Paris in the Springtime?

Once upon a time, UK resellers of Huawei equipment had a cease and desist order placed on them by Cisco, as Cisco suspected there was a suspicious amount of familiar-looking code in certain Huawei products. Now, we see it is Huawei taking action to make sure that its IP is not exploited by external parties.

This time around it’s slightly more complicated, though, as Huawei is not keen to see Motorola engineers heading off their aspiring new host, Nokia Siemens Networks, with back pockets stuffed full of Huawei IP. Huawei, you see, has been providing its 3G products to Motorola for resale, although quite how much actually got sold would be another question, given Motorola’s lack of success in mobile 3G. And now NSN has come in for the networks side of Motorola, Huawei is rather keen that knowledge of its IP won’t make it over to the new owner. That seems a pretty tough thing to enforce, given that Motorola has had a relationship with Huawei for 10 years, and will have a good working idea of Huawei products. Also, NSN doesn’t exactly need 3G IP, the principle area of Huawei and Moto’s collaboration.

Whatever the reason for Huawei’s action, it serves as a reminder that the landscape of the network equipment vendor has well and truly changed.

Also a changing landscape – good old NFC again. Reports surfaced from nowhere about Apple including NFC in the next generation of iPhones. There wasn’t much more than the usual hint and nudge, but their was agreement that this wasn’t just about payments. Instead, as with Google’s Android iteration of NFC, the focus is as much on content discovery and delivery, and advertising.

But away from the rumour mill, banks and a card provider have indeed signed up to an iPhone NFC payments solution. Granted, you need more than just the phone, but Visa and WIireless Dynamics’ “stick-on” accessory solution is a sign that there are players in the industry, including operators, who are not going to wait around for handset manufacturers to attempt to own this market. Visa’s iCarte application will have its detractors for its overall user experience (you have to get a separate accessory?) but  don’t ignore what it means in terms of Visa’s determination to find a way to make this market work. 

Meanwhile, the GSMA, as if it didn’t have enough on its plate, has made sure that there will be no need for people from Cologne or Amsterdam to be polite about it at its at Mobile World Congress. (February 14th, Barcelona, had you heard?)

Yes, the industry organisation has cut its shortlist of Mobile World Cities from six to four, not to three as it originally said it would. This means that of the competing six, only Amsterdam and Cologne have been shown the door. That means that Barcelona, the incumbent, Paris, Milan and Munich are all still in the running. I have been asked which I would prefer, and I’m torn, as I don’t think that the best city for the Congress is necessarily the best for the concept of the Mobile World City, which brings with it the idea of a whole city aciting as a sort of semi-permanent exhibition to the wonders of mobile. The chosen City will be expected to roll out a host of advanced mobile services, acting as a shop window to the world for the potential of mobile services.

I think Paris would be best for this, it has the most multi-cultural population and heritage of the bidding cities – meaning it is the most open the world at large. It also has the sorts of sectors you need to develop mobile applications for – mass transport, large media and financial sectors, lots of varied retail and entertainment outlets, plus millions of incoming tourists. All of these lend themselves well to a Mobile World City.

But for a Conference? I don’t think you could really pick between them all, and of course people will always point to the weather in February mitigating against the northern cities. Yet the GSMA has said that a change of date will be considered in the bid process. So… paris in the Springtime? Apart from Scotland’s biennal evisceration on the rugby field, what’s not to like?

Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe

 

 

STORY LINKS:

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8428-icarte-and-visa-take-accessory-approach-to-iphone-nfc

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8426-huawei-wins-stay-against-motorola-sharing-ip-with-nsn

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8420-mobile-video-through-the-rood-is-optimisation-the-answer

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/webinars/on-demand-webinars/8360-how-real-time-charging-and-policy-management-are-converging-to-drive-more-profitable-mobile-data-plans

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news/press-wire/8429-mobiles-offer-hackers-open-door-to-sensitive-data-says-report-