On-Device Portals (ODPs) allow
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
users to easily browse, purchase and use
mobile content Mobile content is any type of web hypertext and information content and electronic media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like text, sound, ringtones, graphics, flash, discount offers, mobile games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile pho ...
and services. An ODP platform enables operators to provide a consistent and branded on-device experience across their broadening portfolio of services and typically provides on-device catalogs of content for purchase, deep links to WAP portals, customer care functionality and
rich media
Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video and audio. Since its early conception, various f ...
services such as full track
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
,
TV and
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
.
A key benefit of on-device portals is the ability to target the user rather than the device itself. This personalized service delivery, coupled with the ability to be updated on a frequent basis by the operator – refining services or adding new content – makes ODPs an attractive proposition that has already proven successful in encouraging users to access mobile content.
[Operators in fresh effort to promote mobile surfing, Financial Times' Digital Business Supplement, April 18, 2007] By enhancing the
user experience, ODPs improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn and in turn, drive higher data revenues.
On-Device Portals generally offer the following applications: Offline portal, store front, home-screen replacement and reporting function:
* Offline Portal - An application that allows the user to browse content categories and preview content free of charge through pre-cached content that does not require a WAP connection and creates a mobile environment that blurs offline and online experiences.
* Store Front - A client-server application enabling the user to discover, preview and select cached content offline, before accessing it via a WAP link.
* Home-Screen Replacement - A dashboard function of the ODP client that replaces the handset's home screen to provide zero click access to customized mobile content and services.
* Reporting Function - User analytics that allow operators to measure, refine and improve the delivery of data services by providing visibility into the way subscribers use and interact with their mobile devices.
On-Device Portals can be targeted to a specific
mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...
or provide multi-platform support allowing operators to achieve a consistent, branded experience across of all devices whether they run on
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...
(Symbian OS),
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
(Windows Mobile),
BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless),
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
or
Research in Motion
BlackBerry Limited is a Canadian software company specializing in cybersecurity. Founded in 1984, it was originally known as Research In Motion (RIM). As RIM, it developed the BlackBerry brand of interactive pagers, smartphones, and tablets ...
(RIM) platforms. Some vendors have server-side components to their On-Device Portal offerings which are tied into operator billing systems that deliver features such as usage tracking and lifecycle management. On-Device Portals are not intended to replace the operating system (OS) or other aspects of the phone's interface.
The term On-Device Portal was coined by the London-based ARCchart Research in 2001. In 2005, ARCchart estimated 10 million ODP-enabled units were in the
marketplace
A marketplace or market place is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a '' souk'' (from the Arabic), ' ...
.
History of On-Device Portals
On-Device Portal
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
emerged in 2000, as operating systems and Java were beginning to be deployed on mobile handsets.
One.Tel
One.Tel was a group of Australian-based telecommunications companies, principally the publicly-listed One.Tel Limited (ACN 068 193 153), established in 1995 soon after deregulation of the Australian telecommunications industry, most of which are ...
launched smart on device applications using a combination of
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
and SIMtoolkit technology in May 2000. In 2002, four vendors — ActiveSky, SurfKitchen, Action Engine and Trigenix - began developing ODP offerings. In March 2003 at CeBIT O2 demonstrated an ActiveSky powered O2 branded On-Device portal that was both user and operator (remotely) reconfigurable, that same year KDDI deployed an ActiveSky based solution. In 2003, operators including O2, Sonofon and ONE began to deploy ODP solutions. From 2001 to 2005, it was central to many MVNO solutions, as a more cost effective and customer-centric alternative to handset software variants or SIM toolkits, Virtuser developed many trials of these, including a pre-blackberry email service that used Bluetooth in buildings.
Since 2003, On-Device Portal technology has been embraced by mobile operators across the world
to complement WAP-based mobile data services and help operators deliver on the promise of mobile data services. Carriers expected the launch of
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...
(HSDPA), in which they had invested heavily, to drive robust
average revenue per user
Average revenue per user (ARPU), sometimes known as average revenue per unit, is a measure used primarily by consumer communications, digital media, and networking companies, defined as the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers.
The t ...
(ARPU) growth. But despite this investment, the mobile data services market still only represented 19% of global mobile service revenue in 2007. Several factors have been cited for the slow uptake in data services, but poor user experience, based on older browser-based WAP technology, is widely acknowledged as one of the leading reasons.
