125 millions why you should be interested in Indonesia

With an estimated 125 million internet users by 2015, its not surprising that the FT was reporting that Jakarta is ripe for a boom in tech start-ups. And that was before Softbank announced that together with Sequoia Capital they would be taking a $100m bet on  Indonesian online marketplace Tokopedia.

 

In the country that is home to the world’s heaviest users of Twitter, Smartphone ownership is booming, but it's not all rosy with Jakarta having infamously bad traffic, slow internet speeds, under-developed electronic payment systems amongst its myriad of problems.

Without doubt Indonesia is a land of opportunity for the telecom industry, so where do you fit in?

At this years Total Telecom Festival we bring together the two of the biggest names in Indonesia telecoms, with Alex J. Sinaga, Chief Executive Officer, Telkomsel speaking about redefining the telco-OTT relationship, transformation from telco to digital company, whilst later in the day Muhammad Awaluddin, Chief of Marketing for Enterprise Business at Telkom Indonesia will speak about building new business and recognising new role of the telco in developing society and community.

Why not come along, it's a great chance to meet the teams from Telekom Indonesia and Telkomsel and discover what the opportunity is for you.

Six Articles From Yesterday at #MWC14 You Must Read

Yesterday from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Total Telecom team reported on rumours, health initiatives and.... pasta. Check out the six most read stories on our news service below or click here for the #BreakingNews channel.

Cisco CEO dismissive of Juniper/NSN rumour, predicts vendor 'musical chairs'  

Zuckerberg seeks operator partners to extend affordable Internet access
 
Samsung goes heart rate monitoring mad with Galaxy S5, new wearables
 
Deutsche Telekom on network lasagne and losing the 'mobile' from MWC

Smartphone spec wars are over, it's now about marketing and pricing
 
Sprint boosts indoor coverage at fraction of cost of femtocells

From out content partner: Huawei Technologies: Huawei Leads the Way with Innovative MBB Solutions among MWC Offerings Industry-leading Huawei Looks to the Future at MWC Assure High-Quality Communications in Formula 1 Grand Prix [Video] VISIT THE MINI-SITE

Mozilla - more like Godzilla

Smartphone wars are alive and well with announcements aplenty from CES. But the latest OS to flex it's muscles comes from the previously low profile Mozilla. In a report for Total Telecom deputy editor Nick Wood reveals that +ZTE Corporation could bring smartphones to Europe with a Firefox operating system.

This follows hot on the heels of a host of other smartphone related news from CES involving amongst others Apple, +Lenovo, Nokia and Sony. Five of the most interesting stories being:


> Nokia stresses dedication to Windows Phone platform

> Lenovo chief looks to US with high-end PCs, smartphones, manufacturing

> Fresh low-cost iPhone rumours predict 2H launch

> ZTE seeks to bring first high-end smartphone to US

> Sony has assets to be a formidable top-three smartphone maker - CEO


For more on this subject, check out our article on Mobile operating systems: "Windows of Opportunity" in the December / January 2013 issue Total Telecom+

Second Screen? Yes we're sharing my Yota...

This could be a new meaning of Second Screen. Russian tech firm, Yota, have revealed that they plan to launch a dual screen Smartphone with conventional colour display on one side, and b&w e-ink on the other. Whilst this might be a great space saver on the subway, it remains to be seen whether droves of people will be giving up their iPhones and Galaxy's in favour of a Yota, or whether Kindle and Nook should be trembling at the thought.

You can read the full article on the BBC here

Is a dual screen Smartphone on your list of telecom innovations that will fly for 2013? Let us know what you think will be big big big next year (the serious and the funny welcome)!

Soapbox - network management

We've been going out and asking people what they think are the most important issues in Network Management - here in no particular order are the top 6:

> Network management should focus on a single point: Availability of network service.
> New/Emerging protocols and their adoption levels 
> Big data analytics
> Software defined networks - impact on network management
> Data visualization, Smartphone and tablet apps 
> 4G/LTE and its impact on Network Management apps 

So what do you think? These are responses to us asking the question, not necessarily the view of Total Telecom. Do you think these are the big issues in network management, what else would you suggest. How do the issues vary for operators / service providers and enterprise network managers?

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS

These type of areas will be under discussion at the new Total Telecom Network Management Show in 2013. If you'd like to explore the opportunities to share your opinions on these areas, let us know or visit the website www.totaltele.com/network

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Double Trouble #ATM #M2M

The BBC reports today that cardless ATM's are live for customers of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) or NatWest. 


Hooray I hear you shout, real life M2M, mobile money at it's best, Smartphones as a mobile wallet, all good news for telecoms, right?


Wrong, you just know this is going to be a recipe for disaster. 




Picture the scene:


1. you rush to leave the house and forget your mobile - have to return because you need money
2. grab mobile and rush to bank - ATM out of order
3. no worries, you use your App to locate another ATM, just around the corner
4. you get there, it's working, success...
5. no failure. It's inside the shopping centre, there's no mobile signal - foiled again!


