Healthy opportunities in the m-health sector

Opportunities in the global mobile healthcare market are estimated to be worth between $50bn and $60bn in 2010, prompting operators to step up their initiatives in this emerging sector.

The figures come from a global market survey from management consultancy McKinsey & Company, and suggest that mobile health (m-health) opportunities in 2010 could be worth $20bn in the US alone.

To test consumer demand for m-health services, McKinsey conducted a global market research survey of 3,000 consumers in six countries (500 each in Brazil, USA, Germany, South Africa, India and China). The findings indicate that a large proportion of the four billion people using mobile phones today struggle to gain access to good quality and affordable healthcare, both in emerging markets and more developed societies.

According to the research, almost 70 per cent of respondents were extremely or very interested in at least one m-mealth product, with Indian and South African consumers having the highest levels of interest (40-60 per cent across all products). However, US consumers expressed high levels of interest in PhoneDoctor (60 per cent) and HealthWatch (35 per cent) services.

Willingness to pay for such services was also surprisingly high for several products across geographies, with Indian customers willing to pay ten times airtime rates, and US consumers 20 times airtime rates to be able to speak to a doctor via PhoneDoctor. Brazilian and Chinese consumers meanwhile were willing to pay equivalent to a new mobile phone subscription for HealthWatch.

These two sectors – PhoneDoctor and HealthWatch – were found to hold the greatest opportunities, with almost 50 per cent of the market opportunity likely to be captured by connected biosensor devices, representing almost $30bn of incremental opportunity globally. HealthWatch services might include a SIM embedded biosensor watch that monitors vitals, and is connected to the emergency services. PhoneDoctor, which was estimated as a $10bn global market opportunity, allows customers call to speak with a qualified physician for remote diagnosis and advice.

“Mobile healthcare is clearly an opportunity to improve healthcare, manage costs and at the same time drive growth. We believe it is something that mobile operators, hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, technology players, health insurance companies and governments too should all be looking at closely,” said Alessio Ascari, director at McKinsey’s Milan office.

Vodafone, a founding member of the mHealth Alliance, already has an m-health initiative up and running and Orange recently announced that it too had joined the Alliance – a partnership which uses mobile technology to improve public health and patient care in the developing world.

Orange said it will work on projects focused in West Africa, where it has a mobile presence, including Botswana, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina-Faso and Mali.

While last week, O2 UK appointed Keith Nurcombe, a former executive at GlaxoSmithKline, to head up its new mobile healthcare division. The new department will launch in May and will examine and develop m-health and M2M initiatives that could be applied to Telefonica’s operations in Europe and Latin America.

Mike Short, vice president of public affairs at Telefonica O2 Europe, recently spoke to telecoms.com about the future of the mobile operator, and said that m-health would be a main focus going forward. ”

If you look at healthcare, national health services cannot deliver all the care we need. It will cost a fortune and, with the ageing population in Europe, there are not enough carers. So we need new ways of looking at healthcare and an understanding of how communications can help these evolve, We think there will be more focus on prevention rather than cure, on health rather than illness. That means wearable devices, or self measurement. It’s about taking some ideas from the sports field and making them mass market,” Short said.

The iPad arrives in the US on April 3

Apple’s crack at the e-reader market, the iPad, will become available in the US on April 3 as a wifi only version, and then in late April for the wifi and 3G model.

The device will hit European shores (Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK) as well as Australia, Canada and Japan late in the same month.

The iPad, dubbed as a ‘magical’ device by chief exec Steve Jobs, will sell for $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB, and $699 for the 64GB versions. The 3G-capable models will be available at $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. International pricing will be announced around launch time in late April.

Apple will open up a new section in the App Store to cater to the iPad, although the device is also able to use 140,000 existing iPhone and iPod Touch applications. However, some have noted that once some of these apps scale up to the available resolution of the iPad (1024 by 768 pixels at 132 pixels per inch) they look a bit like the blocky graphics of the Commodore 64.

Taking the e-reader market head on, the iPad will feature an iBooks app that allows users to browse, purchase and download e-books to read on the device. The screen isn’t up to the same standards as electronic ink, but that’s because it’s being pitched as a jack of all trades when teamed with the iWork suite of office tools, Safari browser (with the same lack of support for Flash and Java that the iPhone suffers from), email client, and photo, video and music player apps.

The iBookstore will be available as a free download and will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

In related news, an Android-based, dual screen e-reader made by US-based Spring Design seems to be having some launch delays. The Alex, which features a 3.5″ colour LCD screen with virtual keyboard as well as a paper-like 6″ EPD screen, and connectivity provided via wifi, GSM and EVDO/CDMA, was due to go on sale at the end of February for $399.00. However, the online store has still not launched, but a company spokesman told telecoms.com that the units are ready to go, the firm is just waiting for the website to be completed and some issues with the back-end e-commerce.

Skype makes quick exit from US Ovi Store

Internet telephony player Skype has demonstrated the importance of its newfound relationship with Verizon Wireless, by pulling the Symbian version of its VoIP app from the US Ovi Store.

