Page 12 - Mobile World Daily - Day 4

NEWS
iPhone 6 sales
drive up iOS
share in China
By Anne Morris
Apple’s iOS operating system
reached its highest ever
share in urban China with an
iPhone accounting for one in every
four smartphones sold, according to
data from Kantar Worldpanel
ComTech for the three months to
end-January.
“Leading into Chinese New Year,
Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus drove
sales to an unprecedented high in
Smart mobile apps
key to capturing
consumer attention
By Paul Rasmussen
Digital marketers typically
overlook how to keep
customers engaged by failing
to monitor the user’s experience
within a mobile app. Did the app
perform and, if not, where was the
experience failing customers?
These issues, according to Jennifer
Tejada, CEO of Keynote, a cloud
testing, monitoring and analytics
firm, can be significantly reduced by
accepting that preparation is key to
understan ding a consumer’s
behaviour when using a mobile app.
“If you know that your mobile site
can deal with spotty coverage, has
minimal third party apps slowing
down the site beyond your control,
and you can be sure it loads as quickly mostly about understanding the
as possible and has a low tolerance to
downtime, you have created the best
environment to grab consumer
attention and take them through to
the check out,” she said.
A company stands to lose out in
three key areas from having a
poorly designed mobile web site,
according to the Keynote CEO.
“Revenue from the customer now,
revenue from the customer in the
future, and revenue from other
Context data boosts
operators’ reactions
By Paul Rasmussen
Work underway within
Twitter’s telco group is
helping mobile operators
react better to customer service
requests and reduce churn. This is
PAGE 12 Thursday 5th March
urban China with iOS’ share of the
smartphone market reaching 25.4
per cent – a 4.5 percentage point
increase over the same period in
2014," said Carolina Milanesi, chief
of research for the company.
“Across key global markets
Apple’s momentum generally
continued from last month, although
Android was able to slow down the
decrease in share in some countries
such as Germany, Spain and France
where its sales had started to look
customers. In terms of the here and
now, if a customer wants to make a
purchase using their mobile device
and they can’t, they’ll turn to a
competitor. This is then likely to
shape their buying decisions in the
future; why turn back to a company
that failed, when a competitor has
proven it can deliver. The third area,
a company’s reputation, is the one
area that is often overlooked.”
Customers are much more likely to
complain about a bad service than
praise good, and are willing to add their experience and can inform the
impression to the app ratings, said
Tejada. “If businesses can’t support
customers on mobile devices, many
others will also turn to competitors.”
The Keynote CEO maintains that
personalising a mobile app is
context of the customer.
“In terms of the
here and now, if a
customer wants to
make a purchase
using their mobile
device and they
can’t, they’ll turn to
a competitor.”
starting to take place in real-time,
says Bret Herd, head of telco
strategy and development at
Twitter, as context data associated
with a user is better understood.
Herd claims that mobile context
data is driving product and service
like they were in freefall,” she said.
In Europe, Android’s share
declined by 2.2 percentage points
year-on-year to 67.2 per cent while
iOS rose by 3.2 points. After losing
its top spot to iOS in the holiday
quarter of 2014, Android bounced
back in the US with a share of 51.9
per cent, the research company said.
“As vendors flocked to Mobile
World Congress this week to
showcase their latest products it is
noticeable how many have decided
to focus on the mid-tier as success
at the high-end appears more and
more unattainable,” Milanesi
commented. “However, while mid-
tier consumers might be more
accessible than high-end ones,
manufacturers will have to work
harder than ever to stand out in an
increasingly crowded marketplace.”
“Many businesses are looking at
ways to engage customers
throughout their physical to digital
experience, such as knowing when
potential customers are near a shop
and then serving a tailored ad to their the ten biggest deals.
mobile device that offers discounts
to encourage them to enter.”
