The first thing is, if the typical consumer is not already using a “Samsung” device (I will explain further in the blog why I’m using quotation marks), then what would he be using?  If he’s based here in the United Arab Emirates and already owns a smartphone, he (or she) would typically be using a BlackBerry device or possibly an iPhone.  This is a stark contrast to most of the world where the typical smartphone user that “Samsung” would target would be an iPhone user.  RIM’s BlackBerry platform has the largest marketshare in this region in the smartphone space due to the first mover advantage they hold, the popularity of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and the large variety of data packages that telecom operators here offer.

Image: http://blog.inner-active.com

If the consumer was using a BlackBerry, the changing landscape would be immense for the consumer.  Gone is the touchpad, BlackBerry button, a stress free data plan and the much-loved BBM (which has a penetration rate of 99% amongst BlackBerry users in the region).  In return, the consumer would have a much richer App ecosystem, a world with no physical keyboards and a constant search for free Wifi in order to stop data costs petting out of control.

For a consumer making the switch from an iPhone, the change is slightly less dramatic.  An iPhone user would already be used to a touchscreen and running after free Wifi wherever they could find it but what would make the “Samsung” unique is the better integration with Gmail, the ability to sync to a Google calendar, the ability play movies in virtually any file format to name just a few differences.  The “Samsung” would come in different screen sizes  and it would be a departure from the one flavour for all policy that Apple has had.

The “Samsung” has been making headway in the smartphone market but the question arises, is it successful because of what Samsung has put into making the product successful or what Google has done with the operating system?  The reason I mention this because more and more I’ve heard people crediting their Samsung device for certain features that are inherent to Google’s Android operating system but due to Samsung’s leadership over other brands marketing Android, they’ve managed to take some credit on behalf of Google.  It’s not to say that Samsung hasn’t made a major contribution to the success of their devices but the boundaries over what is their contribution and what is Google’s is a little more blurry as compared to Apple who design everything themselves.

So in case you decide to play with a Samsung device again, just ask yourself, do you like the fact that the product is a Samsung or an Android device.

Nokia's new Arabic Windows Phone

Although Windows 8 is quite clearly Windows 7 reimagined with all things new and improved, the much awaited OS from Microsoft is expected to set itself completely free from the PC platform that it has become synonymous with. It might just prove to be Microsoft’s winning move to make computing as fluid as the devices themselves have become.

From the buzz it generated at the GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 showcase on the Microsoft stand, it promises to position Microsoft at a completely new level, offering users Office just where they need it and how they want it.

Set for official launch in the Middle East on 27^th October 2012, the next new OS with its live tiles and multiple options to switch views is powering up on supporting a number of form factors as well as applications to step up its game.

From what I’ve seen it’s clear to me that consumer needs for computing itself has changed forever and although it may be too early in my view to debate on its long term future, in the near term however, anyone familiar with the Windows OS can be expected to be treated to a completely contemporary computing experience.

Fluidity of form and service

For one, Windows 8 will be truly scalable across different form factors – from notebooks, to convertibles to tablet devices and certainly over multi-form factor mobile phones. Add to this will be the application ecosystem that Microsoft is building out in support of the Windows 8 launch.

Windows 8 powered computing form factors

To top it all off, Windows 8 will also tightly integrate a robust set of back-end services ranging from Windows Azure to Office 365 and extend its SkyDrive from being an online file storage service into what the company has been calling – a “device cloud” that will help users carry their data across devices and on the move.

In a quick catch up with Miriam Farshoukh, PR Lead for Microsoft Gulf, she also shares that Windows 8 is also designed to offer a superior touch-based interface and it will come to life on a variety of form factors. “We’re also excited about the market place of international and locally developed apps that will help build momentum for its uptake,” says Farshoukh.

So far close to 10 locally developed applications are already available for the UAE including a GITEX app to help visitors navigate the show and a du app for customers to pay their bills with.

To round off its showcase at the show, Microsoft has also lined up an impressive array of devices and form factors running Windows 8. For computing devices, on display were products from its partners Acer, HP and Lenovo among others while its mobile phone partners Nokia and HTC had on show Windows phone models. Interestingly, Nokia has also made available the first all Arabic Windows Phone with touch functionality.

Partner devices aside, Microsoft is also readying itself to launch its very own Surface which will be available in the market starting October 26 2012. So there’s quite a bit of excitement still left to come. Keep watching.

Enterprise software leader SAP is making a big comeback to GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 with significant participation in the Mobile Apps and Content pavilion. SAP’s return to the show is also an affirmation on how mobility is changing the face of transactional applications in the enterprise.

In his role as the Director of Line of Business, SAP MENA, Deniz Kilyar says the new stage for the industry is the mobile enterprise era, where all the users in a corporation will not be limited by the location or space and be directly connected from the back end system to where the action is.

