OneAPI to bind them.

There’s trouble in Mobile Earth.  Or so it appeared at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.  Darkness is spreading throughout the networks, as the twin towers of Apple and Android continue to suck application developers into their empires.  But help was at hand.  Step forward those plucky little hobbits at the GSM Association.  Prior to the Conference their ivory burrow had been echoing to the sound of furry feet as they hastily put together the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to thwart those twin evils of the cellular world.

ARPU is precious.  Brand is even more precious.  As without that, you’re just a data pipe.  But both are fading.  The only thing that consumers appear to value these days is downloadable apps, and lots of them.  Last year at MWC, every operator was busy launching their own Apps Store.  A year on, the cellular shires have realised fighting alone didn’t work, so they’ve banded together to pit their combined forces against the dark empire.

It’s an odd alliance, and probably one that is doomed to failure. 

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Fast, Fit and Fertile. Bluetooth low energy spurs innovation.

The potential of Bluetooth low energy was eloquently demonstrated at this week’s ISPOO conference in Germany, when the winners of the first year of the Bluetooth Innovation World Cup awards were announced.  The competition has been running for the last year, inviting individuals and companies to submit ideas for new sports and fitness products that will be made possible by the new Bluetooth low energy standard.

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mHealth – Mobile Monday Amsterdam (Part 1)

Watch the Video  |   See the Slides

The organisers probably weren’t expecting snow, but it didn’t stop the audience turning up en masse to Mobile Monday’s mHealth meeting in Amsterdam last week. The presentations were far from chilling;  mHealth is moving from a position of  relative obscurity a year ago, to something that every network operator feels they need to have.  Vodafone, AT&T and Telefonica have already declared that it’s a key part of their strategy.  The potentially still-born US health reform and accompanying monetary stimulus plans have convinced many more that there’s money to be made from it, and 400 plus attendees were keen to understand where those opportunities may be.

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