Imagine if Boeing strapped on a couple of Piper Cub engines on its new 787 Dreamliner. It may look sweet, have a lot of options and features, get everyone talking about it, but nobody’s going to go anywhere fast. One of the DNA’s of good airplane building is making sure you have a good engines. Few would disagree -;)
The mobile industry too, has its own DNA. Keeping it intact lately seems elusive.
On the heels of Consumer Reports study that iPhones hog much more data than other smart phones, RIM’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, sounded an alarm; Blackberry Maker RIM Warns of Bandwidth Crisis. Earlier this month, Cisco Systems released its Visual Networking Index figures that predict mobile data traffic will leap an astounding 39x, a 108% CAGR between 2009-2014. The average individual mobile subscriber data consumption will grow from 1.3 gigabytes/month to ~7 gigabytes/month. If you are interested in the other details of the Cisco report, GigOM did a nice job summarizing the report here: Cisco: The Mobilpocalypse Is Coming!!!!!
This is not a RIM vs Apple vs anyone else problem. It is an industry core DNA problem.
To be sure, RIM with 75+ million smart devices shipped to date, quite likely knows more about mobile data traffic optimization than any similar or peripheral provider in its industry. RIM’s own DNA is largely taken for granted by both business users and consumers alike. By definition, DNA (mobile or otherwise) should be transparent and assumed.
Remember this entire wireless data industry was created because the RIM Blackberry solutions felt fast and reliable on 1995 vintage 4.8-9.6 Kb/s low-speed, low capacity networks (mobitex, cdpd etc). Something nobody at the time could accomplish. Handset incumbents Nokia and Sony/Ericsson probably run a close second to RIM’s knowledge of end to end traffic optimization, Motorola likely a distant third. Relevant newcomers Google, Apple and Microsoft are hell-bent on the big bang broadband theory, thus efficient use of mobile network bandwidth seems assumed to be the “dumb pipes” problem, not theirs.
Ten+ years ago, in the middle of a blizzard in Waterloo, Jim Basille and Mike Lazaridis, were quite put out with me at one point during a private meeting. Let it be noted that it wasn’t the first time I have evoke that emotion, nor the last 
. Jim handed me a very early prototype of a RIM 9000 and said “what do you think?”. To their chagrin, I immediately tapped on the screen (like with that era Palm V’s) and said, hey, “no digitizer, no application OS, what gives?”. I doubt either Mike or Jim of remember that day, but over the course of that afternoon, we hammered out what I often refer to as the Mobile DNA. (The truth be told, they probably had already thought about this stuff and were humoring me!)
The key Mobile DNA from a subscriber view includes;
- Simple ease of us.
- Fast reaction to an expected outcome (eg get mail, open a website, use an app, make a call).
- Long battery life.
- Reliability
- Utility
Without these elements of this DNA, how many apps (free or not) are in a storefront or how “open” a system is, or is not simply doesn’t matter. Success cannot occur without a solution being great at one of the DNA elements and at least “ok” at the others. Bad DNA speaks for itself. One can already gauge the truth and importance of my thesis. Microsoft’s 55% collapse in mobile market share is because its solution has bad DNA – uncertain reliability, poor battery life, and terrible ease use. Apple is successful because it has good DNA – great ease of use, great utility and is “ok” at reliability, battery life and device speed (reactive). Nokia excels on reliability, battery life and utilities and exhibits “ok” DNA elsewhere. Google is not yet tested but is showing signs of tainted DNA in terms of battery life, reliability and reaction time. Google’s Eric Schmidt may want “a piece of Google in every mobile data transaction” but he has a lot of work to do and I think he knows it.
As mobile cloud services become dominate (and they will) network transaction/payload protocols optimizations between devices and the cloud will become more critical.
There are four reasons (at least) why this is true;
- users insatiable appetite for speed (bandwidth),
- users low tolerance for delay (latency),
- users requirements for longer battery life and
- more sophisticated apps that use isochronous data like voice and video.
In fact the Cisco report theorizes that 66% of mobile traffic by 2014 will be video.
Wireless network operators are in a period of 3G+ and 4G coverage build outs. While with each evolution of network technology comes with new capacity and economics, it seems seems we find ourselves facing a gap between available “dumb pipe” investments in capacity and the accelerating use smartphone applications that consumer exponential levels of network capacity. In the early 90’s RIM worked with Ericsson to revamp its mobitex network, including a redesign on many of its network protocols and routing schemes. The point here, is this DNA issue is not an issue in isolation – no one element of the mobile ecosystem owns the problem. Mobile DNA is a socially relevant issue for all parties.
Network operators, handset manufacturers, network equipment suppliers purveyors of OS’s have a market mandate to refocus on core mobile DNA. Else risk stalled growth, collapsing economics, increased subscriber frustration that could lead to further regulatory impositions.
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