Enterprise mobility is a critical priority for CIOs today, thanks to the huge productivity gains and employee satisfaction. Analysts predict mobile devices soon become the primary platform for accessing applications and data, and business processes are being transformed by smartphones and tablets.

With the advent of BYOD, more and more organisations are also encouraging employees to use mobile devices at work, even as applications vendor are respond to the needs of enterprises to mobilise their workforce.   “The internet boom ushered in a new business productivity experience for organisations. The mobility boom in my view is the next big mega trend that can cause similar, if not a bigger impact on enterprise productivity,” Kilyar emphasizes.

SAP commits to enterprise mobility

SAP is more than committed globally to the cause of enterprise mobility and Kilyar takes the effort to explain why in our chat.

“Mobility is an overarching and transversal technology trend that has broad and deep impact across both the enterprise and consumer markets. It impacts how companies run their business and how we as individuals work and play. We are still at the early stages of this trend, which means there is a tremendous market opportunity for companies who can help enterprises and consumers realize the benefits of this new mobile enabled world. SAP, as a leading enterprise software vendor, is at the forefront of this mobile evolution, and this is why mobile is one of SAP’s key strategic markets.”

Director of Line of Business, SAP MENA, Deniz Kilyar

He says the mobile market is still an emerging and fragmented market. “There are three types of vendors in mobility market: device manufacturers, pure-play niche vendors and system management vendors.  SAP is the largest player in the last segment and, there are no other clear leaders.”

With enterprise application development changing fundamentally as a result of mobilization, Kilyar says transactions systems are now becoming more collaborative.

“When you look at the evolution of the enterprise applications development you will see different stages which determined the impact they made to the business processes and productivity increase. There was a time when EA were just integrating the functions within the walls of an enterprise. With the internet becoming a platform for EAs, extended applications were developed around the core functions which enabled corporations to communicate between each other through their EAs. Moreover, it added great flexibility for user access.”

Talking strategy, Kilyar is quick to add that SAP will continue to develop products to meet the mobility mandate of enterprises and estimates the overall enterprise mobility market that is addressable to be around $39B by 2015, growing at a CAGR of 53%.

This market itself has segments including: Mobile Device Management, Mobile Application Development Platforms, Mobile Messaging Gateway, Mobile Enterprise Apps, Mobile Consumer Apps, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and SAP has a complete offering at the forefront for all these segments.

Taking centre stage at GITEX

SAP is also gearing up to unveil its core ERP software running on the HANA in-memory database by the end this year, as it makes its much awaited comeback to the region’s biggest technology show.  SAP’s investments will primarily be focused on expanding the company’s footprint in the region, accelerating its innovation offerings, as well as up-skilling market talent. Additionally, part of the spend will be dedicated towards establishing an SAP Training and Development Institute that aims to certify 2000 new consultants within the next four years, tripling our existing consulting capabilities, and further support the localisation of solutions to meeting customer needs.

“SAP recently announced a four-year plan worth AED1.65billion (US $450 million) to up-skill local talent and drive sustainable innovation and growth in the Middle East and North Africa region, and GITEX represents a perfect platform for us to discuss our latest innovation agenda,” says Kilyar.

Somewhere over the last two years or so, we seem to have moved back to the Stone Ages seemingly.  The sight of a USB charger popping out whenever you are sitting in a meeting has become too common a sight these days and surprisingly most of us as users of these devices have come to accept this as the norm.

The uproar, the rage, the protests over why your phone suddenly needed to be topped up twice a day never happened.

If you speak to most manufacturers of tablets, smartphones or laptops, they often blame it on the fact that the devices are so much powerful.  Most of these devices once upon a time ran on a single processor and today run on unto four processors.  Screen sizes got bigger and brighter, especially on tablets.  Products got slimmer and the space left for a battery reduced, so  smaller batteries are fitted into these products.

Image: http://theawesomer.com/

The fact is, technology has moved on.  The problem has been that battery technology hasn’t quite moved at the same pace as the evolution processor technology.  The work around till now that most brands have had is that they find ways of making the technology inside these devices more energy efficient.  This is good but this isn’t the entire solution.  Even brands like Apple when they’ve introduced newer versions of the iPhone and iPad over the years have packed in more technology and made those components smaller inside the devices, but had to eventually fit in bigger batteries.

The reason most of us have accepted it for now is that we’ve believed the story that most manufacturers have given us that we need more juice and battery life is a compromise that we should accept.  The fact is, we should have laptops that work for days on a single charge and not for a couple of hours.  We shouldn’t be switching off the 3G or 4G capabilities on our tablets or smartphones and using an EDGE or GPRS signal just to save battery.  As consumers, we pay for this technology but we don’t get to exploit it due to deficiencies inherently within the battery industry.

If brands want to provide real value, they should be fighting the battle with the battery research labs and manufacturers to improve the pace at which they innovate or else we may reach a stage where we’re lugging around spare battery packs or spare devices just to get us through the day.

