US mobile carriers want more devices, fewer OSes

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Yes, the carriers want new business models and partners as their traditional wireless voice and data markets saturate, but these must work within the cellco assumptions, expanding the operators' total addressable markets while engaging in a clear profit share. In other words, not Skype.

A huge range of devices

But Verizon and AT&T recognize that the new embedded applications will require a huge new range of devices – which will only be feasible to support, for developers and carriers, if there is some harmonization of software platforms. Echoing similar calls from AT&T and T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said the carrier needed to reduce the “eight or nine” operating systems it had to support to “three or four”, with a unified development environment on top, though he did not pick out any particular OS.

Verizon Communications. CEO Ivan Seidenberg also took to the stage, and his theme was increasing wireless penetration and Verizon's revenue streams and account control – by going well beyond handsets and supporting a huge range of devices with embedded wireless and a host of applications. This could lead, on a powerful network like Verizon's planned LTE system, to “500% penetration”.

He added: "There will be no limit on the number of connections as part of the mobile grid. Everything has the potential to be connected to the web” – provided there are broadband mobile networks and open platforms. So far, Verizon Wireless has certified 36 devices in its Open Development Initiative (ODI), as it moves towards open access (mandated on its 700MHz spectrum) – and most of these are 'smart grid' gadgets like health monitors, not phones. “If we think in terms of the complex web of wireless connectivity that next generation technology will bring about, then the opportunity to explode past the 100% ceiling to 300%, 400%, or 500% is not only possible, it's probable,” Seidenberg concluded.

Among the new devices launched at CTIA under the ODI were Sierra Wireless' USB 598 modem; and Motion Computing's F5 rugged tablet PC for field workers and its C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant, the latter a hospital grade product that is used for clinician documentation.