Inevitable Innovation

In the mobile industry, some developments are just inevitable. It’s only a question of time before the right mix of technologies, demand, and agents of change turn inevitable innovations into market reality. I was reminded of this while attending a recent webinar [1] organized by the Transport Data Initiative Forum. This featured stories about pilot projects in several UK regions to apply ‘IoT’ data to tackle a variety of what might be termed smart city applications. 

Several of these pilots involved applications built with mobile network operator data, provided by the UK’s O2. Pilot projects involved several municipalities. Each of them focused on a local need (e.g., road maintenance, environmental monitoring etc.) and each built applications using data from a range of their municipal sensors and data sources. In several cases, they combined their local data assets with mobile network operator data. 

I recall discussing this inevitability with a mobile operator in the UK, around 2017. The challenge in those days was to persuade different parties about the value of sharing data across organizational and commercial boundaries. A related challenge was the need to explore collaborative business models based on the equitable sharing of rewards. 

MNOs’ IoT Platform Predicament

IoT Analytics, the German market research firm, recently published a customer satisfaction assessment of IoT platforms [1]. It covers 50 vendors and applies a broad definition for IoT platforms. At one end of the spectrum, there are multi-purpose cloud infrastructure and platforms, such as those offered by Amazon and Microsoft. At the other end are platforms for niche users, with machine builders as one example.

IoT Analytics used feedback from senior executives in organizations that procured and are deploying IoT solutions to rate the top-25 platforms. There is a slight bias to North America, which accounted for 40% of the mix. Europe (25%), APAC (25%) and MEA (10%) make up the rest of the survey.

For this post, I propose to focus on a summary chart. This maps leaders, challengers and follower IoT platforms across technology and customer-centricity dimensions. The chart highlights a predicament for mobile network operators and especially the large European operators.

2018 in Review: IoT puzzle-pieces falling into place

Compared to previous years, the pace of corporate activity in the IoT arena has settled down. This is to be expected in a maturing market cycle. This impression may be at variance with wider industry sentiment where the use of AI/Blockchain/IoT/Machine Learning labelling continues to sensationalize.

As a sign of IoT market reality, the opening event of 2018 dealt with the commercial reality. It took the form of Telefonica O2 withdrawing from the smart home market through the closure of O2 Smart Home. The year ended with a couple of more promising events for the mobile and IoT industries. I’ll touch on these later.

Most activity was concentrated among three groups: technology vendors; network operators (mobile, low-power and virtual); and, platform providers.

A fresh look at MNOs' IoT strategy

Over the past few weeks, there have been several commentaries about IoT strategies for mobile network operators (MNOs), several of these expressed at Mobile Europe’s 2018 IoT in Telecoms conference.

Vodafone’s Director of IoT, Stefano Gastaut [1], expressed visible frustration about the ‘dumb pipe’ label attached to MNOs and the implied commoditization of connectivity. Enrico Bagnasco, Head of Innovation at TIM articulated [2] a ‘horizontal services’ view.

And, finally, Ericsson published a study [3] drawing on interviews with 20 mobile operators about the status of their IoT priorities and the strategic opportunities for growth. One highlight in Ericsson’s findings is that 70% lack a well-defined strategy. While many are testing different roles in the IoT value chain, 80% plan to move up to higher layers.

On the whole, it therefore looks as if the industry has got second wind, aiming to build on a first phase of growth, triggered by the GSMA’s ‘M2M and Beyond’ industry strategy.

So, are operators on the right track to capitalize on the opportunity or has the market passed them by?

Blockchain and the Mobile Industry

With almost no industry untouched by blockchain-mania, what opportunities does the technology hold for the mobile industry? Recognizing the issue, the GSMA has begun to explore the applicability of its Mobile Connect, identity management proposition. And, at this year's Mobile World Congress, several mobile network operators (MNOs) bandied together to launch a collaborative approach [1].

Innovating and Investing Strategically in New Service Categories

A few weeks ago, the UK mobile operator O2 decided to shut down it smart home business [1]. O2 stated that it had not seen "category-leading take up" of the service to justify continued investment.

This episode encapsulates a recurring challenge for businesses in the mobile eco-system, laboring under the opportunities to exploit mobile technology in adjacent industries and new application categories. Just think back to the promise of mobile money and mHealth (another category that Telefonica entered and subsequently exited a few years ago [2]). The new waves of opportunity today are in the industrial IoT and smart city markets, to name a couple of examples.

2017 in Review: Making the IoT work

Looking back over notable, M2M/IoT corporate initiatives in 2017, mobile network operators (MNOs) and technology vendors were the two most active groups in the industry eco-system.

The main feature amongst MNOs was market expansion into new geographies. Sometimes, this happened individually; more often, it took the form of partnering with other network operators. This is a classic growth model for the mobile operator community.

In the technology vendor community, leading initiatives took the form of: acquisitions/investments; partnering (with MNOs, platform providers and system integrators); and, product innovation.