With a renewed focus on consumers, Nokia is now entering a new era by driving greater engagement of users with their mobile devices. Interestingly, having placed its bets on the Windows Phone platform, the plan is to tie content, people and location together.

Even as we sit down to talk at Nokia’s sea facing office looking over the Dubai Marina skyline, Praveen Prabhakaran, Head of Developer Experience, Middle East, Nokia Corporation, asks me to name my favourite restaurant from hotel towers I was looking at. He then points his camera towards the window and tells me to look at the display screen. 

The image looks better than what the eye can see, with each restaurant located at the distance literally mapped out on the screen, clickable and complete with information drop downs. That’s the new world of location based mobility – built to drive consumer experiences by integrating the physical world with the digital through the phone. Certainly, there’s more where that came from. 

The mobile phone according to Prabhakaran is in the middle of all the action today and for Nokia it’s a perfect dovetail of its consumer as well as business focused initiatives. “We have always tracked consumers and their activities with their mobile devices and with Nokia now having committed itself to the Windows Phone platform, experiences for users can be seamless,” he shares. 

Windows Phone to offer powerful experience 

The key to the strategy is the fact that seamless integration between Windows 8 (set for launch soon) and Windows Phones with a common OS kernel that can truly drive an interconnected, multi-device and multi-screen experience. It also offers a natural progression for PC users to migrate to the Windows Phone or tablet and with Nokia’s future investments completely on this platform we can expect strong movement. 

The Windows Phone platform itself has been seeing strong upward movement with the application ecosystem showing steady growth. “Close to 100,000 apps have been added for the platform in an eight month period making it the fastest growing mobile ecosystem today and combined with a heavy installed base of Nokia customers it looks really good,” Prabhakaran tells me. 

What makes mobility so important? 

Mobile ecosystems and platforms set aside, I ask him what makes mobility the biggest buzzword of the industry today? From what he tells me, it appears that mobility has been able to link the What-Who and Where of the internet together. Let me explain. 

“The ‘What’ perspective is about knowing what is out there on the internet, driven mainly through web-based search. With social networking, people began to define the “who” on the web and finally with context aware and location based information we are able to define the ‘where’ factor. 

“With content, social networking merging together on the mobile, it is today the only device that can effectively plug in the location context as well to fully engage the customer,” he emphasises.

I couldn’t agree more. 

Looking beyond, the real opportunity lies in the fact that this potent combination of content, people and location can be layered with services at every level. 

Nokia wants to own its services 

Having firmed up its strategy for content and location based services; Nokia is now moving quickly to cement its position in the game. This will hinge on capabilities and technology the company has been developing and acquiring over the past few months. 

As a company Nokia says it has the strength to own its location services and this has three layers – Content layer (developed by mapping the entire globe) which makes the system richer; mapping human activity and linking it to positions and points of exit and entry and finally navigation. 

Having acquired Navteq, the supplier of automotive maps for GPS navigation, Nokia’s Windows Phones will now adopt this strategy in a big way. “Today Nokia Navteq maps have the highest standards and players like Yahoo, Bing are already using this. Nokia plans to rely more on our strength instead of depending heavily on user generated mapping,” he says. 

With over 196 countries already mapped and over 100 ready for voice guided navigation, Nokia supports over 50 languages for navigation. By linking users to locations, the platform can actually feed and create information based on user traffic. This analysis will then feed back to create relevant links and applications based on the Nokia Location Platform which is also central to the overall strategy. 

Prabhakaran is quick to add that as of today, Nokia already has five applications that are ready based on this platform including: 

-          Nokia maps 2D, 3D and satellite views available on the web and mobile and automotive

-          Nokia Drive navigation which can offer offline navigation and walking navigation on a global level.

-          Nokia Transport: public transport services covered in 500 cities globally to help commuters plan journeys

-          Nokia City Lens: A beta augmented reality application using Nokia maps and the location platform to connect content together

-          Nokia Pulse: a social networking application that allows users to tag their location 

Ready for revolution or an evolution? 

So where do we go from here? According to Nokia the next step is to use this layer of content and location to layer offers to entice consumer activity and eventually transactions. 

“We offer APIs to developers to take our location data and make their application augmented reality ready. The next stage will be to move towards NFC (near field communication), a technology that makes transactions through the mobile possible,” he says. 

Although Nokia’s new smartphones are NFC enabled, the industry still needs to wait a while before we see a tangible outcome to this technology. But it’s got the whole industry thinking on how adding this piece can re-define the consumer experience. 

“NFC is far more complex because it involves multiple players to be in place before you can actually tap your phone and pay for that coffee. In the meantime however, there’s plenty for the tech savvy and gadget hungry market to watch for,” Prabhakaran says. 

While he’s still keeping his plan for GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 under wraps, Nokia’s participation at the show is certainly expected to give us a glimpse into the future of mobility. We can’t wait to catch up.