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ABI Research Blog (95)

Why Google Wallet Is On Track and What Google Needs To Do To Win

Mar 22, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Over the past 8 weeks or so, it seems the media has gleefully skewered Google for their Google Wallet project and wondered aloud if Google Wallet is already doomed. They have cited personnel moves by project team members (some moved internally, two have left Google), the security problem with rooted phones, and Google’s demand that developers use Google Wallet. The latest sign prognosticators interpret as Google Wallet failure is a rumor that Google is negotiating with Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile to potentially share revenue with them if they support Google Wallet http://bloom.bg/GLiuJt .

I say none of this indicates the project is in trouble. To me, these are typical issues any company would go through trying to launch transformative services, and were expected. As a matter of fact, I believe the project is pretty much on the track we predicted in our report on mobile wallet strategies, published in November http://bit.ly/wAzyWA .
Google is going to get nowhere in terms of getting Google Wallet on AT&T, Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile until ISIS has had a chance to prove itself somewhat, and Google knows that. In our report I said Google should concentrate on getting as many Google Wallet-friendly devices on the Sprint network that they can in 2012. Sprint and Google announced that as many as 12 new devices would support Google Wallet this year. Google does not need to set the world on fire in terms of user adoption of Google Wallet in 2012, but they do need enough consumers to adopt the Wallet so they can prove the use case.
The smartest thing Google can do for their Wallet project is build an excellent consumer and merchant experience, collect the data on those experiences, and then bring that to the bargaining table when they talk to other wireless carriers, whether that be the ISIS partners or wireless carriers in other markets. The key to Google Wallet success at this stage is not mass adoption, but a frictionless, mistake-free consumer experience. The dumbest thing Google can do for their Wallet project is not get the customer experience right. My own testing of Google Wallet has been a mixed bag – sometimes payments and offers have worked great, other times, not so much. Google Wallet will die a very quick death if that experience doesn’t become 99% great.
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Leveraging Consumer Heart Rate Monitors for Sleep Tracking

Mar 19, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​HypnoCore Ltd has launched a consumer focused analysis application under the name SleepRate that highlights ongoing disintermediation between wearable devices and the applications that leverage them.

Tel Aviv based HypnoCore Ltd was founded to commercialize a sleep monitoring application for professional healthcare use. Now it is extending its application and algorithms that convert heart rate measurement into an analysis of sleep patterns for the consumer market. Consumer sleep monitoring is not new, but the SleepRate subscription service stands out as it plans to leverage existing, and more importantly third party devices, to collect and share the data. Existing approaches have tied the data analysis to their own devices or vice versa.

Sports heart rate monitors have been available for years from players such as Polar or Garmin and they are usually in chest or arm straps. The devices collect heart rate data and transmit it wirelessly to a gateway or display/storage device. There are millions of heart rate monitors being used around the world as athletes and keen sports and fitness participants look to better monitor and understand their performance. SleepRate hopes to leverage that existing user base by extending the usefulness of these devices currently used for a few hours during exercise to make them useful all night as well.

While online sports and fitness applications have been competing to provide analysis of GPS and other performance data from a range of sports devices from competing hardware vendors, existing consumer sleep monitoring offerings have seen the analysis software and the wearable device tied together in a single offering. That has companies having to seed the market with devices to make use of their monitoring algorithms or developing monitoring algorithms to improve the usefulness of their devices. SleepRate’s confidence in leveraging devices from other players is driven by the awareness that the market for wearable sports and fitness devices is set to boom as standardized wearable device connectivity is embedded in millions of new phones, device pricing declines and a wave of new applications and services come to market. Sleep monitoring is one of the many markets that will expand from a small niche as these devices become available and affordable.

Just as we have seen in countless technology markets before from the largest computer systems to mobile phones there is emerging a split between the hardware and the software that leverages it. The same disintermediation is increasingly moving to wearable wireless devices as the market increasingly supports standardized data profiles and standardized protocols to transmit that data. Delivering just the application provides SleepRate with the potential to enter the market based around its software without the need to develop and market hardware. It also brings the potential for partnering with existing and emerging device players looking to enhance the benefits and appeal of their products.​

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Cisco's NDS Acquisition will shake up IPTV & Multiscreen Offerings

Mar 15, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Cisco announced a $5B acquisition of NDS Technologies. Cisco’s Videoscape platform was unveiled in early 2011, and provides technologies that enable telephone companies to deliver IPTV services, as well as help cable operators to deliver multiscreen video (TV Everywhere) technologies.

