Carriers need to enter ‘the cloud’ to keep their grip on subscribers

The most important weapon in the war against the dumb-pipe scenario may just be the cloud.
Cloud-based services – hosted applications “in the sky” and accessible through the Internet, as opposed to native apps – are suddenly all the rage in mobile. The concept is the cornerstone of Apple’s MobileMe, and Google has made it a key component of its much-hyped Android platform. Nokia Corp. has joined the bandwagon, too, allowing Ovi users to synch contact and calendar information between PCs and phones.
But operators – who increasingly are fending off the third parties in an effort to stay relevant to consumers – are uniquely positioned to stay in front of the customer and create real value by adding the cloud to their offerings, according to Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco.
“Mobile 2.0 is all about data; whoever has the data wins,” Capobianco said last week. “Nobody can do that better than the mobile operators today. They are the only ones who can do it across devices.”
Capobianco has a dog in this fight, of course. His company markets white-label, push mobile e-mail services that extend the desktop to the phone, enabling consumers to access their personal management information from whichever device they happen to be using.
The executive makes a compelling point, however. Carrier-branded, cloud-based services could help keep the third-party services at bay, strengthening the operator/subscriber relationship and boosting data revenues as they give customers a reason not to switch services. What’s more, cloud-based contact information can be integrated with social networking sites, allowing carriers to build their own communities or tap into existing services such as Facebook and MySpace.
No everyone is sold on the cloud, though. Linux guru Richard Stallman recently called the concept “worse than stupidity” and warned that the cloud is simply a ploy to entice customers to buy into locked-down systems. Those comments echoed last week’s thoughts from Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who derided cloud-based efforts as “insane” and “idiocy.”
Indeed, the cloud has substantial shortcomings, as MobileMe’s troubled launch illustrated, and a host of problems must be addressed before businesses will embrace cloud-based services for any mission-critical purposes.
The concept is a natural fit for mobile consumers, though, providing a simple way to access information across platforms without downloading information or tethering their devices – hassles that have thus far kept most consumers from connecting their phones to anything other than an electrical outlet. So Apple, Nokia and others who are experimenting with the cloud now may end up as rainmakers as their operator counterparts continue the slow slide toward irrelevance.
“Carriers have been delaying this long enough,” Capobianco observed. “At this point, with the attack coming from everywhere, they have to move now.”