The growing influence of Google in the furniture industry is demonstrating clearly worrying some device manufacturers and operators, some of which put on a United Front against the search giant during a Roundtable at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Wednesday.
The leaders of Research In Motion, Nokia and NTT DoCoMo spoke about their strategies for working together to tackle the threat.
Nokia aims to "an environment where the relationship between service providers, handset manufacturers and operators are in a proper balance," said Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia. "Our philosophy is to be the most friendly," he said.
Google presents a conundrum for some of the companies consolidated in the mobile telephony sector. The software helped Android as Motorola hardware makers turn their fortunes around and helped operators to sell more data contracts. But other phone makers such as Nokia, has chosen not to use Android for fear that the platform would corner too much innovation and bring to market.
Google also offers a lot of services for mobile users who prefer to offer mobile operators.
"What is most important for network operators is how to avoid being reduced to a dumb pipe," said Ryuji Yamada, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo. "There are more sensitive than ever at risk of becoming a garbage dump pipe ... and we are determined to avoid that, by all means".
One way to avoid that fate is for operators to offer smart services from the cloud, he said. But the example he gave was a DoCoMo service that translates languages, similar to the one that Google has shown this same Conference last year, said Ben Wood, an analyst with Insight CCS.
Yamada recognized that such services may be offered by third parties, but does not say much about how the operator could beat Google. "It is a race between these two different fields," he said. "As the network operator, we are in the best position to know what the network is capable of."
RIM seems to be working hard to try to help operators ward off competition from the likes of Google and others. "We might need a Google translation service and a Nokia service but at the end of the day it is better to be a DoCoMo General Services [which directs customers] on their behalf and branding and distribution or the alternative is a bit with a programmable SIM," RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said.
RIM this week rolled out some new features designed to help operators hold on to their relationships with customers. For example, offers the opportunity for operators allow customers "gift" or airtime to other applications, with the charges showing on their mobile Bill. RIM also announced that Telefónica and Vodafone would begin allowing users to pay for applications from RIM application store on their regular bills.
Operators want to bill customers because they think that helps to build a relationship with users and why could enable new sources of income. With Apple and Android, for example, most end-users pay for applications with their credit cards through the shops of the respective application, and so the operator does not get a share of revenue from apps.
These days, every time a CEO from a company that provides services to end-users with an operator, the operator is trying to size up the objectives of this society, Balsillie said. Operators are wondering if you can trust the company and its business model has a sustainable business structure for the operator, said.
"The structure of the industry is very much in flux," says Balsillie. Said that the question of what role will the operator is currently the most important industry.
Nancy Gohring covers phones and cloud computing to the IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @ idgnancy. E-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com, Nancy
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