Page 3 - Mobile World Daily - Day 2

NEWS
j GOOGLE Cont. from P1
During his Monday Mobile
World Live Extra session at
Congress, Pichai said in
response to questions about the
launch of a possible Google
MVNO that the company is
working on a project together
with carrier partners. “Our goal
here is to drive a set of
innovations,” he said, comparing
the company’s approach to its
Nexus smartphone programme,
where Google leaves others to
serve the mass market.
“I think we are at the stage
when it’s important to think
about hardware, software and
connectivity together,” he added.
In general, Google and Facebook
are both seeking ways to connect
more people in developing regions
of the world, although the two
internet giants are taking very
different approaches.
While Facebook is focusing on
the Internet.org project to bring
free online services to users
through collaborations with mobile
operators, Google is engaging in
large-scale projects to explore
some highly futuristic ways of
providing internet access to areas
with little or no access.
For example, Project Loon,
Project Link and Project Titan are
seeking to provide internet access
using balloons, fibre and drones
respectively. Pichai pointed out that from stand-alone fixed and mobile
while people in the developed
world now take connectivity
largely for granted, “there are many
parts of the world where people
are offline,” he said, estimating the
global unconnected population at
more than 4 billion.
Pichai confessed that when
Google co-founder and CEO Larry
Page first broached the idea of
putting large balloons in the sky to
provide mobile internet coverage,
he thought it was a “crazy idea...it
sounded like science fiction!”
Now, Pichai seems convinced
that Project Loon will work, and
said he expects to see “real
services” in a couple of years.
Vodafone in New Zealand,
Telefonica in Latin America and
Telstra in Australia are all
involved in trials, for example.
On the subject of Facebook’s
approach, Pichai said he was
“very happy to work with them on
Internet.org” by providing Google
services, but commented that
Google is doing something
different as it is seeking to provide
actual physical connectivity.
j OPERATOR CEOs Cont. from P1
“Why do I pay twice for the same
app?” he asked, referring to the
dominance of Apple’s iOS and
Google’s Android in the mobile OS
space. “I can choose operators, I can changes everything,” she said.
change operators, and I want to
choose in the converged new world.”
Anne Bouverot, director general
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS DAILY 2015 | www.mobileworldcongress.com
Sony talks up
mobile commitment
By Steve Costello
Sony Mobile used its press
event at Mobile World
Congress to address questions
about its continued commitment to
the mobile sector, with Kazuo Hira,
group CEO, stating at the outset that
“mobile remains an important part
of Sony”.
“The smartphone market, of
course, is highly cost-competitive,
and we expect the commoditisation
we are seeing to continue. So we
have to make changes to how we
manage the business as well. But
one thing has not changed. Mobile
remains an important part of the
Sony group. And the reason for that
is quite simple. Smartphones,
tablets, smart wear, mobile devices
and services are firmly rooted in our
daily lives,” he said.
His sentiment was echoed by
Hiroki Totoki, recently installed
head of Sony’s Mobile unit.
“You cannot cost-cut your way to
Music is not
quadplay’s silver bullet
By Joanne Taaffe
If operators do not find a way to
offer premium content, then
they risk earning less from
quadplay than they currently do
services.
Today “quadplay is a discount
play”, admitted Philip Humm,
of the GSMA, emphasised how
mobile and the Internet of Things
has a far-reaching role to play across
all industry sectors, with the
potential to drive a new phase of
European industrial growth. “Mobile
To safeguard network investment,
Hoettges called for a single regulatory treated equally, Hoettges said this
success. Instead our success will
come from not just optimising our
core smartphone business, but from
new ideas, new business
opportunities, and even new ways of
working. So that whatever changes
we encounter, we will develop
products that excite and entertain,
but do so with profit,” he said.
Of course, there were new devices
to show, but the company shied away
from joining the premium-tier
smartphone battle initiated by HTC
and Samsung on Sunday.
It showcased its Xperia M4 Aqua,
which is a mass-market device that
is also its first octacore 64-bit
smartphone powered by a
Qualcomm Snapdragon 615
processor, and said to represent
“our renewed mid-range focus –
with no compromises”.
And the company also unveiled
its Xperia Z4 Tablet, with 10.1-inch
2K display. It is powered by
Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon
810 processor.
Regional CEO Europe, Vodafone,
speaking on the MMIX panel at
yesterday’s Mobile World Congress
— even though Humm also
described quadplay as reducing
churn by a factor of three.
“In Spain and Portugal …
between 60 per cent and 80 per
cent of what we sell is quadplay – in
the markets where we discount less
environment – to cover all players in
the digital eco-system – the scaling
back of wholesale price regulation,
and coordinated spectrum policies.
The Deutsche Telekom chief also
wants a more nuanced discussion on
net neutrality. While supporting the
principle that all web traffic should be for different types of internet traffic.
[ie. Northern Europe] quadplay is …
smaller,” explained Humm.
However, the dominance of
YouTube as a music channel and the
expectation that Apple will integrate
Beats Music streaming into iOS,
iTunes, and Apple TV seem to rule
out music as a sizeable source of
future income as operators roll out
4G networks capable of distributing
more content, faster.
“YouTube is the ultimate free
service,” said will.i.am, pointing out
that YouTube is the first port of call
for most people looking for music
and videos -- including himself.
“No one is going to subscribe … if
you have YouTube on your device,”
said the musician and entrepreneur.
Will.i.am, who played a key role
in inspiring Beats Electronics, in
which he owns a founding,
undeclared stake, is optimistic
about how Apple will integrate
Beats into its products – although
he gave away no details about the
new service expected mid-2015.
Apple bought the streaming music
service Beats Music, and Beats
Electronics, which makes
headphones, speakers and audio
software, for a total of $3 billion in
May 2014.
was not always possible. The
connected car, for example, would
always have a stronger claim on
network resources than someone
listening to Spotify. Rather than full-
blown net neutrality, Hoettges
advocated that regulators leave room
for “quality classes” in order to cater
Tuesday 3rd March PAGE 3
NEWS IN BRIEF...
M2M alliance
leads to battery-
life uplift
Teclo Networks and Stream
Technologies have announced
a tie-up to improve the
performance of M2M network
performance, including a
significant increase in battery
life cycles. The pair have used
Stream Technologies' S-
Series solution to achieve
faster data transfer times
between connected devices,
this means such devices use
less power when they
‘communicate’ with one
another.
Jasper forms IoT
partnership with
Salesforce
Jasper has partnered with
CRM specialist Salesforce to
enable enterprises to lower
the cost, reduce time-to-
market and enable global
scale for their Internet of
Things (IoT) deployments.
CSG International
launches new
digital platform
CSG International, a provider
of “transaction-driven
solutions”, unveiled a new
digital services platform
called Ascendon, which it
claimed will allow
communications service
providers (CSPs), content
producers and retailers to
launch, scale and monetise
new digital services (such as
movies, music, games and
home security).
Openwave
Mobility ‘first’ to
optimise
encrypted video
streaming
Openwave Mobility has
announced a solution called
Secure Traffic Manager that
optimises encrypted mobile
video and audio streaming
traffic. It claims to help
operators achieve 50 per cent
data savings on encrypted HD
video, delivering an improved
user experience for
congested networks without
compromising subscriber
privacy.