Free Mobile: Simplicity laws applied to business

Today in France, everyone was waiting for the launch of the new low cost french mobile operator Free Mobile. Free was up to its promise of proposing unlimited mobile plans at half of the practiced prices. Two plans are proposed: 

• Unlimited plan for 20 euros / month: Unlimited calls in France, and to 40 international destinations, unlimited sms/mms, unlimited wifi, and 3G data
• Social plan for 2 euros / month: 60 min of voice communications and 60 SMS

I watched the morning launch presentation by the CEO Xavier Niel, and I would like to talk about two points on the positioning of Free Mobile.

The first point is about simplicity. In a previous post I wrote about the laws of simplicity (Reduce, Organize, Time..). For me, these laws applied by Free to their new mobile offer makes it a really beautiful piece of art.

1. The Reduce rule: reduce number of offers to only two, reduce offer complexity, reduce price, reduce control: no engagements, no usage restrictions, reduce services, reduce options, reduce contract clauses..
   - The image of the offer can't be clearer and simpler in the mind of the consumer, no need for catalogs, no need to think to choose the right offer.
   - The resulting chain value/cost structure of this simple offer should be also simple: simple sale process, no need for sales advisers, simple after sales services, simple information system, simple advertisements.. all of which are factors for lowering the costs of the offer! take for example their after sales services, they don't need to learn about sophisticated offers, so this service can be externalized easily, and if not, more client issues can be treated more rapidly thus needing less personnel.
2. The Organize rule: The offer is organized in a new innovative way: the mobile subscription and the financing of the mobile phone are separated. This way for example you pay 20 euros per month for your communications plan and 15 euros per month to pay your iPhone "loan". This way of organizing the offer gives the consumer the freedom of financing the mobile phone he wants in the way he wants. As a whole, the organisation of the offer is very simple. Speaking of iPhone, Apple has adopted the same simplicity in their offer: Only one phone, the iPhone!
3. The Time rule: The consumer needs less time to understand the offer, to choose his plan and to get the offer (online). We consumers, we love our time, and prefer not spending it on comparing offers, reading catalogs, talking with sales advisers..
   The time savings are also valid in all of the value chain processes of Free Mobile.

As a conclusion of this point, Free Mobile has made very quickly a simple and strong representation in the mobile brands evoked set.

The second point is about the aggressiveness of the offer presentation in the launch. This was for me the very negative point of the positioning of Free Mobile. In his presentation, the CEO was very aggressive and disrespectful toward other brands of mobile providers. For example he kept telling the audience that the current mobile operators were stealing money from consumers, he criticized the complexity of their offers, their prices and practices. He may be right, but I don't think that he should be doing that, but rather focus on the innovation and the advantages of his offer. As a consumer, I don't like the seller whose only arguments are the defaults of his rivals.

The launch of Free Mobile on the french mobile market will certainly disrupt it, which is a good thing. I am looking forward to see how free will deploy and develop their offer, market, and their mobile network, and also how rivals will respond.

Mobil-Inn a new innovative SME(PME) in Lannion

Mobil-Inn is a new small business in Lannion, France, presented by its founder Frederic Jeanne, as a mobile development enterprise.

Frederic is a former Alten employee, he has more than 15 years of experience in software architecture in the telecom industry.

Frederic's concept is is based on the fact that smartphone market is growing very fast, and its share is increasing among mobile devices, so why don't we use smartphones to replace old fashioned boxes with dedicated functionality? a simple app on a smartphone can make use of the several capacities of the device (geolocalization, communication, orientation, sound...) to provide a similar functionality to a traditional box.

The first ready product of Mobil-Inn is Avenguard. Avenguard is a solution to protect isolated workers. In fact in France, the law defines isolated workers and requires that they can be able to ask for help at any moment when something bad happens to them. The current solutions for this are expensive dedicated boxes, which are hardly customizable to the needs of a specific company:

Avengard is a solution on smartphone, on Android in its first version, which allows an isolated worker to use his mobile to inform about his problem. In the basic free version, Avenguard sends an SMS to a prefigured contact upon a fast movement (worker falling), long time immobility (worker lost conscious) or an intentional click of a big button on the screen in case the worker feels threatened. The SMS includes the name of the worker, a preconfigured message and his GPS coordinates. In its Pro paid version, avenguard back end system initiates a call to the preconfigured contact, interacts with the callee using the latest IVR technologies to inform him about the worker and then puts him in contact with him. You can test the demo version in the android market here.

Mobil-Inn is in its very first steps of creation, searching for its form, its economical model, its financing, market studies, partners..

Frederic still has a lot of innovative ideas in this field, and he has the necessary experience and dedication for succeeding in his project.

Fore more information, you can check Mobil-Inn's website: http://www.mobil-inn.com/, or contact Frederic directly on this email: frederic.jeanne@mobil-inn.com

Achraf

Social answering machine

A few days ago I was in a music class and I was messing with my smartphone. Then suddenly I had this idea: What about an application that updates the message on my answering machine just like a status on a social network? for example in my case in the music class i would have started this application on my phone, then written “I am in the music class” in the status field, then updated the status. If someone calls me and he gets my answering machine, he will hear “I am in the music class”.

