Social networks represent the next wave opportunity for mobile services

Craig Richards of SLA Mobile argues why Alacrity plays a critical role in enabling the mobile future

It’s clear that the mobile market is expanding and changing at a remarkable pace.   Increasingly, mobility is the driving force behind cloud computing.   Cloud-based resources – such as social media, media sharing, and search engines – are, more and more, being accessed from mobile devices rather than traditional desktops.  The estimates vary but it’s probably fair to say that about 50% of Facebook ‘interactions’ are via mobile devices.   And a significant industry has sprung up – app stores, mobile advertising and location-specific sales promotion – around the pervasive consumer mobile phenomenon.  Soon a similar phenomenon will hit the enterprise too.

However, network operators are often being left behind in the scramble to create the ‘new mobility’.  So-called over-the-top (OTT) players such as Google and Apple are winning the publicity war (and lucrative customer relationships). Network customers often have much deeper and richer relationships with the big app stores or social media sites than the underlying network providers.

This doesn’t have to be the case.  Operators have the opportunity to take advantage of their customer relationships and network assets to build new hybrid propositions that engage customers – right at the heart of the social networks that are the driving force of consumer interaction and connectivity.   That’s why we see the emergence of a new type of mobility that also embraces the richness of the mobile network itself.

Our Alacrity platform enables three categories of customer focused solution – utilizing core network assets.  These hybrid solutions deliver rich, revenue-enhancing customer experience focused on mobile commerce (enabled by direct operator billing), customer loyalty & sales promotion.  But the key thing is that the services are delivered right within Facebook or other social media sites.  But this is just the start.  Over time operators will also want to support the development of M2M cloud applications, enterprise applications and other services – and Alacrity will provide a supportive and enabling platform for future growth on public cloud networks (such as Facebook) as well as virtual private clouds.

Alacrity allows innovative propositions to be developed in-house or via external aggregators and partners – and achieves this through what we call enablers:

• Direct operator billing and m-Commerce
• Extensions to social network assets
• Mobile and fixed APIs
• Revenue settlement
• Customer analytics
• Application Developer On-Boarding

The SLA Mobile Alacrity platform has been utilised by a leading operator here in the Asia Pacific region to allow value added services to be promoted and shared among Facebook users.

The operator’s Facebook application, based on a social shopfront application framework, delivers a Caller Tones solution as a fresh channel to subscribers.   It turned a ‘Fan page’ environment into a revenue earning service.   The fan page allowed subscribers to engage with and provision mobile services – from within their favourite social media environment.  Similarly, a European tier one carrier wanted to create a partner ecosystem that would drive e-commerce activity – expanding the use of their often underutilized network capabilities.   SLA Mobile worked to “on-board” a series of partner aggregators to integrate new mobile network APIs into their development plans.   The result is a host of new cutting-edge ‘mobile cloud’ services enabled by an active community of developers.   Moreover, the operator now has a clear opportunity to develop new service propositions that take further advantage of the mobile web and underlying network assets.

Craig Richards is Director of Operations & Engineering at SLA Mobile

As most wireless industry participants are aware, the Wholesale Application Community (WAC) was formally launched in February 2010 (http://www.wholesaleappcommunity.com). This creation of the GSMA made its debut at the World Mobile Congress to a developer community eager to learn its intentions. In their own words, “WAC will promote the use of web technologies to enable developers to write a single application which can run across multiple mobile device platforms. WAC will also enable all applications to be deployed across the many retail application stores of its operators.”

The WAC’s stated goals are:
• Accelerate and expand the market for applications.
• Enable the creation of more compelling applications.
• Provide greater choice for businesses and consumers.

And might I add, not a moment too soon! While the GSMA’s OneAPI initiative is laudable, something more aggressive is needed. Concrete steps need to be taken in order to support application development across multiple platforms.

Apple, of course, has shown us how bright the future can be. In June 2010 the company announced that there are now over 225,000 applications available on its site, that there have been over 5 billion downloads, and that it has paid out over $1 billion to developers. All of this from one phone being carried (in most cases) by one carrier in each country.

Granted, the WAC has received some justifiable criticism for moving too slowly (http://bit.ly/aVLt2W), but clearly they are headed in the right direction. With an estimated 84 app stores in existence, their focus should be on interoperability, not on discovery. Developers need an easier way to make their products available to a wider audience. Hopefully the WAC can make this happen.

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Much of this data is user generated: photos, videos, audio recordings, SMS messages. However, increasingly, there is an emerging market demand for premium content.  Until recently most ‘consumed’ premium content was ring-tones.  However, as phone features improve they act and behave more like personal entertainment centres. 

Therefore, there is growing demand for premium multimedia content: games, on-demand video clips, music and live streamed content.

Content owners, increasingly, are re-purposing content for mobile devices.  However, it’s often difficult for content owners or content aggregators to get their content to mobile devices and make money out of the process. 

That’s where SLA Mobile can help.  We have prepared a business briefing paper for mobile operators and content owners that discusses the issues associated with Mobile Content Distribution and our approach to it.  Get it now.