NDS is the leader in both the conditional access (content protection) and middleware markets, including DVRs, electronic program guides (EPGs) and Advanced Advertising. It serves international video service providers including DirecTV, Sky (BskyB,Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland), Cox Cable, Cablevision, Canal+, Kabel Deutschland , China Central TV (CCTV) and others. According to ABI Research, NDS is #1 in the worldwide conditional access markets, with (22% of revenues) as well as #1 in the worldwide middleware market (also with 22% of revenues). NDSnarrowlyleads both the conditional access and middleware markets, with Nagra / OpenTV a close second and other players withregional and/orplatform specific focusses.

Cisco’s acquisition of NDS significantly alters the marketplace for IPTV solutions and multiscreen video solutions. Traditionally, IPTV vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia-Siemens Networks have built video delivery networks and provided system integration (SI) services to operators. Middleware vendors, including NDS, Nagra, Irdeto, Motorola as well as Cisco (in the North American Cable market) have focused on user-experience and software that runs on set-top boxes. The combination of Cisco and NDS creates a more comprehensive offering, including both video delivery as well as customer-facing middleware technologies.

Cisco and NDS are complementary from a technology and market platform. Cisco excels in the North American cable market and has some traction in IP video systems. NDS excels in satellite markets worldwide, and has a good footprint in cable in rapidly growing India & China. From a technology side, Cisco excels at the headend and video delivery, while NDS’s technologies are more consumer-facing.

This acquisition will create a more complete offering that that provided by other vendors and will give Cisco additional traction in IPTV and multiscreen markets.

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Broadcom Adds New Set-Top Box SoCs with a lot of Performance

Mar 12, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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At CableLabs Winter Conference, Broadcom announced a few new products.

The BCM7435 (Dual Transcoding MoCA 2.0 Gateway) is, in some ways, designed to refute Intel Atoms' entry (CE4x00 line - CE4100/SodaVille and CE4200/Groveland ) into the set-top box market by providing significant computing power to operators. These products are shipping today. In some cases, it is hard to imagine how consumers (and operators) will leverage the full performance of the gateway solution. Specifically:
Support for 22 simultaneous video streams: This is a mix of QAM and IP streams, HD and SD. Some streams would simply be routed to other set-top boxes, while some will be transcrypted from a native CAS to DLNA link protection, and some could be fully transcoded.
Support to transcode up to four HD streams (720p30) – designed to support the growth of tablets in-home.
Other changes are easier to see the immediate benefit to operators and consumers:
Providing hardware protected kernel space and therefore allowing users to run apps and/or OTT content in a way which does not compromise the boxes security.
7000 DMIPS of CPU performance (2 dual-threaded CPUs) with a dual core GPU on the one hand seems to be more than operators require today, but within what they may need during the 7-10 year lifecycle of gateway boxes operators are planning to deploy. Specifically, a single instance of a 3D user interface will not require this class of horsepower (they typically leverage the GPU), and DLNA stacks are typically not heavily compute intensive. However, the promise of a gateway device is that it standardizes the operators experience in the home – implying it could run a web server with HTML5 guides, or other forms of remote user interface (RUI) for other connected TVs or game consoles in the home to connect to the service provider video services.
​Slightly less disruptive, but still interesting, t he new BCM7574 is a new HD DTA SoC solution which reduces the cost of HD DTA’s and brings in a handful of new features:

Up to a 2X boost in CPU, GPU and audio processing – enabling new applications and better user interfaces to run on the device.
100 mW standby mode, supporting new Energy Star 4.0 requirements.
Fast Channel Changes occurring via end-to-end optimizations
Universal HD DTA security for all North American technologies (notably Cisco, Motorola, Nagra)
We understand the FCC has recently extended separable CAS (CableCard) waivers to DTAs which support a guide, but is not allowing advanced services, such a video on demand (VOD). This chip will have some market potential in the final stages of the digital cable transition within the US. However, it will have the most to offer should the FCC continue to relax its restrictions on delivery of advanced services over DTAs, as cable operators often want to give their customers the option of getting access to VOD and other two way services, even if the set-top box costs a bit more.

