Johannesburg, 18 Feb 2009
The future for mobile technology companies, as well as for the greater good of the mobile industry, including business users and consumers, lies in the use of open standards and tight collaboration, say Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia.
This emerged during a panel discussion on open mobility, at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, this week.
Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T mobility and consumer markets; Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of Nokia; and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made it clear that, in the current economic situation, vendors, operators and application developers should move closer together.
They explained that these players should invest in greater collaborative initiatives, based on the adoption of open standards to ensure the success of the mobile ecosystem.
De la Vega says: "Interconnected symbiotic and balanced systems are dependant on a variety of technologies and, as in any ecosystem, they must all together thrive in harmony to ensure everybody shares in the benefits."
He says that, to strengthen the ecosystem, one must always remember to protect customer security and privacy, and thus transparency is needed, which means open standards are necessary to increase operability.
"We need to ensure applications work across devices and platforms, and we need to adopt OMTP. We simply need standardised solutions that are device- and platform-agnostic. We also need to be open to alternative business models if we want to save the mobile ecosystem," he says.
There is general consensus that the silo approach to business in the mobile industry will not work and needs to be scratched altogether. There are also too many mobile operating systems. This is a rather big step in the evolution of mobile technologies, as companies are thinking of sharing more of their market with competitors. The question is which operating system will be crowned the leader, because all players still want to survive in these times.
Kallasvuo says third-party application developers must be able to develop mobile applications that will run across all devices, and the current disparate operating system environment is not conducive to this. This is where open standards will be the answer.
Ballmer says the industry needs open standards in these tight economic times, not only in large organisations, such as Microsoft, but all companies across the globe.
"Now is the time to keep your ambition and not to downscale it. One needs to be optimistic at present if you are to survive," Ballmer adds.
Those who understand the fundamentals of innovation are those who will be strongest at the end. "The power of ideas and innovation is what is going to drive us forward - mobile or fixed technologies," he says.
"Consumers want seamless experiences between home and work life, and I believe the TV is going to be one of those devices that will have the biggest impact."
Ballmer agrees that no single company can be a one-stop shop with platforms, handsets and more: "I believe we need to work together and we need to be open enough to build on the back of each other and leverage the innovation of others so that we can get the solutions that matter.
"Be open, even in different ways and at different times. The success of open ecosystems is undeniable, and security and interoperability are all challenges, and together we need to find solutions."
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