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Mobiles, muffins and multimedia

Technology can be daunting, especially when you consider that I still haven’t been able to configure my two-month-old mobile phone to send or receive multimedia messages. What could be an even more daunting thought is coffee and conversation with a gentleman, who says that if there is one word that defines what he does, it is ‘digital’ with the ‘end user always in focus’. Soon, however, over an orange juice and blueberry muffin, Ericsson’s director of business development – multimedia, the soft-spoken Andreas Liffgarden makes it clear that the success of mobile space and its services, especially those services you don’t really need like multimedia, depends on how easy the service provider makes it for you. “You are the customer – you should just enjoy the service, you shouldn’t have to install it.”

A lot of things taken for granted on the Internet is not so in the mobile space. Liffgarden further assuages my mobile phone-challenged soul with the information that less than ten per cent of all mobile phone users in the region have the data settings configured on their phones. While all phones have voice pre-configured out of the box as opposed to data that has to be configured, this results in the total penetration of data-configured mobile much smaller than it could be. There are 2bn handsets in the world and says Liffgarden, “All of these can use digital services or the Internet and what we need to look at is how we can increase the percentage of penetration.” While the mobile internet has been around for the past ten years, not as much has happened here as in the traditional Internet space. “The future success of our industry, as vendors and operators, rests on how we develop our business to make it useful and easy for the users, and more importantly, make it a fun experience.”

In order for any of this to happen, overall broadband penetration, be it fixed or wireless, needs to gain momentum. Bigger, faster and chea-per connectivity is intrinsic to digital evolution. Then, the more handsets that are enabled, the better. Jordan’s liberalised telco market is one of the forerunners in the region with prices that are as competitive as anywhere in Western Europe.

Abu Dhabi based Liffgarden, a frequent visitor to Oman, finds it very encouraging that there exists forums like Digital Nation and institutions like the Knowledge Oasis Muscat. “Oman is very active – what it needs is more entrepreneurial spirit in the technology space: someone with a brilliant idea and the mind to achieve it.” What Liffgarden would love to to see are big ventures from the Middle East take on the global giants. For this, you need the Sequoias of the region.

The fact is that an environment where a lot of entrepreneurial activity is funded by the family is not conducive to hi-tech, hi-risk business proposals. A venture capitalist has an appetite for risk that the traditional family set-up can never emulate. But then, isn’t this a chicken-and-egg situation, since entrepreneurs would need an environment that supports technology before we started to produce them? “Yes it is. Unless you have a market that consumes whatever is invented in that market, business will be difficult to sustain. That is why it is key you have broadband.”

Tying in the entrepreneurial idea to new innovations in the digital space, Liffgarden says, “Operators and vendors should not be the only ones to provide the services. If I as the operator, vendor or distributor control all services you get – it is limiting. There are other smart people in the world and why would you limit socio-economic development to my pace?” Third party content development will help flourish a competitive, and therefore varied, environment to flourish. “Almost every crazy idea that anyone ever had on the Internet, they could try it out. Some failed miserably but at least they had an ecosystem that supported it. When people ask what is the success factor of Youtube – how do you replicate it, I say they are talented but they were the lucky ones to be picked up by a Google. There are hundreds of others doing the same.” The more ideas that are out there, the more options, and therefore greater penetration.