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The GSM Association (GSMA) hopes to work with government agencies like
the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the
Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), and relevant ministries to
reach out to the Malaysian mobile innovator community.
Through collaboration with these bodies, the GSMA hopes to raise awareness of its programmes, such as the Mobile Innovation Programme, among local mobile developer communities like the Maxis Developer Programme.
By “innovators,” the GSMA includes mobile content and applications developers, hardware vendors and technology enablers who can provide the solutions which can fulfil operators’ commercial demands.
“We will help bring the innovators to a global audience and showcase Malaysian talent worldwide, so operators will see that Malaysians can provide them with products and applications to help them fulfil their need to be competitive,” Jaikishan Rajaraman, GSMA Director for Product and Service Development, said at the MSC Malaysia Creative Industry Social Nite 2007 in Kuala Lumpur last month.
The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators across 218 countries of the world. In addition, more than 200 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association’s initiatives as key partners.
The primary goals of the GSMA are to ensure mobile phones and wireless services work globally and are easily accessible, enhancing their value to individual customers and national economies, while creating new business opportunities for operators and their suppliers. The Association’s members serve more than two billion customers - 82% of the world’s mobile phone users.
Mobile Innovation Programme
The GSMA began its Mobile Innovation Programme (MIP) on 2 July, 2007 to help create an ecosystem in which mobile innovators can thrive.
MIP is a community of mobile innovators, operators and investors which creates a sustainable ecosystem enabling the creation of a win-win-win situation for all concerned.
Operators need to be competitive by rolling out new, innovative and exciting products and services, which the innovators can provide, while investors can fund innovators’ development work at low risk, knowing that they will most likely have customers.
“MIP is a marketplace which brings the three parties together, resulting delivery of high-quality service to consumers,” said Jaikishan.
“The GSMA aims to build a living and breathing organisation which is self-sustaining, which will attract more operators, venture capital providers and innovators to do business and the MIP will become the most established vehicle in the mobile space for this business,” he added.
“There’s a huge potential for mobile innovation development in Malaysia, thanks to its stable government, its visionary telecommunications policies which encourages innovation, advanced communications infrastructure, focus on developing a knowledge-based economy, maturing mobile market, tech-savvy population and a highly creative workforce, all of which are the pillars for a booming and thriving mobile economy,” said Jaikishan.
He credits the MCMC’s allocation of RM20 million to fund content development overall, the government’s aim to make Malaysia the world’s content and multimedia hub and an exporter of home-grown technology to the rest of the world, as well as MDeC’s role in bringing together innovators within Malaysia.
“At this stage, we are still studying how to take Malaysian innovations overseas and we’ve invited government ministers, people in relevant ministries and government agencies to participate in our events in Macau and Barcelona and we hope to raise awareness of MIP,” he added.
Meanwhile, the GSMA will hold its inaugural Mobile Innovation Summit and Innovation Awards at its Mobile Asia Congress in Macau from 12 to 15 November.
“The awards will showcase the best-of-breed of mobile innovations in 4 categories: Device-centric technologies, Carrier infrastructure, Mobile enablers in vertical markets and Consumer applications,” said Jaikishan.
Local Developer Community Support
Head of the Maxis Developer Programme (MDP), Rostam Hashim said that the MDP has always been open to explore with corporations and organisations for initiatives, programs, and avenues to enhance its support to the Malaysian mobility developer community, to collaborate, and together enrich the industry. It has collaborated with organisations such as MCMC and MDeC, as well as market leaders such as Microsoft, SUN Microsystems, and Gemalto, to name a few.
MDP feels that the Mobile Innovation Programme falls very nicely in MDP’s efforts in enhancing support for developers especially at this stage, where a lot more stress and focus is being put in the area of commercialisation and market access including to the region and globally. The Mobile Innovation Programme is a good platform and opportunity for Malaysian mobility innovators to take their products onto the world stage. “The GSMA is the perfect body to launch this programme because it represents the entire GSM telecommunications industry. At the same time, it brings abundance of experience in the whole value chain within the industry. With the Mobile Innovation Programme, participants would be able to showcase their offerings all over the world.”
“In 2005, through the MDP-SIMagine initiative, MDP exposed three local companies to the world to showcase, participate, and compete in the Worldwide SIMagine contest during the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, a premier summit event by the GSMA.”
Rostam also said that the MDP strongly support the initiative. “We are encouraging MDP members to participate in this programme and in fact, we are planning to hold a special briefing on this programme for MDP members and the Malaysian mobility community soon.”
Apps or content?
So which is more lucrative, mobile content or applications?
“Innovative applications provide for a richer user experience, while innovative content leads to the mobile phone being the preferred channel for access,” said Ian M. Klein, Director of the Mobile Innovation Programme.
For now, voice and text are the biggest mobile applications but the future will be mobile data applications and content.
However, mobile content uptake is slower than expected worldwide, since it’s still in its embryonic stage, with lots of ideas but few sustainable business models.
“Most content available today is based on TV, movies, music videos, and advertising re-packaged for mobile phones, instead of mobile-specific content suited to the phone’s small screens, resulting in content that is poorly suited to the mobile, while content produced specifically for mobile phones will be more applicable,” said Klein.
However unlike PCs, mobile phones are less standardised, with different screen shapes, sizes, resolutions and codecs, resulting in compatibility problems of content and applications written for one phone to display or sound well on another. “Content standards are needed to enable broad applicability across all phones. This will help developers to create content and applications once and have them work well on many devices, enabling them to sell their products on a global basis,” Klein added.
Another guest at the MDeC party, Wang Huey Yi, manager for multimedia services at mobile streaming video content provider, SpeedCast saw mobile applications as being more lucrative than content in Malaysia so far.
“The mobile content market is still very young in Malaysia, with only music and ringtone downloads doing very well, while mobile TV is still in its infancy,” Wang said.
On content in general, Andrew Ooi, managing director of animation house Inspedia said, “Content has more afterlife and can be marketable long after applications become obsolete.”
Steve Bristow, creative director with animation house Creative License concurred, adding that animation content remains marketable for up to 10 years, while good software enables good animation.
Rostam said that both mobile applications and content are important to fill the needs of mobile consumers. However, he said that there is a perception that the focus is on developing mobile applications only. “In fact, content developers are an equally important part of the mobile ecosystem, which is why the authorities have set aside funds to nurture content creation. On our part, we would like to see more content developers join the MDP programme, and to leverage on the experience and knowledge brought by the whole community.”
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