Much to prove – much to "come later" says Vodafone
We said we’d be back with some thoughts from the Vodafone 360 launch. And here they are.
First off, a reminder that Vodafone said it was going to do this – it’s not an announcement that has dropped out of thin air. Back in October last year it said it was going to make internet services one of its three key strands. Then it bought Zyb in 2008, and followed that up with the acquisition of Wayfinder. Zyb was a software company specializing in the social contact list. Wayfinder was a mapping and navigation provider.
Then, in May this year it said it was going to launch an applications store, with applications developed to the specifications laid out by JIL, a group it formed with SoftBank, Verizon and China Mobile.
So, let’s have a look at what Vodafone has announced. As you will likely know, the kernel of its announcement is the launch of a presence-enabled address book, which allows users to view contacts not just as a name and phone number, but to see that contact’s latest updates, status, location and the like.
This functionality is built around the acquisition of Zyb last year. And the application can be downloaded to a range of handsets – at the moment this is restricted to a number of Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices. In time, Vodafone wants pretty much all handsets to be able to download the client – why would it not? When you download the client, you don’t have to build a new address or contacts book. It sits in the native contacts book of your phone. So accusations that Vodafone is running a closed shop seem to be off the mark.
Feeds can be taken in from Facebook, and the IM supported is Windows Live Messenger. Twitter and other sites are coming. Again, although that’s not many sites or communities at launch, it’s not in Vodafone’s interest to limit the scope. We asked if integrating to Vodafone’s client required a lot of tight, custom integration, or was fairly easy. Vodafone gave the impression that it was easy enough, using its API, and that it wanted as many partners as wanted to work with Vodafone. Yes, of course, it would say that. But it makes sense, it’s not in Vodafone’s interest to limit reach, here.
Alongside that contacts book announcement, Vodafone announced the launch of an app store. The app store will have 1000 apps in it at launch, and that content will be available in China Mobile, Verizon, and Softbank versions of the app store when they launch. This is because these are the operators that have formed the JIL APIs for apps development, and between them there is a subscriber base of over a billion. Developers that want to enter a billing relationship with Vodafone will need to develop to the JIL APIs. But the shop will support W3C-based apps for free apps. Does this include apps that are free, but have an ad-funded model? That is a question that nobody could answer at first pass.
There was also the lassoing of Vodafone’s music and maps service within the 360 umbrella. (Mobile Europe readers will know that Vodafone hopes to start selling ad formats on the map platform in 2010.)
So… added to all this, Vodafone also announced it has developed two specific handsets to support the new service. These are custom built handsets from Samsung that are built on the LiMo OS, and use a UI that has been developed within Vodafone. In this UI, you can also view your contacts in groups, or in 3D, where icons float on a black background. If you tap a button you can view all your contacts’ updates in a chronological view, rather than alphabetically. When you click in to view a contact you can choose how to contact them – call, text, email, IM (Windows Live Messenger), and give them a location nudge as well.
Will there be more phones running this UI on the LiMo platform in the future? Yes, says Vodafone. In time. Does the UI have to run on LiMo to get the full experience? Yes, says Vodafone.
Now, this is the first rub. Because Vodafone has developed its own proprietary UI on LiMo, someone who wants the full experience will need a LiMo phone with Vodafone’s UI on it. That does not mean that you can’t download the app to another phone, or access Vodafone’s app shop from a non-LiMo phone – but neither of those approaches will give you the full Monty.
And there are other features that are limited just to these phones. As well as the 3D view, there is also the ability to tag photos with a location, and then to back that up automatically in the cloud.
At the launch, Vodafone said that the application can will be embedded in four Nokia Symbian devices. 10 devices can support the full application download, and there are 100 devices that can support the contact book “component” of the service. The company is “working on” giving compatibility to iPhone and Android-base devices, the operator said.
We spoke to Rick Fant, who is head of internet discovery at Vodafone, and he said that in time these functions would be available to other handsets. But so far the operator hasn’t figured out the way to do that.
He also said that Vodafone went ahead with the JIL specifications because it needed to get on with something fast, and something that would have the maximum reach within that timescale. There is an industry initiative within the GSMA called oneAPI, which aims to enable mobile operators to expose useful network information and capabilities to a Web application developers. It aims to reduce the effort and time needed to create applications and content that is portable across mobile operators.
So why has Vodafone (and its JIL partners) cracked on with JIL? Fant told us that it was about getting to market quickest, and first, but he also said that Vodafone sees itself, in time, moving towards oneAPI, or vice versa, to achieve compatibility with that.
It was a similar story with the GSMA’s Rich Communications Suite initiative, which seeks to develop interoperability in a set of common approaches amongst operators developing the connected address book theme. Again, Fant said that Vodafone say a time to market advantage in going with its own approach, but also added there is still “work to be done in cross-network interoperability.”