Operators should be competing with Google and Apple
Should more mobile operators have their heads in the clouds? Fabrizio Capobianco thinks so, and his company Funambol aims to help them do it.
The company offers what it describes as open source mobile cloud sync technology on a white-label basis to operators, to allow them to compete with services like Google Sync and Apple’s MobileMe. He says the time is absolutely right for such services.
“There is a reason why they have to do it right now,” he says. “Everyone is in this space. Device manufacturers want to make the carrier a pipe by taking the most important content out of a phone – the address book, calendar, pictures and messaging – and putting it in their cloud. And then there are the portals like Google Sync and Microsoft’s MyPhone.”
He thinks that if operators don’t compete with their own offerings to let their customers sync their most precious data with cloud-based servers, they’ll suffer.
“If you’re a carrier today, you need to jump into this,” he says. “You need to start making cloud services like MobileMe. That kind of service is necessary at this point for a mobile operator to remain relevant, and they have some advantages over the device manufacturers.”
Well, Capobianco would say that: he’s trying to pitch his company’s platform to operators after all. But he thinks the advantages possessed by the carriers include the fact that they’re device-neutral – which may help when it comes to services where families on different handset makes want to share their synchronised data.
“The carriers can be the unifier for mobile cloud services,” he says. “It’s a great opportunity for them if they move fast. If they don’t move, they’re done.”
That’s the problem though, surely? Mobile operators – especially the big ones – aren’t renowned for their ability to move swiftly when it comes to launching new services and technologies. At least, not as swiftly as the likes of Google. Are the carriers really prepared to move fast in this area?
“In the last six months we’ve seen a sense of urgency that we have never seen before,” says Capobianco. “We have signed two Tier 1 carriers in the last two months for example, so they have this strategic issue very clear in their minds. They’re realising that the growth of smartphones is even faster than they thought, and they don’t want to become just a pipe.”
Capobianco points to Motorola’s Android announcement last week as further proof of the competition the operators will face in this area. Although there was a new handset announced, the Cliq / Dext, equally high-profile was Motorola’s new MOTOBLUR interface which aggregates social networks on the handset.
“They are clearly going in that direction of trying to build a cloud service where they take all your social networking information in the cloud,” he says. “But they are one device manufacturer and this works on one phone. Carriers can have a better play supporting a lot of phones.”
Capobianco thinks it won’t be long before mobile users are presented with a variety of different options for cloud-based services when buying a new phone – offered by the handset maker, the likes of Google and their operator.
He thinks the most open will win out. But does that really mean services from operators? After all, if someone syncs all their photos, social networking data and contacts with an operator, what happens if they later want to switch to a rival?
It’s not a question Capobianco has a firm answer for: Funambol could presumably migrate users if it had deals with both their existing and new operator, but if not it could be complicated.
What about D2C cloud syncing though? Funambol already has its own portal and iPhone app, so can’t it make a bigger push with a D2C service to take on Google? “Today we have an offering to consumers, but we believe as a company it makes more sense to offer this through mobile operators who already have millions of users,” he says.
“There is definitely an opportunity there and a need to fill that gap that we might look at, but today the main question is monetisation. Do you charge, like Apple does for MobileMe, or do you offer it for free and make money from advertising?”
Other thorny questions for Funambol include how to handle copyrighted content – if someone wants to sync music that they’ve bought on their phone with other devices, do the relevant licences support this?
Capobianco says it’s an area Funambol has steered well clear of so far, in favour of focusing on content that users themselves have created – photos and videos as well as contacts and messaging.
Meanwhile, the company is looking beyond mobiles to other devices, including cars, tablets and netbooks. Funambol’s CEO is certainly buoyant about the company’s prospects.
“Open mobile cloud services are all part of a big trend, allowing people to keep their most important content across devices and share it with other people,” he says. “There are a lot of things happening very quickly in the market. It’s very real and very soon.”
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