KEITH DE MENDONCA, Chief Technology Architect, Symbian Software India Pvt. Ltd. explains the potentialities of embedded "mobile connectivity"in consumer and multimedia devices, the benefits of an open standards-based mobile operating system and the importance of alliances and partnerships in the wider mobile ecosystem to fuel the acceptance of Next Generation Applications to PALLAB DUTTA...

Keith de Mendonca is the Chief Technology Architect at Symbian´s development centre in Bangalore. He holds a 1st class honours degree in Computer Systems Engineering, and was awarded a D.Phil by Sussex University, England. Mendonca joined Psion PLC in 1994, the Londonbased company that developed the EPOC 32 operating system, which later became Symbian OST.

He joined Symbian Limited when it was founded in 1998 and was initially the company's messaging technology specialist. Mendonca became a Chief Technology Architect for "Application Technology Development" in 2003. More recently, he moved to Bangalore to become the first CTA for Symbian India Pvt. Ltd in August 2006...

Could you highlight some of the trends that will shape the telecommunications sector in the next three years and will fast-forward the acceptance and adoption of Next Generation Applications?
Keith de Mendonca: The biggest trend right now is that people are doing more and demanding things with their mobile phones. Greater functionality, services and applications traditionally only found on high-end phones are now being demanded by our customers - the largest handset manufacturers in the world - for lower cost higher-volume products. Symbian is working closely with its customers and partners to ensure that Symbian OS phones provide best-in-class multimedia, graphics "Embedded" mobile connectivity and virtues of an open mobile OS and networking services on mobile phones for the wider market. Undoubtedly, these features will be crucial to provide experiences that users will continuously demand.

The Web browser, for example, is in itself becoming much more important on the mobile platform as it really has to provide a very rich experience to the user. Expectations are that it should match a PC browser as much as possible. In the PC world, we are starting to see many Web-based applications being made available and there is no reason why we would not expect to see similar mobile Web apps available on handsets too. Currently, mobile phones can easily provide content (e.g. upload photos, videos, audio, blog text) to Web 2.0 services but consuming the content onto the phone is still a less than perfect experience. I think mobile Web browsers will strive to match desktop browser functionality, and there will be a lot of industry effort in determining how Web content may be better re-factored for the mobile screen. On the other hand, there are certain Web applications that are proving to be more valuable on mobile phones than on PCs. For example, online maps and location based-services on mobile phones are much more useful than on the PC: you don't have to print a hard-copy of a map and risk looking like a tourist if you get lost ; or manually dial a telephone number of the restaurant you just searched because you can simply search and click to get through. We see location-based services becoming quite interesting. The specific mechanism of such location-based services becomes possible once the right framework is provided on phones. There will be a lot of rich and interesting interconnections between knowing your location and then getting services that use that geographical information.

Scripting languages which take advantage of the power of an OS and allow it to be utilized in rapidly-developed applications will also increase the pace of development of innovative applications and services for phone users. Security of data and functionality has been a concern on PCs for many years and is of course a threat to any widely deployed open OS products - especially those which are always online. As a response to this, we have delivered a platform, which delivers a simple but effective security model from the kernelupwards.

What will be the possible constraints?
Keith de Mendonca: Stepping back, and looking at the wider telecoms sector, we can see that some manufacturers are now also looking to take some ownership of the provision of content onto their mobile platforms, as well as just making the phone product. I think this is a response to the fact that it is still difficult to mobilize the end-toend market for advanced data services; although the technology is already usually available, finding the market, galvanizing that market, and making the service robust and simple for customers to use requires considerable oversight.

The usual constraints that have existed on the mobile phone like the relatively small screen and the navigation issues are a lot better than they used to be. You can see that the density and the resolution of the mobile screen are becoming extraordinarily high, and touch screens can resolve some of the navigation problems on small devices. Symbian's main aim is to produce a sufficiently rich OS and then to help the ecosystem develop and produce a rich array of applications and services for a vast base of customers to want and enjoy.

In what formats will "simple connectivity" mobile phones morph into? What will be devices of the future be like and how capable will they be in "loading" Next Generation Applications ?
Keith de Mendonca: Symbian is interested in bringing smartphones to the mass market by anticipating consumers' mobile lifestyle changes and enabling the richest experiences and seamless multi-tasking to make the most of tomorrow's technology. As the personal computer market has slowed to low singledigit annual growth and smartphone shipments are predicted to total 1 billion by 2012, we strongly believe that the smartphone platform is the technology platform of the future.

To a certain extent, we can see 18 months into the future of mobile phones for the rest of the world just by looking at what is happening in the Japanese mobile market today.

In this fast-moving market, a very wide range of product categories are driving sales and enabling the most innovative technology to come to mobiles: a large percentage of the Japanese use TV phones, music and video phones, m-payment phones that allow secure payments and act like e-tickets for airlines, waterproof "lifestyle" phones for jogging and sports, gaming phones, even biometricenabled devices where phone data is protected by fingerprint sensors and face recognition, and plenty more. Population demands will shape the market too: for example a product line called "Raku Raku"- which means "simple" phones - was introduced to tap into the elderly Japanese market segment.