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NFC Turn Out Better Than I had Hoped at MWC - But Only Just!

Mar 9, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Speaking with the handset companies in Barcelona at MWC last week​ was a rather mixed bag from an NFC perspective. Some companies, notably LG, Nokia, RIM and the newly rebranded Sony were very much to the fore in demonstrating and discussing their smartphones' new contactless capabilities.

The demo from Nokia as to how a number of its new devices (including the 41MP 808 PureView) can tap to pair with speakers, open up new gaming levels, etc. demonstrated clearly and simply how NFC can - and probably will - change how we use our phones to interact with our physical surroundings.

The same can be said for Sony which is investing in Xperia-branded NFC tags which can be used with their leading handsets to change UI settings and personal preferences, e.g. in-car, at the office, at night, etc., or to access specific information and updates, e.g weather, news, travel, multimedia content, etc.

Again this highlights how NFC will change the manner in which we use our mobile devices, something that will increase over time as NFC becomes more established and ubiquitous in devices.

We're not there yet though. Myself, I counted more than 10 but less than 20 new handsets on show at the event - this excludes those already announced last year, such as RIM's flagship Bold smartphones. Some manufacturers and developers continue to appear to be behind the curve. Speaking to Motorola they had no NFC devices on display, and tablets in general don't seem to have made the leap yet - but this is no real surprise because they lack the portability of a smartphone and therefore the infrastructure and app's targeting tablets has not yet arrived.

However, on the plus side, I was pleased - and a little surprised - to see a small but growing number of low-cost NFC handstes/smartphones. One in particular which stood out was DMD Mobile's NFC Communicator, a sub-$100 Android smartphone targeting the very large pre-paid market base in Malaysia, Indonesia and local markets. Other manufacturers are looking at the $50 or less mark for NFC handsets. What will be interesting is, whilst there is a lot of deliberation still on-going in more mature markets, if it will be the emerging markets that will take the lead on NFC. They have innovated and run with mobile money over the past few years and given these developments they could now do the same with NFC. I know that I will be watching closely to see what happens once the handsets get out and developers see what they can do with NFC as an enabling platform for new services and use-cases.

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AT&T's Digital Overseas Life

Mar 6, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​AT&T’s plans to offer home automation services is an interesting move. AT&T has developed a platform that can provide a range of remote monitoring and home automation services. The new platform – dubbed Digital Life - is not for AT&T’s home US consumers but, rather, it is a wholesale offering aimed at providing non-US operators to offer web-based home automation, energy and security services.

AT&T’s Digital Life is a new software platform that the company says is customizable to enable carrier customers to develop and offer home automation management products that can manage a range of in-home devices, using a range co connectivity options. Details are few at present only that offering supports a variety of devices, such as sensors, cameras, door locks, lighting and thermostat controls and that these devices will communicate with a control center inside the home. In addition, end users will control the devices through a web-based user interface. However, specific devices and communications protocols between them are not yet defined. Neither has AT&T announced any specific home automation device partnerships at this time. AT&T says only that the services are wireless agnostic, with an open system designed for multi-country use and that it is working with various OEMs for each device category.

Digital Life builds on the technology the company acquired when it bought Xanboo in 2010. AT&T’s first forays into home automation were in partnership with Xanboo in 2006 in a largely security monitoring offering. AT&T says it has invested significant engineering resources to commercialize what we acquired from Xanboo.

At the launch of Digital Life AT&T has stressed that this new platform is only available to overseas carriers and that it has not announce plans to offer its own services using the platform in the US. However, any questions regarding a US deployment are answered with “not yet”.

AT&T rivals including Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon have launched home automation/home security offerings in the United States. By stalling its US launch but announcing this international offering AT&T keeps its name in the home automation frame. Even so, the strategy seems an unusual one. Releasing to overseas carriers first suggests a two stage release strategy that sees the customers it hopes to win acting as Guinean pigs for its own potential plans. Unusual especially as potential customers look for the product stability and security for their own investments. In this case AT&T looks to be asking other carriers provide the feedback and the learning’s it to leverage with its own product in its own territory.

