The fanfare that invariably accompanies a public appearance of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has finally died down. Amongst the slew of announcements at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference 2011 on June 6 were a number that may have a profound effect on CSPs worldwide, especially those in the mobile/wireless network space.
Perhaps the most surprising new feature revealed during the keynotes was iMessage, a real-time messaging service that lets iOS users send texts, photos and videos to other iOS users over Wi-Fi and 3G. No big deal on the surface , sounds a lot like BlackBerry Messenger that has hardly set the world on fire, but when you dig down you discover that a push notification is received on ALL the recipients iOS devices. If you know any Apple aficionados, you’ll know they are likely to have more than one device in their possession.
That’s pretty cool but its limitations, like those of Messenger, are that it can only inter-operate with other proprietary Apple devices. If the service is provided at no charge some analysts believe iMessage may be a potentially lethal threat to operators' premium SMS and MMS services. However, it has some stiff competition from other cross-platform messaging options already around, including Twitter, that has also been embraced by Apple.
It remains to be seen how successful these moves will be. Little has been heard of the success of Apple’s last foray into the telcos VAS space, FaceTime, a video calling app that was supposedly going to make video calling cool. This was despite repeated failures by operators to attract mass take-up of similar cross-platform technology that has been around for years. Not to mention Skype that offers all the above on any platform.
The biggest news was around iCloud, Apple’s foray in cloud services but with a twist. Jobs noted at the keynote that the cloud has “demoted” the PC and Mac to just mere devices, and iCloud will step in as the “center of your digital life” and digital hub. "iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices," he explained. "It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it … Now, when I buy a song on one of my devices it automatically downloads to all of my devices without having to sync or do anything at all. We're making it free, and we're very excited about it."
But wait, there’s more! Apple is incorporating its iWork suite of programs (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) into iCloud so that users can work on projects using one of these apps on one Apple device and then pick up where they left off using another. iCloud will also sync up the Camera library among multiple devices using Photo Stream, which pushes the last 1,000 photos taken on any of the iCloud-enabled devices to the rest.
OK, enough already, are you getting the message? Apple wants all its customers to be able to sync all their devices, all the time, anywhere. The whole strategy is predicated on continuous connectivity to the internet over fixed-line (cable, ADSL, etc) and preferably over wireless (3G, Wi-FI, Wi-Max, LTE). Presumably, Apple believes that network operators worldwide will be happy to transport the extra traffic, effectively multiplied by the number of Apple devices being synced continuously with the iCloud mother-ship.
This is taking OTT to new level and one wonders if operators will be happy to play along or will have to formulate special iCloud plans to include all their customer’s Apple devices. Those customers will be wanting, no, needing, all-you-can-eat options just to cope. Operators will surely be hesitant to offer anything more than capped plans to preserve their precious, limited bandwidth.
Knowing how critical fast internet access is to the success of iCloud, you would think Apple would have consulted operators to see how they could work together and benefit jointly. It is doubtful that this has happened and further consolidates the industry’s worst fears that OTT players like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook will continue to view their networks as ‘big fat pipes,’ there for the taking!
Posted
06-15-2011 7:16 PM
by
The Insider