The browser-based mobile experience is considered difficult and complex, often requiring a user to click multiple times in order to navigate from browsing to downloading or purchasing content. Separately, WAP's structure, which differs from
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
, has made it difficult for content developers to build efficient content channels.
The On-device portal is also not without complications, supporting wide handset lists is a lot harder to manage than mobile web content, and updating major components is not just a case of re-publishing, but of redistributing applications. At the same time, while it is generally easy to test web content on a handful of browsers, portals need to be tested on nearly every handset which will be expected to use the on-device portal.
Mobile User Experience for On-Device Portals
As the market for mobile services has emerged, it has focused on technology until early 2008. But handset vendors and operators are moving quickly from technology to focus on the user experience as the best way to improve market penetration.
“When done properly, these experiences understand the task, the environment, and the audience.”
Data is still being collected as companies analyze how effective greater emphasis on user experience proves to be for operators. Orange Group, for example, doubled its download data ARPU after deploying a portal on its Signature devices.
[http://www.surfkitchen.com/downloads/Nov07_SurfKitchen_Mobile_Advertising_Paper.pdf Walking the Mobile Advertising Tightrope, SurfKitchen whitepaper]
On-Device Portal User Categories
On-Device Portals target four main user categories:
* Consumers, who demand an improved interface for their mobile experience
* Operators, who want to improve
ARPU with richer media content
* Content and media providers who want to monetize their offerings in the mobile world
* Handset manufacturers, who want technology frameworks to help customize handsets for their customers
* Consumers who want to extend their web based social networking experience onto the mobile device (Facebook, BeBo, MySpace etc.) or share / back-up content from their mobile device to the web (Nokia Ovi, Flickr mobile etc.)
The Future for On-Device Portals
ARCchart expects that number of On-Device Portals licenses to grow to 1.1 billion by 2009.
As the ODP market matures it is expected to move beyond mass market services such as
mobile TV
Mobile television is television watched on a small handheld or mobile device. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satellite broadcast. Regular broadcast stand ...
, music and content catalogs to provide an experience where the subscriber can choose from a broad range of services and content, personalized to their needs.
This change is being driven by operators’ desires to emulate the success of
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
by being able to offer a broader and more personalized range of services to the user. This shift in operators online portal strategies increases the emphasis on operators being able to quickly launch, measure and refine services, while offering users an intuitive way of browsing and searching a large catalogue of services.
Some vendors have started to incorporate the kind of functionality needed to support mobile Web 2.0
[SurfKitchen finally gets very very sexy – demo with CTO Dave Evans, GoMo News, April 2, 2008] and as the market matures, idle screen access, mobile
widget platforms and the ability to support a broad range of operator
business models
A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-published, 2010 in economic, social, ...
(subscription, transaction and advertising driven) will become imperative for all ODP solutions.
See also
*
3G
*
Average Revenue Per User
Average revenue per user (ARPU), sometimes known as average revenue per unit, is a measure used primarily by consumer communications, digital media, and networking companies, defined as the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers.
The t ...
*
Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October ...
*
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...
*
Handheld Device Markup Language
The Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML) is a markup language intended for display on handheld computers, information appliances, smartphones, etc.. It is similar to HTML, but for wireless and handheld devices with small displays, like PDA, m ...
*
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...
*
High-Speed Uplink Packet Access
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...
*
Java programming language
Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...
*
Location-based service
A location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, ent ...
*
Mobile advertising
Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mob ...
*
Mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
*
Mobile development
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. These software applications are designed to run on mobile ...
*
Mobile network operator
A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...
*
Mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
*
Mobile TV
Mobile television is television watched on a small handheld or mobile device. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satellite broadcast. Regular broadcast stand ...
*
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...
*
Qualcomm Brew
Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (Brew MP, Brew, Qualcomm BREW, or BREW) is an application development platform created by Qualcomm, originally for code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile phones, featuring third-party applications such ...
(Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless - BREW)
*
Short message service
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
*
Smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
*
Widget
*
WiMAX
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options.
The WiMAX ...
*
Wireless Application Protocol
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieve ...
*
Wireless internet service provider
A wireless Internet service provider (WISP) is an Internet service provider with a network based on wireless networking. Technology may include commonplace Wi-Fi wireless mesh networking, or proprietary equipment designed to operate over open ...
References
Mobile software