Regardless of the style of announcement, AT&T’s Digital Life offering is further evidence that US telcos increasingly see potential in supporting home automation services as the technology receives another wave of interest – even if that means looking outside the US for initial customers.​

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The Science and Art of Becoming a Habit

Feb 29, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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First we had discovery, and now we've discovery and habit. That has been onenotable trend in the app economy over the past year or so:the growing attention to user retention and engagement.As start-up mentor and “behavior engineer” Nir Eyal explains inhis blog, the tech industry’s current top dogma, viral growth, will bring only short-livedsuccess if the company that achieves it fails to turn itself into a widespread habit.

Firms that sell consumer goods and services have always taken advantage of habitual behavior, but what is new and even exciting (I'dalso accept 'potentially creepy')is that the emergence of big dataand the increasing digitization of consumption give them much more sophisticated toolsfor doing it.Thiswidely cited articlein NY Times demonstrates rather well why this is the case.

In apps, one of the most imaginative strategies I’ve come across in this field is what is being employed by RedLynx, a game developer. The company’s iOS title 1000 Heroz hasn’t been found among the top-ranked games when we track the platform’s apps in different countries, but at the same time it has built itself a reputation of having a very loyal user base. This has been achieved through its rather unique value proposition: RedLynx enhances the game with a whole new level and a character every single day, over a period of 1,000days. The gaming experience also involves global leaderboards for each day, as well as customized leaderboards to connect and compete with friends.

Those 1,000daily updates obviously can’t offer too much variety, after all, but as an engagement strategy 1000 Heroz is nonetheless an interesting experiment. It tries to combine frequently and regularly released new content with a social dimension (leaderboards), which arguably are among the three most important qualities for an app to drive engagement. This way of doing things wouldn’t necessary work for all in all app categories (take for instance utility, medical, and navigation apps), but for lighter segments such as games and entertainment it seems like a good fit.

That third quality, then? I would agree with findings by MTV Networks in that ease of use, or accessibility, is still the most decisive one. The window of opportunity to convert an app downloader to a frequent user is notably small, and apps that don’t feel accessible on the first try are seld​om given a second chance, let alone a third. This means that in the app business less is normally more. The apps that really impress usually don’t do many tricks, but the ones that they do, they do remarkably well.​
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Canoe Ventures Drops iTV to focus on VOD Advertising

Feb 23, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Multichannel News yesterday reported that Canoe Ventures would shut down its interactive TV (iTV) development, and move forward with only a VOD delivery focus. In our recent Advanced Advertising report, we highlighted that iTV had a modest (3-5% of ad sales) revenue potential. Unlocking that potential is seen as being dependent on two key factors, first, building a unified platform with large household addressability, and second, ensuring interactivity is not seen as intrusive and interrupting the programming experiment. In the same report, we discussed viewer consumption shifting to a variety of on-demand platforms. Five years from now, we expect VOD advertising platforms will be required for broadcasters and MVPD’s (MSOs, IPTV vendors and satellite vendors) to maintain their advertising market share. Absent these technologies, we forecast a 15-30% drop in advertising market share to television platforms.

The surprising decision by the six major MSO’s that had invested in Canoe (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House Networks) to shutter most of Canoe was likely driven by several factors, including:
Limited success in trials of the technologies, or data that viewers showed rapid iTV fatigue.
Difficult technical challenges to use EBIF for interactive advertising across multiple networks due to divergent middleware standards.
Recognition that the best TV commerce platforms will likely be born out of second screen, or companion applications – rather than fulfillment occurring on the main screen.
With Canoe’s exit from this market, we are likely to see operators leverage their own interactive TV (iTV) platforms for delivery of their own tune-in ads, and some local advertisements. A few networks may maintain interactive programming – notably those like Home Shopping Network where it is core to their value proposition – performing MSO integration themselves.
The VOD space, further, seems a little bit more crowded. Both Blackarrow (with its well established AAMP consortium) and This Technology are already well underway in this market. Blackarrow hits primarily the Comcast VOD footprint, while This Technology has not been able to disclose where its decisions are taking hold (we hope to update this after speaking with them further). In both cases, it is possible that Canoe will operate the pipes that deliver many advertising campaigns to market.Thisbusinesswill likely grow to a low-margin, high transaction volume business over time.
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I Look Forward To the Day When I No Longer Talk About NFC Handsets....