In comparative terms, activity among platform organizations was subdued. And, end-users barely featured among 2017 initiatives. It is likely that these last two data points mask a higher level of internal activity targeting operational scaling and in-house developments as firms solidify their foundations in the IoT market. As an example, Altair, a provider of engineering software to enterprise customers, acquired the Carriots IoT platform. This initiative illustrates the trend to internalize IoT capabilities and has parallels with the earlier acquisition of ThingWorx by PTC [1].

Innovation at ETSI IoT Week 2017

Last week, I attended ETSI's IoT Week, an annual event to explore the IoT standardization landscape and to see how industry and academics, around the world, are testing IoT implementation ideas for the future. Not surprisingly, the oneM2M standard featured prominently in the program and the display zone of demonstrator projects given that ETSI is one of 8 standards development organization (SDO) partners in the oneM2M project.

However, not everything on the agenda centered on oneM2M. Other standardization efforts were also represented including: ESMIG (energy); SigFox and LoRA Alliance in the LPWAN sector; ZigBee Alliance; and, international organizations such as ISO, IEC. And, several companies, including MNOs, demonstrated how they are addressing new business and revenue opportunities beyond IoT connectivity.

AT&T and GE Digital hit IoT road bumps

Over the past few weeks, AT&T and GE have featured in the news because of issues connected to their IoT business units.

AT&T seems to be having second thoughts about its Digital Life commitments with some news reports suggesting that it might divest this business unit [1].

In GE’s case, its Digital business unit is emerging from a hard re-alignment following internal activities to stabilize its software platform and to adjust its financial targets. Now, the focus will prioritize profitability over unfettered spending [2].

So, what’s been happening to these two IoT industry pioneers and what can other companies learn from their experiences?

Will digital transformation save the telco industry?

Over the past few weeks, McKinsey [1] and the World Economic Forum (WEF) [2] have weighed in on the debate about long term growth prospects in the telecommunications sector. They have valid concerns which arise from projections for low revenue growth and shrinking margins for telecommunications service providers. The near term prospects for many telcos involves the sale ever increasing volumes of data and cloud services to consumer and business customers on the assumption that price elasticity effects will work in their favor and not undermine top-line, revenue growth.

The McKinsey and WEF ideas rely on optimizing the core business and building at the periphery to support digital services and enhanced customer experiences. These approaches take a narrow view of the market for telcos and one and define competition in terms of other telco service providers. Is that really the right way to address the strategic challenge that faces the industry?

A tweet to IoT’s low-power, wide-area networking proponents

It’s amazing to think that Twitter recently turned ten years old. This milestone came on the heels of a rumored, CEO-level assessment [1] of whether to relax its longstanding 140-character limit on tweets. Some of the reaction to this development questions how Twitter, a major influencer of condensed, bite-sized communications, could pull the rug from under its core proposition.

There’s a timely lesson in Twitter’s evolution for the rapidly growing band of companies developing low-power, wide-area and small payload IoT applications.

Co-opetition in Digital and IoT markets

Several news stories have circulated over the past few weeks in connection with the potential acquisition of Nokia’s mapping business, HERE. The most recent stories have a group of German auto-manufacturers winning out over Uber although there has been no formal announcement to this effect.

HERE is an important enabler for mobile value-added services. One element of its technology captures location content such as road networks, buildings and traffic patterns. Other businesses then purchase or license this mapping data along with navigation services from HERE. Smartphone Apps, to make use of mapping data, form a part of its technology portfolio.

The potential acquisition of HERE by three German car makers – BMW, Daimler and Audi – is relevant to the telecoms industry for several reasons.

Business innovation at IoT speed

Having worked on the topic of M2M value chain structures in 2012, a couple of relevant market developments caught my attention over the past few weeks. These involve: Aeris, an M2M service provider, Cisco, and Deutsche Telekom.

Each of these company initiatives aims to simplify the process of implementing M2M and IoT applications. They provide guidance to (non-technical) companies that are seeking to implement M2M solutions while also providing an organising structure for complex application situations. These examples hold lessons that companies can apply to improve their sales performance in M2M and IoT markets.

Review of M2M Corporate Events in 2013

2013 as a whole was another year of strong corporate activity in the M2M market. A total of 147 events easily surpassed the 115 events that were recorded in 2012. These events include: announcement of an industry changing technology breakthrough; market entry/expansion initiatives; strategic partnering; investment-related acquisitions or divestitures; distribution agreements along the value chain; product innovation and outsourcing of key service delivery capabilities.

While 2013 saw many more companies taking to the press wires to publicize their sales wins, these are not recorded here as corporate initiatives. If anything, sales wins are the consequence of one or more corporate strategy commitments made in prior years.

An important development that occurred over the course of 2013 was a shift in sentiment to promote IoT in preference to M2M. This began with a raft of announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2013. Momentum continued to build around the IoT theme due to significant publicity drives and business commitments by large organizations such as ARM, Bosch, Cisco, GE and Intel.

