Spotlight

Helping mobile operators earn more

Having acquired customers such as Vodafone, Sprint, T-Mobile and others for its mobile device management technologies, Mformation has set its sights on the South Asian markets primarily focusing on India, where mobile growth is high, and Malaysia. By Mohd Shariff PA

Although the number of smartphone users is a small percentage of the overall mobile user community, growth has been impressive. Data-centric smartphones have grown by 200 percent in unit terms in Q1 2007 over Q1 2006 to reach 74,713 units. Recently the uptake of Blackberry and HP iPAQ has also surged. These smartphones help you carry your office along. But there is the fear factor of what happens if you lose a smartphone. You would lose the configuration, the data including your phonebook, appointments, messages etc. Retrieving data saved in your phone ‘on air’ was next to impossible in the past. Realising the market potential in data retrieval, mobile operators across the world such as Vodafone, Telefonica, Sprint, Cell, T-Mobile, ROGERS and TELUS like have implemented mobile device management that helps retrieve lost data from smartphones possible. Helping these mobile operators is New Jersey based Mformation Technologies, the mobile device management solutions company whose solution is used by these operators.

Mformation started its operation in India in May 2005 at Bangalore by setting up a development centre to support its global customers. The development centre in Bangalore has helped global operators increase their average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering value-added services such as e-mail, picture and video messaging, enhanced graphics and Internet capabilities.

Bhaskar Sharma, Director India Operation, Mformation says “We call ourselves the Mobile device Management Company and our aim is to enable operators to rollout data services in an efficient way over the air.” If a configuration problem occurs in the phone, a user needs to call the operator, and by using Mformation’s Configuration Manager, any software can be configured over the air. Users do not have to know any technicalities for this. Supposing you have a GPRS-enabled smartphone and need an application upgrade or add a new application or want to run Microsoft Windows CE as the mobile OS, then you need not junk your old phone. “All you have to do is give us a call and we do the rest. We can do all that—help you do over-the-air up gradation of the phone to install new software or functions and configure settings,” says Sharma. Mformation’s software is being used by some of the largest and most demanding mobile operators in the world. Its technologies are helping mobile operators increase the demand for mobile data devices and services by lowering costs, improving the customer experience and streamlining the delivery of new data services and applications.

The Bangalore development centre, that celebrated its second year in May 2007, is involved in the whole product life cycle starting from architecture and high level design to implementation, testing, quality assurance, bug fixes and customisation based on specific requirements of customers. Engineers here have been developing solutions that help the world’s biggest mobile operators such as Vodafone and scores of others to be more responsive to customers and in turn take up more challenges to enhance their services.

Some of the company’s products that are in the market are Configuration Manager, Software Manager, Customer Experience Manager, Diagnostic Manager and Enterprise Manager.

Nowadays we see everything from low-end phones to smartphones that are nothing less than computers on the move. A solution such as Configuration Manager assists customers to reconfigure their devices without visits to the customer-care or service centres.

Software Manager is useful in securing software over the air updates of device firmware and software applications, ensuring seamless access to the latest data services and applications. In the same way Customer Experience Manager is a real-time, transparent monitor of the actual customer experience with voice and data services, enabling service hurdles to be found and fixed quickly.

The Diagnostic Manager module makes customer care easy. It provides on-time diagnosis for customer device and service problems. “Customers need not bring the device to the showroom for the support. This system can resolve the problem accurately on air,” Sharma adds. Customer Experience Manager monitors customer behaviour, feel and spending habits. For instance, a customer buys only one brand of perfume or requests for some information over the Internet on phone, like a Web site, the phone will pull up only that brand and show it to the customer.

Enterprise Manager is also a unique product that helps operators to provide a secure, customised self-care environment for enterprise customers as a value-added, hosted service. Here any enterprise can avail this facility through any operator and customers can directly contact the concerned system admin and avail all facilities.

Focusing on South Asia

An important aspect of Mformation’s Indian presence is the rapid growth of the engineering facility at Bangalore, which is now contributing significantly to the company’s technological innovation. Sharma claims “India being a prime mobile market we are targeting the Indian mobile operators.” He continues that the company believes that by 2010, 25 percent of the mobile users in India will use smartphones and they will demand data storage and transformation. By that time the company intends to float its solutions in the Indian market.

Sharma says, “Mobile operators around the globe are looking at ways to increase their ARPU. With increase in mobile phone usage and proliferation of newer handheld devices, there are ample opportunities for mobile operators and service providers to gain new customers, launch compelling new services and grow revenues. For instance, data services such as e-mail, picture messaging, Internet access and push-to-talk are gaining momentum and generating new revenues for mobile operators.”

The concept of mobile device management in India is still in an alpha stage, as the revenue from voice continues to decline, mobile operators are increasingly looking at value-added services such as data services and this is where we see a big opportunity for mobile device management in the Indian market.” According to him the company is in various stages of negotiation with Indian mobile operators. The company’s Service Manager product was recently recognised as the best service delivery platform product by the GSM association at this years 3GSM World Congress. Being recognised on such a platform speaks of their knowledge of the wireless environment a key ingredient to move forward in the new mobile era.