Feb 17, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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I was thinking​ this morning about how many NFC (new) handsets I might expect to see in at Mobile World Congress inBarcelona at the end of the month. Truth be told, I don't have very high expectations. I hope that I am wrong but given the fact thatprogress has been slow over the past 12 months I amsitting firmly in the cautious/conservative camp.

So how many new NFC handsets might there be? Well, speaking with NXP earlier this year I was pleased to hear that they are working on near enough 100 devices (handsets, smartphones, and tablets amongst others), of which 60-70% are Android-based; no surprise given Android ICS incorporating support for NFC. Couple this with the high profile design wins from Inside Secure and things look promising, especially when you consider the other IC suppliers also active.

However, in reality, I would be surprised if there were more than 10 new handset models with NFC in Barcelona. This is largely in part to the fact that it is early in the year still, but also down to the OEMs customers - the MNOs. At this time I still generally see MNOs working on business plans, looking for ROI on seeding the market with NFC-enabled handsets - and they still cannot find a business model to appeal to their financial partners for payment services.

As a result, the MNOs are yet not ordering NFC devices andthe OEMs will likely continue to hold back from widely offering it as a feature of their handsets. Yes, they will work with NXP and Inside Secure to ensure that their designs are ready but that does not mean that they will then include NFC within the commercial design (especially if no-one is requesting it or prepared to pay for it).

I am not all doom and gloom though. I see good signs in the market, especially when you remember that NFC is not just payments. It can be used for so much more, as an enabler of and enhancement to new services. "Making applications interactive" is one way that I look at it. And I believe that news such as that annoucned by Texas Instruments this week is such a good sign. It is launching two new combo ICs featuring NFC alongside Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS/GNSS and FM connectivity.

Until now, TI had held back from the mobile market, instead focusing its NFC developments on other sectors, such as medical, consumer and automotive. Its move with the new combo chips is a boost for the nascent NFC market and I think that by incorporating NFC with other technologies, the barrier of someone paying for an additional (standalone) NFC controller is removed. That si to say, OEMs are not so worried about NFC impacting their margins and MNOs see less added cost for NFC handsets.

As I said in this blog's title: I look forward to the day when I no longer talk about NFC handsets. Instead, I look forward to the day when it is simply there, as a ubiquitous feature (at least in all smartphones).I won't be talking about it because it will be as pervasive as Bluetooth, FM receivers, GPS and WiFi. And perhaps it will be; with developments like TI's combo connecitivty IC there is no reason why it won't be. There's obviously some way to go still and Idon't think that we will beat that point at next year's MWC -but it might be the year after that....

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Femto Forum Gives Way To The Small Cell Forum

Feb 15, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​The Femto Forum has rebranded itself to the Small Cell Forum, although I genuinely think that it’s come slightly late in the day. Most of the vendors in the Femto Forum have long past rebranded their own marketing messagesto include small cells as a part of the larger discussion. However, it’s good to see that the there is a general acceptance of the term ‘small cells’.

In fact we at ABI Research sparked off debate back in 2009 when we suggested a Super Femto concept, which could be argued as being a one of the first steps of decoupling femtocells from the basic residential play and probably a precursor to the term small cells. Back in early 2011, we were also one of the first few analyst firms to rebrand our own femtocell research service to include the larger small cell opportunity. We got instant acceptance from our existing clients and have since been getting a lot of interest from a much wider ecosystem of vendors and operators.

But apart from blowing our own horns, yes this does allow the industry to move on past the terminology debates and get to the more serious business of getting standards and interoperability in place for the wider small cell family of solutions. Also it’s a good one-stop shop for anyone in the public arena wanting to know more about small cells in general.

To most people its basically an umbrella term that incorporates femtocells, picocells and microcells and to an extent Wi-Fi as well. These could be indoor or outdoor small cells. And there lies the clue – outdoor small cells (or as we used to call them metro cells) are getting all the attention these days.

While the Small Cell Forum is committed to continue the preaching the virtues of indoor small cells, it’s the outdoor small cells that will take most of their attention and energies, I presume.

One thing that will be interesting to follow is if the traditional DAS and repeater folks will also start to borrow the term small cells, while it is still hot.Although I don’t think the Small Cell Forum is too eager to further wider their scope. There are architectural and philosophical differences in the two ecosystems and its better that they remain separate.

In any event, this officially marks the beginning of the small cell era.

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