New Category - Thursdays Thought

Since I started this blog a few months ago, most of the posts have been a regurgitation of info gleamed from press releases from companies in the market.  Since I am man of opinion, and if nugged a little will share lots of opinions of lots of topics.  That being said, I decided to give my self a little nudge and start a new category called "Thursdays Thought".  Why Thursday?  Well, today is Thursday, and today I decided to start this.  Not sure how often I will do this, maybe once a month, or if there is enough to think about, maybe I will do it weekly.  Anyway, the idea here is to focus on news within this industry and pose a question or thought...feel free to reply or comment...or just think about it.  Tomorrow is Friday, so you should have plenty of time to ponder...

Todays Thursday Thought is based on the news that Nokia, after their announcement in late August, has closed their acquisition of Gate 5.  In the press release, Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia, states that  "We see that location based experiences, such as search, mapping and navigation will be a fundamental platform for many applications in Nokia Nseries devices going forward."  Anssi further explains that Nokia's strategy is to deliver "world-leading location based experiences as an integrated offering to our customers". 

In a completely separate release yesterday, Nokia announced the integration of Orb MyCasting in their Nokia N80 device.  This service from Orb Networks allows users to "instantly enjoy your home photos, videos, music, and even TV, where and when you want".

Both announcements sound compelling to me, but the question /thought that I have is this....does an OEM deal with a content owner or application developer matter?  At the end of the day, or when they are getting ready to sign the purchase order, won't the carrier decide what software they want on the device?  Will a carrier that is trying to make a few $$$ on music want their subscribers to be able to easily access their itunes or mp3 collections at home via their wireless device?  Will carriers allow their customers to access their home DVRs rather than use their live TV services?  How about pictures?  Will something like Orb MyCasting change the dynamic of MMS?  Will consumer opt to interact and send pictures from their mobile device, from their PC.   Ultimately this leads to the dumb pipe theory.  OEMs  clearly want to participate in the upside of the digital media space, but will doing so turn their customers into dumb pipes. 

At the beginning of the year, Google announced a deal with Motorola whereby  "Motorola will integrate a Google icon onto select devices so that users can connect directly to Google anytime, anywhere at the click of a button. These mass-market, Internet-optimized handsets will be distributed from early 2006 to select Motorola customers worldwide."  So, will carrier that sell Moto devices just hand over their search business to Google?  Alltel signed on with JumpTap, Verizon with Medio...will those deals be trumped by a Google button on the Moto handsets?

Will OEM deals with content application developers mean anything?  Well, that's the Thursday Thought.  Let me know what you Think.

Dan

Comments

[Dan Melinger]

I agree with your analysis of the Nokia / ORB deal. It _is_ an example of "Dumb Pipe Theory" and I think Nokia knows exactly what they're doing. I've got no answers as to whether that's a smart or dumb choice by them, but it's pretty clear that those Finns are starting to test the waters, pushing, but not yet enough to get their current customers (the carriers) too ticked off.

It's just one of a long line of moves - dual-mode WiFi-enabled devices that carriers are balking at, "flagship stores" around the world going direct-to-consumer, maybe even the N95 with its inclusion of a GPS chip on a GSM handset, to some extent. We'll see if it's a good bet. In the very long run, I have no doubt that bits will be bits, but it's very possible that Nokia is placing their bet too early.

[Lisa Peterson]

In the US market, the carriers still very much control the end to end experience. But, the European and other international markets are different - the OEMs have more flexibility to directly market to the consumer, so this model is much more prevalent. Nokia's recent purchase of Gate 5 makes sense, since their new phones have GPS built in and the intent is to drive adoption through value added services. Mobile navigation is going to be a huge market - I think we will start seeing this integrated into many service offerings. My question would be why did Nokia decide to go with an onboard GPS Nav solution vs. a server-based solution, given that they are in the wireless space? I would think that they would want to enhance this with real-time content, such as traffic, weather, etc. at some point, so I'm not clear on their selection of an "onboard" provider. The carriers are all working with server-based providers, since this drives additional data usage.