Managing M2M inside an MNO

France’s Orange has a long history in the M2M market and was one of the early pioneers in establishing an M2M competence centre, leveraging the deep expertise of its M2M team, notably in the Belgian market. It was therefore interesting to see Orange Business Services’ announcement of a strategic partnership to use Ericsson’s Device Connection Platform (DCP).

Orange has operating companies in several different countries and is also a partner with Deutsche Telekom in the UK’s Everything Everywhere. Orange is separately a partner with Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera and Telecom Italia in the Global M2M Association. In light of these different constituents, one interpretation of the Orange/Ericsson partnership is as a neutral platform that many, if not all, of the M2M operating businesses can buy into.

If this is indeed the strategy, it would shift the responsibility for coordinating multiple platforms, capabilities and expertise onto Ericsson. Channel and account management responsibilities would then more naturally fall on to individual operating businesses.

To get a sense of the coordination challenges and operational complexities that arises in enterprise-grade and multi-platform environments, it is instructive to look at another company, Telefónica.

Rethinking the mHealth Value Proposition

Over the past few weeks there have been a couple of thought provoking developments in the mHealth market. The first event was the withdrawal of two recently launched mHealth services by O2 UK on the grounds that there was inadequate consumer demand. The second event relates to Verizon Wireless which obtained FDA approval for its mobile health remote monitoring and personal health data platform.

These developments prompted me to revisit some earlier work I did on the value proposition in mHealth. In particular, I was investigating whether remote monitoring is actually a relatively minor, but necessary, element in the business model. My earlier work focused on diabetes care although I suspect that the arguments carry over to other chronic health conditions.

M2M Corporate Initatives - Strong H1-2013

Over the first half of 2013, there has been strong evidence that companies in the M2M market are continuing to implement a range of business strategies to capture new M2M service and revenue opportunities. Specifically:

• the number of corporate initiatives is more than double that for the corresponding period in 2012

• the market is no longer entirely driven by supply-side companies; several enterprises have strategically embraced M2M connectivity and have either partnered with mobile network operators or they are taking the lead role in developing new services

Launch Strategies for Digital Business Units

Among the many announcements and presentations from Mobile World Congress 2013, one that caught my attention came from Matthew Key, the CEO of Telefónica Digital.

In a post-event blog post Key highlighted how the mobile industry is moving beyond the realm of “phone calls and pure connectivity” with particular reference to M2M and mCommerce opportunities. He observed that “Despite the realization by all telcos of the need to become digital to leverage these opportunities, there is a lack of consensus on how to get there. What then is the way forward?” His own position involves “driving open partnerships and using mobile and digital technology to address pressing social needs”. Partnerships, in a variety of forms, is something I have previously described as a key aspect of business model innovation.

Stepping back, however, what are the key characteristics of other mobile operator ‘digital’ initiatives? And, what does this imply as the way forward as other operators strive to become Digital?

M2M Platform Permutations

Ericsson’s 5 February announcement to supply its M2M Device Connection Platform (DCP) in support of XL Axiata in Indonesia has prompted this update to an earlier article on the competitive dynamics of international alliances and M2M platforms.

The DCP deal is something of a coup, providing Ericsson with a meaningful customer reference in the highest population country in South East Asia. The news announcement actually formalizes a business relationship that dates back to early 2012. In October 2012, both companies highlighted an achievement of 89,000 M2M connections. The pace of growth seems to have accelerated with XL Axiata’s M2M base reaching a total of 125,000 in the intervening months. The latest announcement provides some timely marketing collateral for Ericsson to use with mobile operators that cannot justify an investment in their own M2M platforms and the delegations of mobile-operator executives who will shortly be congregating at Mobile World Congress.

The move by XL Axiata is not unique in the market. Other mobile operators have partnered for M2M platform capabilities to handle large scale application opportunities using processes that are geared specifically to M2M operational needs and economics. AT&T was an early partner of Jasper Wireless, for example, while Everything Everywhere in the UK has been working with another platform provider, Transatel.

These developments and the changing competitive dynamics for M2M platforms will have far-reaching implications for all device vendors, service providers and users in the M2M eco-system.

Finance as a Telco M2M offering

The role of telecommunications service providers in the M2M market is typically associated with the provision of wide-area data connectivity. This narrow perspective ignores the other capabilities - technical and non-technical - that service providers can bring to bear in new application scenarios.

In November 2012, Telefónica announced a cooperation agreement with Generali Seguros in Spain to pilot a new, automobile insurance service. The service will allow users to pay for their car insurance policy based on how they drive. The service will also provide information about how users can drive responsibly and tips to improve their driving habits. The overall service concept is not new; it has parallels with an offering such as 'In Drive' which is available in the USA from State Farm Insurance and Verizon's recently acquired subsidiary, Hughes Telematics.

However, what is interesting in the Spanish case is the three-party business model that Telefónica has put in place to capture a share of the wider commercial potential of this new service.