Of course if you'd had a cash card, lack of mobile signal wouldn't have mattered.


Progress is never going to be easy. Maybe you wouldn't have forgotten your phone, maybe the first ATM was working, and maybe there was a signal. But life is never like that...


Hopefully all those who have attended our two day Wireless World conference have discovered how to avoid these  little hurdles. #TTWW12 

Available on iPad - but don't tell anyone

You can read the March issue of Total Telecom+ on your iPad other tablet or most #Smartphones, but on second thoughts you'd better not.

Post Barcelona, editor Mary Lennighan examines who is going to pay for the network that supports the latest devices that were the talk of the town at Mobile World Congress.

Elsewhere in this issue we look at the growing market for MVNO's as China Telecom follow the lead of Turkcell, launching an MVNO geared at ex-pats, whilst Alun Lewis looks at how some companies are starting to take the plunge with Cloud based unified communications.

As ever, you can read this months Total Telecom+ for free in multiple formats, including:
> Online digital viewer
> Simple PDF download
> Tablet edition

So what #phone will you take to Barcelona?

Mobile World Congress will no doubt reveal the latest innovations in smartphones, so have you considered what you will take with you?


This isn't an issue of phone envy as yours looks shoddy alongside the latest gleaming offerings, but according to dating site Match.com, more an issue of what your phone says about you...


Their recent survey, reported by VentureBeat reveals that Android users are most likely to have visited an online dating site, whilst iPhone users are the quickest to follow up after a first date (good news in the limited timespan of MWC?). As for Blackberry users, they fall in love and first sight, then get drunk! Read the results in their full glory here.


What the survey doesn't make clear is what impact, if any, these perceptions have on the brands using these operating system. We'll have to ask our friends at Brand Finance if they considered romantic connotations when compiling this years telecom brand valuation, including the Top 10 Handset Makers, which you will find on page 13 of this months Total Telecom+


RELATED CONTENT:
Mobile device developments: Phoney War (Total Telecom+ Welcome to 2012)
Top 50 Telecommunications Brand Ranking (Total Telecom+ February 2012)

Start the week: 10 #telecom stories not to miss

Last week Total Telecom published over 220 news stories, plus company news, white papers, viewpoints and more, making it the unmissable source of telecom news.

So here are the 10 most popular:

1. Ericsson would consider buying Nokia Siemens assets – CFO
2. Bogota studies possible utilities merger
3. Datawind to launch £99 tablet with bundled Internet in UK 
4. Ericsson Q4 hit by weaker US, Russia demand
5. Apple retakes smartphone lead in Q4
6. EU warns five member states on telecoms rules
7. EU's Kroes hopes TV demand will drive broadband investment
8. US warns of mobile radio band bottleneck
9. New legislation to encourage tech innovation in UK - lawyer
10. Poland's premier vows caution on anti-piracy pact

Registered users can now access all Total Telecom stories up to 1-month old.

The #smartphone myth?

Gartner has reported that Smartphone sales continue to rocket (Total Telecom+ Sept 2011) with a rise of 74% year-on-year, and this clearly adds credence to the assertion of SK Telecom that free smartphone apps may place a threat to IMS based services offered by mobile carriers - see Roy Rubenstein's article "Multi tasking"

However SMS Marketing company Tatango have put out the fancy infographic shown here

showing that the main use of such devices continues to be text messaging and photographs.

You may well argue that it's a tremendous success that social networking, gaming, and downloading apps have all been listed as uses of smartphones by consumers, but it will be interesting to see how things pan-out as operators move away from diets of all you can eat bandwidth.

It will be interesting to hear from people like Alex Musil of Shazam and Marc Anné (VP Customer Insight & Advocacy) of Orange Business Services at Total Telecom World as they talk about some of the issues surrounding this subject as well as Olivier Baujard – CTO – Deutsche Telekom Group whose keynote presentation is entitled The Smartphone Challenge

Global smartphone growth driven by U.S.

The number of smartphones sold to end-users globally rose by 29% on-year to 32.2 million in the first quarter of this year, with handset giant Nokia growing faster than the market, according to new statistics published by Gartner.

The analyst firm reported that smartphones accounted for 11% of the global mobile device market in Q1.

Sales in EMEA reached 11.7 million units during the quarter, up 38.7%, while smartphone sales in North America rose by a massive 106.2% to 7.3 million units.

On a global basis, Nokia claims a 45% share of the smartphone market, recording growth of 25% in Q1. The Finnish vendor is the market leader in most markets, with the exception of the U.S., where number two player worldwide RIM is a more popular choice. The BlackBerry maker is hot on Nokia's heels globally though, with 1 42% market share.

And - heaven forbid we fail to mention the iPhone in a blog post - Apple comes in at number three globally with a 5.3% share, having sold 1.72 million handsets. The iPhone has a sizeable 20% of the U.S. smartphone market.