that figure was 114 million.
My second prediction that we would see the emergence of a common approach to providing voice services over LTE was also fairly safe. The VoLTE initiative was launched with the backing of 40 companies and organisations in February, and has since progressed as planned. Right now, 80 companies actively participate in the GSMA’s work on VoLTE and many others support the initiative. Alternatives are still proposed, but the widely-accepted wisdom is that everyone will end up deploying VoLTE eventually.
My third prediction – that there would be a reduction in fragmentation in the applications market – hasn’t really come to pass. The continued rise of Apple’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android, along with the launch of the Wholesale Application Community by mobile operators, have been consolidating forces, but they have been counterbalanced by other developments. The new Microsoft Corp. Windows Phone 7 operating system looks like a credible contender, Nokia Corp. and Intel Corp. have thrown their weight behind MeeGo, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has launched handsets running its new Bada software and Hewlett-Packard Co. has the heft to keep Palm Inc.’s webOS in the race.
The success of my fourth prediction, that we will see a structure emerge in the embedded mobile market, is not so easy to evaluate. The work the GSMA and others have undertaken around embedding mobile connectivity into non-traditional devices has revealed that the breadth of the opportunity is much larger than first imagined. But right now, this opportunity is mostly being addressed with “bottom-up” bespoke solutions, rather than the top-down approach necessary to generate economies of scale. There is a clear need for a more streamlined mechanism for device certification, a modularised modem interface and broader appreciation of the impact of millions of new devices on mobile networks.
And finally, prediction No. 5 – mobile solutions will be increasingly used to reduce carbon emissions. This hasn’t happened as quickly as I hoped, partly for the reasons discussed in the previous paragraph. But the efforts of the mobile industry itself to become greener and hence, more sustainable, have been impressive. I was part of a judging team for the Informa LTE Awards and the entries for the Green Products category suggested there is significant progress in reducing the power consumption of network equipment, the use of renewable energy sources and the implementation of cleaner manufacturing processes.
So I score myself three-and-a-bit out of five for this year. How might I do next year?
Dan Warren joined the GSM Association (GSMA) in 2007 as Director of Technology with a particular focus on helping the Association drive forward standards and technologies including High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) mobile broadband, Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as well as providing internal technical consultancy to GSMA’s Projects and Working Groups. Prior to joining the GSMA, Dan worked for Vodafone and Nortel. Dan has a degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Applied Mathematics.
