1. Comms at the crossroads:
What Telecoms and Computing Should Know
About Each Other and How We Can Take the
Best from Both Worlds.
Bruce Carney, March 2009
Intuitively everyone in this room realises that the computer and telecoms world
are converging.
As personal example, I celebrated my sons birthday last Sunday and his 78 year
old grandparents, in Australia, helped sing happy birthday and watch him blow
out the candles on his cake using Skype on a Wi-Fi/Webcam enabled netbook.
Even though it took me 30mins to set up using VNC to remotely access my
fathers machine……That certainly is convergence at .
Equally, I could have been video streaming via mobile phone using technology
such as QIK and/or doing a video telephone call via the 3G network. Certainly for
us early adopters we are all interchangeably talking, emailing, twittering and web
surfing between our computer and smart phones.
As we move to a world of “convergence”, and the “converged device”, there is a
classic paradox at the play, the “unstoppable force of the computer industry
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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2. meeting the immovable obstacle of the telecoms industry”. I intend to talk about
how Symbian Foundation, whom I am representing today will solve this paradox.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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3. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON CONVERGENCE
Some observations on convergence
Intuitive:
- The telecoms world is full of pre-historic traditions and control points.
- The computing world is more open and innovative.
Counter-intuitive:
- Practices in the computing world won’t meet mobile consumer expectations.
- The telecoms world knows how to reach further and wider.
Thesis:
- The computing and telecoms world are the way they are because that was
the best adapted solution for their environment…
- We’re entering a new environment. DNA from both will drive growth.
Intuitively we view:
The telecoms as being full of pre-historic traditions and control points.
Massive multinational corporations, with implicitly high barriers to entry;
slow moving and equally slow to adapt to change.
The computing world is more open and innovative
Countless garage developers have taken bright ideas, wrapped innovative
business models around them and created multinational corporations
delivering enormous value. In the computer industry nowadays there
almost no barriers to entry and almost no incremental costs to scale…all
the value is in the ideas and eyeballs.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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4. Counter intuitively:
The computer world does not meet the needs of consumers.
Consumers are forced to adapt to learn computers and their
idiosyncrasies. It is a one-size-fits-all approach and most non technical
people I know are engaged in an ongoing fight to keep their computer
operational.
The telecoms world knows how to reach further and wider
The telecoms industry has been able to address mass market consumers,
simply. It is a tremendous challenge to simplify telecoms networks to the
level that most people are completely oblivious to it’s operation.
And by mass market I mean big, really big and diverse. As an example, I
can pretty much roam anywhere in the world accessing data services and
make/send receive calls, sending an SMS to anywhere else in the world,
all the while why everything else is maintained in the background for me.
All need to do is charge my phone and pay my bills.
The thesis is that convergence is best understood as something where there’s a
lot to learn from both sides. Each is actually well-adapted to its environment, but
we are entering a new environment. The DNA from both is required to fuel the
growth and will present the future opportunities
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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5. The good, the bad and the ugly?
Telecoms Computing
Walled gardens for applications Productive programming
Walled gardens for applications Productive programming
Network-by-network acceptance environments
Network-by-network acceptance environments
Ancient platforms Published interfaces
Ancient platforms Published interfaces
IP ‘fortresses’ Free and open standards
IP ‘fortresses’ Free and open standards
Device fragmentation Amazing pace of SW innovation
Device fragmentation Amazing pace of SW innovation
Lead times from hell
Lead times from hell
Relentless hardware innovation
Relentless hardware innovation
Power discipline
Power discipline Consumers are our beta-testers
Consumers are our beta-testers
Built-in-billing
Built-in-billing Lack of HW product choice
Lack of HW product choice
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics Complexity of SW distribution and
Complexity of SW distribution and
expectations
expectations discovery
discovery
Products as fashion statements
Products as fashion statements
Highly segmented product
Highly segmented product
So now based on the origin-of-our-differing-species we can understand that
certain reflexes, patterns and behaviours are inherent in how things are currently
implemented.
In telecoms
Trust is essential as every action = a financial transaction, a call, an SMS,
a data packet
Thinking is naturally towards security, scalability safety.
walled gardens made sense, protect consumers to maintain trust and
simplicity (and revenue)
Devices and anything from outside our network need to be tested/certified
on a per network basis. And there are a lot of networks around the world.
Backward/forward compatibility = although, a phone i bought in 1950 is
still going to work on the fixed line network
Simplicity: technology adapts to the person (the complexity of the network
is managed and hidden)
Robustness: i drop my mobile phone it survives (or for those following the
news this week a phone was found in a fish and was still working?)
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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6. However, this interestingly what is also happening in mobile telecoms are rapid
changes:
Relentless hardware and mechanical engineering innovation, adding more
cpus, radios, audio paths on a device.
Orders of magnitude improvements in power usage to drive every nano-
amp of battery life (to the point that an e71 has 10hours talk time and 17
days standby time)
Differentiated products: age, gender, locale, interests, pricepoints…etc
The mobile phone has become the “personal computer”, everything about
it is personalised and it never more than a few feet away from it’s owner
The good, the bad and the ugly?