Keynote believes that the use of
big data can help to determine what
makes for a successful customer
business on where to make
improvements that maximise their
digital investments.
development: “Data analysis allows
operators to provide a better
service with higher quality and
improved efficiency. Twitter can
now offer another data filter they
didn’t have six to nine months ago.”
Speaking at Tuesday’s Context is
King session, Herd provided an
example where Twitter had acted as
the channel for mobile subscribers
to request action from their service
provider – and received immediate
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS DAILY 2015 | www.mobileworldcongress.com
Telco and tech M&A
to continue apace,
despite challenges
By Joanne Taaffe
The financial industry expects
no immediate let-up on last
year’s fast pace of mergers
and acquisitions in the telecom and
technology sector. Instead, today’s
heated M&A environment may
unleash big surprises.
“Cash-rich [Internet] companies
may start sniffing around telcos,”
suggested Tony Poulos, market
strategist at WeDo Technologies,
speaking on the Tuesday panel
Enabling M&A for Industry Growth.
The value of mergers and
acquisition in the technology and
operator sector grew 34.9 per cent
in 2014 from the previous year,
according to B. Holt Thrasher, MD
for Mooreland Partners. “The last
time it was that high was in 2000,”
said Thrasher. And last year
telecom M&As represented three of
But although telecom operators
and equipment manufacturers
speaking on the panel still see
opportunities to use mergers and
acquisitions to grow or transform
their companies, they rang a note
of caution.
Ericsson, for example, views
M&A as a potential means to
transform its business as the
industry moves towards software-
based service delivery.
“Our previous approach was
more focused on filling gaps. We
are now looking at a complete view
of which new business we need to
be in,” said Rima Qureshi, SVP, CSO
& head of M&A, Ericsson.
Qureshi, however, questioned
today’s high valuations of software
companies.
“There is an interesting way of
increasing value by throwing in buzz
words. Traditional valuations need
to be reassessed when looking at
software companies,” said Qureshi.
The executive also stressed that
“the performance on acquisition is
not necessarily stellar. It’s an
important caveat. An acquisition ... is
not a panacea, it’s not going to solve
the problem.” And particularly when
management attention.
“A number of T-Mobile US
customers were requesting the
ability to roll-over their unused
monthly data to the next month,
something operators do not offer.”
The operator reacted promptly to
these tweets by launching a new
service to overcome this
dissatisfaction.
“A senior exec within T-Mobile US
monitors Twitter each day to see
“Authorities are
starting to
understand that the
industry is setting
itself up for a data
only world”
it comes to acquiring small start-ups
with different cultures, “it’s important
not to kill what you bough,” she said.
For European telcos, in-country
M&A continues to makes the most
sense, according to speakers.
Operators “should start with in-
market consolidation, then fixed-
mobile convergence … then
international – the latter is very
complicated,” said Mats Granryd,
CEO of Tele2.
But international consolidation is
much less likely to raise the ire of
the European Commission.
“The commission generally
welcomes cross-border M&A – it
reproaches too many in-country
deals”, said Thomas Wessely,
partner at Freshfields.
As a result, gaining approval for
in-country deals is slow, complex
and uncertain. But there may be a
shift in mindset at the commission.
“Authorities are starting to
understand that the industry is
setting itself up for a data only
world,” he said.
“The Commission is a bit of a Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde. When you
discuss the merits … [of a deal]
they are extremely conservative…
.When you come with
convergence and OTT as an
argument they are not very
receptive. The commission views
[market consolidation] as [a
question of] fixed cost
efficiencies,” said Wessely.
However, the commission still
gave the green light to in-country
telco consolidation in Germany,
Ireland and Austria, despite
national opposition, he noted.
what its customers want. In this case
the issue was escalated within the
company and a resolution achieved.”
Herd maintains that context data
is become a meaningful differentiator
for operators. “It’s an X-factor, and
we’ve seen it worth fighting for to
boost real-time customer service.”
Twitter is planning to unveil a
data context dashboard too in the
near future to make analysis easier
and quicker.