Just last week, Nokia highlighted the power of consumer brands, by hopping into bed with Skype to make the client available to some 200 million smartphone users worldwide, allowing users to make VoIP calls possible over either a wifi or mobile data connection. The app is downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, but should also work on Symbian devices from other manufacturers, like Sony Ericsson.

However, the app is not available to Ovi Store browsers in the US, presumably because of the recently struck deal between Skype and US carrier Verizon.

From March, US consumers will be able to get Skype on a wide range of Verizon phones, including the BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as Droid by Motorola, Eris by HTC and the Motorola Devour.

The service will allow users to make and receive unlimited free Skype-to-Skype voice calls and send and receive instant messages.

Commenting on the announcement at the time, Dario Talmesio, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said: “The Skype/Verizon announcement demonstrates that mobile operators are beginning to change their attitude towards VoIP providers, they have gone from blocking to managing what they consider to be an issue. However, the majority of mobile operators have yet to make a firm decision, but market forces are such that mobile operators can’t avoid Internet-based VoIP.”

The Skype app can still be installed and used on Symbian handsets in the US, it’s just not available as a direct download from the Ovi Store.

Ofcom to investigate net neutrality

The chief of UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has said the authority will investigate web traffic control measures later this year as the net neutrality debate rumbles on.

Ed Richards, who gave a keynote speech at the Cable Congress conference taking place in Brussels this week, said that in light of Europe’s move to adopt region-wide telecoms legislation, national regulators needed to assess the ‘openess’ of the internet and decide whether action needed to be taken to preserve it.

Traffic management measures are now commonly used by service providers to prevent bandwidth hogging by heavy users of services. But there is great concern that bandwidth throttling could be used ant competitively to restrict rival services.

Richards also said that service providers need to be more transparent in explaining what measures they use to their customers.

UK ISP Virgin Media, which is a vocal opponent of net neutrality (in fact CEO Neil Berkett once referred to the concept of net neutrality as “a load of bollocks”) just last week implemented web traffic management software from Zeus to ensure its customers receive a decent web experience even during spikes in demand.

Alex Brown, senior product manager for internet products at Virgin Media, said: “We wanted to offer customers better email and web services but at the same time ensure we can deliver them without impacting service levels or compromising security. Since we are dealing with massive volumes of traffic, reliability and performance is of paramount importance.”

When asked if Virgin was introducing throttling – one of the functions of the Zeus implementation – by stealth, we received no reply.

Google, as one of the world’s biggest generators of web traffic, often pops up in conversations about net neutrality, and Vodafone and Telefonica have recently made statements that suggest they are thinking of charging search engines to use their networks.

Both Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta and Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao have said that they are thinking about charging Google and other search engines to use their networks.

Alierta implied that it was unfair that search engines were using mobile bandwidth for free while Telefonica’s operations provided the network, product sales, customer care, installation and maintenance for them.

Alierta said that he was sure this situation would change and that search-engine companies would need to start paying for some of the infrastructure, possibly through the introduction of monthly fees in accordance with the amount of data generated by each site. Colao used his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress to say that search engines such as Google and Yahoo should pay for preferential access to the company’s networks.

However, Informa analyst Paul Lambert asserts that for now, the arguments are unsound, and in strategic terms they point to a misreading by the operators of the balance of power between Google and them.

“Why? Let’s take the “wrong in principle” argument first: Why should Google pay operators to allow mobile users to access its services? And why should Google – but not the BBC, Spotify, The New York Times, Facebook, HSBC or any other content/service provider – be required to pay operators for access to networks?” Lambert said.

“At the moment, Vodafone and Telefonica need the big search engines more than these companies need them. People expect to use Google and other popular Web sites on their mobile phones. The balance of power lies with Google and co., not any individual mobile operator. Unless Vodafone and Telefonica actually block Google and other Web sites from their networks, the majority of their customers will find a way to use them, because that’s exactly why they signed up to data plans in the first place – to use these Web sites while on the go.”

Apple targets HTC in patent dispute

More toing and froing in the world of patent wars this week, as Apple hit Taiwanese manufacturer HTC with the legal stick for infringing on iPhone related patents.

In a suit filed with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and in the US District Court in Delaware, Apple alleges that HTC has infringed on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

Patent lawsuits are commonplace in the mobile industry – Apple is presently embroiled in a lawsuit with Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia. Nokia sued Apple in October over allegations that the iPhone infringes upon ten of its patents. Apple responded with a countersuit in December, claiming that Nokia is infringing 13 Apple patents.

HTC has recently shaken off its cloak of anonymity as a quiet, white label device manufacturer, leading the charge on Android adoption with the production of such devices as the G1 and Google Nexus One.

Apple is looking for an injunction that would prevent HTC importing and selling certain devices in the US, but these cases often follow a similar pattern – trundling along for years without any resolution.

Siavash Alamouti, group research and development director, Vodafone

Vodafone, the world’s biggest carrier by revenues this week announced the appointment of Siavash Alamouti as its group research and development director, effective March 1, 2010.

Alamouti joins Vodafone from US chip vendor Intel, where he worked in its mobility group.