As a geek, I thought about the technical aspects of the idea, and i figured out a way to do it. First, you must redirect your incoming calls when you do not respond, to a fixed number. For example, with Orange in France all you have to do is dial: **61* redirection number #. You should own the redirection number, on which you install an interactive voice server (IVR), Asterisk for instance. The VXML script of the IVR must do the following: read for the redirected caller the message text file (e.g.: msg.txt containing the string “I am in the music class”), then save his voice message if he leaves one in an audio file. We will suppose that this is a simple answering machine, so afterwards it sends the voice message to me as a mail, and notify me by SMS for example using the Orange SMS API or other APIs. On the same machine, we install a web server with a simple servlet that changes the msg.txt file upon an authenticated web request. Lets suppose that the request is according to the following form:

www.mydomain.com/servlet/setMessage?msg=I%20am%20in%20the%20music%20class

The server side is done, all we need now is a simple client application on the smartphone. On the application UI, I write my new status, and click on update. the application sends an HTTP request to our webserver with the new status in parameter to update the answering machine message.

We can add complexity the idea by integrating the traditional answering machine services, like calling back to hear the message, or we can have several customized statuses according to the calling number (SFR offers a similar service: SFR Repondeur+). Social extensions maybe thought of, like synchronisation with Facebook or others.

Would you appreciate such an option in you answering machine if it existed in you offer?

Achraf

Android in 3 days

Android OS for mobile phones is gaining market shares in an exponential rhythm : 1.8% in the second quarter of 2009 to 17.2% one year later, thus making it the third worldwide popular mobile OS just behind Symbian and RIM  (Source: Gartner).Android changed the landscape of the mobile ecosystem: HTC doubled his shares by taking the risk of massively investing on android, a platform leveraged by the APIs of Google almighty, app store, open source, active developpers community..

Personally, i was seduced by the OS and im using android on HTC legend. Im quite happy with the richness of its interface and its functionalities.But i think Google still have alot to do on its performance, clearly android have inherited the sins of Java.
So now all telcos are investing on android, and there is more and more demand on development of applications on this platform. In this context i had to discover the platform, and it took me three days to understand it and develop my first application on it. this is Mainly due to:
1 - Google provides freely a very easy to install environment: Android SDK (Emulators, platforms..) and an Eclipse plugin (ADT) that gives you all the necessary tools to develop, debug, test, deploy...
2 - Google provides tons of documentations, and plenty of well explained samples.
3 - Android is based on Java, and it is somehow inspired of some J2ME concepts. (comparison)

In the following i will explain rapidly main concepts of android, and than use them to explain my application.

An android application is composed of one or many of the following elements:

View	UI elements that form the basic building blocks of a user interface: e.g. Buttons, Images…
Activity	A user interface concept, It represents a single screen. The design of the Activity is separated of the programming logic in an XML file.
Intent	Intention to do some work: Broadcast a message, Start a service, Launch an activity, Display a web page, Dial a phone number
Content Provider	A standard mechanism for applications to share data
Service	Background processes that can be local services or remote services
Broadcast receivers	A component that receive and react to broadcast announcements: time zone has changed, that the battery is low, that a picture has been taken…
AndroidManifest.xml	Lists app’s activities and services along with application permissions

For deeper understanding of the fundamentals of android click here.

My application is a fake call simulator. it is a widget, that once it is clicked, it launches a Calling similar screen after 7 seconds and play the default ringtone of the phone. the user accepts the fake call, so an In Call screen shows up. Very useful to find an excuse to runaway from someone :)

Here are the screens of the application:

So in the AndroidManifest.xml i declared the followinf entities:
1 - FCWidget.Java: defines the behavior and design of the widget
2 - FCService.Java: the service that waits 7s and launches the fake call
3 - CallingActivity.Java: defines the first screen of the application
4 - InCallActivity.Java: defines the second screen of the application

When the widget is clicked, it start the service. After 7 seconds, the service creates and intent to launch the Calling Activity screen. Once created, the activity plays the default ringing ringtone. Clicking on the answer image button will stop the ringtone and create an intent to launch the InCall Activity. finally the End Call image button will end up the application. you can download and try the application here: Fake_Call.apk

Bref, i think android is a promising platform, many telcos are adopting it in their offers, especially that they can customize it, and a key benefit of developping products on this plateform, is the fast time to market (TTM) (i developped on iPhone, i know what im saying :D)

Achraf

SFR’s Click To Call: Integration in Facebook

During 4 months, one thousand clients of the french telco SFR volunteered to test a beta version of their application “Click To Call SFR”. The purpose of the application is to offer to SFR mobile clients who have a facebook account a C2C service from their facebook page. a typical use case is the following: Bob is my friend on facebook, so i navigate to his profile, and i click on the C2C box to initiate a Web2Phone communication with him. the main idea of the application is to offer a way to an SFR mobile client to be called without giving out his phone number.

 SFR has understood the potential of social networks to increase the ARPU and thus their revenue. Last year,I had the chance to work with them on their RCS application “Mon repretoire Live”, when they wanted to enrich it by social networks’ functionalities. Voxalot is a VoIP application provider who proposes also a C2C application on facebook.

Since I am an SFR client, i tested the application on facebook. The quality of the communication is not very good, but that depends on a lot of factors, especially the Internet connection of the caller. The ergonomy is to improve, and they have to negotiate with facebook how to be implemented in the profile page. because as it is, it wont be discovered easily by facebook users. it should be placed for example in the contact information. When someone calls you, your phone rings, but you cannot figure out who is calling! this is a major drawback, but its not easy to be resolved using the actual technology (IMS as a solution ?? :) ). Security problems also must be fully examined, as you dont wish to be called by a Internet bot!! An advantage of this application is the possibility of make easy low cost international calls (SFR competes then with low cost VoIP providers?). Finally i ask this question: is facebook the adapted social network for this feature? in facebook we might have a lot of contacts, but we dont wish that everybody just call us! unless we can set the privacy of the application in facebook. I think professional social networks are the ideal potential for the C2C application.

We have to wait to see if SFR will commercialize this application, and in under what offer?

Achraf