MWC Day 2/3 – Uncovered issues

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Relevant items outside the usual MWC news flow.

Google – Stairway to heaven.

• Google as taken a small step that may herald the end of Android and the arrival of a new OS that could end the endemic fragmentation that plagues Google devices.
• This is a development environment called Flutter that aims to be an easy to use tool to create apps in the Google UX framework and simultaneously publish them on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.
• This would also help the niggling problem that developers tend to publish their apps to iOS first with Google Play being an afterthought thereby diminishing further the appeal of Google Android.
• However, the key point here is that Flutter is also part of Google’s mysterious OS development known as Fuchsia (see here).
• The Fuchsia user interface is built using Flutter and if developers all start using it for iOS and Android, it means that launching Fuchsia as a replacement for Android would be a simple and easy process for developers.
• Looking at the history of Symbian, it became unusable 12 years after its creation as the core upon which it was built had become obsolete and impractical to upgrade.
• Android will be 12 years old in 2019 raising the possibility that it, too, may become obsolete requiring a complete rewrite from scratch.
• One would hope that Google would take this opportunity to bring the quality of the Android ecosystem into line with iOS and finally mount a credible challenge to Apple.

IBM – 3 piece suite.

• IBM chose MWC to release its annual c-suite survey which revealed some interesting insights, highlighting how critical execution is, especially in start-ups.
• IBM has conducted 13,000 conversations (not surveys) with c-suite executives from companies from 112 countries and all industries.
• The last 12 months has seen a large upswing in confidence that the large companies in each industry will survive and not be disrupted by Silicon Valley-like digital upstarts.
• This appears to have been triggered by:
  • Execution: Failure of many start-ups to execute on their hyped and very well-funded ambitions.
  • Data access: Increasingly, data is a necessity to enact change and, in their industries, it is the big incumbents that have all the data and they have woken up to its value.
  • Culture: The incumbents that look set to hold onto their positions are the ones that have realised their own shortcomings and put in place an attitude of learning and being open to change on a constant basis.
• RFM’s analysis has shown one big exception to this general finding which is the automotive industry.
• Here, many of the incumbents do not really have any data and their cultures are so set in stone that they risk having the industry stolen out from underneath them.

RFM MWC stand-outs.

• The real un-carrier: uCloudlink, a Hong Kong based company that enables global roaming at local rates without having to secure the co-operation of the telecom operators.
• Craziest gimmick: Nokia, Audi and Vodafone who are sending autonomous cars to the moon which will be controlled with a 4G network on the moon.
• Very interesting to note that they chose not to use a 5G network despite all the best spectrum on the moon being conveniently vacant.
• The toughest crew. Jolla which is the last man outlasting a host of much larger and much better financed rivals in the business of offering alternatives to Android or iOS.
• Sailfish is now available on feature phones, still has support from Russia and Latin America and may even break even this year.
• Biggest disappointment: the weather.
• 2^nd biggest disappointment: Daimler virtual concierge. This is supposed to recognise the user’s emotive state but showed no indication of recognising the broadest smiles or the fiercest frowns.
• This firmly places Daimler (and the partner who provided this product) into the pretender’s category when it comes to AI.