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The WDN Symbian DevZone Looks at FastMobile's fastxt Instant Messaging
by Richard Bloor, January 20, 2003
FastMobile Inc. is a private company with headquarters in Chicago, IL USA. The
company has ambitious plans to provide users with a range of text, voice and
picture based products built around Instant Messaging functionality. This week
we are discussing their business strategy and choice of Symbian OS with James
Tagg, European Office M.D, and John O’Boyle, Marketing Director.
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SMS has been a huge hit and is being used as a form of defacto instant
messaging by many users. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that a number
of companies are building IM products for the new generation of smartphones.
One such company is FastMobile who recently launched their fastxt service using
the Nokia 7650 in the UK.
WDN: Why did FastMobile perceive a need for a mobile IM product given that
SMS already provides users with very similar capabilities?
John: We see Mobile Instant Messaging as being a natural progression for the
large number of people in the UK and Europe who are, to put it bluntly, text
addicts. It also extends the PC owners use of Instant Messaging into their
mobile. As such we believe that Instant Messaging is going to be of significant
benefit to people on their mobile in the same way as it has been on their PC. So
we have developed what we believe to be the best system, one that can be used
across all 4 networks in the UK, with plans to expand internationally.
WDN: However there are already clients for existing web IM services starting to
emerge for mobile phones so why do you believe there is a place for a new
service?
John: Firstly we have it working and working very well. Secondly, while there are
a number of Internet companies providing these services we are fundamentally
different because we are not only an Instant Messaging company. fastxt is part of
a family of products we will be launching under the ‘fast’ brand that will appeal to
smartphone users including a picture-based product, a chat based product and
others. We are expecting to launch additional services in the first half of this
year.
WDN: You have chosen the Nokia 7650 as your initial launch phone, what were
the commercial or technical reasons for using that phone?
John: We chose the Nokia 7650 because it was the first major commercial
camera and MMS phone. In addition Nokia has dominance in the UK and
Europe, so it was the obvious one to go for because of the sales volumes. Very
much the right phone at the right time, it was extensively advertised in the last
quarter of 2002 by both Nokia and the Operators so it made sense to target a
phone which was getting maximum exposure.
We will also be moving to phones like the Nokia 3650 and Sony Ericsson P800. If
its GPRS and Symbian we will look to launch for it. We are also using Java to
cover other non-Symbian phones such as the Motorola T720.
WDN: So is it fair to say that you chose the phone rather than the operating
system?
John: Not entirely. We look for technology that will be on handsets in the
markets that are of commercial interest to us and likely to have good market
penetration. Symbian OS and Java are technologies that fulfil these criteria.
WDN: In developing the Symbian based application have you used any of the
programs offered by Symbian or its partners?
John: We are members of the Symbian Platinum program and have been
working well with them for some time now. It is a very good relationship. Most of
the support they provide is in the technical area but we also attend their
conferences and meet regularly with them to discuss marketing opportunities.
WDN: What about the Symbian OS licensees, Nokia for example, given you
launched on the Nokia 7650?
John: We certainly have had involvement with Nokia. From my perspective their
strength is they treat everyone in an evenhanded way. I don’t believe there are
special deals for developers, product companies or operators and I say that with 8
years experience with mobile operators. They have certainly given us everything
we have asked for, to the extent that they would, I believe, provide the same
information or assistance to anyone. From a marketing perspective the fact that
they will invest in marketing support is great but again no more or less for us
than anyone else.
WDN: Your strategy appears to be to sell fastxt through individual retailers in
parallel with their phone sales. Many developers seem to feel that getting a direct
relationship with operators is a key sales tool. Why have you not taken this
approach?
John: I would like to emphasize that this is not a strategy that excludes
operators.
There are two good reasons for the approach we have taken. Firstly we want to
build FastMobile as a brand. Secondly we want the products and services we are
offering to be available across all the 4 mobile networks here in the UK and an
early tie-up with an Operator may have been a barrier to that.
Also in part it is because there are hundreds of other companies knocking on the
operator’s door. So we are targeting quality retailers and selling through our own
on-line shop, we are supporting this with targeted advertising in publications
such as T3, BoysToys and style magazines such as GQ and Esquire. If we prove
that we have a strong product, a sustainable business model and proven
customers then that makes us a force to be reckoned with.
The other reality is operators tend to work on a large scale and prefer their own
brands. We expect that our products will make some noise in the market and as
they do they will come to be of interest to operators. Certainly we hope to get
involved with the operators, ultimately we won't rule out discussing our products
with anyone who is interested and fits with our business plan.
WDN: We are already seeing companies working on Voice IM, given these
emerging technologies how much life do you see in text based IM?
John: If you look at SMS it is not an advanced technology by any means yet for
most operators it is a very, if not the, most significant revenue stream. Mobile
IM improves dramatically on SMS and fits well with what customers have shown
that they want. In the studies we have done text based IM has some advantages
over voice based products, the fact that it is silent, you can not be overheard and
there is a significant portion of the market to whom that is important. I suspect
that it is corporate users are more likely to be more interested in voice, though we
have had several requests from corporates about our fastxt service.