A recognised expert in wireless communications, with over 20 patents under his belt, Alamouti is recognised as the inventor of space–time block coding – a technique used to transmit multiple copies of a data stream across a number of antennas, combining all the received copies of the data to improve the reliability of data transfer.

Alamouti will replace Mike Walker, who recently retired as head of R&D after 25 years. Walker currently holds the position of chair of the board of European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), as well as being a part-time professor.

Orange backs the Intel, Nokia, Linux platform, MeeGo

Mobile operator Orange got behind the Nokia-Intel founded Linux initiative MeeGo on Wednesday, anticipating the creation of a new channel for the delivery of consumer multimedia services.

MeeGo was unveiled at Barcelona in February as a merger of Intel and Nokia’s respective Linux initiatives, to create a software platform spanning a range of consumer electronics from mobile phones to netbooks.

Intel is contributing its Moblin platform, which will be merged with Nokia’s Maemo platform and the Nokia-owned cross platform application environment, Qt.

With the operator’s backing, Intel and Orange will work to increase the availability of Orange Signature Services, such as Orange TV and Orange Maps, to be supported by the MeeGo and Intel Atom environment.

“Seventy-five per cent of our customer base has yet to embrace the mobile internet. With the increasing number of phones and operating systems for customers to choose from, it is our role to make sure our customer’s journey into this richer mobile multimedia environment is simple and easy,” said Yves Maitre, SVP of devices at Orange. “Our collaboration with Intel on the MeeGo software platform will not only ensure a broader choice in terms of screens and devices, but that customers continue to benefit from a consistent user experience delivered through Orange Signature services, including a customized home-screen they trust and recognize, the highest quality network and secure and simplified billing.”

The companies aim to establish a common software framework across multiple devices, ranging from smartphones and tablets to netbooks. An ambitious initiative, but as Ovum analyst Tony Cripps at Barcelona, the real win is in tying developers to the MeeGo platform.

“Turning MeeGo into a mainstream platform for CE will be no mean achievement in its own right. However, it will ultimately be largely meaningless how many devices it is deployed on if the consistency provided by the underlying OS is not matched by its ability to provide a true multi-screen application platform for developers.

“For that to happen, several things need to occur. First, Nokia needs to prove that Qt development really can scale across different categories of device. Second, it needs to prove the benefits of that scalability to developers. Third, it needs to persuade developers that Qt is a better cross-platform, cross-device application and UX platform than alternatives such as Adobe Flash/AIR, Microsoft Silverlight and HTML5,” Cripps said.

But given that Qt’s rivals – like Microsoft Foundation Class and wxWidgets – are either already widely deployed or likely to become more so and already have sizable developer communities, MeeGo may have its work cut out for it.

Nokia puts Skype on Symbian

Using the power of brand to reach consumers, Nokia on Wednesday hopped into bed with Skype to make the VoIP client available to some 200 million smartphone users worldwide.

The two companies have jointly developed a Skype app for the Symbian platform, making VoIP calls possible over either a wifi or mobile data connection. The app is downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, but should also work on Symbian devices from other manufacturer(s), like Sony Ericsson.

“We’re seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day on Ovi Store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones will have wide appeal to Symbian users,” said Jo Harlow, senior vice president for smartphones at Nokia.

Skype should eventually run on any smartphone using Symbian ^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. But the initial Skype for Symbian application is compatible with: Nokia N97, N97 mini, X6, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530, E72, E71, E90, E63, E66, E51, N96, N95, N95 8Gb, N85, N82, N81, N81 8 Gb, N79, N78, 6220 classic, 6210 Navigator, and 5320.

LiMo Foundation builds bridges to Wholesale Applications Community

Keen to increase its relevancy across all industry areas, mobile Linux evangelist group the LiMo Foundation is looking to build bridges with the recently formed Wholesale Applications Community.

At Barcelona in February, 24 operators accounting for over three billion subscribers formed the Wholesale Applications Community, an alliance designed to build an open platform for delivering applications to all mobile phone users.

The alliance plans to initially use both the JIL and OMTP BONDI requirements, evolving these separate standards into a common standard within the next 12 months.

LiMo sees itself as a perfect fit here, having already produced standardized white-label SDKs for the LiMo platform in both native and OMTP BONDI-compliant forms, while a number of LiMo’s key stakeholders also hold leadership roles within the JIL initiative.

Since LiMo’s launch in 2007, three major releases of the LiMo Platform have been delivered, with 52 LiMo devices brought to market including the Vodafone 360 H1 M1 devices from Samsung and a wide range of devices for NTT DoCoMo from Panasonic and NEC. Altogether ten operators representing approximately one billion subscribers participate within the LiMo group.

In an open letter to the Wholesale Apps Community, Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation, offered “full support, committed participation, and immediate practical assistance” to the strategy.

“It is clear to us that the highly complementary areas of focus, shared belief in true openness and common industry vision create an exceptional opportunity for deep and long-term collaboration between LiMo Foundation and the Wholesale Applications Community to release unfettered innovation across the industry and fully ignite the mobile internet in a way that is compelling and life-enhancing to consumers everywhere,” Gillis said.