Telecoms Computing
Walled gardens for applications Productive programming
Walled gardens for applications Productive programming
Network-by-network acceptance environments
Network-by-network acceptance environments
Ancient platforms Published interfaces
Ancient platforms Published interfaces
IP ‘fortresses’ Free and open standards
IP ‘fortresses’ Free and open standards
Device fragmentation Amazing pace of SW innovation
Device fragmentation Amazing pace innovation
Lead times from hell
Lead times from hell
Relentless hardware innovation
Relentless hardware innovation
Power discipline
Power discipline Consumers are our beta-testers
Consumers are beta-testers
Built-in-billing
Built-in-billing
Lack of HW product choice
Lack of HW product
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics
Complexity of SW distribution and
Complexity of SW distribution and
expectations
expectations discovery
discovery
Products as fashion statements
Products as fashion statements
Highly segmented product
Highly segmented product
Equally, computers have been wonderful for enterprises and developers. Their
evolution has been driven almost exclusively by the needs of these groups...as
such
There are multitude of programming environments, where there is the
luxury of
o Virtually infinite computational resources;
o Always on power..
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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7. o Mean that you can spend more time building out functionality than
worrying about
o New systems and functionality can be built and deployed fast.
Interfaces are published and well documented
Standards are actually standard!, becoming universally/globally adopted
or at least they battle it out until one dominates and the rest follow.
Openness fuels innovation.
However, areas where computers haven’t been so great are
Exposing users to viruses, spyware, phishing, fraud, spam, denial of
service attacks….
Consumers feel like they are being used as beta testers. And in many
cases they are!!!
Sw distribution and discovery is complex and for many consumers they do
not purchase, know about or in many cases are afraid to install apps.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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8. Not to force the point
Not to force the point…
The PC in 2002 The PC in 2009
The phone in 2002 The phone in 2009
In reality, and especially viewed from the vantage of a mass market consumer.
Most life changing innovation for this decade is occurring is actually in the mobile
telecoms space.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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9. What we’re trying to do different
What we’re trying to do different
Rich web runtime
Designed as a platform for 3rd party apps
Collaborative software development
Community-led innovation
Open devices, open networks
Quality of product
Diversity of product design
Enable global, segmented product
portfolios
Clear long-term roadmaps
Symbian was founded in 1998 and its founders set it with a vision to create an
open operating system for mobile phones. Whilst the term “open” is becoming
very much clichéd nowadays,
One thing is certain symbian is battled hardened and has been at the center of
this convergence; working at the center of with oems, carriersand developers to
create an ecosystem to provide open mobile devices
Then in a move that is best described as “if you love, something set it free” on
the 10th anniversary, an industry changing announcement was made to open
source symbian os and all user interfaces S60, UIQ and MOAP (in japan)
…………….a billion dollar asset put into the public domain…………
This game changing decision by symbian’s shareholders, to create the symbian
foundation, provides the computer and telecom industry an environment to
leverage each others strengths in a level playing field.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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10. Here you have a low power, efficient, robust, scalable, secure operating
system….. Already shipped in more than 250 million devices globally… Set free
to drive grow faster…
In short…… To accelerate innovation …
By taking all the advantages of the development models from the computer
industry whilst …
Allowing the member community full access source code,
o To influence the platform,
o To competitively differentiate and segment
o And lead innovation in their specialist areas.
Quality, packaging and testing.
Maintaining long term roadmaps for review and comment
Including more common run time environments, such as webkit, but also
supporting the further development of commercial and open source
developer environments.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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11. Symbian foundation platform plan (open for contribution)
Symbian Foundation Platform Plan
Open for contribution
2009 2010 2011
Symbian Foundation 1 Symbian Foundation 3
To be defined according to community process
• Support for multiple form factors, resolutions and input
methods
• Customisable home screen supporting embedded widgets
and other personal content
SF1
SF2
SF3
Symbian Foundation 2
• Support for composition of hardware accelerated content seamlessly into UI
• High performance communications architecture enabling fixed internet level of
performance
Available on “Day 1”:
•SDK based on Forum Nokia SDK 5th Edition, compatible with Symbian OS v9.x and S60 5th
Edition
•Source code for SF1 release available to members
With an reshaped vision, it remains non trivial to take a billion dollar asset and
move into a new governance model, i will touch briefly on how we see this
transitioning to the future
To start with nothing changes, the current S60 5th edition on Symbian OS
becomes the basis for future Symbian Foundation releases.
The yellow arrow depicts the Symbian foundation Codeline and release ‘blobs’.
The foundation intends to complete a release once every six 6 months and
contributions are encouraged in all stages of all releases –
For releases so called, SF1 and SF2- a few top line features are introduced to
continue the momentum that Symbian platform already has, as well as to build a
theme around each release.
SF3 is left intentionally blank to highlight that that roadmap will actually created
by the member community and that dialogue is about to start.
Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009
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12. Come and join us
Thank you. (Come and join us.) @
www.symbian.org
Membership is now open as we ramp up for an operational launch later this half.
Symbian foundation is a intended to be a meritocracy and this is a real
opportunity to create the environment for telecoms and computer industries to
work with each other, learn from each other and create the future of an internet
without wires…the mobile internet.
Thankyou for listening….more details on membership and the Symbian
Foundation from www.symbian.org.
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