WDN: Given that you have got a Java implementation of your IM client and
Symbian can run Java why not simply use a Java Client?
James: There are actually several reasons. Java MIDP is heavily sandboxed, so
for example in building an instant messaging application it would be
advantageous to use the contacts list that is already on someone’s phone. In
Symbian OS there is an API we can use to read, manipulate and write details to
the contacts list. In Java, because of the security model, you can not look at
other data on the phone so you are not able to access the existing phone features,
which can hamper usability.
The second thing is that Java on a mobile is a bit like the old DOS computers,
you start a program do something, quit and move onto the next program as
opposed to Windows were the program hangs around forever until you want to
use it. So in Java the application will terminate when a phone call comes in and
when you hang up you have to restart the application. To be honest most people
forget meaning that the default for IM on a Java phone is off-line with the user
periodically connects to see if any of their buddies are on-line. Now obviously if
everyone in the community is in this mode, mainly off-line, there is not going to
be a community to talk to and you don’t have an Instant Messaging product. So
Java only really works with pre-existing communities of users. Now it turns out
that IM only works for pre-existing communities of members anyway, because no
one is going to create a community from scratch. So Java has a lot of promise for
people with a Java smartphone who want to check their instant messaging but it
not as rich an experience as can be provided on Symbian OS.
There are a number of other reasons the usability of the Series 60 and other
Symbian OS UI’s, that Java currently blocks you on all the really clever things
you could want to do. There are plans for all of that to change with Java, but the
process could take 2 to 3 years to work through standardization and get built into
phones.
Finally there is the issue that TCP/IP and UDP are not supported on many Java
phones, just HTTP. Our experience is that customers don’t like the HTTP
implementation, when we show them it they are not very receptive, it’s the
difference between a 10 second response and 0.5 second response when we use
TCP/IP. After all it is instant messaging! That’s why the first Java phone we will
launch on is the Motorola T720 because it’s one of the first to support TCP/IP.
WDN: So how have you addressed the issue of using existing communities?
James: By interoperating with MSN Messenger and SMS, so we are not building
a whole community from scratch, although it is practical to use our product as a
stand alone Instant Messenger. We have to piggyback on the network effect
created by existing communities.
WDN: Perhaps I can move on to ask a little about the architecture, are you
running the whole service from the phone or using a intermediate server?
James: We have our own server. There are actually a number of ways we could
have implemented the service, but using a server has several advantages. Say we
want to interoperate with AOL, now AOL change their protocols regularly, so if we
had 10,000 client applications out there on phones it will take forever to get
everyone upgraded and working again. However having our own server means we
simply change the protocols once on the server and we are back in service. The
other significant advantage is that it keeps the client small, as it does not have to
implement multiple protocols. Our client is about 61K, whereas I have seen
clients where no server is employed getting to upwards of 800K and that makes it
very hard to do over the air downloads. It does mean that you have to maintain a
server but the costs are fairly small per customer when you get to scale.
Another good reason for having our own server is to help with future products
and services, such as our forthcoming Voice Messaging product.
WDN: You mentioned AOL just now, but not as a service you interconnect with
currently, presumably your server approach means you can turn AOL on easily in
the future?
James: Yes, we certainly can. The choice at the moment is driven by the fact
that in the UK MSN pretty much has the market, so after you have implemented
MSN you are really scratching your head about whether it is worth doing
anything else. Of course in America it will be AOL and when we are in 2 or 3
international markets we will probably be supporting just about everything.
WDN: There are a number of emerging standards for IM and presence, have you
used these in the applications?
James: The big problem at the moment is that there are, I think, 4 standards
bodies all working on IM and presence and the standards are not finalized. So we
have used a hybrid combining our own proprietary protocols and the developing
standards for communication between the phones and our server. But again as
we use our own server we can easily work with any of these standards when they
are finalized.
WDN: Why did you choose Symbian OS over the other smartphone operating
systems?
James: Well it’s a good operating system. We actually implemented the
application on a Microsoft PDA initially. The primary reason to go to Symbian
and the Nokia 7650 was market share. If you look at the adoption of new
technology 85% of early adopters are Nokia phone users. So launching on any
other phone would have meant chasing a fraction of 15%.
WDN: Was it the same team that did the Symbian OS development?
James: Half and half, we hired 4 ex-Symbian people and created a team with 4
of our existing developers.
WDN: For the developers who were not familiar with Symbian OS how did they
find the transition?
James: We ported the whole thing to Symbian OS and launched it to the market
in 2 and an half months, obviously the ex-Symbian people helped greatly, but
within about 2 to 3 weeks you probably would not have known the difference
between them.
About the WDN Symbian Editor, Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor has 16 years experience in the IT industry. His earlier
work was largely in design and development of commercial and
manufacturing systems but more recently has focused on
development and test management of government systems.
Richard Bloor is the Mobile Applications champion at System
Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at bloor@wirelessdevnet.com.
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