These phones have large buttons that light up to guide the user, an easy to read display, and can slow down the incoming voice to make it easier to understand! So the basic provision of voice and data services will be repackaged to fit more closely into the lifestyle choices of the customer thereby enabling key players to address more market segments with differentiated products. But that's Japan where smartphones are already extremely popular and Symbian already holds more that 60% of the smartphone market. Arguably the next big challenge for the mobile phone industry is to make smartphones more accessible to many more people around the world. The smartphone already combines over 20 standalone devices and gives users instant and constant access to the world's sources of information and entertainment.

What is the outlook for fast-developing economies?
Keith de Mendonca: Significantly, it's the developing world where we will see a high penetration rate in the future. Symbian believes that it will account for 50% of smartphone sales within five years. In emerging economies such as India, China and parts of Africa, part of the population's first exposure to Internet-based applications will be via mobile devices, rather than via PCs. Sales of PCs are declining steadily worldwide, whereas mobile phones sales are rocketing. For those people, the phone is the Internet computer. In China, people who do not own PCs are running small businesses on the smartphones.

However, let's not forget that in these emerging markets we will also see a huge proliferation of basic 2G voice devices - at affordable prices. The penetration of both sides of the mobile market will make communication available to the larger populations, stimulating the local economies as well as helping people to keep in touch. What some call a smartphone today will be the average mobile phone of the future. Multimedia or lifestyle phones have extremely high acceptance rates in practically all markets. It must be noted that a number of these lifestyle/music/consumer electronic products are being termed as mobile consumer items. Digital connectivity in "intelligent" homes - especially for home entertainment AV systems which will direct multimedia data to the music system and television - is becoming more and more popular. The mobile phone itself will become one "connectivity-enabling" component of this wireless digital network, and will be one source of multimedia content. The next version of Symbian OS phones will enable easy transfer of music, videos and images using MTP with improved seamless connectivity to home computers. In other words, one mobile phone will in some ways replace several devices. The Symbian mobile phone will bring true convergence to consumers worldwide.

Can you outline the benefits that network operators can gain by adopting an OS like that of Symbian? How has the ecosystem been developed over the past few years?
Keith de Mendonca: Symbian is by far the most prevalent open phone OS in the market. Over 126 million Symbian OS phones have been shipped to over 250 network operators making Symbian OS the largest installed base of capable data-enabled phones upon which to proactively deploy differentiated services. As an open platform, Symbian is trusted by all players including handset vendors, operators and developers not to steal value but to give value and therefore works with its partners to deliver the technology that supports wider market demands such as push email, video games, VoIP, Wi-Fi, mCommerce, secure authentication, mobile TV, and converged services (quadruple play) for instance. Therefore, the opportunity for network operators and third party developer companies choosing Symbian OS is huge.

For starters, network operators can roll out services to a large installed base of Symbian OS phones quickly. Further, they can also enhance phones already in the market with downloadable new applications and services, based on what the market wants or the psychographic and lifestyle-dictated interests of people in those markets. One of our aims is to have a close relationship with key operators, understand their requirements and help them in leveraging the advanced capabilities of Symbian OS and its ecosystem for commercial benefits.

Symbian OS is an open programming platform which makes it easy to add "after market" applications onto the phones. Network operators will always look to innovate and offer applications and services that can be used by existing subscribers on their existing phones. Network operators that have chosen Symbian OS as a common platform include NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Orange, TIM and T-Mobile. Symbian OS combines the power of an integrated applications environment with mobile telephony, bringing advanced data services to the mass market. What we do is provide a mobile platform which supports multi-media -based and "rich" data streaming applications; applications which can offer the user the best possible experiences.

For operators in different markets, adopting an open OS such as Symbian OS allows them to develop one service and deliver it consistently across multiple UIs and devices saving them time-to-market for new services, roll out services over the air to an existing installed base and decrease total cost of ownership through device management.

Symbian is well placed to understand the value of networks that can help develop the ecosystem. On that note, why are alliances/partnerships and networks important to help develop the ecosystem and how will they shape up in the future?
Keith de Mendonca: Symbian has leveraged the multitudinous benefits of partnerships and alliances and developed the ecosystem greatly. This has led to acceptance of Symbian smartphones in markets as different as Japan and South Korea and Europe. For example, we try very hard to understand the new specifications for network operators and also the new features that would be prevalent in the upcoming mobile devices.

The quest is to see what the OS must provide in order to give the network operators the maximum chance to provision the services they desire on our platform in the future. So certainly we have been working for several years to effect closer and closer relationships with key network operators, to really understand what's happening with their vast customer bases, and tailor our OS accordingly. In terms of the developer ecosystem, our Platinum Partner program supports companies that provide Symbian OS services or products. We also have a "Symbian Signed" initiative which was set up by Symbian and endorsed by the mobile industry to stimulate the creation and adoption of third party applications. I spoke before about the security threats which exist for any open OS; this signing process verifies that applications are protected and stable before they are available for download from a trusted source. It also guarantees a level of quality of that software. Our direct customers such as Sony Ericsson and Nokia support and rely upon this programme, and they also work hard to support their own communities of developers for the UI platforms which are built on top of Symbian OS..